Episode 1: Seth Rogen & Lauren Miller Rogen

Edibles. I don't mess with that. Snoop Dogg doesn't eat edibles.

Oh, wow.

That's how wild the variation on edibles is. And I do not recommend this.

I love learning. Even if a topic's complex, I like to see if I can figure it out. And when you're learning about something, it's important to let yourself be confused, to acknowledge, oh, I don't really get how these pieces work together. And then it's so much fun when they start to make sense. And I call that getting unconfused. Welcome to unconfused me. I'm bill gates. Alzheimer's, comedy, and even cannabis come together for the couple I'm talking to today. My guests are Seth Rogen and his wife, Lauren Miller Rogan. Seth is done comedies, which, if you haven't seen, you've really missed some of the best stuff out there. Knocked Up, Fabelman's Pam and Tommy, Superbad, and the voice of Donkey Kong, most importantly. And then Lauren's also super talented. She produces, directs acts. And now the coolest thing, which we'll get into quite a bit, is that together they started Hilarity for Charity. It's about a decade old and been very successful, highlighting the role of caregivers, providing financial support, really just building communities of people to help each other deal with the challenges of Alzheimer's. So you guys love humor. And here we have one of the more serious topics of all time. Alzheimer's.

We like a challenge.

Steve Creedon, Hilarity for Charity. Tell me about that.

Well, we started Hilarity for Charity out of our own frustration and desire to do something about, you know, how powerless we felt about dealing with my mom, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. You know, she was diagnosed when she was 54, almost 55. After my mom was diagnosed, we spent those first few years feeling like most people do, which is scary and depressed, and had no idea where to turn. And so we started talking about it, and we threw our first event, which.

Was just a comedy show. Yeah.

But we did that in January of 2012, and really through that, realized, oh, there are young people who are affected by this disease. They want to have a voice in it, too. They want to share their stories. They want to be advocates. They want to take action. They want to raise money. And so we started as a fund within the Alzheimer's association, and we grew our, you know, our programs, and we started doing support groups for young people. One thing we sort of first realized was, you know, we're not raising the type of money that's going to find a cure for this disease. And so what can we do to help people now? What can we do to help caregivers today? And over the years, I think our mission has become clearer. So that's what we're doing.

So when you were calling up friends to show up and perform at Hilarity for charity, that must have been hard at first.

Yeah. Today I remember Nick Kroll was like, do you have Alzheimer's? But, yeah, people were confused at first, but now they get. But they were always very supportive, honestly, and happy to help, you know, and especially people who knew us. Yeah. And then you start to hear every. You know, almost everyone has some sort of personal story or some connection with Alzheimer's or dementia in some ways.

Yeah, everybody's going to run into this because all the progress we make on cancer and heart disease just means you lives longer. Yeah. And although, as you experience, people can get this Even in their 40s or 50s, you know, once you get into your 80s, the majority of people have some dimension. The majority of that is Alzheimer's. Let me ask you, when you do your events, is it mostly just they're entertaining or do you try and educate people at the same time?

Now we do.

I'd say we've evolved our approach to integrating the serious subject matter into comedy. Tonally, we were just really uncomfortable at first.

Well, exactly to your point, Alzheimer's and comedy aren't the most obvious come combination. So therefore it was like, well, we want people to have fun and we want them to give us their money, but also it's about Alzheimer's. So, you know, that was a sort of, you know, a delicate walk into just figuring out how to do it.

And 10 years ago, you know, we were in our late 20s and very few people our age were even talking about Alzheimer's, like, at all in any capacity. And, yeah, I think we struggled with our own comfort of kind of how to be funny and talk about it. But now it's. It's actually like very intuitive and organic and people are very understanding of it and they can really go along on the journey and shift gears very seamlessly from hearing kind of very heartbreaking things to experiencing very funny, silly things.

You probably know, my dad also died of Alzheimer's, although it wasn't until his early 80s that it was really slowing him down. And then he lived until 93, so he had about 13 years. And, you know, I was super lucky that I could afford these professional caregivers along with the family. And, you know, we got to be so close to those people. My dad never knew their name, but he, like, he. He liked them. I mean, he lived with them, so that, you know, kind of made it a shared experience. You know, early in my dad's house, there's one funny thing, which is he was on the board of Costco, you know, which is a super successful retailer and a very important job. And I said to my dad, you should get off of this board, dad. And he said, why? You know, I. I'm really good on this board. And I said, no, dad, you have an unblemished reputation, and so you shouldn't. You know, you're probably not up to it. And he said, oh, I think I'm up to it. And then he thought about it, and I told him again. Then he called up the guys, the Costco board, and he says, look, I think I'm doing a great job, but my son says I should quit. And sometimes my son is right, so I'm quitting. Yeah, you have to laugh about some of the milestones.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a cruel disease, but I think a lot of people have those types of moments where it's like it was accidentally, you know, a funny thing you can look back on. We did a virtual event for caregivers. One of the panels was about humor and bringing humor to caregiving, and there were some very funny things.

People have truly, like, outrageous stories, and it was very cathartic, and it was like a group of people, like, all crying and laughing hysterically at the same time, which, yeah, I think is actually, like. It's very emotionally relieving for people, I think, to be able to kind of access both those emotions. And it is just funny sometimes because of how absurd it is, and sometimes all you can do is laugh. And, yeah, I think comedy does have an amazing ability to kind of support any idea if you are good with it, you know, and there's very few things that you really can't kind of surround with comedy if you aren't sensitive and really aware of what you're doing. And so, yeah, over the years, like, people really, like, I think that we're able to talk very frankly and openly about Alzheimer's and also make you laugh a lot.

Yeah, it still has some stigma. I mean, there's both lack of awareness and stigma. You know, in my dad's case, they never really, until pretty late, officially said it was Alzheimer's, although it had the unique characteristics, because sadly, since there really isn't much in the way of treatment Actually making the formal diagnosis isn't like you magically. Okay, now take this antibiotic in your hands. Your Alzheimer's will get cured, you know, in the next decade. Pretty hopeful. There's a whole pipeline of new drugs that should make a difference. But I'm surprised at the stigma and how strong it is.

Yeah, honestly, the stigma has put us in the place we're in today instead of further along because people were afraid to talk about it. They're still afraid to talk about it. They don't want to share their stories because yes, there are some funny ones, but the reality is it is a dark disease and it is painful to watch your loved one go through it. And I think that my grandfather, my mom, father had it. Then a few years after he passed away, her mother started showing signs of dementia. She was sort of between Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, et cetera. And then when my mom started showing signs only five years after my grandmother had died, you know, we knew and she knew, but she didn't want us to tell anyone because she felt this shame and this, you know, sadness for herself and this fear of what was gonna happen. And, you know, she was a teacher for 35 years. She was someone who used her brain and was in control and, you know, commanded a classroom of six year old. That's not easy. What we sort of faced early on was keeping the secret really became heavier and a harder burden to bear than just telling the truth and just sharing it and telling my friends like, this is what I'm carrying, this is what I'm going through. And once I did that, people showed up for it and I felt supported. It is this fear of aging, this fear of death that humans carry with them and the loss of control. Someone who has dementia and Alzheimer's, they lose all control of everything. And I think that is incredibly scary, but it is a reality. And I think part of what we've tried to do is just talk about it honestly and openly and encourage other people to do the same. Because when we share our stories, understanding happens and learning happens and that's how we progress.

Yeah, I think there's always milestones, like is the person willing to accept somebody being in the house? It's their private, they're self sufficient, that person, what's their agenda? Where do they sit around? And it's really hard. In my dad's case, he took a fall and he clearly needed help for the fall. And you know, we finessed it that those people just never left. But we should have gotten people in there, you Know, maybe six months before, but it would have been such a, you know, why are these people in my house? Type thing. And then for other people, if you can't do it in the house, then you want to move them out of their house. But then that's often traumatic and it's even somewhat associated with them not being as understanding of the environment they're in.

Right. It's a really complicated situation when your loved one is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And my mom also had resistance to people coming in early on. Fortunately, that didn't last very long, thank God, because these caregivers saved my dad's life.

Yeah, I mean, often the caretaker dies before the person they're taking care of with Alzheimer's. And that was something we were like seeing play out in real time before.

It was really obvious.

Yeah, it was obvious he had to.

Retire early from his job to take care of her. And then taking care of her became truly like a 24 hour job that he.

Yeah, he couldn't sleep. He was physically being taxed. His health was definitely like being deprioritized. And when you're in your 60s and 70s, like that is like rapidly detrimental, you know. And so, yeah, I mean, it's why we also were able to pay to have people come into the house. And it made everything easier and it saved her father's life, probably. And it made our relationship much better because it alleviated this giant pressure, you know, and that's why giving grants for in home care became like a major thing we started to do with the money HFC was earning and raising because we just saw like how tangible it was. And like in one day, if you have someone in the house, your situation goes from being like completely unmanageable to like somewhat manageable. And it was just so obvious and clear and it felt so unfair that we were able to do this and that millions and millions of people, people who were dealing with this disease just had no opportunity and were instantly buried by the diagnosis. And it instantly just like ripped their lives apart, you know.

But when we, we surveyed some of the recipients of our grants and Some like between 8, was it 85 or 90% of them said they felt more hopeful about caregiving after receiving this respite care. And it couldn't be more obvious. Right. Like, yet our government is not up to speed on that. And that shouldn't be the case. Caregiving shouldn't be a personal responsibility, it should be a societal one.

Yeah. And it's something we just see firsthand is like if you don't have a lot of money and you have a loved one who needs care, all of a sudden, you usually have to quit your job, so you have even less money. That money just quickly dwindles. It destroys your physical life. It's, like, mathematically instantly impossible to deal with for a lot of people.

Do we have a different word when we refer to a family member who's taking care of their loved one for free versus the people who come in?

We call it family caregivers.

Family caregivers.

Family caregivers. Yeah. Versus, like, a professional caregiver.

Okay.

And I think that as the population is aging and as things like Alzheimer's are becoming more and more costly and not enough resources are being put into fighting it, it just, you know, to us just, you know, it's like the further down the hole you go, though, just the more frustrating it gets and the more you really are mobilized to try to do something about it.

You know, you'd think, given how prevalent Alzheimer's is in our society, that getting people signed up for trials would be really easy. Sadly, it's not, because the amount of tests you have to undergo to know whether you fit a particular trial is really quite grueling. And because there's no formal diagnosis, finding all those people and seeing who might be right for the trial is very, very inefficient.

I think it's all up against this, like, massive societal, like, shift that needs to happen as far as, like, how Alzheimer's is spoken about, how it is dealt with, and, like, the amount of money it receives in comparison to, like, cancer and things like that, which are less costly, more treatable, and exactly as deadly. I think the only logical answer is that people just don't like talking or thinking about Alzheimer's because it scares them, because it makes them uncomfortable. People are weird about their brains. That's just a thing in general is like, mental health, brain health, all that is a taboo thing people don't like to talk about. And so all these things are kind of like the things that need to be overcome, I think.

Yeah, I get to work on the science and which hopefully will reduce this problem and eventually eliminate it altogether.

That's the dream. I mean, I would actually honestly, truly love to hear more about the clinical trial space.

And what are you most optimistic about?

You know, so much more about that. And what are some of the things you're excited about?

About 10 years ago, there was a generation of drugs that they thought that interfering with the plaques, that that would stop the disease. And relieve the symptoms. And although there's still a few of those that may have some modest benefit, by and large that failed. And you've got to give the pharma companies credit. You know, Eli Lilly even did a movie about all the people working hard and the disappointment when it didn't come through. Now they're saying, okay, you have to get in much earlier that by if you're just getting there, when the tangles are there, the brain cells are already dying. So let's get to younger people. The two big theories are. One is that just the basic energy factory of the brain having run for 50, 60, 70, 80 years, that the parts of the brain that are active all the time, those cells called the mitochondria, which are the energy factory, that they develop these defects. And so there's about six different companies that have drugs that have to get all the way up into the brain. That's tricky, but they're much smarter about that. Now they're in phase one or phase two trials. So best case would be five years. Worst case it'd be like 10 years. Another theory, which is a fairly mainstream thing, is that the way your immune system reacts and creates inflammation, that that's bad for your whole body. Aging and inflammation are very related, particularly if you're in stressful cond. And they see now that the part of the immune system that's in the brain, the so called glial cells, that for the people who get it's Alzheimer's, they're more hair trigger. And that's partly all these immune system things women sadly are slightly more subject to. And we see that with Alzheimer's as well. So there's a bunch of drugs that some of which I think will work that interfere with that. These trials have been really expensive because you have people come in and you take these cognitive tests and sometimes they get really good at the test. And so it's a very imprecise measure. If we could really just take a blood sample and there are now some diagnostics and that'll come first and it'll make the trials a lot easier because you'll just take the blood and you'll see a clear signal of are you having an effect or not. So even though the brain is so much more complicated than everything else, these trials are very promising. If you'd asked me four years ago, I would have said it's a little scary. But during these four years, the new small companies have come along, the big pharma people have largely stayed in. There'll be tie Ups between those. And so, you know, we have to stay healthy for another at least five to 10 years.

That's why brain health is important. That's why living a brain healthy lifestyle matters.

Kick it down the road.

We gotta get science caught up. And that's why our other focus, of course, is brain health and teaching people, everyone, teenagers, college students, adults, that you can care for your brain and perhaps delay, maybe prevent altogether, but delay until perhaps, as you say, 10 years from now when there is a drug.

And what we've found as we've gone down this brain health journey is that the average person a does not even know. You can conceptually do things to take care of your brain. And if they are aware of that, they have no idea what those things are. Basically maybe crossword puzzles is the things they'll say, which is not true, which is not even helpful. So it's like, I think that to us is something that has also been very inspiring and especially with young people. They love nothing more than to hear where previous generations have failed them and to see them perk up when they hear like, oh, there's a hole, maybe the most important part of your body you were never told how to take care of. They completely neglected that. Conceptually, it really engages people and they really like it. And there's studies that show like, you know, right now up to 40% of cases, I think, of Alzheimer's are preventable through brain healthy habits. I mean, it's not 100%, but that's a lot. That's almost half, you know, and so it's like I would, you know, everyone should take that. So I think that's something that's been really a great focus for us and something that especially is people who kind of have a, like, line to a younger generation from a communication standpoint, like, they've been very engaged with and people really. Yeah, they like to know that they can do things to take care of their brain. Just like if you don't smoke, you won't get lung cancer. Probably if you don't eat french fries all day every day, you won't die of a heart attack. Probably. There are things you can do to really help your chances of not getting Alzheimer's.

And one of the strongest things to emerge in that area is the importance of good sleep.

Yeah.

So I've gone from in my 30s and 40s when there'd be a conversation about sleep, and sadly for me, that's a long time ago. They would be like, oh, I only sleep six hours. And the other guys No, I only sleep five. Well, sometimes I don't sleep at all and be like, wow, those guys are so good. Jesus. I have to try harder because sleep is laziness and unnecessary sleep when I'm dead. Now what we know is that to maintain brain health, getting good sleep, even back to your teen years, is super important. It's one of the most predictive factors of any dementia, including Alzheimer's, is whether you're getting good sleep. So I've swung all the way to looking at my daily sleep scores, competing, okay, who got a 90? How the heck did you do that?

Generally I do better than him.

I'm not.

I take the dog out. When I was young, the convention was, you'll sleep when you're dead. Sleep isn't that important. You don't need sleep. And now already we know that that's completely oppositional to the truth. And if anything, it's maybe the single most important thing you can do to keep your brain healthy. And it's like they used to think smoking was healthy. It is similar. And that's where we are culturally is the things people think and understand about their own brains are where they were in the 50s and 60s. You, it's just like so far off from what actual science is reflective of. And it's nice to be able to communicate that to people.

Yeah. And you know, we have these conversations and sleep is actually the funniest one, honestly. Cause so many people, how can I improve? I can't improve my sleep. There's nothing to be done. And it's like, that is so not true. You can do so many things.

You ask them three questions and you're like, oh, yeah, okay.

And that's been a fun thing to change my own sleep. And now and because I do track and I look every day, I know that I sleep really well. And that's really important.

She sleeps with 400 contraptions. She does sleep really well though. But it's like a team of people. It's like a shuttle launch every night.

So, you know, hfc, we have our five brain healthy habits, which of course, sleep, exercise, nutrition, mental fitness, and then emotional well being. So, and those are things that seem obvious, but they're not things that people incorporate into their daily lives. And you know, and I wasn't doing that. Now I do and I feel better and my health is better and I feel optimistic about that information when I'm given it and I find that people like it. So anyways, we created this coursework for high school students and college students to learn about this stuff because it seemed to us like they wanted to know. And what is it? Literally was it 100% of them said that they were more interested and would be taking steps to live a brain healthy lifestyle. And what was it, 80 something percent of them said they were interested in studying neurology, which would be another thing which would of course help this.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, what we found from the neurologists and doctors we know is that a lot of people in the medical field don't understand that there are things you can do to keep your brain healthy and that, that like, that's how far off, that's, that's how big the disconnect is, which was alarming. You know, in some ways. What's funny is the one scientific study that we did, that we actually had published is that I taught this coursework of, of brain health and we neurologists teach the coursework and we scientifically prove that people retain information better from celebrities than doctors, which. It's a heavy burden, so just know that. But it is true. Yeah, it was published.

Yeah. We're in the next couple weeks shooting five more courses with five more celebrities.

With five more celebrities. Because young people only want to hear from them. Yeah.

So, yeah, we're doing that soon. And then hopefully, you know, we'll, we'll get it out there. Because it is again, when we talk about, like, the main issue in my mind is people not sharing their stories. And it's because they're scared. We give them some hope and they become less scared. They share the stories and that leads to energy, that leads to movement.

Yeah.

So when you first met Seth, were you surprised how much weed he smoked? No.

Well, when we first met, he smoked cigarettes and that. And that I ended immediately.

Yeah, she made me stop that literally.

As soon as I saved his life.

Then she really did. Yeah. So the weed was fine.

I really, truly, I was like, weed, great. Hand it over. But cigarettes, I was like, no, no.

And you have this cannabis lifestyle business called Houseplant. Are you enjoying this new business?

Yeah, it's been amazing. You know, I always talked about how much weed I smoked ever since I was young. I started when I was in my early 20s, writing and acting and producing. And people always, like, really liked that I was honest about the fact that I smoked a lot of weed and that I was like a productive, normal member of society. And a lot of were that also. But no one was talking about it and no one made them feel like they could talk about it. And the impression of every stoner was that they were like a lazy loser. And I was anything but a lazy loser. I was creating a prolific career at the time when all I would do was smoke weed all day, every day, which is all I still do. So it really, it's great now to be able to make things for people who smoke weed that are nice things and that have thought put into them. Because if you're like me and smoke weed, you're horrible. Whole life you've never bought anything that was nice and had thought put into it. It all seemed like it was like concocted in like a Dorm room at 4 in the morning. And so the idea that, yeah, that there could be like, nice home goods and kind of like a lifestyle, you know, products for people who smoke weed that were actually, like, elevated was, you know, it was fun from like a company standpoint, but also from like, emotionally connecting with people who grew up like me smoking weed and kind of being told that they should feel shame about it. Like, I think things like Houseplant make you feel like you don't need to feel ashamed of it. You know.

I love music and I always think it's fun to hear from other people what some of their favorite tunes are. And so I encourage you to bring something along. Did you bring something?

We sure did. Yeah, we did. Well, speaking of Houseplant, one of the fun things that we do at Houseplant is we created these, like, essentially mix records. Oh, wow. And the idea is that, I mean, the idea originally came from is that we created essentially like, playlists that went along with different strains of weed. So, like, the Sativa playlist is upbeat music. The Indica playlist is really mellow music, and the hybrid music is right in between. And so, yeah, that's what these are. And me and my friends picked all the songs. And it's a lot of soul music. It's a lot of funk and R and B music, stuff like that. Does this work? Should I put it on?

Yeah.

This is a hybrid song and.

It'S like a perfect hybrid song.

Yeah, it is.

You want to Bobby Cabbie. You don't really want to get up and dance.

Yeah, but it's not going to put you to sleep straight in the middle.

If you smoke enough weed. Are there carcinogenic effects or there's none.

That have been, like, definitively proven. I think part of the reason is I can also say, like, we've never had a doctor tell us to stop smoking weed. We bring it up. We tell our. We're very upfront with all of our doctors. Lauren goes to neurologists. She's part of programs and studies. And no one has been like, you should stop smoking weed for the health of your brain. And so that's. That's been good and nice. And it's nice that this thing that I do is not antithetical to the other thing I do. And that potentially there are therapeutic effects to the manifestations of dementia, things like mood and appetite and things like that. And so, if anything, it could be helpful.

But because it's not federally legal, there isn't money to fund research.

Yeah. And it's scheduled in a way that. That makes it, like, unstudiable in a lot of ways. It is federally illegal for labs to have. It's incredibly complicated to have it. And it's scheduled next to heroin. And so it's not federally accessible for study in the way that it could be. So people actually understood what it was and was not doing, which I would love to know.

Yeah. I've always wondered if we started from scratch and we said, okay, society, you can have one drug. You can either have alcohol or pot.

Oh, my God.

Oh, they would have picked weed for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Weed's much less.

Oh. I mean, at the. You know, we go out with our friends, and they're. They drink and, you know, of course I'll have a drink every now and then, but, like, the amount that people drink versus, like, the amount that we smoke, like, someone the day after a night of drinking and someone versus someone the day after a night of smoking weed.

Oh, yeah.

You're in a very different condition.

Alcohol's the worst drug. They did a real, like, marketing thing there. Like, they took a drug that, like, it's like, you have fun for, like, 25 minutes, and then you headache, you're vomiting the whole next day, you feel.

Terrible, you say stupid things.

Yeah, exactly. And, like, they've done a really good job of selling it as a good drug, but it's one of the worst.

The one complaint I've heard about legal pot is that a lot of us who are smoking it when it was illegal, the dosage was actually pretty modest. And so at least as you move into the legal pot world, you can. There's higher doses getting, like, really extreme doses, particularly on the edible square.

Yeah.

I mean, I. I think I know. Okay. If I puff five times what that means.

Yeah.

Whereas if you ingest. I have no clue.

Oh, no, no. An edible can. Really? Yeah. There's nothing. They should study those and dose Those out properly.

That's a place where federal regulation really help. I think it would be really nice if there was some sort of standard. Yeah, I edible. I don't mess with that. Snoop Dogg doesn't eat edibles.

Oh, wow.

That's how wild the variation on edibles is. Is that, like, you really don't know what you're gonna get?

Seth's dad once accidentally ate a brownie. A whole brownie. An entire brownie out of our fridge. That is the kind of thing that if I had, I would have had one.

Ate a little bit. Yeah, okay.

And he thought he was dying.

He literally said about taking me to the hospital, I'm dead.

He was fine.

How old were you when you first smoked pot?

And I do not recommend this. I was probably like 13 years old. I'm from Vancouver. It was a different place in time. But, yeah, when I was in eighth grade, I really wanted to try it. I was like, I was out to try it. I was seeking it out. And the first time I smoked pot, I didn't get stoned at all. And it took me a lot of times to actually understand even, like, how to. To breathe it in properly.

I was 18. Weed wasn't really around so much. I grew up in central Florida. There wasn't a ton of weed in my high school times. But it did appear a few times. But I was like, I will only drink in high school and I'm gonna wait to smoke weed until college. Cause I wanna save it. But when I arrived at college, I was like, it's on it's time.

And back at you, Bill. When was the first time you smoked pot?

I say 105 people in my class. I think there were three or four who didn't smoke.

Oh, wow.

Because it was kind of a, hey, I'm an adult. Hey, I can break the rules. But I will say, like, you, sometimes it's like, I guess I'm doing this to be cool. It wasn't so much smoking for pots for pot's sake as it was, you know, kind of being the culture associated with it. No, it's amazing how it's changed. You know, when I grew up, it was just kind of a rebellion thing.

And I think it's one of the reasons I think people are weird about brains in general. And it was also heavily stigmatized so much by the government. It was essentially illegal because the lunatic racist in the 20s wanted to put jazz musicians in jail. And we're still living in the ripple effects of that. But it's really encouraging. And I think the fact that people can even admit that they like to smoke weed because it makes them less stressed out. And I think that's something that people, again, just are weird about talking about.

Yeah, I don't know when it first came up in what, Colorado and Washington state. So my state was one of the first two. I thought, wow, things really are changing. And the fact that you can have the federal level, still have one set of rules and the state rules, there's definitely a paradox there that's gotta be resolved at some point.

You would hope. Yeah, it's crazy.

I mean, because the benefits are exponential. Just as far as like financially, the government should just do it for that simple reason.

The problem is, I mean, the truth is just like a lot of people who are in jail in America, which has the highest jailed population on the planet per capita, are there because of weed related charges. And that's often one of the first offenses. They get people and puts them in the system and it has like a catastrophic effect on the rest of their lives. And so there's a lot of money involved in weed being illegal as well. And there's a lot of people getting real rich off weed being illegal. And so you would think common sense would say, like money, they should legalize it. But a lot of those people are also getting money on its criminalization, you know.

Well, it was fantastic to have you here and talk about Alzheimer's and pot.

Exactly.

Good music.

We're your one stop shop for that. Not a lot of people are going after that.

We're happy to be there for that.

It's a good mixture.

Unconfused Me is a production of the Gates Notes. Special thanks to both my guests today, Lauren Miller Rogen and Seth Rogen.

My first big acting role was as Slow Mo Gump, probably when I was like. Yeah, around 12 years old, I think.

Played Fagan once in a production of Oliver. I think I was 8.

Were you in any plays in high school?

Yeah, they kind of got a kick out of casting me in a couple plays.

That's funny.

So, yeah, I had fun doing it, but it was definitely the nerd guy. Acting, not my future. I knew where I was headed professionally.