Sal Vulcano — Comedian and one of the stars of the hidden-camera show Impractical Jokers. A stand-up touring nationally who recently became a father again and is filming his show's 12th season.
The gist
This wide-ranging conversation opens with Sal describing how he started working with a personal trainer at 48 and got in-depth blood work, with Joe coaching him on building fitness slowly and keeping momentum. From there the two wander through Sal's disastrous youth basketball team, art collecting and the theory that the CIA propped up modern art as Cold War propaganda, and Joe's deep dive into archery and bow hunting. The back half turns to the paranormal: Sal retells a ghost-encounter story about a hand squeezing his while he slept, and Joe shares haunting tales from the Comedy Store's mob-club history. They close on the mystery drones over New Jersey, Chinese drone superiority, AI and AGI timelines, gruesome machete-fight videos, and how George Washington was essentially killed by his own bloodletting doctors. Throughout, the tone is comedic storytelling rather than product recommendations.
Big reveals
- Sal's in-depth blood work flagged a genetic variant (the elastin gene) making him susceptible to soft-tissue injury.
- Sal's grammar-school basketball team lost its first game 44-0 while opposing parents chanted the score in his face.
- Joe lays out the theory that the CIA secretly propped up modern artists like Pollock as Cold War cultural propaganda.
- Sal recounts being thrown on stage to open for Imagine Dragons in front of ~15,000 people, getting booed and pelted with ice.
- Sal retells his ghost story: a hand squeezed his while he lay awake, alone, behind a locked door.
- Sal admits he Amazon-Primed a machete for home defense and hid it in the bed, upsetting his wife.
- Joe explains George Washington was effectively killed by leeches and bloodletting after catching a common cold.
- Sal reveals he has photorealistic tattoos of Jaden Smith on both thighs done as a recurring TV-show bit.
Things worth remembering
- A hunting arrow travels roughly 279 feet per second; a fast bow can hit 340 fps (about 232 mph).
- Mongol bows required up to 160 pounds of draw, and some skeletons were physically disfigured from the strain.
- Practicing a kick or skill on your weak side improves your dominant side by deepening understanding of the movement.
- The Comedy Store was once Ciro's, a 1930s mob nightclub where Mickey Cohen had peepholes drilled to watch the doors.
- Only three U.S. states (Alaska, California, South Dakota) require disclosing a death on a property, often within 12 months to 3 years.
- A total of about 32 ounces of blood was extracted from George Washington during his final bleeding.
- Washington was given a set of fake teeth reportedly made partly from slaves' and horse teeth set in a lead mold.
- Bull sharks bit the fins off a free diver's feet because the fins were painted with fish scales.
- AGI / peak machine 'super intelligence' is commonly predicted around 2040-2050, with some estimates in the 2030s.