Engaging in his core with me on the couch. Derek Waters, co-creator and star of drunk history. Now, Emmy nominated. What? Did you hear? No. You're nominated for an Emmy.

Oh my god. I'm so glad I could break the news to you. That's pretty cool. I got a cell phone. I had no idea. That's awesome. Thank you for having me.

You're welcome.

I'm a little worried cuz I'm not young or Hollywood.

Well, it's not about an age. It's about Yeah, how old are you?

22.

Okay, you're fine. Next year though, we're not going to invite you back.

Oh yeah. I thought you had to be 21 so I was nervous.

Usually we cut it off at 18, but you know, whatever. It's not an age. It's an attitude.

Oh, I want to learn the attitude. Do I have the young Hollywood attitude?

I think you do. I think you have potential. All right. You're wearing the right socks for it, anyway. I mean can we get Oh, yeah, you can see This guy was a president. The 16th president claimed to free some slaves. Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln, sorry. Yeah. Awesome. Very appropriate for your show.

Thank you and it's laundry day. What I really love about this show is that on paper it's like not supposed to work. A bunch of drunk people talking about sometimes pretty, you know, little known historical events and people. How have you made this work?

I don't know, it's God because it was just an idea. I wanted to do one thinking like, oh, it'll be really funny to have someone get drunk and tell a story that they really love and we've all been with someone who tells you a story that you're a little iffy about if it's true or not. And so I thought history was the only way you could call B. S. for something that was or wasn't true since history is documented. So that's all the idea was and then it just became this thing where Jack Black saw it and said, oh, I want to be Ben Franklin and then it was on HBO and Will Ferrell wanted to do it and then it just was like, okay. I'm not sure why this or how this is happening, but I'm going to go with it.

You're just gonna roll with it.

I'm gonna roll with it. And an Emmy nomination.

Where were you when you found this out?

I was in bed. But it was early. I woke up to all these texts. I was like there's no way cuz I didn't even know when it was going to be announced and, you know, any human being with humanity will say like, oh, it's crazy. I can't believe it but sincerely, it is crazy and for the academy to say yes to a show that has drunk in the title that they see that it actually is a show that has a voice and is doing something that is always the goal of like what if we could just tell stories that people should have been taught in school? They should have been taught in school.

So do you consider your show educational then? Cuz I feel like I learn something new every time. If you don't laugh, at least you learn. Is there any historical event you won't touch?

Um, I mean, there's I think there's something to learn in everything, but the stories I stay away from are just anything that's just too too sad. Like a lot of stories end with like a death but they achieve something, you know. But anything that's too sad, I just think the mixture of someone drunk telling that story and us watching like why did why did we need to learn it? Why did we need to hear about this thing that's just too sad?

I'm glad that you're looking out for us as the audience too. Because you want us to actually learn something and not go home and, you know, cry ourselves to sleep.

100%. Yeah, that's the goal. To laugh and secretly learn.

Um, Derek, thank you so much for dropping by. This was super, super fun.

Thank you for entertaining me. Do you have any like suggestions for me because I would really like to take this to the next level?

Learn history and not science. You hear that, kids?

Yeah, no. To the kids of Hollywood, learn everything. The world is yours.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for dropping by.