Hi, friends. In case you have not heard, 20-20 is a big election year and it's important that everyone vote, make sure you're registered and make sure you have a voting plan. Talk to your friends and family about it, too. OK, now on with the show. OK, that sound is Olivia Munns, rescue dog, very contentedly snoring through this entire episode.

All right, now that we have that out of the way, let's all keep our voices down. Try to not wake up the pup.

This is Don't Ask BTIG, I'm Tig Notaro, and you have a hard time following directions, we. So is everybody. Today, I am joined by the supremely talented Olivia Munn, Olivia Hitzig, that's a very nice introduction.

Well, it's true. You're one of those people where where where everyone's just kind of floored, really, with all. Yeah, you don't know. I don't really know. Oh, how how dare you talk about my friend like that? I beg to differ.

Well, I'm happy that you think that that means so much that you believe that about me. Well, that's the end of the podcast. Great. Thank you so much.

This has been really great. I appreciate what you have. You've done pretty much everything.

I mean, you're I mean, TV and film, obviously, but it's horror comedy, politics, sci fi franchise. I mean, it's stupid.

It's you can't even come on here talking about how small you feel.

And but it's so indicative of someone who is willing to say yes to new things. And how do you approach new things and new challenges?

I do. I always like to to do things that I would want to watch or want to be a part of. And I'm always just trying to have fun.

It's also I feel like sorry chance is going to be snoring in the background.

It's going to be a lie. I have four year old roommates.

OK, well then I hope I hope they're snoring too, so don't feel as bad. But he starts to snore really loud. Just so you know, at first you're going to be like, OK, not bad. It's, you know, it's cute. And then you're going to be annoyed and like ten minutes.

Well, we're going to cut out you saying the chances that snore and then we're just going to have that noise in the background.

You're just going to people will think that I've just fallen asleep every now and then. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Olivia Yeah. Tig I did I didn't know this.

The I found out through the producers that you have a black belt in taekwondo. That is true. How is this never come up? Because you and I have never walked down a dark alley together and I haven't had to protect you.

But I guarantee we should do that together. We should be. That's you.

You could protect me. You could fall on. OK, can I tell you what I would do? Because I feel like I can protect myself and I feel like I could protect you.

I maybe actually know. I think it would protect you as well. But my go to move and tell me what you think of that. I when there's trouble I throw myself. Well I don't throw myself. I had spinal fusion a year ago but I, I will get on my back, kick my legs in the air and just start kicking my feet wildly at somebody.

I mean I think that would work.

I think that I really feel like it really is a good move. In fact, I might incorporate it into my my repertoire. I think it's a really great self-defense mechanism. Yeah.

If you and I were walking down that dark alley that we eventually will be and somebody sees Olivia Munn and points at you and they just come at you aggressively, I would get down gently on my back in front of you. Yeah. And I would kick my feet wildly. Yeah.

I think you got your four four year old boys. I think you should put start start them in martial arts as soon as we get out of the pandemic and they're allowed to or or even get them into. I think I've heard a lot of friends who do martial arts talk about their Zoome classes are filled up now and a lot of kids are like for their kids, for kids. So I think that that would actually be great.

I think that it's I started doing it when I was four or five years old. Everyone in my family had to. I mean, I think it's partly because, you know, it's instilled in us and also because we're Asian that we just have to it's like my mom is like play an instrument and do martial arts. And we just always had to do those things no matter what. But a martial arts is so great for everybody to learn, no matter what age you're at, but especially if you get kids in it at a young age who just teaches you how to hold yourself in a different way.

You have a self respect that people can't really teach you as you go through life. When you know that you you can control your body in a way that helps you protect yourself and other people around you. It's just a it's a it's just such a great well of confidence that you are giving them. Where do I go? Just go, I went, I will keep you keep going left and right. I went, Well, Chance is on my left and Frankie's on my right.

And I went to go Pet Chance just to try to calm the snoring down a bit because it's about to get really loud and he's going to start up again. It was very it was just a moment.

And it's not really again, we're cutting all of this out now. Olivia on the NEWSROOM, you played a journalist and then in real life, you have a journalism degree. So what would be your advice on how to stay informed right now without getting too overwhelmed?

That is a great question, because it's really difficult to to know who to believe. Everyone's so polarizing. And, you know, no matter what, you know, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, they're all like one way or the other way. And I just really I would like to just know the the facts. And then I would like to, you know, make my own decisions on what that means. And I think it's really difficult right now because there's just so so I think it's more than ever so much.

And then there's a lot of stuff on I you know, all here what what I usually do if I hear something, I will go on to Twitter and then I will go on to certain websites that I, I, I like and then ones that I don't necessarily like. But I want to just I kind of have to go.

I really have to do all my own vetting of like what everyone's saying as some days I haven't even looked at the news and I'm blown away that I'll go the whole day and realize, oh, or Stephanie will tell me a news story. And I'm like, oh no, I didn't know that. She's like, really? Wow. I got to you first. So love that.

Now, believe it or not, we haven't even answered a question.

People have questions that they that they need help with weight to give them advice.

And I love that your dog followed you back over to where you are just to snore, right, Mike?

Right. All right.

We're going to we're going to go in for question one. Olivia excited. Taylor writes, I'm 27 and my goal in life is to write a book, but I feel like the clock just keeps ticking. I've been working on a manuscript and I love the concept, but I'm constantly doubting myself.

Hmm. What do you think?

Well, I feel like you're a writer, so that's your domain.

OK, well, I will say that I have had many projects that I have felt very passionate about. And what I've learned is prioritizing projects, prioritizing my time.

And if it is something like writing a book or working on a script or something like that, I have to sit down and just do it. I mean, it's hard to avoid doubting yourself. I certainly doubt myself before I turn something in, but it's ultimately an excuse to not do something.

Also, I think what you're saying is actually really interesting for Taylor because of the pandemic. You know, what I learned during this time was how important it is to have a space that you go to that's for work, because apparently your brain chemistry changes when you're in certain places. So when you go into the bedroom, the brain chemistry changes to be like this is where you sleep because your brain gets used to that. So if you have your apartment in your house and you have a designated place where you write, like even if you go there and like you said, it's bad, you're not doing a good job, but you just at least you show up.

Whatever you do, eventually your brain will start to click in and go, this is where we work, this is where we work. And then you'll start to do more and more, right?

Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And just thinking back to the beginning days of my stand up, I was questioning myself, am I good at this? And my funny, I was so doubtful and I was not good, you know, maybe once or twice when I started. But I got better.

Know it. It's all all of that. It's Delp. It's a lot of doubt. Yeah.

You have to learn to get through it. You have to learn because the dot will never go away. You just have to learn to to acknowledge it and say, oh, that's that thing in me that that makes me doubt myself. OK, but there are like a ton of other things that will help push me forward that will always be there. You can't just eliminate it from your body and think that you'll never have that. You just have to recognize that it's there and work hard to acknowledge and push forward the other things in your personality and your being that allow you to keep pushing forward.

Mm hmm. All right. Well, Taylor, thank you so much for the question. That's that's what Olivia and I that's what we think you should do. Good luck writing and more questions after the break.

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That's better. HELOC, dotcom exotic. Olivia, our next question is about health grade, I love health questions.

Well, then you're going to love this. Grant writes, I need to quit smoking, but I straight up don't want to. I know it's healthy and shit, but I just don't want to. Any advice? First of all, I love your style, Grant.

I love that Grant approaches this as though Olivia and I told him he needs to quit smoking and he's just had it with us nagging him all the time.

I used to smoke. Have you ever been a smoker? I was never a smoker, but I was never a smoker because I saw when I was like maybe 10 years old in a magazine, there's a picture of a woman when she was 20 and a picture of a woman when she was 40. And it showed like, what happens to your face when you smoke?

And it showed up was it may not know. Was I the after photo? No, it was like it showed the girl like being young and youthful one side. And then the other side said smoking and it showed her teeth. They get yellow here and then the frown lines here and you get squinty eyes and then it explained each one. Why, like you get crow's feet because you're squinting because all the cigarette smoke is going here. In here you get a grayer tone to your skin.

It's all these things like it's drier. You get more wrinkles when you appeal to my vanity. A 10 year old, I thought, well, that I mean, I think if you if you appeal to everyone's vanity, that probably stops people in their tracks as you're describing what smoking does to your face. I'm just picturing Grant putting out his last cigarette just like, oh, gosh, I don't want crow's feet. I now you're making fun of me.

This is this is my suggestion to Grant. I smoked as a child.

I would steal cigarettes and I'd smoke outside in the woods. And my mother smoked. My stepfather smoked, my grandparents smoked. Everybody smoked.

And they were with that. They were everyone was OK with that. No. Oh, no. I was nine. I know. I tell you, I was failing dropping out and smoking cigars. Yeah. Listen, I was the Fonz at five, but anyway, so I.

What do you do when you're in your kitchen?

Are we bothering you? I have to make my dogs a little bit of dinner. They got like a pre dinner, this guy.

So I have done twelve of these. I have never been on a zoom or somebody got up and carried their microphone and and tripod into the kitchen and then opened the refrigerator door in my face.

I can't even see you. This is so offensive. Tell you it's a I do. I am.

I am Emmy and Grammy nominated. OK, this is not the way I twice Grammy nominated. Twice, twice Grammy nominated.

Once Emmy nominated. Oh now I wish I was back then. Nothing, nothing nominated.

Do not talk about my friend that way. Now listen, I'm trying to tell my my huckleberry btig story.

I'm sorry. I'm here. I am. You were nine and smoking in your house and nobody knew but everybody was smoke. Right.

And then I, I really became a regular smoker at age 12 and I smoked until I was twenty five and I dated somebody at that age of twenty five and she smoked also and she smoked a lot of pot and, and it kind of I would, I wouldn't even say it kind of bothered me, I just was not into just like the like drinking and pot thing all the time.

And then I realized oh. I smoke cigarettes, that's not great either. So here I would like for her to quit these things and yet I'm an addict.

And so I thought about I'm twenty five. I would rather quit now than be a person that's 50, wishing I had quit when I was twenty five. And so what I did and this is really gross, but I'm going to tell you to do this Grant. Go buy yourself some Swisher sweet cigars, that's what I did. Do you know those disgusting things? No. What is it there? Those thin brown cigars with the plastic filter? Yeah, they're disgusting.

OK, I bought Swisher Sweets. I just smoked Swisher Sweets the most disgusting. They're not even cigarettes or cigars. And I was inhaling them and I smoked them until I made myself sick. And I also am not a big drinker, but I bought a six pack of beer and I just made myself sick. And to this day I have not smoked since I was twenty five. However, I am right now filming a movie and they wanted me to smoke a cigarette.

My character is supposed to smoke a cigarette and I couldn't bring myself to do that because I'm so not a smoker anymore. But I did say here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to use a Swishers sweet cigar because that way I can just have it in my mouth and it's not lit and it ties me to a positive, which is I use these to quit smoking. So that is my prescription for Grant to quit smoking.

Well that's a great SWEEP's Swisher Sweets and peach beer. All right, Grant, good luck making healthy choices. We're going to move on to the next question, Olivia. Our next one is from a listener with two opposing needs. Oh, OK. Yeah. Ali writes, When I have depression days, how do I get my boyfriend to comfort me and try to make me feel better while simultaneously leaving me the hell alone? I mean, if this isn't begging for your answer.

Yeah, well, I think I can probably answer better because I've had depression. And one thing that I think was the biggest help for me in my life with depression was just to say it out loud, just to say I'm depressed. And I said that in the way that it was almost like I said, if I if I was saying it's hot in the house. OK, well, turn on the air conditioning. It's like I'm depressed. And that way it didn't because I didn't want because I, I understand everything.

I didn't want anyone to coddle me. I don't want someone to come in like baby me.

But I also don't want to feel alone and and get into this kind of deep, dark despair, a circle that you can get into. So I actually would got for me, I just want to be able to say to to somebody I'm depressed and then I want to sit down and watch TV or put on a movie and just eat something and kind of just have someone there with me. And so I think the best thing to do.

So it's probably good to be very clear with your needs. Exactly. I think if she told her boyfriend, hey, sometimes I get depressed, I don't want to be babied, but I also don't want to push you away either. And sometimes I really don't know what I'm feeling. But if you want to just like if I can just say that to you and you just kind of clock it and then just come hang out and sit down next to me and don't talk to me about it, just like help me kind of weather this storm and ride this wave out.

That would be great, because that I mean, I'm not her, but that's what I needed was someone to ride the wave with. Well, yeah.

And it also might be helpful for Ali to tell her boyfriend, listen, I'm going to go into this kind of state of mind and read my cues and let me take the lead and I will come back. You know, it's kind of like being in an argument with somebody and saying we can revisit this. Mm hmm. But I need to not be near you or talk to you right now. But I will come back. I think that's a lot of times helpful.

And hopefully your boyfriend can deal with that. But, Ali, take care of yourself and. Olivia, our final listener question is about karma. Hmm? Danielle writes, My boss is kind enough to buy me a very expensive seasonal subscription box back in 2015.

The problem is it's still arriving every year, even though I no longer work there. While I'm a fan of getting these boxes, I'm starting to feel guilty. My husband tells me it's payback for a job that was soul sucking, but I'm worried it will be bad karma to keep accepting these. Maybe my old boss doesn't realize their card is still being charged for this. Well, I think for sure you have to tell. The boss, that's my feeling, because even if your job was soul sucking.

Sometimes if if elements of your life are soul sucking, you should take the initiative to try and change that and get out of it.

I would say that there is a soul sucking element that is taking place because of this gift that she's getting. You know, everybody is different. Some people can can can totally look at that as they deserve this. But for her for for Danielle, it is causing her a lot of stress. And I would argue that that in itself is soul sucking for her.

So that's a really good point. So for Danielle specifically, because it causes so much stress and it causes a lot of worry and it makes her wonder if there is going to be some kind of karmic debt that she accrues because of this. I would say that she should send an email and say, I love getting this. It's been so great to get this every year. I just wanted to check to make sure that this is something that I'm supposed to be getting every year or if there was a mistake.

And your card has been continued to get charged for this because it leaves it open for somebody to say, like, oh, no, you're supposed to be getting that for X amount of years.

Set your soul free, Danielle. Set your set yourself free. So, Olivia.

We that was the last question that came in from our listeners.

When I say our listeners, I mean mine and only mine, our listeners, OK, but we do still have one more person to help.

And it's a person from the past.

This is advice of yesteryear.

When Jerry brags about taking Jenny out, he learns that she dates all the boys. So as we see now, menstruation is just one routine step in a normal and natural cycle.

How do you choose a date?

Well, one thing you can consider is, look, I did everything you said, but my boss still hasn't asked me to lunch.

The advice of yesteryear is where we go to an old advice column from long ago, and this happens to be from Dorothy Dix's advice column, 1949. Wow. And yeah, it reads, Dear Mystic's. A young man who wants to marry me has the following qualities. Bad qualities, never saved much money, smokes and eats excessively, drinks moderately, swears rather fluently to blunt in telling the truth, good qualities, pleasant and lovable, even tempered, charitable and faithful, well-educated and a hard worker.

What do you make of such a man? Would he be desirable as a husband? Signed Hope. Well, I don't know if this jumped out at you, but a bad quality is that he drinks moderately, huh?

Did you find that odd? I found that to be like a pot. I thought that that seemed weird because everything else seemed like he does this everything else a lot. And then that one. Yeah. Yeah. It almost seems like it should be followed with also exercises and takes care of his health. Would you marry this guy?

No. But why? Because but I don't really know why.

So I don't really know if I want to marry anyone but the drinking moderately. I know that sounds like he had a lot of negatives. I was I didn't think that there would be anything positive. In fact, her Pozzo, she was really good at dividing it.

Five bad and five good. I mean, she sat down and made a list by candlelight, I'm sure, because it was nineteen fifty nine. They didn't have, you know, in 1949 or 1949. Yeah. They didn't have, they only had candlelight.

Can you rattle off the five bad and five good again.

Never save much money smokes and it's successively drinks moderately suares rather fluently too blunt and telling the truth. Good qualities. Pleasant, lovable, even tempered, charitable and faithful, well-educated, hard worker.

Well you know, when you hear them real quick like that, it sounds like the bad qualities that he's just a little bit of a party guy who likes to eat and drink. And he is a little blunt. I'm blunt too, with my honesty. I'd like to just kind of go out there and say it and then all the positives. You want somebody that's lovable and faithful and nice to be in temper, even tempered. Yeah, charitable. That's great.

They don't meet a lot of charitable people.

I mean, it's really hard to get people who can just like, you know, and he doesn't save a lot, but he's charitable. What does that say? That's a I say that that's a oh God.

Sorry, you scared me. Sorry. You know what what did what did the the columnist respond back about it?

Excellent question, Olivia. The answer is sounds to me as if he were a paragon that you had better seize quickly, huh. Certainly his fine qualities outweigh his faults, which is not true. It's even it's half and half. If Dorothy Dix would have paid attention to the math like I did, there is no such thing as a perfect man.

Imagine being married to a man who never made a mistake, who never blundered, who never did anything silly and foolish, but was invariably right.

What a poor, miserable worm of the dust he would make you seem what approach he would feed to you. What a contrast. No, my dear, if you want to be happy, though married, pick out a man who, while he has the standardized sterling virtues, also has plenty of faults.

That was so that was a lot of flourish for for that, for that call. Yeah, I think we did a better job breaking down why she should have stayed with him. Yeah.

Before I let you go, Olivia, thank you. Thank you for all of our helpful advice. Is there any best advice that you've been given that you'd want to share?

Think something that I've come to realize, especially when it comes to. Success and and not just in your career, but in relationships, I think the biggest problem is not aiming high and missing, it's aiming low and hitting. And I think that we all need to put our fears aside more and aim high and don't don't go for the low, low targets, because if you hit it, you know you're stuck there.

Yeah. You get the you get the low target. It kind of calls back to the advice from earlier with our friend that was writing a book. A writer. Yeah. Well said, Olivia. Thank you to the show. That's it.

We did it. Now why? That's it. We just go back to life. Do you have anything you want to plug?

There are two animal rescue organizations I've been working with, the Shelter Pet Project Dog and also stay home and Foster Dog.

Well, that's all very, very great stuff to be plugging Olivia and then listeners out there. Please, please know or remember that you can send in your own questions that don't ask TIG and we might try to answer them on a future episode.

You can write them down or you can send it to us as a voice memo. Again, that's don't ask Tig to reach us with your questions. Thank you again, Olivia. I really, really appreciate it, Noah.

So first, I'd love to see you guys day. I'll get a covid test and then and quarantine. Then come see you guys if you ever wanted to.

Yeah, that'd be great. All right. Say bye to Frankie.

This is little better. Frankie, could you hear him? If you're looking for another podcast and let's be honest, who is it? Check out Tig and Cheryl. True story. It's me and my pal Cheryl Hines from Curb Your Enthusiasm, discussing documentaries each week. And if you'd like to catch me, live in the comfort of your own living room. My old podcast, Professor Blastoff, is reuniting and putting on a streaming show October 6th.

Tickets are available on Eventbrite.

Check my social media for more information. It'll be a hoot. That's what Joe. If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate and review us, don't ask. BTIG is hosted by me, Tig Notaro. It's produced by Thomas Willette, Mary Knoff and Tracey Mumford. Our editor is Phyllis Fletcher, executive producer Lauren D, Engineering and Sound Mixing by Eric Rachmani, Digital Production by Christina Lopez. Talent booking by Rocky band Lulu Duban, our theme music is Brendan BTIG by Edie Brickell and Kyle Crushin and Listen To Your Heart by Eddie Brickell.

Special thanks to Hunter sideman Lily Kim and Alex Shaffer. Our executive consultant is Dean Cappello and Gobsmacked Studios Don't Ask Tig is a production of American Public Media. And of course, thank you, Dana. And I'll tell Becky.