Soul Boom - Hasan Minhaj: Does Comedy Matter if the World is on Fire?

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Hasan Minhaj (Off With His Head, The Patriot Act, Homecoming King) joins Rainn Wilson for a vulnerable and inspiring dive into the purpose of comedy, the search for meaning, and the power of storytelling. They explore Hasan's spiritual upbringing, his journey through stand-up and fame, and how his faith and Indian-American identity have shaped his worldview. From reflections on Ramadan to insights about art's true value, this episode is rich with heart, humor, and depth. Rainn and Hasan discuss why comedy may be one of the last places where truth and hope collide in meaningful ways. This episode is brought to you by... Stamps.com: Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale 👉 https://www.stamps.com/soulboom Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! Pretty Litter: 20% OFF & FREE cat toy! 👉 https://prettylitter.com/soulboom MERCH OUT NOW! https://soulboom.com/store Sign up for our newsletter! https://soulboom.substack.com SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom!! https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom Watch our Clips: https://bit.ly/SoulBoomCLIPS Watch WISDOM DUMP: https://bit.ly/WISDOMDUMP FOLLOW US! Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: [e-mail] Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Voicing Change Media Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to soul. When we were first sitting down, you were like, why do you have so many stand-up comics on your show? Are you starting to understand maybe a little bit why? Yes. You love scratching the surface here. I like you love getting to the subterranean. You're an emotional fracker, Rain Wilson.

I'm an emotional fracker. You go deep. I'm an emotional mother fracker. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson. And I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers. about life, meaning, and idiocy.

Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. We've got merch. Soul Boom fam. I'm so excited. Our first merch drop is officially here. Go to Soulboom.com slash store. You can get totes, tanks, teas, hoodies, beanieys, mugs, water bottles, sippies, a handy dandy journal.

It's all supporting the cause. Support the boom. Shop now at Soulboom.com. slash store. Can I have a piece of paper and a pen too? I love having a piece of paper and pen. Diva. Demanding much.

Thank you. Dear Rain. It was thank you. Best podcast ever. Where do you live in New York? We lived in Hells Kitchen for years and now we live in the suburbs outside of New York. What suburb?

We live in Connecticut. Yeah. Okay. Gorgeous, beautiful. Amazing. Amazing, trees. Trees, greenery, shrubs. Shrubbery.

The Cardinal, the state, bird. Beautiful. The Mighty Cardinal. Are there Cardinals flirting about? Beautiful, yeah, lying around. It's amazing. Yeah. We live outside of LA.

We have a lot of birds on our property. Yeah. When our property is not burned down. I'm so sorry. Segway. Yeah. I'm sorry about that. Thanks, yeah.

We lost half our house and a bunch of our trees and fences and, and, stuff like that. It was, is not fun. But a lot of those birds don't have homes, or at least they found new homes not in our yard. Yeah. Which is sad. Where are they going now? The birds? Yeah. They'll migrate, right? Oxnard. Got it. I don't know. I don't know where they go. They'll head down to Irvine. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they're natural habit. Thanks for coming on soul boom. Thanks for having me, man. This is the only way we meet. I was telling you this off camera. Yeah, because you were like, you know, why wouldn't you just have lunch with me instead of, I like it better

this way because I'm socially awkward and having lunch with you like what are we going to talk about like we just do your start we would just do what we're doing now without without microphones without lav mics and making micro content and we'd still have messages as a deeply spiritual person you could you understand how deeply not spiritual this is right I don't think that's true okay tell me how you think this is not spiritual this is a a fabricated setup we are in front of right we're performing in front of here's what we get to do we get to have a deep probing meaningful yes vulnerable conversation. Yes.

That hopefully inspires folks on the other end and touches their heart in a way. And maybe there's like some young Indian American kids that see you having this conversation are like, oh shit. Like the sky's the limit. He's the limit. What I could do. Ray Wilson. Yeah.

He's made it. That's awesome, man. That's really beautiful that you have this optimistic view. I view content as a service. And I think you do too. Tell me about this show that you're doing on YouTube. The Asiminage doesn't know. Doesn't know.

In honing up on you, I've watched several episodes. I'm like, oh, he's doing his own mini-daily show. Kind of. But he's doing a DIY style. But you've got comedy segments and a really interesting variety of guests. And sometimes you go like super deep into issues. Yes. And sometimes it's just straight up funny.

Well, you know where I came from is a lot of, times people have reached out to me, whether it's politicians, bureaucrats, artists, whoever, they will DM me and go, I'd love. Is that how people can get in touch with you? That's how you get into here, folks. Yeah, that's it. The DM, the power of the DM. Okay, I'm going to pause.

I'm going to pause your story right here. Sure. Because I have a story of a DM and you that I want to share with you. My producer, Karthik. Yes. Are you out there, Carthic? Open the door. This is an intervention?

His mom. Deemed me? DM'd you years ago to get you to leave a message for Karthik what here come in and squat a squat over by him what is happening right now my wife and I got married yes okay mom is Indian obviously of course and she was desperate to get you to send her a congratulations message she DM'd me to send you a video and they filmed her DMing you hi Hassan can you please send my son a video congratulating him on his wedding tomorrow. Otherwise you're gonna be so...

What are you doing? Just keep reading. 12 hours. So appreciative. Thank you. He'll do. He'll do it. But you never got in touch with us and we just found... Oh, wait, wait.

Okay, but hold on. There's more. A lot's happening. There's a lot. So how many years ago was that? How many years ago was this? Four years ago. And now we have a very special assignment for you.

Carthick's mom is here. No, she's not here, but... I'm having my second child. Why don't we... Do you want a facetimer? Let's do it. Should we do the real thing? Let's do it.

Try and FaceTime. Well, first of all, we have to do this in order of operations. Congratulations on the wedding. Thank you, so much. And congratulations on Chalbun. Thank you. And let's FaceTime Mom and let's do... Yeah, let's do Baby Number 2.

She might be like, who is this? She legit. Does she answer FaceTime normally? She usually does. What do you call your mom? Mom? Just Mom. Okay.

Not on me. No. Okay. We'll go to option two, which is the video. Okay. Mom, adabab, how are you? I'm here with Kartik and Mubarakha. There's a baby arriving, so Mubarak, Mubarak.

I said, Mom, how are you? I'm with Karthik, and congratulations, congratulations. Your Hindi is excellent. No, it's not good. Barely an accent. I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. What were we talking about DMs?

Thanks for that. Thanks for being so open to that. Of course. What were we talking about? Oh, people were DMing you. and saying, hey, we have conversations. Sitting politicians, bureaucrats and senators. And I go, what do I do with this?

What do you want me to do with? Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to sit down and chat with you. I was ignoring it for a long time. And then I was thinking like, I, this is a very rare opportunity. I have many questions I would like to ask them. And I think my perspective is kind of just as a citizen, but also almost like a representative. of the sentiments of the general public.

I can be that as well. So I said you should use this opportunity to sit down with someone like President Barack Obama or Elizabeth Warren or the Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and have a conversation with them and ask them the questions that many people wonder. And this is a spiritual act because you're providing a service

to the viewer and having conversations that normal people don't get to have. Yeah, you could say that. The thing that fascinates me about you and why I want to record our lunch We'll pretend we're having lunch. I don't want to record this lunch conversation. Like, we normally don't do, like, biography on the show,

and we do want to get, I want to dive into some big ideas and how we're going to create a spiritual revolution and make the world a better place through comedy and storytelling. Yeah. But talk us through that story. Child of immigrants, father comes here in 1982. He has a PhD in chemistry. He works for the Cal EPA.

He marries my mother in 1984. They conceive. They have me in 1985. I'm born in Davis, California. How do they conceive? What happened? That I haven't gotten into with my parents. I'm just wondering what position or... Oh, but that, I'll talk about with them on WhatsApp.

Okay. Soon enough, WhatsApp Dad, about how you were conceived. Born on 885, grew up in Davis, California. We, my son... Yeah. We know the exact place and time that we had sex that he was conceived. And you've told your son this? Yes.

And where it happened. How does he name? my mother-in-law's house on the floor of their guest room and kind of right by the door jam. Yeah. So, like, I know where the seed dropped. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yes.

He's grossed out so gross. He's 20 years old. Oh, he's so grossed out by that, by that story. But then that house burned down. So that room doesn't exist anymore. But the guest room is a room where, yeah. I think a lot of children were conceived in the other-in-law's guest rooms. Yeah, sure.

And the guest room is also an interesting. It's almost like an away game sort of room. You can have the childhood bedroom. But the guest room, stuff goes down on the guest room. Stuff goes down. Listen, your dad worked for the EPA. Cal EPA. And now the EPA is being gutted.

Sure. We can get to that later. Yeah. So, you know, my dad did that. My mom physician. Davis was a great kind of suburban town. I didn't realize it at the time. Lovely town.

Lovely central California in town. Northern California town. And it is a lovely place to grow up. And I didn't realize it at the time, but it is really like any town America. If you grow up in Sacramento, which is that area, it is the forgotten part of the cultural conversation in California. You got the Bay Area and they got their, you know, tech snobbery. And then you have Southern California with its Hollywood snobbery and all that sort of stuff.

Sure. But if you grow up in kind of Sacramento, but not been to Dallas or Charlotte or other parts of the country, I go, oh, I get it. This is kind of like Sacramento. Yeah, right on. I get it. Like I get what this city's about. Was there a lot of pressure for you, child of two PhDs in a college town? P.E. N.D., yeah.

You're going to be a doctor. You're going to be a scientist. You're going to be in medicine. Anything like that? You know, it really was just kind of like an immigrant survivalist story. You know, it's, you know, there was a contract that I think, you know, my dad clearly saw on the American Dream. That was about pursuing higher education. You got a really good job, a white collar job. you work that job for your entire life, you have a house in the suburbs,

and you're able to have, like, health care and have assets and send your children to good schools. I think he, over the course of my teenage to adult life, saw that slowly unravel. How so? I feel, and I think a lot of Americans feel that that social contract has kind of frayed. Withered.

Yeah. You know, the privatization of everything. has kind of turned America into a you get what you pay for type country. So the privatization of health care, the privatization of schools, that social contract is, well, you got to pay for it. And that has created a lot of class tension. But that's for another time and place. So the funny conversation I have with my dad a lot of times is I think the image that he had of America,

let's call it like 1980s, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sylvester Stallone America. Reagan America. Yeah, Reagan America. But specifically kind of like Hollywood pop culture America. Okay. This place is incredibly safe and aspirational and there is no poverty. And you can become anything that you want to become and all of those sort of things.

It was a very, Reagan called it what the shiny, what is it the shining? City on a Hill or? Sierra Hill. Yeah, yeah. I think that was my dad's perception of American. I think that America is very different. And I've had many conversations, he's 74 now. So I've had conversations with him about it.

And I go, he's got, it's a very different country. They were very open, not a lot of pressure on you to. No, no, no, there was a lot of pressure to kind of be a kind of type A high achieving, academically oriented kid. Okay. So, and that's what I thought. And you were? I was pretty good at school. Did you go to UC Davis?

I went to UC Davis, yeah. Okay. I was a decent student. I wasn't an amazing student, but I got good grades, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And how does a shift happen from you? you were studying political science, right?

I was studying political science. I was always kind of artistically inclined. I just didn't know. I just didn't know it was possible. You know, I just didn't think it was possible. I didn't see anyone like me and represented in popular culture on TV or in movies. And then Harold and Kumar go to White Castle

came out in 2004 when I was a freshman in college and it just changed. It changed the way I... Okay, that's amazing. It was a life-changing moment. Yeah, yeah. What Cal Penn and John Show did in that movie was life-changing.

I auditioned for that movie. Really? To be Harold. I think, I'll be. Aliens in that movie? Did you audition to be Harold or Kumar? I, neither. I think, are there aliens in that movie? I think there's not aliens in that movie.

You're talking about Mars attack? No, it was dude where's my car, there's aliens. Which was around the same time, but I think I auditioned for both of those movies. Just really small supporting parts. That's when I was the kind of dofist little comedy character guy in Hollywood. It was right around the time the office started.

So I was doing the rounds over there. That's amazing. Yeah. Talk more about that. So walking through downtown Davis, I see a poster outside of Holiday Cinema. And this is Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. And it's half of John Cho's face and half of Cal Penn's face. And I just, I couldn't believe it.

I just didn't think we were. Right. poster worthy. Like I just didn't, I never saw our experience articulated that way. Like, oh, they had to do a photo shoot for that. And they blew it up. And then I'm going to go inside of a movie theater. Well, I was talking to our, sounds like I grew up in like the 1960s or 70s.

But it was a, it was a, it was an extremely culturally significant movie. And there's another detail. And shout out to Cal Penn and John Cho, and they know how revolutionary the movie was at the time. The detail that is like just really so amazing about it is that they were kind of in the movie countercultural rebels. They were mavericks in it. They did not follow the model minority thing. You know, Kumar famously blows off his like med school interview. to just fuck off and get high and have hilarious antics ensue.

Yeah. So in it, he was like a badass. And so you got to understand, you know, like for me, pop culturally, you grow up in, let's call it, like Indiana Jones Temple of Doom representation of Indians in pop culture to that. Yeah. To be like, oh, wow, you can really be number one on the call sheet and have a ton of agency and be whoever you want to be. And by the way, there's shout out to all the Asian American, you know, writers and

directors who have done amazing profound work. But that was a cultural touchstone moment. It was interesting. It was very funny. I was in touch with someone from the Smithsonian. Yeah. And they wanted to do something about Indian Americans in popular culture in America. And they kind of took the temperature.

And they were like, we want to do like an ode to the Diwali episode of the office. Sure. And they wanted to be in touch with Mindy Kaling. Yeah. They wanted like props and costumes from that. Yeah. Because as they were polling, like the Indian American population. Like, Wally Office episode, iconic episode was like iconic and groundbreaking.

And when we were doing it like, oh, this is fun. It's colorful and wacky. And Michael Scott gets to make all kinds of tasteless jokes. Yeah. You know, in an Indian background. But I was thinking about that in terms of you and this story and our producer, who you met Carthick, who's, you know, also Indian American, about like going from, you know, Apu from The Simpsons

to now to Patriot Act to Mindy Kailings amazing success We have an incredible diaspora There's Maitre Ramay Krishna And there's just so many Amazing South Asian artists

And by the way They're a ton in the UK as well They were I guess what I'm more specifically saying Hassan is that It seems like there has been A really revelatory and exciting shift Of like Indians as but of joke

with funny accent to cutting-edge artists, especially for young folk in the United States to look up to and emulate like you emulated Harold and Kumar. And that, as an entitled, clueless suburban white boy, like that didn't even like register to me. Yeah, for me, man, really what it did is, it gave me the inspiration to articulate a POV. If you have a POV in a perspective to say something,

you should say it. And then that coincided with the Napster, Limewire, T3 internet revolution that also took place while I was an undergrad. So I got exposed to tons of media in a way that I, media, by that I mean music, art and film in a way that I never was before. And it was, it changed my life. It profoundly changed my life. And what was your voice and how did that move to stand up? So I'm a freshman in college and I'm hanging out with a buddy of mine And and we're doing the freshman in college thing of like oh, we're gonna go we're gonna go party like we're gonna go to a party

It's Friday we're gonna go to frat row we're gonna do something this weekend and my buddy is changing in one of the rooms And he's like why don't you meet my roommate and his roommate is watching Chris Rocks never scared So he had downloaded it he had torrented it off the internet All right. And I'm watching, I'm watching him watch it. And I'm like, what, what is this? You know, and I had never really been exposed to stand up comedy in that way. We didn't have cable television at home.

And that special where Chris Rock is wearing a maroon suit was just groundbreaking for me. Chris is talking about, you know, politics and race and war and the president and all of these things that were too taboo to talk about. Yeah. At Office Max or I worked at Office Max at the time. or even in college. I love that you worked at a Dunder Mifflin. Totally. Yeah, I sold printers, yeah.

Yeah, I stacked reams of paper. That was my department, yeah. But it was groundbreaking for me. And so that was a moment. And again, I did not know this was possible. So it's one of those things where, hey, just there was kind of these set paths that were already set for you. And then being exposed to something like that is like, oh, wow, you can do that. And that was an artistically revolutionary moment of, oh, wow, this, I have talked about politics and race.

And I've argued about this at home. I did not know you could do this at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., and thousands of people would gather and want to hear this. I wasn't exposed to George Carlin or Richard Pryor. And so then I just voraciously ripped through all that stuff. And it changed my life. Thanks, lime wire. Thank you, Limewire. Thanks, Napster.

Yeah, thank you, Napster. You know how they're like, this is illegal, this is bad. Yeah. It was great. It was great for humanity. It was great for my life. And then, yeah, I was kind of a forensics and speech and debate kid. I was an academic decathlon in high school.

And then when I watched that special, I was like, whoa, this is like speech and debate, but funny. I love that. You're just making an argument. Yeah. But you're just doing it in a funny way. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to get jokes from your first sets,

but what did you talk about? I mean, it was like what it's like living at home and like, I mean, this dates me a little bit, but yeah, it would be like, have you ever been at home and you're trying to get on the internet, but your parents need to use the phone? Like it's observational stuff like that. Yeah, stuff like that, yeah.

So when did it shift to bringing in some politics? It was like just a slow journey. Like what's really beautiful about just the art of stand-up comedy is like it really is this kind of just brick by brick step-by-step-step process. But what's awesome about it is, and you must have felt this when you're writing a book, it forces you to explore yourself. The only way you get to the next page is you have to write it. You have to write the next joke or the next observation. And as you have more time that you need to follow. Hope and you have kids in the hall writing your jokes.

But you have, yeah, you have, you have to fill time. And so it just forces your hand to be like, okay. And I have to fill this time. And then as you fill more time, you have to have something to say. You have to have something to say. And there are these moments that are really beautiful that I love about stand up, which is when you're working on new material, you're on stage, you're alone. And if you've ever been an audience member and you're seeing a comic work something out. you're kind of on the edge of,

you're on your tippy toes, like emotionally. Because you're basically saying, I don't know if this is going to work, but there is a very sink or swim gear that taps in where even as much as you want to write it out, you can write the joke, word perfect. You can sometimes sense, oh, the audience doesn't know what I'm saying.

So you dig for the next analogy and the next analogy, oh, it's kind of like this. But it's like this. Uh-huh. It's like this. And you will all of a sudden find your, yourself swimming. It's a really beautiful thing.

I feel alive doing it. I used to go to Catch a Rising Star back in the late 80s, early 90s, because I had a bunch of friends that were bartenders there. Yeah. And they could sneak me in and I would watch some really Dennis Miller and Brad Hall, some really interesting, Rich Hall, sorry. Yeah. Comics, like doing it and they had the cards.

Yes. And they were brave enough to be in an audience, to have 50 people. there and to like try a joke and it bombs and you'd see them tear the cart you see them cross it through and you know what stand up is really hard it's really hard you're in front of you're in front of people they've paid a lot of money and they're expecting to laugh and there's a tremendous amount of pressure and if you succumb to that pressure you're not going to be funny because you have to be talking to people as if you're in your own living room right that's a very difficult task now is it hard in terms of like as like my dad going out and and and changing out sewer mains. No, it's not that

hard. It's a different kind of hard. It's not easy. It's also really hard to make a career. You have to work really fucking hard at it. And you have to like get tons of rejections and you got to put yourself out and you got to have your head shots and you got to submit your reels and you've got to you, you've been to a thousand open mics. And it's really hard and it's demanding and it's tough and it's demeaning and it's difficult. And there I said it. You have to have a stomach, so I'm going to agree with you. You have to have a stomach for uncertainty and risk, which is very true.

And then simultaneously, you also reign have to, you know, acknowledge that a lot of this is driven by ego and unchecked mental illness. Oh my God, look at this. Look who's calling me. Who's calling me? Carthick's mom. Look at this. This is what I mean.

UTA. UTA. Oh, God, maybe it's an audition. Keep going. Wow, I'm more important than UTA. Look at that. You know what? Can you hold on?

Yeah, sure. I get it. But also, you've made it. You've got Netflix specials. Yeah. There's about another... And I'm very lucky. 20 or 30 that have Netflix specials

and I've had TV shows and whatever. And there's about 3,000 or 30,000 out there working the comedy clubs and Chuckles Comedy Cellar and trying to support family. and trying to make it and trying to express themselves and stuff. And that's hard too. And people don't understand that there is a huge class of middle class actors,

trying to support families by pretending to be people and having to maybe work some side jobs and stuff like that too. It's incredibly demanding and stressful and can be overwhelming. And they're like, oh, these celebrities flying around. It's like, I'm really lucky. I happen to get on a TV show that took off. I have a lot of friends that got on TV shows that didn't take off. No, we're in agreement about that.

We're in agreement about the luck part of it. We're in agreement about how it's an incredible privilege. I also just think that it's important that art and artists, and again, I'm saying this as a comic, you have to also understand, you got to get the joke. You also cannot be so navel-gazy that you're not willing to acknowledge the kind of the struggles and the pains and the contributions of other people. And let me just say this. I think at times we over-index.

the power of art, meaning music is important, art is important, comedy is important, but it's not going to change the world, but it's an important part of the lived human experience. And it's important to do, and that's really great. But there are many more meaningful, awesome, beautiful ways to change the world. I disagree. And in a weird way. Okay.

You saw Harold and Kumar. Yeah. It inspired you. It helped give you a voice. Yes. Cut to 15 years later. Yeah. You're doing Patriot Act.

Patriot Act, right. And then you're doing the show about Saudi Arabia about how the, what's the name, BLS, BLT, MBS killed the journalist. Yeah. And it gets pulled from Netflix. Right. And out of that happening, all kinds of press hit that assassination. Sure. And hundreds of thousands, millions of people.

Find out about the corruption of the Saudi empire. Has it done anything to change the world? No, but tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people would not have heard about it. Had that episode not been canceled, had you not watched Harold and Kumar. So I do think that there is... This is an interesting line that you're... I think there is an important there that is often underappreciated. Okay.

Okay. I appreciate that. You're such an optimistic person. That's really beautiful. That's awesome. I certainly want to be humble, and I certainly don't want to think of myself as. important but at the same time I want to acknowledge the fact that you know I lucked into getting the office yeah as I meet people almost every day who say thank you for the office it got me through such hard times yeah that's pretty awesome and helped me and

my sister was dying of cancer and we'd watch it and laugh together in the hospital or my parents were getting a divorce and we would watch it and I've told these stories before but I hear this stuff like that's almost every day yeah and I want to honor the role that entertainment and storytelling and truth-telling and comedy, you know, brings to the world without saying, oh, it's this little hobby thing. And it doesn't mean anything and it doesn't have any impact in it. You know what I mean? I want to be right-sized about it.

I don't want to be arrogant about it. Yeah. And I also don't want to be poo-pooing of the importance of storytelling. Yeah. And that's really great. That show and what you did on that show did give a lot of people. so much joy and comfort and respite in a good way. And comedy does that as well.

And also, look, it's important to me. It's given me purpose and given me, yeah, like a path and direction in life. I'm very lucky. You know, things were not good at Office Max. Were you not moving enough printers? I wasn't moving enough printers. And I also, there's this thing where you had to, basically, Office Max made people in the printing department sell these extra insurance policies. Oh yeah. Yeah, it was called like performax or something. Yeah.

And for an extra $20. Yeah. Yeah. You can ensure you've got to move those. You know, so do you want to you're, I know you're leaving. Did you have a red vest like Staples? No, no, no, no. We don't, we don't speak of Staples. I just thought of a white. What about Office Depot? Was that, was that similar? I don't know. They might have been the same parent company, but I just wore a white Oxford with khakis. So when we were first sitting down, you were like, Rain, Rain, you've had so many stand-up comics on your show. Why do you have so many stand-up comics on your show? Are you starting to understand maybe a little bit why. Yes. You love scratching the surface here. I like you. You love getting to the subterranean. You're you're an emotional fracker, Rain Wilson. I'm an emotional fracker. You go fracking. You go deep. Emotional mother fracker. But I do think that the thing I appreciate so much about stand-ups versus actors.

Yeah. It's really hard to get actors to really open up and to go there and stand-up comics. You can mix it up a little bit and and and there. They're willing to get more vulnerable and talk about mental health and struggles and how the sausage is made. Yeah. In a way that so many other artists, it's hard to find artists that will speak with the same candor. Sure. Speaking of which. Have you been to India, by the way?

I have. How was that experience? It was amazing. It's everything everywhere all at once, right? It's like the movie. It's, you're in every spider across. It's absolutely astonishing. and speaking of celebrity,

the funniest thing happens is that, so we went to Darm Shala, and we went to Rishikesh, and we went to Amritsar and Delhi, and when you go to a lot of the more remote places of India, there's a lot of Indian tourists that are coming in from way more even remote places. Like we were in Rishakash,

that's a, it's a Hindu, you know, pilgrimage site. Yeah. And a lot of these families have never or rarely seen white, folk before and want a picture with the white folk. Right. So my wife and I spent a lot of time in Rishikesh, having our photos taken with Indian families who had no idea that I was on the office. That's hilarious. And I imagine maybe one of them. Like, oh, and we went to Rishakash and we met some like nice white Americans who were tourists and we did this photo and they showed the photo and they're like,

it's twice true. Don't you understand? That's a great meme. Have you seen this meme? Has it like Has it popped up on Reddit or something? It hasn't. Oh, that's great. That's so great. Maybe we can make that happen. Let's make it happen. But India is a powerful place to visit.

You must. Everyone must. And it's so true. Let's go together. I would love that. There's a famous quote from a Hindu friend of mine who says, God is everywhere, but God lives in India. Oh, yeah, you see it. Yeah, it's all happening.

Spirituality is. woven in the fabric of living in a way that I've never experienced before or since. What's your relationship? Well, they already had a soul boom there. Do you understand? Oh, they had one 5,000 years ago. Yeah, totally. What's my relationship with India or spirituality in India?

Both. I think, well, what's really cool, what I love most about, specifically my Indian heritage, that's really awesome when you go back there and you visit, is so many different religions are intersecting all at once. And everybody is uniquely aware of everybody else's religion. Meaning, oh, he or she is sick, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim,

Bahai, Bahai, Sunni, Shia, like all the subgroups people know, oh, like we have to stop right now. So-and-so is walking over here to acknowledge the death site of this particular saint for this particular faith. And by the way, it goes without saying that to be a Hindu is an umbrella term for a thousand different kind of subsets of beliefs.

So I imagine there's an awareness too of what kind of Hindu you are at school, what kind of guru you've had, what kind of tradition you'll come from as well. So what's what that, that spiritual kind of, let's call it the spiritual operating system, system. It's already in your MS DAS. Like it's you're starting, you're running your software, spirituality.exe is already running. It's already running. That's really cool about India and growing up Indian. Number two, there is a beautiful collective spirit. So families live with each other. Extended families live with each other. So this kind of like very Western existential angst of 23 and me and who am I and where am I where do I belong where is my this is all this is all reconciled like the moment you go back home you're like this is my house my dad was born in this house

that is my grandmother this is my you know these are my cousins you are so tapped into that you can the moment you sit down and like your cousin's bed in his or her bedroom you're like my uncle has slept on this bed. There's, there's no, there's no, I, one of the jokes that I was working on is like, in India, there's a room with a bed in. Right. And different rain could come in. Right. You, like, if we go to Delhi together, we'll go to my cousin Sahel's place. You may sleep on Sawhal's bed. Like, Rain needs a place to sleep. And you'll be, all right, sleep here. And so Rain Wilson may have slept on that bed. I may have slept on that bed. Sahel may sleep next to the bed. Next to the bed. Yeah, yeah, head to toe. Yeah. So you go, you go head to toe. Right. And he, he doesn't

know that, you know, you're, you're Dwight Shrew, he has no idea. But that's really beautiful. You understand how that's, like, very different than what we have here in the West. Right. We're kind of those two things I think people are searching for, but it is not integrated into your day-to-day life. Some people have it, but I would say the majority of people don't have it. We were walking across a bridge in Rishikes, and there was a fire down by the river. And there were some people down there and in some robes or whatnot. And we said to our tour guide, hey, what's going on down there? And he was like, oh, and he could spot it. And he said, that's a Hindu burial right. They're burning the body of the father. Yeah. Because those are the sons because they're wearing this

color robe and they've shaved their head in this way. And that's the holy man, you know, performing the ceremony. Yeah. And I was like, do you need like a permit? My thing was like, do you need a permit to burn your father's body by the river. Like, I don't see anyone from the government or a policeman or anything like that. It's like, no, you just go down there and bring the body. Yeah. And as we're walking across this bridge and watching this unfold, I was like, what an interesting relationship also to death.

You talked about sharing a home, but being in proximity to the rituals around death. You're around it, and it's not a scary thing. You see your grandparents die. You see uncles and aunts die. And you get the chance to, you know, I visited two years ago in 2022. I got to see my grandmother before she died. I got to, you know, sit next to her and sleep near her. And it's awesome.

It's not the scary thing. It's really, really cool. It's not an embalmed body that maybe you can take a peek at or something like that. No, my nani isn't like King Tut and like, all right, like she's embalmed over there. So again, that spirituality and community, interwoven into so many different activities that are so human. Death is the most profoundly human thing that that is going to happen to all of us. Yeah, I love how you already were thinking about like city and state ordinances.

You're like, how can you do this? Yeah, I was trying to figure it out. Do you go down to the, like, maybe it's a little bit of a stand-of-comedy's kind of mine. Like, okay, my dad died, do I go down to City Hall, file for a permit? No. To do the burn. Is there like a chart? and like online, you're like, I'm going to burn the body

and this burial site. No, no, you don't go to, you know, burial site.gov. No, it doesn't work like that. No, no, it's just like a thing you do. Tell me about your Muslim heritage in Davis and with your family. And how did that work?

How did that manifest itself? For me, spirituality was really like, it was a thing that I could just feel at a young age, you know, like my dad was very involved at the mosque. I learned Arabic, I learned how to read the Quran, I went to Sunday school, I still pray to this day. I mean, Muslims, it's the, you know, the regiment is, we're pretty regimented. It's five, five calls to prayer a day. Five a day, you know what I mean?

Do you have a little rug? Do you have a little rug? I got a big rug, I got the baby, I got the travel, yeah, sometimes I'll throw it on a jacket, I'll pray, yeah, yeah. It's all, yeah, I dig it. That's awesome. My Bluetooth was open, man. It air dropped and I felt it. But how did that work?

But by the way, I'm also like, I'm also very much moved by, you know, I can be in Italy and I can walk into a church and hear, you know, calls to prayer and be moved by it. Like I, I'm just moved by that. Well, in Islam, the divinity of Jesus is inherent in the religion and all the Abrahamic faiths. Yeah, we big up prophet, prophet Isa. Yeah. Yeah. How did it feel in your life growing up?

Like what did it, what did it mean to you? Is it something you thought about a lot? Like walking into school? Was it a feeling inside of you? Or did it, how did it manifest? How did it work on you? For me, religion or spirituality has always been. How do I find agency and purpose and meaning in a world where I feel pretty small and insignificant

can in meaning I don't know what what things mean and why and it it gave me this really kind of beautiful almost like a rope something that you can hang on to so much of comedy and you let's call it like the modernism movement and we've gone past to that to met metamodernism and then nihilism these two things were in conflict with each other you know And so, but I could always feel like a desire to ask the why. You know? So it's interesting that my dad was a scientist and so much of American thought and American kind of, let's call it culture, is very scientific and empirical and data-driven.

And probably 95% of all scientists and academics for that matter. Totally are atheists. Yeah. Or just there is an obsession with the what. Like, what, the material world is all that matters. What is this? And let's use hypotheses and scientists and let's be scientific. Let's have a scientific method to find out what are the key components of this table.

What is in it? And what, how many, it's H2 hydrogen for one oxygen. And yes, as a child who grew up with, you know, shout out to the periodic table. I love the periodic table. My dad loves a periodic table. I was simultaneously into the what, but I also just was wondering the why. Like, why are we here?

What does, like, what happens? Is there a soul? What happens to me after they die? Was there a conflict between science and faith in your household, or did your dad kind of, like, wed the two kind of effortlessly? To me, like, I had amazing parents that just lived it.

They, like, lived a really beautiful, ethical, spiritual path that I was like... That was not in common. conflict with not at all science and the periodic table and the enlighten no my dad's a my dad has a PhD in chemistry no yeah he's he's he's all up in science yeah he loves science my mom's a physician you know like so loves science but shout out to Kaiser Permanente but Kaiser is not trying to tell you what happens to you after you die or do you have a soul or why are you here why are you here and what does this mean like only religion spirituality art so why would create music

Why are we here? Yeah. Man Hassan. Reveal the meaning of life. I mean, if you want to start with, you know, Surafata, we can start with Surafata. We can get into that. Let's get into it. No, no.

I don't have that answer. What worked for me with my spiritual upbringing and the way I was raised Muslim is that Islam does a really beautiful job of combining two things that I think are really important. necessary to life, which is like there's a practical element of like you have to live in the world. We are physical beings of the world. But then there's also the spiritual element. So the rituals and a lot of the stuff that's laid out is pretty practical. You know, when they talk about like Islamic finance and banking and you shouldn't have usury or interest. Like these things are really very practical and they make sense ten toes down and your lived

reality on planet Earth. Nice. Awesome. Like, I'm with it. Like, Wutang, enter the 36 chambers. I want to enter all 36 chambers. Quran, I want to enter all 30 chapters of this thing. Awesome. Like, I get the pragmatism of it. Simultaneously, it has a ton of, if you follow Sufism, and if you follow, like, a lot of spiritual, Urdu, poetry.

There is a huge, awesome spiritual component. Yeah, mystical. Mystical component to, you know, Islam as well. Those two things is kind of like who I am, which is awesome. So it worked for me. It doesn't work for everybody, but like it worked for me. That's amazing. There's a quote from

the Imam Ali who was married to Prophet Muhammad's daughter and became the center of the faith for a while and it's one of my favorite quotes of all time. In fact, I think I almost lead off my book with it and it says does thou reckon myself a puny being when within the universe is folded?

Wow. And you think about that from both a scientific standpoint and a mystical standpoint. Yeah. Do you reckon yourself a puny being when within you the universe is folded? The universe is folded within us.

Sure. We are stardust. We have atoms in us that were there at the Big Bang. Yeah. We are miraculous stardust beings. all of the elements of the universe are somehow contained in our bodies.

And at the same time, it has that metaphysical element as well. Like the universe is folded within me, the universe of possibility of love, of hope, of beauty, of order, and a reflection of the divine, you know, that we are reflecting the divine in having a conversation like this, in being open-hearted and using our imagination, and using our humor and using language.

We're reflecting the divine in the same way that beautiful galaxies and the Milky Way reflect the divine. Yeah. So there's that, again, that harmony of science and faith. So I had this, like, upbringing. And so when a lot of my friends in, like, late high school, early college were like, let's do acid. Like, I got to see God. I'm like, I already kind of had a pretty cool relationship. Mm-hmm.

Ramadan's pretty intense. You got 30 days. Yeah. No food and water. You go to the mosque at night. Like, you pray. It's pretty dope. and, who, rain, Islam in its relationship to significant American art is pretty profound.

Really? I didn't know that. No, there's a lot of Muslim artists. You know, Islam is one of the, you know, religions and also a pretty popular region within hip-hop. Most-F, Buster, I mean, you can just list. There's a ton of hip-hop artists. Islam in its relationship to black America has a deep, influence in that. Shout out to Dr. Sherman Jackson, who wrote the book, Islam in the Black America. You should have them on the show.

Then there's also its influence on music through Kat Stevens, Yusuf Islam, a ton of stand-up comedians, Rami Yusuf, Dave Chappelle. It has had a, it is intersected art and culture and American art in a really beautiful way as well,

which is really awesome. Like I'm, like, it gets, really cool when you really dig into it it also is really interesting to explore the intersection of you know the golden age of of Islam yeah around the year 1,000 or so and how that influenced the Renaissance everything from algebra and algorithms being created and and and and and street lights and the incredible inventions of that of that Muslim golden age but then how Muslim thoughts I think it was I think it was Muslims that really were translated

the ancient Greek texts of the Bible and brought it to Europe. I mean, those roots are also really fascinating. So much of what we owe, what we think of as Western culture is owed to the Islamic Golden Age. Totally, and for me, there's like certain books that I've read and things that I've learned about

that like deeply just resonated with me Another historical example of like, I remember learning about this during the Mughal Empire in India, there was the Mughal emperor Akbar the Great. And there's a famous Hindi film called Jodha Akbar, which is like the story of Akbar, who's the Muslim prince falling in love with, you know, Jodah the Hindu-like princess. And they fall in love in this very Montague and Capulet, Romeo and Juliet, sort of ways. But if you read about Akbar and the way when he was ruling over India, he had these open kind of debates amongst different theologians openly in the palace. So you would have Jewish scholars and Christian scholars and Islamic scholars.

They would all openly have this conversation about God and religious text. And it wasn't a punitive zero-sum game. Right. It was like, oh, we all coexist and we share these different ideas with each other. And I remember reading about that and being like, that's really, really powerful. And, you know, it's a part of my own story. You know, I grew up in a Muslim family. My wife grew up in a Hindu family.

Like, these things are uniquely possible only because of my Indian heritage. And I believe Indian culture is at its best when it's all of those things happening at once, which is, you know, pretty awesome. People can debate. It's not like that. I don't agree with that. but like these are particular pieces of work or pieces of history that spoke to me in a certain way. Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally. Like you can read a book or listen to an album and it hits you a certain way and you're like, oh wow, this profoundly changed my life. And the way I look at the world and think about the world, you know. There was another book that also just shaped the way I think about spirituality, which was Hamza Yusuf's book, Purification of the Heart. Like that just changed the way.

I don't know it. Oh, it's an amazing book. Yeah, what is it? What's it about? But it's specifically about, you know, the spiritual aspect of Islam of the things that befall your human heart, jealousy, envy. He deals with it chapter by chapter by chapter. And there's different prayers and things that you can do that analyze the, basically

how you keep your heart healthy, like how you live in a world where these feelings overtake you. And how do I actively? What do you do if you're feeling envy or? or anger, resentment, or which we are all a slave too. And so in that chapter, it's like you pray for the one that you are envious of. These were, again, spiritual feelings

meeting the practical world. Hey, I'm feeling this way. What do I do in the world about it? You know, so it worked. You mentioned Ramadan before. Yeah. It's about, it's coming on up. And do you, and the Baha'is have a fast,

very similar to Ramadan. Yes. No food or drink from sunrise to sunset. Yes. They're 19 days, so it's a little bit... You guys get 11 days shorter. Yeah, it's a little bit more milk toast. But what does that experience like for you?

How do you find it spiritually rewarding and challenging? Growing up, it was just about being around family. It reminds me of my mom and dad. It reminds me of my, you know, when I was in third grade, my grandfather and my grandmother living with us. It reminds me of, oh, the sun is setting. We're all breaking fast. we're all eating together.

Like, it's those feelings. Oh, it's Eid. Mom is going to get me New Jordans. It's like my Eith present. Like, oh, my God, I'm going to get a Sega Genesis because it's Eid. Eat is the end of- Ramadan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, it's like Christmas, but for real, for real. Like, we aren't. You've gone through something. Yeah. Yeah. And to me, it was awesome because like capitalism is meeting spirituality.

It's like, you paid. You paid. You did 30 days. You deserve a Sega Genesis. And I'm like, I do. Like, I can feel it at my book. literally. But also, there's something really cool about the night prayers and going to the mosque. And, you know, I remember I was living in L.A. at the time. And when you go to the mosque, what's really

cool about the American Muslim community is how diverse it is. So I remember going to the North Hollywood mosque. I mean, the mosque is like the size of this room. And in the room, you know, you will have Bengali cab drivers. You will have Indian uncles. You will have Indian uncles. You will have Egyptian uncles, their children, kids running around and screaming, rapper Lupe Fiasco, all praying. Amazing. Like a Bengali cab driver is praying next to Lupe Fiasco, one of my favorite rappers of all time. And like, I'm here.

And we're in this like shoe closet in her pocket. Yeah, it's just a really amazing experience. What about on a personal level, I know in the Baha'i faith, the, you know, eating before the sun rises and maybe having some tea and some water to get you through the day. By the way, I'd love to hear what you like to eat in the morning before a day of fasting. Sure. But then... You like magical dates?

I don't really like the dudes, yeah. Oh, my God. You go with the dates? Of course. Of course. You guys... Baha people don't do dates. No.

Oh, man. I got to put you on magical dates. Okay. Yeah, dates are incredible. All right. All right. I'll get it. I have some great dates at home.

I should have brought them. I have some great dates. I'll send you my address. You can send you days. Amazon. One click. I'm not even going to do the Amazon. I'm going to put you on to some real good dates.

Oh, damn. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Yeah. I love it. I mean, there's so good you might convert. But I think there's something so powerful about breaking bread before the sun is coming up. And then like finishing and then watching the sunrise and being in prayer and in meditation.

Yeah. Having started in the dark and then the sun rising. And there's such a beautiful kind of metaphor to the sun being like. God, like a metaphor for the power of Allah, creation and light and warmth and heat and growth and life-giving force and being in humility before that as the sun moves across the sky

and saying, I am foregoing the comforts of the day in terms of food and drink. Well, there's two things that are like really that I've only gotten to appreciate as I've gotten older. There were some moments where I was in my 20s and I'm like, this is just legislated dehydration. Like, why is this like spiritual dehydration? The water's the harder thing.

The water and the coffee is so hard. Like the coffee headaches are really tough. But there's two things that are really cool, right? That was, I was like, oh, this is awesome. So I'm, I don't do all five prayers. I want to. I really want to, but I just, I miss them. You know, on a good day I might get one to three.

Okay. If I'm going to be 100% honest. Okay. Don't fact check me. or God's going to fact check me on the day of judgment. But what's really cool is during Ramadan, it's not just about abstaining from food and water. You're not supposed to back bite, lie, cheat, curse.

There's all these other things about being a good person. And if you violate those things, those will also make your fast and valid. So that's one piece of it of like, oh, I have to actively think about what am I do? Like, what is my day-to-day life? What am I implicitly or explicitly participating in? So am I talking to rain and then when I leave and I'm outside and I'm talking to a friend,

like rain is totally out of his fucking mind. Like I'm backbiting and I'm cursing. Like this is not good. I'm not supposed to do that. And it would kind of, some would argue it would negate my fast. But the other part of it is you try to, to the best of your ability, you're supposed to make all five prayers from sunrise all the way to the night prayer. and what's cool about that is it's the first time

generally during the year that I flip the script so normally my life is Google Calendar first and then spirituality and all that stuff second so when you can fit it in yeah when you fit it in I got this two o'clock thing with Rain Wilson it's on my Google account and I got to do that first but Ramadan is one of the few times where I'm like

okay I'm gonna do this thing with Rain at two the afternoon prayer is at like 12 30 or one. Okay, maybe what I'll do is all like go to the green, I'll try to knock it up. It's for the first time you have, you start with spirituality. It resets your priorities. Yeah. And it's cool. And in a career that I was, that I am pursuing where there's so much not in my control. And there's so much where you feel disillusioned and powerless and it feels really confusing. That call from UTA, the audition that may or may not go your way. the healthcare bill that you got to cover for your kids, you know, all that stuff,

it gives me something quite grounding and that's really cool. By the end of it, when it's Eve, I'm like very happy, but the journey is. And I think too as well, like when I'm hungry and I'm thirsty and it's three o'clock or four o'clock, and you get your cotton mouth, you've got really bad breath or you take a nap. To be again in that, like, ah, I'm living in sacrifice of the material for something greater than myself. Yeah. There is a...

And then, you know what, Rain? I'm gonna... I'm coming back around. You're so right. You're so right. The power of art. Okay. I'm gonna tell you a little story.

Are you a fan of basketball? Yes. Okay. So, growing up... I know the story you're gonna tell. Hakeem Elijah one was like... Yeah. Everything.

Hakeem Elijah one... He would have a day game in Ramadan. So... And not drink water. So for the... For people who don't know, Hakeem Elijah one is probably one of the greatest... One of the greatest centers

in NBA history. Sure. was, you know, kind of, I would argue in between Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O'Neal in terms of his, like, legacy on the position of being center. But he really was this amazing center that, like, stretched the court, had incredible footwork. Kobe has referenced the power of Hakeem. Like many small forwards reference Hakeem's like Hakeem the Dream, his footwork in their lineage of the way they play basketball. So I'm a kid. My dad is the president of the Muslim Mosque Association in Sacramento.

And Hakeem was playing, the Houston Rockers were playing the Sacramento Kings. And Hakeem, when he would travel, would go to local mosques. And I remember he pulled up to our Sunday school and came down into the basement, like where we would like, where like a bunch of us learned.

Yeah. And I'm in the third grade. So this is the 1993, 1994 season where he wins the MVP and he wins the NBA championship. He's at like the peak of his powers. Wow. He basically just came downstairs and met all these kids. These Indian, Pakistani, Afghani, just kids got to meet Hakim the dream Elijah one.

And he pulled up and he just sat down and talked to us. And then he was like, I'm going to go upstairs and pray the afternoon prayer. I'm going to pray soher. And like all these kids. I mean, it was like my Muhammad Ali moment. Like all these kids like ran after him. And then like we fought like, I'm going to pray next to Hakim. I got to pray next to Hakim.

Yeah, yeah. It was awesome. And. And later that year, there was this NBA on NBC segment where like Bob Costas was like, Hakeem, the dream Elijah won, fasting during Ramadan. Like they were talking about the way he would fast during games. And it was just massively inspiring. I'm like, this guy is cooking David Robinson and has not had a sip of Gatorade.

Yeah. Or a calorie since 6 a.m. Yeah. He's just dropping some of his best career numbers during Ramadan. And it was this profound. inspiring moment, you know? And yeah, what Hakeem represented to me and to many Muslims around the world was very powerful. And then Muhammad Ali, obviously, you know, before he would fight, would sometimes do a prayer, we'd put his hands up like this. And I just remember being like

seeing that old footage of him, literally inside of a ring. And you got to understand the boxing industry, still to this day, deeply corrupt and dangerous. and exploitive. And he was able to maintain this really strong, powerful semblance of humanity and spirituality through all of that that was super inspiring. And I have so many Muslim friends growing up

that have these photos of Muhammad Ali coming to their mosque and literally just like little brown kids sitting on their lap that have like photos with Muhammad, the greatest boxer of all time. Wow. So there's this really beautiful thing

of I was impacted. by these really, I just call them giants. These people were giants. Harold, Kumar, Hakeem. Yeah. Yeah, I got to walk amongst, and I know Calpan, and I got to meet Hakeem, Elijah, it's pretty cool.

You referenced earlier there being a little bit of a conflict in the stand-up comedy world of comedians that are jaded, pessimistic, maybe a little materialist, don't necessarily have kind of a spiritual, foundation and then your spirituality and the beautiful stories you told of growing up and your family giving you kind of hope purpose mission perspective yeah a unified connection to science and faith well my critique is more is more so it's more of hollywood in and kind of like uh western

but but capitalistic pursuits that that's fine but my question is was that ever difficult to navigate that that kind of like sometimes that a little bit corrosive pessimistic feeling that happens in the world of stand-up and bringing your kind of Muslim heritage and spiritual foundation no it wasn't a problem at all like for me the thing that I like what I love most about comedy is comedy is kind of you just have your bullshit goggles on and you're just observing bullshit and hypocrisy in the world why are we doing it this? Like you're worried about this, but have you seen your... Whether it's airplane food or whether it's the White House. Yeah, that's interesting.

You're complaining that my hand is dirty. When was the last time you cleaned your iPhone screen? Like, it's just, that's every observation of like a stand-up act, right? That wasn't in conflict with my upbringing in my household. My parents are constantly arguing about that sort of stuff, litigating the minutia in the hypocrisies of the world. also like this idea that the art form of comedy is like spiritually or culturally devoid of religion

there is a deep history of Jewish culture in stand-up comedy going back to like the borschfeld comedians so they were also massively I think inspiring with me and my generation of comics if you look at like Rami Yusuf's comedy it's so culturally and spiritually significant and what he's kind of laying out, you know, of like what it means to grow up in New Jersey and an Egyptian, Muslim American household. His show is incredible in that way, you know? Yeah. And so it's totally similar, in my opinion, to... We couldn't get him, so we got you next to...

He's busy. He's busy guy. He's busy guy. Where are you headed, and what do you want to build with the kind of storytelling that you do? I just... There's all the career stuff that, you know, you're doing. in pre-production and you're filming stuff and you're you're working on stuff but for me it really is just like working out the next joke the next idea it's really beautiful so i had my last special

off with his head and like i'm back on stage it's just like working out new bits it's the best like that's and i want to do that for the rest of my life like i want to do what you know jim gaffigan and lewis black and dick gregory and all those guys they literally just have dates on the books and you work towards that and you just want to keep expressing yourself. Wow. That's it. That's really, that's really, when I try to make it more than that, that's when, you get into trouble.

Yeah, you, all the disillusionment and all the disappointment. It's, it's really not about that. Like, yeah. I have this, I have this seven minutes that I'm really just trying to work on. I did Mike Barbiglius podcast and I'm just trying to crack this whole run about why being the fastest kid in your school was the most important thing when you were in the third grade. It was like the biggest... It is true.

Yeah, the fastest kid at your school and then having a really great packed lunch. Why was that so significant? Here's what was significant to me. Yeah. It was one kid slower than me. So there would always be... I don't know why there were so many races.

Like you go to P.E. Like, okay, everyone line up against the fence. Yeah. We're all going to run to the other fence. Totally. Right? What is that about? Yeah, what is this about?

And then, thank God, there was one guy slower than me. So I wasn't like the slow. Because being the last guy to touch the fence, that was no fun. And you also knew, you know, your parents and your teachers were like, if you just try, all that matters is that you try. But deep down you know, you're like, that's bullshit. There's no fucking way. I can be the slowest kid in this class. Yeah.

There is this like Roman gladiator element that like taps into, you know, your brain. There's this other thing that I'm trying to crack, which is I don't know why my kids are six and four. And for some reason when I close the door and if they have friends over, they'll immediately be like, chase me. Chase me, right? There is something about children when all doors are closed. They're like, let's run around the house right now.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh, there's a kitchen island and there's a hot stove. Let's just laugh. I want, I want the thrill of danger of knives potentially falling on my head. I can open up the backyard, like go run up.

No, they're like, no, no, no, no, no. We need to be sharp. So, that's what I'm into, Ray. I love it. I love it. I don't know if that's, if that's, I'm thinking too small. I think that's beautiful. You know, you have such an important voice in terms of current events and politics and big ideas.

We're in a really challenging and overwhelming time right now. Do you have any perspective on what would you say to folks trying to get through this kind of onslaught of racism and misinformation? and kind of dismantling of democracy that's happening. I want to give a shout out to my big bro, Roy Wood Jr. But Roy had this amazing take at Sundance. This was really profound and beautiful. So by the way, if any of your listeners want to watch his new special, Lonely Flowers on Hulu, it's incredible.

He's one of the best stand-up comics in the game, I think, right now. But he basically said, you know, when you're kind of consuming your media diet, just try to determine what is nutrition for me and what is angering me. Like what is just trying to incite some sort of reaction from me. Right. And I think he had this very practical thing where he was like, why don't you just try reading the newspaper instead of consuming it on your phone or engaging with social media?

You get the same New York Times A1 coverage. You can read to the end. You don't have to fight with anyone in the comments. You don't have to play these shadow proxy wars. Going to click through to something else. Totally. And it allows you to like engage with the story deep. You still get your nutrients and then you can still avoid kind of the anger and the, the outrage.

What I like to do also for perspective is there's really great like profiles and pieces from people that I admire and look up to. There's this book that I'm reading called James Baldwin, the last interviews. So Baldwin passed away in the 60s. And it allowed me to go back to these iconic interviews that he had in his last days where he's talking about race and politics.

When you go back to those things, you kind of see America for what it is. And those tools of whatever you want to call it, race, class, poverty, xenophobia, they've always kind of existed in the air. And when you go back to the Jedi that came before, they have profound wisdom that you're not gonna get on Instagram rails.

Right. You know what I mean? No, but yeah, or there's gonna be real. On the Atlantic, you know, or something like that. It's, it's, so when you go, when they, when they say we're living through unprecedented times, no doubt, like there's no doubt that we are, but the existential angsts,

of the present has always existed. If anyone is a fan of graphic novels, read the prologue to Watchmen. Frank Miller writes a prologue in the late 80s leading up to Watchmen, and he's sitting in a bar, and he's basically writing to about the current state of America. But he's like, crime is amok.

We're on the precipice of nuclear doom. I don't know what the future holds. Will we even make it? And here we are, we're 34 years later, and 35 years later, we clearly are. You know, 36 years later rather, yeah. So it's those things- I feel like you need a book club.

I need a book club? Yeah. I feel like you need like Hassan's book club. We've gotten so many great book recommendations from you. Totally. I love the fact that you wrote your book. Thanks. Yeah. That's all we're going to talk about on my show.

I can't wait. The fact that you bled out on the page, and edited. It was one of the hardest things I ever did, and I remember finishing it, and I was typing, I didn't have my shirt on, and I was like sweating, and it was a deadline, and I needed to finish this last chapter, they had to rush it into the printers,

and I was like, I'm never fucking doing this again. How was your shirt off? I don't know. I don't know why my shirt was. It was hot, that's such a great image. But I was at my friend's beach house, and it was really hot, and the AC wasn't working, and I was sweating. was sweating and binging it out of the clubby yeah and uh and of course i was like i'm never doing

this again and so what did i do then i signed a contract for another book so i've got another one do next year so holy shit uh yeah uh okay let's do ossef monvi stories and get out of here ossef monvi stories so many he is a legend hilarious tell you hysterical a great dramatic actor great dramatic actor yeah big range we did waiting for godot again he's got a huge he's got a Yeah, in the theater and have become, we kind of, we went through the trenches on that project and have, have bonded. Was it rich and meaningful and amazing?

Should I do theater? I'd love to do theater. You should absolutely do theater. I should do theater. Yeah, yeah. Nothing, nothing, it's like doing an open mic or something like that with new material. Like nothing homes you as an actor more than doing theater.

It was an incredible, It was an incredible experience. I'm trying to think of specific Asif Monvi stories. How do you not have a Monvi story? I've got to have one. I should have been prepared. Damn it.

Do you have nothing that made you just crack up? He's a wild and zany dude. He has a zany. And he's one of the OG South Asian artists that fight a lot of uphill battles. Yes, yes he did. So in Monvee's name, we cheer.

And cheers to Asa Rays of Glass. To Asif Monvee. Well, I have very, question for you since we're here do you want to save it for your podcast mine's going to just be about this okay um i'm 39 years old i'm turning 40 this year i feel like i have a six year old i have a four year old i've been married 10 years all the lanes in my freeway of life are merging my children are young my parents are old i'm stretched way too thin it's 344 i'm already late for the next thing does it is

get better? Or is it just going to get stressful and worse? And is my body going to decay and I'm just going to die? Because I feel like I'm being held together by duct tape right now. I'm going to say that enjoy your kids before their teenagers. Because once they're teenagers, it's a totally, totally different experience. Got it. So this is what people have done. Good luck, buddy. So is it like I'm playing Atari right now. Yeah. And they're like, they turn their teenagers

and they're just like, you're playing field hockey, actually. You're not even playing a video game. Like the game changes completely by the time they're a deal. See, I was wondering where you're gonna go with that metaphor. Yeah.

What's the analogy? Yeah, what's the analogy? Let's figure this out. This is a bit. You were in a petting zoo. Okay. And you think you're playing with a baby goat and a baby lamb.

Yeah. And then all of, of a sudden you turn around. And you're in Jurassic Park. And it's a wolverine. Hilarious. And I feel like Jurassic Park was a better metaphor. You think I should have gone to Jurassic Park?

Yeah, yeah, the T-Rex. You're the stand-up. The T-Rex, and then you're the writer. You're the, you're in the little porta-potty. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's going to be a new set of challenges. It's going to be thrilling and exciting and it's going to be hard as fuck, especially in contemporary environment with phones and screens and social media.

So you'll figure it out. You're going to navigate it. Great. We'll figure it out. Yeah. God willing. Yeah. Thanks so much for coming on Soul Boom.

These are some wonderful stories and perspectives. Yeah. And this was our lunch. This was our getting to know you lunch. This was our getting to know each other. Next time we'll sit down and we'll have a tuna sandwich. Great. Let's do that.

We'll break a fast together. Hey, we could do that. We follow the lunar calendar. Yes. Yeah. Right on. Right on. Like a wolf man.

All right. Thanks, Hassan. Thanks, man. The Soul Boom podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify. Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.