1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless

1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] This episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show has some explicit language. So if you're offended by that, well skip to the next one. And Mom, it wasn't me, it was the guest coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Drew Carey: And I'm acting like an idiot, just like drunk outta my mind, fucked up drunk, but in a really good, happy way.

Like we gotta do something with Drew. And somebody had the idea, let's put Drew in a wheelchair and wheel him outta here. So they got the Disney guide to get a wheelchair, put me in the wheelchair, and they're gonna wheel me out of there, which they do. And I'm in the chair just like fireworks going off.

Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers, even the occasional [00:01:00] organized crime figure, war correspondent or neuroscientist.

And if you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, I suggest the starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation. Psychology and geopolitics. Disinformation, China and North Korea, crime and cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app. To get started today on the show, the one and only Drew Carey, comedy legend host of the Price is right. This episode is really full of funny stories from a long career in Hollywood and comedy, plenty of laughter, and of course, inside baseball on one of the most popular game shows of all time.

I wondered and of course, asked him if anybody had ever cheated on the prices, right or tried to some hard times in his career, and his love for raves and partying, which I did not see coming at all. Of course, I wanted to hear about the downsides, how he handled rejection, setbacks, and a whole lot more. I feel compelled to say, drew Carey, come on down.

You look good for, are you [00:02:00] 66 6? Wow. I'll be 67 in May. Congratulations. Thanks for living this long. I guess less and less like Dilbert every year. Thanks.

You went to Kent State? Yeah,

Drew Carey: I enrolled in Kent State.

Jordan Harbinger: I filled out the paperwork. I bet they love you now though. Like, oh, that Drew Carey, he's one of ours,

Drew Carey: kind

Jordan Harbinger: of

Drew Carey: one year they honored me and put me in the Homecoming parade and I, I think I got an honorary degree and met the president of the, this is

Jordan Harbinger: the only degree I have from

Drew Carey: Kent State now. Yeah. They really treated me right.

Once I got famous and had money,

Jordan Harbinger: they get the business angle of things. They're selling shirts with Drew Carey went to Kent State on the front in the gift shop. They should leave money on the table. Damn it. Uh, you kept that Marine Corps haircut for a long time in your career or the pseudo marine program?

Well, I was in the

Drew Carey: reserves when I started doing standup. I was just at the end of my sixth year about to finish up my sixth year in the Marines when I was like, okay. And then when I decided to do my first amateur [00:03:00] night, I. That's just how I had my hair. That was once a month. The drill was once a month, like, whatcha gonna do?

You can't grow your hair out. So that was just my haircut. And then the glasses, the Marine Corps, I don't know what they do in the Army, in the Marine Corps, they call 'em BCGs, birth control glasses.

That's what the drill instructor called it. That's what every other Marine called it. I don't know why they officially just don't call 'em that, but even like when you're like getting ready, don't forget your BCGs. Oh, I gotta go get new BCGs. Nobody would just say glasses.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh God, that's really funny.

Flamingo.

Drew Carey: Yeah. It became a part of your brand, right? Well, that's how I look. And the thing is, back then I was broke. Stone broke paycheck to paycheck. Shift to shift when I was waiting. Tables had cash on Friday, the last to next week. When I got cash tips and uh, that's how I was living, literally counting my pennies.

I had a journal where I would keep track of everything, like one of those little accounting journals you'd buy at the CVS or Walgreens back [00:04:00] then. And I'd keep track of every expense pack of gum I knew down to the penny and the change my pocket. Good for you. How much I had. Wow. That's how broke I was.

You don't do that now, I assume? No. Okay. I have a general idea, but that's what I did back then. And like I remember with my brother, back then it was like the oil embargo. Suddenly we were learning about drafting behind trucks on the freeway, get an extra couple miles a gallon. Wow. And oh, let's get behind this truck and then we'll draft and we'll drive into Columbus or something.

We'll get an extra two miles a gallon. That's

Jordan Harbinger: crazy. I didn't realize it was that significant.

Drew Carey: Yeah, a little but not that. My brother's an engineer and we were like obsessive about keeping track of our miles per gallon and made like a game of it. I wouldn't fill it up. I didn't have that money.

Jordan Harbinger: Who can afford to fill up the ga?

Yeah. I wonder what the price equivalent

Drew Carey: was. $2 worth. I need a gallon of gas to last me this next couple days and I'm getting 30 miles per gallon. I needed to get 30 miles today, so let me just get my dollars [00:05:00] worth or two gallons. I would hand the guy two $1 bills. That's just how I lived. I need enough to get me through to the next time I can afford to put five bucks in.

I really felt like a big shot if I could fill it up.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Drew Carey: it was

Jordan Harbinger: two bucks worth five bucks worth. You mentioned that you used to eat macaroni and cheese, but you just put water in it. That's all I could afford. That's

Drew Carey: crazy. I lived in Vegas for a time and I was just, again, stone broke counting change in my pocket and I would have enough change and spare cash to get a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, and then I would buy like the quarter stick of butter, but I couldn't afford the little pin of milk.

I could afford the pin milk. You

Jordan Harbinger: gotta choose one. Gotta pick one. I think the butter does it better than the milk.

Drew Carey: And then I would use water instead of milk.

Jordan Harbinger: So when you made it, did you get those shells with the velv vita that you could squeeze out of the foil bag? That's craft mac.

Drew Carey: It's the story. The punchline is, once I got on the Drew Kerry show and made money, I would buy Kraft macaroni and cheese.

Deluxe liquid [00:06:00] cheese, squeeze outta the foil. Nice. No mixing and just I'm rich. Bitch. Who knows what chemicals are in there. Didn't even care.

Jordan Harbinger: Doesn't matter. I was raised on that stuff too. Oh, you want to eat when you come home? Squeeze the vel vita bag into the thing with the pot

Drew Carey: on and and pray. George makes jokes all the time about when you have frozen dinners or stuff as one of the grocery items.

They'll go just like mom used to throw in the microwave, just like the canned mom used to open.

That's funny. Do people recognize you by the way, without your glasses on? You've had glasses, your whole, I've been wearing glasses since I was eight. They do and they don't. It depends on the context. And in LA nobody cares. And if they do, they don't show it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Drew Carey: It's not cool to show it in la. No. Like there's this diner I go to all the time.

Swingers and tons of celebrities go in there regularly and come in and out to actors when the servers all know that they're regulars. And when you see 'em in there, there's no line to get their autograph. But when I was on the Drew Carey show and like really banged out my first fame, [00:07:00] I couldn't go anywhere.

And everybody recognized in Cleveland? Yeah. Or outside of la. I remember I went on a driving trip, pulled into Holiday Inn or whatever roadside thing where I could just pull in and park. I wanted to be able to park my car outside my door, those places, and they'd be like, what are you doing here? My joke was the celebrity hotel was closed.

What are you doing at seven 11? They recogniz me. Oh my God. What are you doing at seven 11?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Drew Carey: I need gum.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Like I don't have, I didn't bring my assistant on my road trip across the United States to go out of the car and get the gum from me. Yeah, that's funny. The celebrity seven 11 had a huge line, so I decided to pop over to this one.

That's

Drew Carey: my standard joke. The celebrity blank was closed. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: You lost a bunch of weight. I don't know how recent that is. I've lost about a thousand pounds over and over again. Yeah, I know the feeling.

Drew Carey: Was there any sort of triggering event? The first time in my bow tie phase, when I first dropped all that weight was, 'cause my son Connor, he's 19, I, he'll be 20 in April.

I just realized that I wasn't gonna live to see him graduate high school.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Drew Carey: [00:08:00] Like we would play in the backyard when he was five and run around like daddy's tired. I couldn't chase him around the yard. I couldn't play tag with him. I was just exhausted, like my feet hurt. I would leave prices. Right. My feet would hurt and I was looking for orthopedics

Jordan Harbinger: since you must have been like 50.

Yeah. Not old enough to be like, oh my, everything hurts.

Drew Carey: You know? My back hurt my knees. I always needed a nap. 'cause I ate so much junk and sugar all day. Like my diet was awful. And when you're soaking in something, you just think it's normal. Like we all have our own normal now where you realize, oh, it might be normal, but it's not good.

Like just 'cause it's normal on the bell curve doesn't mean that's ideal. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm the average weight of an American male at my age. Yeah. Well then you're fucked. Yeah, exactly. Good luck. Yes. Yeah. On Larry King, RIP, typical Larry, he, how did you get to be so overweight? Just flat out and gradually then suddenly.

Yes, exactly. [00:09:00] But you described your diet and I was like, wait, is this real? Yeah. It was like, do you remember that at all?

Drew Carey: Yeah. So this is how I thought I would go to whatever diner it was. I was a big boy back then. I was working at Warner Brothers. Go to Bob's pig boy and I would have steak and eggs and toast and like three, four cups of coffee with sugar.

Two things of sugar.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh wow.

Drew Carey: In my head I thought, well I'll use brown sugar.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's brown. It's healthier, A little

Drew Carey: healthier.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

Drew Carey: And I won't have pancakes this morning, so I'm trying to be good. But if I was just like, ah, yeah, sure. Pancakes. Put a side of pancakes on there 'cause it's a regular day.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Drew Carey: I'm not trying to be healthy

Jordan Harbinger: Saturday.

Drew Carey: Yeah, yeah. And uh, devour all the hash browns. And then I'd get to work, have a Pepsi look over the script. There'd be snacks at the craft table, maybe a little bit of bagel or something. And oh, a cookie. Have a cookie, and then lunch, [00:10:00] same kind of thing. Burger fries. At night I would leave and I would go to swingers and get pasta with heavy cream, Alfredo chicken with chicken in it.

And then. Extra cheese on top and then a cupcake. But then if I was feeling good, I would not have a cupcake. Or I'd be like, nah, kind of down, we have two cupcakes or, and then I would drink iced tea with that, with extra lemon. So I'd put two slices of lemon and the iced tea, and then another, it would be like five, six wedges of lemon and iced tea.

And I'd already had three Pepsis at work all day and crashed after every show. And then feet would be hurting. And then I'd get home, crack open another Pepsi.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh,

Drew Carey: at night. Oh man. Oh yeah. Doritos Ranch Dip. Ooh, it sounds good. Something Twizzler. Something like that. Watch tv, have a beer, have a couple beers, and then go to bed.

And. I wouldn't be able to sleep. So I was taking Ambien and I would take one,

Jordan Harbinger: my friend [00:11:00] Roseanne said, they make you racist.

Drew Carey: I think Ambien is like the work of the devil, honestly.

Jordan Harbinger: You hear about people driving and then like, not remembering how they got somewhere and they were asleep. And I would end up having to take,

Drew Carey: I dunno if I had to, but I think I did.

Taking two Ambien just to sleep and then I'd get up exhausted. Couldn't wait to get a coffee in me. And that's how I lived. That's, that's scary. And to me that was like, oh, this is what everybody does. You're probably not too far off. I think a lot of people do it. And I'm at the gap buying clothes. I had such a stupid mindset.

Like I, I bought everything from the Gap. 'cause in my head as this is only temporary. So why am I gonna invest in expensive clothes, but I'm gonna lose this weight in a few months anyway, so I just buy gap clothes. I knew it fit me, it was fine. I was just gonna work and who cares. And if they were selling double xls,

Jordan Harbinger: that's normal because it's, hey, it's at the gap.

It means I'm still a normal person. Size, I'm not over the limit. I have to go to the big and tall place. Right. That

Drew Carey: was in my head. I remember going to Urban [00:12:00] Outfitters once, I only style up a little bit and I went to Urban Outfitters and the biggest waste they sold was like 36. I was like, these motherfuckers was the only kids allowed to buy here and it'll sell the clothes to adults.

I was really like, huh, okay, fine. You're not getting my money. Yeah. Drew Carey came in here, looked around, and then left. Yeah. '

Jordan Harbinger: cause you don't sell double XL shirts. Yeah. Geez. It was crazy how I thought. Yeah. But the rationalization machine is powerful, man. I. Yeah, I watched your Johnny Carson appearance from 1991 and it was pretty good.

Stands up really well. Yeah, it stands up really well and they did things differently back then. I think you're kind of in this position where, come on out and entertain us right away. You don't like walk in and be cool and like, no, just chat. It's perform and don't blow it. Or this is the last chance you'll ever have.

Yeah. Of making it big. No pressure. Yeah, no pressure. That's exactly what it was. Like. Do you, were you nervous back then? Do you remember?

Drew Carey: Man, so I used to be an evangelical Christian and [00:13:00] Oh wow. But I remember feeling like I just got saved by Jesus

Jordan Harbinger: at the end.

Drew Carey: That's the only feeling I can relate it to.

Like I was floating. I was in a such a flow state. I think your listeners are probably familiar with the flow state. Oh yeah. You've heard of it, and if you haven't, there's whole books on it. YouTube videos if you're not in a reading, but it happens to you when you game. You get off flow state if you're really into the game or when you're driving with the radio on or off.

You really get in a flow state when you are. Anything where you have hyper concentration, where you look up and you're like, oh my God, it's been an hour already. I thought I just sat down. That's a flow state, and I was in such a state of flow. I might as well have floated out there and floated over. It was like a dream state the whole time because I'd rehearsed that set when I walked out.

Jim McCauley, RIP, he was the guy that booked the comics and he was the guy that if you were in a comedy club and you knew Jim [00:14:00] McCauley was in the audience, you'd be like, oh my God, Brio. Well, yeah, because he could make or break you by putting you on the Tonight Show or not.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Drew Carey: Back then it was like just very few gatekeepers and if you got past those gatekeepers you were in, and if you didn't

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Folding towels at Equinox.

Drew Carey: Yeah. There's no. Podcast to go on. There's no YouTube channel. You can start, there's no third tier like this podcast. Now there's like many avenues back then. There was just the one and then just the two when Letterman started.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah.

Drew Carey: Then after you got famous from those, then you could have an HBO special.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah.

Drew Carey: Or a showtime special, and that was it. Now you could make your own special, put it on YouTube, get a YouTube following, and then you're set.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Drew Carey: Nothing like that. You had to go through the gatekeepers. Always a gatekeeper,

Jordan Harbinger: man.

Drew Carey: So Jim McCauley was the biggest gatekeeper in the country, and he said, Hey Drew, you're on next.

Ready to go backstage. I had my notes, my set list that I hadn't barely glanced at, and I was gonna look over it one more time before I went on, and it was on the top [00:15:00] page of my notebook. It wasn't a separate sheet, I just had my notebook and I would fold over the top like a lined Oxford line notebook paper.

He walks me backstage and he goes, well have a good time. And I go, am I next? And he goes, yeah. And I go, well, I guess I don't need this. And I tossed it.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Drew Carey: Didn't have a chance to look at it before I went out. And the next thing you know, it's Johnny introducing me. The curtain's open and I float out on stage and I'm in a flow state.

It's going great. I'm like electric inside. I feel like I'm on another planet. It's going so well where I'm not associated with reality. And then I get called over just like in my dream. The night before, I had like a vision of exactly how it would go. I was working at a club in Chicago, funny one in Chicago at the time, and Schomburg.

I got a call like, Hey Macaulay called, you want to do the Tonight Show? And the club owner's really excited 'cause that's extra money on the weekend when I come back from that And just to have a comic there that just got his first Tonight show and he was a good friend of mine anyway. And I was like, what?

Well I need Friday night off. So Thursday [00:16:00] night I got the call Wednesday and Thursday night I told the audience, I'm doing the Tonight Show and I did my set and I go, that was my Tonight show set. So lemme just figure out the rest of this because you already heard my Closer. Wow. Wow. And I flew out there, but the night before I was laying in bed and I could not sleep.

I kept imagining in real time I was doing the set, 'cause the set's pre-approved so you have to do that set. So I'm doing the set in my head in real time, seeing the stage in my, through my real eyes. 'cause I'd already been there. Another friend of mine suggested I was in town, suggested I go to the Tonight Show and just be backstage and when the show is over, just go out and look around.

So I'm not as nervous. Some of the best advice I ever got. So I, I knew what the states looked like, so I could imagine the whole thing. That's smart. And then Johnny calls me over at the end of my night dream all in real time. Like it's really happening.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And he said, you're funny as hell. That was the first thing he said.

Said word.

Drew Carey: It was word for word. It wasn't like it was matching moments. Like it was 10 minutes, the whole sequence, or eight minutes, the whole sequence was timed. I got up, walked around the hotel, went back to bed, couldn't get [00:17:00] out. So only slept on the plane, on the way out from Chicago to la and it happened just like I envisioned.

It was a, a supernatural.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Drew Carey: To me

Jordan Harbinger: that's the genesis. That's it. That's why I'm famous. Yeah. It makes you think really like how many people have come just close and then were too nervous or like couldn't handle the pressure or self-sabotage.

Drew Carey: Tons of people. My friend Fred Stoller, really funny comic character actor.

If you saw his face, you'd go, I know just who he is. Really cool guy. He's written a bunch of books and he wrote one book called, I think it's called Five Minutes to Kill. That's when he did HBO, young Comedians, or maybe it's 10 Minutes to Kill, when he was on the Young comedian show and he listed everybody else who was on the HBO and comedian show and who made it and who didn't and what happened to them, including him.

Like who got famous from that and who didn't. And they only had this five or 10 minutes to make it or break it. And that five or 10 minutes affected the whole rest, the trajectory of their life. They either were famous and owned a house, or they went to catering 'cause they [00:18:00] couldn't get booked anymore.

Fred Stoller has a really good career. Brights books lives in an apartment and he's the guy in the movie go, oh, that guy.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah.

Drew Carey: But he wasn't famous like the other people were. That got him there and it was always like, it's a thing that comics always talk about. I was with Messina Baker, this management firm when I did my first tonight show.

And after I did that was a Friday, like the next week I was doing sets for CAA and UTA and the agencies, yeah, William Morris sent like 20 some agents to see me do a set at the improv. Monday through Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Friday. I did a set every night for agents 'cause everybody wanted to sign me so freaking hot.

It was insane to somebody to set me on fire and everybody was like, oh my God, look at that. Like I was lit up like a light bulb. That's how I felt. And I'm sitting there with Jack, the other comic who'd end up being a writer around the Tonight Show. And there was another comic I didn't know and Jack and I were both with Messina Baker, so we [00:19:00] knew each other from that, plus doing comedy.

But we especially had a bond 'cause we were with the same manager. We're sitting at the improv in one of the tables and we're talking about this crazy thing that's happened to me. They're like, what's it feel like to be flavor the week? And I was like, take a look, bro. Yeah. I was like, it was like that. I was like, oh my God.

It's like, it's crazy. And we were laughing about and having a drink and uh, the guy looks at, he's talking to Jack and he puts me like, how many tonight shows have you done? And Jack goes, I don't know, like 10, 12. Wow. He's been on Tonight Show, like that many. He was a regular. Yeah. And he goes, how many times has this motherfucker The Tonight Show?

He points at me and I go, just the one. And I go Look at that. This motherfucker, he's friend of friendly way, one tonight show you've been on 10, 15 times. And then he looks really earnestly at Jack. And he goes, you know what the problem is, right? Jack goes, what? And he goes, it's your management.

And me and Jack just started laughing. Yeah. Because he didn't know we had the [00:20:00] same manager. Oh God. There's three comics having a serious business conversation. You know what your problem is, right? It's your management. There's a great joke that comics used to do with each other. I'll do it to you like, Hey, what agent are you signed with?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, UTA.

Drew Carey: Not for long. That's a standard comic dick move with, with newcomers.

Jordan Harbinger: What, who are you with? Uh, you mentioned in your book that it's important to talk to the audience like they're drinking buddies. I think that's such an interesting way to look at, because you're not out there like, I'm gonna entertain everyone.

You're just thinking, I'm gonna tell some funny stories that happen to me. Well, a little bit of a different mindset. When I

Drew Carey: first started, I would go to every headliner. I would ask them advice, do you mind watching my act this week? And giving me some advice? Hmm. And if you're funny and they like you, they will.

It was a comic friend of mine that was getting a ride to a comedy club in Ohio from another comic that opener, [00:21:00] EMC, my friend was the middle act. And they were driving down to this club to open up for this headliner that was in town. And on the way down the opener, who was driving, put a cassette tape in the car and pressed play.

And he goes, Hey, I wonder if you mind listening to my act on the way down here and giving me some foot advice. Oh, that you're

Jordan Harbinger: trapped in the car. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew Carey: And my friend, he told me the story, he said he ejected the tape and threw it out the window. That's so mean. Had a joint. And the guy was like, what the fuck?

And he goes, bro, I'm not listening to your act all the way down. Like just drive. I'm gonna smoke a joint. We're gonna get to the

Jordan Harbinger: wow.

Drew Carey: In the comedy world, if you're funny and people know you're funny, even if you're an up and comer and they like, you're like, oh, this is a funny guy. This is a funny person.

They wanna help you out. Sure. They wanna mentor you. They wanna see you succeed and they'll hang out with you. And if you're not funny. They're like, oh, I'm just gonna go to my room. Or I'm just, yeah. Good set. Talk to you later. That's how it goes. Oh, interesting. You know, if you're in, you're out by if they want to hang out [00:22:00] with you after.

And if you're struggling, nobody wants to be around you. If you're not funny and you're a comic, nobody.

Jordan Harbinger: That's true.

Drew Carey: It's just how it is. You just know. So these guys would gimme advice. Thankfully, they thought it was funny. And one guy, these, a lot of Chicago comics came through Cleveland. I would go to Chicago to do sets all the time.

I wasn't a Chicago comic, but I knew all the good ones. I would stand there like this with my hand on the mic and just stand in front of it like this, and I didn't know where to look and I didn't know what to do. And I was, what do I do to get over this? He goes, just pretend you're talking to friends in the living room.

Yeah. Then you can look right in the eye or look right at their forehead, top of their head. Like a trick. Yeah. All these little tricks. Tell yourself you're in a living room. Joking around with friends. Treat it like that. That was great advice. So I started doing that and now when I'm at the prices right, I feel so comfortable there and I know I'm in such a friendly place that as far as I'm concerned, I'm having a game night party and you're all invited.

Nice to meet you. I'm Drew and I'm gonna look you right in the eye when I'm talking to you, even though I'm on [00:23:00] stage and when I'm doing improv or stand, I'm gonna look you right in the eye 'cause you're friendly to me. I don't fear you. I don't have to worry about your judgment. We're all pals. And that's how I treat it.

It puts me in a really comfortable place.

Jordan Harbinger: I noticed that you do have really good rapport with the people on the prices, right? The contestants, and it seems very natural. Is it something you think about or had to think about consciously or is it just from comedy? You kinda already had it in the bag? Both.

Drew Carey: So I had it in the bag from comedy. People were asking me, I always get asked, what was it like to take over for Bob? Bob Barker? Yeah. 18 years later I still get asked that question, but I realize now. You know when you're a comic anywhere, they had somebody really good there the week before or two weeks before.

Oh, last week Gary Shanley was here. Boy he really killed the place. And knowing you should have seen him or they'll be talking about something great, the other comic did. Or they'll have stories about at the club, like famous moments or you should have seen them. Like guys will tell stories after the [00:24:00] show about this happened that happened.

Like Bill Hicks story, you would hear about some club that he walked out. One time I was just telling a friend of mine the other day, bill Hicks, he's dead now, but he was a legendary icon when I was doing club comedy. He was so looked up to and so funny. He would talk about anything like there was no limit to this guy.

The edgiest of edgy comics like a Bill

Jordan Harbinger: Burr situation.

Drew Carey: That's Bill Burr is walking in his shadow. Honestly, bill Burr would recognize Bill Hicks and go, yeah, that guy right up there with Lenny Bruce, as far as I'm concerned, as far as like freedom on stage to do whatever you want. But funny, no offense to Lenny Bruce.

When Lenny Bruce was going through his trials, like he would get up on stage and read his transcript for his trials and complain. Like he wasn't telling jokes. Geez. He was just ranting And it was interesting, huh? But it wasn't like here's my act. It's a ballsy move though. Yeah. But like he didn't give a fuck.

Yeah. Clearly, which was great and but when he was funny like a groundbreaker, no doubt about it. But then he [00:25:00] just was like angry man and no kidding. They were trying to put him in jail and putting him on trial.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Drew Carey: And I'd be pissed too if I got arrested after my act, like what happened to him. And I was like, afraid nobody would book me.

'cause you didn't want the police rating the place 'cause you're seeing the word fuck on stage. Oh god. Like crazy. So Bill Hicks was like, he had the freedom and the rights that people like Lenny Bruce earned for him. And then he was able to just talk about anything. So the story I heard, which is a true story, was that club owners were like, Hey Bill, welcome to the club when they picked him up at the airport.

Glad to have you here, and we know what your act is, but we're Christians and we'd really appreciate it if you didn't say the word fuck. That's really our only rule, right?

And he went, all right. And first of all, Christians made them an enemy. I. He came up with Sam Kinison and the same club in Texas, and they were like part of these Texas outlaw comics. That was Bill Hicks, Sam [00:26:00] Kinison, and a couple other guys. But those were the two main ones. So that was his attitude. Fuck you, I'm gonna get up here and do whatever I want and I'm gonna do a bump for come on stage and tell you I did and everybody knows I'm on cocaine right now.

Go fuck yourself if you don't like what I'm saying. Leave. And that was his attitude. And he got up on stage and for as long as he could, talked about fucking a child,

Jordan Harbinger: oh my

Drew Carey: God, until everybody left and he walked the whole audience like one by one, people were like upset. They didn't wanna hear it, he just stood there and looked him in the eye and then graphic as horrible as he could make it.

And they all paid their checks and walked out until the very last couple got up and left. And then he was like, great. There you go. I didn't say the word Fuck no. Oh no. He did. He never said the word. Fuck you there. You want me to not wait to say the word fuck. This is what's gonna happen. Oh man. You gimme complete freedom or I'll tank my career.

It's

Jordan Harbinger: like a political

Drew Carey: statement almost. Yeah. Yeah. And he never got as famous here [00:27:00] as in England. Like wildly popular in England. Huh? But here he was popular with comics and people in the know and people that were hip to him. Yeah. It's like a

Jordan Harbinger: comics comic. Yeah.

Drew Carey: Yeah. There was no Bill Hicks sitcom. 'cause people were like, what do we do with you?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. The networks were probably like, yeah, just make sure he doesn't say fuck. Oh, wait a minute. No,

Drew Carey: not that guy. He would just be arguing all the time with the writers about how he can't talk about what he wants to talk about.

Jordan Harbinger: Yikes. Yeah. No.

Drew Carey: How come they talk about drugs and how they should be legal and how do that now.

Yeah. He had a great bit about how great drugs were. He goes, you never hear that from people, do you? Geez, drugs are great.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Drew Carey: They make you feel good. Why can't you take

Jordan Harbinger: drugs? That was his attitude. You've said as comedians make more money, they get less funny and you've gotta a guard against that. Why is that?

I learned this from

Drew Carey: Steve Martin. I've never met Steve Martin, believe it or not. Huh? One of my idols growing up. He might take your call at this point. I don't know. You gotta learn how to play the banjo. He's still Steve Martin and I'm still Drew Carey. You know he's legend. He's like [00:28:00] Mount Rushmore. Yeah, I don't know.

He's like untouchable to me in my head. That's God, you're gonna meet him. He is gonna be like, oh, I saw every episode of your show. Knowing what I know. He's not a Kar Show Watch. Too smart, too Above it. But, um, his first album that came out, I read every interview and he said, an interview, that's 10 years of comedy there.

That's my best stuff from 10 years. And on my next album, it's like, what do I do now? I don't have 10 years. They want me to do another album in a year. And I know if I do it, I'm gonna get this extra money. And it's almost like you're putting out b material. If an author had one big novel that they've been burning inside and they write it, that was great.

Jordan Harbinger: Now follow it up with another one.

Drew Carey: A band has their big hit breakout album and the next album is,

Jordan Harbinger: uh, it was pretty

Drew Carey: good. Yeah, but that's happens to comics. You don't have five hours, four hours. Nobody puts eight. Jerry Seinfeld said he did. I believe Jerry Seinfeld wrote eight hours a day, treated it like a job, but he might have been using eight hours a [00:29:00] day.

Like it could have been six hours and two hours of having coffee and fucking around until he got back in the mood. Sure. Like how writers do.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That's what everybody does at work, I think.

Drew Carey: Yeah. I knew he took it seriously enough to go like, okay, this is my job and this part of my day. I'm telling you from being on the road, comics didn't do most comics did not treat it that seriously.

And if they wrote, they did it a couple times a week and go, ah, I think I'm gonna write for an hour. Alright, Jerry Seinfeld. Yeah.

So all of a sudden then you're famous and now you're got meetings to go to. You got other projects to do. When I was on the Drew Care show, I didn't have time to write any writing. I did all the jokes, went to the Drew Care show. I wasn't writing jokes for my act, and I was famous enough as a standup. Then if they wanted a standup special, I could have done one.

But if they wanted me to do a second one, what am I gonna write it? What am I gonna have time to go on stage? How do you guard against that? You said you have to guard against that, so I assume you

Jordan Harbinger: came up with a way to guard against that.

Drew Carey: Yeah. Plus another thing is you don't live a normal life [00:30:00] anymore.

When you're rich, your assistant's doing things for you. You're getting dropped off at the VIP to go into the club. You're not dealing with the everyday frustrations that people deal with. You're stuck in traffic like everybody else in your shitty car, like everybody else in la yes, but everywhere else, maybe not.

Yeah. When you're a good standup comic, it's every man against the world. You're speaking up to power. Why are these people doing it? Why is it just technology doing this to us? Why are we leaving in this system that's so frustrating? This is hypocritical. This is stupid. This is wrong. Ha. And you make a joke of it.

That's how every successful comic

Jordan Harbinger: I see works. So when you're richer, you're just insulated for more and more This. You're in that world

Drew Carey: now, whatcha gonna make fun of if you're the guy next door because you're rich too. It really hurts you. So you have to be in a mindset of. Drive yourself. Do your own fucking shopping if you can.

Try to be as normal thinking as you can, because the more you insulate yourself from the world, the less you have to joke. Like, what are you gonna joke [00:31:00] around? There was a guy named Martin Mul, a really famous guy from Cleveland Comic. I used to watch him on The Tonight Show 'cause it would be Martin Muller, Steve Martin.

When I would look at comics on the Tonight Show, sometimes I get 'em mixed up when I was first following them, like, oh, Martin is on. Oh yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: one of the Martins.

Drew Carey: Yeah. Martin Muller had his albums really famous, really good, funny songwriter. So he'd be on The Tonight Show with a couch and a guitar. He'd do funny songs.

He wasn't like a standup, but he'd, in between, on one of his albums, he has a song called Rich Person's Blues. And it was, I woke up this morning, I saw both cars were gone. BI felt so low down, deep inside. Threw my drink a pound. A lawn.

Yeah. I remember I was like broke when I heard that. I was just a fan. I thought it was the funniest thing to me. Yeah. I listened to it over and over on an album. I was rich man's blues. So what you get up joke about what frustrates you? My jet was late. [00:32:00] Yeah. Go fuck yourself. So the key is

Jordan Harbinger: the more successful you get live a or live in that

Drew Carey: mindset.

Live that mindset. Hey, be aware of it. That's tough. Recognize that you're in a private jet. 'cause you're famous and rich. Yeah. And Disney got you a private jet that time, which they did to me. Or somebody's flying you somewhere 'cause you have to get somewhere or make it joke about how rich you are. Like you gotta do something to humanize yourself for everybody.

Jordan Harbinger: Now take your fat drunk ass to the gap and or Disneyland. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Dell and a MD. What would you do if your company's big product launch got hijacked? Not by competitors, but by a hacker? That's exactly what happens in the latest episode of the Cybersecurity Tapes.

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You do see when really popular comedians lose touch and they lose the plot a little bit. And people really hate that. Even more than an unfunny set. Oh, he went a little too far with the trans stuff. It's like the worst thing a comic can do is just appear out of touch. It's like Right. Career suicide in some ways.

You

Drew Carey: gotta find a way to ground your, that's why I love being about the prices, right? 'cause everybody there is normal. Yeah. It looks like you're

Jordan Harbinger: having a fun

Drew Carey: time every day. It's got so many average Americans in there. Like you wanna know what America is like. Go to a prices reg taping. That's how Americans dress.

That's what they look like. This is what they believe. Just [00:36:00] being a guy and loving sports, I would think that everybody loved football. 'cause everywhere I go I could strike from a conversation about how the football team was doing and I would watch ESPN and I'd watch it. So I knew some stats. 'cause when I started a conversation, I didn't wanna look like an idiot.

Yeah. In front of my friends. And I would catch them and me repeating stats I heard on ESPN or talking points are heard on ESPN or Sports radio. I really had to know that because I didn't wanna look like a fool when I talked to my friends. I see. You know what I mean? I go to the price of right audience and I'm like, boy, did everybody see that game?

And blanks? Really? No. Middle of America not watching football. Nobody gives a fuck. That's funny. There's guys there that do, there'll be a few guys that'll raise their hand, but the average person, if you look at the ratings, the Rams or whoever, they get a percentage just like everybody else of the ratings.

I guess being

Jordan Harbinger: from Detroit, it was like, oh, we're playing Green Bay. And it's like, you think everybody knows. Just think everybody. I was the only kid who didn't Yeah. Really care about any of that stuff. [00:37:00] I was an outcast for that reason. You weren't the

Drew Carey: only kid. So when I was doing standup, they would have you do radio shows on Friday morning.

'cause it was always a local rock and roll station or country station. Depend on where you were that would sponsor the club.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I see. Yeah. So you're on K Rock or whatever,

Drew Carey: or you'd be in the Morning Zoo show somewhere, their version of the Morning Zoo and they would do, oh, this guy's great. He gets a eight share.

What does that mean? So 8% of the people listening listen to him, which would, like, in this market, if you get a two share, three share in LA, you're a God. But then it's like in Indianapolis or someplace, if you get an eight share, like forget it. And then I would think to myself, man, I'm getting up at fucking six in the morning.

I work last night. I gotta do two shows tonight. So we're all getting up early to do radio and then we're gonna take a nap and fucking figure out, go to Applebee's or whatever so we can get our shit together. Take another nap, do that all because we can do this. And it was every week, this guy's really big gets an eight chair.

And in my head I would think, oh, so you mean 92% of the people in the city aren't listening to this guy? And that's only the people they're measuring who are listening to [00:38:00] the radio. That doesn't count. People who are just driving in their car in silence or have a cassette tape in psychopaths driving your car without a music or aren't driving anywhere and just sleep in and don't listen to 'em.

I'm supposed to be kowtowing and awe of this eight dude. No, not gonna do it. And on the Drew Carey show, if they were like, oh, you know, like 15 share. Watch the Drew Carey show. So 85% of the people watching TV don't give a fuck about me.

Jordan Harbinger: What was your competing show at the time? Do you remember? Like what was on at the same time?

Oh, for a while it was West Wing. Oh, that

Drew Carey: was huge. Also. Yeah, kill. I remember talking to Dietrich Bader like, Hey man, have you seen West Wing? I go, no. He goes, oh, it's so good. You really need to watch it. And I go, it's the fuck. It's our coffee. It's at 8:00

Jordan Harbinger: PM I would be like, Hey, any chance we can move to seven 30 before people tune into West Wing?

For God's sake, you're killing me here.

Drew Carey: You're killing me.

Jordan Harbinger: Could buy my own jet. I wouldn't need Disney. But that was my attitude. Just from doing those

Drew Carey: radio shows was my strength too. 'cause I knew I just needed a sliver of the pie. Lamb of God doesn't need to be a household name. [00:39:00] No. Like Kiss or Taylor Swift.

And even Taylor Swift, I'll argue artists like her have a sliver of the pie and you hear a lot about them, but as much as you hear doesn't match the. The record sales in the big market. 'cause people buy country music, classical music, they go to jazz clubs, they go to no clubs. They know the song 'cause it's played in the mall.

They know the song 'cause it's on the radio and they're maybe listening to the radio or people reference her when you're watching the game. But average person doesn't know every song on a Taylor Swift album. That's true. And that's just how it is. In show business. You can be famous, but everybody only has their own little sliver of the pie.

And you have to service your audience. You have to service your sliver of the pie and really make sure they're happy. Seattle Sounders. We have a sliver of the pie in the soccer world, a small sliver of the, in Seattle, it seems like huge, but it's really a small sliver of the pie. And we go out of our way to service those people so we don't lose their business.

And that's how [00:40:00] every business works. You don't have to appeal to everybody. The analogy I would make with people, they'll go, well, you know, this is the most popular thing. You hear that argument? Sure it's good 'cause it's popular. I go, really? You think McDonald's has the best hamburger in the world? You think that's the best restaurant in the country?

You think McDonald's is the best place to go eat? They're the most popular. Sure. That's not the best. They're good. I enjoy McDonald's every once in a while. This podcast sponsored by McDonald's in the Gap sausage McMuffin with egg was making a joke to myself in the car. Like all the things I would eat and consume and like pretty much if you advertise in the Super Bowl I'm in,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah,

Drew Carey: I'll drink Budweiser 'cause they advertise in the Super Bowl.

I bought this 'cause they advertise in the Super Bowl. They gotta be the best one. They advertise on the Super Bowl. I get hooked in by marketing so easily by everybody. That's funny. You marketed me the right way and ad comes up when I'm scrolling the news. Also, somebody came up with a place that was selling bed tents.

Place called Temu. I got,

Jordan Harbinger: oh, Temu. That's one of those Chinese, like it's [00:41:00] only $3. Yeah. And then you click on it. It's like everything, they just knock off products, sell you the crappiest version. But I clicked on it. I was like,

Drew Carey: oh man, that's really cool.

Jordan Harbinger: I don't buy anything from Temu. Yeah.

Drew Carey: I was this close to buying it just 'cause I saw it while I was reading a news article and I'm like, what the fuck?

I had a snap out of it. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: no, that stuff's made by like child slave labor. I want my children who manufacture things to be compensated fairly. Yeah, man. So the price is Right, which is aired the 10000th episode on my birthday. Oh, thanks for doing that. I appreciate that. It was just for you. Yeah, I, I know that was the pitch for bringing you on when the Drew Carey show ended.

Did you have any sort of identity crisis at all? Because this is aimed after you for God's sake. No. Huge. Yeah. Oh yeah. Tell me about that. A rug pull, you know, because you're losing a part of yourself when the thing ends. I wouldn't feel

Drew Carey: so personally attacked if somebody wrote something bad about the Drew Carey show.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that's not gonna happen in the comments of this episode at all then. Yeah, well, I don't care anymore. No. Okay, good.

Drew Carey: And I was just thinking, I took everything so personally. 'cause first of all, my name's on it and I knew [00:42:00] that this was my only one chance to not ever have to work again. But it ran for nine, 10 years.

Right? So nine years save your money, you'll be fine. Yeah, yeah. But your fourth year, fifth year, nine years. You want a 10th year? Well, yeah. 10th year. You want an 11th here? Like you don't want it to end. Some things are so good you don't want it to end. Do you want the party to end when you're at a party?

It's raging and you're in the midst of like the peak of it when it's over. I just

Jordan Harbinger: walked out of the bathroom. Yeah. Keep

Drew Carey: this thing going. Rubbing your nose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't do coke, but I know the feeling. And you and I are contractually

Jordan Harbinger: prohibited from doing drugs. So you don't do drugs. Yeah. I go, when I go to EDC, I'm sad when the night's over.

Drew Carey: Yeah. I'm like,

Jordan Harbinger: ah, man. I love that. You love EDC Electronic Daisy Carnival. It's Electric. Electric Daisy Carnival. Yeah. It's basically a rave. It's a rave. Exactly what it is. Yeah. In the middle of the desert on

Drew Carey: a racetrack in the middle of, yeah. Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Every May, 17th, 18th, and 20th, I think this year.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you have to be careful about things you do in public? You can't go to EDC and go, you know what I'm gonna do Molly, with my friends? Let's say you don't [00:43:00] do drugs. All right, I'm going to drink. But then it's like, you can't just be like stumbling drunk. 'cause someone could video that and it's not a good luck for Drew Carey.

I have been. It's happened. I'm sure.

Drew Carey: Yeah. I was at Disneyland when I was on the Drew Carey Show. Every year we would take the writers and the cast to Disney World. That was our thing. The guy that created the show, Bruce Helford and I would drive across country. We would rent a car, he didn't fly, and we would drive from LA to Orlando and we would meet the cast of Drive from LA to Orlando.

How long does that take? Like a week, few days, four days, few days you take turns driving. Listen to rock and roll. Sure. Talk about the show. What went wrong, what didn't? What we liked, what we didn't, what we wanna do next year. What about this brainstorm? Shoot the shit. Eat at diners. Joke around. Okay, we get a motel.

This looks like Good Holiday Inn Express. Let's stay here. What are you doing here? Well, the celebrity Holiday Express is closed. We get to Orlando and a BC is owned by Disney, so A B, C would get the rooms and make sure [00:44:00] we pay for our guides and we basically get a semi free trip to Disney World for everybody and be all the writers and all the cast we did every year.

So one year I wanted to have everybody drink the world at Epcot Center. I see. Which is a thing to do. You can eat the world or drink the world and we were gonna drink the world. So there's 10 countries in the Epcot Center. Starts out with Canada, United States is in the middle of course. And then Mexico is on the other side.

So you start with Canada, work your way through Japan, China, England, Norway, all the other countries, Germany, Italy. And you end up in Mexico at the end of the night. And the idea was to get to Mexico right before 10 o'clock. 'cause that's when the fireworks went off. So we're like, yeah, we gotta get an early start.

'cause 10 drinks,

Jordan Harbinger: that's a lot of drinks.

Drew Carey: And you had to have a drink in each country. So we were supposed to start in Canada and everybody was late. And I was like, where the fuck is everybody? And everybody didn't get there at like 1 32 or something like that. And I was like, okay, let's go now. We gotta make up some time.

So we chugged [00:45:00] a beer in Canada and we gotta walk everywhere. So we walked to the next one, walked to the next one, and by the time I got United States, I'm having a beer. And then in. Japan. I'd have a Saki, China, I'd have something else. And Germany, I'd have another beer. Italy, I didn't have a glass of wine.

It wasn't Guo or something. Yeah, it wasn't. I was mixing and just fucking stumbling. And by the time I got to Mexico, I'd been quarter at 10. It was nighttime out. I was like running around and like giggling and like tagging people and I had mouse ears on and people were worried about how I was acting and they're like, we gotta do something about true.

This is also before smartphones,

Jordan Harbinger: so it wasn't

Drew Carey: like, yeah, thank God. But it wasn't before cameras or instant cameras that you would buy at Disney World to take around all day.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, wow.

Drew Carey: Or like throw away cameras, disposable cases. Yeah. Everybody had something. They didn't have a phone, but they had something.

And I'm acting like an idiot. Just like drunk outta my mind, fucked [00:46:00] up drunk, but in a really good, happy way. Like we gotta do something with Drew and somebody had the idea, let's put Drew in a wheelchair and wheel him outta here.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God.

Drew Carey: So they got the guide Disney guide to get a wheelchair. The red vests.

Yeah. Got me a wheelchair. Plaid vests guy put me in the wheelchair and they're gonna wheel me out of there, which they do. And I'm in the chair just like fireworks. Going off a month later, whenever we're back and we're starting in the writer's room. Was it weekly world news or Weekly World? Some tabloid, tabloid double page.

Drew Carey drunk at Disney World. Oh no. The picture that made everybody laugh so much is me in the chair with my mouse ears askew on my head. They weren't even straight. I have a red solo cup in my hand.

Jordan Harbinger: What's in there?

Drew Carey: Yeah, that's my face. I got beer spilled all over the front of my shirt. So this is beer stain in the front of my shirt.

I'm in a wheelchair with a dizzy guy.

Keeping the place classy.

Jordan Harbinger: I picture that framed in my [00:47:00] house. Oh, you do? That's what you put on the T-shirts for the price is right.

Drew Carey: Well, after I did the Phish thing, when I went to the Phish concert and sent out those tweets about how I would stick my dick in a blender, I also said, by the way, that I would give you all my money and give up pussy for the rest of my life.

Nobody mentions that part. All they bring up is the dick and the blender part. Like I offered like three big things. Yeah, I'll take the cash. You know, you can have all of it, but why are you concentrating? Only that?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Drew Carey: because for a guy that's like the worst thing, like you can have everything. Just don't do that.

It's a visceral feeling. Yeah, yeah. But after that, I remember talking to an executive at CBS and that Diddy thing just came out where he dragged her through the hallway, like that video had just come out. She says, look, you're just having fun. It's not like you're dragging way through a hallway and beating him.

I'm like, exactly. Like who care if you're honest with everybody about how you live and if you're not hypocritical, I. You can pretty much live your life. In my book I wrote about me going to strip clubs and all that stuff. Yeah. Fighting with the censor. It wasn't shocking 'cause I'm open about it and I was open about it.

I would go into a strip club as Drew [00:48:00] Carey and go, Hey man, I'm I. VIP's here, where's my table? And everybody knew, Hey Drew. Hey.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, you're not pretending to be like a religious influence or something like that. Never do such a thing.

Drew Carey: Remember the guy that was the president of the American Evangelical Association?

He was a TV preacher and he got caught with iron gay hookers. And then he went to a Christian conversion thing for like two weeks and came back and he said, I'm healed. I'm not gay anymore. And I gave this joke to Greg Proofs. He would do like a nightly thing at a club, like it was like a chat show, but it was live at a club in la.

I went every week. It was so good. And I gave him that. I got a great joke, but I don't do standup. So here's this joke for you. 'cause it was just in the news. He goes, yeah, Greg proofs like killed it. He goes, yeah. So this guy, I can't remember his name, got caught with gay hookers and he went to a Christian conversion thing for a week.

Now he's not gay anymore. And what they did was they took him out behind the barn and made him smoke a pack of dicks till his tummy hurt.[00:49:00]

Oh,

people were like pounding the table. I was so proud of myself and I wouldn't have given it to anybody else. 'cause Greg Proofs can tell a joke. Like nobody. Oh man. But yeah, you get caught doing that, then you're in trouble. Yeah. But if I'm like, yeah, I go to EDC, what do you fucking think I'd do at EDC? Not drugs.

'cause you're the, so the prize is right. I was on another TV show telling a story, a drug story. It was the show called This is Not Happening. That was my joke. Yeah. Um, I'm at a DC, my friends doing mushrooms. I'm not, 'cause I'm the host of prices writer. I'd be an idiot to do mushrooms and then talk about it in public.

So just, it was just him. He was,

JHS Clip: yeah. Not

Jordan Harbinger: me though. That was the joke. It's funny 'cause I'm, I have morality [00:50:00] clause in my contract and it's, it's like a whole page. Everybody does. And my lawyer's like, we gotta argue this. You might wanna read that. It might be in the fine print. And my lawyer's like, we gotta argue this.

'cause this can be construed in so many different ways. And you're in this weird position where you have to be like, I would never do that, except there are these things that I do do that I wouldn't necessarily say in public. And that's gonna fall under this thing if somebody doesn't like you. So I'm always never hurting anybody.

Yeah, just having fun. No, of course. But there's things where these things can be construed so loosely, but if I say, oh yeah, you know, weed should be legal federally, because one time I mailed weed to my friend, I didn't realize it was a felony. And then it's, oh, you admitted to that on a podcast. And since we're trying to get rid of you because you did some other thing, we're gonna use this as an excuse to get rid of you.

Now if you're crushing it, you got that eight share or whatever. Yeah. Then they're like, he's joking.

Drew Carey: Howard Stern could talk about anything he wanted, admit to anything he wanted. Nobody fucking touch him.

Jordan Harbinger: No. It'll be like, oh, he's a comedian. It's just a joke, right Howard? And he goes, no, I really did that.

And they're like, [00:51:00] but that's

Drew Carey: why people listen to Howard Stern. 'cause he's truthful and he's honest and he is saying exactly what he did and he's not trying to bullshit his way through. And you, you know, you're on the Howard Stern show. That's what he was like. Off Mike. Off Mike. Yeah. On Mike. You can't fake it.

Jordan Harbinger: No,

Drew Carey: you can't be. I'm meeting you. You can't be on the show and fake it for this long possible and your show would suck. It would be terrible. Yeah. That's why people listen. That's why people listen to podcast because they're getting a real thing and have a real conversation with people. If I do a nighttime talk show, I talk to a segment producer and we talk about what we're gonna talk about.

What if we have a story? But it's all pre-planned. That makes complete sense. The host has cards. So I heard you did this. I got a great story. I was on, uh, Letterman and I did the pre-interview. It's always a pre-interview, which I hate because I can talk for 10 minutes. Like what are you fucking doing to me?

Maybe somebody else can't, but I can. It's insulting almost that they gimme a

Jordan Harbinger: pre-interview. I wonder if it's because they think, oh, we don't want you to be boring or talk about something somebody else already talked about. Well what's the point

Drew Carey: that, plus, they wanna [00:52:00] know what's happening. 'cause it's a seven minute segment.

Jordan Harbinger: I see

Drew Carey: we gotta hit bam, we don't need dead air. Can't afford it. So they're like, Hey, this isn't gonna be a whole show. So that segment, if you just seven minute talk about golf, seven segment's do, let's hit it. And then these are great stories and those will be viral. Whatever they do, they want gimme your most.

Interesting. I get that.

Jordan Harbinger: Thank God

Drew Carey: to do. Um, yeah, I get it. Letterman, it was going okay, the interview. And then towards the end he set me up with a story. He changed the wording and it, I didn't hear the keywords I was expecting, so I didn't tell the right story. Oh no. I just was like, fumbling. It was interesting.

You told a different story. It wasn't funny, but I was like, yeah, blah, blah, blah. And then I got trailed off and then he goes, okay, well we're gonna go to commercial. And he goes commercial. And it was in December, around Christmas time. And he leans over to me, he goes, Hey man, I'm really sorry about this crowd.

There's just, this is such a nowhere crowd. It's the holidays, this crowd's nowhere. They bring a cigar out, he just lets his smoking a cigar. Crazy.

Jordan Harbinger: It's crazy. In studio. Yes. Wild

Drew Carey: smoking a cigar during the commercials. And I go, I'm really sorry, I just didn't hear the cue. Right. And you has different ways, I suspect then.

And he looked straight out [00:53:00] above the audience's head with his scar and he goes, fuck it. Just fuck it.

Jordan Harbinger: Tell us what you really think. The good news is I'll be here next week. I don't know about you puffing a cigar, just not a

Drew Carey: care in the world. Thinking about his flight to The Bahamas in five hours, the next time that I was on Letterman, I was doing a show, and I forget the name of the actress. She was a child actor, then she was in all the pretty horses and then she's a famous adult, but I can't blanking on her name, but she's like 14, 13, something like that.

I was lead guest, she was on, and Warner Brothers had given me a Porsche to renegotiate my contract. They just gave me a car taxes paid for and everything. Here's your car. And that was one of their common negotiating tactics because I remember driving on a lot one time and in front of set there was like.

10 Porsches lined up also and you're like, oh, there's the

Jordan Harbinger: entire cast's cars. Yeah. Yeah. They must have just signed their deals. Yeah,

Drew Carey: that's what they did.

Jordan Harbinger: Smart.

Drew Carey: But all the [00:54:00] talent wanted Porsches. That's a talent car. You don't want a Mercedes or a Jaguar. That's the executive car. Yeah. We had a whole discussion about what car to ask, whatever this one.

It's funny, podcast

Jordan Harbinger: one.

Drew Carey: I'm open to this idea, by the way. Yeah. I just got this Porsche and I had three weeks to get to New York. I had all the time in the world, so I just, it was one of the best vacations I ever had. I wanna get away from everybody. I don't wanna talk to anybody. You probably value your alone time.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, time with my kids now, especially,

Drew Carey: or even without the kids. You're like, can I have an hour

Jordan Harbinger: just for me? That's my workout in the gym now. I don't wanna take a phone call when I'm in there. It's church

Drew Carey: time. Don't fucking bother me. Everybody has that, including me. So I was doing a driving trip all by myself, and I left la I went to.

29 palms to get massages for a couple days. Cut that short. 'cause I over massaged. I was like, I can't get three massages day. Right. Bruised going outta my mind. Then I drove up and I went to Vegas. I kept going north through Idaho, got to Montana, made a right. I just wasn't even looking at a map. I just knew generally where I had to go.

All my [00:55:00] clothes weren't even a, a suitcase. They're in my trunk. I would grab any shirt, underwear, socks for the next day and I'd grab my toilet through kit, my computer bag, go into my room. That's what I had. I put the dirty clothes in a bag and I would mail dirty clothes home, mail 'em home. Oh wow. And if I needed new clothes, I would stop at a gap outlet store or a gap and I would just buy new clothes and just put on a T-shirt.

And I was just driving three weeks. Wow. Nobody bugging me. And when I got to Montana and made a right, I just knew the road was going east and it was one of these like two blacktop roads. It wasn't the main freeway because I didn't wanna go on those. And the speed limit then was you had to drive judiciously.

I forget what the sign said. No actual speed limit. Yeah. I was like, fuck, nobody's around. I'm in a Porsche. Go 110 at the top down, got it. Up to 110, 120 with the top down. Then I pulled over and I go, I'm getting dragged from the, having the top down. Let me put the top up, see what this thing can do. Got it Up to 160, I dunno.

Three minutes. That's scary. It was, yeah. But there was literally not another car in sight [00:56:00] this whole time. I could have been dead, could have hit a pebble and flown 30 feet in the, oh yeah. It would've been an hour before somebody found. It was one of those roads in an noir movie where they'd leave the body and I was just like, bam.

And then I slowed down. I was like, wow, that was sound was like shaking. I was like, wow, that was really cool. And I ended up driving to New York City when I got the Letterman. I told that story. I was in Montana and I got to go 160 'cause they don't have a speed limit. And he had owned like four Porsches.

He was like Really? Huh. That's pretty funny. Everybody was laughing 'cause they knew Letterman had a Porsche and we were laughing about guys talking about speeding and getting away with it. And then the actress came on and talked about filming all the pretty horses in Montana, how beautiful it was and how gorgeous Montana was.

Yeah. And I remember backstage Letterman saw me backstage at the theater. He goes, Hey, great job tonight. I go Guys, thanks for having me man. And he goes, Montana, huh? And I go, yeah, it was great. No speed limit. Alright, take care. I leave the next day I start driving down to Orlando 'cause I'm gonna meet all the casts.

Sure. And I'm Monday. I forget what the little town I'm in, but I stopped for breakfast. I buy a USA today. [00:57:00] I opened it up. It's a little article that David Letterman over the weekend had gotten a ticket in Butte, Montana for going 40 in a 25.

Fucking guy flew to Montana. Oh my God. Probably in the private jet. Yeah. Shipped his Porsche over or rented some kind of car. 'cause he was gonna go in the freeway and just gun it. Yeah. And he got a 40 and a 25 and beat Montana.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And he is that Drew Carey never booked that guy again.

Drew Carey: If he booked that guy again, send in the bill for this ticket.

And the next time I was on a show, I was telling that story. Okay.

Jordan Harbinger: I've heard this before, somewhere. That's so funny. Drew and I are gonna take a quick break from laughing at our own jokes. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Aura Ring. I've been rocking the aura ring since Gen one back when people would go, what is that weird thing on your finger?

Now we're on Gen four. Just looks like a regular ring now, and I've gotta say it just keeps getting better, sleeker, more comfortable, smarter. I wear mine 24 7 without even thinking about it. What sets it [00:58:00] apart is it's the best sleep tracker out there, period. Much more accurate than the watches. Aura doesn't just tell you how long you are out.

It shows you sleep stages, recovery metrics, heart rate variability, even your body temperature. It's kinda like having a personal sleep lab on your finger. And sleep is not just about feeling rested. Quality sleep is one of the biggest factors for long-term health and longevity. So if you wanna live better longer, you have to start with how you sleep.

Jen wears one. My brother-in-law wears one. Yeah, we compare scores. I know it's nerdy. I don't care. It's made us all more aware of how we are treating our bodies and how much better we feel when we're getting real rest. So if you're ready to optimize the one thing that affects everything else, give aura the finger.

Learn more@auraring.com slash Jordan. That's OURA ring.com/jordan. This episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb. I gotta give a shout out to Brian McDonald, who listened to the show and absolutely hooked me up in Vietnam. Recently, Brian runs a taste of Hanoi, and I had this layer over in Hanoi, and he's like, I got you.

Set me up with one of his guides for a motorbike food tour in Hanoi, which is awesome. [00:59:00] Now, if you've never been in the back of a motorbike in Vietnam, it's something, man, you're weaving through scooters and traffic like a video game where you can actually die, and then all of a sudden we're inside someone's house.

Literally inside we rode the motorbike. I, I'll tell you here, here, but the guide pulls into what looks like an alley. Okay. But it turns into a hallway and then he turns around grins and goes, okay, put your hands on my shoulders. Duck your head down. Pull your knees all the way in. The next thing I know, we're riding through someone's living room.

Not even kidding, like actually someone's living room to get to this little courtyard kitchen where this auntie is making fu. That'll just ruin your life. No, if I will ever taste as good and Vietnamese egg coffee upstairs on the balcony, I don't even know how to describe it. It's like Amisu and espresso had a beautiful caffeinated baby, short trip, chaotic, absolutely incredible.

And I can't wait to go back and bring Jen next time because I know she's gonna love it. And next time we'll put our place on Airbnb to help fund the adventure you can too. Airbnb makes it super practical. It doesn't take a lot of effort. You set it up before you leave, and then boom, your house is earning money while you're on vacation and making memories.

Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at [01:00:00] airbnb.com/host. This episode is sponsored in part by Audible. People always ask me how I managed to get through so much content, especially since I prep for every interview. I'm talking two to three books a week, and it's all thanks to Audible.

I've got Audible in my ears while I'm getting my 10,000 steps in running errands, even doing stuff around the house. I don't mess with physical books anymore at all. Audible's, just way more efficient. I listen on two or even three X speed, which lets me cover a lot of ground without sacrificing quality.

Right now, I'm listening to Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy. She's got this really down to earth way of talking about parenting that is not preachy. And here's what a lot of people don't realize. Audible is not just audio books anymore. You get access to thousands of titles with your membership, podcasts, audible originals, and cool stuff like their words in music series where artists tell their stories in their own words.

The variety makes the membership way more valuable, so you never run outta great stuff to check out. One day. I'm deep in a parenting guide. The next, it's a podcast or a spy thriller. So whether you're into suspense, self-development, or you just wanna make traffic suck less audible's got you covered.

Jen Harbinger: Start listening and discover what's beyond the edge of your seat. New [01:01:00] members can try Audible now free for 30 days and dive into a world of new thrills. Visit audible.com/jhs or text JHS to 500 500. That's audible.com/jhs or text JHS to 500 500.

Jordan Harbinger: If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors, those who make the show possible.

All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable on the website at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, you're not sure if it even exists, email us. I'm jordan@jordanharbinger.com. We are happy to surface codes for you because it is that important that you support those who support the show.

Now for the rest of my conversation with Drew Carey, why jump into hosting the prices right after a successful TV run On the Drew Carey Show, Howie Mandel was on the show of zillion years ago, and he said when he was looking at deal or no deal. He told his wife, he goes, is this gonna be good for my career?

And she said, what career? So he was like, well, I guess that [01:02:00] answers that question. Wife will always tell you, right? It's been a long time since

Drew Carey: Bobby's world, Howie. You might want to get a paycheck. You gotta keep people like that around you. That'll just tell you the truth all the time in Hollywood, if you don't have those kind of people around you, I pity you.

Honestly, if you don't have a ballbuster next to you, that'll tell you. My comic friends, keep me humble. Don't tell a comic your weakness. So that's all you'll hear about the rest of your life. I wanted to get into the soccer business and I wanted money to buy into a soccer team or purchase my own team.

Like I didn't know how it was gonna go, but I needed some soccer money and I did it 'cause of the money. Yeah, but it's fun though, because it wouldn't be full-time. It's not full-time. Well, I work like 25 hours a week, I guess I just assumed it took the whole day to tape each one of those. It does, but it's three days a week, four days a week.

Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: okay.

Drew Carey: You know what I mean? Yeah. And then I get a week off every month. I get 10 days off, 11 days off every month. I. Because it's three weeks on, one week off. Oh, okay. It's a great schedule. I remember when they went from two shows to three and I was working eight hours instead of six, and I'm thinking to myself like, fuck, I've been here all day.

Then I go like, oh [01:03:00] no, it was eight hours. Normal people do this five days a week. I remember thinking to myself like, just shut the fuck up. You just shut up. I'm, nobody's gonna be ping you. So tired. Eight hours tired.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Working on tv. Let me walk backstage and get it steak cooked. Just the way I like it.

And a peanut butter cookie that they bought just for me because they know I like these. Yeah.

Drew Carey: Yeah. It's like being a celebrity is, I tell people all the time, it's like being an infant. It's like being a toddler. They bring you water. You okay? I see you look a little sad. No, I'm fine. It's a little hot in here.

Make everyone else uncomfortable because he is. Yeah. They lay my clothes out for me like animals before I go on stage. I don't have to think about a thing. Someone comes and does your hair when it's out outta place. Yeah. Uh, I just show up. All I have to do is show up in a good mood. Or by the time that door opens, be in a good

Jordan Harbinger: mood.

Be in a good mood. Yeah.

Drew Carey: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: That's my only job. This show has lasted 50 years with 10,000 episodes, which is what, 5,000 hours of middle aged women screaming. And even the crew seems to be having a good time. Is that real as you can

Drew Carey: have at work? Yeah. I suppose there's worse places to work, man. Probably.

You heard yourself horror stories [01:04:00] about working on one set or another set where it's tense and nobody likes each other and they're like another 16 hour day with this motherfucker. And talk

Jordan Harbinger: shows where you're not like the, I won't mention the name, don't look her in the eyes. Stuff like a psycho on you.

Drew Carey: Yeah, that price right's. Super chill, super cool. I mean, everybody's hustling. They work really hard. Everybody hustles, everybody does their job. It's a hard work. Like all the grips and stuff, they're really working, but. Worst places to work. Like as far as showbiz, we all have it pretty good at the prices.

Right?

Jordan Harbinger: People are so excited to be there too. That's gotta be fun. They have run up, they hug you. I saw you get taken to the ground. Actually, at least once by one gal in a clip doesn't bother me. And did, is it true someone kicked you in the nuts? I assume that was an accident. Yeah, she jumped up on me and when her leg was coming

Drew Carey: up, she kicked me in the

Jordan Harbinger: nuts.

Nice. How do, so do they run that or is it like, okay, give him five minutes, let's retake him. Uh, I doubt it. I don't watch it. Yeah, that makes sense. I don't see why you would necessarily, I don't like watching myself, I never watch the Drew Carey show. I just don't like watching myself on [01:05:00] tv. Yeah. I can relate.

I only listen to this occasionally to make sure that everything sounds right. Right. But I also rely on my team and I go, Hey, how did this bit come across? Or how did this little segment come across? And if my producers don't say anything, I'm not gonna download the show and listen to it myself. I was already there.

Yeah. I was there. It's not cringey or anything, it's just I was there. I've heard it already. Right. That's how I am. Unless the final production got screwed up, which that's not gonna be on me a hundred percent, that there's nothing for me to say other than what am I gonna do? Chastise my producer for not cutting something.

I'm not gonna tell them how to do their job. So is there anything that annoys you on the prices? Right, besides getting kicked in the nuts by no contestant? No. I always wonder, sometimes you look off camera. And I guess you don't know if you're looking off camera. I'm looking at Chris, the game guy, the

Drew Carey: announcer or one

Jordan Harbinger: of the,

Drew Carey: he's the game producer.

Jordan Harbinger: I

Drew Carey: see. I'm usually looking at him. If you see me looking off camera, looking at Chris, I

Jordan Harbinger: see

Drew Carey: Chris Donan, his official title is game producer, so he's the guy that picks the grocery items.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. Okay.

Drew Carey: And puts in the fake numbers on [01:06:00] all the games. And it's you against Chris when you're on the prices. Right.

And he knows where to put the X on secret X, where to hide the $25,000 card on punch a bunch, all that stuff. When we're doing the dice game, where all the numbers for the car one through six is stuck on these dice, no zeros, no number higher than a six. And they roll the dice. And if they get the right number at dings, if they don't, they have to tell me whether the actual number is higher or lower.

So if they roll a two, they'll go higher. If they roll a five, they'll go lower. But then they'll reveal the thing and they've rolled a five, but the actual number's a six. They've rolled a two or the actual number is of one. And the first thing I do is I look at Chris, I go like, really? There's a six and one dice game?

He looks at me, he goes like, yikes. Hey man. Can't give it all away. Yeah, can't give it all away. Whatever. Look on his face is, what's a game? Win some, lose some whatever's. Look on his face or I'll say something to the audience about odds or something and it'll go, that's not [01:07:00] really how we do it. Like we can change it anytime we want.

We have a game called flip flop that we play all the time. We have a lot of either or games that are quick games that we need for time. Not all games is a long game. Flip flops, uh, one or the other, but it's presented as three choices. We show you the wrong price and you can flip first two numbers. So in 7,800, it's 8,700, or you can flop the last two numbers.

So instead of 34 it's 43. Or you can flip and flop. Both do both numbers, but one out of a hundred is a flip flop. You go whole season without a flip flop. It's really. Only flip or flop if you watch the show and play the game, like a super fan would never flip and flop. I see.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Drew Carey: But we're well within our rights to make it a flip and flop.

Sure. Because that's how we present it. If we did it in their head, people would be right to go like, fuck, why did I come on the unlucky day or the one day? And our argument would be like, we have to do, it's just like TSA, are you in TSA pre?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, of course. Yeah. Once in a while you don't get it right. And they're, or they're like, you've been randomly [01:08:00] selected.

I'm like, this seems to happen almost every other time I fly. What is it about me that looks scary?

Drew Carey: So they have to do that. Sure. So the terrorist, whoever don't think that you're just get away with, there's always a chance. Sure. So they have to know there's always a chance that'll be a flip flop to make it even more exciting or playable, but practically never is, to be honest.

Jordan Harbinger: Don't ever flip flop. That's the more of the story. How heavy is that wheel that you spin? It looks like it's got a way heavier

Drew Carey: than people think it is. Yeah. I don't know if people were in better shape in 75 and late seventies when they first started it. 'cause it started at 75 and it was a different wheel.

Then they changed it. To what it is now. But yeah, it's all plywood. Huh? I've seen all the wheel spins since I've been there. Every single spin. And so if somebody's like a older or not, they don't seem as strong. And if they can only get it exactly one time around and they're first, I think, oh, they're gonna hit a dollar or five or 15, a good chance they're gonna hit a dollar.

If they can eek it out, one spin around. 'cause that's all they can manage, that's actually, it's better to be not super strong. Big guy will get up there just pro [01:09:00] and give it a spin, which just spins like four times. 'cause I can count the rotations in my head while I'm watching it, or three times we're gonna be here all day watching this spin.

And then that's too random to me. And some people will try to finesse it. Like in my head, if I ever was a contestant, I would try to finesse it one round or one and a half. But I know how much it weighs. If you bold with a rental ball, I. You wouldn't know how to throw it the first time. And that's what's happening to them.

They're throwing a rental ball for the first time down a lane where they don't know that it's oiled. Or even the oil pattern is, they have no clue.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Drew Carey: That's our advantage. So it really is random that way. But if I give you that rental ball and let you play a couple games and then said, okay, now we're gonna make it real, you'd have a really big advantage over

Jordan Harbinger: us.

Interesting. Yeah. So some guys at home building one of those in his basement and trying to get the weight right. That's how people have beat. Roulette wheels. Yeah.

Drew Carey: There's famous stories on the internet you can find about a, a guy beating a roulette wheel. And what they've done is they bought that brand of a roulette wheel and put it in their house

Jordan Harbinger: and they did it 10,000 times.

Yeah. And they figured

Drew Carey: out the pattern and they figured out the [01:10:00] speed and they figured out the sounds and they know when they go, they have a way better chance of winning than somebody else. There's a guy named Darren Brown.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah. It's been on the show. Oh great. It's a friend of mine, actually. A nice guy.

Guy Bananas,

Drew Carey: right? Yeah. So I saw his special where he bet 5,000 pounds on the roulette wheel, and he was only one number off, but he trained himself. That whole special was about him training himself to listen to the sounds and learn all those things. So he was gonna be able to go in and beat that one particular roulette wheel at that one particular place.

And he was only off by one number.

Jordan Harbinger: He's a very interesting and cool guy.

Drew Carey: A guy wakes up in the morning and hears a voice in his head. Wakes up in Ohio and quit your job. Sell your house. Take all your money. Go to Las Vegas. He doesn't believe the voice. Takes a shower. Goes to work. Quit your job. Sell your house.

Take all your money. Go to Las Vegas. Finally, he hears it every five minutes. Quit your job, sell your house. Take all your money. Go to, he believes the voice. He gets home, sells his house for cash to the very first buyer, quits. His job, takes all the cash, everything he owns in one bag, flies to Las Vegas.

Gets off the plane. The voice says, go to Caesar's Palace. He listens to the voice. He goes to [01:11:00] Caesar's Palace. The voice says, go to the third dulet table on the left. He goes to the third dulet table. On the left, the voice says, put it all on black. 17, he puts it all on black. 17, the guy spins the wheel comes up red.

16, the voice goes, fuck.

When that happened to Darren Brown. That's the man first joke I thought of. That's so, it's so, I think that was one of my favorite jokes. He was off by one. He built up that whole hour. He was off by

Jordan Harbinger: one. Still impressive somehow. Yeah. Yeah. Still

Drew Carey: impressive, man.

Jordan Harbinger: How does the producer or whoever pick who goes on the show?

Yeah, I know you pick someone and say, come on down. But then it has to be,

Drew Carey: it's whoever shows up, nobody sends in tapes or anything. We did during Covid, but not a normal show. It's just whoever shows up, we gotta get lucky. Do they get interviewed in line like, oh, she's so animated and fun. Very briefly. Okay.

What's your name? Where you from? What do you do? Oh, great. Nice talking to you. Boom. On the next one you get a few seconds, [01:12:00] five seconds. We gotta interview like 200. Some people, there'll be a person interviewing and another person with a clipboard and they'll have a code. They don't do it now, but when I first started his code, he'd be like, oh, that's really interesting.

And if he said that, mark that contestants number down. Said, nice talking to you or something else. Don't they? Come back to this room and they have 20 people who knows how many pictures of everybody, and that they print up right away on a printer and they'll have the number and they'll just hold him up.

This guy's really interesting. He is a professor and he's here an anniversary with his wife, and this woman is just recovering from cancer, this girl's college, and she's really energetic. We could use her and then they narrow 'em down who they wanna bring up, the first four, who's gonna be last. They want somebody energetic to come up last.

They want a demo of who's watching the show. So it's not gonna be all white people, it's not gonna be all black people. It's not gonna be all old people. It's not gonna be college kids. So if you're in the military and you're a vet and you're retired. [01:13:00] There's three of you and you see another military vet, retired, just got picked.

You're not getting picked if you're a college kid and they got their college kid, if they got their old married lady. Whatever the demographics of the show is, we want that to be on the show. Yeah, that makes sense. We want it to be representative of who's watching, not necessarily of who's in the audience, not random, but who's watching.

'cause we want the experience of people watching themselves and rooting for themselves and empathizing with whoever's on the show because those people are the stars of the show.

Jordan Harbinger: Right.

Drew Carey: Not me. I. It's those people and the prizes. It's an aspirational prize. I would love to go on that trip. I need a new washer and dryer.

Even a bedroom set. Fuck, that looks great. I would wish I had a new bed. Like things you don't even think of if somebody offered you like, Hey, you wanna get rid of this old washer and dryer you've been using for three years and get a brand new one that does steam. Yes. I'll take it. I know maybe you can't use all this game room, but it's, look, it's a pool table, a dartboard, a [01:14:00] field player.

You weren't thinking of it, but wouldn't it be cool?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Drew Carey: if you got, it's something like all

Jordan Harbinger: aspirational,

Drew Carey: or even if you didn't think it'd be like, oh, that'd be fun to have. And then the small items, grocery items. We had a butter churn on the show. That's not a pride. That's a thing you have to price to win the bigger prize.

Yeah. We're not offering you a butter churn. We're seeing if you know the price of a butter churn. To win the better thing. It's all gamed out.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Drew Carey: And so that's how we do it.

Jordan Harbinger: Are there any tips for people who wanna get selected or is it just hey, come in and be a delightful personality? So a common thing that

Drew Carey: happens is somebody will come up on stage and they'll have a shirt on that says, pick my friend, it's her birthday.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that's funny. And

Drew Carey: I'll talk to 'em in between. I'll go, who's the friend with the birthday over there? And what happens is when they're in line, the friends of the birthday girl, birthday guy will go, oh my God, you gotta pick my friend. He's, this day we're bringing him here. Pick my friend. And the friend is like, oh, come on.

Don't make a big deal out of it. Yeah. It's my birthday. So we pick the energetic person who's all hyped up, happens all the time.

Jordan Harbinger: Pick him, it's his birthday. And that guy's, yes, it's my birthday. You want it

Drew Carey: [01:15:00] turn into up to 11, right? Yeah, that makes sense. We pick nine people. If there's 15 people up to 11, somebody's gonna get left out.

A lot of times you have to come back like five, six times or more and then finally get your turn. But it's a fun tap and you come to anyway. It's free.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Can't beat it. Bob Barker, the previous host, for those who don't know, he used to have this awkwardly long microphone that was like thin and you have a very similar, it's an updated tech.

Mine's

Drew Carey: wireless. They tried to go wireless with him once and it didn't work 'cause it was brand new. Oh, it pooped out on him? Yeah. Yeah. And he didn't trust it after that they told me.

Jordan Harbinger: That's interesting. I always wondered 'cause I

Drew Carey: was like, Hey, it's 1995 and he's still using it. Uh, people that are watching this instead of listening, you'd see our microphones are pretty big and if you're not used to being on tv, you get this big microphone stuck in your face.

It's offput. Mm. But if I have this little tiny thing that I can just flip out and put it right here and you barely notice it and flip it back, but they're micd

Jordan Harbinger: up themselves. They got a lavalier now. They are before they were now. Okay. 'cause you know, it's something about entertaining a crowd while you're holding a microphone in your hand is different than.

Being micd up [01:16:00] with booms on a stage. Oh, when I first

Drew Carey: got on stage, what do they think of my body? Do I look ugly today? How's my hair? Oh my God, I'm fat. Look at these jeans. Everybody goes through that when they're the first time they're ever on a camera.

JHS Clip: Yeah.

Drew Carey: And honestly, in acting classes and stuff, biggest thing an actor can learn is the say, fuck it to all that.

It's the fear of judgment that makes people a good actor or not a good actor. Jack Black has no fear of judgment.

Jordan Harbinger: Doesn't care. Yeah, doesn't give,

Drew Carey: doesn't

Jordan Harbinger: give

Drew Carey: a fuck. I saw him, we did a charity thing. He walked out, he stripped down to his little tiny underwear and walked out all fat, bouncing around. You see his whole packet, and he was just like dancing around and laughing.

Yeah. Didn't give a fuck. Didn't give a flying fuck. And everybody was like, wow, jackpot doesn't give a fuck. That's what you aspire to. If you can do that, when people are doing a scene where they're sobbing and crying and just a complete wreck, they have to not give a fuck about looking weak. They have to not give a fuck whatever scene that they have you in, you're playing a [01:17:00] character and you need to be as real as possible.

You cannot think, oh, what if my wife sees me with this chick? What if my friends see me groveling to this guy in a scene? 'cause I want something for him. I'm gonna look weak. Yeah, your character's weak. So when you're talking to this guy and he's a mob boss and you want something fucking grovel, fucking cry, like your life depends on it.

You would never do that in real life. But do you have to be able to do that? And some people can't let that go. They're not as good an actor and people that can not give a fuck for that moment. And just go, you know, I'm just gonna grovel. Like there's no camera around. You have to not be in that kind of mindset.

If you do that, you'll be the greatest actor in the world. That's the difference. All that acting technique stuff is bullshit. Yeah. Interesting. Or that's just technique. That's just craft. But to be a really good actor, you have to not give a flying fuck.

Jordan Harbinger: What has been the craziest fan encounter on the prices, right.

Name a day. Oh God. Really? There's always something. There was a woman who I, I think you'd said this in another show. She peed her pants. Peed her pants, but she'd already been picked. So like she,

Drew Carey: she's gonna play Plinko and she is wearing white pants. And she got up on stage and she was like, prancing. And she goes, oh my God, I'm gonna pee.

[01:18:00] I said, but first, wait, hang on. Before you do that you're gonna play Plinko. And she went, oh my God. And she peed herself and then she had to walk up those stairs. Wow. A stay in her pants. She got it on the local news, so they ran it. We couldn't help but run it. She got onto her local news. Oh

Jordan Harbinger: my gosh. And laughed about it.

Yeah. Good for her. Speaking of not giving, like whatcha gonna do shit. Yeah. Geez. Has anyone ever tried to cheat on the prices? Right. Truly there's been some attempt at something.

Drew Carey: No, but the guy that had the perfect bid, we didn't know what the fuck was happening. They had just changed producers and the old producer had been at the show for 35 years and it was the first year without that guy.

And there was a big, huge fan group online that were really upset. The only fan presence we have online is this big forum where everybody, they keep track of every show, every game, every price, every contestant. They have a database like you wouldn't believe of everything. Super fans. Wow. That was our website, this third party run group of [01:19:00] superfans.

And I remember the producer telling me like, if those guys like you, then you're good. 'cause they're the super fans. So this guy gets a perfect bid. I don't know the prices ahead of time. Nobody does on stage. Nobody has any way of knowing any single price Who's on the stage or interchanging with the contestants.

It's only Chris, the game producer and the people in the booth. Are the only ones that know the prices. And I go backstage to find out who's going first and who won the showcase. And the producer goes, she's like in shock.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Drew Carey: She goes, he got a perfect bid. I go, what do you mean? She's right on the nose, $117 and 85 cents.

And he just said that it was exactly to the dollar. And I was like, does that ever happen? And she went, no. We were like, what the fuck happened? 'cause this would never happen. And in my head I was like, did somebody leak information to fuck us? 'cause they're mad that the old producers in here now. Did somebody fuck us?

'cause they're mad. We got a new guy and things are changing. [01:20:00] It's my second year, so I'm gonna be the guy that ruined prices. Right? Am I gonna be in middle of a scandal? Like I was really like scary. I was like, what the fuck? And everybody backstage was like, what the fuck? And there was like a good 15 minute stop down.

Just seems like forever, 20 minutes, something like that. They made a documentary about it that I didn't watch because I was there. Because you were there. And we have cameras all over the fucking place. Running all the time and just at rest. There's somewhere in the audience. And during the show we're like filming the audience.

I thought the guy cheated.

JHS Clip: Yeah.

Drew Carey: And so when I read the thing, I was like, all right, you got an exact price. Good for you. I wasn't gonna give him the satisfaction in my head. I was like, fuck this guy. And I got all kinds of shit online. Oh, this guy got a perfect bid. And Drew Carey wasn't even happy for him, but I was like, I'm not gonna be happy for this Cocksucker cheater.

Yeah. In my head, that's why I was like, fuck this guy. I'll go through the motions and that's all you're gonna get. Then we had all kinds of meetings and I remember being in one meeting and one of the lawyers said, what if you don't allow the audience to allow prices anymore? And we were like, what? That's the whole show.

Shut up. Go outta here. [01:21:00] What exactly do you do here anyway, buddy? A, a lawyer? Yeah. Oh, okay. And then we found out that everybody was getting their prices from one guy in the audience who was like in the second, third row in the, towards the middle. And he was from that website. He was from that forum group.

And at the time everything was, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Attitude like this is traditional, this is what we do. And everything was fine. Bob was there and all of a sudden Bob wasn't there. Producer isn't there now. We can't be traditional anymore. It's all gotta shake it up. There was a woman playing a game called One Away, and I remember her looking on the audience and she got all her numbers from that guy.

Got 'em all right the first time, which rarely happens once in a hundred that happened. And the guy that got the perfect bid, I think he won his bid. I dunno if he got a perfect bid, got the extra 500, but he might have. And then he was on Door two, which is the farthest away and the cameras in the middle.

So he couldn't see the guy and he lost his game. But then he won on the wheel and got to the showcase. Then he is able to [01:22:00] see the guy and he gets his numbers from the guy. We got it all on camera. This is like a savant. At the time we only changed like six prizes a week. So if we had a couch that was $800, we.

We'd have that same couch on another show, an $800 couch when we had a can of soup. It was only Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. 'cause Bob was vegan and it was a vegan show and Campbell's cream of mushroom doesn't have beef stock or chicken stock. And it was a dollar 29, then it was a dollar 30, then it was a dollar 31.

That was the soup. You just knew if you watched the show enough and if you were snap big of a fan, you would just know what the prizes were. You would just know like any gamer. So this guy was there. They used to come to have his show. Looking back, I shouldn't have been mad at. It was all fair game. Yeah.

All these people had every right to do what they did and I'm glad they did it and I'm glad he won. I didn't know that at the time and he was just like yelling out. 'cause he wanted people to win and he knew all the prices 'cause he'd watched the show and they never changed the prizes. And it was early enough in the [01:23:00] season.

The new guy was just learning the show before we changed everything over. We were changing things on the fly and that's how it happened.

Jordan Harbinger: Interesting.

Drew Carey: Yeah. But that was one thing where I thought it was cheating but it wasn't. It was just people finding a weakness in how we presented the show. We could have the same car in every act and you would never know the price.

Jordan Harbinger: You said something interesting that's almost as a throwaway line in the book. You don't celebrate your birthday because you'd sit around and think that you could have or should have made different choices in your life. Now that you've made some money, you've had some success, this process happens a little bit less.

This is something you wrote in the nineties, right? What advice do you have for people who also ruminate? 'cause it seems like the message is that it ain't over till the fat lady sings essentially, and you don't know the impact of your choices. Potentially until long after you've made them. Because a lot of the things that you beat yourself up for in this book in the nineties are probably the reason that you're so successful now, right?

Drew Carey: Yeah. You're always trying to heal your inner child some way something's happened to you [01:24:00] that you want to make up for, get over with. And there's tons of psychologists based on whole career and that kind of, and your neurons get wired a certain way where you make the same choices just 'cause those, that's the pattern in your head.

And until somebody shows that to you, I thought it was normal to eat pasta every night and drink Pepsis all day. If you quit all this and only eat fat, go on a keto diet, you'll have a lot more energy. No. Mm-hmm. To make sense, you gotta have sugar, right? Sure. The fuck nonsense. To me. Remember when Atkins first came out?

Yeah. What? Get the fuck here. Love carb. Yeah. Get the fuck outta here. You're crazy. Like it seemed insane. Yeah. One of our est friends was, uh, smoking in her. She was went home and her, she was hacking, going down the stairs and her mom said, oh honey, you want a menthol? Oh God. People don't see beyond the horizon.

So yeah, every birthday, every New Year's, I look back on the year or I look back on recently, and I do that all the time anyway, like every weekend, like, how was the week? Did I do what I wanted to do? Am I on the right track [01:25:00] to what I want to do? Is it okay for me not to have a goal? Can I just exist this week and not have to worry about anything?

I've hit everything. Why can't I just like chill and relax?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Drew Carey: I do that all the time, just with different things. I'm constantly self searching. I'm constantly looking to grow. I'm constantly looking to learn. What can I do that's fun? Prove myself how? What can I do that would keep me young? Keep me in a young attitude.

I go to EDC. I don't want to get old and set my ways. I wanna know all the new songs, all the new fads. I wanna know what Riz means. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Gibby, all that stuff. Yeah. Oh, you're so Ohio. I wanna know what that means. You got Riz. What does so Ohio mean? That's, that doesn't sound like a compliment. It's not. It's like you're so meh.

Ugh. Mid.

Drew Carey: Yeah, just mid. You're So Ohio, Midwest put me in, so Ohio? Yeah. Live a little. So I'm constantly like looking to grow. And once you stop growing, that's the end of you.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I gotta ask, who's your favorite DJ right now? If you're going to EDC and listening to all this stuff, Diplo Cascade, [01:26:00] Afrojack,

Drew Carey: all the usual suspects.

That's a great selection. Yeah. 'cause all the best guys are there. I remember seeing Cascade once on the main stage and it was so good. I looked at my friend and I said, this sounds like when James Brown came on, the Tammy show. Just changed everything. It was great. Everybody's great. But then Cascade had such a good set.

People were just like up and everybody was dancing. Not just a few people, bottle service. Girls were dancing like everybody, and we were like, man, this guy's killing it. We were fist bumping each other and just like, what in the fuck is happening? And once in a while, a guy gets a dream set. I went to the sphere in Vegas and we saw a marshmallow at a club.

He had a great set. When I was there, I was like, man, this must feel good. Because I know what it's like to go on stage and have a magical set.

Jordan Harbinger: That was Johnny Carson 1991

Drew Carey: or even in a club all week. I've been doing the same act, but then Saturday second show, for some reason it just hit better. Every laugh was better, and if there's no better feeling, like however many times you have sex with your wife, one day you'll have that night.

We're like, woo, are we dating again? This is like, I [01:27:00] can't believe we just had that. It happens, and that's what happens when you're seeing a DJ set. Somebody will have their night at EDC where it's just 'cause they want to bring their A game and it'll just be like, I stood behind Diplo once when he did a set, I'll never forget it.

I thought I was watching Beethoven play piano or something. So he was hitting the boards and working the board so well, I was like, what the fuck is this? When you see Liberace play piano and like how is fingers moving so fast? That's what it looked like to me.

Jordan Harbinger: So that's a pretty cool perk. You go in and they're like, oh, drew Carey's here.

Yeah, you wanna go up, hang out on stage. Yeah. You're a national treasure at this point. On the price is right. Thanks for coming on and being so great. Open and candid, man. Great. Oh, it's really fun talking to you. Anytime you want me back, let me, yeah, of course. Yeah, I hope I see you at some of those shows.

EDC or something like that. It would be really fun to run into you in the wild coming up in May. Yeah, man, I'll be there. Thanks man.

Drew Carey: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Jordan Harbinger: If you're looking for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show to sink your teeth into, here's a trailer for another episode that I think you might enjoy.

JHS Clip: So what happened was we were doing a. Not unlike we're doing now. We're doing an interview. Yeah. And he [01:28:00] says, thank you and we'll probably go to a commercial and thank you, Howie. And, and I got up and I started walking to the door and I thought he was like wrapping it up and going to commercial. And then I just said to somebody really quietly, can you grab, can you?

And he's going, what are you afraid of? The door. And then he goes, just open the door. And I go, can't open the door. He goes, just open the door. And then what happened is I started getting a panic attack and I started breathing heavy and. I just turned to him and thinking that he had already thrown the commercial.

'cause he was just talking to me. Howard, please, this is really serious. I go to therapy for this. I have something called obsessive compulsive disorder. I'm about to pass out. If you don't open the door for me now, you'll be calling 9 1 1 and taking me to the hospital. This whole thing was on national radio.

Yes. I thought, oh my God, that was probably the darkest space I've ever been, and I'm walking through the lobby toward the door out into this teaming streets of Manhattan. I might as well just continue walking and walk right into the traffic. And I stopped just outside the door. And you know, [01:29:00] millions of people are on the street, but I felt very alone.

And some guy came into my periphery and said to me, are you Howie Mandel? And I, you know, I just nodded affirmatively. And he said, just heard you on Stern. And my heart dropped him in my stomach and right before I could take off in the traffic, he said two words, which means something very different today.

But they changed my life and he went. Me too

Jordan Harbinger: for more with Howie Mendel, including some pretty awkward moments of my own making. Check out episode two 10 here on the Jordan Harbinger show. All things Drew Carey will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals.

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