The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Moshe Kasher

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Comedian and writer Moshe Kasher joins Andy Richter to discuss the chance encounters that changed his life, his pitch for vaccine vapes, Alcoholics Anonymous as a subculture, the transcendental power of rave music, and his new book, "Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes."Find the dates for Moshe's book tour here:https://linktr.ee/moshekasher

Hello everyone. Welcome back to The Three Questions. I'm your host, Andy Richter. Today I'm talking to Moshe Kasher. Moshe is a very funny stand-up comedian, an actor, and a writer. Moshe's new book, Subculture Vulture, A Memoir in Six Scenes, is out now. Moshe will also be bringing his live book tour across the country. You can find dates on linktree.com slash Moshe Kasher. Moshe joined me live in the studio, and we had a really fantastic conversation. He's had some crazy stuff go on in his life. And here is my great conversation with Moshe Kasher.

Hi, everyone. I'm here in studio today, which is always a lovely thing. Oh, it's better than Zoom. Oh, it certainly is. I have full-blown COVID, though, so there might be a back end that you don't enjoy. Listen, I actually just vaccinated myself twice yesterday. Oh, you self-vaxxed? Mm-hmm.

I got, yeah, I fell off a truck, let's just say. COVID-wise, I do feel like I have been vaccinated enough because I have had a couple instances where I was in the proximity of somebody that then came down with, you know, then later tested positive. And I'm not saying like I'm bulletproof and I don't think that, but it is, I do kind of feel like, nah, I think I'm okay. Forever. Well, I mean, no, I think I'm always going to be getting, I will always get a flu shot and I will always get, you know, I love vaccines.

Yum, yum, yum. No, I love them too. I love, I do gummies. I don't know if you guys, they do gummy vaccines now. The Novavax gummies, they're actually very tasty. And they have CBD in them, so it kind of takes the edge off the stress of life. The Vax vapes. Honestly, if we could put the vaccine into a vape juice, I do think we could get more people on board.

You know what? You're probably right. You're probably right. Or if you just like, yeah, dip cigarettes in them, I bet there'd be people would be like well all right i'm sensing right now a branding opportunity for team coco okay and i don't know if you want to put this up the flag board just put it into production directly but i think team coco uh vax vapes is not it's not a terrible idea yep and if there's anything that that makes think Conan O'Brien, it's vapes. It's vaccinated vapes.

In partnership with Pfizer. Well, I'm here with Moshe Kasher. You know that already because I just probably did an intro to him. And you heard those crazy vax vapes riffs, so you know you're in comedically good hands. You know that it's funny town. And he's here promoting promoting his book which you have a copy of well i brought i don't know i i when i was leaving i thought it would be a good thing to hold up i don't know dude is that a thing it feels like a thing people do well yeah you make

a point and you go as it says in my book end up on instagram you never know as it says in my book which is conveniently in my hands right right subcculture, vulture. You should just get one. You should get a big pocket pouch. Like a hip holster that you can just pull it out and here we go. Oh, that's really good. When I go to coffee shops or whatever, and I like to go through coffee shops in Hollywood and ask people what they're working on. You know?

I just go, is that a screenplay? And then I turn it around. I say I'm with the William Morris agency. My favorite thing about coffee shops in Hollywood, although it hasn't happened in a while, that a screenplay and then i turn it around i said i'm with the william morris agency my favorite thing about coffee shops in hollywood although it hasn't happened in a while is when someone recognizes me and then they carpet bomb me with names that i don't know oh yeah you know oh it's always things like oh hey andy listen yeah hi i'm uh my name's bob and listen i worked with uh james uh james mcelroy and also and i also talked to Shelly Mix-a-Lot

or whatever. Shelly Mix-a-Lot is Sir Mix-a-Lot's daughter. It's actually disrespectful to call her Shelly Mix-a-Lot because she also has a title. She's Lady Mix-a-Lot. He's Sir Mix-a-Lot and when he got knighted everybody in the family became royalty. She's the Duchess of Mix-a-Lot.

She does not mix that much. No. That was more her dad's thing. Baby got title. yeah she's the duchess of mix a lot she does not mix that much no she doesn't yeah i mean that's that was more her dad's thing baby got title yeah yeah something like that yeah right right right anyway i'm here promoting no but that was always the carpet bombing of names was always something that i would notice a bullshitter and it was you know in the first few times i was like where they'd say all these names and i don't know who anyone is anyway. I still have things like, well, we were just talking a moment ago about auditioning and like a part that I was just reading for that was kind of like a dramatic part. My agent said, she said something like, listen, Brian Miller is auditioning for this. And I was like, oh, not knowing who that, who that was at all.

And it wasn't Brian Miller. It was some other name. But I was like, and, not knowing who that was at all. And it wasn't Brian Miller. It was some other name. But I was like, and I even said, like, who? And she said, Brian Miller. Brian fucking Miller. And I was like, oh, I don't know. And what are you even supposed to do with that information? Even if you, oh, Brian Miller.

I'll adjust the read then. I think it's because she was sort of trying to improve. It's actually kind of funny and i love i love her she is seraphine i love you but uh it was the for the part of the leader of the white nationalists in in prison like i you know i read for that too oh you did they said i was woefully miscast i don't quite understand why they said too jewy yeah a little too jewy for the white nationals yeah yeah but um she but she told me when she told me about it she goes like and she said don't be afraid to go dark and i was like you know what i i kind of think if i read the

leader of the white nationalist party as light-hearted kind of whack it it might be kind of offensive here's the rules of prison the whites with the whites and the blacks with the blacks and you ride off on a unicycle you know i have to find something to love about every character here's how prison works economically. We sell vape vacs. But anyway, yeah. Coffee shops in Hollywood. Oh, I was going to say, and it actually does tie into the book because part of the book is how many different universes I've kind of lived in. Yeah, and it is something.

I have a little sheet of research here on you, and it really is, it sounds like six different people well it kind of in a way is but they i i i don't know they kind of synthesized into i i think that's what everybody's life is right it's these like no don't you think it's a little bit like a little bit more than most let's get into it but i was going to say that sometimes in hollywood i'll have this experience where i'm walking down the street, especially when I first moved here. And I would go, I would see someone, I would go, do I know that person from AA, from Burning Man, from the Bay Area? Are they a comedian or is that Brad Pitt? Like, I don't know what I'm recognizing here. And see, not many people would get to do that, you know? Sure.

Or do I know that person from Shul, you know? Yes, a little too jewy for sure but no but it is true and uh the book is called subculture vulture and it's in six different scenes and i guess it's like it's six different parts of your life that like you just listed burning man growing up with deaf parents uh addiction into you know a a mental facility yeah then stand up you know stand up and uh and sign language interpreting and and deafness it's sort of like um you know i wrote my first book uh i came on the show a million years ago when the first book came right and it was was the story, it's my-

Cashier in the Rye. Cashier in the Rye, the true tale of a white boy from Oakland who became a drug addict, criminal, mental patient, and then turned 16. So that was sort of the first stanza of my, everybody always says like, how are you on your second memoir? I mean, how many things have you done? And like the first stanza of my life was this pure, pure chaos and then i got sober when i was 15 i got out of rehab for the last time at 15 and went in for the first time when i was i think 13 so there was most of my time drinking was in and out of rehab yeah and i you know my i thought my life was over i really thought like when i got sober at 15, I was like, okay,

I'm going to live, but I'm like, I'm going to physically survive, but I'm done. Like there's nothing else for life for me in life because drugs and alcohol at that age were like the only thing that had ever made my life feel palatable. The only thing that ever made my life feel livable. And I thought, okay, I'll live, but I i will be bored and when i wrote that book it ends like basically the day i get sober and everybody over the years people would constantly ask me like what happened next what happened next and i very specifically didn't want to write a book that was like a recovery like tuesdays with maury kind of book yeah and i started to think about that in the last few years like what happened next and the answer was everything else, you know, a lot. And, and I, I, I occupied these six worlds that really became

these universes that became the building blocks of my personhood and who I am. And they are, like you said, they're AA and drug rehab, Judaism and Hasidic Judaism. My, my father, when he and my mom split, my dad kind of got born again and remarried into an ultra, ultra, ultra Orthodox Hasidic Jewish community. And I spent my summer vacations in Brooklyn essentially cosplaying as a Hasidic Jew while being a secular Oakland Public School kids, you know, the rest of the year. Yeah, yeah. How did you pull off the payas? That was, I'm glad you asked, Andy. That was a real tell. I'm always thinking thinking about hair you're always thinking about payas styling and

payas you texted me and i would say uh a concerning amount of time about payas and whether i was bringing them to the podcast today and i didn't but but that was a big tell yeah i had these tells in that neighborhood because what would literally happen is my father would pick me up at the airport. He would drive me directly from the airport to, it's funny you mentioned here because that was the first stop. The first stop was at the Hasidic Jewish barbershop at pretty much every time. We would stop there and this sort of, you know, like Yiddish speaking barber would kind of look at my California bowl cut and disgust and think like i assume like what are we gonna do with this like and try to approximate some the closest he could to a secular i mean he was in on it i guess in a way yeah and i would like oh yeah he would he was in on your secret yeah exactly yeah

he knew that i was that i was not a real jew not the real not yeah yeah it's funny you say not a real jew because the kids in my neighborhood in in Seagate, this was the neighborhood in Brooklyn. As I say in my stand-up act, I say, if you don't know how to get to Seagate, I'll explain. You take the F train to the last possible stop. You get off. You walk past Coney Island, past the projects, past the people of color, through a gate, through a time portal to pre-Nazi Europe, and you'll then arrive in Seagate. Where everyone's made wearing different fashioned hats made out of beaver yeah yeah they're selling baubles and using horse-drawn

buggies spinning at redheads because they're bad luck that was my summer vacation you know so it's so funny because like my my real jew friends my my friends that have a fulsome jewish experience uh they had i i say in the book they had both a more and much less uh much more and much less jewish experience than me because they had a year-round jewish experience right i would have nothing and then six weeks a year i would be an extra on the set of yento like that that was the the dynamic yeah so this barber would cut my hair down to create kind of a silhouette right an illusion of side locks. My dad would throw a velvet yarmulke on me, slacks, a dress shirt, and he would take me to Seagate where literally the kids in the neighborhood spoke Yiddish as a first language.

These were accented children that were third generation American. They had Eastern European accents. Their families didn't. This is the weirdest part is my uncle, like my uncle, Uncle Heshy, he sounds like a New Yorker. Like uncle by marriage or your dad? My step uncle. Okay. My father's wife's brother.

Yeah. He had an American accent because he was a first generation immigrant, a first generation immigrant's kid. Yeah. And the first generation immigrant's kids, the parents go fit in. You got to fit in. Right. Be an american right so he sounded like an american but by the time he got to adulthood and started having kids he was feeling comfortable in his position as an american and he would have these kids my cousins and they would be reared in yiddish speaking uh

yeshivas so they sounded he sounds like a yankees fan they sound like like characters in dr zhivago yeah and the whole dynamic was weird and i would walk into town with an english prayer book which was a scarlet letter wow i mean people would be staring at me i just felt every second i was there i felt so uncomfortable and i didn't know hebrew i didn't know hebrew at all these people spoke yiddish as a first language i I don't even know like the alphabet in Hebrew. But this was the only way that you get to spend time with your dad. Yeah. Like you couldn't go there and just kind of be, you know, Bay Area Moshe.

And it's like, oh, that's my kid. Don't worry about it. You couldn't imagine the pressure that he felt, that I felt. When I was a kid, you know, the question, what do you want to be when you grow up yeah i i said my answer was i want to be a baseball player or a rebbe you know what a rebbe is i do it's a mega rabbi i know i do it's like and in reality i didn't want to be either yeah but both were filling this supposed this hole that i thought was in me yeah you know the baseball for my manhood the rebbe for my my spirit. And in reality, I wanted neither of those things. I, you know, I wanted to be the lead white supremacist on a new TV. So that's the, that's sort of the beginnings. Yeah. Um, and, oh, I'll tell you a story. I started getting older and it was coming towards the bar mitzvah age. Yeah. i like i said the people that have a year-round jewish experience they're not like having it's almost like a uh the coal to diamond pressure

judaism is what i got regular jews or whatever walking through the world they just have an experiential they have a life of judaism and it's fun and it's not and they're friends and they go to summer camp and they make lanyards and they stare at flat jewish chests and you know they have like a life i was just like had this pressure and as it was getting closer that pressure was like getting close to breaking me and the local rabbi rabbi misles saw me and took pity on me he knew he could tell where i was he took pity on me told my dad yeah let me have him on like wednesday afternoons or whatever and i'll teach him basic hebrew yeah and this is like you know the late 80s so at that time you could ask for some alone time with a kid and they'd be handed over no questions asked right so i would go to his house and he would teach me the

alphabet i mean it would be literally we were starting at the beginning i mean and this is a person who's used to i remember that same rabbi i once i i confided in him i go i don't know that i'm going to be religious when i grow up and he like started stammering and he just was like i i don't know how to answer you would think that that question yeah would be like sort of the entry-level rabbi question hey rabbi i don't know if if i'm gonna be jewish yeah yeah yeah he was so religious that no one had ever asked him a question like that before this they would so okay so it's on the sabbath you light a candle but the the sun goes down and your your drapes catch on fire can i turn on the oven please yes yeah that's the one he's going oh you know rabbi hillel said he can

answer that just the fundamental hey should i be jewish I be Jewish? He was like, I'm out of my depth here. He outsourced me to another rabbi. So that's the level of religiosity this guy was. And what are the other rabbi? I mean, why the other rabbi? Was he just like... So he's from, my father married into a sect of Hasidic Judaism known as the Satmar Hasidim, who are the most hardcore of all, if you can imagine. No, I mean, you know, I honestly, the only Jew that I knew growing up was my pediatrician. Sure. Honestly, until like in college was the only time. Well, no, that isn't true.

There was like a Jewish kid in, you know we when my mom remarried we lived in another town for two years and there was a jewish kid and one jewish kid uh-huh in in we call them the town no i mean and there were there were other jews in town but it just that was in my third grade class there was one jewish kid and all the kids would ask him about like and it was you know it's the classic thing about like wait you get presents 12 days or you know and and then he would say like yeah but one of them's a toothbrush yeah yeah most of them are toothbrush yeah one toy and yeah and and seven toothbrushes socks and things yeah i but that's the experience i was having that's what's so weird about my jewish upbringing is truly throughout the year i had no exposure i

was in oakland public schools in the early 80s and mid-80s, and it was when Oakland public school was like, when Oakland, rather, was spiking in crime, and it was too short and gangster rap, and it was just like, it was the wildest thing to then get on an airplane and go to the most, it felt like pre-war Europe, really. And I would just sit there going, where am I?

Even like I say, I didn't, I wasn't that exposed to Judaism at all. And then into adulthood, getting into show business, moving to New York city, getting a lot of Jewish friends. But most of my friends,

secular Jewish friends who then would then tell me about like, holy shit, Judaism is fucking crazy. Like there's so many levels of it and then i you know i would live i lived in chelsea and lived around the corner from what used to be bnh photo and like my my ex-wife whose name was sarah would go in there and they would see her name and then like all the guys behind the counter would just be like, just like, look at her like Sarah, assume she's Jewish, see that she's not wearing a wig and then just act as if she was like a farm

animal or something, you know, like, just like, what do you want? Well, this is what's interesting for me about those, those people,

those people. Well, I was good. I'm glad you said, no, I chose it on purpose because those people are not those people to me when i see someone in the airport or on fairfax or or in uh in manhattan you know people that that i'm not going to assume but i will sort of uh i don't think it'd be so weird

for you when you look at them you probably go you notice to go whoa when i see them and i'm talking people that are this isn't just like an orthodox jew this is an ultra ultra orthodox jew living pretty much in a i said in the book it's like building a wakanda in plain sight it's like the the acidic world especially the satmar world is like a little bubble inside of of they don't travel outside it yeah and there's a reason popular culture like television and movies that they don't travel outside it yeah and there's a reason for that popular culture like television and movies like they don't know well there's a reason for that yeah that they that they exist like that and and and i'll tell you but when i see them i think i have kinship with them and they would look at me with that same look of like who the hell are you

yeah to me i oh i'm like you're me and i'm connected to you in this way that i don't even fully, even as an adult, even having written this book, I don't even fully understand. But they're my people in this very bizarre, not just on a like all everybody in my tribe. It's more like, no, you're like my uncle. I grew up with you in this very weird way. Yeah. Can't you tell my loves i will get back to the question why did he outsource me because this is the answer and this is why part of what i do in the book to try to sympathize uh with with the community after the war um the there was a response that you can only imagine that there was multiple responses and and a big part of that response was secular judaism was people not that there

weren't secular jews before but now it was like okay you're still we're still making this there is a god pitch we're really doing that now like we all just burned up and and had to flee from our homes and we're really and that was the direction that my grandparents took my father's mother and father. They were communist American communist party members of vowed secularists. They, uh, and that was,

uh, they left the fold and my father went back to it, but the, the religious Jews that chose to keep it, some of them decided that we'll go, we will, um, we will go into secular society and attempt to assimilate and some of them said what

we're going to do is we're going to build walls around the shattered uh the shattered remains of what is yeah and and and we we've lost all hope in humanity we've all lost all hope in society there is no hope outside of just us so they built these walls around their communities. And so when you see someone, uh, in the streets of, uh, New York or, or, uh, LA and you look and they, and you have these feelings of like, who are these people? Why are they living so far apart? You have to understand, not you, but everyone. And even me have to understand that you're not just interacting with that person. You're interacting with a person's interaction with the biggest trauma that has ever befelled um a people or certainly my people and their response was we build walls around what we have left and hope that we just survive and so that's

the context in which they exist um that's the context in which they're so far outside the margins of society but some groups like chabad who do a telethon they had the exact opposite response yeah it wasn't like we're going to preserve what's left of us by building walls around it they said we're going to open up these walls and try and try to like join into society and that was the rabbi that uh rabbi misles outsourced me i see i was one of the more user-friendly front-facing right right but still orthodox still still super hard yeah yeah but but they if you can believe it my stepmother was satmar which is really hardcore my step my my father's family comes from another sect of hasidic judaism called new square the square hasids and those jews they live in new square new york when hillary clinton ran for

senator 100 i don't know if this is exactly correct, but it's close enough to correct it. 100% of citizens of New Square, New York voted for Hillary Clinton for senator. In a totally unrelated story, Bill Clinton pardoned one of their leaders in a Pell Grant scandal. Totally, totally unrelated. But the point is, they are hardcore. Women don't drive in New Square.

Maybe they do now, but when I grew up, women did not drive in New Square. New York, this is upstate New York, and women did not drive. So that, I was from the two most hardcore sects of Hasidic Judaism that existed.

And then I would just go back home to Oakland and just be like this regular secular kid again. But from where I'm from in Yorkville, Illinois, graduated from high school in 1984, the biggest sort of sociological movement that I experienced that I was present to was the born-again Christian. There was like in our town, there was a storefront church that when I was in later grade school into junior high was a storefront. By the time I was out of high school, it was a mega church that had built this giant church out in the country and that tons of people were coming. Kids that I went to high school with. And I mean, for him, there was a kid that was Lebanese.

So he was already very exotic for us but lebanese catholic and then he he lived in our town and then he got caught up in the born again stuff he was a huge genesis fan oh sure you know gotta be yeah a huge but i mean prior to that but which we were all kind of like genesis like you know everyone else is like listening to Van Halen and he's listening to Genesis. So it was already kind of weird. But like he burned his Genesis albums. Oh, wow. Literally like.

Wait, aren't they Christian? No, no. Genesis is. That's Phil Collins. Yeah. Phil Collins and Peter, the guy Salisbury Hill. Yeah. Peter Gabriel.

You know, they're art rock. They, Peter Gabriel. They're art rock. They're basically sort of like popular art rock. There is no shorter road to hell than art rock. I think we all can agree on that. Tell me about it. Roxy Music is right now sitting on the devil's right hand. Oh, I was going to say. Oh, so this Rabbi Meisels, I wanted to tell you this one story.

So he would sit me down and teach me the ABCs. And I was struggling. And he noticed it one day and he's like don't worry don't worry hold on he calls his son eldest son and he's like shmuley shmuley come in come in he goes say the english alphabet and the kid goes oh no and he goes a b g B, G, D. And then the rabbi's like, see, he's stupid in English. You are stupid in Hebrew. Everybody's stupid. That was the energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, God bless him. That's nice. Very nice. Willing to humiliate his eldest son to teach me to love learning. Beautiful. Well, but anyway, so just the concept of born again Judaism was so surprising to me because like a friend of mine had a sibling that was rock and roll partier, kind of a little chemical problems. And then all of a sudden was like, I'm moving to a kibbutz, you know, and I'm going full bore, going gonna have 18 kids in five minutes all this stuff and it was you know and it was all kind of like i mean the sort of the for me the the sort of

the thread that ran through both strains was like crazy sure you know and but i did feel and tell me if i'm correct in this i did feel feel- That Judaism is less crazy than Christianity? In a way, yes, you are correct in that. Yes. No, no, but just that when people were born again, it was kind of like, oh boy. It was just like they got a new thing that they wouldn't shut up about. Whereas in Judaism, I always felt like the secular Jews were like, there was a bit of,

well, they're doing the thing that's actually a little better than what I do. Like there's a little bit of guilt and like, I'm not as good a Jew. They decided to be a better Jew than me and that there was some sort of qualitative difference to the more sort of enlightened, you know, hardcoreish person that's

a really interesting question um you know i can answer it only in my own family which is that like i said my mother left the my grandmother rather left the fold and said never again like hardcore communist she meant a different thing when she said never again she meant it i think she meant both in a weird way yeah and she married my grandfather who was himself a writer a yiddish novelist and they were as secular as one could be while never leaving the jewish neighborhood of of the lower east side if my mom i i imagine that my grandmother was deeply disappointed by my father's decision to go back, to go back. Yeah.

But I also understand what you're saying. I think that in a way there is something romantic about, even to a secular Jew who might eschew all connection to religiosity. There's something romantic about, because it's so, the difference between christianity uh in its current form evangelical christianity and judaism is evangelical christianity really embraces modernity that's really its thing it's like we're modern we rock you know we've got a double-headed guitar and we set it on fire for christ and judaism it's all on this ancient tip it's all biblical and so yeah in a weird way i do think there's something like when you look at that and you go like well they're a fanatic but they're my fanatic like i

like that they're carrying on this yeah kind of do you think because you know i mean it's a cliche about the about jewish guilt yeah do you think that guilt is such a component of the jewish psyche that it's just like a new thing to feel guilty. Like, well, you know, like I'm already not doing, I'm not a good son. I'm not a good husband. I'm not, you know, like, and look, I'm not even, you know, my sister just had 18 kids. She's a much, I'm not as good as her. Well, I think that, I think Jewish guilt, there's a, there's guilt and then there's guilt, right?

There's emotional guilt, which I think, yeah, that's just classic. And Jewish guilt is not that different from Catholic guilt and every other. Because there definitely is. There are. There's guilt throughout. But we have this. I think Jews have this heavy weight of history on our shoulders that is not unique to us as a people because other people have that similar weight. But it is certainly ever present in in a jewish

in the jewish consciousness it's like so when you look at someone with the 18 kids you're go there's something where you go you're you're writing a historic wrong there are missing pieces if you look backwards in jewish history there are missing there are holes where there should be lineages there are there are uh ciphers where there should have been communities there are uh that is ever present in a in a jewish consciousness and so i think that's part of it too it's not the emotional guilt it's more like look that's not for me but i'm glad somebody's doing it because those those people were punched out yeah over our history right and and that's like i think maybe that is why i wrote this book the way that i did because this isn't just memoir it's history it's comedic history all of these

are told through sure through um through my my ability as a comedy writer but i start in the jewish chapter we literally we start at abraham and we go all the way until today and every one of these segments any every one of these six sections gets this sort of comedic history doing a rundown of an american or an american subculture and then at a certain point like i come into that history and i tell the story of my time in that world i think like my affinity with history is because of that i think it starts with judaism because that is sort of the specter behind every jewish community is the is the past yeah is there a part of you that feels that you should be more hasidic more fundamentalist more no and i think like i i think i i got really lucky

in that because of the timeline of my jewish, my dad, and because of just who my dad was, my dad was an artist. He was a beatnik painter before he became, he was like an abstract impressionist painter. And in fact, a mime. In fact, he was a mime of such skill that according to family legend, Marcel Marceau, the world's only famous mime, saw my dad miming and was like, run away with me and join the silent circus.

That's how good my dad could have been in another, that would have been a different subculture I could have been writing about. My life on the road with my deaf, by the way. And you would be Maurice

or something, you know. I would have a totally different identity. And I'd be wearing a striped shirt. You know I would and this and you would not be talking this podcast just be me you would probably not have had me on your podcast you should so get a mime performer on your podcast you call it no questions with andy richter he's he's pulling a rope right now okay this is really revelatory so my dad dad, his connection to Judaism was very aesthetic.

It was very much about the clean lines of Hasidic Judaism, the black and white, the velvet yarmulkes. He had a very visual... He would explain this to you after he made this deep, huge, sweeping life change. He didn't explain it to me. How old were you when when this change happened my mother basically kidnapped us uh when i was nine months old and i went back

wow i started going back to brooklyn when i was i think four when he was this happened when you were a baby yeah his his life change well this is the answer to the question you were asking earlier is like when you look at someone who makes a wild switch like yeah and you go oh are you what's what's happening with you emotionally that you needed to do this yes which was a question i wanted to ask like why did your dad do this the way that i understand it now and there's a meta a visual metaphor for it that's actually sort of heartbreaking my my uh you be the that. My father was, like I said, he was an abstract and passionate painter. He was a talented painter. He was really good. He went to FIT. He had a degree in art. He was talented. I have his paintings in my house. They were good. And he was a passionate artist. And when my father, when my mother left to bring me to Oakland on a summer vacation, when I was that left was like what do i do and that is what religion is good for yeah religion is great for what do i do like if you don't have answers they're like we have all of the answers sure

and they swoop right in yeah so so he became religious in that vacuum and he took all of his paintings and painting supplies and put them in storage in Manhattan and moved to Brooklyn. And his whole life, he told us when I retire, he never painted again. He stopped painting immediately and never painted again. And my entire life, he would tell us, his entire life rather, when I retire, I'm going to open up the storage and I'm going to get my painting materials out and I'm going to start painting again and he died before he got enough retire from what what was the post office oh wow he was a postal worker wow yeah and it was this really it became this sort of mythological thing the storage unit the storage unit where all of my father's you know hopes and dreams and artistic uh life lives and someday like the arc of the covenant it'll get opened up

and he died before he could open it and we opened it after he died and it was just like you know just things but they represented sort of everything yeah that's like that is something that like if you wrote that into a story people would be like it's a bit much you know like come on you know a hundred percent you know but because it's heartbreaking it's so like there's such sadness there yeah and i mean when first of all i mean being from a parent you know like a a child of divorce and then ending up you know and being so affected by that and never wanting you know and then eventually getting divorced like staying married probably far too long because because of the trauma because i because of what it did to me and not just one but two you know like my mom got divorced twice and i saw that the damage that it

wreaked and you know and the damage that it wreaked on me that still that there's still scar tissue from today that that sadness i mean it do you think that that sort of leads into the the substance abuse you know one thousand percent yeah because the two subcultures that i was born into that are more they're not really traditional subcultures you know deafness and sign language interpreting yeah and hasidicic Judaism, the ones that were sort of infused into who I am from birth, those two things always made me feel other, uncomfortable, just like I didn't fit the obvious way we've discussed with Judaism. And then back home in Oakland, I was always an other. Inland you if you were a white boy you were

just automatically another but then my mother would come to class and she had this funny voice and she was signing and it was all of this stuff was like the the building blocks of me feeling like i don't fit i don't fit i don't fit yeah and then when i found very young drugs and alcohol you know because that is what this book is about it's about it's about finding your people finding where you fit and the first place that people that broken people find that they fit is at the back of the school behind the portables where the other broken toys live yeah and when i found those kids and i smoked my first joint and drank my first 40 it was like immediate like gone it wasn't even that i felt good or that i felt comfortable for the first time it's more

that comfort ceased to be a thing that i was after it was more like i fit yeah i'm i am just here yeah and the problem with and also he's cool oh yeah the other kids like oh here comes that's the kid with the mom with the weird voice who sign language and oh wait he's getting high and he's getting drunk he's cool and holy shit when you're when you're young he's cool is the best thing you can hear it's it's all that you need yeah yeah it's like a it's like a uh it's like a life preserver yeah and that's because those other people they have their own version of you know their mother might not be deaf but they might be in their dad might be in jail or they you know it's all those are the people the the sort of broken people that found each other and made each other whole together in the back of the of the school the problem of course is when

you're 12 years old when you start dropping acid and getting high sure you don't have any adultness to say slow down take it easy yeah go go slow and and let this experience develop so by the time i was 13 i was like wildly out of control totally it was so i could my brother always says because my brother was like the good kid he always got i'd never be older he's older older and he was a straight a student but it's not like he was a square he partied too but he just had enough sense not to part i mean from the minute i had some breaks he wasn't all gas yeah it's like you're always getting busted and i would say to him you think i'm always getting busted but if you knew how many infractions i was actually participating in i almost never get busted i'm a master criminal in so many ways she's missing 90 of what i'm doing

so i hit rehab for the first time because I didn't have that, that break at 13. Like I said, and then I forced on you or you're not like, you're like, fuck you. They're like, no, you go. Yes. And, and my first mental hospital when I was 14 and then in and out of rehab through 14, 15, 16. And then when I was finally almost 16 years old, I got sober. I walked into an AA meeting. It was a young people's meeting. And I was the youngest person by a decade. And you're out of the hospital or whatever.

I'm out of the hospital. And I flunked ninth grade at that point three times. Wow. I was in and out of – that's not, by the way, easy to do. But it was kind of – there were some cool parts. Because by the time you're a third-year ninth grader you're starting to get a little tougher a little bit more broad-shouldered you know you're like some whiskers yeah absolutely like you got a camaro yeah but so i i had this realization like a pretty adult realization at 15

is like oh i see i'm the cause i'm the problem uh like because my whole life up until that point was everybody else's is my problem my my mom and therapists and the oakland public school system and oakland police department my dad and the rabbis like every and the people that are giving me psychological diagnoses and the people at the rehab my rehab counselors my family i was in therapy by the way at a certain point eight times a week eight eight hard to do that's more than once a day right right um i had rehab five days a week and then i had individual therapy family therapy and group therapy and that so my whole life was it was just being analyzed and and and talking about your feelings and how i had potential but and and then to make matters worse you know i my mother's

deaf and so 90 of the time i'd go into one of these meetings it was about me and they wouldn't have hired an interpreter because they just didn't do that and so they would say could you interpret so now i'm sitting in the room with my mom in the meeting about me interpreting to my mom the things that they're saying about me and being broken and behaviorally fucked up and you know and the same for her like they're finding out what she's saying through you so you do like okay so that's a delicate dance when you do that you go okay i'm not going to be doing faithful translation here of course not that ain't going to happen of course not but i also can't sit down

at a meeting with the oakland police department or and go, he's cool. Everything good. Good boy. Because my mom will smell a rat. So you got to give over like a percentage of the negative information. But shave it just enough so that she doesn't completely freak out. And my biggest problem was adults. I was just like, fuck, I hated adults so much.

Every adult in my life was just a person that was just telling me how to behave and telling me that if I did it this way that I could change myself. I just hated adults with this vibration. I can't even express to you. And I got to AA. I go to a young people's meeting and I go, oh my God, it's even here.

It's all adults. It's just all adults. And this sort of magical thing happened in AA at that time, which was that nobody told me what to do. They all told me what they did. And it broke down this barrier. Had you not been to AA before? I'd been, you know, there's just like there's guilt and there's guilt, there's going and then there's going. I was in NA meetings for years, smoking weed in the parking lot and attempting to flirt with women. Like, yes, I was, I guess I was going to meetings, but you're technically not supposed to smoke marijuana at an NA meeting. I think so, yeah.

That's sort of one of the tenets. It must be one of the tenets. It must be, yeah. But this was different. This was, I went to the meeting, and I said I need help. I raised my hand, 15 years old, and like I said, I had this kind of adult idea, which was, I think I'm the cause of all these problems.

And then I went to apply the answer to that. You know, I think I'm the cause of all these problems. It's me getting high and drinking that is the cause of all these problems. There's a very obvious solution, which is stop drinking and stop getting high. And then I got high the next day. And then I got scared because then I had the conscious realization I am the cause of this. It's the drinking and the of this and it's the drinking and the drug use that's the problem i knew that information but i had no ability to do anything about the information and that was the state that i found myself in at at just 15 when i walked in to an a meeting and said i need help and then i immediately i was like i don't think i

can do this i i don't know how to stop i i'm scared and then i got up and i walked out of the room which is like a kind of not i wouldn't say the best way to get help you're just like i need help and if anybody it's a very 15 year old very 15 fuck you guys i'm out of here yeah yeah but this i need all of you goodbye and i will see you in the hallway and so i was leaving but somebody followed me outside this guy pigeon who i'm sort of in touch with to this day he's a he's a chaplain somewhere in north carolina speaking of the good the good part of religion yeah and he put his arms around me and and hugged me and he just said it's going to be okay and i don't know that's not the i mean that's sort of the most basic it's going to be okay i mean i

know that's not like ram das we're not at ram das level we're not it's like thinking of all the times in my life when i've wanted to say or even said it's going to be okay and it being a complete fucking lie. Right. Or just like I don't fucking know, but here I'm going to say it'll be all right. Like I said, he was a broken toy too. He's not coming out. I mean, he is coming out there to help me, but he's also that's sort one of the the odd paradoxes of aa is that you help people in order to help yourself yeah and i didn't know that when i asked for help that there was no possibility somebody wouldn't follow me outside because

they're all in there trying to save their own skin yeah and so he said that and it was enough it was enough to get me to to like you know get back in the meeting and stay and that was the beginning of my time sober and and it stuck i i part of what i talk about in the in the aa chapter is my slow very slow uh journey into fundamentalism so i never had fundamentalism with judaism i always was able to wear it like a loose garment i never felt guilt i never felt like i should be more than i am i always felt like what i have is enough in aa probably because i was so young and mentally undeveloped i just jumped into it like your lebanese friend yeah you know i burned all my uh 40 40 ounces and uh like they were genesis albums and i by the time i was 18 was like a fire brand fundamentalist for aa for

soberness for sober like in a way that was intense. And it was sort of the start of my comedy career in a bizarre way because I got sober so young and I was articulate and funny. I started to get flown around the country to speak at AA conferences. And that was where I learned how to perform for a crowd. Wow. And that was truly the start of my performance career. I did theater and stuff in when I was younger before my life kind of went off track. But that's the first time that I got laughs from the crowd. Yeah. And and the journey of in the book is when I turned about 30, you know, I maybe even a little later, I had been sober for a long time since i was very young and i started to have this little niggling seed of like doubt of like i don't know that this is the place for me anymore and if i have had that doubt in judaism i could it could have been fine if i'd had that doubt in aa as a person with a more developed brain when i entered because i think most people that are in aa they don't go into it the way i did

the problem with fundamentalism is when you find one thing that's wrong or that they don't go into it the way I did. The problem with fundamentalism is when you find one thing that's wrong or that you don't believe anymore, the whole thing becomes possible that it's bullshit. I don't necessarily believe that everything in AA is bullshit, but having a doubt was the seed that eventually led me to, I'm not, I wouldn't say I'm in AA anymore. I'm still sober, but I haven't been to a meeting in many, many years. And part of what I discuss in here is my journey out. It's not a condemnation of 12 steps or AA, but it is a discussion of what happens to people when they get sober that young and then have to realize, you know, I'm 35 years old. Is it not possible that that was a phase in my life? Is that not

a possibility? AA does not encourage that sort of introspection that specific kind of introspection yeah and that's what i went through and that's so part of this is my journey into and part of it is my exit from yeah yeah and i can see that that it's just it's not necessarily a repudiation of it it's just a personal moving on yeah yeah yeah 100 and in fact in some ways the principles that a gave me are still really really fundamental to the way that I live my life. Like, really, I carry a lot of that medicine with me to this day, for sure. And I carry that stuff with me and it's really important to me. But, you know, the other thing that happened was I was also 15.

I mean, that's a really important part of this thing. I was so young that I didn't just want to be like a recovery guy. I wanted to like get into the world and like experience what it had for me and go find all of these other things. And when I was about, I think six months sober or a year sober, I saw this like flyer on a telephone pole in Oakland that this rave called cyberfest was happening and i thought i want that can't you tell my loves i don't know where i got this idea from like raves are for me because my whole time when i was drinking getting high was all in the service of like too short and gangster rap and like just being a being a g hanging out yeah and then this like rave thing i'm sober now and i go i'm going and so i went by myself to my first rave

when i was now now 16 years old and i went to this thing called cyber fest which was in the henry j kaiser convention center in Oakland. And I had another transformative experience, another it's going to be okay, just completely stone sober in a warehouse in Oakland, listening to techno with people wearing Dr. Seuss hats. just i got there and i remember i got there and i this was my mentality i i walked in i had i used to wear escape you remember escape by calvin klein yeah were you an escape guy no were you ever a cologne guy like whatever my dad would give me for christmas noir uh no the the vetiver de carvin oh yeah classy well my dad's gay so he he's, you know, he's not going to give me any fucking Ducar Noir, you know. Yeah, Ducar Noir is for ladies. Yeah. Let's just say it.

Right, exactly. So I had this bottle of escape that I brought with me to the first rave. Just in case. Yeah, you know, you sweat, you stink. I don't know what I'm going to. I don't know what a rave is. I just like, it had this like mystic appeal to me. And I go, and i brought this bottle of escape

with me and i had like a change of socks and i remember i was walking in line and i looked down in my bag and there's a bottle of escape and a sock and i go uh i start stuffing the escape bottle into the sock because i'm i'm making a weapon uh in case something goes wrong in this race so this is the mind that i brought with me to my first rave i was like oh yeah you know i got myself a little right potpourri scented blackjack just in case i have to crack somebody i'll fuck you up but you'll smell nice yeah yeah you're gonna walk away bleeding but attracting people to you and so that was the mentality i entered with yeah i just like this like oh it was hard to be around me i will will say I had like an accent. I had an acquired accent. Like I'm not from the South. Yeah. But I definitely had a Southern, I never been to the

South at that point in my life. I fully had a Southern accent, you know, and it would come and go depending on who I was talking to. My brother who'd been around me the whole time, he would, I would be doing, I'd be doing it to him. Like I'd be sitting there talking to him. I was like, well, David, you know, I don't know what today, hold on a second i got a phone call hello yeah what's up my man yeah yeah we're just chilling over here yeah all right all right then peace and then i turn to him he go what the fuck just happened where did that come from what what shaft arrived all of a sudden like what are you doing so that was sort of who i was when i yeah. Yeah, it's so darling. It's just like, it's so like as a dad, it's just like, oh, honey, you just want to fit in, don't you? Would you find it darling if your child had that affectation?

Yeah, kind of, a little bit. I mean, to be honest, I have a thing where I end up, but it's also like I grew up outside of Chicago, hearing Chicago TV tv but surrounded by people that had either flat midwestern or sometimes even getting down a little bit country sure and so like what people sounded like was four or five different things and i and i have the tendency to mimic people oh you'll go towards them if i'm talking if i'm taught like if i'm talking to somebody from chicago i'll start talking like this you know and and it's just and i've always had that you know you know that you are and i am too and i know this and i think it's a bad thing i am a person if i moved to london for a year would come back like oi welcome mate i don't know that i would come back that way but i would come back

around them i might start talking a little bit oh you'd be a little bit more posh. You know, I'm from the streets. Remember the escape blackjack? Exactly. So, yeah. I've got me bottle of escaping a sock. What I love is raves. First and foremost, it's the power of techno and electronic dance music, right? But by the way, England plays... I'm off to Yeshiva.

But by the way, England plays... I'm off to Yeshiva. By the way, England plays a huge part in the story of raves. And like I said, each of these things is a history and my history. And England had the same thing happen to it that happened to me when I walked in. When techno and house, which started in America. In Chicago, I think. In Chicago, house music started. In Detroit, techno started.

And nobody listened to it. And the reason that house music started in America was because disco was so gay and so black that white America, like, basically, they decided that disco sucks was something. They had rallies. They had rallies. Which were basically, and at the time, you know, the big one was in Chicago. Steve Dahl. Steve Dahl. Disco demolition.

I go through that whole story i and and at the time i did not realize what a racist homophobic festival it was more racist than you think or maybe you know this people so the idea was as you know you would get it was a it was a double header that night the white socks game and you would get in free if you brought a disco album to be exploded on site on the field between the two games but a lot of people would show up trying to get in free and they didn't have a disco album so they were like here here's a marvin gay album here's a stevie wonder album they would look at it go he's black good enough and toss it into the pile so it was

so racist yeah and that was the problem that occurred was that disco when it was gay and black nobody cared but when but when abba hit and people started listening to it on the charts and when it was white white teen it's a lot like the crack epidemic when it was in the inner city we don't care when when white kids started smoking saturday night live then all of a sudden exactly yeah it's a problem it's a problem we have to do away with it they exploded the these disco records and disco shattered into a million pieces and was reconstituted by people in chicago making a new form of music taking the shards of disco and creating this thing called house and then in detroit they they they stripped it down even further and they created this music form called techno and nobody listened to it in America. Nobody cared. And it got exported to England, which was, you know, right in the middle of the Thacher administration, tired of the establishment, tired of the repressive tactics of the regime.

It's punk rock is in is in the mix. It just happened and it just taken England by storm. And the rave scene completely took England by storm and changed their culture completely. And then it flew. It changed of england and flew back so it was like it had been appropriated into europe and then exported back into new york when this this dj called named frankie bones went to new york to dj i went to london rather to dj he came back to america started started the rave scene in america and it spread all the way across to meet me in Oakland that night in the 90s at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. What was it that spoke to you so much? Was it the dancing?

Was it like even though you're not doing ecstasy, there's something transportational about it? This is what I realize now is I get there with the with the the the escape bottle in the sock that's the mentality i went in and i listened to this music i started dancing i never danced i was like as a white boy in an all-black school system dancing is where you betray your whiteness completely of course so the way i would dance at like oakland public school dances is like uh you know i would just you could do the i call it i discuss in the book the booty grab slow dance uh which is just where you you try to grab the butt of your part this this is junior high and elementary school we should not be doing this but this is how they danced in the 90s and then i got

sober and i would go to these aa dances and i didn't they didn't dance like that there and so i would just stand up on the wall and sort of clench my butt cheeks to the uh to the to the beat i just wasn't a dancer yeah and i went to this party in oakland and i started dancing and and and then these two guys this gay couple came up to me and they i remember that i was like i was like pure a wedding it was like it was like i was having a a metamorphosis yeah in real time and this gay couple comes up to me and they grab me from either side they lift me up and they're like you dance beautifully and i i'm this like you know thug life escape bottle you know southern accent guy this gay couple picking me up like what are they doing touching all on me you know what do they think i am who they think i am i'll show them who i am when they let me down i grabbed them both and like kissed them both on the cheek and say you do too like I literally became a different person yeah

and it's like I know that when people think about raves they think like they nowadays anyway they like roll their eyes and go like what kind of corniness are you are you even talking about but I had this like metamorphosis and now I understand it as like I had this I had this like metamorphosis and now i understand it as like i had this i had this childhood that was filled with like i said like arrest and violence and and divorce and resentment and cultural confusion and deafness and shame and feeling uh out of sorts and drug addiction and rehab and it was that's what my whole childhood was yeah my whole life that's how i felt when i was a kid and then i got and i so i didn't get a childhood i just got this i just got like clinicians and then i get to the raves to the rave scene and like i don't know

if you have you been to a rave at all i never have yeah they have this not my thing and and i guess not everybody's thing yeah yeah but there's a thing in raves that is very infantile. Everybody's wearing bright colors. Everybody's wearing like, especially in the 90s, like Mickey Mouse stuff and Dr. Seuss hats. Pacifiers. Literal pacifiers. Literal pacifiers, yeah. And by the way, I had a pacifier.

Okay. And the reason people have pacifiers. No judgments. No, well, you will after I tell you why. Because the reason people use pacifiers in raves is because when you take ecstasy, which everybody at raves does, it makes you grind your teeth. I know. And so they suck.

So that is your secret. Yeah, yeah. So they suck. And also there's a dry mouth, a component of it with the dancing. And then so it's like, yeah. So it's like you don't want to keep loading lozenges. So you might as well just, you know. You might as well suck on a pacifier.

Put on a paci. So they're on drugs. They do the pacifier to avoid grinding their teeth into little rave nubs yeah and i i'm sober i i'm i'm in aa i got the pacifier because i thought it looked cool yeah i just was like yeah yeah this is now this is a good look right right right it was a tweety bird pacifier i remember it well and i used to bring a stuffed monkey puppet to these raves and like dance around with it. Like the, so much so that I was, I had friends, my old like drug friends who came to me and they were like, I remember this dude, Joey came up to me. He's like, Hey man.

Cause I had like, you know, uh, uh, bleach blonde hair and I would wear it with barrettes. And I had this like choker with little, uh, candy, like neon candy like neon stars on it and I just looked like such a buffoon and he's like, hey man, people saying you gay now, you want me to go beat their ass? And I was like, no. I felt this, that was the world I came from, right? And i felt this like freedom like i don't care about that at all yeah and i what i realize now is all the infantilism in the rave scene all the like pacifiers and stuffed monkey puppets and barrettes and glitter and it was like this pendulum i went from this like horrifying version of a childhood all the way to this like weird artificial like drug adult version of childhood but it was such a caric like weird artificial like drug addled version of

childhood but it was such a caricature of childhood right it's like we're dancing and we're we have puppets even though everybody's 16 17 18 20 years old it gave me this hyperbaric artificial childhood renewed childhood yeah redo childhood so that i could have been literal trappings of it yeah yeah i said a caricature of yeah like the iconography of what it means to be a child even though we're all adults and everybody's hooking up and everybody's on drugs so it's not really childlike but it had for me this healing effect of by the time i exited the ray the rave scene when i was like 22 or 23 or 24 i don't really remember um i was softer i had been

like softened in this way that i don't think i could have found in a different world i think that it softened me in this really profoundly spiritual way and i'm not exaggerating when i say like aa raves were as healing to me as aa was yeah Yeah. And it was fundamentally reconfiguring to me to be able to go to that in a, in a really direct way, actually. Yeah. Um, you know,

when you said that, you know, that, that the real transformative moment is when that couple literally embraced you and called you beautiful when you have been through and you're in a weird subculture. You're in a weird bubble all to itself with its own rules. That's kind of like separate from the rest of the world. You've done that. You've already done that in a number of ways completely against your will. And they were all hostile. They all made you feel kind of

shitty about yourself. So like here you are in one that has all kind of the similar kind of things. You know, it's like this odd little world within the, you know, existing world. Except they say I'm beautiful and they accept me and they hug me, you know. And they allow me to be soft and pretty. Yeah. And childish and, you know, and needy. Of course. That's exactly.

Yeah. That is exactly correct. And it didn't occur to me until this conversation, telling these two stories back to back, that it was the same thing that happened to me at that first meeting. Yeah. Somebody walked outside. Somebody walked up to me and put their arms around me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, I guess that's really, in a way, like that's all that I, little me, needed was just like somebody to like put their arms around me

and say like, you're going to be okay. You're beautiful. Like you're all right the way that you are. Yeah. And yeah, it was transformative. That, it's such a, you know, it's such a, just to somebody to say, you're special, you're smart, you're good, I care about you, I like you, that is such a powerful thing.

And there's so many stories. I just watched a documentary about a cult where it seemed like it's an HBO. It's not worth, but every person that they talked to in the thing, there was like almost everybody they interviewed had a moment where the leader of the cult said, you are so brilliant. And they all went like, and nobody ever told me that. And just it breaks your heart to think about this world where how many people are walking around having never been said told you're special you're beautiful and and so when they hear it they go all right what do you want anything you got it's such a it's such a beautiful thing such a sad thing such a dangerous thing but also like can be such a transformative thing obviously you sitting here you know like it made

all the difference in the world to you yeah somebody was nice to you it's and it's just what you're saying like my the the the first 15 years i mean listen my mother told me she loved me i'm not it's not like she would but the messaging i received was the it's not going to be okay you're not beautiful like that was the the primary message i received is you are broken there is something wrong with you and both of those things both of those people hugging me both of them were just saying like it's okay yeah you're okay yeah and i just don't know that i would be around if it wasn't for those two things yeah that messaging just just what you're saying like and everybody needs that so badly like like i talk to

these people because you have kids i have a kid i tell my daughter i love her like i would say an obnoxious amount of times a day and it occurred i meet friends who are like yeah my dad never really said that i'm like it just feels like that's you know it's as sophisticated a parenting technique as um you're gonna be okay is an advice technique it's just like i love you you're good you're special um and and yeah i had missed that and and i got that back i feel very lucky that i got that back yeah i got that chance because you know even if my mom was saying that i couldn't hear it because the other stuff was so loud yeah and these strangers telling me that like it it hit me and it resonated and i'm also very lucky that i didn't join the cult in that hbo documentary

because i probably could have i was a prime candidate no because i think the whole the other underpinning of it all was they were high all the time yeah one of them even said well somebody had to put weed on the table that was a a line in it. Okay. Well, I know where they're coming from. I mean, it was, um, it was raves were not just emotionally transformative, but they were, they were literally transformative to me.

I mean, to me as well. The second party I ever went to, and this is my, I think maybe my favorite story in the whole book, but the second party I went to, I went to that first rave and I just, my identity changed.

I bought all new clothes, barrettes, everything. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't know how to get to another one. Cyberfest was like on telephone. It was a big party. Yeah. You could buy tickets at Ticketmaster. But I didn't know how to get to another one.

You know, now I'm like all dressed up and nowhere to rave. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've literally. And no internet. No internet. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

And it was a secret society. Yeah. It really is. And that is part of what I love about subcultures is these little crevices and alleyways into weirdo people on the outside. And it's our thing. It's our thing.

And that it's our thing is my thing. And that's true in deafness. It's true in Judaism. It's true in Burning Man. It's true in standup. It's true in comedy. Yeah, yeah. So I went to this AA dance, another AA dance, my last ever AA dance. And this guy who's yeah yeah so i went to this aa dance another aa dance my last

ever aa dance and this guy who's one of my best friends to this day he saw me dancing now i've learned how to dance i'm like you know doing a crystal waters like you shuffle yeah at this like vets hall in danville california and he goes do you go to you go to raves and i go well i'm i'll go to i've been to rave i've i've done one a couple hugged me i've had a transformative experience is that what you mean yeah he goes what part do you go to i go cyber fest and he's like oh let me show you a real party and we got he goes i'm going now and he's sober too he's also so wow is random and truly this book is about more than anything the random happenstance by which a life occurs yeah that only by the time you get to a phase of adulthood can you look back

and say oh this was a journey this was a path that i've been on yeah at the time it feels like i'm just being slapped from experience to experience the way i started stand-up was completely random and weird but now i look back i go oh yeah because it all it's one of again it's like it's from subculture to subculture to bubble to bubble you know and and and experience to experience and and if you look back and you're a person who believes in magic and faith or whatever you can say ah i see now in hindsight it was destiny or if you're not you go oh wow look at this random pattern neither is more magical they're both really incredibly magical yeah and or you followed your nose to the aromas that you were accustomed to and that you enjoyed 100 and you didn't even know you were following your nose you just like yeah um i mean sure your

life is filled with that too like these random pains were like if i wasn't here i'd be here and then yeah and then there's that thing like when you're in the middle of deep pain you you you say this is awful but then you go uh you know that that story like the chinese uh story where the the guy the guy comes and the uh the army says we need to take all the kids to the army and uh and they they go they go to to the guy who's only got one son. They say, we need your son. And everybody goes, that's awful. He goes, maybe. And then they find the son, but he's injured himself.

And they go, oh, that's great. He goes, maybe. And then they, you know, like that's what, even in the moments of darkness, you go, this is awful. Maybe, but it might be good too. Yeah, it might end up being good. Yeah. So he throws me in his car.

It's 10 p.m. And he says says we're going to go to a real party and the way you would find parties at that time is you would call a voicemail and it would just be a pickup and there'd be this like voice on the other end often a british accented voice just saying like come to the here's where the map point is it wasn't even the directions to the party it was directions to the place where you would get directions to the clearing in the woods or something there'd just be a man standing under a street light and he'd hand you a slip of paper and it would say here's where the party is we get the directions to the party it's a full moon that's significant but i didn't know it at that point it's like midnight almost when we get directions and we drive an hour and a half south to santa cruz california from

the bay area uh to this place called bonnie d. And I look down the beach and there's a thousand kids down at the beach and the moon, the full moon is in the sky. And I take off running down the beach to this party that's happening down. This is a totally different kind of party. This isn't at a convention center. It's not 10,000 people. It's like 800, people weirdos you know just like psychedelic bizarro people like the music is is slower and deeper than it was at that first party and and i'm down there this is a real rave like an underground yeah full moon party they

called them in the bay area every full moon that they would they would bring stacks of speakers down to the beach in santa cruz or whatever beach they could find. And we get down there and I'm dancing and I sit down around this fire and, um, and, uh, well, I could tell you the version that's in the book, but it's a little bit more, um, it's a little bit more, uh, um, narrative, I guess, which is to take an aside. narrative i guess which is to take an aside yeah my name is moshe kasher uh my birth name when i was born was was my dad in the jewish religion you're supposed the father is supposed to have the right of naming the second child the first one goes to the mother the second one goes to the father and my father said i want to name him mos And my mother said, we can't name him Moshe. That's a crazy name.

It sounds like moose. Now, my mother is deaf. My father is deaf. My mother has never heard the word Moshe. She's never heard the word moose. She does not know what either of these things sound like. And yet, she won the debate, I guess. And my birth name was Mark Moshe Kasher.

And my father never called me Mark. And he never, uh, he never acceded to that when they, when they left, that was the one battle he always fought. I was always Moshe, always, always Moshe. Uh, Moshe to your mother. I was Mark to my mother. I was Mark to my father. I was, uh, I was Moshe and on my birth certificate, it was Mark Moose Kasher and, um, Moose. No, no, I'm just kidding. And on my birth certificate, it was Mark Moose Kasher. Moose? No, no, I'm just kidding. Mark Moshe Kasher. Okay. So I stayed Mark through my whole childhood.

Through all my rehab years, I was Mark. Even when in Oakland at the time in the early 90s, Mark became, I don't know if you know this, but it became like a hip-hop slang insult. Mark was like a fool. Yeah, yeah, like a sucker. A sucker. Yeah. And so everybody was, you're Mark, Mark. And the truth is, I felt like that. I felt like a fool. Yeah, yeah, like a sucker. A sucker. Yeah. And so everybody was, you were Mark, Mark. And the truth is, I felt like that.

I felt like a Mark. I felt like a coward and a sucker and a person that didn't belong. And when I finally got- Even in Brooklyn, were you Mark? No, in Brooklyn, I was always Moshe. Always, always, my whole life. I never identified with my real name, but I didn't want to stand up in Oakland public schools and go, if you wouldn't mind calling me by my biblically mandated name.

So I go to rehab. I get out of rehab. I get sober. I go to this rave. I'm in this process of transformation. I'm looking for this new identity. You know, I'm looking to recreate who I am. Now, there's a video game called, I don't know if you ever, do you play video games?

No, I don't. There's a video game called, I don't know if you ever, do you play video games? No, I don't. There's a video game called Katamari Damacy. And it's this video game where this little, anybody? Katamari Damacy? It's a classic. It's this little prince. Prince, I think his name is Katamari. And he, the object of the game is that you roll around a little teeny tiny ball, a little ball, and you grab everything.

As you're rolling it around, you're picking up stuff, dander and threads of, thread and then cups and uh and and and tables and cars and it gets bigger and bigger that's the whole game bigger and bigger until finally the mission is that you you you make this ball so big that it becomes the moon it it he throws it into the air and katamari has won the game when he throws the ball into the air and it becomes the moon. Now, that's sort of what my life was like. It was like this little prince, but it was a negative ball. As I pushed my little ball through the world, I was picking up all of these terrible things. A psychological diagnosis, a pair of handcuffs, an arrest record. I go to rehab, to pain, suffering.

It's getting bigger and bigger and bigger until it's dominating me. It's so huge that when I got to AA, I said to the people there, like the biggest thing I needed was relief from this ball. And I said to them, like, I got this fucking ball here. I got a ball I've been pushing. And they're like, oh, the ball. We know about the ball. Stop running.

And I go, you don't understand. If I stop running, it's going to run me over. Like, don't worry about it. Just stop running. I go, really stop running. They're like, yeah, stop running. so i stopped running when i got to a.a yeah and the ball teeters groans rolls me right the fuck over and i i i like it hurt and i go it just ran me over and they were like yeah yeah it does that yeah you knew this was gonna run me over yeah and

i go well what do i do now what do i do you know i puff some air into my body all like acme wiley coyote style and and puff some air back into my body and i go what do i do now they walk over with a tiny hammer and chisel and they go get to work and so i start chiseling away the ball yeah and that's what i had been doing up until that point i had been um chiseling away at the ball but it still loomed large it was still like all it was this big ball representing every mistake i'd ever made every every wrong turn i'd ever taken yeah even at the raves even after my transformation even after those two people hugged me and told me it was going to be okay and i was beautiful i was still dominated not over yeah still dominated by this and i get down in this party party. And the full moon's in the sky.

And I sit down at this bonfire that they're having. And Jeremy's there, my friend who brought me to the party. And I'm meeting these girls. And this woman, Alona, is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. Everyone there, by the way, is the most beautiful person I've ever seen in my life. I can't even believe it. And they're going around and she's talking to me. And she says, well, what's your name?

And I go, well, it's Moshe. It's the first time I've ever told anyone my name is Moshe. And she says, well, it's nice to meet you, Moshe. And I turn and go, oh, did you meet my ball? And the ball's gone. And the full moon is shining brighter than ever before. Little Katamari had thrown some of that ball into the sky. I've never gone by another name since.

I've been Moshe since then. That is how I determined my name and found my identity in this new reality. And I've never really seen that fucking ball since. That's great. That's great. That's lovely. We've been talking a long time. I have enjoyed every second it it's been fantastic i also went to burning man all right

yeah no i mean well that's no i mean you know we may have to do a part two at some point when you write the next book um i do because you know that i do want to know like what's where you go from here but i also want to the one thing that i want to just ask, because you've been through so much, and especially so much so young, was the thought of having a child daunting to you. Like, did you feel like, I can do this, you know? I know what you're saying. And I, now, the thought of having a child was not daunting to me yeah having a child is daunting to me yeah because now when i see her and everything that i understand about her difficulties any difficulties they're all mashed through this

land you know i think it's a pretty story about the ball, but the truth is, and it is true, but it's also, it's not fully true ever. We are always, and I'm sure you are, we are always a product of this building blocks of trauma that are not really possible to fully excise from you. I'm 20 times times 50 times better than i used to be i you know i've lived a life haunted by depression with the fucking ghost following me yeah and i have kind of shook them mostly right and um but i still have days when i don't know what the fucking point of anything is yeah and with these ghosts that you shake it's like then you go into this dip and you go, fucking, you're still here? Yeah. Absolutely.

I was just talking to somebody about like the crux of therapy for me was, wait a minute. Everybody does all this shit and I can't do anything about all this shit that people do. The only thing I can control is my reaction to it yeah they don't ever fucking change i have to adjust i have to change that's no fucking fair and the answer is yeah yeah well that's it you know decades of getting to the point where it's like yeah that is you know you can't you know you cannot change other people you can get away from people if there are people that that it just becomes so hopeless you have to you can get away from them but you're not going to change them but i still have days of like what the fuck come on people yeah i gotta do it all it's all the work is on me you know so yeah it's

totally it never ends no there's this and you know natasha and i my wife um natasha uh leggero and i do this we do this advice podcast the comedy advice podcast we'd love to have you on and i'm there and you see this people call in and it's just like there is no escaping it it is it it follows on the endless honeymoon podcast it followed you know but you see you see people it follows people it follows everyone you cannot escape there is no escaping a ghost the ghost will always be there and when i and to what you're saying about changing yourself like when i remember one of the most profound aa lessons i learned had nothing to do with aa this like hawaiian kahuna guy that was probably trying to hook up with me when i was underage anyway doesn't matter gave me this book of hawaiian spirituality that i remember

this line from it it said the world and its people are the cause of all of your problems but obviously you cannot change the world and its people just change yourself and you will find that the world and its people have changed around you yeah And to me, that is the process. It's like you change yourself and then all of a sudden the adults become less scary. The trauma, the ghost becomes smaller, the ball becomes smaller and you can walk through the world. And then I had a kid and anything that happens, any attention deficit that I notice, any behavioral blip, any of it becomes, it's your ghost. It's like my ghost pops back up and goes, you know, this is very similar to what you were going through. You know what this means, right?

You know that it's possible that blah, blah, blah. And also, I'm coming for her. No, exactly. And I'm coming for her because you created her. Yeah. Because she came through you. You brought her to this party. Yeah.

And she's built of you. And, and the thing that I need to remember with her is, um, is that, is that, like I said, destiny only becomes destiny when you look back and destiny doesn't move. There is no destiny moving forward and yes she is that she is mine and she does belong half to me but i also am giving her an experience that is profoundly different than the one that i have yeah one that isn't filled with uh with um with uh analysis and filled with uh labeling and it's one that i hope if i do this right is like filled with love.

And this book I wrote is actually dedicated to her because not only love, but I want her to have these experiences too. I want as wild and maybe unconventional as my journey was, like I want her to find worlds of her own. I want her to find her own people. I want her to find her own people. I want her to find her own way.

I don't want to let my fear of her becoming like me stand in the way of her becoming who she's supposed to be. Yeah. Is that the main thing you want her to know? Or is there something else kind of, you know, that you'd, you'd tell her?

Well, that is the main thing that this book is for, for her. Uh, and I'm not trying to get back to plugging the book. But the message I realized only in writing the whole book was like, I hope so desperately. Because for me, this journey was so huge of like, and with comedy, like this is the one that I settled into. With comedy and with Burning Man, with all of them, I got these lessons from all of these communities that i spent my life in that

have formed my my my personhood they formed who i am like really really on this fundamental level and so i don't know if it's the main thing i want her to know in life but i think yes that if i i said once to my brother like if i have a religion it's have fun yeah you know like we have a family a leggero casher family motto or a family like like credo and it's uh work hard try your best um believe in yourself be kind and have fun yeah and i think like if you can just find the the combo of all of those things yeah then you can have a good life because you're right andy like it's not possible to you cannot exit life without some form of ghost attaching itself to you it's not possible it just isn't the world is painful the world is filled with with with sadness and chaos and the only thing for me that makes that chaos palatable is experiencing all of the joy and the beauty that is also a big part of life.

You know, there's a Yiddish writer, Sholem Aleichem, who was a friend of my grandfather's actually, but he's a very famous Yiddish writer. And he wrote a novel called Some Laughter, Some Tears. He wrote a novel called Some Laughter, Some Tears. And to me, that is the encapsulation of the entirety of Jewish history in four words, some laughter, some tears. And to me, that could be the encapsulation of what life is. It's like some laughter, some tears. And it's so easy if you do not develop and you do not do hard work, like you said, like you have been doing, to just let it be some tears or all tears.

You just have to find some laughter and find the joy. So joy yes i guess that is what i would want to leave or some or that there are there are damaged people who it's just laughter just some laughter you know yeah there are some people that like they they are on the run yeah those tears you know on the surface of life and you know what that's a good point because that's no life either. No. And that is what drugs are, honestly. It's filled with degradation and sadness, but really, when it comes down to it,

what drug addiction is about is about I don't want to go below because the monster lurking below the surface of the water is too scary, so I'm going to take these drugs to try to just stay skinny on top. Neither of those are a life.

Yeah, it's true but i'm glad for the life i had and the life that i have it's created this like really beautiful thing and like it it sent me into stand-up and like you know what stand-up is i'm not gonna i know we're we're we've been talking a long time but what stand-up is obviously it's the the creative like thing that pays my bills and makes me happy as an artist. But also, if I hadn't gone on that random trip to New York City that one summer and run into Chelsea Peretti, who I'd gone to middle school with, and she's like, I'm doing stand-up now. And I went to an open mic with her and watched her do stand-up and went to a good showcase that night and watched Patrice and Sarah Silverman do stand stand up and gone, what the fuck am I even looking at? Then I never would have started stand up and I never would have met Natasha and I never would have created this person who I just literally came from,

from her holiday pageant at her school and watching her sing a song like she wouldn't exist. Ours was last night. Yeah. There'd be some other person and I'd be in some other life and, and this is the life that I got and I'm super grateful for it. And I'm super grateful that it led me even here. Well, thank you. Well, the book, Subculture Vulture, a memoir in six scenes,

it's coming out at the end of January. Yeah. And I'm going to read it. I was telling, I told Moshe when I got here to the studio, they're like, here's some mail for you. And it was a copy of the book, like just in time for me to have like seven minutes to read it before we did this. You know what? I like reading a book and then watching the movie.

So this will be kind of like that. You listen to the podcast and then read the book. Excellent. But I am very proud of this book. I worked super hard on it. And I think it's my best work, and I hope that the people that get it enjoy it very much. Well, I hope it does really well. Thank you.

It's been a wonderful conversation, and I really appreciate you coming out and doing it. So thank you so much. Thank you, Andy. I appreciate it, too. And thank all of you for listening, and I'll be back next week with more of The Three Questions. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco production. It is produced by Sean Daugherty and engineered by Rich Garcia. Additional engineering support by Eduardo Perez and Joanna Samuel.

Executive produced by Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, with assistance from Maddie Ogden. Research by Alyssa Grahl. Don't forget to rate and review and subscribe to The Three Questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts. And do you have a favorite question you always like to ask people? Let us know in the review section. Can't you tell my love's a-growing? Can't you feel it ain't it showing? Oh, you must be a-knowing. I've got a big,

big love. This has been a Team Coco production.