WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1169 - Hari Kondabolu

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

When Hari Kondabolu was a college student, he interviewed Marc for a research paper about standup comedy. Twenty years later, they're talking to each other as peers whose lives have changed considerably in the past two decades. With a newborn baby, a recent Netflix special, and a documentary about Apu from The Simpsons that spurred a global conversation about representation in pop culture, Hari gets Marc up to speed on where his life is at right now. He also explains how he developed his comedy career while engaging in human rights work and immigration activism.  Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store

and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fuck, Knicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron.

This is my podcast, W wtf thanks for tuning in how's everybody holding up i want to say a special hello to my uh instagram live crew who hang out with me in the morning i seem to uh regularly regularly it's like all my speech impediments in one thing except for the S's. I seem to regularly get on there in the morning and meander for nothing. For my own sanity and for the sanity of others. I do the Instagram lives, usually about an hour when I get on there and just kind of free form it, answer questions. It's been a lot of a lot of good people. There seems to be a community forming there around the the sort of morning coffee business. And I'm good. Helps me. Helps me riff it out like I do here on this mic.

But even more free on that mic. And I got to be careful. No editing on the IG. I don't got Brendan keeping things in check. So I got to keep my own self in check. But it's sort of serving the purpose of getting me engaged with my brain, which is generally how I generate ideas, material, things. And it's helping me because I'm not doing stand-up so in the morning i get up and do that business and uh you know sparks new stuff i don't understand the farsi arabic russian troll

onslaught i don't know what's going on with that but i do know there's a lot of and just regular trolls not too many but mostly mostly more than anything else. Just people looking for a little bit of relief, a little bit of distraction. Not unlike you people listening to this. A guy I've known for a long time is on the show today, Hari Kondabolu. He's never been on for a one-on-one show, despite being on one of the very early live WTFs. You may know his stand-up from Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me or from the documentary The Problem with Apu, which he created. He's got a new stand-up special on Netflix and his podcast with W. Kamau Bell called Politically Reactive is now back on the air,

back in the downloadable zone. But he's a smart, funny guy. He's an intense guy, zone but uh he's a smart funny guy he's an intense guy and he's a guy that i've known since he was a kid almost i remember when harry kondabolu was coming around comedy club sort of intense and seemingly aggravated maybe a little sweaty when he was in college trying to uh figure out how to do stand-up before he did stand-up and i talked to him about that which was kind of interesting because i have very clear memories of this guy. And I think, I feel like we were sort of, he was sort of a kindred spirit in the sense that he

reminded me of me at a different time. Just intense, you know, angry, you know, looking for a way not to alienate people, but still kind of wanting to alienate people. Smart. But he figured it out his new special is actually very good i believe it's called warn your relatives but it's funny it's smart it's uh

i think it was uh shot in seattle which is one of my favorite places but um so i'll talk to harry in a few minutes and those of you who watch the ig live know that uh you that a lot of people have already bought these things, but we're selling these T-shirts. The Too Close Marin T-shirts. Too Close, which has become sort of a hook of some kind. Whatever the case, people are enjoying the T-shirts. All right. I guess people are looking for reasons to get some merch while the days get shorter and our isolation persists. So you're in luck. We did some sort of a run of T-shirts with some nice art on there of me.

And you might remember that last year we did a special edition line of posters to celebrate the first decade of WTF. So a couple of months ago, we put out a special edition line of merch to celebrate the first 10 years of WTF. Artist Johnny Jones did some new designs for us, and we had some t-shirts, pins, and notebooks that are still available at podswag.com slash WTF. that sold out very quickly. So we've got two more of those, two more of the posters, and they're available now, all signed by me. There's only 100 each.

So check them out, folks. We'll put some pictures on Twitter and Instagram as well. Go get this stuff at podswag.com slash WTF or go to wtfpod.com and click on the merch link for the new Too Close shirts and all the other stuff. All right.

So if you know me, you know that I have a sort of love-hate relationship with food and myself. That's just my nature. I don't know if you can relate to that. That's just who I am. So I generally take care of myself, but it's a struggle with food because I like to eat things that are very satisfying. And if I could, I would eat cake and ice cream all day long every day, but I don't. And one of the issues with having an addictive personality and the physical

nature of the effect of sugar and carbs on the fucking system is that when I put a little in there, it takes me like two or three weeks to pull back. Not that I'm going crazy and fucking shoveling pasta into my face, but I got the craving. I got the Jones. I got the sugar monkey on my back. So somewhere after going through a few pints of ice cream that Patton Oswalt had sent to my house,

I got a bug in my brain about this goddamn Kentucky butter cake. That's the other problem. If you follow New York Times cooking on fucking Instagram, you're getting pictures. You're getting pictures all day long of fucking food. There it was, Kentucky butter cake. Some recipe from 1963 won a Pillsbury award and I'm like it's in a bunt pan I'm like I got a bunt pan I'm gonna fucking make a Kentucky butter cake no I'm not I'm alone here I'm dealing with the weight of isolation of quarantine of plague of the possibility of the complete economic and political collapse of the country

i live in we're being sort of driven into the ground by a narcissistic second tier demon and now i got it on my brain i got to make a perfect kentucky butter cake so i'm going to do it but i got no one to share it with really i got a couple friends come over my buddy kit maybe she'll have a fucking slice but then what what am i gonna do i drive it over to sharplings am i gonna drive it around what am i gonna do so i went and got the supplies i got the buttermilk i got the butter i got the sugar i got the flour i got the vanilla extract and all I want to do is make this thing correctly, make this thing perfect, eat the rest of the cake and somehow getting it out of the fucking house. Knowing that I succeeded, had the meditational therapy of cooking and the fucking buzz of eating a bunch of sugar and butter and flour and eggs. So I did it.

I set out to do it and I fucked it up and it didn't go the way I wanted. The recipe wasn't specific enough about preparation. So I made the batter. I buttered the pan. I poured the batter in the pan.

Fine. No prob. Put that in the oven. Cooked it the right amount of time. Then here's the idea with the Kentucky butter cake that's just basically butter flour and sugar sponge in the pan and then you create this butter sugar syrup that you then pour over the cake that you've poked holes in so the cake

soaks it up like a sponge and you let it sit for three hours and then you turn it over and get it out of that bundt pan so i pulled the cake out of the oven i poked the holes and i'm making the fucking butter syrup didn't put enough water in they said don't let the sugar dissolve all the way so i i thought it looked a little lumpy and i didn't have a good feeling about it but i thought i had done it right and i poured it over the bundt cake and it wasn't i didn't put enough water in it because I fucked up. I put two teaspoons in instead of three tablespoons. I don't know why. So now I know that I fucked the entire thing up

in the last goddamn leg of the recipe. I fucked it all up. So now this sugar is basically just a glaze sitting on what's supposed to be the bottom of the fucking cake. And I know it's going to be fine for what it is. Like, how is it not going to taste good? It's just butter and sugar and flour and eggs and buttermilk and vanilla.

It's going to be fucking what it is, but it's not going to look like it's supposed to. It might not come out of the pan like it's supposed to. It might not. It just isn't right. Okay. It's not right. So now I'm beating myself up because I fucked it up and I'm looking at this thing. It's supposed to sit for three hours. I'm looking at the glaze. It's supposed to be syrup hardening on the top of what is the bottom of the cake. And I'm angry. I'm just sitting there going, just throw it out, man. Throw the whole thing away. Throw it away. I even said it in that accent. Throw it away from Queens. Throw it away. What's the matter with you? away from Queens throw it away what's the matter with you but I sat in that for about an hour and a half about half the time it's supposed to sit and I went in I tried to shake it out of the

fucking mold and I broke a plate trying to shake it out of the mold and I got another plate I kept shaking it wasn't coming out of the mold so maybe the cake was fucked up too whatever the case about half of the cake came out of the mold the bottom half of what's it's a top but supposed to be the bottom half so now i've got this broken cake with this hardening sugar glaze on it in pieces with the other half stuck in the fucking pan and i'm fucking pissed man and i'm i just take the pan over the garbage i take out what's left in the pan i throw it in the garbage i throw the pan in the sink now I'm looking at these fucking jagged fucked up pieces of cake and glaze on this plate and I just shovel them into my mouth probably two slices worth quickly and I just it's so fucking good how could it not be so I'm just chewing that angrily angrily shoving this broken up piece of unsuccessful cake into my face.

I throw the rest out. And the thing is, is that not only was I angry at myself for fucking up, but, you know, after I ate it, it was so good, I had eaten just enough of my fucked up cake to feel shitty about eating it. Job well done. Shame intact. cake to feel shitty about eating it job well done shame intact went to bed just sweating butter worried about diabetes wondering if my heart was gonna clog and whose fault is this you know whose fault it is fucking donald trump's that's a lie i can't hang that on him. This is not a political problem. I have to say at

different points in my life, I've done the exact same thing as I did with that cake. But the catch is, is that usually I made the cake correctly, but the exact same steps unfold afterwards. All right. So my guest is Hariry kandabolu a very intense very smart very funny man his podcast politically reactive with harry and uh w kamau bell is back with new episodes every week he also has a stand-up special on netflix called warn your relatives very funny called Warn Your Relatives. Very funny, shot in Seattle. And his documentary, The Problem with Apu, is now on HBO Max, which was kind of informative for me. Maybe you'll enjoy it.

So this is me talking to Hari Kondabolu, who I had a profound influence on when he was a younger man. It's winter, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats, but meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls. Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No, but moose head? Yes, because that's alcohol and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday

essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance, you're probably spending more than you need. That's why you need to switch to low-cost coverage from Zensurance before your policy renews this year. Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need, and policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance, mind your business and

kanda bolu how are you buddy i'm all right how are you don't don't pretend like you don't know me no seriously though how are you i'm all right yeah what you mean with the with the thing of course you know today was not great but it's been it's getting easier you know it's getting easier but it's uh you know i don't cry as much in front of strangers or people i haven't seen in a while. Right. I was surprised you went right back to work. Did you take some time off at all? I did not. Okay.

I just found it to be fitting for what I do. Like, I really had to figure it out whether or not to live that thing publicly. Would it be helpful in any way to anybody? And you all right with the mic stand? Yeah, I'm just adjusting it. It's funny because it's only been a few months since I've regularly used a mic stand

and I feel like I'm out of practice, which is very embarrassing. But that's a bendy one? That's not the straight one, is it? No, no, it's a bendy one. It's one of those music ones. Yeah, but those are, no matter how good you are at standup,

the one thing you don't want to see when you get on stage is the bendy one. It's people don't get it, but it's just awkward. Also, it's, if you wanted to use the mic stand, you can't anymore.

Cause it's all up. Yeah. It's going to, it's going to do, it's going to do what it's doing to you right now in the middle of your show. I don't really understand. Why do they,

why do musicians need this what is the purpose of this why do they play the guitar oh so it's it's going to be next the guitar is that the idea it's not actually for room no they have room like it's so like if they're standing there with a guitar oh they can right all right what was i going on oh what was i talking about oh yes i started working immediately because um i i just thought that was that was my relationship with my feelings so i i shared them and i think they were helpful to some people you know how people when they have tragedy they say like this is what they they would have want me to have done especially athletes say that all the time like you know my grandmother would have wanted me to play did you ever have a thought like that like lynn would have expected me to

continue to to do what i do and not stop i don't know you know you know you're in an awful lot of shock so i i don't like i i just was i knew i was having these feelings that were profound and unlike anything I'd experienced before. And I couldn't control them. And I think I was surprised at that and the sort of genuine. I mean, like anybody would have had it. But like, I don't think I'm one to acknowledge how deep my love is when people are alive or or in general right so i don't know that i thought about what she would have thought but i tried to to uh respect her and i and i felt on some level in retrospect i i think some there's like obviously she has family she has people have

known her longer than me and all this other stuff. And I didn't want to be disrespectful for them either, but this is what I do. So I felt like if anything, on some level, it might have been a little jarring for the people that have known her all her life to have this new guy who none of them knew that well, you know, crying publicly. Oh. So it was a little tricky. But speaking about what? Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. we're gonna go ahead go ahead no yeah i just want so you were you were at that stage where you would have met all her closest

people soon like it was that like right right that stage where this is a real thing right i'm gonna be with this guy right i want everyone i know to know him and love him like it was that stage right it was that stage right it was before that you know it's like a little you know we'd known each other a long time but that hadn't really happened yet i'd met her parents in passing before they knew we were a thing right and uh but no i had to meet everybody um through you know telling them she was in the hospital uh it's terrible yeah but speaking about life and death you look pretty well is and i assume it's because you have a baby uh i feel very tired thank you for saying i look very well um yeah i i've i'm incredibly i've never been this happy and tired before how old the baby a month a month old yeah yeah yeah and you have a wife a partner yeah a partner not a

wife yeah no we're not married was the baby a surprise the baby. No, we're not married. Was the baby a surprise? The baby was a surprise. We love each other very much. We both want to be parents. A child is a blessing, especially when you're in your mid to late 30s and you want a child. Yeah. If it wasn't a strong relationship with someone who I imagined I wanted to be with almost from the moment I met her like you know we this would this conversation wouldn't be happening but like we felt good about that and i think marriage was something that was on the horizon and now all of a sudden it's like what's more important right now you know like to me having a child with someone in theory is actually the bigger bond right because whether

or not you're together you always have this child you always have to deal with each other you're always in each other's life and committing to that is so much bigger sure but uh but it adds a little extra oomph when it's harder to leave uh i don't know man i mean i know enough people who like get get i mean but you you don't have kids though you've never been in the situation of wanting you know i've seen like you know it's like the the the beautiful thing that you said just then about commitment revolving around this new life that you will you will always have to be in each other's lives because of the children. I've heard that said with such bile in my life.

Yeah, I guess I'm, yeah. I'm certainly not saying it with bile. I'm saying it as a beautiful thing. I'm talking about guys in the middle of a divorce, buddy. It's like, I got to fucking see that bitch, all right, because we got the kid the kid and i gotta figure out how to get time with the kid now so i gotta say these things i gotta give this money there's a different there's a different tone to exactly what you said right i mean to me it's like well this kid you know is gonna have two loving parents regardless of what happens and that's that's how i'm viewing it and well i think that's probably true at you

but you can only hope. I'm older than you and I've seen some bad shit. But I have faith in you. Well, I mean, I'm 38. I've seen some bad shit, Mark. It's not, you know. Yeah, but you got better friends than I did. You seem like a little more well-adjusted.

You think you turned out better than me. I talk to you like you're my brother. I still remember that night I met you when you were kind of intense and angry and sweaty yeah and panicked that was years like 14 to 32 but i know we've talked about this before i think we talked about it the one time that we talked on the show but it's so it doesn't matter but but i just remember and i want to sort of clear some stuff up because i i feel like for some reason when i see you and i'm watching the stand up like i i always know we knew each other and i always knew that i was one of the first people you talked to about stand up when before you really started doing it but then i always i

always felt that there was a slight bit of tension between us um that's true with everyone you know isn't it like you're making it sound like this is unique to me yes i'm a person you've met no i'm a person that's known you for over a year yeah that's not true it's not there there there is oh yeah i think there is i, one, the power dynamic initially as, look, when I first spoke to you, I think I was 19 or 20 years old. I was a college student. Weren't you a graduate student? You're a college student.

No, no. I was a college. I was a junior. I went to Bowdoin College, but I spent my study abroad year in Connecticut at Wesleyan University, where I took this pop culture culture class and I used that as an excuse to write a paper about stand-up comedy. Oh, right. That's right.

You were writing a paper. Which is a stupid essay people are still writing today. But anyway, so I used that as an excuse to contact comics from their webpages because it was that easy back then in 2003. I just emailed you from your webpage web page now it's even easier you just have to tweet at somebody something offensive and you there's an 80 chance they'll respond so i i interviewed you and doug

stanhope and i went to the cellar and interviewed like greg giraldo and hood and uh jim norton and tom papa it was a whole ted alexandro like there was a ton of people and um we we spoke initially on the phone and like i was i just i still have tapes of our phone call you do yeah yeah in my parents place it's on old cassette tape. I haven't listened to them in years. I remember, obviously, you and I are in very different places back then. I'm a kid really desperately wanting to do stand-up, but being too afraid to, and using this as an excuse, this academic exercise,

as an excuse to talk to real comics to understand what this business was. Try to get some courage. Right, exactly. excuse to talk to real comics to understand what this business was try to get some courage right exactly and you were at a stage where you were unhappy with where your career was you i remember you getting really upset i don't seemingly out of nowhere and you mentioned dane cook and i'm like i don't know why people like that guy i don't understand that like i don't i don't get why i don't i can't fill a room i don't i don't understand yeah And I'm like, I don't know why people like that guy. I don't understand that. I don't get why I can't fill a room. I don't understand. And I'm like, I'm 19 or 20. I'm like, I like you. I don't know what to say. It was like a terrifying turn of events. How can I help this man? Yeah. It's like, this is a grown man telling me how things didn't work out. And I'm trying

to convince myself to do stand-up. And it's like you're warning me, and I did not pay attention when I should have. You were warning me, don't let this happen to you. Did it happen to you? It didn't happen to you. What? You didn't get bitter and mean and awful?

Oh, yeah, I guess you kind of did. I don't think I ever got bitter or mean or awful, but I certainly wanted to stop a few times. You know what it was? I think this is why I think that probably if there was any stress or, but I want to hear about when, because I remember sitting down with you at the cellar. That was the second time, yeah. But you were making me, you almost made me nervous because you were so intense and so filled with this sort of strange, what I thought was like defensive, angry energy. But you were just uncomfortable with everything about yourself.

Yeah. Well, I was, again, 19, 20, 21. You know, I loved stand-up so much. And it was the only art form I could see myself doing. And I had done it through college and in high school. And I just lovedup so much and it was the only art form i could see myself doing and i'd done it through college and in high school and i just loved it so much i was uncomfortable and i was thinking about is stand-up a place for me and i also like you know i would go down to the the cellar you know when i was 18 19 20 because back then you the cellar was desperately looking for people to fill the seats during the weekdays so you could you could get this coupon online you'd

get two sodas and that's all you had to pay, and you could watch comedy on a Monday or a Tuesday for free. Yeah. Yeah. It was incredible. And so I used to go to those shows where people were working stuff out and all that. And I would also see – there was a certain – there was – like,

y'all were a little more hardened than I – you know, you were a club comedy. You were working clubs. It was like Patrice and Jim Norton and Voss and all these comics and Robert Kelly. And I'm seeing like people work in the crowd and it's rough. Nick DiPaolo. And I'm thinking, oh, I can't. I can't do this. I'm not built like that.

I'm not built like that. Those guys. And to this day, by the way, it's,'s you know i still haven't played the cellar still too afraid to do it i feel like i've gotten to do all these incredible things i'm proud of and that's the one thing the one thing because oh my god and i know chris rock said he would vouch like i had different people say they'd vouch and i'm like ah it's all right i've opened opened for Chris on the road in the U.S. and Europe, and the thing I'm afraid of is playing the cellar. Dude, I don't.

I'm still afraid of it. I play it. But you don't know what's going to happen. There are guys that fucking live there. You get to a point. The thing about the cellar is not unlike the comedy store original room is that for some reason if you show any real uh fear in those rooms yeah you you will fail and it will be oh yeah and it'll be it'll be hard that's unforgiving you can't you know you can't be open-ended about things. You have to have a complete comfort about being on that stage or else it will crush you and you will feel it.

Well, I think that's also why your stand-up in particular at that time really hit me because I'd watch all these incredible comics. But you were different because you allowed yourself to be vulnerable. And I remember just thinking like on this stage in particular, it stood out. It was so different. It wasn't jokes. It wasn't just jokes and stories. It was like you were talking about painful things. You were making people uncomfortable by being so open and honest.

And, you know, some sets were amazing and some sets, you know, you were clearly working stuff out. sets were amazing in some sets you know you were clearly working stuff out but like the fact you would like i had never really seen that before i used to make those i used to make my peers leave the room i'd be like atel get out of here i'm let me try to do this please can i do it without you sitting there what it's so funny to me because like you know you were playing that and you were playing like luna lounge like you were i was at the cusp of what you know what i think you ultimately created you you know like there was this there you know there was those places enabled me room to sort of take chances and work out in a way that you couldn't at the comedy store because you had, you know, Manny walking into the room and panicking and looking around and looking at you and seeing if they were laughing. And Esty would be like, I don't know. And you're like, oh, fuck, you know, it's so like and I could just go to Luna Lounge with all that.

Oh, fuck energy and just blow it out yeah yeah yeah but it was weird because we were all a lot of the people that were over there that started that were were club comics but but then that world became uh you know not this alternative world but an an alternate option yes yes i mean i certainly think that that space was i think more conduciveive to what I do now. But, you know, I started really seriously in Seattle and I was doing the clubs there and I was... The underground shit. You were living in Seattle? Yeah. I mean, after I graduated from college, I tried to do it in New York.

I was like 21 and I'm like, I don't know. So I went to Seattle to be an immigrant rights organizer. That's actually what I'd planned to be and i worked at an organization where the executive director was pramila jayapal who's a congresswoman now from from seattle and she was my mentor and i did stand up at night at the underground and like the the growing alt scene there and it was a hobby and so i just kind of developed it there and it kind of took off. But yeah, the Seattle is still the city that like I will go to the most. The original underground with old Ron down there. Yeah. Yeah.

Did they move? Oh yes. The original underground. That's right. With the little bullpen in the back basically where the comics would wait and they go up. Yeah. Yeah.

The stinky downstairs underneath that other bar. Right. Where you could see some of the original pike place market uh before the city had burnt down square pioneer century ago yeah that's right yeah um yeah i loved that club my god i mean that's i mean between that was a great place i mean that you it's not quite a road room but you know when a rough late friday show anywhere is still a rough late but it was a great basement low ceiling yes perfect i mean great i mean it was a great place to develop certainly so like i think that and um the alt scene there and then

you know i kind of stem from there but i still like i'll rent a little 50 seat theater in seattle and work out my material there like i'll do an hour of stuff mostly new and just like do uh i'll find a way to work it out kind of the way the british comics would do with with edinburgh like they do all these london preview shows before and they'd beat themselves up to get ready yeah sure and i got i got that out of san francisco when i went out there too i mean i've developed in a lot of different places but i don't think i knew about that so you went to college so comedy was not the thing. You were focused on immigration rights. Yeah.

I mean, I'm one of those, I think, young brown people that came of age post 9-11 and was politicized by it. And so I think that I was motivated from 18, 19, 20 on by trying to make the world better, whether, you know, that's human rights broadly or specifically in immigrant rights, because post 9-11 with all these hate crimes and detentions and deportations and all, you know, I think people like they talk about how bad Trump is. I think people forget those years right after 9-11 when everyone was pretending the country was united. A lot of people were scared to death constantly.

It was like being doubly traumatized because you're scared of, are terrorists going to bomb something again? Is another plane going to hit? And I'm a New Yorker, so that's scary. Plus, are my fellow Americans going to beat the shit out of me for no reason? So I think that very much drove the kind of work I wanted to do. I wanted to support communities of color, and I still did stand-up, and I loved stand-up. But this was like 2001 2002 like there were no brown stand-ups that were making it you know and how much of your act really like at that time because like i like how much of your act are you ashamed of now

oh when i was 18 19 20 like almost all of it i was a kid i had no life experiences the only thing i was thinking about is make people laugh they're laughing i did a good job yeah and that's it and and i knew that like an indian accent was funny because the simpsons proved that to us and i'm like ah this makes the people laugh if i do the funny voice i'll do the funny voice the jokes were well structured well written but they were empty like they didn't really say anything did you lean on did you self mock did you mock your were you culturally self-mocking yeah i think so not the not the worst case scenario of that but certainly i knew that i had that in my back pocket. I guess my question is, like, after watching The Problem with Apu is – because it's curious to me how we learn about things. And there's always room to learn about things.

And I learned from watching that documentary some things. And there are things that we know as comics and we tolerate as comics that you eventually have to question. And that continues to happen. Sure. comics that you eventually have to question and that continues to happen sure but i i just wonder because i think some of the more interesting stuff in that in that in in moments of that documentary is how the other incorporates their otherness into accepting the dominant paradigms view of them right yeah so so like when you were younger it was like you already knew what you wanted to do with your life and what fight you wanted to fight for for people of color

yet you couldn't quite see you had a slight blind side as to how you were stereotyping yourself or you just lived with it well i mean first of all i was doing stand-up before i ever started thinking about the world because the first time i did stand of all i was doing stand-up before i ever started thinking about the world because the first time i did stand-up i was 17 in high school on my high school stage and i did it through college and so to me it's like that came first right and so this political awakening happens after and you know so at that point the idea of like oh you can say something with your stand-up and have meaning and make people uncomfortable and you can still be funny yeah that was a a lesson i mean i probably learned

that lesson a little bit from from you from david cross's uh double album shut up you fucking baby yeah which is also the reason i started cursing so much and um paul mooney sure like i saw paul Paul Mooney. Sure. Like I saw Paul Mooney do stand up in Washington, D.C. in 2003. That's a long show. Oh, my God. The servers were so angry. The wait staff was furious. I middled for him in Sacramento once. Oh, my God.

You middled for Mooney? What was that like? Well, I learned an important lesson about racism. But it's not the one you would think. The lesson I learned from Paul about racism, because of the nature of how he keeps antagonizing white people. Yeah, he really does. Right. But like, and you know, like in a place like Sacramento, it's mostly a white audience.

So if you go in there thinking you're not racist, by hour two, he'll find it in you. I love it, though. I love it. No, it's genius. It's, you know, obviously in D.C. it was a mostly black crowd, some people of color, and you have white people walking out. To be fair, some white people walked out because it was entering the third hour of his set but like for me it was incredibly cathartic because i didn't know that you could make an audience uncomfortable and yet i'd never laughed harder before like the idea that something could be for me right was was new like this and i'm an indian dude i'm not even

a black dude like as an indie person this was the closest we got i'm like oh this this doesn't need to be for white people because everything else was meant for white people and then you have to interpret their experience and compare it to yours to be able to to you know because if i'm like well i'm not going to watch this white shit what am i growing up watching do you know what i mean yeah you you have everything is made for white people and you translate it so it fits in your life because you're an american you're born here he he made something for people of color black people specifically yeah but it was like this is fucking great you can say what you want not everyone's gonna like it but who gives a shit it makes it better no right and I think that

the point about some of the more mind-blowing things that you know I had to reckon with as somebody who claims not to be racist but accepts a a certain amount of white privilege, obviously, because it's where I come from as a Jew white guy. But just the lack of representation culturally, I don't think I ever really thought that through until relatively recently. Sure. But like, you know, when I was watching the Apu doc, I was like, I never watched The Simpsons. I never watched them.

So I have no point of reference with Apu. Sure. And I don't really have a point of reference I you know I with convenience stores well my association with Indian people has always been at restaurants and it's it's a very Indian restaurants and then I it was always with reverence you know like like for years I just I would I taught I said it to Mindy Kaling who I think I offended just you know dramatically but I was like you know I just want to go to India because they have such great food you know like but i don't i don't know anything else about the culture right right it's not a stereotype i feel like the the most important takeaway from that

documentary is that one people should have the right to represent themselves yeah uh two i think more representations are always better because also i think you get better stories you know there's something that accent and that character is hacky it was hacky back then i think i read a simpsons interview where they were saying that when that character was created we already knew that was a was a stereotype and a cliche so we didn't want to do it until you know hank azaria did the voice and we started laughing. Yeah, the Indian voice has been around forever. I mean, but the thing is like, you know, the thing about any kind of racism or a lot of these like simple racial jokes is they're like, they're hacky. Like just creatively, anyone can do them.

They're not particularly clever. Why didn't you talk to Jerry Bedknob? Oh, God, Jerry Bedknob. I mean, that's to be fair. Jerryknapp, that's like the proto. Like, he's way back. That's like, would he have been the first Brown South Asian comic? Probably, right? Maybe, yeah.

Maybe he would have been. I can't, because then, you know, I'm thinking after that, it would have been like Russell Peters and Aladdin Ulla and all these other folks, Vijay Nathan. But, like, he would have been well russell peters and aladdin ulla and all these other folks of vijay nathan but like he would have been well before that yeah he's not like ancient but he's you know that's the first wave you know that's always the first way yeah it's like pat marita's stand-up like if you've seen pat maria was a great stand-up but like right he used he used to call himself the hip nip i mean

that was his sure his thing you know this stuff was very stereotypical there's also i think a difference between playing to your own and playing to a mass audience too like you know russell does lots of accents russell peters and he and he certainly he's he's certainly a groundbreaking south asian comic and i think a lot of us owe him something for what he's done but like you know people are very critical like oh he does so many accents but if you look at his crowds like they're mostly south asian and asian he's basically open stand-up markets around the world people have started doing stand-up because they saw him perform in dubai or india or wherever like well i think that the it's what's interesting about him is that he kind of covers the expanse of the non-African American Brown experience somehow that's very

interesting yeah that that his audiences are are diverse within the spectrum of Brown non-African American yes that's I think that's very true and that and he's global also right for that reason I mean there's lots of comics like that like they have really important cultural roles like Rex Navarrete like he has you know to a lot of filipino folks he's their guy yeah you know yeah there's a lot of guys i think one of the great punch lines in your last special was the mango podcast punch line you don't think anyone will listen to that how about a billion people which i thought like then i felt like he's probably right i mean he's probably right do you know who doesn't agree?

Is everybody I pitched that idea to in the podcast world? Like they're totally wrong. It would be so huge. You would just have to, you'd have to somehow introduce it into that market. And people really underestimate the sort of like loyalty and need to support their own. Yes. There's not enough of us at this point to like i mean there's enough of us now where we can hate bobby jindal and nicky haley right yeah but there's not enough of us where like uh you know i completely hate harry kundabolu it's like yeah he's he's

annoying and he complains too much but good good for him. Like, they're still like that. But that's interesting. But what is that politically? You know, because how do you, I mean, because politically you are of a certain ilk. You are progressive and outspoken leftist even. And, you know, when you see someone like Nikki Haley or like Bobby Jindal, Do you see that as fundamentally calming in a way? Because their approach to the American experience is something it's extreme in the other direction.

That's a good question. First of all, regarding my leftism, I think it's taken a hit since I had the baby. There's something about a baby that turns you into a capitalist so quickly. Let me start there it's okay it's okay to you can like money and the second thing um to a degree i think that we all have different ways to deal with being an outsider in a place

and and and what fitting in looks like yeah and you know and for some people it's like do whatever it takes to succeed you know assimilate as opposed to it like i'm about integration but i also grew up in new york city so that place is everything all at once constantly it's constantly changing there's always a bunch of different languages there's always a bunch of different cuisines you might not know everything about your friend but you are familiar enough because you went to school together like like they grew up with south carolina north carolina like whatever they the louisiana like i'm assuming their experience was very different but i also think you know once they realize okay this is also something that, first of all, I've assimilated into this

culture. These are some of the mainstream beliefs, and this is the easier stance to take, or this is the stance I've learned to take from growing up here. They've kind of run with it. And to me, it's not completely genuine. I know Bobby Jindal certainly hit up South Asian, like Hindu temples and other south asian centers for money when he was running so as much as he can say like i don't play race it's not about race it's like well when you needed the money you certainly were into it well it's interesting i wonder what they're like because like i you know that whole second generation you know with a vengeance american kind of thing yeah you know that there's a like I would assume there's a desire to pass, but there's also

a desire to overcompensate, you know, in terms of like strange jingoism to command respect from the people that would have usually hated you. I think there's some of that, but there's also like, you know, my whole, to me, it kind of comes down, like at a certain point in South Asian American political circles but there's also like you know my whole it to me it kind of comes down like at a certain point in south asian american political circles there's dinesh d'Souza and there's Vijay Prashad all right dinesh d'Souza worked for reagan he's saying stuff about like indian cultural superiority and talking about black inferiority and how it's cultural and all that. And he's just playing into this whole model minority thing. And you have Vijay Prashad, who is a Marxist,

who wrote the book The Karma of Brown Folk, playing off of W.E.B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk, who is saying that while Du Bois asked, why are black people posed as the problem of America? black people pose as the problem of america you know you know prashad saying asians and south asians are seen as the solution to the black problem like the ultimate sin of slavery all of a sudden you push that aside and say well it's black people's faults because we have these other dark-skinned people these other people who aren't white who are succeeding so so there's something wrong with you and there's you know he's america's been able to

use that racial triangulation to consistently keep us as non-black minorities as outsiders while keeping black people as inferior but still american and so god i god that while i'm saying that i'm like god damn i'm in the wrong profession that is a waste of an education no but but also that triangle lets white people off the hook somehow but but yeah but no what but i mean to segue from that idea that you know that your education or what interests you or or what causes motivates you you know you you know what you do and what i've struggled with at times more so at different times but in my last two specials a little more than the the one before that is integrating these ideas into comedy that people can understand i mean you were tracy morgan joke on the last special about him telling you you know you're too smart and

you know what would be hilarious is if a guy that looked like you and sounded like you said you know i was looking my girlfriend's asshole or whatever. Which he's right, by the way. Objectively, that that would be effective. No, but we do it. You do it. I mean, it's like, you know, you're the smart guy, but, you know, you you also your appreciation for the comics that you appreciate enable you, you know, to be filthy, you know, in a moment and in a selective way that you're not

a filthy comic, but you know how to use the device confidently, even though you call yourself out on it, which bothered me. Why did it bother you? It's a little bit of a wuss move, I thought. Just jerk off. You're okay. You can just jerk off. Are you kidding me? To me, that wasn of a wuss move i thought you know just jerk off you're okay you can just jerk off just jerk off are you kidding me i to me that wasn't a wuss move that's me like because you know

i'm a huge the biggest comedic influence in my life outside of margaret cho that made me want to do stand-up when i was 15 and paul mooney who told me that like who showed me that you can make people uncomfortable is stewart lee right i'm obsessed with stewart lee that's right i remember that yeah i remember you being obsessed with Stuart Lee. Remember, I'm the one who kept telling you, you should interview Stuart Lee. You're not going to get hip to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I got you,

you remember you emailed me and I gave you all this info on him and clips to listen to. I'm such a huge fan of him and his ethos. I mean, he's one of those guys who's like, oh, there are no rules. Whenever comics, when people are going after Hannah Gatsby

and saying, it's not stand-up it doesn't kind of stand up and it's like where does this this purest nature of stand-up come from when it's like it's the lowest production values it's a person a microphone it can be anything you want it to be i know i have no comics who've performed on pool tables and without yeah no, no, I've done that. Sure. No, but I think that came with, you know, that that ultimately what happened with alt comedy and the sort of I think the produced show movement. And then with TED Talks is that comics felt like they were losing turf that, you know, we paid our dues in this particular context. And now there are these infiltrators.

So I think it comes the purest mode comes from the old idea of dues paying and club work. And then, you know, they sort of judge on those lines. I think it's that simple. That line that doesn't work anymore. Of course. Especially like, you know, people are complaining that. That said, though, I did pay my dues. And you did pay your dues. Yes. anymore of course especially like you know you people are complaining that that said though i did pay my dues and uh you did pay your dues yes i i have audio uh evidence of you talking about

paying your dues actually and i was only halfway through the dues i hadn't even hit the hard part of the dues when you talked to me but what i'm saying is that you do honor your education by doing the kind of shit that you do and at what point did you realize you could do that what joke was the turning point for you where you realize like this is a political joke it's effective it it makes people look at what what they take for granted differently and uh it opened a window because usually you know which moment there's two bits one of them was this joke about um the koh-i-noor diamond which is the diamond that the british stole from india in the probably 1700s maybe right um and how it's on it's like one of the british crown jewels and it's on you know it's on one of their crowns. And it was a bit about like

reading, I haven't done it in forever, but like a museum exhibit that says that it was found in India in the 1700s. Like, yeah, it was found there. It wasn't taken from India. It was found because we were just eating them. We didn't know what they were. You know, we were making diamond biryani till the British showed showed up and and they taught us how to use our opposable thumbs and i took those diamonds away so there's there was a bit i did about that that was like okay this is about colonialism it has a bit of anger which i think i had to learn gradually that anger was the place that i guess my comedy comes from the most you know i think that's why i think that's why you and i might have had tension and what i saw in you that i related to and resented or that we there's the thing we had

in common yeah i think you and lewis black especially lewis black because he lewis black screams um i think but he's cartoon like he's figured out how to do it right right right but i definitely think that release of anger and frustration as funny i think you definitely were you know influenced me particularly that first record which i listened to obsessively like i love was uh not sold out right oh the 9-11 record yeah yeah yeah uh were you i remember you opened by talking about how you had a cold sore yes that's right yeah that's not sold out and that has the bit about thinking that the fbi is watching me that i want to see my file yeah that's my favorite joke on it where right where you know mapping masturbating again now he's sleeping crying now yeah crying for no

reason yeah uh yeah there's a few bits i think the bit on there that I think for me had the most impact for a lot of awful reasons but was the one where you talk about suicide and where you say have you ever gotten so depressed how you think about suicide not because you actually want to do it makes you feel better I still kind of talk about that joke I don't want to do it but it

just it it just makes me feel better knowing i can if i have to yeah oh that that thing stayed in my psyche probably way too long uh because i think it's still in mine i mean i mean there is a part of me i will say before before the kid that saw the end of the world in the same way right like like a nuclear annihilation or this thing. Oh, thank God this whole thing's over. Like there's that relief in the same way as an individual. It's going to be quick for everybody. Oh, thank God.

We're all in it together for the first time. Yeah. Done. Which all of a sudden feels different having a kid. It's like, well, I want him to at least experience something. I want him to at least experience a horrible authoritarian racist culture that he's going to be growing up in. And ice cream. Yeah.

So, okay. So the first kind of aware bits were about colonialism, which oddly to me. Yes. like only recently took into consideration because of a trip to London where, where I realized like that the, the people of color experience in Europe is completely different than America, but I was not educated that way. But I went to an art exhibit at the gallery. I can't remember which get the Hayward and I, and it was all a reflection on colonialism.

And all of a sudden my mind just blew about that. Like I'm still i'm a 57 year old man who's relatively progressive and fairly open-minded but i never really kind of absorbed the idea and result of colonialism properly because i didn't grow up in it and i didn't study it i mean my parents speak english do you know what i mean and there's like english is still one of the official languages of India. Right. Like it's also the administrative language in addition to Hindi.

So, you know, yeah, I mean, like it's certainly it's very strange being in a colonized country coming from like whose family came from a place that was colonized. coming from, like, whose family came from a place that was colonized. There's something weird about, like, we got them to leave, and now we're going to another place they went and they took over. I mean, we're all contributing. Like, look, I'm benefiting from it, too, by being here and living off this land. I'm also, like, the, you know, I have caste privileges, you know? Like, a lot of the Indian people that are in this country, you know, they came from upper classes, especially that first wave with visas. I mean, you know, they were brought to this country, you know, with educations to get more educations to support the U.S. economy. And they come from upper caste backgrounds. How did your parents come?

My dad's sister, my aunt, came. I think she's a nurse. So her and her husband, who's a doctor, came, moved to Kansas, then brought my uncle and my dad and sponsored them. And then my dad eventually moves to New York. From Kansas? From Kansas. He spent his first year in Independence, Kansas,

which is a very small town, where he was once asked if he was chinese because nobody knew what to make of him um but then he he moves to new york lives with some friends there and then eventually my mom and him got married an arranged marriage in 81 and then my mom comes over so it was it was arranged back home back home yeah my mind it was interesting my mom i mean i think it speaks a lot to my mom's really unique experience is that like she was a doctor as a south indian which is very conservative south indian woman in her like late 20s with her own practice. She never learned to cook. She never had to do any of the domestic things that a lot of young Indian women, especially of that time, are taught to do and how

marriage is ultimately the goal. My mom had her own thing, man. You know what I mean? She's told me, I love you and your brother, but if I never got married, I'd be fine being a spinster reading books for the rest of my life. That would have been fine, too. So I think she actually took the biggest hit. To me, both my parents' stories are really interesting, but I think my mom's sacrifice to me, that's the real story. If she wanted to be a doctor here, she would have had to go to medical school again. She had to take an exam, automatic it didn't automatically transfer over

i don't know what the rules are now and between raising two kids and my dad so technically three kids uh it was it was difficult you know like i think yeah your dad gets sort of like he takes a couple hits in the special too and my parents always take hits but like what well having seen like the idea of an arranged marriage i think to me and to a lot of people is sort of like well that sounds horrendous and how do you remain committed to that you know when they didn't have to do that in this country right um i mean it one i think that it's not always terrible you know there's enough stories of arranged marriages uh that work out and it's a lifetime of i learned to love someone and this is an incredible

partnership i've shared with some person there's also this is a terrible marriage and thank god i got out and then there's the i'm in it because of the social and societal pressure to stay and at a certain point you have to accept that they were figuring things out too and i think my dad certainly like was falling in line with what he expected you know a wife to be and my mom you know was falling in line with what she was told that she had to be um but secretly she she knew otherwise and uh and eventually you know my mom's a brilliant woman she again had her own practice in in you know in a small town in andhra pradesh southern india like her life was so different than the life she's lived in 40 plus years since yeah 40 years since so you know i think that like there's lots of stories and i think a lot of women have these stories you know it's not just south asian

women it's not just indian women there's a lot of women that have stories of like expectations ruining uh or affecting the course they were on and changing you know what they expected there's a lot of tragic stories like that you There's a ton of women like that. Yeah. So we certainly have our share. And I think my mom certainly is an incredibly forward-thinking and thoughtful, brilliant woman and is beloved by people who meet her. And at the same time, beloved by people who meet her uh and at the same time i think she's this idea of duty and what is your duty as a woman you know that stuff's ingrained man that doesn't go away wired that's and that's not again i just want to reinforce that's not just various indian cultures

i mean that's everywhere and that's just how it looks in our scenario and in our context. So is your brother still in the band? No, that band broke up, uh, eight years ago. What's he doing? A lot of things. He's been,

uh, yeah, he's has a, I think he's sold something to Spotify. He has like, the band was Das racist. Das racist. Yeah.

He was the hype man. Dap. Well, yeah, yeah. But he's still in the music racket. Nah, not really. I i mean he djs a show called chilling island and he like does his own thing but it's not nah he doesn't act he doesn't

play music he never played music you know right but sounds like he's still in the area yeah we're developing our own things together and we're pitching things together which are you yeah which is always like a dream thing like i I've always wanted to work with my brother. He's my best friend and he's definitely the smartest and most creative person I know. So that's nice. Yeah. No, I think we as a team have always been kind of, yeah. I think the other thing I'm trying, I keep trying to figure out like what it is about,

you know, our dynamic, me and you. It's also the thing of having to accept. And I think, you know, we both, I think maybe Stuart Lee made it easier for us in the sense that, you know, he told me, you know, when I talked to him. But we had to accept that we're not for everybody and that's a benefit. And that there's nothing we can do to be for anybody. Not that we want to, but it's not even available to us as an option. Yes.

Because secretly, you know, when you think about other people's success or the size of other people's success, or why can't what I say be as entertaining and as far reaching as that other motherfucker? There is part of your brain that does that. But then you realize it's never going to be.

Oh, I had to put that away a long time ago. We've all gone through that, right? Where you start comparing yourself to your peers or how come I don't have that? Well, yeah, I still get that sometimes. But I'm talking specifically about- You still get that? Sure. A little bit. Well, sometimes because I see get that sometimes, but I'm talking specifically about- You still get that? Sure. Really?

A little bit. Well, sometimes because I see myself a certain way, right? Okay. If I look at my last special, I'm like, I'm not going to get better than that. I'm not going to get better than End Times Fun or the one before it. I'm just not. Everything I ever worked towards is in there. Everything I've ever done to make me me is in there.

All right? And they did fine. They did well. The timing of the last one was prescient and fucking weird, you know, because it was there was a prophetic element to it, but it didn't blow up. You know, didn't you know, didn't get me an Emmy nomination, but it's really the best I can do. So there's part of me that thinks like, what is it? I mean, I couldn't have been more accessible. Okay, fine. Mike Pence blows Jesus at the end. I still couldn't have been more accessible.

So there's like, that's the thing. It's like, how is this not for everybody? Why aren't there more kids at my shows? You know what I'm saying? Oh my God, this is the conversation we had 17 years ago why are there not more people at my shows how come how come i don't have an emmy i don't know day i don't know what what is dane cook doing i don't know why people like that guy yeah i don't know why people like that guy okay okay all right but the truth is is

i know i have a tremendous beautiful fan base i know i can i sell out the places i go to i and i know all that you're a top 100 american comic all time without question good yeah no i i agree i agree i know so like in the sense that i i get it sometimes it's not real. You don't want to know where you rank in the top 100? I'd rather not. Okay. All right. But, because I don't know. Who makes those lists?

Some kid in an office at Rolling Stone? No, I was talking about an imaginary one in my head, but all right. All right. I'm glad I made the cut. So, like like it could have been top 20 would have been nice 100 sure i okay well thanks yeah but um but but but what i'm saying is that there's about about self-ownership and about knowing that like it's okay you know once you find your your place and you find your people and you find your voice

you know it's a very comforting thing and then to accept that like it isn't for everybody and that's okay and to sort of make fun of that which i do as well is is is great and and to sort of have the power to sort of make people look at things differently which is really why i got into comedy which is what comics did for me which is they would frame things in a way that i would understand and also to you know make me think about things differently and we can do all that and the fact that you were able to figure out how to do it you know around politics without seeming too strident which i think you had to work through or to anger that you had to work

through and balance it with mango jokes you know you know it takes time to do well to be fair that mango joke's all also about colonialism no i know i mean i think a lot i mean i'll say that i'm the all those things are and i appreciate that thank you but i feel like my my goal is still i still think about you on a tuesday night at the comedy cellar dying and talking about things like you know I remember like to me like you like oh this is what Pryor did like this is what you're supposed to do I've never

completely gotten there I've never shared the stuff that hurts the most I've never I haven't when you think about that in particular when you say that you seem to know what that is what is that what is the area of that in you depression anxiety oh like man fuck i didn't like i didn't expect to be alive five years ago like i wanted to be done yeah like this is not you know that's why i like the idea of like i'm happy i'm happy and tired because i have a kid and i'm still around but like for me it's funny because i'm saying like at one hand i'm saying

like i would love to talk about this stuff on stage and i'm saying it to you so i guess it's already kind of happening right now but like um you know to be able to share that like what it feels like to not want to be alive to be depressed to be anxious to have panic attack after panic attack after panic attack in a hotel room in australia at the melbourne comedy festival i had that what you had what you went to the melbourne comedy festival i got sent home from australia australia was your australia too had to say? But it was way before the Melbourne Comedy Festival. It was just like, I just, I bombed so badly on a five week run that they sent me home after the first week. You got to listen to me tell that story at some point. But okay. So what was

your panic attack about in Australia? It was, I don't know, man. It was everything. Everything was terrible. Certainly like it's a mix of what am i doing with my life and yeah uh i i'm sick why am i on the road constantly and i'm alone and i'm depressed and this this this sucks what the fuck am i doing with my life and i'm i'm in this you know i'm in this room they put you in the same room you're there for two weeks and uh for the we're doing a one-person show i was doing the head that headliners thing and it was it was with wyatt senac mike caplan and cristella alonso and so like two depressed guys a math guy well the thing is like i like i had to go on say i'm pretending it like i i wasn't feeling well

like just i was sick generally speaking in addition to being depressed on my mind but i'm pretending that everything's okay what'd you do today i just went around and saw stuff and i'm like no i was in bed having panic attacks and being tired and passing out and then waking up and i'm like oh where did i leave off oh yeah and then another panic attack like that that's what I would. That was what Australia was to me. And then probably drinking too much good coffee, which doesn't help the anxiety. So, no, I mean, at a certain point, I ended up like canceling six months of shows telling my reps that I just wasn't feeling great. Yeah, I was just I just feel kind of sick, you know.

But meanwhile, I'm like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. What do you what do you think it was? Was it was it fear it fear i mean was it like do you think it's clinical depression because was it just like an anxiety i had been depressed for years and you know definitely refusing to to medicate in any way because fuck that plus you know i think a lot of south asian cultures um the idea of you know sharing your personal life with someone else is very taboo do you know what i mean like that's not something yeah i get it i get it you got to keep uh you got to keep it to yourself because we're trying to make it here right exactly this is this is for this is us and so that's you know you don't and plus you don't let outsiders know

your shit right uh and to break through that to accept therapy to begin with then medication just felt like a weakness right and and you know i'm a homebody that chose a really weird job for a homebody like i'm a well-traveled homebody yeah and i'm so that's anxiety yeah it's anxiety it's being alone it's like what value am i adding to the world? It's, you know, stuff at home that I don't want to get into, but it's like a lot of that that's building. And it was not good, you know? It's funny. I was talking to Kamau Bell the other day. W. Kamau Bell is one of my best friends.

He's a mentor. He's a brother. Like, he's like, he's, i owe him so much as a as a friend but you know i was talking to him about this the other day and he had no idea any of this happened five years ago and i just assumed i had told him but like it was one of those things where like you know i think about my life in terms of five years ago everything is really five years ago like when people talk about this documentary about this apu documentary to me it's like it was a pop documentary that for me was like a side project i thought was interesting that turned into this whole global thing where people in brazil are

sending me death threats in portuguese like you know when was this when was that when did you make that uh the thing came out i think in 2018 the apu doc and like to me the apu doc the thing that i'm proud of is the fact that that was one of the first things i wrote a pitch for after i came out of where i was like it was one of the first things that you know that i actually decided to make like i'm like i kept going you know like that and that and my second record i'm like this came out of a bad period to me everything from this point on is fucking gravy like um so you made it through that so so when i asked you originally what got us here is like you know

that you feel like you need to you that you don't address that on stage well well, maybe you don't need to. I feel like being able to address, both as a human being, but also as a performer, being able to address the most difficult things and turn that into art, that's what the great performers do. And I feel like people who like my standup, they know who I am through what I'm saying and through what I believe, but they have no sense of any of that. They have no sense of the context that creates those feelings. Right. Well, my suggestion is I would definitely punch it up a little bit.

You don't think the suicide would have been the bigger punchline, right? If I had done it, that would have been the bigger. No, no, no. I'm just saying that like that would i think that the intensity with which you were explaining it you know this this feels like when i first talked to you that was the that was the energy that you had when I first talked to you at the cellar. So funny.

I'm sorry you went through that. What's the name of that clown that everyone talks about? The one- Pagliacci? Yeah. Sad clown? Yeah. Yeah, that's who we are. Yeah.

That's funny, though, because I can't see it in you anymore. So maybe I don't see it. See what? The anxiety? The depression. Not anxiety. It's anxiety. I feel like I'm in a very different place than I was.

I think I put a lot of work in, and I don't think I understood the work I put in. I also don't think I understood the impact I was having on other people. I don't think I understood. And I'm still working on I was, I understood. And I'm still working on like the selfish choices I made and things, you know, when you're depressed, when you're miserable, you know, you're dragging everybody, when you're drowning, you're dragging everyone down with you to keep yourself up. And I was doing that. Like, I feel terrible about it. I know that the version of me that did it isn't the me that's talking to you now. But like,

you know, to me, but like you know to me like you know it's funny like hearing people talk about that's the guy that wants to kill the cartoon character and i'm like i don't give a fuck about that yeah but what but like see like i i didn't really know about all this so so and after the this is after you got through the depression you made the the apu doc which is basically an argument you know uh founded in you know the the stereotype that sort of because uh uh south asians were so uh not represented culturally in america that apu became this sort of this this identifier for almost all white americans it's a few things one it's that it's the idea of this is for almost all white Americans.

It's a few things. One, it's that. It's the idea of this is how a stereotype carries, how this particular stereotype was grandfathered in because The Simpsons is this show that's lasted long that anyone could have expected. The impact a stereotype has. Also, it's a singular example,

which is useful to look at minstrelsy in general, how it's worked historically. We got Whoopi Goldberg to talk about the history of black minstrelsy and kind of kind of the the legacy of that uh the impact that has but but ultimately the the journey was to for somebody to take fucking responsibility for apu and what it put you and your indian compatriots through as a stereotype i think that's i think that was the way to sell the documentary i mean i think the documentary i wanted to make had no voiceover and was just edits between interviews but i was doing it for true tv and we had to account for commercial breaks but it also but i thought it was very

effective and provocative and you talked to a lot of the right people and i thought that the lessons about you know you know non people not being represented culturally is a big it's everything it's a very good 101 and i think what's what's hard is that if you're somebody who knows this stuff like for brown people for people who it's like this is old man this is like shit so for me it was like i know the only thing that was really interesting and it was to be able to talk to other brown people you know and also be able to talk about like such a jithre and the history of the the apu trilogy i know i want to go see that those movies again i only saw the first one i'll but i mean that to me is like the film like i made a short film in 2006 called minoge

that covered the stuff that's in that documentary in 12 minutes. And to me, the documentary is saying more than showing. And I guess what I didn't understand or what I didn't know about was the, um, the, the backlash, you know, that I thought like, here's,

I'm such a fucking dumb idealist, progressive person or, or open-minded enough to think like, well, well, Hank, you know, he's not going to do the voice anymore.

They might not have the character anymore, you know, victory, uh, you know, well, Hank, he's not going to do the voice anymore. They might not have the character anymore. You know, victory. We move on. But I didn't realize that there was a global movement against you for ruining The Simpsons. And for people who didn't even see the documentary, because the documentary was only available in the US for more than a year. So people are reading what they think it's about from different articles. It's still not available in South America.

I don't know why all these death threats in Spanish showed up, but that's the way. Because at a certain point, it's a template, right? It's not actually about what the argument is. It's the idea of anybody questioning something becoming this politically correct, you know, crusade to destroy everything we love versus no i'm a simpsons fan i'm talking about the complications of art and how art and and culture interact that's what this thing's about it's not about hating a thing or not and what i wanted you know i was hoping for a nuanced argument about representation and instead i got like nonsense like the idea of making a movie about a cartoon and then having extra

security it shows is fucking absurd right and then having to tell like the the security guards why did they hire me it's like because i made a cartoon movie and people like the cart it sounds fucking ridiculous you did you had to do that you had to hire extra security yeah it's like you want that if you're saying lenny bruce type shit You don't want that when you're talking about the cartoon bothers me. Who wants that? It's stupid. There was credible death threats, you think, against you? Who knows?

I don't know what credible means. I know that it was enough where people are sending things to schools or venues, so you have to get security. Oh, my God. So you had to deal with that? My God. So you had to deal with that? And it's stupid for, again, something that was a nice side project that I thought would be fun to do on true TV. You'd just gotten through your depression and now this.

Yeah, which honestly, there was a part of me like you're trying to kill me. Two years ago, this would have been perfect. There's your joke. There's the punchline you were looking for. We got it. Where were you two years ago? I just wanted to start living two years ago. Not now. I just had my epiphany.

Yeah. ago it's not now i just had my epiphany yeah so you got but so but all in all frank hank his area never talked to you no but you know i've heard that he's done a lot of his own work on race and he's like read a lot and he studied a lot and he's done his own and to me that's kind of what i was hoping other people would do i just wanted this to be a spark point i thought for having this conversation and it looks like the only person that had it was hank which is like a fucking bummer well if the movie is honest it seemed like that's what you were gunning for i was trying to get a larger fucking conversation important like i i appreciate that guy for actually i mean i get why he didn't speak at the time and i'm you know i was annoyed at the time but the fact this dude did the work that's what you hope

like people with any sort of privilege do i think it did do that i think a lot of things are happening even in the shadow of this dismantling of our our government that may or may not take is that there have been a lot of proactive events and movements going on that clearly are having an impact. I think to deny that that thing was provocative. I mean, I watched it and I was provocative to me. And, you know, and I'm a fairly, you know, like I'm old and I'm but I obviously it would resonate with me, but it definitely got in there and I learned a few new things.

And so I don't think you should discredit in any way just because a bunch of fucking monsters, you know, came at you, but. Yeah. But also keep in mind, like as a standup, what do you want, what do you want people to see? You want them to see your standup? Yeah, I know. But dude, I, you know, I, you know, what made me famous was a goddamn podcast.

So I was going to shows and i had my 2 000 listeners you know saying to each other on comment boards we should go support mark i'm like what do you mean support i've been doing stand-up 25 years i need an audience i don't need fucking a support group and then when then people then people would be like i really like your stuff and i'd be like well what do you like like people come up to me after the show. Don't fucking tell me about what you want to be known for. I really like your stuff. I'm doing this over two decades.

I didn't know why they knew me. Why did you know me? It took me years to integrate the two to where they became one thing and it didn't matter. Like there are still people that see me on glow and they don't know that i do anything else but when they see dude but they're gonna want to do your like they're gonna come to your stand-up if we ever have stand-up again like they're gonna come to the gigs obviously i mean that's fine i get it but they're all surprised like i just know you from glow i never knew you did this like how could you not know i've been doing i've been pounding my head against the wall for 30 fucking years i've done 50 conan o'brien's i've been performing in nondescript basements for 30 years how are you not why

isn't everybody in the loop i'm on twitter you have twitter but the way to look at that harry from a guy who's put it into perspective is see yourself as always discoverable yeah that's true i am googleable no but i mean literally people can find your shit and be like who's this guy right let's go check him out right but you're okay now what'd you do did you take medicine or you didn't? I'm great. No, I mean, yeah, I've been good. I think the last five years, you know, it's always up and down, but it's not living in the down. And it's the idea that, you know how when you're really depressed, it's the same day for years. It's just the same day. Like being able to wake up in the next day, being the next day is remarkable.

Oh, because your perception is fucked. Yeah, I in retrospect, don't believe I ever had actual depression. I think I suffer from paralyzing anxiety, future thinking. And I get to a point of dread that causes a type of paralysis that feels like depression. But it's actually at its core anxiety. of paralysis that feels like depression, but it's actually at its core anxiety. So if I treat it as such and I can get back into the present and sort of reconfigure how I'm approaching the day, I have some success at that. Whereas I think depression is paralyzing no matter what you do. That the level of dread I can experience and also the level of a lot of times it has to do with me not necessarily doing what I need to do

to feel better or like you know this there's this I think there's a thing like if I could like I think I don't think it's a South Asian thing but I think it's I think you and I are very hard on ourselves and that the expectations we have on ourselves are sort of hard to meet if not impossible so when you set that So when you set that up for yourself, you're only in the state of self-punishment. And eventually that's going to become exhausting and you're going to disappoint yourself and fall into a hole somehow.

I think that's true. I think there's a great deal of self-flagellation and that just is exhausting after a while. Yeah, and eventually it has to do with, you know, you know, faulty self-parenting, you know, expectations that were unmet or whatever you're projecting to. It's a deep wiring thing.

But I think what I'm saying now is that I think your success and maybe the baby, but also that, you know, your comedy coming, like a lot of these things that we didn't have self-esteem before, but also that, you know, your, your comedy coming, like a lot of these things that, that, that we didn't have self-esteem before, but you do stuff where you kind of can't deny it after a certain point where

you're like, I feel better. You know, like, why do I feel better about myself? Cause you've done some amazing shit. Yeah. You can't even take it. You can't even take that. I think part of it, you know, in this, right now, as you say this, I am 20 again. And I'm just kind of taking it in like, Mark thinks I've done some good stuff. That's nice. Can't Hari think he did some good stuff?

Can't we get Hari to think he did? Did you like the special? The special was funny, right? Yeah, it was good. It was good. It was good, right? Yeah, it was tight. It was good.

It was funny. Everything landed. Yeah, it did land, yeah. I could see you put the work in. You wrote the good jokes. You ran that shit for at least a year, some of it. That's correct. That's absolute-

You did good, man. Thanks. That's absolute. You did good, man. Thanks. So what's this podcast? So W. Kamau Bell and I have a podcast called Politically Reactive people after shows coming up and saying hey when are you bringing the podcast back and it's like it's been three years i don't think we're bringing it back um and we decided you know between covid and uh the demand for it that it was time to bring it back you know it's definitely it's it's a political podcast but more than that it's a it's an activist podcast i mean we certainly you know we don't have politicians on as much as we have people that are working on the ground who

are organizers academics um you know what's cool about it is that we can talk about something like gerrymandering which we did in one of the first seasons and that can be used in like college classes and high school classes which wasn't the intention or we could just be like you know goofing around like you know we did with like hassan minaj or you know asif manvi we're having alana glazer on soon like you know the cool thing about the podcast is that we're able to be to be light be be ourselves i mean we're great friends so that definitely lubricates the thing um and still be able to talk about stuff that maybe would have been seen as wonky otherwise and it's forward moving like it's not really this isn't a what do the republicans think address both sides

no it's a podcast with a very clear agenda to it and right and also like at this point you know people need uh you know people are isolated and they feel alone they feel crazy and you know those you know your voices and your ability to see things the 2am be be light be heavy you know kind of run the gamut of emotions be funny it's very helpful to people who are who are who are not able to get out much anymore also i mean i think it's a very good friendship and i think that's really mean, I think it's a very good friendship, and I think that's really what drives it too. It's like these two friends who care about the same things,

who are both comedians, who have this incredible dynamic, and who are very inquisitive and very thoughtful. I mean, I think that's part of what drives it. Also, I mean, Kamau and I used to be on the phone, and we'd have these amazing calls. We're like, this should be a podcast. And that's kind of what we want. And also, I mean, Kamau and I used to be on the phone and we'd have these amazing calls. I'm like, this should be a podcast. And that's kind of what we want this thing to be. We want that except with a bunch of brilliant people also teaching us stuff.

Great. Well, I'm excited that you got it back up. And I look forward to the new hour about depression and anxiety. Thanks. Get to work on that. I'm glad that we did some workshopping today uh i haven't been on stage in a long time so that that was that was good that was yeah you you tagged it man real good tag out of that thanks thanks mark one quick

thing i just want to say uh that i love my father very much and the man worked very hard and in case he's listening to this, and he will be, dad, I love you. You're a good dad. You're going to be a great grandfather and I just want you to know that. Nice. That's all.

Yeah. You might want to maybe call him too. Give him a heads up. Mom, you're a very strong person. I don't want to make it sound like you were purely a victim of fate that didn't have your own autonomy uh you absolutely do have your own autonomy but i do think the weepy immigrant story sells better mom and you know that good so i'm glad you got me maybe i'll do that uh with my parents if I can figure out some nice things to say.

Do you like the cop-out deconstruction at the end of this interview? No, I think it's a great closer. And I think that's how you're going to close your anxiety depression show. Do you think Stuart Lee will like it? Because ultimately that's what this is about. I think he'll like it if you're going to have to pace it a little slower and more deliberately. Okay. pace it a little slower and more deliberately okay take care buddy thank you mark yeah it's great to see you take care man all right that was harry again the podcast politically reactive with harry and w come out bell you can get that It's back. You can get that where you get podcasts. A special on Netflix,

Warn Your Relatives is up. And his documentary, The Problem with Apu, is now on HBO Max. Now enjoy the failed butter cake blues. Thank you. Boomer Monkey La Fonda

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