Mike Birbiglia #5

Summary

Podcast Summary: "You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes"

Episode: Mike Birbiglia #5
Release Date: June 10, 2024
Host: Pete Holmes
Guest: Mike Birbiglia
Theme: Two close comedian friends trade roasts, workshop new material, and get candid about comedy, parenting, envy, and existential contradictions. Simulcast with Birbiglia’s "Working It Out," this is the long, unfiltered version.

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Episode Overview

Pete Holmes welcomes “best friend” and comedy peer Mike Birbiglia for their fifth podcast conversation. The tone is instantly playful, self-aware, and affectionate as they oscillate between friendly burns, meta-comedy discussion, live joke workshopping, and deeper reflections on family, growth, and the challenges of modern life. The episode is less of an interview, more a comedic jam session, shifting from riffs on plastic-free living to existential rumination, from working comics’ neuroses to confessions about fatherhood and envy. The result feels like eavesdropping on two friends effortlessly switching between bit-testing and real talk.

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Key Discussion Points and Segments

1. Opening: Friendship and the Nature of the Episode

• Simulcast context: This is the “warts and all” edition, simulcast with Mike’s edited “Working It Out” version.
• Meta talk: The episode will flow freely, with unedited behind-the-scenes banter, roasted jokes, and deep sharing.
• Memorable banter: Pete and Mike instantly fall into friendly burns and improv (01:56–04:50).
  • Pete: "You look like you’re a puppeteer who forgot the puppet, but your wife with rollers in her hair sends you out anyway." (04:51)
  • Mike: "Imagine if Mike Birbiglia were a little taller and a lot less funny." (05:22)

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2. Consent, Roasts, and Comedy Intimacy

• On joking boundaries: They discuss "consent-based" burn games, and how mutual roasting fosters intimacy (07:10–08:00).
  • Mike: “The home game is: talk to your friends about their comfort if you burn each other. If they're good with it, go to the deepest burns … whenever you and I do it, I feel closer to you afterwards.” (07:10)
• *"Shadow work" and the beauty of playful wickedness in friendship. (07:37)
  • Pete: "There’s something beautiful about roasts … letting some wickedness out. Not real wickedness, just a little …”
• Notable bit: Pete tries out the “half-speed podcast became a person” burn (08:11)

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3. Craft and Comedy Approaches

• Pete on Mike’s craft:
  • Pete: “You have a certain Japanese shoe-store quality. … A well-curated garden … That’s how I think of you guys.” (12:36)
• Mike on joke obsession: Mike relates to Bargatze, Seinfeld, and the need to “crank out the thing” because “the audience is waiting for the jokes.” (13:13–14:07)
• Bits-in-progress: Mike’s banking crisis joke, with a Mitch McConnell tag.
  • Pete: "That tag is elder abuse." (14:07)

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4. Comedy Industry & Podcasting Legacy

• Self-aware reflections on podcasting:
  • Pete and Mike riff on “You Made It Weird” being the “first pancake” of conversational podcasts—innovative but a little underbaked.
    • Pete: "When the Wright brothers built their first plane, some guy had to push it…I'm that guy" (22:03)
    • Mike: "You were the first batch of pancakes." (22:29)
• Discussion of podcasting progenitors (23:18–24:07):
  • Pete: “You like SmartLess? You like Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend? …You think this shit exists without…?”

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5. Comedy Jealousy and Vulnerability

• On envy and milestones:
  • Mike, about being added late to John Mulaney’s show: “I was a later add. Which means someone was canceling.” (11:34)
  • Pete: “Now look at the pleasure I’m feeling that you’re a last minute booking.” (12:03)
• Meta-reflection: On how seeing a friend’s success elicits envy—even as you root for them.
  • Pete: “It’s not that I’m jealous. It’s that I’m upset that there’s even a little part of me that’s like, ‘But I should be on it.’” (32:20)
  • Mike: “I wrote a whole movie about it. Don’t Think Twice.” (32:34)

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6. Parenting, Fathers & Generational Change

• Thematic core—fatherhood and generational shifts:
  • Mike: “My whole life I wanted to be my dad. And at a certain point, I realized I wanted him to be me.” (45:10)
    • Pete calls it an “incredible joke” (46:10) and they riff on the honesty and punchline mechanics.
  • Justice in comedy: They discuss the idea that “justice for both parties” (the comic and their parents) often makes for the best jokes (56:22).
• Modern vs. 80s parenting:
  • Pete: “If I fell at the playground in the 80s, they’d just say ‘You’re okay.’ Now, it’s ‘You’re having a hard time…’” (57:14)
  • Mike: “Dads in the 80s were like the villains in animated films. Now, dads are like the bird who flies ahead and goes, the coast is clear.” (59:21)

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7. Secret “Weird” Truths, Vulnerability, and Creative Process

• On telling secrets:
  • Mike: “If you’re not telling secrets, then who cares? What’s the point?” (54:31)
• Working through parental pain/confession:
  • Mike shares raw stories of cheating in school and pretending injury for approval, and being bullied at an all-boys Catholic school (73:38–75:03).
  • Pete shares about shoplifting as a kid to feel agency (76:20).
  • Pete on going to his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary: “I feel like a prisoner going to the warden’s birthday party.” (77:38)

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8. Material on Religion & Spirituality

• Testing Religion Jokes:
  • Mike: “Every religion is an answer to something we don’t understand. That’s why I like Hinduism, because I don’t understand elephants either.” (84:02–84:51)
  • Pete’s God/metaphysics bit (89:00–91:15): “To exist means to stand out from the ground of being. I think God is the ground of being. … Characters in a book can’t find the author…”
• On making fun of all religions equally and religious ‘punk rockness’
  • Mike: “I think being serious about your faith, I think in some ways, is the new punk rock.” (94:01)

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9. Comedic Debates & Joke Workshopping

• Each hosts and critiques the other’s premises, including:
  • Parenting (“calling my mom is difficult…” 81:24)
  • Regional comedy (“my relatives in Texas act more country than they are…” 96:19)
  • Eating habits (“I eat past the point of enjoyment…looking for the double-dusted chip.” 99:44)
  • The “shoes off in the house” pet peeve (108:10)
• Discussion features honest feedback (“I’m not with this joke…” 106:44), and reflections on why some bits work or don’t for each of them.

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10. Closing—Charity and the Real-Life Friendship

• Pete chooses Homeboy Industries as his charity shout-out (102:33), poignantly describing its work with gang rehabilitation.
• The closing is overloaded with meta jokes, mutual appreciation, and a return to affectionate burns:
  • Mike: "I feel like today is your Joker origin story." (110:35)
  • Pete, callback roast: “You look like the sawdust they put on the puke at the carnival.” (110:28)
  • Mike: “Keep it crispy… my fellow comedian friend.” (111:20)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On roast consent:
  Mike: “Because it’s a consent-based joke game. If they’re good with it, give it a shot. Whenever you and I do it, I feel closer to you afterwards.” (07:10)

• On podcasting’s influence:
  Pete: “I was the first batch of pancakes.” (22:29)

• On creative envy:
  Pete: “It’s not that I’m jealous. It’s that I’m upset that there’s even a little part of me that’s like: but I should be on it. I get upset that I have that response.” (32:20)

• On fatherhood:
  Mike: “My whole life I wanted to be my dad. And at some point, I wanted my dad to be like me.” (45:10)

• On childhood wounds:
  Mike: “[In 9th grade,] I got beat up by this guy on the football team … and then I became a mark for his friends. … I was a speed bag of sorts.” (73:57)

• On being honest as a comic:
  Mike: “If you’re not telling secrets, then who cares? What’s the point?” (54:31)

• On religion’s weirdness:
  Pete: “Religion is all trying to explain the universe, which is why I like Hinduism, because the universe is fucking nuts. And Hinduism is the only religion that’s like, ‘I don’t know, maybe an elephant’s in charge.’” (85:09)

• On the friendship itself:
  Mike: “I love you. I appreciate you having me on. Weird working it out.” (111:14)

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Tone, Style, and Dynamic

The overall mood is warm, frenetic, and intimate, blending relentless teasing with bursts of vulnerability. Both comedians oscillate between detailed bit workshopping and unexpected earnestness. The episode rewards listeners who enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at how comics generate, scrutinize, and polish material in real time—while also getting rare glimpses into the struggles and insecurities that underlie the laughs.

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Suggested Listening Segments

• Classic roast exchange & burn meta-discussion: 04:51–08:35
• Comedy jealousy/admission riff: 10:18–12:59, 32:20–33:06
• Parenting and generational dynamics: 45:10–60:00
• Vulnerability about school, cheating, and bullying: 73:38–76:17
• Philosophizing about God and religion: 84:02–91:15
• Bit workshopping and honest feedback: 106:44–108:49

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Takeaway

The latest “You Made It Weird” with Mike Birbiglia is a high-wire, deeply entertaining jam session between two best friends who are masters of both comedy and candor. Whether they’re trading burns, confessing childhood pain, or wrestling with big cosmic questions, the episode is a refreshing blend of sharp wit and real emotional openness—unfiltered proof that a podcast can be both endlessly funny and surprisingly revealing.

Transcript

[Mike Birbiglia]

You made it weird. You made it weird. You made it weird. Oh, yeah. You made it weird. Yes, you did.

[Pete Holmes]

You made it weird with Pete Holmes. What's happening, weirdos? This is Mike Birbiglia, my best friend. My wonderful friend. He's wonderful and hilarious. And this episode is being simulcast. This is the unedited version. If you want the edited, working it out version, listen to it on Mike's feed. Working it out. But we're. We're dropping it together on the same day. That's why this episode's coming out on Monday. And it's also on Mikey's feed if you want the shorter version, I guess. I like it. Warts and all, the whole thing. So this is. This is the you made it weird version, meaning we just let it roll and let it play out and let you guys listen into two friends making fun of each other, trying out bits and having a nice, good, deep conversation. It's so fun. I'm so glad you guys are here. Not much to say up top, other than even if you listen to this one, click on mics, too. You know, Click on mics as well.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Working it out.

[Pete Holmes]

Let's give the love to both. Both drops. And maybe you want to come see me live. I do a monthly show at Largo in Los Angeles. Thanks to everyone who came out last time. Largo-la.com for tickets to that. And then I'm going to be in Houston, Homestead, Penn. The Pittsburgh Improv and also the Milwaukee Improv. All right, all the dates coming up. Tickets to all of Those [e-mail] In the meantime, so glad we're hanging out. Glad we get to spend some time together. Enjoy the return. Return. Return. Return of the wonderful Mike Birbiglia. And watch the Old man in the Pool on Netflix. That's his new thing. Watch all this stuff. But that's the new one, and it's wonderful. All right, get into it. Here, just sit down. We'll start.

[Mike Birbiglia]

This isn't.

[Pete Holmes]

This isn't your. This isn't your show. No, I know, but this is the part you edit out. This is the fun. You edited it out. This is the fun behind the scenes. You're off mic, right? You should like it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

This is the Kumail Nanjiani sketch.

[Pete Holmes]

It's very npr. Can I just borrow that for Foley?

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, no, no.

[Pete Holmes]

Give me both.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Both.

[Pete Holmes]

This is so your brand.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, it's like, oh, you're just doing Foley. Work with my papers, you know, Mike.

[Pete Holmes]

It'S fun to see you, man. I sat down With Mike Birbiglia.

[Mike Birbiglia]

This is terrible.

[Pete Holmes]

And it's that sort of charm.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That we'll leave in and you'll let it out.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I will say this is. This is off brand for you as plastic bottles of water.

[Pete Holmes]

Katie bought it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Plastic bottles of water right under the bus. I recycle more than anyone.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. She made a last minute impulse choice for you. For the guest. This is cardboard.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I've recently heard people saying, I went plastic free again today. Like that's a thing. Like it's a daily renewal.

[Pete Holmes]

Like at the end of the day.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, it went plastic free again. And I actually kind of like it. I like hearing it.

[Pete Holmes]

I go immediately to it sounds like I'm wearing women's underwear. That's what it feels like to me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What do you mean?

[Pete Holmes]

There's a slight kink to it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, it's kinky.

[Pete Holmes]

We're having dinner. I don't mean sexually kinky.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay. Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, we're having dinner and I'm just like. I went plastic free today. Like, it just feels like.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like sand dunes turn me on. It feels the same as sand dunes turn me on.

[Mike Birbiglia]

By the way, I love the new studio. I haven't been here. I love it.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, thanks, man.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Love it.

[Pete Holmes]

That's great. Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I mean, okay, you've been doing this. You've been doing this podcast 15 years or so, right?

[Pete Holmes]

11, I think.

[Mike Birbiglia]

11 years. 11 years. I've been keeping track.

[Pete Holmes]

11 years. You look surprisingly robust when.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Robust? What do you look at?

[Pete Holmes]

Last I saw you, I was like, we got to get Mike out of New York. This man can't have 24 access to mozzarella.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I know what you mean. Well, it's funny, like your whole okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Knowledge, the.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So you're. Well, no, I take it in as real feedback.

[Pete Holmes]

It is real feedback. I was like, this guy can't get hoagies at 2am no, no, it's.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You're not wrong. It's when sometimes you know, so people know. This is all love. Pete and I love each other.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, yeah. We have to say that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's a disclaimer because sometimes people in the comments.

[Pete Holmes]

The Internet doesn't know.

[Mike Birbiglia]

They don't know.

[Pete Holmes]

The Internet don't know.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Everything that he says to me today, I'm fine with. I'm guessing everything I say is probably fine with you.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what you look like? You look like you're a puppeteer, but you forgot your puppet. That's why you're on stage. Like you belong in the rafters with strings. Two crisscrossing paint, stirrers and strings. Okay, but the puppet's not here. You forgot your puppet. And your weird wife with rollers in her hair goes, you get out there, Mike Birbiglia, and you go out and you do a show.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I think that's very good. I. I came up with a title for your next special today.

[Pete Holmes]

Can't wait.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's imagine if Mike Birbiglia were a little bit taller and a lot less funny.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you get residuals every time there's a tumbleweed in a Western? Because you're dry and Cris. And you just look brittle. You just look brittle to me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Crisp and brittle. Katie's laughing. And brittle.

[Pete Holmes]

Dusty and brittle. That's your vibe.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Isn't that brittle?

[Pete Holmes]

I'm just saying, if I was playing Pictionary and I drew a tumbleweed, most people would go, Birbiglia.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So today I'm working it out. Today I'm working it out. We have Pete Holmes.

[Pete Holmes]

You made it Weird. We are on Mike Birbiglia as the guest.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You're the guest. We are on Working it Out in a guest studio.

[Pete Holmes]

You made it Weird work. You worked it weird.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You worked it weird. You worked it weird. I like it. There's that improvisational brain you haven't used in 20 years.

[Pete Holmes]

You haven't used yours since you pretended to do it for a movie. And more people would get that if they saw that movie. That would be a sick burn if more people did.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Streaming. It's done quite well.

[Pete Holmes]

Has it?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm just kidding. I know.

[Pete Holmes]

It's one of my favorite movies of all time. Yeah, I like that puppeteer burn. Can I say, last time I did your pod and we were roasting each other, you said, that's very funny, but why do I sell more tickets than you? And I've lived with regret for. Since then. So months. So let's say it again. Will you say, that's fine, but why do I sell more tickets than you? Will you please just humor me?

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's fine, but why do I sell more tickets than you?

[Pete Holmes]

Because for every ticket you sell, you sell two more to their grandparents.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God.

[Pete Holmes]

I like that night that joke arrived and I was like, damn it. Like, I wish I had thought of it in the moment.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Here's the home game of Mike Birbiglia. Pete Holmes. The home game is talk to your friends about what their level of comfort is if you burn each other with the deepest burns you can go to. And if they're good with it. Cause it's a consent based joke game. If they're good with it, give it a shot. Because whenever you and I do it, I feel closer to you afterwards.

[Pete Holmes]

It's. Now we're on. You made it weird. I'll let you know when we're on. Working it out. Right now we're about to be on youn made it weird because I'm gonna call it shadow work. There's something really beautiful about roasts and teasing and.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And something about letting some wickedness out. And I. I'm not even gonna say it's worse now than it's been. I think it's always been hard to find safe and delightful spaces. It's hard to let out wickedness. But growing up wickedness. I don't even mean real wickedness. I just mean like a little. A little. Like you're a half speed podcast became a person. Like that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Say it again.

[Pete Holmes]

Did I say it too quickly? Because you're a half speed podcast became a person.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm a half speed podcast that became a person.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Listen to yourself as you say that. If I was listening to you, I'd look at my phone and go, did I put this on quarter speed? Is this point to 5? Because I'm on the treadmill. I'm trying to get some. Some reps in. I think it's reps.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I guess I just. I guess I just think before I speak.

[Pete Holmes]

That is good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's very nice. That's what Sister Mary Frances taught us.

[Pete Holmes]

Sister Mary Frances think before you speak sexy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You do what's right because it is right. That's what she taught us. She was our principal.

[Pete Holmes]

Was she depressed? That sounds like something someone would say.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You do what's right because it is right. It's a nice little slogan.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not saying it's not, but it sounds like someone who's run out of ways to describe it to children. So she just go, you do what it's right because it's. You know what I mean? When she was like, week one of the job, she was like, you do what's right because what's in me is in you and you love each other.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Now we're on working it out because that's a good punchline for what I said, which is a great setup. Oh, yeah, it's a per. Yeah. So the setup is she used to say, you do it again, which I.

[Pete Holmes]

Used to think was beautiful.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And then I realized it's blah, blah, blah.

[Pete Holmes]

You could even say, now that I've.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Been A parent, she ran out of things to say.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. And she got tired of explaining it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

It reminds me, as it has echoes of the Mulaney bit where he goes, you ever been on a date? You know, first couple people you date, they get the best version of the story.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, it's like we were teenagers. We were walking on the railroad track. I remember the sound of the peepers. I remember the moon, all this stuff. And then, like, the third, fourth, fifth person you date, you go, when I was a kid, I saw a dead body.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's a great joke. Is that on a special?

[Pete Holmes]

You know I know Mulaney live, right? I don't.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You saw him do it somewhere.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not an expert at the special.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not. That doesn't mean I don't love Big, bigger fan. Well, he has huge fans, but, I mean, I'm a huge appreciator of. But I don't know. I can't footnote it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm doing his live talk show tomorrow.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, good. Yeah, that's me masking jealousy. I hated that. No, no, I hated that I felt jealous. That's. That's hated. That's what I hated about that. But didn't you kind of like telling me? Wasn't that a little too much lemon in my iced tea? Wasn't there a part of you that knows I asked for sugar and you gave me splendor with just, like, a little. Again, like a mischievous, wicked. I can't. When will I tell Pete that I'm doing the show that our friend is hosting? That's wildly. Look at your fucking face, you Coney island mascot. Look at your delight. Did you think on the way over, when am I gonna tell him? No, no, because you didn't even want to fantasize about it. You just wanted to enjoy it when it happened.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Are you changing the narrative as you go?

[Pete Holmes]

Because I'm right. I know me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I would.

[Pete Holmes]

Mike, I'm gonna. Now you. You're not on it. I'm gonna tell you just for the fun, okay? I'm doing Mulaney's live talk show tomorrow.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, that's so funny. That's what. That's what?

[Pete Holmes]

I believe you.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's so fun.

[Pete Holmes]

You said that like Paul Rudd. That's how I know you were acting.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's so fun.

[Pete Holmes]

That's so fun.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, it's an honor. It's isn't an honor. Yeah. Although I was. I will say I was not on the. The original announcement artwork. I was a later A.D. yeah, you were. Which means someone was canceling.

[Pete Holmes]

Bailed, walk up.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't know who that is.

[Pete Holmes]

He's a rapper.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh.

[Pete Holmes]

And then you, you swung in. They had a cancellation. Now look at the. The pleasure I'm feeling that you're a. You're a last minute booking.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

And they can't have both of us.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean?

[Mike Birbiglia]

No one will be able to tell us apart.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what I mean. You can't have kidney beans and navy beans. It's just fucking beans. You get one bean.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

By the way, there's my.

[Mike Birbiglia]

There's Mike and there's Mike on stilts.

[Pete Holmes]

That's very funny. Honestly, all of our tease too does come from what you have. I don't think you think this about me, so I'm being vulnerable. But what you have, I want more of. I like your craft.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh.

[Pete Holmes]

I like your Zen garden. A lot of people I admire Bargazzi, Seinfeld. You have a certain Japanese shoe store quality. It's a little more minimal than me. That's not quite right because it's cold. But imagine like a very well curated garden. That's kind of how I think of you guys.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't think of it that way at all.

[Pete Holmes]

But you don't think of what you do as curated.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, we.

[Pete Holmes]

Then why the artifice? We found it. We found a way back. Then why does it feel so stilted?

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, no, I relate to those folks. I relate to Nate and Jerry in the sense of. I think similarly. I'm obsessed with jokes and I'm obsessed with. You gotta crank out the thing.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You know what I mean? Ya ha. Because ultimately the audience is waiting for the jokes. You gotta show up with the jokes. It's like I make a joke on my live tour right now where I say, you know, I talk about the banking crisis and I go, that's crazy. I can't get over the banking crisis. This is like think, think about your job, any job, assuming you're not a banker. What if you just didn't do it? Well, if I showed up tonight and I go, I don't have the jokes. You know what I mean? You'd be like, you don't have them. I'd be like, well, if I don't have them, the government's gonna tell the jokes. You know, that's good. Yeah. And then I do like a run on that where like Mitch McConnell burst through the door and is like, the funny thing about the debt ceiling is. And they freezes it's good.

[Pete Holmes]

That's elder abuse. That tag is elder abuse.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, no, I open it up and I.

[Pete Holmes]

100% JK. 100% JK. See that? I forgot. You're very, you know, you're considerate. I was joking. I like your Mitch McConnell is having a stroke joke.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's not a stroke.

[Pete Holmes]

It is a stroke.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He froze. No, I think he froze.

[Pete Holmes]

Let's name it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, really? You think it was a stroke?

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, no. Old people just freeze sometimes. He was probably just remembering a Werther's original he had one day. He's probably just remembering a can of Barks and root beer he had with a sweetheart in the fridge.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So it really was a stroke.

[Pete Holmes]

They're strokes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, are they strokes?

[Pete Holmes]

Motherfuckers having blood clots.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Their way from the left to the right.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay. Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Nobody's just jokes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

By the way, Katie, who's your engineer on your show.

[Pete Holmes]

Producer. Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Producer on your show, is laughing. I feel like she could stifle laughter. And I think you told her you have to laugh a little bit more, otherwise it won't be funny.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. Katie and I have been close for 11 years.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I know.

[Pete Holmes]

She laughs however much she wants. I will say she's laughing a lot more today because she likes it mean.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Is that right? I guess. There you go.

[Pete Holmes]

Old man in the pool. You look like what they found in the filter.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's good.

[Pete Holmes]

You look like what they found in the filter. It didn't come out clean, but I liked it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I like it.

[Pete Holmes]

Old man in the pool, Mike. Looks like what they found in the filter.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, since that's.

[Pete Holmes]

See, this is what if we were on the Tom Brady roast, it would just be us roasted.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, since that's what I'm here to plug, why don't we talk about the old man in the pool? Other than just one idle joke about it at my expense.

[Pete Holmes]

Idol is a good word for the show. There's a big swoosh of graph paper on the stage and then a man comes out and does kind of. It's feeling too mean.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Is this.

[Pete Holmes]

It's a great show. It's on Netflix.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Dot com.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Did you back away because it was too mean?

[Mike Birbiglia]

No. No.

[Pete Holmes]

Did you go in your head cuz you were like.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, I was just thinking about the word idol.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I always think about what your career has been since 2011.

[Pete Holmes]

That's very nice.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I remember when you were on that. When you were on that series Crashing. I couldn't believe that they had such an unattractive Star of an HBO series who didn't hang a lantern on how unattractive he was.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, it wasn't a plot.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right, Exactly. Like. Like you never acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is the elephant who's the star of the show.

[Pete Holmes]

It was like the movie mask. Remember the movie mask? Not the mask. Right, but the movie mask. It was about a guy with a. With a face who had been deformed. And you felt in the same way.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right. Why isn't this guy.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

They're just acting like he's a leading man on an HBO series. Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

This from a guy who looks like cream cheese. Got its wish to become a real boy. Plain cream chees. You look like plain cream cheese on a plain bagel. Got struck by lightning and was like, I'm going to the comedy Cellar.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You have sick. That's really similar to a burn you've had of me in the past. What was that? Something else that becomes a real.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I love. Becomes a real boy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't even know what that means.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like Pinocchio.

[Mike Birbiglia]

The Pinocchio reference. Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. No, you're not wrong to shine a light on it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

We were wrong to not shine a light on my.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You know, your HBO series.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. The fact that I was a regular guy with a TV show, but not unregular enough. Kind of a dissatisfying middle. Am I right? You know, I'm trying to think. It'll sound like I'm making fun of them, but someone who's really left of center. Yeah, but in a good way.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, I'm thinking of, like, Dino Stanton. Like. Like a real. Like, I'm not saying he's unattractive. I'm just saying, like, here's a. Here's a wild choice.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Stavros.

[Pete Holmes]

Stavros.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Stavros.

[Pete Holmes]

Dino.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I meant Stavros would be like an anti hero type of stupid.

[Pete Holmes]

I meant almost.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He would. Stavros would almost be like a Tony Soprano of comedy.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what I'm saying.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

So a real interesting choice. Stavros. Not me. I'm right here in the middle.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And then here you have Jon Hamm.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And people are like, I bet it'll be a Jon Hamm. If it's not him, it'll be a Stavros. But then it's me. And everyone's like, I feel neither warm nor hot.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Your series Crashing was like one of those shows where on episode one, everyone in the audience goes, he's really falling Off. I liked the early episodes, but there weren't earlier episodes.

[Pete Holmes]

It's very good. It's very, very good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I was a consulting producer on that show.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm looking forward to your next hour where you get lost in a library.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What are you trying to bum mics with me? Trying to. Dave Attell. Jeffrey Ross, me.

[Pete Holmes]

Lights come up. The Dewey Decimal System. I remember as a kid learning about the Dewey Decimal System.

[Mike Birbiglia]

By the way, it's the only system.

[Pete Holmes]

There is for organizing books other than the stack.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Let me know when this is over.

[Pete Holmes]

You can put them by author, you can put them by color. But then this guy comes in named Dewey, and he's like, you should do it by this longitude, latitude, seven digit code. If you're not laughing and you're wondering where the punchline is, that's how we all feel.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It.

[Pete Holmes]

Because the impression is so good. You're like, why am I here? That's how we all feel. And I look around and there's fucking Jack Black and goddamn hot, hot head Hollywood celebs. And we're all wondering the same thing. How did we get here?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I think you mean at the old man in the Pool premiere?

[Pete Holmes]

When I was at the old man in the Pool premiere. A lot of hot names.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Big names.

[Pete Holmes]

I feel like that was a big night.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It was wild night.

[Pete Holmes]

Do we. Should we do it? We should do it. The Dewey.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He's doing it again.

[Pete Holmes]

Should we do the Dewey?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Is he doing it again?

[Pete Holmes]

No.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No.

[Pete Holmes]

Now it's me. That's what I would say. The funny thing about gum on the bottom of a desk is you shouldn't chew it. I found that out the hard way. But then you drop it off, you talk about something else for 45 minutes, and then you go. And that's when I chewed the gum. Blackout. Everyone goes, this was $70.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

What is this? A long voicemail?

[Mike Birbiglia]

What is this?

[Pete Holmes]

A long voicemail? Your show has the continuity of a butt dial. Does that make sense? Yeah, just sort of a rambling. There's some shuffling. People are excited because I think I heard some keys.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You get a.

[Pete Holmes]

Your show has the vibe of a butt dial. It was him speaking. That's what we could say.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I just want to acknowledge to the listeners of. You made it weird that I have so much respect for a podcast that really was the forerunner to podcasts of this type. And it didn't take off and you kept going because a lot of people would have quit. They would have gone, well, other people came along. The shows are bigger now. But you just Kept. You're like, no, we'll build a studio. Let's build a student. Maybe that'll help.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what? I am tsa. And your premise, like, when the Wright brothers built their first plane, there was some guy that, like, had to push it, like the early planes. I'm that guy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And then you go back to the field, and I'm still there, just like ribbon dancing. People are like, he should go home. Yes. Handing your premise.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's like people always ask me. They're like, the podcast revolution just keeps getting bigger. And I go, yeah, because, like, the stuff that's popular is like Pete Holmes show. So we got to work on it, make it better.

[Pete Holmes]

I was the bar.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were the. You were the. You were the first batch of pancakes.

[Pete Holmes]

You know when you go to an open mic. Yeah, yeah. First pancake.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Succession.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Don't. Don't be stealing Succession jokes here.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, I didn't know that. I don't know that.

[Pete Holmes]

Canceled.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Did they say it canceled? I've watched Succession, but what was the joke?

[Pete Holmes]

They verit. No, I, I. Obviously I'm kidding. But they very slyly refer to. Forgive me for calling him Cameron, the oldest brother.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Which one is that?

[Mike Birbiglia]

The one, the. The actor who was in Ferris Bueller. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

What's his name?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Rock.

[Pete Holmes]

Alan Rock. He's wonderful. Forgive me. He's used to it. Everyone's calling him Cameron. And Broderick eclipsed Ferris. Good for him. And Robin Williams eclipsed Mork. People can get past a huge name.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Good point.

[Pete Holmes]

Alan. Rock on Succession. They should have called him, like, Stadop.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

Something fun to get Cameron out of our minds. But anyway, they very casually refer to him as first pancake.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

He's not. He's not as good as them. They're like, you know, he's first pancake. And they all just go, first pancake. And they don't explain it. That is the most satisfying.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God, Television. Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

So you're saying our podcast is first pancake. Yeah. You know, when you go to an open mic. This is me burning my own show.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

When you go to an open mic and you watch the other people and you go, I could do that. That. That was our podcast.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

A lot of people were like, wait, that's what it is.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, I could do that. Yeah. Just talking.

[Pete Holmes]

Just talking. Just bullshitting. Yeah, I could do that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You don't edit it. Well, I could do that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Here we are. You're welcome. Thanks.

[Pete Holmes]

You like smartless you're welcome. You like Conan o' Brien needs a friend. You're welcome. You think this shit exists without. Without this shit? Probably.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Marin still mad at you?

[Pete Holmes]

I don't think so. I don't know. I don't think Marin cares about me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No.

[Pete Holmes]

He's like Don Draper. That goes. I don't think about you at all.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't think. I don't think Marin's thinking about me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No. No.

[Pete Holmes]

Whenever I see him, I still have that like, I want to make him like me kind of thing. But I work on it. I push it aside.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I have burns from Aaron. Ready?

[Mike Birbiglia]

What's. What is your case?

[Pete Holmes]

He burns me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What is your red line? What would I. What could I say to burn you? There'd be one. A bridge too far.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, what's funny is we've known each other long enough that you have. You have accidentally hurt my feelings before. But it's not. It's. It's all in the. I don't feel this way about anybody else. But there have been times when you've just, like. You know what it is? It's not what you said. It's the mood I'm in. You know, when you're in that mood.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Catches you in the wrong moment.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, we're both dads.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And sometimes I love my baby more than anything. We all know this. And sometimes. Please don't touch Daddy. Please.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Please.

[Pete Holmes]

I just can't be touched right now. Like, I'll get, like, tactile sensitivity. It's because I'm thinking about something. It's. Cause I got an email that Some sort of weird choice.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you want to be here for three weeks for this, or do you want to be here or do this? Like, I get real tight and real panicked when you make me plan my future, which is unfortunate because most of our job is, like, planning.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Or it's almost like. And this is maybe into the working at our universe. It's almost like the movie Minority Report, the Spielberg film, where Tom Cruise is. Yeah. There's that great visual where he's moving stuff from side to side.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what they do after offstage, those milky psychics. When I get off stage, they go, that's how hard I killed.

[Mike Birbiglia]

But you know how they. You know how he moves stuff around?

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And it's all so convenient. I feel like that's, like, our lives now, except all the things on the board are just smacking us in the face all the time.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. I feel this paralysis, too.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You know what I mean, it's like emails, Ah, calendar reminders. Ah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, And I've said this to.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You before, push notifications. Like, it's endless. It's like, it's not as cool as Minority Report.

[Pete Holmes]

No. Well, he was trying to solve pre murders.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I know.

[Pete Holmes]

We're just trying to return a fan on Amazon. We're trying to send back a broken fan. You ever just keep something? I bought like a. I bought, like, a fan, and it sucked. And I was just like, it's $12. I'm walking. I'm walking away. Yeah, I'm walking away. That's my mom. Never would. World War II, you know, refugee. She'll get on the phone for five hours for $12. And I'm just like. I don't. I'm not even crazy about that part of myself, but I go, it's worth it. It's worth it to just walk away.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I feel like we gotta get to some pressing topics.

[Pete Holmes]

Depressing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Pressing topics.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, pressing topics.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. I mean, I feel like it's like, how long have we been talking?

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's our magic.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Is it, though? I get worried. I know you. You don't. I edit mine, so I'm gonna. You're gonna hear a version on mine. It's gonna be edited. We're gonna really think through. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like this American Life, where they go, for a bleeped version, go to mikebrabiglia.com People are gonna hear my version.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And they're gonna be like, oh, this is nice. They cared about what I was interested.

[Pete Holmes]

In or withheld the parts that were human and real and vulnerable.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And your version is just gonna be kind of like, you know, two people, like, sitting on a sidewalk together.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Waiting for the bus.

[Pete Holmes]

Two people sitting on a sidewalk together. I'm like, what? What are they getting into? And you're like, what if we open with a wide of those guys and then we push in real tight and out of nowhere, the first line of the podcast is, that's why that horse saved my life. And then we start 45 minutes earlier, and we work up to the horse.

[Mike Birbiglia]

People keep telling me you're doing an impression of me on the road.

[Pete Holmes]

I told you about it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What do you do? Can you say, or is it give away what it is?

[Pete Holmes]

I don't care. I say, it was, Val and I were sexting. New terrain, sexy texting. And I misunderstood one of the things she said for meaning, I'm done. And then I finished. And then I realized she wasn't done, and she's still going. And she's like, I'm so wet. And I'm like, gross. And then I go, I'm skipping parts because you understand, it's like someone. Sex doesn't make sense anymore. It's like someone poured a bucket of water on the fire. But she's still going, I'm so wet. Gross. And then I go, do you understand? Understand at this point, I'm as sexless as Mike Birbiglio.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God.

[Pete Holmes]

Huge laugh. Huge laugh. And I can tell the markets you tour in because the laugh is bigger. I did it in la, whatever, four nights ago. Biggest laugh of the hour.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, wow.

[Pete Holmes]

And then I go, what I want to do to your body is nothing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Stuff like that. That part is unscripted. That part's different every night. The real fans bootleg it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And they trade it as BitTorrents. I'm kidding.

[Mike Birbiglia]

There's that amazing. There's that amazing moment in Neil Brennan's interview. Jerry Seinfeld.

[Pete Holmes]

Where did you. I told you to listen to it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's good, right?

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's great. I mean, why are you up here?

[Pete Holmes]

You should be a writer.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

That's the part.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's the goal.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Because what's your inner monologue?

[Pete Holmes]

When you're on stage, everyone can tell you're faking it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Everyone can tell you're faking it. You should be a writer.

[Pete Holmes]

And even Jerry Seinfeld.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Even Jerry Seinfeld saying that. And even when you're doing your impression of me, I'm thinking, oh, you're doing the hair. Your hair. You're making your hair crazy.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I do use the space more when I'm you.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. And I do get self conscious. I'm like. I'm like, oh, yeah. Like, @ what? I'm 45 years old. @ what point am I going to start combing my hair and wearing some outfits that fit.

[Pete Holmes]

Your cellular age, though, is dead. You. You have been here for 40, but the tread is off the tire. Your. Your cellular age is long dead.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Is dead. Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

You're like a recessive gene.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So what's off limits?

[Pete Holmes]

I like when I make you think.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What's off. What's off limits for you? Like, what's the thing that I said to you that was too far? Do you remember?

[Pete Holmes]

No, I think we've talked about this before. It's. It's. We said to each other, what do people say behind our backs?

[Mike Birbiglia]

And I remember.

[Pete Holmes]

But really, Mikey, if I'm in the wrong mood, you could Say, like, pete me on stilts. And I'd be like, I didn't choose this body. Like, if I'm really. That's why I think if you're a.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Raw nerve on that day.

[Pete Holmes]

I've said this before. Everybody who reviews anything, it should open with a two page essay on how they're feeling.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Because Val and I saw Fall Guy today. We loved it. You know why I fucking love Val? With the movies playing hooky, we went to a 10am showing of fall Guy eating Reese's Pieces with our kid in school. You think I'm not gonna have a hoot of a time?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. But, you know, nothing more fun than going to a movie with Jenny. We're gonna go Saturday night. This Saturday night we have a movie date. I'm thrilled.

[Pete Holmes]

What are you gonna see?

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's the thing on my calendar I'm most excited about.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And I'm on John Mulaney's live talk show.

[Pete Holmes]

Twice you've hurt me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I think after. Every time I say there should be a five minute silence.

[Pete Holmes]

I remember that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I think we go freeze frame.

[Pete Holmes]

Remember?

[Mike Birbiglia]

In your face every time. And every time I say it, the feeling.

[Pete Holmes]

This is what Val taught me. It's not that I'm jealous. It's that I'm upset that there's even a little part of me that's like. But I should be on it. I get upset that I have that response.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

So do you understand what I'm saying?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Of course.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, Val and I talk about this all the time.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I wrote a whole movie about it. Don't think twice.

[Pete Holmes]

It's not real. No, I know. But then you get to a part in your life. I'm 45 as well. This is what you would look like if you've been outdoors or had a vegetable. But I'm also 45, believe it or not. We look like two genetic experiments. Like, they're giving me the antidote and they're just letting you be data. I can see you going like, I don't look. Data. They're letting you wither away in the name of science.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, is that what Data was? I don't know. Data. The character. The character who's like a droid.

[Pete Holmes]

That's data. Oh, but I said data.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Data. Okay, okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I guess I should have said data. I thought data was more technical.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Just data as, like a general noun. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, in this.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's why the confusion of the joke, by the way. Because in my mind, I was doing Star Trek.

[Pete Holmes]

And your Data. Yeah, well, yeah. I like the idea that you're a cyborg. Like, you're an early prototype.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's what I thought you were getting at. And then I was like, oh, how. Why'd you pronounce it that way?

[Pete Holmes]

You're the. You're the Data prototype that they never showed anyone.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right?

[Pete Holmes]

Like, keep that one away. Yeah, you're the Boo Radley. Data. Keep them in the attic.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I always thought Data looks pretty good.

[Pete Holmes]

He did. Brett Spiner.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Is that who it was?

[Pete Holmes]

Golden Blush.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He always looked pretty good.

[Pete Holmes]

All I cared about you for real. Real talk.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, I like him.

[Pete Holmes]

No, no, I'm giving you some real talk. My interest in consciousness started watching Next Generation and watching Data. If there was a Data episode.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And there were. They figured out we like Data. The writers knew.

[Mike Birbiglia]

They knew.

[Pete Holmes]

And if he was like, what is love?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right. No, there's something. So people. If people don't know what we're talking about. Data was a character on Star the Next Generation, which is. You don't have to know much about Star Trek to understand the context of, like, it's one of the ones. It's the TV one in the 90s.

[Pete Holmes]

Can I interject? Data. Calling a robot Data. Doesn't that sound like a slur? All right, Data. This from Ones and Zeros. It's like calling an Italian guy spaghetti. It's like. Ah, shut up. Spaghetti.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Data.

[Pete Holmes]

Spaghetti.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Vodka.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what you call the Russian boxer. I said that because in the video game Punch out, it was Vodka Drunkinski. Was. Became Soda Popinski in the Super Punch Out. Did you play Punch Out?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Remember Soda Popinsky? Yeah, his name in the arcade. Vodka Drunkinski.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, really?

[Pete Holmes]

Because he's Russian. There was a. There was a real heyday for stereotypes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

It lasted 40 years.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It was a long time.

[Pete Holmes]

It was more than a heyday. It was a.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And it was. It was probably more than a. 40 years too. Yeah, it was a solid century.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, you're right.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Led to murder. Murder. Yeah. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Tell the host I said that tomorrow.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, Murder.

[Pete Holmes]

Mike is here. So excited. Mikey, you're part of the Netflix as a joke fest, is that right?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Great. We'll be right back.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's a good impression.

[Pete Holmes]

Very good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Have you done that for John?

[Pete Holmes]

When would I do it for John? No, I'm just kidding.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You've done it for me. I'm walking that back.

[Pete Holmes]

He texted me the other day. Very sweet. Because I think he heard me on a podcast kind of saying, we're not really that close anymore. We are friends. He's just so busy, and he lives in New York, and I love him, but I haven't done it for him.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He doesn't live in New York, he said, because he lives in New York.

[Pete Holmes]

I just assumed he lived in New York. He doesn't live in New York.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No.

[Pete Holmes]

Even Katie seemed to know.

[Mike Birbiglia]

The look.

[Pete Holmes]

No, no, no. My only concern in this moment is that John is going to think. Think I'm. I'm complaining, and I'm not. I just saw him the other night at Largo. Right. We had a lovely hang.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know the funny thing, though, is because I texted him the day after his bowl show, and I was like.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He played the Hollywood Bowl.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you want to talk to anyone?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you talk to 30,000. Whatever it is. So I was like, I fully understand. I always say, you don't have to reply. That's. That's how I do it with Johnny boy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's. I told that story the other night on Jimmy Kimmel, But I texted Larry David.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And I said, any out that you want is yours. Is yours. I go, you're. Let's say I'd love to have lunch with you. Because a couple years ago, he called me.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Which is really the greatest honor of all time. Better than any.

[Pete Holmes]

Was it when I called you? You really like that? I don't know. I was bored. I just wanted. Good show.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Pretty.

[Pete Holmes]

Pretty good show. It's getting better. I see the doubt in your face. It's making me want to make it better. It's getting better.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's like a cross between Larry David and Bill Burr.

[Pete Holmes]

It's a little bit burr. That enthusiasm. I feel like we could. We could carve it. My wife Mia. I tell you. Tired of women saying they don't want to lose weight for movies.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

Lose some weight.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, my gosh.

[Pete Holmes]

Do it. That's one of his bets. I'm just quoting him. I'm just quoting Bill. That wasn't Larry. That wasn't me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

But anyway, Larry David. I think it's a funny little story I told on Camel.

[Pete Holmes]

I know this story.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You know that, right? I'll give you all these outs. And he wrote back, I'll take. I accept the outs.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. And then he texted you back, and.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Then he said, I'll say I'll do it, but because I accidentally ghosted him, I literally accidentally goes to him because I was dealing with family stuff, but that was more pressing. So I was off my phone.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And then he wrote back, I feel bad about the last text. Let's have lunch.

[Pete Holmes]

All the. The. Leave me alone. Secret sweeties.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He's a secret sweetie.

[Pete Holmes]

They're all secret sweeties.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That was on Neil's episode about.

[Mike Birbiglia]

About.

[Pete Holmes]

They said people don't know how sweet Larry is.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Larry's people don't know how acerbic Jerry is. I think they use.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, that's interesting. Did they say that with Jerry?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. And Jerry goes. It was one of the best parts of the podcast. I called Neil about it. He goes, that's the Brennan I. I.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Was like, yes, the Brennan.

[Pete Holmes]

I. I like that moment. That there is the Brennan.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I know Larry. Larry's deeply sweet. And of course, these people. You know, when I talk about someone like Larry David, I want people to realize I don't even view him as a human being, as immortal. I view him as some kind of comedy. Yeah. God. Or. Or, you know, like a. It's not even. I wouldn't even imagine him to be alive.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm gonna say something weird.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

I kind of. It makes me feel a little bit like a mathematician.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Or. Or a physicist. And then there's, like, Einstein. I think we feel that way. Like, we are physicists.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We're physicists and we're good. Einstein. Yeah. No, I get it.

[Pete Holmes]

And. And not to force this. When you were like, have you done that impression for John? When I see John, even though we do bits and we laugh and we hug and we say, I love you, I love him now. He's become. It's not a celebrity. He's just become so great. I'm still kind of like, it's Einstein a little bit. Not to make everybody Einstein, but I can't think of another famous physicist.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oppenheimer.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that legacy tainted? A little bit. Once you do that, kind of hard to walk it back.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Hard to walk it back.

[Pete Holmes]

Hard to walk back. The. A bum.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

There's been no bigger improvement to my sleep than using hostage tape. What is hostage tape? It's mouth tape, which sounds so simple, but it does so much. What is that? What is it doing? You're not supposed to breathe through your mouth, especially when you're sleeping. Don't be a mouth breather. It's bad for your. Oral hygiene. Means you're getting less oxygen to your brain. Almost 20% less oxygen to your brain. Which means what? Less deep sleep. Less quality sleep. And it stinks. And snoring, in my case, I was snoring. Helped with that. I was not sleeping very deeply. Helped with that. Keeps me asleep all night. And I dream all night. And you only dream when you're in that good, deep REM sleep. And I am dreaming epics like Lord of the Rings style quests. Since I've been using hostage tape mouth tape, I've actually tried another kind of mouth tape in the past and it stunk. Literally, it stunk. It smelled like adhesive. It tore my skin off when I took it off in the morning. Hostage tape is just strong enough to stay on all night, but it doesn't smell like an adhesive and it doesn't rip your facial hair off or your skin off when you're taking it off in the morning. So if you want to help yourself sleep, and who doesn't? And if you want to support this show, try hostage tape basically for free. You just have to pay the shipping and handling and you can get 20% more. Reduce your risk of sleep. More oxygen. Excuse me? Reduce your risk of sleep apnea. Get rid of that snoring. Help with your oral hygiene and bad breath. Get in that deep REM sleep. They are the official sleep and breathing tape of UFC for a reason. They're the real deal. So free. Just pay $8.95 shipping and handling and get a sample pack and sleep better tonight by going to hostagetape.com weird. This is a huge game changer. You know, we only do ads for things I actually love. And I. Since the first time I've tried it, I haven't even taken a nap without hostage tape. It makes that big of a difference and makes your sleep deeper, creamier, dreamier. Amazing. Get more oxygen in your brain. Use hostage tape. By the way, it doesn't. It's not hard to use. I thought I was going to put it on. I was going to feel like I was suffocating. It's not that way at all. Your brain gets the message, all right? We're breathing through our nose. It's effortless. So give it a try. HostageTape.com weird. We're also brought to us by our friends at Better Help. You guys know this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You guys know I absolutely love, love, love talk therapy has absolutely changed my life. It's one of those things that is greater than the sum of its parts. Talking to a trained professional helps. Whether it's work stuff, relationship stuff, family stuff, internal stuff, anxiety, these are things that talking to a professional truly, truly helps. Therapy helps. This year has gone by so quickly. What's something you're proud of in 2024? What's something you still want to accomplish? Well, guess what? Therapy helps with that stuff. Life goes so fast. It's important to take a moment to celebrate your wins and to plan out your future. Make those adjustments for the rest of the year. Therapy is a wonderful place to take stock of your progress and set achievable goals for the next six months. I swear by it. I love it. We talk about it constantly. BetterHelp is a wonderful way to give therapy a try. If you're thinking of giving it a try, give better help a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist. You can even switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. So support your life, support your goals, support your, support the show. All of those are wonderful things. Take a moment. Visit betterhelp.com weirdo today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L p.com weirdo all right, everybody, back to the show. Do you want to do some bits and make it your show? Because I love doing bits with you. I kind of forgot that we were doing that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, I had a few questions.

[Pete Holmes]

I wrote down, you look like what they used to stuff antique sofas with, but they stopped because people were going blind. You look like that substance.

[Mike Birbiglia]

The. Well, here's the thing that you and I. And we talk on the phone quite a bit. We talk about these kinds of things.

[Pete Holmes]

We probably talk four times a week.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. In my current hour that I'm touring with, I talk a lot about my relationship with my dad. And I said it was really helpful the other day because I wrote this line that was kind of.

[Pete Holmes]

I thought about it the other day doing dishes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It was emotional for me to write this line about my dad and realizing that my whole life I wanted to be my dad. And at a certain point, I realized that I wanted him to be me.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, it's an incredible joke. And I said, it's not even a joke.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's just a line.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. I think it's a great joke.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's not even a joke. There's no punchline.

[Pete Holmes]

If something's. No, it is the punchline.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What's a punchline?

[Pete Holmes]

Of sorts, if something's so true, it is a laugh.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't think it's a laugh line.

[Pete Holmes]

I think it's a laugh line. Well, you forgot what I would call the setup. I would call that the punchline.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

The setup is. It's crazy. This is you. You should just listen to me do it, because I'll do it, but maybe there'll be something good in there. Is. It's crazy that I was. When I was a kid, I thought my dad was a giant.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

He was the king.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right?

[Pete Holmes]

All I wanted to be was like, my dad. He had a job, he had money, and he used that money to send me to school.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

And eventually I went to college, and I wanted to make him proud and get good grades. But then I started learning more and more. Learning more than my dad. He used his money and his. That his mind made to send my mind to a college with his money. That I learned more. More than his mind. And then I would go home and I'd be like, my dad's nuts.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a funny version.

[Pete Holmes]

And it's like, no, my dad's not nuts.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He's him.

[Pete Holmes]

He just didn't change.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He stayed the same.

[Pete Holmes]

He stayed the same.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He didn't do anything wrong.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like you sent something out and it came back to you and was like, you're an asshole.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, you're up to.

[Pete Holmes]

That's the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. And that is part of it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah, you're an asshole. Yours is better. You're not a weirdo. Not whatever I said. But then you go, my whole life, I wanted to be my dad. Then at some point, I wanted my dad to be like me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Isn't it wild? Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

No, it's the most wild thing in the world.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And then it. It carries over, interestingly, into, you know, I was with Atsuko Akatsuka and Ryan the other night, Atsuko's husband Ryan. And they were. They were pointing out, you have that relationship with your dad, but you also sometimes have it with your husband or wife. You know what I mean? And you have to fight it. You have to fight.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I'm sorry. I went a lot of places when you were saying that, but I hear you now. Any relationship?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Any relationship, in some weird way, it's a tussle.

[Pete Holmes]

I'll tell you something really funny that I think relates to what you're saying. I'm hosting Somebody Feed Phil tonight.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And I love Phil Rosenthal. Yeah. And the past year, I took a break. You know, I was vegan for nine years. And the past year, I just was more lax.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

I just decided to kind of, like, take it easy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Had a lot to do with having kids. You just kind of eat a little of her chicken finger, whatever. So it was a real kind of eat Anything year. I was still eating a lot of plants, but wasn't a vegan for a year.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Literally, like, two weeks ago, just one day, woke up and was like, I'm vegan again. I just knew. There was no, like, choice. It wasn't intellectual. I was like, I'm vegan again. I just knew.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And then I was, like, watching somebody feed film, and I. I said to prep for the interview. I was like, it's interesting. Now I'm watching this, and there's just the slightest vegan lens where I'm, like, you know, feeling a little bit of, like, reservation.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Sure.

[Pete Holmes]

With all the animals.

[Mike Birbiglia]

The pigs.

[Pete Holmes]

The pigs, the pigs.

[Mike Birbiglia]

The smart animals. The pigs that we eat.

[Pete Holmes]

Stop it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I know.

[Pete Holmes]

Not to make it about that, but it's true. And once you. One of the weird things about becoming a vegan is you can kind of open that door. The door we all have open a little bit. And we don't like this door. I don't like this door. You can open it a little bit more.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

To the horror. And I'm watching, and I'm like, I can feel that my experience of this show is a little bit tainted.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Now that I'm a vegan again. And Val said. And she wasn't even trying to be funny. And you'll know why. What we're talking about made me think of this. Val is so funny. She goes, well, just try and get in touch with the you from three weeks ago.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's so good.

[Pete Holmes]

That said, life feeds on death and nothing is perfect.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So good.

[Pete Holmes]

And I was like that. That is comedy. That's what comedy is.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Neil was saying, constant contradictions.

[Pete Holmes]

Just pointing out contradictions.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Pointing out insanity.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'll give you that. It's insanity.

[Pete Holmes]

Insanity. I was being insane.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'll say another one.

[Pete Holmes]

Not insane, but I was being human.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's like a year ago, Jen said to me. She goes, I wasn't living in the present. I wasn't. Whatever. And she goes, you know, I was thinking about something in the past, obsessing about something in the future, what's gonna happen, blah, blah, blah.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And she goes, I have the perfect show to recommend to you to deal with this from a. From a guy who's figured it all out. And I. And I go, it doesn't come out till November.

[Pete Holmes]

It's very good. At least you get the last laugh there.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't know. She had the last laugh because it's like. She's right.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. But I've. I've been with I, I don't know if I was with Ram Dass when he lost his cool or was frustrated or, or like, annoyed by something.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

What I'm trying to say is, even though this has taken some of the comedy out of it, even if you write a show about appreciating the moment, that doesn't mean you're now outside of the group. And I'm not trying to attack Jenny, obviously, I love Jenny. I'm just saying you did a beautiful thing and it's noble and deserves to be celebrated.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, thanks.

[Pete Holmes]

Rather than what we often do when someone tries to go like, hey, have you noticed that living in the moment helps? And then you see that guy on his phone and you go like, eat shit, Eckhart Tolle, or whatever it is. I've never seen Eckhart Tolle on his phone. I'm just saying we love kicking people down, but who's kicking who? Like, it's all just us doing the best we can.

[Mike Birbiglia]

True, true. Yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you want to hear a joke I wrote about God? I was gonna, if I was on your show.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, yeah. I'd love it.

[Pete Holmes]

I would run this joke by you, but keep it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Keep in mind that after we talk, after we talk about this, I want to get circle back to the dad stuff because. Oh, no, you and I, I feel like we talk about this a lot, and I feel like it's, it's, the, it's gonna be. This hour is going to be done in six months, nine months. It's, it's gonna be. I think the heart of the hour is discussing my relationship with my dad.

[Pete Holmes]

That's great.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Let's keep talking about it. I, I, I, I heard Eckhart Tolle come out of my face, and I was like, oh, maybe I can do my God joke. I don't do it. No, no, no. I don't want.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Because I can. I, I, I, like, I just want to remind myself to get back to that.

[Pete Holmes]

My phone will remind me that we'll get to that joke or we won't. I'm not invested.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay. So, yeah, so I have that thing about my dad, and then I had this thing the other day, which is I wrote my notebook, but I don't have the joke for it, but maybe you have something for it, which is, my dad always wanted us to raise our daughter to be Catholic, but, like, he never went to church. Right? Like, so, like, and I think he thinks we didn't notice, but, like, we totally notice.

[Pete Holmes]

That's a great line. That's A funny line.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I think.

[Pete Holmes]

I think he thinks we didn't notice.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He thinks we didn't notice.

[Pete Holmes]

Wait, can I ask? Were you at church?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And there's just an empty space. Is that fair? Where dad should be.

[Mike Birbiglia]

He never went to church. He never went to church. Like my mom. Like, it would be me, my mom, maybe my brother, maybe my sisters. And right before we went to church, my dad was sort of tucking Tuck away in his little study area. And the joke is, I don't have it fully fleshed out. It's like. It's not like he was doing, like, noble doctor stuff. I mean, he's a doctor, but he was, like, smoking a pipe and reading a book about World War II. You know what I mean? It was his me time.

[Pete Holmes]

That was his church.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It was his me time. Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And then I have this joke. It's a half a joke, but it's like. Is like I have that nostalgic. I have a smell memory with pipe smoke.

[Pete Holmes]

Of course. Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Because it was this thing that was so meaningful. It meant that my dad wanted to be away from his family and not talk to anybody.

[Pete Holmes]

And, of course, this folds into how you relate to that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Now, of course.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, I feel like 20 minutes later in the show, and you say, and this is how I tell you I'm this close to buying a pipe.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, my God. Blackout.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Because you figure out that. That one of the. One of the things I realized about my dad, and I'm saying this in hopes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Idea, by the way, that's a good pitch. I'm only silent because I'm, like, thinking it. I'm mulling it over. That is a good. There's potentially good callback there. I think the. The initial joke itself isn't there yet. The thing I just pitched you isn't there. But I think it's an interesting tableau.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't know what the comparison is. I don't even know if you need a perfect comparison. But the one that came to mind was, like, sports. It's like, when my baby was born, my family would buy her, like, Red Sox onesies.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And they'd go right in the garbage disposal. And I was like, it's not what we're doing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's great. You should do that on stage.

[Pete Holmes]

You think so? I feel like I don't. I don't want to hurt Red Sox fans.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, no, no, no. You're not hurting anybody. They've won, like, 10 championships.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I mean, come on.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, then here's the actual truth. I'm. I'm afraid that's very close to me being like, what was I saying?

[Mike Birbiglia]

What do you mean? What do you mean? This?

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, I'm not in your tribe. I'm not in your tribe. I'm not. I'm not caring. Forward the legacy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Come on, come on, come on. We gotta. We. We. You know, we always reference you on working it out because we say. Pete and I always talk about. If you're not telling secrets, then who cares? What's the point? Yeah, what's the thing that you. That's a secret for you about, like, your dad with the onesie. The Red Sox onesie. And it's like, first of all, why aren't you telling that on stage? Because I think that's very funny. I think you throw three tags on that. That's. That's a killer joke.

[Pete Holmes]

My parents. I feel like the time is gone, though, because my daughter's five.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, no, no.

[Pete Holmes]

See, I don't want to do it. You're catching me. This is like therapy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You're busted.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like, I don't want to do it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You're busted. That's a great. It's a great piece of imagery.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Right in the garbage disposal.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. I mean, it's. And it's so relatable. Think about how many things we get from people. We're like, ah, you don't get me.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Oh, that's a line from my green eggs and ham. Because I got the green eggs and ham shirt from two different friends. It's true.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Someone gave me a green. The first friend, I was like, you don't know me at all. The second one was like God himself being like, put on the fucking shirt. This is how people see you.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's really funny.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. I could tell by your silence I meant it. I could tell that you're going like, data.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Really data.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm the one who really gets you because I just sent you ham.

[Pete Holmes]

That's very good. It took me a second. It's very. It's very, very good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I know you can't read and you love eating pretty pictures.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I like the dad stuff. I.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What? What's your dad stuff? What? You don't avoid this. Don't avoid this. What's. No, you.

[Pete Holmes]

If you saw my new hour, you would be. In fact, when you talked about that line.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

We were talking about the justice component of jokes when we. You talked to me on the phone.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Yeah. The other day, you made the point, which is my joke. That I just said right now. And it's sort of an early form of it has justice for both parties, justice for me and justice for my dad. He actually makes a point for his side of it.

[Pete Holmes]

One of the considerations for an audience is justice.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I agree.

[Pete Holmes]

And I think that's pretty funny. I mean, it's like absurd. It's not absurd. It's just like a strange phenomenon that no one's kind of talking about. So when you kind of shit on your dad or make fun and then he gets this last laugh, I have a lot of that in my current life.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's great.

[Pete Holmes]

So I have this joke about. And I told you this, but I have this joke about how I'm parenting my daughter more gently than I was parented. If I fell at the playground in the 80s, they would just say, you're okay, and I would be like, oh, thanks for denying my reality. You know, like that sort of thing. And now you. I show what modern parenting is, which is like, you're having a hard. I actually do kind of a you voice. You're having a hard time. You are really having a frustrating feeling. And the only way to express yourself was to set a fire in my study. I get that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

But then I go, it's moments like that that I wish a portal would open up and a Charles Dickens style ghost would come take my daughter by the hand and whisker to my childhood so she could see. Like, I want her to know, but I don't want to be the one to tell her.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

So the ghost would come out and say, let me take you to a time when Peter's father apologized to him. They go in the portal. It's perfect darkness and silence. And my daughter goes, but spirit, there's nothing here. And he goes, of course. Because it never fucking happened. That's. That's well and good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You can take the the out of it, by the way.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, but see, I'm not in. I'm not in this to take the out.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay, okay.

[Pete Holmes]

No, you're you. Because you don't ever have it. Yeah. You're not wrong.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You don't need it.

[Pete Holmes]

You're not wrong.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You can write a clean joke. That's that good. Take it out.

[Pete Holmes]

Take it out. Well, here's the justice. Okay, so I've been doing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm not a prude. If you have to say fucking a joke. If it's important for the joke, great. If it's not important.

[Pete Holmes]

Do I have prude face right now? Sorry.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Yeah, I think it is.

[Pete Holmes]

I'M doing pre face. The next line is, I go. Every time I've wanted my father to apologize to me for hurting my feelings, I end up apologizing to him for having hurt feelings.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Beautiful.

[Pete Holmes]

And then the way that I make that a laugh is I go, I know that's not funny, but if you leave feeling a little less alone, that's also my job. It becomes this big, nice moment.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And then I go. And then a portal opens up, and my father comes out of the portal, takes me by the hand and takes. And takes me to his childhood. He's six years old. Old, already has three jobs, and he's taking a break eating a glass sandwich.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You've told me that, like, three times. It always makes me laugh. That's the justice sandwich.

[Pete Holmes]

That's the justice. And then I go, there's a callback. Cause I call my father, o Captain. My Captain. At another point in the show, I go, I'm sorry, sir. Oh, Captain, my Captain. I guess every side has two stories. Every story has two sides, and that's justice. There's an interesting dynamic going on.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I think it's beautiful. I have another joke about. I just remembered, and that I haven't put on stage yet, about how in the 80s, dads were like the villains in animated films. They're like. And now dads are like the bird who flies ahead and goes, the coast is clear.

[Pete Holmes]

That's very true. Yeah. No, I. I try to make it very clear that I.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Like, that's funny. Or is it nothing?

[Pete Holmes]

No, I like it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Dads were the something else. The coast is clear.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, because, like, I'm like, I look at my dad, and I look at. Not even just my dad. Every damn dad I know in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. These people were terrifying.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

These people were where. I would not cross one of these people.

[Pete Holmes]

No.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I would not say a word out of turn to any of these people.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I look at the dads now. They're like, are we. Are we going, Trevor, are we heading out? Oh, we don't have to. We don't have to. Yeah. You can keep playing for five or six hours. Yeah, you can keep doing what? Oh, yeah, you're eating five chocolate chip muffins. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That is so right on, Leila. Let's say I tell Leila, don't eat that cookie, and then she eats it. I go, lee, it's a pretty good cookie there, right? Like, there's no. And I wonder if we're gonna get bit in the butt. I know.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, we are.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't know.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I think I actually. Sure. No, I actually don't know. I don't know.

[Pete Holmes]

The values that we value might not be relevant. You're absolutely right. As relevant in, like, 10 years.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Meaning sharing. I also.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Sharing. I don't think sharing.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't think. I don't think sharing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You were going to say something insightful. There you go. Maybe we won't value sharing because the world value kindness.

[Pete Holmes]

The world will be customized completely to you the way that it already sort of is now. No, I'm talking about a virtual.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, interesting.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm talking about. It'll make a movie that you're in starring other people that you want with the music that you want. If something is hooked up to your brain and knows when you're releasing pleasure chemicals, it can make a symphony of perfection. And the fact that you and I were just kind of walking around in the dark going, like, maybe this book, maybe this movie, maybe this record will be a joke. And all of the things that we learn about, like, sharing is based on, like, scarcity. It's, like, based on. There won't be enough. But if you're living in a virtual world where there's a chance.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. But I think I. I'll push back on you and say that that's what punk rock was. Right. Punk rock was an answer to the Beatles and disco. And it was basically like, no, no, we're not doing that. We're smashing these instruments and we're expressing what's in our soul.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And nobody told us to do it.

[Pete Holmes]

And you think, there'll be a punk.

[Mike Birbiglia]

There'll be a punk rock version of Digital Algorithms. I think I can only dream, But.

[Pete Holmes]

I think, yeah, I'm just concerned. And I don't want to turn this into a futurist podcast because I don't really know what I'm talking about. And none of us really do.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No.

[Pete Holmes]

But I think anything that you know, this thing could know and then be like, where do you want it to be? Like punk rock. Do you want to, like, tell me to go fuck myself? It'll be like. It'll do whatever you want.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What? All right. What's a thing about your relationship with your dad that you've never talked about on stage that you think about sometimes on a loop, but you're like, well, I can't say that on stage. Hmm.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, Val and I have talked about Fight Flight Fawn, which I think is pretty funny.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What's Fight Flight Fawn?

[Pete Holmes]

Fawn is how I manage my folks as I tell them how. How great they are. Oh, so it's fawning, like fawning.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That seems very kind.

[Pete Holmes]

Fight, flight, freeze, Fawn. It is kind, except it's a little bit tricky if you're fawning to prevent a situation. It's not necessarily the most. Like, if I found out you were being nice to me because you were afraid that I might say something that would hurt you.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That's different from if you were just being my friend.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right. It's a little disingenuous, but maybe when your folks are in their. In their later years, it's kind now kind of a nice thing to do.

[Pete Holmes]

I actually. My dad and I are in a great place. You know why? Because I get ahead of it. And now I'll just text both of them a kind word that's nice and I like it. But it is a little bit. When I say manipulative, it's my attempt at keeping things sort of copace.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, I get what you're saying. I mean, my thing with my dad is. And I said this to you the other day on the phone is I go and I'm experimenting with saying this on stage. It's like, my dad grew up in the 40s in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, went to med school on the GI Bill, and worked on a military base in Texas for a decade. And I'm just realizing we're not the same person.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Like, how did I miss that?

[Pete Holmes]

That's a premise that I never tried, is I never knew how bad my dad was at spelling until we started texting, and then. But it's because I thought my dad was like, the Pope. I thought he was infallible.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's great.

[Pete Holmes]

And then I was like, oh, my God, that's great.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Have you done that? I think that's very funny. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

He's not exactly dying. She prefers the.

[Mike Birbiglia]

She likes us burning each other.

[Pete Holmes]

You look like someone who'd get a burn very easily. Sunburn.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. True. We just dapped.

[Pete Holmes]

Mike, if there is one piece of technology, wearable technology, that has changed my life in the past years the most, it would be, hands down, this, that you always see me wearing on the show. It is my Apollo Neuro. Apollo Neuro is a wearable tech that helps your body recover from stress by sending vibrations into your body. That gives your nervous system the sensation of being touched or held. That's right. It's a wearable hug, and it absolutely works. Your nervous system speaks in a specific language. It's not language. It's Touch. And when you get these very specific neuroscientist designed vibrations going into you. Apollo can help you relax. It can help you sleep, focus and be more productive. It's using that touch therapy on your wrist or your ankle. It's like finding the fuse box for your emotions. It's got settings for energy and wake up which I use when I've had enough coffee. I don't need to be jittery, but I want to wake up sometimes when I'm driving social which is what I have it on when I'm doing this podcast. Clear and focused which is what I use when I'm writing. Rebuild and recover after any stressful situation. Calm which is wonderful for meditation. Unwind which I put it on when we're watching TV at night and helps me get ready for bed and fall asleep. Which is a wonderful chemical free way to ease yourself into gentle, beautiful deep sleep. Apollo Neuro was developed, as I said, by a neuroscientist and a board certified psychiatrist. It is not a crystal, it is not a mood ring. They have been studying the impacts of chronic stress in humans for nearly 15 years and Apollo's effects on stress, sleep, cognitive performance and recovery have been proven in multiple clinical trials and real world studies. And I'm one of those people. I will tell you it works. I never ever ever one time I jumped in the pool with it and it fried. It bought one immediately because I, I swear by it. It is a life hack and a game changer. You can get 40 bucks off by going to ApolloNeuro.com that's a P-O-L-L-O-N-E-U-R-O.com weird and use promo code weird at checkout. 40 bucks off. Get this in your life. I've seen so many weirdos that chose wearing them. They always tell me the same thing. Thank you for introducing this to them. Non chemical. Something tactile, something physical, embodied, somatic that helps you cope with stress. What do you nuts. Help you focus. What are you nuts? Help you sleep. It does it all. It's incredible. ApolloNeuro.com weird. We're also brought to us by our friends at Modern Mammals. You guys know I am a huge believer in Modern mammals. It's the only shampoo that cleans your hair but makes it look like you didn't wash it. If I had five seconds to explain it to you, that's what I would say. For years I would avoid shampoo occasionally washing my hair, which means my hair was nasty. But I Didn't want it to look all fried out, all dried up, all fluffy, unmanageable. I basically had to schedule my shampoos to a two, three day window where my hair could look terrible and I didn't want to do that anymore. And I finally found Modern Mammals. It's the only shampoo that I actually love and use and makes your hair look perfect the day you used it. Meaning if you want it to look incredible, you can have it right there on command. It almost has like a controlling managing quality to it, meaning it's the opposite of unruly, it's the opposite of fluffy. It's got that wave and it leaves just enough natural oil to keep your hair manageable and looking perfect. So I absolutely swear by it. So many guys over 40, 000 guys have switched to Modern Mammals. You should see the reviews for this stuff. They will never go back to shampoo and I am one of them. I am hooked for life. And it's a small grassroots punk rock company that I love working with. These guys created. They put a lot of time and and effort into making the perfect formula. Six seconds to perfect hair. Go to modernmammals.com weird. You can get a special combo deal only through this show where you can get both the bar, which is the pH balance fragrance free version, and the bottle, which is the magic mud. It's like that because it's like a gray mud you put in your hair and rinse out. Try both for 44 bucks. That's modern mammals.com weird. You won't regret it. You will be a believer just making that up. I'll say I'm a believer. Give it a try. See if you are to get into it. I think, I think when you see this new hour, you'll see I have a lot of.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, no, I get it. I'm just, I'm just trying to. For the sake of the podcast.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And for the sake also just of your hour, I'm just trying to squeeze out of you. What's the thing? Because I'll try to do the exercise myself. Like, what's the thing that like you're. You think about your parents but you wouldn't say because you're like, maybe that's a bridge too far.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't mean to compliment myself, but that line every time I've wanted my dad to apologize to me, I've ended up is as close a shave as I can manage. Yeah, it's like tricky to say.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, you know, what's my close shave that I'M sort of. I don't have a joke for yet is. But it's just a truism. I wrote my notebook the other day because I know that this is the thrust, you know, for people who haven't seen my shows. Generally there's some kind of theme. It heads towards a main story.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And so I'm always in this case. It was a lot about my dad. It's all about being a dad and having a relationship with my dad as he's in the latter part of his life and I'm unpacking these things about my dad where I'm going all like the only time my dad was interested in what I was doing was when it had to do with academics and sports. And I wasn't great at sports so I cheated at academics.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow, that's very good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Not bad, right?

[Pete Holmes]

I like it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I did cheat in school in eighth and ninth grade.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, me too.

[Mike Birbiglia]

A lot. Quite a bit. And I feel like I want to.

[Pete Holmes]

Stop in high school. I In high school.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I do.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I stopped in sophomore year. Why'd you stop?

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I went. I went to a very hippie. My joke about my grade school was no grades. You either got a hug or a slightly, slightly firmer hug. We called our teachers by their first name. I loved it. It was great. Very empowering. But I also realized it was kind of like how we're parenting our kids. I realized like I can just look at my neighbor's paper. Like we were sitting very close to each other and I was just like, I don't know and I don't want to get a bad grade.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So.

[Pete Holmes]

I know I just said we don't get grades. We did get grades.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I report card.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I have two instances where I was sort of lying and cheating in that span of years. One of them was a track meet where I qualified as the. The head. The. The St. Mary's School 50 yard dash champion. So I went to the town track meet and base and I and I leading and my dad was excited and we made pasta the night before. You know, we did all the stuff that's not actually helpful.

[Pete Holmes]

Right. You know, in the 80s we were guessing drink Gatorade, M and M's, have some M and Ms. You're going to want to stay up late. Stay up very late. Think about the race, but think about losing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So my mind is like going to make my dad happy. I'm going to make him proud. I'm going to win the town track mate. It's like everybody in town, Shrewsbury and The. The starter gun goes off or whatever it is. I swear to God, it was like a puff of smoke, like a cartoon. It was like everyone is gone. They're not even in the same race. They're like, done with the race. I'm starting the race. And so what I did was I pretended to fake an injury. I just fell down.

[Pete Holmes]

That's exactly what I would have done.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I go, my toe, my toe. Who has a toe injury in a 50 yard dash?

[Pete Holmes]

You're really in a very sweet spot. Because there's a thing that we do, and I'm guessing your dad did it, where they're like, pretending about the toe is better than facing reality about the race. So they allow it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like when a kid doesn't want to go off the high dive and he's like, I have a stomach ache. And you. And you go with it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's just too hard to be like. Or are you scared because that. Who the fuck says that?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. And then this is another one that's a little bit more sad, which is ninth grade, all boys school. I get beat up. All boys Catholic school. I get beat up by this guy on the football team really bad. And then I became a mark for his friends. They would come up to me at the locker and punch me in the face.

[Pete Holmes]

What?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm not even kidding. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not kidding. I became, you know, a speed bag. I was this. I was a speed bag of sorts.

[Pete Holmes]

I hate that I'm making jokes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It was awful. And the school didn't do anything about it because it's Massachusetts. Right? It's Massachusetts. They're like, haven't you. Haven't you heard of us? It's Massachusetts in the Catholic Church. Have you seen our work?

[Pete Holmes]

That's very good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Maybe that.

[Pete Holmes]

That's good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Maybe that's a joke. That's good. Have you seen it? Have you seen our work?

[Pete Holmes]

Have you seen our work? Always nice to meet a fan. Oh, you were complaining. You were complaining.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Always nice to meet a fan. Oh, you are. Completely.

[Pete Holmes]

We noticed. Mike's been punched in the face. Always nice to meet a fan.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God. I remember. And I have this memory where I was in. I was in the. St. John's High School. I was in ninth grade. I was in the computer lab writing an article for the school newspaper about the aviation club. And the title of the article was Aviation Club soars into Orbit.

[Pete Holmes]

Can I just say I'm dead. Every detail. And knowing that a punch is coming.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm dead. Little Mike Birbiglia in his Velcro New Balances in the computer lab. You also made me realize how much of our lives was spent at the computer lab.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, gosh.

[Pete Holmes]

With the one shared printer.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So then this kid comes in and he's like. He's like, you know. You know, Archie Cavuto's looking for you and he's gonna kill you. And I was just like, I don't even know who Archie Cavuto is.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's part of the problem. Archie wants everyone to have a certain feeling about him, if you understand.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So I was. I was sort of at this Catholic school. I was sort of on the run, and. And what I started to do, and it was sort of an act out of sorts, is I would just cheat on tests.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It was sort of my way of saying, flipping the bird to the school. Like, I don't care about the school. I'm just going to cheat.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm going to hate. This is why child psychology and school psychologists, it's all real.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

In the 80s, 90s, they were like, get the fuck out of here. I'm like, it's real.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You were so disempowered.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I went through a shoplifting phase.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, really? Same time, shoplifting.

[Pete Holmes]

It was a stress. I was trying to have some control.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What'd you take?

[Pete Holmes]

Well, the highest end, toward the end of my career was pornography.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, wow.

[Pete Holmes]

We would steal Playboy magazine.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

Thank God I didn't get a club magazine. I feel like I'd be a different guy if we had gotten one of the hardcore mags.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, gosh. Club. I don't even know that one.

[Pete Holmes]

You don't know Club International?

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, I just remember the more extreme.

[Pete Holmes]

Look at my face. And I'm a straight guy, and I'm still like, no.

[Mike Birbiglia]

All I remember that was the extreme one when I was a kid was like, I think Hustler Club's a notch up. Oh, it's a notch up from Hustle. Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

You seen buttholes in Hustler?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't recall.

[Pete Holmes]

Then you didn't see no buttholes. You remember your first glossy butt hole?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Anyway, the point is, I'm trying to, you know. And this brings in the. Working it outside of. This is like when. When I'm working on jokes, a lot of times it's not the funny part that I start with.

[Pete Holmes]

Of course not.

[Mike Birbiglia]

A lot of times it's. What do I not want to talk about?

[Pete Holmes]

You made me realize that the area is my parents. I'm Going to my parents 50th wedding anniversary. And I think I've talked to you about this because it's weighing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes, yes.

[Pete Holmes]

And I go, I feel like a prisoner going to the warden's birthday party. That's how I feel. And I've said it many times in life, because it's a real. I've been depressed on stage. No.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Very funny. Why are you doing it on stage?

[Pete Holmes]

The little boy is like, don't say that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Avoidance.

[Pete Holmes]

Don't say that they.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Because you know that they don't. Your folks don't listen to the podcast, but they're going to watch the special.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, but even that has been sort of discredited. Meaning they'll watch the special. And sometimes it just doesn't. It's possible to.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It washes over them.

[Pete Holmes]

They wouldn't necessarily.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's a great, great joke. Love that joke.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, I'm going to the wardens. Well, in the movie of my life, I give a toast at the. If, If I were a Mike Birbiglia movie.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I'd get to the wedding anniversary and I'd give a roast. Like, I would roast them.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, I feel like we're celebrating everything that broke me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

And they would love it, too. Like, I wouldn't want to. I never, I really, really don't want to humiliate or embarrass, but there's a certain mood they can be in. But I don't know if they'll be in that mood.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

The feeling of my childhood, I think.

[Mike Birbiglia]

The thing that I'm trying to come to grips with and it reminds me of what you're saying, because I'm like, I don't want to. I want to preface this by saying how much I appreciate my parents. Love my parents, appreciate my parents. I feel like they gave everything in their life for me and my siblings. So it's like, it's. With all due respect, but I, But I often, I look at, like, I, you know, Jen said recently, I don't know, a few years ago, she goes, when we got married at city Hall, I didn't think we were going to be married. I was like, you didn't think it was going to, like, last? She was like, no, I just sort of thought it would be whatever, maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. I was like, oh, I thought it was like a whole life thing. Like, I'm from Massachusetts. Like, people just stay married. Like, my dad used to say to my mom, Mary Jean, you would talk to a doorknob. He used to say that to her on a regular basis because she talked to a lot of people and they're still together. They've been together 60 years.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's a premise.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Those people, they're together.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a premise. I have written down in my notes that I could work it out with you. Let's see, dad.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You like that? As a joke?

[Pete Holmes]

Of course. It made me think of one of my own jokes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay, good.

[Pete Holmes]

I loved it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Is that a good sign? Made him think of one of his own jokes.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I loved it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Talk to a doorknob. Yeah, I would love to. Didn't give it enough.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, no.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like when you're telling street jokes. You told one and made me go like. Oh, I know.

[Mike Birbiglia]

There you go. There you go.

[Pete Holmes]

That's all. Good joke.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You know what I'd love? A water that isn't in a plastic bottle.

[Pete Holmes]

Have your Vita Cocoa, baby. That's cardboard. Recyclable. You can drink your magic mind.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, my gosh.

[Pete Holmes]

Didn't I send you some of those?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Hold on. I'm gonna grab a water. Am I allowed to grab a bubbly thing?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, whatever. Is there bubbly water in there?

[Mike Birbiglia]

There is this one. Is that okay?

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, that has caffeine in it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, it has caffeine. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That's how you know we're 45. Don't touch that. That has caffeine in it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, no, hold on, hold on. Sorry.

[Pete Holmes]

That all that?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Definitely ton of caffeine. Is it like one of those?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I'll tell you how much caffeine it is.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, I'll look. I look, I look.

[Pete Holmes]

I assumed you don't have your readers.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't have readers yet. I'm gonna get them soon, though.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, probably. Me, too. So calling my mom, which I hate.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Hold on one second.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't enjoy it. I don't hate it, but it's not always pleasant.

[Mike Birbiglia]

35 milligrams of caffeine. How is that?

[Pete Holmes]

It's a third of a cup of coffee.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay, sorry. Start the joke again.

[Pete Holmes]

Calling my mom is difficult. It goes in these phases. We open with technical difficulties.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's funny.

[Pete Holmes]

She can't hear me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I love that.

[Pete Holmes]

We move on to environmental difficulties. My father won't turn Jeopardy.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Down.

[Pete Holmes]

This is all real. I've never called my mom and just gone. It's always like. She answers on her watch.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

She can't find her phone. She answers. She goes, oh, P.T. why can't I hear you? This is so cursing. She's she's sad, but she gets sad. She's like, I'm pushing the button. And I'm like, it's on the side of the phone. There's a volume on the side of the phone. Then there's the airing of grievances, which is her complaining about whatever she and my father got into. Then there's the fall report, how many times she fell. Sweet.

[Mike Birbiglia]

This is good.

[Pete Holmes]

Then there's the unsolvable, solvable problem. This is a whole. This is a reliable segment. Your father keeps leaving town and leaves me home alone. I will suggest a solution, and this will deepen, deeply offend her. Because what she really wants is to fall and die so she can tell my father, fuck you from beyond the grave.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's good.

[Pete Holmes]

Like she wants to be a victim. Like she doesn't want. Because I was like, maybe, mom, you could hire more people to be around the house, check in with you. She doesn't want the solution. She's like, I'm gonna fall and your dad won't be here. And then I forget that she's kind of twisting her mustache.

[Mike Birbiglia]

This seems great. I mean, I think right now you're a little bit on the page. Like, you're a little bit reading.

[Pete Holmes]

I've never done it before.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, I know, but I'm just saying.

[Pete Holmes]

But here's the.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm only saying it because I'm not laughing audibly, but I'm actually, like, taking it in and loving it.

[Pete Holmes]

Here's the last one. The misunderstanding. This is the final piece. Did you get the butterfly gift? Yes. It's great. We're growing the butterflies you sent in the. In the habitat. She goes, that's not what I got you. I sent a book. Oh, yes. We got it. Thank you. My mom says, I don't need you to thank me. I just want to know if you got it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I love this. From the person who accused me earlier in the conversation of just reading voicemails.

[Pete Holmes]

That's hilarious. And it ends with the accidental callback. If I talk to my mom 10 minutes after the phone call, she will call me back and I'll answer, and she'll say, sorry, I didn't mean to call you back. That'll happen between one and four times.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's very funny. I think that whole. Runs great. You gotta do it on stage.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I'll try it. I want to.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I think it's going to be great.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, thanks, man.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I had something on religion because you're so. You're so hip to religion.

[Pete Holmes]

I like being Hip to religion, you know?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, I have a thing where I'm like. And you had a religion thing too, right?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I do. I'm a little nervous because it's serious. It's like bonsai tree. It's micro adjustments. Very delicate. Could die on the table. That's what I'm saying. Nothing harder than writing a joke about God, in my experience.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, I have one, which is. I think that every religion is an answer to something about the world that we don't understand. Which is why I like Hinduism, because I don't understand elephants either. It's like, are they aliens? Are they.

[Pete Holmes]

I would do it. I would do it differently.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I mean, they got the, the trunk and it's like a straw and a fork and an arm. It's like, yeah, that should be a religion.

[Pete Holmes]

That's very good.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Not bad, right?

[Pete Holmes]

I like that it went a different way. Just for what it's worth, I would say religion is all trying to explain the universe, which is why I like Hinduism, because the universe is fucking nuts. And Hinduism is the only religion that's like, I don't know, maybe an elephant's in charge.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's. That's better.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, it is better.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's better. No, but, but.

[Pete Holmes]

And if you don't like the. If you don't like the elephant, maybe it's this Michael Jackson looking monkey. That's Hanuman. You wouldn't get that. But like, they have a lot of funky chunkies.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, they have a lot. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

No, my director, Seth Barris, was telling.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Me because he toured a show that he directed called the Tricky Part in all over India, and he said the amount of gods that there are.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

In Hinduism is astonishing.

[Pete Holmes]

I say with all respect, as someone who'. Hinduish, who's enjoyed Hindu practices.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Sure.

[Pete Holmes]

So don't be mad. It's kind of the Pokemon of religions. There's. There's a. You got to catch them all.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's interesting. There's a lot.

[Pete Holmes]

But you could say the same about Catholicism. You guys have all the saints and the.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, I'm intrigued. I'm genuinely intrigued by Hinduism right now.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. I mean, the same way that I'm.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Genuinely intrigued by Buddhism is.

[Pete Holmes]

It's a. It's a masterpiece. It's wonderful.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What would be. You know what's funny, though? Atsuko, my buddy who did the show the other night with me, she was saying, she, she was like, your Hinduism bit's funny, but, like, you also gotta, like, make fun of Hinduism. You know what I mean?

[Pete Holmes]

Like, go at it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Cuz she was like, you make fun of Catholicism, you make fun of other religions. It's like. But then like, you, you have this funny joke about Hinduism. It was like, you gotta like smack it a little bit.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, you got a lot. There's a lot going on. I mean, Krishna is a blue boy, you know?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't know what that means.

[Pete Holmes]

Krishna.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Krishna's a blue boy.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What do you mean, a blue boy?

[Pete Holmes]

I feel like there's a YouTube clip that could.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, really? That would make me really feel really bad about, About Hinduism.

[Pete Holmes]

No, no, they could just give you the basics. I'm pretty sure this is Hinduism.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, but why is it like a negative thing I'm saying? No, no, what she's saying is you don't criticize. You're not.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I know, I know. And if you knew the mythology.

[Mike Birbiglia]

If I understood the mythology, I'd have more criticism.

[Pete Holmes]

Arjun Lakshman. There's a lot of old Jewish ladies I know named like these.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, the thing I've been saying, but I think the reason why she was saying this is lately I've been doing this thing about I, I was raised Catholic, but I, I can't read, I can't bring my daughter a Catholic church. It's like, I, I know what happened.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Like, it's like if, if someone molested someone at our local Whole Foods, we wouldn't hit the Whole Foods that much anymore. Yeah. You know what I mean? Even if they were like, it only happens sometimes.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Like. No, that's enough.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm a little Freudian here with words. I wouldn't say Whole Foods unless that's the joke you're trying to make because.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It'S a sexual double entendre.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I didn't mean it that way. Yeah, I know you didn't.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Trader Joe's.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Interesting. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Somebody got molested at Trader Joe's.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, we might not hit that Trader Joe's anymore.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I don't know that. By the way, brain is very literal.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, in the working it out space for the working out listeners, as you point out, that's a perfect example of this. These are the conversations comedians have all the time. Whole Foods one. Well, yeah, Whole Foods. Trader Joe's. What's a funnier word? Trader Joe's.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, it's a funnier word. And Costco is a funnier K sound, but I don't think it's. It's funny. I don't see you in a Costco.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you want to hear my.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Your religion joke.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, here. Here's a one liner. I want to do a patriotic travel show called America. Love it and leave it. Look at your face.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

Katie liked it. Kids.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, patriotic travel. Patriotic. Okay, I get it now.

[Pete Holmes]

Kids talk like swingers. This is a joke I'll never do. It's too gross. Kids and swingers talk the same.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay, do you want to play? Oh, God.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you like to share?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God.

[Pete Holmes]

Are you good at sharing?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't like this.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, nobody wants. Nobody likes it. I hate it. I'm telling you, I'll never do it. I'll never do it. But when we're at the playground, we're like, if these were men with mustaches, you would think they were about to.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like swingers. Swinger talk. Okay, I'm going to tell you the God joke. I believe in God. Don't get me wrong. I don't think God exists. That would be insane. To exist means to stand out from the ground of being. I think God is the ground of being. That's what that one means. I believe in this. You know. This?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

This. Yeah, that's God. Reality, consciousness. Some people say there's too much sadness, too much pain, too much chaos, too much confusion for there to be a God. But what does the plot of a movie have to do with whether or not someone made the movie? I think that's funny. You would never say there's too much sadness, pain, chaos and confusion in this movie. Therefore, no one made the movie. The movie just spontaneously arrived out of blackness for no reason whatsoever. It's too sad. Like, if it was a nice movie, you'd think something made it. Like if we were all having orgasms 247 and eating lobster rolls, listening to Jimmy Buffett while sitting on warm chocolate bidet fountains would be like, yeah, there's a God. Someone planned this. There's a liquid dessert being shot at my tush. Who cares? Who cares if it's nice or not? It's here. There is a movie. We have to deal with that. Just because it's not the movie you would have made doesn't mean something didn't make it. The content has nothing to do with it. There is a movie and you're in it. Like. Like it's funny that all the arguments you can come up with for there being no God, you come up with them in reality. That's the funniest thing I can say to you. You come up with them in reality. Like you use the mystery consciousness. Your Existence to say there's no mystery. Consciousness is the mystery.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, that's right.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like we're all pens and we're filled with this magical ink that makes us aware and gives us life. And some of us use those pens to write. This is bullshit.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like characters in a book arguing for the existence of an author. Of course there's no author. Characters in a book can't find the author. The author isn't in the book. Even if the author writes a character named the author, that's not the author. That's a hint that there might be an author. That's as good as we can get. Of course there's no God. You're not gonna find God here. You're not gonna find author in a book.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Congratulations, you're hired as our deacon.

[Pete Holmes]

I know, it's. It is a homily, isn't it?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, that's. Contact your local priest or deacon or Pete Holmes. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, even as I'm reading it to you, that's the first time I've tried it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's good.

[Pete Holmes]

You think it's good?

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's a good run. I mean, I think it's like. I think your final version of gonna be a third or more.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what I was gonna say.

[Mike Birbiglia]

A third of what it is. It's a third, which is, by the way, for the. For the creatives listening.

[Pete Holmes]

That's mine.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's my reason. If I have something I like, it's gonna be a third of what I wrote.

[Pete Holmes]

This is real. Working it out. Shit. Do you want to know the real. The real real of my process? I'll go on stage with that. I won't memorize it. And what I say, that's the joke. It'll just kind of come out. The pressure of being on stage. I'll go, I believe in God. Don't get me wrong. I don't think it exists. Some people think God doesn't exist. But what is the plot of a movie after? Because it's too chaotic. It's that. And then the third one is. The author isn't in the book. Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

The author isn't in the book is my favorite part of it. That's the part where I locked in.

[Pete Holmes]

Me too. This is what my life too.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. This is what my director, Seth, always talks about, is like. He doesn't talk about things in relation to. I love it. I hate it. I like it. I don't like it. He just goes, I was in here and I fell out here. And then I was in here.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And then I was really in here. And for me, it's. When the people in the book don't know there's an author.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, the joke could be as simple as, I think it's funny that all the arguments you can come up with for there being no God, you come up with them in reality. That's the funniest thing in the world. You're in reality saying, nothing made reality, which is really interesting to me because there's no evidence for a God except the fact that you can hear me right now. But you know what gets tricky, Mikey, is that I believe that God is consciousness. And that's really hard to kind of explain. I kind of don't want the wrong God element. When I said this to Val, for example, she's like, it's giving me church douche chills. Because calling God the author of reality is a very churchy thing to say.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What's interesting, I was talking on, working it out recently about how in some ways. And this goes back to our other conversation, in some ways about algorithms, is like, I've had Rami Yousef and Alex Edelman on the show recently. Someone who's very serious about Judaism, someone who's very serious about Islam.

[Pete Holmes]

Which one?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, it doesn't even matter which. For which it doesn't even matter. And in some ways, I feel like people who are devout religious people, and yourself included.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not developing religious.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, you're serious about your faith.

[Pete Holmes]

Sure.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And I think being serious about your faith, I think in some ways is the new punk rock.

[Pete Holmes]

I know. Isn't that funny?

[Mike Birbiglia]

It is.

[Pete Holmes]

That's a funny take.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It is, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I'll add to it, and I could be wrong. I'll. Katie, I'm including you so we can get the full spectrum of humanity, the three of us. I think not drinking is the new punk rock. Like, there's a new thing going on where, like, young people are like, I don't drink. Miller High Life. Katie's nodding her head because, like, that's fucking corporate bullshit.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I get that.

[Pete Holmes]

And I'm not getting fucked up in college and falling in a pool and all that bullshit. Like, get out of here.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

They're like getting woke to what it does to your sleep, what it does to your brain, what it does to your body.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And people are going, I don't want to do that. They'd rather microdose lsd, you know what I'm saying? Like, than. Than drink seven glasses of wine. And I think I Think they're onto something. Yeah, I don't think they're onto something. I think that's. That's right on.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What do you got?

[Pete Holmes]

I got more premises. I love doing your show, and you're doing my show.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I love your doing your show.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you want to hear this?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Do you think that we're doing a good job of. Of. Of fulfilling both podcasts?

[Pete Holmes]

Of course, having noticed.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, this is a chocolate vanilla swirl.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, it is. Okay, great.

[Pete Holmes]

I did this. I did this on stage the other day.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I get insecure. I get more insecure because I. I think about the quality of my work.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I know you do. To its own detriment. I was on stage the other night, and I go, what's that?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I just deflate shaved you. I think.

[Pete Holmes]

The sound effect made me think I was a bouncy house. I tried to write some jokes for Nikki Glaser. I was like, jeff Ross lost a bunch of weight. He just looks like a deflated bounce house.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, that's funny.

[Pete Holmes]

She didn't use it. Anywho, I go, I'm not on social media. Like, I don't go on social media. So if I'm canceled, just don't tell me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Funny.

[Pete Holmes]

I just want to walk around like an idiot. Just like. Like, hey, people like you. I'm like, nice to meet a fan. Ticket sales are slow. Like, just let me be a happy idiot.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, God. Let's see if there's anything.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, here's one. My relatives are from the South. They're from Texas, and they act like they're more country than they are.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, they're like, what is that?

[Pete Holmes]

What is a quiche? Like a.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Like a. Like.

[Pete Holmes]

Like a pie crust, but it's egg in the middle. Yeah, that's exactly what a quiche is. You know what I mean? Like, you know.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

What do you preheat it to?

[Mike Birbiglia]

350?

[Pete Holmes]

Put a bunch of eggs in there with some veggies.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

What is a crepe? Like one of those really thin pancakes. What is a scone? What's a scone? Like a really hard, crumbly muffin.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

You knew. You knew the whole time.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Have you done this?

[Pete Holmes]

That's new.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, that's gold.

[Pete Holmes]

That's the first time.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, that's gold. You know, it's funny. I have a. I'm playing. I'm trying to think of where I'm playing. I'm playing Georgia this summer, and this is a jo. I have a Georgia joke, which is sometimes there's some parts of the country, you go, and you just don't know what they're saying, and they're speaking English. I was in Georgia once, and I was in this parking lot, and this woman goes. And this is to the best of my understanding, she goes, dip, dippa dip dip a dip a hat. And I was like, oh, no. Because all I understood was the hat, you know? So then I dip, dip a dip, dip a dip, dip a hat. And I go. And I go, yep. And then I go, well, no, no. I go, what? And then she goes, dip bipa dip bipa dip a hat. And I'm wearing a baseball cap. And so I'm like, must be something with the hat. You know what I mean? Like. And so I. This is 100% true story. And I just go, yep, this is some kind of hat. And she goes, nah, dip bip a dip bip a dip bip a hat. And I. I walked away from her slowly and waved. And I thought, I guess we're never gonna know each other. That's.

[Pete Holmes]

It's been minted that that record went gold. It's on my wall.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's so funny. I. I've had that joke. I love that I've had that joke in my back pocket for two years. Every now and then I do it. Well, tell me thematically how it, how it fits into the My damn show. Because sometimes I have these jokes like that where I'm like, this is so funny to me. But I don't know what has to do. I don't know how, what has to do with my dad. You go on being a dad.

[Pete Holmes]

It's nice to be in Brooklyn. You know, some places you talk English, but you don't understand. The whole country speaks English, but let me just say it's not the same English.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right?

[Pete Holmes]

You do it. It's a nice little. It's the sorbet before the main course.

[Mike Birbiglia]

There you go. Right. I would do it a little differently than that. It would be more in the universe of like, you know, every city is special people. The diet, sometimes the dialects I don't quite get.

[Pete Holmes]

I actually think if. If you're a stand up, stand up's listening, who care. My opinion. There's no easier or more natural opener. And I'm not alone here than saying, I was just here and this is what happened.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I was just in Georgia and this is what happened.

[Pete Holmes]

It's the only natural way to start, actually.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's good.

[Pete Holmes]

When you eat pistachios or Doritos, it's. I'm kind of an addict. I'm an addict.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Or like lime Tostitos.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Are you like me? I'll eat way past the point of enjoying it because I'm. I'm just. It's a scavenger hunt. I'm looking for the double dusted chip. I want that chip. That got two hits.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Two, Right. Two hits from the.

[Pete Holmes]

This isn't even a bit. It's just kind of a premise.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

You know when you're eating like two squeezes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Two squeezes.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm eating the pistachios. Just looking for that one where you're like, oh, no one was paying attention when that one went by.

[Mike Birbiglia]

But I'm being real with you.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You want that?

[Pete Holmes]

I do want.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't. There's something to me where I'm like grossed out by the exact thing you're saying. So I'm not laughing. Not out of non solidarity for that. I think it's a funny observation.

[Pete Holmes]

Here's a one liner.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We're just. You're just going to pass over the discussion?

[Pete Holmes]

No, go ahead.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Next joke.

[Pete Holmes]

I like Mexican Diet Coke because it's made with real acetaminophen and I've been sub it down to 45. I have to get a real ingredient. I love that I interrupted you for a joke you didn't even like.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Wait, but that's not even true because the Mexican Coke actually does have real sugar.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I know, but I'm trying. There's a way to go like. And I like Mexican Diet Coke. It's like a. It's an Albert Brooks joke.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, that's funny.

[Pete Holmes]

I was just in Mexico and they have better Diet Coke there. It has the real separate, like you say the thing that's good as real phosphorus acid.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, you have to do it with Diet Coke. I think Mexican diet.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what I said. You didn't hear that part because you're still mad.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, he said diet.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay, that's okay. Can you. Okay. Did you. I do feel bad that I interrupted you. No, no, I.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Look, as long as you're good with nonsense.

[Pete Holmes]

A little bit of nonsense.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, yeah, as long as you're here. Okay, here's what I'm urging because we.

[Pete Holmes]

Only have seven minutes left.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, is that what we have?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Here's how I'm gonna sum up what's happening today. And I think it's beautiful.

[Pete Holmes]

You said that like Melania. Oh, is that what we have? He's kind of got that meerkat thing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Here's what I'm gonna Sum up today, I feel like for the Working it Out listeners.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

This is a lot of working out of. This is really truly. When we invented the show, this is what we wanted it to be.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Which is peek behind the curtain of what comedians actually talk about.

[Pete Holmes]

You can say it. I'm the only one who does the show. Right. I didn't say that you can.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, because actually, good example. Rami and Alex were both great guests and we're. Rami has a line that is in my. In my hour right now, just from the show. There's riffing. No, but I just want to say. Pay that compliment and say that I also want to do. If we only have a few minutes left. Working it out for a cause. What's an organization you like to support? We will link to them in the show notes and contribute to them.

[Pete Holmes]

How much? I don't know.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I don't know what. I don't know what it is.

[Pete Holmes]

That's the only right answer.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, I don't know. Homeboy Industries is my go to. I love that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, yes. Homeboy Industries. That.

[Pete Holmes]

Last time I was on the show.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's great.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

And what do they do?

[Pete Holmes]

Like Feeding America and water dot org? But Homeboy is. Is my number one.

[Mike Birbiglia]

What does Homeboy do?

[Pete Holmes]

Homeboy is the largest gang rehabilitation center in the country. It's not far from here, actually.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's incredible.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. And the. The books, tattoos on the heart, the whole language, and I think it's called. It doesn't matter. They're all by Father Greg Boyle. They're incredible, incredible books.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So when they.

[Pete Holmes]

About what?

[Mike Birbiglia]

When they leave the gang and they go to Homeboy, do they have to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior?

[Pete Holmes]

No, no, no.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I just want to make sure I get it right.

[Pete Holmes]

No, no, no. They don't worship Christ. They become Christ.

[Mike Birbiglia]

They become Christ. Like.

[Pete Holmes]

No, no, not even Christ. Like, it's not behavioral. It's the most loving, beautiful, true ministry that it has nothing to do with religion directly. I wouldn't. I would say.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Oh, sweet.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. It's just. It's rehab. They. Tattoo removal. Get it off your face. Job training. Oh, Homeboy Bakery.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It's beautiful.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, it's awesome.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I love that. Awesome. And then also. Where are you going?

[Pete Holmes]

Where's your show tonight?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't know, but it's downtown.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you want to hear a joke? I never tried because I'm too nervous sometimes. I get nervous when jokes are real. Like, you can tell I'm setting up a real Thing and stuck in it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Well, I can tell when you're doing a joke that you've really written.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Because you sound like Dennis Miller.

[Pete Holmes]

This is gonna have that problem.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

What are you, Goliath of Gath? I'm over here with my slingshot because I'm David in the Old Testament and you're looking at me like Ross Perot. Just got the numbers in 1986. 6.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's a good joke.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that good?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, I think that is very good. It feels very Dennis Miller esque.

[Pete Holmes]

You're trying to give me Bill Cosby 2020. When I want Cosby 1999. Okay. I'm talking premium, primetime. Thursday night, 8:00pm NBC, Cosby.

[Mike Birbiglia]

All right. Jesus Christ. It's a pretty good Dennis Miller. It really is a pretty. And people do Dennis Miller a lot.

[Pete Holmes]

Curious over here. Okay, here's the joke.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Here we go.

[Pete Holmes]

Some. I cook for my daughter. And I cook for her very lovingly, obviously. And sometimes I like to pretend I'm a fine dining waiter. And I'll go like, tonight, the chef has prepared a frozen burrito that your dad microwaved. It did explode and is cold in the middle. And that's been chilled in the fridge. You. You were with it?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, I was with it.

[Pete Holmes]

When I asked you. Yeah, I made you a. I don't.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Know why you got chilled in the fridge.

[Pete Holmes]

You don't chill your daughter's food in the fridge. That's the whole point of the joke.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I know.

[Pete Holmes]

I didn't get chilled in the fridge. I made you instant macaroni and cheese that has been hand stirred with a powdered based cream cheese and that's been chilled in the fridge. You gotta chill your food in the fridge. You don't give your kid hot food. You chill it in the fridge. You've made. Well, Katie, you don't have any kids. Oh, yeah, well, that was. That was the 90s. All right. You just killed that joke.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I didn't mean to.

[Pete Holmes]

Somebody listening liked it. Okay, here. Here's the last one. You know why music biopics suck? You know they suck.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

They do. You know why?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Why?

[Pete Holmes]

Because writing music is fucking stupid. It's stupid. Someone sitting in a studio and going, do that again. Yeah, it's fucking dumb. Elton John being like rocket Boy. Dumb. It's dumb.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Music, rock and roll is rehearsed coolness. They're like, if I go out and I'm like, do the Alum Shuffle. That's cool. But the guy just sitting with a pad and pen going like, you Know Rolling Stone joke here.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I. I'll tell you, I'm not with this joke.

[Pete Holmes]

What are you, Seth Barish?

[Mike Birbiglia]

We know. It's not that I love. I love rock and roll documentaries. And so your premise is rock and roll documentaries are so annoying. And I'm like, I don't know, man.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm saying they suck.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'm like, I know you're like, they suck. I'm like, I don't know, man. Like, I love rock and roll documentaries. I don't know, dude. I'm telling. It's like, I'm telling you. I'm being honest. I love, like, almost every joke you've said today.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate the honesty.

[Mike Birbiglia]

So, like, when. When something doesn't hit me, I'll be honest about why it doesn't hit me.

[Pete Holmes]

Facts.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Like, I almost think you have a better chance with that joke if you feel really power impassioned about it of not speaking in platitudes and just saying. I have this pet peeve with rock and roll documentaries.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, make it about me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah. Your experience. Because the moment you said they suck, I'm like, like, I don't know, man.

[Pete Holmes]

Interesting.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I love them.

[Pete Holmes]

That's helping me with another joke I have that I love right now about houses that make you take your shoes off. And I might do better. I do it in platitudes, as you say I do it. I think it's funny to just say the opening line is, can people who make you take your shoes off before you come in their house just quit it? And I think that's really funny. But it might be funnier to be like, I have a thing about that.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Make.

[Pete Holmes]

Make it more inclusive. Because a lot of the audience, Part of the fun of that joke is, you know, half the audience disagrees with me.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

But I go, oh, you have a policy. I have a policy. Eat shit.

[Mike Birbiglia]

That's my God.

[Pete Holmes]

And it's real fun to do. I'm not changing it. This was me just realizing.

[Mike Birbiglia]

For me. Well, for me it would be like I would place it in someone's house. Even if it's a. Yeah, yeah. If you're making up their name.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

No, it's Sarah's house. But you say it's Maureen's house.

[Pete Holmes]

No, it's my friend Sam and Ariella.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Cuz I get it.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I think if you place it in someone's house.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

We picture the house.

[Pete Holmes]

We picture them.

[Mike Birbiglia]

There's stakes. Because they're real people. They could hear you talk about this.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. That's nice.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I like the bit.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, you'll like the bit.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Are. Am I annoying you today?

[Pete Holmes]

Zero.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay, good.

[Pete Holmes]

What about my open, open, generous body language says, I'm not into you? Everything about me says, is this generous body language? Yes.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Okay, good.

[Pete Holmes]

We're both presenting to one another. We're just like, would you like. Would you like this?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Would you like this?

[Pete Holmes]

Maybe. Maybe I was getting in my comedy voice. I do have to go. I can hear you. Want to hear my Phil Rosenthal impression? And I go, and they have these little dumplings, and they're filled with pork. I didn't know you could put pork in a dumpling. I eat it. It's incredible. He's kind of like you. Now that I think of him, I go down, there's an old woman making spaghetti with her knuckles.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It reminds me of.

[Pete Holmes]

I didn't know you could make spaghetti with you.

[Mike Birbiglia]

It reminds me of Richard Kind, who's the announcer on live.

[Pete Holmes]

Is he?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, everyone's in la, which is. I'm on tomorrow. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, he lives in New York, so.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Thank God.

[Pete Holmes]

Petey, I saw what you said on your podcast. Stop it. Stop it. We're friends. I didn't have you on the list of people I couldn't have on. It is long as your night shirt.

[Mike Birbiglia]

If we. If we had an MRI machine.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Right here. We could see your heart shrinking in real time like the Grinch. Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

You look like the sawdust they put on the puke at the carnival. Just kind of like a bland.

[Mike Birbiglia]

I feel like. I feel like today is your joker origin story.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh. Because the De Niro Mulaney didn't have Joaquin Me on, but he had you on. Yeah. I hope you have a lot of fun, man.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Thank you very much. And this. If. If you choose to keep this in, that will be very amusing to me. I love you. I appreciate you having me on. Weird working it out.

[Pete Holmes]

Weird working it out.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Nice.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Weird working it out.

[Pete Holmes]

Would you say keep it crispy?

[Mike Birbiglia]

Yeah, keep it crispy. My fellow comedian friend, I love you very much. I love you.

[Pete Holmes]

Tell John I said, what's up?

[Mike Birbiglia]

I'll try. It's really busy over there. They have, like, a lot of stuff going on.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Just thought a lot of moving parts. It's like tv. You wouldn't understand. It's like show business over there, you know, it's not something you'd understand. It's like people in the business, you wouldn't understand. It's like. It's really like royalty and comedy you wouldn't understand. It's real. Like hall of Fame, heavy hitter legends over there. You wouldn't understand.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I don't know if I said it last time, but you look like the photograph Matt Damon tapes to his treadmill to motivate.

[Mike Birbiglia]

You said it. It's still funny.

[Pete Holmes]

It's still funny. It's still funny.

[Mike Birbiglia]

Keep it. Keep it in. Keep it crispy. Keep it crispy. That.