A Bit of Optimism - Giving A Sh*t with Phoebe Robinson

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Short packets of content. That’s the world we live in. We've condensed and compressed so much of what we consume that our entertainment and our news seem to have lost any nuance or complexity.And that’s a problem, because our world and our lives are nuanced and complex.Phoebe Robinson is a comedian, bestselling author, actress and producer who tries to capture the nuance and complexity of life in her work. And it works. She’s funny, thought-provoking and full of heart. This is…A Bit of Optimism. For more on Phoebe and her work, visit:https://www.phoeberobinson.comhttps://www.tinyreparations.com 

We live in a world of oversimplification. News is given to us in soundbites. In fact, everything is given to us in soundbites. If you can't do it in about 140 or 180 characters, people won't have the attention span to listen or pay attention. Things are getting shorter, smaller, and dumber. Not for Phoebe Robinson. She's a comedian, producer, actor, all-around remarkable human being who believes that we need complexity, we need nuance in the work that we do. Why? It just makes

it better. It makes it smarter. And it makes it more more important this is a bit of optimism when your new book came out yes please don't sit on my bed in your outside clothes i didn't even have to open it i was like oh oh she and i can be friends, right? Because this is a complaint I have had with almost everybody I've ever dated in my life who like comes in from the outside and gets on or worse in my bed. Oh my God. And I'm like, what are you doing?

They're like, I'm getting into bed. I want to take a nap. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Those clothes have been on the subway. Those clothes have been outside. Bed is a place for pristine. That's why you wear pajamas or nothing. Only the thing that belongs in the bed is what goes in the bed.

Nothing from the outside world. 100%. I agree. And you're the only other person I've ever met. And you wrote a whole damn book about it. Well, it's not a whole book about it, but you titled a book about it. Can we just get into it if we want to get into it in terms of dating and all that stuff? Yeah. Because obviously you're very successful. You work really hard. You're on your grind, on your hustle. Are you in a place where you are prioritizing finding a

partner? Are you sort of just like, if it happens at this moment, cool, but I'm focusing on Simon? I made a deal with myself many years ago. When I started with Start With Why and I started to get invited to speak and travel, I recognized that if I pursued this, it's going to hurt my personal life. I mean, it was obvious. I'd be on the road so much. I'd go on an amazing first date and I'd say, oh my God, I had such a good time. Are you free for a second date in six weeks? So I was pretty undateable for anybody that wanted anything serious. And I made the choice that I was going to pursue spreading this message because it really mattered. And I knew that it would come at personal sacrifice and I was okay with that. The deal I made with myself was that when it found its own momentum, that I would reprioritize. And as things started to go

and I didn't have to be out there pushing the flywheel by myself every day, like social media and other people, like books that all helped, I could refocus. So I'm in that space. My personal life is very important to me, and I will turn down work because something at home matters now. And I am dating somebody, and it's wonderful, and I like being in a relationship. I mean, I've had relationships prior. It's not like this is my first one. But my mindset is very different. And COVID also had something to do with that as well. I believe that there's no such thing as bad or good. Everything is balanced. Everything good comes at a cost. And everything bad has some sort of advantage or lesson built in. Everything is balanced. And so I'm curious, for all of the stress and fear and horror and sadness that goes with a global pandemic. I'm curious what you gained.

I think the biggest thing that I gained was perspective, which is really cool because it's not necessarily like this tangible thing, but it's a life altering thing in a way. And I've been working in comedy entertainment going on, what is it? 2022. So we're talking almost 14 years at this point. And, you know, much like your, your career, it's like, you kind of just, if you're like, I'm going to do this, I have to give all of myself. And so I was just hustling. I was grinding. I was like, work came before everything, family, friends, you friends, relationships, all that stuff. And then when COVID happened and we had to just sort of stop and all these work commitments that I have for 2020 sort of dried up. And I was like, well, what does this mean?

I have this business. I made all these plans. I was doing everything right. As if me being morally a good person is going to prevent a pandemic from happening. You know what I mean? You know, I was really sort of like mentally struggling. My work is a big part of me. So who am I without that part being as president as it was? I was sort of thinking about starting therapy and then my boyfriend and then a close friend of mine were like, yeah, we think you should just do it. Just do it once and see what's up. And I was like, all right, I've never done it before. And it really just allowed me to sort of be like, as much as I want all my dreams to happen and I want to do the TV shows and I want to produce and I want to keep

writing books, there's more to life than just doing and creating. And I think it's very easy when you love what you do to have it be like, well, I love this thing. So I want to keep doing it. But it's like, I miss weddings. I've missed friends, having kids. I just have missed a lot of things that now at 37, I'm sort of like, I don't want to keep missing stuff. And I don't want to keep missing my life is what I felt like I was doing. That's such a great lesson, right? That we are worth more than the work that we do. I see this with successful people. Their whole self-identity is tied to their work that when they stop doing that work, they literally have an identity crisis. They retire or they get fired or

whatever happens, something goes haywire in their career and they have crisis. I wonder how many people had that mini crisis during COVID when they were faced with that image before it actually happened. It's like a crystal ball. You know, listen, there's certainly the capitalism aspect of things. You have to work to sort of moving and pursuing and building and acquiring and more and more and more. So it's easy to lose that perspective and see like, oh, what am I actually missing out on here? You do so many different things. You're a polymath. Is there a thread that you try and weave through everything, whether you're writing or producing, that you have something you're trying to spread, something you're trying to instill in others? You know, I think, especially in the world of comedy, comedy changes so much. I think it often can not only reflect what's happening in society, but also help society sort of change course.

Right. And I think specifically with comedy for a while, it was very sort of cynical and sort of like, I'm going to be detached and I'm going to be removed. And that's kind of cool because I'm checking out of this bullshit. And I think, you know, certainly with the pandemic was sort of coming into a place of like, I want to laugh because I give a shit because I'm emotionally invested in I'm laughing even harder because I recognize that thing. It's the old jester's role. The one person who can tell the truth to the King. Yeah.

Who has a perspective and is willing to speak out about irony or nonsense. Yeah. And like, I want to have fun and be light and be celebratory about life, but then also have a lot of heart too. I just think some of my favorite comedies, they have so much heart.

I think people could just shortchange comedy as like, oh, it's like light. You just turn your brain off and you're not even thinking. But I think you're not really laughing. Like when you're really laughing super hard at something, sometimes it can just be like a silly sort of like physical pratfall. But it's because you recognize something in that or you've experienced that or, you know, it just means something to you that it captures your heart and hits you where your essence is. And

that makes you laugh a lot too. Back to the question I asked before. So what's your cause? Like what's the thread? What's the commentary that you want to weave into all of your work to make sure that it shows up? I want people to feel without turning it into judgment, turning it into judgment, making it like about, well, I'm righteous because I feel this thing now. And I think it's very easy to get on your high horse and be like, I'm perfect. I'm smart because I felt this thing, whether it's joy, whether it's sadness, whether it's rage, I got it. And you didn't get it because you didn't get it when I got it. And I want people to just be able to experience the world without it being a competition. I get caught up in that too sometimes where it's like, you get so caught up in, well, I figured this out, so everyone else should have

figured this out already. And it's like, well, there was a moment where you also didn't know. Yeah. So can you give me an example from your own work where that really is a crystal clear example of you want it to be your own journey? It's not a competition. Have all the feels. And if somebody hasn't had the feels yet, support them rather than berate them. across, I think a lot in, in my writing and sort of how, if I'm going to make a commentary about anything on the outside, I'm going to address myself first and be like, hand in the air. I fucked up about this thing. You know, when you run your own business and you're like a boss, you make so many mistakes all the time. You're just like, fuck. Okay. I know that now. And so I think

being a boss in general has been probably the most humbling thing because you think, boss, you're like, I'm going to have these cute, like I'm a CEO outfits. I'm going to have like the nice, you know what I mean? You're like, I want to have a nice chair for my back. And you're like, bitch, why the fuck are you worrying about chairs? I remember the first time I got a nice chair. Yeah. And so I think, you know, for me, one of the biggest things I learned right away is I learned such a higher level of compassion., you know, your employees are people, they're going to have good days, they're going to have bad days and you can't judge them for the bad days and ignore the good days. And so if you see someone sort of like struggling, you could be like bottom line, or you could be like, fuck, I've had weeks where i've just been off yeah and i have to

be like that's okay that's normal and like work through it and so i think it you know sort of going into being like it's just about achieving genes and like knocking everything off the to-do list and it's like no this shit's like it's hard And people are going to respond to certain things in certain ways. And you have to be open to that. I think this is one of the great gifts of COVID when it comes to leadership, which is, you know, we judge people at work almost entirely on their performance. You're a good performer. You're a bad performer, you know, but COVID forced us to see everybody as human, right? Because A, we saw them in their homes. We sometimes saw their pets, their kids.

I didn't even know you had kids, you know? And it made it all a little more patient, you know, because, you know, there were interruptions and we were fine with it. And I think we understood that we were all going through something. And when somebody's performance was down, our instincts for the first time,

our natural instincts were not to judge performance, but to be like, are you okay? And so one of the questions is, how do we tell the stories that help us remember and bring the feelings back so that we can remember to be the better versions of ourselves? And I think this is part of the role of the entertainer, which is to remind us of the stories, to show us and remind us, whether it's dramatic or comedic, it doesn't matter. But the best stories are the ones that you left sort of like, I gotta be a better person at the end of it.

Back to what I was saying before about sort of this kind of cynical air of comedy. I think now it's really, because of COVID, it's like you want the truth. You know what I mean? And so I think that is a really interesting place. I think that comedy and drama are both sort of circling right now. I think people want to be seen. I really do think that one of the great things about COVID is that it forced us to have conversations with ourselves now that we ordinarily would be having in like 20 years. We're having conversations with ourselves like, what does happiness mean? And do I want the life that I have? And the great

resignation, which is a real thing, I think is part of that. In the past, most people would define their job as fine. A very, very small percentage get to say, I love my job. It's great. A very, very small percentage, it's the most toxic thing in the world. They get berated at work every day. It's probably too many, but it's relatively speaking, to all people working all people working a small number. Most people, unfortunately, if you say, how's your job? They say, it's fine. Is it great? No, it's fine. Would you like to quit? Yeah, yeah. But you know, it's fine. And the problem is, is the unknown of quitting is way scarier than the status quo. And so we make do, and I hate to say this, we probably do this in relationships as well, but we make do with okay because unknown is scary.

And what COVID did is some people got furloughed, some people lost their jobs, some people just had fear and uncertainty even though they kept their jobs, and we were okay. Our relationships are intact. And all of a sudden, the unknown became a lot less scary. And if I'm comparing fine and unknown now, I'll take unknown. What I think is so interesting about the great resignation is that it's affecting all levels inside a company, especially lower levels. So it's your frontline worker who for decades has been mistreated and abused because companies knew that they needed the paycheck and they could get away

with it. And for the first time ever, that frontline employee has been like, no, I'll take unknown. It's an indictment on leadership and the manner in which we've built corporate cultures for the past multiple decades. It has been so unbalanced against your average employee that this to me, it's like a stock market correction. This is a rebalancing. And it's gonna go off balance the other direction for a short period, which is what the great resignation is,

but it'll find equilibrium. And what I hope happens for equilibrium to happen is the quality of leadership goes up, the quality of corporate culture goes up, and that average frontline employee can say, no, I like my job. I'm happy. And fine becomes the minority. I love all that. That was so smart. I was like, I wish I was taking notes. Well, the good news is I've recorded all of this. I do have a quick just question based on what you just said.

So we are both very lucky for us to love what we do. Yes. Not everyone's going to have that. If someone's just like, my job is fine. Isn't that also okay for like your, like, say you just want to be like middle-class fancy, right? Like you want to have like, you put in your, I don't know, 45, 50 hours a week. You have your weekends off where you can be with family, friends, hobbies, blah, blah, blah.

But your job is not. It's fine. It's whatever. Isn't that also okay as well? I don't know. So my intonation of fine and your intonation of fine are different. When I say fine, I'm not thinking about, yeah, it pays the bills and I'm really happy and I love my life. When I say fine, I mean like the corporate culture that I go to work to every day, the people

that I work with, the manner in which I'm treated by my leaders is fine. When I talk about fine, I mean literally like it makes me a little bit, literally, like, it makes me a little bit, not depressed, but it makes me a little bit sad. Because I bring fine back home. And then I sit on the couch, and my home life is fine. And my relationship is fine. And we're active participants. It's not just like, the office has to give me this. I'm like, yes, yes. That's a part of the equation. It's like in your relationship, my boyfriend has to do this. True. And you have to also reciprocate. Yeah.

Like it's a relationship. It's a relationship. And I think that's been forgotten. I think all of this has been forgotten. I think we've forgotten that we're in relationship with each other in life. We accuse each other like the left and the right and whatever the cause is, you know, we forget that we're in a marriage. It's like, we live in the same country. We live in the same cities. We share the same resources. And like, we're going to have to figure this out at some

point because like we're in the house together. And like, this is what I lament. I lament the fact that we are partners in a relationship. We are one part of a relationship and it doesn't matter who's right or wrong. We're going to have to figure this out. The thing is, it feels like we're, no, you're 100% correct in that.

But what I find, I'm not saying who, but what I find is certain people do not want to respect others. You can't live in a space where you're going to be disrespected based on race, gender, sexual orientation, how you identify. So I don't know. I just feel like we live in such a world of toxic negativity where it's much easier to say something shitty or to be like, hey, did you see this horrible thing that happened over here? Let me retweet that or post that as opposed to posting something positive or interesting or something that can't be boiled down to extreme reactions and actually requires nuance. And I think's all binary. And we've forgotten that life is complex, to your point, it's nuanced. And we are not very good at dealing with complexity and

shades of gray. So how are you going to fix it, Simon? Working on it. Jeez, all the pressure. The path that I've chosen is to try and sit in the middle, where I think it's important to listen. I don't know if you know the work of Dia Khan. She's an award-winning documentarian, Muslim woman living in England, who was trolled by white supremacists to the point where the police advised her to stay away from open windows. Like it got that bad. Yeah. advisor to stay away from open windows. It got that bad. Yeah. The way she responded was she moved to the United States and went to meet white supremacists. She was in Charlottesville. She

wasn't marching with them, but she was walking with them. She went to give white supremacists a safe space to feel heard. And she tells the story of her own journey where she went to the rallies and she spat on the Nazis and she felt self-righteous. She talked about it with all the people who went to the rally and spat on the Nazis and held their signs and screamed and yelled and called them racist. And they all felt great about themselves. And at the end of the day, Dia asked herself, what did I do? Did I move the needle? Did I actually affect them or did I just feel good about myself?

And she realized that screaming and yelling and spitting at people isn't the solution. She made a documentary about it called White Right, Meeting the Enemy. And something remarkable happens, which is she gives them a chance, as she calls it, to empty the bucket. At the point that they feel heard, they're willing to listen to her. And they struggle to now reconcile their racist views with the fact that they trust her and view her as a friend. And one by one, they drop out of the movement. What she's doing, I think, is helpful. I think it was great for those Nazis

to sort of realize I shouldn't be a Nazi. Okay. But what I also find is like, I feel like we can't be in a place where we have to center ignorance and hatred and hold their hand. There's a part of me where it's like, I don't care if a Nazi doesn't feel heard because what you're spewing is vitriol. Like as a person of a color, as a woman, as just like a person who's like not horrible, to me, it's wild that what she's doing is never done from the other side.

Like a white supremacist is like, let me go talk to some Mexicans and figure out my shit. It's never that. It is someone else having to do the work of fixing white patriarchal bullshit, which I'm like, we are not here to fix your shit and fix this mess. You're right. You're 100% right. And I asked Tia that question. And she said she's worked with white supremacists. She's worked with jihadis. She's worked with abortion activists. And she said in her work, in her experience, the one lesson she's learned, agree or disagree, like it or not, is the victim very often has to go first. first. And you're right. I shouldn't have to. The white patriarchy, I shouldn't have to fix their shit. You're right. But then what? How is someone who has a racist point of view, or a misogynistic point of view, or who has supremacist thinking, how will they see the light if they don't have an experience that helps them see the light? That is a great question. I

think that's super valid. But also, I think it would be more supportive of stuff like this, even though I think what she's doing is brilliant and smart and necessary, obviously. But what I find is more often than not, it tends to not be sustained. Throughout history, there have been gay people, people of color, women, you know, white dudes who are like, who get it, who have done the work of educating this group or that group. And it's great for like a movie that like, you know, Hilary Swank will star in, you know what I mean? But the fruits of that labor never come to pass. If it's not actually being sustained

through years and decades, I'm not sure what the work is actually doing in the long term. Well, I think you summed it up. The work is constant. I mean, you're in a relationship. You're in a four and a half year relationship. I never understood that. People like people like relationships require work i'm like how how good is your relationship if you're constantly working on it you know and i'm in

a relationship and let me tell you it's a lot of work but every day i wake up and say is this work worth it and every day i say yes and the minute it's not worth it, then I guess it'll collapse. But the work is worth it, which is why I and we keep doing it. And if it was only me, then it would fall apart too, to your point, which is how much do I have to keep doing this? But as you know, in a relationship, one of you has to go first. if you have a debate or an argument or a fight one of you has to say i'm sorry even if the other person's wrong or can i tell you how i feel and what happens when both parties stand on the sides going you have to go first although i refuse to what happens and i'm not saying right or wrong or good or bad i I'm just asking the question, what happens in society when both sides sit with their arms folded and demand the other person to go first?

You're right. I mean, we end up with the shit show that we're in right now. Pretty much. A podcaster ain't going to resolve this. Can you tell me something you've been involved in that you absolutely loved and if every project you worked on if everything you did was like this one book this one special this one show where this one script whatever that you would be the happiest person alive i i honestly so i'm in the middle of a writer's room on my um show everything's trash that's coming out on freeform later this

year and it is truly the best working experience i've ever had part of it is because i started achieving success career-wide or success the way that people would view it later you know what i mean like it didn't happen for me when i was 21 25 like the the two dope queens on hbo happened when i was 33 going on 34 yeah which is just a different mentality you're much more appreciative you've experienced more things not working out than working out and you know a lot of the writers in the room, they're in their 30s, some are like early 40s, some have kids, like everyone's sort of like been through their own shit. And so when we all come into the room, we're sort of like, this is a goddamn privilege. Like to be in this room and like create and write and laugh with each other for eight hours a day,

we're not going to bring the bullshit in. We're not going to be laugh with each other for eight hours a day, we're not going to bring the bullshit in. We're not going to be competitive with each other over like, I want to say the funniest. There's just a level of like, we're adults. And I think when you're an adult, you sort of kind of enjoy things, I think, in a deeper way without the sort of insecurities lingering over it. You've worked with adults before, though. What makes this one stand out that you're saying it's the best working experience I've ever had?

I mean, you've worked with mature people before. What's so special about this one? I don't know if it's because of the pandemic, but there's just a level of appreciation and a genuine sort of, I want to feel good today. And I also want you to feel good. And I think that's maybe something before the pandemic when it was sort of like, I, I, like, I just want to feel great. Like, I don't really give a shit how you feel. And we're sort of like, no, we want this to be good. You know, it's sort of like when you have like good sex and you're like both being like this is tight, as opposed to this one person being like, I'm getting mine. The other

person's like, oh, I have not gotten it yet. I'm still waiting. You know what I mean? And I think that we want this together, which is nice. Tell me an early specific happy childhood memory. One of my favorite memories of just childhood is just like, my brother's four years older than me. And he was always so generous. And so he would always just let me play with him and his friends. And it was just like such a cool thing. Like he was never like, Oh, get out of here. Just be he just like included me sort of in that there was just no bullshit. He was like, I'm having fun. I want you to have fun too. And I could just like, I closed my eyes and I could just see us like in the backyard playing basketball together. And it's just like, he's such a cool dude. He's such a cool dude.

Do you know that the story you just told me about your childhood and the story you just told me about the writer's room were the exact same story? What you just revealed is basically your deep-seated motivation, your deep-seated inspiration, what energizes you, which is what you said is this mutual appreciation. You are become your brother. It's not just about him playing with his friends and having fun and keeping his little sister out. It's about him having fun with his friends and including his little sister so she can have fun too. And that's how you describe the writer's room. It's not just about me having fun, but I want you to have's room. It's not just about me having fun, but I want you to have fun too.

It's not just about me finding success or fulfillment or joy. It's about you finding it too. And your life's work now is to basically invite other people to the basketball court to play basketball with you. Oh, I want to tear up. Simon, the way you just encapsulated that. And I would argue that your best work is the work that the message is about appreciation, inclusion, and it's not just about me.

It's about including you as well. And like the messages in your work, when that comes through, you will look at your own work and be like, I'm proud of that work. This was great. Oh my God. Phoebe, you're magic. So are you. This is a dream. This has been a true dream. The feeling's mutual.

What a joy. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Until then, take care of yourself. Take care of each other.