Episode 1648 - John Mulaney

Lock the gate!

All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies, what the fuck, Nicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron.
This is my podcast, WTF. Welcome to it.

Welcome to all you people that have been here for a long time.

Some of you new people that have a lot of catching up to do.

Look, you guys, I don't know if you know this, or why would you? Maybe some of you would, but WTF, this podcast, will turn 16, 16 years old on September 1st. That's a couple months away.
16 years.

It's a long time. A long time.

It's a long time to do anything. And it's certainly...

I've said recently that I know when I'm living it, I don't feel like time is passing by quickly, but

yeah, all of a sudden, you know, you're old and you realize you've been doing something a long time. And this started,

you know, the old garage, the, you know, just no one knew what a podcast was. I was coming out of a horrendous divorce.
I was

wanting to.

figure out how to continue living my life. Things were not looking good for me.
Brendan McDonald, my producer who I had worked with for years on other things, radio and streaming-related.

And when Brendan and I started this thing,

all we knew is we were going to do it every Monday and Thursday. And there was no way to make money.
There was no way that we knew how to build an audience or anything. And it was crazy.

We were doing it in a garage at the beginning that was just a garage. It was filled with junk.

And it slowly evolved into the show

that became what you listen to twice a week. 16 years

we've been doing this. And

we've decided that

we had a great run.

And now

basically, it's time, folks.

It's time.

WTF

is coming to an end.

And

it's our decision. We'll have our final episode sometime in the fall.

It was not some kind of difficult decision necessarily. Neither me nor Brendan, who are the only people in charge of this operation,

on every level, I record it here in my garage studio. Brendan produces it.

in his chair in Brooklyn. And it's always been a two-man operation.

And we always said, well, how do we know when we're done?

And I always said, well, whenever Brendan says so.

And he always said, well, if Mark,

you know, it's finished and we're finished.

And thankfully,

we both realized together that we were done.

And there was no convincing or pushback or arguing. We were done.
You know, and it's okay.

It's okay for things to end. 16 years.

And we have been through a lot. And I'm talking about me and you, the audience, me and Brendan, me and my life, me and my cats, me with my guests, me with,

you know, my equipment, you know, me with, you know, moving and

things change. But you've been through the entire arc of my life and everything that's happened in it for for the last 16 years.

And a lot of it was not easy. A lot of it was amazing.
A lot of monumental things, really, happened on this show. And this was a show that was started when there were no podcasts.

And now there are nothing but podcasts. It's been an incredible time.

In my life, in Brendan's life, we've done things that we never thought we would be able to do. Because of the podcast, my life changed dramatically.

All the things that I set out to do before I did the podcast as sort of a Hail Mary pass to be a stand-up with an audience, to try my hand at acting, to

have experiences with other people that were one of a kind and completely exciting and unique and engaging and revealing.

To talk to a president in my garage, so many things happened because of just this setting up a mic in my garage with Brendan, you know, on the knobs

producing it,

discussing with him how we do it all. It was a real creative partnership.
And you, the audience, have

been here through all of it.

And I shared everything I could with you because that's the way I do it and with my guests. And there have been so many amazing guests.

And it really comes down to the fact that we have put up a new show every Monday and Thursday for almost 16 years. And we're tired.
We're burnt out.

And we are

utterly satisfied with the work we've done. We've done great work.

And this doesn't mean I'm never going to do something like this. Again, it doesn't mean I'll never have talks like I do here or some kind of podcast at some point in time.
But for now, we're just

wrapping things up. It's okay.

It's okay to end things. It's okay to try to start some other chapter in your life.
And I'm talking to myself.

This podcast has been my connection to you people. It's been my connection socially to people in my business, people I never thought I'd meet before, creative people, interesting people.

It's a very big part of my spiritual, social, and psychological life.

But I'll be honest with you, it's nice to be able to end things

on our terms.

And we've always had that power to do that. And that's what we're going to do.
We started the show on our terms. We grew it on our terms.
And we'll end it on our terms.

Look, we've had great partners who have helped us do the show over the years. ACAST has been our partner for the past three years, and we've been able to do things on our terms with them.

We always had that and it's always been the way we've done it and that's been great.

And we've been very fortunate to be able to do things the way we want to do them. And now this is this is part of it

is ending it the way we want it to end.

And look, the thing about burnout, about being tired, and about the way me and Brendan are is that

we are very focused and very particular and very hardworking in this endeavor. And the quality of the work we've done, every fucking episode is

its own greatness because we're crazy, dedicated

guys

who really...

want this to be the best show that it can be. I bring what I bring to the table, Brendan brings what he brings to the table.
And, you know, God forbid, we just keep plowing along and

something diminishes.

And we wouldn't want to just keep plugging along because we can at the risk of our burnout or our

sort of like, you know, passion, you know, starts to drift or it starts to get sloppy. We're just not those kind of people.

And look, I mean, look, I've got a lot of stuff going on. I've got a lot of projects going on.
And we're still going to be doing this for the next several months.

And we'll try to have as many people on as possible, many people that maybe want to do it, never did do it, or people that maybe will do it now that, you know, this is the sort of like home stretch.

But I do want to sincerely thank all you people, you know, for being along

on this journey with me and with Brendan and with all the guests because we really did something here. And I want to thank you all for that.
This isn't a sign-off, but that's the big news.

And I'm sure we'll talk about it more in the weeks to come. I'm sure that you guys will want to chime in.
But just for now, thank you for being here,

as always. And it's going to be...

There's probably going to be some ups and downs over the next few months with me emotionally

around the reality of this. But it's done with,

you know,

this is a full-hearted decision. It's the right decision for me.
It's the right decision for Brendan. It's okay.
It's okay

for things to end.

It's just time, folks. But again, we'll have a few more months, so don't get all bummed out.
Let's just enjoy it. The world is on fire.
I have people I want to talk to. We'll find a little joy.

We'll find a little connection. We'll find a little solace in in each other's company.
We'll learn some things.

We'll get some laughs.

We'll cry a little bit.

And, you know, we'll move on.

That being said,

the first guy to hear about it was my guest on the show today, who's a good guest for

this particular episode. John Mulaney is here.

And he's been listening to this show since the very beginning. He was also on episode 551 and episode 743.
He's been through a lot since then, I would say.

He's currently hosting the Netflix talk show, Everybody's Live, with John Mulaney, which had its season finale

last week. So, yeah,

I get to break the news to John.

Also, I wanted to mention this, the documentary, Are We Good, the screening at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City

next month.

That's a documentary about me. There are two screenings.
Saturday, June 14th at 5 p.m., that's at the OKX Theater on Chamber Street.

Then Sunday, June 15th at 5.30 p.m., it's screening at the Village East on 2nd Avenue and 12th Street. You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour to get tickets for that.
And oddly,

in the current cut of the documentary, it is not brought up that

we are retiring the show.

But I'm excited. I'm excited.
There are things going on.

I did go to the premiere of this new show, this new Apple show that I'm on with Owen Wilson, which premieres June 4th. I think they're going to drop three episodes.

And they had a nice little red carpet event at the AMC in Century City with all the casts there and the producers and the writers and everybody on the crew. It was kind of great.

Got dressed up in the one suit I have. I have actually two suits.
But the thing is, I had never seen it. I didn't watch any of the cuts.

I was trying to do what Owen does. You know, Owen doesn't watch anything he's been in, ever.
He's never seen anything he's been in. I talked to him about that.

I understand that. But,

you know, like I did this independent movie that I wanted to see the rough cut in case I had any suggestions. I was a producer on it.
He was also a producer, but I guess

of stick.

But he explained it to me. He He said, look, you know, that fight scene that you and I had, I remember it as like the greatest fight scene ever.

Because it was not a real like stunt-driven fight scene. It was an emotional explosion between two old friends.
He says, I just remember that as great. Why not just hold on to that?

And I respect that. So he actually went out during the screening itself.
He went out with his brother Luke to get something to eat.

And, you know, I watched it and I got to say, it's going to be a touching series.

I feel like I did pretty well in it.

I feel like I did the character. I represented myself.
I was doing some new things for me in terms of acting and how I was approaching it. But I got to be honest with you.
This series

is a heartfelt, heart-wrenching experience. And the comedy balances out the emotions pretty well.
I think people are going to enjoy it. I think you're going to enjoy it.
And it doesn't matter

if you don't know anything about golf because

I didn't and I'm in it. And sometimes when they're interviewing me on these, on these, on the junk it, on you know, all these outlets are interviewing me about my relationship with golf.

I almost feel like I should lie, but I don't.

I did learn enough, I think, to portray the guy that I portrayed. I didn't need to step up and look like a real golfer, but I think I could look like a real caddy if necessary.

But mostly in this show, I was an emotional caddy, i think for a lot of the characters but all that said i do recommend you watch it because i think it is a very human and uh a very moving

series and in a in a rare turn all the characters kind of transform all the characters change and that's really what you want from a an arc of a story about any character is that is that they do change and and this is a a a kind of

uh found family Is that what you call it?

A kind of makeshift family of underdogs who are kind of moving towards self-realization and trying to let go of some things. And

it's kind of a beautiful thing.

16 years, you guys. Wow.

It's going to be fun, though.

I do think we're going to have...

I think we're going to have a little,

as much as I'm capable of, this will be a bit of a party. Is that possible? Is that overselling it?

It's going to be good. And John Mulaney, I did his show.
I did that. Everybody's live with John Mulaney.
Had a nice time, and it's always nice to talk to him. I haven't talked to him.

I think everybody else has about what he went through with

getting sober. I imagine we're going to get into that a bit.

Everybody's live with John Mulaney. Just rapped last week.
I couldn't make the rap party

because I was doing a press junket for Stick. I don't know if it's clear whether he's going to do more, but they're all there if you want to watch them, and they're pretty fucking unique and odd.

This is me talking to John Mulaney and breaking the news.

Heavy shit, man. Jacques Derrida.
Yeah.

I felt like I took a crack at Derrida and Foucault and those writers in college. And

all I can do is say their names.

And I'm like, you know, we're pretty smart people. No, I know.
We tried. We tried.

So what were they doing is the real question. Well, I think you have to be sort of, it's part of a evolving language of philosophy.

So if you're not going to read the Heidegger and you're not going to read the Kant, it's hard to make the jump right into the Derridas and the Foucaults.

Yes, they have deceptive introductions, I feel like. Often this isn't for everybody.
I'm not going to be able to handle this one. No.

It's literally a different language. Yes, it is.
And I think the most accessible one was that Baudrillard.

You don't know it all. You can read that guy.

He's of the same ilk, but he was a little more poetic and he dealt with things that you can kind of see in life as opposed to think.

Yeah, what was his first name? Jean Baudrillard. You know, they actually made one of his coffee table book.
Yeah, I was kind of obsessed with knowing that stuff, but not unlike you.

I possess the books.

I possess the books. I possess the desire.
And I carry myself as if I've read them.

I think that's your great trick, John. Yeah, thank you very much.

I would like to give off that I have read those and thought about those. I think the more I see of your show, the more I realize we're similar.

It's like it only takes one album to make people believe that you know all of it. 100%.

So we have to open in a very specific way. And you're the first person I think I've said this out loud to, but this episode,

I will have said in the intro before I talk to you that we are ending the podcast. Whoa.
I know.

Mark. I know.

I know. I'm shocked.
It's up. We've got some time.
It's in the fall. Okay.
But my producer and

partner in this endeavor, Brendan, and I have agreed on the decision to

put it to rest. Congratulations.
Thanks, buddy. That's awesome.

It's 16 years, man. It's 16 years.
And look at the, I feel like I've,

you know, partially done an amazing thing for culture, but on the other side of that, I feel like i've released the kraken oh that's interesting well

it was bound to happen i think it was bound i think

yeah i think the kraken just you know is going to come out no matter what yeah uh was out gonna come out no matter what and you sort of it's no longer uh it's always am radio well it's it's always twofold when you're at the beginning of a new medium yeah you know there's a there's a lot of like wow this is the freedom of it.

And, you know, I think those words are said before anything turns into a horrendous, malevolent force.

The freedom of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, so you know. Yeah, before you build a commune in Idaho, you remark upon

the wide open land. Oh, yeah.
We could start a neo-Nazi commune here. Well, even

any kind. Like, we are free to think and feel the way we feel.
Yeah, finally. And now that's over and you have to drink.
Everyone must drink this at the same time.

Our ambitions have exceeded our space in San Francisco. Guyana looks nice.
It's beautiful down there. Yeah.
Plus no meddling relatives. So finally, that's like what we thought of.

Out of the reach of Congress.

Out of the reach of notes and networks. Yeah.
Oh, that's exactly right.

But yeah, but so you're the first to kind of know. You're the first guest to

well, that's a nice way to frame it.

I appreciate that. I think we've done an amazing thing.
I don't think we live in a time where people of my generation and slightly older know how to move on from anything or stop.

Do you feel like you're kind of making yourself stop for the exercise of it? No, I feel like,

you know, we've done our bit. We've done all right.
You know, it worked out okay for us in terms of

we've always done a great show. We've always, the quality and the audience has remained steady and

high.

And I just think there's no shame

saying like, all right, well, we did it and we did a great bunch of work.

And I don't really know what this means for me.

You know, I do have a few months, but I do have to try to wrap my brain around

what it means

in terms of like, this is most of my social life. Like you wouldn't be here

if it isn't if you didn't. I'm

sure, sure. I mean, maybe I say, hey, John, you know, I got something I need you to talk about.
It's vague. And I just, could you come over? Let's just look at each other and talk for a minute.

Yeah, yeah, we could do that. I mean, and I like doing that, but it is a big part of my life and has been for a long time.
And I don't really know what it feels like to not have it.

I know, because you have been so consistent. It's the longest stretch you ever took off.
Well, we don't take any off because we do two new shows every week and we have for 16 years. Yeah.

So no matter, even if, you know, Brendan takes a vacation, I don't vacation much, but I'm on the road. I'm recording the things.

There was a period there where I was interviewing people out there and doing the intros.

So this job and this passion of these conversations was a big part of my life.

And I don't know what you're like with a resting mind.

Has it ever happened, be honest? Had a resting mind? Yes. I have had, yes.

I had full,

I had, I think I had a pretty full period of

you can't talk your way out of this. You have to sit in this.
But, you know, looking

it might have been a few months only. Yeah, but it's a resting mind, like a peaceful resting mind.
Well, just sort of like, okay, I've decided to,

like, you know, in relation to like, yeah,

the, the post-bottom hitting, now I've got to rebuild, own up, and try not to do any more damage. Yeah, I don't know why I answered like that because clearly, yeah, you're talking about a more-

We've done this amazing amount of work. Yeah.
Culture has changed. We've gotten older.
We've done all we can.

We're satisfied. We're okay.
But it's been a primary part of my life

for this amount of time. And now that's going to be gone.
100%.

And I know even if I just do stand-up, you know, like working towards this special I just shot, that's two years, a year and a half of pounding that shit out. Yeah.
And now like, you know, I did it.

And there's that moment where I'm like, well, you know what? I'm going to just take a break. In three days, i'm fucking at the store of course

so but this is gonna be different because after we stop this i'm like i don't have a producer i don't have uh the bookers i you know i guess i could still sit here on the mics but i'm not gonna do that without my uh my creative partner

and uh i don't know that i need to but it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting because i guess the point was if i sit with myself for very long it's not good upstairs sure yeah i mean i start what does your brain do

I'm trying to think the longest amount of time I've does it go to somewhere in the zone of like, I'm a piece of shit?

I forget what I do and I go like, do I, what is my job? I go to the gym sometimes? Yeah, yeah. I make coffee.

Yeah, I make coffee and like. Now you got the kids, so there's always that.
There's that too, but in front of. in front of them when I've had a month or two.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why is daddy sitting on the couch so long? Yeah, why does he have so much time for us?

Oh,

he really thought about building this city out of blocks.

This is troubling. It's much better than that.

I was actually more dialed into building a city out of phone blocks the other day than my son. And he moved on, and I was like, well, why don't we...

Why don't we make a walkway? Because I can't get this building higher, but we can make a walkway to a different. And he was like, nah, yeah.
It's good. Let's go to Discovery Cube.

How old's that kid now? He's three.

Getting back to you for a second, did you have, well, did you have a, was there an interview or an episode or a jag of interviews where you started to go, oh, I'm going to hang this up.

And if so, who were they? Yeah. No, not really.
You know, everything is like, I don't know from one interview to the next what's really going to happen.

So there, there's always that element of surprise. Yeah.
And I do get anxious and sort of somewhat

dreading

everyone because I really don't know what's going to happen. So there was never,

there's been moments where it's been a job,

but it wasn't interview-specific. Okay.
It was just sort of like, you know, like we, you know, we're kind of short on interviews. We're going to have to do five this week.
Right, right, right.

And then, you know, and there have been ones that have been

disappointing in that I couldn't get through or whatever, but, but not, it was never,

there was a sort of point where, like, how many actors do we have to do? 100%.

But it was fortunate that that kind of coincided with me becoming an actor. So there was that interest at least.
But to the average person, you know, are they going to talk about craft again?

That's very funny.

It's like the guy who's just listening in his car. It's like, I'm going to listen to Paul Dano talk about animal work.

A penguin, huh? Now they're just doing Alexander technique on here.

Exactly.

There's been jags like that where it's like,

But fortunately, because Brendan, my producer, you know, like sometimes he comes up with ideas and I learn things.

You know, there was a period of professional wrestling, which was not totally my thing, but it was his thing. But I can engage with that.
Generally, I can engage. But we've also talked with everyone.

We've also talked to almost everybody.

Yeah.

Probably.

No show has had the quantity and quality you've had. Crazy.
Like, I've dipped in and out over the years,

like, not out that often. You were an early adapter.
I was an early adapter. I was on the show for that first time live at Comics, I think.
Back before it, maybe before you even.

Before we did the one-on-one?

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, there was definitely a live one.
Different episodes had different formats, right? Well, that was only to try to make money. Yeah, 100%.

The live ones were, you know, we had created a pay site so people would buy them because we were stuffing envelopes and doing tiered donations.

I had a house full of envelopes with t-shirts and stickers for the high-tiered donations. He's been you and Brendan since 2009? Always.
Oh, wow. He was always, it's just me and him, period.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just mean he and you started.

I've been with Brendan since 2004. Wow.
I met him when he was 24 years old at Air America. He was an associate producer.
Just come out of WNYC. He was on Morning Sedition? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I've known him since he was a kid. That's amazing.
And for the first like five years of doing this, he couldn't say he was the producer because he was working somewhere else with

a no-compete or something, a non-disclosure or whatever. Yeah, but he couldn't own it.
It used to drive me nuts. That's so funny.
Because he was just like, he was the mastermind. He was the wizard.

And I'm like, no, no, no. I got this guy.
Yeah, I got this guy helping me out. Yeah.
This is the worst. That's so funny.
Yeah.

Are you going to miss the,

or I'll volunteer this. I would certainly miss the, hey, good show this week.
Yeah. From a passerby or a friend or an

yeah, I don't know. I have a lot of people that have been sort of because outside of the interviews the narrative of me

you know has been has really

made me very close to some people for sure on their side

and I appreciate that and I I don't know that's the big question will

whatever small amount of relevance I have in this culture you know and we all sort of worry about relevance on some level

you know when that goes away you know it part of it is delusional in my head anyways but i always think like you know i'm not quite relevant enough or you know am i relevant but with this out of the picture i'm sort of like i could close my social media accounts and be okay interesting

i don't know dude why did that give us both a start i did close our social media can you imagine we stared at each other like whoa now marks i know i know but it really i think it would be helpful and healthy i'm 60 i'm gonna be 62.

yeah there was a time in this country where people were like, I'm winding it up. Yeah, but not show people.
I guess not. They just keep going.
And sometimes you look at them and you're like, why? Why?

Because why not?

Because like to me. It's still fun to do it.
Yeah.

But sometimes you may not know when you go out there, people are like, whoa, geez.

That's where a little bit of our

when we're in that groove of inflated self-esteem versus crushing low self-esteem.

That's why it's helpful. I don't know, man.
I just saw that.

You hear that pop when I walked up there?

Which one? No, you

tell yourself that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're 75. Sure, sure.

They were pretty surprised. I was there.
As you're looking out at an audience of 75-year-olds. And still, still asking them at the cellar to act like you're a special guest.

Hey, anything can happen here.

Even this old-ass man can walk up here. Well, they can, dude.
Yeah. And they do.
I just saw footage of Angus Young. Yep.
And for the first time in my life, I'm like, ooh, uh-oh.

He's this fucking little old man.

You know, and it's like hard. And I had, you know, I did a whole bit about the stones on that level.
And it's just, you know, there's something about your heroes pounding on

that

makes, you want them to be immortal, goddammit. You do, but I guess I'm one that always wants people to either reunite or go back out on tour.
Seriously? Oh, yeah.

I always want people to come out of retirement and do something. Really? And then I think as a fan, it's never enough.
Like, I'm always, yeah, I'm going to go. What are you expecting now?

Keep going, keep going. What am I expecting? I guess it's something to do with my own sense of mortality that I get kind of squirrely when they get old.
Okay. Do you know what I mean?

Where I'm like, oh,

it's like that bit I did about when, you know, when the day that Mick falls down when he's in the middle of it, and then you got a room full of baby boomers going like, it's over. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's down. He's down, yeah.
Everyone fanning him with menus. Yeah.
You okay, buddy? You okay?

But the frailty of it all,

look,

I don't know, man. How's your stand-up?

Well, it was sort of

slightly neglected when I was busy with some other things. And then I've been doing a ton of spots because I've been doing longer monologues on this Netflix show.
And like, I appreciate it.

So I started kind of working at it like they're. I appreciate the effort of that.
I appreciate that. Thank you.

It was fun to do. You know, there was a period there where I thought, you know, I had a pilot for a talk show many years ago at Comedy Central, back before, back when it was still half run by HBO.

I did a pilot for Comedy Central in probably 2000,

fuck, I don't know, whenever, well, it was before the Daily Show started. They went with the Daily Show.
Okay. And I did something called the Mark Maron Project.
This was after

right. And I, and Chappelle was my guest, and Stephen Weber.
There was a big, you know, but Chappelle was still like a kid almost.

And

I

was going to the Museum of Broadcasting and watching Jack Parr shows because I wanted to figure out how to do the long monologue. Yeah.
And if you could hold it.

Like if you could keep it compelling enough for people to want to go for the whole arc.

Yeah.

Was that your feeling? A little bit. Yeah.

Could you hold them? And could you

relax out of having a monologue cadence? Yeah. And would they follow it? Right.
And that, that's not groundbreaking. Other people have done that, but it was,

I just wanted to see, you know, you're Richard Kind announces me. Yeah.
You just had the titles, energy, energy, energy. And you want to go, welcome to my show.

Yes, this is the only show on Netflix where punchline, punchline.

And then kind of. Tell a story.
Yeah, tell a story, get out of that. Yeah.
And yeah, again, and tell it to the camera too yeah as well as right the folks in the room right um

and just feel like yeah we all have a bit of patience right now yeah as we as we go somewhere with this as we enter this yeah this we don't know where it's gonna go no not totally and we don't know if it's related to that night's themes we know it's not related to the news how is now in the conception of this thing how many have you done now

As of today, we've done 11. We're doing the 12th on Wednesday.
And that's it? That's it. Have they said we're doing more yet?

Yes, there was a plan to do more, and we're figuring it out. Yeah.
Yeah. Are you going to?

I never know what to say to that. Well, I mean, well, here's the question.
I'm just thinking about.

You're thinking about Wednesday. Yeah, I'm thinking about Wednesday.
No, yeah. Well, I mean, here's the question, though.
It's been very enjoyable, and

it's been very enjoyable. And

I have really felt the 12 weeks in a row. It's a lot.
lot. Imagine if you're doing it every day.
Yes, though,

we would scale back what we were doing if we were doing it every day. Right.
But I guess my question is 60 minutes of all, it's all us.

No commercials, no. Oh, that's true.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I guess my thought is like at some point in the career of a comic, you realize the jobs that are available to you.

Like you do stand-up, and that usually means, well, if you're not going to be a writer, you're available to host things. Yes.
That's a job a stand-up does.

You can have a show centered around you. Yes.
All right. Now you've done all of this stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now you've done all of the things available.

Two of them.

Three.

Three. Writing.
Writing. Oh, some acting.
Hosting.

Being center of a show. Yeah, that would be the acting.
Yeah. And then just your stand-up.
So there's really four. Wow.
Hey.

You,

well, I think Brian Regan, for a lot of us,

had a different path of like, you can be an industry out on the road. And then you, Mark Marin.
Can be an industry in my house. I've created a fifth one, yeah.
The fifth estate. Yeah.

No, you really did. Yeah, I've created an entire culture, culture of entertainment fueled by, you know, aspiring afternoon drive-time radio personalities.
It is amazing.

It's just like every, you flip on your phone, and depending who you're following, you'll see three or four white guys sitting behind mics talking about the first time they shit their pants as an adult.

Well, I'm glad you never got a couch. A lot of these shows started having a couch with mics.
Well, we're just audio. Still, it does.
But we're just audio. Oh, that's right.

There's no fucking YouTube to this. That's so relaxing.
Yeah. And there's no, we didn't,

it was not what we do. We're audio guys.
Yeah. Yeah.

So how do you feel

you did with this format?

Oh, I loved doing this format. I mean, it it felt like making 12 specials using the talk show as a format.
Yeah.

I once did this children's musical special, and it felt like I'm taking something like Free to Be You and Me dance. It was really fun.
Yeah.

I'm doing a comedy special of my

stuff

channeled through like, you know, Free to Be You and Me with Marlowe Thomas. And this felt like

some kind of evergreen, weird, not quite any era talk show uh

that

also is trying to be

you know that that's also a variety a variety show in some ways that's also trying to be like jules holland or uh david sanborn jules holland night music you know um

and

trying to feel very loose and then trying to feel very produced and we just got to like

Try

to try every speed, too. It was more the

more than just that we we got to try a lot of bits and jokes and have guests on it.

It was more, we just got to try whole episodes where it felt very shoestring and episodes where we were blowing it out production-wise. Right.

Now, if let's hypothetically, you say, all right, I'll do 12 more, but these are like, this is what I've learned. This is how we're going to move forward.
Yeah. You know what's great about that? What?

I don't know how to do it. As of no learning.

The first six we did last May during the netflix festival

we it was a joke but it also just became true there's no time to learn we're just doing the show that was in front of us right and um

there was there was in a in a way that i really am proud of there was like little things we learned worked we didn't do again uh-huh um that's always good in large part yeah

why why why do what works exactly yeah you but because other people are offering that if you know if you want to see that and that's great. You know, go, oh, this type of bit worked.

We'll just do tonight. Next week's episode will look like all the most refined parts of the first five weeks of episodes.
Well, there was a lot of talk about how,

you know, or a couple of people, I said, well, they're finding their, you know, their legs.

They're finding their legs, yeah. It's sort of like what Conan did for

four years.

They seem to be finding a rhythm. Yeah, yeah.
And I kept watching, and I'm like, they're not, though. Thank you.
I really appreciate that. Thank you very much.
I really do. Because two reasons.

One, we weren't. Two,

anytime you say they're figuring it out,

not a bad side, a side of me comes out. You know, like they've found their groove.
Fuck you. No, we haven't.
I'll do it blindfolded.

And also, when they say things like they're figuring out, it's just a diplomatic way of saying it's not good. Oh, I think they just say it's not good when they don't like it.

Yeah, I think we're no longer living in the decent era of, well, they're figuring it out. Well, I think people want the best for you, John.
Oh, that's good.

They want you to, you know, you got fans, and they're like, yeah, he'll get, he'll figure it out. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, that kind of thing. Yeah.

I thought you meant, well, sometimes critics like to say like they've found a groove and it's almost them saying like, because they took our notes. Oh, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

What has happened? And that's the most exciting thing to them. Yeah, what?

Yeah. Didn't listen to you at all.
Didn't even read it. Yeah.

Oh, no. Read it.
Yeah. Thought about it.
Yeah. Rejected it.
I hate when it comes to. Advice read.
advice rejected. Well, I don't like when critics are correct.

It bothers me because it feels like I have a blind spot.

Oh, but do you find when they're correct that it's something you already had thought of? Well, no, I think sometimes if I trust the critic and they assess my work,

you know,

even if it's a good review, there's usually that one paragraph.

Just to keep their edge. And they take it.
And they just showed their face and whatever. Wherever critics hang out, they need to keep it

held high. That's right.
There's the three critics that really exist. But I often think about the one thing that they're sort of critical of in a real way.

And

I kind of mull it over. And sometimes I've learned things

from critics that I think in retrospect were probably correct. I don't think I listened to them at the time, but eventually it turned out to be kind of right.
Yeah. Yeah.

What has the critical response been?

We've had

some really,

really dead-on, excellent pieces written about the show that

I think have captured that there's

something intensely personal about it, even though I'm working with eight

amazing writer-producers who are

the voice of lots of pieces.

That

a couple people, my favorite thing, my favorite pieces were zeroing in on, well, two favorite types, zeroing in on they're just kind of, this, this show is just kind of going where it wants. Yeah.

And they, you know, in the, in a mature way, go for better or worse. Right.
They're just going. Yeah.
He wants to talk to John Kale and Maggie Rogers. He's going to.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

You were there then. Yeah.
Give that a try. Give that a try.

I got my own show. I'm going to, there's no way I'm not going to talk to John Kale.
Yeah.

It's funny, though, because like, you know, for the most part, it seems you forego segment producers when it comes down to guests.

Like, you know, like I'm pretty reliable.

But I know how to work with a segment producer. For sure.
But I think that on another show, if someone was going to talk to John Kale, they would be like, well, let me just see what he's got.

Oh, yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
No. You didn't do that.
No.

No pre-interview. Yeah.
No social media ask.

We try to make it a very light lift for guests. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's also, it's a talk show designed by someone that's been on a lot of them.

And so we we did without some of the things I find inconvenient, such as preparation. But do you think that works out when you don't have a produced, a pre-interview? It really does.

And I'm not trying to be naive that a meandering

conversation. Oh, so it keeps you engaged.
It keeps me engaged. It's also,

I just had to look at it like, there are...

five guys out there who do that so well. They do it really well.
Throw to stories.

Basically.

And then make sure sure that are just excellent at knowing, I'm going to get this guest to do this, not just tell the story or do this bit or go over this piece of, you know, go through this news item about them, but we're going to do it in three and a half minutes or four and a half minutes.

Yeah. Yeah.
It's a real art. Yeah.

But there's a lot of people doing that. Yeah.

And I wanted to, one of my favorite moments in the whole series was

Tina Faye was on.

And spur of the moment, I went, do you collect anything? And she went, no. And I went, neither do I.
And then there was like a one, 1,000. And then we moved on to the next topic.
And

there's something about,

you know, there's something about what Larry King used to feel like. Sure.
Where he'd, you know, he'd be talking to a caller. He'd have on Andy Rooney.
Yeah. Andy would go, what are you talking about?

He went, no, am I wrong? And he'd go, yeah, you're wrong. And then they'd move on.
Yeah. Did you ever do an interview with Larry King? I did his, what was the year next year? I did that too.
Yeah.

Yeah. It was fun to meet him.
Yeah, it was fun to meet him. And then I also interviewed him at his house which was not a great day

uh because i walked in he goes you're late oh interesting and i was because i had the wrong time and it was not it was a tough opening 10.

i know i've had those in my life i've had a i've had a healthy amount of that yeah sorry i'm late the uh traffic well yeah well that's why we leave early

okay shit

I'm a grown-up. Come on.

Traffic is no excuse in Los Angeles. Yeah, exactly.
That's why you map it. If you got to go down to Culver City, you better leave the night before.

But I think it was always, it's always been more fun

to

be as

surprised by a guest as I am by a car.

But Larry pressed.

You're not going to be able to do that. Larry pressed with a lot of incorrect information.
Of course. Yeah.

Oh. You don't think? Yeah.

He had on Andy Rooney once and he goes,

there was just another high-profile kidnapping. Let's say Elizabeth Smart.
And he goes, Andy, why are there so many kidnappings? And Andy goes, what are you talking about?

He goes, there's more kidnappings now than there used to be. He goes, no, there's not.
There were always kidnappings. He goes, aren't there more? And he goes, no.

And then without missing a beat, he changes topics. He goes, should the Pope resign? Yeah.

That was it. Just one question after another.

Aren't there more kidnappings? No, there's always been kidnappings. And that's because he was with a peer and they actually had a moment of conversation.
Yeah.

As opposed to Larry just going, what do you think? Exactly. No, yeah.

I just re-watched. I just realized a good analogy for your show, in a way.

No, because there. A good analogy.
Well, you know, look, if you watch the old Dick Cavitt shows,

there's a lot of awkwardness.

In the sitcom? No, the Dick Cavitt talk show. Oh, Dick Cavitt.
I think I mean Dick Cavot. No, Dick Cavitt.
Dick Cavitt. Oh, for sure.
And the audience was rarely laughing.

You didn't get the feeling they were there half the time. You didn't get the feeling that anyone felt the role of a studio audience is to be laughing on steroids the whole time.
No. No.
It was all.

And applauding every beat. Yeah.
And some of those British shows.

And there's a bit of that in your show.

Those are very comforting to me.

If something of note happens and it's very funny,

there's a big studio laugh. There's applause when something, you know, Robbie Hoffman climbing over the couch in two seats.
It was a very funny, spontaneous moment.

But you did feel like it's engaging to have this audience here. It adds electricity, but we're not here to make sure everything is...

Well, that's interesting because that's almost rebellious at this point.

I don't know if it's rebellious, but

it was something I thought.

I know this melody in my head and I'm not seeing it right now. And I also, they gave me the key to this

studio. So that's what we'll do.
But I watched

one of my favorite

moments in show business was

Bob Dylan being presented with the Lifetime Achievement Grammy by Jack Nicholson. Oh, yes, of course.
The best. The best.
And when Chandling comes back out. Yeah.

Bob and Jack are talking backstage about how they're going to do more TV.

It's really.

It's great because Dylan seems to not. He tells that, you know.
Well, he does that thing about, well, you know, my father. My father said...
Yeah, he said a lot of things. Yeah.

And even, was it like everyone will forsake you? Even your parents will forsake. Something for you.
I said that before that. Yeah.

But it was that beat of like, you know, well, it's like my father always told me.

And he waits like 15 seconds. Yeah, he said a lot of things.
He's always not.

And then there's that whole weirdness where Jack doesn't really know where to stand

while Dylan's getting the award and he's moving around. It's great.
Yeah. It's great because

what used to be just human,

just the human time frame

is now kind of in the cringe column. It's why I love the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.
Yeah.

Because none of them are used to talking. None of them are used to talking.
As you move down the line.

Also, start with some of the fringe members and end with the who we consider the front man. Yeah, yeah.
Don't go the opposite way.

But they always go the opposite way. And then they get into like someone who didn't get royalties.
like, come on, Debbie, come on.

Let me play. All right, fine.

But they also, they couldn't have had more notice that they're going to get an award. I know.
And they couldn't have prepared less.

Well, they don't think to hire a writer. And people who are shocked, shocked, ingenuous that win awards and are shocked.
Yeah.

Still,

once they get over the hyperventilating, they dial into a tight, good speech that we all agree on is a good way to

watch it. And these people just get up year after year and blow it.
So did you wait? Now wait, did you turn down the Oscars? Hosting it? Yeah. I did, yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
What was the thinking?

Well, they, I was very flattered. They came to me.
Yeah. Must have been last summer.
And

I knew Jimmy Kimmel wasn't going to do it. And they offered it.
And it was honestly that I had a lot going on. And

months and months of work. Yeah.

Because, I mean, I think Conan did a great job. No, that's the thing.
I mean, the best job he's done on anything. Yeah, they're two totally different topics.

And he came out, and he not only was so funny, but he elevated the show to the point that I almost convinced myself I had seen these movies and I'd seen not a one of them. Right.

I was like, yeah, this was a great year. It was amazing.
This is a great year. It was a great year.
Yeah.

But he also did that thing where, like, because I know him for so long and I was really worried that he'd start sort of, you know, self-erasing, which he does.

You know, like he'll do a joke and be like,

he'll kind of, you know, take it apart. That's how interesting.
You know, it's an insecurity. It's a habit he does.

And he'll start playing with his nipples and dancing around or whatever. So like, you know,

the first, you know, fucking, the first couple of jokes, I noticed him starting to go that way. And then I'm like, come on, don't do it, dude.

And then he just kind of like, whoa, just locked in and owned the fucking thing. Like, I'd never seen it.
Well, it's the same thing I thought at his Mark Twain Awards.

I went, oh, you have, he has stature. Yeah.
When he's out there, yeah. It's just this thing that has come to some

of those in our business where you go, that's Conan O'Brien. Yeah.
And he's in control. Yeah.
And it's an amazing thing.

It took a long time. Yeah.

It wasn't always natural for him. But it was to me as a fan.
I was sure. Yeah.
He's the one.

Honestly, there was no point where I thought Conan's show wasn't great. Like I sort of knew later through Rolling Stone or Bill Carter or something that he was, you know, struggling.

But as someone watching it, I was like, well, just as a comic, like, because you were a kid, but we were comics and

we were the sort of like, why this writer? Who is this guy? Uh-huh. Yeah.
It has a comics job. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, you know, but whatever.

It felt like it was a time where it's like, that's generally a comics job. So there was actually this envy of like our job being taken.
That's very funny. It's true, though.
It's really funny.

It's a different time, buddy. Different time.
So you're going to do stand-up. I like it very much.
Yeah, I'm going to do it.

But I'm in a bit like

after your last HBS special,

do you forget in the

specials how to work?

But the one before the one was just taped.

I'm talking about what's been released to the public. Yes.
Yes, sir.

Did you forget how to

forget how to do stand-up in between? I'm afraid that I forget it after two weeks, but it's all pretty mental. I think all you forget, all you

it's not forgetting, it's a rustiness.

Because after a certain point there's some part of you that lives up there and he'll generally show up yeah but you know sometimes it's he's not in the same he's not jiving quite right if you get a little out of practice yeah like i believe you have to keep that channel open to talking to an audience yeah but if that goes away then there's a little bit of like all right so you guys are waiting for me to do something yeah but then the other guy steps in and goes i got it

yeah there's always this solid uh he's not a trick pilot but he can land a plane and he can i'm just we're not breaking new ground tonight right this isn't a memorable set yeah but this isn't tigot largo yeah yeah but we're gonna land the plane it's gonna be okay it's gonna be well you gotta take the hit that's the hardest thing really yeah and and fortunately when you come out of the special your confidence is pretty high so you you gotta you can take a few hits yeah after that well then you schedule that first Show that where you'll have to do an hour.

Yeah, oh, yeah. And you just keep thinking about the special going, wait,

that is in there, too. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Well, here's, well, I added some stuff to it since then.
I know the worst.

The worst. Where you find it? I do it every time.
Yeah. Yes.
I record it. Yeah.
Then I have a few more dates. Yeah.
And suddenly the burden of the special is off. Yeah.

So I have this like more fertile mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Come up with some great tags. Yeah.
Sometimes I figure out how to finish a story, though. Totally.

Totally. Yeah.
I found a couple of things the other night and I was like, God damn it. That would have been a nice callback.

Was it, was it at the store or was it, yeah, I think it was at the store. It's all I've been doing since I got back.

Yeah, I was able to put a couple of things together and it was, the thing was, I was adding shit right up until the special the week before. Like there was smart.

There were a couple of pieces that just kind of like, there was a joke that was funny enough the way it was. Yeah.
But I knew the tag wasn't right, but it was good enough. Good enough.
Yeah.

And then like, you know, three days before the special, it was delivered to me. Oh, that's amazing.
Where it's sort of like, oh, it was right there. Yeah.
And it's perfect. And even if

you hadn't found the perfect one, it's great to just throw something in so that your brain is online. Oh, totally.
Yeah. I can't.
Yeah. We did Largo right before you went to Brooklyn to do it.
Yeah.

Right. And I remember you saying, like, I'm not going to run the hour.
And I thought, that's a good idea. Yeah.
You don't want to be too. I didn't, I don't think.
I don't think you did. Yeah.

But I did do, I did three club shows in Vermont

the week before. Okay.
And because I had a whole week and I'm like, what am I doing? I got to shoot a special that Saturday. I'm just sitting on my ass in New York for a week.

So I did three shows at Vermont Comedy Club. And then I did one theater show in Portsmouth.
But it was so funny because I'm like,

this is where just do it. Do it at a comedy club.
Don't like, you know, riff around with the audience.

Just stand before them with that detachment one has when they have a completed thing and fucking do it, which is not my habit. My habit is always to sort of like, well, I'm going to feel them.

For sure. And I was like, be a professional, fuck them.

Do what you've prepared. And that's that.
Isn't that what you said about your first half hour,

HBO half hour, is that you were like, I'm just going in. I'm not preparing.
Well, that was that. Yeah.
And it feels like that.

But I don't know if it's this medicine I'm on, but I was not frantic at all. And I knew the shit like.
top to bottom and I had no fears of the material at all.

And because I had done those four shows before I went with that focus of like, you know, just, you know, did make some decisions.

Like I knew going in that the political stuff up front, that it's my nature to become sort of swaggery and self-righteous with that type of material. And I made a decision.

I'm like, try to just do it like casually. Right.
And see how that works because then you won't have to switch gears so hard. Yeah.

And, you know, I made that note a week, you know, in that week before, and I did it that way. That's amazing.
Well, whatever. I'm just tooting my own horn.

Well, you would also already run it and run it so you could. Sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
I could move it.

I could play with it a little bit. So what else is going on in terms of, like, how's your fucking head, dude? Pretty good.
Pretty good. Yeah.
Yeah. Not squirrely?

Not squirrely.

How long you got sober now?

Well, December will be five years. Oh.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, you know what they say. You get your marbles back?

That thing? Or what? No. No, I have a darker one of those.
Go ahead. Don't kill yourself in the first five years because you'd be killing the wrong person.
Oh, yeah. I've heard that.

That's a good one, right? That's a great one. That's a good one.
That's not in the book. No, I don't think it is.

That one. It might be in

the end of the NA book when it's like, you know, different people who wrote in. Yeah, right.

Right, right, right. The stories.
Yeah, the stories. Yeah.
The stories at the end of the new NA book. That one always got me.
And then there was one I heard, God doesn't wake up and think he's you.

That's a good one. That's very funny.
You like that one? That's very funny. Yeah.
There's a lot of good ones. Yeah.

But are you actively doing the thing?

I'm

yeah, I'd say I'm in

a good amount of recovery talk. Great talk and work.
Yeah. With the dudes.

You got some dudes?

And well, the biggest thing is I see a great psychiatrist once a week. Oh, yeah.
Like the psychiatrist, full full doctor. Full doctor.
Oh, look at that.

Addiction specialty. Oh, yeah.
You can cover many other things. Sure.

And

yeah, it's like,

no, squirrely, no. The obsession's gone.
Thank God.

Yeah, that should go by five. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's a fucking gift.

The, the, I don't exist in a lack of drugs, you know. Whoa.

Or just like

any of it. Yeah.
Yeah. A clonopin to fly home from

Penguins in Cedar Rapids. Or, you know,

landing and

having to finish a draft of something. So I need 60 milligrams of Adderall.
Right. You just do coffee? All of that.
Do you do your coffee?

I do lots of, lots of, lots of cafe. Yeah, lots of it.
And

I'm eating these nicotines again.

A lot of nicotines. Did you ever stop?

I did. I stopped for like three years.
Really? Yeah, now I'm on a mixture of lozenges and the zins. Yeah, I stopped totally.
And it was fine, though. It was fine.
Yeah.

But you know what's not fine about it?

It's that sort of like, you know, oh, how do I reward myself? Yeah, for sure. It's really.
I had one non-alcoholic beer after each

episode of the day. I've been drinking those.
Yeah. And I never used to.
No. But now they're better.

They're better, and it just feels for some reason.

Yeah. I could never handle like a virgin anything.
It somehow feels more grown up. Well, the beers now, like, there's people putting

a lot of thought and heart

into the non-alcoholic uh beer beverages yeah and they taste like fucking beer yeah they don't taste like like almost beer yes they're not lacking no they're not they're they go through the process i believe they actually go almost up to the fermenting process yes right yeah versus creating a fake drink that tastes like beer yeah i just like because i've been thinking about it like drugs lately

you know because i think i saw some on tv or whatever but it really is about that knowledge that has to be be drilled pretty far into you that you know you can't even do one

thing with any safety at all.

Not at all. Yeah.

I don't think there was never a point in the past five years where I deluded myself at all that I could do what I was doing. I never for a second thought, maybe I'll just do this this time.

But even when I think about like the question was early, early, early 2020,

like,

well, do I just dive back into oblivion? That's right. It wasn't like, I could probably,

you know, boot some

Adderall every day and then come down with a Xanax. Yeah.
It was never that. No, no, you always knew, like, yeah, am I willing to commit my life to this again? It was like, am I becoming Batman? Yeah.

Because I'll have to get all this stuff. Yeah, the lights in the sky.
Yeah, I'll be spending money. I'll be out late and I'll be.
Lying. I'll make mistakes and people will be like, that bad night.

And I'll be be like, trust me, it's all part of a plan. Yeah.

Well,

the one thing I think about

with not regularity, but like, I think like, well, when I get old and, you know, my responsibilities change, couldn't I just smoke weed all the time?

I don't know. I know.

I don't know. Well, because there's that swippery swoop.
Hey, it's legal and, you know, it doesn't ruin your eye. Oh, legal, never.
Yeah. Yeah.
But. Most things I did were legal.
That's right.

That's booze is legal. Just needed a prescription.
But even, but like the weed now and like, and just knowing that if I did it, I it's always like,

it's not like, maybe I'll just do a hit. It's like, I know that if I do that, that's going to be my life.
For sure. That within two days, I'll be like, I got to go to the weed store.
Oh, 100%. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like buying sunglasses.
Yeah.

I just can't stop.

And I freak out when I don't. I'm the one of the greatest gifts is

now I have a phone and car keys and I guess a wallet. Yeah.
And that's it.

The, the lack of having to make sure I have something on me. Oh, also.

Yeah, I got that with the, I get that fix with the Zins. The panic of like, and then that's the thing.
You get the panic and the reward of I remembered them. Yeah, yeah.
And,

well, the phone gives you that too. I mean, if you don't know where your phone is, that's pretty, that's a rough few minutes.
I guess so, yeah.

Where you're like, oh, shit, did I leave it at at the, but uh, actually, I have this weird thrill now where I hope I've lost the phone forever. Yeah.

With this inso, now, because it's illegal, the self-flavored ones in California, because of the kids, I had to find a guy that's got them. So now I got the two layers of drugs.
Right, right, right.

Yeah. They're like, where'd you get the peppermint ones? I got a guy.
I got a guy. Yeah.
That's okay. So that it probably feels good to have a guy.

And like he's got rules, like, no, come on, man. It's 9 p.m.
You know, like he's got hours and standards, you know? It's a little early in the day, isn't it? Yeah, well, yeah, it's a little early.

No, they just got to know you. You know, you go through the first two, like, yeah, and they give them to you, and then they know you.

And then they, they don't look weird when they're going under the counter. Yeah.
It's not a street corner thing. It's a

store. Yeah, it's a store.

And which one, by the way, if you I know you talk about it in your special. What medication are you taking? Or do you? Oh, I just took, I'm just taking the Busporin.

Oh, which one is that? It's a sort of a small net

dopamine thing that's like for anxiety. It's not like a full SSRI,

but it just works on this one area.

And I think it's very, the joke I had about it being adverse to SSRIs is the doc says, well, there's this other stuff I can give you that generally doesn't work for people.

I'm like, that sounds like the right drug for me, Doc.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Well, no, because I didn't want to have any of the brain fog or any of that stuff.

But I do think that. It's funny, there's also these things like

MAO inhibitors that were sort of the precursor of antidepressants. But you can't be on, you can't, I think, you can't eat certain cheeses.
Oh, right. Certain foods would

have a terrible chemical reaction with them. It's like grapefruit and statins.
Yeah.

But my doctor was like, oh, they're probably the best drug. People just couldn't handle not eating the cheeses.
Oh, really? I was like, like, wow, people really. Do you do a thing? You got one? Yeah.

Yeah, I take Welbutrin and Zoloft. Wow.
So

that balances it out because Welbutrin will jack you up a little bit. So I can't recall if I ever had that, but

maybe it was. It used to be marketed to help people quit smoking under a different name.
Yes.

What was it called? It started with a Z, I think. And then you learned that it was like, oh, it's just Welbutrin.
Was it Chantix? Chantix, maybe, yeah.

And i remember i was on that and it definitely jacked me up but everyone's going to respond differently you know i started welbutrin at a time when i still used a lot of amphetamines yeah and oh my god so i don't recall right right and it's working for you this combination it has been yeah no no side effects You're not going to get fat.

It's been a while. Yeah.
So if there's a side effect, I'm so used to it. Yeah.
I think I had some stomach issues with Zoloft, but they went away. And I might reduce Zoloft.

In fact, I am currently reducing Zoloft a little. Yeah.
And I haven't noticed anything yet. You know, I'm interviewing your wife tomorrow.
Yeah, I know.

Isn't that wild? That's wild. Yeah.
How's that going? Great.

Okay. Good.
Oh, so good. All right.
Take it easy. Don't care.
No,

you asked. I'm telling you.
Okay, well, I'm good. I'm glad.
Yeah. Yeah.
I just don't want you to overkill it. I know.
And so people go like, I don't know. I know.

I know how the public works.

I understand perceptions. I'll tell you one thing, and I'll tell her tomorrow.
She's fucking great in this show, dude. She's great on that show.
Great.

Really? And just wait. Just wait.
Until the last one? Well, you'll see. Well, no, I've watched all of them.
Oh, till the last one. Oh, yeah.
You're in the media. Yeah.

I mean, because I got to talk to her. You're talking to your listeners.
And I haven't seen.

Well, by the time we put this up, it'll all have been aired.

But I haven't seen her in a long time do stuff.

And after we had our son and then she was diagnosed with cancer,

she was not working for

now.

She's still on a course of treatment that will be

a few years. Oh, really? But

they did catch it, though it was aggressive. They did catch it

at a good

point. But

the short answer is she's got,

you know,

you just don't say in the clear yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I get it. But she's so fucking good.
She's great on that show. It's like,

it's not even like, because I don't know her, it's not like, oh, it's a perfect role for her. She just acts the fuck out of it.

Yeah, she makes, I mean, I talked to her in between, you know, did she come home? How was it? I sort of was vaguely aware of what the show is about, but like, she makes the most interesting choices.

And when I've talked to her about running lines for something I'm doing,

the thing I always think to do is change the words. Yeah.
I go, well, I know how to get the emotion across. I'll just change every word you have here.
I'll put it in a different way.

And it's really interesting to watch like a real actor who can work within the words. Yeah, work within the words.
Yeah. I think it's.
I only realized that recently.

I thought, oh, you're figuring it out with what they wrote. That's the truth.
Whereas I'm like, I'll show up early. I'll show up 10 minutes early and go, hey, right here, can I say this instead?

Yeah, yeah. I wrote some pretty good lines for you.
Yeah, yeah. I know you guys are writers, but you know, you guys are writing.
I'm also a writer. You know, I did a little sketch comedy.

And the kids, how's that treating you? How's it changing you?

I just,

I don't know if I changed, I doubled. Yeah.
Like I, my, I expanded where I can do,

I almost feel like I can do

more

less of a trade-off and more like

I've just become you integrated it. Yeah, but also, I genuinely feel like my brain doubled in size.
Like we knocked a wall down. Well, it's the kid wall.
And there was all this space.

Well, also, like, you know, I think that you're wired for the emotional connection if you're a normal human being. Yeah.

Like, you have kids, and the part of you that goes, oh, you're supposed to love them, should kick in pretty quick. Immediately.
It wasn't even that. It was, oh, oh, hi again.

That was the real feeling. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Especially with my daughter. Yeah.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
I know you. Yeah.
And you're going to be here a while. Yeah.

And

I have, we are so, we have

the sweetest, funniest, nicest kids. I tell you this.

Like, yeah, you can't oversell it because it sounds disingenuous. No, no, no.

I'm in a very, very happy time. Yeah.
I'm in a really happy time. Aren't you glad you can appreciate it? Yeah, I totally can.

And I find I can be more of a psychopath in my work because

I go home and I go, oh, these people really like me.

Show's over. I can just be myself.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Everyone here really likes me.

You don't believe everybody else, though?

Whatever.

It's just different relationships. This is a different relationship.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, because they're my children.

Yeah, yeah.

I guess you got to suck, kind of take it in while you can. Because from what I understand, there are periods where they might not like you as much.
Yeah, there are times. Yeah.

Can you think, do you think of yourself as a teenager? Like, I put my parents to hell

at certain points.

Yeah, I had a...

I had a slightly different relationship where I was trying to keep my parents separate from whatever I was doing. Yeah.
That was a problem. And I really felt like

I felt quite quite noble in this pursuit. You figured it out.

And when I would get caught, when the two would meet, I would get mad at my parents because they weren't giving me credit for how much I tried to keep this away from them.

I was like the head of the CIA talking to the president, like, do you know what the fuck I do over here? It's not for you to know about. Yeah.
Get out of my personal life. Yeah.
Yeah.

I remember thinking as a kid,

I'm going to try to keep my personal life separate from my family.

And you're pretty successful at it, apparently.

Well, I mean, as you got older, it seems like the amount of surprise that everyone had, you know, when you were kind of, when you hit the wall, because, you know, like a lot of people.

I guess I'm surprised, yeah. No, no, totally.
I mean, outside of your inner circle who were probably just concerned. And you I had talked to months earlier.
Remember that? When you're trying to.

Early pandemic when I was like, hey,

hey, you know about, you know, how you've ever heard of relapse?

Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know if I gave you good advice. I imagine I did.
Yeah, you did. Yeah.
But like, it's so funny because for somebody like me, and I don't know if I told you this, you know,

when you went through all that shit, my response was like, well, good for him. That makes him much more interesting.
Yeah. Like he like he's he's a real deal.
This guy's the real deal.

That was the first thing Lauren said to me when I saw him after all that. He went, oh, you finally became interesting.

That demon.

People get, people were surprised and also there is something about going through something very human in front of people where

it,

I mean, certainly I don't need to tell you that, but like there's also

rather than feel like, oh, are you all disappointed in me? There's this great like

great extra familiarity with the audience from it. Totally, because like it's like it's it's you know, you float in this ether when you're not being candid on any level, yeah, uh, in your art

where you know that you're just you're you're boxed in and you're an entertainer.

But then when all this human shit happens, you're gonna get people that are like, fuck him, but you most of the people are gonna be like, Yeah, I had a brother who had, and I've been through that, or whatever they did, yeah, whatever it is, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How'd you handle all that fucking pushback when you got divorced?

Uh,

so You disappointed a lot of girls, I think.

Or something.

I don't recall exactly.

I

was

focused on a couple things at that time. One, I'm in like month three or four.
Of sobriety. Of sobriety.

And

I wouldn't even say I had to shut it all out because it all got back to me. Yeah.

But

the crisis at hand was, you know, like, I'll keep the boy alive. and then um

and then

we are into the summer and uh my son's born in november oh yeah so what was happening

in my life was not

it didn't really rhyme with what was happen what was being said out there which is like almost always the case yeah like what's being said out there is just this weird kind of you know uh beast of its own yeah it feeds itself yeah well sometimes you're going through the thing everyone's talking about, and sometimes you go, no, that's in the past, actually.

Yeah.

You guys are going to have to let this go. I have a whole other thing.
Yeah, yeah.

You know, like, I, yeah, I have a whole other thing where I'm trying to chain smoking and

trying to keep a kid alive. Yeah.
And trying to figure out how to do that. Yeah.
Yeah. And these people are like, what an asshole.
And be like, wow.

Wow. Without Coke, I've gained a lot of weight.

Did you? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
But you never got fat. I'll tell you this.
Yeah. A critic saw me at

City Winery. Yeah.
And he wrote,

as if, it's so funny with everything I went through that I still zeroed in on this. He wrote, he looks healthier.
He looks heavier. And I was like, just the first part.
We don't need the second part.

His suit doesn't fit. Yeah,

his suit. The buttons are pulling.
Just say he looks healthier.

Well, you get that kind of like weird rehab rehab puffiness. Oh my gosh.

I mean, I was kind of a plates of carbs. I was quite a cigarette and amphetamine person.

You were smoking?

All the time. Really? I quit

a couple weeks. I quit in early November 2021.
But was that something you did as a kid, too? Yeah. Oh, you smoked your whole life.
Yeah,

I smoked my whole life. Yeah, I got a chest x-ray recently.
And they said, when, how long did you smoke? And I thought, let's see, I was

13 and I quit when I was 39. Me too, dude.
And they were like, oh, 26 years. And I'm like, yeah, when you say it like that.
Yeah.

And I said, do you count the teen years? And they go, yeah.

Yeah.

That's fucking crazy, dude.

14 I started when I was 14. Yeah.
And I can't like. Did your parents smoke? My mom smoked occasionally.
But it wasn't like a house where the kids are allowed to smoke.

No, but like my high school, we could smoke. That's so interesting.
Well, this is like, there was like 3,400 kids in my high school. There's a public high school.
What do they do?

You can smoke because it was

unmanaged.

Oh, yeah. No.
If you couldn't, you would stop them.

You would get Saturday jug, they called it, if you were to. No, they couldn't contain it.
It's not like you could do it in the school, but you could definitely smoke. Yeah.

I went to a camp where you could smoke. That's so funny.
A music and arts camp when I was 15. I remember my aunt bought me a cart and a Marlboro Red.

Just smoking it up, just smoking at camp, yeah, and playing guitar. It was like the perfect thing.

I was always fascinated by those kids where you go to their house and they'd just be smoking, and their mom would come in and ask for a lighter, and everyone was smoking.

Yeah, it was a rare thing, but it was kind of amazing, wasn't it? It was kind of amazing, and I

couldn't have envied it more. That they were normalized that much.

Yeah. No, I mean, I guess I really quit in 2000 and

you know, just when I got sober, I think 99. By 2001, I was done.
63, 73, 83, 93. Yeah.
Do you look at it? Sorry. Do you have two periods? Is it like

comedy store Sam Kinnison, then did you actually stop everything? Or were you not really, really sober till the early...

Dude, it took me the first time I got sober.

was 1987.

And that was like like total abstinence from I went to rehab.

I left LA after that Kennison thing and I was psychotic. I had coached myself into psychosis.
Yeah. And, you know, I was hearing voices in my head and I had to leave because a voice told me.

And you know, all I could, all I did it name the place you should go to? Well, I just went to Tucson. I did go to Tucson.
Oh, very nice. Oddly.
Very nice. Because my brother was in school there.

And I didn't know what to do. I packed up everything I had in my car and I just left in a panic.
And all I knew was like, I got to to get a new passport because I'm going to have to get out.

And I didn't even know why.

But then I got home and I'd gotten a month or a space from the store. And I said,

I got to check in because I'm like, you know, I'm, you know, I'm at this weird point where if I don't have silver pinky rings on and a skull on my shirt, I'm going to be in trouble.

I was out of my mind. Yeah, yeah.

So then,

so then I went to,

I thought I was seeing the signs, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And And then

they were protecting me. And you'll see in all those early pictures, there had to be some representation of the skull.
Yeah, I had a little skull pinky ring. I had a skull on my shirt.

But then I would stay sober for, I never got the program. So I would stay sober for like a year and a half, max.
So I got out of rehab, went back to New York, started over again.

Within a certain, within a year and a half, I was using it again, you know, went to California,

kind of like sobered up here and there. And then, you know, again, I'd get totally sober for like a year and a half.
It wasn't until I met, you know, Mishna

in, you know, 99

where, you know, she kind of walked me through the basic stuff about the program. Okay.
Like, I did not get the program. Right, right.
So it took me whatever, like, I've got, what, 25 years this year?

26, 26 years this year. So that would have been 99.
But the first time I got sober was in 80

seven. Yeah.
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Periods of abstinence then falling back.

Then yeah, but falling back, but you know, by the time I met her, I was, I was on the, you know, I was bloated and sweaty, and I had kind of resigned myself to the marriage I was in.

And I thought, like, my thinking was I was hosting a local TV show in New York for, I can't even remember the station. I'm like, all right, well, if I can just get jobs like this,

I'll be okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I just wanted to be dead. Yeah.
And then Mishnah just just like appeared out of the clouds. And I'm like, I want to be with her.

And it just so happened she was sober. I looked up.
Wow. So all the basic ideas of we were going to meetings two, three times a day.
I had nothing to do. Yeah.

So when I first got sober, you know, you get that crew running around New York doing two or three meetings a day, totally locked in, sponsored.

Yeah, no, I left the second rehab I was in, and my counselor was like,

a a minimum 180 and 90 days. You have to do two a day, 490 days.

He was like, there's no world where you're going to be fine

occasionally going to a meeting. He's like, it's the pandemic.
They're all on Zoom. You're going to go to a minimum of two.

Did you? Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, like, I, it was, you, well, that was the thing that stuck with me. It's like, you got to put it first.

And like, you're lucky the pandemic was happening in a way.

Because to put your sobriety first, above and beyond everything else,

and the belief that everything will fall in place after that

is a solid thing. Though with my ego,

it was weird because it felt like everything shut down because I had a drug problem.

I was called to my guy. Yeah, I was like, everything, I was like, yeah,

everyone's taking this hard and we're all just pausing.

No one's going to work. Everyone's getting their fingers.
But if I come over with a mask, can I I still get the drugs? Oh,

please.

I didn't even know that the nasal tests hurt until

well after getting so. Oh, really? Because people used to complain.
Yeah. Like, oh, they stick it up there.
And I was so numb

that I'd go to get different COVID tests for things in the early pandemic. I was like, what do people

complain about?

Yeah,

it took a long time. And sadly, or maybe not,

I don't go to many meetings you know one of my best friends is you know very sober so i talk to him often there's people i call

but i don't go to to many meetings and it would it probably wouldn't kill me but i find that there's other issues like i'm not worried about drinking or using drugs

but there are some weird you know al-inani you know

graduate level recovery that graduate level recovery that I could probably engage in. Then I don't quite do it.
But I'm back in therapy. We'll see see what happens.
Yeah. And I'm old, dude.

But you're young. Yeah.
Some people are not

young.

You're just you. Right.
Thank God. And that probably has something to do with my commitment to boots and no kids.
And do you wear any skulls now?

I don't, dude. I don't have any skulls.
So you're really vulnerable. Very vulnerable.

The constant reminder of death is firmly planted in my head now. So I don't need to stave it off with my skull shirts.
So are you going to go on a vacation come this fall when you're done?

I don't know if I know how. I know, but are you going to try? You think I should? Yeah.

You were doing the podcast into the IFC show, into the podcast.

I did the podcast no matter what I was doing, dude. It's crazy.
It's crazy. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I might spend time in New Mexico, but I don't know where to go. Somewhere else.
How about somewhere? How about going somewhere else?

Well, we might have to leave. Wait, do you mean like to see family or

yeah?

Well, not so much to see family. Yeah, a vacation.
I used to go to Hawaii frequently. Hey.
I used to go to Kauai.

Well, yeah, exactly. But once I brought the fourth girlfriend to Kauai,

and I was saying things like, I've been here. Yeah, yeah.
That's so funny. Yeah.
Yeah. This land's very healing.
I told that to my last three girlfriends. Yeah, or wives.
Yeah. I don't know.

Where have you gone?

I do. Hawaii is great.
What do I really like?

You could go to Ireland.

I like Ireland. I went to Ireland with Lynn, and I go there to work.
I didn't go this year. I'm kind of sad about it.
I was at the Kilkenny Festival the same time as you, I think.

I was a fucking nightmare. It was? Yeah.
You were going on runs. I remember you're the first person I knew that ran without music playing.
Oh, interesting.

Interesting memory. I just thought it sounded that,

you know what?

That, when you were asking about about taking time off and

being at peace with yourself, I have noticed that I cannot do most things in life without music playing or some audio playing.

I just find with exercise, running specifically, I mean, I understand the music thing and I've done that a lot.

I remember you told me, no, you just listen to your breath, and I was like, that's but also time goes by quicker when you don't listen to music because, yeah, there's something about songs that measure time.

I just find that if I'm running without music and my brain wanders like it does in real life, then all of a sudden time goes by. But like with songs, I'm like, all right, I know this next.

Oh, right, right. Here's the bridge.
Right. Or whatever.
Or

whatever your song list is. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. But that's just crazy.
That's weird that like I have been exercising for a long time. Yeah, Ireland is fucking great, dude.
Yeah. Do you journey?

Do you take trips with friends? Like I always picture you guys are like I talked to Kroll the other day. I'm like, are you guys spending family time together? Yeah.
You do?

You bring the kids and all that stuff? Yeah, well,

our kids are uh

close enough in age and then dan levy uh he's got what nine kids he has nine now yeah wow

and uh they live in an ultra-orthodox community on beverly in the brain um he's got three and his daughter penny was born across the hall from my son oh wow same same night isn't that nice though so do you guys do the whole are you like traveling like uh yeah we'll do like new heart and uh rickles yes and then you know i'll get some terrible new year's Year's Eve show, and he'll open the show, and we'll bring our families and make a vacation out of it.

Yeah, and we always think this will be great. We'll get adjoining suites, and, you know, then just, it's just, we're all in one living room with kids running around.
Yeah, not great.

It's different kind of stuff. But have you gone to Europe and stuff?

I have gone to Europe with Dan Levy, but it was for a stand-up. Oh, but never like, let's bring the families.
Skiing? But we would.

No, I won't ski. I'm not going to do that.
Have you ever? Yeah, when I was younger, and now I think about it. It It comes right back.

It's a little exhausting. You got to get way out of it.
I think that's funny Danza and that awful Michael Smith Kennedy or whatever. Oh, the tree thing? Sonny Bono.
Doesn't it seem

too wild? Dangerous. Yeah, it seems too dangerous.
All right. I get it.
Also, like, if I will say this, we're talking about being in a great place in life.

I do sometimes think, like, yeah, but what if you blew out your knee and you couldn't

work out and go do stand-up and do all these things? And you had a pain medication prescription. For sure.

That's the,

but I do, I do think about that in terms of like any injury that would lay me up. I'm like, you'd be okay.

You have a wonderful family and support system and a wonderful wife, but you know, let's not, let's not pursue it. Yeah, let's not strap hook on skis

at the Aspen Comedy Fair. Yeah, I had some dental work done.
They gave me an oxycodone prescription. And it was one of those things where, you know, I know well enough about stuff.
And oddly,

I only took one

the day of. And then I'm like, and then they sat in my cabinet for a long time.
And then I didn't feel any craving or anything, but I'm like, dude, just throw them away. Yeah, yeah.

Why are they sitting there?

And I threw them down the toilet, and I got two emails from fucking concerned, progressive, sensitive people that said, you really shouldn't throw them down the toilet because it goes into the water supply.

I'm like, I don't give a fuck.

We're going to throw them away like it's like people that, you know, take the batteries and, you know, paint it. It's the water supply.
Yeah. It's going to get into the water.
Yeah, the oxycodone.

Not the tens of thousands of gallons of Prozac in people's piss. It's my oxycodone.
It's your oxycodone that will get the world that will get all the L.A. Everybody's water drinkers.
All the L.A.

tap water drinkers. Well, I think they were primarily worried about it fucking up the almond groves.
Oh, we do need more almonds.

No, I don't know what they were worried about, and I understand their sentiment. But that's so interesting that you just said, and then I threw them down the toilet and people got mad.

I mean, you left out the part where you told everyone on your podcast. Yeah.

So it's an interesting piece of your life where you do an action and then there's, I talk about it. You even missed the, yeah.
Yeah. Well, that's all going to be gone.
Yeah.

And I'm not going to know what people know anymore. Hey, listen, if you miss it and you want to come back and do it, just come back and do it.

Don't think because you did a, I assume, big farewell and countdown and everything. Well, here's the thing.
You can't. I sometimes feel bad for people that

are trapped by their finale. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I don't, like, I don't, like, I just don't want to do this without Brendan because this guy is a genius and he's been watching my back forever. Yeah.

You know, and, you know, just me talking without someone then taking the talking and making decisions after the fact is, it's not always great. You know, in terms of like,

you know, sometimes I'm too candid

and I'm not always aware of what's going to cause trouble. Oh, I see.
Yeah.

And to have a good producer, like I would say things on here, and while I'm doing my monologues, I'll say, like, you're probably going to take that out, but all right.

That man, I have to say, he is quite good because the flow of it, I would never guess things are out. Yeah, he's the best.
So I don't think I'll do this without him. And

so, and then the other thing is, it's like, well, you're an interviewer. There's jobs, you know, you could do that.
I'm like, why? Yeah, why? How am I going to do it as good as this?

Yeah, like on a TV. I'm going to talk about that and why.
Yeah, what's the point of it? Like, I can't, like, I can't. What am I going to do? Yeah, I don't know.

But I'm not, I'm just going to, I'll do the stand-up and you know, maybe, you know, I'll get better as an actor and do that.

And then, if you ever want to interview someone, there's always terrible Paley Center panels and 92Y. Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah.

Whenever you feel like I'd like to host an evening. Get me into the live host, the live moderating game.
Symphony Space, 92Y. Paley.
I've done those. I've done those.
FYC events.

The future is bright, my friend.

Well, maybe I'll just kind of figure out a TED talk.

Do people still do those? I don't know. Yeah.
All right, buddy. Good talking to you.

Hey, man, congrats. Thanks for having me again.
Yeah.

There you go, folks. John Mulaney.
I like that guy, and I feel like we're friends. Everybody's live with John Mulaney.
The episodes are available on Netflix.

I think, as he said, we're not sure if there's going to be new ones, but go check out what they were up to. All right, hang out for a minute.

Hey, folks, Full Marin listeners get a bonus episode tomorrow where Brendan and I go into more detail about our decision to end the show.

We'll give you the whole story. Like, I don't really have any apprehension about our decision.
No. It's so funny because I walked over here and I was like, you know,

I was pretty sure that, you know, we were on the same page, but I didn't know 100% that if I said like the way I felt about it, like there might be, you might have a different feeling or you might be like, wait, but end it entirely?

Like, shouldn't we keep it going somehow? But like right away, I was like, I think the smartest thing to do is for us to end this. And you were like, yep.

Well, people have always said to both of us, you know, in my mind, it was always going to, if anyone said, how long are you going to do it for? I'm like, as long as Brendan wants. Yeah.

And I said the same thing. Right.
But so that then becomes a thing where we actually do have to figure it out. And oddly, I think we're both on the same page.

Well, it became, it was that thing, what it was, it was really, I think, you know, because we have pretty good boundaries with each other.

And, you know, to our credit, you know, nothing has ever really polluted our professional or personal relationship,

whether it was ego or wanting to do other things.

But I think that conversation we had a few months ago about about just the level of burnout we were operating at and acknowledging it, because I won't acknowledge that. That's right.
That's right.

And I think that you were sort of ahead of me in identifying it.

And, you know, how could it not be that? That's right. Because of the nature of my work and how I work and being self-employed, I never even factor that in.
Right. That it's even a real thing.

That bonus episode posts tomorrow for Fulmer and subscribers to sign up. Go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF Plus.

And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST. Here's some guitar that after I came up with it, I realized it's pretty close to a cat power song, but that's that's good.

Boomer lifts, monkey and the fonda, cat angels everywhere.