Aging, Death and other Uplifting Topics with Mike Birbiglia 55:02

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On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org.

Hi, it's Naima. Today we want to play you an episode with comedian Mike Birbiglia. Blakeney Schick produced this interview, and you will have heard about her on Monday's episode. If you haven't, please go back and listen to that. Blakeney actually went to see Birbiglia's show, The Old Man in the Pool, before Cara and I did. Kind of like an advance team. She took along Rafaela Seward, a producer that she had managed. And they both loved the show, and so did Cara and I. Only after we taped the interview did Blakeney mention something to me.

She'd actually been one of Mike's yoga instructors back in the day. It was quintessentially Blakeney to be humble and understated. So before we play you the interview, we wanted to play you a brief remembrance of Blakeney from Mike Birbiglia. Hey, it's Mike Birbiglia. I'm the guest today on the show, and...

And I knew the producer, Blake Knee, pretty well. I mean, she was actually, she was my yoga teacher. That's how I met her originally. And I saw her when I was on Leonard Lopate's show. I would see her. She was just a person who I would see a lot. And I actually remember in Brooklyn one day, like I...

I didn't know Blakey that well, but she, I was in one of her yoga classes and then it was like, I ran into her at a cafe and then like I ran into her at lunch and then I like, I ran into her on the street somewhere. And usually in life, when you run into someone too many times, you're like, this is dreadful. I can't take it anymore. But she was just one of these people who just emanated kindness and humor and just seemed to be enjoying her life and enjoying other people so much that

I love that from Mike Birbiglia. Now, without further ado, here's the episode, which originally ran in December of 2022. It's on!

Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Loveline with Dr. Drew Pinsky and the thousand percent less Adam Carolla. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Nae Moraza. That is a class from the past, Loveline. Dr. Drew. Dr. Drew. He went off the little reservation there. Didn't Adam Carolla as well? I don't know. We need a VH1. Where are they now? Drew Pinsky. Anyways, we're not Loveline, but we are doing a special advice episode soon.

Yeah, we are. So if you have a question for Kara, for myself, you can call 1-888-KARA-PLZ and leave a voice message. That's 1-888-KARA-PLZ. What should people ask us for advice about? I don't know. They can ask what they want. What are we qualified to dispense? Almost nothing. Almost nothing. Like, it doesn't matter, though, because we go on. Like a lot of people these days, they're not qualified to do a lot of things. So they just...

the hammer on. So we might as well hammer on, but we'll talk about career. We're good at career. Yeah. Career. We can do fashion clothes. No, that's you. That's you. It's not love. Yeah. Love, love. Um,

Information about Yellowstone, for example, or 1883, or the upcoming 1923. There's a lot we know. Yeah. Call for all this advice. Yeah. Yeah. The life living. And actually, speaking of life living, talk about our guest today. Yeah. Our guest today is the comedian Mike Birbiglia. We went to see his latest show last week at Lincoln Center, and we'll talk about it in a bit. But he's a very profound and kind comedian. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think...

I've seen all his shows, the new one and Sleepwalk With Me. And, you know, he's just a, he's a really interesting and insightful. He's somewhere between a standup and a,

and a playwright and a storyteller. Philosopher. Philosopher. It's just very nice. And it also goes down easily. And it's not because he's not talking about big issues. It's because he's not an asshole. He's just a very nice guy. He's a nice guy. He's also a Hoya. He went to our alma mater, Georgetown. That's the least good thing about him. But he's very brainy, and I like brainy men talking about...

About death. Yeah. I like to talk to dumb men about life. Okay. Just kidding. Okay. All right. But it was also around that same weekend that we went to see the show. I read this piece in the Times about kinless aging.

You read that too, right? Yeah. There's several stories because the aging population is outweighing how many people are being born. Tucker Carlson's very concerned about this, the fertility crisis. Whatever, Tucker. I don't know. I'm doing my part. What could I say? So we've got to figure out a new way of aging and where people can be in communities. And the devastating quote in that piece was she says, I only see my doctors and doctors.

I think, you know. As you're saying, her social life was mostly comprised of doctors and shop clerks or something. It was so depressing. Someone who had no spouse, spouses died, no children, no siblings have died or don't have them. So it's literally the opposite of me. I am...

I got a lot of kin. I also have kin in West Virginia where they call them kin. Well, anyway, I'm surrounded. I have a lot of kin. I'm Pakistani. I have a lot of kin. But there's now close to a million older Americans who are kinless. So as you said, no spouse, no children, no siblings. A third of them are women over the age of 75. Yeah.

The demographic reasons for this are that there's lower marriage rates, there are higher divorce rates among baby boomers, and less having of children, older couples. This article really depressed me because... I know, it did, yeah. Are you kinless? And you think there's like a sad assignment editor at the New York Times right now. Yeah, exactly. I think there's a sad assignment editor. Because there's been a...

a couple of these, not the same, but it was similar and I'm blanking on what it was, but it was like that. When my dad was in the hospital, we were like, you know, three daughters and my mother and we never left him alone. Like the nurses were like, can you please leave the fucking hospital? But I would

I would walk by often and see people who weren't visited for days, you know, and it'd be so sad. I'd sometimes just go try to like visit these people I didn't know because I don't know. You know, that's the entire plot of Fried Green Tomatoes, but go ahead. Yes, I was Kathy Lee. What's her name? Wait, what's her name? Kathy Bates. It's Kathy Bates. Kathy Bates. Yeah. It's one of my favorite movies. Tawanda.

My favorite line in that whole movie. That's a wonderful movie. What's the best line? When she hits the young people take her parking space and she just smashes into them over and over again. And she goes, and you know, they're younger and we're faster. And she says, I'm older and I have a lot more insurance. Yeah.

That's going to be like your mental break when you're shoving a tone. I think it hasn't happened. I'm like, how much will this cost me? Oh, I can afford it. I think I'll do something better. So you don't worry about aging alone because you've surrounded yourself. You're basically what is called in Silicon Valley a protonatalist. Do you know what a protonatalist is? No, I don't know what that is. It's this troop of people, Elon Musk is, I believe, among them, who are

procreating at Great Lakes to save the population. There's a guy in my grad school class who's doing this and he's like, if I have 11 children and they each have 11 children over time, we'll overpower the human race. I'm like, that's so crazy. Oh God, if someone in the date said that to me, I'd run the other direction. Well, that wasn't a date to be clear, to be clear, very clear. But really this, you know, because I'm single, I don't have children yet. I did

I think I've always had this idea of, someone recently told me about marriage religion, which is like an obsession with, this person was saying women have, but people have with this idea of marriage and getting married is a real achievement. And I don't have that. I think I used to have that in my late 20s. But then when I passed 30, I was kind of like, I care more about being married at 80 than at 35, which is good because I've passed that. Oh, 80. Wow. Yeah, growing old together, you know. This is really sad, this phenomenon of

people growing old alone. Yes, I'll hire someone to be with you, Naeem. I'll

Oh, you will? Yeah, I'll just hire you a friend. Can I get Louie? Louie is very good at this. Louie's the best. I got to tell you, you know, my mom is ailing and she's still kicking, but she's getting older. And Louie is literally the best caregiver. I don't want him to do it a lot because I think it's hard on him emotionally. What's your plan for Lucky? My plan for Lucky is... Your mother. Right now, ice flow, but no, I'm kidding. Kidding, Lucky. She listens to this. She's always like... Why are you talking?

Stop talking about me. Stop talking about me. Are you kidding? We should have her on the show. Yeah, we will. Give voice to Lucky. Free Lucky. Free Britney. Free Lucky. But your plan. Yeah, it was, I don't know. We're trying to get her to get some help, and she's declining that kind offer of her children. The, like, tightening of the nuclear family in the last, you know, 100 years in the United States is something that I think compounds this issue. Because

Part of being Pakistani is, and I wrote about this with my dad, the amount of extended family who show up. Yeah, we have a lot of family. And that you can call upon, as you said, and you're all your West Virginia kin. Not just that. Those aren't the ones who come. We have an Italian family, lots of cousins. So my grandmother, she had a tough last years of her life, but she had a lot of people around her and stuff. What are your recommendations on books people should read about aging or about? Do you have any? Yeah.

Anything by Anne Lamott. I think Bird by Bird is a really great book by her. I think she's just a beautiful writer. She writes a lot about this topic. And she does it in many of her books. And there's just a bunch of books. There's a lot. I think, you know, any theater is often about that. Yeah, about how you live in life. Watch any Sondheim. Sondheim is all about death. It's all about death.

Yeah, or Russian, if you read any Russian literature, read some Tolstoy, read some Death of Ivan Illich is really good. And the Atul Gawande book, Being Mortal, is really good about how to think about giving your parents dignity in old age. He's a wonderful writer, too. He's wonderful. But speaking of aging, our guest today is Mike Birbiglia, the writer and star of The Old Man and the Pool, which we went to go see last weekend. Yes, we did. We went with you and my wife and my lovely son, Louis. It was a great outing. It was full. The theater was packed. It was packed. I have

to say I really enjoyed it. I'd seen some of his previous shows, including the new one, which was about his baby on Broadway. And I wondered why this comedy was happening on Broadway. There was only like one really visual moment or interactive moment in that. And this show was a lot more involved. Yeah, it's sort of a stand-up on steroids. There's a lot of, there's, you know, the set was critically important that he jumped around on. And

And things like that. It was sort of this off-kilter pool, essentially. It was just a piece of paper almost. I thought it was really beautifully done. And I'm excited to talk to him about it because it's a lot of the themes I talk about. This show was really a lot about...

and mortality merge with being, with the parent-child dynamic. Yeah. Which appeals to, I think, both of us. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think, as you know, I talk about death a lot and I talk about having children a lot. And so having a child made him understand that he couldn't die, really. Yes. I don't think you know this. My father was 50 when I was born. And

he was preoccupied with this idea of death. So every single card I have for my dad, you know, like, I never thought I'd see you graduate from high school. I never thought I'd see you graduate from college. I never thought I'd see you. And there's a lot of things that my dad didn't get to see. He died last year at age 85. But I think it gave him the sense of scarcity of time, which he passed on to me and made me feel like life was really meaningful because of his

urgency and surprise to be there for anything at all. Parenting by mortality. That's how I operate. So, you know, I don't write that down on cards, but that's really funny. Was it weird seeing this sitting next to your son? Because you have a heart surgery coming up. I do. I do. And I'm going to talk about it. No, it was good. He knows I talk about it all. He's used to it. He's like, oh, mom, talking about death. He's used to it. But you do have a surgery coming up. Are you scared at all? No. No.

No, I'm more scared about if I don't get the surgery. How's that? That's fair. You think it's pretty routine? Right now it is. It wasn't before, but now it is. I trust doctors. I'm not an anti-science person. And, you know, I think I'm glad I'm getting it done because if I didn't, I'd suffer more in the years to come. Well, you can talk to him about that and about death. Enjoy. Thank you. Favorite subject.

First, let's talk about the show itself, The Old Man in the Pool. Very timely to see your show for a lot of reasons, one of which I talk about death almost continually since I've been very young. And I went with my oldest son. So watching you discuss health and mortality and parenting was incredibly moving to me.

Talk about your, why you focused on death because really that's what the play is about, I think, but maybe not. No, it is. It's about death. You know, my last show was called The New One. It was about having a child despite never wanting to have a child. And I wrote that because I was obsessed with that. And I wrote a show about death because I'm obsessed with death. And I

Oddly, I think I've heard this before. It's not my original idea. I've heard that once you have a child, it makes death more on deck in your head. Yes, absolutely. Because you go, oh, okay, I get it. I'm the next one who leaves here. Yes, that's right. They're your replacement, really, pretty much. Yeah, that's an old Jerry Seinfeld joke. I lost my dad at five of a cerebral hemorrhage.

And it definitely shaped me profoundly. I want to talk about the near loss, how it shaped you and thinking about it, because it was also, it wasn't just your dad, it was your grandfather, et cetera. I had two things that I think changed the way I think and live profoundly, which is when I was 19, my dad had a heart attack and I think almost died. They put a stent in and it saved his life. And

When I heard the news from my mom in my college dorm, I thought he was going to die. And then I had bladder cancer when I was 20, which fortunately hasn't come back. I think those two experiences with death really informed me very early in my life that it can all just go away. Yeah. And I think it changed the way I am as a comedian because I always had this sense in my 20s of...

I have to figure this out fast. This is going to be a very short career. I'm going to be dead by about 30.

And so when I hit in my 30s, when I turned the corner, I was like, oh, I'm actually not sure what I'm gonna do because I had a whole plan for my 20s. Right. I even remember one of my first jokes was about it. It was a friend of mine, a mother passed away when we were in our 20s, very sad, and I was at the funeral. And I said, it was one of my first jokes. I said, they handed out Kleenex at the beginning of the funeral, which I thought was cocky. She's gonna die and die. She's so dead, you know.

I always, when I think of funerals, I actually like funerals. I enjoy them. I think they're interesting shows, but I always say I try to put the fun in funeral, which you can borrow at any time. That's a kid's joke. That's a dad joke. I love that.

When my oldest kid was five is when I really understood the loss, right, of my dad. Because she knows me really well at three. She knows, you know, as she does and he did and my second son did. My one-year-old knows me really well. And so you really begin to understand what that loss is. And in your case, a near loss of your dad. Did that change your relationship with him? You still don't say, I love you. You say, take care. No. I say, we say, take care. Which, by the way, I find...

I have a lot of people come up to me who are either first or second generation, third generation immigrants, where there is a I love you substitution, very common thing. 'Cause I've been performing this show for like four years. I mean, I've been doing it for a long time. So I hear that a lot. But one of the things about performing this show is I think about my daughter who's seven and a half,

all the time because there's a certain bit of emotion that goes into explaining that I thought I was gonna die when I was 20 years old and I have to transport myself to that feeling. And the way that I think of it sometimes is I imagine how I would feel if my 20-year-old daughter died

told me that that was her diagnosis. Right. I mean, it would be crushing. And that's emotionally sort of how I get there. Yeah. Yeah. Your daughter plays a very big part of it. The most touching moments of the show was around your daughter, reading to her. And that one moment where she said this, she changes the words all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Including in a very touching way. Can you talk about that? Yeah. So reading a book about the days of the week

you know, when she has no words, she'll say another word. And so she said, the days of us. And I said, and I thought that's better. And that got me. I got to tell you. Yeah, it's emotional because it because it because of course, that's what in some ways the play is about. It's about that

this is just us. That's all this is. Yeah, absolutely. Despite these dark topics, the show is really funny for people. We're talking about death right now. Comedy to me is often very dark, and I want to get into that in a second, but how do you walk the line between comedy and sadness? You break away at moments like that. So what I do is the macro story is about ailments and life and death and thinking about people I know who have died or almost died and

And then the micro is all jokes because my training, my training in quotes is in comedy clubs. Like I, when I was in college, you know, close to where you are at Georgetown, I, I worked at the Washington DC improv at the door and I watched like Margaret Cho and George Lopez and Dave Chappelle and all these people come through who were 1990s national headliner comedy club comedians.

And I learned this, you know, I opened for some of them and I learned kind of the art form of writing jokes. And I love jokes. And what I do is over the years, I started writing these solo plays because I studied dramatic writing at Georgetown. And I started inserting like absurd amount of jokes and

And so it's a hybrid structure of a ton of jokes and a ton of story. And that's sort of, yeah, that's what it is. And the jokes, the jokes serve a purpose. The jokes serve a purpose, which is jokes make us comfortable thinking about death. And I think that that, for me, that's what's meaningful about the show because it's a conversation starter, hopefully with families or people are on dates or whatever it is, or your husband or your wife or your kids, like the

Your kids is a big one. I've had a lot of people say it started like big existential conversations with their kids. Right. One of the things the show is about also is how hard it is to change, right? And toward the beginning of the show, you take one of these tests where you blow into a tube, essentially. And at the time, the doctor's concerned you're having a heart attack right there, or should be at least having a heart attack. And you joke about it, but this is the moment that everything changes, right?

So talk about the exercise thing and how it's changed you in terms of doing it. And when you think about it in modern culture of how we think about what exercise is for. I think a lot of it is, I talk about this in the show, but like when you're underwater, you know, for me swimming, it's like the why, it's like, there's no phones, there's no emails, there's no calendars. In some ways there's no time. And I feel like in the current moment, I feel like

you know, we're so attached to our phones in this way that we're afraid. I saw this written the other day. Someone wrote a piece about how we're afraid of silence.

Like the culture that we're in, it's like there's music at the mall. There's music in the elevators, music everywhere. And just to be with yourself exercise, I think it's powerful. And is swimming different? Do you do other exercise? I walk quite a bit. I do yoga. Yeah, I do Pilates. I do a handful of things. So you are quite...

It's like sporty. I work on it. I work on it. You're very sporty. I was thinking backstage, you look very fit. Well, I gained a ton of weight when we had our daughter. In that span of time, I gained probably about 30 pounds and I don't talk about it

I don't talk specifically in the show about weight because it's such a hot topic in terms of like people are very sensitive to weight loss. A lot of people are very anti-weight loss programs and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, you know what?

I don't want to fight this battle, but I also don't, I don't want to include it in the show because I just don't want to be part of it. Yeah. I want you to talk a little bit about how you craft because it's quite precise. And I understand from some of your friends who I know that you spend a lot of time with jokes over and over, over again. So I want you to talk about how you think about writing. A lot of these shows come out of a

You know, like you get obsessed with a topic in this case, like death and exercise and, you know, wrestling in high school and all this kind of stuff. And then what I'll do is I'll go out to like clubs or I'll go out to like, or I'll rent out a small theater in New York, like the Cherry Lane Theater. And I will,

of the stories on their feet and then I'll record it and I'll listen back to it. And then I'll write- With an audience. Yeah, with an audience. And then I'll write a revision of that and then I'll memorize that and put it on stage.

memorize that, you know, make the changes. And it's just rinse and repeat for like, in the case of this show, The Old Man and the Pool, I've been doing it for almost four years. So you've been rewriting for four years. I've been rewriting for four years. And the truth is like,

Until we film it, which is I don't know when, like I will continue to make tweaks. The night you saw, I probably put in like three or four little tweaks because I'm always trying to get to. I'm not trying to hit a demographic, but I am trying to hit the most amount of people I can with something that is something of a niche art form.

I know that what I'm doing is not as pop as like my first album was called to drink Mike. And it was a bunch of commie central specials. It was just joke, joke, joke, joke. And it was like the funniest joke about any topic and completely random and blah, blah, blah. And then,

At a certain point, I started doing these shows. And for me, it's just, it's more satisfying for the audience to come away feeling like they've been moved in some way or they want to do something else or think in a different way than doing just the joke version of it. Right. So you say cleverness, that's what you're saying, cleverness or joke, joke, joke is overrated. But heart, you want to get to, you want to shape to the thing. Yeah, because I found like,

This is an interesting thing. Like my director, Seth, and I have done like a handful of like workshops and things where we've taught like this type of storytelling in different forums before. And we've actually found like with some of the younger folks who are like maybe 20 or so, there's a block of

where I can't identify what it is exactly, where their craft is phenomenal. And they're like, this is the inciting incident. This is the plot point. This is the point of no return. But then when it comes to giving their heart to it, to their soul to it, I think they don't really want to. And I think the reason they don't want to, and I think this is like a downstream thing that our culture is going to have to reckon with eventually,

is that we're like living in a gotcha culture. It's like you admit something that you did wrong and people go, "Aha, you did it wrong." You're like, "No, I know. I don't know any other way to tell you that we're flawed. We're flawed people." Right, right. So you can't talk about those flaws. And there's also, they're also sharing on social media, right? And I think a lot of it is performative.

because they learn sort of the tricks, what works there and what doesn't. But you're right. I think they don't want to reveal themselves. I'm going to get to that in a minute. But one of the things about your show, I think, that was interesting was, let me read you a review from Vulture, which I thought was the best review. He's a master at translating between big and small things. In his work, our darkest fears and most intense loves become visible and accessible to us through absurd daily realities. The way chlorine smells, the nickname we call our partner, the mysteries of safety signage, the chicken parmesan served at Christmas, which was

Wonderful. The signage thing is, I love pool signs. I'm obsessed. When you started, I was like, especially because every pool sign has a no and then everything you ever want to do at a pool, right? Everything. No, it's big. It's no fun. No fun. No, you may not do this. Not yes. I'd love to see a pool sign that said, yes, have fun. Yes. But is that where the craft lies here is finding small things that evoke big things when you're thinking about it? Is that hard for people to do now when everything is so performative and so...

I don't know what else to say. It's so obvious. So much stuff is so obvious now. No, I think you're right. I think, you know, I have, when I'm writing, a lot of times I'll put like little three by five quotes around me. And like one of the ones is Allen Ginsberg, which is observe what's vivid. And it's like, whenever I'm talking to other writers, I'm always like, to me, that's where it's at. Like I have a joke in the show.

about a close friend of ours when we were kids who we loved and he was sort of rich and he'd ring his doorbell and it wouldn't be like bing bong, it'd be like bing bong. I know that one. And so it's like, and we're like, this dude's rich. And there's something about, and I actually did that joke on my podcast, Working It Out, where I work out jokes. It's a pandemic baby of a podcast where I work out jokes with friends.

that was one example of like getting feedback where I got a lot of emails saying, "Hey, I love that doorbell joke." And I was like, "Oh, okay, let me find a home for that." And so a lot of things are like, you make observations and you crowdsource them. You basically see, "Oh, okay, the rich guy with the doorbell, that makes sense to people. People relate to that. The thing about going to the doctor and the scale being like an abacus scale, that people relate to that." And I kind of string those together into a narrative.

So what is, you talked about journaling too. Is that your actual, how you do that, write things down and then make the things that stick out? Yeah, I write in my journal and it's honestly, it's for me. I mean, it's for my own therapy. I always tell people,

If you can't afford a therapist, write in your journal. I mean, it's one of the best ways to, I say in the show, like write down the sad, the thing you're saddest about or angriest about. And what I find is if you write down those things and you zoom out, you start to see your own life as a story and you can encourage the main character to make better decisions. Yeah, make good decisions. So let's talk about that because one of the last things I want to ask about the show is the end. Okay. So the ending is probably the thing that's most commented on and I won't give away what it is, but...

It's something we worked on, Seth and I worked on for like a couple years. Like we tinkered with a lot of different things. And so we arrived at this very, very unexpected, I'll say, ending that doesn't take away from the narrative thrust. No, it doesn't. And allows people to draw their own conclusions. Yeah, I thought you did it perfectly. I'm not going to say how you did it. But let me ask you in your life, what last thing you want to say before you die, babe? I'll give you one. Steve Jobs said, oh, wow.

That's great. Yeah, of course. It was perfect. It was perfect. Do you know? Yeah, we're all lucky. If you could, that was the last thing you'd say. Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's Michael Lewis's Princeton speech from years ago. It's on YouTube. I couldn't recommend it more highly. And he says, if you're here, you're lucky.

And he goes, and I don't, basically I'm paraphrasing. He goes, if you're here, you're lucky. And because of that, you have a responsibility. Yeah. And he, of course, had a terrible tragedy. We did a wonderful interview about his daughter. Oh, gosh. Just awful. Just awful. So you're lucky. That's what you're going to say? You're lucky. Yeah, we're all lucky. We're lucky to be alive. That's it. Yeah. Yeah, mine's going to be snap out of it. We'll be back in a minute.

All right. So I want to do, I want to move it to Netflix, comedy, controversy, that kind of stuff where comedy is on a bigger picture. Your specials have found a home on Netflix. A lot of comedians are there. Ali Wong, Hasan Minhaj, which is a great show. Amy Schumer. Netflix has kind of become the new HBO where comedy specials used to be. Do you think that's the case or is there still other places? There's basically two places where people see comedy specials en masse and it's Netflix and YouTube.

There's a self-producing revolution in YouTube right now that is astonishing. And it's definitely like going to grow because, you know, you can shoot on your phone something that looks pretty darn good. You're shooting in 4K. And so, I mean, it'll be really interesting to see...

what direction that all goes in. Netflix really changed my career because what I do is so niche and people were able to find that niche on Netflix back when they were just buying up comedy libraries of special. So I had a special called What I Should Have Said Was Nothing from 2008.

from Comedy Central and not that many people saw it is the truth. And then it was on Netflix and all of a sudden the people, it's the democratization. I mean, that's what's interesting, I think, in relation to the internet and comedy.

The internet has democratized comedy so much because if people like it, they people like it. The numbers don't lie. So you also talked about YouTube. It's interesting because like George Carlin saw a renaissance of stuff that people hadn't seen from TV shows. A lot of it was on YouTube and different places. How do you look at YouTube, though? Because everyone used to compete to get on first the HBOs, get that HBO special. And that was that set your career. And then you went off and did that.

not you, but bad movies most of the time. What is that now? Does YouTube have that power or is it everyone's still trying to get the Netflix show or the sort of the marquee show that you work your way up to over time by being in clubs? Someone in entertainment recently put it this way, which is we're no longer living in mono. You know, like we're living in stereo where it's like,

There is no brass ring of anything. There's no, you know, there was a long piece recently that was a beautiful piece in the times about how there's no movie stars. And it was, it's true. You know, like about how Tom Cruise's movie, the Top Gun reboot was, was about that. And I'm a cinephile. I love movies, love the 90 minute to two hour piece of storytelling. That's why I love plays. I love the theater. I love movies, but,

streaming TV just doesn't do it for me, even though I respect it. I'm like, good job. Way to go with that. How do you not like it? What is the... I don't enjoy it. It's...

I don't have the time to spend 15 or 20 hours on a story that I don't have faith will pan out. Rather than a short kind of thing. How does that affect the comedy then? I mean, do you spend a lot of time on YouTube or TikTok again is another area that's seeing a lot of comedy. I find TikTok to be completely fascinating right now. But are you on it? I'm on it. Yeah. Yeah. What's fascinating about it from your career perspective?

I think what's interesting is that the algorithm is, in my experience, pretty good. Like it's feeding me like interesting, like film theory, comedy theory, things about my health, things about blah, blah, and things about death and life and all these things. And I actually find it to be...

I mean, it's kind of vacuous sometimes, but also sometimes it's satisfying and you find like archival footage of some random interview from the 70s with Martin Scorsese where you're like, I wouldn't have found that in a million years. And I was a real holdout on TikTok. I was like...

This is, I mean, you know, your partner on the other show, Scott, like talks about how TikTok is like the great evil of entertainment, but also he's still on it because that's where people are. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because it does drag you in. I find it highly enjoyable. I love TikTok, but I am obviously worried about the Chinese government nonetheless. Yeah, sure. Do you use it as a creative element? Do you put your stuff on there? Do you find, can you do your work there? Yeah.

I put my stuff on there. I put, certainly put like clips from my podcast and that kind of thing and clips from my standup. And I also, the truth is like, I find people there. Like I book people on my podcast who I have found on Instagram and TikTok. Like this week, my friend Atsuko Akatsuka has an HBO special coming out

I met her because I was served something of hers from Instagram two years ago in the middle of the pandemic. And I just DM'd her and go, hey, would you want to come on the podcast? I think you're very funny. And then we became friends from across the coast. And then when shows started, she started opening for me. And she has an HBO special. It's amazing. She's like a huge success story of social media. And I think...

What I've heard from my friends who are women and comedians of color is that social media has been good for that group of people because it cuts out essentially white male gatekeepers of comedy club booking. I hear that a lot. Well, you should. It's true. Yeah, it's true. And so I think in that sense, I mean, look, there's a ton of downsides of TikTok and Instagram. But

but there is an upside, which is the thing that I just said. The discovery part. Yeah. Where you find what you want. Um, there's often controversy too, with a lot of comedy too, in terms of what gets out there and what's, and that's a large due to social media, but also how many, how much we have this sort of fire hose of content. Now, um, Netflix got a lot of heat for, for example, the Dave Chappelle, uh,

show The Closer after the platform generated controversy for jokes I didn't think were funny about trans people. My issue was they weren't funny and they went on for a long time. There's all this controversy around comedy and what should be allowed and what shouldn't, including employees at Netflix weighing in. Ted Sarandos stuck by Chappelle, and I think correctly in that you should...

you should just let it go and see what happens in the market. How do you look at those controversies? I think one of the things that's confusing about this moment in history for comedy is that a bunch of things that happen simultaneously. So one of the things that happened is that comedy went from being kind of a niche, dark comedy club, you know, smoky room in the 80s and 90s art form to being something that is...

main, main, mainstream. And the other thing that's happened is we're living in an age of decontextualization and fundamentally jokes cannot be decontextualized to the comedian's benefit. You can only take something someone said, you can say the sentence that is the most incendiary and you can put it in the New York Times font

and make it look like it's real and it was said with earnestness, et cetera. Rather than as a comedy. And rather as a joke. And so decontextualization is something that I have to be, and I think a lot of comedians have to be extraordinarily wary of. And then there's a third thing that happened, which I think is, and I've heard this credited to the brilliant Jon Stewart who you're mentioning, is that people started to identify with comedians more

belief system. So like the Daily Show was so good. John had so specific of a political impact and it was so huge. And

that, uh, people started to think, oh, I'm Jon Stewart, you know, or I agree with everything Jon Stewart says. What's your politics? I'm like, I'm like Jon Stewart's politics kind of thing, which is to say that like, I'm pretty liberal, but I'm also, I have a sense of humor about it all. Right. And I think what, what happened is, is when Jon left and of course, Jon was brilliant at it when Jon left, uh,

A lot of people said, my new person is XYZ person. And it's like, well, guess what? Probably John Oliver. Well, guess what? That person probably isn't that. Yes, right. No, but they're trying to, it's become politicized to the point of you have to like certain, rather than in pieces. So one of the things that's interesting about you, you seem to be the opposite end of the spectrum. You don't punch down at all. A lot of comics do. They do. They just do that. And, you know, you can think it's, I go with, is it funny or not?

And the reason I have an issue with Chappelle is I'm like, it's funny for the first one or two jokes, an hour of them, not so much. Like it's at some point it becomes like,

You have a problem? Like, that's what I got to about. And I think he's brilliant, by the way. Well, I think Jimmy Carr has this great book that came out about a year ago about comedy and about the interrelationship between life and comedy and the meaning of it. And he says this thing about punching down, which I think is really worth noting, even if you don't agree with it. If people hear this, they don't agree with it.

is that he doesn't like the phrase punching down because it implies that you're deciding what down is. Oh, that's fair. Yeah, of course. And, you know, he says, I don't like to think of things in that way. Sure, but there is down and up, correct? I mean, like George Cronin did a lot of rich people and that's punching up, I would say. To power. Yeah, yeah. Truth to power kind of thing. Sure. I don't think anyone's going to cancel you for your jokes about babies and...

talcum powder on old man's balls. But do you think about it? Do you, because you've mentioned it several times. Do you think we're drawing too many lines around and fences around comedy? Sometimes I do, but not, I don't think you're going to be the one to all of a sudden, Mike, really says a really bad joke or something that gets you into trouble. My inclination is that I'm too aware of it for people to come at me. I take in a lot of feedback. A lot of people write me emails, um,

or DMs and say, I was hurt by this. I was offended by this. I take it all into consideration. You know, I'm not defensive. I'll say like, I don't have this thing of like, come on, it's a joke. Like that is definitely not my defense. That's their favorite thing. I've actually taken jokes out where my director, Seth and I, or my brother Joe and I have had like long conversations about it.

is it fair that this person is saying they feel triggered because this alludes to a sexual assault in a certain way and they were assaulted and it triggered that and blah, blah. And so a lot of times we talk about like, what is the meaning of the joke? What is the point of view of the joke? What is the goal of the joke? And is the joke worth it if it hurts some people's feelings or not? I think

I think trivially, like, I think most comedians are doing that, but I do it kind of obsessively. Is that a problem if comics aren't allowed? To me, they're the last bastion of people who should almost be able to say almost anything. At the same time, they can be offensive, like purposefully mean and offensive. I like provocateurs. Like, I'm interested. I mean, you're a provocateur in a way. Yes.

in a different way than all these people we're talking about. But it's like, I'm in, that's why I listen to your show. I mean, I like people mixing it up. Like, I don't go to entertainment or art or plays to have the status quo. Right, right, right. The status quo in my mind. And I'd like to think I'm a grownup enough that I can hear some wild takes and go, wow, that made me think about that. And-

my take is still in this universe. You know, I had a line in Thank God for Jokes that I took out because it was too on the nose, but it's, I think we all have a right to, we all have a right to offend and we all have a right to be offended. And I think like,

We're going to start infantilizing people and saying like, no, they can't hear that. It's like, no, they can. I think they're grown up enough to hear it. Right. There's all these interviews with Sandbank and Freed and they're all like, oh, he's a little like unmade bed of a little boy. And I'm like, he's 30. So let's stop treating him like a baby. And people are like, Kara, you're not being very nice. I have one little anecdote about that, which is I recently performed right before they did the show on Broadway. I went from Nashville. I drove from Nashville to Cincinnati, California.

and i hired a driver to drive me there uh and about halfway through the ride it's like five hours because what do you do for a living and i'm a comedian and he goes uh can't say anything anymore

And I go, well, I go, you can, but you know, a lot of people have, will have strong opinions about that. And in the age that we're in, there's an exponentialization of how loud those opinions are. And so I said, so for example, like I said, like Lenny Bruce got arrested and

for jokes because people have felt strongly he shouldn't tell jokes about religion or politics and this, that, and this. And I said, no, just, no one's being arrested right now.

And if and I said when they start being arrested, I will completely agree with you. But I said what did they say? He was he was very amenable. We had like a very nice Trump guy, two time Trump voter. We talked out that I actually I kind of I think because of my family, I'm from central Massachusetts and I'm from there's a lot of conservative folks who who who are from there.

And I find that I like to, I like to find common ground. And I think I have, I think I have possibly the best anti-Trump argument because I find Trump to be an alarming public figure. I said it to this guy and he agreed with it.

I said, with Trump, like, I understand what you find attractive about him. Oh, and for the record, I think Biden's too old to... Throw that one in. You know, like, I'm not gonna, I'm not like clutching Biden and saying this is our guy. But I think with Trump, I go, here's what worries me. What worries me is...

One of his initial speeches for running, he talked about a group of people being rapists as a false generalization about a group of people. And I think because of the historic nature of that going poorly in the history of the world, I think for me, that's disqualifying. Mm-hmm.

And he goes, yeah, that's, he goes, that is terrible. It was a very, and it was, we just left it at that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the sort of my thing. I'm like, you know what? You can like him, but he's an asshole. And they're like, yeah, he's an asshole. I'm like, do you want an asshole as a present? They're like, not really. And I'm like, yeah, he's an asshole. That's, you know, it seems to, the asshole seems to encompass it. And when people say you can't talk, I often say, how is it that the people who say they're censored never shut up? Just...

Let me just point that out. Oh, it's endless. It's endless, right? Marjorie Taylor Greene, I'm censored. I'm like, why do I keep hearing from you? You know, kind of thing. You're right, arresting. If they're arrested, that's the bigger thing. Let me ask you the last questions about your podcast. You have Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out, which is a great show, where you talk to other comedians and creators. And is that where you're working out your next show? I'm starting to. There's two things I'm working on. I'm working on my third movie. My first two movies were Sleepwalk With Me and Don't Think Twice. And I'm working on a third movie, which I'm

I'm writing two different scripts right now. A lot of times that's what I'll do is I'll write things concurrently and I'll see which one sort of has my passion to finish it. And then I'm writing like two other comedy specials right now or comedy shows, plays. About? Can you say what they're about?

I mean, it's funny. We were talking earlier about Instagram and sort of the downside of Instagram. One of them delves into that, which is this idea of I go back to material that I wrote in my 20s and I tell the story that I told on stage and on the record. And then I talk about what my real memory is of that and how it's different from what's on the record.

and how we're all kind of self-memorializing in a certain way with social media. And it's kind of like, I desperately want young people to not take a lot of stock in the way that people are representing themselves. That's correct. Oh, that would be a great show. I have this whole obsession with when straight people get married on Instagram, they always do a picture of themselves with their hands in the air, like, you know, together. Like, we did.

Do you know that look? You know it, right? They all put it up there. And then a couple years later, one of the couples got divorced and a friend of mine, a younger friend was like, someone I was dating was like, well, I can't believe it. They seem so happy. And I'm like, they're not, they weren't. Like that picked hands in the air was not real. And so I'm obsessed with hands in the air pictures and weddings. And then what happens to them? Like, did they stay together? Yeah.

Let me ask you the last question, which you knew I was going to ask because I'm a huge Swifty. You said you were late to appreciate the artistic genius of Taylor Swift. I can't imagine what took you so long. But you were in this music video for Antihero, which my daughter knows every single word for at three years old. You played her uber preppy son Preston at her funeral. Yeah.

Can you tell us very quickly how that came about? I think we'll end on that because speaking of someone who has a lot of power throughout music and everything else in the culture. I've been friends with Jack Antonoff for a long time. He was a brilliant musician and works with Taylor and has worked with Taylor for a long time. And I've only met Taylor a handful of times. And one of the times was a year or two ago when she was writing that song.

And it just so happened we were socializing, me and her and my wife and Jenny and Jack Antonoff, Jimmy Fallon, a few other people. Like she was writing the video script and all this stuff. I think it just clicked like, oh, this would be a funny version of like the nightmare of my son. And so then I got a text message from her, like, I don't know, four months later or something like that. I literally thought I was being catfished.

But then Overtek sent me the script of it, and it was very funny. And so I thought, oh, it's either Taylor Swift or it is a very talented writer catfishing Taylor Swift. And she's a generational talent, and she's, I mean, what a director. And now the Swifties love you. Yeah. That's that, Ben. Yeah.

It's good. It's good. I mean, the only thing that's weird is like... You've been in a lot of shows. You've been in Billions. You were on Orange is the New Black and stuff like that. Yeah, no, but she has a very specific type of fan. I mean, I think the only thing that's really, truly funny about it to me is that

She is so popular. You have to be a real certain level of popularity where your marketing is, it's a secret. Yeah. And there's like codes and puzzles. And I have to just tell people like, I don't know the codes. I don't know the puzzles. I'm just a fan of the music and I'm an actor, et cetera. Well, you were fantastic. I have one last question. What is the funniest thing happening right now? Oh my gosh.

Besides Elon Musk, you can leave him out. Yeah, I feel like I answer this in my head all the time. And, you know, I think Conan O'Brien put it best. He was talking to Bill Hader on his podcast and he goes, we reached a point with the talk show where we realized that you cannot compete with

people shooting videos all over the world on their phone. It is so purely funny. I mean, whether, I mean, it sounds, I mean, I sound like a kid, but it's like watching animal videos or someone fall, you know, a rock fall on their head, whatever it is. Like some of this stuff, you just cannot beat how funny it is.

I mean, there's nothing you can do, no comedy you can write. And so, by the way, that brings us back to, you gotta give your heart to your writing because that's all we have to offer. We don't have cleverness. Cleverness is overrated. You know who cleverness is overrated? I should have mentioned earlier, has a lot of that in his book is Scott Calloway. Yep. In his book about happiness, he talks a lot about how like, essentially like if you think you're smart,

I think he says something to the effect of thinking you're smart is like going to the airport and thinking that the Delta Club is exclusive. Good joke. Isn't that great? Yeah, he's a funny guy. I've repeated that a lot. It's a great point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're some 20-year-old, you think you're smart, it's like, well, you're gonna meet about 100,000 of yourself in like five minutes. Yep, so your heart is all you got. Yeah. And your death. Yeah, that's right, your heart and your death. That's right.

All right, Mike, this has been a pleasure. You're a wonderful artist and I really enjoyed the show. It was really great. I'm excited for your next one. This has been a thrill. So Mike thinks the funniest things ever created in America were basically America's funniest home videos. They were. Are you kidding? I love that show. There's no evolution beyond that, apparently. They're so funny. That's why cat videos are so good, except you want to kill them and have dead kittens. That's right. To quell your tears. We'll not get into that. We're moving on from that anyway. Okay.

Okay. Well, what's your favorite joke? In the interview or the show? Oh, the show. I liked any part where he was in conversation with himself in a loop. Like when he's having the abacus at the scale at the doctor's office and he's like, I'm not a thousand pounds, but I'm not five pounds. Right.

I'm not, you know, 100 pounds. What was your favorite moment? On a pizza. On a pizza. You and Dave Portnoy. Portnoy. Ugh, that guy. He's nothing like Mike Birbiglia. Yeah, Mike Birbiglia is a nice, nice guy. Yeah. But you thought about being a stand-up at some point, didn't you? I did. A spy and a stand-up. I did. I have a good sense of humor. I thought I could do one on tech, kind of focusing on that and tech and what it means to us. And then I just was, maybe I'll do it when I'm older. I don't know. We'll see. I'm old right now, but older. I don't know.

I don't know. I think one of the things I like about Mike is that he doesn't have so much anger. He doesn't punch down. We talked about that. And he's such a good writer. Do you think he doesn't punch down because he's just genuinely that nice a guy, but also he doesn't see the business risk in punching down? I don't see the point. He doesn't see... I think he thinks they're easy. They're easy jokes, right? And I think he wants... He's a very complex... He's doing something smarter. He's a craftsman. He really is making something beautiful. Anyone could just tell a penis joke, but, you know, whatever, a mean joke or...

super easy to do those. Do you have a penis joke for us? I do not. I do not. I don't have even one. I'll call Louie and Alex and find out, I'm sure. My brother actually has a lot of penis jokes. Jeff, yes. My kids are so excited for Christmas because he tells them and it's their moment with, you know, a man telling them penis jokes. Well, no penis jokes, but we do have credits. Do you want to read us out, Cara?

Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Blakeney Schick, Christian Castro-Rossell, Rafaela Seward, and Claire Tai. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. And our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get your very own pool party. If not, take the plunge, but don't pee in the pool. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow.

Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Thursday for more.