Try GOLD - Free
Mike Birbiglia The comedian on his fourth Netflix special The Good Life, the rise of right-wing comics, and being funny vs. being famous
Time
|June 23, 2025
What would you say people like about you?
The people who are diehard fans are maybe aware that I'm on a journey and I'm showing full disclosure. I always think of it this way: you never want to be more famous as a comedian than you are funny. I think sometimes people get too famous, not enough funny.
Would you like to be more famous? No, not at all. I said to my wife recently, “It’s a week away from when I’m famous for a month and then not for two years.”
Would you say that you have made choices to not be famous? Maybe, but I don’t really know. People ask me to watch their solo shows. They’re like, “Give notes.” I saw one afew months ago, and I was like, “What do you want it to be?” The person was like, “I want it to be bigger.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s not anything that I’m ever trying to do.”
This story is from the June 23, 2025 edition of Time.
Subscribe to Magzter GOLD to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
MORE STORIES FROM Time
Time
Where electricity bills are on the ballot
Clockwise from top left: downtown Atlanta at night; high-voltage transmission lines near Rome, Ga.; a QTS data center in Atlanta's Howell Station neighborhood; Georgia Power's coal-fired Plant Bowen in Euharlee, Ga.
14 mins
September 08, 2025
Time
THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
MATTHEW PRINCE HAD TO BE CONVERTED to the belief that AI is eating the web.
3 mins
September 08, 2025
Time
Two good men confront the Task of forgiveness
CRIME DRAMAS, IN OUR DISTRACTED TIMES, TEND TO front-load said crimes. More often than not, there’s a murder within the first five minutes. This is only one of the genre’s many implicit rules that HBO’s Task breaks. The series from Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby opens with a montage of quotidian scenes from the lives of two men. Weary Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) folds his hands in prayer, dunks his face in a sink full of ice water, downs Advil while driving. Rugged Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey) carries his sleeping son to bed, pours himself a tall mug of coffee, perks up at a radio ad for a dating app.
3 mins
September 08, 2025
Time
Beyond human control
THE RACE FOR ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE POSES NEW RISKS TO AN UNSTABLE WORLD
11 mins
September 08, 2025
Time
In exile, I lost India but gained a home
ON NOV. 7, 2019, THE GOVERNMENT OF PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi revoked my Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI), effectively banning me from the country I grew up in. India was where my mother and grandmother lived. Where four out of my five books of fiction and nonfiction were set. Where I had returned after college in the U.S. with the aim of being “an Indian writer.”
6 mins
September 08, 2025
Time
POOR VOTE, SWING VOTE
On the one hand, this is the worst of times: power is concentrated in the hands of people who pray at the opening of Congress, then prey on the people they swore an oath to serve.
3 mins
September 08, 2025
Time
SUMMER OF OUR DISCONTENT
In The Roses, Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch embrace a movie season of not- so-romantic comedies
6 mins
September 08, 2025
Time
PUTIN’S BRUSH-OFF
The Kremlin appears in no rush to negotiate peace with Ukraine—despite Trump’s efforts
3 mins
September 08, 2025
Time
The agentic age: a new frontier for AI and humans
FOR THE PAST YEAR, I’VE BEEN RUNNING SALES- force with a colleague who never sleeps, never takes vacations, and has read more than I could in 100 lifetimes. On a typical day, sitting with a few executives around the table, I’ll ask it to evaluate a competitor's moves, refine a keynote draft, or surface strategic blind spots we might have missed.
5 mins
September 08, 2025
Time
Why are so many women leaving the workforce?
212,000. THAT'S HOW MANY WOMEN AGES 20 AND OVER have left the U.S. workforce since January, according to the most recent jobs numbers released Aug. 1 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (By contrast, 44,000 men of the same age have entered the workforce since January.) The numbers are especially stark for women with children. From January to June, the labor-force participation rate of women ages 25 to 44 living with a child under 5 fell nearly 3 percentage points, from 69.7% to 66.9%, says Misty Lee Heggeness, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Kansas.
2 mins
September 08, 2025
Listen
Translate
Change font size