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Survivor 46 is here, and so is On Fire, the only official survivor podcast, and we have a twist this season. The winner of survivor45, Dee Viadoras, will be joining us every week.

We're going behind the scenes of the biggest moments, the how and the why things happen, and the strategy and analysis you can only get from someone like me, a survivor winner.

Listen to On Fire, the official survivor podcast on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. You're listening Welcome to Comedy Central. My guest tonight is a best-selling author whose new book is called Grief is for People. Please welcome Sloan Crosley. Sloan. All right. Hi. Hello. How are you feeling?

I feel pretty great. How do you feel?

I feel great. I'm excited to talk with you. This book is beautiful and wonderful. You write before this book, a lot of essays involving humor. This is a memoir involving loss and grief with a lot of humor in it. I laugh, but how do you strike that balance between grief and laughing?

I know. I can't believe I'm here talking about the sad book. No, I think that the topography of grief that everyone experiences, the people you miss, you miss because they're so specific. In this case, the person I miss was very dark and very funny. You have both my silences wonder of humor going and his going at the same time.

You mentioned Russell, but really, when you start this book, it's about being burglarized.

I know. So many bad things happen.

So many bad things happen. Again, there's a lot of laughing. There is a lot of laughing, for real. But one of the most interesting parts of the book is how it turns. Tell me a little bit about how you approach that from being robbed to then this next bad thing that happened? Yeah.

Basically, on June 27th of 2019, I left my apartment for one hour to get a hand X-ray, so I took all my rings off. What are you going to do? And came home to find all my jewelry gone, burgerized. And not particularly flashy, just gone. And then a month later, my dearest friend, unfortunately, died by suicide. So that first loss, obviously, became the more minor precursor to the second loss. But as a human being, I am deeply unlucky. But in this case, I am. But as a writer of this book, I knew this is a suspensful It's a story about grief, and it's a funny story about grief, and I don't think you get a lot of those.

Yeah, and it's easy to grieve at first for these items, right? If you have been-It sucks. It sucks. We had some winter coats stolen, and I'm almost embarrassed. Winter coats stolen. Yeah, we had winter coats stolen. I'm so sorry for your loss. Exactly. It is humorous in a way, but also you feel violated, you feel mad. Then as soon as anything real happens, you go, That's the important thing.

Yes. Well, it's also the only commonality that these two losses have is the sudden nature of them. It just felt like a real demarcation of before and after, which you don't always get with grief.

Tell me about Russell. You tell a lot in the book, but-Unlikely.

A national television.

Yeah, please.

Share Russell with us. Just like anyone would about their friend. I used to work in book publishing. He hired me. I worked for him for 10 years. He was wildly generous, funny, brilliant, brilliant publicist and deeply inappropriate. I'm really hesitant to repeat some of the lines in the book. But he fits less and less, I think, in a world that he had helped build in a way. Part of the challenge of this book was how to memorialize and pay tribute to someone like that without sounding like a frustrated septuagenarian white man who's like, It's just not the same. It was The world has changed. The world has changed. But he was just a wonderful, well-read human being who really was almost like, he's my partner in crime. I felt like that. People have that with work relationships and friends.

I love when you talk about some of his quote-unquote offensive, whatever they were, remarks, actions. He sent you an email once as your cat or something. Was that what it was?

Yeah, the whole account.

Yeah, the whole account.

It would say, Mommy, why are you wearing the same thing you wore yesterday? Mommy, why didn't you to come home last night? This is my boss, just so it's clear.

That's so awesome.

But also my dear wonderful friend.

Yeah. What HR doesn't get is-Won't kill them. Right. Well, when someone is gone, it's these hilarious, sometimes they cross the line moments that we think about and we laugh about. Yes.

Now, having said that, I'm not trying to be permissive over some of the behavior that he exhibited, but also it didn't come... Those things that we're talking about, they weren't attached to abuses of power or lording sex over people or anything like that. He fought for everyone's raises.Right..

You talk about a lack of self-help books or grieving groups for loss of a friend. Yes.

Why is that? Well, I would say it's not like anyone was trying to take my grief away from me. Nobody was like, Well, you don't get to grieve too bad.

Just a friend.

You don't get to do that. You don't get to sit in the corner. No, but it just felt like the structure of life, of the self-help books, of the Internet, is very much loss of a spouse, loss of a child, God forbid, loss of a parent. In addition to being so confused and hurt by his death, I had this extra patina of thinking, Do I ever write to this? I'm trying to get purchase on it. How much of it is mine? It turns out about 200 pages worth is mine.

It can feel very serious, but there's humor. Are you looking for the humor, or are you a person who writes your truth, the world you're in, and humor's there?

This whole thing?

Yeah, that whole thing.

No, the truth is I have always been humor writer.

I'm asking not for them because I'm curious because it's like, do you try to be funny? Yeah, not for them. Do you try to be funny in this serious situation?

No, I don't. I think that what I have, and what I imagine you have as well, in replace of poetry, maybe, are analogies and observations and this abject exasperation at the world, and that's how I see and describe the world. The humor in my more traditional humor essay is there's a better alignment, I suppose, between the topic and how I'm telling the story. With a grief book, I think it hopefully gives the book more texture and/or will offend massive amounts of people.

No, it won't. It's not. It's an excellent read. Why are we afraid to say grief? Why are we afraid to talk about it? I find talking about death, especially in North American culture, it's like, Keep it down. Why? Tell me the answer to this existential question.

That's why you're here.

I'm specifically-No, but you have a good input. You have a good thought on-On how to speak to people who are grieving.

A singer.

Why? Sorry. On why it is that we talk about it so little. Why is there a little bit of an air right now? Because there's grief and there's sadness.

Well, especially the death this is is very scary. When we say we don't necessarily say your cancer, our cancer. We do say our suicide or your suicide, his suicide. It's like we give it. It's like hot coal, and we give it back to the dead person as fast as we possibly I can. I think because we're frightened for ourselves as we well should be. But I think the only way around that is to discuss it more and to talk about it and to be asked questions about it. In the wake of Russell's death, people would often say, Did you know? Which I personally don't have the best reaction to because I don't know if it's for me or for him. But I like to talk about it.

What should you say?

Well, I mean, first of all, you should say whatever the hell you want to say. I'm not trying to police people's reaction to grief as long as it's authentic and it's sincere and not just rubber necking it a horror story and using your grief for this. I think you should just go with declarative statements. You did. I did? Well,. Where you said, Tell me about him. I wish I knew him. He must have been wonderful. What a big life that's more than this one moment.

That's beautiful. I've heard you say, Part of grief is becoming on the side of the living once again. Explain that to me.

Well, if you've ever grieved someone, you know that especially right away, there's this almost embarrassing thing I felt, which is I was receiving all of these wonderful condolences, and I felt like I was ill-equipped or did not have the shelving to accept them because everybody had committed the sin of not being able to bring my friend back. I just wanted to do whatever he wanted to do. We had a memorial service. I turned into what I call in the book, a Funeral Zilla, where I was just like, Is it hard to shut down Fifth Avenue for an hour? Why are these programs not bound with ribbon? Where is the gold lead? I'm like, Okay, somebody needed to pull me aside and say, You know he's not going to be going to the Memorial service. Honestly, at that moment, no, I did not know that.

Right. Is it changing that focus back to present tense? Yes.

I love that. Also changing to what he would want. Because again, even and especially with someone who dies by suicide, they are more than their last act of free will. We had an entire friendship, an entire life together where I know that he wanted more from me than to just focus on him.

It's a beautiful book. You will laugh. You will think, I promise you. But it's also a tribute to your friend Russell. Thank you for chatting with us very much. I appreciate it. A delight. Grief is for People is available now. Sloan Crosley, everybody. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back after this. Thank you.

Mtv's official Challenge podcast is back for another season. That's right. The challenge is back, and so are we. I'm I'm Simone Simone. And I'm Devon Rogers. Now, you all know we had so much fun covering the Challenge USA one together that we thought, why not do it again? So we are joining forces to dive into this brand new season. Season 39, battle for a new champion. Yes. Yes. 24 contenders will compete to win their first championship. They know the battle, but not the victory. Oh, thank God. I am ready for a new champion, a new one. Okay, give us some fresh faces, people. Girl, I couldn't agree more. So every week after the episode airs, come hang with us as we break down all the challenges and eliminations, and of course, get the inside scoop on all the drama. And we got all the tea, okay? We will be joined by the cast members themselves every week, you all. Listen to MTV TV's official Challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

My guest tonight is a University of Kentucky basketball legend and an NBA shooting star who has written a memoir called It's Hard for Me to Live with Me. Please welcome Rex Chapman.

That's what I'm cool. Thanks for having me. All right. All right. All right.

This book, you lay it out. I know you from basketball. Some people know you from social media. You have a podcast. In this book, you talk about your addiction, your recovery. How difficult was it for you to write that?

People have been telling me I should write a book for a long time. I never really understood why guy. Then Seth Davis, the author who co-wrote the book with me. I've known Seth a long time. He called me up. I had a level of comfort that I don't know that I had with a lot of other people. We started the process We started it probably... I told somebody today, I think it was like two years ago. It was like four years ago because about a year in, Seth said, Hey, man, I've got another project that's time sensitive. Do you mind? I said, No, I don't like I'm talking about this anyway, so take all the time you want. I said, Sure. What is it? He said, Well, it's Sister Jean, who's 104 years old. I laughed. I said, That's the sweetest thing ever that you think I might outlive, Sister Jean. Anyway, there we go.

Man, I resonated with so much of this. You're incredibly honest. One of the things that jumped out at me was you broke the rules and oftentimes the law a lot before the big bottom. I mean, there was cheating in school. There was cheating on your girlfriend. That's not against the law. No, right? There was driving with a suspended license. There was breaking tons of curfews. I mean, every Rule breaker. Rule breaker. But then it really seemed like it all crashed in 2014 when you get arrested for stealing from an Apple store. Is that right? No, not you. Okay. But I mean, By the way, I didn't just bring you out here to tell you all the shit you did in that.

Got you. Got you.

Yeah. I'm asking a question that I should probably get to it. The perks of being an athlete and being a successful athlete, is that what allowed you to-I think so.

Just talking about it in the green room, really, with Larry Hughes, my Simon & Schuster guy. My last two years of high school, I have dyslexia, and I didn't know any of that, though. I just knew higher math and science and all that stuff. I would check out How are you guys getting this? This is not easy. Then I'm being told it's common sense. I quit. I'm not going to be a math teacher. Why do I need to know this? Then I'd cheat. But my last two years of high school, I just left school early after lunch. Because I was a good basketball player, even in high school, well, they can't afford to sit me. What craziness is that? But I left, and the only I got in trouble. Assistant Principal called me in one day after school. For two years, I've done this, and I thought I was in trouble. He said, Listen, Rex, I don't mind you going home after lunch, but don't be washing your car out there when the school busses are coming by. This also shows just how good you were at basketball.

Because maybe I could put up seven points, but if I skip school, they're like, Hey, Costa, you're not that good.

You know what Listen, man, you played tennis, and you played it at a very high level. Going and playing, you did. He really did. He went to Illinois and played tennis. And anybody that goes to college and plays a sport, Division One, Division Two, especially, that's all your time. That's right. I didn't really have, I didn't have probably the capacity for the school part of it, but I was having to go every day. I remember sitting in class because it takes all your time. For me, back in the day, we can only play basketball like three, four hours a day by rule. I'd be in a geography of Kentucky class sitting there. It's such a complicated class. I'd be sitting there and thinking, Well, Reggie Miller, Clyde Drexler, Michael Jordan, Ron Harper, all these guys are working out right now, and I'm stuck in this class. It's my only avenue to I get where they are. I have to do what is being told. Probably cheating on my tests weren't the best thing, but I only did that once. But as I read this, man, you worked hard.

I worked hard. You were going at night. I was obsessed by it. But you were getting a key to the gym at night and having you and your buddy and have him rebound for you. You might have been a rule breaker.

No, that was the only thing that I had. That was the only thing I felt like I could control. No, I worked at it. I was obsessed by it. I told someone earlier, I used to wake up at midnight on the East Coast. I'd fall asleep, wake up just in a sweat thinking, My guy, Jerold Madken, somebody I know out in LA, my grade, he's at the park right now. It's nine o'clock. I need to do some push-ups. Let me go run a mile. I'll come back and go to bed. Obsessed like that. Somebody's working harder, and I can't allow that.

That same level of commitment, that stubbornness, that anxiety over working, does that help you in recovery? Or in a way, is it hard to go to recovery because I'm a bad mother?

I can beat this. I know I can beat this. I think that's probably the mindset that got me there. I for sure went through... Very first, when I started taking Vicodin, or or OxyContin. I just remember one day, very vividly thinking, Oh, can I cuss? You can cuss. I think I already said no to fuck her and something else. Can I say all of it? Okay. I thought to myself, Well, I thought, Oh, fuck shit. No, I thought- You played against Michael Jordan.

You've heard him way worse than all these.

I've heard it all. But I was thinking, all of a sudden, I was When I was taking this medicine, it was saying take it once every whatever. Where I'm making that call, all of a sudden, one day it just flipped where that medicine was telling me when to take it. Before I know it, I was only supposed to take three today. Now I'm to four and now I'm to five. Then I'd get to seven or eight and I'd go, This is an issue, man. I'd cut it down to four or five. Then guess what? Maybe an argument or whatever. I'm going to take this. Then that was... From the time I was 15 or 16-year-old, though, I started having some depression and whatnot and really started coping that way then because I didn't know how I cope, I would sneak off to the racetrack all the time, bet horses. That was what my dad and I always did. I just thought it was normal.

He talks a lot about in this book, not just the pills, but also a horse racing addiction.

I liked basketball. I love thoroughbred racing. The only horses these people know are the ones at Central Park. I like those two.

Let's talk about because as you're talking and you discuss before games in high school, you always would vomit as a nerve. But then you also talked about how your dad, who was a basketball coach, would do this as well.

See, this wasn't... Yes. He used to be a coach, and I would be in his locker rooms before games, and he'd give his pep talk, and he'd go in in the restroom, stick his fingers down his throat, and throw up. A lot of times, it was dry heaves, and I just hear him in there. But that was how he got ready for a game. I don't know if he did that when he played. I just know he did it. We never talked about it, but then I started doing it. Well, I did it out of nerves. He brought his whole team to watch a third-grade game of mine. I didn't know they were coming. I went out on the court, puked everywhere at mid-court. I mean, big throw up. They cleaned it up. I felt like Superman after that. I was ready to go. From that moment, I was a regular puker. I puked every single game from third grade till my second or third year in the NBA. Then I was just like... I would stick my fingers down my throat. If I was playing bad, one of my teammates might be like, Bro, did you stick your finger down your throat?

Go in there and throw up.

But I'm reading this, I didn't realize that. That's crazy. This is anxiety, man. It's also your dad had a similar situation. When did you face that?

When? Out of rehab. The last time, 2014. I've been cleaned for nine Nine years, I'm not the model. I smoke marijuana. But I use medical marijuana. I have a Coors Light from time to time. Nine years clean from opioids. I think I really started delving. I hit rock. I was broke. I was broken. I'd embarrassed myself, my family, my kids, my ex-wife, all of my friends, and my friend's kids that looked up to me. I felt like, Man, if you're going to live, you better start tackling some of why you do the things you do.

Your dad is in here a lot. Yeah. Tough on you. I mean, one time, you scored 40 points. You come home, dad's going to like me, and he was mad that you didn't play better defense. I played collegiate tennis. My dad, sometimes I think, If he would have been harder on me, I could have been a better pro. I'm thinking, Well, Which one is it? I don't want that. But I also wouldn't mind me a couple more bucks playing tennis. So what's the balance, dude?

I don't know. Okay. I don't know because to be honest, I never in my life... My dad played professional basketball. He played college. I never in my life, my whole life, was on the floor with my dad playing basketball. He never rebounded for me. He never did any of that stuff. Also, I didn't want him to do that. I was focused on what I was doing. I was watching his teams, watching everything he did, listening to everything. I was absorbing it. I honestly think he knew that I would be too nice and maybe fizzle out as a college player or whatever. He knew I had the talent. The problem is I did very much similar things with my own son, and he didn't have the same talent. He was way tougher than I was, but I treated him almost like my dad treated me. Sometimes I was better. But still, I think that's what we're all trying to do. It's a hard balance. A little better than our parents, but it's a hard balance. Becoming a professional basketball player was a dream come true. That's the one thing. My dad, it's complicated. I love him to death.

I appreciate everything he's done for me. My mom, the same way. Are there some things I wish we'd have done differently? Yeah. Who's not that way?

My mom's here. There's. And on Black Woman History Night. Yeah, that's right. Here's a list of things she should have done better. That's a joke.

You know that, mom.

What do you have to say to people listening who might be middle school phenom in a sport or high school phenom in a sport? Everything's in front of them, it seems like. There's a reality of this that you have lived. What do you say to somebody who might be in the throes of addiction right now? Do you have a message or a thought?

Man, I guess it's really just find somebody to talk to. I had so much pride that I was this King Rex type thing, this image, and I had so much pride about not living up to anything. I had all these secret your insecurities, and your pride can get in the way a lot. And once you let that move a little bit, then you can start to see a light at the end of the tunnel. However, I also recommend therapy. If I would have been able to have therapy as a teenager, 18, 19 years old, I feel like... I don't know if it would have changed anything, but I know that I had a better shot of managing the stuff that goes along with being a popular and famous athlete.

That's a great message. Thank you for this book. I loved it. You're the man. Rex Chapman, everybody. Explore more shows from The Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11:10 central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+. This has been a Comedy Central podcast.

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Mtv's official Challenge podcast is back for another season. Season 39, battle for a new champion. Yes. 24 contenders will compete to win their first championship. They know the battle, but not the victory. So every week after the episode airs, come hang with us as we break down all the challenges and eliminations, and of course, get the inside scoop on all of the drama. Listen to MTV's Official Challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.