How to reclaim your cringe
39:54 Share

TED Audio Collective.

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today's episode is all about the cringeworthy, embarrassing, mortifying moments of our lives. For me, these are memories of a time when I did something that was so deeply awkward that even years later, it prompts like a physical reaction in my body. Out of nowhere, when I'm thinking about it, probably in the shower or in bed, I will say out loud, oh no, oh baby, oh no. This happens to me enough

that my wife knows exactly what it means when I have one of these outbursts. When it happens, she often asks, what did you just think about? And she asks that because it is a kind of a treat for both of us. Because despite how embarrassing those moments were in the past when I was living them, now in the present, looking back, they are often really, really, really quite funny. And that concept that we can laugh at some of the most cringeworthy, embarrassing moments of our existence, that's

That is the driving force behind Mortified, a hilarious podcast and live show that I could not love more. Today's guests are Dave Nadelberg and Neil Katcher. They're the co-founders of Mortified, and we're going to be talking to them all about their show and what they've learned about how to laugh at instead of feel ashamed by our past selves.

I want to give you a taste of what Mortified is like. So we're going to play you a clip that actually isn't of Dave or Neil. Instead, it is one of the performers at a Mortified live show. They are in front of a live audience reading from their childhood diary. And this performer, Kevin, sets up this entry by explaining that at this time when he was writing this, he had never kissed a girl, but he was very, very, very obsessed with Star Trek. February 20th, 1991, 20th century.

Break. Incoming message. Kevin HQ control. Alert. Alert. Fire up generators. Begin flirt sequence. Start level six and rise to maximum nine. Valentine's dance today. Kendra was not at the dance. I wanted her to be, but God said no. God likes it that way. Message ends. Break. On to today's report.

I saw a rise in flirtations with Kendra that could have been one of two things, real or fake. Over and out, Kevin Miller. Is that not hilarious and incredible? I am such a fan of Mortified. I'm so excited for today's episode. We're going to have a lot more awkwardness and a lot more hilarity right after this break. Don't go anywhere.

What is this place? Welcome to Cloud Nine. How exactly did I get here? You're a Toyota Crown driver. And only Crown drivers ever reach this level of pure bliss. The refined but elegant design makes you sit up a little straighter. It gives you a rush of confidence as soon as you're behind the wheel and a feeling of all eyes on you. That's how the Crown transports you here. It's pretty awesome, right? The captivating Toyota Crown family. Toyota. Let's go places.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, TED is traveling to the birthplace of American democracy, Philadelphia, for an exciting new initiative. Together throughout 2024, TED and Visit Philadelphia started to explore democratic ideas in a series of three fireside chats that will shape our collective future as we work towards a more perfect union.

Our third and final event of 2024 about moving forward together took place on November 20th at the historic Reading Terminal Market. Hosted by TED curator Whitney Pennington-Rogers, we featured TED Talks and a moderated Q&A with world champion debater Julia Darr and head of curiosity at the Eames Institute, Scott Shijioka. Thanks to Visit Philadelphia and our supporting partners Bank of America, Comcast NBCUniversal and Highmark.

Go to visitphilly.com slash TED to learn more about this event and to hear about the exciting things we have coming up in 2025.

Add a little curiosity into your routine with TED Talks Daily, the podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday. In less than 15 minutes a day, you'll go beyond the headlines and learn about the big ideas shaping your future. Coming up, how AI will change the way we communicate, how to be a better leader, and more. Listen to TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

And we are back. We're talking about laughing at our past selves, finding ways to move past embarrassment and shame and how to transform humiliation into something positive. And we're talking about all that with Dave Nadelberg and Neil Katcher. Hi, I'm Dave. I'm Neil. And we are the producers of Mortified. That is correct. So for people who don't already know about Mortified, I've been a fan for years now. I first saw the live show, uh,

maybe 10 years ago in Boston. And it was one of the funniest things that I've ever seen and have been a huge fan ever since. But for people who aren't already familiar with Mortified, can you tell us what Mortified is and where the idea for the show came from? This is David again. Mortified started over 20 years ago because I had found a love letter that I had written when I was in high school. And I found it when I was in my mid-20s. It was a love letter that I had never read

given to anybody. I just had written it to a crush and then it sat in, you know, in a box for years, like in my childhood bedroom. And then I found it and I was like, this is ridiculous. I would love to read this on stage and invite strangers to do the same thing. And somehow that became a movement. So Mortified is this has become this celebration of

things that make you cringe, often from people's teen years or early childhood life where you have this

pure, extremely genuine, authentic emotion. And it's so unfiltered. It's hilarious, but it's also really cathartic. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the catharsis part. Obviously, Mortified is ultimately a show that it's ultimately a comedic storytelling show. So people getting on stage and they're sharing things with the idea that people will ultimately laugh with them about their childhood selves and

That said, you know, one of the cool things about getting on stage and performing is sharing things that you are embarrassed to share about how you thought or things that happened when you were growing up.

is that there are aspects of it that, you know, in the title, it's called mortified. So theoretically, these are things that you are embarrassed about and may be even produce some shame. So getting to share that material in front of an audience and have people laugh, theoretically with you, 99% of the time it's with you.

That laughter that the audience gives the performer is a laughter of acknowledgement of, hey, we relate to that thing. And whatever those things are that you thought that you're embarrassed by or things that you did, we relate to it because we maybe did that too. It's a chance for you to feel better about the things that you once held so close and wrote in your diary when nobody was around.

So, you know, you've been doing this for 20 years. So there I'm sure there is no shortage of really memorable, mortifying stories. But will you give me a few of the ones that have just stuck in your brain and that when you think about you still go, I can't believe someone actually shared that on stage. There is a woman named Sarah Binns who's been on the podcast before. I'm just obsessed with her journals. She performs for us in Portland, Oregon, and I believe she grew up in Oregon.

And there's a scene and I might be getting some of it wrong. And I say scene, like this is how much of a fan I am of her diary that like, I think of it as a movie in my head, but there's a moment where she's a bit of a wallflower at a school dance. And she goes for a hug with her crush and he doesn't reciprocate. And instead he offers to do a high five and,

And it is one of the most painful, beautiful, heroic moments I've ever seen in any, like whether in a book or in a movie or in a play or something. I just love it. And it's just something that was written in a diary and had no idea that it was funny or going to be funny years later. My favorite part of that is that I think when she wrote it in her diary back when it happened, she,

I don't even know that she completely saw that as a rejection, but more as like, it's progress. Right. There's a lot of layers. So you're saying there's a chance. Yeah, it's that moment. Exactly right. That's incredible. Wait, so Neil, can you give us one of your favorite moments as well? There's a mortified piece from a woman who was a very old soul.

and became obsessed at a young age with the Marx Brothers. And this is someone who grew up in like the 80s or the 90s. So this is not someone, I even think it was the 90s. So it wasn't even when like the Marx Brothers were theoretically on reruns on television. She became so obsessed that she developed a crush on Harpo Marx, the silent one who blows the horn. Often people deal with their crushes

on their own. Like, you know, they don't tell anybody, but maybe they tell their best friends. Like, who do you even tell you have a crush on Harper and Marks to in the 90s? Like, who do you tell? Who would you even do that to in the 1940s or 50s? That would be a hard bit of gossip to share with somebody without them, like, disowning you. There's a common thing that we'll hear in a lot of mortified submissions of, especially with

who had like crushes on boy bands. It's like,

Most people will like the Justin Timberlakes, but certain strategic people would like the Joey Fatones for the theory that they are sort of more obtainable. I wonder if that's what Harpo was on just sort of like a colossal scale. But there's also something here that, you know, you said that there's this common thread that you've seen in a lot of them. You are in this really interesting position where kind of, I think without question,

intending it. You have ended up with like a longitudinal sociological study where you've had thousands of people submit things that they find to be embarrassing and mortifying from their childhood or from their teenage years. What are some of the common threads that you've seen? The things that tend to be funny and mortified are these moments where like a kid is treating something or perceiving perceiving events in their life

be on a grand scale with huge stakes where we as adults might laugh because to us they seem small. But what's fun is like, give it to a 13 year old. All of these things are huge. We're sort of like laughing at the kid, but we're also cheering for them at the same time.

But I've seen different versions of this where a kid winds up like writing something like, dear diary, something really sad happened. You know, 9-11. Like I was turned on the TV and this thing happened and buildings fell and my mom is crying and everybody's crying. And it's like real gravity.

And then two seconds later, there's a new paragraph that says, anyway, I can't wait to go to the Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake concert tonight. It is going to be so fun. And so both of those things have the same bit of gravity, which is bizarre to us. But it actually is kind of beautiful because they really are equally important to a 13-year-old. And I don't think that means that the 13-year-old is shallow. I just think it means...

they care about these things equally as much. And that's just sort of so such a perspective shift for us that I think we're laughing at. It's like a bizarre optical illusion or something. I think one of the things that is really fun in mortified is that the things that a kid wants isn't necessarily any different than what an adult wants. The big difference is that the kid has less information and,

I often call teenagehood the sort of the first day on the job of being an adult.

And the training's been really bad. There's been really poor training at the office. And so a lot of the things that we laugh at and enjoy, but also relate to so much is just someone operating without a manual. And in a weird way, that's why they're keeping their journal. And it's also why we root for them. You know, for me coming at things as a comedian, one of the main things that I have found that has translated into my life is

is the idea that people want to root for you and like you more and connect with you more when you show them the parts that aren't perfect.

That actually the person who like everyone hates is the person who seems like they have it all together and everything's going well and they're perfect. Like nobody looks at that person and says like, that's the guy I want to hang out with. That's the person that I want to spend time with. Whereas if you're a mess and you've spilled coffee on yourself, but you laugh about it and then, you know, you're walking down the street and you slip and now there's a

giant pile of mud on your leg. Like that's the person who walks in and has a story and everyone like laughs and feels comfortable with that person. You know, what's interesting about that is that where we learn that lesson about sort of hiding that our vulnerabilities and the things that might be embarrassing, that sort of, that happens at the sort of nexus of becoming a teenager. My son is 12 years old right now. He just turned 12. And a year ago,

He was cool having his hair long. Like he was cool with like taking the,

Certain like the water bottle that might feel too adult in his lunch pail. And now these things are concerns. You know, he got his hair cut like everyone else. He's very particular about certain things that like are in his lunch. How what is his lunch look like? I can't give him a fruit leather. I can't give him a fruit leather anymore. What happened? I guess it's not cool in middle school to be eating fruit leathers.

But it's this thing that we start to learn that the way we fit in is to shave off all of the sharp corners and the jagged edges so that we can sort of fit in. And a lot of what you see is in the journals that happen in Mortified, one of the biggest pressures is about fitting in. And so you see people...

Not just shaving off their edges, but then they actively start to figure out what version of fitting in am I going to, what's that going to look like for me? Am I going to be the goth kid? Am I going to be the popular, am I going to hang out with the jocks? Like, what is that going to look and how do I have to like fake it till I make it right? How do I pretend to be that until I actually feel that way and actually can fit in? And then I think we spend the rest of our lives once we get out of our adolescence and

Learning that actually those things that we've been hiding, if we can let them out of the sort of like finely tuned egg we've formed around ourselves, like that's when we can actually like feel like a like happier and like a full human being. It's when we learn to re-embrace the fruit leather. I have. I have. Neil, as a parent who's seeing your kid go through this process of trying to avoid the

the embarrassment, the weirdness, the mortification. How are you able to take all of the things that you've learned from Mortified and try and communicate them to him or try and help him along the way? Maybe the answer is you can't. It's just impossible as a parent. The painfulest part of being a parent to a teenager is that especially having done Mortified for longer than he's been alive is

There are all these things that you learn along the way as just a person. But then I only had like a break of being a teenager and then reading teenage journals. Maybe I had like a six year break between those two things. And so I've spent almost my entire life in teenagehood reading.

And yet, like hardly any of the wisdom I could impart on this child, like does not really get through the wall of insecurity that is starting to form around him. And when a real situation comes at you, like, oh, there's a bully at school or whatever.

I'm like, oh, I know how that could be funny. If you write about it now, we open it up in 20 years. Like I can help you with that. But in the moment I'm shitting bricks trying to figure out how to help you navigate this situation. Cause it's actually real. I have been studying the manual for 20 years, but now it's actually still happening in real time and I'm fumbling with the manual. So it's kind of a cruel joke that,

Nothing can prepare you to be a parent and nothing can prepare you to be the parent of a teenager. We're going to be right back after a short break with more from Dave and Neil. Support for the show comes from Lumen. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. I have a device. It is a device that measures your metabolism through your breath.

And it's paired with a very easy to use app that lets you know if you are burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance so you can improve your nutrition or workouts or sleep or even manage stress better. It has been so fascinating for me to blow into my Lumen device and see instantly how my metabolism is performing. And I use it certainly to improve my sleep now that I'm in my early 40s and my sleep is getting a little bit more erratic.

but also to manage stress levels.

I've loved Lumen's recommendations to improve my metabolic health. It can also track your cycle as well as the onset of menopause if you're in that time of life and adjust your recommendations to keep your metabolism healthy through any hormonal shifts. That sounds good, right? So if you want to take the next step in improving your health, go to lumen.me slash betterhuman to get 15% off your Lumen. That is L-U-M-E-N dot me slash betterhuman for 15% off your purchase.

Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this episode. Support for this podcast comes from Odoo. Imagine relying on a dozen different software programs to run your business, none of which are connected, and each one more expensive and more complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful. Now imagine Odoo. Odoo has all the programs you'll ever need, and they're all connected on one platform.

Doesn't Odoo sound amazing? Let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price. Sign up today at Odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

Today, we're talking with Dave and Neil from Mortified, and I'm such a big fan of their show that I actually can't resist playing another clip from the Mortified podcast. Here is one of my favorites. This makes me laugh every time. This is a performer named Jay, and Jay is reading a portion from a diary that they kept when they were 16 years old. And this is a list of qualities that Jay requires in a future mate. Hilariously, there are more than 160 requirements on that list.

And here's Jay reading just a few of these very strict conditions that must be met. So the list wasn't about me. It was about the other person and what they needed in order to apply for the job. Massages my feet, paints my toenails, treats me like his brother. Again, some of these are weird. Has soft hands.

uses lotion when necessary, has Omar Epps type qualities, has Denzelian qualities, knows that I am God's gift to him. Oh, wow. David Neal, I love that so much. Your show is really one of the funniest things that I've ever seen. And also, it was one of those shows where I left and was like, wow,

That is a kind of comedy that I didn't know existed because it comes from regular people who are not comedians. And yet it is huge laughs, bigger laughs many times than you could ever get from like a professional comedian. And I remember I left that show and I was like, I wish that I had this kind of documentation from my own life. Like, I wish I had that material to draw on. And I now keep a journal every day and I'm

I started the journal for two reasons. One is I was going through a really hard period of time, maybe seven years ago. My wife was having some real serious health issues and we were just like, it was just a really big mess of a time. And so I started journaling as a way to just get stuff out. But I won't lie. In the back of my mind, I was also like, this is a way to

to have this material for future me to look back on the hard times and be like, actually, there was something kind of funny here. For people who don't know, I know you two know this, but there's a very famous comedy equation that people talk about of tragedy plus time equals comedy. And

I was hyper aware, even in the moment of tragedy, that like, if I can document this and then add time, I think it will be funny, at least to me later on. Is that something that you all think about for your own lives or no? Yes. Although Neil and I were just talking about this the other day, like there are submissions that we had and things that have appeared on the, on the mortified stage years ago that got huge laughs, but comedy cultural tastes have shifted. Yeah.

And we're like, oh, could we not put this old thing that did well on the podcast today? And if we did, would we need new context? That is one of the biggest things that...

changes with social media or with just putting things out online is that there's often this collapse of context. So you're seeing something without understanding what it's like in the room and with the energy of the person. And someone reading from their diary saying, I was 13 when this happened, and I think it's funny now, and I'm willingly sharing it. And it's a night where everyone understands that's the thing. It's so different than watching a 30-second

Instagram reel where you don't have any of that context, then it can make something go from hilarious to tragic to offensive to totally benign, just depending on what context you see it in. I think people often forget that about the context. And I know that's something you two think about a lot. It's interesting. I don't remember who this person was, but years ago, we had a person come in and read for us once who had journals. They had journaled from a time...

when they heard mortified on the radio, like on a NPR story when they were a teenager. And then they were reading that entry to us like 15 years later. Wow. And I've always like wondered like, how does having that bit of knowledge that there's this show that where people are doing this, sharing the journals from the time when you're keeping your, like, how does that taint,

Like, how does that taint like your writing? I've kept a journal as an adult and I keep a journal on and off. And I'm keenly, obviously keenly aware of the potential of what like this might look like if anybody else was reading it. There's a level of awareness there.

But it always makes me think of that teenager who was sitting in their bedroom when they were 12 years old going, oh my God, people are laughing at this thing that I'm keeping in earnest? Yeah.

And how does that, you know, I guess the fear is already like my sister or my mother or my brother might come upon this journal. And I already might have to answer to that. So that might be in the back of your mind. But how does it taint you if you think the world's going to hear it? I have a friend who journals every morning. And his thing is he writes it in a doc and I think writes for 15 minutes or whatever his amount of time is. But then he deletes it, permanently deletes it afterwards. And for me...

That feels such a waste, right? Like, oh my gosh, but then the future material. And for him, it's because he doesn't want to be writing for the audience, even for the audience of the future self. He's like, I want to just get all my feelings out there and then not, I want to quite literally burn it. Like, I think he had, he started by writing it on a piece of paper and then literally burning the paper. But then was like, that's a little too much logistics to start a fire every day. So I'm going to just do it on the computer. There's a real sense of liberation in that.

I like that. But it does rob him of the ability to gain perspective looking at those events. Because you remember the events from your past, but you don't remember your perspective always. And the journal winds up being a time machine that lets you go back and see, oh, that's how I saw it through the lens of me then. So our process is...

People submit things to our stage shows and our job is to help figure out like which excerpts from your writings, which are journals, but also letters and poems and home movies and stuff.

Which will be interesting to an audience of strangers. And then we help you find a story in that and like frame it as a story. So that you're up on stage saying like, hi, I'm Chris and I grew up in this city and my whole life I really just wanted X. And then we thread the entries that we've selected around that story.

Without changing anything. But what I'll say is even if you don't have enough to be in a show like Mortified, I do think there's a lot of value with going back into your past. You have more than you realize. You might not have a journal. You might have a song that you made up in seventh grade and all you remember is the title or all you remember is one part of the chorus.

And if you can remember just that, you will remember a couple of other words and pretty soon you'll have like at least half a song. But there might be other things that you have that your mom saved or everyone has more than they realize. But if you go back and find some artifact from your past, even if it's just doing a Google search on your favorite action figure from when you were a certain age and share that artifact,

with someone in your life who you love and have them ask three, five questions to you about this artifact and your relationship to it. Like, why did you write this? Or why did you love this toy? Or whatever the things are. If they ask at least five questions or something like that, they will have learned something about you and you will have learned something about you that is new, even with someone who's been with you for decades. And that is the super cool thing

Not a trick of it. That's such a fun idea. You know, one of the things that bums me out about your friend who burns the journal entries is that like right after he writes them is that one of the things that we do when we're helping someone sift through their own material potentially to share on the stage is the main thing we're doing is we're looking for patterns.

What is the thing that's sort of unexpectedly funny about how you were when you were younger, how you saw the world that keeps repeating in a way that's kind of familiar and funny to the audience? When you don't have those journals anymore, when you're burning them every day, you may be robbing yourself of the ability to see the patterns that are appearing in your life that maybe could be therapeutic in some way to understand.

And so that's the part that when I hear that story, I go, I think there's liberation in it. And then there's also like a little bit like there's something confining about it as well. It's like, oh,

Maybe I need to know that every time my wife says this one thing that I'm triggered for the rest of the day and I didn't realize it. Those patterns are funny with time and they're very relatable, but they're also helpful to know. If you're looking through someone's raw material, how do you find the patterns that are the funny ones? How do you find the ones that are going to resonate with an audience of strangers?

So we do have like three little tendencies or criteria and those would be the embarrassed kid, an embarrassing situation. That is what everyone thinks our show is. It's actually, our show is rarely that. Yeah.

You showing up in third grade and somebody pulls your pants down accidentally and you're humiliated. That is an embarrassing situation. That is actually something that rarely happens in our state show. The other two are far more common, and those would be the melodramatic kid, somebody who has big emotion. And it could be negative emotion, like, I hate dad. He's such a butthead. Or big positive emotion, like...

Oh my God, I love him so, so, so, so, so, so, so much. I will die if I don't get to hold hands or something. And then the third one is sort of just naive, like the oblivious kid. So a common thing that we'll have is like someone who is out of the closet and gay now, but when they were 14 in the 90s, when that was less acceptable, they will have diary entries or something about, you know, everyone at school is gay.

is teasing me or there will be lots of things of like people think I'm gay or blah blah blah and my girlfriend doesn't think so and I can't wait to take her to the barber's yeah yeah like that like literally entries like that where the audience is in on a joke with the adult performer that the kid who wrote this is not aware of but it's all with love and

And you'll see that often with religious kids, they'll be very pious about something, or even politically active kids, they'll be very pious and zealots about something, as if they have the life experience to stand on a soapbox and preach to others, this is how you got to live, and I know the way, and I'm 12. And we will laugh because they are oblivious that there are nuances to the world that they don't know about yet.

no matter what their political or spiritual leanings are. I think that dramatic irony is such a fun thing to look for in... I mean, it's obviously such a great thing to look for when you're writing fiction, but also in excavating your own nonfiction past, that's a really fun idea to look for. I mean, when I was in eighth grade, I really wanted to be one of the cool lacrosse boys. And I've never been good at sports, and I also have curly hair, or at least wavy hair. And all of the cool lacrosse boys had straight hair that they put like...

thick gel in so that it would stick straight up in like a spiky point at the front.

And I would every day put that thick gel in my hair and I would spike it up in the front and it would look good in the mirror. And then I would take the bus and it would be a little bit of humidity or I would sweat a little bit. And slowly my spike would curl back until by like the middle of the morning, I would have like a cartoon baby curl where you could like put a pencil in this like full, like literally like I was a drawing of a baby in a Warner Brothers cartoon and

And finally, a teacher, like an actual adult teacher took me aside and said, like, you have to stop doing this with your hair. Like, that is not it's not working for you. You have to stop what you're doing. And it was a real kindness. The best teacher and the absolutely. Yes, she was both of those things. But she helped me out a lot. And at the time, I remember being like, this is the low point of my life that a teacher is telling me my hair does not look good enough to keep doing. I'll just say I relate to this too much.

There were several attempts at several popular haircuts between the end of grade school and the start of high school that did not go well. I had a similar curly hair problem. Part in the middle does not work with curly hair. You can't do anything with that. There was the spiked hair look. That didn't work. You can't spike. And then there was also the thing when I was a kid where you had the...

Like kind of mullets kind of, but like some were mullets. But then there was that little thing for a period of time where there wasn't a full tail. There was just like a little tail. There was like in the center back of the hair. When you curly hair, it just curls right up. So like I went through several hair styles. None of them worked. I unfortunately have images that survived that time, which I haven't burned, but I should.

Unlike today where kids have Instagram, so most kids are really on top of their appearance because they can take a thousand pictures at every given moment. And they also have the eye for social media. So there are way fewer awkward pictures than there once were. But we did have mirrors. And I don't understand how we looked that way. And we looked in the mirror every day and we were okay with it. And we thought, this is...

Good. I just don't know how it happened. I think this is really one of the like incredible parts about being a teenager and that I think feels pretty universal to me. Even our producer Morgan is saying the same thing that like her favorite part about teen memories and nostalgia is that we can all immediately identify these phases by our hair, the awful perfume that we wore, the bad eyeliner. And, you know, exactly the music that was popular at the time and where you were and all of that, like everything.

No matter when you grew up or where you grew up, there's this moment where you're figuring out your identity. And it often involves like really big swings that are not the right swings to be taking. Big swings are good, though. I think when I see a kid or even an adult, like just like put it, put yourself out there. Taking a big swing creates vulnerability, creates strength, creates confidence. The trick is, I think, especially in this era of social media, like

It's like there's like a bad side of putting yourself out there where it's to fill some sort of narcissism. And so there's like an unhealthy version of that. And then there's the healthy version of that, which is I'm not afraid. And I'm not smart enough to understand whatever, to be able to articulate what that line is. But I side more on it's healthy than unhealthy. But there is a line where one switches to the other.

I really believe that this is one of the reasons why comedy and humor and laughter are such powerful forces, not for like the professional career one, not the thing that you watch on Netflix, but just like in your daily life, why being having a sense of humor and like cultivating like the ability to laugh is so powerful is because if you can laugh at yourself when you take those big swings just to, you know, continue this thought for a second. People often when they ask me about doing stand up, they like

they often get fixated on like hecklers. And what I tell them is like, actually, like when someone heckles you, it's not a bad, it's not the worst case scenario. Sometimes it can be bad and disruptive, but like the worst case scenario is just like a show where no one showed up or no one's listening. Like a five out of 10 is way worse than a zero out of 10, which is better to tell about later on. And a 10 out of 10 is obviously great because like, that's just a great show. So it's really like,

Throughout all of my life, I'm just trying to avoid that middle where it's like you're not really trying. That feels like the real loss to me. I think so. Whatever is in your palette of jokes, on a given night, maybe you're going to share nine of those in a short set or something like that. Maybe there's more. Who knows? And what order you're going to tell them and which nine you're going to choose change. And you start to shape because you start to see patterns and segues. And they start to feel like

as it develops, you can take these nine disparate ideas and make them seem like you're talking about one thing for 15 minutes. And that it's just like evolved and escalated throughout. That's basically what we do.

with the diaries and the poems that we find in Mortified. It's about finding that stitching. So I have done stand-up, but I also started, I was a fifth grade teacher. And the thing that has influenced my life most from being a fifth grade teacher is the idea of a growth mindset, right? That like almost nothing about who we are is fixed, that you can, you maybe have natural abilities or talents, but that you can build these muscles. And I think a muscle that

Mortified is so great at showing is the muscle of like, you can build the muscle of laughing at yourself. You can build the muscle of like taking this stuff and finding it to be funny and transforming it into a strength rather than a private, shameful weakness. Life is not always kind. You know, it's a very comforting thing. The reminder that

We mess up and like the end of the end of every mortified podcast and stage show, we say, what did we learn? Well, we learned a million things, but most of all, we learned that we are freaks and we are fragile and we all survived. To me, I take all that to heart. It's not just like a pithy thing because I think these are valuable. Like there is a lesson to that. And you could, whether that comes from a thing like mortified or, or whether you can apply that same logic to a million other things in life.

Did I say life weird? I think I did. I think I said laugh. I didn't even notice it as weird, but I love it. I have faith you'll do it better in the future, though. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Growth mindset. One of the first episodes of this show that we did, we interviewed a researcher, Lucy Hone, who's a resilience researcher. And she spent years studying as a psychologist what makes people resilient to tragedies, to disasters and all of that.

And then in her own life, she had this horrible, unthinkable tragedy where her teenage daughter was killed in a car crash. And all of a sudden she had to put the stuff that she'd learned into practice. And she found that like a lot of it kind of felt like bullshit. Like she was like, this is not actually working. But a few things really did work for her. And one of the things that she talked about is the idea that

nobody's life gets to be perfect, right? It's not like the default is things are good and nothing bad ever happens to you. This is a bad thing that happened to you and bad things happen to people and you have to figure out how to move on from that. And I think that there is a way that what you said as your takeaway at the end of Mortified and just the cathartic process of listening to your show or watching it, it really reinforces that idea that like,

Bad, embarrassing, humiliating stuff happens to us all. Like that is what is normal. That is the default. We're not supposed to be perfect and happy and flawless all the time. You know, one of the things that I find valuable in what Lucy was sharing is that one of the ways in which she got through that or are maybe still getting through that difficult time, because that is a very hard thing to work through, is she simply reframed the story for herself.

She found a different way of looking at something in a way that was empowering and the way that helped her survive it. And one of the things that we get to do, which we're not necessarily attempting to do this at the outset, but it's certainly a byproduct of what we do, which is when we work with people on the embarrassing things from their past, the effort of working through that stuff with them

And acknowledging them by maybe laughing at something or noticing something that they didn't realize in their writing. They might not, when they come to us, have the full distance or full awareness of what their own experiences were. And by working with them and having these conversations about stuff in their journals and their past, and by going over and over it again and again as we're trying to figure out how to share this material on stage, there is a...

reframing that naturally happens by trying to figure out what is this story. And when someone can go on stage and share their past in a frame that is empowering to them, there is a catharsis that ultimately happens. It is that survival technique kicking in. That is the way we get through those experiences for ourselves, is trying to find a way to frame it in such a way

that doesn't keep us stuck in the parts that feel too hard to survive. Well, Dave, Neil, thank you so much for being on the show. It was such a pleasure. And thanks for everything you do with Mortified. I'm a huge fan. Thanks. Thank you. This was really fun.

That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guests, Dave Nadelberg and Neil Katcher from Mortified. You can listen to their podcast wherever you're listening to this, and you can find more info from them and dates for their upcoming live shows at getmortified.com. That is getmortified.com. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com.

How to be a better human is put together by a team that always reminds me that my facial hair must serve a purpose. On the Ted side, our team is the never embarrassing, always extremely chill group of Daniela, Bella, Rezzo, Ban, Ban, Chang, Chloe, Shasha, Brooks, Lainey, lot, Antonio, lay, and Joseph to Brian. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas, who on a daily basis experienced secondhand mortification. When they hear the wild statistics, they're like,

and referenceless facts that I try and slip into this show, but that they helpfully remove before you ever hear it. On the PRX side, we are put together by a group of angsty teens putting together this audio diary, and those teens are Morgan Flannery, Noor Gill, Pedro Rafael Rosado, Maggie Gorville, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez.

And of course, thanks to you for listening to our show and making it possible for us to do this as a job. Without you, it would just be the extremely mortifying situation of me recording these files and storing them on my hard drive for my own personal enjoyment and for no one else to hear.

So thank you for making that not be the case. Wherever you're listening to this, share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it. Tell your friends about it. It is really helpful for us. It gets us out to new people. We will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, I hope that you have a very non-awkward, non-mortifying week.