← Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out
Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out
195. Arthur Brooks: The Science of Happiness and Humor
00:45:25
Arthur Brooks might be the only Working It Out guest who's crossed paths with Jerry Seinfeld, Oprah Winfrey, and the Dalai Lama. He’s a professor and bestselling author, whose books include The Happiness Files, From Strength to Strength, and Build the Life You Want, which he co-authored with Oprah. Mike sits down with Arthur, whose speciality is the science of happiness, to explore what goes on in the brains of comedians and audiences at comedy shows. They discuss creative productivity, how Arthur prepares his lectures, and the benefits of gratitude.
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- [00:01]
A
Steve Martin wrote about this once where he said, as comedians, people typically get less funny as they get older because the dark things that we joke about when we're younger happen to people, you know, or happen to you.
- [00:17]
B
Yeah, well, part of it is. And it was okay.
- [00:20]
A
And it was okay.
- [00:21]
B
And it was okay. That's the. And it was okay part is really the salient part of us.
- [00:25]
A
Right.
- [00:25]
B
If it. That bad thing happened to me, and I was always worried about it was worse than I thought. That's still funny. That's still funny. Funny man. You're gonna still be able to find plenty of humor in that. But the whole thing happened to me. I got sick and. And. And I got through it. There's nothing funny about that, right? About getting. It's like, yeah, this really. It's like my. My spouse had a huge affair and broke up with me and humiliated me publicly. And I survived.
- [00:50]
A
Right?
- [00:51]
B
Great punchline, man.
- [00:55]
A
Great punchline, man.
- [01:02]
That is the voice of the great Arthur Brooks. This is a fascinating episode today. Arthur Brooks, someone I've been following for a while. He's an author. He's a professor. He's a scientist. His specialty is in the science of happiness. He's written many, many books. He and I crossed paths a few months ago, and we were in touch about something, and then we thought, oh, it might be interesting to talk about the interrelationship between happiness and comedy and laughter. And it ended up being a fascinating conversation. He's had a really interesting life. He was a professional musician in Spain. He teaches at Harvard. He co authored a book with Oprah. We don't usually get the chance to dive into this sort of like, brain science of humor and laughter. So I was glad to have the opportunity to talk to him about that kind of stuff today. By the way, thanks everybody who has listened to the premium episode that we just dropped with Pete Holmes. We. We had the regular Pete Holmes episode, and then we had the premium feed episode with me and Pete Holmes punching up your jokes that you sent in. And if you sign up for the premium feed, we really appreciate it. You get no ads in any of the episodes. And then you get these bonus episodes seemingly about once a month. I think we're working on another one for December. So make sure to go on Apple podcasts and subscribe to Working It Out Premium to hear those episodes and get the ad free version. And also if you don't, that's fine, too. We have 200 episodes, all free. I wanted to announce on here that I will be appearing in The Broadway show all out from January 13th through 18th, alongside Cecily Strong, Wayne Brady and others. All out is of course, written by the great Simon Rich, who wrote for SNL and has written for the New Yorker and has written a bunch of really funny books. Just a very funny person. He wrote a show called all in last year that it was John Mulaney and Fred Armisen, all these great people. And this one is a sequel. It's called all out, and you can get tickets@allout broadway.com. i love this conversation with Arthur Brooks. I can say with some certainty he's the only guest on the on the podcast who knows Oprah and Jerry Seinfeld and the Dalai Lama. Enjoy my conversation with the great Arthur Brooks.
- [03:27]
B
Comedians are especially good at reading rooms, are incredibly good at reading rooms. And part of the reason is because there are so many different ways that we express positive and negative emotion. But people go into a comedy club, for example, ready to express a lot of positive emotion, and you need the truth.
- [03:43]
A
Yeah.
- [03:43]
B
Especially when you're working it out, you need the truth. And so you have. You get really good filter about when somebody's laughing politely. 85% of laughter is social lubricant, not based on humor. 85%.
- [03:55]
A
Yeah.
- [03:55]
B
You know, you see somebody that you like, you grew up with, you're, like, laughing the whole day. There's no jokes going on.
- [04:01]
A
That's true.
- [04:02]
B
It's absolutely true. And 15.
- [04:04]
A
Because you want it to go well.
- [04:05]
B
Yeah, yeah, totally. And you want them to feel good about it. You want. And you want to fire the mirror neurons in your friend's brain. And the way that you do that is by expressing positive emotion.
- [04:14]
A
Yeah.
- [04:14]
B
And so that's 85%. And so if you're a comedian and every time somebody laughs, you're like, hey, that joke killed. It's like 85% of the time you're wrong.
- [04:22]
A
Yeah.
- [04:22]
B
And so you get super good at sussing out that 15% for yourself and for other people. You're naturally super good. Behavioral scientist.
- [04:31]
A
Right, I get that. No. And Chris Rock, of course, is the greatest at this, because before his specials, he'll come into the comedy cellar, which is 150 people in a basement in New York City, and he will do his jokes with no inflection.
- [04:44]
B
Yeah.
- [04:44]
A
Because he wants to know that.
- [04:47]
B
Does it work?
- [04:48]
A
Will these words in at neutral with no affect with no. That's Chris Rock with no.
- [04:55]
B
Right.
- [04:56]
A
He's doing something exciting. Right. Do the words. Are the words themselves funny?
- [05:02]
B
And is the cadence of the word so it's really super interesting when you study this stuff, which is important for me because I'm, you know, I'm standing in front of audiences all the time.
- [05:09]
A
Yeah.
- [05:10]
B
I need to understand how this stuff works. But studying comedy is incredibly good for actually talking about science in front of popular audiences who are not scientists. Right. Part of the reason is because telling a joke at the six to eight minute cadence is super important for actually resetting the attention of the audience.
- [05:29]
A
When you say six to eight minute cadence once every six minutes, tell a joke.
- [05:32]
B
So every six to eight minutes, your natural attention span is six to eight minutes. And if you're an academic and you try to go 15 minutes, you're gonna lose them and they're not gonna understand what you're talking about. So every six to eight minutes, you need to reset, let them get off the bike and then do something fun for 60 seconds. 60 to 90 seconds, and then put em back on the bike and back up the hill again. But the best way to do that is to give them a little surprise. So there's a little part of your brain, the limbic system of your brain called the parahippocampal gyrus when you flick it, obviously. Yeah.
- [06:05]
Rolls off the tongue when you flick it a little bit. That's what surprise. And the surprise is met with amusement, laughter. And so what comedians like you are super good at in these great Netflix specials. Congratulations on the newest one. Love it. The great thing about it is that you know just the right amount of flick, naturally, too much of a flick, people are like, you know, he dropped an F bomb in front of kids.
- [06:28]
A
Right.
- [06:28]
B
That's too much of a flick on the parahippocampal gyrus. Or people. Or you like, make a joke about a hurricane that just went through and people lost their loved ones.
- [06:35]
A
Sure.
- [06:36]
B
Or if it's like not enough of a flick, it's what your daughter thinks is funny because she's 10. That's a dad joke. Not enough of a flick. And people are like, it's not enough of a flick. But there's right in the middle there where really, really good comedians can actually do that. And then extremely efficiently, not that changes the attention. And then you're able to, to, to reset them. And, and it's interesting because that's hard for us civilians. Yeah, it's a hard thing to do. You know, then I can give examples to my class of I can flick their parahippocampal gyrus with kind of a dumb joke. And they'll laugh right. Naturally. Even at a dumb joke, if you do it right, like, you know, I want, you know, this, the old joke. I want to. I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers.
- [07:19]
A
That's funny.
- [07:20]
B
And that what happened was I, it's. I mean, but you just laugh politely.
- [07:23]
A
Because I followed the logic of it.
- [07:26]
B
And I enjoyed it at the end. That was that neurocognitive thing. Actually, the one who. Somebody who gave me really great advice on how to tailor the joke in the right way, not neurocognitively, was Jerry Seinfeld, who came to a talk I gave at the Aspen Ideas Festival. And I was in the middle of an hour long lecture on the science of love. And in the middle, I knew I was at the six to eight minute mark because I'd been working it out. And I stopped.
- [07:52]
A
Thank you.
- [07:54]
B
And during. I stopped because I had this like 90 second little riff. I knew it was gonna, I was gonna talk about. It was. It was a thing about how parents and their kids, they interact with each other in a very different way. We're way, way, way too protective today of kids. And they were way underprotective. When I was growing up in the 70s.
- [08:11]
A
Yeah.
- [08:12]
B
So I said, when I was a kid, for example, I had a paper route. I grew up in Seattle, four o' clock in the morning, all by myself. And it was the neighborhood that Ted Bundy had been marauding through.
- [08:25]
A
Right.
- [08:26]
B
And then. And in the same era, it was about. I would say he was in the late 60s and I was in the mid-70s.
- [08:33]
A
But there was.
- [08:33]
B
And I said, well, there's this mania about serial killers. Everybody was talking about serial killers.
- [08:38]
A
Yeah.
- [08:39]
B
And my mom read a newspaper story about serial killers and that Ted Bundy had been in our neighborhood.
- [08:43]
A
Yeah.
- [08:44]
B
And she said to my dad, we had to let little Arthur has to stop doing this paper route.
- [08:47]
A
Yeah.
- [08:48]
B
And my dad, who was on my side, he wanted me to be able to keep the route. He had a PhD in biostatistics and he made a statistical argument to my mother saying, actually, I've been looking at the data and Arthur doesn't fit the core demographic of a serial killer, so he should be able to keep the route.
- [09:04]
A
That's really funny.
- [09:05]
B
And so. Okay, so that. And I told the joke and they're kind of. It got kind of a laugh. And afterward, Jerry Seinfeld was in the audience. And I'm thinking, that guy looks like Jerry Seinfeld. Turns out it was. And he comes up later and he says, Says, you know how to make that joke really kill? And I said, how? And he said, don't say Ted Bundy because you just personalized the serial killer. Just say serial killer. And then it's a general concept and people have permission to laugh. And I tried it the next night, and it just killed.
- [09:34]
A
Oh, that's great.
- [09:34]
B
Yeah, that's a great tweak. But the whole point is that he knew how much to flick their parahippocampal gyrus.
- [09:40]
A
I do the inverse of what you're describing in the sense that I do joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. And every six or eight minutes, there's a truism.
- [09:46]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [09:48]
A
Truism.
- [09:48]
B
Well, there's a thing in there that makes people go, huh? Yep. That's my life, too.
- [09:52]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [09:53]
B
And that's how you're actually letting them off the bike.
- [09:55]
A
Well, it's the thing. The thing that. Like an example of this, and I've seen you talk about this exact topic, is there's a moment in my. In. In my show the Good Life, where I say, kids don't know anything, but they absorb everything. And the audience goes. And that's the flick in the other direction, because I've been seeing joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. And then they're like, oh, that's actually true.
- [10:17]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [10:18]
A
We all kind of. That's true.
- [10:20]
B
That's right. That's right. And part of the. And it's really interesting how you do this. I've watched it, and I've sort of diagrammed as you've done these specials, because it's super interesting to me as a behavioral scientist to see people who are at the top of their trade. Oh, at the top of their trade. Actually talking in front of audiences. Because that's what I do. Right?
- [10:38]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [10:38]
B
And I want to see people who are super good at it doing it in a very intuitive way. And their job is not the science, it's actually the. The humor.
- [10:47]
A
Yeah.
- [10:48]
B
So you really are doing the mirror image of the kind of thing that I'm doing. And what you're doing is you're making sure that people actually trust you as a comedian by saying true things about their lives. And that's not just. I mean, you can do it in kind of a, you know, cheesy way, which is a pure observational humor. What's up with Starbucks?
- [11:03]
A
Or no, it's like, right.
- [11:04]
B
Who cares?
- [11:05]
A
Right.
- [11:05]
B
But if you actually say you want your kid to grow up and go to church.
- [11:10]
A
Right.
- [11:11]
B
She needs to see you on your knees. Man.
- [11:12]
A
Right.
- [11:13]
B
Because that's going to have a cognitive impact.
- [11:15]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's funny, because that. That is one of the things I've heard you say, and I'm at a personal.
- [11:24]
I would say, inflection point with this, because I am not religious. I don't practice. Was raised religious, raised Catholic. And when I see you talk about religion and your faith and others talk about their faith, I have complete and total respect for it, but I'm somewhat ambivalent about it.
- [11:44]
B
You don't feel it?
- [11:45]
A
Yeah. And so what, am I going to fake it?
- [11:47]
B
Yeah.
- [11:48]
A
Yeah.
- [11:48]
B
Okay.
- [11:49]
A
Sounds good.
- [11:49]
B
Yeah. And part of work here is done. Well, you know, life. The things that we care about the most are not feelings. You know, the truth of the matter is that your marriage is not about your feelings. Your marriage is about your commitments. That's the man that you are. Mike Birbiglia is about commitments and decisions, not about temporary feelings.
- [12:09]
A
True.
- [12:09]
B
I mean, if you. Look, I've been married 34 years. If it were about my feeling, I'm married to a Spaniard. I mean, fighting and anger are part of the daily vernacular of life. It's like mother's milk. If it were about my feelings, I wouldn't have been married 34 minutes.
- [12:25]
A
Right.
- [12:25]
B
You know, the truth of the matter is I've decided that she's my Dulcinea and I'm Don Quixote and that she's the last person on which I'm gonna take my last gaze as I take my dying breath. Because that's my decision.
- [12:36]
A
Yeah.
- [12:36]
B
You know, and that's where. That's the life in life.
- [12:39]
A
Right.
- [12:39]
B
That's where we're living in our. The space of our moral aspiration as opposed to our animal impulse.
- [12:43]
A
Yeah.
- [12:44]
B
And that's a really, really important thing. And that's true for all of the things that really matter the most.
- [12:48]
A
So you think I should fake it? I should just go to church?
- [12:50]
B
Well, I don't think you should just go to church. I think that you should basically say, I'm. I've decided to have an open heart. I've decided I'm going to open my mind to this.
- [12:59]
A
Interesting.
- [12:59]
B
And. And, you know, there's a bunch of different ways to do that that might mean. I've decided I'm going to pray every day.
- [13:04]
A
Yeah.
- [13:05]
B
I've decided I'm. As literature. The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.
- [13:12]
A
Right.
- [13:13]
B
Because that's one quarter of the New Testament. That's kind of. Read it. It's just like, wow, it's blowing my mind. Yeah, I'm going to read the proverbs. I'm going to read it, I'm going to read it. And then, you know, once on a Wednesday, I'm going to go down to the local parish and on, you know, the 8:30 master something, I'm going to sit in the back and go, huh, as if it were the first time. Yeah, that's what I'm. I'm just going to make a decision to do that. See, there's a. There's religious belief or religious religiosity has three parts to it. It has feelings, beliefs and practices. And we often think, because society tells us incorrectly, that for you to practice something, you've got to believe it. For you to believe it, you have to feel it. That's exactly wrong. That's exactly the wrong thing. On the contrary, you should practice. And then sometimes you'll believe and occasionally you'll feel it. And that's the story of all of your love relationships.
- [14:03]
A
Well, it's funny because that was my relationship of me to stand up comedy. I think, oh, tell me more.
- [14:09]
B
This is interesting.
- [14:10]
A
Well, I think when I was in college, I had a sense of, okay, this is something I want to be a comedy writer. I wanted to write for Conan O' Brien's Late Night Joe. It was in the 90s, and then there was the Funniest Person on Campus contest. And I was like, oh, let me write something for that. I performed it and I won. And I got the chance to perform in a club nearby. And.
- [14:36]
I read an article in the New Yorker about Richard Pryor's writing process, how he would go up on stage and he would essentially bomb and then come back the next week and bomb with the new 10 minutes and then bomb with a new 10 minutes. And I was like, let me try that. And I went to a series of open mics that summer in Virginia, and I would say.
- [15:01]
I was mostly bombing, and I don't think anyone really enjoyed it, but I got a lot better at it and eventually I understood the value of it.
- [15:08]
B
It's all reps. Yeah, it's really all reps. And then you also have to learn from the reps. And people don't always do that. They're always like, I hope it goes better tomorrow night. No, no, no, no, no. As soon as you're off stage, the notebook is out. This worked. This didn't work. The timing was off on this. So I'll do a. When I have a new talk. You know, usually my talks are 40 minutes long. That's the typical length. And it has a whole bunch. There's the neuroscience section, and there's the how to section. And here's the feng shui of a speech is the three things that you should actually do so that you can absorb the science into your life. Here's how you go teach it to your family. That also sort of the same structure, but the first 25 times that I do it, the first thing that I'm doing when I get off the stage is I'm taking notes on what went wrong and how I can. That part doesn't work. It's like, I've tried that five times, it's still not working. I gotta get it. And so it's a large part of the same process. If you're not. If you're not. If you're not bombing, you're not learning.
- [16:06]
A
Yes.
- [16:06]
B
Is really a. It's a. Because you're not trying anything new.
- [16:09]
A
That's right. You have this thing you reference about performance, which I think is just so true, which is this magician from the 1920s, who.
- [16:20]
B
Howard Thurston.
- [16:21]
A
Howard Thurston, yeah. Who, when someone asked him how he keeps it fresh, he said, before I go on, I express gratitude for the audience. And I think that that is something I do. And it's something that took. But it took me a long time to get there. In my 20s, I thought it was all about me. In my 30s and 40s, I've come to realize, no, no, no, it's all about them. So my question to you is, like, how do you teach that when a kid in their twenties, in some ways maybe can't learn that?
- [16:52]
B
Right, Right. So everybody can. But first, let's recognize why it's hard. We are not evolved to be grateful. We are ungrateful wretches by evolution. And the reason for that is that Homo sapiens during the Pleistocene, very dangerous time, you know, 200,000 years ago.
- [17:09]
A
Sure.
- [17:09]
B
I mean, there was a tiger ready to gobble you up at any single second. Which means that if you're. You need to be ungrateful and suspicious and hostile and sad and anxious all the time or you're gonna die.
- [17:18]
A
Yeah.
- [17:18]
B
That's the reason that there's literally more tissue dedicated in your limbic system of your brain to negative emotions and positive emotions. We're made to be bummed. That's the bottom line. And so you need to manually over. Override that. This consciously, so that you can supersede negative emotionality with positive emotionality. But it doesn't come naturally. So gratitude is something you have to manually use to override your ingratitude. And the problem is that we're not taught to do that. And there's a bunch of techniques for doing that in the behavioral science literature that are really, really useful and interesting. The first is gratitude lists. And this comes from Robert Evans, who's this great social psychologist who's sort of the. The godfather of gratitude studies.
- [17:57]
A
Yeah.
- [17:57]
B
I have a column coming out.
- [17:58]
A
I used to have a joke about this, which is I started a gratitude journal. So far, it's empty, but I'm hopeful.
- [18:05]
But it really.
- [18:07]
B
It is hard to keep up with the gratitude. You have to routinize it the same way that you routinize your workouts.
- [18:12]
A
Okay.
- [18:12]
B
You have to do something that doesn't feel natural, but it's something you want to do. And then when you can override the conscious decision to do it by making it automatic, which then you stop using your prefrontal cortex, which is where you make your executive decisions, and you start using your nucleus accumbens, which is your habitual behavior going around your prefrontal cortex. That's when you get up and do a thing, even though it used to be unpleasant, and now it's automatic. That's why your life gets better, right? Is because that's good habits. That's also why it's so hard to quit smoking. That's why it's so hard to quit cussing when you have kids, is because your nucleus accumbens is cussing, not your prefrontal cortex. And so habitual behavior is hard to break.
- [18:50]
A
These brain terms are challenging.
- [18:52]
B
I know. Psychology actually sort of is biology. And so it also just makes me look smart. And I'm just trying to impress you.
- [18:59]
A
Yeah, no, I'm impressed.
- [19:00]
B
Thanks. I appreciate that.
- [19:01]
A
Our version of it in our house is Rosebud Thorn. That's a gratitude journal of sorts. You know that one?
- [19:06]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [19:07]
A
Jenny Noona and I will do. What was your rose today? What was your thorn? And then what's your bud for tomorrow? And that's a gratitude journal.
- [19:13]
B
Yeah, for sure. And all that is is making gratitude salient, making it conscious, and then it becomes more automatic after that. So I recommend a gratitude journal where you're writing down five things you're really grateful for on Sundays and then looking at it each day for a couple of minutes and updating it on Sundays. And the data show that you can. And you can raise your actual life satisfaction, subjective life, well, being by between 6 and 12%. By about 10 weeks.
- [19:38]
A
Interesting.
- [19:39]
B
But just that exercise. Second way to do that is to be overtly grateful to somebody.
- [19:46]
In sort of an on purpose way, in a lascivious way.
- [19:50]
A
And obnoxious.
- [19:51]
B
Exactly right.
- [19:52]
A
Overbearing.
- [19:52]
B
Overbearing. Like make it really uncomfortable.
- [19:54]
A
Oh, my God.
- [19:55]
B
Thank you truly. You go up in the suck up zone immediately.
- [20:00]
A
Very infected.
- [20:02]
B
So Monday mornings, write two texts to people that you're actually grateful to. So that's the second way. The third way is public gratitude towards somebody, whether you know them or not. And say, this is somebody's work who's really, really helping me. And you put it on social media. Use social media for gratitude more.
- [20:17]
A
Yeah.
- [20:17]
B
Without getting into the suck up land.
- [20:19]
A
Yeah. Right.
- [20:20]
B
And then the last place is just meditating thoughts about gratitude. Sort of loving kindness meditation.
- [20:25]
A
Yeah.
- [20:25]
B
But gratitude meditation toward other people. And if you have a protocol of those four things, your life really changes a lot because you start to override the natural ingratitude from your ancestral environment.
- [20:36]
A
As a comedian, people expect me to be funny.
- [20:39]
B
Yeah.
- [20:39]
A
As someone who's written about happiness, do people expect you to be happy?
- [20:43]
B
Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, they do. And that's actually not the way it.
- [20:45]
A
Works at all, of course.
- [20:46]
B
Because I study happiness because I want it.
- [20:48]
A
Yeah.
- [20:49]
B
And I want it for a reason.
- [20:50]
A
Right.
- [20:50]
B
Because it doesn't come easily to me.
- [20:52]
A
Because it's not easy.
- [20:52]
B
Yeah, no, no. I mean, it's like I'm. I come from gloomy stock, man. Half of your happiness is genetic. You know, your mother literally made you unhappy.
- [21:00]
A
What do you mean by gloomy stock?
- [21:01]
B
That means that if your parents are on the lower end of positive affect, you'll tend to be more on the lower end of positive affect, which is the intensity of your positive emotions. Your positive and negative emotionality are produced in different parts, different hemispheres of the brain, but also in different parts of the limbic system. Every one of your emotions has a specific evolutionary reason for existing. We sort of regret that. Fear, anger, disgust and sadness, which are the four negative emotions, they kept you alive.
- [21:29]
A
Yeah.
- [21:29]
B
You should be like down on your knees grateful for your fear.
- [21:33]
A
I am.
- [21:33]
B
You know, it's like because you didn't get run over today and you know, you jump out of the way of a car because your limbic system says that's a predator. You know, jump is kind of how that works. And so the intensity of those emotions, however, can make your life really uncomfortable. And a lot of that is actually genetic.
- [21:49]
A
Right.
- [21:50]
B
If you have a genetic proclivity towards sadness and anxiety yeah, you need better habits. And better habits actually start with knowledge. The reason I study and talk about happiness is because I'm sad and anxious a lot.
- [22:02]
A
Yeah.
- [22:02]
B
And I want to manage it. I don't want it to manage me. That's kind of what it comes down to. And by the way, I know a lot of comedians and comedians are funny.
- [22:10]
A
Oh, don't get me started.
- [22:12]
B
Oh, yeah, you know more comedians than I do.
- [22:13]
A
No, but I know exactly what you're going to say comedians are. We have a depressive streak, certainly. And also, by the way, it's the thing like you're saying, it's your limbic system that keeps you alive. It's your understanding as a comedian of sadness that allows you to make jokes about things that are sad.
- [22:32]
B
And that's a particular neurocognitive ability, is to flick the parahippocampal gyrus. And people around you, and you don't know why you're able to do it. You just know that people laugh. And when you say something that makes people laugh, you're less sad. And so this turns out to be an emotional substitution technique that people are naturally funny, who are also often naturally sad that they start doing and they get better and better and better at comedy, even though they don't know it.
- [22:59]
A
Right.
- [22:59]
B
And so that's what a lot of comedians have. That's why you've got this sort of the sad clown thing.
- [23:05]
A
Jimmy Carr describes it as.
- [23:08]
When you talk to a comedian, ask them which one of your parents was sick.
- [23:13]
B
Yeah.
- [23:13]
A
Because it's a mechanism that.
- [23:16]
B
It's a defense mechanism.
- [23:17]
A
You're able to help people.
- [23:18]
B
Yeah, it's emotional substitution. You're also helping yourself because when you say something and other people laugh, it's a reward to you. And that redirects your limbic system. You redirect yourself. What you're doing is you're inviting other people to redirect you. It's a kind of a complicated and indirect mechanism, but that's what's going on. Lots of comedians watch this show, and my guess is that they never actually thought about what's going on in their brains. And I hope I didn't ruin anybody's act.
- [23:47]
A
No, I think that's because I don't think. Well, this is where it becomes this question about art. And if you get happy, does the art go away? And that's a big question.
- [23:58]
B
I think if you're at peace, that's actually more. It's more. When you're at peace, what happens? You notice that A lot of people that they become less funny when they get older.
- [24:07]
A
Sure.
- [24:07]
B
You notice that a lot of people, that songwriters have less good songs when they're older poets. Now, part of that is this migration from what's called fluid intelligence to crystallized intelligence. You're just less innovative as you get older, but you have more wisdom.
- [24:22]
A
Yeah.
- [24:22]
B
And so if you become more synthetic, you know, I went from writing mathematical treatises that were read by 14 people as an academic to now I write for the Atlantic, and I have a big audience, but I'm retailing ideas because my crystallized intelligence brain is the teacher brain.
- [24:36]
A
Right.
- [24:36]
B
As opposed to the intellectual innovator brain. And so that's really important. I know comedians who actually get more synthetic in what they do as opposed to. But they want to be original. The whole point is, however, when you're older and you're more at peace, because most people are more at peace when they get older. Neuroticism drops a lot as you get older. Generally speaking, your personality gets better as you get older. You become more conscientious, you become more agreeable, you become less neurotic. Those are the three dimensions of personality. Three of the five dimensions of personality. So when you're more at peace, there's less tension. When there's less tension, you're less funny because you're pursuing less emotional substitution.
- [25:16]
A
That's interesting. Steve Martin wrote about this once where he said, as comedians, people typically get less funny as they get older, because the dark things that we joke about when we're younger happen to people you know or happen to you.
- [25:33]
B
Yeah, well, part of it is. And it was okay.
- [25:37]
A
And it was okay.
- [25:38]
B
And it was okay. That's the. And it was okay part is really the salient part of us.
- [25:41]
A
Right? Right.
- [25:43]
B
That bad thing happened to me, and I was always worried about. It was worse than I thought. That's still funny. That's still funny, man. You're gonna still be able to find plenty of humor in that. But the whole thing happened to me. I got sick and I got through it. There's nothing funny about that.
- [25:57]
A
Right.
- [25:58]
B
About getting. It's like, yeah, this really. It's like my spouse had a huge affair and broke up with me and humiliated me publicly. And I survived.
- [26:07]
A
Right?
- [26:08]
B
Great punchline, man.
- [26:11]
A
Great punchline, man.
- [26:27]
Support for working it out comes from AG1. I really like AG1. It is the daily health drink that combines your multivitamin, pre and probiotics, superfoods and antioxidants into one simple green scoop. It's one of the easiest things you can do to support your body every day. What's your morning routine like? Coffee? Shower, Light stretching? Well, let me tell you, my morning routine has never been the same since I started with AG1. It's become a foundation of my energy and wellness throughout the day. AG1 Next Gen contains more vitamins and minerals than ever before, and it's clinically shown to fill common nutrient gaps. Don't be ashamed of your nutrient gaps. We all have them, but AG1 Next Gen is here to help you fill those gaps. AG1 has their best offer ever. If you head to drink ag1.com brewbigs you'll get a welcome kit, a morning person hat, a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2, an AG1 flavor sampler, and you'll get to try their new sleep supplement Agz for free. Wow. That's a great deal. That's drinkag1.com Brubigs for $126 in free gifts for new subscribers. Working it out is brought to you by Aura Frames. Aura Frames are digital picture frames and I have a bunch of these that display a rotating collection of photos that you can upload and manage directly from your phone. We have one in our bedroom and it's got photos of my family. It's got photos from trips over the years. These are a great gift. You know how you have people in your life, you don't know what the heck to buy for them because they sort of get the things that they need and you go, that person has everything. This is the gift. Get some aura frames, load them up with photos of you and that person. You can personalize your gift, add a message before it arrives. Every Aura Frame comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag for a limited time. Save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off Aura's best selling Carver Matte frames named number one by Wirecutter by using promo code WIO at checkout out that's a U R a frames.com promo code WIO. This deal is exclusive to our Working it Out listeners and frames sell out fast. So order yours now to get yours in time for the holiday. Support the show by mentioning it at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.
- [28:51]
Oh, this is what this is you. You quote something about procrastination. Sorry? You write about procrastination in your book the Happiness Files, which is something I think about all the time, which is the Hemingway quote, which is leave ink in the well.
- [29:07]
And finish. Leave your work when it's at the 90% mark, so that when you come back, you have essentially inertia coming into it. Can you talk about why that's true? Because I feel like it is true and I live it all the time, but I don't even understand what's happening.
- [29:24]
B
So you probably have noticed. Are you a morning person or night person?
- [29:29]
A
I write well in the morning.
- [29:30]
B
Okay. There's a reason for that. That's because your dopamine is highest in the prefrontal cortex of your brain.
- [29:35]
A
Okay.
- [29:36]
B
So if you're diagnosed as a kid with adhd, you'll be given a psychostimulant that vacuums dopamine in your prefrontal cortex. Dopamine, we think of it as kind of a reward chemical. It's really focus creativity. That's what it does. It makes you able to focus on things. And when you're. If you take a psychostimulant that does that, you're able to focus on your work and so you can actually focus on boring things. You need that as a creative to the max. And you're going to get it the most for about. So Hemingway said he had two good hours of writing a day. Now, he didn't have enough because he was an alcoholic, and that meant he was spending his dopamine and he was probably in a trough in the morning. So that's one of the reasons, if you're creative, don't drink at night. Don't drink at night because you're going to have a dopamine trough and it's going to hurt your creativity in your best creative hours.
- [30:20]
A
Wow.
- [30:20]
B
So that's really important. And you can optimize your. Your dopamine levels by postponing your caffeine consumption for the first couple hours after you wake up and then having your caffeine right before you work. Don't use it to wake up, use it to focus. Use it as an ADHD drug, as a stimulant. For example, getting up early before the dawn is really good for you for doing that. For example, not drinking the night before. These are the protocols for creative productivity, is how this actually works. So you're going to get. If you do everything right, you'll get maximum really creative four hours a day. You're not going to get more than that. And so leave all of your, you know, zoom meetings and leave all that stuff for the afternoon. Never. Never. Don't take anything.
- [31:02]
A
That's exactly what I do.
- [31:03]
B
And you've done it naturally. I've done exactly what I Do you've done it organically?
- [31:05]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:06]
B
Is this your workspace that we're in right now? As a matter of fact. And I see that because it's like it says, you know, joke ideas on this board back here. It's like holes in planes. And now what could be funnier than that?
- [31:15]
A
Yeah, holes in planes. There was a period last year, remember.
- [31:18]
B
Two years ago, people getting sucked out.
- [31:20]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:20]
B
Buildings and planes. Yeah, holes and planes. I can't wait for that one. That's going to be your next Netflix special called Holes and Planes with Mike.
- [31:27]
A
Berbiglio comedy strategy plus time. That'll come out in about five years.
- [31:32]
B
So.
- [31:34]
What you want to do is to structure your day around this. So anybody who then tons of creators are watching the show. And so restructure your day and make sure that you fix your habits that are obstructing that. So that's why. What? Hemingway would get up pretty late in the morning because he was drunk, and he would get up too late, and then he would probably at 10 o' clock in the morning, he would open his closet. He had his typewriter in his closet, and to keep focused, he'd look at the back wall of the closet and he would write for two hours. And that was it. And then it was back to the bottle is the way that works. That's a huge waste, but it's directionally correct. Get up earlier, go to bed the night before, don't use alcohol the night before. Get up before the sun comes up. I recommend exercising without any psychostimulants. I recommend prayer med, then a huge hit of coffee and a bolus of protein, and boom, you're gonna get four hours of maximum creativity because your brain is optimized for that. Okay? Now here's the thing. As you go through that four hours, you have less and less and less dopamine in your prevalent cortex, which means that you're able to work, but your creativity is waning. Your focus and creativity aren't as good as they were. And that means the end of it is gonna be worse than the beginning. You want the end of what you write to be even better than the beginning of what you wrote. So leave the last 10% for the next day's dopamine.
- [32:49]
A
There.
- [32:50]
B
How it works.
- [32:50]
A
You know that I. I've never talked about this. I changed you. You asked whether I'm a morning person or night person for creativity. I changed it because I had this. This radical thing occur in my life where I sleepwalked out of. Through a Second story window.
- [33:03]
B
That's a famous story because you actually, you know, Walla Walla, Washington.
- [33:06]
A
True story. And I had to change.
- [33:08]
B
Yeah.
- [33:09]
A
Because I was writing in. Yeah, I was writing.
- [33:13]
B
You have REM issues.
- [33:13]
A
Yeah. I was diagnosed with rbd, rem Sleep behavior disorder. And had to change to save my life.
- [33:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [33:20]
A
Because I, I basically had to. And whenever people ask me this, I'm gonna say this on this, on the air today because I, I get endless questions about sleep.
- [33:29]
B
Right.
- [33:29]
A
Because I have sleepwalking disorder and people call me. I have to go. You should either a, a see a doctor about this and, or just read a book. Read the Promise of Sleep. There's another book called Sleep. There's a lot of books on sleep hygiene. But you can, can change your habits so that you're not. This is the analogy is not mine, but I think it's the best way to put it. You're not crashing into sleep, but you're landing into sleep. And it's like a really crucial thing for sleep health, for sure. So you talk about how for you, being happy is waking up at 4:30, 4, 35:30.
- [34:06]
B
I get up at 5:30, 4:30. I mean, on the weekends, I'm with my wife and I often get up at 5:30, 30 because, you know, I'm living large.
- [34:12]
A
Yeah, yeah. You eat protein. You don't drink coffee right away. I mean, there's a whole thing, usually.
- [34:18]
B
Two to two and a half hours, and there's a whole neuroscience on coffee consumption. Andrew Huberman's great on this.
- [34:24]
A
Yeah.
- [34:24]
B
Andrew Huberman has changed the behavior of a lot of people because he's explained how the, how, how coffee actually works at the molecular level.
- [34:31]
A
Yeah.
- [34:32]
B
And once you actually kind of visualize what coffee's doing, you're like, oh, I want to use it in the right way. Right. I want to use it in a way that helps me.
- [34:40]
A
Right.
- [34:40]
B
As opposed to just chasing away last night's beer.
- [34:43]
A
But that's, but, but that's happiness for you. But when I view that or that's part of your formula, what it is.
- [34:49]
B
Is it helps me to be the person that I want to be.
- [34:52]
A
Okay.
- [34:53]
B
Which helps me to become less unhappy.
- [34:56]
A
Right.
- [34:56]
B
It's a, it's a little more complicated than, you know, than a lot of Greek yogurt in the morning. Makes me happy. On the contrary.
- [35:03]
A
Right, Right. You're right. You're strategizing on your own. Inherent unhappiness.
- [35:11]
B
High negative affect.
- [35:12]
A
Yeah.
- [35:12]
B
Really intense negative affect.
- [35:14]
A
Because for me, I look at that, I go. Well, that would make me miserable. Waking up at 4:30 in the morning seems like it would be making me.
- [35:18]
B
Miserable for a minute. For a minute, for sure. I don't like it. It's not like, you know, I'm not naturally. For the longest time I just thought I was a night owl.
- [35:27]
A
Yeah.
- [35:27]
B
And I was just a hard drinking musician and that's different. And I was able to shift my chronotype but it took habitual behaviors. Part of your chronotype is genetic to be sure. And I still don't get up without an alarm clock. I still need an alarm clock. But it's so worth it to shift your chronotype because the benefit is so much higher than the cost.
- [35:55]
A
Foreign.
- [36:01]
Support for working it out comes from quints. Oh man, I love quince. This year I've talked a lot about Quince's summer and fall collections. You must be thinking that's all they have, right? Surely they don't have a winter and holiday collection. Guess what? They do. They've got my old standby, the $50 Mongolian cashmere sweater. And for the cold weather they have wool coats that are equal parts stylish and durable. You got a layer everybody. You're not going to get better layers anywhere else than Quince. By partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans, Quince cuts out the middleman to deliver premium quality at half the cost of other high end brands. So you can get luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. Get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with Quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com burbigs for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada as well. That's Q U I N C-E.com B I R-B-I G S free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comigs support for working it out comes from Rula. I'm a huge advocate of therapy. I've said this on the show a lot before. I've been in therapy for 20 plus years. Anyway. Rula. Rula is great for providing better access to therapy. No wait lists, no frustrating back and forth. Rula makes it easy to find a mental health provider who's accepting new patients and appointments are available as soon as tomorrow. Plus Rula sticks with you throughout your journey, checking in to make sure your care is helping you move forward, making sure their providers are carefully screened and vetted, monitoring the quality of their care and helping you monitor your progress in therapy. Thousands have already trusted Rula to support them on their journey towards improved mental health and overall well being. Head on over to rula.com brrbigs to get started today. After you sign up, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. Go to r u l a.combrbigs and take the first step towards better mental health Today. You deserve quality care from someone who cares.
- [38:14]
The Dalai Lama blurbed your book. And when that happened, did you consider retiring?
- [38:19]
B
I've been working with Dalai Lama pretty closely for about 12 years now.
- [38:22]
A
Oh yeah, me too. How similar is the Dalai Lama to Oprah?
- [38:29]
B
Nice transition. I love the connective tissue here.
- [38:33]
A
It's like you're next level name dropper. You're like, I know Oprah and at the Dalai Lama.
- [38:37]
B
I didn't drop that name.
- [38:38]
A
No, no, I'm just saying because she blurbed your book and you work on, you've worked on some stuff together.
- [38:42]
B
We co authored a book together. So my last book was called Build a Life youe Want. It came out in 2023 and she, she and I co authored it.
- [38:49]
A
What are three things people don't know about Oprah? Because we know everything.
- [38:53]
B
Yeah, no, I mean, and because she's been an intensely public person for decades.
- [38:58]
A
She's a legend.
- [38:59]
B
She's probably one of the five most most famous people in the world. The important thing to understand about Oprah is because as a behavioral scientist, I'm really interested in people in public life life. And it's. It's not natural to be in public life. No, it's not. It's. Being famous is one of the weirdest things that can happen to somebody.
- [39:15]
A
100%.
- [39:16]
B
It's. And part of the reason is because your brain can't accommodate fame. We want to rise in a social hierarchy, but we're built for bands of 30 to 50 individuals. And so if, you know, in 1650, the pope could walk down the street in Paris and go unnoticed.
- [39:31]
A
Right. Because there's no votes.
- [39:34]
B
And so more and more and more, we're in a state of unbelievable cognitive dissonance because we want this rising to the top of our band of 30 to 50. But doing so means becoming Internet famous, which is disequilibrating and makes you intensely unhappy. Yeah, that's a really interesting thing. So you find that people who are in public life have a drive for it, but they have a resistance toward it at the same time. And that creates a lot of trouble in a lot of people's lives, which is why so many famous people are publicly happy and privately unhappy. That's one of the reasons that you actually see this. Oprah is the exception, and she's cracked the code to crack the code on how to be happy and famous at the same time. And here's how you do it, okay? You recognize that the reason for your fame is to serve others. You recognize that this is not about you, that you are here to refract the attention of others to things that matter the most, that can actually improve their lives. Maybe it's religion, maybe it's goodness. Maybe it's generosity. Maybe it's justice.
- [40:30]
A
Yeah.
- [40:31]
B
But if it's about you and you take the rays of a, you know, a thousand suns into yourself, you burn to a crisp.
- [40:38]
A
Yeah.
- [40:38]
B
If you refract them to other people and create warmth in their lives, you can accommodate that. The most important thing to understand about Oprah Winfrey, she's intensely mentally healthy because she understands that that source of energy was given to her by God, and it was given to her by God because she is on earth to lift other people up.
- [40:55]
A
Yeah.
- [40:56]
B
And she's in person when we're eating dinner at her, just the two of us at her table in Montecito, California. Exactly the same as when she's on tv. Same person.
- [41:05]
A
She's changed a lot of people's lives.
- [41:07]
B
Yeah, totally. My wife learned English watching the Oprah Winfrey Show.
- [41:10]
A
I think my mom was deeply affected by the Oprah Winfrey show when I was growing up. I think it opened her eyes to a lot of things.
- [41:18]
B
She's a phenom. She's an incredible person. Can I ask you a question?
- [41:22]
A
Yeah, please.
- [41:23]
B
On the board over here is prayers to St. Anthony.
- [41:25]
A
Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the jokes from Good Life, because it's like that.
- [41:30]
B
I remember it, but I don't remember it.
- [41:31]
A
It's a bum deal as a saint, you know, you get canonized, you perform miracles. They verify the miracles. You know, a lot of dark money in that space. And. And then. And then they're like, one last thing. You got to find everybody's keys. He's like, what's that last thing? You got to find everybody's keys. You know, it's just like.
- [41:48]
B
I do remember that, like, St. Anthony, it's like, what.
- [41:51]
A
It's going to be great responsibilities. Yeah. What's the catch?
- [41:56]
B
I know it's the cat catch. There's one part of the job I didn't tell you about, like, the last part of the interview.
- [42:02]
A
That was my whole Thing when I was a kid, my dad would be, where are that goddamn keys? My mom would be like, I'm going to say a prayer. That's not going to work.
- [42:11]
I always doubted that could be worse.
- [42:13]
B
You could be St. Joseph. You got to sell everybody's house.
- [42:16]
A
Oh, right. That's another thing. Yeah, you got to. My mom used to do that. We were trying to sell our house, and she buried St. Joseph in the back upside down.
- [42:26]
B
And. And there's some people think it should be pointed toward some people facing away from the house. You bury a statue of St. Joseph upside down. I'm not a superstitious Catholic.
- [42:34]
A
You were saying you're working out stuff on chore right now, which I thought was interesting because, you know, Sedaris does that. Sedaris will take. David Sedaris will take essays out and he'll read them and he'll understand what's working, what's not working, what is the stuff you're working out right now.
- [42:49]
B
So I have a. Usually every three years, I have a big book that comes out. It's a big book. It's a big idea book. And it's usually something I've been working on for more than those three years. And I've got a book coming out in the end of March called the meaning of your life, Finding purpose in an age of emptiness as the scientific explanation for the crisis of meaninglessness. If you look at the explosion of depression and anxiety, it's explained by not being able to articulate the meaning of your life. Not knowing the why of your life. That's really what explains it. Right? I mean, and there's a lot of things that go along with it. You know, misuse of technology. And, you know, John. Have you had John Hyde on the show? He's the great social scientist of our time. Yeah, I read his. And, you know, the anxious generation talks about misuse of technology and how it's associated with. It's correlated with this caus to depression and anxiety. The question is, when people are scrolling away their days and hours and years, what is it that they really wanted that they're missing? And the answer is a sense of their life's meaning. So that's a hard book to write, and that's a hard thesis to talk about. And I'm gonna get a half hour, 45 minutes in front of audiences plenty soon, and a lot of media about how to explain very quickly what's going on with the human brain and what you can do to get your brain back. And it's not just about technology, it's about culture and economics and. And the whole point is that we're being forced into the left hemisphere of our brain, which is the things part. And all the mystery and meaning is in the right hemisphere and it's becoming inaccessible to us. So people say, where do I go to find meaning? Italy? Church? Home? No, the right side of your head. That's where you need to go. So the book is about where do you go and what do you do to rediscover the right hemisphere of your own brain, which used to be like, I mean, you're the, you know, great grandpa Birbiglia. I guarantee you he never came home and said to great grandma, I had a panic attack behind the mule today.
- [44:39]
Because it wasn't a thing. And the reason is because he was living in the right hemisphere of his brain, the way his brain was intended to function. And now ordinary would have been extraordinary then. And to be extraordinary is to be ordinary, the way the great grandpa lives. Lived in a highly post industrial technological society. So what I'm working out right now is how to describe, how to explain. This is the problem. Here's why it's happening, here's what you do with yourself and your kids. And I got 40 minutes to do it. That's what I'm working out. And I got to do the six to eight minute segments. I got to figure out what do I do to disequilibrate the brains in the audience so I can keep them on track. And by the end they're going to say, I feel truly empowered to change my mind life.
- [45:24]
A
Oh, that's interesting.
- [45:25]
B
Yeah, that's a show I'm working on.
- [45:26]
A
So part of the tactics is what we were talking about earlier, where every six or eight minutes so that you don't lose them, you do a joke.
- [45:33]
B
Of some kind, or you say, oh, and by the way, I just saw this study. It's blowing my mind. It's not exactly on this topic, but I got to tell you about it. That's a pretext. Or you tell a story about your kid. That's a pretext.
- [45:46]
A
Or you go into the crowd.
- [45:47]
B
Yeah, well, break the fourth wall. That's. Yeah, you can do that. That's actually kind of harder in a lot of the audiences that I do.
- [45:54]
A
Because of like a big house.
- [45:55]
B
Well, it'll be. Well, if it's a 5,000 people that. Yeah, then you actually.
- [45:58]
A
Is that the kind of places you're playing?
- [45:59]
B
Some.
- [46:00]
A
Wow.
- [46:00]
B
I mean, I'll do some. I did. I did the Conference day before Yesterday. Yeah. For 5,000 or. Wow, 5,300 people or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes it'll be more. Some. It's usually more like a few hundred people.
- [46:13]
A
Yeah.
- [46:14]
B
But it's not, it's not that culture. It's not a fourth wall breaking culture.
- [46:18]
A
Yeah.
- [46:19]
B
You know, they want to learn something.
- [46:21]
A
Yeah.
- [46:21]
B
And with my, with my classes, I'm super interactive because, you know, they're, they're.
- [46:26]
A
Learning a hundred people, 200 people.
- [46:27]
B
Yeah. And it'll be all hands up by about the third class.
- [46:31]
A
Right.
- [46:32]
B
Because they want to. And they'll punctuate the equilibrium of the class. And it's an entirely different rhythm where I'm co creating the material with them. But that's different than when you're actually doing this. It's usually lecture and then Q and A.
- [46:42]
A
Right.
- [46:42]
B
That's kind of how it works. So you better keep it on the tracks.
- [46:45]
A
Right.
- [46:45]
B
You better like, you better be interesting.
- [46:47]
A
Right.
- [46:47]
B
Don't be boring. Don't confuse them. And ideally a little fun funny occasionally. I'm not going to be funny. Like you're funny because you're, I mean, funny is the stock and trade.
- [46:57]
A
Yeah. That's all I have.
- [46:58]
B
And it's not all you have. I actually learned stuff from, from the good life.
- [47:01]
A
Oh, really?
- [47:02]
B
For sure.
- [47:02]
A
Oh, that's good.
- [47:03]
B
Yeah. I learned some things. It reminded me of a lot. I mean you're, you're, you're good as a social scientist.
- [47:08]
A
Oh, thanks.
- [47:09]
B
Because your stuff is correct and it's meaningful.
- [47:13]
A
Huh.
- [47:13]
B
And it's based on truth.
- [47:15]
A
I try, I try to do that. That's definitely the goal.
- [47:23]
Is there a non profit that you like to promote? And we will contribute to them and link to them in the show notes.
- [47:28]
B
Oh, that's terrific. Yeah.
- [47:33]
The foundation for Excellence in Higher Education is one that's trying. Is a great organization trying to bring as much free speech as possible to campuses in terms of intellectual ideas, in terms of comedy, in terms of all different ways where we can go from safe spaces to the beautiful, enriching, unsafe spaces that college is supposed to be.
- [47:50]
A
Be great. Well, we'll contribute to them. We'll link in the show notes. And Arthur, this is fantastic. I could talk to you for 10 hours. You're just like a Fascinating, fascinating.
- [47:58]
B
I hope this is the first time and we actually get to goof around in part two.
- [48:02]
A
All right, that was great. Thank you so much. Working it out, cuz it's not done.
- [48:09]
We're working it out cuz there's no. That's going to do it. For another episode of Working it out, you can follow Arthur Brooks on Instagram arthurcbrooks. You can get his book the Happiness Files at your local bookstore. Check out birdbigs.com to sign up for my mailing list and you'll be the first to know about my upcoming shows. You can watch the full video of this episode on our YouTube channel, Ike Birbiglia. Please subscribe because we're posting more and more videos. Our producers of Working it out are myself, along with Peter Salamone, Joseph Birbiglia, Mabel Lewis and Gary Simons. Sound mixed by Ben Cruz Supervising engineer Kate Balinsky. Special thanks to Jack Antonoff and Bleachers for their music. Special thanks as always to my wife, the poet J. Hope Stein, and our daughter Oona, who built the original radio fort made of pillows. Thanks most of all to you who are listening. If you enjoy the show, please rate us and review us on Apple Podcasts. It actually helps. People don't even know where to begin with 200 episodes of a podcast and so you can just write in a bunch of stars and what you like about the show, if you like it, and your favorite episode, and then people know where to start. There are 200 episodes, all free. No paywall. Check them out. Thanks most of all to you who listen to the show. We appreciate it so much. Tell your friends, Tell your enemies, tell the Dalai Lama. Next time you bump into His Holiness, just say, hey, I know you probably spent a lot of time in silence, thinking, meditating. I'm just saying, if you ever want a short break from the silence, try a podcast. It's called Mike Birbiglia is Working It Out. It's where a comedian named Mike Birbiglia talks to a other comedians and sometimes talks to personal friends of yours like Arthur Brooks. Thanks everybody. We're working it out. We'll see you next time.