Mike Birbiglia Tells the Deeper Story in ‘The New One’

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Aaron Schwartz: Hi, I'm Aaron Schwartz and I'm the comedy editor here at Audible. Today I'm here talking to comedian, actor, writer, and director Mike Birbiglia. You may know him from his movies like Sleepwalk with Me or Don't Think Twice, or maybe from his many comedy specials like My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, which is a personal favorite of mine, Thank God for Jokes, or his most recent show, The New One, which ran on Broadway and now lives as a Netflix special and inspired his new book, also called The New One, which he co-authored with his wife, J. Hope Stein, which is available on Audible right now and is why we're here to speak today. So how's it going?

Mike Birbiglia: That sounds about right. And thank you. I feel pretty good. You know, I think like everybody, it's one day at a time with everything. It gets really sad and then there's also, you know—I'm spending a lot of time with my wife and daughter, which is sweet, so it's a twisty time.

AS: Sure. Yeah. For people listening in the future, I'll just clarify that we are in the middle of the COVID pandemic, which I'm sure you've heard of by now if you're listening.

MB: We are in the sweet spot. We’re yeah, that's exactly it.

AS: So we're talking over a video call. You know, it's funny, I happen to actually have been lucky enough to see The New One when it was on Broadway, and I have watched the Netflix special, and I was re-watching it the other day and there's a moment in the show—it's a very big moment, especially when you're there live—when your daughter's toys fall from the rafters.

MB: Yeah, sure.

AS: When I was watching it the other day, I was like, “Oh wow, that's probably—I imagine his house is probably like an amplified version of that these days with everybody staying inside.”

MB: Yeah, I mean, I actually created my first—and I'm going to pronounce this in a way that is controversial—gif the other day. Some people say “gif,” some people say “gif.” I've been told by people the correct is “gif.” I don't know, but I made a toys version on a professional gif app. And I never thought I would do it, but then I was like, “Well that deserves a gif.”

AS: Yeah. I think now more than ever.

MB: Oh my gosh. Yeah. A lot of people were retweeting it because I think it's a relatable image currently because everyone's stuck inside.

AS: Sure. And speaking of, before we talk about the book I wanted to ask about your Tip Your Waitstaff initiative that you have going on right now.

MB: Yeah so, I think at this point we've done about 30 episodes. We've had John Mulaney, and yesterday was Bert Kreischer and Maria Bamford, and Sarah Silverman. All these comedians come in and we bounce jokes around and we're directing people to a website called Tip Your Waitstaff where different comedy club waitstaffs across the country posts their own GoFundMe's.

The other day someone wrote: “@JHopeStein should be the narrator for every audiobook.” I couldn't agree more.

Because when the shutdown occurred, I was driving to a comedy club in Buffalo called Helium Comedy Club, and then the next week I was supposed to be in Bloomington, IN at The Comedy Attic. The first thing that occurred to me is like “Oh, well what happens to the people who they don't have—" At this point they hadn't cut any checks and all, you know, and so it's like, “Well, what happens? They live on tips.” And so we were like, “Well, what if we just put up GoFundMe's to raise money for tips?” Tipyourwaitstaff is just a URL that sends people to the GoFundMe. But the aggregate of all the GoFundMe's is like almost $600,000 at this point, which is for like 50 to 100 clubs.

AS: Yeah, that's amazing, and they're so entertaining to watch.

MB: Thanks.

AS: I was watching the one you did the other day with Jack Antonoff, and I'm a big Bleachers fan too.

MB: Oh yeah, oh my gosh, those guys are the best.

AS: And then having Jacqueline Novak heckling you guys in the comments at every episode is also great.

MB: Yeah, she's the best.

AS: Yeah. So, The New One, your audiobook. I know you start the book off by getting into this, but for people who may be listening to this who haven't listened to the book yet, I was wondering how this whole story found its way from the stage to print and audio format.

MB: Well, it's funny because when I was first writing—I said this actually in the Audible Instagram Q&A—but I write in my journal a lot, and so when my wife Jen—who wrote the book with me—got pregnant, and when we were talking about having a child, and then for the first year of the pregnancy, I was writing a lot of private stuff in my journal. And it's very therapeutic for me. Like it really helps me process things that are challenging, and I say this in the book, but it's like, “I never want to have a child and I have all these reasons why.” But then we talked it through and then we decided to do it. I just sort of wrote a lot of my deepest, darkest feelings in my journal. And I knew at some point I would probably turn them into maybe a book or a show or something. And then, at a certain point, we were at a film festival with my film, Don't Think Twice, and they asked me to tell a story. And the theme was jealousy. And I said, “I don't really want to tell a story.”

And Jen said, “Well, you're jealous of our daughter Oona.” And so that was sort of the floodgates opening of like, “Well I do have some stories about that.” And so then I started writing and then Jen started showing me some of her poetry on the same themes. And that's how we started talking about the idea of like, “Maybe this could be a book, maybe this could be a show.” And then it became both. It became a show. And then ultimately, we had so many more stories and poems and jokes and things to tell because anyone who has children knows just the sheer amount of feelings you experience: frustrations and feeling like you're doing it wrong and feeling like you're thinking the wrong things. It's seemingly endless. And so we felt like it would be a good book for people, particularly for like a Mother's and Father's Day kind of thing.

AS: Sure. Like I said, I got to see the show in person and I've watched it on Netflix and I love it both. But listening to the audiobook is really special I think because, for anyone who's followed your work, you mention Jen's gift for language a lot.

MB: Yeah, that's right.

AS: And you do a great demonstration of it. But hearing her actually do it—it's so beautiful to hear. It comes through so great in the audio to have her be a part of telling the story.

MB: Someone the other day on Instagram wrote—and thank you so much and I'll relay that to her. I feel the same way. The other day someone wrote: “@JHopeStein should be the narrator for every audiobook.” I couldn't agree more. When we were in the studio, our engineer, Charles, actually said that at one point. He was like, “You should do audiobooks. Your voice is great.” And she really does have this beautiful damn voice.

AS: Yeah.

MB: And so, yeah. Thank you. It's really special.

AS: And I think what's also really special about it too is there are moments when listening to it where you yourself laugh when telling the story. And it's great because it immediately—it feels like this. It feels like what we’re doing right now. And it just sounded like a lot of fun. Like was this whole process of getting Jen involved and recording yourself and telling these other guys, like another three and a half hours along from what the show itself was—three and a half hours more of material—that these are stories that you are telling for the first time—what was the recording process like?

MB: The recording process I think was worrisome the first day. It was about four days. It was worrisome the first day and then fun the other three days or so, because Jen really isn't a performer. I've been performing for years and years and years, 20 years as a comic. And before that I was doing high school and college theater—but Jen is like really—I mean I talk about in the book—she's very introverted. She writes under a pseudonym. And so it was really like a coming out for Jen in a lot of ways. And we had the director of the show, Seth Barrish, who's a brilliant director, who's directed so much theater and is an actor also, he was coaching us in the sessions. And that was really helpful because you generally don't want to coach your wife. It's really not where you want to be. Yeah, directing your wife is challenging. So the third person there was helpful.

AS: Yeah, I would imagine.

MB: That goes for all relationships: your wife, your husband, your whatever. It's just a challenging dynamic I think.

AS: Sure. Yeah, I would imagine. I mentioned before that I'm a really big fan and I think the thing that I gravitate to the most in your work is this real honesty and vulnerability that—a lot of comedians are honest, but there's something about the form I think that you take on in this longform storytelling that allows for a much deeper excavation of so many things: of relationships, of your past and childhood and all these things. So I'm wondering about your approach—what was it about this longform storytelling that really drew you in, that you maybe weren't getting or, you liked parts of it that you liked more of than a standard standup set?

MB: It's so funny because early in my career I did specials for Comedy Central and they're just much more like: setup, punchline, tag, tag, tag. Setup, punch line, tag, tag, tag. And I love doing that too. That's what my first album Two Drink Mike was. And at a certain point I was asked by The Moth, which now is a public radio show and a podcast, The Moth Radio Hour, but at the time was just a storytelling series [based] locally in New York. And they asked me to tell a story and I actually told one of the stories from My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, which you referenced where—if people haven't heard it, it actually is on Audible, the audio.

AS: Yeah. I've recommended it I think twice in the comedy newsletter already.

MB: Awesome. So there's just the story about high school, which is this sort of titular story, which is—I'm paraphrasing, but my first girlfriend basically told me that I couldn't tell anyone that she was my girlfriend because she had another boyfriend. Eventually she invited me to meet her parents and I went and at her house was her other boyfriend. And I meet him and then he asked us to go meet his parents. And then I'm strangely meeting my girlfriend's boyfriend's parents for the first time. You want to make a good impression. So I told that story at The Moth. It must've been like, I don't know, 16 years ago. And it was just one of those things—and I've had very few of these, by the way, in life, like they say these sort of “epiphany moments”—but it was one of those epiphany moments where I was like, “I think that I'm meant to do this. And I think this is what I'm better at than just the set-up, punchline, tag, tag, kind of thing.”

...it was one of those epiphany moments where I was like, “I think that I'm meant to do this."

And then I started telling more and more stories and I started watching solo theater plays and Seth Barrish actually directed my favorite one, it’s called The Tricky Part. And then I approached him and I started working with him and then eventually the folks at The Moth introduced me to This American Life. And so it just sort of snowballed into this thing where like, you know, Ira Glass mentored me and it's just become what I do. Yeah.

AS: Yeah. I think what I'm so drawn to is, I feel like we get to see you in a way that maybe with other comedians we don't get to—we don't get to see as vivid a portrait of [them]. It was the first time that I, when I saw My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, fully related to a comedian’s story and I was like—I mean I haven't ever dated a girl who also had boyfriend, but the kind of—

MB: Yeah. The bad making out when you're in high school and being in the makeout club and the non-make out club and all that stuff.

AS: Yeah. I think it's really special. And also on the storytelling front, I noticed as a viewer and a fan of your stuff, in preparing for this I was re-watching The New One, and the couch stood out to me more.

MB: Sure.

AS: In the book as well, the couch plays a big role. And it’s really well done how you find this physical object or a moment and are able to find all of the threads that connect all of these things together but still bring it back to this couch. And I was wondering, specifically for The New One, the couch—when you see the couch, does it spark all of this or was the couch a detail that you found along the way in all of these journals?

MB: It's funny because it's like, the couch arrived in the show because I performed material in the early stages—like I mentioned, my podcast is going to be called Working it Out. When I'm working out material, I call the shows “Working It Out.” It’s just “Mike Birbiglia Working It Out.” So I would do early drafts. I remember one of my first jokes I wrote for this was, “My wife and daughter love each other so much and I'm there too.”
That was the first joke that like actually worked with the crowd and I was like, “Okay, I feel like I'm onto something.” But I wasn't fully there yet.

I was performing in comedy clubs and theaters and different things and I was really connecting with people who were like my age or older. I'm 41 now. I was in my late thirties when I started it. I performed at a college one night and it wasn't connecting in the same way. And I was like, “Okay, something's missing. I don't want this just to be for people who have had kids or who have friends who have kids. These kids in college, not only do they probably not have kids, they probably don't even know anyone who has kids.” You know? I just started thinking, what changed in my twenties that was drastic? And I started thinking about how like, “Oh wait, I bought a couch.” It's so stupid. It's seemingly so inane a detail, but then I was like, “No, I love my couch. I really do.”

AS: I related to it because I'm 25 and you said you were 25 [when you bought yours], and I bought my first couch at 25. I saw the show not long after and I saw it with my mom and we both just started dying laughing. It was that moment you were like, “It's the first adult thing I did at 25. I'm a man, I'm buying a couch.” And that's exactly how I felt.

I was like, “I’m buying a couch, I'm a grown person.” But it's of course symbolic of change, you know, like having a child is a drastic life change.

MB: It is embarrassingly true to my personal experience. I was like, “I’m buying a couch, I'm a grown person.” But it's of course symbolic of change, you know, like having a child is a drastic life change. And when you're in your twenties, getting a couch feels like a drastic life change. You're like, “I used to live on an air mattress and I didn't have a couch and now I have a living room and a couch.” I don’t know, you're like shifting into gear.

AS: Yeah. As somebody who doesn't have kids and is not married and is 25 with a couch? That was immediately—within the first two minutes that joke comes out and I was like, “Oh yeah, I'm 100% in.”

Nowadays, because we're all stuck at home, I think a lot of people are, whether or not they're actually working with their significant other or are in the house working next to their significant other—I feel like maybe as somebody who just wrote a book with their spouse, you might have some insight into how best to manage a working relationship with your partner.

MB: Oh my gosh. First of all, it's very communication-based. It's very much about saying how you feel about something or like how they say in therapy: “How does it make you feel” is better than just saying, “Stop doing that.” As opposed to saying, “When you do that it makes me feel like this.” So there's a lot of that. It’s also like, pick your spots. I think one of the things we're all learning to live with in the shutdown is like, you don't have to discuss everything. Maybe find the right moment bring up that you've both been wearing the same pair of socks for five weeks or whatever.

AS: Sure. All right. And I guess my last question for you, since this is Audible, is: Do you have a favorite audiobook?

MB: Oh my gosh. You know, when I was writing this, I emailed David Sedaris, who I was lucky enough to meet a few years ago at a This American Life live event—where it's pretty cool if you look up the video where he dresses up like a clown and tells the story. It's really, really funny. But my favorite audiobook is Me Talk Pretty One Day. And I really listened to it when I was writing this book and it was so inspiring because it was the first book that I, when I was about 22 years old, was like, “I want to do that someday.” And it is one of those weird aspirations that there's no ZipRecruiter listing for.

AS: Sure.

MB: You know what I mean? It's like, “I want to write humorous essays about my life.” It's like, “Good luck with that.” And that's how I was met, with that response. And I would mention it to people. I was like, “I've been reading David Sedaris and I think that that's what I'm going to do.” People would be like, "Right. So we need you at Pfizer at 8:30 AM and you're going to report to HR…” That book is really special. And I re-listened to it and for me it completely like held up and I was screaming-laughing.

AS: Yeah.

MB: And then I'm a huge, huge, huge, a) Audible fan and b) fan of authors who read their own work. So the other person who I love her books is Mary Carr.

AS: Oh, okay, yeah.

MB: Mary Carr has the book Cherry and Lit and Liars Club. And man, she's got a great voice and she's got great stories and man she's just fantastic.

AS: Yeah.

MB: Yeah. Those are my two favorite authors that I would suggest.

I think one way to look at the shutdown is like, “Damn it, I can't do anything I want to do.” And for my mental health—of course I have days where I don't feel this way—but for my mental health, what I try to think about is, “What can I do that I couldn't do before?”

AS: Great. Thank you so much. So before we go, I was wondering if you had any upcoming projects you wanted to talk about.

MB: Well strangely enough I was supposed to be on tour right now for this book. It’s a new hour of comedy, obviously no one can tour right now. No one can go anywhere. So I created this podcast called Working It Out that, knock-on-wood, premiers June 2nd, and the pilot episode has Ira Glass with me. We basically let people in on, in that pilot, the process of me working out material, but because we don't have an audience, it's just him and then people listening and it's pretty cool. And then we have a few exciting future guests: John Mulaney and Hannah Gadsby and some other folks who are really, really—I mean I'm really excited about it. This podcast universe is a whole new sort of thing.
I think one way to look at the shutdown is like, “Damn it, I can't do anything I want to do.” And for my mental health—of course I have days where I don't feel this way—but for my mental health, what I try to think about is, “What can I do that I couldn't do before?” One of the things is—Hannah Gadsby is someone I’m a huge fan of—I could ask her to be in my podcast and we can run material together. It's like, “What would that be like?” There's almost no excuse for me to do that usually. “Today would be cool.” And that's how I feel about my daughter and my wife. It’s like, “What is good about us being all in one house?” And it's like, “Well I can spend more time with her and I can teach her how to play guitar and, you know, there's things where I can—” Those are on my better days. On my worst days I'm like, "Get out." Yeah, yeah. Like everybody, like everybody.

AS: I'm really looking forward to that because I caught your Tip Your Waitstaff episode with John Mulaney and you guys are going through openers and it was great. It’s such a pleasant thing to listen to. Yeah, it’s great. So I'm really looking forward to that.

MB: Thanks a lot Aaron. Thanks for having me on.