Are You Garbage? Comedy Podcast · Kevin Ryan & H. Foley

Tom Segura: The Early Years

·1 hr 11 min·5 clips

Tom Segura opens up about the rough-and-ready version of getting started. He talks about working at a pizza place on Riverside Drive in Los Angeles. A boss with a blunt line about his legs becomes one of those details the room cannot stop circling. The conversation stays tight and nosy, which is exactly the point. Tom also explains the site rep job he did for productions. That meant being the person watching over houses, hospitals, churches, and banks while crews filmed. One of the stranger full-circle moments comes when he ends up shooting Bad Thoughts season two in a place where he used to work. The owner remembers him, and the whole thing lands like an accidental career receipt. From there the conversation widens into what it was like living in one of the roughest parts of Los Angeles. He talks about Rampart Division and the violence around him in that area. There is a story about a cop in a Wells Fargo elevator and the casual way danger sat in the background. The hosts keep pressing on the small social tells that make a life sound trashy, lucky, or both. Tom does not sand any of it down. The episode keeps moving with the show's usual pile-on rhythm. One story triggers another. One detail turns into a verdict. Even the more practical career talk stays tied to that same hard-luck, hard-graft energy. He mentions Bad Thoughts coming back for season two. He also says El Tigre is supposed to come out later this year. Then the conversation shifts to the next stand-up hour. That part lands with a real sense of work ahead. Starting again is hard, even for somebody who has already done it for a living. The episode closes on that note, with the hosts sending him off and treating the whole thing like one more chapter in a very noisy, very lived-in history.

As heard by us

A rough-edged comedian origin story built around odd jobs, a full-circle production job, and club talk.

Tom Segura gets a loose, grounded episode here. The strongest stretch comes from the early jobs and the rougher edges of Los Angeles, especially the pizza-place story and the later return as a site rep on productions.

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Why you'd press play

You want the early-year dirt behind a comic who still sounds like he earned it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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