S2_14 Danish Anwar: Comedy as a Mirror, Unconventional Paths, and the Psychedelic Perspective

Today's episode is with Danish Anwar who shares profound insights into his life as a comedian, his creative process, and the unconventional wisdom he's garnered through his experiences with psychedelics. Through a mix of humor, personal anecdotes, and thought-provoking observations, Anwar and host Raad Seraj engage in a deep dive into the interplay between comedy, creativity, and consciousness expansion. This episode not only entertains but also enlightens, offering listeners a unique lens through which to view the world.

Key insights from the episode include:

• Comedy's Role in Understanding the World: Anwar discusses how comedy acts as a reflective mirror, allowing both the comedian and the audience to make sense of societal absurdities and personal experiences in a way that is relatable and often cathartic.
• Advice for Creatives: Emphasizing resilience and authenticity, Anwar offers invaluable advice to aspiring artists. He stresses the importance of pursuing one's passion for the art itself rather than external rewards, highlighting the necessity of finding joy and fulfillment in the creative process.
• The Power of Psychedelics for Personal Development: Anwar opens up about his use of psychedelics, particularly mushrooms, as tools for introspection and artistic inspiration. He shares how these substances have helped him break through creative barriers and gain deeper insights into his mind and the nature of reality.
• Navigating Unconventional Paths: Reflecting on his journey from a challenging childhood to international comedic success, Anwar speaks to the courage required to forge one's path in the face of societal expectations and personal doubt.
• Resilience and Hope: Despite the challenges and uncertainties inherent in a creative career, Anwar's stories and insights are a testament to the human capacity for resilience. His optimistic outlook, grounded in realistic acknowledgment of life's hardships, offers a beacon of hope for others walking the tightrope of creative endeavors.

You can learn more about Danish here:
www.instagram.com/terrorsuspect

Transcript

[00:00:20] Raad Seraj: Today my guest is Danish Anwar who is an award winning comedian and trendsetting producer known for selling our shows worldwide from iconic venues like the Comedy Store in LA and the National Art Center in Ottawa to the ultra cool Tokyo Comedy Bar in Japan where he has become a recurring favorite.

[00:00:34] Raad Seraj: He has worked with comedy titans like David Attle, Russell Peters and Paul Provenza performed at prestigious festivals like Just for Laughs, ZooFest, and Magner's International Comedy Festival in Bangkok. He has also created the global comedy sensation, You Heard The Joke, playing in LA, New York City, Tokyo, Toronto, Barcelona, and Amsterdam.

[00:00:51] Raad Seraj: And finally, he's the founder of Toronto Comedy All Stars, one of Canada's premier comedy labels. 

[00:00:56] Raad Seraj: Thanks so much for joining me. I want to start by um, touching on your, your, I guess, one of your shows or one of your productions, Your Hood's a Joke. Tell us a little bit of what that is. And then I'm curious, what is the funniest thing you've heard someone say about Toronto?

[00:01:12] Danish Anwar: Sure. I mean, so you heard the joke, it's a, it's a territorial roast battle. I started it in 2013. That was around the time when like roast comedy had just started. Like the show Roast Battle also originated that year. And then this was also, keep in mind, we're talking about the year 2013. This was at the peak of quote unquote cancel culture.

[00:01:32] Danish Anwar: What we call cancel culture now is what started back then. Not a big fan of the terminology, but it's the closest way I can approximate it. So essentially, we're talking about a time when I, you know, I and most comedians were a lot more careful because the slightest thing could set people off. And because of my, just the nature of my being, I was like, you know what, let's go into the worst possible thing that could set people off.

[00:01:57] Danish Anwar: And so I started a show where we roast each other based on our history, culture, ethnicity, geography, that kind of thing. Because with the show, you can represent anybody. You can be, we could have battles between cities, like let's say Toronto versus New York. We could do countries like Canada versus USA, you know.

[00:02:12] Danish Anwar: India versus Bangladesh. We did schools, colleges, you know, neighborhoods, anything that you feel a strong connection to, we would pit against someone of the opposite side, right? And that's kind of how it started. And it took off pretty quickly. There was a, the controversy behind it kind of helped launch it.

[00:02:30] Danish Anwar: And one of the tricks to like 10 years later, we've had zero complaints, zero incidents. We say the absolute worst possible combination of words spoken by man on stage several times a month across the world in multiple cities. And the trick behind that has always been to approach it with equality. Right?

[00:02:51] Danish Anwar: Because you're not watching somebody rag on one side. It's a back and forth. It's like watching boxing, but comedy. We have agreed that we want to watch these people go at it on their own merits, and then we decide and on top of that, I also introduced a warning system, much like movies. You know, you don't just walk into a movie, not knowing what it's about.

[00:03:08] Danish Anwar: There's usually a rating X and PG 13. So I started doing that with my comedy. So with a show like this, I would always in all the marketing promo, even the beginning of the show, as you're walking in, we would always say content warning. This isn't for everybody. It's probably not for you. If you don't like dark humor, get out.

[00:03:23] Danish Anwar: The rest of us want to do this in peace. And so that would, you know, mitigate a lot of our risk where, you know, we're not. Shocking somebody we're not sorry. We're not surprising somebody into or baiting somebody into participating in something. They don't want to do So it kind of along with roast battle and you know other shows of this nature We kind of became our own little circuit and now 10 years later.

[00:03:44] Danish Anwar: It is the biggest independent circuit in comedy in the world There's like over a dozen cities that are part of this league with roast battle And then your hood the joke my show has a similar presence in the same cities You We kind of circumvented the entire industry. We have our own thing going with venues with other comedians.

[00:04:02] Danish Anwar: So that, that whole thing has been a whole journey. As, as far as the funniest thing about Toronto, I don't even know where to begin, but the most common, to be honest, it depends on where the show is. When like in Toronto, most of the jokes are about how it, it. We can't afford to live, you know, the Scarborough accent, you know, how there's a lot of Jamaicans, you know, things of that nature.

[00:04:23] Danish Anwar: But internationally, when we've had Toronto, let's say we've had like a Toronto versus Tokyo battle in Tokyo, the jokes tend to be about Drake or Michael Cera or other famous people from the GTA, you know. So it's been interesting to see how people perceive You know, each other depending on the setting.

[00:04:39] Danish Anwar: Right. And I mean, me personally, I've lived around the world and my experience has been that people like to talk shit. So that's, this is basically the show about talking shit to each other, you know, it turns out it's very popular and now it plays in multiple locations you know, every month, sometimes, you know, multiple times, you know, depending on what the situation

[00:04:57] Raad Seraj: Amazing. Congratulations on all

[00:04:59] Danish Anwar: that's the long and short of it.

[00:04:59] Raad Seraj: far. What's what's Toronto standing? Do you think around the world as a city? So is it are we known to be besides sort of like Drake and weekend? What else? What else do people think about Toronto?

[00:05:11] Danish Anwar: You know, the worst thing I've ever heard about Toronto internationally is that how it's New York light.

[00:05:17] Danish Anwar: You know, but beyond that, Toronto has a very solid reputation as a city of immigrants, multicultural city, you know, a city of arts. And also it benefits a lot from Canada's general reputation around the world. That kind of bleeds in. I don't know if people really look at Toronto separate from Canada internationally, because internationally Canada is one giant big clump, you know, but they don't say, Oh, this person is from Toronto, Canada, Vancouver, Canada, they just say this person is from Canada, right?

[00:05:45] Danish Anwar: So we're kind of like get lumped in together. The nuance is gone. And that's pretty normal. I guess it's pretty much how we see other places as well, or how anybody would. So it's the short version of that is people don't really think about Toronto too much, unless they have to. You know, unless there's a new Drake lyric or, or unless the Toronto Film Festival is happening, something of that nature, or, you know, we've got, or if one of our mayors ends up doing crack on Jimmy Kimmel or something, so

[00:06:09] Raad Seraj: Yeah.

[00:06:09] Danish Anwar: surprisingly come close, very close to

[00:06:11] Raad Seraj: as mundane as that. Yeah. So you said a couple of things in, you know, describing You heard the joke. One of those is that back then when we had cancel culture So are you saying that we're no longer in council culture territory beyond that and secondly What constitutes dark humor?

[00:06:30] Danish Anwar: The first part, yes, I think we are beyond that because, I mean, it's a very long conversation, but to shorten it and cause that's the job of a comedian, you know we entered an era. of correction in the 2010s, right? To correct historical injustices as fast as we possibly could. That was the intent, you know, that you can't like words mean something and certain assumptions we have about each other are not right.

[00:06:54] Danish Anwar: That's how it started. And then it morphed into, if you absolutely do not have the right opinion, every time you open your mouth, you are the worst possible interpretation of those words. Right. So it's a very common phrase. Every correction is an overcorrection. So, you know, there's, there's also that popular theory that the massive right wing wave of the 2015, 2016 era was a direct reaction to over overt leftist policing of everybody's language.

[00:07:25] Danish Anwar: I don't, to be honest, I don't entirely disagree with that. You know, you push people far enough, people will do crazy things as we can see right now happening around the world. Right. And now, in my opinion, we're definitely way past that. Because if you were to look at the comment section of any, any joke, any risqué post anywhere, there's usually one or two people now who will use the classic 2014 BuzzFeed language.

[00:07:51] Danish Anwar: Be like, well, if you said this, that means that, right? And then a thousand people will go like, no. This person's clearly joking. You are just trying to interpret them in the worst way possible for clout. You know, that era, that's the era we're at right now, where there's like a pushback to this extreme policing, this extreme purity test, really what it was.

[00:08:11] Danish Anwar: You know, the, I don't really, I guess cancel culture is, it gives, that phrase gives me the heebie jeebies because it's been hijacked by, you know, Like every single time by the wrong people like there's a like another correction happening right now where it's over correcting now People are going back to overt racism and overt homophobia because they're like well because of cancel culture I couldn't say this now.

[00:08:32] Danish Anwar: I'm gonna be just overtly bigoted to people So now that is being over that is over correcting as well. So we're kind of in this constant push pull of I'm trying to do well. I'm trying to do something good But I turned into a fascist. That's pretty much human history because I think I'm right and I think I'm so right that I will force people to be right with me.

[00:08:53] Danish Anwar: That's kind of, you know, and there's all there's always a reaction to that and we're kind of in the react We have been in the reaction phase to like leftist purity tests now for a while. I found it much easier for me to I mean, do all kinds of jokes or even have all kinds of opinions or thoughts that would have been impossible in like the 2012 to 2018 time period.

[00:09:16] Danish Anwar: So yeah, we're definitely

[00:09:18] Raad Seraj: beings have never been really good with the, with freedom, you know, juggling freedom with responsibility. That's really the whole question here, right? We want to be free, but there is a price or there is a responsibility that comes with that, because especially online and also online spaces where you have influence just by being there, having a bigger mic and having algorithms on your side that you can pay for or inherit or something like that.

[00:09:41] Raad Seraj: I think there's, there is that question. And in fact, Left or right, you know, power is power and every hunger is for it.

[00:09:48] Danish Anwar: Yeah, power corrupts. It's that's basically what happened. And I mean, just to add to that, that thought is at this point, I have seen myself people who were the biggest proponents of these purity tests from, you know, like the mid 2010s. They're all gone. You know, they have no longevity as from a comedy industry perspective, those types of people whose entire job was to police other people for not being perfect.

[00:10:15] Danish Anwar: They don't have, they literally don't have a career. Not because they were canceled is because at the end of the day they had nothing to offer except negativity and bad faith interpretations of other people. So now that people have seen past that, that entire group, like there was an entire subgroup in the comedy industry in every city that has simply, they're off to whatever else is going on in their lives now.

[00:10:40] Danish Anwar: They were, they were never interested in being creative. They were only interested in critiquing creatives for not being exactly the kind of creative that they wanted. So. It's, it's, they've kind of failed their own tests in that sense, I suppose but yeah, it's it's a, it's an ever evolving situation, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if this overcorrect, the current overcorrection becomes a problem very soon because it's not, the last week, like we're, this is the 3rd of November that we're taping this, just in the last week alone, I've seen a massive resurgence online in various comment sections about people using the N word and being like, what's wrong with it?

[00:11:14] Danish Anwar: Why can't I use them? Like, well, We're back to that now? You're gonna bring back the purists if you keep doing this. Like, we're stuck between extremists, essentially. We're just yo yoing between one extreme to the other. And it's also, you know, part of it is the algorithmic nature of the internet night right now.

[00:11:30] Danish Anwar: You know, we're all in our own bubbles and the platforms we're on incentivizes us to be like this, because that is what boosts their revenue. The angrier you are, the more emotional you are, the more you'll use their apps, the more you'll comment, and the more ads you will see, and the more things you will click on, and the more things you will buy, and the more commissions people will make.

[00:11:47] Danish Anwar: But it all starts from conflict, like artificially. Because people outside of the internet, and I do see A lot of people, just by being a comedian, you know, I'm out and about. I talk to people all the time. I'm doing shows. People want to hang out after shows. Human beings are not as angry in person as they are on the internet.

[00:12:07] Danish Anwar: It gives us the shield of anonymity and being at home kind of lets out the feral side of us. And that makes everybody believe that, Oh, this is how people are. But when you're actually face to face with the person, I've had very, very difficult conversations online and in person with the exact same human being.

[00:12:22] Danish Anwar: And it's such a, such a massive difference. When you're actually face to face, you see each other's humanity and you don't assume the worst of the other person. And you're more likely to listen, right? So there's a little bit of that where I forget who said this some famous, I think it was maybe Mike Tyson that, you know, the internet made people very comfortable with talking trash because you're not going to get punched in the face.

[00:12:42] Danish Anwar: Stability isn't there. And you're, and then you're just going to scroll over to the next fight anyway, instead of solving or resolving what the conflict was. It's all about, I'm going to say something, get the most likes and retweets and I'm out of here, right? So we're kind of in a prison of our own making 

[00:12:58] Raad Seraj: firms, Big platforms, they, by atomizing us, they also give people less information to do to sort of form judgments. Right? You go to a coffee shop, you don't give a shit who's what, who's got how much money, what religion they're from, what their political stance is.

[00:13:14] Raad Seraj: You're just like, I'm just here at a coffee shop with a bunch of people. I mean, I don't go to coffee shops not knowing anybody. It's like to hang out there and people watch. And that it, I'm anonymous, but also feel perfectly safe doing that. And that's to your point. That's how most people operate, but you go online and the way these algorithms are built, it basically meant to polarize and atomize right this time.

[00:13:34] Raad Seraj: I'm, I'm, I'm always curious. Like, you know, for me, my greatest comic heroes are like Mitch Hedberg, Bill Hicks, for example, George Carlin, you know, truth tellers. Hilarious, but truth tellers. I'm curious, like what, how do you see the the place of arts and comedy In this particular time. I don't mean like every, every joke has to have, like, it has to peel off the layers of complex social narratives and stuff like that.

[00:13:57] Raad Seraj: It can just be funny and hilarious in, in, in a world where we have increasingly prescriptive political doctrines, prescriptive technologies. Where, what, what role does art and comedy play in creating maybe a more, more nuanced language?

[00:14:14] Danish Anwar: Oh, huge role. I personally love it because it's made comedy more dangerous. It's. And for a while it was getting boring. I'm like, Oh, I can just say whatever it's fine. You know then came the purists and I'm like, Oh crap, this isn't fine. Now it's too dangerous. I've literally been like at the height of it in like the mid early to mid 2010s had been banned from like several online spaces for jokes that actually were clean enough to air on the CBC.

[00:14:41] Danish Anwar: The CBC aired some jokes that a couple of people were like, they literally Took the worst possible interpretation. I'll actually tell you what it was. I used a certain phrase. The phrase was, slaying mad pussy. Does that sound wrong to you? It's just a yeah Well the I got banned from like 12 different places because it promotes violence against women that language Because I use the word slay Slaying mad pussy.

[00:15:06] Danish Anwar: It was a pun. That joke was a pun about a guy who puts down mentally ill cats He's slaying mad pussy all day That was the whole joke and I got banned from so many places because it became you know How it is? Somebody hears a joke, they turn it into a meme, it got shared, and then people are like, Wait, this guy's in our group, and he's using violence, or using language that implies violence, blah, blah, blah, boom, boom, boom, ban, ban, ban, ban, ban.

[00:15:28] Danish Anwar: So stuff like that was a little too much, but There's still an undercurrent of danger that I like to play against. I would, I would argue most artists need something to push back against, otherwise it's boring. Otherwise, you're just kind of, at least the way I do things, you're probably just sitting there going, Well, The trees look nice, , you know, like, I'm not a poet.

[00:15:50] Danish Anwar: I'm not here to be, to talk about nice things. I'm ta I'm here with, as most comedians are to reflect back the unspoken nature of what's happening. You know, like the, the con, the funniest jokes are ones where you're like, yeah, exactly. You're relating to it. You're sitting there going, yeah, exactly. But nobody ever said that.

[00:16:07] Danish Anwar: Nobody took that thought and crystallized it because we're just living through it. It's like the two fish. And, you know, in the ocean, one fish goes, Hey, man, the water is nice. And the other fish goes, What the hell is water? So you're not aware of these things because you're constantly surrounded by it. So for for for an era that we're living through right now, there's constant bombardment from every side.

[00:16:27] Danish Anwar: There's conflict, there's anger, there's surveillance, there's just No escape from doom scrolling and the constant march to an apocalyptic end. We've got double tornadoes, fires where there shouldn't be, snow where there shouldn't be, floods where there shouldn't be. People need, I guess, not to, not to toot artists horns too much, but art is what is used to cope with that, to find a way to synthesize it into something coherent that you can now be like, yeah, this is how I feel.

[00:16:58] Danish Anwar: I haven't been able to put it into words, but this is what's going on, because so much is going on, I'm too overwhelmed. So that's the role of artists and comedians in general, in my opinion, is to, is to, you know, like bring or speak into life 

[00:17:11] Raad Seraj: find, you know, comedy is that rare form, which not only allows you to point the finger from outside to inside to yourself and go like, Oh, maybe I'm also Like this, or I am also participating in this problem, not only that, and you know, at the same time feeling safe to laugh at yourself and with others, but it's also the thing that gives you a sense of agency to your point, right?

[00:17:33] Raad Seraj: From giving the unspoken, the thing that you cannot describe that feels arbitrary, that is imposed to something goes like, Oh, okay. I kind of understand it more now. Maybe that's why.

[00:17:42] Danish Anwar: yeah, because a lot of these, a lot of these problems that we face are presented as, oh, this incredibly complicated thing that you couldn't possibly solve. Well, that's a comedian's job is to distill it into, well, no, at its heart, it's this very small thing that has ballooned into this large thing. So a lot of it is also, you know, pretty much pointing out the the simple nature of complicated things, you know, it helps people deal with it.

[00:18:06] Danish Anwar: It's like, oh, well, What can we do? We're just helpless in the face of climate change and state power and unchecked corporate Surveillance, etc, etc. That's where somebody comes in and be like, well, it's actually one two and three There's like 13 people who are in charge of all of it and here's their addresses, you know I mean not that I would recommend that but that's generally the idea is like no, it's not we're not as helpless We're just 

[00:18:29] Raad Seraj: And that's how the powers that be win, right?

[00:18:31] Danish Anwar: You know, so

[00:18:32] Raad Seraj: I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about, you know, your formative years and how you grew up. But I want to take it from the perspective of two online monikers that you've had, right? And maybe you still have. One is the brown Russian.

[00:18:44] Raad Seraj: Right? And the other is the your I. G. Handle terrorist suspect. So tell me a little bit of where those came from. And then how did you grow up? What did you grow up? I know you grew here as a diaspora. One of the she grew up in Russia and Bangladesh. Tell me a little bit about how you identify and where they come from.

[00:19:00] Danish Anwar: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, I was born and raised in the Soviet Union you know, I have no accent in Russian when I speak, which freaks out Russian people, but I also, because I left when I was 10 years old, because the country was collapsing, I sound like a 10 year old child when I try to speak, there's that call myself the Brown Russians because that's just what I heard a lot growing up, you know, there's no Brown Russians.

[00:19:20] Danish Anwar: I'm like, well, you want to see my birth certificate? You know, I'm not an American president, but I can find you a birth certificate. So that's that. It was just a straight up reflection of what I do, what I was lived through. And. My handles, most of my handles on the internet are terror suspect because post 9 11, that was imposed upon me.

[00:19:39] Danish Anwar: It's not like I had a choice, you know, and I thought it was funny because well, these people can't tell the difference between Arabs and South Asians. Right? I'm like, South Asian people didn't attack the Twin Towers, but every single one of us, especially young males, became became a target for surveillance, for harassment, for all kinds of things, right?

[00:19:59] Danish Anwar: So that was just simply another version of me reflecting back what I experienced, right? It was simply the truth. Still is, to a degree. And then growing up, you know, around, I mean, we bounced around a lot Russia to India to Bangladesh to here and a whole bunch of other places in between, always for pretty much bad reasons, country collapsed.

[00:20:19] Danish Anwar: domestic violence, running away from domestic violence, that kind of a thing. So it was always a, like, we are literal, quite literally a family of runaways. We had to pick up and leave every single time, depending on the circumstances. So that experiences like that. If they don't absolutely shatter you, they can make you very unhinged.

[00:20:42] Danish Anwar: I don't, I don't react normally to things just because of the, of my upbringing, like my reaction, for example, to the pandemic was, no, okay, cool. I know what this is like, you know, people here are about to find out people here about to find out how the rest of the world lives. You know, like I don't know if you spent a time in Bangladesh when the dengue fever, Was going around.

[00:21:02] Danish Anwar: Do you remember that? Yeah, I'm like, it's my third pandemic at this point, you know, it's just except in in that part of the world You just have to live life exactly the same way while people around you are dying off Whereas when the pandemic hit globally, especially in countries that are unaccustomed to mass catastrophe Man, that was to me low key funny I was just like, dude, you want to go build houses in places where they live like this and you can't even handle the safest version of what happens,

[00:21:30] Raad Seraj: like you get to watch TV and have groceries

[00:21:33] Danish Anwar: just as,

[00:21:33] Raad Seraj: while you live through a pandemic.

[00:21:35] Danish Anwar: exactly, exactly, you know, I was just sitting there going, you know, This, this stuff is going to expose a lot of people, like the, the, the level to which we can work from home, the government is giving us money, like at the same time that this was, we were going through that here in India, you know, that there was a massive oxygen shortage, right?

[00:21:55] Danish Anwar: Because you can't in South Asia, there's no social distancing at the best of times. There's, you know, there's a million people per square kilometer stacked on top of each other, right? The poorer the neighborhood, the denser it is. Even the rich neighborhoods are dense as hell. And they ran out of oxygen.

[00:22:08] Danish Anwar: My biological father, who's, who still lives there, who we ran away from in Bangladesh or Russia domestic violence in India, in India he's, he's Indian. I'm half Indian. My mom's Bangladeshi. So he caught COVID and I haven't spoken to this guy in like 18 years. His wife, my technical step mom calls me out of nowhere.

[00:22:28] Danish Anwar: She's like, We need you to buy oxygen for this man who would beat you and your family, which is what I had to do because, well, just out of obligation. Also, you know, it's like a family thing. I have a younger brother who has a different relationship with him. I did it for his sake. At the same time, I was hearing people complain about.

[00:22:47] Danish Anwar: Well, the, I gotta go to Starbucks wearing a mask and they have to have a barrier. And like, this is like, this is like communist China right now. I'm like, well, do you want to, you want to deal with not having oxygen? Because that's the alternative. You want to, do you want to pick between everybody above the age of 60 dying?

[00:23:10] Danish Anwar: And then you having to delay every other procedure because there's no hospital resources or Hear me out, put on a mask and stay home because the government is paying you. You know, so there's like to live in both sides because at the same time, like we ended up spending about 5, 000 Canadian to get oxygen black market oxygen, by the way, because what happened in India was, well, because what happened in India was so many people were hospitalized with COVID.

[00:23:37] Danish Anwar: Like, one of the things that COVID does is you cannot breathe. Your, your, your lungs and blood will literally not accept the oxygen coming in from your nose. There's nothing blocking you, but you're suffocating while you stand there. That's what happens. So you have to be filled like you have to be connected to a oxygen mask and so many hundreds of millions of people needed those math that they ran out of oxygen in India and not not that they ran out the you know how it is in South Asia.

[00:24:04] Danish Anwar: There's a lot of corruption. So the oxygen makers or whatever. They were like, well, everything costs. Exactly. 10, 000 times more. And that's where, like I said, my stepmother calls me. He's like, yep, I know you haven't spoken to us in almost 20 years, but he is dying.

[00:24:18] Raad Seraj: Okay.

[00:24:48] Danish Anwar: to be conspiratorial.

[00:24:49] Danish Anwar: My opinion, it's a man made virus. It's, yeah, it's a man made virus according to the CIA, according to multiple government agencies, including the U. S. Senate most like the vast majority of what we would call respectable institutions are now saying, look, man, scientifically speaking, it's impossible for an organism to evolve this quickly in this amount of time, unless there was, you know there was some intervention.

[00:25:16] Danish Anwar: And also not to state the obvious. But we got a coronavirus coming out of a place called the coronavirus lab. I'm just gonna say that I I don't like I don't want 

[00:25:26] Raad Seraj: It's a conspiracy. Don't say that.

[00:25:28] Danish Anwar: if you get syphilis and you just came back from spring break You know, you can't blame a bat or a monkey it was like what a coincidence that a Novel coronavirus came out of the same region that has the world's largest novel coronavirus research.

[00:25:47] Danish Anwar: Oh, no

[00:25:48] Raad Seraj: Right.

[00:25:49] Danish Anwar: Wonder what the big mystery is. So there's that. And the fact that it happened right around the same time that the U. S. government shut down pandemic centers, right? This was a Donald Trump decision that, why do we need pandemic centers? And the whole point of these centers was there were all these places around the world that would monitor the chance of another pandemic coming.

[00:26:07] Danish Anwar: And the moment they, they saw signs, they would take action to cut it out at the source. They took those away. People kept experimenting and now we're in this situation, man made, trying to blame the Chinese for having bad diets. That was our thing. Oh, no, you know, they eat bat soup over there, those crazy people.

[00:26:26] Raad Seraj: Or going like, oh, you know what, it was a, it was a chicken sitting on top of a rat on top of a pangolin and one shat on the other and the shit just trickled onto the lowest animal and obviously it jumped into humans. Great. That's a great theory.

[00:26:39] Danish Anwar: Yeah, exactly. It's like, Oh, you know, those open, open air fish markets, you know, those, those, those people, they, they, they like, they like to

[00:26:47] Raad Seraj: How could I be racist without being racist,

[00:26:49] Danish Anwar: never eat. And that's clear. And exactly, exactly. It was the whole thing was to me, it was hilarious. And I say that as someone who's had direct family members die from COVID, like my actual grandmother passed away from COVID.

[00:27:04] Danish Anwar: She was also quite old. So there's that, but. It's not that, it's not to say that it didn't happen. There was a virus, there is a virus still, and there was a pandemic, but the cause of it is where I'm like, eh, this is starting to sound

[00:27:18] Raad Seraj: Talk to me a little bit about the sort of personal journey you've had through that. Like I also lost family members and I happen to be in Calgary. It was, it was my own choice to move there at that time. Cause I wanted that experience of being somewhere new and, you know, being closer to nature, but also a very difficult experience, particularly if you lost family in Bangladesh, and I couldn't travel back to keep my other family members safe, you know, and having lost my uncle, who was like, you know, patriarch in the family. It was both a very dark time, but also, you know, it was a very it was a transformational moment for many reasons. I'm wondering what was the time for you, both personally, As a human being, having that experience as an artist, but also to your point, I'm curious about like, you know, you've talked about how your family left from place to place to escape abuse. And then here you were, you had to step up

[00:28:11] Danish Anwar: Mm hmm.

[00:28:11] Raad Seraj: for to preserve the life of your father, biological father, who was the source of abuse. What was that experience like and are you, what's your relationship with him now. Hmm. Hmm.

[00:28:24] Danish Anwar: Oh, I gave him the money. I haven't spoken to him since that's my relationship. I'm pretty like I said, I don't react appropriately to things. It's impossible for me. Cause you know, you grow up with trauma after trauma. There's a part of you that's like, finds a way to deal with it, you know? And there's only so many times you can be like, Oh, I'm so sad.

[00:28:41] Danish Anwar: After a while, it's like, just fuck off. You know, what do I have to deal with now? You know, a lot of the things that people experienced during the pandemic I experienced by age nine. So for me, this is really old news. Tragedy and like trauma is boring to me, quite boring, especially when it happens to me.

[00:28:58] Danish Anwar: I'm like, All right, bring it, you know, it's kind of like that so as far as you know, the whole thing about having to save the life of Basically the abuser of the family to me was like, well, okay crazy things happen. That's how it that was probably the least The smallest thing that I would like emotionally that worried me mostly it was being disappointed by people That's what the pandemic was like with me.

[00:29:20] Danish Anwar: Like wow, you guys are you don't care about anybody, you know, and the the

[00:29:24] Danish Anwar: Was surprising is how little it took for people to completely turn on each other to lose their sense of compassion. You know, like, it's like, Oh no, I, I'm slightly inconvenienced. Well, I guess Asian people suck, you know, that it went straight to racism for a lot of people.

[00:29:41] Danish Anwar: So on a personal level, you know, I, having grown up in much worse circumstances than having to stay at home with my Xbox and free government money. This was nothing on that note. On a professional level, it helped me a lot. Because quite honestly, this happened across every industry that I know of, but I'm just gonna use comedy as an example is that there was a massive culling, you know, there's a lot of people in every industry that are just there for some other tangential reason, right?

[00:30:07] Danish Anwar: They're there as a job. And I'm talking, I'm not talking about like job jobs. I'm talking about industries where you choose to participate. And that is any kind of creative industry, anything where you're like, I'm doing this because I love it. Right. It could even, it could be any kind of people who like to build things are, we'll probably say the same thing to you or have a similar experience where there was a massive calling amongst people who didn't really do comedy because they liked the art of it.

[00:30:30] Danish Anwar: It was mostly a social thing. You know, comedy attracts a lot of mentally ill people who are incapable of being anywhere else. So for a lot of those people, it's like, Oh, if I can tell two or three jokes on stage, I can have friends, other comedians, it was literally a social life for people who had. who hadn't written a new joke in 10 years, but because they had a couple jokes, they had the right to hang out with everybody else.

[00:30:51] Danish Anwar: So that whole segment got wiped out because they didn't really feel the, the absence of comedy the way some of us did. We're like, no, we really want to do this. We've got to find a way to do this. So in my case, you know, I started 

[00:31:03] Raad Seraj: remember that. I went to one of those shows. It was, it was fucking awesome.

[00:31:06] Danish Anwar: Like once a month. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:31:09] Danish Anwar: You know, we were, we were socially distanced. People wore masks, and we were just trying to have a human connection, right? There were people who tried to put on shows in barbershops, in parks, outdoor parks. Whatever it is we could do, we tried. And the people who weren't in it for the love of the game, they either quit or they moved to another city.

[00:31:29] Danish Anwar: A lot of people straight up moved back home. You know, like, the economics, you know, Of our society weren't working for us anymore. So you can't really blame them for that. So the pandemic experience for me was all of a sudden, there were fewer people in my industry, but we were all like true believers, you know, we're in it because we love this.

[00:31:49] Danish Anwar: The quality of every show spiked upwards so hard because there were no more fillers. There were no more hanger ons. There were no more social climbers. It was just. Pure comedians. So instantly the quality of the industry went up. And one thing that happened that we talked about before is that from the audience's perspective, post pandemic, having gone through like a, such a traumatic event, and now in an era of hyperinflation, people just don't have the patience for bad product or mediocre product, even.

[00:32:21] Danish Anwar: You know, nobody has time to just, yeah, it's Tuesday night. I'm just going to go, maybe go to go to a bar and then watch this open mic and maybe waste a couple hours of my time. There's no time or money to waste anymore. And I happen to live in the comedy world. I live in a very specific segment where I put on premium shows, they're on big, they're at big venues, there's production value and the tickets tickets cost a little bit more and what the biggest bane of my existence pre pandemic was being undercut by mediocre shows that would cost less and then the venues would go well, you know, I gotta, I can pay this person less.

[00:32:53] Danish Anwar: I don't care if they bring in fewer people. Post pandemic, nobody can afford to have, no venue can afford to have an empty seat on any night. So people like myself and other producers who are known for bringing in an audience every time, even if it costs the venue more, they were okay with doing it because they understood that they can't afford to have an off night anymore.

[00:33:13] Danish Anwar: So all of a sudden there was a culling and there was a concentration of work amongst pretty much I will say the top 10%. And then now we're kind of seeing like a resurgence, like a little bit of I guess nature is healing. There's more newcomers coming back into the fold and we're kind of seeing a little bit of the old style of doing things, but not, not, it's never going to go back to that because from the audience's perspective, there's just no appetite for fucking around.

[00:33:41] Danish Anwar: If you're not good at it, people do not have the patience for you anymore. So, you know, there's been a real hardening and there's been kind of, I mean, to my ear, to my

[00:33:50] Raad Seraj: feel like that's happened because I mean, obviously inflation, everything costing more, you know, people losing their jobs and stuff is part of this, but do you feel like post pandemic people have an innate sense of why art is important? Why being in community is important? Why experiencing music and live performance in person is important?

[00:34:10] Danish Anwar: Yeah, I think what really happened is people stopped taking things for granted out here. I think there's a more, a lot more respect for time and your life now. Having gone through something that is, that was life threatening. A lot of people in the Global North, you know, Have not gone through anything like that.

[00:34:23] Danish Anwar: There's like a, that sense of complacency that oh, I'll just do it tomorrow. It's gone. Everybody's on survival mode the way the rest of the world operates. The rest of the world knows that tomorrow isn't promised. And I think the global north knows that as well. If tomorrow isn't promised, you're not going to waste your time.

[00:34:40] Danish Anwar: You know, you're not going to waste your time. You're not going to waste your energy. You're not going to waste your money. You're going to do things. that feel good to you with the people you want to be with. And you're not going to waste time on people who don't have your back, fake friends, bad nights out, poor quality food.

[00:34:54] Danish Anwar: You know, the, the, the, the level, there's no patience for

[00:34:57] Raad Seraj: you know, you started describing the pandemic as like you spent a lot of time being disappointed in people, but this is sounds like a good outcome, right? People are genuinely more kind, perhaps to themselves and to people around them, because to your point, their tomorrow is not promised. You can't take any of the shit with you,

[00:35:14] Danish Anwar: Yeah 

[00:35:14] Raad Seraj: I wanna, I'm gonna position comedy and perhaps art, you know, speaking as not a comedian, but as an artist in some way is that there is this, you know, part where art becomes performance when you're skilled, right? You're, you're, you're, you're the master of your craft.

[00:35:29] Raad Seraj: And then there's the art part of the art that is therapeutic. Generally, it gives you something It's a tool to look inwards. From that perspective, tell me about how and why psychedelics are important. Mushrooms, cannabis, all, you know plant medicines are important or what role do they play in your life, both in terms of therapy as well as enhancing your performance.

[00:35:52] Danish Anwar: Yeah. I mean I personally, I'm sober on stage, you know, I'm not one of those people like I used to maybe smoke a joint and go on stage, but I've over time I've realized I'm way better when I'm sober on stage, I use mushrooms and cannabis to pretty much to self medicate because I have a pathological distrust of pills.

[00:36:10] Danish Anwar: It's not, I think it's a like, how do I say it? It's a personal thing, I don't distrust them, it's just I don't like to change my body chemistry from something made in a lab. If I have a headache, I'd rather smoke an indica than take Tylenol. I still think people should be on medication if they need it.

[00:36:26] Danish Anwar: I just personally have an aversion because I'm a weirdo. You know, I'm not a science denier, I think science rocks. And I think medical science in particular, like I'm brown, I have a lot of doctors in my family. I believe in doctors and the kind of people who choose to be doctors. I just don't like stuff in my blood that

[00:36:45] Raad Seraj: Defaulting to pill popping, you mean like defaulting to that kind

[00:36:48] Danish Anwar: in my particular case Yeah, yeah, I'd rather try to figure it out. Like, I know that that changes with age. I'm 38, you know, at the moment. So if you're, you know, I'm not super old, but I'm not super young either. But at some, you know, there's a point to where there's a certain point at which you can still depend on your body to fix things.

[00:37:05] Danish Anwar: But there comes a point where now, okay, now you need intervention from medical science, pills, etc. I'll probably get to that point. I will get to that point at some point, we'll cross that bridge and I will be, I won't have any problems taking medication then. I'm just trying to avoid it as much as I can.

[00:37:22] Danish Anwar: Like for example, I very obviously have ADD, ADHD, whatever you want to call it, you know. And instead of being on medication for it, I'll smoke weed to help me focus. It helps me to relax, it helps me, if I'm, when I'm completely sober, I'll do 15 different things and not finish a single one. If I smoke, I can focus on like three of those things.

[00:37:42] Danish Anwar: You know, and get them done. I've been, I've heard of, you know, like ADD medication, how it's helped a lot of comedians, etc. I've just been avoiding it myself. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll be on it. Not so far. Mushrooms help me sort of clear like the, the year, not years, but like weeks of mental trash that accumulates in your mind.

[00:38:04] Danish Anwar: That's what ends up happening. Like you might be going about your day. Maybe somebody bumped you into you or somebody murmured something the wrong way and you got, you got mad about it, but then you didn't do anything, but it's still in the back of your head. And as you live your life, all these little annoyances they accumulate without you knowing, creating a burden on your mental health.

[00:38:23] Danish Anwar: So I find that when I do mushrooms, it's, It's like a concentrated form of therapy because suddenly I am forced to deal with all these things that I didn't even realize I was dealing with. Like, I didn't realize I was still mad about this guy who charged me 20 bucks extra for weed at the dispensary by accident.

[00:38:39] Danish Anwar: Like, it's not his fault. He was stoned and I was too stoned to even correct him. I'm like, okay, I guess I'll pay 140 bucks for a beer. For a quarter, I was mad about it for like 20 minutes, but then I forgot. I'm like, yeah, whatever. I'll just, and, but then that's still in the back of my head. It's still poking and prodding.

[00:38:56] Danish Anwar: So mushrooms helped me clear out that the detritus, the trash that has accumulated and I guess that is essentially therapy, you know, vocalizing what you haven't, what you didn't vocalize and want to vocalize and want to face. And I always come out much more clear headed. You know, unburdened as well, because, you know, I've heard this a lot.

[00:39:17] Danish Anwar: You do mushrooms and you end up crying because, Oh no, I was so mean to my mom when I was 12. You know, all these things just start bubbling up to the surface. So that's kind of I use, I use mushrooms to rejuvenate

[00:39:27] Raad Seraj: Is there any particular experience that stands out as the most meaningful?

[00:39:32] Danish Anwar: Oh, I've had a few. I've had a few. I'll tell you one, which was some would consider it a bad trip. Because when I'm on Mushrooms, I'll just, you know, I'll sit on my balcony and I'll just stare at the view and be lost in my thoughts and, you know, unpack things that need to be unpacked, that kind of a thing.

[00:39:48] Danish Anwar: If somebody were to see me on Mushrooms, they would just see a guy sitting there for eight hours straight. You know, a single tear rolling down his cheek like that, remembering something, something wrong or some injustice I committed, that sort of a thing. But the most interesting and memorable trip I had because was I was hanging out on my balcony and what I do before I do mushrooms is I try to load up my brain with whatever I want to think about, right?

[00:40:10] Danish Anwar: Like it's intentional. Maybe I want to think about X, Y, Z. So I'll do a read on it. I'll focus on it. And then I'll eat the mushrooms. And this particular instance I was watching some stuff about reality, about quantum physics. And, you know, I'm like trying to decode the, what really is or isn't, you know, the universe, et cetera, very cliche stoner mushroom behavior.

[00:40:30] Danish Anwar: Right. So, yeah, so I was reading upon all that. I'm like, you know what, let's do some mushrooms and synthesize all the data that's in that I've absorbed and see what I get. Right. So I'm on my balcony and trigger warning for unaligning type of conversation. So I'm on my balcony, I'm just looking out, and I'm thinking like, you know, the only way you will find out what reality is, is after you die.

[00:40:48] Danish Anwar: That's the only way. That's literally, unless we make some machine that can cross dimensions or whatever, with technology as it is right now, I guess I'll find out, my thought was, I guess I'll find out when I die, right? As I'm saying, as I'm thinking this, I literally had an auditory hallucination. Where I heard voices from outside.

[00:41:05] Danish Anwar: One guy goes, Kill yourself. Right? And I literally look and I'm like, what? And then I hear the same voice, other shoulder, Just kill yourself. You'll find out. And my first reaction was, Don't tell me what to do. You don't pay rent here. I'm just talking to myself at this point. I'm full on schizo at this point.

[00:41:22] Danish Anwar: And so I'm like, alright, I'm on mushrooms. I'm thinking about the nature of reality and how you'll find it out when you're dead. So that's what's happening I was lucid enough to be like, you know what? Let's just walk away from the balcony Let's go sit in my living room pet my dog. We're just hanging out there till the the till the The high passes on so as that happened, I realized oh, this is what people mean by you know, like like being like the What's the word?

[00:41:47] Danish Anwar: There's a term for when you go full something on psychedelics, when reality doesn't seem real anymore. It's escaping me right now, because at that point, I was like really into what, how we connect to each other and what it means to be real. And is this table here or not? And I'm hearing voices that are that to me seem like they're coming outside of my body.

[00:42:11] Danish Anwar: Like I said before, I think, well, before we record it, I don't really do a like a big dosage of shrooms. I'll do maybe a gram, gram and a half, where you're still functional. I could, like, on that dosage, I've gone

[00:42:20] Raad Seraj: done groceries at the ground and a

[00:42:21] Raad Seraj: half. Wow. lights. I've done show. Yeah, yeah. I mean, one time with an ex, we did about a gram and a half, and then we went to brunch, and we were giggling so, like, it was like school children.

[00:42:36] Danish Anwar: We just sat there with our eggs going, this used to be a living thing, you know, just like we're eating an egg, you know, just this dumb things like that. But generally speaking, that was probably, I guess, the only time where I've had like an experience where like, wow, this is this is interesting, but most of the time it's been very therapeutic in a very on a more basic way where I'm simply confronting things that I pushed to the back of my mind.

[00:42:59] Danish Anwar: Right, so, and that happens all the time. I don't know if that's, if that's what you meant by something poignant, but like I've always been able to answer questions that I haven't been able to answer sober, but on mushrooms. Because they open up my mind to possibilities I've blocked myself away from right like a much like you have I guess what it's called conditioning, right?

[00:43:20] Danish Anwar: We go through our life and we pick up all these habits, these rules, these conventions, and we live our lives in according to that without even knowing. And I find that when I'm on mushrooms, all my conditioning goes away. Suddenly. Everything looks new as if I'm looking at it for the first time. Now you're back to the beginner mindset because by the time you get through a game, through a career or whatever, you've picked up all these habits and you've gotten good at it, but you've also kind of, you end up in a specialization and I find that mushrooms break open those shackles and suddenly you're back to the beginning and you're like, yeah, why do I do that?

[00:43:53] Danish Anwar: Why am I like this? Why did I think that this is how it has to be? And that is an ongoing thing. And I think that's. For me, that's the most that's the most important and the most attractive part of doing mushrooms is that it opens up my mind to possibilities that were always there, but I didn't see because I

[00:44:10] Raad Seraj: may reverse the childlike state where you ask the basic questions, the hardest questions, but the basic questions, right? And you're not jaded by the sort of layers and, you know, and the bullshit that comes with just getting old and living and stuff like that. What role would you say

[00:44:24] Danish Anwar: Yeah,

[00:44:25] Raad Seraj: mushrooms or psychedelics have played in keeping you hopeful?

[00:44:28] Raad Seraj: And I say this with the, you know, George Carlin had this saying, right? The inside every cynic lived a disappointed idealist. But these Bill Hicks, George Carlin were still out, I think ultimately very hopeful people because they talked about compassion a lot. It was about being better people, a better culture.

[00:44:44] Raad Seraj: Yeah. So sometimes it came out as misanthropic and stuff like that, but that's delivery. That's a, that's their style. But like, how, how do you remain hopeful?

[00:44:53] Danish Anwar: Oh, that's

[00:44:54] Raad Seraj: mean, you strike me as somebody's hopeful person, even though if you declaim me,

[00:44:57] Danish Anwar: not a hopeful I guess that is one interpretation because I pathologically look at the, people would say I look at the bright side of things. I look at the side of things I can influence. That's how I look at it, you know? 'cause to use comedy as an example, you know, there, there are times when you do a show because it is, it is creatively fulfilling and you are on stage expressing yourself the way you want to.

[00:45:23] Danish Anwar: And there are times you get hired to do a show to use your skills in a particular way that the client wants. Right? So those are called road gigs. They are tedious as hell. You're in a Boston pizza because Boston pizza wanted to have an employment employee appreciation party. Nobody's looking at you.

[00:45:40] Danish Anwar: They're eating their dinner. The lights are on. You're literally just background noise, right? And a lot of people hate that. A lot of comedians hate that kind of a show because it is tedious. I look at it as I'm there's like two extra zeros in my paycheck because Boston pizza has money. The creatively fulfilling shows, right?

[00:45:59] Danish Anwar: Are usually single digit paying. You're, you're getting a coffee, but you're getting, you get to fully express yourself and in either case, you can do one of two things. You can either focus on the negative side of it, or you can focus on the reason why you're there. So I always focus on, well, I don't want to do the show as a creative person, but as a rent paying person, this is the best day of my life by doing this.

[00:46:22] Danish Anwar: Absolutely horrendous, unfulfilling hour and a half in front of 20 people who are at a work event and would rather be at home playing League of Legends is fine by me because at the end of the day, this means I just made my entire

[00:46:37] Raad Seraj: And I really like this perspective because, you know, and

[00:46:40] Danish Anwar: So I wouldn't say 

[00:46:40] Raad Seraj: in an interview that I'd read, it's, it's a very practical approach that actually would allow more artists to be artists. If they just accept that you don't have to be a fucking starving artist, paying your bills and not having to worry about it is a good thing.

[00:46:53] Danish Anwar: Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. It's very hard to be creative when you're worried about rent, when you're worried about whether you can eat, right? So that peace of mind is, it makes or breaks people. You know, if you're literally starving, you're not going to be funny. You're not going to be creative. You're just going to be hungry, right?

[00:47:12] Danish Anwar: So my approach just with everything is I know not to beat my head against the wall because I grew up with it. I grew up with it. Like circumstances that are impossible for a child to break out of. So I have a lifetime of accumulated habits of how can I make the best of this in these circumstances?

[00:47:32] Danish Anwar: Right. So that's kind of how it is. Our circumstances on the planet right now are bleak, you know, so I wouldn't say it's not that I'm hopeful. It's more like I'm pretty confident that I'll find a way out and that most people will find a way out, you know I just don't think the world will be what it was and if that's how it has to be That's how it has to be if you just kind of it's a cliche But you have to accept the things you cannot change.

[00:47:58] Danish Anwar: Otherwise, you'll go crazy. You'll go crazy thinking why doesn't this happen? Shut up. Think about how you can move through this how you can make something out of it how you can deflect construct and Whatever it is, you have to figure out how you can move with something that will absolutely not change.

[00:48:16] Danish Anwar: That's, that's, if it's hoped, so be it. For me, it's more, it's, I guess, not even pragmatism. It's just how my

[00:48:22] Raad Seraj: Well, I was very Buddhist, too, right? You, you act on the things you can change, right? And I think when I say hope, to me, at least, I don't mean like hope of a better world in the sort of like the Disney cliche sense. I mean, hopeful in the sense that human beings are creative, and we might be on this arc of history where we perish.

[00:48:39] Raad Seraj: Just like the fucking dinosaurs, just like every other civilization, because we haven't learned, because we have a collective, you know, amnesia as a culture. But what gives me hope is that human beings, when we connect through art, through experiences, through sharing experiences, we are inherently better, stronger people.

[00:48:57] Raad Seraj: I, I'm hopeful about the resilience of human, of cultures, of communities.

[00:49:02] Danish Anwar: Yeah. Yeah. You know, resilience is the right word here because, you know, if you, you, you, you've been in Bangladesh and other parts of the world, like I have had the poor experience in every other country, like, and to be poor in one of the poorest countries on earth, that's a very, very unique thing. And even while living.

[00:49:19] Danish Anwar: In like a really bad part of Dhaka, really I saw how resilient people are in circumstances that when I try not to tell people because it bums them out, it straight up bums people out when I tell people about my childhood, you know, because I, for example, I've been doing this bit about how I'm the bummer friend because every time you ask me something, the reason behind it is so sad, right?

[00:49:42] Danish Anwar: Because I literally, I'm 38, I 

[00:49:44] Raad Seraj: still don't know how to swim So you're better than I

[00:49:46] Danish Anwar: the age of 37. It's the

[00:49:48] Raad Seraj: don't believe that for a second, man. But good for you.

[00:49:50] Danish Anwar: show you. Oh see, I didn't either. I didn't either, but the, you know, the thought that changed me was even a baby can swim. So there's obviously a relationship between water and the human body that works.

[00:50:00] Danish Anwar: That's kind of the thing I went in with. And. When I tell people, yeah, I just learned to swim and they're like, wow, that's so cool. You know, it's good to pick up a new skill later in life. And my, all my, why didn't you? And my answer is always, well, cause I barely had clean drinking water as a kid, much less something to swim in because they're expecting something like, Oh, you were just probably low hydrophobia.

[00:50:19] Danish Anwar: I'm like, no, I love water. It's just, I was poor. We had parasites in our drinking water. We didn't have water to splash around in. We barely had water to drink. So, you know, when you come from those circumstances and you see how people still overcome that. You know, I grew up in very tough situations where everybody around me was still a human being about it.

[00:50:36] Danish Anwar: They were struggling, but there was still, you know, there was family, there's friendships, there's love, there's all of that. So that knowing that baseline about humanity makes it very easy for me. To navigate whatever's going on around. I'm like, cause my answer is always like, trust me, you'll be fine. You 

[00:50:52] Raad Seraj: you 

[00:50:53] Danish Anwar: know how strong you are.

[00:50:54] Danish Anwar: You will

[00:50:54] Raad Seraj: So you're a hopeful

[00:50:55] Danish Anwar: I know. Cause I've

[00:50:56] Danish Anwar: Yeah, sure. I think it's just anthropology. I just think I

[00:50:59] Raad Seraj: last question. So we've gone through quite a bit. Quite a journey here as a. Diaspora Bangladeshi as a, you know, successful seasoned artist, comic somebody who is, you know, very active in Toronto, you have things that you've built globally. What advice would you give to aspiring artists, Bangladeshis like us? There's lots of Bangladeshis I find in the diaspora that are afraid of walking the unconventional path. And I understand that. It comes from a collective trauma of not having security and safety and generational wealth and so on. What advice do you have for anyone who wants to pursue the arts or comedy?

[00:51:38] Raad Seraj: Ooh.

[00:51:41] Danish Anwar: Don't do it. It's a tough life. I don't want the competition, but if you are going to do it, do what makes you happy. And I know that sounds cliche, but it's true for a reason. The arts, comedy in particular, is not easy. You can make a lot more money with 10 percent of the effort elsewhere. So if you're doing this, don't make it tedious for yourself.

[00:52:04] Danish Anwar: You know, a lot of people end up trying to copy other trends, styles. They wake up in the morning. They're like, Oh, I got a so and so posted this and got 12 million views. I have to do that thing. If you do that, you're going to be miserable. So if you're in any form of art, if you don't do it for yourself, the tedium of it and the difficulty of it will be unsurmountable because you don't enjoy it.

[00:52:26] Danish Anwar: If you don't enjoy something and you want to get paid for it, there's a day job for that. Just go do that. But if you're gonna go get into the arts, make sure to whatever the art is, whatever your process is, that it gives you joy because that'll be the only thing motivating you to get better at it, right?

[00:52:41] Danish Anwar: Like, just the way, like, to use a gaming example, I'm a huge gamer. I play the games I like and I'm good at those games and I don't play the games I don't like. It's simple as that because I have a choice here. I don't play turn based games. I know Baldur's Gate 3 is huge right now. Personally, not a huge fan of turn based combat.

[00:52:57] Danish Anwar: I prefer real time. I prefer games that are toxic as hell. You know, I don't like, I don't like, you know, agreeable Stardew Valley type of The Sims 4 or whatever. Like I need drama. I need toxicity. I need people to be calling each other slurs on the mic, you know? So that's what I do. Cause I enjoy it. And I'll spend a lot of time on it.

[00:53:17] Danish Anwar: Same with any kind of art. Do the thing that you enjoy because you will need that to motivate you to the absolute hell. You have walked into because it is not for the weak of heart. It

[00:53:30] Raad Seraj: Thank you. Very practical advice. Appreciate that. Thanks so much. I really appreciate you spending all this time and really going through a journey. I think it's super inspiring. And again, as a fellow Bangladeshi, it really, I think it's very inspiring to see someone on the global stage doing the thing that you're coming from the life that you've lived.

[00:53:45] Raad Seraj: So I appreciate it.

[00:53:47] Danish Anwar: No, thank you. Appreciate you having me. I'm like I said, i'm gonna right after this. I'm gonna go get me

[00:53:51] Raad Seraj: You also seem to be buying drugs like people bought drugs

[00:53:54] Danish Anwar: what happens this You don't have to do those things anymore.

[00:53:56] Danish Anwar: Yeah. Yeah, I like I don't like that. It's legal but that's just my

[00:54:01] Raad Seraj: You need some drama.

[00:54:02] Danish Anwar: authoritarian contrarian thing where i'm like I need, it's the only thing I understand, and I'm sorry to bring up this man's name, Elon Musk, is the only thing I understand about him. The guys, Obviously out of his mind, but the only thing I can relate to is he loves drama.

[00:54:18] Danish Anwar: The only reason he bought Twitter is because Tesla and SpaceX are doing so well, they don't need him anymore, and he needs to fight something. Guy's a moron, guy's the worst businessman I've ever seen in my life, but holy crap do I relate to this guy wanting to blow everything up just so he has something to do in the morning.

[00:54:33] Danish Anwar: I get it. I get it. I need to buy my drugs where there's an element of danger. I just can't, I can't walk into a place and it's all brightly lit and there's a receipt. What? What are we doing here? 

[00:54:45] Raad Seraj: A very unconventional ending talking about buying mushrooms and Elon Musk being a terrible businessman. Thanks Danish. I appreciate it, man.

[00:54:50] Danish Anwar: Sweet. Thanks a lot.