All-In x Kill Tony:一场爆笑的节日特别节目
Tony Hinchcliffe × Chamath Palihapitiya × Jason Calacanis × David Sacks × David Friedberg
Kill Tony 已将开放麦的随机性变成规模化的媒体与人才发现飞轮。 节目拿下“前所未有”的4部Netflix特别节目合约,成为YouTube播客排名第2、仅次于Joe Rogan,并3次售罄Madison Square Garden;其报名桶仍是民主化的人才入口,如今好莱坞也在密切关注。Dedrick Flynn等了2年、连续39周报名,最终直接成为固定演员,这个案例浓缩了该模式的核心:“一切皆有可能。”
Hinchcliffe所谓的“12年一夜成名”,本质上是一个关于耐力、而非励志的创始人故事。 他上午11点到晚上7点接电话,晚上8点到凌晨2点半在Comedy Store看门;从400美元的沙发,降级到300美元的懒人沙发,最后睡进汽车,但他说自己从未考虑过放弃,因为“那是我最喜欢的时光”。疫情期间失去现场观众,迫使节目改做远程演出并忍受Zoom交接失灵,但节目仍持续发布。
对Friedberg和Chamath而言,Alphabet是最明确的大盘股赢家,因为分发能力与产品质量在市场普遍预期搜索将被颠覆之际同时汇合。 Friedberg提到其市值从2万亿美元升至4万亿美元、云业务增长40%、YouTube成为全球第1大媒体公司,以及每天大约“创造100亿美元价值”。他认为,直接把AI整合进Google.com后,市场叙事已从ChatGPT将杀死Google,反转为Google可能威胁ChatGPT;Chamath还将功劳归于Sergey Brin回归以及公司重新承担产品风险。
AI交易已从软件扩展到芯片、建筑劳工和具身机器。 Sacks称,数据中心的管道工、电工、石膏板工和混凝土浇筑工工资上涨了25%-30%;Friedberg选出的CEO Jensen Huang,则在“33年积累”后,用36个月将Nvidia从3000亿美元带到4.5万亿美元。Chamath对人形机器人的预测是,“每个人最终都会拥有自己的C-3PO/Friedberg”,但这仍只是预测。
输家企业有一个共同模式:拥有有价值的分发渠道或资产,却没有能将其转化为价值的管理层。 Jason称Apple过去10年最值得一提的成就是“一部很薄的iPhone”;Friedberg认为,Warner Bros. Discovery的并购估值达到其交易价格的3倍,暴露出公司长期管理不善;Jason称公众对大学是否值得其成本的看法,在10年间从+13转为-30。Hinchcliffe则把批评延伸至规避风险的电影制片厂,并表示自己的电影由独立资金支持。
对创作者企业而言,政策风险如今同样嵌在分发栈里,而不仅来自政府。 Hinchcliffe将Netflix“你想怎么做就怎么做”的态度,与每周都在变化的YouTube规则作对比:平台有时会在上线窗口直接取消变现,或加上足以摧毁转化率的年龄门槛。Friedberg提到英国3000多起恶意通信逮捕、德国84000起出于政治动机的通信犯罪,以及法国6000起基于言论的仇恨犯罪;他还指出,加州SB771最终送到Gavin Newsom手上,随后被其否决。
这场小范围押注更偏好耐久型IP和政策正常化,而不是时髦的新奇事物。 Hinchcliffe称,TKO是他唯一亲自让高尔夫球友买入的股票,理由是Dana White的舞台能力和WWE的增长,并称其取得了“野蛮成功”;Sacks则表示,加密货币已从“战争”和担心入狱,走向立法与“公平对待”。Friedberg选的Bennu突破短期内更难交易,但意义更深远:这颗45亿岁的陨石携带了核酸、氨基酸、糖和葡萄糖。
1. 吐槽让不敬成为当晚的核心产品
Hinchcliffe开场就戳破了全场的自我想象:旧金山的困境肉眼可见,现场观众却“花500美元看亿万富翁彼此聊天”,4位主持人的合计净资产超过30亿美元。他最后称赞All-In推动科技、文化和政治领域的讨论,这句话之所以成立,是因为在此前的吐槽中,没有人得到保护,包括缺席的Chamath Palihapitiya。
随后,主持人亲自进入Kill Tony的一分钟表演模式。Jason Calacanis围绕插话、减重和攀名人展开:“我刚收到Elon的短信;他说那不是真的。”但Hinchcliffe发现,他一次次转向主持人席,确认笑话是否奏效,而不是牢牢抓住观众。
David Sacks贡献了全场最亮眼的一段,包括“SPAC现在代表Seriously Pissed at Chamath(真的被Chamath惹毛了)”,并被宣布为新的“黄金门票赢家”。David Friedberg的段子包括“我研究黑洞,而Chamath投资黑洞”;Friedberg随后承认自己的节奏不对,还需要“再来一两轮”。
2. Kill Tony始于对未经筛选的失败下注
Hinchcliffe回忆,他最初是在Comedy Store主持开放麦,每晚40名喜剧演员、每人3分钟。他会吐槽每一段表演,但私下给出实用建议——深呼吸、使用停顿、改变语速,或把麦克风拿近一点;与此同时,他意识到,最有趣的素材往往是演员们在后台彼此低声交流的内容。
所有人都劝他做播客时,Hinchcliffe提出把这套混乱的开放麦流程公开。联合主持人Brian Redban的反应精准概括了这场逆向下注:“他妈的谁会想看开放麦?”Hinchcliffe的答案基本是:所有人都会,只要把私下评论、公开冒险和偶尔的指导全部呈现出来。
这套创始人神话极其具体:上午11点到晚上7点接电话,晚上8点到凌晨2点半在Comedy Store工作,收入甚至不够支付每月400美元的房租。他后来从沙发降级到300美元的懒人沙发,最后睡在俱乐部后面的车里,还要靠维修工Juan Carlos推迟嘈杂的维修工作,才能好好休息。
房租那段时期过去18年半后,Hinchcliffe给前室友转了1000美元,备注写着“Rent money 2007”。有人问他是否想过放弃,他直接否定了这个问题:“那是我最喜欢的时光。”如今站在奥斯汀的露台上,他仍会想起当年的挣扎;而每一场MSG演出,都会给他一次新的“我成功了”。
3. 疫情冲击与奥斯汀生态反而强化了这项IP
Hinchcliffe毫不犹豫地称奥斯汀是最好的喜剧城市。他拒绝接受当地演员只是“网络激进派”的说法:这些人就是曾在洛杉矶Comedy Store演出、占据中段阵容的同一批喜剧演员,也依旧能在纽约或洛杉矶的俱乐部登台;奥斯汀只是他们如今生活的地方。
他将自己的搬迁归因于加州处理疫情的方式,以及加州在George Floyd骚乱期间对待警察的态度。在Hinchcliffe列出的奥斯汀聚集区里,有Joe Rogan、Shane Gillis、Matt McCusker、Tom Segura、Elon Musk和Tim Ferriss;他还提到,有时约300名访客会排在街上,仅仅为了看看Kill Tony在哪里录制。
COVID攻击了Kill Tony最核心的资产——现场观众,而就在同时,其他播客正迎来繁荣。团队靠观众提交的一分钟视频,再接Zoom采访,顶着寂静、糟糕的Wi-Fi和不断失败的转场继续做下去,最终让观众在户外间隔6英尺入座。Hinchcliffe的叙述重点不是优雅适应,而是在替代产品“糟糕透顶”的情况下拒绝停播。
国际扩张却没有那么自动发生。Hinchcliffe称6月的欧洲场是节目史上最糟的一期,原因包括表演者实力不足和伦敦“无休止的阴郁”;他说,除非能拿出白金汉宫之类的东西,否则节目可能不会再回去。这个喜剧式夸张仍然揭示了格式对当地人才密度和观众氛围的依赖。
4. 分发政策可以抹掉创作者的上线窗口
主持人拿Hinchcliffe在Madison Square Garden参加Trump竞选集会的表演开玩笑,说他差点把整个竞选烧掉。他表示,MSG的现场氛围以及争取年轻选民和未决定选民的机会吸引了他。被问及后续风波时,他回答“假新闻”,提到宾夕法尼亚州波多黎各裔人口增加20%,随后为自己对所有阵营一视同仁的吐槽风格辩护。
他更广泛的抱怨是语境被剥离:记者把那段例行表演当作党派言论,却没有核查他的多元演员阵容,也没有核查他在Comedy Central做过的13场吐槽专场。Hinchcliffe的解读是,有“幽默感”的观众看得出哪个政党容得下笑话。
平台经济才是更直接的运营风险。Hinchcliffe将Ted Sarandos和Netflix的“你想怎么做就怎么做,想多狠都可以”,与YouTube毫无预警地更改可用词排名作对比。创作者往往要等到节目发布90分钟后被取消变现,或恰好在最大观众涌入的窗口被加上年龄限制,才知道规则变了。
Friedberg将这些私人平台规则与公共言论管制联系起来,提到英国3000多起恶意通信逮捕、德国84000起出于政治动机的通信犯罪,以及法国6000起以言论为定义的仇恨犯罪。加州SB771已通过州议会推进,随后被Newsom否决;一位主持人还提到欧盟对Musk处以1.2亿欧元罚款,称这说明欧洲“从来没收到那份备忘录”。
5. 这个桶已成为好莱坞盯着的开放人才市场
规模如今验证了最初的产品设计:Kill Tony在Madison Square Garden连续3场售罄,Hinchcliffe的单口专场又一次售罄MSG,Netflix拿下4部特别节目合约,年末YouTube播客排名第2、仅次于Rogan。主持人称这套档案库经久不衰,但表示现场到场才是入口,因为观众能在现场感受到“失败的机会”。
Dedrick Flynn是最典型的样本。他在桶里报名等了2年,搬到奥斯汀后又连续39周报名,甚至准备在终于被抽中时停手。他的一分钟表演和采访足够出色,Hinchcliffe直接跳过黄金门票环节,把他提拔为固定演员;节目大约每2年才会做出一次这样的决定。
4周内,Flynn已经在表演一段唱自己“已经很有钱”的说唱。Hinchcliffe称Howie Mandel和更广泛的行业都会通过节目寻找潜在签约对象,包括《America's Got Talent》;但他不会从演员获得的机会中抽成。Jason随即提议为年度特别节目锁定期权,也由此抛出了一个问题:这个平台应该保留多少人才发现价值。
6. Alphabet靠既有分发与重新押注风险取胜
Friedberg选的商业赢家是Alphabet。他称Alphabet的市值从2万亿美元升至4万亿美元,同时每天增加约100亿美元价值。其经营逻辑包括云业务40%的增长、YouTube作为全球领先媒体公司的地位、AI转向,以及本应下滑的搜索业务重新恢复增长。
Jason强调了预期的逆转:1年前,市场共识认为ChatGPT会杀死Google;如今讨论的却是Google是否会杀死ChatGPT。Friedberg给出了实现路径:先做出有竞争力的AI产品,再把它装进Google.com——“全世界最大的消费产品”。Chamath补充称,Sergey Brin全职回归,让Google重新获得了承担产品风险的许可。
Sacks选择了数据中心周边的实体劳工。他称,管道工、电工、石膏板工和混凝土浇筑工的工资上涨了25%-30%;Jason则转述一份报告称,持证电工的年收入可以达到50万美元。他的核心观点是,AI的收益已经不再局限于科技公司或股票持有人。
Hinchcliffe选了Kill Tony本身:Netflix合约、YouTube排名,以及把现场观众转化为习惯性观众。这个选择带有自利成分,但逻辑自洽——如今这项IP横跨现场活动、单口喜剧、流媒体特别节目、人才发现和每天被消费的内容档案库。
7. Apple、Warner Bros. Discovery和大学浪费了内置优势
Jason选的最大商业输家是大学。他引用一项持续10年的指标:认为大学值得其成本的美国人比例,从+13跌至-30。他选的Disgracia是Stanford,并称如今有50%的学生自称残障,以获得考试便利;在他看来,这反映出一个成绩被稀释、特权越来越容易钻空子的体系。
Friedberg选择Warner Bros. Discovery,因为一项并购交易给出的公司估值,是其此前交易水平的3倍。对他而言,这个差距证明内容资产的价值远高于管理层实际提取出来的价值。Jason曾卖出仓位来抵消其他地方的收益,也承认自己错过了最终结果:“这是我少见的一次失误。”
Jason选的输家是Apple:无限资本、无限分发能力,而在他看来,公司过去10年最令人印象深刻的硬件成就不过是“一部很薄的iPhone”。当一部流媒体剧《Pluribus》可能成为公司近期最好的产出时,他认为,Apple在AI和产品定位上的机会成本才是问题所在。
Hinchcliffe选择大型电影制片厂,称它们即便在《The Hangover》之后——他把这部片放在2006年前后——仍然热衷于表演正确立场、回避风险。Jason补充说,这个系列赚了10亿美元。Hinchcliffe的回应是一部由他与UTA团队安排、独立出资的电影;相比一个可预测的当代参照物,他把《Kingpin》视为保持喜剧锋芒的范本。
8. 突破名单把深科技与耐久飞轮放在一起
Friedberg选的科学突破来自小行星Bennu。NASA探测器于2020年采样,并在2023年带回样本;活动前2天公布的发现包括核酸、氨基酸、糖和葡萄糖。由于这颗45亿岁的陨石包含“生命的所有组成部分”,Jason认为,这一发现说明生命未必只存在于地球。
Chamath选择了“3到4种”人形机器人的进展,并预测最终每个人都会拥有一个“C-3PO/Friedberg”。Sacks选择了商业航班上的Starlink,因为可用的空中互联网会改变乘机体验;但他承认自己自2012年以来就没坐过商业航班,这个答案立即被拿来开玩笑。
Jensen Huang是共识CEO人选。Chamath称,Nvidia经过33年形成的飞轮,在36个月内将公司从3000亿美元推到4.5万亿美元,相当于“连续3年每个月增加约1000亿美元”。被问到另一个选择时,Chamath提名Alex Karp,理由是Palantir经历了强劲的一年,以及Karp在一次峰会上的表现——用他的话说,Karp“把Tucker都比下去了”。
Hinchcliffe唯一亲自建议别人买入的股票是TKO,理由是Dana White策划UFC赛事的能力,以及Nick Khan和Paul Levesque领导下WWE的持续增长。这位自称“意大利穷小子”、更喜欢把现金放在鞋盒里的人说,这笔持仓取得了“野蛮成功”;与Jason的Warner仓位不同,他一直没有卖出。
9. 政策正常化获胜,政治诊断却各说各话
Sacks选择加密货币作为政治赢家:1年前,这个行业还面对“加密战争”,担心有人因此入狱;如今,立法和政府框架带来了“公平对待”。Hinchcliffe最终选择Sacks本人,称他帮助建立加密框架,并保护美国在AI领域的竞争力——这是“我们一生中最重要的竞赛”。
其余赢家暴露了这个联盟内部的矛盾。Jason选择美国民主社会主义者;Hinchcliffe曾在与Zohran Mamdani相关的社会主义和正在壮大的America First运动之间犹豫;最终,他为讲亲Trump笑话辩护,因为几乎每个其他喜剧演员都在攻击同一个目标。
他们对输家的判断同样截然不同。Sacks称欧洲在经济、地缘政治、社会和文化层面都是“一个衰落中的文明”。Friedberg选择开国元勋;Chamath解释说,选民越来越接受政府控制收入和日常生活。Jason选择Stephen Miller的“表演式残酷”;Hinchcliffe选择Gavin Newsom,尽管他称赞Newsom否决SB771。
收尾时,一位主持人称喜剧演员是自由言论的“旗手”,即便观众并不接受他们说的话。Jason称Hinchcliffe对旧金山的攻击是一次反派转身;另一位主持人说,直到那一刻观众都还站在他这边;Hinchcliffe随后部分收回了自己的说法。这场交锋再次凸显了当晚不断试探边界的主题。
Honestly, I think this is the most fun Christmas party we've ever had.
Ever. And probably the most fun event we've ever had is because Tony is here.
Please welcome the one, the only, Tony Hinchcliffe.
What the fuck is up, you goddamn nerds?
Tony, any chance we could play Kill Tony tonight?
You guys want to play Kill Tony here?
So, are you guys prepared for this? You know how it works?
We know how it works. I don't know if we're prepared.
I wasn't expecting to have to do this tonight, but I think I just found a new Golden Ticket winner.
Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for your besties.
David, Jason, welcome everybody to the second annual All-In holiday party. Yes, thank you for coming. This is going to be an incredible lineup. We've got so many great moments for you tonight. Unfortunately, Chamath couldn't make it tonight.
I know. I know. It's hard. It's hard. But we have a pretty great replacement that you're going to love. Friedberg, tell them what's coming.
Hold on. Let me get my script.
Wow. Professional. Do the sponsor shout-out.
Tonight, we are going to have the legendary Bestie Awards.
We have some roasting, and we're all going to play Kill Tony.
What?
We're going to play Kill Tony.
We are going to play Kill Tony.
Oh, thanks for letting us know.
How many here are big fans of Kill Tony? Oh, that's incredible. Well, then let's just bring out the one, Chamath's replacement. Chamath's permanent replacement on the program. The three of us voted him off the island. Please welcome the one, the only, Tony Hinchcliffe.
Oh, my God, look at this star power. Fuck yeah. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.
What the fuck is up, you goddamn nerds? How about a hand for the All-In podcast Christmas party? We're here in San Francisco. Make some noise. You guys live here in San Francisco? What a shit hole.
It's actually worse than a shit hole. You could actually use a shit hole here to put the shit into that's on the streets. A shit hole would be an actual upgrade. It used to be so beautiful here. You guys remember the intro to Full House? That house is still full because 23 Somalis live in it now.
Put your phones away, you fucks. You can watch this in video form later, you fucking dorks. Everybody wants their own exclusive. I'm going to make it tonight. My YouTube channel is going to get extra hits.
California has more homeless people than any other state. People are struggling, and you fucking paid 500 bucks to watch billionaires talk to each other. God bless America.
Look, billionaires don't have it easy. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a billionaire to pretend that they like their kids?
I had to research these guys, and it was the most exhausting thing I've ever done. Absolute dorks. But then I watched Mountainhead on the plane, and then The Big Bang Theory, Succession, and Brokeback Mountain, and I think I figured it out.
As many of you know, these gentlemen started the All-In podcast at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. It saw massive success very quickly, which makes sense. People were isolated and looking for relatable content. And what's more relatable than 4 venture capitalists playing high-stakes poker?
Their combined net worth of the four hosts is over $3 billion. You guys realize you don't have to do a podcast, right?
Jason does.
Whenever anyone is asked what they would do if they had $1 billion, I've never heard the answer, “Attend weekly Zoom calls.”
I do love the current landscape of podcasts, though. How is my show even considered to be on the same playing field as what you guys do? It's crazy, right? You can listen to 4 experts educated in economics and technology, and within seconds you can switch over to my show and listen to an Elon Musk impersonator roasting an aspiring comedian with cerebral palsy.
These guys are all actual friends with Elon Musk. They told me that backstage, and then they told me their names.
Our friend Elon, of course, got some criticism from the left at the beginning of this year when he was accused of doing a Nazi salute. He said he didn't do a Nazi salute, but that it was a Roman salute. He could have just said it was an awkward wave, and people would have accepted that.
I don't know if “Roman salute” is the best alternative. He went with the group behind the Nazis—the Romans, who killed the most Jews, including Jesus himself. That's like being accused of visiting Epstein's Island and having an alibi that you were touring Thailand with Bill Gates.
Can you guys tell Elon to use his rockets for something positive, like immigration? Do you have any idea how fast you can get illegal immigrants back to where they came from on a fucking rocket? I looked into this. It's 26 seconds from here to Tijuana, Mexico.
It's simple. You take the rocket, fill it with illegal immigrants, blast that fucker up in the air, and let Elon do his fancy little parallel-parking thing that he likes to do. You empty out the illegal immigrants, fill it with avocados.
Yes, no tariffs on these avocados. These are the ideas.
There are some critics on the left who say the hosts of All-In are all too conservative, calling it an echo chamber. An echo chamber is also how Marjorie Taylor Greene's ex-husband refers to her cunt.
We may have to edit that one out.
Immigrant jokes are okay, but big dick jokes aren't? What kind of party are you running here?
But seriously, it is an honor to be here at the Christmas party. Remember, everyone, Santa is watching to see who's naughty or nice, and you don't want to end up on his naughty list. Then again, that would be the second-worst list JCal ended up on.
JCal's net worth is $60 million. So on this podcast, he's known as the broke-ass bitch. He was an early investor in Uber, and out of everyone up here, he's the closest one to having to be one of the drivers.
He refers to himself as the greatest podcast moderator in the world.
These are the people cheering who have not seen my show.
If you get to call yourself the greatest podcast moderator in the world, then I get to say that I'm a virtue-signaling, angel-investor, liberal cuck. That's what you are.
Oh, my God. Fun fact: Candace Owens thinks that the leader of France's wife has a bigger dick than JCal.
His AngelList flex is the startup equivalent of that guy who won't stop talking about his high school football championship. Oh, okay, lost you on the AngelList joke. All right, that's surprising. Puerto Rico. Very good, sir. Thank you. We're trying to forget about that.
JCal and I don't have much in common. I'm a centrist, slightly right-leaning person, and he's a full-on liberal. The only thing we have in common is that liberals don't like us.
Chamath couldn't make it, which is completely disappointing. And I'm still—if it's all right with you guys—going to do my Chamath jokes.
Yes, I might do a couple of extra ones that I thought were too mean. Now that he's not here, I had to show up for this thing. He works hard. $1.5 billion. He works hard 24/7/11.
He bought into the Golden State Warriors because he heard they had Curry over there.
How do these nerds like sports jokes more than AngelList jokes? This doesn't even make any sense. He's got vindaloo. Indian food jokes, anyone? He's got a lot of bread. It's a non-issue.
Okay, here we go. He's the best poker player out of the bunch. He has the most patience because he looks like a doctor.
Somebody told me that Chamath has a very hot wife. I wonder what she sees in him. Perhaps the hairy feet.
Okay, Chamath at one point was a senior executive at Facebook, where he spearheaded several projects like Facebook Phone, Facebook Home, and Facebook Beacon. If none of those ring a bell, it's because they were all completely scrapped by Facebook. Hell of a résumé.
Chamath, did you also pitch the logo ideas to Cracker Barrel?
How about a hand for David Sacks?
I am a huge fan of yours. I just think you're truly so cool. For a genius like you to take a break from wildly successful businesses to be a patriot and share your brilliant mind for the better of our great nation is unbelievable.
Agreed. Agreed.
David Friedberg is here. It didn't get the laugh I expected. I was supposed to be funny, but I just was nice to David Sacks and then moved on.
Oh, and to Sacks, the crypto czar: Michael Saylor asked me to say hello. And if you can do anything—anything at all—that would be great.
I don't really know what he's talking about, but it's a truly admirable feat. I'm excited to watch Jason Calacanis follow in your footsteps in 2028 as AOC's special adviser for plugging your own [__] on air.
I didn't think it was possible to be the third wheel on a podcast with 4 guys. You guys—
Oh my God.
—are cracking yourself up. David Friedberg has a segment on the show called Science Corner, or as Sacks calls it, “Time to Go.”
David and David, I would like to personally thank you for both elevating the representation of African Americans among the billionaire class. You know, they say we have wealth inequality in this country. Well, it turns out we fixed it. We just outsourced it to better Africans.
Yeah, that's America. That's America, baby. You see a kid from Johannesburg with a laptop, and he's a billionaire in 10 years. You see a brother from the South Side with a laptop, and he stole your laptop. It's true. The only blackmail on the podcast is whatever the Israeli government has on these guys.
Blackmail.
Yes.
All right. But seriously, to the All-In squad, thanks for all you do to promote healthy discourse and share perspectives across culture, tech, and politics. What you all have built is special and transcends partisanship. I'm honored to be here tonight, and I'm very proud to now call each of you my friends. Also, can I borrow some money? Thank you very much.
Awesome. Oh my God, man. That was easier than I thought. Wow. Yo, that was fun. Tell me a little bit about the just unbelievable 12-year overnight success that is Kill Tony.
Yeah, I just built the show that I wanted to do. I was always very lucky early on at the Comedy Store to get to host the open mics there, which are 3-minute-long sets on Sundays and Mondays, with 40 comedians in a row doing 3 minutes. Three minutes, three minutes, three minutes.
I would go up after each comedian did 3 minutes and make fun of them. Every once in a while, afterward, I would go up to them personally and say, “Hey, you know, if you took a breath sometimes, or used pauses, or sped up, or got the mic closer to your mouth—little advice here and there.”
My friends and I would always have so much fun sitting in the back of the room watching these open mics. The things that we would whisper into each other's ears, I thought, were so funny. We'd be in the back of the room, and sometimes we'd be the only people laughing at the open mic because of what we were saying to each other.
I thought to myself, during this time when everyone was saying, “Tony, you have to do a podcast. You got to do a podcast. Everyone has a podcast”—it was completely unheard of at the time—“Why not show how crazy an open mic can be, and the ideas that my comedian buddies and I were laughing about? If we shared what we were laughing about with the people, I think it could be a hit.”
Even Redban, the co-host at the time, said, “Wait, what? Who the [__] is going to want to watch an open mic?” I kind of thought everybody would. It turns out it worked out pretty well.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. When I moved to Austin 2 years ago, the first thing people say when they land in Austin is, “Have you been to Kill Tony? Can you get me tickets to Kill Tony?”
You were so nice. You gave me your phone number. You said, “Anytime you want, come in.” And then I texted you, and you ghosted me.
Really? Did that really happen?
No, I just wanted to see if the joke would last.
It would have happened if you did text me. That's why—
I deleted your number, but yeah. No, I didn't.
But it is a phenomenon. The show is selling out. I don't know how many weeks you put out at a time, but my office is over there by Dirty Sixth Street, and sometimes I'll walk to get a coffee and there are 300 people lined up on the street. They just go to Joe Rogan's Mothership to see where it happens.
Jason, what's it like in terms of the number of tickets and then this incredible scale? You've now sold out Madison Square Garden how many times?
Yeah, 3 Kill Tonys and once just for my stand-up—the stand-up show. The most recent Kill Tony was all after my famous MSG performance.
You spoke at the Nuremberg Rally.
Yeah. So that was even more special because it was already my favorite arena. In fact, the only reason I really did that event was because I was excited to feel the magic of Madison Square Garden again.
Had it been at, you know, what's the one in Jersey or whatever?
Brendan Byrne.
No, a different arena. It doesn't matter. But it's in Jersey. It doesn't matter.
Yeah. My point is, if it had even been anywhere else, I don't even know if I would have done it. But the magic of MSG, mixed with the opportunity to perhaps get a few people—maybe younger people or whoever was there who were on the fence—to vote what I thought was the right way.
Can I ask, how did that whole MSG thing come about for the Trump campaign? I remember when they asked me to help, and I just threw a dinner. When you did it, you delivered a killer set that almost burned the campaign down.
Fake news. Twenty percent Puerto Rican increase in the state of Pennsylvania. An uptick, because Puerto Ricans have an unbelievable sense of humor.
You know, when you do this every night and all the time, you get a really good feel for what you can and can't get away with, and exactly where the actual line is. I think, in retrospect, a lot of people think that the mainstream media were trying to make it appear like a comedian. I don't think any of these journalists did their research. With a simple Google search, you can see that I have the most diverse comedy show in the world, and that I push the limits, whether it be at the Tom Brady roast or the Snoop Dogg roast, and all the roasts that I've written over the last 13 Comedy Central roasts.
It's equal opportunity, basically.
With a simple Google search of my name, you can find out that I was just doing what I did. I think they weren't banking on the fact that I'm not mainstream, right? I'm not Jimmy Fallon or any of these darlings of theirs. I think that they thought it was going to make everything look bad.
But meanwhile, I think anybody with a sense of humor at all saw it and went, “I think this is the party with a sense of humor.”
Yes.
Meanwhile, the other side had GloRilla shaking her ass, and everyone's pretending like that's cool, but that's not cool. And, Tony, can we go back to your story? I thought what was so interesting was your story getting here, because there's a lot of entrepreneurs—
—people that have built businesses in this room. One of the defining characteristics of building a business is that you have to have grit, because nothing goes as planned if you're doing something for the first time.
Yeah.
And you get your ass kicked. If you can deal with that, you can deal with it again. You deal with it again, and you can eventually get somewhere.
You started out in Los Angeles. Can you talk about not just the idea, but then what the process was like going from the idea to having yourself on stage with the future president at Madison Square Garden? What was that experience like, and how hard was that iteration, that build, and the struggle to get to where you got to?
Oh, it was insane. I actually just mentioned this: I was on Joe Rogan's podcast this week with John Cena, and it came up. I had this moment a few weeks ago where I Venmoed a buddy because I thought that I owed him rent from 18 and a half years ago.
I was renting the couch in a living room with 4 comedians total. I was one of them. One had a bedroom with a bathroom, another one had a bedroom with a bathroom, and there was a little loveseat. The guy was renting the loveseat, and I had to pay $400 a month in rent.
I literally was working all the hours, from 11:00 a.m. on the phones to 7:00 p.m. at night. Then I would put on the Comedy Store T-shirt and work the door from 8:00 p.m. until 2:30 in the morning, and then do it again the next day.
The Comedy Store hadn't had its second huge boom yet, which was a few years away. They would cut your hours at the Comedy Store. They just wouldn't. Not only would you not get overtime, you wouldn't even get the hours that you actually did work, or really anything at all. I couldn't make the $400 a month rent.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, I said to one of the other buddies who had a room, “Hey, I think I still owe the main guy a few hundred bucks in rent.” He goes, “You do? He mentioned it the last time I saw him.”
Wow.
So I went to Venmo and just Venmoed him $1,000 straight up. In the caption, I wrote, “Rent money, 2007.”
But, Tony, was there a period during that time when you were going to quit, where you said, “It's not working”?
No, these were my favorite times. In fact, after the $400 rent—which, by the way, because I couldn't make the $400 rent, I got downgraded. Not only was there someone else on the loveseat, but someone else moved in who could afford the $400 rent. So I paid $300 rent for a beanbag on the ground.
And let me remind you, the bathrooms were in the other guy's bedroom. So you had to tiptoe, if you had to pee in the middle of the night, through somebody else's bedroom.
It was after that, actually, after basically the first year, that I decided to just start sleeping in the back seat of my car behind the Comedy Store, where I wasn't even allowed to park.
It’s a tiny parking lot. I would be up on one of the hills in the Hollywood Hills, and after 2:30 or 3:00 a.m., when you’re done, I would walk up a hill, get my car, and drive it back into the empty Comedy Store parking lot. I’d pull into the back. Juan Carlos, the maintenance man there, would show up at around 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. He was nice enough to wait a few hours, trying to let me get a few extra hours of sleep before he started nailing [bleep] and fixing everything.
Those are literally the times that, now that I have a touch of success, I think about all the time. Every single time I find myself looking at the skyline of Austin from my beautiful [bleep] home with a crazy outdoor terrace and everything the way that I want it, I think about those times—the struggle—all the time.
Was there a moment where you said, “I made it”? [applause]
Yeah, it happens quite a bit. The “I made it” thing happens a lot. Every MSG show—and, again, to go back to it, the Trump thing at MSG being global news was so insane—not only did I make it, I feel every time like I’m making it again. It just seemed, at the time, there were a couple of weeks where literally tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people were saying or thinking that that could be it, that it’s all over.
What’s the best city for comedy right now? Is it Austin? Is it still L.A.?
There’s no question about it. It’s Austin, Texas.
Austin. Really?
Absolutely.
Honestly, you guys are making it sound really fun. You’re there. Jake’s there. Rogan’s there. Who else is there?
Elon, Tim Ferriss.
Let’s go shopping.
Shane Gillis. His entire crew is there—Matt McCusker, Tom Segura.
I came and saw you a few months ago when we did that event in Austin. What was that, March or something? March, right?
It was incredible. I mean, the crowd.
Yeah. We got hooked up with your guy, who got us some tickets, and I was with some buddies. They said, “Let’s go see Kill Tony.” We got in touch with your guy and got into the show, and I think I had forgotten what stand-up comedy was supposed to be like from the late ’90s, early 2000s, even into the 2010s. Over the last couple of years, we’ve talked a lot about guys getting their heads chopped off when they said something wrong—Chappelle—and everyone got so guarded in comedy.
I went to your show and I was like, “What the fuck? Oh my god.” [laughter] This was tame tonight, but what went on on your stage? Then you did a bit where you really tried to push the limits. It was a really interesting show to watch because we were sitting next to each other and we were like, “Oh my god, he’s really trying to see how far he could go.” There were moments where everyone was just like— [laughter]
But it was so different. You’ve really given everyone permission to find the limits, to find real humor, to find what’s been taken away, without a doubt. And that’s what we always did.
Some comedians, when they’re trying to promote their specials or whatever now from L.A. and New York, will say things like, “Oh, Austin,” so that they can get hits on their clip. You have to talk [bleep] about Austin. It’s been a thing the last couple of years. They go, “Oh, they’re just edgelords and this and that, and they’re just pushing limits.” We were the Comedy Store guys in the middle of the lineup. When I go to New York, I can perform at any club there. When I go to L.A., I can perform at any club there.
So, we just live there. It’s an amazing place to live. It’s an amazing place to go out and drink and eat, listen to music, and hang out with people.
Now, your guys are going mainstream. Your one guy’s on SNL now.
Yeah, Shane, right?
And so much is happening. But my point is that we’re doing the exact same thing. We’re not like, “Let’s go to Austin and get even crazier.” We’re the exact same people who were in the middle of the lineup at the Comedy Store. It wouldn’t have changed. We would still be in L.A. if California hadn’t completely mishandled the pandemic and let police take such a terrible hit during the George Floyd riots.
That’s why you moved.
Yeah. It’s when we all decided to move. It was an absolute disaster.
The pandemic hit. You guys saw how—
The pandemic got so bad at one point that, when we were doing our show—which you weren’t allowed to have a live audience for—we were still doing Kill Tony. You want to talk about plowing through when times are rough? Everybody else’s podcasts during the pandemic skyrocketed like that. Us? The only show with a live audience was done. But we didn’t stop. I had to improvise.
We had people send in, from home, a video of themselves doing a 1-minute set, which was horrendous. I mean, absolutely terrible—worse than doing roast jokes and killing. We had one guy going “ooh” after each and every joke into a microphone attached to his cheek. [laughter] But it was dead silence. Nothing was funny to us, by the way. We lacked [bleep] vitamin D. We were used to having the instant gratification of a crowd every single week.
We were watching these horrific 1-minute sets, and then we would Zoom with the people. And by the way, don’t even get me started on all the technical issues: playing a video, ending the video, starting the Zoom call with somebody who probably doesn’t have the best Wi-Fi. No great comedian knows how to work a computer or this or that or anything, anyway.
We were doing this, and then at one point we were so excited because they allowed you to have tables outside of the Comedy Store, 6 feet apart, in the parking lot. The parking lot was empty of cars. Social distancing.
Oh my god. The dumbest [bleep] era of humanity that’s ever existed.
I know this is San Francisco, so you’re like, “Oh, he’s the devil. What’s he talking about?” I think we all wanted safety. You got tricked, [bleep]. [laughter]
Let me ask about Europe. Have you followed any of what’s going on in Europe with speech suppression?
Oh, it’s insane.
It’s insane. We talk about it in our green room all the time. Yeah, it’s crazy. I get weekly updates. And do we worry about that? We had this bill in California called SB 771, and I’ve got to give a shout-out to Gavin Newsom for vetoing it. All the things you want to say about Gavin, but he vetoed it, thank God.
This was a hate-speech bill where you can’t say speech that’s deemed hate by administrators in the government. Those bills are finding their way here, and it made it all the way through in California, except Gavin vetoed it. Those sorts of bills are showing up that were in the EU and throughout Europe. Do we worry about that here in this country? I’ve always viewed comedy as the most important test of free speech, and it really does define what we’re being given permission to do.
It’s so interesting because I work directly with YouTube and am insanely in touch with these things on a weekly basis. I do believe YouTube is the biggest streaming platform right now. What’s insane is that Netflix—and Ted Sarandos—literally is like, “Do whatever you want. Go as hard as you want. Push it to the limit. Let’s go.” Meanwhile, on YouTube, every week something’s different.
A Black guy right now is only allowed to say the N-word. A Black comedian can only say the N-word 2 or 3 times per minute, but the rules aren’t very clear. I mean, you don’t even notice when these guys do it, by the way. It’s obviously different from a white guy saying the N-word.
That’s about Friedberg’s average.
Right? Exactly. [laughter]
It’s not even funny. Tony, don’t laugh at a joke.
Thank you, Tony. We’re in this together.
Oh, but yes, the interesting thing is that you can say certain words on YouTube, but they have them ranked, and the rules change all the time. You don’t find out that the rules at YouTube have changed until your producer goes, “They just demonetized the episode,” and it’s been out for an hour and a half, which is when everybody’s going to see the episode. The age restriction is a killer because—
Yeah, we got hit with that restricted content.
Almost everyone who watches the show is over 18. However, who the hell wants to log in to their stuff? I mean, you dorks do, but real people don’t want to. They just like going to YouTube, typing in the show, and there it is. It aired an hour ago. Here we go.
Then if it says age restriction, just to check to see if you’re 18—which is what a [bleep] joke, because every kid can access anything anyway—
We got age-restricted.
Yeah, we got restricted content.
But I guess your point, Tony, is that there are gatekeepers who control the distribution channel—in this case, YouTube.
Without a doubt. And I’ll say this again: I don’t want to keep getting political, but there was a time toward the end of that last Biden administration when we were seeing things go the wrong way almost every week. Like, “Why’d this one get demonetized? How did this one get demonetized?” Because we would have to—and you have to do a lot of digging, because they’re just robots over there—until you finally get big enough to get a human contact at YouTube, which is a big deal.
It was definitely going the wrong way, and it felt like every week there was some new category of thought and expression that you couldn’t say. They were banning new things, and then, frankly, Elon bought Twitter.
And that was the first event that shifted the momentum.
No, there’s no doubt.
And now the EU is coming after him. They fined him €120 million yesterday.
It’s like Europe never got the memo. You know, it’s over. Will you guys tour in Europe, or is it not working?
We did. We just did in June, and unless they basically give us Buckingham Palace, we’ll probably never go there again. It was the worst Kill Tony in the history of our existence.
The comedians were just terrible. We’ve done quite a few shows in England and Ireland and stuff, but the comedians were terrible. The vibes there are rough. There’s just this never-ending gloom in London.
Yes.
The food is beyond horrible.
They used to be funny over there, right? We were going to the locals like, “Please, anything. Where can we get a steak? Where can they overcook us a steak?” [laughter]
Oh, it was fucking crazy, man. Everything. It became a running joke because we got there a few days early to settle in and kind of ease into it. So that’s 3 meals a day. Even if it’s just 3 days, that’s 9 terrible meals in a row.
We have the best food in the country in Austin. It’s unbelievable. We have hundreds of restaurants better than anything we tried, even the fanciest crap in London.
And they open 7 new ones a week. I mean, it does say something about society when comedy is appreciated more in the Middle East than it is in London.
Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty crazy. It really was.
Hey, Tony, any chance we could play Kill Tony tonight?
You guys want to play Kill Tony here? [cheering]
All right. Is it true? Did you guys prepare something?
Oh, whoa. Oh my God.
Well, please. This is Callie, our elegant elf.
Wow.
Callie the elegant elf.
You guys have your own Heidi. That’s amazing.
Yes, she’s here. That’s a San Francisco Heidi.
So she has a penis.
Asking for a friend.
San Francisco Heidi. There’s got to be a surprise underneath that skirt.
Oh boy, here we go.
This place is ridiculous, by the way. You guys all better be wildly successful for living here. [laughter] I walked outside of my hotel earlier. There were literally 2 dudes banging against a tree. I looked the other way, and there was a guy taking a shit on the sidewalk. Then a lady walks up to me and tells me to put out my cigarette. [laughter] What is going on with San Francisco? It’s crazy. Kind of nuts.
So, you guys prepared for this? You know how it works. You get 60 seconds uninterrupted. You know that your time is up when you hear the sound of a kitten.
Wow. You really got it. Then you have to wrap it up, or else you bring out the angry West Hollywood bear. Okay, you guys want to do this? [cheering]
All right, this is All-In Kill Tony, ladies and gentlemen. Going up first, make some noise for Jason, everybody. [cheering]
Oh my lord. Wow. All right. Well, many of you know I moved to Austin, got a ranch, and also lost 40 pounds. So now it’s a fat-free ranch. Thank you. [laughter]
Yeah, I went fat-shaming. But I’m a little nervous about doing a minute up here. I don’t know how I’m going to get through a minute without interrupting Sacks.
Thank you. Tony, I’m a huge fan. I’m a big fan of yourself, Joe Rogan, and Redban. People say I name-drop a lot, but I just got a text from Elon. He says that’s not true. [laughter] It’s not true.
It’s great to be—thank you—it’s great to be here with 3 of my besties and a new one. We’re missing Chamath. Now, some people say Chamath is a douche. I don’t agree. I don’t agree because women get something out of putting a douche inside of them. I thought that one would land. [laughter]
Sacks, my Jewish friend here, is the—oh, God. Okay, I don’t know if I should say this one. [laughter]
Go for it.
Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll go for it. Sacks is the only Jewish guy who built an app to remind his friends to pay him back.
All right, that’s my time, everybody. Thank you.
Jason, everybody. [cheering] [applause]
Wow. You don’t want to do the interview. You have to stay up there.
Oh, I’m supposed to stay up. I’m sorry.
Stay standing. It’s not that easy. What do you do for a living? [laughter]
Yeah. I’ve got a podcast or two.
So, how hard did you prepare for this? [laughter]
I guess 2,500 podcast episodes later. Yeah.
I love it. I love it. Now, when you were writing this material, were you planning on doing the joke and then turning to see if we were laughing each time? [laughter]
That could have been a tactical mistake. Sorry.
You’re supposed to engage with the audience and stay focused on them. [laughter]
Yeah. Okay. What do you do for a living?
Product manager at Google.
Sorry about the layoffs.
I don’t even know what kind of tech jokes you guys—what kind of inside-baseball nerd shit is going on here. I feel like I walked into a Magic: The Gathering convention.
Is stand-up something that you’ve ever wanted to do, or is this just spontaneous for you?
Just spontaneous. More of a magician.
No, that’s not true. Do you have magic tricks?
I have no magic tricks.
Do you have any other special skills?
I can get 3 narcissistic Asperger’s venture capitalists to show up every Thursday and tape a podcast. That’s my only trick.
That’s amazing. Good answer.
They appreciate it.
You know what, Jason? I think you did just fucking good enough. Come on back and sit down. Let’s keep it moving. [applause]
You guys having fun out there? All right.
Well, this is my fucking guy, ladies and gentlemen. As you know, I love him. You love him. Make some goddamn noise for the one and only David Sacks, everybody. [cheering] [music]
All right, Tony. Thank you so much for being here. I loved your roast of Puerto Rico. You went so hard after a Latino island, and I’m shocked President Trump didn’t appoint you Secretary of War.
JCal, I’ve been following your feed this week. I really appreciate your support for All-In Tequila. I know you love it because you finally get to take a shot that’s not Ozempic. [cheering]
It was only a matter of time before JCal got in the beverage business, because I’ve never met anyone more thirsty than JCal. He spent his entire life dreaming of the day he would see his name mentioned alongside the world’s most influential people. Congratulations, Jason. You finally did it. You’re in Epstein’s black book. [cheering]
I knew the Epstein files were a hoax as soon as I saw that JCal was in them. Who would want to blackmail a loser?
All right, let’s talk about Chamath. Chamath is a prime example of why unlimited immigration is not in America’s interest. Chamath is from Sri Lanka. Tony’s description of Puerto Rico didn’t offend him; it made him homesick. [laughter]
Do I have time? Can I keep going?
Yeah.
Chamath has angered so many investors. SPAC now stands for “Seriously Pissed at Chamath.” [laughter]
And Friedberg is all about science. So, what can I say about Friedberg that hasn’t already been said about watching paint dry? [laughter]
Friedberg lives life as a vegan, and that’s exactly what it feels like to hang out with him. You know, there are more satisfying options on the menu, but you made a decision and now you’re stuck with it.
You’ve all tried those tasteless Beyond Burgers. Well, Friedberg is our Beyond friend.
All right. Thank you, everyone. [cheering]
David Sacks, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah.
Unbelievable. Oh, okay. You’re good. Sacks, you’re good. I’ve got to tell you, man, that was fucking unbelievable. [cheering]
I wasn’t expecting to have to do this tonight, but I think I just found a new Golden Ticket winner. [cheering] [applause]
Have you ever done stuff on stage before in a non-business-like sense?
Well, we’ve done a couple of roasts among our friends at birthday parties before. We did a JCal roast. We did a Phil Hellmuth roast. There’s a lot of material in both of those cases.
Yes. So, we’ve done some friendly roasts, but—
Your 50th roast.
Yeah, my 50th birthday. We actually did a big roast. These guys were all part of it, so we had a little bit of roast experience.
Amazing. It shows, Sacks. That was absolutely incredible. How about one more time for David Sacks, everybody?
Did he get his $15,000 worth from the comedians he hired, or no? [laughter] Is that how much he spent all-in, or do you pay for them out of pocket? [laughter] That was incredible.
That was amazing. Are we going to have Friedberg do his set?
We want to hear Friedberg. Let’s do it. Tony, Tony, hype me up. Let’s go.
Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for your final comedian of the night, David Friedberg. Everybody.
So great to be in San Francisco. The streets are like Chamath: they’re totally full of shit.
Thanks for being here, Tony Hinchcliffe. I love the show. I’ve worked in agriculture for years, so I’m used to working with genetically modified fruits. Tony Hinchcliffe’s actually a GMO—a gay man. Obviously. [laughter]
Chamath couldn’t be here tonight because he’s feeding the hungry. Just kidding, that’s below his pay grade. [laughter]
Speaking of hungry, JCal, you’re looking great, buddy. Thank you. Now you only have to buy 1 seat on Epstein’s plane.
Chamath, your weight goes up and down more than your SPAC portfolio. In fact, you look so skinny now, I confused you for Chamath’s legs. Chamath’s legs are so thin, he wears socks, leggings, and thermals. He covers up more than Sacks does for the Trump administration.
Sacks, congrats on all the success, but the stress is clearly getting to you. You look like someone microwaved Jon Lovitz. All In is what Sacks says when he’s cheering on an ICE vehicle. We’re all so different. I’m just the science guy: I study black holes while Chamath invests in them. Here we are, enjoying the holiday spirit together. I know the things I said tonight might be a little mean, but the world’s already burning. I figured I might as well burn some bridges. All right, Christmas tree. [applause]
Wow. Have you ever done anything non-business, like something performative, historically? A play? Nothing?
A little acting growing up, a few plays, a few musicals. Oh, here’s a factoid no one knows: I actually starred in a play with Rashida Jones, the actress from Parks and Recreation.
What was that play?
We were in the same high school, and we were in the drama program together.
What was the play that you guys did together?
Inherit the Wind.
Oh, wow.
A little before my time or something. I don’t know. Sacks would be familiar, right?
I love it.
When you’re writing jokes like this, what was your process? Where did you find yourself coming up with your funniest stuff? Did you sit down at a desk?
I just like to shoot the shit on the computer and then edit it. I like putting on music. We were playing some music, and then I just kind of did them. We did this for Sacks, and I went a little scorched-earth for his 50th. Do you remember that?
Yeah, I definitely remember.
I think everybody remembers that, with a lot of pent-up anger. Friedberg gave a set that—
It was so bad.
No, it wasn’t bad. It was just mean.
It was mean.
Yeah, it was wild. I just said the mean shit.
It was like [bleep] strength applied to a roast.
Yeah. It was so mean, you didn’t realize it had stopped being funny. [laughter]
Let me ask you this, David. Do you remember one of your favorite—or one of the bigger, crazier jokes from the Sacks roast?
I don’t. No, I’ll pull it up later.
There’s nothing.
That was my 50th birthday, so it was like 2 years ago.
Oh, hey. That little self-deprecating joke—I see.
That’s amazing. But you didn’t film that or anything.
I don’t know. Do we have a copy of that?
We might have a copy of that one.
That’s what Epstein would do.
We did some amazing birthday-party roasts. Jay Cal had one. I had one. We went to Philly, but we never recorded them, which was—we were kind of afraid.
We were very afraid of being—
We were afraid of getting canceled.
That is correct.
Yeah, but now we’re uncanceled on both.
I love that. Perfect.
We don’t give a shit.
Yeah. [laughter]
Friedberg, did that go how it felt like it was going to go for you? Was there more or less? What was different for people who haven’t tried comedy or written something?
My cadence is a little off. I’ve got to go 1 or 2 more rounds, and I think I can get the cadence down. I liked it. I had some other material I pulled out, and I’d like to try that at some point. [laughter]
I thought there was some A-plus material in there. A-plus. [applause] It was great. David Friedberg, ladies and gentlemen.
You guys are good. All right, respectable. That’s what we wanted to do.
You know, we have a tradition: We give some Bestie Awards. These are the best of the year. Maybe our elegant elf, Callie, can come out and present us with the 5th annual Bestie Awards. Here it is. As you can see, it’s 2 very heterosexual men embracing.
That makes sense. San Francisco. [cheering]
Callie.
Hey, guys. [music]
All right, first up—
Keep her on. [laughter]
What do you say?
Keep her on.
Take it easy. She said, “Between the 2 of you.”
All right, so first up on the Bestie Awards is our Biggest Business Winner. Who did you have for Biggest Business Winner? Oh, Sultan of Science—Alphabet.
Alphabet went from a $2 trillion market cap to a $4 trillion market cap this year. That’s a $170 billion gain—$10 billion in market-cap gain every day for the entire year. They added $10 billion of value every day for the entire year. The pivot in AI, the risk-taking, cloud growing 40%, YouTube the number-one media company in the world—it’s all under 1 roof. I think they just crushed it on all cylinders. Business of the year.
Amazing. Sacks, who did you have as your Biggest Business Winner?
I said construction workers related to the data-center boom. They’re seeing their wages go up 25% to 30%. We’re talking about plumbers, electricians, drywall hangers, concrete pourers. It’s not just tech companies. We’re seeing a larger boom throughout the country because of AI.
Didn’t Jim say there are electricians that make $500,000 a year or something? Master electricians?
Unbelievable.
Pretty incredible, and a great White House talking point for the midterms. [laughter]
I, too, had Alphabet and Google. We were sitting here a year ago, and everybody thought they would absolutely get killed by ChatGPT. Now we’re having a discussion: ChatGPT is probably going to get killed by Google.
Oh, Google Cloud, right? Is that who that is?
Yeah.
Just out of curiosity, because I don’t know how any of this works: What did Alphabet do this year to surprise you guys, other than the results? How did they get there? What did they do?
They put AI into search. Now, when you go to search, there’s an AI interface that pops up. That’s how they drove people to their AI product, because they’ve got the biggest consumer product in the world, Google.com. Then they had a good product, so they put the 2 together, and suddenly they’re crushing ChatGPT.
Yeah. Sometimes the first company up the hill takes the arrows, like Netscape, the browser, which eventually wound up losing. But I think Google was also underestimated, and they probably were very conservative in how they released products. Then they kind of got permission when Sergey came back to work full-time at Google, the founder. They took more chances, and the search franchise grew this year. Everybody thought it would go down. It grew.
My Biggest Business Winner is the show Kill Tony. I don’t know if you guys have heard about it. We have a 4-special deal on Netflix, which is unprecedented for any show. We also ranked number 2 at the end of the year on YouTube, only behind my very best friend, Joe Rogan. So that’s pretty crazy.
That is the number-two podcast on YouTube. YouTube’s the number-one podcast platform. Pretty incredible.
By the way, Jason, can I tell you something? I didn’t tell you this before, but when I came and saw your show in Austin, I hadn’t seen a Kill Tony show before. Someone I was with said, “You should go check this out,” and that’s how we ended up going. Then I came back and thought, “I should watch Kill Tony.” I would say I’ve watched maybe 100 episodes since I came back. It’s so big.
It’s timeless content. Every night when I’m ready for bed, I’ll put on YouTube and watch a Kill Tony episode. It is literally my go-to media now.
The live show is the gateway. I highly recommend checking one out live, because you can feel the opportunity for failure. It’s funny to watch online, but when it’s live, you can feel that they’re right there. Anything can happen. This could go terribly wrong.
It feels dangerous.
It feels dangerous, and then it’s so great. It’s almost like waiting for the big game moment to happen. You’re waiting for that big champion to show up, like that guy you had a couple of weeks ago who you made up.
Dedrick Flynn. That guy was insane.
It’s amazing. In just 4 weeks, he was made a regular. You randomly pulled him out of the bucket, saw him, and the interview was so likable. I skipped the Golden Ticket and made him the first appointed regular. We maybe get 1 of those every 2 years. Cut to 4 weeks later, last Monday, he literally did a rap about how rich he already is. He did a whole rap performance about quitting next week. He was like, “I’m out of here. I’m going to—”
Do you get a piece of it, or does your agent just snipe these people?
No. Well, actually, that’s an interesting question, because now the entire industry is watching Kill Tony to see what’s next. The bucket is the first line of defense. Howie Mandel watches every episode, and people get booked on America’s Got Talent based on whether they’re unbelievable on Kill Tony.
You should offer them a show on your channel. That would be the ultimate move.
Remember, Johnny Carson used to be the thing where a stand-up would go on Johnny Carson, and if Johnny invited them to sit down, then they had a career. You’ve kind of become the new—
But he’s kept it fair.
What’s crazy is that guy, Dedrick.
Yeah. Dedrick.
Dedrick. He’s so black, you can’t even say his name.
Absolutely.
He put his name in as Dedrick.
Don’t use that generic word that you used. Do it. [laughter]
He put his name in the bucket for 2 years to get called. So he moved to Austin and did 39 weeks in a row, and he was just about to stop trying. Then he got pulled.
Unlike all these other guys, where there are control systems in Hollywood with agents and producers and they’re like, “Here’s the guy that’s going to be the winner,” these guys all have a democratic shot. They have an open shot at getting in that bucket and getting pulled, which is what I love about it. You never know what you’re going to get, and everyone has a shot. So it’s not like this control thing.
You know what you should do? If they agree to do it, you should say, “Just as a thank-you, we want the option for you to come do 1 Kill Tony special a year for the next 2 years.” Not something crazy, but just—
You should take business advice from JCal.
Absolutely. Hey, I built the number 1 podcast in the world. [laughter]
It’s not just you. He gives me advice. He gives the president advice.
I gave the president great advice, and he said, “Even Jason has good advice.” All right. [laughter]
Even JCal. Even Jake, biggest business loser. Who’s your biggest business loser? David Sacks, who’s the biggest loser?
Universities. The margin of Americans who now believe that college is worth the cost has gone from plus 13 a decade ago to minus 30.
Wow.
So no one believes that college is worth the cost anymore.
Amazing. Great poll. What do you think, Friedberg, about Warner Bros. Discovery?
I think the fact that the M&A deal is being done at 3 times the value that this thing’s been trading at for the last couple of years really shows how they undermanaged the business. The content itself is worth so much more. They were never able to get value out of it, which speaks to what terrible management they’ve had there.
Which company did you say?
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. That just got beat. Yeah. You owned the stock, didn’t you, in your thing?
I cleared it. I was like, “These guys are going to—”
You missed the outcome.
I did miss the outcome. Yeah, it was a rare miss for me. I went with Apple.
Wait, hold on a second.
They didn’t listen to your advice. [laughter]
I mean, the problem was I had all these other things that had won, and I had a bunch of gains and needed to sell my losers.
He put all his stock trades on the internet, Tony. But then—
I called it J Trading, and it went up 5 times and 3 times.
But he bought a whole bunch of Warner Bros. He’s like, “This is the next big thing.”
I thought Disney and Warner Bros. would figure it out. Neither of them have. My biggest business loser was Apple. This company has unlimited distribution and unlimited capital, and the most impressive thing they’ve done in the last 10 years is a thin iPhone. What a missed opportunity.
Maybe the best thing they’ve done recently is Pluribus. I don’t know if you guys are watching that, but—
Oh, people like it.
Yeah, it’s a pretty great show. Literally, if I’m thinking their streaming show is the best thing they’ve got, they’ve got a problem.
Who’s the biggest loser in comedy?
Entertainment, right?
Well, the biggest losers really are these giant movie studios, which still are virtue-signaling and afraid to take any chances whatsoever. The last movie with any edge at all in a theater, I think, was The Hangover, which I think was 2006.
And it made a billion dollars for that franchise.
Yeah, exactly.
Are they coming to you asking you to do 1? I would think that would be a very natural play, but there’s no studio who would do it. So maybe A24 or 1 of the smaller ones.
We are working on something. Really, yeah. And it’s going to be—
You heard it here first.
Definitely the answer to that, and it’s all happening. It’s going to—
Well, they let you do what you want.
Yes. We already went and got independent financing for it—my amazing team over at UTA.
Wonderful. What would be analogous or inspirational for you? Are there films that informed this 1? Are you a Tropic Thunder fan? Are you into Easy Money, with Rodney Dangerfield, from back in the day? What comedians in films did you love?
Without a doubt—and it’s an odd pick because it’s not the 1 everybody thinks I’m going to say—Kingpin, with Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray. I think it’s the best Farrelly Brothers film. I think it’s the funniest thing Bill Murray’s ever done. I think it’s the funniest thing Woody Harrelson’s ever done.
If you haven’t watched it in the past few years, go back and watch it 1 more time. It’s unbelievable. It seems like it’s a movie about bowling, but it’s not at all. It’s just hysterical.
I had a bunch of 7- and 8-year-olds over for my daughter’s birthday party, and we did a film. So I said, “Oh, you guys should watch Bill Murray in What About Bob?”
This was a beloved PG film. I thought this would be fine. They’re 8 years old. In the film, they use all these words—you know, “dick breath,” “idiot.” They just do this thing. Then I went to school the next day, and 3 parents cornered me here in the Bay Area.
“Can we talk to you about your film selection? My daughter came home and she said, ‘Dick breath.’”
I was like, “Have you seen What About Bob?” And the parent was like, “No.” I was like, “You should watch it. It’s incredible.” Our daughters are never coming over to your house again.
Meanwhile, those same San Francisco parents are probably like, “Do you know there wasn’t a single trans character in that movie?” She said “dick breath,” but I think they should actually have “dick breath,” because there’s nothing that’s off-limits. [laughter]
Jason, we’ve got 2 minutes to get through. Two-minute lightning round. Go.
Okay. Biggest political winner is the Democratic Socialists of America.
Okay. [laughter]
Sadly, biggest political winner—well, this may be a talking point, but I’m going to say crypto. A year ago, there was a war on crypto. They were worried about going to jail. Now we’ve passed legislation, and we’re getting a fair shake from the government. It’s a total change.
Yeah. Incredible. You know, I had your pick: Zohran Mamdani socialism. I also had the America First movement that’s burgeoning. But I gave it some thought and thought, my lord, there’s 1 individual who part-time went to the government and took crypto and made it legal and created a framework for it. They made sure that America would be absolutely competitive in the AI race, the most important race of our lifetime and, in fact, of humanity’s.
So, hands down, my biggest political winner of 2025 is Mr. David Sacks. [cheering] [applause]
Okay. Political winner for you. You don’t give a fuck. What do you think?
A political winner for me? I mean, again, I’m just a big fan of this president. People can say that I kiss ass and that comedians shouldn’t. There’s this thing I’ve been hearing where people are like, “Comedians should be punching up, not punching down. You’re supposed to make fun of the big thing.”
Well, if everybody is making fun of that 1 thing, then I think it’s kind of funny to go the other way and to push it up. So I literally have pro-Trump jokes in my stand-up set, which nobody’s fucking doing.
Which 1 lands the most?
I make fun of his autograph. I say he has the most obnoxiously cool autograph in the world. It looks like Lizzo’s heart rate.
And he actually does.
My biggest political loser, Sacks—
By the way, he does have the best sense of humor—
It must be the best of any president we’ve ever had.
Hysterical.
Anyone who’s spent time with him is just blown away at how funny he is. All the best comedians talk about how he might be the funniest human being on planet Earth. This is a conversation I’ve had. I’m not going to name their names, but you can put it together in your head. I’m talking about the actual best comedians in the world.
All of them.
I believe—
All of them. Michael Richards.
No, I’m kidding.
You know who the best are. And yes, they all agree. Funny is funny. It’s undeniable. Literally—goddamn it, I’m blanking out. This week he did something so fucked—oh, the Somali thing.
Yeah.
It’s a hellhole. [laughter] They come over here and they fuck and complain. It’s common sense, and that’s the funniest thing.
I still love when Zohran visited him and he said, “It’s okay, you can say—”
I’m fucked. It’s easier if you just tell them, “Okay, yes.”
Okay, let’s go. Come on. Let’s keep going. Okay. Biggest political loser, Sacks.
My biggest political loser is Europe. It’s a civilization in decline. [applause] They’re losing economically, geopolitically, socially, and culturally, and they can’t seem to reverse that trend. It’s very sad.
Political loser, Friedberg?
The founding fathers.
Wow. Because I feel like free speech, property-seizure rights—you know, we read this excerpt from these 2 Thomas Jefferson letters, and you can read a lot of these. Just ask Gemini to tell you about some of the things that the Founding Fathers wrote.
If you spend time with them and translate them into modern English, because they do write in a very poetic, frilly way, there is so much of the principles of the Founding Fathers that are lost in how we are kind of devolving into this organizational system where the government is everything in our lives, everything in our country. The individual liberties are being taken from us.
And I don't mean taken from us in a sense that they're being seized. We're voting for a government that dictates our lives, that controls what we eat, how we eat, how we live, how we get paid—our checks. I think the majority of Americans today live on checks from the government, through the government. I think that the Founding Fathers would have been really saddened at the state.
I went with Stephen Miller. I felt his performative cruelty was a detraction for the 47th administration.
And that was a shame because I loved his band.
Yeah, this is Biggest Political Loser.
Yeah. Mine's Gavin Newsom.
Yes.
I mean, the hair is great.
Yeah, great hair.
That's enough for you liberals to be impressed by. Absolutely.
Oh, he's got hair. Amazing.
Let's go with Breakthrough of the Year. Friedberg, what's your breakthrough of the year?
Okay, we haven't talked about it on the show. This definitely deserves a Science Corner, but asteroid Bennu: NASA sent a probe, and they pulled a bunch of samples up. In 2020, they collected the samples; they landed back on Earth in 2023.
2 days ago, they showed that on asteroid Bennu there are nucleic acids, amino acids, and sugars. All of the building blocks of life were found on this asteroid floating through space.
Wow.
Can I ask you a question?
Yeah.
Did the asteroid make it to Uranus?
Friedberg, this is great, but you're putting the audience—I honestly think, just for a brief moment before we make the jokes, this is going to end up being one of the most amazing discoveries of our lifetime. It really does show that life is not necessarily unique to planet Earth.
This was an asteroid that's been floating around for 4.5 billion years, and it's got all the components of life on it. It's a pretty incredible discovery.
It's amazing.
And it is made out of sugar.
It's got sugar on it. It's got glucose on it.
Friedberg, how many times have you masturbated to this asteroid so far?
All right. My breakthrough of the year is 3 or 4 humanoid robots. I think we're just underestimating the progress these will have. Everybody's going to get their own C-3PO/Friedberg, so we won't be the only ones with a robot in our lives. Sacks, what was your biggest?
I just said being able to use Starlink on commercial flights. I mean, you can actually use the internet now.
Hold on a second. I'm calling bullshit. You haven't been on a commercial flight since Clinton was in office.
Oh, that's true. I was doing it for you guys.
Honestly, when were you last on a commercial flight?
Last time you flew commercial? For you, JCal. For you.
Thank you. Is it more than 10 years?
I'm for the people. I was thinking about you.
Is it more than 10 years since you've been on a commercial flight?
I set the over-under at 15 years. I haven't been on a commercial flight since 2012.
2012.
I don't know how to be real. I mean, what do you do? Do you like it?
Jake, what's the Wi-Fi password on the Lolita Express?
Apparently, it's 1-2-3. Oh, is that 2? Is that a strike?
Come back.
By the way, why is it that all the liberal guests that you bring on the pod are regular visitors to Little St. James?
What are you talking about?
All of your liberal buddies that you bring on the pod.
Okay.
But he did get some good dating advice, apparently.
Oh, come on.
CEO of the Year, not named Elon Musk. We all, by consensus, have to pick Jensen Huang.
Jensen Huang has been 33 years in the making. He built a flywheel, had the vision, and stuck through the ups and downs. For whatever people said about every generation of the last 33 years, he kept building, and this flywheel finally took off.
Here's a crazy statistic: NVIDIA is at a $4.5 trillion market cap. That's up from $300 billion 36 months ago. So this is a company that, in 36 months, created $4.2 trillion of market value. That's $100 billion every month for 3 years straight. It's incredible.
I think it's insane. Chamath, who is your CEO of the year, not named Elon Musk?
Well, that was a great one, but I'm going to go with Alex Karp because, if you heard him speak at all at the Summit, I think he brought down the house. He out-Tuckered Tucker.
I mean, so in addition to Palantir being a monster of the last year,
I went with NVIDIA, Trump's favorite company, and Jensen Huang as well. Let me just say again, even though this isn't my territory, I want to give a shout-out to a couple of badasses: Nick Khan and Paul Levesque over at WWE. They've taken on this massive, historical company and made so many huge deals with so many different networks to bring in so many big events.
Are you a WWE or a UFC guy?
I'm both.
You're both. If you had to only go to one—
In fact, since this is the only place where it would be interesting to ever mention it, TKO was the only stock that I ever told my guy—my golf buddy—who, after years of insisting I should give him money to put in stocks, which I never believed in because I'm an Italian poor kid from Youngstown, Ohio, I believed before that just having cash in a shoebox was the way to have money.
But then the only stock I had was TKO because Dana White knows how to put on a hell of a show, and I know that, obviously, WWE is always amazing and always growing. So it's the only one I ever told him to get. And we've seen, you know, whatever. And in my little world—
Did you buy the NVIDIA?
Yeah. Wild success.
Yeah, so unlike JCal, you held the stock.
Yeah. Yeah. Great.
And by the way, we had Paul Levesque—Triple H—speak at the All-In Summit.
Oh, I love that. I was just with him. I hung out with him just last night. SmackDown was in Austin.
All right. Each host gets to pick their Disgracia of the Year: the most disgraceful moment, person, company, or trend. [music] Desraad. He was the best guy around. What about the people he murdered? You can act like a man. What did I do? He's just killed little [__] man. You insulted him a little [__]. I'M SMART AND I WANT TO SPIT. WHAT'S WRONG with you? Your hair was in the toilet water. Disgusting. I had to suffocate you. You little It's a disgrace. Disgraciad. All right, discretzia.com.
Tony, whenever you're ready, you can give us yours. But Friedberg, who's your Disgracia?
The crackdown on speech in Europe: 3,000-plus arrests in the UK for malicious communications—mostly fines, but also incarcerations, including recently calling a convicted rapist a pig, which landed someone in jail. There were 84,000 politically motivated communications crimes in Germany, and 6,000 defined hate crimes based on speech in France.
Across Europe, this has become a major issue. Again, I'll reflect on Gavin Newsom vetoing SB 771 in this state, but we were very close, and I think it's very important that we pay attention to it.
Sacks, that's a really good one. It's a good one. I would agree with that one, but the one I would choose is that, at Stanford, they said that if you're disabled, you get more time on tests and you can kind of be unproctored and kind of—
Accommodations, right? So now 50% of students at Stanford say they're disabled.
And you had a case to make yourself, and you never pulled the Asperger's card. I never pulled that card. But no, this is all part of a piece with grades. Basically, there are no grades anymore, and everyone sort of claims to be disabled in order to get special advantages.
My Disgracia was socialism in New York, my hometown. Absolutely disgraceful. The actual true New Yorkers didn't vote for it, but the people who've been there for under 10 years did overwhelmingly. Disgracia for me.
Tony, who's your Disgracia for 2025?
I'd have to say the people that just cheered that people won't be leaving California next year in this crowd are the Disgracia.
You guys realize there are other places, right? I was guilty of it, too. I lived in L.A. happily for almost 20 years. I loved it. I never really thought I would move to another place. As a touring comedian, you go visit places and you would go back to L.A. That was just the headquarters.
It took so much chaos for me to even try to go to another place and fall in love with it. But when you do try other places, you find that it's better than this, and it's definitely better than this, because L.A. is better than this, and this is just the worst.
And the world, by the way, is laughing at you. Some of you are booing, but you're clearly not the ones making the money off the app that shows you where the shit on the sidewalks is in this hot shit dump that you call home. [laughter] So anyway, you're the Disgracians.
I love it. Bringing the heat. See, I'm a real wrestling fan. I'll do a heel turn right away to win the audience.
You had them. They loved you for 90 minutes. You were doing so well, you couldn't help yourself.
Burning attack.
That was not only a heel turn. It was a low blow. It was a chair shot over the head.
Yes, of the entire audience.
Fuck you, nerds.
That was not only a heel turn. It was a low blow. It was a chair shot over the head.
Okay. All right. Listen, this has been absolutely amazing. Let's give it up for the one, the only Tony Hinchcliffe. [applause]
Your friend is unbelievable. I need to thank Tony. Tony, thank you for what you do. [applause] People don't have to agree with your speech. I feel it's really important that comedians act as the flag bearers to keep freedom of speech alive. For all the jokes we can make about the things you say and the way you offend people, I think that pushing the limits is so important. For that, I appreciate what you do and love your work.
Honestly, I think this is the most fun Christmas party we've had.
Ever.
Ever, and probably the most fun event we've ever had. It's because of Tony here. No question about it. So thank you. [applause]
I'm just kidding, audience. You're not really that much of a Disgracian. [laughter] But I'm walking it back.
They were with you until that.
Yeah. These nerds are having flashbacks to getting bullied back in the day. You just stuffed them all in the locker, metaphorically.
We'll see you—
And we really appreciate all of you coming out tonight.
Yeah. Thank you guys so much for coming out.
Honestly, I didn't know what to expect from this. And honestly, this is the most fun we've ever had during an event.
Happy holiday.
Thank you to all of you. [applause] Let your winners ride.