Speaker 1: This is pod Popular Podcast for the People, The Great
Speaker 1: Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate, the.
Speaker 2: Great Love Debate. It's a great love to hi again,
Speaker 2: Everyone's Brian Howie. Welcome to the Great Love Debate, the
Speaker 2: world's number one dating a relationship podcast since twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: I am here in the very fine and fancy studios
Speaker 2: of Pod Popular Podcast for the People. I am at
Speaker 2: the one in uh Cleve. I mean it's just outside
Speaker 2: of Cleveland. It's about ten miles from downtown Cleveland Lynnhurst, Ohio,
Speaker 2: and it is one of the newest ones.
Speaker 3: It is in a lovely complex called Legacy Village.
Speaker 2: And I gotta say, you know, you guys who listen
Speaker 2: to the show, you know, I'm always a fan of Cleveland.
Speaker 2: But when it is nice, which is not a lot,
Speaker 2: it's very nice. I say that about Chicago a lot
Speaker 2: that if it was seventy degrees everywhere for one day
Speaker 2: on that day, Chicago wins. It's not seven degrees nearly
Speaker 2: enough in Chicago or Cleveland.
Speaker 3: So neither one of them win a lot.
Speaker 2: But when they do, they do a little bit of
Speaker 2: a news dump here, and it's a little bit of
Speaker 2: a different show. I'm gonna explain some things and whatever. So,
Speaker 2: as you guys know, this podcast came out of the
Speaker 2: Great Love Debate Tour, and that tour came out of
Speaker 2: my book I wrote, called How to Find Love in
Speaker 2: Sixty Seconds that I no longer stand behind ninety percent
Speaker 2: of that book because I hadn't.
Speaker 3: Done the tour yet.
Speaker 2: So this the tour started January fourteenth, twenty fourteen, at
Speaker 2: the Center Stage Theater in Santa Barbara.
Speaker 3: It was supposed to be a promotional stunt, a one
Speaker 3: night event.
Speaker 2: To promote the book, and that was supposed to be it.
Speaker 2: I did not even host it. I was on the stage.
Speaker 2: My good friend and prolific best selling author Joe Piazza
Speaker 2: did the honors of hosting. I was just one of
Speaker 2: a handful of people on the stage. It was supposed
Speaker 2: to be just a quick little promotional stunt, talk about love,
Speaker 2: dating relationships, and that would be that. Well, thatned into
Speaker 2: something else, and people heard about how it went in
Speaker 2: Santa Barbara, and so two weeks later I got booked
Speaker 2: at I think it was the Long Beach Performing Arts
Speaker 2: Center in Long Beach, California. And then I did another one,
Speaker 2: and then I thought, hey, maybe let's there's something here.
Speaker 2: And I started barnstorming pretty much city to city. I
Speaker 2: went to Boston, worked my way through the East Coast,
Speaker 2: and one thing led to another end. And you know,
Speaker 2: eleven seasons of this later four hundred and fifty something
Speaker 2: live shows, and I think one hundred and sixty four cities,
Speaker 2: a dozen countries, we have done the Great Love Debate
Speaker 2: live show all over the world, thousands of people, thousands
Speaker 2: of laughs, perspectives that the famous and the not so.
Speaker 3: Famous coming together to share.
Speaker 2: Or look for something special, something great. And I always
Speaker 2: said my role in that show was to raise the
Speaker 2: questions and not necessarily give the answers, And even on
Speaker 2: this podcast, my job has always been to raise the questions.
Speaker 2: I just think for that live show and how long
Speaker 2: I've been doing it, and the and the toll that
Speaker 2: the travel takes, and I already travel a lot for
Speaker 2: my regular life, I think it's time. I think that
Speaker 2: I need to step off the stage so the and
Speaker 2: I know people who listen to this podcast a lot
Speaker 2: are probably going to say that I have had more
Speaker 2: more finales than than Elton John.
Speaker 3: But I think this really is it.
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure how many shows I'm gonna do
Speaker 2: between between the time I'm recording this and the time
Speaker 2: of the last show, which I'm telling you right now,
Speaker 2: They're probably gonna be a couple more in there, because
Speaker 2: I owe some shows to some cities. But the last one,
Speaker 2: the tour finale, will be November sixth at the Boca
Speaker 2: black Box Center for the Arts in Boca Raton, Florida.
Speaker 2: So you might be like, that's weird. Why are you
Speaker 2: Why did you start in Santa Barbara and why'd.
Speaker 3: You end in Florida? Well?
Speaker 2: I like the sunshine, but why am I choosing to
Speaker 2: end it there. I've done more shows than anywhere in
Speaker 2: New York City. I have done residencies in Minneapolis, Chicago, La.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of places where I have done bigger shows,
Speaker 2: more shows, you know, And this is I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think it's about three hundred and fifty seats. It's
Speaker 2: not our biggest venue. I'm not even sure it's my
Speaker 2: favorite venue. And I'm not even sure the best shows
Speaker 2: are in Florida because they are particularly nutty group there,
Speaker 2: and sometimes the conversation that happens at these shows get
Speaker 2: a little bit out of control. But why am I
Speaker 2: picking to choose it there. The first time I played
Speaker 2: that theater, it was October twenty nineteen, and on my
Speaker 2: way to Lax out of Los Angeles to fly to
Speaker 2: that show, I had to do a news thing in
Speaker 2: the morning. I was on the back of a lift
Speaker 2: on my way, about two miles from the airport, and
Speaker 2: we got hit from behind. And it was just a terrible,
Speaker 2: terrible car accident. And if you go back to this
Speaker 2: podcast and listen to somewhere mid October, I did.
Speaker 3: A podcast about it maybe a week later.
Speaker 2: It was a really really rough time and rough set
Speaker 2: of injuries, but I didn't know how badly I was hurt,
Speaker 2: you know. I went in an ambulance, went to the
Speaker 2: emergency room. They're like, oh, maybe you.
Speaker 3: Broke a rib, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't process the pain properly, and so I
Speaker 2: got back on an airplane the next day and I
Speaker 2: did a show forty eight hours later at that theater.
Speaker 2: I got on the stage after this awful car in
Speaker 2: unfathomable amounts of pain, and I had twenty one broken bones,
Speaker 2: as it turns out, thirteen broken ribs, broken leg, broken vertebrae,
Speaker 2: broken scapula internal injuries. But I was stupid and I
Speaker 2: was stubborn, and I didn't know how badly I was hurt.
Speaker 2: But I got through it. And I've probably played that venue,
Speaker 2: I don't know, four or five times since. Maybe once
Speaker 2: a year I go back there, And until recently, I
Speaker 2: always had sort of a bit of PTSD every time
Speaker 2: I went back there, because I would remember that night
Speaker 2: and I remember the pain, and I thought I was
Speaker 2: just gonna die on a stage. But I never want
Speaker 2: to cancel a show, despite all those shows that canceled
Speaker 2: on me during the COVID days. But and I did it,
Speaker 2: and I survived it, and I just think surviving that
Speaker 2: situation and that night gave me a warm sense of
Speaker 2: pride and fondness and gratitude for that theater and for
Speaker 2: that community and for that experience, and for doing the
Speaker 2: Great Love Debate in general.
Speaker 3: Like I.
Speaker 2: Just realized how much I enjoyed doing that show, that
Speaker 2: I was willing to do it no matter what. And
Speaker 2: you know, that was five something years ago, and probably
Speaker 2: haven't done as many shows since.
Speaker 3: I know, I definitely haven't done as many shows since, because,
Speaker 3: as I just.
Speaker 2: Said, the world shut down for a while kind of
Speaker 2: killed the momentum, But I'm like, you know, that was
Speaker 2: the hardest. People tell me all the time what was
Speaker 2: the hardest show to do? And they always ask me
Speaker 2: in terms of crowd, or in terms of feistiness, or
Speaker 2: in terms of location or whatever. That was the hardest
Speaker 2: show and that. But like I said, I don't look
Speaker 2: back on that badly. I look at back on that
Speaker 2: like we did this, and we meaning me, the crowd,
Speaker 2: the people on the stage. I mentioned it at the
Speaker 2: beginning that I was kind of playing hurt and not
Speaker 2: medicated though I probably should have been, and the crowd
Speaker 2: got me through it, and the energy of what we
Speaker 2: do all of the time at the Great Love Debate
Speaker 2: got me through it. And I just feel really good,
Speaker 2: as you know I have I you know, sometimes record
Speaker 2: this podcast that pod popular in Boca Riton, Florida. That
Speaker 2: was my first time in that city, and so there's
Speaker 2: a lot of things about that that I'm like, you know, what,
Speaker 2: if I'm gonna wrap that up, They've always been good
Speaker 2: to me. Wrap this tour up. That's where I want
Speaker 2: to do it. So that's where I'm going to do it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna talk a little bit more about a few
Speaker 2: more things. I would just want to open up with
Speaker 2: that I take a quick break because we still have
Speaker 2: to pay for things like airplane tickets to Pokerito in
Speaker 2: Florida to do shows, and we will be back right
Speaker 2: after this, and we are back, so you know, as
Speaker 2: I said, you know, my job was to raise the
Speaker 2: questions and not give the answers for the live show.
Speaker 2: I think I have too many of the answers, not
Speaker 2: nearly all of the answers, like I will never have that,
Speaker 2: but I think enough of it that when I go
Speaker 2: into a city, if it's not a new city, I
Speaker 2: don't quite have as much curiosity on it as I
Speaker 2: used to. I sort of know where all the bodies
Speaker 2: are buried. Like if I do a show in Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: I know where a lot of the dating bodies are
Speaker 2: buried there, and not that that doesn't make it any
Speaker 2: more fun and the audience obviously doesn't know. But a
Speaker 2: little bit of my mojo to work through is restricted
Speaker 2: by the format of the evening. You kind of have
Speaker 2: to Every show is different, every crowd's different, every night's different,
Speaker 2: but there's certain beats in a theater show, comedy show,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to say that you have to beat
Speaker 2: so you have to get through so that you see
Speaker 2: that the show starts here and the show ends here,
Speaker 2: and you have to end in sort of a hopeful
Speaker 2: place despite ninety minutes of bitching and winding and dating disasters.
Speaker 3: We have to get through it.
Speaker 2: And like I said, I don't want to ever make
Speaker 2: it seem like everything is different, but a lot of
Speaker 2: the things that are raised hit a certain format. There
Speaker 2: is something to the show, and not that I'm ever
Speaker 2: restricted by that, because within that context it can go
Speaker 2: in any sort of direction. But I don't quite have
Speaker 2: the freedom. So people are like, well, how can you
Speaker 2: quit the live show? But you're still going to do
Speaker 2: the podcast. The podcast allows anything to happen. And we
Speaker 2: have done slightly more podcast episodes than we have done
Speaker 2: live shows, which tells you how many live shows I
Speaker 2: did back in the day.
Speaker 3: I was always on the road. But the podcast can
Speaker 3: talk about anything. I can talk about this.
Speaker 2: I am not so restricted. I can talk to one
Speaker 2: person about one experience. I can do that, and you're
Speaker 2: not inhibited by people who paid, you know, fifty five
Speaker 2: bucks and two drinks to come see it live.
Speaker 3: So that is the difference.
Speaker 2: That that I feel uninhibited and I feel that there's
Speaker 2: no restrictions on this podcast, which is why this podcast
Speaker 2: is going to go as long as I forever. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm never gonna gonna wanna stop talking about this stuff.
Speaker 2: People say that to me a lot, like do you
Speaker 2: ever run out of things to talk about on the podcast? No,
Speaker 2: I would be talking about this anyway. There's so many
Speaker 2: ways to skin this apple, and so many layers to
Speaker 2: this and so many things to revisit. And the world
Speaker 2: changes all the time, and I change all the time,
Speaker 2: and and and and.
Speaker 3: That's another part of it. You know.
Speaker 2: Somebody said to me when I when I mentioned that
Speaker 2: everything I just brought about, like why I booked it
Speaker 2: in Bukton. I talked to it to the guy who
Speaker 2: runs the theater there. He's a really good guy, and
Speaker 2: I explained that to him and he goes, you're kind
Speaker 2: of emotional about this, and I'm like, I didn't have emotion, Sadly,
Speaker 2: before I started doing the Great Love Debate, I really didn't.
Speaker 2: I really lived in a emotionally walled off space and
Speaker 2: I was never too high and I was never too low.
Speaker 2: And even when we started the Great Love debate. It
Speaker 2: was a lot more Jerry springerish, It was a lot
Speaker 2: more men against the women.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I produced a play once called Boys Dumb, Girls Crazy.
Speaker 2: It had a lot of elements of that in it,
Speaker 2: And early on, I think a lot of people left
Speaker 2: those shows, not that they weren't fun and funny, but
Speaker 2: feeling a little bit more validated in their misery. And
Speaker 2: I didn't want that. And somewhere along the line, I
Speaker 2: didn't make a con just changed to change it. I
Speaker 2: think I changed. I started to hear people sharing and
Speaker 2: revealing and talking about things, especially the men that I
Speaker 2: was like, I'm the weirdo here. I'm the one who
Speaker 2: has not having proper relationships. I'm the one who who
Speaker 2: I was like a dating zzy girls like me, what's
Speaker 2: the problem here? I was the one who is not
Speaker 2: putting all my chips on the table and all of
Speaker 2: these you know experience I've had in relationships, and my
Speaker 2: various girlfriends would say like, you just don't understand what
Speaker 2: I'm talking about, do you? And I would answer and
Speaker 2: I don't, I don't know what you're talking about. Well,
Speaker 2: doing the Great Love Debate made me understand.
Speaker 3: It made me open.
Speaker 2: Up and all of these people in all of these
Speaker 2: theaters and comedy clubs and live music venues all over
Speaker 2: the world, and we have done this show in Sydney
Speaker 2: and Tel Aviv and Mantra all and all kinds of locations.
Speaker 2: Made me have to go deeper and drove me into
Speaker 2: therapy and made me have to think what am I missing?
Speaker 3: What am I not sharing? How am I not growing?
Speaker 3: What have I missed in my life? That was somehow unfulfilling.
Speaker 3: And that's what doing these shows did.
Speaker 2: Just hearing people mestick a microphone in their face and
Speaker 2: say stand the fuck up. And I would say that
Speaker 2: I'm like, get the fuck up, Like, have you've been
Speaker 2: to one of our shows? I'm kind of a dick.
Speaker 2: But that's what you have to do to wrangle hundreds
Speaker 2: of people to reveal good, bad, funny, strange, painful in
Speaker 2: front of you know, they're dating peers.
Speaker 3: For lack of a better term.
Speaker 2: And that's not always easy for some people. Like we
Speaker 2: do shows in you know, a place like San Jose, California,
Speaker 2: or Silicon Valley or Portland or Seattle of course, where
Speaker 2: there's a lot of at best social, awkward and introverted
Speaker 2: to people who are not likely to share one on one,
Speaker 2: much less in front of people in the room. And
Speaker 2: I am pretty ballsy and a little bit alpha on
Speaker 2: that I get the fuck up and share. And if
Speaker 2: they were willing to do that, and if I was
Speaker 2: willing to putting people in a position to say, you've
Speaker 2: got to talk about this in front of people.
Speaker 3: Then I had to be willing to do that too.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't just do that, you know, one on
Speaker 2: one or in the privacy of a therapist office. I
Speaker 2: had to reveal, you know, a lot of my own
Speaker 2: stuff I had, you know, you've heard me talk about
Speaker 2: in the past.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, I never trusted my parents' love for each other,
Speaker 2: which means I didn't trust their love for me, which
Speaker 2: it means I didn't trust the concept of it.
Speaker 3: So the fact that I'm doing the great love debate,
Speaker 3: a lot of that is rooted in all of this.
Speaker 2: I got interviewed for for Nightline on ABC a couple
Speaker 2: of years ago, and uh, after the interview was over,
Speaker 2: the reporter, I forget her name, was it, Deborah Roberts.
Speaker 3: Maybe she goes, can I ask you something?
Speaker 2: And I said, yeah, and she goes, you talk about
Speaker 2: this as you know, you call the Great Love Debate
Speaker 2: the world's greatest social experiment on love, and it's in
Speaker 2: your press materials and all that, and I go, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah it is, and she goes, is this whole thing
Speaker 2: about you? And at first I thought that the answer
Speaker 2: to that felt too way, too self centered and if
Speaker 2: that was the case, but I had to think about it,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I think this is about me, and
Speaker 2: I think raising the questions of everybody else really is
Speaker 2: about raising the questions of myself.
Speaker 3: And so when I say that that I know the answer.
Speaker 2: Is to a lot of the questions, well, I have
Speaker 2: had to do that work and I have had to answer.
Speaker 2: So if anybody asked me a question, you know, nine
Speaker 2: years ago or the beginning of this tour, I would
Speaker 2: have given him the answer most likely to elicit a laugh.
Speaker 2: I would have given them a snarky answer. People that
Speaker 2: would ask me then they would stand up in the
Speaker 2: show and they're like, how come you're not married yet?
Speaker 2: And I would say, the day's not over. That's a
Speaker 2: fun answer, but it's not the real answer. It's because
Speaker 2: I wasn't willing to or able to or ready to
Speaker 2: or put it in a situation where I'm like, ah,
Speaker 2: this is what all of those people were talking about,
Speaker 2: this is what they mean, this is what this show means.
Speaker 2: And so doing this over and over and over in
Speaker 2: different cities and you know, different crowds, different types of places,
Speaker 2: and but the through line in it was everybody had
Speaker 2: some fear, everybody had some pain. Everybody wasn't willing to
Speaker 2: go into that mental, physical, emotionally scary place outside of
Speaker 2: their comfort zone to seek the answers. And so this
Speaker 2: was me doing this. I spent you know, twenty something
Speaker 2: years in show business, writer, director, producer before I ever
Speaker 2: became the talent. And the Great Love Debate suddenly I
Speaker 2: had to be the talent. And you know, people ask
Speaker 2: me all the time like, oh, you've done stand up comedy.
Speaker 2: No I have not performed, No I have not. I
Speaker 2: hid behind other people's talents and put my voice through
Speaker 2: words and screenplays and plays and TV shows. And I
Speaker 2: was never comfortable being out front, Like even said even
Speaker 2: the first Great Love Debate, it was never that.
Speaker 3: And then.
Speaker 2: The longtime producer of this show and maybe the smartest
Speaker 2: person and most in tune with who I am and
Speaker 2: what I'm doing. The two time Emmy Award winning Keko.
Speaker 2: She said, she forced me. She'sai' this is you. It's
Speaker 2: a great love to baby with Brian Howie, Like this
Speaker 2: is it. You've got to put your name to this,
Speaker 2: You've got to own this. You've got to understand that
Speaker 2: if you're asking this of other people, you have got
Speaker 2: to be the conduit. And so a lot of times
Speaker 2: being the conduit, you know, that puts me in a
Speaker 2: position where I have to really think, and I have
Speaker 2: to really feel, and I have really and all these
Speaker 2: things that I never done. And you have a really
Speaker 2: nice life coasting around and especially in show business, without
Speaker 2: putting yourself in a position to get hurt, without putting
Speaker 2: yourself in a position to put.
Speaker 3: All your chips on the table.
Speaker 2: And doing the Great Love Debate has made me put
Speaker 2: my chips on the table. And because in order to
Speaker 2: be authentic for the audience and not just make them laugh,
Speaker 2: it's one thing to make people laugh, it's a whole
Speaker 2: other thing to make people think. It is hard to
Speaker 2: make people think, and it's another thing to make people feel.
Speaker 2: I to do all these things myself, and so that's
Speaker 2: what the Great Love Debate has done for me. So
Speaker 2: That's why I feel like, am I going to misdoing
Speaker 2: this show? Every time I've said this before, like I
Speaker 2: don't want to do this show anymore, travel and then
Speaker 2: I do it and I'm like, oh my god, that
Speaker 2: was the greatest night. I can't believe that I would
Speaker 2: even consider not doing it anymore. I considered this. This
Speaker 2: is some thought going into this, or some timing going
Speaker 2: into this.
Speaker 3: It's just time. You know. I wanted to be like, oh,
Speaker 3: last year.
Speaker 2: Ten years, nice bookend whatever, and then you know, creeped
Speaker 2: into an eleventh because they call and they offer and
Speaker 2: stuff to turn down, money and opportunity. But I wanted
Speaker 2: to be honest about it, like this will be our
Speaker 2: last show. Barring changing my mind. The Rolling Stones are
Speaker 2: still going around. But so there might be some iterations
Speaker 2: of this. There might be some special live podcasts which
Speaker 2: I will do. So I don't know if I'm completely
Speaker 2: putting down the microphone in front of crowd altogether, but
Speaker 2: this version of our traditional great love Debate show, it's
Speaker 2: time to put an exclamation point on the sentence. So
Speaker 2: I want to share that all of you guys are
Speaker 2: a larger Every single one of these episodes probably gets
Speaker 2: a larger audience than dozens of those shows combined. But
Speaker 2: I want to share it, so it's breaking news. I've
Speaker 2: kind of hinted at it before. You guys know, at
Speaker 2: the end of these shows, I say, oh, my live
Speaker 2: tour schedule, check it out, and I'm not quite as
Speaker 2: enthusiastic about it where I used to rattle off the
Speaker 2: next fifteen shows in the various accents of the city
Speaker 2: that I was traveling to, like Boston.
Speaker 3: But that's it. So this podcast.
Speaker 2: Will continue, obviously over and over and over. Tickets around
Speaker 2: sale for that show and possibly some others in between.
Speaker 3: Great Loovedebate dot.
Speaker 2: Com, shoot me an email, Great Love Debate at gmail
Speaker 2: dot calm. If you make me an offer, I can't
Speaker 2: refuse to say no, you got to do one more
Speaker 2: show in Dallas.
Speaker 3: I'll think about it. Please like, share, follow, and review
Speaker 3: this podcast.
Speaker 2: Your reviews, even when I get off the stage, will
Speaker 2: always mean a lot in the podcasting ecosystem, because, as
Speaker 2: always at The Great Love Debate, we.
Speaker 3: Never stopped making love. See you next time.
Speaker 1: The Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate.
Speaker 2: The Great Love Debate.
Speaker 3: It's a Great Love Debate.