How Catholic Guilt Becomes Comedy with Ryan Doyle

Clown school and they fuck with your head, they insult you. People are gonna hate you. This is a chance right now to face that directly in a safe environment. I came to it through rules and shame and Catholic guilt. It’s a constant thing. You’re never over it. I’m starting to give myself way more permission to just do the things I like.

It’s okay to pursue things that make you happy or give you pleasure. I’ve felt like my throat chakra is really blocked up. I have a lot I wanna say, but it feels stuck. The Hindu priestess, she pulled a flower off the tree and she was like, can you eat this? And I ate the flower. All of a sudden it just poured out of me.

The show, all of it started flowing so easily. It’s every type of speech possible in one hour. It’s called free speech, a big stunt of language, a feat of memory and memorization and speed and combining into one show. I’m not allowed to eat this cookie until you hit subscribe, please. I’m hungry. The show. The show, the.

Jen: I am really excited to talk to you for so many reasons. I only had multihyphenate guests on so far, but I think you, you have the most hyphens of anybody.

Ryan Doyle: I have at least three hyphens. I’d say that I like stick to, writer, performer. I throw a clown in there at the end cause I feel like that sums up what I write and perform. And then within each of those, I feel like there’s a few hyphens, like a little linguistic tree down from comedy. There’s standup sketch. I like to write funny poems within poetry. There’s a few hyphens down from there, like doing the typewriter stuff, writing my own poems, doing like ensemble, like group performances of poems.

Ryan Doyle: So yeah, lots of hyphens.

Jen: Is your goal to always be furthering yourself in all three of those main categories, like equally, or are you really pursuing one over the other?

Ryan Doyle: I feel like I’m at a place now where they’re starting to combine in a really clear way. For a long time, it would stress me out. I’d be like, I’m doing too many things. Making progress on all of them, but they never turn out as great as I imagine. My big thing’s been like I have to limit myself to two things at a time for like seasonally almost.

Ryan Doyle: So I can have like one big project and then almost like an ephemeral practice project. So like for me right now, that’s just writing jokes, a daily kind of throwaway thing. That’s like the second thing. I’m at an interesting point where I’m trying to cut and eliminate a lot out and it feels really good, to do less actually, even though I have all those hyphens.

Jen: When you’re writing, when you first have an idea, do you know if it’s turning into a joke or a poem or a funny poem, or is it kind of like once you start writing, then you see where it goes?

Ryan Doyle: I think I look at them the same way. Like, I think jokes are just a form of poetry. I always say like, I

Jen: I love that.

Ryan Doyle: wish my comedy friends would read more poetry, and I wish my poetry friends would read or do more comedy. I really think poetry’s a way bigger umbrella than we give it credit for. Like, it’s not just a Robert Frost or, cheesy slam poetry that some movie’s making fun of when the main character walks into a cafe or something. It kind of depends. Sometimes I have a joke and then it clearly is like, this could be like a longer poem. Maybe this is a scene or something. Sometimes I’ll perform a poem and then be like, oh, it’s really just that one line that’s funny that that’s the only thing the audience even cared about.

Ryan Doyle: So this is a joke now. It’s pretty fluid.

Jen: You have a partner that you do performance with. How much of your performing is split between solo versus partner versus group?

Ryan Doyle: I’d say it’s been 60 40 with my partner over the past 10 years or so. In 2023 and 2024, we were like producing our own show where we would write and produce like a brand new show every month. It was a variety show, so we’d have guests too, but the main goal of it was like a challenge to write like an hour of sketch once a month on a new theme. And so when we were in the flow of that, it was a lot more partner work. Right now, just cause we both moved to LA I was traveling for months. Right now it’s honestly like 90 10. I’m really just focusing on my own projects right now, which feels really good actually.

Ryan Doyle: I deeply love my partner. We’re best friends. We grew up together.

Jen: Aw.

Ryan Doyle: But I do think it can be really beneficial for partnerships or groups to take a little break and reflect and just remember what it’s like to have to self-motivate. Not always rely on the other person to like, pick up the slack or push you along. It’s been really good having to find more of an internal drive for my own work.

Jen: How does screenwriting fit into all of this?

Ryan Doyle: I’m not really writing very much narrative stuff at the moment. Like, as far as industry writing, I’m a lot more interested in writing jokes, sketches, things like that. So I guess sketches is in a screenwriting script format. But it’s really not my priority right now just because I have a solo show that I am working on really intensely and just very obsessed with at the moment.

Ryan Doyle: I feel like, I have that David Lynch, like, wow, I caught a big idea. And it’s a really big idea and I’m having so much fun working on it that, for all that, like multihyphenate, all the different stuff I do right now. In a weird way, I’m talking to you at a time where I have the most laser focused on one thing and one thing only. Which is different for me.

Jen: What is the topic of the show? Are you allowed to share the secret?

Ryan Doyle: Yeah. I can share, I wasn’t sharing for a while cause there’s that thing of like, you don’t wanna talk about your idea too much or people’s energy will suck away from it. But I do feel like I’m far enough along now that I can talk about it. Do you remember the evolution of dance video? That was a 2005 YouTube hit? It’s a stunt of dance where you combine all the different dances into fluid transitions. I’m doing that, but for speech, for language. So it’s every type of speech possible in one hour. And it’s called free speech. And I’m treating it like a big stunt of language, where I’m writing things on every category you could possibly think of. Anywhere from hellos and greetings and how are you and small talk to onomatopoeia to language in the media, to controversial language that there’s been like Supreme Court cases about to poetry, jokes, everything and everything. I’m gonna try to do it all in kind of like a fluid one hour monologue. And it’s been so much fun and rehearsing. It has been such like a feat of memory and memorization and speed and so many things I’m interested in kind of like combining into one show where it’s comedy, it’s definitely clown and interactive, but it’s poetry mostly in terms of like the rhythm to it. I’m super excited about it. It’s kind of all I’m doing while I don’t have a job in Los Angeles yet, and I have a place to stay, I’m treating it like my, like a writer’s residency and just working it out.

Jen: That’s amazing. Do you have an ideal timeframe for when you’re hoping to put it up?

Ryan Doyle: I want to put it up in February. I have 40 minutes out of 60 minutes written. The next two weeks, by the end of the year, I want that final 20 finished. And then January’s all just memorization and trying to keep that 60 minute flow and even like having to train my breath to be able to do it because I go very fast. It’s like hellos is truly like every type of hello I can think of in five minutes. It feels like a physical feat, a writing feat, a performance feat. I’m super excited about it. So February I want to find a place to put it up, small theater, get my friends and people to put eyes on it, tell me what they like, what they hate, why they think it’s terrible, why they think it’s awesome. And then from there, March, April, bring it to more places and then start really developing it in the spring.

Jen: That’s awesome, man. That’s so exciting. Well, I’ll probably be back in the US in the spring, so I’ll come out and see it in one of its iterations.

Ryan Doyle: Or maybe I’ll bring it to Philly if you know a good theater there that would love to put up a weird, crazy show.

Jen: Absolutely, yes. I had my hands in the theater pies back when I lived in Philly. Yes, for sure. Who are your comedy influences or inspiration people?

Ryan Doyle: I love Sacha Baron Cohen. His mix of extreme silliness with biting political satire is exactly the lane I like to occupy. He went to clown school in France, he’s the one who got me interested in going to that school. Just watching all his work and not just as a spectator being like, how the hell did he do this? Like, how did he stay that deep in character, not laugh, be on his feet in real life? I gotta get a piece of that somehow. I need to figure that out. So he’s a huge inspiration for a variety of reasons. And then, I’m an old soul. I like old comedians. Like, I really like the one-liner comedians. I think Steven Wright is amazing. You wouldn’t be a comedian if you didn’t say George Carlin. I love George…

Jen: I was just gonna say George Carlin is one of the comedians who is often referred to as a poet.

Ryan Doyle: 100%. My favorite work of his are the ones that are just, they are poetry. He just doesn’t tell you that, or he doesn’t need to lead into it. His poem that he opened up his 2005 special with Modern Man is one of my biggest inspirations. It’s one of my favorite works of like solo speech. I think it’s wonderful that, and the classic dirty words list, like that sort of flow and rhythm of language that he does is like, I’d say I’m trying to do that in my show, but not for only like five minutes. He’s a huge inspiration. His process I resonate with as well, where he would write his shows like essays and he would work with a director on every physical motion, every inflection, every silly face he made. All of that was planned, rehearsed, perfected. I really work that way more so than someone who kind of just shoots from the hip and keeps going up on stage a million times to get it. That part’s fine, but I really like that intense writing rehearsal development process.

Jen: Did you see Jacqueline Novak’s special last year? That was just like an hour long poem about blow jobs? I think it’s on Netflix. You should definitely watch it. It’s like an hour long poem. I mean like stand up special poem about blow jobs, but like very, I think you’re gonna love it. I’m pretty sure it’s called Get on Your Knees, but it’s beautiful.

Ryan Doyle: Novak blow jobs… Jacqueline Novak. Yeah.

Jen: Um.

Ryan Doyle: Of like modern people today, a big reason why I moved to LA was like the clown scene here. I think Natalie Palamides is just like amazing. Her special Nate is a feat of performance and like getting permission from the audience to go to absolutely crazy places. And it’s the only scene I’ve really felt like, oh, people are doing something different here. It doesn’t feel like traditional standup where it’s like, hey, I’m just wearing a hoodie and I’m just kind of casually being funny. I’m not gonna be weird, or I’m not gonna be funny myself. I’m not gonna be silly. The things I say are silly or my observations are sillier. I feel like improv is the same. It’s like two people standing in their jeans just being like, we’re talking about what we’re doing. And I’m silly. A big rule of mine, like for my own work is like, don’t talk about something that’s silly. Be silly, embody silly. That is way more interesting to me.

Jen: I agree. So heartily, that is a beautiful manifesto. Dig it.

Ryan Doyle: Yeah. I watched some of your dad’s videos by the way.

Jen: Oh, that was gonna be my next question.

Ryan Doyle: Oh, really? Yeah. What an interesting father.

Jen: I’m very pleased to hear you watched some of his videos. Yeah. Okay. For context, my dad was a professional mime for 11 years. Now he’s a novelist. In between, he had great success in network marketing and business and like being an inspirational speaker in the business landscape. What I wanted to ask you about is your relationship with, I guess, shame and failure. I know that I am very unique in this world because I was raised by my dad who was the definition of like, there’s nothing more important than embodying silliness, making yourself laugh above all else. Like even if nobody else does, like if you’ve made yourself giggle, you’ve won the day. And that’s how I’ve always gone through life and I love it, but nobody else seems to do that. But I’m guessing you have a good chunk of that.

Ryan Doyle: I love that. I wish that’s how I was raised. I feel like I came to it through the exact opposite direction, which was through rules and shame and Catholic guilt. And you’re the oldest of five, and so you better set a good example. My grandma is from Ireland and she definitely has that like blunt, harsh, Irish Catholic sort of attitude where you come sit down at the dinner table and she’s like, what are you doing wearing a hat at the dinner table? Get the hat off. Everything’s wrong. It doesn’t even make sense why you’re not allowed to wear a hat at dinner. It’s just a rule. My relationship with shame and guilt has probably been my biggest challenge in adolescence and becoming an adult myself. I feel like I’m just at a place where I’m over, not over that cause it’s a constant thing. You’re never over it. But I’m starting to give myself way more permission to just do the things I like. It’s okay to pursue things that make you happy or give you pleasure. And I think American culture has such an insane on off switch with that where it’s either, the country was founded by puritans and it’s very puritanical and hard work, Protestant work ethic, or it’s capitalism is selling you all of your desires to the most extreme. I feel like I’ve settled like 65 towards pleasure now recently. And just coming to terms with what I actually get pleasure from, what’s healthy pleasure, what’s pleasure that motivates me and makes me wanna keep working. And not in that like shame, guilt cycle of I have this big goal and maybe I didn’t do it and now I’m beating myself up. Like, come on, get up early, you gotta do it. And like that cycle hasn’t worked for me. The past couple years I’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on changing my mindset around that.

Jen: Does doing the actual action of putting yourself on stage in front of people, putting your body into unusual positions, making your voice do something unusual, like these are all exercises and like pushing that to its limits, that a lot of people would be so embarrassed, so ashamed, they have so much fear around that. So has doing the actions changed your mindset or has it been like mindset first allows you to get weirder and weirder on stage?

Ryan Doyle: I think a little bit of both doing the actions for sure. When I did go to that clown school in France, their methodology is like, they fuck with your head and they insult you. Each teacher director gives you totally contradicting advice or goals. Like the teacher would say, people are gonna hate you, this is a chance right now to just face that directly in a safe environment. Like get used to it. And that really helped, that really helped framing like going to an open mic or doing a showcase, someone else’s show. Or when I produce my own show, being like, oh, this is because I like it. It’s not because I need to pass the test or prove that I’m really doing this or prove to whoever in my life whose voice is one of doubt of this choice or that rule oriented sort of upbringing. I can just do this because I really enjoy it and that’s enough. Not every time I perform has to be like a test of like, should I do this or should I not? Am I awful? Oh my God, I’m great. My partner and I did a show where we paint ourselves green and we transform into goblins and we sing rat pack songs and wear tuxes. And being green in public it relieves something for sure, but I think I get more out of embracing the fact that I really want to break the rules more than like, I need to overcome shame or like, I’m gonna do this gross thing where I’m not wearing clothes on stage, or, if that’s what the scene or the bit calls for, I’ll do it because it’s fun and it makes me feel like I’m breaking the rules more so than like, I gotta do this to work on myself.

Jen: Yeah, yeah, of course. That makes perfect sense. My dad, he’s a dual citizen of Ireland and yeah, raised a very similar upbringing to you, so as I said after I met you, I think you guys might be like, I don’t know, alive at the same time, reincarnation.

Ryan Doyle: Totally. Interesting. Yeah, it really sounds like it. I feel like I need to just sit down with him for a coffee or a drink and just pick his brain too. I’d love to hear all his stories.

Jen: He would love to share them. Alright, shall we get into your actual to-do list?

Ryan Doyle: Yes. My to-dos.

Jen: So you sent me two separate lists. You have New Life todo, which is my favorite heading ever, and tomorrow to do.

Ryan Doyle: New life. It’s a new life and there’s much to do in this new life. On the west coast, everything’s new. Everything’s new.

Jen: Let’s start with new life. You have interpersonal, can you walk me through what’s on the interpersonal category, and then what are these things?

Ryan Doyle: Interpersonal is, my biggest weakness is responding to people on my phone because I just, I try to keep it as far away from me as possible throughout the day and when I’m writing. So I have to give it its own section for just like, you gotta respond to these people. These ones you really do have to respond to. Your friend who just sent you an essay about why he’s really stressed out right now and why he loves you as a friend. Like, I can ignore that for a little bit longer. Those ones for the new life to do for people are just friends I have here in California and in LA who I really need to catch up with, who I’m excited to catch up with, who have cool projects going on, or they know of places I should go perform or I have to get one of my typewriters fixed and I know there’s someone who knows where to do that.

Jen: So that’s message Eric and typewriter repair. That’s that one.

Ryan Doyle: Yes, yes. That’s that one. Eric is one of the founders of the Haikus who I do some typewriter poetry for, but they do specifically haikus for people. And so I know he knows where to get a typewriter fixed in LA.

Jen: Nice. And then what’s meet with Bailey?

Ryan Doyle: Bailey is an actress friend of mine that I met doing performance poetry in Chicago. A wonderful person, a dear friend. I just have to meet up with her and hear how the acting life is going.

Jen: And then you got Santa Monica gig supplies and message Santa Barbara Lady.

Ryan Doyle: Yes. Santa Monica gig supplies. It goes with typewriter repair. I need paper and ribbons. I just need to make sure I have all that stuff before a typing gig in Santa Monica. Santa Barbara lady was someone I met writing poems for 18 months ago. I was like, oh, I think I’m moving to California. And she’s like, well, when you do, I run this educational programming in Santa Barbara and I’ll hire you to type there. And so it’s like, okay, I need to message her. Yeah.

Jen: That’s awesome. What are your typewriter gigs usually? I saw on Instagram you advertising yourself for holiday parties amongst other things.

Ryan Doyle: Yes, I’ve done holiday parties, I’ve done corporate events, weddings, bar mitzvahs. I do it on the street, sometimes busking. That’s a really good way to get more of those gigs. It’s more fun because you can kind of do whatever you want on the street. Events are like the job’s mostly customer service and just being like someone people want to talk to. And then obviously you write them a poem or something and they appreciate that. But when you’re on the street, one of the most common requests people want a poem about is something like, can you write a poem for my dog? Which is wonderful. People want poems for their dogs. But I’ve been doing this for three years now, 60% of the requests are for this. And so some days when I’m on the street, I’m just like, no dog poems. Today we’re writing limericks only, or we’re doing sonnets, or I’m only doing silly poems. Gimme the weirdest prompt possible. I don’t wanna write anything sentimental, like just pick three words and we’ll do that. Every context and every event is totally different.

Jen: Love that. And then next we have finished rough draft of free speech three E’s by January first, can you walk me through all of the subsections?

Ryan Doyle: Three E’s very important. The script, like the rough draft, I timed myself for rehearsing it today. I have about 35, 40 minutes already done. Out of that, I have probably like 20 minutes with all the physicality planned out as well. And so it’s really just these last 20 minutes that I’m hoping I can finish writing in the next two weeks. And so some of the sections for that I’m trying to write is like technical language. Like, the point where someone’s specialty means that the majority of people can’t understand the language anymore. So that would be academic speech, scientific speech, math, legalese. Yeah, exactly. I’m writing little spoof poems for each of those sections to go in there. That one is, if there was a camera and you could see me in my apartment doing this, you would think something’s deeply wrong with me because I’m trying to figure out how do I segue from coughing into sneezing, into farting, into ow and exclamations and whoa. That’s just me doing every bodily sound with intermixing like onomatopoeia, pow and ooh and things like that.

Jen: Amazing.

Ryan Doyle: What else was on there? Oh yeah. Poetry section. Yeah, I want something with poetry in there later in the show. Poetry kind of becomes where we really intentionally use language. It also is kind of in that technical language area where it can become so specific like certain people don’t understand it or it breaks the rules of language. So it gives a different feeling or perspective. And then the media section is the other one I really need to tackle. I have a fantastic piece for advertising that I feel like is every major type of American advertising you could see in one like five minute sort of go. Local news, podcasts like this, movie quotes, all sorts and kind of structure those into like a little mini monologue as well.

Jen: What is your work process like? Are you ever going out and looking at things for inspiration or is it just entirely in your brain?

Ryan Doyle: No, I definitely get references. I look at videos for references. For the advertising one, I just watch football with my dad and football’s really, you’re watching advertising with little sections of football clipped in. And so I pretty much just sat there one day watching it, and it was like every time a new ad came on, I wrote a different line for like that sort of ad. Okay, Colgate minty fresh, that’s in everything, great. Oh yeah, erectile dysfunction’s everywhere all of a sudden. And just combine all of them, swirl them in a pot and then sculpt it from there. I definitely go seek out references for the technical language. I’ll use JSTOR, like a college search engine. And I’ll go get articles, research things on different topics. And then I use the cut-up technique, if you’ve heard of it. It’s kind of like collage for language. Where I just take a bunch of texts, I’ll put them all in a program, and then the program will blend the text and it’ll give you this just monster paragraph with no grammar in it. And then instead of writing just words from my head, I just use the delete button and I just kind of sculpt it into what seems like normalish language. So I kind of just steal or rob text from other places and then recombine it into a poem or a performance piece.

Jen: It’s amazing, man. I’m so excited to see the show. This sounds so cool.

Ryan Doyle: Yeah. It’s been so fun. It’s been so fun. I feel like, oh, this is a good idea. I’ve had that feeling before where you’re like, oh, this is a really good idea. But this is one where it’s like, oh, I’m excited to wake up and I’m gonna spend 10, 12 hours on just this today. It’s been really fun to go that deep into one project.

Jen: Do you feel like you or the universe was kind of holding this back to time it with your move to LA?

Ryan Doyle: 100%. It’s really interesting. Before I left Ubud, I did a healing ceremony with a few Hindu priestesses. They said to come in with an intention. I had a few intentions. It was very intense. It was like two hours, it felt like an ayahuasca ceremony without the plant medicine. And then at the end I was sitting there sipping my tea, coming back to reality. And the one lady was leaving and she went, oh, by the way, what’s going on with your throat? And I was like, oh, well that’s weird. Like, yeah, that was kind of my intention. I’ve felt like my throat chakra, or my throat is really blocked up. Like I have a lot I wanna say, but it feels stuck. And she was like, one second and she went and she pulled a flower off the tree and she was like, can you eat this? Can you eat this whole thing? And I was like, okay, yeah. And I ate the flower and then she just walked off. After that, all of a sudden it was this like, it just poured out of me, the show, conversations with certain friends or family members that maybe I was afraid to have or I was worried about how I’m gonna rhetorically say a difficult thing. And all of it started flowing so easily. And I think it definitely was timed with moving to LA but that as well is like one of the last things I did before leaving Indonesia going into this big transition in my life. It was really fascinating.

Jen: That’s amazing. And you being open to those experiences and deliberately putting yourself into a place of change and growth potential, even in unconventional ways. Yeah. That’s awesome.

Ryan Doyle: Spirituality is actually like, even though it’s comedy, it’s silly. I’m being so silly, but it’s actually like a really big part of my process in a variety of ways, especially the past three, four years. Just working on myself, working on certain things or hangups has actually, like taking time to just do that and not be creative has actually made me like a million times more creative in so many ways.

Jen: Yeah, of course. That makes perfect sense. Alright, back to your to-do list. We have creative administration. Oh, whoa. I like those two words next to each other.

Ryan Doyle: Yeah. That’s sort of like, that’s things I already have that either need to be put in the right organizational place, need to be updated and ready to go given the circumstances. Knowing how I want to pitch something, writing a log line or like, how do I explain this really crazy idea to someone who is so not interested in crazy ideas. They just want to know what is it on a simple level. I struggle with that. I wanna talk about all the crazy different ways I think about it in my process. But that’s not helpful most of the time.

Jen: On creative administration, you have what’s the Love is Blind script?

Ryan Doyle: I wrote a spoof of Love is Blind. That is Love is Blind, Deaf, Mute, Touchless and Tasteless. So instead of they’re in pods where they can’t see each other, they’re in sensory deprivation tanks, they just have to sort of intuit who their match is. Because that show, they so overemphasize like not seeing them, never seeing them. So I just blew that up to an extreme and was like, what if there was no input at all?

Jen: I like that. That sounds hilarious. What’s a tainted water script?

Ryan Doyle: That was a longer sketch I did with some friends that I wrote about kind of like the Flint water crisis where there were some of these videos coming out around that time and in other cities that were having water problems where the mayor or the alderman would be like, see this water’s fine. Glug glug glug, and they drink a glass of water. But this was one where it was like a town hall. And my two friends are angry townspeople at the town hall, and they’re like, you want to drink this water here? Go ahead and drink it. And then we let the audience put whatever they want in the water. So we had like chocolate syrup, mustard, vinegar, like a whole big tray of different sauces and things that could be poured in the water. And then I would drink it at the end.

Jen: Uh, that sounds very entertaining and very gross for you.

Ryan Doyle: Yeah. We’re not above gross. It’s not the main thing, but every so often it’s fun to throw in. Gross. I really appreciate groans. People want laughs. Laughs are good, but I like groans. I like awe. I like ugh. I like all those reactions equal to laughs.

Jen: That’s great. I love that. Then you have other projects. Finish Sculpting Confluence. That’s quite a sentence. What does it mean?

Ryan Doyle: Sculpting, it’s writing, but I’m just using the delete key and maybe I’m adding words in certain places. So that’s where I already amassed a whole bunch of text and now I just have to see how it connects. The word daily is here and then there’s like three thes and a two and an and, and it feels like daily, the the the two and schedule. Oh, okay. So we’ll delete these here and then, oh, daily schedule. That’s fun. I kind of discovered that as I was editing it. And so this is like a big project where I basically took all my personal writings, like journals and poems, and I fed it into this program. It blends up the entire text and now I’m sculpting a new piece from that blended version. So it’s kind of a way of like that content, all that stuff I wrote that’s about myself is going to be in that through just the vocabulary that the piece is limited to. But it’s gonna connect everything in this oblique way or this ambiguous way or this indirect way that gives people a feeling and it feels like prose or it feels like writing, but the way everything is connecting is really unique or juxtaposed in a strange or interesting or funny way. And so that’s what Confluence is. I named it Confluence cause that’s where a bunch of rivers and the ocean will all meet. So it’s like all these different streams of my thought all swirled together. And then I edit that into like a new piece. I’ve done this with a lot of stuff, but this is one where it’s like, this is a longer thing I would hope to publish one day.

Jen: That’s so cool, man. I like the way your brain works. Next you have board game, new copy.

Ryan Doyle: Yes. This is another project of mine, a year ago in Chicago, six, seven different projects. This has been like a passion project with a friend for like seven years. We were both of the mindset like this doesn’t need to become a really intense project where we have to race to the finish line. So we’ve been happy developing it slowly over time. But now we’re getting to a point where, okay, we wanna actually publish this.

Jen: That’s so cool, man.

Ryan Doyle: The board game is called, if I can give you my pitch for it, the board game is called the Doldrums. It’s a pirate themed board game, and it’s like battleship meets chess. Imagine chess, but the pieces are obscured. So I don’t know if you moved your queen or if you moved your pawn or if you moved whatever piece. And it’s very, very fun. If you like two player, if you like that process of chess where you just play with a close friend on like a Sunday afternoon and have a cup of coffee and you play for like an hour. This is your type of game.

Jen: And then you have plan out mics for January and have five minute set, 10 minute set, poetry set.

Ryan Doyle: Yeah. So just planning out which open mic do I want to hit when. I like to plan that out ahead of time because you work a whole day or you write a whole day and then it’s six o’clock, seven o’clock, eight o’clock, and you’re like, last thing I want to do is go sit in a bar for three hours, listen to everyone perform, and maybe I get up, maybe I don’t. And so it’s so easy to bail on that the day of. So I plan it out ahead of time and it’s like, no, no, no, the 13th, I’m going no matter what. And I already decided what I’m gonna do. I’m showing up. I mean, sometimes I’ll show up and I’ll have the thing, and then I’m like, okay, do I wanna go crazy? Do I want to take a risk? Does this feel like a room where I’m gonna do something that I’m willing to do something they don’t like, and just see how that goes? Or, okay, no, I rehearsed this and I really wanna see how this goes. So I’ll do the main thing I was planning. So I’m just trying to plan out like, alright, what’s the five minute set I want to do right now that’s just jokes? If I go to a poetry place, which poem do I wanna read? Let’s pick like three or four to have memorized and ready to go. So that’s just kind of like, I do that planning month by month.

Jen: Have you already been going to any venues not performing since in the month you’ve been in LA?

Ryan Doyle: Yeah, I’ve just been going to see other people’s shows. Friend shows, going to certain theaters that I’ve from a distance been watching with great appreciation and admiration. It’s so fun. There’s so many good shows here. There’s so many places. There’s so many awesome people. I’m loving it. Yeah, it’s definitely filling my cup. I oscillate between, like, I want no other artistic input. I’m not watching comedy. I’m not watching people’s shows. I’m not watching movies. I’m only doing instrumental music. No lyrics. To, okay, now I’ll watch a whole bunch of stuff and I need to go see other people doing stuff.

Jen: What, how long do those oscillations usually last?

Ryan Doyle: Kind of a long time. I’d say like three-ish months, especially right now where I’m really developing something specific. I don’t know, it’s like, there’s a catchphrase that’s going around TikTok and online that’s just like, create more than you consume. And I’m trying to stick to that for the most part.

Jen: It sounds like you’re absolutely achieving that.

Ryan Doyle: It’s just, we’re constantly inundated with stuff and I don’t know, it sounds bad as someone who likes to write comedy and poetry and stuff like that, but I turn on my TV and I look at any streaming service and I just go, ugh, ugh. Don’t care. Oh, another movie. Okay. Another show. Cool.

Jen: And you feel like that all the time?

Ryan Doyle: Kind of, kind of, I don’t know. No. Sometimes I go on a tear where it’s like, this director, how have I never watched this? And then I watch everything they’ve done in a week or two. Or yeah, someone, all their specials or every album. I like a deep dive. Like recently I’ve done that with Jacques Tati, a French clown, so famous, considered one of the best directors. But I just never watched his movies. The past couple weeks I’ve watched all of his movies and he’s so fantastic.

Jen: That’s really cool. What is your relationship to social media and yeah, I guess algorithms and stuff like this?

Ryan Doyle: I need to be a lot better and do more. I have such an aversion to social media and all of my friends are like, we did too, but just, you gotta do it. We hate it, but you gotta do it.

Jen: You have to post, not that you have to consume.

Ryan Doyle: Yes, exactly, exactly. I need to be better at pitching myself in succinct ways and not being overly analytical and self-critical about it. People are way too busy and wrapped up with themselves to be thinking that much about me. And it’s the same with like a stupid little video on Instagram or TikTok. No one cares. Most likely they just immediately scroll as soon as they see it. Just put it out. But yeah, we’re working on that.

Jen: Wow. I’m really surprised to hear that. What’s the difference between doing it on stage versus putting it on the internet?

Ryan Doyle: I think there’s something to looking in people’s eyes and just being present with people. Even if I know that sounds crazy because when you’re in a room that you’re in, it’s like, oh God, you really feel the hate. I’m okay with that. If someone hates me to my face or is pissed off at me, fine. But like a latent unknown, never. There’s this phrase that like, you become too self-critical when the imagination is more powerful than your will or your will to do something. My imagination is way too powerful. Through the lens of social media, I immediately assume the worst and just awful things. Whereas if I’m performing in person, oh, I know that that table right there, they fucking hated me. And I know that lady over there with the weird laugh, the cackle, she loved it. And like, okay, great. I can take that. That’s direct feedback. On the internet, this idea of the invisible audience still holds too much weight over my imagination.

Jen: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I honestly, I don’t think I could have done this. I mean, this is my first real personal project. I’m like two weeks in. But having done all of my dad’s marketing for the past few years and having done it for businesses and other personal brands and stuff, and just being able to look at it so objectively as whatever, like you said, just pooping it out. Like, what’s the little poop package that we’re putting it in? And knowing like, okay, yeah, put more on this lever, more on this lever. And that it is nothing about, if you actually come and watch a 30 minute long YouTube video, then yes, that is about me and my guest and the thing we’re creating. But anything that’s going on social media or short form or the intro or any of that stuff, it is just about playing a game, pulling the right levers, putting the right inputs, putting the right colors, putting the right, blah, blah, blah. Nothing to do with me or anything. Yeah. Like there’s zero evaluation of me or my guest if you’re watching this for less than 90 seconds. It just doesn’t. But I don’t think I could come to such a cold distance to understanding if I hadn’t done it for so many people before myself for so many years that now I can just edit myself and be like, yeah, just kind of whatever. She’s really genuinely not giving a fuck in a realistic way. Yeah. But you don’t have time to become a marketing director and do personal branding for 30 other people before you do it for yourself. So not recommending that path, just saying, if you can borrow any of my wisdom and feelings by osmosis, then I give it to you.

Ryan Doyle: Thank you. No, I appreciate it. It’s really what I need to hear. It’s my final frontier at the moment is social media.

Jen: Alright. Let’s go through your tomorrow to-do list, your detailed to-do list real quick. Alright. First up is send Jen your to-do list. What’s that?

Ryan Doyle: Woo-hoo. I did it.

Jen: Yay. You did it several days ago. Very on it.

Ryan Doyle: I did, I did. I wanted to give you some options. Yeah. I wanted the macro, the like, this is all the shit I have to do in my new life. And then the micro, like, this is how I’m spending my time right now, especially as I don’t have a real person job at the moment and I’m doing my creative projects. I thought it’d be interesting.

Ryan Doyle: Yeah, I already talked about the Santa Barbara gig and the emails and stuff. Just kettlebell. I’m a big kettlebell proponent at the moment. I found being in California and being able to just go in the grass and have a kettlebell, such a fun way to work out that doesn’t feel robotic and mechanical.

Jen: That’s awesome. Yeah, that sounds like a great workout. And feet on grass is one of the best things you can do for nervous system regulation.

Ryan Doyle: It really is grounding. It’s one of those, it checks out.

Jen: Yep. Actually works.

Ryan Doyle: I guess what I don’t have in there is I was rehearsing out loud too. Like that’s a big part of my process. So it’s like in the morning I’ll go to a coffee shop and write, but I can’t do crazy things in a coffee shop. So I’ll come home and then I’ll do on my feet writing, where I just talk and talk and talk. And then maybe I write a little bit and then I talk and talk and talk. I basically do that to wear myself out. And then around four o’clock I’ll work out, or I’ll go on a run, when my brain is totally torched, when I just can’t do anything anymore. A lot of people work out in the morning, but I really like to do it at that point because it gives me a second wind. I feel like after then I’ll eat, and then after that I just go right back to work. I’m definitely a night owl, so I’ll write most of the night after my workout dinner situation.

Jen: Where do you schedule time to hang out with your fiancée? Where’s your quality time coming?

Ryan Doyle: Quality time is, I pick like one day where it’s like, this is my day where I can be, well, if we’re not doing a fun activity, so if we’re not going hiking or going to the beach or gonna see a movie or something, I call it my gremlin day. I can do whatever I want. If I want to eat pizza naked on the couch and smoke a bunch of weed, that’s the day. And so we try to have Gremlin Day together when we can. And basically we watch trashy reality TV and get high and eat donuts. And I feel like it’s really important to have one or two days a month where it’s like, I don’t have to worry about my behavior at all. This is a libertine day.

Jen: And you have that together?

Ryan Doyle: And we have that together. But it’s also just like, it’s all the time. It’s all the time. Like we love being around each other. At the moment, because we’re still kind of transitioning, we have a lot of flexibility. So I haven’t been scheduling quality time.

Jen: Not like you won’t stop working unless she comes and grabs you, or is like, pay attention to me, you know?

Ryan Doyle: Oh no, I would love to be able to work with her in the same room, but knowing her presence is anywhere around me is like the biggest distraction ever. Cause all I wanna do in life is spend time with her. Really. I really don’t care about anything else. That’s really all I want to do. So if she’s anywhere near me, it’s like, I love you, but please get out of the room. I can’t, I’m gonna just keep saying things to you. It’s not, I can’t, I just, I cannot focus with her around like that. But I will literally perform everything I do on stage for her before I do it. Like a one audience member show. And we do that probably every day. Every day at night. She’s like, alright, what’d you write tonight? Do you wanna perform it to me? We watch Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Do you wanna read me the poem you wrote?

Jen: That’s an excellent lineup of nightly entertainment.

Ryan Doyle: Oh, it’s so great. I love trashy reality TV. I was saying like, I turn on Netflix or HBO or something and I’m like, oh, all this is crap. Or all these movies are crap, but reality TV, that is not crap. That’s gold.

Jen: Very interesting assessment. And oh, I saw you also have news on your daily schedule, so is that, you have to stay relatively up to date so that you can be incorporating that into your stuff?

Ryan Doyle: Yes. Yeah. Mostly for just daily joke writing practice. I like to write about headlines. I was 18 and 19, I cold emailed the head writer of The Onion, cause I was part of this program that was encouraging you to do rejection therapy and just cold email people, see what happens. You never know. And so I cold emailed the head writer of The Onion at the time and he actually responded to me and he was like, yeah, if you wanna send me your headlines once a week, I’ll give you feedback. And so for a good two years I was doing that with him.

Jen: Wow.

Ryan Doyle: And so that’s kind of always just been a practice. Not specifically only Onion style, but if Kimmel would say a joke like that in his monologue or weekend update on SNL, those sorts of newsy political jokes, that’s just sort of a weekly practice. I love politics. I was a social studies political junkie through school. So keeping up with the news, I already do that anyway. I just have to do it a bit more when I wanna write jokes about the topics. And so I schedule time to do that every day. And it’s also kind of a good break from my own project because it’s not about my own ideas at all. It’s like, okay, healthcare, that’s what we’re writing about today. It’s all here. I don’t really have to do too much. I just have to find what’s funny about this. Oftentimes it’s just sad.

Jen: But that’s why it needs humor. Okay. Final official question. If you could see anybody’s to-do list, whether that be a specific person or a job title, whose to-do list would you most like to see?

Ryan Doyle: That’s a really good question. I would transport myself to like 2004 when JJ Abrams was planning Lost or Dan Erickson planning Severance, like someone who wrote something so massive that goes so many different places that covers so many different metaphors and weaves together. I just don’t even understand, like as someone who plans and does big heady concepts, how you set that up for yourself long term is so fascinating to me. It’s something I really want to learn while I’m out here in LA.

Jen: Absolutely. Great answer. I would really like to see those. And yeah, not even necessarily to-do list, but just world building structure lists. The Tetris of their ideas. Yeah. Good one.

Ryan Doyle: Who’s your answer?

Jen: I mean, my answer is everybody, and that’s why I started a podcast about it.

Ryan Doyle: True, fair, fair.

Jen: Yeah. I’m very curious about this specific question. I wanna see everybody’s to-do list.

Ryan Doyle: I’d put it this way then, like if you could have any person on the show.

Jen: Gosh, a lot of people. I guess the first person who’s coming to my head, and I really do plan on asking her, is Whitney Lee Morris. She’s a small space influencer. She has a newsletter, Substack. She’s very big on Instagram. Her newsletter is called Right Sizing. She’s a person I go to almost daily to reign myself in, insanity check when I start getting compulsions to have or seem like something. Then I go and read her stuff and it is all about just having this beautiful life but just being balanced, being right sized, checking in, thinking, making things creatively, certainly creating more than you consume. She’s one of the few, or maybe the only influencer who’s been somebody who I turn to for advice on an extremely regular basis for at least 10 years. I am very curious to talk to her and tell her how much she helps me not be a rampant consumerist person. I would also love to have Dax Shepard on and other big podcasters and other big marketers. I don’t mean other, like I am one of either of those things, but yes, I’m curious to speak to podcasters and marketers at the top of their game. But everyone, everyone’s the real answer.

Jen: Well, where can people find you and stay up to date on all things Ryan?

Ryan Doyle: Yeah, Instagram, Ryan Doyle, first name, last name, YouTube. I’ll put some sketches and jokes on there that I do. Those are the main ones. I’m trying to use TikTok more as well. That’s also just my name, Ryan Doyle. And then in the new year I will be promoting my show Free Speech quite a bit. So definitely stay tuned for that.

Jen: I’m sorry I kept you for so long. Sorry not sorry, this was my longest one ever. But I’m just, your brain is so interesting and I just have a million questions for you. So thank you so much for being so generous with your time and your brain.

Ryan Doyle: No, I love talking. In so many other scenarios, I am the listener. I’m a really good listener. People talk to me and they talk to me for a long time, so it’s really nice to be on the receiving end of it where I can kind of pour.

Jen: Come back on anytime and pour cause yeah, I love hearing your inner workings.

Ryan Doyle: Definitely, I would love to.

Jen: Yay.

Ryan Doyle: Thanks for having me. And it was, oh, I guess the one thing I would say is that it’s crazy how we even did this, because of how we met. You’re living in the house in Ubud that Shoshi and I met in and lived in for three months in 2015. And it’s just so crazy that we decided to stumble by and go look at it, and you were there and said, come on in and gave us some delicious pumpkin bread. Might I add. I feel like it was already a synchronicity, just meeting and being able to do this.

Jen: It was so fun meeting you guys and getting to hear your story and your relationship with this house. I didn’t ask if you guys met in this house or if you had already been together. That’s crazy that you met in this house and that you fell in love with one bathroom shared amongst, what was it, 10 people? Now you’re engaged. That’s true love.

Ryan Doyle: 15, 15 people.

Jen: Wow.

Ryan Doyle: Lots of people.

Jen: Relationship forged in the fires.

Ryan Doyle: Well, yes. Yeah.

Jen: Well, again, thank you so much for doing this. I wanna hear updates on your show and I wanna come. Yeah, keep me posted on where it is and I’ll let you know when I’m coming to America and I wanna see it and all that.

Ryan Doyle: Hell yeah. Yeah. Let me know when you’re back in the States. It’d be great.

Jen: Will do. Have a wonderful night. Bye. Thank you.

I’m Jen Tracy, and you’ve been watching the To-Do Show. If you’re curious about how other people tackle their days, and honestly who isn’t, there’s another conversation right here that’ll probably surprise you. Go check it out. And here’s something interesting. There’s actually research showing that people fall into eight distinct patterns when it comes to how they organize their lives. Productivity and psychology experts like Adam Grant and Gretchen Rubin have been studying this for years. We built a quiz based on that research and people keep telling us it’s weirdly accurate. It takes about five minutes and you’ll understand why certain systems work for you and why others never stick. Head to thetodoshow.com or check the link in the description to take the quiz. And please, please, please hit subscribe and you can check that off your to-do list.