The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Neil Brennan & Erica Komisar

Episode Date: December 27, 2017

Neil Brennan is a prominent standup comedian, writer, director, actor, and producer. He was the co-creator of Chappelle's Show and was the star of the Netflix special, "3 Mics."  Erica Komisar is a psychoanalyst, parent guidance expert, and author with a private practice in New York. She consults for schools, corporations, and other institutions. She is the author of the book, "Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters."

You're listening to The Comedy Cellar, live from the table on the Riotcast Network, riotcast.com. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to The Comedy Cellar Show here on Sirius XM Channel 99. My name is Noam Dwarman. I'm the owner of The Comedy Cellar. We're not in our regular location because TruTV has kind of evicted us from our table downstairs, but we're here upstairs at the podcast studio with Dan Natterman, of course. We're in the studio. This is actually an apartment that Noam owns, and it's where some of our more famous comics go to the bathroom, if need be.

Yes, yes. Actually, we should get them to sign the bathroom, right? Sign the wall. Right upstairs from the comedy center. All the most famous names in comedy have made number two in this bathroom. Kristen Montella, who's back. She's pregnant.

Are you back on the show now? No, I just came because I saw that Erica was on the agenda. I'm really, really excited to have you on the show. Her name is Erica Komisar. Am I pronouncing it correctly? Yes. I gotta tell you, Stephen writes these introductions and usually they're bad. really excited to have you on the show. Her name is Erica Commissar. Am I pronouncing it correctly? Yeah. Uh, is a psycho.

Now I gotta tell you, Steven writes these introductions and usually they're, they're bad. Okay. Is a psychoanalyst, parent guidance, expert and author of being there. Why prioritizing motherhood in the first three years matters.

That's basically enough. I can't, I can't, he, why can't his, he sends it to me, attack. Why can't his text messages parse into MMS automatically? By mistake, I, in preparation for this interview, I read the Jersey Kaczynski book. All right. So now, first of all, just, are you a mom?

I am. Okay. And Kristen's pregnant, as you can see. Yeah. I have. Congratulations. Thank you. I have.

No, it's unwanted pregnancy. I have a five-year-old, a four-year-old, and a six-month-old baby. Oh, nice. And come closer to the mic. Okay, yeah. And my wife, this is, first of all, what I love about this is because I don't let my wife work. And now I have justification for it rather than just being a sexist. No, we're very lucky because my wife

doesn't have to work. She's able to stay home with the children. And again and again, I say to myself, how could this not be the best thing for my children? How can you pay someone else to raise your kids? And I felt this so strongly that when I was speculating about like, why are there so many mass murders and everything? What's different? Like, we always had guns. I began to wonder, and I got someone really mad. I said it kind of sarcastically, but it's like, could feminism be to blame for this?

Could this movement, which liberated women to do whatever they want, have a huge collateral damage in children suffering upbringings which are not as good and not what they need compared to previous generations. So I'll start with that. Well, I would just, if I could... Can you slut the guests? Jesus, Dan. Well, she's not a researcher on mass murders, but I find that supposition a little bit...

Well, it's a launching point. Obviously, I'm not really saying that's the case, but clearly, if upbringing matters, it's got to manifest itself Obviously, I'm not really saying that's the case, but clearly, if upbringing matters, it's got to manifest itself in some way. So how do we see it? So I'll address the feminism issue, which is why my book has been so controversial, really. You know, feminism, I consider myself a feminist in that feminism was about choices, that women didn't have choices before before and they do have choices now. We don't all have the same choices.

We don't all have the choice to work or not to work, particularly in a country that doesn't provide us with paid maternity leave. We're the only civilized nation that doesn't provide paid maternity leave, which really devalues mothering in that case. But, you know, feminism is about choices. So you have a choice to have children. You also have a choice not to have children. And you also have a choice if you have to work about how you spend your time with your children. And so, you know, feminism was about women's rights. And obviously it's important that we have rights as women. But I think what got, what you'd say the pendulum swung too far. So what's now been

overlooked are really the rights of children. And I would consider myself a child advocate, but I would also consider myself an advocate for mothers because I've never seen a mother in all the years I've been treating mothers and babies. I've never seen a mother who's happy whose child is not happy. A mother who's happy whose child is not happy. That's very interesting. So I mean, I consider myself an advocate for mothers. But, of course, you've seen the converse, that is, happy children and miserable mothers. That we see a plenty of those. You know, I mean, again, I think when children are happy and healthy, in the end, their mothers are happy and healthy.

So I really consider myself an advocate for mothers and babies. And, you know, we do have an incredible rise in postpartum depression. It's 20 percent. One in five women suffer from postpartum depression. Those are only the ones that are diagnosed with it. Many more should be diagnosed, meaning it probably is as high as 40 percent of women today have postpartum depression, which means that, you know, they're not getting the kind of support they need. They're often bored with their babies. So, you know, we really have a problem in this country. Well, I just want to say, can you talk about that a little bit?

Like, I cannot understand the concept of being bored with your baby. Right. So can you just kind of talk about how that manifests or what that looks like when someone comes to you and that's kind of what you're seeing? So you'd say every job has boring moments. Probably even being a comedian has boring moments. Every job has boring moments. Watching them for sure, but that's my job. So, right, every job has boring moments

and being a mother is very valuable work, incredibly valuable work, but it has boring moments. But if you have a pervasively bored feeling of being with your baby, you'd say it's quite unnatural. And it is a sign of postpartum depression, but not one that we identify in our culture as part of postpartum depression. We actually tell women it's okay to be bored. It's fine. It's normal.

Go back to work if you're bored. We don't actually tell them that with somebody else's baby, it's actually more natural to be bored but with your own baby not so natural and we're not providing those mothers with what they need to really mother all right well I have a few first of all this is Neil Brennan co-creator of the Chappelle show disagree he's also three mics three mics on Netflix thank you for correcting people and dating my resume for this is he's a he has comes from a family of Three mics. Three mics on Netflix. Thank you for correcting people. Updating my resume for me. He comes from a family of nine children. Nine children?

Thank you, yeah. And this is Erica Commissar who wrote a very, very important book. You might have read about it in the papers, saying how important it is scientifically, how important it is for mothers to be with their children for the first three years as opposed to being out of the home. And so we haven't said what is the. You may have covered this already.

What's the basic premise? I know that's but what is it? What happens in those first three years and what is neglecting it resulting? It's a good question. So the first three years are what we call the critical window of brain development. By the end of the third year, 85% of the right brain or the social-emotional brain, what we call the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system of the brain, are developed. So basically, by the end of three years, 85% of your social-emotional brain is developed. And a mother's interaction with her baby in those years is

really a very important part of the development of that part of the brain. And so mothers do really two, they do a lot of things, but they perform two really critical functions for babies in that period of time. One, they buffer children from stress from moment to moment. And that buffering of children from stress after three years is internalized by that baby as emotional security, which then that child can be more resilient to stress in the future. How do they buffer them? So every time a baby is in distress, a mother soothes that baby's distress. And then she is doing the other thing that I was going to say is the other critical function, which is emotional regulation. So every time a baby is in distress,

a mother is bringing a baby's emotions back to what we call homeostasis. So they don't go too high and too low. And what we know now is that, you know, babies are much more neurologically fragile than we've ever understood before. There are some scientists now who say that actually babies are born nine months too early. Others that say 18 months too early from a neurological perspective. And the only reason babies are born. Well, I know the answer to that. Okay. Yeah, because the vagina is too small to get the head out.

That was the old theory. That was the old theory. And actually, that's been a little bit disproved. is too small to get the head out. That was the old theory. That was the old theory. And actually, that's been a little bit disproved. The new theory is that energetically, mothers could never carry a baby for another nine months or 18 months. The mother would die. It would kill the host, basically.

That's ridiculous. That's a small price to pay for a baby. So she's getting a lot of flack from feminists because she's basically arguing that women shouldn't be out working in the first three years if they can avoid it. And if I think about how people who don't want to accept global warming find a way to just discount any data, what you are putting forward is going to be very, very difficult for, on the left, for feminists to swallow, on the right, for people who don't want to have family leave to swallow. And they're going to attack you and try to accuse your data of being inaccurate. Is that correct? Yeah. And I mean, you're exactly correct.

Is there anybody that doesn't have an agenda that's attacking you because they feel scientifically you're incorrect? Any scientists or researchers that feel that a Jamaican nanny is just as good? Specifically Jamaican nannies. I live on the Upper East Side. That's what they're about. So I can honestly say the research is not mine. I am a collector of research. So I've been collecting research for the last 13 years. And basically, it's neuroscience, attachment, epigenetics, and psychoanalytic research.

And it's basically research from the last 75 years. And it all goes in one direction, more or less? Goes in one direction. So it's not my research. It's research I've collected. Now, the 90s was something called the decade of the brain. So we have a lot of neuroscience research. It's research I've collected. Now, the 90s was something called the decade of the brain. So we have a lot of neuroscience research, but we also have a lot of very, very current neuroscience and epigenetics research that backs up everything that we believe to be true over the

years that I've seen in my practice, which is that when mothers are absent from a child's life on a daily basis, from moment to moment, that child is not getting that emotional regulation and that buffering of stress, both of which at the end of that three-year period are internalized by that child. So one, the disorders that we're seeing in children and adolescents and young adults now are disorders in adults,

because I can ask all of you, how many of you know people who are on any kind of antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication? I know one very well. We are in the comedy world, you understand. So you'd say, I would say 50% of our population is on some kind of psychopharmacological medication. And that means that we have a population of people that can't regulate their emotions. And so then you say- Having said that, it's because they weren't really prescribing stuff 40 years ago.

It doesn't mean that it's gotten 50% more. Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't think that's necessarily a great example. So, well, you know. I do agree with you. Well, it's cause for further inquiry. If you look at the statistics, there's been a rise in depression and anxiety. There's been a, in children and adolescents.

So between the ages of 12 and 19, there's been a, in children and adolescents. So between the ages of 12 and 19, there's been a 400% increase in children prescribed medication, anti-anxiety and antidepressants since 1988. 400%. Well, you, are you a working mother? I am. And how do you sleep at night? I mean, she gets her kids drunk. So my kids are teenagers now. Great. So one of the things I advocate for in the book is that you can do everything in life. You just can't do it all at the same time. And I'm a good example of that because I started to write this book 13 years ago

and thought about getting an agent and really felt compelled to do it because I was very concerned about what I was seeing. But then I put the book down because I knew that there would be a right time for it in my life. And at that point, my children were very young and it would distract me away from really being there for my children. So one of the messages and an important message in the book is that you can do everything in life. You just can't do it all at the same time. And that doesn't mean that women can't quote unquote work at all.

But it means prioritizing your children in those first three years. And that really then, then we get into a discussion of why don't we have a paid maternity leave in this country? Well, I can tell you right now, Noam would give thumbs down to that. What? Paid maternity leave. I have to pay? Well, that's what I'm saying. That's why I say that Noam is a believer in the importance of a mother being present,

but he is not a believer in the government telling him how to spend his money. I'll tell you what I'm not. I mean, if you want to get sidetracked, I'm a believer that these worthy goals like paid maternity leave

or health care, whatever it is, I believe in them all and I believe they should be funded by the entire taxpayer base. They should not be funded by one individual employer who has the misfortune to have five mothers and this one has no mother. But I'm all for it's a very good spending of taxpayer money to help women stay home. You know how strongly I believe this. Well, I didn't know that, but now I'm...

No, I mean how important I think a mother is. First of all, I see other things... Oh, I know you believe that, yeah. Like, I think that... I discovered this. It's more to do with dads, but maybe it's with mothers too, that, you know, you'd think that, oh, you have a child, now you're automatically supposed to love it.

But it really is not that easy. You have to spend the time with it. You do. And I see these dads who are not attached to their kids. And it's not because they're not good people. They're not with their kids like I am. They'd be attached to a puppy if they spent the time with a puppy. And I think that the fact that I see these moms.

We have an au pair as well. And I hear a lot of stories. And there's a whole lot of moms and dads who only see their kids a few hours on the weekends. They'll pair, put them to school, they're at work, they come home, maybe they get to say goodnight to them. And I say, how attached to their children, what kind of bond is there going both ways?

So when I was joking about why do we have more serial killers now, I'm only half kidding because if this is important, then we should be seeing some real problems from it. Do you think that the problem would be solved by maternity leave? I mean, is that it? Because there is the three year. It's still all the Sheryl Sandberg thing of like it's that's not leaning in. I told you he was smart. It's the beginning.

We have to have some kind of paid maternity leave. You know what I advocate for knowing the reality of our country. Now there's some countries that provide three years of paid maternity leave. Which countries do it? Eastern Slovenia and Eastern European countries provide three years of paid maternity leave. Finland provides 18 months. Sweden provides a year but Sweden has other problems because Sweden actually then forces children into daycare after a year so we don't want to idealize

Sweden. Do you think that women will have a hard time going with that? Because there is that thing of like well I'm either a bad I think women face the choice now I'm either a bad feminist or a bad mom

Part of the issue with feminism was that in the 60s, it basically, Gloria Steinem came out and said that if you didn't go to work, you were a traitor to feminism. So there's a lot of very conflicted young women who actually have to be told. I mean, there's so many reasons I wrote this book. But another reason I wrote the book was really to validate mothering as really important and valuable work, because we basically devalued mothering. So young women feel so terribly conflicted about mothering that they feel in some way that they're traitors to the cause of feminism. You know, again, if we really think about what feminism is, feminism is basically gave us choices. And you can't make the best

choices for you or your children or your family unless you have all the information. Well, like you said, the choice that they made is all of the above. And you can't do that. A small percentage of people and women have what I would call as objectively rewarding work.

Like you comedians or me, I run a business that's creative. Most people have these rote jobs where they go and punch a clock. Why would they want, why would women want to be doing that in the name of feminism? Because having a child, raising a child is intrinsically,

naturally rewarding to a human being. I mean, it's in our DNA. So you would think they'd way prefer that to going to, I'd say, eight out of ten jobs or just bull. They probably would prefer that. Well, as long as there's no stigma. But they can't admit it. That's the problem.

Who goes first? Well, not on the Upper East Side they can't admit it, but I think in most of America they happily would admit it. I think the financial aspect is what weighs more heavily than the stigma, personally. I mean, especially living in New York City, you just, it's not possible unless you're in a certain echelon financially to stay home for three years. But you know what the irony is? I believe this.

I don't know if it's true. That as women went to work and it became normal that every family has two earners, expenses as supply and rents just went up. Everything went up to cancel out the fact that families have more money now, and they're probably not living any better than they were when it was a single breadwinner. That's probably true, but we're here now.

If you could unwind it, then things in society would have to become cheaper to allow for it. I just wanted to know if in a case where it was not feasible for the woman to stay at home with the child, what is the next best solution? Well, the next best solution is to have a single surrogate caregiver. And that's also difficult to afford.

And so what I recommend is, what I don't recommend is, yeah, I recommend a family member first. And then- And of family members, you would- Not your uncle. Not your uncle. What we call kinship bonds, meaning a mother, a grandmother, an aunt. What's the best? Grandma. Grandma. Grandma. Someone who has a similar investment in that child as you do and will be in that child for the rest of their lives. So there you know, there's researchers in my book, one in particular, who goes around the world and studies mothering in various countries and cultures, basically to see if mothering,

sensitive, empathic mothering is culturally relative or whether it's universal. And what she's discovered is no, in fact, it's universal. I believe that. But what she's also discovered is that we've perverted the idea of what's called alloparenting. So sometimes people will come up with this, you know, well, in the rest of the world, there's, you know, multiple attachment figures. And the answer is yes, that's called alloparenting, where you have multiple attachment figures. But what they don't tell you, the whole story, is that we've perverted that system here. That multiple attachment figures means that the aunt and the grandmother and the next door neighbor you call aunt and the sisters, the baby, when the baby is not in distress,

goes to those other caregivers. They are alternative attachment figures. But when the baby is in distress, the mother is still physically proximate to the baby. So the baby goes back to the mother when the baby's in distress. And that's how you grow the right brain, not by removing the baby from the mother's proximate presence, their physical presence. And what we've done is we perverted it. So we now leave babies for, as you said, the Pew Charitable Trust did a research, did some research on the fact that working parents in America spend 60 to 90 minutes a day with their child under the age of one. So that means that you basically can't develop a child's emotional security,

nor can you develop their right social emotional brain spending 60 to 90 minutes a day with a newborn. Noam, your mother left... 60 to 90 days when you're already exhausted anyway from working. Right, exactly. This is strictly anecdotal, but Noam, your mother left the house at what age were you? Five. Oh, five. Okay, so you were, your mother left the house at what age were you? Five. Oh, five.

Okay, so you were already in the clear. Yeah, and she was home. What if your mother is around, but she's got a two-year-old, a three-year-old, a six-year-old, a nine-year-old? You know what I mean? That's his family. What about me? With a family of nine children. What about me?

I'm the youngest of ten. Yeah, so the fact that it's nine months of pregnancy, you know, and usually mothers heal a little bit, even if we're talking about Irish twins and nine children where mothers have them every 16 months. Yeah. Every 16 months. Remember that child still has 16 months with their mother. But having said that, what ends up happening is that the mother, meaning, you know, however long it takes the mother to get pregnant, gestate that baby, and have the time in between before she gets pregnant again. Oh, got it, got it, got it.

But really what happens in very large families is the mother is still proximate, sort of like alloparenting. And the sisters and the brothers, they become alloparenting alternate attachment figures. So yeah, so oftentimes siblings will help to raise, and that's what happens in other parts of the world too. Siblings help to raise the baby, but when the baby's in distress, so when the baby's happy and playful and, you know, playful stimulation is great for siblings. Yeah, it's great. But when the baby's in distress, that's when you're doing the hard work of emotional regulation.

Yeah. And so that's when the baby goes. So it's this sort of, what Margaret Mahler, a very famous psychoanalyst, called emotional refueling, that mothers have to be proximate to the baby

for the baby to go back and forth to do this kind of emotional refueling. Can I? Yeah. No, I'll tell you, because we brought this up years ago. I've been very stubborn on something in my house, and I think that you're going to say I'm right.

Which is why you're here. Well, basically what you're saying, I let my kid sleep in bed with us whenever they want to. And I had so many parents tell me, oh, you have to let them cry it out and self-soothe. And I said, no, I'm not buying it. And I said, why would God give children this instinct to cry and us this strong instinct to want to soothe them if that was not the right thing to do?

Right. How could that possibly be? We have all these instincts. That's exactly the wrong thing. Let them cry. But parents every day let their kids cry. Babies. So in other parts of the world, babies don't cry as much. That's what the studies show. Because why? Guess why? They're on welfare. They're on the teeth. They're not separated. They're not separated. They're skin, what we call skin to skin contact. Mothers carry

babies on their bodies. And, you know, Jane Goodall just had a film that came out. She's with the apes, right? Well, Jane, yeah. And she also commented on how chimpanzees, you know, the babies aren't in distress and don't really get into really heavy-duty distress states because the baby is on the mother's body. And when the baby's in distress, the baby need only to pull on the mother's hair or make a little squeak and the mother comforts the baby. Wasn't she here at the cellar recently, Jane Goodall? I saw a picture of her. Was she? I didn't know that. I thought Jared Freed, and I thought it was somewhat ironic because she's into apes, and

so Jared Freed and her, you know, he took a picture with her. Really? Yeah. But she's got to be in her 80s now. She's quite old. I feel like we would have all heard about that. He captioned the picture with Jane Goodall. Maybe he was kidding and it wasn't Jane Goodall. Maybe he was making

fun of his ape-like hairy back. We have, by the way, we have a case study for you to decide on. This is not about mothers, but Noam has to leave the country to go to Russia with his band. Noam's a musician. I don't know if you knew that. And a

fine one, by all accounts. At least that's what he says. There's no way to prove it. Well, I'm not musician enough to judge,. Noam's a musician. I don't know if you knew that. And a fine one, by all accounts, at least that's what he says. There's no way to prove it. Well, I'm not musician enough to judge, but Noam has to go to Russia with his band to play. And he does this every year and Lord knows what goes on there. I mean, you know. I'm sorry. Jared Free with Jane Goodall. You were right then. Jared Free with Jane Goodall. Wow. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Was that at the cellar? Yeah. She's grooming his hair. Eating the insects out of his hair. So Noam said just before the show, he said, I don't want to go. I want to stay home with my kids. And I said, well, then don't go. I'm going to go. I kind of have to go. But I get pain.

But why do you have to go? Because I gave my word I would go and they're depending on me. But I get pain. Who, your kids? You're right, Noam. You did give them your word that you would stay and be a good father. The guy who takes us to Russia does a lot for me, and I can't let him down now. But...

But you can't find another guitarist as good as you are? One of the best, by the way. I have to go. But having said that, it's painful for me to leave these kids. Now, my kids are very lucky, as I said, because my wife's always home. They've never gone a day without us spending hours with them. Forget it. We've never left them.

We don't even go out to dinner without them. Like, these kids, you know. So they'll be fine without me for a week when the mom's home. But it's the dad who can't take it. I'm not worried about the kids. I can't take it. What about the presence of the father? Noam's in a lucky situation. Noam, he makes it, and I don't know

if you've been to the comedy side before, the places, there's never an empty seat. So the man makes, you know, he's comfortable. Let's put it that way. He doesn't need to be, he can be at home all the time. Do you feel that, I know you wrote a book about mothers, but is the presence of the father, if he can do it, if he's blessed like Noam is, how important would that be?

So there's a lot in the book about fathers and forefathers. I actually encourage fathers to read the book. One, to support mothers and also to understand how they can contribute by being more sensitive and empathic as well. So, you know, father's presence is important for different reasons than mother's presence. And that's a very controversial thing to say in our society, because we just want to believe that there's no difference between men and women, that they're almost interchangeable, like socks, you know, in the dryer kind of thing. And what the research shows is they're not. They actually do very important things for children's development, but different things. And so when mothers nurture and fathers, they both produce something in their brains called oxytocin.

Oxytocin is like a love hormone. It's a neuropeptide produced in the brain when we nurture. Actually, in women, it's produced when you give birth, when you breastfeed, and when you nurture. And also when you have sex. Yeah. That's why you catch my afterwards. When you're intimate, yeah. And men produce it too when they nurture. But when men produce it, it comes from a different part of their brain than when women produce it. And it has a different effect on fathers than mothers. When mothers produce it in big quantities, first of all, when a mother produces oxytocin in her brain, because she's three things, has skin-to-skin contact with the baby, is making eye contact,

and is vocalizing with the baby. Those are the three cues, the three nonverbal cues for oxytocin. When the mother produces it, the baby produces it too in great quantities. But when a mother produces it, she becomes more of what we call a sensitive empathic nurturer. So if a baby is in distress, she leans into the distress and soothes the distress. Right. Exactly. I'm leaning into my mic for those at home. Right. And when a father produces it, he becomes more playfully stimulating, encouraging distraction, encouraging exploration, encouraging resilience. So we say, you know, that's a very important part of separation, but that really becomes more important as a child gets older. Having said that, you know... That's what they induce in the child? So in a father, when he produces oxytocin,

he throws the baby up in the air higher, tickles the baby greater. So fathers with this playful stimulation actually encourage things like exploring the world, separating from the mother for short periods of time to do that refueling. It's a very important function. And fathers do another thing that's really important, which is that theyueling. You know, it's a very important function. And fathers do another thing that's really important, which is that they help regulate children's aggression, particularly little boys' aggression. So what the studies now show is that mothers regulate fear, distress, sadness, but fathers regulate aggression. So when fathers aren't present enough, what we're seeing with fathers not being present enough is an

increase in very early signs of aggression in children more children having trouble in school with aggression and hitting and um so yeah so fathers are really important too they're just not exactly the same testosterone i've been thinking about this a lot lately with louie and everybody um men most a lot of men men do riskier things like we testosterone induces risky behavior that's been hugely constructive for the world so i'm you know i'm going to tell you something little known fact as oxytocin goes up so oxytocin testosterone goes down so oxytocin- Testosterone goes down. Yeah. Has an inverse relationship with testosterone. So when fathers stay home and they nurture, they're much less aggressive. So we do want to encourage fathers to be more involved with their children. We want to encourage men to be more involved intimately with their wives and

girlfriends and husbands and whatever your sexual orientation. Intimacy is good for society. Agreed. But why do we need testosterone? Intimacy is good for society. Agreed. But why do we need to lower testosterone? I mean, that's what happens naturally, but I'm just saying, like, why would you encourage that? So, again, I'm not encouraging it. I'm just suggesting. Let no one go to Russia. I'm suggesting that some aspect of sensitivity and sensitive empathic nurturing is good for everyone to learn.

Having said that, you know, men and women really evolutionarily have performed different functions for children's development. So if we're going to change this up after thousands and thousands of years, and we're going to change it up fast, we have to understand that there's going to be some major consequences and repercussions if we don't slow it down. I know. Well, they don't like that. If we don't slow it down. I know. Well, they don't want to hear about it. Aren't you describing really the heart of the matter on basically all our social problems that people are constantly trying to get a handle on with government programs? And I'm not railing against government programs, but whether it's how they do in school or aggression or anything you name, it's no match for bad rearing.

Like my kids, we have a really good public school in Arts League, really, really good. However, when my children get home, mommy and daddy are there, we're there to do their homework with them and all of it. And if we weren't there, they would be doing terribly in school. And then we blame the schools. It has nothing to do with the schools.

It has nothing to do with, they could, I think my kids could, I think the one thing the schools fail at is not academics, it's giving the proper environment so children can just relax and learn. And you think like Abraham Lincoln and that whole generation, they were raised in one room school houses.

They had no whiteboard and computers and they read and they wrote and they had great math. I mean, they did everything that we want our kids to do. They all became Abraham Lincoln and computers and they read and they wrote and they had great math. I mean, they did everything that we want our kids to do. They all became Abraham Lincoln. No, but look at the Civil War letters. I mean, there was no problem in the education of that generation. Those are the letters that we tend to focus on. I don't know that that's... My father's generation, before there was any computers, any television, anything, when they had 40 kids

in their class, the only difference was the environment was wholesome and the home was different. The technology does not matter to learning. Yeah, no, but the murder rate was higher in 1977

than it is now. Well, because we incarcerate so many people now. Or there's less attempted murders. Well, what we incarcerate so many people now. Or there's less attempted murders. Well, what we do understand is that there's an increase in aggression in young children and adolescents and young adults. And what we understand about aggression is that it's induced in a part of the brain. It's a defensive response. So, you know, as I said, the brain is a much, babies are more neurologically fragile than we've understood. And so when they're exposed to stress, which is too early separation, or fear,

which is what early, early separation does for children. So they've done salivary tests on children who've been separated from their mothers too early or put into daycare too early. And what happens is there's a ton of cortisol in their bodies. And cortisol, we know, is not a good thing. Stress hormones are basically not good things. Short term, they're okay. When you get up as a comedian and you perform, there's stress hormones rolling through your brain and your body. They're cousins with adrenaline anyway. But acutely, it's okay. Acutely. And then when you stop your comedy routine, you have to find a way to kind of be mindful and relax and come down, right?

And hopefully without medication. That's oftentimes where the drinking comes in. Yes, indeed. But the idea is that you can deal with cortisol acutely. You just can't deal with it chronically. And if you have cortisol rolling through your body and your brain chronically, there's a lot of bad things that happen. Your children are now teenagers?

Is that right? Yeah. So now we can judge. There's a lot of bad things that happen. Your children are now teenagers? Yeah. So now we can judge, we can look at the proof of the pudding. Because, you know, oftentimes, you know, therapists and people in that field, their children are a complete mess. And we've seen this and we've observed this in the literature. I like to say my kids are great kids. And you know, you have said, I will say this about you. Sometimes kids are great kids. For now.

I will say this about you. Sometimes people are great coaches, but terrible players is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. They know exactly what to do. They just don't do it. Yeah. But you have a very soothing voice. You know, you would be, I mean, just listening to you, I'm like, oh, well, you know, she seems quite soothing. She's an awesome mom.

You would think so, you know. Neil, what lessons did you learn? If you were to have kids now, what things happened in your parenting or your rearing that you say, I'm never doing that to my kids? Is he using the word rearing to get a cheap laugh? You got to keep the numbers down.

We were doing too many numbers. We were doing too many. High volume. The volume was too high i'd say to keep the numbers down i also to your point about letting kids uh like the dr spock thing of crying it out and all that stuff like what was the case study for someone who wasn't allowed who got to sleep in his parents bed too much or hurt. You know what I mean? Like, what was their, what was their, what was

their example? I know you prefaced every sentence with so, which is really in vogue now. So I just don't want to let you be aware of that. Okay. So now you're ruining it for her in case she was going to. No, I'm just saying, you know how every now and now everybody when you ask my question, they go, okay, so

it's a new thing. It's a space filler, I guess. It's a space filler, but it's in vogue now. It is. I didn't know it was in vogue. And it's very polite to point that out. I'd like to know what theory Dan is proving just in his persona. I'm not nagging anyway. I think it's an interesting thing.

And I have to say, when I hear it, it's like, you know. Anyway, go ahead. Okay. Well, I wanted to first address what you had brought up earlier, which is children who sleep in their parents' bed. So, oh, there it is. You know, it's. A lot of people saying and as well. The research shows.

It's in vogue now. The research shows that nighttime security is even more important for children's emotional security than daytime security. So I just put out a YouTube video, which if you're interested, you could watch about why letting babies... That is a video sharing site, YouTube.com. Yeah, which basically letting babies cry it out is actually very damaging to their brains. And so, you know, particularly at too early an age, there's a difference between distress and frustration. So we want to incrementally introduce children to frustration because incrementally frustration. So there's frustration in being a baby anyway. I mean, if you're hungry, your mother doesn't always pick you up immediately. You have to wait sometimes for

a few minutes. If you're wet, you have to wait or, you know, your mother isn't always pick you up immediately. You have to wait sometimes for a few minutes. If you're wet, you have to wait or, you know, your mother isn't always immediately available to you. So that incremental frustration is the beginning of separation. So we say really attachment happens from the beginning, but so does separation. Because in every moment a baby has to wait, there's incremental frustration. That's not distress. Distress is really, so first babies start by being frustrated and making a little sound. Maybe it's, and then they may cry if nobody picks them up. And then they may cry louder. And then they may scream out of rage.

And then they go silent. They give up. Right, they give up. And we don't want their brains to give up. Nor do we want to build what we call the father of attachment, said John Bowlby said. Who said that? John Bowlby, who's the father of attachment. Oh, he's good. Yeah, he's gone now.

But brilliant. And he said, we build a scaffolding for our children. Basically, that scaffolding from the very beginning in attachment is what our children will expect from relationships and from the world going forward. And if that scaffolding is one in which they expect, that they form expectations, that the world is a place that meets their needs and people, when they're in distress, pick them up,

that is the development, that's the foundation of emotional security. But if you build a scaffolding in which no one picks you up when you're in distress and you're forced to scream and then go silent, that is then the scaffolding for that child in terms of relationships. That's the scaffolding for the last 40 years of Americans. Right. And that's why we've seen an increase in mental illness, because what we see is dissociative behavior, because what you do defensively when you're a baby is you go silent. That's dissociation. So what's dissociation? Addiction is dissociation, alcoholism, drug, drug use, eating disorders, tubing out. These are these are dissociations and everybody dissociations. And everybody dissociates a little. What's tubing out? I don't know what that means. Meaning watching TV or getting into technology in an obsessive way. It's basically a dissociation.

So what babies do when they are frustrated or understimulated or overstimulated is they'll take little breaks. If you watch babies, if you watch your own babies or other people's babies or babies in the park, they take little breaks. Babies don't have words yet. So the breaks that they take is they'll look away from the mother temporarily. And that's a little bit of a defensive dissociation. And that's normal. But then they look back at the mother and they reconnect. And that's what's happening all day long with the mother who is there primarily. But what these babies who are forced to cry it out do is that they get into a more chronic dissociative state. And that's really the foundation of the mental illness, all kinds of pathology.

I want to point out something because what I found to be one of the most, especially reassuring for someone like me who cannot take three years off of work, is when you talk about just being present. And I think this is where technology comes into where Noam is saying that, you know, just being physically there is not, and to your point as well, is not really meeting the expectation or the need. And so if you could just talk a little bit about kind of, you know, turning off your phone and just, you know, how that plays. So first I want to say you can be a, it really isn't a book about stay-at-home moms versus working moms because you can be a stay-at-home mom and be physically there but be emotionally checked out.

So really, you know, people always ask me, what about quality time? And I say, well, the problem with quality time is it assumes that you don't need quantity time. The truth is you need both as much as possible. But if you're a working mom, there are things you can do when you return, before you leave, even the way you think about your work, how you perceive of it, whether in that period of time that you're raising very young children, you're being aspirational about your work or you being more aspirational about raising your child. And then maybe the work in those years isn't something you're aspirational about, but you're doing, you know, doing the repairing part you talk about is also really key. So basically if you're a working mom,

removing distractions. So there's lots of really good advice in the book, you know, putting your computer, your, your iPad, your, your phones in a basket at the door and not picking it up until your children are asleep. Um, also important for adult to adult relationships. I mean, you know, how many times have you gone to a restaurant and seen adults like on their phones instead of talking to one another? So we really lost connection. Um, yeah, we've lost connection. Our radio shows. Yeah, we've lost connection, basically. So removing- I was inspired, guys. Sorry, I wrote a note down. What exactly is your work again, Kristen?

I forgot. I work in research administration at NYU School of Medicine. So I'm actually lucky in the fact that I have, and one of the reasons I've stayed in this job is that I have very flexible hours. I will be one of the reasons I've stayed in this job is that I have very flexible hours. I will be one of the lucky ones who can kind of do what you advocate in terms of working a couple of hours, a couple of days a week instead of doing, you know, I can adjust my schedule. What about the modern? Was your mom home, Dan?

She was. Your mom was home. My mom was home my mom worked your mom worked and that's i actually wanted to just touch on the daycare aspect because i'm curious how this we're talking a lot about emotional and kind of right brain stuff how does is there any research or have you looked at how this manifests cognitively in terms of, you know, how smart kids are or how because I come from a daycare. I mean, I was in daycare from six months and so are my two younger sisters. And my sister has three children who are all and she just moved recently to Connecticut suburbs of Connecticut. Lauren. Oh, yeah. And she's also a preschool teacher and she has a master's in education and she's aware of a lot of developmental stuff. Sorry. It's relevant. But the point is that she noticed that in her kids being in school, they're quote unquote way beyond all the other kids seemed behind. And a lot of them were, you know, in Connecticut where she has a lot of stay-at-home moms.

And probably these kids didn't enter daycare until— She's saying do you get dumb? Is there any intellectual advantage to being out in daycare? I know you say the socialization really can't happen for kids before they're two. I think it's the genes, man. I'm just curious. These kids, they're smarter than dumb. But anyway, we'll let this...

Noam's kids are also very smart, and they didn't go to daycare. So think about the idea that social-emotional development should always come before cognitive development, meaning think of it as your socks before your shoes. You wouldn't put your shoes on before your socks. My son does that, but go ahead. Okay.

And so the reason that progressive education and, you know, really where education has gone to is a more experiential and progressive place is because they believe that social emotional development has to come first. And that means emotional security. That means emotional regulation. That means buffering from stress. And that sometimes what happens to children is they develop defensive independence. So if you force a child to adapt to a situation where they are forced to be self-sufficient too early, they will adapt. But what happens is they form pathological defenses, which are not healthy defenses. Defensive independence is not organic independence. And what that may do is it can produce left brain development, meaning cognitive development, early on.

But that's fragile. And what we're seeing is a lot of children who seem very smart academically and cognitively breaking down because they don't have the emotional substance and the emotional security to deal with frustration. I'm raising my hand. That's me. And so really, if you think about it as socks before shoes, you always want to put your socks on first. There's plenty of time to learn cognitive skills. Socks before shoes was the original title of Bing.

Yeah, it was. We had many titles. That's actually a very good title. Dan's mom was home, and look what happened. I was about to say. This is all I have to say. He's just like a perfect example. I'm sorry. I knew that's where it was going. I just want to make the point.

You correct me. Listen, everything is probability. You're talking about curves. There are always outliers. You have people who have everything that they shouldn't have, and they turn out to be great and well-adjusted and happy. Don't take them on your book tour. And you guys are actually outliers of exactly the opposite.

You had none of the things she's recommending, and you and all your sisters are like the most well-adjusted, happy people ever. Well, let's not go too far. Dan had a nurturing mom, and he's a total basket case. I don't know how great the Montella girls are psychologically considering one of them

actually had a crush on me. You manifested that in your psychotic version. That's part of your problem. Yes, that's part of your problem. Now, what about, one more time. Let me ask you,

I'll ask and then you ask. Okay, okay. What about birth orders? How much stock do you put in birth orders? Like the oldest, you know what I mean. Go ahead. Stocks before shoes.

So, I mean, there's some evidence that birth order impacts children, but really it's, you know, obviously it's easier for a mother with one child, an only child, which is a thing in New York, you know, in particular in New York, because it is so expensive here. I was an only child. child, which is a thing in New York, you know, in particular in New York, because it is so expensive here, to give a child a lot of attention and emotional as well as physical presence. And as soon as you have another child, that child can't share your presence because you can't share a person.

It's not like King Solomon where you split the baby in half or you split the mother in half. They have to wait. They have to take turns. So automatically it implies frustration tolerance. They have to learn. They have to take turns. So automatically it implies frustration tolerance. They have to learn to deal with frustration and waiting. And in your case, nine kids, boy, there was a lot of frustration. I'll tell you about birth order. Studies show that artists, people in the creative arts, are more likely to be the youngest child. And my anecdotal

experience suggests that this is true. Now, Neil, you're the youngest child. And my anecdotal experience suggests that this is true. Now, Neil, you're the youngest child. I am. But then again, you also have a brother in the business who's not the youngest child. I'm the youngest child. And I think you'll find

that there's a disproportionate amount of youngest children. My guess for that is, the reason I think that's true is because we want attention. We were not taken seriously as kids. We were just the little ones and nobody paid attention to us and now damn it everyone's going to pay attention to my cousin

sheila joke and um or what have you and um that's my theory as to birth the word neil does that job with yours uh not the cousin sheila part uh no i think that yeah but then like chris rocks one of the older kids in his family well and i think that there's no i'm not saying everybody but i think that yeah but then like chris rocks one of the older kids in his family well and i think that there's no i'm not saying everybody but i think is the youngest of three i think that proportionally uh disproportionately the youngest child is more likely to be certainly a comic i and i haven't done a study but just anecdotally i think yeah that's what i've noticed too about like i whenever i'm i've also been arguing with adults since I was five and angry adults. Well, I mean, if you're first, you get a lot of attention.

If you're last. Yeah, you get a lot of attention. You get a lot of attention. And you also get all the surrogate parents. The kids in the middle probably struggle the most. We get a lot of attention as the youngest children. But what we don't get is respect, goddammit. Because we're the youngest.

He's right. And so I think that that might play into it. Now, the airline pilots are more likely to be the oldest child. Well, you're both, Dan. I'm not an airline pilot.

Well, you're a pilot. I do have a pilot's license that I haven't used it in quite some time. But ask Neil. You know, Neil is... Now, if you hang around comics, you'll notice that many of us

are in our 40s and don't have children. A disproportionately high number of us are in our 40s and don't have children a disproportionately high number of us are in our 40s and don't have children i am in my 40s and don't have children don't really intend to and probably will not support you in that well okay thank you so much neil i don't know if you're in your i don't know if you're in your 40s i don't want to have children myself it's never occurred to to me. It doesn't look like fun. But it may be because I didn't feel a connection with my father or really my mother. My mother was there, but I've always said talking to my mother, it's like there's plexiglass between us.

There's not an emotional connection. She claims that when I was little, we were kicked it, like, all day. Well, there were eight children between you and your mother. So that's a lot of plexiglass. But, you know, I think the idea is that you don't have to have children to be happy in life. And I think we have to give people permission not to have children and say, you know, just like feminism said to women, you're a traitor to feminism if you don't work. You know, in a way, then society went to a place where we said, if you don't have children, you can't be part of society. Rome actually believes

that children are the key to happiness. Well, not for everyone. This is what I believe. I don't know what, but I feel like I've used this analogy before. When you take a dog and you throw him in a swimming pool, he immediately begins to dog paddle. Now, the dog has no idea what dog, he doesn't even know this response. And if he never was thrown in the water, his brain would never activate all those circuits to start swimming. I think to some extent, this is what parenting is. When you have a child, all of a sudden things get activated in your brain. You start dog paddling as it were, and that's very gratifying. And if you had never had the child, you would have never known it was in you would have never experienced those emotions, which are sitting dormant and will die with you. And, you know, comedian friend told me the exact same thing. He said it's 40% of your brain you didn't even know was there. And sometimes you'd say sometimes the doors and windows to a happy connection to your mother and father get opened.

And it's a transformative experience for a mother or a father. And sometimes the windows and doors that get opened, and that's really the basis of postpartum depression, is that sometimes the windows and doors that get open are actually a very unhappy connection to your childhood. I experienced both. That you've repressed. And so fathers can have- Is that the diagnosis of postpartum? Is that what it is? Yeah. So basically having a baby is kind of a psychotic experience. You know, this living creature is coming out of your body. And women either are transformed because the windows and doors that are opening to the past are memories and sense memories of a happy and loving and intimate connection. Oh, that's really interesting.

But what can also happen is you can have a window and door open that is a horrifying, neglected, abandoned, abusive experience. The world, the upside down. Do you watch Stranger Things? Yeah, I do. Or just, you know, or a distracted or depressed mother. You know, mothers who are depressed and distracted, they're not bad people. They're just, they're suffering too. And, you know, we do no good for society by not really addressing postpartum depression and telling women, it's okay. It's okay to be bored. I bored i mean we really need to address it not just sort of um push it aside and say it's okay and normal it's not i i've found that you know you have children and you you think all the time about when you were a child when you had children i find that both i am at times now uh

forgiving my parents for things that i didn't understand at the same time, also resenting certain things that I didn't realize I ought to resent. Like, you know, they could have, they could have done this for me. Like, you know, I, I accepted it at the time, but now I'm a dad and I do it and they, they should have done that. So it's very interesting reevaluation of your past as you looking at it. And it doesn't end up being a wash more or less. No, no, but it doesn't, it doesn't end up well a wash more or less no no but it doesn't it doesn't end up well you know what i mean yeah i'm trying to basically it's the same amount of resentment or blame that you have but just for different things no i think that in the end i actually uh

and feel warmer towards my father if that were possible after being a dad i think i had a really good dad and he was very loving to me and a lot of physical affection he was there for me but there were certain things that i hadn't thought of before that i began to reevaluate uh uh thing now my mom my mom left me when i was pretty young and i didn't see her much i see her now she's a good grandma and um even that had a little resentment and put a little english on good grandma yeah yeah and a little something on there and that's a tougher one for me i don't know if she doesn't listen because i'm like how could she do that like yeah but i think it's what i alluded to before that at some point you see less and less and then the attachment just wanes

and it's not because it makes her a bad person. It's just human, you know? Yeah. But now maybe she should have had the self-discipline to fight that waning that she felt. And she didn't. But whatever, you know, all in all, I had a pretty good upbringing. I think what you said is really true, which is there is no intimacy without time spent. And that really is the bottom line. Yeah. That you can't be intimate without time spent. Not as concisely. Whether it's an adult to adult relationship orult relationship or an adult-to-child relationship. And so, you know, children need you when they need you.

Not on your time, but on their time. And so if you're not there when they need you, and I'm writing a book now about teenagers, which is the next critical period of brain development, which is 9 to 29 is adolescence. It actually starts earlier than we thought and ends later. And that's another critical period of brain development where parents have another opportunity to make a difference in their children's social-emotional brain. So if you didn't get to the first period or you had to race it.

Are you saying socks first was that? If you put the shoes on. That reminds me of a David Tell joke where he's like writing notes to himself just to remember things and it's like, pants down, then shit. All right, we got to wrap it up. I want to tell you that I think that 30, 40 years from now,

the stuff that you're talking about now is going to be accepted and be critically accepted as critically important i think it's the whole ball of wax to everything i really do life has limitations life has limitations and just accept them and and embrace them right i always say you can get everything you want life just not in the order you think you're going to get them or the order you want them yeah and it's like yeah just you can't have it all. You can have a lot of stuff, but not all at the same time. And make the most of what you have and the time of that you have. And not to be afraid when life is out of order, as you say. And I think that's

a really important component of the book too, is that, you know, you, there's so much fear of living a nonlinear life. And as a comedian, you're certainly not living a linear life, but most people aspire to living linear lives. And that means linear careers and linear relationships. And I live in that life on the imaginary number plane. That's not a bad thing. I like the word imaginary. It's important for right brain development. But yeah, so the idea that, you know, taking time off or doing it differently than you thought you would do it or, you know, getting off the kind of the track that you're on. I have to ask you one really important question for parents. Yeah. I said I wouldn't do this, but over time, my son ends up watching more and more superhero stuff with violence, you know.

And the violence isn't like when we were kids when it was really obviously fake. Like, he can't comprehend this. He says he knows it's not real. What do you think? Do you think that's going to be consequential to him? So, really, you just said it. You actually know the answer, that the more imaginary and not real it feels,

the more okay it is. Like Yosemite Sam getting hit with an anvil. Yeah. It's not as quite as damaging. I've even taken him to YouTube videos where they kind of demonstrate how CGI works just to try to get him to wrap his head around the fact that this is not real.

And he seems to get it. He loves it so much. It's really hard not to let, and all his friends get to watch it, but I worry about it. I don't know. Well, again, you want to- A good movie for kids, Faces of Death.

You want to be careful with violence too early and too much. But on the other hand, children look to superheroes to kind of express some of their own aggression. So they express it vicariously through the superheroes and it's why they dress up as Superman. And again, in the old days, it wasn't very realistic.

So in a way, that protected us. And now with all the videos and things, we have to be careful of virtual reality. There's also something to be said for learn. So he's into superheroes. He's into violence. Go out and do some violence and see what happens. He'll do something violent to a guy bigger than him and he'll get him he'll get beat up and i bet he'll be less

obsessed with violence or if or sleep with your parents until you're 13 see how that does for you in in at school you know what i mean like fair enough but there's two ways to not be violent one way is to just not feel the violence yeah and another way is to feel the violence but learn you have to try to keep it inside because you get your ass kicked i want him to be the former you know he might get his ass kicked but i don't want him to live with these urges his whole life right you know but i don't think i don't think that's a learned urge it's actually what's more impactful on children in terms of their regulation of aggression is their interaction with their fathers and their mothers, but really with their fathers.

So if their fathers can regulate their own emotions, are good at, if their fathers don't have terrible tempers, if they know how to regulate their own anger, and they show the child how it's done, that's how children learn. They learn from watching their fathers regulate their aggression. Well, I gotta say

that Noam regulates with the best of them. I've never seen him flip out. Now, of course, I'm not around you 24-7, but I just have not seen it. Okay, but that's because I really was yelled at by my father as a child, and it was traumatic. And I will not yell at my kids like that.

But in general, unless your kids bring up, like, labor unions or something like that. Interestingly, you picked a woman who wants to be home with her children when your mother wasn't there. I told you I gave her no choice. But you did a lot of repairing in your own life. Even forget about yelling at your kids. I don't see you flipping out in general.

Yes, he has. What are you talking about? God, I never heard that. Are you out of your mind? Where are you? The truth is I don't anymore. I did years ago. Okay, I never heard that. What the fuck? Are you out of your mind? Where are you? The truth is, I don't anymore. I did years ago.

Okay, fine. Maybe more recent. Well, but I have, you know, in the past 10 years when I got to know Noam, so maybe I didn't see that prior. It's when I started

talking to Noam which has been the past 10 years. But with the children. But maybe having children made you less like that. Sometimes Noam will say, you know what he'll do? He'll say,

I'm really angry right now. You know, he'll say to me, Dan, I'm getting really angry right now. But maybe that's having, Dan, I'm getting really angry right now. But maybe that's how the children made him regulate more. But I don't see the manifestation. Well, that could be. I find you just act more Jewish.

If that were possible. Yeah. You get Jewier when you went through frustration. Is that in the book? Do you cover the Jewiness in the book? Actually, I'm Jewy too. So I can tell you there's, I'm Jewy too. So I can tell you there's a lot of Jewy stuff.

Some of it got cut out, but there's still quite a bit. So I'll end it on a Jewy thing. I'll tell you that in the Torah, there's something called Yisra'el Hava, which means the sacred obligation that we have to care for our children. You don't have to have children to have a good life. In fact, I encourage people not to have children if they're ambivalent and they don't want to go and work through that ambivalence with someone, a professional. But if you do choose to have children, then you have a sacred obligation to care for them

and meet their needs first. So that's straight from the Torah. That's a good note to end on. And that's a smart one. Okay, well, listen, I'm so happy you came here. Thank you for having me. This is such a subject close to my heart and to Chris's a smart one. Okay, well, listen, I'm so happy you came here. Thank you for having me. This is such a subject close to my heart and to Chris's heart, and it ought to be to most people's heart. And, Neal, thank you.

Do you have a website or a Twitter account or something? I do. It's www.comisar.com, and the book is available in bookstores and on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Well, nobody goes to bookstores. And yes, I tweet, and please follow me on Twitter. By the way, do you have an audio book? You have such a nice speaking voice. I do.

I have an audio book. They don't let the authors generally read, but they found someone that I got to pick who sounds more like me than not. Tracy Morgan read his too. Did Tracy Morgan read? Yes. Oh, yeah. But Tracy Morgan, I mean, you got to have that.

I guess if you're a performer, they ask you to read your own book. But she's not a performer, but she does have a very good voice. Thank you. Absolutely, without question. Very good. Neil, you want to Twitter? Neil Brennan. Neil Brennan.

I mean, it's, you know. People know me. He's so famous, you don't even need to follow him. I mean, very famous. Do you know the Chappelle Show? Were you a fan back? I do. That was back in the early 2000s.

I do, yeah. Remix. You would actually like Remix. The Chappelle Show was really you a fan back when that was back in the early 2000s? Yeah. You would actually like it. The Chappelle show was really just two people, Neil and Dave. And they did 100% of it. And I don't know who was most involved with the Prince basketball sketch. But I assume Neil had a hand in that.

Yeah, directly. That was certainly one of the highlights. And what about Black Bush? I mean, yeah. People send me that all the time. Oh, that one. I got to say that was mostly Dave. I don't like to get, I generally don't split credit up like that,

but when it's so much him, he just always wanted to do a reenactment of White President. Well, they're like Lennon and McCartney. Who wrote Hey Jude? They always share the credit, but it was usually one or the other that took the lead. I just made that. I don't know if that's true.

Well, okay. Thank you very much, everybody. Good night, everybody. Thank you.