Mike Birbiglia
speaker
192 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard 18 Jun
Mike Birbiglia’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So the beginning of it is I'm walking with my daughter home from school and we see like a smoke shop called The Good Life. And she's like, Dad, what's The Good Life? And I'm like, I don't even know. It's not what I'm doing. And then I'm trying to explain drugs and sex and all these things that are like religion, big things. And then I kind of go into a lot of flashbacks about my dad.
And then in the middle of all that, my dad has a stroke. And I'm kind of coming to grips with the fact that like,
you know my dad like we had a stilted relationship for like i would say most of my life and it's weirdly only now like in his final phase of life where like i'm starting like i said like it has calmed him down the stroke it has like he used to shout so much it wouldn't be every day but it would be enough that you'd be like on edge like is it gonna happen today yeah
you know the joke i say in the show that he'd be like where are my goddamn keys and we'd all be like we gotta find dad's keys like i spent my whole life looking for those keys i go i jumped through a window to find those keys and uh but like that was my you know that was a lot of it and then and then i was you know now that my dad is dying like in the final phase of life like
you really do realize he's just a person, and he was probably doing his best, and we're all doing our best, you know what I mean? It is like seeing your parent in that stage puts us so much in perspective.
Good looking folks. I'll see my dad like picking up like a cup or something and like, and I'll just be like, that's sort of like me. Like you just see, you go, Oh yeah, he's a human struggling with this thing. And that kind of reminds me of my own physicality. Even is he close to you now? Like, does he live in New York also? No, he lives in Rhode Island.
So I'm going home like every few weeks on a train. And, uh, That's where my brother and sister live. Oh, they live there? Yeah, which is hard for them. It's hard for my mom. It's just hard. The way America deals, the healthcare system deals with end-of-life stuff is not good. There's this book Atel Gwande wrote called Being Mortal. You ever read that? It's really good, but it's all about...
how he kind of opens by saying like, in like India gets a lot of things wrong in medicine, but like the thing they get right is like end of life. Cause they treat it like it's special. And like, essentially you're like letting someone go. And like in America, we're like,
we need to prop him up and put him on stilts and shock his body and all this shit just to keep someone alive but like barely alive and so much of their body doesn't work you can't walk you can't stand it's like so many things that are brutal doesn't remember what happened in the last year it's a really hard thing so hard yeah
A condo.
We don't have, because communities don't have insurance. No. No. We don't have loved ones. We don't love, we don't love anyone. We're not loved.
No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how it works. That's not how it works. Let's get my dad on the phone. He can explain.
can he talk he can talk yeah so i talked like i basically end up talking to him about it just asking questions about his childhood i grew up in bushwick in the 1940s and and it's just like you realize or i've realized through this thing of like of like oh i didn't ask my dad enough questions
Yeah. Like, I just didn't. I should have just let him go.
Really?
okay next question like do you regret leaving your mom like my mom no not really like there's no cognition we gotta get you on working it out we're gonna work this into a bit have you done that as a bit because it's so funny like my my podcast working out literally the whole premise is people come on and we talk about stories it's like how could that be a bit we gotta i want to do this yeah come on let's do it come on in new york
Oh, my God. I was like, what? He fought in the war?
72 years old.
Yeah.
Yeah, and then with my dad, 10, 20 years ago, I would get in the weeds of arguing with him about politics or whatever, and it's like, who cares? It doesn't matter. This is not important what your politics and my politics are. What matters is that there's a human connection. I don't know. That's my lesson of my 20s and 30s was like, don't talk about stuff like that with your parents.
Showing 161–180 of 192 · page 9 of 10
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