The Zen Wisdom of Sarah Silverman

“WHATEVER UR WORRIED ABOUT DOESN’T MATTER” reads a prominent sign on the wall behind Sarah Silverman’s desk in her Los Angeles office. In the three-plus decades since Silverman began performing onstage, she’s become an icon of standup comedy, an accomplished film and voice actress, a writer of an Off Broadway show, a best-selling author, a sharp political pundit, an honorary late-night-television host, an executive producer, and one of the world’s finest purveyors of potty humor. More recently, she’s also become a fount of Zen-like wisdom. On “The Sarah Silverman Podcast,” she counsels callers on whatever issue might be nagging them that day, whether it’s a failed relationship or attitudes toward French kissing. Usually, the advice boils down to something like: It’s not as bad as you think. “Everything always works out,” Silverman told me calmly last week.