Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Rachel Bloom

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Meet Rachel Bloom, a hilarious and talented actress, comedian, songwriter, singer, and producer. You may know her from co-creating and starring in "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend", a role which won her an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Critic's Choice Award. Her Netflix comedy special Rachel Bloom: Death, Let Me Do My Special came out in October. I’ve been a fan for a long time so I’m delighted to share this episode. EnJOY!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Happy holidays from me, Michael Rappaport, and my gift to you is a free subscription to the I Am Rappaport Stereo Podcast, where I discuss entertainment, sports, politics, and anything and everything that catches my attention. I am here to call it as I see it, and there's a whole lot of things catching my eyes these days. Listen to the I Am R Rapaport Stereo Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, and wherever you get your podcast. The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers.

So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this Bume Stock stuff is I think embarrassing to the SEC. Follow The Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen. People, my people, what's up? This is Questlove.

Man, I cannot believe we're already wrapping up another season of Quetzalove Supreme. Man, we've got some amazing guests lined up to close out the season, but I don't want any of you guys to miss all the incredible conversations we've had so far. I mean, we talked to A. Marie, Johnny Marr, E, Jonathan Schechterer, Billy Porter and so many more. Look, if you haven't heard these episodes yet, hey, now's your chance. You gotta check them out. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now. It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid it's still only me, Craig Ferguson, on my own, standing on a stage, telling comedy words. Come and see me, buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones. I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but you should at least know it's happening. And it is.

The tour kicks off late September and goes through the end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at thecraigfergersonshow.com slash tour. They're available at thecraigfergersonshow.. slash tour or at your local outlet in your region. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. On the podcast today, for my money, one of the most interesting and different and talented American performers to emerge in the last 20 years. She's really

thoughtful, clever, interesting, talented. Well, you're gonna find all of this out. It's Rachel Bloom. bloom. May I compliment you first of all on your background, which is amazing. And also the fact that you are dealing with a young child right now and you look fresh and young and upbeat and lovely and I'm jealous. Well, I slapped on some makeup just before I came on here. And I had a glass of wine last night, which to me is six glasses of wine, because I have no tolerance.

So that means a lot that I look fresh. No, you look great. And listen, I know what it's like to have a little kid. It's, my God. Every time I see people in, I to have a little kid. It's, uh, my God. Every time I see people in, I'm in a hotel right now, when I see people in hotels with little kids, I always say, is anybody getting any sleep? And everybody's like, no. It's all encompassing.

She wasn't asleep over last night. So it was nice to go out and come home and to be like, oh my God, there's no one. I don't have to care for anyone in this house. I mean, that sounds very mean because I still have a husband and a dog. But to not be responsible for someone's life for one night. Because even when you're off the clock, you're on the clock. I was going to say, you probably woke up panicked in the middle of the night. It was weird.

Yeah, I know. I know I've done it myself. Hey, here's what I have to tell you. I'm a little angry. I'm a little angry at you. Oh, okay. Okay. I'll take it.

Because, because I'm watching Death Let Me Do My Special and you shouldn't make people cry and be scared in stand up comedy. That's not stand up comedy. I was scared. I had no idea like when the death thing started up like, this is fucking with me, man. I don't like it. Did the audience know that was going to happen? No, no.

Oh my God. It really fucked with people when the show, when we've started trying it out, it was called like Rachel try some new stuff out and see what happens. So people really had no idea. And then of course, you know, the country we live in, we kept cutting down the time that we revealed it was a plant so that people wouldn't be worried for their lives. Because the second you hear someone say I'm deaf, you're like, well, what? So that was also like, yeah, so that was also like, okay, the second we're going to hear him heckle,

but the second he says I'm deaf, let's get him on mic. So, you know, something's up. So that was something we worked on, but yeah, no, it fucked with people. And then when we called the show, death, let me do my, people still thought it was, um, real, but they knew something would be off about the show. But they thought it was, they thought it was real. And then they grew to not trust anything in the show to the point where I had actual weird things happen

in the show and a couple of actual hecklers. People assumed it was built in. That's kind of great though, isn't it? I mean, even even I first became aware of your work with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend like most people I think and and I always thought like I remember first the first episode of that show going the fuck is happening why is and then it took me and I love that it reminded me of you ever seen the movie Trainspotting? No. All right. Well, you should see it. You really like it. It's about it's an upbeat

tale of heroin addiction in Edinburgh in the 1990s. Oh, you know what? I saw it a long time ago. Yes. There's a scene in that movie where Ewan McGregor as a drug addict drops a vial of heroin, a kind of anal heroin input thing down a public bathroom and it's disgusting, but he knows the only way he can get the heroin is put his hand into the horrible toilet to get the heroin. And then when he goes into the toilet, he goes all the way into the toilet and he's swimming in this beautiful ocean in this toilet and they play

Brian Eno's Deep Blue Sea and it's so beautiful. And when I saw Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, I thought whatever MacGuffin in the head of Irvine Welsh that created that story, you have that too. You know, that odd. Oh, well, thank you. That's a big, and I didn't even need heroin. Well, what I'm saying to you is maybe it's time, as your daughter gets a little older, maybe you start thinking about heroin, especially when she's on a sleepover.

That would be the time. That's the time to do it. But it's an interesting thing because I was very taken with the special. I don't... Oh, that means a lot. I really obviously love you and respect you. That means a lot to me. Oh my God. No, it's fantastic. Anyone who fucks with a genre that is tired anyway, stand up comedy. there's too many people doing it. It's like, it's everybody's playing C, F and G on the guitar.

It's like, stop it, stop it, stop it. And then somebody comes along and throws in a huge minor chord and a five, eight drum thing. And suddenly the whole world opens up again. And I'm now enthusiastic again about stand-up comedy and you have no idea how jaded I am that suddenly you see somebody doing you go fuck there's more room again there's somebody's breaking it again it's great well done that really means a lot to me thank you well it's the truth and what I... You paid a high fucking price for it though.

Like, when you talk about the death of Adam in the show, that to me is... It's such a weird twist on the... I don't even... Is it stand- up comedy? Is that what it is? It's like stand up. I always say it's, it's a stand up show wrapped in a storytelling show, wrapped in a one act play, kind of. So it's kind of, there's more into storytelling as it gets, especially when I get into just like, all right, my character is talking about this for the first time, right? So it's like, okay, let's just go day by day, what happened? And then you're in real storytelling, where it's like, all right,

I'll just tell you about this terrible week where I gave birth, my friend died. And so like, that's where it gets, like it gets very storytelling in that granularness. It's also, it's a very kind of horribly convenient for story thing to event. I mean, it's a cataclysmic kind of, cause I've been, you know, I've had friends that I obviously everyone has and, and I've been at two live births, both of my children. My God, they're so weird.

It's so weird. So weird. It's like that weird kind of energy, like somebody's coming. And it's bloody and it's, there's nothing else in life that's a central life event where it's also going to be gory. Yeah. Unless you have really good birthday parties, I guess. But it's like, gruesomeness is part of it. And so you're already in this very fleshy bloody place that feels very primal. And there's poop too, let's be honest, there's poop.

You know what? I'm astounded. I, with me, there wasn't poop. Oh, stop, stop. You're amongst friends. Of course there was poop. Maybe there was. No one told me.

I didn't smell it. They're being nice to you. There's poop. Maybe. I would have been fine if there were, but yeah, no, there's everything. I mean, and there was a, my husband was trying not to look, but there was a mirror on the other side of the room where you could see everything. And I didn't really see the birth because everyone was blocking it, but after she was

born and they took her to the NICU and the placenta was still in, I caught a glimpse of open wound placenta umbilical cord. It was, it's unbelievable. Isn't that crazy? And it changed everything. I mean, clearly for a mother is physically an astonishing, you know, change, but everything in my life changed everything that my entire perspective of the world changed when I became a father. And I hear people say, oh, you know, like not having kids.

I'm like, fine, that's your choice. It's okay. But I always say, you know, that all the great philosophers in history, none of them had children. That's actually, no, it's not true, but I say it to people because I want to shame them. But it really, what I think it is, is everything, you know, that people say that there's lazy assumptions that I think people, I made before I had kids. One of them was, you know, people say that thing, well, we were born alone and we die

alone. And I've been at two live births. And as far as I can tell, nobody is born alone. There's at least two people in the room. There's nobody born alone. It's utter bullshit. And I just everything about my perspective in life started to change a lot after my first son was born.

It is weird. Is that what is happening to you? A hundred percent. I mean, I say a little in the special where, you know, ever since I've given birth, a story of a child being hurt anywhere messes with me. I got into it a little bit, but basically yeah, like, it kind of makes sense. I don't, I know it's not technically true that like philosophers, all the great philosophers didn't have kids because before you have kids, there is an impartiality that you can have on the world.

There's a moral impartiality that you can have. There's this scene in the HBO show, The Last of Us. Did you watch it? I did. I love that show. So remember when it's like someone basically turns in the head of this rebel alliance in exchange for cancer medication for his brother. And he's like, I wanted to prevent a child from dying. And Melanie Linsky's character goes, children die. Children die literally all the time. This wasn't worth it. And before you have a kid, you can say that, right?

There's a certain amount you can zoom out from the world and look at history and say, well, life is gruesome, life is horrible. And I had such a strong stomach for, I don't know, true crime for, I went to the Museum of Death. I was going to say, same thing. I went to the Museum of Death in LA where it's the most gruesome crime scene photo. And it's just you're like, yeah, that is what it is. And then I had a kid and it just blew that wide open.

It's so much harder to be impartial because you would do anything for this kid. Yeah. And you would, would I turn in the founder of a rebel alliance to get my child cancer treatment? Fuck yeah. Yes. In an absolute second. So you're led by your heart and emotion. And now the media that I can consume has completely,

not completely, but it's really, really done in almost 180. Where I am much more, I'm just so much more sensitive and empathetic, but like in a painful way. Yeah. I mean, I can't watch, I used to watch British detective shows about, you know, crumbly detectives and they have this thing going on with the British, a lot of British detectives shows as the murder of a child and I was like, I can't do it, can't, I'm not, I'm not, or a child is even

missing. Maybe the child's going to be okay, but you don't know about the child missing. That's enough. I don't want to see it. And it is an odd thing. And it's not because I don't know what happens. I was able to consume that media before you, like you say, but it's because I can't stand it. It's not entertainment. It's not, it doesn't, all it does is make me feel awful all the time. Yeah. And all it does is make me feel awful all the time. Yeah, that's what it's not even, and it's not even making me think in the way that darker shit used to make me like, okay, this is dark, but like, okay, it's teaching me a lesson.

I'm so consumed by the emotion. I'm like, I'm not learning a lesson from this right now. Yeah. It's funny that as well, I think even when I have dark thoughts about my own mortality and I thought, well, better not die now because I would really upset the kids. It's like, I'll be fine, but whatever happens to me, happens to me, but I would be... Oh, you start to have this narrative of like, oh yeah, sometimes when I get on a plane alone and I'm like, oh, this is the movie

in my daughter's life where it's the last time she saw her mom. Oh, I do it all the time. Right? Because they do that in so many where it's like, oh, this is the last time and this is the story she's going to tell herself now where it's like, goodbye, I'm going to Vegas. And then it's like, and I never saw her again. So you're telling me you left your daughter to go to Vegas. What age is this little girl?

I did go to Vegas alone a couple of weeks ago. That is true. Did you really? I did. There was a skeptic, there was a convention of skeptics and my friend was speaking at it. And I went for literally a night. First of all, I have to take you back.

Yeah. Because I need to know what happens at a convention of skeptics and why they would meet in Las Vegas to gamble. That seems like a contradiction. Okay. So they, as far as I can tell, Vegas is just where you meet because they have good convention centers. And it's, well, it's not even somewhat central.

It's still West Coast. I don't know. But it was a convention for the Center for Inquiry held at the Horshey Las Vegas. And it was just a bunch of panels and speeches about science and skepticism. And I'm, I'm really, really into this. And I'm, I'm a, I'm a big old skeptical atheist. And it was like, absolutely my jam and my friend Rina was there speaking about, she's really, really good.

She's actually a book called The Gospel of Wellness that's awesome about the pseudoscience of the wellness industry and why we turn to pseudoscience and why even now with all the information on the internet, people are still so mired in false truths. Have you ever read The Demon Haunted World? Yes, I have! It's a fantastic book, isn't it? It's unbelievable. Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World, for those of you who haven't read it.

I still think about the thing he says, which is, you know, when people talk about, and this is more about paranormal phenomena, but he's like, all right, so imagine you're in a house, you're looking at a glass sliding door and there's a fireplace behind you during the day, you would see the backyard during the day. The sun starts to set, Suddenly what you see is the reflection in the glass of the fireplace behind you, but you've been looking out the window all day so it just looks like suddenly there's a fire outside. And he compares that to the way as our brain tricks us into thinking we might be seeing things that aren't there

and hearing things that aren't there. I still use that as an example. problems in your relationship? Come to me. Your best friend acting shady? Come to me. Thinking about cursing that one stank auntie out at the next family gathering? Do it. But come to me before you do because I cussed all mine out before. You want to fight your coworkers? Come to me. Baby daddy mad because you got a boyfriend? Come to me. Thought you was the father but you not? Come to me. I can't promise I won't judge you, but I can guarantee that I will help you. As a daughter, a sister, a mother, and an entrepreneur, I've learned a lot in life. So I'm using my own perspective and experiences to help you fix your mess.

Send me your situation and let's fix it as a family. Listen to Carefully Reckless on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. From tips for healthy living to the latest medical breakthroughs, WebMD's Health Discovered podcast keeps you up to date on today's most important health issues.

Through in-depth conversations with experts from across the healthcare community, WebMD reveals how today's health news will impact your life tomorrow. It's not that people don't know that exercise is healthy. It's just that people don't know why it's healthy. And we're struggling to try to help people help themselves and each other. Listen to WebMD Health Discovered on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Good people. What's up?

It's Quest-O, Questlove. And Team Supreme and I have been working hard to bring you some incredible episodes of Questlove Supreme with gifts you definitely don't want to miss. Now one of the things I love about this Questlove Supreme podcast is we got something for everybody, every type of musical ever. We enjoy speaking to the people who are the face of some movements, some people you've seen on stage or TV or magazine covers, but we also love speaking to the people who are the face of some movements, some people you've seen on stage or TV or magazine covers, but we also love speaking to the folks who are making it happen behind the scenes and they paved the way for those that followed, you know, keystones to the culture.

This season we've had some amazing one-on-one conversations, like on PayPal chatting up with hit maker Sam Holland, shook a Steve Chad with the legend Nick Lowe, and I've had pleasures of doing one-on-one conversations with Willow, Sonata Matreah, Kathleen Hanna, and The RZA. These are conversations you won't hear anywhere else, so make sure you go back and you check those episodes out, all right? Listen to Quest Love Supreme on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a quote that he does at the start of the book, which I think is fantastic. He's talking about a taxi driver that he gets who's asking him about, so where is Atlantis? You're Carl Sagan, where's Atlantis? And he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. You know, the city under the sea. And he's like, I'm, no. But then he goes into a quote from Leon Trotsky,

who to be honest, not my favorite guy in the world, but Leon Trotsky is talking about the rise of the Nazis in Germany. And he's talking about, you know, I'm paraphrasing it until the end. I only remember the end, but the paraphrasing that Trotsky says, you know, they have pilots who wear amulets to give them good luck

while they have, you know, while they pilot these magnificent machines of engineering. And he talks about all these different people who do superstitious things while doing very scientifically advanced things. And then this is the thing that he zeros in to make it about the rise of the Nazis. He says this quote, which I still find chilling. He says about human beings, what remarkable reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance and savagery. And I was like, whoa. And I feel like that's accurate even now.

We have remarkable amounts of darkness, ignorance and savagery. People are very on fire right now. Oh, it's all, I mean, to put it bluntly, to make me sound like I'm 90, we weren't ready for the internet. No, I don't think anyone's ready. We just weren't ready. I'm not ready for it now. I'm not ready because it takes advantage of tribalism, which is in us. Like, I think,

I might be wrong, but I feel like I read somewhere the reason homo sapiens is the dominant, you know, the only dominant kind of species of our kind is because we just killed everyone else because it was, you know, the Neanderthals were wiped out. We killed the Neanderthals. I think that I also heard that same study though. I also heard that we actually just shagged the Neanderthals and we're all like their genes stopped coming through and everybody got their sex on and the humans came through more, you almost say apians came through more than Neanderthals.

But I might have just been looking at a completely erroneous report. Maybe it's a beautiful mix. I think it might be a little bit of both, a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. But let me take you back to Las Vegas because it's important to me. Because I don't think I know enough about skeptics, modern skepticism, and I would like you to take me through it. Well, I think it's still finding of what is it generationally now,

because I would say it was overwhelmingly a lot of people who were Gen X or boomers. And there's a lot of skepticism that's still about UFO paranormal debunking because it's very much in conversation with like new age stuff that came about in like the 60s, the 70s, right? So UFOs are less of a thing now, but if you were born in the 50s, you know, Roswell, like, there's so much about that aspect of the paranormal that they're still debunking, which is very interesting. But I think what was really cool about this is my friend Rina and some other people spoke more about taking a

skeptic lens into health trends and into there was this really really interesting speech I forget who it was of this journalist comparing Gwyneth Paltrow goop culture of that kind of pseudoscience like put this jade egg up up your vagina to look like you're saying I noticed that as well. Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of parallel with that with what's going on with now the Manosphere. I don't know if you've heard about the Manosphere, which is like, it's like, I feel like Joe Rogan's like kind of a part of this where it's just like, all of these things you can do to make yourself as manly as you can.

Like people are drinking their piss. There's this one guy who's like, people are fully drinking their own fermented piss because they're like, this will make you manly. And it's also why people are, it kind of goes into people are chewing really tough gum to get a chiseled jaw. Like that's a big thing now, to like look as manly as possible and it's just the kind of flip of the Gwyneth Paltrow stuff, where it's like pseudo-sciency stuff to be the best that you can be

and be the most of your, I don't know, it's all about like primal, right? Like let's go back to being a man. Like there's this, there are these influencers who are like, I only eat raw meat and look at me. I'm, I'm fucking shredded. And then it turns out he's doing a lot of steroids. Yeah, only raw meat and steroids. Yeah, exactly. But it's the same thing where it's on the female pseudoscience end where it's like, you know, I only eat grass and spring water. Also, I can afford a trainer six times a week. So that's the bigger, that's the probably the bigger thing.

But that does not play into archetypes. Those things play into archetypes of aesthetics as well. Like if a square jaw makes you more manly, but David Bowie was a man, Andy Warhol was a man, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a man. There are men who look different. I guess it's like to look like a cartoon man. It's to be, I think it, well, it all, look, it also relates to a lot of the cultural thing of like men need to assert themselves, men need to be masculine. It's a thing that's, I think, more on the, what you would call the right, although I don't even know what that means anymore. But the idea of like men need to be men and women need to be women and the world will be more organized once men are empowered again to embrace their

true power and potential as opposed to the journalist was like, as opposed to me, he's like, I'm a soy boy beta cuck. He's like, I'm their nightmare. So it's like whatever, like I guess they would consider David Bowie a soy boy beta cuck. See that's interesting because I, my definition of masculinity is like aspirational masculinity for me as a man is individualism. Is fuck you, you know, this is how we all have to be. Fuck you, it's how we have to be. This is how we all have to be. Fuck you. It's how we have to be.

This is how I am. You know, so if I'm like, and you label, beat a cock, fuck your beat a cock label. I'm a man, you know, and I kind of, I don't like to allow people who have a different view of the world than me to give me a name that I then have to adopt. Oh, that's all the internet is. Yeah, I know. All the internet is people giving other people names.

If you have to take, and I think if you have a name, no matter what part of the spectrum you're on, the political sphere you're on, if you have a name for a group of other people, you need to take a fucking look at yourself. Because people are people. And I think that that's what fascinates me is that I always thought the internet was a bit like show business. It's only dangerous if you take it seriously. If you take it seriously, it can kill you. You know, I really love,

on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, we did a whole story about a character getting sober. And we actually watched some of your work in the room. You did a great monologue. It was when Britney Spears was having her meltdown. And because we were talking about what you learn in AA and to be non-judgmental and how in that you were saying like, I don't want to say she's not good. I don't judge. I don't want to say what she is. And I just love, I don't know, I really see that kind of non-judgmental space

in what you're saying right now. And it's just really cool. It's really cool to see like evolved recovery and how it continues to clearly like affect your worldview in all sorts of awesome ways. I think that it's the idea of it. Thank you. But I think the idea of it is that the idea of evolution, I think, has, it's interesting, you know, people say that the evolution, and I think this is part of this masculine thing right now

that, you know, the strongest survive, and that's not true. The strongest don't survive. Mammoths are plenty strong, saber-toothed tigers, strong. You know, it's not about strong, it's those who adapt, survive. If you can adapt to the changing environment, you survive. And so I think that by,

if you extrapolate those that adapt, survive, then the intelligent survive. That's an optimistic worldview, I know, but I think that I feel like, you know, Hannah Arendt said, if evil had triumphed even once good wouldn't exist or something like that. I don't know if that was her or it was someone else. I mean, she said a lot of very clever things and a bit so have a lot of other people. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know, you know better than me if that was her, but yeah,

that's a really good... Has anyone else made that point? Matthew Becker Oh, I'm sure they must have. There's nothing good. Danielle Pletka I'm sure you're not the first person to point out that adaptation is actually a better quality than just brute strength. Because yeah, like the reason that mammals became superior and that there was like mammalian supremacy in the first place is because when the asteroid hit and killed off the dinosaurs, all these little moles were living underground. And so that's why now we're here. And that's why mammals rose to the top without that,

who the fuck knows where we'd be. We'd all be feathered bird lizard people. You know, I've had a few nights. Yeah. I was also going to say if you ask certain corners of the internet, they'll say, well, okay, a lot of people are. I don't know. I mean, I think it's quite interesting because it also depends on your idea of what success is. Like is your success as a species, is it numbers?

Is it sheer numbers? Because if it is, ants win. Or is it intelligence? Is it a soul? Is there a soul? I mean, what do the skeptics say about the soul? Is there a soul? I mean, I think that the skeptics are, it's all about kind of always searching. That's the thing that I always take from the skeptic community is it's always searching for the truth. So soul, no, I mean, there's never been any, it's all evidence based, right?

So there's never really been any evidence of a soul. A lot of what you're saying also, the keynote speaker the night I was there was Neil de Grasse Tyson. And a lot of what you're saying also, the keynote speaker the night I was there was Neil deGrasse Tyson. And a lot of what you're saying is exactly what he was saying. He's like, all right, so if aliens came and they wanted to talk to, you know, the smartest animal, how would they gauge that? We don't have the biggest brains of any animal on earth. And he started to go through, what are the animals with the biggest brains?

And he's like, okay, well, let's say we're looking at brain to body ratio. We're not the animals even with the, you know, biggest brain to body ratio. And so he's really started breaking it down about how objectively unspecial human beings are. If you were, if you were an alien species looking down at us and that was his whole type of kind of zooming out. if you were an alien species looking down at us and that was his whole I could cause a great counter to that though. Yeah, Lucy. Lucy K has a great counter to that, which is humans remove themselves from the food chain. So that's pretty impressive. Like, for most of history, humans died like, ah, ah, ah, but now that doesn't happen really

anymore. And now we're perfectly capable of destroying ourselves, but it's, you know, and then actually, if you think about it, maybe we didn't, I mean, look at COVID, for example, with Adam, you know, it's like, fucking plague comes, it comes. So maybe that's not true. Yeah, there's nothing you can do. It's why, what is it? Is the movie The Sword and the Stone?

There's a, it's an animated movie, it's King Arthur and Merlin. There's a wizard fight. And the way the wizard fight culminates, I want to say, is they're like turning into, one's a dragon, the other turns into a bear and finally Merlin disappears and he's become a virus And he just gets the other wizard very sick because he's like this is actually the most powerful thing Yeah, maybe I that would like the last of us when they do that at the beginning of it,

when they're doing that show about fungus in the 1970s. That was such a good cold open to acknowledge. Oh my God. Hey, I know we're in a pandemic, but there's actually something worse. That was a really chilling way to open a show. How do you deal with that now that I tell you what I'm leading up to, I had to adapt my entire Viltong shang, my entire worldview had to change when I became a parent because now there was someone who mattered more than my feelings on earth.

And it continued with my second child. And I think that it led me in a very different path that I'd been to before. I was very evidence-based right up until I became a parent. And now I'm on a deep dive right now with the early Christian mystics and the Moses and his gang. And I mean, it's like I'm off on all sorts of adventures with those people now. And Pythagoras, who is like a real, you know, and Gore Vidal's historical novels, which

if you haven't read them, oh my God, have you done any of those? No, no. Oh, you have to. I'll put it on my list now. Oh my God. It's amazing. Amazing. But I became much more interested in the un-evidence, in the lack of evidence than in the evidence. And I think it came from that moment of being at my first live birth, apart from my own, which I don't remember, but that weird moment where it all...

There's no words for it. I don't even think there's just some kind of weird gap in the universe and then somebody news there and it freaked me out. It had a profound effect on me and I am no longer evidence-based. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So, I'm not there. I think that I see it more as my emotions and my empathy have been just cracked open in a way that makes it very hard for me to be totally objective and totally impartial. But for me, I guess the thing with looking for evidence-based stuff, and this might just be really personal to me, is the part of the reason I'm interested in all of it in skepticism and, you know, the search for the truth is I want someone to find the proof

of the mystic. And I'm- It wouldn't be- That's what I'm looking for. But it's not mystical of this. But that's what I'm looking for, right? I know. I'm looking for, what is it I read, this woman named Mary Roach, she writes amazing books.

I read, was it named Mary Roach, she writes amazing books. I read, was it stiff or spook? She's written two books about death and the search for the afterlife. I read that stuff because I'm like, maybe this will be the thing that proves it. Which is very, I think not everyone, but it's why I like the skeptic area is from a very young age. I knew that I kind of liked this area, but also I didn't want to believe in things that weren't true. So this is the way I split the difference. Because it's funny, my own therapist, I was talking to her about my interest in this and she goes, you know, she's, she's like, I don't really believe in this stuff.

She's like, I'm an atheist. She's like, I just't really believe in this stuff. She's like, I'm an atheist. She's like, I just don't think about this stuff. You really have a thing where you're, you want to immerse yourself in this skepticism, paranormal investigation where she's like, I just don't, I just don't think about it. I just think ghosts aren't real and that's it. And so I don't, I don't know what it is, but there is something in me that I love reading studies of things that can't be studied because maybe this will be the thing that proves it. But that's a beautiful mind to have. That I think is a spiritual hunger, which was my own particular brand. I don't know if I was

ever an atheist. I think I probably was at one point. And I'm certainly not a flag-waving, drum-beaten, organized religion person. I'm not good at joining groups of people. I couldn't even join in a group of late night hosts and there was only like seven of us. So I like, I like, I don't want to be part of your fucking gang. It's like, there's only, there's only enough for a dinner party. Like I don't fucking care. It's funny. I was talking to a friend of mine today about that very thing. Atheism is, is too fundamental a stance for me. I can't do it. I can't do it. It believes in itself too much and fundamentalism, I can't do fundamentalism. It doesn't seem hungry enough. This is where you get into like the idea of atheism being a form of spirituality is controversial.

But when I really kind of became an atheist, what it actually meant for me was, really, what I would say is I'm a practical atheist, theoretical, agnostic. I live my life as if there's nothing, as if no one's looking out, if I fuck up, it's not the universe teaching me a lesson. It's like, no, maybe I just fucked up and I have to apologize to someone. But I'm practically agnostic in that I think it's something like 98% of the universe is dark matter and we don't know what dark matter is. So no, you can't be like there's nothing when there's so much we don't know. It's just the way I live my life on a practical level is as if there's nothing and very evidence based, but there's a part of me that is very

open to wonder and wants to remain open to wonder. So whatever that means, I don't know if that's pure atheist, I'm sure there are some people who are like, well, that's then you're not an atheist. I don't know what that means, but that's how my brain, this is what I think makes me the best version of myself. Whatever you call this, what I'm doing. From tips for healthy living to the latest medical breakthroughs, WebMD's Health Discovered podcast keeps you up to date on today's most important health issues.

Through in-depth conversations with experts from across the healthcare community, WebMD reveals how today's health news will impact your life tomorrow. It's not that people don't know that exercise is healthy. It's just that people don't know why it's healthy. And we're struggling to try to help people help themselves and each other. Listen to WebMD Health Discovered on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Yo, what up? It's your girl Jess Hilarious, and I think it's time to acknowledge that I'm not just

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to bring you some incredible episodes of Questlove Supreme with gifts you definitely don't wanna miss. Now, one of the things I love about this Questlove Supreme podcast is we got something for everybody, every type of musical ever. We enjoy speaking to the people who are the face of some movements, some people you've seen on stage or TV or magazine covers, but we also love speaking to the folks who are making it happen behind the scenes and they paved the way for those that followed, you

know, keystones to the culture. This season, we've had some amazing one-on-one conversations, like on PayPal, chatting up with hip maker Sam Holland, shook a Steve Chad with the legend Nick Lowe, and I've had pleasures of doing one-on-one conversations with Willow, Sonata Metreia, Kathleen Hanna, and The RZA. These are conversations you won't hear anywhere else, so make sure you go back and you check those episodes out, all right?

Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we talked earlier about the lessons of sobriety or recovery. And there's one thing I learned that I think has been pivotal for me in this and it sounds like you are capable, not capable, you do this too. And at a far younger age than I ever got hold of it was, it seems to me that too many people, most people are not willing to make themselves the villain of their own story.

Everyone and I am willing to do that. I want to go, look, this person may have fucked up, but I fucked up too, you know, and I, I really try to live my life like that. Like, okay, whatever they did, that's not important. What did I do? You know, what did it? Because that's the only thing I can do anything about. Yeah. Can't do anything about what they did, but I can important. What did I do? You know, what did I, because that's the only thing I can do anything about.

Can't do anything about what they did, but I can do something about what I did. And if it means I have to try and, you know, make amends or not do it again or whatever it was, then I do that. But I think accountability is something that can be lost if you're not worried about the accounts being settled in some way.

You know, and I'm not, I'm not worried about that, but you see where I'm kind of like edging towards this. I get it. I don't have, I have so many other parts of me that want to be a good person that have nothing to do with heaven. Oh, I agree. I don't mean that. I don't mean like getting the books right so you get into heaven.

I mean, getting the idea that there is a, I don't want to get to one of the, I'm not saying oh, well, if you don't believe in God, you're going to run around killing people. That's nonsense. But what I mean is it helps, I don't know, it helps me imagine that there may be something. Yeah. But I absolutely reject the didactic nature of stand up, sit down, turn around, eat this, don't eat this, wear this, don't wear this, tell these other people they've got it wrong. I reject all of that.

The organized part of religion, if you like. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question of, and one that I'm still trying to figure out for my own family of, okay, if you live your life not religiously, where does a moral compass come from? Where do you get a sense of right and wrong? And do you need God for a sense of right and wrong? For me, I don't know if you do. I think that we just have so many societal structures that are set up. You have thousands of years of people philosophizing

and thinking of morality in the context of different spiritualities. And a lot of it is not. And very little moral compass that we're kind of taught that isn't based in some sort of spirituality. So, I'm still navigating, okay, how do you teach someone a sense of right and wrong? And maybe spirituality isn't involved. But at the same time, like, just from an objective perspective, like, it's not like religion is useless to me. Religion is people for thousands of years ideating on the human condition. That in itself is so incredibly profound. It's a lot to throw out in one thing.

I don't want to do that, but I think that that's a real debate. And it's what a lot of religious people would say, well, when you take religion out of society, you miss some moral compass. And I don't think that's necessarily the case, but that is a debate of what you ground yourself in. Well, I guess there are people who if they, you know, I'm not one of them, I don't think you're one of them, but maybe there are people who if they didn't have their, you know, their accounts to settle in heaven, they would run around killing people.

And that's the reason why they don't. So maybe- Which is so scary. Which is just so, which is so- It's terrifying, but- I am so less scared of the idea of someone going around who doesn't murder people who, if you really press them, they'd be like, no, I can murder someone and get away with it.

I just don't want to murder people. That scares me a lot less than someone who's like, oh boy, if there weren't God, I would be killing everyone. That's horrifying. Yeah, it is a horrifying thing. I don't think there's that many of those though. I don't think there's that many, but all you need is a few to be serial killers. Well, there's that, but then you get the people are like, oh, well, I got to kill these people because God wants me to. There's no, there's no, there's no speaking to. Well, and they're taking that and they're taking out whatever is messed up in their

head, you know, but for them it's, it's, it's righteousness. Yeah. I mean, this is stuff that I'm actively thinking about and going through, especially since having a kid. But for me, I guess like, what guides my moral compass is, how do you spread joy, not pain? How do I not cause pain, even though at the center of life is pain? I mean, something that I've been really thinking about lately is the way that living beings survive is to consume other living beings. Even if you're a vegetarian, you're eating plants,

plants are alive. So that's weird that in a, if this were a moral just world, the fact that not only are we supposed to eat things that are alive to survive, but that then everything alive has pain receptors. And even plants, even plants have, like, plants have a way of sending out distress pulses, right? So even though that fundamental of life to me seems really morally contradictory, I'm just trying to cause people the least amount of pain as possible. And Patton Oswald has a great special, I don't know if you saw it, shortly after his wife died. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And she says, and she was, I think, very much what sounds like an atheist or agnostic, and she just always said, it's chaos, be kind. And I think, I still think about that sometimes. I think that's such a beautiful way to view the world and kind of how I see the world. It's like, it's just chaos. Just be kind. You know, I feel like that is it. That's the only way to, it's hard to be kind when, you know, it's, I think it's easy, for me, I find it easy to be kind when people

are worthy of pity. But when they're worthy of anger, it's harder for me to be kind to people I feel angry with. Oh, yeah. It's much more of a challenge. And people I don't necessarily love or love how they live. It's tricky. I am so I'm not an aggressive driver, but I'm a judgmental driver where if someone doesn't signal or cuts me off, I'll just I'll be what do you do? You know, to the point where my four year old has heard me criticize people enough that

she's like, Mama, you should have your own driving school where people can learn how to drive like you. And I was like, you know what? They should. So I was very- That is a great idea. I was like, that's really, and so now, but now it's gotten, it's become kind of in our family

a running joke of my kind of Soviet reeducation camp where I forced people to learn about all sorts of different polite things that we've forgotten in society, like no cut-seize is really important to me. Very. So I'm, as much as I want to spread kindness, I'm also very petty. I think maybe you're just human.

And we're all a duality. What I always circle right back around, I seem to always come back around to Carl Jung. Every time I wander off in any direction, any other direction, I come back to Carl Jung, who seemed to kind of grab it all for it, you know, all into one place, mysticism and science and, you know, and the human experience. I really kind of get there. human experience. I really kind of get that. Do you ever read any or have you ever come across the Red Book or anything like that? No, it's been a minute actually. I did a lot of, we read a lot of Freud in school. So I'm

behind on my young. It's funny. Freud, I mean, obviously, you know, an innovator. Oh, so many, no, no, so many holes to poke. Yeah, a little bit. I took a class in Freudian psychoanalysis for some reason in school and I really, and then I had my first therapist was a therapist who was then training in psychoanalysis. So I know a lot more about the kind of almost simplistic Freudian view of things than I do about the Jungian view. It's on my to-do list. Well, they, I mean, they famously kind of split up. It was a real John Lennon Paul McCartney moment with those two. But I veered towards Young.

I can't make Freud work for me much. But the discovery of things is important. And he did discover a lot of techniques. He moved things forward. He wasn't really, it wasn't a be all and end all. No, and he didn't believe in clits. Yeah, that's a real... No, it's a whole...

There's a really fucked up story. It was a story from like the 20s. There's this princess, she was a great... She was like a grand niece of Napoleon Bonaparte. She was very rich. And she got in with Freud and she was obsessed her whole life that she'd never had a vaginal orgasm. And Freud was like, agreed, like, because he basically believed that clitoral orgasms, which is scientifically where all orgasms come from, in the woman, were immature.

And so this woman had numerous, this is in like the 20s, surgeries to try to make her vagina closer to her clitoris. And this was all urged on by Sigmund Freud. It's nonsense. It's absolutely nonsense. So there was a lot of bullshit. You've talked a little bit in your life about mental health and kind of dealing with your own struggles.

I mean, as I have myself, I've talked a lot, but like when I got sober, I thought everyone was going to be great. It didn't really work out that way. I mean, there's, it's kind of an ongoing, struggles to, it requires vigilance. Do you still find yourself in that place today? Do you still kind of?

Oh, it's a journey. It's a journey I'll never be, I'll never be over. Cause there's two things. There's my own mental health and then, you know, the mental health of others. And I've dealt with people close to me going through mental health issues and, okay, how much do you help? Where do you put up boundaries? Yeah, it's hard.

And that's, you know, you can only control what you can control. But no, it's an ongoing thing, especially as just the world continues to get more complicated, not only becoming a parent, but as frankly the internet gets scarier and weirder and weirder. Like I'm never going to be like, yeah, I got nothing else to solve with my mental health. This is why I get, when you said that thing about the internet and the world getting weirder and stuff, I feel this is why, I mean, people that listen to this podcast probably sick of me hearing it, sick of me saying it, but that's why I get so obsessed with these Gore Vidal historical novels.

Julian the Apostate, Creation, the Seven Narratives of Empire that you wrote about the United States from the revolution till the 1950s. It's fascinating because it's always been a shit show Rachel. It's always been a shit show and he made it, he makes it personal so that you believe it's not distant, it's like real people 500 years BC. You believe it. It's like someone's got an iPhone and showing you around. Oh I've got to get into these. You have to because it's FaceTiming your way into the past. He was a fucking genius, Vidal. I met him towards the end of his life and I hadn't read a thing he had written at that

point and I feel like I really missed an opportunity to, I don't know, grovel or something. I don't know that it would have made any difference to him, but his work is unbelievable. He's an unsung American genius. I know a lot of people are into him, but he should be far more to the forward of thinking. No, that's very calming to me. Just hearing you say it's always been a shit show is really, it's fucked up. I find that really calming that. I find it too. Me too. This is life. I think coming up during the 90s, which people called the end of history,

right? There was something about like, well, we're finished. Nothing else to see here, nothing else to do here, which was kind of the narrative of, I don't know, I think the maybe a child's perceived narrative of the late 90s. And then being launched into this century with anything but calm. Just to remember like no, it's actually chaos is the norm. Totally. It's common. Look, the United States, you know, Aaron Burr shoots and kills Alexander Hamilton and goes on trial while

he's still the vice president, goes to New Orleans, tries to raise an army to become the emperor of fucking Mexico, right? This is all going on. What we've got right now is kind of mid range crazy. Wow. You know, McGinley. I didn't know about the emperor of Mexico thing. Oh, girl, he was fucking nuts.

And then, you know, don't get me started on Thomas Jefferson, how crazy that fucking shit was. And then, and Burr was Jefferson's vice president. Of course, yeah. Oh my God. And then McKinley getting shot at the start of the 20th century and Teddy Roosevelt, who was his vice president coming in and all that crazy shit that was going on. William Randolph Hearst getting blamed for inciting the assassination of McKinley

and losing his chance of ever becoming president, which is what he really wanted. And when you read about these people, you go, oh, well, that's Elon Musk. That's Donald Trump. That's, you know, that's Hillary. That's I mean, they're all over the place. I mean, it's Mark Twain gets the credit for saying this. I don't know if he said it or not, which is kind of ironic because it makes sense with the quote.

Apparently he said, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Yes, I love that quote. I think that that's the way I find it very comforting and well researched, meticulously researched, genius written historical fiction, but based in real fact. Well, I got to get into that because I because even though I'm not a mental health professional, I can't help but see people's unresolved issues and personality disorders everywhere. Right.

And it's just like, oh yeah, that's the brain chemistry that's been fucking people up and causing dictators in wars for the past 10,000 years. Totally, Totally. And I think that- Not to blame mental illness on people being bad, which is a whole other debate. I just want to say it's complicated. Well, yeah, but there are things like, let's take Henry Vh, right? Henry the Eighth, who for a long time is like a fairly

staid, nothing much going on monarch in England. Everything's pretty stable. Has a jousting accident. It won't heal. He starts getting a little crazy. He's putting on weight. Decides that, you know, his wife of 20 years, it's her fault. And that whole period, his six wives of Henry, that's a 10 year period. That's it. That was the last 10 years of his life. So it was like maybe concussion from a jousting accident or something. I think it was... That's really interesting. They reckon he was probably type two diabetes. And he had all sorts of, I mean, for a while they thought

it was syphilis, they thought it was something else, but a lot of his behavior was brought on by the physicality of his changing body, you know, through the course of his life. And I think that that, you know, to come back to the skeptics conference a little bit, I think that's what people are looking for sometimes when they put the jade egg in the vagina or the fucking rub myself with cat feces in order to make whatever, you know, whatever the thing is to please don't do any of those. But they, um, I think they're looking for a way to physically change how they feel. I did that with alcohol. I want to physically change how I feel.

And some of it's beneficial if you run or you swim or you do pushups or something, then it's all right. But as I have to go myself, so do you. That's just amazing. I'm honestly going to read that might be next on my reading list. Oh, I can't recommend it highly enough. Start with either Julian the Apostate, Burr, or Creation. Oh, okay, great.

They're all fabulous. It was great to talk to you. That's especially yours as a fucking masterpiece. How dare you. Oh, thank you. But other than that, I remain a fan. Oh my God, you're the best. Thank you for having me.

God bless you. Talk soon. Happy holidays from me, Michael Rappaport. My gift to you is a free subscription to the I Am Rappaport Stereo Podcast where I discuss entertainment, sports, politics, and anything and everything that catches my attention. I am here to call it as I see it. And there's a whole lot of things catching my eyes these days. Listen to the I Am R Rapaport Stereo Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, and wherever you get your podcast. The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers.

So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this Boomstock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Follow The Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen.

People, my people, what's up? This is Questlove. Man, I cannot believe we're already wrapping up another season of Quetzalove Supreme. Man, we've got some amazing guests lined up to close out the season, but I don't want any of you guys to miss all the incredible conversations we've had so far. I mean, we talked to A. Marie, Johnny Marr, E, Jonathan Scheer, Billy Porter, and so many more. Look, if you haven't heard these episodes yet, hey, now's your chance. You gotta check them out. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcast.