Marlo Thomas Reveals the Truth About Her Health Mission
She’s the cancer crusader who has helped change the lives of thousands of children fighting this disease, and has rallied all of Hollywood to help. That Girl’s Marlo Thomas is an inspiration to many, with her generosity and unrelenting will to make a difference. In this interview, Marlo reveals to Dr. Oz why this mission is personal to her, and why laughter is always the best medicine. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
I was 24 years old producing my own show and I was the only female on the staff.
And I found that the way I could win over the men from not being, you know, sort of intimidated by the fact that I was a young woman in my 20s and I was the boss.
If you tried to do it by being sterner or tougher than any guy, it wasn't going to work.
The way to win people over was to make jokes, making them feel comfortable with laughter.
Hey, everyone.
I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast.
Marlo Thomas.
Joining us today, you all know her, of course, is that girl, Danny Thomas' little girl.
But this is a woman who has done incredible things throughout her life.
She's a TV legend.
She's won four Emmys, a Golden Globe, Grammy, a Peabody, everything.
She's also the National Outreach Director for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, a great organization that does cutting-edge work.
Her newest book is what we're talking about today, Growing Up Laughing, My Story and the Story of Funny.
Hi.
And this book, her first memoir, interweaves lots of chapters about Marla's personal story of growing up with her comedian father, Danny Thomas, and all of his celebrity and entertainer friends, with topics that really hit me hard about laughing, joy, and what brings playfulness into life.
Marlo interviewed lots of comedians, Alden Alda, Joy Behar, Sid Cesar, Stephen Colbert.
The list goes on and on and on and on.
There's not a single big name that I thought I would want to hear from that she didn't include.
And I think what she does so beautifully is bring all those stories together.
I'm going to talk about all that today, so stay with us.
But let me start off with, I think, the foundation of this, which is that laughing is healthy.
Talk to me a little bit about how that epiphany came upon you.
Well, you know, I grew up in a house of laughter.
And we had every crisis that ever was, somebody ended up making the other person laugh.
So I've never taken life quite as seriously as a lot of people do.
I take my work seriously and obviously the love of my family and my husband seriously.
But we don't dwell a lot on what's wrong without kind of seeing that it's insane also.
You know, I remember my dad...
One time my mother and father were having this huge fight at the dinner table, and I write about this in the book, and my dad got up from the table just furious, and he walked through the dining room and over the marble staircase and a floor to the bottom of the staircase and the big Venetian chandelier overhead, and he put his hand on the carved pedestal of the staircase.
He looked at my mother and he said, Rosemarie, I can't live like this.
And then he fell over laughing because he got an idea of what he must have looked like in this very opulent, beautiful place.
And he couldn't live like this.
And we all started laughing.
And I thought, you know, that is a pretty example of, you know, how they say there are two kinds of people in the world, you know, half full glass and a half empty glass.
I think there's three kinds of people when it comes to laughter.
And that's people that can laugh at something just about when it's happening or they can look back at it maybe a while later and then laugh at it.
And then those people who never find it funny at all.
And those are the people I think that are really got too much stress.
They're going to end up having heart attacks.
Well, you know that better than anybody.
You can't take that kind of stress, that kind of suppression to your immune system.
I spend a lot of time at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the giggling that goes on there and the clowns that we have come to play with the kids and the puppies that we bring.
All that's going on there all the time is things to keep them having fun and laughing and not be wallowing in the scariness that they're living with.
And boy, it's a perfect example, really, of how laughter can heal you, can make you better.
And I remember reading somewhere that a man named William Fry, who's a laughter researcher, said it takes 10 minutes on a rowing machine for his heart rate to reach the level it would after one minute of hearty laughter.
Yeah.
A hardy laughter can make you sore.
Yeah.
So you're laughing really hard.
But I mean, isn't that interesting?
It is.
You know?
The remarkable healing power of laughter is, you know, becoming better appreciated.
But just speaking as a layperson, you can appreciate that it is a workout.
Yeah.
Your diaphragm hurts.
You practice the deep breaths without even trying.
Right.
Takes you where you want to be.
You know, I'm struck.
Well, you know, Growing Up Laughing is your first memoir.
Yes.
The books were a little different in their nature.
You tell a lot of very telling stories.
One was, you mentioned St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.
You talk a little bit about your first visit there.
Yes.
Talk to us a little bit about that.
Well, it was my first visit after my dad died, and I'd been going there for years with him, and I loved my dad so much, and he died suddenly, so it was very heart failure.
It was very scary for us.
It's kind of, when somebody dies that you love and they die suddenly, it's as if they've been kidnapped.
The brain can't even compute it, let alone the heart compute it.
It's a very conflicting thing.
Anyway, several months later, I went to St. Jude for the first time, and I thought, oh my God, this is going to be too painful to go through there and remember him.
It was just such a personal place.
He founded it in 1962, and we spent so much time there together.
Anyway, I went inside.
I thought, I'm not going to cry because these poor people have enough heartache of their own.
They don't need me crying.
So I got myself together and I walked in and there was this party going on.
There was cake and ice cream and streamers and little kids running around in party hats.
So I said to the nurse, oh, that's so darling.
Whose birthday is it?
She said, oh, it's not a birthday party.
It's an off-chemo party.
That's what they celebrate.
They're able to derive strength from one child's turn for the better.
All these little kids having a party to celebrate.
And I thought then and there, this is going to be fine.
My dad's spirit is here.
My spirit's going to be fed here.
And the celebration, it's so amazing when you look into the faces of these children, you see the potential for what we could all be.
To be able to have joy in the midst of all this adversity, to be compassionate for others, to be brave and strong and not wallow in what's going wrong, but think about what's the celebration that you can have every day.
It's really a lesson.
It's taught me so much.
It's remarkable how humans have developed social webs to protect us from the pain of life.
It's what has kept our species able to thrive, which is why it's such an important part of how we deal with adversity.
I'll just throw one number out.
If you have a major adverse event in your life, bankruptcy, divorce, it takes about seven years off your life.
Really?
If you can have an intact social network around you, a web, to pull you back up again, your loss of life is less than a year.
Really?
There's still a penalty from having a bad thing happen to you.
That's of major importance.
But it's not nearly what it would be if we didn't have each other supporting us.
And I think what St. Jude does so beautifully is it gives you hope.
Right.
And hope, of course, is not just getting a good outcome, although St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital helps that occur by the work they do, but it's also being able to make sense of what's going on.
Yes.
And laughter, in many ways, cracks the facade, the veneer we put around us.
Which is when you tell the story of your father walking up to the banister in an opulent setting, saying, I can't live like this anymore.
Right.
Like, gone with the wind.
Right, exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
No, I know.
And I think it's contagious, too.
Depression is contagious and laughter is contagious.
You know, they say that, you know, you can only be as happy as the unhappiest person in the house.
So you really want to hang out with people that are happy.
And sometimes if I'm feeling blue, I'll say to Phil, let's go to a comedy movie or let's go to a comedy club.
Yeah.
Because then the minute you're there and you're laughing, your body is moving, your blood vessels are expanding, oxygen is getting to you.
It does everything for you.
Let's talk about Phil for a second.
I'll share the story with everybody.
I've always been a huge admirer of Phil Donahue.
In fact, the show that we do, as you probably know, I copy a lot of the things that he developed and brought to television.
A few months ago, I had the opportunity of meeting somebody And I went, Dr. Oz, I watch you every day on my treadmill.
So I hope you recognize your husband in those antics because I try to do the things he did, which is to listen.
He was a wonderful conversationalist, but what he did more than anything else, he turned the talk show genre into a listening show genre.
And then people felt, well, you know what, if he cares what I'm saying, about what I'm saying, then I care more about what else is going on in the program.
And it led to so many years of great success.
As you go through your life with him, what are the kinds of things you laugh at?
I mean, how do you bring joy to that?
What's been the success of that relationship?
I think the interesting thing is that we listen to each other.
A, we listen to each other.
It's funny when I'm a fixer.
So if something's wrong, I'm going to fix it right now.
I'm going to figure it out and fix it no matter who it is.
Marry her off.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Get them back together.
After a couple of years of marriage, and we were arguing a lot, he would tell me something and then we'd argue about it.
And one day I said to him, he was telling me something, and I was advising him, and you should do this and you should do that.
And he said to me, you know what?
I really don't want you to tell me what to do.
I said, what do you want me to do?
He said, I just want you to listen.
I said, you mean I don't have to fix it?
I can just listen?
You mean nod my head and go, uh-huh, uh-huh?
I said, that's easy.
I thought my job was to fix it for you.
And that was a very interesting moment for me to realize that people tell you things, they don't really want you to fix it.
They just want you to say, oh, that's...
I understand.
I understand.
It's so cool you said that because that's the big message Lisa's been hammering me about.
See, in our family, obviously, we each have our own fixing genes.
Right.
But a surgeon always tries to fix.
Right.
Males are often trying to fix.
So, you know, the daughters come to you complaining about some crisis in their life.
The first thing they do is cop their boyfriend and fix the problem.
Exactly.
Of course, the last thing they want you to do.
And so on the show, oftentimes early on, my first instinct when you were telling me about some catastrophe in healthcare you had was to try to fix the problem.
Right.
And so often what we all want is to be heard first.
Right.
Because you can't fix a feeling until you've heard it.
Right.
Exactly.
Sometimes you can't fix a feeling at all.
It can only be heard.
Sometimes the person doesn't want you to do anything.
That was the big thing for me.
Yeah.
I was used to everybody wanting me to fix things.
And now I was with a man who's completely self-sufficient and just really wanted somebody to tell it all to.
And That really changed our relationship.
And I think, I mean, I'm never going to write a book on what makes a happy marriage, because I'm not the one to write the book.
But I do think that what makes a marriage wonderful is that you're really good pals.
You're really good friends.
You know, I see people whose marriages aren't working, and they're not.
They're not close as friends.
They don't trust each other as friends.
They don't look to each other to have fun.
You know, we go out on our boat two weeks at a time, just the two of us, and he's...
It's a 57-foot boat, and he'll be the captain, and I'll be the crew, and we'll just go...
You're kidding me!
Captain's the boat himself?
Absolutely.
We go from Norwalk all the way...
We live in Connecticut, to Martha's Vineyard in Nantucket, just the two of us, and it is fun and...
We laugh and we, you know, we cook food on the boat and we have a big bathtub on the boat and we just have a ball.
So you don't second guess his captaining ever?
No, no.
He doesn't second guess my crewing either.
Okay, we're only just scratching the surface here.
We've got a lot more to go, so stay with us right after the break.
Talk to me a little bit about the advice you might want to give women who are listening to this right now and are thinking, you know, I— Marlothomas was always vitality to us.
She always represented what it was to be alive in life.
How do you keep that going throughout your life?
How do you reinvent yourself?
Well, you know, I have a new website called Marlothomas.com.
And I've always had the feeling that I've lived somewhere behind a one-way mirror where everybody got to look through it at me, but I didn't get to look back.
And I want to have a conversation with women.
And one of the conversations I want to have is, you know, life is not over at 40. This website is for women 40 and over to say, okay, what's on your mind?
I'm not through dreaming.
Don't you be through dreaming?
You know, let's talk about money and men and kids and aging parents.
And I think what keeps me vital is that I'm not through dreaming.
I have new plans all the time.
I remember George Burns when he was like 98 years old said, I can't die.
I've got too many plans.
And I think if you do have plans, you stay alive.
And if you don't, I think retirement is really a bad idea.
I would never retire.
Working, writing books, my new website, working for St. Jude.
I did a movie with Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus called LOL. The more I reinvent myself and find new ways to express myself, and like this website, I'll be talking to all these women now and making this community of women where they'll have some place to vet and talk to each other.
The great thing about...
The web is that you get a conversation going and then people talk to each other.
It's not just you talking to them.
It's a completely different kind of dialogue than I've been used to as a writer and as a person on talk shows and so forth where I do the talking but nobody's talking back.
That to me is very exciting.
Speaking of communication, you mentioned LOL. What's it like to make a movie or a television show now compared to 30 years ago?
What are the big challenges you see now that didn't exist and vice versa?
The big challenge is so little money.
I mean, these movies are all done on the cheap.
Unless you're making Avatar or some gigantic 3D film that has a huge, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars.
These smaller movies have very little budget.
So you're really working fast and you're working on the fly.
Even with a big star like Miley Cyrus, you're still working fast and working on the fly.
But in terms of the talented people you're working with, how do you impart knowledge to them?
How do you share with Marley?
Marley Cyrus is probably following your footsteps, but a lot later.
What are the tips and clues that you give to her about life that you could share with her?
I've got to tell you something.
This kid doesn't need any clues.
I mean, she is really good.
She's smart.
She's prompt.
She's on time.
She knows what she's doing.
She knows what's good for her.
I was very, very impressed with her.
Demi Mortu.
They really know what they're doing.
But I would say to anybody is, you know, fame is fleeting.
Really work hard and take the work seriously.
Don't take yourself seriously, but take the work seriously and, you know, give it your all and don't take anything for granted.
Because it's really, it's such a, it's not just that it's a privilege.
It's so hard-earned.
You know that.
You know, to be known, to find your place in a career, any career, you have to really focus on it and put a lot into it.
Sometimes your families suffer.
All kinds of things suffer.
But if you really work at it, you know, when you get there, treat it well.
Treat it well.
Take it, take it, don't take it for granted.
Right.
Well, you and Miley had a similar situation in that you both had famous fathers before you entered the business and then chose to go into entertainment.
I believe her father was fairly supportive since they did a television show together for you.
Right.
But you say in your book that your dad was not supportive of you going into entertainment.
Right.
He was terrified.
He really was.
He said to me afterward, he said, I just didn't want to relive the terrible first years with somebody that I love.
And he dissuaded me constantly.
But you know what?
He showed up at every play.
He was there all the time.
He was always in my audience.
In fact, people used to say to me, are you nervous when your dad's in the audience?
I said, absolutely not.
At least that one person for sure loves me.
I absolutely love having him in the audience.
I used to pretend that the audience was just filled with people that all look like him.
Exactly.
So, yeah.
No, it's good to know that somebody loves you.
But he was against it for that reason.
He was scared.
I remember when I opened in London in Barefoot in the Park, and I write about this in my book too, where he came backstage afterward.
My mother was all excited.
It was a big success and all this.
My mother was, you know, crying and happy.
And I saw my father walk in the door, and he looked like he had just finished the triathlon.
It was completely drained.
I knew that he had lived every moment of that play with me.
And I looked at his face, and I thought, it's not exactly pride.
It's not joy.
Oh, I know what it is.
It's relief.
It's complete relief that I'm not going to kill myself.
He's been holding his breath through the entire show.
For the whole show and for the 12 years before that.
You know, you have kids.
You just want them to be okay.
I love to talk about some of the comedians that you talk about in the book.
Let me start with the big question.
Do you think you're a good joke teller?
I am.
Now, what is it that allows you to do that, besides just the timing issue?
Oh, the timing.
Don't look that down.
This is an obvious part.
You are a funny person, and you're good and quick at this stuff.
Why are some people more challenged with that?
They want to be the life of the party, but they just have a difficult time getting there.
Well, you know, it's funny.
I asked the comedians in my book.
I interviewed Billy Crystal and Jon Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock and a whole lot of wonderful comedians.
And my question was, which was a question to myself and kind of is your question, is how did you get funny?
Was there somebody funny in your life?
Because I know why my family is all very funny.
It's because we lived with a comedian and there were George Burns and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar.
And all those guys were at our house all the time telling stories.
So we learned how to tell a story too.
And all of them had a funny uncle or a funny dad or something in their life that gave them the fact that they were laughed at, that people saw that there was something funny about them.
Except for Jerry Seinfeld.
He said his father was very funny.
His father told jokes all the time.
But he didn't really.
He was funny with his friends, his parents, not so funny with his parents.
So when he told his parents when he was 20 that he wanted to be a stand-up comedian, his parents said to him, why?
You're not very funny.
Somebody said, you mean you were like this closet comedian?
And he was.
He said, I was, you know, I never was funny at home because my dad was funny.
I said to Conan O'Brien, were you sort of the class clown?
He said, no, no, the class clown usually ends up in a motel shooting.
I was just a funny guy who said funny things.
I just thought that was such a great thing.
He is so funny.
I know we have Conan's old studio.
Oh, wow.
So when he went off to the West Coast, it's space freedom.
So, of course, we told him he couldn't come back.
He said, but my plan's working perfectly.
I've gone from network to basic cable.
Yeah, that's a very good plan.
And then do a bus tour.
And then do a bus tour.
That's right.
He's very funny.
But, you know, you talk about all the...
By the way, to quote Jerry Seinfeld in your book, he said, the average child laughs 75 times a day.
The average adult laughs 12 times a day.
Yes.
So something happens to us.
And as you grew up with these comedians, what was it that allowed them to keep tapping into that childlike desire to laugh?
I think they valued it differently.
They value humor differently.
You know, when you're with a bunch of funny people, in fact, last night I had a party with about 12 people and several of them were comedian types.
And we were laughing and having a good time.
time and I thought, we really value this.
We hang out together especially to make each other laugh.
And we're funnier because the other one is there.
You know, when you're with somebody that's really fun and funny, you get to be, you know, that comes out in you because you know there's a value to it.
You know that it's appreciated.
It'd be like, you know, if you're talking about any subject and, you know, you would talk to another heart surgeon, they would really, you know, impress each other with what they've just learned in the last year.
But comedy is the same way.
They want to make each other laugh.
I remember the comedians, Jan Murray was a very funny guy, and I write about it in my book.
He would get my father so convulsed in laughter that my father would literally fall on the floor, gasping for air, screaming, stop, stop!
Like he thought he was literally going to die from laughing.
And Jan Murray would straddle over him and continue.
He had him now, this captive guy on the floor.
And as I say, you know, in the real world, the guy on the floor convulsed like that is the one having the best time.
But in this world, the guy making him laugh like that is really doing what he lives for.
And that is the joy of it.
Jerry Seinfeld says in the book, I asked him if he thought his children...
We're funny.
He said, well, my daughter is eight years old and she has a book she carries around called Jokeopedia.
And she said to me the other day, she says, you know, Dad, I really like to make people laugh.
I said, oh, how great.
And what did you say to her?
He said, I said, I know the feeling.
So there's a little genetic thing there too.
The value of a laugh.
The value of humor in your life.
It's ironic because there's this health benefit of laughter and it is such a good feeling and it is such a good thing and yet so much comedy...
It comes from a place of pain within the comedians.
There's a cynicism.
If you turn on the comedy channel, you can see there's a little anger underneath.
There's a lot of taking pain and turning it into something funny.
So it doesn't always come from a place of happiness, this comedy.
I think you're right.
But what did Cahil Gibran say?
What is our sorrow but our joy en masse?
What is our joy but our sorrow en masse?
It's really the same thing.
It's what makes us human beings.
I mean, we're the only species that laughs.
Yeah.
Dogs don't laugh.
No one else.
And also the oppressed people, you know, the Jews, the blacks, the Irish, you know, those are the people that are the funniest people because they've come through something and they've realized that the way you cope with stress is to laugh, is to get it out.
I mean, it's good for the immune system.
It's good for the heart.
And I think also when you hear people laughing, you're drawn to it.
It's almost like your body wants to be a part of that explosion.
You walk by a group of people that are laughing and say, what's funny?
What's so funny?
You want to know.
You want to get into that thing.
It's like making love with a lot of people at once.
It's a community of love.
That's what happens, I think, with laughter.
There's a lot more to come after the break.
You know, you talk in the book about your dad.
There's some great pictures in here, by the way.
You say he's an old-fashioned dad for all the fame and money my father had earned.
At his core, he was a working-class guy, the middle son of a large family from Toledo, Ohio.
Yeah.
So what was it that allowed your dad, Danny Thomas, to leave Toledo and reach the level of success that he had in Hollywood?
What was that little magic dust that he was able to sprinkle that you think kept him going?
Well, first of all, he was an optimist, my dad.
I am, too.
He really had that wonderful middle-class work ethic, which is if I work really hard, I'll get to where I want to go.
But I think he had this impetus, too.
His family was on relief.
We call it welfare today.
And he had immigrant parents, came from Lebanon, didn't write English or read English.
They could speak a little bit.
They had ten babies, nine boys and a girl, and no money.
And my father remembers through that time how hard that was.
And there was a lot of laughter.
There was a lot of comedy in their lives.
And I think that he came out of that immigrant childhood with...
Wanting to be able to provide for his family.
He wanted to be a solid citizen.
He didn't want to be an uneducated, impoverished person.
And he used his gift of laughter, really, and it's a gift.
It's a gift to be funny.
It's a gift to look at life and see what's funny about it as opposed to letting it drag you down.
And he used that gift of laughter to pull himself out of that immigrant situation.
The Lebanese background, I think, independent of the fact that there was hardship involved with it, also is an interesting one.
The Lebanese in general I find very funny, very industrious, very effective of getting from point A to point B. I was fishing up in Canada.
And I had been taken there by a Lebanese man who's done well in life.
And we went to the Gillicuddy, the fish man.
And we were just talking about how Lebanese seem to make something out of nothing a lot of times.
So this Gillicuddy took us around, took us fishing.
And so we asked about his background.
And it turns out he's the head of all the Gillicuddies in Western Canada.
He's Lebanese.
He'd come over, learned how to...
I mean, I'm not even a good fisherman.
This guy can get me to catch fish.
But I think it speaks to...
And I think comedy is an example of this because it's such an art form.
It's often forgotten.
I mean, we have gallows humor in the hospital.
I love operating with one of my partners who I've always found to be one of the funniest people on the planet.
And in the most dire circumstances, he'll say something that just cracks the ice of tension in the opening room.
By the way, MASH, the movie, the lead surgeon in that movie...
Alan Alda character was based on a man who was chairman of Columbia for many years.
Wow.
And so it was the same kind of concept.
You would tolerate anything except abusing those beneath you.
Because they had enough stress already.
Right.
How does my yelling at a nurse help the situation?
Right, right, right.
In fact, it's insulting to me and them.
Everyone.
Everybody.
So they would always use humor as a way of decanting the frustration that necessarily happens in life.
Right.
Would you find that frequently as you were going through life?
Not just with your father, but in your own life.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I also found that it was a way to...
When I was starting out, I was the only female.
I was 24 years old producing my own show, and I was the only female on the staff.
And I found that the way I could win over...
The men, from not being sort of intimidated by the fact that I was a young woman in my 20s and I was the boss, was to make jokes.
I brought people together with humor.
Because otherwise, if you try to do it by being sterner...
Or tougher than any guy, it wasn't going to work.
So I think I've always thought that the way to win people over is making them feel comfortable with laughter.
That's what I think when you go to a comedy club or something, you're in a place where everybody's come for the same thing.
They've all come to let go, to have some fun.
They didn't come there to have a bad time.
They can do that at home.
Exactly.
And only Don Rickles is the only guy I know that the hardest way to get laughs is he insults people.
That's right.
And people can't wait.
They tip the maitre d' to have the front table so they can be insulted.
They love it so much.
It's an interesting thing.
But I do think that if you watch little children, I think the reason children laugh so much is that they and we don't laugh as much is that It's sort of taken out of us as we grow up, you know?
I remember so much in school being told not to giggle and not to laugh and not to pass that note around.
I mean, the spontaneity, you just keep, you know, beating spontaneity out of somebody and after a while, you know, they won't giggle or laugh as much.
It's hard to hang on to that.
That's why it's great if you have it at home, you know, and you see it as a really good thing.
I mean, I was always in trouble for laughing at school.
I can see that.
There's a glimmer in her eye now.
Speaking of Marla Thomas, Growing Up Laughing, title for her new book, My Story and the Story of Funny.
So MarlaThomas.com, what's your hope with that?
My hope with that is that millions and millions of women will talk to each other and inspire each other.
I'm doing, for example, these different video series on the web.
One of them is called The Hero Next Door.
And I'm asking women to send me and nominate a woman that they know that's doing...
It doesn't have to be somebody who brought the plane down into the harbor.
Salisberger.
Salisberger.
Exactly.
It's just somebody who did something really good or kind that we can learn from, that's a hero to you.
We're doing another series, and we've already done a lot of them, doing another series called Girls' Night Out, where I get five or six women, and we sit around, drink wine, and absolutely vet about all the things that are driving us crazy about our husbands or our kids or each other or our girlfriends.
It's a girlfriend place, because...
Actually, it came out of my own desire.
I always think if I think of something, everybody else is thinking it too.
Sure.
And it's my own desire as I go on the web, and I love the web, that there's no place for me.
There's no place like just talk, grown-up talk.
You know, I mean, I'm on Facebook, and I'm on Twitter, and now my site's up.
It's much, much more fun for me to be talking to these women about real things and not...
You know, talking to 20-year-olds.
I mean, I love 20-year-olds, but I'm not 20. So for women 40 and over, this is a new place, a place where you can find some real conversation and maybe some solutions and maybe some inspiration.
And mostly what I want to say is don't stop dreaming.
Yogi Berra said it ain't over until it's over.
It ain't over after 40 either.
And that's something to celebrate.
Yeah.
Not everyone's blessed by having a comedian father.
And so my last question in the purgatory of questions I'm going to get you through.
What would you give as advice to families listening to us right now who want to bring humor back into their life to make it a fun experience for the family?
You have to look for it.
I mean, really, tell a joke.
Find a joke book and pick a joke and tell it and make the people around you laugh.
Find ways to bring the humor into your life.
Go to a comedy club.
Go to a comedy movie.
Start to get into the habit of putting humor in your life.
There are people who never do any of those things.
But I remember when we were children, my dad used to always say at the dinner table, who heard a joke today?
Oh my goodness.
Yeah.
And we would tell a joke and he would laugh.
So what's your favorite joke right now?
My favorite joke?
Oh my God, I have so many jokes.
Well, let's see.
I'll give you a joke from my book.
I have one from chapter three.
I'll go first, then you go, right?
Okay.
Old man and his wife, and by the way, remember this joke, guys, you can tell it at home when you get to your kids.
An old man and his wife die and they go to heaven.
They're sitting, this is from chapter three in Marlo Thomas' book, Growing Up Laughing.
They're looking out at the lush hills and the valleys.
The birds are fluttering about and the beautiful aroma of lilac trees is wafting over their table.
Everything is perfect, even though waiting at the tees, they're golfers.
After a while, the wife turns to her husband and she says, darling, isn't heaven wonderful?
Yeah, he says.
And if it hadn't been for your god darn oat bran, we could have been here 10 years ago.
I love that joke.
I've got a good one.
Actually, Phil gave me this joke.
There's an old Irishman named Patty.
He's just about to go to his eternal reward.
He looks at his grieving friend Mike and says, Mike, I have one last request.
Anything, Patty, Mike says.
What is it?
He says, in the kitchen pantry, you'll find a hundred-year-old bottle of whiskey.
When they put me in the ground, will you pour it over me grave?
I will, Patty, Mike said.
But would you mind if I passed it through me kidneys first?
Thank you so much for gracing us today with your presence.
Congratulations on growing up laughing.
My story and the story of funny, you know, you're as lively, vivacious, and with it as always.
I appreciate it and congratulate you for all you've done in leading so many people to a happier place in their lives.
