Transcript of From Emerson to Letterman: Eddie Brill's Insights on Comedy

Welcome to Mic Unplug, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves, and game-changing conversations. Buckle up. Here's Mic.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mic Unplug. And today, we have a legend. From his early days at Emerson College, where he co-founded the renowned Emerson College Comedy Workshop, along with legends like Dennis Leary, to a 17-year tenure as the warm-up comedian and Comedy Talent Coordinator at The Late Show with David Letterman. He has been the cornerstone of the comedy landscape, with a reputation for discovering and nurturing comedic talent, he continues to inspire audiences around the world. Get ready to deep dive into the art of humor with the insightful, the dynamic, the trailblazing, New York's old Mr. Eddie Brill. Eddie, how are you doing today, brother?

All right. Long intros are fun because you have to get through them. You know what I mean? They're lovely. I'll tell you an interesting story right off the bat. In America, we do intros, and it's very important. When I first went to London the very first time to do stand-up, I think it was '99, that era. I told the emcee my intro, gave it to him, and he looked at me like not very happy. He brought me up without saying anything, just Eddie Brill, and Luckily, it went well. It was good. I got to be friendly with him, and I said, Why were you so mean to me that first night? He said, Because you came up to me, I never met you, and you bragged to me about your career. I went, I wasn't bragging about my career. I was giving you my intro. He said, intro, why would you do an intro? If you're funny, the audience will laugh. You could have all the credits in the world. He said, You know just as well as I. There are a lot of people who are not that talented who get big TV shows or work in theaters.

So your intro doesn't mean anything. It's who you are on stage that really makes the difference. And I really like that a lot.

Yeah. No, that's actually honest, because you're exactly right. I mean, I get pitches. I'm sure you receive pitches, right? Of all these people. I was like, I've never heard of them. Then you go research them because it's 2025 now and the information is an abundance, and there's nothing there. It's like, all this stuff you just wrote, how come I don't see this anywhere else?

It doesn't mean you didn't do it. People have said to me, Hey, I have this comedian, it's another Chris Rock, and I said, Well, you know what you're saying? I should book Chris Rock. Because why would I want another Chris Rock? I want each person to be their authentic self. It's interesting. One of the things I realized at the time also was how we pander to the crowds in America. Hey, give yourselves a round of applause for coming out tonight. Why would I applaud going out tonight? I've done it before. I'm very good at it. It's just you're BSing the audience into making noise for you instead of creating it yourself with your talent. It's very interesting.

I love that about you, because, again, I've been a huge fan of yours forever. I love the joke about your mom I forget. Oh, my God. If we were not here, I could repeat the joke verbatim. But it was one that you did on Letterman, and you were talking about your mom always being honest, but she's in prison now, right?

Oh, no, that's my grandmother. Your grandmother, yeah. When you do a five-minute set for television, you need to get a laugh in the first 5, 10 seconds. So the audience, if you're famous, it's different. You're going to get a laugh even if you suck, because the audience is already based on what you've done before. But a comic who's not well known, needs to get a laugh in the first 5, 10 seconds. The joke was, my grandmother told me, The truth will set you free. Then she went to prison for perjury. Then I said, I lied. It's just this take That's what it means to get to that level.

Setting it up for the deal. I love, Eddie, man, to go back to when you got started. To be the co founder of the Emerson Workshop, the Comedy Workshop, it had to in you. When did you know that not only this is what I want to do, because anybody can have the dream, the idea, but doggone it, you're good at this. When did you know that, I'm going to do that?

There's so many ways to answer that. I remember the first laugh I got in the Comedy Workshop on stage, and it feels so good that there's very few things like getting a laugh. When you get a laugh, because you can write Pat Adams and make people cry. There's nothing wrong with the movie. It's just a formulaic crying. But laughter is a very difficult art form to create. When I got that very first laugh in the very first Emerson Comedy Workshop bit, it's like when you chase it for the rest of your life. It's really great. But your question was more about, how did I know? How did I feel? I grew up in a house where my mom was very funny. We had comedy albums around the house. For Christmas, I remember I got a comedy book, The great thing about the comedy book was a joke in it, and it said, What did Tennessee? The answer was the same thing Arkansas. I'm five, and it's the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life. Then I saw George Carlin on television, and he did wordplay. In between that birthday book and Carlin, I was doing my own wordplay.

I'd draw a picture of a salt shaker and a knife, a salt with a deadly weapon, and I would just love wordplay. I was a very shy kid growing up, and when I'd get laughs, it was my way of letting go, and it felt really great. The more I would make people laugh, the more I felt strong about who I was. Then the biggest change was finding out that the bottom line is the foundation for all comedy is the I mean, you could be silly and you could be and do comedy whatever way you want, but the comedy that I've always loved is the foundation is the truth. Once I connected to that... I'll give another example. Not long ago, Rick Rubin, I heard him talking the music producer, and he said, I don't write my music for the audience. I write it for myself and I do what I love. I went to college with Stephen Wright, the comedian, and he started back then with us. He said, Yeah, I don't write my jokes for the audience. I mean, I want them to enjoy themselves. I love when they love it, but I write what makes me laugh.

That was another step for me to tell my truth. When you start out as a comedian, you act like another comedian because you don't know yourself. Plus, we can go deeper. Society says that we're a piece of... I don't know, what's the language on this podcast?

Whatever Daddy Bro wants it to be.

Okay, I was going to say, advertising, politics, and many forms of religion teach us that we're sinners and pieces of shit. The only way we could be good is if we're consumers. It's a very smart way to make money. If you're a smart business person, that's how you make money. When you start out as a human being in society, you go on a date, you don't feel comfortable to be yourself. You have to create a character you think the other person wants. What I've learned is to… When I was starting out, I sounded like George Carlin, my rhythms. When Jerry Seinfeld started out, he sounded like Robert Klein because we're acting like comedians. Once I found out who I was, or at least had some idea, that's when things, the damn burst open. In reality, it was a very long, winded answer. You know what's interesting about that? When I was one and a half, two, I didn't talk. Really? They took me to the doctor and to figure out what was wrong. They said, Nothing's wrong. Some kids, now I don't shut up.

You were a big thinker at two, huh?

A big stinker.

So, Eddie, one of the things on Mic Unplug that we talk about is your because. That thing that's deeper than your why, right? For me, it's your purpose. My because It started out as a promise that I made to my mom, and then it became promises that I made to my brother, my sister, my kids. My because is always around a promise. I know that you are so philanthropic, and you do more unseen than people will ever know. What is Eddie's because?

When I was very little, we didn't have any money. Parents eventually got divorced, and we were living very poorly, but love, love, love, and all through the house. Love, laughter, a lot of laughter. That really carried us. Once a week, we'd get ice cream, and it was the greatest night of our lives. My stepfather, who was incredibly great, got very sick and died of cancer. I was 15, and we were five of us, and I raised the kids. I got such a joy in being the leader, the teacher, the It just gave me such a joy. I think I've carried that all the way through in my life. Not to everyone's happiness, but I love doing that. That's why if you book comedians for television or you book comedians for anything, you have to say no to 99% of the people who audition. You're not loved because of it, because people think you're a jerk for not doing that. But you learn to live with what you can do. My purpose has been, just be the best. There's a great book called The Four Agreements. I don't know if you're familiar with it. My Bible.

One of the things is to just be impeccable with your word. Don't make assumptions. Don't take things personally and do the best you possibly can. That's how I live my life. I follow that pattern. I don't know if they answer the question or just- No, that is truly, truly, truly amazing.

Again, been a huge fan of yours forever. This is something I wanted to ask you. I hear, and I've heard a lot of comedians, whether it was Robin Williams, a Deion Cole, talk about the dark side of comedy. When people expect you to always be funny and to always love and to always be humorous, they forget a lot of times that you're going through the same things that they're going through, and you just have 30 minutes, an hour to go be funny. But as soon as come off the stage, you're dealing with that same monster, whatever it is that everyone else is dealing with. How hard, either for you or people that you've been around, or even just for the industry of comedy, how hard is that for people to really understand that you really are funny for an hour, but outside of that, you're going through the same stuff, and probably right before you're supposed to be funny, you just received some horrible news. But they're expecting Eddie to be funny as soon as Eddie That was the mic.

That's happened to me. Just before I went on stage, I get some really horrible news. It was one of the biggest comedy nights of my life where I ended up performing at Carnegie Hall and Caroline's and at the Letterman Show and one other venue. It was a misdiagnosis. But I had heard that one of my brothers had a pancreatic cancer. Knowing that Bill Hicks, the great genius comedian, had just recently died of that very quickly, I had to go on stage and do these shows, and I took all the energy that I had and put it together and had some of the best shows of my life, and then collapsed when it was over, only to find out a couple of days later, it was pancreatitis, and it was misdiagnosed, and he lived, and But you find out this news, you got to go, you got to do the work. It's actually beautiful. My sister had a lot of loss, and I'm gulping because I have… My sister died in 1997, and it just it hurt so bad that she did. It was very interesting because when she had passed away, it took a lot out of me.

I learned after a while to celebrate the life instead of mourning the loss. It's funny because in this conversation about this, I was actually going somewhere else, but my brain took me over here. It's an interesting life because you never know what's around the corner. You can't really plan. I mean, you can, but it's not always going to work out. To be able to adlib, to be able to play in the moment, and to never take things so seriously. Some jokes that I write are not politically correct, not mean, not mean-spirited. It's just funny. I can't spend my life trying to please everybody. People will say to me, Hey, I saw Chapelle's special, and I didn't like it. I say to them, He's not here to please you. If you don't like Chapelle, who is one of the most talented comedians on the Planet. If you don't like them, change the channel or go watch somebody else or complain about something else. Life's too short. Why did I go all over the place on that one? I'll watch this later and go, What did I mean? Why did I bring my sister up here?

This is raw and authentic with Eddie Brill. I love it. I love it. So you get your stunt with Letterman, you earn it. Here's what, again, just being a huge fan of you, you're in New York, and I mean this as lovingly as I can. There's 200,000 Eddie Brills in New York trying to get that same job, right? Same thing as Chicago, Toronto, all these big cities that are just comedy houses. Everyone's buying for and applying for and auditioning for what you got. How the heck did Eddie Brill get that, man?

You know what? It's the, weirdly enough, it's as simple as it's who you know. When I was in... I lived in LA and New York for a while, and one of the guys I went to college with contacted me out there. I was broke, and he said, I'm working at this show called Saved by the Bell, and they need a warm-up comedian, and you'll make a or something, and I had like 35 cents in my pocket. I said, Yes, I'm a warm-up comedian. I never had done it before, and I had done it, and it was babysitting. It was just babysitting. The great thing about it was the money, of course, so I can afford to live. But across the hall, literally, a couple of feet across the hall was The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. That was great. But anyway, I did the warm-up, and it was a very hard job to do, but I did it, and it was okay. Then I moved to New York, and I got an offer to work at the Dana Carvie Show to warm up the audience. Now, The Dana Carvie Show was a really smart and funny show.

It was too smart for American television. It was taken off after only a couple of episodes. Steve Carel and Robert Smigal and Louis CK. It was just all the best of the best. The show only lasted a few episodes. Now Louis CK went over to the Letterman show to do some writing. Everyone dispersed into different shows. Letterman approached the writers and said, Do you know a comedian who we need a warm-up comic? So Louis said, Yeah, I worked with Eddie Brill at the Dana Carby Show. I met Letterman, and it had a six-week trial period, and it lasted 17 years. You have to be able to do the job when you get there and you have to work hard. I would average between 5 and 600 stand-up shows a year, just running around working sets because you got to love it. You got to marry it, you got You got to love it, you got to hold it, and you got to squeeze it, and you got to nurture it. That's what I did. I still love it. I love it more. I'm now doing it 40 plus years, and I just can't get enough of that funky stuff.

Yes, sir. You know what else I love about you, Eddie, is that you are genuinely who you are, and you hone in your craft. Even 40 years later, you're still honing in your craft. These are the words of Mick, and Mick only and are only part of the Mic Unplug podcast, so I don't want anybody coming at me. But over the last seven, eight years, the YouTube and the Instagram comic has gone craze, right? To me, they're not that funny, Eddie. To me, they can't go on stage and work a crowd. I respect what they do. I don't want anyone to come at me and say, I'm not respecting you. I totally respect what you do. But when you can hold your and edit and do whatever. It's a little bit different than when you're in a room. I don't care if it's 50 people in a room. It's different than you got to work this out in the room. This is what a lot of people don't know. I love live comedy. I go to comedy shows monthly, always going somewhere. There's always 15 to 20% of the room that paid to go see this comic that's sitting there saying, Yeah, but I'm not going to laugh.

I bet you he's not that funny or she's not that funny. People don't understand it. For that Instagram or YouTube comic, man, what does Eddie feel about that? I had to get that off my chest.

I'm sorry. No, it's okay. It's understandable. The comics, we talk about it all the time. The whole idea of writing Comedy and performing it and trying it out. There was very few people who were amazing at it, like Richard Prior, George Carlin, Louise Hamlin, Jonathan Winners from that era. Then before them, Jack Benny, and then before that, Charlie Chaplin, and Mark Twain before that. Comedy consistently goes through time. What's happening now, the pandemic hit, and you're at home, and you can't really do stand up in front of a crowd, which is the way it's supposed to be done. What someone does is they use their brains to create this internet comedy. It's different from stand-up comedy because you're just using the internet. It's nothing for me to be jealous of. But what a smart person would do who has popularity, who has 2 million followers or whatever, they take five of their friends who are good stand-ups and go on the road, and the MCAP who's popular and brings in the crowd, goes up on stage and just chats. It's not that funny. Might be a funny person. Might have jokes, but mostly they don't.

They're mostly like, Hey, I'm the la la la, clown, clown, clown. And that's okay. Nothing wrong with being a clown. Many comics are clowns, and many clowns are comics. Then they'll bring on their friends who are talented, so the audience gets a show. That's the smartest way to use the internet. But I think that I want to stay away from being the comical. When I was a kid, there were comics, we used to go off, and we didn't have two legs. We would go out there. I appreciate the art of stand-up, and I love writing the joke and and trying it out, and then rewriting the joke, and then trying it out, and getting it to a place, and then writing a new joke, and then trying that out. That part, to me, is the art form. But it doesn't mean that these people who are playing on the internet are that talented at stand-up, they're talented at creating a phenomenon. There are comics who work the Madison Square Garden who are not funny to me. It doesn't mean I don't like them or hate them or wish them poorly. It's just that they've learned to use the internet.

I think it's a very smart ploy on their part. It doesn't mean I have to enjoy it or love it. But I respect the people who said… For instance, when you had TV shows like The Lucy Show or Mr. Ed or Green Acres, and you had these sitcom shows, they were written by some of the greatest writers in the business. You never saw them. You only saw the names on the credits, and they never got the exposure. But you watch Mr. Ed now, it's still hilarious. You watch Lucy, it is a great, well-written show. Nowadays, you have just a really good performer at the head of the show, and then you have a bunch of comics in there. I don't hate it. At the beginning, I was like, Darn those kids. But I actually respect a lot of them.

No, I respect the work. Don't get me wrong. I respect the work. It's just when they start talking about comedy and stand-up, I'm like, Wait, it's a little bit different. Those two are not the same thing, right? But it's okay. Work hard. I appreciate. You got to follow it.

Yeah. If you work hard, I respect it. I work with a bunch of younger comics, and I don't believe you could teach someone to be funny. You either have it or you don't. I tell that to the people I work with, but you can workshop it. You say, Okay, here's a joke, and I don't know how to finish it, or the middle is a little bit weak or whatever. You can actually workshop it and get the joke to be the way it is. The process of working at a joke or working at a scene or working out a movie that's funny, that's really an incredible process. You watch a famous comedy movie, being there. It might not be laugh out loud, like if you watch Blazing Saddles, but they're both brilliantly great comedy films written by two... Jersey Kozinski is one, and then Mel Brooks and Richard Pryer is the other one. They're completely different writers, but they have created really brilliant comedy. That's what I respect, the people who put the work in. Shortcuts, it's eventually going to burn you out.

Absolutely. You said workshop several times in that segment. Let's talk about it. Eddie Brill in his workshop. Not only are you the world-renowned writer, the world-renowned comedy, I'm going to say expert guru, right? You are the king of funny to me. Talk to us about these workshops that you do.

Yeah, I've been doing it for 25 years around the world. What it really is, is bringing a whole bunch of people together and working out your material and hearing the other people's perceptions perceptions. If I go on stage and I do my set, and then I have the whole group give me their perceptions, I don't have to agree with any of it. The person might be a never had done stand-up or the person has been doing it for 20 years, but it's great to hear their perception because we don't know what we're like as much as the other people. If someone says, Hey, you're always touching your chin, or you say you know all the time. We're afraid of the silence, and the silence is of our most cherished partners in comedy. Jack Benny got all his laughs on pauses. In the workshop, a lot of workshops I'll do, you'll hear people say, You know, and I used to say that all the time. But now I've learned to just use... Because words are only one form of communication. You use your body. Like if I said to you, I was walking down the street and I saw this beautiful car, you got it.

But if I said, I was walking down the street and saw this beautiful car, that little face that I made is just as much writing as the words that I wrote. It's all part of it. The more I do it, the better I enjoy it. I've learned and have grown myself from doing these. I recently got a really great compliment. There was that movie, Everywhere Everything, Every Place. I forgot the name of the film. There were two guys who had written it named Daniel, the two Daniels. They were being interviewed, and they said, Yeah, we took Eddie Brill's Workshop a million years ago. They won the Academy Award, and they He did this thing where he made us listen, and I learned a lot about pausing and listening and how powerful that is. It's pretty good. First time I did Letterman as a guest, Joan Rivers, and I was on the plane that I was coming back home on. I introduced myself at the gate, and she came and switched places with the woman next to me. I told her I was doing Letterman as a guest for the very first time. She had me go over my set with her on the and then gave me great advice, including the pausing and using the silence as your friend.

When I was on stage that night doing the Letterman show, Joan Rivers was right here. She was right there the whole time. I'll never I guess, what she did. Then years later, I was doing this thing at the Studio 6B, which is where they film Saturday Night Live, I think it's 6B. I was hosting an event, and it was all celebrities. A lot of them are coming in late and they're doing, Why are you late? Would you forget your watch, stupid little things. There was laughing and all of it. Then Joan Rivers walked in, and the audience was like, All right, here we go. I said, I'm not going to make fun of her. I explained to her how good she was to me. They gave her a standing ovation, and she had tears. Comics will help comics. I got help from David Brenner. I got help from Joan Rivers. I got help from just people. So many wonderful people took very good care of me, and I vowed to do the same for young comics along the way.

I love it. So speaking of comics, if I were to ask Eddie Brill, of all time, who was your favorite comic of all time?

I would say there's one in one A. One A, one B is Carlin and Prior. Yeah. And I would say that Jonathan Winners is right up there, too, but it was different. There's a clip of him on the Jack Parr show, and it's called The Stick, and he just takes stick, and for six minutes, it's just brilliant genius.

Yeah.

I love it. How about you? Who's your favorite comic of all time?

My 1A is Prior, and then I probably am going to say Red Fox.

Yes.

Again, people don't... They remember Sanfordian sign, Red Fox. But I still have the old 45s. I got a 45 player right there.

That's fantastic.

In most of the records that I have, believe it or not, are comedy. I have comedy and jazz. Like, literally, that's it. That's great.

Comedy and jazz. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. Jazz and comedy, they're very mathematical.

Yeah. But Red Fox.

Red Fox was very good to comedians. One of my heroes was his Philip Wilson, and Philip Wilson had Red Fox on the show the night before Sanford and Son was going to air, and he was plugging the show. It was one of the funniest episodes ever. Philip Wilson was doing stand-up, and Red Fox was heckling him from the audience. It was just brilliant. I went to Viva Las Vegas once with my friend Robert Chimel, and Robert Chimel was a brilliant comic who helped me a lot. Red Fox loved him and put him on all these things. He was playing poker at the tables. I joined the table, Robert and I, and I got in a hand with me and Red Fox, and we're the only two people left. I have a queen's boat, and I'm ready to kick his ass. We're laughing and we're taunting and we're having fun. All of a sudden, I lay down my queen's boat, and he has a king's boat and wins and goes, You got to be doing comedy a lot longer than that for me to beat me in poker. It was such a thrill.

Man, those are the good old days, man.

I'll tell you a great George Carlin story. Let's go. Again, at the beginning of my career, I was acting like George Carlin, and my jokes were very wordplay-ish and still are. I wrote a joke that I liked that was, How can I don't have a word like nonchalant when there's no such word as chalant. Then I'd act in, Oh, my God, I'm late for work. I can't find a thing to wear. God, am I chalant today? I was like, Calm down, Ray. Be like me, nonchalant. It would always get big laughs. I did the joke on Star Search in October of '86. It aired in January of '87, and I got a call from a comedian friend who said, Why did you do George Carlin's joke on TV? He's my hero. I know all this material. I would not never do George Carlin's joke. I wouldn't do anybody's joke, not on purpose. I took the joke out of my act because I don't want people thinking I stole the thing. It was a shame because I loved the joke, and it was crushing with the audiences. Years later, I was at the Bally's in Las Vegas and working with Robert Chimmel in the Comedy Room, Catch Rising Star, and Carlin was in the big room.

I'm in the lobby, I see Carlin. I I go up to him and I introduced myself. He couldn't have been nicer. I told him the story, and he goes, Well, first of all, you're smart to get rid of the joke because people are going to think you stole it, and they're going to not think well of you. But secondly, someone told me that joke, and I thought it was so funny. I didn't know it belonged to a comedian. It turns out I'm the son of a bitch who took your joke, which was such a thrill, which started our friendship and my relationship with his daughter and his brother and family. Then when George had He passed away in 2008, his daughter called me up and said, Now that my dad has passed away, I'd love you to do that joke again to keep that joke alive. It was like, okay. But I said to myself, I would never do it like the joke. I would explain it so that people understand. If they remembered Carlin doing it, they wouldn't think that I took it because that's the worst thing you could do.

Question for you, and this is totally off-topic, but you went there. How serious is joke stealing in the comedy world? We saw some viral moments last year.

It does happen because there's a lot of insecurity, and people can't write, and they need material. People will do what it takes, whatever it takes, not always with integrity to get far. I know very good friends of mine who've stolen material a lot, and they don't care because they've had wild success because they were noticed. To us, to most comedians, it's stealing your baby. No one is allowed to steal your baby. But a lot of people don't care because there's one life they live, and they don't live in integrity, and they'll steal material. I've been in shows where friends of mine have done material. I've had friends do it on The Tonight Show. I've seen some of my jokes, and they did very well, but not with me saying it. I've had a few people admit over the years, later, I took your joke, I'm sorry. It's really evil. It's an evil thing to do, but a lot of people don't care because they'll do what it takes to be famous or to have money or their values are low and their greediness or, again, lack of integrity is more powerful.

Yeah. I was telling my wife because last year we were talking about it, and I was like, Babe, it's a little bit different than leadership, right? Because I do leadership consulting and advising. I can say, Hey, Abraham Lincoln, a great leader, once said, and it's cool. A comedian can't go on stage to say, Hey, I got this from Eddie Brill. Let me tell you this joke. It doesn't come across the same.

It doesn't. Now, a situation might come up where something happens, you're chatting with the audience, and someone goes, It's funny. You said that, and my friend John Mendoza has this great joke he does in his act. Not that I've ever done that, and John and I are friends. But you could say that, and it's still some audience member might go, Hey, I heard an Eddie Brill joke. So you don't do that. But if you're going to ever do it, that's the situation you do it in. What leadership stuff do you do?

I'm all about the modern leader and modern practices, because it's 2025. Humans have changed. Humans have gotten younger, but humans have also changed. We buy differently now. 20 years ago, Eddie, you wouldn't have your credit card or checking account stored on a computer somewhere. Yeah. But now, that's the way it is. We don't go into places. If people have changed who we are in our habits, leadership has to change, too. We have a lot of, I'm going to say, mandates. We have a lot of doctrine from the 1800s, the 1900s. While a lot of those are true to the core, how we communicate is much different now. Again, these are the words of Mick and Mick only. People are a little bit softer than they were when Eddie and I were growing up. We'd walk on from school and 15 people, 15 adults could at us, and we'd have to accept it and say, Yes, man, yes, sir, whatever. Now you can do something, and it's like, Oh, my God. The police will come to your house if you look at somebody the wrong way. I feel like leadership, and more importantly, emotional intelligence is different now.

I think we need to lead with emotional intelligence, and we need to... Again, a lot of the core of leadership is the same, but how do we communicate? How do we get people to no longer be motivated, but to be inspired? That's what I really hope.

Yeah, I think that The gut is the brain of the body, and the gut never lies. Now, you can rationalize anything in your head, but your gut, if you trust it and learn to trust it, you will know the truth, and you will know your truth, and you will be able to do that. I think it's important. A lot of people… It's funny. I use Nina Simone and… What's her face? Céline Dion as an example. Céline Dion gets all the notes right. She has an incredible voice, but she's in her head. She's painting by numbers. I'm doing an A and then a G and then a C and all this stuff. Nina sings from the gut. The camera is not low enough, but from the gut. She might make a mistake, it might not be perfect, but it's real and it's human and it's soulful. People say to me, When I want to book a comedian, what do you do? I say, I look for Nina Simone. Nothing wrong with Céline Dion. She has a beautiful voice, but there's the soul that's missing for me is so important. When I look at people, I look at them from the gut, and I realize this is, again, the brain of the body.

We should do something together where we do a leadership program, and we talk about how people laugh and teach them why comedy is so important and inherent in the history of our world, and how you can laugh at the most horrible things, and just to have a relief or a release.

Eddie, I would be honored. Consider that done. If you really want to do that, Eddie, that is going to happen this year.

Very cool. I love that. I'm serious. I am, too. Yeah, good.

I am, too. Well, Eddie, I know you're a very, very, very, very, very busy human being. You always have things going on. Last moments, what do you want people to know about Eddie Brill? What do you have going on now? What's upcoming, what's new out there?

There's so many things. There's a club that I don't know if it's going to happen, but they want to change what they've been doing. They've asked me to help them do that. That's the newest project. I'm doing stand-up all the time. You can find me on Instagram at eddicomic. It's very easy. I produced 12 comedy videos last year. It's nonstop. I Whatever I can do, I do. But my favorite thing of all of them is doing stand-up. The other night, I was supposed to do 45 minutes. I looked at my watch, figured I'd done about 25, and I had done an hour and five. It's just I can't get enough of that. It's so good.

You are the man, Eddie. You are the man. For all the listeners and viewers, I'll make sure we have everything associated with Eddie on the show notes and the descriptions. Make sure you are following. It is going to be definitely worth your time because you're going to get the funny. When he talks about to the gut, I like to do what I call gut laughing when Eddie is blessing us with this time. So, Eddie, brother, thank you so much.

My pleasure.

We're definitely going to make this happen. You made my day by making that comment, so we're going to do it.

Okay, wonderful. It was such a pleasure. I had no idea what to expect. I like to go in without an idea, and I'm richer for it.

No, you blessed the millions of downloads and listeners and viewers that we have. So thank you, Eddie Brill.

Wonderful. Be well. Have a beautiful day, and be in touch. You have my info.

You got it. For all the listeners and viewers, remember, your because is your superpower. Go unleash it. Thank you for tuning in to Mic Unplug.

Keep pushing your limits, embracing your purpose, and chasing greatness.

Until next time, stay Unstoppable.