Will Sasso: Comedy, MADtv, AI, Friendship, Madness, and Pro Wrestling | Lex Fridman Podcast #323

Will Sasso is a comedian, actor, and co-host of the Dudesy podcast. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex to get special savings - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex to get 1 month of fish oil - BetterHelp: https://better

once this whole thing falls apart and we are climbing the Kudzu vines that spiral up the Sears Tower like they say in Fight Club Bobby will go back to his gatherer form and be happy as a pig and shit just walking around the loincloth with his bird hanging out tracking jokes to people and climbing up on them for a stool lap dance or whatever he does you think some level of crazy is required for comedy yeah like at some point yes have there been low points in your life uh yeah I know yeah yeah hey yeah hahaha the following is a conversation with Will Sasso a comedian actor podcaster and someone I’ve been a fan of for many years since Mad TV in the late 90s to recently with the time in the podcast and now the new podcast called dudesy this is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here’s will Sasso so let’s call it the elephant in the room you wore a black suit in a recent episode of doozy yes you wore a black suit again today uh Shakespeare than Mark Twain said clothes make the man uh what kind of man does a suit make you well me in particular it makes me a fellow who did not get this dry cleaned in between because that episode of the show as we sit here now was around a week ago so that’s that’s the kind of man it makes me well the uh the nice things you’re wearing pants I think yes I am wearing I don’t think you were wearing pants in the episode that’s correct I I prefer to wear shorts but this was a special occasion so I’m wearing pants and I thought it fitting obviously to just wear you know the black tie and uh clothes do make them in and I’m uh I I would not consider myself to be a man of leisure but I do enjoy shorts because my legs get hot so that’s what kind of man the shorts make often do you wear a suit I fucking hate wearing suits so what is this a statement of uh is it ironic or is it are you honoring the gods of this particular podcast I’m honoring the gods of this particular podcast would be a good way to put it yes no this is this is in in reverence of and in dedication to you and our newfound friendship here yes which we are uh making uh on the podcast you and I just met yeah everything that we’re saying here is the or the first things that we’re saying to each other so I’m meeting you on Common Ground dressed like well I’ve been actually a one-way friend of yours for many many years since Mad TV oh um when did you start on mentee so that was many I mean in 90s 97 yeah 97. so I was a huge fan of yours and the cast was incredible it’s one of the funniest shows ever created your whole journey watching through that was was incredible for Mad TV to Three Stooges to the podcast the the 10 minute pause and then the new podcast is incredible um cheers my favorite role that you played was the mountain in the Game of Thrones what was it like working with Dragons well the dragons are usually tennis balls on the end of c-stands but uh sometimes they they hang out um I am c-stand it’s like you know it’s like a little like the thing you got the camera on here oh this is like film lingo yeah no I understand I’m trying to impress you with my film lingo you know what a banana is yeah and you walk like this oh do a banana I take it back I did not know what a banana was yeah yeah because it’s just a food yeah normally uh I can see Hollywood folk the lingo and I’m uh my name is Bjorn hap Thor bjornsson and I am seven foot four and uh yeah so dragons don’t dragons don’t scare me even though they’ve been extinct for a while these scientists right is that check out yeah I actually I’m really into video games I don’t know if you play video games there’s a there’s a Skyrim uh video game that’s part of the Elder Scroll series and for the longest time there’s a legend that there’s dragons I think it’s starting in Daggerfall and so I always I grew up playing those video games and dreaming of one day meeting a dragon in a virtual world and eventually you did in in Skyrim so it’s dragons represent I don’t know exactly what they represent but they represent maybe this kind of mythical creature that is bigger than anything humans can comply possibly comprehend maybe because they’re so they’re so they show up so often in myth from the from the religious stories you know of the snake and so on The Serpent and I don’t know what that is with this breathing fire that’s kind of weird it’s interesting when I think about dragons because uh now that you bring it up these are people that probably wouldn’t have access to the fact that there used to be dinosaurs right maybe they did if they didn’t they’re drawing things that look like you know a dinosaur cousin but cool that can breathe fire and has Wacky Wings and a spiked tail um yeah where the heck did they come up with that because they’re clearly of course represented in mythology all the way back to uh no not cave drawings well the Egyptians probably knew what the and they could time travel so they would have gone back to the caves with the aliens that placed living organisms on Earth could time travel and they could plant Legends into the into the collective intelligence of the human species yeah and perhaps they were thinking of us to do something smart with it and we didn’t we just came up with Skyrim now we’re just what’s that sorry that was very offensive I’m sorry I don’t mean offend you with your video game I’m more of a burger a burger time uh Donkey Kong dude oh what is that that’s an original burger time was an arcade game that later showed up on the in television um uh who’s in television I believe it was made by Texas Instruments horrible first generation uh video game console and burger time you just it’s like Super Mario you just gotta stay away from the the eggs and the pickles and stuff and you just go and you the bun Falls and then you go down to then wait in the cheese and then the meat I’m not going to say it’s as complicated as Skyrim but uh took me a while to finish it when I was seven did you play video games that was that a part of your life a part of this source of happiness for you at all it was it was I played video games up until around uh I think in 2010 I got the red ring of death on my Xbox 360. that was it that was it I never or whatever the Xbox was then yeah I had I was playing uh I had finished uh the the Grand Theft Auto that was out and finished the Red Dead Redemption so I was doing that thing where you just drive around uh you know the streets of New York or just ride around on your horse shooting people and uh you know throwing grenades into into groups of people in uh Grand Theft and you’re describing the same thing that happened a decade later because it’s now Red Dead Redemption 2 and there’s still not a new Grand Theft Auto so yeah there isn’t right yeah they’re working on it they’re always flirting with that idea you know who else plays Skyrim another person the two people I’m a huge fan of from that time in Mad TV’s Bobby League he plays Skyrim he’s a huge fan he plays every so what Bobby Lee loves to do is the grind do the boring task over and over gather mushroom like in Skyrim you can fight dragons you can fight all kinds of things but you can also gather mushrooms and different ingredients to make potions and all that kind of he loves the ingredients that he’s the you know in the hunter-gatherer World he’s The Gatherer he’s The Gatherer yeah I’ve heard him described that way and and he likes to describe himself that way uh I worked with Bobby not too long ago he came and did a couple days on this thing we wer