WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1387 - Rob Delaney / Sam Lipsyte

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Rob Delaney says the last time he was on the show, he didn’t have two coins to rub together. After that, he started a family, moved to London, created the hit show Catastrophe and saw his career take off. Then unfathomable tragedy struck with the illness and death of his youngest son. Rob talks with Marc about picking up the pieces and putting his thoughts into a new memoir, A Heart That Works. Also, Marc spends some time with his friend Sam Lipsyte to talk about Sam’s new novel, No One Left To Come Looking For You. 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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Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global bestselling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series, streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply.

Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening where we at how you feeling after the big long weekend that strange disassociative weekend it just starts on wednesday or or Thursday and it kind of smears on the calendar. You do the eating, you do the traveling. It's just a very weird time. I mean, I lost all sense of personal history, all sense of self-respect from the amount of food I ate, all sense of any kind of temporal. Is that the word I want? Temporal?

Is that time i just you know on top of the the general weirdness post-covid of time and the cultural malaise and shit show and just you know the climate weirdness it just everything becomes strange and it's stranger when you just you're floating in this thanksgiving zone of long weekend-ness. And this thing goes on through Christmas. It's just, this is the weird time. Usually just mildly weird because it's kind of vacation, but it's kind of sad and it's kind of winter.

I'm in LA. But still now it's just compounded by just a maelstrom of anti-Semitism and weirdness and just the general kind of like, when did the sky stop working? But let's not make it negative. How was your thing? Did you do a thing? I was very fortunate to bring food to another place. So it didn't stay in my house. I'm very fortunate not to have to look at a carcass and a pot of potatoes and way too much gravy and two different kinds of cranberry stuff. And just wonder, like, how do we eat this all? How many days are going to take us to eat it? And should we throw it out?

When can we throw it out? But I hope it went well for you. I hope everything worked out. Look, today on the show, I talk with Rob Delaney. I recorded it in London, as you remember, when I was there. You know Rob from the show Catastrophe and also his comedy and Deadpool and being one of the first big Twitter stars back in the day. Rob was on the show back in 2010, episode 55, one of our great early episodes. It was heavy, man.

A lot has happened for Rob since then. He moved to London with his wife and his two young boys. And while they were living there, they had a third kid, Henry. But Henry passed away. And Rob just wrote a book called A Heart That Works about Henry's diagnosis of a brain tumor the two years leading up to his death and how Rob and his family dealt with their grief. Also, I've got a short talk with my friend Sam Lipsight to talk about his new novel, No One Left to Come Looking for You. Very funny.

Well, let's get back to this Thanksgiving business. Yeah, I cooked a brisket. I did a 10-hour smoke in the Traeger, and it came out pretty fucking good. I baked a chest pie, brought that over with the stuffing the amazing philosophy professor stuffing the yeah the loaded stuffing the stuffing full of baggage the slightly traumatic perhaps uh sexually inappropriate cost of that stuffing is something that i have stuck in my memory but i've framed it and processed it and I'm left with stuffing and he's dead. But I did have a nice time, but I think that I'm a little tweaked.

I'm a little tweaked. I've been pretty detached from social media. The Twitter thing, it's odd. It didn't affect me that much. I don't use Twitter that much and i'm not that upset about it i i'd be more than happy for it to go uh instagram i'm barely on that anymore you know i check it occasionally uh you know i'm limiting the uh the email intake you know to mostly my just my personal emails and i'm just trying to clear my head to uh you know to get into this special i got gotta shoot the special on the 8th and i've only got three more shows to prepare for it and it's this happens every time i'm still not sure of how it's how it's going to be structured i need it to be fresh in my head i need something new to happen like i'd like to think that I'm not nervous about it.

But look, man, I'm sucking down cigars. I'm eating everything in sight. I'm losing my fucking mind. I'm jacked up on caffeine. It feels like that I just need to kind of rev up my brain in a sort of mania slash shame driven depression business, just this mishmash of emotions and feelings to avoid any sort of anxiety about the actual task at hand, which would cause anybody anxiety. But I just choose to fill in that world of possibilities of dread with a lot of other things. So I can be like, nah, I feel I'm pretty relaxed about the special. Look, you know, we've all been going through this

in terms of with me. Yeah. I've been doing this material for a year and a half and now we're going to do it. And I can only be an hour. And I'm sort of in this zone where it's like, I really need this cultural stuff to be in there. And I need this personal stuff to be in there. And it's just a matter of like finding the redundancies, trimming it down, weaving it together. And you would have thought I'd be working on that for the last year, but no, it really comes down to the wire with me. It's just the way I do it. So I've got these couple of shows coming up in Asheville and then

I've got the one in Nashville and then I'm doing the thing. Got to figure out what shoes to wear. I got to figure out how to not wear clothing that I'll only wear that one day and regret wearing for the rest of my life. I cannot seem to land in an outfit on television that I like ever, ever. The last special, I don vest and i wore a collarless uh shirt and uh these pants it looked okay but i was a little too skinny and like i never wore the vest again because i don't know what i was thinking the special before that i wore some old ass chamois shirt this red one that was like that it was very comfortable and i'm like i'm just gonna wear stuff that i wear every day it's like no no it's a special it's gonna be around forever wear special things but not new i don't know i'll be honest with you i got a stylist for this one to advise me

but i just bought these new pants black jeans at ship john and these new t-shirts that he set me up with. And they look pretty fucking good. And maybe a Western style shirt. I don't know, dude. I think really what's going on is I just need to do this special and I need a long break from hammering out the standup and it's coming. and i've got plans i don't know what you guys are doing for christmas but i'm gonna go spend time with my father i'm gonna see my mother uh in between my nashville show and my new york show do some family stuff and just sort of uh do the life thing it's so weird man you know it just talking getting older talking to people I was talking to Tom Driesen last night he's been on the show he's telling stories about old-timey

show business I'm hanging out with Tom Rhodes who I hadn't seen in a while you start to realize this is like we're kind of the new older guys and Driesens, like the way older guy, used to open for Sinatra, told an amazing story about Sinatra and saving Johnny Carson's life. And I don't remember him telling me that story, but apparently it's in his book. Still standing, I think it's called. But it was just so funny. It was me, Mo Mandel, my buddy Jerry Stahl, who had gone with me to the comedy store. And we're just standing around tom and he's telling these straight up fucking mob stories and all this chicago stuff and this

vegas stuff and it's just there's not there's not many of them left when show business was glorious and all the clubs were mob owned back in the day you know and i just i found myself at the comedy store the last couple nights doing a lot of parking lot time just hanging out in the day you know and i just i found myself at the comedy store the last couple nights doing a lot of parking lot time just hanging out in the lot talking to the young guys talking to the old guys getting ready to do my special being a comic so look um sam whipsite is really one of my closest friends and i have to be honest with you, this new book, No One Left to Come Looking for You,

is a great, funny book. And it's a quick read because it just moves. And it's set on the Lower East Side in the music scene. And it's just so funny and so tight. And there's a sort of a whodunit at the core of it. It's great. Uh, and it comes out, no one left to come looking for you

comes out next Tuesday, December 6th, but you can pre-order it now wherever you get books. And this is me and Sam catching up. and this is me and Sam catching up. No one left to come looking for me. For you. No one left to come looking for you. Oh, I blew it? Yeah.

Damn it. No one left to come looking for you. Yeah. Is that a riff on the Hillel thing? It's actually quoted. It's a lyric from a song by the band Come. Oh. If you remember Come.

I don't remember Come, but it is a good window into the world we're talking about. No, you know the one, it's like when they came for the hoo-hoos. You know, I said I'm not a hoo-hoo when they came for the ya-ya's. Right, yeah, exactly. And they said I'm not a ya-ya. Yeah. And then when they came for me, there was no one left. No one left. Yeah.

That used to be, I think, wrongly attributed to Einstein or something. No, it was a philosopher. Was it Popper? Not Hofstadter? No. Is it Popper? No, it was, I know who you mean. It was the theologian philosopher, right?

Niebuhr? Was it Niebuhr? What was his name? Yeah. We'll have to. Was it him, right? New? Niebuhr. Was it Niebuhr? What was his name? Yeah. Was it him, though? I don't think so. No, I think it was always wrongly attributed. No, it's that guy Hoffer, I think.

We have the technology just to look it up, right? I've seen it attributed to 20 different people is what I'm saying. What? What do you want? House cleaning? What do you got? House cleaning? What do you got? We're good. Okay, so by Martin Niemöller, a German Lutheran pastor.

But that's not Neuber. What's his name? What's that guy? Yeah, that was a thing. Different guy. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. This is from the Kammler.

We should move back. This is a Kammler. Yeah. From the band Kamm. Yeah. That has nothing to do with when they came for nothing to do with the jews although i think although the the leader of that band or one of them a woman named talia zedek yeah um was it you i think she is i think so oh is it you yeah I think she is. I think so. Oh, is it you? Yeah. But I'm not sure.

But the thing is, in terms of like this book is, and I've read a lot of your books, and I will say that I've read, I think, all of them except the one that you sent me. And I got to read the short one. But I feel that the pace of this, you can't put it down. A lot of great characters. There's a little bit of a detective story. There's points of reference in reality. Yeah. That was an interesting curveball about halfway through.

And also, I feel like you're not unlike... Look, I feel like you live part of this life. And I know that it's not you. And honestly, dude, this time I didn't even picture you. I almost always picture you as the main guy. Right. feel like you live part of this life and i know that like it's not you and i honestly dude this time i didn't even picture you i almost always picture you as the main guy right well usually the main guy is you know this kind of dumpy middle-aged guy exactly who's feeling like you know the pressures of uh yeah yeah yeah so it's easier to picture you like exactly but i didn't even picture a young sam i didn't picture a mulleted Sam from his rock days. A young husky mulleted Sam.

But not a mullet because of the mullet. I think it was just overcompensating for what you were losing, right? Exactly. It's a party in the back and nothing in front. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I still got something. Go fuck yourself. A defunct business in front. It takes place in a very specific. It's like, I still got something. Go fuck yourself. Yeah. A defunct business in front.

Yeah. It takes place in a very specific. It's 1993. It's the East Village. I was in a band then. And this main character, his name is Jonathan Liptack. But he decides that he's going to be called Jack Shit. Yeah.

Because he's in a band called The Shits. Yeah. And the novel begins. He wakes up one day. And his roommate, who is the lead singer of the band and has a terrible drug problem yeah has disappeared with jack shit's base yeah jack shit is the bass player and he's pretty convinced that he's taken the base to sell for drugs right and so the the the novel takes place over a few days as he's searching for his lead singer and his bass. Yeah.

And it takes him deeper and deeper into some mysteries and some murder. Yeah. And so it becomes a kind of like detective novel of sorts that also includes sort of figures of the time, some of whom became even more powerful as time went on. Yes, it involved the uh the new york machine the new york political machine there's the new york political machine there's the the the police yeah of that you know of that neighborhood um there the drugs of that there are the drugs and the drug dealers so there's a lot going on and um and we and he sort of jack shit is our guide through it but it's hilarious because you have to really sort of construct a music scene out of what was sort of like, you know, just I guess like no wave was probably about that time or was it everything was shifting.

Everything was shifting. It was just before Nirvana hit and then right after Nirvana. So everything is straddling that that period of time. Yeah, that they're there. that's when I was there. Yeah. And the thing that was interesting, I mean, I think about this a lot, about living there and living in any kind of congested area like that is there are probably, you know, a hundred music scenes happening on top of each other, unaware of each other.

Yes. So like you're in your little circuit with your bands, your friends, the clubs you play on certain nights, where you practice, the bars you hang out in, the apartments you hang out in. And, you know, then you like are walking down the street and you see flyers for some other bands. And, you know, they're in the same neighborhood you are playing the same places. But you're kind of like, I don't know anything about that. Right. Yeah. Right.

And like I have my world i have my little it's true and that but there was only a certain there's only a few cities that that could happen in yeah right and this was one of this was one of them and and also you just have the crashing waves of everything that came before in new york yeah you know like you know the original punks performance art you know new wave no wave art music well that these these these characters in this book are very much aware of how they're i think the yiddish word is knock schleppers they're you know the ones who've come after they're sort of they're it's they're too late in some ways you know punk came and went right you know they're they're in a kind of post-punk age but what does that mean and and

then there's and it's new york you know what does it mean to be in new york and now they're kind of almost the first wave of these gentrifying people. And they're like, there are people in the novel talking about that a lot. Right. And also about like, you know, the band that sold out in there getting all the attention. And then there's the band that like signs to get fit. And like our narrator is very, he's both incredibly, you know, bitter about them. He also kind of secretly thinks they're good.

Yeah. He doesn't want to admit that right anyone but that one of the best details of it is the guy who who who has the band that almost everyone has been in yeah right that that to me is such a detail of a music scene of any music right he's that everybody has passed through yeah that guy's band yeah and it still exists in some form yeah it's his band at this point and um that's so funny that band is called the annihilation of the soft left a lot of good names a lot of good funny but uh but so with this book though like what were the decisions you made like how is it because like it was do you think it's because

it is such familiar terrain that it just like the the pace of it because like it was do you think it's because it is such familiar terrain that it just like the the pace of it is different but you're you know you know well my last book was pretty uh it was a long book and there were a lot of different voices hark and there were different uh different povs in it i would switch characters and it was you know poly you know it it it was multi-voiced let's write it that way in this book i just knew i wanted it to be this one narrator um and take place in a few days and just be very contained yeah and be um and be and really i was thinking about that time it was i wrote most of this during the pandemic yeah and i i just decided i actually bought a couple of notebooks and i had

this like cheap fountain pen and i just wrote it that way and like didn't even look at the computer for a long time and just said i wrote it by hand i said i have to write a whole draft by hand before i put anything into the computer that was your idea that yeah and i just wanted to like get down that was the ritual that was the ritual i wanted to get to the real physicality of writing this book yeah and staying in this book yeah and um so yeah it's all it's all in like a couple notebooks and um the first draft really and uh and i was really those memories you know it all changes in the book and it's not the book is not my story or the story of my band but the feel of being alive in that time and place uh i was very connected to it while i was writing the book and each day i would just you know find myself just descending into that

sense of being like yeah 24 and i i was having to channel my, you know, really kind of both, you know, very alive and very dumb 24-year-old head to, like, to get there. It's so funny, too, that, like, descriptions of everything and the drugs and his, like, you know, the bodega thing. It's such a fucking, like, it's a type of, it's a New York novel, but it's not the kind you really you know i've never seen one like this and you wrote it all on paper do you think that that the idea of writing in notebooks uh connects you to something more personal because it is sort of a way of journaling in a sense maybe i mean i also it also connects me to like to me writing is can is even though we don't think of it this way is a very physical act yeah and the more sometimes i can at least for me i can get in touch with the physicality of of you know using ink to put down to put to make these symbols on a page in a certain order

yeah to evoke feeling and other people like that's you, that's a thing I'm doing with my body as well as my mind. Right. Or they're one thing. Yeah. And it's sort of one process. And so that was very useful for me to just get this draft, that first draft done and to feel that I could just tap into this one flow for the whole. Right.

But isn't that sort of like a, like almost like this weird Kerouacian trip where you, like, but you don't have access to cutting and pasting. He was writing on this television. I get it, but I'm just saying editorially. I was editing as I went. But things weren't going in the trash. In the sense of when you're editing as you go along on a computer,

you can literally excise things and they disappear forever. Yeah, exactly. No, here you just have to cross it out. Yeah, but it still exists. It still exists as this crossed out page. Yeah, absolutely. But that's good.

Yeah. That means you're completely responsible for your train of thought without the access of computer uh computer-enabled decision making which which takes you out of a flow like you can make decisions on the computer which completely upend whatever your real train of thought was because you can just move shit around right i mean one of i you know one of my favorite writers who i know you like a lot stanley elkin yeah uh he he you know he was middle-aged by the time the word processor really became something that people could use and he he said oh well everyone should be able to write a perfect novel at this point right with that thing with that thing

right that's the way he saw it yeah i wonder if he did he use one yeah he did oh yeah he called it his bubble machine well yeah i mean like do you like i thought i honestly thought like this this book like ended solid yeah like the third act was great like you know you it's satisfying oh thank you i'm glad yeah because that's a hard that's the hard one right how do you land this thing now landing it is really hard sometimes right because you got all this stuff like one, right? How do you land this thing? Landing it is really hard sometimes. Right? Because you've got all this stuff building up to it. How do you make those kind of decisions?

Because it's a very weird thing about endings in novels. I can't imagine the struggle of that. Well, it's funny because I knew I threw these things into motion in the beginning that they had the show coming up. But you also had to solve a caper i had to solve a caper they i mean it's very scooby-doo in a way they had to you know they have to he solves they solve the caper they deal they have a show and then they have a show to play and um but then i knew that couldn't be the end there had to be this other little quota right and that had to so like you know i always sometimes have you know i think of this as a it's a circle yeah but it doesn't meet yeah the two ends don't meet yeah they one kind of goes off right right right right and that that's sort of how you want to think about your ending so like just veering off a little bit but on some level the circle completes but it doesn't it doesn't

become a whole circle exactly there's some other thing that shoots over here exactly like where's that going yeah to try another circle right exactly it's going over to bleak to start a new circle yeah to start over again but when you were like because i thought it was all very i guess visceral is the word because i could picture all these people from down there on the lower east side because i lived there between second on second between a and b so i was like i could see all of it right yeah but that's where you were hanging out too right yeah that's exactly where i lived you lived where'd you what street you lived a couple different places but yeah avenue b yeah ninth street wow geez man so what happens is it going to be a movie oh i not not not that i know of unless uh well has to come out

first i guess yeah i think it would be a very good movie it'd be great yeah it'd be great movie i okay so do you want to pitch it you don't need me though you can do it on your own just call your agent it's not a tv show you don't need me you You already wrote it. I think it's a TV show. You do? Yeah. I mean, maybe a limited... Miniseries? Miniseries, yeah.

I mean, it's a movie. You're on a roll, dude. Yeah, but like, you know. Yeah, you're thinking ahead. Sam Lipside, people. No One Left to Come Looking for You comes out next Tuesday, December 6th. Pre-order it now. Funny book, good book, tight book, beautifully written book. We'll have more

of me and Sam posting this week for full Marin subscribers. Plenty left. Go to the link in the episode description to subscribe to WTF Plus or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus to get all that stuff. Now, let's go back to England. I did a few interviews in England. I interviewed Rob Delaney, Armando Iannucci, Courtney Love, Tommy Tiernan. And I guess this is the second of the UK conversations. I was actually in Ireland when I interviewed Tommy. But me and Rob

caught up, me and Rob go back. The difference between Rob's life now and Rob's life when I first talked to him is profound and a beautiful success story, but also a tragic, horrible event occurred that he had to process, which we talk about it, the loss of his son. And the book, A Heart That Works, comes out tomorrow, November 29th. You can get it wherever you get books. And this is me catching up and really talking about grief and loss, among other things, with Rob Delaney. grief and loss, among other things, with Rob Delaney. 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.

Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Yeah, we might as well just get on the mics and regroup. Okay, terrific. Yeah, very happy to. Yeah, nice to be holding a mic too. yeah we might as well just get on the mics and regroup what do you think terrific yeah very good

about it yeah nice to be holding a mic too like an american time you fucking held a mic well uh i haven't done much stand-up post-pandemic uh because i've been fortunate to be doing a lot of acting work and i have young kids yeah and i after henry's death i don't uh you know i massively prioritize family time so i would love to be doing more stand-up but now with the book right acting haven't done much right doing a shitload up until up until the pandemic really but i've only been on stage yeah no the reason i specified i'm happy to be holding a mic is because i've been doing things where projection was necessary for the last few months, but it's always like

a British head mic where, come on, I want to hold my gun. You know what I mean? I didn't know there was a thing, a British head mic. You mean the TED Talk mic? Yeah, the TED Talk mic. The wraparound mic? Yeah, Brits love that. They'll do stand-up in one of those.

Jesus. Yeah, it always looks odd to me. It looks like i always feel like that that you're sort of expected to do magic yeah yeah yeah a little trick there's a rabbit out of your hat but i was looking at the uh the i haven't talked to you it's been a long time 2010 is that true is that fucking nuts that's that's stressing that's when the that's when that podcast when we did that podcast my lord but i don't feel uh like distant from you no i'm very abreast of all that you do in fact um you're familiar to me yeah the bad guys is on heavy rotation in our house you're so good in that thank christ mark marin is doing cartoons because your voice is so just glorious oh good it's so good i i was funny because with

that i was the only i've drinking nine americanos i have no terrific i have no sense of it four you have just four i don't know i can't i miss drip coffee that's it starts to depress me when i get here i'm like i can't take any more espresso yeah it's funny they so i've lived here for eight years now and people sometimes if you go somewhere whatever uh some holding room or whatever and they're like oh apologies the coffee's not that good i'm like oh it's fine i'm american i'll drink garbage is it brown let's have it you know but it's still espresso uh sometimes yeah i can't find a drip coffee but uh yeah so i'm sweating because i have no way to calibrate how much of this I need. Yeah, well, you're among brethren.

2010, yeah, I mean, you hadn't done anything, really. No, nobody knew who I was, certainly. And you were like, you know, brooding and weird a little bit, weren't you? I mean, I remember we talked about the horrendous alcoholic bottom hitting and driving the car. But I mean, you were doing stand-up, you were doing the Twitter thing. I guess you weren't depressed, but it was a heavy talk and it resonated forever. Yeah, well, I didn't have a nickel. Is that what it was?

Oh, yeah. I was sharing a car with my wife and she was teaching. She was the breadwinner at Culver City Middle School as an English teacher. And I'm taking the bus or her car to go do stand-up, making less than unemployment. You know the things where like- During UCB. Oh, certainly. That was like, you weren't doing the big clubs.

No, no. We were just doing, that was when alternative comedy was a thing. Yeah. But it didn't go anywhere. It's all gone now. Oh, God. All of it, all the bringer shows, everything's gone.

Oh, Lord. I think, I don't know. I am old. Yeah, yeah. And I have no idea what people are doing. Yeah i mean well that's interesting you know and then because now that i like i had even had two kids before anybody really knew who i was because of catastrophe yeah and um which is great i mean how great to only have people learn who you are after you've been sober for some time yeah so you don't go bananas yeah

yeah yeah yeah um like i just bought some plane tickets to go home to boston and uh you go i've been going a lot lately who's there still everybody you folks are still alive uh my dad is dying he's got leukemia and is is on his way out so i've been there a lot lately yeah um and we've been having a really good time yeah i um you know i think about death talk about death and lately witness it a lot lately but uh with my dad it's sort of different because he, the amount of quality time that we have spent together lately has been amazing. He was a huge part of my son Henry's life. He became proficient and certified in taking care of a little tiny kid, you know, one and

then two with a complex tracheostomy. So he could do emergency care and airway maintenance. Was he here? Yeah. So he came here a lot. He was the only one of the four grandparents who was retired. So they were all amazing and came when they could. But my dad would come for months.

And got certified as a caregiver for a child with cancer. Yeah. And so he was so great. So I don't want him to die because I love him and I love spending time with him. But God damn it, his final innings were glorious. And I'm so proud of him and so grateful for him. So I'm going to go there and get in bed with him and hug him and put my head on his

chest and it's weird you know because i've had a son die yeah i don't as i said i don't want my dad to die yeah but i'll pull through you know what i mean and and i've just been able to focus on loving him yeah well that's i mean well i well the title of the book uh you know heart that works i you know is a it seems like a fine metaphor for a life that you know eventually lands well let us right play let us also mark maron uh acknowledge that uh that's from a lyric by juliana hatfield um from boston and uh yeah the full lyric being a heart that hurts is a heart that works. And the second I heard that on WFNX in Boston, I was like, oh, look, my life mantra has arrived. So that was always part of the rotation of songs

in your head since you were a kid? For sure. Really? Yeah. I mean, I wonder how old I was. I should look up how old I was when that came out. Yeah. I probably had pubic hair.

Yeah. Well, it's just like, I mean, I was trying to kind of wrap my brain around the trajectory was when that came out yeah uh i probably had pubic hair yeah well it's just like i mean i was trying to kind of wrap my brain around the trajectory because i guess when i first talked to you how i mean how sober were you really if it was 2010 then i would have been sober for eight years yeah and now it's 20 and and you also had you know problems with you know darkness uh right oh yeah yeah yeah serious depression because you know i don't have a medical degree i'll never get one but uh you know i think i was one of those self-medicators and after my fairly uh climactic getting sober which you know i drove a car into

a building and then was in jail um so i I was quite busy in early sobriety between surgeries, court dates, rehab. And so I had a lot to do. And as soon as the smoke started to clear and I remained sober for a calendar year. And your wife stuck with you through like you hadn't met yet. Oh, okay. We hadn't met. We met. I got sober in 2002.

We met in 2004. The new guy. She met the new guy big time and uh so so um i my brain was like wait a minute all right now that your arms have been surgically knit now that you're employable just about yeah um you're gonna start getting loaded again right and i was like no i'm not and uh my brain was like oh well then fuck off it just absolutely stopped working so real serious depression you know with physical components you know thrumming pain diarrhea vomiting i mean like awful just from the mental thing yeah it was bad. And so, but talk therapy and antidepressants worked for me.

Thank God. Yeah. And do you continue both of those? I do. Yeah. I think maybe one day when my kids are adults, I might, you know, see about maybe reducing it, but I don't want, I'm in no rush. You know what I mean?

I mean, if it works it works right yeah so because like you know i kind of lost track of you know of you but i mean i just know there was a point where you know you were here yeah yeah and and you had a hit show and uh and you were just gone you were you were not in america anymore and you were a phenomenon in britain yeah and uh and i was like well good for him yeah crazy right but i mean that show was huge we were really lucky you know catastrophe yeah we were so lucky we because i think um we wrote that pilot yeah and neither of us how did you know her i met her on twitter probably around 2010 wow and uh i had seen a show of sharon's called pulling which i thought was the funniest thing i'd ever seen yeah and um

so i wrote her and said hey crazy about your show and she's like oh cool and uh but then we became friends and uh you know then a couple years later we thought hey let's write a pilot together we did and we weren't spring chickens we weren't trying to you know it wasn't pilot season so we weren't like we need to get out this year's idea we were just like let's write from our hearts and so we wrote kind of a wild bare bones domestic you know yeah high octane tight little thing and it cost nothing to make so i don't think it was like a big risk you know and then people were like wow this is all right you know this is great and it's cheap yeah so like i tell people in america how much an episode of catastrophe costs to make and they're like you're kidding yeah right right there's no special effects

you know sure and there's like i i mean i talked to armando iannucci yesterday and i think just the nature of production here is so much different in terms of how many people involved the infrastructure of the business here i mean i think everything's different here and this sort of you know like it seems that three or four seasons is enough to a british people well you know we sharon and i wrote every episode and we, you know, I had a child die and. But wait, was that, but that was during the show? It was in between the third and fourth season.

So yeah, I didn't know that I would make a fourth. But he was sick during almost all of it. During three. During three. So we make one and two. Yeah. Back to back right after moving here. And then, then he gets sick.

He was born here? Yeah, he was. He was. And the other two were born in the States? Yeah, the first two were born in the US. How old are they now? 11 and nine. And then you have another one too, right?

Yeah, who's four. And he was also born here. So I got two who were born at UCLA Santa Monica and then two who were born here in London. And they would be British citizens, yeah? No, not quite. Here's a fun thing. America, I mean, I know we love to lambaste it as xenophobia headquarters. But in fact, if you're born in America, it doesn't matter what.

You get an American passport. You're born here. They're like, oh, we don't care. So even my son who was born here, they're like, yeah, you're you're american buddy and he has to go through all the hoops really which we're going through we're almost citizens what for british yeah yeah so there's not going to be a dual citizenship yeah we would be dual citizens and it's taken this long to do that or it's is it that long a process it is it takes a while you know um yeah i mean did they can't you just add a tv show well in fact yes when we we were very lucky and we won baftas for comedy writing for catastrophe then that kicked my visa

up to like what they call an exceptional talent visa really which can last longer yeah than a your shitty cobbled together six month visas because you came over to do stand up right so so honestly when we got the bafta i was like hey a bafta is cool but i also got a big fat visa and that was like awesome yeah because then i didn't have to go to the home office in croydon yeah uh every six months with a bunch of children and spend the day with bureaucrats so are you happier here? No, we tried to leave. In fact, I know. Don't get me wrong. I love it here, but it wasn't like, you know, I just feel more comfortable here. There's more suited to the United Kingdom. No, we wanted after two series of catastrophe. My wife was like,

hey, what do you say we move back to Santa Monica where we can walk from our front door literally into the ocean, turn around, face the shore and look at the Santa Monica mountains wouldn't that be nice they're on fire now yeah so and it was like I know right but at the time they were merely smoldering and um and I was like yeah so we were going to move back and then the second we made that decision uh Henry got diagnosed with a brain tumor so so we couldn't leave so of course we'll go back through this if you want but the basic timeline is in between two and three seasons two and three of catastrophe we went to move back henry got diagnosed and then we couldn't go anywhere um because he began care you're not gonna you're not gonna fly a kid who's just had his brainstem opened up um so time passes we get used

to getting care here our older boys school is wonderful to them and the people we barely know many of them are taking great care of us yeah the nhs here was amazing so then he's sick for 21 months, and then he dies. And when he died, of course, then we were really immobile. We couldn't do anything. And time continued to pass, even though we were grieving. So by this time, years have passed, and our older boys, who we love just as much as Henry, don't want to move. And we're like- They're dug in.

Yeah. They're like, well, that makes sense. I guess that's really what it's about, ultimately. If you can honor the kids, then you do it. Yeah. Well, so there's six of us. One of them has departed this realm. But we try to make decisions as a, you know, I guess maybe I was going to say a democracy,

but I guess my wife and I are the senators. So our votes do count for a little bit more, but we very seriously consider what the kids have to say. So we do try to think of it as what's best for the six people as a whole. So it took you, I mean, you know, the process of grief and the process of sort of reckoning with your own feelings, I mean, it took you a while to embark on a memoir around this stuff. And when you're considering the book, I mean, what is your reason? Okay.

So at first. Is this something you've answered many times? No, no. At first, I wanted to write something very angry and even hateful. Towards who? The world, people who haven't experienced terrible grief, people who aren't roiling in pain. So you felt that people did not know how to handle it on any level. Right.

And that even loved ones, friends, regular in passing. So I guess the initial feelings of anger that cannot be explained. Yeah. Having dealt with a bit of tragedy myself that you know i realized relatively quickly i was not in the same position you were but but you know somebody you know i love died quickly yeah and it was tragic and it was unnecessary but i mean even the word unnecessary is ridiculous word because from my experience it you i realized it just in order to keep my sanity that you know sadly this isn't unusual it's not unusual you just don realized it just in order to keep my sanity that, you know, sadly,

this is an unusual, it's not unusual. You just don't want it to happen to you. Right. Yeah. So like the, the initial anger at God or the injustice or why, like what's instead of talk about the incentive and the,

the, the inception of the book. I mean, when he was diagnosed, yeah. What was, what was your, what was the feeling? Was, was the first feeling like, well, we're going to fix it.

We're going to do everything we can to fix it. Yeah. So we had some weeks where we couldn't figure out what it was because when you've just turned one and you can't talk, nobody immediately thinks brain tumor. You know? The thing that. So terrible. I'm so sorry you had to go through this well thank you um the thing they the thing that like made a an older doctor and i think this is important because we knew a lot of we were meeting wonderful young doctors and nurses

but i think this guy had just been around the block and he said to me, he goes, so he's vomiting a lot. And I said, yeah, which is clear, you know, it was terrifying because he's a baby who's supposed to be chunking up and

he's losing weight and, and disappearing. So that was awful. I used to want to collect his vomit and then pour it in a funnel back down. I mean, I, his vomit was like more precious than gold to me and I would cry. And so a doctor says to me, you know, I don't know how many doctors we'd have seen at this point. He goes, let me ask you something. When he vomits, does he retch?

You know, does he seem in distress or or is it effortless and i was like it's effortless it just comes up and out yeah um you know there's no retching or you know heaving or anything right and he goes okay then we need to do an mri of his head and i was like what why yeah and the reason being is that effortless vomiting can be a symptom of a brain tumor because what happens is the pressure in your head just presses on the emetic center, the vomit button,

so you just, and it's up and out with the contents of your stomach. Jesus. So when he said that, I was like, that's what it's going to fucking be, isn't it? And it was. And so- How old are your other kids at this time three and five and you're working your ass off uh luckily i'm just in between two and three so i do have a little breathing room um but all in all like leading up to this you know then i'd been working like a mad

man and you were feeling you know i mean because i know that you know as a alcoholic person you know that you're gonna find something yeah yeah yeah and and it seems like i mean was your wife working no so it was very difficult because we moved here with a three and a one year old she's pregnant with henry when we arrive she takes a three and a one-year-old. She's pregnant with Henry. When we arrive, she takes a leave of absence from Culver city middle school and we don't know anybody. So she's lonely.

I'm working around the clock and I'm being a bad husband. I'm really working crazy hours. I think anybody could like, look at what I was doing and how I was doing it and be like, I get it. You know, I thought like this is my shot. This is my opportunity to swing for the fences. And so I thought I had to do everything. And I don't know that that's ever true, my wife said to me, so listen, I'm pretty miserable with the amount that you're working and the dire lack of attention you're giving to me and the kids. Yeah. So I've been looking into how to divorce you while in a foreign country. It's not going to be easy, but I think I figured out how to do it.

Unless that is, you want to change how you work and the amount that you work, and then maybe we can work things out. And that stopped me in my tracks. I wasn't like- I hope she said it in that tone. Yeah, right. Very calmly. And so that immediately, my response really was, okay, I will make those changes. Yeah.

I do love you. I do love these kids. At risk of losing this show, I will do those things. And it wasn't easy. I i felt like i was on fire you know because i'm mad there was anger not really at her because if you look at i mean like i'll show you a picture beautiful she's got three beautiful children that look like her mostly slightly me but not really and so she it's a vision. I look at her, it's like there's nothing more beautiful to me than those people. And so I want them to be happy. I want them to feel good. Yes, I also want people to be clapping for me and saying, what a magnificent show you've made.

And you want to make money too. And I want to make money. But I realized, what do I want more? I want them to know peace for a few minutes of each day if possible yeah and uh so so i decided to to try to learn how to work smarter and not harder and uh i realized yeah because i realized what do i care about in a tv show sure i'll tell you what i care about i care about that each script lands with a thump on the table right is airtight and that when you read it you have a full mature nourishing entertainment experience and you were writing it so yeah and you can picture it all and you hope it gets made

because you think it'll but if you if it doesn't you had a good experience reading it that's what i care about do i care what the characters are wearing? No. No, I don't. That's not your job, really. No. Do I care about the locations they're shooting in? No, I really don't. Can I be funny in that location? Then I don't care.

Right. So what I did was I dropped all the other stuff and was like, oh, why don't I let our amazing heads of department do their job? So you surrendered the control freak element. Exactly. I remained despotic, as did Sharon, about the scripts. Right. You know, beyond that, have a blast, DOP, with your lens selection.

I don't care. I don't, you know, so. That's a good lesson to learn. So that was amazing. And that freed up a lot of time. Yeah. To be able to do that, to be able to, what's the word that I always forget? Is it delegate?

Yeah. It's a gift. Alcoholic forgetting the word that i always forget delegate yeah it's a it's a gift alcoholic forgetting the word delegate i love it yeah it's it's one of those words that sticks with me every time i'm like is it subterranean but all right so so now this is where you're at before henry gets it right these are decisions no joke it isn't even certainly not a month it might not have even been weeks from that conversation with my wife where i'm like it's overhaul time do embark on the barest beginnings of that right and then henry is diagnosed so he gets he gets a scan yeah and is there any hope yes um

because okay i mean honestly now you look at it and you're like i don't know like any any you know doctor would be like wow the tumor is called an appendomoma and he was so young and a boy which are the worst if you're young really young and male appendomoma they don't get me wrong they kill little girls too but they kill more little boys. And so he was like in the worst cohort to get it. But it was possible that they could take it all out and he'd be disabled. But it was possible that it wouldn't come back. But it did. They took it out?

Yeah, they took it out. They did a good job. The surgery was brutal because they had to damage his brain stem. They had to damage and even destroy some cranial nerves to get it out, meaning, you know, so half his face was immediately paralyzed. His ability to swallow was gone, so he had to get a tracheostomy. And that would have been life. It would have been he would not had he lived oh uh as you get

as your body just increases in size they can give you less horrific tracheostomy tubes ones where you could even put a speech valve on it um and it was possible that he might have regained there are people who've had his cancer had a tracheostomy and then gotten older and had the tracheostomy removed so that could have happened it's interesting you know it seems i don't have children and it's probably you know it doesn't i don't know why but i do know why but because i can't even handle hearing about this the panic and the worry and the pain that that you know whatever your love for that kid is at that time you're willing to accommodate the idea that he's going to live this horrendously compromised life yeah and still believe that that life is worth fighting for oh big time oh no so you know what's funny is my wife and i met

back in 2004 at a camp in massachusetts yeah for uh people with disabilities okay camp jabberwocky and so we met taking care of disabled adolescents through adults with major disabilities and problems and you know so we're doing feeding tubes and wiping butts and yeah you know lifting huh you know uh paralyzed adults and all sorts of stuff um and so so we had a bunch of friends who were quite disabled already um and so and had been around people like that and loved people like that so so this is you met her before you went to hollywood and then that came back around no i left los angeles just for a summer there so this camp you got sober yeah i met a guy um a sober guy yeah uh and he said to me hey you know i'm doing this camp in venice um california that is uh for people disabilities

uh it's sort of a satellite of a camp i've worked at for years in massachusetts do you want to come work at it you know volunteer at it and i was like yeah i would love to so i did that i had the best time ever so this is like service yeah i guess you know and uh but it's fun that's the secret that's the dirty secret of volunteering is it's usually fun as hell yeah so people who enjoy things like drugs or gambling yeah or watching succession would probably also, if they got off their ass, enjoy volunteering too. That's the secret.

And so, so then I went back to the one in Massachusetts for just for a couple weeks, you know, because I had some time off. And so I went and it happens to meet my wife at that time. So I, although I grew up in Massachusetts, I wasn't living there when to meet my wife at that time. So although I grew up in Massachusetts,

I wasn't living there when I met my wife. I was just visiting to volunteer at this camp. And where was she from? She was in the process. She's from Asheville, North Carolina. And she was in the process at the time where she had been teaching in Mississippi. And she was in the process of moving to DC. So she was homeless for a few weeks as she moved and so she did this camp yeah we were just

both in transient periods met each other and fell in love but here's the thing it's almost like you you start taking care of your child who's disabled and no it's not easy yes your house becomes like a satellite hospital but how do you triage isn't there a sort of persistent heartbreak? Of course there's difficult, but you know what, to be honest, is Henry died before he turned three, right? So Henry died before he was cognizant of the fact that he was different and that there were things that he couldn't do or couldn't do as well. So henry was like hey what's up man i'm henry let's party yeah so yeah and also like i don't know like because i'm you know selfish and i don't have children like i'm

i'm speculating yeah and and it seems like you know in my mind if we continue how i'm thinking about it that'd be like well we should just let him die you know what i mean well here's the thing is like one thing that i realized from doing this camp is that uh after you spend a bunch of time like we're like a bunch of like sleep cycles wake up go to sleep with people with people who are quote disabled and people who are quote not the line really begins to blur so like if you're literally like you know in a camp situation with people then like you know like whatever like you know evening will roll around and you'll be thinking like i'd really rather hang out with

nancy right now who's quite disabled you know speaks using a board where she points at words than i would with dave who's another counselor fully able-bodied but a bit of a weird asshole yeah so you find yourself like you realize like you kind of forget who's disabled and who isn't the spirit starts to or you not starts to shine through yeah but you get to where you can see it faster and people yeah so so like you look you can have fun and laugh and have a robust emotional experience with somebody with down syndrome just like you can with somebody who doesn't. Of course. Yeah. I have no doubt about that.

It's just like the spectrum of your life, you personally, you were already somewhat open-hearted to at least a human experience. Yeah. Getting sober certainly helped a lot. So after the first surgery, what was the hope? That the cancer would not return. Right. And that over a lot of time, he would begin to work through and heal from,

if possible, damage to his brainstem. And so, yeah, we just hoped cancer wouldn't return and that he would outgrow or heal from or repair stuff so he could get rid of the tracheostomy. And how are the other kids handling it? Are they old enough to register? Oh, yeah, they're in the hospital all the time. I mean, we have hundreds of pictures of the three of them in the hospital bed, you know,

having eaten McDonald's. So you had the other kid while he was still sick? No, our youngest came after. My wife was pregnant when Henry died with our fourth. So that little fella did not get to meet Henry in the traditional sense, you know, although he shared a womb with him, and then he was in Henry's bedroom. It became his room.

Now, in terms of healthcare, you had a great experience here. Yeah, we really did. And I think it's an important distinction to make because I love to criticize not American healthcare, but American private health insurance obviously there's amazing nurses and doctors in the united states and you can get great care there's no question about that but the question is you know can you access it and in accessing it are you going to go bankrupt or insane you know more likely yeah from trying to navigate all the

labyrinths right uh of private health insurance private health insurance. So the big benefit for us is that we had more time with our son. I spent no time in the hallway on the phone with the insurance company saying, he needs this MRI. Right. Please approve it. Yeah. I didn't spend time arguing with a pharmacist because they understandably couldn't understand the crazy new terms of the pharmacy plan that we were on. You know, so they're not asking me for $615 for a prescription that he needs to live, you know? Yeah.

So, we had less stress than an American would in dealing with this. So we had more time and didn't get a perforated ulcer from stress. So really beautiful. And when do you start to realize, I'm assuming that given what we talked about earlier in terms of what drove you to write the book after the fact. When do you start to feel alone in your dealing with the tragedy in terms of, I mean, obviously the family was close, and I assume that your family, but when do you start to realize that people have no real emotional sense of how to deal with it, or you? Well, I must say, it's not everybody um as as

you may have experienced yourself that you can be surprised totally surprised step up beautifully totally and then other people who you think would have been there fuck off and do a terrible job well i guess i assume nobody would i mean i i didn't really know you know my my parents are not emotionally capable people so they were not great yeah and also, you know, my parents are not emotionally capable people, so they were not great. Yeah. And also like, you know, it happened so quickly. Yeah.

But in terms of our community, the comedians, I mean, it was kind of stunning. That's wonderful. That's so great. And it was the middle of COVID. So it was kind of limited in and of itself. Like, you know, so you kind of take what you could get. Yeah. But some people, I mean, it was really amazing.

So what was your experience? So a lot of people were wonderful. A lot of people surprised us in beautiful ways. Plus, we're in a country where we do not have roots, you know. And so a lot of people were great. But then some people are afraid of you. You know, if you lose a child, I think, you know, as they say, losing a child is people who have children's greatest fear.

And so I think people were afraid of us. That's my guess. That's my stab at it is that they were afraid of us, that they might catch dead kid from us or they'd have to imagine, you know, dead kid. I think that's probably more it,

the mortality of their own life or their own children yeah that the i i've been trying to talk about grief for a while with people you know and again you know i don't want to you know compare griefs or whatever but you know the feeling is the feeling that that was yeah and it is so human yeah unavoidable unavoidable uh but but i understand what you're saying because i was thinking back on i know a guy who lost a kid in a car accident and we weren't close or anything but there's that feeling of like what do you even say yeah yeah yeah and i guess that is selfish because what i learned in talking about this stuff on stage is that sometimes all you got to do is stand there exactly the question i think isn't what what what do i say it's better is what do i do right because

you're you know mark maron multiple stand-up specials you know you're good at talking but nobody's so good at talking that they can heal the pain of of death i think i think that is what that is the the the crux of it yeah is that there's there's no getting away from it no so if you sit there with me you know like you know it'd be nice you know like i'm just imagining like you're on a couch that would fit two adult bums so if i'm sitting on that couch in acute grief after henry died and you came over and you sat down right next to me so there's extra space to the right of you and I'm in between

and you just sat there and put your arm around me. That's it. That'd be fucking amazing. Right. And that'd be better than you giving me some advice. Sure. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

You know, I had a friend who lost a kid. Great, okay. All right. Oh, so there's another sad guy out there. Okay. Yeah, it's interesting because that is the thing, is that in order to sort of bear witness or to show up for somebody in that much pain,

if you're uncomfortable or even if you're shut down emotionally, that none of that matters in a way. If you just share the space. You know what it's like? It's like if you ever jump off something high into the water. That's fun to do. Right. Right?

But it's scary. Sure. Okay? But you don't really have to do anything. You just kind of have to lean forward. That's right. And then in a couple seconds, you'll be in the water. It's kind of like that comforting a grieving person.

Sure. You just kind of wait until they get done with their crying jack and pat them on the back. It's kind of like that, comforting a grieving person. Sure, you just kind of wait till they get done with their crying jack and pat them on the back. Yeah, you know, and it doesn't take long and it helps tremendously, you know. A couple seconds of touch or silence is the same thing as like falling

into some lovely water for them. It helps. So like most of this, I would imagine, so when he did pass, how long did you know that was going to happen? We learned in September of 2017 that his cancer had returned and would kill him. And then he died in January on my birthday. On my 41st birthday, he died.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. Which is so wild you know so you're just waiting in a way yeah and trying to maintain some quality of life yeah and and the quality of life is sky high at that point because although the tumor is growing he's not showing any symptoms so we really felt insane because we know he's got a time bomb in his head yeah and it will kill him as sure as you're born and uh and and what were the conversations that you were having with your wife or with the other kids i mean like because it seems like you know knowing that you don't

know when it's going to happen and you have a certain amount of time. How did you emotionally prepare for what was coming? Well, um, you can't prepare, right? I remember thinking, but you can know here's some, some things I did.

Um, so I, I thought, so I'll be, I'll be damaged by this. I'll bear scars from this, but how can I protect Henry's brothers? Yeah.

And cause I was worried it would fuck them up irreparably for life. And I called a couple of friends from Boston, um, that I loved dearly and that I grew up with. Yeah. One of them, his dad died when he was one. And then his mom remarried a wonderful guy who raised him to the age of six.

And then he died. So he, he had his two dads die so you're thinking about bringing in another father yeah i'm thinking you know can i marry your mother to heal is the right thing for me to do to to maybe even try to have a baby with my best no so um but i called him because he because because he's a wonderful sensitive guy and i wanted to know some a child who was struck by very severe tragedy um how do i take care of my boys who are about to get walloped and um so i called him and i called

another friend that i grew up with whose brother had died when he was a child and i said what do i do to take care of my boys to both of of yeah these guys and they were like listen these things aren't going to define your sons forever and they're both like you might fuck up your kids and they might get fucked up but it won't be this right now they're like because both of them were like you send me pictures of the three of them in henry's hospital bed you take henry with all his beeping machines and tubes to the park you were constantly holding and touching and loving so he so he reassured me they both reassured me that my wife and i were both doing exactly what we should. You know?

And also like, you know, one thing I know just from talking to people and seeing it, that children will become their own people and they're incredibly resilient and part of the emotional language they'll learn will process this. And I think ultimately with the amount of love that you're going to give them, you know, this will only make them deeper in a sense yeah they're incredibly emotionally astute you know there's no guarantee of of a shiny bright future for anybody but it won't be this right so i don't have to fear yeah that's something right and that was really beautiful and so like leading up to this, so the family intention was just to make however long he was going to be around as fun or as pleasant as possible. Exactly. Exactly.

You know, my wife and I even sat down and wrote out like, what do we want to do? And we asked the boys like, what's important for you to do with Henry before he dies? And because they knew, we told them told them you know they were with us uh they were in the next room when we found out that his cancer had come back and we came out crying and so oddly i guess but naturally the grieving starts then in a way i suppose so you know it's sort of weird like you know i might have a little more experience with with grief than some yeah but i don't know is that grief sure i'll accept that i mean it's it's the knowing pre-grief but but it's also like you know we all know we're gonna die but we're able to really keep it at bay exactly

yeah it's it's it's really the one of the driving forces of our lives as as as sort of selfish weird irrational people is the avoidance of that knowledge i I mean, there's very few people that, I think, have that integrated. And there's very few people, I think, that can handle that integration with me. Because it could go either way. You could sit around and be like, oh, it's the fucking point.

I don't wanna live or it's, what a rip off. How do you start to calibrate why life is worth living? And I guess if you have kids, that certainly is one way. And I guess I'm just trying to say that it's difficult for me. I have no children and I'm depressed a lot. Oh, no. But. Oh, kidding.

No, but you know what? I'm looking behind you on the wall is this like tapestry type thing. Yeah. And I think about the grief that I feel. And let's say that's like, I don't know, fucking bolt of fabric or. Sure. String of yarn or whatever. And now that has

been i'm weaving i'm doing the best to weave that into my tapestry not to try to burn it or throw it off a bridge but sure but i've been given this and fuck off for a thousand years if you think i'm not going to weave the death and the life and the spirit of my beautiful son into my tapestry i mean what am i joni mitchell at this point but yeah do you know what i mean like i don't think i i don't think you have a choice yeah in in the sense that you know especially if you're a sensitive person that you know and i think it seems that one of the one of the reasons yeah why you wrote the book was to sort of, you know, to kind of say this is what it is.

Yeah. And that, you know, this is part of life. And I am angry that so many people, you know, make me feel uncomfortable because of their discomfort and that, you know, that a grown person with the heart that works is going to you know understand that this is life there's no there's it's guaranteed you're born and you're gonna die and i've had to shoulder this and feel this and it's going to inform every other part of your life yeah i mean that's that's the proper way to integrate yeah and and i guess yeah the the fuck you of it is it's like you know your ability now to say oh it's coming oh yeah you know hopefully not for your loved ones but

it's going to come for you i know i know it is i know well so how what did how did it change your perception in you know once you got like i imagine the exorcism in writing this book of of sort of outside of what we just said in terms of comforting somebody with grief what are the other issues that you find that with other people in terms of how they handled grief that you have a problem with um well i guess it's just a we very painful gift to receive yeah but but my family received some gifts of of profound reality yeah and it allowed us to you know appreciate how ephemeral even our bodies are right now yeah and so i guess i also lament i'm not just frustrated with people who can't hold the grief or feel that they have to

babble i'm just frustrated with that but i in in some ways i i i feel blessed and burdened with knowledge that they don't yet have about how precious all this stuff is oh yeah so you'll hear them complain about the most pedestrian stuff and you're like come on man yeah you can't really do that you know because i'm not i'm not cruel right i don't want to you know drop a bomb in the middle of their day like at every sort of uh you know kind of a passing social interaction just say like yeah my kid died yeah yeah yeah oh interesting oh what was that oh sorry i was looking over your shoulder at the fucking urn that my son is in on the shelf behind your shoulder.

So tell me about your bad breakfast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, but it's all part of the spectrum. So you have to integrate that spite. Yeah. And not feel guilty that I feel it.

You know what I mean? Right. If my wife and i laugh about some ridiculous thing that's said to one of us yeah then we're happy and we enjoy the rest of our day and we don't hold on to it hating them i don't wish these people ill no of course it's just like and you have to have sort of there must be some sort of empathy because the other side of seeing it as like it's not a gift but but processing it correctly is yeah and and it's not something you would wish on anybody no no no god no so so you know you have to sort of accept

the fact of course people don't know how the fuck to behave they didn't yeah they haven't been granted x they haven't been given the code to access that yeah thank god but but the bigger message is uh that you know someone grieving is almost everybody. Yeah. So, you know, to somehow integrate that into how you approach somebody would be a beautiful, empathetic thing to do collectively. Yeah. Right?

I know. I'm imagining, because people have the urge to be like, you know, oh, my son has a tumor. Oh, really? Oh, my grandfather had a tumor. It would be a better empathy would be like, oh, your son died yeah i'm gonna die too and so are you like that they're great wouldn't that be great the grandfather thing doesn't work for you no but when if somebody was like oh your son died and like instead of trying to compare if they're like oh i'm gonna die right i'll probably be dead in 30 years maybe a wonderful i'll be in the same

cemetery yeah like then that then i'm like yeah man maybe but that's also utterly uh like you know selfish right so like but i i think the lat the i i think that the real thing that's lacking is it seems empathy around it yeah that that like because like for whatever it's worth you know years of talking to people candidly about whatever and then you know having somebody you know i loved you know basically you know dying my house has has opened my heart to like i can't like along with my grief which which i can tap into but but is integrated that the empathy for it like i can feel an almost immediate

yeah uh emotional reaction yeah yeah yeah to someone's loss yeah yeah which i don't know that i could yeah before yeah like i'm having a tough time you're gonna know who you're gonna be like we we really need to get him an omelet you know what i mean we don't need to tell him it's gonna be okay but let's get him an omelet come on man but the thing i have to fight is not to just start crying of somebody in front of someone who's experiencing the same thing yeah you know just sort of like just sort of like hijack their grief with sort of but you don't want to commiserate you want to show up for somebody right yeah yeah yeah totally it's tricky right well? Well, I'm doing that, you know, I have been doing that with my dad because my dad was there when Henry was dying

and after he died and now my dad is dying. And I'm always tempted to talk about, oh yeah, I remember, you know, like when the hospice people delivered my dad's morphine, you know, I was like, oh, your morphine's blue. Yeah, Henry's was red. You know, I want to be like, just let him have his death you know what i mean so i sometimes will i'll be like and then i'll be like you know what yeah let's just let this guy die for the moment you know i think you

seem to have uh somehow uh achieved the the um the kind of emotional level of of a sort of a a death doula in a way maybe well just that like you've been able to integrate and accept the reality of it you know and and process the feelings of loss yeah uh you know you're prepared for it yeah and preparing for it i think about my own death you do and yeah about it uh i you know what i try to tell myself is that it'll be fine. You know, it's not my job to know what's going to happen next. But it is my- A lot of people think they know.

You have any- It's funny. When I think of my own death, it's sort of like, well, I have to save some money. I should go over the papers. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you have a family. So it goes to- Yeah, yeah.

I don't. So I'm sort of like, I have some gifts to give. Totally. That's awesome. I've got to go over the paperwork. Yeah. Yeah. What comes next?

I don't know. I think of it like I'm a glass of water, you're a glass of water, and then we die. We get poured back into the ocean of whatever is out there. We all mingle. So I'm not me anymore. You're not you anymore. All our molecules are- We're just part of the big frequencies

yeah and and which is good for me because i definitely want to be obliterated when i die i don't want to be me anymore yeah no it'd be a relief in a way wouldn't it you don't want to go too far with that line of thought yeah not just do it now no yeah no no no well i also think yeah i'm pretty anti-suicide because i think it's also our responsibility having been given this life to ride it out you know what i mean like i i really don't feel like i should decide when life begins or ends you know um other than you know having sex with my wife which i know could result in a life sure i think i should do that and when so you conceived the the newest kid while Henry was sick? We did, yeah. Consciously?

Consciously, we did, yeah. What was the conversation around that? We wanted a bunch of kids in our house, and we'd thought about having a fourth, but we knew we were spread so thin between, sometimes it was two hospitals and our home if he was shuttling between the hospital he lived at and the hospital where he got his chemo and three kids so it was so we knew we couldn't do that but when we learned he was going to die

we just decided to have another one not it's impossible to replace a child that can't be done but we knew that we had a certain amount of love yeah we wanted to be divided between a bunch of unruly children and so we wanted our house to be full of little people and so so so yeah it's interesting too like when when you're in that much pain or you're in that much sort of um trauma uh you know emotional and mental know, I mean, you do things to feel better. Of course. Yeah, yeah. There's no...

Yeah, you're still allowed to have sex. Sure, and make more kids. Yeah. And how's the new kid? He's magnificent. He's four. So you have three boys? Yeah, yeah, no, we have three different boys alive.

Yeah. Three alive boys. It's so funny because you tone around henry and death and like the kid died and it like there there's it's not it's not a flat affect but there there seems to be a sort of uh constant reaffirmation of knowing he's dead i insist on saying it a lot mostly for myself yeah um i i i repeat to myself the details of his life and and appearance of symptoms yeah i tell myself i'll say like i had a boy named henry and i loved him so much and he was healthy and beautiful and then he got sick and we didn't know what to do, and we took him to the doctors, and it took a long time. They found out what it was. It was very bad, and they tried to fix it,

and they couldn't, and it got worse, and then he died, and now he's dead, and I still love him, and I still talk to him, and he's still my son, and I'm'm still his dad and I don't know what our relationship is now I don't know where he is but it's very important for me to repeat those things myself it grounds me and it makes me feel not insane yeah I would imagine that you know on top of the the the act of grief, that as an affirmation of life in a way, it keeps you present. Yeah, it does. Right? It does, absolutely.

It's interesting about going over that stuff. It really helps me. But you know in your heart that you did everything possible. Oh, yeah. That's great. That's a gift. Yeah. I mean, look, my wife and I aren't doctors or nurses,

but we know how to love children, and we sure did that. Yeah. And you got all the best care, and it was great. Oh, yeah. After the book writing and after the processing is there one thing that you you do now that you didn't yeah um i hold my children and i hold my wife and i know that they'll die and i know that it could happen before i die so i know that our time together is finite and it will end um and so i appreciate them so much more i marvel at the fact that these particular collections of

cells coalesced around these souls for a temporary period and i'm so lucky to get to be here at the same time yeah um as a little collection of of cells and whatever's and bones and nostril hairs that i am yeah and and so i really make the most of it in a way that i didn't before and i wish that that skill didn't come from something so painful, but it did. That was the price tag for me of that gift, and now I have it, and I appreciate it. Yeah. Well, that's good. It's beautiful.

It is good. Yeah. And how do you approach work now? That's a fantastic question. My opinion and feelings about what I do for a living have sort of changed. They've become right-sized, so to speak. As they say in the lingo. Yeah.

I used to gravitate between I'm ashamed of what I'm trying to make people laugh as a job. And I think what a piece of shit I am. Or, you know, I'd get a paycheck and an award and be like, I probably deserve it, you know, and it'd be those two things. And now it's gone like right between the two of those. Yeah. Where I now know that all the accolades and stuff are beyond ridiculous. Right.

But it also isn't stupid and useless it's like it's as important as like the table i'm knocking on here you need a table to put your stuff on and you need a show or a stand-up special at the end of the day to unwind so it's not more important than any other job in the world and it isn't less so now i'm like i go to work gratefully and i do the work and i'm so happy that i get to do it you're busy i i saw i had i talked to sigourney weaver oh wow about the the uh the movie the good house the good house yeah yeah and and that was kind of a dark interesting part but very human yeah and oh what a privilege to get to work with her you know so she's so amazing of course but

then kind and sensitive and brilliant and so getting to but that character was sort of antithetical to where you're at now i know yeah and um and yeah what a privilege and um they shot it in nova scotia which actually when i was there a lot i was having the thought like i'd really like to die here it's so beautiful i was like i need to find i need to figure out how to die in nova scotia so that movie was a thrill to work on and you're doing what what do you got you're doing mission impossible you did it yeah i did a part in that was that a big part no it wasn't but i did get to do a full week of working with tom cruise oh yeah fascinating was it it really was good guy to work

with. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that I would want to go on a cross country trip with him. He probably doesn't do. I don't think he does things like I don't. I didn't get the sense. He has a social life. So yeah, working with him. Amazing. Incredibly educational. It's his movies are excellent now

all the time, not haphazardly because he's an unbelievable filmmaker who knows so much. And also Christopher McQuarrie wrote and directed that. So working with the two of them was very educational and great. You've got any plans of doing any creating? Yeah. Yeah. So,

so I've just, I'm finishing a script right now that I'll see if anybody wants to make. For a TV show or a movie? Probably a movie. I started as a TV show, but I think it might actually be a better movie. Okay. Because certain things happen in it where it couldn't have subsequent seasons, so why not make it a movie? Sure.

And then, yeah, I've got a show coming out probably in the springtime called Bad Monkey that Bill Lawrence made, which is just tremendous. Big guy. Did you go shoot that in the States? Yeah. Yeah. I shot it in Miami and the Florida Keys. Hot and muggy. It was so insanely hot and muggy that it was like, yeah.

Yeah. Well, he's a good guy. I haven't talked to him in a long time. He was such a pleasure to work with. Yeah. Well, he's a good guy. I haven't talked to him in a long time. He was such a pleasure to work with. Yeah. At first he was like, do you want to come shoot a show with me in Florida? And I'm like, well, Bill Lawrence, why didn't you have me in your show that you're making in London? But he's like, I don't know.

Which one is that? Ted Lasso. Oh. That's right. And so I was like, well, I'd love to, but I don't know. You know, Florida, I live in London. And he was like, well, why don love to, but I don't know. You know, Florida, I live in London. I try not to. And he was like, well, why don't I make it family friendly for you?

You know, we'll shoot you efficiently. We'll bake in some breaks. And I was like, well, okay, thank you so much, family man, Bill Lawrence. So, yeah. Is that a good part? Oh, so much fun. Yeah. Yeah.

It's based on the book Bad Monkey by Carl Hyasson. Yeah, he's good. Which was a great book. And Bill adapted it beautifully and had an incredible time shooting that. So that, like, yeah, I know I'm in it. Sometimes you do stuff and you're like, yeah, maybe I'll catch that if I get the chance. This one I'm like, can't wait to see. Oh, good.

Vince Vaughn, too, right? Vince Vaughn. Yep, Vince Vaughn, Michelle Monaghan, Jodie Turner-Smith, Meredith Hagner, Zach Braff, Scott Glenn. Wow. Myself. Scott Glenn's intense. I talked to that guy. Yeah.

He was great. Yeah. Yeah. Good talking to you, man. Great talking to you and great to see you. It's good to see you, buddy. That was great to talk to Rob. That was great to talk to Ron.

And again, A Heart That Works comes out tomorrow, wherever you get your books. And what a good guy. So look, can you hang out for a second? Just hang out for a minute. 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.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Center in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. If you've got a WTF Plus subscription, you can go back and listen to that early episode with Rob Delaney. That's episode 55.

It's really a great talk with a truly harrowing story of what made him get sober. Lipsight has been on a bunch of times, old Sammy. Episode 10, episode 52, episode 162 are all part of the full Marin. And episode 984 is available in the free feed on all podcast apps. Here, listen to some. I used to sing in a rock band, so I'm used to a little bit of this. Yeah. Do you feel it coming back to you?

I feel the surge. I did a thing where I put my whole mouth over the mic and scream into it. Oh, really? So you made that horrible distorted noise? Exactly. And the sound technicians did not like that at all. That was back in the days of Dung Beetle. Dung Beetle, yeah.

Was that what it was called? It was called Dung Beetle, yeah. You were exploring the freedom of the form. We were pushing the boundaries a little bit. Yeah, for those few people, you pushed the boundaries. For about 12 people. But did Dungung beetle ever record we uh recorded a few things here and there never a full record but we did some singles and some we were on some soundtrack for an independent film things like that oh really what film it was called half cocked and uh it came out in the 90s and it

was same 12 people enjoyed that movie do you remember the band uh well there are a lot of bands that were on the soundtrack like the grifters i don't know if you remember them kind of yeah what year are we talking i'm trying to figure out when people ask me about music it's sort of like was i even doing anything but wandering around doing i guess it was mid 90s it's like yeah i might have missed a whole i think i missed most of the 90s it's sort of a it's sort of a movie about a fictional band that gets in a van oh and goes and then the filmmakers were in bands too and they used songs from friends yeah who are also in bands it's always kind of a celebration of a certain moment in a sad moment maybe in an american indie rock that moment what is that it was actually really at just a moment

it was like about a year more like three seconds like for some reason in the 90s i just i missed everything like lcd sound system i didn't even know they existed well they didn't exist in the 90s but no they well that james murphy he's a friend of yours, right? Yeah, he is. And he worked with us with Dung Beetle. He worked with Dung Beetle? Yeah. James Murphy did. Yeah. See, that's clickbait right there.

That's going to break the music press. Yeah. They're just James Murphy, Dung Beetle connection revealed. Well, I was just with him the other night, and we were talking about who, do we listen to that music, or who even talks about that music? Which music? Just whatever was going on. Dung Beetle?

Dung Beetle, yeah. You can subscribe to WTF Plus for every episode ad-free. Go to the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus. Wait. Before we wrap up today, I need and want to wish Brendan McDonald, my producer, my business partner, my friend, a happy 43rd birthday, 40 fucking three years old. Brendan, Brendan, who I started working with when he was 24. We've been working together almost 20 years.

This guy has had my voice in his head and he's become obviously one of my dear friends, a guy I respect his opinion of on almost everything, a guy who advises me, a guy who filters me both on the air and off, somebody who, one of the smartest guys I know, and an inspired producer, and I would not be able to do what we do here and what I do in my life without him. Happy birthday, Brendan. You made it another year, 43. You're like a fucking old man now. Huh? How's that feel? All right.

So my tour dates are winding down. Only three more left this year. My shows at the Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina are sold out. Still some tickets for the show in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm at the James K. Polk Center on Saturday, December 3rd. And my HBO special taping is at Town Hall in New York City on Thursday, December 8th. There are a few tickets left for the second show up in the balconies, I think. You can go to WTFpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info.

And here's a little John Lee style. Thank you.BGM Thank you. Thank you. boomer lives monkey and the fonda cat angels everywhere all right all right all right