Artistic Expression with Shane Shane Rogers: Comedian and Podcaster
Host Matt Miller interviews Shane Rogers, a comedian, author, and co-host of the Midnight Facts for Insomniacs podcast. They discuss Shane's background in artistic expression, including his experience in a circus as a child and his involvement in bands as a teenager. Shane opens up about his career as a stand-up comedian and his transition into podcasting and discusses the origins and growth of the podcast, the dynamic between him and his co-host Duncan, and how they divide the responsibilities of research and hosting.
This is a great ride between to California boys, even if your host is now an East Coast guy.
Transcript
Welcome to the podcast. Everyone today we're talking with Shane Rogers. Shane is a comedian, a self, an author of, and a cohost of midnight facts for insomniacs podcast, which is very cool. By the way, I've listened to a little bit, when I started researching you a bit and I really dig the podcast. It's a ton of fun. And I'm not saying that just because I'm talking to you today. I really.
MFFI (:thank you.
Matt Miller (:I really enjoy it, man. It's great stuff. today's podcast. We're going to focus on artistic creativity. Shane's been creating art his whole life, either through music, comedy, writing, or most recently podcasting. Shane, I Google all my guests to do some research. Do you want to see, what other Shane Rogers are in the world? so a Shane Rogers is, is a fortune 500 CEO.
MFFI (:Yeah, let's find out.
MFFI (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:also a cyber security business lawyer, Shane Rogers has four IMDb credits on short films. you're a baseball player and investment Baker. and you also have an alternative country band called the Shane Rogers band.
MFFI (:Wow.
MFFI (:I am the most underachieving Shane Rogers that has ever existed. I am bringing shame to the Shane Rogers lineage apparently because boy those guys are all doing better than me. I don't know about the country band. I do love country music but I don't know that that would be a career that I would want but otherwise I trade places with pretty much any of those guys.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Hmm.
Matt Miller (:Well, if you want to talk about under achievers, there's a Matthew Miller. He is the spokesperson for the state department. And there's a Matthew Miller. He is a well published and a very, and he's on ESPN. He's like an NFL critic and pundit for ESPN.
MFFI (:No.
Matt Miller (:And so if I, you Google me, y 'all you're going to see as state department guy and ESPN, analyst expert the whole time.
MFFI (:I think it gets worse and worse the more generic your name is because I'm sure there's a million, you know, if you're a John Smith, there's a million successful John Smiths out there. There's probably also some murderers and serial killers and things too, so.
Matt Miller (:That's true.
Matt Miller (:Yes, there are. I bet so. All right, so Shane's been pretty creative his whole life, always dabbling in artistic stuff. And I think it probably starts from the beginning, Shane. So where were you born and where did you grow up?
MFFI (:I was born in Fort Bragg, California, but we were living in Oregon at the time. And so I lived in Oregon briefly and then we moved to San Francisco. And yeah, it did start young because actually, I don't know if this came up in your research. I don't know where this would be online. But I was in a circus as a kid. My mom was the box office manager of a circus called the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, pickle family circus. That sounds great.
MFFI (:Yeah, and so I was an acrobat from age 9 to 14.
Matt Miller (:Wow, I was going to ask if you were really in the circus or your parents just were did circus work and you just went around as a kid.
MFFI (:Yeah, for the first year I just traveled with the show, but I really wanted to be in the, you know, I wanted to be performing. And so I sort of trained with all the acrobats and I was a kid, so I was very elastic and malleable. And so I could pretty much and I learned trampoline. It was pretty good on trampoline, but mostly I just did floor tumbling and juggling. And so, yeah, the second year I was in the show. And then after that, it kind of went from there and
Matt Miller (:Yeah, of course. Yeah, what kid wouldn't want to be.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MFFI (:Once I got to high school, it became a little less cool to be the circus kid. It was like, instead of being the cool kid who was, you know, getting to travel around doing fun stuff, it was like, now you're the carnival freak. And that was less, that was less cool. I got teased a lot and I was like, I think I'm done with this. So at 14, I quit the circus. But yeah, so I have a little bit of a background in, in the performing arts, I guess.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
no.
Matt Miller (:Eh.
Matt Miller (:That is spectacular. I love that man. so I also read that you were in some bands growing up. so how did you, what, what got your start into music and following that and that journey?
MFFI (:Yeah.
MFFI (:I think like every teenager I was really obsessed with music and at the time you know the big bands were I guess grunge was kind of the big thing when I was growing up and Nirvana and Pearl Jam and I wanted to be I wanted to have a band and MTV was you know huge back then when it was actual music television and there was actual music on television and so that's how I met
Matt Miller (:Yep.
Matt Miller (:Yep. Exploded for sure. Yes. Yep.
MFFI (:My co -host of the podcast that I'm sure we'll talk about, I played guitar. I started playing guitar when I was around 13 and he is a great singer and we were in bands together from pretty much late in high school up through all the way through college and a little bit of our, you know, post college days as well.
Matt Miller (:Yep. Yeah, your pictures on your podcast website are great. Total. I mean, you check all the boxes for like grunge high school kids in a band. I was, I was smiling. Look at it though. So I was like, man, look at those nineties hoodlums right there. I mean, long hair, all that stuff, man. I was like, yep, there it is.
MFFI (:Yeah, totally.
MFFI (:Absolutely. Yeah, we both had. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, we had the long hair we had, you know, I was I got really into like heavy metal too as a teenager. I think when Duncan and I first met, he was really into like corn and everything. And you can kind of see that in his in his picks. And yeah, I was definitely like, you know, Megadeth and stuff. And and then we went sort of more grunge route and then we went more like pop.
Matt Miller (:Yep.
Matt Miller (:Right, right, right.
MFFI (:Rock, we had all of our phases, because it was many years, it was like over a decade of playing together.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
That is, that is great. I was in marching band. That doesn't count as the same though. Cause I'm a, I'm a, so my, my full -time job, not just podcast or I'm an elementary music teacher and I've taught, elementary music, high school music, I do private lessons. And so I never got to the bands with my friends. We all did. we all wanted to be like,
MFFI (:Margin Band's fun.
MFFI (:nice.
Matt Miller (:Like ska bands, right? We all played some kind of horns or something like that So we always tried to get a ska band together, but that never came about but we did try a We tried that a lot though
MFFI (:Hmm.
MFFI (:Well, that'd be fun. I had my... Yeah, I definitely had my, you know, cherry -poppin' daddies phase and everything.
Matt Miller (:Yes. I got to see them at concert. They came, they came our way and the suit suit, right. And all that fun stuff, man. We dug it. what were some of the things, like gigs and venues you got to play when you're in high school?
MFFI (:Love it.
MFFI (:boy. Well, in college was when we really kind of had, you know, that was our missed opportunity back then because we had a really good band in college. It was called Maybe Never. I was at UC Davis. And yeah, and we were touring. We did a lot of, I mean, most of our shows we did in sort of the Sacramento area because that's near Davis, but we were always going down to San Francisco. We were able to tour around a little bit. We did some shows in LA. We got a little bit of traction. I mean, we were on college radio at Davis.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:That's a good name.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:and had some songs that I still love. I'll still throw on some of our stuff to this day. We were definitely a good kind of college party band as well. We would play a lot of frat and sorority parties and stuff. Yeah, it was a good time. It was contentious. It's always hard when you're five young men in a band trying to gel together and...
Matt Miller (:Yep.
Matt Miller (:fun.
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:and with different lives and different things going on, I was at UC Davis, Duncan was in a different school. A couple of the other guys had like kids. It was, it was just tough. And I think we were, we were honestly, we were a really good band. We were very proficient. I think we put on a good show, but it just was not, it just wasn't sustainable long -term.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, I've got a, I've got a good buddy from school and I can't tell you how many bands he's rolled through and all of them are trying to find that little window of opportunity. And then the try, try, try. Nothing ever seems to happen, but he's gone.
MFFI (:Mm -hmm.
MFFI (:It's hard. And you know, we, I mean, we opened for some bands that really proved that it's not just about talent because I mean, there was a woman who had a band called Storm Incorporated. Her name was Storm Large, the most talented singer songwriter I've ever met in my life. Just incredible and beautiful. She looks like a model. She's amazing. And she ended up doing she's had success in music, but not, I mean, she should be, she should be everywhere. She should be massive.
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:And everyone that I turn on to storm is like, my god, this woman's amazing. And she didn't make it big. She got a career she can support herself. But like the fact that she's not everywhere is we we looked at people like that. And we were like, Okay, what are our chances? You know, it's so much of it is just luck.
Matt Miller (:Right. Yeah. You've got a, you know, a million and a one people all trying to find that same window. you just right place, right time to get there. so what was your major in college while you were trying to get your band together?
MFFI (:Yeah, yeah, 100%.
MFFI (:I was an English major, which probably helped. I didn't have to work super hard. I, so what I had done is I went to college of the Redwoods, which was like a community college for two years. And it was the only one in California that has dorms, I believe. And Duncan and I went there together. We did band stuff. And then I transferred to UC Davis, on a scholarship.
And I was really worried about maintaining my scholarship. It was a full ride scholarship to Davis, so they covered everything, which was great, but I had to maintain a 3 .5 GPA. So I was like, you know, I'm going to do the thing that is easy and I know I can do well at. And then my plan was law school or grad school. After that, I did take the LSAT and the GRE. Did pretty decently, but I ended up just kind of moving to Santa Cruz with a bunch of friends. Duncan was at that point attending UC Santa Cruz. And we had a band here and I ended up in this
Matt Miller (:Yeah. Yep.
MFFI (:working at this resort as a recreation director. And then I kept getting promoted and just never ended up going to grad school. And now I've been doing that forever. Now I'm a spa and recreation manager. Yeah, life is weird. You never do.
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:there you go. You never know. You never know where life takes you, man. My, my brother's got a degree in anthropology, but he, but he works in pharmaceuticals, has nothing to do with his degree at all. And he just, he just lucked into that, cause he couldn't find any work in anthropology anywhere once he graduated. And he just on a whim, put an application at, Pfizer.
MFFI (:Wow, that's a pivot.
MFFI (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:that we have here in our town and just moved up, you know, like you did in your resort and then, and then lo and behold, that's what his career is, is working over there. You never know.
MFFI (:Wow, good for him. Yeah, life is random. I'm telling you, you just, it's very interesting to look back when I was a teenager or a kid and wonder what that person would have thought of me and where I ended up. Because, you know, they, no one, it's no one's aspiration to work at a resort, but I also really enjoy my life. So it's going well.
Matt Miller (:right?
Matt Miller (:Yeah. Well, you can't put, well, I guess you can't put a price on most things, but happiness with your job is, it's pretty priceless, especially for the people that are still looking for happiness with their job.
MFFI (:That's what it is. And it creates a certain inertia because I really I don't hate my job. I just enjoy going. It's like a beautiful place. We have 300 acres of redwood forest. It's like an amazing. I have great staff. I have a lot of autonomy. And so I just can't leave. Like every time I've thought about like I need to go do something else with my life. I'm like, yeah, but I just but then I probably won't enjoy my job. So, you know, it kind of keeps you in like a golden cage, but I'm enjoying it so far.
Matt Miller (:my god, that sounds great. Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Yeah. that's well, that's what matters. All right, sir. So we got so let's talk about what you're doing now. How did Well, before podcasting, you did a fair amount of time on stage as a stand up comic, right?
MFFI (:Yeah, yeah, about 12 years.
Matt Miller (:That's, so you did standup comic as still and still a resort director at the same time.
MFFI (:Yeah, and that's again, that was part of the reason that I've stuck with this job is because it just gives me so much freedom. Like I can, I'm the boss of my area. I have like 50 employees. It's, it's nice. I can kind of make my own schedule. So it's been really nice that I'm sort of able to cruise in and cruise out when I need to. So it allowed me to do other things like that. I, when I graduated from college, I had at UC Davis had a weekly column in the newspaper and it was a comedic column. And so I was always writing.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:funny things. And so I had just so much material because I'd always wanted to be prepared. So I was producing a lot. And when I graduated, I didn't know what to do with all this stuff. And so I put it up on a website that I called, I think, One Last Real Thing. And I just had all of these kind of funny observations and little episodes. And I got
Matt Miller (:Right, right, right.
MFFI (:A small following and one of the people who was a huge fan of it was the manager of a comedy club in Chicago. She was actually the manager of the director or manager, general manager of the Laugh Factory in Chicago at the time. It had just opened and she was like, this is great. Have you ever considered standup? And I thought, okay, well, if someone who's in the industry thinks maybe this would be good.
Matt Miller (:Right?
MFFI (:maybe I should try it. And so I didn't for a while and she finally convinced me and I actually flew out to Chicago and did my first set out there on stage and it went okay. I learned quickly that like the stuff you write for a college newspaper does not translate all that well into you know rimshot jokes on stage. So I had to learn a lot but that was how it all got started and it just went from there.
Matt Miller (:Okay.
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:fun. Yeah, man. I'm a little low key jealous of college band stand up comic. Yeah, I've always wanted to do stage work, but that never seemed as you said life always takes one direction or another. Can anybody see any of your comedy online? Is it up anywhere?
MFFI (:Yeah, life gets in the way.
MFFI (:There are a couple clips. First off, there are some clips that I think people uploaded that I didn't sanction. I think there are there are a couple that you'll find from like some of my really early sets. There's me doing this bit about a cat that I was the first thing that ever really worked on stage. I think it was like the bit that I started with and I did that for probably a year because it was the only thing that really worked. I think that's on online. And then there are a couple little clips of
Matt Miller (:Right?
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:stuff that I put up on if you go to www .shanerogers .net there are a couple little clips of kind of I don't know I I liked to put up little things that I probably wasn't going to actually use in sets just to give people a sense so they're older stuff that I wasn't doing anymore but yeah you can get a little a little taste and but I tried to really control what what I put up and
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:When I started, you know, there wasn't TikTok or at least, you know, there was like YouTube, but I was really not trying to get an online presence. A lot of it, you just didn't want to kind of waste your material. So I wouldn't put stuff out. And then when I stopped and I would only send stuff to bookers. So a lot of the clips and things that I have were set to private and were only for people to book me.
Matt Miller (:Right, right.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha, sir. Gotcha. All right. So how did your podcast? I'm gonna make sure I get the name right because I'm terrible with names. Midnight facts for insomniacs podcast really great work. How did how did podcasting get started?
MFFI (:So it was it was kind of a natural evolution from comedy. There was a point at which it seemed like every comedian that I knew was starting a podcast. And I felt like, OK, I guess this is the next thing. This is what I have to do. I really didn't. Again, I didn't want to get on TikTok. I didn't. There were just I wasn't following the normal template. And so I felt like in some way I have to get I have to start playing the game.
And so me and another comedian started a podcast called Midnight Speakeasy. And he's a great friend of mine. And I think it was, it was a fun podcast, but we didn't really know what we were doing. Our equipment kind of sucked. We were just figuring things out based on a Google search of how to podcast. And so it was a, it was a little bit of a, you know, misstep in the beginning, but I got some experience and learned a little bit about podcasting. And then.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:Right around right before quarantine he moved to Las Vegas or the surrounding areas and So I I had to decide whether I was gonna continue doing a podcast maybe try to go it alone or what I wanted to do and It just occurred to me that Duncan my friend Duncan who I had been in bands with all my life is one of the funniest people I know he does he can do accents. He can do impressions. He's just hilarious He never wanted to do stand -up comedy and I was always trying to push him to do it
Matt Miller (:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MFFI (:And I was like, you know, I have this guy that I've been friends with forever. We have amazing chemistry. We just, you know, we know everything about each other. Maybe this would translate on the microphone. Let's just give it a shot. And so we came up with this concept. It was based on, there's another podcast called Stuff You Should Know. And then there's a podcast called The Dollop. And I wanted to sort of cross pollinate. Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:The dollop. Yes. Yeah, I know the dollop real well. That was an early podcast I got into. Yeah.
MFFI (:Yeah, I love the dollop and I figured, you know, we could do something like that. They do really, really long shows about and kind of meandering in there. They're very funny, but they go off topic a lot and it kind of is, you know, they're very silly and they do just historical stuff. And then stuff you should know is two guys who are a little less funny. They're more kind of straight, just talking about an in -depth
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:subject. They just do some research and then they talk about the subject. And I liked the format of the dollop, but I wanted to have more flexibility. and so we do something similar. It's, what we decided is that we would recreate our sort of natural dynamic, which is Duncan. I've always been, you know, I had a, whatever, a very research oriented, academically oriented personality. I was, like I said, I had a, you know,
Matt Miller (:Right. Yes. We're an English major.
MFFI (:I was an English major. I had a scholarship to school and I was always doing research. And so I would teach Duncan a lot of stuff. I was always telling him about, you know, the new thing that I was researching and he cares less about things like that, but is always receptive to learning. And so the dollop is kind of similar where one of the guys basically explains the topic to the other guy. And so that's what we sort of decided to do. and this was actually before we'd ever heard the dollop. I found out about it later.
but, and I was like, this is great. You know, these are two things that we can meld. and so that's what it became is that we now, when we started, we just chose topics that we were interested in. Now we have a pretty active discord community. We have like 600 something people in there and they choose the topics. They suggest the topics, they vote on them. And so for instance, last week was a ghost towns, creepy ghost towns. we did one recently on black holes, which was really interesting. That was a lot of research.
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, yeah.
MFFI (:we've done this one that's coming up that Duncan doesn't know about that we're going to be recording today is a viral dangerous viral trends. So we've done a little bit of everything UFOs. and so it's fun. It always keeps it fresh. and then during quarantine, so we started doing that and then during quarantine, obviously couldn't do stand -up. So I put a lot of energy into the podcast and it just started to gain traction.
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:Well, that's outstanding. yeah, it's really good work. I was listening. I was like, this is sort of like the dollop and, really great stuff. I was really laughing. I think it was your maybe episode about PETA maybe, but it was the beginning part where you were telling your listeners about how you felt good because I guess in the prior episode had some sort of religious take and
MFFI (:Mm -hmm.
MFFI (:yeah.
Matt Miller (:They were all praying for your soul or something like that.
MFFI (:Yeah, we have a great group of listeners. It's really interesting because we're very, I'm very skeptical. Like I don't believe in ghosts. I don't, I'm not religious. I don't have any paranormal or spiritual beliefs. And our listeners, you know, we have a very, at this point, we have a pretty large listenership. And so they're very diverse and a lot of them are religious or do believe in ghosts and things. And so it's interesting to correspond with them. I get a lot of messages and from people who are
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:offering to save my soul since I'm not doing it myself and I appreciate that. It's nice of them to do that. It's funny that you listen to the PETA episode. That episode got the least downloads of any episode we've done in the last probably year and a half. People did not want to hear about PETA and I think...
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, I was, I mean, I mean, your research was great. I was like, what is that true? Is that really true? And your buddy Duncan, he was like, I didn't get any message about my soul. I guess they just gave up on me.
MFFI (:Yeah.
MFFI (:Yeah, I think they have he's he's known on the podcast for being it's funny because I'm probably the more cynical one in our real life but I think that people have this view of me since I'm kind of running the show so I have to keep it kind of upbeat of As me being a little bit more You know, I don't know peppy and Duncan's like the cynical one and and I think in real life. It's maybe switched I'm probably even more cynical than Duncan is
Matt Miller (:Yeah. So, so you do all the research and then Duncan just kind of comes in blind, right? To the podcast.
MFFI (:Yeah. Yeah. And that was not really, you know, we weren't trying to recreate the dollop. That actually was just Duncan is not willing to do. We have done a couple or a few at this point, post swap episodes where he comes in and does the research. He hates it and he drags his feet and complains about it the entire time. So it was just it was honestly just the way things were going to work. If I wanted Duncan to do the podcast.
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:I was going to have to do all the research and he was just going to show up. He's like, fine, I'll do it, but I'm just going to show up. And so that's how it works is I'm lucky enough at this point that I have some help. We have some listeners who helped me with particularly llama trauma, my research minion, and then some other people who will help out with the, with the research aspect of it. They send me links, they send me sources, and then I kind of compile all that and I still have to do a lot of research. It takes hours for each episode, depending on how much I already knew about it.
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:Yep.
Matt Miller (:Right, right.
MFFI (:But yeah, so it's a lot of work.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, I can only imagine. Yeah. Well, you know, that's your good friend. You gotta, you gotta know your role in any relationship, whether it's friendship or marriage or all right, I just got to be the one that does this. Right.
MFFI (:And it ends up working out well that way. And also what I realized over time too is that I'm so much of a control freak that I'm not comfortable with even though the host swap episodes that we do are nice because it gives me a week off. But I also dread them because I'm too much of a control freak and he the way he runs the show is not the way I would run it. And so I. Yeah, so it ends up being even though it's good for him to just have to show up. I don't think I would want any other way because I just couldn't handle it.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:I know exactly what you're talking about.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, I mean, I'm the same way like at school or running a concert or even if I met someone else's school concert, I'm always like, wait, why are you doing that? That's not how I do things. You should be doing the blah, blah, blah, blah.
MFFI (:Yeah, I'm the guy who in college like if we had to do a group project, I would be like, how about I just do it you guys and I'll put your names on it. Because I just want to make sure that it gets done right.
Matt Miller (:Yeah. Yeah. you should hear my daughter. She's a, she's in college now and they do a group assignment and she's like, these folks are in college. Why am I having to push them and tell them what to do and all this sort of stuff? She has, she can't hack. She hates not having control to she's, I don't know. Maybe it gets a little bit of that for me. I don't know, but yeah, it's fun to mention it. so,
MFFI (:Yeah.
MFFI (:Yeah, yeah.
Matt Miller (:You know, your podcast started just like everyone else's. You get, you started and you get it going and you know, nobody, you know, listens in the beginning. You got to put it out there, put it out there. How do you think you got a midnight for insomniacs? how do you think you got that rolling and gotten to its, popularity where it is now?
MFFI (:I think some of it was, again, we talked about Storm Large and just being in the right place at the right time and not a lot of it being luck. That is kind of what happened with us. It didn't happen with us with music, but the podcasting just happened at the right time. And then there was part of it that I think was calculated. I did have a little bit of a fan base as a comedian, which was nice. I had kind of like a, you know, a list of people that I could send things to. So...
Matt Miller (:right?
MFFI (:I was able to say, hey, I'm starting this new podcast. I'm taking it a little more seriously this time. Everyone jump on board. So we had a little bit of a listenership in the beginning. It wasn't large, but you know, when you've got a couple hundred people who are listening regularly, that feels good and it keeps you going. But we definitely weren't taking it very seriously. I had mentioned to you right before we started recording that all of the first episodes of the show were recorded in my car. We would just drive somewhere, park, talk for a couple of, you know,
Matt Miller (:Right?
MFFI (:I don't know, 30, 45 minutes. Duncan was usually drunk for the first few episodes. I mean, in those first episodes, you can hear that he's wasted. We were not taken seriously. We were just, it was me and him doing what we do, which is, you know, sit around and give each other a hard time and have fun. And it started to pick up right before quarantine. We started seeing the numbers going up.
Matt Miller (:Yep.
Uhhh...
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:That's cause people were listening there. Everybody was home or sitting around. Yeah.
MFFI (:Yeah, as the pandemic kind of hit, people had less to do. And so I think they started looking for things to listen to. Also, the people that were listening already had more free time to kind of promote the show. And we really asked them to do that. But we still weren't taking it seriously. And then as it started to grow, we started seeing the numbers grow and we realized like, boy, we either have to get better at this and take it more seriously or stop because we're getting to the point where people are expecting more from us.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:and actually promoting the show on their social media and stuff. And I don't know, there were some of those episodes, I was like, I don't want anyone promoting this. Like, I don't, we're just messing around. We don't want people to hear this. So we realized like, we need to either go all in or just quit. And so we just went all in and we decided, you know, we, it really, I think was when June, there was a kind of a super fan that we have who started the Discord channel for us.
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:Ahahaha!
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:she, the Discord server, she messaged me and said, basically, hey, you have a little fan club. Do you want to join it? And I didn't know what Discord was and was like, went in there and there were all these people talking about us and they were excited to have me there. And I was like, wow, this is serious now. So we started growing. She gave me the Discord server, taught me how to use it. We started growing that element of it. And as we had more and more fan interaction and they became more invested in the show because they were choosing the topics and
Matt Miller (:Right?
MFFI (:debating the topics and voting on the topics. People really started promoting on social media and it just started to snowball a little bit. And we realized that, you know, this was we had something here. And then by the end of quarantine, once I tried to go back to doing comedy, comedy was a little bit weird at that point, all the tables were far apart, it felt comedy just felt strange. And I was like, you know, I'm just going to put all my effort into the podcast. And I also suddenly
Matt Miller (:Yeah, yeah.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:didn't have as much time as when I'm going back to work now. I don't have all the amount of time to research. I really had to choose one. And so I started just putting all of our energy into the podcast.
Matt Miller (:Yeah. Well, that sounds great. Super fans. I need to get a couple of those.
MFFI (:I'm telling you, the biggest thing for us was to leverage our fans and at first it feels weird because you feel like maybe you're exploiting people because they're not getting paid for this. But what you realize is like now at this point, we have a Patreon. So we have people who are paying us to do the podcast. And there are other people who maybe they don't have money that you know, extra income that they want to spend or that they want to spend. But they have free time and they're like, hey, I would love to do something to give back for this show that I'm enjoying.
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:And so we had to kind of get over the whole thing of feeling like we were no, we'll do it ourselves. We shouldn't be using our fans that way. And now it's like, no, if you guys want to help out, hey, here's what you can do. And they've been amazing. Like it's just been so much fun to sort of leverage the fan base to grow itself. And, and that, you know, they do more. We did a couple little ad runs in the beginning with Spotify where we like bought ads on Spotify and that was good, but it was never as much as just actually having your fans go out and do the promoting for you.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Yes. Right. Right. Right. Man. Well, that's fantastic. yeah, you should definitely check out, check out the podcast, midnight facts for insomniacs. It's really great stuff. If you like listening to two guys, horse around and, and learn about a topic or a subject, it's really.
Really, really fun stuff. I highly encourage it. All right, Shane, so I've got a couple of kind of fun questions for you. What is your favorite kind of podcast topic to do? Like, what do you like get really excited about? What kinds of stuff?
MFFI (:That's a good question. It's interesting because I have found that I'm not a good gauge of what I'm going to enjoy. Weirdly enough, I have even vetoed topics before and just gone a different direction because I'm like, I don't want to do that. I should have done that with PETA, but I didn't. But I actually thought PETA was going to be interesting. It was very controversial. It only won by like one or two votes, which probably one of them was mine. And...
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Heh heh heh.
Matt Miller (:I found it interesting. That's for sure. I learned a whole bunch.
MFFI (:I did find it interesting once I was looking into it, but it was it was hard. I had to watch a bunch of animal abuse documentaries. It was tough. But a lot of times they will suggest a topic and I am not excited about it. And then it ends up being completely fascinating for me. Black Holes was one where I was like, OK, this is kind of of course, everyone's going to ask about black holes and we're just going to talk about gravity, you know, and space time and whatever. And it's not going to. And it was just absolutely I went down, you know, black hole rabbit hole.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Miller (:Right, right.
Matt Miller (:Heheheheh
MFFI (:so to speak and it was amazing and really fun. It got probably more in depth than it needed to, but is a really interesting episode. Anything science related is usually interesting for me. We get a lot of requests for like paranormal episodes, which just ends up being me debunking things, which is less fun for the listeners, I think. So we try to avoid doing a lot of paranormal stuff. And also we get a lot of requests for true crime and we did have fun. I don't know if you know, but
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Right, right, right.
Yes, I agree.
MFFI (:We live in Santa Cruz, California and Santa Cruz was called murderville in the seventies because it had three active serial killers at the time, one of whom Ed Kemper is very famous. and so.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Wow.
Matt Miller (:I, I was born in, West Covina, California and LA County. when I grow up, it was, what was he called? A midnight stalker? I think was our, was our murder at the time. I remember growing up and everybody being wigged out.
MFFI (:Okay.
MFFI (:Yeah, yeah.
MFFI (:Yeah, my mom grew up actually in San Francisco when the Zodiac Killer was active. And so yeah, I'm not that big of a true crime guy. Those were actually interesting episodes to do. But we do I try to mostly kind of avoid true crime and paranormal which to our detriment because those are the two most popular subjects for podcasts. People love paranormal and true crime.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:do they love true crime? Everybody tells me about the true crime podcast they like to listen to.
MFFI (:Yeah, so it is a little bit unfortunate that we don't go, we're probably going to start going in that direction a little bit more just because there's so much demand for it from the insomniacs. That's our listeners, we call them the insomniacs. And those do end up being interesting for me. But again, it's mostly the science ones, anything kind of related to natural phenomena. Those are all really fascinating.
Matt Miller (:Well, I hope all your insomniacs listen to this episode and they are like, Shane like science stuff. Let's start doing let's tell them all the science stuff we want them to look at.
MFFI (:There you go. I don't think they care what I like. That's one thing I've learned is like I can put out you think you think that you're kind of a celebrity to your listeners and they think of us as their friends because they just hear us you know, BSing so often that I'll be like, Come on guys, choose one of these and they're like, screw you, we're doing what we want.
Matt Miller (:Right, right, right. Yep, totally.
Matt Miller (:What kind of topics do you guys not not do like no, we're not we're not doing that.
MFFI (:There hasn't been much that I've vetoed without ending up doing it. When I have vetoed things, usually it's because I'm just not in the mood for it, but I get around to it because I do want to honor what they want. So sometimes I'll veto something and then do go a different route. I did an episode on taxes and no one was excited about that, but I was because I had learned a bunch of stuff that I thought was interesting about how taxes started and the tax code and everyone actually, it ended up being a really fun episode, but
Matt Miller (:Yeah, yeah.
MFFI (:No one was thrilled that I had vetoed whatever topic they had to do taxes. So it didn't go over incredibly well. But then I ended up doing, I think it was like spies or something. I did that the following week. The one, the only one that I have completely vetoed and not brought back was children killers, like not people who kill children, but children who have killed. And there's like all these instances of children who have either killed adults on purpose or killed other kids. So it's almost like little
Matt Miller (:Right?
Matt Miller (:But children who, right?
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:many serial killers and boy I was researching that and I was like this is there is no way to make it we we pride ourselves on being able to make most episodes not very dark we keep it a little bit light we're able to find the humor in it I think PETA was a good example of like that was tough there's a lot of like you know monkey abuse and things that I don't want to know about but we try to make keep it light that one I just there was no angle to keep it light and I was just getting more and more depressed and I was like I'm not doing this you guys nope.
Matt Miller (:no.
Matt Miller (:No, that's... Yeah.
Matt Miller (:You know, no, my, I don't know. I think it's because I was, I watched gremlins at such a young age that I can't stand horror stuff. It's just like, I don't want to watch it. Like I don't, my wife loves horror movies and I've got a good friend of mine. He manages our local movie theater and he makes.
horror movies, you know, for fun, indie stuff. And I'm like, I don't know if I want to watch this or not. Always gives me the wigs. And so having to like, all right, you're going to talk with somebody who kills babies and eats seals. That's going to be your podcast person was like, I don't think I want to do that.
MFFI (:well.
MFFI (:Yeah, but again, it is interesting that some of the episodes that I was not super excited about, we did an episode on the Fermi paradox. And that doesn't sound like an exciting topic. But it ended up being really interesting. That was actually suggested by I think my stepdad at the time. And I diving into that, I was like, I don't even know what I'm gonna say about this. And it ended up being really fascinating. So sometimes they give me a topic and I'm like, not.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:thrilled about it and then once I get into it, it becomes really one of our more interesting episodes I think.
Matt Miller (:All right. going back to your college days, what was your favorite song to play with your band?
MFFI (:like cover song or our actual
Matt Miller (:Any cover song, original song, what did you just enjoy doing each time?
MFFI (:We had this song called drunk and you know how appropriate for being college kids and it went over as you might expect really well at college parties. We played a lot of frat parties we played sorority parties which was interesting because those are usually dry there was no alcohol there and we'd play a song called drunk and a sorority party where everyone's sober those were not as fun. But yeah that song was great but we used to do some cover songs too that actually people wouldn't always expect.
Matt Miller (:Yep.
Matt Miller (:Yep, I can agree, I can think so.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:Duncan is an amazing singer and one of the songs that we would cover was Give Me One Reason by Tracy Chapman. And Duncan can crush that song and it's just really fun to hear a guy singing. I don't know if you've heard the version of Fast Car that Luke Combs did, but like she has such an incredible voice and having a male voice on it can really add a lot of texture too. And so it was really fun. People loved that song. They would ask us to do it again and again.
Matt Miller (:Yep.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Miller (:what's the, the best comedy gig you've ever, performed at.
MFFI (:boy, the best comedy gig I've ever performed at. That is tough. It's so much easier to come up with worst comedy gigs, but I think... My favorite venue was the club where I kind of started. The first club where I got like passed as a comic was this place called Rooster Teeth Feathers. It's in Sunnyvale, California. And they have like... I've just had such amazing shows there.
Matt Miller (:I can see that too.
MFFI (:I've done some, I've gotten to do some really big venues and doing fun shows, opening for some comics that I really respect and enjoy. And I've been on stage with some people that are amazing. I've done shows with Sarah Silverman. I've done shows with people that everyone would know. And then some sort of comics that are maybe a little second tier that are some of my favorites that I've gotten to work with. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've done...
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:You know, Comedy Day in San Francisco is always really fun. That was started by by a bunch of actually really famous comics, including Robin Williams. I think he was like kind of the cornerstone of Comedy Day and it takes place in Golden Gate Park and it's kind of an honor to be chosen for that. And I did that a couple of times. The show itself isn't always great. It's outdoor during the day, which is never the best thing for a show, but it's so fun hanging with all the amazing comics backstage. Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Right, right, right.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:And so there's just a lot of great memories, but probably the ones that stick out more like the, you know, the terrible shows. So it was like, yeah, those are fun. Yeah.
Matt Miller (:The bombs, the bombs, but we won't talk about those. so you've done, some music, you do have some writing, some podcasting. what do you think else you're going to get into? What do you think? What kind of artistic outlet do you think is next for Shane Rogers?
MFFI (:That's a good question. I don't know. My mom is famous for like jumping from hobby to hobby. She's done a million things. She's incredibly talented. She's a renaissance woman. She knows she's just done a little bit of everything. I'm a little I tend to stick to things for for a while. I once I get my teeth in something, I just try to make it work. And that's how it was with music for us. I mean, we we really wanted to make music work and we knew we were good enough. But, you know, we just weren't the right man for the right.
time or we just didn't have our break. So with, you know, my plan is really to stick with podcasting at this point. Like, honestly, this is sort of our retirement plan. Like at some point, what I'd like to do is once you can never get too old, you never get too old to just talk on a microphone. And so I'd love to continue growing this. And then when we retire, you know, we would have hopefully a sustainable income just doing this on top of our retirement. So.
Matt Miller (:time. Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Correct. You got it.
MFFI (:That's kind of the plan now. I really get a lot out of doing this. And so for me, unless it becomes unfulfilling or I start to not enjoy it, this is kind of my plan going forward.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, you and me both brother. My wife thinks I'm nuts, but I was like, Hey man, I'm like five to six years away from stepping out of teaching and retiring. I was like, that's how much time I got me and we're going to get this thing rolling.
MFFI (:Yeah, it's great. I mean, if you know, it takes a long time to get the financial aspects, I think viable. And we we've been really lucky to get our Patreon kind of going and get that to be a significant source of income. But we haven't actually fully monetized, we don't do ads. And so when we do, you know, when we turn on that revenue stream, it should be I'm going to wait until it's it's actually going to be worth it. But when we do, it would be really significant. And that that
hopefully will will be something that we can continue to grow and continue to kind of nurture going forward. And we would love I'd love to retire early and be able to just do the show. So that's kind of the goal is like build it enough to where it's a little bit harder for us you I envy you in some ways because you only have to come up with enough income to support you know, one guy. And I mean, it sounds like your wife probably has her own career. But with me and Duncan, we'd have to split everything so.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:You know, we have to have make this podcast big enough to support two adults living in California. Yeah. So yeah.
Matt Miller (:Yes.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, it's nuts. You guys are like three times as much. I'm here in North Carolina and I mean, nothing's cheap anymore, but we are not California expensive.
MFFI (:Yeah, no, I mean, the
MFFI (:No, I mean, I live in literally one of the most expensive places on earth, not just California, but right next to Silicon Valley by the beach and.
Matt Miller (:yes. My, yeah, I've got family in San Jose and, we were there a few years back and we just, you know, we were just picking up a little advertisements for homes just for fun. And you gotta be kidding me. my God.
MFFI (:Mm -hmm.
MFFI (:Yeah. Yeah, and it's even worse where we are. We're about an hour from San Jose right next to the ocean. So this is like where everybody wants to be and all the tech bros can afford it. So it's yeah, it's brutal. But the nice thing is that if we were to get to that point where we could quit our jobs, we could do this from anywhere. So that's the other great thing about podcasting. It's super mobile. Duncan and I live together now. We actually both ended up getting separated from our spouses at the same time.
Matt Miller (:Yep.
Yep.
Matt Miller (:Yes.
Matt Miller (:no!
MFFI (:And right after quarantine, it's very, it's amicable on all sides. We're great friends with our spouses. but we ended up moving in together. We had lived together before. And, when we were younger. Yeah. And it is, and now it's super convenient because we can podcast whenever we want. We're doing, we're recording later today, I think, right? You know, a couple hours after this and we just, do it in our pajamas, which is great.
Matt Miller (:What you got to man, I mean, you got, I mean, it's so expensive to live.
Matt Miller (:Right?
Matt Miller (:Yes, for sure. I'm sure you're, yeah.
MFFI (:But we could realistically move anywhere. You know, we could move to North Carolina if we were able to do this. And that's what I'd like to do. I'd like to get out of this area. I'm really stuck here because of my job and I do love the area, but I would be fine anywhere else where it's more affordable as well.
Matt Miller (:Yes. Yeah. Affordable. Yeah. We're, we're not too bad, but, like my house, in, in Kobe, West Co Covina, California and LA County, when we moved, in 1987, I don't, I can't even tell you how big that lot is, but it was suburbs, right? So it was, you know, I don't know, a quarter acre, less than a quarter acre of land ranch family house, just, you know, all one level,
MFFI (:Hmm.
Matt Miller (:I think that thing sold for like two or $300 ,000 in 1987, which was like double the price. My parents paid for it, whatever year. Right. and then I looked it up and it's like $900 ,000. Now I was like, I was like, you gotta be kidding me. Cause my parents now, well,
MFFI (:Mm -hmm.
MFFI (:Yeah.
MFFI (:yeah, I'm surprised it's under a million. That's wild.
Matt Miller (:it, well, like their house now is on four acres of land. They have like a 3000 square foot home, all this space, a whole separate building. And that here in North Carolina is only about 500 ,000.
MFFI (:Wow, yeah, that's amazing. I gotta move.
Matt Miller (:pray it's nuts. It's nuts, man. yeah, I'm going to get in. I also told my wife, I said, real estate. I might get into real estate for a retirement gig. for sure. Start selling stuff.
MFFI (:No kidding. I know. That is... Yeah. It's not getting any cheaper, that's for sure.
Matt Miller (:All right, Shane. I asked all my guests, about the same six questions at the end of the show. it's fun to hear all the different answers. what is your favorite smell?
MFFI (:This is gonna be weird, but well, my favorite like good standard smell that people probably, a lot of people like is lavender. I love the smell of lavender. I'm actually growing some just cause I love it. And.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Yep, I've got some lavender incense burning right now.
MFFI (:Yeah, it's it's I know that's kind of generic, but it is one of my favorites. And then probably my favorite smell that's a little I know a lot of people feel the same way. But a lot of people also think I'm weird is gasoline. I just like anytime I go get gas for my car. I just love it. I love the smell of gasoline. And I would it's I know you would say like I've never huffed but I sure wanted to it's tempting even to this day.
Matt Miller (:Yeah. That's your 1990s hoodlum coming out right there. What's your favorite kind of sandwich?
MFFI (:there is this place in Santa Cruz. It is right next to where I work. It's called Garden Liquors and Deli and they have a sandwich called the Italian Special and it's roast beef and pesto and it's warm. It is amazing. I'm actually now that I think about it, maybe I'll drive there and get one after this because my God, it's so good.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Sounds sounds amazing. What's your favorite kind of drink?
MFFI (:I drink so much diet soda. You can see I'm drinking a cherry diet coke right now.
Matt Miller (:Hey, I drink a cherry drink and here it's called cheer wine.
MFFI (:Nice, nice. Yeah, my it's weird that I for some reason don't drink much coffee, but I like caffeine these days. And so I'm just like pounding diet soda all the time.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
what's something that makes you happy every time you get a chance to do it.
MFFI (:that is a good question. I love to play basketball. I've played since I was a kid. I don't know if it makes me happy every time because I managed to hurt my shoulder pretty bad a few years ago. And so it now it's just kind of makes me, it makes me sad if I can't play it. But I've been able to get out and play a little bit lately. I'm sure I've been rehabbing the rotator cuff. But I love playing basketball.
Matt Miller (:yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:And that's probably the only thing that always makes me happy again, unless there's an injury involved, because I love doing comedy, but boy, comedy doesn't always make you happy. There's times when you get on stage and it doesn't go as well as you wanted. I got to the point where it almost never, once you get to a certain level, you almost kind of never bomb. You'll do little, but you have to do little bar shows and little open mics to try new stuff. And then when those things don't work, it's so frustrating. So.
Matt Miller (:Hmm, I bet I can bet.
Matt Miller (:Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep.
MFFI (:Comedy doesn't always make me happy, but I did enjoy it a lot. But yeah, probably basketball.
Matt Miller (:So if you could send your younger self a little tidbit of advice, what would you tell a younger Shane Rogers?
MFFI (:We just did an after midnight episode on that. So every other week we do an episode that just for patrons and we do do a video component of that and we live stream it. And one of our recent episodes was the top five pieces of advice that we would give to our younger selves. It would be interesting. I'd have to read to see what we came up with. But the main thing is to not take yourself so seriously. Like it's really important in life. This sounds so trite, but like to smile.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, yeah.
MFFI (:and maintain a good attitude. I remember being a younger man. I always thought it was so important to be like complicated and tortured and like dark like an artist and be it. It was it was, you know, that was Nirvana, right? That was the grunge era. And it's just that's the worst. Like, don't go through life being taking yourself seriously and moping like just try to be the person that people want to spend time with because no one wants to spend time.
Matt Miller (:Yep.
Matt Miller (:That was the 90s brooder. Yeah. Yep.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:with the Mopi guy. Just smile and have a good time and try to enjoy life. Don't worry about like I was a musical purist. I only like certain types of music and certain artists and it's like now I'll listen. I love Taylor Swift. I don't care. Like I listen to everything and you know, stop taking yourself so seriously. It's not a big deal. Try to enjoy life.
Matt Miller (:Yep.
Matt Miller (:Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Matt Miller (:All right, and almost done. What's one of the most beautiful things you've ever gotten to see?
MFFI (:Well, I have been lucky enough to do a lot of traveling. With the circus, I've been to almost every state in America, and then I've been done a lot of traveling on my own and with friends and with family. I boy, I am trying to think of the most beautiful. I think one of my favorite places that I've been is Greece, and we went to the island of Rhodes, Rhodes.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:And just the Mediterranean water, it's just, and this kind of, it has such a classic aesthetic. I think of all the places I've been, maybe that stands out in my mind. Obviously there's all of the Greek islands. We spent a week or five days or so on Crete, which was beautiful.
Matt Miller (:Yes, yes.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, I bet so. Mine, mine is water too. It's a, my son and I were on the beach at Tampa Bay and the sun setting over the ocean, was quite magnificent to watch it. And I was, yeah, I was unaware that the Gulf side of the beach, you can walk like a mile out there. It's so shallow. And I had, I had no clue. And that's, so that was cool to be.
MFFI (:Florida's amazing.
MFFI (:yeah.
Matt Miller (:a hundred yards from the beach and still like the water is like at my waist and it's nuts.
MFFI (:Yeah, that's actually in Crete. There's a beach that's like that in Crete where you can just walk out forever and you're still... So you're looking back and you're just... It's like you're in the middle of the ocean, but you're only up to your waist. And they're famous for pink sand. They have pinkish sand there and it's incredible looking. The other thing that you brought up, you brought up Florida, my wife and I, ex -wife, we were in Florida...
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Sweet. Yeah.
MFFI (:for a cruise, we were going for a two on a cruise out of Miami. And there was a hurricane that actually was threatening to come through and didn't end up hitting Miami. But we were stuck in Miami, and no one else came. Everyone canceled their trip to Miami. So all of a sudden, we were on north, you know, there's North Beach and South Beach, and you can walk up and down. And normally, that's just packed with people, it would be just umbrellas blanketing the sand. And there was not another person on the beach, it was
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:Right, right, right.
Yeah.
MFFI (:warm, there was in the distance, there were storms and thunderclouds and there was lightning and but where we were was amazing and we were out in the water and we were the only people on that incredibly popular tourist stretch of beach. So it was just one of these magical moments where like we had this entire, it felt a little apocalyptic because it's like very strange that no one else was there. It was a little creepy but also just really magical and amazing.
Matt Miller (:Sweet. Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Right? It's like, no one else is here. Why are we here?
Matt Miller (:I love it. All right. And my last question is to help sustain the podcast. who do you think would be a good guest to have on the podcast? Somebody that's been doing something for a really long time is really passionate about what they do.
MFFI (:boy, that is a good question. Who can I think of would be a good guest? Yeah, I don't know. I might have to get back to you on that one. You could certainly have Duncan on here. He'd be fun. He's a great guest.
Matt Miller (:No pressure.
Matt Miller (:he sounds great, especially since he likes to be drunk when he does podcasts. Yeah. I can't wait, man.
MFFI (:yeah, he I so we, we do have a rule about on on our podcast that he can't drink before, which is, I noticed that he messaged me during this show. And I think that he is saying, when are we going to record? And I think part of the reason is because as soon as we finish recording, then he can start drinking because he's not allowed to drink before. So he's excited to do it. But yeah, I'll have to I'll have to think about that. I'll do some brainstorming. I have a lot of comedian friends. So the nice thing about our
Matt Miller (:Hehehehehe
Matt Miller (:Yep. Right.
MFFI (:after midnight episodes is that every once in a while we'll have a comedian on and that's been fun. And they always make, most of the time they make really good podcast guests because they are very quick witted and funny. So yeah, I'll think about that.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, I could think so. Yeah, man. Yeah. there's a whole bunch of things I'm probably going to do on a podcast. Once I retire from public education that I don't do now, I'm gonna.
MFFI (:Yeah, yeah, that is that's true. You have to be a little careful. I do too in my job, but we for the most part are pretty. Luckily, there are not a lot of things that I that come to my mind that are cancelable. But Duncan, on the other hand, I have to like, we've had to do some editing before.
Matt Miller (:Right. Yep.
Those are the best kind of friends to have right there. do you ever do stand up at your resort that you work at? Do they ever have you come up on stage and do something for guests?
MFFI (:Absolutely.
MFFI (:No, and it's funny, we have had stand up comedy shows over the last few months at the resort. It's the first time they've tried this. They came to me and asked if I would help book it and perform and I was like, I'm not getting anywhere near that. I don't want anything to do with doing stand up at my job. I actually did get in trouble one time for it was it was so ridiculous. I did like a local show. It was a very low key, like small, it was a brewery.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:ha, ha, ha.
Matt Miller (:Right.
MFFI (:that had this comedy show and I was trying new stuff and I was just winging it and there were like there was no reason for me to censor myself. No one was recording it. It wasn't going to end up anywhere, but I got called into the general manager's office and he was like just wanted to throw this out there. But one of your fellow employees, someone who worked in like the main building was at that show and was offended by some stuff I had talked about and I was a very for the most part clean conic like most of my stuff was. I mean if you go to that.
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:Yes.
MFFI (:website, you'll see bits about shark week, you know, it was, I was very non controversial, but every once in a while, I just throw stuff in just for the hell of it, because it was a live experience. And I wasn't worried about it ending up online or something. And I think I just done some jokes about sex stuff. And this girl was like, she wasn't even offended by it. She just wanted my the like, employers to know, like, hey, he might be, you know, out there representing this resort and
Matt Miller (:Yeah, right, right, right.
MFFI (:making it look bad. And so it was a funny conversation to have. I was like, Hey, I am not, I'm going to pretend like this conversation isn't happening because I'm going to say whatever the hell I want in my personal life and you guys can go fuck yourselves. Like I literally told that to my boss and he was like, I get it. I get it. I'm just saying, we just want to make sure that you're representing the resort. And I'm like, I'm not representing the resort when I'm on stage, I'm representing me. I'll make sure that nothing, I'm going to do my best to make sure that nothing that could be potentially.
Matt Miller (:Mmm.
Matt Miller (:Right. Yep. Right.
Matt Miller (:No, right. That's right.
MFFI (:controversial ends up online and that is what I will promise you but beyond that I'm gonna say whatever the hell I want and so I was pretty annoyed by that. That was very frustrating.
Matt Miller (:Yeah. Don't you hate those people? Like, you know, they could have come to you if they work there. They're like, Hey, maybe you should do stuff like that on stage and archiving.
MFFI (:And it is always it was funny because the person who had complained was not a person that I would consider to be very PC. And I am a person who's mostly pretty PC like I'm a very sort of liberal guy. I'm very careful and have pretty, you know, I don't want to offend anyone. And she's someone who was not that way. So it was interesting that that happened. But and she and I are actually friends. It was fine. It all worked out. But it just yeah, that was one thing that.
Matt Miller (:Right.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
MFFI (:was shocking to me that that anyone else was shocked by.
Matt Miller (:Yeah. We got a lot of those folks in education too. A lot of, a lot of people will complain to the higher ups instead of just coming to you and say, I don't, I didn't like what you were doing here, but they'll go tell your boss that instead, but they won't tell you.
MFFI (:Yeah.
MFFI (:It's funny because there is just a there is this idea that like in comedy you have to be so careful about everything you say and man I don't know I I'm in the clubs or was you know up until a while ago on a regular basis I still go watch comedy I still go hang with my friends and I mean people are still getting away with saying just bonkers off the wall stuff as well.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:I gotta say, the most popular comics say the worst kinds of things, man. So...
MFFI (:I don't know if anyone I don't know if you watch they just had on Netflix the roast of Tom Brady. I mean Yeah
Matt Miller (:Yeah. I mean, the idea of those roasts, comedy central Netflix. I mean, you just get prepared for the worst kinds of things to get thrown out at everybody. Yeah.
MFFI (:everyone on everyone on that roast had a joke about Aaron Hernandez hanging himself. I mean, it just like it was brutal. And I thought it was a lot of it was really funny. A lot of it was offensive. But at the same time, it's like, you know, that's what you come for. Don't watch the roast if you're going to be offended. So it Yeah, and I'm not one of those, you know, hey, culture warriors who's concerned that I'm being censored because I felt like, hey, you
Matt Miller (:Yes.
Matt Miller (:Right. Right.
MFFI (:You know, as long as it's funny, audiences will let you get away with anything. They just will just make it funny. Like if it's not people who complain about I'm being censored, it's usually because you're just trying to say offensive things and they're not that funny. And that's the problem.
Matt Miller (:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Miller (:Right. Yep. It's all in the delivery. That's for sure. I was scrolling through my phone, this morning, cause I woke up way too early and it was the biggest hits of what's her name? Nikki Glaser or community. Yeah. yeah. She's always on them, but it was like her, her biggest burns, you know, throughout the years of roasting people. And I mean, it's just awful. And you know, and yeah.
MFFI (:She was on the roast, yes.
MFFI (:yeah, no, she she's blowing up right now because she had hands down the best set on that roast and it was brutal. Like, I mean, I was sitting there laughing and at the same time going like, God, I can't believe she said that. it's vicious.
Matt Miller (:Yeah.
Matt Miller (:Yes. Yep. She was, I was, she was talking, you know, it was a, it was the roast of Bruce Willis and she's right there just roasting him and his family is right there and she's bringing them up and, I was like, man. Yeah.
MFFI (:Yeah.
MFFI (:yeah, nothing's off limits. I think the only thing they do, like on the Tom Brady roast, I guess I was reading a little behind the scenes stuff that they had, the one thing they had said was that his kids were off limits. But beyond that, I mean, it was no holds barred. It was rough.
Matt Miller (:Right. Yeah, I can only imagine. That one I have to watch maybe by myself.
MFFI (:just watch her set and you'll get you'll get the idea. You'll just be like, wow, that is off the charts.
Matt Miller (:You'll get the gist of it. Yep. She's great. it was Shane. You've been a great guest, man. I love talking to you. Check out, Shane's podcast for sure. Midnight facts for insomniacs. it's available wherever you get your podcast app, man. And, check out the website, for them. They got a lot of great pictures of him and his cohost Duncan.
through the years, those are great. If you're about my age, if you're 40 something, you're going to see some great throwback pictures. that'll bring you right back to your high school and college days, man. Shane, I really appreciate you coming on the show, man. That's been a blast.
MFFI (:That's right.
MFFI (:Absolutely.
MFFI (:thanks so much for having me. Had a good time.
Matt Miller (:Remember folks, find out what makes you happy and get to it. There's a lot of life out there to live, so make it a good one. Be kind, be nice, be good, and everybody have a great week.
