Judd Apatow On: Panic Attacks, His Creative Process, And Why Comedians Are Often So Neurotic

Summary

Podcast Summary: Judd Apatow on: Panic Attacks, His Creative Process, and Why Comedians Are Often So Neurotic | 10% Happier with Dan Harris

In this insightful episode of "10% Happier with Dan Harris," host Dan Harris engages in a profound conversation with acclaimed filmmaker and comedian Judd Apatow. The discussion delves deep into Apatow's personal battles with panic attacks, his creative process, and the common neuroses that seem prevalent among comedians. Below is a comprehensive summary of their dialogue, enriched with notable quotes and organized into clear sections for easy navigation.

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1. Introduction to Judd Apatow's Journey

Dan Harris opens the conversation by highlighting Judd Apatow's extensive career in film, television, and stand-up comedy. Apatow is renowned for his work on movies like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," and "Trainwreck," as well as his contributions to TV shows such as "Freaks and Geeks" and "Girls." Beyond his creative endeavors, Apatow is also a prolific writer, having authored books like "Sick in the Head" and its sequel "Sicker in the Head."

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2. Influence of Parents' Divorce and Early Life Struggles

Judd Apatow opens up about the profound impact of his parents' bitter divorce on his life and work. He reflects on how witnessing his parents' marital breakdown fueled his obsession with self-help and pop psychology.

Judd Apatow [07:13]: "It may be because of its failure to save my parents at one point."

Apatow shares personal anecdotes about his attempts to seek mental health support during his childhood, highlighting a gap in effective communication and support from his parents during their divorce.

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3. Navigating Self-Help and Internal Family Systems

Apatow discusses his extensive engagement with self-help literature and practices, including meditation and Internal Family Systems (IFS). He emphasizes the importance of understanding the various "voices" or "parts" within oneself.

Judd Apatow [12:00]: "I'm always reading Buddhist books and also just looking for some sort of self-help that makes me feel better."

He explains Richard Schwartz's IFS model, detailing how recognizing and communicating with these internal parts can lead to greater authenticity and emotional well-being.

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4. Managing Anxiety and Its Impact on Creativity

A pivotal part of the conversation centers on how Apatow's anxiety influences his creative output. He describes the incessant internal dialogue driven by anxiety and how it can stifle creativity.

Judd Apatow [13:40]: "...that is the voice of anxiety. And if I can calm that voice down, I feel way better."

Apatow shares strategies for calming his anxiety, such as mindfulness and awareness, and underscores the challenge of maintaining creativity amidst persistent anxious thoughts.

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5. Experience with Ayahuasca and Personal Growth

In a candid revelation, Apatow recounts his experience with ayahuasca, a powerful psychedelic, and its role in his journey toward healing.

Judd Apatow [34:17]: "I did ayahuasca, and for me, a lot of it is the fear of letting go, the fear of surrender."

He describes how the experience forced him to confront his fears and taught him the importance of acceptance and humor in the face of inner turmoil.

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6. The Role of Comedy in Coping with Personal and Societal Issues

Apatow explores the intricate relationship between comedy and neurosis, challenging the stereotype that comedians are inherently more troubled. He posits that comedy serves as a medium to process and articulate personal struggles.

Judd Apatow [49:59]: "Most of us in comedy have had enough happen to us to give us a big bowl to draw from."

He argues that while anxiety can hinder creativity, it also provides rich material that fuels genuine and relatable humor.

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7. Embracing Criticism in the Creative Process

The discussion shifts to how Apatow handles feedback and criticism. He emphasizes the value of honest critiques while also cautioning against becoming overly influenced by others' opinions.

Judd Apatow [69:13]: "I always embrace as much criticism as I can get. I try to do these screenings when I make a movie and I invite as many friends and other writers and directors to tell me what they thought of it."

Apatow shares insights on balancing external feedback with personal vision, highlighting cases where constructive criticism significantly improved his work.

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8. Upcoming Projects and Continued Creativity

As the interview nears its end, Apatow shares details about his forthcoming projects, including a documentary on Mel Brooks for HBO and upcoming comedy shows.

Judd Apatow [83:26]: "The main movie I'm working on is a documentary about Mel Brooks for HBO."

He also teases his live shows scheduled for New York City and Atlanta, underscoring his commitment to both creative endeavors and charitable causes.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Judd Apatow [07:13]: "It may be because of its failure to save my parents at one point."
• Judd Apatow [13:40]: "...that is the voice of anxiety. And if I can calm that voice down, I feel way better."
• Judd Apatow [34:17]: "I did ayahuasca, and for me, a lot of it is the fear of letting go, the fear of surrender."
• Judd Apatow [49:59]: "Most of us in comedy have had enough happen to us to give us a big bowl to draw from."
• Judd Apatow [69:13]: "I always embrace as much criticism as I can get. I try to do these screenings when I make a movie and I invite as many friends and other writers and directors to tell me what they thought of it."
• Judd Apatow [83:26]: "The main movie I'm working on is a documentary about Mel Brooks for HBO."

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Conclusion

This episode provides a raw and honest look into Judd Apatow's personal struggles and his approach to creativity amidst anxiety. Apatow's reflections offer valuable insights into the human psyche, the therapeutic role of comedy, and the ongoing journey toward self-understanding and artistic expression. Listeners gain a deeper appreciation of the complexities behind Apatow's acclaimed work and his commitment to using humor as a tool for connection and healing.

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Recommended Resources Mentioned by Judd Apatow:

• "The Untethered Soul" by Michael Singer
• "When Things Fall Apart, Start Where You Are" by Pema Chödrön
• Richard Schwartz's books on Internal Family Systems
• James Finley’s "The Healing Path"
• "Transforming Problems into Happiness"

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Upcoming Apatow Events:

• New York Comedy Festival: November 9th at the Beacon Theater
• Los Angeles Shows: November 11th at Largo with guests Beck, Zooey Deschanel, and Robbie Hoffman
• Atlanta Show: November 3rd at the Variety Playhouse

Be sure to catch Judd Apatow’s live performances and stay tuned for his Mel Brooks documentary on HBO.

Transcript

[Dan Harris]

Wondery subscribers can listen to 10% Happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey everybody, how we doing? I had no idea about this. No idea. I've been a fan of Judd Apatow's work for years. The 40 year old virgin Knocked Up Train Wreck Judd Apatow has been a reliable source of hilarity in my life for a long, long time. I'm sure that's true for you as well, but I had no idea that he was a self described pop psychology and self help junkie who had personally struggled with panic attacks. My ignorance evaporated when I noticed that Judd had commented on one of my Instagram posts about my own struggles with panic. So I reached out to and now today he's on this show, which is very cool if you are unfamiliar with him. Judd is a extremely prolific dude. In addition to writing and directing movies like this is 40, knocked up and Funny People, he's been a producer on movies like Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Superbad. He also does his own standup, including a Netflix comedy special. Speaking of television, he's also been involved in seminal TV shows such as Freaks and Geeks and Girls. He's made documentaries for HBO on legendary comedians such as George Carlin and Gary Shand, who will come up a lot in today's conversation. And there's more. He's written several books including Sick in the Head and then the follow up Sicker in the Head. And then one more thing to say about Judd's standup career. He's actually doing a couple of shows soon. One in New York City at the beacon Theater on November 9th and another in Atlanta on November 3rd. Anyway, like I said, prolific dude. And today we have a wide ranging discussion. We talk about the role of his parents bitter divorce in his life and in his work, the balance between creativity and ambition, why so many comedians are so narrative erotic, his creative process, including some gems that he's picked up from another TV writer, David Milch. Some of those expressions really stuck with me. His relationship to panic and a hilarious story about freaking out on weed. The way he has recently started to understand the different voices in his head, his recent experiment with ayahuasca and what he learned and the role of comedy in a world that often feels like it's on fire. Judd Apatow Coming up. This podcast is brought to you by Huggy's Little Movers. Our son is nine it's been a minute since we've been in the diapers stage of life, but I have many, many fond memories of having a little critter around the house. You know the poop part of it. I could take or leave, but that's a non negotiable fact of life. And given that it's a non negotiable fact of life, Huggies are a darn good option. Huggies know that babies come in all shapes and sizes and so do their tushies. Huggies has more curves and outstanding active fit. No matter the size of your baby. Said baby will feel comfy in Huggies. Little movers curve to fit all of your curves with 12 hour protection against leaks. Get your baby into the best fitting diaper. Huggies Little movers wet fit among branded open diapers the show is sponsored by BetterHelp. I'd like to take a quick moment to say thank you to you, the listeners of this show. We could not do this work without you. I'm incredibly grateful every single day for the fact that you show up and listen to this show. So again, thank you. I say all this because November is all about gratitude. And along with the listeners of this show who I just shouted out, there's another person who I think we should all be thanking ourselves. I recently saw a clip on TikTok of Snoop aka Snoop Dogg when he got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he got up and thanked himself for working so hard. And it's hilarious and also quite wise. Obviously we don't want to get into overconfidence or cockiness or self centeredness. But actually I think it's quite healthy to give yourself a pat on the back. So in this month of November, let's send some thanks to the people in your life, including maybe your therapist who are there when you need them. But also, don't leave yourself out of the picture. If you're thinking about starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. I know my therapist is excellent at reminding me to be grateful for the things or for the people I may be overlooking in my life. BetterHelp is entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Let the gratitude flow with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com happier today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L p dot com happier listening on audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you Listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Find the genres you love and discover new ones along the way. Explore bestsellers, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts and originals that members can listen to all they want with more added all the time. Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as part of your daily routine without needing to set aside extra time. There's more to imagine when you listen I've been checking out recently are the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I'm a little embarrassed that I haven't gotten to this one until now, but I've been checking it out. Amazing. Another hole in my cultural literacy. Lonesome Dove, which won a culture like many decades ago. As an Audible member, you could choose one title a month to keep from the entire catalog, including the latest best sellers and new releases. New members can try audible free for 30 days, visit audible.com 10% or text 10% to 500500 that's audible.com 10% or text10% to 500500 to try audible free for 30 days audible.com 10% Judd Apatow, welcome to the show.

[Judd Apatow]

It's great to be here.

[Dan Harris]

I'm so happy you're here. I'm a longtime fan but didn't know too much about your backstory until I started preparing for this interview. And I saw this quote where you described yourself as both a therapy and pop psychology junkie who's read and I'm assuming this is you taking creative license here. 10,000 self help books. So I guess my opening question is what is driving all of that?

[Judd Apatow]

That gets right to the meat of it all. I know because it is a form of self help hoarding and it's so funny. What is driving all that? I remember when I was a kid, my parents who soon after got divorced went to couples counseling once and my dad always said that the therapist was too hard on my mom. Like he just went after her a little bit and then she refused to ever go again.

[Dan Harris]

Huh.

[Judd Apatow]

And but one of the things that led to whatever the dynamics were that eventually led to their divorce was my dad started reading your Erroneous Zones by Wayne Dyer and when my dad read that book, he realized he was unhappy and it led to, I think, my mom not being up for looking into her mind and her heart and trying to, you know, figure out who she was. My mom was very resistant to all of that. Later in life. I convinced her to see my therapist once and when she left. She said, he told me I was right about everything. So there must be something deep in me that feels like I need to know this stuff for one reason or another. It may be because of its failure to save my parents at one point.

[Dan Harris]

Well, but I could see you playing it the other way, which is that it failed to save your parents, so you're going to want to stay a million miles away from it.

[Judd Apatow]

Well, only one of them read the book. So maybe that's, maybe that's it that you have to read the book. Maybe it's my dream that my mom would have read and had a different conversation. Although I'll tell you another book story which is, you know, my parents had a very unpleasant divorce and my mom moved out and I lived with my dad. And one day I saw this book in the house and it was on a coffee table and it said, growing up Divorced. And I like read some of it and it was explaining the dynamics between a couple when they're going through a divorce. And it was kind of helpful. I probably read eight pages of it. And a couple years ago I said to my dad, you know, you never asked me how I was doing during that divorce, which went on for, you know, a decade. And he said, well, I left that book out for you. And I what? I left that book out for you growing up divorced. And I'm like, but you never asked me if I read it. There was no follow up where you talked to me about it. You didn't even know I read it. He's like, well, you took it off the coffee table. It's like, that is how much mental health support I got as a kid. So I think on some level that's why I'm always catching up, trying to read things I think I should know.

[Dan Harris]

So I'm going to stipulate that your parents are good people. And I'm hearing that your mom has a pathological need to be right and your father's a terrible communicator. Would that be a fair summary?

[Judd Apatow]

Well, I mean, you know, my mom is no longer with us, so we can speak freely there. I think it was also a completely different generation and it was maybe the first generation that was getting self help books. You know, pop psychology was just becoming popular in the 70s. And so that means when they were raised, they got 0 of it and their parents knew nothing about it. And I think it was just a different, probably much more brutal era of parenting. And so they were flying blind, I would assume, and didn't know how to communicate about it. I think my mom wanted to always tell me everything and make me suffer with her every aspect of it. And my dad went the other way, which is to never ever talk about it, and thought that that was being kind to me. And, you know, there was no middle ground and there was no, we're going to take you to a therapist or have you talk to a counselor. That just didn't happen at all. And they weren't religious and not in a way where they talked badly about it. They just never mentioned spirituality ever. So I was Jewish, I wasn't bar mitzvahed. Nobody was in my family, my brother and my sister. And so there was this giant hole of spirituality that only began to get filled later on in life when I met Gary Shandling, who was very interested in Buddhism and Eastern thought. And that's when I started getting interested in all of that.

[Dan Harris]

What form does it take now, your interest in all of this stuff other than hoarding books? How does this play out in your life now?

[Judd Apatow]

How does it play out? Well, I learned TM a long time ago, so I do that way less than you're supposed to, but I do do it. And I've read about other forms of meditation, loving kindness meditation. I'm always reading Buddhist books and also just looking for some sort of self help that makes me feel better. You know, lately I've been reading a lot of Richard Schwartz internal family systems books, which I think is the thing that's been most helpful, which for people who don't know it, is the idea that you have all these voices and characters in your head and they also have these protectors for all these exiled parts of your personality. And that you, instead of talking to just your inner child, you're basically saying your inner child has 20 people and they all are trying to help you in different ways that usually hold you back. So whenever I explain it to people, I say, you know, let's say you're shy and you go into a party. There's a part of you that says just go home. And it thinks it's protecting you by having you leave the party. And you learn how to talk to it and try to understand why that's the philosophy and to remind it that there's probably a better way. And you could look at all the ways that you use defense mechanisms in your life and try to un knot them so that you can be more authentic.

[Dan Harris]

That Dick Schwartz IFS stuff has been huge for me too, like just learning how to like identify the characters who grab the steering wheel Most frequently, and then have a relationship with them that is sane rather than reflexive, if that makes sense.

[Judd Apatow]

Absolutely. And the one that I noticed was, my most prominent is a character or a voice or a protector, whatever term he uses, which is always saying, what are you supposed to be doing right now so everything doesn't fall apart.

[Dan Harris]

Yes.

[Judd Apatow]

And I noticed that that voice is on a three minimum, 24 hours a day, even while I'm sleeping. And that is the voice that is most destructive to me, that keeps me out of the moment, because I really fear that if I'm not in the future, something really bad can happen. And it's been very helpful to understand that in a different way. I always knew it a little bit. I always knew, oh, I'm hypervigilant, and I'm trying to make sure that my life is solid, But I think I understand it in a deeper way. And just this idea that it's literally like a character that's going, like, what now? What now what what? What should you be doing? You know, what. What's gonna make everything work? What's gonna keep everything from falling apart? That. That is the voice of anxiety. And if I can calm that voice down, I feel way better.

[Dan Harris]

What do you do to calm it down?

[Judd Apatow]

Well, just noticing it gets me to a much better place. You know, Richard Schwartz calls it just the self, like the real you. In Buddhism, I guess it would be just awareness. And if you're in awareness, you're not doing that. And so just noticing it actually makes it shrink. If I remind myself this is an inappropriate voice, I think for most of my life, I thought, this is an appropriate voice. I'm working. Everything's going well. I can pay my rent. So it must be the voice that is required. It took me a long time to realize that it's basically a very destructive voice that keeps me from being happy and being present for everybody in my life, especially me.

[Dan Harris]

I mean, I got an email today from an executive coach who was saying that just this is the thing he hears the most, that if I. If I relinquish my anxiety, I will perish professionally.

[Judd Apatow]

Yes. And it's actually just the complete opposite, that the voice that's saying, what do we need to be doing? Takes up all your bandwidth. And for me, as a creative person, when that voice is going, I'm not creative, and it is impossible for me to write jokes, to write movies, to think of characters or stories, if that's the main engine that's going. And, you know, a lot of the work that we do in comedy is with a co writer. You might be working with a room of people on a TV show, and you can get pulled out of that voice just because you're part of this large conversation and you all start laughing and sharing ideas and it inherently shuts that voice up. But if you want to write a script alone in a room, it's just you and the computer. You have to learn how to shut that off. Because you literally can't come up with anything creative while that voice is talking to you.

[Dan Harris]

I mean, it makes sense from what little I know about the brain, that if the anxiety or fear parts of the brain are firing, the stuff like kind of in the rear of your head, the reptile brain. That's the oldest parts of the brain. If they're firing the prefrontal cortex where our reason and creativity and ideation all happens, they don't work at the same time. So, yeah, if you're stuck in that, I think sometimes helpful voice of hey, what's coming up? What do we need to get prepared for? When you walk over the line between, you know, a reasonable amount of vigilance and hyper vigilance, it's the death of creativity.

[Judd Apatow]

Yeah. You can't do it at all. The other thing I was, I've been very interested is in is all of those Steve Kotler books about flow.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Judd Apatow]

And flow states and how to get into flow states and be creative and 100% focused on your creative task. And I feel like that connects with the same idea because everything about getting into a flow state is about not being in a hyper vigilant mode. It's about like being open. Because so much of creativity is honestly just taking a walk, trying not to think. And something will pop into your head.

[Dan Harris]

Yes.

[Judd Apatow]

Or it's about thinking about something and batting it around from a bunch of different angles, staying very loose and open and waiting for some bizarre inspiration to just hit you. And it's so mysterious that you're creating. You're creating this space for this mysterious act to occur. Right. It's the Bob Dylan sitting in a typewriter and the phrase blown in the wind comes into his head. Where did it come from? And it could only come to him if he is in that space. David Milch always used to quote somebody, or maybe he was quoting himself and he would say, like, inspiration comes to prepared spirits and you just learn how to be available.

[Dan Harris]

I think it might have been Picasso, but it was probably somebody else who said, the muse will visit, but it has to find you working.

[Judd Apatow]

Yes, yes.

[Dan Harris]

You have to do the work. And if you're just goofing off all the time, you're unlikely to get visits from the muse. But if you're working all the time, you're also unlikely to get visits from the muse. So it's like I never feel flow, or a rarely felt flow standing at my computer. I do the annoying shit at my computer. I move. I edit sentences and move paragraphs around. But it's always when I'm taking a walk or I'm having a conversation with somebody else that the good shit comes.

[Judd Apatow]

Yeah, it's. I mean, it's a magic trip, I think, you know. David Milch, who created Deadwood and co created NYPD Blue with Stephen Bochko, you know, has always been one of my mentors. And he used to always say, you can't think your way into writing, but you can write your way into thinking. He always believed that you should try to write at the same time every day, if you can, because at some point when your butt hits the chair, your brain is conditions to know, oh, this is the time where we're creative. It's like lighting incense before you meditate. You just know, oh, this is the time I'm going to meditate. Or. Or be calm. And that if you just start writing, even if it's nonsense, at some point the creativity will kick in. Here's something that you should do, an exercise where for two weeks, you write for 20 minutes and then throw it in the garbage for two weeks. Anything you, you write, it could be journaling, it could be just anything. But if you just tried to be creative for 20 minutes every day for two weeks and then toss it in the garbage, you would learn what that state was and you would condition your mind to get to that state.

[Dan Harris]

Just to go back to the primary part, to use ifs terminology, in internal family systems, they talk about the various, you know, dramatis personae in our minds as parts. For you, the primary part, or the one that's most salient for you, is anxiety. What do you like now these days? What are you worried? You've had so much success, I think the cheap conclusion to draw from somebody who's not you would be, well, what the hell does this dude have to worry about? I know you've got a show. You do stand up and you've got a show coming up on November 9th at the Beacon Theater in New York City. And you mentioned before we started rolling that you've got some anxiety about whether anybody's going to show up.

[Judd Apatow]

Exactly. There's always things to worry about. I mean, there's death. Just because you're working doesn't mean you don't have all of the stuff that everybody else has to deal with. So for me, it's always, you have the stuff that you have been working on since you were young, your original trauma, all the ways you've adjusted your life to be able to deal with it. And I think there's something about like working or workaholism or this idea that if you can get everything functioning in that part of your life, that everything will be okay. It's so wrong that when you do well, most people have a crash because they're like, oh my God, that didn't work at all. Jim Carrey always talks about that. I mean, that's when you fall apart, is, oh, a couple of your projects go well, and then you think, oh, I feel exactly the same and same and maybe worse because I lost that hope that it would make me feel better. And on some level, obviously a lot of it feels good and being appreciated feels good. Being able to pay for your life feels good. But just the core stuff, which is your insecurity and your self esteem, when you realize, oh, it doesn't actually solve it at all, then you're forced to really figure out how to deal with it.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, well, I've not had that experience. I've had some success, but not the level that you and Jim have realized. But I can imagine that being incredibly frustrating and in a kind of especially embarrassing and lonely way because there are so few people who get that successful. And then for everybody else to think, yeah, you're in the catbird seat for the rest of your life. And for you to know actually that, no, that's not true, that feels like it could be pretty problematic.

[Judd Apatow]

Well, everything that bothers you is the stuff that probably bothered you in high school. It's the same stuff, right? You know, when I was a kid, my mom moved out. When my parents got divorced, no one's mom moved out. Your dad always moved out. And so on some level, you have a really primal trauma of why didn't she leave? You know, what, what was that about? Why was I not worth staying for? And then maybe 40 years later, you have the conversation with your mom and you finally work up the courage to go, how come you left? No one's mom left. And she said to me, I really thought I was going to come back in like a month. Like, she just thought that they would work it out in a month. And it's Such a simple response to something that haunts you your entire life. And as a kid, you don't think you're allowed to ask those types of questions. You don't really dig into what your parents relationship was like and who was unhappy and why and why it was hard or impossible to repair. And so you're left with this feeling that you don't even understand because you've just internalized it. There must be something wrong with me. I must be unlovable if she left or if she's in so much pain because of her life or her divorce or where she's at that somehow I'm responsible for it. Because you're like a little kid and you're thinking like a little kid and it wires you. You realize, oh, this is my. My brain, my pathways are built around these wrong assumptions about a lot of really important things. And I've been in therapy since I was in my early 20s, really digging at this stuff. And I've done okay. But lately I feel like I've taken a slightly larger leap into healing it. But it's 30 years of trying to rewire it and doing it wrong. Doing it with the wrong therapist or the wrong theory or not listening to their advice. You know, a lot of times I'll read journals from 20 years ago and go, wow, I really got the right advice and listened to none of this. Like, they told me exactly what to do and I just didn't do it or I didn't understand it enough to do it.

[Dan Harris]

I sometimes think about, and this comes up on the show a lot. Like we just have this cavalcade of wise people marching through this podcast feed. And there's no way anybody, let alone me, can do all of the shit that people are advising you to do. But this is a kind of cliched, hackneyed analogy. But it is like planting seeds. Yeah, you may have heard the advice 20 years ago, but it's in there and it may actually bear fruit, but just not on your schedule.

[Judd Apatow]

Yeah, I know. I was thinking recently, I feel like I'm just beginning to get a lot of stuff and it's all beginning to bloom a little bit and I'll feel fully healed like three days before I drop dead. Like, I almost can feel the arc of how long this will take. It will be so close to my death. And maybe that's just how it is for most people.

[Dan Harris]

Is fully healed really a possibility?

[Judd Apatow]

I mean, yeah, I guess it's not. It really is. More. Do you have the tools on a day to day Basis to see the truth, to return to your authentic self. A bunch of times, you know, lately I've been enjoying when something really bad happens, trying to figure out the ways that I'm usually triggered or get upset or get angry. How quickly can I do the thing I know I'm supposed to do? And can I reduce the half life of how long it takes for me to feel calm and happy? Can I laugh it off? Because I remember during COVID when we all were sitting around bored and thinking, you know, about ourselves more than we were when we were busy working. Right before COVID one thing I wrote down in a journal was, you're in comedy, but you need to lighten up. You're taking everything way too seriously. You do need to just lighten up. And even that if I just think of that in the moment, wow, you're really taking this seriously. And you shouldn't. And I always think about how Ram Dass said, any Buddhist thought, there's a party that looks at life as like a dream and it's silly and it's not important, it's meaningless. And then also you have to live your life and you should do your best to do well with it and you should take it seriously. And so you're trying to do both things at the same time. And that's tricky to do, to both care and have a part of you that doesn't care simultaneously.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, I mean, I think, to put it in an even more Buddhist way, there's this idea that nothing has any inherent substance. So the term of art for that is emptiness. You know that if you closely investigate anything, the chair you're sitting on, your sense of self, whatever it is, if you bring a high powered microscope to it, either in actuality with your chair, or in a contemplative sense through meditation, vis a vis your sense of self, your emotions, your thoughts, you'll see that it's actually just a flow of phenomena or spinning subatomic particles spinning through mostly empty space. So there is no inherent substance to things. It is a dream or an illusion on some fundamental level. And you are real on the level of consensual reality. And you do need to put your pants on and make dentist appointments. Definitely the latter. So toggling back and forth, the two views can inform one another and it's a paradox, but it's a useful one.

[Judd Apatow]

Yeah. And it's work to remind yourself every day. I always have a little thing in my phone of notes of like, if I could just think about these six things, I can Stay grounded like the toggling or like just return to your breath. You know, a lot of people have been talking a lot about how if you breathe out twice as long as you breathe in, your body just is like a lizard brain and it'll just relax because it you can trick it into thinking you are relaxed just by changing your breathing pattern. And that's one of those things that you hear about. But if you really do it, it completely works and it is actually life changing. It'll help you go to sleep at night. I was saying to someone the other day, no matter how bad anything gets, if you could go in a room for five minutes and just breathe in, four, breathe out, eight, you would return to yourself way faster. And so I always have a bunch of those that I try to look at a few times during the day to not spin out.

[Dan Harris]

The fact that we forget this stuff so easily and that it's so hard to remember and put it to use is a full employment act for me because it's just, that's the job. The easy part in some ways is accessing and comprehending the wisdom, for lack of a less grandiose term. The hard part is doing it. So I mean, we have to come up with our own ways. Your list on your phone is a great one. Coming up, Judd talks about his recent experience with ayahuasca, what he got out of it and why he wouldn't necessarily recommend it. One of the cool things about fall is we get to do a little shopping, a little retail therapy. I recently went to quint.com got myself a Mongolian cashmere sweater and a new set of socks. Quint is great. One of the amazing things about having them as a sponsor is that I get lots of great clothes. You've heard me rhapsodize about my Quint sweatpants. I also have T shirts and now this new sweater. I love it. Quint offers affordable, high quality essentials for any wardrobe. That includes seasonal must haves like the aforementioned Mongolian cashmere sweaters from 60 bucks and comfortable pants for any occasion, Quint only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices along with premium fabrics and finishes. And they partner with them directly, cutting out the cost of the middleman and passing the savings on to you. That means Quint's Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. So you can update your look without breaking the bank. Upgrade your wardrobe with pieces made to last with quince. Go to quince.com happier for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns that's Q U I N C E dot com happier to get free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com happier My son, who's 9, loves Pokemon. Loves it. If you want to win that dude over, get him some Pokemon cards. In fact, some friends of mine have done that in the past and he still remembers it. My son does. He still remembers when people give him that gift. So imagine my surprise and delight when I received in the mail a huge box filled with Pokemon trading cards, which I then of course gave to my son. It was one of those rare moments where he thought I was cool. Why did I receive said box? Because they're sponsoring the show. Specifically, the Pokemon Trading Card Game is what I want to tell you about. It's a gift sure to delight gamers, collectors and Pokemon fans. Each Pokemon set has dozens of new cards in different styles by different artists, ranging from cute to stunning. You can learn to play in minutes. Enjoy the TCG and new cards for years to come. Find gift ideas for all ages and at every price [e-mail] holiday before we get started, as everybody knows, we're in the midst of an anxiety provoking election week here in the US One of my favorite slogans is Never worry Alone. So we're going to put that into action this week with live guided meditations every day. I will be going live each day at 11 Eastern. That's 11am Eastern and 8am Pacific. I'll do a 10 minute guided meditation and then I'll take questions. This is open to all subscribers, free or paid, but you do need to download the Substack app. So head over to danharris.com to find out how to do that. And if you can't make it live, you can watch the [e-mail] the Happier Meditation app just launched a new course called Unlearn to Meditate. This course takes you deeper into the why behind mindfulness. It's a chance to start fresh and challenge what you think you know about meditation. The teachers involved are Devin Haza, Pascal Eau Claire and Matthew Hepburn. Download the Happier Meditation app today to explore Unlearn to Meditate and rediscover your practice. Let me go back to something you said a few minutes ago, which is that you feel like you've been chopping away at your stuff for a long time and recently you kind of feel like you've made some leaps. What do you think? What are the variables there?

[Judd Apatow]

Like what?

[Dan Harris]

What has allowed you to make the Leaps and what does that even look like?

[Judd Apatow]

Well, I did ayahuasca earlier this year, and I had a profound experience on it. I certainly don't recommend it to people because it's crazy. I mean, it's just something that I can't, you know, speak for its safety or how anyone will react to it. I just knew some people that had positive experiences and knew someone that they trusted to do it with. And I just thought, there's too many things I'm stuck on for too long. It's been a really long time not being able to crack certain things that I actually understand, but it's not getting into my mind or my body. The adjustment isn't happening. So I did ayahuasca, and for me, a lot of it is the fear of letting go, the fear of surrender. That's a hard part. And not really growing up around any spiritual ideas. You know, existential dread is always a big thing. So to open myself up to something completely different and try to trust the universe and let go, just the idea of doing it is a. Is a game changer for me because I used to have really bad panic attacks. So, you know, when you talked about that, like, I. I relate because I had so many stories of full meltdown around other people. One of the first panic attacks I had was I went to see the premiere of Batman Forever. That's how long ago this was. And I'm there as a guest, a guest of Jim Carrey. And I'm going to take a limo with Gary Shanley. I haven't eaten all day, and all I ate was a little popcorn. And then Gary Shandling lit a joint. And I never smoked pot, like, very, very little. And I never really liked it. I just wouldn't. I wouldn't get the experience that other people got out of it. And I start feeling a panic attack, but I don't know what a panic attack is. That's the scariest part. So my heart is racing, and I'm getting claustrophobic, and I think it's the pot, right? And so now it's time to sit down at Batman Forever. And we're walking through the lobby, and Gary says hello to Rosie O'Donnell. I always remember this moment because me and Gary are talking to Rosie O'Donnell. We're both stoned, and I'm having a panic attack. And Jerry says to her, I just saw your new special, and it was incredible because I think at the time, she had, like, a really great. Our standup special. And then I looked at her and I just went, I didn't see again. That's why we sit down and we're in this aisle and this is back, you know. You know, in the 90s when some of these premieres were high powered. Like people don't see the go to premieres anymore, but they used to go. And so I'm in Jim's aisle. I'm sitting next to Renee Harlan and Gina Davis and Bob Iger is in front of me and Tom Cruise is in front of me. It's so star studded. It is a joke. And in my head I'm like, I don't feel right. Something feels really wrong in my head. I'm stoned and I think it's the pot. And so I go, it'll be fine once the meeting starts. And then the movie starts. It's the loudest movie in the history of movies. And the credits are like, they fly forward, like into your face. Each credit Jim Carrey, Val, camera. And that gives me a bigger panic attack. So in my head I go, I have to leave. I have to leave. The movie just started 30 seconds ago. And so I turn to Gary and I go, I don't feel good. I'm going to step out for a minute. And I stand up and I'm trying to walk past Jim Carrey. It's his premiere, right? And as I try to slip by him unnoticed, he screams, but joking, but screams, sit down, you're ruining the memory. And then I go to the the balcony and I stand against the back wall, as far away as you can be from the screen and watch the movie from there. It never came back. And had a series of experiences like that that culminated in me having a panic attack on a plane and just going into full meltdown for hours. On a plane. Back then you could use a phone on a plane. I called my manager and talked to him for two hours. Like, I can't handle this. I can't handle this. I still don't know. It's a panic attack. I just, I think I'm losing my mind. And we land in Chicago and then I'm supposed to take another plane, right? So it's a layover and I'm so scared to get back on the plane. And so I fall asleep in like the little area in the terminal. And then they're saying, okay, you have to get on, you have to get on. And I walk over to the stewardess seeking empathy and I just say to her, before I get on, I had a really hard flight last time. I'm really Scared. And she goes on or off, And I just went off. And I got in a cab, had a panic attack the entire time in the cab. Went to a hotel and got under the blankets and then called my therapist. And then he explained what it was.

[Dan Harris]

Oh.

[Judd Apatow]

And then I realized, oh, okay. And he said, you can't push it away. If you push it away, it's like breaking a mirror. You kind of almost have to accept it and not resist it. And he just, you know, talked me through how you deal with it. But I had to have my friend fly to Chicago, and I saw him at the airport, and the second I saw him, it went away. And then I flew home, but he had to literally fly me home. And then I learned what panic attacks were and how to deal with them, and I was able to manage it. And eventually they stopped happening like that. But that was a tough lesson to, like, feel it. Like, no, don't try not to feel it. Like, actually really try to feel the panic attack. And that makes it disappear. But I didn't know that. I just thought, I'm having a nervous breakdown in the mall in Chicago. How I knew I was having a bad panic attack was I went to McDonald's, and I would always get two Quarter Pounders and a cheeseburger because I was 25 years old and I only ate one of the three hamburgers. And that's when I knew I was in trouble, because I never finished my McDonald's before my entire life.

[Dan Harris]

So you don't get them anymore. You really. They've gone away completely.

[Judd Apatow]

They basically sometimes, like, it raises its ugly head, and I'm much more able to look at it and feel it. That being said, I have tried to sit on the aisle seat in all plays and musicals since the 90s. I don't like being trapped because one of my biggest fears is be like, say you're in the fifth row of Death of a Salesman. When you're at the center and in the middle of the big speech, you have to get up and walk out. Like, the Jim Carrey premiere. Like, that's something that freaks me out, the idea of causing a scene. But I haven't had it really bust into full panic attack. Sometimes I feel it, like, the vibration of it, and I can breathe it off.

[Dan Harris]

I wish I could say the same for myself. I mean, for me, the panic attacks are still, as, you know, pretty real.

[Judd Apatow]

Yeah.

[Dan Harris]

And it's just what you said, the word you said before. Trapped. If I feel trapped, especially if there's a social component, meaning that Other people will see me freak out. That's the recipe. And I, notwithstanding all of my, you know, years of meditation and endless yammering about it, haven't really been able to. It's so strong for me that I haven't been able to, like, just let it wash over. Sometimes I can, but often it's. Yeah, it's, it's. It overpowers me.

[Judd Apatow]

Yeah, it's. It is so terrifying. And it's one of those things that it only goes away because you can tell someone. Like, I realized if I told my wife the second it started, like, I'm, I'm beginning to have a panic attack and if she just held my hand, it would just go away.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Judd Apatow]

And it was the shame or the stigma of it. That's why it's so great that you've talked about it so much. Because when it happened to me, no one had ever talked about it publicly in a way that reached me. And I wouldn't have even had those panic attacks if you had talked about a death. You were the only resource for me. And I find that that's the case with a lot of these subjects. I've produced a few things about depression. I produced Gary Goldman's standup special about depression, which is really, really funny. And there was a show that Chris Gether did for HBO called Career Suicide, which was about his mental health struggles. And each time we did those projects after they aired, we would get tens of thousands of messages saying, thank God you're talking about it. This got me through the night and this gave me hope. And that's what both Gary and Chris talked about was that they never had anything like those projects, which are both online now. And it really helps people because it is the lack of knowledge that is the thing that messes you up the most. But I feel like in terms of the panic, the thing about doing ayahuasca is it is the setup for the biggest panic attack of your life. Because you have to just accept whatever ride is about to happen. And beforehand someone said to me, no matter how bad it gets, it kind of tends to pass in like 90 seconds. So if you're having a bad freak out moment, it's not like you're going to have that for an hour. It's literally like 90 seconds. So if you could just observe it almost with a sense of humor, like, what am I supposed to learn from this message that my mind is sending me right now? Even if it's freaky, even if it's scary, something's trying to teach me something from it. So when those moments would happen in my head, I kept thinking about this thing that Michael Singer, who wrote the Untethered Soul, he was giving a talk, and he was saying something about, are you in there? A way to reach yourself, your true authentic self, is to go, are you in there? I may be misquoting him. During the Ayahuasca trip, if I was really freaking out, I'd have a little voice in my head and I would go, are you in there, Judd? Are you in there? And then I would go, yep. And then that would be me. And then that part of me could just observe what was going on, whatever it was, the trip. And then another thing that would happen is I would imagine Ram Dass in my mind, smiling, kind of laughing at what I was going through. And he would just say to me, this is crazy, right? You're really going through it. And he's kind of laughing, like, isn't this wild that this is happening? And that would calm me down, like, locating myself and this sense of. Of humor about this journey I was on and that there was something to learn from it. And just. Even if it's terrifying, be like, oh, I'm supposed to learn something from whatever this message is, this visual message or whatever story is being told to me while I'm tripping balls.

[Dan Harris]

1. One observation, then a question. The observation is that it's a recurring theme in this conversation is that when you're freaking out, whether you're tripping balls or not, just the presence of another person, or to put it in psychological terms, an empathic witness is a massive calming agent. And, you know, it just goes back to this thing that I always. It's not my expression, but I heard it from Dr. Robert Waldinger, which is like, never worry alone. It's just. It is incredibly good advice. And I had this experience a couple weeks ago where I was on an elevator. I don't like getting on elevators, but I really try to make a practice of it. And I was with Joseph Goldstein, who's a great meditation teacher, an old friend of Ram Dass, who you keep referencing. Ram Dass is a sort of like a old, old school. He's no longer with us, but old, old school meditation teacher who wrote the book Be Here Now. And anyway, so I'm with Joseph, and he knows I'm uncomfortable, and he just puts his hand on my head during the elevator ride. And. And he was kind of laughing while. He was definitely laughing while he did it. And. And. And that is enough. You know, it's like, that's enough. And so my question for you is, on the ayahuasca thing, it sounds like it wasn't like you had some sort of insider epiphany or it wasn't so much the content of the experience as much as it was the willingness to let go and just deal with whatever comes up.

[Judd Apatow]

I thought was the most important part of it is the idea that the mystery of life I can open up to. There's a. There's a journey in not being terrified of it and open to the possibility that there's actually something supportive in it. And that is a new thought for me coming from just pure terror. Because I did have a therapist in my early 20s, and he was a somatic therapist. I was on a table a lot. There was a lot of breathing techniques, and I didn't understand it. And I remember I went to see him, and as I walked out in his office, he had all the books he had written. His name was Jack Rosenberg. And one of the books he wrote was called Total Orgasm. And so I walk out and I saw that he wrote a book called Total Orgasm. And I was recommended him by Gary Shandling. And I called Gary. I'm like, gary, you didn't tell me. You sent me to the Total Orgasm guy. And he's like, you don't have to talk about orgasms there, you know, But. But he was the one who said, the good stuff is in the darkness. Yeah, the good stuff, like the thing you don't want to go to if you go to it. That's where the good stuff is. But I think literally only in the last year have I begun to actually understand that and maybe even feel it a little bit.

[Dan Harris]

What role does all of this sort of angst and anxiety play in comedy? You said before that, like, it's. If you're in that anxious mode, it's hard to have the creativity to come up with the jokes. And yet it's a cliche that comedians are neurotic. So there's this idea that if you didn't have the neuroses, you wouldn't be able to do the comedy. So how do you square that, that circle?

[Judd Apatow]

I don't think you could think about it too much. Most comedy dies on the operating table. I mean, most of us in comedy have had enough happen to us to give us a big bowl to draw from. We have all of our anxieties and traumas. And there are people who are smart, who are hilarious because they're smart, but even they're usually Kind of weird, right? So it's not really about, if you heal yourself, you won't be funny. I think there probably is an aspect of, you know, if you feel yourself, maybe you might slow down a little bit. You might not feel the need to do so much or accomplish so much. But I do think as you understand your mind more and you have a sense of your own spirituality and your own ability to look at other people's journeys and their stories, that you can create better art because you've paid attention to yourself, to others, and hopefully your stuff gets deeper and you do better work. That's, you know, that's the dream, is that you. You have a little more complexity in your thinking, and then what you're saying touches people even more deeply. But it's hard to know. I, you know, I once talked to Ron Howard about creativity and his work because he just puts out so many amazing movies, but they're all very different. And I asked him how he looked at his career, and he said, I look at it like my career is like a art gallery, and on the wall is the poster of each movie. And I'm just putting up pieces on the wall. Like, no, one thing is the thing. I'm just, here's a thing I made, here's another thing I made. And at some point, I'll walk around that room and look at all the things I did. And I think that's how you have to perceive it so that you don't feel the pressure. You're just trying to be open to your next inspiration or the next thing that makes you passionate about thinking about it and creating it. Because all of the work takes years. Sometimes you have to be obsessed on a thought a really long time to make a movie or to do a TV show. So you have to find something that will make you excited for years.

[Dan Harris]

To what extent is any anxiety that remains with you these days connected to your career? I mean, we mentioned this fear that nobody's going to show up to your show. So I can relate to that because I've had those exact same fears. But whenever I've done public events, I've.

[Judd Apatow]

Had it happen where no one was there.

[Dan Harris]

You've had it happen like I did.

[Judd Apatow]

The first time I put out a book. I didn't understand about marketing it, and I wasn't on any social media. It was just at the beginning of some of the social media stuff, like Twitter. And I took my daughter with me to my signing, and I swear there was 13 people there, and my daughter, who was maybe 10 at the time, was just so humiliated. And that's when I joined social media. I said, oh, I have to market all these things myself because I can't trust that they're going to do it and there'll be people there. And that's why I got on it. Now, obviously we're all trying to get off of it now, but at the time I didn't have a way to reach anyone who might be interested in what I was doing.

[Dan Harris]

But that's less true for movies. I would assume there are big marketing budgets for movies as opposed to books.

[Judd Apatow]

Yes. Yes. Yeah, it was more about live appearances. You know, once I was asked to do this conversation with Cameron Crowe to promote one of my movies and he did it as a favor, but the studio didn't promote it. Right. And literally 30 people showed up in like 400 seat movie theater and we had this incredible conversation and I idolized Cameron Crowe and it was a dream night. And I couldn't believe they didn't, you know, whatever, send the flyer soon enough or post about it in the right place at the, at the right time. A movie is a different thing because it's, you know, it's a. It's. You're spending six months trying to figure out how to convince people it's worth leaving the house to go to the movie. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But it is like a massive military campaign to try to figure out how to activate people to get off the couch.

[Dan Harris]

The industry is in a to tell. I mean, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but the industry's in a tough spot right now. Fewer things are being made. It's not like a great time for comedies in the theater, which has been, you know, a huge area of success for you. So what is that, anxiety provoking or can you just roll with that?

[Judd Apatow]

No, it's. It's definitely anxiety provoking because as technology changes, as the culture changes, you have to make some sort of adjustment. There was a period where everybody went to the movies to see R rated comedies, then they would all buy them on dvd.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Judd Apatow]

And it was just very, very successful. And as streaming got more popular, people felt like, oh, maybe I can just watch these comedies at my house. The studios stopped making as many and got people out of the habit of leaving the house for comedies. I still think people want them desperately. That's why Barbie made a billion dollars and why Deadpool and Wolverine made a billion dollars. It's, you know, there's that hunger for getting a Huge laugh for the large group of people. I just think that the economics of how comedies are made, you know, whether or not they travel around the world, whether or not people will wait for them to be on tv, changes the approach to how to do it. But it's very anxiety inducing. I mean, I actually think that one of the things that affects it is that people are just watching comedy all long right on TikTok and Instagram. And people haven't really talked about this aspect so much. But usually you would want to go see a comedy on the weekend. Say you wanted to go see Wedding Crashers or something. You hadn't seen any comedy all week. Maybe you were watching something on tv. You're watching Home Improvement or Roseanne or something, but for the most part, you weren't satiated. But right now, you could sit on your phone and you can go, okay, I'm gonna watch someone cleaning a baby monkey in a sink. And then I'm gonna watch somebody fart in a hot tub. And then I'm gonna watch someone, like, fall off a roof into a pool. And you can literally watch 300 of the funniest 12 second things. And I do think at the end of the day you might think, well, I'd rather go see a horror movie. Right now. I'd rather watch Dateline because I have been laughing all day. So it's up to the people who make comedy films to just make better ones and make ones that are deeper, more emotional or wilder. It just hopefully will lead to more originality and taking chances. But we can't deny that there's something happening in the world that's affecting habits.

[Dan Harris]

You could go do Marvel movies.

[Judd Apatow]

Exactly. There's gotta be a character out there that I'm right for. I never get that call. No one wants me for Marvel. No one wants me for Lord of the Rings or Harry. I don't know why I'm on none of these lists. There are people like me who somehow make that transition. I may not have put my hat in the ring on the giant giant movies. I'll do that. Maybe that'll be the answer to everything.

[Dan Harris]

Let's go back to comedy. So I think what you were saying earlier is that you don't have to be neurotic to be funny. You can actually be on the path toward healing, whatever that means, and still be funny. But you might not be as crazy about the process. Am I restating that with some degree of accuracy?

[Judd Apatow]

Well, I think when you're young, you know, it's really how you define Crazy or neuroticism. I think for a lot of people when they're young, they have unreasonable amount of confidence to pursue things. I think we're genetically built to hunt and gather and get out there. So in the comedy world, you have a lot of really funny, sometimes strange people who have a belief in themselves that they can break through and reach a lot of people. And even that alone is kind of crazy. You know, when I lived with Adam Sandler and we were in our early 20s, Adam just really believes everything that has happened to him was going to happen to him. And even now, he says it made no sense. His parents were really cool and built in him a real belief that he would succeed. But when you look back now, we were just two idiots in an apartment with no real connection to anything. But we thought we could pull it off in a way that was totally irrational. And so is that neurotic. And then it's, what are we talking about? What do we find interesting? Some people are really unique. If you're Stephen Wright or Bob Colthwaite, there are people who are just really smart and insightful, whatever, like Seinfeld or Bill Maher. There's all sorts of different ways people do comedy. Not everybody is a neurotic mess. Or maybe everyone isn't more neurotic than people who don't do comedy, but they've just found a way to turn it into something artful. I've met people in and out of comedy. I don't look at it like the comedians seem much crazier than everybody else. They seem more entertaining. And I think that they enjoy when bad things happen. Because when you're in comedy and something terrible happens to you, you get kind of excited because you're like, oh, this is gonna be a great story. And so we have that going for us. And that's true for other art. I heard a country music star saying, yeah, when someone breaks up with me on some level, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get some songs out of this. So that certainly is a stress reliever, but it's just a way of looking at the world. When I was little, I loved the Marx Brothers because I liked that there were these people who were usually. They didn't have as much power as the bad guy. And I think it was the way I projected my hostilities about being, like a nerdy kid who was big class in gym class. I love the Marx Brothers humiliating the people in the tuxedos. It was class warfare. Or, you know, they were getting mistreated in some Way someone said, as long as you punch Harbo in the face in the beginning of a Marx Brothers movie, you will laugh at anything the Marx Brothers do to those people. And we think that in our movies all the time. You know, that sense I feel less than I feel mistreated and rising up or getting revenge is fun. And that sometimes is also the seed of comedy. I don't fit in. And so I'm seeing the world differently and sometimes compassionately I see all the levels of mistreatment. Like I feel bad and I'm compassionate to those people. It's like the 40 year old virgin, you know, he's just a guy and intimacy got past them and he's hiding in the stock room in a stereo store, afraid to connect with someone. He thinks he's going to be revealed as a freak, so he rather hide. And when you're interested in comedy, you relate to those types of people. You want them to win. You love John Candy and planes, trains and automobiles, those types of underdog people. And so sometimes it's from a neuroticism, but sometimes it's for like a love of people who are struggling and wanting to tell stories about how they overcome it.

[Dan Harris]

It's interesting because at the heart of your comedy there is this earnest thing you, I'm going to quote you back to you here. You've said in everything I write I have the same basic theme, which is we're all struggling, we're all trying to figure out how to be better. Which again, that's a pretty earnest note. In movies that can be hilariously and scathingly sarcastic at times.

[Judd Apatow]

Yeah, well, because I came to realize that every movie I'd made, I made was a coming of age movie. And then I thought, I think most stories are coming of age stories. Most stories are about someone taking some sort of a beating or being put in a corner and having to fight their way out of it. And usually in movies people learn something or they come together in some way and if they don't learn anything, that's a shocking aspect, right? No country for Old Men or something where it just ends and he's dead. And you know, that's the point of the movie, the Darkness of the World. So to me, I just think that when I go to the movies, I'm rooting for people. I like seeing people who need to learn lessons. And it's fun to show people make terrible mistakes, immature mistakes, mistakes of all kind. And here's the repercussions of those mistakes. And here's how that resulted in maybe they grew a little bit and maybe they can connect with someone more than they could. Maybe they could love better than they could before things really fell apart. Because when things fall apart, that's when we laugh the most. Like, yes, this is what life feels like. Everything is going wrong. And we all laugh at it because it's so familiar. But then we like to see the climb out and what can you make out of it?

[Dan Harris]

Coming up, Jud talks about how comedy can help when it feels like the world's on fire, and how he embraces criticism in his own creative process. This episode is brought to you by Hills Pet Nutrition. Every shelter pet deserves a second chance. And you are making it possible for thousands of them every day. Because when you feed your pet Hills, you help feed a shelter pet, which helps make them healthy, happy, and more adoptable. I am a huge, unrelenting, unreconstructed fan of adopting shelter pets. We've got three shelter cats marauding around our home. And actually my friend and former colleague Whit Johnson was here the other day. He's an anchorman at ABC News, but he's got a side hustle. It's not really a hustle. It's a volunteer gig on the side where he fosters puppies. And he brought a puppy here the other day to our house and we almost adopted that puppy, but pudding, that was the dog's name, went to somebody else. Anyway, I think it's really cool that Hills Pet Nutrition supports animal shelters by feeding shelter pets. Hills has Provided More than $300 million in pet food to more than a thousand shelter shelters. Over 14 million shelter pets fed and adopted science did that. Visit hillspet.com podcast to learn more. Whether you're scouring business financial sites or listening to economics podcasts till your ears ring, you will find there is no surefire secret to successfully managing your company's finances for the future. It turns out you might just need to pair with PNC Corporate and Institutional bank, whose team of dedicated relationship managers bring 160 years of experience, pragmatic advice and an array of tools and tech to scale to any size business. In fact, they're so tuned in to what you need they knew you would be listening to this podcast. And as for that ringing in your ears, that is the brilliant sound of success. PNC bank brilliantly boring. Since 1865, PNC and PNC bank are registered marks of the PNC Financial Services Group Incorporated. One of the themes that's come up in your books specifically, you know, sick in the Head and Sicker in the Head, the sequel. In both of these books, you're talking to comedians you just by for background for the audience. Judd has been obsessed with comedy since he was a little kid. And even when he was 15, was like lugging around the tape recorder, was like the proto podcaster interviewing these big comedians about, you know, what makes them tick. And so he's turned it into a couple of books. And one of the themes you explore in the book is like, in these books is like, what is comedy's function in a society? And is it okay to laugh when the world's on fire? So I'd be interested to hear you riff on those questions.

[Judd Apatow]

I think that the real issue is that everyone laughs at different things. There are people that need humor to be very dark and in your face and inappropriate. And it's a way of laughing at the horror of the world, is to laugh at the thing you shouldn't laugh at. It is like giving a finger to the madness of the whole thing. And to other people, that type of humor is just wrong and hurtful and unnecessary. You know, some people like a very delicate, gentle type of humor. Some people like things that are weird, Some people like political humor, some people don't want any politics. And so it really is like music. People like classical, they like country music, they like Norwegian death metal. I think the issue is that nowadays people get mad about the type of comedy that they don't want to listen to. And so because things come through in your feeds, you're being fed things that every once in a while you might see something that deeply offends you. But in the old days you wouldn't even see it.

[Dan Harris]

Right.

[Judd Apatow]

It's like in the 70s, you wouldn't buy Norwegian death metal and so you wouldn't even know what it was. But now, sooner or later, we do see a little bit of everything. And that's when our sensibilities clash about comedy. So for me, generally, I think people should be able to listen to what they want to listen to. And also people should be able to criticize. If you hear something that you think is offensive, I think it's fine to say that it is offensive. I don't think people shouldn't work because of a joke misfire. But I do think it's okay for someone to say that is truly an awful thing to say. You can't really stop that conversation. Comedians tend to be very thin skinned when it comes to criticism. Comedians love to tell everyone what they're doing wrong. They love to make fun of everyone in the most brutal ways, but you tell them one of their jokes is bad, they fall apart or they become enraged as if they're in a protected space. But just like a movie gets reviewed, I think comedy can get reviewed by a newspaper or just a person online. The key is I don't think anyone should lose their ability to perform because of it.

[Dan Harris]

How thin skinned are you about your work? Like in your creative process? Do you take notes? Are you getting feedback? Or are you maybe in a world where people don't want to say the hard thing to you because you're Jet Apatow?

[Judd Apatow]

No, I always embrace as much criticism as I can get. I try to do these screenings when I make a movie and I invite as many friends and other writers and directors and I really push them to tell me what they thought of it. And certainly there are a few people that have no hesitation to tell you what they didn't like about it. And you desperately need that. The issue is that sometimes they're wrong. Sometimes you invite someone and it's not how they would do it. And sometimes they tell you how they would do it and you realize, oh, if I listen to you, it would sound like the way you do things. So you have to be very careful because you can get influenced and lose touch with how you tell stories and what you find funny. And that's delicate. Some people really can't handle too much input because it throws them. I actually don't mind it. But most importantly, when you show a movie to 300 people and let's say you're re editing it and then you show it again and you re edit it based on what you learned from the audience. If after doing that four times you don't understand what is functioning and what is not, then you're in trouble.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Judd Apatow]

Because the audience, well, there's a joke. Did they laugh? If they didn't laugh, you failed.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Judd Apatow]

Can you fix it? Do you have another joke? Can you remove it without it causing a problem? Do they understand your story? Do they like your story? And so you keep fiddling as you keep showing people, and hopefully you get enough information where you land somewhere where you're very happy with how it it turned out. But it's a conversation between you and the audience. And then there have been friends, comedy writer friends, who have watched Cuts and said, here's the mistake. And they're just completely right. And it completely transforms what you're doing.

[Dan Harris]

I saw a clip on TikTok or somewhere with Bill Hader who actually has been on the show as well, and he was saying that you should listen to notes, but don't listen. You know, listen when somebody points out something's not working, but don't take their advice on how to fix it, because they're never right about that. They're just right about what the problem is.

[Judd Apatow]

I think when you show a project to a bunch of people, you'll hear recurring criticism, and that's how you know it's a real problem in terms of people having the fixed. Yeah. It is rare that somebody knows your story well enough to actually give you the fix. But I've certainly done table reads where somebody was there. And at the end of the table read, I asked them what do they think of this script that they've said, I think the problem is this. And they did fix it. Like, it has happened where someone. Now, it may not be the scene, but it might be the idea or the emotional idea. You know, we had a friend who saw Pineapple Express, and he said, it seems like the whole movie is about the fact that Seth Rogen doesn't know if he wants to be friends with his drug dealer and his drug dealer, James Franco wants to be his friend. And Seth thinks, no, you're just my drug dealer. And that's the thing we care about. And that was in the movie. But we didn't realize it was the whole movie. And as soon as we leaned into it based on his recommendation, the whole movie worked. So it does happen, but not as much as you wish. You wish your friends could just fix it for you all the time. That would be much easier.

[Dan Harris]

I put out my work. I have a little kitchen cabinet that I give out my stuff to. And it makes complete sense what you say. If there's a recurring theme, you know, there's something you should look at. Like, I gave. I've been working on a memoir for six years now, and I gave it up for notes, like, six months ago. And one of the recurring themes was, we don't like the main character, which is a problem.

[Judd Apatow]

I had a friend say something very similar to me recently about a project they were working on. You know, that's. That's. You know, that's the dance of it. Like, why am I following this person? How am I relating to this person? Do I. Do I feel like I like them? Am I sharing? Sharing common problems? So I have empathy for them. But why. So in your memoir, you are the least sympathetic character? Is that what you're saying?

[Dan Harris]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I'm the least sympathetic character. But I bet there's exactly the questions you were just asking, like, why am I following this guy? Why am I on this train with him? That was. I mean, that's an incredibly hard thing to hear, especially when the main character is you and the whole story is supposed to be a factual retelling. But it was a really good note. And I completely. I have no quibbles with it. I have to just go back and fix it.

[Judd Apatow]

Well, they want to know more, I think is usually what it is. Like, they don't know you well enough to be sympathetic enough to your struggles. There's something that is probably omitted that would get them to really feel you as much as they. As they need to. But it's funny, I remember I was listening to your podcast once and you took one of those tests about, like, how you treat your employees.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Judd Apatow]

And your tests, like, you realize that maybe you weren't as sympathetic to the people on your staff as you should be. And I remember just relating to it. Like, I thought, wow, that's so amazing that he's talking about that because it's so hard to have employees and to have all those relationships be healthy and comfortable and you're so stressed in your work that your best self doesn't always come out. And I thought it is so great that you had an honest conversation about office spaces and the tension in them and the communication dynamic. So I'm the opposite. Like, I would probably love your memoir exactly as it is because I don't relate to the way, you know when you are a perfectionist or if you're wound tight or you care so much, or you're neurotic in a way that makes you care so much that you could pop. Like, that's how I always felt, too. I would get hired to rewrite Friends scripts so they'd be about to shoot a movie in like two months. And they would bring me in to be the last writer to try to fix all the big problems before shooting started. And in my head, I would think, if this movie doesn't work, it's only my fault. And then I would have panic attacks because I put so much pressure on myself to be able to fix it. And I really thought it's only me that is the reason for this failure if it happens.

[Dan Harris]

So it sounds like your problem in the workplace is maybe the opposite of mine because I was seen as cold and stubborn and dismissive by my junior employees when I got my 360 review six years ago. But you have Described yourself as a people pleaser.

[Judd Apatow]

Well, I think in a creative space, I might be so nervous that I don't know if it's working or not, that I could just be in my head in a way that someone would think, you know, he's. He's shut down now, or he's. He's not warm and nice right now. Because I'm terrified that this movie, which costs millions and millions of dollars, makes no sense whatsoever. And I. I found that sometimes when I'm directing, I have to actually put on almost a show for the crew and the actors of confidence and a lightness of spirit that is not honest. That in my head, I'm like, that rehearsal was not funny. We really need to start from scratch. Maybe I gotta go in the trailer and sit with the producers and the actors and rewrite everything we're doing today. And then you're supposed to go back to the set and just be, like, really funny and sweet and cool with everyone. But in your head, you're thinking, this day cost a quarter of a million dollars, and the script I wrote is awful. And so that's part of the dance of being an employer and a leader of a group of people. The creative team is, you know, they don't want to deal with your weird mood. You have to find a way to, you know, be pleasant and productive and communicate in a healthy way. And on a movie where you're exhausted, it's really challenging because sometimes you also haven't slept in your. You're out of gas. And you have to tune into how you're affecting people because, you know, the fish rots from the head. So you have to care about that, make it your, you know, your highest priority.

[Dan Harris]

It's a funny thing, that expression the fish rots from the head is something I say. All. I'm sure my staff has a drinking game, because part of what I Learned through my360review is now when there's a problem on the team, I really try to put it through the frame of not necessarily self laceration. But I'm the leader here, so I'm almost certain that it traces back to me in some way. And how can I look at it through that lens rather than just blaming the people around me? And I don't want to blame myself unnecessarily either. But it's at least asking that question, like, huh, what am I? Or my executive coach, Jerry Colonna, likes to say, how am I complicit in the conditions that I say I don't want? I Find that very helpful.

[Judd Apatow]

Yeah, I need a Jerry Colonna in my life. Wait, where's Jerry Colonna's phone number?

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, hit me up offline. I'll make that happen for you, buddy.

[Judd Apatow]

I'm gonna have him move in with me like Eugene Landy did with Brian Wilson.

[Dan Harris]

That's right, Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys moved, had this like self help guy move in with him. And didn't it go wrong?

[Judd Apatow]

It did, because he got taken advantage of by him. And the guy started trying to write songs with him and take writing credit. And I think that a lot of people, especially Brian Wilson, felt that he was being controlled. There's a great movie where John Cusack plays Brian Wilson that talks about all this.

[Dan Harris]

All right, we are approaching the end of our time together, which I'm sad about because this has been really fun. But let me ask you a couple questions that I always ask. One is, is there something you were hoping that we would get to that we didn't?

[Judd Apatow]

That we didn't?

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Judd Apatow]

Well, that's a very good question. What didn't we cover? What's helpful to other people, I guess. Well, all I can say is I'll tell you my favorite self help books. Maybe that's helpful. Great to people.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Judd Apatow]

I love Michael Singer the Untethered Soul. I love all the Pima Chodron books. You can't go wrong with those books like, you know, when things fall apart, start where you are. I do think all of these Richard Schwartz books about internal family systems or Game Changers, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ram Dass, you know, that's where my head is lately. I also love James Finley, who writes about contemplative prayer. He has a great book called the Healing Path. And Richard Rohr has a lot of great books that are related to faith. But James Finlay is someone that talks about the space where you feel connected to. I don't know if you would call it mystery or spirituality or God. But there's this very quiet space. And sometimes we connect with it when we're walking and we just see a bird. Or maybe it's something our dog does or the moment when we think of something creative. There's that sacred space and it's really hard to get to and it's hard to stay in. And he talks about how every moment in modern life is trying to pull you out of it. And he writes beautifully about those conditions. And I find that when I read his books, I just do better with writing because I do think that that's true. It's so hard to get quiet, to clear all the voices, all the critical voices, and feel a different kind of connection to the universe that feels almost undescribable. Indescribable. That's what you say, indescribable. But James Finlay is someone worth looking up. There's a lot of videos on YouTube where he talks about this.

[Dan Harris]

Another book I've heard you mention is Transforming Problems into Happiness.

[Judd Apatow]

Yes. That was a great book that Gary Shannon gave me. That's based on the Buddhist idea that when bad things happen, you should be happy because it's an opportunity to learn something or fix something about yourself. And if you really are in that head that this is supposed to happen, speeding I'm taking right now is the best thing that ever happened to me. It's going to teach me about compassion or resilience or something that that can really change your mood all the time. Because then nothing actually is bad. I mean, obviously some things are pretty bad, but it's a way to look at things that makes things more bearable. My therapist always says life is suffering, yet we soldier on.

[Dan Harris]

I'm trying to think if I agree with that. Life involves suffering.

[Judd Apatow]

Oh, we have no choice for sure. Well, you can't avoid the suffering. No, this is really the point of it. Like it's coming and how do you relate to it?

[Dan Harris]

Yes.

[Judd Apatow]

Can you handle the fact that life is just a mix and it's coming from both directions and how can you do the dance with it?

[Dan Harris]

That I agree with for sure. Final question for me. You mentioned your show coming up on November 9th. Tell us about that. Tell us about anything else you're doing that we should look for coming up.

[Judd Apatow]

Well, I am doing a Judd and Friend show for the New York Comedy Festival. So you can go to nycomedyfestival.com and that's going to be November 9th at the Beacon Theater in New York. And a lot of surprise, shockingly good guests will be there. That's how I like to do shows where it's me and mystery guests and you can always know for sure that the mystery guests are better than me. That's the fun of going to the shows. I don't know when this airs, but I have a bunch of shows at Largo in Los angeles on the 11th. We're doing a show with Beck and Zooey Deschanel and Robbie Hoffman. And then I've an OPA one on the 25th of September. I do a lot of shows there and I have a show in Atlanta. I believe it's November 3rd or 4th. I think it's the Variety Playhouse. You could find it. If you're in Atlanta, you'll find it. But those shows are just so fun for me, and most all of them are for charity because it's an excuse for me to ask people to do shows with me without guilt. I can just say, come on, it's for charity. And it's a way to manipulate people into hanging out with me.

[Dan Harris]

Do you have any movies coming out?

[Judd Apatow]

Well, right now, the main movie I'm working on is a documentary about Mel Brooks for hbo. So I've been lucky enough to spend a lot of time with Mel Brooks the last few months. He is, he's 98 years old, and a lot of our conversations are about what he's learned over the years, what wisdom he's taken from his journey, and it's very special to spend time with him. But when I ask him what advice he gives, like his grandchildren, and I expect a very long answer, he just goes, be nice. Just be nice. You don't know what people are going through. Be nice. One would say he is a stoic.

[Dan Harris]

I mean, that's solid advice. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's hard to go wrong with that. My man, this was awesome. Thank you very much for doing it. Really appreciate it.

[Judd Apatow]

Well, thank you. I've been listening for a long time. I have many of them downloaded for permanent re listens because they've been very helpful along the way. And I'm so glad you're so committed to it. It's great.

[Dan Harris]

Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks again to Judd Apatow. Don't forget to check out his shows. One in Atlanta on November 3rd and the other on November 9th at the Beacon Theater in New York City, one of my favorite theaters. Also, don't forget, if you want a cheat sheet of today's episode, go over to danharris.com where you can sign up. You can also interact with me in the chat and get my monthly video ama's, Ask Me Anything sessions. And also I've been live streaming some of my daily meditations. So a lot going on over on danharris.com please join me. Before I go, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneider Niderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the Van Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier and I hope you do. You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short [e-mail] survey.

[Judd Apatow]

I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in US History. Presidential lies, Environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, the Houston Astros shocked Major League Baseball by going from last place to winning the World Series in just four years. This remarkable turnaround seems to vindicate Astros general manager Jeff Luno, whose unconventional use of data and the latest technology stirs controversy around the league. But when two reporters uncover that some players and coaches have been using that technology to cheat, it casts doubt on the Astro's culture of winning at all costs. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery. You can join Wondery in the Wondery Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today.

[Dan Harris]

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[Judd Apatow]

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[Judd Apatow]

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