This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von

#664 - Crooners Welcome

Peak solo Theo: the crooner bit and rodeo reverence are the comedy, but the live call to a newly five-years-sober listener is the real payoff.

1. 01Theo Von sang with Ella Langley at Stagecoach and decided he is not a singer but a crooner, the guy who comes in at the end and does the baseboards.
2. 02Theo Von traces rodeo to 16th-century Mexican vaquero cattle culture, with one of the earliest cowboy contests at Deer Trail, Colorado in 1864.
3. 03Theo Von's answer to a caller jealous of his girlfriend's past: holding old history against a partner was his own way of keeping one foot out.
4. 04DC Blocks plans a data center beside the Nashville Zoo and an elementary school, and Nashville's Metro Council has passed a temporary moratorium.

#654 - Something New

The middle 20 minutes are Theo with no bit running — a genuinely vulnerable, half-formed attempt to describe changing your own story that lands harder than most polished recovery talk.

1. 01Theo Von frames the episode around wanting something new, after the Busboys opening weekend and the last Rat Tour dates in Lexington.
2. 02Supercross trucks 26 million pounds of dirt into Nissan Stadium for one event and stores it around town between races.
3. 03Von tells Alex, 331 days sober and driving to Los Angeles at 5 a.m., that the city holds one of the best recovery communities in the world.
4. 04Theo Von's current prayer is aimed at the resistance itself, asking for help in the part of him that knows, while praying, that he is lying.

#646 - Hey Patty!!

The making-of-Busboys story is a genuinely candid account of self-funding a movie after everyone said no, and the busboy voicemails — especially the secondhand oyster — are the show at its funniest.

1. 01Busboys, the movie Theo Von wrote and self-funded with David Spade, opens April 17, with tickets on sale March 16 at busboysmovie.com.
2. 02Directors, agencies and studios all passed on Busboys, so Theo Von and David Spade put up the roughly $3 million budget and shot it themselves.
3. 03The Busboys cast includes Tim Dillon, Nate Diaz and Jay Pharoah, and the shoot lost its first day to the California fires.
4. 04Theo Von and David Spade bonded over both having bussed tables in Arizona and wrote the script together starting during COVID.

#691 - Johnny Hamcheck

A prankster millions know only by his voice tells, face to face, how car lots, poker tables, jail and relapse shaped the videos.

1. 01Johnny Hamcheck, a 50-year-old prankster from Columbus, Ohio, showed his face for the first time on Theo Von's show after five years of hidden-camera videos.
2. 02Johnny Hamcheck's pranks rely on confusion rather than concealment: posing as a site boss chasing chains for Balboni, he holds the phone in plain view.
3. 03Johnny Hamcheck says he sold up to 40 Toyotas a month in 2016, yet a poker habit and seven years of ignoring the IRS left him deep in tax debt.
4. 04Hamcheck says his best videos came in 13 sober years; a 2023 relapse after surgery left him pranking while on fentanyl-laced pills.

#690 - Josh Brolin

Josh Brolin gives a candid account of the money, missteps and sobriety behind an acting career that took more than two decades to take off.

1. 01Josh Brolin says 36 of the 50 friends in his Montecito surf crew, the Cito Rats, are dead, many after heroin arrived in the 1990s.
2. 02Josh Brolin spent 22 years after The Goonies studying in New York and doing theatre before No Country for Old Men changed his career.
3. 03Josh Brolin says No Country for Old Men paid him about $100,000, of which he cleared roughly $30,000.
4. 04Day trading from home for about five years earned Josh Brolin more money in four years than 20 years of acting had.

#689 - Nick Saban

It is the rare long interview where Nick Saban explains his own retirement, his view of paying players and the cost of his intensity, in his own words.

1. 01Nick Saban retired from Alabama at 72 after a hard final season, choosing between two prepared speeches ten minutes before a 4 o'clock team meeting.
2. 02Nick Saban's rule for ego: ask a player whether a behaviour, like spiking the ball, helps him graduate or reach the NFL, so the lesson is about the player's goals.
3. 03Alabama won 19 straight games twice under Saban and lost the 20th both times, a slide he blames on complacency rather than the opponents.
4. 04Saban says 33 college coaches were fired last year because playoffs became the standard and boosters who fund players now expect a say.

#692 - Sophie Cunningham

Transcript available; summary, chapters and takeaways are on their way.