This is pod popular podcast for the people, The Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate.
Great Love Debate. It's a great loved Hi again everyone, it's Brian Howie. You welcome to The Great Love Debate, the world's number one dating and relationship podcast since twenty fifteen. You get just me today. Some of you like that, some of you roll your eyes. Well, you're all here, so gather around and stay for a bit it uh.
I was thinking about that the other day because I was producing some podcasts and helping some podcasters, and it took me almost one hundred episodes of this show before I was able to do one by myself, or I was able to stand on my own two feet, and even quote unquote felt able is probably a bit of a stretch. Somebody back then, I don't know, five years ago, canceled at the last minute, and I was sort of thrown into the deep end and I just had to
wing it. And some of you at that time actually gave me positive reinforcement and the kind of feedback that I was looking for, that you liked it and you were along for the ride, even if it was just the two of us. So I always needed at that time, back in the day when I had the sort of the early feeling out of.
The Great Love Debate podcast.
I always had my engineer Kalin through the glass and my producer Kko was around for most of them, and I had this sort of revolving rotation of mostly female voices. I had Jilly, and I had Kate, and Christina Webber did a bunch and Laurel did a whole lot of shows. And I just think I needed someone to play off and I needed someone to say right or you know too, and I needed them to hit the ball back. So that was probably more about my insecurity than about creating
great content. But that was me then and that was us then. And I think I needed a reaction, and the easiest and most tangible reaction was always laughter. I needed someone to laugh. And back when I used to direct a lot of theater, there was always some funny elements to it, and a lot of the actors and actresses would would come off the stage and they'll be like, they're not laughing.
I didn't see them laugh, and I was.
Always tell them to relax, because you know, that doesn't mean they weren't absorbing or appreciating the material if they weren't overtly laughing. Some people just aren't comfortable laughing.
In a theater.
I know that when we do our tour shows, it sounds differently when we do it in a live music venue versus when we do it in a comedy club versus we do it in a theater. Some people just aren't comfortable laughing in a theater, so I told them not to worry about that. But I needed that in this podcast. Back then, I needed someone to laugh, even if they're just behind the glass. But as we got deeper into these shows and sort of this collective journey,
I think I wanted us all to think. And I used to tell the actors and actresses back then, if you had four or five hundred people in a theater and they were all thinking about something that collectively, that sound, that sort of were metaphorical sound of people thinking was louder than any reaction I thought you were going to get if people were just laughing. So as I get into this and what I want to talk about today,
it's not that the laughter fades into the background. It's that it needs, I think, to be more of a more of a side course and not totally the driving impetus, but behind these conversations.
So what triggered all of this?
On this sunny morning as I record this, I am here in the very fine studios of pod popular podcasts for the people. I am at the one in Scottsdale, Arizona. And if you have listened to this podcast before when I've been recording in Scottsdale, you know that I love being in Scottsdale. I love almost everything about Scottsdale. I love that I can just say scott and not have to say Arizona. And people are like, oh, I know Scottsdale because it's not.
That big a place.
People know it are there about fifty days a year when you or me should not come to Scottsdale because you would not love Scottsdale.
Probably Scottsdale in July and August.
Is no picnic, but the rest of the time Scottsdale And you're like, I didn't tune into the Great Love Debate podcast to listen to the Greater Phoenix Area Board of Tourism. I get that, but it leads a little more into what I want to get into.
On a deeper level.
And sometimes we go into a deeper level around here who knew back in the day when we were just chuckling through the glass.
So what do I love about it here?
And how will that get into what I want to talk about today? And somebody asked me that what do you love about Scottsdale? Are you a fan of the desert? You love cactus? Do you love you know, indigenous creatures that live here? And I'm like, I love it because it's silly. And I'm not sure the Chamber of Commerce wants to lead with that. They probably want us to focus on the vibrancy of the desert and the history
of the Old West and the Gulf and whatever. But really, the thing that makes this place this place is how silly it is. There are now the third most bachelorette parties in the country here, and at some point, as I record this pretty early in the morning, a group of girls is going to pedal buy on a bike, sucking on drinks and wearing matching T shirts and go
whoo as they ride by. Bachelorette parties are about being silly, and dating is about being silly, which is why I love all of this, the dating conversation and the Scottsdale. They both have a heaping quotient of silly, and they should first and second on the bachelorette party list. Vegas and Nashville two places that I also love and two places that are about as silly as.
You can get, and I like those places.
Beverly Hills is a silly place, Boston is a silly place. Miami, Atlanta, And that all bodes well for the dating landscape. People that show places that show up year after year on our worst cities in America to find loveless they lack that, they lack that sense of silly. Philadelphia, It's dreadful, dour, Denver, dull is dirt, Seattle, San Francisco, New York. And you might be like, no, New York is wonderful. It can be, and it has been. It's got plenty of wonder There's
plenty of wonder in New York City. But I think it lacks whimsy. And nineteen sixty three New York, you know, Audrey Hepburn, New York.
Maybe, and whimsy is rooted and silly.
And you're like, well, we're talking about silly for forty five minutes. Today I'm like, not quite so We're gonna go down the rabbit hole on all of this and what it's about and what it ultimately means after this quick break, So stick with me. The answers are just sixty seconds away at most, I promise, and we are back.
And why do I bring up all this besides being amused by some drunk girl in a bad wedding veil sucking on a penis stra at eleven o'clock in the morning, Because one of the things that comes up the most at all of our live shows for years and years, hundreds of shows, is the women saying over and over that they need a guy who is funny.
Funny.
Funny is first on the list for the majority of women what they're looking for, above smart, above stable, above wealthy, above handsome or kind or anything else. Funny overwhelmingly is what they say they want. And my first instinct is to defend that, because by any objective standard, I'm pretty fucking funny, and I get paid a lot of money by top comedy clubs in the world to go there
and make people laugh for ninety minutes. But part of me wasn't ever completely comfortable leading with the funny, or at least putting it, you know, sort of first on my metaphorical resume, more deep therapy here. Because my parents thought funny was quote unquote a waste of my smarts
and that only only serious people can be successful. And when someone would ever say to me in life ort one of my shows, they go, oh my god, you're so funny, I would flinch a little because I would hear their voices, Mom and dad, this is a waste of your time and our money. But a second part of me, when it comes up at the shows, I react to a little differently, in the sense of to defend the guys, or to look out for them at least.
But what if he's not funny? Then what Because these guys are sitting there in the audience and they hear women, it's sort of like the tall thing they you know, the women say, oh my god, I need a tall guy, and half the room is under five to nine, and they're like, what am I supposed to do with this information? Well, the same thing happens with funny. The women say I want funny, I want funny. I want funny, so I hear,
and I'm thinking of the guys. Well then what so I tend to scratch a little deeper on it, and it kind of reveals itself that it really isn't about funny, not entirely. You guys have heard me say over and over that every woman only wants three things, and every woman wants the same three things, and everything else is just a subset of, or tangential to tangential English major. Everything else is just a subset or tangential to these
three things. She wants a man who makes her feel special, she wants a man to make her feel sexy, and she wants a man to make her feel safe. And safe is always the tough one. It's about trust and sharing and honesty and strength and vulnerability and all the things that don't come readily or easily to a man. And the funny can give those Being funny can make her feel special, and it can make her feel sexy,
for sure. The laughing triggers all kinds of things, but I'm not sure it can make her feel safe, and safe is the most important one. So you're like, where are you going with this? I'm going back to the silly. The silly's different from funny, and I'm gonna make the argument that silly of all things can make you feel safe, and you're what you're like. What silly is not about is about not taking things seriously. It's about being foolish.
It's about using poor judgment. These girls that are a ride by and go wooh, lots of poor judgment in their immediate future. But I think silly can calm you. I think it can ground you. Silly can make you forget a lot of stresses. Silly comes from the creating of an environment between two people where confidence can flourish and your cares won't overwhelm you, and they might even disappear.
So I bring up Adam Sandler a lot in this podcast, because Adam Sandler gives a lot of guys a lot of hope for acting a certain way and getting a certain result in his movies. But he doesn't get the girls at his rom comms when he is funny, it's usually funny in the first part. He gets them when he turns into silly, because silly is one step from being sweet, and the silly leads to a song, and
the sweet is what wins the day always. And you're like, are you adding silly and sweet to your holy trinity of special, sexy and safe. I'm not, but I'm saying that those two things are at least a big part of the ingredients. It isn't necessarily about funny getting her to laugh. It's getting her to smile, which we've done whole episodes about. It's getting her to calm, it's getting her to be distracted in a good way. I think it's getting her to relax. I think it's getting her
to share. And I think it's get her to see more of you and I think more of herself. And it's about remembering what it's like to behave and act and feel and think in a way that it doesn't matter what anyone else thought of her, only what you think of her in the best possible way. Giggling is silly,
and giggling is sweet. If you can't make her laugh, and many many guys cannot make her laugh, that doesn't make you ineligible to her, despite what she claims or publicly says that our shows or really thinks, because she hasn't really thought it through. And if she thinks it through, she'll want you to be confident.
And calming and caring.
And present, and she wants you to create this atmosphere where she can be herself, which is always on her very best day, in the very best light, probably a little silly.
Which is why people love it here. The Scots dazzle.
That's why these girls are going around this town and having such fun and feeling so free. It's not about the boys, and it's not about the marriage to calm and the life ahead and the realities of the future. It's about being in the moment, and in the moment, being silly almost always wins. The silliest group of girls, I think are probably eleven and twelve, that little window right before the boys come into play and the stresses of life, and they just like, what are they doing?
That doesn't really go away. Later in life, you still have that part in you. You just turn it off.
And so when I'm talking about being silly, it's a weird time where something can be both liberating and grounding simultaneously. It's liberating that you can be and do anything you want without fear of judgment or the specter of regret. And it's grounding because it's rooted in who you always were, your core, your essence, and those feelings. So are you like, are you saying laughter doesn't matter of course not. I'm
saying being funny isn't necessarily about being funny. So this is partially to get the girls to think what is it really about? And it's partially to give the guys some hope that if they aren't clever and witty and full of great jokes and lines, that they still have a shot if they can tap into the silly. That doesn't mean they need to dress like a clown. It's more likely to frighten her. And that doesn't mean they need to tickle her and unexpectedly she would hate that.
Don't do that.
It might just be taking her hand and twirling around on the sidewalk in the middle of nothing. Or it might be taking two oranges in the grocery store and turning them into giant eyeballs. She'll laugh, She'll she'll think you're an idiot, but you'll find it silly and you rolled your eyes. Ladies when you're listening to that, but you know you'd smile and you'd probably even laugh.
The silly is a gateway to that too.
It might mean doing a bad attempt at an accent for no real reason. Bad accents are silly. My producer Keko back in the day. She'd always say, please stop doing your Bosston accent.
It's terrible.
But she'd always be on the brink of cracking up every time I try it, because it was silly, and I think silly wins the day. So if you weren't born funny, there probably isn't a path to be funny unless you go down a really dark path, because lots of funny comes from those shadows, and lots of comedians are absolutely miserable, and you don't want that and you don't want them. So taking a stand up or a improv class definitely worth it. Everybody should do it because
it'll help your confidence and communication hugely valuable. But it's not going to make you funny. You're probably not suddenly going to be funny at forty years of age, forty five years of age, but at twenty five or thirty five or forty five or seventy five.
You can be.
Silly because you are silly, because you were born silly.
We all were.
I think the giggle is still there. I think the impishness. I think the smile and the imagination, and people are always like, well, who's creative person?
How do you be creative? We all are.
If you can dream, and we all dream, you have imagination. The things that your imagination comes up with while you're asleep, you have those, and that's what you have to work with and you can put it to work.
That's silly. So every time you say, ladies, you.
Want funny, I think you really want that feeling you had with your girlfriends, either recently or long ago. You know, Alanis Mori set went on a tour I think last summer, and a lot of women I know were like, oh my god, I can't wait to go that. It wasn't about Atlantis. It was about reliving a time in the nineties when.
They just could do anything.
And it's the same way people of all ages sing their asses off at a Taylor Swift concert, or they spent a ridiculous amount of time worrying about what was happening with Ross and Rachel back in the day or whatever the characters are on Big Bang Theory.
Then I don't watch, but a lot of people do.
And you absolutely would want love to share some of that feeling, those feelings with a guy, one guy, the Taylor Swift and the friend stuff, but the feeling how ridiculous it all is to care. If you care that much, it feels silly, that's a good thing. That's what you really want to care about. Funny is sometimes a window to a dark place, but silly is a gateway to the vulnerable. And if you find that in the guy, I think you'll find that in yourself. And then I
think you'll find that in the relationship. And I think if you find that, you're gonna laugh plenty too, and you'll probably love plenty too, and you'll be just fine.
So maybe you.
Thought me babbling on about this for a while was a bit silly.
Too bad. That's a good thing.
So maybe I'll go get on one of those bikes and ride around Scott's Deale go whoo.
The girls will be like, don't do that anyway.
Shoot me an email funny, sad, serious or silly great lovedebated gmail dot com. I wanna hear your thoughts. I wanna hear your feedback. I get a very different interesting episode coming up.
I believe next week, two weeks.
Listen to all of them. It's like picking a favorite child. But one's gonna be like, huh, that's a weird guest. He had on to talk about something very out of the box.
Do that.
Like, share, follow, Please review this podcast your reviews. Once again, I mean a lot in the podcasting ecosystem because as always at the Great Love Debate, we never stopped making love.
To see you next time, the Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate, Great Love Debate. It's a Great Love Debase.