Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Eric Kaplan: Does Everything Happen for a Reason?

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

Eric Kaplan (EP on The Big Bang Theory, Co-EP on Young Sheldon, M.A. in philosophy) joins us to break down the funniest moments from The Big Bang Theory, philosophy as it relates to mental health, and practical ways to avoid being consumed by fear. He shares the differences between spirituality and religion, his experience as a monk for a brief period of time, and his concerns about selling out when he became a tv writer. Eric opens up about the passing of his older brother and how it affected his family and Eric’s own relationship with his parents, his obsession with death and dying that led him to study philosophy, and his "meditation on emptiness" practice. He explains different types of philosophy, how the concept of a higher power fits into his philosophical belief systems, and helps us answer important questions like "Why do people believe in God?" and "Does everything happen for a reason?" Eric discusses the potential benefits of psilocybin and LSD, the potential origins of climate change denialism, and what he thinks is going right in the world. Mayim and Eric consider how transgenerational trauma can inform cultural traditions, how cultural traditions can provide solutions to that trauma and grief. Eric Kaplan's new podcast, "Terrifying Questions and How Not to Be Terrified By Them": https://starburns.audio/podcasts/terrifying-questions/ BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here's a question. Was Big Bang Theory funny? When you put on that tiara and you became seemingly like a being with no bones and started sloshing around the stage, I thought that was hilarious. What else did I do that was funny? This is fun. Didn't you say shut your ass at some point to Canal? Yes. That was really funny.

I think when you were in the car with Jim Parsons and he says that's a lot of band-aids, That was really funny. I actually thought when Kevin, uh, the line was don't all look at the same time because a girl had walked into the comic book store and Kevin said,

don't all look at the same time. He sang it. It was really funny. It's my and be all next breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. Because you know she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to be. Hi, I'm I. I'm Biallick and welcome to my breakdown.

This is the place where we break things down. So you don't have to. We're talking today to a very, very special person. Eric Kaplan. Matt Graining describes his book, Does Santa Exist, A Philosophical Investigation, as the funniest philosophy book since, well, ever. My quote is on the back.

It says Eric Kaplan is more than a talented comedy writer. He's a deep soul and intellectual master and a brilliant communicator of the subtleties of the intersections between faith and logic. He will have you laughing, thinking harder than you've ever thought, and falling in love with the process of intellectual exploration all over again. First, my favorite person who I'm sure exists, Jonathan Cohen.

Only sometimes. I'm a mythical creature. You are a mythical creature. Only in your imagination do I exist. And sometimes on this podcast. I've introduced you to Eric. We've talked to Eric about writing. He's also a big influence for me as a writer and has kind of coached me through a lot of my

writing journey. But I'm very excited for you to get to also talk to Eric. He's, you know, his degree, his doctorate is in philosophy of mind, and he's a really fascinating person. Eric wrote on Futurama, Flight of the Concord's, the Big Bang Theory, where he was an executive producer, also Young Sheldon where he's an executive producer. He's an incredible writer and thinker and also the dungeon master of the D&D game that I played with some of the other Big Bang folks for many, many years. But it's really, it's a pleasure to welcome Dr. Eric Kaplan to the podcast. him. Eric Kaplan, I mean, a man who needs, to some no introduction and to some, a lot of

introduction. Eric is one of my teachers, as it were. He's done many, many famous things. I met you on Big Bang Theory. Yes. Where you were, I want to say, you were co-EP, correct? I eventually was raised to. We were raised to executive producer.

I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Chuck Lorry told me to my face that you are the funniest man in the room. That was kind of him. A tremendous amount of what many people love and identify with the Big Bang theory, especially in the years that I happened to be there, not because I was there, but we're due to much of your brilliance. You really are an incredible writer and thinker. And, I mean, you wrote for Futurama. Like, there's an Emmy in your house. Just like hanging out next to, like, the, you know, bourbon glasses.

You've also written for Flight of the Concords And you, Young Sheldon is actually what you started working on During Big Bang Theory. You, Maria and I think Dave Getch were back and forth As, you know, kind of our incredibly seasoned writers Who then began Young Sheldon And that is where you, in theory, reside. We also still share a workspace, meaning we both are at Warner Brothers

Where you have a deal. And we've been wanting to create together for many years and hopefully we will get to do that. In addition to all those things, you are, I don't, is the word ordained for monkness? I was ordained as a monk, but I'm no longer a monk. I was a monk for a brief period of time. Almost every male in Thailand was ordained as a monk that's part of Thai culture to be a temporary monk. So I was a temporary monk.

I wasn't drummed out of the sign. No, no, I understand. But you say that as if you were. raised in Thailand. I wasn't. I was raised in Brooklyn. When someone says they are no longer a monk, can you say, was it accurate to say that I'm a retired monk? I would say a former monk. I would say a former monk, yeah. I mean, retired just sounds, it has a little ring to it. It does. It does. I want to warn the two of you that I think about language more than is, I'm not going to say more than as healthy, but probably more than as entertaining for the audience.

I told Jonathan, you might say what is is at some point in this conversation. Heck, yeah. Well, no, I mean, the question is, do I have my phenomenologist hat on or my entertainer hat on? And I'm kind of monitoring myself and maybe too much. Maybe I'm monitoring myself to the point that I'll be inhibited and be less entertaining. But I am sort of thinking like, is a discussion of what is is? Does anyone want to hear that?

Will that bring any enjoyment to the listeners' lives? and my worry is now. So Eric is from Flatbush, a place in Brooklyn with a lot of history, and there's a lot of religious Jews there. And it's a place that I have been. It's where I buy my long skirts because they just sell them, you know, every other store in Flatbush. Before you kind of became a proper comedy writer,

a sitcom writer and obviously in the Simpsons Futurama world, You studied philosophy at Columbia and you medieval philosophy and philosophy of science, is that right? Yes. And then your doctorate is from Berkeley. Yes. And you studied philosophy of mind. Yeah, as it connected to a few other things, but yes. Okay.

When were you in Thailand in your robes? Because I've seen the pictures and they're beautiful. It's just not crimson. What's that color? It's like a golden rod. Oaker. Oh, O'Ker. When did that happen?

That happened after college and before grad school. Great. And you did that, and then you came back. And you met Reduka, your awesome wife. Yes. You met Reduka in New York, correct? Yes. And then you both moved out here.

Yes. Okay. That's true. How does one go from, you know, medieval philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind to the very, very mainstream, popular world of sitcom writing. So when I was a little kid, I was writing stories all the time. So part of my deal is writing.

And in high school, I wrote, sorry about the vocalized pauses. Plays. I wrote some plays. and, God, I wonder if, you know, I used to stutter. I wonder if this is sort of like so weird echo of the stutter, because if I don't put in the vocalized poses, there are these weird un-vocalized poses, which I don't think are what the doctor ordered either.

Anyway, so, so, loosen up, loosen up. So, yeah, I did plays, I wrote plays, I wrote stuff for comedy magazines, and I liked the idea of connecting with people. And then when I got married, I sort of had a small family to support, and I became terrified of unemployment as an academic. And I felt guilty about this for many years. I felt I was doing this horish thing that I was leaving behind, thinking about stuff and selling myself. And that's true.

I am selling myself. But I also had this sense that I really wanted to connect with people, that I really wanted to write something. that people would care about and like. So, of course, anytime you seek external validation, it's a, yeah, you're walking into the labyrinth of the Minotaur, you know, because you can lose yourself. But I think there's also, I mean, it's been a weird path for me, but I bless it.

Like I'm happy I did it, although I've had, like I said, a lot of self-recrimination along the way. Because I, what are you trying to do this for? I have a voice in my head. What are you trying to do this for? Why aren't you like trying to write about, you know, the meaning of life or something, you know, pure? So I sort of deliberately took a path, you know, for the money, for the impurity, and for the external validation. But I think I learned something from it.

So I think I'm going to say here on this podcast, I'm glad I did. What do you think you learn from it? And I'm no master at this by any means. but I know better than I did before how to connect what I'm saying to where people are. There's a, we can use German philosophy words on this podcast. I mean, we do when you're not here. Why wouldn't we when you are?

So Aus ein Andresetsung? I might need. Ossin Ander Zetzing. This is where, I can come back later and put little words on the bottom of the screen, right? If people don't know how to spell us and Ander Zetzerzeng. I mean, everyone in the audience. audience knows, but I might need a one out of, okay, for Jonathan, it's a, it's an out of one another setting. So the idea is like, and I sort of believe this from a philosophy of language standpoint,

it's relevant to your podcast, which is communication isn't really that I have a chest in my mind full of good stuff and I unpack it and hand it over to you and then you put it in the chest in your mind. It's creating a new, a third space between us where things can, happen that are unexpected and exciting and flourishing, sometimes terrifying, but sometimes good. And I think I learned to bring that space into existence in more ways and maybe, not maybe, certainly ways that appeal to more people. And like I say, I'm not a master at it. I cannot do it at will. But I think I'm better at it than I was when I was, you know, writing papers about, you know, Donald Davidson in grad school.

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Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention My Ambiotics Breakdown to help support the show. Eric, do you come from a funny family? Yeah. Tell us about your family. By the way, that reminds me of a story, which is, so I'm like, A grad student terrified that I won't be able to support my family.

And I've decided I'm going to try and get a job in TV. So I beat the bushes to see if anybody will read me at David Letterman. And I get an interview. And the first thing I do when I get the interview is I get so terrified that I say, I want to write more. Don't give me the interview yet. So, of course, they go to the next person on their list, and it's another three months of me being scared. And I should have taken the interview.

So that's such I've become moderately more savvy than I was. Did you take the second interview? Yes. So I went in there, and Rob Burnett, who is the executive producer, like, oh, you know, grad school, blah. And then he says, are you funny? So my wheels are turning because I'm like. like, I feel if someone asks you a question, are you funny, you should give an answer that is funny.

It's a very hard question. So I said yes. And I didn't say anything else. And I was scared because it was a big swing, you know, because I could just come across as like a weirdo, you know, which is a risk. It's always my risk when I'm presenting myself in social situations going back to my childhood. I don't want to just be written off as just a weirdo, you know, because I'm a risk. because, like, well, we're not going to hire that guy.

Maybe we'll beat him up later. I mean, they wouldn't beat him up because of, you know, litigiousness in our modern society. But I just said, yes, and I didn't say anything else. So that's when you, that, I'll flesh back to that when you said, well, you know, was your family funny? I was like, maybe I should just say yes, and not say anything. But I won't do that. I think my father was so funny, he could maintain deadpan. for like 16 years.

Like he could not say anything that he actually meant for decades. And as a child's raising strategy, it leaves something to be desired. I'll be honest. Because children are sort of looking to you to model how to communicate

about feelings and emotions and realities. and if everything you say without exception is deadpan sarcasm, it can be a puzzle for the youngster. But it's good at teaching you to be funny. So that's my answer. And I'm going to stick to it unless it turns out to be a lie,

in which case I'll drop it and run. Your dad was also a very, very noble. and very righteous person. Can you tell just briefly what your dad's life was like? So my dad was an abogato. He had a storefront law office

on Avenue B on the Lower East Side for over 50 years. And it was quite a rough neighborhood for much of that period. It's not like Avenue B. today, which is a bit like Disneyland. It was a very rough neighborhood.

There were people, oh, I mean, like he was robbed numerous times. He never told my mother. And it was a multi-ethnic, although plurality Puerto Rican neighborhood. And his office was a warrant of security features of like middling efficacy. And you'd open up the door and he'd be there. secretary was behind him and the office was considerably smaller than the room where we're doing this podcast. And you can see it, by the way, because it is in an episode of Louis C.K.'s show where they are casting someone as a slimy realtor. But in any case, so people would walk in

and my dad would greet them in his terrible Spanish. And he did everything. He did everything from homicide defense to slip and fall to divorce to family work. Yeah, yeah. So that's that that was my dad. He he he worked nonstop like seven days a week and left the house at quarter to eight in the morning and came back a quarter to eight at night and then spent all night watching TV and typing his own forms. And he defended a lot of people who otherwise would not have gotten as good a defense. And he also was a little bit like the mayor because there were always people, he would call up, he'd be like, there's 11 languages being spoken in my office right now, Eric. So there was always like a crowd of people there and kind of hashing things out. So yeah,

I'm very grateful that I had his example. What was your mom like? My mother grew up in an Orthodox household in East New York. And became a high school teacher at the age of 20. And she was never, never admitted she was wrong about anything ever and was never late ever. And her school became pretty tough. It went from a rate, she taught at Erasmus Hall High School in the middle of Brooklyn on Church Avenue in Flanbush. and she had unquestionable authority over her students. So she was a tough person.

She held herself to very high standards. She held others to very high standards. She was a rigorous, a rigorous person. She really should have been a doctor, honestly, but she was frightened. She told me she was frightened. And her father, he was from Galicia. So he, an orthodox, and he was quite ambivalent about, about girls getting an education.

My mother was very smart. She was an intellectually accomplished person and inspired me to love science. I gave her a lot of credit. And she also was a great mother. So I had a stutter for much of my childhood and she would drive me or pick me up. I think she picked me up.

She picked me up in Manhattan a couple times a weeks when I went to a speech therapist. So yeah, that was what my mother was like. Tell us your sibling situation. Oh, so I have a brother who's eight years older than me named Philip Kaplan. I always have to remind myself that his public facing persona is not Flippy Kaplan, which is what I call him. He's a playwright. He recently retired from his job, his day job, as bank vice president, but he's an award-winning playwright.

I'm working on a pitch for an animated film with him. And he really inspired me to be a writer because he was always writing. So it gave me as a little kid the notion that that's a thing you do. You sit in your house, you sit in your room and you write short stories. So that's, I give him a lot of credit for that, possibly. I had another brother who passed away before I was born, who had Down syndrome named Andy Kaplan. So I never had the privilege of meeting him. He was institutionalized and he died at the age of five.

That was after Flippy. Yes. Got it. Yeah. And again, so for my mother, this was before Amio. So she got pregnant with me and was willing to roll the dice on another baby, despite having had this heartbreaking maternal experience. Do you feel that that hung in the air in your home? Like, were you aware of it? Do you remember how old

you were when this became kind of something you knew about? They never spoke about it at all. And I think I learned that it was true possibly in fifth or sixth grade when I had an assignment to fill out a family tree. Wow. But I believe it affected how my parents, expressed emotion and how they felt about each other, about me in a very deep way and kind of permeated life in my family. So you grew up in Brooklyn and then what is the decision to study philosophy? Meaning is it like, I'm smart. I like to think a lot.

Like, what is that? It's kind of related to your last question because I, I was very lonely and obsessed with death. And I wanted to think about that. Or it's not like I wanted to think about it. I couldn't help but think about it. I would lie in bed and I would try and think like, well, what's it going to be like when I'm not here,

when I'm annihilated? And I would imagine that. and I would get very scared, and then I would think, but I haven't even successfully imagined that because I'm still here imagining that I'm gone. So I need to get rid of that as well and imagine, like not imagining. So when I first came across philosophy,

it seemed to me like a way that other people were thinking about this sort of thing too. And it gave me a little, a little bit of a stepstool that I could put my youthful feet upon to try and, to try and think about these things. But it came from an emotional need. And it was not an other directed need. I wasn't trying to, like, impress others that I was reading something challenging at all. I was really just trying to dope stuff out for myself. One of the things that I really miss, you know, from, you know, being in college and then in grad school is being, you know, surrounded by people who are on a similar pursuit. And not everyone and especially, you know, I had a pre-med track. So a lot of people were just like, I want to make as much money as possible as the fanciest MD PhD MBA, you know, doctor. And but, but in large numbers, you know, I did find people who wanted to do the things I wanted to do. do. They wanted to, you know, I wasn't into partying. Like, that wasn't my thing. I wanted, I was part of, like, clubs and I studied Zen Buddhism for several years. You know, like I did other

things. Did you feel like you kind of found your people when you went to college and kind of were immersed in academia? I mean, for me, I often like the professors more than the students, but I'm just curious if you felt like a certain aspect of that loneliness, you know, shifted. It's much more on a person by person basis for me. I have a little bit of like lost dog syndrome, I think, where like I'll come up to people and be like, will you be my friend? Will you be my friend? And sometimes they say yeah. And sometimes they say no. I mean, I connect with all sorts of people along all sorts of different axes, honestly. I went to a high school that you had to pass a test to get into. And I found. In my high school, which was Hunter, a greater percentage of people who were like me than at Harvard. Because at Harvard, there were a lot of people who wanted the financial or prestige benefits of having a degree. So they were considerably slicker and considerably taller.

honestly like I I thought I was quite a tall person at hunger because of the the largely ethnic population and you just say well Finns and Scandinavian I mean Norwegians are an ethnicity as well but they weren't as well represented at Hunter but yeah yeah I I felt like my high school was pretty simpatico and I certainly found people who or Simpatico in college and grad school. So you wrote a book in the time, I guess, that we were working and playing together. And it's called De Santa Exist, a philosophical investigation. Also, there's a little red dot that says, writer on the Big Bang Theory.

There's a quote from Matt Groening, the creator of the Simpsons and Futurama on the cover, that says, Eric Kaplan's Des Santa Exist is the funniest book of philosophy since, well, ever. I love this book, and I remember reading early drafts. also the illustrations in this book are super awesome, really beautiful illustrations throughout. And you wrote this book kind of as a, I mean, I see it in some ways as a fusion between sort of your identity as, you know, a funny writer and a public, you know, person in the industry and also the brain that is you. So can you just explain what you wanted to do with DeSanta exist? I wanted to talk about belief in God in a way.

that would get past people's justifiable defensiveness. And that's what I wanted to do. And also I was interested in paradox and contradiction. And I feel like as I say this, I can hear people turning off the podcast. But I was interested in paradox and contradiction. and my thesis was that comedy, logic, and mysticism are three ways of approaching this. I guess what I was noticing was between people, you can have one person who believes in God

and another person who doesn't, and they're both right. And then I was sort of looking within myself, and I was thinking, I seem to believe things that I cannot reconcile with each other. And I came to thinking, maybe that's okay. Maybe that's what it means to have an intellectual body, that there's parts that bend and there are parts that don't bend. There are parts that are vulnerable and parts that are armored. There are parts that see and parts that move.

and maybe that's just the way it is. Maybe that's good. Can you give us an example of something you believe, let's say that's in direct contradiction to, you know, in this case your logical or intellectual self? Yeah. I think that each person's life is of infinite value, but I also think that when we make decisions,

we can and must measure more lives versus less lives, fewer lives, that if you want to decide on legislation, you have to say who will get hurt more and who will get hurt less and decided appropriately. And I, this could be a personal confession of incompetence. I don't know how to put those two together. I'm sure if I like you know what I'm talking about in terms of legislation like you could say I mean I'm always always shocked by the number of traffic fatalities in our country and how it dwarfs the number of people who were killed on September 11th I think it's like 40,000 a year now you could enforce a speed limit of 40 miles an hour and save all those people and they'd be walking around and having kids and we'd be able to see them, which we can now. But someone will say rightly, well, what about all the people who's will be impoverished

because they can't get to their jobs? What about them? And as a person who's responsible, you have to make those decisions. You can't recuse yourself. I mean, we can. We're not traffic legislators, but somebody has to make that decision. And yet I also think each person's life is infinitely valuable. I don't know how to put those two together.

So when we talk about kind of the realm of, you know, belief systems, and this book covers many different philosophies and practices and religious traditions, meaning you go through kind of the philosophy of various different approaches. And I'm wondering if one of the sort of things that you have belief in that maybe doesn't align with, you know, you're more intellectual or logical, self is surrounding the notion of a power greater than ourselves? Yes. Although I also think the power greater than ourselves is infinitely weak, infinitely fragile,

infinitely vulnerable at the same time as it's powerful. That's one of those paradoxes. People talk about authority. The thing that has the greatest authority in my life, the greatest unquestionable authority I ever experienced, was a newborn baby. So the fragility of the baby makes me change my life. And yet it's, so what was the most powerful thing in my life

when I took that baby home from the hospital? It was the baby. It was a power greater than me, but it was incredibly vulnerable. So that's sort of how I think about that issue. I mean, I'm indebted to a great philosopher who doesn't get studied too much named Nicholas of Cusa, who said that when you get to the, you know, God or the unexplained, You inherently cross over into the realm of paradox, so you would say, he would say, God is infinitely powerful, but also infinitely weak.

And I guess, I guess this has some applications in math. I've never, I've never learned math to my own satisfaction, but I think it has applications in math. Kuzza, Kusa was interested in math and law. I can understand the explanation with a baby, but how is it that like a divine as it's, you know, described in biblical texts? So have that fragility as well? Well, I don't know. The biblical texts might be wrong.

Or traditional understanding of... Yeah, the traditional understandings might be wrong, or they might have been appropriate to those people at that time. I guess the notion is a little bit like, so Rudolph Otto. He's a phenomenologist of religion, and he said that the divine is a mystery that's both tremendous and fascinating. So that's what the people writing those texts were encountering, this sense of sort of like, I'm out there a small weak being in a terrifying universe, and there's something about that universe, which both accepts me and rejects me, I guess. So that is where you get that tremendous power, and that's true.

It's an infinite power. But then you also have this sense, certainly coming in by the time of the prophets, that that power, the best way to relate to that power is by caring for the most vulnerable members of society. So the only way to grok in your word and the only way to have a connection with this power that is so great that it can smash the globe is by caring for, you know, some kid with Down syndrome. And, you know, why is that? It doesn't make any sense. And some people would say, well, because it doesn't make any sense. but that's how I would answer your question, Jonathan. Well, and I think also, I mean, I can't really speak to, you know,

the entire Judeo-Christian, you know, structure. You could if you try? No, I really can't. I mean, I can't think, I can't speak for all of monotheism. I know that a lot of the study that, you know, I've done mostly with Eric and with David Sacks as well, has also talked about, you know, there is a mystical concept of a relationship that we are in with something greater than ourselves, and inherent in that, there is vulnerability, not to the sense of like, oh, I have a God that I can disappoint, or I have a God that I can make mad, but that,

you know, at least in, you know, in Jewish tradition and also in the Old Testament, as, you know, others call it, there is a notion of a relationship with the things that we struggle with that are supposed to have power over us. You know, we have a history of people challenging God. We have a history of anger with God, and that does indicate some sort of, you know, a relationship that I think is significant. Eric, why do we believe in God? Why do people want to do that? I think there's a natural question built into the human condition. And it's a very deep question. I think it's something like, so I have my Darwinian drives, right? I want my body to be around. I want to have children. I want them to be around. And sort of plastered on top of that, I have my sort of social

drives. I want other people in my society to acknowledge my value. And yet there's a question, I feel and what else? Supposing we're in a situation where like all that is blocked, like, we're not going to live, our children are not going to live, we're not going to be acknowledged by other members of our society. Is there anything more? And that's the question. And I think belief in God, and honestly, I think there are people who believe in God. God who don't, and there are people who don't believe in God who do. But I think the answer is

trimmed to that question. So it's like a very deep question, and it's a sort of emotional question. So it calls forth a deep emotional answer. This ties back to really what brought you into philosophy in the first place, which is the exploration of what is it going to be like when I'm not here. Yeah. Yeah. And while I'm here, what should I do about that fact? Well, isn't, and just to kind of, I mean, this might sound like an extremely sophomore oversimplification, but, you know, what you're really, what I hear is like, what is my

purpose, like, why am I here, right? And this is something that, you know, to our knowledge, we are the, we are the, the, the, the animals that we can think about these things, write them down. I'm not saying that other primates and any other animal doesn't think that, but we have no way to measure that. So for us, it really is, it's that it is the existential, you know, angst-ridden question, which I began seriously thinking about probably junior high school. And I think some people are more consumed by it than others. I was very, very consumed by it. And a lot of times, you know, I mean, I don't know what your experience was, but a lot of times, like, those kids are flagged,

like for being morbid, for being depressive, like for being, you know, spooky, gothy, you know, there's all these sort of terms that we put. But for me, and, you know, I really related, you know, on a smaller level, because I think you are a much bigger mind than I, but on a smaller level, that really was, like, why am I here? Like, what, I'm just going to, like, get a job, do a thing, crank out a baby, like what's the, there's got to be more. And I think, you know, for a lot of people, we just like slid God in there to be like, here, this is why, because you'll have heaven, right? And it's like, I don't know if that's going to do it for me, right? So I think for many people, having some sort of ritual or religious or mystical or spiritual practice gives a place to hold some of

that. Like when I, you know, learned to use yoga not as a competitive sport, which it also is to some extent for me, when I learned to see the way that we can hold and move our body, the way that breath actually has power to influence our mental state, I saw that, oh, these are practices that people do because it helps satisfy some of that angst. It either gives it a name or a label, or it calms down the system that can't stop obsessing about it. Does that, that's a thing? Does that sound close? I think that's a beautiful way of expressing it. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. If animals did have this existential angst, it would be squirrels. They seem very disturbed. But Eric, you said when you were talking about getting over the fact that, or imagining the

fact that you may not be here, you talked about trying to get over the fact that you are the imaginer because you couldn't imagine the fact that you wouldn't be here because then you would still be imagining it and only conjuring. Where did that go in your journey? Like, did you get over the imaginer? I don't have a canned answer. So I'm going to have to kind of off-road a little bit here. We love off-roading. I think... Off-roading with Eric. I think there are two, there are two, there's at least two. There's at least two ways of approaching life. And one of them is Vedanta. And one of them is Vedanta. And, you know, and there's a least two, And Vedanta is, and it's very similar to in the West neoplatonism.

And it says, there is the one, we're all part of it or reflections of it. It's beyond time and space. And it is beyond being even. That's how much it is. And it's holy and it's blissful and it's fantastic. And there's not much. much to say about it. It's ineffable. And, and, and it's, it's, it's sort of, uh, noetic. Like, it, it is a, it is a, an awareness and a bliss and a being all wrapped up into one with no

distinctions. And that's all there is to say. And that is one perspective on life. And I think it, it's true. But then there's an, and that is, that is where that, um, I'll still be there, even when I try to imagine not being there, kind of drives you because it drives you to a consciousness of a sort of witness consciousness that stands behind any thought or emotion we could ever have or sense experience. I think there's another perspective on life,

and I don't know what the word for it is. And it's everything that happens, in our lives deeply matters because it has to do with things that are vulnerable and fragile. When people die, there's an actual loss. On the first view, when people die, there's not really an actual loss because it's sort of like shaking the etchusketch. And the loss of a picture on the etchusketch is nothing to cry about because it's just the etchusketch.

it's another configuration of an underlying reality that remains. There's another perspective which is heartbreaking. I don't know how to put the two together. Where do you reside most of your time? Both. Interesting. Just depending on the day or even moment to moment. Moment to moment.

Sometimes both at the same moment. Sometimes I think I have different internal entities within me and I'm like the the family that contains them. It contains both a screaming child screaming at the injustice of it all and a soothing remote parent saying

don't worry, it's all one and I am I am larger than either perspective. Not me, not me, Eric. That's not like I'm larger. I'm like everybody is large. Everybody is large. than this perspective, both perspectives. Because I assume when you had your stint as a monk, you were more in the Vedanta state of being.

Right. Yes. Lord Buddha did teach us that ourselves don't even exist now. So therefore, it would be foolish to be sad that they'll end. that it's almost like it's like the etch-a-sketch model or like the Scrabble-Tile model that me you,

you, according to the teachings of Lord Buddha, are a little bit like writing the word Eric with scrabble tiles. You would be silly to be sad when those scrabble tiles return to the box. They're just a concatenation of thoughts and matter, but they're not me. They're not worth crying about or being overjoyed about. Yes, that's true.

When you studied philosophy of mind, you said in relation to, but we didn't get to what it was in relation to. It was in relation to existentialist philosophy and philosophy of language and to a certain extent metaphysics. I was doing analytic philosophy. An analytic philosophy is an attempt to understand the world by means of extremely precise, well-argued thinking. What struck me, I think, in your early description of philosophy of the mind and what drove you there, it felt both very emotional from your personal, like, angst of thinking about the unknown and the great beyond, but also, like, it's also a very heady experience, as you just described the notion of language and the precision there.

Do you feel like your life is guided in some way? Like, and I'll tie it back very specifically. Was saying no to the Letterman interview? because you ended up getting the job, right? Yeah. Was saying no and giving yourself the three months the right thing to do? No, it was the wrong thing to do. I'm pretty sure that if I had said, yes, I would have gotten that job

and had three months of gainful employment as opposed to nervous fidgeting. But isn't that also just like the path of your life was that you were not ready at that moment? to take that interview. Like if a butterfly, you know, flaps its wings, am I not to say that to a proper philosopher? Yeah, that's a holy, that's a holy perspective, guys. I'm not going to disagree with that. I don't have a perspective.

I'm always just more curious, trying to lead into this idea of, you know, if you find yourself in between those two states, one is sort of a oneness. And in the oneness state, it feels like life is more a series of divine events that have some interconnection to one another. This is what I think you're trying to ask. Eric, does everything happen for a reason?

Well, and I'm just sort of like, like, what cop-out should I give these two nice people? And one cop-out, I think, is I don't know if one human being ought to or can answer that. question for another. No, more for you. Oh, for me. Yeah. Yes. I think everything is unfolding for a reason. And I'm just sort of like a blind inchworm on this, whatever, in the ear of Michelangelo's David, that I have no idea what the overall four-dimensional reality I'm exploring is, but it is all for a reason. That's either the title of your next book or the T-shirt we're going to make. It's just going to say Blind Inchworm. Blind Inchworm.

Yeah. Do you ever stop to see how beautiful they are? attempt to be sort of sensitive to anything I need to know at the time. I mean... Do you have a meditation practice? Yeah, I have a meditation practice. What is it, Eric? It involves both meditations on emptiness,

mindfulness of the breath, and some visualizations. Where did you kind of gather these together? Like, is some of it Tibetan Buddhism? Yeah, some of it is Tibetan Buddhism. And I found a teacher online during the pandemic who is willing. He's in the lineage of Lama Yeeshay, but he was willing to share it in a kind of non-lineage-dependent way. Because in the Vajiana tradition, they're like, well, if you'd like to learn to meditate, you need to perform 100,000 prostrate. You need to take off three years of your life and go on a retreat and do 100,000 prostrations and do this particular ritual 100,000 times and this other one 100,000 times.

So it's not something you can do if you got a job. There's no app for that. No. Here's a question. Are you a drug person? You mean I'm a high now? No, I know you're not. I don't think you're high.

now. I'm not. I know you're not. I'm asking if any of your journeys have involved, you know, exploring with, I mean, as it were, you know, neurochemical modifications. Well, I think psilocybin and LSD are potentially really good for mental exploration and sort of mystical exploration. There isn't a pill that can do the work of spirituality, but I think these substances or medicines can be really useful. And I think one of the spiritual challenges of the next 10 years will be to see if we can create the containing rituals in communal space where people can incorporate these mind-blowing experiences into a flourishing ethical life or if they just become commodified. Because I do think, wow, someone is struggling with PTSD or addiction or depression,

and then we're in a world where you can go to CVS and get psilocybin and you take it. And now you have 24 hours where you're like, oh my God, it's all so amazing. They don't need to be depressed or addicted or frightened. And then you come out of it, if someone has not provided a path to you, you'll fall back into the old patterns. And it might even be depressing to you that you think among the things that are purchasable, CVS is God, that could be a kind of bummer of approach to life. So, so like one of the things that I find exhilarating about the Jewish tradition is that the mystics and the lawyers are frequently the same people.

And I think that's great, because I do think the one has somehow contracted itself into our bodies with hands and feed and bank accounts and all this. And what do we do with that fact? What do we do with our lives? Like that's the real question. Because I think anybody, I think if you're relatively sympathetic to some of these words, anybody can say, yeah, I guess it's all one. I don't think it's four.

I think anybody can have that view. I'm sure if we wanted to find YouTube clips of people telling us that it's all one in 10 minutes, we could find a thousand. But what do you do with that? That's the million dollar question. Embodied awareness. Like what is the practical application of... Embodied communal awareness, yeah.

What's the difference between people who are religious and people who are spiritual? So there's a great podcast about all this stuff from Scotland called the Study of Religion podcast, and I highly recommend it because it gets into the weeds of where these words and labels come from and who uses them and why. Sociologically, I think there are people who like talking about God and the meaning of life, but don't like organized religion. Like they don't like the baptism that they were raised in

or Episcopalianism or Islam or Judaism. They don't like them for a host of good reasons. So I'm spiritual but not religious is a way for them to identify as a group. That's a philosophy of language cop-out. But I don't think it's purely a cop-out. No, I think, you know, what my experience is, And there are many, many people who I, you know, have tremendous respect for who would say that they are spiritual and not religious.

I'm not, you know, condemning people in general. But what I have found, what my experience is, is that being spiritual as an ethereal concept, often for me, does not lead to behaviors and changes that I want and a rhythm of my life, which, you know, not even organized religion, but a religious structure. especially one that has ritual, does afford. So for example, many people say, I don't want to go to synagogue on Saturday. I want to go to the beach. I want to sleep in. I wanted this, that the other.

It's totally fine. Do whatever you want. But for me, if I'm going with intention, if I'm going and I'm having an experience that is different than the experience I would have in my bed or at the beach, then for me, that is me essentially having to put work in. You know, some of the learning also that, you know,

that we have done is incredibly rigorous. Like, it is not easy, fun, light work to work through philosophy and how you feel about things and understanding why physics also has to do with your belief system and things like that. It's a lot of work. And I think that's, you know, what I learn from you. Like, this stuff doesn't come easily. You don't get an understanding. Like, I said to Jonathan, you're one of the most positive people that I've ever encountered.

And it's not that you don't experience difficult things. I've seen you through loss. We've both been in each other's lives through tremendous changes. You have two kids who are adults. That is a huge transition. You are a loving husband and father. So you live a real and rich life, but you do make room for the work that is, you know, both a spiritual life and in many cases a life that has, you know, some ritual involved.

Just the one thing I want to put on the table is I don't think people who say that they're spiritual and not religious should get. dinged for being lazy. I didn't say they're lazy. No, I didn't say they're lazy. What I meant is that there's a certain kind of work that some people don't want to do. Meaning, like, my dad would go to synagogue and just fall asleep. The language, like the sound of Hebrew literally put him to sleep.

He didn't want anything to do with it. And that was it. Did he on his deathbed say to me, I wish that I had paid more attention? Sure. But I don't think that's everybody's experience. But a lot of people, they don't want to have to wake up and go somewhere and listen to someone else talk, right? I would distinguish two things. One of them is a human desire to be free of the demands that other people place on our lives.

You know, Martin Luther King said that Sunday was the most segregated hour, Sunday. morning was the most segregated hour in American life. So a desire to be free of the demands that other people place on your lives is very much to be found in synagogues and churches, as well as outside of synagogues and churches. I love that. That's really. I really like that. So that is, we're all in this together, if we're good people fighting our tendency to numb out and be distracted in the face of the overwhelming amount of pain and injustice in the world. Everybody is guilty of everybody. Everybody we know.

Everybody is guilty. Us is guilty of being distracted and numbed out and not standing up to the huge challenge requirement. So that, that's one thing. I do think that, yeah, there are communal rituals and communal ways of relating. And there, so I went to, I went for Yom Kippur to the open temple in Venice. And there was a rabbi there, Lori, and she said something, which I think is true, that these communal practices, are both tied up with an immense amount of transgenerational trauma and sometimes can provide the solution to that trauma.

Well, and I was going to say, and this was my experience, you know, in the year that I said Kaddish, you know, for my dad, my father passed away before, before yours. And I did talk to you a lot about, you know, grief. And, you know, for me, what I discovered in saying Kaddish, so that's a prayer that you traditionally say when someone dies and to commemorate the anniversary of their passing, but some traditional people choose to say it, I mean, every day, three times a day is the, was my goal, but I often, you know, only made it for one service or for the two in the evening. But what I found is that that's a prayer that is required that you say it with a minion, not

because Judaism likes to make up ridiculous rules and say you have to be with 10 people. The notion being, you are not alone. You should not be alone. And even if your tendency and instinct is to be alone when you're grieving, we're going to put a structure in place for this community that you are always observed. You're supported. If you look like you need additional help, you are surrounded by enough eyeballs on a daily basis to be able to say, what does this person need?

They look like they're not eating. They look like this, whatever. Great. But the thing that I found, and this is not something that everybody likes to do or wants to do, I found that I had tremendous solitude even when I was in a quorum because even when I'm with other people, I'm still myself. I'm still, I can still have a lonely experience. And that's, you know, also I always feel alone in a crowd, which is a, you know, feature of certain personalities. But what I have found is that when I am not in that environment, I only have the option for solitude. So for me, I like to be able to place myself in,

in an environment, not just in grief, but in general, where I can have a singular experience and also the things that a community experience provides, you know? And we had an interesting experience. We've never spent, you know, synagogue time together. And we did a few different, you know, ways in this season. And it was, it was very interesting because Jonathan also is a person who really does have a strong sense of self and wants to, even when we're with a lot of people. But there's also something really nice about being able to say, like, we're part of something as a community, you know, especially in terms of, you know, the relationships that we have with other people. Anything you want to add on that or no, you feel fine. Okay. I just go back to what

Eric was saying about the need to be free of the demands of other people on our, us and our time. And I think people who have grown up with a rigor or a demand to participate in organized religion. I just feel very strongly that like there was a lot of like, oh, you have to do something. And so my reaction to that is, no, I don't. I get to decide what I want to do at all times. Is that not the point of being an adult? And what Mime says is, no, that is not the point to being an adult if you want to be in a relationship. Why do you want to be in a relationship? This is a very good question.

Answer. The good doctor's asking. I mean, I think I can speak sort of in a general sense, which is I think everyone wants some form of interaction with other human beings. And in every relationship, it's how much of myself do I have to give up to have the connection with another human being and how much do they want? And every relationship is some form of negotiation of how much time, energy, thoughts, am I sharing versus how much do I want that? and how much do I want to be able to navigate independently and do my own thing? True. I mean, there's certain things like playing chess that you would need at least one other person to participate in. There are certain things like having people come to your birthday party that you'd need more people to participate in.

And probably if you never go to their birthday parties, you know, it's like it's inherently a reciprocal or communal practice, birthday party celebration. It's almost like for you to get all the things you as an individual want, you have to surrender getting all the things that you as an individual want if some of the things you want

are to play chess or to celebrate birthdays. Very true. What is your relationship like? How does it feel for you to be in relation with Raduka? Oh, great. I'm really lucky. I should have saved my life. I mean, what I think is who I am on this journey from birth to death is really inextricably bound up with the fact I'm sharing it with her. And now we're a mom and dad, so we have relationships going forward and our children have four grandparents who wouldn't have been in the same group.

and nothing for us, you know. Right. Two questions. Both of them are somewhat unrelated. My mention that you are an extremely positive person. What is going right? Do you have a list of like, or if you don't have a list, could you like rattle off? Like, what's going right these days?

So as far as I can tell, call up on Wikipedia a list of kinds of cancer. As far as I can tell, I don't have those. So I can start rattling that off. I mean, I don't, as far as I know, have cancer in my left pinky toe. I don't think I have it in my fourth left toe. I mean, God forbid, kind of hurrah. Kind of hurrah. But there's a long list of things that are going right.

And just to sort of translate, you're talking about a very intimate and personal sense of gratitude about the vessel that is... I'm really happy I don't have Alzheimer's dementia. I'm happy. I'm not, you know, in the dungeon of a serial killer. I'm happy. I'm not, you know, a debt slave in a third world country, you know, picking coffee beans to keep my family from starving. Things could be worse is what I'm hearing you say.

I want to hear of this list. Keep going. This is the best gratitude list I've ever heard. Yeah, I'm happy. I'm not a... Oh, I'm happy I wasn't raised believing a lot of false beliefs. You know, like I could be one of those people

in Russia who thinks, by God, I ought to die to conquer Ukraine. You know, I could be... You know, I could have been born with really severe mental retardation like my brother. I mean, I could be... I mean, there's a vastest... amount of misogyny around the world.

So I could have been born a woman. I could have been born a woman like at least one, like you were, my. I mean, honestly, I don't mean to get personal. I don't mean to get personal in the podcast. You get to decide as a Hollywood celebrity how much you want to disclose. But she was born a woman. I'm going to say. So I feel like I'm perhaps being facetious.

What did what were you hoping? Jonathan, what's not going? Well, climate is a big question. The fact that it hasn't rained on the West Coast and properly in many, many years is a big consideration and the displacement of potentially millions of people around the globe is a concern. Tell us about the economy. Not doing well right now. And there's going to potentially, as I'm no economist, but the pundits are saying that we went from trying to have a soft landing to there'll be blood in the streets. So that's a pretty big shift.

Many people will suffer because of that. These are concerns. Are they my everyday focus? No, I would also like to practice that I, you know, and be very appreciative that I don't have cancer in my pinky toe, as you said. And I think, you know, when I asked you what's going right, I think that's a great answer. And I was also, you know, thought maybe it would be overall on a macro global level as well.

Oh, you want what's going right on a macro level. But I loved your answer because it helps also frame. that like, oh, we should first instantiate what's going well for ourselves. Well, I think there's a couple of things that are going well on a macro level. I think there are just more people who are not in subsistence level poverty than ever before in human history. That's true. That's one thing that's going right. And another thing that's going right is the widespread dissemination of knowledge.

Yep. So those are two things that I think on a macro level are good. Oh, and a third one, and everything is a double-edged sword, but at least a double-edged sword. But I think the understanding of molecular biology and cell biology is staggeringly impressive. and it's going to transform our lives in a lot of really, really good ways. We are killing the planet.

Do you think about that? Yeah. How do you, how do you, where does it go? Everybody needs to roll up our sleeves and do something about it. There's people who don't believe that we're killing the planet. You have to look at who is, paying their salaries. Climate change denialism is a false fringe belief that is funded by powerful business interests.

I feel better already. I want to do this. I mean, this is, I'd like to do this with everything in my life. Like say to Eric, like, Eric, I'm worried about this. Like, Eric, I'm scared I'm going to die. You are going to die. Okay. So how do you want me to frame that?

Like, I can cry it. any time if I think about it. Would you feel better if you cried on this podcast? We haven't had an episode where she hasn't. I mostly cry on this podcast. No, but like that's... It's all right to cry. It might make you feel better.

That's from Free to be you and me. It's a deep cut. It's all right to feel things. Though the feelings may be strange. Feelings are such real things and they change and change and change. Oh, how they change. Oh, how they change. So my life would be a lot better.

If Eric would sing to you? If I could just conjure the song lyrics that Eric has conjured just in this podcast. It is all right to feel things. It's all right to feel things. But people get consumed with that fear. Oh, the fear of death? Sure. Well, one thing, I think.

So there's a practice that before you go to bed at night, you say, if this was my last day, I'm okay with it. I have lived. And you just feel like this life was a gift. I didn't do anything to earn it. I don't know what it's hemmed in by both, I don't know where I was before I lived and I don't know where I will be when I ceased to live. But I'm going to bed and I feel I have lived. I feel today I lived. And if you can practice doing that, then on the day that is in fact your last day, unless, you know, this is modulo, you're not being pursued by a tiger. You know, if your last day is being pursued by a tiger, it's also you may not be at leisure to form a philosophical response to it. I don't know. Some people say that,

that if you're in the jaws of a tiger, your brain does something kind of merciful for you. And you glimpe out and you're okay. But let's say it's not the tiger scenario. And it's just that the doctors say, I feel better seeing it about me than about you because I don't want to kind of hire anything. So it's like the doctors say to me, Eric, yeah.

Sorry. I mean, and don't blame us. Please give us five stars on your way out because we're good doctors, but we can't, you know, come on. And if that's my last day, then I want to have had enough practice saying, I live today, that that will work for my last day. How does that strike you? Me personally? Yeah. Because you said you're crying all the time that you're going to die.

I said I could cry. Okay. You said you're potentially crying. Maybe you should allow yourself to cry. My first reaction to that doctor would be, I don't really trust you because you're part of the Western medical industrial complex. I bet you there's a solution for this outside of your purview. Right.

That's the challenge. Yeah, Reinhold Niebuhr said, accept the things you have to accept, fight against the things you don't have to accept and tell the difference. That's the serenity prayer. Yeah, very great American theologian who actually, he was one of the people who really was like, yeah, we need to do something about white supremacy in this country. We can't just like pray.

You know, we need to do something about it. So, Ronald Niebuhr, fantastic guy, fantastic prayer. It's, you kind of also need to like, be like, I'm not there yet. I would like to. And then also you can, I think, be like, data driven. Like if you say, I would like to be in a situation of serenity about my death,

and I'm going to do two things. One of them is going to be, I'm going to spend an hour helping people, and I'm going to spend an hour smashing my toe with a hammer. And take some data, which makes you more serene about your death. I don't know. I've never spent an hour smashing my toe with a hammer. I don't know. I'm wondering if you can sort of encapsulate, you know, there are many people who feel, you know, we're nuts and bolts and we're, you know, amino acids that string together and they produce proteins and proteins are the building blocks of everything. And then you have a body and then, you know, we have this existence. And obviously for religious people, it's like, God, gave me a soul. And like, that's beautiful. And I appreciate it. But I'm kind of curious from you as both a, you know, person very, very learned in science and also philosophy and also mysticism.

What is the soul? Where is consciousness? Like where do these things fit into our understanding of ourselves? At right angles to the discussion of what the brain is made out of. And I'll give you an analogy. Where is importance? Like if I say, I think it's more important to study cognitive neuroscience than to count the hairs on my left shin,

which I think you must believe, if you study cognitive neuroscience and don't spend your day counting the hairs on your left shin. Where's the importance? It sort of permeates your life and is something that you come to an understanding of through non-scientific practices, including who you are, what you care about,

what other people you care about. That's where the importance lies. But you're not going to find the amino acid for importance. Right. I think consciousness is the same thing. It's the same kind of question as where is importance? Where is consciousness is a similar question, which is important and is at right angles to the question of what precisely is the cascade of, what precisely is the cascade of, of neurological events that allows short-term memory.

I think that is a great question. I want people to understand it. I would love them to give me a pill if my short-term memory goes away so that I can get it back or get it even better. But that's not the kind of pursuit that will tell us what consciousness is. And I even, and this is my philosophy of language thing,

I was warned, don't make it a question about what is, But I do sort of think like consciousness isn't a thing. It's almost like a dimension to reality, which is, so if you say reality is a collection of things in space time, consciousness is not one of those things. Right. What about soul? Well, soul is interesting. I'm not a big Aristotle walla, but I think Aristotle said it's something along the lines.

of the organizing principle of an object that makes it the kind of thing that it is, something along those lines. So it's more like your soul is more like for Aristotle, an activity that your brain can do than something in your brain somewhere. But I think soul also is, it's a word that comes from an archaic, mythological, register and that's fine. Love is a word that comes from an archaic mythological register, the self. I mean, there's a lot of words that, you know, rights, human rights, you're not going to,

and Mike Gizaniga will not claim that he can determine what feature in the brain gives you a right to free speech. He's a smart guy. He doesn't think that. So I think, why do we have a right to free speech? You're not going to find that in the brain, you might find it in some kind of interesting concatenation of history, law, ethics. You know, there's a lot of different ways of thinking about life, you know.

Jonathan's brother, when they were teenagers, was in a near-heaval. fatal car crash. His brother was in a coma. And, you know, obviously when you don't know what someone's, you know, prognosis really is, I mean, there's lots of guesses and, you know, the original, it was very, very, obviously, very, very bleak. But, you know, Jonathan was 14 when this happened. And, you know, some of what Jonathan has talked about, you know, as an adult of looking back was a real question of like, who's in there, you know, like who's in there when someone's in that? I mean, who's in there for any of us, but especially when someone's kind of conscious self is really kind of hanging in the balances both like physiologically and also kind of, you know, metaphysically, right?

Like who's this person? Who are they when they wake up, you know? And what precipitated that from me, that questioning was the doctors would say to my parents, come in and speak to him because like some part of him will hear you and then he'll come back. And so the kid in me was like, well, if he's coming back, where is he now? And I went on this, you know, I would sit in my room and like imagine and try to picture, especially when I would be going to bed at night. I would like imagine where he would be.

And I kind of saw him off on a journey somewhere and some sort of in between state of being physically there and where what he used to be and dead. And so then I would imagine what would dead be like. And so when you were talking about this notion of exploring like, what would it be like if I'm not here? I would start to imagine like, oh, if I wasn't here, where would I be? And then I also thought, well, how would I know where I would be if I'm here and thinking about that? And then I imagined, well, could I go to where he is?

And then that would lead to like, oh, but where is he? And that would be a long trip. And actually, that led me in my early 20s into shamanic practices and reading the way of the shaman. And they started talking about the different levels. of existence in the different planes of reality. And they started to teach how to journey, shamanically journey into the lower world. And there's a whole visualization process through drum meditations. And so when I went to university the first time, while my colleagues were out partying,

I was listening to drum meditations and trying to go into... What are you saying? What kind of meditations? Drum. Oh, like drumming. Drumming. Got it. Yeah.

You would put on headphones and they would do a series. You know, you would listen to his track and then try to go into the lower shamanic realms. Did you go there? Yeah. So I did that. Is Daniel there? Well, actually, I never really found him there. I kind of went into this exploration of what are these realms like.

By then he had recovered to the point where he was no longer in a coma. This is, you know, five, six years later. And he was back, but not the same person as he was when he left. And I really saw it as someone else came back, like the person he was left. And then we got this new brother who has a lot of similarities to the old brother, but mostly in similarities in that he was told about his life prior. And so he kind of adapted that. But, you know, again, this is a fairly maybe childlike explanation of it. But I see it as two different brothers that I have.

Thank you for sharing that. I don't know if there was a question. Yeah, no. I think that's really fascinating. I appreciate you coming and talking to us. You also have a podcast. I plan to launch a podcast with Taylor Carmen of Barnard University. And I think it's going to be called something like scary ideas and how not to be scared by them.

Before we let them go, given that you are a comedy writer and been doing this a long time, what's making you laugh recently? Oh, yeah. Well, it's been a while. I think Dairy Girls is great. I really like Dairy Girls. I don't know that show. That's really funny. Do you like what we do in the shadows?

Yeah, that's hilarious. Actually, when Jermaine becomes a cat in the movie, I laughed harder than I can remember. I literally was helpless with laughter. It was so funny. The movie. The show is great, too. But honestly, that particular moment of Jermaine becoming a cat was so funny. It's because I have certain touchstones of things that I find really funny.

And it's a short list. And one of them is in Duxu, when Harpo puts his feet in the lemonade, I find that incredibly funny. And then once it was super duper hot in Cambridge, And I saw a woman carrying a Shetland sheepdog, which was incredibly hairy. And she was carrying this animal. And the dog seemed to me, it had its tongue stuck out, and it seemed to be laughing at her discomfort. But Jemaine becoming a cat is on that short list.

It's really funny. What else is funny? Your older son, well, I guess you're firstborn, is a, comedian. Ari Kaplan. Is he funny? He's very funny. My goodness.

So you know that he's funny? He's funny. Why is he funny? He says funny things in a funny way. I don't know. I love when people who are in it, you know, and like professional comedians, writers, comedic writers, actors, etc. I'm always fascinated by like what gets them.

Well, here's a question. Was Big Bang Theory funny? Yeah, it was funny. I thought when you put on that tiara and you became seemingly like a being with no bones and started sloshing around the stage, I thought that was hilarious. That was hilarious. What else did I do that was funny? This is fun. Didn't you say shut your ass at some point to Canal?

Yes. That was really funny. I think when you were in the car with Jim Parsons and he says that's a lot of band-aids, that was really funny. Yeah, that was really funny. I actually thought when Kevin, the line was don't all look at the same time because a girl had walked into the comic book store and Kevin said, don't all look at the same time. He sang it.

It was really funny. I mean, the other thing is just like, like I fear, I fear to be. typecast as a curmudgeon. But the thing is, comedy relies on the unexpected. And if you spend as your day job thinking of jokes, some jokes are expected to me that wouldn't be expected to the audience. And I just need to somehow be aware of that. By the way, another thing which I find strange.

So, you know, the way my job works is I'm just pitching. stuff all day long. I'm pitching, pitching, pitching. And I'm not a great authority on what that I say actually gets a laugh. And in fact, sometimes I'll be like, ah, I'm not going to say that. That's dumb. But then I will say it and I'll get a big laugh. So like, like the part of me that censors my own jokes is not entirely reliable. And you mentioned psychoactive substances earlier. If I have a couple of drinks in me, I think I'm actually funnier, even though there's certainly a reputation that people who get drunk think they're funny and they aren't. But I think in my case, I might be funnier because I disinhibit myself. Well, I recently, I've told you about my struggles with improv and I recently tried again.

And I basically stopped drinking probably at the beginning of COVID. And I don't mean that I'm a sober person. I mean I'm choosing not to drink because I don't like how it makes my body. body feel and I can't sleep and I like pee every hour and it's like I'm just too old to like drink. What'd you say? That's too often. It's too often. But I know that like before that improv I was planning like I should just like have a drink because like it's it loose it like you know lifts that veil of inhibition which I think especially for self-conscious people which I am a very very self-conscious person.

And I kind of assumed that, like, people would have a drink and it didn't happen. And I'm not saying it would have gone well if I, you know, had been able to have that drink. But I kind of think it would have gone well if I had had that drink. I did improv once. And the guy who invited me said, you can have two. Not three. If three, you get sloppy. That's right.

Some people won't even do one. You know, Eliza Schlesinger, she talked about on our podcast. She will not perform with anything, you know, not even one drink in her body. Like, people are paying to, you know, have her not, you know, with that. But again, I think everybody's different. On the other side, W.C. Fields. Thank you, Eric Kaplan, for being with us.

Check out, Does Santa Exist, a philosophical investigation. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. Breakdown, she's gonna break it down for you She's got a neuroscience PhD or two One fiction, and now she's gonna break down