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So I would always tell my mother everything that I was doing.
I would just be like, I did acid last night.
And she'd be like, oh my, I was like, I did like a nitrous party last night.
I was like sucking down like nitrous balloons.
Do you think it killed like a lot of my brain cells?
What was that guilt?
What did that feel like?
I think I definitely had a massive codependent relationship with my mother.
She was like God to me and I very much put my well-being into her hands and required her to answer questions and comfort me over things she couldn't possibly comfort me over because she's not God.
Am I going to hell?
No, you're not.
Am I going to die young?
No, you won't.
She can't tell me those things.
It still absolutely follows me.
Something that I have to work on very hard every day.
This need to connect in that enmeshed way, it's an addiction.
And I've exhausted a lot of relationships because of that, you know, and not checking that.
And then also getting into relationships that were probably subconsciously going to abuse that as well, you know, or react to that in a way that wouldn't be healthy for either of us.
My therapist now really put this into a context form of agency and counteragency.
So like living for other people, living to be that thing that you think they want you to be and then, when they don't react how you want them to and don't give you that motherly love, that enmeshed love or the love that you want from them, then taking revenge on them for that, you know, emotionally.
Just getting really upset with them.
Got it, got it, okay.
Getting overly, irrationally upset.
This thing of, like, disrespect.
They disrespect me.
They don't disrespect me.
They're just going about, they're trying to do the best they can in their lives and they don't have time to have a huge conversation about my problems tonight.
It's Mayim Bialik's breakdown.
She's going to break it down for you.
Because you know she knows a thing or two.
So now she's going to break down.
It's a breakdown.
She's going to break it down.
Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.
And I'm Jonathan Cohen.
Welcome to my breakdown.
This is the place where you break things down so you don't have to.
Today we're going to break down an acclaimed actor, writer and comedian whose signature, intensity and fearlessness enables him to navigate both comedy and drama.
You should already know who we're talking about.
We're very, very, very excited to have Brett Gelman with us.
God, hello.
Hello.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you for being here.
And for saying I'm acclaimed.
Acclaimed.
That feels good.
And for those of you who've been living under a rock, I mean, there's many rocks you could be.
You'd have to live under so many rocks to not know who Brett Gelman is.
I happen to be an unabashed Stranger Things fan.
And I don't watch a ton of television, but I dialed in hard to Stranger Things with my teenagers.
And so I'm a little bit embarrassed to say that is where I primarily know you from.
But...
If you've watched, oh, I don't know, Fleabag, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Twin Peaks The Return.
Also, love the Adult Swim Special Trilogy Dinner with Friends.
Also, you co-wrote so much of these things.
Lemon, Without Remorse, Lyle Lyle Crocodile.
And we're actually, we're going to talk about so many things.
But you just put out a book called The Terrifying Realm of the Possible.
Yes.
And I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I have a lot of questions about it.
But first, we'll just we'll welcome you.
Jonathan, you're a Brett Gelman fan of a vast variety.
But in particular, you are a fashion fan of Brett Gelman.
Why don't you tell everybody about it?
All the pajamas.
And it seems as though you have like there's a little bit of a stereotype for your comedic roles.
Is that going too far?
Some of them have a little bit of overlap in that you're often both in pajamas and often being broken up with and doing a variety of drugs and alcohol.
Is that too far?
I mean, you know, they like to put me, they like to make me.
You know I play a lot of very flawed characters.
Who gets you know who plays dress up?
They like to put clothes on the doll, you know?
I warrant that.
I invite that.
And, you know, we all have a very good time.
Yeah.
Also, your red carpet style is very distinctive.
And you're also wearing, I believe that is a Guatemalan fabric. on your lovely coat.
I think so.
You like fashion.
I do love fashion.
Yeah.
Who dresses you for the carpet?
Do you dress yourself?
Like a big group?
I sometimes do.
And then sometimes I have a stylist, you know?
Yeah.
And they help.
I don't.
Well, I'm asking because I really dislike the whole red carpet stylist, like the conversations and the fittings.
Yeah, I believe in that.
I believe that that's sort of a form of expression.
Right.
You know, it's part of our business.
We show up.
They're taking pictures of us.
People are going to see these pictures.
And public appearance is kind of part of it.
Right.
It's sort of like a living... performance art.
So and it's also clothes that I love.
I love fashion.
So it's very exciting to dress up.
So you're also wearing a really, really nice pearls, like you're, you're put together even in your casualness.
Thank you.
You're put together fashion wise.
Thank you so much.
Likewise.
OK, this is a big effort today.
It's a big effort.
Okay.
Because it's not a black picture.
For me too.
For me too.
Don't get me wrong.
Okay, this is a dumb question, but I'm going to ask it.
Yeah.
Have you done and forgive me because I haven't looked at all the sort of like I mean, I've seen some of your press but have you ever done like a fashion shoot where they like dress up the doll like a fancy suit man doll?
You know what I mean?
Like I'm curious if there's been that Brett Gelman moment.
I love that.
You know, I haven't done, like, any type of major magazine profile yet.
Like, I want Vogue to be like, let's put Brett Gelman in, you know, a skinny suit.
See what happens.
I would love that.
I would love that.
No, I, you know, put me in, like, Tom Brown.
Right.
But with a grill.
Wearing a grill.
That's what, like, I go to this store, Mohawk General, and...
In Silver Lake.
Sometimes you know and they've got really you know very fashionably gifted people working there.
You know both in how they dress and their knowledge of fashion.
And one of them told me that they were like I'd like to put you in like a Tom Brown suit, something like really formal and then a grill.
And I was like, oh, I can wear a grill.
He's like, yeah, you represent the culture.
And then he got me his grill guy and I had a grill made.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
Like, because there's a lot of different kinds of grills.
Like, is there bling in it?
Does it say my name?
It's like up top, it's two tones of gold.
Oh, okay.
And it says your name.
It says Mayim.
And on the back of it, it says Blossom because that's the first time I met you.
No, but yeah, it's like white gold and yellow gold on one side.
And then I have these two different pieces on the bottom that are um our gold, and then have these tiny, very inexpensive, uh relatively uh like green and blue diamonds type of thing.
Okay.
See, first I was like, why am I asking?
And now I didn't know that you could do two tones of gold.
Yeah.
You absolutely can.
Yeah.
Top and bottom.
Can you close your mouth when you wear it?
You can.
You can't chew though.
No, you gotta, you have to take it out to chew.
Like not even gum.
No, like you can basically like drink water with it in unless you want to.
So that's fun at a party when you're wearing it and then you're like, excuse me.
And you have like a sip of wine.
You're like my kid with his Invisalign.
Yeah.
And then you, exactly.
And you take out the grill and then your TMJ has produced like saliva.
And so, you know, it's like, then you're, I'm not representing the culture at all when that happens.
I'm representing a different culture.
Well, so let's talk about the culture of Highland Park.
Yes.
Because that is where you're from.
Yeah.
Tell us about growing up in Highland Park.
Jews.
I mean, I do know some people from Highland Park.
Yeah.
No.
It's.
You know, it's a place that, as I go back to now, I appreciate more.
Not, my family doesn't really live in Highland park proper, but they live very close.
A lot of them, my mother, my sister, my, uh, aunts, my uncle, um, some of my cousins.
And then, uh, and so it, I definitely was seen as strange, uh, growing up there.
And, uh, But I'm very grateful that I grew up in a predominantly Jewish community.
What was different about you?
Back then?
Yeah.
I did not have as much swag.
I am very much a late bloomer.
I'm very much a late bloomer.
I don't mean what was different about you from the way you are now.
I can't imagine you popped out of Highland Park in 1976 like in Guatemalan fabrics with a grill.
Right.
I'm saying what felt different amongst your peers or amongst that community?
Oh, because it was like you know, they were very – it's a very sports – uh centered community.
You know, chicago is in general and hey, i mean i loved the chicago bulls when i was growing up.
I don't think, like no matter how little of an athlete you were, it was hard not to be a fan of the of the bulls and michael jordan at the time.
It was just like you know, that was a major cultural moment and uh and so.
But yeah, i just i was uh not a confident kid, you know, and everybody would be talking about sports and I'd be watching Mark's brothers and Mel Brooks movies.
And, uh, And I cried a lot.
I cried a lot.
I cried a lot more then than I did now.
It was very much like a playground crier, I think, at times.
Not the town crier.
You were the playground crier.
No, definitely not the town crier.
Unless town crier meant standing in the middle of the town crying.
I have two questions.
Were your parents artistic or were they abusive?
Where did the crying and sensitivity come from?
Both.
I mean, my father was like a tough guy.
He was like a real, like, you know, I grew up in a family like that had major swag.
Like they were, like they were hippies and they were definitely like into more of the like fashion stuff, partying aspect of being hippies than the political peace aspect of it.
Um, i mean my mother very peaceful, you know, and more artistically uh, definitely artistically leaning my father was like kind of like a gangster in a lot of ways and uh and like had him, i mean he kind of looked like a jewish sam elliott.
People often thought he was sam elliott and uh, he worked at like he read Arnold Schwarzenegger's bodybuilding encyclopedia all the time.
You'd be smoking a joint reading Schwarzenegger.
And then going to the gym, work hard every day.
And then go to the gym and work out really hard for two hours.
And so he was a very masculine man.
And my, you know, my uncles, yeah, they all...
They all had that.
Well, one of my uncles is still with us, thankfully.
But they all had that vibe.
Him and his two brothers.
And very funny, though.
Like, really funny.
Lovers of comedy.
Lovers of movies and things like that.
But, you know, he had a temper.
He never hit me.
But, you know, he didn't have to.
He did not have to.
Um, and so, uh, and you mentioned your mom was kind of artistic.
Yeah, she's, you know, she's very artistic.
She's still like a, an agent for photographers.
Oh, wow.
For advertise.
You know she, she mostly reps them, but she represents a lot of fine art photographers for their advertising work.
I mean, she, she negotiated the Beyonce British Vogue.
Huh. the last British Vogue cover that Kennedy Carter did.
She was representing Kennedy Carter at that time, who you know was very had not done something of that nature before.
And so, yeah, she negotiated that whole deal with Beyoncé's team and Vogue, which was wild.
So... This, like, 72-year-old Jewish woman being like, oh, we, uh...
I just talked to Beyonce's creative director today.
Like, wow, that's amazing.
Yeah.
So did you, I mean, were you always sort of artistically inclined?
Because you studied theater, right?
You're classically trained.
Yeah, always.
I was obsessed.
But if you knew me though, as a kid, until I got into high school, it was not really obvious that I was artistically inclined.
I think I was more just obsessed as a fan and I was not confident to put that out in my personality publicly.
So I think a lot of people who knew me, I was more just nervous, you know?
Yeah.
And had what my therapist would call high agency.
And so just really wanting people to like me.
Got it.
Doormat, you know, very much a doormat.
And so I think you know that's sort of the opposite of what people see, especially basic morons that I was friends with see as an artist, you know.
Well, I mean, but actually as actors, that sort of is exactly what we have to do.
Absolutely.
Is make everybody like you.
Make the maximum number of people in the room like you so that you can then like yourself.
Yeah.
And then sometimes experiment with making everyone hate you.
Well, that's a game we play too.
What we call is agency and counter-agency.
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And you have a younger sister, correct?
I do, yeah.
Was she athletic?
Yes, very much so.
Oh, she was more of the No because, since I wasn't athletic, she was very obsessed with being the opposite of me.
So I was not athletic.
I was a terrible student.
I was very much like, oh man, school's a joke.
I educate myself, you know, and she was like, very obsessed with getting great grades and um being an amazing athlete, so she played basketball, she played tennis very competitively and then every, you know, every night upstairs in the books had to make sure that like, the tv wasn't too loud downstairs or else she'd go nuts.
I mean, I love to psychopathologize people who I barely know.
Yeah, and I love to do that to others and have that done to myself as well.
No, it's just interesting because you know, oftentimes the firstborn will be the studious one, you know, the one sort of who aligns kind of easily right with sort of a dynamic in the house, and it's kind of interesting um, not that you upset the apple cart, but that you were, you know, kind of this more tender and sort of you know bohemian and she sort of you know filled in the blanks right as a second child.
It's interesting yeah, i mean, i definitely, though she like ran the house though a lot of the time, Like a lot of things, that.
But she would argue that this is the opposite.
The opposite would be true.
But whereas I think I was more malleable to the, you know, to the words of my parents.
Got it.
To the dictations of my parents.
Besides grades and besides... doing my fair share of drugs in high school.
Yeah, I was just going to ask.
I mean, you know, you just mentioned kind of you know both of your parents and sort of you know this also, sort of like bohemian sensibility.
Did that feel like a comfortable place for you?
Like, did you enjoy that escape?
Or what sort of appealed to you about that sort of numbing, as it were?
Yeah, I think...
Yeah, I think that – I mean, I was never doing hard drugs.
It was mostly marijuana and psychedelics.
But I was – I would say I did – I smoked marijuana the most in junior and senior year of high school.
I probably – you know, I would be high all day.
Right.
And as soon as I – How'd that go for you?
Well, it –
I don't know.
I definitely went to a lot of great concerts.
What did you see?
I was on the last Dead tour.
There it is, Jonathan.
There it is.
I didn't get to see them, though.
I went on their last tour.
I saw their last two shows that Jerry Garcia ever played.
Whoa.
And I was like on – I went with this like hippie family from Highland Park and I was like on a blue school bus that I think they named Further, which is what the Merry Pranksters, if you've read the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which is an amazing book, what they named their bus.
So it's like, okay.
Hey, this is Further Jr., I guess.
Yeah.
And like on there with their family and then a couple of other friends and – selling grilled cheeses in vermont, which would inevitably be filled with sand and dirt and uh yeah, and that was like the closest i ever got to being like.
I got so warped a little bit that i was like maybe i won't be an actor, maybe i'll be a drifter oh, like neil cassidy.
You know, That's exactly what I was thinking.
Exactly.
I'll be like Neil Cassidy, and then I'll just be this figure, this counterculture, iconic hero.
How did that jive with sort of your parents' sensibility and wishes for you?
Like, did they have, you know, like...
Stop smoking weed and get back to school.
My mother would get really, really upset with me.
That was, we were very much at odds.
You know, I would come home to dinner all the time, most of the time late, like high out of my mind.
And my mother would be really angry with me.
And my father would also be high out of his mind and sort of be silently backing up my mother and just seeing if I got too volatile, and then he would come down.
But that was definitely when I was the most rebellious against my parents.
And uh, all my heroes do drugs, you know, and i but like i had a guilt about it too.
So i would always tell my mother everything that i was doing.
Wait wait, say more.
I would just be like I did acid last night.
And she'd be like, oh my... I was like, I did like a nitrous party last night.
I was like sucking down like nitrous balloons.
Do you think it killed like a lot of my brain cells, mom?
What was that guilt?
What did that feel like?
It was just like it was a guilt.
That was so, You know.
I think I definitely I mean had a massive codependent relationship with my mother right, very enmeshed with my mother that i'm not anymore, you know, we have a healthier relationship, but yeah, she was like god to me and i very much put my well-being and required into her hands and required her to answer questions and comfort me over things she couldn't possibly comfort me over because she's not god.
So, you know, Am I going to hell?
No, you're not.
Am I going to like die young?
No, you won't.
She can't tell me those those things.
Did your sister have?
I mean, I don't mean to get into your sister's life, but was this a special kind of relationship you had with your mom?
Like, was that a you and her thing?
That was a me and her thing, and my sister has that, but in a much more combative way than my mother and I have.
Well, yeah, daughters and mothers is a different dynamic.
Exactly, exactly.
That's really interesting.
I mean, I'm interested in it because...
You know, my family is full of complicated relationships, you know, and it's sort of there's a sort of constant jockeying for emotional position and ownership.
And you want someone else to answer those questions for you.
And also it it places a tremendous burden then on what you expect of other people.
So it's very, very interesting dynamic the way you describe it.
I mean, I had obsessive compulsive disorder from a very young age.
So I was like seeing a psychiatrist since I was like in the fourth grade.
Oh, that was unusual for when we were kids.
Yeah.
I had like.
What did it look like for you?
Well, I had, like you know, some thing, like I like in second grade like fooled around with my at that point best friend.
So i was like you know, and then you get into fourth grade and then you learn what gay is, and in the 80s, being gay was not good, you know.
It was very homophobic, society was very homophobic, and so i was like, oh my god, am i gay?
And then i had like a complete mental breakdown.
You know, like in fourth grade got it and then uh, and then yeah, i saw my mother uh, like do you wanna?
I like laid on the couch for like three days, i mean, i didn't say anything.
And then i told my mother and she was very comforting and i think that that was probably like something.
That like was the thing that made me go.
Oh my god, she's god, because she comforted me in this moment of feeling very lost and confused.
I remember watching like it's pretty honest, you know watching uh, david lynch's dune And just seeing the rotting like villain and being, you know like I'm thinking I was like losing my mind.
Huh?
Yeah.
That's really, I mean, that's very young to have that burden on you.
Yeah.
So then they sent you to a doctor?
No, like, she was like, do you want to see somebody?
No, that's what I mean.
Yeah.
No, she wasn't like, I got to make sure.
You got to go to a psychiatrist.
Lucky you.
It was a helpful thing.
I mean, my parents had friends who were gay who were some of their best friends, I mean.
I remember my mother saying goodbye on the phone to a friend of hers who was on the verge of dying of AIDS.
And that was a wild – maybe I shouldn't have been in the room for that call at the age I was at.
But, as traumatic as that was maybe to my young mind, it also probably was good for me to – it made sure that I was not – homophobic.
Right.
So what's it like going to a doctor at that age, especially when there's no like vocabulary in the culture at that point, for kind of what you were experiencing?
He was a very brilliant man.
He was a very brilliant man.
And he basically let me talk about anything that I wanted to talk about.
So if I wanted to talk about movies the whole time, you know because at that time I was already obsessed with comedies would do that.
You know, he did not uh muscle the conversation ever and just basically yeah i, i never felt that he was closed off to anything that i said.
So he was like an amazing.
I mean, he like kind of saved my sanity.
He was an amazing man.
Dr j hirsch, and uh, how long did you see him?
I saw him for, I think, like a couple years.
Wow.
And then I would get in the car and my mother would be like, what did you talk about?
And I'd be like, we talked about Blue Frame Roger Rabbit.
And she's like no, that's not what you you should be talking about.
The thing that you were talking to me last night about like obsessing that you were going to hell.
How you stand like at your you know, how you can't go to sleep because you keep looking at the clock and it's an odd number and you got to wait until you see an even number on the clock.
You know all this stuff.
But, you know, that's why he was great though, because he let me lead it and he guided me through what my thought process is, which is what I think brilliant therapists do.
And then, yeah, and then Then I was in the theater department in my high school.
And then I went to college, you know, to art school, the North Carolina School of the Arts.
And, you know, I definitely explored what my sexuality may or may not be.
But you got to obviously experience that then, with this notion of also support and a lack of fear, which Exactly
Yeah.
And so found my, I guess, you know, hetero-leaning in an organic way.
Right.
Not to say that I don't have fluidity, though.
Sure.
I wouldn't say that.
It's a spectrum.
Exactly.
So I wouldn't say I'm straight, but...
I've never, yeah.
Got it.
I've never been intimate.
And you're partnered with a female person.
Yes.
Right now you're engaged.
Exactly.
With a lady person.
Yes.
With an incredible woman.
I wonder if you can.
We can get to that in a little bit, but I do wonder.
You know, obsessive compulsive disorder is one of these things that you know it gets a lot of hashtags of like I'm so OCD.
My shoes are lined up.
Yeah.
And, you know, annoying people like me and probably you are like, no, that's not exactly.
It's interesting you mentioned numbers.
You know, for those of us who live with obsessive compulsive disorder, there's often special numbers.
I like to tell this story that you know.
It wasn't until I was in college and a psychiatrist said to me do you have any special numbers?
And I was like, yes.
And he was like, oh, and I'm thinking, what's he writing?
Doesn't everyone have special numbers?
There's so many different special, there's different ways to have my special numbers.
Anyway, were there any other features like did you have you know, because sometimes like cleanliness will come up or religious obsession, or sounds like you had a lot.
And actually this comes up in your book, notions of death and dying and heaven and hell.
Were these kind of themes that felt like they had obsessive and compulsive components to them?
Yeah, I mean, immense fear of the future.
Immense fear of the future that I would you know, of death, of not achieving my dreams, I think is the two big things.
Mm-hmm.
You know, apocalypse.
That's another one, you know, just like like fear of nuclear war could stop a dinner.
Right.
I'd have to pull my mother aside and like whisper, like hey, we're going to, there's not going to be a nuclear war.
Is there?
No, there's not.
There's not.
Wow.
She had a lot of power.
I gave her a lot of power.
I am an optimist at the end of the day, though.
I am an optimist.
I believe that we're going to be OK, have to um, but uh yeah, so a lot of around that, you know a lot of around that there's nothing after death.
That's a big one for me.
That was a big one for me.
And my psychiatrist was an atheist and he was out and he told me he's like i don't believe that there's anything after death.
And i was like gyrating and on the chair uh, you know, And not in a fun way.
Right.
I mean, I was very cliche with the number 13.
I still, if I look at the number 13, I'm bummed out.
I'm bummed out.
Huh.
And I have to fight urges.
That's a negative number for you.
Yeah, I hate it.
Oh.
Very scary.
That's so cliche.
Well, I mean, you know what?
It's not for me to say what your special number needs to be.
Do you have positive numbers?
14.
14.
Oh, you like 14 because it means you got through 13.
Exactly.
And so if I looked, I would have this ritual where, if I looked at 13 on the clock, I would have to look away.
You had to wait and wait until it was 14 to look back.
And then...
And then if I missed it and it went to 15, I'd have to wait until it got to an even number.
So it was very much about like odd numbers being evil because they were associated with 13.
Got it.
And even numbers being good because they were associated with 14.
Do you, okay, I'm going to ask, do you also like seven times two or just 14?
No, no.
Seven times, but that's an interesting question.
I never really thought of that.
You're making me feel bad, because for me, my numbers, it's also about the multiples that make them up.
Yeah.
Well, you're, I think you're probably more intelligent than me.
And so, you know, you're bringing, you're bringing math into it rather than just like blanket.
So we like 14.
Any other numbers you like?
I like six.
It's my birthday.
Oh, okay.
I like that.
Yeah.
What month?
October.
So 10.
Got it.
Yeah.
I mean, I like even numbers and then odd numbers make me feel a little clenched.
And you're born in an even year too.
Exactly.
1976.
Yeah.
So like it's 10, six.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
Yeah.
Sorry.
I just, I like numbers.
16.
No, totally.
Okay.
Yeah.
I have to ask what happened the year that you were 13.
I mean, obviously it's bar mitzvah year.
Was that a hard year for someone who hates 13?
That much junior high?
So yeah, besides my bar mitzvah terrible i would say that junior high was the worst.
That was maybe one of the worst periods of my life.
It was just when everybody became their most vicious and i became my most nervous and i was the most, the most doormat ish that i ever had been.
That whole account in my book of when Abraham lets them throw him in the mud that's an autobiography.
Not everything in the book is.
Oh, I can tell.
That is.
Honey, you're not hiding it that well.
No, I didn't.
I didn't try to.
I didn't try to.
But yeah, so that's like.
Let's dip into the book a little bit because, you know.
It's a very unusual book.
I'm not going to pretend like this is like this is the summer read at the lake.
No, it's a bullet of anxiety.
It's a bullet of anxiety.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know if I would describe it.
Is that?
Yes.
I want to know what you would say.
So for me, I mean, you know, I was raised on Philip Roth.
I was raised on, you know, the writings of Woody Allen.
I was raised on.
You know this sort of literary obsession that that our country had with a specific type of male author which you know now, in the lens of the culture we're in now, it's like oh, we were so invested in, like white male experience.
And we were, you know, as a literary, you know, happening.
But, you know, I went and saw Philip Roth speak at UCLA with my dad.
This was like it was a journey, because this was the literature that you know spoke to a lot of my dad's experience, that generation.
You know, our generation doesn't really have those kind of writers.
And then, when I read your book, it reminded me of all of the beauty and complexity of telling these stories.
And there that was my partially my aim.
OK, so in my perspective, deeply, they're deeply psychologically interesting.
Um, nothing is simple.
You can't say, Oh, this is a story about a character who blah, blah, blah.
You are taken on a journey with each of these characters.
And sometimes it's diary entries.
Sometimes it's poetry.
Sometimes it's script.
I'm not telling you like, you don't know.
I'm telling people who might be listening.
Like, you know, you wrote it.
Um, but also you know the book is divided up into these different personas and And you know, as a person who's been dipping into internal family systems therapy you know these are also parts of bread, like meaning.
They're parts of your creative brain.
They're parts of your psyche that may be, you know, working themselves out.
And I mean, the book like it starts with a bang.
Are those your illustrations?
Yeah.
OK, so there's also these like adorable illustrations for each of the characters, and they're really awesome.
Thank you.
But but yeah this, this first character Abraham, you know he's, he's lovable, but he also elicits a lot of compassion and you don't pity him, but you
Tell us about who that character is and why sort of you chose to start the book with Abraham.
Also the first Jew, Abraham.
Yeah well, it was very much like to show.
Yes, it was very much to show.
I mean, it's pretty simple concept that my editor helped me form a little bit of the you know of like.
I think my editor, a very brilliant guy named Stuart Roberts, saw what I was going to bring to the table in terms of my writing.
And then, yeah, we formulated this idea of five ages.
You know, five different people at different ages.
And then I basically blasted off from there.
And...
He, I mean, he, I would say that the closest to me is Abraham and Mendel.
And so, and Abraham was, is really like a bloodletting of my childhood trauma.
And I really, you know you talk about those writers and yeah, I really wanted to bring back like to me, like roth and and woody i mean without feathers is obviously a huge influence on the book.
Um, that's like jewish culture to me.
I wanted to bring back like this has value, you know, but do it hopefully in.
I've worked to educate myself as hard as i can on all aspects of how we have all evolved in our culture.
Yeah, I mean Woody Allen and Philip Roth in particular, two men who have had a tremendous amount of attention paid to treatment of women.
And, you know, recently a beautiful essay.
I can't remember the author.
I feel bad even mentioning it.
But very recently, you know, an essay about can we still read Roth?
Right.
So I think that's also really beautiful that you took an aspect of this art form that for you is so special.
And also, I don't want to say salvageable, but it's unique and it still deserves a voice.
Yeah.
And no man's hands are clean in this culture.
No man's hands are clean.
And I think that you know, hopefully one of the things that what we've all been going through is maybe going to take a turn to us being able to have more of a conversation about that.
So that men can more safely change their toxicity.
You know anyway uh, but i wanted to put that on full, honest display.
You know, and uh, and then show where it kind of starts is that it's this child that is, you know, abused by his own mind and also by the world around him.
And that's kind of how I see childhood from my experience, from my very specific experience.
And uh and yeah is there.
You know he is.
He is not a character that is poor, you know.
He's not a character who uh, you know, has to deal with some of the really raw realities of life in the ways another child would have to.
But I, you know, his experience is still trauma is relative experience is relative.
And so I wanted to bring that so that and do it in a really immersed way, so that even if somebody to challenge somebody to push it away and go oh, this is, and try to put it in the box and not you know, really resist letting the reader do that.
Well, and I think, I think there's there's something that I appreciate about your writing which is not dissimilar from your acting trajectory.
Yeah.
You know there's a real.
You know Jonathan was talking about.
You know, in particular, a lot of these.
You know a lot of the roles that you play have a real explosiveness to them.
You know a real um, a sense of like heightened emotion and also, in some cases, like persecution.
You know there's a lot of um.
It's volatile.
Yeah.
And and I'm not saying that the writing is volatile, but I'm saying you're expressing experiences in all of these different characters that aren't, they're not pretty.
They're not polished.
They're not tied up neatly.
Do you feel that your writing is, you know, sort of?
I mean, obviously as actors we can't always control what we're cast in, but you know, once you have a look or you know a voice, you know that tends to be sort of where you meander.
But I wonder if you do see parallels between who Brett Gelman you know, the guy who you know went to art school and then ended up, you know, becoming this actor, if that feels similar to your writer's voice.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, I often feel like in my acting, whether I'm writing the thing or not, I'm living out my psychological biography.
I think that there's a weird thing that happens to me and maybe I'm forcing it subconsciously.
But I do feel that the piece and my psyche or some aspect of my life the piece usually if it's good is reflecting that.
And it sort of plays out.
And that's a big bummer sometimes.
Life-wise, but very exciting artistically.
And I've always got like kind of these two things going where I'm a student of people like Groucho and Mel and you know comedic actors like I mean the whole the whole Mel Brooks company, you know Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn,
But I'm also a student of what might one might call the method, you know.
Tell us about the method for people who don't know.
Well, the method, you know, is very much defined as you live, as the character, the whole.
You know, you're people, you got to be called the character and you're going home and you're eating the breakfast that the character would eat.
That's not really the classic thing. definition of the method.
I mean, the classic definition of the method is basically seeking out a sensory experience.
You know and also I'm classically trained.
So I'm bringing that into it, too, in terms of transformation as much as the role requires.
And, if I can just interject, like it's a sort of dissociative identity disorder that actors will engage in because you are, in theory, inhabiting the heart rate, the mental processes, the interaction with the world.
You are inhabiting a different person, and that's not just when they yell action.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
So you're sustaining that.
Exactly, exactly, to some degree.
You know, whatever the, I think that you can do it.
I think it depends on the role what that process should be.
You know, obviously for somebody like martin and fleabag i'm doing something different than i'm doing for murray in stranger things, because it's two different worlds, it's being authored by two different artists and they're two different characters who require different things.
You don't want to like over prepare in a certain way for murray when there's very, something very iconic about him.
That's very like the comedic relief of the action movie and science fiction movie that I loved, you know, and I wanted to play when I was growing up, you know.
And.
But then there's also this like profound loneliness to him too.
That needs to, you know, be put in the recipe, not to get too.
But yeah, I feel like, no matter what I do, it's injecting something that's very different, very unusual, very singularly me, and that i'm pulling together those two forms, you know.
And then yeah, and so like, Much like, following Gene Wilder, you know I'm as much learning from Jenna Rollins, you know, as I watch that happen.
And I'm just as mesmerized and inspired by that.
So yeah, I'm like combining those two things.
I guess like talking about like emotional rawness and psychological rawness and comedic craft and physical craft,
How long from the time, let's say, that you graduated school, to sort of making your living as an actor?
I mean, like, really like 10 years.
That's a long time.
I would say.
That's a long time.
Yeah.
What are those 10 years like?
Especially for someone who, I mean, wants, I mean, as actors, like we want, validation.
Like the only way that you get like the thumbs up on life is if you know we get to do our craft in a way that allows us to support ourselves.
Right.
Yeah.
What were those 10 years like, especially given what you sort of told us about your personality?
I mean, the Upright Citizens Brigade were those 10 years.
Thank God for, I owe my career to that theater, to the man who ran that theater, Matt Besser.
You know they, I and I benefited from being one of the only people who knew how to be on a stage at the early, at the early days of that theater.
So I got on stage very quickly.
But you didn't get paid, you know, because there was so many performers and they were.
They sold tickets for five dollars.
So they didn't really have the budget to pay performers.
Yeah.
But I was on stage a lot.
I mean, I lived there.
And then I sort of went into the alternative comedy scene of like the alt stand-up world.
You know, performing like I was always on Wednesday nights would go to Rafifi on 11th Street.
And... either do or watch Eugene Merman and Bobby Tisdale's show, Invite Them Up.
And so I was going back and forth between those two scenes.
And I was definitely at Invite Them Up doing some of the most bizarre things that was being done there that I don't know was so audience-friendly a lot of the time.
Like what?
Definitely as a comedian.
I mean, I did...
I would do bits like I mean, the big thing that I would do live was this one-man musical 1000 Cats.
And there was a whole backstory to the character as I sang about enlisted different types of cats and became them in a black unitard and cat ears.
That sounds like my favorite show ever.
But I had a whole backstory that the audience knew nothing about, that the character was losing his mind as he performed it.
I would do that all the time and I would do, I mean like all different types of bits where I would I mean I like, would do.
I did a character named Mr Bonobo where I put on a monkey mask and did all these like one-liner jokes in a really high voice about bonobos.
Those are the monkeys that like to have sex a lot.
Yeah, they're like the most human monkeys in a way.
The masturbatory monkeys.
Yeah.
So I think like the day I learned what a bonobo was, I would do.
Are these things you do high also?
I want to know.
I was not like getting high at that point.
Because like this sounds fun.
You know, I'm just curious.
Um sometimes, like later on, you know, but uh no, at this time I was not getting high at this point.
I was taking a break from getting high at that point.
Yeah.
I don't think my uh, my mind was ever really that.
I don't think my mind was made more strange by drugs at all.
If anything, it mellowed me out for a time being.
If anything, it numbs me out.
And so that's why moderation is key.
And so yeah, I mean, you know, I love that was like another thing of like being a student, of like loving George Carlin and Richard Pryor and you know Eddie Murphy, even though you know those, not everything in those specials but not anything in any comedy.
You know real, you know there's things you can pinpoint in so much comedy that doesn't age well necessarily, but like uh and uh, you know, and then, but then discovering uh,
Andy, you know, and wanting to do You know, and then also like Eric Bogosian, you know, was my idol.
Yeah, these are all... It's funny, because I...
You know I think of you in your acting roles, but when I think of your style and then when I read your book, I got to see more of those kind of influences, you know.
Yeah.
And I never like I never.
There are two things that I'm like.
That's really strange that I navigated that like that.
And maybe that was a form of self-sabotage.
But I never, like, really, besides 1,000 Cats, never was like, this is my...
My set that I'm doing, I never like really performed like or pursued having a career in quote unquote stand up.
And I and I couldn't deal with like starting on the ground floor of trying to get into the legitimate theater as well.
Right.
So, since I've graduated North Carolina School of the Arts, a one of the best conservatories in the country
I've only done one play, Tartuffe.
I know it's not the same, but it's clear.
Especially when you talk about method and you talk about these characters, there's so much complexity to what you do.
You know I, I'm trained in sitcom, you know.
So for us it's like get to the emotion as quickly as possible, you know, with as little fanfare as possible.
You know you have to step up your acting game when you act with real actors, you know.
Meaning like if I were to act with you.
It's like you have a whole set of training that's very different from the way I'm programmed, you know.
Yeah.
But I would not, I mean, I think you're, Brilliant.
Oh, okay.
We're not going to talk about that.
That's not what I meant.
I just meant sitcom is so different from like, you know.
Right.
But I think like so much of it is repetition.
Right.
At the end of the day.
Right.
Well, I put my tens of thousands of hours in.
Exactly.
As much as like you know, and then the way in which I think, also being a star, which you are, is also a craft you know of like.
Really being like this is Mayim, you know is like that is not lesser than something that.
Brando does.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I appreciate that.
And so that's the other thing that I learned.
And that was also the thing.
When I was doing all of this comedy, people thought I was insane.
And I was like, no, no, no, you don't understand.
I'm coming at this from... a Peter Brookian philosophical place.
This is theater in the rough to me if you read The Empty Space, which was a very influential book to me.
You read the theater in its double Antonin Artaud, and he's saying the biggest example, the best example of what the theater should be is the Marx Brothers movie.
Wow.
You know?
And so it's...
And you know, like I remember Jim Jarmusch saying, like I don't believe in elitism when it comes to art.
I can listen to Beethoven.
You know one of his symphonies and I give it the same value as listen to Capone and Noriega's The War Report.
You know that 90s hip hop album.
And so, like, I was like, that's how I see things.
Yeah, i don't like i i'm not going to compare you to adam driver right, you know, because you both have equally.
You know your craft is is equal to me and what you're doing is equal.
The process is very kind.
The relationship you described with your mom is is not foreign to me, you know and um, i think it.
It is a very um, you know there's a very kind of complicated loving enmeshment.
You know that many of us of our generation, I think, experienced
And, you know, there's a lot more conversation now.
There is conversation about this concept of intergenerational trauma and that you know, if you think about it sort of from a scientific perspective, the egg that became you was in your grandmother's, Because that's when your mother's eggs formed is when she was in your grandmother's womb.
Right.
And I just like think about the things that both of my grandmothers experienced.
And you know that leaves us with this sort of very complicated matrix.
You know that we then are born into in the 70s.
Right.
But the the notion of this relationship with your mom.
I wonder if you found that other places meaning you know to have such a strong desire and also a validation, you know, of a connection.
And you talked about sort of, you know, being a doormat.
Like, did this follow you into dating?
Like, did this follow you into friendships?
What was that like?
It still follows me.
It still absolutely follows me.
It's something that I have to work on very hard every day.
The way like this need to connect in that enmeshed way.
It's an addiction.
And I've exhausted a lot of relationships because of that, you know, and not checking that.
And then also getting into relationships that were probably subconsciously um, going to abuse that as well, you know, or react to that in a way that wouldn't be healthy for either of us uh, and so that's a constant thing that i have to check, you know, and uh, because it's that thing of like like, let's be friends and let's be.
I'm still that kid who, like I, have two great dinners with somebody and I want connection with people so bad, because I spend so much of my day like playing the story out in my head of how alienated I am and how alone I am.
Uh, beyond my fiancee, who i am, you know, very connected to and, i would say, shares this thing with me uh, which is amazing, and how we found each other, but i don't want to speak for her too much, and the book is also dedicated to her.
I should mention yes, and our dogs, who are our fuzzy children and um no, because she is, you know, the greatest person i've ever known in my life and somebody who is a gift, you know uh, for me to not act that way, but then also um, you know uh is, is able to work it out with me, and i'm able to work that out with her, and we work and the work is very exciting, you know, the relationship, work is very exciting and it's very honest and and uh, it's just the, it's the most perfect relationship that i've ever been in, not to say that, you know, every relationship you come.
Sure, you know you have your stuff, but like uh, It's so It's just very fluid and honest.
And there's an ease to it.
Even when we're, you know, upset with each other.
Like, there's still this ease and safety to it.
And so...
Yeah.
But like yeah, I have to watch myself in that, in that needing to connect and that like taking revenge if somebody blocks that connection.
It feels like a betrayal.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, it's really sucks.
It's like the biggest thing that I'm like, hey, but I've gotten a lot better.
Do you still go to therapy?
Is that something you partake in?
I have therapy right after we have this interview.
Well, that's probably because we're having a session.
No, my therapist now really, like, put this into a context for me of agency and counteragency.
So like living for other people, living to be that thing that you think they want you to be, and then, when they don't react how you want them to and don't give you that motherly love, that enmeshed love, or even any type of Or the love that you want from them, then taking revenge on them for that, you know, emotionally.
Just getting really upset with them.
God, I got it.
Okay.
Getting overly, irrationally upset.
Which can, if some people pout, it can look like different things.
Exactly.
I mean, just saying there's many ways to get revenge on people.
No, but like being this thing of like disrespect.
Yeah.
They disrespect me.
They don't disrespect me.
They're just going about, they're trying to do the best they can in their lives and they don't have time to have a huge conversation about my problems.
Well, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that, because sometimes, in our attempt to care so much about other people, we actually at least I'm speaking for myself I've often learned that it's, it's really a self-centeredness.
It's how does that person meet or not meet my direct needs?
I couch it in what can I do for you?
How can I make you happy, right?
Let me do all the things so everything will be okay.
But it's actually really like, Do it my way.
Love me the way I want.
Right, what's that quote?
Like just because someone doesn't love you the way you want, doesn't mean they don't love you with all that they have right.
Should have that tattooed on my forehead.
Yeah, no, that's totally true.
That's what that tushy's for.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, and knocked your headphones off.
Tushy always.
The word tushy always knocks my head.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I wonder if you can speak to that too, because also, as actors again, like our whole world is about, like it's me.
It is.
It's about me.
It's about enough about me.
What do you think of me?
Absolutely.
I mean, any art.
Right.
You know, you're engaging in that.
Right.
You're saying, yeah, you should.
Everybody should. watch me or listen to me or read me, you know, uh, make me.
And I think yeah, you even see that in activism too, you know, in the world of activism, which is very interesting world.
Uh, and so yeah, it's like your.
You know, it's almost like I wake up like needing that uh, And when I don't get that I feel lost.
I feel betrayed.
Rather than, oh, what can I do?
I often like, you know, and I often can like, I think, sort of have this identity amongst people.
I'm either this like swagged out father figure that they want to emulate, or i'm a creature of anxiety and sort of like the dangerous, uh problematic gesture.
That's how i see it.
I'm not saying that that's how other people see it, but like how it like forms in my mind.
What are my choices?
What was the first one you said?
Like a like a parental.
Oh, right.
You know, figure.
Right.
People want to emulate, or that like creature that is like oh like yeah, like very too complicated to engage with.
It's also very Frankenstein.
Like it's very like, am I the doctor or am I the monster?
Jekyll and Hyde.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Like, yeah, it's weird.
Like me, my fiance and I.
Often people like refer to us as mom and dad, even people who are like I mean she's, she's younger than me.
You know, she's like a lot younger than she's younger than a lot of people who call her mom.
And it's just very, I, I, Yeah, I think it's like we're very good at comforting people.
And then we're both very good at also making people feel really uncomfortable.
That sounds like the perfect formula for have you ever wanted to be a parent?
Yeah, absolutely.
No, I very much want to be.
I mean, cause that really is like, that's the, that is the dynamic, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so I want to... Do you think about enmesh?
Like, do you think about that?
Because it's, it's very easy, right?
Yeah.
To try and connect with...
I mean, everyone, but in particular, your own.
Oh, I mean, our dogs are like I'm enmeshed with my dogs.
You know, they're like my you know, our eldest dog is 14 going on eight.
She is like very, you know, and this is like.
The diets and the constant talking and engaging with them, you know, and they're like going out and being like oh, that sucked.
And you come home to these two and they're like, I'm like, why did I ever leave you guys?
I just need you two.
Right.
And they're like.
They're that too.
They're both this comforting entity and then also so honest that they can make you feel.
They can make people feel very uncomfortable at times too.
So they're like and so uh no, but i'm like, i really want kids.
I think we'll be great parents and i think that uh, it's great.
Uh, I think it's great for the world, you know, to bring in the new generations that will help keep it from destroying itself.
Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about destruction.
So, you know, one of the interesting things that happened, you know, in your career is you know, you have this platform called, with which you've, you know, chosen to discuss.
Um, you know the events of the 7th of October in particular.
And um, you know, recently clarified your humanity, which I'm surprised that you had to clarify it.
But you specifically clarified that your heart breaks for suffering in the world, no matter who is receiving that suffering.
However you have, this book has brought about conversations about the legitimacy of of, for many of us, the existence of Jewish people in the public space.
I can't imagine the stress that this puts on you in terms of trying to put out a book in the middle of life happening.
Yeah, I wonder yeah, I wonder what you'd like to sort of talk about regarding that and, in particular, with a nod to the complexity of the human experience that we've been talking about.
Yeah.
Um well, it's been.
It's wild, you know it.
Uh It's, you know, speaking narcissistically.
It's crazy the timing.
You know in my own life and career that this happened.
I will say that it's been incredibly self-actualizing on the positive side.
It's really made me.
It's actually this whole thing of agency and counter-agency that we're talking about.
It really has put that very much more in perspective.
And... put that way more in control.
I've become much more in control of that, because so many people really don't like me right now and are very vocal about it.
And a lot of people you know, as every Jew says, has lost, especially you know people who lean on the liberal.
You know more progressive side, as i assume you and i do have lost friends over this, or at least colleagues you know feel alienated in our own industry, feel alienated on our own political side and have you know i've come to make major realizations of Even how I was discriminating or maybe erasing myself in my life.
Which I was already really noticing in the last few years.
My fiancé very much helped me see that.
Because this sense of herself as a Jew is very clear to her.
She is Israeli.
And they...
They just have more of a.
Even if they grew up here, which she did, they have a clearer view of their identity, I think, than we do in the diaspora, I think.
Well, living surrounded by countries that call for your destruction, will do that exactly.
And then, you know, assimilating into a culture and helping uh build that assimilation, as we did, uh will do that to us, you know, and um, and it's more complex than that.
I don't mean to make that so like i'm not saying that there isn't an amazing you know, there's so many amazing examples of jewish identity and jewish culture in this country, but uh Yeah, I saw like the book is not about Israel.
No.
But it's very much about being a Jew.
I think there is this thing that's, you know it's, I think, a.
I'm proud of it in that it calls out, that it calls attention to my and our marginalizations.
Yeah.
What does it mean when a bookstore in a major city says that they cannot guarantee your or their patron's safety because you are speaking there?
What does that mean?
It's incredibly traumatic, and it makes you—we're met with a lot of questions. i think that that's maybe not what in our trauma of this you know our which has been at times for me very hysterical and i know for everybody um i don't think we've been we're i think as jews afraid to embrace these it's like the biggest fear is the wondering of the question well why did why did they pull out How much of a security risk was it actually?
What is going to happen on that day?
I've seen what's happened to you.
I've followed that closely.
I've seen what's happened to so many of our peers on so many different levels.
And so why does the bookstore pull out?
Is it really a security concern or is it an image concern?
And regardless...
It's a disappointment.
It's a deep, traumatic disappointment because I would have provided security.
Sure.
I would not expect an independent bookstore to make sure that place was secure.
I would do that.
Yeah, I think part of what we're seeing, and I do think of this in terms of mental wellness because I think about what kind of discourse we have as a people meaning humans.
Yeah.
And you know I come from, you know from parents who would place their bodies, places in nonviolent protest and be removed or tear gassed.
Yeah.
Like I understand what protest is, you know?
Absolutely.
And also there's this sort of notion of the shouting down culture.
And I think that that's sort of what...
I try and understand, with these kind of situations meaning, what has our collective culture become when there is not room?
Because a tactic is to shout down and cancel someone, right?
And, of course, it's specifically painful when it is when there is historical trauma, which there is for the Jewish people.
Yeah.
Which is not to say there's not trauma for other people.
But if we're talking about that, that you know also is just alarming to me that you know I was reading there was an attempt to collect a variety of voices about campus free speech.
And most of the left did not show up.
And the irony is so painful.
It's not a conversation if we can't have a conversation.
I mean, that's what I thought we were about.
And that's what we used to be about.
Right.
And at some point identity politics got co-opted by almost a right-wing method of you agree or you're out.
Right.
There's no shades to it.
This is I mean, for.
That is a very what we used to think of as a right wing policy.
Yeah, I think I mean, seeing.
The the left, which, you know, I until recently.
I was very progressive.
Yes, I believe.
And I don't you know, I believe wholeheartedly with all of my being.
This is not an opinion even.
This is a reality.
And the non-binary reality of gender and sexuality.
That is something that is whole you know is we have the last few years been taught
And if you have not been willing to learn that, you're a bigot.
And so...
But it's just such a deep hypocrisy that in this moment, the left chooses to see race and cultural experience and political beliefs as completely rigidly binary.
Right.
There's no breaking out of that.
And you know they've all you know they're Whoever ran this propaganda, whether it was Russia or the Islamic Republic.
You know I don't know who filtered this into our universities and social justice groups and social media, but whoever did that did it very, You know, did the brilliant thing that you know the Nazis did, which was which was okay.
What do people hate the most?
What does this group of people who has the mo you know, because we don't need to worry about the right they, they got this.
They got this white replacement theory.
Jews are running that boom.
Yeah uh, jews built the space laser that created covid whatever, whatever.
Like crazy shit, but like whoever's running this specific propaganda was brilliant enough to look at that and say they, they got this and And also.
That's insane and is never going to.
It's going to remain fringe.
How do we mainstream antisemitism?
And what, so what is the most hated right now?
The white oppressor.
And let's bring back the yeah by bringing in, like very unoriginal cliche, Jewish tropes that have been present since there have been Jews.
So uh Yeah, and then it's just so – so it's like so traumatically disappointing how they all – how everybody bought into that.
And I even bought into that for a certain amount of time to some degree.
I was never like an anti-Zionist or thought Israel should end.
But I definitely thought like I benefited from – my existence was white privilege.
Yeah.
And that's not true.
That's not true.
I'm not saying that, you know, my experience is the same as a person of color, you know.
But white privilege gives a.
The definition of that is that you don't experience oppression.
You don't experience systemic discrimination.
And that's obviously not true about our people.
And so I and also you ask a white supremacist if we are white and they will say no.
Not that we go by them for all the definitions we need, but it's helpful.
It's helpful to put it into context.
As my parents used to say when someone was like, I'm not Jewish.
My grandmother was.
They'd be like, good enough for Hitler, right?
Yeah.
And if you wear your Jewish identity, you know up front, you know whether it's and that's culturally not.
You don't need to just be religious in order to do that.
You just culturally live that.
Then you are putting it out there.
Then it is seen, you know, and then you are a target, especially right now.
You know, I know people who are wearing jewelry that we wear, and you and I are also public people.
What's gonna happen when we step into that party or we step into that coffee shop now?
So don't tell us that you're disproving your theories by how you're treating us.
I think what's also important to mention is that we can talk about more than one thing at a time.
And the notion that what is occurring in the Middle East has a direct impact on the way Jews should be treated around the world, who have nothing to do with the conflict, is just conceptually problematic.
You know that kind of grouping of responsibility.
It actually doesn't benefit anyone because it conflates things that shouldn't be conflated and makes conspicuous Jews have to put our backs up.
Yeah, because everything is being grouped together whereas you know being able to say you don't have to agree with the policies of the Israeli government.
But that also doesn't mean that you deserve to not exist as a Jew or compete in sports events or or exist as a professor or write a book.
And you have to look at that.
I mean, I definitely think that the Israeli government bears a lot of you know, they deserve a lot of criticism.
The current government,
Right, but no government in the world, when you criticize them, is the solution.
That country shouldn't exist anymore.
Exactly.
And I'm sorry, that's kind of when you show your cards.
Yeah.
That's never the solution for anybody.
And that you don't call out the terrorist regime that did what it did on October 7th and continues to do what it does.
Correct.
But thank God the UN, after five months of examination, was able to conclude what they did.
Yeah, but to me, if you're not also blaming Hamas and you're not examining what all of that is in an honest way, and you're only going at Israel and Israelis and the Jews.
I mean, every Israeli I know hates Netanyahu and was protesting Netanyahu.
So...
But they still want to be safe.
I can't unequivocally say that everything going on in the war is okay.
I mean, it's definitely not okay on an existence level, on an existential level.
The fact that innocent people are dying is completely... There are no words for the horror of that.
But like...
We also just don't know what's going on.
And that is like something that like this culture really, and I think the left really they somehow developed into this culture of like no, we know everything.
Well yeah, and I think it's also you know, when I think about peace and I actually want to kind of, you know, end on this notion of where's your optimism in this?
Because, you know, I am a peace lover.
Me too.
I am a person who seeks, you know, seeks out, seeks out peace and justice, which does not mean that I always believe there is peace and justice.
It means that that is something that we fight for and that we work for.
But I do wonder how you find an ability to be optimistic, you know, because for me the notion of you know I always associated the left, right with peace activism.
And when the calls are for a global attack on Jews, I find that hard to reconcile with a peaceful message.
That's not a peaceful message.
And, you know, I am praying for an end to these labor pains.
I am praying for the birth of something that provides dignity for the Palestinian people, for the Israeli people and for Jews worldwide right.
So what, for you, where does optimism or how does optimism work into this?
Especially as you are, you know, tackling this really exciting thing in your life which is the release of your book.
Yeah well, think we have to fight for our identity as jews, but also our identity as liberals, what the true liberal identity is, which is not this fascistic thing that has been developed that is, you know, goes way outside this war, even.
Um, and that is just about punishing without conversation, you know and know, just going off of a hashtag to completely dismantle somebody's perspective or erase somebody's perspective and and their existence and their livelihood.
Uh, i think this, like complete unwillingness to have a conversation, is is a conservative value, Or I mean, conversation actually has become this conservative value, which is crazy.
Whereas you know like we associate the left with, you have to be careful about what you say.
You know, and I think that that can go too far too.
Do I not understand?
Do I not understand?
Am I right wing?
Well, or like, am I not understanding something really fundamental?
But you know, I think that for me, my optimism comes in when I am reminded that What happens on our campuses actually is not going to impact what's going on for the justice and salvation of the Palestinian people.
What it's doing is it's creating more divisiveness, more obstruction in our communities.
And I mean that on both sides, meaning this kind of dialogue.
So you know, there are communities that are like let's put actual Palestinians and Israelis together so that we can show you what it looks like when intellectuals have an intellectual conversation about practicalities of this solution.
Yeah.
What do we do next?
How do we account for 1948?
How do we talk about 1967?
How do we talk about October 7th?
Right.
Right.
But this notion of, you know, I was recently in Manhattan.
I was afraid to turn every corner because I didn't know if I would be identified in the.
Yeah, and you're watching, weird feeling it's my city yeah no, and you're seeing torn up.
You know when the last time i was there, torn up posters of children missing children.
What does this have to do?
What is this whole thing of like?
Why, when the jews pain is brought up, does it become oppression olympics all of a sudden?
And why do you need to erase jewish pain and jewish suffering?
There's room for everybody to advocate for everybody else's suffering, for everybody's suffering.
It's like when you know, when people bring up the genocide in the congo that happened from that belgium asshole, i'm like yeah, we should know more about that.
We should know about what happened to the palestinian people in syria.
Yes, we should know about what's happening to the Uyghurs in China.
We should know what's happening to homosexuals in Rwanda.
Like we should know about these things and we should be calling it out.
And like and this notion.
So it's like this is my optimism that we need to stay strong and let this hysteria hopefully die down so that we can get into a conversation.
And I believe that I just believe good will prevail, because I believe that if you're operating from such a hypocritical standpoint and such a standpoint of double standard, you can't persist on that.
No culture has been able to ever persist on that.
It brings it down.
And if it has to take a hit in order to be brought back up again, that's what's happening.
Well, and I think also, you know, and I really appreciate your, you know you coming and talking with us about your whole career, like all the parts of Brett Gelman.
But I think what's important to remember is, you know, you're not going anywhere.
We're not going anywhere.
Jews are not going anywhere.
Palestinians are not going anywhere and neither Israelis.
We're all here.
We're all here having this human experience together.
And I really.
You know it's funny that the title of your book is The Terrifying Realm of the Possible, because there's so much that seems impossible, you know.
And, and I, I mean, I don't mean to like link it so directly, but I really did.
I got a lot out of this book in terms of, you know, it's a real, it's an opening of consciousness.
It's an opening of creative consciousness to say you know, how far can we go in our own minds, right?
And in our own kind of psychological experience.
And you know, in the case of your book, like it goes from the hardest parts of being a human to to the hardest parts of dying.
You know.
I mean, it really, like, it runs the full gamut.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I think that's what we need to, like, take into account more as human beings all across the board.
And really...
I so appreciate you always having a conversation.
Like everything that you do elicits conversation and invites conversation.
We want to wish you well in your nuptials, in your life, with your furry children and any future children you might have.
Likewise.
It's really been a pleasure to get to talk to you.
The book is the terrifying realm of the possible nearly true stories.
And I hope, after listening to Brett talk with us on this podcast, you can start deciphering which might be true and which might be fiction.
Thank you so much.
It's my and Bialik's breakdown.
She's going to break it down for you.
She's got a neuroscience PhD or two.
And now she's going to break down.
It's a breakdown.
She's going to break it down.
