Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out - 225. Ariel Elias: One Joke Every Day for a Year

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

Comedian Ariel Elias rose to prominence after a video of her chugging a beer that an angry heckler threw at her went viral. But the real story is more interesting, notably how Ariel drew on the incident for her act. Mike and Ariel talk about how to write jokes about upsetting experiences, and Ariel shares the highs and lows of her experiment writing one joke every day for a whole year. Please consider donating to God's Pantry Food BankText BIRBIGS to 917-444-7150 for updatesFind Mike:Website: https://birbigs.com/Instagram: https://instagram.com/birbigs/Facebook: https://facebook.com/birbigfansTikTok: https://tiktok.com/@mikebirbigliaFind Ariel:Website: https://www.arieleliascomedy.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ariel_comedy/Hosted and Produced by Mike BirbigliaProducers: Peter Salomone, Joseph Birbiglia, Mabel Lewis, Gary SimonsSound Mixed by Shubh SaranSupervising Engineer: Kate BilinskiVideo Consultant: Graham WilloughbySpecial Thanks: Marissa Hurwitz, Josh Upfal, David Raphael, Nina Cwik, J. Hope Stein, OonaMusic: Jack Antonoff and Bleachers Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You also had a really lovely reaction to me when I met you at the cellar that I appreciated a lot, which was when you heard that that happened, you looked so pained. And it, because the reactions that I got from comics were one of two things. It was either what you had, which was empathy, or it was, oh, I'm so jealous. Oh, God. It was, oh, man, I wish that had happened to me. Or, oh, that's so cool. And it's like, it was so cool, but it was also very terrified. I don't think that's cool.

But there are a lot of people who are like, oh, man, I wish I had something thrown at me. Hey, everybody. It's Mike Barbaglia. This is working it out. That's the voice of the great Ariel Elias. Ariel is a great comic. We've actually done a bunch of shows on the road together through the years.

She has a special out called A Jewish Star, and it is on YouTube for free, and it's great. She grew up in Kentucky and is Jewish, which is not super common. You might know Ariel from an incident that happened a few years ago. This is an interesting one. A heckler threw a beer can at her while she was on stage, which is awful, and she immediately picked up the beer can. This is like it went viral. I picked up the beer can, chugged it. And then Jimmy Kimmel invited her on his talk show, and she talked about it on stage a lot.

Because how could you not? That would be the seminal life moment. We talk about that today in terms of like, how do you take an incident that everyone knows about and then turn it into comedy? It's a great chat. I love talking to Ariel, super smart comedy, mind. As always, you can watch this episode on YouTube and Spotify. This is a great chat with Ariel Elias. It's a deep dive into jokes, joke writing, joke structure.

We talk about open mics. Ariel first tried comedy at an open mic in New Orleans. Let's talk about gathering up the courage to try comedy for the first time. I think you're going to enjoy my chat with the great Ariel Elias. I thought the special came out great. Thanks, man. It's the kind of thing at the time. I was like, I'm so proud of this.

This is amazing. And now I watch it. I'm like, ugh. Oh, really? Yeah. I think the jokes are fantastic. Thank you. How did you learn to write jokes?

I know that's such like a 101 question, but I'm like, oh, these are really well-crafted jokes. And I was like, did you, how did you, like, where did you start? I started in New Orleans. Did you do an open mic? Yeah. I started by, I had never seen stand up. Yeah. Like, not on TV or listen to it on the radio.

And then when I was in college, I was getting ready to graduate, and I would listen to podcasts, which had just come out. Right. The podcasts were this new thing. Right. And every podcast would have a comedian talking about like, how did you start? Right. And every single one of them said, I just went to an open mic. Sure.

I think I listened to one, like the nerdist with Drew Carey. And he talked about just going to an open mic and being really bad. Yeah. And I was like, I could be bad. I can be bad. I'm so good at being bad. Of course. So I wrote some stuff down and I took two of my roommates and I went to this open mic and I signed up and I watched a bunch of people first.

I stayed in the audience and that was my first time seeing stand up and so much of it was so bad. And I was like, I could do that. I could be really, really, really bad at this. It's astonishing how bad open mics can be. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're like, this is not, nothing is entertaining here. No, no, there isn't, sometimes you go to open mic, you go, there isn't one good joke the whole night.

Yeah. Yeah, or one good person. Or one good person. Yeah. No, it is like the line between open mic and group meeting. Yeah. Is the thin line. But even now looking back on it, that was a good, Mike.

That was good. That was a good one. No idea. No idea. You know, New Orleans is also this place that really encourages people to be characters and encourages people to be so weird and wear a costume and not necessarily write jokes, but there's a lot of storytelling. There's a lot of just everybody's on drugs. Sure.

So looking back on it, it's like, yeah, no. Nobody was, you wouldn't look at somebody and go, oh, they're just doing Carlin. Or, oh, that's just somebody doing Mitch Headberg. It was like, no, that's, that person's being like, it's just the wizard on mushrooms. Right. That's sort of good, though, right? Yeah, it was beautiful. Yeah.

It was really beautiful. And then moving to New York and the open mics are so different here, right? There's no audience except for the other comedians. Oh, is that right. Okay. And everybody's trying to make it. Right. In New Orleans, nobody's really trying to make it.

Right. They don't think they're going to make it. There's no. There's nothing to make. There's nothing to make. You know, you make art for the sake of art or whatever. That's kind of lovely. Yeah, that's similar.

I similar thing. Like I did open mics in D.C. and Virginia when I was 19 and 20. And like, yeah, I don't think anyone actually thought they were going to make it or have a career. I actually think the best case scenario for the open mics I was at was that people were like, maybe I could be like a road comic and perform like in West Virginia. Oh yeah. Not Virginia. Not Virginia.

We're going on the road. No, no, we're driving. West Virginia. We're driving to West Virginia. I actually do think that was what they had in mind. And some of them did. Yeah. And those were gigs that people had.

Is that what you had in mind? Like, why do you think you had a different ambition? I think you know what it is? Because I thought always, as a stand-up, I always thought of myself as a writer and that the stand-up was just a showcase for these things I was writing. Like, someday I'm going to write for Conan O'Brien. And then, like, how will I show them that I can write? Well, I'll do jokes on stage. And then, like, I got like a couple years in and I'm like, I'm okay at this.

You know what I mean? Like this is something on its own. That's interesting because like I do think of you as like you are such a writer. Yeah. But you have such a cadence too that feels like very specifically yours. Yeah. Well, it's funny because like I feel like when we first met, I think it was. Like I was, I think I met you at the cellar one night.

And I, because you, I heard you or someone. tell the story of you getting a beer can thrown at you and then you chug the beer can and then it went viral, which by the way is like the plot of like 900 television shows and movies. It went viral and then all of a sudden you were like... And then your life changed. But like that literally happened to you. You did like a moderately political joke. Yeah, it was a joke about my IUD.

Yeah. So in the sense that women's health has politicized. It was a political joke in that sense. But then wasn't the thing that someone shouted political, though? Yeah. Well, it's like it wasn't, the show wasn't going that well. Right. It was in Jersey, I remember.

It was in Jersey. And I was featuring. They weren't there for me. I don't even know if they were there for the headliner. It was like that kind of show. Yeah. And I just said, I kind of just gave up on my jokes a little bit because I was like, you don't want to, you guys don't like this.

Right. And so I said, does anybody have a lot? any questions. Let's just do that. Because I never want to do crowdwork with people who don't want crowdwork done upon them. Yeah, yeah, sure. So I'll never go like, hey, man, what's your deal? Right. But I'll open it up. Yeah. And then if you want to talk, let's talk. Yeah. And the first thing, this woman in the back raised her hand. And it's not in the video, but I go, are you raising your hand? That's so polite. That's so considerate. Yeah. And then she goes, Did you vote for Donald Trump?

Oh. And I was like, here we go. Okay. So that's how it started. That's how it started. Okay. And then afterwards, I was trying to get back to the joke. And that's when her husband through the can.

Okay. And did he shout something political or? I don't know. Okay. It's funny because I don't always know what is my memory of it happening and what is just me narrating the video. It's kind of gotten conflated in my head. You threw a beer can at you.

And then in heroic fashion, you chugged it. And then the crowd like ate it up. And then the internet ate it up. Yeah. Because it is like a quintessential thing of like what would you do? Sure. Which is I think we all have in our head all the time. What would I do if I'm on staging literally the worst nightmare, which is someone just throws stuff at?

me. Yeah. Have you had that happened to you before? I never had that.

I mean, I've had variations of people shouting wild stuff. I mean, all kinds of stuff.

I remember one, I did a vaguely political joke once in the Atlantic Sydney, Jersey also the guy shouts,

you didn't die since 9-11. And all, but, you know, sometimes with heckles, this is what gets complicated about

heckles, you can't hear the whole thing. Right. So I just heard die. I just heard, die!

Oh my God. Are I going to get shot? Like, what's happening exactly? But like, so I've had stuff like that, certainly. But like you're, in your case, it's like, you know, it's like the most extreme, one of the more extreme things you could think of. And then you chugged the beer, the audience goes crazy. Jimmy Kimmel loved it, had you on a show, which is cool.

It was cool. Like that week or a week later or something. Yeah. on hiatus the next week. Yeah. It was the week after. And I asked him if I could come be on a show. Oh, you did?

Yeah. Oh, because he like reposted it. He retweeted it. And I was just like, and it was a little bit of my. That's so funny of me you after him. Kind of like this podcast. Yeah, yeah, totally. But yeah, it was my own ignorance of like, I didn't know he didn't have stand-ups on the show.

I was like, oh, it's a late night show. Right. I'll just ask to be. be on it and I'll do it publicly so he can't say no. He can ignore it. So you just replied. I replied to the tweet. Wow. And did he write back? Yeah, he said, yeah, definitely. And then a few days later, I heard from his team. That's really cool. Yeah. It was very cool. You also had a really lovely reaction to me when I met you at the seller that I appreciated a lot, which was you, when you heard that that happened, you looked so pained.

Oh, yes. And it, because the reactions that I got from comics were one of two things. It was either what you had, which was empathy, or it was, oh, I'm so jealous. Oh, God. It was, oh, man, I wish that had happened to me. Or, oh, that's so cool. And it's like, it was so cool, but it was also very terrifying. I don't think that's cool.

But there are a lot of people who are like, oh, man, I wish I had something thrown at me. And I was like, I don't think you understand, like, it was very cool. Don't get me wrong and I'm very grateful for everything that came from it, but it's like, I didn't sleep for a few weeks after that. I had kind of a continuous stomachache for about a month. And I remember I'm not great at processing my feelings when they happen. And as I've gotten older, I've become more aware of that tendency. But I remember telling my husband, hey, at some point, in a few months, I will cry. And you will not understand that it's actually about this. Yeah. And that's exactly, I mean, six months later, we were ordering food. And he goes, I think he might have ordered too much. And I just burst into tears. And he was like, no, I'm sorry.

It's the right amount. It's the right amount. And I was like, no, it's not about that. Yeah. About something else. So, yeah, you like displayed empathy, which was neat and nice. I was and still am, yeah, sympathetic to that being what you had to deal with. It's just like, it just runs deep.

Like someone being vulnerable, like on stage. And then someone kind of like violating that like relationship into like throwing a thing at you feel so aggressive to a point of like that's shocking. It's shocking. It's also like there were parts of it that were cool where I was like, oh, I have power. Like I can piss people off. I didn't know I could do that. Right. Really?

I knew people could like not like me. Yeah. But I didn't know I could ruin somebody's night. That's kind of cool. Right. It was also, because it was such a public thing that happened, I had never had this happened before where I suddenly felt, oh, I have to write a joke about this. Yeah.

I had never had an experience before where it was like, and now I have to write about this. Yeah. So there was a lot of, it was nice in a way. You have to write a joke because you have to have a response. Right. People go, hey, what did you think of that? that. Right. If people are buying tickets now to see me because they saw this video, they want to know what I think about what happened that night. And I can't just be like, oh, man, it was so

crazy. Right. Anyway. What was the first joke you wrote about it? Because he's written a bunch. Yeah. The first joke. What was the first one? I don't remember the first one. I remember I realized, I remember one time saying, somebody was like, why did they throw the beer can at you? When I was on stage, somebody asked me that. And I said, it doesn't matter. because I didn't want to talk about politics. And the person said, it does matter, actually. And I was like, you're right. 100% you're right.

Of course it matters. And so then I was trying to figure out how to write a joke about politicians in a way that everybody could laugh. And so I remember coming up with, I just said, man, it really just, it sucks that I took a beer can for Joe Biden. It's great. I was like, that's something we can all get on board with, right? It's not a cool, it's not a cool guy. Right. So that was one of the first ones that I wrote about it.

And then another one that I wrote about it was about how the woman threw the beer can at me, or the woman was heckling me, but it was actually her husband who threw the beer can at me. And as they're terrible people, they're a great couple. That's funny. It works. They'll never get divorced. That's true love. That's a couple that finishes each other's sentences. And those sentences are.

in prison. They're prison sentences. That's great. Yeah. But it took a long time to try to figure it out. It's funny because I always say when sometimes people will ask us on the Q&A episodes of the show, like how do you write about something that's sad or challenging your life? And for you, it was that instance.

And for me, it was like I had cancer when I was 20. I had a bladder tumor. And it was one joke that allows you. a window into everything else because if the joke works, then the audience knows that your point of view is you're going to make funny things out of it. Right. They can trust you. They can trust you.

Yeah. I mean, every bit. It's one joke. And then that enters. For me, I think it was the first that I remember the first jokes I wrote where I was like, oh, okay, was I like got herpes when I was in college. Right. Yeah. And so I started writing jokes about that because I was like, I don't know how to tell guys that I want to hook up with. Yeah, yeah. So I'll just, I'll just write this and then I'll have them come to a show.

Oh my God. And then that's it. You have a joke in your special about herpes. And then your husband complains. He's like, you know, it's not a, it's not as fun to have sex, you know, with a condom. And, and you're like, that's the attitude that caught me herpes. Yeah, I know. That's why we're having this conversation. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Because I figured that out three boyfriends ago.

Did you, is your relationship with your husband such that he knows that everything in your personal life is fair game in that way? I think so. Yeah. And I will, I mean, he helps me write a lot of it. Yeah. Because he's so funny and he used to do stand-up. So he understands. And it's all like, I think if I was up there and I was like, oh, my husband, I hate him.

You know what I mean? If it was coming with that attitude, he'd be like, hey, I don't love that. Yeah, yeah, sure. But as long as it's true, I think. And I think part of it is also like I, hopefully this changes in the future. But I haven't gone so deep into our relationship because that's not, I don't think I'm a good enough comedian yet to do that. So I'm not really. Yeah, I know.

I'm not a good enough comedian. Totally. But I'm not. I don't know how to, there's so much, so many, like, heavy topics that I don't know how to talk about, including, like, what it is to be married every single day. Like, I don't know how to make it funny. Right. So I'm not trying to talk about it. Right.

Yeah. No, it's, I think it's remarkable, though, that you thread the needle on, like, you know, you have a trans joke that. works with all types of audiences. Thank you. You know, I think basically like your husband's like, would it be a deal breaker if I was trans? Yeah. And you go, no, you being a man is the thing I like least about. Yeah.

That's a real conversation we have. It's great. Yeah. I mean, that's just, it's a great trans joke. Thank you. It's not going after a marginalized community. But it's also kind of acknowledging how you feel and how your husband feels. And like there's real characters in it.

Right. Yeah. And when I said when we had that real conversation, like we both just laughed. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, you know I don't actually hate that you're a man, but it'd be nice if you weren't. It would be nice if you weren't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now, I mean, what's frustrating with like starting over is I now have a bit about how, you know, about how I'm straight and how frustrating that is. Right? I don't want to be attracted to men. That's men, nobody wants to be. attracted to men. And I say, I say, I know I'm straight and I know because I'm happily married to a man even though I know that's what Jady Vance wants for me. And that's how I know this isn't a choice. So, but, you know, the trans stuff, that joke and the special use, like, I started using it to lead into this new bit. Right. And now I have to, I'm trying to figure out how to let go of the old

trans joke, which is so hard. I know. That's a common thing in my act is like you have you have two jokes and they are part of part of what makes up a chunk of material. And then one of them falls away in a special for whatever reason and you're left with this one and you just go, but I want to do the other. It's like they're twin jokes. And they like they support each other. Right. It's like these these jokes too that where you're like, well, I did this one in the hour. Yeah. And now I have this other one. But it works so much better if I have the one from the hour.

Like they... No, 100%. It's so hard. Yeah, it's just... Writing jokes is really hard. I don't know if you've discussed that. It's hard. I love this thing that you did, which is you did a year of writing a joke every day,

posting online. We talk about stuff like that on this podcast all the time. It's like essentially like how do you put your feet to the fire? I would say like what's the best and worst joke from the exercise? And what's like the coolest and least cool thing about the exercise of doing that? There were so many worst jokes to choose from. There were, I think I, and I don't remember the worst ones, but I do remember there were some where I was like, I'm sorry, this isn't really a joke.

This is like half of a funny-ish thought, maybe. Sure. Anything that you think might make it into the next special? For sure. A lot of things. A lot of things. A lot of like jumping off points. Like a lot of beginning, like starting jokes. Yeah. I had one, I think the first joke that I wrote where I was like, oh, okay, I can build off of this was, I saw this TikTok video where apparently I've been doing oral hygiene wrong because you're supposed to, you're supposed to floss first, then mouthwash, then brush, then brush. And that's not what I've been doing. I've been brushing first, then mouthwashing, then I floss two days before my dentist

appointment. And I was like, oh, okay, that's just a classic formulaic joke. And then, I mean, yeah, there are a lot. And I've forgotten a lot, too. So now I'm like trying to go back and look at some of the good ones that I had forgotten and realizing, oh, that can actually go here. because I think a thing that I learned, even though I didn't realize that I needed to learn it, is that jokes are pretty meaningless if there's no context with it.

So when I first started the project and was just writing a joke and then I'd go and try it on stage, none of it worked because none of it was actually saying anything. Right. And none of it had anything to go with. You know, I'm not like a one-liner comedian. Right. So this doesn't make sense. and then as as things started to shape and grow and I realized oh this actually leads into this

every more things started working yeah so that was like a that was a huge lesson of like the the joke matters yeah but it matters so much less than who am I and what am I trying to say with the joke yeah and how do you feel about the joke yeah and also learning like For a long time, I thought that negativity was much funnier. And I've learned getting older, like, I think positivity is actually funnier. So I would come at it from this angle of like, I hate this because blank. And now I've realized, no, if I say, I love this because blank is fun. So I had this joke of like, I hate, I don't like cats.

I don't like cats because like they just seem like they're like the hot girl at the bar We're like, they'll only touch you if it's last call. That's their vibe. And then I realize, no, if I say I love cats because they have this vibe. It's like people are more receptive to it. Yeah, I get that. So it's been like that's been a really good reminder too of like it's okay to be positive. That's interesting.

It's like, yeah, it's almost like coming at it from a point of view of curiosity versus just like we're going to just shoot down everything that you. you like. Yeah. Yeah. If you like this, you're wrong. Yeah, yeah. And I disagree as opposed to like, no, no, no, you're right to like it. We like it for different reasons.

Totally. Yeah. And I think part of the reason that that's true is that in some ways it's easier to hate everything. Of course. And it's harder to find the awesomeness and everything. For sure. Yeah. Yeah.

It's easy to criticize. Yeah. It's hard to appreciate. And also we're in a culture of criticism right now. Yeah. We're a culture of like people just like mocking everything all the time. And so if you're the contrarian take is like, actually this is kind of fun. Right.

Yeah. If you think about it, this is kind of ridiculous and fun and weird. Yeah. Yeah. So it was the whole project was like, there were so many days where I was like, I regret doing this. Yeah. This was a huge mistake. Why did I do this?

but I also saw that my joke writing ability, like I don't think the ceiling got higher, but the floor got higher. So my worst jokes got less worse, because this is what it is. I wrote this joke the other day, which is like I always tell people when I die, like burn my journals.

Because the last thing I want is someone showing up to the funeral and be like, I like the specials, but I didn't like the underdeveloped first drafts. You know what I mean? Like there is something painful about like people seeing the journal. Yeah. And being like, oh yeah, this guy has some swings and misses. The journals are awful.

Yeah. It's also so funny because it's like nobody wants to read your journals. No. Nobody wants it. It's really the 365 jokes idea. It's very in line with what we talk about on this show a lot, which is like the only way you can get better. as a writer is writing every day. It's literally the only thing you can do.

And accepting that you're going to be bad at it all the days. It's such a hard thing because everything you're putting out, you go, I want it to be good, I want it to be good, I want it to be good. And then you have days where you're like, I can't be good today. Yeah. But at least I was something today. At least I was here today. And it also, there's this funny thing too, I think, which is the only way to get good at something

is repetition. over and over and over again. And by the time you repeat it, 900,000 times, 1100 times, inevitably people will be like, hey, you're really good at that. And you actually can't take the compliment well because you're so tired. You're like, I know. I'm a lot. If I wasn't good, I won't know what I'm doing with my life.

I've wasted my whole life. The whole life. Yeah. It's literally like walking up to, you know, an Olympic ice skater and being like, you know, the lines you're cutting are so precise. And they'd be like, yeah, it's what I do all the time every day. Yeah. You know how when you're like hanging out with your friends?

I'm doing that. I've sacrificed everything else in life to be good at cutting. lines in the ice. You know how you have a girlfriend? I do cut, I cut lines in the ice. I mean, it's kind of it.

And then weirdly, like, when people ask for advice and you say that's the advice, they're just like, oh no. Right. I don't want to know. I have to work really hard.

I have to do it. Yeah, I have to repeat it over and over again. Okay. I don't want to do that. I know. The amount of days I'd be hanging out with my husband and I go, all right, I got to go make my video real quick.

Yeah. That was the hard. I mean, you know, that's the other thing about, like, the time that we live in. You can't just sit there and write your joke. You then have to go, all right, and now I'm going to go do a video of me telling the joke and then explaining how I told the joke and then I have to edit it and then I have to post it everywhere. And then I have to come up with like a clever caption. 100%.

Yeah? Awful. What are people's favorite and least favorite thing about you? Ooh, people's least favorite thing about me. is probably that I will cancel and find something wrong with just about everything. Wow. I will cancel so much. With friends.

With friends. Wow. I cancel all the time. And when somebody else cancels, like, we tried to do this podcast like three or four times. Yeah, yeah. And every time I got the text saying, hey, actually. And I was like, great. Thank you.

This thing that I wanted to do so badly and asked to be on. And I was like, thank you for canceling. Wow. I just want to be home. I want to be invited. I don't want to go. Yeah. I think that's something that people, my friends, don't like.

I don't, I will not go to a party. I'll go to a party maybe for about 20 minutes and then I'm out and I won't say goodbye. Yeah. Irish goodbye. Irish goodbye. I don't know why the Irish gets stuck with that one. It's really, really unfair. It's really, really unfair.

I feel like the Irish are so loud about leaving. Yeah, yeah. It's not an accurate stereotype at all. Yeah. But I feel like I'm Irish goodbye. I'm also just like, how late are you guys staying out? Crazy. What is going on here?

Maybe I'm letting myself off the hook by saying that that's people's least favorite thing about me. Maybe people's least favorite thing about me is that I will spiral really hard thinking about what people's opinions are of me. Oh. Maybe that's what it is. Interesting. It's not this like, oh, common thing that everybody in their 30s does of not wanting to go to a party. I think it's every friendship. I'm like, is this going okay?

Yeah. I think it might be that. Okay. And then what's your favorite thing about me from people's favorite thing about me? I am like very there for people in a crisis. I think I'm very good at that. A lot of empathy. That's great.

I don't know. No, that's good. Good answer. I bake a lot. It might be that. It might be the cookies I make. I'm sure that's what it is. It might be the chocolate chip cookies that I make.

Who are you jealous of? I'm jealous of everybody. What am I jealous of? I'm truly jealous of everybody. Professionally, I'm jealous of people who are able to write a lot quickly and who have good careers that I want and who, have abs that I want and I'm jealous of careers and abs. Yeah, careers and abs. I'm jealous of careers and abs. Yeah. What's the best piece of advice someone's given you that you used? Ooh,

eat shit in the dark for as long as you can. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Just like work anonymously. Just get good quietly with and don't take your time with putting stuff out. Yeah. Take your time because we all want to be in a hurry. We all want to get it all out. We all. all want to be famous, famous, famous. But eat shit in the dark for as long as you can. Until you can't anymore. Yeah. How do you know when you can't?

I don't know. When somebody throws a beer can at you. That's funny. What's a time you remember feeling pure joy? Like two days ago. I went to Miami with my husband and another couple. and we were in the ocean and I saw these fish. Oh my gosh.

I borrowed some goggles and I was just swimming around with fish. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it was quiet. You could just be underwater. Sometimes, oh, if people are fortunate enough to go to Florida. Florida, as many jokes as we all make about Florida, Florida man, Florida, everything, beautiful state. It's really beautiful.

I mean, that coast is unbelievable. It's really beautiful. You know, I think most days I experience pure joy at some point. Really? I think so. Wow. You know, I'll just like watch my dog kind of like burrow in some blankets. I'm like, that's incredible.

Yeah. That's so great. My husband and I, every night we do, before we fall asleep, we ask each other what was the best part of your day. Yeah. And it's, and then we'll also ask the dog and then do her voice, her perspective of the best part of the day. And it's like, yeah, every day there was something great. Yeah, we do my wife and daughter and I do rose bud thorn, which is similar. What's your rose of your day? What's your

what's your thorn? That's really sweet. But it is a good exercise because that's what life is. It's roses, buds and thorns. And it's like, yeah, that's really sweet that you have that every day. Do you have any jokes you're working on? I have a few jokes, but curious, Have you have anything that's like half baked? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one I'm trying to do right now, that I've only said it once on stage about how my favorite genre of movie is when a girl dresses as a boy to play a sport.

And then off screen, there is very clearly an entire other movie going on that you never see of the lead guy. questioning his sexuality and going, am I gay? Yeah. Because I'm attracted to this, what I think is a guy. Yeah. And then they get together. And then after they're together, he's still probably questioning.

Yeah. And going, you know, she'll like be getting ready. And he'll be like, what if you just like wore the wig again, though? Like, what if you like? Or she's like plucking her chin hairs. And he's like, no, babe, I love you for exactly. who you are. You don't even have to. So I think that's my half-baked.

I feel like that's, whenever I watch like 80s movies, I feel like there's so much of that plot line that is just kind of feels out of place. I mean, famously, it was in Teen Wolf. Yeah. Like Eugene Merman used to do a joke that I thought was great. joke. I'm sure it's on one of his specials where

styles is Michael J. Fox's best friend and he goes, he finds out he's a wolf. His friend's a wolf. He goes, oh my God, I was so worried that you were gay. I was so insane. Eugene Merman has to get full credit for calling out the insanity of that. era of movies. Yeah.

Thank God. Thank God you're not gay. That would be so weird for all of us. I'm so relieved. You're a wolf. Thank goodness. You just turn into a creature. Yeah.

I think with your joke, it's like, where's the question I think for making a joke is where's the you in it? Totally. And that's why it doesn't work. Which we were talking about earlier. You always have to find the you. What's your point of view in it? Would you be the girl who does it?

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Were you ever the girl who did that? Is there an analogous situation like that? I think I always wanted to be the girl who would do that. I always wanted to be the girl who was so good at a sport that she had no choice but to go undercover as a boy. That's great.

And then make the boys team. And then you have that, you have that fantasy of two of like, and somebody's just like, they're so in love with me. Yes. But they can't even help but question their sexuality for me. You know what's amazing is that you just. saying it like that makes me lean in. Great. I'm just like, oh, that's a really interesting premise.

Because it's honestly, like, we talk about this on the show a lot of it's like, it's like, you know, tell your secrets. It's like, how do you feel? Like, I didn't know that's how you felt. Sure. So I'm going to, huh. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Wouldn't it be so cool? It's also like a, it is a, I am like pretty fascinated by like the, the gender bending stuff and all the trans stuff in sports. Like the reason I have that joke about it is because I'm like, I think it's such a fascinating element of like, like this is, you really think somebody would change that part of them just to play basketball? Right. How good do you think basketball is?

That's really funny. There's also like, there's also maybe a joke in like, in modern times we're living through this sports trans discussion, that's essentially the plot of every 80s high school movie, except plus hatred. Right, right, right. Yeah, at the end, everybody's not like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're just like, what?

What? At the end of it, they're like, what? We must outlaw this. Yes. Yeah. There's a lot there. I think that's really fertile. Thank you.

Well, and I have this other joke about with trans people in sports of like it just feels like such a made up controversy because when I was a kid, we never talked about trans kids in sports. When I was a kid, it was like dogs in sports. It was like should Air Bud be allowed to play basketball? Yeah. Yeah. I like that too. Thank you. One day I saw a guy riding a bike and smoking a cigarette at the same time.

and I thought, that is living. It got me thinking about when we're like, that's like what is living? And I think it's doing something where you almost die and then you don't. You know what I mean? Was he wearing a helmet? No.

Great. No, no. It's just broken. No hands. Just, you know. And there's something, and I don't, I mean, that's half a joke, but it's like, there is something

whether it's bungee jumping or cliff diving or skiing glades where we love watching people like almost be done from the earth and then they aren't yeah yeah yeah they could have been they could have been even that guy on Netflix with the jumping Alexanel free solo guy free solo yeah like holy cow and like we all watched it, by the way, live. Yeah. Like live. We're like, will he die live? Well, it's also like, and that's the extent of the risk that we're willing to take.

Yes. This guy is doing this and maybe dying. And we're going, I'm maybe willing to watch somebody. Maybe. Yes, maybe. The other thing with the guy biking, smoking a cigarette, it's also like, that's so attainable. Right. Like there's no bungee jumping, you got to go somewhere high, you got to plan for it, you got to pay money to do it. Biking. You can get on a city bike. You can go buy a pack of cigarettes. That's so, that's right there. That's right there. It's just like a convertible for poor people. Yeah, that's right. It's, um, that's living. I wrote, living with no G feels dangerous.

An apostrophe or no apostrophe. Just the N. Apostrophe. Apostrophe N and apostrophe. For some reason, it's the lack of G that creates risk. That guy's living. She's eating. He's drinking.

I'm joking. Yeah, the letter G looks like a hug, like one side of a hug. Oh, that's interesting. It looks like it's closing in the word, right? Because the G, the curve goes back towards the word. Yeah, yeah. This feels very like Gary Goldman. Right, right.

The G going, the G goes to the left. I'm performed. Right. That's right. Yeah, it does just kind of like cut the word. So to not have the hug, to not have the arms there. I had this one, which is I was in the back of an Uber and the driver was scrolling on his phone. And he was, and the car was swerving.

And I thought, the car. swerving is the real-life version of scrolling. Ooh. I know. The real live version of scrolling. It's not super clear. It's not super clear. Well, there is something of like the only thing that will make you look up from your phone

in the backseat is the guy driving looking at his phone because you're like, somebody needs to be watching this. That's right. So I, right, he's scrolling on this phone. I'm scrolling on my phone. The car is swerving, which is the car's version of scrolling. Right. The car is scrolling. Everyone is scrolling. The car's scrolling. The driver's scrolling. The passenger scrolling. Everyone's scrolling. We are all possibly dying. Right. Yeah. Nobody, none of us are living.

No one's living. In moments from now, we're not going to be living. That's good. I like that. I mean, I think it lacks a turn. Like, I think it's true. Like, it is, it's a good observation. It's like, I'm scrolling. He's scrolling. He's scrolling. Car is scrolling. That's interesting. It's a good picture. But like, where's it go? Right. Like, off the side of the road. Off the side of the road. Yeah, yeah.

But it is like where, yeah, I always think about that with jokes is like a lot of times, I don't know if you have this. A lot of times it's like pages and pages of things like that where it's like, that's the first half. Yeah. I don't know where to go with it. Yeah. Yeah.

I probably have 500 pages of that's half a joke. That's half a joke. That's half a joke. In the middle of the night and I'll wake up and go, oh, that's what it is. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that weird?

It's so weird. I had a line for so long about how I, about how I can't tell. I go, they shouldn't expect me to know when a video's AI. I can't even tell when it's cake. It's a good line, but it doesn't quite make enough sense, right? It's too many leaps that you have to make. Right. And then I found.

Wait, wait, can you say it again slowly? They can't expect me to know when a video's AI. I can't even tell when it's cake. Right. That's good. It's good. But you're thinking it's the first half of a joke. It's the first half.

Right, right. It's just part. It's just a funny thing. I think it, again, goes back to like, what's the you of it? Right. Like what situation were you in where someone, your mom, someone in your family was like, hey, can you tell if this is AI? So what happened? I can't tell.

I can't tell it. How would I know? I can't tell if it's cake. What happened was like, two years later, my parents had this conversation where my mom said, AI is using up all the broadband. And I tell that, so I go, she has no idea what she just said.

Yeah. She read it somewhere. And I go, I'm not making fun of her. I can't tell. I'm really about an AI too. I can't tell when something's, and then it, and then it,

where I was like, oh, there's like, there's that context there now. Yeah. There's, this is why I was thinking about AI and this is why I'm bad at it. And I'm not making fun of her. I'm being positive, right? I'm not criticizing her.

I'm being positive. I love that she said AI is using up all the broadband and doesn't know what that means. The final thing we do is working it out for a cause, and if there's a nonprofit you like to support, we donate to them and then we link to them in the show notes. Yeah. God's Pantry in Lexington, Kentucky. Nice. It's a food bank. That's where I volunteered as a kid.

That's fantastic. I always try to promote food banks on here because it's, in my opinion, in my experience of just, seeing the work they do the way they stretch a dollar, I think is unbelievable. It's incredible. It's obviously such an inherently positive thing to do. And Lexington, Kentucky is a great town. Comedy, up Broadway is a great club. Ariel Eliascom.

Perfect. Awesome. All right. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having it. That's great. Thank you so much. Working it out because it's not done.

Working it out on one on. That's going to do it for another episode of Work. it out. You can follow Ariel on Instagram at Ariel underscore Comedy. You can watch her special, which is called a Jewish star on YouTube. It's fantastic and it's free. You can see her live in October. She'll be in Sunnyvale, California, Spokane, Tacoma, and Seattle. Tickets at Ariel Eliascom. Our producers of working it out of myself along with Peter Salomon, Joseph Berbiglia, Mabel Lewis, and Gary Simons. Sound Mixed by Shib Sarin, Supervising Engineer Kate Balinski. Special thanks to Jack Antonoff and bleachers for their music. and my wife, the poet, Jahope Stein, and 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, rate us and review us on Apple Podcasts, it really helps us out. And tell your friends and tell your enemies and tell your hecklers. Tell your hecklers. Someone heckles you on stage or offstage, for that matter. Just say, hey, you seem angry. Maybe instead of yelling at me or throwing things at me,

try listening to the Working It Out Podcasts is where Mike Barbigley talks to other comedians. about the creative process, and it might just calm you down because you just seem so angry. You know, Mike's got sort of a calm voice. Maybe you'll fall asleep. That would be great. Thanks, everybody.

We're working it out. We'll see you next time.