March 10, 2026 • 49 mins
Comedian Pete Holmes joins Ben Higgins for a deep dive into comedy, faith, and finding true freedom. Pete shares personal stories—divorce, heartbreak, spiritual awakening through Ram Dass and psilocybin, and a journey from strict evangelical roots to embracing spaciousness and play. They dissect why we take life too seriously, the power of laughter to connect us, what spirituality really means beyond labels, and how Pete uses comedy to reveal our shared weirdness. Plus: thoughts on the afterlife, finding peace in uncertainty, Pete’s new special "Silly Silly Fun Boy", and why confession makes us less alone. Tune in for wisdom, honesty, and lots of laughs.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Comedy, Spirituality, and Freedom
01:04 Ben’s Comedy Envy
02:56 The Comedian’s Safe Space
04:26 Laughing at Darkness
05:46 Generational Humor Shifts
06:06 Spirituality and Playfulness
08:49 Lightness, Faith, and Identity
09:59 Breaking Free from Labels
13:39 Pete’s Spiritual Journey
18:49 Heartbreak and Rethinking God
20:14 Mushrooms and Awareness
21:33 Beyond Words and Spiritual Experience
22:51 Myth, Story, and Meaning
23:56 Finding Clarity in Doubt
25:11 Everyday Awareness and Acceptance
29:08 Life, Death, and Consciousness
33:09 Oneness, Afterlife, and Self
35:34 Bridging Comedy and Depth
38:16 Vulnerability, Confession, Connection
42:13 Laughter’s Healing and Holiness
46:45 Silly Silly Fun Boy Promo
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If we weren't recording this, it would be twelve times funnier.
And I was just like, that's it. What I consider
like a deeply spiritual person. Are spacious, happy, free, you know,
lighthearted is a good word for it. You don't want
to be Christian, you want to be free. You don't
want to be Jewish, you want to be free. I
believe in a God who protects me from nothing but
(00:20):
sustains me and everything. And this is a much better model.
When I took mushrooms and the appearances started to change,
I was acquainted with the part of me that wasn't changing,
the awareness that was aware of those changes. Laughter. When
you're laughing, you're not there in the way that we've
(00:42):
been talking about it. In the same way that the
guy that free soloed, you know, or whatever mountain it was,
he's not there. That guy can't come on the journey.
Laughing is the same people really knew me, they wouldn't
love me. That's like the fundamental wound of most people.
So we learn how to do it impressions of what
we think people would like to see.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Welcome to if you can hear me, a space where
culture meets the Soul.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I'm Ben Higgins.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
You may know me from the Bachelor, and you may
know some of my guests from culture and Headlines, but
this podcast is about going beyond the surface into something deeper.
Today's guest is Pete Holmes, a comedian known for his
stand up, the HBO series Crashing, and the podcast You
Made It Weird, where humor meets deep conversations about life, faith,
(01:32):
and the search for meaning.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I get nervous to talk to comedians.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Why.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I feel like there's some secret, like magic that you
have going on in your brain. I play golf with
some comedians and they are tremendously more funny than I am,
and so much quicker than I am, and it makes
me feel less than I want to be.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Like you, I know exactly what you mean. I hate
to agree with you, but I just I felt the
same way growing up when I saw comedians on TV,
when I saw them on talk shows and stuff. It
was that same sort of envy, I guess, and just
really got obsessed with honing that and trying to get
(02:19):
in that group. You know that, to me, no exaggeration,
is the greatest part of being a comedian is having
friends that are comedians and laughing. I just listened to
Mike Brobiglia interview mulaney on his podcast and they started recording,
and they were like, if we weren't recording this, it
would be twelve times funnier, and I was just like,
(02:41):
that's it, that's completely true. And you know, I don't
mind the job. I like kind of playing within a parameter,
but when you're golfing or just hanging out with comics
it can be To me, it's not so much that
it's funny, although that's a huge part of it. It's
that you're just kind of like everyone has the benefit
of the doubt, Like everyone knows you're just playing grab ass.
(03:03):
Everyone knows you're not malicious. None of my friends are malicious.
None of my friends are cruel, none of my friends
have hate in their heart. So once you're kind of
like clear, you got through airport security, that's comedians. You're
through security. Everything is okay. Now let's joke. Let's joke,
and like I do this on stage too. It's like,
(03:23):
let's I got a miss call from my mom and
she's eighty four right as I was going on stage,
and I was like, I just missed a phone call.
Does anyone here know that this was last night? The
sheer terror of missing a phone call from your eighty
four year old mother right as you're going on stage.
And I was like, for all I know, I'm doing
this stupid set and she's like buried under a pile
(03:44):
of phone books. You know what I mean, Because that's
what it is when they're in their eighties. It's always
something bad. And they, you know, they rightfully kind of
pulled away, and I was like, no, let's just be
in a contract that we will laugh at the darkness.
We will be okay with that here. And that comedy
club contract is kind of what comedians not kind of
(04:06):
it is what comedians are living under those rules all
the time. And then the cliche is when I'm with
non comedians and there are people who don't do comedy
who I consider comedians that they're in that fold, you're
often saying things that are you know, inappropriate, are like
or like get you outcast. Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I've been curious about this, and I feel like you're
the first person that I can actually ask that will
give me a good answer. And I kind of have
you locked in here for a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
The show is about faith, and it's about our experiences
with faith and all the different perspectives when it comes
to faith specifically this show specifically. I don't know if
you know where you're at, but that's exactly where you're at.
We're gonna talk a lot about faith.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
I could. I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled, But I do.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Want to talk comedy because it is the reason we're here.
Silly silly fun boys coming out in it's your special.
We want to promote it because I think you're hilarious
and I think you're great, but you are intriguing to
me personally because of the way you intertwine faith and
truth and reality within the comedy and within your experience.
(05:16):
Was there though my grandfather and his friends. My grandfather
passed away. He was ninety six, so don't feel that bad.
He lived along in good life. They were so quick,
and they had all these jokes stored up in their head.
And my grandpa would go to bed at night, and
if I stayed the night over there, I could hear
him rehearsing some jokes while he laid in bed at night,
(05:38):
and he would laugh at himself. And I'm sure he
went to breakfast the next morning and told all his
buddies these jokes that he had been preparing and practicing.
Have we lost that? Because it felt like the way
they communicated was all through humor, and they weren't malicious
but making fun of each other, poking fun at reality.
And my buddies and I don't function that way. None
(06:00):
of us are professional commedians, but we don't speak in
that light in that way with each other, Like, have
we lost that?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
You think it might be a generational thing that he
valued jokes and kind of kind of taking the piss
a little bit more than we do. I don't know.
I like that goes back to your first great question,
which is like that envy, you know, the thing you
brought up when I saw that there were these keepers
(06:28):
of that specific flame, the people that are like, no,
not taking things seriously is so fun, and I would
argue is pretty pretty spiritual, meaning the perspective of somebody
who doesn't take reality, meaning objective reality, to be the
end all, be all of everything. That would be a
lighthearted person. All the qualities of what I consider like
(06:52):
a deeply spiritual person are spacious, happy, free, you know, lighthearted,
is a good word for it, and the fruit of
that perspective can often be making fun of things, making fun,
making fun. It's fun. It's my daughter's name is Leela.
Leela means the dance or the play of the universe
(07:13):
or of God. It's this dance, It's a play. I
think we get tight and we get rigid when we
take everything really seriously, like I'm late, I'm late for
this meeting, and like that sort of stuff is a lie.
I'm not saying we can express love and concern and
compati all these good things by being on time. There's
a relative reality to those things. But my favorite people
(07:34):
tend to be the ones that are like, what are
you talking about? Like? What are you talking about? There's
no such thing as what you're talking about? And why
are we putting so much meaning into it? Into ourselves?
I'm pete, you should respect me and all this sort
of stuff. It's all vapor. It's all vapor. Make fun
of me, make fun of you. There's something I think
(07:56):
there's a holiness to that. If I let you make
fun of me, it's because I know who I really am.
It's you could say, in God, are you like do
you understand that. I think we might have lost that
because we take ourselves pretty seriously, even as spiritual people
will be like, well, I'm a spiritual person, all I
believe in God? Or you can't say that to me?
What it's the opposite. I don't think. I don't think
(08:18):
anything exists except God. Like, this is just a play,
this is just shadows on the wall. Let's let's make fun,
Let's laugh at it. Let's that's another way of saying,
let's enjoy it. You know what I mean? Rigid tight
Jesus picking weed on the Sabbath, Like, what are you
talking about? None of this is real? Like, that's that's freedom.
(08:39):
That that to me, the marker of spiritual maturity is
what I would call spaciousness, and that spaciousness can lend
itself to a certain degree of playfulness.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
And you made a great transition because you're touching on
something that I really want to get to in this show.
This show is about being the brison between the secular
and the sacred, and I'm thankful that I Heart gave
me the platform to be able to discuss it with
people like you. But I think when it comes to
our spiritual experiences and being a Christian or following something
(09:12):
greater than ourselves. I think it binds us up because
we want to do the right thing right. We want
to be the person that matches whatever calling was placed
in their life and whatever scripture they read. And so
for you, when you say, hey, let's lighten it up
a little bit, let's have a little more fun with this,
(09:32):
where did you find that freedom? Because from my research,
you grew up an evangelical household that was i'm assuming
fairly like strict and a little bit more conservative than
maybe what we'd be familiar with today. And that kind
of upbringing for so many of us have made us
into adulthood going I don't know how to have fun
(09:55):
because everything was in a box back then.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, I think I know what you're saying. It's a bummer.
So one of my teachers is Ramdas, who I love
very much, and he used to say, you don't want
to be Christian, you want to be free. You don't
want to be Jewish, you want to be free. You
don't want to be a Hindu, you want to be free.
And that really resonated with me. You know, Ramana Maharshi,
(10:22):
this great saint talked about we have the stick that
we stoke the fire with, and that would be our practice.
It might be Christianity, it might be something else. But
once the fire is going, once you know who you are,
once you've recognized your nature, your true nature, the stick
you throw it in the fire too. Buddhias said something
(10:43):
very similar, meaning meaning you don't hold on to the
thing that set you free, because then you're bound to that.
That's your new identity. You've traded an egoic, materialist, consumers
whatever identity for now a spiritual identity. And now you
wear linen pants, and you have crystals, and you're a
pet psychic, and you go on retreats. More bullshit, more bullshit.
(11:03):
You want to be free. You don't want to wear
Lululemon pants on a Wednesday in Teluca Lake. You want
to be free. Buddhists had a very similar thing. The
boat that carries you over the river. We're talking. I'm
not talking about some exotic experience like enlightenment. I'm talking
about recognizing who you are in the exact same way
that the prodigal son remembered he was the man's father.
(11:24):
So nothing changed, there was just a recognition whatever brings
you to that recognition, that's the boat. That's your practice.
Once you're crossed the river, leave the boat. So many
of us pick up the boats, and now we're walking
with the boat. I'm a Buddhist, I'm a Christian. These
are my values, these are my scriptures. What are you doing?
(11:46):
Drop it? In fact, spirituality could be called drop it,
give up, drop it. Stop insisting you are anything other
than what you are, which is more like the empty
space of this room. It's more like the space of
the universe, empty, vivacious, fresh, expansive, free awareness. That's what
you are and whatever brings you there. Who cares? But
(12:09):
we're so good at turning anything into an identity, just
another thing to defend. Well, I'm a Christian. You can't
you don't talk that way to me. Eh, I'm a Buddhist.
You can't eat that. You can't say that. What are
we doing? What are we doing? You want to be
a spiritual persona or do you want to taste liberation?
Do you want to live in a in a felt
(12:30):
experience of who you are? We could say, in religious language,
who you are in God, who you really are, and
that Jesus drew a crowd. He drew a crowd salt
and light. This is this is an exciting, inviting, engaging thing.
It's an appealing thing when you meet and talk to
(12:51):
a liberated person, somebody who knows who they are. It's
it's attractive. It's not well, this is what I do
on Sunday, and do you These are the hymns were
you sing? Or these are the beads I carry? And
these are the mantras I chant? And this is what
it doesn't Once the boat gets you there, and once
you recognize something as simple as a son remembering who
(13:13):
his father is. That's how simple this recognition is. Whatever
gets you there, leave it drop it. Don't start defending
what got you there, because it might be evangelical Christianity
over here, might be Buddhism over here, might be science
over here, might be rock climbing over there. Something, this truth,
this poll will come and get you however it needs to.
(13:36):
And it doesn't need to be the way it got me.
And it doesn't need to be the way it got.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
How did it get you? What's I mean? What's your
experience getting to this point where you do feel free?
Speaker 1 (13:46):
It's a lot. I mean, you said we have thirty
five minutes.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
We can go for your two hours if you need.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Well. You see now why my podcasts tend to be long. No,
I have a little bit longer. I'm not worried about it.
Let's see what we can cover, and you let me
know when you're when you feel good, because it's a
generous it's a generous question. I don't I do want
to give a caveat that. I don't think people need
to copy this formula. You know what I'm say, There
(14:16):
was a time in my life I'd be like, this
is what I did, this is what you should do.
I'm just saying how it found me was I as
you mentioned, I was raised. When I say fundamentalist, it's
not quite right, but literal, literal Bible, like this is literal.
This is no myth, no metaphor, no allegory. It was
more of a textbook. It was we're looking at like
(14:39):
God said it. I believe it. That does it kind
of in that part in that realm. And then I
got married when I was twenty two is what the
show Crashing I made was about. I got married when
I was twenty two. My joke is like, why didn't
anyone stop me, But you know I was. I was determined.
I wanted, if I'm being honest, I wanted to have sex.
(15:00):
I wanted to move in with my partner, and I
wanted to move to Chicago to do comedy. And I
was in a world where you didn't do that unless
you got married. So everybody thought it was a great idea,
but it had everything to do with appearances. If somebody
had said to me, hey, uh, just live with your girlfriend.
It's beautiful, you love it to go live with your
(15:20):
girl friend, I would have been like, like somebody in
the church. If they had said that to me, I
would have been like, are you kidding? Really? Like I
would that would have been awesome. I could have done that.
But we got married, but it was very practical. I
want I don't want to break up. I want to
move to Chicago. I'm too scared to move to Chicago
on my own. I joked that I went from a
mom to a wife, like, now you can take care
of me. It was very juvenile. I was twenty two
(15:43):
and she was twenty four, so she seems so much
older than I was. And uh, we moved to Chicago.
I was doing comedy and faith really wasn't much more
to me than something I uh was raised in. It
was a little bit and I don't say this putting
it down, but had everything to do with what happens
(16:04):
when you die. It wasn't really much about changing or
converting how I view reality or how I engage with
my fellow people. It was really like, I don't want
to go to hell. I believe in this. And then
after that was kind of settled, I just sort of
went about my business. We were good people. It informed
our ethics, our morality and stuff, and it was good,
(16:27):
but it wasn't like a huge part of my life.
It was more of a cultural identity than a spiritual identity,
if that makes sense, and there's nothing wrong with that.
That's what early faith often is. And it's okay. Then
my wife and god lover, for real, she married this child,
you know, like I was. I wasn't. I didn't know
(16:50):
what I was doing. I was also marrying someone to
help me. It's very unsexy. I don't just mean sexually.
I mean like it's not very slick to be like,
will you take care of me? Will you teach me
how to pay my bill? And help me find an
alternate side parking, and find an apartment, like I just
needed an assistance. So she was right. She recognized what
was going on and she wanted out. And the way
(17:14):
that she did it was I used to think this
was like cowardly. Now I'm like, no, that's what she
was able to do. She had an affair. She fell
in love with somebody else. She has this affair underneath
that I can see now is this unconscious I want
out of this and I don't know how to do
it because she didn't want to hurt me, so like
an affair. I'm not a fan of affairs. It was
(17:34):
very painful, but it is kind of like sometimes I
feel like that she felt like that was her only choice.
You know, I don't know how to do this other
than like blowing up the bridge because I was a sweetie,
Like on crashing, I was like this sweet, nice guy.
We were always nice. We didn't have one fight. How
do you break up with that? It's but it's not
(17:54):
it doesn't feel you know, it doesn't feel like the
love of your life. But it's like your best friend.
What do you do? You shoot the dog? Basically, you know,
it's like old Yeller it's cruel, but like you just
gotta do it fast affair. She also fell in love.
She is I don't know if she's with that person anymore,
but I imagine she is. So that really turned everything
(18:17):
on its head. It exposed a belief that I had,
which was, if I don't have sex until I'm married,
if I don't smoke or drink or swear all these
naughty things, and if I believe in Jesus, I kind
of thought the bargain was, you'll protect me. This is
what some have called like the slot machine guy, like
(18:39):
you'll protect me, You'll help me find parking spots, you'll
help me when the airplane is turbulent. It's all fine,
But that exposed something to jump ahead a little bit.
The way I view it now, as Jim Finley as
this great line, I believe in a god who protects
me from nothing but sustains me and everything. And this
is a much better model. I did not have that yet.
(19:02):
But here I am. My wife is breaking my heart.
Where's this God that's supposed to protect me? What's interesting
is I was being sustained, you know what I mean,
Like there was a a I don't mean like a
woo woo, something that's not happening right now. Currently, we
are both being sustained. We're being sustained that life is
in us, and I was being sustained through that heartbreak.
(19:23):
So that's my view of God now. But back then
I was like, you did not pold your end of
the bargain. So I realized I had to look at
what this God was. I dabbled in not believing in God.
That never didn't, that never felt quite right. And this
is the part where I'm like, not everybody has to
do this, But what happened with me is I comedian.
I'm at Bonnaroo. I took mushrooms. I took a pretty
(19:46):
small dose of mushrooms like psilocybin. Amy Schumer was there
and I had never done them, and I said, what
is mushrooms like? And she said it's like weed but stronger,
which is really funny, because no, it's not. But I'm
so I'm so glad she said that because I went
in completely fearless. I was like, oh, it's like weed
but struggle. It's like fun and pleasant. And it was
(20:08):
fun and pleasant, and it wasn't really what I saw
on the trip. It was that I was introduced to
something that was seeing. So there's this classic line in spirituality,
which is what you are looking for is what you
are looking with. And when I took mushrooms and the
(20:28):
appearances started to change, I was acquainted with the part
of me that wasn't changing, the awareness that was aware
of those changes. So that is the pearl of great price.
That is the piece that passes understanding. It's what spirituality
is about, is what is it that is aware of
your experience? And mushrooms, by being this kind of laser
(20:49):
light show, made me aware of awareness for the first time.
And it also made me aware that there are things
that are so unbelievable, so ineffable, so mysterious, so ineffable
is the right word, you can't talk about them. That
As I was coming down from my mushroom experience, I
(21:10):
vividly remember thinking I'm gonna have to talk about this
and ruin it. And that was a real click moment.
I was like, maybe that's what the Bible is, Maybe
that's what they all are. Maybe it's these compassionate, loving
beings that are trying to talk about something you can't
talk about. Because I had finally tasted something beyond the mind,
(21:34):
and the mind was trying to make sense of it
and it was completely failing. And that was humbling, And
it also made me realize maybe that's what all of
this spiritual stuff is trying to point to. It can't
talk about it, but it can be evocative. It can
evoke that experience in you, more like poetry than a textbook.
(21:54):
So that's when I found Joseph Campbell. He wrote a
great series I think it's on Netflix called The Power
of Myth. Really helped me understand Semitic storytelling, help me
understand metaphor, and help me see that sometimes stories aren't
they're not they're not factual in the way like an
engineer's guide to build a bridge is factual, but they
(22:16):
are true, Like there are things that are so true,
so essential that they can only be told with lies.
And back in Jesus's time, this was very commonplace. It's
still commonplace in our in our time too. But we
do it with movies, we do it with music. You know,
Ray Charles says like I love you even when it's raining.
(22:37):
We know he doesn't mean rain, we mean when he's blue,
when he's sat Like we have metaphor it. We have
indirect ways of talking about things, usually romantic love. In
any way, I'm talking a lot. But Joseph Campbell really
helped reframe the Bible for me. Then I found Ramdas.
Then from Romdas, I found Rupert Spira. He introduced me
to non duality than John Wheeler, and then I started
(22:59):
to recognize that kind of what we were saying at
the beginning, what science calls consciousness, what you and I
are both experiencing right now. You're conscious, You're aware. That
is it. That is what we're talking about. It's as
close as the air on your skin. That is what
every tradition is pointing to. Science calls it the hard
(23:22):
problem of consciousness. We call it the mystery of God's being.
And I think God's being is the only being. I
think there's one consciousness, sort of like there's one ocean,
and then there are appearances within that ocean that waves,
and the wave appears to be separate, but at the
end of the day, it's just ocean. It's all the
same water. And I think that's what's going on with
you and I and I think once you kind of
(23:44):
have that perspective, you might laugh a little bit more
at traffic or your flight being delayed. It sort of
helps you light.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Now, it's funny that you mentioned Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell's
played a huge impact in kind of my thinking. But
here's the problem, and I don't I mean, you operate,
and I think you're so intriguing to me because you're
such a brilliant comedian and a thinker, and you do
have this it seems like a deep desire to make
(24:19):
the most out of the space that we're in right now.
And so I mean, I'm going to make an assumption
and tell me if I'm wrong. My assumption is you
have this experience where all of a sudden, your work
gets rocked a little bit and you realize that there's
a piece of you that you haven't necessarily cared for
or experienced, and you go, I got to talk about this.
(24:40):
And here's the point that I think so many listeners
and watchers of this will relate with where did you turn?
Because I think one of the common things today is
that when you have these experiences, good or bad. Right,
I've had an experience where all of a sudden I
turned inward and I was like, I've done nothing right.
You know, I get very self critical. Where do you
(25:03):
turn in that moment to get to seek some of
the answers or to seek some clarity or some peace
and some joy.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
I think I'm understanding. You know. For me, it wasn't mushrooms,
it wasn't my wife leaving me. It wasn't these peak experiences.
It's the ordinary, everyday awareness that you and I are
both we can say employing right now. And a big
turning point John Wheeler, who's on YouTube John Wheeler, non duality.
I'm obsessed. He's a teacher who stopped teaching anyway, that's
(25:33):
another thing. So we're talking about questions or doubts or
something comes up. The real turn for me is in
recognizing that, Okay, you're this awareness. You're like, you're like
the space in this room. Right my voice is appearing
(25:53):
inside of you. You're hearing me. Later you can sceptualize, oh,
that's I'm hearing that he's over there, but really it's
just kind of appearing in this emptiness. And once you
see that, everything emerges out of that awareness and then
recedes back into that awareness. So you have a question
like am I doing this right? Have I done anything right. Well,
that's an appearance in the awareness, and the awareness is
(26:17):
the good news. The awareness is the gospel. So you
don't have that doubt. And then, effervescing, sizzling out of
that awareness emerges a form a thought, have I ever
done anything right? And then let's say you take some time,
you twist yourself in pretzels and you think, well, no,
(26:38):
that's not true. I have done some things right, and
you satiate that doubt, and then it recedes right, and
now you're just left with the emptiness again. So, before
the problem emerged and after it's satisfied, same state. Do
you understand? So the mind isn't invited on this journey?
(26:58):
What's wrong with right now? If you don't think about it?
Why does it feel so good to think about nothing?
What must exist for the mind to exist? What must
be there for the mind to exist? It's awareness, awareness, awareness,
So the mind will never stop thinking of another question.
(27:18):
The mind will never tire of lobbing up another piece
of self doubt. Oh maybe it's the wrong teacher, maybe
it's the wrong book, maybe it's the wrong practice. Maybe
I've been wasting my time. The answer, unfortunately, is to
go ah, interesting and go back to the awareness, because
why would you trade christ consciousness? We could call it empty, spacious,
(27:43):
fresh aliveness that you are and have always been. It
was here when you were seven, it was here when
you're twenty seven, and it's here right now. Why would
you trade that for ghosts and shadows games? It might
as well be sudoku bella. What if we're what if
we're a fool? Great, thanks for being here. Guess what
(28:05):
your stomach is digesting right now. Your hair is growing,
your fingernails are growing. All this is happening naturally. We
don't think that's us. It's some problem we have to solve.
Same with your mind. It's always gonna love, new doubts,
new fears based on your state. You take away my coffee,
you give me no food for six days. I might
start being like, oh, I don't know, you just have
(28:27):
to go I see, and you let it go by
like a leaf on a river. But it's even more
than letting it go by. It's going like in what
medium is this concern, this fear, or this doubt appearing?
And you realize everything is made, Everything is a modulation
of the truth that you are. So even a bad
(28:48):
thought you must be present and aware to witness that
bad thought good news. You're president aware.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
You are that you ask all I mean on your
show and you have an incredible podcast. We've joked about
it because we started this out and I was like, Hey,
it's not gonna be this show is not going to
be two hours because you do a very long form show.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Uh, you made it weird.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
On that show, you ask most participants, I don't know
if it's every h kind of what their thoughts are
in life after death? Correct.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, Well that's a good way to kind of cut
to the the center of the filet you know, like,
what do you think happens when we die?
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah? So, I mean, can I turn that on you
a little bit because we're talking about consciousness and we're
talking about this this life experience right now, we're talking
about your relationship with the divine and so all of
this leads up to something that I'm sure you've thought
about and you think it's kind of cutting to the
cutting to the chase.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
So for you.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Personally, can you answer that question?
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Have you ever.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I mean publicly or is that like a secret that I'm.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Not suspecting, Cause no, I don't know if there are
any secrets, Benjamin, I really Usually my strategy when I
want people to talk about those things is to talk
about them first. So we're totally comfortable. But thank you
for checking. You know. I do want to go back
(30:19):
to what we were just saying, what happens when I
die is an appearance in that fresh aliveness that is
beyond pete. So there's something to be not achieved later,
but appreciated right now. First of all, how could I know?
(30:40):
So it's not really the point, meaning I'm calling bullshit
on my own approach. Buddha, I believe Buddha when they
asked him what happens when you die? I said, what
business is that of yours? Meaning? You know, it's like
we're in a dream, and I say, what happens when
this guy wakes up? Well, we weren't there to begin with,
(31:04):
and he'll wake up. It's hard to let me answer
it the way other people have answered it. I believe
that what we are I got this from Rupert Spiro,
one of my beloved teachers. I believe that awareness the
space where your feelings are appearing, your thoughts are appearing,
(31:24):
the sight of me is appearing, the sound of my
voice is appearing, the feeling of your butt in the
chair is appearing. We conceptualize the idea of a body
experiencing those things. But if you really close your eyes
and look at all the data, just raw data, it's
appearing in a spacious field. It's a spacelike knowing presence.
(31:45):
So if they're your dog barks again, you and I
both conceptualize, meaning interpret the dogs bark because it's kind
of echoe and it's kind of over there. We go,
it's over there, But really the sound of your dog
barking is made out of it's in you. It's you.
It couldn't be closer. Brain goes, let's go with a
(32:06):
bird tweeting. It's quiet, it's over there. Yeah, okay, Sure,
that's helpful if I'm hunting birds and want to eat them.
But in reality, it's appearing closer than close. It's already
inside of me. What I am isn't bound by this body.
It's spreading out in every direction. That's the reason I
start there is it's sort of like the space in
(32:28):
this room, right in the room that you're in, and
asking what happens when you die? Presupposed is a separate
entity named Benjamin Higgins. Right, So we're going there's sort
of a problem already, we're going, what happens to Benjamin
Higgins when he dies? What happens to Pete Holmes when
he dies? That's like saying, what happens to this space
(32:50):
in my office when this house is eventually demolished? Will nothing?
Did it re emerge with the space around it, the
space outside the space of the universe. It was never
separate from it. It just had the appearance. The four
walls created the relative reality of a room. But the
(33:14):
truth is the empty space in this room is the
only empty space there is. So there's this line in
the dowd Eya Ching about when I actually I'm sorry
it's not in the Dowdy Ching, but it's it's from
that tradition. When a oz breaks, the air inside the
v ose just reunites with the air around it. That's death.
(33:36):
That's the idea. It's another it's a fancy. It's a
more satisfying way of saying nothing happens, because we're already there.
And that's why I say the thought what happens when
I die? Emerges in the Ultimate Mystery in the Pearl
of great price in the Kingdom of heaven. The I
(33:58):
Am God said, his name was I am. You and
I are also both having the experience I am. That
is God localizing himself as you and I What happens
to that I am when this appearance vanishes nothing, You're
already there. There's nothing for you to figure out. Your
(34:21):
brain is never going to click and go oh, I understand.
All you can do is recede, relax, drop stuff, and
recognize that your entire life, including this moment, you were
that you were the essence of reality. So when we
(34:41):
say what happens to this person one today, there's a
problem in the question. The problem supposes that that appearance
is separate and then will be reunited. There is no reunited.
You can't become what you already are. The prodigal son
was the man's son the whole time, not just when
he remembered I'm his son. Was he not his son
when he was drunk with the sex workers and the pigs.
(35:04):
He was always his son. This is Jesus saying, it's
that it's that you are the light of the world.
You are the light of the world. You are what
renders the world knowable that's what light does. You don't
see trees, you see light on trees. That's how you
see things. You are the light of the world. What
(35:25):
happens to this apparent limitation of the light of the
world when this heart stops beating? Good news?
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Nothing for It's interesting because you obviously are such an
incredible thinker, and you've processed so much, and yet you
get on a stage and make people laugh. Yeah, for
a living. I'm curious about I mean, because I think
your comedy transforms in many ways. I think it is
(35:55):
a transformative comedy that sheds light on things that we
take too seriously and also illuminates things that maybe we've
hidden behind. I think it's wonderful and it's brilliant. But
how and this is going to be a very dumb question,
but I just I want to simplify it in the
best way I can. How do you make sense of
(36:17):
in one space being such a deep thinker and such
a processor of things, and then on tonight you'll step
on a stage and make a giggles.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, and talk about my winner too? Is what we're plying? Right? Yeah? Well,
I I don't I don't see any It's like hellelujah.
I don't see any difference. I don't see any shift there.
Why I don't, I don't, I don't. I don't think
awareness prefers a clean joke. This I don't. By the way,
(36:50):
just so you know, I'm not saying this defensively at all.
I love clean comics. I love dirty comics. I don't
think naked unborn awareness is like always talking about his
uh sex, or he's talking about something he's angry about.
I'm gonna shrink a little bit. This light doesn't go out.
And the people that come to the show, they have
(37:12):
a taste for that. They like it. It makes them laugh.
And when you're laughing, I'm being honest. When I'm on stage,
I'm not reverse engineering something. I'm not going like, well,
this is what it'll be. Let's let's figure out how
we're gonna make that. I'm just naturally unfolding. In the
same way your dog barks when the package hits the door,
(37:33):
and in the same way that mailman drops throws the package.
He's naturally occurring, Benjamin, Your mind is natural. It's it's
you're not in this world. You're of this world. You
are of this you are an expression of it, and
it's lawfully unfolding, and there's something beautiful about a human
being recognizing, you could say, their gifts, their voice, their perspective,
(37:56):
and authentically representing that and then allowing the people they
would be my fans that are drawn to that, to
be authentically drawn to that. And when we all get together,
it doesn't really matter. I say this on stage, I
go the words are an excuse to be together. It's
an excuse to get off our phone. And laughter. When
(38:19):
you're laughing, you're not there in the way that we've
been talking about it. In the same way that the
guy that free sooloed you know ever, or whatever mountain
it was, he's not there. That guy can't come on
the journey. Laughing is the same. If you're laughing, we
can put to one side what you're laughing at. If
you're laughing, you vanish. You're not defending. It's like deep
(38:43):
sleep or something. You're not defending yourself. You're not thinking
about who you are. You're standing there naked and vulnerable.
It's a great feeling. Comedy's not the only thing that
does this. Music, of course, says this. Relationships can do this,
conversations can do this. It's a evaporating process. An individual
(39:08):
goes to a comedy club and if it's good, which
is so hard, they're laughing. Now they're merging with the
people next to them. That's becoming an audience. We have
a name for that. You're now an audience. And then
the performer comes and merges with that audience into something
we call a show. So everything's vanishing, it stops even
being about me and you. We're all just kind of
(39:29):
making this rhythm together. That's literally holy, who l y.
It's reunifying. We were strangers. We were honking at each other.
Some of us honked at each other on the way
to the show because we were others. And now we're
(39:50):
one thing. Where Whereas when I was young, I used
to be like, well, and I don't think this is
what you're saying, but I think it's worth addressing. I thought,
but being polite or being gentle in your like, you know,
making jokes about you know, raisins or whatever was like better,
(40:10):
was like God would like that more. And I'm very
happy to say I put that to the test. And
I've seen so privileged to see so many people crying
with laughter because I'm talking about like I said, talking
about my mom being under a pile of phone books.
That's rude. I'm making fun of my mind. That's a
(40:36):
guy who says I'm not my mind. That's a guy
who says you're not your mind. Have you noticed this?
Have you seen what's going on up here? Is there
anything more lonely than thinking everybody at churches? Where's khakis
and a nice band? Hello? Bullshit? This is a mess.
This is a mess. It's wild, it's strange, it's isolating.
(40:58):
Let's look at it, Let's laugh at it, Let's celebrate it.
Let's realize that we stand apart from it. That's laughing.
That is so like, the more weird and confessional and
strange it can be, the better. I don't leave a
show where all we talked about were number two pencils.
Feeling less lonely in the world, I go like, geez,
(41:19):
what's wrong in my mind? That's not what I'm I
love Seinfeld. He has like five minutes on cotton balls.
That doesn't make me feel more at home in the universe.
What makes me feel more at home in the universe
is comics that are like I am out here, I'm
in this I'm participating, and you don't choose your thoughts.
(41:42):
Your thoughts are occurring, just like your stomach is digesting,
your thoughts are pouring in. And what a lonely thing
to think. Wow, everyone else is thinking about cotton balls.
I hated the back of the guy's head in front
of me on the plane. I don't even know why
I hated it. But guess what, we can confess that
if it's mentionable, it's manageable. That's mister Rogers, let's talk
(42:05):
about it. You'll leave lighter. Put it down, put it down.
That's again, That's that's holy. I had.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
I had what I would call a spiritual experience in
college one of my best friends. I'm an only child.
I grew up in this small little town, and I
really tried to do things the right way and was
very woundly tied, and my mind was always playing games
on itself. I actually wrote a book called Alone and
Playing Sight Pete, because I've lived so much in my
(42:35):
life feeling alone in this world and a buddy in
my eyes. I remember the moment we're sitting in the
car and he goes, Ben. If you knew the thoughts
that went through my mind, you would never like me.
And I remember going that and I took a second.
I was like, wait, I felt the same way about myself,
and so it's it's work like yours that does help
(42:59):
me feel less alone because you're willing, you have the
courage whatever you want to call it, to stand on
stage and say this is what I was thinking. And
I'm like, yeah, me too. Maybe I'm alone and like
some of the weird stuff that goes on up here.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
That's exactly right. And it's so meaningful when I see,
like like a classic little old lady at my show
and she's laughing her butt off. I love that. But
you really named it. I think so many of us.
I certainly can't say what percentage, but certainly me go,
it's worse than if you could see my thoughts, because
(43:34):
we can kind of stand apart from our thoughts and go, oh,
that's not me. Not all of those are me. The
good ones are me, you know. But it's like, if
people really knew me, they wouldn't love me. That's like
the fundamental wound of most people. So we learn how
to do impressions of what we think people would like
to see. We put on a suit, and everybody's doing
(43:56):
this to a greater or lesser extent. I think one
of the functions of art is to say you're not alone.
And I think specifically in stand up not always. Some
stand up makes me turn cold and makes me feel scared,
but some stand up can say you know me too,
me too. Not only that, but I'm under lights. We
(44:18):
are pack animals, we are primate, you know what I mean. Like,
I'm not trying to get in devilish, I'm just saying like,
we have that tendency to band together. And if there's
someone who's louder than us, higher than us, on a stage,
brighter than us under lights, that's the leader. So what
does the leader do? Most leaders politicians tell you how
(44:39):
they've got it handled, that they're the best, and don't
and I want your vote, right, that sort of thing.
A comedian gets on stage and tells you about the
time they shit their pants. That is a reversal of
That's what makes it funny. You're not supposed to say
that or not. All comedy does this, but the comedy
that I like does this. A lot of my jokes
(45:01):
are about a time I let myself down, a time
when I was selfish. There's a story in the new
special about how a friend of mine was looking for
his kid. He couldn't find his kid, but it was
the last carousel ride of the day, and my daughter
really wanted to ride the carousel, and we went on
the carousel. That is a letdown. That's a letdown of
a story. And we laugh at it and we find
(45:21):
the kid. Everything's fine. But the joke is I was disappointed.
As soon as I got on the carousel. I was like,
what are you doing? Which is a funny way to feel,
as you're like going up and down on a fake horse.
But I'm like, I made the But my daughter's so happy,
so I'm like, did I make the wrong choice? They're
gonna finder. That's what a comedian, in my opinion, should do. Hey,
(45:47):
it's not just you. I can't stand. And a lot
of comedy is this. I respect it. It's fine, it's
just not for me. Comedy about like here's how I won,
Here's how I got the last word. He looked at
me and I said this, and then a guy coming
Paul McCartney comes out and says hi to me, and
I moon walked into a limo, like who cares. Who cares? Like,
(46:10):
if I want people lying to me about how well
they're doing, I'll go on Instagram. Let's just here in
this art form, in this truly original American art forum.
Let's do it. Let's do it the way they did it,
and confess it and share it and celebrate it. My
(46:32):
mom might be under a pile of phone books. In here.
We laugh at that, and here we look at that.
Out there, we go, ohh well, fine, but let me
have my playroun Pe.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
You're wonderful and I'm so thankful for you coming on.
We do have just a few minutes here, and I
want to take time because you have a special called
Silly Silly fun Boy. For anybody watching or listening to
this in the upcoming weeks ahead, why should they watch
it it? What can they expect? And are you proud
of it?
Speaker 1 (47:06):
I am proud of it. It's always hard releasing things,
even though I you know, in this conversation, I think
you said a nice tone and I've enjoyed it, and
you know, been kind of feeling myself and being like, oh, comedy,
it's beautiful. Then you really suspecially you're like there is
a part of me listen what if So it's vulnerable,
(47:27):
I think you should watch it because what have you
got to lose? Have you got to lose? I mean, yeah,
you could lose the time, but you'll know, you'll know.
We edited it in such a way that you'll know
in the first ten minutes if it's for you. And uh,
it's free, meaning like one of the things I love
(47:49):
about having a special on YouTube is there's absolutely no
barrier to access. You don't have to have a premium
account or anything. Anybody can watch it. Just type Pete Holmes, silly,
silly fun boy, maybe just beat homes I don't know,
and just give it a go. I would encourage people to, like,
for fuck, like just turn your phone off and maybe
give it a try, you know what I mean. Like
(48:10):
I'm guilty of that, like being like this is dumb
and you realize you've been watching it for three minutes,
like stay in because I am really proud of this.
I've been It's not every day that you get to
watch or that I get to watch something where somebody's
been focused, somebody's been obsessed with a certain skill, a
certain art form for twenty five years, you know what
(48:31):
I mean? It's like this has been my life for
twenty five years. If somebody makes me a scooter and
they were studying scooters for twenty five years, I don't
like scooters. I'd give it a try. I'd like to
see what twenty five years of intense passion feels like
on the road. So there you go. It's it's it's
the best special I've done so far. And I'm obsessed
(48:54):
with those jokes. There's one mean one about me being
on a carousel. There's some good God stuff in there,
some good God jokes that are for everybody, not just
religious people. And what have you got to Liz, It's free.
Just watch it, Just watch it, and then like keep
it looping and keep it on the keep for six months.
(49:15):
Just get those views out.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
Pete holme Silly Silly fun Boy out on YouTube. Pete,
thanks for coming and hanging out with us. Thanks for
sharing your heart and your mind. You are a brilliant person.
But I have always been a massive fan of your
work and it's an honor to have you here today.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
It was an honor to be here, Ben, thank you
for having me.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Hey, friends, thanks for listening or watching.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Would you take a second follow.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Subscribe and drop a comment.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
It really helps
If we weren't recording this, it would be twelve times funnier.
And I was just like, that's it. What I consider
like a deeply spiritual person. Are spacious, happy, free, you know,
lighthearted is a good word for it. You don't want
to be Christian, you want to be free. You don't
want to be Jewish, you want to be free. I
believe in a God who protects me from nothing but
(00:20):
sustains me and everything. And this is a much better model.
When I took mushrooms and the appearances started to change,
I was acquainted with the part of me that wasn't changing,
the awareness that was aware of those changes. Laughter. When
you're laughing, you're not there in the way that we've
(00:42):
been talking about it. In the same way that the
guy that free soloed, you know, or whatever mountain it was,
he's not there. That guy can't come on the journey.
Laughing is the same people really knew me, they wouldn't
love me. That's like the fundamental wound of most people.
So we learn how to do it impressions of what
we think people would like to see.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Welcome to if you can hear me, a space where
culture meets the Soul.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I'm Ben Higgins.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
You may know me from the Bachelor, and you may
know some of my guests from culture and Headlines, but
this podcast is about going beyond the surface into something deeper.
Today's guest is Pete Holmes, a comedian known for his
stand up, the HBO series Crashing, and the podcast You
Made It Weird, where humor meets deep conversations about life, faith,
(01:32):
and the search for meaning.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I get nervous to talk to comedians.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Why.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I feel like there's some secret, like magic that you
have going on in your brain. I play golf with
some comedians and they are tremendously more funny than I am,
and so much quicker than I am, and it makes
me feel less than I want to be.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Like you, I know exactly what you mean. I hate
to agree with you, but I just I felt the
same way growing up when I saw comedians on TV,
when I saw them on talk shows and stuff. It
was that same sort of envy, I guess, and just
really got obsessed with honing that and trying to get
(02:19):
in that group. You know that, to me, no exaggeration,
is the greatest part of being a comedian is having
friends that are comedians and laughing. I just listened to
Mike Brobiglia interview mulaney on his podcast and they started recording,
and they were like, if we weren't recording this, it
would be twelve times funnier, and I was just like,
(02:41):
that's it, that's completely true. And you know, I don't
mind the job. I like kind of playing within a parameter,
but when you're golfing or just hanging out with comics
it can be To me, it's not so much that
it's funny, although that's a huge part of it. It's
that you're just kind of like everyone has the benefit
of the doubt, Like everyone knows you're just playing grab ass.
(03:03):
Everyone knows you're not malicious. None of my friends are malicious.
None of my friends are cruel, none of my friends
have hate in their heart. So once you're kind of
like clear, you got through airport security, that's comedians. You're
through security. Everything is okay. Now let's joke. Let's joke,
and like I do this on stage too. It's like,
(03:23):
let's I got a miss call from my mom and
she's eighty four right as I was going on stage,
and I was like, I just missed a phone call.
Does anyone here know that this was last night? The
sheer terror of missing a phone call from your eighty
four year old mother right as you're going on stage.
And I was like, for all I know, I'm doing
this stupid set and she's like buried under a pile
(03:44):
of phone books. You know what I mean, Because that's
what it is when they're in their eighties. It's always
something bad. And they, you know, they rightfully kind of
pulled away, and I was like, no, let's just be
in a contract that we will laugh at the darkness.
We will be okay with that here. And that comedy
club contract is kind of what comedians not kind of
(04:06):
it is what comedians are living under those rules all
the time. And then the cliche is when I'm with
non comedians and there are people who don't do comedy
who I consider comedians that they're in that fold, you're
often saying things that are you know, inappropriate, are like
or like get you outcast. Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I've been curious about this, and I feel like you're
the first person that I can actually ask that will
give me a good answer. And I kind of have
you locked in here for a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
The show is about faith, and it's about our experiences
with faith and all the different perspectives when it comes
to faith specifically this show specifically. I don't know if
you know where you're at, but that's exactly where you're at.
We're gonna talk a lot about faith.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
I could. I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled, But I do.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Want to talk comedy because it is the reason we're here.
Silly silly fun boys coming out in it's your special.
We want to promote it because I think you're hilarious
and I think you're great, but you are intriguing to
me personally because of the way you intertwine faith and
truth and reality within the comedy and within your experience.
(05:16):
Was there though my grandfather and his friends. My grandfather
passed away. He was ninety six, so don't feel that bad.
He lived along in good life. They were so quick,
and they had all these jokes stored up in their head.
And my grandpa would go to bed at night, and
if I stayed the night over there, I could hear
him rehearsing some jokes while he laid in bed at night,
(05:38):
and he would laugh at himself. And I'm sure he
went to breakfast the next morning and told all his
buddies these jokes that he had been preparing and practicing.
Have we lost that? Because it felt like the way
they communicated was all through humor, and they weren't malicious
but making fun of each other, poking fun at reality.
And my buddies and I don't function that way. None
(06:00):
of us are professional commedians, but we don't speak in
that light in that way with each other, Like, have
we lost that?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
You think it might be a generational thing that he
valued jokes and kind of kind of taking the piss
a little bit more than we do. I don't know.
I like that goes back to your first great question,
which is like that envy, you know, the thing you
brought up when I saw that there were these keepers
(06:28):
of that specific flame, the people that are like, no,
not taking things seriously is so fun, and I would
argue is pretty pretty spiritual, meaning the perspective of somebody
who doesn't take reality, meaning objective reality, to be the
end all, be all of everything. That would be a
lighthearted person. All the qualities of what I consider like
(06:52):
a deeply spiritual person are spacious, happy, free, you know, lighthearted,
is a good word for it, and the fruit of
that perspective can often be making fun of things, making fun,
making fun. It's fun. It's my daughter's name is Leela.
Leela means the dance or the play of the universe
(07:13):
or of God. It's this dance, It's a play. I
think we get tight and we get rigid when we
take everything really seriously, like I'm late, I'm late for
this meeting, and like that sort of stuff is a lie.
I'm not saying we can express love and concern and
compati all these good things by being on time. There's
a relative reality to those things. But my favorite people
(07:34):
tend to be the ones that are like, what are
you talking about? Like? What are you talking about? There's
no such thing as what you're talking about? And why
are we putting so much meaning into it? Into ourselves?
I'm pete, you should respect me and all this sort
of stuff. It's all vapor. It's all vapor. Make fun
of me, make fun of you. There's something I think
(07:56):
there's a holiness to that. If I let you make
fun of me, it's because I know who I really am.
It's you could say, in God, are you like do
you understand that. I think we might have lost that
because we take ourselves pretty seriously, even as spiritual people
will be like, well, I'm a spiritual person, all I
believe in God? Or you can't say that to me?
What it's the opposite. I don't think. I don't think
(08:18):
anything exists except God. Like, this is just a play,
this is just shadows on the wall. Let's let's make fun,
Let's laugh at it. Let's that's another way of saying,
let's enjoy it. You know what I mean? Rigid tight
Jesus picking weed on the Sabbath, Like, what are you
talking about? None of this is real? Like, that's that's freedom.
(08:39):
That that to me, the marker of spiritual maturity is
what I would call spaciousness, and that spaciousness can lend
itself to a certain degree of playfulness.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
And you made a great transition because you're touching on
something that I really want to get to in this show.
This show is about being the brison between the secular
and the sacred, and I'm thankful that I Heart gave
me the platform to be able to discuss it with
people like you. But I think when it comes to
our spiritual experiences and being a Christian or following something
(09:12):
greater than ourselves. I think it binds us up because
we want to do the right thing right. We want
to be the person that matches whatever calling was placed
in their life and whatever scripture they read. And so
for you, when you say, hey, let's lighten it up
a little bit, let's have a little more fun with this,
(09:32):
where did you find that freedom? Because from my research,
you grew up an evangelical household that was i'm assuming
fairly like strict and a little bit more conservative than
maybe what we'd be familiar with today. And that kind
of upbringing for so many of us have made us
into adulthood going I don't know how to have fun
(09:55):
because everything was in a box back then.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, I think I know what you're saying. It's a bummer.
So one of my teachers is Ramdas, who I love
very much, and he used to say, you don't want
to be Christian, you want to be free. You don't
want to be Jewish, you want to be free. You
don't want to be a Hindu, you want to be free.
And that really resonated with me. You know, Ramana Maharshi,
(10:22):
this great saint talked about we have the stick that
we stoke the fire with, and that would be our practice.
It might be Christianity, it might be something else. But
once the fire is going, once you know who you are,
once you've recognized your nature, your true nature, the stick
you throw it in the fire too. Buddhias said something
(10:43):
very similar, meaning meaning you don't hold on to the
thing that set you free, because then you're bound to that.
That's your new identity. You've traded an egoic, materialist, consumers
whatever identity for now a spiritual identity. And now you
wear linen pants, and you have crystals, and you're a
pet psychic, and you go on retreats. More bullshit, more bullshit.
(11:03):
You want to be free. You don't want to wear
Lululemon pants on a Wednesday in Teluca Lake. You want
to be free. Buddhists had a very similar thing. The
boat that carries you over the river. We're talking. I'm
not talking about some exotic experience like enlightenment. I'm talking
about recognizing who you are in the exact same way
that the prodigal son remembered he was the man's father.
(11:24):
So nothing changed, there was just a recognition whatever brings
you to that recognition, that's the boat. That's your practice.
Once you're crossed the river, leave the boat. So many
of us pick up the boats, and now we're walking
with the boat. I'm a Buddhist, I'm a Christian. These
are my values, these are my scriptures. What are you doing?
(11:46):
Drop it? In fact, spirituality could be called drop it,
give up, drop it. Stop insisting you are anything other
than what you are, which is more like the empty
space of this room. It's more like the space of
the universe, empty, vivacious, fresh, expansive, free awareness. That's what
you are and whatever brings you there. Who cares? But
(12:09):
we're so good at turning anything into an identity, just
another thing to defend. Well, I'm a Christian. You can't
you don't talk that way to me. Eh, I'm a Buddhist.
You can't eat that. You can't say that. What are
we doing? What are we doing? You want to be
a spiritual persona or do you want to taste liberation?
Do you want to live in a in a felt
(12:30):
experience of who you are? We could say, in religious language,
who you are in God, who you really are, and
that Jesus drew a crowd. He drew a crowd salt
and light. This is this is an exciting, inviting, engaging thing.
It's an appealing thing when you meet and talk to
(12:51):
a liberated person, somebody who knows who they are. It's
it's attractive. It's not well, this is what I do
on Sunday, and do you These are the hymns were
you sing? Or these are the beads I carry? And
these are the mantras I chant? And this is what
it doesn't Once the boat gets you there, and once
you recognize something as simple as a son remembering who
(13:13):
his father is. That's how simple this recognition is. Whatever
gets you there, leave it drop it. Don't start defending
what got you there, because it might be evangelical Christianity
over here, might be Buddhism over here, might be science
over here, might be rock climbing over there. Something, this truth,
this poll will come and get you however it needs to.
(13:36):
And it doesn't need to be the way it got me.
And it doesn't need to be the way it got.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
How did it get you? What's I mean? What's your
experience getting to this point where you do feel free?
Speaker 1 (13:46):
It's a lot. I mean, you said we have thirty
five minutes.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
We can go for your two hours if you need.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Well. You see now why my podcasts tend to be long. No,
I have a little bit longer. I'm not worried about it.
Let's see what we can cover, and you let me
know when you're when you feel good, because it's a
generous it's a generous question. I don't I do want
to give a caveat that. I don't think people need
to copy this formula. You know what I'm say, There
(14:16):
was a time in my life I'd be like, this
is what I did, this is what you should do.
I'm just saying how it found me was I as
you mentioned, I was raised. When I say fundamentalist, it's
not quite right, but literal, literal Bible, like this is literal.
This is no myth, no metaphor, no allegory. It was
more of a textbook. It was we're looking at like
(14:39):
God said it. I believe it. That does it kind
of in that part in that realm. And then I
got married when I was twenty two is what the
show Crashing I made was about. I got married when
I was twenty two. My joke is like, why didn't
anyone stop me, But you know I was. I was determined.
I wanted, if I'm being honest, I wanted to have sex.
(15:00):
I wanted to move in with my partner, and I
wanted to move to Chicago to do comedy. And I
was in a world where you didn't do that unless
you got married. So everybody thought it was a great idea,
but it had everything to do with appearances. If somebody
had said to me, hey, uh, just live with your girlfriend.
It's beautiful, you love it to go live with your
(15:20):
girl friend, I would have been like, like somebody in
the church. If they had said that to me, I
would have been like, are you kidding? Really? Like I
would that would have been awesome. I could have done that.
But we got married, but it was very practical. I
want I don't want to break up. I want to
move to Chicago. I'm too scared to move to Chicago
on my own. I joked that I went from a
mom to a wife, like, now you can take care
of me. It was very juvenile. I was twenty two
(15:43):
and she was twenty four, so she seems so much
older than I was. And uh, we moved to Chicago.
I was doing comedy and faith really wasn't much more
to me than something I uh was raised in. It
was a little bit and I don't say this putting
it down, but had everything to do with what happens
(16:04):
when you die. It wasn't really much about changing or
converting how I view reality or how I engage with
my fellow people. It was really like, I don't want
to go to hell. I believe in this. And then
after that was kind of settled, I just sort of
went about my business. We were good people. It informed
our ethics, our morality and stuff, and it was good,
(16:27):
but it wasn't like a huge part of my life.
It was more of a cultural identity than a spiritual identity,
if that makes sense, and there's nothing wrong with that.
That's what early faith often is. And it's okay. Then
my wife and god lover, for real, she married this child,
you know, like I was. I wasn't. I didn't know
(16:50):
what I was doing. I was also marrying someone to
help me. It's very unsexy. I don't just mean sexually.
I mean like it's not very slick to be like,
will you take care of me? Will you teach me
how to pay my bill? And help me find an
alternate side parking, and find an apartment, like I just
needed an assistance. So she was right. She recognized what
was going on and she wanted out. And the way
(17:14):
that she did it was I used to think this
was like cowardly. Now I'm like, no, that's what she
was able to do. She had an affair. She fell
in love with somebody else. She has this affair underneath
that I can see now is this unconscious I want
out of this and I don't know how to do
it because she didn't want to hurt me, so like
an affair. I'm not a fan of affairs. It was
(17:34):
very painful, but it is kind of like sometimes I
feel like that she felt like that was her only choice.
You know, I don't know how to do this other
than like blowing up the bridge because I was a sweetie,
Like on crashing, I was like this sweet, nice guy.
We were always nice. We didn't have one fight. How
do you break up with that? It's but it's not
(17:54):
it doesn't feel you know, it doesn't feel like the
love of your life. But it's like your best friend.
What do you do? You shoot the dog? Basically, you know,
it's like old Yeller it's cruel, but like you just
gotta do it fast affair. She also fell in love.
She is I don't know if she's with that person anymore,
but I imagine she is. So that really turned everything
(18:17):
on its head. It exposed a belief that I had,
which was, if I don't have sex until I'm married,
if I don't smoke or drink or swear all these
naughty things, and if I believe in Jesus, I kind
of thought the bargain was, you'll protect me. This is
what some have called like the slot machine guy, like
(18:39):
you'll protect me, You'll help me find parking spots, you'll
help me when the airplane is turbulent. It's all fine,
But that exposed something to jump ahead a little bit.
The way I view it now, as Jim Finley as
this great line, I believe in a god who protects
me from nothing but sustains me and everything. And this
is a much better model. I did not have that yet.
(19:02):
But here I am. My wife is breaking my heart.
Where's this God that's supposed to protect me? What's interesting
is I was being sustained, you know what I mean,
Like there was a a I don't mean like a
woo woo, something that's not happening right now. Currently, we
are both being sustained. We're being sustained that life is
in us, and I was being sustained through that heartbreak.
(19:23):
So that's my view of God now. But back then
I was like, you did not pold your end of
the bargain. So I realized I had to look at
what this God was. I dabbled in not believing in God.
That never didn't, that never felt quite right. And this
is the part where I'm like, not everybody has to
do this, But what happened with me is I comedian.
I'm at Bonnaroo. I took mushrooms. I took a pretty
(19:46):
small dose of mushrooms like psilocybin. Amy Schumer was there
and I had never done them, and I said, what
is mushrooms like? And she said it's like weed but stronger,
which is really funny, because no, it's not. But I'm
so I'm so glad she said that because I went
in completely fearless. I was like, oh, it's like weed
but struggle. It's like fun and pleasant. And it was
(20:08):
fun and pleasant, and it wasn't really what I saw
on the trip. It was that I was introduced to
something that was seeing. So there's this classic line in spirituality,
which is what you are looking for is what you
are looking with. And when I took mushrooms and the
(20:28):
appearances started to change, I was acquainted with the part
of me that wasn't changing, the awareness that was aware
of those changes. So that is the pearl of great price.
That is the piece that passes understanding. It's what spirituality
is about, is what is it that is aware of
your experience? And mushrooms, by being this kind of laser
(20:49):
light show, made me aware of awareness for the first time.
And it also made me aware that there are things
that are so unbelievable, so ineffable, so mysterious, so ineffable
is the right word, you can't talk about them. That
As I was coming down from my mushroom experience, I
(21:10):
vividly remember thinking I'm gonna have to talk about this
and ruin it. And that was a real click moment.
I was like, maybe that's what the Bible is, Maybe
that's what they all are. Maybe it's these compassionate, loving
beings that are trying to talk about something you can't
talk about. Because I had finally tasted something beyond the mind,
(21:34):
and the mind was trying to make sense of it
and it was completely failing. And that was humbling, And
it also made me realize maybe that's what all of
this spiritual stuff is trying to point to. It can't
talk about it, but it can be evocative. It can
evoke that experience in you, more like poetry than a textbook.
(21:54):
So that's when I found Joseph Campbell. He wrote a
great series I think it's on Netflix called The Power
of Myth. Really helped me understand Semitic storytelling, help me
understand metaphor, and help me see that sometimes stories aren't
they're not they're not factual in the way like an
engineer's guide to build a bridge is factual, but they
(22:16):
are true, Like there are things that are so true,
so essential that they can only be told with lies.
And back in Jesus's time, this was very commonplace. It's
still commonplace in our in our time too. But we
do it with movies, we do it with music. You know,
Ray Charles says like I love you even when it's raining.
(22:37):
We know he doesn't mean rain, we mean when he's blue,
when he's sat Like we have metaphor it. We have
indirect ways of talking about things, usually romantic love. In
any way, I'm talking a lot. But Joseph Campbell really
helped reframe the Bible for me. Then I found Ramdas.
Then from Romdas, I found Rupert Spira. He introduced me
to non duality than John Wheeler, and then I started
(22:59):
to recognize that kind of what we were saying at
the beginning, what science calls consciousness, what you and I
are both experiencing right now. You're conscious, You're aware. That
is it. That is what we're talking about. It's as
close as the air on your skin. That is what
every tradition is pointing to. Science calls it the hard
(23:22):
problem of consciousness. We call it the mystery of God's being.
And I think God's being is the only being. I
think there's one consciousness, sort of like there's one ocean,
and then there are appearances within that ocean that waves,
and the wave appears to be separate, but at the
end of the day, it's just ocean. It's all the
same water. And I think that's what's going on with
you and I and I think once you kind of
(23:44):
have that perspective, you might laugh a little bit more
at traffic or your flight being delayed. It sort of
helps you light.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Now, it's funny that you mentioned Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell's
played a huge impact in kind of my thinking. But
here's the problem, and I don't I mean, you operate,
and I think you're so intriguing to me because you're
such a brilliant comedian and a thinker, and you do
have this it seems like a deep desire to make
(24:19):
the most out of the space that we're in right now.
And so I mean, I'm going to make an assumption
and tell me if I'm wrong. My assumption is you
have this experience where all of a sudden, your work
gets rocked a little bit and you realize that there's
a piece of you that you haven't necessarily cared for
or experienced, and you go, I got to talk about this.
(24:40):
And here's the point that I think so many listeners
and watchers of this will relate with where did you turn?
Because I think one of the common things today is
that when you have these experiences, good or bad. Right,
I've had an experience where all of a sudden I
turned inward and I was like, I've done nothing right.
You know, I get very self critical. Where do you
(25:03):
turn in that moment to get to seek some of
the answers or to seek some clarity or some peace
and some joy.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
I think I'm understanding. You know. For me, it wasn't mushrooms,
it wasn't my wife leaving me. It wasn't these peak experiences.
It's the ordinary, everyday awareness that you and I are
both we can say employing right now. And a big
turning point John Wheeler, who's on YouTube John Wheeler, non duality.
I'm obsessed. He's a teacher who stopped teaching anyway, that's
(25:33):
another thing. So we're talking about questions or doubts or
something comes up. The real turn for me is in
recognizing that, Okay, you're this awareness. You're like, you're like
the space in this room. Right my voice is appearing
(25:53):
inside of you. You're hearing me. Later you can sceptualize, oh,
that's I'm hearing that he's over there, but really it's
just kind of appearing in this emptiness. And once you
see that, everything emerges out of that awareness and then
recedes back into that awareness. So you have a question
like am I doing this right? Have I done anything right. Well,
that's an appearance in the awareness, and the awareness is
(26:17):
the good news. The awareness is the gospel. So you
don't have that doubt. And then, effervescing, sizzling out of
that awareness emerges a form a thought, have I ever
done anything right? And then let's say you take some time,
you twist yourself in pretzels and you think, well, no,
(26:38):
that's not true. I have done some things right, and
you satiate that doubt, and then it recedes right, and
now you're just left with the emptiness again. So, before
the problem emerged and after it's satisfied, same state. Do
you understand? So the mind isn't invited on this journey?
(26:58):
What's wrong with right now? If you don't think about it?
Why does it feel so good to think about nothing?
What must exist for the mind to exist? What must
be there for the mind to exist? It's awareness, awareness, awareness,
So the mind will never stop thinking of another question.
(27:18):
The mind will never tire of lobbing up another piece
of self doubt. Oh maybe it's the wrong teacher, maybe
it's the wrong book, maybe it's the wrong practice. Maybe
I've been wasting my time. The answer, unfortunately, is to
go ah, interesting and go back to the awareness, because
why would you trade christ consciousness? We could call it empty, spacious,
(27:43):
fresh aliveness that you are and have always been. It
was here when you were seven, it was here when
you're twenty seven, and it's here right now. Why would
you trade that for ghosts and shadows games? It might
as well be sudoku bella. What if we're what if
we're a fool? Great, thanks for being here. Guess what
(28:05):
your stomach is digesting right now. Your hair is growing,
your fingernails are growing. All this is happening naturally. We
don't think that's us. It's some problem we have to solve.
Same with your mind. It's always gonna love, new doubts,
new fears based on your state. You take away my coffee,
you give me no food for six days. I might
start being like, oh, I don't know, you just have
(28:27):
to go I see, and you let it go by
like a leaf on a river. But it's even more
than letting it go by. It's going like in what
medium is this concern, this fear, or this doubt appearing?
And you realize everything is made, Everything is a modulation
of the truth that you are. So even a bad
(28:48):
thought you must be present and aware to witness that
bad thought good news. You're president aware.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
You are that you ask all I mean on your
show and you have an incredible podcast. We've joked about
it because we started this out and I was like, Hey,
it's not gonna be this show is not going to
be two hours because you do a very long form show.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Uh, you made it weird.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
On that show, you ask most participants, I don't know
if it's every h kind of what their thoughts are
in life after death? Correct.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, Well that's a good way to kind of cut
to the the center of the filet you know, like,
what do you think happens when we die?
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah? So, I mean, can I turn that on you
a little bit because we're talking about consciousness and we're
talking about this this life experience right now, we're talking
about your relationship with the divine and so all of
this leads up to something that I'm sure you've thought
about and you think it's kind of cutting to the
cutting to the chase.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
So for you.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Personally, can you answer that question?
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Have you ever.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I mean publicly or is that like a secret that I'm.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Not suspecting, Cause no, I don't know if there are
any secrets, Benjamin, I really Usually my strategy when I
want people to talk about those things is to talk
about them first. So we're totally comfortable. But thank you
for checking. You know. I do want to go back
(30:19):
to what we were just saying, what happens when I
die is an appearance in that fresh aliveness that is
beyond pete. So there's something to be not achieved later,
but appreciated right now. First of all, how could I know?
(30:40):
So it's not really the point, meaning I'm calling bullshit
on my own approach. Buddha, I believe Buddha when they
asked him what happens when you die? I said, what
business is that of yours? Meaning? You know, it's like
we're in a dream, and I say, what happens when
this guy wakes up? Well, we weren't there to begin with,
(31:04):
and he'll wake up. It's hard to let me answer
it the way other people have answered it. I believe
that what we are I got this from Rupert Spiro,
one of my beloved teachers. I believe that awareness the
space where your feelings are appearing, your thoughts are appearing,
(31:24):
the sight of me is appearing, the sound of my
voice is appearing, the feeling of your butt in the
chair is appearing. We conceptualize the idea of a body
experiencing those things. But if you really close your eyes
and look at all the data, just raw data, it's
appearing in a spacious field. It's a spacelike knowing presence.
(31:45):
So if they're your dog barks again, you and I
both conceptualize, meaning interpret the dogs bark because it's kind
of echoe and it's kind of over there. We go,
it's over there, But really the sound of your dog
barking is made out of it's in you. It's you.
It couldn't be closer. Brain goes, let's go with a
(32:06):
bird tweeting. It's quiet, it's over there. Yeah, okay, Sure,
that's helpful if I'm hunting birds and want to eat them.
But in reality, it's appearing closer than close. It's already
inside of me. What I am isn't bound by this body.
It's spreading out in every direction. That's the reason I
start there is it's sort of like the space in
(32:28):
this room, right in the room that you're in, and
asking what happens when you die? Presupposed is a separate
entity named Benjamin Higgins. Right, So we're going there's sort
of a problem already, we're going, what happens to Benjamin
Higgins when he dies? What happens to Pete Holmes when
he dies? That's like saying, what happens to this space
(32:50):
in my office when this house is eventually demolished? Will nothing?
Did it re emerge with the space around it, the
space outside the space of the universe. It was never
separate from it. It just had the appearance. The four
walls created the relative reality of a room. But the
(33:14):
truth is the empty space in this room is the
only empty space there is. So there's this line in
the dowd Eya Ching about when I actually I'm sorry
it's not in the Dowdy Ching, but it's it's from
that tradition. When a oz breaks, the air inside the
v ose just reunites with the air around it. That's death.
(33:36):
That's the idea. It's another it's a fancy. It's a
more satisfying way of saying nothing happens, because we're already there.
And that's why I say the thought what happens when
I die? Emerges in the Ultimate Mystery in the Pearl
of great price in the Kingdom of heaven. The I
(33:58):
Am God said, his name was I am. You and
I are also both having the experience I am. That
is God localizing himself as you and I What happens
to that I am when this appearance vanishes nothing, You're
already there. There's nothing for you to figure out. Your
(34:21):
brain is never going to click and go oh, I understand.
All you can do is recede, relax, drop stuff, and
recognize that your entire life, including this moment, you were
that you were the essence of reality. So when we
(34:41):
say what happens to this person one today, there's a
problem in the question. The problem supposes that that appearance
is separate and then will be reunited. There is no reunited.
You can't become what you already are. The prodigal son
was the man's son the whole time, not just when
he remembered I'm his son. Was he not his son
when he was drunk with the sex workers and the pigs.
(35:04):
He was always his son. This is Jesus saying, it's
that it's that you are the light of the world.
You are the light of the world. You are what
renders the world knowable that's what light does. You don't
see trees, you see light on trees. That's how you
see things. You are the light of the world. What
(35:25):
happens to this apparent limitation of the light of the
world when this heart stops beating? Good news?
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Nothing for It's interesting because you obviously are such an
incredible thinker, and you've processed so much, and yet you
get on a stage and make people laugh. Yeah, for
a living. I'm curious about I mean, because I think
your comedy transforms in many ways. I think it is
(35:55):
a transformative comedy that sheds light on things that we
take too seriously and also illuminates things that maybe we've
hidden behind. I think it's wonderful and it's brilliant. But
how and this is going to be a very dumb question,
but I just I want to simplify it in the
best way I can. How do you make sense of
(36:17):
in one space being such a deep thinker and such
a processor of things, and then on tonight you'll step
on a stage and make a giggles.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, and talk about my winner too? Is what we're plying? Right? Yeah? Well,
I I don't I don't see any It's like hellelujah.
I don't see any difference. I don't see any shift there.
Why I don't, I don't, I don't. I don't think
awareness prefers a clean joke. This I don't. By the way,
(36:50):
just so you know, I'm not saying this defensively at all.
I love clean comics. I love dirty comics. I don't
think naked unborn awareness is like always talking about his
uh sex, or he's talking about something he's angry about.
I'm gonna shrink a little bit. This light doesn't go out.
And the people that come to the show, they have
(37:12):
a taste for that. They like it. It makes them laugh.
And when you're laughing, I'm being honest. When I'm on stage,
I'm not reverse engineering something. I'm not going like, well,
this is what it'll be. Let's let's figure out how
we're gonna make that. I'm just naturally unfolding. In the
same way your dog barks when the package hits the door,
(37:33):
and in the same way that mailman drops throws the package.
He's naturally occurring, Benjamin, Your mind is natural. It's it's
you're not in this world. You're of this world. You
are of this you are an expression of it, and
it's lawfully unfolding, and there's something beautiful about a human
being recognizing, you could say, their gifts, their voice, their perspective,
(37:56):
and authentically representing that and then allowing the people they
would be my fans that are drawn to that, to
be authentically drawn to that. And when we all get together,
it doesn't really matter. I say this on stage, I
go the words are an excuse to be together. It's
an excuse to get off our phone. And laughter. When
(38:19):
you're laughing, you're not there in the way that we've
been talking about it. In the same way that the
guy that free sooloed you know ever, or whatever mountain
it was, he's not there. That guy can't come on
the journey. Laughing is the same. If you're laughing, we
can put to one side what you're laughing at. If
you're laughing, you vanish. You're not defending. It's like deep
(38:43):
sleep or something. You're not defending yourself. You're not thinking
about who you are. You're standing there naked and vulnerable.
It's a great feeling. Comedy's not the only thing that
does this. Music, of course, says this. Relationships can do this,
conversations can do this. It's a evaporating process. An individual
(39:08):
goes to a comedy club and if it's good, which
is so hard, they're laughing. Now they're merging with the
people next to them. That's becoming an audience. We have
a name for that. You're now an audience. And then
the performer comes and merges with that audience into something
we call a show. So everything's vanishing, it stops even
being about me and you. We're all just kind of
(39:29):
making this rhythm together. That's literally holy, who l y.
It's reunifying. We were strangers. We were honking at each other.
Some of us honked at each other on the way
to the show because we were others. And now we're
(39:50):
one thing. Where Whereas when I was young, I used
to be like, well, and I don't think this is
what you're saying, but I think it's worth addressing. I thought,
but being polite or being gentle in your like, you know,
making jokes about you know, raisins or whatever was like better,
(40:10):
was like God would like that more. And I'm very
happy to say I put that to the test. And
I've seen so privileged to see so many people crying
with laughter because I'm talking about like I said, talking
about my mom being under a pile of phone books.
That's rude. I'm making fun of my mind. That's a
(40:36):
guy who says I'm not my mind. That's a guy
who says you're not your mind. Have you noticed this?
Have you seen what's going on up here? Is there
anything more lonely than thinking everybody at churches? Where's khakis
and a nice band? Hello? Bullshit? This is a mess.
This is a mess. It's wild, it's strange, it's isolating.
(40:58):
Let's look at it, Let's laugh at it, Let's celebrate it.
Let's realize that we stand apart from it. That's laughing.
That is so like, the more weird and confessional and
strange it can be, the better. I don't leave a
show where all we talked about were number two pencils.
Feeling less lonely in the world, I go like, geez,
(41:19):
what's wrong in my mind? That's not what I'm I
love Seinfeld. He has like five minutes on cotton balls.
That doesn't make me feel more at home in the universe.
What makes me feel more at home in the universe
is comics that are like I am out here, I'm
in this I'm participating, and you don't choose your thoughts.
(41:42):
Your thoughts are occurring, just like your stomach is digesting,
your thoughts are pouring in. And what a lonely thing
to think. Wow, everyone else is thinking about cotton balls.
I hated the back of the guy's head in front
of me on the plane. I don't even know why
I hated it. But guess what, we can confess that
if it's mentionable, it's manageable. That's mister Rogers, let's talk
(42:05):
about it. You'll leave lighter. Put it down, put it down.
That's again, That's that's holy. I had.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
I had what I would call a spiritual experience in
college one of my best friends. I'm an only child.
I grew up in this small little town, and I
really tried to do things the right way and was
very woundly tied, and my mind was always playing games
on itself. I actually wrote a book called Alone and
Playing Sight Pete, because I've lived so much in my
(42:35):
life feeling alone in this world and a buddy in
my eyes. I remember the moment we're sitting in the
car and he goes, Ben. If you knew the thoughts
that went through my mind, you would never like me.
And I remember going that and I took a second.
I was like, wait, I felt the same way about myself,
and so it's it's work like yours that does help
(42:59):
me feel less alone because you're willing, you have the
courage whatever you want to call it, to stand on
stage and say this is what I was thinking. And
I'm like, yeah, me too. Maybe I'm alone and like
some of the weird stuff that goes on up here.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
That's exactly right. And it's so meaningful when I see,
like like a classic little old lady at my show
and she's laughing her butt off. I love that. But
you really named it. I think so many of us.
I certainly can't say what percentage, but certainly me go,
it's worse than if you could see my thoughts, because
(43:34):
we can kind of stand apart from our thoughts and go, oh,
that's not me. Not all of those are me. The
good ones are me, you know. But it's like, if
people really knew me, they wouldn't love me. That's like
the fundamental wound of most people. So we learn how
to do impressions of what we think people would like
to see. We put on a suit, and everybody's doing
(43:56):
this to a greater or lesser extent. I think one
of the functions of art is to say you're not alone.
And I think specifically in stand up not always. Some
stand up makes me turn cold and makes me feel scared,
but some stand up can say you know me too,
me too. Not only that, but I'm under lights. We
(44:18):
are pack animals, we are primate, you know what I mean. Like,
I'm not trying to get in devilish, I'm just saying like,
we have that tendency to band together. And if there's
someone who's louder than us, higher than us, on a stage,
brighter than us under lights, that's the leader. So what
does the leader do? Most leaders politicians tell you how
(44:39):
they've got it handled, that they're the best, and don't
and I want your vote, right, that sort of thing.
A comedian gets on stage and tells you about the
time they shit their pants. That is a reversal of
That's what makes it funny. You're not supposed to say
that or not. All comedy does this, but the comedy
that I like does this. A lot of my jokes
(45:01):
are about a time I let myself down, a time
when I was selfish. There's a story in the new
special about how a friend of mine was looking for
his kid. He couldn't find his kid, but it was
the last carousel ride of the day, and my daughter
really wanted to ride the carousel, and we went on
the carousel. That is a letdown. That's a letdown of
a story. And we laugh at it and we find
(45:21):
the kid. Everything's fine. But the joke is I was disappointed.
As soon as I got on the carousel. I was like,
what are you doing? Which is a funny way to feel,
as you're like going up and down on a fake horse.
But I'm like, I made the But my daughter's so happy,
so I'm like, did I make the wrong choice? They're
gonna finder. That's what a comedian, in my opinion, should do. Hey,
(45:47):
it's not just you. I can't stand. And a lot
of comedy is this. I respect it. It's fine, it's
just not for me. Comedy about like here's how I won,
Here's how I got the last word. He looked at
me and I said this, and then a guy coming
Paul McCartney comes out and says hi to me, and
I moon walked into a limo, like who cares. Who cares? Like,
(46:10):
if I want people lying to me about how well
they're doing, I'll go on Instagram. Let's just here in
this art form, in this truly original American art forum.
Let's do it. Let's do it the way they did it,
and confess it and share it and celebrate it. My
(46:32):
mom might be under a pile of phone books. In here.
We laugh at that, and here we look at that.
Out there, we go, ohh well, fine, but let me
have my playroun Pe.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
You're wonderful and I'm so thankful for you coming on.
We do have just a few minutes here, and I
want to take time because you have a special called
Silly Silly fun Boy. For anybody watching or listening to
this in the upcoming weeks ahead, why should they watch
it it? What can they expect? And are you proud
of it?
Speaker 1 (47:06):
I am proud of it. It's always hard releasing things,
even though I you know, in this conversation, I think
you said a nice tone and I've enjoyed it, and
you know, been kind of feeling myself and being like, oh, comedy,
it's beautiful. Then you really suspecially you're like there is
a part of me listen what if So it's vulnerable,
(47:27):
I think you should watch it because what have you
got to lose? Have you got to lose? I mean, yeah,
you could lose the time, but you'll know, you'll know.
We edited it in such a way that you'll know
in the first ten minutes if it's for you. And uh,
it's free, meaning like one of the things I love
(47:49):
about having a special on YouTube is there's absolutely no
barrier to access. You don't have to have a premium
account or anything. Anybody can watch it. Just type Pete Holmes, silly,
silly fun boy, maybe just beat homes I don't know,
and just give it a go. I would encourage people to, like,
for fuck, like just turn your phone off and maybe
give it a try, you know what I mean. Like
(48:10):
I'm guilty of that, like being like this is dumb
and you realize you've been watching it for three minutes,
like stay in because I am really proud of this.
I've been It's not every day that you get to
watch or that I get to watch something where somebody's
been focused, somebody's been obsessed with a certain skill, a
certain art form for twenty five years, you know what
(48:31):
I mean? It's like this has been my life for
twenty five years. If somebody makes me a scooter and
they were studying scooters for twenty five years, I don't
like scooters. I'd give it a try. I'd like to
see what twenty five years of intense passion feels like
on the road. So there you go. It's it's it's
the best special I've done so far. And I'm obsessed
(48:54):
with those jokes. There's one mean one about me being
on a carousel. There's some good God stuff in there,
some good God jokes that are for everybody, not just
religious people. And what have you got to Liz, It's free.
Just watch it, Just watch it, and then like keep
it looping and keep it on the keep for six months.
(49:15):
Just get those views out.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
Pete holme Silly Silly fun Boy out on YouTube. Pete,
thanks for coming and hanging out with us. Thanks for
sharing your heart and your mind. You are a brilliant person.
But I have always been a massive fan of your
work and it's an honor to have you here today.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
It was an honor to be here, Ben, thank you
for having me.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Hey, friends, thanks for listening or watching.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Would you take a second follow.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Subscribe and drop a comment.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
It really helps
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