Rachel Bloom

The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now. It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me, buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones. I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but you should at least know what's happening, and it is. The tour kicks off late September and goes through the

Well, I've slapped on some makeup just before I came on here, so and I had a glass of wine last night, which to me is six glasses of wine because I have no tolerance, so that means a lot that I look fresh now.

You look great, and listen, I know what it's like to have a little kid. It's myke every time I see people and I'm in a hotel right now. When I see people in hotels with little kids, I always say, you get is anybody getting any sleep? And everybody I was like, no.

It's all encompassing. She wasn't asleepover last night. So it was nice to go out and come home and to be like, oh my god, there's no one. I don't have to care for anyone in this house. I mean, that sounds very mean because I still have a husband and a dog.

But to.

Not be responsible for someone's life for one night because even when you're off the clock, you're on the clock.

I was going to say, you probably woke up panicked in the middle of the night.

It was weird.

Yeah, I know, I know. I've done it myself. Hey, here's what I have to tell you. I'm a little angry. I'm a little angry at you.

Oh okay, okay, I'll take it.

Because because I'm watching death, let me do my spash. And you shouldn't make people cry and be scared in stand up comedy. That's I was scared. I had no idea. Like when the death thing stopped, I'm like, this is fucking with me. Man, I don't like, did the audience know that was going to happen?

No, no, it really. It really fucked with people.

When the show, when we started trying it out, it was called like Rachel try some new stuff out and sees what happened.

So people really had no idea.

And then, of course, you know the country we live in, we kept cutting down the time that we revealed it was a plant so that people wouldn't be worried for their lives because the.

Second someone say I'm death, you're like, well.

What so that was everything Like yeah, so that was also like, Okay, the second we're going to hear him heckel, but the second he says I'm deaf, let's get him on Mike, so you know something's up.

So that was something we worked on. But yeah, no, it fucked with people.

And then when we called the show death, let Me do My people still thought it was real, but they knew something would be off about the show, but they thought it was They thought it was real, and then they grew to not trust anything in the show to the point where I had actual weird things happened in the show and a couple of actual hecklers.

People assumed it was built in.

That's kind of great, though, isn't that. I mean, even I first became aware of your work with crazy ex girlfriend like most people, I think, and I always thought, like I remember first the first episode of that show, going the fuck is happening? Why? And then it took me on and I love that. It reminded me of you ever seen the movie Train Spoton? No, all right, well you should see it. You really like it. It's about It's an upbeat tale of heroin addiction in Edinburgh in the nineteen nineties.

Yeah, what I saw it a long time ago.

Yes, there's a scene in that movie where you and McGregor as a drug addict drops.

A a vial of heroin, a kind of anal heroine and put thing down a public bathroom and it's disgusting, but he knows the only way he can get the heroin.

Is put his hand into the horrible toilet to get the heroin. And then when he goes into the toilet, he goes all the way into the toilet and he's swimming in this beautiful ocean in this toilet, and they play Brian ENO's Deep Blue Sea and and it's so beautiful. And when I saw crazy ex Girlfriend, I thought, whatever mcguffin in the head of Irvin Welsh that created that story. You have that too, You know that that?

Oh well, thank you?

And I didn't and I didn't even need heroin.

Well, what I'm saying to you is maybe it's time, as your daughter gets a little older, maybe you start thinking about heroin, especially when she's on a sleepover. That would be that would be the time.

That's the one.

That's the thing.

But it's an interesting thing because I was very taken with the special. I I don't know.

That means a lot that I really obviously love you and respect you. That that means a lot to me.

Oh my god, no, it was. It's fantastic anyone who fucks with a genre that is tired anyway, and stand up comedy, there's too many people doing it. It's like it's everybody's playing CF and G on the guitar. It's it's like, it's stop it, stop it, stop it. And then somebody comes along and throws in a huge minor chord and a five eight drum thing, and suddenly the whole world opens up again, and I'm now enthusiastic again

Oh well that really means a lot to me. Thank you.

Well, it's the truth. And why was you paid a high price for it? Though? Like, yeah, when you talk about the death of Adam and the show, that to me is it's such a weird, a weird twist on the I don't mean, is it stand up comedy? Is that what it is?

It's like stand up.

I always say it's it's a stand up show wrapped in a storytelling show wrapped in a one act play kind of. So it's kind of kind of veers more into storytelling as it get, especially when I get into just like, all right, my character is talking about this for the first time, right, so it's like, okay, let's

It's also it's a very kind of horrible, uh convenient for story thing to event. I mean, it's a cataclysmic kind of because I've been you know, I've had friends that I obviously everyone hasn't, and I've been at two live births, both of my children. My god, they're so weird.

They're so weird.

It's like that weird kind of energy, like somebody's coming.

It's definitely and it's bloody, and it's there's nothing else in life that's a central life event where it's also going to be gory. Yeah, unless you have really good birthday parties, I guess, but it's like gruesomeness is part of it.

And so you're already in this.

Very fleshy, bloody place that feels very primal.

And there's poop too. Let's be honest, there's poop.

You know what.

I'm astounded with me there wasn't.

Poop, but oh stop, stop, you're amongst friends.

Of course, there was no one told me the nice to you, but maybe I would have been fine if there were. But you know, there's everything I mean, And there was a my husband was trying not to look, but there was a mirror on the other side of the room where you could see everything. And I didn't really see the birth because everyone was blocking it. But after she was born and they took her to the NICU and the placenta was still in, I caught a glimpse of open wound placenta umbilical court.

It was its unbelievable. Isn't that crazy? And everything I mean, clearly for a mother is physically astonishing for you know, change, But everything in my life changed, everything that my entire perspective the world changed when I became a father, and I you know, and I hear people say, oh, you know, like not having kids, and I'm like, funne, that's your choice. It's it's okay. But I always say, you know that all the great philosophers in history, none of them had children.

One hundred percent?

I mean I say a little in the special where you know, ever since I given birth, a story of a child being hurt anywhere messes with me. I got into it a little bit basically, yeah, like it kind of makes sense. I know, it's not technically true that like philosophers, all the great philosophers didn't have kids, because before you have kids, there is an impartiality that you can have on the world. There's a moral impartiality that you can have. There's this scene in the HBO show

I did? I loved that show.

So remember when it's like someone basically turns in the head of this rebel alliance in exchange for cancer medication for his brother, and he's like, I wanted to prevent a child from dying. And Melanie Lynsky's character goes, children die, children die literally all the time, this wasn't worth it. And before you have a kid, you can say that, right, there's a there's a certain amount you can zoom out from the world and look at history and say, yeah,

For I went to the Museum of Death, and I.

Was the Museum of Death in la where it's the most gruesome crime scene photo and it's just you're You're like, yeah, that is what it is.

And then I had a kid and it just blew that wide open.

There's no, there's no, it's it's so much harder to be impartial because you would do anything for this kid, and you would would Would I turn in the founder of a rebel alliance to get my child cancer treatment?

Fuck?

Yeah, in an absolute second. So you're led by your heart and emotion. And now the media that I can consume has come completely not completely, but it's really really done in almost one eighty where that's much. I'm just so much more sensitive and empathetic, but like in a in a painful way.

Yeah, I mean I can't watch I used to watch British detective shows about you know, Crumbly Detectives, and they have this thing going on with the Brittige a Law of Bridge detective shows that's the murder of a child. And I was like, I can't do it. I'm no, I'm no. Or a child is even missing, maybe the child's going to be okay, but you don't know, but the child missing, that's enough. I don't want to see it.

Yeah, it's that's what. It's not even And it's not even making me think in the way that dark that darker shit used to make me like okay, this is dark, but like, okay, it's teaching me a lesson. I'm so consumed by the emotion. I'm like, I'm not learning a lesson from this right now.

Yeah, it's funny that as well. I think even when I when I have dark thoughts about my own mortality, and I thought, well, par no die now, because I would really upsett the kids. It's like, I'll be fine, but whatever happens to me happens to me.

But I would be Oh, you start to have this narrative of like, oh, yes, sometimes when I get on a plane alone and I'm like, oh, this is the movie in my daughter's life where it's the last time she saw her mom.

Oh I do right, because they do that in.

So many where it's like, oh, this is the last time and this is the story she's going to tell herself now where it's like, goodbye, I'm going to Vegas. And then it's like and I never saw her again.

So you're telling me you left your daughter to go to Vegas. What Vega?

I did go to Vegas alone a couple of weeks ago. That is true, Navy.

I did.

There was a skeptic There was a convention of skeptics, and my friend was speaking at it, and I and I went for literally a night.

First of all, I have to take you back because I need to know what happens at a convention of skeptics and why they would meet in Las Vegas to gamble. That seems like a contradiction.

Okay, So the Vegas, as far as I can tell, Vegas is just where you meet because they have good convention centers and it's well, it's not even somewhat central. It's still West Coast.

I don't know.

But it was a convention for the Center for Inquiry, held at the Horseshoe, Las Vegas, and it was just a bunch of panels.

And speeches about science.

And skepticism and I'm I'm really really into this and I'm I'm a I'm a big old skeptical atheist. And it was like absolutely, my jam and my friend Rena was there speaking about she's really really good. She's actually a book called The Gospel of Wellness that's awesome about the pseudoscience of the wellness industry and why we and why we turned to pseudoscience and why even now with all the information on the Internet, people are still so mired in false truths.

And also, yeah, have you ever read The Demon Haunted World? Yes?

I have. It's fantastic because it's it's unbelievable.

Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World for those who haven't read it.

And I still think about I still think about the thing he says, which is, you know when people talk about and this is more about paranormal phenomena. But he's like, all right, so imagine your.

You're in a house.

You're looking at a glass sliding door, and there's a fireplace behind you. During the day, you would see the backyard. During the day, the sun starts to set. Suddenly what you see is the reflection in the glass of the fireplace behind you. But you've been looking out the window all day, so it just looks like suddenly there's a fire outside. And he compares that to the ways our brain tricks us into thinking we might be seeing things that aren't there and hearing things that aren't there.

I still use that as an example.

There's a quote that he does at the start of the book which I think is fantastic. He's talking about a taxi driver that he gets who's asking him about, so, where is Atlantis? You're Carl Sagan, where's Atlantis? And he's like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about, you know, the city under the sea. And he's like, I'm you know. But he then he goes into a quote from Leon Trotsky, who, to be honest, not my favorite guy in the world.

Oh it's all I mean to put it bluntly, to make me sound like I'm ninety. We weren't ready for the Internet.

Anyone's I'm not ready for it.

Not I'm not ready because it's takes advantage of tribalism, which is which is in us. Like, I think I might be wrong, but I feel like I read somewhere the reason Homo sapiens is the dominant, you know, the only dominant kind of species of our kind, is because we just killed everyone else because it was you know, the Neanderthals were wiped out, we.

Killed I think that I also heard that same study, though I also heard that we actually just shagged the Neanderthals and we're all like their genes stopped coming through and everybody got their sex on and the humans came through more. You almost sapiens came through more than Neanderthals. But I might have just been looking at completely erroneous report or amazing.

Maybe it's a beautiful mix.

I think it might be a little bit of both, a little call them be. But let me take you back to Las Vegas, because it's to to me because I don't think I know enough about skeptics modern skepticism, and I would like you to take me through it.

Well. I think it's still finding of what is it general generationally now because I would say it was overwhelmingly a lot of people who are Gen X or boomers, And there's a lot of skepticism that's still about UFO paranormal debunking because because it's very much in it's very much in conversation with with like New Age stuff that came about in like the sixties the seventies, right, So UFOs are less of a thing now, But if you were born in the fifties, you know Roswell like, there's

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there's a lot of parallel with that with what's going on with now the Manisphere. I don't know if you've heard about the manisphere, which is like it's it's like I feel like Joe Rogans like kind of a part of this whe where it's just like all of these things you can do to make yourself as manly as you can.

Like people are drinking their piss.

Uh.

There's this one guy who's like people are fully drink people are fully drinking their own fermented piss because they're like, this will make you man this will make you like manly, and it's also why people are It kind of goes into people are chewing really tough gum to get a chiseled jaw, Like that's a big thing now to like look as manly as possible and it's just the kind of flip of the Gwyneth Paltrow stuff where it's like pseudosciencey stuff to be the best that you can be

I'm I'm fucking shredded.

And then it turns out he's doing a lot of steroids.

Yeah exactly.

But it's the same thing where it's on the female pseudo science and where it's like, you know, I only eat grass and spring water. Also I can afford a trainer six times a week, So that's the bigger that's the probably the bigger thing.

But that does not plato archetypes. Those things plea into archetypes ofticsthatics as well, like the you know, like if a square jaw makes you more mad. But you know, David boy was a man, Andy Warhol is a man, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a man. You know, there are there are men who look different. I mean, I guess it's like to look like a cartoon man.

Maybe to me, I think it well, it all looks. It also relates to a lot of the cultural thing of like men need to serve themselves, men need to be masculine. It's a thing that's I think more on more on the what you would call the right, although I don't even know what that means anymore, but the idea of like men need to be men and women need to be women, and the world will be more organized once men are empowered again to embrace their true power,

See that's interesting because I my definition of masculinity is like aspirational masculinity for me as a man is individualism is fuck you, you know. This is how we all have to be. Fuck you, It's how we have to beat This is how I am. You know. So if I'm like and your label beat a coup, fuck your beat a cup label, I'm a man, you know, and I kind of I don't like to allow people who have a different view of the world than me to give me a name that I then have to adopt.

Oh, you know, that's all the internet is. Yeah, No, all the Internet is people giving other people.

Names that you have that you have to take. And I think if you have if you have a name, no matter what part of the spectrum you're on the political sphere, you and if you have a name for a group of other people, you need to take a fucking look yourself, because people are people. And I think that that's what fascinates me is that I always thought the Internet was a bit like show business, that it's it's only dangerous if you take it seriously, you know.

I really love and crazy ex girlfriend.

We did a whole story about a character getting sober, and we actually watched some of your work in the room. You did a great monologue. It was when Britney Spears was your melt down, and because we were talking about what you learn in AA and and and to be non judgmental and how and that you were saying, like, I don't want to say she's not cool.

I don't.

I don't judge, I don't I don't want to say what she is, and I just love I don't know, I really see that that kind of non judgmental space and what you're saying right now, and and uh, it's just really cool. It's really cool to see like evolved recovery and how it continues to clearly like affect your worldview in all sorts of awesome ways.

I think that it's the idea of it, thank you. But I think the idea of it is that the idea of evolution, I think has It's interesting. You know, people say that the evolution and I think this is part of this masculine thing right now that you know, the strongest survive, and that's not true. The strongest don't survive. Mammoths are plenty strong. Sabertooth tiger's strong. You know, it's not about strong, it's those who adapt survive. If you

Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't know, you know, but you know better than better than me if that was her, but but that, but yeah, that's a really good Has anyone.

Else made that point?

Oh, I'm sure you're not the first.

Person to point out that adaptation is actually a better quality than just brute strength, because yeah, like the reason that mammals uh became superior and that there was like mammalian supremacy in the first place is because when the asteroid hit and killed off the dinosaurs, all these little moles were living underground, right, And so that's why now we're here, and that's why mammals rose to the top.

You know, I've had a few nights. Yeah.

I was also going to say, if you asked certain corners of the internet, they'll say, well, okay, a lot of people I don't know.

I mean, I think it's quite interesting because it also depends on your idea of what success is like, is your success as a species? Is it numbers? Is it sheer numbers because of it as ants when you know? Or is it? Is it? Uh? Is it intelligence? Is Is it a soul? Is there a soul? I mean, what did the skeptics say about the soul? Is there is there a soul?

I mean I think that the skeptics are it's all about kind of always searching. That's the get that's the That's the thing that I always take from the skeptic community is it's always searching for the truth. So soul, No, I mean, there's never been any It's all evidence based, right, So there's no there never really been any evidence of a soul.

A lot of what you're saying.

Also, the keynote speaker of the night I was there was Neil de grasse Tyson, and a lot of what you're saying is exactly what he was saying. He's like, all right, so if aliens came and they wanted to talk to to, uh, you know, the smartest animal, how would they gauge that we don't have the biggest.

Brains of any animal? On Earth.

He started to go through, what are the animals with the biggest brains? And he's like, okay, well let's say we're looking at brain to body ratio. We're not the animals even with the you know, biggest brain to body ratio. And so he's really started breaking it down about how objectively unspecial human beings are. If you were, if you were an alien species looking down, it doesn't That was his.

Whole agree that luisy k has a great counter to that, which is humans removed themselves from the food chain. So that's pretty impressive, like for most of history humans died Like, ah, yeah, it doesn't. That doesn't happen really anymore. It's we're parefully capable destroying ourselves. But it's you know, and then actually, if you think about it, maybe he didn't. I mean look at COVID for example with Adam. You know, it's like fucking plague comes, it comes, So.

Maybe that's nothing, there's nothing you can do. It's why what is it?

Is?

The movie The Storm, The Sword and the Stone, there's a there's a it's you know, it's animated movie. It's King Arthur and Merlin. There's a wizard fight and the way the wizard fight culminates, I want to say, is they're like turning into one's a dragon, the other turns into a bear. And finally Merlin disappears and he's become a virus. Oh, and he just gets the other wizard very sick because he's like, this is actually the most powerful thing.

Yeah it maybe that was like the Last of Us when they do that at the beginning of it, when they're doing that show. But Fungus in the nineteen.

Seventies, that was such a good cold open to acknowledge, Yeah, I know we're in a pandemic, but there's actually something there's actually something worse.

That was a.

Chilling way to open a shew, How do you deal with that?

Now that I'll tell you what I'm leading up to. I had to adapt my entire Velt Arm show. My entire worldview had to change when I became a parent, because now there was someone who marred more than my feelings on Earth. And it continued with my second child, and I think that it led me in a very

No? No, oh you have to put Oh my.

God, it is amazing, amazing. But all I became much more interested in in the un evidence, in the in the lack of evidence, than in the evidence. And I think it came from that moment of being at my first live birth apart from my own, which I don't remember, but that weird moment where it all there's there's no words for it. I don't even think. There's just some kind of weird gap in the universe. And then somebody

Oh that's interesting, Yeah, so I'm not there. I think that I see it more as my emotions, in my empathy have been just cracked open in a way that makes it very hard for me to be totally objective and totally impartial. But for me, I guess the thing with looking for evidence based stuff and this might just be really personal to me is the part of the reason I'm interested in all of it In skepticism, and you know, the search for the truth is I want someone to find the proof of the mystic and I'm

But that's a beautiful mind to have. That's a that I think is is is a spiritual hunger, which is was my own particular brand. I don't know if I was ever an atheist. I think I probably was at one point. And I'm certainly not you know, a flagwave and drum beaten organized religion person. I can. I'm not good at joining groups of people. I couldn't even join in a group of late night hosts and there was only like seven of us, so I like, I don't want to be part of your fucking gang. It's like

This is where you get into, like the idea of atheism being a form of spirituality is controversial. But when I really kind of became an atheist, what it what it actually meant for me was really what I would say is, I'm a practical atheist, theoretical agnostic. I live my life as if there's nothing, as if no one's looking out. If I fuck up, it's not the universe teaching me a lesson. It's like, no, maybe I just

What I'm doing. And we talked earlier about lessons of sobriety or recovery. And if there's one thing I learned that I think has been pivotal for me and this, and it sounds like you are capable, not capable. You do this too at at a far younger age than I ever got hold of. It was it seems to me that too many people, most people are not willing to make themselves the villain of their own story everyone,

I get it.

I don't have I have so many other parts of me that want to be a good person that have nothing to do with heaven.

Oh well, agree, I don't mean that. I don't mean like getting the books right so you get into heaven I get. I mean getting the idea that there is a that there is a I don't want to get to one of these. I'm not saying, oh well, if you don't believe in God, you're going to run around killing people. That's nonsense. But what I mean is it helps I don't know, it helps me imagine that there

Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question of and one that I'm sure is still trying to figure out for my own family. Of Okay, if you live your life not religiously, where does a moral compass come from? Where do you get a sense of right and wrong? And do you need God for a sense of right and wrong? For me?

I don't.

I don't know if you do. I think that we just have so many societal structures that are set up you thousands of years of people philosophizing and thinking of morality in the context of different spiritualities, and a lot of it is not and very little moral compass that we're kind of taught that isn't based in some sort of spirituality. So I'm still navigating, Okay, how do you how do you teach someone a sense of right and wrong?

Out in one in one and I don't want to and I.

Don't want to do that, but I think that that's a real debate, and it's it's what a lot of religious people would say, well, we're you know, when you take religion out of society, you miss some moral companies. And I don't think that's necessarily the I don't think that's the case. But that is a debate of what we'll ground yourself in.

I guess there are people who if they you know, I'm not one of them. I don't think you're one of them. But maybe there are people who, if they didn't have their you know, their accounts to settle in heaven, they would run around killing people. And that's the reason why they don't.

So which may be scary, which is just so, which soide I am so less scared of the idea of someone going around who doesn't murder people, who who if you really press them, they'd be like, no, I could murder someone to get away with it. I I just don't want to murder people. That scares me a lot less than someone who's like, oh boy, if they're if they there weren't God, I would be killing everyone. That's horrifying.

There's a horrifying thing.

I don't think there's not many of those though, there's not many, but all you need is a few to be you know, serial killers.

Well there's that, but then you get the people are like, oh, well I got to kill these people because God wants me too. There's there's those speaking too.

Well and they're taking that and they're taking out whatever is messed up in their head, you know, but it's it's uh, it's righteousness. Yeah, I mean, this is stuff that I'm actively thinking about and going through, especially since having a kid. But for me, I guess, like, what, guys, my moral compass is, how do you spread joy not pain? How How do I not cause pain even though at the center of life is.

Pain.

I Mean, something that I've been really thinking about lately is the way that living being survives to consume other living beings. Even if you're a vegetarian, you're eating plants. Plants are alive. So that's weird that in a if this were a moral just world, the fact that not only are we supposed to eat things that are alive to survive, but that then everything alive has pain receptors, and even plants, even plants have like plants have a way of sending out distress pulses.

Right, So, even though that fundamental of life.

To me seems really morally contradictory, I'm just trying to cause people the least amount of pain is possible. And Patton Oswald is a great special I don't know if you saw it shortly after his wife died.

Oh yeah, yeah yeah.

And she says, and she was I think very much what sounds like an atheist or agnostic, And she just always said, it's chaos, be kind, And I like, I think I still think about that sometimes. I think that's such a beautiful way to view the world and kind of how I see the world, where it's like it's it's just chaos.

Just be kind, you know. I feel like that that is it. That's the only way too. It's hard to be kind when you know it's I think it's easy. It's for me. I find it easy to be kind when people are worthy of petty, but when they're worthy of anger, it's harder for me to be kind to people I feel angry with. Oh yes, it's much more of a challenge, and people I don't necessarily love or love how they they love. It's tricky.

I am so I'm not an aggressive driver, but I'm a judgmental driver where if someone doesn't signal or cuts me off, all just what do you do? You know, to the point where my four year old has heard me criticize people enough that she's like, Mama, you should have your own driving school where people can learn how to drive like you.

And I was like, you know what they should?

So I I was like, that's really and so now and but now it's gone. It's become kind of in our family a running joke of my kind of Soviet re education camp where I force people to learn about all sorts of different polite things that we've forgotten in society, like no cutseas is really important to me. Very so I'm as much as I want to spread kindness, I'm also very petty.

I think maybe you're just human and we're all a duality. What I always circle right back around. I seem to always come back around to Carl Jung. Every time I wander off and Nanny directs and any other directions, I come back to Carl Jung, who seemed to kind of grab it all for you know, all into one place, mysticism and science and you know, and the human experience. I really kind of get that. Do you ever you ever read any or or have you ever come across the Red Book or anything like that.

No, it's been a minute.

Actually I did a lot of where we read a lot of Freud in school, and so I'm behind on my young.

It's funny Freud. I mean, obviously, you know, an innovator.

Oh so many no, no, so many holes to poke. I took a class in Freudian Freudian psychoanalysis for some reason in school, and I really and then I had my first therapist was was a therapist who was then training in psychoanalysis. So I know a lot more about the kind of almost simplistic Freudian view of things than I do about the Youngian view. Uh it's on my to do list.

Well, they I mean, they famously uh kind of split up. It was a h John Lennon Paul McCartney moment with those two. But I kind of I veered towards Young. I can't I can't make Freud work for me much. But the discovery of things is important. And you know he did, he did discover a law of techniques. He moved things forward. He wasn't really it wasn't the be all and and all.

But no, and he didn't believe in clits.

Yeah, that's that's a real.

No, it's a whole there's a really fucked up story.

It was.

Oh, this story from like the twenties. There's this princess. She was a great she was like a grandniece of Napoleon Bonaparte. She was very rich, and she got in with Freud and she was obsessed her whole life that she never had a vaginal orgasm. And Freud was like agreed, like because he basically believed that clittoral orgasms, which is scientifically where all orgasms come from.

By and the woman, we're immature.

And so this woman had numerous this is in like the twenties, surgeries to try to make her vagina closer to her clitterists. And this was all urged on by Sigmund Freud. It's nonsense, it's absolutely n So there was there was a lot of of bullshit.

You've talked a little bit in your life about mental health and and kind of dealing with your own struggles. I mean, as I have myself, I've talked a lot, but like when I go sober, I thought everyone's going to be great, it doesn't really work out that way. I mean that there's it's kind of an ongoing struggles to It requires vigilance. Do you still find yourself in that place today? Do you still kind of Oh, it's a journey.

It's a journey.

I'll never be I'll never be over because there's two things. There's my own mental health and then you know, the mental health of others. And I've dealt with people close to me going through mental health health issues, and Okay, how much do you help or do you put up boundaries?

That's hard and that's you.

Know, you can only control what you can control. But no, it's an ongoing thing, especially as just the world continues to get more complicated, not only becoming a parent, but as frankly the Internet gets scarier.

And weirder and weirder.

Like I'm never going to be like, yeah, I got nothing else to solve with my mental health.

This is why when you said that thing about the Internet and the world getting weirder and stuff, I feel this is why. I mean, people that listen to this podcast, probably sick of me here and as sick of me saying it. But that's why I get so obsessed with these gour Vidal historical novels, Julian the Aposta creation, the Seven Narratives of Empire that you wrote about the United

Oh, I got to Oh, I've got to get into these.

You have to because it's it's face timing your way into the past. He was a fucking genius, Vidal. I met him towards the end of his life and I hadn't read a thing he had read at that point, and I feel like I really missed an opportunity to I don't know, grovel or something. I don't know that it would have made any difference to him, but his work is is unbelievable. He's an unsung American genius. I know a lot of people are into him, but he should be far more to the forward of thinking.

Now, that's very calming to me, just hearing you say it's always been a shit show, is really it's fucked up? I find that really calming, that this is just.

This is life.

I think coming up during the nineties, which people called the end of history, right, there was something about like, well, we're finished, nothing else to see here, nothing else to do here, which was kind of the narrative of I don't know. I think that maybe a child's perceived narrative of the late nineties and then being launched into this century with anything but calm, just to remember, like, no, it's actually chaos is the norm.

Totally comic the United States, you know, Aaron Burr shoots and kills Alexander Hamilton and goes on trial while he still the vice president, goes to New Orleans, tries to raise an army to become the Emperor of fucking Mexico. Right, this is all going on. What we've got right now is kind of mid range crazy. Wow, you know.

About the Emperor of Mexico thing.

Oh girl, it was fucking nuts. And then you know, don't get me started on Thomas Jefferson, how crazy that fucking shit was, and then the and Burr was Jefferson's vice president of Oh my God, and then McKinley getting shot at the start of the twentieth century, and Teddy Roosevelt, who was his vice president coming in all that crazy shit that was going on, William Randolph Hurst getting blamed for inciting the assassination of McKinley and losing his chance

I love that quote.

I think that that's the way I find it. Very comforting and well, meticulously recepched, genius written historical fiction but based in real fact.

Well, I gotta, I got, I gotta get into that, because I even though I'm not a mental health professional. I can't help but see people's unresolved issues and personality disorders everywhere, right, and it's just like, oh, yeah, that's the brain chemistry that's been fucking people up and causing dictators and wars for the past ten thousand years. Totally, totally, and not to blame mental illness on people being bad, which is a whole other debate.

I just want to say it's complicated.

Well yeah, but you know there are things like let's take Henry the Eighth, right, Henry the Eighth, who for a long time is like a fairly stayed nothing much going on monarch in England. Everything's pretty state, has a jousting accident. It won't heal. He starts getting a little he starts getting a little crazy, he's putting on way decides that you know, his wife of twenty years, it's her fall, and that whole period of his six wives

So it was like maybe concussion from a jousting accent or something. I think it was really interesting.

They reckon he was probably type two diabetes and he had all sorts of I mean, for a while they thought it was syphilis, they thought it was something else. But a lot of his behavior was brought on by the physicality of his changing body, you know, through the course of his life. And I think that that, you know, to come back to the skeptics confidence a little bit.

This is amazing. I'm honestly gonna read that might be next on my reading list.

Oh, I can't recommend it highly enough. Start with either Julian, the Apostate, Burr or Creation.

Oh okay, great.

They're all fabulous. It was great to talk to you that, especially yours is a fucking masterpiece. How dare you?

Thank you?

But other than that, I remain a fan.

Oh my god, you're the best. Thank you for having me.

God bless you. Talk to it for to paper for two