Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Judd Apatow On: Panic Attacks, His Creative Process, And Why Comedians Are Often So Neurotic

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Why the man behind “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” is a self-help junkie.Judd Apatow is one of the most prolific comedic minds in the industry. Recently, Apatow produced Peacock’s buddy comedy Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain and Universal’s romcom, Bros, starring and co-written by Billy Eichner. Apatow also directed, produced, and co-wrote with Pam Brady, the Netflix comedy The Bubble and produced and co-directed HBO Films’ Emmy®-winning documentary George Carlin’s American Dream with Michael Bonfiglio. His Netflix comedy special, Judd Apatow: The Return, released in 2017 and premiered to critical acclaim. Previous director credits include the Emmy®-award-winning documentary, The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and The King of Staten Island. He produced Academy Award®-nominated The Big Sick and Bridesmaids, as well as Superbad, Pineapple Express and Anchorman. For television, he executive produced Crashing, Girls, and Freaks and Geeks. Off screen, Apatow authored Sicker in the Head, a follow-up to his New York Times best-seller Sick in the Head.In this episode we talk about:The role of his parents’ bitter divorce in his life and workThe balance between creativity and ambitionWhy so many comedians are so neuroticHis creative process, including some gems from the TV writer David MilchHis relationship to panic, and a hilarious story about freaking out on weedThe way he’s started to understand the different voices inside of himHis recent experiment with ayahuasca, and what he learnedAnd the role of comedy when it feels like the world is on fireRelated Episodes:Bill Hader on Anxiety, Imposter Syndrome, and Leaning into DiscomfortDuncan Trussell on: Being a Spiritual Omnivore, Whether Psychedelics Are a Bridge to the Divine, and How the Gates of Hell Are Locked From the InsideSign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: http://www.happierapp.com/podcast/tph/judd-apatowAdditional Resources:Download the Happier app today: https://www.happierapp.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, everybody. How we doing? I had no idea about this. No idea. I've been a fan of Judd Apatow's work for years. The 40-year-old virgin knocked up, train wreck. Judd Apatow has been a reliable source of hilarity in my life for a long, long time. I'm sure that's true for you as well. But I had no idea that he was a self-described pop psychology and self-help junkie who had personally struggled with panic attacks.

My ignorance evaporated when I noticed that Judd had commented on one of my Instagram posts about my own struggles with panic. So I reached out to him. And now today he's on this show, which is very cool. If you are unfamiliar with him, Judd is a extremely prolific dude in addition to writing and directing movies

like This Is 40, Knocked Up, and Funny People. He's been a producer on movies like Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Superbad. He also does his own standup, including a Netflix comedy special. Speaking of television, he's also been involved in seminal TV shows such as Freaks and Geeks and Girls.

He's made documentaries for HBO on legendary comedians such as George Carlin and Gary Shandling, who will come up a lot in today's conversation. And there's more. He's written several books, including Sick in the Head and then the follow-up, Sicker in the Head. And then one more thing to say about Judd's stand-up career. He's actually doing a couple of shows soon, one in New York City at the Beacon Theater on November 9th and another in Atlanta on November 3rd. Anyway, like I said, prolific dude, and today we have a wide ranging discussion. We talk about the role of his parents' bitter divorce

in his life and in his work, the balance between creativity and ambition, why so many comedians are so neurotic, his creative process, including some gems that he's picked up from another TV writer, David Milch. Some of those expressions really stuck with me. His relationship to panic and a hilarious story about freaking out on weed,

the way he has recently started to understand the different voices in his head, his recent experiment with ayahuasca and what he learned, and the role of comedy in a world that often feels like it's on fire. Judd Apatow, coming up. I personally love Airbnbs. My friend Glenn and I just rented an Airbnb in Fort Lauderdale. We're going to bring our families down to see Inter Miami play some soccer.

Glenn and I both have boys, our boys really want to see messy plays. So anyway, I'm really looking forward to all staying in the same place instead of being in hotels where we maybe run into each other once in a while. I love the intimacy of all being in the same house. It's really cool. Maybe you're planning a ski getaway this winter or you've

decided to go someplace warm. While you're away, you could Airbnb your home and make some extra money toward the trip. It's a smart and simple way to use what you already have. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host.

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Bianca, and I have been listening to many audiobooks as we drive around for summer vacations. We listen to Life by Keith Richards. Keith, if you're listening, I'd love to have you on the show. We also listen to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And Yuval, if you're listening to this, we would also love to have you on the show. So audio books, yes, audible, yes, love it.

There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30 day audible trial and your first audio book is free. Visit audible.ca, audible.ca. Hello, I'm Pandora Sykes, and welcome to Rivals, the official podcast. Step inside my Rutscher residence as we celebrate Rivals, the brand new original series

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wherever you get your podcasts. Judd Apatow, welcome to the show. It's great to be here. I'm so happy you're here. I'm a long time fan, but didn't know too much about your backstory until I started preparing for this interview. And I saw this quote where you described yourself

as both a therapy and pop psychology junkie who's read, and I'm assuming this is you taking creative license here, 10,000 self-help books. So I guess my opening question is what is driving all of that? That gets right to the meat of it all. I know because it is a form of self-help hoarding. And it's so funny, what is driving all that?

I remember when I was a kid, my parents who soon after got divorced went to couples counseling once. And my dad always said that the therapist was too hard on my mom. But he just went after her a little bit and then she refused to ever go again. But one of the things that led to whatever the dynamics were that eventually led to their divorce was my dad started reading Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne Dyer. And when my dad read that book, he realized he was unhappy. And it led to, I think, my mom not being up for looking into her mind, her heart, and trying to figure out who she was. My mom was very resistant to all that.

Later in life, I convinced her to see my therapist once, and when she left, she said, he told me I was right about everything. So there must be something deep in me that feels like I need to know this stuff for one reason or another. It may be because of its failure to save my parents at one point. Well, but I could see you playing it the other way, which is that it failed to save your parents, so you're gonna wanna stay a million miles away from it. Well, only one of them read the book. So maybe that's it.

Then you have to read the book. Maybe it's my dream that my mom would have read and had a different conversation. Although I'll tell you another book story, which is, you know, my parents had a very unpleasant divorce and my mom moved out and I lived with my dad. And one day I saw this book in the house and it was on a coffee table and it said, growing up divorced.

And I like read some of it and it was explaining the dynamics between a couple when they're going through a divorce. And it was kind of helpful. I probably read eight kind of helpful. I probably read eight pages of it. And a couple of years ago, I said to my dad, you know, you never asked me how I was doing during that divorce, which went on for a decade.

And he said, well, I left that book out for you. And I was like, what? I left that book out for you growing up divorced. And I'm like, but you never asked me if I read it. There was no follow-up where you talked to me about it. You didn't even know I read it. He's like, well, you took it off the coffee table. So that is how much mental health support I got as a kid.

So I think on some level, that's why I'm always catching up trying to read things I think I should know. So I'm going to stipulate that your parents are good people, and I'm hearing that your mom has a pathological need to be right and your father's a terrible communicator. Would that be a fair summary? Well, I mean, you know, my mom is no longer with us, so we can speak freely there. I think it was also a completely different generation, and it was maybe the first generation that was getting self-help books. You know, pop psychology was just becoming popular in the 70s. And so that means when they were raised, they got zero of it and their parents knew nothing

about it. And I think it was just a different, probably much more brutal era of parenting. And so they were flying blind, I would assume, and didn't know how to communicate about it. I think my mom wanted to always tell me everything and make me suffer with her, every aspect of it. And my dad went the other way, which is to never ever talk about it and thought that that was being kind to me.

And there was no middle ground and there was no, we're gonna take you to the therapist or have you talk to a counselor. That just didn't happen at all. And they weren't religious and not in a way where they talked badly about it, they just never mentioned spirituality ever. So I was Jewish, I wasn't bar mitzvahed, nobody was in my family, my brother and my sister. And so there was this giant hole of spirituality that only began to get filled later on in

life when I met Gary Schandling, who was very interested in Buddhism and Eastern thought. And that's when I started getting interested in all of that. What form does it take now, your interest in all of this stuff, other than hoarding books? How does this play out in your life now? How does it play out in your life now? How does it play out? Well, I learned TM a long time ago, so I do that way less than you're supposed to, but I do do it. And I've read about other forms of meditation, loving kindness meditation.

I'm always reading Buddhist books and also just looking for some sort of self-help that makes me feel better. Lately, I've been reading a lot of Richard Schwartz's internal family systems books, which I think is the thing that's been most helpful, which for people who don't know it is the idea that you have all these voices and characters in your head and they also have these protectors for all these exiled parts of your personality and that you, instead of talking to just your inner child, you're basically saying your inner child has plenty of people and they all are trying to help you in different ways that usually hold you back.

So whenever I explain it to people, I say, let's say you're shy and you go into a party, there's a part of you that says, just go home. And it thinks it's protecting you by having you leave the party and you learn how to talk to it and try to understand why that's the philosophy and to remind it that there's probably a better way.

And you could look at all the ways that you use defense mechanisms in your life and try to unknot them so that you can be more authentic. That Dick Schwartz, IFF stuff has been huge for me too. Like just learning how to like identify the characters who grab the steering wheel most frequently and then have a relationship with them that is sane rather than reflexive, if that makes sense. Absolutely. And the one that I noticed was my most prominent

is a character or a voice or a protector, whatever term he uses, which is always saying, what are you supposed to be doing right now so everything doesn't fall apart? And I noticed that that voice is on a three, minimum 24 hours a day, even while I'm sleeping. And that is the voice that is most destructive to me, that keeps me out of the moment because

I really fear that if I'm not in the future, something really bad can happen. And it's been very helpful to understand that in a different way. I always knew it a little bit. I always knew, oh, I'm hypervigilant and I'm trying to make sure that my life is solid. But I think I understand it in a deeper way. And just this idea that it's literally like a character that's going like, what now, what now? What should you be doing?

You know, what's gonna make everything work? What's gonna keep everything from falling apart? That that is the voice of anxiety. And if I can calm that voice down, I feel way better. What do you do to calm it down? Well, just noticing it gets me to a much better place. Richard Schwartz calls it just the self, like the real you in Buddhism, I guess it would be just awareness.

And if you're in awareness, you're not doing that. And so just noticing it actually makes it shrink. If I remind myself, this is an inappropriate voice. I think for most of my life, I thought this is an appropriate voice. I'm working, everything's going well. I can pay my rent. So it must be the voice that is required.

It took me a long time to realize that it's basically a very destructive voice that keeps me from being happy and being present for everybody in my life, especially me. I mean, I got an email today from an executive coach who was saying that just this is the thing he hears the most, that if I relinquish my anxiety, I will perish professionally.

Yes. And it's actually just the complete opposite. That the voice that's saying, what do we need to be doing takes up all your bandwidth. And for me as a creative person, when that voice is going, I'm not creative. And it is impossible for me as a creative person, when that voice is going, I'm not creative. And it is impossible for me to write jokes, to write movies, to think of characters or stories if that's the main engine that's going.

And a lot of the work that we do in comedy is with a co-writer. You might be working with a room of people on a TV show, and you can get pulled out of that voice just because you're part of this large conversation, and you all start laughing and sharing ideas, and it inherently shuts that voice up. But if you want to write a script alone in a room, it's just you and the computer, you have to learn how to shut that off because you literally can't come up with anything creative while that voice is talking to you. I mean it makes sense from what little I know about the brain that if the anxiety or fear parts of the brain are firing though the stuff like kind of in the rear of your head the reptile brain

that's the oldest parts of the brain if they're firing the prefrontal cortex where our Reason and creativity and ideation all happens, they don't work at the same time. So if you're stuck in that, I think sometimes helpful voice of, hey, what's coming up? What do we need to get prepared for? When you walk over the line between, you know, a reasonable amount of vigilance and hypervigilance, it's the death of creativity.

Yeah, you can't do it at all. The other thing I've been very interested in is all of those Steve Kotler books about flow. Yeah. And flow states. And how to get into flow states and be creative and 100% focused on your creative task. And I feel like that connects with the same idea

because everything about getting into a flow state is about not being in a hypervigilant mode. It's about like being open. Because so much of creativity is honestly just taking a walk, trying not to think, and something will pop into your head. Yes. Or it's about thinking about something

and batting it around from a bunch of different angles, staying very loose and open and waiting for some bizarre inspiration to just hit you. And it's so mysterious that you're creating this space for this mysterious act to occur, right? It's Bob Dylan sitting at a typewriter and the phrase blow and the it comes into his head. Where did it come from?

And it could only come to him if he is in that space. David Milch always used to quote somebody, maybe he was quoting himself, and he would say, you know, like inspiration comes to prepared spirits and you just learn how to be available. I think it might've been Picasso, but it was probably somebody else who said,

the muse will visit, but it has to find you working. Yes, yes. You have to do the work. And if you're just goofing off all the time, you're unlikely to get visits from the muse. But if you're working all the time, you're also unlikely to get visits from the muse, but if you're working all the time, you're also unlikely to get visits from the muse. So it's like, I never feel flow

or have rarely felt flow standing at my computer. I do the annoying shit at my computer. I edit sentences and move paragraphs around, but it's always when I'm taking a walk or I'm having a conversation with somebody else that the good shit comes. Yeah, I mean, it's a magic trick, I think. David Milch who created Deadwood and co-created NYPD Blue,

Steven Bochco has always been one of my mentors and he used to always say, you can't think your way into writing that you can write your way into thinking. He always believed that you should try to write at the same time every day if you can, because at some point when your butt hits the chair, your brain is conditioned to know,

oh, this is the time where we're creative. It's like lighting incense before you meditate. You just know, oh, this isn't the time I'm gonna meditate or become. And that if you just start writing, even if it's nonsense, at some point, the creativity will kick in. You use the thing that you should do an exercise where for two weeks, you write for 20 minutes

and then throw it in the garbage for two weeks. Anything you write, it could be journaling, it could be just anything. But if you just tried to be creative for 20 minutes every day for two weeks and then toss it in the garbage, you would learn what that state was and you would condition your mind to get to that state. Just to go back to the primary part, to use IFS terminology in internal family systems, they talk about the various, you know, dramatist personae in our minds as parts. For you, the primary part, or the one that's most salient

for you is anxiety. What do you like now, these days, what are you worried about? You've had so much success. I think the cheap conclusion to draw from somebody who's not you would be, well, what the hell does this dude have to worry about? I know you've got a show, you do stand-up, and you've got a show coming up on November 9th

at the Beacon Theater in New York City. And you mentioned before we started rolling that you've got some anxiety about whether anybody's gonna show up. Exactly. There's always things to worry about. I mean, there's death. Just because you're working doesn't mean you don't

have all of the stuff that everybody else has to deal with. So for me, it's always, you know, you have the stuff that you have been working on since you were young, your original trauma, all the ways you've adjusted your life to, to be able to deal with it. And I think there's something about like working or workaholism or this idea that if you can get everything functioning in that part of your life, that everything will be okay.

It's so wrong that when you do well, most people have a crash because they're like, oh my God, that didn't work at all. Jim Carrey always talks about that. I mean, that's when you fall apart is, oh, a couple of your projects go well. And then you think, oh, I feel exactly the same and same and maybe worse

because I lost that hope that it would make me feel better. And on some level, obviously a lot of it feels good and being appreciated feels good. Being able, a lot of it feels good. And being appreciated feels good. Being able to pay for your life feels good. But just the core stuff, which is your insecurity and your self-esteem, when you realize, oh, it doesn't actually solve it at all, then you're forced to really figure out how to deal with it. Yeah. Well, I've not had that experience. I've had some success, but not the level

that you and Jim have realized. But I can imagine that being incredibly frustrating. And in a kind of especially embarrassing and lonely way, because there are so few people who get that successful. And then for everybody else to think, yeah, you're in the catbird seat for the rest of your life. who get that successful. And then for everybody else to think, yeah, you're in the catbird seat for the rest of your life. And for you to know actually that, no, that's not true,

that feels like it could be pretty problematic. Well, everything that bothers you is the stuff that probably bothered you in high school. It's the same stuff, right? You know, when I was a kid, my mom moved out when my parents got divorced. No one's mom moved out. Your dad always moved out. And so on some level, you have a really primal trauma of why did she leave?

What was that about? Why was I not worth staying for? And then maybe 40 years later, you have the conversation with your mom and you finally work up the courage to go, how come you left? No one's mom left. And she said to me, I really thought I was going to come back in like a month. Like she just thought that they would work it out in a month. And it's such a simple response to something that haunts you your entire life.

And as a kid, you don't think you're allowed to ask those types of questions. You don't really dig into what your parents' relationship was like and who was unhappy and why, and why it was hard or impossible to repair. And so you're left with this feeling that you don't even understand because you've just internalized it. There must be something wrong with me. I must be unlovable if she left, or if she's in so much pain, you know, because of her life or her divorce or where she's at that somehow I'm responsible for.

You're like a little kid. And you're thinking like a little kid. And it wires you, like you realize like, oh, this is like my, my brain, my pathways are built around these wrong assumptions about a lot of really important things. And I've been in therapy since I was in my early twenties, really digging at this stuff and I've done okay. But lately I feel like I've taken a slightly larger leap into healing it, but it's 30 years of trying to rewire it and doing it wrong, doing it with the wrong therapist

or the wrong theory or not listening to their advice. You know, a lot of times I'll read journals from 20 years ago and go, well, I really got the right advice and listened to none of this. Like they told me exactly what to do and I just didn't do it. Or I didn't understand it enough to do it. I think I sometimes think about, and this comes up on the show a lot, like we just have this cavalcade of wise people

marching through this podcast feed. And there's no way anybody, let alone me, can do all of the shit that people are advising you to do. But this is a kind of cliched hackneyed analogy, but it is like planting seeds. Yeah, you may have heard the advice 20 years ago, but it's in there. And it may actually bear fruit,

but just not on your schedule. Yeah, I know. I was thinking recently, I feel like I'm just beginning to get a lot of stuff and it's all beginning to bloom a little bit. And I'll feel fully healed like three days before I drop dead. Like I almost can feel the arc of how long this will take. It will be so close to my death. And maybe that's just how it is for most people. Is fully healed really a possibility? I mean, yeah, I guess it's not. It really is more, do you have the tools on a day-to-day

basis to see the truth, to return to your authentic self a bunch of times. You know, lately I've been enjoying when something really bad happens, trying to figure out the ways that I'm usually triggered or get upset or get angry. How quickly can I do the thing I know I'm supposed to do? And can I reduce the half-life of how long it takes for me to feel calm and happy? Can I laugh it off?

Because I remember during COVID, when we all were sitting around bored and thinking about ourselves more than we were when we were busy working right before COVID, one thing I wrote down in a journal was, you're in comedy, but you need to lighten up. You're taking everything way too seriously. You do need to just lighten up.

And even that, if I just think of that in the moment, wow, you're really taking this seriously and you shouldn't. And I always think about how Ram Dass said, any Buddhist thought, there's a part of you that looks at life as like a dream and it's silly and it's not important, it's meaningless. And then also you have to live your life and you should do your best to do well with it and you should take it seriously. And so you're trying to do both things at the same time and that's tricky to do, to

both care and have a part of you that doesn't care simultaneously. Yeah, I mean, I think, to put it in an even more Buddhist way, there's this idea that nothing has any inherent substance. So the term of art for that is emptiness, that if you closely investigate anything, the chair you're sitting on, your sense of self, whatever it is, if you bring a high-powered microscope to it, either in actuality with your chair

or in a contemplative sense through meditation vis-a-vis your sense of self, your emotions, your thoughts, you'll see that it's actually just a flow of a phenomenon or spinning subatomic particles, you know, spinning through mostly empty space. So there is no inherent substance to things. It is a dream or an illusion on some fundamental level. And you are real on the level of consensual reality.

And you do need to put your pants on and make dentist appointments, definitely the latter. So toggling back and forth, the two views can inform one another, and it's a paradox, but it's a useful one. Yeah, and it's work to remind yourself every day. I always have a little thing in my phone of notes. Like, if I could just think about these six things, I can stay grounded like the toggling, or like just return to your breath.

You know, a lot of people have been talking a lot about how if you breathe out twice as long as you breathe in, your body just is like a lizard brain and it'll just relax because you can trick it into thinking you are relaxed just by changing your breathing pattern. And that's one of those things that you hear about, but if you really do it, it completely works. And it is actually life-changing. It'll help you go to sleep at night. I was saying to someone the other day, no matter how bad anything gets, if you could

go in a room for five minutes and just breathe in four, breathe out eight, you would return to yourself way faster. And so I always have a bunch of those that I try to look at a few times during the day to not spin out. The fact that we forget this stuff so easily and that it's so hard to remember and put it to use is a full employment act for me.

Because it's just, that's the job. The easy part in some ways is accessing and comprehending the wisdom for lack of a less grandiose term. The hard part is doing it. So, I mean, we have to come up with our own ways. Your list on your phone is a great one. Coming up, Judd talks about his recent experience

with ayahuasca, what he got out of it and why he wouldn't necessarily recommend it. I'm Mike Bubbins. I'm Ellis James. And I'm Steph Guerrero. We're convinced that our podcast, The Socially Distanced Sports Bar, is going to be your new favorite comedy podcast with just a little bit of sport thrown in.

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Let me go back to something you said a few minutes ago, which is that you feel like you've been chopping away at your stuff for a long time. And recently, you kind of feel like you've made some leaps. What do you think, what are the variables there? Like what has allowed you to make the leaps, and what does that even look like? Well, I did Ayahuasca earlier this year,

and I had a profound experience on it. I certainly don't recommend it to people because it's crazy. I mean, it's just something that I can't speak for its safety or how anyone will react to it. I just knew some people that had positive experiences and knew someone that they trusted to do it with. And I just thought there's too many things I'm stuck on for too long. It's been a really long time not being able to crack certain things that I actually understand, but it's not getting into my mind or my body.

The adjustment isn't happening. So I did ayahuasca. And for me, a lot of it is the fear of letting go, the fear of surrender. That's a hard part. And not really growing up around any spiritual ideas, you know, existential dread is always a big thing. So to open myself up to something completely different and try to trust the universe and let go, just the idea of doing it is a game changer for me. Because I used to have really bad panic attacks.

So when you talked about that, like I relate, because I had so many stories of full meltdown around other people. One of the first panic attacks I had was, I went to see the premiere of Batman Forever. That's how long ago this was. And I'm there as a guest of Jim Carrey and I'm gonna take a limo with Gary Shanley.

I haven't eaten all day and all I ate was a little popcorn and then Gary Shanley lit a joint and I never smoked pop, like very, very little. And I never really liked it. I just wouldn't, I wouldn't get the experience of other people got out of it. And I start feeling a panic attack, but I don't know what a panic attack is. That's the scariest part. So my heart is racing and I'm getting claustrophobic and I think it's the pot.

Right. And so now it's time to sit down at Batman Forever and we'll walk into the lobby and Gary says hello to Rosie O'Donnell. I always remember this moment because me and Jerry are talking to Rosie O'Donnell. We're both stoned and I'm having a panic attack. And Jerry says to her, I just saw your new special. And it was incredible. Cause I think at the time she had like a really great hour standup special. And then I looked at her and I just said, I didn't see it again.

We sit down and we're in this aisle. And this is back, you know, you know, in the nineties, when some of these premieres were high powered. Like people don't seem to go to premieres anymore, but they used to go. And so I'm in Jim's Isle, I'm sitting next to Renee Harlan and Gina Davis and Bob Iger is in front of me and Tom Cruise is in front of me. It's so star studded, it is a joke. And in my head, I'm like, I don't, you're right.

Something feels really wrong in my head. I'm stoned and I think it's the pot. And so I go, it'll be fine once the movie starts. And then the movie starts. It's the loudest movie in the history of movies. And the credits are like, they fly forward like into your face, each credit. Jim Carrey. And that gives me a bigger panic attack. So in my head I go, I have to leave.

I have to leave. The movie just started 30 seconds ago. And so I turned to Gary and I go, I have to leave. I have to leave. The movie just started 30 seconds ago. And so I turned to Gary and I go, I don't feel good. I'm going to step out for a minute. And I stand up and I'm trying to walk past Jim Carrey. It's his premiere, right? And as I try to slip by him unnoticed, he screams, but joking, but screams, sit down, you're ruining the movie. And then I go to the balcony and I stand against the back wall as far away as you can be from the screen and watch the movie from there. It never came back. And had a series of experiences like that,

that culminated in me having a panic attack on a plane, and just going into full meltdown for hours on a plane. Back then you could use a phone on a plane. I called my manager and talked to him for two hours. Like, I can't handle this, I can't handle this. I still don't know it's a panic attack. I just, I can't handle this, I can't handle this. I still don't know it's a panic attack. I think I'm losing my mind.

And we land in Chicago, and then I'm supposed to take another plane, right? So it's a layover. And then I'm so scared to get back on the plane. And so I fall asleep in like the little area, you know, in the terminal. And then they're saying, okay, you have to get on, you have to get on. And I walk over to the stewardess seeking empathy.

And I just say to her before I get on, I had a really hard fight last time, I'm really scared. And she goes, on or off? Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. And I just went off and I got in a cab,

had a panic attack the entire time in the cab, went to a hotel and got under the blankets and then called my therapist. And then he explained what it was. Oh. And then I realized, oh, okay. And he said, you can't push it away. If you push it away, it's like breaking a mirror.

You kind of almost have to accept it and not resist it. And he just, you know, talked me through how you deal with it. But I had to have my friend fly to Chicago. And I saw him at the airport. And the second I saw him, it went away. And then I flew home. But he had to literally fly me home. And then I learned what panic attacks were

and how to deal with them. And I was able to manage it. And eventually they stopped happening like that. But that was a tough lesson to like feel it. Like, no, don't try not to feel it. Like actually really try to feel the panic attack and that makes it disappear. But I didn't know that. I just thought I'm having a nervous breakdown in the mall in Chicago. How I knew I was having a bad panic attack

was I went to McDonald's and I would always get two quarter pounders and a cheeseburger because I was like 25 years old and I only ate one of the three hamburgers and that's when I knew I was in trouble because I never could finish my McDonald's before my entire life. So you don't get them anymore? You really, they've gone away completely? They basically, sometimes like it raises its ugly head and I'm much more able to like look at it and feel it.

That being said, I have tried to sit on the aisle seat in all plays and musicals since the nineties. I don't like being trapped. Cause one of my biggest fears is be like, say you're in the fifth row of death of a salesman, you're the center and in the middle of the big speech, you have to get up and walk out like the Jim Carrey premiere. Like that's something that freaks me out.

The idea of causing a scene, but I haven't had it really bust into full panic attack. Sometimes I feel it, like the vibration of it and I can breathe it off. I wish I could say the same for myself. I mean, for me, the panic attacks are still, as you know, pretty real. Yeah.

And it's just what you said, the word you said before, trapped. If I feel trapped, especially if there's a social component, meaning that other people will see me freak out, that's the recipe. And I, notwithstanding all of my, you know, years of meditation and endless yammering about it, haven't really been able to, it's so strong

for me that I haven't been able to like, just let it wash over. Sometimes I can, but often it's, it's, it's, it overpowers me. Yeah. It's, it is so terrifying. And it's one of those things that it only goes away because you can tell someone. Like I realized if I told my wife the second it started, like I'm beginning to have a panic attack and if she just held my hand, it would just go away.

And it was the shame or the stigma of it. That's why it's so great that you've talked about it so much. Because when it happened to me, no one had ever talked about it publicly in a way that reached me. And I wouldn't have even had those panic attacks if you had talked about it then. You were the only resource for me. And I find that that's the case with a lot of these subjects. I've produced a few things about oppression.

I produced a Gary Goldman standup special about depression, which is really, really funny. And there was a show that Chris Gether did for HBO called Career Suicide, which was about his mental health struggles. And each time we did those projects, after they aired, we would get tens of thousands of messages saying, thank God you're talking about it, and this got me through the night, and this gave me hope. And that's what both Gary and Chris talked about was that they never had anything like those projects, which are both online now.

And it really helps people because it is the lack of knowledge that is the thing that messes you up the most. But I feel like in terms of the panic, the thing about doing Ayahuasca is it is the setup for the biggest panic attack of your life. Yeah. Because you have to just accept whatever ride is about to happen.

And beforehand, someone said to me, no matter how bad it gets, it kind of tends to pass in like 90 seconds. So if you're having a bad freak out moment, it's not like you're going to have that for an hour. It's literally like 90 seconds. So if you could just observe it almost with with a sense of humor, like what am I supposed to learn from this message that my mind is sending me right now? Even if it's freaky, even if it's scary, something's trying to teach me something from it. So when those

moments would happen in my head, I kept thinking about this thing that Michael Singer, who wrote The Untended Soul, he was giving a talk and he was saying something about like, are you in there? Like a way to reach yourself, your true authentic self, is to go, are you in there? I may be misquoting him. But so during the Ayahuasca trip, if I was really freaking out, I'd have a little voice in my head and I would go, are you in there, Judd? Are you in there? And then I would go, are you in there, Judd? Are you in there?

And then I'd go, yep. And then that would be me. And then that part of me could just observe what was going on, whatever it was, the trip. And then another thing that would happen is I would imagine Ram Dass in my mind, smiling, kind of laughing at what I was going through. And he would just say to me, this is crazy, right? You're really going through it. And he's kind of laughing. Like, isn't this wild that this is happening?

And that would calm me down. Like locating myself and this sense of humor about this journey I was on and that there was something to learn from it. And just even if it's terrifying, be like, oh, I'm supposed to learn something from whatever this message is, this visual message or whatever story is being told to me while I'm tripping balls. One observation, then a question.

The observation is that it's a recurring theme in this conversation is that when you're freaking out, whether you're tripping balls or not, just the presence of another person or to put it in psychological terms, an empathic witness is a massive calming agent. And, you know, it just goes back to this thing that I always, it's not my expression, but I heard it from Dr. Robert Waldinger, which is like never worry alone. It's just, it is incredibly good advice. And I had this experience a couple weeks ago where I was on an elevator. I don't like getting on elevators, but I really try to make the practice of it.

And I was with Joseph Goldstein, who's a great meditation teacher, an old friend of Ram Dass, who you keep referencing. Ram Dass is sort of like a old, old school, he's no longer with us, but old, old school meditation teacher who wrote the book, Be Here Now. And anyway, so I'm with Joseph and he knows I'm uncomfortable

and he just puts his hand on my head during the elevator ride. And he was kind of laughing. Well, he was definitely laughing while I did it. And that is enough, you know, it's like, that's enough. And so my question for you is on the ayahuasca thing, it sounds like it wasn't like you had some sort of insider epiphany or it wasn't like so much the content

of the experience as much as it was the willingness to let go and just deal with whatever comes up. I thought was the most important part of it is the idea that the mystery of life I can open up to, that there's a journey in not being terrified of it and open to the possibility that there's actually something supportive in it. And that is a new thought for me,

coming from just pure terror. Because I did have a therapist in my early 20s and he was a somatic therapist. I was on a table a lot. There was a lot of breathing techniques and I didn't understand it. And I remember I went to see him and as I walked out in his office, he had all the books he had written. His name is Jack Rosenberg and one of the books he wrote was called Total Orgasm. So I walk out and I saw that he wrote a book called Total Orgasm and I was recommended him by Gary Schaling and I called Gary.

I'm like, Gary, you didn't tell me you sent me to the Total Orgasm guy. And he's like, you don't have to talk orgasms in there if you don't want. But he was the one who said, the good stuff is in the darkness. The good stuff, like the thing you don't want to go to, if you go to it, that's where the good stuff is. But I think literally only in the last year have I begun to actually understand that and maybe even feel it a little bit. What role does all of this sort of anxiety play in comedy?

You said before that like, if you're in that anxious mode, it's hard to have the creativity to come up with the jokes. And yet it's a cliche that comedians are neurotic. So there's this idea that if you didn't have the neuroses, you wouldn't be able to do the comedy. So how do you square that circle? I don't think you could think about it too much. Most comedy dies on the operating table.

I mean, most of us in comedy have had enough happen to us to give us a big bowl to draw from. You know, we have all of our anxieties and traumas and, you know, there are people who are smart, who are hilarious because they're smart, but even they're usually kind of weird. Right? So it's not really about if you heal yourself, you won't be funny. There probably is an aspect of, you know, if you heal yourself, maybe you might slow

down a little bit. You might not feel the need to do so much or accomplish so much. But I do think as you understand your mind more and you have a sense of your own spirituality and your own ability to look at other people's journeys and their stories that you can create better are because you paid attention to yourself, to others. And hopefully your stuff gets deeper and you do better work. That's the dream is that you have a little more complexity in your thinking. And what you're saying touches people even more deeply. But it's hard to know. I once talked to Ron

Howard about creativity and his work because he just puts out so many amazing movies, but they're all very different. And I asked him how he looked at his career. And he said, I look at it like my career is like a art gallery and on the wall is the poster of each movie. And I'm just putting up pieces on the wall. Like, no one thing is the thing. I'm just, here's a thing I made. Here's another thing I made.

And at some point I'll walk around that room and look at all the things I did. And I think that's how you have to perceive it so that you don't feel the pressure. You're just trying to be open to your next inspiration or the next thing that makes you passionate about thinking about it and creating it. Cause all of the work, it takes years sometimes.

You have to be obsessed on a thought, a really long time to make a movie or to do a TV show. So you have to find something that will make you excited for years. To what extent is any anxiety that remains with you these days connected to your career? I mean, we mentioned this fear

that nobody's gonna show up to your show. I can relate to that because I've had those exact same fears or whenever I've done public events. I've had it happen where no one was there. You've had it happen? I mean, I've had it happen. Like I did it,

I had it the first time I got out of book, I didn't understand about marketing it, and I wasn't on any social media. It was just at the beginning of some of the social media stuff like Twitter. And I took my daughter with me to my signing, and I swear there was 13 people there. And my daughter, who was maybe 10 at the time,

was just so humiliated. And that's when I joined social media. I said, oh, I have to market all these things myself because I can't trust that they're gonna do it, and there'll be people there. And that's why I got on it now. Obviously we're all trying to get off of it now. But at the time I didn't have a way to reach anyone

who might be interested in what I was doing. But that's less true for movies I would assume. There are big marketing budgets for movies as opposed to books. Yes, yes. Yeah, it was more about live appearances. You know, once I was asked to do this conversation with Cameron Crowe to promote one of my movies

and he did it as a favor, but the studio didn't promote it right. And literally 30 people showed up in like a more hundred seat movie theater and we had this incredible conversation and I idolized Cameron Crowe and it was a dream night and I couldn't believe they didn't, you know, whatever, send the flyer soon enough or post about it in the right place at the, at the right time. The movie is a different thing because it's, you know, it's a, it's, you're spending six months trying to figure out how to convince people it's worth

leaving the house to go to the movie. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it is like a massive military campaign to try to figure out how to activate people to get off the couch. The industry is in a, I mean, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but the industry's in a tough spot right now. Fewer things are being made.

It's not like a great time for comedies in the theater, which has been, you know, a huge area of success for you. So is that anxiety provoking or can you just roll with that? No, it's, it's definitely anxiety provoking because as technology changes, as the culture changes, you have to make some sort of adjustment. There was a period where everybody went to the movies to see R rated comedies. Then they would all buy them on DVD.

And it was just very, very successful. And as streaming got more popular, people felt like, oh, maybe I can just watch these comedies at my house. The studios stopped making as many and got people out of the habit of leaving the house for comedies. I still think people want them desperately.

That's why Barbie made a billion dollars and why Deadpool and Wolverine made a billion dollars. There's that hunger for getting a huge laugh for the large group of people. I just think that the economics of how comedies are made, whether or not they travel around the world, whether or not people will wait for them to be on TV Changes the approach to how to do it, but it's very

anxiety Inducing I mean I actually think that one of the things that affects it is that people are just watching comedy all day long right on tik-tok and Instagram and people haven't really talked about this aspect so much, but usually you would wanna go see a comedy on the weekends. So you wanted to go see wedding crashers or something. You hadn't seen any comedy all week. Maybe you were watching something on TV,

you were watching Home Improvement or Roseanne or something. But for the most part, you weren't satiated. But right now you could sit on your phone and you can go, okay, I'm gonna watch someone cleaning a baby monkey in a sink, and then I'm gonna watch somebody fart in a hot tub, and then I'm gonna watch someone like fall off a roof into a pool, and you can literally watch 300 of the funniest

12 second things. And I do think at the end of the day you might think, well, I'd rather go see a horror movie right now. I'd rather watch Dateline because I have been laughing all day. So it's up to the people who make comedy films to just make better ones and make ones that are deeper, more emotional or wilder. It just hopefully will lead to more originality and taking chances.

But we can't deny that there's something happening in the world that's affecting habits. You could go do Marvel movies. Exactly. There's got to be a character out there that I'm right for. I never get that call. No one wants me for Marvel. No one wants me for Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. I don't know why I'm on none of these lists.

There are people like me who somehow make that transition. I may not have put my hat in the ring on the giant movies. I'll do that. Maybe that would be the answer to everything. Let's go back to comedy. So the, you're, I think what you were saying earlier is that you don't have to be neurotic to be funny. You can actually be on the path toward healing, whatever that means and still be funny,

but you might not be as crazy about the process. Am I restating that with some degree of accuracy? Well, I think when you're young, you know, it's really how you define crazy or neuroticism. I think for a lot of people when they're young, they have a unreasonable amount of confidence to pursue things. I think we're genetically built to hunt and gather

and get out there. So in the comedy world, you have a lot of really funny, sometimes strange people who have a belief in themselves that they can break through and reach a lot of people. And even that alone is kind of crazy. When I lived with Adam Sandler and we were in our early twenties, Adam just really believed everything that has happened to him was going to happen to him. And even now, he says, it made no sense. His parents are really cool and built in him a real belief that he would succeed. But when you look back now, we were just two idiots in an apartment with no real connection to anything. But we thought we could pull it off

in a way that was only irrational. And so is that neurotic? And then it's, what are we talking about? What do we find interesting? Some people are really unique. If you're Steven Wright or Bob Goldthwaite, there are people who are just really smart and insightful, whatever like Seinfeld or Bill Maher.

There's all sorts of different ways people do comedy. Not everybody is a neurotic mess, or maybe everyone isn't more neurotic than people who don't do comedy, but they've just found a way to turn it into something artful. I mean, I've met people in and out of comedy. I don't look at it like the comedians seem much crazier

than everybody else. They seem more entertaining. And I think that they enjoy when bad things happen because when you're in comedy and something terrible happens to you, you get kind of excited because you're like, oh, this is gonna be a great story. And so we have that going for us.

And that's true for other art. I heard a country music star saying, yeah, when someone breaks up with me on some level, I'm like, oh, I'm going to get some songs out of this. So that certainly is a stress reliever. But it's just a way of looking at the world. When I was little, I loved the Marx Brothers because I liked that there were these people who were usually they didn't have as much power as the bad guy and I think it was a way I projected my hostilities about being like a nerdy kid who was in the class in gym class. I love the Marx brothers humiliating the people in the tuxedos. It was class warfare or they were getting mistreated in some way. Someone said, as long as you punch Harbo in the face in the beginning of a Marx Brothers

movie, you will laugh at anything the Marx Brothers do to those people. And we think that in our movies all the time, you know, that sense, I feel less than, I feel mistreated and rising up or getting revenge is fun. And that sometimes is also the seed of comedy. I don't fit in. And so I'm seeing the world differently. And sometimes compassionately, I see all the levels of mistreatment.

Like I feel bad and I'm compassionate to those people. It's like the 40 year old virgin, you know, he's just a guy and intimacy got past them and he's hiding in the stockroom in a stereo store, afraid to connect with somebody. He thinks he's going to be revealed as a freak, so he'd rather hide. And when you're interested in comedy, you relate to those types of people. You want them to win. You love John Candy and planes, trains, and automobiles, those types of underdog people. And so sometimes it's for minoradism, sometimes it's for like a wave of people who are struggling and wanting to tell stories about how they overcome it.

It's interesting because at the heart of your comedy, there is this earnest thing. I'm gonna quote you back to you here. You've said, in everything I write, I have the same basic theme, which is we're all struggling. We're all trying to figure out how to be better. Which again, that's a pretty earnest note in movies that can be hilariously and scathingly sarcastic at times. Yeah, well, because I came to realize that every movie I'd made was a coming-of-age movie.

And then I thought, I think most stories are coming-of-age stories. Most stories are about someone taking some sort of a beating or being put in a corner and having to fight their way out of it. And usually in movies, people learn something or they come together in some way. And if they don't learn anything, that's a shocking aspect, right? No country for old men or something where it just ends, and he's dead.

And that's the point of the movie, The Darkness of the World. So to me, I just think that when I go to the movies, I'm rooting for people. I like seeing people who need to learn lessons and it's fun to show people make terrible mistakes, immature mistakes, mistakes of all kinds. And here's the repercussions of those mistakes. And here's how that resulted in maybe they grew a little bit and Maybe they can connect with someone more than they could maybe they could love better than they could before

Things really fell apart because when things fall apart, that's when we laugh the most like yes This is what life feels like Everything is going wrong and we all laugh at it because it's so familiar, but then we like to see the climb out. And what can you make out of it? Coming up, Judd talks about how comedy can help when it feels like the world's on fire and how he embraces criticism in his own creative process. What's up guys, it's your girl Kiki and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you it's too good and I'm diving into the brains of entertainments best and brightest,

okay? Every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation. And I don't mean just friends, I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on. So follow, watch, and listen to, baby, this is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage

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wherever you get your books. One of the themes that's come up in your books, specifically, you know, Sick in the Head and Sicker in the Head, the sequel, in both of these books, you're talking to comedians. You, just by, for background for the audience, Judd has been obsessed with comedy since he was a little kid. And even when he was 15, was like lugging around a tape recorder, was like a proto-podcaster interviewing these big comedians about, you know, what makes them tick. And so he's turned it into a couple of books. And one of the themes you explore in the book is like, in these books is like, what is comedy's function in a society?

And is it okay to laugh when the world's on fire? So I'd be interested to hear you riff on those questions. I think that the real issue is that everyone laughs at different things. There are people that need humor to be very dark and in your face and inappropriate and it's a way of laughing at the horror of the world is to laugh at the thing you shouldn't laugh at.

It is like giving a finger to the madness of the whole thing and to other people that type of humor is just wrong and hurtful and unnecessary. You know, some people like a very delicate, gentle type of humor. Some people like things that are weird. Some people like political humor. Some people don't want any politics. And so it really is like music.

People like classical, they like country music. They like Norwegian death metal. is like music. People like classical, they like country music, they like Norwegian death metal. I think the issue is that nowadays people get mad about the type of comedy that they don't want to listen to. And so because things come through in your feeds, you're being fed things that every once in a while you might see something that deeply offends you. But in the old days, you wouldn't even see it. It's like in the 70s, you wouldn't buy Norwegian death metal. And so you wouldn't even know what it was. But now, sooner or later, we do see a little bit of everything. And that's when our sensibilities class about comedy. So for me, generally, I think people should be able to listen to

what they want to listen to and also people should be able to criticize. If you hear something that you think is offensive, I think it's fine to say that it is offensive. I don't think people shouldn't work because of a joke misfire, but I do think it's okay for someone to say that is truly an awful thing to say. You can't really stop that conversation. Comedians tend to be very thin skinned when it comes to criticism. Comedians love to tell everyone what they're doing wrong. They love to make fun of everyone in the most brutal ways, but you tell them one of their jokes is bad,

they fall apart or they become enraged as if they're in a protected space. But just like a movie gets reviewed, I think, you know, comedy can get reviewed by a newspaper or just a person online. The key is I don't think anyone should, you know, lose their ability to perform because of it. How thin skinned are you about your work?

Like in your creative process, do you take notes? Are you, you know, getting feedback? Or you, or you may be in a world where people don't want to say the hard thing to you because your jet appetite. No, I always embrace as much criticism as I can get. I try to do these screenings when I make a movie and I invite as many friends and other writers and directors and I really push them to tell me what they thought of it. And certainly there are a few people that have no hesitation

to tell you what they didn't like about it. And you desperately need that. The issue is that sometimes they're wrong. You know, sometimes you invite someone and it's not how they would do it. And sometimes they tell you how they would do it. And you realize, oh, if I listened to you, it would sound like the way you do things. So you have to be very careful because you can get influenced and lose touch with how you tell stories and what you find funny.

And that's delicate. Some people really can't handle too much input because it throws them. I actually don't mind it. But most importantly, when you show a movie to 300 people, and let's say you're re-editing it, and then you show it again and you re-edit it based on what you learned from the audience, if after doing that four times you don't understand what is functioning and what is not, then you're in trouble.

Because the audience, well, there's a joke, did they laugh? If they didn't laugh, you failed. Can you fix it? Do you have another joke? Can you remove it without it causing a problem? Do they understand your story? Do they like your story? And so you keep fiddling as you keep showing people

and hopefully you get enough information where you land somewhere where you're very happy with how it turned out. But it's a conversation between you and the audience. And then there have been friends, comedy writer friends who have watched cuts and said, here's the mistake. And they're just completely right. And it completely transforms what you're doing. I saw a clip on TikTok or somewhere with Bill Hader,

who actually has been on the show as well. And he was saying that you should listen to notes, but don't listen, you know, listen when somebody points out something's not working, but don't take their advice on how to fix it, because they're never right about that. They're just right about what the problem is. But I think when you show a project to a bunch of people,

you'll hear recurring criticism. And that's how you know it's a real problem. Yeah. In terms of people having the fix, yeah, it is rare that somebody knows your story well enough to actually give you the fix. But I've certainly done table reads where somebody was there and at the end of the table read

I asked them what do they think of this script that they've said I think the problem is this and they did fix it. Like it has happened where someone... Now it may not be the scene, but it might be the idea or the emotional idea. We had a friend who saw Pineapple Express and he said, it seems like the whole movie is about the fact that Seth Rogen doesn't know if he wants to be friends with his drug dealer.

And his drug dealer, James Franco, wants to be his friend and Seth thinks, no, you're just my drug dealer. And that's the thing we care about. And that was in the movie, but we didn't realize it was the whole movie. And as soon as we leaned into it, based on his recommendation, the whole movie worked. So it does happen, but not as much as you wish. You wish your friends could just fix it for you all the time. That would be much easier.

I put out my work, I have a little kitchen cabinet that I give out my stuff to, and it makes complete sense what you say. If there's a recurring theme, you know there's something you should look at. Like I gave, I've been working on a memoir for six years now and I gave it out for notes like six months ago and one of the recurring themes was we don't like the main character, which is a problem.

I had a friend say something very similar to me recently about a project they were working on. You know, that's, that's, you know, that's the dance out of it. Like, why am I following this person? How am I relating to this person? Do I feel like I like them? Am I sharing common problems? Do I have empathy for them? But why, so in your memoir,

you're the least sympathetic character? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I'm the least sympathetic character, but there's exactly the questions you were just asking. Like, why am I following this guy? Why am I on this train with him? That was, I mean, that's an incredibly hard thing to hear,

especially when the main character is you and the whole story is supposed to be a factual retelling. But it was a really good note and I completely, I have no quibbles with it. I have to just go back and fix it. Well, they want to know more, I think, is usually what it is. Like, they don't know you well enough to be sympathetic enough to your struggles. There's something that is probably omitted that would get them to really feel you as much as they need to. But it's funny, I remember I was listening to your podcast

once and you took one of those tests about like how you treat your employees. Yeah. And your tests, like you realize that like, you know, maybe you weren't as sympathetic to the people on your staff as you should be. And I remember just relating to it. Like I thought, wow, that's so amazing

that he's talking about that because it's so hard to have employees and to have all those relationships be healthy and comfortable and you're so stressed in your work then your best self doesn't always come out. And I thought it is so great that you had an honest conversation about office spaces and the tension in them and the, the,

the communication dynamic. So I'm the opposite. Like I would probably love your memoir exactly. Cause I don't relate to the way, you know, when you are a perfectionist or if you're well-tied or you care so much or you're neurotic in a way that makes you care so much that you could pop, like that's how I always felt too. I would get hired to rewrite friends' scripts.

So they'd be about to shoot a movie in like two months and they would bring me in to be the last writer to try to fix all the big problems before shooting started. And in my head, I would think, if this movie doesn't work, it's only my fault. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And then I would have panic attacks. Hmm.

Because I put so much pressure on myself to be able to fix it, and I really thought it's only me that is the reason for this failure, if it happens. So it sounds like your problem in the workplace is maybe the opposite of mine, because I was seen as cold and stubborn for this failure if it happens. So it sounds like your problem in the workplace is maybe the opposite of mine, because I was seen as cold and stubborn

and dismissive by my junior employees when I got my 360 review six years ago, but you've described yourself as a people pleaser. Well, I think in a creative space, I might be so nervous that I don't know if it's working or not, that I could just be in my head in a way that someone would think, you know, he's shut down now or he's not warm and nice right now because I'm terrified that this movie, which cost millions and millions of dollars dollars makes no sense whatsoever.

And I found that sometimes when I'm directing, I have to actually put on almost a show for the crew and the actors of confidence and a lightness of spirit that is not honest. That in my head, I'm like, that rehearsal is not funny. We really need to start from scratch. Maybe I got to go in the trailer and sit with the producers and the actors and rewrite everything we're doing today. Then you're supposed to go back to the set and just be really funny and sweet and cool with everyone.

But in your head, you're thinking, this day cost a quarter of a million dollars, and the script I wrote is awful. And so that's part of the dance of being an employer and a leader of a group of people, the creative team is, you know, they don't wanna deal with your weird mood. You have to find a way to, you know, be pleasant and productive and communicate

in a healthy way. And on a movie where you're exhausted, it's really challenging because sometimes you also haven't slept and you're out of gas and you have to tune into how you're affecting people because, you know, the fish rots from the head. So you have to care about that, make it your highest priority. It's funny thing that expression, the fish rots from the head is something I say all the time. I'm sure my staff has a drinking game because part of what I learned through my 360 review

is now when there's a problem on the team, I really try to put it through the frame of, not necessarily like self laceration, but like I'm the leader here. So I'm almost certain that it traces back to me in some way. And how can I look at it through that lens rather than just blaming the people around me? And I don't want to blame myself unnecessarily either,

but it's at least asking that question like, huh, what am I or my executive coach, Jerry Colonna likes to say like, how am I complicit in the conditions that I say I don't want? I find that very helpful. Yeah. I need a Jerry Colona in my life. Wait, where's Jerry Colona's phone number? Yeah. Hit me up offline.

I'll make that happen for you, buddy. I'm going to have to move in with me like Eugene Landy did with Brian Wilson. That's right. Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys had this self-help guy move in with him, and didn't it go wrong? It did because he got taken advantage of by him, and the guy started trying to write songs with him and take writing credit. And I think that a lot of people, especially Brian Wilson felt that he was being controlled. There's a great movie where John Cusack plays Brian Wilson that talks about all this. All right.

We are approaching the end of our time together, which I'm sad about because this has been really fun. But let me ask you a couple questions that I always ask. One is, is there something you were hoping that we would get to that we didn't? That we didn't? Yeah. Well, that's a very good question. What didn't we cover? What's helpful to other people, I guess.

Well, all I can say is, I'll tell you my favorite self-help books. Maybe that's helpful to people. Great, yeah. I love Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul. I love all the P. Machodran books. You can't go wrong with those books like, you know, When Things Fall Apart, Start Where You Are. I do think all of these Richard Schwartz books

about internal family systems are game changers. Thich Nhat Hanh, Ram Dass, you know, that's where my head is lately. I also love James Finley, who writes about contemplative prayer. He has a great book called The Healing Path and Richard Rohr has a lot of great books, you know, that are, you know, related to faith, but James Finley is someone that talks about the space where you feel connected to, I don't know if you would call it a mystery or spirituality or God, but there's this very quiet space and sometimes we connect with it when we're walking and we just see a bird or maybe something our dog does or the moment when we think of something creative, there's that sacred space.

And it's really hard to get to and it's hard to stay in. And he talks about how every moment in modern life is trying to pull you out of it. And he writes beautifully about those conditions that I find that when I read his books, I just do better with writing. Because I do think that that's true. It's so hard to get quiet, to clear all the voices, all the critical voices,

and feel a different kind of connection to the universe that feels almost undescribable. Indescribable, that's what you that feels almost undescribable. Indescribable, that's what you say, indescribable. But James Finley is someone worth looking up. He's had, there's a lot of videos on YouTube where he talks about this. Another book I've heard you mention is Transforming Problems into Happiness.

Yes, that was a great book that Gary Shaman gave me that's based on the Buddhist idea that when bad things happen, you should be happy because it's an opportunity to learn something or fix something about yourself. And if you really are in that head that this is supposed to happen, speeding I'm taking right now is the best thing that ever happened to me. It's going to teach me about compassion or resilience or something that that can really change your mood all the time because then nothing actually is bad. I mean, obviously some things are pretty bad,

but it's a way to look at things that makes things more bearable. My therapist always says, life is suffering yet we soldier on. Hmm. I'm trying to think if I agree with that. Life involves suffering. Pete Slauson Oh, we have no choice? Jared Lieberman For sure.

Pete Slauson Well, you can't avoid the suffering. Jared Lieberman No. Pete Slauson This is really the point of it. Like, it's coming and how do you relate to it? Jared Lieberman Yes. Yes. Pete Slauson Can you handle the fact that life is just a mix and it's coming from both directions and how can you do the dance with it?

That I agree with, for sure. Final question for me. You mentioned your show coming up on November 9th. Tell us about that. Tell us about anything else you're doing that we should look for coming up. Well, I am doing a Judd and Friends show for the New York Comedy Festival, so you can go to nycomedyfestival.com and that's going to be November 9th at the Beacon Theater in New York. And a lot of surprise, shockingly good guests will be there. That's how I like to do shows

where it's me and mystery guests. And you can always know for sure that the mystery guests are better than me. That's the fun of going to the shows. I don't know when this airs, but I have a bunch of shows at Largo in Los Angeles on the 11th. We're doing a show with Beck and Zooey Deschanel and Robbie Hoffman. And then I have another one on the 25th of September. I do a lot of shows there and I have a show in Atlanta. I believe it's November 3rd or 4th. I think it's the Variety Playhouse. You can find it if you're in Atlanta, you'll find it.

But those shows are just so fun for me. And most all of them are for charity because it's an excuse for me to ask people to do shows with me without guilt. I can just say, come on, it's for charity. And it's a way to manipulate people into hanging out with me. Do you have any movies coming out? Well, right now, the main movie I'm working on is a documentary about Mel Brooks for HBO.

So I've been lucky enough to spend a lot of time with Mel Brooks. The last few months, he's 98 years old. And a lot of our conversations are about what he's learned over the years, what wisdom he's taken from his journey, and it's very special to spend time with him. But when I ask him what advice, you know, he gives like his grandchildren, and I expect a very long answer. He just goes, be nice. Just be nice. You don't know what people are going through. Be nice. One would say he is a stoic.

Jared Sussman I mean, that's solid advice. Pete Slauson Oh, yeah. Jared Sussman Yeah, it's hard to go wrong with that. My man, this was awesome. Thank you very much for doing it. Really appreciate it. Well, thank you. I've been listening for a long time. I have many of them downloaded for permanent relistens because they've been very helpful along the way, and I'm so glad that you're so committed to it.

It's great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks again to Judd Apatow. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks again to Judd Apatow. Don't forget to check out his shows, one in Atlanta on November 3rd and the other on November 9th at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, one of my favorite theaters. Also, don't forget if you want a cheat sheet of today's episode, go over to danharris.com where you can sign up. You can also interact with me in the chat and get my

monthly video AMAs, Ask Me Anything sessions, and also I've been live streaming some of my daily meditations. So a lot going on over on danharris.com. Please join me. Before I go, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer.

DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself

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