Joy 101: Howie Mandel

[upbeat music] Hey guys, I'm Hoda.

Welcome to the Joy 101 Podcast.

So I've been thinking a lot about this idea.

So two people can live in the exact same circumstance, exactly the same.

Same house, same number of kids, same job, same whatever, and one person will be totally joyful, and one person will be finding out all the things that are wrong and crummy.

And so I did this interview, uh, a while back with Sheryl Lee Ralph.

So Sheryl Lee Ralph is the woman from Abbott Elementary who I adore.

She's amazing.

And she won her first Emmy at, like, 65 years old, and got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame a couple of years later.

So I was interviewing her, and I was talking to her, and I said...

She was explaining this story about how when she was a young actress, Robert De Niro said something with her, and it stuck.

And I was like, "Oh, what did he say?" And he goes, "Well, he came up to me and he said, 'Sheryl Lee Ralph, you are a magnificent actress.

It's too bad they don't have roles for Black women, you know.

What a shame.'" And I was like, "Oh God, that is awful.

My gosh, how" And she goes, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, you know, what Robert De Niro said." And she said, "Hoda, Robert De Niro said I was a magnificent actress, period, full stop." That's where she saw the sentence.

"Robert De Niro said I was a magnificent actress." She took that part of the sentence and ran with that in her career.

Someone else might have taken the full sentence and said, "Oh, well, terrible.

I'm not gonna get any opportunities.

Horrible.

I'm not gonna get what I want." She decided not to.

She saw the world through that lens.

So what happened in her life? In her 60s she gets the, the Emmy, she gets the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and she's still going.

And when Sheryl Lee Ralph walks in a room, it lights up.

It's literally as if the lights go on brighter.

She chose to look at the world through a certain lens.

So it got me thinking about, like, where is joy? Well, joy is something you have to search for sometimes.

It's not always right in front of you.

You have to decide.

And that brings me to my next guest, who is Howie Mandel.

So Howie Mandel is a person who has had all kinds of beautiful successes in life, and has also had his share of struggles.

His successes are so many.

I mean, we, we know him as a comedian, we know him as a judge on AGT, and he's done-- He's got a podcast.

He's got a number of great things, and he's also wrestled with his demons, as he calls them.

He's been diagnosed with OCD and with ADHD, and he struggles with a, a lot of things.

And he's a guy who has to seek joy.

He has to search it out.

It doesn't come naturally to him.

It's something that he has to decide daily to do.

And so I thought, wouldn't that be interesting? Why don't we talk to Howie Mandel on this Joy 101 Podcast and find out about the art of finding joy, sometimes in the darkness, sometimes when joy doesn't seem apparent.

It's not there with a party hat on and streamers.

It's something you have to go seek out.

So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Howie Mandel.