Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out - 129. J. Hope Stein Returns: Earth Day Poetry from Clo

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Mike welcomes back the poet J. Hope Stein, aka Jenny, aka Clo, aka Mike’s wife of fifteen years. A frequent collaborator on Mike’s comedy specials and movies, Jenny describes her favorite type of creative feedback and why she’s most impressed by poetry that crosses over to audiences who don’t always understand poetry. The couple shares candid and embrassing stories from the early days of their romance including two stories that might make it into Mike’s new live show. Plus, Jen reads two new poems in celebration of Earth Day and announces the audiobook of her poetry collection “Little Astronaut.”Please consider donating to Children's Hospital Los Angeles

I thought in Little Astronaut you conveyed some really strong feelings about our marriage and the pain of childbirth and all these things. I remember when I first started sharing those poems, I sort of emailed them to you. I emailed them as just like, oh, these are some things I wrote. And you're like, it's good. It hurts, but it's good that you wrote them. It was painful. But I think that that's good. I really do. And I encourage you in the future to swing away.

You've encouraged me for sure. I just, I'm not a person that lets people in. So if I am saying, if I am communicating something, it's usually pretty layered. something, it's usually pretty layered. That is the voice of the great poet J. Hope Stein, a.k.a. Jen, a.k.a. Chloe, also happens to be my wife, often

creative collaborator. This is a really cool episode. We talk a lot about poetry, a lot about comedy. She's published work of her own poetry in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Poetry International. She has her own book called Little Astronaut that is coming out on audiobook for Mother's Day. It's going to be on Libro FM. It's going to be on Audible. I believe on a lot

of those places, you can pre-order it now. She has a wonderful voice and I'm her husband. And so I would say that even if she didn't have a wonderful voice, but she does have a wonderful voice. So it leaves me in a little bit of a pickle because I have to say it, but then also she just... Anyway, the point is, you'll see our dynamic in this conversation. I compliment her a lot and she shoes off compliments very deftly. You might know also her poems are projected onto the screen in my special, The New One. And we also wrote a book together called The New One with poems by J. Hope Stein. The tour, by the way, is going super, super well. It was kind of a breakthrough week in Tulsa and in Texas. I actually just sent like a longer form version email out if you want to join the email list.

I regularly send little newsletters that I used to call my secret public journal out with a bunch of sort of jokes and stories about Tulsa and Texas. I'm heading to the Chicago Theater this week, this Friday and Saturday. Two shows are sold out. The third show on Saturday night has a few tickets left, one of my favorite theaters in the world. Then I go to Los Angeles for Netflix is a Joke,

and I'm going to be on Jimmy Kimmel Live. I'm going to be also on Jon Stewart and Friends at the Greek Theater. I opened for Jon at Merriweather Post Pavilion many years ago, and it was pure joy. His fans are so smart and such comedy nerds, so I'm super psyched for that. Then I added a show in Troy, New York. I'll be in Rochester. I added a fourth and final show in Toronto at the Elgin Theater, which I love. I'll be in St. Petersburg, Florida, Miami. I just added a second show in Westport, Connecticut at the Westport Country Playhouse.

This is one of the prettiest theaters in the country. It's like this little 500-seat theater about an hour, an hour and a half from New York City, and it's gorgeous. I mean, it's just wonderful. I've done shows there before, and I'm doing some in June. The Beacon Theater in New York is sold out. I'll be in Atlanta, we added a second show. In Charlotte, we added a second show. In Richmond, there's a few tickets left. In D.C., there's a fourth and final show. I'll be in Niagara Falls. I'll be in Sag Harbor. We added a second show in Red Bank

at the Count Basie Center for the Arts. I love that theater. In the fall, I'll be in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Madison, Milwaukee, Champaign, Indianapolis, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Dayton, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, Asheville, and Charleston. There will be more cities added, but that is at this point, I think we're at about 45 cities.

But keep telling me about cities that I'm missing. I hear you, Kansas City. I hear you, Iowa City. I hear you, St. Louis. I'm working on it. I think we'll get there. We'll make it happen. But today on the podcast, I'm talking to my wife, Jenny. Jen has been a collaborator of mine for many years. You can find her on Instagram, at jhopestein. That's at J-H-O-P-E-S-T-E-I-N.

You can link through to her new audio book for Mother's Day of Little Astronaut. You can link through to her merch, T-shirts and tote bags and things to go along with her Earth Day poems. I'm writing to you from an island made of plastic merch. That's one of a kind. Enjoy my conversation with the brilliant J. Hope Stein. We are here with my beloved wife, Jen Verstein, aka J. Hope Stein the poet. Hello, Jen. Hey, baby.

How you doing? Thanks for having me. Third time. Yeah. Third visit. Maybe this is the one visit maybe this is the one maybe this is the one yeah which is the a perfect start to your self-deprecating your signature self-deprecating humor thank you that i uh i know all too well but people only know you you try to from your poetry you try to break my self-deprecating humor and you want me to be more like self-loving. That is true.

We want to go on that tangent right away? No, sorry. Okay, let's circle back to that. Save it for therapy. Yeah, save it for therapy. No, no, we'll keep it for the podcast. I have to introduce this. Okay, sorry.

So I'm here with my wife, Jennifer Hopestine, third time on the podcast. So I think today can be kind of an open-ended episode of the podcast because we are, in addition to being married, best friends, lovers, collaborators, we are always in dialogue about our own work. I say I'm always sharing new work with you. You're sharing new work with you. You're sharing new work with me. My question for you is, and we'll start with this. When you're sharing work, what's your favorite thing to hear as feedback? I think that for me, if somebody who doesn't

usually read poetry is understanding or enjoying or getting something out of my work and for a moment or within a moment of a poem that I write it's very satisfying because I want to write poetry that like everybody can read like not sort of like an academic type of poetry but a type of poetry poetry that anybody can read and someone who might not understand poetry can read. And I think that's the sort of goal. So if anyone feels that when they hear my work, it makes me happy. So like you like refrigerator magnet poetry? Yeah. Whatever makes you feel something. That's what I say. I mean, I know that there's like a lot of different camps within poetry, like these kinds of poets, like those kind of poets or whatever. And I sort of just feel like it doesn't matter. It just matters like how people are feeling when they hear something. which is to say there are some schools of thought where people go like,

well, I only like comedy that's witty, or I only like comedy that's sophisticated, and I don't like stuff that's silly or goofy or this or slapstick or physical comedy. This is a real thing that happened recently. Yeah, this is in relation to something in our life. But I actually think all of the above, I'm interested in. That's how I feel. I like lowbrow and highbrow at the same time in all art forms.

all art forms. I always say this, that when you and I met, I was in kind of a, I would describe it as kind of a comedy central, comedy special universe, talk show comedian. Yeah. Doing, you know, touring as a club act. And then I was, I dipped, I dipped my toe. I was, I was trying to go in the universe of writing a solo show. I'd written a solo show called Sleepwalk With Me. And it wasn't done yet by a long shot, but you saw a very early version of it at UCB Theater, the original UCB Theater, 26th Street under Christides in Manhattan. And you were like, you should do that, more of that. And I think that as I am so deeply in love with you, I feel like I'm drawn to, I think all of us are secretly drawn,

whether we realize it or not, to doing the thing that the person we're in love with enjoys most about us. Maybe not all of us, this is a blanket statement, but for me. Well, when I met you, you were determined to do a one-person show and I just never met anybody like that who was like, oh, yes, hi, I'm going to put a one-person

show on stage next week. I just didn't even understand how you were going to do it, and the fact that you just did it, you just went up and did it, and I just couldn't believe it. I don't know. There's something about it I'll never get over, and I was really... You'll truly never get over? Never. You'll never get rid of me? I'll never ever get rid of you or get over it. The hold on me has been... Get rid of you, get over it. You know, one of those things. The hold is strong. But I don't know. I'd never seen anybody do anything like that. And it really left an impression on me. And I just was like, oh, yeah, you should be doing that.

But that was also just based on getting to know you because as I got to know you, you would just tell me these stories that were huge red flags if you're dating somebody. I had a lot of those. But the way you were telling them made me want to come back for more. And I was just like, you should just do that on stage because there's like an element of tension there where you're just like I shouldn't really be dating this person but I still want to see them tomorrow maybe maybe they're not red flags maybe they're beige flags maybe let the audience decide for themselves I would sort of call them like a neon pink. What are they? What were they?

Well, you were just telling me all these stories about how you were in relationships and how you don't want to be in a relationship based on these experiences. And you would like lay out the experiences. I would lay out the experiences is the worst part. I remember taking you to like a family wedding. And we got very serious very quickly. Like we were just like inseparable except when we were. I call it in love. And then I took you to like a family wedding.

This might be like the last wedding we ever went to. It was like the first year we met except for we went to Jack's wedding, Jack and Margaret's wedding. But it was like a long gap. And I think this is the reason why, because at this wedding, we were like dancing and you were just like in this like headspace where you were really profoundly realizing something that you wanted to communicate. And you were like, it's so crazy because I'm like so in love with you. I've never loved anyone this much in my whole life. It's so weird because we'm like so in love with you. I've never loved anyone this much in my whole life.

It's so weird because we're not going to be together. It was just like those kind of red flags. By the way, straighten the act. Put it in the next show. I'm going to put it in the next show. You are. Can I put it in? Sure.

That's a perfect red flag example. Yeah. And just, I don't know, every time you talked about your past relationships, it was in a way, it was in a self-deprecating way where you sort of understood what you did wrong and it was, you know, beautiful and thoughtful and funny like your shows. But should you marry that person? Yes. The way you said yes was not convincing. Well, now it's a big yes, but when I first met you, it was not a yes.

It was like, I know, this is fun. Even the way you said big yes, not convincing? I'm happy with my choices. Even the way you said, I'm happy with my choices, not convincing? By the way, this morning when I took Una to school, I told her I was going to be on this podcast. I was like, what should we talk about? And she was like, it's just going to be like you guys talking at the table. And this is kind of like what it's like when we talk at the table. This is full on exactly us in life. Yeah. There's not much of a difference, but yeah. Sorry.

I was just thinking of that. But yeah, there was, I'm super happy. I was thinking of it because like there's times where we just sort of declare our love to each other at the table. Well, I think it's, this is actually kind of a sweet thing about us, I think, is when Una was really little, our daughter was really little, and she could only see like from here to here kind of thing. Right. I would try to put us together face to face, side by side, you and I.

So that she could see in the same frame our heads together lovingly. That's right. That's sweet. So that's a sweet thing. Yeah. What other red flags were about me? So the red flags about me were, I was talking about past relationships that had failed

and all the things I had done wrong. It was literally like going to one of your one-person shows where it's like a full like, here's something I did. There was the prostitute story that you told me, like our second week right that's in the new one yeah and um i love i love that story and the amsterdam story the amsterdam story um and that one i mean it wasn't a red flag it was just so not a thing that you like jump out and say

when you just start getting to know someone right so. So I think that you just couldn't help telling me anything, sort of everything that someone would find sort of challenging about you as a partner. And so you sort of got that out of the way the first month. Sleepwalking? Sleepwalking, everything. And you would just be like, I'm a really complicated guy. And I think a lot of people think on the surface you're just very agreeable generally.

And you're just sort of easy to hang with and that kind of thing. But you actually are a complicated guy. And there is a lot of things going on underneath the surface and so you want more about that you wanted to let me know that really early I think because I don't know because we just both didn't think it was going to last so you just like told me everything and then I think that well we can talk more about it but I think that in the beginning it had the effect of making me super uncomfortable with thinking of you as a long-term person that I would be with but I was having a great time and I enjoyed my time with you but then in the long term I was like this is someone I can really trust because they cannot help but say all of these things constantly about like their worst

thoughts their worst feelings getting to know you was that experience where I got to like experience this honesty as like with stakes, with real personal stakes. Right, real personal stakes because we were about to engage on a 20 to 100 year relationship. We've been together 20 years. Well, it would be, you would just be like,

no, you don't understand like I'm a pretty dark person and like you know most people don't think Mike's a dark person I say it like a hundred times in my act though it's the strangest thing

I say I consistently tell people I literally have a joke in my act right now where I go like last year Jen said to me I feel like

sometimes I feel like you're not happy and I'm like right like I was never happy and then we met I fell in love I'm still not, I feel like sometimes I feel like you're not happy. And I'm like, right. Like I was never happy. And then we met, I fell in love. I'm so unhappy. You know what I mean? Like I literally say outright,

like I have a complicated situation. Emotional situation. I think there's a segment of people who think you're a sort of happy-go-lucky kind of person. What shows you something about comedians, my comedian friends think I'm the stable one. I'm like, no, no, I'm not stable. I'm just able to show up on time.

You do show up on time. That's like my one thing. Prompt arrivals, definitely. Will you read one of your Earth Day poems? Yeah. Or Earth-themed poems? Sure. I was going to read the Plastic Island poem from the plastic thing.

Okay. I'm writing to you from an island made of plastic. There's no food here, says Earth. The people keep their nipples on ice, breastfeed each other to survive. What do your people do to pacify? We move to New York City to be remembered, I tell Earth, but nothing in New York City will be remembered. Not a freezer full of smuggled Russian vodka in a midtown subway

tunnel bar named Siberia, where, fully clothed and with no touching, we spun like Neptune with 2 a.m.'s just-off-work dancing girls, nor the slivered light of numbered streets morning that pinkens the towers down the avenue. No, says earth, certainly not the morning. Not a trash can in West Chelsea where I once left all the love letters I ever received and all the poems I ever wrote. Not the vegan place with the garden seating or the vegan rats celebrating at our feet. Nor the dugout canoes of the Lenape crossing the Hudson, says Earth, before it was called the Hudson for the man of Amsterdam and was called Shetmuk for its nature, meaning flowing in two directions.

Not the Lenape people picking berries on Second Avenue where there is now a rat and a foot. New York City is built on schist. Nothing you do will amount to a petrified ball of dinosaur dung, giggles Earth. But we must keep shitting. Limestone, says Earth. Get yourself a big bed of fossil-loving limestone, and you'll be as happy as an imprint of a prehistoric clam. And the river whispers earth,

but I know what earth is going to say about the river. She answers to Shetmuk. You look like you could use a drink, says earth, and parts her blue blouse to me. Between tongue and roof the bare strip nipple rolls. I, swallowing, swallowing, that great swallowing, by its lilac milk myself gulped. Atrocity and song.

Atrocity and garbage and song. I'm writing to you from an island made of plastic. We are capable of great atrocity. We are also capable, aren't we, of great song. Oh, I love that. One of the things I like about it so much is it reminds me of that book you got me called Here, which is a graphic novel, which has kind of, it's like a zoom in and a zoom out of like 50 million years ago. And then like 1952 and then like 2025 and then 13,000 BC. Yeah. It's a graphic novel called Here by Richard Maguire.

And I was probably reading that when I wrote these poems a few years ago and they were definitely influential. It was a really influential book on me and I bought that for you because I felt like it was a good time for you to read it but it's all about yeah it's about just sort of living on this planet and all the scope of things that have happened over time and personal from personal loss and different moments that we live here to like yeah like a dinosaur was living in the space that we live here to like, yeah, like a dinosaur was living in the space that we're living in right now. So it's a really beautiful book. I always get it for people who I feel like are going through a tough time. Yeah. Yeah. I think like,

I love this poem. I love that book here. I love a lot. I love things where people are able to zoom into the specificity of what's beautiful about things and zoom out into the idea that we're just molecules and dust ultimately. inspired by is um there is an island made of plastic in the pacific ocean and it's just like sort of like a gyre of just like plastic from all over like the world that just ends up in this one spot just through the tides and it's um pretty massive and i don't know there was something about the metaphor of that that really wanted that i wanted to explore so i do i have like a bunch of poems about it. I was pretty obsessed with it for a while. When you talk about not a freezer full of Russian vodka and a midtown subway tunnel bar named Siberia, we're fully clothed with no touching. We spun like Neptune with 2 a.m. just off work dancing girls. Do you take that from life? Yes. That's a very specific memory I had where

when I first started working in the city, there was this really amazing subway bar on 51st street. I think it was the two three, um, inside the subway tunnel, there was like an unmarked door. And if you opened it, it was just this amazing bar called Siberia and they served Russian, cold Russian vodka and it was open all night. And so, um, in that neighborhood, there are a lot of sort of dancing girl peep show type things and they would get off work at about two in the morning and then they would hit that bar. So we would just be dancing there and hanging out. And it was just, it was one of my favorite New York City experiences, I think partially because it was when I first moved to

New York. And it was also, I don't know, there's something magical about it. I think I like the idea of things that feel planetary, but also feel very intimate. And there's another specific moment in that poem, which is about you and I going to, I think a dojo. A vegan restaurant with the vegan rats. With the vegan, yeah. So we went there. I mean, this was like the first year we were dating and I don't even mention what happened that day, but it was sort of a volatile time in our relationship and specifically like one of the more volatile days. But all that made it into the poem was the vegan restaurant and the vegan rats. So I was just playing around with that

and pulling in some moments in my life that felt very vivid to me. Yeah. What was our volatile part of our relationship at that moment? Do you remember? Yes, I do. Well, that was when, that was actually, that was like the day, that was when we broke up. So I think that was, do you remember that time we broke up for three months? Yeah. So we broke up before we came back together and then decided to ultimately get married. But there was a breakup period for three months. And that lunch led in...

Classic relationship moment. Do we break up or do we get married? Yeah. So that was that moment. We doubled down. You know, I could tell you details if you want details, but you might be embarrassed. A little bit of embarrassment. Okay.

We got into a fight after lunch in the East Village. You know where this is going, right? I know this story. And then we're in the middle of a fight, and it's pretty— This is the most embarrassing story. Emotional. Yeah. Well, you need me in the balls at one point.

That came after. On the street, you need me in the balls. Which is kind of crazy. I never did that to anyone before or since. Yeah. We were the argument in the street that you see as a New Yorker or any Chicago, Seattle, wherever, all the time on the street. And you're like, whoa, they're really going through it. That was that for us. And as that happens happens someone walks by

and they go like Burbiggs you're awesome yeah I love that and you're like and then you're and that's really what you want in the middle of an emotional fight with your significant others for the other one to have a random stranger tell them that they're awesome

and then and then he said, this neighborhood is my demographic. True story. I did say that. I'm so embarrassed that I said that and I'm choosing to put this on air. I think this was definitely the lowest moment

of our relationship. This neighborhood is a lot of people in my demographic. That day was true. It's the East Village. And then we broke up for three months, and then we got back together. We went and we saw The Passenger. Yeah. Will you read, this is one of your Earth poems,

will you read How the Sea Turned to Ammunition? Yeah, thanks. How the Sea Turned to Ammunition It was a devastating hurricane season, says Earth, when the AR-15s were brought to the shoreline at dusk. I saw gunmetal instead of fingers. Humans, says Earth. I saw their silhouettes at dusk.

The years are defined by fingers, says Earth, in the grip of a trigger, or running themselves through hair, then refraining from touch. Country first, shouts President Cheeseburgers in an imported business suit, declaring war on the sea, which was flooding the land.

It was a devastating AR-15 season for the sea and the school children. Gun sounds, I heard them. I saw their silhouettes at dusk. I love that. I think for me, the what I get of it all, and I think it's the reason I enjoy it, is to me it takes these current issues, one being mass shootings, gun violence,

and combines it with this kind of ecological disaster that we're dealing with with the ocean right now and it merges those two things together but it doesn't by merging them it's kind of the statement unto itself as opposed to there being a statement within it yeah i feel like that poetry what's fun about it is you can do these sort of merging imagery and sort of have one sort of connect to the other. And I guess the trick is to try to figure out how to do that without being overbearing and, you know, sort of explaining too much and just sort of letting the images speak for themselves and sort of see what it can paint. Yeah, I see jokes really similarly. Like if I have a joke that I can't picture what the story is or I can't picture what it is,

like I always describe it as like it doesn't have enough cinema. I feel like poetry is kind of similar, right? I think so, yeah. It's image-based. It's definitely like your ability to use an image to sort of convey kind of an unexplainable, intangible thing that when you're, whatever, if you're writing a joke, if you're making a painting or a poem, that something larger than you comes forth. And I don't know, just like that expression that a human can make is, I find it endlessly fascinating. So we did a show recently where we asked people to ask me questions, like a Q&A.

One of the questions we get is, are you able to veto jokes? Yeah. Well, it's not like— That include you. I don't do hard vetoes, I don't think. But I definitely think that there's been moments in our life where it's really like our personal life is very complicated and in process and sometimes scary, sometimes, you know, like really hard things are going on. And so at those moments, I'm usually like, I need a little time before we even think about you talking about this on stage.

And I think that's hard. Those are really hard conversations to have. But I don't feel like I give you hard vetoes. I mean, you definitely say like, oh, here's a joke that, is this okay? Like if I say this, I feel like I'm usually pretty open, but I mean, you would say even no more. And like sometimes I'll just add to it and say, well, here's like my thoughts about it or here's my side of it. I think also when it comes to our daughter, we have to be careful because we talked about her a lot when she was a baby. We have to be careful because we talked about her a lot when she was a baby.

But now that she's like a person, we have to be a little more careful about the ways in which we talk about her. I think one of the things that is helpful about two artists coexisting, although there's many challenges to it, but one of the things that's the upside is often I'll tell you a thing I'm working on and you'll say, I remember it this way. Or one thing you might want to include is this. And more often than not, that ends up leading down a more fruitful path and a more dimensional version of the joke and story. Right. That's the hope is that it's like a positive. I think that there's like been like a couple of times where I've definitely had to be like, I really don't think that you can talk about this on stage right now. And it's painful to have to like say it in that way because I know that it's sort of against our like overall agreement as to sort of how we exist in the world um but for the most part

when it's coming to stuff about you and me i think it's sort of a yes and kind of thing i would hope that that's your experience of it and that it's not veto veto or not that you're like stressed to like run something by me i also think as artists, it is important to write down the things you want to write down and not to not write them down. So I think there's a difference between writing the material and putting it in front of people or sharing it. I don't know. But I think sometimes if you write the material,

it might lead to another thing, and so you can sort of get away with it. And it won't sort of damage the sort of internal family thing that we do need to protect at certain points. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think like I always give that piece of advice because one of the most common questions I get, and I got in that Q&A also, is how do you write about your personal life in a way that doesn't hurt the people around you or hurt their feelings, et cetera. And I have a similar thing, which is like, just write it all down. And then as time goes by and you have distance from it, you'll see sort of how it shakes out and how you could write about it in a way that doesn't necessarily hurt anyone's feelings. And also like sometimes things can be, make their way into fiction.

Right. I thought in Little Astronaut, you conveyed some really strong feelings about our marriage and the pain of childbirth and all these things that... Well, I remember when I first started sharing those poems, I like sort of emailed them to you or I emailed them as just like, oh, these are some things I wrote. And you're like, it's good. It hurts, but it's good that you wrote them.

It was painful. But I think that that's good. I really do. And I encourage you in future to swing away. You've encouraged me for sure. I just, I'm not a person that lets people in. So if I am saying, if I am communicating something, it's usually pretty layered and it's like through a different character usually. I mean, I'm writing poetry because

I don't really communicate well in other ways. So if I communicated well in other ways, I would be writing very differently and I would be, I wouldn't really need to write poetry if I was able to just say things in a straight out way. But for whatever reason, the way I think and the way I communicate is more of a looping way. Yeah. Well, sometimes when you and I, I'm trying to communicate with you, you're like, don't you realize, like, I don't speak like this. I write poems. I'm like, right, but, like, at some point, like, we got to figure out, like, which day is off from school so we can go to the museum.

Yeah. You know what I mean? I do. So I say all these things that are negative about myself in the show. What are the things that are so wonderful about me that I'm just missing about myself? Okay. Well, you're just like, like the other day we were, we dropped our daughter off at a birthday party. We were walking and you were like, I just want to say, I'm really happy to be spending this day with you. And like, you know, we've been married a long time. Like nobody says that anymore. Like if I 20 years, like you're just, you're still very like urgent and self-improving

in this way as like an individual and as a team member, like in this way that is so intense, in this way that is so intense, but also just so beautiful. Also, you make a lot of mistakes. This is negative again, I think. But you keep going and you just keep doing it. Mistakes, but you keep going. And you just like fumble around. It's all from improv.

Yeah, you fumble around. The mistakes are the beauty. You got to find the pattern. Find the pattern in the mistakes. Therein lies the humor. But I think you really want people to say to you you made a mistake here. You want that interaction

so deeply. Whereas I think other people don't want to face themselves. I think you really are looking for people to help you face yourself in this way that I think is really beautiful and profound. I think if anyone has a problem with you, just call Mike up. Tell him what the issue is. Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah.

I think you're right that most people don't want to have a discussion of what the conflict is. Most people don't want to, and you're dying to. You're like. I'm confused when people don't want to. I'm like, why not? Like, it's all, I don't know. That stuff's dicey. It all roots back to this thing.

Chris Fleming was here the other day, a comedian, great comedian. And he's also from suburban Massachusetts. And we have this thing exact in common, which is like we grew up in this wildly repressed Catholic upbringing where nobody talks about anything. And me and Chris, I think, to some degree, have in common that we're trying to end the cycle on that.

Well, a lot of people, including myself, when some... You've said to me, like, oh, you said this thing that upset me yesterday, and I'll sort of be defensive about it, or I'll feel criticized by it, or I'll feel criticized by it or I'll feel like, well, 99% of everything else I said was amazing. Why do we have to like harp on this 1% thing that I didn't do perfectly? It's sort of like how I experience it. But the way you usually experience it is you want to dig in and you're like, thank you for bringing this up. Like you see it as like a sign of interaction, love, respect to bring it up, even if it's a difficult thing. Whereas I feel like I and other people take it as like, let's just keep moving.

Like 99% of this is working, you know? Well, because if we're not growing, aren't we just dying? Yeah, Bob Dylan.ylan yes we are i know i agree with you i think it's a challenge for me in a good way um this has been a very productive so thank you thank you for your challenges this is very helpful The last thing we do is working out for a cause. Is there a nonprofit that you like to support? I wanted to do the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. Okay. Where Jimmy Kimmel and Molly McNerney have contributed a lot.

They do a lot of work with the hospital, and I feel like I want to support them. That's a great one. Yeah. All right. We'll contribute to Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and we will link to them in the show notes. It's a great, great, great organization. Thank you, Jay Hoopstein. Did I make you sleepy?

No. Okay. Do I look sleepy? Thank you for marrying me. Thank you for marrying me. This is how I end every interview is, Thank you for marrying me. Thank you for marrying me. This is how I end every interview is, thank you for marrying me, and we will link to our marriage in the show notes.

That's going to do it for another episode of Working It Out. Little Astronaut, the audio book, is available for pre-order now. It comes out for Mother's Day. It'll be on Audible. It'll be on Libro.fm or anywhere where you get audio books. You can find Jen on Instagram at jhopestein. She posts all kinds of cool animations related to her poetry. She's a great follow.

Check out birdbiggies.com to sign up for the mailing list to be the first to know about my upcoming shows. Our producers of Working It Out are myself, along with Peter Salamone, Joseph Burbiglia, Mabel Lewis. Our associate producer is Gary Simon. Sound mix by Shubh Saran. Supervising engineer Kate Belinsky. Special thanks to Jack Antonoff and Bleachers for their music.

Love their new album. It is out now. Special thanks, as always, to our daughter Una, who built the original radio fort made of pillows. Thanks most of all to you who are listening. If you enjoy the show, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts. People wrote such nice things last week. Someone wrote a nice thing about how much they enjoyed the show in Houston

and how much they're enjoying the podcast. Some people talk about how interrelated the live tour shows are to the material they've heard on the show, and they enjoyed seeing it in front of a crowd in relation to listening to it on a podcast. It's been a really, really cool journey. Tell your friends, even tell your enemies. Maybe you see a couple people fighting on the street.

Instead of telling them that they're awesome, maybe say, Hey, I don't mean to interrupt, but maybe you'd both enjoy listening to this podcast called Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out. It's a comedian who speaks to other comedians, actors, filmmakers, even poets. And sometimes, in the past, they've argued, like you. But now they've worked it out. I'll see you next time, everybody.