Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out - 28. The Lucas Bros: Losing Their Minds Together

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

Keith and Kenny Lucas join Mike for an episode that alternates between utterly serious & supremely silly. They discuss their moving Vulture essay "Our Brother Kaizen," as well as jokes in process about "twin discrimination," and the difference between writing a will and meeting Will Smith. They also discuss the devastating loss of their mutual friend Kevin Barnett and how it led to the Lucas’ sobriety after years being self-described stoners. A must listen. https://ysrp.org/

We're twins, by the way. It's true. A lot of crazy things have been happening. We got fired from our last job. It was about a year ago. But it was terrible, man, because they fired us at the same time. For the same exact reasons. It was crazy. And you don't want to get fired with your identical twin brother

at the same exact time, you know what I mean? Because it's like not only are you getting fired, but it's kind of like you're watching yourself get fired in 3D. Hey, everybody, it's Mike. We are back with a new episode of Working It Out. The voices you are listening to are two of my favorite comedians, Keith and Kenny Lucas. They go by the Lucas Brothers.

They are twins. I've toured with them a bit over the years. I've been lucky enough to tour with them some. They're screenwriters. They're actors. they're comedians. They have a special on Netflix called On Drugs. You might recognize them from the film 22 Jump Street. We recorded this a couple weeks ago.

Quick note. So there's no mention of the recent attempted coup. This is definitely one of my favorite chats we've ever had on the show. This is the Lucas Brothers. Enjoy. I was looking back on the shows that we did together over the years, and I realized that we did a show in Colorado. And I called you guys. I was like, hey hey do you want to do this show in Denver and you were like sure and then I announced it on social media and people were like I hope they don't get too stoned and not

show up and I was like I I think they'll show up and then I like Google it and it's a whole thing. Yeah, that was one of our many infamous moments in Denver when we we took edibles and really, really fucked us up. We didn't take edibles out of context. It was a 420 themed show. And we just wanted to be a part of the show in an honest and authentic way. We just wanted to be a part of the show in an honest and authentic way. We just, our bodies. We were committed to the 420 premise, but we went too overboard. And, you know, suffice it to say we missed the show. But yeah, I heard it was a good show.

Yeah, I heard it was a great show. I think it might have been better without us. You know, I mean. That's ridiculous. You were still. Yeah, it was all part of of the premise of the festival which is that you're stoned at the 420 festival precisely we were we were basically method acting so i asked you to the show i you said yes i announced it to people they go make sure they show up. And then I Google it.

I Google it. I see an article that says they ended up, and I don't know if this is true, they ended up shirtless. The Lucas Brothers ended up shirtless, wandering around Denver in search of a cheeseburger. Yeah. That is all true.

No, no, it's not entirely true. They say shirtless. You were fully nude, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, see, here's the thing. I was supposed to take a shower, and I forgot to take the shower. I just went to go look for a cheeseburger, and I didn't even realize I didn't have any clothes on. You've got to be kidding me.

No, no, this is all true. Yeah. I feel like every comedian's origin story has some kind of epiphany of, like, I should be a comedian. So, obviously, one of you had to have had the epiphany at a different time than the other. Yeah.

That's a good question. Yeah, well, okay, I think I had the epiphany first. For sure. But, yeah, it was definitely, but I was, like, doing horribly in Law, not horribly, but I was, like, a solid, OK, I think I had the epiphany first. For sure. But yeah, it was definitely. But I was like doing horribly in law. Not horribly, but I was like a solid like B student. And I had lost out on a summer internship. And I was like, I don't even think I want to be a lawyer.

And so I said, OK, I want to I want to do comedy. And then I called him up and he was having similar reservations about law. And so we both sort of said, let's fucking do this. Wow. Yeah, it was like our third year. And I don't know, it was just like, I missed out on an internship as well. And I just, I don't know, I had a weird summer the summer before. And it's just like my mind wasn't really into that space anymore.

And yeah, he came up with this crazy proposition and i was like this dude must be losing his mind uh but i was like i'm slowly losing my mind so you know maybe we can lose our minds together well it's funny because like your comedy is not as influenced by the law as it is by like philosophy well philosophy is our first love right we study we study philosophy in college and uh i don't know it's just like one of those things it was love at first sight and uh i think we wanted to be we wanted to get our phd uh in philosophy but but, you know. It doesn't pay. One thing late.

Yeah. Comedy pays a lot more. And I feel like you can philosophize pretty well as a comedian. And the thing about comedy, which is so great, is that you can travel across the world and you can test out a thesis or a premise. Yeah. travel across the world and you can test out a thesis or a premise yeah and and you can see if the it's almost scientific in a sense where you're like oh i'm getting feedback they're validating my initial premise let me see how how farther i can go with it until you land on like this is what i love about your comedy because it's like you you set out to do a full piece with

your comedy and you get you get your point of. It's not just like a collection of jokes. And I think that's also very philosophic. When you read, like, say, a Bertrand Russell, they give you full pieces, and you get their entire point of view told through the perspective of particular jokes. And I think that that's what's beautiful about comedy. Yeah, that's definitely the goal with my shows

is to sort of, yeah, to present sort of a single story with a single through line. And it takes a long time. It takes years. Right, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's another needle you guys thread, though. It's like I've never seen comedians talk earnestly about philosophy on stage and like i remember we do us doing that show in denver and you're like killing with like jokes about kierkegaard this is impressive like these guys are really they're pulling some kind

of thing off that i i don fully grasp. It's bold. I mean, like, I feel like when you first started, like, talking about philosophy on stage, were you thinking, like, well, I don't know if this is going to work? I mean, it took us a while to get to the level, or to get comfortable with talking about philosophy on stage. Our first couple years, you know,

it was all just, just like 90s references, weed jokes, you know, things that we thought audiences would be able to... A lot of twin material, too. Yeah, twin material. Yes, of course. Yeah, yeah. But not, you know, but not honest twin material. Right, right.

You know, but philosophy was like, it was one of those things where maybe it's a little too intellectual to the point where people won't understand the humor of it all. But as we got more comfortable on stage and actually watching you perform and watching you lay out your pieces as a thesis, antithesis, it was like, oh, the way you structured it is a way that we can structure ours, but also embed philosophy within how we deliver our deliver our sets so i mean it took us a while it took us a long time it's really i mean obviously i'm i'm a big fan but like it's it's

interesting like did you decide at a certain point because like with the smothers brothers for example it's like classic brothers duo and they disagree but you guys generally agree yeah yeah or or i would say like at least you you yes and you build on what the other person's saying without a doubt like i think that's a big thing that we've learned throughout the course of our journey with comedy is that when we reaffirm one another we let the audience in uh on the process with us and so they can have a better understanding of what points we're trying to make as we sort of uh yes and one another it's like a lot of some improvisation but it's also very uh written i think uh the good part about it is if they if

we muddle a premise if we muddle a a joke keith will always say well this is what we intend to say so you can follow along with what we're saying. I wish I had that. It's like a cheat code. That's funny as hell. My brother Joe and I write, we collaborate, we've collaborated on comedy writing for years together, probably over 20 years.

And I think that he wishes he was on stage sometimes and could just tell me to shut up. Because I'm not delivering something properly that he had written. But like, do you ever have that like, do you ever have conflict after the show where you're like, hey, you kind of botched that thing that I that I came up with? Yeah, when we first started, I mean, it was it was. Because, you know, we had different conceptions of comedy, you know? I had my theories on what it meant to be funny, and he had his theories on what it took to be funny. Keith wanted to push us to the more, like, absurdist sort of avant-garde.

Keith was fully comfortable with the audience not getting what we were saying. He was like, it doesn't matter. We got to get to the point where we're talking like we talk on stage. Once we get to the point where we're having conversations like we have off stage, then we know we're doing our comedy in the most authentic level. But I was always of the mindset like, no, we have to be structured. We have to be organized. And we can't, like, they have to hear us, hear what we're saying.

It has to be clear and lucid. Because if not, we're not going to get the last per minute. And people are going to think we suck. And they're going to what we're saying. It has to be clear and lucid, because if not, we're not going to get the last per minute, and people are going to think we suck, and they're going to think we're hacks. And so I tended to move away from the more absurdist style of comedy, because I thought it would alienate and hurt our clarity. But now that we've moved into that space, I love it, because it's so freeing. I don't worry as much. But to your point, I think when you're starting off in comedy, you do have to know how to tell

a structured joke. I mean, I think that it's the basis of comedy, being able to tell jokes. So you don't want to leap to something that you're not ready to leap to. So I think there was a synthesis that we were trying to reach where we take a little bit of structure and then, you know, mess it all up. But I think that we just had we had different approaches and we were very headstrong about our approaches and we weren't able to come to like a synthesis. I thought you were crazy. I was like, this guy, is he not watching? That's not what Jerry Seinfeld does. This is crazy. They were going to get kicked out of the industry before we even get started stepping away from my conversation with the lucas brothers to send a shout out to helix

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So you wrote this piece for Vulture called Our Brother Kaizen. Right. And I don't know if your other friends had this reaction, but I mean, like, I knew that you came from Newark. You were, it was tough. You know, I knew that you went to law school. I knew that you, you know, you had a long, challenging road. But, like, you really open up in that piece about you know as basically

a family member someone you're so close to you it was basically family a friend of yours who's basically family right right and uh and how he was killed and and it's beautifully written and i highly recommend people read it i'll link to the i I'm going to link to it in the show notes because it's just, like, a really illuminating piece about systemic racism in the state of our country right now and what it's like to grow up in Newark, like, in a project. You know, and it's like, did you have people like me who were your friends going, like, oh, wow,

I really didn't know that about you? Yeah, I mean, one of my good friends, Nimesh, Nimesh Patel, great, great comedian. He hit me up and he was like, man, he's like, I didn't know, man. I'm sorry. I'm like, it's cool, bro. It's all good, man. Like, I feel like it's it's just something that I learned from you, Mike. It's all good, man. I feel like it's just something that I learned from you, Mike. It's like from how you structure your stories and how personal you go into your details. I was like, that's what I want to do. I want to tell stories. I want to tell full pictures and I want to be as open and as honest as possible. And in order for me to do that, we have to sort of lay it all out.

We can't really, you can't hold back on anything. And I felt like it was a relevant piece to add to the discussion about systemic racism because it has such a profound impact on our upbringing and the upbringing for many other African-Americans. I felt like it was a piece that could resonate. And then it's like, look, we are stoners. We have we do do we did do drugs and i but like that shit doesn't exist in a vacuum right like right of course there's a reason why we're fucking putting drugs in our body and that's like we're coping with this very serious shit and i felt like it would be a good way to like uh turn the stoner trope on his head like yeah we're stoners but here's why you know it's also we're

stoners but they're you know there's a lot of steps being taken to decriminalize white kids right doing drugs and to criminalize black kids doing drugs totally absolutely absolutely yeah the stoner trope doesn't always apply to to young african-american uh african-Americans, you know, it's not as adorable. Right, right, right, right. It's not a lovable trope. It's like you can do hard time if you're caught with drugs on you in the inner city. And I think with that piece, you know, it was important for us to, for the first time, I think, be completely honest. I mean, it's like, I think we were trying to make, take that turn away from, you know, the stoner gimmick to something a bit more sincere. And it felt like the writing format was, was a way to like, just really,

really elucidate our opinions on a lot of things. And we just sort of just laid it all out. I mean, Kaizen was extremely close to us when we were younger. We kind of like broke apart as we got older, but he was an extremely influential person in our lives. And just to see his, basically his demise from when he was a kid to how it ended up, it was just like, it was so like heartbreaking. And it was like, this is a story that we think can not only illuminate on certain aspects of the criminal justice system, but also humanize what some people consider the quote unquote thug. You know, it's like, yeah, all these people have stories. All these people come from

places that, you know, a comedian that you love may come from, you know what I mean? They're human beings. And we started reading all these news articles about Kaiser and it was just like, oh, this terrorist, this gangster, this thug. And I'm like, man, I did not know him like that. He was such a vivid character in my mind. And for him to just be reduced to that was just, to us, just devastating. So it just felt necessary to write the article. And it was something you told us. I was asking you, how do you frame your stories? And you were like, find that one thing that you can really talk about that can really act as a through line. And then when we saw our cousin Kaizen at a comedy show, and that was in May. And then a couple of months later, he gets into this shootout and i was like

holy shit that's just fucking crazy to me like it just blew my mind it was just shocking do you think that you might do a show about that story eventually oh yeah oh yeah that's all that's the end that's the end goal like to to do a two-person show about Kaizen. And hopefully, like, once we can get back on stage, explore that on the stage. Right. Yeah, because it just seems like, to your point, like it seems like the stories, the personal stories of people affected by systemic racism need to be told

in a way that's not only human, but is also funny. Right. And that's what you guys bring to it, you know, because you're storytellers, but also you're hilarious people. And one of the things you point out about Kaizen is that he was hilarious. Right. Hilarious.

Right. One of the funniest people we had the privilege of meeting. I mean, he was just a ball of jokes like just a guy who had this the gift of uh of humor and uh that's i mean that's a way to humanize a person like oh yeah he's actually good at telling jokes and making people laugh and trying to bring people together i feel like like one of the things that that a story like that because i didn't know you were going to consider doing it on stage like i just read the article like i feel like one of the ways to stage that would be to to to it's kind of like the new one is like this is like all the reasons why you never want to have a child the turn is like i have a child And it's like, the front half of the Kaizen story could be just fun, funny.

Funny stories, you know what I mean? Right, right, right. Like, if you can establish Kaizen as this large and in life just, like, comedic hero who, you know, you're telling all these anecdotes just about how funny and how great of a person he was, and then you take that turn. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that could be real powerful. All right, so this is called the slow round. Do you guys have like a smell you remember from your childhood? Let's see. I remember my mom used to like braid hair, like she used to braid people's hair. So I remember the smell of weave.

Vividly, I can smell it immediately. Yeah, it's like fake hair. It's fake hair that you burn. And it does have a very distinct smell. I was going to say, I don't know if you remember these, but it's like these pineapple sodas. We used to drink them a lot during the summer in Irvington. I remember the smell of like the summertime with that sweet pineapple soda smell. Right.

Yeah. It's so funny because I was thinking about like a childhood memory the other day of like a smell. And like I was thinking about like a smell of like hot chocolate after sledding yeah yeah like yeah like there's something about like like the smell and the taste after another thing right right right right right right it's like the pairing of like wines like you must have the chardonnay with the seared tuna. You know, it's like, well, actually, have you tried hot chocolate after sledding? That's true.

You never forget that beverage that you go to during the season, like with hot chocolate during the winter or with pineapple soda during the summer. Like, it's always like a beverage that just you can recall. I feel like there's a huge thing. I feel like it's a huge thing where like, I don't know what age it was in childhood, but like my daughter's five and a half now and I think she's starting to get to this point where you realize you can access your own food and beverages. Right.

I feel like seven. Six or seven or seven seven seven's big for that yeah but my daughter has like a snack drawer and it's like like every now and then you see your sneak off to the snack drawer and you're like oh yeah i remember that the moment you realized there was a snack drawer yeah yeah those are those those are some critical moments as a child like just like the the realization moment where you're just like, Oh, I can do this. I can do that. It's all downhill after like, what do you think the down, what do you think the downhill age is for me? For me, it was 14. I think 13 or 14, 13 or four, like right when puberty starts i think it's all yeah puberty

puberty and girls man yeah that's it man why you know it's funny i would say almost the same thing i feel like when i was like 13 or so from i yeah it's like puberty girls like sexual feelings like feeling insecure like and also like like existent for me it was like existential issues started coming up like at 13 like what is anything i didn't have existential moments i was like deeply we were deeply religious like baptists so i was like my metaphysics were pretty much intact i was like all right you know god whatever my problem was like i started having like you know sexual at 13 you started having like oh i'm attracted to this person and then you're like how do you square that with my religion like christian christian faith teaches

you not to be you know promiscuous or anything like that so i was that was probably the hardest thing i had for sure oh yeah oh yeah that's huge that's huge though I mean that's that's that's very to use your phrase like that's very hard to square right right oh yeah without a doubt that was that was certainly the toughest toughest thing to sort of so I just rejected God I was like fuck it like yeah something must be wrong with God. Yeah. God needs to have more sex. God needs to get laid, man. God needs to chill out and get laid. And we all know it.

Right. So you were Baptist, and at this point, you had moved from Newark to North Carolina? Right. Yeah, so when we were 10 years old, we moved from Newark to North Carolina. We lived in North Carolina for about six to seven years. And then we moved back to Newark. But throughout that entire time, we were strictly Baptist. We would go to youth summer camps.

And we would go to church every Sunday and every Tuesday, like, like two or three times a week. Like we were really, really hardcore within religion. Right. Wow. Did you think that you were going to have like a religious path in life? Yeah. Oh yeah. We thought about in our second year of college, we thought about going to the seminary. We were going to do like, wow. And then it just converted to philosophy right i wanted to study at the princeton theological seminary like cornell west that was my goal and then uh

we we transitioned into philosophy and then you transitioned into weed actually we did not smoke weed in college i mean we didn't we smoked weed once in college but that was our senior year but for the most part we were straight edge so it was law school you started smoking weed right law school we started smoking weed yeah among among many other drugs uh but we was wow so you so you went to you went to north carolina when you were like 10 and that's a really that's like a really religious place. So it was like religion on steroids. So you have like a choir.

You have like Sunday school. You have deacons. You have the preacher. And I mean, it's like the preacher sort of runs like his own sort of like fiefdom. He has control over most of everything. And everyone's sort of like, it own sort of like fiefdom like he's like he he has control over most of everything and everyone's sort of like it's kind of culty really when you think about it but you're supposed to be like you're supposed to be celebrating jesus but it's like

this guy's interpretation of jesus and it's like how do we get this guy's right you know what i mean and then you the baptist preacher is the i think the crate like the craziest version of the like the the figurehead of a church, like the Southern Baptist preacher. I mean, it's highly entertaining. If you ever get a chance to go to a church, go watch a black Southern Baptist preacher on a Sunday. It's the greatest. It's so entertaining. It's just like they're so animated.

And it's like, you know, it's like they have this sort of weird interpretation of the Bible. It's not completely clear that they fully understand what the Bible is, but they do it with so much conviction that you can't help but to believe, but you're like, this dude might be a fucking maniac. He's delivering it with so much passion. I have to believe it. Do you guys feel like you're influenced by your your religious upbringing oh yeah yeah i i think the one thing that i i took

from my religious upbringing is discipline it made me very just like aside from all my drug usage and promiscuous sex but i i think that uh uh i think that for the most part like i approach everything in a sort of disciplined structured manner like i Like I would study the Bible like crazy. Like I would just like read passages and try to understand like the metaphysics behind it. And like until this day, like I try to figure I try to understand, like, is there a larger purpose? Does God really exist? Is the universe basically God? Like I wrestle with these things on a daily basis, but I think it's all rooted in my Baptist upbringing. Oh yeah. And back to religion, like, you know, as culty and crazy as religion can be, it does sort of force you to ask those big questions. You know what I mean?

Like they have all the answers of course, but that was like the beginning of asking those big questions that sort of pushed me to philosophy, push me to comedy, just push me to try to figure out what my metaphysics, like what it is. And like, I see religion as the starting point. You know, I don't think their answers are always right, but I do believe that they ask some very important questions. And I think that that continues to shape how I live my life. That actually makes me think about my own religious upbringing

in a completely different way. As a matter of fact, as I'm conceiving my next show, the YMCA Pool, which is all about hitting middle age and asking all these existential questions about my life and death and mortality, there's a lot of stuff about growing up Catholic

and being taught these things about jesus and and and really believing it like like like to the word like for years and years and years but i actually never considered that point that you're making which is that that potentially is what sculpted who i am today which is someone who asks a lot of questions and at the very least, it's a reaction to that, too. Like I was having so many like problems with, you know, basic philosophical arguments that the Bible would make. And I had to understand like, well, because I was always a big guy. I was always really big in math. Like I love I love everything about math from geometry,

calculus. It doesn't matter. I love math. And I could never square my love of math with my religious conviction. They don't mention anything about proofs in the Bible. You know what I mean? It's very strange. Stepping away from my conversation with the Lucas Brothers brothers to send a shout out to monk pack they make snacks that taste like our favorite sugary treats but wait for it there's only one gram of

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That's MunkPak.com. Now back to the show. Now back to the show. I've never asked anyone this question, but because you guys smoke a lot of pot, do you still smoke a lot of pot? No, man. We've been sober for how many days?

Almost 500. Almost 500 days. No way, really? Yeah, yeah. Well, congratulations. That's great. Thank's great thank you thank you wow um was was deciding to be sober related to to kevin barnett at all because our people though if people don't know our our mutual friend kevin barnett passed away uh almost i because the you're saying 500 days and i'm like that's probably the timeline right

yep that's exactly what i mean it's just like when you see your homie that you've you know traveled the fucking world with laying in a casket after you know you know doing what you know whatever it's just like when you see that that's that kind of shit that just i don't want to say scares you straight but it forces you to just rethink how you approach substances and what you put into your body. And it's like, he was so larger than life. He was such a larger than life person. And just to see him lifeless was just like, it was just so jarring that it just forced me to just be like, I can't put this shit in my body anymore. Right, right. And I think it was another thing, like when I

saw his mom at the funeral and the pain that she was going through, the first thing I said to myself was like, I don't want to put my mom through that because I don't know why I'm putting this shit in my body. What's the reason? Because a lot of times you're doing drugs and you're like, oh, nothing's going to happen to me. I'm good. You know, I can still I'm good. It'll never happen to me. But then, like, you see it happen to people around you and you're like, oh, shit. All right. Well, I mean, addiction is is a serious, serious, serious. It's a disease. like it it can it can it takes out all kinds of people like it doesn't matter how strong you think you are like it's it's

it's a it affects you in a way that you feel like you have control but you really don't and uh you have to fight it like you fight anything like and yeah and seeing kevin in that casket i was like we got to start fighting man and like we we can't yeah we just can't lose ourselves to our to our to our addictions and uh yeah it's it's a it's a it's a personal battle but it's it's a battle that a lot of people are fighting and that was another thing that sort of triggered that uh the the you know the kaizen piece you know he also struggled with substances. It was one of those things where we felt like it was, again, our moral duty to speak truthfully about what we're going through and why we're going through it. Because you never know who

you can help when you're talking about it and when you're being sincere. Rob Markman, Because the first part of our... the first half of our comedy career, it was all about drugs and how cool drugs are and getting stoned is dope and everything is chill. It was this sort of like we romanticize drug usage. And I don't want to sound like a narc, but I'm like, so many people are dying from this shit.

I don't want to contribute to that in that way anymore. And now I feel a responsibility to talk about shit in a real way. And at the same time, I still understand that marijuana shouldn't be criminalized. You shouldn't be criminalized for doing this shit. But at the same time, there are certain drugs that you can't glamorize and glorify because people are listening. And if you think it's cool, they're like, oh, the LucasRose thinks it's cool so I should do it.

It's just like that. Yeah. I mean, I lost my friend Greg Giraldo to substance. I lost Mitch Hedberg to substance. It's in the news, but a friend of mine recently is you know struggling with substance and uh and uh kevin i mean kevin passing away was just devastating he

was he was he was this young comic who was super prolific super funny funny. He was going to explode. I mean, he had done some TV stuff, but, I mean, he was going to be, I mean, one of the greatest comics of our generation. Without a doubt. And we lost him, and it's devastating. It's just like, yeah, it's just tragic that, like, he wasn't able to reach his full potential,

but also tragic that, like, his family's so fucking awesome. And, like, it's such a, like, a dynamic family, into, but also tragic that his family is so fucking awesome. It's such a dynamic family. He was sort of their voice, right? He was the voice of his family. He was putting it out there for us to consume. We lose that. We just lose a comedic connection to such a brilliant family.

Rob Markman, Right. we just lose like a comedic connection to such a brilliant family do you guys have a memory on a loop that you think about that's not like a story but it's just something from your childhood that every now and then pops in your head we used to throw eggs on cars it was just something the neighborhood kids used to do. And this

one time, it was me, Kenny, I think Kaizen was there, and then our friend Sean, our friend Booby. And it was Halloween night. And we went to like the... it was like a bridge where our overpass, where the highway was underneath us. We just started throwing eggs at cars and then we hit this one black car. Because normally cars wouldn't... They would just keep driving forward and we just took the risk. We didn't think that anyone would chase us down. We hit an undercover cop car and he sped out and we were like, holy shit, this dude's coming to chase us.

So we all just started running, and our friend Boobie was kind of heavy. He wasn't the fastest runner. And that guy was running like Will Smith in Bad Boys. It was the fastest I've ever seen a man run. I've never seen a man run that fast. Rob Markman, So he completely chased down Booby and just gave him this verbal scolding. And we were all just hiding. Some people hid in trees and we went to friends' houses. We just tried to hide and get out of sight. But we all could

hear him giving our cousin Booby boobie just like a just the business just like yeah just tell him and set his life on like set his life on that straight and it was the funniest thing we've ever seen and we laughed the whole night like that's one thing that just that that memory just never leaves my head wow yeah um do you have a neighbor from growing up that was particularly memorable like like really strange or bizarre that's my uh the neighbor that not really a neighbor she lived way down the street but it was uh we were on the same block she was my friend's mother she was a very very very religious like a deeply religious person and uh one time we spent the night over our friend's uh house and you know like i don't

know if you remember this but there was like cinemax back in the day where you can watch oh yeah yeah and i was like everyone's sleep why not give it a little peek and so i uh i did i watched it but i think she overheard me watching it so the next morning she just like she said that we're we're cursed by the devil we're demonic uh we're going to hell and that wasn't the first time someone deeply religious said that i'm i'm cursed by the devil so i was like maybe maybe maybe am. Maybe on Christmas. Yeah. And she would always walk to church, like, by herself in this very serious face. I'll never forget that face and just, like, her deeply religious convictions.

Wow. That's just the idea of telling a kid that they're cursed. Yeah. I mean, just, like, unpack that for a second i was like it's just it's just they don't even show that much if that's if that's leading you to hell then like it must be like the standards of getting into hell must be really really low and what was crazy is that is that she made pancakes for all of us and i was like oh it's gonna be a nice pancake morning and then she after she served the pancake she just went into like this fucking lutheran tirade about why i'm going to hell why we're going to hell i didn't even do it it was just it was just guilt by association she was like no no these pancakes are from heaven

and you're like and you're like you're not wrong they were some good ass pancakes they these pancakes are from heaven. And you're like, you're not wrong. They were some good ass pancakes. They are good pancakes. They were great pancakes. I'll give her that. So it's going to run some material. Do you guys have material you want to run today?

Man, let's see. I mean, we've been sort of tweaking, we've been like loosely trying to figure out this twin discrimination bit. Rob Markman, Right. Rob Markman, It's not fully fleshed out. We kind of have like loose jokes, sort of like, kind of like, it's not very coherent, but that's sort of what- Rob Markman, The argument that we want to make is that being

black is hard, but being black twins is twice as hard. You know what I mean? That's funny. And so then we try to run through how that's the case. But we don't want to offend too many to the black listeners. We recognize the struggle. We're just saying black twins, it's even harder. Yeah, it's double the trouble.

Yeah, it's twice as hard. we're just saying black twins it's even harder yeah it's double it's double the choice is hard that's really you know that's really funny partly because i made this observation on this podcast to pete holmes where i go when i was out on tour with the lucas brothers they get recognized so often uh just from being in movies and stuff and i and and pete holmes goes my theory is that the twin aspect gives people two bites at the apple to recognize that's probably right so they're like wait a minute i think that might be yep right right that might be it i never i never thought about i never thought about it that way but that might be it. I never thought about that. I never thought about it that way, but that might be it. Because when I'm by myself, I don't get recognized as much.

But when I'm with him, I get recognized way more. I remember one time someone saw the both of us, and they're like, oh, I thought it was just one of you, but it was CGI. That's cool. I was like, really? CGI? Have you done that on stage that's hilarious I thought they just copied

and pasted you from a computer program I mean it's one thing you see Ethan Hawke at a cafe you go hey maybe that's Ethan Hawke but then you see two Ethan Hawkes oh it's definitely Ethan Hawke I think that's funny But then you see two Ethan Hawks. Oh, it's definitely Ethan Hawks. I think that's funny.

Double the discrimination is very funny, though. I think that's like a good bit. But the thing is, though, like it's not like necessarily historically accurate. Historically, twins have been treated very well, except for in Africa. Africa twins are treated very poorly. But in America, black twins have been, you know, not that bad. So we have to square it with the historical. What is the African treatment of twins like?

In certain cultures in West Africa, I believe. And I don't know if they do this anymore. But tribally, they thought twins were evil. It goes back to this demonic shit. They thought if you gave birth to twins, that means you're doing something that, and I think it was more economic, but they had to justify it with religion.

And so they would kill, they would throw the twins out into like pasture and have them killed because they associated it with evil. Well, you know, a lot of those twins have Cinemax. They were just like, Cinemax just They were just watching. Cinemax just hit Africa and they were just trying to... Cinemax hit Africa

and all of a sudden everyone's up in arms. That's exactly what it was. So I'm working on this bit. It's about how when our daughter Una was born, we were told that we should write a will. So we hire this lawyer for the sake of the story. We'll call him Will.

And middle initial and last name Testament. So Mr. Testament comes over and he goes, I do, he goes, I do wills. He goes, but then he like, and this is a true story. He just dove right in. He goes, all right. So what happens if Mike gets hit by a bus? I swear to God.

I was like, whoa, easy, Mr. Testament. Easy. And then we tried to give answers. We were like, okay, well, if I get hit by a bus, then Jen gets all the money. And then what if Jen gets hit by a bus? Well, I'll get the money. He goes, what happens if you both get hit by the bus i go i don't know una gets the money he goes who's in

charge of una we go the bus driver so then we pause for about 40 minutes and at this point we're just acting out this horror movie in our heads of us being hit by the same bus and our daughter being an orphan singing hard knock life with a bunch of other orphans living with the bus driver and uh and then uh and then he tells us so this is the end of the story it's like so the so Will tells us to fill out some forms to finalize the paperwork. And he says, it won't take more than 20 minutes or so. And we never called him back for six years. Keith and Kenny, I'm telling you, six years.

We haven't called him back. That's how in denial of death we are. That's some Ernest Becker shit right there. Right. Which is in your wheelhouse. That's incredible. Yeah, I think, you know, it's so funny. It's funny how stories develop because they're not stories at the time.

You know, like when the guy came over and he's like, let's write a will. That's not a story. That's just a guy comes to your house and you're like, you should write a will because you have a kid. But then six years later, when you haven't written the will,

it's like, oh shit. Like there's something going on here. Right, right, right. Yeah, like the germ of a story is always like just like a nugget of an idea that you just have to, you know, flesh out. But like, you know, honestly, fleshing out is just sometimes just living a little bit longer. It is.

No, that's why, yeah, so it just takes it takes 10 years to see what what the ending is right right right you never want to like rush it because then you like you you might close the chapter on it but it's like wait a second that wasn't the that wasn't the right time to close but so you just have to sort of like wait it out and see what happens next until you feel comfortable with like actually putting a button to it like do you do you get a feeling when you know you got the ending like you're like oh no i got it this is the ending it's so funny it's funny it's funny you should say that because what i do i don't know if you guys have this but like a lot of these stories like i'll just tell them conversationally to friends not intentionally just because we're

on the phone, you know, and I'll go like, oh yeah, we haven't done a will because the guy came over. And then, and then, you know, like I'll literally be on the phone with my brother, Joe, and I'll be like, and like, we haven't called him back for like six years. And my brother, Joe, who's my business manager is like, yeah, Mike, I know. like yeah mike i know like we paid that guy like six years ago to do nothing have you guys um have you guys made a will no the closest thing i've come to was a will as we got to meet will smith he was he was he was unhappy with his life. And I'm like,

holy shit, I should be very unhappy, too. If Will is unhappy, then there's no hope for any of us. Right. Do you guys have any other bits you're working on? Oh, let's see. Oh, I so I I have like my mom asked me for money and my father asked me for money. I'm like giving them allowance, but they never really gave me allowance. So I feel kind of like I'm being cheated. That's funny. I don't have a joke. I just like.

That's a very funny premise. I just feel very uncomfortable giving my dad money. Like the guy didn't even give us child support. But it's like he owes me thousands of dollars. very uncomfortable with giving my dad money. The guy didn't even give us child support. It's like he owes me thousands of dollars. Now he wants parent support? Yeah, he wants parent support. What kind of

world is this? What kind of world are we living in? It just seems so it's not fair. That's really funny. I mean, I think one way to twist that joke would just be like, what did your parents give you as kids? Right. Oh, and then I could just give them, I'll give them what they gave me.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's funny. That's funny. My dad gave me trauma and... Yeah. I don't think he ever gave me anything. And abandonment issues. It. And abandonment issues. He gave me abandonment issues.

You could be like, my dad asked me for money. And so I said, why don't I just give you what you gave me? You should go live with your stepfather in North Carolina. I was like, I'll give you what you gave me. And then I just never get back to him. Stepping away from my conversation with the Lucas Brothers to send a shout out to ShipStation.com. If you sell stuff online, which I do, and my brother does, you know how busy 2020 was. It was insane for so many reasons.

One of them was shipping stuff online. Well, get ready for 2021. It's going to be even more insane, bigger, more stuff. But the good news is ShipStation just does great work. No matter where you're selling, Amazon, Etsy, your own website, ShipStation brings all your orders into one simple interface, making them easy to manage from any device, even your phone. Get 21 off to a great start by using ShipStation.com.

Use my offer code for bigs to get a 60-day free trial. Whoa, 60-day free trial. Whoa! 60-day free trial? That's incredible. Who could go wrong? Go to ShipStation.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page, type in BERBIGS, offer code BERBIGS, and now, back to the show. It's funny because when I was looking at the cities that you guys and I have toured to together,

I was like, Boise, Salt Lake City, and Fort Collins, Colorado. It's like the whitest town in America. And I was like, man, I wonder if that was weird because I remember walking around town with you guys and being like, oh, you're like some of the only black people in town. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. We doubled the population in a lot of places. Yeah. It's, you know, and that's stand up, right? Like, you know, especially if you're touring in middle America, like, you know, you're going to go to a lot of places that are that are predominantly white, probably right. I mean, right leaning. And you have to. So that's I mean, being able to actually see those parts of the country and perform in front of, you know, Trump people, Trump supporters. Like, yeah, it gave me a better understanding of like this.

This country is is it's very divided on the internet for sure. But when you're with people in real time, it's just not as bad. I think it got worse this year because of an election year. But when we were on the road, it wasn't as bad as it feels now. Yeah. Like I would do shows and we did we did philly i think it was philly yeah and it was like these two guys it was no it was a couple it was an interracial couple and the husband was a trump supporter and the wife was uh not a trump supporter and they walked up to

us and they were like we love you guys and it blew my mind that like that sort of uh i mean this was before now so i mean maybe it was early in the trump uh period so i think things might might be way more fractured now but i i try to like i've tried to approach it so like look i know that we have different political beliefs but they're human and i don't want to create enemies but like it gets to a point where it's like this guy is like, yeah, he's trying to he's trying to throw out millions of votes. Yeah. And predominantly black neighborhoods. Yeah. And it's like at some point you've got it. You've got to be like, this guy is racist. Right. Right. Right.

He doesn't like black people and they don't see us as human. And you can't just you can't tolerate it. Right. Right. Right. It's reached a breaking point for sure. We're there. But I think it's interesting, like, you guys, because we did shows in, like, Boise, Salt Lake, in Denver, in Fort Collins, Colorado.

These are, like, super white places, and you guys are crushing. You're, like, crushing. I mean, like, I can't even, I can't even, I'm not exaggerating a hint by saying like completely won over the crowds. And I think there's a lot of Trump voters in those places, a lot, and in those crowds. And they love your show. And they're probably saying, and this is the conversation I think in America right now.

They would go, well, we love Keith and Kenny. We're not racist. We love Keith and Kenny. We're not racist. We love Keith and Kenny. Right. And it's like, but it's the difference between racism and systemic racism. I think. Right. I mean, that would be my, that would be my sort of take on the thing, which is that systemic racism and your article sheds a lot of light on this and helps people understand what systemic racism is. But I think it's hard for some people to grasp the difference when they go like, I like Keith and Kenny. I like my black friend, you know, Tom. I like this person. I like this person. I don't see color.

Right. A lot of people have like a rudimentary understanding of racism. You know, people don't want to feel like they're a part of the problem. They want to feel like, yeah, racism might exist, but I have black friends. I like black media, so I'm not racist. But that's not the nature of systemic racism. But that's part of the problem. You isolate it, you individualize it. And the problem that African-Americans are facing is systemic. So if you don't if you don't look at it as like a unity of purpose then nothing's going to change right like if you don't if you don't if you don't see it as a larger uh problem that affects all then you're going to

be stuck in your sort of like isolated but you got to look at it from a on an institutional level you know it's not it's not about the individuals, about institutions. And I think you see it playing out with Trump. Like you see, like the power of institutions and how, like, yeah, one individual can shape it. But ultimately, like we move in institutions, we move with groups and in groups and institutions, they lay down the system. groups and institutions, they lay down the system. And ultimately, that tends to have a negative impact on brown and black people at a policy level. And it's also just basic power politics. Right, right. White people have been in power since the beginning. They've created this country and they don't want minorities to be equal. I mean, it's not like this is not it's not an abnormal position to take. You want to maintain power. You want to maintain control. You want to have control over

the vast resources that the American military production does. So it's like, of course, you're going to react negatively, especially when a black guy wins presidency. Yeah, that should that probably upends your entire like foundational view of democracy. But it's like, no, we're getting closer and closer to a more perfect union because people who have been not able to participate can participate. That's right. We have a black woman as a vice president. That would have been unheard of just 15 years ago. So we're getting closer to a more perfect union. But as we get closer to that uh ideal it strips away

the power for uh white men and they don't like it and so they're reacting violently but here's the thing about comedy though comedy critiques institutions like we we so we said uh we sent noam chomsky uh an email because they he responds to people which is crazy does he really yeah we we uh he does. We sent him an email. We were like, so what's comedy's role in the 21st century? With cancel culture and people like Trump using comedy for nefarious purposes, what's the role of the comedian in the 21st century? And he said, the role of the comedian has always been to, to, to critique institutions.

And that hasn't changed. It hasn't changed now. It hasn't changed since then. It hasn't changed now. I mean, he used more eloquent language, but like, it's like,

yeah, that's it, man. It's like, our role is to, to keep these institutions and to keep individuals honest. And, and,

you know, we got, I think comedians for the most part, they take it very seriously. That's our duty. You see someone like Chappelle critique Viacom honestly, and it's like, that's the role of a comedian, just to keep

these fucking institutions honest. It's a privilege and an honor to be able to do it. Well stated. I have a couple quick jokes, and if you guys have any other quick ones to end on. This is, my mom refers to every piece of technology

after 1987 as a car phone. She's like, I'm going to play a song on my car phone, then I'll make a cappuccino on my car phone i'm gonna send an email with my car phone and i'm gonna step out onto the porch and call you on my car phone uh that's all i got it literally is an observation i wrote down like a few years ago car phone is very funny it's funny it's a fun visual yeah it's such a yeah the car phone i mean it's like i remember like the car phone used to just be a thing like it wasn't a joke it was like getting a car phone was like a sign of like huge huge it was like oh this person must be like

rolling in dough like but now it's like it's a punchline remember. Remember when it was like they bring you in movies and stuff, like they bring you a phone at a restaurant? Yeah. What the hell was that? What the hell was that? Who's calling a person on a phone at a restaurant? At a restaurant. Maybe it's just a movie device, but I'm like,

in my lifetime, I've never seen it happen. No, I've never witnessed that ever. I've never witnessed it. Ever. Do you guys jot down a lot of overheards and things? That's sort of where a lot of my jokes come from. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Of course. Absolutely. So I was listening to these teenagers on the subway, and they were talking about what type of men they liked and one of them goes uh you like spanish men you should go to la they got everything money cars double dick and i was like whoa apparently the the standards have changed. We are competing with men who have two penises. Gone are the days of a simple one penis or even a 1.5 penises.

Not to mention, these very men have both cars and money. What the hell is a double dick? I don't know what a double dick is man is it like is it just like a big one and they're just like

in their minds they're just breaking it down into two but it's really just one that could be two it was one of those things that I wrote down because it just made me laugh so hard double dick is hilarious double dick is hilarious right it's funny in and of itself but to visualize it and to try to figure out what the fuck it is.

And by the way, and maybe that's where the joke goes. It's like, I'm not going to Google it. So you have to conceptualize it. You have to seriously think it through and visualize what the double dick is. I think it's like conjoined twins but they have separate dicks right it's double dick well there's a lot of double dick discrimination oh yeah so the thing i'm gonna uh we end on is working it out for a cause. And I give to a nonprofit of our guest choice every week.

Is there a nonprofit you guys know about that's doing a particularly good job right now? Yeah, yeah. So there's this, it's called the Youth Sentencing Program. So my friend I went to law school with named Lauren Fine, she started an organization that helps kids who were unfairly sentenced in prison. So like they have like just crazy sentences, like they were like 12 years old,

but they're sentenced to like 10 years in prison. So like she fights to- Overturn. Yeah, to overturn their sentences, so. It's a really easy URL for people to find. It's ysrp.org, Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project. I will contribute to them. I'll put a link in the show notes

to encourage other people too. And thanks Keith and Kenny for coming on. This was a blast. This was awesome. Mike, thank you so much. man. This was great. I needed this laugh, man. I needed this. This is fucking great, man. This is awesome. That was another episode of Working It Out with the Lucas Brothers. I love those guys. I can't wait to see what they do next.

Oh, I should mention, we are doing Valentine's Weekend more virtual shows. We had such a blast with Christmas and New Year's. We're doing Valentine's Day. Three shows. Tickets now at berbiggs.com. They go fast. The producers of Working It Out are myself, along with Peter Salamone and Joseph Berbiglia,

consulting producer Seth Barish, sound mix by Kate Balinski, assistant editor Mabel Lewis, thanks to my consigliere Mike Berkowitz, as well as Marissa Hurwitz. Special thanks to Jack Antonoff for our music. As always, a special thanks to my wife, J-Hope Stein. Our book, the new one, is at

your local bookstore, curbside. As always, a special thanks to my daughter, Una, who created this radio fort. If you like the show, if you're enjoying this podcast, write a little user review on your Apple or your thing or wherever you

do the thing and write the stars and the, hey, I liked it, and maybe tell your friends and tell your enemies because we are working it out. Thanks for listening, everybody. See you next time.