Name: Rainn Wilson Talks Faith And Sobriety
Uploaded: 2025-09-21T13:00:36.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Rainn Wilson Talks Faith And Sobriety' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-21. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Rainn Wilson Talks Faith And Sobriety' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-21. Transcript available.

Let's parlay that. You were talking about your grandmother. I know that you
talk a lot about
faith and you have a podcast. And in your career since then, you're very
upfront about spirituality.
You're Baha'i. I'm Baha'i, yeah. And that's an Abrahamic religion? I know
nothing of Baha'i,
but it's new, right? It is an Abrahamic religion. I would say it's the fourth
major Abrahamic
religion. Yeah. Yeah. How many boys you got globally? Six million. So small.
Small. Yeah.
Six million. Yeah. And you're like the number one? I'm number, I'm like number
two or three.
I've done. What have you found? Dizzy Gillespie was Baha'i? Yeah. Dizzy Gillespie
was Baha'i.
That's not bad. Yeah. Yeah. What's your Hollywood? What's the Baha'i? What's
the thing that you guys
have on lock? What's your... There's like seven Baha'is in Hollywood. No, I
mean saying like our
thing is like we control the media and the banks. Yeah. What do you guys
control? Baha'is control
non-profit international development service work. That sounds evil. Yeah. That
sounds real evil.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My, my, uh, my bro I'm staying with, my homie, my Baha'i
homie's letting
me stay in his apartment in Harlem. He's off working on the international food
program for Rockefeller
Foundation. You know, feeding the, feeding the kids, you know, feeding the kids.
And you guys are
gonna have that... With sorghum. On locky. What's sorghum? I don't even know.
Okay. It's a thing.
What's the, what's like the, what's the book? What's your like, uh, vibe? Like
what language
is it? Cause it's not like a, it's not attached to like an ethnic identity,
right? Like it's,
it's an international faith, but it started in Persia. In Persia, right? Yeah.
So the,
the, you know, the main languages, the main Baha'i writings were, uh, Persian,
Farsi and
Arabic. So when you go to shul or when you go to church, church or no church,
no synagogue,
no temple, no clergy, no clergy. No. So what's, so like, do you like, do you,
do you have songs
or something? There's, there's some songs that people make up and stuff like
that. There's
a bunch of Baha'i books and tablets and prayers. Um, we're here in New York
city. So every year,
all the Baha'is of New York city gather and elect nine Baha'is. They feel like
kind of are
the most wise and spiritual to kind of get on there democratically, uh, run the
affairs
of the Baha'i community in, in New York city. So that, and then there's, but
none of them
have any authority over any other. So it's completely democratically elected,
uh, religious faith.
Are you thinking about running? No campaigning. No campaigning.
Campaigning, uh, is, is illegal in the Baha'i faith. So what, they just have to
think of someone?
Yes. You, you, you literally go into prayer and contemplation and you write
down a silent ballot,
nine names of the people that you want to vote for. So if you get on that, you
have to do it?
Can you decline? You can, you could decline. You can either just stop showing
up or you can decline
for like health reasons and some, you know, some other like hardship reasons.
So how, how does one practice the faith? Um, if there's no church, you can't go
to the place
and like, you know, you, we, we meet and gather at community centers or people's
homes or something
like that. So Baha'is read, uh, from the holy writings in the morning and the
evening.
We say one prayer in the middle of the day and there's a fasting period kind of
similar to Ramadan.
Okay. And, uh, uh, uh, so Baha'is do a fast. These are some of the things, the
Baha'is,
these are what the Baha'is do in your neighborhood.
And your, your parents were Baha'is? In your neighborhood, my parents were Baha'is.
You were raised Baha'i. Yeah. Is it, is it kind of in America is like kind of
hip, a hippie or?
It was kind of a hippie. Yeah. It's this weird amalgam where my parents were Baha'is
kind of
Bohemian Baha'is from the sixties. A lot of people became Baha'is in the sixties
and the seventies
when people were exploring kind of different spiritual paths, like, uh, Cat
Stevens became
a Muslim and you know,
Yusuf Islam, I call him. Yeah. And, uh, Steve Jobs was in a, like a Buddhist,
uh, monastery and,
um, and then there was this influx of all these Persian refugees from the
revolution in 79 and 80.
So you had all these like hippie Baha'is, you know, singing peace and love
songs. And then this
influx of Persian Baha'is. Black BMW, leopard skin couch. Yeah. Yeah. There was,
so there was a very
interesting, uh, coalition and, um, but, uh, yeah, I left the Baha'i faith for
a long time. I didn't
want anything to do like a lot of young people with religion or faith or God or
morality or anything
like that. And, um, you went punk. I went, I went punk. Yeah. Were you punk?
NYU? Yeah. I, well,
86 NYU. What are you listening to? I dyed my, I, I got a buzz cut and dyed my
hair black. Buzz cut and
black. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I look kind of like Henry Rollins a little bit.
Really? Yeah. So what,
what were your bands when you were punk? You know, I wasn't really that
hardcore because I was like
Clash, you know, stuff like that. What's wrong with that, dude? Well, yeah, but
I wasn't like,
Best band. I wasn't like, uh, uh, I wasn't like going all like, uh, Black Flag
and, and you know. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Too scary. Yeah. I don't even hurt. Smelly. A little bit smelly. I
like the,
yeah. My first, uh, my ma, my grandma gave me 20 bucks. I got a three CD set,
self title,
London Calling and, uh, combat rock. Oh, amazing. When I was like 13. Right.
Life changing. That's
what I thought. I was punk too. Yeah. And then my mom was like, you're fucking,
you're an idiot.
You're Jewish. And I was like, I'm a lot of great Jewish punks.
Yeah. Who? Henry Rollins, not Jewish. I can't think of. Jello Bialfro. Ugh.
What is he on about? You know, he's got the same voice as the B-52s guy. No one
says that, right?
It's annoying. That's true. The government doesn't not trust me.
President Reagan. Yeah. It's whatever, dude. Anyway, I wait. So, so I've been
to the Baha'i
temple in, in Haifa, in Israel. You have? Okay. Yeah. It's a new religion. You
guys,
you think about maybe. It's 200 years old. Get the hell out of there.
You don't need to be involved in that. We were there, we were there before,
certainly not before the Palestinians or the Jews. No, no, no. But Baha'is were,
you know, the Baha'i holy land was coming to existence, you know, late 19th
century,
early 20th century. So Baha'is are so like neutral about the whole thing.
Oh, so you guys are wait, wait and see. That's your, that's your vibe.
Baha'is are just trying to survive and keep our holy lands intact. It's a
really
kind of like, please make peace and stop fighting. And it's beautiful. And, uh,
um,
yeah, but it was, you know, it was, it was pretty intense because the war was
raging as
the Baha'i temples were being built and the administrative center was being
built. And then,
then there was the, you know, the 1948 and, and stuff. And we weren't sure,
like,
where, where's the Jewish state in the Palestinian state? And how is that going
to subdivide the Baha'i?
You guys were just gardening. We're just like, yeah, just pruning shrubs.
It's really beautiful that the Baha'i gardens. Yeah.
I mean, the buildings, I was like looking online, the one in India is really
stunning.
The Lotus Temple. The Lotus Temple.
Yes. It's really, you guys have nice places.
Baha'is are very good at building houses of worship. They really are.
Yeah. The, the community, uh, you pay a tithing? Is that how, how do they
afford that?
Um, you donate whatever you want to donate, but there is another thing, um, uh,
called, um,
um, now I'm forgetting the name of it. I'm blanking on the name, but, uh, where
we pay
nine percent of all profit over. It's kind of like a tithe over and above all
essential costs.
So once you pay your, your rent, your insurance and blah, blah, blah, and your
kids tuition and,
you know, cost of living, electricity, cell phone, blah, blah, blah, blah,
anything extra,
you pay nine percent. So you have to like ask your accountant to figure that
out.
I do. That's what I literally do. Craig Tesler. Jew.
Of course. You shouldn't let him near your money. But anyway, uh, no, but like,
so wait,
so I'm just interested because I was reading about it and I was like, I'd
rather just ask you about it,
but there was a guy named Bob, right? The Bob. The Bob.
Which means the gate in Arabic. B-A-B. B-A-B.
And then there was an offshoot that became the Baha'i, right? From the Bobbists.
Yes and no. The, it was a, it was a movement kind of like John the Baptist had
a religious
spiritual movement that then became Christianity and Christianity came out of
John the Baptist's
movement saying like, there is a Messiah that's coming. There's someone greater
than me.
It's going to be, it's going to rock your world. It's going to be amazing. And
then Jesus gets
baptized and sees the dove and the spirit of, of God and, uh, et cetera. It's
kind of similar to that.
So there was this religious movement called Bobbyism followers of the Bob who
claimed to be a new
prophet in this Abrahamic tradition. And he kept saying, there's a Messiah even
greater than me. That's
coming imminently. Yeah. And then Baha'u'llah is the founder of the Baha'i
faith. His name means
the glory of God and Baha'is are Baha'u'llah. Wow. Yeah.
Yeah. Do you guys have beef with, uh, Gary Delabate? He's kind of making, with
Baba Booey?
Baba Booey, Baba Booey. And then there was a third prophet named Baba Booey.
Yeah. Do you believe in God?
I, I, it would be nice, but I don't, it's. Are you a Judist?
Uh, no, I didn't have anything to do with that. No, like, uh, Buddhist, but, uh,
so many Jews.
Oh, I thought you meant Judas. Because the Old Testament is so, like, um, I don't
know.
We didn't do anything. I didn't have anything to do with that.
We, it was the Romans. We just, we may have suggested.
It was. We may have suggested. Maybe you wanted, maybe if you could, maybe
would,
maybe if you would crucify him. I just, I just read this whole thing. I read a
whole book.
Um, about how Jewish, how they did that spin, trying to get it away from the
Romans. And the
reason they did that, the early Christians, and they spun it towards the Jews,
because they feared
the persecution from the, the Roman empires, first in those first 300 years.
And then the whole empire
converted. And then the whole empire converted. But before that, if they had in
their writings,
hey, our Messiah was put to death by the Romans, then the Romans would come in
and be like,
what the fuck? What the fuck? Yeah. Um, are they, so they, so Baha'i like
everyone?
They're nice to everyone? They're nice to everyone. Yeah. Are they, they're
nice to women? Women can be,
yeah. They're nice to gay people or they're nice to, they don't like gay people?
Well,
they like gay people, but. Why do they like gay people? Well, this is, this is
a, this is a,
this is a matter of a great deal of. So you guys are like Rastafarians. You're
like, you're hit,
you're like a spiritual, but you still don't like gay people. There's that
Abrahamic thing about
marriage and men and women and stuff that is still in the Baha'i faith. And I'm,
I really struggle with it. I really personally, I don't know how to do that. I
really struggle with it.
But if I like 90% of the faith, then that's enough. That's enough for me. But
what other parts do you
not like? Um, that's the main one. Yeah. Religion is kind of a pick and choose.
But it's a little
different in the Baha'i faith. It's not like there's no hell. There's no damnation.
Sin doesn't work the
same way. It's kind of like, here's the moral laws, but they're there for your
guidance. So it's,
it's much less, there's none of this kind of like gays going to hell, gay evil,
stuff like that. It's
accept and love everyone. They're just being bad. They're being bad boys.