What up, Whiskey, Ginger fans? Welcome back to the show. It's your first time joining the show. Welcome to the show. We got a good one for you today. Like my man, Steve Harvey, Dunsay. It's Mike Berbiglia, the Berbigs. He's got a special out right now called Old Man and the Pool on Netflix. Go watch it, man. I love this dude. Berbigs is so funny, so smart, so witty, so quick, so sharp. A very, very funny, talented comedian who does more than just your tradish stand up. He is a wonderful storyteller and brings the comedy world of his life to life. Old Man in the pool on Netflix right now. Also tonight, right here, right now, I am in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. If you're not at the show, what are you doing? Tonight in Milwaukee, tomorrow night, Chicago Theater. I think we're sold out. Come on by and wave to me from the outside. Then we're going to be in Minneapolis and Madison with me and Bobby Lee ending the tour this year in Minneapolis and Madison. A couple of tickets left in Madison maybe. Then in the new year, we're going to Atlantic City. We're going to be in Reno, Tucson, Sacramento, Dameculah, Long Beach.

We're all over the place. Go to badfriendspod. Com, badfriendspod. Com for those tickets. Enough rambling for me. Let's go to the episode.

In here, we pour whiskey.

You were that creature in the.

Ginger Fierce. Sturdy, ginger.

Like them.

The Ginger Gene is a curse. Ginges are beautiful. You owe me five dollars for the whiskeys and 75 dollars.

For the whore. Ginger. Oh, hell no. This whiskey is excellent. Ginger.

I like ginges.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Whisky and Ginger. My guest today is one of my favorite people on Earth. I said I thought of wrong my guest, but I mean it once again. Today, smooth this morning. It's Mike Berbiglia.

I didn't catch any of that.

You shouldn't. And here is what we've got going on today. Mike heard a conversation with me and Piti Piti Homes about coffee. Now look, could McCone, my assistant, have gotten this all wrong? Very possibly. But we wanted to test out different versions of the coffee because, Berbiglia will tell you there was a discrepancy over- Three shots. Three shots versus two shots. Three shots. Yes.

Yes, exactly.

In a small cup. In a small cup. So let's see what we've got here. What did you get him now? Let's explain. There's cappuccino there, right?

By the way, the reason why I care about this is I love the Pete Holmes episode, and you guys go pretty deep on coffee. We get, yeah. And I was literally, I could watch them talk about coffee for.

Three hours. You know who is that? Tom Papa is the same way. Papa is a, yeah, and this is my regular coffee, right? Yep. All right. So here we go. So what's the tall? What do we got the big one?

What is that?

I think- See this? I told.

You he messed it up. I hate this. What did I say though? Because that's the one that has.

Too much milk. Yeah, I told you he messed it up, and I knew it. I said mediums for all of them. No, no, no, no, no. I only said large for mine. No, see, and see, this is the thing.

This is the only one that's going to be correct.

That will.

Be correct.

Because it's the smallest cup. But let's taste it last then.

Okay, okay.

Let's taste the first one and see how terrible this is. This ridiculous one? Yeah, let's see the ridiculous one. The one with the flat white was. When I said good flat white, they were like- Who was there? Who was there?

It was a burnet girl?

I don't know. The little tiny, skinny one? Yeah. Yeah, I know. She's a little new. You know it's so funny? She's a little new. And if the owner was there, they would have been bummed.

Okay, so this is the for whatever reason, tall cappuccino.

Whatever it is. Let's see super tall cap.

It's not bad. Three shots.

It's not bad. You know, it's so funny? It's still because their coffee is really good. So I go even a bad pour will still taste good, even though the numbers.

Are wrong. I wanted to Slam it, but it's got a nice taste.

Well, you know what this is? I don't know how you feel. You know Jay Lars? Oh, yeah. Jay Lars is a self-proclaimed expert of Arnold Palmers. Is he? Well, he loves the mix. He loves a perfect mix of Arnold Palmer, as he says. Yeah, his accent is extreme. And he says he's got the right numbers down. I remember we were talking about this one time. And even if the numbers are a little off, if the ice tea is really good and the lemonade is really good, you can excuse it. This might be that excuse, right?

Yeah, I think the coffee. All right, let's try. Can we say what the coffee is?

Priscilla? Oh, yeah, I love Priscilla. I've been a long fan of the Big P.

Yeah, so whatever they're doing, I.

Think the best. Now let's see the cap. Tell me what the cap is.

So this is their.

Regular cap. Here's you on the flight home, by the way. It's just gripping the seat, breaking it.

No, I heard Seinfeld talk about this once. I'm unlimited coffee.

You can do all day.

Pretty much. I can do four or five coffees in a day.

Okay, so my limit is always, I've limited myself to, well, that's a lie, one to two in the morning and then one in the afternoon, and that's maxed out. Good for you. Only because for years I was doing as much as I wanted all the time. And then at night I would be not caffeine buzzing, but just anxiety stiff.

Yeah, I get you.

I get you. I'd just be spaced out anxiety stiff I should get rid of this stuff in my body.

No, I get that. Well, it's funny because P. D. Holmes, our.

Mutual friend, our buddy.

I did my show The Old Man in the Pool, which is now a comedy special.

Which is now available to.

Transition: The.

Old Man in the Pool is out right now. You can go watch it as we speak. When this episode is live, the special will be out and you can go see it. I want to talk about.

That, but go ahead. When I was in London doing it, I did it in the West End for four or five weeks, and it was hard to be away from my family. I got really depressed.

They never came.

They came at the end. It was tough. My daughter's first day of third grade was the same day as my first day of my show. It was brutal. It was like one of those things, show business sometimes like, We don't have the theater for that's the only date we have. You go, Okay, I got to do this. I was depressed. Really depressed. I said to Peter on the phone, I go, I'm rock bottom. I don't think he's ever heard me even say that.

That. This is genuine. This isn't like one of those, Man, I'm really bummed about this. This is a life moment where I'm going to regret it or be.

Hurt by it. Yeah. And I was really down. And he said, I think you got to listen to The Power of Now, the audiobook, which is... Yeah, like Arttoll. Yeah, like Art Tole. Yeah. And it really helped me. I have to say, it really helped me. It did. Yeah. And it's I think the reason is, sorry, this circles back to what we were talking about a second ago, is as comedians, whatever it is, you were saying you're having anxiety. For me, as comedians, it's like our job is literally to use our mind to take apart things all the time, to dissect coffee, to dissect the sandwich place, to dissect your relationships. And we get very good at it if we're any good. And my problem is, I think a lot of comedians problem, we can't shut it off. And so the Ecker-Toley book is all about separating your mind from your consciousness and seeing your mind as a tool for your consciousness and not your consciousness itself. Right. So that was helpful.

The division makes it a little bit easier. You still exist in that space, but it's the same thing I go through with this. I've talked about it on this. I have this terrible back injury that's caused crazy pain. And the pain, I talk about neuroplastic pain is the thing that's a real term in the medical field, meaning like, you know what phantom limbs are. You know what that is, right? Sure, yeah. So phantom limb is what they.

Would call neuroplastic. You're an ampute, and you think you still have an arm. You do not.

It's all neuroplastic, meaning your brain is still firing these weird, crazy signals with the assumption that it is there because the pain was so tremendously traumatic. And what helps these exercises I do, they help some of my actual pain subside a little bit, but it also helps the neuroplastic pain disappear a little bit. The pain is still real.

So what do you do to do that?

Well, I mean, there's a litany of things, honestly. A lot of breathing exercises are a big part of it and stretching and doing yoga. But also it's a lot of meditation. It's weird. A lot of it is brain heavy, focused. So what you're saying in The Power of Now is once you learn to divide these two things and really separate that all consuming thought, anxiety, consciousness, and if you can peel those in two separate sectors, it makes it a little bit easier for you to handle, right? When everything is at once, it's like if you looked at the calendar and you saw all the things you had to do for.

The day.

You want to lose it. But if you were like, if I can just.

Do that. No, I need to make lists.

Otherwise, I just fall down an anxiety hole.

I find that I fall down an anxiety hole. I even get with my podcast, I don't know if you have it with this podcast, which when you're in New York, I'd love to have you on.

Yeah, I'm coming in a month.

Oh, great. Come on, working it out. I get anxious before the recording.

Yeah, I do. Oh, you do? Yeah, but it's anxious because I want to see the guest there. The anxiety gap is the same I have before I go on stage when I'm like, I just really want to get this going. I just want to start the engine. That lull before is the most nauseating. Every athlete I've ever spoken to, by the way, feels the exact same way. Oh, interesting. You talk to any performer, anyone that has to perform live, sport, comedy, whatever that is, that lull is the most anxiety-inducing, where you're waiting for the thing to start. Thats then once it starts, the moment you set foot on stage, it's almost like you take a breath. It's almost like it feels like relief. Much easier. You're like, There you are. They're all there. It's so weird how people, I think, fans alike assume, Are you ever nervous before they're set? It's like, not nervous. I really would like to get it going. Yeah. I just want to start. Let's see this cappuccino, by the way.

I'm going to try this. It's gold.

It's gold. It's gold. He likes it. Yeah, see? Look at his smile. Way to go, McCon. Way to go. Even the big pour was not bad.

That wasn't bad. This is great.

This is it. It's a delicious little...

This is making my whole trip.

The only thing that would make it better... I'm not even kidding. You know what would make it better? In a real cup. That's the only difference. Really? Paper cups are nice, but when you drink it locally there.

In a real cup, it's just... I think you're right. No, I'm a big real cup guy. A real cup. It does something to it. I like a nice ceramic mug.

I love it. I like the discomfort of a small cappuccino cup. I think it's funny that it's so tiny. I like that it fits oddly in my fingers. That it's like as an American, we have everything that's easily grippable. Like, look at this. They designed a bottle of whiskey so you can hold the sides. I like that they have little cappuccino cups. They're not made for hand fitting.

How is this? This is no good.

Also good.

Not.

Good. Not good. Not good. This one's no good. This is third place. What is this? What is that? Just regular, like ice coffee with regular milk. Yeah, that's been sitting.

It's just not anything. I've been on the road as a comic for like 25 years, so it's like I'll do rest stop coffee. I'll do it if I have to do it.

Yeah, you have to.

At some point, you have to. I've seen the spectrum.

You've done it all.

But once you taste something like this, you just go, Oh. It's over. You're craving it all the time. Yeah, it's crazy. Because I don't do drugs. I don't drink a lot.

You never did drugs?

Never did hard drugs. No. Not the good and the good. It's funny. I'm working at my new hour right now, and a lot of the things that I'm ruminating on are having to do with I have an eight-year-old daughter. I'm seeing the world through her eyes. I'm remembering that when I was a kid, I thought grownups knew everything. Thing. Now I'm a 45-year-old man like, We don't.

Know anything. No, we're faking it. All of us are pretending all the time.

Right. For example, with drugs, at some point, I'm going to have to be like, So don't do drugs. But then also, I take clonapen for my sleepwalking, which is not a drug person. It's a drug. You know what I mean?

Classifying the levels of drugs that are appropriate is very funny to your kid. She's like, Well, why is that better? Your kids are so intelligent. She's like, Why is that better than psychedelics? You're like, Well, I don't know. I don't know.

I can't explain it. There's so many things I don't know. The thing that I've realized in adulthood is I feel like in every relationship, one of the people should know how electricity and plumbing and heating works, and we don't have that. And so now we're looking for a third in our thrupble because we need a husband. We don't have.

A husband. Yeah, we really do. And we need to zap him back from 1958. That's the thing. Absolutely. Can we get that guy here? Because that guy would be able to level us out. It is funny. I bet you 50 years to 60 years ago, both the husband and the wife or the couple living in the home almost always knew.

All the things. I think they both knew the things.

They knew what the things, how to do it, how they worked. Well, your father is replacing one of the generators, but they know.

Yeah.

Now it started to separate. Now at the same time, the bottom dropped out. Now, neither me or my wife know anything. Here's what happened yesterday. The plumber came because a pipe was leaking that they had originally fixed. He said, We'll put the new version on because I think I know what happened. He shows up and my wife says, Do you want to ask him about the leaky guest toilet in the hallway? Because I went and bought a new pump thing. I said, I can do it. I can do this. I know exactly how to fix that pump inside the tube. Oh, you do? Well, just from trial and error. Okay. And she said, But you haven't done it yet. And she's right. And she's very right. Because my fear is I'm going to break it more, and then I'll really have an issue. So I said, Well, I've got to go ask him if this is the right mechanism for it, the new pump, because I think the old air pump wasn't filtering right.

And.

I leave, I go run an air and I come... I walk in the hall and she goes, Did you try the toilet in the hallway? Yeah. It's fixed? Yeah. Oh, awesome. So was it? And I look down right next to the sink is still the old packaging with the pump inside with the receipt on top of it to return it. I said, He didn't even switch it out. She goes, It was just the chain. The chain wasn't the right length inside for the flapper. And I was like, That's it. That was it. That's embarrassing.

Right, you should be. That's your level. Yeah.

I should have known chain. Right. But I saw chain look fine.

It's so funny you're describing your wife saying like, But did you but did you do it? I didn't do it. I love that because Gaffigan and I were talking about how there's a healthy fear one has of one's wife or husband. Sure. Yeah, of course. Because that person has the power to crush you.

With their words. Because they know your- They know everything. They know your little.

Hurt points. Yeah, they know the hurt points. They know where the bodies are buried. And it's a crazy power.

It's really fascinating. When do they use it?

When do they use it? Yeah, how long have you been married?

Seven.

Seven, I'm 15. Yeah.

Oh, she's used it.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, we're so deep in we've been together almost 20 years. And we've been married for 15 years. We have a child together. I mean, it's wild.

Has she ever had a moment in your relationship where she not only called you on your own shit, but did it in a way that restructured the way your relationship works?

I think so. It's funny because the old Man in the Pool is my new special, and it's all about life and death and mortality. Honestly, it's about, I reference, for example, the Warren Zeevon famous interview with Letterman. Do you remember it?

Do I remember it? Do I remember it? He knows. I watched that thing.

I've watched.

It to death. Dude, I'm going to kiss you on your forehead. Yesterday, I said this to someone. Someone goes, I love this song. I've never heard that. Bobby. Bobby never heard. There was a song that came out on wherever we were. We were in a restaurant. I go, Wow. What a playlist. Because it was...

It was The.

War of the Aval? Yes, and it was from Handsome Boy. Handsome Boy.

I don't know.

The- It's not of a boy. And it was, Hold on. I do want to find it because I just like it so much.

Do you keep in this part?

Yeah, we leave this end because it's unfortunate for me. Yeah, because I look stupid. Anyway, he goes, Who is it? I said, That's Warren Zeevon. You don't know who that is? And he goes, No. And I said, Bob, you have to go home right now and go watch him and Letterman talk about his diagnosis.

Was this Bobby Lee? Bob? Oh, yeah. You call.

Him Bob. Yeah, Bob. And I said, You have to watch his diagnosis.

Essentially to America. Unbelievable.

And for fans that don't know Warren Zeevon, he basically was very close to Letterman. And he said in his final days, was going to do one of his last performances on there. Honestly, that gets me.

He says, Enjoy every sandwich. Enjoy every fucking sandwich. So Letterman says to him, experiencing this the way you are, you're facing down in your end of your life, what have you learned? What can you teach us? He says, Enjoy every sandwich. And sometimes, Jenny will say to answer your question, she'll go, You should watch your own show because the show is all about living in the moment and experiencing. And she's right. And whenever she says, I go, You're right, but...

No.

But... It's in everyday.

But she's right. She's right. It sucks because I know we take these cliches for granted when someone's enjoy... Those things come and they go. But I think the more we hear them, the more we hear them from our significant others or our good friends, like Pete does that with me, me and Pete check each other down all the time. I think the more you hear it from someone you care about, the more you do get to actually enjoy the sandwich. Seinfeld had a quote that I heard the other day that made me laugh very passively. I don't know what the interview was, but he goes, and that very... You know when Seinfeld is doing his like, That is up here and he's at the very top. It's like the last of the... He goes, and I won't scream like him, but he said, The guy that gets to heaven with the lowest mileage on his Porsche loses. I was like, That's so funny. Oh, that's nice. In a very Seinfeldian way. Yeah, he's saying, You don't get to enjoy the thing you made? What a fucking bummer.

What a bummer. The other thing Seinfeld said in one of these interviews, I don't even really know Seinfeld. He's one of a few comedians who I actually have never really had a conversation with. But I've seen him here and there in New York. But there's an interview where he goes, Your job is a type of torture, I'm paraphrasing. And he goes, And if you can get a job where it's the least amount of torture and you enjoy the torture, then you win. I enjoy the torture. I do, too. It's actually very calming for me to hear him say that. I'm like, Yes, that's right. I got to do my dream job. I'm a comedian. I make these shows. I make these specials. I make movies. It's so hard. I have so much anxiety to go back to what we were talking about earlier. I experience anxiety all the time. But also, I love it. And in my last special, which was called The New One, about having a child, even though I never wanted to have a child, I talk about how if you're lucky in your life, there are moments where you feel like there's a...

Where things make sense and you feel joy. There's moments of joy. Joy can't be a constant.

No. Miserable. It's so miserable. I've talked about the book, Some. You know the book, Some?

I never read that.

No. Oh, it's great, man. And it basically says that. It's like you couldn't have all of these... If you were given the option in the afterlife to experience 1,000 years of sadness, and then 1,000 years of happiness followed right after consecutively, would you rather have that or the way that you've lived? And you'd say, well, I'd rather have a sad day than a good day instead of 1,000 years of hurt. And it's like, Yeah, well, then this is it. Don't you understand? The balance is going to be what it is. You can't control when these things go up and down. But the beauty is that they do go up and down.

That's why I did it this morning at my hotel. I was feeling a little down and I write in my journal.

First thing when you wake up? Yeah.

I try to do no phone, no technology write before I can think anything. And Itry literally, I say this is a line from my special where I go like, I go, I feel I find if you write down what you're sadest about or angriest about, you can start to see your own life as a story. And when you see your own life as a story, you can start to zoom out and encourage the main character to make better decisions. And I feel like that's true. This morning, I was feeling down. I wrote my journal. I wrote about what I'm upset about. And then I'm like, Yeah, things are good. You open.

The curtains to your nice hotel. Things are okay. Get me coffee.

In here, we pour whiskey.

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Ginger.

I like Gingers. No, it is true that I think if you... Especially because look, and I want to talk about the special because it's pertinent in my world because when you talk about your father, by the way, and there is such a good piece that's circling through the Internet about your father at 56 and his father at 56 as well. I think a lot of people experience something with their father with death that boys, especially where you're like, Man, am I going to be just like my dad? Yeah. In a million different ways.

I feel it more by the day.

Am I going to be exactly like my dad? And for me, it connected me when you say that because my fear was always not turning out. My father struggled with addiction, so I was always scared of that. And he's made himself a more whole man years later. But that was always this looming thing that I tried to avoid. But in an effort to avoid that, I would have other habits that were worse where it was my quickness to get angry. You know what I mean? I have that. Right. When you avoid... I guess my question for you is knowing your father's path, which you joke about so eloquently when you say, I should just take that whole year off. And it's.

Like-when I turn 56. Right, exactly. Because my dad had a heart attack of 56. His dad had a heart attack of 56.

So you should.

Take the year. Take the year off when I turn 56.

But in that, what I really saw through that was, do you, as a man that's going through this life now, as you're becoming a father of your own, are you trying to do all the things your father didn't do? Are you trying to not go that route?

Well, I feel like what I've experienced is through my teens and twenties, and honestly, arguably what got me in the company in the first place is this massive attempt to reverse not be my dad. My dad was a doctor and I'm going to be a road comic. He didn't want me to do it at all. He had no... He was like, What are you doing? He was actually quite angry in my twenties when I moved to New York to become a comedian. He was very angry. My brother, Joe, who I collaborate with a lot on writing, really had to talk my parents down.

From the ledge. Beyond this disappointment, was it disowning? Was it like, I.

Don't want anyone to talk to you? No, I don't think they're... They would never... I don't think that that's in their DNA.

You're not the child of an immigrant. No. Because they just disown their children. Fahim Anwar, he talks about that as the moment he told his father he was going to want to be a comedian, his dad was like, Well, that's it for us.

I don't know if I need them, that's it.

For us. It's that idea of like, Oh, so we're not cool anymore. It's like, No, no, no, no. I want to try something. I want to.

Try this. The closest I ever came to that was without going into detail, some political conversations in the last 10 years.

Oh, yeah, that's always been pretty hard. Yeah, that's.

Guns out. Those were pretty hard.

Yeah. I used to poke the bear with my dad because my mom loved how much it pissed him. Oh, my gosh. My mom would laugh and she's like, don't do it. But I would make such obvious, heavy handed jokes that were sliding him and he would get so fucking mad. But it was so funny to watch him do that. I love to bait him. I don't do it anymore.

Sorry, to get back to the... Yeah, in a way, I grew up in Massachusetts, Irish Catholic town, Shreusebury, Central Mass. And it was like, I said this in my first solo show, Sleepwalk with me years ago, but growing up, the thing you'd hear from people a lot was just like, don't tell anyone. You know what I mean? And, of course, Catholic Church, that clearly went a little too far.

With the don't tell stuff. Yeah, that was their whole thing.

Well, yeah, that's one of my jokes from one of my first specials. I was an altar boy as a kid, and the answer was no, it wasn't. I think it's because I knew I was a talker. But it really did infuse with all of the culture of growing up as people just didn't open up about stuff. And so I ended up being this comedian who was confessional. I tell the things that I'm embarrassed about, I think they're ridiculous about me and are embarrassing. And I don't even want to say, Peter Holmes, I always talk about this. If you're not talking about the things that are your secrets, then it's like, What are we even talking about?

Right. What are we.

Talking about? Why are we here? Right.

You know what I mean? Someone's got to open up that door.

Yeah. And so that's how I ended up being a comic. I don't know how the hell we ended up in this conversation.

We're going to keep.

Doing it.

Okay. Shrewsbury, by the way. Yeah. What a name. It's like it's built to be a quaint town. Shrewsbury.

No, and it was. It's a great little town. I actually went there recently. They were doing like a peacock, was doing a little documentary about my comedy. We went back to my childhood home and everything.

Are you the pride of Shrewsbury?

Apparently. I didn't think I was.

Has anybody else come from there?

No. No, it's not. There's not a lot. Down the street was the birth control pill. They invented it down the street from where I grew up at the Worcester Foundation.

But there's a-.

Way to go, Shroosbury. There's a weird connection, though, because I ended up with bladder cancer when I was 20. And literally like the... I've never said this in anything. Literally, the doctor goes like, This is really unusual. People are 20 years old. They took out this tumor and it was malignant and all the stuff. Have you worked with toxic paints or have you been around a lab of any kind? It's literally down the street. It is. And so then, Yeah, and a bunch of people in our neighborhood ended up with cancer. I know it's a lot. I know it's a lot.

This episode of Whisky Dieter brought to you by...

But anyway, there's not a ton of well-known people out of Shreve's, but yeah, it is a quaint little town.

You reminded me, by the way, before I get back to that is there's a documentary called The Devil We Know, and that's about the invention of Teflon and what that did to the town. And if you haven't seen that, people at home, my God, will it shock your core? What Teflon did to like this to local people were like, Why does everybody have weird cancer in this neighborhood from this factory. And then skip forward real fast, interesting fact, Teflon is being found in blood from everyone around.

The world.

Oh, I can't take it. -dating back to the.

Korean War. Oh, I can't even take it. Did you watch Chernobil? Oh, come on. Chernobil, the Cragmason series is a.

Master work. It's unreal. But it's devastating in.

Relation to that.

It's awful.

Back to Shreusebury. Shreusebury is no Chinobal.

No, no, no, no, no.

It's.

Just bad or cancer. What are you going to do? But when you left and your old man is a doctor and you go to the city, there had to have been a point when he was like, Man, this kid has definitely got a thing.

You mean, was there a switch?

Was there a switch? No, was there just a switch for your father that was like, I think he should continue on in the mix?

I think when I did Letterman. I did Letterman Young. I did it when I was 24.

Holy.

Shit.

You had to be one of the youngest to do.

Letterman then, right? Yeah. I think it was me and I think Chappell did it when he was 19. I do remember that. Bobcat maybe did it when he was 20, something like that. I don't think there's many other folks who did it. It didn't go over well with the other comics, I was saying.

They were pissed because you got it. Yeah. Fuck that guy. What does he do that I don't do? That's how it always is at that level. It's like, Oh, that guy got to Nigel? Oh, okay. Why? Who does he know? Does he.

Know someone? It took me 10 years to live that down. Now you have the store, we have the seller in New York, right? And they're a one for one in a certain way. And I love the seller. I love the comics at the seller. But what's so funny is I meet all these younger comics and they're great. And it's like they have no idea. I'll tell them stories. I'll be like, I used to be slashed limb for limb by Patrisse O'Neal and Bill Burr and Colin, all those guys. I mean, it was merciless. They don't even get a grasp how mean people were to me. Yeah. And it was because of that. I got ladder man when I was a kid.

Success puts a big target on your back.

But then, weirdly, Todd Glass told me this once.

I love Todd. And can you do it like Todd does it? Can you say it like he said it?

Let me tell you about... No, let me tell you about David Spade. David Spade. No, I'm not an impressionist.

But he's so... Todd is.

Very like- No, no, no, no. Stop. No, stop. This is important. Mike, this has... No, I know you're making that you're bruising past this. This is important. David Spade.

That's very good.

This.

Intonation he has, every single word is so big. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. He gets bigger and then goes smaller.

Yeah, I love Todd. Me, too. He's fantastic. I opened for him when I was a door person at the Washington, D. C. Improv when I was in college, and he's one of the most influential comedians of my whole career.

Yeah, he's such a magician, man. He's so fun to watch.

He transformed. He said this thing to me once, though, because he came to New York and it was like, Todd Lynn, who had passed, and Patrice, who had passed, who's now passed. They were both going into me hard. Todd was just in touch. He's just like, What is happening?

Why are you guys doing this to this guy?

Todd walked out with me and Todd was just like, Why did they do that? I was like, I don't know, man. That's just what's like around here. That's so brutal. He said to me, David Spade, when he came to L. A, that's what people were like to him. And then he goes, It goes away when you get older. When David became 35, 40, whatever, because people realize you're sticking around. Yeah.

And it's working, by the way. It's not like you didn't get one day. It's not like you got letterman and no one saw you do anything ever again. It was like it was working. So there's only so much you can say at some point before somebody goes, Yeah, he's good. He's doing it. Imean, the jealousy thing is what's weird about the youth in our profession is you want it so bad and you want it for your friends, but you also are like, Fuck that guy.

Well, yeah, I made a whole movie about it, Don't Think Twice. It's all about a group of best friends and an improv group. It's a great movie. Oh, thanks, man. It's a very, very good movie. I wasn't begging for a compliment, but like... No, no, it's a great movie. But it's something I'm obsessed with. This idea of a group of best friends in an improv group, one of them gets SNL. Who gets SNL?

Right, what was it called?

The movie?

The weekend Live. The weekend Live.

That's right. The Kika and Michael Keegans, the weekend Live. And the rest of the friends don't. And it's about what happens in friendships when people realize that life isn't fair because it's not. No.

And how could you expect it? You weren't all going to get it. No. You knew someone would maybe get it, but all of.

You know. What's wild is that movie cured me of being jealous. I used to be much more jealous. When I was younger, 20s, even in my 30s, How come that person got that and I didn't get it? At a certain point, you go, it's a whole like some version of luck and hard work and talent. It's like talent is the cost of admission to even be in the conversation. Sometimes when people are like, but I'm talented. It's like, all right. A lot of those. Yeah.

A lot of people are.

Talented, man. But then it's like talent. A lot of people have it. Hard work. It drops off. It gets a little- Big time drop. Yeah.

Big drop. Big drop. Big drop right there. That hard work hill is real big.

People don't want to do the burpies.

Sit-ups. Yeah, man. That's how you get them. No, but then after that, it's- And.

Then it's luck, I think. It's luck.

Then it's the universe or whatever you want to call it, whatever word you like to insert for the universe. Or blessing or whatever.

Slides you into that. -hashtag blessed. I go #blessed always.

Blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing. I feel like whatever the universe is, I think the universe is constantly throwing things up and around. And it's almost like sometimes it hits you. Again, not to go back to Seinfeld for no reason. But he did. He got a lot of wisdom. He said that in another interview about he goes, I'd be, and I'm paraphrasing, I'd be foolish to think that I did all of that, Seinfeld. He's like, The casting was perfect. The things they just... It was on Letterman, I mean, on, sorry, on Stern. He was saying how all of these things slotted right. To get all these actors to push into the same thing. He's like, What do you think that I don't think that was luck. There's a lot of luck.

Going on there. I'll tell you a funny thing that this makes you think of, and you've also never told us anything. In the middle of pandemic, Larry David calls me. Don't know him.

How did he just got your number called you? Don't know him. Called you. I'm a number called. Love this. I love when this happens. I've never had a guy not have my number call me. I like this. I want this so bad to happen to me.

Calls me. He goes, I've been listening to these albums. These are great. Great job. I was like, This is a dream. This is literally a dream. Mike, these are great. I'm like, This is a bit? Yeah. Someone has Pete Holmes doing Larry Davis? This is bananas. I go literally, I go, this is literally my dream come true. And then I made the fatal mistake of going, Would you ever come on my.

Podcast where- I got to immediately.

He said the best thing about podcasts, he goes, No, there's no upside. What's the upside? I can only say the wrong thing. People get mad because people already watched my things.

He's right. What is the upside for Larry David?

It's such an awkward thing with the podcast because you go hundreds of thousands, sometimes millionsMany millions of people listen to this thing and you're talking to someone and you're thinking, oh, that would be good, actually, if they came on. But it's like the moment you bring it up, they have to ask you.

They have to want you.

I asked you to come on here. That's the way it has.

To work. I work you to want you to want to do it. Yes. Because it's hard when you ask people to want to do it. Neil Brennan always says this quote to me all the time. He always says, You can't ask someone to do your dishes. That's what it is. He's like, you're just begging people, will you do the dishes? And it's like, I didn't even make that mess. I don't want to do those fucking things. He's like, That is a metaphor for when you're asking people to go out of their way to take time to do a thing that's just for you. He's like, it has to be for both parties. It has to be mutually. Yeah, to want to do a thing. And why would Larry want to do anything?

Oh, my God. And then what am I even doing asking him that? No, but it's wonderful. I didn't make that mistake again. In here, we pour whiskey. Here to.

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Ginger. I like ginger.

We've all done this. I've sat on the show, the most embarrassing thing, Jim Carey was my boss and I'm dying up here. We had dinner and it was going wonderful. It was like that. It was going wonderful. And then I was like, Where are you living now? I was like, What? What the fuck am I asking? Where is he living? Hey, none of my business. I'm not coming over. And also what a moot conversation? Who cares? It's almost like, there's so many other things we could talk about. And when I asked him where I'm living, he's like, I'm all over the place, man. Which is exactly what he would say. What do you mean? I don't know. I don't know.

It's so funny with Jim Carey because years ago, Judd Apatow, invited me to have lunch in Montreal at the festival with Jim Carey.

Oh, that's cool.

If you want to be able to be able to school. Yeah, it's like one of those people. He's an Alzheimer's. He's a legend. And the way he's depicted in media because he's in a Buddhist headspace, is that he's loopy. They clip out of context, him being like, Well, we're all just particles or whatever.

Does anything matter?

But then it's funny. You talk to him for an hour, you go like, Oh, yeah, this guy's great. This guy's fantastic.

No, he's wonderful. But also that is true to the conversation. He will say things to the effect of like, What does this mean to you? I mean, it grounds you a little bit in the idea that... Yeah, because I think I did like me, I got lost. More stuff, more drink. What is that, by the way?

This is just tea with honey from my boys. Because you're, yeah. Yeah, because I've had this weird...

Don't do it. Don't get into a conspiracy theory. Don't do it. Don't do it. You know he's about to do it.

His new special?

What would it even be? What's been in my throat? You got to see Mike's new show.

What's been in my throat? Oh, my God.

Jesus Christ. It was a one year. One year he took to make it, and he put it all together.

I will say that is one of the funny things about being a comedian is the absurdity of getting to occasionally meet or cross paths with people who you've watched for years.

It's absurd. Yeah. You feel like it shouldn't have happened in a weird way. Yeah. Why did I get to do it? Why did we do this?

Yeah. Then that's the luck part of it, I guess. Right.

Well, what's weird for me is as a sports fan, I meet athletes and their kids.

No.

And I forget I'm 40. Right. And I meet someone who to me is like a god of their abilities. I'm like, This person is so incredibly talented. And they are. But then you meet them and you're like, You're 24.

Yeah. You know what's a great documentary for that? It's Break Point. It's a tennis documentary. There's six or ten episodes on Netflix.

Wait, I feel like I saw one of these on the plane. That's great.

It's like they follow Alcarez and they follow Anshibour and a handful of these top 20 players. I don't know how the hell they got this access to the tennis players because they're going in their hotel rooms and they're going on their planes and all this stuff. And you just realize these people, they're the best in the world at a sport that a lot of people play.

And there's a lot of access to this game.

It's everywhere.

Yeah. It's like basketball. There's a lot of tennis courts, a lot of basketball courts. And yet their lives are hard. Hard. Yeah. I mean, it is constant drills, constant travel, constant press. And you just go... And honestly, you get the sense of like, I don't know what the hard numbers are on it, but you get the sense that if you're not in the top 15, you're struggling financially.

Oh, yeah.

I'm not the top 15 in.

The world.

At a sport that a lot of people play.

If you're 30.

In the world and you're not.

Killing it.

Financially, what the hell is wrong?

It is true. That's so funny. That's the same thing. I'm a big golf guy. If you're one of the best 50 in the world, doesn't mean that you're financially well off. No. And you're in the world, in the globe. You're one of the greatest who gets to be on the tour and you still aren't making enough money unless you get a win. Unless you win, then you get a good check. But otherwise, you're just.

Coasting through. And also, one of the things is that the American athletes actually do a lot better financially-.

Than European.

-because of the marketplace. Because if you're from Sierra Leone or wherever, what's the market share of those fans?

Yeah.

That's true. Whereas if you're a TiaFO in America, and he's number eight or six or whatever, people are like, Yeah, we love it. But if you're number eight and you're from Kenya, how many fans do you really have who are going to be buying the rackets and the shoes that have your name on them? Right.

Well, that's why in a lot of sports, they end up going to China or Eastern Europe to play ball or something like that because there's a whole other career to be had if you can't have one here. There's something else to be had over there. That's something to be said about the American market, too. Americans are very harsh. When we're done with you, we're done with you. That's the same.

Thing in our game. By the way, our entertainment, too. I talk about this with Gaffigan.

We're done. They're done.

With you. I talk about this with Gaffigan. He's like, I've been doing this for 30 years. He's like, I'm so lucky.

He's.

Like, This business spits.

People out. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I mean, people, think about how many people you came up with or I came up with. They're just gone. Where are they?

Yeah, so they're ghosts. They're floating through the hallways. It's terrible. My only fear is what I think you've done, and I do want to say this to you as someone who's really loved what you've done since I've seen you, you've made your own path, which is extremely difficult. And I give you a lot of credit for that. Thanks, man. Because you've created your own world. And you know, like all of us have learned, the phone is not ringing, whatever.

You know the sound like- Right. Oh, my gosh. The phone is.

Not ringing. It's not like, Mike, you're going to get it all. And you're like, We're going to get it all. You have to make it otherwise it doesn't happen. Whether people think that there's something behind it machine wise, the truth is you did it. Yes, people were there to help make the dream come to reality, but you have to build all of it from zero. You have to do it. And if you stop, they're not going to be there to catch you. So thankfully, I guess my point is this career only continues if you do the burpies. You got to do the burpies. And you just keep.

Doing the burpies. But you know what was a major thing, a major inflection point. And thanks for the compliment. At the end you go, But...

But...

But I would like some more tags on the jokes. I feel like they just end. Is that the.

Whole joke? There was a bit I did not like.

My mother was hurt by- Yeah.

Did not enjoy.

Did not enjoy. No, I had a big inflection point where I moved out here for a couple of months in 2008, and it was the dream come true. It was my former dream come true, which is sitcom pilot at CBS. And Bob Odenkirk was my brother. We shot it. Bob Odenkirk played my brother. Francis Connery played my mom. Nicole played my The Mike Berbigley, untitled Mike Berbigley Project, literally called that before the Mindy Project, whatever. And it was all right. You know what I mean?

Yeah, it.

Was all right. It was all right.

I'm sure it was passable.

Yeah. I mean, to me, it didn't go to series, and it was the luckiest thing that ever happened in my career other than 10 other things along the way. But in some ways, it was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me because it was Death By a Thousand Cuts, artistically. It was like, you get the notes and then you make it a little more broad. And then you get more notes, you make it a little more broad. And you're like, Yeah, but once we get it on the air, then we can have fun, whatever. And by the time that we finished it, it was like, It doesn't even have to be me. It could be anybody. I hate that. And so then I'd been working on my solo show, Sleepwalk with me for probably three, four years. At this point, I was writing it. I've been working with this guy, this director, Seth Barish, who's a brilliant theater director, and since then, he and I have been on five shows together. And my takeaway from Los Angeles, from Hollywood, seeing a CBS group of executives and producers and crew put something together, it's like, Oh, wow.

Hollywood is really good at marketing something and putting a shine on it and making it look and feel like a thing. What Hollywood isn't good at is doing the thing. And I'm good at doing the thing, and I'm not good at marketing the thing. So I went back to New York and I was like, All right, I'm going to do sleepwalk with me, but I'm going to do it nice. We'll have a photoshoot. We'll spend a lot of money and thought and time on producing it properly. We'll get proper designers. We'll get great. I started working with this guy, Wolf Barrett, who designed all five of my shows. Since then, he's won two Tony. He's just amazing. We'll work with designers. We'll work with lighting designers. We'll make this thing really nice. And then we were lucky because then Nathan Lane really liked the show, and then he put his name on the show. And Nathan Lane presents Mike Berbigli a sleepwalk with me. And then all of a sudden it became like, Oh, yeah, I don't need the Hollywood machine. I can just be the thing myself.

Unfortunately.

It's a lot more work, but that's the cost of admission for this path.

Yeah, worth it. Yeah, worth it.

Well worth it.

Yeah, I think so. But that's the burpies. That's the thing you're talking about. That's the burpies, yeah. The talent was having the idea.

It's hilarious talking about burpies because I can't do burpies. Neither can I.

I can't. Does anybody really do that? I can't. When I see people online doing stuff like that, I'm always like, Oh, shut up. Whenever I see someone doing really grueling exercises online, it really pisses me off because I just don't have the athleticism to do it anymore. I'm just like, Oh, you're just.

Showing off. There's this Sonheim show in New York that Mellanie and I went to see the other day. It's a really fun, funny show. But there's a character who does burpies in the show.

In the show?

And he does them for five minutes straight. I said to him backstage. The actor afterwards, I go like, You do the burpy. You're really fucking dealing with them. If people don't know what this is, it's like a push-up and then you.

Hop up and then- It's a jump, hop, down push-up. Yeah, there you are.

And he goes, I made the mistake of improvising that in rehearsal, and they're like, Let's keep that. No, idiot.

That is one of those old rules that like... Robert Forrester did the pilot for the show that I did, and we were sitting at a table, and he came up to me and was like, Are you guys going to smoke that joint the whole time? Oh, my God. And I was like, I mean, we can. We can't, whatever. And he's like, Well, you're going to be doing that all day.

Yes. Smart.

And I was like, Smart. Right. Right. And he goes, I'm just saying. And then he walked away because we didn't have to be smoking a joint. Someone in the group was like, Oh, yeah, we should be passing around a joint while we're listening to him do this really intense speech about how much disrespect we've shown to his family. And I thought, Man, that's great, because I didn't want to have to suck on that thing for fucking nine hours. It was a huge scene. So thankfully, he gave a little-.

That's a super.

Smart one. Yeah. He was like, don't you don't want to smoke that. You're going to be sitting smoking. And this because.

It was a grand scene. Eating is the same. Any eating scene, you got to spit into the thing. You can't eat.

The thing. You know what I always say? When a director goes, I do like to see... This director came on our show and she goes, I don't want fake eating. I don't want to see fake eating. I hate it. And she comes up to me and she goes, What's going on here? I go, I've already finished. And she was like, Okay. She goes, All right, gave me credit for it. She's like, all right. I go, I eat fast in real life. These guys are more than halfway done. I've already finished my plate. I was like, I'll just sip out of a cup because I couldn't stand. I never liked eating on camera, but I also hated, and to her credit, she's right, I hated to see people fake eating on TV. It bothers me to.

Know it.

I get it. It's so weird looking. You're like, Eat it. Nobody moves it around that much in conversation.

I feel that way about sex scenes.

They're always so weird. Always so bad. So bad and weird and uncomfortable. Terrible. Dude, I do not like seeing sex scenes. It makes me curl up inside.

It doesn't look anything like sex.

No.

It doesn't.

What's happening? What are you doing?

Yeah, it's also so... But if you showed the awkwardness of real sex, it would be really... It's almost like porn. Porn is so choreographed that you're like, Man, if there was a real porn of awkward couples sex.

It.

Would be a drama.

One time I was in my hotel room in Denver, Colorado, and I look out my window and across the way, across the street, I see a lit up hotel room with two people having sex like people do in porn. And it was fully lit up. They must have known. They did know. They do it for you. They did it for me. And it was like, and this position and this position and this. And they're both in shape. And it was this weird thing where I go like, Wait, are they mimicking porn or is porn based on them? Maybe I should do that as a bit. That's a great fit. I have the scene.

Of you being like, Come on, and they keep switching. Come on. Also at the very end, you take one sip of coffee and you're like, God damn, this is good coffee. It just wipes away this entire sex scene that you've seen. I've seen this in hotels, people having sex. New York is probably my favorite place to watch people have sex. Every time I'm in New York at a nice hotel, I always see someone having sex. Oh, that's interesting. Always. I always see someone in one of the windows having sex, and they do this because that voyeuristic thing is awesome because they don't have to ever.

See you. There's no stakes. Very low stakes.

Having sex.

In a city with a lit up window. You get to see.

Me without ever knowing you. It's awesome.

Yeah. Have you done it? I don't do it. You're not telling me neither. Are you kidding me? Out of.

My mind? My wife doesn't want to... A curtain's closed, lights off. She doesn't want to see me. No, no, no. It's all but wearing costumes. We're right there. We might start wearing costumes, so we completely disappear. If I had someone else seeing me having sex in a public space like that...

The other day...

End of times.

Today, Jen texted me a photo of me on Halloween, dressed up as Colonel Mustard-Stains, which is Colonel Mustard with actual mustard stains that my daughter rubbed into the thing. And she sent me a photo, and I wrote back, Who would marry this person?

I.

Feel like that all the time. Yeah. I'm always just like- What fool. Yeah, you really got stuck with this guy.

You got a lemon. You married a lemon. Yeah, you got a lemon. Yeah, you married a lemon. But isn't it relieving to know that you can be Colonel Mustard-Stains and she thinks it's fun?

Oh, she.

Likes it. Thank God. That. Think about putting that on a dating app.

No, my God. No, I think I've been tinkering with this at the cellar lately, but it's like, I'd go, if you meet someone in your life who understands you more than anyone in the world and that person is willing to spend any meaningful amount of time with you at all, you are very lucky. And then I go, That being said, and then I go into a handful of things on a regular basis, and they'll stare at me doing an activity for five seconds and then go like, What are you doing? And it'll be about like, there's 10 different things. What are you doing is a big part of our lives. What are you doing? Yeah, What are you doing?

Yeah, I do that to myself a lot. I'll go, What am I What am I doing? If I feel like I'm wasting time doing anything, I'm always like, What the fuck am I doing? We do a thing now where, I don't know if you tell me if you do this, where I don't mean to raise my voice, but I'll say it out of frustration with a little bit of... And she'd be like, What was that? And then I immediately have to be like, I'm just saying...

And.

I have to go back to the.

Voice pitch. Business voice.

Business voice. No, I'm just saying that's.

Such bullshit. I think actually, absolutely, we should go. No, we should. No, we should be late. We should go at 9:30, even though the invitation's at 7:00, I think 9:30 is a good time to show up.

I was agreeing. Yeah, we should.

Prepare for the party for about five, six hours. I think that's a good idea. Business voice. Business voice. There's Hey, I was telling you, Hey, this is Mike, for Bigley. I'm in room 317, and I was just thinking maybe if there could be ice, the ice maker doesn't.

Make ice. Also, I need medical. If you could send someone immediately, I do need to go.

Yeah. Oh, God. Gosh darn it.

No, okay. I thought you.

Were going somewhere. I had something to do.

I have to ask you real fast. The bracelets, is this from your kid?

Yeah, this is... Iuna made this.

This is your version of letting... A lot of dads now let the daughters paint their nails. Have you seen this? I've done that. Yeah, this is a hot bed now. But your daughter made these for you.

This one says, Silly. And this other one says, Una, Dad. Which is based on a poem that my wife, Jenny, wrote. My wife's a poet, and she writes under J. Hope Stein. And she wrote a poem called, Una, Dad. That's really beautiful.

And she made that for you?

Yeah, Una made this. And then she is silly. She goes, Dad, that's to remind you to be silly.

Oh, that's fucking right. I don't want to get you emotional. You're going to see her soon. It's okay.

I know.

You're going to see them soon. When you're on the flight back, the excitement to see your.

Loved ones, it.

Only really hits when you start your descent. You know what I mean? The whole flight is like trudging through this like, Come on, let's get to the fucking place. I'm exhausted. I don't know how to do this. And then as soon as they're like, And we're starting on a descent. That's when my endorphins kick in. I'm like, Oh, finally, I get to go home, home. Because as much as we travel, I lose track of all the... I feel a little spacey, especially lately we've been on such a big tour. Do you feel that when you lose sense.

It's funny. I said to Noem, who owns the Conviceller recently, I go, If you're lucky, I feel like there's a place where you roughly feel at home, which means you feel warm there. You feel like you're among people who you love and love you. And for me, it's literally, it's my apartment in New York with my wife and daughter, and it's the company's owner. Those are the right two places. I mean, one of them is a bar.

Yeah, true. Formally a bar.

Formally a bar. Yeah, it is. But no, it's true. Do you have two homes or one home or two homes? What's your home?

Well, it's funny that you say that, and I hate to say this, but the store was my home club, is my home club.

And it used to feel that way the most. And it's gotten... It's changed a lot because the city changed a lot. Pandemic changed the city a lot. A lot of people moved and left. It shifted so heavily that it doesn't feel the way it.

Used to. Now it's Mother Ship.

Now it's the mother. Yeah, I know. No, it just feels like the store... Even without people leaving, the pandemic shifted the culture. We had a big upending here, and a lot of young people came came in, which is great.

True, New York, too.

A lot of young people. It just feels different. It just feels a little bit different. But Home, Home truly for me, at my physical house, I would say, and then the moment I go back to Chicago.

You do feel like that.

In Chicago. God, yeah, I love Chicago. That's nice. I love it so much. I just wish I could be there, but I can't.

Is that where you started doing comedy in Chicago?

No. Okay, I started here. I really started here, truthfully. But Chicago just home to me, man. I don't know. It is literally home. But also I really adore that city.

I love it there.

I just like the people. The guts of it all is great. Everyone is a hustler. I love that. Everyone's a hustler.

Oh, it's incredible.

We're in a city. Everyone is up to something. Where New York is so many people with so much going on that you can't really define New York. It is a breathing, living thing. Chicago is pretty definable. You go to Chicago, you know a Chicago person when you see one. Oh, that's interesting. That guy is from Chicago.

Well, and even you're from Naperville. Yeah. Which is in Don't Think Twice, is name-checked because my character, which is named Miles, which is loosely based on my friend Chris Fossdik, who lives in Naperville with his wife and family.

Oh, that's wild.

That's.

How you got it.

Well, he was... Yeah. At the end of the movie, he goes back to Naperville. Oh, wow. Which is like, where his girlfriend who's having a baby is living.

Living the suburb life.

Yeah, Naperville. Yeah, that's a-And that's literally for my friend Chris Fostek, who cast me in my college improv troupe, which changed my life. And forever. I mean, truly forever. Because before that, I was like, I don't really feel like I connect with anybody. And then I've met these 10 people, and I was like, Oh, this is great. I just got to meet people like this. Comedians are the best. I had never met one. Right, exactly. It's a mixed bag also. But that's what I found out later. But then Chris was... And then we all moved to New York, including nick Kroll was in that group. And it was a really good group. We were called Little Man. We used to perform at UCB Theater. And at a certain point, people started to break off and do different things. And then Chris moved back to Naperville with his wife and maybe got married.

Did you ask him about that before you put it in the film?

No, but he and I have like, we're so close. I feel like we have a shorthand. Sure. About he knows how I feel about the whole thing. You know what I mean? I said to him, I go like, because he was... I mean, Nickroll might dispute this, but I think he was the best improviser.

In the crew. I don't listen to a word Nickroll said by the way. I have a.

Fucking take Nickroll. Nick was always amazing. Nick auditioned for our Georgetown Improv group, and I had to convince the other people, the producers. I was the director. I had to be like, Do we have to cast this guy? They were like, Yeah, but this and this, and we like this.

Other person. Is it because he was young or something?

No, It was like he was just like nick is, which is nuts. Yeah. I was like, and maybe not as refined. He hadn't done a lot of... He hadn't been an actor. He hadn't put in the hours. And so it was like this rougher version of nick Kroll, but he was so funny in his bones. And I just said to the rest of the group, I go like, no, no, no. This guy's funny in his bones. Right. It sits there. This is one of the funniest people I've ever seen. I don't even know him. And then he became what he became. But Chris Fawzik, I think we all thought he was the best improviser in the group. He was the guy. And then he went into living in Naperville. And I said to him, I go like, one night after one of our shows at UCB, I said to him at the bar, I go like, You shouldn't leave. We're all going to make it. We're all going to have careers. And he goes, Yeah, but I look around this bar at the people who have careers and I just don't want it.

I like this guy.

He's the best. He's literally.

The best. What does he do now?

Do you know? He works in consulting and he's doing great. He's like a partner at some firm. I don't even say.

That name. No, no, no. But a smart guy.

Oh, yeah. He's he's sult of the earth. He's like, I.

Look around, I don't want to be any of these people.

I don't want to be any of these people. I don't.

Want to be these.

Miserable assholes. And he'll love this, by the way. Yeah. He'll send this around.

But I get it. The Western suburb of Chicago is this weird metaphor for like, it's like a weird safety net. And it's also a nice people go there. When all the people start to have kids, they move there. When me and my mom lived in the city when I was a kid, and then when she had my sister, we left the city because she wanted to raise my sister not in the city because I was a fucking lunatic. Because I came from a broken marriage and then a kid grown up in the city and my mom was like, I'm not doing this twice. Oh, wow. So when we went to the Western suburbs, it was.

Like-you mean that your parents had broken up?

My parents got divorced when I was one. When you were one, okay. So my mom raised me then she met my stepdad and who became my father who raised me. And when they got pregnant, my mom was like, We can't raise another one in the city. That was always the joke. I was like, You really loved her. Because me, they were fine being like, Take a walk. Go to the fucking White Hand by yourself.

Right.

It was like, yeah, there.

Was-what do you mean you really loved her?

No, that was like, You must really love the one that you didn't want to raise downtown. For me, it was like, They let me wander. I felt free to like, The city was this fun little playground to chaos that I could get into, but I think they wanted to protect her and the Western suburbs was like a nice... It's like we got to get away from the city. Yeah. So that's why I say you really loved her. For me, it was like, oh, we fucked this one up. We shouldn't fix this one. We should make this one the.

Right one. You're the first batch of panca.

Yeah, they're not that good. One side is burnt.

And then your sister is the second.

Batch of panca. Right. They're so fluffy. Yeah, nice. But they can't drive on the highway.

That's the exchange. Keep those panca away from the highway. That's right.

Keep those fluffy panca away from the highway and very scary movies. She's going to hate that I said that. I can.

Drive on the.

Fucking highway. That was always the biggest joke, was she was scared of chaos, but I liked it.

The.

First time I went to New York, I remember being like, This is Chicago on steroids.

By the way, this is what I disagree with about Seinfeld in interviews.

Well, let's get started about stuff like this. I disagree so much about Seinfeld. Let me tell you something fucking jerry. No, go ahead.

In interviews people will often ask him, Are comedians broken or the Herod of the... He goes, no, because any profession you go in and there's people, everyone's broken in some way. I think that comedians are particularly broken. I mean, the fact that you're divorced from number one and then we move when this and- Yeah, we're broken. Yeah, there's a reason you're a comedian.

100 %. Yeah. That life had to make you funny to deal with-.

You had to cope. It's a coping mechanism.

Weird shit. I always say with old man in the pool, I talk about death for basically 90 minutes because that was my goal. My goal was I'm anxious about death. I'm sad when I think about losing people close to me. How can I make this funny? Because everybody's experiencing this to some degree. How can I make this funny for them? How can I use my coping mechanism and give it to them? Maybe it's helpful for them.

How old were you again when your old man passed?

No, my dad's still alive. He's 83. My folks are 83, but he's had a handful of heart attacks. It's been.

Like touching. It keeps going.

Yes, since he was 56.

You haven't had one. No. Knock on that. This part is wood. There you go.

That's wood, too. No, but I've just had so many health scares. I had jumped through a second story window sleepwalking and whatever.

That one's worth it, though. I made a great show. If it makes a good show, it makes a good show.

That one was worth it, though. I'm going back to Walla Walla. Really? To where I jumped through the window. La Quenta Inn is where I- Why? Why are you going back? If people don't know, there's a movie and a show called Sleepwalking that's based on... I thought it would be funny if I went back 20 years later. I don't know, Mike. I don't know, Mike.

I don't know if this is a good idea, man.

I'm not going to.

Stay at La Quenta Inn. No, let's not stay there.

There's a plaque on the wall there. There's a plaque on the wall that says 20 years ago, Mike Berbiglia, a comedy, Mike Berbiglia, I jumped through a second. And some of my fans will go as a pilgrimage. They think it's funny, which I do. It's like.

Letters, Grave. They put flowers by that La Quenta Inn.

But there's a gorgeous little 400 Cedar there at Four Hundred Street Theater. And so I'm doing that in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver. I'm just doing a Pacific Northwest run.

I love the.

Pacific Northwest. Yeah, it's gorgeous. It's so nice. It's gorgeous. And I'm doing that in January, which is a beautiful time of year for that part of the country. Yeah.

But- Hey, man, it's not Minneapolis. You know what I mean?

Oh, my gosh.

I've done- Ice cold in the winter.

Nothing to do with it. How about Minneapolis? When you tour there in the winter and there's fucking tubing in between the buildings because you physically can't walk outside?

No, man. Yeah.

I mean, what is happening in that city? This guy is.

From there, he knows. Oh, that's where you're from? They're all crazy in a great way. They're great Midwest crazy.

They're funny people. I mean, Mitch Headberg, Maria Bamford, Bob Dylan. It's endless the amount of talent.

Yeah, great musicians and comics out of there.

Yeah, prints. I mean, it's like the amount of talent. And it's not a coincidence.

No.

It's not a coincidence that Massachusetts has a lot of comedians. Chicago has a lot of comedians. Minneapolis has a lot of comedians. I don't know. I don't want to.

Be- Do it. Do it. Do it.

I don't want to be offensive to people who live. I just don't see a lot of comedians coming out of Hawaii. It's not. The comedy scene is not popping off in Hawaii.

You don't see.

That often. Aruba is not yielding enough comedians.

Not a lot of comics out of the Caribbean, huh? No. It's not happening, is it? If it's.

Really nice, what's to get down about?

What's the bummer? What's the bummer, man?

Well, and where's the coping? The coping isn't there. You don't get that coping skill.

Not a lot of comics out of Hawaii. It's true, right? It's so true. It's bananas. Do you have any want to make this special film?

I've outlined it as a film because one of the producers of Don't Think Twice was like, This should be a film. I was like, Yeah, I know what you mean because I structure my shows like film stories. They're plays. But it's this tricky thing where I did Sleepwalk with me as a solo show, and then I did it as a movie. There was some part of me when I was making the movie where I'm like, I've told this story for years, and then I'm doing it again. There is some degree of like, you want to move on to the next thing. I'm writing another movie that's completely separate, and I'm writing what I'm touring now, like I said to Walla Walla in Seattle, all these places, Boston, which is called Please Stop the Ride, which I'm super psyched about, which is all about Please Stop the rides in reference to going to a carnival when I was a kid and when I was in seventh grade and being with a girl I have a crush on and knowing I'm going to throw up on the ride, on the scrambler and just being like, I got to tell the guy to stop the ride.

I got to tell the guy to stop the ride. Then I'd be like, Please stop the ride. And then you're back and then you're scrambling, scrambling, scrambling. Please stop the ride. And then you're scrambling, scrambling. And it's really about the show. It's not done yet and it's the early stages, but it's that thing of like at a certain point you realize like, Oh, yeah, we're all on the ride. And it's not going to stop.

No.

And you have to just figure out how to enjoy the ride.

That's right. Or what does your wife say?

Watch your own show. Oh, watch.

Your own show? Watch your own show. I think.

She said it in even wittier way. She goes like, I have a show to.

Recommend to you. Yeah, you know what me and my friends really enjoy? Well, please go watch your own show. Please go watch Mike Special. It's out right now, and it's...

Are you wrapping up?

Yeah. You're wrapping up? Okay. I want to kick you out of here. Well, you know why? Because you've got to catch a flight. I'm not going to catch a flight. I don't want to make you...

Oh, yeah, good catch. And I want to get you to New York. Yeah. We're to be on working it out and work out jokes.

I'll be there in one month. I'm going to come poke around.

Because we literally... Pete Holmes has been on, he's coming on for the third time.

This month. That's too many, to be honest with you. Let's get Pete on there a little bit less.

But we actually work out jokes. There's jokes in his special, which I love, where I tagged his joke. He tagged jokes that are in The Old Man and the Pool. We literally, the things that we do at the store in the cellar where we're like, Hey, have you ever thought about this? We do it on the podcast.

It's super fun. But it's only fun to hear from someone you really like. It's true. You know when somebody comes up to you, they go, Mike, Mike. And then you're like, Fuck this guy. I hate this fucking guy. You have to be nice. That's the worst.

Yes, thank you. They pitch you the version of it that's much worse. Way worse.

Or you're like, Yeah, dude, do you like that? You like the pitch? Are you just doing that because you wanted to talk? We could just talk. We could just chat. You don't have to just give me a bad tag.

No.

No, no. Just say, Hey.

No, I totally agree.

I don't like that. It's got to be a buddy. It's got to be a buddy. I would never give someone a tag unless we have a pre-established relationship of this is a thing.

Thank you for all the coffees. Yeah, please. Thank you for all the coffees.

Please, it's our pleasure.

Andrew, thanks for having.

Me on. Thank you for being here. Super fun. Please go watch a special now on Netflix.

Please cut out all the things of me with my big crazy thermos.

No, no. Zoom in on Tim drinking the thermos right now. Thank you. It's tea.

Yeah. Just so people know, it's tea, and this is a normal thing to do. Sure it is. To drink.

Tea from a thermos. We end the show the same way, Mike. You look in that camera right there, you're single. And you say one word or one phrase to end the episode. I like it as a little button for you to have your last word or words.

New Friendship. In here, we pour whiskey. Whiskey. Whiskey. Whiskey. You are that creature.

In the Ginger Field.

Sturdy.

And ginger. Like the Ginger Jean in.

The Coast. Ginger is a beautiful. You owe me five dollars for the whiskey and 75 dollars.

For the horse. Ginger. Oh, hell no. This whiskey is excellent.

Ginger. I like ginges.