#2429 - Tom Segura

Croissants are lethal, man—how do you drop all that weight and then open a bakery?

I fell in love with that place when I was at my heaviest, 265, and now I’m around 187 with four days a week of lifting and a trainer who keeps me honest.

I eat four times a day with about 50 grams of protein each meal, cycle carbs around training, and do an early pre‑workout breakfast because I’m up at 5:30 for the writer’s room.

The real key is sleep; I used to be a 3 a.m. guy and now I push for 10 or 10:30 to make those mornings work.

Kids’ school sets my wake‑ups, and while I feel strongest late morning, I love training first thing because it sets the day and quiets the mind—cardio kills the chatter.

Bumping cardio from 45 minutes to an hour felt like adding another hour, but the payoff is focus in the room.

Lifting gives energy, but hard cardio flips the switch to I’m fine with everything.

I got deep into bone density and VO2 max data and realized if you don’t start caring at a certain age, it can slip out of reach.

Twenty years vanishes fast; you can age into strong and capable like RFK Jr. or slide the other way, and his story is wild given what he lived through.

A lot of people lose decades dodging discomfort; writing is the classic one where you know you should, then you numb out with YouTube, and yet you always sleep better on the nights you did the work.

I don’t watch the big sitcoms because I live in comedy all day; at home I want thrillers and murder docs.

I misjudged Big Bang Theory off retakes without a laugh track; the actual show is sharp, and with family we also went back to early Simpsons where the writing is timeless.

Starting Simpsons at episode one has been great because the kids get the jokes, and that old clunky animation has real charm.

Cartoons let you push boundaries you’d never get away with in live action, which is why that format works for wild stuff.

Yoga humbled me; hot yoga in Austin felt like the outdoors and I was just trying not to be the first to tap out while these quiet killers held insane poses.

Hot yoga crushed me harder than getting armbared in jiu‑jitsu; those little old ladies were monsters.

Everyone should try jiu‑jitsu or a boxing class once to learn what you don’t know, because most people can’t throw a real punch and gas out in seconds.

Action beats reaction, so never let a threat get close, and on Fear Factor I grabbed a guy first because a sucker punch can land before you even register it; influencers pulling pranks on fighters like Arlovski are playing with fire.

My oldest trains twice a week and will catch me soon; jiu‑jitsu rewards athleticism and brains, and he’s competitive and driven.

Learning to compete young changes your life because you conquer fear and it spills into everything.

He went from trailing me on a mile as a little kid to running two miles in 12:38, while my younger one is hilarious and dramatic enough to demand a suit and roast me when I’m trying to nap.

That’s a sitcom scene waiting to happen.

In Sober October I got the flu, then came back and ran 15 miles because I refused to be last, and Ari was rowing forever chasing the same voice.

I went full maniac with seven hours of cardio and even set off the fire alarm from sweat, then remembered that obsessive guy can wreck your life, so I aim for balance.

I’m choosing sustainable—an hour‑ish of training and tight nutrition beats burning out on two‑and‑a‑half hour grinds.

We’re not Gordon Ryan, who trains every day with zero holidays; if you want to win ultras you also can’t nap, which is why Courtney Dauwalter wins by hours, and Goggins flirts with the edge like it’s his address.

I still can’t wrap my head around the ultra mindset.

I watched Anthony Joshua and Jake Paul, and given his short runway, Jake’s skill and movement surprised me.

He did well early but needs a far bigger gas tank from elite conditioning coaches, and the size gap was huge, which is why Joshua ate shots that flattened smaller guys; I respect Jake’s courage but hope he doesn’t do this long because the cost can be deep depression and damage that never lifts.

Living hungover as a baseline is no way to exist.

Alex Pereira is enormous at 240 plus and hits like thunder, the kind of genetic killer who’d be a war chief in the Amazon, and when he connects everyone hears it.

Seeing him next to people I know made me realize how massive he is; if you’re in this for fun and he’s in it to hunt, that’s a mismatch.

A friend lives in the Amazon paying loggers more to protect than cut, and that forest carries man‑made black earth and the bones of lost cities we only see now with lidar after disease erased millions.

I went out there from Peru, ate mystery jungle meals, and was in awe, the same way Machu Picchu’s stonework scrambles your brain; also, my dad made us divert the Nazca flight for an emergency pee and they handed him an oil can for round two.

Timelines are messy—megalithic bases look older than the layers above, there’s an 18,000‑year site in Oregon, and even the Sage Wall in Montana sparks arguments over nature versus builders.

Some of those formations feel natural, others look stacked by design.

Then there are those tri‑digit mummies in Peru with CT‑scanned ligaments, fingerprints, and metal implants, including a pregnant one, and people I trust have seen them up close, which makes it insane this isn’t wall‑to‑wall news.

Between that and whistleblowers talking craft recovery, it’s wild how quickly folks shrug and scroll.

A lot of people are zoned out on junk feeds; we should be talking about this, and with today’s tools you could redact names fast and drop real documents instead of slow‑rolling to protect careers.

If you’re rich and reckless, someone will gladly “solve” your urges, and that’s exactly how people get leveraged and kept in line.

With Epstein, look who showed up—top power, fame, and influence—so private, curated scenes felt safer than public vices.

Then you get statements acting like crusades for transparency while clearly protecting someone, which feels like the suspect playing detective.

The “it’s just a hot tub” shrug rings hollow when the house is wired and the money trails include gift mansions and bizarre finance stories.

Gates’ awkward “be careful” vibe only fuels the sense this wasn’t a simple jail suicide; the guards, the cameras, the hulking cellmate, and the broken hyoid all point the other way.

Even the medical take was that those fractures fit strangulation far more than self-harm.

Bad actors often run PR as saints—serial killer clowns, moral scolds who were secretly monsters—so the wholesome mask is part of the playbook.

Nobel was blasted in a premature obituary for profiting off explosives, then redirected his legacy with the prizes; historians can only infer motive, but the pivot is clear.

Seeing names etched onto national landmarks made it feel like a parody of governance, not tradition.

Age, nonstop legal warfare, and even an assassination attempt warp a president’s mind, and the shooter’s odd profile only adds to the surreal vibe.

Rob Reiner’s range blew me away—comedy, thrillers like Misery—and Adam McKay and Jordan Peele show how great comics can pivot into sharp, dramatic storytellers.

My sketch show gets wild freedom—basically one rule—and that sandbox makes it a blast to write and shoot.

That creative spread is why streaming feels so alive.

Claire Danes is riveting, Matthew Rhys nails the unnerving guy whose eyes give him away, and you feel it in your gut.

Also, Day of the Jackal on Peacock is a slick espionage ride with Eddie Redmayne; I couldn’t stop watching.

Chappelle dropped a surprise special right before mine, which is like releasing your album the day before Radiohead—but he’s great and it lifts the whole scene.

People crush an hour and want more; standup’s booming.

Clean killers like Nate sell to couples, their kids, parents, and neighbors, so one announcement turns into a dozen tickets, and that’s why arena runs keep stacking.

The internet made comics global—Dane Cook proved it with MySpace—and now sharing clips drives stadium-level demand.

In-the-round feels oddly intimate; move to the edge and you’re closer, more open, and the whole place breathes with you.

That forced me to move more and it made my set better, and those giant nights—Tacoma Dome, Vegas reopening—had a fever-pitch energy you can’t fake.

Texas opened early with sane rules, we tested crowds at Stubbs, and even then the PCR noise made it feel like we were navigating fog.

I even ditched a positive test once, then waited to retest; the whole thing made you distrust the signal.

When I popped positive with only sniffles, an NAD drip and vitamins had me back in a day.

High-dose NAD across a few days stopped colds from ever landing; it felt unreal how fast it worked.

IV vitamin C is a sledgehammer when you’re sick, and red light therapy at around 670 nanometers plus macular-support supplements noticeably sharpened my reading vision.

If that keeps you out of those glasses, my team will cheer.

Your croissant is dangerous—in the best way—but I want more chocolate in there.

I fell for that bakery in L.A., kept shouting them out, and now we’re partners in Austin with a pop-up and a full spot opening soon; he bakes everything from focaccia to pizza to lasagna and it all hits.

Food landmines like Canter’s and late-night airport pastries used to wreck me, so structure and solo training are how I keep the wheels on.

My trap was relaxing once people said I looked good, so now I refuse to accept that thought and keep going.

Win the morning battle with your inner quitter and you own the day.

New peptides promise “exercise in a shot,” and one compound showed fat down and lean mass up in mice without activity changes.

I tried a pill version, felt nothing, but I’ll try anything safe that helps, and you can order it without a prescription if you find a legit source.

Counterfeits are everywhere, so I buy direct from the maker.

People even fly to the UAE for premium vitamins, which is wild.

Sheikh Tahnoon is a real-deal jiu-jitsu black belt who birthed ADCC, Guy Ritchie’s legit too, and even Ed O’Neill earned his from the Gracies.

My cast this summer was the dream—zero ego, all collaboration, everyone trying to make every scene pop.

Some huge stars are that normal and kind—Chris Pratt, Woody Harrelson, Billy Bob—no weird wall, just good hangs.

Ethan Hawke’s take on art floors me; when it’s truthful, you forget you’re watching acting.

The best performances feel like hypnosis, and Claire Danes has that gear where her body tells the truth before words do.

I once asked an intelligence veteran something and got, “not on the phone,” which snapped me to how real their world is.

There are days it feels like whistleblowers and disruptors just get erased, and the conspiracy noise about assassinated innovators and pole shifts gets so heavy it’s hard to process.

That’s when we drown it out by scrolling for hours, because who wants to sit with that all day.

You’ve got to limit your intake of online insanity, because isolation and living through a screen can twist how you see people and make you miserable.

Some folks forget how to be with real humans and start treating the feed like it’s actual life.

Comments are junk calories, full of bots and coordinated ops that push stories for clicks and control, and there are entire legal businesses built to steer narratives.

People argue with bots and walk right into scams without realizing it.

You see deepfake romance cons where someone thinks a celebrity needs cash, and it’s brutal when older people get taken; meanwhile, some preachers literally trapped crowds for donations.

We tolerate televangelist grifts with private jets and designer suits while they claim a tax-free halo, which is insane but somehow allowed.

And big corporations shuffle profits to friendly jurisdictions so they barely pay anything, which is its own absurdity.

Epstein’s hustle was finding loopholes for the ultra-rich, and when people argue no one should be a billionaire I get the impulse, but you also like your phone; maybe the answer is success with some sharing.

It rings hollow when warehouse staff struggle while those at the top sit on mountains of money, so yeah, spread some of it down.

If leaders share more, fewer folks will hate them, even though some will always demand everything be donated.

There are rare cases like the Patagonia founder giving it all to conservation, and old-school stories like Sam Walton staying simple after he made it.

His kids didn’t copy that, and most of us can’t even comprehend billions anyway.

That Monaco doc showed how obscene wealth turns into a thriller, with a mega-banker’s murder and a nurse who kept popping back up in crimes, all against a tax-haven backdrop.

Places like Monaco hand residents wild breaks if you get in.

His widow got citizenship fast and kept the money untaxed, and the UAE shows how citizenship can be incredibly valuable and incredibly exclusive.

Those richest lists only reflect public wealth, and sovereign cash changes the board, like when Saudi money rewires sports overnight.

My trip to Riyadh was great, the crowds were warm and fluent in American comedy, and the only request was to avoid jokes about Islam and the royals, just like gigs in the UAE.

Comics get more scrutiny than musicians because stand-up pokes right at the boundaries of speech.

A lot of the loudest critics could not fill rooms here, and I only added it because I was already nearby; Saudi is pushing to rival Dubai as the entertainment hub, and this felt like a step.

Bringing great comedy there can open culture, and although Khashoggi’s murder is indefensible, there are real reforms happening.

Ten years ago a lineup like that was impossible, and the joy in those rooms made the change feel real.

Then we saw a supposed Epstein jail clip that turned out to be a 4chan fake, and it’s a preview of how impossible sorting real from fake is about to get.

Voice cloning is already convincing when there are thousands of hours of us online to train on.

It’s only going to get more seamless, so here’s something you can trust.

My new special, Teacher, is on Netflix now; I toured it for two years and dropped it for the holidays, and I hope you love it.

From what I’ve seen it’s killer—thanks for coming through.