This is pod Populi podcast for the people, The Great Love Debate. It's
the Great Love Debate, the Great Love Debate. It's a great love tobace.
Hi again everyone, It's Brian Howe. Welcome to The Great Love Debate,
the world's number one dating and relationship podcast since twenty fifteen. You get
just me today. Some of you like that, some of you roll your
eyes. But you're all here, so gather around and stay for a bit
it uh. I was thinking about that the other day because I was producing
some podcasts and helping some podcasters, and it took me almost a hundred episodes
of this show before I was able to do one by myself. I was
able to stand on my own two feet and even quote unquote felt able is
probably a bit of a stretch. Somebody back then, I don't know,
five years ago, canceled at the last minute, and I was sort of
thrown into the deep end and I just had to wing it. And some
of you at that time actually gave me positive reinforcement and the kind of feedback
that I was looking for, that you liked it and you were along for
the ride, even if it was just the two of us. So I
always needed at that time, back in the day when I had sort of
the early feeling out of the Great Love Debate podcast, I always had my
engineer Kalin through the glass and my producer Kako was around for most of them,
and I had this sort of revolving rotation of mostly female voices. I
had Jilly, and I had Kate, and Christina Webber did a bunch and
Laurel did a whole lot of shows. And I just think I needed someone
to play off and I needed someone to say right or you know too,
and I needed him to hit the ball back. So that was probably more
about my insecurity than about creating great content. But that was me then and
that was us then. And I think I needed reaction, and the easiest
and most tangible reaction was always laughter. I needed someone to laugh. And
back when I used to direct a lot of theater, there was always some
funny elements to it, and a lot of the actors and actresses would come
off the stage and they'll be like, they're not laughing. I didn't see
them laugh, and I was to always tell them to relax, because you
know, that doesn't mean they weren't absorbing or appreciating the material if they weren't
overtly laughing. Some people just aren't comfortable laughing in a theater. I know
that when we do our tour shows, it sounds differently when we do it
in a live music venue versus when we do it in a comedy club versus
we do it in a theater. Some people just aren't comfortable laughing in a
theater, so I told them not to worry about that. But I needed
that in this podcast. Back then, I needed someone to laugh, even
if they're just behind the glass. But as we got deeper into these shows
and sort of this collective journey, I think I wanted us all to think.
And I used to tell the actors and actresses back then, if you
had four or five hundred people in a theater and they were all thinking about
something that collectively, that sound, that sort of were metaphorical sound of people
thinking was louder than any reaction I thought you were going to get if people
were just laughing. So as I get into this and what I want to
talk about today, it's not that the laughter fades into the background. It's
that it needs, I think, to be more of a more of a
side course and not totally the driving impetus behind these conversations. So what triggered
all of this? On this sunny morning as I record this, I am
here in the very fine studios of pod Popula podcast for the people, I
am at the one in Scottsdale, Arizona. And if you have listened to
this podcast before when I've been recording in Scottsdale, you know that I loved
being in Scottsdale. I love almost everything about Scottsdale. I love that I
can just say Scottsdale and not have to say Arizona. And people are like,
oh, I know Scottsdale because it's not that big a place. People
know it are there about fifty days a year when you or me should not
come to Scottsdale because you would not love Scottsdale. Probably Scottsdale July and August
is no picnic, but the rest of the time Scottsdale. And you're like,
I didn't tune into the Great Love Debate podcast to listen to the Greater
Phoenix Area Board of Tourism. I get that, but it leads a little
more into what I want to get into on a deeper level. And sometimes
we go into a deeper level around here who knew back in the day when
we were just chuckling through the glass. So what do I love about it
here? And how will that get into what I want to talk about today?
And somebody asked me that what do you love about Scottsdale? Are you
a fan of the desert? Do you love cactus? Do you love you
know, indigenous creatures that live here? And I'm like, I love it
because it's silly. And I'm not sure the Chamber of Commerce wants to lead
with that. They probably want us to focus on the vibrancy of the desert
and the history of the Old West and the golf and whatever. But really,
the thing that makes this place this place is how silly it is.
There are now the third most bachelorette parties in the country here, and at
some point, as I record this pretty early in the morning, a group
of girls is going to pedal by on a bike, sucking on drinks and
wearing matching T shirts and go whoo as they ride by. Bachelorette parties are
about being silly, and dating is about being silly, which is why I
love all of this, the dating conversation and the Scottsdale. They both have
a heaping quotient of silly, and they should first and second on the Bachelorette
party list. Vegas and Nashville two places that I also love and two places
that are about as silly as you can get, and I like those places.
Beverly Hills is a silly place, Boston is a silly place. Miami,
Atlanta, And that all bodes well for the dating landscape. People that
show places that show up year after year on our Worst Cities in America to
Find Love list, they lack that, they lack that sense of silly.
Philadelphia, It's dreadful, dour, Denver, doll Is, dirt, Seattle,
San Francisco, New York. And you might be like, no,
New York is wonderful. It can be, and it has been. It's
got plenty of wonder There's plenty of wonder New York City. But I think
it lacks whimsy, And at least in twenty twenty three it does nineteen sixty
three New York, you know, Audrey Hepburn, New York, maybe twenty
three not so much. And whimsy is rooted in silly. And you're like,
well, we're talking about silly for forty five minutes. Today I'm like,
not quite. So we're gonna go down the rabbit hole on all of
this and what it's about and what it ultimately means after this quick break,
So stick with me. The answers are just six seconds away at most,
I promise, and we are back. And why do I bring up all
this besides being amused by some drunk girl in a bad wedding veil sucking on
a penis strad at eleven o'clock in the morning, Because one of the things
that comes up the most at all of our live shows for years and years,
hundreds of shows is the women saying over and over that they need a
guy who is funny. Funny, and funny is first on the list for
the majority of women what they're looking for above smart, above stable, above
wealthy, above handsome or kind or anything else. Funny overwhelmingly is what they
say they want. And my first instinct is to defend that because by any
objective standard, I'm pretty fucking funny, and I got paid a lot of
money by top comedy clubs in the world to go there and make people laugh
for ninety minutes. But part of me wasn't ever completely comfortable leading with the
funny, or at least putting it, you know, sort of first on
my metaphorical resume, more deep therapy here, because my parents thought funny was
quote unquote a waste of my smarts, and then only only serious people can
be successful. And when someone would ever say to me in life or one
of my shows, they go, oh my god, you're so funny,
I would I would flinch a little because I would hear their voices, Mom
and dad, this is a waste of your time and our money. But
a second part of me, when it comes up at the shows, I
react to a little differently, in the sense of to defend the guys or
to look out for them at least. But what if he's not funny?
Then what Because these guys are sitting there in the audience and they hear women,
it's sort of like the tall thing they you know, the women say,
oh my god, I need a tall guy, and half the room
is under five to nine, and they're like, what am I supposed to
do with this information? Well, the same thing happens with funny. The
women say I want funny, I want funny, I want funny. So
I hear this, and I'm thinking about the guys, Well, then what
so I tend to scratch a little deeper on it, and it kind of
reveals itself that it really isn't about funny, not entirely. You guys have
heard me say over and over that every woman only wants three things, and
every woman wants the same three things, and everything else is just a subset
of or tangential too tangential English major. Everything else is just a subset or
tangential to these three things. She wants a man who makes her feel special,
she wants a man to make her feel sexy, and she wants a
man to make her feel safe. And safe is always the tough one.
It's about trust and sharing and honesty and strength and vulnerability and all the things
that don't come readily or easily to a man. And the funny can give
those Being fun he can make her feel special, and it can make her
feel sexy, for sure. The laughing triggers all kinds of things, but
I'm not sure it can make her feel safe and safe is the most important
one. So you're like, where are you going with this? I'm going
back to the silly. The silly's different from funny, and I'm going to
make the argument that silly, of all things, can make you feel safe
and you're what you're like. What silly's not about is about not taking things
seriously. It's about being foolish. It's about using poor judgment. These girls
that are ride by and go whoo lots of poor judgment in their immediate future.
But I think silly can calm you. I think it can ground you.
Silly can make you forget a lot of stresses. Silly comes from the
creating of an environment between two people where confidence can flourish and your cares won't
overwhelm you, and they might even disappear. So I bring up Adam Sandler
a lot in this podcast, because Adam Sandler gives a lot of guys a
lot of hope for acting a certain way and getting a certain result in his
movies. But he doesn't get the girls at his rom coms when he is
funny. It's usually funny in the first part. He gets them when he
turns into silly, because silly is one step from being sweet, and the
silly leads to a song, and the sweet is what wins the day always
and You're like, are you adding silly and sweet to your holy trinity of
special, sexy and safe. I'm not, but I'm saying that those two
things are at least a big part of the ingredients. It isn't necessarily about
funny getting her to laugh. It's getting her to smile, which we've done
whole episodes about. It's getting her too calm, it's getting her to be
distracted in a good way. I think it's getting her to relax. I
think it's getting her to share. And I think it's getting her to see
more of you and I think more of herself. And it's about remembering what
it's like to behave and act and feel and think in a way that it
doesn't matter what anyone else thought of her, only what you think of her
in the best possible way. Giggling is silly and giggling is sweet. If
you can't make her laugh, and many many guys cannot make her laugh,
that doesn't make you ineligible to her, despite what she claims or publicly says
that our shows or really thinks, because she hasn't really thought it through,
and as she thinks it through, she'll want you to be confident and calming
and caring and present, and she wants you to create this atmosphere where she
can be herself, which is always on her very best day, in the
very best light, probably a little silly, which is why people love it
here the Scott's Dazzle. It's why these girls are going around this town and
having such fun and feeling so free. It's not about the boys, and
it's not about the marriage to calm and the life ahead and the realities of
the future. It's about being in the moment, and in the moment,
being silly almost always wins. The silliest group of girls I think are probably
eleven and twelve, that little window right before the boys come into play and
the stresses of life, and they just like, what are they doing?
That doesn't really go aways. Later in life, you still have that part
in you just turn it off. And so when I'm talking about being silly,
it's a weird time where something can be both liberating and grounding simultaneously.
It's liberating that you can be and do anything you want without fear of judgment
or the specter of regret. And it's grounding because it's rooted in who you
always were, your core your essence and those feelings. So are you like,
are you saying laughter doesn't matter? Of course not. I'm saying being
funny isn't necessarily about being funny. So this is partially to get the girls
to think what is it really about? And it's partially to give the guys
some hope that if they aren't clever and witty and full of great jokes and
lines, that they still have a shot if they can tap into the silly.
That doesn't mean they need to dress like a clown. It's more likely
to frighten her. And that doesn't mean they need to tickle her and unexpectedly
she would hate that. Don't do that. It might just be taking her
hand and twirling around on the sidewalk in the middle of nothing. Or it
might make be taking two oranges in the grocery store and turning them into the
gurrant giant eyeballs. She'll laugh, She'll think, she'll think you're an idiot,
but you'll find it silly, and you you rolled your eyes, ladies
when you're listening to that, But you know you'd smile, and you'd probably
even laugh, because the sillies a gateway to that too. It might mean
doing a bad attempt at an accent for no real reason. Bad accents are
silly. My producer Keiko, back in the day, she'd always say,
please stop doing your Boston accent. It's terrible. But she'd always be on
the brink of cracking up every time I'd try it, because it was silly.
And I think silly wins the day. So if you weren't born funny,
there probably isn't a path to be funny unless you go down a really
dark path, because lots of funny comes from those shadows. Also, comedians
are absolutely miserable, and you don't want that and you don't want them.
So taking a stand up or a improv class definitely worth it. Everybody should
do it because it'll help your confidence in communication hugely valuable. But it's not
going to make you funny. You're probably not suddenly going to be funny at
forty years of age, forty five years of age. We're at twenty five
or thirty five or forty five or seventy five. You can be silly because
you are silly, because you were born silly. We all were. I
think the giggle is still there. I think the impishness I think the smile
and the imagination, and people are always like, well, who's creative person?
How do you be creative? We all are if you can dream,
and we all dream. You have imagination. The things that your imagination comes
up with while you're asleep, you have those and that's where you have to
work with and you can put it to work. That's silly. So every
time you say, ladies, you want funny, I think you really want
that feeling you had with your girlfriends, either recently or long ago. You
know, Atlantis Morris Set went on a tour I think last summer, and
a lot of women I know were like, oh my god, I can't
wait to go that. It wasn't about Atlantis. It was about reliving a
time in the nineties when they just could do anything. And it's the same
way people of all ages sing their asses off at a Taylor Swift concert,
or they spend a ridiculous amount of time worrying about what was happening with Ross
and Rachel back in the day or whatever the characters are on Big Bang Theory.
Then I don't watch, but a lot of people do, and you
absolutely would want love to share some of that feeling. Those feelings with a
guy one guy. Not the Taylor Swift and the friends stuff, but the
feeling how ridiculous it all is to care. If you care that much,
it feels silly. That's a good thing. That's what you really want to
care about. Funny sometimes a window to a dark place, but silly is
a gateway to the vulnerable. And if you find that in the guy,
I think you'll find that in yourself. And then I think you'll find that
in the relationship. And I think if you find that, you're gonna laugh
plenty too, and you'll probably love plenty too, and you'll be just fine.
So maybe you thought me babbling on about this for a while was a
bit silly. Too bad. That's a good thing. So maybe I'll go
get on one of those bikes and right around Scottsdale and go whoa. The
girls will be like, don't do that anyway. Shoot me an email funny,
sad, serious or silly Great Love debate at gmail dot com. I
want to hear your thoughts. I want to hear your feedback. I've got
a very different interesting episode coming up, I believe next week two weeks.
Listen to all of them. It's like picking a favorite child. But one's
gonna be like, huh, that's a weird guest. He had on to
talk about something very out of the box. Do that. Two shows I
am definitely doing if you want to go check out our live to our schedule.
One is right here in Phoenix, Arizona. I've not done a show
here since two thousand and maybe sixteen. I've done one in Phoenix. I've
done one at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. Not a silly venue,
it's very serious venue. I'm not sure it's such a good show.
So i want another crack at the Valley. And I'm doing one at good
Night's Comedy Club in Raleigh, North Carolina. It's a makeup show that got
lost in COVID. I do owe them one. They did talk me into
doing it. It'll be on sales shortly. Great Love Debate dot Com Like,
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we never stopped making love. See you next time. The Greatest Love
Debate. It's the greatest Love Debate, the Greatest Love Debate. It's the
greatest love debate,