Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out - 11. Judd Apatow: The Cinema Mogul Tries to Ruin Mike’s Podcast

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

Judd and Mike are real life friends who share their real life candid observations in this loose and hilarious hour of workshopping jokes. Judd’s childhood friend peed on him as he watched Saturday Night Live and Mike puts the dental in transcendental meditation because he grinds his teeth. Together they reminisce about 7th grade Washington trips, fears from being a teenager, and fears about having a teenager as Judd helps Mike sculpt his own “This is 40.” Things get tense when Judd declares that he is more attractive than “The Rock.” Please consider donating to 826LA https://826la.org/ David Lynch Foundation https://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/

Hey everybody, it's Mike. Once again, our presenting sponsor is Samuel Adams. It is summer. I'm enjoying their summer ale, which somehow, in a way that I don't know how, just tastes like summer. Samuel Adams is doing a great thing right now, which I've mentioned before.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. How dare you? How dare you ruin my podcast? Judd, you're not taking this seriously. This is part of my bit. There's a lot of sound effects. Welcome back to Working It Out. Today we have Judd Apatow,

legendary director, writer, producer. He's made films like 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, Bridesmaids. His new film is called King of Staten Island, which is now available to purchase on digital and Blu-ray. Judd also cast me in Trainwreck, which is why I think he feels completely comfortable messing with me. Enjoy. You know what's funny is you discovered so many damn people. Because even like, you know, the obvious ones are like Amy Schumer with Trainwreck or Kumail Nanjiani with Big Sick and Lena Dunham with Girls. But then even like, you go back like Kevin Hart with Undeclared,lared right i mean isn't that a discovery uh well

the word discovery i have found is so offensive to people oh it is i didn't even i think it is because if you say i discovered you yeah yeah people are like no i just worked and at some point you gave me a job. I was here doing my stuff and you were lucky to get me to do something. I was going to do something great somewhere. So I always avoid that word. I do think of it more as I tried to support somebody early in their career because there's always a big career around it, even if you say that was the moment. Well, Kumail Nanjiani has been around for a long time. Of course. Doing amazing work.

And I supported him in the belief that he should be the lead of a movie. And if it was a bomb movie and we all failed, it would just be some strange anomaly. But, you know, him and Michael Showalter and Emily Gordon and everybody, they did an incredible job. And so suddenly it becomes a substantial movie. So I don't like to look at it that way. There's just people I love and I think, I wish they had a movie.

Totally. You know, like, Kamau's great. If he made a movie, I'd go see it. And that's how I look at it. That's how I think of you, though, and you and I have this in common. Both of us are comedians, but we're also unabashed fans of comedy and comedians.

Yes. I just love people who can make me laugh. I love Kumail. You know, I feel, you know, I love, you know, Schumer. Like, all these people are like, oh, they're great. But you sort of put your money where your mouth is and go like, I will make a movie with you. Well, you know, here's the thing. Quietly, you know, I'll be at a comedy club.

And there'll be ten people in that club that if they had a movie, I'd be thrilled. People you might not even think would ever deserve a movie. But in my mind, I'm like, I'd love to know what their life is like. I'd love to go home with them and see what their relationships are like with their family. I kind of find most people fascinating. And usually when we make a movie, almost everybody in the movie, no matter how small the part, I think is worthy of their own movie. Yes. I think that's a good way to look at it. I, Jen always says that about like, you know, like a great, like Cameron Crowe movie. If you see like almost famous,

you can imagine the Zooey Deschanel character. That could be a movie also. Yes. And you could imagine the Francis McDormand character, that's a movie too. You know, like, that's sort of the mark of a great movie is you feel like there's a hundred movies within it. Absolutely. And I try to cast with that in mind that, you know, Pamela Adlon

is in The King of Staten Island. Yes, she's great. If you stayed with her. Oh my god, she's great. If you stayed with her, that would be the most fun thing ever. If you stayed with Derek Gaines, that would be another wild movie. You know, you could go home with Rich Voss and Bonnie, and that would be another movie. And that's what I love about casting, because if you really try to make every part,

no matter how small, as deep and three-dimensional as possible, then you'll always have that feeling. Yeah. It's funny because I did this interview with Mindy Kaling the other day for this benefit for 826, this great tutoring charity. That's great. And she said, you know, I was thinking that your movies are all about people who are stuck.

And I thought, I've never thought about it in those terms. It really made me laugh. Oh, that's really interesting, yeah. Because I thought, that's not really how I see it, but it's actually completely true. The 40-Year-Old Virgin is that. You know, Pete's character is that. Amy Schumer's character is that.

Sure, yeah. I must feel stuck somehow. You know, I'm stuck here on this podcast now. Yes, you are. Let's do the slow round. Do you remember a smell from your childhood? The first thing that I thought of was when I was a kid and my parents separated, I would be home a lot because my friends played sports.

And I would just go home and watch the Mike Douglas show and the Dinah Shore show. And my parents would get me these pre-made hamburgers, just the meat. And we had a little grill on our kitchen island. pre-made hamburgers, just the meat. And we had a little grill on our kitchen island. And I used to cook hamburgers for myself. Oh, I love that. I'd grill alone at 3.30, two cheeseburgers. Oh my gosh.

And that's the smell I thought of. And then I would go in the other room and watch the Mike Douglas show. That's so funny. Your smell makes me think of another smell. I always say YMCA pool, but the other one is, I just remember I didn't know what it was until I got older, but mildew as a smell as a child. Because I was in Massachusetts and everything is just damp.

Yeah. And when you're a kid, you don't know. You don't know that it's damp until you move somewhere else and then you're like, oh, I guess that's not a smell here. I didn't realize that the whole world doesn't smell like shit. Well, I found out recently because there was

mildew in our apartment in New York and Jen was like, I can't sleep in this room. And I was like, well, I can sleep in it. I don't, you know, I'm used to, I'm used to this smell. I'm, you know. You know what the issue is here is that you keep calling it mildew, but there is a modern term for it, Mike. And it's called toxic mold. Mold. Yeah. That's a mold is a huge thing. And then we did. Right. No, no. I know there's mold,

and we had the person come over and test for mold, and there is mold. There's mold in mildew. Was it the dangerous mold, or you had the nice mold? No, non-dangerous mold. Yeah. And because I'm comfortable sleeping in the bedroom that has the mildew,

my wife calls me a superhero name, which is Mildew Man. Oh, my God. Now, does she have hypersensitive smell? Because my wife does. And if it was a little stinky, we'd be at the Hilton Hotel. Yeah, yeah. No, Jen has a very acute sense of smell.

So, but let me get to the next one, which is called On a Loop. Do you have a memory from childhood that doesn't ever make it into a story, but it sort of repeats in your head? I was at my friend Michael Tai's house. We were having a sleepover with my friend Ronnie and Kevin. We were watching Saturday Night Live. So this was probably like 1978.

You know, we were like 10 or 11. Yeah. And then as I'm watching the show, I feel something land on me, and Michael Ty is peeing on me. Oh, my gosh. What? It was just this really shocking, out of the blue, him just standing on the top of the couch.

I'm laying on the couch, and he just decided to pee on me in fifth or sixth grade. And, you know, you don't really know what to do. You just start going crazy. Your arms are flailing, and you're just screaming and running around, taking it very seriously. That was the first memory I thought of uh and you know you

have those memories that like they're so important from your childhood like every single time i see ronnie or kevin if we're talking about michael ty or go and have dinner with him like we did a couple years ago he'll say like i'll make sure he doesn't pee on you this time oh my gosh even though it's like 43 years ago when we were 10 years old. But the other one was I remember being on a trip, I think it was to Washington, D.C. in fifth or sixth grade, and there was this teacher, Mr. Rock, who was kind of tough and I guess a little ornery. And I don't know what I was doing or if I was just being loud on the train. And he would flick people with his middle finger.

Like he would flick them on the back of the head. But it really, really hurt. Like it hurt. He would crack you with his flick. And he wasn't my teacher. He was a teacher of the other class. And I just turned and went, fuck you! Oh, my gosh.

But what grade were you in? I was in sixth grade. Jesus. I mean, we went on a seventh grade Washington trip, and Mr. Robinson was our teacher who took us, and he did it every year with seventh grade, and he would say this thing. He would go, we're going to go down.

He had Boston accent. We're going to go down to Washington. We're going to stop at Roy Rogers. They have the best Roy Rogers. We're going to get hamburgers. And I always just remember the best Roy Rogers. Like there's hundreds of them. But we didn't know.

And so, you know, we're stopping whatever on I-95 and we're stopping, we're eating the Roy Rogers and we're thinking, this is the best Roy Rogers. We got the number one Swensons on the East Coast. Those things just really stick with you. But I love your Michael Tai peeing on you watching SNL because I feel like that's a metaphor for your whole career is you're watching SNL and someone is sort of trying to pee on you. Was anyone, like who was creative growing up

when you were like your neighbors or kids at school? I don't remember anyone being creative. I know this sounds crazy. Wow. I don't remember one person writing a song or playing music. I'm sure they were, but I remember there was a kid who loved Rush. And I forgot if he was a drummer or a guitar player. People were like, he could play Rush note for note.

Oh, my gosh. But I never saw it. But no, I didn't feel a lot of creativity there. My friend Josh Rosenthal, who worked at the high school radio station with me, he was a hustler like I was. He would run around and try to meet all the musicians and interview them. So he interviewed R.E.M. in the early 80s and Suzy and the Banshees, people like that. And then we realized that we could call up record labels, act like we were a real radio station, and get free shit. That's huge. The biggest thing we were able to do was to convince somebody to give us free tickets at Lincoln Center to see The Commodores with Ray Charles.

You've got to be kidding me. So we're like 16 years old. We feel like we have pulled off the scam of the century to get free tickets to see The Commodores and Ray Charles. Now, we are not fans of The Commodores or Ray Charles at this moment. I don't even know why that was the band we picked. But we realized, oh, we can get free tickets. And then he said to me, you should do a radio show where you interview comedians because then you can meet all the comedians.

And that's what I did. I called up Steve Allen's record label. And then I got an interview with Steve Allen and went to this hotel with this giant tape recorder from my house. Like a boombox. I literally brought a boombox with a cassette and talked to Steve Allen for an hour and a half.

Unbelievable. And then from there, I would then call Seinfeld's publicist and go, this is Judd Apatow. I just interviewed Steve Allen for the radio. We'd love to do Mr. Seinfeld. Oh, my God. And next thing you know, I could go,

I just did Howard Stern and Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld. I'd love to do Mr. Shandling. And then before you knew it, I did like 50 of them. That's bananas. I mean, that's essentially what Cameron Crowe is documenting in Almost Famous, which we were just talking about. Yeah, it's just he did it as a job. He got money. I was just doing it as a

lunatic. Right. But that's pretty wild. I mean, that's actually one of my other slow round questions is even though you're successful and you've been able to do exactly what you want to do, is there still something that sticks in your craw that people underestimate about you?

Well, I always am down on myself. So if anyone says something bad about me, I'm like, yeah, you got me. That's right. Yeah, sure. The movies are too long. I can't control myself. I have no sense of time. I can't control myself. I have no sense of time. I can't seem to get the story to fit the box.

What about this one? Was there a group in your life growing up or as an adult that wouldn't let you in, that drove you crazy? When I was really little, I didn't understand that I was a year younger than everyone because I was a December kid. And so I think I was a year to almost two years younger than most people in my class. Oh, wow.

And as a result, I was terrible at sports because I was just tiny. And there's a thing that happens when you're little, which is if they think you're bad at sports, literally starting in like kindergarten or first grade, they just don't give you the position where you would learn how to do it. So you're thrown into right field

and the ball never comes to you. So you never learn how to catch it. That's right. I lived that too, yeah. And as a result, I started thinking, I'm not a good athlete, but we would play sports twice a day in gym class and then at lunch and we would pick sides.

So literally twice a day from kindergarten to sixth grade, I would be picked almost last. Wow. And there would always be people who were better than me. Every type of person was better than me. Sure. You know, boys, girls, everyone. And I always thought, like, if I just had the chance,

I would be able to do it. And so I started getting depressed about it, and then that's why I got into comedy, because I thought, you know what? I'm going to get into something that no one is into, and I'll just be the best at the thing that no one wants to be good at. Yes.

And so I had my own special thing, and in my head, as a weird, angry nerd, I just thought, one day, I'm going to make a living at this. Yeah. And this is going to pay off. And you know what? You can't make a living playing kickball. And I think it drove me to try really hard.

But I'm sure on some level, I was devastated that I was seen on some level as weak. Yeah. And not masculine. Yeah. And not masculine. Yeah. That I felt bad about that because I felt like it connected to what girls thought of you. You were just like this dipshit who couldn't play any

sport. And you know, at gym it was all the boys and all the girls. So they watched your daily humiliation. Yes. For years. The same girls saw how you were treated by everybody else. And that, I think, probably made me a little bit of a quiet rebel. Like, I don't need any of you. I'm going to go home and watch Jeff Altman on the Mike Douglas show.

That was such a scary era for me. Not a scary era, but that was such an intimidating era for me. Because I remember in seventh grade, we went to Washington, D.C. Eighth grade, we went to Montreal as a class, class trip to Montreal, Canada. And we were taking a bus and someone said to me, and I had not had my first kiss at this point, someone said to me, I'm not going to say her last name, but her name was Kate. They're like, Kate wants to kiss you on the bus. And I was like, you know, like, great. That sounds great, you know.

And meanwhile, I was like, oh, no. This is going to be a disaster. I have no idea how to kiss anyone. Well, you know what you said that Kate wants to kiss me on the bus? The nerd part of me that completely went back to that age as you said that went, where on the bus? Where on the bus? Like I'm instantly in a panic about it.

Like you put me in a panic even telling the beginning of that story. No, I think I find it stressful even telling you the story. I haven't thought of that in probably 15 years. That's the thing about the slow round. You think about all these things that you haven't thought about in so long. Yeah, that's terrifying. I was always so scared of that and doing all of that wrong. What did your first kiss end up being?

There was a girl who just kissed numerous boys behind a tree. Sure. At some point. Oh, I know that. I know that tree. Sure. In elementary school. A very nice girl.

But she was willing to bust everybody's kissed cherry in quick succession. Yeah. At least that's how I remember it, which probably is not what it was like at all. But it was, to me, all of that was pretty terrifying. Yeah. The first interactions, because that's, you know,

starting around like sixth or seventh grade. Yeah. And you're trying to get a sense of, does anyone like me? Am I a likable person? And that's, you know, that's shocking. I mean, there was this girl who lived behind us, right? So there were woods behind us.

And in my mind, it's miles and miles of woods. But let's assume it was probably like 200 yards of woods. And for years, I would just walk across those woods and pray this girl would talk to me and hang out with me. And I remember for a year, I hung out with her brother. I just hung out with her brother, who was younger than us. Yeah. All the time, just to get near this girl.

Yeah, just proximity, yeah. And at some point, I'm not sure why, I think her dad yelled at me and said, stop coming by. Oh, wow. And then at some point in the next week, the front of her house was all these rose bushes. I tore them all out.

Oh my gosh. I was so hurt. I ripped out all these roses. How dramatic. That's a lot of rage. Yeah, that was. How dramatic. I swear that era, what happens between sixth grade and ninth grade at three years of your life? And it is a shocking transformation. Sixth grade, seventh grade, they start going like, so people are kissing each other. Not me, but like people are, people we know are kissing other people we know.

Eighth grade, ninth grade, they're like, people are having sex with each other. You're like, what the fuck? I didn't even kiss anybody yet. What am I supposed to do here? Yeah, too much happens then. And that's right when my parents got divorced. So they were breaking up and getting back together and breaking up.

And so my brain was somewhat scrambled by all of that. So I really wanted to connect with friends and girls because I think I was just going through something. I just wanted friends to talk about it with. I was trying to process it. I didn't really understand what was going on. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, there's something about those.

And that was part of the reason I, you know, obviously my last show and my book is all about how I never wanted to have a child. And part of it was, like, that I didn't want to, like, be a parent to a child sort of going through all that. Like, when your daughters were that age, was it torturous for you to see them dealing with that? Oh, yeah.

It's just so hard because you can't save them from it. No. You can't save them from, you know, liking people and all of the drama around who likes them, who they don't like, how kids connect with each other and decide how they feel about each other, who gets excluded. I mean, we're in an era that's very different than when we were kids. You know, for me, I felt like, well, I've been excluded by almost everybody. I have basically two friends. Yeah. And in a lot of ways, that was

enough. You know, you really would just ride your bikes around with your two best friends. And then you might have another three or four you would see occasionally. But you were in a pretty tight group. And there was no technology. So you didn't know where anyone was. Yeah. Like, I didn't know where anyone was. There were no cell phones.

So if I left the house at 3 o'clock to go play with my friends and I was coming back at 6, my family had no clue where I was for those three hours. That's exactly the difference between when you and I were growing up and now. It's the location. No one knew your location when you were a kid. Yeah, and I'm literally in the woods. I'm riding dirt bikes bikes i'm blowing things up with m80s i'm looking at my first pornography all during this like blackout time where my parents

can't find me and no absolutely with kids now because they're all on their technology not only did the parents know where they are every second of the day, their friends do. And they have a larger friend group and they know who didn't invite them to hang out every minute of every day. Oh, I hate this.

And what I realize is the biggest problem of childhood now is they have too many friends. So if I have two friends, they never exclude me. But if I have 15 friends, if on any given day I hang out with two, I'm excluding 13 who are kind of mad at me. I have one. We're talking about like kids not knowing where kids are.

Like I remember I was a teenager. My parents moved to two hours away from where we lived. Completely new town. I had no friends. I remember I drove my mountain bike to like a local baseball game. And I met a couple kids who were watching the baseball game. And this girl invited me to go to a party on an island. This is in Cape Cod a party on an island. This is in Cape Cod.

And on an island. And so when I say an island, I mean like a few hundred feet from the shore. Like people were taking little Boston whalers over. And so I said, sure. I go over to this island. There's like a party. People are smoking pot. I smoke pot.

And then I'm terrible at smoking pot. And so I reach this point where I'm like paranoid and I'm like, I got to get out of here. I'm on an island. I don't know where I am. What's going on? And then like all I have is this memory of like begging a guy who has a boat just drive me back on his boat

over to the shore. And then I'm walking home along, essentially, somewhere, something between a highway and a road. And I'm walking along, and I see lights of a car driving towards me. And it was like a movie where the lights were zigzagging in a way that is so drastic that I'm going, oh, that's a drunk driver. And that person might hit me. And so I dove off of the road down. I tumbled down kind of like a cliff hill kind of thing, like rolling down.

And I lost. It was pitch dark, I lost my Birkenstocks. And I climb up the hill and I walk home and I'm thinking to myself, because I'm a little high, I'm thinking, oh no, my parents are going to know. They're going to know what happened. They're going to know where I was. And I walk in the door and my dad's like watching TV

and he goes, hey, Mike, like, how was your night? And I go, oh, it was fun. You know, not much happened. I go upstairs and we have never spoken about it since. Well, that is the funny thing of childhood is, you know, there were so many moments where your parents didn't talk to you at the moments they should have. Yes, that's right.

You know, like I remember how my dad found out I was having sex was I was in 12th grade. And he says, Judd, come in here. And he walks me into the guest bathroom. He points at the toilet where there is a condom which has risen back up. Oh my gosh. Filled with air. And then he's like,

what's this? And then I just looked at it and didn't say anything. And he goes, well, at least you're using them. Oh my gosh. And that was the only discussion we ever had about it.

I've never had a conversation about sex with my gosh. And that was the only discussion we ever had about it. I've never had a conversation about sex with my parents. There was a point at which my dad found out that my girlfriend and I in college were living together. And he just sort of looked at me for a little while and he just goes like, you're playing with fire. And then that was it. Want to send a quick shout out to audible.com. I listen to Audible books myself.

My own book, the new one, is on Audible. Right now I'm listening to Zadie Smith's new book, which is called Intimations on Audible. It is brilliant. She reads it herself. I highly recommend it. This is for the working it out section where I'm working on material because we can't get on stage right now. And I thought of this bit. Wait a second before you start. Oh, yeah, please.

Let's talk about the bit that I saw you do, which just makes me laugh because I'm a part of it. The Brie Larson bit. Oh, yeah. You know what's so funny is I don't even have that written down. I improvised that night, which is basically, I'll say it to the best of my memory, but it's basically like sometimes I'll search for myself

on Twitter or whatever, and people will be like, you know, Brie Larson is Mike Birbiglia's wife in Trainwreck? And I'm like, yeah, you know, it's a movie. I don't know what to tell you, you know? The director of the movie, Judd Apatow, is married to Leslie Mann, so all bets are off here.

is Judd Apatow is married to Leslie Mann, so all bets are off here. In fighting above your weight class. Yeah, yeah, that's his Brie Larson. But I love the idea that people, just how insulted you are that people just think that there's no chance that this could ever happen. But in my eyes, this is how the world works.

Yes, yes. This is through the lens of Judd Apatow. And it makes sense that Mike Birbiglia is married to Brie Larson. Well, the funny thing is this, because this has come up many times throughout my career, that people say, you know, you are writing something that is false,

which is that a beautiful, intelligent woman would ever like someone like you. And so it's so funny because it's insulting in a bunch of ways. One way it's insulting is they're saying me and the people I am putting on screen, the men, are all ugly and do not deserve or could never get women like this. It's like a triple hit. It's like a triple hit. Yeah, so in order to understand their premise, you have to accept that we're all ugly.

Yes. And you have to accept that we all have no other qualities that could get a woman. except that we all have no other qualities that could get a woman. You're also basically saying that it is better to be classically beautiful and that they're all smarter and better than men. You're also saying that. Yes, that's right.

So it's like funny and insulting in so many ways. And then people do laugh because you're married to Leslie Mann. So I always say, well, I know it's possible. I know it's happened in life. And of course, that's what I always say. It's like I'm married to a beautiful poet who's like, you know, she's gorgeous and brilliant, and it happens.

I had a joke about it. I'm trying to remember exactly how it went, where I basically would say like, you know, all women are better than the man in all situations. You know, there's no relationship where the guy is the better one. Yes. You know, like all women are kind of pretty and all guys are kind of ugly. So it all works.

I think that's a funny bit, but I think women would, if a woman were present in this conversation, they would really fight you on that. And they would point out men who they would say,

no, that man is wildly attractive. You know, like The Rock or something. I don't even know who you'd pinpoint. I don't think that I'm

less attractive than The Rock. I think I'm as attractive as The Rock. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm as attractive as The Rock. And that's the clickbait as The Rock. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm as attractive as The Rock. And that's the clickbait. That's what we're going to use. Judd Apatow

tells Mike Birbiglia, I'm as attractive as The Rock on the Working It Out podcast. Well, I had it with Paul Rudd where I came to Los Angeles with the new one show and the reviewer for God's sakes says if this is a movie, if the new one show, and the reviewer, for God's sakes, says, if this is a movie,

if the new one becomes a movie, Paul Rudd should star in it. I'm like, I'm an actor, for God's sakes. I wrote a whole show. I can't play myself in the movie? Well, that's also the implied insult to me on all my work is like, it's always better with Paul Rudd.

My whole life would be better. My whole family's life would be better if I just left and Paul Rudd was here. Well, Paul is just, he's an adorable man. He's a great on-screen figure. He's also very funny. I mean, that's another thing about Paul. He kind of is a triple threat. Well, when people think my movies are personal,

I always say they're not personal because Paul Rudd is there. And I'm just fucking annoying. Like all the handsomeness and charm and wit that Paul brings to the movies is there because in real life, I'm just like a fucking pain in the ass. And you would not watch that movie if my personality was there. I love when Paul in your movie, This Is 40, and Paul and Leslie Mann's character get stoned at the hotel. Oh, yeah.

It's just, it is so, I mean, what did you shoot that all day? I mean, because it's so, it feels so i mean what did you shoot that all day i mean because it's so it feels so alive and real well it's you know it's one of those multi-camera situations we didn't it didn't take that long to do but we were talking about that thing where you get so so caught up in your problems raising your kids because there's so much to debate with kids and that sometimes when you leave town, even if you go 20 minutes away and you're not dealing with the succession of problems, that you fall back in love with each other.

Yes, that's right. That's why it's good to get away. You just need like a little break and then you're like, oh, this is why we like each other. And then in the movie, the second they get home, everyone is screaming and you realize, oh, okay, back into it. Because there's a lot of stuff to debate when you're married.

Like, you could debate everything. Every single thing that happens with your kids. Well, with the quarantine, I think it's endless. Because, you know, I always say this about me and Jen. It's like, on the level of caution, I'm a 10 out of 10, and she's a 10.3. And the.3 is notable. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's all debatable all day long. Every single thing that happens, you can get into some sort of subtle conflict. You can quibble over it. Yes. Eggs. Eggs can cause a conflict. Eggs. And conflict is good, right?

I mean, theoretically, like, disagreeing is... I mean, it's so funny because, like, Jen and I will disagree on something and she'll be so analytical about something and I'm thinking, like, on the surface, I'm like, ah, you're overanalyzing this and reading into it so much. And then it's like, well, I think about it.

I'm like, well, that's also what I'm in love with about you is that you're overanalyzing. You're a poet, for God's sakes. I think that's true. It's like the things we like about our spouses are also tough. Like, this is an egg argument. The other day, I come back from my two-hour walk, which I take every morning

because I just don't know what to do with myself. So I just take these crazy long, like seven-mile walks every morning. And I've been eating eggs, which I shouldn't do because I have high cholesterol. And that's always a point of contention in my house. Like if I eat one French fry in my house, I have three women look at me like I'm doing crack. Like they all give me a

look like I will die in 15 minutes. They're very aware. And that's, which is a loving thing. They're concerned for me, but it makes me angry because I want to eat the French fries. Yes. So the other day, I open up the egg container, and there's four eggs left. So instead of being a normal person and eating two, I'm like, maybe we should just finish this off. So I start cracking four eggs, and Leslie's like, you can eat four eggs? You can eat four.

And now in that moment, I have a choice. I can dump out some of it. I could say, you know what? You're right. That's crazy, I have a choice. I can dump out some of it. I could say, you know what? You're right. That's crazy. I have high cholesterol. What am I eating four eggs for? And I just go, yeah, I'm just hungry for eggs.

And then I just start cooking. I start cooking the eggs. And then there's all this tension, which is me thinking, I'm allowed to eat as many eggs as I want to eat. And then her thinking, I'm not going to get into a fight, but this is crazy that he's eating four eggs right now. But when you're in the quarantine,

no one gets a break from each other, so you just feel the crackling tension of us all trying not to take it to the next level. We had it with bread. Jen says that whenever we discuss bread, it brings out a side of me that she doesn't like. And so we ordered bread delivery, and she has been carefully and meticulously refrigerating

the bread and then putting some in the freezer and just timing the bread. Timing the bread is a big thing around the house. And I said, when the bread showed up the other day, I said, can we just leave a couple loaves of the bread out

that doesn't go into the refrigerator in the freezer and it was the wrong uh request because she said i think that you don't appreciate what i'm doing in the house with the bread and i go no no i do appreciate what you're doing but But I just feel like I want to have this fresh bread for like a day or two. And then if it starts to go bad, then we'll put it in the fridge. And it was the bread incident was it needs no further explanation from me to Jen other than the, you know, saying the bread incident and it immediately

snaps us back to that conflict. Because there's a thousand of those. There's a thousand of those. That's marriage. Yeah, that's marriage in a nutshell.

And it's who's going to give in because we all have the way we would do things. Like my wife has that with blueberries. She thinks you leave blueberries out. I just think you put them in the fridge.

And she's just decided blueberries are out. And like it really bothers me and I have to go like I think those blueberries are supposed to be refrigerated and I'll tell you one that we have that I can't ever talk about. We have the recycle bin and we have our normal garbage.

All garbage to her is recyclable. Sure. A roast beef she she thinks, can be recycled. Like anything that happens, a bicycle tire, she thinks some guy at the recycle place is going to take the tire off and melt the plastic. There's a term for that. It's called wishful recycling. And I didn't coin it.

I've seen it used elsewhere, wishful recycling. And I'm not coin it. I've seen it used elsewhere, wishful recycling. And I'm not going to point fingers, but I know a lot of wishful recyclers. And I'm like, that pizza box is not going to be recycled. It has grease on it. It's not happening. No, it's everything in my house. I'll just go like, for years, I'd be like,

there's not the logo. It doesn't have the logo when we put the broken guitar in the recycle bin. And at some point I just gave up. And I just joined in with the everything in the world is recyclable. But, you know, you have to pick your battles because there's just too many of those. Once I was trying to write a bit about this, but wasn't smart or funny enough to do it. I was trying to come up with something about, is there a guy at the landfill separating this? Like, well, let me take this strawberry off this box.

And, you know, like taking our things apart. Like, oh, there's a little piece of saran wrap on this cardboard. I'll separate that and put it in the plastic part. Like, isn't it just going into a giant fire somewhere? No, the amount that we trust people who we don't see is way too much. I mean, I remember I worked at a fancy restaurant when I was a teenager. I was a busboy and we would like have a basket of rolls that we were about to bring to a table. And on the way out of the kitchen, we just take a huge bite of the roll and, you know, and then bring the rest out to the table. It's like the sloppiness in the fanciest of kitchens.

If you saw what was happening behind those doors and how many roaches and rats, you would never go to these restaurants. Yeah, no one knows about that. And I worked in restaurants for years. And let me just say this. If they drop your steak, they ain't putting it in the garbage. No, if they drop your steak,

you're eating the goddamn steak. When my parents owned a restaurant, we used to race the lobsters. Oh my gosh. And make bets on them. I mean, there's such cemented things happening in restaurants. It's one of those things that I know

because I was there and I blacked out of my mind because I love restaurants. And even though if I take a moment to think about what I saw, I should never go to a restaurant ever again. I made a conscious choice to fully just black it all out and just keep going. And in my mind, no one does anything bad ever. I've convinced myself.

This is a bit that I wanted to run with you because you introduced me to transcendental meditation. So I wrote this bit about that, which is I started doing meditation six years ago because I did a benefit for the David Lynch Foundation, which does this really special thing where they offer free meditation training to soldiers with PTSD. And then they make these movies where like one guy has no eyes and then this other guy's like speak a boo. And that's the plot of the movie. Anyway, that's what the foundation does. And so I do it. I do transcendental

meditation. And I really put the dental in transcendental because I grind my teeth, which I think is part of it. So I went for training. After I did the benefit, they offered to train me. And so I go in, and I meet this guy Mario, who's really sweet, and he gave me a mantra. And I think it's supposed to be secret, but I'll tell you. It's Mo Money, Mo Money, Mo Money,

which is, I believe, an ancient Tibetan reference to the goddess Momonius, who is the god of selling basketball sneakers and Gillette razors. That's the whole bit. You're doing the anti-Maharishi bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I just wanted to do something about meditation in my new show You're doing the anti-Maharshi bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I just wanted to do something about meditation in my new show because so much of the new show is about my own death and hitting middle age.

I mean, it's sort of my This Is 40, so to speak. And I feel like I have an attempt at, you know, reversing my bad habits. And one of those attempts is meditation, which I know you do also. I do meditation, but rarely. And because it's just so hard to quiet my mind. So a lot of the self-help I read is about getting comfortable in quiet.

But I think I've lost my mind a little bit. And I don't know if it's technology addiction, but it is tough for me to sit in silence for 20 minutes. And sometimes I can really get in a groove of it, but a lot of times I'm in a full-on panic. I mean, I feel like meditation in some ways is facing our greatest fear, which is death. And that there's a degree to which the willingness to entirely shut yourself down and essentially think nothing, so to speak, is a resignation into like, maybe I'm not alive.

Maybe there's no such thing as space and time. And that's for someone like me or perhaps someone like you,'m not alive. Maybe there's no such thing as space and time. And that's for someone like me or perhaps someone like you, it's terrifying. That's why this is such a weird moment because we're all forced into what you almost could call a multi-month meditation where we all contemplate our lives, where we see our lives from a distance.

Our lives have stopped. So now we can see what we do every day. And we can see how we are in our relationships and our jobs. And a lot of it feels ridiculous when you don't do it for a while and you just look at it. And you think, is that what I do all day? Is this the purpose of my life? That's right.

And then I had this one other bit that's in a similar vein, which is one time my friend Ed and I were on tour in Wisconsin, and our car broke down on the side of the road, and this guy pulled over like a hero and helped us. He's, like, jacking up the car, and he's underneath it, and he's putting in a spare. And from underneath the car, he looks up at me and Ed, and he goes, y'all believe in Jesus?

And we said, yes, sir. And he said, good. And then we moved on. Because sometimes in life, you have to lie. So we end on a segment called Working It Out for Charity. And there's two nonprofits that we mentioned today that you contribute to. There's 826 and there's the David Lynch Foundation. And so I'm going to contribute to both of those organizations for this episode.

The link will be in the description. will be in the description. And I mean, like I said, the David Lynch Foundation teaches meditation to soldiers with PTSD, as well as kids in schools in really challenging public school situations. As I get older, I do a lot of reading about the brain.

And you know why I do it? Because my brain's falling apart. And there's a lot of reading about the brain. And you know why I do it? Because my brain's falling apart. And there's a part of your brain that gets fried from stress. Yeah. And when you're stressed out and you have a lot of cortisol in your body, you can't access information and you make bad decisions. So something that might take you one second to figure out, if you're super stressed,

might take you five or seven seconds to figure out. So if you're like really angry, your brain kind of starts shutting down. So anytime you teach somebody to be centered and calm, which makes them have a different baseline where they're calm most of the time, when rough stuff comes up, they tend to be calmer during it

and make better decisions. They've done all this research with kids where if they meditate before taking a math test, their grades are way better. Their brain just accesses information better. So the David Lynch Foundation, people should definitely check them out and check out

826 as well. Yes, 826 has a free tutoring for kids. You know, there's a lot of kids who can't afford tutoring. And so they have these centers where any kid can walk in and there are tutors there waiting to help them. And they have these centers all around the country. It's a really great charity. And I give all the money to my book, Sick in the Head,

which is interviews with comedians, to 826. Which is great. Yeah. And I will say, in closing, and it didn't occur to me until just now, this conversation, that growing up, I always looked up to Bill Cosby as this figure of morality and love and humor. And I've, of course, given up on Bill. And my new role model is Judd Apatow. Oh, I'm the new Cosby. Let me say I appreciate it.

And it's such a good thing to be, you know. I'll be there for you, my man, my man. Don't do this. Don't do this. All right. Thanks a lot, Judd. All right. Take care, buddy.

Be well. Working it out, because it's not done. We're working it out, because there's no... That was another episode of Working It Out with Judd Apatow. I love that Judd Apatow. His movie, King of Staten Island, is very good and dark and funny, and you can purchase it on digital and Blu-ray. Our producers of Working It Out are Peter Salamone and Joseph Perbiglia,

consulting producer Seth Barish, sound mix by Kate Balinski with help from Joel Robby, assistant editor Mabel Lewis. Thanks to my consigliere, Mike Berkowitz, as well as Marissa Hurwitz. Special thanks to Jack Antonoff of Bleachers for our music.

As always, a very special thanks to my wife, J. Hope Stein. Our book, The New One, is curbside in your local bookstore. Jen and I are doing a virtual bookstore tour to all these local bookstores. It's called Jokes and Poems. It's really fun.

We're actually having so many laughs. Everyone is different. You can join us this week virtually at Hub City Books in South Carolina. Skylight Books in Los Angeles, which is one of our favorite bookstores Phoenix Books in Vermont next week as well as Politics and Prose in Washington D.C. You can find out about any of these

on Burbiggs.com Sign up for my mailing list if you haven't already As always, thanks to my daughter Una who created a radio fort which has bonus pillows from One Fresh Pillow. Those are world-class pillows. One Fresh Pillow

makes especially soft pillows. That's true. Once again, our thanks to Sam Adams, who's presenting the restaurant Strong Fund. Join them today at SamuelAdams.com. And thanks, most of all, to you who are listening. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies, we're working it out.