Lauren: Welcome to 52 Weeks of Hope, this is where you get to hear how to feel happy, balanced, and worthwhile, how to make that lonely ache vanish and feel empowered, confident, and secure. I'm Lauren Abrams and today we're talking to writer, producer, and a funny man himself Jack Herrguth. Jack's a writer producer, an entertainment executive. He wrote several episodes of the hit television series "Sister, Sister." he produces and has produced hit shows and works behind the scenes, plenty. He's here today though because he started a podcast with actor, comedian Stephen Kramer Glickman called Never Surrender. And it's similar to 52 Weeks of Hope where people, actually famous people, talk about, that's the part that might be a little bit different, talk about what they've overcome and how they just keep going, they never surrender. It's funny, it's witty. They talk about how they just don't give up no matter what. And [inaudible 00:00:51] been out for about 6-8 weeks now. And it's fabulous, it's just really great. And, so, Jack's going to tell us his message is a hope that he's received and what his personal one is too. Welcome to 52 Weeks of Hope, Jack. Jack: Hey, Lauren. How are you? Thanks for having me on today, it's a real pleasure to be here and I'm excited to talk to you. Lauren: Yeah, it's great to see you too. It's been good to hear you talk about your podcast. And I actually am not positive what brought it about but it's a great show. I've enjoyed listening to a few of your episodes. So, first, what did bring about your Never Surrender? Because I know what brought my podcast about, it was from my own dark time and me going out and asking people, "Okay, why are we here? What's the point?" It was a soul searching. So, what brought Never Surrender about? Jack: Well, I'd say it's a very similar thing that happened to me. I...gosh. So, let me think. It was a couple years ago, I think like it was around 2015. And I was working at a company that I thought really was my dream job. Like I was working at this company that I had wanted to work at, I had grand designs of being there and accomplishing great things. And, throughout the course of my year there, it was absolutely miserable. It was like the worst like professional

working experience I've ever had in my entire life. I was being sabotaged by co- workers left and right, just the worst horrible things. And, at the end of that year, I found out that I was being let go from the company just purely by accident. Like somebody in the HR department sent an email to someone else in the HR department and accidentally CCed me on the email saying that my last day was that day. And they accidentally sent it to me, CCed me on it, I saw it. So, I got let go from there, it was just a horrible ending to a horrible tenure. Then, about 6 months after that, my mom passed away. And then 3...2 months...no, 3 months later after that, my dad passed away. Then another job I was working at, I got let go from that job. So, it was two jobs in a year I got let go from. My parents both died within that year. And then, a few months after all of that, I got cancer. For the second time. And when all these things happen to you, that are bad or negative or horrible or tragic, however you wanna define it, you start thinking, you know, "Who have I made angry?" like, "who have I pissed off?" Like, you know, if you believe in god, "Did I piss off god? Did I make him angry?" like, "what have I done? Why is the world just," you know, "coming down upon my shoulders like all the time without any sort of break?" And like nothing good was happening. I was just in a really bad place. One day, I was on my laptop and I was just messing around on YouTube, and I come across a video from Will Smith. And I think the heading was something about failure, so, I was like, "Well, that's how I'm feeling right now." You know, through personal and professional struggles, I had just felt like a massive failure. So, I click on this video and he's talking all about failure. And he says, "It's important to fail often. It's important to fail big. Failure is a big part of being successful." I thought, first of all, "What has Will Smith know about failure? What has he ever failed at?" But, the more I thought about it, it just stuck with me. And I started to think about, "I wonder, if you sat down with Will Smith, what his story was about failure?" Like, "What does he have to say about failure?" And the more I thought about it was, not just Will Smith, but, "What if you sat down with the

most successful people in entertainment and heard about their stories of struggle, their stories of overcoming adversity, their failures," you know, "why they never gave up and why they never surrendered?" I thought that could be a really great idea for a show. That is something I would listen to, based on all my failures, just learning from the failures of very successful people. And, so, I pitched it to my friend Stephen, who's an actor, comedian, like you said at the top of the show, and he's very successful, but he's also had his share of struggles, like anybody else has. And he loved the idea. And then, we pitched it to this company called Western Sound, and they've made a lot of very popular podcasts, and they loved it. Then we started lining up, you know, celebrities to interview. And, so, we sat down with comedians, actors, writers, directors. And the main thing that I learned from all of it was never give up. I mean it seems like a very simple piece of advice but it's true. Like they all have the very same story. They've all struggled, they've all overcome adversity. But the main thing was they kept with it, they never gave up, and they never surrendered. Lauren: Did you interview Will Smith? Jack: No, we have not interviewed Will Smith yet. He is certainly one of the pie-in-the-sky guests that we wanna have. So, hopefully, someday. Lauren: Yeah, you definitely will. No doubt you will. Jack: Yeah, fingers crossed. Lauren: Yeah, it's interesting because the never give up is...yeah, that's kind of keep putting one foot in front of the other is certainly...and do you get messages of how to never give up from your guests? How to get through a day? Because it's, like you say, it's easy to say, "Yeah, don't give up." Okay, so, here it is, you hear this from Will Smith. Then what would you do? I mean because things resonate when they resonate. We hear them when we hear them. I'm sure you had heard that before, "Don't give up, keep going," but, for some reason, on this day, this resonated and you came up with the idea. How did you get through your dark period? I mean that's a lot.

Jack: You know, I would say...you know, and it sounds trite but it's true, like you just have to keep going. You just have to put one foot in front of the other and take things, you know, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, and month by month. You know, because you will get through it. And when you're sitting there in that dark time thinking, "I'm never gonna get through this," and I've just had one horrible thing happen to me after another, whether it's losing a job, having a loved one passing away from you, getting an illness, you know, and all that stuff happening, you just think, "well, this is how my life is." Like, "My life is never going to get better. I'm never going to see the light of day," you know, "the sun's never gonna rise again." You know, it's that sort of thing and it's very hard to get out of that mindset once bad things start happening. You start feeling like you are attracting kind of bad things, you know. And that's one thing, you know, me sort of having anxiety and being a little anxious, you start thinking like, "Am I attracting bad things? Am I bringing negative energy into myself?" You know, you just have to wake up every day and try to have a positive outlook, no matter how hard it is. And some days it is very very very difficult to get out of bed and put a smile on your face and be like, "The world's great, even though I just lost my job and my parents are dead and I had a horrible illness," you just have to project a positive attitude and then, hopefully, that positive energy will start, you know, coming your way. And I really feel like, at the beginning of this year, I just wrote, I tried to manifest, you know, some positivity. And I'm not one to really do that, like I'm a little skeptical of things like that, you know, "Oh boy, here we are," you know, we live in LA and there's all this mumbo jumbo, yes, about people like, "oh, I'm just gonna manifest my work and I'm gonna manifest this and that," I've always been very skeptical of it. But I was like, "It can't hurt, right?" So, on new year's day, on new year's eve, my wife and I and her kids just wrote stuff out that we wanted to happen in the new year. And I just wrote down all this positive stuff and put it into an envelope and put it away. Lauren: Wait, wait, how did you get your kids to do it?

Jack: We just said, "Let's write..." well, we gave them $1,000 each and bribed them. We gave them lots of money and told them we would take them to Disneyland...no, I'm kidding. We just said, "Hey, let's," you know, "write down on a piece of paper all the good things that we want to happen this year." And they were very open to it, surprisingly, because they're kids and they never wanna do anything that their parents wanna do. Right? "Oh, do I have to do this? Oh, you're twisting my arm, I don't wanna do that." But they said, "Okay," which was a big surprise. And, so, I wrote down this stuff and I feel like...I don't know if it's because my point of view shifted or my attitude shifted, at that point, but I feel like, since the beginning of the year, things have been very positive and I feel like this is the first time in a while I feel like things are moving in a positive way. And, so, you know, you could say, "Life just moves in cycles," you know, "and you've been through some bad stuff and now you're gonna go through some good stuff," or maybe somehow I did manifest something, I really don't know, and I'm trying not to sit and think about it. But, you know, I feel like I'm in a good space right now and I'm happy that, you know, the podcast is out because this is something that we've been working on for a while. And it's funny that the name of the show is Never Surrender because even the show itself, the production of that show, had its problems. You know, we were signed up initially with a podcast-distribution company and they were gonna give us like all this money to market the show. And we had a deal sort of in place with them. And then, all of a sudden, they just stopped returning emails and they stopped returning phone calls. And then my partner on the show had to leave, and we didn't think he was coming back. And, so, it was a very apropos of the show, it was just like one negative thing after the other. And I was like, "Okay, well, this show is never gonna happen. It's never gonna get made if there's just something in the universe that doesn't want this to happen." And, again, that just kind of felt how everything was happening to me at that point.

But, ultimately, my partner came back. We found a new partner and we recorded the shows. And now they're out. I'm just happy that, you know, people like yourself and people that I haven't spoken to in years, or have heard from in years, are coming out of the woodwork and calling me or emailing me or texting me and saying, "Hey, I'm listening to this show and it's great and I love it and it's funny and it's inspirational, and it's just sort of what I need." You know, that makes me feel very happy because it sort of came out of a dark place and my whole point of making it was I want to help people who are in a similar place, or are struggling personally or professionally, and show them that, "Hey, you're not alone. Some of the biggest most successful people that you would think have never struggled in their lives have had huge failures, have had huge struggles, have had massive setbacks. But they have overcome them and, hopefully, that means that you will too." And, yeah. So, that's been my goal really with the podcast is to help people. Because I have been there, I know what those dark times are like, I know they're not fun, I know there are days where you feel like they're never gonna end. But they will, you just have to hang in there. Lauren: Yeah. I relate 100%, it is exactly how 52 Weeks of Hope was born. I mean for me, at first, I was interviewing people for me, like "Why are we here? What the hell was that?" And I was just going around, I thought, "All right, I'm gonna interview a person a week for a year for me," like, "why are we here?" It was an older demographic for sure initially. And people would divulge such personal information to me. My whole thing was they say, "Nobody on their deathbed ever wish they worked harder, made more money. So, you've lived a long time. What have you gleaned from life. Tell me." People were divulging such personal information and telling me such good stuff. I was like, "All right, this is so rich and so good," and [inaudible 00:13:25] getting to be such common themes. I would just go home and write it up, right up to my best friend and stuff like that in my verbiage. And it was a lot of humor and just what I got from it, not for anyone else.

But there started being really common themes of community and what we need and that we do need each other and things like that. We can't sit around in a corner or in a closet by ourself. Sorry... Jack: Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm talking to you from a closet right now, so... Lauren: Jack [inaudible 00:13:54] in his closet. So, [inaudible 00:13:57], no kids, which I so understand. I was wondering, "Oh, my dog's barking," a few minutes ago, if I muted in time or not. But anyway...and, so, in some of my chapters that I ended up writing, you know, I thought, "This is good, I have to share it on my website," but I had to pivot during COVID and start the podcast. And I love podcasting, just love. So...and then, when you were telling your story about the work, I was like, "I'm an employment rights lawyer," so, I was like, "[inaudible 00:14:26]," no, I'm just kidding. Jack: I should've called you, [inaudible 00:14:29]. But yeah, it's like when you are...you know, I've been in the entertainment business for a long time, you know, and I've worked as a writer, I've worked as an executive, I've worked as a producer. And when you get to be in a business for 20 years, you know, you know you're older now and then, when things happen when you start losing jobs one after the other and you're sort of, you know, older, it's like you start to struggle a little bit about like, "Where is my place and where do I belong?" and, "I had all the success in the past and why are all these struggles happening now?" Like, "Isn't it supposed to be the reverse of things?" like, "don't you struggle and then you get your job in entertainment, no matter where you're at, and then you get it and then you work hard?" And that was always my belief, you know. And then you work hard and you make lots of money. Lauren: This is in your twenties. Yeah, "This was supposed to happen in my late twenties or something," right? Jack: Yeah, "Not now." And then you're like, "Why is this happening now?" And, so, it was just a lot of, you know, again, thinking that I was a failure and, you know, having my pride wounded and feeling like I'm not a good dad or a husband or I'm not providing or those sorts of things. And, you know, that can

really eat away at you, you know, at night when you're lying there in bed and you're thinking like, "Where is my next job coming from and why did I have so much success and why am I struggling now?" And it can do a real number on you, you know, on your psyche. And it can throw you into a big depression. Like I was depressed for a long period of time because I was just feeling like, all of a sudden, I was a stay-at-home dad. And not that there's anything wrong with that but that's not...you know, spending all that time in entertainment industry and working hard was not so I could just, you know, stay at home and wonder where my next job was coming from, you know. But like I said, seeing that video with Will Smith that day really helped me out. And I was like, "Well, I've been in this place. I know there are other people in this place and my goal really with this is to help people get the message out that," you know, "you will ultimately be okay." Lauren: Yeah, I don't think there's any good thoughts late at night. That's just my opinion but I just don't think there's any good thoughts. So, you've interviewed a number of people, at this point. Are there common themes that you're seeing in your industry? Because I've interviewed a lot of religious leaders and imam...I got that one wrong, a lot of rabbis, a lot of all different spiritual leaders. The imam, he corrected me, it's either imam or iman. One means "faith" and one means like it's the title, like a rabbi or a priest would have. [inaudible 00:17:10] completely. Yeah. So, have you seen common themes? Jack: You know, well, there's one thing and that is, you know, the entertainment industry itself is a very volatile industry. Right? You know, things can change on a dime. And like you've seen, over the past year, with COVID, the movie business has made a complete 180, you know, how movies are distributed. You know, that has caused a major shift in how movies are consumed. Some of that is here to stay, you know. Now, a lot of people are gonna be consuming movies from their homes rather than going out to movie theaters. As much as you wanna go out to movie

theaters, people are gonna start watching them from home. That's a major shift. You know, a lot of these entertainment companies have now been bought up by tech companies. Tech people are running them, so, there's major shifts in that. So, my point with that is the entertainment industry is very volatile. And everyone I've spoken to, like from Paul Feig, who directed "Bridesmaids," to Randall Park who was just in one division, to...take Notaro who's, you know, a well-known comedian, has been in lots of shows from "Star Trek" to her own show, "One Mississippi," to this new Zack Snyder movie coming out. Like everybody has been fired, at one point, had a personal issue or illness that they've had to overcome. And people have had to, you know, at one point, sort of buck up and swallow their pride. Like, for example, Randall Park, when he was first starting out, got cast on a show called "Wild 'n Out" on MTV. Which is a hugely popular show on MTV at the time. He wasn't making enough money from the show because it was Viacom and they don't pay very much. And, so, during the day, he had to get a job at Starbucks...while the show was airing on MTV. And, so, you know, he'd be working at Starbucks behind the counter and people would come in and would recognize him and say, like "What are you doing here?" you know, "you're a millionaire." Like, you know, "Why are you busing tables, why are you making people coffee?" And he said it was real embarrassing because, you know, people would recognize him for TV. And not that working at Starbucks is embarrassing by any means, but, when you have a high-profile job and people are thinking of you one way and then they come in and see you in another light, that was something he really struggled with. And he said, you know, "One day, I'm gonna be a huge success and I'm gonna go to Starbucks and I'm gonna leave a huge tip." Which he said he still hasn't yet. But, you know, so, that's one thing. And then, you know, take Notaro. Her mom died, her girlfriend broke up with her, and she got cancer all within like a matter of weeks. You know, that would be tough for anybody over a lifetime. But to happen in a matter of weeks to one person was very very tough for her.

And then Paul Feig directed a movie that bombed and put him in what he refers to as "movie jail" in the sense that nobody was calling him for work anymore. And he thought, "Well," you know, "I love books and maybe I could get a job working like at Barnes & Noble and just," you know, "count down the clock to the end of my days working in a bookstore." Lauren: I love the catastrophic thinking... Jack: Yeah. And it's funny, I'll get to that in a second, but it's...and, so, all of these people have faced tragedy, they face struggles at one point in their lives. And I understand, to the normal working person, "Oh, so, you directed a movie and it bombed? Boohoo..." you know, that's like, you know, first-world problems, but it's still...you know, he put a lot of time and energy into it, he spent, you know, years working on something and it was a huge failure. I think anybody would work on something for a few years, no matter what it is, if it's a movie or a book or building a house or anything, and it fails, that's a huge blow. And he thought he was never gonna work again. And, so, that's scary. But what I have learned from most of these people, actually from all of these people, is, again, what I said at the top, and it does sound trite and it's much easier said than done, and that is, "Just keep going." You know, don't give up, you never know, you know, what's gonna happen, you never know where your next job is gonna come from, where the next good thing is gonna happen. So, you just really have to keep moving. And that is something that I have learned the hard way myself is that, you know, you have to wake up every day, put a smile on your face, and, even if you're not in a good mood or you're having a bad day, you know...as Paul Feig said actually, which I thought was really interesting, he sort of looked at life as an etch-a-sketch and he said that, if he was having a bad day, at the end of the day, all he needed to do was take the etch-a-sketch machine and just shake it up until it got erased and it was a blank slate, and then you have a good night's sleep, and start all over again the next day. And, if at the end of that day he was to have another bad day, he would just shake up his etch-a-sketch and start the next day over the next day.

And I think that's a very interesting and valuable way to look at things. Because, if you are having a bad day, that doesn't mean you're gonna have a bad day the next day or the day after that or the week after that or the month after that. You just have to try to be happy and realize that happiness is different from, you know, good days and bad days. You know, like there are days when things are gonna go right, there's gonna be days where things are going well for you, but you have to learn how to be happy between those peaks and valleys, you know. And that's something that I'm still learning. And that's something that Larry Wilmore, you know, said to me in one of our podcasts...and Larry is a hugely successful TV writer and performer, he created "The Bernie Mac Show," he's won all sorts of awards, he had his own show he hosted on Comedy Central called "The Nightly Show," he just had a show on Peacock called "Wilmore." And, you know, he just said that you just have to realize that happiness is different than, you know, being...you know, I forget what he said, but you can cut this...what's that? Lauren: Than what you're doing for a living. Jack: Yeah, yeah. So, anyway. You might wanna cut that out because I lost my train of thought. But it was, you know, talking to Larry Wilmore. You know, he was very insightful. He got fired from "The Bernie Mac Show," you know, but he went on to do other things. So, you know, get a show on Peacock, get a show on Comedy Central. So, just because one thing ends doesn't mean it's gonna end forever. There will be new beginnings. Lauren: Yeah, etch-a-sketch was interesting. I was thinking, "Why not start your day over?" if you're shaking [inaudible 00:24:06] start your day over at another time, why wait till the next day if you're having a bad day? Just, anyway, it was just a thought... Jack: Yeah, no, that's a very good point. Like, just because you're having a bad day doesn't mean you have to have a bad day the entire day, you can try to change it for sure. Yeah, try to change your attitude. Which, again, is much harder to do, easier said than done, but it certainly...you bring up a very good point, you don't have to wait until the next day.

Lauren: Yeah, it's just an idea. So, why a podcast? Jack: Why a podcast? Because I thought it would be the simplest way to get the message out and I thought it would just be a great way for people to hear these stories. You know, where you can just plug into your phone and listen to someone, you know, talk about their story. And I thought that was the easiest and most efficient way for people to, you know, hear these stories, the easiest way to get the word out. What I have learned...because I thought, "Oh, I'm gonna do a podcast and I'm just gonna get a microphone and start recording and then, the next day, it'll be out," what I said earlier was that, you know, it was a lot more difficult and challenging than that because we had a production company involved and we had a distribution company involved. And then we had, you know, people drop out and, you know, people ghost us. And, you know, so, it just became sort of the theme of the show sort of personified was every day was a challenge to get this show made. Which, to me, was just crazy because, again, like I said, like aren't we just supposed to be making a podcast like in a room and we're gonna record it and then we're gonna get it out that day or the next day? Like what's so difficult about it? But, for whatever reason, like everything else in that period was just a challenge. But again, that goes to show you that just because something is hard doesn't mean that it's never gonna happen. You know, now it's out. We had four episodes out right now, Tig Notaro was our first episode, and then Randall Park, Paul Feig, Larry Wilmore. And now JoJo, the singer, that just came out the other day. So, we have five episodes out. And we did one season. We have like six more episodes to go. And, you know, hopefully, people will love it. You know, I'm getting great feedback now, and then, hopefully, we'll get to do another season of it. Lauren: Yeah, it's very fun. And I do think you help a lot of people. It doesn't matter what somebody's doing for a living, there's still a message to keep going no matter what it is. Do you have...yeah, go ahead.

Jack: I was going to say like that's sort of another reason for the show is that, you know, I don't want people to think like, "Oh, just because you're an entertainment, this only applies to people who work in entertainment." For me, it applies to everybody. You know, no matter what you do, no matter, you know, if you work in healthcare, if you work in construction, if you work in food service, if you do work in entertainment, if you're a lawyer, if you're a doctor, if you're a podcaster...no matter what you're doing, everybody at some point has struggled with something. You know? And I think that you can take what these very famous and very successful people are saying and apply it to your own life. And you can look at someone like Larry Wilmore or Randall Park or any of these people and be like, "Wow, they really had a hard time and they were in a bad place and they thought they were never gonna work again," or, "they thought they were gonna die." But look, they all have made it out to the other side, you know. And that's not to say they won't face other struggles again, you know, odds are they will with something. But they have made it through. And for me that's huge because, at one point, I never thought I would make it through to the other side, you know. Not that I was gonna harm myself or anything like that, I just thought my life is over, it's never gonna get better. And what I have learned from these interviews and what they have taught me is that everything is temporary and that things will get better. You just have to get up every day and get through it. You know, as Paul Feig says in the episode we recorded with him, he said his dad told him a story about Winston Churchill and Winston Churchill was giving a speech somewhere and, at the end of the speech, he just said, "Never, never, never, never give up." And, so, that's really the mantra for the show it's just don't give up, there are better times ahead and that, you know, nothing bad lasts forever. Lauren: I was gonna ask you for your message of hope but I feel like that was it.

Jack: That really is. That really is the message is that, you know, just keep going and that, you know, bad things won't last forever and good things are just around the corner. You just have to have hope and faith that things will get better. And, you know, odds are they will. Lauren: Do you have any kind of a morning routine that you do? Do you meditate? Do you exercise? Do you journal? Do you see a therapist? Do you have anything that you would recommend to somebody just to get through the day? Jack: I start off drinking...no, I'm kidding. What do I do? You know, I don't really have a routine, you know, I don't really have a morning routine. But I have a lot of different things that are going on. I have my podcast, I have a show that I'm producing. I have a couple of shows that I'm producing. So, my day is really filled with producing these projects and, so, that sort of takes up all of my time. Which is great because there have been times I'm just at home on the couch staring at the wall, which is less fun. But, you know, I have had cancer twice. And one of the most valuable lessons I learned from that was...I had testicular cancer, my first go-around with cancer. My mother bought me Lance Armstrong's book because he had testicular cancer too. And one of the chapters was, you know, about the Tour de France. And, you know, you can say whatever you will about Lance and what happened with the Tour de France but he said that, during the race, if he ever felt like he couldn't keep going or he couldn't carry on or he wanted to quit, he would say to himself, "You have had cancer, you have been through worse than this." And that would motivate him to keep going. That is something that I have never forgotten, that passage, because, when I have bad days, or even if I'm like in line at a grocery store and I'm getting impatient because the line's taking too long, or I'm going to a meeting or taking my kids to school and there's traffic on the freeway and I'm sitting there and I start getting impatient, and I just have to realize that, "You know what? This really isn't that bad. You have been through so much worse and you need to put things into perspective."

And, so, that's something I use as a reminder that I don't sort of go overboard or get too impatient. You know, I just try to put things into perspective, like, "Hey, you've been through worse. This isn't that bad." And, so, that's something I always try to carry with me, you know, wherever I go when things are bad. Like, "Hey, you've been through worse, you got through it. This won't be," you know, "a forever thing." Lauren: That's so good. I interviewed somebody who's writing about the seven blessings of cancer and I think you just summed it up right there. Jack: Yeah. And it's like I'm actually writing a book too about my cancer experience, and it's something that I've always wanted to write about and just have never had the time. Nor did I think I could ever write a book because it always just seems so daunting to me. But with COVID and everyone in lockdown and everyone being at home, I thought, "Well, now I have the time to actually do it." And, so, I'm in the middle of that. And, you know, one thing I said in a speech that I gave, and it sounds so crazy and so weird, but, to me, you know, cancer was kind of a gift. And some people will say, "How dare you say that?" you know, but the way I look at it is I met so many people that came into my life that I never would've met otherwise that are special people to me, that are important people to me, that are now lifelong friends. And these people I never would've met ever in my life and it has given me a newfound appreciation for life. And, also, there are just some crazy silly things that happened, you know, because of it. Like I became really great friends with my oncologist and we became good friends. And, you know, one thing about, you know, getting a cancer diagnosis and being lucky enough to survive it is that you have to go to your doctor for continual checkups. The first year you've gotta go like, you know, every couple of months and the second year it's like, you know, less than that and then the third year you're down to like every 6 months, and then once a year. And then, by the fifth year, if everything's still good, they kind of like let you go and they send you on your merry way. Basically you have graduated.

And, so, I finally got to that point and my doctor says to me, "You know, there's something I've really been waiting to talk to you about and I wanted to wait until I knew that you were cured. But now that you are, I have an idea for a TV show." And I'm like, "Only in LA would your doctor pitch you a television show." Right? And I was like, "Okay. Well, what's your idea?" And he said, "You know, nobody thinks cancer is funny, rightly so, but because there are so many things that happen in this office that are funny, no one would ever believe me." I'm like, "Okay, like, well, what funny stories happened?" So, he starts telling me some stories. They were funny. And, so, I said, "Well, let me go off and let me think about it." He was like, "Okay." So, that was another thing that I just kept thinking about. Lauren: Just the fact that he waited and that he pitched you... Jack: Yeah. I was thinking like, "Has he been waiting 5 years for this?" like, "he must have been really patient." You know, so, I'm thinking about it, I'd think about it, and I was like, "You know what, I think," you know, "this could be interesting. This could be a good show." So, and, the more I thought about it, it was like, you know, it could be a nice mixture of comedy and drama, you know, like a show like "Barry" or, at the time, "Louie" where you'd watch an episode and some episodes would be just straight dramatic and not funny and other ones would be hilarious. And, so, you know, that sort of tone could fit with a show. And, so, I reached out to a friend of mine who is a very successful TV writer and he writes mostly 1-hour dramas. And he loved the idea and he wanted to bring in a friend of his who writes mostly half hours so they could kind of put like a comedy and drama brain together. And then we kind of sat together and came up with an idea for a pilot, and then they went off and they wrote a script. And then the agency that was representing us read it and they loved it and they said, "Well, you need like a big time comedy producer to help you sell this." And we're like, "Okay." So, they sent it out to Will Ferrell and to Ben Stiller and all these people. And then one day we hear that Paul Feig, who, you know, directed "Bridesmaids,"

and "Freaks and Geeks," and was an executive producer in "The Office," loved it and like flipped out over it. And, so, we had a meeting with him and he said, "I love the script and it's the best script I've read in a year," and, "I wanna attach myself as a director an executive producer." And we were like so excited. And, so, then we went out around town and we pitched it to like HBO and to Showtime and to Netflix and to Amazon and to TBS and to Comedy Central. Everybody passed. Everybody passed on it. And, so, that was discouraging. And again, I started feeling like a failure. One day, and not too long after that, we got a call from our agent saying, "Hey, Vimeo is trying to launch a streaming service like Netflix and they wanna compete with Netflix. They're gonna launch in the spring and they're buying projects from all these big time writers and actors and directors. And they read the script and they love it and they wanna meet with you guys." We were like, "Okay, great." So, we go in there, it's like me and the writers and Paul Feig and his producing partner. And these executives at Vimeo, they start telling us how much they love the show, you know, they wanna make it, they love it, and they basically buy it in the room. And, if you don't know anything about entertainment, that rarely happens. Rarely does a network or a buyer buy a project in the room, it's very rare. And, so, we were, of course, very excited and very happy. Then Vimeo said, "Well, we'll send you an offer letter and," you know, "get a deal together and we'll send it to you," you know. And then, a couple days go by, we don't hear anything and a week goes by, we don't hear anything, and it's like 2 weeks and we don't hear anything. And I call our agents and they're like, "Well, we haven't heard anything yet but," you know, "we should be getting something soon." And then, 3 weeks go by, and the company goes out of business. So, you know, that to me is a perfect example of never surrender. It's just that there's good times, there's bad times, and you just have to, you know, never give up, never surrender, and just, you know, make your way through them. Because you never know what life's gonna throw at you and, you know, you

have to keep moving. And that's the main lesson I learned from everybody in these interviews is that you just really have to keep moving, keep going. Lauren: Absolutely. There's no telling what's gonna happen. And I believe, as long as you keep showing up, anything can happen at any time. Jack: Yeah, exactly. What's the famous saying? You know, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Lauren: Yeah, yeah, that's Gretzky. Jack: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. The famous philosopher. Lauren: Yeah, he is. Well, this was so much fun talking to you today. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for being our guest on 52 Weeks of Hope. Jack: Oh, thank you so much. And, yes, please, thank you. And, for those listening, yeah, please check out our podcast, Never Surrender. It's on Apple Podcasts, it's on Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcast. Lauren: Yeah, we'll have links for everything up with the show notes on the website. So, we'll get all of that from you. And, yeah, this was great. Jack: Well, thank you so much for having me on the show today. I really enjoyed it and it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.