December 17, 2024 • 55 mins
Meet Rachel Bloom, a hilarious and talented actress, comedian, songwriter, singer, and producer. You may know her from co-creating and starring in "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend", a role which won her an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Critic's Choice Award. Her Netflix comedy special Rachel Bloom: Death, Let Me Do My Special came out in October. I’ve been a fan for a long time so I’m delighted to share this episode. EnJOY!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now.
It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid
it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing
on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me,
buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and
see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones.
(00:21):
I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but
you should at least know what's happening, and it is.
The tour kicks off late September and goes through the
end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at
the Craig Ferguson Show dot Com slash tour. They're available
at the Craig Ferguson show dot Com slash tour or
at your local outlet in your region. My name is
(00:45):
Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I
talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness
on the podcast today, for my money, the most interesting
and different and talented American performers to emerge in the
(01:05):
last twenty years. She's really thoughtful, clever, interesting, talented. Well
you're going to find all of this out. It's Rachel Bloom.
May I compliment you first of all on your backcrack,
(01:27):
which is amazing, and also the fact that you are
dealing with a young child right now and you look
fresh and young and upbeat and lovely, and I'm jealous.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, I've slapped on some makeup just before I came
on here, so and I had a glass of wine
last night, which to me is six glasses of wine
because I have no tolerance, so that means a lot
that I look fresh now.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
You look great, and listen, I know what it's like
to have a little kid. It's myke every time I
see people and I'm in a hotel right now. When
I see people in hotels with little kids, I always say,
you get is anybody getting any sleep? And everybody I
was like, no.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
It's all encompassing. She wasn't asleepover last night. So it
was nice to go out and come home and to
be like, oh my god, there's no one. I don't
have to care for anyone in this house. I mean,
that sounds very mean because I still have a husband
and a dog.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
But to.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Not be responsible for someone's life for one night because
even when you're off the clock, you're on the clock.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I was going to say, you probably woke up panicked
in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
It was weird.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, I know, I know. I've done it myself. Hey,
here's what I have to tell you. I'm a little angry.
I'm a little angry at you.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Oh okay, okay, I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Because because I'm watching death, let me do my spash.
And you shouldn't make people cry and be scared in
stand up comedy. That's I was scared. I had no idea.
Like when the death thing stopped, I'm like, this is
fucking with me. Man, I don't like, did the audience
(03:12):
know that was going to happen?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
No, no, it really. It really fucked with people.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
When the show, when we started trying it out, it
was called like Rachel try some new stuff out and
sees what happened.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So people really had no idea.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And then, of course, you know the country we live in,
we kept cutting down the time that we revealed it
was a plant so that people wouldn't be worried for
their lives because the.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Second someone say I'm death, you're like, well.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
What so that was everything Like yeah, so that was
also like, Okay, the second we're going to hear him heckel,
but the second he says I'm deaf, let's get him
on Mike, so you know something's up.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
So that was something we worked on. But yeah, no,
it fucked with people.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And then when we called the show death, let Me
do My people still thought it was real, but they
knew something would be off about the show, but they
thought it was They thought it was real, and then
they grew to not trust anything in the show to
the point where I had actual weird things happened in
the show and a couple of actual hecklers.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
People assumed it was built in.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's kind of great, though, isn't that. I mean, even
I first became aware of your work with crazy ex
girlfriend like most people, I think, and I always thought,
like I remember first the first episode of that show,
going the fuck is happening? Why? And then it took
me on and I love that. It reminded me of
(04:38):
you ever seen the movie Train Spoton? No, all right,
well you should see it. You really like it. It's about
It's an upbeat tale of heroin addiction in Edinburgh in
the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, what I saw it a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yes, there's a scene in that movie where you and
McGregor as a drug addict drops.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
A a vial of heroin, a kind of anal heroine and
put thing down a public bathroom and it's disgusting, but
he knows the only way he can get the heroin.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Is put his hand into the horrible toilet to get
the heroin. And then when he goes into the toilet,
he goes all the way into the toilet and he's
swimming in this beautiful ocean in this toilet, and they
play Brian ENO's Deep Blue Sea and and it's so beautiful.
And when I saw crazy ex Girlfriend, I thought, whatever
(05:36):
mcguffin in the head of Irvin Welsh that created that story.
You have that too, You know that that?
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Oh well, thank you?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And I didn't and I didn't even need heroin.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Well, what I'm saying to you is maybe it's time,
as your daughter gets a little older, maybe you start
thinking about heroin, especially when she's on a sleepover. That
would be that would be the time.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
That's the one.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
That's the thing.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
But it's an interesting thing because I was very taken
with the special. I I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
That means a lot that I really obviously love you
and respect you. That that means a lot to me.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Oh my god, no, it was. It's fantastic anyone who
fucks with a genre that is tired anyway, and stand
up comedy, there's too many people doing it. It's like
it's everybody's playing CF and G on the guitar. It's
it's like, it's stop it, stop it, stop it. And
then somebody comes along and throws in a huge minor
chord and a five eight drum thing, and suddenly the
(06:36):
whole world opens up again, and I'm now enthusiastic again
about stand up comedy. And you have no idea how
jaded I am that suddenly you see somebody doing it,
you go, fuck, there's more room again. There's somebody's breaking
it again. It's great.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Oh well that really means a lot to me. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Well, it's the truth. And why was you paid a
high price for it? Though? Like, yeah, when you talk
about the death of Adam and the show, that to
me is it's such a weird, a weird twist on
the I don't mean, is it stand up comedy? Is
(07:17):
that what it is?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's like stand up.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I always say it's it's a stand up show wrapped
in a storytelling show wrapped in a one act play
kind of. So it's kind of kind of veers more
into storytelling as it get, especially when I get into
just like, all right, my character is talking about this
for the first time, right, so it's like, okay, let's
(07:39):
just go day by day what happened. And then you're
in real storytelling where it's like, all right, I'll just
tell you about this terrible week where I gave birth,
my friend died, and so like that's where it gets
like it gets very storytelling in that granularness.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
It's also it's a very kind of horrible, uh convenient
for story thing to event. I mean, it's a cataclysmic
kind of because I've been you know, I've had friends
that I obviously everyone hasn't, and I've been at two
live births, both of my children. My god, they're so weird.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
They're so weird.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
It's like that weird kind of energy, like somebody's coming.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
It's definitely and it's bloody, and it's there's nothing else
in life that's a central life event where it's also
going to be gory. Yeah, unless you have really good
birthday parties, I guess, but it's like gruesomeness is part
of it.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
And so you're already in this.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Very fleshy, bloody place that feels very primal.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And there's poop too. Let's be honest, there's poop.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
You know what.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I'm astounded with me there wasn't.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Poop, but oh stop, stop, you're amongst friends.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Of course, there was no one told me the nice
to you, but maybe I would have been fine if
there were. But you know, there's everything I mean, And
there was a my husband was trying not to look,
but there was a mirror on the other side of
the room where you could see everything. And I didn't
(09:28):
really see the birth because everyone was blocking it. But
after she was born and they took her to the
NICU and the placenta was still in, I caught a
glimpse of open wound placenta umbilical court.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
It was its unbelievable. Isn't that crazy? And everything I mean,
clearly for a mother is physically astonishing for you know, change,
But everything in my life changed, everything that my entire
perspective the world changed when I became a father, and
(10:04):
I you know, and I hear people say, oh, you know,
like not having kids, and I'm like, funne, that's your choice.
It's it's okay. But I always say, you know that
all the great philosophers in history, none of them had children.
That's actually no, it's not true. But I say it
to people because I want to shame them. But it really,
(10:26):
what I think it is is everything you know that
people say that. There's lazy assumptions that I think people
I made before I had kids. One of them was,
you know, people say that thing, well, we were born
alone and we die alone. And I've been at two
live births, and as far as I can tell, nobody
(10:47):
is born alone. There's at least two people in the room.
There's nobody's born alone. It's utter bullshit. And I I
just everything about my perspective in life started to change
law after my first son was born. It is weird?
Is that? What's happening to you?
Speaker 3 (11:07):
One hundred percent?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I mean I say a little in the special where
you know, ever since I given birth, a story of
a child being hurt anywhere messes with me. I got
into it a little bit basically, yeah, like it kind
of makes sense. I know, it's not technically true that
like philosophers, all the great philosophers didn't have kids, because
before you have kids, there is an impartiality that you
(11:30):
can have on the world. There's a moral impartiality that
you can have. There's this scene in the HBO show
The Last of Us. Did you watch it?
Speaker 1 (11:38):
I did? I loved that show.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
So remember when it's like someone basically turns in the
head of this rebel alliance in exchange for cancer medication
for his brother, and he's like, I wanted to prevent
a child from dying. And Melanie Lynsky's character goes, children die,
children die literally all the time, this wasn't worth it.
And before you have a kid, you can say that, right,
(12:01):
there's a there's a certain amount you can zoom out
from the world and look at history and say, yeah,
well life is gruesome. Life is horrible. And I had
such a strong stomach for I don't true crime.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
For I went to the Museum of Death, and I.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Was the Museum of Death in la where it's the
most gruesome crime scene photo and it's just you're You're like, yeah,
that is what it is.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
And then I had a kid and it just blew
that wide open.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
There's no, there's no, it's it's so much harder to
be impartial because you would do anything for this kid,
and you would would Would I turn in the founder
of a rebel alliance to get my child cancer treatment?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Fuck?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, in an absolute second. So you're led by your
heart and emotion. And now the media that I can
consume has come completely not completely, but it's really really
done in almost one eighty where that's much. I'm just
so much more sensitive and empathetic, but like in a
(13:13):
in a painful way.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, I mean I can't watch I used to watch
British detective shows about you know, Crumbly Detectives, and they
have this thing going on with the Brittige a Law
of Bridge detective shows that's the murder of a child.
And I was like, I can't do it. I'm no,
I'm no. Or a child is even missing, maybe the
child's going to be okay, but you don't know, but
(13:37):
the child missing, that's enough. I don't want to see it.
And it is a it is an odd thing, and
it's not because it's not because I don't know what happens.
I was able to consume that media before you, like
you say, but it's because I can't stand it. It's
no entertainment, it's not it doesn't. All it does is
make me feel awful all the time.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah, it's that's what. It's not even And it's not
even making me think in the way that dark that
darker shit used to make me like okay, this is dark,
but like, okay, it's teaching me a lesson. I'm so
consumed by the emotion. I'm like, I'm not learning a
lesson from this right now.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, it's funny that as well. I think even when
I when I have dark thoughts about my own mortality,
and I thought, well, par no die now, because I
would really upsett the kids. It's like, I'll be fine,
but whatever happens to me happens to me.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
But I would be Oh, you start to have this
narrative of like, oh, yes, sometimes when I get on
a plane alone and I'm like, oh, this is the
movie in my daughter's life where it's the last time
she saw her mom.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Oh I do right, because they do that in.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So many where it's like, oh, this is the last
time and this is the story she's going to tell
herself now where it's like, goodbye, I'm going to Vegas.
And then it's like and I never saw her again.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
So you're telling me you left your daughter to go
to Vegas. What Vega?
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I did go to Vegas alone a couple of weeks ago.
That is true, Navy.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I did.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
There was a skeptic There was a convention of skeptics,
and my friend was speaking at it, and I and
I went for literally a night.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
First of all, I have to take you back because
I need to know what happens at a convention of
skeptics and why they would meet in Las Vegas to gamble.
That seems like a contradiction.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Okay, So the Vegas, as far as I can tell,
Vegas is just where you meet because they have good
convention centers and it's well, it's not even somewhat central.
It's still West Coast.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
But it was a convention for the Center for Inquiry,
held at the Horseshoe, Las Vegas, and it was just
a bunch of panels.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
And speeches about science.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
And skepticism and I'm I'm really really into this and
I'm I'm a I'm a big old skeptical atheist. And
it was like absolutely, my jam and my friend Rena
was there speaking about she's really really good. She's actually
a book called The Gospel of Wellness that's awesome about
(16:10):
the pseudoscience of the wellness industry and why we and
why we turned to pseudoscience and why even now with
all the information on the Internet, people are still so
mired in false truths.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And also, yeah, have you ever read The Demon Haunted World? Yes?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I have. It's fantastic because it's it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World for those who haven't
read it.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And I still think about I still think about the
thing he says, which is, you know when people talk
about and this is more about paranormal phenomena. But he's like,
all right, so imagine your.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
You're in a house.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
You're looking at a glass sliding door, and there's a
fireplace behind you. During the day, you would see the backyard.
During the day, the sun starts to set. Suddenly what
you see is the reflection in the glass of the
fireplace behind you. But you've been looking out the window
all day, so it just looks like suddenly there's a
fire outside. And he compares that to the ways our
brain tricks us into thinking we might be seeing things
(17:13):
that aren't there and hearing things that aren't there.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
I still use that as an example.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
There's a quote that he does at the start of
the book which I think is fantastic. He's talking about
a taxi driver that he gets who's asking him about, so,
where is Atlantis? You're Carl Sagan, where's Atlantis? And he's like, dude,
I don't know what you're talking about, you know, the
city under the sea. And he's like, I'm you know.
But he then he goes into a quote from Leon Trotsky, who,
(17:47):
to be honest, not my favorite guy in the world.
But Leon Trotsky is talking about the rise of the
Nazis in Germany, and he's talking about you know, I'm
paraphrasing it until the end, I only remember them. But
the paraphrase in that Trotsky says, you know, they have
pilots who wear amulets to give them good luck while
(18:09):
they have, you know, while they pilot these magnificent machines
of engineering. And he talks about all these different people
who do superstitious things while doing very scientifically advanced things.
And then this is the thing that he zeros In
to make it about the rise of the Nazis. He
says this quote, which I still find chilling. He says
(18:33):
about human beings, what remarkable reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance,
and savagery. And I was like, whoa, And I feel
like that's accurate. Even now, we have remarkable amounts of darkness, ignorance,
and savage y. People are very on fire right now.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Oh it's all I mean to put it bluntly, to
make me sound like I'm ninety. We weren't ready for
the Internet.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Anyone's I'm not ready for it.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Not I'm not ready because it's takes advantage of tribalism,
which is which is in us. Like, I think I
might be wrong, but I feel like I read somewhere
the reason Homo sapiens is the dominant, you know, the
only dominant kind of species of our kind, is because
we just killed everyone else because it was you know,
the Neanderthals were wiped out, we.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Killed I think that I also heard that same study,
though I also heard that we actually just shagged the
Neanderthals and we're all like their genes stopped coming through
and everybody got their sex on and the humans came
through more. You almost sapiens came through more than Neanderthals.
But I might have just been looking at completely erroneous
(19:46):
report or amazing.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Maybe it's a beautiful mix.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
I think it might be a little bit of both,
a little call them be. But let me take you
back to Las Vegas, because it's to to me because
I don't think I know enough about skeptics modern skepticism,
and I would like you to take me through it.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Well. I think it's still finding of what is it
general generationally now because I would say it was overwhelmingly
a lot of people who are Gen X or boomers,
And there's a lot of skepticism that's still about UFO
paranormal debunking because because it's very much in it's very
(20:27):
much in conversation with with like New Age stuff that
came about in like the sixties the seventies, right, So
UFOs are less of a thing now, But if you
were born in the fifties, you know Roswell like, there's
so there's so much about that aspect of the paranormal
that that they're still debunking, which is which is very interesting.
(20:49):
But I think what was really cool about this is
My friend Rena and some other people spoke more about
taking a skeptic lens into health trend and into There
was this really really interesting speech I forget who it was,
of this journalist comparing Gwyneth Paltrow Goop culture of that
(21:13):
kind of pseudoscience like put this jade egg up up
your vagina to.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
So there's a lot of parallel with that with what's
going on with now the Manisphere. I don't know if
you've heard about the manisphere, which is like it's it's
like I feel like Joe Rogans like kind of a
part of this whe where it's just like all of
these things you can do to make yourself as manly
as you can.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Like people are drinking their piss.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
There's this one guy who's like people are fully drink
people are fully drinking their own fermented piss because they're like,
this will make you man this will make you like manly,
and it's also why people are It kind of goes
into people are chewing really tough gum to get a
chiseled jaw, Like that's a big thing now to like
look as manly as possible and it's just the kind
(22:05):
of flip of the Gwyneth Paltrow stuff where it's like
pseudosciencey stuff to be the best that you can be
and be the most of your I don't know, it's
all about like primal right, like go, let's go back
to being a man. Like there's this there are these
influencers who are like I only eat raw me and
look at me.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
I'm I'm fucking shredded.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
And then it turns out he's doing a lot of steroids.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
But it's the same thing where it's on the female
pseudo science and where it's like, you know, I only
eat grass and spring water. Also I can afford a
trainer six times a week, So that's the bigger that's
the probably the bigger thing.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
But that does not plato archetypes. Those things plea into
archetypes ofticsthatics as well, like the you know, like if
a square jaw makes you more mad. But you know,
David boy was a man, Andy Warhol is a man,
Arnold Schwarzenegger is a man. You know, there are there
(23:10):
are men who look different. I mean, I guess it's
like to look like a cartoon man.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Maybe to me, I think it well, it all looks.
It also relates to a lot of the cultural thing
of like men need to serve themselves, men need to
be masculine. It's a thing that's I think more on
more on the what you would call the right, although
I don't even know what that means anymore, but the
idea of like men need to be men and women
need to be women, and the world will be more
organized once men are empowered again to embrace their true power,
(23:42):
uh and potential. As opposed to the journalist was like,
as opposed to me, he's like, I'm a I'm a
soy boy beta cook. He's like, I'm their nightmare. Uh
So it's it's like whatever, Like I guess they would
consider David Bowie a soy boy beta cook.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
See that's interesting because I my definition of masculinity is
like aspirational masculinity for me as a man is individualism
is fuck you, you know. This is how we all have
to be. Fuck you, It's how we have to beat
This is how I am. You know. So if I'm
(24:19):
like and your label beat a coup, fuck your beat
a cup label, I'm a man, you know, and I
kind of I don't like to allow people who have
a different view of the world than me to give
me a name that I then have to adopt.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Oh, you know, that's all the internet is. Yeah, No,
all the Internet is people giving other people.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Names that you have that you have to take. And
I think if you have if you have a name,
no matter what part of the spectrum you're on the
political sphere, you and if you have a name for
a group of other people, you need to take a
fucking look yourself, because people are people. And I think
(25:04):
that that's what fascinates me is that I always thought
the Internet was a bit like show business, that it's
it's only dangerous if you take it seriously, you know.
But yeah, if you take it seriously, it can kill you.
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I really love and crazy ex girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
We did a whole story about a character getting sober,
and we actually watched some of your work in the room.
You did a great monologue. It was when Britney Spears
was your melt down, and because we were talking about
what you learn in AA and and and to be
non judgmental and how and that you were saying, like,
I don't want to say she's not cool.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
I don't judge, I don't I don't want to say
what she is, and I just love I don't know,
I really see that that kind of non judgmental space
and what you're saying right now, and and uh, it's
just really cool. It's really cool to see like evolved
recovery and how it continues to clearly like affect your
worldview in all sorts of awesome ways.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
I think that it's the idea of it, thank you.
But I think the idea of it is that the
idea of evolution, I think has It's interesting. You know,
people say that the evolution and I think this is
part of this masculine thing right now that you know,
the strongest survive, and that's not true. The strongest don't survive.
(26:30):
Mammoths are plenty strong. Sabertooth tiger's strong. You know, it's
not about strong, it's those who adapt survive. If you
can adapt to the changing environment, you survive. And so
I think that by if you extrapolate those that adapt survive,
then the intelligence survive. That's an optimistic worldview, I know,
(26:52):
but I think that I feel, like you know, Hannah
was Hannah Rent said, if eovele had triumphed, even good
wouldn't exist or something like that. I don't know if
that was hard it was someone else. I mean, she
said a lot of very clever things, and but so
of a lot of other people.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't know, you know,
but you know better than better than me if that
was her, but but that, but yeah, that's a really
good Has anyone.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Else made that point?
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Oh, I'm sure you're not the first.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Person to point out that adaptation is actually a better
quality than just brute strength, because yeah, like the reason
that mammals uh became superior and that there was like
mammalian supremacy in the first place is because when the
asteroid hit and killed off the dinosaurs, all these little
moles were living underground, right, And so that's why now
(27:45):
we're here, and that's why mammals rose to the top.
Without that, who the fuck knows where we'd be. We'd
all be you know, feathered bird lizard people.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
You know, I've had a few nights. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
I was also going to say, if you asked certain
corners of the internet, they'll say, well, okay, a lot
of people I don't know.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
I mean, I think it's quite interesting because it also
depends on your idea of what success is like, is
your success as a species? Is it numbers? Is it
sheer numbers because of it as ants when you know?
Or is it? Is it? Uh? Is it intelligence? Is
Is it a soul? Is there a soul? I mean,
(28:29):
what did the skeptics say about the soul? Is there
is there a soul?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I mean I think that the skeptics are it's all
about kind of always searching. That's the get that's the
That's the thing that I always take from the skeptic
community is it's always searching for the truth. So soul, No,
I mean, there's never been any It's all evidence based, right,
So there's no there never really been any evidence of
a soul.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
A lot of what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Also, the keynote speaker of the night I was there
was Neil de grasse Tyson, and a lot of what
you're saying is exactly what he was saying. He's like,
all right, so if aliens came and they wanted to
talk to to, uh, you know, the smartest animal, how
would they gauge that we don't have the biggest.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Brains of any animal? On Earth.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
He started to go through, what are the animals with
the biggest brains? And he's like, okay, well let's say
we're looking at brain to body ratio. We're not the
animals even with the you know, biggest brain to body ratio.
And so he's really started breaking it down about how
objectively unspecial human beings are. If you were, if you
(29:32):
were an alien species looking down, it doesn't That was his.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Whole agree that luisy k has a great counter to that,
which is humans removed themselves from the food chain. So
that's pretty impressive, like for most of history humans died Like, ah, yeah,
(29:56):
it doesn't. That doesn't happen really anymore. It's we're parefully
capable destroying ourselves. But it's you know, and then actually,
if you think about it, maybe he didn't. I mean
look at COVID for example with Adam. You know, it's
like fucking plague comes, it comes, So.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Maybe that's nothing, there's nothing you can do. It's why
what is it?
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Is?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
The movie The Storm, The Sword and the Stone, there's
a there's a it's you know, it's animated movie. It's
King Arthur and Merlin. There's a wizard fight and the
way the wizard fight culminates, I want to say, is
they're like turning into one's a dragon, the other turns
into a bear. And finally Merlin disappears and he's become
(30:40):
a virus. Oh, and he just gets the other wizard
very sick because he's like, this is actually the most
powerful thing.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah it maybe that was like the Last of Us
when they do that at the beginning of it, when
they're doing that show. But Fungus in the nineteen.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Seventies, that was such a good cold open to acknowledge, Yeah,
I know we're in a pandemic, but there's actually something
there's actually something worse.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
That was a.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Chilling way to open a shew, How do you deal
with that?
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Now that I'll tell you what I'm leading up to.
I had to adapt my entire Velt Arm show. My
entire worldview had to change when I became a parent,
because now there was someone who marred more than my
feelings on Earth. And it continued with my second child,
(31:35):
and I think that it led me in a very
different path that I've been to before. I was very
evidence based right up until I became a parent, and
that I'm on a deep dive right now with the
early Christian mystics and the Moses and his gang, and
I mean it's like I'm off on all sorts of
(31:56):
adventures with those people now. And then pythagora Is, who
is like a real uh you know, and Gorvi Dahal's
historical novels, which if you haven't read them, Oh my god,
have you have you done any of those?
Speaker 2 (32:11):
No? No, oh you have to put Oh my.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
God, it is amazing, amazing. But all I became much
more interested in in the un evidence, in the in
the lack of evidence, than in the evidence. And I
think it came from that moment of being at my
first live birth apart from my own, which I don't remember,
(32:35):
but that weird moment where it all there's there's no
words for it. I don't even think. There's just some
kind of weird gap in the universe. And then somebody
news there and it freaked me out. I had a
profound effect on me, and I am no longer evidence based.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Oh that's interesting, Yeah, so I'm not there. I think
that I see it more as my emotions, in my
empathy have been just cracked open in a way that
makes it very hard for me to be totally objective
and totally impartial. But for me, I guess the thing
(33:13):
with looking for evidence based stuff and this might just
be really personal to me is the part of the
reason I'm interested in all of it In skepticism, and
you know, the search for the truth is I want
someone to find the proof of the mystic and I'm
that's what I'm That's what I'm looking for. But that's
what I'm looking for, right I'm looking for what is it?
I read? This woman named Mary wrote wh writes amazing books.
(33:35):
I read was It Stiff or Spooks? She's written two
books about death and the search for the afterlife. I
read that stuff because I'm like, maybe this will be
the thing that proves it, which is very I think
not everyone. But it's why I like the skeptic areas.
(33:56):
From a very young age, I knew that I kind
of like this area, but also I didn't want to
believe in things that weren't true. So this is the
way I split the difference. Because it's funny, my own therapist,
I was talking to her about my interest in this
and she goes, you know, she's She's like, I don't
really believe in this stuff. She's like, I'm an atheist.
She's like, I just don't think about this stuff. You
(34:18):
really have a thing where you're you want to immerse
yourself in this skepticism paranormal uh investigation where she's like,
I just don't. I just don't think about it. I
just think ghosts aren't real, and that's it. And so
I don't know what it is, but there is something
in me that I love reading studies of things that
(34:41):
can't be studied because maybe this will be the thing
that proves it.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
But that's a beautiful mind to have. That's a that
I think is is is a spiritual hunger, which is
was my own particular brand. I don't know if I
was ever an atheist. I think I probably was at
one point. And I'm certainly not you know, a flagwave
and drum beaten organized religion person. I can. I'm not
(35:10):
good at joining groups of people. I couldn't even join
in a group of late night hosts and there was
only like seven of us, so I like, I don't
want to be part of your fucking gang. It's like
there's only enough for a dinner party. Like I don't care.
It's funny I was talking to a friend of mine
today about that very thing. Atheism is too fundamental a
(35:34):
stance for me. I can't do it. I can't do it.
It believes in itself too much, and fundamentalism. I can't
do fundamentalism. It doesn't seem hungry enough.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
This is where you get into, like the idea of
atheism being a form of spirituality is controversial. But when
I really kind of became an atheist, what it what
it actually meant for me was really what I would
say is, I'm a practical atheist, theoretical agnostic. I live
my life as if there's nothing, as if no one's
(36:07):
looking out. If I fuck up, it's not the universe
teaching me a lesson. It's like, no, maybe I just
fucked up and I have to apologize to someone. But
I'm practically agnostic in that I think it's something like
ninety eight percent of the universe is dark matter, and
we don't know what dark matter is, So no, you
can't be like there's nothing when there's so much we
(36:27):
don't know. It's just the way I live my life
on a practical level is as if there's nothing and
very evidence based, but there's a part of me that
is very open to wonder and wants to remain open
to wonder. So whatever that means, I don't know if that's,
you know, pure atheist. You know, I'm sure there are
(36:49):
some people who are like, well, that's then you're not
an atheist. I don't know what that means, but that's
how my brain. This is what I think makes me
the best version of myself whatever you call this.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
What I'm doing. And we talked earlier about lessons of
sobriety or recovery. And if there's one thing I learned
that I think has been pivotal for me and this,
and it sounds like you are capable, not capable. You
(37:24):
do this too at at a far younger age than
I ever got hold of. It was it seems to
me that too many people, most people are not willing
to make themselves the villain of their own story everyone,
and I am willing to do that. I want to go, look,
this person may have fucked up, but I fucked up too,
you know, and I I really try to live my
(37:46):
life like that, like, Okay, whatever they did, that's not important.
What did I do? You know that? Because that's the
only thing I can do anything about I can't do
anything about what they did, but I can do something
about what I did. And if it means I have
to try and you know, make amends or or not
do it again or whatever it was, then I do that.
But I think accountability is something that can be lost
(38:12):
if you're not worried about the accounts being settled in
some way, you know, And I'm not worried about that.
But you see what I'm kind of like.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
I get it.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I don't have I have so many other parts of
me that want to be a good person that have
nothing to do with heaven.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Oh well, agree, I don't mean that. I don't mean
like getting the books right so you get into heaven
I get. I mean getting the idea that there is
a that there is a I don't want to get
to one of these. I'm not saying, oh well, if
you don't believe in God, you're going to run around
killing people. That's nonsense. But what I mean is it
helps I don't know, it helps me imagine that there
(38:53):
may be something. Yeah, but I absolutely reject the didactic
nature of stand up, sit down to and around, eat this,
don't eat this, where this, don't where there's tell these
other people they've got it wrong. I reject all of that,
the organized part of religion, the feeling.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question of and
one that I'm sure is still trying to figure out
for my own family. Of Okay, if you live your
life not religiously, where does a moral compass come from?
Where do you get a sense of right and wrong?
And do you need God for a sense of right
and wrong? For me?
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
I don't know if you do. I think that we
just have so many societal structures that are set up
you thousands of years of people philosophizing and thinking of
morality in the context of different spiritualities, and a lot
of it is not and very little moral compass that
we're kind of taught that isn't based in some sort
(39:54):
of spirituality. So I'm still navigating, Okay, how do you
how do you teach someone a sense of right and wrong?
And maybe spirituality isn't involved, But at the same time,
like just from an objective perspective, like it's not like
religion is useless to maybe religion is is people for
thousands of years ideating on the human condition. That's that
(40:18):
in itself is so incredibly profound it to throw.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Out in one in one and I don't want to
and I.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Don't want to do that, but I think that that's
a real debate, and it's it's what a lot of
religious people would say, well, we're you know, when you
take religion out of society, you miss some moral companies.
And I don't think that's necessarily the I don't think
that's the case. But that is a debate of what
we'll ground yourself in.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
I guess there are people who if they you know,
I'm not one of them. I don't think you're one
of them. But maybe there are people who, if they
didn't have their you know, their accounts to settle in heaven,
they would run around killing people. And that's the reason
why they don't.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
So which may be scary, which is just so, which
soide I am so less scared of the idea of
someone going around who doesn't murder people, who who if
you really press them, they'd be like, no, I could
murder someone to get away with it. I I just
don't want to murder people. That scares me a lot
less than someone who's like, oh boy, if they're if
(41:17):
they there weren't God, I would be killing everyone. That's horrifying.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
There's a horrifying thing.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
I don't think there's not many of those though, there's
not many, but all you need is a few to
be you know, serial killers.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Well there's that, but then you get the people are like, oh,
well I got to kill these people because God wants
me too. There's there's those speaking too.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Well and they're taking that and they're taking out whatever
is messed up in their head, you know, but it's
it's uh, it's righteousness. Yeah, I mean, this is stuff
that I'm actively thinking about and going through, especially since
having a kid. But for me, I guess, like, what, guys,
my moral compass is, how do you spread joy not pain?
(41:59):
How How do I not cause pain even though at
the center of life is.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Pain.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
I Mean, something that I've been really thinking about lately
is the way that living being survives to consume other
living beings. Even if you're a vegetarian, you're eating plants.
Plants are alive. So that's weird that in a if
this were a moral just world, the fact that not
only are we supposed to eat things that are alive
(42:28):
to survive, but that then everything alive has pain receptors,
and even plants, even plants have like plants have a
way of sending out distress pulses.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Right, So, even though that fundamental of life.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
To me seems really morally contradictory, I'm just trying to
cause people the least amount of pain is possible. And
Patton Oswald is a great special I don't know if
you saw it shortly after his wife died.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
And she says, and she was I think very much
what sounds like an atheist or agnostic, And she just
always said, it's chaos, be kind, And I like, I
think I still think about that sometimes. I think that's
such a beautiful way to view the world and kind
of how I see the world, where it's like it's
it's just chaos.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Just be kind, you know. I feel like that that
is it. That's the only way too. It's hard to
be kind when you know it's I think it's easy.
It's for me. I find it easy to be kind
when people are worthy of petty, but when they're worthy
of anger, it's harder for me to be kind to
(43:41):
people I feel angry with. Oh yes, it's much more
of a challenge, and people I don't necessarily love or
love how they they love. It's tricky.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
I am so I'm not an aggressive driver, but I'm
a judgmental driver where if someone doesn't signal or cuts
me off, all just what do you do? You know,
to the point where my four year old has heard
me criticize people enough that she's like, Mama, you should
have your own driving school where people can learn how
(44:12):
to drive like you.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
And I was like, you know what they should?
Speaker 2 (44:16):
So I I was like, that's really and so now
and but now it's gone. It's become kind of in
our family a running joke of my kind of Soviet
re education camp where I force people to learn about
all sorts of different polite things that we've forgotten in society,
like no cutseas is really important to me. Very so
(44:37):
I'm as much as I want to spread kindness, I'm
also very petty.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
I think maybe you're just human and we're all a duality.
What I always circle right back around. I seem to
always come back around to Carl Jung. Every time I
wander off and Nanny directs and any other directions, I
come back to Carl Jung, who seemed to kind of
grab it all for you know, all into one place,
(45:03):
mysticism and science and you know, and the human experience.
I really kind of get that. Do you ever you
ever read any or or have you ever come across
the Red Book or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
No, it's been a minute.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Actually I did a lot of where we read a
lot of Freud in school, and so I'm behind on
my young.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
It's funny Freud. I mean, obviously, you know, an innovator.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Oh so many no, no, so many holes to poke.
I took a class in Freudian Freudian psychoanalysis for some
reason in school, and I really and then I had
my first therapist was was a therapist who was then
training in psychoanalysis. So I know a lot more about
the kind of almost simplistic Freudian view of things than
(45:57):
I do about the Youngian view. Uh it's on my
to do list.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Well, they I mean, they famously uh kind of split up.
It was a h John Lennon Paul McCartney moment with
those two. But I kind of I veered towards Young.
I can't I can't make Freud work for me much.
But the discovery of things is important. And you know
(46:22):
he did, he did discover a law of techniques. He
moved things forward. He wasn't really it wasn't the be
all and and all.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
But no, and he didn't believe in clits.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Yeah, that's that's a real.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
No, it's a whole there's a really fucked up story.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
It was.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Oh, this story from like the twenties. There's this princess.
She was a great she was like a grandniece of
Napoleon Bonaparte. She was very rich, and she got in
with Freud and she was obsessed her whole life that
she never had a vaginal orgasm. And Freud was like agreed,
like because he basically believed that clittoral orgasms, which is
(46:59):
scientifically where all orgasms come from.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
By and the woman, we're immature.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And so this woman had numerous this is in like
the twenties, surgeries to try to make her vagina closer
to her clitterists. And this was all urged on by
Sigmund Freud. It's nonsense, it's absolutely n So there was
there was a lot of of bullshit.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
You've talked a little bit in your life about mental
health and and kind of dealing with your own struggles.
I mean, as I have myself, I've talked a lot,
but like when I go sober, I thought everyone's going
to be great, it doesn't really work out that way.
I mean that there's it's kind of an ongoing struggles
(47:40):
to It requires vigilance. Do you still find yourself in
that place today? Do you still kind of Oh, it's
a journey.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
It's a journey.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
I'll never be I'll never be over because there's two things.
There's my own mental health and then you know, the
mental health of others. And I've dealt with people close
to me going through mental health health issues, and Okay,
how much do you help or do you put up boundaries?
Speaker 3 (48:04):
That's hard and that's you.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Know, you can only control what you can control. But no,
it's an ongoing thing, especially as just the world continues
to get more complicated, not only becoming a parent, but
as frankly the Internet gets scarier.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
And weirder and weirder.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Like I'm never going to be like, yeah, I got
nothing else to solve with my mental health.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
This is why when you said that thing about the
Internet and the world getting weirder and stuff, I feel
this is why. I mean, people that listen to this podcast,
probably sick of me here and as sick of me
saying it. But that's why I get so obsessed with
these gour Vidal historical novels, Julian the Aposta creation, the
Seven Narratives of Empire that you wrote about the United
(48:49):
States from the Revolution till the nineteen fifties. It's fascinating
because it's always been a shit show, rachel A. It's
always been a shit show, and he made it. He
makes it personal so that you believe it's not distant.
It's like real people five hundred years BC. You believe it.
It's like someone's got an iPhone and showing you around.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Oh, I got to Oh, I've got to get into these.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
You have to because it's it's face timing your way
into the past. He was a fucking genius, Vidal. I
met him towards the end of his life and I
hadn't read a thing he had read at that point,
and I feel like I really missed an opportunity to
I don't know, grovel or something. I don't know that
it would have made any difference to him, but his
(49:33):
work is is unbelievable. He's an unsung American genius. I
know a lot of people are into him, but he
should be far more to the forward of thinking.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
Now, that's very calming to me, just hearing you say
it's always been a shit show, is really it's fucked up?
I find that really calming, that this is just.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
This is life.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
I think coming up during the nineties, which people called
the end of history, right, there was something about like, well,
we're finished, nothing else to see here, nothing else to
do here, which was kind of the narrative of I
don't know. I think that maybe a child's perceived narrative
of the late nineties and then being launched into this
century with anything but calm, just to remember, like, no,
(50:21):
it's actually chaos is the norm.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
Totally comic the United States, you know, Aaron Burr shoots
and kills Alexander Hamilton and goes on trial while he
still the vice president, goes to New Orleans, tries to
raise an army to become the Emperor of fucking Mexico. Right,
this is all going on. What we've got right now
(50:47):
is kind of mid range crazy. Wow, you know.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
About the Emperor of Mexico thing.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Oh girl, it was fucking nuts. And then you know,
don't get me started on Thomas Jefferson, how crazy that
fucking shit was, and then the and Burr was Jefferson's
vice president of Oh my God, and then McKinley getting
shot at the start of the twentieth century, and Teddy Roosevelt,
(51:16):
who was his vice president coming in all that crazy
shit that was going on, William Randolph Hurst getting blamed
for inciting the assassination of McKinley and losing his chance
of ever becoming president, which is what he really wanted.
And when you read about these people, you go, oh, well,
that's the lun musk, that's Donald Trump, that's you know,
(51:36):
that's Hillary, that's I mean, they're all over the place.
I mean it's Mark Twain gets the credit for saying this.
I don't know if he said it or not, which
is kind of ironic because it makes sense with the quote.
Apparently he said history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Yes.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
I love that quote.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I think that that's the way I find it. Very
comforting and well, meticulously recepched, genius written historical fiction but
based in real fact.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Well, I gotta, I got, I gotta get into that,
because I even though I'm not a mental health professional.
I can't help but see people's unresolved issues and personality
disorders everywhere, right, and it's just like, oh, yeah, that's
the brain chemistry that's been fucking people up and causing
dictators and wars for the past ten thousand years. Totally, totally,
(52:33):
and not to blame mental illness on people being bad,
which is a whole other debate.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
I just want to say it's complicated.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
Well yeah, but you know there are things like let's
take Henry the Eighth, right, Henry the Eighth, who for
a long time is like a fairly stayed nothing much
going on monarch in England. Everything's pretty state, has a
jousting accident. It won't heal. He starts getting a little
(53:04):
he starts getting a little crazy, he's putting on way
decides that you know, his wife of twenty years, it's
her fall, and that whole period of his six wives
of Henry, that's a ten year period. That's it. That
was the last ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
So it was like maybe concussion from a jousting accent
or something. I think it was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
They reckon he was probably type two diabetes and he
had all sorts of I mean, for a while they
thought it was syphilis, they thought it was something else.
But a lot of his behavior was brought on by
the physicality of his changing body, you know, through the
course of his life. And I think that that, you know,
(53:47):
to come back to the skeptics confidence a little bit.
I think that's what people are looking for sometimes when
they put the jade egg in the vagina or the
fucking rub myself with cat feces in order to or
you know, whatever the thing is to please don't do
any of those. But the I think they're looking for
a way to physically change how they feel. I did
(54:11):
that with alcohol. I want to physically change how I feel.
And some of it's beneficial if you run, or you swim,
or you do push ups or something, and it's all right.
But as I have to go myself. So do you now?
Speaker 2 (54:25):
This is amazing. I'm honestly gonna read that might be
next on my reading list.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Oh, I can't recommend it highly enough. Start with either Julian,
the Apostate, Burr or Creation.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Oh okay, great.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
They're all fabulous. It was great to talk to you that,
especially yours is a fucking masterpiece. How dare you?
Speaker 3 (54:46):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (54:47):
But other than that, I remain a fan.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
Oh my god, you're the best. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
God bless you. Talk to it for to paper for
two
The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now.
It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid
it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing
on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me,
buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and
see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones.
(00:21):
I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but
you should at least know what's happening, and it is.
The tour kicks off late September and goes through the
end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at
the Craig Ferguson Show dot Com slash tour. They're available
at the Craig Ferguson show dot Com slash tour or
at your local outlet in your region. My name is
(00:45):
Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I
talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness
on the podcast today, for my money, the most interesting
and different and talented American performers to emerge in the
(01:05):
last twenty years. She's really thoughtful, clever, interesting, talented. Well
you're going to find all of this out. It's Rachel Bloom.
May I compliment you first of all on your backcrack,
(01:27):
which is amazing, and also the fact that you are
dealing with a young child right now and you look
fresh and young and upbeat and lovely, and I'm jealous.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, I've slapped on some makeup just before I came
on here, so and I had a glass of wine
last night, which to me is six glasses of wine
because I have no tolerance, so that means a lot
that I look fresh now.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
You look great, and listen, I know what it's like
to have a little kid. It's myke every time I
see people and I'm in a hotel right now. When
I see people in hotels with little kids, I always say,
you get is anybody getting any sleep? And everybody I
was like, no.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
It's all encompassing. She wasn't asleepover last night. So it
was nice to go out and come home and to
be like, oh my god, there's no one. I don't
have to care for anyone in this house. I mean,
that sounds very mean because I still have a husband
and a dog.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
But to.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Not be responsible for someone's life for one night because
even when you're off the clock, you're on the clock.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I was going to say, you probably woke up panicked
in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
It was weird.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, I know, I know. I've done it myself. Hey,
here's what I have to tell you. I'm a little angry.
I'm a little angry at you.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Oh okay, okay, I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Because because I'm watching death, let me do my spash.
And you shouldn't make people cry and be scared in
stand up comedy. That's I was scared. I had no idea.
Like when the death thing stopped, I'm like, this is
fucking with me. Man, I don't like, did the audience
(03:12):
know that was going to happen?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
No, no, it really. It really fucked with people.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
When the show, when we started trying it out, it
was called like Rachel try some new stuff out and
sees what happened.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So people really had no idea.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And then, of course, you know the country we live in,
we kept cutting down the time that we revealed it
was a plant so that people wouldn't be worried for
their lives because the.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Second someone say I'm death, you're like, well.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
What so that was everything Like yeah, so that was
also like, Okay, the second we're going to hear him heckel,
but the second he says I'm deaf, let's get him
on Mike, so you know something's up.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
So that was something we worked on. But yeah, no,
it fucked with people.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And then when we called the show death, let Me
do My people still thought it was real, but they
knew something would be off about the show, but they
thought it was They thought it was real, and then
they grew to not trust anything in the show to
the point where I had actual weird things happened in
the show and a couple of actual hecklers.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
People assumed it was built in.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's kind of great, though, isn't that. I mean, even
I first became aware of your work with crazy ex
girlfriend like most people, I think, and I always thought,
like I remember first the first episode of that show,
going the fuck is happening? Why? And then it took
me on and I love that. It reminded me of
(04:38):
you ever seen the movie Train Spoton? No, all right,
well you should see it. You really like it. It's about
It's an upbeat tale of heroin addiction in Edinburgh in
the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, what I saw it a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yes, there's a scene in that movie where you and
McGregor as a drug addict drops.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
A a vial of heroin, a kind of anal heroine and
put thing down a public bathroom and it's disgusting, but
he knows the only way he can get the heroin.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Is put his hand into the horrible toilet to get
the heroin. And then when he goes into the toilet,
he goes all the way into the toilet and he's
swimming in this beautiful ocean in this toilet, and they
play Brian ENO's Deep Blue Sea and and it's so beautiful.
And when I saw crazy ex Girlfriend, I thought, whatever
(05:36):
mcguffin in the head of Irvin Welsh that created that story.
You have that too, You know that that?
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Oh well, thank you?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And I didn't and I didn't even need heroin.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Well, what I'm saying to you is maybe it's time,
as your daughter gets a little older, maybe you start
thinking about heroin, especially when she's on a sleepover. That
would be that would be the time.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
That's the one.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
That's the thing.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
But it's an interesting thing because I was very taken
with the special. I I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
That means a lot that I really obviously love you
and respect you. That that means a lot to me.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Oh my god, no, it was. It's fantastic anyone who
fucks with a genre that is tired anyway, and stand
up comedy, there's too many people doing it. It's like
it's everybody's playing CF and G on the guitar. It's
it's like, it's stop it, stop it, stop it. And
then somebody comes along and throws in a huge minor
chord and a five eight drum thing, and suddenly the
(06:36):
whole world opens up again, and I'm now enthusiastic again
about stand up comedy. And you have no idea how
jaded I am that suddenly you see somebody doing it,
you go, fuck, there's more room again. There's somebody's breaking
it again. It's great.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Oh well that really means a lot to me. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Well, it's the truth. And why was you paid a
high price for it? Though? Like, yeah, when you talk
about the death of Adam and the show, that to
me is it's such a weird, a weird twist on
the I don't mean, is it stand up comedy? Is
(07:17):
that what it is?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's like stand up.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I always say it's it's a stand up show wrapped
in a storytelling show wrapped in a one act play
kind of. So it's kind of kind of veers more
into storytelling as it get, especially when I get into
just like, all right, my character is talking about this
for the first time, right, so it's like, okay, let's
(07:39):
just go day by day what happened. And then you're
in real storytelling where it's like, all right, I'll just
tell you about this terrible week where I gave birth,
my friend died, and so like that's where it gets
like it gets very storytelling in that granularness.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
It's also it's a very kind of horrible, uh convenient
for story thing to event. I mean, it's a cataclysmic
kind of because I've been you know, I've had friends
that I obviously everyone hasn't, and I've been at two
live births, both of my children. My god, they're so weird.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
They're so weird.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
It's like that weird kind of energy, like somebody's coming.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
It's definitely and it's bloody, and it's there's nothing else
in life that's a central life event where it's also
going to be gory. Yeah, unless you have really good
birthday parties, I guess, but it's like gruesomeness is part
of it.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
And so you're already in this.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Very fleshy, bloody place that feels very primal.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And there's poop too. Let's be honest, there's poop.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
You know what.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I'm astounded with me there wasn't.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Poop, but oh stop, stop, you're amongst friends.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Of course, there was no one told me the nice
to you, but maybe I would have been fine if
there were. But you know, there's everything I mean, And
there was a my husband was trying not to look,
but there was a mirror on the other side of
the room where you could see everything. And I didn't
(09:28):
really see the birth because everyone was blocking it. But
after she was born and they took her to the
NICU and the placenta was still in, I caught a
glimpse of open wound placenta umbilical court.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
It was its unbelievable. Isn't that crazy? And everything I mean,
clearly for a mother is physically astonishing for you know, change,
But everything in my life changed, everything that my entire
perspective the world changed when I became a father, and
(10:04):
I you know, and I hear people say, oh, you know,
like not having kids, and I'm like, funne, that's your choice.
It's it's okay. But I always say, you know that
all the great philosophers in history, none of them had children.
That's actually no, it's not true. But I say it
to people because I want to shame them. But it really,
(10:26):
what I think it is is everything you know that
people say that. There's lazy assumptions that I think people
I made before I had kids. One of them was,
you know, people say that thing, well, we were born
alone and we die alone. And I've been at two
live births, and as far as I can tell, nobody
(10:47):
is born alone. There's at least two people in the room.
There's nobody's born alone. It's utter bullshit. And I I
just everything about my perspective in life started to change
law after my first son was born. It is weird?
Is that? What's happening to you?
Speaker 3 (11:07):
One hundred percent?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I mean I say a little in the special where
you know, ever since I given birth, a story of
a child being hurt anywhere messes with me. I got
into it a little bit basically, yeah, like it kind
of makes sense. I know, it's not technically true that
like philosophers, all the great philosophers didn't have kids, because
before you have kids, there is an impartiality that you
(11:30):
can have on the world. There's a moral impartiality that
you can have. There's this scene in the HBO show
The Last of Us. Did you watch it?
Speaker 1 (11:38):
I did? I loved that show.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
So remember when it's like someone basically turns in the
head of this rebel alliance in exchange for cancer medication
for his brother, and he's like, I wanted to prevent
a child from dying. And Melanie Lynsky's character goes, children die,
children die literally all the time, this wasn't worth it.
And before you have a kid, you can say that, right,
(12:01):
there's a there's a certain amount you can zoom out
from the world and look at history and say, yeah,
well life is gruesome. Life is horrible. And I had
such a strong stomach for I don't true crime.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
For I went to the Museum of Death, and I.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Was the Museum of Death in la where it's the
most gruesome crime scene photo and it's just you're You're like, yeah,
that is what it is.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
And then I had a kid and it just blew
that wide open.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
There's no, there's no, it's it's so much harder to
be impartial because you would do anything for this kid,
and you would would Would I turn in the founder
of a rebel alliance to get my child cancer treatment?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Fuck?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, in an absolute second. So you're led by your
heart and emotion. And now the media that I can
consume has come completely not completely, but it's really really
done in almost one eighty where that's much. I'm just
so much more sensitive and empathetic, but like in a
(13:13):
in a painful way.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, I mean I can't watch I used to watch
British detective shows about you know, Crumbly Detectives, and they
have this thing going on with the Brittige a Law
of Bridge detective shows that's the murder of a child.
And I was like, I can't do it. I'm no,
I'm no. Or a child is even missing, maybe the
child's going to be okay, but you don't know, but
(13:37):
the child missing, that's enough. I don't want to see it.
And it is a it is an odd thing, and
it's not because it's not because I don't know what happens.
I was able to consume that media before you, like
you say, but it's because I can't stand it. It's
no entertainment, it's not it doesn't. All it does is
make me feel awful all the time.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah, it's that's what. It's not even And it's not
even making me think in the way that dark that
darker shit used to make me like okay, this is dark,
but like, okay, it's teaching me a lesson. I'm so
consumed by the emotion. I'm like, I'm not learning a
lesson from this right now.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, it's funny that as well. I think even when
I when I have dark thoughts about my own mortality,
and I thought, well, par no die now, because I
would really upsett the kids. It's like, I'll be fine,
but whatever happens to me happens to me.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
But I would be Oh, you start to have this
narrative of like, oh, yes, sometimes when I get on
a plane alone and I'm like, oh, this is the
movie in my daughter's life where it's the last time
she saw her mom.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Oh I do right, because they do that in.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So many where it's like, oh, this is the last
time and this is the story she's going to tell
herself now where it's like, goodbye, I'm going to Vegas.
And then it's like and I never saw her again.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
So you're telling me you left your daughter to go
to Vegas. What Vega?
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I did go to Vegas alone a couple of weeks ago.
That is true, Navy.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I did.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
There was a skeptic There was a convention of skeptics,
and my friend was speaking at it, and I and
I went for literally a night.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
First of all, I have to take you back because
I need to know what happens at a convention of
skeptics and why they would meet in Las Vegas to gamble.
That seems like a contradiction.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Okay, So the Vegas, as far as I can tell,
Vegas is just where you meet because they have good
convention centers and it's well, it's not even somewhat central.
It's still West Coast.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
But it was a convention for the Center for Inquiry,
held at the Horseshoe, Las Vegas, and it was just
a bunch of panels.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
And speeches about science.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
And skepticism and I'm I'm really really into this and
I'm I'm a I'm a big old skeptical atheist. And
it was like absolutely, my jam and my friend Rena
was there speaking about she's really really good. She's actually
a book called The Gospel of Wellness that's awesome about
(16:10):
the pseudoscience of the wellness industry and why we and
why we turned to pseudoscience and why even now with
all the information on the Internet, people are still so
mired in false truths.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And also, yeah, have you ever read The Demon Haunted World? Yes?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I have. It's fantastic because it's it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World for those who haven't
read it.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And I still think about I still think about the
thing he says, which is, you know when people talk
about and this is more about paranormal phenomena. But he's like,
all right, so imagine your.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
You're in a house.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
You're looking at a glass sliding door, and there's a
fireplace behind you. During the day, you would see the backyard.
During the day, the sun starts to set. Suddenly what
you see is the reflection in the glass of the
fireplace behind you. But you've been looking out the window
all day, so it just looks like suddenly there's a
fire outside. And he compares that to the ways our
brain tricks us into thinking we might be seeing things
(17:13):
that aren't there and hearing things that aren't there.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
I still use that as an example.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
There's a quote that he does at the start of
the book which I think is fantastic. He's talking about
a taxi driver that he gets who's asking him about, so,
where is Atlantis? You're Carl Sagan, where's Atlantis? And he's like, dude,
I don't know what you're talking about, you know, the
city under the sea. And he's like, I'm you know.
But he then he goes into a quote from Leon Trotsky, who,
(17:47):
to be honest, not my favorite guy in the world.
But Leon Trotsky is talking about the rise of the
Nazis in Germany, and he's talking about you know, I'm
paraphrasing it until the end, I only remember them. But
the paraphrase in that Trotsky says, you know, they have
pilots who wear amulets to give them good luck while
(18:09):
they have, you know, while they pilot these magnificent machines
of engineering. And he talks about all these different people
who do superstitious things while doing very scientifically advanced things.
And then this is the thing that he zeros In
to make it about the rise of the Nazis. He
says this quote, which I still find chilling. He says
(18:33):
about human beings, what remarkable reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance,
and savagery. And I was like, whoa, And I feel
like that's accurate. Even now, we have remarkable amounts of darkness, ignorance,
and savage y. People are very on fire right now.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Oh it's all I mean to put it bluntly, to
make me sound like I'm ninety. We weren't ready for
the Internet.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Anyone's I'm not ready for it.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Not I'm not ready because it's takes advantage of tribalism,
which is which is in us. Like, I think I
might be wrong, but I feel like I read somewhere
the reason Homo sapiens is the dominant, you know, the
only dominant kind of species of our kind, is because
we just killed everyone else because it was you know,
the Neanderthals were wiped out, we.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Killed I think that I also heard that same study,
though I also heard that we actually just shagged the
Neanderthals and we're all like their genes stopped coming through
and everybody got their sex on and the humans came
through more. You almost sapiens came through more than Neanderthals.
But I might have just been looking at completely erroneous
(19:46):
report or amazing.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Maybe it's a beautiful mix.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
I think it might be a little bit of both,
a little call them be. But let me take you
back to Las Vegas, because it's to to me because
I don't think I know enough about skeptics modern skepticism,
and I would like you to take me through it.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Well. I think it's still finding of what is it
general generationally now because I would say it was overwhelmingly
a lot of people who are Gen X or boomers,
And there's a lot of skepticism that's still about UFO
paranormal debunking because because it's very much in it's very
(20:27):
much in conversation with with like New Age stuff that
came about in like the sixties the seventies, right, So
UFOs are less of a thing now, But if you
were born in the fifties, you know Roswell like, there's
so there's so much about that aspect of the paranormal
that that they're still debunking, which is which is very interesting.
(20:49):
But I think what was really cool about this is
My friend Rena and some other people spoke more about
taking a skeptic lens into health trend and into There
was this really really interesting speech I forget who it was,
of this journalist comparing Gwyneth Paltrow Goop culture of that
(21:13):
kind of pseudoscience like put this jade egg up up
your vagina to.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
So there's a lot of parallel with that with what's
going on with now the Manisphere. I don't know if
you've heard about the manisphere, which is like it's it's
like I feel like Joe Rogans like kind of a
part of this whe where it's just like all of
these things you can do to make yourself as manly
as you can.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Like people are drinking their piss.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
There's this one guy who's like people are fully drink
people are fully drinking their own fermented piss because they're like,
this will make you man this will make you like manly,
and it's also why people are It kind of goes
into people are chewing really tough gum to get a
chiseled jaw, Like that's a big thing now to like
look as manly as possible and it's just the kind
(22:05):
of flip of the Gwyneth Paltrow stuff where it's like
pseudosciencey stuff to be the best that you can be
and be the most of your I don't know, it's
all about like primal right, like go, let's go back
to being a man. Like there's this there are these
influencers who are like I only eat raw me and
look at me.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
I'm I'm fucking shredded.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
And then it turns out he's doing a lot of steroids.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
But it's the same thing where it's on the female
pseudo science and where it's like, you know, I only
eat grass and spring water. Also I can afford a
trainer six times a week, So that's the bigger that's
the probably the bigger thing.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
But that does not plato archetypes. Those things plea into
archetypes ofticsthatics as well, like the you know, like if
a square jaw makes you more mad. But you know,
David boy was a man, Andy Warhol is a man,
Arnold Schwarzenegger is a man. You know, there are there
(23:10):
are men who look different. I mean, I guess it's
like to look like a cartoon man.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Maybe to me, I think it well, it all looks.
It also relates to a lot of the cultural thing
of like men need to serve themselves, men need to
be masculine. It's a thing that's I think more on
more on the what you would call the right, although
I don't even know what that means anymore, but the
idea of like men need to be men and women
need to be women, and the world will be more
organized once men are empowered again to embrace their true power,
(23:42):
uh and potential. As opposed to the journalist was like,
as opposed to me, he's like, I'm a I'm a
soy boy beta cook. He's like, I'm their nightmare. Uh
So it's it's like whatever, Like I guess they would
consider David Bowie a soy boy beta cook.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
See that's interesting because I my definition of masculinity is
like aspirational masculinity for me as a man is individualism
is fuck you, you know. This is how we all have
to be. Fuck you, It's how we have to beat
This is how I am. You know. So if I'm
(24:19):
like and your label beat a coup, fuck your beat
a cup label, I'm a man, you know, and I
kind of I don't like to allow people who have
a different view of the world than me to give
me a name that I then have to adopt.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Oh, you know, that's all the internet is. Yeah, No,
all the Internet is people giving other people.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Names that you have that you have to take. And
I think if you have if you have a name,
no matter what part of the spectrum you're on the
political sphere, you and if you have a name for
a group of other people, you need to take a
fucking look yourself, because people are people. And I think
(25:04):
that that's what fascinates me is that I always thought
the Internet was a bit like show business, that it's
it's only dangerous if you take it seriously, you know.
But yeah, if you take it seriously, it can kill you.
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I really love and crazy ex girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
We did a whole story about a character getting sober,
and we actually watched some of your work in the room.
You did a great monologue. It was when Britney Spears
was your melt down, and because we were talking about
what you learn in AA and and and to be
non judgmental and how and that you were saying, like,
I don't want to say she's not cool.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
I don't judge, I don't I don't want to say
what she is, and I just love I don't know,
I really see that that kind of non judgmental space
and what you're saying right now, and and uh, it's
just really cool. It's really cool to see like evolved
recovery and how it continues to clearly like affect your
worldview in all sorts of awesome ways.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
I think that it's the idea of it, thank you.
But I think the idea of it is that the
idea of evolution, I think has It's interesting. You know,
people say that the evolution and I think this is
part of this masculine thing right now that you know,
the strongest survive, and that's not true. The strongest don't survive.
(26:30):
Mammoths are plenty strong. Sabertooth tiger's strong. You know, it's
not about strong, it's those who adapt survive. If you
can adapt to the changing environment, you survive. And so
I think that by if you extrapolate those that adapt survive,
then the intelligence survive. That's an optimistic worldview, I know,
(26:52):
but I think that I feel, like you know, Hannah
was Hannah Rent said, if eovele had triumphed, even good
wouldn't exist or something like that. I don't know if
that was hard it was someone else. I mean, she
said a lot of very clever things, and but so
of a lot of other people.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't know, you know,
but you know better than better than me if that
was her, but but that, but yeah, that's a really
good Has anyone.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Else made that point?
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Oh, I'm sure you're not the first.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Person to point out that adaptation is actually a better
quality than just brute strength, because yeah, like the reason
that mammals uh became superior and that there was like
mammalian supremacy in the first place is because when the
asteroid hit and killed off the dinosaurs, all these little
moles were living underground, right, And so that's why now
(27:45):
we're here, and that's why mammals rose to the top.
Without that, who the fuck knows where we'd be. We'd
all be you know, feathered bird lizard people.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
You know, I've had a few nights. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
I was also going to say, if you asked certain
corners of the internet, they'll say, well, okay, a lot
of people I don't know.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
I mean, I think it's quite interesting because it also
depends on your idea of what success is like, is
your success as a species? Is it numbers? Is it
sheer numbers because of it as ants when you know?
Or is it? Is it? Uh? Is it intelligence? Is
Is it a soul? Is there a soul? I mean,
(28:29):
what did the skeptics say about the soul? Is there
is there a soul?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I mean I think that the skeptics are it's all
about kind of always searching. That's the get that's the
That's the thing that I always take from the skeptic
community is it's always searching for the truth. So soul, No,
I mean, there's never been any It's all evidence based, right,
So there's no there never really been any evidence of
a soul.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
A lot of what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Also, the keynote speaker of the night I was there
was Neil de grasse Tyson, and a lot of what
you're saying is exactly what he was saying. He's like,
all right, so if aliens came and they wanted to
talk to to, uh, you know, the smartest animal, how
would they gauge that we don't have the biggest.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Brains of any animal? On Earth.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
He started to go through, what are the animals with
the biggest brains? And he's like, okay, well let's say
we're looking at brain to body ratio. We're not the
animals even with the you know, biggest brain to body ratio.
And so he's really started breaking it down about how
objectively unspecial human beings are. If you were, if you
(29:32):
were an alien species looking down, it doesn't That was his.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Whole agree that luisy k has a great counter to that,
which is humans removed themselves from the food chain. So
that's pretty impressive, like for most of history humans died Like, ah, yeah,
(29:56):
it doesn't. That doesn't happen really anymore. It's we're parefully
capable destroying ourselves. But it's you know, and then actually,
if you think about it, maybe he didn't. I mean
look at COVID for example with Adam. You know, it's
like fucking plague comes, it comes, So.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Maybe that's nothing, there's nothing you can do. It's why
what is it?
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Is?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
The movie The Storm, The Sword and the Stone, there's
a there's a it's you know, it's animated movie. It's
King Arthur and Merlin. There's a wizard fight and the
way the wizard fight culminates, I want to say, is
they're like turning into one's a dragon, the other turns
into a bear. And finally Merlin disappears and he's become
(30:40):
a virus. Oh, and he just gets the other wizard
very sick because he's like, this is actually the most
powerful thing.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah it maybe that was like the Last of Us
when they do that at the beginning of it, when
they're doing that show. But Fungus in the nineteen.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Seventies, that was such a good cold open to acknowledge, Yeah,
I know we're in a pandemic, but there's actually something
there's actually something worse.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
That was a.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Chilling way to open a shew, How do you deal
with that?
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Now that I'll tell you what I'm leading up to.
I had to adapt my entire Velt Arm show. My
entire worldview had to change when I became a parent,
because now there was someone who marred more than my
feelings on Earth. And it continued with my second child,
(31:35):
and I think that it led me in a very
different path that I've been to before. I was very
evidence based right up until I became a parent, and
that I'm on a deep dive right now with the
early Christian mystics and the Moses and his gang, and
I mean it's like I'm off on all sorts of
(31:56):
adventures with those people now. And then pythagora Is, who
is like a real uh you know, and Gorvi Dahal's
historical novels, which if you haven't read them, Oh my god,
have you have you done any of those?
Speaker 2 (32:11):
No? No, oh you have to put Oh my.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
God, it is amazing, amazing. But all I became much
more interested in in the un evidence, in the in
the lack of evidence, than in the evidence. And I
think it came from that moment of being at my
first live birth apart from my own, which I don't remember,
(32:35):
but that weird moment where it all there's there's no
words for it. I don't even think. There's just some
kind of weird gap in the universe. And then somebody
news there and it freaked me out. I had a
profound effect on me, and I am no longer evidence based.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Oh that's interesting, Yeah, so I'm not there. I think
that I see it more as my emotions, in my
empathy have been just cracked open in a way that
makes it very hard for me to be totally objective
and totally impartial. But for me, I guess the thing
(33:13):
with looking for evidence based stuff and this might just
be really personal to me is the part of the
reason I'm interested in all of it In skepticism, and
you know, the search for the truth is I want
someone to find the proof of the mystic and I'm
that's what I'm That's what I'm looking for. But that's
what I'm looking for, right I'm looking for what is it?
I read? This woman named Mary wrote wh writes amazing books.
(33:35):
I read was It Stiff or Spooks? She's written two
books about death and the search for the afterlife. I
read that stuff because I'm like, maybe this will be
the thing that proves it, which is very I think
not everyone. But it's why I like the skeptic areas.
(33:56):
From a very young age, I knew that I kind
of like this area, but also I didn't want to
believe in things that weren't true. So this is the
way I split the difference. Because it's funny, my own therapist,
I was talking to her about my interest in this
and she goes, you know, she's She's like, I don't
really believe in this stuff. She's like, I'm an atheist.
She's like, I just don't think about this stuff. You
(34:18):
really have a thing where you're you want to immerse
yourself in this skepticism paranormal uh investigation where she's like,
I just don't. I just don't think about it. I
just think ghosts aren't real, and that's it. And so
I don't know what it is, but there is something
in me that I love reading studies of things that
(34:41):
can't be studied because maybe this will be the thing
that proves it.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
But that's a beautiful mind to have. That's a that
I think is is is a spiritual hunger, which is
was my own particular brand. I don't know if I
was ever an atheist. I think I probably was at
one point. And I'm certainly not you know, a flagwave
and drum beaten organized religion person. I can. I'm not
(35:10):
good at joining groups of people. I couldn't even join
in a group of late night hosts and there was
only like seven of us, so I like, I don't
want to be part of your fucking gang. It's like
there's only enough for a dinner party. Like I don't care.
It's funny I was talking to a friend of mine
today about that very thing. Atheism is too fundamental a
(35:34):
stance for me. I can't do it. I can't do it.
It believes in itself too much, and fundamentalism. I can't
do fundamentalism. It doesn't seem hungry enough.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
This is where you get into, like the idea of
atheism being a form of spirituality is controversial. But when
I really kind of became an atheist, what it what
it actually meant for me was really what I would
say is, I'm a practical atheist, theoretical agnostic. I live
my life as if there's nothing, as if no one's
(36:07):
looking out. If I fuck up, it's not the universe
teaching me a lesson. It's like, no, maybe I just
fucked up and I have to apologize to someone. But
I'm practically agnostic in that I think it's something like
ninety eight percent of the universe is dark matter, and
we don't know what dark matter is, So no, you
can't be like there's nothing when there's so much we
(36:27):
don't know. It's just the way I live my life
on a practical level is as if there's nothing and
very evidence based, but there's a part of me that
is very open to wonder and wants to remain open
to wonder. So whatever that means, I don't know if that's,
you know, pure atheist. You know, I'm sure there are
(36:49):
some people who are like, well, that's then you're not
an atheist. I don't know what that means, but that's
how my brain. This is what I think makes me
the best version of myself whatever you call this.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
What I'm doing. And we talked earlier about lessons of
sobriety or recovery. And if there's one thing I learned
that I think has been pivotal for me and this,
and it sounds like you are capable, not capable. You
(37:24):
do this too at at a far younger age than
I ever got hold of. It was it seems to
me that too many people, most people are not willing
to make themselves the villain of their own story everyone,
and I am willing to do that. I want to go, look,
this person may have fucked up, but I fucked up too,
you know, and I I really try to live my
(37:46):
life like that, like, Okay, whatever they did, that's not important.
What did I do? You know that? Because that's the
only thing I can do anything about I can't do
anything about what they did, but I can do something
about what I did. And if it means I have
to try and you know, make amends or or not
do it again or whatever it was, then I do that.
But I think accountability is something that can be lost
(38:12):
if you're not worried about the accounts being settled in
some way, you know, And I'm not worried about that.
But you see what I'm kind of like.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
I get it.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I don't have I have so many other parts of
me that want to be a good person that have
nothing to do with heaven.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Oh well, agree, I don't mean that. I don't mean
like getting the books right so you get into heaven
I get. I mean getting the idea that there is
a that there is a I don't want to get
to one of these. I'm not saying, oh well, if
you don't believe in God, you're going to run around
killing people. That's nonsense. But what I mean is it
helps I don't know, it helps me imagine that there
(38:53):
may be something. Yeah, but I absolutely reject the didactic
nature of stand up, sit down to and around, eat this,
don't eat this, where this, don't where there's tell these
other people they've got it wrong. I reject all of that,
the organized part of religion, the feeling.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question of and
one that I'm sure is still trying to figure out
for my own family. Of Okay, if you live your
life not religiously, where does a moral compass come from?
Where do you get a sense of right and wrong?
And do you need God for a sense of right
and wrong? For me?
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
I don't know if you do. I think that we
just have so many societal structures that are set up
you thousands of years of people philosophizing and thinking of
morality in the context of different spiritualities, and a lot
of it is not and very little moral compass that
we're kind of taught that isn't based in some sort
(39:54):
of spirituality. So I'm still navigating, Okay, how do you
how do you teach someone a sense of right and wrong?
And maybe spirituality isn't involved, But at the same time,
like just from an objective perspective, like it's not like
religion is useless to maybe religion is is people for
thousands of years ideating on the human condition. That's that
(40:18):
in itself is so incredibly profound it to throw.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Out in one in one and I don't want to
and I.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Don't want to do that, but I think that that's
a real debate, and it's it's what a lot of
religious people would say, well, we're you know, when you
take religion out of society, you miss some moral companies.
And I don't think that's necessarily the I don't think
that's the case. But that is a debate of what
we'll ground yourself in.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
I guess there are people who if they you know,
I'm not one of them. I don't think you're one
of them. But maybe there are people who, if they
didn't have their you know, their accounts to settle in heaven,
they would run around killing people. And that's the reason
why they don't.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
So which may be scary, which is just so, which
soide I am so less scared of the idea of
someone going around who doesn't murder people, who who if
you really press them, they'd be like, no, I could
murder someone to get away with it. I I just
don't want to murder people. That scares me a lot
less than someone who's like, oh boy, if they're if
(41:17):
they there weren't God, I would be killing everyone. That's horrifying.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
There's a horrifying thing.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
I don't think there's not many of those though, there's
not many, but all you need is a few to
be you know, serial killers.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Well there's that, but then you get the people are like, oh,
well I got to kill these people because God wants
me too. There's there's those speaking too.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Well and they're taking that and they're taking out whatever
is messed up in their head, you know, but it's
it's uh, it's righteousness. Yeah, I mean, this is stuff
that I'm actively thinking about and going through, especially since
having a kid. But for me, I guess, like, what, guys,
my moral compass is, how do you spread joy not pain?
(41:59):
How How do I not cause pain even though at
the center of life is.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Pain.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
I Mean, something that I've been really thinking about lately
is the way that living being survives to consume other
living beings. Even if you're a vegetarian, you're eating plants.
Plants are alive. So that's weird that in a if
this were a moral just world, the fact that not
only are we supposed to eat things that are alive
(42:28):
to survive, but that then everything alive has pain receptors,
and even plants, even plants have like plants have a
way of sending out distress pulses.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Right, So, even though that fundamental of life.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
To me seems really morally contradictory, I'm just trying to
cause people the least amount of pain is possible. And
Patton Oswald is a great special I don't know if
you saw it shortly after his wife died.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
And she says, and she was I think very much
what sounds like an atheist or agnostic, And she just
always said, it's chaos, be kind, And I like, I
think I still think about that sometimes. I think that's
such a beautiful way to view the world and kind
of how I see the world, where it's like it's
it's just chaos.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Just be kind, you know. I feel like that that
is it. That's the only way too. It's hard to
be kind when you know it's I think it's easy.
It's for me. I find it easy to be kind
when people are worthy of petty, but when they're worthy
of anger, it's harder for me to be kind to
(43:41):
people I feel angry with. Oh yes, it's much more
of a challenge, and people I don't necessarily love or
love how they they love. It's tricky.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
I am so I'm not an aggressive driver, but I'm
a judgmental driver where if someone doesn't signal or cuts
me off, all just what do you do? You know,
to the point where my four year old has heard
me criticize people enough that she's like, Mama, you should
have your own driving school where people can learn how
(44:12):
to drive like you.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
And I was like, you know what they should?
Speaker 2 (44:16):
So I I was like, that's really and so now
and but now it's gone. It's become kind of in
our family a running joke of my kind of Soviet
re education camp where I force people to learn about
all sorts of different polite things that we've forgotten in society,
like no cutseas is really important to me. Very so
(44:37):
I'm as much as I want to spread kindness, I'm
also very petty.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
I think maybe you're just human and we're all a duality.
What I always circle right back around. I seem to
always come back around to Carl Jung. Every time I
wander off and Nanny directs and any other directions, I
come back to Carl Jung, who seemed to kind of
grab it all for you know, all into one place,
(45:03):
mysticism and science and you know, and the human experience.
I really kind of get that. Do you ever you
ever read any or or have you ever come across
the Red Book or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
No, it's been a minute.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Actually I did a lot of where we read a
lot of Freud in school, and so I'm behind on
my young.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
It's funny Freud. I mean, obviously, you know, an innovator.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Oh so many no, no, so many holes to poke.
I took a class in Freudian Freudian psychoanalysis for some
reason in school, and I really and then I had
my first therapist was was a therapist who was then
training in psychoanalysis. So I know a lot more about
the kind of almost simplistic Freudian view of things than
(45:57):
I do about the Youngian view. Uh it's on my
to do list.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Well, they I mean, they famously uh kind of split up.
It was a h John Lennon Paul McCartney moment with
those two. But I kind of I veered towards Young.
I can't I can't make Freud work for me much.
But the discovery of things is important. And you know
(46:22):
he did, he did discover a law of techniques. He
moved things forward. He wasn't really it wasn't the be
all and and all.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
But no, and he didn't believe in clits.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Yeah, that's that's a real.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
No, it's a whole there's a really fucked up story.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
It was.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Oh, this story from like the twenties. There's this princess.
She was a great she was like a grandniece of
Napoleon Bonaparte. She was very rich, and she got in
with Freud and she was obsessed her whole life that
she never had a vaginal orgasm. And Freud was like agreed,
like because he basically believed that clittoral orgasms, which is
(46:59):
scientifically where all orgasms come from.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
By and the woman, we're immature.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And so this woman had numerous this is in like
the twenties, surgeries to try to make her vagina closer
to her clitterists. And this was all urged on by
Sigmund Freud. It's nonsense, it's absolutely n So there was
there was a lot of of bullshit.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
You've talked a little bit in your life about mental
health and and kind of dealing with your own struggles.
I mean, as I have myself, I've talked a lot,
but like when I go sober, I thought everyone's going
to be great, it doesn't really work out that way.
I mean that there's it's kind of an ongoing struggles
(47:40):
to It requires vigilance. Do you still find yourself in
that place today? Do you still kind of Oh, it's
a journey.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
It's a journey.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
I'll never be I'll never be over because there's two things.
There's my own mental health and then you know, the
mental health of others. And I've dealt with people close
to me going through mental health health issues, and Okay,
how much do you help or do you put up boundaries?
Speaker 3 (48:04):
That's hard and that's you.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Know, you can only control what you can control. But no,
it's an ongoing thing, especially as just the world continues
to get more complicated, not only becoming a parent, but
as frankly the Internet gets scarier.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
And weirder and weirder.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Like I'm never going to be like, yeah, I got
nothing else to solve with my mental health.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
This is why when you said that thing about the
Internet and the world getting weirder and stuff, I feel
this is why. I mean, people that listen to this podcast,
probably sick of me here and as sick of me
saying it. But that's why I get so obsessed with
these gour Vidal historical novels, Julian the Aposta creation, the
Seven Narratives of Empire that you wrote about the United
(48:49):
States from the Revolution till the nineteen fifties. It's fascinating
because it's always been a shit show, rachel A. It's
always been a shit show, and he made it. He
makes it personal so that you believe it's not distant.
It's like real people five hundred years BC. You believe it.
It's like someone's got an iPhone and showing you around.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Oh, I got to Oh, I've got to get into these.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
You have to because it's it's face timing your way
into the past. He was a fucking genius, Vidal. I
met him towards the end of his life and I
hadn't read a thing he had read at that point,
and I feel like I really missed an opportunity to
I don't know, grovel or something. I don't know that
it would have made any difference to him, but his
(49:33):
work is is unbelievable. He's an unsung American genius. I
know a lot of people are into him, but he
should be far more to the forward of thinking.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
Now, that's very calming to me, just hearing you say
it's always been a shit show, is really it's fucked up?
I find that really calming, that this is just.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
This is life.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
I think coming up during the nineties, which people called
the end of history, right, there was something about like, well,
we're finished, nothing else to see here, nothing else to
do here, which was kind of the narrative of I
don't know. I think that maybe a child's perceived narrative
of the late nineties and then being launched into this
century with anything but calm, just to remember, like, no,
(50:21):
it's actually chaos is the norm.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
Totally comic the United States, you know, Aaron Burr shoots
and kills Alexander Hamilton and goes on trial while he
still the vice president, goes to New Orleans, tries to
raise an army to become the Emperor of fucking Mexico. Right,
this is all going on. What we've got right now
(50:47):
is kind of mid range crazy. Wow, you know.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
About the Emperor of Mexico thing.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Oh girl, it was fucking nuts. And then you know,
don't get me started on Thomas Jefferson, how crazy that
fucking shit was, and then the and Burr was Jefferson's
vice president of Oh my God, and then McKinley getting
shot at the start of the twentieth century, and Teddy Roosevelt,
(51:16):
who was his vice president coming in all that crazy
shit that was going on, William Randolph Hurst getting blamed
for inciting the assassination of McKinley and losing his chance
of ever becoming president, which is what he really wanted.
And when you read about these people, you go, oh, well,
that's the lun musk, that's Donald Trump, that's you know,
(51:36):
that's Hillary, that's I mean, they're all over the place.
I mean it's Mark Twain gets the credit for saying this.
I don't know if he said it or not, which
is kind of ironic because it makes sense with the quote.
Apparently he said history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Yes.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
I love that quote.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I think that that's the way I find it. Very
comforting and well, meticulously recepched, genius written historical fiction but
based in real fact.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Well, I gotta, I got, I gotta get into that,
because I even though I'm not a mental health professional.
I can't help but see people's unresolved issues and personality
disorders everywhere, right, and it's just like, oh, yeah, that's
the brain chemistry that's been fucking people up and causing
dictators and wars for the past ten thousand years. Totally, totally,
(52:33):
and not to blame mental illness on people being bad,
which is a whole other debate.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
I just want to say it's complicated.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
Well yeah, but you know there are things like let's
take Henry the Eighth, right, Henry the Eighth, who for
a long time is like a fairly stayed nothing much
going on monarch in England. Everything's pretty state, has a
jousting accident. It won't heal. He starts getting a little
(53:04):
he starts getting a little crazy, he's putting on way
decides that you know, his wife of twenty years, it's
her fall, and that whole period of his six wives
of Henry, that's a ten year period. That's it. That
was the last ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
So it was like maybe concussion from a jousting accent
or something. I think it was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
They reckon he was probably type two diabetes and he
had all sorts of I mean, for a while they
thought it was syphilis, they thought it was something else.
But a lot of his behavior was brought on by
the physicality of his changing body, you know, through the
course of his life. And I think that that, you know,
(53:47):
to come back to the skeptics confidence a little bit.
I think that's what people are looking for sometimes when
they put the jade egg in the vagina or the
fucking rub myself with cat feces in order to or
you know, whatever the thing is to please don't do
any of those. But the I think they're looking for
a way to physically change how they feel. I did
(54:11):
that with alcohol. I want to physically change how I feel.
And some of it's beneficial if you run, or you swim,
or you do push ups or something, and it's all right.
But as I have to go myself. So do you now?
Speaker 2 (54:25):
This is amazing. I'm honestly gonna read that might be
next on my reading list.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Oh, I can't recommend it highly enough. Start with either Julian,
the Apostate, Burr or Creation.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Oh okay, great.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
They're all fabulous. It was great to talk to you that,
especially yours is a fucking masterpiece. How dare you?
Speaker 3 (54:46):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (54:47):
But other than that, I remain a fan.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
Oh my god, you're the best. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
God bless you. Talk to it for to paper for
two
Host
Craig Ferguson
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com