This is pod Popular Podcast for the People, The Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate, the.
Great Love Debate. It's a great love to hi again, Everyone's Brian Howie. Welcome to the Great Love Debate, the world's number one dating a relationship podcast since twenty fifteen. I am here in the very fine and fancy studios of Pod Popular Podcast for the People. I am at the one in uh Cleve. I mean it's just outside of Cleveland. It's about ten miles from downtown Cleveland Lynnhurst, Ohio, and it is one of the newest ones.
It is in a lovely complex called Legacy Village.
And I gotta say, you know, you guys who listen to the show, you know, I'm always a fan of Cleveland. But when it is nice, which is not a lot, it's very nice. I say that about Chicago a lot that if it was seventy degrees everywhere for one day on that day, Chicago wins. It's not seven degrees nearly enough in Chicago or Cleveland.
So neither one of them win a lot.
But when they do, they do a little bit of a news dump here, and it's a little bit of a different show. I'm gonna explain some things and whatever. So, as you guys know, this podcast came out of the Great Love Debate Tour, and that tour came out of my book I wrote, called How to Find Love in Sixty Seconds that I no longer stand behind ninety percent of that book because I hadn't.
Done the tour yet.
So this the tour started January fourteenth, twenty fourteen, at the Center Stage Theater in Santa Barbara.
It was supposed to be a promotional stunt, a one night event.
To promote the book, and that was supposed to be it. I did not even host it. I was on the stage. My good friend and prolific best selling author Joe Piazza did the honors of hosting. I was just one of a handful of people on the stage. It was supposed to be just a quick little promotional stunt, talk about love,
dating relationships, and that would be that. Well, thatned into something else, and people heard about how it went in Santa Barbara, and so two weeks later I got booked at I think it was the Long Beach Performing Arts Center in Long Beach, California. And then I did another one, and then I thought, hey, maybe let's there's something here. And I started barnstorming pretty much city to city. I went to Boston, worked my way through the East Coast,
and one thing led to another end. And you know, eleven seasons of this later four hundred and fifty something live shows, and I think one hundred and sixty four cities, a dozen countries, we have done the Great Love Debate live show all over the world, thousands of people, thousands of laughs, perspectives that the famous and the not so.
Famous coming together to share.
Or look for something special, something great. And I always said my role in that show was to raise the questions and not necessarily give the answers, And even on this podcast, my job has always been to raise the questions. I just think for that live show and how long I've been doing it, and the and the toll that the travel takes, and I already travel a lot for
my regular life, I think it's time. I think that I need to step off the stage so the and I know people who listen to this podcast a lot are probably going to say that I have had more more finales than than Elton John.
But I think this really is it.
So I'm not sure how many shows I'm gonna do between between the time I'm recording this and the time of the last show, which I'm telling you right now, They're probably gonna be a couple more in there, because I owe some shows to some cities. But the last one, the tour finale, will be November sixth at the Boca black Box Center for the Arts in Boca Raton, Florida. So you might be like, that's weird. Why are you Why did you start in Santa Barbara and why'd.
You end in Florida? Well?
I like the sunshine, but why am I choosing to end it there. I've done more shows than anywhere in New York City. I have done residencies in Minneapolis, Chicago, La.
You know.
There's a lot of places where I have done bigger shows, more shows, you know, And this is I don't know. I think it's about three hundred and fifty seats. It's not our biggest venue. I'm not even sure it's my favorite venue. And I'm not even sure the best shows are in Florida because they are particularly nutty group there, and sometimes the conversation that happens at these shows get a little bit out of control. But why am I
picking to choose it there. The first time I played that theater, it was October twenty nineteen, and on my way to Lax out of Los Angeles to fly to that show, I had to do a news thing in the morning. I was on the back of a lift on my way, about two miles from the airport, and we got hit from behind. And it was just a terrible, terrible car accident. And if you go back to this podcast and listen to somewhere mid October, I did.
A podcast about it maybe a week later.
It was a really really rough time and rough set of injuries, but I didn't know how badly I was hurt, you know. I went in an ambulance, went to the emergency room. They're like, oh, maybe you.
Broke a rib, blah blah blah.
And I couldn't process the pain properly, and so I got back on an airplane the next day and I did a show forty eight hours later at that theater. I got on the stage after this awful car in unfathomable amounts of pain, and I had twenty one broken bones, as it turns out, thirteen broken ribs, broken leg, broken vertebrae, broken scapula internal injuries. But I was stupid and I was stubborn, and I didn't know how badly I was hurt. But I got through it. And I've probably played that venue,
I don't know, four or five times since. Maybe once a year I go back there, And until recently, I always had sort of a bit of PTSD every time I went back there, because I would remember that night and I remember the pain, and I thought I was just gonna die on a stage. But I never want to cancel a show, despite all those shows that canceled
on me during the COVID days. But and I did it, and I survived it, and I just think surviving that situation and that night gave me a warm sense of pride and fondness and gratitude for that theater and for that community and for that experience, and for doing the Great Love Debate in general.
Like I.
Just realized how much I enjoyed doing that show, that I was willing to do it no matter what. And you know, that was five something years ago, and probably haven't done as many shows since.
I know, I definitely haven't done as many shows since, because, as I just.
Said, the world shut down for a while kind of killed the momentum, But I'm like, you know, that was the hardest. People tell me all the time what was the hardest show to do? And they always ask me in terms of crowd, or in terms of feistiness, or in terms of location or whatever. That was the hardest show and that. But like I said, I don't look back on that badly. I look at back on that like we did this, and we meaning me, the crowd,
the people on the stage. I mentioned it at the beginning that I was kind of playing hurt and not medicated though I probably should have been, and the crowd got me through it, and the energy of what we do all of the time at the Great Love Debate got me through it. And I just feel really good, as you know I have I you know, sometimes record
this podcast that pod popular in Boca Riton, Florida. That was my first time in that city, and so there's a lot of things about that that I'm like, you know, what, if I'm gonna wrap that up, They've always been good to me. Wrap this tour up. That's where I want to do it. So that's where I'm going to do it. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about a few
more things. I would just want to open up with that I take a quick break because we still have to pay for things like airplane tickets to Pokerito in Florida to do shows, and we will be back right after this, and we are back, so you know, as I said, you know, my job was to raise the questions and not give the answers for the live show.
I think I have too many of the answers, not nearly all of the answers, like I will never have that, but I think enough of it that when I go into a city, if it's not a new city, I don't quite have as much curiosity on it as I used to. I sort of know where all the bodies are buried. Like if I do a show in Philadelphia, I know where a lot of the dating bodies are buried there, and not that that doesn't make it any
more fun and the audience obviously doesn't know. But a little bit of my mojo to work through is restricted
by the format of the evening. You kind of have to Every show is different, every crowd's different, every night's different, but there's certain beats in a theater show, comedy show, whatever you want to say that you have to beat so you have to get through so that you see that the show starts here and the show ends here, and you have to end in sort of a hopeful place despite ninety minutes of bitching and winding and dating disasters.
We have to get through it.
And like I said, I don't want to ever make it seem like everything is different, but a lot of the things that are raised hit a certain format. There is something to the show, and not that I'm ever restricted by that, because within that context it can go in any sort of direction. But I don't quite have the freedom. So people are like, well, how can you quit the live show? But you're still going to do
the podcast. The podcast allows anything to happen. And we have done slightly more podcast episodes than we have done live shows, which tells you how many live shows I did back in the day.
I was always on the road. But the podcast can talk about anything. I can talk about this.
I am not so restricted. I can talk to one person about one experience. I can do that, and you're not inhibited by people who paid, you know, fifty five bucks and two drinks to come see it live.
So that is the difference.
That that I feel uninhibited and I feel that there's no restrictions on this podcast, which is why this podcast is going to go as long as I forever. I mean, I'm never gonna gonna wanna stop talking about this stuff. People say that to me a lot, like do you ever run out of things to talk about on the podcast? No, I would be talking about this anyway. There's so many ways to skin this apple, and so many layers to
this and so many things to revisit. And the world changes all the time, and I change all the time, and and and and.
That's another part of it. You know.
Somebody said to me when I when I mentioned that everything I just brought about, like why I booked it in Bukton. I talked to it to the guy who runs the theater there. He's a really good guy, and I explained that to him and he goes, you're kind of emotional about this, and I'm like, I didn't have emotion, Sadly, before I started doing the Great Love Debate, I really didn't. I really lived in a emotionally walled off space and I was never too high and I was never too low.
And even when we started the Great Love debate. It was a lot more Jerry springerish, It was a lot more men against the women.
You know.
I produced a play once called Boys Dumb, Girls Crazy. It had a lot of elements of that in it, And early on, I think a lot of people left those shows, not that they weren't fun and funny, but feeling a little bit more validated in their misery. And I didn't want that. And somewhere along the line, I didn't make a con just changed to change it. I think I changed. I started to hear people sharing and revealing and talking about things, especially the men that I
was like, I'm the weirdo here. I'm the one who has not having proper relationships. I'm the one who who I was like a dating zzy girls like me, what's the problem here? I was the one who is not putting all my chips on the table and all of these you know experience I've had in relationships, and my various girlfriends would say like, you just don't understand what I'm talking about, do you? And I would answer and
I don't, I don't know what you're talking about. Well, doing the Great Love Debate made me understand.
It made me open.
Up and all of these people in all of these theaters and comedy clubs and live music venues all over the world, and we have done this show in Sydney and Tel Aviv and Mantra all and all kinds of locations. Made me have to go deeper and drove me into therapy and made me have to think what am I missing?
What am I not sharing? How am I not growing? What have I missed in my life? That was somehow unfulfilling. And that's what doing these shows did.
Just hearing people mestick a microphone in their face and say stand the fuck up. And I would say that I'm like, get the fuck up, Like, have you've been to one of our shows? I'm kind of a dick. But that's what you have to do to wrangle hundreds of people to reveal good, bad, funny, strange, painful in front of you know, they're dating peers.
For lack of a better term.
And that's not always easy for some people. Like we do shows in you know, a place like San Jose, California, or Silicon Valley or Portland or Seattle of course, where there's a lot of at best social, awkward and introverted to people who are not likely to share one on one, much less in front of people in the room. And I am pretty ballsy and a little bit alpha on
that I get the fuck up and share. And if they were willing to do that, and if I was willing to putting people in a position to say, you've got to talk about this in front of people.
Then I had to be willing to do that too.
And I couldn't just do that, you know, one on one or in the privacy of a therapist office. I had to reveal, you know, a lot of my own stuff I had, you know, you've heard me talk about in the past.
Uh.
You know, I never trusted my parents' love for each other, which means I didn't trust their love for me, which it means I didn't trust the concept of it.
So the fact that I'm doing the great love debate, a lot of that is rooted in all of this.
I got interviewed for for Nightline on ABC a couple of years ago, and uh, after the interview was over, the reporter, I forget her name, was it, Deborah Roberts.
Maybe she goes, can I ask you something?
And I said, yeah, and she goes, you talk about this as you know, you call the Great Love Debate the world's greatest social experiment on love, and it's in your press materials and all that, and I go, yeah, yeah it is, and she goes, is this whole thing
about you? And at first I thought that the answer to that felt too way, too self centered and if that was the case, but I had to think about it, and I'm like, I think this is about me, and I think raising the questions of everybody else really is about raising the questions of myself.
And so when I say that that I know the answer.
Is to a lot of the questions, well, I have had to do that work and I have had to answer. So if anybody asked me a question, you know, nine years ago or the beginning of this tour, I would have given him the answer most likely to elicit a laugh. I would have given them a snarky answer. People that would ask me then they would stand up in the show and they're like, how come you're not married yet? And I would say, the day's not over. That's a
fun answer, but it's not the real answer. It's because I wasn't willing to or able to or ready to or put it in a situation where I'm like, ah, this is what all of those people were talking about, this is what they mean, this is what this show means. And so doing this over and over and over in different cities and you know, different crowds, different types of places, and but the through line in it was everybody had
some fear, everybody had some pain. Everybody wasn't willing to go into that mental, physical, emotionally scary place outside of their comfort zone to seek the answers. And so this was me doing this. I spent you know, twenty something years in show business, writer, director, producer before I ever became the talent. And the Great Love Debate suddenly I had to be the talent. And you know, people ask me all the time like, oh, you've done stand up comedy.
No I have not performed, No I have not. I hid behind other people's talents and put my voice through words and screenplays and plays and TV shows. And I was never comfortable being out front, Like even said even the first Great Love Debate, it was never that.
And then.
The longtime producer of this show and maybe the smartest person and most in tune with who I am and what I'm doing. The two time Emmy Award winning Keko. She said, she forced me. She'sai' this is you. It's a great love to baby with Brian Howie, Like this is it. You've got to put your name to this, You've got to own this. You've got to understand that if you're asking this of other people, you have got
to be the conduit. And so a lot of times being the conduit, you know, that puts me in a position where I have to really think, and I have to really feel, and I have really and all these things that I never done. And you have a really nice life coasting around and especially in show business, without putting yourself in a position to get hurt, without putting yourself in a position to put.
All your chips on the table.
And doing the Great Love Debate has made me put my chips on the table. And because in order to be authentic for the audience and not just make them laugh, it's one thing to make people laugh, it's a whole other thing to make people think. It is hard to make people think, and it's another thing to make people feel. I to do all these things myself, and so that's what the Great Love Debate has done for me. So That's why I feel like, am I going to misdoing
this show? Every time I've said this before, like I don't want to do this show anymore, travel and then I do it and I'm like, oh my god, that was the greatest night. I can't believe that I would even consider not doing it anymore. I considered this. This is some thought going into this, or some timing going into this.
It's just time. You know. I wanted to be like, oh, last year.
Ten years, nice bookend whatever, and then you know, creeped into an eleventh because they call and they offer and stuff to turn down, money and opportunity. But I wanted to be honest about it, like this will be our last show. Barring changing my mind. The Rolling Stones are still going around. But so there might be some iterations of this. There might be some special live podcasts which
I will do. So I don't know if I'm completely putting down the microphone in front of crowd altogether, but this version of our traditional great love Debate show, it's time to put an exclamation point on the sentence. So I want to share that all of you guys are a larger Every single one of these episodes probably gets a larger audience than dozens of those shows combined. But I want to share it, so it's breaking news. I've
kind of hinted at it before. You guys know, at the end of these shows, I say, oh, my live tour schedule, check it out, and I'm not quite as enthusiastic about it where I used to rattle off the next fifteen shows in the various accents of the city that I was traveling to, like Boston.
But that's it. So this podcast.
Will continue, obviously over and over and over. Tickets around sale for that show and possibly some others in between.
Great Loovedebate dot.
Com, shoot me an email, Great Love Debate at gmail dot calm. If you make me an offer, I can't refuse to say no, you got to do one more show in Dallas.
I'll think about it. Please like, share, follow, and review this podcast.
Your reviews, even when I get off the stage, will always mean a lot in the podcasting ecosystem, because, as always at The Great Love Debate, we.
Never stopped making love. See you next time.
The Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate.
The Great Love Debate.
It's a Great Love Debate.