Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: You've been doing stand up specials, and in this last special, well,
Speaker 2: you've talked openly about how vulnerable you've become in some
Speaker 2: of your stand up and you spoke openly about some
Speaker 2: of the therapy you've tackled.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love therapy.
Speaker 2: Tell me about it.
Speaker 4: I love give it up a therapy.
Speaker 2: You get therapy, and you get therapy.
Speaker 5: You get therapy.
Speaker 2: Talk to me about the love of therapy, because it's
Speaker 2: nice to have two men openly talking about therapy. And
Speaker 2: those are the women that are trying to bring us down.
Speaker 3: You know something, It's it's changed my life in so
Speaker 3: many ways. I think it's made me a funnier comic
Speaker 3: because not everything from a very dark place anymore. And
Speaker 3: maybe like just pretty much talk about anything, but therapy
Speaker 3: has been so beautiful. Like I'm at the happiest I've
Speaker 3: ever been because I've been able to unpact things over time.
Speaker 6: That's over a year.
Speaker 2: You're you're a busy guy. Are you doing? Is it
Speaker 2: like phone therapy?
Speaker 1: Is it zoom?
Speaker 2: Are you in a you know, on set? Like and
Speaker 2: this is the way it made me feel? And you
Speaker 2: know that type of.
Speaker 1: A knock and hat.
Speaker 3: I do both. Actually it depends on what my scheduling is,
Speaker 3: because I do like going in person. It's just in
Speaker 3: person is always so crazy because, like, especially if you've
Speaker 3: been crying a little bit, it's like awkward when you leave,
Speaker 3: Like you can tell the therapists want you to go
Speaker 3: because this time they keep doing this.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, but you like this, and.
Speaker 3: So they're like yeah, so uh.
Speaker 7: One of the things that I appreciate so much about
Speaker 7: your music and that I think sets you apart from
Speaker 7: so many other artists is the way that you juxtapose
Speaker 7: these these big, sort of joyful, big band jazzy music
Speaker 7: along with lyrics that are really raw and honorable and
Speaker 7: about very serious issues. You talk about body dysmorphia, you
Speaker 7: talk about mental health, sexual assault. How do you even
Speaker 7: begin building music around those lyrics?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I do think I think music is medicine.
Speaker 1: I will say that. I think I think, like, even
Speaker 1: sitting here and talking to you about these sort of
Speaker 1: heavier subjects, I get nervous. I don't really know how
Speaker 1: to address it or what to say. And I think
Speaker 1: music is a safe space to kind of be raw
Speaker 1: and honest, and for me, that's my safe place, it's
Speaker 1: my therapy. And yeah, you know, I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of us have really broken and a lot of
Speaker 1: us are hurting, and a lot of us are dealing
Speaker 1: with things we don't know exactly how to speak about
Speaker 1: or express even with the people that we love, And
Speaker 1: I think music is a safe space to do that,
Speaker 1: to find healing or talk about it or just I
Speaker 1: don't know, process it. So that was really important to
Speaker 1: me as an independent artist. I just wanted to be
Speaker 1: honest about those things you're quite about, you know.
Speaker 7: You you actually took quite a bit of time away
Speaker 7: from acting to spend the time with your family. You
Speaker 7: had Malcolm, and you were very open about experiencing postpartum depression.
Speaker 8: Yeah, postpartum anxiety. Anxiety, Yeah, so I had. I'd been
Speaker 8: prepared for postpartum depression because we hear so much about it,
Speaker 8: But postpartum anxiety came on and it was I don't
Speaker 8: know if anyone here has gone through that of their
Speaker 8: partners have, but it is. It is one of the
Speaker 8: worst experiences of my life.
Speaker 9: It came on like a month or two after I
Speaker 9: had Malcolm, and I woke up at four am. My
Speaker 9: eyes just pop open and I start going.
Speaker 8: And I keep breathing like that all day long, and
Speaker 8: I keep waking up like that every day at four am.
Speaker 1: For a year.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, for a full year. I just couldn't breathe.
Speaker 9: I just had so much anxiety and it wasn't There
Speaker 9: was no actual thoughts, and thank god, I didn't have
Speaker 9: any thoughts of self harm or harming others. I have
Speaker 9: so much compact and sympathy for mothers who are going
Speaker 9: through that, and I think that people don't understand it
Speaker 9: enough and we're not compassionate enough about what it's like
Speaker 9: to be a mother, into birth, a bathing, everything that
Speaker 9: happens to your body and the hormones. But it was
Speaker 9: incredibly difficult, but I did make it through to the
Speaker 9: other side.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: For social media to keep people engaged, for news organizations
Speaker 4: to keep people watching, they have to ramp up the
Speaker 4: urgency and the existential nature of the crisis. So you're
Speaker 4: sort of torn between these two impulses. One is to
Speaker 4: not participate, which would be abdicating civic responsibility, but the
Speaker 4: other would be to bathe yourself in this existential crisis.
Speaker 4: What choice do you have?
Speaker 6: Well, we do have a choice because so look at anxiety.
Speaker 6: There's productive anxiety and unproductive anxiety. Think about it. If
Speaker 6: you didn't have anxiety, you wouldn't be able to be safe.
Speaker 6: That's why we have anxiety. It was like, there's a bear,
Speaker 6: you better have anxiety. Your unproductive anxiety is I'm just
Speaker 6: going to stand here. Productive anxiety is I'm going to
Speaker 6: do something about this.
Speaker 4: See that's so weird because my anxiety has never saved
Speaker 4: me from bears, but it often convinces me I'm not lovable.
Speaker 5: So how how I shared too much?
Speaker 8: How do you just going to say?
Speaker 4: How I watch I didn't want to watch the debates tonight,
Speaker 4: but I do work once a week now, so I
Speaker 4: have to because it's toxic to me. I know that
Speaker 4: I have to participate. But how does that anxiety of
Speaker 4: watching it? How is that a relic of something.
Speaker 1: That's good for me.
Speaker 6: It's good for you because then you can take action.
Speaker 6: By the way, I hope you're taking action on the
Speaker 6: unlovable thing.
Speaker 4: I hope you're getting some help with that little thing
Speaker 4: called mushrooms, baby micro dosa.
Speaker 6: Way, Sorry, but it's helpful because you say, okay, there
Speaker 6: are two ways you can respond to this. You can
Speaker 6: say I'm going to put my head in the sand
Speaker 6: and not engage, which is I hope not the option
Speaker 6: that people here are taking. And you can also say, oh,
Speaker 6: I'm just spinning an anxiety, I'm doom scrolling, I'm just
Speaker 6: getting all worked up. That's not helpful, that's unproductive anxiety.
Speaker 6: And then there's productive anxiety, where you say what can
Speaker 6: I do well? You can get involved in a campaign,
Speaker 6: you can volunteer, you can please vote, you can get
Speaker 6: the people around you to vote. There are things that
Speaker 6: you can do. The thing that you want to do
Speaker 6: is you want to say what can I control here?
Speaker 6: And that's where you take your anxiety and you say,
Speaker 6: it's going to motivate me to do something productive.
Speaker 5: Something happened in the early twenty tens. And my argument
Speaker 5: in the book is a tragedy in two acts. The
Speaker 5: first act is the loss of the play based childhood.
Speaker 5: It's what anybody over forty in this audience had. You
Speaker 5: were out with your friends after school, there was nobody supervising.
Speaker 5: You had to learn how to work out conflicts, how
Speaker 5: to face adversity. So that's what kids have had for
Speaker 5: ten hundreds of thousands of years. It's part of being
Speaker 5: a mammal. You play, you develop skills. We began to
Speaker 5: crack down on that to lock kids up in the nineties,
Speaker 5: to not let them out. So we're restricting what they
Speaker 5: most need, which is play, from the nineties through the
Speaker 5: two thousands. But mental health doesn't collapse. Then it's actually
Speaker 5: pretty stable. Then we get aact to which is the
Speaker 5: arrival of the phone based childhood, and what that is
Speaker 5: is in twenty ten, everybody had a flip phone. The
Speaker 5: iPhone had come out, but most teens had a flip phone,
Speaker 5: no front facing camera, no social media on the phone,
Speaker 5: no high speed data. And by twenty twenty fifteen, everyone's
Speaker 5: got all those other things. Now suddenly everyone has a smartphone,
Speaker 5: front facing camera, high speed internet, social media especially Instagram
Speaker 5: on the phone, and almost like someone turned a switch.
Speaker 5: In twenty thirteen, girls in America and many of the
Speaker 5: countries suddenly become very anxious, depressed, and self harming.
Speaker 7: You mentioned that you've talked very openly about struggling with
Speaker 7: anxiety and depression. How did that feel to share that?
Speaker 1: Did that?
Speaker 7: Were you surprised by the reaction that you got?
Speaker 10: One hundred percent surprise and here's the thing. It didn't
Speaker 10: feel weird to share because I live in Los Angeles
Speaker 10: amongst a group of artists where this is just dinner
Speaker 10: table conversations. We're all anxious and depressed and we're always
Speaker 10: talking about it all the time. We're trading therapists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what medication?
Speaker 7: My therapist is right under the.
Speaker 8: Set on call.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and so it's like, what medication are you on?
Speaker 10: I'm switching over to Selexa. Now you know it's this,
Speaker 10: these are our conversations. But what I didn't realize is
Speaker 10: that you know, as you well know, because I don't
Speaker 10: know if you guys know, DESI was with me on
Speaker 10: the League like ten.
Speaker 2: Years ago as a guest star.
Speaker 10: A little amazing, but god, it's a great it's a
Speaker 10: great show. And a lot of the men who watch
Speaker 10: that show are not the men who are comfortable with
Speaker 10: talking about their mental health because of football dudes and whatnot.
Speaker 10: And so when I started going on my social media,
Speaker 10: I got this outpouring, particularly from men just being like,
Speaker 10: I can't believe you're saying this out loud. And it
Speaker 10: makes me feel really good to know that someone that
Speaker 10: I view as somewhat successful is still on their feet
Speaker 10: despite this, and it offers hope in that way. So
Speaker 10: I never really planned on being some sort of mouthpiece
Speaker 10: for it. I was just sort of whining on social
Speaker 10: media and then it kind of had this effect. So
Speaker 10: I'm like, oh, well, this is something so.
Speaker 7: Not only brave, it's a generous thing for you to
Speaker 7: do to help support others.
Speaker 8: So it's really meaningful that you did that.
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