Mike Birbiglia #4

Summary

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You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes

Mike Birbiglia #4 — November 22, 2023

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Episode Overview

In this highly conversational and boisterously funny episode, Pete Holmes welcomes his longtime friend and fellow comedian Mike Birbiglia for their fourth pod sit-down. Recorded in Birbiglia’s New York studio (after a sleepover, no less), the episode is a joyful deep-dive into friendship, comedy process, vulnerability, the nature of dinner parties, obsessions (with death and more), and unfiltered reflections on art, family, personal quirks, and how comedians mine their own weirdness. The episode especially centers on Mike's new special, The Old Man in the Pool, and addresses themes from facing mortality and self-consciousness as performers to dinner-party etiquette and the evolving purpose of sharing "real stuff" onstage.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sleepover Recap and the "Day Off" Philosophy

• [06:42] Mike kicks off with: "We had a sleepover last night. We should talk about that."
• Both reminisce about their unusual podcast recording logistics, underscoring the intimate, sometimes messy friendship dynamic.
• [07:12] Pete quotes Conan O’Brien: "'Martin Short is a day off.' That’s always my goal—make the host just relax and enjoy."
• [07:40] Mike analogizes healthy marriages to the “day off” dynamic: "Sometimes it’s not that doing the dishes is hard... it’s the act of, like, you show up and they're done. There’s something about... Yeah, you’re a day off."

2. Friendship Dynamics & On-Air Roasting

• [08:48] Pete recounts doing Mike’s podcast while Birbiglia looked “like a medium”—deadpan teasing about how Mike looked exhausted and spent.
• [09:05] Mike: "To give context, PD and I have been friends for a long, long time... maybe 20 years." The warmth is apparent, but so is the competitive, comic edge.
• [13:50] Pete: "That’s the secret [of stand-up]: you go towards the real thing."
• Playful burns, including Pete querying whether anyone checked if Mike was still alive during the last podcast taping.

3. The Comedy Process: Realness vs. Performance

• [13:50] Pete: “You always... and in your work, go towards the real thing. That’s the secret.”
• [37:04] Mike: “One of the most insightful things I’ve heard about comedy: I don’t like watching comics where I can tell they’re not talking about what they’re thinking about.”
• Mutual agreement that the best comedy stems from honest, often obsessive personal truths—Birbiglia’s work on death for his special being a major example.
• [40:29] Mike: “Everybody knows everybody’s stuff. Just look around. You kind of know everybody’s stuff.”

4. Dinner Party Social Dynamics: The Magic Number

• Animated analysis of how intimacy shifts as guest count enters “over the limit” at a dinner.
• [29:32] Mike: "Five people, it's civil... seven, now you're at WWE. You're watching different constellations of three momentarily take the focus."
• The perils of conversation “lulls” and the challenge of feeling heard in larger groups—likened to improv jams and standup sets.

5. Comedy Bits, Impressions, and the Creative Well

• Pete and Mike trade Bill Burr, Nick Kroll, and Mulaney impressions, reflect on how bits are born in conversation.
• [41:00] Pete: “I know you’re thinking about dicks and puss constantly. Everybody’s like at a steakhouse and bodies are segmented like filet...”
• [55:41] Mike notes how natural comedy arises: "When I first met Mulaney, half the things he says I go: 'Do you have that in the act?' ... he's unaware of how funny he is all the time. It's like the sink is leaking. Comedy."

6. Death, Obsession, and The Old Man in the Pool

• [35:10] Pete (steering to death): "Let me... steer it... to Old Man in the Pool... It's about death."
• [36:31] Pete (on Mike's show): "Do you think a lot about death?"
• [36:55] Mike: "I think standup is best when you're discussing obsession... I'm obsessed."
• Discuss how honesty about difficult, even uncomfortable topics is what draws crowds in—Mike notes the people most affected by loss are the ones that most need comic relief on death.
• The audience’s hunger/desire for comics to address important, taboo, or scary topics explicitly.

7. Personal Growth, Religion, and Spirituality

• Pete reflects on his shifting conceptions of God and the comic’s responsibility to honestly interrogate topics like belief, meaning, and consciousness.
• [50:41] Pete: “My God is love. And I really miss the old one... My God won’t talk shit... it’s a snooze. I miss the God that was dramatic.”
• [51:57] Mike (on the paranormal): "Do I believe in ghosts? Loch Ness monster? Sure. I don't know. If five people say they saw a 100-foot monster, I wouldn't go, 'No you didn't.' I'd go, 'Tell me more.'"
• Both hosts note the essential humility, openness, and sense of wonder that grounds their work and personal philosophies.

8. Family, Vulnerability, and Breaking Patterns

• Mike discusses The New One, his special/book about fatherhood, ambivalence, and collaborating with his wife Jen Birbiglia (who expresses herself through poetry intertwined with the comedy):
  • "I never wanted to have a child and all the reasons I never want[ed] to have a child and how I was right, and then how I was wrong..." [59:16]
  • Their daughter Una can’t comprehend she was ever unwanted because her parents are so doting in the now—a testament to how patterns can be broken.
• Importance of calling out family narratives, mythologies, and hidden family “scripts.”

9. Art as Catharsis: Why We Love Horror, Mortality, and the Absurd

• The function of horror movies and dark comedy as ritual, societal therapy:
  • [65:14] Mike: Tells a story of drunkenly asking Darren Aronofsky why the protagonist of The Wrestler must die: "He dies so the audience can experience it but not have to live it."
  • Pete: “We want a third-person death”—audiences crave safe access to deep anxieties.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [07:40] Mike: "I think marriage is like that in the sense that it’s not that doing the dishes is hard. It’s... you show up and they’re done. There’s something about... Yeah, you’re a day off."
• [13:50] Pete: “You always... and in your work, go towards the real thing. That’s the secret. And I know we’ve said this every time we talk, but... what is the secret?”
• [29:32] Mike: “Five people, it's civil... seven, now you're at WWE.”
• [37:04] Mike: “I don’t like watching comics where I can tell they’re not talking about what they’re thinking about.”
• [40:29] Mike: "Everybody knows everybody's stuff. Just look around. You kind of know everybody's stuff."
• [50:41] Pete: "My God is love. And I really miss the old one. My God is so loving... my God won't talk shit... it's a snooze. I miss the God that was dramatic."
• [63:47] Pete: "I have dreams that I'm fighting my dad a lot... and I wake up and I feel that, like what's going on? Then I watch a movie that gets into that muck and I go, thank you. Thank you."
• [65:14] Mike (quoting Aronofsky): "He dies so the audience can experience it but not have to live it precisely."
• [67:31] Pete: "Every night I die, every morning I'm reborn."
• [73:34] Mike: (On Pete's classic closing) "Say, 'keep it crispy.'"

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Important Timestamps

• 06:42 — Mike opens on the recent sleepover; friendship dynamics set the tone
• 08:48 — Pete teases Mike’s “deathly” appearance during podcast recording
• 13:50 — Insight on honesty in comedy, “the real thing”
• 29:32 — "Magic number" for dinner parties, detailed riff on social dynamics
• 35:10 — Pete transitions to discuss “Old Man in the Pool” and death themes
• 37:04 — Mike’s “tell the truth on stage” philosophy
• 50:41 — Pete’s bit on God, love, and spiritual evolution
• 65:14 — Mike’s anecdote about Darren Aronofsky on mortality in The Wrestler
• 73:44 — The “keep it crispy” ritual and Birbiglia’s hardest laughs

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Closing Notes

Throughout, the episode is filled with affectionate digs, “inside baseball” comedy talk, and a tension between Pete’s exuberant tangents and Mike’s understated wit. The conversation ebbs with rare vulnerability—whether about avoidance of death, yearning for attention, parental regrets, or the ways comics see through one another’s acts. Hilarious impressions, running bits, and recurring themes about authenticity, mortality, and childhood trauma are all on display, balanced between earnest reflection and relentless riffing.

Final Moments (73:44):

• Pete: “What’s a time in your life you laughed harder than any other?”
• Mike: “When I’m home with my family over Christmas... telling stories about when we were kids and everyone just laughing and laughing.”

Shared sign-off:

Pete: "Would you say, keep it crispy?"
Mike: (Broken up by laughter) "Keep it crispy."

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Recommended for:
Fans of confessional comedy, anyone curious about the creative process, those who love hearing comics in full “hang” mode, and anyone interested in how performers balance personal pain, joy, art, and absurdity in their lives and work.

Transcript

[Mike Birbiglia]

You made it weird. You made it weird. You made it weird.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, yeah, you made it weird.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes, you made it weird.

[Pete Holmes]

You made it weird with Pete Holmes.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

What's happening, weirdos? This is, this is exciting. This is Mike Birbiglia. We, we recorded this when I was in New York just a week ago and we shot it in his studio. So if you're watching this on the video, it's going to be a little bit different.

[Pete Holmes]

It's going to look like Mike Studio.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

And also the first, I think it's like 10 or 15 minutes are there's no video. So on YouTube it'll be whatever, whatever Joe throws up there. But the video will kick in about.

[Pete Holmes]

10 or 15 minutes into the conversation.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

So if you only want to see it, you can skip ahead to that.

[Pete Holmes]

But you can listen to it the whole way through.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

So happy you guys are here. Not much to say.

[Pete Holmes]

Up top.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

My Netflix special, I Am not for Everyone is available now. We have new Batman videos on my YouTube channel, which is at Pete Holmes. Hope you guys like those. And tour tickets [e-mail] all that stuff. Pretty easy stuff. Pretty easy. This episode is brought to us by one of my absolute favorite Pete's picks in the world, which is Modern Mammals. Which is. What is it? I could. I can basically say this in five seconds. Modern Mammals is a shampoo that's like not a shampoo. Because when you wash your hair with shampoo, your hair looks like shit. It looks like absolute shit. It looks like a bale of hay that you put in the dryer and then you stapled to your head. Looks terrible. My whole life I didn't wash my hair when I wanted my hair to look good. Modern Mammals comes in. I don't know how they did it. They developed this new formula. It's kind of like mud. You rub it in your hands. Smells great. Rub it through your hair and you rinse it out. It cleans it. So we're talking comb, brush, goes right through. Feels great, looks great, but it looks great. That's the key is it looks like I washed my hair yesterday.

[Pete Holmes]

It's fucking nuts.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

I wash my hair now before I go on tv. That's like I did the talk this week. Wash my hair before I go on the talk. What is going on? They figured it out. It's shampoo that cleans your hair but makes it look like you didn't wash your hair with shampoo. It's a total, total game changer. They have bars which are ph balanced, fragrance free, minimalist Packaging, no plastic. So if you want like an earth friendly, great way to easily rub it in your hands.

[Pete Holmes]

Get in here.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

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[Pete Holmes]

You got to see the reviews.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Guys are losing their mind. It blows their mind. Once you use it, I swear you're hooked for life. I am hooked for life. You can't go back to regular shampoo after this. And it's a small grassroots punk rock company. These guys were just fed up with shampoo frying their hair. And they set out to create something new for guys to have perfect hair. A shampoo alternative. It's six seconds to have a perfect hair day on demand. Modern mammals couldn't. Can't say enough about it. Go to modern mammals.com weird. Where people can get a combo deal and try both the bar and the bottle for 44 bucks for both. Once you do it, you're never going back. You're very, very close to perfect hair and never having that tumbleweed look for your big date or your job interview or whatever you need to look good for. Modern mammals.com/weird.

[Pete Holmes]

Also, of course, I'm wearing them right now.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

I only wear them the perfect Jean. I wore them for my Netflix special the Perfect Jean because they look perfect, but they also feel perfect. I like stretchy pants, but these are stretchy pants that don't look like stretchy pants. In fact, they don't even really. They do feel like stretchy pants, but you don't feel like you're wearing yoga pants or PJ pants, but they're kind of somewhere in the middle there. Meaning it's 2% spandex, 2.5% rayon. Although they have a new 99% cotton version, which are dope. They also make khaki jeans, like khak jeans. Khaki jeans. They have it. They have you covered. They have your lower half covered, and they stretch. I don't know why we're not wearing these pants. These pants are total game changers. They give you extra room so your nuts aren't crushed, your nuts ain't crushed. And they provide the only True home for your bone. They're also incredibly, incredibly well crafted. The colors are awesome. They're basically high end designer jeans that feel as comfortable as a baby's butt. You might even forget you're wearing pants. I love them. I did a complete overhaul. The Perfect jean has changed my jean game. They look incredible and they're comfortable enough to sleep in. I have. I have slept in them. And they're not. They're not just fucking cotton khakis. If you want khakis, you get the khaki colored ones.

[Pete Holmes]

Look dressy fucking great.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

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[Mike Birbiglia]

And.

[Pete Holmes]

And.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Thank me later. Modern mammals. Perfect gene. Two standards. Get them both. Get them for someone you love. This holiday season, pretty much any man that washes his hair and wants to look good or wears jeans and wants to look and feel good. Modern mammals, Perfect gene.

[Pete Holmes]

Boom.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Thank me later. All right, enjoy my chat with the wonderful Mike Birbiglia, whose new special, the Old man in the Pool will be or is available. I should have looked that up. It either will be or is available. I'm pretty sure it is available on netflix.com, the website. It's incredible. I've seen it several times. Check it out. Check out everything Mike does. Check out his podcast. Working it out. He's so good and one of my dearest friends. We make fun of each other a.

[Pete Holmes]

Lot in this podcast, but know that.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

That'S out of love and don't forget.

[Pete Holmes]

To get into it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Let me start by saying we've seen. We had a sleepover last night. We should talk about that.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

We did have a sleepover.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I know it's your podcast, but we should talk about it.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I don't mind, buddy. I could use a day off, you know what I mean?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, I know. I know.

[Pete Holmes]

You know.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, sometimes I go on podcasts and either they take over or I take over, and I'm kind of good with either.

[Pete Holmes]

Either way.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Yeah. If someone takes over.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I'm stealing that phrase from Conan. Who? We were just talking about this guy. He said, Marty Short. Martin Short is a day off. I've said that many times.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I love that.

[Pete Holmes]

Because that's always been my goal when I do late night, is I want the host to say, you're a day off. I'm always unabashedly going for, thank you for making it so I could just not just sit there. Yeah, but they don't have to steer. They can laugh, they can interject, but they don't have to pull it out of you.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Everything's like that. Like, I think marriage is like that to an extent. Right, Mark?

[Pete Holmes]

Marriage.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Mark, Marriage. Yeah. I think that marriage is like that in the sense that it's like, sometimes it's not that doing the dishes is hard. We all know how to do the dishes. It's the act of, like, you show up and they're done.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, that's right.

[Mike Birbiglia]

There's something about. Yeah, you're a day off.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

No, that's one of the biggest cliches that is true.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that like. And not even sex. It sounds. When I say like doing the dishes is foreplay, it means like, val's gonna give me what I want.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Which is a right fucking. It's not that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Wow. You bec. You can become that guy.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You mean. No, that's you. That's part of you.

[Pete Holmes]

Like a more popular comedian. Like, if I was saying things like that, people would be like, thank you.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes. Yeah. Right?

[Pete Holmes]

You do look much better today. Speaking of making fun of each other.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm more and more well rested.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm glad. I was worried about you.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We. Oh.

[Pete Holmes]

So I did your podcast, and for 20 minutes, I was like, are you on your way out? Like, you looked like. You looked like a medium. I wanted to ask you to ask questions to dead people. I know. Cause you looked like you had one foot in the River Styx.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I get it. I get it. So to give context, PD and I have been friends for a long, long time and long time. Borderline, maybe 20 years or something.

[Pete Holmes]

Borderline personality disorder.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Borderline personality. 20 years. And. And. And then we've been on each other's podcasts a lot. And so he's on this new. Working It Out. Might be my fifth time. So today I'm on. You made it weird. But yesterday we recorded him on Working it out, and there's great jokes on there that are.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

New jokes we're working out. Yeah, but you came. But we met on a Sunday because you're on tour. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And I just done D.C. and I came in on Sunday. And you're not used to recording on Sunday. So you came in looking like. I mean, you look squashed.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, I look like something was wrong.

[Pete Holmes]

And I looked all. I mean, I felt juiced, like I had been working. Like, you know, I had done shows the night prior. So when we were recording, I had been on stage, like, 12 hours earlier.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Early or maybe less. So I felt, like, virile and ready to go. And you looked like I was interrupting a family man. Sunday.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes. So you saw family. You saw family Mike. And then this morning, you slept over our house.

[Pete Holmes]

And I saw Morning Mike.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Morning Mike.

[Pete Holmes]

And I said, this is key. I'm glad you're good. This is good. This is worth mentioning. I saw you. I was on your little outdoor area.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And I saw you through the glass getting coffee or shuffling around in basically those slippers that are bare feet. You didn't have those on, but that was the vibe. I was like, oh, my God. Mike is, you know me in the morning. Comedian. And we do.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, what element does a comic let you into their life? Seinfeld. He had you over for dinner, maybe, or lunch.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, I never had.

[Pete Holmes]

No, no, no. I don't mean literally. I mean, like, his audience knows him in a suit.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, okay. I followed that.

[Pete Holmes]

We. Were you getting an Eggo out of the toaster.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, that's what you're saying?

[Pete Holmes]

That's what I'm saying.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, I didn't even follow that.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm saying.

[Mike Birbiglia]

When you were saying that before.

[Pete Holmes]

It's kind of an indication of the intimacy level.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You go, like, I'm a little tired. I'm a little raw.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

Like. And I just need to kind of.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Tell somebody, I'm enjoying this.

[Pete Holmes]

This story.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm enjoying this impression.

[Pete Holmes]

What's funny is you talk that way off stage, too. We had dinner last night, and every once in a while, we're all kind of performing because it was a bunch of performers. I don't mean it as a bad thing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

But it come back to you. And you'd be like, no, I know.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm like, wow.

[Pete Holmes]

And then you tell this. Great. You had dinner with Marty Short. We're back.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

What happened? Tell me about a dinner with Marty Short. We'll ask you about Old man in the Pool, which premieres on Netflix.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, the. And thank you. And thanks for. You probably saw Old man in the Pool three.

[Pete Holmes]

Of course I did.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Two or three times, probably.

[Pete Holmes]

Of course I did. And I loved it, and it was fantastic. And there's a Drawing of the. Of the set design, which I really appreciated. You're just so deliberate. Like, I feel like I'm out there. I'm a patch of wild, growing Irish moss that every once in a while I'm like, look at that. It really looks beautiful. And you're out there making us all look dumb because you got like a bonsai tree and you're trimming it and you're putting clean white stones at the base. That's what I mean by the set design and the light design. The lights shift and I'm sitting in the crowd going like, what the fuck? And you know what? Can I also give you another comment?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, please.

[Pete Holmes]

When we were.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I wanna. I was. I was about to discredit myself and just be like, that was Seth Barish and Beowulf, Barrett and Hannah and Aaron and all these guys.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what all the curators do. They go, but I asked someone to do it. Shut up. You still ask someone to do it, right?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right?

[Pete Holmes]

Doesn't. Oh, you got help, right? I'm not asking for help. And that was the other thing when we were doing bits, and I'm just so privileged to be your friend, is that I would tell you, like, I'm working on a joke about thinking about getting a vasectomy. This is not a spoiler. You should still listen to Working it out. It's great. But, like, you always, and in your own work, go towards the real thing. And I'm saying, like, oh, having a child is so much harder than I thought. And then I had some funny vasectomy jokes, and you're like, no, talk about that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You know, like, how it's so hard.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, that's the secret. And I know we've said this every time we talk, but, like, yeah, what is the secret? We both of us tear up. By the way, you were like, oh, our episode was a two parter. And then you're like, no, it's a one parter. Last night, which. Which you said as a burn kind of. And you told that to Judd. You were like, hey, we did this two hour episode. Because I was like, maybe it'll be a two parter. And then I'm like, this isn't as good. It's a one parter. And I'm sitting there like a schmuck. No, as I go to bed last night, just a little bit. As I go to bed last night, I'm like, the part where I told you the secrets I tell about my parents. Part two, Wacko Jack O. Where you died last Night Wacko Jacko is amazing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's all in part two. It's in the second half.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, you're right.

[Pete Holmes]

What do you want to happen? I said you got tired after, not during. So after you're tired and you're like, what am I crazy? That's nothing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, no, no, you're right. You're right.

[Pete Holmes]

I got defensive. Let's see if it. I think it still will be a one parter.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's the Pete Holmes. I think that's the Pete Holmes Achilles heel. Defensive. Because as you know, I love you. I love you. I love you. Love your comedy. Love your new special. Love your tour, Love your new jokes.

[Pete Holmes]

What's the heel that I get?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I think you get defensive.

[Pete Holmes]

I think I do, too.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I think you have something that is kind of like corner dog when you're not cornered dog.

[Pete Holmes]

You're. I feel so seen and loved right now because I told you so last night. Judd Otsuko's husband, Ryan.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. And Jenny. And.

[Pete Holmes]

And Jenny, your wife. And me and my daughter.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. We're all here at the apartment.

[Pete Holmes]

I hate when people go like, and she was my date. But I did feel a bond with Una.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God. And she was my date. I hate.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, no.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I hate universe.

[Pete Holmes]

Me too. My dad goes, how's my little girlfriend?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm like, God, stop it.

[Pete Holmes]

Stop it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Stop. Stop it.

[Pete Holmes]

Please stop, Stop.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Let me. Stop. Let me cut you off right there.

[Pete Holmes]

But we're not. I. We're. That's a level of closeness we don't have. I can't be like, will you stop? That's gross. I can't. I just have to be like, well, she's doing very well, sir. What I meant was, I in. I was enjoying Una. We were writing poems together. We were having laughs together. So I felt accompanied, like a friend.

[Mike Birbiglia]

She's pure joy.

[Pete Holmes]

She's pure joy. That's all. I mean. So, anyhoozle, what was I saying? Oh, so the cornered thing, we're gonna bring it right back to you. But that. I don't need that. No, I know, but this is your episode. But as this is good audio of a friend lovingly saying, like, hey. I said, hey. I noticed. You look like you're gonna die soon.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You said it to my wife, and fortunately, my daughter.

[Pete Holmes]

My daughter is Mike. Okay. But you look great right now.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's really funny.

[Pete Holmes]

I needed some time to just get accustomed to how translucent you are.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God. Well, you and I. And hopefully we won't do it again. Today on my episode of Working it out. We just burn each other for like 10 minutes straight.

[Pete Holmes]

That's a lot of burning.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We come at each other so hard.

[Pete Holmes]

A lot of Bill Burr impressions, too.

[Mike Birbiglia]

A lot of Bill Burr impressions you did. I mean, you do it on your podcast, but on mine you did a lot.

[Pete Holmes]

You went into every impression, every person that came up.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Swiss army impression, man.

[Pete Holmes]

It was Swiss army. And just like the Swiss army, you know, I wouldn't. Couldn't cut a piece of paper with those scissors. But, you know, they are scissors.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Technically, they're scissors.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

So anyway, my wound, and Val knows this is if I start to feel like I'm vanishing, which is so weird because all of my metaphysical and spiritual pursuits is to come to peace with the idea that we're not special. And then it's all just kind of like this one magnificent thing. It's not about an individual identity, but if you start taking away my individual identity against my will. So this will happen sometimes with dinner parties, without. And it was happening a little bit last night where it was me, you and Jed and Jenny. And I know my place in that. And then two new people come who are wonderful and I actually really want them to like me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And so it's just different. It brings me back to junior high. And that defensiveness that you hear when I say that's in the second part that you're saying needs to be cut. That's in the second part. I'm grateful for it. I'm going to put this to you too. My wound is also my strength.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

The thing that is our downfall is the other side of it is the pointy spear that we use to like get through the cobwebs.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So two things to unpack from this one is.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm sorry, I'm not done talking. Oh, I'm just kidding. I was talking so much. She was too much.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Please. So. So a couple things to unpack. One is I had you over and you really, to your credit, you went out of your way to come from D.C. up to New York. I was like, I saw your tour schedule. You're one of the favorite all time working it out guests of all time. People people email me about it. People message in the comments on Instagram.

[Pete Holmes]

They're all memes. Fake news. Speed Gnomes at Gmail.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, Speed Gnomes wants you back. I do. You know him. Speed [e-mail] sneat poems 102@gmail. No. So it was. It's a commonly and People will literally come to my shows and say, I love it when you and Pete Humps Bar. And so, I mean, we spar because we're not spars.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We're people who don't really spar with.

[Pete Holmes]

Other people usually hold the bucket for the boxer to spit in. It's like, what if they fought?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes, exactly. That's what it is. No, that's great. The. But so. So people are like, when's that again? And I'm like, well, we just live so far away from each other that it never quite works. And I went to Los Angeles recently, and Val took you out on a little, like, getaway thing. And so you're like, sorry, I can't do it.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, yeah, the surprise vacay.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right where Val.

[Pete Holmes]

The joke there was. Val just saw I was in town, but didn't see.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

I would say this if Val was here. She laughed too. She was like, I didn't see that. Every day. Had lots of things planned.

[Mike Birbiglia]

But I'll one for one you on the Val thing. So. So I'm like, will you come up and do the podcast? And it was. We had never done a Sunday. We only do Monday through Friday. That's when everybody's in. That's when my steps in. And I will do Sunday. And so you saw my Sunday self, which is a disaster.

[Pete Holmes]

It was.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And like a dad. A dad. The dad from Parenthood, basically, the Steve Martin from Parenthood, kind of like holding everything all at once. And then you saw Morning Mike this morning.

[Pete Holmes]

That was the most natural mic I've ever seen in my life. I was like, you've all. You should be by a coffee maker, and it's dripping in slowly, and you're just waiting for one cup to be in there so you can let it sizzle on the hot plate.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And so. So there's that. And then. Oh, this is a kicker. Didn't tell you this last night. It would make you feel subconscious or. I didn't want to let on. I let you. I told you. But I didn't tell you too much. I forgot I invited you to stay overnight. So we finish our podcast recording, and you and I had had text messages that were very loose. And so I'm gonna contend that.

[Pete Holmes]

But, like, I could pull it up right now, but I don't have to. No, no, you can trust me. When you said you can stay here. And I'd say, that sounds great.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes. So that happened because it's 800 bucks. No, no. I mean, New York hotels are crazy.

[Pete Holmes]

It's crazy. But 800 bucks.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's every city right now, by the way. It's. It's. Chicago's like that.

[Pete Holmes]

And there's no non $800 option.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Maybe DC is like that right now, but New York is particularly egregious. Hey.

[Pete Holmes]

Hey, Gary. Oh, man, you rushed.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You're okay. Sorry to rush, everybody. It's my up. He's. He has to catch a train at noon. We've been recording for this. We've been recording for this. You're okay.

[Pete Holmes]

It's all good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all mellow. It's all mellow.

[Pete Holmes]

This will just be for a clip or something. Nice.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's so nice.

[Pete Holmes]

Thank you for being here.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. So we've been recording for 15 for. For Pete's show. And then. And then the. Whatever video we get, we'll get. And we can also.

[Pete Holmes]

Those lights.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I know. It's nice, right?

[Pete Holmes]

See everything you're doing. And see, unlike your show, we're not gonna edit this out. I like this. I like them to hear.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We're gonna cut it out and send it.

[Pete Holmes]

We're gonna send it to you. Cut is such a funny. It's. You said it. Sort of mean.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm not kidding. You will not get this.

[Pete Holmes]

No, we will.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, no, you won't.

[Pete Holmes]

This is.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, this is the show. No, no, you won't.

[Pete Holmes]

Soda cans opening.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, no.

[Pete Holmes]

Staff discussing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I can't allow it.

[Pete Holmes]

You laughing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I can't allow it.

[Pete Holmes]

Because, Mike, we got to hear, like, people need to know that there are comedians like you that employ other comedians, first of all, and that speak to them compassionately, kindly, and let them bind the curtain a little bit.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Gary, get the fuck out of here. Turn the fucking camera. Go on and get out of here.

[Pete Holmes]

Gary's sweaty. He went up the stairs too fast.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Mabel, close that closet.

[Pete Holmes]

Mabel's. Mabel's. Sorry to be. It feels too personal to be checking your sweat levels, but Mabel's cool as a cuke.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, I know.

[Pete Holmes]

Mabel's fine.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, yeah. That Mabel. I.

[Pete Holmes]

Two at a time on the side.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I pointed out before Mabel. For Mabel is 22. It was 22.

[Pete Holmes]

Never afraid.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm like, I was more afraid when I was 22. I was afraid of everything.

[Pete Holmes]

I got married when I was 22.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

Can you imagine?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I can't believe that you got married when you were 22.

[Pete Holmes]

This is not how I really feel. But I remember after I got divorced, I was like, why didn't anyone stop me? Somebody stopped me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, but you didn't have anyone in your life who would have stopped you?

[Pete Holmes]

That's true.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Cause I know I'm thinking about who was in your life at that time, and it was a lot of people who were like, rah, rah, rah. Christianity for sure.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's why you need a Mike Birbiglio.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, you.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's why you need a friend that goes. You are, in fact, the consummate friend that goes, what are you doing? That's why, even roasting you, that you looked unwell.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, yeah, that's me. So Gary and Mabel, you guys missed yesterday on the podcast, or Gary didn't. That.

[Pete Holmes]

I was concerned for Mike, but what.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Literally was like, are you okay?

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

What service am I To my.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I know.

[Pete Holmes]

Mabel's like, thank you. Someone said it. See, you guys are all like, the frog getting slowly boiled. I walk in and I jump out of the hot water, and I go, Mike's. Mike's not good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm gonna speak to the camera and say, we're on. Pete Holmes, you made it weird. And Mike Birbiglia, we.

[Pete Holmes]

You look like you only eat Honeycomb cereal.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay, this will make no sense in this context. I'm trying to set up your video for your YouTube channel, brought to us.

[Pete Holmes]

By Honeycomb cereal based on your complexion.

[Mike Birbiglia]

This is. You made it weird. I'm Mike Birbigli. I'm the guest. The video today is only from now until the end. The audio, you can listen to the first 15 minutes on any Apple podcast anywhere you listen to. You made it weird.

[Pete Holmes]

I like when people say, wherever you find podcasts.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Pete Holmes]

Sometimes I say, whomever you find your podcast. But here on YouTube.com, you can watch the last 40 minutes, which is not bad. The first 20 wasn't that great. I'm just kidding. I liked it. See, that's something I feel like you.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Would say the last 50. 50, I think so. It's only 10, 10, 10. Great.

[Pete Holmes]

10, 10, 10, 10, 10,. Done. I can't do Burr anymore. I did it too much yesterday.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We went so hard on Bill Burr impressions in the episode yesterday.

[Pete Holmes]

I wish you could tell. I thought it was very interesting that you said, like, Bill loves comedy, but he's not super aware of you or. Or me. Like, he's focused on his thing, and then he has other interests he's really.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Into, like, fair to say what I've heard is interesting. I'm not close with him. It's like, what I've heard is he's really into, like, drumming right and like, sports.

[Pete Holmes]

I think that's completely. I think that's true based on my experience. But that means he's like a kind of like more like a real. Like a real person.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I respect it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Well, you and I get together, and we're not talking about anything except comedy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We talk about Bill Burr. We talk about Bill Burr, Kotska and Judd Apatow. Exactly. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Should we go back to that?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. So. Okay, so the two things I wanted to point out about last night.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And I'll bring Gary and Mabel up to speed on this, because they didn't know, so. But they know my habits. They know that this kind of thing would be true.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So we record working it out with Pete, and at the end of it, he goes, so I'm staying overnight.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. I'm like, my bag.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, we talked about it. I'm staying overnight. You invited me to stay overnight. Yes. Yes, you are.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, you are flattering yourself. You weren't that good at it. You were like, oh, What I should have said was Marriott.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. I spoke in my own joke structure from 2007. For some reason still on the wall.

[Pete Holmes]

If you want to distance yourself from it, maybe don't frame it and hang it up.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We're. We're, by the way, in the Working it out studio, and we are surrounded by tour posters and special posters, which is what Pete is.

[Pete Holmes]

What I should have said was, nothing is framed to my right. So you didn't know I was.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I didn't know. And then I went. And then I. Weirdly, I went down to Jen, and I go, okay, so Pete is. I. I offered to have him stay overnight, so he's staying overnight. And she goes, where? And I go, I don't know yet.

[Pete Holmes]

You have a couch.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. I go, he could stay in the office. But also, I go, we could have Una sleep in our bedroom in the bonus bed on the floor. And then he could sleep in Una's bed. And then we had to measure Pete and see if he would fit in Una's bed.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And he doesn't. Spoiler alert. He doesn't. Buddy slept there anyway.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't fit in most beds. Me and go. Me and Gulman aren't fitting in any beds.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's a wild thing. So then I wake up, and I'm.

[Pete Holmes]

Pinned down by a tiny civilization most days.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So part two of this is, you said to me, we're walking down these steps. You go, I'm staying overnight. I'm thinking, okay, all right, so that's happening. And then and then you go. And I invited John Apatow over to have. Okay. And I love Judd. He had come over the other night.

[Pete Holmes]

For dinner, too, invited Judd to have dinner, and we would meet here, and you were welcome to join if you wanted.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

It turned into a family style.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And then I had invited Atsuko Akatsuka, who's a comedian friend who's been on working out a lot and. And has been on. You made it weird, right? Yeah. And her husband Ryan. So then it all of a sudden, it became like seven people at a dinner party. And it was sleepover and a sleepover. So it was dinner, dinner party, sleepover. And it was. I think Gary and Mabel relate to this and. And the difference between. And I think this could be a bit. A five person dinner party and a seven person dinner party. All of a sudden, totally different.

[Pete Holmes]

That's exactly what I'm saying.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And this is a bit, by the way. I don't even know what the jokes are, but you know what to do. Mark my words. It's like you steal that bit or I steal that bit and put it on stage, and that thing will work. People know. People know. You got five people. It's civil.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Seven.

[Pete Holmes]

Seven people somehow taking shifts.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, somehow you're at the wwe. You're at like a. You're like a monster truck.

[Pete Holmes]

No, you're watching different constellations of three momentarily take the focus. And you know what else happens with seven that wasn't happening with five lulls?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, every.

[Pete Holmes]

And they. They've timed it. Psychologists have done studies. Every seven minutes, we would just be like, huh?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, yeah, here's the other one. And Ryan will be comfortable with me saying this because we're. We're close friends. So I say to Atsuko, I go, so, Atsuko, I want to talk. You talk to Una. Because some of the boys at school, they just. They chase her around. Like, did you have that as a kid? She starts answering. As she's answering, Ryan starts talking to me on my right. Yeah. So Otz goes on my left. He's. I go, no. Did you just. What? What are you doing?

[Pete Holmes]

I just asked about something else.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, about something else. Totally different thing. Yeah. Like, we got to keep these conversations under control. There's only seven of us here. Come on.

[Pete Holmes]

But it is over the limit. It's over the limit. See, I'll start to vanish.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What is the limit? Let's establish a limit. Gary, Mabel, what do you think? What's the. What's the right amount of people, Gary?

[Pete Holmes]

I Like four to five.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Gary says four to five. Mabel. Mabel says four to five.

[Pete Holmes]

I think seven. You know why? Because in seven, this happened. When you said that the boys won't stop chasing Una, I had a response. I'm sure Jen had a response. Yeah, I'm sure Atsuko had a response.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Held your fire.

[Pete Holmes]

Brian had a response. So you hold it. And now you have conversation, kind of. You know, you're backed up, but you're waiting. And by the time the window opens, it's too late. And that's what a lull is. That's what a lul is. That's a good bit.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Bring it on working out. Bring it on working out.

[Pete Holmes]

We're on working it out, baby.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I know, I know.

[Pete Holmes]

This is a crossover episode. This is like when ALF walks into Cheers. Hey, hey, Sam Malone, like, kill me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You're right. This is a crossover episode.

[Pete Holmes]

This is when the critic was on the Simpsons.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yep.

[Pete Holmes]

It stinks.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I never saw that. But the critic. I believe you, critic was great.

[Pete Holmes]

Anyway, we're two comics and you guys are comics as well, right? You got into this because you were like, let's clean up the hedge maze.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Of conversation, of parties.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right?

[Pete Holmes]

People think it's narcissism. It's not. It's a relief for everybody.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes, I'll talk. I know I'll talk. I know that you feel that way.

[Pete Holmes]

You do too.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We all know that.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, you do too.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, no, no.

[Pete Holmes]

It's compassionate.

[Mike Birbiglia]

How dare you think of an interesting insult.

[Pete Holmes]

You do too. You just got. You do too. You just got. You do, dude. Because you do too. It's nice. Look, when you. When I started, there was a lot more ego in it. It was like, finally I'm gonna get the attention that I deserve.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, sure.

[Pete Holmes]

I swear, I feel more in touch with the like. This was nice of me to think of something we could all enjoy. Just like a song, you know what I mean? Like, I work with Glen Hansard. That man just wants everyone to have a good sing song. He wants to have a good sing song and he wants you to forget your troubles. As I get older, the more I'm more Hansard than I am. 22 year old Pete, who was getting married and doing stand up comedy. Good combo. That's a good combo. You want to pursue the most difficult career path and also get Christian mingled.

[Mike Birbiglia]

But let's. All right, let's bring the dinner party into the universe of stand up comedy. Really similar. It's. It's arguably or you know what? It's More like. It's more like an improv scene. Well, that's why five people or seven people at dinner party, it's improv.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what? Old homes. He used to do two man improv. You know why?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

What am I gonna say?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Improv. We talk about it here all the time. Chris Gether and Tammy Sager are doing it right now.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm gonna stand on the back wall and watch you guys do a show. Beat it. You know. You know what the problem with the don't think Twice guys are too many of them beat. They can't all shine. So Gethard's all, should I put drawings in my submission? Beat it. You should have been in every scene. No breaks. Then you become Keegan. You want to be Keegan? Do two man or two person. I should say like human.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, Petey, you're on fire. This morning. All we needed. Gary, am I right about Pete? We just needed to get him some sleep.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, my God. I did sleep about 12 hours last night. It was fucking great.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You're a giant, man. You're so giant that animal control might take you away by accident.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, those tennis ball nets.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Most days my day ends when the tennis ball nets find me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I saw you in an animal control truck driving by. I go, good work, fellas.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. I feel that. I feel that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, you're big, big guy.

[Pete Holmes]

Let me. I'll steer it. Just because we don't have all the time in the world to old men in the pool.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

And say that you. It's about death.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's right.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you think a lot about death? Because yesterday it didn't look like you do.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Because I.

[Pete Holmes]

Because I looked on the death like a man. That was like, it'll be fine.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right?

[Pete Holmes]

I'll just eat white bread and mayonnaise.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, it's literally Nick Kroll's impression of me all the time. He'll just go, does anyone have mayonnaise? Like, literally. All right.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, that's what happens when you know someone since college. Their impression of you dates to, like, 1999.

[Pete Holmes]

Does anybody have some manners?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God, I want to go to brunch. Just wait, Gary. Mabel, your friends will mock you for things you did three years ago.

[Pete Holmes]

Anybody have any mayonnaise? Trying to do crawl.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's good.

[Pete Holmes]

That's okay.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You get.

[Pete Holmes]

You.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You. You do a good job getting your voice there.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, it's you. It's singing, it's pitch. Yeah, that's what I've noticed. And that's why some days you can't get it. And it's cuz your throat is off or whatever, you know, cuz you're trying to sing. Like when I did Morgan Freeman yesterday.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean? Because my voice is warmed up and all that stuff. But some days you try it and it comes out bad.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's interesting.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. So death.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So death. Yeah. So am I thinking about a lot?

[Pete Holmes]

Well, what made you want to do a show about it? Were you like, this is undiscovered? Like, I'll. I'll be the first to.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, it's not that. It's not that. It was, it was just. I think that stand up comedy is best when you're discussing obsession. And so, by the way, that's all.

[Pete Holmes]

You get to say on this show.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I had a feeling I wouldn't get to say a lot.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I felt you cut me off. I felt you going into press mode. You were answering. You were answering a question. So I'm going to disrupt that shit right here and say the Latin word for passion, passion was obsession. And it was actually a bad thing. The passions. Yeah, like, it was almost like, look out for your passions.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's what that, that's what the biblical passions means. Is that what you're talking about?

[Pete Holmes]

Passions of Christ?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

No, no, that just means torture. I don't know why they called it passions.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, but it was a kink some people had. What are you passionate about murdering now? I love this.

[Pete Holmes]

I wish we had a crucifixion every day, but then it wouldn't be special, Mark.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God.

[Pete Holmes]

Exactly.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, Judah seems to want to do it every day for like, come on.

[Pete Holmes]

Nine pieces of silver. Okay, so you're. You're passionate about death?

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, I'm obsessed.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, obsessed.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, it's. It's the, it's the thing of. And I'm not. This isn't a press talking boy, by the way. This is like.

[Pete Holmes]

This is like keeping you on your toes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I get you. I can tell. I can tell when comics aren't talking about the thing they're thinking about.

[Pete Holmes]

I love what you just said. What you just said. Like when I induct you into the Comedy hall of Fame and I'll get it wrong. I'll be like, I'll never forget. I'll talk like my dad when Mike Birbigli said, I'm tired of comics not talking about what I can tell they're thinking about. And we'll cut to John Mulaney in a glass jar. He's floating in a blue liquid Wonderful.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Why would he.

[Pete Holmes]

He's miked.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Why would he be in the blue liquid?

[Pete Holmes]

Cause he's. Something happened, and he's in a blue. He's being suspended like Ted Williams in a blue liquid. Stupendous. Cause it's the future.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't know why he's in the blue liquid.

[Pete Holmes]

It's the future. I'm old. You're old. Mulaney's the same age in a blue liquid. But he's just ahead.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Is it.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I've known Mike not yet.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Are wealthier people in blue liquid? Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. All the hot people are in blue liquid.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

The Kardashians. Blue liquid.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Yep.

[Pete Holmes]

They're all floating in blue liquid.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yep.

[Pete Holmes]

Some people have the yellow liquid. Yuck. Yuck.

[Mike Birbiglia]

A good bit for its time.

[Pete Holmes]

A very. People don't get it now.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

This coming from a yellow liquid. He hosts SNL 72 times in the liquid.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So when you induct me into the hall of fame and John Mulaney's in.

[Pete Holmes]

Blue liquid, and I look like Jabba the Hutt. You look like Paul Rudd hasn't been outside in 40 years.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Which I already look like. You would quote the thing I just said. Basically. Like, I don't like watching comics.

[Pete Holmes]

We went on a rift tang. But that is one of the most insightful things I've heard about comedy ever. And you've put words to a feeling. It's almost like you discovered a flavor. Like, we're eating chips for the Frito Lay Corporation, and you're like, umami. Because when I'm watching and I'm like, that's not how you feel. That's not who you are.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And frankly, that's not even what you're thinking about.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's not what you're thinking about, and I know it. I know. Isn't it weird how you know? That's one of the things I've learned from being a confessional comic. People always say, I can't believe you tell people all that stuff. And I go like, everybody knows everybody's stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

That's so funny.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Just look it around. You kind of know everybody's stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

Look around. Yeah, that's true.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You kind of know everybody's stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

I tried to do this for a while. I was like, hey, everybody out there that's addicted to pornography, we all know that's funny. We can see it in your face.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, you can.

[Pete Holmes]

I hate. Like, that's not entirely true. Because certainly there are people that are getting away with it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

But, you know, there's a sunken eye kinda. There's a way that you scan people's bodies.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

You're just.

[Pete Holmes]

I know you're thinking about dicks and puss constantly. Everybody's just. You're like at a steakhouse and bodies are segmented. Like filet.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Rump.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Because all you do is look at two dimensional images of hardcore pornography.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. That explains why this lunch is going so fast.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Weird.

[Pete Holmes]

Beat it, Elliot. I just made that up. I don't know anyone named.

[Mike Birbiglia]

But then you gave up pornography.

[Pete Holmes]

I try. I. I'm light on myself if I. If I have a little. I'm not rough.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I remember you did a while back, though. I remember you talking to you about it. You were like, I gave up pornography. I gave up this.

[Pete Holmes]

I gave up this g. What I'm talking about.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. I was always admiring of that, though, that you had this kind of. This kind of self improvement focus.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I do. We talked about that this morning. As I was taking my element and drinking my fiber and all this stuff. I was like, there is a Christian, a latent Christian. I'm impure, so I need to, like, fix.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, my God, yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Right?

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's what you're talking about. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

So that. That's in there. That's certainly the self.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Wait, when I was pretending to listen, that's what you were talking about?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And by pretending to listen, you mean the synapses behind your eyeballs hadn't yet been found. Like the first 30 minutes of your day. Just like.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. I just couldn't put words to it.

[Pete Holmes]

You look like tapioca in the microwave. But then you finally came to and we could barely tell. To be honest.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Gary, Mabel are laughing in a way that I don't like.

[Pete Holmes]

You have to.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's like you're really nailing me. And these folks who work on my podcast and are my dear friends are just like, pete is nailing Mike in a way that we maybe couldn't without it being, like, over the line.

[Pete Holmes]

This is what you do when I go and do Conan's podcast. You just make fun of Conan because.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, I know. I did the same thing with Conan. They love it.

[Pete Holmes]

I think he loves it too.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

With Conan, I'm a little more. A lot more gentle.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Keep in mind, this is your podcast.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. It doesn't feel like. Doesn't feel like it because we did yours and you did interview me, and I'm allowing you to interview me. And I shouldn't.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

But I do. I do forget what we're talking about.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

This show is sponsored by Better Help. I love Better Help. I love therapy. We talk about it a lot and how it's changed my life. And especially at the end of the year, the holidays can be a really tricky time for me personally. And it's been super helpful to talk to a professional in the past and still is. When I'm feeling those holiday blues, it's kind of weird when everybody else is so happy and you need to vent some stuff. But it's more than venting. Talking to a professional is greater than the sum of its parts. It seems like you're just talking to somebody, but something magical is happening that can be really transformative and healing. This time of year can be a lot. It's natural to feel some sadness or anxiety about it, but feeling but adding something new and positive to your life can counteract some of those feelings. And therapy can be a bright spot amid all of the stress and change. Something to look forward to, to make you feel grounded and to give you the tools to manage everything going on. It helps with family stuff, it helps with boundaries, work stuff, obviously relationships and all different types of feelings. Talking about it helps. It helps so much so if you're thinking about starting therapy, give better help a try. It couldn't be easier. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. You can even switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. So do something new, something positive, feel grounded, and get to work on yourself. Trust me, it helps find your bright spot this season with better help. Visit betterhelp.com weirdo today to get 10% off your first month. That's better help. H E L p.com weirdo For 10% off, give yourself a little extra boost this holiday season. Also, we're brought to us by our friends at Ritual, the best and only multivitamin that I've ever taken, that I actually take and feel ready to start my day. I talk to so many people about vitamins and they all kind of poo poo it. Like you just pee it out. You know when you take a multivitamin and your pee is just green and you're like, well, that appears to be all of the vitamins I just took. Ritual has figured it out. Not only is it completely traceable, it's allergen free. It's got a minty taste, which I really enjoy and can fill the gaps in a normal diet, it can fill those gaps. I can Speak to that from my own visits to my doctor. Filling gaps really helps. You don't pee it out because it's got a delayed release. It waits until it's in your large intestine where they can actually be absorbed and get into you. So the delayed release takes care of that predator blood situation. Plus I do a lot of fasting. If you've ever taken zinc on an empty stomach, you know it's. It'll make you barf. It's your. Your stomach does not want it. The delayed release takes care of that. Ritual is the perfect multivitamin to take when you're fasting. First of all, to get some of those nutrients in you while you're not eating. But it also won't upset your stomach. It's specifically developed multivitamin with key high quality nutrients in a bioavailable form that are clean. Rituals A new type of two a day helping support heart. A healthy heart with omega 3 DHA to normal muscle function to normal immune function with vitamin D3. This small step can have a major impact. It's traceable. It's vegan friendly, non gmo, sugar free, gluten free, major allergen free and as I said, delayed release. Designed to make it gentle on an empty stomach. And it even has a minty essence which makes it fun and a pleasure to take. Essential for Men is a quality multivitamin from a company you can actually trust. Trust and get this. Ritual is offering weirdos 30 off your first month. During your first month, visit ritual.com weird to start ritual or add Essential for Men to your subscription today. That's ritual.com weird. Do something to support the show. Do something to support your body better help Ritual get into it. All right, let's get back to Mike Brabiglia.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm one of those. I have a friend who.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And this. But also this has into death for sure.

[Pete Holmes]

Go ahead, tell me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So in other words, like you were saying, like what? You know, why do you talk about why? Why did you start talking about death? I started working on the special like four years ago. Yeah. And it was just an obsession. It was what I was interested in. I'm sure you find this with bits. The fear I had. I had one fear, which is, oh, this might be too close to home for people who are dealing with death right now. Their parents just died, their friend just died, whatever it is. And actually those are the people who need it.

[Pete Holmes]

I was just gonna say too close to home. You mean there's people in the home?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You'd like some people in the home.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

The American strategy on death is like, go in that shack that's on that cliff and just be there alone. There's no heat, there's no furniture. Just go sit in there for a while. Or maybe, Stan, it would be better if you stand Blair Witch style. That's our strategy with death. And if you're talking. Buddy, you're talking to somebody who's recently cut, like 20 minutes of death stuff from my new hour.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Really?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. And a lot of it. Why no 20 stayed, though. It's just.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It was too much. Okay. It's all you're talking about.

[Pete Holmes]

But like, I wanted to talk about it. I saw my. A guy, a man who was like a second father to me just died. And it's like, let's talk about it. Let's get into it. But I know crowds don't want to.

[Mike Birbiglia]

They do, though.

[Pete Holmes]

They do.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm here to tell you. Yeah, I did an hour and 20 on it. My new special.

[Pete Holmes]

That's the genius of going, like, come to a Broadway show. You know what one of my save lines used to be when I was starting in comedy? I was like, I really envy theater because if you do a joke and it doesn't work, the audience goes, maybe he's trying to be moving. Or maybe it's like, ironic, but you know what I mean? But, you know, I'm failing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't. I don't agree with that, though. I'm going to push back on you. I'm going to say, as your friend, two things. One is, I workshop the Old man in the Pool, comedy clubs and theaters. So it's like, I don't think they need the Broadway set up in the. In the. In the set and all the stuff. And especially your shows. You know, I was talking to Judd Apatow the other day about your audience. Your audience is there for you.

[Pete Holmes]

Pete's audience. That was very good. Pete's audience is very special. When I was doing 40 year old virgin, he never talks about his movies.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He never does. Okay, so he was talking to me about how he was at one of your shows. And your audiences are just like, you know, because you wrote a book, comedy, sex, God, et cetera. Like, they're interested in. They're interested in your relationship to religion. They're interested in your relationship to existentialism, which. And jokes, et cetera. So, like, this idea that you're saying you're imposing on yourself this restriction on your act right now of like, oh, I can't do that.

[Pete Holmes]

But I'm in the middle, which is actually a great place to be, let me tell you. Judd's talking about my Largo show.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

When I go and do DC, every show, there's at least 30% randos that are just like, oh, okay, E Trade, baby.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Or whatever.

[Pete Holmes]

And then I start going, that's a hook. Sometimes the club uses it, and I go, like. I start talking about it. I just feel it. And you know what? Matt McCarthy always says this, too. He goes, maybe you're uncomfortable. You know, like, I impose it on them.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's what I'm saying.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's what I'm saying.

[Pete Holmes]

But you're a good friend. Because when you and Judd said that, I was like, oh, no, my new hour. I don't have. I'm not trying to be formulaic, but I'm like, I don't have a new God joke. Do you want to hear my premise? Kind of working it out, Please.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

I go, my God is love.

[Pete Holmes]

And I really miss the old one. My God is so loving the God that I believe in now. So the ground of being accepting.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Accepting neutral, actually just made of love in the way that water's made of wet.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

My God won't talk shit. He's not mad at me. It's fucking. It's a snooze.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, I miss the God.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That was dramatic. Old Testament God that was like, he.

[Pete Holmes]

Jerked off again and they send the. The angels.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

To fucking get me. It was like Jason Bourne movie.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

And now, my God, you sit in a bar with him, and you're like, mike Birbiglia, right? He's always giving me shit. And he's like, mike's doing his best.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I love that God.

[Pete Holmes]

Mike's doing his best. I like Mike. And when I'm in my heart, that's how I feel about everybody.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right?

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I'm saying? Like, I go, like, I don't want Bill Maher to believe in God. I'm like, look at that. Perfect peace. Perfect peace. He defines the others, you know? We all define one another. Bill Maher's atheism defines my theism. You know what I mean? But we only want one side of the coin. Fuck off. That was the faith I grew up in. It's like, what if the whole field was daisies, right? And I'm like, no, it's thorns. It's weeds. It's.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, it's funny.

[Pete Holmes]

It's everything.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You and I were talking about this this morning. Someone asked me, do I believe in ghosts. Do I believe in Loch Ness monster, this and that? Like, sure. I don't know. Yeah, like, that's my answer. Like, anything that is outside of the parameters of the thing that culture believes in isn't accepted. I just go, like, if someone. If. If five people came up to me and they say, I just saw a monster, it's 100ft tall, I wouldn't go, no, you didn't. I'd go, like, tell me more about that. Yeah, I. I didn't see that. But I don't think that you have a motivation to come over to me and tell me there's 100 foot monster.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Like, why would you do that?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I love that. Because you know what I feel when I hear that is there's a certain humility when you recognize that consciousness, awareness, that's. That's looking at your eyes right now. That's. It's like, how are you? How do you know what you're hearing? Because you are aware.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

So that is a miracle. And I've said this a million times, but it's almost over. I think it's so funny that we're like, pen, it's almost over. That's what I always warn people. I'm like, if it sounds like I'm repeating myself, at least I'm almost done.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like we're magical pens filled with this miraculous fluid. However you want to picture this, it could be golden and molten. It's amazing. It's blinding light.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And so many of you use that ink to write. This is bullshit. Which is so funny.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, I love that.

[Pete Holmes]

The mechanism.

[Mike Birbiglia]

This is great.

[Pete Holmes]

With which you're determining. Of course it is.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. And you're not. You're not saying that on stage.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, you think that's a bit.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Give me that. Penny.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Are you kidding me? Come on. What are we doing?

[Pete Holmes]

All right, so we have. Mike's doing his best. We had Jason Bourne. I heard Mabel laugh at that. And magic pen.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Magic pen.

[Pete Holmes]

This is bullshit. But that. That what you're saying is. It's kind of what I've said in another bit. It's like nothing really makes sense. So, like, why would anything be any weirder than this? Every time I wake up in the night to pee, I go, oh, right. I'm in this. Like, what? And a lot of us.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Because you're like, oh, my God. I'm in this body.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm in this body.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm in this body that has to, like, excrete water.

[Pete Holmes]

And you know what? I say, most times when I pee, I go, in this dream, you can pee.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's crazy.

[Pete Holmes]

In your dream.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Dreams. That's a good bit, too, by the way.

[Pete Holmes]

In this dream, you can.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You're one of these people. Mulaney's like this, too, too. When I first met Mulaney, Brilliant God.

[Pete Holmes]

Floating in the Barbasol. I love it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm being preserved.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, my God. Sarah Sherman did an impression of Mulaney on SNL the other night that was very, very funny.

[Pete Holmes]

We watched it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

As a group.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Very funny.

[Pete Holmes]

I hope. Sarah Squirm. Squirm?

[Mike Birbiglia]

She goes by both. Oh, Squirm. Squirm's her stage name. Sherman's her real name.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, I didn't know. I've only known her as Squirm. Sarah Sherman would be happy to know that. Me, Judd, Atsuko, you. Not that we're special, but like, anybody that a bunch of comics put on a YouTube and just play it. And kill.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, and kill. It killed in the room. Yeah, yeah, but. Yeah, but, but. But. I'm sorry, you were saying I cut you off.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I said, you can pee in the stream.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, yeah. I would do that as a bit. Oh. The reason I brought up Mulaney is when I first met Mulaney, he's one of those people where half the things he says when I'm with him, I go, do you have that in the act? And he goes, no.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Write it down. And then he'll literally take out his phone, be like, yeah, okay. Like, he's unaware of how funny he is all the time. It's like the sink is leaking. Comedy.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. In fact, that. That was the image I had. He's like Willy Wonka in a candy factory. I know it's Chocolate Factory, but I'm sorry.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He's the real deal. And I. From jump. I've known.

[Pete Holmes]

I've known him.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I've known him since he was, like, 21 years old. It's like. It just is a riot.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Just is a riot of observations. And it's. And it honestly is. I think this is. Can't shut his brain off.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. He's like an insurrection of Congress. It's involuntary.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, we can't stop it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, but. But you're like, that in the sense that, like, I'm telling you, like, four things to write down.

[Pete Holmes]

That's only skeptical. But. Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, that's me literally withholding, saying that 10 other times during this conversation.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, that's nice.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm not. That's that's me being like, the format of my podcast. Working it out is working out bits. And me being like, that's a bit. That's a bit that. It's not even the format of yours. I'm like, I gotta tell you this. That's a bit. I'm sorry to interrupt.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, this is what's interesting about going back to your brilliant thing that you said. Comics are often clearly not saying what they're actually thinking.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And feeling one of the great things about podcasting, but also just friendship and conversation and why you can't do this in a vacuum and why we inherently don't trust comics that don't hang.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Never hang.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Pete Holmes]

And never, never hang.

[Mike Birbiglia]

They never hang comics.

[Pete Holmes]

You're in a rental car and they're not shooting the shit with you. I've had that. They're just on their phone or something.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And you're like, oh, my God, what are we doing?

[Pete Holmes]

Like, why would you talk about Aussies like that?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Just kidding.

[Pete Holmes]

I love the opening for you. It was a highlight of my life. I'm sorry. I have social anxiety. I can't talk to you in the car. I'm on my phone. The battery died 20 minutes ago. I'm looking at a black screen.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Now I got a flip phone.

[Pete Holmes]

Now I got a flip phone. Cause it's a problem.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Kanye. Kanye. Oh, my God. I can watch this all day.

[Pete Holmes]

You're about to.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

But that we know it's not created in a vacuum. So sometimes these conversations. And what's so great about your podcast is you need someone from the outside, like a therapist that goes, oh, you go to a marriage counselor. They're like a doctor, and they go, this is where the issue's in your pancreas. And you didn't know. And sometimes a comic goes that. It's like, what you did with my vasectomy thing. It's like, actually, the joke is kind of about how hard it is. Parenting is ungodly difficult. And I know it's a cliche to tack this on, but I have to. It's like, it's my favorite thing. It's the only thing. Yeah, it's my only thing. I love it more than anything. And Val and I sometimes look at each other like it's like Saving Private Ryan. And I'm like, why did I turn down the cigarettes? Remember that moment?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

He's like, they were giving out free cigarettes. And I said, I don't smoke. It's like, everybody smokes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, that's That's a joke, Jenny. And I'll always say about my. You know, Jenny and I worked on the new one special, which is also a book. It's called the New One. It's all if people don't know. Because.

[Pete Holmes]

Edit that out.

[Mike Birbiglia]

If people don't know. It's a. It's a. It's a. It's a book and a special that has Jen's poetry and my comedy about how, you know, I never wanted to have a child and all the reasons I never want to have a child and how I was right and then how I was wrong. And then Jen's perspective, which is expressed through poetry because she's an introvert, and she expresses herself through poetry, and it intertwines with that. And a lot of times people will ask us, how is Una, your daughter, gonna feel about this? And we always say, like, she knows. And she just doesn't even believe it's true because she can't imagine a universe where the person where I. This completely doting father who's completely obsessed with every tennis stroke she takes and cartwheel she makes would not want to have a child. She can't conceive of that.

[Pete Holmes]

Right. Right. Yeah. Oh, I love that. It's also right in that she starts.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Laughing when we bring it up.

[Pete Holmes]

She knows. See, what we're saying is children like you and I, who we all experience some form. I know the word gets overused, but of trauma, of something that was not ideal. And we know what it's like to be in situations where we know, but no one's talking about it, and that is unacceptable.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And that's a wonderful thing to say, that you can turn the tide of a pattern like that. You can make the army march the other way. This isn't my family, and I would tell you if it was, but there are so many families that I've seen or people have asked about. I just did Moshe and Natasha's podcast. Somebody called in with a question like this. Families have narratives. Families have mythologies. And when a new person comes in, like, you marry somebody, and they show up, sometimes they're like they didn't get the script, and they are like, is he having a third bottle of wine? And you recognize this is why David lynch movies and the Attack of the Robot People and all these things, it's like, that's us. You think zombies don't exist. You're. You're this person, you know, that's a zombie that's pretending that they don't see something or. Or Vampires don't exist. People who drain and hoard. That's the 1%. You know what I mean?

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

These.

[Pete Holmes]

These.

[Mike Birbiglia]

This is why there's a whole other ball of wax about movies right now. This is why a lot of people are saying that movies right now are less realistic and they're more based on abstract universes and worlds because people don't want to. They want to escape from what's happening right now, which is horrible.

[Pete Holmes]

I. I thought it was because we need the Guardians of the Galaxy to go into another planet where everything's a drawer and there's bubbles and aliens, because that's what the Internet feels like. See, I don't know which comes first. Leela being interested in Ninja Turtles and being introduced to violence, or Lela having, like, a Jungian archetype of violence, a propensity, a model of aggression that she's dreaming about, and she needs reflected back to her to interpret it and distance herself from it and process it. So which comes first? Raphael kicking shredder or Leela kicking the shredder of a child? You know when you pick up your kid from school and you're like, oh, this is Lord of the Flies. You know what I mean? Like, someone just took her ball and ran away. Someone just sneezed on her hair. I'm like, this is like prison.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean? So she has those feelings, and she doesn't know what to do with them. She watches the Ninja Turtles, and she's like, right. There's a force in me that can fight those aggressions, that can push them away. There's two things that war inside of us. So we're sort of lenient in that way.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

I'm not gonna let her watch it.

[Pete Holmes]

But, like, at the same point, why do grown ups watch it?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right?

[Pete Holmes]

Because you probably want to, like, you know, kill someone in your family, and you don't know how you feel about that or whatever.

[Mike Birbiglia]

In your family, who is it that you want to kill?

[Pete Holmes]

Not literally, but we all know what it's like.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Who is it?

[Pete Holmes]

I have dreams that I'm fighting my dad a lot. I mean, that's a dream. And sometimes it's my brother. I love these guys. I do. I'm being real.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, I know.

[Pete Holmes]

And I wake up and I feel that, like, what's going on? I had a dream the other night that I was hitting my brother with a set of car keys. I'm hitting him on the head, and I'm like, what was that? And then I watch a movie that gets into that muck. And I go, thank you. Thank you. Why look at. Look at our art. It's so weird. I don't like horror movies very much. Like, I don't consume them. I like the ones I've seen, whatever. But why? It's such an interesting loophole that we have as a society that we're, like, pretty careful about what you can say. I'm with it. I get it. That's triggering. That's offensive. But we'll also flock in record numbers to a movie where, like, someone decapitates a horse and fucks the non head side.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And we're like, yeah, Saw is back. And it's like, weird. But that to me is this remnant of a tribal understanding of sometimes someone puts on the wicked red mask and they took a dump on the fire last night and it healed me for some reason.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, that. That was. This is. I was at a party where Darren Aronofsky, who made the Wrestler, you know Darren Aronofsky, the great film director, he made Black Swan, a bunch of other stuff. But I've been drinking too much, which I rarely do. I don't even really drink almost ever.

[Pete Holmes]

You look like you should have a Pedialyte. Like, I'd love to get you some Ensure.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, my God. Something.

[Pete Holmes]

Something with phytonutrients.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay, so that wasn't what my story's about. But so I. I was so drunk that I asked Darren Aronofsky. I'm like, at the end of the Wrestler, why does he have to die? And it's so, like, I think of myself as not the person who walks up to the director of the Wrestler and asks him a question that he doesn't really want to talk about. Yeah, but what did he say? Because he. He dies so that the audience. So that the audience can experience it but not have to live it precisely. And that's it.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right. We want a third person death.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what third person death you'll never see. I don't think you'll see many movies. It's one of the reasons why the Sopranos was so jarring. Because it was a first person death. You know what I mean? It was from his perspective. It went black and we hated that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

We want our deaths third person because that's what we want our own death to be. It's like Woody Allen. I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens. We want to be a depersonalized observer of our own death. Like, I don't mind seeing Pete get hit by a bus, but to be in his head like, argh. Like, that's not fun. One of the reasons why VR is.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So jarring, and that's with old man in the pool. That was the goal, was to. How can we laugh about the thing that we're not laughing about in a way that doesn't feel contrived? That was my goal. I mean, there's like a handful of times in the show where I talk about people close to me dying, my family going through medical issues, near death men, medical issues, my grandfather dying, et cetera. And it's like, I think that, that the thing that you're describing about horror movies and extreme things, it's the same appeal in a certain way, is the reason why people like it is because they're going through the thing with me. And at the end they walk out and they're like, oh, I feel pretty. I feel some gratitude about my existence right now.

[Pete Holmes]

Every night I die, every morning I'm reborn. Is a nice one for me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Was that on, like the back of, like, a cocktail napkin or something?

[Pete Holmes]

You wouldn't know it because it wasn't on the back of a pack of ramen noodles that you put chicken powder on.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What do you mean by that?

[Pete Holmes]

And go, jen, I had a good meal today. It was very lean, very lean. And I slurped it up. And I think the doctor says I have another couple weeks.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Who is this an impression of?

[Pete Holmes]

I ate some ramen noodles because I'm on a high carb diet.

[Mike Birbiglia]

But who's the impression of? I don't even get it.

[Pete Holmes]

Not even doing you anymore. Cause it takes too long to actually do you. It's too drawn out. Like, I want to do it, but I don't want to ruin the comedy. I'd slip into your voice, but I don't want to ruin the comedy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

The burn you said of me on my podcast. I'm like a podcast at half speed.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, you are. You are a slow boy. But you know what? I get off stage and I go, oh, thank God I went slow. I'm always trying to go slower. You might want to take a note from me and go the other way. Just kidding. You're perfect. We have to end.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, I'll tell you. I'll tell you exactly what's going on. So you're. You have like five minutes. You have to. Yeah, you have to get to the train station it. Right now. By the way, it says 24 minutes, which means if you left at 11 in 10 minutes from now. Yeah, you'd be there at 11:24.

[Pete Holmes]

I scheduled the ride share.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, okay.

[Pete Holmes]

I won't say which one I used for fear that there's always some scam. You know what I mean?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Of course.

[Pete Holmes]

No, sometimes you go like, I just Amazon that. People are like. Like, I didn't know.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, I know.

[Pete Holmes]

I didn't know. Yeah, we know, though. That's one of the things we know that we don't know. We all walk into apartments and it looks like they just moved in because there's so many Amazon boxes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, I think that's true.

[Pete Holmes]

We're all just looking the other way on that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So we're an hour into this podcast. Is there any. Is there any moment where I'm going to talk?

[Pete Holmes]

You're very funny. Well, if we can get one of those people, can you blow like a fire with to, like, encourage the flame? If we could stick that in you and maybe, maybe we could make you talk, reanimate you.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So if people in the comments section of Apple podcast could just go right now and just say, why doesn't Pete Holmes let Mike Birbiglia talk? That would be really helpful. Thank you so much.

[Pete Holmes]

My source. Subjects also say, why does he laugh at his own jokes? What are yours? What are yours? What gets your goat? I really. Because real quick, I interrupt and jive because I'm like, if you want to listen to a fucking stale ass interview, listen to Mike Birbiglio on any other pod. If you want information, go to Wikipedia.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm sorry, what did you just say?

[Pete Holmes]

What?

[Mike Birbiglia]

What did you just say?

[Pete Holmes]

What do you mean?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Repeat what you just said.

[Pete Holmes]

If you want like a straight ahead interview with Mike Birbiglio, listen to any other podcast.

[Mike Birbiglia]

But what do you get on this? Just you talking.

[Pete Holmes]

Very good. When you were Ant man and you reanimated to a regular size, why didn't your liver grow back? You seem to not be processing toxins.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Why didn't your liver grow back?

[Pete Holmes]

What I'm saying is that's cruel. It's a piece of conversation art. There you go. And I laugh at my own jokes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

There you go. What?

[Pete Holmes]

There you go. And then the other thing. Why do I laugh at my own jokes? We were talking about this last night how you said you had a friend who watched my special. And we're like, he laughs at his own jokes, Mom.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Which is fine.

[Pete Holmes]

Which is fine.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Can we keep it in? Yeah. All right. Mabel's mom, like your mom, like the special. Mabel, like the special. Mabel's mom said, like the special. Why does he laugh at his own jokes?

[Pete Holmes]

It's fine. And to Mabel's mom, Tracy, and to everyone who are. I hear the caring in there. You know what I mean? There's some care. There's some interest in comedy and what's good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Pull that away. Sure.

[Pete Holmes]

Just taste.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Take that out.

[Pete Holmes]

But I said to you, I go, you know, I've tried it both ways.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And everything I'm doing is to delight you. Everything.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, is that what it is? Nothing we can do.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't think we're picking it up. These are unidirectional microphones.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't hear anything. Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

So anyway, everything. Everything I do on stage is to delight you. It's. It's all this benevolent trick to get us to a joy place.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You've done it.

[Pete Holmes]

I've done it both ways. You think I can't stop myself from laughing? I can, and I don't. Yeah, because it's better if I do.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And I like doing it as well. So every.

[Mike Birbiglia]

There it is. Tracy.

[Pete Holmes]

There it is. Tracy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We did we dedicate this.

[Pete Holmes]

What were you saying, though? You were about to. Oh, I was going to say this. All the teasing aside. I love you so much.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I love you.

[Pete Holmes]

That's how I thought we could close.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Beautiful.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, like, if you wanted to say other nice things. Oh, that's my alarm.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's your alarm. Just went off to remind you to leave.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I have to go in seven minutes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

I set alarms. I set alarms on the Amtrak. You don't want to miss your stuff.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I love you.

[Pete Holmes]

I love you, too. I think you're one of the greats.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Aw.

[Pete Holmes]

You're out there. You know what you are? You're Disney World. It's, like, curated. It's clean, it's nice. It's interesting.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't want to be Disney World.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I don't mean in every way. I'm just talking about the landscaping. Just the landscaping?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Just the landscaping?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What the hell kind of compliment is that?

[Pete Holmes]

I'm the rides.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's like saying you're like the Death Star. Just the engine. It's got a really good engine.

[Pete Holmes]

No. When you're older and you go to Disneyland with your daughter, this is how I know. I'm 44. I go, look at those trees. Those have been pruned.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

Those are nice. That takes effort.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay. Okay, we're good. We're good. We're all good.

[Pete Holmes]

I love you, buddy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I love you, too. And and. Yeah, no, I think we're good. I think we're good. I think. Is that. Does that give you closure? How. How do you get closure? At the end of your episode, you.

[Pete Holmes]

Say, keep it crispy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, right. Okay. That. But. Oh, yeah, we covered God stuff. I'm trying to think of the things in your podcast that we didn't get to.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, okay. You want a classic?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

What's the time in your life you laughed harder than any other time you've ever laughed?

[Mike Birbiglia]

So mine is when I'm with my. And Jenny always knows all about this because she's like. It's an unstoppable force. When Mike is home with his family over, like, Christmas, sitting, standing around, like, the kitchen aisle, you know, late at night.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Telling stories about when we were kids and everyone just laughing and laughing. My brother and sisters and. And there's nothing funnier than that.

[Pete Holmes]

That's great.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And. And, yeah. So we gotta say keep it crispy. But. But I gotta have a. A way to say it.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, this is what normally happens. I love that answer. What a beautiful answer. But I say we end the show with the guest saying, keep it crispy. It doesn't mean anything. Would you say, keep it crispy?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm trying to capture you on stage. Why are you laughing? I'm saying keep it crispy.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm saying it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Keep it crispy.

[Pete Holmes]

Can I pitch a line?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

If I was in the crowd, I'd be losing my mind right now.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's right. Keep it crispy.