#150. Is Standup Comedy Offensive? - Leah Lamarr

Hello again. This is discover more, a podcast for independent thinkers who appreciate the importance of nuances with mental health as a through line. My name is Benoit Kim, an Ivy League educated policymaker turned psychotherapist and a world class interviewer.

According to my mom, that is what is the fine line between being offensive and being funny in today's comedy culture? Today's conversation with an intellectual turned stand up comedian will tear down what you thought you knew about comedy. I promise you that this is going to be the funniest conversation that is also equally thought provoking. Leah Lamar is an internationally touring stand up comedian, writer, podcaster, and tv personality.

Expect to learn about what makes a joke offensive. The current stand up comedy culture, why comedy is actually not therapy, how to master your emotions, and much, much more. Also a heads up.

She is an edgy comedian, so profanity and laughters are part of the package for this episode. Welcome to discover more. Leah, welcome to discover more.

Thank you so much for having me. That introduction was incredible. So, leah, I want to start from intention versus impact, since stand up comedy can be polarizing, depends on the audience.

So as a comic and writer, how do you view intention versus impact when approaching stand up comedy or writing jokes? Okay, so this is an interesting question, because intention in comedy is usually either to just elicit laughter, because that's our job, is to bring joy. But if you watch people like Dave Chappelle or this is what you would consider a modern day philosopher and obviously funniest person alive, stand up comedian. Right? So for him, it might be to elicit thought it might be to elicit for you to just think about what he's saying and maybe change your perspective on it.

I would say there are a lot of ways to go about comedy, and that's one. So that's intention, impact. Kind of the same thing in a sense, because for impact, it's okay.

Do you want my jokes to have an impact on this audience past just a laugh and they go home and forget about it? Or they quote the joke like it's like an old anchorman, like a early 2000s movie, like an inside joke with their friends about it? Or is it, I never thought about sex this way, or birth control or relationships, and now I have a different take on it, or it's given me some food for thought, or maybe I no longer want to be in my relationship, or, oh, I don't want to have kids because of this or whatever it is. Right. So the fact is they kind of have a similar goal with intention and impact.

The only thing is that absolutely most common between both of them is that you can't control your intended effect on either. So you can't control whether or not your intent comes across. You can't control the impact that you might have.

People like to take risks, so they might do a joke that might feel inappropriate to some people, and the intention might be to just get them to joke about it and have a laugh about it. Because why not just poke fun at everything? That's also something that comedians believe is that you can make fun of literally everything. That's equality.

As long as you're punching up, not punching down. Do you feel like the process of writing jokes and shifts because Bill Burr talks about this? Conan O'Brien? Conan is a so funny. He's just ruthlessness, how authentic he is.

I was on a show with him the other night. Oh, the show that I did right when I got back from London and I was like, don't do any comedy, leah. You're going to have super bad jet lag.

You won't be able to say any words, and you're going to bomb, which I didn't this time, but I have done that in the past. Anyway, Bill Bur was on the show. He riffed, just straight up riff for 20 minutes, didn't come with material.

And afterward he goes, what did I say? I was saying something about, does anyone remember what said, like, that's how good he is, that he could just go on stage and speak and just crush absolutely murder. He's so funny and so gifted. But the other thing is, once you have established your presence as a funny person, people will laugh at what you say anyway because it is their instinct to laugh.

Like, if you see Jerry Seinfeld go on stage, you just already get excited and you get in the mood to laugh because your brain tells you it's time to laugh. I see this funny person. So when you get to a certain level of credibility, you already got the audience.

But his talent coupled with that makes him unstoppable. Sorry, I just want to give Bill bur his flowers. I think he has too many flowers at home.

But the reason I bring that up, because he was talking to Conan about how writing jokes and delivering with the audience has shifted because 2030 years ago, the intention of writing jokes to deliver to the people in live audiences. But now you have to have a double lens to think about how people outside of this container, which is intimate, will respond. Any thoughts there? I actually just got the feedback the other day that a lot of people just see me as a crowdwork comic because of my social media content, and I was blown away.

I was like, what? And they're like, it makes sense. You don't want to give your material away because it's not from a special. So if the material is already out there, it's less likely to get picked up as a special because the content is already free.

It's already been seen by everyone. It's not new. So I post a lot of crowdwork clips, which is what a lot of comedians do, and it's kind of what we're told to do.

Matt Rife blew up on TikTok and Instagram only from crowdwork, and he basically only posts crowdwork. A lot of comics do this because it doesn't give away your material, and it just shows your comedic ability in the moment on stage, how you perform your essence, and then it makes people want to buy tickets to come see you in person. However, when people go do shows now, a lot of times, instead of doing their material or all their material, they will intentionally do a lot of crowd work so that they have content to post online.

And it does affect the way that you perform, because if you're not already super duper famous, and even if you're super duper famous, we're all like, just content machines. We have to constantly be putting out content, whatever it is. And so it's like, I'm building my set based around the Internet, which makes no sense because I want to have a good show for the audience, which, of course, it is a good experience live, but they're not seeing all of your material.

So along that same thread, in terms of the impact, yeah, I think it's weird because for the live audiences, they'll get offended by some delivery. But then for the outer audience who is not in that space to get offended because they don't have the contextual environments, I find that very fascinating. And of course, when you're offended, it comes with trigger emotionality, reactivity, and all things.

But I do see a very close relationship with emotions and comedy as a whole. So I would consider myself to be a pretty edgy comedian. I have opened for a lot of comics.

Some of them are edgy, some of them play it a little more safe, but it's not as if they transform to be safe. It's. They've always less blue, and that's great.

Like, clean comedy is amazing because you could work forever. You can do clean comedy forever. Dirty or edgy.

It's harder. It's definitely harder because you can't be on mainstream platforms with that sort of, you know, Andrew Schultz actually had his special with Netflix, and they gave him a bunch of notes and told him to take sections out because they thought it might offend the audience. And he bought the special back and released it independently because he stood by his jokes and he was like, I'm not going to appease a network because they want to censor people and they don't want to offend anyone and ruffle any feathers because comedy is comedy.

And if it's funny and it's good comedy, who cares? It's a joke. No one comes with ill intent. I don't know any comedian that's ever tried to actually hurt someone with words.

There are obviously moments in time where people have broken know, like Michael Richards, and there are moments right where that happens. But for the most part, if you're on stage, you're performing, you're just trying to deliver joy. You're not trying to hurt people.

A lot of comedians are also super self deprecating. Like, I tell a lot of jew jokes. I'm jewish.

I mean, I did a festival that was all jews, and it was great because I was like, I know all these people are going to be self deprecating, too. And I could just tell all these jokes about jews, and we can all laugh about them. They're not supposed to be offensive.

It's just about our culture and our people. And I love being jewish and I love jews, but there are times that I'll write a joke and I'll be like, I don't know, could I get canceled if I say this one word? Should I reword it so I don't offend people? And then when I go into that mode of changing my art to appease people, I know that I've made a mistake. My brain's going somewhere weird.

Might be the caffeine, but I think about original thoughts a lot, and nothing is original, right? The Aristotle 2000 years ago talked about format matter. Now the science at the cusp of it through quantum mechanics. But for jokes, though, original thoughts matter.

Of course, there's incidents where people steal jokes, which is highly frowned upon. I've seen that. I literally told a joke on stage, and then a girl went up after me and said just a line that had come out of my mouth.

And I was like, that is so wild. Wild. And a lot of it is called parallel thinking, where, oh, I heard the topic and thought of it.

Or they might have heard it, like, years ago, out of your mouth and then forgot that you said it. But, yeah. Anyway, it's pretty wild when people steal.

And I want to use as a segue to ask you this question, because I see a lot of similarities with long form podcast and stand up comedy. Callback improv. Right? So what makes great comedians great, leah? Is it the writing? Is it the callback? I feel like the spectrum of stand up comedy is so vast, like Bill Burr, as we talked about earlier, not that he needs more digital flowers.

He's authentically ruthless comedy style. Or Andrew Schultz for his referential one liners after he blew up on Instagram and so on. But, yeah, what's the ingredients that make great comedians great? So I think this question is very subjective, and I say that because it's, like, what makes great art? You could see a modern art piece in the MoMA and think it is absolute dog shit.

It's just a white canvas with a red line on it. You don't understand it. You don't understand how it could be worth a million dollars.

You go to art Basel, you see a banana tape to a wall. It's $200,000. Then you see a monet or you see a dali or you see a Picasso or you see a Rembrandt, and you see all these older art pieces, and you think, I get the value of this, but someone might come up to this painting and think, I don't know.

This Renoir seems pretty bleak to me. I don't know why anyone would care about this. And then see the white canvas on the wall with a red line and go, wow, this really impacts me.

I feel emotionally invested in this piece, and for whatever reason, I want to pay millions of dollars for it. So the same thing with comedy. I think that it depends on your perspective and your life experience as a person.

So if you are someone who enjoys edgy comedy. I opened for Mark Norman once, and he's so funny. He's a master joke writer, and I was so excited to open for him because his audience is used to receiving his edgy content, and his jokes are hilarious.

It's a master class of how to craft a joke. He doesn't need to do crowd work because he's got, like, hours of just perfectly crafted jokes that's neither here nor there. They love the type of content that he does, and they are primed for it.

And I think they would be disappointed if he told jokes that didn't align with how he performs. And so, that being said, I just think that it depends on your life experience. If you're someone who gets very easily offended or super triggered, or you care about a certain issue, or anytime you hear the word abortion, you have a meltdown.

It's like, okay, maybe even Chris Rock had an abortion joke. It's like, maybe that would make it so you can never watch Chris Rock again. But obviously he's one of the all time greats.

He's one of the people that made me want to get into comedy. And it really just comes down to perspective and life experience. So I would say the recipe is, generally speaking, talent, writing ability, charisma.

Everyone has their own charisma. It's an essence that can't be bottled. A flair.

It's a flair. It's a flavor. It's something that other people cannot capture.

You just have it, whatever it is, people enjoy that thing about you, the Genesis qua. And for me, I really do enjoy doing crowd work with people. And those people that I interact with live become fans for life because they feel like they've been so immersed in the show and that you really care, and they feel like they got to know you and had this private, intimate moment in a room of 1000 people, or 300 people or 20 people.

Every time I do crowd work with specific people, they always message me, they always follow me, they always comment like they're just loyal fans. And so for me, being able to think on my feet and have fun interactions with the crowd in person is also a good mark of a comedian. But is it necessary to be successful? My brain is going towards the word presumer, producer and consumer.

Presumer. Presumer, is that a new word? It's been recognized ten years ago with content creator, economy, things like that. Myself.

Yeah, keep going. Because I'm a podcaster that happens to have YouTube and social media, but it's always a line between artistry and algorithm. So with you, everything you talked about when you write jokes, not doing crowdworks, how much of these producer versus consumer are you thinking about? Because you don't want to only write jokes for experts and philosophers, philosopher type.

It's so crazy. You brought this up because I was literally thinking about this on the car right here, which was, do I make content for the algorithm, or do I make content that applies to me and is authentic to my art and my niche, and fans will find me who enjoy what I have to offer versus having a broader appeal. Trying a growth hack, which is important, it's like if you don't grow, it's going to be hard for people to find someone's like a chicken in the egg situation.

But if you're growing for the wrong reasons, then you have the wrong audience following you anyway. And if they come to see you live, they're going to be disappointed. So I think that there's a really fine line between being authentic with your content.

How do you define that word now? Yeah, I just can't stand it because anyone can be a content creator. You have an iPhone making content. I'm posting and I'm a content creator.

That's not art. I'm sorry, it's just not. And I hate to be precious about it, but do I hate it? Okay.

So for me, it's difficult to see that we're in the era of content creation versus art. Because when I see good art, people need to see this. They need to look at this and be impressed by the ability of someone to actually create something original and new that takes effort versus something that's just, oh, point.

Shoot. Here's me, my morning routine. It's like everyone doesn't need a reality show.

I just don't think so. And that's kind of what content has become, is capture your life. Not everyone's life is interesting.

And now I think a lot of people are trying to, and I don't mean to be a bitch, do I? I might. I don't think my life is particularly interesting. I just enjoy what I do.

But that's also why I don't have reality show. I do think that people make content for the algorithm and it's like, okay, well, if you're trying to find these bite sized clips that will go viral, that is a great way to grow and gain a fan base. And hopefully it's the right audience and it's people that find you for the right reason.

So that when they, instead of just listening to 62nd clip, if they go to listen to the full hour, they feel like it's still authentic to what they saw in that 1 minute clip. But what I've been hearing from a lot of people is that their podcast Instagram page is doing amazing because all their clips are going viral, but they have no one listening to the full episode. So what are you really doing for yourself? It's kind of smoke and mirrors.

And in a way, that's all good and fun because you need the smoke and mirrors. We all need the smoke and mirrors. I need it too.

Like, I'll show up to a red carpet, hair, makeup, gown, looking fabulous. But you didn't see me like three minutes prior crying in the car because I felt fat. You know what I mean? It's all kind of smoke and mirrors, a little bit of a lie.

And I try to be as authentic as possible because I don't want younger women looking up to me thinking, oh, she has it all, she's perfect, she does this and that. I'm like, no, you know what, a lot of this is a filter. Some of it is edited.

I don't always look like this. Sometimes I have bad days. So authenticity is really important to me.

And I think that people who just focus on growth hacking and making these perfect 62nd clips to go viral, unless it's for the purpose of just mere education and 62nd clips. And you're not trying to do a larger vision. I don't know.

I'm not sure what the impact is for, except for just vanity metrics. So on the line of being authentic and doing what we call is right, yeah. I want to go back to something that you alluded to a few times, edgy comedy, which is your style.

So a, I would like for you to define what edgy comedy is to you because I'm guessing that it changes based on the context and the environment, the era and so on. So what makes it edgy and why is it a specific form of art? You chose to be branded with God. It's like the scarlet letter.

Stand up really just fucks you hard, emotionally, physically, mentally. Why did I didn't choose this? It was kind of like thrust upon me. What happened was I'm a theater trained actor.

I came to La thinking that I was going to be a dramatic actor. I was like, I'm going to be the young Angenu. I'm going to be in the Star wars.

Just like absolutely delusional, completely void of knowledge about the industry and how it actually works, right? I was like, I thought I would just come here. I had booked a job, so I was like, oh, it's easy. I'm going to tear this town apart.

Like mental patient. Absolutely. Just like, should be an institution.

And obviously that didn't happen. You get lucky, you get some things, you might think it's easy, but then you have, like, it's feast and famine. So I used to book like a ton of commercials.

Like, I couldn't not book a commercial. And then I just went through a period where it's like, I didn't book a single know, so you never know. But anyway, moral of the story.

Okay, so I first get to LA and I have this dream, right? Let me just say, there are not enough dreams to go around. Like, some people do need to go home. Wow.

Not what I expected. No, that's not what you expected. But you asked for edgy comedy, didn't you? Right? So, look, there's a lot of talent out here.

Everyone's fighting for the spotlight. We're all trying to fill this God size hole that we have as mommy and daddy didn't love me enough. I need attention.

I need to be seen. I need to be heard just screaming for it constantly. That's why people have these Instagram shows or whatever it is, just like constantly filming their life.

It's like validation, validation, external validation. Constantly. How many likes, how many comments, how many reposts.

It's just never ending cycle of sadness and compare and despair. Anyway, I didn't mean to go on a tirade about this, but can you call my therapist? I feel I'm in the. So.

Oh, my God. Yeah, you're a psychotherapist. My best friend called me the other day and told me she had a dream that she made out with me.

Oh. And I was like, was it hot? I'll give you some dream analysis after. Okay.

I did Google it. And Google was like, it just means you guys are becoming closer and more emotionally intimate. And I was like, but what if we fuck? Okay, so having nothing to do with that, just really quickly, because like I said, we'll ramble forever.

I met with a casting director, and this was like, I knew one person in LA, he was a producer. And Clint, shout out to Clint. Really hooked me up.

That's all I knew. And when you come to Hollywood, if you don't know anyone, you're like, a little fucked. I knew one person.

I'm like, I ruin being like, how am I the only jew that doesn't have any fucking connections in the business? So Clint, not jew, love, God bless him. He set me up with this casting director, and she and I chatted for an hour. She was a commercial casting director.

We were laughing, having a great time. And at the end of it, and again, remember, I think I'm a dramatic. Like, I think that I'm just doing commercials to make a paycheck, but that I'm going to be this huge feature film trilogy star, right? She goes, leah, I just want to let you know you're more funny, less.

And I was like, oh, my God, you think I'm funny? And she was like, yeah, you should be doing stand up. Take some control over what your gift is. There are not as many people who look like you who are also funny.

It was really hurtful at the time. I think I cried for weeks over this. But looking back, what she just meant was that there are fewer attractive females in comedy at that time.

Now it's just like, you walk outside and supermodels are hilarious, and you're like, fuck, I will kill myself. This was all I had, and now I've got nothing. This Victoria's supermodel can make me laugh.

Kill me. I got nothing to offer. But I understood what she meant, and she was like, yeah, you should be doing stand up.

And I had been doing improv just because they tell you to do it when you're auditioning for commercials and stuff. But I always hated it. I always hated it.

I did all levels at UCB, started making my way up through groundlings, and I was like, why do I hate this? And it's because my brain is more suited for individual performance, not group performance. So for me, going on stage saying my piece, at first stand up was therapy for me, where I just got a lot of trauma off my chest trying to make it funny, and now I'm like, oh, okay. So therapy is therapy.

Stand up is not therapy. So that was for me. Just get in and out there, right? But the second I started doing it, I felt completely aligned.

I loved writing jokes. I loved being on stage, although it scared the shit out of me at first. But I had already had my sea legs because I'd been doing live theater.

Live theater is terrifying because there's no undo button. You know what I mean? Like, if you make a mistake, you can't go into crowd work. You're in the script.

It's just a repeated performance. But live comedy, where anything could happen at any second, the possibilities are endless. Really fun.

Really fun. Especially for someone who craves attention. Ha.

Change and joy. So for me, it was just. I consider myself to be a lone wolf.

I like to come when I want. I don't want to leave when I want. I was talking about sex there, not about my job.

But when I arrive somewhere, it's like, I will come to the show at my spot time. Then I will hang out if I want to hang out. It's an interactive show if I want it to be.

Otherwise, I'm just doing my material and hoping to connect with people and make them laugh and forget about their day. Maybe they think about something new because of that. Great.

I'm really lucky. That's cool. I did my job for today, but, yeah, the second I started doing standup, I knew it was right for me.

Was it my first choice? No. And it's crazy, because when I moved from New York to LA, the last thing I did was I went to go see a stand up show. Joe Piscopo was hosting and Harlan Williams was on the show.

I just remember thinking, I could never do this. This is the scariest thing I've ever experienced. These people are stars.

It is like an impossible feat what they're doing. How in the world could I ever do that? That was literally the last thought I had in New York. I go to LA and then someone's like, you should do stand up.

And I was like, what? No, me. And now I'm like, yeah, I do stand up. So that's kind of that.

But as far as edgy comedy goes, I think because of my, again, personal experience and comedy subjective, and the trials and tribulations of my life has kind of led me to, I would say, not have a super cynical view of things because I've gone to therapy a lot and tried to manage my expectations of life and other people. Oh boy. How many twelve step programs can you be in? But I find edgy material to just connect with me more authentically.

When I try to do clean jokes that feel very, almost like not dad jokes, you can be very funny and be clean. It just doesn't feel fun to me. I don't enjoy it.

I enjoy telling sex jokes. I enjoy telling political jokes. I will do some of them in certain states and not other states.

I enjoy telling jewish jokes. I enjoy telling jokes about thoughts that I'm having on certain subjects. And you just hope people relate.

You're just a Pandora box that keeps on giving or keeps on terrifying people. Yeah, Pandora. Didn't Pandora just unleash the beasts before the.

Yeah, before the unleashing of the creatures. But I know I'm the open Pandora's box. I have released the kraken.

So speaking of edgy, though, I want to go into therapy since you planted the sea. So I have to pick it up. Thank God.

Where a lot of therapists and Bill Bur being, he started to seeking therapy. He did psychedelics and he became a very different person. Still a master of his craft.

I think a lot of seasons are just known comics. Their biggest objection to therapy is, oh, it's my edge. My trauma is my edge.

Speaking of edgy, what was that process like? And b, how did you just grapple or reconcile with this? How much of my experiences can I retain without losing this air? Quote edge. Because that's not true. Okay, so really funny you're bringing this up yet again because I recently got married.

Congratulations. Thank you. And now that I'm happy, I'm so not funny.

Like all of my jokes, I was telling all these jokes about being happy in a relationship and all of them were bombing in LA and I was like, oh, because you losers can't relate to being in a happy relationship, okay. It's hard for people to relate to your joy. It is easier for people to relate to your pain.

And that is something I've noticed. A lot of comedy is poking fun at other people. When comedians are doing crowd work, they're just poking at people.

That's all they do, right? Which as a kid I hated, so I can't believe I'm doing it. Maybe that's why I'm doing it now, to get back those bullies. Yeah, I'll show you.

Oh my God. Dr. Feinberg, call me.

I think that's funny. Oh my God. That is like every comedian's worst fears.

Like you're on stage and someone just laughing, they just go, that's funny. This has happened to me before. I just annihilate those people.

I'm like, just laugh. I need this. This is like my oxygen.

Because that's what comedians do to each other. Because we're so used to just seeing everything that we barely even laugh now. We only laugh on something so funny you can't hold it back.

But because comedy is our business or around it all the time, we can appreciate when a joke is going up. Oh, that's hilarious. Funny.

I'm usually a second behind, that's why. Because I have to be so immersive. But I was like, oh, that is funny.

Hilarious. But I do want to really quick in that sense. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you about therapy too, though. All right. But before therapy, I want to quickly go into from your experiences interpersonally and your just career.

Why do you think people are gravitating more towards pain than joy, at least in a comedy container. Fuck, man. If I knew, I think I would just have a job in the midwest and just be happy.

I wouldn't need to do this. You know what I mean? It's like I'm still seeking my own answer, so I don't know, I'm not God, although I am jewish, so it's pretty close. Two degrees away.

So stupid. Look, I think the thing is that you've heard the expression trauma bonding. I think people can relate over each other's pain.

And this is also exactly what twelve step is, so you don't feel alone in your trauma or your pain. It's, oh, all these other people have had the same exact experience. I don't feel so alone now.

And, in fact, people laugh a lot in twelve step meetings, because it's a release of. Oh, my God. Wow, that's hilarious.

That happened to me, too. Wow, that sucks. I can't believe so many people have had this shared experience.

So when you go to comedy shows and people know, if you hear Bill Byrd talking about Black Lives Matter, we all can have a different frame of reference for Black Lives Matter, and he covers every angle, so everyone is. He gets everyone. He is just so knowledgeable about how to write a joke and how to think about a joke and how to think about writing a joke, that, for him, he dives so deep into an experience and is like, well, how do I view this from the perspective of a police officer, from a white person, from a black person, from the experience of someone outside of America, from inside of America, from the city, from the.

Like, he just goes and he attacks from every angle so everyone can relate. That's at least my experience of watching him. I don't know if that is intentional, but I think that that's also part of what makes trauma, quote unquote relatable, is that so many people can relate to it.

Understanding and trauma are different things, but how you relate to something, it's harder to find something funny about being happy than it is to find something about sadness. Like, you don't want to poke a hole in happy things. It's like, if I have this beautiful marriage, why would I want to be like, let me take.

If the marriage is a balloon, let me take just, like, a needle and just start just poking a hole. Let some air come out. Deflate it.

It's not fun to poke fun or at things that are good. When things are bad, it's like a punching bag. It's like, how do I make this better? I can make this better by making jokes about it.

And I'm sure a lot of people have had this problem. So if a lot of people have this problem, a lot of people find joy in it or have an elevated mood around it because they heard a joke about this fucking parking meter that came and gave me a ticket even though I was sitting in my car. What a cunt.

So I think, really, if we get into the heart of it, that's what that's about. So how did you. Because I think not all, but a lot of.

How did I hit rock bottom? No. Well, a lot of comics have different defense mechanisms or coping mechanisms, and I think laughter is one too. So I'd love to hear about some behind the curtain with your therapy process where a, did your therapist ever call you out whenever you use laughter as a default mechanism in the sessions? Or b, how did that come up? Or how did you approach that process? Because it's in your dna.

It's crazy because laughter is my defense mechanism. So when something is uncomfortable, I laugh. I often laugh in movie theaters or in movies at points that no one else is laughing at, always, because I just have a different trigger than other people.

And it's like, you can't take me to a funeral, I'm serious. It's so awkward. My main instinct is just to laugh because I'm so uncomfortable.

And it's something that I've been working on because you should be able to be a well adjusted person, go to someone's funeral and not be laughing. But because I think my instinct is to turn sadness, it's like I'm so uncomfortable sitting in the emotion that I have to. I'm like, no, it's got to be funny.

How do I make it better? I just want to fix it. And that is my instinct. And happens when I go to the doctor, if I go to the chiropractor, they crack my neck.

I start laughing hysterically and I can't control it. My chiropractor is like, I've never seen anything like this. And I was just like, it is my trauma response, my body, I can't change it.

It's like, I can, I'm working on it. But right now it is just my knee jerk impulse and it's very bizarre to watch. I mean, really, it seems like I'm the joker.

Like I'm a mental patient. Wow. But therapy, for me, I think I resented people who told me or suggested that I go to twelve step or.

It's like I had the seed planted in my head. That therapist means you have a problem. And I didn't want to admit that I had a problem.

And that comes from family. When you're brought up in a learned environment of therapy means you're weak and weak means you're bad. Therapy means there's a problem and we have to hide all of our problems and nothing's ever wrong.

And therapy means you have emotions, you're not supposed to show your emotions. You have to always put on brave face, then you don't want to go to therapy. So the process of me even getting to therapy was crazy.

I mean, I had hit an emotional rock bottom that I can't even begin to explain. I was insufferable to be around. Like, this is pre stand up, by the way.

I was so impossible to be. I can't even believe I had friends. Truly.

I was like an absolute doormat. People pleaser, would get involved in people's affairs, was gossiping. Oh my God.

It's like I didn't know how to have a conversation through conflict, which is still hard for me, but I'm working on it. And I'm not perfect, but I've been in therapy for over seven years now. And they say it takes seven years for every cell in your body to change.

And it's crazy because literally just after the seven year mark, I met my husband and I finally dated someone who was emotionally available. And we got married, like immediately. Every other guy I dated before that was an addict, a narcissist, was emotionally unavailable, treated me like shit, and I accepted that and I allowed that.

And I kept dating the same person over and over, just in a different body. But yeah, I was on my knees. I had to do something about it.

And then when I finally went to twelve step Alanon, which is for friends and family members of alcoholics, it's not aa. When I went there, I just sobbed through the first two meetings because I couldn't believe that this was not a unique experience. And hearing other people share, I was like, did you grow up in my household? Did you date? My ex boyfriend was like, my old best friend.

Your best friend. Just the amount of experiences that I heard that were the same as mine. I was like, I can't believe other people have gone through this and that.

Those people seem okay because every situation felt like the world was ending. Everything felt apocalyptic. I couldn't stop thinking about my actions in the past.

And if I had done this or that, would it have given me a different outcome or future? Tripping about, well, if I do this or everything was panic, everything was catastrophic. I would never take action on anything because I'd be so scared. I just lived in constant fear.

And now I just live in fear sometimes. And I think that, you know what? It's all about progress, not perfection, just baby steps. So, yeah, I got to therapy and twelve step on my knees, I needed so bad.

And then I just was going and going and going because I was like, okay, I really want to get better because I can't live like this anymore. I can't be around addicts all the time. I can't be around people who drain me all the time.

I can't keep getting involved in other people's problems, because it's just, you can't fight other people's battles. People need to take accountability for their own actions and they need to fight their own fights. There's no war happening.

I'm not a general of war. I'm not the president. You have to understand that when you come from a home of dysfunction or chaos, everything felt really intense, like a war or a battle.

And so as an adult, not that you want to avoid it, but you realize that you only need to take on the conflict that has to do with you directly because other people's problems are not yours to solve. And I used to try to solve everyone's problems and get involved in everyone's lives because if I helped them and their life get better, then maybe they'd like me more. Or if I helped them get better, then I wouldn't have to focus on my own problems.

I just never focused on myself. And I think once I finally started focusing on myself, I started building a career and I started aligning more with my authentic truth and I started really being able to express emotion and feel emotion and understand vulnerability isn't weakness. Vulnerability is strength.

Brene Brown icon, queen, legend I really resonate and I appreciate you sharing. I know now vulnerability is also a marketplace, unfortunately, but I feel the genuine energy. I swear, if this does well in the algorithm, I'm going to be pissed.

Now you're only stuck with vulnerable. You're going from edgy comedy to vulnerable. I'm a content machine.

Fuck. But that's how I view mental health, as a psychotherapist is where it's knowing that life is vast and it looks different. But none of us walk this path of life alone.

And I really want to zoom into what you just said. It was hard for you to seek help because you didn't want to recognize you need help. And that's why I tell people, first step of therapy is often the hardest.

Because to seek help, you must first recognize and accept that you need help. Oh yeah, admitting you got a problem, accepting that you have a problem really hard. I am so much better than I used to be, but I am nowhere near close to perfect.

And perfect is an illusion. And if you're achieving or aiming for perfect, you are always going to be disappointed. Unless your last name is Christ, first name is Jesus, lol.

Or last name is Pitt, first name is Brad. Yeah, he's perfect. I mean, he can do no wrong in my book, besides the way he's treated women in the past.

But other than that just stunning. Gorgeous. Love him.

And he sounds like the pre stand up days was like, that's when your kraken was truly released from the Pandora box. And now I think the box is slowly closing down slowly. And I'm glad that therapy now equates to marriage.

I can't believe it. I'm so lucky. If I hadn't gone to therapy, I would never have found actual love and I would have never been attracted to someone who was actually emotionally available and actually compatible with me.

Instead, I just kept choosing partners who would trigger the chaos and the dysfunction wound. And because it was part of my family cycle, it was familiar to me. And so that I saw as love.

The push pull, the toxic chaos relationship, the cat, mouse. Oh, my God. I mean, I made a meal out of that.

I can't even begin to tell you how many relationships I had that just when I look back, I can't even believe I spent more than a minute with that person. And now I'm with someone. Oh, God.

I'm just thinking about a breakup I had. Where? Oh, this is so funny. I was, like, living in his place, but he was out of town and we'd already had, like, a million blowouts and broke up, got back together.

Let me just tell you, if you keep breaking up and getting back together, it's over. Just let it go. It's done.

You're not supposed to be together. You wouldn't be constantly breaking up with someone you actually want to be with and know is good for you. Okay, so toxic.

Toxic. Wham, wham, wham bullshit. So we're back and forth, back and forth.

I had already known that he had cheated, but turned the other cheek and pretended that his lie was a truth. Me? No, how I got this infection on my dick was from a towel at the gym. Oh, my God.

Of course. The gym was so dirty. You poor thing.

I love you so much. Okay, so I was in his apartment, and we had already thought about this one specific girl, and I realized he lied to me about where he was and what he was doing. He was already out of town, but he said he was filming all weekend.

Oh, my God. He hasn't slept a wink. You poor thing.

And at this time, he'd been away so much that I was just missing him. And I was like, anytime he could come back, I really wanted him to come back. See me living in his fucking place.

I was about to go to celebrate getting this really big job as a host for a new tv show. And this is so funny and so weird. I was, like, getting ready to leave the house, and I was sizing myself up in the mirror.

I was like, my hair is too long. I need to just cut it. I've cut my own hair for, like, ten years.

This is a weird thing. This wasn't, like, the trauma response. My hair, like, seven inches shorter.

Like, huge amount of hair, okay? Which, by the way, once you book a job, keep yourself the way you are. They hired you the way you were. Don't immediately change everything about yourself.

Okay, so I cut my hair. I leave. Then I'm in the bathroom at this party, and I see that he lied and flew to another country to spend the whole weekend with this girl that I had asked him about.

And she's like, just. Oh, I mean, the whole thing. And he said he was filming.

I lost my goddamn mind. I never went back to his place. I think about this all the time.

Imagine coming home and just seeing piles of dead air. Oh, you just left everything there. I just never went back.

I really think about that a lot where I'm like. Because he probably thought that I did that in response, but that was not how it timed out. I just literally never spoke to him again.

And I just left piles of my dead hair everywhere. Completely psychotic. But maybe he was being truthful and he was filming.

Yeah, he was filming a porn. That's what he was doing. God.

Loser. But who's the real loser? I stayed with him. I'm the loser, babe.

Me. I'm the loser. Tango takes you to dance, right? Sure.

Not in LA. In LA, Tango takes as many people as you want to dance. Because people can't be monogamous.

Everyone's Polly. In LA, you just walk up to someone, they're like, yeah. So I'm, like, dating four people right now, and it feels so.

That just sounds like four people are disappointed. Sorry. I mean, having one relationship is almost too much.

I'm like, I have to commit to conversating with this person every day, let alone four people at the same level. No, I blow my brains out. What I'm saying is they're really good at multitasking.

And I'm jealous. Right? Yeah. Hope your husband's listening.

Me too. So I have pretty, I guess, intimate questions, and we'd love for you to take. More intimate than everything I've already said.

Even more intimate. Okay, great. No, I've never done anal next.

So myself and a lot of my colleagues. In the psychotherapy realm, it's not a saying, but I think it's experiential, where people who don't know how to love other people cannot be loved. Given everything you just talked about, any thoughts there? Agree? I think you've said it all, but hold on, let me go on a ramble for ten minutes about the thing you just said.

I'll keep it brief, but boy, people who do not know how to love do not act with love and cannot receive it. So it doesn't matter. This was the root of my problem, was that it doesn't matter how much you do for another person.

It doesn't matter how much you give to another person. It doesn't matter how much love you show to them. If they cannot receive love and do not understand it, your time is wasted and you're just going to be building up so much resentment against this person.

Especially if you're giving to receive. I think that's something else is that especially in LA. I'm sorry, it's just true.

This is what I've seen people give with expectation. It's very transactional here. If I give you this, I expect to get something back.

That's not how I am with gift giving because I was in therapy and twelve step, and when you focus on having expectations of people, what I've learned is that you are often disappointed. So this is now a new learned behavior. But if I give you a gift, I just want you to have it.

I remember I had a close friend's birthday in LA and I did this whole thing for her. I made this crazy cake and I did like a whole ceremony with some of our close friends. And afterwards she had said to me, why did you do all that? And I was like, because I love you and wanted you to have a good birthday.

And she's like, well, I felt like you did it because you wanted me to like you more. Whoa. And I was like, oh, my God, that really hurts my feelings because I no longer do that.

What I do is I want people to feel joy. That's why I'm a comedian. I enjoy giving gifts.

I just sent a random gift to my husband the other day just because I was thinking about him. I don't care if he sends me anything back. It's like, that's how I'm just going to show him love today.

I sent something to another girlfriend the other day because I wanted to. I don't expect her to send me anything in return. I don't expect anything from her in return in general.

But if you borrow money from me, bitch, you better send it back. I think that that's really difficult for some people who don't know how to show love or experience love and who aren't actively receiving therapy on how to change that in their brain, or they don't think that they have this problem because it's a practice. And I empathize with a lot of people about this because I was this way.

And now that I'm not in this way, I really triggered by people who react like that because I've worked so hard to not live my life like that. But it's like I just want to love people, to love them. And if I get it back, cool.

If I don't, whatever. I'm giving you this gift because I want you to have it. And I think that that's a really hard concept for people.

People who don't know how to receive love because they come from a broken home, they came from a situation where one parent was never emotionally available, or they had an abusive parent, or they had an abusive sibling, or completely competing constantly with their sibling. Everyone comes from a different dynamic. So when you come from your own personal experience, maybe you have sister trauma, maybe you have brother trauma, maybe you have mom trauma, dad trauma, whatever it is.

Those sorts of wounds just create bigger problems as you get older because you are reenacting that exact wound in that relationship on every other person that you interact with. So if you have a wound, let's just say you had, like, the first person you ever hooked up with said something that cut you to your core and made you feel really insignificant and made you feel really bad about yourself and gave you guilt shame, gave you a complex about a part of your body, maybe, or whatever it is, every time you go on a date, you might be afraid to take your clothes off. It doesn't matter that the person could be so kind and think you're the most beautiful person in the world.

The second that that wound is activated and triggered, it doesn't matter who it is. So it's like these types of wounds require healing. Otherwise, it's the cycle of insanity.

You're doing the same thing, getting the same results, and you could try to expect a different result. But unless you work on it, because it is a practice, it will never change. The one thing my therapist did say was that confrontation is the highest form of caring.

So it's saying, I want to keep you in my life, not push you away. I don't want to stonewall you. When you confront someone, it means, hey, I need to know if we can work through this and continue to be in each other's lives.

Or if we need to have a boundary and still continue to be in each other's lives. But, like, hey, let's no longer talk about coffee because I'm triggered by it. Whatever it is, I'm grateful I worked on it, because I finally got the love that I wanted and I think deserve.

Thanks for keeping that response to nine minutes, not ten. But I'm going to listen back to the podcast, and it'll just be like a 1 minute clip of everything I've said. It's like, oh, wow, okay.

So they just use the word the cool, cool 20 minutes, but I echo with that because hurt people hurt people, full stop. Yeah. But I do want to ask you about some of the changed belief through your therapeutic work.

One is expectations, the thief of joy. That's something you learned very viscerally. Sounds like the second thing is this is what a true, caring love looks like.

Aside from those two ideas or belief system, are there any other beliefs that you used to believe and uphold? No longer. That really stands out in this container of conversation? Yeah, well, there's also, like, compare and despair. I mean, it's like an adage that a lot of people talk about.

This is why I think Instagram and TikTok are such a. It's like a necessary evil. I think it's great for people who need to promote their art and promote their philosophies, promote their business, but that it leads a lot of.

I mean, I did not grow up with TikTok, and I think if I had, I would be really troubled. Like, more troubled than I already am, which is very hard to see. Honestly, I couldn't imagine that.

But especially on girls, I hear a lot of stories about this. They're just comparing themselves. They're all depressed already because they're comparing themselves constantly to each other.

It's almost like too much sensory feedback and information, and everything is a lie on the Internet. Sorry, my shit is filtered. I admit it.

I tell people that sometimes it's super obvious, and I'm not the only one. And sometimes I try to not do it because I'm like, I want people to see the real me. I want to be loved for the real me, not a fake person.

I don't want someone to come and meet me and be like, well, I guess didn't see her three chins in that photo, but in person. God damn that tech neck. But I want people to love me for me.

And I think that compare and despair becomes really brutal on the Internet. People just start shaping their lives and creating situations that aren't real for themselves. That's a really difficult one.

I do agree with you about hurt people. Hurt people. It's like if you are upset, you will bleed on someone who didn't cut you.

That took me a long time to realize when I was just reenacting. Like, I would take an immediate wound and then just put it on someone else. I'm like, that person didn't fucking do anything to me.

They said one thing, and then it triggered my core wound, and then it felt like it was times a thousand. And now I hate them. It's like, what? They didn't do anything.

A lot of people that are no longer in my life have been my biggest teachers. And I think that's really important for me to know, too, is there are some people that I would love to be in my life, and I have a lot of really good friends and a lot of love in my life, and I'm so grateful for all that. But I think sometimes when something breaks down because neither party knows how to communicate or there's a lot of fear around something, it's because two people are both so triggered by the same issue or different issues, whatever it has to do around with the wound.

And I learned what I need to work on. It's like, you got to put the focus on yourself. How could I move better throughout the world? How can I have better conversations? How can I have better confrontations? How can I change this type of relationship? How can I figure out how to feel the emotion behind whatever uncomfortable situation I'm in and then turn it and flip it on its head and make lemonade? I think it's really hard to make lemonade.

And a lot of these people, I got these lemons, and I did not know how to make lemonade. You toss out the bath water with the baby in it. Yeah.

I have some really beautiful people in my life that I haven't spoken to in a while, and it makes me sad because I think we both didn't know how to respond. Or just one person. It could just be one person and it doesn't matter.

But if someone's not reaching out, if you're not reaching out, they say, like, if you spot it, you got it. So if I'm like, that person's being a bitch. Maybe I'm being a bitch.

Maybe I'm the fucking problem. Hi, it's me. I'm problem.

It's me. I've been the problem a lot of times, and I don't always have the ability to admit that I'm wrong right away. I think feeling my feelings, being able to label my feelings, not labeling other people's emotions, like letting them have the dignity of their own experience is really important.

I mean, some other important therapy things I learned were like how to love myself and how to fill up my own cup. You can't look for happiness in another person. If you can't look for love in another person, it's like you just got to figure out what fills you up and write whatever that list is.

Whenever you feel good, you don't feel like resistance towards something. A lot of people are like, oh, resistance means you got to do it. That's fine, but what about the things that you just, if someone said, let's go do this, you'd be like, yes.

And you just jump and go do it. What are those things? For me, it's like being in nature, working out, meditating, creating, which every part of the process, writing, editing, shooting, acting, whatever it is, all of that brings me joy. And so you really just have to figure out what personally brings you joy.

How can I fill up my own cup? And once my cup is full, then I'm giving myself self worth. And these are esteemable acts and shows yourself that you love yourself and that energy will radiate out and you will start to attract the type of love you want. So I want to talk about companionship.

Love, Esther Perel. She's a famed psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Amazing person.

She talks about more people allocate effort to repairing their friendships than they do with their marriage or their relationships. Think about how many people, if you know someone for ten years, you're your best friends, you had a fallout. Sounds like you have some situations where you never got to reconnect with some beautiful people in your life because of the lack of art, with confrontation.

Because that is our art. Communication is our art. I just want to throw this out there because if every single in America, because the lifetime divorce rate is 60%, if more people are willing to exert their effort and their energy towards repairing their relationship with their romantic partner as they do with their friendships.

Esther Perl argues, and I agree, that there would be half or even way less amount of divorce rates or breakups. Okay, so let's just say I knew someone for 30 years. Crazy number.

You're only 22 though. Yeah, 21. Let's say I knew someone for 80 years.

Hi, I'm Joe Biden. You have so much history with this person and so many memories. And if you've known this person for a really long time and you have a history of being good friends to each other, then you would see why it's worth it to have the uncomfortable conversation.

Because they have shown you that they love you through years of friendship. Then again, that has nothing to do with some things you can come back from, some things you can't, right? Like if you try to fuck my husband, you're dead to me. You're just dead to me.

There are certain things we don't come back from. Whatever. I don't need to go into the scary things that are in my brain.

But a lot of stuff you can come back from, you have to allow people to be imperfect. It's not fair to assume every person is just going to act correctly in the moment all the time. I'm sorry, that's just not achievable.

And it's not fair. But with marriages, because sex and intimacy and attraction come into play, it's a completely different ballgame. And I think for people, if you no longer have attraction in your marriage, there are some people who are fine having a sexless marriage.

Cool, that's totally fine. Again, this comes from your own personal experience. Whatever works for you, works for you.

This is no judgment zone. But I know a lot of people who have been married for seven years, spent their partner twelve years, and then they see someone at work that they're like, I'm just attracted to this person. Affairs are really difficult for people to come back from.

And I think attraction can be fleeting, or it comes in waves, it ebbs and flows. I haven't been married for that long, so thank God we be fucking. Yeah, we'd be fucking.

But I do know from listening to other people's relationships and watching shows like snapped and every true crime documentary about people killing each other in relationships or murdering significant others of other people because of jealousy, because of this, because of that. They want the attention of that, whatever it is. I think more people are killed because of affairs than from car accidents.

You know what I mean? It's just like straight hate, envy, jealousy, anger, rage. And all of these feelings can be really overwhelming and all consuming. And it causes people to have irreconcilable differences.

But there are also other things that aren't as serious in terms of leading people to murder, but things that maybe you just don't agree on, right? Where it's like we're going to start our life together. And then maybe I change my mind. I'm like, I want to have kids.

And you're like, you said we didn't want kids. And you're like, I actually really don't want kids. It's like, you do have to get divorced because your wants have changed in a way that you would not build a happy life together, and that's not an issue you would have with a friend.

So, yeah, I mean, it's all, I think, case by case, dependent. But I understand why the divorce rate is high. Yeah.

And I love your nuances. Sometimes I throw a general blanket question until you see how far you want to be willing to go. I just think everything in life is a shade of gray.

50 shades of gray, baby. Never watched it, but me neither. I have porn.

I didn't need to watch it. And porn usually takes me about, like, 30 seconds to come, and I need to watch, like, a trilogy of people fucking. Wow.

Okay. It's never about the story for me. Right.

Let's just get to the action. Yeah. You're not alone.

So everything you said is about reactivity and emotions. And I have a question for you. Speaking of coming back from certain experiences, a lot of comedians, seasons or not, they talk about heckling and hecklers.

So I want to ask you about, if any, take this wherever you see fit. Has any hecklers in the past taught you about just emotions and how really human emotions work? Because you talked about combinations of rage, resentments, anger, envy. It just becomes this explosive package.

And I also want to denote the difference between female and male comedic dynamics with their audiences. But with that ad note, I love for you to see anything comes up for you there. Yeah.

So I might just take this in a different direction, but okay. I have had very funny hecklers in the past where I've just been like, I can't believe this is the situation. That's, know, sometimes you assume a heck like you've seen, I'm sure, the viral clips of beer bottles being thrown at people or people coming on stage to attack Dave Chappelle.

Right. It could happen to anyone for any reason. I wouldn't even consider that a heckle.

I would consider that just assault. Yeah, exactly. But either way, it's a disruption, whether it's physically violent or vocally violent.

This one show I did was in Arizona. It was still, like, peak pandemic, but the red states weren't wearing masks or social distancing. And the blue states were like, no one leave their house.

There's a line outside trader Joe's for 8 hours, and it's like, okay, great. I got to Arizona. No one was wearing a mask.

People were trying to rip my mask off. My face. Hey.

That's how they were living. This isn't even about the pandemic. I'm just painting a stage for you.

We're setting the scene, babe. So I'm on stage. This is my first weekend headlining.

I'm doing 6 hours in four days. Halfway through the set, like, 30 minutes in, I'm having the best set of my life. Then suddenly, chaos reigns.

There were situations out of my control, which was that the club was understaffed. They had only sold, like, 50 tickets beforehand, and then. So they didn't hire that many people for that night.

And then by the time the show started, it was full, so they were severely understaffed. So halfway through my set, just note the host, the guest, the feature have already gone on stage. So it's been over an hour and a half.

People haven't gotten their food, they haven't gotten their drinks. They're hot. The AC is not pumped enough.

People in the backs just start raging, like, going crazy. And I'm like, oh, my God. I don't even know what's going on.

I just know something bad is happening. Then to the left of me, there's a table of Mormons who start trying to fuck me. So it's a guy and his three wives.

I have this all on tape. I've posted some of it, and they go, we love your jewish pussy. Do you want to hang out with us after the show? And I thought it was a joke at first, and I was like, this is fucking annoying.

Shut the fuck up. And he's like, no, this is my wife Rachel, just going through the wives, and we think you're hot. And I was like, sir, I'm in the middle of work right now.

I'm doing a show. Meanwhile, the back of the room is becoming, like, january 6. Everyone on the left side of the stage trying to fuck me.

Then there's a guy in the middle of the stage who's just like, I'm from Cleveland. I'm like, oh, my. Like, this is not a job interview.

Are, you know, you feel free to leave if you just like, I love lamp. I don't know what to say. I just.

So mentally ill. And it was just a bizarre experience where all of these different types of events were happening at the same time. I just sweat through my shirt and smiled and just told jokes to an or 20 minutes and then got off stage.

I was so embarrassed. I felt like I couldn't even look at any of those people in the face. I didn't even go to the meet and greet, and then I had to do another show.

So right before I was going on stage, I walked out the green room and the Mormons were still there. They'd been waiting for me to come out, and they're like, hey, did we make you uncomfortable during the show? And I was like, yeah. I was at work trying to tell jokes, and they're like, oh, okay, well, did you want to hang out with us? And I was like, oh, my God, no, bro.

Like, what? I'm at work. What is wrong with you? It was the husband. It was the husband who was getting aggressive, but the wives were there.

It was real. It was truly we. They wanted it.

We? Yeah, the royal we. They all wanted it. And it was bizarre.

I never experienced it, and I've never heard a guy had that experience. But I have heard of a lot of guys fucking their fans. So it's just like, I just wasn't interested in fucking my fans.

If I was, it would have been a sick orgy and a really good story. But instead, I had to have morals and was, like, trying to do my job stupidly. But also, I don't, like, judge people for having sex with people on the road.

When you get off stage, you're like, I'm a fucking rock star. Suck my dick. There is so much there.

But I do want to talk about the reactivity because as your casting commercial director told you, you have the looks and the comedic bones in you, but your mental illness is so insane. Your personal disorder, according to my analysis. Yeah.

What would you say this is? BPD or multiple personality disorder? How would we diagnose? I'll tell you after. Great. But do you feel like whatever that people get triggered or heckling, is it always about what you're saying, or do you feel it's something always deeper in terms of, like, unattended trigger, whatever they're dealing with that happens to get triggered and projected at that very moment with you or otherwise.

Sometimes it has nothing to do with you. Sometimes it's literally just someone wants attention, and it is so wild. I was doing a New York comedy festival show.

I was headlining, and I was at the stand. Love the stand. It is one of my favorite places in the world to do comedy.

Anyway, I'm doing the show, and this girl just is talking. She's just talking at me. She's like, so when I was in Germany, I was just like, first of all, no, second of, like, the audience is Jews.

Babe, we're not listening to your time in. But. And I was.

And, okay, at first you see if you can handle it by yourself before you ask security to come and kick someone out. The audience is usually with you. And then it just kept happening, and she just wouldn't stop talking.

And finally security went over to talk to her, and I was just like, hey, are you good over there, or do you want to leave? No problem, either way. But you got to make a choice, because I could have you kicked out, or you can stay here and just shut the fuck up. And she's like, sorry.

I'm sorry. And she was like, okay, fine, you can stay. Just do not talk again.

And security left. Then at the end of the show, she came up to me and she's like, you're so funny. I'm, like, obsessed with you.

You're so good. I was like, bitch, why didn't you shut the fuck up? And she was like, I just, honestly was my first show, and I didn't know you couldn't talk. And I was like, I don't even know what to say to you.

Because if I was at your job and you were giving a presentation and you just kept talking at me about whatever you want to talk about, wouldn't you think that was weird and out of place? And she was like, yeah, I just thought comedy shows were supposed to be interactive, and I thought I was supposed to do this, and I was like, so when I kept telling you, stop and don't do this, and all your friends were really embarrassed and shushing you and felt uncomfortable, you weren't reading those signs. You weren't reading the room. And she's like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

I think you're amazing. And I was like, okay, well, as long as you think I'm amazing. And then all of her coworkers, they were all coworkers, came up to me, and they're like, we hate her.

We're so sorry. She's just paying the bill for everyone. Oh, my God.

We're so ashamed. You're awesome. That was so weird of her.

And I was like, muscle your friend. Guys, leave this bitch at home. Anyway, moral of the story, sometimes it has nothing to do with you and just everything to do with other people being wildly out of their own comfort zones and just not knowing how to act like normal human beings.

Sometimes when people heckle, I think they want to wreck your set or think they can, and that usually never works out well for them. I love crowd work, and I love talking to people who are annoying because the crowd is always with you. The crowd's like, yeah, shut up, dude.

Or shut up, gal, whoever you are, or whatever, just stop talking. We're enjoying a show. I don't know what triggers people.

Actually, at the same show we were at, there was a guy who I was just, like, mercilessly, just chaotically poking fun at him, like, absolutely going at him. And we were having a great time. The audience was loving it.

Then this girl is like, that's really fucked up that you keep bringing that up. We're joking about his dick. And she.

He's like, this is so rude. And I said, okay, he's laughing. And then I said, sir, I want you to be honest with me.

I will stop the whole show right now. Are you okay? Am I hurting your feelings? Because if you are, I'll stop. He goes, I'm having a great time.

And I go, okay. And I was like, ma'am, you good? And she goes, no, it's so inappropriate, and he doesn't really mean that. And I was like, sir, just again, if you want me to stop, I will stop.

I thought we were having fun. That could be my bad. And he was like, I'm good.

We're all dying of laughter. And I was like, cool, cool. And she was like, yeah, you're just inappropriate.

And I was like, you can leave whatever trigger you have. Honestly, it was like a very woke trigger of just, like, knee jerk attacking anything that was happening. I don't like using that word woke, but it just felt like it wasn't her fight to fight, and she was putting words in someone else's mouth.

She wasn't even the person I was, quote unquote offending. But she felt the need to be offended for someone else and then make an issue about it when the other person wasn't even offended or bothered. And he became a fan.

And we chatted for a while after he came on stage. We had a blast. And then eventually I was like, hey, you should totally go if you don't like this comedy, because this is what my comedy is.

And if it's not for you, please go. I sang her out of the room. I was like, nana, nana, nana, nana.

I was like, avita, saying goodbye, like, just singing her out of the room. And she was with her boyfriend, who was my fan, and her boyfriend didn't want to leave, so he just sat there and she was like, come on. And he was like, it was so.

I loved every second of it. Then she left, and then he was sitting there furiously texting her. She was outside, and I could see it all going.

And, like, ten minutes later, he embarrassingly left. And then he was like, by the way, I think you're really funny. Sorry about that.

Also, by the way, they came in early, before the show even started trying to be seated. They were already problematic from the start. She's like, he's your super fan.

You better be funny. And I was like, okay, this bitch already's got a chip on her shoulder. I don't know what your deal is, but bye.

Yeah. Anyway, that was long story, right? Did I keep it under ten minutes? No. Twelve minutes.

But I do want to, not to be like all grand or anything, but I do want to pose a bigger question similar to this. Would you say six inches? Eight inches? Six and a half. Great.

But I don't ask leading questions because I don't want to create any arbitrary blinders for you. Tell me you're a psychotherapist. Without telling me you're a psychotherapist.

Exactly. Yeah. I just plan to see, see what happens.

But usually you get pregnant when that happens. Okay, go on with ideas. Yeah.

So you talked about this briefly, and a lot of comics talk about this, like Duisha Paul when he talked about trans community. Where is a fine line between when you talk about a certain community or individual, you buy poking fun. That's the vehicle you chose.

I know the undercurrent of that is you're spotlighting the community. I know that's what Dave Chappelle is doing. That's what a lot of people are doing.

Andrew Schultz included. So, like, how do you view this? Not dichotomy, but this dance or balance between. How much are you doing it to really honor them for being here with you, spending their money and time, which is sacred, especially.

It's an art form versus. Oh, yeah, I'm bigger than comedy. I want to.

Yeah, it's interesting because, again, I do believe that comedians, their intention is never to hurt. And if you're telling a smart joke or you're punching up, I think we should all be able to laugh at ourselves. So whatever the issue is, there's always going to be something ridiculous about it.

I'm sure there are jews that don't like my jew jokes, but I'm like, if we can't make fun of it or laugh at, like, so we're just going to not talk about this. The elephant in the room. Come on.

For me, I'm like, let's break it down and make it funny. And I'm sure know there are people who watch Dave Chappelle and think that trans joke was intentionally hurtful. His words and his joke wasn't funny enough.

Whatever. It was. Whatever.

Okay, fine. I think that if you want to be offended, you'll be offended by anything. I have trans friends that saw and thought it was hilarious.

I have trans friends that saw and didn't think it was hilarious. I sometimes don't know where the line is. Personally, I think a lot of comedians are kind of of the worldview that if you want equality, we can joke about anything as long as you're punching up race, gender politics, ethnicity, relationships, whatever it is.

And this is funny because I was taping an audition this weekend and in it was a probably going to butcher this anyway, it was an italian dish. Tonyrelli caccia Pepe. And then I just kept going, tony rally, Caccia Pepe.

And my friend and I were laughing. We're like, let's use that take. It's hilarious.

And she's chinese. And we were talking, she goes, but you know what's funny? If you said this in a chinese accent, it was a chinese word, you'd be racist. And I was like, and I go, why isn't it racist? When I do it like a funny italian way? And it's like, we're like.

Because it's just not what makes something racist. It's like, if you are chinese, can you do that voice? And it's not racist. But if you're not chinese, if you do an accent, is it racist? Is it that some people have made their whole careers from doing a joke in a different voice or impressions or whatever? It know, I'm like, well, why is it that if I do like a fun italian, it's because Italians, like, when was the last time you think about them being persecuted against in a large way where they've been spotlight by the entire world as a negative entity? Okay, like Mussolini, whatever.

Hate the Jews. Like, fuck that guy. But, well, I don't know.

It is interesting to think about because someone there might be an Italian who sees it and it's like, fuck you. Although Italians and Jews would kind of have like a handshake deal. Like, we can play each other in movies and stuff.

But it was interesting because it was in that moment I was like, I don't know, I've never thought about this as racist, but if someone told me it was racist, I would just be like, fuck you. I'm like, this is hilarious. But I personally would never put on a chinese accent to say a chinese word because to me, I'm not comfortable with that.

That feels weird. And wrong and bad. I know, like, very little Mandarin.

It's so funny because I spoke Mandarin to her, she goes, that's racist. I was like, that was actually Mandarin. I speak Mandarin.

Oh, no. My Mandarin is like, okay, horrible. Whoa.

Hoy show Idr ponchois. You're not good at it. Not good at it.

But it's like, at least that's what I was saying, was that I speak Mandarin, but really not well. And that's very clear. But I said that to her, and because she doesn't speak Mandarin well, she thought I was making up words, and I was like, well, no, that was actually, like, just bad Mandarin.

Yeah, it's like if I was trying to say a sentence in English, and I was like, eat spaghetti. Be like, well, you're so close, but you're so not good at this. Just maybe take a couple more lessons before giving it a go.

B minus for effort. A plus for effort. B minus for understanding.

D minus for understanding. But, yeah, it was interesting because I think a lot of times the line moves. We don't know where it is until we've crossed it.

And a lot of people are complaining or upset or offended or disappointed. My intention is never to hurt anyone's feelings, but also at the same know, I have this joke where I literally was like, am I allowed to say the word Africa? I literally stopped and was like, would that be seen as offensive? And I was like, the fact that I even just thought that is crazy, because if I said Europe, would someone think that was offensive? My brain just broke and I was like, what happened? What's wrong with me that I've become this self censoring, almost sabotaging person where you go on Twitter and you just see everyone's ready to attack anyone at the drop of a dime. Someone's ready to cancel you at a show because maybe you made a mistake or you said something that was off color for humans.

But the fact that I even just had the notion to stop and think, would I get in trouble for this? I was like, oh, no. I'm so in my head about my own art when all I'm trying to do is make people laugh. And if at the end of the day, your goal is just to make people laugh and bring joy, you don't want to be offending people.

But also, it's like, can we all just take a joke? We all just have know, I don't want to hurt anyone. She'll make people laugh. And most people are.

So, yeah, Jerry Seinfeld said that if it's funny, it's a joke. If it's not funny and it's offensive, it's not a joke. He stopped doing colleges, and he's a clean comedian because that's how offended the younger generations historically, right now are, how easily offended they are, how they take things out of context.

And he's a clean comic. So the fact that he stopped doing colleges lets you know how rampant censorship and ease of offense. I don't know what era this is, but it's frightening and it's a little dangerous because it just feels like we don't have freedom of speech anymore.

And there's a difference between freedom of speech and. Look, hate speech is different. I guess technically you still have freedom of speech to say hate speech, but I don't think a lot of comedians are attempting to just spew hate.

Right. I wanted to end the conversation with this question because it's a full circle. We started with the intentional impact, because I think we live in a world where he talks about the fact that he stopped doing college tours.

That phenomena permeates with academics. A lot of professors getting canceled. They're losing their tenureship.

And a lot of them talk about they can no longer teach the way they feel, called to to teach because of the receptivity on the other side. And I see that across all sectors. That's why I really want to talk about intention versus impact, because I think stand up comedy is the vanguard of that.

But, yeah, before I roll out the metaphorical red carpet moment for you, Leah, is there anything that we talked about today that you really feel called to share that we haven't touched about? Because I really view you. We didn't talk about whole other aspects of your just web 3.0, investing your technological acumen on all these things, because I think that will really detract from the algorithm.

That's half the. So when we're making content about this, I just want to make sure that everyone knows that I'm totally well adjusted. I'm a very normal person.

Nothing's wrong with me, and I have no problems whatsoever. Cured for life. I'm perfect.

Yeah, I'm totally healed. I'm absolutely healed. Healing is a journey.

It's a lifelong journey. It's a practice, and you're not always going to get it right. And that's okay.

Practice makes progression, not perfection. Hey, fucking go. That's absolutely correct.

And stop comparing yourself to hoes on the Internet. I'm a ho on the Internet. Stop comparing yourself to me.

You're a ho with the ring, though. Yeah. Ho to housewife.

But no, just stop comparing yourself to people. If you can just focus on yourself and just be as authentic as possible. I think the thing that I wish I had done sooner was get help.

No one regrets getting help. That's number one. Number two, just be you.

You'll find your tribe, your audience, your people, your niche, whatever it is. I think I spent a lot of time being someone else because I wanted everyone to like me. So it was just like an absolute people pleaser.

I don't even think I knew who I was, and I didn't live a life authentic to me, so I always was out of alignment. I was always, like, unwell. I was sick.

I had to take meds. I was just sad. Lived in resentment, anger, fear, constantly.

Like, I just lived in this tiny little circle that was so insulated, just. I couldn't step outside it. I was just afraid of everything.

So if there's anything I can hope for people is that they are fearless and get help if they think they need it and continue their journey of healing if they've already started. Congratulations. We are the lucky ones and just be you.

Everyone else is already taken. Stay curious and don't be an asshole. No, don't take away being an asshole.

I live for that. I need that desperately. I have nothing else.

As a Star of Star wars trilogy, all I can say is being an asshole really brings joy to my life. I believe that in a parallel universe, somewhere next to us, you have become a trilogy of the life of Leah Lamar. Look, Natalie Portman and I have never been in the same room together.

Who knows? We might be the same person. Hard to say. Yeah, you two are very similar.

Totally similar. Just jewish women. That's it.

She's so hot. Oh, my God. Unbelievable.

She is gorgeous. Gorgeous, stunning. Queen power empress, gracious, kind, beautiful.

I mean, I've never met her because obviously, we're in the same room together, but, God, I'm so unwell. So after I give you a proper diagnosis about your personal disorder. Can't wait.

But before we do that, here's the metaphorical red carpet moment. Okay. I really appreciate your time.

I know. Especially you just got back from a two week reset in Europe, and we're able to cop on a discovery call, and you made your way out to here, which is not easy in. But I really, really.

I want to say this one more time. Like, vulnerability can be a marketplace, but I felt the genuine energies, and I've seen, at least from the context which you shared, you're going through evolutions. And it's really not easy to find someone that really loves you.

And finding a meaningful relationship in LA, that is hard. Well, that's why I didn't find it in LA. I went to Ibiza.

Ibiza for. Everyone's going to destroy me for saying it that way. I went to Ibiza.

That's how they say in England. And if you say Ibiza, they're like, it's Ibiza. When you go to Ibiza, they say it's, you know, you can never win.

But I went across the old, it's my first time in Europe. I married just the first british guy I met. That's exactly what happened.

I said, you'll do. And that was it. No, I had to go across the world to find my husband.

I found a british jew, which is like finding a needle in a haystack. But I adore him, and I'm so grateful. And when I met him, I knew he was the one.

I mean, like, three days in, I was like, oh, this is different. I saw him. I don't know if you've ever experienced love at first sight.

Never experienced first sight. You've never seen anyone. You're people blind.

Yes. I met my fiance yesterday. So great.

I think a lot of people can relate to seeing someone and just being awestrucken by them. Just, oh, my God. I have this feeling that I don't know what to do with it, but I think we're meant to be together.

It's just this, like, grandiose feeling. A lot of times I've realized in hindsight that was just a core wound being activated, and I was attracted to their chaos. I could find the craziest alcoholic in a room of 10,000 people and be like, that's my husband.

How many times have you been to jail? It's not enough. I'll fall in love with you no matter what. It was like lust at first sight.

It was chaos at first sight. It wasn't actually love. I saw my husband for the first time.

I had a different feeling, which I was overcome by, which was, I need to know this person. I need to be around this person. I need to know.

You know, it's so crazy, because the first night we met, I had tissue paper in my ears. We were at Pasha, which is the notoriously loudest nightclub in the world. Not my scene.

Don't know what I was doing there. And he brought me earplugs, and he's like, do you want these? And I was like, yeah. Who is he? Yeah.

Angel. And he's like, do you want to go outside and talk? And I was like, yeah, are there chairs? We sat outside and we talked and he did something no man in LA has ever done, except for you now, but asked me questions about myself. And he was really just trying to get to know me.

And I was like, God, this is so know. The last date I had been in, in LA was with a guy who I'd been dating. And we went to dinner and he didn't ask me one question.

And I actually was sitting there waiting for him to ask me a question to see if he would. And the whole time he just talked about himself and I was like, wow. Here's a man who's genuinely interested in getting to know me.

This is uncomfortable because now I'm being seen and heard and I have to be vulnerable with this person and share intimate details with my life. And now what if they reject me after seeing the real know? And then I was like, oh, my God, was I the emotionally unavailable one the whole time? It was like my kaiser Soze moment. The call is coming from inside the house.

Hi, it's me. I'm the problem. It's me.

And just through a process of letting myself trust fall into being with this genuinely nice, authentic person who was emotionally available in a stable attachment style. Just comes from a loving family. They're all friends, they hang out together.

I mean, it's just a lot when you don't come from a similar situation. It's an overload, almost. You're like, oh, my God.

People can react to family members this way and you choose to hang out with each other. This is so crazy. It's all I ever wanted for my family and that's what I still want, but it's just we're not quite there.

And getting to experience that sort of love and unconditional love and acceptance just changed my nervous system. Instead of being with a guy where I felt that, oh, the butterflies or that's just chaos. When you're with someone, you should be at peace, you should be comfortable, you should feel safe.

Feeling unsafe is not love. So very grateful for my husband. He's an angel.

Just a cutie little patootie. And he's taller than 6ft, which for me was. If he were on hinge, I'm sure he would put off his height.

I got the better end of this deal, I'll tell you that much. Poor guy. I'm just like, you're fucked, bro.

You married me, stupid, but now you're organized chaos. Not yeah, I always tell him you're stupid. I'm smart, right? Because I married you.

And I'm so lucky. Right? Best investment. Yeah.

Without further ado, I want to ask you to trust. Fall into the red carpet. Metaphorically.

Where can people connect with you? Maybe hear more of your edgy jokes at your full blown scale? I know your Instagram's shadow band. I know you're working through that, to that situations, but, yeah, for anyone to check out your projects, tour coming up, anything you want to share and for people to discover more about who you are. Yeah, if you want to find me, I'm at Leo Lamar Leahlamarr.

Two R's. The extra r is for ridiculous. Ha ha.

Just whatever. Two R's, whatever you want to be. And yeah, if you go to leahlamar.com,

you'll find show dates. But just follow me on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter TikTok. It has five r's.

Stop asking questions. It's so annoying. But if you go to my instagram, I'm always posting my show dates.

You can get tickets to come see me. And I'll be touring soon. I'll be in Europe this summer doing shows out there.

I got a bunch lined up, so hit me up on the dms if you are looking to see if I'm coming to your city soon or just follow me and see some more crazy, edgy content and mental illness on display. Yeah, please help with my algorithm. Thank you so much.

But seriously, I really appreciate your time. And yeah, I really enjoy these type of conversations. And thank you for being willing to be intimate within this container of conversations.

And just thank you for your thoughtfulness and what you do. I think you're doing cool things. So sorry for being the most long winded person who's ever been on this podcast.

That would be my Guinness Book of World Records reward award. It would just be inability to answer a question in 60 seconds. I'll create an extra tab on my website just with your name.

Click on it. The longest winded guest of all time in four years of discover more. Thank you so much.

This is an honor. I don't know who to thank. All my childhood trauma and every guy who's never loved me and the.

Okay, thank you. I'll stop.