How to Laugh About the Saddest Sentence in the English Language

Summary

Pablo Torre Finds Out – “How to Laugh About the Saddest Sentence in the English Language”

Date: May 16, 2024
Host: Pablo Torre
Guest: Michael Cruz Kane (writer, comedian, creator of "Sorry for Your Loss")

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how humor can intersect with the most profound grief, centering on Michael Cruz Kane’s one-man show "Sorry for Your Loss." The conversation covers the painful reality of child loss, the challenge of communicating grief to the world, and the role of comedy in navigating and expressing such unimaginable pain. Torre and Kane dissect the mechanics of the show: how it was crafted, the risks taken, and its philosophical core—that even the saddest sentiments can coexist with humor and connection.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introducing Michael Cruz Kane and the Show’s Premise

• The episode opens with warmth and banter between Torre and Kane, both reflecting on their shared Asian American heritage.
• Kane recounts his satirical response to a study stating most Americans couldn’t name a famous Asian American—by writing a musical comedy bit listing Asian celebrities (02:00).
• Torre transitions to the episode’s focus: Kane’s one-man show “Sorry for Your Loss,” which navigates grief through comedy—specifically, Kane’s grief after losing his infant son (04:29).

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The Risk and Design of “Sorry for Your Loss”

• Building Trust with Audience: Kane discusses intentionally starting his show with high-energy and humor to make the audience comfortable before disclosing its true subject matter (06:17).
  • Quote:
    “The show, I mean, the title is sorry for your loss. So it's not like a huge mystery what it's going to be about. But I do want people to feel at ease...” — Michael Cruz Kane [06:40]
• Kane details how, as a comedian, his focus shifted from routine topics to what was preoccupying his mind—the death of his son (07:28).
  • Quote:
    “I don't care about these jokes anymore. All I can think about is what I really want to be talking about, which is my son.” — Michael Cruz Kane [07:54]
• The “big reveal”—explicitly telling the audience his show is about the loss of his child—happens 28 minutes into the performance to allow an emotional onramp (09:04).

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Confronting Grief: Personal and Societal Avoidance

• Kane wishes our culture discussed death more openly, something he only realized after his own loss (10:18).
• He describes joining an unspoken “community” of bereaved people, all carrying silent burdens (10:45):
  • Quote:
    “Once you are affected by some kind of tragedy or loss ... you become very aware ... they're just keeping it quiet.” — Michael Cruz Kane [10:57]
• The conversation touches on therapy and the distinction between using comedy and traditional approaches to process grief (11:46).

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Comedic Structure: Math and Metaphor

• Kane’s prior work as a math tutor informs the language of the show, specifically using the concept that 0.9 repeating equals 1 to illustrate dualities and contradictions in grief (14:21).
  • Quote:
    “You think things are one way, but they can also be another way.” — Michael Cruz Kane [15:46]
• Torre riffs on the surprise math lesson in the grief show, highlighting the creative strategy (16:00).

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Grief Language and Community

• Kane shares the liberation and relief of connecting with “fluent” speakers of grief—a parallel to learning a new language (27:26):
  • Quote:
    “I think of it like a language ... once somebody else I know also speaks it, it's so much more comfortable.” — Michael Cruz Kane [28:06]
• The conversation intertwines empathy for those unfamiliar with loss, and the responsibility felt by the bereaved in social interactions.

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Navigating Awkwardness and Taboo

• Kane recounts awkward real-life moments where others, unsure of how to respond, misstep after hearing of his loss—such as a neighbor comparing her sick cat to his deceased child (26:24).
• He emphasizes the wish to dismantle the taboo and normalize honest, even uncomfortable, responses to grief (34:21).

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Keeping the Lost Alive Through Story

• The show’s motivation is to keep his son Fisher’s memory alive—not in a religious but a “worldview” sense (32:40).
  • Quote:
    “...to keep him alive. Is that. And in a way that I never would have said before he died ... he is very much alive.” — Michael Cruz Kane [32:53]
• Kane acknowledges the transformative impact of saying this out loud while building his show—it’s not a coping mechanism, but a true conviction discovered through performance (35:57).

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Comedy and Contradiction: Quantum and Linguistic Methods

• The metaphors extend: Kane uses linguistic oddities (e.g., G-H-O-T-I for “fish”) and quantum physics (the duality of particle/wave) to argue for holding multiple truths in grief (37:38):
  • Quote:
    “We are not just particles, we are waves. We are not just where we are, we are everywhere. My son was not just a particle, he was a wave.” — Michael Cruz Kane [39:26]

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Audience Response and Performing Sadness

• Kane talks about the range of audience reactions—audible crying, reverent silence, even occasional inopportune farts (41:57, 43:15).
• He designs the show to provide “safe” space for grief, without immediately undercutting pain with jokes (41:57):
  • Quote:
    “I want you to have the space to just be sad about this. I don't want to protect you from the feeling ... I want you to feel like you're safe. But I do want you to experience what it is to be sad and just live with that for a little bit.” — Michael Cruz Kane [42:21]

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The Future of Comedy and Authenticity

• Looking ahead, Kane aspires to create work only he can create, drawing inspiration from solo acts like Jacqueline Novak’s one-woman show on sex and identity (43:32).

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “Most people, if you ask them to name a famous Asian American ... 58% ... could not name a single famous Asian American.” — Michael Cruz Kane [01:17]
• “No, no, no, no, no. We're keeping that in. We're gonna lose all of our Nazi listeners.” — Pablo Torre [03:37]
• “It is about Death and grief. It's called sorry for your loss. You might cry. If you cry, that is fine. If you don't cry, that is rude.” — Michael Cruz Kane [08:36]
• “I wish we talked about death more because 100% of us are going to die ... Those are pre dead people. All of us.” — Michael Cruz Kane [09:18]
• “I love therapy. I think I crush at therapy.” — Michael Cruz Kane [12:02]
• “A lot of the feedback is here's a story about something horrific that happened to me. And this show helped me process that...” — Michael Cruz Kane [33:42]
• “Sacrilegious and perverse.” — Michael Cruz Kane (on comments about grief comedy) [34:21]
• “I want this show to be a way of keeping my son alive ... to keep him alive ... he is very much alive.” — Michael Cruz Kane [32:40 & 35:57]

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Memorable and Humorous Moments

• The listing of Asian American celebrities in song, including “there’s always my mom.” [01:54]
• “...here's my wife over here. And then here's ... a freaky tapas of my wife.” — Michael Cruz Kane, on the surreal C-section experience [03:16, 23:36]
• Math as metaphor for grief—“One equals 0.9 repeating. ... [It] kind of blew my mind. You think things are one way, but they can also be another way.” [14:43]
• Audience farting during “the big silence” in the live show [43:15]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:17] — Discussion of Asian American representational invisibility
• [04:29] — Transition to Kane’s one-man show “Sorry for Your Loss”
• [06:17] — Strategy for opening a show about grief: humor and audience comfort
• [07:28–09:04] — Reveal: Death of son as subject
• [14:21–15:50] — Math lesson as metaphor in grief and perception
• [16:57] — On how to reveal trauma to the audience
• [22:18] — Discussing impact on Kane’s wife
• [27:26] — Grief as a spoken “language” and community
• [32:40, 35:57] — Keeping his son alive through show and performance
• [39:26] — Quantum physics analogy
• [41:57–43:15] — Audience responses, including silence and humorous mishaps
• [43:32] — Future artistic aims and inspirations

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Tone & Style

The episode is candid, moving, and darkly funny—unafraid to juxtapose gallows humor with devastating truth. Both Torre and Kane use playful banter to ease listeners into harrowing material, making the subject approachable without diminishing its seriousness. The language is direct, often self-deprecating, and uses sharp wit to both acknowledge and disarm the gravity of grief.

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Takeaway

This episode demonstrates how profound loss and humor aren’t mutually exclusive. Michael Cruz Kane’s journey—turning the most unimaginable tragedy into a vehicle for communal understanding and laughter—underscores the healing power of storytelling, comedy, and authentic vulnerability. For those untouched by deep grief, the conversation is a rare, generous invitation “beyond the game,” into the emotional realities we all will one day face.

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To hear the complete show “Sorry for Your Loss,” visit Audible.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Here's my wife. And here is a freaky tapas of my wife.

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network. Two years ago, it was Asian American Heritage Month, and you did something that does make me feel like I owe a debt to you. Michael Cruz Kane, guest in person in the studio, a half Filipino friend of mine.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Thank you for having me. A joy I've been an admirer forever, since the beginning of time, since before you were born.

[Pablo Torre]

I felt it. I felt it from the very start. You did something for me two years ago in your capacity as a writer for the Late show with Stephen Colbert. This is not me repaying it in any way.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Good, because this doesn't become close.

[Pablo Torre]

No, I'm actually using you for more content. But there was a stat two years ago during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Do you remember the stat?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

The gist of it was that most people, if you ask them to name a famous Asian American, more than 50% of people, the answer was, I can't think of one. 58%. Actually, it's all. According to a recent survey of more.

[Pablo Torre]

Than 5,000 U.S. residents, 58% of Americans could not name a single famous Asian American.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

The study came out two times, and both times it was more than 50% of people who said, don't know they did the study. And the year later, in fact, it got worse.

[Pablo Torre]

And so you did something that made me feel like the most special boy in the world.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Lots of Asians. 16% of you. It's true. Lots of Asians. Forgot the one Asian you knew. There's Pablo Torre, Anna Sweet, Nina Kynes, Bayork Lee, Maggie Q and King Wu, David Chang and Lulu Wang and Salman Conray, Hans Salam. Look us up on google.com if you forget. There's always my mom.

[Pablo Torre]

I want people to understand that you were wearing a tuxedo.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

And you did have a cane.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

I did indeed have a cane.

[Pablo Torre]

How long did it take you to write and perform a song in which you named all sorts of vaguely famous Asian Americans, me and Mina Kimes included?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Well, the answer is not very long. Well, I guess that's because as someone who is invested in the existence of Asian Americans, I am aware of many Asian Americans who are.

[Pablo Torre]

But you have yourself, of course, you know Philippines in your blood. But it's. But it's. But it's. But you're sort of a crypto Filipino.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Okay.

[Pablo Torre]

Which is to say that once you know that you're Filipino, it's obvious. I see my cousins in you. But you also have the ability to not at all be identified immediately as such.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

That's true. I definitely. I definitely pass as white or as, like, you know, mystery race. I pass as, like, maybe he's Turkish.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that we both look like. I think what scientists have predicted many people on the planet will look like in like, 50, 000 years when everybody just intermixes.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yeah. I think at a certain point, being, like, racially purebred will be antiquated. It'll be like, you're like, white, like, completely white. Like, ooh, yikes. We should maybe edit that out.

[Pablo Torre]

No, no, no, no, no. We're keeping that in. We're gonna lose all of our Nazi listeners.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yeah. I know that. This podcast is sponsored by the Aryan Brotherhood at work. I do a lot of, like, musical things. So if there's like a big, long song and dance number on the show that's pre taped, usually I've had my hand in it in some way or another because I have a degree in musical theater. Yes. And then I try to sing, like, in comedy stuff whenever I can.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay. But I'm not bringing Michael Cruz Caine onto this show because he can sing and dance and improvise and win Peabody awards. All of which is true. I'm not even bringing him onto the show because of that study we talked about about Asian American famous people that they actually reconducted this month, by the way. And for the fourth straight year, the most common answer, besides, quote, I can't think of one end quote, was Jackie Chan, who is not American. Michael Cruz Kane is here because exactly one year ago this week, I got tickets to see a one man show that he had performed called sorry for your loss, which is now available on Audible. And ever since I saw this show, I have wanted to talk to Michael about it. About how he designed and architected it, how it grew out of this podcast that he used to do. How he managed to make something that felt to me profoundly risky, running the full gamut of human emotion and leaving a mark on me, unlike pretty much anything else I can recall. Sorry for your loss. Your one man show, which I saw here in Manhattan, was something strategic, structurally strategic, because you didn't lead with the lead.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

How's everybody doing? You okay? One more time. Are you okay? Oh, sick. What a good group.

[Pablo Torre]

You start with such high energy, and you come in out on stage and you're immediately clearly, like, going for real laughs and you're not explicitly telling people what you yourself are struggling to figure out. Like, when do I just say it?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

No, let's do the show now. This is the show. It's happening. It is a comedy show, but it is also sad. However, I will include, I promise, some elements of a pure comedy show. For example, sir, what is your name?

[Pablo Torre]

Greg.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Greg. Am I saying that right? Greg. Wonderful. So that is my crowd work. And I think for me, it's like, let's let them know who I am first. And that this is like a safe place to be. Because the show, I mean, the title is sorry for your loss. So it's not like a huge mystery what it's going to be about. But I do want people to feel at ease in the show and not feel like they have to perform the role of audience in a particular way.

[Pablo Torre]

I almost feel obliged myself to give a disclaimer here, which is that what we're gonna do here is gonna be fun. If it hasn't been already. It'll get fun. Because the subject of your one man show, which I should not delay anymore, is what? How do you elevator pitch this?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

The subject of my show is the death of my son. I mean, it's about grief, broadly, but I wouldn't have written it if my son hadn't died. I had twin boys who were born in 2009, and one of them died 34 days after at 34 days old. And I've been doing standup for a long time, and it just became the thing that I was obviously always thinking about. So I'd be doing standup about, you know, whatever being Filipino or being half Jewish or the Constitution or pornography or whatever. But after a while, I'm like, I don't. I don't give a about. Like, I. I can't make myself care about these jokes anymore. All I can think about is what I really want to be talking about, which is my son. And so I started to try and find ways to talk about that. And the first one was at the Asian Comedy Festival in New York. And I would describe that show as horrific. People went from laughing very hard at 20 minutes of pretty good jokes, nailing it to going, wait, what the is happening?

[Pablo Torre]

Like, you lied to me.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

You can feel the room be like oopsie daisies. So I started working on it in earnest and found, like, other spots that were more amenable to me doing sad stuff. And that's kind of the beginning of the journey of that show. It is about Death and grief. It's called sorry for your loss. You might cry. If you cry, that is fine. If you don't cry, that is rude.

[Pablo Torre]

I was looking at the, the timestamp. I think you actually wait till like 28 minutes and 30 seconds before you actually say aloud the thing that you mentioned, which is that this is a show about my son dying.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yeah. I wish we talked about death more because 100% of us are going to die. Like if you, if you look around the room right now to your left and your right. Those are pre dead people. All of us. Yeah, me too. This is just a list of some of the people who have died or will die. Just to kind of on ramp us into this discussion. You've got you, me, Lady Gaga. It's gonna happen. Martin Luther King Jr. RIP Frank Sinatra, Mary Bonaldo. That was my babysitter, Martin Luther King Senior. Who by inductive reasoning must have been a person. Your mom, Jon Hamm, Mia Ham.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm realizing as a through line here in your work you do like listing. Listing.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Big people, big fan of lists.

[Pablo Torre]

But the fundamental desire that you articulate, which is. I wish we talked about death more. And this is all part of the wind up to your personal experience with death. Did you have that sentiment before your son died?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

No. No. Absolutely not. I didn't. I. I think I probably had the same desire to talk about death that any person who has not gone through something that they experienced as tragic had. So. Which is. I don't want to talk about that.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, a big zero.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yeah. Which is. I would absolutely. I have no interest in discussing this subject. But once it. Once you are affected by some kind of tragedy or loss, you. I don't want to say you. I became very aware of the fact that obviously this has happened to many, if not most people have felt some version of this and they're just keeping it quiet. And when my son died, we had, I, you know, tons of people that I knew, I. And I thought very well would approach me or message me and say, you know, I never told anybody this, but. And then some horrific story and you're like, oh, like I've been playing basketball with this guy twice a week, every week for five years and I did not know this. Like, I know so much about this guy and he doesn't tell anybody this. And so you're like entered into this community and I. It's just so weird that not everyone's in it. It's crazy that there. That some people have no idea it exists.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, we're pre members.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Exactly. That's exactly right.

[Pablo Torre]

But. But the question of how you would deal with this, you know, non comedians go to therapy, and perhaps you yourself.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Indeed, indeed. I have been to copious therapy.

[Pablo Torre]

And what's that like for you?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

I mean, therapy's great. I love. I love therapy. I think I crush at therapy.

[Pablo Torre]

You're giving your therapist Filipino nurses material.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

That's exactly right. I'm doing five minutes. She's like, okay, we got to go. I don't. Okay, can I just do my. I'm going to do five minutes for you right now of just straight. Stand up and just let me know what you think. I love being Filipino for a lot of reasons, but one is for sure that there are no bad stereotypes about us. And if you can think of one, I would say keep that to yourself. The only one about us that persists over here is that Filipinos are nurses. And that's fine because that's true. I mean, it's not 100% true. Right? It's more of a, like a square rectangle situation where not all Filipinos are nurses, but all nurses are Filipino. And I know you might be here now thinking, hang on a second. Second. I'm a nurse. I'm not Filipina. Bad news. Yes, you are. And then I do the bits to be like, while I'm doing this, really, I'm thinking about something else. I'm trying to put you in that audience. Who knows now that people who are doing these bits could be thinking about something totally different. And that's like the mindset that I have now walking around the world where you're like the. The. The guy doing flips on the subway. Also his something. You know, like everyone has some horrible thing happening to them that they're trying to push out of the way so, like, they can do this.

[Pablo Torre]

You're like a grief mentalist.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yes, exactly.

[Pablo Torre]

On the point of, like, people are learning who you are in the course of you doing these bits that are meant to also soften them such that they can absorb what you want to hit them with. You also introduce a fact that I didn't know until I watched your show. And it made sense to me because of the whole Asian thing, which is that you were a math tutor.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

That's right. So I taught standardized test prep for, I want to say, like, 15 years.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, my God. Can you explain, like, your thought process on math being the way into this thing that would then recur throughout your show?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

I love math. I'm not like, you know, I'M not a great mathematician. I was a pretty good tutor. And one of the things that had always fascinated me was the idea that 0.9 repeating equals 1. Basically, the fraction 1/3 is 0.3 repeating. I think you. You know that on some level, if you've been to any kind of school, it's 0.3 repeating.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

And the fraction 2/3 is 0.6 repeating. If I add 1/3 and 2/3, what do I get? Anybody? One. Excellent. And if I add 0.3 repeating and 0.6 repeating, what do I get anyway? 0.9 repeating. Very good. One equals 0.9 repeating. Now, the first time I saw that, I almost had a panic attack. What are you talking about? They can't be the same. They look very different. And there are other versions of proving that. For example, for two numbers to be different, there has to be a number in between those two numbers, right? So, like, I know that 2 and 3 are different in several ways, but one of them is, I know that 2.5 is in between those two numbers with 0.9 repeating. And 1. You couldn't tell me a number that's between them. There's no way to fit anything in there. That's because they're the same. And it kind of blew my mind. You think things are one way, but they can also be another way.

[Pablo Torre]

This part of your show did make me like, I. I'm sorry if it's. If it's. If it feels like the math was the most revelatory part of this. I was like, holy.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

You kept telling people, you got to go see this math show. And then he does a show about grief. Oh, God.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

The show's about his son. And then if that's not enough, now we're teaching math. There are three people left listening to this episode, but they're valued. We value you, listener.

[Pablo Torre]

The question then of like, okay, I'm going to introduce the premise. We're at the 28 minute mark, right? And it's like, time to actually say the thing. Your approach to that. How did your real life sort of experience inform how you wanted to then finally invite the audience into what has been at the forefront of your brain ever since this happened?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

My experience in life is that telling people about it in a way that is pretty frank and, you know, unornamented is way easier than any other thing. We don't have two kids. We have three. Truman is an identical twin, and his brother Fisher died when he was 34 days old. And that is what this show is about. And I know that is the saddest sentence in the English language. My son died in that moment. What ends up happening is the person you're talking to, their world kind of flips upside down. They think about their own kid. It's totally impossible to believe that what I'm saying could possibly happen.

[Pablo Torre]

There's a discomfort.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Like a fundamental. Like, oh, no.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yeah, exactly. But I think it's also like, oh, there's no reality. Because, like, in reality, your son doesn't. Sons don't die and parents die. Grandparents, your friend, maybe your friend dies, but the generation below you, that person doesn't die. And I think for someone to really internalize the possibility that could happen, like one of the promises the universe makes you is that that's whatever horrible will happen in your life, that won't be one of the things. You might have a disease, you might be in an accident, whatever. Your kids will be fine. So I feel like I have to let the audience be like, we're. We're. Like, we're hanging out. We're friends. You know me. I know you. Now I can. Now I can tell you something.

[Pablo Torre]

Sorry for. Your loss was just sort of like the culmination, it feels like, of a good cry.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

Which is the podcast.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Exactly.

[Pablo Torre]

And your first guest was your boss.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

Stephen Colbert.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yep.

[Pablo Torre]

Who I would consider, by the way, like, your show, between the two of you, has two elite grief analysts.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

You lost your father and your brothers when you were 10. Yes. Is that right? Do you remember? And would you talk about the moment? Do you remember learning about, like, when you learned about it?

[Jacqueline Novak]

Yes, I remember. And that's a good second question, which is, are you willing to talk about it? Because it's a hot moment, you know? Yeah, it's almost feels physically hot. I was told to not take the bus home from school. My brother Billy picked me up, and he took me home, and I went in and he said, mom's upstairs. And I looked over into the living room as I went up, and a couple of my siblings were in there who didn't live at home.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

And.

[Jacqueline Novak]

I got upstairs, went to the.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

End of the hallway.

[Jacqueline Novak]

My mom was in there, and she was lying on the bed as if she had been thrown there or slapped down by a giant. And she turned to me and said, come here, or put her arms out, which meant, come here, and said, there's been an accident, and that's it. She didn't say anything else for a long time.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

To hear him talk about it, even as we were sitting there Recording it. There's. Sometimes this is gonna sound so corny, but there's times when you're sitting there listening to him, and you're like, this guy's a genius.

[Jacqueline Novak]

Grief is perfectly sound and whole and just a medicine you don't want to take. You have to experience it. You have to go through it. There's no going around it. And we're so afraid to experience grief, partly, I think, because it feels like you're dying, too.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

He's very intentional about his words and tries very hard to say what he means and also what he thinks people should hear. And that's not something that I had starting out as a comedian. Like, I was starting out as a comedian. I only wanted to make people laugh. And it's sort of like, by any means necessary. And there are a lot of jokes from when I started out, even jokes that I've done on TV that I'm like, you know, I wouldn't have done these jokes if I ever thought people were going to hear me say them. I would have done something else. And Stephen is someone who really reinforces, like, the value. There's so many comedians who reinforce that, but the value of saying something worthwhile, whether you're speaking, whether you're doing comedy or not, what's the point of what you're saying?

[Pablo Torre]

In your show, you are frank and direct about how you talk about your wife feeling.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

One thing that I do remember perfectly is being in a little side room where they put you if the worst possible thing has happened. And Carrie saying to me through tears, how am I ever going to be happy again?

[Pablo Torre]

And I recall, like, people around me audibly crying at that point. How do you work through with her, what you're going to say?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

She's seen every version of it all along the way. And anything that I. I mean, the answer to that question is meticulously, because the show is really for me, and then it's for her, and then it's for my kids. So that's, like, who the show is for. And the fact that it, like, it has had this sort of ancillary, These, like, ramifications of being helpful to other people, it's is great because that's how I can continue to do it. But really, like, it's for those five people, me, my wife, and my three kids, one of whom is Fisher, who died. So if there were any part of the show that she's like, ah, I don't like this part. It's gone.

[Pablo Torre]

Did she give notes on how you described her innards looking during a C section.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

No, it's not. It's not usually that hands on in the discussion. It's more like I was in the C section a little early and you just see, I know there's dudes out here who know what I'm talking about. They bring you in there early and you're like, oh, here's my wife over here. And then here's all the other, the parts of my wife on another table over here. I see as the doctor is pulling stuff out of my wife that is not babies, whatever else is down here, I don't know. To this day, your pancreas, your brain doctor's pulling all this stuff out and putting it over here on another table. So like here's my wife and here is a freaky tapas of my wife that did remind me of a tapas.

[Pablo Torre]

It leads us to a thesis that you make that you launch in your show about, I guess why we're bad at talking about death and why we're bad at processing grief.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

For most of modern history, grief was very public ritual. Wailing, the death whale, keening, just a bunch of ladies screaming. That was totally normal. All over the world, you'd be living in the woods, have 12 kids, seven of them die. And everyone's like, yeah, no, if you got sick, you just died. Runny nose, you're dead. Headache, dead, rash, dead. So grief was terrible, but it was normal.

[Pablo Torre]

So who do you blame for why the people around you are so clumsy?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

I mean, one of the things I put forth in the show is that science has gotten so good that it's, it's, it's so hard to die now when you get sick, you don't go to your priest, you go to your doctor. You don't get sicker, you get better. And once people stop dying, death isn't normal anymore. It's not inevitable, it's a failure. It's a shame. So we don't talk about it. We keep our grief to ourselves. In my mind, I imagine like a sci fi future in which like you have to try to die. Like there, like you have to, you have to pay to it to get your way out. But the, the, the medicine and the scientific advances have gone so far that now it's like kind of embarrassing when somebody dies. It's like, well, you get questions like, well, did you try, did you see this? Kind of, what about this? It's like, I don't know, dude, he died. I don't tell you.

[Pablo Torre]

But in terms of what people told you, in real life, in the aftermath, like, what. What was that experience?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Like, anything anyone said was nice. Probably the most awkward exchange that I had was in the building where we lived. A woman who lived there, who I knew but not well. I'm in the elevator with her, and she's, like, crying super hard. And I'm like, what's going on? And she's like, my cat is sick. And then she asks, you know, how the twins are doing? Because she knows that we've had twins. And I tell her that one of the twins has died. And you've never seen someone feel more bad in the. In the history of the world for this woman to be like, I was just crying about my cat, and now I can't believe how little that. You know. Like, you could. You could see her processing, like, mountains of guilt.

[Pablo Torre]

How did you feel as you watched her process that?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Mostly just bad for her. I mean, like, that some version of that happened a lot. When I came back to doing comedy, a lot of people were like, you know, oh, dude, your dad, twins. How's it going? And for a very brief time, I would just be like, oh, it's great, because, like, what am I gonna do? But that just started to feel up to me. I couldn't hold that. You feel like an alien. Because I'm like, in this world, and no one here understands what I'm talking about. No one could possibly understand it. I have a special sadness that is all completely my own that has been heretofore unknown in the universe. And so I felt that way all the time. And that's part of the reason, I think, that I ended up with this, like, massive buildup of, I have to talk about this or I'm crazy. I think of it like a language where it's like, I speak this grief thing and I can talk to whoever, but once somebody else I know also speaks it, it's so much more comfortable. I knew a guy once who was involved with a university in Holland that was starting to switch all its classes to English. And he said the biggest shame that they felt over there, they were very happy to do it. But the big regret, the anxiety where the teachers were like, we're not funny in English. And I feel that way about this grief thing, where it's like, I have an ease of use with this language now that only people who speak it understand with me. Yeah, that was a very convoluted way.

[Pablo Torre]

No, I love it. I love it. While simultaneously, I'm like, yeah, that is a convenient alibi for the Dutch.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

That's what's been holding them back.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You just don't get it.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

This is very funny. Yeah. You have to imagine is, you know, something like that. That's my Dutch accent.

[Pablo Torre]

Better than mine.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Thank you.

[Pablo Torre]

But when the language is unlocked, what do you get to do?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Great question. Wow, what a good one. When the language is unlocked, you get to talk about it in a way where you don't fear for the other person's safety. Like, basically the thing you're worried about when you're talking about grief is I'm going to say to you, some ugly, dark, and you are not ready for it. You have not felt this before. You don't know that it exists. So you, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you will either start to kind of tune out, which I definitely see, or you will completely disintegrate in front of me. Like you'll, I, I will obliterate you by telling you a true thing about the world that you did not know. Right. And so with people who have been to the bottom in that particular way, you don't have to worry about that because they've already, they're, they, they know how far down it goes and they've already been there, and so you're not worried about hurting them with it.

[Pablo Torre]

But even the commonalities of, of, of this language, like, you know, not all grief is the same.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yes, totally.

[Pablo Torre]

So the idea of like, oh, I speak this dialect, which is a profound. Again, the sentence that you articulated. There might not be a sadder one than my child has died feels like its own tribe.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Totally.

[Pablo Torre]

But then what have you learned about the ability for others to access across different experiences? Is there is, what's, what's the common sort of ground you found?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

I mean, my experience is that, I mean, really crudely, the longer your child was alive. Generally, if I know someone who has lost a 10 year old, there's a part of me that's like, okay, that's a different category I was gonna ask.

[Pablo Torre]

About than what I had this very thing.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

And then I have people who I know who, who've miscarried or, you know, whatever. There's not much less time than 34 days. But we've lost younger children. I don't know that it's more grief or whatever, but if he had died at five years old, I, I do think it would have been harder. Whatever, whatever that is. I, But I don't know. You know, I think I'm also cautious at any point to speak as to, like, of course, as an expert on anything. I'm just like a guy that this happened to, as opposed to like a griefologist.

[Pablo Torre]

That's. We're going to have you chironed as guy that this happened.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Guy that this happened to.

[Pablo Torre]

But even in that, in that sort of diversity of sad possibilities, I am now conscious of how we gotta get some laughs in here, man. And so when you are deciding, okay, I'm going to begin to use my audience, I'm going to begin to train them in the art of this language in limited ways in the course of the show that you're doing for them, then you're like, okay, but I can't obliterate them. What did you want the audience to feel?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

That's these are, man, you should have a podcast. I'm sure there's an answer to that question. But what, what I will say is the reason I do this show, for me, yes. And I say this in the show, is to keep him alive. Is that. And in a way that I never would have said before he died. That is not, you know, religious to me, he is very much alive. So what I wanted the audience to feel is that that is true.

[Pablo Torre]

So I had the experience of. I had not felt myself feel things this way before, which is an indictment of me on a fundamental level, but also a compliment to you. What is the feedback that you've got? Because it's not just all people being like, thank you for this important work. I imagine there are also some things that are, I don't know, what's it like to get? What are the off beat sorts of things?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yeah, so. So most of the feedback, like down the middle is great. Oh, you know, this was. Thank you so much for doing this. A lot of the feedback is here's a story about something horrific that happened to me. And this show helped me process that in some way. Some of the feedback. The Times wrote an article about, like people doing comedy about grief. And I, like a goddamn genius, read the comments. Oh, no. And the comments in there, people hadn't even seen the show. So the comments in there were like, how dare this guy do this thing? It's, you know, sacrilegious, it's perverse, whatever. There's those kinds of comments.

[Pablo Torre]

That's a good movie poster quote too.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Sacrilegious and perverse. One of my sister's best friends came to the show and afterwards I asked her how her kids were doing and she said, well, I mean, thank God they're alive, am I right? And it Was so shocking, but also, like, I loved it. Like, it's just one. It's one of those things where, like, so often when you talk, that person, I don't think understands, like, the grief language, so to speak. But that's someone, like, being real with me about how they're actually feeling. And after years of talking about this, I find that very refreshing for someone to just say something that absolutely you should not say. Felt really nice and open. And it's like one of these moments where, like, oh, you're a person.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. So you're sort of like a through line in this conversation is wishing that a taboo was not. Yes, a taboo. And the taboo is a taboo because it's meant to. To protect you.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yes, totally.

[Pablo Torre]

You weak person that can't handle hearing what people might actually think about the thing that you're desperate to actually hear them say aloud.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And so the thing that I am circling as you articulate, I want this show to be a way of keeping my son alive, which I believe, speaking as you, that he still is. That genuine sentiment of he's still here. When did that set in for you? A conviction that this is actually. This is not a rationalization. This is not a way of coping. This is just my worldview because that comes through in the show.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

I mean, it's gonna sound kind of weird, but it happened in doing the show. Like, the original version of this show that I first did at the Asian Comedy Festival or whatever, or that I did it.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm gonna find a tape of that.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

I. I promise you there is not. I didn't know it was the point of the show. I didn't realize until I said it. Like, you know what I mean? So at some point in the rehearsal process for this show, someone asked me, and I was like, oh, I have to articulate why I'm doing the show. And a way that this show was written, which is unlike most shows ever, probably, is that a lot of it is, like, me just talking and some. And audio recording it or transcribing it and then trying to, like, kind of brush it up. So at some point, it Never having been written down, ever, I just said, I'm doing this to keep my son alive. And it was like, oh, that's the. That's right. That is what this is for.

[Pablo Torre]

The math connecting to this realization. The idea of one thing can be this. And also that the device you use to persuade the audience is to teach us math and then use linguistic analysis to show that intellectually now, not just emotionally, that Contradictions. The dead can be alive.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

It really was about trying to be myself. And so, as someone who had tutored for 15 years, those were, like, principles that I had always taught to my students about, like. And I. I think it's about a little bit about my worldview, which is, like, don't be so sure of things. Be open to the idea that it could be something else. You know, I mean, you think that. Well, I mean, this is why I say this in the show a hundred times, but you think things are this way. And they might be. They might be this way, but they might also be a second, a third, a fourth. Might be many. There might be many ways all at once. And the math is an example of that. I talk about how G, H, O, T I. The letters G, H, O, T I. George Bernard Shaw supposedly said that G, H, O, T I could be how you spell the word fish. Because G H and the word enough makes a F sound. And the O in the word women makes an I sound. And the ti in concentration makes a sh sound. So you get F sh fish out of G, H, O, T, I. But of course, if you saw that written on a blackboard somewhere, you'd be like, that's a nonsense word. And it is. But it's also, according to the rules of phonetic English, that you either know. You know, actually, or that you know in your blood. It's fish. That is Fish. It's that.

[Pablo Torre]

Which happens to also be your nickname.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yes. My son's name is Fisher, and Fisher. Fish was what we would call him.

[Pablo Torre]

As a structural device. You are dropping these breadcrumbs that you then pick up at the end. And the quantum physics, I don't even. Is there a way to summarize the quantum physics here?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

I barely understand it myself. But the idea, basically. And if you're listening to this, and you're a particle physicist, and I say this in this show, just don't correct me. In quantum physics, they hold that under the right conditions, everything can be both a particle and a wave. A particle is in one place. Right? We're here now. But a wave, which is also you, under the right circumstances, can be in multiple places, crashing on shores simultaneously everywhere. We are not just particles, we are waves. We are not just where we are, we are everywhere. My son was not just a particle, he was a wave. His life, however short it was, leads to me being here. Something you will remember, I hope. Things can be one way, but they can also be a another way. That's the climax of this idea of Things being one way and another way, that sort of convinces me that my son could be this thing that you can hold, but it could also be this thing that's in motion. He could be here, but he could be everywhere, just like everyone. And thing is. And it may sound like complete bull, and that's fine if it does, but it's something that I have become convinced of in the last 14, 15 years.

[Pablo Torre]

When you are at the end of the show and it's. You use silence, you use negative space, pauses in an extraordinarily affecting way. The audience. Are you hearing what they're doing? What has been the range of responses from the audience, I mean, to that.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Well, the. The full range. People. People have all kinds of reactions to silence. I mean, mostly in the show, it's. You feel like they have a reverence for the subject, so they're pretty quiet. There's a lot of audible crying. I want you to have the space to just be sad about this. I. I don't want to protect you from the feeling. I want to, like. I don't want to drop you in it with. With. With no. With no safety around you. I want you to feel like you're safe. But I do want you to experience what it is to be sad and just live with that for a little bit. It's okay to go, oh, I'm this. I'm scared right now, and not have me immediately pop out and hit you with 10 jokes in a row before I do it again. There are. Obviously, the show is a comedy, and there's lots of times in it that are, I think, very funny. But there are also times when, if I'm doing my job right, you will really be affected by what has happened, and I hope that. I hope that you are. And I think that people are.

[Pablo Torre]

My favorite hypothetical, though, is someone in the audience in that big sort of crescendo at the end, and they just, like, do something that is not appropriate.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

We definitely had somebody farted during one of those. For sure. For sure. A long. A long, low fart. That's. That's one that has happened.

[Pablo Torre]

Do you know what you want to do next? Do you feel obliged to do something different?

[Michael Cruz Kane]

I think it's like, really artistically, I'm just trying to find what interests me and. And pursue that. I think a lesson that I have learned is to follow what seriously interests me as opposed to what I think other people will think is funny. I don't know if you know the comedian Jacqueline Novak. Yeah, she did a show about blowjobs that's like one of the most brilliant, singular shows I've ever seen. I saw it a couple times live. I watched it on Netflix.

[Pablo Torre]

Another single topic. Comedian.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

What is the penis to me? What is its nature? It's responsive, you know, springs up under certain conditions. That's why I think it has the soul of an artist.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

You know, what's cool to me about that is that only that person could do it. Nobody else could possibly have come up with this show. And so I hope to only make things that are like that. That's like, someone sees me do stuff and they're like that. Oh, oh, you're talking about that guy. Because no one else will have this joke or like this perspective or this style. That's what. That's what I want to be.

[Jacqueline Novak]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

So just to be clear, the way you wanted to end our conversation about. No. Who has passed away is Jacqueline Novak.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Jacqueline Novak show is incredible.

[Pablo Torre]

I wanna. I wanna do the blowjob thing, whatever that means.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

No, don't call it that.

[Pablo Torre]

Michael Cruz Kane, a man who is many things. Filipino, Jewish, potentially Turkish, handsome, you were gonna say, probably also that insofar as you are fractionally like me, ethnically speaking. Thank you for being happy to talk about this. And also, I would have to imagine, as you said before, fundamentally sad as in the process. I really, really, really appreciate you taking the time.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Thank you for having me. And to anyone listening to this, you know, thank you for. Thank you for listening. Doing this has meant a lot to me.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, man. It's really, really good.

[Michael Cruz Kane]

Beautiful.

[Pablo Torre]

To listen to. Sorry for your loss in full. Just go over to Audible where it is available right now. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production, and I'll talk to you next time.