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Has ambition ever led you astray?

When hasn't it?

When I talk to my peers for my 20s, I do think I was a little off-putting in relation to my own ambition.

I think everyone who does whatever job they do at a very high level does have, in some ways, an uncomfortable degree of ambition.

I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation.

Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards.

They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me. My guest this week is comedian Mike Berbiglia.

I think what you have to learn to do as a grown-up, and being a grown-up starts, I believe,

around age 35 or 40, is understanding how ambition does not work against being kind.

So it's not very often that I listen to a middle-aged man from Massachusetts who tells jokes for a living and then I think to myself,

that dude gets me.

But I actually think Mike Barbigli and I might have been separated at birth.

First off, yes, I know there are big differences.

I, for example, am from Idaho. He is from

New England. He is hilarious. I can't even get my kids to laugh at my jokes. But there are a lot

of parallels. Mike was raised in a really religious family, so was I. His dad preferred reading

books about world wars instead of parenting. Same. And he owes a podcast where he asks people

point blank really deep questions. I mean, come on. This was meant to be. His new comedy special

is called The Good Life. His 2023 show The Old Man in the Pool was nominated for an Emmy.

His one man off-Broadway show, Sleepwalk With Me, was turned into a movie that won all kinds of awards.

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