Kate Berlant | Good Hang with Amy Poehler

Episode Overview

• Host Amy Poehler interviews comedian, writer, and actress Kate Berlant—joined early on via video call by Kate's frequent creative collaborator John Early (Search Party, Maddie’s Secret)—on the Good Hang podcast to discuss her new HBO comedy special, Parmesan.
• The conversation explores the origins of Kate and John's comedic partnership, tracing how their distinct upbringings shaped their shared fascination with passive aggression, pretentiousness, and the failure of social niceties.
• Kate examines the psychological toll of modern technology addiction, detailing her experiences with Internet and Technology Addiction Anonymous (ITAA) and how abstaining from social media scrolling restores personal intimacy and childhood memories.
• The discussion delves into how performance intersects with gender and sexuality, including Kate's perspective on failing within identity categories and her comedic thesis that heterosexual relationships can serve as a hiding place for women who do not want to be seen.
• The episode concludes with candid stories about Kate's medical anxiety, early acting jobs, conflict avoidance, paranormal experiences, and her obsessive approach to party hosting, alongside Amy's practical formula for delivering a successful wedding speech.

Key Concepts

• Comedic Origins in Passive Aggression and Authority: John Early and Kate Berlant first met at age 24 on a mutual friend's comedy show/short film set and subsequently spent almost every day and night together in New York before Kate moved back to Los Angeles after 10 years in New York. They slept in the same bed for an estimated 3 years in a room with only 1 foot of space on 2 sides of the bed, with John running out of underwear so often he would buy new packs of Hanes at CVS while wearing the same shirt and pants every day. Amy Poehler compares their comedic volley to Agassi and Sampras, hedging, "I believe they played together, I hope they did." John attributes his comedic interest in passive aggression to growing up in a Southern Protestant environment where anger is never expressed directly. He hedges that Kate's specialty—mocking the foolishness of authority and superiority ("I think maybe that's where it comes from")—stems from growing up as an only child under the table around Los Angeles modern abstract artists, "probably having incredibly pretentious, indecipherable, illegible conversations."
• Artistic Upbringing, Early Ambitions, and the "Nepo Baby" Label: Kate grew up with a picture of Amy Poehler and a printed copy of the Upright Citizens Brigade manifesto on her bedroom wall, and she first performed stand-up comedy at age 17 in the basement of her all-girls single-sex high school. As a kid, after seeing the movie Erin Brockovich, she started doing her homework in high heels, and at age 16, she used to unscrew the big drop-down world maps from her school classrooms and walk out with them to steal them for her bedroom. Her father is a metal collage sculptor and her mother is a stay-at-home mom and former prop designer who built the famous Stonehenge prop for This Is Spinal Tap—a lineage that led New York magazine to include Kate in their "Nepo Babies" feature right next to Timothée Chalamet. In one of her own early acting jobs, Kate woke up at 4:00 a.m. to voice fake humiliated callers for "War of the Roses"-style morning radio shows in Texas/Dallas (hedging on the pay: "I think I'd get paid like 75 bucks or something, I don't know") before being fired for sleeping through a 7:00 a.m. Dallas radio call.
• Technology Addiction and the Loss of Self-Intimacy: Kate's HBO special Parmesan got its name from a ridiculous temporary title that made Chelsea Peretti laugh, while also referencing a joke in the special about what people comment on online. Addressing the reality of internet habits, Kate reveals she has attended ITAA (Internet and Technology Addiction Anonymous) Zoom meetings twice and shared in the meetings. She has completed a 6-week cleanse and several 1-month periods of social media sobriety—eliminating scrolling and social media apps while keeping email and texting 24/7—before relapsing. She explains that constant scrolling destroys psychological intimacy with oneself, whereas after 3 weeks without scrolling, childhood memories (such as being 10 years old in her kitchen) flood back into her brain.
• Gender Dynamics, Failing Categories, and Heterosexuality as a Hiding Place: When Kate was 14 or 15, a popular boy told her that guys do not like funny girls because it reminds them too much of other guys. Kate also argues that tampons and blush should be free and that women should be allowed to safely steal makeup from big corporations (not mom-and-pop shops). Regarding her sexuality, Kate notes she exclusively dated men until falling in love with a woman later in life, which opened "another room" for her. Rather than locking into a rigid label, she views herself as both a "failed straight woman" and a "failed gay woman," finding comedy in how people fail within categories. In Parmesan, she proposes that heterosexual relationships can function as a way for women who do not want to be seen to be left alone due to the inherent distance between men and women—though she explicitly hedges that "of course there are guys who like funny [women]... of course they exist" and "I believe that straight women exist... Everyone relax, okay? I know there's straight people that are in love."
• Unconscious Everyday Performance and Social Niceties: Kate and Amy examine how people constantly perform in daily life, noting that performance only becomes scary when people are unaware they are doing it, and that watching a "failed performance"—where someone unsuccessfully uses social niceties to cover their true feelings—is comedic heaven. Kate even traps herself in unnecessary performances: on a 6-hour flight, she invented a fake shoulder injury so a man would lift her carry-on bag into the overhead bin, and felt compelled to physically act out the injury upon landing 6 hours later in case he was watching. When asked how she handles real-life conflict, Kate hedges ("Maybe I withdraw. I'm probably going to go with withdraw" / "gun to my head, withdraw"). She illustrates this with a story about a chimney sweep who came to her house without drop cloths, got soot all over her white couch, curtains, and hallway, and gaslit her while his boss told her on the phone, "Maybe your house was dirty." To get him to leave, Kate still paid him a reduced amount and claims she developed permanent TMJ and jaw tension from clenching her teeth for 1 night afterward. Similarly, when she bit into broken glass in a ceviche appetizer at a wedding and bled in her mouth, she quietly went to the kitchen to warn the staff to pull the trays so she wouldn't ruin the party's vibe.
• Consumerism as an Endless Search, Medical Paranoia, and Quirks: As co-host of the wellness and beauty podcast Poog with Jacqueline Novak—which Kate discloses was partly started to get free products sent to them—she observes that consumers do not actually want to find the "right" product; rather, the ego loves to engage in the search forever. This intersection of targeted products and Kate's severe medical/sensation anxiety recently led her to get an unnecessary CT scan/angiogram at Cedars-Sinai after using an Instagram-advertised neck massager ("Haisu") too hard and panicking about her neck arteries. In her personal life at her Los Angeles home—which a visiting handyman once remarked upon by saying, "Never have I seen a house so small"—Kate wears Ugg Ultra Mini boots indoors even when it is 104 degrees outside, blasts her air conditioning at night while sleeping naked, and explicitly solicits Eight Sleep on air to send her a free mattress cover. She also recently got a haircut 3 days prior to the podcast taping from a stylist on Fairfax who told her, "I want extreme length for you," and she claims to have psychic abilities, to have predicted things, and to have seen ghosts over the last couple of years—including 2 upsetting paranormal experiences that prompted her to place special figurines on her nightstand to "close the door" (while also mentioning friends who were told someone could lift a curse for $500).
• Vision Health and Disclosed Episode Sponsors: Early in the conversation, Amy mentions she "just read somewhere" (hedging on the unspecified source) that people with blue eyes are more susceptible to sun damage and should wear sunglasses at all times; John states he still has 20/20 vision, while Amy uses reading glasses and John claims Kate wears reading glasses too. Throughout the episode, Amy discloses three commercial sponsors: presenting sponsor PayPal (whose "Pay in 4" splits payments into 4 with no interest and no late fees; PayPal Inc. NMLS 910457); Visible by Verizon ($25 a month for unlimited 5G data and hotspot, offering $10 off the first month of the Visible+ Pro plan with promo code HANG); and K18 Biomimetic Hairscience for FutureIQ Biomimetic Hair Longevity Serum (offering 10% off a first purchase at k18hair.com with promo code AMY, with ad copy claiming the product delivers up to 19,000 more hairs, helps prevent premature grays, and improves the scalp barrier to start reversing hair age in 3 months, with no study type or sample size disclosed).

Quotes

• At 0:05:00 - "You know, I just had never met someone around my age who was as funny as like my idols, you know. It was so crazy." - John Early describing his immediate comedic admiration for Kate Berlant when they first met at age 24.
• At 0:08:40 - "And I think that if we're playing people who—and this is I think actually Kate's specialty—is like this, the foolishness of like authority and, you know, yeah, pretentiousness, superiority." - John Early explaining the core comedic target of his and Kate's collaborative characters.
• At 0:20:37 - "By the way, I have gone to ITAA meetings, Internet Technology Addiction Anonymous. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, I don't know." - Kate Berlant candidly disclosing her participation in support groups to address her phone and scrolling habits.
• At 0:22:57 - "But then just on the base level of like, on a personal psychological level, like you've lost all intimacy with yourself. And like that's the crisis of it, it's just so devastating." - Kate Berlant articulating the deepest psychological cost of compulsive social media scrolling.
• At 0:25:21 - "He was laughing and he was like, 'God, you know, you're really funny.' I was like, 'Yeah.' He was like, 'You should be careful though, guys don't like funny girls because it reminds them too much of other guys.'" - Kate Berlant recounting a formative comment from a boy when she was 14 or 15 that shaped her view of how men perceive funny women.
• At 0:30:00 - "But I guess as I'm less interested in like locking into a certain category, mostly because I think what's interesting is like failing, and what's funny is like failing within those categories. Like I'm a failed straight woman for sure." - Kate Berlant explaining how she views her sexuality and why failing within identity labels is central to her comedy.
• At 0:32:21 - "It's only when people don't know they're performing that it starts to get scary." - Kate Berlant distinguishing between self-aware stage performance and the unsettling nature of unconscious everyday performance.
• At 0:37:15 - "Like it's like, if you're a performer, it's like you have to go under to go off." - Kate Berlant discussing the psychological nature of being a performer.
• At 0:46:55 - "And like we just, like the failed performance, to say it again, like when people think that they're covering and they're not, and when people are using the social niceties to cover, like that is just heaven to watch." - Kate Berlant highlighting why watching people unsuccessfully mask their discomfort or anger with politeness is so compelling.
• At 0:54:45 - "There's this misconception that you want to find the right product. You actually don't, you want to engage in the search forever. The search is kind of, you know, the ego loves to search and never to find." - Kate Berlant sharing an insight from her wellness podcast Poog on the psychology driving endless consumerism.
• At 1:07:10 - "Start with a joke, end sincere. Don't do it the other way around. Don't start sincere and then think that this hilarious joke is going to kill." - Amy Poehler offering her golden rule for non-performers delivering a wedding speech.

Takeaways

• Structure any wedding speech or toast by starting with an easy, self-effacing joke (such as admitting you are nervous) and ending on a deeply sincere note—never start sincere and attempt to finish on a big joke—and cut your prepared speech in half so it does not run too long.
• Experiment with a 3-to-6-week social media and scrolling cleanse (while keeping essential text and email communication) or attend an Internet and Technology Addiction Anonymous (ITAA) meeting to break compulsive phone habits, regain psychological intimacy with yourself, and allow dormant memories to resurface.
• Recognize that the urge to constantly buy new beauty and wellness products is driven by the ego's desire to stay in an endless search rather than a genuine need to find a working solution, and use that awareness to curb impulsive shopping.
• Avoid purchasing or aggressively using unvetted wellness and massage devices advertised on social media—especially if you are prone to medical or bodily sensation anxiety—to prevent injury and unnecessary emergency medical scans.
• Protect your eyes from sun damage by wearing sunglasses consistently outdoors, particularly if you have blue eyes, which Amy notes she read may make eyes more susceptible to sun damage.
• Handle unexpected crises at social events discreetly—like Kate quietly alerting kitchen staff after biting into broken glass in wedding ceviche—so you can resolve safety hazards immediately without ruining the mood for the hosts and guests.