Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast - Pete Holmes

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Comedian Pete Holmes shares the small ways his mom infused her Lithuanian heritage through food, even if she wouldn’t talk much about the home she knew before having to flee the country and become a refugee. He’ll open up about his journey confronting some dark parts of his past that helped him make better comedy. Plus, we’ll get the recipe for his mom’s apple pie that might look more like a cobbler.Pete Holmes is an American comedian, actor, writer, producer and podcaster. He gained recognition as the creator and lead actor of the HBO series "Crashing," a semi-autobiographical show centered around the world of stand-up comedy. Holmes has also worked as a writer for "Saturday Night Live" and lent his voice to characters in the animated series "Animals." His stand-up specials, including "Nice Try, The Devil" and "Faces and Sounds," have received praise for their observational humor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Audible Originals presents Your Mama's Kitchen, hosted by Michelle Norris. My mom's beet soup, which was like borscht, but somehow it was Lithuania. I don't know what it had or it didn't have. And God, that was just so good. And you know, I'm grateful for this conversation because as much as I like to tease my family and like we were all crazy and we were, I have very fond memories of eating that with my mom.

And like, without talking about it, appreciating that we both knew it was something from her. Welcome to Your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast that explores how we're shaped as adults by the kitchens we grew up in as kids. I'm Michele Norris. Today we're joined by stand-up comedian, podcaster, and major mama's boy, Pete Holmes. He doesn't mind that title. He's mastered the art of opening up

in entertaining ways about things in his life that the average person might bring to their grave. No topic is left undiscussed on his own podcast called You Made It Weird, where he talks to celebs and other comedians about some of their deepest, darkest secrets. He even created and starred in a show based on his real life experience

with a tough divorce and a shaky initiation into comedy. He did all that in a show called Crashing on HBO. But today, we'll go all the way back to the melting pot of the kitchen where Pete first learned to be funny, where his family steamed lobsters, get this, in the dishwasher. You heard me right, dishwasher lobsterwasher lobster, where his mother, who fled Lithuania when she was just a child, cooked dishes that reminded her of home. of self-discovery and how facing the dark parts of his past has made him connect deeper with himself to ultimately make better comedy. Plus, we will learn how to make his mom's Lithuanian apple pie.

It's really more like an apple cobbler with a thick, heavy crust. Mm, it's almost like a cookie. All of that is coming up. P.E.A.T. HOMES Pete Holmes, thanks for being with us. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. You grew up in Massachusetts.

Do I have that right? You do. Lexington, Massachusetts, birthplace of the American Revolution. You're welcome. Okay. Thank you, I guess. No, you owe a great debt to me and everyone who's ever lived in Lexington. What we were talking briefly off, Mike, that is where the shot around the world happened

on the Battle Green in Lexington, which is, you know, it's a park. It's near the- I've actually been to that park. Yeah, it's near the CVS. I've covered many campaigns and politicians like to go to that park. Oh, as they should, yeah. So describe your New England community. Walk me down the street to the front door of your house and if I came in through the

foyer and made my way to the kitchen, what would that look like? What would I see? Oh, well, it's an old Victorian house. It's the house that I grew up in. It looked a little scary. All my friends were scared of my house. I wasn't. Oh wait, wait. What's the story there? They were just scared of my house. It's a big old Victorian house. It just looks like a haunted house. There was there was no like circumstantial reason to be

afraid of my house. It was just like the last house on the left. It just looked like. Well yeah. In fact, if you watch like the Amityville horror. I was just like the last house on the left. It just looked like... Well, yeah. In fact, if you watch like the Amityville horror... I was just thinking of Amityville. I almost said that. That was a big white Victorian house. Well, that's, you know, Victorian houses have bad marketing because, you know, they're old. So those are going to be the haunted houses, I suppose. So you had a porch.

We had a porch and there was an extension that my father built on the back part of the house, which is very cool. But nobody wanted to do sleepovers at my house because they just thought it looked haunted. But if we walked in, you'd see my parents love of antiques. So you'd see a roll top desk. My father loved roll top desk is what he would say. And there was a whole room that you couldn't go in that was called the antique room.

Roped off or something? Or did they just tell you and your brother, don't you dare go in there? It was like an invisible fence for dogs. There was no roped off, but we had been shocked enough times to not go past there. You know, you could go in, you just couldn't touch anything. It wasn't fun.

They had like a horsehair sofa, I remember. That doesn't, that sounds sticky, like prickly a little bit. The whole thing is an exercise and just like none of this is working. It doesn't make you happy. You don't like it. Why are you doing it? Horsehair sofa is a good metaphor for the entire house. Like, let's just get a nice comfortable sofa.

They're like, no, we have a horsehair sofa. Our house, this is me realizing our house was a horsehair sofa. Like, we could have streamlined it and made it cozy and welcoming, but it was an uncomfortable sticky. And you're right, it was a sticky, who's ever touched a horse's tail and been like, I need this fabric. Cozy. Yeah, no.

They just wanted it because no one else had it. I don't know. Wait, so was the kitchen the one comfortable space or did it also have like an old fashioned white stove, you know, kind of Victorian vibe. You know, the kitchen, I wouldn't call any part of the house welcoming or hobbit-like or warm, but there is something sweet I could say, which is that my father knew my mom liked to cook and when they redesigned the house in a very loving gesture, made a very, for the 80s and 90s, modern kitchen, which just meant it had an island. Like there was a cooking island surrounded by countertops and the stoves and stuff.

And there were like, there was like a lazy Susan, which was like cutting edge technology. I used to love showing my friends where we kept the peanut butter because it was on this little rotating thing. Again, that was the future. We didn't know about AI and wireless internet. We were just rotating a drawer. Happy with the lazy Susan. We were so happy with the lazy Susan.

And a big pantry, which is just a walk-in food closet. But like these were the cutting edge of the 90s, and my mom had that. And I think, I like questions that help me remember kindnesses, because my parents, you know, still don't really get along. They're still together. But like, there are these gestures, and the kitchen was one of those gestures. It was like, I know you like cooking, and I'm going to do that for you.

That's lovely. Did it make her happy? No. What are you, nuts? I'm a comedian. What do you think? You think comedians grow in happy soil? Well, there might be moments of happiness.

I'm joking. There, of course, were moments of happiness. I'm joking. There of course were moments of happiness. And I do have, I have memories of my mom, you know, not twirling in the kitchen, but you know, looking at it the first time and being really thrilled that she had, I remember the island being a really special thing to her was that she had her space.

Julia Child had an island. Well, my mom was obsessed. had her space. Julia Child had an island. Well, my mom was obsessed with Julia Child. And for her birthday one year, I got her a framed, it was from the Boston Globe, I'm from Boston, and it was a story of Julia Child. And she just loves that woman. And it's still up in her kitchen. They've moved from this house that I consider

the house I grew up in, but that Julia Child thing made the move and is still up in her kitchen. They've moved from this house that I consider the house I grew up in, but that Julia Child thing made the move and is still up in the new house. So yeah, you're right on. She loved Julia Child. She wanted to have that sacred space. So tell me a little bit about your mom and your dad. Your dad was an oilman

and your mom was a refugee from Lithuania. Yeah, good combo. Classic combo. The old oil man meets the refugee from World War II, Lithuania. That old trope. But my mom and my dad met, and I think they had both, it's safe to say, hadn't met anyone quite like the other. I think that's definitely true.

My father is a very gregarious and charismatic, likable, funny, larger than life person. And one of the things that's unique about him was that he really had like an appetite for bigger things. He was like an adventurer and he wanted more. He didn't, I don't think this is unique to Boston, but a lot of people are kind of like from their neighborhood and they stay in their neighborhood

and they might kind of work what's familiar and do. And my dad wanted to know the old man who owned the mansion on the hill. Like he wanted to go and talk to him. And he had the kind of personality that could go and talk to those entrepreneurs. And then his father died when he was quite young and his mom not long after that. And he's really like an American dream story. But my father was that kind of guy.

He could pitch, you know, I want to buy properties in Summerville, in Cambridge, and I want to... This was new. There weren't people that were like flipping things. You know, it wasn't... There wasn't like... This was before like all those house shows on HGPD. Exactly. Where my father got it, I don't know. Like he must have just... He had a sense for it. He was like, somebody owns these buildings. And I really And it might as well be me. It might as well be me. And I admire that. He had that thirst for something more. And then my mom kind of fell into that was that here's this woman from Lithuania who's just

not like the girls from Boston. My mom moved to South Boston when she was seven, so she was very much from Boston. But you know, seven years in Lithuania, that's enough to kind of get a different flavor to you. And she was incredibly and is incredibly no-nonsense, and she's very, very smart, and very, very emotionally intelligent, and also just deeply, wickedly funny. So I think my father was intrigued by this, you know, off the menu person. It wasn't just another from the neighborhood girl. And also she didn't take his crap, you know. She gave him guff.

And I think he liked that. And then they got married and away we go. If I may ask, what was your mother running from? What was her family fleeing in Lithuania? You know, that's not entirely clear to me because it wasn't entirely clear to my mother. And as it's kind of been revealed, some gaps have been filled in. I know my mom's brother became a freedom fighter for Lithuania. And it's very tragic.

He got captured and he was killed by a firing squad, which of course is deeply traumatic. So there's a lot of sadness in my mom's side of the family. Her mother and her father had to deal with that loss. She had to deal with that loss. And of course, it makes me so grateful for the modern world, how aware we are of therapy and just in our language, like you need to process that and that must have been hard for you. That wasn't...

No one was talking about processing things. That was just not part of our vernacular or the way we lived back then. Yeah, you kind of, you had to eat it to a certain extent. And I think that's where a lot of my mom's sharpness came from. I think she was a survivor in South Boston. You know, Boston is the only, not the only place, but it's really elevated it to an art the way white people can be racist to other kinds of white people. So, you know, Boston is a troubled place.

It's a city of fiefdoms. Yeah, yeah, it's tricky, but they'll divide on themselves. Look, it's all nasty, it's all ugly, but you know, the Irish hate and then the Lithuanian hate and whatever it might be. So my mom got like rocks thrown at her and was just sort of othered and that was very hard for her. And that brings us to my father again, is I think my dad wanted something different and my mom wanted something that would help her belong in her country. So they both got, I think they both got that. Again, I'm not an authority on this.

This is how I understand my parents' story. Yeah, but you know, there are, you see your parents as you get older, you start, they, it's almost like a Polaroid that keeps developing as you get older. You sort of understand aspects of their life and their marriage and it's like, oh, okay, now this makes sense. This didn't make sense. But as I get older, become a parent myself, have a mortgage myself, things start to make sense.

I've read a lot about the so-called refugee kitchen, that people who come to America from somewhere else and often with a single bag, you know, are fleeing something. That refugee personality sometimes evolves in the kitchen. And that, you know, the kitchen is a place of plenty. Because when they first came to a country like this, there was so much that was uncertain. Or the kitchen becomes a place where we're going to work it out because they came from a country where they weren't allowed to do that. Or liberty of thought winds up being so much, so important in the lessons that they pass on because they came from a place where there was no liberty of thought.

I was wondering if that, if you experienced any aspect of a refugee kitchen. Boy, as you said that, it just warmed my heart. But I, to be completely honest, I always felt a little bit excluded from those movies and stories and play, Fiddler on the Roof comes to mind, this idea of like, but we know how to eat. One of the tricky things about my family is we really felt like four individuals. And we didn't have a lot of tradition and we didn't have a lot of enmeshment with one another necessarily

and with the idea of our culture. It was people that were trying to redefine themselves. I don't think it was conscious, but it wasn't a complete denial of it. There were Lithuanian things and there was Lithuanian food. But there wasn't... Okay, I guess a better answer maybe would be on Christmas Eve, my Aunt Jean who passed and my cousins Raymond and John and my mom and our family, obviously my dad, we would

have like a very traditional Lithuanian Christmas. And now that I'm older, I'm looking back, I'm like, it was a very Catholic Christmas. We weren't Christmas. There was like fish and there were like co-hogs. Do you know what a co-hog is? It's a kind of clam, isn't it? Yeah. It's like a stuffing filled clam, but it's clam stuffing. But it's spelled like Q-U-A-H. Yes.

It's not spelled like it sounds. No, it's the name of the town and family guy, which is a fictional town in Rhode Island called Kohog, because it's very New England. It's served in this enormous clam shell and it's like a clam stuffing. I didn't know until years later that this was a, not aggressively, but aggressively Catholic kind of traditional, you know, it's, we don't eat meat on Christmas Eve or on Friday kind of thing. So something almost like Feast of the Seven Fishes, like a version of that. Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, I think both me and my brother had, you know, we loved being American, we loved being like Bart Simpson. We didn't have an extreme connection to really anything. But as we got older, we got more curious about our Lithuanian-ness. And you know, my brother more than me was like, why didn't you teach us Lithuanian? Like, there was almost like a retroactive, we would have liked having a culture. But again, my mom's to have some compassion, me, not you, obviously me, my mother and her association to Lithuania was so fraught that I don't think it was like a warm, safe place for her.

It was the place where her brother died. And she was running from it as much as, I don't know if those are the words she would use. It wasn't fiddler on the roof. It wasn't let me teach you about our ways. So when we got these little tastes of ceremony and ritual, and you know, when we were young, the table, all the stuff that we had on Christmas Eve was so kind of gross.

And then as I got older, I started to really appreciate it. It was a lot of beets. There's exactly what you're thinking. It was a lot of beets. There was a lot of smoked fish. It was a lot of pickled fish. There was a lot of smoked fish. It was a lot of pickled fish. Herring. Herring.

There was eel. We would eat eel, like just a slice of eel. Like you knew what it was. It was a, you were eating an eel off the bone. And then later it got kind of fancy. She would steam, my Aunt Jean would steam lobsters in the dishwasher. So, yeah. Wait, wait.

Back it up. Back up. Back it up. Steam lobsters in the dishwasher? Yeah, apparently you can cook lobsters if you put them on the steam setting in the dishwasher. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know. What? I didn't know. What?

I didn't know either. And that started, that was maybe the last four or five years. That was a later addition, but we would eat dishwasher, we would eat dishwasher lobster. I wanna try this now. I actually wanna try this. But does your dishwasher smell like lobster, like for a long time after that?

Do you have to like run lemons or something through it, exercise it so you get the lobster smell out of it? I think you need a little cascade. Just run one with no dishes in there just to get the smell out. Probably. I mean, lobster's no joke. There's a definite aroma. Yeah, a different odor.

But you know, esteem is esteem. That's not what we said, but it's what we could have said. A steam is a steam. Now I'm wondering if restaurants do this. If they just get a bunch of dishwashers, a bunch of kitchen aides back there and steam the lobsters. I mean, it's so funny when we... It's kind of brilliant though.

Have you ever done a lobster in the dishwasher? We've never used our dishwasher for anything other than washing dishes. But as we're talking, I'm like, are we missing out a whole angle? I'm married to a man who loves seafood. And so upon hearing this episode, I have a feeling that we're going to be doing this in our house. Honestly? Honey, you know what you've done?

You have kicked off a viral TikTok thing. There are going to be people that are going to be like steaming their lobsters and their crab legs all over the place. And you will take, you know, we'll all credit it to you. Well to Aunt Jean. Full respect to the OG. Full respect to Aunt Jean. Old Jean. Original Jean. When we set this up, I was like, oh, I don't have that many interesting things to say.

I'm like, oh no, you're a good interviewer. We do. We do. We had dishwasher lobster and stuff we called the pink stuff, which was like a beet salad, like kind of a mayonnaise-y beet thing. A lot of beets. And that brought me to my mom's dishes was first and foremost was beet soup, which was like borscht, very similar to borscht, but somehow it was Lithuania.

I don't know what it had or it didn't have. And this really brings me back is you would put just a spoonful of sour cream in it. I'm salivating. So it was this pink, very dark pink soup with the beet stalk, the beet root, the beet greens, and beets, obviously just sliced beets. And I think it had beef in it or something like that, but the part that made it like beautiful, like literally like physically beautiful, was the sour cream wouldn't quite mix in so it kind of like

looked like a snowy day in a pink atmosphere like on Mars or something. And God that was just so good. And you know I'm grateful for this conversation because as much as I like to tease my family and like we were all crazy and we were, I have very fond memories of eating that with my mom. And like, without talking about it, so this is a little fiddler, but appreciating that we both knew it was something from her. You know, this was as close as we came. This is a piece of me. Yeah, this is a piece of you and we're eating it.

And I remember being proud that I liked it. No shade on my brother, but my brother was a picky eater and I wasn't and I would eat the co-hogs and I would eat the dishwasher lobster and I would eat the beet soup. And the most recent one, my aunt Jean passed, but when the last time we were there, I ate the herring. I ate all the like, I went full Bourdain,

and I was like, give all of it to me. And I think I was even vegan at the time, I'm a vegan now, but like I was vegan then. And I put the veganism, which I firmly stand behind, I put the veganism, which I firmly stand behind, I put it aside. I was like, look guys, this eel's already dead. There's no ethic that I can have that's gonna save this eel. So I'm a chompette and I did, and I'm so glad I did. And in the same way that when I go back, again, still a vegan, My mom makes this apple pie that's like in a sheet tray, like in a casserole dish.

And it's got the thickest cookie-like crust on top of it. I used to help her make it. I would peel the apples and slice them and she'd put them down and you bake it. But I can't stress enough how thick that crust is. It's like the thickest, thickiest, stickiest. It's incredible. It's like it's unbelievable. And veganism goes away when that, when my mom...

Because there's a lot of butter, a lot of dairy products in that? I believe it's butter, yeah. Or is it lard? It's butter. I'm pretty sure it's butter. Okay. Because it could be lard also. Which, you know, even more pretty sure it's butter. Okay. Because it could be lard also.

Which, you know, even more offensive to my vegan brethren. Okay. So. Hi, it's Michelle Norris. I want to tell you about another podcast I was a guest on recently. On Dinner SOS, Chris Morocco and a guest from the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen solve your toughest cooking questions. Chris and I had a wonderful discussion about food memories and we answered some listener

questions together. It was so much fun. I even confessed to one of my biggest kitchen fails from the first time I cooked from my husband's mother. Some people consider cooking to be torture, but with Dinner SOS, cooking becomes the ultimate labor of love, making it the perfect podcast for chefs of all skill levels looking for inspiration. Get your weekly dose of Bon Appetit's Dinner SOS available now wherever you get your podcast.

It sounds like you grew up in an interesting household. You've said you've done comedy about this. You've talked about it many times that your mom and dad had some tensions. Yeah. But you were particularly close to your mom. Was that in part because you weren't trying to protect her from anything physical, but did you feel like you were in some ways... It's interesting when I talk to Jeff Tweedy, he said almost the same thing.

Oh, wow. That he was really close to his mom because he just felt she needed a buddy. Yeah. No, that's correct. You know, it's interesting. My therapy lately has been uncovering all of these good things. I thought I'm doing kind of like somatic, internal family systems work, and I'm going in and talking to my inner child. And I'm sort of new to it.

But the first thing he's been showing me is sort of like all of these good parts of it. Not necessarily stuff with my folks, but like a feeling and feeling safe and feeling happy. So I want to give respect to that. And just as compassionately and hopefully even-handedly, I can say my mom and I had each other and needed each other. And that sort of got a little chunky funky when the roles just get a little blurred. You know, to Jeff, and I know he would agree, even if there's something lovely and necessary about finding refuge in one another, it gets a little complicated later in life when you go like, I didn't want to be a peer, I wanted to be your child.

You know what I mean? And that's okay. We can explore that and unpack that with love and understanding. But a lot of my adult life has been like, you know, oh, sweetheart, talking to myself. That couldn't have been easy to basically be like an ally. Like, you know, it sort of blurred the line to like a father, a friend and sort of like a non-romantic husband

or you could even say like a girlfriend would gossip about my dad, would talk shit about my dad. Like, what are we doing? Like, that's my dad. Like, this is so confusing. But we did what we did. We did what we did because it's what we needed to do to survive. Later in life, we look back and we go, was that appropriate?

And that's a conversation for that point in your life. But we bonded hard, sort of any port in the storm, and we helped one another. And we did. And my mom was incredibly generous and loving and was there for me. Yeah. Yeah. You should go back and listen to Jeff's episode. Oh, really?

Yeah. Yeah. He talks about sitting up late at night with his mom, drinking Coca-Cola's and watching late night TV because she wanted someone to sit with her. Yeah. It was him. Yeah. It was a beautiful conversation.

That might be triggering for me. I appreciate that, to use the hot word, triggering. I just mean, it got a little... I wish it was that, man. I don't have thoughts like that. I have thoughts of comforting a mourning and traumatized person every day of my adolescence. That's what I remember. I shouldn't have been in that position.

I'm saying this for the people listening, by the way. I'm not saying this to get out anger or revenge. I'm just saying, I know there are millions of people that relate to what I'm saying. It wasn't watching late night TV and sharing a laugh. It was comforting a hysterical person while no one was helping and me feeling like, who's comforting me? Did you feel that at the time or do you feel like when you look at a young version of little

Pete wondering who is comforting him? That's a great question. Did empathy just feel like a natural thing to do? Because we don't have boundaries in the same way that we do as we age. No, you're right on and you're very wise because I think that's a grown-up thought, who's comforting me. I didn't know any different and that was the pattern that we had fallen into. And that's literally what the therapy I'm doing now is going back and asking things like, I think we want to, you know, it's over. That's a very New England thing. I don't know

if it's unique to Boston, but like, why would you open that can of worms is a big thing. And I'm a huge believer in like people think it's stoic or brave or courageous to push away the past and just forge forward. And I'm like, you're not courageous. That's the opposite of courage. And I don't think it's masculine. I don't think it's admirable.

I always say to those people that are just like, ah, just keep moving forward. I'm like, your pain would destroy you. Or that's what you think. So really courage is in the opposite direction. And by the way, if you don't want to do it for yourself, do it for every human relationship you have. If you think it's navel, yeah, well, that's the other Boston thing.

They're getting the result of your decision to say, it's merely a flesh wound and just press on. The Boston voice in me is like, that's too indulgent. It's navel gazing. And I'm like, it's the opposite of indulgent. If you want to... The Boston tough thing. Yeah.

Don't look at it. And if you did look at it, you're somehow being indulgent. And I'm like, it's literally way more courageous to look at it. And it's literally the most generous thing you can do. If you'd like, when I am with my daughter, and I'm with my wife, and we're present, and we're there, and we're available to one another, that is the direct result of me looking these things in the eye. It's not running away.

You're a wise man. Well, you brought it out of me. Now I know that you're a wise man. And you're a funny man. At what point did you realize that you were funny and was part of that making your mom laugh? Or was that making the kids laugh at school to gain acceptance? At what point did you realize, I have this gift. I'm very funny. I can make people laugh.

I can change the atmosphere. I can change the temperature in a room. Wow, that's so generous. It's a very generous question. You said all of the answers in your question. I watched how my father would take over a room. That's my father's magic. When he goes in a room, he becomes, in a very fun way, the center of gravity.

Is he a big man? Is it because he takes up space or he does that with his personality? He is big. He's 6'2", maybe 6'3", and he's loud and he's funny and he's handsome and he's just persuasive and he can lock on to somebody. When I say a good salesman, I don't mean a trickster. I mean somebody that can, you know, a good salesperson is somebody who can see your need and then address it. But I saw my father doing that and I saw the power. And more importantly, I saw how people liked it. I really think watching my father take over rooms and then

I recognized pretty quickly that, you know, they call it the gift of gab or whatever, but what really the gift of gab is, which you and I are both doing, it takes me absolutely no effort to put this sentence together. I'm not bragging. Just a certain type of lingual structuring of the brain. And when I was in high school, I started to notice that not everybody was that way. And what I identified the talent of being funny, yeah, there's being funny. There's like acquiring and cultivating a sense of humor based on influences, based on trial and error. But there's also the talent of it really to me, at least in my case, was an ability to think while I'm talking. And that's what I'm doing when I'm doing stand-up, is an ability to know the whole

thing and calmly deviate, stay, linger, add, subtract. That's actually what's going on when you're doing comedy, more than being funny, if that makes sense. And you have used in your comedy your own life. You talk about your faith, you talk about your family, you talk about an early divorce and your first marriage. Is that necessary for comedy to mine your own life, to dig deep inside your own life and your own soul,

to create comedy that is authentic? You're so good. Stop it. You're so good. Well, you know, I asked that because you mentioned there's a different kind of comedy when people are willing to actually go there.

I completely agree. And I started in comedy thinking this would be another way to kind of whitewash and you could present yourself however you wanted. And so the first 10 years really was me trying to prove in bars and smoky places that I was clean and that I was gentle and I was nice and I wasn't greedy and I wasn't selfish and I wasn't afraid. And at that time in my life, I knew what God was and I knew who was going to heaven and who was going to hell. And I just wanted to kind of twinkle like a toothpaste commercial.

That's a huge part of the beginning of life. Kind of doing an impression of who you think you're supposed to be. And then after my divorce, I got a crash course in kind of finding what's deeper and more interesting. Now, I love your question because when I... I can feel very protective of comedy as a whole. And when I see comedy, which is pretty often, meaning if I'm on a show I'm watching the other people, and my little dark little or little mischievous game that I'm playing when I'm watching a lot of other people

doing comedy is they'll be like, they'll say something and they'll be like, I was at blah blah blah blah blah and I'll be like, no you weren't. You know what I mean? Because I know they weren't. Like so much of it, it's like, no you weren't. That didn't happen. That's not true. And I could be wrong, but 90% of the time I bet I'm right. Meaning, even if it's not circumstantial, I'll go, that's not how you feel. That's the first draft of how you feel. And it will haunt me. I actually don't like watching comedy very much because I'll work on it. Just as a hobby, I'll be driving home working on their bit. Oh, okay. Right. You're critiquing other people. I won't tell them because that's not my place unless they're a friend of mine. But like there are people that do jokes and they're like, it was like this. And I'm like, no,

it wasn't. And I'll want to come up with the metaphor. Just as a human, as a human being, meaning a shared human experience, I'm like, there's no way that's how you feel. You really are an empath. I am very empath. Yeah, I'm a super empath and I'm a highly sensitive person. And I am, this is going to sound however it sounds, it'll sound how it sounds. I'm sort of to the point of disgust, but it's more anger at things that aren't real. Like, I don't know if you know the enneagram. I'm right down the middle. I'm in enneagram four and a three, but a four is like, give me that real, give me that depth, and I can't stand it when people are surface or they're not taking some sort of chance.

It's like what we were doing earlier. It's like, I'm like, oh, do I want to talk about comforting my sobbing mom? I'm like, that's the only thing we're here to do. That's the only thing we're here to do. And I'm thinking about people in their cars listening to this and that warm feeling you get when you're touched and you feel less alone. What is the price of making all of us or some of us feel less alone? What is the price of making all of us or some of us feel less alone? I'm like, that is the the cream of the crop right there. Is everyone leaving feeling less alone? That's what comedy, that's what art is.

Yeah, I think you get it. What did you experience in that childhood kitchen that lives in you today? High cholesterol. All that sour cream. Sour cream, saturated fat. And doesn't have to be food. I just wonder if there's something that you saw that you ate, that you absorbed, that you witnessed in the kitchen that lives with you today and maybe is evident in the kitchen that you're creating with your wife and your daughter. Well, I must have seen it.

I either saw it at home a little bit here and there, I'm sure I did. And then I would see it at other people's homes. And I'd also see it in media. It was really challenging as a child when I would watch TV shows that sort of showed families cooking. And I was like, look, again, everybody did the best they could, but that wasn't my experience. So one of the beautiful things about the way the universe works is it's often people that had that deficit

that springs forth a beautiful family kitchen. And that's really lovely. That's sort of like every part of the buffalo-ness of the world. So I don't have memories of my father whisking the eggs while my mom chops the chives or whatever. I don't have memories of my father whisking the eggs while my mom chops the chives or whatever. I don't have that. But I have it now. And would I have prioritized it if I got it? I don't know.

And maybe not as fervently because I really was like, that's what we're going to do. That's what we're going to do. And like... So you cook together as a family. We cook together. My daughter... I don't know if you've seen the Bluey episode about the omelet, but we let Leela crack the eggs, and it's a mess. It's the most... I mean, I'm not recommending this,

but I let my daughter use knives that are way too big and way too sharp. But I'm there with her. Isn't that life? We brought this thing into this world and there's knives, but I'm here and I'm with you. There's a lesson in that and we're eating it together. I do this thing with my daughter where I go, do you see a cup? And she goes, I see a cup. And I go, we are not separate. Like we both, you and I both see this cup. We are not separate. That's incredible.

And when you can eat the thing, how much more so are we not separate? Do you taste an omelet? I taste an omelet. We have chickens by the way. So I'm a vegan, but we have chickens and I'll eat those eggs. Cause those chickens, those chickens are like lifestyle.

They're rich and famous chickens. They're doing great. So you, there's no moral issue. There's no suffering. They're free range. Oh, these guys are great. You play music for them. They have little chicken cars. So we do make omelets and you know...

You know, the vegan police are going to come knock on your door because you have talked about a lot of non-vegan food in the course of this conversation. Well, there's no word for what I am, but the quickest way to say it is vegan. But, you know, if it's about animal suffering, which for me it is, and we have chickens that are out there smoking little chicken cigarettes and getting little chicken massagers, you also see just how many eggs these things produce.

You just like eat them up. When chickens are happy, they really do. Oh, these guys produce. These ladies, they produce hard. Yeah. We should talk about that apple pie that you mentioned. Yeah. I want to go back to the apple pie, which...

Is it called apple pie if it's cooked in a big sheet pan? Is it still? Is it an apple tart at that point? Is it an apple cobbler? Whatever it is, it sounds like it's cooked in a big sheet pan? Is it still? Is it an apple tart at that point? Is it an apple cobbler? Whatever it is, it sounds like it's delicious. I want to know more about it. What kind of pan is it prepared in? It is a casserole pan, for sure. Like a glass casserole pan? Yeah, exactly. And the most important part of the Lithuanian apple whatever tradition is that you absolutely eat it at the end of, well, I guess when would that have been Thanksgiving? Yeah, Thanksgiving. And everybody loves it and you have it with ice cream. was in the morning and my mom and I are both morning people, so we would be up before everybody,

and we would eat the apple pie out of the tray. You don't serve it, you have to eat it out of the tray together for breakfast. Which, far and away, is my favorite food memory, is eating apple. I remember, you talk about what you said when it all starts coming back. I remember the spoons.

I remember the flair of the spoon and the way that the foil looked and where we sat and all of that. And again, these precious, like, this is what we do and would often finish it, like it would be gone. And it's like, yeah. By the time Dad and your brother woke up, sorry. Sorry.

Snooze you lose. Literally snooze you lose. And that recipe… Is it double crusted? Is there crust on the bottom in addition to that thick crust you described on the top? No, it's all on the top. It's all on the top. God, it's good.

And if you get a corner piece… Oh, I always love the corner pieces of cobbler. Just forget. You know, it's good. And if you get a corner piece... Oh, I always love the corner pieces of cobbler. Just forget it. You know, it is, it's more, I think, I feel like an alien. What you people might know as cobbler, like that's good. It is, it is more of a cobbler for sure. Cause it's not, it's not a, it doesn't have the bottom. It doesn't, it's not slicey.

You get a square of it. It's a cobbler, I guess. But man, unbelievable. Okay, we're gonna try this. You know if it has a little lemon in it or? No lemon. I don't even know. There's gotta be cinnamon in it. Yeah, probably.

Raisins. I hate to lose a third of the audience listening, but I'm pretty sure. Walnuts. I felt people back away from the table. Yeah. Raisins and walnuts. Yeah, I think so. Okay.

Oh, you know where the raisins are? The raisins are in the apple mix and the walnuts might be in the crust. I'm pretty sure. But guys, this is Lithuania. They're not here for you. You're lucky to have Lithuania. Lithuania doesn't care what you want in the pie. Shut up.

Here's your pie. Lithuania. You don't like walnuts? Shut up. Lithuania. Well, I look forward to fixing this in my own kitchen. I'll find you some way and send you pictures. Yes, please. I have loved this conversation. Oh, me too. So very much. I really did.

Thanks for making time for us. I absolutely loved it. And thank you for having me. This conversation cracked me up and it was also surprisingly eye-opening. For being a notable funny man, Pete proved himself to be so self-reflective. It was inspiring to hear about his spiritual journey, his ability to face the trauma of his past and confront it in order to be a better father, husband, person, and ultimately an incredible comedian. He's a good soul. And even though he grew up in a kitchen where no one cooked much, things are very different today. He, his wife, and his daughter all cook together, like he's making up for lost time. There's an image that will stick with

me from this conversation when Pete describes sharing his mother's Lithuanian beet soup with that dollop of sour cream. She didn't talk much about fleeing Lithuania, and yet she was sharing a part of her heritage in that dish. Yes, sometimes food has its own language. Now about that apple pie, you will find the full recipe for his mama's Lithuanian apple pie that looks like a cobbler on our website. You'll find it at your mamaskitchen.com. Make sure to eat that pie right out of the pan

like Pete did or with a great big scoop of vanilla ice cream. And of course we wanna hear how it goes. Send us your pictures if you have your own killer apple pie recipe. Well, share that too because you can always use another good apple pie recipe. I'll make sure to post the recipe also on my Instagram page at michelle underscore underscore Norris. That's two underscores. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Make sure to come back next week because you know us, we're always serving up something special. Until then, be bountiful. This has been a Higher Ground and Audible Original produced by Higher Ground Studios. Senior Producer Natalie Wren, Producer Sonia Tan, and associate producer Angel Carreras. Sound design and engineering from Andrew Eepen and Roy Baum. Higher Ground Audio's editorial assistants are Jenna Levin and Camila Thurtacus. Executive producers for Higher Ground are Nick White, Muktam Mohan, Dan Fearman, and me, Michelle Norris. Executive producers for Audible are Nick D'Angelo and Anne Hepperman. The show's closing song is 504 by the Soul Rebels. Editorial and web support from Melissa Bear and Say What Media, our talent booker is Angela

Peluso. And special thanks this week to Threshold Studios. Chief Content Officer for Audible is Rachel Giazza. Head of Creative Development at Audible, Kate Navin. And that's it. Goodbye, everybody. Make sure and come back to see what we're serving up next week. Copyright 2024 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. Sound recording copyright 2024 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. And I'm gonna go get some coffee. I'm gonna go get some coffee. I'm gonna go get some coffee. I'm gonna go get some coffee. I'm gonna go get some coffee.

I'm gonna go get some coffee. I'm gonna go get some coffee. I'm gonna go get some coffee. I'm gonna go get some coffee. I'm gonna go get some coffee. I'm gonna go get some coffee. I'm gonna go get some coffee. I'm gonna go get some coffee. seasoned potatoes, or small hot coffee.

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