The Rich Roll Podcast - Pete Holmes: Comedy! Sex! God!

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

Comedian! Writer! Author! Spiritual seeker! One of my favorite people, Pete Holmes needs no introduction. But I'm going to give it to you anyway. A stand up veteran with a cornucopia of comedy specials, television shows and late night appearances to his name, Pete is best known as the creator and star of the semi-autobiographical HBO show Crashing, a riotous and touching series he executive produced alongside Judd Apatow loosely based on Pete’s life in the early days of his comedy career. In addition, Pete hosts You Made It Weird – hands down one of my absolute favorite podcasts (I was honored to be a guest) — and is the author of the brilliant and just released Comedy Sex God*. Part autobiography, part philosophical inquiry, part sacred quest, I can't recommend this book more highly. Equally hilarious and profound, it hits bookstores everywhere this week. Pick it up immediately*. Read. Ponder. Thank me later. A long-time fan of Pete's, we were first introduced by our mutual friend (and former podcast guest) Rob Bell. From that moment forward I have yearned to get this fellow traveler on the show. It finally happened. And the experience is everything I hoped it would be. Comedy. Sex. God. And everything in between. We cover it all. We discuss his evangelical upbringing and how his failed attempt to live up to picture perfect standards forced him to question his faith and re-examine long-held beliefs, catalyzing the soul-seeking journey he has pursued ever since. We talk comedy and creativity. How he squares Christianity with alternative faith modalities. And what he has learned spending time with spiritual savants like Ram Dass and experimenting with psychedelics. We explore how fatherhood has impacted his spiritual and professional perspective. What it's like working with Judd Apatow. The experience of being a celebrity with a big show on HBO. And, more importantly, what happens when that show suddenly goes away. But mostly, this is a beautiful exploration of the messy, confusing, wonderful, mysterious, disorienting thing we call life. You can watch the entire conversation on YouTube at bit.ly/peteholmes441 (please subscribe!) As Pete would say, GET INTO IT! Peace + Plants, Rich

This is very unpleasing to the ego when we think it's not about having something, it's about letting go of something. But stillness and quiet, be still and know that I'm God, that is right there staring you in the face. It's about getting into your pure, basic awareness. A big thing the book is about is tapping into soul consciousness. When you can really go, my awareness that's behind and beyond my identity and the thought and the story that I build about who I am,

my gender, where I'm from, my age, my likes and my dislikes. If you can identify with the witness to those things, which is what meditation is, it's practicing being plain, pure awareness. If you can go into that place through breathing or repetition of a mantra, that's where peace is. That's Pete Holmes, this week on The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? Welcome to the show. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. And today's guest, what an absolute delight this guy is. You guys know Pete Holmes, right? Stand-up comedian, writer, spiritual seeker, creator and star of the HBO series Crashing, which if you have not caught it, I strongly suggest you check it out,

which is a show that's basically loosely based on Pete's life when he was just getting started as a stand-up comic. It's executive produced by the great Judd Apatow, and it is a must watch. I was first introduced to Pete a couple years ago by our mutual friend Rob Bell, and I had the pleasure of guesting on Pete's podcast, You Made It Weird, back in, I think it was December of 2016, which as a huge fan of Pete's work was such a cool experience. I'll put a link in the show notes to that if you missed it. And I've wanted to get this guy on the show ever since meeting him. This experience is everything I hoped it would be, and it's all coming up in a couple of few. But first.

We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care. Especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem.

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I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices.

It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself,

exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself. I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Pete, Holmes, comedy, sex, God, it's all in there, people. We cover all of it, and oh, how I love it. We talk about his evangelical upbringing, how Pete's failed attempt to live up to this picture-perfect life kind of forced him to re-examine everything from his beliefs, his faith, and the soul-seeking journey that he's kind of been on ever since. Of course, we talk about comedy, stand-up, creativity, Christianity, Jesus, spending time with all kinds of spiritual savants like Ram Dass.

We talk about psychedelics, fatherhood, what it's like to work with Judd Apatow, what it's like to have a show on HBO crashing, what it's like when that show goes away. goes away. Basically, how to make sense of this crazy, beautiful, messy, wonderful, mysterious, disorienting thing we call life. And that, my friends, is all I'm going to say about that. Other than to say, as Pete would say, let's get into it. So, I emailed you, like, I think, when was it that you were going to come out here and we had to cancel? Mudslides. There was mudslides and the road was closed.

You live in the Bible. That was like two years ago or something like that? Yeah. I mean, you know, my show just got canceled and there's like sort of a wonderfulness. There's obviously some other feelings for sure, but like there's like this opening. Like I was very excited to get in touch with you

and other people that I was like, not just podcasts and self-serving promotion stuff, although I'm happy to see you obviously, but just meals, phone calls. Getting back to your life. Yeah. Just kind of sitting with my wife and having no other program running.

I'm a very, you know, this is kind of a brag, but I'm very present with my wife and very loving. So she's not, I think if she was here, she would tell you that I'm not like a, hold on, I'm going to write that down constantly person. But like now that the show has concluded, I just feel, I feel, I keep saying I feel like the sky in Montana. I'm just like wide open. So I'm like reading so much.

I told you I came here. This is all I'm doing today. Yeah, it's nice. How my life was much longer than it was a show producer. You know what I mean? Yeah. That was four years. Well, last night was the season finale and also the series finale.

So here we are the morning after, I would imagine there's a bit of a hangover with that. You must have conflicting emotions about the whole thing. I didn't expect that. You're not a flat earther. I'm just kidding. What a disappointment. I'm just kidding.

Yeah, I was noticing on the way in that I felt Sky Montana and joy and like really joy and gratitude. I always have to tell people that I'm not like repressing anything. I'm a very emotionally available person. So if I was devastated or angry, I would tell you. But I do sort of psychically feel a little bit of the sadness because we watched it together. Yeah, I would imagine. As a group.

Oh, the whole cast and crew? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, everybody that could come. So we watched it last night and that made it more sad. My brain is very forward moving. I'm very fortunate in the times of my life that like things, I've been privileged to have other things canceled.

You know what I mean? And I tend to, it's like I'm getting pushed instead of I'm getting snowed under. I feel like I'm getting pushed. You know what I mean? It's mobilizing. Right. So I kind of like that energy. There's like a sharky, like a friendly shark though, that likes to keep moving. And I sort of thrive with uncertainty and I enjoy pressure and I like novelty. So there are all these good feelings, but then you watch it and every shot of a TV show that you make is a memory. Of course.

It's not just like, I wish I had invited you, but I sometimes feel like nobody wants to come to the spectrum. Oh, I would have totally come to that. Oh, I'm sorry. I would have been like, I just feel like,

I feel like I'm inviting people to something that they feel bad if they can't come. You know what I mean? It's almost like this New England polity that I'm like, I don't want to bother somebody, make you come to Beverly Hills on a Sunday night. Oh, my God. It would have been cool. Well, we watched it. And if you had sat next to me, what I was saying to Val was, like there's a scene with John Mulaney and I, and it's so funny, he kills it.

And he's sort of explaining that he's not a jerk. He's sort of coaching me to tell people that he's not a jerk. And I go to Val, I'm like, it's five in the morning or like 4.30 in the morning when we're shooting this. And I'm losing my mind. And in the scene, like, you know, I look normal. I look like it's seven o'clock in New York. Yeah, it looks like it's in real time.

Yeah, exactly. Everybody's super composed. But that's what you don't, that's what I didn't really know is when you're watching a movie. Now, when I watch anything, I have a pretty good nose for like, I bet that's the first thing they shot.

You know what I mean? Because it's not the first scene. You don't start with the first scene. But that takes you out of just being present for the experience of what the artist is trying to convey. Sometimes, it can be. I have to like sort of make an effort to turn that part off, but I can. But that takes you out of just being present for the experience of what the artist is trying to convey. Sometimes. It can be. I have to sort of make an effort to turn that part off, but I can.

But sometimes I like to do it, especially if it's something that I don't care about. If it's some movie that I'm not really waiting to be swept away by, I can kind of go like, isn't it weird to think that that's Tuesday and when the person walks out of the building, that's Thursday? You know what I mean? Right, right, right. Because it's an exterior. And the interior was a set and the exterior is a real location. So they probably flew somewhere for that shot.

You know, there's movies like that where they say like the David Lynch movie, Eraserhead. There's a shot where he walks out of the building. And then people who know that movie really well are like, the next shot is three years later. Because they like ran out of funding or there's some story. And I kind of like stuff like that. Well, Mulaney was great. He was a jerk.

And then the fact that you then get up on stage and kill it and own him for that, that's comedy. Well, I did what I could. The honesty of that. That's really, I sort of think about what really kind of gets me going isn't necessarily comedy. It's the perspective of a comedian, which is very honest, and usually

going wherever the line is. And I don't just mean in terms of offensive things. I just mean the line in terms of thinking, where usually people stop and stop saying what they're thinking. Comedians usually start at the line and move forward, whereas most people take the line as a cue to stop. So honesty really excites me.

Yeah, and then to see him respect you for that. Yeah. And not hold a grudge or be irritated, but instead kind of embrace you and welcome you into his fold. And old programming Pete, like Christian Pete, thinks it's impolite and apologizes to him. Right.

When really he's sort of learning that lesson that like, no, that's whatolite and apologizes to him. Right. When really he's, he's sort of learning that lesson that like, no, that's what we do. We take unpleasant emotions. I said on another podcast, I was like, life is falling down and getting up and talking about it.

That's what we're all doing. And the artist's job, whatever you're doing, you could be an artist as a mother. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be like a professional artist, but the art of life is to share and talk about it. I was talking to somebody like the first painting, the first time somebody painted something, if you've ever taken

psychedelics as you're like, you get overwhelmed with a feeling of like, oh, I'm sort of alone in here. You sort of feel trapped sometimes like in your body. And I feel like art's job is somebody paints this and goes, this is how I feel sometimes. This right here is how I feel. And other people look at it and they go, I get that. And it's wonderful. It's warm all of a sudden. It's less isolated and scary. Yeah, because the truth is undeniable. Yeah. Even if it's only your personal truth and you're unsure as to whether anybody else is going to be able to connect with that, it doesn't matter. Well, the more specific we were and the more specific I've been in everything that I've done, my podcast and my book and the show and even silly sketches, the more specific we got, the more universal they became.

Yeah, that's an interesting thing where you think like, oh, it's going to be so inside baseball that you're going to lose people. But that's actually the appeal. I love your story. I've never done a sit-up. You know what I'm saying? It's not about that. Like, it's such a weird thing that we live in this world of living metaphor.

Bhagwan Das, Bhagavan Das, you say his name different than I do. I'm lazy. You say Bhagwan. That's probably the proper. No, I don't think it is. I think it's Bhagavan. But I'm lazy. See, I won't even, my tongue doesn't even do sit-ups.

Bhagwan Das. And that has nothing to do with Boston. I know. I'm just lazy. Bhagwan Das says life is a metaphor. And I think there's something interesting. Like your story, the feeling of like your body, your container being a metaphor

for your inner world is interesting. And that's why your story of being winded, going up the stairs, we all know exasperation, whether it's physical or emotional or mental or psychic or whatever it might be. So we love these. So people telling a story about standup, who cares? I had people come up to me,

a lot of musicians that related to the show, photographers, artists, academics that were just like, yeah, that's what it feels like to pursue a dream. Whether or not you're rolling a huge tire like what you do or getting up on stage and bombing. But you know, like Pete in the first season, I told everybody I was a little bit eerie how well the series wraps up. And that's true. If you look at the pilot, first episode of the first season, Pete goes up on stage and is unable to take his pain and sort of alchemize it into comedy in real time, which is exactly what he does in the series finale. Something happens to him now. That, to me, is a big spiritual practice is like, we can all look back on our things and go,

you know, now that I've had some perspective and some therapy, that bad thing really was the best thing that could have happened to me. But the trick is to do those things in real time. So while you're suffering, can you be present? Not later can you go like, oh, the universe knew what it was doing. Can you say thank you to suffering while it's happening? That's the game. So you see that in the macrocosm of Pete suffering and then going on stage and doing it in real time, learning that it's okay, even in front of John, especially in front of John to say, I don't think he was a dick, but he was kind of a dick. And to have that rewarded is a big metaphor. It's a big discovery for him almost. And the show ends on this very hopeful note that these

new doors are opening for him. And it makes me wonder what season four would have been. Like, where do you go from there when it's crashing and it's all about his struggle. And now he's got this new horizon. Well, after the show was canceled, you know, I wear the same pants a lot. I'm not really interested in changing my pants. I don't shit my pants. I change, I take my pants off.

You know what I mean? Yeah, the underwear is the protective barrier that I get changed every day. But I don't care about pants and I don't care about clothes. I look at whatever, there's milk stains and stuff from my baby and stuff. And I just don't care.

I just don't have one of those minds that really cares about, I like dressing up sometimes. Anyway, that's a digression. So there's something about, what was I saying? I lost it. What were we talking about?

Talking about clothes, pants. Oh, so I was wearing the same pants for months. The pants that I wore for my comedy special, Dirty Clean, I was still wearing until about a week ago, maybe four days ago. So as I'm changing these disgusting pants, I took out of my pocket,

because there's all these interesting things in my pocket. There's all these stories. And I found the season four outline, the breakdown that we had written. And I just saw the first line because it was folded in fourths. So I couldn't see the whole thing. And I wasn't really interested in reading the whole thing.

I knew it. But the first line was, Pete gets a really big break I couldn't see the whole thing and I wasn't really interested in reading the whole thing I knew it but the first line was Pete gets a really big break and I was like well that's interesting because the show is isn't as I've joked before it's not called flourishing it's called crashing and it's about what it's like to be an open mic and it's about what it's like the origin story told slower the story of crashing three seasons is usually a montage you know it's like a five minute montage in the story of a comedian or seinfeld or other shows about comics they're already just successful we wanted to slow that down as close to real time without being excruciating so when i looked at

pete gets a really big break you know and i'm telling you it's not just revisionist like i'll just change how i feel i saw that and I was like, that changes the show a little bit. Like once he gets a break, now instead of you, the viewer wondering what might happen to Pete, which I really like, it keeps the medium hot. You know, it's like active in your imagination. We're just telling you, oh, he got a talk show or something like that, which would have been fun for sure, but it might've changed the feel of the show. Yeah, the whole tenor and the balance of it shifts. Yes. Pete gets a really big break. That's the first line. And I was like, are we entourage now? You know what I mean? Is Pete concerned if he can do the movie,

if he's on the tour? Like, it's not as fun. And you don't root for him as much. Right. He, we, yes, we, again, it would have been fun to do, but there's something about a show that was just about what's going to happen, which is the feeling that every comedian can relate to. Any creative person trying to make a living at what they love can relate to the idea of, okay, he's in the club, so he can go into the arena now, and he's good enough to sort of hold his own,

and he's going to grow. And we sort of hold his own and he's going to grow. And we sort of see, oh, he's going to learn this and this and this. Like in the finale, he does stand up expressing anger about his girlfriend slowing him down when he was trying to get on the train. It's very basic anger.

It's pretty benign anger. But at least he's showing an emotion that he had never shown on stage before. He was usually just like, what's the deal with ice packs? Which is great. But at the end, he's like really sort of, you're seeing a catharsis in him as he rants

and as being more animated and mobile on stage. So I think it's exciting for us to go, hopefully for the fans of the show to talk about it. Like, what do you think happens? Well, he's probably, in truth, he'll probably grind it out in that club for 10 years before something big happens, which might not be the most interesting fourth season if we really told it as slowly as life happens.

I mean, everybody knows it takes 10 years to sort of become minted as a comedian. But there's a whole nother set of stories that could be mined and told. For sure. About what that life is like. I mean, the Judd and me and being in that room and our ambition with the show, of course. We had a nice season that we wanted to tell. And HBO really liked it.

That's not why they canceled it. The numbers were good. They were up from season two, right? You mean the ratings? I believe they were. But it also was an expensive show. And that's all it comes down to. It's like the price of the show. And this is the same thing with my talk show.

They look at the price. They look at the numbers. And I, they very, Casey Bloys, the head of programming, really like passionately and compassionately explained to me that it was just a financial decision. So is that like just a phone call that you get? Yeah. But I freaked him out. Like I really weirded Casey out. I love Casey.

I loved working with him. And I think Jed told him that I tend to be, talk about dealing with things in real time. Can you process things in real time? Can you process suffering in real time and not forget that it's just- Can you be genuinely grateful? Yeah.

And can you remember that it's just a dance and that there's something really wonderful happening and there are things out of our control? And can we, instead of falling, can you kind of incorporate it into your little dance? And he said, I'll, you know, this, sorry to be self-serving, but he was like, I've made a lot of calls like this. I'll never forget this call, he said. Oh, sweet. Because I was so happy.

You did three seasons of this show. It was, you know, wildly embraced. Yeah. You're beloved as a result of this. And you got to share this story with so many of the, you know, notable comics that we all love. Right. You know, it became very inclusive for the community. Well, you know, one of the things of my life, I'm almost, I'm turning 40 this month and I'm really kind of getting a better look at what I'm. Really? Okay. Thank you. But I don't feel old. Some people, even like that, I'm like that with

Casey's phone call and I'm the same way with 40. I'm like, wow, what a privilege. It's so exciting to be 40. I always wanted to be 40. When I was a kid, I wanted to be- You kind of always been 40. I've always been 40. I've been a dorky dad my whole life. Now I finally have a kid to be dorky with. It's wonderful. You can finally be the person that you've always been. I filled out the suit. I've always been wearing it, but it just looked floppy and stupid on me. And now I'm filling it out and it's a great feeling. But I love honesty and I love solidarity. I love sharing. To me, crashing as a show was about if it sucks, you're doing it right, which is something that I sort of picked up and heard from other comedians when I was handing out flyers or when I was bombing. When you hear the stories of like all of your heroes, Bill Burr told me a story

of leaving a club and hearing someone saying that redheaded guy sucked. And like when you're young and walking to your car and you hear someone from the audience and they don't know you're there and you hear that, Bill Burr, the fucking greatest. And he got that. So we like to kind of select all and delete that pain and just act, not Bill, I'm just saying most of us like to act like we just sort of showed up complete. But I love telling anybody that's pursuing any dream that it's actually the feedback of it being difficult and being painful means you belong to a lineage now. You belong to our species. It's almost like an induction. We took you as a young boy into the Serengeti to hunt and it was terrible and you were scared. Or all these weird rituals that we used to

do where you have to go in some terrible cave and it's designed to scare you. That mints you and sort of gives you that blood bond to being a comedian, which is really special. I mean, when you look at someone like Mulaney, I mean, he's so cocksure that it's hard to imagine him struggling. He looks like he just came out fully baked. And he sort of did. There are anomalies and that's important. And we sort of talked about that with Jaboukie. Jaboukie's in his twenties and he's fantastic. And so one of the things that people like me that had to develop and grow and earn it, and that's 99.9% of us, you have to guard yourself and open your heart to people like Mulaney that are just, he speaks in bits. You're just like, oh, everything

you say is funny and you're not like, you're not, I don't feel a clenched. It's like that off camera too. Oh my God. Every time John and I hang out, here's my impression of me. I go, that's a bit. I just tell him, he doesn't need me to tell him, but I mean, everything he says, it's just really funny. And when he was young, I remember John had a bad set. I hope he wouldn't mind me saying one time we saw him have a bad set. And I remember Birbiglia said to him, I was like, you know, it's kind of good because it sort of humanizes you. Right.

Because we're all over here going like, what is happening with this person? Right, that's crazy. And what is the secret sauce with Judd? Like, what's the magic that he brings to a show like yours when he sprinkles his special, you know, Judd fairy dust on everything? It's an interesting thing.

He's a wonderful collaborator and he was involved in everything and he was very good at trusting his instincts. I think one of the reasons why it can be difficult, I have a friend, my friend Duncan Trussell is starting a show and he was like, I don't get it, man. People show me two ideas and they're both good and they asked me to pick one.

And I'm like, what I learned from watching Judd and he would say this if he were here, is you just learn to kind of trust your gut. Judd would go, it's this. And it's like, but couldn't we have talked for 20 minutes about how it could have been that or two hours or two days about how it could have been the other. And he's sort of learned how to listen to his small, still voice.

And he would fucking hate that I made it a Quaker thing. I'm just saying he's learned to trust his instincts. And that's why so many of his projects have the same flavor. And you know what else he does is sometimes he knows to go against his instinct. He knows every 15th, I'm making that up, but every 15th time to do the opposite, do the George Costanza and do the opposite of what you think. So he knows to even keep himself on his heels. I could talk much more about that if you'd like.

I mean, it's hard to sort of put what he does in a nutshell. Is there an example where you had a strong inclination, like this scene should play like this, or this arc should look like this. And he's like, had a strong inclination, like this scene should play like this, or this arc should look like this. And he's like, no, it needs to be like this. And that's really good for me. I'm an idea person. I would write scripts and Judd would, you know, I'd sometimes have like a fit of mania and write a script and just show it to him. And he'd be like, this seems like a season three idea. It's season one. And he's like, this seems like a season three idea. And I'm good with that. I just go, okay. I don't fight. I don't

debate. So it works. It was a good relationship. Especially when you respect somebody's body of work so much, it's a privilege to go, it's a no? Okay, move on. Instead of go like, and get real upset about it. But there's a good example in the third season where my character, I wrote it sort of sappy. I can be a little bit romantic. And sometimes Jed would steer me a little bit away from the sappy melodrama stuff. And Pete and Allie, obviously, is this like sort of will they get back together thing. And in the first episode of the third season, I have it written that Pete's auditioning at the cellar. And he bombs, or he doesn't bomb, he does well, but he doesn't get in. And that was tricky to do. We could talk about

that. But the sort of silver lining is that Allie came. So it's this like sign that she came. So he's supposed to come out and he's upset, but then he realizes that Allie was there to watch. And there's this sort of like loaded message underneath that, that maybe she still at least likes him as a person or loves him as a friend. And I had it written very sweet, like, you know, the violin swell. And at least this girl that I'm still secretly having feelings for is here. And Judd was there that day and he was like, we did shoot it the sweet way. And then he was like, you should do it where you just have a fight and you get mad

because you're taking the frustration of your failure out on her. Because that's sometimes what people do with people that they love. That's more human. And that's what Judd does. So Judd, that's what I would say. Even though he had read the script, even though he was at the table read, even though he read the rewrite and he approved it and he was involved, on the day he'd go, get in a fight. Just get in a fight. And I didn't even like doing it. Because even as an actor, I like getting along with people. And now I'm going like, fucking thanks.

Thanks. And that's not easy for me to do. And it was so much better. And he would do that a million times every season. He would go, I know everybody's saying. And sometimes he was the only one. He was like the one juror that was like, I think they're innocent and would make them go another week. That was what always played in the edit room.

Yeah. But what would happen was I was very good at going, some of my friends would be like, shouldn't you fight more? And I was like, I understand. Judd and I last night were joking that there was another version of my last set at the Cellar where I get very Rob Bell with it. And I talk about how we're floating on a planet and how we're all so alone and we don't know what's going on. And it was funny, but it was mostly transcendent. And it was great. With the background actors, we all felt it. It was this very dipped in set, very emotional set. And we all thought that that was the right way to felt it. It was this very like dipped in set, like very emotional set.

And we all thought that that was like the right way to end it. And then Jed was like, no, you should just be funny. And it's almost too much. That's what he said. Too evolved. That's what he said. He's like, Pete can't do that. If he does that, he has nowhere to go.

This is his first moment. Like just nail a few jokes. So he would help me stop me from being too precious. He's like, yeah, it's really great. And he me stop me from being too precious he's like yeah it's really great and he means it he's like it's really great that you can go up and make people think deep thoughts and and get everybody in the moment which is really what i think i did in that set but that's like pete holmes now yeah exactly exactly that's not pete but the to give you an idea i joked with him last night he was like because we watched that episode and he was like

and i was like it is better what you said was night. He was like, because we watched that episode. And I was like, it is better. What you said was better. And he was like, see, you fought me. And I said, and by fought you, you mean I brought it up politely twice. And he laughed. Because that's, I don't think, that's one of the reasons why he and I worked well together. Is I don't know if it has something to do with my psychology and how I was with my parents. I think it probably does.

But I was very okay with going like, you know, he told me on a Friday, like, we're going to cut this, even though I really loved it. And I sort of kept my mouth shut. And then over the weekend, I just unpacked it. And on Monday, I was just like, fine with it. Even though all the editors knew I loved it and stuff. They knew I must have been disappointed. But it's great to have somebody with that heavier crown

or that shinier crown to kind of yield to. Well, let's talk about your parents a little bit. I'm getting into your book. In fact, this just came in the mail like an hour. The guy delivered it like an hour ago. What version is it? I really- I don't know. Well, that's the galley, right? They sent me a galley that was the wrong- Really? So that's what just arrived today. But you sent me the PDF. I wonder which galley this is. So I've been reading it. Oh yeah, I sent you the PDF. I had a moment, talk about dealing with suffering

in real time. I had to practice what I write about in this book because they sent me the wrong galley. And it was like the second draft or something. And I was really- Did that go out to press and stuff? I was afraid that it had, but I think we caught it before it did.

It looks like this is not that version. But there were like chapter titles that were, I'm sure, I don't know if you do this when you write books. I would write a phrase. It was fool king. It's one word. It's not a word. It meant I had to go back to that part.

Like I'd write fool king just so I could do a fine. A note to yourself. And I'd, you know, do, yeah, a search for that phrase. And then I'd go, oh, right, I have to fix this. And the book included some fool kings. In fact, one of the chapters was called Fool King. The chapter about meeting, about Ram Dass meeting Maharaji was called Fool King.

And I was like, guys, that, you know, I, again, I sort of did what I did. I said to Valerie, I'm very upset. And then I went in the bedroom. Cause sometimes I don't know, I'm very upset. And then I went in the bedroom because sometimes I don't know, I'm a little overwhelmed with that emotion. And I did what I write about in this book. And I tried to say, yes, thank you to suffering in real time,

not later and go, oh, okay, I get it. The universe is sort of nudging me away from being so precious and important. And my book, like the baby picked me up. Like in the, and I, in real time, even though I didn't intellectually believe this, I said, yes, thank you to the suffering. And when you give it that space, it really does have nowhere to cling to and it dissipates. And then my wonderful editor, Luke, Luke Dempsey said, we'll change it. I didn't even ask him to, he said, we'll change it.

It's an amazing thing when you do have the capacity to let go in real time like that. Is that fun? Actually, it's a short circuit to the solution that you seek. And it's in the struggle and the fighting it that actually delays the result that you're looking for. You're giving yourself, Muji, the great saint, talks about when you have a thought,

the only thing that can give that thought power or validity is you. It's just for you. So here it is. It's just this firing of your brain. But your awareness and your consciousness can give it value or not. So I'm having all these valid, rational,

real objections to the second draft. And it's legitimate. You just spent three years writing this book. But you have to just go, it's irrational. It's how I love my wife. Our wedding vows, I said, I vow to love you irrationally. Because I don't want rational love. Get the fuck out of my face with that fucking 7-Eleven,

by the register bullshit, conditional love that I can get from anybody being special and shiny, suck my dick. I want that irrational stuff. I want that trans-rational stuff, the real stuff, the stuff that's holding your molecules together. That's a love, even when you're being shitty, it's still keeping you rich. Fucking A. I hope so. I mean, yeah, it's pretty exciting. One of the things you talk about in the book, I'm like 70 pages into it. So I just started. That's fine. I've done interviews on less. I've done interviews and blown them away with how much I understood their book. And I only read the

first chapter, but they're like blown away. Cause if I read something, I can remember almost everything. And I'm like, well, it's like this. And they're like, whoa. But the worst is when somebody tries to play themselves off as having read it, thinking they're going to get away with it with the author. Because it's so clear to the person who wrote it whether they read it or not, right? That happens on talk shows. Yeah. You just have to give, because you know they're doing a show every day. In fairness, yeah, like they can't possibly.

When I had a talk show, they used to give you a book and it would be highlighted with little post-its and stuff. So you could just read the- So you could act smart. Yeah. Reader's digest. Right. Back to your mom and your dad. Yeah. So what's interesting is that your dad was kind of the,

you know, regaling funny man. Yeah. And it would be easy to say, well, this is who you got your comedic inspiration from, but it was really the alchemy with your mom and her sensibility. I think you get more of it from your mom, even though she wasn't a comedian or a funny person.

She was very honest. Yeah. It's that honesty, that willingness to be honest. Right. That is the defining mark of a good comedian. Yeah, I agree. What I got from my dad was my dad goes in a room almost like a salesman or a politician and changes the temperature

of the room. Not in a, hey, get out of here way. You just notice he's a big planet and he becomes the center of gravity in a way that you sort of enjoy it. Almost in the way that it's like, hey, follow me. You know what I mean? And you like it. So I would watch him. And I don't mean in high stakes situations necessarily. I wasn't there for those because I was a kid. But if he went into a bakery, suddenly it just became the neighborhood bakery.

He was just sort of the mayor of Somerville where he worked most of the time. And he'd go in and I would just watch how it wasn't impolite to sort of change the frequency of a room. It was actually welcome. It's like a party, you know what I mean? When there's one person at a party that makes it a party. And as someone now I've thrown parties and whatever, you know how badly you want someone to come and be like, this is a party. We're having fun. And I learned that from my dad. And Valerie,

my wife, has pointed out that I have that from my dad and Valerie, my wife has pointed out that I have that quality too, especially when I'm pitching something or when I'm doing standup, I can sort of rally us into one thing instead of 300 individuals and a comedian, we just become a show. And that, and that's a quality that I learned from my dad. My dad does tell a lot of jokes and it made me think that jokes are important my mother would always put the funny pages out for us like because we liked it but she read them too so like jokes were like important and joking around was important but my mother was just still is the sort of person that will point out that my my friend that she hasn't seen in 20 years his hair is receding or whatever you're just like oh you don't have as much hair or whatever. And you're just sort of like, wow. And like, what's funnier? I know. The joke or the, or the, like the, just the little

stab of honesty that comes in an unexpected way. It's somebody that's not playing by the rules. It's Kramer. It's Kramer on Seinfeld. It's just like, and you need a Kramer on Seinfeld to tell the story. You need someone that like Kramer goes, you just need a nose job. Remember that moment? you need someone that, like Kramer goes, you just need a nose job. Remember that moment? That's my mom. And I did learn that.

And also there, she was religious, obviously. She is religious, but she also gets almost offended or bewildered if someone doesn't understand that she's joking. That's why I said lighten up was a mantra. And so was, can't you take a joke? Like they just don't get it right it's almost like a dysfunction she doesn't understand why you would be upset that she's saying something but is she aware that she's being funny i think so yeah i think it comes from the the place of

the painting and the you know wanting to feel and not a bad way but the feeling of like i don't want to keep that in here i want you to reflect me back to me which a lot of, but the feeling of like, I don't want to keep that in here. I want you to reflect me back to me, which a lot of artists have that. It's like, I want to say what I'm thinking and see what you think. And then I'll know myself and you a little bit better. So I think she had that and has that. She's a little bit like an artist. Right.

The mantra that I think you adopt and you point this out in the book is this idea of like, what is this? Like, what is going on? Like the sense at a very young age where you're walking around and everyone's living their lives and you have this like undeniable sensibility of awe and wonder about the world and what is actually happening on this crazy,

you know, spinning blue thing, we're out in space and you know, the sky is up, but it's also sideways. It's also below you. Yeah, all of that. And just confused why no one wants to talk about that, right? And that ultimately seems to be, you know, in addition to your mother's impetus,

like what leads you into the church and where you, you know, find a home for, you know, debating and talking about these things that also then informs your comedy. Yes. I still wonder why we're talking about bullshit. I get it. Sometimes it's exhausting to talk about what is this,

but just in the way that you don't seem to mind swimming with a weight belt on. I don't mind. I don't do that, but okay. You know what I mean. I don't tire as easily just kind of wondering, even right now as we're speaking, what is going on here? I like it.

It kind of excites me. There's an exhausting way to do it where you're really thinking about it, where you're really going like, let's really conceptualize what's going on. And then there's a way that's almost like thoughtless, where you're just sort of yielding to a mystery that we're a part of. And that's not as tiring. It's tiring to go like, look, that dust looks like the solar system. That's almost like writing poetry in your brain, and that will get tiring.

But there's almost like a quietness where you're going like a dream. Like I'm a lucid dreamer. And whenever I have a lucid dream, I'm like, it looks just like reality. That's like fucking crazy. And you can bring that wonder into your waking life as well. There was more about dreams in the book. My editor rightly was like, no one cares about dreams. So I was like, you're right.

I don't know. I care about dreams. There's some. Well, that's because you're interested. But the what is this was my thing as a kid, and it manifested in being very interested in UFOs and Bigfoot and ESB and all these different things. Which made you immediately popular.

Very unpopular. And comedy. Comedy is also like playing Operation. We're trying to figure out where the boundaries of socialness lie. And then that what is this kind of got funneled into the church. And what I liked about the church was we didn't really debate as much, but at least they said God, which I liked. I enjoyed that they had an answer that was different from, well, I don't know, eat your fucking tacos. Who cares? We got to get to school.

It was nice that they were saying God because God was something. I make a comparison in the book where I was leaving a superhero movie and I heard a kid say to his dad, dad, how do they make that man fly? And the dad, without really thinking about it, just went computers. And I was like, that's very funny

because computers really just means I don't know. He's just saying, I don't know. And in the same way, God might mean I don't know, but at least it was something. At least it gave us a symbol and something to explore and unpack if you're feeling curious, computers or God. It gave me a foothold into the mystery. And then when I came into the church, this is the sex part, I sort of also received a lot of information that wasn't welcome. Yeah. I mean, that was the cracks in the firmament from the get-go. Yeah. Right. My sexuality, and I'm a straight person, so what I'm saying is it wasn't like, I guess, I don't want to

call it normal, but I mean like straight white guy, you'd think that would be pretty normal. But in the church, you almost feel like you have to come out as straight. You're like, I like vagina. It's like a dirty, it's also bad. Like everything's bad. It's all bad. It's all bad. Everything about it is bad. So you get this shame that people might not understand. Like right here, we got, we, yeah. So you're having, I'm holding up Nadia's, Nadia Bowles-Weber's new book, Shameless. She's going up on the podcast tonight. She's amazing. She's doing your podcast tomorrow. Yeah. So her whole, this new book that she just came out with is all about that. I know. And when I was reading through, you know, your youth in high school and what you experienced, I mean, you're the white male version of what she talks about in here, but imagine you're

trans or you're gay and just what that shame and that guilt must feel like for those people. But that's why even as a straight white male, I relate and empathize and my heart opens to people who are, for example, are trans because we're all taking the information, the emotional and the psychological and the personal information inside

and we want to be acknowledged and seen for what we really are. And even if you are just a straight white man, there's still some of that uncovering and self-love that needs to happen and go like, it's okay that I want to jerk off three times a day or whatever it was. I mean, I really thought I was, I write about thinking that Jesus was going to come back

while I was trying to come. And it was very, that's almost, it's almost like child abuse. It kind of is. Yeah. What I liked in the book is your mom's honesty shining through when you're there trying to, you're asking these questions that everyone's too afraid to ask. Like, is it okay for me to masturbate? Can I do this? Right. And everyone else is like freaking out and raising the issue. That's right. In church, they would just say, the closest we would get is saying lust. You'd just be like, lust, lust.

Let's talk about lust. But we never really talked about lust. I was like, that's, that's a big, that's a big part of my psychology is lust. And, and my, you know, for whatever reason, we were just too polite or whatever to talk about it directly. And I really needed help. And when you're sort of left to your own devices with verses, like if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery, which Jesus says. And then I asked my youth pastor of masturbation, if I had masturbated, was I still a virgin? And he said, technically.

And I was like, well, I'm technically going to heaven? I'm technically okay? Like one of the big things in the book was I wasn't tempted to lie or cheat or steal or hurt people or murder anybody. But I had like undeniable, throbbing biological urges and a fresh batch of them every morning. And that is where you sort of get an unhealthy bond between God and sex. An unnatural feeling that that was exactly how you were loved or unloved or heaven or hell or accepted or unaccepted. And the journey of the book is, among other things, learning to accept that part of myself and every part of myself. But you stayed in it for quite a long time. I mean, it leads you into a marriage, it's a big part of your story with what happened there.

And it took a long time for you to kind of reconcile all of this. It did. I mean, you haven't gotten to it, but I mean, eventually I pushed it down a number of ways. One of them was just, Oscar Wilde says the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

And I had a huge portion of the book. I become an atheist in the book. And then I just sort of enjoy that time of still engaging with my what is this, but without a symbol system or a metaphor or a story. So I was still a decent person, but I was like, I'm done beating myself up about sex or being horny or this or whatever it might be. I had some random sex that

was very healing for me. And I thought I had sort of gotten it all out. And then at the end, when I go and sit with Ram Dass in a personal retreat, which is sort of how the book ends, I realized that like all that stuff was still in there. There needed to be a more radical acceptance. You can go like- You just compartmentalize the shame and the guilt. Exactly. And I had sort of given the werewolf a pork chop, basically.

I was just like, here you go. But really what the werewolf wanted was love. A rational love is what we're saying. Not going like, you're a virile and you're a young man and it's part of life. It's the ABCs. Everybody does it. That's not good enough.

It needs to be, shut up. I love you, period. That's it. And not, I'm thinking about loving you. I mean like an energy, like a heart energy that I'm sure you've dipped into and dip into every day. There's a spaciousness that we can feel and participate. I call that spaciousness God. I call that flow and that energy and that space God. It's a beautiful

thing to play with. But you had to go on that journey in order to arrive at that place where you could sit at the feet of Ram Dass and have him deliver that message to you. And you could accept that. That's right. You know what I mean? Well, it's all in the game. And it's sort of like, these are different versions of crashing, right? You have to crash in your life in various ways in order to meet yourself. Slow it down and it's all in the game.

And I used to think losing your faith was the worst thing you can do. And there's Jesus saying, you have to lose your faith. You lose your life to find it. And I would say you have to lose your faith to find it. The cracks, Leonard Cohen says, that's where the light comes through. I used to think God was asleep at the wheel when my wife left me. And now you look back and you're like, oh, for fuck's sake, it was all the day. It was all for you. It was all for me. Who else could it be for? Even my death though, that's not a failure. You know

what I'm saying? It's not just about prosperity gospel. It's not, and then I got a TV show. I'm talking about something way more important, which is an inner transformation and an enlightening feeling. You know what I mean? A place. Our society, our culture is so organized

around this principle of like creating this happy, you know, drama-free life of success and prosperity and ease and luxury. But the truth is the grit and the beauty is found in that struggle. And to the extent that, I don't wish ill will on anybody, but anybody who's gone through their version of, their kind of crashing, whether it's spiritual or physical or emotional,

there are lessons to be mined in that. Wouldn't trade it for the world. And that is the stuff of life. Ram Dass says in his Netflix documentary, which if people don't know Ram Dass, it's a great place to start. It's called Going Home, I believe. And he says, I don't wish you the stroke.

He had a stroke in the 90s. He goes, I don't wish you the stroke. I wish you the grace from the stroke. And also it's important to know when people are suffering, it's not helpful for you to go in and go, ah, this is grace. But it's been very helpful for me to update my understanding of the divine that's inclusive of everything. Otherwise we're just, my therapist would say there's a big pile of shit in the room and we're just spraying Febreze on it. You know what I mean? You need to find, I needed to discover on my own and through personal experience, a model of the universe and of the mystery. We don't have to call it God, just what's happening. What is this? That includes suffering. And I didn't have that.

We had, I remember my pastor, my first pastor. If you're suffering, you're doing it wrong. Exactly. And if you're suffering, we're just gonna, if someone dies, we just go, well, they're in heaven. But we were just praying our eyes out that they would be healed and then they died. So I guess God was drunk that morning. You know what I mean?

No, what are you doing? It's like Buddhism. It's like, you're already dead. The cup's already broken. Like, what are you gonna do? How are you gonna, like Ryan Holiday would say, the stoicism of it. It's like, you can't change the game that we're a part of. You can change how you respond to it and how you interpret it and how you interact with it from inside.

So what led you to Ram Dass? How did you find yourself seeking him out? A lot of psychedelics? Not a lot. I've done psychedelics under 10 times probably in my life. I've heard you talk about it before though. I mean, they're very important. I mean, you can only get hit by a car once. It's going to be a low number, but a high impact on your life. And I didn't know that when I took mushrooms for the first time. So basically the bullet points would be my wife left me. I grew up in the church. I got very into it. I thought I was

going to be a youth pastor. I went to Christian college, all this stuff. Ended up becoming a comedian anyway. The book opens with a joke. My mom said, close enough. I was going to be a pastor. I became a comedian. She said, close enough. Which is very funny, by the way. She's funny. It's the first thing in the book. First joke in the book. Well, the first joke in the book is some of the names have been changed to protect my ex-wife, which I was proud of. But

then I lose my faith because my wife leaves me. And I felt like I had been paying protection money to God. I think a lot of people feel this way, like the mafia. And yet still someone had thrown, for the fifth time, a brick through my bakery window. I'm like, what am I paying this guy for? You know what I mean? I'm his sheep, shepherd me. Sheeps don't have their wife sheep get fucked by a wolf. Like you fucked up. That's how I felt. So he broke his, he didn't hold up his end of the bargain in my sort of third grade,

second grade, kindergarten understanding of God. So I was like, forget it. I also think I was having doubts that sort of I was allowed to feel after my wife left me. I was sort of allowed to let them. I used to think thinking doubts was a sin. So I would push those away as well. But then when I had lost what felt like everything, I was sort of free to look at those doubts

and those feelings for the first time without the fear of- The idea of being like, everything, I was sort of free to look at those doubts and those feelings for the first time without the fear of- The idea of being like, look, I was a good soldier. I did all these things. I went the extra mile to adhere to all the insanity and I'm repaid in this way. That's right. I brought non-alcoholic beverages to parties.

I wore khakis. I played the bass in the worship team. I like when you're trying to recruit people in your high school too. I mean, is there anything worse? Yeah. You barely have your feet on the ground of what you think is salvation and then you're supposed to go out and sell it. It was one of the most unpleasant things in the world. You're all like 16. But that was one of the things is when my wife left, I had to take a real hard look at like, do you really believe that, like the example I use in my book is my brother is going to hell.

He didn't believe like I did. Do you really believe that? Like really, really think about it. And I was like, well, my behavior is maybe more honest than my thoughts. And my behavior, was very clear. I wasn't really actively grabbing him going, you fool, there's a train coming and you're on the tracks, you idiot. I wasn't doing that. I was having tacos with them, tacos again. So then I lose it. And then I'm out in the wild and I start kind of feeling, growing up a little bit and all these kind of interesting things.

And then I took mushrooms with my girlfriend at Bonnaroo. And we just thought it was like something fun to do. I wasn't a big drug person. I wasn't a big drug person. I'm not a big drug person. I hadn't done a lot of drugs. I'd probably smoked pot like, I don't know, 15 times in my life at that point. And then we bought some mushrooms from a roadie and we went on the Ferris wheel. And I, at the time I would not have said that I experienced the divine. What I did experience was something that was completely beyond language. So what we're saying, it was transrational. It didn't make any sense.

It wasn't something I thought. It was something that I became. And this sounds like if you read other people writing about mystical experiences, that's what they say. You can think I am made of the same molecules as this table and as you, and yet here are two consciousnesses talking to each other. It's fucking trippy. But to become that, that'll lay you on your back. And it did. And I laid there, mouth agape, staring at the clouds and receiving direct, real, even after I had come down, real transmission from the universe, grabbing me and saying, we're so glad you're finally fucking here.

So you can put down your briefcases filled with your precious little beliefs and you're in, I'm in, I'm a Christian, I'm in. Get all that shit out of here. Lay the fuck down on some grass and stare up towards infinity, you idiot, which is always there, you idiot. And really like, listen to me for a second. Stop praying by thinking, God, help me find parking. God, help me beat that flu that's going around. And listen, shut up for a second. So turn your brain off for a second.

And that just plays directly into your main thing, which is what is this? Exactly. And I was finally getting a taste. And it was through something, it wasn't from, as Richard Rohr would say, it wasn't from doing it right, abstaining from drugs. It was from doing it wrong. What a beautiful paradox. God hides himself in pain and strange wayward afternoons in Tennessee. That's fucking gorgeous. That's amazing. So I did mushrooms and then I realized that there were some things that we can't really talk about, right? There are things that are beyond language. Terrence McKenna says there are things that we can't talk about. Oh, how does he say it? There are things that are beyond language. They're just so damn hard to talk about. It's basically what he says. So I experienced that. I realized that that is a

reality and that is a reality, that there are almost like magical things, like magic is real and like wonder is real. And it's not just some cute feeling we sometimes get at the end of a Pixar movie. Like it's a fucking real thing that's happening. And more importantly was it's impossible to put into words. And then I started my heart. I didn't know had opened up to the potential that the writers of things like the Bible were also trying to use myth and metaphor because as Richard Rohr says, metaphor is the only language we have to talk about God. That doesn't mean it's not true.

It means it's so big and vast and mysterious that how else are you going to talk about it? I'm sorry to be so aggressive, but like you're going to talk about it directly. You're going to talk about it like the contents of your refrigerator. You're going to add it to your Amazon wish list, the mystery of everything. You can't talk about it directly. You can talk about it through music, sex, drugs, poetry, and metaphor. So then I meet Joseph Campbell. And because I started doing my podcast and this guy named Matt Ruby was like, because I started sharing my story and the more that I shared, the more I was getting feedback.

You could say from the universe, I'll just say from my friend, Matt Ruby. He emails and he's like, I think you'd really like Joseph Campbell. And then I start reading the Bible as a myth, overlaid over history. Who cares? It's so boring. Well, some of it's true. Okay, get out of here.

You're just, okay, eat your ice cream. Is this what brings you to Rob Bell? Eventually. Because what's interesting is, you know, there are other people with similar versions of your story that leads to them, you know, abandoning their past and their relationship with Christianity altogether.

And they may find themselves at the feet of Ram Dass, but then it's a whole exploration of mysticism that never leads them back to kind of reclaiming a different relationship with that text that started it all for you. I find that deeply and admittedly psychologically very beneficial. If it's all one, it's all one, right? But I just happen to have ties to Jesus. I like Christ, right?

The Jesus story. The Jesus. I come from the Jesus tradition. But I like that. So there was a period, there was much more about Rob in the first draft of the book. It was just getting too crazy. I can't summarize Love Wins and Richard Rohr and Ramda. And that's what the first draft. But that's another book. It is another book. I mean, you could write a whole book on that. I absolutely could. And that would be a great book. It would be like Tuesdays with Moray,

because I used to go and surf with Rob every weekend. And I wish I had been journaling at that time, honestly. I just didn't realize how exceptional and wonderful it was. I could tell, but I wasn't thinking like, how could I share this with people yet? But I would do it kind of in real time on the podcast. But that, so once I opened up the idea that Jesus's death and resurrection, for example, is a metaphor for your death, your ego death, and your resurrecting to the dynamic source of all being.

So you need to wake up to Christ consciousness, basically. Suddenly it wasn't about worshiping someone else's story. story. I write about it in the book. Jesus was, you're on a football team with Jesus and he does this incredible return after a punt or whatever, I don't know, football. So he catches the ball and he runs it back to his own 30 yard line, but then he gets tackled and the ball splits out and falls in your arms. And instead of running with the ball, you put the ball down so you can... Wow. That was amazing, Jesus. And Jesus is ball, you put the ball down so you can applaud Jesus. That was amazing, Jesus. And Jesus is going, you idiot, go.

This story isn't about me. It's about you. And worshiping someone else's story isn't gonna do shit for you. Like we need you to do it. You die, you die. You know what I'm saying? I get all passionate about this. No, I like it. It's one thing, like, I believe this, so I'm in a club is way different from going,

oh, I saw what he did. I'll do it too. I can't literally raise from the dead and I can't literally heal the blind and I can't literally turn water into wine, but I can metaphorically and I have and I, and you do too. And that's what we're supposed to be doing. The distinction between the institution of religion and Christ consciousness is a crevasse that's so vast. And it's, I just look at it as if, Christ consciousness is a crevasse that's so vast, you know, and it's, you know, I just look at it as if, you know, just introducing human beings into an organizing principle

around this, you know, exceptional human being or the ideas that he represents immediately corrupts it. Fast forward to young Pete Holmes, you know, being told all these things about his sexuality that make him feel terrible about himself. Well, that's, I think Duncan told me this, but I think Ram Dass also, it's just a joke. It doesn't belong to anybody, I guess.

But the God and the devil, why is it the devil, but just God? God and the devil. That's a bit. Yeah, the devil, well, he has more of an ego. So he's like, it's the devil. God's like, I'm fine with just God, it's fine. Drop the the, just devil. Well, he has more of an ego. So he's like, it's the devil. God's like, I'm fine with just God. It's fine.

Drop the the. Just devil. Like Facebook. Which is the devil. I'm just kidding. It could be. Listen, they're walking down the street. I don't know why.

And they see, God sees on the ground a little piece of truth. And he picks it up and he's like, wow, look at this truth. And the devil says, give it to me. I'll organize it. Which is what we're dealing with. Like I think the enormity of these things and my heart goes out to these people because I was one of them and can completely understand. But our ego wants to wear the Jersey and be in the club and think that we're right. And it's all nationalism and clan thinking and personal salvation and fuck everybody else. Like kind of quietly kind of feeling that way.

And I don't think Jesus came to start a religion. I don't think that's even controversial to say. Rob would say Jesus would be appalled that there's a religion because he went around going, it's right here, it's right here. There's a lot more of that stuff in the gospel of Thomas and stuff,

which isn't in the canon, but there's certainly a lot of it in the gospel of John. What's interesting about Nadia, and you'll find this out when you talk to her, is she shares so much of that same perspective, and yet she's also very much a traditionalist. Like she remains within the institution as a pastor in the Lutheran church.

Right. And reconciling those two things, like these progressive ideas about what these stories mean, how we interpret them and incorporate their wisdom into our lives versus the institution itself. And she's found a way to coexist within that. Right. That's interesting.

That's definitely one of my questions for her and for Richard Rohr, who is going to do my podcast again. It's like some people beautifully remain in the tradition. My thing is a Ram Dass thing, and it's in the book, is he says, you don't want to be Christian, you want to be free. And you don't want to be Jewish, you want to be free. And as long as, you know, what you want is consciousness without an object. You want no separation between you and God. So I write this story in the book about how I used to go to museums wrong. Cause I'd go, I'd look at a painting to think about it. I'd go, oh, this is fewer colors than other paintings I've seen. This is more colors. This

is bigger than others I've seen. I could do that. I could do that. It's definitely one of them. Or these are the good ones. Cause I look down and I see it's Picasso or I go, this is a good one. I think it's Monet, but it's man. And I'm like, it's not good. It's, it's bullshit. It's head stuff. So like, I don't want that. I want to completely merge beyond subject and object where God and I are just coexisting seamlessly in an unspeakable way. So how do you get to that place? I mean, I definitely talk about that in the book. One of them is through practice, and I don't just mean meditating and yoga or whatever it might be. I think it can come, one of the big things for me is contemplation, talking about it, remembering to remember is a big one, because it's a little bit more effortless

than sometimes we make it sound. I think a lot of people get turned off when I say, well, you need to meditate twice a day, every day or whatever. And they're just like, I can't. And then they don't. But we all occasionally slip into these states. I know I'm not just saying this because it's you, extreme physical activity

or just swimming in the ocean or having sex. These are little glimpses or near-death experiences. I think it's about removing the script that you write for crashing is not gonna directly correlate to like how hard you work on it, right? If you grind on it and you pull all nighters, that doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna be good. It might be, and probably will be better

if you can just get into a space of stillness where you can kind of channel what's already inside of you. That's right. And in an effortless way. That's right. And it might not feel like you did anything, but then the truth will be there. And that might be the thing that elevates. That's right.

So it's about like stripping away. Losing something. Right. Not gaining the right belief, but losing something. And I say this in the book too, I think that the devil can be a metaphor for your brain or your ego, because we used to call the devil a liar and a thief. And I think it's my brain and my thoughts that are often thieving me and lying to me. And it's the same thing when I'm in the museum, thinking about a painting is not the same as merging with

the painting. So I say, don't consume a flower, be consumed by it. And there's methods in the book that I talk about, and they're very simple, and I don't mind spilling them. But a lot of times it's about giving your brain something to do. One of the chapters is just called Yes, Thank You. That's very valuable to me. I think it's worth, I don't know if the book's like 25 bucks, I think that's worth it, and here it is for free.

It'll be cheaper on Amazon. Yeah, exactly. It'll be cheaper on Amazon. Yeah, exactly. It'll be cheaper in the bargain bin at Walmart. But yes, thank you is a very, very powerful mantra. It doesn't have to be in Sanskrit. It doesn't have to be woo-woo or something that might not feel natural to you. Yes, thank you is super, super valuable.

And we talked about it earlier with suffering. You just say, yes, thank you to that. Well, there's all these paths towards that. You can use the traditions of the Jesus story and its ancillary stories. You can find it in the wisdom of Ram Dass. And you can find, it's analogous to a lot of the Stoic philosophy too.

There are many paths towards that essential truth. Well, there's no greater joy, and I'm not just saying this, than when I find truth hiding in different people's styles. You know what I mean? If I read something, I'm reading Richard Rohr's new book, which is called The Eternal Christ. And I'm also reading Alan Watts' book called This Is It. And it's the same book. You know what I mean?

And I mean that in the great way. Obviously, they're using different symbols, but they're talking about the same things. And that really lights me up. And then when Ryan comes on and talks about Stoicism, which I didn't even really know much about, and I'm like, oh, they were saying the same thing that the Buddhists were saying. But the Buddha did that. He held up a flower. That was his great sermon.

Eckhart Tolle says crystals are enlightened rocks and flowers are enlightened beings because they're beautiful for no reason. They've just sort of figured out like, well, I might as well do this. And then it's just like a beautiful flower. And that is a much more powerful sermon than me trying to get you to think and absorb the same symbols and stuff. So the Christ story still works for me. Meditation is wonderful. Psychedelics are still occasionally very helpful to me. But one of the things that I really enjoy a lot is using the mind to beat the mind. There's a type of yoga that, if I was really smart, I would remember the name of the type of yoga that is.

But your brain is a certain power. Yoga nidra. Yoga nidra, is that? I don't know, maybe. I didn't make it up. It doesn't sound right. But I like contemplation. I like reading things and stopping and looking out the window or staring at a tree.

And that's where everything fits. So if somebody was to say to you, you know, Pete, how do you define your faith? How do you canonize it? How do you articulate your perspective on these things? I'm a Christ-leaning spiritual seeker person. your perspective on these things? I'm a Christ-leaning spiritual seeker person. I still enjoy that because for better or worse,

those things got in there and were imprinted on me when I was young. So I get very excited when I can reclaim those stories and bring them with me and not throw the baby out with the bath. But a lot of it, I spent so much of my life thinking how to be more like Jesus would wear those bracelets to say, what WWJD, what would Jesus do? We wanted to be like Jesus as if Jesus, like the point of Jesus was how nice he was and

how he got along with everybody. And when people say, how can I be more like Christ? I'm like, when? In between each of those words, I think you're probably closer than you think when we can stop and turn the volume down. This is very unpleasing to the ego when we think it's not about having something, it's about letting go of something. But stillness and quiet, be still and know that I'm God, that it's right there staring

you in the face. It's about getting into your pure, basic awareness. A big thing the book is about is tapping into soul consciousness. It's so hard to be still these days. I know. You know? I know. You have to really be intentional about it.

You have to go out of your way. You have to create roadblocks and boundaries. Otherwise the phone and the email and just the digital landscape spills into- Every time I email you, I get like an auto response. It's like, I'm taking a break from email for four months, but then you write me back. Yeah, I know, right?

It's like, don't tell people. I try, but I have to do that, you know? And I'm not very good at it. Like it's become increasingly more and more difficult to turn those things off and allow yourself to be bored. But if you don't create boredom for yourself, then as somebody who's a maker, who's making things, how do you make? You need that fertile soil. You need the soil to be fertile. In order to do that, you have to carve out that space.

I like to think of it like a pond, like a koi pond. And if the water's too rocky, you can't even see the fish and the fish are your ideas. But if the pond is deep, there's always still water underneath. It's always there. Or you can go swimming and find it. Jump in. You just have to go down.

That's what psychedelics are. I wish I could do psychedelics. I can't. I gave that up. I know. It's so interesting. You don't drink anymore, right? No.

I consider myself- I remember you asked me when I did your podcast, you had a bunch of questions about alcohol, and then I'd heard that you quit drinking. Well, you can listen back to my podcast when I was drinking. And anytime I talked to a sober person, I was just so blindly, so obviously curious about what are you doing? Because I didn't realize that I was habitually addicted to

it. I like to say I wasn't like a sexy drunk. It was just something that I had lost control over. Sexy drunk meaning like I don't have wild stories. I have like kind of sad stories about getting high from doing standup. I get that like good natural high and then going home and not knowing what to do with it. So I would drink enough vodka to kill one of your dogs, you know? And that's not like a wild story, but like you realize, I realized one day I went home and I poured myself a drink and I had never, there was no agency involved. It was just something that I do. Like, I don't know, taking off your pants before you get in the shower. Like it was just natural. And I was like, what I really liked about the way that I stopped drinking was people want to drink because they have liberty. They're like, no one tells me what to do. It's a real human need

is no one tells me I can't have a Mai Tai. Right. And then I, and I really flipped it and I was like, no true liberty is not letting something that was like sold to you as relaxation and, and relief lie to you and, and, and come in and steal your liberty. So I sort of flipped it very one for one being like true liberty is going, no, you, you can't. Well, if it's starting to have this, if it's starting to own you, then certainly you're not free. And, you know, I don't know, you know, whether you're an alcoholic or not, but it's a self-diagnosed thing. Only you know whether it's problematic for you.

And it was, it was helpful for me. I read a book called This Naked Mind and I recommend it on audio book. It's almost hypnotic in how repetitious it is. But I liked that it didn't necessarily, for better or worse for me, use alcoholic, non-alcoholic, in the club, out of the club, whatever it was. It was just like alcohol is a deeply addictive thing. And you also have all this conditioning. It talks about advertising and the way the story was kind of given to you and how it is in our culture. And maybe my ego liked it. I don't know that it was like, you were had.

That's the summary of that book. You've been had. And you were able to just put it away. Yeah, I read that book. And by the end I was done. And I think, but it was also because when you were on, I was talking about it. So it's like, we can say-

No, it's interesting because you were curious. You're like, so you don't drink ever? And like, would anything make you drink? Like, I don't remember exactly what you're asking me. I was like, that can say- No, it's interesting, because you were curious. You're like, so you don't drink ever? And like, would anything make you drink? Like, I don't remember exactly what you were asking me. I was like, that's a very interesting question. I probably was like, toast at a wedding? Would you toast at a wedding? People are fine.

I talked to somebody last night. He was like, yeah, I haven't drank in a month. I feel great. And I'm like, that's fantastic. And he was like, yeah, I'm going to start up again next month. And I was like, why? Right. It's this really interesting thing.

There's a joke in AA that like, uh, only the alcoholic would want to celebrate like getting their one year chip, getting a year of sobriety by getting drunk. That's really funny. Or, or like, you know, Oh, if I wasn't an alcoholic, I get drunk every day. Yeah. It's a weird mental twist. Interesting. But I saw it with food too. You know, I had somebody do my podcast and he was talking about like, he, uh, he gave up processed fast food and he was a real addict to that stuff. And then he was like, and he had lost all his weight and he was basically juicing and all this stuff. It's interesting.

Dave Stone is his name. And he was like, I'm really excited when the year is up, I'm going to have my cheat days or whatever. And I was like, I understand. But at the same time, it's like, you're in this abusive relationship. Why are you going to spend one Saturday a week with that person who beats you? Because human. I know. And we can't lose touch with that. So when you talk about how it's hard to be present, I'm like, great. You're way more useful to me this way. If you were just sitting up by your

beautiful pool and telling me how easy or how present you are, it's not really useful to me this way. If you were just sitting up by your beautiful pool and telling me how easy or how present you are, it's not really useful to me. But if I can tell you, if you get in the shower, you want to remember memento morir, right? This is mori, memento mori. Remember that you die. That's a real hack into the present. And if you get in the shower, I do this and it works. You get in the shower and you say, you can do it both ways. You can say, this is my first shower, which is kind of true. But you can also say, this might be my last shower. It's another way that your mind robs from you as you go, it's Tuesday and it's morning and you shower

and you will on Wednesday and you will on Thursday and you will on Friday. Maybe not. I thought that on the ride over. I was like, I could fucking die on the way over. Guess what? I'm feeling the steering wheel a little bit more in my fingers. And I'm hearing the music a little bit more.

Well, I think, you know, in my case, there's probably a contingent of people out there that project onto me. You know, I've heard you do it already in this podcast. Like, oh, Rich goes and he does these crazy athletic things and he's Mr. Mindfulness and all of that. Like, you know, just to be clear, like these are things that I struggle mightily with. And I think there's power in sharing that honesty. Of course. And not saying like, oh, here, I figured it out.

And here's what you do. And your life will, you know, be forever changed. Take advice from me. Right. Like, I never want to be that guy. I don't think of you that way. And, you know, what I, you know, gathered in the first 70 pages of your book,

which is incredibly well-written. You're a great writer. Oh, thanks, man. Really well-written. Thank you. Can we use that as a blurb? Is it too late? Cover blurb?

I don't know. Are you comfortable with a cover blurb? Will your editor spell my name right? That's hilarious. Why? Did I spell it wrong? No, no, no. I was making the joke

because they say you're the wrong guy. Oh, that's funny. For a second, I took it personally. But what's very clear is how, and this goes back to stand up and what being a comedian is all about, which is being honest and having that deep willingness to be

vulnerable and own yourself on stuff that's like not comfortable. You know what I mean? And I went through that when I wrote my book, I realized like, look, I'm not the most amazing athlete out there. You know, like why is somebody going to want to read this book? Only to the extent that they can connect with some strain of humanity. And the only way I'm gonna be able to do that is if I have that willingness to be honest. Well, that's what- I'm not a standup comedian, but I had to come to that place

in order to create something that would have any kind of value. Of course, that's it. That's why this book is almost embarrassingly filled with foibles and stories of me jerking off. I joke that it's called Comedy Sex God because that's what it's about, but most of the sex is with myself. And then there's just so much shame and embarrassment. And it's important to note that even after I met Ram Dass the first time and I learned how to meditate and I learned what soul consciousness was and I had done contemplation and I had learned breathing, and I had learned yes, thank you, and all these different things at work, how many times I would fall off.

And this is the sine wave of reality, and that's very valuable. And that's where the energy is created. I am not loved by those that love me because I have the answers. I'm loved because, I don't know why, but I have to guess it has to do with my honesty. Of course. And if everybody could just like pause for a moment and really think about that, because I think to the extent that we can all embody that a little bit better, I think the world would be a better place. I say to my dad point blank, because my dad is a very classic dad and he really wants to be a capital D dad to me. And I'm like, dad, I'm 40. I'm almost 40. I can't wait to say I'm 40. Dad, I'm 40.

Stop, stop. And my vows, my wedding vows, they were like these sort of almost coded messages sorted to my dad from Val and from me. And he said he really loved them. I don't know if he heard them, but it was about how Val said something like, I love how you know real strength is in sharing weakness.

And that is so important to me. I love that I grew up with like a mountain of a dad, but now as I'm raising my daughter. He's like a dude's dude, right? Works on cars and is into all that kind of stuff. He loves the Red Sox and sports and all that, which is fine. And you can be into those things and be deeply wonderful. And he is.

But admitting faults. So when I sent this book, the story, when I go to Ram Dass is that I get really, really, really, really, really horny while I'm there. It's like, I think it's a really funny story. What's that about? Well, the conclusion is I thought horniness was in the way of the teaching. The horniness was the teaching. And that's what I'm talking about when it comes to like, I needed to reconcile with that. I needed to love my fullness.

And I don't mean think about loving my fullness, as I already said. I mean, just being Montana sky, just being spacious, irrational love to myself and getting in touch with that part of myself. And then obviously, it went away. Not that that was the point, but like, I didn't find myself.

I joke in the book, I couldn't look at porn at Ram Dass' house. The Wi-Fi password was Maharaji. I just wasn't comfortable doing it. But these things are chasing us and they all sort of want the same thing. The same thing that we're after we can give ourselves. And that's a really powerful thing. But the book is, there's a season, the second season of Crashing, everything that I wrote about in the book, I already knew, right?

But I found myself deeply depressed going to different liquor stores to mix it up because a lot of them watch HBO. So I would mix up which liquor store I went. Yeah, that would not be good. So that's- Going back to the same- Now that I say it, it sounds like- I mean, that's alcoholic behavior. That's an alcoholic story. Yeah. That actually was helpful to me. I be like, yeah, that would not be good. So that's back to the same. Now that I say it, it sounds like. I mean, that's alcoholic. That's an alcoholic story. Yeah.

That actually was helpful to me. I was like, that sounds like a real AA share, right? Yeah. That I was aware that how much I would drink, I could drink like a pint of vodka. That would be like a normal serving for me. Cause I knew that that wouldn't give me a hangover. This is real alcoholic stuff now that I'm saying it.

So that was after Ram Dass. You know what I'm saying? That was after the methods and the meditation and the techniques. But I got sloppy. I say in the book, I had a nice little garden patch, but then I just stopped watering it. This is what we do. But it's a practice. That's what I mean. You don't go to Ram Dass and then your problems are solved. Right. You have some dawning self-awareness that changes everything. And my problems aren't solved now, but I see it as a game, as the dance and the play of the universe that I'm participating in. But I do kind of see it from a different perspective. I'm less attached to it and I identify with it less, which is really helpful.

One of the more powerful parts of the book, I talk about praying for peace and prayer. When I was growing up was thinking, it was just more thoughts. Like I would say, dear Jesus. And that meant start listening to my thoughts, which were going never ending anyway. But that just meant like, come in God. And then it's saying Jesus name, amen. And that meant you can go back to whatever you were doing. But I would just think, and I would say, and I was an anxious kid and I'm still an anxious person. Like I just have sort of general anxiety. But when I was a kid, I had a bald spot on the side of my head. I had like digestion problems, like the things that we diagnose very quickly now, oh, you have IBS. And like back then I was just like, oh, Pete has gross farts or whatever. But like, I was deeply, deeply, deeply

anxious. And so whenever my pastor- A bald spot on your head from like- Stress. Compulsive, like, wow. I didn't know. It wasn't a pocking. It was on the side. I just went bald on the side of my head. Wow. Something that now, 2019, any kid, you go to a specialist. Right.

But in Boston in 1986 or whatever it was- Get over yourself. Get over yourself, you fucking- I can't say the words they would say. My parents were loving, but it wasn't as like hyper aware as we are now, hopefully. But so whenever my pastor would preach about peace or the Lord being your shepherd or whatever, I would really pay attention.

And I have this, it's emotional for me. I remember singing the song called, I cast all my cares. I cast all my cares. I cast all my cares upon you. I lay all my burdens down at your feet. And anytime I don't know what to do, I cast all my cares upon you. We have the same light in our nursery. Crazy. And I would sing it out loud. I would pray. It wouldn't work. I'd open my eyes. The anxiety would still be there. So I'd sing it out loud alone with stuffed

animals way older than I should have been to still have stuffed animals. And it was terrible. It didn't work. I really was trying to let go and to accept peace from God. That was very real to me. So it was a failure. Not only was it not working and I really needed it to, but also it wasn't working because of my lack of faith or I didn't mean it enough. I had all these value systems. So soul consciousness is more than just a fun thought experiment. behind and beyond my identity and the thought and the story that I build about who I am, my gender, where I'm from, my age, my likes and my dislikes. If you can identify with the witness to those things, which is what meditation is, it's practicing being plain, pure awareness.

If you can go into that place through breathing or repetition of a mantra, that's where peace is. Ram Dass says, awareness is peace. That's peace. When we say, peace be with you, peace can only exist for a moment in the ego, because it's made of stuff that will not allow for it. This is a quote in the book. Awareness is peace. So I say in the book, it's one of my favorite lines. I say, when I was a kid, I used to ask for peace.

Now I go in and get the motherfucker. And that's really, that's not, isn't it fun to pretend we're souls? Because when we go to heaven, we'll get blowjobs from unicorns that shit ambrosia. Who cares? Fuck that shit. We're here now.

And when I still, little Pete comes in to visit me at night and I feel generalized anxiety. It is not situation-based. It is not, what am I going to do? Crashing was canceled. What am I going to do? It doesn't come that way. It just feels like, what if they get me? That's what it feels like. What if they get me? Who's they? It doesn't matter. What if they get me? I write in the book, it's a sensation usually reserved for something pointy chasing you, but it's just a misfiring and it's happening and it's real. I used to go, please take this feeling away.

Please take this feeling away. And now when I can get in touch with my big eye, you can realize that this is just a story that you're buying into and you can kind of slip behind it and fall asleep. That's just practical advice. It's a mindfuck though, because you can't try to let go. The only way to let go is to let go. Yeah.

And to get beyond your story, to become the observer, to step into the consciousness that supersedes the machinations of the thinking mind is an allowing. Yeah. Right? And it contravenes every impulse and instinct that we have to try to corral our resources to get to a certain place using our brains. Right. So, the avenue is much

more delicate and nuanced and ephemeral. Like, there's, you know, it requires somebody like Ram Das in order to explain it to us. It doesn't. And even after it being explained, it doesn't land immediately. See, this is why I like- It goes back to practice. And I'm right there with you. And yet I'm not, I love the way I meditate, but it's not very regimented. It's not, people are like, do you meditate every day? I'm like, not really.

What kind of meditation do you do? Exactly. What's your mantra? And I'm also like, in another way, I never stop meditating, but like, however you meditate every day? I'm like, not really. What kind of meditation do you do? Exactly, what's your mantra? And I'm also like, in another way, I never stop meditating, but like however you want to frame it. But like Mooji, do you know who Mooji is? He's worth looking up on YouTube.

And I love him because he's a realized being. And he just talks about like, he makes it sound not as complicated. Like we've all heard, and I want to be clear that my book isn't necessarily saying like, if you want to be clear that my book isn't necessarily saying, if you want to be able to turn off your mind and fall asleep when the generalized anxiety comes, meditate for an hour every day.

A lot of people just go like, well, I can't, and they're out. Mooji, and something that I've learned from people like him and from Ram Dass too, are just like, well, who's saying it? I'm anxious. Who's hearing you say it? Who's witnessing? Literally, who's saying it? I'm anxious. Who's hearing you say, who's witnessing? Literally just stop and go, I'm depressed. Is the part of you that's noticing the depression depressed? Well, no, that's just this impartial, it's like a flashlight shining around. Well, identify with that. And even if you can only do it for a moment, try doing that every time you're

feeling an unpleasant feeling, you're going to get in a moment, try doing that every time you're feeling an unpleasant feeling. You're going to get in a lot of reps, to use your language. I'm just kidding. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to paint you in a corner. I'm trying to be funny. But you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

That's something you practice all the time. So it doesn't have to be sitting cross-legged in orange robes and lighting incense. Just any time you're like, I'm anxious. Who's noticing it? That's why I did my, in my stand-up bed, I was like, sing happy birthday in your head. How are you hearing that? What is the thing behind the thing? We all go like, I'm Pete.

And we think you're the voice and go, I'm Pete. Really, there's a thing that was there between I'm Pete and I'm hungry. It was there and it's always there. And it's not anxious. And it's also not invested in your cute little story or your TV show getting canceled. It's just there. And that's also not invested in your cute little story or your TV show getting canceled. It's just there.

And that's peace. And it's not as hard as it sounds. It's not something you necessarily have to climb a mountain and talk to a yogi to get. They're just going to shake you and say, you're already there. This is every story. The box you're sitting on as you're begging is filled with gold. What St. Francis says, what you're looking for is what you're looking with as you're begging is filled with gold. St. Francis says, what you're looking for is what you're looking with. It's here. It's here. Not what the eyes

can see, but that whereby the eyes can see. That's Brahman. That's the universal consciousness. It's fucking amazing. And it's right there. That's amazing. And it's right there. And the more adept you get at developing that, the more you realize that your thinking brain is very good at doing certain rote things that get you through the day and allow you to survive. But ultimately, and in my case, I can say like, most of the time, it ain't my friend.

That's right. It's just bombarding me. Yes, with messages that don't serve me, that want to bring me down. Yeah, I'm hearing it right now. Unhelpful. What am I going to ask Pete next? Dude, I'm hearing it now too. Look at you. Oh, you have it all figured out. Tell him how you couldn't sleep last night or whatever it might be. And for somebody who's listening, who is having a hard time wrapping their heads around this concept, a little tweak, mental tweak that might help you is thinking about the last time you had a dream. And in that dream, you're having a conversation with someone. Let's say you ask them a question

and you're awaiting their response. You don't know what they're going to tell you. Yeah. And then they tell you the answer and you're surprised. Yeah. Isn't that fun? That's how compartmentalized our brains are. That's right. Consciousness. You think you have it all laid out like a yard sale and you don't, it's a secret. So who is coming up with that answer that you're unaware of? That's right. That's very good. I have the one dream thing that Luke allowed me to keep. Well, you know, he would have let me keep whatever. But the one thing that I was like, I want to keep is about a dream.

And it sort of summarizes how I feel about Christ and Buddha and Krishna and everybody. Is that I still have that dream where I'm in high school. And there's a test that day. It's a horrible dream. I'm a senior. There's a math test that day. It's a horrible dream. I'm a senior, there's a math test and I have them going to class. Like I know all this in the dream. I have memories in the dream, which is kind of trippy.

You're in the Dockers. In a polo. The leopard skin wrist slap wrist thing. Exactly, longer than the trend lasted. And I'm terrified and I kind of scramble and I go around asking people if I can borrow their notes. I really go through everything. I'm like, can I cheat? Can I do of scramble and I go around asking people if I can borrow their notes. I really go through everything. I'm like, can I cheat?

Can I do summer school? It's panic. It's dread. It's horrible. It's a terrible dream. And then because I lucid dream, and occasionally sometimes this happens even if you're not lucid,

you realize it's a dream. You go, it's beautiful. I just go, I'm almost 40. I'm a comedian. I don't need math I'm not even in school anymore this is a dream there is no test

that to me is liberation having that realization while you're in the dream I'm in the dream and I realize that there's is that a recurring dream

I haven't had it in a while but yeah I've had it at least 25 30 times for sure and it's worth having the panic to wake up. So I'm not waking up, but in the dream, I'm becoming aware. So I'm waking up in that sense. And I go, there is no dream and there is no test. And that to me is what Christ was doing.

That's good news. Good news is not you die and you better swear your allegiance to the right spelling of my name or I'm going to fuck with you forever. You stupid bitch. That's not good news. Good news is, hey, guess what? No one's going anywhere. No one's doing anything. Where could anything go? It's all this. As I say on my mushroom trip, it's all one thing thinging itself. It's like a fountain. It's undulating. It's working out lawfully. And your doubts and your fears and your shame, it's all welcome. And it's all loved, irrationally loved. But those dreams are like little gifts to remind you of how far you've come. Yeah. They can be like little gratitude bombs If you just tweak your perspective on them. Like in AA, there's a thing where, you know, a lot of people, myself included, have like relapse dreams.

Oh, wow. The most vivid. I had that with me. Do you? Yeah. The most vivid where you're like, I can't, I'm not going to do it. And then you do it. And then you're like, okay, it's on.

And then you're like off to the races, using, drinking, whatever it is, I've had many of these. And they're terrifying because they're so real and like visceral. And I've come to now look at them as exactly what you just mentioned. Like you wake up from them and you have this moment of panic, like, oh my God, I've just destroyed my life or I blew it

or I have to start over again. They go, ah, didn't actually happen. Yeah, beautiful. And they can be terrifying, but they can also remind you of what it was like and of all the work and the changes that you've made to move away from that regressive. That's right.

A little test, it ran a little test. Yeah. And it reminded you of where you are and how far you've come. So that happens to you with meat? Sometimes. Do you? Are you still vegan? When I first became a vegan, I was more precious about it and I would have more, oh no, I just ate at McDonald's, dreams. And now I like to say I'm a full of shit vegan or flea-gan, flexible, meaning there's some meals that I eat that are vegetarian. But really it's not about an overarching flag that I fly. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just become more,

I don't know how to put it without sounding really full of shit. Let's just say I'm 98% vegan. Right, like you don't institutionalize it. Well, Ram Dass actually has a great thing about this that speaks to me, was he was a vegetarian, which back in the 70s was as radical as being a vegan is now.

And so he's a vegetarian because holy people are vegetarians and they only wore sandals made of leather, but there was a special company in India that made them out of cows that died of natural causes, blah, blah, blah. So he's very holy about it. But he caught himself,

whenever he felt himself feeling superior to other people and feeling, as I sometimes do, like, you eat that, he would go to KFC. Wow. And he would mindfully eat some disgusting, and this is after they knew how they abused those animals and biological bullshit. And he would eat it and he'd say,

he'd sit with the horror of it. And I sometimes will occasionally do something like that. It's usually with pizza. So my cheats are vegetarian. Yeah, but is the motivation so that you can right-size your ego and not be so pious? Or is it because you just had a craving and you're like, you couldn't help it? I'm sometimes foolish yet.

And sometimes I will say that I have deliberately gone, because my wife is not vegan. She's vegetarian, pescatarian. And I'll catch myself just like that sneaky little feeling. Like, I'm better than you. And then what I'll normally do in that moment is I'll just have a bite of her feta or whatever, and just kind of write myself because the toxicity of that feeling other times though, just to jump ahead, it's because I'm an ape.

Right. You know what I mean? That's interesting because I think that piousness is a big problem in the vegan community. Well, I have a big thing about this. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. No, I mean, I think the vegan community does a pretty good job of eating its own and attacking each other

because just like there's always gonna be somebody who's more woke, there's always gonna be somebody who's more vegan and trying to hold each other to some crazy standard and then attacking people for falling short of that is doing nobody any good. Yeah. Go ahead. If there's something that I want to embody or that I enjoy embodying is the idea that we don't have to be so black and white about it. We can be a little bit third way, which I understand. I can feel some vegan ears burning and being upset and that's fine.

But- A lot of vegans listening, right? The idea though, that you're in or you're out isn't necessarily helpful in introducing, let's say, introducing somebody to how good it feels to eat plants. Because I got into it for selfish reasons.

It gets me high. That's what I tell people. Eating plants gets me high. Like it just makes you feel better? It makes me feel fucking fantastic. So was it a, like a, so it wasn't a spiritual impetus to like become like Ram Dass. I did that later, just like every asshole vegan. I did it because it made me feel fantastic. And then later I was, because I was no longer eating animals, I was emboldened to watch some of the videos, like the carnism TED Talk that I was like,

oh, fuck, I'm done. I'll never do it again. But I wasn't brave enough to watch those until I had already stopped. Yeah, exactly. But the thing that I think vegans can forget is that like, or lose touch with, is that even though I stopped eating meat

when I was, I don't know, 33 or something, that meant I ate meat for 33 years. Yeah. And as soon as I stopped eating meat when I was, I don't know, 33 or something, that meant I ate meat for 33 years. Yeah. And as soon as I stopped, like smokers, you know, that gives you cancer. Like as soon as they quit. You start evangelizing. And like Christians, as soon as I lost my faith.

That's the parallel that I want to get to. Like there's a lot of parallels with the institutionalization of religious beliefs. And there's something powerful in when Ram Dass tells these stories about being recognized in line in a porno theater, right? Beautiful Ram Dass story. Oh, I don't know this story. It's a deep one. It's a deep cut.

Or me telling the story about being horny in his guest house. Those are so much more valuable than just like stories of perfection. So like we're drawn to these people that still understand that occasionally like you got drunk and ate a Shake Shack burger or whatever it might've been. So I now enjoy, let's not forget

that even though I stopped six, seven years ago now that I did for most of my life, let's not lose touch and compassion. For me, it's all us. And at the end of crashing, you're at Pink's. I know. Right? Well, she's eating fries. She is.

I actually didn't see you take a bite out of a hot dog. Pete in the show is not a vegan. He was eating fried chicken at that place in the South. Although I don't eat it on camera. But anyway, so losing touch with the part of us that did eat meat and remaining compassionate to that. And also just inviting people. I think one of the things that people don't want is to belong to another club and to have another thing. So it's like now you're a vegan and now you're on the record and you better not. But some people want

to belong to a club. They're looking for a club to join. That's fine. Enjoy that. I believe this book speaks to that. Ego is the enemy. That's great. Doesn't it feel good to be in? Put it on a flag and start a parade. But here's what the other thing,

vegans are right. And that's why they're so annoying, right? But like what we do with that rightness is on the record and compassion is always important. And recognizing that people have psychological ties and also just unconsciousness, meaning they're not thinking about it in the same way that you are. Sometimes it is just a sandwich with a friend

and you coming in in your wokeness, aggressive and hot, isn't necessarily the most loving or even the most effective thing to do. So I like to demonstrate, be a flegan, be a flea-gan, be a flexible vegan, eat plants as much as you can, and don't fear the reaper of like,

whoops, I ate a Samoa because I bought some Girl Scout cookies and I ate one. All right, love yourself. You're out of the club. Love yourself. Love yourself. That's it. Yeah, I think that's an enlightened perspective on.

I agree. I used to think it was more. I mean, even if your agenda is to, if you have that evangelizing impulse and you really do wanna spread this message, it isn't effective. Nobody wants to be told what they should or shouldn't do, or to feel bad about the decisions that they're making.

And we all live in glass houses and taking other people's inventory is just not a business I want to be in. What they put in their mouths, which is very personal and embarrassing. And I don't know, we live in a world where there's so much death. There's this great quote where he says,

I forget who says it, forgive me. It's some genius, like Tolstoy. It was Tolstoy where he says, I forget who says it, forgive me. It's some genius. Like Tolstoy. It was Tolstoy. He goes, as long as we have slaughterhouses, we'll have battlefields. And I was like, oh, that's right on. So we're living in this unconscious state, right?

And that's just true. Was it, and Einstein said something similar. Like you can judge the morality of a state by the way they treat their animals or something like that. But look at The Shining, right? The movie, The Shining. We're in a hotel and everything's fine, but the history of the slaughtering of Native Americans is like a part of that story. It's America in a hotel. And guess what? Sometimes the elevator opens and a tidal wave of blood comes out.

We're all dealing with this suppression and it's fucking tricky. So be careful how you wake people up. You know what I mean? And be compassionate and remember how you woke up. And I'm, I'm pretty sure it wasn't because somebody came in and made you feel shitty. It might be because somebody was like, Hey, eating plants gets you high. I like that. It gets you hot. That's more alluring, I think. Yes. It's joy. It's abundance. Look at the fucking shit that's just growing out of the earth that you can eat and the diversity and the color and the way that it makes you feel and what it does biochemically to your body. These are hints. That's a metaphor. Eat living things and feel life. That's beautiful. Eat dead things and feel death. Get out of here. Get out of here. So what are you struggling with right now?

Like what's the mountain you're trying to climb emotionally and spiritually? Like what's the thing that's coming up for you right now that you're doing battle with? You just mean in general, not off of veganism? No, no, no, not off, just in general. Hmm. I would imagine, and I'm sure I'm projecting, but having this show on HBO and suddenly being, like you were successful before, but that put you in a different kind of pecking order

in your career. And I'm sure if you walk down the street, wherever you go, people know who you are. Like, does that, did that fuck with your ego? Did you, have you had to kind of right-size yourself in that way? That's interesting. Because you seem super grounded about the whole thing.

Well, that's kind. I, I like fame. I like my level of fame. It's weird. I don't mind leaning into my psychology and sort of giving my giant the treats that it wants. I try not to be too attached to them, but it's fun to play the game. For example, one of the reasons I work so well with Judd, I mentioned, is because of the psychology I have with my father. So I can see a dysfunction in myself. And instead of ignoring it, I can mobilize

it. I can go, oh, you like working with big, powerful people? Conan, Judd, you know what I mean? Go for it. You want to please daddy? This daddy will get you on HBO. That sounds weird, but you know what I'm saying? I don't mean to call Judd daddy. That sounded weird. But this father figure or my therapist, I have a male therapist. That's me leaning into my dysfunction going, I like pleasing men. You're a man. Let me try and get you to love me. And we'll even talk about that. That sounds like a super healthy relationship with your therapist. If you're there trying to get him to like you. Well, I want him to, yeah, that's part of it. But we talk about that and we work with that. It's not necessarily that I want him to like me, but I want to impress him with how good at therapy I am. And that makes me good at therapy. And that makes me

more honest and it makes me do the work. You know what I'm saying? So it is unhealthy, but I'm using it. I'm alchemizing it into being good at therapy, which actually helps me shed some of that, boy, I hope my therapist likes me stuff. But he likes me because I'm good at therapy. Because I'll come in and I'll tell him everything.

It's that's the- See, most people that would want to get their therapist to like them would then just go on and lie. No. Tell the therapist what they think the therapist- I'm up level. I'm playing three-dimensional chess. This is advanced.

No, I'm going to tell him every fucked up thing ever. And he's going to go, shit, one session with Pete is like 12 with Dan. And that's the real shit. I come to score. I'm here to score. I want to be on the board. And that makes me a good patient. So that's using an unhealthy thing for a healthy thing.

But what were we talking about? Just what you're dealing with right now. So then similarly, the type of fame that I have, I heard Letterman say that it turns the world into a small town. So I'm not Jake Gyllenhaal. But if I go to Whole Foods, chances are somebody will listen to the podcast or they'll have watched the show. And they'll just kind of be friendly.

They'll be like, hey, I like your show. We went to brunch yesterday and the guy was like, I really like your show. And I get this almost every day. I grew up evangelical or my wife left me or I'm trying to do comedy like there's millions of these people especially in l.a and we just talk and it's nice and i just go thanks man what's your name nice to meet you and i like that and so i i don't struggle with that and i i also don't it's happened enough that i don't i don't really go like

i'm a big fancy boy you know what i? It just turns the world into a small town. Wouldn't you like to live in a small town? I bet you do. Yeah. Hey, Rich. That's what I live. I get this a lot. It's nice.

Just that. Just like somebody looks at you twice and they smile. Yeah. You know, like, oh, okay. Feed the beast. The beast. Right. So one of the ways I can keep my,

my job is sort of to like identify and solidify and mobilize my ego. So on one hand, that's very shallow, right? That's very like, it can be seen as depraved. I'm in the ego business. The other thing is I'm over here. When I edit the show, I go, is there one where Pete does this?

Like we're talking about him as somebody else. That's very elevated. That's an elevated game. I'm like, I don't like the way Pete did this. You know what I mean? You start to literally, what Rondo says, you're extricating yourself from your identity. So I have Pete show up at eight o'clock on a club and he shows up. I said to a crowd the last time I did send up, I was like, which Pete do you want? Do you want me to love everything or do you want me to be critical? What do you want? Which game are we going to play? That's depersonalization in a healthy way. So when you're working with your ego and you're demonstrating and putting it on display so much,

it can actually have, in my case, a liberating quality. Instead of going, and that's me! I'm the guy who sells out Madison Square Garden, baby! When Val and I are at home, and I'm not just saying this to be like, oh, what a good thing. It's like, it's so ordinary. I spend four hours with the baby alone. I read her books. I just read her, I'll read her Ryan's book.

She's a baby. She doesn't know. That's the real life. It's so much just hanging out with Val. Very boring, very uneventful. And then we have these like flare ups of what it is that we do. And then how has having a baby changed how you kind of think about that? It's been the best. Well, when we talk about soul consciousness, it's very helpful for me to have something that

isn't yet selling me who she is. She doesn't yet have a brain that's developed in that way, that's thinking in words and insisting, I am female. I am white. I'm a Los Angelino. You know what I mean? And I like yellow rice, not white rice. Most people that you meet, this is a Ram Dass thing, are just asking you if their costume is on straight. Do I seem like a comedian? Do you seem like a triathlete? Are we doing it right? Are we vegans? Are we vegans? Do we seem like a triathlete? Are we doing it right? Are we vegans?

Are we vegans? Yeah, you're a vegan, right? I'm a vegan. I'm vegan. And we just kind of go around complimenting each other's bullshit, which is fine. It's what we're doing. It's not negative bullshit. But my baby, I call her luminous emptiness.

She's awareness. She's light. But she's not, she's empty in the beautiful way. Dense as a mountain, but spacious as the sky. And that's what they said about Maharaji. These people, they're just like empty in the good way. So I thought my baby would be a deterrent, possibly. You have a flare up where you're like,

this is gonna impede my enlightenment. Then you're hanging out with something that is enlightenment, that is Christ, that is Christ, that is Christ with no shoddy theology. That's Christ. And it's fucking amazing. And I want to hold her on my skin and be quiet with her. And she picks up on it, man. It's a great, great subtle game to play with a baby, to see how can you come to her level? You know what I mean? Right. Not, I hate when I see fucking babies in Red Sox onesies.

You fucking asshole. Programming them. Yeah. Day one. And you know what? Compassion, sure, fine. But that's just a very, that's a very, you know, easily identifiable way

in which a parent would program a child, but we all are doing that. I hear that. And I have to be careful not to make my child into a new agey. That's why we named her Leela Jane. Leela means the dancer play of the universe. It's a Hindu word.

Jane is in case she doesn't like that shit. Jane is a cool girl. She's a photographer. She smokes menthols. You know what I mean? She wears a beret. She's a photographer. She smokes menthols. You know what I mean? She wears a beret. She's cool. Or if she's sporty, she can be LJ.

Right. But then you have this mental construct like, okay, these are these two identities that- Three. At least are three that on some level, conscious or unconscious, you're trying to instill in this person. And I can almost guarantee you

that Lila will be none of those things. Yeah. No, I know. I'm only here to be called in this person. And I can almost guarantee you that Lila will be none of those things. Good. Yeah. No, I know. I'm only here to be called on my bullshit. That would be nice. And we talk about it all the time. She'll probably be an athlete. She'll probably be a rational thinker. She'll love math and reason. Of course she will. But I'm also going to be very careful. And I like saying this on the record, even though it's got some chutzpah to it to assume that I know how I'm going to raise my daughter because it's different every day. But I want, I'm here to help. That's something I say to her.

I say, you're welcome. I say, you're welcome here. I'm glad you're here. It's just a good energy. And I also just say, I'm here to help. I think about those like anime characters. There's always like, it's like an anime trope that there's like a big robot and like a little child. That's me. What do you want? You want me to break that building? And what do you want to be? You want to be an atheist? Are you fucking kidding me? I like Penn Jillette is a

friend of mine. Wouldn't change him for the world. You know what I'm saying? Irrational love. What do you want to do? Because I believe in, you can look at it mystically or not. Psychologically, there's a karma. There's something programmed in her. And she's a lawful unfolding of what's going on here, the fountain that's undulating and recycling itself and playing with itself. So she's that part of it. And I'm here to help. And am I open to the idea that she'll surprise me and she'll be like a hard materialist?

Great. You tell me. My mom comes to my house and knocks over my Buddhas. You understand? I have something, I have a machine to rage against. I have an openness. I have to counteract a closeness with a vastness. And that's my play.

I like that. No, it'll be good. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out over time and what she develops into. But I'm not afraid to be open about it because this is what it is like today. You know what I'm saying? I might look back and be like,

oh boy, I was a fool. I sort of hope I do. But I'm not afraid to speak of how I'd like it to be. Well, any resistance that you throw up is only fomenting that which you are railing against. Right, yeah. So to be completely open and accepting and supportive is really the only choice.

We just want to love her irrationally. That's all. That's what I say to Val. That's how I love my wife. It's not like this is a new thing. You have an amazing relationship with her. Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah.

I'm like, I can't believe that the universe put something in my favorite package that happened to be exactly what I needed and also what I wanted. And that she's on this journey with me. It's fucking incredible. I love it. Well, one of the things that we, you know, our lives and our stories are very different, but we both had mishaps in a first marriage. and I've heard you talk about kind of, you know,

owning your part in what went wrong in that, being, you know, wrapped up in your own career and like not seeing her and just sort of, you know, she was there to support your vision and your dream, but then leveraging that experience to be able to be a fully formed person that could be in the kind of relationship that you're in now. Right, right.

I had to be broken to rebuild myself into the person that could be with Val. And so how do you, so what is the, not that there's a secret to it, but like what are some of the guiding principles that keep you guys healthy? Well, I say to her all the time, I just want good for you.

That's an important one. We're not swingers, we're not open, but there's almost like a psychological openness that I have for her, which means that I just want good for her. It's kind of hard to say. It's just the way that I go against my possessiveness. We have our boundaries and we are just us,

you know what I'm saying? But it's almost like my love for her is so radical that there's nothing. I try to experiment and play in that space of like, there's nothing you could do. I'm your best friend. You fuck Jude Law. Details. You know what I mean? That's a Mike Birbiglia joke. Details. But like, I'm on her side. That's what we say all the time. It's just a lot of language. I say, it's very routine to just say, you're my favorite person. I love being with you. I love holding your hand. I love your body. My wife, this is self-serving, but she's never taken her clothes off in front of me without me telling her some noise or some look on my face

that makes her feel valued. I'm going to cry. It's just love. It's just like a lot of deliberate work and language. We happen to have the same love languages. Like I love to, you know, she hates folding laundry. So this morning I folded the laundry and it's just like, you leave it on the couch.

She's like, you fold the laundry? And you're like, I knew it would make you feel loved. Like real, not making someone guess. Just like, and she does that for me constantly. And saying like, I love telling her you're 30% funnier than me. That's something I say to her all the time. I'll say a joke and then she says that 30% funnier. And I'm like, you're so talented. I say, you're a true talent. Just speak to her wounds. And she speaks to mine. I'm going to get emotional. But you know somebody that's well, you see where they are and you remind them when they're getting off the path. So a lot of it had to do with the early stages of making sure you were with the right person before that you were safe and able to open up this much. So that time in my life was important.

Now that we're in, we can just sort of open all the blinds. Yeah, well, there's a level of honesty. Like the acceptance of each other, at least from my arm's length perspective, just seems to be unquestioned. Like you can be completely honest with this person and know that you're accepted. Right. And love it. And that's what I'm talking about in the book. It's

loving yourself that way. And the work that I do on myself is for value. Like all the books I read, some of them are on this table, are about consciousness, right? For the most part. And sometimes people are like, do you read baby books? And I'm like, every book I read is a baby book. And every book I read is a relationship book, and every book I read is a relationship book, and every book I read is a book about work, and every book I read is a book about art. It's all one thing. So the work that I do, I go to therapy for Val and for me,

getting ahead of stuff. The levels of honesty, I make sure they're not creepy. There's almost like a smarmy, I don't know what I'm trying to articulate, but there's a level of oversharing that it's really about you being like, I'm sorry, I pooped on the lawn. Some things I keep from her

just because I want to be attractive to her and a solider person for her. Although it's about the motivation behind the share. Exactly. If it's helpful to me in the morning, like Val threw a move at me two nights ago and I wasn't in the mood. And in the morning, I just was like,

I'm really sorry I wasn't horny last night. And just being able to say that, like I just want that, that works for me. But you're supposed to be the guy who's horny all the time. I know. And I talk about this on the stage. Val is that sort of energy that works for me sexually as well. Like, we talk about it as if it's somebody else.

Have you noticed that I can't really perform sexually unless it's my idea? Like, I just need to be able to say that. I go like, it sucks that my body is such a coward that I need to be like, this is my were my idea. Like, I just need to be able to say that. I go like, it sucks that my body is such a coward that I need to be like, this is my werewolf idea because that's sexy to him. But I wish it wasn't that way. You know what I mean? But we just have to deal with it deep personally.

And I can, and a big thing is I go, that may be how it is and I can work on it. You know what I mean? Like I hate resigning to things or shortcomings and just going, those are the ABCs of me, babe. Right. I don't do that. I hate when people do that. When they just go, sorry, I'm not a good listener. Work on it, dipshit. You know what I mean? Like fucking figure that shit out because you're not

dead yet and you still have agency and freedom. But I think people need, they need their crashing in order to face that kind of stuff. Like it takes, it's a lot harder to voluntarily sign up for that kind of work unless you're in some kind of crisis. Right. Or your hand is being held in the flame or you're losing something. That might be why the cancellation seems like such a liberating feeling for me. That's interesting. As I'm getting old enough and I've done it enough times to realize that this is where

the juice is, the real, oh, yeah. Where's the growth opportunity? What's next? Yeah. And trusting and believing and knowing that there's something around the corner that is fit for you. That's right. This is what that time is about.

That's right. Plus you have a lot more time to go and promote your book. Buddy, you know how it is. I worked on this for three years. And the press schedule when I was gonna be shooting the fourth season was two days. Two days we were gonna carve out while I was shooting. And I told my editor, I was like,

the states that I'm talking about in this book are not easy. We're talking about how hard it is to be present and to be in our awareness or whatever you want to say. And when I'm shooting my show, it was very hard to stay in that place. I wasn't feeling it. Sometimes I'll just tell people that I'm like, yeah, sometimes when I'm in that place, I feel this. I'm not in that place right now. You know what I mean? Like I can't, we're not all one right now. I'm stuck. And that's what I wish pastors could do. I don't believe it today. Sorry. I just saw a video about an earthquake in India. I'm sorry. I don't feel it. So sometimes

I feel that, but it's very helpful to me when I can spend my mornings with Leela reading and being quiet and seeing the sun coming through our weird old windows and the glass sort of distorts the light and see that and see the trees and all that and drive here to see your beautiful house and see the nature and have it speak to me. I can get in touch with the state that I was in as I was writing this book in the mornings. And then I can more effectively go out

and communicate that as opposed to like a haggard, stressed TV guy who's wearing nine hats and then one of them has to be like, I also wrote a book. I didn't want this to be, I also wrote a book. It's been three years of my life

and it's like very, very from my heart. You should be proud and you should go everywhere and scream from the mountaintops about it. I would have been in the writer's room today. I would not be on the podcast, you see. And now you can do lots of podcasts.

You can do lots of podcasts. And by the way, I know a guy who got on the bestseller list just from doing podcasts before the book came out. Yeah. That's the way it is these days. That's right. And I, sorry to be so bald. That's what we say in writer's rooms.

It's so obvious. But I mean, like, yeah, I wanted to come on to get the word out about the book because the book matters to me. Well, there's, you should be completely unapologetic about that. But there's also, I wrote the book, this is gonna sound maybe cheesy. There were two R's, to relieve and to restore. Relieve suffering.

There's a lot of people that are suffering. Maybe their wives left them. Maybe they lost their faith. They might be having some sort of pain that I also experienced. So I wrote the book to talk about and walk people through how I relieved my own suffering. and then restore, restore a connection to the mystery. Let's not say God because it's loaded, but some sort of participation with that's playful and fun and

spacious with the fundamental, what is this that we're all sharing that we're all stuck in this conundrum that we can analyze and we can dissect and build up and break down, build bridges and rockets and understand a lot. Like I talk about science being like sheet music. You know what I mean? It's like, we can break it down. It's fucking beautiful. I'm not putting down science, but we're still sort of stuck going like the thing that's breaking it down is also a part of the thing. You know what I mean? So it's like, it's just this weird, it's like Mario realizing everything's made of pixels. Like, good for you, Mario.

You're made of pixels. Like, what did this? Like, what is the Japanese man that made this? So it's really, really fun to restore. And the connection methods that I describe in this book are as liberal as they get. There's no dogma and there's no group to join at the end of this book. In fact, I almost called the book Gateway God because it's the idea that every concept of God that you have is that, it's a gateway God.

It's the book, it's the bookmark for now. And you can close the book. You can put it aside forever. You don't have to go back. You can come back. You can move forward. You can move backwards. It's just, there's an Alan Watts quote.

I wonder if I can find it. But to be clear while you're looking for that, like it's a memoir and it's funny. It's your life. It's not a, this is not a- There's an Alan Watts quote. I wonder if I can find it. But to be clear while you're looking for that, like it's a memoir and it's funny. It's your life. It's not a, this is not a- Well, the first three quarters of it are just a comedy book really. And then it takes, you didn't even really,

you didn't get to that part. There's like a hard, it takes a hard left, which is my favorite part of the book. Here we go, Gateway God. Where is it? Oh, here it is. When a chicken comes out of the eggshell, the Zen philosopher Alan Watts said, the eggshell is not something to be deplored. It's certainly something to be broken, but had the shell not existed, the chicken wouldn't have

been protected. So in precisely the same way, images, religious ideas, religious symbols exist in order to be constructively and lovingly broken. That's it. Constructively broken and lovingly broken. Right. So in other words, we welcome you stress testing our ideas around faith, God. That's right. And losing your faith to find it is,

I thought it was the worst thing that could happen. And now I'm like, that's how you get there. How do you have conviction about your faith to find it is, I thought it was the worst thing that could happen. And now I'm like, that's how you get there. How do you have conviction about your faith unless you've lost it or it's been so questioned? Well, Jesus is in the desert. It's in the book. It's in the story. Jesus going into the desert for 30 days

and Buddha going into the woods for 30 days. Hey, that's peculiar. But I'm just saying it's built into these stories. It's staring you in the face. You weren't supposed to be wearing a Red Sox jersey or a Jesus onesie as a baby. You were supposed to fucking give it, resist it, break it, rediscover it, rebuild it, and talk about it. Because we're all stuck in this and we need help. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it doesn't help anybody to be a perfect vegan

or a perfect Christian or a perfect, it doesn't, nobody, my dick is so soft even thinking about that. Well, we're not anyway. That's right. So get out of here. All right. Have your parents read this book? You know, I want to talk to you about that

because Mulaney gave me a blurb and he was like, I'm so glad I'm not related to Pete. He pulls no punches. And when I read it, I thought I was gentle with them. And I'm curious what you thought. I gave the first couple chapters to my mom. Well, your sense of gentility can only be measured against your assessment of the truth, right? So I have no comparison to measure it against, but I felt like you didn't pull punches. I didn't feel like you were being untowardly, you know, cruel or anything like that.

You're being very honest. Yeah. But there's aspects of that honesty that I would imagine, you know, depending upon the sensitivity of your parents that might be challenging for them to digest. Right. I gave it to my mom and my brother.

I didn't give it to my dad. But it was because my mom and my brother. I didn't give it to my dad. But it was because my mom and my brother, I thought, what I wanted them to do was make sure that what I was writing was how they remembered it. And my father, who I love very much, wasn't necessarily the best witness of what happened. Not just because he drank, but because he, I don't think his mind really works

that way. And he wasn't around as much. So what I was writing was what it was like living in the house in the tension of kind of a strange relationship with my dad, especially when we were young. Something happened around 30. I think my mom gave up. She stopped trying to change my dad. And that sort of made a more benign strangeness. But when I was young, I wanted to share the story of why I became a comedian. And I'm a believer that nobody really becomes a comedian without some sort of turmoil or something. And mine was that my parents fought every night. And that's very valuable to me to share more explicitly than I have on my podcast, what it was like living in a house where we just had like a nightly screaming ritual.

And I thought that was normal. I just thought it was normal. It was like a play that we did. Like my dad would come home and they'd fight and we'd go upstairs. It wasn't physical, but I sort of make the point that it didn't need to be physical, that we were children and we felt unsafe and I think I liken them to Greek gods throwing thunderbolts

and that me and my brother were like dogs waiting for the fireworks to stop and that's very sad, I can't read that part of the book without kind of tearing up and I made sure that my brother remembered it the same way and that my mother remembered it the same way and I love my dad and I've made sure that my brother remembered it the same way and that my mother remembered it the same way. And I love my dad and I've made peace with my dad. And it was important to me that he didn't come off like a villain or something.

But the truth is he and my mom don't get along. Their personalities don't get along. I sort of say my dad was like a dog and my mom was like a finicky cat. And like dogs and cats, they fought. And that sort of baked in me my need to be a peacekeeper. And that baked in me my need to be a good boy. And my good boy going into the church

was the best way to be a good boy. And also at church, nobody was arguing or fighting or mean or yelling. So like, and by the way, my dad was never mean to me. They just didn't get along. And it was pre-therapy and pre-emotional availability. So there was no like, hey, sorry about last night. On the way to school, my dad wouldn't be like,

that must've been really hard for you guys. I'm so sorry. There was none of that. And that's when you go, you know what? I'm gonna go up on stage and make strangers love me. So what was your mom's reaction? She said, you were easy on us. That's what she said.

I was ready for her to like fact check it. And she had a couple of thoughts about the timeline. And she was right. I jump around in the timeline in a way that, and in not important ways that only she would notice. Like where my bald spot was, whether that was junior high or high school, that's sort of blurry in the book. But I didn't think that was important.

But she said, you were easy on us. And honestly, when you're writing a book like this, there is a version you could have written that could have been harder. But that's not the book. I just wanted to be like, this is what it felt like growing up. And this is why I ran to church where it was safe. And honestly, I hope the book sounds affectionate because church was that place for me. Even though they told me that, you know, my dick was the devil.

And they didn't even tell me that directly. They just were indirect enough that allowed me to sort of have that perversion of thought. I don't mean sexual perversion. I just mean like I filled in the blanks in an unhealthy way, and some of that was supported by some of the church volunteers and stuff. But there was an affection for the church. It was a safe place.

It's the first place I tried stand-up. It's the first place I felt funny. Not the first place I felt funny, but I felt safe enough to go up on stage and do stand-up. Safe crowd. Yeah, they had to love their neighbor, and that was great. And it gave me grown-up, especially male grown-ups, that were interested in what is this. Not just the stories of what's happening in our lives, but they wanted to talk about things that just seemed so feminine to me, like where everything came from and how we're supposed to behave

and feelings and thoughts and dreams and all that stuff. So the church was, that's what I'm saying with the gateway God thing. It wasn't right or wrong or good or bad or in or out. It was just the third grade. And then you move, maybe you move to the second grade. Maybe then you move to the fifth grade. Then you're in college. Then you're in community college. It doesn't matter. You're moving around and that's all in the game. So what is the main thing that you want people to take away from the book?

That basically, sorry to repeat myself, that it is all in the game. That losing your faith is actually a really important thing. I could read this part from the book too because I just saw it. It's kind of breaking down the hero's journey, but in my own words. You're in the village and it's nice, safe, familiar, comfortable.

That was me in church, basically. It's chicken night and you love chicken, but you feel the call to go to the woods. You've been told your entire life not to go in the woods, but you're compelled and you leave on chicken night. And it's not nice. It's unsafe, unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and you're cold and hungry and lost,

but you get strong and you kill your own chickens and learn your own way. You meet others, people who've never even heard of your village, and you learn. You slay dragons, get wounds, find swords, and heal. You find out what you're made of and realize what you're looking for was part of you all along. But the story doesn't end there. The final step in every hero's journey is to come back.

You return to the village, the same but different. And the village is the same, but you see it differently. And you tell everyone what you've learned in those forbidden woods around the fire, adding spices to their chicken they've never dreamed of, telling the story of the time you did the one thing you were told never to do. Now God isn't something I believe in. It's something I feel all of us soaking in. So that's it. Yeah. It's beautiful. I get emotional. This is it. I'm 40. I'm almost 40. I only want to talk about the real shit. You know what I mean? And that's not to say that comedy and silliness isn't a part of my life. I love being

silly for silly sake, but there's, I just, it was like written on my, in my bone marrow to like tell the story. And that's why I'm excited to come on this show and promote it and get the word out. Well, beautifully done, my friend. Thank you. I'm excited to see you birth this thing into the world. Thank you very much. And now you have all this bandwidth to go out and tell people about it. I know, Montana's guy. So thank you. Yeah. It's great. Thank you, Rich. Really appreciate it. Come back and talk to me again sometime. I'd love to, if only to see this property. Yeah.

All right, so- Where I'm gonna take psychedelics. You said I could. Down in the teepee. Unsupervised. Good deal, man. You'll just look out and it's me and Val running naked. There's a guy down there.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, I gotta go. Awesome, at Pete Holmes, easiest way to find you. And the book's called Comedy Sex God. Comedy Sex God, available wherever you buy fine books. You can order it now, that would be nice.

Pre-order it now. That's what I mean, you can pre-order it. Yeah, pre-order it now. It comes out May, mid-May, right? May 14th. Awesome, man. Thank you. Congrats. it now. It comes out May, mid-May, right? May 14th. Yeah. Awesome, man. Thank you. Congrats.

Thank you. Best of luck. My pleasure. Peace. Plants. Good times, people. That was awesome, right? Do me a favor.

Let Pete know what you thought of today's conversation. You can hit him up on Twitter or Instagram, at Pete Holmes. Please pick up a copy of his new book, Comedy Sex God, or check it out on Audible. Check out Crashing on HBO. Check out his stand-up specials and his amazing, awesome podcast, You Made It Weird, which, again, I had the good fortune to guest on a while back. As always, links to everything are in the show notes along with a literal biography on all things Pete Holmes to elevate your experience beyond the earbuds, my friends. So check that out on the episode page at richroll.com.

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Peace. Plants. Namaste. Thank you.