The Rich Roll Podcast - Working It Out With Mike Birbiglia: Comedy & Creativity, Podcasting & The Pope

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

Mike Birbiglia is a master storyteller, acclaimed comedian, and the creative force behind Netflix specials including "The Old Man & the Pool" and his newest, "The Good Life." This conversation explores the quiet architecture of story—how to shape it, live it, and share it in a way that matters. We talk about finding empathy for the parents who couldn’t fully show up, embracing feedback without losing your voice, and why the creative process might just be as simple and profound as “letting your brain go for a walk.” It’s not about performance. It’s about presence. Mike illuminates our shared humanity. This conversation is medicine for our divided times. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Eight Sleep: Get $350 off your Pod 5 Ultra w/ code RICHROLL👉eightsleep.com/richroll On: High-performance shoes & apparel crafted for comfort and style 👉on.com/richroll Bragg: Get 20% OFF your first order with code RICHROLL👉 Bragg.com BetterHelp: Get 10% OFF the first month👉BetterHelp.com/richroll PPMP: Get $10 OFF your membership with code RICHROLL👉mealplanner.richroll.com ROKA: Unlock 20% OFF your order with code RICHROLL👉ROKA.com/RICHROLL AG1: Get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll          Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors   Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

If there's one thing, one thing that I've learned over the years, it's that sleep is the bedrock of everything. Recovery, performance, mental clarity, longevity, emotional regulation, all things that are amazingly enhanced by sleep in ways that nothing else can. It follows, therefore, that when it comes to enhancing sleep, we should all do everything we can, which is why I'm such a super fan of 8Sleep, which is a game-changing product that really has done more to improve my sleep quality than pretty much anything else I can think of. 8Sleep's latest innovation is the Pod5 Ultra, which is a smart mattress cover that turns your existing bed into a personalized recovery machine. You get dynamic temperature control from 55 all the way to 110 degrees Fahrenheit on each side of the bed and now they've

added a blanket that extends that comfort across your entire body in ways bespoke to your needs. And the more you use it the better it gets automatically adjusting temperature throughout the night to optimize your sleep cycles and even reduce snoring up to 45% Based upon feedback from its built-in sleep sensors that track everything from sleep stages to heart rate variability, all without any wearables. It's next level and rigorously evidence-based. In fact, clinical studies show the pod users gain up to an extra hour of sleep per night. Think about that.

That is real recovery time. More deep sleep, better HRV, better everything. So head on over to eightsleep.com slash rich roll and use the code rich roll for $350 off your pod five ultra. And you can try it risk free with their 30 day at home trial. Your body will thank you. Movement is so much more than just exercise or training or motion even.

Movement is a language. It's a way of connecting body, mind and environment. Movement has a way of being. A way of being that brings me close to myself, closer to other people, and to what matters most in life. And for me, what we wear in that pursuit plays a crucial role. And that's what I appreciate about Aunt. They don't just make gear, they engineer apparel that supports and elevates the practice of movement itself. From running shorts with built-in support to technical tees that cool you down right

where it matters. Every detail is widely intentional. Seam placement, reflectivity, breathability, minimalism that works together so the gear disappears and nothing gets in the way. This is a peril born from precision and tested by elite athletes, but made for anyone committed to the path. I've been with ON since 2023,

and I'm still just so impressed by how they continue to elevate and innovate in the name of purpose, not flash. Head to on.com slash rich roll to explore gear that supports you every step of the way. Mike Berbiglia is pretty hilarious. My wife and I hate going to parties, but we love driving away from parties. But what separates Mike from other very funny people

is story. Stories are one of the world's oldest art forms. It's the way we understand ourselves. I remember the first time I got emotional on stage and I didn't know what to do. Every night I walk on stage, whatever happens tonight is the show. Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast.

My guest today is the great Mike Birbiglia. Mike is a comedian, which if you've heard of him and you already know that, I certainly have been a fan of his for a very long time. But what he really is, is a master storyteller. Story is the foundation of everything that Mike does, from performing live on stage to behind the mic on this American life,

which is where I first discovered him many years ago on his own podcast called Working It Out and on screen in films like Sleepwalk With Me, which he wrote and directed based on his bestselling book and his one man show about his crazy experiences with a sleep disorder. Story is something that I think about a lot because story is something that's innately human.

It's hardwired into us. It's a primordial need. And that informs how we learn, how we make sense of the world and serves as the primary way we connect ourselves to and feel connection with other people and the world. So in many ways, the way we experience reality is a story. So fundamental is storytelling in my opinion,

that the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, who we are, what we're capable of or not, and tell others about ourselves and other people, whether they're true or not, create and inform our reality. And only by changing those stories, can we change our experience of reality. Mike is also an actor. He's appeared in movies like Trainwreck

and The Fault in Our Stars, and a bunch of TV shows like Girls Billions and Orange Is the New Black. He also has a couple Netflix specials under his belt, including The Old Man and The Pool, which I got to see live, quite amazing. So today we're gonna get into all of it and we're gonna do what Mike does best,

which is work it out from comedy and creativity to parenting and podcasting and even some stories about the Pope. But more than anything, this is about storytelling, why it's vital and how to do it well. The Good Life is his new Netflix special. It's out now, so check it out because it's super good. But right now, check this out,

which is Mike Perbiglia sharing stories about storytelling and vice versa. But mostly me doing what you do when someone is telling a really great story, which is sit back and listen. Dude, we worked it out. We made it happen, we worked it out. After many years of back and forth, it finally happened.

And today we're gonna work it out. And today we're gonna work it out. Yep, we're gonna work it out also. It's great to have you here. I've been a fan for a long time. And I thought when the old man in the pool came out, I was like, oh, this is like the perfect set of circumstances for us to talk, like swimming, midlife, health and all this sort of thing.

But actually your new special is sort of hitting the bullseye of like stuff I'm going through right now with my parents. And I thought it was really beautiful, this expression that you're now sharing and the honesty and the vulnerability and how that impacts how you think about parenting. And it's just a highly relatable story.

Nice. Yeah, really well done. I'd seen some of the pieces of it, cause I saw you at Largo and you were kind of, you were working out the show, I assume at that time. So I'd heard a couple of those stories before, but like to have it all come together as this woven together like fabric, where you go from A to Z.

It's like you're really a master storyteller. I appreciate it. It's, I think for me, the experience of this one, what made it different from the other specials is that the story is the story I'm living in the present. Like my dad is still in care and had an acute stroke and it's really struggling. And so the pain is still there.

Like a lot of the things, it's like things that I've dealt with in the past, having a sleeping disorder, sleepwalking disorder, but I've dealt with it to some degree. I had bladder cancer when I was 20. It hasn't come back. Like I've been doing well in that front. This is like, oh, this is my life now,

and this is hard. And it was interesting because I started out writing a show two years ago about what can I teach my daughter, who at the time was eight. And I was having this thing where I thought, you know, when the kids are little, this is a joke in the special,

but I go, you don't have to know that much because it's a lot of layups. It's like, what's that? That's an egg, I'm a genius, you know? And then at a certain point, you're like, oh, I think my ceiling for intelligence might be like age seven. Right.

You know what I mean? And then you don't know the answers. And then the thing happened with my dad where he had a stroke and I'm trying to explain to my daughter what a stroke is. I'm going, I'm sure I can't really explain this. This is hard to explain. And that's what the show became ultimately about,

which is what can I teach my daughter? And then what have I learned from my dad? And to do that, I had to be, I think, more empathetic with my dad than I had been previously. So it was a good exercise in the sense that my dad has always felt distant to a degree, even though our family's close, but it forced me to just go, well, as a writer of a play,

you wanna have all, you wanna care about all the characters and do justice to all the characters, because otherwise it just feels cartoonish. And I was like, yeah, he was angry and he had a temper, but also he was a great doctor and he was very compassionate in these ways. And so it was an interesting challenge for me. And like, I think made me understand my father more.

Well, the low-hanging fruit from a comedy perspective is all the anger and resentment that you've stored over many years of like, why didn't he do this? And why was he like that? And here's why I'm this way. But the real arc of the story and the kind of spiritual aspect of it

is traveling from that place to a place of like love and compassion and forgiveness and to your point, empathy. Like seeing him maybe for the first time as like a holistic person who did the best that he could with what he had. Yeah, I mean, truly, like when I was a kid, I really viewed my dad as like this mythological creature, like in hindsight.

And as I've, in the last few years, I feel like I've just understood him as a person. How old is he? He's 84. So he was born in 1940. So was my dad. Yeah, oh really? Yeah.

I mean, my dad grew up in 1940 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, it was really unlikely for him to have the life he had. Like he got, I mean, I asked him about this. So much of this stuff is like in the condition he's in, he can't remember what's happened in the last year, but he can remember things from the distant past. So I've asked him all these things that I had never asked him about his life.

And he had one of the things was I go, how'd you end up going to Xavier High School in New York and Holy Cross College and med school and all this? And he goes, you know, it was like some kid at school was going to take the entrance exam for Xavier and this Jesuit school in Manhattan. And I go, I'll try that. And then he like scored really well and got a scholarship.

And he ended up leading him on this path that I think he never imagined for his life at all. My favorite joke is when you say, you know, he was this great doctor, but then that wasn't enough. so he went to law school. That's how much he didn't wanna be a dad. In his free time, he went to law school, it's crazy. But that is an amazing thing,

but you're this kid who's vying for attention and never able to get it. I mean, there has to be a connection between that and you becoming this comedian. Oh yeah, certainly. Yeah. I think part of it is, and maybe this is the reason why I'm the comedian

of the four children is like, I was youngest of four, and I think I was like the oops baby of the family. And I think my dad was kind of done with parenting at that point. Right, like whatever attention he had available to him to give to the kids had been long past spent at that point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's like he would come to soccer games and he would come to, you know, but it's not like I was good at soccer. You know what I mean? It's like, no, come to my plays. But he would, yeah, he would show up to things, but he wasn't around a lot.

And it was, and I do think that, like you're saying, like the correlation between that and becoming a performer is not lost on me. Being the youngest, you get free rein to kind of be who you wanna be though, also, right? Like, so there's not the pressure that the eldest has to like follow in the footsteps or the expectations. It's sort of like you go do whatever you wanna do, right?

Like, so was that part of it too, where you felt like you could go into this, you know, off kilter world and profession without the intensity of your parents judging it? 100%, so much of my childhood, and it's so confusing the way we, me and others raise our children now, it's like, it really was, there weren't a ton of rules.

We were just in the forest, we would be at the park, we would be, it's that cliche people say, come back by dark. You know what I mean? By when it's dark. And of course, parenting is not like that now for almost anyone. But yeah, so it did give me free rein.

And then the other thing is, you know, it's not lost on me that my, you know, my mom is extraordinarily loving. And so that gave me a stability also to feel comfortable in trying things. And she's a good storyteller. And I think that I had always admired that and kind of copied that in a certain way.

So I don't know. Yeah, but it's definitely, it's all part of the alchemy that leads one to being, doing something so odd as being a comedian. Have you ever had your dad on your podcast? No. My dad, like, it's so hard to describe, like how uninterested he is in show business. But I raised that because I had my dad on

and there was a reason for that. He was a lawyer, but then when he retired from his profession, he started writing these really dense historical biographies, unlike historical figures. And he had written this book and it's like, I'll have him on. But obviously this is my opportunity to like,

you know, like let's go into it, you know, but the formality of podcasting allowed us to talk about his life in a way that I don't know if I ever would have taken the opportunity to sit down with him across the breakfast table and engage with him in that way. I have definitely tried to interview my parents over the years about different things.

And they just don't really wanna engage in it. Yeah. And I just have to go, okay, sure. And of course we do the opposite as parents, right? We let that pendulum swing way too far in the other direction. And you talk about that in the special as well. Like we're gonna try to do all the things that, give our kids all the things that we feel like

we were deprived of, but as a result of the stoic, kind of unemotional, landscape of intimacy being know, intimacy being, you know, something impossible to get. Yeah. No, and exactly. It's like, whatever we're doing wrong, my wife and I, parenting,

we're gonna find out when she's an adult. And you can't even guess what it is. So Una is 10, right? Yeah. Okay, so I'm way further down this path and I can report back to you that, most assuredly, it'll be, there's gonna be a whole laundry list of things,

grievances that, why did you do it this way? And like, all those choices that you make that you feel like are the right ones. Like it's wired such that it's always gonna be the wrong choice from their perspective for some reason later in life. No, absolutely. And I will say like, you know, my parents have,

while they haven't been extremely supportive of my comedy career, like they don't come to a lot of my shows, et cetera, they also haven't complained a lot. I mean, apparently they complained to other members of my family. Like they complained to my brother and sisters about stuff I'm talking about, but they don't,

it's not to the point where they say like, you can't talk about that. You know, I think like in some ways, if like the lineage of my comedy does go back to like another theme in the show, which is I went to the Vatican last year and met the Pope and which so lucky before he passed. And that was my strict upbringing was Catholicism.

And I do feel like there was, at least in that 1980s Massachusetts Catholicism, a sense of like, don't talk about things. And I feel like in a lot of ways, my comedy is like, talk about everything. Right. So that's what I'm always thinking about when I watch your stuff,

because you're naming names and you're talking about the people that you're closest to in your life. And it's like deeply uncomfortable to me as a people pleaser, like like how does he just do that? There must be a whole domino effect to that. You talk about your wife and they're getting wind of whatever you're saying.

No, no, certainly. And I mean, fortunately, yeah, there's a little bit of a hack to it. If you look at, if you deconstruct sort of who are the main players in my shows, which is to say that like, I talk about my brother Joe a lot and he's a collaborator of mine,

we've worked together for 20 years. And I talk about my wife a lot and she's a collaborator of mine. And we've worked together for probably almost 20 years. So they have a lot of input on, you know, the line, the depiction of, yeah, the line and the depiction of themselves. Sometimes, in the case of my special,

a few, three specials ago, the new one, I included poetry from my wife about the birth of our child. And that was my depiction of her feelings about how it was because it's so sensitive for her. So I was like, oh, I'll read it verbatim and just say, this is a poem that Jen wrote. So there's that.

And then there's, I mean, mostly in my comedy, I try to make myself the butt of the joke. I try to find the humor of, you know, that I was talking about this with Conan recently, it's like the comedy of like, we're the ones in the mud with everybody, you know, and that there's something fun about that, of being part of the joke,

being part of what the joke is, as opposed to looking down at people who are in the mud. Yeah, no, there's nothing condescending about it. You're in the middle of the whole thing. Yeah. Like, and you're the one who created the disaster and has to find their way out of it. That's right.

Yeah. No, completely. And I will say, like, as I've gotten older, the most rewarding part of being a comedian has become that people feel connected to the personal experiences. Like the stuff that you're describing of like, that this is similar to what you're experiencing

in your life. For me, that's the most rewarding part of being a comedian more than anything, more than any part of it. Like, which is so different from what got me into it. What got me into it was like, look at me. And I feel like as I've gotten older, it's like, no, no, look at everybody. Yeah, the connection you're creating.

Yeah, look at all of us. And just telling jokes or making fun of yourself or pointing a finger at other people, that doesn't accomplish that. What accomplishes it is storytelling, like a story well told where every member of the audience can see themselves and feel themselves somewhere in that narrative,

even though the facts of their life are very different from yours, the emotional experience of whatever you're traversing is something highly relatable. So I wanted to talk about storytelling and that is the defining feature of what you do. And I think you're a master at it. Why do you see this as so central to your work?

Like, what is it about storytelling and how do you think about it? So I started out writing jokes when I was in high school. It was the first, I was, my brother Joe took me to see Steven Wright, who's like a great classic one-liner comedian from Boston. We saw him at the Cape Cod Melody tent in Massachusetts and I was entirely transfixed.

I was like, oh my God, I can't believe people think like this. This is kind of like the illusion of stand-up comedy, which is like, that's what I think. He's saying what I think, you know? And of course, because I've never experienced that before, I'm thinking this is only me. You're the only one. Yeah.

And so I went home, just like a notebook like this, you just start writing jokes and they're all like one-liner jokes. So in college, I entered the funniest person on campus contest and I won that. And I worked the door at the Washington DC improv. And I like studied all these comedians. And then probably when I was about 24,

I was asked to do the moth storytelling series. And it was the first time I told a story. And it was, I told this story that ended up being eventually in my special called my girlfriend's boyfriend about how when I was in high school, I had my first like serious girlfriend. And she told me that I couldn't tell anyone that she was my girlfriend

because she had another boyfriend in another town or whatever. And so I was like, okay. And then eventually she invites me to meet her parents. And I was like, this is my moment. And I went over and I met her parents and this other guy is like hanging around the house. And I'm slowly realizing like that's the other boyfriend.

And he seems nice. And then he invites us to meet his parents. And it goes very strange thing meeting your girlfriend's boyfriend's parents for the first time. And that was the first time I told that on stage. It was in Aspen, Colorado. And it was the first time where I was like,

oh, this is deep. Like what's happening in this room is pretty deep because I, you know, like the thing I just said to you, the version I just said to you, that's a joke. But then there's also moments of silence where it's like, people are really feeling something in the room of, oh my God, I've had that, I've lived that. And I just- Or it's their worst that. Or it's their worst fear.

Or it's their worst fear, or they've lived something like it. And I was like really hooked. I was like, oh, I should tell a story like this. And then I told, for the moth, I told my sleepwalking story where I jumped through a second story window sleepwalking. And then Ira Glass from This American Life heard about it and asked me to put it on This American Life.

I think that was the first time that I heard you. Yeah, and that in a lot of ways changed my whole career because Ira really kind of taught me how to tell stories. And the more that I would tell stories, the more I was just interested in that format of like, there's something about, you know, stories are, you know, one of the world's oldest art forms.

It's the way we understand ourselves. You know, that's, I mean, look, it's like, people always say filmmakers say this, playwrights say this. It's like, make the movie you wanna see, you know, not the movie you think people want, make the movie you wanna see. It's like, for me, I, when I was a kid, I would watch, I'm trying to think of a movie that really captures that.

It's funny, like the James L. Brooks movies for me, or the Woody Allen movies. But I'm thinking of broadcast news where it's so funny that Albert Brooks' character is so funny and sweating, and he's in love with this woman and she's not in love with him. And it's funny that I'm saying that now,

I'm like, that's my girlfriend's boyfriend. It's literally my girlfriend's boyfriend. The context of the story is irrelevant. It's just the idea that even though he's sweating on camera and all of that, we all have had some version of that experience in our own private lives. That's right.

And so when I watch movies like that, or like more recently, Jesse Eisenberg's movie, A Real Pain, I like so deeply connected with that movie, because I'm like, yeah, I've been in that relationship that he and Culkin are in, the characters are in. And it's like, yeah, the way that we see ourselves through stories is powerful. And it's like, when it works, it's amazing.

When it doesn't work, it's brutal. If you've ever wondered what generations of nutritional wisdom looks like, bottled, meet BRAG, the OGs and original architects of Whole Food Wellness. Their organic apple cider vinegar is a perfect example of thoughtful, clean nutrition. It's non-GMO, USDA, organic, produced in the USA with absolutely no additives or processed sugars, made with 100% apples and naturally fermented, of course. It's kind of like this perfect and versatile and super healthy addition to salad dressings

and a wide variety of recipes for this tangy, nutritious boost. From the very beginnings of my personal adventures in nutrition and well-being 18 years ago, Bragg, I gotta tell you, was the first brand I turned to. I actually talk about this in my book, Finding Ultra, which came out 13 years ago. And it's a brand that I've remained unwaveringly loyal to because their products are best in class, because of their insane commitment to quality, because they're a B Corp, which speaks volumes about their integrity and commitment to the ethics of health and production. And not for nothing,

because Bragg is a brand that's been doing things right for over 100 years. 100, a century of walking their talk. So check it out. They've got tons of products and when you use the code richroll, you will get 20% off your first order when you visit brag.com. Visit brag.com, B-R-A-G-G.com to get your daily dose of wellness.

After many, many years of sharing my plant-based journey, a common question that I just get all the time is, how do I actually make this work in my daily life? And this is precisely why we created the Plant Power Meal Planner. But this meal planner is way more than just meal planning. It's actually designed to help you nourish inward and thrive outward by simplifying healthy eating, supercharging your nutrition, and helping you to stay on track with relative ease. As a Plant Power meal planner member, you unlock powerful tools to transform your health and take charge of your plate. Based on your preferences, you'll gain access to literally thousands of nutritionist and chef-crafted recipes rooted in the Plant Power lifestyle, allowing you to build vibrant health

from the inside out. And what sets this apart is complete personalization. You can create unlimited, fully customizable menus that fit your goals, your routine, and your taste buds. So if you need guidance, that's on check too. Get one-on-one support from expert food coaches who are right there for you to help you succeed. We've streamlined the entire process. You can breeze through grocery shopping with smart lists that take the guesswork out of it, and you can enjoy convenient delivery in most major cities and score exclusive member- only deals on aligned brands. So check it out.

It's also incredibly affordable at mealplanner.richroll.com and use the code richroll for $10 off your membership. Take charge of your plate today. When it works, it's transcendent. Yes. And it lives forever. Yes. You know, it really is an incredibly powerful thing.

And Ira is like the ultimate, you know, mentor guru of storytelling. And you have this opportunity to like learn the craft with him. Unbelievable. You talk about it all the time in your podcast, but you know, this guy has X-ray vision when it comes to story and what works and what's not working about it

in ways that mere mortals can't see. Like what is it that he has and how does he deconstruct stories? He would, if he were here, he would say, it's the sheer amount of stories that he's edited that has made him so sharp. He's one of these, he's one of these like fierce believers of like, it's not talent.

Like it's like, I worked for this. I figured this out. I do it over and over and over again. Like that, and I think he's of course a genius. So I, you know, I'll argue with him about that. But I think, you know, his, he'll, you know, he has like five or 10 things that he believes about what should be in a story.

And he's just very rigorous about making sure that that is there. And, you know, one of the biggest things he's taught me over the years is that the best way to tell a story is you tell a little bit of plot and then how you feel about the plot and then a little more plot and then how you feel about the plot.

And he said to me years ago, he goes, you have this lucky thing, which is you have jokes and jokes is your version of how I feel about the plot. So the time where you might lose the audience, they're actually laughing and so they're engaged. Right, the other thing that he talks about and that you talk about all the time is this idea of structuring the story.

So there's never a situation in which it's in and then, so then, like everything is propelling the next thing forward. Yeah, that's like a, that's the thing he talks about. I think Pixar talks about that, that's in their storytelling book, which is great. It's, whenever a young storyteller asks me for advice, I always say, just get really nerdy

on the causality of the story. It's like, I jumped through the second story window, sleepwalking. So then I walked to the front desk and explained what happened. So then he told me to go to the hospital. So then I got into the rental car. So then I drove to the front desk and explained what happened. So then he told me to go to the hospital. So then I got into the rental car. So then I drove to the hospital.

So then I flew home and I saw a doctor. So then if a story essentially has a so then structure, the audience is always waiting for what the next thing is. And they're always, and the key thing is like, when you're breaking apart a story is, if the audience gets ahead of the story and they know what's gonna happen, it actually becomes boring.

And so that's why I like, I workshopped this show, The Good Life in 70 cities. And what I'm looking for a lot of times is where are the laughs and where is the audience ahead of me? When do they know where this is going? The predictability of it. There's also the part of identifying which stories or what aspects of these stories are actually important

and which aren't. And when you're talking about yourself, there's many things that you could say, well, I could tell this story, this story, this story, but what is the story that actually is driving forward like the theme or the point that I'm trying to make and being rigorous and saying, yeah, this story is really funny,

but it actually isn't like speaking to the underlying kind of like idea that I'm trying to get to. So when I'm developing these shows, I probably write about three or four hours of material in a show that ends up being about an hour 15. So it's essentially like three times as much material as ends up being in the show. And a lot of the bits that I cut are pretty good.

Some of them are great. Some of them, my brother Joe collaborates with me on some of those shows and sometimes he'll just be like, you're taking out the rap song about drugs? And I'm like, yeah, it's a funny story, but it's- But stories can, you can't like hold onto the funny thing if it's not moving the story forward, right? Like every comedy director will tell you that, right?

No, absolutely. And my director, Seth Barash, who's directed my last five specials and all of these solo shows, he and I will have painful conversations about, he'll go, I just don't, this story, like I don't get anything from it. Like I get that it's funny, but I don't get how it relates to the story you're telling.

And he won't say you have to cut it, but he'll just go, that's how I'm experiencing it. And it's, those are painful conversations. Well, this gets to the idea of working it out. Like everything you learned from Aira and the way that you workshop and craft these shows, you solicit input and feedback from other people. And then you created this podcast, working it out.

During COVID, is that what you started it? Yeah, five years old. Where you bring on your buddies and other creative people who are working on things and you share what you're working on and you give each other feedback. And I think like it's funny and it's just enjoyable on a surface level to like,

hear you like talk to all these people. But I actually think it's a real public service because you're modeling this practice of being open to other people's perspectives on your work, which is something that is essential if you're a creative person in order to, you know, make the best version of your project, but is a real life skill that I think most people lack

because we over identify with whatever we're doing and we're defensive. We're not receptive or open to other people saying, hey, maybe don't do this and look at this instead. And when you and whether it's whoever it is, John Mulaney or Pete Holmes or Judd Apatow, to watch you guys kind of get together and say, you know what, that thing that's not working, here's why,

and be excited about that, like, oh cool, you know what, that thing that's not working, here's why, and be excited about that. Like, oh, cool, tell me more about that, is a way of showing people, like this is a way of being in the world also, with like your own behavior, because I don't think you can grow or change or evolve or achieve your goals or manifest whatever it is you're trying to do,

unless you can learn how to model that very behavior. It's funny, yeah, it is a little bit like the Silicon Valley version of open sourcing, where you just say like, here's the code, here's how we did it, you can do your version of it. It's basically like, and it's something that comedians for many years and myself included It's really like, and it's something that comedians for many years and myself included have been very resistant to,

which is like showing people how it's done and what it looks like along the way. Because it's a vulnerability. When you go out and you perform your best 10 minutes of standup comedy, you don't do versions of the jokes that just aren't there yet. And as a result, if you go out and you kill for 10 minutes, people just go, oh, that guy's a genius, right?

They go like, he doesn't, that guy doesn't miss. That guy's just home runs all day. And if you show an audience that, oh, they don't start like that, the jokes don't start like that, there's a vulnerability that you're risking where people go, oh no, he's not a genius. He's actually like me.

He's just someone thinking about this and working on it and trying and failing. And it was during COVID that I was like, well, I don't wanna give away my jokes, but like in their early form, but why not? Why not try it? And then what happened was by the time people started performing again in front of audiences,

my audiences were like two or three times as big as they were before the podcast because people wanted to see where the jokes started and where they ended. And so it was like a kind of an awesome experience. But as a comedian, you have to have a healthy relationship with failure and imperfection because you're constantly getting up and working on stuff that isn't working

and you have to deal with people who aren't laughing and all of that. So I feel like more than most people, like you're engaging with your own limitations like publicly in a way that most people don't or don't have to. Yeah, but with typically smaller audiences. So like I would go to the Comedy Cellar for years

and work on jokes that I thought were pretty good, but could be great. And then once they got great, I would bring them out to the theater tour. But this is like recording and filming, working out things that are just not done. Yeah. And it's a weird level of trust. It's a trust that the audience is smart enough at home

to go, no, no, we've seen him do it well. So we're comfortable seeing him do it not well and not judge him for it. Yeah, what I take away from it is just leaning into being open to, like you have to choose your, the people who you're gonna expose your work to, right? Like you can't just do it to everyone, but how vital it is to be receptive

to other people's perspectives and to be objective about your own blind spots, to like have the humility, like in order to create something great, you have to have, you have to believe in yourself, but you have to have the humility to know that you don't, you can't see all of it. And there are other people who can make it better.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think like that was why in some ways, like when I first moved to New York, I wanted to have comedians who were mentors and I didn't really have that as much, but that's why when Ira came along, Ira became something of a mentor and I feel like that's why my comedy veered

in that direction. Do you feel that your success in doing your comedy in this way is now influencing other comedians to follow in suit with their version? I mean, Andrew Scholes' show is, you know, follows a, you know, a narrative through line in a way that is a little bit different than most of what you see in these comedy specials.

Yeah, and I talked to him when he was developing that and I gave him a couple of thoughts on things he could do. But yeah, I think it's out there. I think that I've been part of a series of Hanukkah, Gadsby's shows or like that. I've been part of, I would say the last decade of comedy has moved towards narrative storytelling, much more than when I started.

And when I moved to New York in 2000, it was like, no one was really doing stories. But you come out of Georgetown. When did you graduate Georgetown? 2000. 2000. You moved to New York right after that. But at Georgetown, you're at Georgetown at the same time or in the same range as John Mulaney and Nick Kroll,

which is insane. Even beyond that, Bradley Cooper. Oh, that's right. So Bradley Cooper was in a theater company called Momatic Theater Company. We were the Georgetown Players Improv Group. In my screenwriting class was Jonah Nolan, who has co-written all those Batman movies

and The Prestige and all these brilliant things. He was in my screenwriting class. It's like, it's so funny though, because Georgetown, it's not like USC or NYU. It's like, you don't go to Georgetown to be in the entertainment industry. You go there and become a Senator. And so here you go.

It's so, it is so confusing. And it hasn't been repeated. It's not like, oh, every couple of years, Amazing Talent is coming out of Georgetown and making its way to Hollywood. No, it was so utterly strange. And because I remember in college thinking like, everyone's really good.

And then cut to like, like a ton of people are like luminaries in the businesses. Like, you know, the director of my improv group was James Murray, who now has a show, Impractical Jokers. That's like a mega hit TV, like prank TV series. And like, they were just that, for whatever's like a bumper crop of people. It's like the Malcolm Gladwell theory of, I think, outliers,

which is like the groups of people are overachieving is good for each other because it kind of demonstrates that for the other person. And they kind of see a through line for it. Yeah, like Seattle and grunge music. That's right, that's right. So like even like Mulaney wasn't, he was a year after I graduated.

So I cast Nick Kroll and then Nick Kroll cast John Mulaney, but then I came back to visit Georgetown like a year later, I met John, I met Jacqueline Novak, who's another one who's a brilliant comedian. And it just, we all became friends. And then when John moved to New York, he like opened for me for a little bit. And he, you know, he said this before,

it's like, it's a thing where you see, you see someone else do it, something that's unorthodox as a job. And you go, oh, I guess that could be a job, which I think is a huge part of it. But it's not like it's set in motion a wave, right? Where then, you know, the people who are younger than John then saw that and then they came up,

it did become a, you know, a self-perpetuating situation. So this is where I asked the question that Ira Glass would ask, which is like, what do you make of that? Yeah, what do you make of that? I think it is the outliers phenomenon, which is there was a bunch of people. I mean, for starters, like my screenwriting,

playwriting professor is a guy named John Glavin, who has taught for so many years at Georgetown, revered, also a little feared. Like my first week in class, he told me I was late or something, and then I think he told me not to come back. And it was kind of like, felt like West Point or something. Like he was just like, no, no,

you're not in the class anymore. I was like, I went to office. I was like, no, this is really important to me. I really want to pursue screenwriting. His classes were so hard. You'd hand him a script, you'd hand him a screenplay or short film, and he would write things like, no, on the tongue.

And you just feel like, this is crazy. But then like, but I kind of, did he do that on Jonathan Nolan scripts? Maybe, I mean, you'd have to ask, but I think so. Like, he was so tough. But then it was interesting because I remember sitting in John Clavin's office hours one day and we're talking about the different people

in class and he goes, Jonah, he goes, Jonah's gonna be a major screenwriter. I was like, oh, and I'm like 20 years old. In Washington DC, got, okay. You know what I mean? Jonah Nolan, who works at Eagle Liquors, and you know what I mean, like, he's just a guy. But then you moved to New York,

and you're almost immediately on Letterman. Almost immediately felt like a long time. Well, was it two years maybe? Two years. It was. But still to be that young. After a year of being in New York, I got a thing that's hard to get,

which is Montreal Comedy Festival, New Faces, which in comedy is a big deal because like Ray Romano got it and then he got a sitcom. There was seemingly a pathway for that to be how you get introduced to the industry. In my group was like Kevin Hart, Demetri Martin, like a bunch of people. We were the new faces that year.

Yeah, I was like 23 years old and then the Booker of Letterman, Eddie Brell, saw me at Montreal and he said, I think we could put together a set for Letterman. And it's gonna take a while. We're gonna have to work on it. And we did, we worked on it for about a year. And then I was on it at 24.

And that really, yeah, it really changed my career. So it was still in the period of time in which something like that could be an incredible lever. still in the period of time in which something like that could be an incredible lever. Yeah, it was, I mean, I was touring, I was touring the country as quote unquote, the youngest comedian to ever be on the weatherman. This is something I don't even think is true.

I'm sure that went over really well when you would show up at the comedy clubs with the other comedians. I don't even think it's true. Actually, I looked it up once. I think the two younger people were Chappelle and Bobcat Goldthwait. Wow.

And I think Chappelle did it when he was like 19 or something and Bobcat maybe when he was 20 or 22. But no, it didn't go over well. That was a hard era for me because it was, I had a lot of success fast. And then there were some resentments and I was too young to navigate it well. And so I ended up, I don't know,

just in like stickier conversations with people that I wish I'd never had. And I feel like I'm still kind of at age 46, like reliving those conversations. Is this like a situation in which you and Mark Maron have to sit down and rehash some bullshit from way back? I talked to Maron last week on the phone and we're talking about stuff that happened 20 years ago. I mean, it's, well, cause I was,

I got my first solo show is called Sleepwalk with me and it was at the Bleaker Street Theater and he was doing a solo show in the basement of that theater at the same time. And then I invited him to come see the show and he was like, fuck you. And you know, it's like the whole thing. And, and of course, you know, Mark and I,

I put him in my movie, I made him my, I made him a super movie, in a movie he's like the mentor comedian character. But yeah, I mean, it's like those relationships you have in your twenties, like you somehow never live down, you never live down how immature you were, the ways that you put your foot in your mouth and all that.

Yeah, I feel like Marin's podcast could have also been called Working It Out. It's like he started it to basically repair all these relationships. No, completely. And it's, so, but what was interesting about my 20s was that I got that big break and I was touring the country and then that's when I started to tell stories,

probably when I was like 25, 26, 27 years old. And so this thing where I got into it with that look at me energy of like, oh, I'm funny, look at me. I started to tell stories and really connect with people and go, oh, this is really kind of like, oh, I'm funny, look at me. I started to tell stories and really connect with people and go, oh, this is really kind of like just a meaningful experience. But wasn't necessarily a path well trodden at that point.

Like the paradigm was go on Letterman and then develop a sitcom. There's a parallel universe where there was a, I think this even almost happened, right? Where there was gonna be a sitcom and then you could have spent 10 years doing that. 100%, yeah, I got a sitcom deal with CBS. Well, first it was with NBC, then it was with CBS.

There was that whole thing that go, you're the next Seinfeld and you're the next this, you're the next that. And I was believing it. I was like, yes, yes, this is true. And then we shoot the pilot and it doesn't get picked up to series. And it was that kind of death by thousand cuts

artistically thing where you write the script based on your life and then they say, change this, change this. And you go, okay. And then you give it back and they say, change this, change this. By the time the thing gets filmed, it's nothing like what you had written.

And then it didn't get picked up. And thank God it didn't get picked up because it ended up literally three months later, I came back to New York and I produced Sleep Walk With Me off Broadway. My friend Eli Gonda produced it. And then Nathan Lane was willing to present it. And it was a big hit.

And it kind of changed my whole, a big hit, a humble off-Broadway hit in New York City, but a hit in relation to what I'd done previously. But also it gives you this opportunity to flex your muscles in all these different ways. I mean, the moth to this American life, to the one-man show, and then the book, and then the movie that you wrote and directed.

And I'd always wanted to direct movies since I was basically studying screenwriting in college. And so that was a huge thing. And then four years later, I was able to direct Don't Think Twice. And now I'm actually, I'm getting ready. I'm writing my next movie. And so that's kind of a dream

because honestly, like this, the good life special is so close to the bone personally that I'm just like, I need to write fiction. Like this is too much. Like I can't do this all the time. How many times have you performed that show? I mean, 70 cities on the tour and in some cities, you know, two or three shows.

So I would say, I would guess probably 400 times. Wow. It seemed like the old man in the pool was touring forever. Like you were on the road incessantly with that. The old man pool was like 120 cities. That was probably something in the universe of like six or 800 performances. Wow.

And when I'm watching the new one, there's moments where I feel your emotion is real. Like, and I'm wondering like, is he a really good actor or is he still able to emotionally connect with this after performing it so many times and maybe just because now it's being filmed for Netflix?

No, no, no, no, it's certainly like, I remember the first time I got emotional on stage and it was in Sleepwalk with me in 2008 at the Bleaker Street Theater. And I didn't know what to do, cause it came, it was like sleepwalk with me in 2008 at the Bleaker Street Theater. And I didn't know what to do, you know, cause it, oh, it came, it was like just choked up and talking about, you know, the doctor in the emergency room taking glass out of my legs and how close the glass was

to my femoral artery and all this stuff. And I really was choked up. And I said to my director, Seth Barish, who's directed tons of plays, I go, what should I do if I feel like I'm getting choked up? And he goes, yeah, just live it. Like that's what we're here for. Like that's what live theater is for.

We're for what happens. And so like with the good life, it really is me. Every night I walk on stage and I think, I would think, whatever happens tonight is the show. And yes, I have this line and this line and this story, it follows this story, but whatever happens with this audience is, that's for all all like all of us.

Today's episode is brought to you by Roka. You know it's funny we don't often think of eyewear as performance gear until it starts to get in the way and if you're like me somebody who has contended with eyesight impairment my entire life it's a very real thing without a real solution for athletes. I cannot tell you how many times I've been mid-run, constantly shoving my glasses back up my nose, tripping on roots and rocks because I couldn't see them, or my glasses had fogged up,

or what about out on the bike, where the treachery is obviously far more intense? Well, this is why Roca has been a godsend for me. Approaching prescription eyewear from a performance perspective first, but not at the cost of fashion, I should say. Helping not only people like me, but all kinds of athletes, including Tour de France cyclists and Ironman champions with everyday frames designed for movement.

Their secret is their proprietary gecko technology. and Ironman champions with everyday frames designed for movement. Their secret is their proprietary gecko technology, patented nose and temple pads that grip even more securely when you sweat. No slipping, no distractions, and they're insanely lightweight. Most frames weigh less than a pencil, super light, even with prescription lenses. Beyond the function, the craftsmanship is next level. Razor sharp optics, durable construction, and a design that actually is beautiful and keeps up with you.

So put them on, feel the difference, and wear without limits. Unlock 20% off your order with the code richroll at roka.com. That's R-O-K-A.com. All of you who have been alongside me for this podcast, A Coaster Ride, know that I am and have been for quite some time an avid user of and a partner with AG1. But this is not just another version of the shout out you've come to expect. This is actually sort of breaking news because AG1 has just launched their new next generation

nutritional formula. It's the same single scoop you know, but now it's been significantly upgraded with more vitamins, minerals, and upgraded probiotics. It's an upgrade that's of significant proportions based upon four human clinical trials that go above and beyond the industry standard and testing to make a great product even better. More specifically, the new formula has been optimized to improve absorption, new vitamins and new minerals have been added, and AG1 has enhanced their probiotic blend, all part of their ongoing commitment to producing the best foundational nutritional supplement designed to support overall wellness. Now

clinically backed with an advanced formula, this is the perfect time to try AG1 if you haven't yet. I've been drinking AG1 for many years now, I mentioned and I'm so happy to be partnering with them So subscribe today to try the next gen of AG1 if you use my link You also get a free bottle of AG D3 K2 and AG1 welcome kit and five of the upgraded AG1 travel packs with your first order So make sure to check out drinkag1.com And is the special one singular performance or did you, is it edited together from multiple? It was mostly one we stole, we filmed for three nights, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, the Beacon Theater, and then the Friday one was like the circle

and then the circle take and then the other ones we've just like taken little patches from because it was like a nice inspired moment. I won't spoil it, but the long-term married couple in the audience, I mean, that was a gift from God. That can't happen every night. Every time you do that. Well, it's always different.

I can say what the question is to the audience. I always ask who's been married the longest. And then when people say how long they've been married, I say, if you're in a conversation with your wife or husband, and it's kind of, there's a silence or there's something in the air and you don't know what it is, do you probe or do you let it lie?

And what's amazing is people's answers are never the same. The one in the special is hilarious, but like every night is hilarious in a way. Like people's, when you get an insight into people's marriages behind closed doors, it is fascinating. I feel like I might do a show just on that. Yeah, the idea that everybody's marriage

is impossible to understand. Yeah, one night a guy goes, I probe. And I go, oh, you probe. He goes, I probe relentlessly. I'm like, what does that look like? It must be fun to live with that guy. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of people when they answer that question,

you're like, oh, this person's a lot. And then you're like, everyone's a lot maybe. But it's all in the context of trying to understand how to be married. Like nobody taught me how to be married. Completely. Yeah, that's But it's all in the context of trying to understand how to be married. Like nobody taught me how to be married. Completely. Yeah, that's what I bring up in the show is this idea of like, I'm trying to teach my daughter all these things,

but like no one taught me how to be married. No one gave me a sex talk. No one told me about drugs. No one told me like, so in a certain way, we're all just winging it all the time, but with marriage particularly, I mean, I just like, I have no idea. Meanwhile, we want our parents to answer these questions or like lead the way,

but it's our kids who are our real teachers. Like Una is the sort of in between the lines in your show is she's the teacher because she's pointing out the things that you need to learn and explore. And so as much as you wanted your dad to do that or you lament the fact that he didn't, she's right there to kind of highlight

the journey that you need to go on. No, that's right. And that's what kids do. Yeah, no, and it's powerful. And it's something I never would have expected in my life. I mean, that's what my whole show, which was called the new one on Broadway, was about how I never wanted to have a child

and all the reasons I never wanted to have a child and how I had a child and why I was right. And then ultimately why I was wrong. That's sort of the emotional turn of that one. Your relationship with your daughter is borderline an obsession. I tell you, I think- Are you, that's how it comes across sometimes?

No, that's why I'm taking a break from the autobiographical stuff and making a movie where people can go, okay, enough Mike for Biglia for now. We can just see his movies. She asks you a question, you know, that is the kind of inciting incident for the show, but how would you answer this question if I'm gonna put it to you?

Daddy, what is creativity? Oh, what's creativity? Yeah, yeah. Oh man, you know, my brother Joe has this great one, a great answer for that, which is, he always describes comedy writing as letting your brain go for a walk. And it's like, in some ways I think that's what it is

in a way, that's what creativity is. What does that mean? Letting go of essentially like, what are the stringent aspects of your life? I have to be at this point at this time, I should eat at this time. And just going, I'm just gonna let my imagination run wild. You know, like sometimes my daughter will be like daydreaming

and Jenny and I, my wife and I are always like, great. You know what I mean? Like daydreaming is great. Daydreaming is everything. Like Mitch Hedberg is one of my favorite comedians of all time and sadly passed many years ago. But like he always said that daydreaming is what joke writing is.

Yeah, that's the juice. So how do you hold onto that? I mean, you've got a journal in front of you. Yeah, yeah, that's true. So I'm like dog-eared. Like what is the practice? The practice. The daily practice. This is just like me writing in my journal every morning

about how I feel. A lot of it's how I feel, you know? So it's like, you know, this is what I've been doing, this is what my day is like, this is what I always say, like, in the Old Man in the Pool, I say, I find that if I write in my journal, what I'm saddest about or angriest about, I can start to see my life as a story.

And if you see your life as a story, you can start to encourage the main character to make better decisions. And I feel like that's like this in a nutshell. And then what happens is, is you write down what happened and often like when you write it, the moment you write it, it is infuriating. It's the thing you're mad about.

And you read it a couple months later and you go, that's pretty funny. Like the guy who wrote that doesn't know what's gonna happen the next day. And how do you know when an idea has legs to take it further? If you're just writing tons of stuff all the time. A lot of it's conversational.

So like, you know, it's so funny because like so much of it is iterative with the way that my standup comedy is iterative. Like doing in front of, like with jokes, it's like doing in front of audiences, seeing what is getting laughter and then writing towards that, writing in that direction. And even with my movies,

it's like, Don't Think Twice was a really basic idea. It's like, what if there's a group of friends in an improv group and one of them gets cast on Saturday Night Live and then the rest of them don't? And what happens in those friendships when that happens? And I would say that to people casually, I'm working on this movie and that's the premise. And they would go, oh my God, that's just like my life.

That's just like me and my band. That's just like me and my friend group from college, whatever. And that's when I knew I was like, oh, okay, this isn't just me, this is like everybody. Yeah, that's interesting. Is that something you've just developed over time or is it like you do it in the morning

or you just take it with you and you're doing it throughout the day? Yeah, and what's funny is I have like, you know, I have 50 of these and they're just around my house. And you go back and you read them and stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all journal tons, but then I never go back and look at them. stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll journal tons, but then I never go back and look at them.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. I wanna hear about the Pope story. Okay. I don't wanna spoil the special, but whatever you're willing to share about this, because this is kind of an amazing thing.

Well, the Pope, Pope Francis had this thought, which was he wanted to invite comedians to the Vatican to speak about comedy, which I make the joke of this especially, he talked to us about comedy, which is a great example of power corrupting. If you get so confident as a priest, you're like, I should invite Chris Rock over

and tell him my thoughts about comedy. Because that's who it was. It was like Chris Rock and Conan O'Brien and Julie Louis Dreyfus, Whoopi Goldberg, all these people. And it was crazy. This was like a year ago, right? Exactly a year ago.

And Jim Gaffigan called me, I think Colbert, Stephen Colbert had called him. And he said, hey, you're on this list. And my first inclination was like to say no. I mean, I just thought like Catholic church, like I grew up in the eighties in Massachusetts. I mean, I wasn't abused, but like, but you know,

if you read anything about this stuff, it's so many people and it's, you know, one of the most powerful movies I've ever seen is Tom McCarthy's movie Spotlight about that, which is if people haven't seen that is, I think one of the great movies the last 25 years. So the reluctance has to do with your own personal relationship to Catholicism,

but also you don't wanna be like involved in the, you know, like laundering of its new image. 100%. And then what happened was is I was with my dad and I told my dad this and he was like, oh, you know, he was like, you know, Grandpa Joe from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Like he couldn't believe it.

And then I start- Now you might finally be able to get, you know, the attention of your dad. Exactly. All your ethics and moral principles go out the window. It's funny you should say that. Ira pointed that out.

Ira Glass pointed that out. He goes, you know, the thing you're not saying in your show is that your dad wouldn't have done that for you, but you did it for your dad. He goes, he wouldn't have, it was some comedy legend or something. He wouldn't have gone to see the comedy legend for you because you're interested in comedy.

But yeah, I was, there was that, there was the my dad of it, who had been through a stroke and all that. And then there was, I just started doing research on Pope Francis and I'm just going, okay, well, everything is compared to everything else. And, you know, he compared to other popes,

this guy's great. You know what I mean? But only compared to other popes, this guy's great. You know what I mean? But only compared to other popes, if you met him at a party, you'd be like, this fucking guy, you know, but compared to other popes, he's amazing. And, you know, he blessed gay couples in the church and he was advocated for refugees and he was very critical of America

in these ways that were very bold. And I just thought, you know, this guy's really special. And this is an unbelievable invitation. The idea that someone would invite me to something like this is a real honor. And I went, and I say it in the special, like the things he said, but a lot of it had to do with like humor has the power to unite people, bring people together.

When you make a joke and one audience member laughs that God laughs, which is sweet. And I thought it was very moving. I thought it was very heartfelt. And I thought being in his presence, we went up and he shook his hand and took a photo and said two words. And it was, I just thought this is a peaceful person

who believes in or seemingly believes in the real message of Jesus Christ. And I do think that that's very good. I think that what's happened to various churches from Jesus Christ's message, I think is wild. But I think that at its core, this idea of selflessness and self-sacrifice and being kind to people who are sick and downtrodden

is beautiful. And perhaps the Vatican did a very good job in with its propaganda machine. PR. And changing your perspective. The PR machine over there is strong. But you had finished, I assume you'd already taped the special

by the time he passed away, he just passed away recently. Exactly. So then we thank him in the credits. I was gonna say, had you still been on tour with this and not yet taped it, would you have added a button to that that might've had something to do with J.D. Vance? That's really funny, maybe.

There is a low hanging fruit joke in there somewhere. I almost never reference people who are cultural figures, especially ones who one might hope people who are cultural figures, especially ones who one might hope might be short-term cultural figures. And so, yeah, I wouldn't have included that probably. Yeah, I would have included that. I had, I saw your movie, the sleepwalk with me, and I've heard you tell that story a bunch of times,

but for some reason, I didn't know something about that story that you talk about in the new special, which is the fact that for 20 years, you've been taking clonapin basically every night. Yeah, yeah. That is wild. It is, right? That is such a powerful drug.

What are your concerns? I don't know. I went to, dude, I went to rehab for people who are there strictly because of their clonopin habit. Do you know what the dosage was? I don't know. Okay. I'm sure it was, well, of course it was more intense,

but it's also highly addictive. No, I know. And so you're able to take, what do you take? A milligram and a half? A milligram, yeah. Well, I used to take one and a half, but I tapered, I used to take two, and then I took one and a half, but I tapered, I used to take two, and then I took one and a half.

I've tapered it down to one, I take one milligram. I don't know. But this is to treat the rapid eye movement disorder that caused you to sleepwalk. That's right, yeah. And you're able to do that and like not be dysfunctional. That's really something. Have a coffee in the morning.

That one milligram would have escalated quickly in my life. Oh, really? What do you do if you have that disorder, but you're like a drug addict in recovery? Oh, God. Is there another treatment for that? What's amazing is like, there wasn't, it's not like there was a case study

for people jumping through second story windows, sleepwalking. It's not, I was the guy. That's why, you know, I'm in the DSM as the example, cause they don't have a ton of examples of people doing stuff like this. So, and then weirdly like, and I say this in a special, they don't even know for sure if that's what I have

because it's such a young field of medicine. You know, sleep medicine is, I think it's from the 70s. You know what I mean? Like it's not that recent or it's not that old. There's something interesting about the fact that, you know, fundamentally it's a neurological disorder of some form, right? And your dad, a neurologist, neurologist. Yeah, cry for help.

What's happening? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, sure. We can talk about this all day. I mean, I don't know what to say. I know. But I am in this process of trying to find grace in my relationship with my parents, particularly my mother who's suffering.

And it's challenging, man, to let go of all that baggage and find that place of empathy. And when they're in the later stages of life or they're suffering health situations, it's easier to do that. And I still find, I can still feel my own resistance around it.

Yeah, I mean, with my dad, it's like, he would shout when I was a kid and that was very hard. And he had just a hot temper. And then, you know, the first joke that I was able to make to even, you know, a lot of these things, as a comedian, you go like, well, maybe I could try these things, as a comedian, you go like, well, maybe I could try talking about that as a topic, but then like your dad having a stroke,

the audience goes silent. You bring that up as a topic, but that my first joke was like, it's devastating, but I will say it has calmed him down. And it was funny because it was like that church laugh. Is that kind of like, not everyone's laughing, but a few people are laughing really hard at it. And I was like, okay, that's kind of my way into this.

And I will say like, you know, to your point about your mom, it's like, I have in a certain way gotten closer to my dad than I have been in my entire life through this horrible ailment. How is he doing now? He's okay. I mean, he's, he had pneumonia and the flu a few weeks ago and it's, and so he's in and out of the hospital,

but what's amazing is how sharp he is about, you know, What's amazing is how sharp he is about, I'll talk to him about me having a sickness or something like that, and he'll diagnose it. Like his doctor brain is sharp as a tack. His memory, particularly his memory of the last year is tough, but he doesn't have, what's interesting, he doesn't have the temper he did when I was a kid. And so it's like you take out that thing

and you do start to see him more as a person. Yeah. I think the practice of asking the questions you never asked about their life, you know, rather than waiting for them to be interested in yours, like showing interest in theirs. 100%. That's the mending, you know, energy.

I think that that's, and yeah, I think that that's where the special lands as an idea. And I think it's absolutely what I would recommend to people who have challenges with their parents is just ask questions. What about people who are challenged with their own creativity? Maybe they would like to be more creative

or they're inspired by your storytelling, talent and facility. Do you think everybody has a story to tell? And if so, what is the advice or the practice of helping people connect with the stories in their own lives that might be important for them to explore? I think like, you know, I always tell people in a journal,

I think writing and rereading your own work and then repeating just over and over and over again is great. I think that building a community of creatives, and it could be as small as two or three people, is great, I mean, I feel like my entire creative life changed when I met my improv group in college. I think that's why I ended up making the movie Don't Think Twice kind of about this improv group because I was so obsessed with this idea of like, oh my God, there's people like me who just want to

just goof around in this way that's just unfiltered and go in kind of wild directions and explore their creativity. And that can be in an improv class, that could be asking a group of friends to read, everyone could read their essays that they wrote or stories they wrote or screenplays or plays that they wrote and everyone can play a part.

Like even like my last movie, it's like I invited a bunch of friends to come over and read the screenplay in my living room and people gave their thoughts and it was just a good hang. Like the thing about creativity is like, you want it to get to a point where you're A productive and creating a lot of things because there's so much trial and error

and it's mostly error. And then you want that to coincide with it being just kind of a fun hang with a few friends. Because then you're not alone in it. Did you see that video that has been swirling around kind of virally the past couple of days of Jordan Peele talking about writing and storytelling? I think that was really interesting.

Where he's like, it's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be fun. And it gets to that idea you were saying of like, you know, writing like the story you wanna, you wanna tell and you would like to read or watch on a screen. Yeah, no, I think Jordan Peele is one of the great visionaries of film and TV

in the last 20, 30 years. And I think like he completely has the right idea. Like when I saw Get Out in the theater, I think I saw it opening weekend. And I just remember going, oh yeah, this is like, this is best picture, best screenplay, best movie. Like this is like, this guy clearly wanted

to make this movie. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it has so much, just like it's teeming with that kind of like inspiration. Well, yeah, and it's just, it's undeniable. Yes. You know, in a weird way. And I think like my recommendation to people in the creative space is to not do the things you like,

but do the things you love because no one's paying you anyway. You know what I mean? And even if they are, nobody's really waiting for your thing. No, no, I feel like there's, I feel like in the creative spaces, a lot of times what ends up happening is,

you have people who they sign up for a lot of things that they sort of like, and they're sort of interested in. And that's fine. Like when you're in the kind of early stages of trying to figure out what it is you love. But at a certain point, I think you gotta go hard at what you love because that's the thing that's really rewarding.

And all you have is your unique voice. That's it. That's the only differentiator. Yeah, years ago, I wrote this piece for the New York Times and it was called, Six Tips for Making It Small in Hollywood, which is how I view myself. I like on your website, you have an advice.

You're like, literally it's like bio, shows, schedule, advice. Advice, you know why? Because I get so many of my emails from people were asking for advice. I'm like, I just gotta put this up there. Yeah, and you have these New York Times articles where you're like, here's what I would do.

Six tips for making small in Hollywood. And one of them is do what you love instead of what you like. And this was Ira Glass's one that he gave to me, which is a start now. It's like, there's no reason to wait. And also weirdly like, no one's like, there's no reason to wait. And also weirdly like, no one's like, if you're looking to pursue a creative job,

it's like, just know like, you're never gonna get rich from it probably. And it doesn't matter. Like, cause if you love doing it, it doesn't matter. You can have another job and you can do that too. It reminds me of that speech that Mark Duplass gave at South by Southwest about like, nobody's coming to save you.

Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, nobody's coming to save you. Nobody's gonna save you, yeah. The moment is right now. Like, if you wanna make a thing, like you're gonna have to, you know, the bad news is, is you're gonna have to make it yourself. But the good news is you get to make it yourself.

Basically is the idea. No, and Mark is amazing. I remember seeing Puffy Chair, one of his first movies at Nantucket Film Festival, my wife and I saw it and it's brilliant, brilliant movie. And I didn't know him. I know he and I are friends now, but I didn't know him at the time.

But that's the other thing. It's like, go to film festivals, go to one act play festivals. Like if you're a creative and you wanna be in the world, it's like, just go to the things that the creatives are making and they're doing. It's like, I can't tell you how many people through the years I've seen in the audience of a UCB theater show

or interning at UCB theater, improv theater in New York. And then one day you go, oh, they're on the office. You know what I mean? Because when you're in it, you're just like, oh, that's just whoever. No, absolutely. I remember I used to rent my, I had an office, like a real, you know, rinky-dink office in New York City

where I would do creative work and then I would rent it out to improv groups to help pay for the rent. And Ellie Kemper used to come all the time and like had an improv group where she practiced and she'd just be in my crazy improv space. And then it's like one day I'm like, she's at the office. Like, this is crazy.

She's on bridesmaids. She's like a major star. This is crazy. But it's like, what's weird is that those kind of are the people who are in the proximity of creative spaces consistently and they're consistently like getting better, making mistakes, learning, those are the people

that end up eventually getting the larger slots in art and art culture. Proximity, just making sure they push through that door and then stay there. A lot of it is just about like the refusal to stop doing it or walk away. 100%, yeah. Yeah, you know, once you've been around for a while,

then you're like, you look around and like all these people, you know, that you knew way back when, or like when you get older, these are the people who are now in charge. Yeah, no, it's crazy. Which is like encouraging, but also like we're in big trouble. Yeah, yeah, we're in big trouble.

That guy. Like nobody knows anything, trust me. 100%, yeah. Which maybe that is good because it like lowers the bar. No, completely. That's really funny. In a past life, I made a short film called Down Dog

that I wrote and directed that was sort of a parody of the LA yoga scene and did a little film festival circuit run and I remember I was at the Bend Film Festival with this thing and that's when the puffy chair was there and Mark was there and I ended up meeting him and like hanging out with him that weekend or whatever. And it's like, that was the inception of what, you know, what would become a really huge career

for him and his brother. Unbelievable, yeah, truly. Which is inspiring. Yeah. Are you still swimming? How's the pool? Yeah, I swim, truthfully, because I'm on the East Coast, I swim mostly in the summer, but yeah, I do swim.

And now my daughter's great at swimming. So I go to like the swim meets. Now you're a swim meet dad. I'm a swim dad. Oh my God. Sitting, I mean, kids swim meets are, they're just interminably long and you're sitting in these really chlorinated environments.

My dad, I mean, my dad did this for me when I was a kid. You know, that's a way of way of me feeling compassion and empathy. I'm like, that poor guy. Yeah, no, absolutely. Just 10,000 heats of the 25 yard breaststroke. Yeah, I gotta get back to the YMCA. I've been doing different things physically, but yeah. The health is okay though?

Health is good right now, yeah. Cool. Yeah. Well, this was great, man. I love talking to you. This is really fun. I think the new special is fantastic. And you are a master storyteller.

And I think it's a real gift that you give all of us to show us how powerful story is. And the Pope was right, you know, like not only comedy, but it is the storytelling aspect of your comedy in particular that I think is needed connective tissue in our divided world at the moment. Thanks a lot, Rich. That means a lot to me and I'm glad we did this.

It's super fun, man. Anytime, you're always welcome here. Maybe five years from now. Your schedule online. It's years in the making. Cheers, dude. All're always welcome here. Maybe five years from now, when you're scheduled online. Years in the making. Cheers, dude. All right, thank you. That's it for today.

Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change,

and the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at mealplanner.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course

awesome and very helpful. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com slash sponsors. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo.

The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae, with assistance from our creative director, Dan Drake. Content management by Shana Savoy, copywriting by Ben Pryor. And of course, our theme music was created all the way back in 2012 by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis.

Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste. Music