How Gary Gulman Turned Depression Into Comedy Gold | Better in Person

**Stephen Dubner** (0:02)
Hey there, Stephen Dubner. This is the third episode of a new video interview show we're making called Better in Person. Today's guest is the comedian Gary Gulman. You are going to love him, I guarantee. If you want the full video experience, go to the Freakonomics YouTube channel. It looks good on your phone, but it looks great on a bigger screen. You can also watch it on Apple podcasts. Just search for Better in Person.
But we also made this audio version for the Freakonomics feed in case you don't want to be distracted by the video. We aim to please.
As always, thanks for listening, and now thanks for watching too.

**Gary Gulman** (0:45)
What do you have to understand about show businesses? The hyperbole is at such a high level that if they love you, it means they don't want to work with you, but they think you're pretty good. If they're obsessed with you, they'd like to work with you, but if this fails, it's all over, we'll never hear from them again. Then I don't know what the next level will be. I want to chop you up in a Cuisinart and drink you like a smoothie, and that will mean that they would like to make your project.
This is Better in Person with Stephen Dubner and Gary Gulman.

**Stephen Dubner** (1:24)
You got to choose one word to describe the comedian Gary Gulman.
It might be kind, which is not a word you associate with comedians very often. He's also tall, 6'6, which helps make him good at basketball. Back.
He's also smart. He enunciates beautifully, he's got an amazing vocabulary, and he wrote a really nice memoir called Misfit, Growing Up Awkward in the 80s. And yes, he is wickedly funny. Consider his first HBO special, The Great Depression.

**Gary Gulman** (1:56)
I still see a therapist. I believe I broke him on Monday.
Yeah, I was leaving his office and I was shutting the door and I heard him go...

**Stephen Dubner** (2:08)
A show about one man's depression should not be funny, but this one is, and it's also deeply human.
Gulman's honesty makes his fans love him even more. And now, I also love Gary Gulman. I mean it. That's not hyperbole. So, I make this podcast, Freakonomics Radio, which is very research intensive. And my producers for this show have been telling me that I need to back off, that I get over prepared and I get a little paralyzed. So, for you, I've done zero. I know your first name is Gary. It's like you're an accountant, I understand.

**Gary Gulman** (2:49)
I was an accountant. That was what I studied in college. So, my profession is accountant.
But then I've taken this side gig starting in 1993, where I tell jokes and I wrote a book. And I act occasionally, but it's just something if the accounting doesn't pay off.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:16)
Did you ever do any accounting?

**Gary Gulman** (3:18)
Yes. I worked for two and a half years for what is now PricewaterhouseCoopers. And I was fired for saying, what are they going to do? Fire me?

**Stephen Dubner** (3:34)
You did not.

**Gary Gulman** (3:35)
I really said that. And it's the only time that somebody has read back to me a quote, and it didn't make me happy. Usually when somebody says, you said this, oh, that's really great. But this was like, and I will say this, I just said, yes, I absolutely said that.
And that was that. And they said, okay, well.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:02)
I'm glad.

**Gary Gulman** (4:03)
Years later, the woman from HR and her husband came to my show, so all was forgiven, but it was.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:11)
Was all forgiven? Are you a grievance holder or a grievance flusher?

**Gary Gulman** (4:16)
I've been grinding certain axes with people over the years, and it's really something I'm reading. I'm reading the autobiography of Nelson Mandela right now. One reason because I admire him, but also this has to be one of the most forgiving.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:33)
Such a great comic.

**Gary Gulman** (4:36)
Funny man. But he's going to be the most forgiving man in history.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:42)
You're thinking, what am I doing with my axes? Yeah.

**Gary Gulman** (4:44)
What am I doing with my stupid things?

**Stephen Dubner** (4:46)
Do you punish yourself, period?

**Gary Gulman** (4:51)
Do I punish myself? No, but I have a lot of guilt over, for instance, my wife would love a bigger apartment than we have, but I see how certain people are living and I think, well, it's not right that I should have so much more than the average person. So I think we do need a bigger place because now I have three storage units which is way too many. It's insane, just filled with, one of them is just a library. It's just all these books that I don't have room for, and also my childhood baseball card collection.