Best Of: Jason Segel / Lisa Kudrow

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From W.H. Y. and Philadelphia, this is fresh air weekend. I'm Tonya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today, Jason Seagull, in the comedy drama series shrinking, he plays a psychotherapist who's having a nervous breakdown, but is continuing to see patients. Seagull talks about what he's learned about psychotherapy and himself playing a therapist. Also, Lisa Coudreau,

she's nominated for two Emmy Awards for the final season of the HBO comedy The Come Back, which she co-created. Lisa is best known as Phoebe on Friends. But long before that, she was performing as a kid for the people around her. I am imitated Lily Tomlin, eat a fan, that character on laughing. I got a slumber parties and to me, it was like doing a show. And then lip sync songs,

and then have everyone do it. I was like a cruise director. And book critic Marine Corps again has a late summer gift for us three new suspense novels. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This season on Planet Money Summer School, we have drilled for oil in Norway. We've smuggled products in the North Korea, and now we make it to our seventh continent at Harktika.

Mr. Penguin, speak to me. I have another sound of Antarctica. That's a reporter trying to interview a Penguin. We'll explain on Planet Money Summer School. Listen on the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Fall is right around the corner. That means the midterms. Hey, it's Miles Parks from the NPR Politics podcast. Now is the perfect time to calibrate your

news diet for the fall. Follow our show for short daily episodes that will help you stay ahead

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on the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi there. I'm Brittany Loose, and not to brag, but I host a really fabulous podcast. It's called It's been a Minute. I love making it, and I think you'll love listening to it. Over the last year, hundreds of thousands of listeners have been tuning in, and I got to say, if you haven't yet, you're missing out. Listen to the it's been a Minute podcast from NPR today.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Terry has our first interview. Here she is. My guest, Jason Seagull, is nominated for an Emmy for his leading role in the series shrinking. The first three seasons are streaming on Apple TV. When we first meet his character, Jimmy, he's a psychotherapist, who's having a nervous breakdown, but continues to work with his

patients. Believing he's having a breakthrough as a therapist, he intervenes in his patient's lives.

He gives them inappropriate advice to do things Jimmy believes will change their lives for the better, and prevent them from complaining about the same things week after week, without ever making an effort to fix the problems. The reason Jimmy is falling apart is that his wife was killed in a car accident a year ago. His teenage daughter is in high school when the serious starts. She accuses him of being so absorbed in his own grief. He's emotionally abandoned her instead of helping

her through her grief. Jimmy's mentor and colleague is played by Harrison Ford, who's also nominated for an Emmy as his co-star Jessica Williams. Seagull got his first memorable role in freaks and geeks. The characters were high school friends. After they show as canceled, Seagull wrote and starred in the film for getting Sarah Marshall. He wrote and was the human star of the movie musical The Muppets. He was one of the stars of how I met your mother, played writer David Foster Wallace in the film

the end of the tour, and wrote and starred in the serious dispatches from elsewhere. Let's start with a scene from the first episode of shrinking. It will give you an idea of how Seagull's character has lost his bearings as a therapist and is pushing his patients to do what he thinks they need to do to move forward. Here he is with his patient Grace, played by Heidi Gardner.

“Are you just kept on going on and on about how dumb I am?”

I don't have dumb Grace. He's sad if it weren't for my great ***** no one would want to take care of me, so that's almost nice. It's not nice. I know, but he loves me.

Grace, we've been doing this for two years. Two years of your life. I have never seen a guy.

Tell a woman that she is dumb and lucky she has great **** and thought to myself, "Wow, baby, it's really being love!" And he keeps telling me how great he is. Well, I saw him. He's not that great. His muscles are too big. His shirts are too tight. Nobody likes that. It's gross. I am sorry. I don't know what's happening because I was talking and Grace, your husband is emotionally abusive. He's not working on it. He doesn't intend to.

He's made you think it's all you deserve. It's not just **** leave him.

But then leave him or I'm done being your therapist. Look. Okay. Jason Seagull, welcome back to Frishare and congratulations on the Emmy nomination and on the series. So I should say the outcome does not go well. It depends on how you look at it. It's good to talk to you again. By the way, I was saying to you

in our little pre-interview session. You're one of my very first interviews and I was a little guy

in the early 20s and it's so nice to be talking to you again. It's a pleasure to have you back. We also talked about the Muppets movie.

“That was a lot of fun. Yeah. That's right. Absolutely. First of all, what should Jimmy have done?”

What do you think? Well, it's an interesting thing because this is the extreme example of this kind of therapy method that the show is based on this group of therapists who kind of broke convention and realized that people were spending a lot of time week after week rehashing where things came from in their past. In a reality, what they really needed was some hope

about what to do on Tuesday. You know, it's like I have to have this talk with my boss on Tuesday

and I have all these feelings about it and you're spending week after week figuring out why you have feelings about authority figures. But Tuesday is coming, you know? And so this group of therapists decided that they were going to kind of change the rules a bit, tell people what to do on Tuesday. And then in the meantime, we will get to figuring out why you had such a hard time figuring it out. And so this is the beginning of that approach to therapy

that we see, you know, as the show progresses of, you know, people really just want to be told what to do to some extent. We can figure out the why of it all. But what am I supposed to do about

“my abuse of husband? What am I supposed to do about, you know, my work situation?”

Who is the therapist that you're talking about? One of them is Phil Stutt, who there is a documentary about and he has a whole web of people that, you know, that he trained and works with a big group of therapists who all have the same idea that what people really want is some hope. And if you can send a patient out of the room with some hope in some direction, they're much more likely to come back and they're much more likely to affect change in their life. Did you participate in that kind of

therapy? Listen, one of these guys has become my actual therapist and it totally changed my life.

He's absolutely incredible. And I had done therapy throughout my life and, you know, like they said,

I had spent a lot of time talking about the same stuff from my childhood or this or that. And to finally be given some direction about, hey, next time this happens, this is what I want you to do. Sometimes as reductive as like, I want you to say this sentence next time this person does this. And all of a sudden your life starts operating more smoothly and, and then you start to pick up the why of it all. As a matter of fact, the last lines of this season that we just, you know,

finish that aired season three, Jimmy finally gets to the dirty underneath of why he can't move forward. This, this idea of who would want me now. You know, I'm all covered in scars. That came from a real therapy session I had with, with Barry, where I had to show up to this thing where I was going to be around somebody who I, who I had kind of come up with. And I've had a twisty, attorney life and some, some rocky moments. And this guy was going to see it had just worn

it all a lot more lightly than I had. And I was talking to my therapist Barry about it and I said,

“you know, I, I think I feel a little bit embarrassed. I feel embarrassed to walk into this room”

and he has worn it all so lightly. And I'm showing up covered in scars. And without missing a beat, he said, what a shame it would be to show up anywhere at 45 years old, not covered in scars. Isn't it what Harrison Ford said? I got off the phone with my therapist. I called the writer's room and I said, guys, this is how this is how this ends. That's so interesting. Yeah. That moment released so much personal, whatever you would call it, shame, embarrassment about

that I've lived a complicated life. And the beauty of doing shrinking is when people come up to you, it's not like I love this joke or I love the Dracula puppet musical. These are all things that I'm really proud of. But people come up for shrinking and they say, hey, I was going through XYZ

up and say, like, that thing about scars really stuck with me. It's, it's a sign of a life fully

lived, you know? No, absolutely. That's stuck with me, too. I've heard you say that at least when you were younger. I don't know how it is. Now you had trouble making decisions. And I'm wondering

“if that relates to how much you like this form of therapy was somebody suggests what you should do.”

One of the things that I've come to realize and getting to know myself for this long is I seem to have like the wrong size computer for my needs. It's like it's just crunching numbers and scenarios instead of letting me settle in and enjoy my life. And it's been that way since I'm really young or that kind of emo, emotional kid and every decision felt so weighty. And I think that it

has been very beneficial to my work because I seem to feel things like 1.5 times the normal amount

but it has been kind of stifling in my personal life. And so yes, I think having somebody simplify the equation has been a really helpful thing. I will say like and I have throughout my past been kind of hesitant to talk about like personal life stuff but I'm getting married this year.

“And my fiance, thank you so much. My fiance does a very similar thing for me.”

She is a dancer and she kind of lives in her body and is a very grounding force that I have been meeting in my life of someone who just says, hey, I know you're thinking a lot right now, but you know our life is great, right? And I don't have that voice. That voice does not like live in me. And so that's also been really helpful for kind of kind of calming me down a bit.

You know, with decision making, did you and do you always think that you know, you can see both sides

well, this decision will be better than that decision, so it's hard to decide which is best, but you're sure there's going to be consequences if you make the wrong choice. Yeah, I wish it was more rational than it is. I think it's honestly, I think it's like a close

“cousin to OCD. I think that the actual stuff is a little bit of a mask. You know what I mean?”

I'm like fooling myself if I think any of this obsession or worrying is about anything real, but you know, it's as simple as like, oh, you know what? If I'm worrying about the property line right now, life must actually be in pretty good shape. You know what? I mean, it's learning that kind of stuff. Do you actually have OCD when you're diagnosed with that? Yeah, and it manifests in a bunch different ways, but like it, you know, when I was

young, really, really young, it was night terrors that turned into like compulsively checking door knobs, and I've found a lot of ways to channel it into creativity. Creativity has been a really good friend. I mean, it's been my beloved since I'm young until I met my partner, like me in creativity where we're right or die. Jason Seagull's speaking with Terry Gross, he's nominated for an Emmy for his leading role in the series shrinking. We'll hear more of

their conversation after a short break. I'm Tony Mosley, and this is Fresh Air weekend. Billionaire Mark Cuban has stared into the belly of the beast of America's health care system. I mean, it's so bad you can go through a long list of really quality hospitals, and they don't know their costs. So, can Medicare for all be a solution? We take a hard look at the cost of the program along with US health care itself. Find this and hear more stories from the

indicator from Planet Money on the NPR app. Okay, so you're driving to work or you're on a walk or you're at the gym or whatever, and you just need to clear your head. That's the perfect time to hit the play button on NPR's all songs considered. It's not the news, it's not work, or whatever else is weighing you down. It's just a good time with good friends and great tunes. Listen to all songs considered every Tuesday in the NPR music podcast. This is Fresh Air weekend. I'm Tony Mosley.

Let's get back to Terry's interview with Jason Seagull. He's nominated for an Emmy for his starring role in the comedy drama series shrinking as a psychotherapist who's having his own mental health crisis after his wife dies in a car crash. I want to get back to the kind of therapy that inspired the kind of therapy your character is practicing in the series of intervening in people's lives and telling them what they should do as opposed to trying to like gently lead them to question

themselves and discover a solution for themselves. Has that has the series been controversial

could be a destructive approach. All I can tell, I don't read the internet, it all, I'm scared of the internet. I thought you might know therapists who are telling you directly. Well, that all I will tell you is that the therapists who have come up to me about it have almost unanimously said that it is wish fulfillment for therapists because the experiences for them you are sitting there knowing

exactly what the answer is and week after week you are trying to use like the secratic method

to like guide them to what to you is a very obvious decision you know and it's kind of funny because in real life your friends who are the least qualified are the most eager to tell you what to do and your therapist who is the most qualified feels the least enabled to tell you what to do

“and so I think that therapists love the idea of being able to just say like oh my god just leave him”

just leave him you know. How is the series pitched to you and it was your idea apparently to add this kind of therapy? No, not really it was Brett Goldstein and Bill Lawrence came to me they had both had similar ideas about the therapists who mentioned that they are the creators of Ted Lazo. I think Bill and Jason Seadek are so the creators of the Lazo Brett is a writer on it and then

Bill Brett and I are the creators of shrinking the reality is I kind of got a great free ride on it.

Bill and Brett had thought of these therapy ideas and they didn't have a script yet but they each had this idea about a therapist going through a nervous breakdown and they pitched me the

“idea and I think my contribution to it was what you had brought up which is I feel like I have”

garnered a lot of goodwill over my career and people are rooting for the characters I play let's push this guy as far as we can into the red because I feel like I can pull him out of the nose dive so let's be brave and you know in the opening I think it's the opening scene of the show I'm in my backyard with sex workers and booze and drugs and my daughter is upstairs like

it is it is pretty unlikable first depiction you know because I felt like if you start this guy at

the rockyest of rock bottoms you have a long way to go to pull him out and I just believed I could make you feel sympathetic for him so then we jumped in and we wrote the pilot and made the

“show in that history the the second truth to how it happened allegedly is I have a place in a town”

called Ohio a little country town and I love it there and I walk around town like big bird in Ohio I wake up every morning and I take this 45 minute walk through town that's kind of like like the beginning of beauty in the beast I'm like waving at the bigger and like shops are opening and I just like I just love it I feel very much like myself apparently what really happened is one of the producers was on vacation in Ohio and I was taken one of these

Muppity walks through town and he saw me from across the street and texted Bill Lawrence I just saw Jason Siegel he seems like a happy guy let's make a show with him and here we are so we've heard you with a patient in a scene from the series and now I want to play a scene with you talking to your mentor Paul who is considerably older than you are he's played by Harrison Ford Paul in the series gets diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and his series his symptoms progress

through the series and you've been really helpful to him as his symptoms have progressed you've been there for him but at this point in the series Paul Harrison Ford's character is leaving LA and moving to Connecticut to be close to his daughter who he'd been estranged from in the past but the relationship has started up again he owns the building where he practiced along with you and along with Jessica Williams who's character Gabby he gave the building in the practice to

because it was her dream to set up a trauma center so now she's going to be able to do that and he knew from the past that you didn't want to take over the whole practice but you feel betrayed because he didn't consult you before giving it to Gabby and you found out late that he was

I haven't watched this scene since I did it why were you afraid to know quite the opposite

this scene with Harrison that you're about to play I knew was common for the whole season you know

“because I get to kind of know the story lines in advance and I think the whole season I was thinking to”

myself boy when we get to the end of this season I'm going to be on a balcony with Harrison Ford acting my guts out you know and it's really important to me that I'd be great you know it's like you're going to play basketball Michael Jordan or something and man when that seam came I was not afraid and I just was honest I didn't show off and I did all the things that I feel like make a scene good and at the end when they said cut Harrison looked at me

and he said so excited you did it kid and we hugged and I didn't need to add any other like judgment to that moment does that make sense sure and he calls you kid in the series too yeah yeah now he's he's become a really special part of my life but yeah let's hear it I haven't heard it before okay and to set it up this a little further the subtext of this is that Jimmy it was felt like

hurt by his own father and emotionally abandoned because his father was always like disappearing on

him and now Jimmy's father is going to go on a fishing trip instead of going to Jimmy's daughter's graduation and Jimmy's really angry with his father for no emotionally abandoning his daughter at

“least that's how Jimmy sees it so here here you are as Jimmy with Harrison Ford as your mentor”

and fellow therapist Paul you speak first you gave the practice to get we talked about this years ago you said you hated paper working you all you wanted to do was spend time with the patience people change you didn't even check with me Paul would you have wanted it no so you're angry with me for not offering you something that you don't want yes I am I'm supposed to be your guy been your guy and this this is how you treat me I don't deserve it you see no I'm mad Paul

and I'm embarrassed I have to find out from make that you're moving you don't even have the decency to come and look me in my eyes and tell me that you're leaving me let's take a break I think these feelings that you're having might be meant for someone else I think they're meant for both you I can't know I'm not as important to you as you are to me I just feel stupid to take me that long to realize it so how does the scene sound to you actually hearing it now

I don't want to put you on the spot and feel like you have to brag about your performance

no no if that's a luckily that's not how I feel I'm I always feel vulnerable when I

hear or watch myself acting because I think like the feeling you're feeling if you're doing it right is so vital that then the it translating to the outside part of you always like by the clumsy act of expression is going to be like one step less vital but I feel I feel like I sound like how people sound when they're feeling those things you know sounds like you're joking yeah I try

“really hard I think that this might be the key to acting but I try really hard not to show off”

that I think that's one of the things that you learn as you're getting more familiar with working with a camera boy you want to show off like the camera's getting ever closer to you as the coverage goes on you know so some parts of you are activating like oh gosh it's my turn you know or oh it's getting closer now's the time to really show them you know and so I think a big thing that I try to do is to be oh you know it this is maybe a easy way to say it I was really

interested in why I thought Jeff Bridges was so good at acting so I went back and I read reviews

actor working today and I thought oh yeah that's the goal is to be as unself-conscious between

“action and cut as possible like just just don't show off don't try to don't try to show them”

just be really how honest can you be between action and cut you know and then you start adding like taking it for a spin while you're out there and that requires some bravery and all that but I guess during that scene but with Harrison between action and cut I just tried to really know what I was feeling I understand when people talk about acting like he might call I might call myself the character like understand what Jimmy was feeling that's not really my experience of

doing acting I'm like what am I feeling right now you know I don't have to search like what is Jimmy feeling what am I feeling and then just like just do that Jason Seagull has been great to talk

“with you again I really appreciate you coming back to the show and congratulations on your Emmy”

nomination Terry thanks so much it's so nice to both of us still be at it after all these years pretty darn cool Jason Seagull is nominated for an Emmy for his starring role in the comedy drama series shrinking he spoke with Terry Gross summer days are dwindling down to a precious few so our book critic Marine Corps again is scooping up some of the season's most interesting suspense fiction here's her review

it's the end of summer so let's grab what escape we can which for me means reading suspense fiction six years ago I stopped eating mushrooms the cause was Sylvia Marano Garcia's horror novel

“Mexican Gothic in which fungi become frightful Marano Garcia who excels at playing around”

with genre fiction recently brought out a noir novel set in 1940s Mexico called the intrigue it's so stylishly evil it begs for a movie version in black and white of course the plot is a classic one in which a predator risks becoming a pat sea a con artist named Ulysses makes his money by placing ads in the lonely heart sections of magazines and waiting to see if any rich widows or spinsters respond

when parola in clon the owner of a mansion turned boarding house in the port of vera crews invites ulysses to visit he thinks he's in clover but trouble awaits in the form of parola's niece ines rightly wonders what a man who bears a resemblance to a movie star like tyrone power is doing according her grim ant more over ines desperately wants out from under her ants thumb who could blame her here's a snippet of a scene where parola announces to friends that she's

shaperoning ines to a dance I will escort her parola said firmly my father always told us

ladies from good families are like delicate flowers which must be carefully pressed inside a good book and I agree with him ines his hand wrapped around a fork her fingers squeezing it tight she wished she could stab her ant with it a carefully press flower she thought a dead thing the double and triple crosses as well as the body count mount in the intrigue which subverted all my guesses about who would be left standing at the end this summer Richard Russo brought out his

first crime thriller originally written as a tv script under the falls is set in upstate new york in a place called stone mountain the plot like that of marino Garcia's novel is

indebted to noir where the past is never really past Tyler sinclair hasn't been back to stone

mountain since he ran off from an abusive father and romantic complications at 18 now 18 years later he's returning as a big shot country rock singer the occasion is a fundraiser for one of Tyler's

but as doc now informs Tyler not everybody in the mountain is a Tyler sinclair fan

“it's not just that you made all that money doc explains it's that you made it writing songs about us”

about our lives where's our cut is how they look at it the benefit concert ends in multiple deaths prompting Tyler and others to excavate his hometown secrets beyond the crime plot though Russo excels here at what he's long excelled at namely chronicling the world of working class America and the limited opportunities for those in places like stone mountain George Pelicanos started writing his crime series starring African American private investigator

Derek Strange in 2001 in the intervening years Pelicanos has written for series like the

wire and tremet but he's always kept intermittent faith with strange 14 years after his last

“doubting an older but still street wise strange returns in the blue flame investigating two”

murders that have struck within a once-type group of friends it's been long enough that I can repeat a cliche about Pelicanos namely that he does for Washington DC what Chandler did for L.A. Strange takes us into the DC the tourists and politicians don't know from neat rowhouse neighborhoods to the DC central detention facility the title the blue flame refers to the fact that strange and x-cop still has that burning cop curiosity I hope it's never

extinguished Marine Corgan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University coming up Lisa Cudro talks about her HBO show The Come Back and why she recently

“binged friends for the first time this is fresh air weekend history is intriguing but unlike”

the present it can feel far off on NPR's through line we bring it back to life and put you in the middle of it go inside the stories from then that shaped the world we live in now find NPR's through line wherever you get your podcasts how will a historically unpopular president navigate a midterm election season that may leave him with a lot less power stay caught up on the latest news with Trump's term the podcast where we curate NPR's coverage of

president Trump and short episodes focused on a single story follow Trump's terms on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts this is fresh air weekend I'm Tonya Mosley before my guest Lisa Cudro was famous back when she was doing improv she created a character an actress determined to stay in show business no matter what it cost her that character eventually became Valerie Cherish the relentlessly optimistic actress who has been chasing her comeback since

2005 Cudro developed Valerie for HBO with writer and director Michael Patrick King building a character who wants to be back on television so badly that she will endure almost anything demotions humiliation and writers half her age who barely hide what they think of her now in the show's final season Valerie finally gets what she has been chasing the lead in a network sitcom the catch AI is writing the scripts the role has Cudro up for two emis this year

one for acting and one for writing it's the latest chapter in a career that includes 10

seasons as Phoebe on friends who's finale drew more than 50 million viewers she won her first

Emmy for that role in 1998 her credits run long so here are just a few web therapy the improvised comedy she co-created playing a therapist who conducts very short sessions online who do you think you are the genealogy series she executive produced for 11 seasons and Romeo and Michelle's high school reunion a sequel announced earlier this summer and Lisa Cudro welcome back to fresh air hi thank you nice to be back I want to play a clip from this third season in this scene Valerie has finally gotten the

network sitcom she's always wanted and she's the lead and the show is called how's that and the secret has just come out though that her fellow cast members are learning that the writers on the

Tim Bagley Brittany O'Grady Barry Hennley Zane Phillips and Matt Cook who speaks first let's listen

come on everyone everyone hates AI I didn't sign up to be on an AI written show yeah should we be calling our agents please don't please don't you know if this gets out and studio doesn't want it to then I don't know they could pull the plug on the whole thing no this information is top secret and even had to sign an NDA sure what's the big deal you can't do a show without writers or not we have now

oh is AI though that also bought yeah well is that why no one would ever give me his

contact information well okay guys listen okay we're the first and the show's tested well

so I think we just take the material that you are given bought or not funny or not funny

“and do everything you can to make it great all right we're actors that's what we do”

right that's right it's our job to make things funnier but a lot of times when I do that the writers get angry if I change a word so many times I've made the writing so much better than it was I've been told that yeah and then I have to go back and do the words the way that they wrote it and the audience doesn't laugh and they look at me like I'm not funny I knew the joke wasn't funny the whole week but I can't say that right it's like when they give me a line that's

not funny they say Gabrielle do it sexier oh I's probably why it's been so fun here it turns out there are no writers it's just us yeah I've been enjoying this yeah you know I don't think I ever like to write her oh I love that scene so much I know you know it's so funny it's it's like this show is just as much about the writers as it is about Valerie very much yes but what I love about that scene is just like the anatomy of a mob you know that it starts with what it's AI you lied to us

this is a betrayal we're doing this without writers that's not right and then once it's like well if you say something they might take the whole thing away oh no yeah I don't want that and then you know

“yeah you know what I I don't like writers and it's just like complete 180 that's what human beings do”

I think you're the youngest of three siblings you grew up in a suburb of LA the San Fernando Valley in Tarzana what was your place in the house my place yeah as the youngest usually like the least um confident person right I mean that's the way it is I'm the youngest by six and eight years you know so I was sort of an only child at times because they're out in a way and it's the 70s also so it was different right it was yeah you'll be fine alright I can do whatever you want I ate you know

baked M&Ms and Doritos for breakfast on the weekends and that was great Conan O'Brien who's your longtime friend you all met very early in your careers when you were just starting out here in Los Angeles he said when you were on his show he described you as quote someone with a Victorian sense of morality which I thought was a really interesting way to describe

somewhat and accurate well first off what does that mean you know yes I was very much like that

and still is that what he was saying maybe but at that felt like the safest way to be did you ever have a wild street growing up no no no you were pretty straight-laced all the

“way through I think so but you know I was funny but not a class clown because they were annoying”

they got in the way of the lessons right during the day was like we need to be good students quiet in class yes I like structure yep so you would make people laugh at you weren't the class clown what kind of things would you do to make folks laugh do you remember yeah I imitated Lily Tomlin eat a fan that character on laughing I'd go to slumber parties and to me it was like doing a show I would lip sync songs and then have everyone do it and I was like a cruise

director is that where the seed came for you an acting when did you really understand that I like this this attention well maybe it was attention because I was the youngest or I don't know but it made

my dad's hilarious my brother and sister were really funny so I would take their material which was you know to mature for and anyone else my age but that made me kind of something

“but it was so great to make people laugh that was the best thing ever you have talked a lot”

over the years about your dad and his work he studied cluster headaches and he founded the first

private headache clinic in the western part of the United States a lot of what he found it back then is still part of standard treatment today but when you were a little girl did you have an understanding of it from the start yeah he was an internist and then in 1971 he switched to just treating and researching headache so I was eight so yeah I was old enough to understand what he was doing and as I got older also you know because he lectured all over the world about headache and so

he would write his lecture and do it to me because he wanted to make sure it was all understandable so I'm maybe like 13 15 you know I don't remember how old he proposed a hypothesis for you know the mechanism of cluster headache and so he wanted to make sure I could fully understand it because if you understood it then I'm proud of folks neurologists will definitely understand it and I remember

“him saying to me you have to understand that right now you are one of the few people on the planet”

who understands more about headache from listening to all my talks then a lot of doctors you went on to faster studied biology initially thought you were going to be a doctor right but you still had this little bit of something in you that loved acting that felt like you still wanted to kind of do that thing but you still graduated with a degree in biology yeah I didn't

still live after you did in college high school in college it was absolutely never oh why did that

change for you because I thought right now you have to be an adult like that's a fun thing but that's you know I've seen actors on TV and you know I've heard about all their divorces do you know and I thought that's not the adult you want to be okay and in college I just I fell in love with biology and thought yeah yeah I want to be a doctor what changed what changed was after I graduated a couple things I mean there's a weird thing that I can't explain you know I come home

from on break and be driving around LA and I'd hear you know a commercial for a sitcom and it just sounded like well that's a horse of a different color like so broad and it's not funny and but there's a laugh track and I'd think oh that's pushing it so I'm hitting it so hard and then I don't think throw it away Lisa remembered a throw it away when you do it and that was just a thought

“that would come in your mind coming my mind and I think wait why do I have to do that I'm that's”

not what I'm going to be doing and the big motivation also my brother's best friend is John Levits I grew up with John Levits I graduate from college he gets on Saturday night life and oh it's not just this thing that happens to a magic few and then I'm really feeling very strongly you better do this now you're only 22 and you have no responsibilities it's it's I imagine a pretty selfish endeavor to pursue acting and now's the time and don't have any regrets later

I want to transition to friends with the few moments I have left with you I'm sorry about the loss of Matthew Perry thanks yeah I know that you for lots of different reasons did it watch the show you started watching it after he passed away yeah because it was too much about me before

I didn't want to watch me and then after Matthew passed away there were so many well there's always

a marathon anyway so luckily there was a marathon to watch and I was so happy to see Matthew then and so funny and it was yeah it was a great way to sort of process yeah him not being here

myself yeah what did you notice about yourself that sometimes yes funny sometimes oh my gosh yeah good no but I mean okay for the most part I enjoyed what I did and then there were times

“where it's like well I mean that you should have your license taken away you know that's not”

don't do that what are you doing anything in particular that made you cringe he's her lobster I haven't walked loaded it's ready to go he playing with a voice yeah what about you singing you know what about your songs and your guitars yeah yeah songs make me laugh yeah those are really

really funny I want to play a scene from the third season of friends this is Phoebe and Ross played

by David Schwimmer and as she explains to him who's a paleontologist that she doesn't buy evolution or gravity let's listen that's fine go ahead and scoff you know there are a lot of things out there that I don't believe in but that doesn't mean they're not true such as like crop circles or

“the brimuda triangle or evolution well you don't you don't believe in evolution not really”

you don't believe in evolution I don't know it's just you know monkeys Darwin you know it's a nice story I just think it's a little too easy to easy to the process of every living thing on this planet evolving over millions of years from single-selled organisms is too easy yeah I just don't buy it excuse me evolution is not for you to buy Phoebe evolution is scientific fact like like like the air we breathe like gravity oh okay don't get me started on

gravity you uh you don't believe in gravity what it's not so much that you know like I don't believe in it you know it's just I don't know lately I get the feeling that I'm not so much being

“pulled down as I am being pushed she was did see but also deep to play that combination”

of those two things together I mean it takes a very specific way that you were able to nail there's also a lot of you there's the the chemistry there you can even hear it even with us without us watching it right oh yeah that was the best part of that part of my life everyone's so good I can imagine getting a role like friends it's a role of a lifetime because it's one

of those roles where the show itself becomes a part of Americana and so you're always connected to

that so that there's the blessing part of it yeah did you ever have another relationship with it though that that constantly being um called Phoebe being referenced people coming up to you probably just saying lines and wanting you to repeat those lines stuff like that well my first response is always I have zero complaints about friends or anything to do with it because every part of it was just the relationship with the other actors we had fun that is so rare and real honest respect mutual

respect it was a really good relationship that took some work and we did the work you know it was great well part of it as you all spent 16 20 hours a day right actually in the beginning or you know but we we made sure we did we played poker together while we're waiting for the run through or while you know any downtime we spent that time together on set um and Jimmy Burroughs helped also and you know we just lost him so that's heartbreaking but Jimmy Burroughs is a legendary

director and creator he did cheers and before that his first job was Mary Tyler Moore Show

and then directed some the Bob Newhart show no and Will and Grace he did every one of them so he did the first 10 episodes of friends he did the pilot and the first 10 episodes and you know it was his idea that Warner Brothers give him the Warner Brothers jet private jet and he flew us to Las Vegas just us no boyfriend's girlfriends none of us were married yet show us the first episode on the plane on the way to Las Vegas and gave us each $200 to gamble with which was so thrilling

to spago and said pay attention this is the last time the six of you can be out in public like this

“and not be recognized and I remember everyone going and I thought maybe how does he know”

right well how does he know because he's been around and he knows he knows when he has a success

it's gonna work yeah at least a coup d'row this has been such a pleasure thank you so much

“thank you really fun award winning actor Lisa Cudro she's nominated for two Emmys for the final”

season of the HBO series The Come Back and she just finished shooting a sequel to the 1997 film

Romeo and Michelle's high school reunion fresh air weekend is produced by Teresa Madden

fresh air is executive producer is Sam Berger our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham our engineer this week is Adam Stanashewski with Terry Gross I'm Tony Mosley how do products end up on big box shelves well we have planted money pitch deep and it money board game I'm trying not to think how much of a big deal it is and how much work has gone into it's really big is it helpful if I remind you how big it is it's sort of the whole thing we go

inside the minds of the people who decide what goes on store shelves listen to plant at money on the

“NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts six months that's how long it has been since the”

U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran where are we diplomatically economically militarily there's a lot changing in the shadow of this uncertainty about what happens with Iran Matt and more the week's big national security news on sources and methods you can listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts