Whitney Cummings on How She Found The Right Man After Giving Birth, How Motherhood Changed Her & Why The Self-Love Movement Is Making US All Narcissists

Comedian and truth-teller Whitney Cummings (known for her hit Good For You Podcast, Big Baby North American Tour, and iconic stand-up comedy specials) returns to MBB with a raw, hilarious, and eye-opening dive into how motherhood rewired her brain, comedy, and concept of love. From navigating “mom brain” and overcoming codependency to redefining relationships (with herself, her baby, A. I. bots, and beyond), Whitney Cummings unpacks the wild transformation that comes with becoming a mom. In this episode, Whitney shares her journey of balancing motherhood and comedy, how to use play for conflict resolution, and why “Pick me” is the worst insult. She also delves into the power of grief, the dangers of defining yourself by who you’re dating, and the fine line between self-love and self-obsession. Plus, she reveals how red light therapy gives her that post-baby glow. Don’t miss Whitney’s unfiltered insights on life, love, mental health, and why laughter truly is the best medicine. Watch now for Whitney Cummings' funniest moments, relationship advice, and her take on navigating the chaos of modern life. Catch Whitney as the host of Friends: The Game Show, a fan competition series celebrating the beloved sitcom Friends’ 30th anniversary, currently on Max. Whitney Cummings' Big Baby North American tour: https://punchup.live/whitneycummings/tickets#tour Whitney Cummings podcast, "Good for You": https://whitneycummings.com/podcast Check out our first episode with Whitney Cummings: https://mayim.simplecast.com/episodes/whitney-cummings-genetics-loads-the-gun-environment-pulls-the-trigger Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/ BialikBreakdown.com https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/ YouTube.com/mayimbialik https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTOocPnDh2YQZZwh86K2OxA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Oh, you've got a kid?

• 0:03Speaker 01

  And I was like, yeah, can you hold my baby for a second? And in your brain, you're like, oh, God, baby, please don't cry. Please don't cry while he's in your hands. You're gonna scare him off. And then I'm like, how could I possibly know if I should be with a man if I haven't already seen him with a kid? This is how dating should always go. On the first date, someone should hand him a baby and see how he does. Because of how deep my suspicion of men's motives are, I saw men leave so much. So it was like, don't be too much, don't ask for too much, don't overwhelm them. Don't need too much. You have to make it easy for them to stay. You know, your personality is already a lot. I was looking for a boyfriend. I wasn't looking for a father.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  That was like a big shift. And then what kind of person do I want to be? Because I was spending all this time trying to be a good girlfriend to a guy or a good wife. Wait, why don't I work on being a good mother and then I'll attract the person?

• 1:02Speaker 01

  A lot of my friends have been like, you came off so hard and being pregnant kind of softened you? I was just attracting people that were into that mask I was wearing. Pregnancy, you're so vulnerable. Something that happened after I had a kid is I couldn't be funny. I couldn't be available, intimate in any way. And so I was able to attract someone that I don't think I could have attracted before.

• 1:31Mayim Bialik?

  Before we dive into today's episode, I'm gonna ask you to do something very quick, very easy, but super helpful. I'm gonna ask you to hit the subscribe button. You see it? Go get it. Hit the subscribe button. It just takes a second, but it means a lot to us. You have probably noticed from all of the comments that we get, many people find that listening to MBB regularly is helping them feel happier, healthier, more inspired. And you know what? That actually is why we are doing this. It makes my heart swell to hear that so many of you are feeling inspired. So subscribing to This show, whether you're listening on YouTube or whether you're listening to it through a podcast app,

• 2:14Mayim Bialik?

  it's the easiest way to ensure that you will never miss an episode. So we don't want you to miss a single one and you don't want to miss a single one. So you'll get notified as soon as a new episode drops. All you have to do is subscribe and share this episode with someone if you enjoy it. We're trying to spread the word. Help us do that. The best way to support our show is by subscribing. So do it now. Thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate you. Let's get back to the good stuff. Hi, I'm Iain Viallick.

• 2:43Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 2:44Mayim Bialik?

  Welcome to our Breakdown. Today, we're having a repeat offender in the Breakdown community. We're going to be talking with comedian Whitney Cummings. The last time she was on here, she was pregnant. She is now the mother of a child. We're going to talk with her all about how she changed during pregnancy, how having a child helped her reprioritize and understand herself better. She's also going to talk about how codependency has shifted in her parenting journey, how she understands her needs better, those of her child and those of the world around her.

• 3:19Jonathan Cohen?

  What I really was touched by was her description of how being pregnant and giving birth softened her in a way that helped her attract a partner and how before she was pregnant, she was looking for a boyfriend. And then after she gave birth, she was looking for a father to her child. It was a really interesting, and it actually has a metaphysical tie in that we're going to touch on.

• 3:42Mayim Bialik?

  In addition, Whitney is extremely vulnerable in explaining what took her so long to find the right person to be her partner. I've never heard anyone explain what she did in terms of timing.

• 3:56Jonathan Cohen?

  And if you're watching this episode, it is something that has never happened before on this podcast for the first section.

• 4:05Jonathan Cohen?

  She's red light therapying. She looks a little bit alien-esque. She has a fantastic red glow. She's wearing her red light glasses for eye protection, which we appreciate, keep herself safe. But then she does transition to a regular view and we get a unique glimpse into her home and her workout space.

• 4:26Mayim Bialik?

  Also want to mention, she's the host of Friends, the game show, which is a fan competition series celebrating the beloved sitcom Friends 30th anniversary. It's currently on Max and also she's touring, big baby North American tour. We'll talk about that. In addition, make sure that you're following us on Substack. A lot of our content, bonus content is going to exist over there. So go to my MB Alex breakdown over on Substack and we can't wait to see you over there. And without further ado, let's welcome Whitney Cummings back to the breakdown. Break it down.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Good morning. I'm doing my red light. I hope that's okay.

• 5:01Mayim Bialik?

  Well, it's totally fine with us, but you, I think you need to explain to the people who may not know what's happening with a red light.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  So, all right, let me, I'll explain. So, um, let me just start from the beginning. So, society hates women. And if women start aging, we're called busted, ugly. You know, it's just, so enter red light and enter me doing anything that makes it so that I don't have to get a facelift off Craigslist in 10 years.

• 5:34Mayim Bialik?

  So what, what does the red light promise? Like plumper?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Listen to me.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Placebo effect is an effect and you should know this by now. It is 60% effective. So I don't know what it does.

• 5:48Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Except make me think that I'm making some kind of progress health-wise. No, I'm going to be, I'm, I'm so grateful that I'm doing your podcast. I miss you. Hi, by the way.

• 5:59Mayim Bialik?

  Hello.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  There's not enough time. So remember when all these things were supposed to save us time, Amazon, and we pay bills online. We're supposed to have an extra six hours a week. Where is the time that we saved? Do you know where it is?

• 6:17Mayim Bialik?

  Well, you had a child, and I believe that he's still small. So that's where your time went.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  So I have started multitasking in a way that also rides on the coattails of my whole thing of like, self-esteem, being authentic. We talk about it, then we don't do it. I'm like, why am I sitting in a chair, which sitting is the new smoking? If I'm on a podcast now, I'm stretching, I'm red lighting, and I'm walking the walk.

• 6:45Jonathan Cohen?

  I would have brought my red light if I had known that this is what we were doing.

• 6:48Mayim Bialik?

  I'm also, and I know you can't necessarily turn the camera around, but what is facing you? Like, oh.

• 6:57Jonathan Cohen?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, she's got a good setup here.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  So apparently, red light is just good for the mitochondria. I don't know. It seems like it's good for the skin. So I've been doing sauna and red light pretty consistently.

• 7:12Mayim Bialik?

  Like, is it like a once a day experience?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  It's a once a day experience. I do it like on like one Zoom a day that I have. And the other side effect that is actually just like a welcome pleasure is, is people start thinking you're so nuts that they call you less. They don't ask you to babysit their kids or hang out. So it's de-stressing on that level as well.

• 7:37Mayim Bialik?

  Well, we appreciate the time that we have with you, and we're glad that we could be part of your multitasking. We are not multitasking. We are only talking to you.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Well, look, thank you. I appreciate that. But you're also, but you're doing your bit. That's you. This is your business, your job. I am always trying to find little ways that I can kind of do two things in once. And, you know, it's like the standing desk and the walking. Employees should be able to legally ask for, right? Is it, is it illegal to not provide a standing desk now?

• 8:05Jonathan Cohen?

  I don't know that that's passed Congress yet, but I think it's right on the cusp.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  That's not, that's not everyone's number one priority right now.

• 8:12Jonathan Cohen?

  It's also a treadmill underneath your desk.

• 8:14Mayim Bialik?

  You are one of our most popular and most beloved episodes of all time that we've ever done here. And we were so excited to get to talk to you again. The first time that you came on our show, you were very, very pregnant. And we laughed so hard that you thought that you might give birth.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  I'm just, I'm obsessed with you guys. I love the show. It's very, um, it's a big deal when you get called back a second time to a podcast. Like, that's like the new, like, I made it.

• 8:43Mayim Bialik?

  So you were pregnant, now you're not, and a lot of your, um, a lot of your comedy is, you know, and a lot of the things that you do that are funny on social media and things, do kind of reference and sort of include this new part of your identity in your life. You know, when you were here, we kind of asked, what are you expecting? And especially given, you know, your childhood and the things that were modeled for you. Can you give us sort of like your thumbnail sketch of what the journey has been like for you?

• 9:14Speaker 01

  You know, it's, I'm gonna start by saying, there's this emotional perfectionism and fear that comes with talking about motherhood of like, am I leaving someone out? Am I gonna hurt someone's feelings? Like, am I gonna upset the C-section women because I didn't have a C-section? Like, let me just start.

• 9:36Mayim Bialik?

  Yes, you will.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yes. Let me just start by saying that you asking me this question is an act of violence against all the women that didn't have my exact experience. So how dare you? So I do have a little bit of that as I start. So just, everyone out there that had a different experience than me, you know, I'm not criticizing you. I, I'm stunned I didn't have a C-section. Like, I am stunned that that is not what happened because I did it via hospital and that's kind of their, you know, whole racket. But also, um, you know, I had a child at 41 and, you know, again, get rid, this, okay, so the last episode was beloved. This one will be the one, I'm, oh, I'm done. They hate it. They hate me. They, they build me up to tear me down.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  So I did, I was recommended by my doctor to induce a week early because I really wanted to do it vaginally. And but C-section would have been fine. Like, that's fine, too. Whatever the universe is, you know, wanted.

• 10:36Mayim Bialik?

  Sorry. And just to clarify, people have vaginal births all the time without being induced a week early. In your case, that was recommended. I don't want people being like, if you want a vaginal birth, you have to be induced a week early.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Thank you. This is why you're you, because you know how to say caveats. And I just, um, look, uh, my doctor is RFK Junior, and this is what he recommended. So I did it. And, um, you know, and yes, it was just like a sizing thing. I'm really just bragging about how tiny my vagina is, aren't I? Um, and, uh, also, there's a very wide, I mean, look, I don't have to tell you how insane the healthcare, you know, system is, is at all in this country. You know, nurses are like, you think you guys can't, you know, you get, they're done. Nurses are done. Like nurses, I mean, whether it was after COVID, they're making more money now doing home infusions. So there was a shortage of nurses. So they were like, come

• 11:30Speaker 01

  early, just because we might not have nurses, you know. So it's, it's, it's a wild time. And, um, you know, so I did the induction a little bit, uh, you know, had my son, I got an episiotomy that, you know, no one really gives you a heads up on that. So yeah, they, they ended up just like cutting me two inches. She said they hadn't done that in a while. Um, I don't know.

• 11:52Jonathan Cohen?

  Had to bring it back.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  They, you know, I do feel we talk a lot about updating words and why do we call it geriatric pregnancy, you know, whatever we're called pronouns. Can we update the scissors? Can we update like some of the medieval torture devices that like, you're giving birth and you're like, that's the most recent one?

• 12:13Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, it feels very 1700s, certain aspects of labor.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Can the Dyson air wrap people get in on the, do you know, there is, I went to a Mother's Day brunch the other day for a woman that invented and updated speculum because it hadn't been updated since the 1800s. And it's still just like tetanus, like shrapnel from a. From a junkyard? And so you're seeing you're at the medieval torture museum. You're just like looking at all of these like weapons. They just pull out a ninja star and cut you in half. And then he, you know, my son wasn't coming out. It wasn't, you know, going great. The cord was around his neck, you know? I think this is pretty common, but it, you know, it would have ended in a C-section had I not induced. So luckily that, you know, um, that did go pretty smoothly.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  I, I was, you know, it's interesting and I'm sure everyone has their own, you know? I know everyone has their own version of postpartum depression. And, um, you know, look, I got ahead of it by having prepartum depression. So I was ready and mine was just about being so tired. And I felt so embarrassed about how tired I was. And, you know, look, like having a kid is the marathon exercise in, you know, asking for help. And so I'm asking people to help me and can you help me put him to, I have to take it. I'm like napping more than my child. And I was just exhausted and, you know, um, eating as much as I could to breastfeed and hydrating. So I was in, it brought up a lot of my like embarrassment.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  And I've always like, you know, that's my core thing is embarrassment and being boring. Those are my two like big fears. And, um, you know, I was like, so I'm just embarrassed that I'm a human. Like this is really what it is. I'm embarrassed that I have to sleep after giving birth. Like how men, you guys have this already, you know, like, have you ever called a man and he admitted he was sleeping?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  You know, you call a man like two in the morning and they're like, oh, no, I'm up. I wasn't sleeping. You're like, you weren't? That's, that'd be weird if you weren't. Like you guys already have this, you know? And like, you know, the, you know, my baby nurse will come in and be like, you know, like six AM, you know, to breastfeed and I'm like, I'm up, I wasn't sleeping. Like, and I was like, this is such a, a weird, um, shame around rest. And of all the times that I have the pass.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  So there was a little bit of that. I don't have to tell you, and as soon as you have a kid, all your shit becomes crystal clear of like, how did you just manage to make that about you, bitch, you know? So it was, it was cool to watch my inner monologue in real time, almost like on a teleprompter, and be able to separate myself from it. It's almost this like, you know, you become a mother and you're like, that's not true. Everything just, it's very clear what's true and false in your brain.

• 15:12Mayim Bialik?

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• 16:42Speaker 04

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• 17:16Speaker 01

  I had taken before I was pregnant Prozac. Like it was 10mg and then and it was working great. And I told, you know, you know, my psychiatrist, I was like, this is working amazing. I love Prozac, like it closes the loop. You know, I no longer obsess if people are mad at me and da da. And he's like, well, that is a placebo dose. I'm like, why did you tell me that?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Now you have to give me the risk. So now it's at 20 because he told me. So I was like, oh, placebos don't work. If you tell me, you dork. So, so I was also off Prozac. So I think I was also just on the loop of beating myself up. And then I went back on Prozac and that helped, you know, a lot. I'm not like a huge like, you know, take medication if you don't need a person, but that really does just, you know, help me a little bit. And, and that was kind of it. I, you know, there was four to six months where, you know, I'm every woman I'm sure goes through like what your identity is. You realize what your self-esteem is hinged on, you know, before the child. And my brain was so slow, mom brain, whatever it is. I actually have shame talking about mom brain because I don't want to be that person.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  It's like, whatever you do, don't hire a woman after she actually has a kid because we're just dumb idiots who can't remember a basic thing. It's tricky because you want to talk about it publicly and be open so other women don't feel shame. But you also want to advertise, hey, after we have kids, we can't remember where we live. We're so dumb. So there's that, you know, struggle, but. My self-esteem and it really hinges on like being quick. And you know, you're friends with comedians, you know, like being quick and being fast and having a joke. And I just, I had nothing. Like my, I wasn't quick, I wasn't fast, I wasn't able to think of a joke. And um, I was like, oh, I guess I'm just like not funny.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  I got, you know, and now I just look back at it as like a rebooting process, like a software update. You know, you have to turn your phone off for it to software update. So that software update for me was uh, very frustrating. And like anything, you know, what you resist persists. So as soon as I was like, you know, I guess I'm not funny anymore. I guess I'll just do something else. That's when it, you know, I was able to kind of get that back.

• 19:31Jonathan Cohen?

  How long did that last?

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Um, the, the not being funny, my whole career, probably according to Reddit. But um, there was like four to six months.

• 19:39Jonathan Cohen?

  It's a long time for someone who makes their living being funny and has an identity being funny.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  But also for, I used to take uh, like, you know, self-imposed breaks from stand-up after I did specials to grow, to make sure I wasn't doing a bad impression of myself. Cause you can do that as a comic. You can stay stuck forever, you know, and not evolve. Like we actively have to go out of our way to mature. Especially since the audience rewards us being like immature and making bad decisions and being messes. So I would take time off, you know, cause if you go right back on stage, you're just kind of, I'm doing that. I'm doing the impression of me, you know? And instead, you know, so this was kind of like nature forcing me to do that. Because after being pregnant for a year, I was still touring a little bit, but I'm like, I'm falling behind. I'm falling behind.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  The fact that your brain tells you, you're having a child, the best thing that's ever happened to you, but you're falling behind in your career. But when you come back, you're gonna be so much better and more interesting. You know, I just had to kind of like slay some of those thoughts and I, and I'm so grateful because they're kind of gone. All these things you worked so hard to change. You have a kid and they're kind of like, oh, that's gone. So what I'm saying is don't go to therapy, just have a kid, it'll fix everything.

• 20:50Mayim Bialik?

  Do, do, do you feel like um, it is a different iteration of you? Like, do you feel better and more interesting?

• 20:57Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'm more interesting, but I'm more interested, you know, and.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  I also have, I think that like, you know, having a kid, like radical acceptance just is like my new kink. I'm so into it. And because anything else really is just judgment, isn't it? And because you're like, okay, I have a son and he's, I have to radically accept if I turn around, he could die. Like, I don't get to, I don't get to gamble anymore with adrenaline. I don't get to be like, but if he just stands here and I grab my phone and text and check this text message. Like, there's no, the stakes are too high. And I think for me, I had a gut, and we talked about this a lot in the last one, of like, the codependence of the people pleasing, the three M's, the mothering, micromanaging, the martyring.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  When you grow up in an alcoholic or chaotic home, where you're a parentified child, when you're taking care of the adults.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  I was mothering adults. And now I get to mother something that actually needs it. And there's a peace that comes with that, because you can never raise a 45-year-old man. It's never gonna happen. And I was in such a manic state of trying to rescue and mother. And whether it was animals, whether it was men, whether it was employees or coworkers or, you know, someone on the internet who GoFundMe, if you put me on fricking Kickstarter, man, I'm just like, the dogs need surgery, like, you know. So to actually be able to put that force, like, we all have these forces inside us. And I think it's just about channeling. I think it's addiction, anything, you know?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  We're these forces of nature, but because we're not in the environment we were, you know, meant to thrive in, for like, putting it towards all these inappropriate things. So it's, I feel very, the word, I guess, would be like, at home. And my purpose is very clear. And as someone that, like, anyone listening to this, and I think there's like a decision fatigue that is the basis of so much of my exhaustion, which is like, should I do this? Should I do this? Should I go to this? But she asked me to her baby shower with this person, and then I did this podcast. And it's just, when you have a kid, there's so few things you can do, that it's just like, oh, my God, the answer to most things is just like, no. And there's something just really a relief about less choices.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  And I have less decision fatigue, if that makes sense. And I think I don't realize how, I didn't realize how draining that was.

• 23:26Mayim Bialik?

  In terms of, you know, sort of your lifestyle with your small human.

• 23:33Mayim Bialik?

  When you were on our podcast and you were with child. You talked about how you, you were not in a romantic relationship with the person that was donating the Y chromosome in this case.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  White trash till I die.

• 23:50Mayim Bialik?

  But you do have, you have a boyfriend now. Are you, like, is that someone that is part of your son's life? Is the person who was your biologic, like, I know, like, you're not supposed to ask a lot of things, but like, I feel like it's something you might want to talk to us about.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  You're like the only person I've really talked about this. But yeah, so look, you know, I spent, and I take full responsibility for the fact that, you know, and the only way I know how to say it, especially as someone that, you know, sometimes I feel like I'm being a know it all, just like saying all the things that I've learned in 12 step programs and, you know, and, and, you know, self-help and all this stuff. I, I didn't heal fast enough to find a partner in time. You know, I just didn't heal fast enough. And, you know, I can say all these things that I know and that I'm trying to do, you know, that doesn't mean I'm able to execute them on a daily basis. That doesn't mean they're my default setting. That doesn't mean, you know, you know, who you're attracted to magnetically on like

• 24:50Speaker 01

  a molecular level is very hard to change when the way you got dopamine and your comfort zone or your neurochemical cocktail of adrenaline and cortisol. And as someone that was terrified of true like intimacy and connection, I was magnetically attracted to people who were unavailable and inconsistent and whose audition I'd, whose approval I had to audition for and who gave me this, this ability to just.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Isolate and go inward and self-flagellate of like, well, if I was just like this, then maybe that okay, yesterday they texted at four and but today they called, maybe it's because I shouldn't have told them I wasn't available. Like just that self-imposed, I'm trying to not say like, um, whatever, the masochistic, but it's not masochistic. It's your comfort zone. If that's what you, you know, come from and it's a way to be alone ultimately, right? It's a way to not be with someone. I'm going to pick someone who is unpredictable, who I can, you know, just be in fantasy land. It it triggers my fan, the fantasy addiction. So I lost a lot of time on that. And I wasn't thinking in terms, when I was dating of fathers, I was thinking in terms of boyfriends.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  And maybe husbands, and I didn't think about fathers. And then I realized like, why is your definition of boyfriend so different than your definition of father? Why is your definition? Because I mean, I got out of a relationship once because my, um, this trauma therapist I was working with was like, you know, would you have a kid with this person was always, you know, and it's like, I was like, no, I would never a kid. But I would never let a kid alone with this person. Are you insane? And I was like, whoa. I am gravitating towards these, you know, people that have these, um, very alcoholic qualities. So that I can fix them and and save them and rescue them. So I couldn't find a man to have a kid with because I I was mothering them already.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Right? And so, um, I, you know, pandemic happens, you know, my mom dies. And I, at forty years old, met someone. And look, you're, you know, studying neuroscience, so this is going to sound ridiculous, but I do think there's value in like the neuroscience of just magic and the neuroscience are just like God, whatever it is, like I met this person who I've never met anyone like him. I've never met, there was just like a kindness. There was like a gentleness. There was a, you know, much younger than me. And I just, my brain was like, that's a father. Grief can be very clarifying.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  And there's something amazing about grief because you don't have the energy to talk yourself into anything. I highly recommend you, um, murder your parents to get this kind of clarity that I had. I I recommend the death of people around you, um, uh, in order to, you know. Grow. Um, so I just, I was like, you're a dad. I, I don't think you're my husband, but you're such a father. Like, he's younger and I'm like, it's not fair for us to be together. Like, you still have so much to, he didn't know who Lorena Bobbitt was. I don't like explaining to people things. I don't like being an educator to a man. I don't like that dynamic. Like,

• 28:06Speaker 01

  you know, there, I do think there's something to be said for being with someone in your age range. So you have the same references. You know, sometimes we can only explain a feeling with a song or a movie reference, you know, sometimes it's like, oh, you know, in this movie, this happened, it was like that, you know, sometimes, um, and we didn't have that. And in our relationship, but I say this with so much love in my heart because as chronically independent people, sometimes when people try to help you, it, things get weird. So when he would try to help me with something, it wouldn't go well. So my whole thing with relationships is the hard things can be hard, but the easy things shouldn't be hard. And the easy things were hard, like little things, like communication stuff, like

• 28:51Speaker 01

  he'd be like, I'll be in the car and I'm like, all right, I'm on my way down. And then I'd be looking for a laptop for 20 minutes and then I'd go downstairs and I'd be like, I can't find my laptop. He's like, well, I grabbed it for you. And I'm like,

• 29:02Speaker 01

  it's not helpful if you don't tell me you helped me. I mean, it was like things like that and we would die laughing because we were like, we just can't even help each other. We can't even, like, we don't know how to even, you know? And so we just had this like a really funny relationship and I was like, can I go off birth control and just see what happens? And we just didn't really think about it. And then, you know, he is from North Carolina, went back to North Carolina and then 10 weeks later I was pregnant. And we just like, we're dying laughing.

• 29:27Mayim Bialik?

  He got you pregnant from North Carolina?

• 29:29Speaker 01

  He did. Okay. So 23andMe, I know you guys don't like it. I know it has some downsides. Um, but yeah, and then we just were like, let's not, I, trust me, I did have the perfectionism of like, we gotta be together. We gotta stay together. We gotta figure out a way to be, you know, more compatible than we are. And let's just figure it out. And I was like, you know, that's what my parents did. So many people do that. Like, maybe, should we just like, He'll never know anything different. Our son will never know anything different if we just, he'll never see us argue, he'll never see us, you know, be together and not be together. Let's just like take the win and,

• 30:09Speaker 01

  you know, be kind of punk rock about this. Um, and then, you know, I, I met my current boyfriend as soon as I had a baby, which I recommend it. Like, how can you, I think you gotta throw someone in the deep end, off the bat.

• 30:24Jonathan Cohen?

  Had you given birth before you met him, or did you meet him pregnant?

• 30:28Speaker 01

  No, well, I've sort of known, he's a very famous skateboarder and I don't

• 30:35Speaker 01

  know what that means. Um, and we had like DM'd about some like business stuff before and, you know, kind of knew of each other and, you know, postpartum depression's wild. I was just sliding into people's DMs, you know, I was just really all over, I was just out there, you know? Thriving, just stitches not even dissolved. Um, and, and then he, you know, I, you know, technically was, you know, a single mom, his dad was still in North Carolina, hadn't moved here yet and he's like, do you need help building that crib? Like, I had to like build cribs and don't, I, I will go off so hard on big mom. The fact that these, I can tell right away what

• 31:18Speaker 01

  baby product was invented by a woman and what was invented by a man in one look. It's like the ba- the baby, not baby oil, we're not doing baby oil, even I know that, but like, the thing you gotta take off and then there's the sealed plastic on it and you're like, and then the plastic outside of it, it's just like, you know, I don't have, I barely have one hand. What is all this? So he just, I was like, can you just come over and take all the tu- caps off everything for me? Can you just like, you know, put a scrunchie on every doorknob for me? Like, I just, you know, and you put the nursery together the way you think you're gonna need it and then it needs to be a tone. So he just came over and, you know, reorganized the place for me and stuff like that. And, you know, it's funny, I'm joking on some level, but I'm also because of how deep my suspicion of men's

• 32:04Speaker 01

  motives are, or, you know, it's just, it's just imprinting, it's just like, you know, I know I'm wrong. I know it's not all of them, but, or how I saw men leave so much. So it was like, don't be too much, don't ask for too much, don't overwhelm them, don't need too much, you have to make it easy for them to stay. You know, your personality is already a lot. Um, and you know, with him, I didn't have that. And I kind of was like, yeah, can you hold my baby for a second? And in your brain, you're like, oh, God, baby, please don't cry, please don't cry. Please don't cry while he's in your hands. You're gonna scare him off. And then I'm like, no, this is, how could I possibly know if I should be with a man if I haven't already seen him with a kid? Like, this is how dating should always go. You should, on the first date, someone should hand him a baby

• 32:49Speaker 01

  and see how he does. Like, I was like, so I, you know, what my psyche needed, I guess, was to see that. And by the way, it was after I had a kid, so I couldn't be available, intimate in any way, at all, like, no chance, you know? So it was just kind of this weird, magical, you know, and I think that for me, being pregnant, you know, this is the feedback I've gotten. And I'm pretty, you know, I think we spent a lot of time going like, ignore the Instagram comments, ignore negativity. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're right. And some, I'm big on feedback, you know, from people I, you know, trust. Sometimes you need feedback from people that don't know you at all. Sometimes your friends go, no, he likes you too much. Like, that's not helpful.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  So a lot of my friends have been like, you came off so hard and being pregnant kind of softened you? So I think I was just attracting people that were into that mask I was wearing. And so pregnancy, you're so vulnerable, you're so, and I couldn't be funny, you know, and so I was able to attract someone that, that I don't think I could have attracted before.

• 34:02Mayim Bialik?

  It's so interesting because also I wonder if, you know, when you talk about dating for boyfriends instead of fathers, and it's kind of interesting, and I wonder if the comedian in you was like, if I would have waited six more months, I would have had a different kind of package with this person, but that's not the way it was supposed to go.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  It's just like, you know, the, I know how regret works. It just ages you. It just, it's also like, to think about the past, like, the arrogance of thinking, if you think about it, you're gonna like, change it. Like, it's a form of insanity, really, right? If I had just done this, if I, okay, great. Cool, cool use of your life on this earth. Oh, oh, are you the one that's not dying? Wait, are you the one that's gonna live forever so you can just waste time on this, you know? And so, yes, I definitely have that, like, oh, God, if I had just, there's this bird, what's this symbolizing? See this bird? Hold on.

• 35:08Mayim Bialik?

  Oh.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  He keeps trying to come into this window.

• 35:12Mayim Bialik?

  He does keep trying to come into that window.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  What do we think that is? There's something symbolic about it. One time I was in a, this toxic, it would, you know, that word's overused. In a relationship with, I was in a growth opportunity. And, and we just couldn't break up. We just had like an ancestral hook in each other. You know, he was like unavailable emotionally, you know, not capable of the um, smothering amount of attention that I demand, my inner child demanded. Um, and, you know, he had all the negative qualities of my primary caretaker.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  I wanted him to have incest with my inner child. I mean, it was just like, it was just a, you know, I, I do think of that as emotional incest. When you're like, are you just dating your dad, you weirdo? And we're sitting by this window and a bird flew into the window.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Hit the window, and like, was convulsing, convulsing. And we went and tried to save it, and went and tried to save it, and then it just died. And we were like,

• 36:23Speaker 01

  we're done.

• 36:24Mayim Bialik?

  It's us.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  That's the, the neuroscience of weird magic. We're like, was I not gonna get this until I watched a bird? Which, by the way, that day, I put stickers on all the windows, because birds can't see them and, you know. So, um, yeah, the takeaway from that story, everyone's like, no, you're just an asshole. And you should have had stickers on your window to not let the birds fly in before. But, uh, you're just now making it a profound lesson. Um, but yeah, I, I, you know, I was looking for a boyfriend. I wasn't looking for a father. And I think that was like a, a big.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Shift that helped me and with girlfriends now. You're like, are you a godmother or are you a friend? Are you a hang or are you, you know? So I think that sometimes words really matter in this space because then your expectations, you know, kind of change. And then what kind of person do I want to be? Because I was spending all this time trying to be a good girlfriend to a guy or a good wife. And I was like, wait, why don't I work on being a good mother and then I'll attract the person? You know?

• 37:25Mayim Bialik?

  Um, you're, you're in the midst of the Big Baby North American Tour. Talk a little bit about sort of what it was like creating a show from where you're at now. And also, how does it work with the travel that you do?

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Um, yes, ma'am. Um, you know, I used to be so much more

• 37:48Speaker 01

  meticulous and about writing a thing and perfectly having the word and the setup and cutting the line and, and the order. And, and something that happened when I, you know, had a kid is there, there a more feral approach emerged. Um, I've always been a pretty instinctual person, but because, you know, I had this self limiting belief, even if it's true, it was limiting me of like, as a woman in stand up, you have to work twice as hard to get half as far. And the whole reputation of women being funny or not is on a female comedian's shoulder at all times. If you mess up, it's a setback.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  The, I put this pressure on myself that was just so, you can argue that it worked on some level. Um, but to your point before going like, if I hadn't applied that pressure, would I even be more, would I have, you know, whatever? Would I not look back at some of my specials and go like, oh, that looks a little like too calculated or too robotic or too, you know? Isn't it wild that the most insulting thing you can say to someone today? The biggest insult right now? What do you think it is? JC?

• 39:03Jonathan Cohen?

  In comedy or in general?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  In general. Let's see if we're in the same algorithm.

• 39:08Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, I do think boredom is is like just you're a boring, uninteresting person is pretty bad.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Oh, funny. That's that's like brutal. You just went to a place that I

• 39:20Jonathan Cohen?

  I went nuclear.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  That was not like you're boring is like that's try hard and pick me.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  She's such a pick me. She has pick me energy. And it's like, we talked about this last time I was on, where it's like, yeah, I just like want everyone to like me, but that makes no one like you. You know, it's repellent energy when you need it's needy energy and and the whole zeitgeist agrees with us. You know, the stuff that I think, you know, your podcast and the stuff you talk about, like, you're just a little ahead of everything. And then everyone has a collective consciousness of like, oh, pick me. You know, that's she's such a try hard. And you're like, OK, thank God. Now it's literally out of style to try hard. It's literally like out of style to want to be picked, you know. But that coincided with having a, you know, a kid where I literally couldn't try that hard.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  And so there's a little more of just, um, I don't want to say conversational because that's, you know, the opposite of comedy a lot of times. But I have, it's less like, oh, that's such good writing and more like human and it's less about punchlines and more about just like sharing joy and experimenting. And going, this isn't perfect yet. And that's why it's working better than the things that I actually thought were perfect before. And so I'm really enjoying that. And in my, you know, look, and then once you become a mom, full stop, you're like, my kid's gonna see this one day, like that also changes the way you write, you know, because you're like, I have to make something my son can actually watch.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  And I think I'm kind of thought of, you know, unfortunately, like as being like maybe a edgy comic or like, you know, but I think comedy is about surprising people. We're kind of like, you know, the idea is you're this like, you know, it's, it's, that's why it's comedy fans or horror fans, you know, it's like you're surprising people, right? And what's less surprising these days than like a sex joke, you know, it's, when I started, that was surprising. That was shocking. It's not shocking anymore. Like, we have a sex tape. That's like, you know, so I think the most actually surprising thing you can do these days as a comedian is kind of be just like wholesome in a way. And, you know, so it's been really fun to experiment, you know, with that maternal energy.

• 41:38Jonathan Cohen?

  What you're talking about in terms of the try hard and in terms of how you met your current partner does speak to something that we've been exploring on the podcast a lot, which is the notion of sort of a personal frequency and sort of a synchronicity to life whereby when you are in a personal frequency that is uniquely yours, which is not trying hard, right? You're accessing something that is authentic, that you're sharing from a place where you just want to communicate, you just want to share something authentic, you then are able to create a frequency that people are drawn to and they come to you versus you pulling them. And that totally changes everything. So it's interesting, you know,

• 42:20Jonathan Cohen?

  that pick me is like the zeitgeist acknowledging this shift.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  And here's what's tricky about that. That was so well said. Here's what's tricky about this. You know, we, you have to try hard to get the things you want. You do, you know?

• 42:37Jonathan Cohen?

  It's different than application of energy towards a goal versus connecting to that thing inside of you first.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  I think it's really about like knowing when to allow, you know, and look, I'm in a 12 step program. That's why we say attraction, not promotion, right? The trick of working hard is especially in a relationship is you can get it, but you'll always know. You'll always know you tried hard to get it. You'll always know if you manipulated. You'll always know if you were fake. You'll always know if you fake laughed on that first date. You'll always, you'll always know. And I'm at a point where, you know, it's not about getting something. It's about, did I get it honestly? Did I manipulate this person? Cause I'll have

• 43:28Speaker 01

  to live with myself. And when we work too hard to get something. Then we have to hold on to it. And then we're insecure about why it's here. And, you know, as someone that historically has held on too tight, because my ego or whatever, it's like, well, I got this thing. Now I have to keep this thing because I worked so hard to get it. And I have to stay the person that got it. You know? And then you have to live with, oh, did this person fall in love with me? Or the person I curated to get them to fall in love with me? And you know, and then you're like, don't know who you are. And you get stuck. And I did that, you know, enough times because I didn't think I, who I was, first of all, I probably didn't even know who I was, but because I would define myself through whoever

• 44:15Speaker 01

  I thought I should be with. And, you know, then what I, it's really just lying. You're a liar at the end of the day, you know? It's something I always grapple with is if someone's lying to themselves first, are they lying to you? Who knows? But I just learned in an early age, you cannot get people's attention with what is you just, it's not good enough. Like it's not good enough. Try something else, you know? And then this tricky thing happens, which is, okay, I'm not enough. I'm not enough, you know? And then you get some modicum of success, right? In order to get love and then you have to make that smaller.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  You go, oh, this actually propels people or it brings out a weird side of people or, you know, the wrong people, of course.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  And now I have to make myself smaller and I have to hide all that stuff. So it's exhausting. It's whack a mole. And as soon as I was like, you know what? Single mom is sick, dude. Fine. What if I am a single mom? When I see a dude, there's a single mom, like bears with them, bears are single. Lions are single. No, this is, we're the only species that's like, after you procreate with the guy, you have to like stay with them forever. Like it's, I think the same way.

• 45:32Mayim Bialik?

  Some birds, seahorses, mountain voles.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  These are vermin.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  These are things that

• 45:40Mayim Bialik?

  I'm just saying, there are some monogamous species.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  If you, they were in your home, you'd broom, you'd hit them with a broom. They're, they're just, they're sick.

• 45:49Mayim Bialik?

  Voles are very cute.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  They carry diseases. Yeah, voles are cute. And, you know, well, they think it's them. They think they're in a, looking in a mirror.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  You know, I'm really, uh, what's the word, like, um, uh, comforted, you know, at first it's disorganizing when everybody doesn't think like you. Cause if everyone doesn't think like you, you either have to judge them and go, well, that's because they're, or, you know, you have to go, why am I crazy? Like when Chelsea Handler, it's so cool that she, you know, it's very, I think, triggering to people of saying like, I don't want kids. You know? I don't want kids. And at first your default is like, well, people wanna, she doesn't, like, she's not kidding. She's not-

• 46:35Jonathan Cohen?

  No, it's authentically her. It's authentically-

• 46:37Speaker 01

  It's always been like, like, you know, and for me, it, it, things like that really helped me go,

• 46:45Speaker 01

  I don't know if I want a husband.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  I want kids, but I think I always got, and I do, I do, obviously, I just, you know, the right one. I don't want the wrong one. How about, I just don't want, I grew up with parents that shouldn't have been together. Period. And they didn't have any kind of graceful exit strategy and I did not want to bring a child into this world where they got a bad blueprint. And I didn't trust that I could break the cycle. I didn't trust that I wouldn't go into an auto, like, I just didn't trust myself. You know, so my brain has just been like, okay, like, this is as far as you can kind of go. Given your track record, your, you know, how fast you feel that your picker has kind of, you just broken picker.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  And now I feel like my picker's sharp, you know, so I've really surrendered to the like, this is the path that I got and I actually can pat myself on the back for not trying to force something that would have really just caused damage to a kid, you know, like, you know, so that's what's, you know, also is just so cool about having a kid is like, it's not about you. Like, it's like, it's just, it's like, you know, it's funny, like, I don't think we really talked about this last time, but- You know, the more I got what I wanted in what I wanted, you know, the more I achieved the things that I thought my, you know, would make my dad love me. Um, I, my self-esteem would get lower and lower.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  And you see this with, you know, any kind of addiction, right? It's just one too many, a million, not enough. And you just need more, you just need, and the shame that comes with like, that didn't work. You know, when you see people that make a lot of money and they're miserable because it's like, if that kind of money doesn't work, it's you. That's real bad, you know? And so I always say to people like, make sure it works if you're gonna do it. You know, make sure because then it's gonna be extra lonely, extra sad. Uh, if it doesn't. Um, because there's no, there's nothing to blame it on. Well, I don't have any money. If I just had money, I'd be happy. If I just had a boyfriend, I'd be happy. And then you get it and you're like, oh. Um, I was like, why is my self-esteem so low?

• 48:56Speaker 01

  And it turns out, uh, I guess I'm not a clinical narcissist. I don't like thinking about myself, like I, you know, our job now, you know, I signed up to once a year, make a special, be on the road. But like, um, this whole thing where you have to look in the phone and be like, hey, guys, I'm here, I'm in the shower. I look what I'm doing, like, I don't, I'm embarrassed by, I'm in a constant state of embarrassment. And I've had to disconnect from myself to like, be able to, hey, guys, like, it's just, it's like a disassociative state. We, if you're not someone that's, you know, and I'm not going to throw around psychology terms if I'm not a psychologist.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  But, you know, I can see myself in my early twenties being very comfortable with that because I was like a shell of a person who could project anything. But I am so much more into myself now that I, I'll just say it this way. I like myself when I'm only thinking about myself like thirty minutes a day. When I'm thinking about myself 24 hours a day, I hate myself. You know, and that's been one of the like major gifts of this is that I don't have to think about myself. And I think in 12 step programs, that's why service is such a big part. Outreach is such a big part, meetings, the relief, the we say the relief is in the rooms. Cause you're not thinking about yourself.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  And we're a society now where it's, you know, I know this, the self-help and stuff is like important for a lot of people. But I think some of it's backfiring and people are conflating. Doing the work and self-care with this like self-obsession of just me all day and my depression and my anxiety. Which are all legitimate, but you know, maybe we, this is where all the time went that we saved. We're spending it on this like self, you know, obsession.

• 50:51Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, a kid makes you have to externalize and slow the heck down. You know, what you talk about in terms of being obsessed with yourself, you, you can't do that. Also, it's a different speed. Like I remember when I first had a kid and I was also trying to write and launch a career. I was like moving so fast in one area and then I would come home and he's just like, look at me, take this thing apart. Or look at the birds or, and I had a very hard time with that transition. But if you can embrace how slowly, especially a toddler moves in the curiosity that they approach the world in. It can be extremely therapeutic to remove yourself from that my spinning mind.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  And like monkey mind, spinning mind, like, you know, there, I get obsessed when I stumble on a new thing. That like makes so much sense, but I don't know, for whatever reason, we don't talk about it like, um, you know. It really helped me when I stumbled on the fact that I spent a lot of my life in shock. And dread. So what happened as a kid, we talk about fight, we talk about flight, we talk about trauma. I just hadn't heard anyone talk about shock. And what happened to me as a kid, I was just in shock. I was just like in shock. I was moving through life in shock a lot. And I just hadn't really heard that. And as soon as I put it together, I was like, I'm just in shock.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Oh, like, you know, after you get in a car accident, and you're just like, and it's all the things that could have happened. And you're just, you know, and that being able to name it helped me to kind of go like, oh, yeah, I was just like in shock. And then dread. I didn't realize how much of my life I was in dread. Like, I would make a plan and then just dread it. I thought that was just like, normal, to make a plan you didn't want to do, and then just spend the week dreading it. I thought that was just plans.

• 52:39Jonathan Cohen?

  It's a pretty clear signal from some part of you.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  I didn't know you could want to do the thing you you were gonna do. I didn't know that was an option. Like, I thought, just like, huh, here comes Thanksgiving, I'm gonna have to fight with my. It's like, I it didn't even occur to me, because I had to, I did so many things out of obligation. I just thought that was like being an adult. And like, you know, who am I to, you know, alcoholics are the only people that are think they should be having fun all the time. Like, what a brat. Like, yeah, you're gonna go to the thing.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Didn't even occur to me to do the things that brought me joy, or that I was looking forward to. Like, I didn't even know that was, you know, a thing. And to what you're saying is, that's really interesting to me, is something I don't think we talk about a lot, because I think that we're so in the, you know, self-love, and get rid of your inner bully, and you know, whatever, like, I was sick of myself. I can love myself and still be sick of myself. I can have high self-esteem and still just like, I'm sick of myself. I want to think about something else, you know. And with all this, you know, 12-step programs, and owning your part, and being accountable, and doing a 10-step every night, and journaling, like, sometimes you're just like, I need a minute, you know, from

• 53:55Speaker 01

  myself. And I don't think we talk about that, because I guess it would imply, like, you know, you hate yourself, and want to escape or something. But I think it's just about finding the balance between like, the extremes of like, you know, it's like, the people that can take this, the wellness too far, the toxic, like, you know,

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Taking things way too far. I'm sure you're seeing a lot of it, just like using wellness as an excuse to like be a shithead or you know, it's so for me, I now have to go like, okay, you've thought about yourself enough. It's you got it.

• 54:31Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I think it's also, it's kind of funny. You mentioned it because you know, many people who are who see themselves as very selfless and very helpful and very like, I know what you need and I'm gonna help you. Like those people see themselves as like, I'm this selfless person and I'm doing this thing for this other person and I live to help other people and I'm so helpful and good. It can be a very self-centered way of functioning because everything is about, not necessarily about you, but about what you can do or offer. And it can be kind of its own, you know, tornado.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  It's also arrogant. You're like, this person needs my help. This adult needs me.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Like, that's the codependent self-delusion of before you solve a problem, first make sure it's your problem. Because when you quote, help someone else, what you're saying is you could never solve this problem without me and I would know. Because as an adult, I check out of my own reality to solve other people's problems to feel superior. I should know. It's, it's a way to also control people sometimes. It's a way to be superior. It's a way to not deal with. How about before you, you know, clean that person's car? Can I see inside your car real quick? What's going on with you? Are you trying to get

• 55:59Speaker 01

  points? Are you trying to get them to owe you? Are you trying to get them to tell other people that you're a good person? Are you keeping score? So in two months, when you don't get invited on the girls' trip, you're like, well, I drove her to the airport because I'm nice. It's, that's always a tricky, very slippery slope.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  And as someone, you know, I come from parentified. So I I used to do that. And it's like, I want this person to think I'm a good person, but what you're really doing, or I want to be a good person, but what you're really doing is I think you're dumb. And you can't, like when someone lies to you, like I used to would be offended or upset by it. So I'm like, you lied to me. I can't believe you lied to me. Now I can't trust you. It's like, wait, wait, no, I'm way more annoyed that what you just, you, you think I'm dumb. You just called me stupid.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  You, you, you were like, she's so dumb that I can get away with this. That's what you really did is you called me dumb. So I'm obsessed with like the subtext of things. Like when, when I try to help someone that doesn't need help, that's really me just saying like, you're too dumb to figure this out on your own.

• 57:09Mayim Bialik?

  The other thing I was going to say is there's so much talk about codependency and like, you're so codependent and he's so codependent and they're so codependent. This is the side of codependency that a lot of people don't understand. This is like the dark underbelly of codependency that doesn't just ripple out into the relationship. It goes home with you and you put it to sleep right next to you.

• 57:33Jonathan Cohen?

  Hold on, is that a fencing mask?

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Hold on.

• 57:38Jonathan Cohen?

  Wait a second.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Jealous of my sex dungeon?

• 57:42Jonathan Cohen?

  There are guns and a fencing mask that we just witnessed. I mean, every time you turn the camera, there's something else. There's a great so as release.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  That is a flamethrower.

• 57:55Jonathan Cohen?

  Which is essential for every workout facility.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  These, yes, my baby's dad was like a fencer, like in college. So.

• 58:05Jonathan Cohen?

  Like you are.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  I as one is one to do. And I'm really into.

• 58:11Jonathan Cohen?

  Is that foreplay? That's.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Look, I got pregnant at 40, didn't I? I am very big into incorporating play into conflict resolution. This is a new thing for me. And not new, two, three years. Because I am so. Bored of like arguing, like arguing, if we're arguing, do we want to solve this or do we want to argue? Is this like my kink? Is this some old thing? Am I, sometimes when you argue, you're like, am I trying to get this person to think I'm smart? Like, am I trying to pun it? What am I doing? What is this? Who's this for? Are we rolling? Like, what's this? Who's this? You know? And so my podcast producer, whenever we have a disagreement on something,

• 58:56Speaker 01

  we play horse basketball. This is how I saw. And then my baby's dad, if we ever disagree on something, it's not like, you know, you left the kid by the pool and he fell in the pool. It's not stuff like that. It's like, should it go this way? And like, well, let's just fence about it. And we start fencing and, and then we just start laughing, obviously. And then we're like, okay, this is ridiculous. So.

• 59:18Mayim Bialik?

  What about the flamethrowers?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  The flamethrowers, now, these I got for my aunts in Virginia. Because unlike California, you know, back in Virginia, if you have dead leaves and trash, you just put it in a pile and you set it on fire. And you can't do that here. Um, and it's very hard to like, light the fire. So I saw these on eBay and I got them so that they could just use them to light their big fires. Like, it's in the middle of a field and you just, and I went to send it. And they were like, yeah, you can't mail.

• 59:54Jonathan Cohen?

  You can't mail flamethrowers for some reason. It's super weird. Yeah.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  So they're here for now. And then next time I go back to Virginia, I'm going to give them. Uh, hopefully I'll be able to get them on a plane. I don't, I'm not, we might need to cut this. Uh, the way you guys are reacting is making me very, very nervous.

• 1:00:09Jonathan Cohen?

  No, I'm in, I'm into it. I just, look, every time we turn, there's something new being revealed about you.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  But I, and I didn't answer, uh, I don't think I answered your question.

• 1:00:18Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I wanted to, yeah, I can sort of tee it up. Just because I would love to hear any sort of reflection you have. Like, this being sort of like the, the underbelly of codependency. A lot of people like to throw the term around and you make a sexy Instagram post about like, he's so codependent, he's, you know, in many cases, it's possessive. It's can be a lot of abusive, horrible things.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:00:39Mayim Bialik?

  But this notion of the codependency is that it lives in me. I take it with me wherever I go. I'm constantly keeping score. I'm waiting to be resentful. Um, I need you to need me is really what a lot of people don't realize about codependency.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  That's so amazingly put. I always try to start any conversation about codependence, which by the way, I don't have much any, like I'll have this conversation with you guys, but it's so, to me, codependence is so serious and clinical and it's very hard to get around people's sort of, you know, pop definition of it. And I didn't even think about that. I know how it justifies alcoholic behaviors in a codependent person, but to justify other people's abusive behaviors by like they're so codependent, that's fascinating. You know, I think we're doing that a lot now. I think we're using a lot of these terms to, you know, justify some really toxic

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  behaviors of, you know, number one, if we can't control someone, well, that he's a clinical narcissist. It's like, well, he also might just not be into you. That's fine, too. But like, you know, or, you know, she's a malignant narcissist. Well, you know, you guys are working together and she didn't like your idea. Like, maybe not, you know, I don't know, like to get around rejection and criticism, which, you know, we're all very afraid of. To me, my working definition of codependence is the inability to tolerate the discomfort of others or perceived discomfort, which I think is an important, you know. So codependence, you know, I'm in recovery almost, you know, 12 years now, but we do things, it's a form of alcoholism because it's compulsive,

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  it's, you know, progressive, it, you know, you don't fix it, you don't heal it, you maintain it. You know, if not treated, it will get, you know, worse and worse and worse. It is a, you know, obligation. It stops being fun, you know, an addiction, you continue to do something despite negative consequences and then it stops being fun. You don't want to drink, you have to drink. You know, you don't want to help this person, but you have to help this person. Because also, what us codependents do is we create this prison because we train people to use us. We train people to use us under the guise of, well, I'm gonna, I'm helping, I'm helping. And then, so now every time you need, they're just gonna go, okay, can you drive me to the airport? And you become a doormat.

• 1:03:07Mayim Bialik?

  Or, I love him, or I love her. That's the, that's the reason we give.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  But why do you love a baby that can't solve their own problems? Are you a pedophile? You know what I mean? Like, why would you want to be with someone that can't clean their own house? Like, why would you want to be with someone that needs that much help? Like, and it's a way to feel useful. We define our, we get our self-esteem through productivity and usefulness to others. And it is a way, the dark underbelly is, now they need me, now they can't leave. Right? I've got your insulin, where are you gonna go? But then you always know that's why you have them, you know? So, also, you know, because we're not sure if we deserve love, we'll settle for being used. I'm gonna set you up for the relationship to be transactional so that you'll use me. And then you feel used.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  And then we become, I love the term exploding doormat. Because then you just, you're not get, you're not, nothing's incoming, you know? You're not able to receive any love. And because chronic givers are only gonna be with chronic takers. And why wouldn't they? And then you just snap. Yeah, I know, it never does anything for me. And how did, and I, you know? And we don't take care of ourselves. You're hungry, angry, lonely, tired. And you haven't been to the dentist. You haven't, you know, cared for yourself. You're not eating, you're not hydrating. You know? And we're the people who, you know, someone put it really good in a meeting one day, like, we're the people that, the way that alcoholics die and, you know, DUIs or, you know, car crashes and stuff. We don't go to the doctor. You know? We die of a mouth infection because we didn't go to the dentist.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Because we were so busy taking care of everybody else. You know, we get in accidents texting and driving because we have to respond to that person because they just texted me. You know? And so, when people in the AA meetings or the NA rooms are like, yeah, alans, you guys are a bunch of like whining complainers. Like, we do all the things you guys do drunk, sober.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Okay? You know, like, I've jumped a person's fence to help them solve a problem that wasn't real. You know, like, I'm rescuing people who are perfectly fine. You know, that is like, it's that addiction, but also even more surreptitious about it. You know, all these diseases, there's diseases that's, I'm fine using that, that word. I actually now will call it like superpower. But, because 2,000 years ago, we would have saved everybody. We were, 2,000 years ago, everyone would have been dead without us. So, how about that?

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  We are wired to be like, live on, you know, like surrounded by lions.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  But, I forgot my train of thought, and I can say that.

• 1:05:45Mayim Bialik?

  Um, there, there is a method of kind of recovering from codependency, but I wonder if kind of in human terms, you could tell us like so many people I think relate to what you're describing and we call it love, right? How do you get over that? How do you get through that? What does it look like on the other side of that? It feels like for a lot of us, it's like, I think I would just be alone.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  By the way, I'm glad now I got my train of thought back, which is ultimately it boils down to a chemical addiction, right? So you're the neuroscience expert. Tell me if any of this is nonsense or doesn't track. So, you know, if you want to do drugs, you go do drugs, you get a pill bottle, you get a, you go get weed, you go alcohol, you go to the bar, whatever. We have something called the internal drug cabinet, right? So adrenaline, cortisol, adrenaline turns into dopamine eventually, right? So that is, you're able to, you don't need a drug dealer. It's all, you can get it yourself if you make your life chaotic enough. If you make your life a series of inconsistent, random, unpredictable pressures.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  If you set yourself up to get adrenaline because you are around people that need help, you need to be rescued and that makes adrenaline, right? So, um, when I talk to sponsors and, you know, in my program and when I'm first deciding if I'm a fit for someone to work with them, you know, the first thing I always ask, you know, a codependent is if you have to be somewhere at four o'clock and it takes a half hour to get there, what time do you leave?

• 1:07:16Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, I would say three.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  You're healed, you're fixed. This is why you have this podcast and this is why we trust our mommy leader. But most people, you know, they're like, I'll go the day before and practice the route. I'll practice the drive the day before, you know? But, you know, that is, it's a level of delusional think magical thinking, we call it, which is like, if you need to be somewhere at four, you're going to leave at 3:30. And that is going to get drugs from a drug dealer because you're going to be pushing it and there's, if there's someone in traffic and then you have to pee and then someone call and then you left your. ATM card and then you have to get gas and then you get to be a victim. Which is another part of the addiction and I was in traffic. You know, those people that show up.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  They're like, and then you're like, you're like, well, we all, how do you think we got here? You think I took the chopper? You know, and the world's against me and they get to recreate whatever their childhood system was of. The world's against me and this asshole in traffic and da da and I'm a martyr and I made it. And I got my hit of adrenaline. So for me, it was like an adrenaline detox. Uh, in a big way, which loops back to our being boring is you gotta embrace being boring as my, you know, sponsor said once. Whitney, your problem is you conflate boredom and serenity. To codependence, serenity and peace feels like boredom.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  And, uh, cause we just wanna be, we, it's when we say, I'm helping this person, you're meddling. It's changing the words, right? I'm fixing them, you know, no, you're playing God. You're actually removing their ability to have dignity. You're removing the ability for them to have the dignity of their own experience. Something I heard someone. Uh, say is the worst thing you can do for your kid is tie their shoes for them. Cause not only are they not gonna learn, but they're never gonna have the pride that they did. Stop doing things for people. Then you're taking away their pride, you know, and then you're making them these like vampires who are like useless. Um, you're infantilizing them, right?

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  And so that's a, that's a big part of it. Looking at your motives and I'll just be real clear on like what worked for me. You have to look at your motives before you help someone. And you gotta stop this. Gaslighting yourself and others that you're this like saint who just wants to help people. That's like, like an alcoholic being like, I'm just gonna drink wine. Cause the one glass of day is good for like, you know, when you hear people be like, no, like weed is medicine. And I'm sober, but I need the medicine of weed to stay sober. You're like.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Who do you think is, you know, the delusion? That's when you've seen drug addicts in their delusion. Codependence, that's our delusion. I'm helping him, fixing him. Do you, does anyone think, no one's buying this, but there, it's the disease that tells you you don't have a disease. That's what, that's what addiction is, you know? So looking at motives, I remember I was at a, a meeting like a couple of Christmases ago. And one codependence's bottom line was every Christmas or holiday, whatever holiday is, every holiday, I will give half the gifts I gave the year before. And we all went around and it was, everyone had a bottom line. I will not give anyone a gift if I haven't seen them within the last year.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  I will not give anyone a gift if I don't see them in person. It's that, it's like, you know, I remember being, um, this was actually a Workaholics Anonymous meeting, which was amazing. And this woman's was, but it was sort of, you know, code in there is when I need to pee, I will excuse myself to pee.

• 1:10:56Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  It's stuff like that.

• 1:10:58Mayim Bialik?

  I'm a holder.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  The, an edger. You're just like, are you, so you're addicted to like UTI meds? That's your life?

• 1:11:05Mayim Bialik?

  No, it's, it's funny. I think, I think if I would get UTIs, it would teach me a better lesson. And there's been times in my life that, um, it's been a lot worse. Um, but it's still something I definitely fight and I, you know, it used to be so prominent that just basically like, the only time to go to the bathroom was when it was an emergency. Like even though I had had to go for hours.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  And by the way, but I'm fat, but is this, that also, that come from acting is, is so you ha, kind of have to.

• 1:11:34Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, none of the other people in my meetings who have this were actors. So it's, it, I think there's, there's some anorexia to it also. There's some restricting to it, like how far can I push it? How much can I push it? So there's definitely something to that kind of restricting. But, um, yeah, it's funny you mentioned that one because sometimes, and it's usually when I'm doing too much, I'm too stressed. It's like, I literally feel like I don't even have space to insert that, you know? But many people also feel that like about water. Some days I'll be like, did I drink any water today? This is not healthy.

• 1:12:11Jonathan Cohen?

  I mean, podcasting is hard, though. You don't want to take a pee break in podcasting. It's like, it's a, it's a.

• 1:12:16Mayim Bialik?

  No, no, we're not talking about that. It's very cute that you said that. But no, we're talking about, I will go hours knowing that I have to be walking past bathroom after bathroom. They're free. They're right. It's in my own home. I'm in my house on the couch and I won't pee.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  But there's something mental minus, you don't have time. You're gonna fall behind if you go pee. Like, you don't have time to be like, there's.

• 1:12:39Mayim Bialik?

  Right. I don't have time to have needs is really what it is.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  And then it's kind of, there's a self deprivation to it. There's a kind of comfort in the distraction of it.

• 1:12:52Mayim Bialik?

  It's, it's not, it's not something I'm proud of.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, I just, I'm with you.

• 1:12:58Mayim Bialik?

  I want to pivot a little bit. I want to ask about something that I don't know if you have any personal experience with, but we want to know your take on it. People are having relationships with like chat GPT. And apparently this is like a thing. It's getting worse. Jonathan, what's happening?

• 1:13:14Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, you were, you were early to the sex robot conversation, and this isn't that, right? This is not about sex robots. However, Meta just announced that they're gonna solve loneliness with everyone having an AI companion. And this is terrifying because all the dynamics that you're talking about in terms of interpersonal relationships, they're not going anywhere. They're just going to be transferred to people's AI friends. And the terrifying part of it for me is that because the incentives of these platforms is to drive engagement, they are going to program friction into the relationships so that people are concerned about losing their AI friends and needing to repair.

• 1:13:58Jonathan Cohen?

  And so all of these psychological dynamics are going to play out, but with an AI version.

• 1:14:07Jonathan Cohen?

  I sound scared for the world that your son is gonna grow up in that's gonna be normal. Mine's a little older. He's gotten to 17. So he, you know, may have an AI companion in the future.

• 1:14:18Mayim Bialik?

  You know what, Jonathan? Jonathan, you know what I wish for you? I wish for you an AI companion that's exactly like you. I want you to see what it's like.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  I find it fascinating. I know that I'm responding to this in a comedian brain way. I'm gonna have a lot of thoughts. It is funny when men start to get worried about people. It's funny when guys like, we gotta, this is a problem. I'm like, how about walk me to my car? Uh, like, there's a lot of current problems that, you know, men are like, this, that's, I'm obsessed with guys being afraid of robots and AI because it's the first time there's something like above you on the food chain. Like, it's like guys with aliens. Guys are like, aliens. I'm like, it's because there's finally something that like you that could kill you that's stronger than you and guys are like, well, aliens, like, what do I, I walk to my car and some, they put a finger in my butt. We're like, yeah, that's

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  our life all the time. Um, but it's fun. Guys have fear for the first time ever because they don't understand it. My only fear is that men are programming it. If women were programming it, I would be much, you know, I have a couple of things on this. Whenever someone's like, I don't know, the self-driving cars, my first reaction is always like, is it going so well now, though? Is it going so well that we're afraid of any other change? You know, I think we're so afraid of change. I understand. AI, I'm not afraid of AI. I'm, I'm afraid of humans first. Humans, human, it's weird because I don't like auto drive. I'm very, you know, I'm very trepidatious about all tech. Just know that as my default.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  Yes, we all should be. But I'm also very freaked out. If, if right now someone's like, should we just have like an AI president? I'd be like, I'm listening. You know, humans scare me. Humans really scare me. I think things like selfishness and ego and, you know, childhood trauma, you know, stuff like that. I think that when it comes in general to they're listening, they're, that's a very, to me, guy thing to be like, they're listening. I'm like, well, what are you doing? Surveillance. I'd love some surveillance. Women, I would like surveillance everywhere at all times, around all young girls and all young boys. Let's put cameras truly everywhere. Like, you know, I think, and I'm being facetious, of course, whatever, but like, you know,

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  surveillance is Santa Claus. Santa Claus was invented, right, so that kids would behave better, right? He's watching, and it worked.

• 1:16:47Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, we had God for thousands of years before that, and it wasn't working.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  That was not working. People were like, no, because of my surveillance guy, I have to kill all these other people that have a different surveillance. You know, so we always manage, so humans always find a way to hurt each other. You know, terror management theory is the thing I might have brought up last time that helps my brain understand, like, because humans are the only species, you know, that we really, that know they're gonna die. So we have to like, you know, um, you know, look, I will say about the Mark Zuckerberg thing with the AI friends, it's so funny because he's like, humans only have three friends, like, because of your stupid, because of your app. All the friends we had, we don't like anymore because you, we saw the worst side of them. Like, we don't like, we have no friends because of Facebook. Like, we saw their political opinions and we don't

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  speak to them anymore. Like, you did this. But, um, it's interesting because I always go back to what is, hold on, my other thing about that is like, Mark Zuckerberg saying, we need more friends, just, he's just admitting he doesn't listen to hip hop or rap. Like, every song is like, keep a tight circle, like, no fake friends, and he's just making fake friends. Like, I think that when you look back at how we're wired, like, that's, that's usually just my default is, okay, we're wired to like, live very agrarian societies, meet very few people in our lifetime, you know, I think that we lost the plot with, you know, dating apps. Like, I think that's more to, just, just, there's all the, you used to, there were three women.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  You had three options, a food a date.

• 1:18:20Mayim Bialik?

  And two of them were your cousins.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  Two of them were your cousin. One of they had a wagon and this is the they have a wagon. That's your wife now, you know, it like the idea, if you want to meet someone, if you did, if you wanted to cheat, you had to get a mule and go miles, you know. So I think that this idea that there's so many people out there, so many options for who our soulmate could be. You're with someone, you're like, but is there someone else out there? Like, I think that's done a number. Certainly, I can speak for myself on me. And there's more options than ever, but less people are having kids, less people are in relationships. It's, you know, I think it's had a adverse effect. I'm sure as has like porn and all that. But like AI friends is, you know, I I don't think we should, when it's like we have three friends, like does, is that bad?

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Is three good friends? Does anyone have time for more than that many friends? I don't know, you know, I can't see my friends now, uh, you know, in the time that I have. So this idea of like, we need more friends. I think it's more a testament to like, you know, the there's certain people that I don't think AI friends would be bad. It's like Scientology, you know, my thing with Scientology is like, if you think that's a good idea, please go live in that castle. Please don't be out in the streets. It doesn't have to be for us, you know, like when a man's like, I want to be with a sex robot. I'm like, please do that. Don't date human women. Don't bring us into this. Like, we have to let people be weird if they're weird, like, good, go, go be in a relation.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  We're already in relationships with our phone. You're already, we're already friends with our phone. So every friend I'm friends with, we only talk to the phone. They're they're the phone. They are the phone. My my friend Dory is just, she's my phone. You know, I don't see her that much now, you know, so I think for me, like, I think that we are giving ourselves a lot of anxiety around things that are like the natural, like progression of evolution, like I think evolution's weird because you just think about it as like flesh. But this next stage of evolution, you know, like Stanford is allowing chat GPT to write papers because they're considering it a natural state of human evolution, an extension of human intelligence. Like, you know, so.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  I think I've had faker friendships I've realized than in with real people than me. I don't, we don't know, but I, I do think as someone that has spent a lot of time watching a very limited, broken, human flaw, flawed, because it's run by humans, like medical system, I just focus on with that fear comes, people with strokes can talk and people with Parkinson's, people can have their parents around longer, like people, you know, like a lot of good things are coming from this on the medical side and it's, you know, I, you know, I do think a lot of problems are going to be solved. I'm just trying to be

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  positive. I just don't see the point in being negative about it. I don't think it helps. I don't think it fixes things. I don't think Zuck's gonna call me and be like, should we do this?

• 1:21:23Jonathan Cohen?

  Just keep it away from kids. Keep, keep it, keep it 18 and older. Don't have children have relationships with these devices. We've seen that they can encourage sexual conversations. There was the risk of one kid who was

• 1:21:36Mayim Bialik?

  Suicide. There's several cases of suicide.

• 1:21:39Jonathan Cohen?

  Encouraged to kill himself. So like, there are serious problems. I agree with you.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  It was happening before. That was happening before though, no?

• 1:21:46Jonathan Cohen?

  Uh, it was before the companions were launched, but it was companies taking chat GPTs and, and making companions and sort of skinning chat GPT to train them towards the

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Let me ask you a question. Was how, like a child was encouraged?

• 1:22:00Jonathan Cohen?

  14 year olds.

• 1:22:01Mayim Bialik?

  There's, there's actually, there's several, there's several cases of depressed kids who got into interactions and the, the veil became very thin between their mental health challenges and the reality of the situation. And some of the language being used was we'll be together if you join me and these kinds of things. It's devastating. I don't really know that we wanted to go this dark, but we just did.

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  Please do, please. This is like the, literally the most important conversation anyone can have. And as someone that agrees with you guys, my brain is also going, but didn't other 14 year old kids do that to 14 year old kids before? Didn't human, you know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, The question is, you know, it's like, how many people a year, is there someone smart who could Google their, how many people get in car accident, die in car accidents a year? It's a lot. But people are afraid to get into the self-driving car, which has killed zero people. You know, I don't like the self-driving car. I don't want to get in it. People prefer, would prefer to drive from it, die from a human driver than a robot driver, period. You know, I think social media for kids at all, I think we're going to look back, hopefully in 20 years, the way we look at like cigarettes

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  of like, remember when like you could smoke inside on planes? I hope we go, remember when like any kid could just get on social media like without, you know? Hopefully that's what it, what happens. But also kids are brutal to kids, like kids are brutal to kids.

• 1:23:24Mayim Bialik?

  Well, I think that the climate, yeah, I think the climate that we're kind of living in feels brutal. Before we let you go, I wonder if you can just speak to a little bit, you know, you, you're unapologetic about having opinions about things, which shouldn't even be something that needs to be said. But how, how do you achieve funniness in kind of a current political, you know, climate that can feel, I mean, kind of absurdist, you know, some of the things that, that come out of Washington on both sides is like, are we, is it crazy? How do you maintain funny in this kind of climate?

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  Thank you for asking that. Just really quick on the, I don't want people to go away being like, oh, and he's like pro tech migraine, I think, but it answers this question too. My brain tends to go to, this has always happened. It just looked different.

• 1:24:15Jonathan Cohen?

  It's about scale and access, though. The, the difference now is scale, access and incentives of the people who are making it.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Jonathan Cohen?

  Are they incentivized to keep you on as long as possible? How are they programming it versus the incentives of children generally weren't to destroy other kids? They were to figure out their own demons.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And by the way, Facebook was, the guy came forward, it was invented to be addictive. They wanted it to be a

• 1:24:39Jonathan Cohen?

  100%.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  I mean, it is the biggest drug dealer in his, I mean,

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  You know, um, this is just demonetized and out of the algorithm now, but um, you know,

• 1:24:51Jonathan Cohen?

  Don't get us demonetized.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  You know, it is, you know, I think, yeah, so I think that, you know, like, how to stay funny? I'll just go there. Um, well, here's it, sorry. The thing, the point I was trying to make when I made a special with the sex robots, and by the way, we're in no rush. I'm finding myself rushing. Um, you know, unless, you know, I'm being boring. My whole thing with the sex robots, I was making, I try to make the opposite argument. I think that's where I try to find funny is like, even if it's wrong, let me just make the opposite argument because we kind of don't, we, we forget to kind of just, uh, at least entertain the opposite of our opinion because the truth is probably somewhere in between.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  And I think we're all so scared right now that we're, we are finding comfort in black and white thinking when, you know, there might be a point, there might be something over that, two things could be true at once. And I think we have a really hard time with that binary thinking of like, two things can be true at once, you know, uh, social media could be a way that creeps could find, you know, out where your kid goes to school, right? But also the phone, you'll know, they can call you and you can come get them, you know, so it's like, it's this tricky, you know, thing. I try to defend the indefensible and see what comes out of it usually.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Things can change quick and I always try to remember this, it was keeps me hopeful. I remember moving to Los Angeles and seeing people smoke inside.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Couple of months later, I'm in New York, people had to leave to smoke and they're all smoking outside. No one could smoke in the bar. It's like two months later and then I come back to Los Angeles. People can't, can't even smoke within 400 feet of a restaurant. They're crossing the street to smoke. That was in like a month. I'm not, things can change quick. And I get excited about that, but something has to happen in order to stop it. And I'm not saying, you know, it's like CTE in football. Unfortunately, no one's going to care until Tom Brady breaks his neck on the field. Do I want that to happen? No. But like, it's like the photo that stopped Vietnam.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  Disgusting, the girl running from the napalm. I think there's a, there's a SeaWorld, the documentary Blackfish. It was that aerial shot of seeing that, that orca in the bathtub that it was over. It's some, whether it's a picture, whether it's a story, whether it, whatever it is, there's like something that we all go no more. I don't think it's just these like vague worry. So I'm always just like, okay, what's the thing gonna be that makes this irrefutably as a society, we say no more. I don't know what it is. Is it gonna be a documentary about ChatGPT? Is it gonna be a kid that, you know, almost

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  jumps off a cliff because it told him to, and this is the story, and now we have the law, the, you know, the, you know, Benny, I'm like making up a fake name, and I can't even do it. This is why we do need ChatGPT. Um, you know, the Benny Blue Law, he almost jumped off a cliff because of ChatGPT, but had that not happened, we don't, like, and that's kind of macabre, uh, to say, but it takes so much to get us to care. It takes so much to get us to, when you think about Amber Alerts and Meghan's Law, like horrible things had to happen for those I'm obsessed with. And Malcolm Gladwell, I'm not sure how he, you know, people like him still, right? Um,

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  he did a speech at University of Pennsylvania about football in college. And it takes three concussions to get CTE. I am kind of obsessed. We spend a lot of time talking about objectifying women, which is, you know, but we don't talk about objectifying, objectifying men as much, right? So these college athletes, these boys, they're gonna get three concussions. Most of them in Ivy League schools never go to the NFL, never, never, never, never. And they're still playing and getting concussions. And his thing was, why, let's stop, let's stop. And they said, well, we make too much money off of homecoming. That's where we make all our money, right? And even though these universities are also taking money from the Saudis, what, the point is, how much money do you guys need?

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Um, to not, to allow hate crimes on campus? It's fine. The point is, he was trying to make. The the argument of like, what does it take to get a society to decide? That's too much. As a society, we all agree that's too far. And when I think about chat GPT, I go, does this mean poor people can get healthcare? Does this mean poor people can get therapy? You know, I coming from what I come from, like Appalachia, you go like. You know, a lot of fear of technology is an elite. Take like when people like Facebook sucks, so a lot of that's where a lot of people get their bookings because they're hairstylists. It's, you know, it's so a religion, religion's dumb.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  It's that's an elitist argument, you know, like you might not need religion and comfort because your life is so good, you know, comedy, this joke is. I'm so happy for you that you don't need comedy. It's for people that need relief. It's not you, you don't seem to need that awesome, you know? So I think that like chat GPT in a lot of ways will help people that. You know, uh, aren't us and like what? So I was just trying to look at my blind spots around it too. And just go like, what's an elitist argument? Like being afraid of technology often is a very elitist. Approach.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  And but there's other sides where you go like Waymos and these self-driving cars. It's like, can anyone just have a job? Can we just let people have jobs? Can we just let Uber drivers and taxi drivers like have jobs? You know, so I think it's like it's I don't know the answer, but how do I stay funny? I mean, this last five minutes has been laugh out loud hilarious. So obviously it's this. Um, but I always like to just. You know, stay in my lane a little bit and just go like, like when people are like, oh. Surveillance, like what if this company gets your phone number like, okay, we used to have a book. That had everyone's phone numbers and home addresses in it, and they would just throw it at your house.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like people like you put your kid on social media, I'm like. Parents always showed people pictures of their kids. They just did it with their wallet. They'd pull out a little mini photo album and there was a Parents used to take their kids to the mall, to Olin Mills, to get a photo with a guy who signed up to photograph kids. You just took him to a creep.

• 1:31:29Mayim Bialik?

  We, uh, one of my favorite things, we used to have sweatshirts with our names on them. Like, you would just walk around. This is like late seventies, or obviously very early eighties. And then one day, someone was like, oh, a child molester could come up to you and be like, hey, he wouldn't know how to pronounce my name. I'd know he was a child molester. You can't spell my name. But they could come up to Jonathan and be like, oh, hey, Jonathan, your mom told me that I'm supposed to pick you up. And the kid wouldn't think it's on my sweatshirt. So then we stopped doing that.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  No, it, dude, we used to do Take Your Daughter to Work Day. We do it in person. Here's my kid. Here, we had, there were, my dad on his desk, there was like a photo of me in like a bathtub with four other kids. It was just like, in his office. You know, there were pictures of us, like, you know, so I just like to go like, we've always, you know, done this. Like, people like, people are such narcissists now. Kids will take, teenagers take photos of themselves. We used to wait in line. We had a day called Photo Day. We'd wait in line. It was the day of the year and we'd have an envelope full of quarters or I don't know, like that, I have so many questions, but, but like, we'd wait in line for you had one shot and it was like your whole, you know, so I just get obsessed with like, okay, this has always existed.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  You know, people were terrified of elevators and trains when they first came, you know. So I don't think that there, you could not count the number of reasons that AI is terrifying. There's so many of them, but I, maybe my religion at this point is to just go like, it's gonna work out. We're gonna, we're gonna figure this out. And like, I just, I'm just trying to be hopeful and like, it's so easy to be negative right now. And it's actually probably, you know, insane on some level to be positive, but I may be fine with being insane. Once, things have gone insane, so we have to go insane with it and maybe be delusionally positive. Like, I did see something about how Japan, uh, might have invented a plastic that dissolves, like,

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  could that, maybe that problem's gonna like get solved.

• 1:33:34Mayim Bialik?

  You know where I like to dissolve plastic? In my ovaries.

• 1:33:39Mayim Bialik?

  That's where I dissolve.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  You get it out of my bloodstream, like, you know, so I feel excited that this younger generation has access to all this information, the ability to make things, you know, because that's when you have time and hope. And once you're in your 30s and 40s, you're not like, I'm gonna make the solution to plastic. You're like, I'm gonna die any minute, you know? So it's like, young people having access to information, yes, it's gonna come with the side effect of creeps could find them, but that's always happened, you know? Creeps are gonna creep, maybe AI is gonna solve the creep problem.

• 1:34:10Mayim Bialik?

  We will be standing by.

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  Dude, if you can find the gene that makes someone that mentally ill, just, you know, we can make robots that take pedophiles in the woods and just kill them. I'm in on that. Dude, Liz Holmes, when she gets out of jail, if she wants to come back, she can make the AI killer robots.

• 1:34:32Jonathan Cohen?

  She's out of jail and her boyfriend has a blood company.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  Dude, I'm in. Where do I buy stock? Where?

• 1:34:43Mayim Bialik?

  Whitney Cummings, it is such a, such a pleasure to get to talk to you again. And we also want to remind people, check out Friends, the game show, which is so, so cool that you are hosting, which is currently on Max. And also check out Big Baby North American Tour. You can go to WhitneyCummings.com for tickets. And also, of course, your podcast, Good For You. Thank you so much. It's really, really a pleasure to connect.

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  Did that, was that crazy? Is that a crazy take?

• 1:35:09Mayim Bialik?

  You have many crazy takes. It's why we like you.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  Is, I'm just thinking, is there a point where we have to just go like, it's gonna work out?

• 1:35:19Jonathan Cohen?

  I think so. I think we have to be positive. And we have, and I do believe, I agree with you, that we will have cultural pivotal moments where people say enough. And then the question is always, how do we create those safeguards? Because I agree, we can't put the genie back in the bottle. AI is here. There are many, many, many benefits, including, as you say, it's gonna change healthcare. People are gonna have easier access to diagnosis. Whether or not they can afford and get treatment is a whole other set of problems.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  It's detecting breast cancer faster than, you know?

• 1:35:47Jonathan Cohen?

  Skin cancers is gonna detect-

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  Male doctors don't care about tits that aren't their wives tits. The robots will look harder.

• 1:35:53Mayim Bialik?

  The guy that touches me after my mammogram, I beg to differ.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I'm calling human resources. But I, I, that's it. And I think being a parent also, you know, more than anyone, you go, I want him to learn this lesson, but not at 80 miles an hour. He's got it. I don't want him to fall down the stairs, but I want him to see that that's, he needs to touch the ribs.

• 1:36:14Mayim Bialik?

  That's why I had very plump children. They just rolled right down.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  But that's it with how you're like, I want us to learn the lesson. Not so much that it destroys humanity, but so much that everyone goes, we're passing this law.

• 1:36:26Mayim Bialik?

  Yep.

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  This, we're not doing, we're not doing this. You know, it's like the, the, remember the things, the, the hoverboards? The-

• 1:36:36Jonathan Cohen?

  Those never came. They never came.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  Enough people, you know, enough people hurt themselves were like, we're not doing that. You know, it's like-

• 1:36:46Mayim Bialik?

  That's how I feel about interacting with the government. Enough people have hurt themselves. We're not doing that.

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  If you were to look back in like 10, 15 years and be like, remember when AI was just gonna like, be everywhere?

• 1:36:55Mayim Bialik?

  I hope that in 10 years, we're looking back and remember when we thought one president was fine for the United States? And now we're all provinces, just like Canada. Everything's gonna be fine.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  No, we're just gonna go, remember the United States? Remember the United States?

• 1:37:11Mayim Bialik?

  The first thing I'll say is that it's good that I am not a child or teenager today because I made my living off being the pick me girl. But not like for the reasons that people seem to be like mean about it. I just always wanted to be picked.

• 1:37:27Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah, I think that's different than what is being described as pick me, which is like-

• 1:37:31Mayim Bialik?

  I don't know. Now I feel like everything that even like you do, like everything's so over scrutinized and like maybe no one has good motives. I don't know.

• 1:37:40Jonathan Cohen?

  What I took from it is the difference between trying to assemble a persona for the-

• 1:37:47Jonathan Cohen?

  Sole purpose of getting attention or being picked or standing out.

• 1:37:52Mayim Bialik?

  No, that wasn't my, no, mine came from a deep, deep psychological trauma.

• 1:37:56Jonathan Cohen?

  Yes, and I think it also, there was something authentically you that you were connected to. Because the performative aspect of society wasn't as evolved yet. Meaning you didn't have it modeled to you that if you do this, you're gonna get attention. Or you weren't like saying, hey, this person is getting attention in this way, so I'm gonna emulate it.

• 1:38:18Mayim Bialik?

  The young people who work with us, like Alyssa, sent me the Merriam-Webster definition, which I think we can still rely on. Usually a young woman, of course, because they're so mean to women. Seen as behaving in a contemptible way for attention and approval, usually from male peers. The plot thickens, heterosexual people. It's most often used in the expression, "pick me girl", which disparages a young woman who's seen as faking interest in stereotypically male activities or conforming to traditional values the expense of other women. This just got complicated and political.

• 1:38:51Jonathan Cohen?

  I mean, I don't even know how to approach that.

• 1:38:54Mayim Bialik?

  Olivia, you tell me with the back of your head. It's the girl who like, there's like a football party, like where you're all watching football and all the girls are outside not watching football. But then there's that one girl in like the skimpy tank top of the team that all the boys, yeah, okay, I'm getting vigorous head nods and she's like, "I love football", but it's about her breasts.

• 1:39:14Mayim Bialik?

  And her seven-layer bean dip.

• 1:39:17Jonathan Cohen?

  That wasn't you, see?

• 1:39:18Mayim Bialik?

  No, that was not me. I was literally like-

• 1:39:20Jonathan Cohen?

  You loved football.

• 1:39:21Mayim Bialik?

  I hated the "pick me girl" because she was talking during my football game.

• 1:39:26Jonathan Cohen?

  That's right, exactly. You had what the "pick me girl" wanted. You were authentically interested in football.

• 1:39:32Mayim Bialik?

  I was authentically interested in stereotypical male activities. The first time that I heard "pick me girl", I was with my cousin Erica, who you know. And Erica was talking about someone and I don't remember who it was and I'm not gonna say. And Erica was like- Oh, that's the, you know, she's such a pick-me girl. And I was like, I don't know what that means. I pretended like I knew.

• 1:39:53Jonathan Cohen?

  I think my favorite part of that interview was just seeing her different parts of her garage.

• 1:39:59Mayim Bialik?

  I think everyone is clear that that was your favorite part of the interview.

• 1:40:01Jonathan Cohen?

  I love it. I love it.

• 1:40:02Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, let's talk about that for the first, I don't know, half hour of the interview, she looked like an alien with the red light.

• 1:40:10Jonathan Cohen?

  I'd like the internet to start the theory that she is AI, that the first part she was an alien, and then the second part that alien left and she came back.

• 1:40:21Mayim Bialik?

  I really, really appreciate her insights and her, you know, the degree to which she's willing to sort of be vulnerable about her experience, really exploring codependency from kind of a clinical perspective. I think it's really, really interesting. And it is something that, you know, kind of gets thrown around a lot. You know, that term gets tossed around a lot, but I do, I do think she really, she's kind of got her finger on it. It's very helpful.

• 1:40:48Jonathan Cohen?

  I want to offer a clarification that is not intended to address the people with serious codependence, who are in the 12-step programs, who have found their life impacted negatively. But instead, for people who have co-opted the idea of this

• 1:41:06Jonathan Cohen?

  to not be in normal relation with other people. Meaning, I can't help you. I actually am going to keep an enormous amount of distance. And I think, as we've seen with many different psychological terms, it can be taken to the extreme so that you're eroding natural, like, people have natural dependence on one another. A friendship has an equal level of dependence.

• 1:41:32Mayim Bialik?

  It's okay to be helpful and it's okay. But I think one of the main things that Whitney talked about, which, you know, obviously the book Codependent No More, you know, talks about explicitly. Are you doing for someone what they actually can do for themselves?

• 1:41:46Jonathan Cohen?

  It's a slippery slope.

• 1:41:48Mayim Bialik?

  It's not so slippery. It's not so slippery.

• 1:41:52Jonathan Cohen?

  I mean, I'll give you a slippery example. Two friends are hanging out. One of them is going to the grocery store or driving in and around the vicinity of a grocery store. Another person is working. They have a meeting. They're juggling a lot. It's a busy day. Hey, do you mind stopping on your way to wherever you're going and grabbing me something?

• 1:42:11Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, my God. It's like, I hate when you ask me that. And that's a big no.

• 1:42:15Jonathan Cohen?

  Oh, OK. But if the person doesn't mind and is not put out, that is not an activity.

• 1:42:21Mayim Bialik?

  I don't know, Jonathan.

• 1:42:23Jonathan Cohen?

  That is a codependent. I could. Could I go to myself? Yes. Would it be way more convenient if someone would do that?

• 1:42:29Mayim Bialik?

  Hold on, hold on.

• 1:42:30Jonathan Cohen?

  And if someone asked me the same, could I do that without resentment, guilt, or feeling like I was only doing it so that they, that person liked me? Absolutely. I don't mind going and picking something up for someone, helping them run an errand. Life is busy. Traffic is a lot. People have different days. Should everyone just be an island unto themselves? No. The answer is no.

• 1:42:52Mayim Bialik?

  Here's the thing. I don't think that's very slippery. I think that's very clear that some people don't manage time the way other people do. And a lot of people who don't manage time well often try and rely on people who do manage time well to do things for them that they can't do because they don't manage their time well.

• 1:43:08Jonathan Cohen?

  This, to me, is you being in the opposite swing of this situation. And there are many times where you'll say to me, hey, you're here. Can you grab something? And I'm like, yeah, of course. Would I say to you, no, you haven't managed your time well? No. I'd be like, it's annoying to have to leave the house if you don't have to do it otherwise. And if someone is out and it's not inconvenient for them.

• 1:43:34Mayim Bialik?

  If it's not. So that's, OK, great, great clarification. If it's not inconvenient for them.

• 1:43:42Jonathan Cohen?

  But you can use inconvenience as a weapon. Like, you could be driving past the store. And it not really be inconveniencing you, but you being like, "That person didn't manage his time well."

• 1:43:54Mayim Bialik?

  No, no, no. So I think this is important because what you're doing is you're kind of slicing your judgment in your favor, which I totally understand. If I know that, for example, you like to go to the supermarket three times a day.

• 1:44:09Jonathan Cohen?

  Not three times, but I do like going to a supermarket.

• 1:44:12Mayim Bialik?

  Then, for me, I know that that's something that's part of your life plan. It's something you're doing and you have the energy and interest to do it for yourself. My challenge is if someone, and I'm not just talking about you, but if someone asks me to do something that is not in my comfort zone, it's not necessarily convenient in terms of like my time, my energy, my resources. My tendency tends to be, historically, I will do it and be resentful. And the fact is, if you can't do it for fun and for free, you're likely going to grow a resentment. And so that's more where, what we were talking about is like, codependency is actually more about what's going on in here, not about what I'm doing out there.

• 1:44:55Jonathan Cohen?

  For sure. And that's the thing. Can you do it for fun and for free?

• 1:44:59Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:44:59Jonathan Cohen?

  Can you not hold resentment? If you're doing it and holding resentment, that's a very different scenario.

• 1:45:04Mayim Bialik?

  Friendly reminder to subscribe here. Hit that little bell icon if you are watching us on my YouTube channel so that you can get all notifications and be the first to know when exciting things happen. Also...

• 1:45:15Jonathan Cohen?

  If you're listening on audio, press follow.

• 1:45:18Mayim Bialik?

  If you're listening on audio, as Jonathan just said, make sure to click that follow button and head over to our Substack, My Impealect Breakdown, over on Substack. So many bonus features, awesome things, our newsletter's over there, so check that out. And yeah, we will see you over on Substack. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.