Maybe It's You

When a global computer virus begins deleting all digital records, 30-something Ellie buys an old tape recorder and begins narrating an “analog” retrospective of her life before all of her photos, videos, and correspondence are wiped out forever. This 8-part scripted audio drama stars Parks & Rec star Natalie Morales, along with Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Cyrina Fiallo. Written by Erin Foley-Chan, produced by April Lamb 'Gimlet's Sandra,' directed and produced by Daniel Powell from 'Inside Amy Schumer.' Catch Ellie and the Wave every Thursday, and be sure to go subscribe to the show on the Himalaya app, or wherever you’re listening now; otherwise click the link in the episode notes.

Greg chats with newish bff Comedian Kane Holloway about cool stuff! :)

Greg Amiira and Land discuss Motley Crue and Amiira’s days in the music biz! 

Greg flies with solo w Romo and the hits keep coming!! 

Greg Amiira  and Producer Land talk about the college admissions scandals, what college is really for, the disparity of your degree and what you end up doing and reinventing meditation! 

Greg and Amiira are joined by producer Land to discuss their binge eating dirty secrets at the dawn of Easter Candy season and the championship level of lacking of self-control each has for trigger foods.  (Note to listener: Easter PEEPS do not fare well in this discussion.) Greg’s corporate gig at a racetrack in Las Vegas happened to provide the perfect opportunity for an audience member to give in to her own compulsion to privately insult his opening act comic and the gleeful dissection of glory and crazy that humans truly are.

Producer Land’s charmed life boggles Greg and Amiira’s minds this week on Maybe It’s You.  Breakup stories creep back in this week as Amiira, Greg and Land spill the tea on all of their bad breakups and what positive self-care they employed to try to get through them as well as the not so great things they did that proved less helpful. Additionally all fess up to the worst thing they’ve done to another person in a breakup and Amiira shares a few more breakup stories to amuse our sad hearts then Greg tackles a historic breakup for the ages.  This episode is brought to you by Gordon Plainthrouse Cabin  Hand Yogurts and Red Apple Corns.

Okay people, you’ve written us and told us that you’re going through the worst breakup of all time and need help.  So this week we’ve culled a couple breakup stories from the WOAT (Worst of All-Time) vault to make you feel better about your own heartbreak! On a very special Maybe It’s You Breakup Horror Stories edition, Amiira and Greg are joined by honey-voiced producer Land to regale each other with nightmare breakup stories that will leave you with soothing feeling that your breakup really isn’t that bad after all. Enjoy!

Amiira and Greg are joined by producer Land to traipse through the landscape of the different iterations of the comfort and discomfort of being seen or being invisible at different times in your life.  Center of attention people, introverts, extroverts and how to  embarrass your teenager without even trying.  Building resilience, allowing yourself and your kids to connect to their pain and discomfort to build the confidence to know that you can do hard things and recover from hard things.  Amiira takes their daughter True to get her driver’s license and inadvertently pisses off the woman doing the driver’s test. The normalization of sexuality in the teen realm where behaviors are less judged PLUS a tremendously incredible audio snippet about talking to boys about sex and porn from The Good Place actress Jameela Jamil who is Amiira’s new hero this week. This episode brought to you by Care/Of Vitamins (Amiira’s obsession) go to www.takecareof.com and use code MAYBE for 50% off your first month’s vitamins. 

Did you just hear that? Drag queen comedian Roz Drezfalez has a spooky new podcast on Starburns Audio about real ga-ga-ga-GHOSTS! On this preview episode you’ll meet your hostess and hear one of her eeriest personal tales of the paranormal involving a haunted antique Ouija Board purchased in a thrift store. Episodes available now on Apple podcasts, Himalaya or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Amiira and Greg recap their trip to New York to do the Today Show, the full shakedown Greg received at the airport by the TSA, flying through the Polar Vortex Arctic Freeze and Greg’s literal thin skin. Is there a difference between breaking an old habit and making a new one? After failing countless times to break old habits, Amiira is trying to just concentrate on making a new habit of acting as a better version of herself and letting that alone be the reward and measure of progress rather than someone else’s response. Greg has the realization that what’s in his heart may not be in his actions. 

With Greg out of town,  Amiira is joined by her fellow Witches of the San Fernando Valley Moon Zappa and Jackie Harris Greenberg for a no holds barred romp through vibrators, the love hate relationship of women and balls of the man variety, the realization that we all still identify with our early traumas and insecurities and the weight of all the old stories we drag along with us about ourselves that continue to harm.  The need to agitate our injuries to make peace with our part of our mistakes and behaviors, clear the air where the vibrations are damaging and the willingness to be dedicated to do the work needed regardless of results. Plus a hearty discussion about teen sexual education, the access to mature sexual content, lessons from a tantric seminar and the idea that your first sexual experience is the you continue to recreate throughout your life. This episode is sponsored by Green Chef. Yum!

Amiira and Greg are joined by producer Land to discuss being cool, what determines cool and the sometimes strong reactions that people have to those that are comfortable with their own coolness.  Conversation traverses the lifespan of cool to the turning point in adulthood where you stop chasing the concept of coolness and reconcile the authentic you. 

Episode Description: Is pining for the past interfering with the present and creating an expectation that can’t be fulfilled in your relationship? Amiira and Greg are joined by producer Land and Photographer Church to roundtable the effect of nostalgia on your romantic relationship. How remembering the past, being overly attached to that younger version of yourself can be a toxic comparative force that wrecks your present and threatens your future. Trying to recreate a time or feeling with elements that no longer exist do to time, circumstance and personal evolution can leave you feeling dissatisfied and resentful that you can’t go back to the newness or effortlessness that once existed in simpler times. We traipse through the nostalgia for a time where anticipation existed for all the big “Firsts” or milestones and stumble onto the realization that we mourn the period of our lives when we were mostly looking forward because most of your life still laid ahead.  It’s deep, it’s funny and it’s real. Enjoy!  

When Greg is out of town Amiira’s friends Moon Zappa and Jackie Greenberg drop by to talk about the magic of Christmas traditions and the realization that there are FOUR parts of giving and receiving gifts. Then Moon fills Jackie and Amiira in on proper butt plug etiquette and the ladies bring the R-E-A-L when a potential suitor gifts Moon a necklace made of dried vegetables plus a bonus impromptu poem by Jackie about said necklace.  We zing zag to the confusion of people who try to lead from behind.  The discovery of white holes, the inverse of black holes lead to possibility of positive chaos explosions and the disappearance of funny men and Producer Land wins Christmas Eve with his family’s We Love Jesus and Grilled Cheesus tradition!

This week’s musings include Amiira’s newest obsession with her Moon Pod that compliments her Gravity Blanket to create a full zero gravity anti-anxiety immersion experience and Greg and Amiira talks about the differences that can make them complimentary at times and adversarial at others. Then producer Land joins to discuss the holidays, family traditions, Richard Simmons dolls, sailor suits, lederhosen, gift giving and intention. 

Comedian and Television Host John Henson joins Amiira and Greg to discuss their friendship and how men's friendships differ from women’s in what closeness means.  The craziness of life and how suddenly you go from being at the height of everything to having your life completely blow up. The desire to assign value to things in your life impulsively that are completely different in hindsight or retrospect. The habit of boxing and storing things emotionally that you can keep bottled up to endlessly fuel future disappointment. Coming to the understanding that carrying around anger that is toxic when the truth simply is that no one denied me anything they had the power to give me.

Widely known as The Single Woman, best-selling author, blogger and social media star Mandy Hale drops in on Amiira and Greg to talk about her new book “You Are Enough.”  A soul baring document of  feeling trapped by the successful persona and brand she created that no longer felt authentic to the life she wanted to live, her struggle with deep depression that resulted in an intensive partial hospitalization psych program where she rebuilt her self worth through grieving, healing and intensive therapy that led her to write “You Are Enough.” The realization that you have to lose yourself to find yourself, that sometimes losing something is actually making room for something better and while the happy times might be great, it’s the sad times that make you great.

The multitalented Merrin Dungey (Alias, Big Little Lies, The Fix) drops some serious knowledge when she joins Amiira and Greg. Coming in hot with, "Say what you mean, mean what you say and don’t say it mean," Merrin brings real tools for having healthy, strong, and most importantly effective communication in all your relationships.  Traversing topics from understanding your power as a girl/woman, the horror show of teens dressing too provocatively and the discomfort it causes Dads and concern it causes Moms, finding your place and sorting your life amid divorcing with children, and the female mind at work as an Super Type A personality and how motherhood makes you a multiple instead of an individual.  Fascinating, insightful and wildly entertaining! 

Comedian H. Alan Scott (You’re Making It Worse podcast/Latter Day Jew) joins Amiira and Greg for emotional bumper cars where Greg and H. Alan realize that they are mirror Straight/Gay images of each other.  Having both survived cancer and been tasked with restarting their cancer treatment paused careers, Greg and H. Alan bond over the reinvention that is the silver lining of personal setback.  Now in a healthy relationship H. Alan is bringing the very first boyfriend he’s ever brought home to his Mormon family for Thanksgiving and what preparation is required with all parties for full family immersion.

Beth Lapides, the creator of the longtime alternative comedy show UnCabaret, joins Amiira and Greg to discuss long term relationships both romantic and the relationship you have with your own creative work. The crossover of working together and living together that works until it stops working, how a dysfunctional relationship can get stuck in the past and stop growing when you stop exploring yourself, and the realization that you might be squeezing the life out of your favorite person. Brought to you by Hello Fresh! Use discount code MAYBE  at hellofresh.com/maybe60 to receive $20 off your first three orders. Thats a total of $60 off your first three orders!

Actress (24, Night School, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and comedian Mary Lynn Rajskub join Amiira and Greg to talk about the shared relationship dynamic of a marriage of a magical thinker with a non-linear mind opposite a linear mind and what daily communication looks like… and how they hilariously still are puzzled by each other after a decade plus of marriage. Learning your person, how they are, how you are and what you both need then training yourself to identify it when it’s actually happening then practicing the appropriate acceptance, boundaries and actions to boost the fun and harmony in your home plus sound bath envy and the desperation of performing comedy. 

The singularly hilarious and mystic Moon Zappa joins Amiira and Greg to talk about all the different obstacles and pitfalls that we encounter in our marriage relationship.  Part 2 of our deep dive into How To Keep Your Marriage From Sucking where we discuss how we behave as badly as your family of origin, hang on to stuff even after an apology has been made because anger continues to come up, and how you can have total willingness and desire to get rid of something and STILL not be able to do it.  The idea of looking to the past as proof that you can recover from adversity or trauma rather than looking to the past for injury. The avoidance trap of putting pleasure on your discomfort rather than digging deeper into the issue and that compromise isn’t meant to be taking turns being miserable.  There’s a ton of funny and insightful information and conversation that will help keep your relationship thriving.  

Amiira and Greg go into the conversations and real life advice that sparked the writing of our new book How To Keep Your Marriage From Sucking, a preventative guide to keeping your wedlock out of deadlock. We’ve run the obstacle course and know all the hazards so we can warn you about all the traps you need to look out for.  Includes a hilarious because it’s true excerpt from the How To Keep Your Marriage From Sucking relationship conversations you need to have quiz, the ability to renegotiate things in your marriage and a sidebar about porn’s effects on how you view your partner. Plus they answer a listener question. Enjoy! 

Comedian Jackie Kashian (The Dork Forest  & The Jackie and Laurie Show podcasts) drops by for an hourlong hilarious deep dive into family dysfunction, celebration and revelation, the joys of marrying the right person after you’re already a formed adult, the steep learning curve of the time we’re living in of sexual misconduct, racism, and human garbage as well as the great hope for self-correction in the future and those who choose to be on the right side of history.

Engaged couple Naomi Ekperigin and Andy Beckerman from the Couples Therapy Podcast join Amiira and Greg to talk about marrying your lives, navigating each other’s parents, historical parent child dynamics that continually teeter on the line of infantilizing.  The responsibility you feel towards your partner in the face of the familial loyalty and love triangle and how too much togetherness and enmeshment can potentially spoil your Couples harmony rather than strengthen it.

Amiira and Greg discuss the erasure of identity that slowly seeps in with the monotony, structure and repetition of daily adult life.  With responsibility and children comes the evaporation of spontaneity and adventure as your role changes to be of service to others before being of service to yourself. The disconnection from how you once defined yourself now that you’re in the environment of adult life.  As well as a lively and revealing discussion of mental illness in marriages.  

Amiira and Greg explore the idea of love elasticity.  How much wear and tear can you put on your love before it stops snapping back? How far can you stretch your love before it breaks? In long term committed relationships (including friendships, romantic relationships, family) we can find ourselves withdrawing our thoughtfulness, consideration and attention from our partner, who once was our first thought, and giving it to elsewhere in the moment then expecting your person to just roll with it. Suddenly, you’ve built this new habit of taking your person for granted, being disconnected and even treating them poorly in favor of another person who is relatively meaningless in your world. Maybe It’s You listener email raises the discussion of conflict in the division of domestic labor and what roles gender, personality and position may play. 

Amiira and Greg’s conversation with Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, Prophets of Rage) continues and delves into  band dynamics being similar to a group marriage as well as the challenges that arise when making decisions as a band at the intersection of art, commerce and ego. Then switch gears into fatherhood with his own sons, discovering as an adult that he had three half-brothers in Kenya and developing strong relationships with them and how their new brotherhood bond built a bridge to his biological father finally becoming a part of his life. Finally, Tom challenges Amiira and Greg to a battle of the bands game!

Tom Morello, (Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, Prophets of Rage) join Amiira and Greg to talk about the glory and challenges of his adolescence as the only African American kid in his town and high school, how working at the Renaissance Faire is still the best job he's ever had, the other education he got at Harvard, having a change of heart about getting married and having kids,  and the five problems you encounter in a band.

Greg and Amiira introduce new producer Land and discuss the difference in the pageantry of young couple weddings and the later in life weddings that are coming down the pike. In true How To Keep Your Marriage From Sucking fashion Greg and Amiira relive their own wedding planning dilemmas that led to them having an engagement party where they staged a surprise wedding and Amiira’s struggle with vulnerability and anxiety at weddings and all the mistakes they made around their wedding.  The reality of post wedding day depression, the brain scramble of when you and your person part ways in what moves you and the opportunity that lives within heart crushing breakups.

Greg and Amiira are joined by engaged comedians and podcasters Kelsey Cook (Self-Helpless) and Kane Holloway (Your First Time) at the How To Keep Your Marriage From Sucking book signing at the infamous Book Soup on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. We get into the meat of bad proposals, conflicting fighting styles, control issues and boundaries as well as reading an excerpt from How To Keep Your Marriage From Sucking and taking questions from the audience on Greg and Amiira’s first live Maybe It’s You..

Amiira and Greg get into the guts of lazy communication plaguing your long term  and most meaningful relationships. How we get into the habit of sacrificing the feelings of our significant others in favor of accommodating near strangers, how we enter a space with conversations that have already started in our head then land them on our bewildered partner with an unexpected punch of amped up and heavily laced energy to guarantee that everyone gets to feel bad now. 

Beverly D’Angelo (National Lampoon’s Vacation, Hair, Every Which Way But Loose, Coal Miner’s Daughter, Entourage, Simpsons) discusses her career as a misfit in Hollywood, seeking fulfillment rather than success, her obsession with Steve Perry of Journey as a gateway for the nostalgia of a time of innocence and seeking safety and her entrepreneurial  idea for mobile therapy. Plus the bonus of close up magic with Handsome Jack!

You know them from seasons of the Bachelor, Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, the vibrant, foxy and newly engaged Ashley Iaconetti and Jared Haibon join Greg and Amiira to talk all things love under and outside of the microscope. Finding strength in their differences and incredible introspection these two reality stars were put on television to find love but developed their relationship off screen between seasons where they nurtured and protected their friendship and incubated an authentic romantic love.  Plus we talk about wedding planning and the awkwardness of having to watch your fiancé’ date on television.

Jennifer Armstrong, author of  Sex and the City and Us, drops by to discuss the cultural impact of female aspiration and the breadth  of relationships and behaviors explored through the characters and storylines of the the much celebrated and groundbreaking Sex and the City.  Shining the light on their own marriage proposal as well as Jennifer’s and Carrie Bradshaw’s, Greg and Amiira delve into the expectations and realities of your evolution both personal and as a couple when marriage is on the table.

Aaron Woodall and Jessa Reed of the Mormon and the Methhead podcast join Greg and Amiira for a deep dive into the experience and expectation of growing up in the Mormon religion, self-discovery through meth use, climbing your way out of isolation, failed marriages, fear of rejection and the dynamics of mastering vulnerability. 

Paul Gilmartin from the Mental Health Happy Hour podcast joins Greg and Amiira to take a deep dive into the difficult conversations that you have to have to achieve true intimacy, how we plant landmines in our relationships in the first five years that will explode later on, recognizing that the shared reality of a relationship morphs with time and fractures, and the fall out of growing up in an emotionally invalidating household. It’s a good one people!

The revealing (and puzzling) truth of Amiira’s family dynamic through a text chain about salad. Greg and Amiira answer listener email about dating and making a connection. Producer Yusong discusses his experience with dating apps and struggles with being complimented. Greg can’t decide whether to discuss his colonoscopy or True’s improv summer intensive.

Our friend Dan Freedman joins us to talk about being a single father after the unexpected death of his first wife, having to be your own moderating force as both the disciplinarian and the paternal figure, being alone in making all the parenting decisions you usually make with your partner, how wasted time is just wasted time and some really insightful perspectives on first and second marriages including the idea of the six month break.

Karen Kilgariff the hilarious comic and My Favorite Murder co-host joins Greg and Amiira to discuss how self-doubt, insecurity and descending voices cripples owning your own ambition, black out dysfunctional drinking days with a crew of comedy greats and a walk down memory lane of the early low brow Los Angeles comedy scene.

In a very special Maybe It’s You, Greg and Amiira flash back to their roots when Greg was a stand-up comedian and Amiira a music business executive when they were first dating and became writing partners. Together they revisit their path to becoming relationship book authors of He’s Just Not That Into You, It’s Called A Breakup Because It’s Broken, It’s Just A F***ing Date and the upcoming How To Keep Your Marriage From Sucking.