ReThinking: Following your purpose (not your passion) with comedian Zarna Garg

What is the worst career advice you've ever gotten? Follow your passion. Everyone hates that. Why do you hate it? No, please no. No, nobody's passion took them to be a lung transplant doctor. Do something that the world needs. Like, please monetize your misery. It's fine. Your passion can be a side gig. And a lot of people think that I'm being hypocritical. I'm not. I believe that I'm doing work that is pushing boundaries for women all over the world, especially brown women who've never known a world where they can say these things. And I'm telling you, I run it like a business. So I think your advice is don't follow your passion, follow your purpose. And monetize your misery is what I say. Hey everyone, it's Adam Graham. Welcome back to rethinking. My podcast with Ted on the Science of What Makes Us Take. I'm an organizational psychologist. I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. Zarna Garg is the stand up comic screenwriter, best-selling author, and one of the busiest people in comedy right now. But her journey to success was not a straight line. Comedy was a late career pivot for Zarna, who previously tried to start multiple businesses. There was a vegan chili company, a tomato sauce brand, a matchmaking service, but none of them worked out. Then her daughter Zoya had an idea, and she launched a campaign to convince her mom to try comedy instead. And Zarna crushed it. Adam, should we get into trashing my mother-in-law right away? Let's just get this party started now. When Zarna stepped up to her first open mic in 2018, she didn't know how to craft a joke. But since then, she's won Kevin Hart's comedy competition, put out an hour-long comedy special, and made a successful pitch to open for Amy Poler and Tina Fey. I read about the tour in a newspaper like everybody else. So I remember calling everybody and being like, they must need an opener. They must need an opener. Somebody's got to warm the crowd up. Somebody's got to see these people. And what was your pitch? I mean, my pitch was quite desperate. I was like, listen, I will do whatever you want. You want me to learn improv? I will learn. You want me to go out there and be so boring that everything you say flies, I will bomb, deliver it. I have happily no problem. But luckily, it didn't come down to any of that. They actually knew me from my work on social media and were happy to discover that I was a real classic stand-up comic. And then things just fell into place. They tried other comics, you know, it's Tina and Amy. They had their own process. And I was very fine with surviving all the audition rounds. Because I knew in the end they would come back to me. I had the confidence. There's no way anybody's going to top this hot mess. [LAUGHTER] Right, you were. OK, well, Zarna, I've been excited for this conversation since before I reached out, because you have been making me laugh for several years now. I am so honored. I can't even believe it. It's reaching you. It's reaching the white guy. [LAUGHTER] Is that all I am to you, a white guy? You're so much more than that. But the fact that a tiny little Indian anti-thing is reaching you is shocking to me. Well, it's not at all surprising to me. I think I actually first came across you when I read a little essay in the New York Times by somebody who recognized your, at the time, hidden potential as a stand-up comic. Yeah, it was my daughter. So she watched me try and fail at launching many businesses. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time. She's my oldest of three. And I used to take my kids everywhere I went, even when I was pitching ideas or trying to sell a product or whatever, because I wanted them to learn. I was so sure everything I pitched was going to be a super hit that I was like, I want them to witness the moment. [LAUGHTER] Instead, what they witnessed was like a series of failures. And I think it was a vegan chili place. I was trying to pitch a vegan chili product to a steakhouse. Because the vegans are always stuck at the steakhouse. When we go with our loved ones, I've been in that situation. I was convinced if I made the best vegan chili, they would just add it to their menus. And she saw the guy buy it and throw it the minute we turned. But he spent an hour talking to us. And that's, I think, was one of the moments that my daughter was like, maybe it's her chit-chat chatter. Whatever this thing is that she does when she meets people, they just want to talk to you. They don't care about whatever this other stuff is. And when we came home, she goes, you know, mom, maybe you should do comedy. And I was like, that's not a job. Who thinks comedy is a job? No one. How am I going to make money doing that? Already, my whole life people told me I was funny. And I thought it was the biggest curse. Curse, why? I was like, yeah. What do you do with funny? I mean, my whole family is surgeons, doctors, mathematicians, those are skills. You do something with that. What do you do with the funny person? I remember my mom being absolutely traumatized when I was a kid. Somebody said she's so funny. My mom was horrified. She was like, we didn't get the CPA. We didn't get the accountant, not the scientific. We got the funny one. What do you do with that? Well, clearly she hadn't read all the research showing that humor is a sign of intelligence and it's a way to establish warmth and kindness. We're learning now. We're learning and are all American kids that teaching us. If I did one thing right in my life, it's actually listening to my kids, my daughter's perspective. OK, to that point. Initially you were resistant and thankfully, you rethought that hesitation. And I understand one of the pivotal moments was a birthday present that your daughter Zoya got you. Tell me about that. Yeah. So she knew that I wasn't taking this funny thing seriously, but she started becoming adamant as kids do. You dig in your heels as they say in America. So I remember she was in ninth grade, I think. She would sit on her computer for hours and be on Facebook. And I was like, what are you doing on Facebook? And she was reaching out to everybody from my past, my childhood friends, my relatives, people I worked with 20 years ago. And she asked them all to write notes about a memory with me, whatever it stood out. So she collected all these notes, like 100 and something notes. Each note was like some version of, you've made us laugh. You're ready for a stage. The responses were pretty unanimous. I've been doing funny speeches my whole life. Now I know it's a comedy set. But we never thought of it that way. I was the person who I walked into a wedding and somebody would hand me a mic for no reason. They would just be like, make a funny speech. And I would sit there and be like, oh, well, did you see this outfit? And what do you think about this piece of dessert or whatever and try to make it funny? And I was really shocked. I was blown away, honestly, because it never occurred to me that I had impacted people in a way that they would remember 20, 30 years later. I mean, a lot of them, I haven't even seen or heard from in decades. So even the emotional impact of that was quite big on my heart. Wow. OK. And what happened then? Did you immediately change your mind and go to your first set? No, of course not. No. I thought my kid has gone completely crazy. I got mad at her because she was in high school and she should have been staring for the SATs. And she was equally like insistent that this was the path that I had to explore. So then she recruited her brothers to push me in this comedy direction. And I made a pact with them that I will go wherever this comedy thing is and see what it's about. Because I had never stepped foot in a comedy club until that point. So I didn't even know where I was going to go. But I agreed to look into it and take a selfie. So I can prove to them that I went. And then we can move on past this. But there was no plan to actually make a joke or write a joke or any of it. I didn't even know that was a thing. So what happened on the first set? I think pretty much every comedian I know bombed the first time they got on stage. I didn't have a set. My plan was I will go and take a selfie just to shut my kids up. So I could go back to doing other real things in my mind. So a mom friend of mine had told me that her friend was running something called an open mic in the basement of a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan. And she said, why don't you go talk to this mom? Because maybe she knows where you do this comedy thing. So I went so when's the afternoon I believe at noon and it was a comedy club. And I remember thinking who are all these people down here? Don't they all have jobs? And then as the open mic progressed, I was like, oh, I see they're making jokes. And they're testing jokes with each other. Okay, fine. I mean, this is like a business, but still not connecting it to myself. I took my selfies and I was about to exit. And the mom who was running the club said, you're already here. Why don't you do five minutes? And I was like five minutes of what? And she said, just go on stage and talk about whatever you think is funny. And so I got up on stage and I just started trashing my mother-in-law. And who doesn't think that's funny? You know, I just like talking about all the things that irritate me about life in the West. I remember having a whole bit about high heels and how annoying high heels are and whatever. I was just ranting. There was no set. And the more I did, I could just see the other comics dying. Now you have to understand what I know today. Open mics are notoriously hard places to make somebody laugh. because every. there is concerned with their set. And I remember when I was about to get off, one of the comics, like, "No, do more, do more." And I was shocked. I didn't think anybody would care about me and my stories, especially the world that I came from. Where my stories felt so specific to my life. You know, why would anybody care? And yet they turned out to be universally relevant. It still is shocking to this state of me. I mean, my biggest, one of my most viral bit was I've never said I love you to my husband. And I really thought when I wrote that joke, that I must be the only person in the world who is in a very loving marriage, but has never said the words. Because if you look around you in pop culture, you feel like everybody is always saying, I love you to everybody at all times. And then millions of people from all over the world were like, we don't say it either. I mean, listen, Indians, it's a big country for rich marriages. So you don't really sit there and think, do you love this person? No, you're like, this is a good match. But we're also not a very sexed up culture. Like no Indian I know has ever had sex. How we became a billion people is beyond me. - So one of the things that I find really interesting about your approach to comedy is something you alluded to, which is you rant a lot. And most people's rants are annoying. There's something different about the way you rant that opens people up instead of pushing them away. What do you think that is? - I know what it is. It's a well-crafted joke. It's delivered as a rant, but you can't just rant. I mean, once I got into the business, I learned everything about it. I audio tape almost every show that I do. So I can hear why the audience is laughing. Is the audience embarrassed? Is the audience with me? Are they nervous? Am I creating anxiety? I have a very science-backed approach to what I do. And I'm very proud of it. I like producing good quality work. The delivery of it feels like it's your mom just saying it off the cuff. But isn't that the challenge? Just to make complicated things look and feel simple? - I'm so curious about what you learned from listening to your early jokes. - I used to do a lot of jokes about my own life in India, which has a lot of sadness and heaviness to it. And it made the audience very uncomfortable. And I decided early on not to go down that road. Because if you're paying ticket money to come see me, all I want is for you to feel light and happy. Like you leave walking on a cloud. I don't need to change your mind. That's also the advantage of coming to something a later in life. You're done trying to change people's minds. So-- - Well, I'm not. That's what I do for a living to keep going. - I mean, the thing that I watch out for in my audio tapes is a nervousness, anxiety. I used to be a very anxious joke writer. I used to be like, oh my god, everything was centered around the idea of is the audience going to be interested in this? Is this a widely resonant enough of a topic? But today I'm much more confident in my storytelling. When I first started, any silence made me very-- me very anxious. I was like, oh my god, my career is going to end if there's a 30-second silence. Now I'm a little more experienced. I can even tell if the audience was on its edge or were they checked out. Like I'll give you an example. I make mother-in-law jokes. I just have to say the words mother-in-law, everybody is like sitting up. If I say-- and do you want to hear about my father-in-law, let balloon, nothing, nothing. And you can hear the energy shift in the tape. Wow. That it's like they just don't want to hear it. And my father-in-law is a hysterical character. He's really-- he's proud of things. I never thought you could be proud of. He loves to say no guard will ever wear glasses, because he thinks it's his genetics. And meanwhile, he walks into the wall every day. But people don't want to hear it. So it's out. Why? It's-- I don't know why. It's a mystery to me. But the father-in-law, not interesting. Mother-in-law, sister-in-law is another character and working out. Very interesting. People sit up, but father-in-law, there's few topics I've found where I-- this just doesn't track at all. OK, so I have a couple of theories about why that might be. Tell me what you think. Yeah. The first one is that I think people run into more problems with their mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, because when somebody in that role is assertive, it violates a gender stereotype that a strong father-in-law or a brother-in-law doesn't as much. It's OK for him to be a little bit overbearing, but her-- Yeah. --not OK. Not OK. And then I also wonder if the source matters here. So is it more legit for you to make fun of a woman than a man? For sure. I think the men don't like it. But as a woman, I'm a big fan of men. Although I will tell you that I've seen a noticeable change in the audience. When I first started, it was all women coming with their women friends. Now it's close to $5,50, but a lot of guys are dying. I mean, if I make an Indian uncle joke, they love it. Love it. I mean, I did a lot of Zoom shows. I remember back during COVID. I was one of the earliest adapters on Zoom. And I would have to do shows with the chat that's running through the Zoom. And uncles are merciless, Adam. Any joke that that wasn't funny, as we're all reading the chat, as my set is progressing, that wasn't funny. OK, she's a little funny. So when I make jokes about Indian uncles, they're fine with it now. But it's been a little bit of a journey. And I think you're on to something there. That's so interesting. So you have to bring the audience with you in order to get the license to be able to make fun of men. I think so. I think otherwise in their perception, otherwise in their mind, you're this rage-filled, anti-man, anti-patriarchy woman who's like a little hysterical. And I already have a little hysterical energy around me when I'm on stage. So I don't need anymore. The thing is that it's not an act. Sometimes people think it's an act. They say, after doing as many shows as I've done, and I continue to do, when I get on stage, I just can't believe I found the thing. Well, that's one of the things that I find so endearing about your performances is the authenticity. And people pay me for it. It's shocking. Sometimes I'm like, no, no, keep the money. It's OK. I'll do it anyway. You want me to yell at your son? I'll do it. Just so you know, people pay more money to sit front row with their grown kids because they know if I ask them, like, what are you doing? And he's like, I'm a history major. They know I'm going to rail right into him. I'm glad you brought this up, Zarna, because I want to fight with you about your stance on majors and careers. Give me your rant first. Well, listen, to be clear, I'm not against the humanities. I'm not against any of those careers. But to go to college and have a half a million dollar degree, which is where we are right now in America, at least where I was with my kids, for a degree that has no clear strategy on how you're going to recover the cost of it. You cannot do it alone. I told my daughter, she's a good writer. She's published in the New York Times now multiple times. And at Stanford, her teachers were like, you're a good writer. Don't do computer science. You'd stay with the writing. And I was like, absolutely not. You want to write. You can sit at home and write. Or you go to Stanford and you get a computer degree. Please, well, God's sake. Every computer secret out there needs to be in your pocket. So we reached an agreement and she did both, which is what a lot of South Asian kids do today, because the parents will not fund that whole experience, which scares us. OK. And what is your fear exactly? My fear is that she's going to end up spending all this money on a degree that she's not going to know how to recover the cost of. If money was not an object, sure, go study whatever. Because my kids, for example, I believe my kids are very hardworking resilient kids. They're going to be fine no matter what they do, right? I know that. But it's a lot easier. All right. So here's your invitation to rethink this rant a little bit. Yes. If you look at the data, you are right that humanities and social science majors earn less money in their first job than STEM majors. But they catch up over time. Yeah. And I think the reason for that is technical skills become obsolete very quickly, whereas what you learn in English, history, classics, psychology, sociology, anthropology are critical thinking and problem-solving skills, communication and collaboration skills. And those become increasingly valuable as your career advances. So shouldn't you be prioritizing those skills, especially in a world where we can automate or outsource more and more of the technical skills? No, we shouldn't be prioritizing them. I think you need both. This is what I'm advocating for. By the way, I did a deep dive on your entire social media and I saw that and I agree with it. I-- yeah, no, I agree with it. But I think saying you can automate your way out is a little naive. You still have to have a working understanding of technology. Otherwise, you're going to end up entering this new age of ours, absolutely like horrified of tech. And you don't need to be that. I don't think my daughter will ever be an A plus quarter. Her heart is not in it. It's very obvious. She'll tell you herself. But she's not frightened of it. We're using every AI tool known to man, every AI thing. But she figures it out because she has enough of a fluency that she's not nervous about. which is what I advocate. And I think you need both, right? - Yeah, I think those are fair points. I think where I might push back a little bit is to say a lot of the STEM learning has happened throughout school, right? So from pre-Kindergarten all the way through Senior Year of High School, you've had a ton of exposure to math and science and increasingly computer science. And by the way, most of our students come to Penn knowing how to code. They're all using AI very avidly. You don't need to take a class to build those skills. And by contrast, I think about the research on where you actually learn how to be a good critical thinker. And it is mostly in the social sciences and humanities where instead of having laws of chemistry or rules of code, you have to think in contingencies and probabilities and understand how to see multiple sides of an argument. And ultimately, that's what really sharpens your ability to think, doesn't it, Zarna? - No, you're not wrong. But my pushback to you is just, it's so expensive that please get some kind of STEM degree as a backup because life is very uncertain. And I'll tell you, the movie I made, my director loves directing movies. He's now an author. He's put out a TV series. He's a creator of the Resident on FX. And then he directed this movie. But he also on the side is a cancer surgeon. And his mom was not letting him quit. - This is your dream, son-in-law. - This is my dream son-in-law. I didn't want to do a movie because I didn't think anything would come out of it for me. I was like, why am I wasting my time? I don't want to do this. But when I met him, he's like, my mom won't let me stop practicing medicine. He's a legitimate Hollywood director. But three months of every year, he has to stop what he's doing and go be the cancer doctor that he is because his mom won't let him. I believe his mom's words, even though he is one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood were, I don't believe in this Hollywood thing. (laughing) You know, we're almost in alignment here. I think the one thing I struggle with a little bit on this is I look at the students who are doing double majors like you're advising. And I think you're right. They're basically future-proofing themselves career-wise. But they're miserable. They miss out on-- - Of course. - The joy of college because they're taking too many classes. They have too much homework. They're very stressed. They're not building the kinds of relationships that ultimately both drive happiness and resilience. And I worry a lot about them. And I think I would feel a little better with a STEM minor or some STEM hobbies. - No, no, no. You're misinterpreting the situation. They're miserable, yes. But we like that. That is our real house. We're Indian people. We don't believe in fun. You know why? I'm shocked when I come up on stage. And people always tell me that you look exuberant. I am because my idea of a job or a business was absolutely tied to misery. The idea that you can be joyful and have a business or a-- It's alien to us, even to me and I'm living it. - I would love to go to a lighting round. This is one of my favorite parts of the show. I mean, this is almost a ridiculous question for you. But what's a hot take that you're excited to defend that we haven't heard yet? - You know, I do a lot of matchmaking type stuff in my jokes. And I've realized that women have been holding themselves back so much because they think there's a prince charming out there who's going to find them. And first of all, Prince charming's not going to find you. He can't even find his socks. Like, let go of that. I almost wish that every woman could just get married once and divorced once so they could get on with their lives and drop the bar. That's the other thing. Drop it lower in the gutter, people. Go deep in the gut. Everybody's a red flag. You know how he red flags my husband. He's like a walking tinnermint square. At some point, you got to settle. - Wow. - I have to ask, how did you meet your husband? - Online. - More specifically, what was the ad that you placed? - Do you want me to read it? I have it. - Yes. - Okay, hold on. Now it's going to make me look even more psycho. So in 1997, I was a student in Cleveland, Ohio, a final year-long student. I really wanted to meet somebody, but there weren't so many Indians around me. But at the time, the internet was very new. And I remember seeing the first ever classifies. And I decided, I was like, you know what? Why don't I look for somebody out on the internet? Because where else am I going to find them? And I put this ad out to some, I am too short or too plump, too dark or too argumentative. But enough about me. This is what I need from you. A husband and a partner, somebody who is ambitious, but not ruthless, confident, but not arrogant, and humble, but not timid. Most of all, he is honest. I'm on a mission to build a very successful life, and you must be ready to go with me. Only contact me if you want to get married. No friends, all capitals with exclamation. Kindly include your most recent tax returns and medical records. (laughing) - What were you thinking when you wrote that? - I don't know what I was thinking. In hindsight, it sounds so crazy, but I didn't think it was crazy at the time. I came from a world of arranged marriages. Do you know how arranged marriages work? And the parents will sit there and be like, "Well, he's wearing glasses, but she's short, so this is a match." These are the things. So I really thought I was being so, you know, practical in putting my truth out there. - So how many people answered that ad? - Hundreds. - Hundreds from all over the world. - Yeah. But my husband famously did not respond to my ad in the way that he didn't think he was getting married. Him and his friends found my ad while they were goofing around the internet in Switzerland. They were doing an engineering internship in Switzerland at the time. And they found my ad and they were like, "Is this real?" Because they thought the ad was obnoxious and I was like, "It's very real. In fact, I have all these responses and why are you wasting my time?" I was annoyed. - And what happened then? - He was a little upset that I wasn't blown away by his credentials. I mean, at the time, I didn't know what a big deal IIT was. And he was like, "You know, I went to IIT." I was like, "Okay." The third time he said it, I was like, "Am I supposed to do something with this?" And he's like, "It's a big deal." I said, "Okay, I take your word for it." "I didn't have any reason to push back." - Well, I'm struck by the way that you just put yourself out there. This is who I am. This is what I'm looking for. I realize that's not gonna be for everyone. It's gonna not be for most people, but you only need one. - I love it. Okay, next question is, who are your dreams in her party guests? - You on the table for sure. 'Cause you could see it all. My wish list is Oprah. A lot of me taking personal responsibility in the early years of my life when a lot was going wrong was a direct result of her show, you know, where she was like, "You are responsible for your own life." And I remember being like, "Okay, that's it." Chris Jenner is another big one. What she's built is aspirational to me. I mean, the fact that she got each kid to do their own thing and succeed at it at that level is just mind-boggling. - What is something you've changed your mind about lately? - I can give you another hot take here, but I could flamethrower it. Oh my God. I'm all about the Indian kids not marrying Indian people. I'm done. I'm so done. We seem to act better when we mix with other cultures. We really do. And maybe this is the future. Maybe this is the way we all evolve, you know. I already know my grandkids are gonna be Cameron, Lincoln, Julia. (laughing) There's not gonna be a puja, Sunil, in my future. (laughing) - All right, what is your best advice for people who are thinking about a mid-career or late career switch? - You can't afford not to. If you're thinking about it, there's a reason you're thinking about it. You can't afford not to take that chance. You need to roll up your sleeves, get in there. If the fear of what people think is stopping you, let me just reassure you that nobody cares. Absolutely, nobody cares. Whether you succeed or fail, nobody has time. So use that to liberate yourself. If you're thinking about it, there's a reason that you're at that crossroad. And if you're a person with good intentions, you're not out there killing somebody or causing other people to be killed. Get involved now. Get involved. I'm being mom, I'm being auntie, and I'm saying we need you on our team. We need you in this world. Just sitting there and overthinking and over-analysing is not helping anybody. It's your obligation. - Well, I love how you just nailed the psychology of both the spotlight effect and the over-blown implications effect. Spotlight effect, people are not paying as much attention to you as you think they are. And over-blown implications effect, people judge your competence much more by your successes than your failures. And I think that, for me, to your point about that being liberating, which says, nobody actually judges you that much if you screw up or if you try something new. - The thing is that the people who judge you are probably not doing anything. Anybody who's done anything real will not judge you harshly because they too have fallen and gotten up. - Okay. If one of your kids said they wanted to be a comedian, professional. - No, no, no, no, no. - You're not okay with it? - No. - No. Oh, no, no, no. It's been said. My older son has alluded to it. And I was like, did he do, no, no, no, no. It is not a good idea. lifestyle choice, first of all, very, very toxic lifestyle. You're out nights and weekends, you get paid and drink tickets. For years, I think there's easier ways to make money. I think do comedy for fun. Don't become a comedian, but do comedy for fun. I actually think comedy skills are highly transferable to every business and job. So a lot of people who take classes at the school that I help run on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, they are like corporate people, they're entrepreneurs, they want to learn how to be better in social situations. I highly recommend that. But comedy as a business, no, no, no, no, no, my kids are not allowed, absolutely not. I actually think that's great advice. Do it as a hobby until you prove that it could become a career. Yeah. All right. And then the last question for you is, do you still think your humor is a curse? I think my humor is a curse and a weapon. It has to be used correctly. It's very addictive to be on stage and have people laugh and clap. It's a very addictive feeling. You start believing you know better than others and all that is a curse to me. But it is a weapon of use correctly. I like to use it to diffuse situations. I walk into complicated situations every day. Somebody's mad at something and I use it tactically to diffuse things. I use it for a purpose that I believe is for the higher good. But it can very much be occurs. If you buy into the hype around it, there are comics out there who think they're rock stars. Like, yeah, not a rock star. I'm sorry to break it to you. And I'm mindful of it. Again, also blessed to have a husband who's very honest and will remind me of the real state of affairs every day. Zana, you are such a breath of fresh air. What a privilege and a joy it is to meet you. Thank you, Adam. And if you ever, I'm going to put this out there into the universe. If you ever one day are like, what more could I do with my life and you want to take the MCAT, I'll take it with you. That sounds like torture. No, it's going to be so fun. I'll do it with you. Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glazer. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our engineer is Asia Polar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winnick and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Highlash, Van Ben Cheng, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong, and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dail Sue and Alison Layton Brown. Do you think a single Indian man would ever be married if dancing well was a criteria? I wouldn't either. No.