MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Every week, a guest draws a card from NPR's Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Comedian Mike Birbiglia is known for finding funny ways into serious topics. And when writing his newest Netflix special, "The Good Life," he was consumed with how to tackle those serious ideas with a child.
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MIKE BIRBIGLIA: My daughter was turning, at the time, 8 years old. She has a lot of questions, and I actually don't know the answers to this level of question. Like, religion and existence and all these - life and death and all these things.
KELLY: He also discussed his relationship with his parents with Wild Card host Rachel Martin.
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RACHEL MARTIN: What's something your parents taught you to love?
BIRBIGLIA: That's really interesting. I had this line in "The Good Life," which is, kids don't know a lot, but they absorb everything, you know? So, like, if you're kind, they know you're kind. If you're selfish, they know you're selfish. As I've gotten older, I've realized that my mom is so deeply kind to people in this way that I feel like I've not been able to live up to it, but I've at least been able to aspire to it. It's been a certain type of North Star. I feel like she's willing to be friends with anyone who wants to be friends.
MARTIN: Yeah.
BIRBIGLIA: And so she just has this, like, cavalcade of friends. You know, she'll just be like, Ellen (ph) from swim class said this, and I'm like, who's Ellen from swim class? She's like, I just met her, like, three weeks ago, you know? Like, you know, Doris (ph) from stitching said this, and you're like, who is Doris from stitching? And, like, she's an amazing friend to kind of the planet.
MARTIN: Yeah, yeah. My mom was like that. We used to joke. My mom would go to Marie Callender's and she would, like, make best friends with the woman sitting next to her eating, like, the Marie Callender's blueberry pie. And all of a sudden...
BIRBIGLIA: Exactly.
MARTIN: ...She knows her entire life story.
BIRBIGLIA: It's got "Forrest Gump" energy.
MARTIN: Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally.
BIRBIGLIA: Like, my dad would say, in kind of a negative way when I was a kid, he would be like, Mary Jean, you would talk to a doorknob. You know what I mean? And it would be, like, at her expense. In my mind, I was like, that's a pretty good quality.
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MARTIN: I mean, do you try to emulate that? You said she's...
BIRBIGLIA: I think so.
MARTIN: ...Like a North Star.
BIRBIGLIA: Look, I...
MARTIN: Do you try to channel that?
BIRBIGLIA: Yeah. Like, my experience of being a comedian over the course of whatever it is, 23 years of being a comedian, is I feel like I've gone everywhere - I've gone to, like, 47 states - and I find that the thing that you discover about America if you travel through it is you go, people are pretty sweet and they're pretty smart and they're pretty - like, I find this to be a very compelling country. So many places where you just go, oh, these are - you go to Tulsa and you'll go like, oh, my God, those are the coolest people I've ever met. You know what I mean?
MARTIN: Yeah.
BIRBIGLIA: You know, you go to Boise. You go, those are the coolest people I've ever met. Like, I just - and I think that that, a little bit of that, is, like, my mom giving to me this idea of just, yeah, just talk to anybody.
MARTIN: Yeah. What about your dad?
BIRBIGLIA: My dad, I feel like, is a little bit the opposite of that...
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BIRBIGLIA: ...That specific thing.
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KELLY: You can watch that full conversation by following Wild Card with Rachel Martin on YouTube. Mike Birbiglia's new Netflix special, "The Good Life," it's out now. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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