Name: John Vervaeke | You Made It Weird!
Uploaded: 2024-11-20T15:01:10.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'John Vervaeke | You Made It Weird!' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-11-20. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'John Vervaeke | You Made It Weird!' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-11-20. Transcript available.

John Vervaeke | You Made It Weird!

You made it weird. Yes, you did. You made it weird. You made it weird. With
Pete Holmes.
Yes, you did. You made it weird. What's happening, weirdos? This is John Verveke.
Who is John Verveke,
if you don't know? I didn't know. I was introduced to him by my friend James,
who I love very dearly,
and he said, John, excuse me, Jotten, he's one of the most interesting and
brilliant philosophers
and thinkers that he's ever encountered, and that was enough. I was like, okay.
He's all about
meaning, finding and making meaning, and recovering from the meaning crisis
that I think we can all
feel so many times in our lives, a lack of meaning. Human beings need meaning,
and that is his trade.
He has a new book called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. It is available now,
whomever you get your
books, and you can also check him out on YouTube. I listened to a series of his
lectures on YouTube,
and I really, really enjoyed them as you are about to hear me gush and expound
upon with him in this
conversation. So I hope you enjoy. Not much to plug up top for me other than
coming up November 21st
is my next Largo show here in Los Angeles. Always fun. That's why I try my new
jokes and do some of the
new hour favorites that I'm loving. It's so fun. It's the best show and the
best time. Val always comes
with me. We have incredible guests. We have music. So the next one is on
November 21st in LA, followed
by Indianapolis, Seattle, Portland on December 20th. We are shooting that for a
special. So get tickets
to the late show. Early show is sold out in Portland, December 20th. December
21st is Eugene, Oregon.
That's sold out. And then Phoenix, Arizona. All of those are available on PeteHolmes.com,
and we will be adding
more dates shortly. In the meantime, enjoy this chat with the brilliant, the
engaging, the wise, the fun.
John Bravacic, John Bravacic. Get into it. See, I've been listening to you. And
I love you. I think you're
fantastic. Sorry, I just LA'd you. I said I love you. But you know what I mean.
Like, I deeply resonated
with and felt a kinship. That's a better way to put it. Yeah, right? Instead of
being phony and all that. But
the threshold of a house. So you get me in that place where I start thinking
abstractly and symbolically and finding
all this meaning. And when somebody explained to me that the threshold or like
the mudroom of a house
is to help you transition. Yeah, right. Liminal. Yeah, yeah. That liminal space.
Yeah. So that's where
you're finding me is they did very well. But I was kind of rushing, not rushing,
but I had my daughter
and my wife got like kind of attacked by the dog, our dog. Not in a bad way.
Just sort of overwhelmed.
He's a huge 111 pound. Okay, good. He can overwhelm me and I'm a giant. But so
it was just
like, when I'm doing something, I like it to be the only thing I'm doing. Yeah,
I know what
you mean. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's almost spectrumy. I just I don't like
gear shifting.
I don't want to be my mother's son and my wife's husband. I hate that. I'm just
like, I hate
this. And I don't want to be father and podcast host. And I don't want to be
comedian and friend.
I'll never go to dinner before a show. I hate all those gear shifts. So anyway,
I needed
the magic mind and sort of- Do you need a little bit more time?
No, I don't. To dial in. This is that time. This is our verbal threshold.
Okay, great, great. Are you that way? I'm like a- Yeah, very much. I don't like
when worlds
collide. Yeah. It's the worst. Now, it's interesting about me because by
profession, I actually bridge
between all the disciplines in the world. But like you, I like to keep things
like focused.
It's the illusion. Well, people say that to me too. They go, oh, you do so many
things.
And I go, if you saw my life, you would be bored to tears. Not really. It's
like being
a firefighter. There's moments of peak adrenalized sort of stuff. But there's a
lot of just staring
into space. I loved what you said about our ability to write things down and
then reflect
and get an inventory of our minds. Tell me, what's up?
Are you a copy of the book? Oh, please. Speaking of the written word.
Yeah, that's what it is, exactly. But I love- I'm just going to keep going, if
you don't mind.
What you're doing is, and I think this is a very high compliment because there
is something sort
of wizardly about this. Oh, awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Awakening
from the meaning crisis.
Well, let's talk all about it. I'll put it right here so people can see it. You're
an enlivening individual and-
Thank you. Yeah. Oh, I hope- I'm glad you received that because I think that's
one of the best things you can do is remind people of how many things, not in
an overwhelming way, but how many things are going on.
Oh, right. I'm a product of my culture and my money and my language and living
in California and being a white male or whatever it might be. I've inherited
all these things that I've sort of confessed.
Confused as baseline, but really they're kind of all over the place and wild.
Right. And so like a good educator can really like enliven their, their
students with like, you know, when you see a good movie and you leave and your
pupils are dilated and the whole world looks kind of like you're on a psychedelic.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're literally letting in more light. Yeah.
Anyway, I'm very excited to be talking to you. I could be talking. I could offshoot
on all of that. How a camera lens is like a dilated pupil. Who cares? How are
you today? There's
There's so much going on.
How are you feeling today?
- Great.
I mean, this whole thing has been wonderful.
I mean, I've had just great podcast conversation
after conversation. - Good.
- And then with James, I had two live events yesterday
and live events are super jazzy
because you have the people really there
and you can get the vibe and you can do the Q&A
and everything.
And so I've just been having an amazing time.
- Well, you talk a lot about the flow state.
- Yeah, very much. - And as a public speaker,
you know, making a video, we're making a video,
but I, this is sort of,
I think it's significant that Katie is here.
And so there's a mini merging going on,
but with a live audience, to your point about flow state,
there's a, there's a, what do you, how do you phrase it?
It's like failure is significant.
Like if you fail, it'll matter.
- Yeah, it matters.
- And that is so essential to me as a comedian is
if you fail, it'll hurt you.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- People say, how do you write so much?
So it's a treadmill, like there's a consequence.
If I stop, I'll fall off the treadmill.
Like I have to keep going.
- Right.
I'm going to sit down to write a book, for example,
much harder to motivate myself unless you can really kind of,
that's why I'm interested in the authors
that do public readings of their work,
'cause they want to imbue it with that, those stakes,
like whoops, that paragraph stinks.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And you feel that pain.
So you get that when you do a live event,
you get jazzed, you see?
- Very much, very much, very much.
- And all those cues and it's a little--
- Yeah, and people will often ask you questions
that you haven't quite anticipated.
And that makes you turn and look in a different direction.
- Yeah.
- And I find that very exciting.
- All my favorites say that.
I, so James is, I'm like a non-dual person.
That's something I enjoy.
And the teacher that I love the most is Rupert Spira.
And he gets asked these questions and I'm like,
it's the most annoying question in the world to me.
And the mark of the true teacher is that they seem to be lit up by it.
Like what you just said, it's like,
oh, you're making me think about it in a new way.
Like the dough has been reanimated,
whereas I'm just like, will you shut up?
Like, that's why I'm not a spiritual teacher.
I wouldn't be like, shut up.
I wrote a whole book about that.
You have to like be present and be allow,
allow a rediscovery, I guess.
- Yeah, I mean, I aspire to be like Socrates
and he was always willing to go in and to question
and to listen and to probe and to be opened up
and to open other people up.
So that's really what I,
that inspires me on a daily basis.
- Yeah, I love that.
So this is what I thought.
I don't normally come in and think,
oh, that'll be a fun way to start and talk about springing it.
No, it's not like that.
It's not a challenge.
I thought it would be interesting if you,
with all of the different lenses you have,
tell me what's going on here.
what's, what is this?
- Okay, what is this?
- You're not just reality.
I don't mean consciousness.
I mean like you, John are my guest on a podcast.
You could talk about what's going on with you personally.
You have a projection of how it should go, whatever.
Or you could talk about the framework.
There seems something sort of the metaphor of it.
I don't know, like you're my guest.
- Yeah, yeah.
- We're going to merge.
You know what I mean?
- Sure, sure.
- We want to, what do we want out of it?
I think it's a good microcosm of,
a good podcast is a good little day, you know?
So tell me, tell me, don't let me lead you.
I just thought listening to you, I was like.
- No, no, that's good.
- You could unpack being a guest on a podcast,
driving here, what's going through your mind,
however you want to take that question.
- Okay, well, I'll start because I mean,
well, what's going through my mind right now is,
well, I literally had the sentence run through my mind.
Hey, I like this guy.
- Well that, we're sniffing butts, right?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- That's why I was like, oh, I'm very excited.
I want to show, I want to demonstrate to you
a certain level of like interest in,
all that sort of stuff to peacock to you so you can.
- There's a musicality to you.
Like there's a, like your speech is almost like music.
Like there's rhythms and it's running up and down
and there's shifts in intonation.
- Which is me trying to get you to do that too, actually.
I'm trying to enliven you, right?
- Yeah.
- It's not a deliberate manipulation.
- But it's infectious and I'm picking up on it.
And so, and what that's doing is it's drawing me out
and I'm, well, I'm looking forward to interacting with you.
And I'm very curious.
- Right.
- What is it, what, what does Pete want?
What is he, what is he going to ask me?
What like, what's going to be the angle, the connection?
- Same.
- Yeah.
- That's a good episode when you're looking forward to doing it,
you have an expectation that it could be something special.
- Yeah.
- Spectacular.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- To kind of, here's a metaphor, sweep you off your feet,
like kind of like pick you up, swirl you around.
And then we get left back.
- I'm kind of now experiencing a bit of gratitude
that this is going to be my final thing.
It feels like a nice way of sort of, there's something,
I don't know, sort of relaxing and flowy already
about this interaction.
- I'm glad.
Well, loading up on you, I was like, I feel like,
I feel safe to introduce that.
Sometimes I fantasize.
I'm like, before every episode we should say,
let's remember that we're going to die one day.
Let's, let's invoke the opportunity that we can share.
How many people might hear this?
How long might this live?
Who might be touched?
And all that sort of stuff.
But sometimes it's too embarrassing to talk that way.
People get weirded out.
So keep going.
- Well, I'm interested in how quick your mind moves.
And so what I'm considering is,
I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way.
I usually, my mind moves very fast.
And so I'm usually having to slow things down a little,
the way it feels in my head to,
cause I want to connect with my interlocutor,
but I'm having a feeling like, oh no, no,
this is going to be like when I'm sparring with somebody.
I mean, in the good sense.
- I know you do martial arts.
Yeah, exactly.
When I get off stage, my wife often goes,
remember they haven't heard it before.
She's like,