Soul Boom - Is God Real If Suffering Exists? Gary Gulman Explores

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

Gary Gulman (HBO's The Great Depresh, Netflix’s Stand Up for Drummers) joins Rainn Wilson for a vulnerable, hilarious, and soul-searching conversation on faith, depression, and the strange beauty of being alive. From the darkest seasons of mental illness to his life-changing experience with electroconvulsive therapy, Gary opens up about what saved him, and how he still struggles with questions about God and suffering. THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! Airbnb 👉 ⁠⁠https://airbnb.com/host⁠⁠ Masterclass (at least 15% OFF!) 👉 https://www.masterclass.com/soulboom BRAGG (20% OFF! CODE: SOULBOOM) 👉 ⁠https://www.bragg.com SOUL BOOM LIVE IN LOS ANGELES 5/27! Tickets 🎟️: ⁠⁠⁠https://soulboom.com/live⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW US! 👉 ⁠⁠⁠Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠ 👉 TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠ CONTACT US! 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 Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to soul. I believe in God. I'm not a fan. I'm fascinated by a group of people who have every reason to distrust God and Christianity and have embraced it to this degree. I have an answer for this. It's the only conceivable answer. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it.

Do a lot of your guests get emotional when they're sitting with you? These are very beautiful things to consider. Thanks for saying so. 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. Soul Boom live at Largo, May 27th.

I am so excited to announce that we're doing our very first in real life, IRL Soul Boom podcast recording live in Los Angeles, May 27th. at the legendary Largo Theater. That's the Largo Theater in L.A. with our very special guest and a dear friend of mine. So get ready for a night of laughter, deep thoughts, spiritual silliness, as I dive into all things, comedy, consciousness, God, and whatever else flies out of our weird little brains. That's the Largo Theater at the Coronet, May 27th in Los Angeles.

Go to Soulboom.com slash live. Tickets are limited. Soulboom.com slash live. I find to this day I cannot have a great thing happen. And to me a great thing is that I do a show and people come. So I say a prayer before every show and then say a prayer afterwards that it wasn't a disaster or that it went well or anything like that. And it's just it's it comes from my dad's version of our religion, which is ask him for nothing. Thank him for everything.

If somebody is dying, then you can ask him to save that lives. And but other than that, there was, and I, and I loved, I have a friend who's a hilarious comedian and an actor named Robert Kelly. And we work together when we were starting out in comedy as, as waiters. And he would have an audition and he would say, pray for me. And I didn't have the heart to tell him that, listen, I can't, I can't pray for myself at an audition. But you could pray for someone else, couldn't you? No. In your dad's universal. It was too, it was too trivial. You're going to pray?

You're going to bother God with your friends audition for a, for an, uh, not off Broadway, off whatever Boston concerns. It's too busy, Gary. Yeah, God is so busy. He's really busy. He can't, he doesn't have time for Robert Kelly's audition. Thank him for every crumb, but do not ask him for a crime. Then that creates a God that's not omniscient. No. That's a God that is like, and they must have had a, He's very capable, extremely capable for big ticket items. But doesn't have time. This is why you're a comedian because big ticket is a hilarious way to put that.

And you don't hear big ticket that much. I had forgotten on my comedian hat. Forgotten that I knew the expression, Big Ticket, because I'm picturing a refrigerator. I'm dealing with this war here. Yes. The power grid is down in Nepal. No, totally. Look at that.

Someone's praying Robert Kelly's audition for law and order? Like, what the fuck? Are you fucking kidding me? With this, get off. You see when I'm dealing with this. Oi-ve! Yes. My grandmother was Jewish.

Oh, wow. What was her name? Marie Nunberg. I love it. She was a Jewish nightclub singer from Romania. Wow. Yeah. Did you have a close relationship with Marie?

She died when my dad was nine years old. in the saddest possible death I've ever heard in my life. Oh, my. I'm not sure if I want to bring this. Yeah, that's okay. I'm gonna tell the story we may cut it out. So get this. She had tuberculosis.

She was in a tuberculosis hospital in Chicago. This is circa 1950. And she was finally gonna be released. I don't know, she got better. I don't know you got better from tuberculosis. They were gonna let her out. So my dad and his little sister got all dressed up, and they went in the snow and they drove in their Model T Ford

or whatever the fuck to the tubercular hospital to go get her. They went into the courtyard. She was in her window. She waved from their window. They saw her in the window like, hi, hi. And she's like, I'll be right down. She ran away from the window. They waited.

They waited. And then there was like a hubbub and some hullabaloo. And then they waited and people kind of came and went. And then the dad came, Chester, came and said, okay, we're going to go home. and she had, in getting ready to go and to get her bags and stuff to come down to meet her kids, she slipped and fell and hit her head and died. Oh, my word.

With them waiting in the courtyard. Oh, my gosh. It's one of the worst stories ever heard in my life. Yeah. And my dad tells a story, and it's just heartbreaking. He said the only thing he remembered about it is he went home, and they told him the news about what had happened. And he said, but who's going to take care of me? Oh.

Yeah. Oh my. Gotta fuck you up. Yeah, isn't that sad? I mean, you could be, it's so, it's also so cinematic. Yeah, but it's the, and then you go, and then you go, you know, I have some atheist friends that would kind of go, see, how could there be a God? Could there be a God so cruel? Or maybe he just is a busy God with the power grid failure in Nepal that he wasn't watching.

Yeah. When Marie Nunberg, Nais, Nguyen, Wilson, nay, Vennyson, slipped and fell and hit her head. He wasn't watching, or was, why, why does something like that happen to a human being? What's your dad's name? Robert. Robert. And how, I mean, what was his life like after that?

How was he able to cope? He had a pretty difficult life. Oh. Yeah. He had a long, complicated, difficult life. And there was a lot of, and this trauma, as well of many, other childhood traumas really aided him for real. So, wow.

Yeah. But how do you answer that question? How could there be a God that would allow Marie Nunberg to slip and fall or not allow cause, allow, see it, no, it's gonna happen, allow it to happen, how does that work? No, I know. But there's way worse than that. You can interview, oh yeah, you know, refugee kids. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, there are actually worse stories. I mean, that's why I say in my most recent show, I believe in God. I'm not a fan. I just don't understand how he lets this stuff go on. And it's just maybe we'll understand after we die. I'm not hopeful about that. I just, I remember growing up, my mother loved this rabbi named Rabbi Kushner,

and she only knew him from his appearances on an AM radio station. She'd never, but he wrote books, and one of the books he wrote was called When Bad Things Happened to Good People, and it was, the rabbi's son had the disease progeria, where you age very rapidly. So the boy was probably died at 11 or 12 or 13 years old, and then he wrote this memoir about it, and it was very beautiful, and he just explained,

there's no explanation for it. He said it was very important that I'm not answering why bad things happen to good people. I'm just saying how you can how you can live with it, live around it, come to accept it. But it's just, yeah, it's the one huge loophole in the, in his whole behavior guidance is that bad things can happen to good people. Yeah. And Job is a great example, the book of Job, which is like... But that was straight up punishment. God was just being a dick to Job. Right.

And he was his most faithful adherent. And there was some wager with Satan. And Satan makes only really a cameo in the Old Testament. Yeah. But he's... It's like you and the Joker. I'm the Satan of the Joker. Well, I have an answer.

for this. Okay. It's the only conceivable answer. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. The only thing I can think, and this comes from my particularly Baha'i perspective, is that we do have souls. We only have meat suits for 70, 80, 90, 100 years.

And then our souls continue on an infinite journey that is glorious and filled with love towards ever, towards the divine, towards maturation, evolution, et cetera, just more and more, light. So what is the purpose of this physical reality? What is the purpose of the physical world? Why are we given flesh suits that are only 80, have an 80 or 90 year warranty on them? And back in the day, it was 30 or 40 years. What is it about this world, about its ups and downs and pains

and losing someone like Marie Nunberg to the slip and fall at the tubercular house? And it has to just be, that ultimately this is the best possible way to prepare our souls for that ongoing eternal journey. We're here for just a blip of time. It's just a burst of static on the radio and then is, you know, infinite planes of existence leading us ever closer toward the divine. So this physical plane has to have random events and suffering and difficulty and struggle and and overwhelm and tragedy and trauma because it's a soul-growing machine. Wow. Thoughts?

I love that. I love that. It reminds me of something my friend, Tom Ryan, who he was, he said that when he was 12, he found a guru. And so he was very involved in the Eastern religions and he became vegetarian. And it was because he had an older brother who had gotten involved in that. That's 12. That's a big swing.

It was really something. I was really impressed. And then he said recently, and he's in his 60s now, he said he started watching these videos about people who had come back from these near-death experiences. Yeah. And one thing. I love those, by the way. Yes.

And he really put me onto them in or the ideas behind some of them. And he said, what gives him a lot of comfort these days is knowing that while he feels overwhelmed a lot of the time he says that earth or whatever plane of existence we're living in is known as a very difficult a very difficult plane to exist on and get through and that just just managing is a real victory and and that gave me that gave me some comfort and and also echoes sort of what what you're saying that this is sort of a crucible or or a tribulation to go through right and and that will will grow from it and i and i i do love the concept of and it's it's put so well I think in in in Stevie Wonder's Higher

Ground which is a pop song but it comforts me all the time which is that he's very grateful it seems in this song that he's been given another opportunity to go through go through life and try to do it better now and I feel like that that is a very compelling idea I never listen to the lyrics of Higher Ground I only listen to the Hammond Oregon oh and the group It's extraordinary and really pretty deep and meaningful to me. And so I really like that idea. And it's as plausible as any of the religions I've bumped up against in my studies. So I really like that.

Like I felt a little bit of a chill come over me when you were describing that going towards more and more light, which is such a beautiful concept and something that I've just been intersecting with a lot over the past 10 or so years about light, that word in particular and what we're going, what we aspire towards. Yeah. I write about in Soul Boom, the absurdity of the opposite, that as if there was a God, then this physical realm would be altered, the science of this realm, because accidents happen.

People do slip and fall. You know, there's a one in 10,000 chance that when someone's running around on a tiled floor in 1950, they're gonna fall and hurt themselves. And then it's like a Dungeons of Dragons dice, and there's like, oh, you roll a 20-sided dice, and if you get a one, you have a fatal injury. Oh my gosh.

What was your armor class, though? That's the whole question. Well, zero. because it's a nightgown. I see. Oh my gosh. You're not a standoff. The nightgay.

It wasn't a chain mail? Not chain mail, no. No, and no head covering. But think about how silly it would be to go in the opposite extreme. Like, okay, there is a god. And then he's going to create a physical universe, but alter the physical laws in such a way

that there was never any pain or hardship or strife. There was no stubbed toe. Right. There was no fall. of Marie Nunberg. There's no cancers or heart disease. Like everyone is, you know, at age 100, everyone knows that they're going to die

and go to a better place. Babies come out of a vagina that opens very wide, so they're not even squeezed. The baby doesn't even cry. It just floats out of the vagina with great ease and grace. And like that's absurd. But I feel like that's the expectation

a lot of atheists who say, if there is a god, this God would dispel any and all suffering from his physical plane, or would just not create a physical plane, and we'd just be like playing harps and wearing white robes, or I don't know. I'm not exactly sure what that would be. Yeah, I mean, I've read some of those, some of those atheist Bible, sort of the Christopher Hitchens and the Dawkins and these things, and the certainty bums me out. Their zealotry mimics that of cults

in many ways. And also it's not a very generous, it's not a very generous approach. And so I just, I don't, I've never embraced, as much as I have so many quibbles with how God goes about

the day-to-day workings of the team, I've never gone to the point where I'm like, There's no, there's no God. I do find it interesting that I have a, there are people who give up on God for some of the most ridiculous reasons. I knew this woman who stopped believing in God after there was a very, a house she wanted was taken off the market and the,

the owner decided not to sell it. And she's like, there's no God. And she was not being ironic. She just, it really, it really bummed her out to that. Now, what about, I agree. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I think what some of these atheists are really angry at, and I totally get it, is the abuse

within certain religions. And the hypocrisy. Yes, and the hypocrisy. And I'm all for, all for that. But in terms of saying there's nothing, and I can't, I can't say that with any certain. any more than I can say that there is with any certainty. And there's also so many beliefs in religions that defy science. Like I know that many Catholics believe that like eating the way for like literally

transubstitiation is eating the flesh of Christ. It's not a metaphorical eating the flesh of Christ. And it's like how does how do you balance science with that? No, I know. There's beliefs like that are in all the major faiths that have to do with miracles and and metaphors that are taken to be true. And, you know, Jesus didn't metaphorically rise out of the tomb. Like it wasn't like his spirit went to be with his father.

Like his body went. Yeah. And that's why it disappeared. There's no body of Jesus in the ground because it's, you know. Right. And I think that's really hard. Like, how do we rectify this with science? So you have that combination of like toxic hypocrisy

and religious faiths. And then these kind of larger than life, quote unquote, miraculous events and beliefs that defy science and the combination of the two is like a one-two punch. Yeah. There were two books that I found really helpful in terms of Christian philosophy, at least. The Jefferson Bible were Thomas Jefferson took out all miracles. Thomas Jefferson took out all the miracles.

He caught a lot of shit for that. Yes. Oh, of course, of course. But that was Jefferson. And so I really enjoyed that, one, because it's very quick and just a good way to live. And then Reza Aslan wrote a book called Zealot. Yeah. Which is, and there are numerous. It just got me into this thing where I like reading the historical Jesus, and there are a lot of really good writers in that area because he was just this fascinating Jew.

And Reza, that's a good title for fascinating. Jew, the story of Jesus Christ. Yeah, who, and Reza, that would be your next comedy special. I do want to do something about fascinating Jew, religion, or at least what I've put together as my sort of philosophy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

and so the... Reza's a dear friend, the zealot, the whole... Oh my gosh, we had a podcast together for a while. I've read it twice, listened to it once, and it's just... The idea of Jesus being a kind of revolutionary rabble-rous challenging the establishment.

And taking out all divinity from him is a fascinating way of positing the story. Yeah. And he's very humble about it. At no point as he said, this is exactly how it went down. But the one thing that he said he could corroborate through several different gospels,

I think, was the turning over of the money changing tables at the temple. What did he say about it? He said that, well, he was able to corroborate. that through several gospels. And there weren't many events that you could do that with. And so I just, I love that idea that he didn't like that, because this was something that

used to bother our rabbi and also it bothers me about comedy and commerce intersecting with art. And so Jesus was so upset that they were making profits off of changing currencies for people so that they could buy animals to sacrifice. there that he turned over the money changing tables and this was just just consider it in modern terms of doing something so disruptive at at temple or at your synagogue and then the other thing is that he also um he didn't like bingo night he said is this gambling or am i an asshole no but but that was the one thing that I thought he was a purist. He was a purest. And the idea that you can have a Jesus without him being Jewish, which a lot of the, which a lot of the Christianity has done sort of

non-Jew washed him or Gentile washed him. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, yeah, sorry about that. It's, it's just silly. It's just silly. And that was what the Reza Aslan book, and I knew about it, but he, what, it's so, so excessively. Like, he's a really smart guy who writes for people who aren't as smart as him, which not a lot of, not every smart person does. Can do. Can do, right. I also loved in the book, it was a very small point that he made, but it really landed

with me of like the word that, I forget what the Aramaic word or the old Greek word is that got translated to Carpenter was really just more like, laborer or like a day laborer. Yes. But somehow, at some point in time, Jesus got promoted from day laborer to carpenter. Because you think carpenter, like, there's something classy about being a carpenter.

You have people with master's degrees who decide to become carpenters. Because they just love the look and feel of a finely crafted banister. And, you know, you think of Jesus with a plane and, like, making a set of matching furniture. And it's like, as opposed to like, laying cinder blocks, you know, and packing dung on a wall or something like that for a couple of

shekels. I love those interesting interpretations and translations. Exorcism, the Aramaic word for exorcism is very similar to the English word for curing sleep apnea. I made that out. I'm trying to find the joke in it. I'm so sorry. I'm really, I'm so sick. The joke is that Jesus was known as a Primo exorcist. Yes. He could exercise demons. Yeah, he could exercise demons, but it would make more sense

because I don't believe in possession. It would make more sense if he could heal sleep apnea, which has a lot of the same symptoms of satanic possession. That's a joke you really need to workshop. I would wait another 10 years. I'm telling you, I do it this weekend

at Gotham Comedy Club and it will murder. I'm going to be Caroline's Comedy Center. Yeah. Jesus wasn't just an exorcist. He should have healed sleep apnea. No, this is how I would tell it, Rain. Jesus was known as an exorcist, but there's no way as many people were being possessed back then

as they're claiming in the Bible. And so what it turns out is that the Aramaic word for exorcism is very similar to the Aramaic word for curing sleep. sleep apnea. It's not. Really? All right. Let it go.

This is humbling, but you know I won't let it go. I will workshop it. I'm not saying it'll work in this form, but by the time you see what we're going to call the show, Fantastic Jew. Yeah.

When you see Fantastic Jew, Fascinating Jew. Fascinating Jew. This bit. This joke is going to work. Yes. Truly, Gary, it's such an honor to sit with you because your special, the Great Depression, really one of my all-time, it's absolutely top-time comedy specials.

Thank you. My work. Well, not only is it searing and moving, and for me, that has undergone some mental health struggles of my own, but it's also just damn funny. And you just were not afraid to like, sometimes I'm just going to tell, I'm just going to tell a joke. I'm just going to tell a straight up joke. Yeah. So the balance of the two.

But for those who aren't aware of your story, you know, there's a lot of mental health issues that you've battled with your whole life. I mean, going back to childhood. Yeah. But they really came to a head. Was it 2015? 2015 through 2017 and 10 months.

So like over two and a half years of just a, my wife described my sort of catatonic repose on the couch or in bed. She said afterwards, and I'm glad she didn't say it while it was happening. She said, I thought you were dying. I thought you were dying. Wow. And that was, but she wasn't my wife at the time, which I find very incredibly moving to me is the fact that she did this for somebody like dedicated much. of her life to take care of a guy she had only been dating for six months when we, when this, when this came across me. And I would say, how, why would you do that? And she said, it was a

great six months. You had a great six months. And then she thought, you were dying. The one thing I will say that I was very good about from the time I was in, in, after college, because I didn't tell my college girlfriend that I had been to therapy or that I had depression until our senior year. But every time after that that I had a relationship, I would say you have to know that I'm susceptible to this illness and it can get pretty dark. And I just want you to go in with both eyes opening.

And without exception, the women were very understanding in some cases they understood because of either their personal relationship to depression or to somebody that they had in their life. How does this depression manifest itself for you. That's a great question. A lot of it was... Do you feel a mood disorder? Does something shift in your brain chemistry? Is it triggered by an external event? And then how does your behavior change as you drift into it? It's not always been triggered by an external event. Sometimes

it was just the... Every winter, right about the time we would set the clotsk's back, I would feel lousy until March throughout my schooling. And then in March, I would feel better. And I realized that there was a seasonal component to it. But that wasn't all of it. The main thing... Were you ever depressed in the summer? Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's when I knew this one was different from all the other episodes. This one that started in 2015. So the other ones were kind of more seasonal, but then all of a sudden it went to year-round.

Yeah. Then on my birthday, I was crying on my birthday, which never happened. I take my birthday a little bit more seriously than most people. I'm not a person who celebrates their birthday month or everything like that, but I always noticed over the years on my birthday, it would be completely carefree because nobody could really ask me to do anything too arduous on my birthday or expect anything from me on my birthday. And then this one year, I'm just crying on my birthday, which is in July 17th. And so, yeah it was seasonal but also all all the symptoms would be would be seasonal which included this

this negative self-talk and the suicidal ideation and the feelings of of of anxiety mixing with worthlessness but then the other thing that that you don't understand about depression until you've gone through an episode is that you really have no energy to do things that used to be so easy so that walking my dogs around the block was this task that felt Herkulean. And I mean in the mythological sense, and that I had to slay dragons. I had to fight different mythological beasts. It felt like that, just to walk my dogs around a New York City block. And I would be wiped out.

And my wife, who is 5'10, I'm 6'6, I could not keep up with her. when we were walking and she wasn't speedwalking but I just was so we would walk somewhere and I just could not keep up with her and everything involved in doing my shows was such an arduous just horrible idea and then so I would show up to shows unshowered unshaved and the clothes I'd been wearing all day just so I could be on a little bit late like five minutes late for my for my shows and always behind and always, always feeling like I needed a nap and then taking a nap and being even more tired and more depressed. So those are a lot of the manifestations. But there's also this thing where you become so, so jealous, I would say, of you compare yourself to other people and you think,

oh, if I had their life, if I had their career and all these things and these feelings that I don't have one in my right mind. I've always been very supportive of other people and other comedians. And there are always people who irritate you in show business. But for the most part, I always looked at people who were succeeding as opening up more and more doors for other comedians. That the more popular comedian got,

the more popular comedy got. And it was just a healthy approach to this thing rather than becoming rivals with somebody to try to spread the word about this really funny person. Have you ever seen Chris Fleming? I was in the depths of depression in like 2010 and had just gotten out of a relationship. And I saw this comedian who made me want to quit. He was so good and had only been doing it for a couple of years. And I recognized it as my depressive thinking that I don't have to compare myself.

And I said, no, why don't you? you just tell everybody you know how good this guy is and take him on the road and and that and so it's become dear friends but it was just it was having to fight this attitude that why should I even bother because somebody does it so so well that is a very depressive thought and so I guess that I mean it was the it was cognitive but it was also physical and that I was so tired so much and and just keeping my head above water was I was whenever I was feeling better, I had to make up for all the time that I had lost with my comedy and get back out there. It was just, it was so grueling, and I could never count on having more

than six months of health. I'd never had as much as a year of health that wasn't interrupted by a devastating episode, and then all of a sudden I had this one that lasted for two and a half years. So I didn't even, I couldn't even make hay while the sun was shining, whatever that expression is, because the sun was never shining. But I will say, and this is the great ending to the Great Depression, is that, and today, it's been since 2017, October of that year, I've felt like myself. And I've had a string where I can accept projects, not being afraid that I won't be able to be able to come through in the end that I'll have to have to stop short because I have a depressive episode and it's just made all the difference and now I feel like odysious at the end of his

at the end of his tail where he wants to just tell everybody and and share the elixir. And what is the elixir? I'm curious how you dealt with your depression before the big the great depression. Yeah. What you went through in the great depression and and what it's like for you now. were you on a certain medication, wasn't working, and then you had to, like, really, like, do some chemistry explorations to kind of get the balance right. Was that a big part of it? Yeah, totally. And at one point, I went into the hospital, or at two points, I went into the hospital,

but in the Great Depression, I compressed it. That was only one, one three-week stay, but there was a three-week and then one week, and the thing was is that I had been trying a lot of different medications, and then my doctor said, treatment-resistant depression can respond to this thing called electroconvulsive therapy. And I had been pushing that off for years. I said, no, I don't want to do that.

I'm afraid of losing memories. The truth is that you lose more memories from being depressed than you do from electrical and convulsive therapy. Your mind is not very sticky. You have so many memories. You wrote a book. Afterwards and you wrote an entire book about your childhood. Yes, yes.

I didn't lose any memories. are things that I don't remember from the time I was depressed because my doctor calls it faux dementia. Depression can be faux dementia, so you're not able to keep your short-term memory, you're not able to make long-term memories. And so there are things my wife will say, do you remember we saw this movie?

I don't remember. But this movie. That happens to me all the time too. Yeah. So it could be your sleep or our age can be a contributor to that. But these were things that my wife. It makes her a little bit sad,

but also we've had such a great run now that it was if I did lose these memories because of the electroconvulsive therapy rather than just the depression, it was a fair trade off. She'd be okay with that. Yeah. And yeah, I have,

there's someone that I know that went through ECT and it was very, very helpful. But, and I know you've spoken about this before and interviews and whatnot about how, you know, Jack Nicholson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in One Floor, the Cuckoo's Nest, how that gave it such a bad rap. But now they anesthetize you. They give you muscle relaxant.

What does it do in your brain? It just stimulates parts of your brain that are dormant or something? It gives you a seizure. And initially they found that people who had epilepsy and were depressed. When they had a seizure, they would be less depressed for a while. And so they thought, why don't we induce? these seizures, but they didn't have the right voltage yet. And so around 2016 or maybe 2017, I saw this TED talk that a surgeon named Sherwin-Newland gave,

and it has millions of hits. I highly recommend it. And he talked about being in a catatonic state where they wanted to give him a lobotomy. And there was an intern making rounds with the other doctors and when they were consulting on Sherwin-Newlin, the young intern said, why don't we try giving him a low dose of, there are studies that a low dose of electroconvulsive therapy that has fallen on, well, there's a stigma to it and people don't like to do it that much. Why don't we try this on him before we give him a lobotomy?

And the thing with Sherlin-Newlin is, he said it took over 20 treatments till it started to have an effect. With me, in three treatments, my anxiety was completely. gone. Wow. Yeah. And my anxiety was brutal. Do you go in for regular?

No, I haven't. I haven't. You haven't had to? No, I haven't had to do any maintenance. And that must give you some hope, too. Like if I ever start to go back down that road again, there's a treatment there that can help. Yes. There was always this treatment and it was effective.

And what my doctor keeps saying is that it gives your brain some neuroplasticity and it makes it a little bit protected against future. And also it does produce different pathways for your connections within your brain. And I don't know if there's neurogenesis or neuro something in there. Neurogenesis, I think, means new nerves growing. And that's a possibility. I don't know if that's a fact or just that they believe

that may be the case. but with me, all I know is that I had it and I couldn't function and I've put out two specials and just did an off-roadway show that will be the third special in five years, or seven years, rather. And so I've never been more prolific in my life and more creative in my life and felt better. This long was such a sturdy recovery. I mean, it's something that, going back to what we talked about earlier, that I thank God for every, every day. Yeah.

It's, yeah. And what about medication? Oh, I take two things. I used to take a third thing. I used to take clonopin for anxiety, but I've been able to combat anxiety with a combination of the 4-7-8 breathing technique as well as. Just breathe in four, hold seven, out eight?

Yes. Okay. I've heard that. You do that three times and any low-level anxiety for me disappears. And there used to be a time when it wouldn't work and I would take half a clonopin, but now I haven't had to go to that next step. And I've also done transcendental meditation, which when I suggested, people say it's very expensive, but I want to say that there are programs where you can get a reduced rate.

and also there are people who will teach it to you for free. On the black market, on the dark web? On the dark, on the dark TM web. Yeah. Well, I just know that I read a book by Kurt Vonnegut, and I can't remember which one it was. One of the books that I think contained more essays than it wasn't a novel, and he told,

he said, I don't believe in DM, but here's my mantra, and this is what you do. And I thought that was very genuine. Yeah, he thought that. It was very generous of him. His problem with TM was that whoever was the leader of TM was saying it was a cure-all and that the only thing wrong with our planet was that people weren't doing TM. And so he didn't care for that.

But I know people who find it very, including myself, it's very effective. Well, I'd love to hear some other tools that you learned going through the Great Depression or that you carry with you. You've already talked about gratitude. You've talked about prayer. You've talked about box breathing. Yeah. And you've talked about...

ECT. Box breathing. ECT. But what other like either daily, weekly, monthly tools do you use to help you? Well, this is the one that's going to bum everybody out. But exercise. Nobody wants to exercise. I don't want to exercise.

But I know if... And here's what I do. And I know this can be a problem for some people. But I will set a timer for five minutes. Literally five minutes. And I just say, okay, walk until this timer goes off at a brisk pace or however a pace you want to do. If you still feel like going further after the five minutes, then go.

If not, you are allowed to turn around and come home and you'll actually have another five minutes because you walked five minutes away. And without exception, I have gone more than five minutes. And there was one point where I decided 18 minutes was the least amount of exercise that I would feel like I had really given it a shot. And so I would set the timer for 18 minutes. And I would run or jog for 18 minutes. And then I would walk back.

And then I mean, there are all kinds of systems. I had this thing in New York City one time. I have all the bargaining that's going on. There's a lot of internal bargaining. There was this thing where I said, all right, I am going to jog and I can stop whenever the walk signs says, don't walk, and I can rest. or I can cross the street that way to the right or to the left and continue to run if I feel like it.

Otherwise, I can rest. And it just, all these bar, it became kind of fun because then I was competing with myself. All right, try to run three blocks without stopping. And then I got the timer, the Apple Watch, and I could see what my heart rate was. All right. So run until your heart rate is at 130. 30 and then you can jog until it goes down to or walk until it goes down to 100 and then jog it up to one.

I mean, it was a lot of fun. I must say, and exercise is the one thing that I will say is really non-negotiable in my routine, that there's no way I can not do that. But exercise is not what we always think it is. It doesn't have to be on a treadmill. My doctor said that he said sometimes he will go to a client and say, I'm outside. We're going for a walk.

And he will walk with them in the park or wherever. Or another thing, he said, get off three floors before your floor in your apartment and walk up the last three. Get out one stop before your stop on the subway. And it's incremental. And the other thing that I need to remind people is that it is not linear.

You're not going to get better every day. You'll take two steps back some days. But eventually, you can get to a point where you're functioning. And is your meditation daily? It is when, so when I was doing the show, I needed to do it every day because I was exhausted all the time. But there are days where I don't do it, and there are days where I do it twice. But I do know that it's more effective when I do it more regularly.

But I also know that when I do it, it is almost a, as effective as a nap. But you can't control a nap because sometimes your naps go longer than you expect it and they become counterproductive. So it's, I always take a 20 minute nap. If I go to fall asleep, I wake up 20 minutes later.

It is very one in a hundred. It's a reinvigorator, right? Yeah. Yeah. I have that. And that's what TM I fit. That's what I feel TM does for me. But that is a superpower.

What show was it where you were talking about your therapist? Oh, that's the most recent one, on Grandiloquine. I talk about my therapist, Alan Lefkowitz, who treats a lot of other New York comedians. There's a lot of odd and delicious quirks about him as a therapist.

Can you share a little bit about that relationship? He was actually referred or recommended to me by a friend I've known since I was in sixth grade, but he told me, he said, I got to tell you,

I recognize some of these guys from your comedy shows. So I think this guy treats other comedians and there's an interview with Richard Lewis in his waiting room that Richard Lewis talks about having been treated by this guy in the 70s. And so, and then I started asking around, because my friend was raving about his therapist.

I said, what's his name? He says, Alan Lefkowitz. And I said, that's the guy I'm going to. And from the first, our first session, I was like, this is the right guy. One of the great things is that you don't have to explain to him, the world of stand-up comedy and you don't have to explain to him the nature of comedians and that you don't have to tell him that this booker at this club, she's incredibly mean and

toxic and you don't have to tell her that this person in the comedy scene is very undermining and makes you feel lousy about yourself because he knows he knows the scene and it's just it's extraordinary. What are some tools that he uses that you find effective? In our first session, he gave him. me the skeleton key but I wasn't I didn't have the door yet I hadn't gotten to the door yet but he gave me the skeleton key and it was he said you have everything you need to be happy you just need to accept yourself and and then five years or let me sit think so that was 2006 April of 2006 and then 2017 18 so 12 years later

you got there I got to the right door yeah and I put the skeleton key in and now I mean it's just the idea and it's so simple

but it's so hard is be yourself and because everything else is just I realized why I didn't want to talk to certain people it was oh

because I can't be myself around them it makes me very uncomfortable and then then once you get to that point where you're being authentic and you're being yourself, you crave that, and it's very hard to go back.

And there are situations where you can't really be yourself, or there are certain people. You have advanced relationships with your family, is what I'm talking about, where it's just too hard, and they will not accept this version of yourself. That is not as accommodating to how they made you feel. Yeah. What is in your bracelet?

Oh, it's a quote by Albert Camus. And I want to make sure I'm getting exactly right. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer. And it kind of goes to the idea that summer used to always be my time. And so I got this when I came out of my depression to remind me. and I've been a Camus fan since I discovered him in college in an intro to philosophy, just the existentialists, I think, feel the most intuitive of all the philosophers.

I just happen to be an existentialist who believes in God, which sort of counteracts the absurdism, but like I said, I've cobbled together a philosophy and religion that. What's your relationship with? with God like now. I'm just so very grateful to him and I guess my my anger comes from why can't you do this for everyone? Why can't everybody have a life as fulfilling and full of opportunity and love? And why can't everybody have this? I am not I am not so special. I don't know what I did to

deserve this life but I find it so unfair that the blessings are so indecisive. discriminately spread around. Like my wife and I, my wife's not, my wife grew up very religious. And I said I wouldn't talk about my wife, but I do find an interesting, she grew up in the, in the black church with black Christianity and a very, very religious mother. And, and, and so, I don't think she's an atheist or even agnostic, but, but she does have a lot of the same feelings as me, but she's constantly saying, we are so blessed. We are so blessed. And that's an expression I hear a lot in my neighborhood and my apartment building. It's very unusual because until I moved to Harlem,

nobody had ever told me to have a blessed day. I just, I'm fascinated by a group of people who have every reason to distrust God and Christianity and have embraced it to this degree. And it's inspiring. It really is. What else have you gotten out of having an interracial marriage and moving to Harlem and kind of,

entering that world is pretty recent. It's eight or nine years, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm very lucky in that in the two things that I dedicated my life to, which was first basketball, and then comedy, there's such a diverse group of people that you intersect with.

And so I've been able to realize that, like, it was very interesting when I joined the football team. There were African-American players on my football and basketball team in high school, but it wasn't, it wasn't like 50-50. It was more white people. And then at Boston College, it was probably like half the people were African-American and half the people were white. And I realized in college that there was a version of me within all these different groups that I intersected within college, whether it be Latin X or African-American or Asian. There were people

who had very similar interests. So there was a guy on the, football team who's a fifth year senior and a superstar athlete but every Friday him and his girlfriend would take me downtown to get comic books and and I thought oh there's there's the the segregation is the keeps us from understanding how much how much we have in in common and then and it's it's heartbreaking because people are missing out on these other people with different experiences but But that's probably for another another podcast, another episode of Soul Boom. But I've just, it's enriched my life to such a degree. And I'm very grateful for the way I grew up in that.

It wasn't only Jewish people around me. Most of my neighbors were Christian and my closest friend went to CCD. So we would compare notes from Hebrew school to CCD. And I just found found that so. How do you and your wife's spiritual practice intersect? Oh, no. Does she still go to church? No, she doesn't go to church except with her family when they would go to church.

And or when we would, we would, there was, I found it very interesting when her grandmother died during the pandemic and we drove down to St. Augustine, Florida for the funeral. And comparing that to a Jewish funeral, there's, there's no comparison. and this celebration and there was dancing and there was music and and singing and it was just extraordinary and at a Jewish funeral we're just trying to out misery sad each and grieve each other and and everything is so dark and and and yet there there are certain aspects of the the Jewish grieving process that I that I think are really helpful sitting Shiva sitting shiva is a beautiful it is beautiful and and and but

so is a going home service in the black church. I mean, they really celebrate these people. And there's a, I don't know if you watch the show, Atlanta. I saw a few of episodes. There's a great episode that you should really watch because it's about how Trinidad and Tobagans grieve. And this funeral turns into like a, it's insane. I don't want to give it any aspect of a way.

But I remember at one point, one of the, one of the Trinidadians, explains to a little boy who's thrown off by the craziness of this funeral. He says, this is how we sad. Yeah. Do a lot of your guests get emotional when they're sitting with you? I mean, these are very beautiful things to consider. Thanks for saying so. Yeah.

Maybe a little bit here and there. I thank you for sharing your heart. Yeah. And invulnerable. Well, once you start doing that, it's hard to go back to not doing that, right? I mean, one of my favorite things is from a basketball coach who is dying of cancer, and he says every day he likes to laugh, he likes to think, and he likes to cry. And he was in the last year of his life, probably.

And he said, that's a great day when you laugh, when you cry. And think. And think. Yeah. Jim Valvano was his name. He was a coach at the North Carolina State University, and he was, dying of cancer and there's an S.B. speech he gives and somebody was giving him the wrap-up sign. And he said, I'm dying. I'm dying. You're giving me the rap-up sign. It was one of the funniest

moments I've ever seen. Yeah, it was so moving. I usually see it once a year because on his anniversary of that, it comes, or whenever the espies are, it comes up and it's really moving. I got to do this amazing show about finding happiness called The That No One Ever Wants. I, called Rain Wilson and the Geography of Bliss. It's on Peacock and it was five episodes traveling the world looking. Nobody saw it on Peacock? I know, can you believe it?

One of the episodes was in Ghana and one of the people we interviewed was a coffin maker who would make coffins in the shape of the careers and the loves of the people that died. And there was a straight-up celebration, but he had a taxicab coffin, he had a fish coffin for a fisherman, a taxi-capped coffin.

a taxicab coffin. My word. He had a shoe coffin for a cobbler. That is so beautiful. So you would have like a microphone coffin. Microphone or a basketball. Or a microphone and it's a little basketball at the top. Oh, I like that.

Oh, that's really cool. Right? I guess mine would be a Dundee from the office. I don't know. Oh yeah. But that certainly puts a different perspective. Yeah, a beat, a beat coffin. There we go.

There we go. And you could have been in a 1040 easy form coffin. Oh my gosh. Had you gone, stayed on your path. An adding machine. A calculator, yeah. Yeah, man, I'm blessed. Gary, will you come back on Soul Boom?

Oh, my gosh. Yes. Oh, I would love them. There's so many, look at all this. Questions I didn't even get to. No, I would love that. Yeah. Are there still things you haven't figured out?

Are there questions that haunt you? Let's go with that. And we'll close with that. Okay. What have you not figured out? What haunts you right now? Oh. Um, I mean, what's haunting me right now is, is the, the future of our democracy.

I'm really concerned about it in a way that I, I never have been. I mean, I was too young during the Reagan administration to understand a lot of the, the sacrifices that people were making in terms of, in the mental health field and, and, and, as well as in terms of of the race relations and things like that and unions. And so I wasn't aware back then. But now I'm aware of all the things that are being done to make the people who struggle have to struggle more. That's the thing.

I'm not afraid for my own future. I have certain means. but other people are just going to have it even harder. And it wasn't easy nine months ago. And it's just going to be harder. And it just, and that's the whole thing with what I was saying earlier. Why? And it makes me feel, I don't feel guilty over it.

I do feel blessed. But I also feel that I need to do more. I need to volunteer more. I mean, that was one thing that was really helpful in my recovery. It was my wife signed me. up for this thing where I would read to kids who are having trouble. They needed extra reading practice. So we would do these exercises. And I would, their favorite part, of course, was not doing the exercises, but when I would read to them. And they would love that. But I look back and I'm like,

I didn't have somebody reading to me in my house. They might not have somebody reading to them in their house. And it is such an advantage to have that. But anyhow, I need to do what I can do and and give more of my time and my money. I love this book called The Most Good You Can Do by Peter Singer. Yeah. And it's about effective altruism. And it's really inspiring. And there are all different, you can go all the way.

You can give one of your kidneys away. Right. That's one of the things you can do. And you can give all the money that goes beyond you living in a single occupancy unit. away. But there's also, you can make yourself a little less comfortable. You cannot have the third house or, or in some cases, the third car, whatever it is to make your life a little less comfortable, but make somebody else's more comfortable. So what I do is I give my royalties from my, um, albums, which I don't do anything to earn these royalties. They just get played. So I gave it

to the Helen Keller Foundation, which gives vitamin A to people who need vitamin A in order. to not be blind or not die. Oh, that's beautiful. And my wife used to work for Helen Keller International. Really? For real. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, that is lovely. Yeah. What is, she had a good experience with it. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a really special foundation. I found it through that book and it's this website called givewell.org in which they rate. You maximize. Yeah. You maximize your dollars. So they say with five, thousand dollars you can save one life if you contribute that's how they've they've put it into into terms that a lot of people understand well listen sharing your story and sharing your mental health

journey i think is the greatest service that you can possibly provide thank you but i feel almost an obligation there's going to be thousands of my blessing there's going to be thousands of people watching this that are going to be to have battle depression yeah see that that you got through it, that they can get through it, that there's treatments, that there's tools that you can use, that you can come out with gratitude and a great sense of humor out the other side. So the Great Depression was, you know, maybe your legacy

and there's many more to follow. Oh, that's so nice to hear. Yeah. That's so nice to hear. Thanks for coming on the soul boom. Oh, my gosh. What a pleasure. I enjoyed every moment.

Oh, this was, I feel like we're like we're a brother from another mother a little bit. And do you play tennis by any chance? No. Yeah. Play a little basketball, but you'd cream me on the court. I tried. I probably would.

I play almost every day. Yeah. It wouldn't be fair. I haven't played in 20 years. But like, I used to be okay. Tennis is a very fun sport that I just didn't have access to growing up. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. All right. Awesome. Pickle ball. It's a pleasure. Okay. Thanks, Gary. Or coffee.

There we go. Okay. The Soul Boom podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast. and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.