Pablo Torre Finds Out - How to Laugh About the Saddest Sentence in the English Language

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Millions of us hide in a ubiquitous sorrow. And pretty much all of us are horrible at talking about it. But Michael Cruz Kayne, Peabody-award winning writer for "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," has a theory about why death feels unspeakable. And how we can all get better at dealing with the most universal fact of life. In a behind-the-scenes look at his one-man show, "Sorry for Your Loss," Michael teaches Pablo about normalizing a taboo — and doing some seriously mind-blowing math in the process.Related links:"Sorry For Your Loss" (via Audible) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Here's my wife, and here is a freaky tapas of my wife. Right after this ad. You're listening to Draft King's Network. Two years ago, it was Asian American Heritage Month, and you did something that does make me feel like I owe a debt to you. Michael Cruz, K.

guest in person in the studio, a half-filippino friend of mine. Thank you for having me. A joy. I've been an admirer forever since the beginning of time. It was before you were born? I felt it.

I felt it from the very start. You did something for me two years ago in your capacity as a writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. This is not me repaying it in any way. Good, because this doesn't even come close. No, I'm actually using you for more content. But there was a stat two years ago

during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Do you remember the stat? The gist of it was that most people, if you ask them to name a famous Asian American, more than 50% of people, the answer was, I can't think of one. 58% actually. It's all according to a recent survey

of more than 5,000 U.S. residents. 58% of Americans could not name a single famous Asian American. The study came out two times, and both times it was more than 50%. of people who said don't know. They did the study and the year later in fact it got worse.

And so you did something that made me feel like the most special boy in the world. Lots of Asians. 16% of you, it's true. Lots of Asians. Forgot the one Asian

you knew. There's Pablo Torre Anna Sweet. Nina Kimes, Bayor Glee, Maggie Q and Constance Wu, David Chang and Lulu Wang and Salman Conre Han Salam. Look us up on Google.com. If you forget, there's always my mom.

I want people to understand that you were wearing a tuxedo. Yes. And you did have a cane. I did indeed have a cane. How long did it take you to write and perform a song in which you named all sorts of vaguely famous Asian Americans, me and Meenakimes included? Well, the answer is not very long.

Well, I guess that's because as someone who is invested in the existence of Asian Americans, I am aware of many Asian Americans. But you have yourself, of course, you know, Philippines in your blood. But it's, but it's, but you're sort of a crypto Filipino.

Okay. Which is to say that once you know that you're Filipino, it's obvious. I see my cousins in you. But you also have the ability to not at all be identified immediately as such.

That's true. I definitely pass as white or as like, you know, mystery race. I pass as like, Like, maybe he's Turkish. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that we both look like, I think what scientists have predicted many people on the planet will look like in like 50,000 years when everybody just intermixes. Yeah, I think at a certain point, being like racially pure bread will be antiquated.

It would be like, you're like white, like completely white. Like, ooh, yikes. We should maybe edit that out. No, no, no, no, no. We're keeping that in. We're going to lose all of our nottes. see listeners.

Yeah, I know that this podcast is sponsored by the Aryan Brotherhood. At work, I do a lot of, like, musical things. So if there's, like, a big, long song and dance number on the show that's pre-taped, usually I've had my hand in it in some way or another because I have a degree in musical theater. Yes. And then I try to sing, like, in comedy stuff whenever I can. Okay.

But I'm not bringing my music. Michael Cruz came onto this show because he can sing and dance and improvise and win Peabody Awards, all of which is true. I'm not even bringing him onto the show because of that study we talked about, about Asian American famous people, that they actually reconducted this month, by the way, and for the fourth straight year, the most common answer besides, quote, I can't think of one, end quote, was Jackie Chan, who is, um, not. not American.

Michael Cruz Cade is here because exactly one year ago, this week, I got tickets to see a one-man show that he had performed called Sorry for Your Loss, which is now available on Audible. And ever since I saw this show, I have wanted to talk to Michael about it, about how he designed and architected it, how it grew out of this podcast that he used to do, how he managed to make something that felt to me profoundly risky, running the full gamut of human emotion

and leaving a mark on me, unlike pretty much anything else I can recall. Sorry for your loss, your one-man show, which I saw here in Manhattan, was something strategic, structurally strategic, because you didn't lead with the lead. How's everybody doing? You okay? More time, are you okay?

Oh, sick. What a good... You start with such high energy, and you come in, out on stage, and you're immediately, clearly, like, going for real laughs, and you're not explicitly telling people what you yourself are struggling to figure out, like, when do I just say it? No, let's do the show now. This is the show. It's happening.

It is a comedy show, but it is also sad. However, I will include, I promise, some elements of a pure comedy show. For example, sir, what is your name? Greg? Are I saying that right? Greg? Wonderful. So that is my crowd work.

And I think for me, it's like, let's let them know who I am first and that this is like a safe place to be. Because the show, I mean, the title is sorry for your loss, so it's not like a huge mystery, what it's going to be about. But I do want people to feel at ease in the show and not feel like they have to perform the role of audience in a particular way. I almost feel obliged myself to give a disclaimer here,

which is that what we're going to do here is going to be fun. If it hasn't been already, it'll get fun. Because the subject of your one-man show, which I should not delay anymore, is what? How do you elevator pitch this? The subject of my show is the death of my son. I mean, it's about grief broadly, but I wouldn't have written it if my son hadn't died. I had twin boys who were born in 2009, and one of them died 34 days after, at 34 days old.

And I've been doing stand-up for a long time. And it just became the thing that I was obviously always thinking about. So I'd be doing stand-up about, you know, whatever, being Filipino or being half-Jewish or the Constitution or pornography or whatever. But after a while, I'm like, I don't, I don't give a shit about that. I can't make myself care about these jokes anymore. All I can think about is what I really want to be talking about, which is my son. And so I started to try and find ways to talk about that.

And the first one was at the Asian Comedy Festival in New York. And I would describe that show as horrific. People went from laughing very hard at 20 minutes of pretty good jokes To going, wait, what the fuck is happening? You lied to me. You can feel the room be like, oopsie daisies. So I started working on it in earnest

And found like other spots That were more amenable to me Doing sad stuff And that's kind of the beginning of the journey of that show. It is about death and grief It's called Sorry for Your Loss. You might cry.

If you cry, That is fine. If you don't cry, that is rude. I was looking at the timestamp. I think you actually wait to like 28 minutes and 30 seconds before you actually say aloud the thing that you mentioned, which is that this is a show about my son dying. Yeah.

I wish we talked about death more because 100% of us are going to die. Like if you look around the room right now, to your left and your right. Those are pre-dead people. All of us, yeah, me too. This is just a list of some of the people who have died or will die, just to kind of on-ramp us into this discussion. You've got you, me, Lady Gaga, it's going to happen. Martin Luther King Jr., RIP, Frank Sinatra, Mary Bonaldo, that was, my babysitter. Martin Luther King, Senior. who by inductive reasoning must have been a person.

Your mom, John Hamm, Mia Hamm. I'm realizing there's a through line here in your work. You do like listing people. Big fan of lists. But the fundamental desire that you articulate, which is I wish we talked about death more. And this is all part of the windup to your personal experience with death. Did you have that sentiment before?

No. Your son died? No, no, no, no. Absolutely not. I didn't. I think I probably had. had the same desire to talk about death that any person who has not gone through something that they experienced as tragic had.

So, which is, I don't want to talk about that. Yeah, a big zero. Yeah, which is I would absolutely, I have no interest in discussing this subject. But once you are affected by some kind of tragedy or loss, you, I don't want to say you, I became very aware of the fact that obviously this has happened to. Many, if not most people, have felt some version of this, and they're just keeping it quiet. And when my son died,

you know, tons of people that I knew, and I thought very well, would approach me or message me and say, you know, I never told anybody this, but... And then some horrific story. And you're like, oh, like, I've been playing basketball with this guy twice a week every week for five years,

and I did not know this... I know so much about this guy, and he doesn't tell anybody this. And so you're like entered into this community, and it's just so weird that not everyone's in it. It's crazy that some people have no idea it exists. Yeah, we're pre-members. Exactly. That's exactly right. But the question of how you would deal with this, you know, non-comedians go to therapy and perhaps you yourself.

Indeed, indeed, I have been to copious therapy. And what's that like for you? I mean, therapy's great. I love therapy. I think I crush it therapy. You're giving your therapist Filipino nurses material.

That's exactly right. I'm doing five minutes. She's like, okay, we got to go. I'm going to do five minutes for you right now. I'm just straight stand up and just let me know what you think. I love being Filipino for a lot of reasons, but one is for sure

that there are no bad stereotypes about us. and if you can think of one, I would say, keep that shit to yourself. The only one about us that persists over here is that Filipinos are nurses, and that's fine, because that's true. I mean, it's not a hundred percent true, right?

It's more of a, like, a square rectangle situation where not all Filipinos are nurses, but all nurses are Filipino. And I know you might be here now, I'm thinking, hang on a second. I'm a nurse. I'm not Filipino. Bad news, bha. Yes, you are.

And then I do the bits to be like, while I'm doing this, really I'm thinking about something else. I'm trying to put you in that audience who knows now that people who are doing these bits could be thinking about something totally different. And that's like the mindset that I have now walking around the world where you're like the f***in the guy doing flips on the subway. Also, his something, you know,

like everyone has some horrible thing happen to them that they're trying to push out of the way so that they can do this. You're like a grief mentalist. Yes, exactly. On the point of like people are learning who you are in the course of you doing these bits that are meant to also soften them

such that they can absorb what you want to hit them with, You also introduce a fact that I didn't know until I watched your show and it made sense to me because of the whole Asian thing, which is that you were a math tutor. That's right. So I taught standardized test prep for, I want to say, like 15 years. Oh, my God. Can you explain, like, your thought process on math being the way into this thing

that would then recur throughout your show? I love math. I'm not like, you know, I'm not a great mathematician. I was a pretty good tutor. And one of the things that had always fascinated me was the idea that 0.9 repeating equals 1. Basically, the fraction 1-3rd is 0.3 repeating. I think you know that on some level

if you've been to any kind of school. It's 0.3 repeating. Yes. And the fraction 2-thirds is 0.6 repeating. If I add 1-3 and 2-thirds, what do I get? Anybody? 1.1. Excellent. And if I add 0.3 repeating and 0.6 repeating, what do I get?

Anyway. 0.9 repeating. Very good. 1 equals 0.9 repeating. Now, the first time I saw that, I almost had a f*** panic attack. What are you talking about? They can't be the same. They look very different. And there are other versions of proving that.

for example, for two numbers to be different, there has to be a number in between those two numbers, right? So, like, I know that two and three are different in several ways, but one of them is I know that 2.5 is in between those two numbers. With 0.9 repeating and 1, you couldn't tell me a number that's between them. There's no way to fit anything in there. That's because of the same. And it kind of blew my mind.

You think things are one way, but they can also be another way. This part of your show did make me like, I'm sorry if it feels like the math was the most revelatory part of this. I was like, holy fuck. You kept telling people, you got to go see this math show. And then he did a show about grief. Oh, God.

The show is about his son. And then if that's not enough, now we're teaching math. There are three people love listening to this episode, but they're valued. We value you, listener. The question then of, of like, okay, I'm going to introduce the premise. We're at the 28 minute mark, right?

And it's like time to actually say the thing. Your approach to that, how did your real life sort of experience inform how you wanted to then finally invite the audience into what has been at the forefront of your brains ever since this happened? My experience in life is that telling people about it in a way that it's pretty frank and, you know, unornamented is way easier than any other thing. We don't have two kids. We have three.

Truman is an identical twin, and his brother Fisher died when he was 34 days old. And that is what this show is about. And I know that is the saddest sentence in the English language. My son died. in that moment, what ends up happening is the person you're talking to, their world that kind of flips upside down, they think about their own kid,

it's totally impossible to believe that what I'm saying could possibly happen. There's a discomfort. Yeah. Like a fundamental like, oh no. Yeah, exactly. But I think it's also like, oh, there's no reality. Because, like, in reality, your son doesn't,

sons don't die. and parents die. Grandparent, your friend, maybe your friend dies. But the generation below you, that person doesn't die. And I think for someone to really internalize the possibility that could happen,

like one of the promises the universe makes you is that that's, whatever horrible shit will happen in your life, that won't be one of the things. You might have a disease, you might be in an accident, whatever, your kids will be fine. So I feel like I have to let the audience be like,

we're hanging out. We're friends. You know me. I know you. Now I can tell you something. Sorry for your loss was just sort of like the culmination it feels like of a good cry. Yes. Which is the podcast.

Exactly. And your first guest was your boss. Yes. Stephen Colbert. Yep. Who I would consider, by the way, like your show between the two of you has two elite grief analysts. You lost your father and your brothers when you were 10. Yes.

Is that right? Do you remember, and would you talk about the moment, do you remember learning about, like when you learned about it? Yes, I remember. And that's a good second question, which is, are you willing to talk about it? Because it's a hot moment, you know. Yeah.

It almost feels physically hot. I was told to not take the bus home from school. My brother, Billy, picked me up, and he took me home. And I went in and he said, mom's upstairs, and I looked over into the living room as I went up, and a couple of my siblings were in there who didn't live at home. And I got upstairs, went to the end of the hallway, my mom was in there, and she was lying on the bed as if she had been thrown there or slapped down by a giant. And she turned to me and said, come here.

or put her arms out, which meant to come here, and said there's been an accident. And that's it. She didn't say anything else for a long time. To hear him talk about it, even as we were sitting there recording it, there's sometimes, this is going to sound so corny,

but there's times when you're sitting there, listening to him and you're like, this guy's a fucking genius. Grief is perfectly sound and whole, and just a medicine you don't want to take. you have to experience it. You have to go through it. There's no going around it.

And we're so afraid to experience grief, partly, I think, because it feels like you're dying to. He's very intentional about his words and tries very hard to say what he means and also what he thinks people should hear. And that's not something that I had starting out as a comedian. Like starting out as a comedian, I only wanted to make people laugh. And it's sort of like by any means necessary.

And there are a lot of jokes from when I started out, even jokes that I've done on TV. But I'm like, you know, I wouldn't have done these jokes if I ever thought people were going to hear me say them. I would have done something else. And Stephen is someone who really reinforces like the value. There's so many comedians who reinforce that, but the value of saying something,

worth while, whether you're speaking, whether you're doing comedy or not, what's the point of what you're saying? In your show, you are frank and direct about how you talk about your wife feeling. One thing that I do remember perfectly is being in a little side room where they put you, if the worst possible thing has happened, and Carrie saying to me through tears, how am I ever going to be happy again. And I recall like people around me audibly crying at that point.

How do you work through with her what you're going to say? She's seen every version of it all along the way. And anything that I I mean, the answer to that question is meticulously. Because the show is really for me. and then it's for her and then it's for my kids. So that's like who the show is for.

And the fact that it like, it has had this sort of ancillary, these like ramifications of being helpful to other people is great because that's how I can continue to do it. But really like it's for those five people, me, my wife and my three kids, one of whom is Fisher who died. So if there were any part of the show

that she's like, I don't like this part, it's gone. Did she give notes on how you described her innards looking during a C-section? No, it's not usually that hands-on in the discussion. It's more like, I was in the C-section a little early, and you just see, I know there's dudes out here who know what I'm talking about, they bring you in there early, and you're like, oh, here's my wife over here, and then here's all the other, the parts of my wife on another table over here.

I see, as the doctor is, pulling stuff out of my wife, that is not babies. whatever else is down here, I don't know, to this day. Your pancreas? Your brain? Doctors pulling all this stuff out and putting it over here on another table. So like, here's my wife and here is a freaky topus of my wife.

That did remind me. of a topless. It leads us to a thesis that you make, that you launch in your show, about, I guess, why we're bad at talking about death and why we're bad at processing grief. For most of modern history,

grief was very public. Ritual wailing, the death wail, keening, just a bunch of ladies screaming. That was totally normal all over the world. You'd be living in the woods, have 12 kids, seven of them die, and everyone's like, no shit. If you got sick, you just died.

Runny nose, you're dead. Headache, dead. So grief was terrible, but it was normal. So who do you blame for why the people around you are so clumsy? I mean, one of the things I put forth in the show is that science has gotten so good that it's, it's so hard to die. Now when you get sick, you don't go to your priest, you go to your doctor. You don't get sicker, you get better. And once people stop dying, death isn't normal anymore. It's not inevitable.

It's a failure. It's a shame. So we don't talk about it. We keep our grief to ourselves. In my mind, I imagine like a sci-fi future in which, like, you have to try to die. Like, you're going to have to pay to it to get your way out. But the medicine and scientific advances have gone so far that now it's like, kind of embarrassing when somebody dies. It's like, well, you get questions like, well, did you

try? Did you see this kind? What about this? It's like, I don't know, dude. He fucking died. I don't know what to tell you. But in terms of what people told you in real life, in the aftermath, like, what was that experience like? Anything anyone said was nice. Probably the most awkward exchange that I had was in the building where we lived, a woman who lived there who I knew, but not well. I'm in the elevator with her and she's like crying super hard and I'm like, what's going on?

And she's like, my cat is sick. And then she asks, you know, how the twins are doing because she knows that we've had twins. And I tell her that one of the twins has died. And you've never seen someone feel more bad

in the history of the world for this woman. to be like, I was just crying about my cat and now I can't believe how little that meant. You know, like you could see her processing like mountains of guilt. How did you feel as you watched her process that? Mostly it's just bad for her.

I mean, like that some version of that happened a lot. When I came back to doing comedy, a lot of people were like, you know, oh, dude, you're you had twins, how's it going? and for a very brief time, I would just be like, oh, it's great because like, what am I going to do? But that just started to feel f***ed up to me.

I couldn't hold that. You feel like an alien because I'm like in this world and no one here understands what the fuck I'm talking about. No one could possibly understand it. I have a special sadness that is all completely my own that has been here to four unknown in the universe. And so I felt that way all the time.

And that's part of the reason I think that I ended up with this like massive buildup of, I have to talk about this shit I'm gonna go fucking crazy. I think of it like a language where it's like, I speak this grief thing and I can talk to whoever

but once somebody else I know also speaks it, it's so much more comfortable. I knew a guy once who was involved with a university in Holland that was starting to switch all its classes to English. And he said the biggest shame

that they felt over there, they were very happy to do it, but the big regret, the anxiety, where the teachers were like, we're not funny in English. And I feel that way about this grief thing

where it's like, I have an ease of use with this language now that only people who speak it understand with me. Yeah. That was a very convoluted way to say.

No, I love it. I love it while simultaneously I'm like, yeah, that is, a convenient alibi for the Dutch. That's what's been holding them back. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, you just don't get it. This is very funny. You have to imagine Zaventmel is, you know, something like that. That's my Dutch accent. Better than mine. Thank you. But when the language is unlocked,

what do you get to do? Great question. Wow, what a good one. When the language is unlocked, you get to talk about it in a way where you don't fear for the other person's safety. Like, basically the thing you're worried about when you're talking about grief is I'm going to say to you some ugly, dark shit, and you are not ready for it.

You have not felt this before. You don't know that it exists. So you, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you will either start to kind of tune out, which I definitely see, or you will completely disintegrate in front of me. Yeah. Like you'll, I will obliterate you by telling you a true thing about the world that you did not know. Right. And so with people who have been to the bottom in that particular way, you don't have to worry about that.

Because they've already, they're, they know how far down it goes and they've already been there. So you're not worried about hurting them with it. But even the commonalities of, uh, of, of this language, like, you know, not a lot of, all grief is the same. Yes, totally. So the idea of like, oh, I speak this dialect, which is a profound, again, the sentence that you articulated, there might not be a sadder one than my child has died. Feels like its own tribe.

Totally. But then what have you learned about the ability for others to access across different experiences? Is there are, is, what's the common sort of ground you found? I mean, my experience is that, I mean, really crudely, the longer your child was alive, generally, if I know someone who has lost a 10-year-old, there's a part of me that's like, okay, that's a different category. I was going to ask about...

Than what I had. This very thing. And then I have people who I know who've miscarried or, you know, whatever. There's not much less time than 34 days, but we've lost younger children. I don't know that it's more grief or whatever, but if he had died at five years old, I do think it would have been harder, whatever that is. But I don't know.

You know, I think I'm also cautious at any point to speak as to like, as an expert on anything. I'm just like a guy that this happened to, as opposed to like a griefologist. That's what we're going to have you, Kyrandas, guy that this happened to. Guy that this happened to. But even in that,

in that sort of diversity of sad possibilities, I am now conscious of how we got to get some laughs in here, man. And so when you are deciding, okay, I'm going to begin to use my audience, I'm going to begin to train them in the art of this language, in limited ways in the course of the show that you're doing for them. Then you're like, okay, but I can't obliterate them. What did you want the audience to feel? That's what these are, man, you should have a podcast.

I'm sure there's an answer to that question, but what I will say is the reason I do the show for me. Yes. And I say this in the show is to keep him alive. Is that, and in a way that I never would have said before he died, that is not, you know, religious. To me, he is very, very. much alive.

So what I wanted the audience to feel is that that is true. So I had the experience of I had not felt myself feel things this way before, which is an indictment of me on a fundamental level, but also a compliment to you. What is the feedback that you've got? It's not just all people being like, thank you for this important work. I imagine there are also some things that are, I don't know, what's it like to get, what are the offbeat sorts of things? Yeah, so most of the feedback, like down the middle is great.

Oh, you know, this was, thank you so much for doing this. A lot of the feedback is here's a story about something fucking horrific that happened to me, and this show helped me process that in some way. Some of the feedback, the Times wrote an article about like people doing comedy about grief, and I, like a goddamn genius, read the comments. Oh, no. And the comments in there, people hadn't even seen the show. So the comments in there were like, how dare this guy do this thing?

It's, you know, sacrilegious, it's perverse, whatever. There's those kinds of comments. It's a good movie poster, quote, too. Sacrilegious and perverse. One of my sister's best friends came to the show. And afterwards, I asked her how her kids were doing. And she said, well, I mean, thank God. fucking alive, am I right?

And it was so shocking. But also, like, I loved it. Like, it's one of those things where, like, so often when you talk, that person I don't think understands, like, the grief language, so to speak. But that's someone, like, being real with me

about how they're actually feeling. And after years of talking about this, I find that very refreshing for someone to just say something that absolutely you should not say, felt really nice and open. And it's like one of these moments we're like, oh, you're a person. Yes.

So you're sort of like a through line in this conversation is wishing that a taboo was not a taboo. And the taboo is a taboo because it's meant to protect you. Yes, totally. You weak person that can't handle hearing what people might actually think about the thing that you're desperate to actually hear them say aloud. Yeah. And so the thing that I am circling as you articulate, I want this show to be a way of keeping my son alive, which I believe, speaking as you, that he still is, that genuine sentiment of he's still here, when did that set in for you? A conviction that this is actually, this is not a rationalization,

this is not a way of coping, this is just my worldview, because that comes through in the show. I mean, it's going to sound kind of weird, but it happened. in doing the show. Like, the original version of the show that I first did at the Asian Comedy Festival or whatever, or that I did it... I'm gonna find a tape of that. I promise you there is not.

I didn't know it was the point of the show until I said it. Like, you know what I mean? So at some point, in the rehearsal process for this show, someone asked me, and I was like, oh, I have to articulate why I'm doing the show. And a way that this show was written,

which is unlike most of... shows ever probably is that a lot of it is like me just talking and some and audio recording it or transcribing it and then trying to like kind of brush it up so at some point it never having been written down ever i just said i'm doing this to keep my son alive and it was like oh that's the that's right that is what this is for the math connecting to this realization The idea of one thing can be this and also that. The device you use to persuade the audience is to teach us math and then use linguistic analysis to show that intellectually now,

not just emotionally, that contradictions, the dead can be alive. It really was about trying to be myself. And so as someone who had tutored for 15 years, those were like principles that I had always taught to my students about like, and I think it's about a little bit about my worldview, which is like, don't be so sure of things. Be open to the idea that it could be something else. You know what I mean?

You think that, well, I mean, this is what I said in the show a hundred times, but you think things are this way. And they might be, they might be this way. But they might also be a second, a third, a fourth. There might be many ways all at once. And the math is an example of that. I talk about how G-H-O-T-I, the letters G-H-O-T-I, George Bernard Shaw, supposedly, said that G-H-O-T-I could be how you spell the word fish,

because G-H in the word enough makes a f sound, and the O in the word women makes an i sound, and the T-I in concentration makes a sh sound. So you get fish out of G-H-O-T-I. But of course, if you saw that written on a blackboard somewhere, you'd be like, that's a nonsense word. And it is. But it's also, according to the rules of phonetic English,

that you either know actually or that you know in your blood, it's fish. That is fish. It's that. Which happens to also be your nickname. Yes. My son's name is Fisher and Fish was what we would call him. as a structural device, you are dropping these breadcrumbs that you then pick up at the end.

And the quantum physics, is there a way to summarize the quantum physics here? I barely understand it myself, but the idea basically, and if you're listening to this and you're a particle physicist, and I'd say this in this show, just don't correct me. In quantum physics, they hold that under the right conditions, every, thing can be both a particle and a wave. A particle is in one place, right? We're here now. But a wave, which is also you, under the right circumstances, can be in multiple places, crashing on shores simultaneously everywhere. We are not. We are not. We are not. not just particles. We are waves. We are not just where we are. We are everywhere. My son was not just a particle. He was a wave. His life. However short it was leads to me being here, something you will

remember, I hope. Things can be one way, but they can also be a Another way. That's the climax of this idea of things being one way and another way that sort of convinces me that my son could be this thing that you can hold, but it could also be this thing that's in motion. He could be here, but he could be everywhere, just like everyone and thing is. And it may sound like complete bullshit,

and that's fine if it does. But it's something that I have become convinced of in the last 14, 15 years. When you are at the end of the show and you use silence, you use negative space, pauses in an extraordinarily affecting way. The audience, are you hearing what they're doing? What has been the range of responses from the audience when it comes to that?

Well, the full range. people have all kinds of reactions to silence. I mean, mostly in the show, it's, you feel like they have a reverence for the subject, so they're pretty quiet. There's a lot of audible crying. I want you to have the space to just be sad about this. I don't want to protect you from the feeling.

I want to, like, I don't want to drop you in it with, with no, with no safety around you. I want you to feel like you're safe. But I do want you to experience what it is to be sad and just live with that for a little bit. It's okay to go, oh, I'm scared right now and not have me immediately pop out and hit you with 10 jokes in a row before I do it again. There are, obviously the show is a comedy and there's lots of times in it that are, I think, very funny. But there are also times when if I'm doing my job right, you will really be affected by, what has happened. And I hope that you are. And I think that people are. My favorite hypothetical,

though, is someone in the audience in that big sort of crescendo at the end. And they just like do something that is not appropriate. Oh, we definitely had somebody farted during one of those, for sure. For sure, a long, a long, low fart. That's, that's one that has happened. Do you know what you want to do next? Do you feel obliged? to do something different? I think it's like really artistically, I'm just trying to find what interests me and pursue that.

I think a lesson that I have learned is to follow what seriously interests me as opposed to what I think other people will think is funny. I don't know if you know the comedian Jacqueline Novak. Yeah. She did a show about blowjobs. That's like one of the most brilliant singular shows

I've ever seen. I saw it a couple times live. I watched it on Netflix. Another single topic comedian. Yeah. What is the penis to me? What is its nature? It's responsive.

You know, it springs up under certain conditions. That's why I think it is the soul of an artist, you know? What's cool to me about that is that only that person could do it. Nobody else could possibly have come up with this show. And so I hope to only make things that are like that. That's like someone sees me do stuff and they're like, that, oh, you're, talking about that guy because no one else will have this joke or like this perspective or this style. That's what I want to be. Yeah. So just to be clear, the way you want to end our conversation

about your son who has passed away is... Jackalind Novak show is incredible. It's to say, I want to do the blowjob thing. Whatever that means. No, don't call it that. Michael Cruz-Cain, a man who is many things, Filipino, Jewish, potentially Turkish. Handsome, you were going to say probably. Also that. Insofar as you are fractionally like me, ethnically speaking, thank you for being happy to talk about this. And also, I would have to imagine, as you said

before, fundamentally sad as shit in the process. I really, really, really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for having me. And to anyone listening to this, you know, thank you for listening. Doing this has meant a lot to me. Yeah, man. It's really, really good. Thank you.

Beautiful. To listen to Sorry for Your Loss in full, just go over to Audible, where it is available right now. This has been Pablo Torre finds out, a Metal Arc Media production, and I'll talk to you next time.