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Ilana Glazer is all grown up! You might know them from their spunky stoner bestie role in Broad City. But now, they’re a mom, and they’re determined to show us what it’s really like to be a pregnant person. We’re talking about the funny, messy, and totally insane parts of growing a human that no one talks about. Illana talks to Reshma about getting the funding for their film Babes and what it was like going on tour for their newest comedy special, Human Magic. Plus, why they’re so pumped about midlife, how they shut off her work brain, and why pregnancy led them to come out as nonbinary.

Follow Ilana Glazer on Instagram @ilana https://www.instagram.com/ilana/?hl=en

You can follow our host Reshma Saujani @reshmasaujani on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/reshmasaujani/?hl=en

Let us know how you’re doing in midlife! You can submit your story to be included in this show at speakpipe.com/midlife

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To follow along with a transcript, go to lemonadamedia.com/show/ shortly after the air date.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Reshma Saujani, Ilana Glazer

Reshma Saujani  00:11

Welcome to My So Called Midlife, a podcast where we figure out how to stop just getting through it and start actually living it. I’m Reshma Saujani, okay, so when I was pregnant with my first son, Sean, it was fucking hell. It was after my, I don’t even know, third miscarriage. I didn’t know if it was actually gonna happen. I was stressed all the time. I ended up having to be on bed rest. It was just not fun. I was not having a lot of sex. I was not eating all the things I wanted to eat. I was just fucking miserable. So I wish the word fun was associated with my pregnancy, but it wasn’t. So when I saw babes with Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau, I was like, wow, pregnancies fun? And it was amazing because it captured all these things about pregnancy that we literally never talk about. And so that’s the gift of our guest today, who now I’d like to call my friend, Ilana Glazer, through her acting, her writing and her stand up, she literally is able to capture the full person on topics like pregnancy and friendship. You know, a lot of folks know her from Broad City, and that was a show about being confused in your 20s, and it was really about friendship. But now, when Alana became a mom, she ventured into talking about motherhood, and I’m so grateful that she did. This conversation is just like a wonderful reminder of how midlife and motherhood have so many multitudes like it’s complicated, right? And there’s no right way to do it. Ilana really reminded me in this conversation that, yeah, those things are hard, but you know what? They’re all so funny and joyful and genuinely fucking hilarious. So here we go. Let’s get into it.

 

Reshma Saujani  03:33

Hi.

 

Ilana Glazer  03:34

Hi, can you just give me one second? I just want to put tape by the by the camera, because.

 

Reshma Saujani  03:39

Go, take your time. Yeah, but now I can’t see you. Is that okay? You can’t because it’s gray now.

 

Ilana Glazer  03:49

Lol, oh, that was the camera. Okay.

 

Reshma Saujani  03:52

I know. I’m always like, completely not technical. And everyone’s like, wait, you started an organization called Girls Who Code, really. And I was like, yeah, I did.

 

Ilana Glazer  04:02

It was the a different aspect of Girls Who Code that made you, that got you to found it, not the technical aspect, the technical aspect, yeah, but also, Reshma, I’m such a fan of you from Girls Who Code. I love that initiative, and I was a big fan of also Black Girls Code. And I just think it’s awesome.

 

Reshma Saujani  04:21

It is she does amazing work. Um, all right. I’m so excited to talk to you. Okay, so I like to start with this little icebreaker. So we talk a lot on our show about the midlife mindset, and everybody has, like, a different perspective. Like, some people are like, fuck yeah, best time of my life. Some people are like, I’m dying. This is the worst Where are you at?

 

Ilana Glazer  04:45

I’m like, fuck yeah, this is the best time of my life. I have two other best friends from Long Island that I grew up with, and we just have been, like, middle aged people since we were in a. Sixth grade, you know what I mean. So like, it feels for me, like this clicking, I think, with my natural, like, tone or rhythm, you know, like there’s like a hum that’s always been there that now is, like clicked in, and it’s feeling harmonious with the other, with the parts of my life, you know what I mean. And while totally challenging, and I’m going through like, major uphill battles of personal transformation, even that feels like it’s singing, you know, and meant to be right now, I think it’s like, because I’ve never been like, really a partier, you know. And I’ve always been, like, obsessively productive as a way to deal with anxiety. So like, as a true middle aged person, a 37 and a mother, I feel it’s feeling really good for me.

 

Reshma Saujani  05:56

That’s to me. So like in sixth grade, like you guys were, like, looking forward to, like, getting older in middle age.

 

Ilana Glazer  06:02

100% I remember calling my best friend Daniel from college, calling Daniel on his 19th birthday, and he literally said, one year closer to retirement, a 19 year old, a young, gay, 19 year old, freshly out, not ready to go live His truth, ready to be closer to Retirement like I think it was, it was more of like this almost older, sensible mindset that me and my like tribe have had since we were really young. That is, like, finally clicking in now.

 

Reshma Saujani  06:33

That’s awesome. Okay, so you’re in the beginning of your midlife.

 

Ilana Glazer  06:38

Thank you.

 

Reshma Saujani  06:38

But you’re actually, like our youngest guest, which is so cool.

 

Ilana Glazer  06:42

Oh, I’m at the beginning of my middle age. Thank you. Ooh, what a little girl I am compared to whoever, JLD or whatever.

 

Reshma Saujani  06:52

And what’s interesting is, like your transition to midlife has kind of been in the public eye, right? You went from the stoner buddy comedy in Broad City to making movies about pregnancy, part of that, right? You talk about like, shit, like, I didn’t know how horny I would be, like in pregnancy, and you wanted to actually do your art, you know, based on, like, talking about your experience. And one of the things I was reading about, you’re listening to, is that people would come up to you all the time, and after Broad City, and they felt like they knew you, right, and they knew your character, but they also said, like, it really changed their lives. And I want to know, like, what’s been the reaction from folks after seeing babes? Because I watched babes, and I felt very seen as a mother?

 

Ilana Glazer  07:38

As I really step into middle age. I’m feeling so tender. Broad City was such a fiery experience, like Abby and I were like, first gloves. You know who, like, got married young and had all these babies young five seasons. It feels like five babies, you know what I mean. And I’m thinking of, actually, a woman I went to school with on Long Island, who has six kids and had them really young and married her high school sweetheart. It’s like, almost like that, but of comedy, and by the time Broad City ended, I had been in that project for 10 years, and I was 32 so it was a third of my life. It was my entire adulthood. Broad City. Wow. The reaction, you know, it was more like, Yo, dude, we should Blaze right now. Do you want to smoke right now? Like, you know, when I was, like, in Broad City, and I was like, No, that’s my that’s a character. But as I’ve gotten older, like, the it’s really interesting and lovely to see people’s reactions change. Like, you know, to age, they’re they’re sensing it. And then with babes, like we were all holding hands together, stepping into this phase together, and it’s been very in contrast to Broad City, the reaction to babes has been a gentleness that people are having toward me, that I see they’re having towards themselves, that the movie kind of invited them to have, yeah.

 

Reshma Saujani  09:03

It was a beautiful and funny film, and I think it was just so powerful, because so many of these films about parenting are often from the perspective of men and not from the perspective of go figure, right?

 

Ilana Glazer  09:18

It’s so sick and it’s just so absurd. And, like, as we started, my producer, Susie Fox and my co writer, Josh rabinovitz, as we started writing this movie, we were like, there are no comps.

 

Reshma Saujani  09:31

No comps.

 

Ilana Glazer  09:32

There are no comps. And it’s, it’s a really tender movie, but it’s like, really funny. We’re doing, like, I would say, two to three jokes per minute. Like, it is funny, and it has the floor, yeah, and it’s like, so it’s so, like, silly and goofy, and like, we had such a this classic sense of New York. It like felt like this old time when people could really live in New York and make a life for themselves in New York. And we pointed. They wanted to give that feeling. And we have to remember and feel that that existed can exist again, and should exist like a livable New York City.

 

Reshma Saujani  10:09

With community, right? That it is, yeah, maybe you had to take four trains to, like, go on to dinner together, but you can still see each other, and you can raise children you, I mean, in New York City, and it, yeah, it’s, it’s, it is really I love that. I love that intentionality around it. You know, one of the things you said is you shopped this movie around. You got a lot of rejections from men. They thought it was gross that you were talking so intimately about what was happening to your body when you actually are pregnant, what was the scariest part and the funniest part of being a pregnant person for you?

 

Ilana Glazer  10:49

I think I mean a big part of the absurdity that was unlocked for me becoming a pregnant person was how powerful I felt. And this narrative that you know, because we have no paid leave, because our system makes creating life worthless and people as property, because we so devalue pregnant people, we make it’s a you have to claim disability to get, like any paid leave in New York State, you have a disability. You’re creating another person while living your own life like not even thinking about it. Your body is so powerful, creating teeth and nails and hair and organs for someone, and then it’s gonna somehow get that body out of you. It was absurd, like, like Kafka, like a cosmic absurdity, hysterical and like a power that I have stepped into, that I, you know, kind of have been. It feels like waiting my whole life to step into that power, that joke of like, it’s not even just like women. It’s like, we devalue this. We devalue creating life. How the hell are we here? You know what I mean, that we are creators. We are the creators. Was hysterical to me, unbelievable. And then the slapstick comedy of your body. I mean, your boobs are nuts. I, like, had the my I had, like, heads, you know what? I mean, I had, like, my own head, but two of my own head as boobs. They were bonkers, bonkers. Titties, nuts. The horniness was so funny, like I I have been programmed to think that once a woman enters the parenthood journey, starting at pregnancy, you are desexualized. I found myself completely sexualized from the inside out, personally sexualizing myself and my partner, like I was like, This is so sexual. This is so activating and and sensual, even after I had my baby, just such a an essential experience like, you know, I think we also almost, it’s almost a good thing that we don’t talk about the sensuality, because our our mainstream discourse does not have the nuance to do it, no safely, but like it is so special and sensual. And you know, my, my, my mind, so much of my mind just went into my body, the the fluids, as we discuss in babes, you’re just like, what’s, what’s coming out of me? Right? Right now, it’s just right. It’s crazy.

 

Reshma Saujani  13:38

How is that pee?

 

Ilana Glazer  13:39

No, I don’t think so, how thick you get and how much space you start to take up after, you know, living as as women, living our whole lives, getting messages to take up less space. It was very funny, very funny.

 

Reshma Saujani  13:56

Why do you think? You know, again, going back to the fact that there were no comps when you shopped babes and it was rejected by men. Why are these cultural narratives about motherhood so hard to change?

 

Ilana Glazer  14:09

Okay, there’s a couple things. This is just like, very rich conversation. So I’m like going line item by line item. Give me one second Wait. What do you think it’s why are these narratives about motherhood so hard to change? I’m going to get to that point for sure in one moment. I just want to say the shopping it around and rejected by men. Part of that is because men dominate the industry. Men are the majority of decision makers in the industry. By design many women come up and build this industry. Many people of color and minorities and black people create the culture of this industry, it remains dominated by men, because that’s who is in power at this time. And I want to shout out film nation Glenn Basner, an older white gentleman who loved it. But I think part of it is that women’s stories and perspectives on themselves. Have been held down and suppressed, such that it remains shocking and such that shock value is the currency for women’s stories being told. You know, we’re at this point in the culture where stories about trans people, trans people want to get past the trauma part of their stories and show them just living their lives where their gender identity is in the backdrop. You know, it is less this point is less amplified for women, and especially white women, but like, it’s still mostly true. You know what I mean? Like, it’s still mostly true that women’s stories are most successful through the male gaze. So, you know, it’s just by design that women telling honest, like not traumatic, stories about their own bodies and spirits and selves remains a rarity, so that we remain a rarity, so that we aren’t represented so much that we’re electing ourselves in droves and electing ourselves as business leaders in droves.

 

Reshma Saujani  16:06

You know what I thought was just so powerful, though about the movie. So I think like in our work at moms first, we always say we’re trying to uplift motherhood like I think what is not respected or valued or aspired to is not actually invested in. So we don’t have paid leave in child care, because we still treat mothers like shit in this country, right? You go to Brazil, you’re a mom, you’re a mom of twins. Oh my god, you’re a goddess, right? So part of the cultural creative it is so critical. I saw this girl, it’s so critical to actually changing policy. And what I loved about this film is like it wasn’t just like it sucks to be a mom, or like there was the honesty of it, but the two of you getting high on mushrooms, you I mean, like looking hot and fabulous, like having this powerful friendship, like, in many ways, not losing yourself, trying to keep yourself. It was the celebration of motherhood in many ways, in this really honest way. So if I watched the film, I and I didn’t have children, I’m not like, oh shit. I’m not doing that. That looks too too depressing, too hard, like, not aspirational. I’m like, Oh okay. Like, I can do this, and I think that that’s that, to me, is really fresh and new in terms of the kinds of films that you see about pregnancy and motherhood.

 

Ilana Glazer  17:32

Yeah, I think what you’re describing is full people. Yeah, our movie actually doesn’t tell you, isn’t propaganda for having children or not, right? It’s actually just a full human story, which is why I found such a diverse swath of people relating to it. Because it’s just a human a specific human story that values full humanhood.

 

Reshma Saujani  17:57

You said it in the them article, that being pregnant on paper was the most female thing I could ever do, but it actually highlighted both the masculine and feminine inside of me, and after that, you came out as non binary. Can you tell me more about what you were feeling and what you learned from your pregnancy about the feminine and the masculine?

 

Reshma Saujani  18:19

So, like, it was really, I didn’t sort of intend to, like, come out in a public way, but I, you know, I had this private experience, interpersonally, of this realization and sharing it with my community. But then, you know, in a interview, I was asked, like, by an astute journalist about my non gendered language in babes, and kind of To the Point before of pregnancy, bringing so much of my brain into my body, so much of my mind into my heart and into my vagina and into my legs and butt and body, like literal body. I felt these I was able to, like, really feel my feelings, not think about my identity from this conscious perspective, but to really feel the two spirits, male and female, inside of me and claim them. I don’t think this is like I’ve always felt this fluidity, and I actually it’s also always been, I think, perceived and visible. But the knowing of it, and the knowing of myself was both in my gender identity, but also in all these other ways, was a gift that only this process could give me.

 

Reshma Saujani  22:23

Yeah, could solidify it for you, for what you always knew in your heart and then having this experience.

 

Reshma Saujani  22:30

On the podcast working it out, you said that the trope about motherhood you heard the most is that it sucks and that kids are annoying, and so you love to talk about the joy of parenting. And you said, you know, why is? Why is the only thing I’ve ever heard about being a mom is that you are a downer cunt?

 

Ilana Glazer  23:51

I sometimes surprise myself when I hear things I’ve said,yes, right? Yeah.

 

Reshma Saujani  23:58

I do too, talk to you about that. Because I’ll be honest, when I saw you post this while back, I was like, I wanted I was like, oh, I want to talk to her about this, because I feel like the reason why people come off as downer cons is because it’s fucking hard to be a mom in America, right? That it is that we don’t have these structural support. Yeah, so talk.

 

Ilana Glazer  24:21

But I’m excited about Marge Simpson, I’m not talking about hearing women bitch, which I fucking love. I love hearing women bitch. I’m talking about Marge Simpson, I’m talking about messages of you know that I’m thinking of Jill on home improvement. Oh, my God, you know. I’m thinking of these lines that, you know, women on TV in the 90s had the furrowed brow, and then, of course, were sold how to remove the furrowed brow later, but you’re still furrowing your fucking brow. But I’m not talking about real people. I’m talking about messaging. That is the message I’ve gotten for so long, and it keeps you in line. It’s like, you’re a donkey, and we put shit on your back, and you’re just gonna go forward quietly and don’t be too loud. But you know, and I grew up really loving the Simpsons, and I actually love Marge Simpsons, and I do it to myself, and I’m like, Oh my God. I’m like, Marge Simpson. It’s not even that. I don’t like it, but it is the only aspect that the powerful minority who have been the storytellers since Hollywood was birthed have told us we are and will be.

 

Reshma Saujani  25:32

Yeah, it’s so powerful. And it’s like, the more we present it as it being tough and rough and like, you just have to deal with it and it sucks. You can’t find your empowerment in it. You just are taught to really suck it up. And I always say this about my mother, like my mother used to always apologize before she went off to work, but that woman didn’t retire until she was 72 because she loved her job and she felt like part of what she had to do was say she didn’t want to do it. Right? I feel this way as a mom, when I have to go off and speak somewhere and I’ll my six year old was sitting at the window, be like, Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go. And the women in the room will be like to me, well, don’t worry about it. He won’t remember. But I’m like, no, I will remember. So the point is, like, I freaking want to create what I want to create for myself and not be given either or either. Like, this is what it means to be a woman in the workplace, or this is what it means to be a woman who is going to not be in the workplace.

 

Ilana Glazer  26:35

And like, also, do you remember the show, step by step?

 

Reshma Saujani  26:38

Yes.

 

Ilana Glazer  26:39

Sally something, and then she had the thigh master. It was like she was so hot and airhead, like, moms were either weirdly hot, even in my community, I’m remembering weirdly hot, like bimbo moms or sexless, angry moms. And like, I’m just thinking about your mom for a second. I’m like, maybe she was genuinely sorry, and that wasn’t performative. Maybe she was sorry and enjoyed her job, yeah. And maybe she was like, a little like, Sorry, I gotta go, you know. And like, maybe it was different on different days. And the other thing about your six year old not remembering. Oh, I like, I’m always like, when people are like, she won’t remember. I’m like, they will remember in their even if they don’t consciously remember which they remember so much they remember in their bodies and in their spines and their cells. But like, what he’s going to remember is that the most important woman figure in his life did what she knew she had to do. Yeah, and it’s like a whole lifetime of experiences we have that we make meaning of, but it hurts, you know? It really, it really hurts in the moment.

 

Reshma Saujani  27:44

And that’s life, right? It’s like that. That’s part of the I feel like, though motherhood though, like, sometimes I’m with my kids and I’m just, like, I had a situation this morning. I don’t know, they just woke up on the wrong side the bed, and like, you know, getting it. We’re all getting them ready for school, and, like, my little ones having a tantrum, and I’m just like, Ah, you I mean, and it’s just it. And my ass was, like, you lecture me this morning. He’s just like, can’t, you know, you can’t get mad like that, right? Yeah. Like, it just sets the whole day in, like, the wrong way. But how do you not get annoyed? Or, how do you not be like.

 

Ilana Glazer  28:19

I do I get, like, literally, so annoyed. So, mean, I’m a baby. It’s like crazy. No, like, so this is the thing me talking about, focusing on the joy in my work. I mean, that’s a professional and creative effort, but personally and privately, I am fucking up all the time, all the time, dude, seriously. And, you know, we all know now how, like comedians carry darkness. You know, it’s like I’ve really struggled with anxiety and depression most of my life. I have mental illness in my family. And you know, I think also as mothers, it’s like we’re more the experience is so visceral. We’re still separating from them. The first separation is them leaving our literal bodies, but like we’re so connected to them. And to have a to have a co parent who was not pregnant, I find my husband to be such a cooling self that I’m sometimes resentful of because I want to do his job too, no, I’m a bitch and a baby and I suck often, and I’m, I am. I do have those lines. And I am like, No and David is also like, you can’t be mean. You can’t be a bitch. You know what I mean to our kid? And I’m like, right, right? And it’s a repeated conversation. It’s not that I’m so grateful for this, com this, you know, public discourse around postpartum depression, around how hard it is. I love women, bitches. I love it. I’m just adding, like, some more slices to that pizza.

 

Reshma Saujani  30:06

But you’re and you’re so right, right. It can’t just be one or the other. Like, there. I fucking love my kids. Best Title I have is being like their mom. But that doesn’t mean that at times I’m like, I need you to leave. That’s why, like, John’s character and babes are so powerful when they’re sitting there on the bed and being like, it’s the most complicated relationship you’ll have. Because when they’re with you, you’re like, can you just go away? And when you’re away from them, like, you’re like, where are you? I need you, and it’s.

 

Ilana Glazer  30:36

it’s sleep bedtime is so crazy, and it’s such.

 

Reshma Saujani  30:40

Oh, I hate bedtime.

 

Ilana Glazer  30:40

Eternally volatile experience, because you’re like, going to sleep, go to sleep. Your anxiety makes them stay up. It’s activating. They sense it, and then the moment they go to sleep, I’m like, and I’m looking at pictures of her. It’s like, psychotic. And what I love about Michelle buto and Hassan Minhaj is seen as Don and Marty and babes is the confronting and like, I really love how our director Pamela Adlon, shot this of them sitting forward, you know, not looking at each other sitting forward and just looking at this sort of space in front of them that is, like, so complicated you’re supposed to be, also sexual and romantic partners. That’s how you met. That’s why you created life. But things have gotten so unsexy. Sifting through the minutia of untangling like you’re saying, a tantrum untangling. When was it that I got annoyed? I lost it. She was pissed, but then then I escalated. Sifting through that stuff is so not hot and annoying and tedious, but the way that you press forward is, like, simply by willing yourself too.

 

Reshma Saujani  31:52

Yeah, I one of the things I want to ask you too about is, like you said your favorite thing is the organic need for constant presence. And I was here, and you said, we know when I’m like, with my child, it’s like, I’m in a scene, in a script. I am dialed in. I am like, present. How do you do that? Like, I’m with another four year old, a nine year old, and like, I have to, like, slap my hand as I’m, like, with them playing Monopoly, but I’m grabbing my phone, you I mean, or I’m like, one eye towards, like, the thing that my to do list, like, how do you dial in that way?

 

Ilana Glazer  32:26

The phone is mostly the thing, honestly, because the phones are now, you know, as AI starts to come for our bodies. I don’t know. You know more than I do. The phone is this literal extension of our minds. We’re anxious without it, and I’m mostly just putting it away. I actually don’t even think that, like folding the laundry is like not being present. It’s like something that has to be done. It’s mostly the phone. But sometimes I like to, like, take a little gummy, you know what I mean, my workday is over, turn the phone off. Take gummy dialed in. You know what I mean, like, fully dialed in.

 

Reshma Saujani  33:03

All right? What’s the gummy that you take to be dialed in during the day?

 

Ilana Glazer  33:06

I do a like, two milligram THC, 10 milligram CBD, very low dosage. And I’m just, like feeling like my muscles relax, and I’m like floating a little bit more. I do that, like, when, you know, we say goodbye to our nanny and I put my phone on the console and leave it until my kid goes down to sleep, and that’s what, that’s what I’ll do.

 

Reshma Saujani  33:32

Yeah, I mean, it’s right, because it helps just take it I know from like, I just need to take it down a few notches. Because I’m normally like let’s go, right? Yeah, it just helps take it down a few notches.

 

Ilana Glazer  33:43

Yeah, I’m not like getting blazed ever, and I used to get blazed a lot. It’s now more like a relaxing, like little additive. It’s not really the center of my experience when I use weed and alcohol has, I’ve pretty much phased out.

 

Reshma Saujani  34:06

I find it that’s wild see, I still need, like, a skinny Margarita, like, or a glass of wine.

 

Ilana Glazer  34:11

I mean, if it felt good, I would do it. But I’m finding that it’s, like, very depressing and makes me, like, depressed, sad and mean. And I’m like, I don’t think, I don’t think this is working for me, but if it was fun, and I was fun with alcohol, I would still use it. It’s not really a principle thing. But I’m like, I’m more able now to, like, be with myself and be with my body and feel what I’m feeling, and then respond to that.

 

Reshma Saujani  35:46

I want to talk to you about pleasure because I love. There’s a quote that you said that I loved, and you said, I aim to take pleasure. Instead of saying, just have fun, talk to our listeners about the distinction.

 

Ilana Glazer  38:07

So I toured my hour that’s coming up in December, human magic on Hulu. I toured this hour for a year, two nights a week. That was that’s as long as I can be away without getting like so sad from my family so I would do so I toured this over the course of a year, and I struggle with depression and anxiety and have for the majority of my life. This tour was such a so transformative for me, as an opportunity to confront all these feelings that I have, and I had this process before every show of walking around the neighborhood I was performing in and talking to myself, I would call it stacking it up. I would stack up the reality of the situation so as not to necessarily believe my feelings, but try to look at them objectively, like I’m in I’m in Detroit. We’re doing two shows today. They’re weirdly early. I did a 2pm show and a 5pm show in Detroit. That’s weird. It makes sense that that feels weird. Dada. Dada, just like that kind of, that kind of gentleness with myself and objective perspective and aiming to take pleasure, you know, instead of saying to myself, just have fun, just have fun, that implies like, why are you not already having fun? Having fun is right, and not having fun is wrong. So I it feels like someone’s forcing, you know, when anybody says Have fun and they mean a positive thing, but it’s like they’re telling you what to do. And it’s like that may not be where I’m at right now. So I would always aim to take pleasure, and I would say to myself, I aim to take pleasure in this hour, because stand up is hard and stand up is lonely, and it’s kind of crazy, pretending that you’re saying something for the first time, and you’ve you’ve said it hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times, but. And so I would just aim to take pleasure in this hour. I would aim to take pleasure in what is new about this hour. The audience is new. I’ve never been with them before. It’s the time is new. It’s a different day. And if I fell short of taking pleasure, or didn’t take pleasure the entire time, which is pretty unlikely, then I haven’t failed. It’s just like a path I’m walking down, either slowly or galloping.

 

Reshma Saujani  40:26

Do you have any advice for people of like, just sinking into that pleasure, a pleasure that sometimes people are afraid of because sometimes, like we’re attracted to, to pain, let’s be honest.

 

Ilana Glazer  40:41

For sure, and there is such a pain, pleasure dichotomy in performance, in achieving our goals, in sex, in whatever you know, what I mean like that is they kind of are two sides of the same coin, sinking into that pleasure. Because pleasure doesn’t necessarily mean a free fall too, like there could be some effort and there is, there is pleasure in pain. Any advice, I would say is, gosh, I mean, like something that I have found useful is talking out loud to myself, and I find that it focuses the thought streams into one thought, and I would say, go for a walk and talk to yourself about what you’re experiencing.

 

Reshma Saujani  41:33

Yeah, I liked what you were describing. What you did before your show is you go for a walk. And there is something I’ve been meditating while I’m walking, and it’s actually been a lot, like, I feel a lot less pressure than, like, sitting there with my hand, you know, back up against the wall. So, all right, last question, what’s next? I mean, what do you want to continue to explore about yourself in midlife? Like, are we going to get a perimenopause comedy? Fingers crossed right here.

 

Ilana Glazer  42:00

I’ll definitely deliver, or one of my close friends will deliver a tri menopause comedy to you, for sure, because, you know, now I’m starting to hear the symptoms. People thought, oh, hot flashes. And again on TV, it’s one side character mentioning hot flashes, and you’re like, oh, years later, you’re like, that was menopause. But actually, in real life, it could be 10 years of hot flashes. So there’s some funny shit ahead there, for sure. But what’s next for me? I plan to continue rooting deeper and further into my life, continuing telling the stories of queer women, centering myself, centering others and shaping, helping shape, using my experience to shape narratives around other identities, telling the stories of friendship and the spectrum of love, between friendship and partnership and where those lines blur. I can’t wait to get on stage and start working on my next hour. I really want to just keep doing exactly what I’m doing, but I know that with each day that that changes too.

 

Reshma Saujani  43:13

Yeah, well, Ilana, we’re so lucky to have your voice and your creativity and your your gifts, and so I hope you do all those things, and I think we’re lucky that you’re out there telling the stories that are not being told, and doing it in such a beautiful, funny way. So thank you.

 

Ilana Glazer  43:32

Thank you. I am so grateful to have this conversation with you. You’re so brilliant and prolific and generative, and I’m so happy to know you now. Thank you so much.

 

Reshma Saujani  43:44

Same here, thank you.  Let’s be in touch.

 

Ilana Glazer  43:47

Thank you so much. Let’s Be in touch for sure.

 

Reshma Saujani  43:50

Ah, that was awesome.

 

Reshma Saujani  44:05

Ilana Glazer is an actor, writer and stand up comedian. Their newest stand up human magic is out on Disney plus on December 20, you can watch babes on Hulu. I’m going into the holidays feeling super excited to hang out my kids, but also I’m gonna give myself some grace to be annoyed with them, too. And hot tip, even your relationship with weed changes when you become a mom. That’s it. See you next week.

 

CREDITS 44:37

There’s more of My So Called Midlife with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content, like midlife advice that didn’t make it into the show. Subscribe now in Apple podcast, I’m your host, Reshma Saujani, our producer is Claire Jones. This series is sound designed by Ivan Kuraev. Our theme was composed by Ivan Kuraev, and performed by Ryan Jewell, Ivan Kuraev and Karen […]. Our senior supervising producer is Kristen Lepore. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neel. Executive Producers include me, Reshma Saujani, Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Series consulting and production support from Katie Cordova. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review and let us know how you’re doing in midlife. You can submit your story to be included in the show at speakpipe.com/midlife, follow My So Called Midlife, wherever you get your podcast, or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership, thanks for listening. See you next week, bye.