Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Here we go again. It's
Speaker 1: been a good run America.
Speaker 2: We've got so much to talk about tonight.
Speaker 3: Mass deportations, potential measles out.
Speaker 4: Break, grabbing Panama by the canal, rip.
Speaker 5: Todi, invading Greenland, profession wrestling, takeover Gaza, tariffs.
Speaker 4: What was I talking about?
Speaker 6: Donald Trump?
Speaker 7: You must Joe Biden Milania.
Speaker 2: Now let's focus on the price of eggs.
Speaker 1: You are for it. We listened.
Speaker 6: The Democrats acted like Republicans for the last four months.
Speaker 6: They wore camo hats and went to Cheney family reunions.
Speaker 6: Do you know how dangerous it is to wear a
Speaker 6: hunting hat around Cheney.
Speaker 5: We have been so concerned about all the scary things
Speaker 5: that Trump's gonna do, we forgot He's also going to
Speaker 5: do some really stupid things.
Speaker 4: If you've been tuning out the presidential campaign so far,
Speaker 4: I get it.
Speaker 1: It's boring.
Speaker 4: And my grandpa is also a rambling eighty year old man.
Speaker 4: And let me tell you, I keep half an ear
Speaker 4: open for the word inheritance, and I just ignore everything up.
Speaker 1: It used to.
Speaker 8: Be that you had to commit a crime to be potted,
Speaker 8: but now Biden has to do this weird like Minority
Speaker 8: Report Preepodden thing where it's like, hey, we know you
Speaker 8: didn't do anything, but Trump thinks you did some things.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna pott in you for anything you did, even
Speaker 8: though you didn't do it. It's it's what al found us,
Speaker 8: what I've wanted think about.
Speaker 9: How strange this moment is.
Speaker 3: I mean years from now, children will be reading about
Speaker 3: this in history books. I mean not in Florida.
Speaker 8: You want us to take actions.
Speaker 7: They got to give Trump some action. You want dem
Speaker 7: to stop jerking off and get to work.
Speaker 3: They gotta get to work jerking him off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get it. I get where you're going. I
Speaker 2: get it.
Speaker 9: I bet you get it.
Speaker 3: You sex monster.
Speaker 9: Damn it.
Speaker 4: It's a letter from Donald Trump. Dear Troy, I saw
Speaker 4: you on TV.
Speaker 8: So you are now the new Secretary of the Interior.
Speaker 9: Qualified to run the Interior.
Speaker 10: I'm gay Jordan.
Speaker 11: He obviously thinks the head of Interior is a decorating job.
Speaker 9: John pay for tracting in here.
Speaker 6: These tarffs are going to help out all.
Speaker 7: My in words, you're you're my net gains.
Speaker 4: Costa right, of course, your net gains.
Speaker 7: Hey, hey, you're not an economist. That's not your word
Speaker 7: to say.
Speaker 9: Okay, you got a truck you want to show me.
Speaker 3: I wish the world a better place because I was here.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, President Trump, same fun. Huh okay, Jenny, I
Speaker 3: don't worry about that whole worshiping false idols thing, not
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 9: Please welcome to the program.
Speaker 3: Boda Gabriel Union and help of Baga Coleman, Domingo Governor Joshua.
Speaker 1: Year Old, Paul W.
Speaker 3: Down, Mark Carney, Ray Wes Lore, Mark Gibber, Jason Brand,
Speaker 3: Si Sport col.
Speaker 8: Governor Gretchen Whitner, Connie Charm, the Amazing Linda Linda.
Speaker 3: Steve Omer, Jessey Eisenberger.
Speaker 1: Jeff Williams. I just signed on for another year with
Speaker 1: your doctors with the network. Oh my god, you're crazy.
Speaker 11: You think you have to live for another years in
Speaker 11: the puge. You should celebrate.
Speaker 10: What's ronning.
Speaker 9: Someone likes to kick shame.
Speaker 11: No, welcome to our to our panel. Uh, thanks John,
Speaker 11: Thank you John.
Speaker 9: Thanks John.
Speaker 12: I'm remarkably prepared with questions that I wrote. Yes for
Speaker 12: all of you.
Speaker 4: Thanks for everybody coming. Oh this is full room. We
Speaker 4: didn't know what was on the other side of the door,
Speaker 4: So thank you. You know what we're gonna say. This
Speaker 4: is nice.
Speaker 12: You could they could be anywhere on a on a Saturday,
Speaker 12: Like if this were in New York, a Saturday afternoon
Speaker 12: in this kind.
Speaker 1: Of weather, I don't think we would come to this.
Speaker 2: We would not be here, no way.
Speaker 1: But I just want to get in.
Speaker 12: We don't have that much time, and I know that
Speaker 12: there's a lot of interest, and I want to just
Speaker 12: get to the questions, and I'm just going to do
Speaker 12: them sort of in order. The first question is for Ronnie,
Speaker 12: why is it that your name appears so often on
Speaker 12: the Epstein List.
Speaker 7: Wow? Look, the nineties was a weird time. You know,
Speaker 7: things were different.
Speaker 8: It was things happened, things happened, and you know in
Speaker 8: show business, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't yeah, yeah, I don't know how it went. Actually,
Speaker 1: this does get Costa. You were you were hosting Costa
Speaker 1: you were on the Epstein List. No, no, no, you
Speaker 1: were hosting this week. So this this is.
Speaker 12: Something that I that I want to talk because I
Speaker 12: I think it's interesting for everybody and I'm interested in
Speaker 12: how you guys deal with it. There was a great
Speaker 12: deal of preparation that went into the week. There's a
Speaker 12: great deal of preparation that went each day. You had
Speaker 12: all these bits lined up, and then in the middle
Speaker 12: of the day, it's around two pm. Yeah, a young
Speaker 12: man by the name of Elon Musk decides to use
Speaker 12: the platform that he has purchased too. And I don't
Speaker 12: know if this was his intention to blow up the show? Correct? Yeah,
Speaker 12: what is that for people that are watching? Because you
Speaker 12: see it, it all looks kind of effortless. People don't
Speaker 12: realize sort of what maybe goes into all that preparation,
Speaker 12: all those different things, the writers that produce, all the
Speaker 12: different people that are putting it together. When at two
Speaker 12: o'clock in the afternoon, somebody just goes, right, what did
Speaker 12: that feel like?
Speaker 1: This week?
Speaker 4: And I know all my co hosts have experienced the same,
Speaker 4: and the same for you, John, for all the years
Speaker 4: you've hosted. But this week we did rehearse. At two
Speaker 4: forty five, we'd covered Trump's travel band. We covered that
Speaker 4: he appointed a twenty two year old boy as his
Speaker 4: anti terror expert that had an eyebiw raised in his headshot.
Speaker 4: And then I went upstairs to get my dog to
Speaker 4: bring him down to rewrite room, and by the time
Speaker 4: I went to rewrite room. They said Trump Trump and
Speaker 4: Elana are Twitter fight were starting over and then you're
Speaker 4: back to the blank cursor blinking on a computer screen.
Speaker 4: And man, that's like my favorite part of the Daily
Speaker 4: Show when you realize how good the machine is that
Speaker 4: we just wiped the show, which was a funny show.
Speaker 4: It was a funny show. It was a funny rehearsal,
Speaker 4: Thank you very much, and wait you rehearsed and it
Speaker 4: is so impressive I get. I'm in awe of the
Speaker 4: Daily Show that that they created in new graphics, new
Speaker 4: sound bites, new jokes and put on a great show.
Speaker 4: And it's just so cool that we didn't back down
Speaker 4: and avoid that and do the show that was good.
Speaker 4: But we challenge our something and that's what they do
Speaker 4: all the time, and that's what's that's what's so fun
Speaker 4: to be powder of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can I throw a question off that to you?
Speaker 3: You're ready for this. This is gonna be awesome. This
Speaker 3: is this is what the new athletic Jinga.
Speaker 5: Put it down, put it down, get out the shredder,
Speaker 5: put it down.
Speaker 3: I feel like this is commonplace for us in the
Speaker 3: the Trump era.
Speaker 12: Biden was so much easier. They'd let you know a
Speaker 12: month in advance. Yeah, he's gonna have trouble at this
Speaker 12: one press conference.
Speaker 1: Make sure you have a camera.
Speaker 9: That you came.
Speaker 3: You took a little break, right, I had to get
Speaker 3: to know my family. You had to get to Yeah,
Speaker 3: family time, as you call it.
Speaker 1: Right. They turned out to be lovely. It turned out to.
Speaker 3: Be lovely coming back into a Trump world where where
Speaker 3: you hadn't been covered day in and day out like
Speaker 3: we were. You expecting the change in the way the
Speaker 3: show had to sort of run in the day to day, Like,
Speaker 3: was that was that different than your expectations walking back
Speaker 3: into the show.
Speaker 12: You know, it's a funny question because a lot of
Speaker 12: the people that were there in twenty fifteen when I
Speaker 12: had let are are still there and they were phenomenal.
Speaker 12: But it's you go away for a little bit and
Speaker 12: you come back and they're faster, stronger, taller, better, smarter, funnier.
Speaker 12: Like I walked back into the room and is all
Speaker 12: the people that I'm used to seeing like you kind
Speaker 12: of you go away, you don't realize and I was
Speaker 12: blown away at how they had taken even the level.
Speaker 1: You know, what reminds me of is.
Speaker 12: So when I was in college, I played soccer and
Speaker 12: we thought we were pretty good. And then I went back,
Speaker 12: like thirty years later to watch my old college team play,
Speaker 12: and their team sucked, like we were probably nationally ranked top.
Speaker 1: Twenty team in the country. I went back.
Speaker 12: They sucked thirty years later, but they would have beaten
Speaker 12: the shit out of our like they were so much faster, stronger,
Speaker 12: more athletic. And that's how I felt about coming back
Speaker 12: to the show. Is everyone had taken it to that
Speaker 12: next level. And I think probably out of necessity having
Speaker 12: been through the first What was it like in the
Speaker 12: in the first TRUMPERA And is it different now than
Speaker 12: what you experienced in that first one?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, we're faster. It's performance enhancing drugs.
Speaker 3: That's what it is. You know that I did not
Speaker 3: know that is I mean, I think I remember hosting
Speaker 3: it was. I mean, hilariously we did. We did a
Speaker 3: live show this year during the Republican National Convention, and
Speaker 3: I remember us thinking like, oh shit, we have to
Speaker 3: write the show. It's always fun doing a live show
Speaker 3: because you are crafting it as the news is coming
Speaker 3: in and then Hulkogin takes the stage and you're like,
Speaker 3: we're gonna be fucking.
Speaker 9: Fine, right, but America America.
Speaker 3: Oh, that guy that's Hull Coke and he's ripping off
Speaker 3: his shirt and he's and then he's bringing out Dana
Speaker 3: White and then Donald Trump's coming out with a tampon
Speaker 3: on his head.
Speaker 9: Okay, this is gonna be fine.
Speaker 12: You know what we will find comment when Kid Rock
Speaker 12: is on the side, gone Hulk, take it down.
Speaker 1: Be respectful, be respectful.
Speaker 3: I think there was the one we jumped back in
Speaker 3: after the Biden era, like we all remembered the pace
Speaker 3: of a Trump news cycle, but it's not until you
Speaker 3: jump back into it that you really remember. Oh right,
Speaker 3: it's just an onslaught by design, And I think this
Speaker 3: one felt even more of an onslaught.
Speaker 9: He's both unfettered.
Speaker 3: I think that design has been honed and is more
Speaker 3: intentional than it ever was before, and so it did
Speaker 3: seem like the pace kicked up two speed.
Speaker 5: It's like the four forty five curse is what we
Speaker 5: call it, where it's just late enough in the day
Speaker 5: you could maybe save it for the next day, but
Speaker 5: it's such a big story you kind of feel like
Speaker 5: you want to touch, at least touch on it for
Speaker 5: the show. How well, how do you decide in that
Speaker 5: day when a story drops like that at four point thirty, right,
Speaker 5: how do you decide whether it's something that you want
Speaker 5: to tackle that day or you want to sit on it?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I show up Monday around three pretty drunk.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, So whatever's in the prompters and the prompter
Speaker 12: and I just you know, I think we all have that,
Speaker 12: And I think the interesting part for me will be
Speaker 12: what level of distraction?
Speaker 1: Everything is strategic now? And he's got he's.
Speaker 12: Got a bunch of cards, I think, in a box
Speaker 12: that he can deploy to distract.
Speaker 1: Us from leads. I think he's got the lead box.
Speaker 12: Like right now, they're like Elon Musk tweets Donald Trump
Speaker 12: is on the Epstein list and he's like, let's declare
Speaker 12: martial law in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: How about that?
Speaker 12: How About I send in the National Guard and a
Speaker 12: bunch of ice agents it and it works phenomenally well.
Speaker 12: But but speaking of that kind of pivot, and I
Speaker 12: want to ask you guys, because you brought up the
Speaker 12: Publican Convention.
Speaker 1: The show was all set to go to the Republican.
Speaker 12: National Convention right before that first attempt, I think on
Speaker 12: Trump's loge. Were you guys in Milwaukee at that time?
Speaker 12: I was still home, But were you guys in Milwaukee
Speaker 12: when that happened?
Speaker 9: I was Jordan's Yeah. We were buying Milwaukee Brewers baseball
Speaker 9: caps at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were at a Brewers game.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, you park. You gotta hang John. We're going
Speaker 3: out doing cool stuff, man, Yeah, I gotta come.
Speaker 1: We're seeing base You guys know I'm super social. More.
Speaker 2: We were trying on Brewers jerseys. We had hats. Do
Speaker 2: you think is this hat good? Or is this hat good?
Speaker 5: And we're running around the store and Jordan is like
Speaker 5: stop just staring at his phone. And I'm like, Jordan,
Speaker 5: do you like this? And He's like, uh, Daisy, put
Speaker 5: that down.
Speaker 3: It is not a good fit. To be very clear,
Speaker 3: it was just not a good fit. It wasn't I
Speaker 3: had to be honest, not my color. I was doing
Speaker 3: what a lot of people do at baseball games. Look,
Speaker 3: you were at the game too, Yeah, we were all there.
Speaker 4: I was on Zillow looking at the local housing costs
Speaker 4: to see if I should move from my shitty New
Speaker 4: York Brooklyn apartment to Milwaukee where I can have a
Speaker 4: six bedroom house on a lake for one hundred and
Speaker 4: eighty five thousand dollars. But we were in Milwaukee and
Speaker 4: took a zoom with you, and Jordan's family was there,
Speaker 4: and he said, do you mind if we share a
Speaker 4: hotel room?
Speaker 1: Goes.
Speaker 4: I don't want my my family to kind of be
Speaker 4: a part of this terrible national news.
Speaker 1: So Jordan and I are sitting next to each other.
Speaker 1: We don't know where you were.
Speaker 4: You probably were, I don't know, but and that's where
Speaker 4: we decided to go back to New York and do
Speaker 4: the shows. And again, that's what's so fucking awesome about
Speaker 4: the Daily Show is how quickly the pivot can happen.
Speaker 4: And great week of shows, which I think was live shows, right,
Speaker 4: maybe that next week I don't remembers, in the air.
Speaker 8: Had the pilot turn around the power I was. I
Speaker 8: was in San Diego doing stand up comedy when he got,
Speaker 8: oh you weren't that you hadn't gotten to Milwaukee. I
Speaker 8: hadn't gone to Milwaukee. I was gonna do the show
Speaker 8: and didn't go to Milwaukee afterwards, and then before the
Speaker 8: I was doing a stand up so in San Diego,
Speaker 8: which is kind of a military town, right, and so
Speaker 8: the guy he got shot? And I was like, man,
Speaker 8: should I talk about this at the show or not?
Speaker 8: I have I have some jokes about MAGA and my
Speaker 8: routine right now, and should I just in the name
Speaker 8: of human decency, maybe let's just have a night of comedy.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, what's that for?
Speaker 7: And I got to the show and no one in
Speaker 7: San Diego cared?
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah because And and to me it was a
Speaker 8: lesson of like people people.
Speaker 7: I don't think they knew he got shot.
Speaker 8: And I guess I chalk it up to, like, I'm
Speaker 8: we are so connected to the news in a way
Speaker 8: that most humans are like what he got Oh right,
Speaker 8: what's the what's toes?
Speaker 1: The dick joke?
Speaker 8: But they didn't even they didn't notice at the San
Speaker 8: Diego show, so I had to. I think I was
Speaker 8: who broke the news to the San Diego crowd, like, hey,
Speaker 8: do you know the president got shot?
Speaker 1: Well, this has also explained some of the problem.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 9: I'm sure either really gentle breaking it to the people.
Speaker 3: I could only imagine that being the calm, soothing voice
Speaker 3: when there's a national tragedy of react. People feel unsure
Speaker 3: running big God to fill us in, right.
Speaker 1: You people are so stupid.
Speaker 8: Stupid people even know President God?
Speaker 12: Did you when we pivoted and came back? So I
Speaker 12: hadn't gone out in there yet, and Jen and I
Speaker 12: were talking. Jen Flanso was the executive producer of the
Speaker 12: program and is really the only reason why any of
Speaker 12: this can happen correct with the kind of adaptability that
Speaker 12: it does. Like just that's one of the people that
Speaker 12: Jen was a production assistant when I started on the
Speaker 12: show in nineteen ninety nine. And now like is the
Speaker 12: keeper of you know, the Krusty Krab formula. Like she's
Speaker 12: the only one who knows how this thing all works,
Speaker 12: but she's the one who makes sure. So she and
Speaker 12: I were talking, and you know, it was that sense
Speaker 12: of do you give in to the moment? There was
Speaker 12: something about it that felt like we must, because Lord knows,
Speaker 12: if one twenty two minute a nightly satirical show is
Speaker 12: off the air, you know from the live location that
Speaker 12: it was supposed to be, that nobody believes were at anyway,
Speaker 12: because normally weren't on a green screen. You know, the
Speaker 12: world will stop spinning. And we were going back and
Speaker 12: forth and all that, and then they moved the security
Speaker 12: zone our theater was in. There was the soft zone
Speaker 12: and the hard zone.
Speaker 1: Uh and but what are we talking about my abs here?
Speaker 12: Yeah, Jen got the call that where the theater was
Speaker 12: was going to move into the hard zone, and we
Speaker 12: were like, I don't think we want to be in
Speaker 12: the hard zone.
Speaker 1: So everybody, everybody came home.
Speaker 4: But why John, Why? Because my instinct was, Oh, my god,
Speaker 4: this is a big thing. This is our duty as
Speaker 4: daily show correspondence. And I was so thankful that you
Speaker 4: smacked us in the face with reality and said come home,
Speaker 4: be safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so thanks for that. No, listen, I thought it'd
Speaker 1: be funnier if you guys weren't.
Speaker 12: No.
Speaker 1: I think that's and and that's something that you know,
Speaker 1: for the audience.
Speaker 12: I think there's sometimes an expectation and I we'll talk
Speaker 12: about that a little bit. Is do you feel a
Speaker 12: sense of and I know I began to feel this
Speaker 12: sort of in the early two thousand is an asthma,
Speaker 12: Like things would happen like the Charlie Headbow horrible massacre,
Speaker 12: and and you start to feel like, oh, we've got
Speaker 12: to go on the air and say something funny and
Speaker 12: profound about this but I think it took a few
Speaker 12: of those for me to realize, Oh, why, that's not
Speaker 12: If we've got something to say, great, we'll say it,
Speaker 12: but that's not necessarily our flag to plant all the time.
Speaker 1: We'll you know, we'll be back. Do you guys feel
Speaker 1: that pressure?
Speaker 8: Take a lot of my cues from you. And so
Speaker 8: when you said so, I gotta admit it is. Ah,
Speaker 8: it is when something super horrible is happening. I'm I'm
Speaker 8: with you. I'm like, wait, why you know, why is
Speaker 8: this is not the voice to come on and make
Speaker 8: some jokes about something horrible. It just happened, right, So
Speaker 8: I'm with you of like, this isn't a uh, that's
Speaker 8: not something that we necessarily need to contribute to the
Speaker 8: culture at that moment, you know.
Speaker 2: So it really helped when you relieved us of that burden.
Speaker 9: Yes, someone someone go in to.
Speaker 1: A meeting and I just went, what we do doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Why won't you all understand that?
Speaker 3: You know, some would call it cowardly or or a
Speaker 3: dereliction of duty, but you know, we see it as
Speaker 3: a relief, you know, not a not a cowardly act
Speaker 3: by a small man in stature and morality like as
Speaker 3: a permission structure to be small ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know, thank you, You're what?
Speaker 9: Thank you?
Speaker 1: I've always said this show can shrink to meet the moment, but.
Speaker 5: To keep but to remember that we are a comedy show,
Speaker 5: and I think so much of it is not just
Speaker 5: about making people laugh and bringing some lightness and some
Speaker 5: joy to everything happening, but it's also about catharsis. And
Speaker 5: you know that can come through laughter, and it can
Speaker 5: come through having something meaningful to say. It can come
Speaker 5: through honesty and authenticity and vulnerability and keeping your humanity intact.
Speaker 5: But if you can't do that, if it doesn't feel
Speaker 5: cathartic to talk about it on the show, why do it?
Speaker 4: You know people on occasion, people will come up to
Speaker 4: me and say thank you for making the show. What
Speaker 4: you're doing is really important, And I look behind being
Speaker 4: to see if they're talking to someone else, because I say,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm not a journalist. You know, I went
Speaker 4: to University of Illinois and I played collegiate tennis and
Speaker 4: I got a C plus average in the School of
Speaker 4: Communication where classes were like public speaking. So I hope
Speaker 4: we're holding real journalists to the standard that something important happened.
Speaker 4: The burden is on them to cover this with integrity
Speaker 4: and honesty. Of course, I love when we say something
Speaker 4: profound and have a message, but we speak for myself.
Speaker 4: I am not a journalist. I am not a politician.
Speaker 4: I'm a comedian. Tickets are available most nights to my shows.
Speaker 2: Plug the book, Plug the book and plug the book.
Speaker 4: No, but of course we want to say something important,
Speaker 4: but important people should say the important things.
Speaker 1: First.
Speaker 8: We can tell jokes, Well, you don't sell out in presale,
Speaker 8: you should try the Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: You got to get a better marketing guy or something.
Speaker 11: I don't know.
Speaker 8: I was supposed to be talking about this, but just
Speaker 8: to bring it back since we have the guy who
Speaker 8: invented modern American satire here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've been.
Speaker 8: Uh, you know a lot of what we do. We're
Speaker 8: talking about changing the show at fourth at four pm, four,
Speaker 8: six pm taping. A lot of that has to do
Speaker 8: with the technology available as well, in addition to obviously
Speaker 8: the skill set of the crew and the producers and
Speaker 8: editors using this technology as available as someone who's been
Speaker 8: around since the Jurassic Like, what what was it like
Speaker 8: trying to could you even change the show at four
Speaker 8: with tapes.
Speaker 1: Years ago. So we we used to do the show
Speaker 1: with the stone tablet and a chisel.
Speaker 12: I would sit and then we have we have the
Speaker 12: tablet almost done, and then somebody would come in and go,
Speaker 12: Garfield's been shot.
Speaker 1: Take it in, McKinley's take it over.
Speaker 12: It is the technology part of it is and I'm
Speaker 12: sure even you guys have seen the advances in that technology,
Speaker 12: but it is true like when we started in nineteen
Speaker 12: ninety nine, you still edit it in the online room.
Speaker 12: So and there were no I mean, it sounds almost
Speaker 12: ridiculous now, but like TiVo hadn't been invented yet, Like
Speaker 12: there wasn't this sense that you could follow. I think
Speaker 12: the way we did the show was we used to
Speaker 12: get there was one group feed that you could buy
Speaker 12: into even if you were us, and it was the
Speaker 12: AP news Feed. So what it would be is you
Speaker 12: would get stories on the AP news feed, so it
Speaker 12: would be the two big stories of the day, and
Speaker 12: then generally like a human interest story like the celebration
Speaker 12: of the Nazarene and the Philippine you know, and so
Speaker 12: our show, not night, would be whatever was.
Speaker 1: On the AP feed.
Speaker 12: And if you wanted to use five rolls of tape,
Speaker 12: like this is before we ever did our daily show
Speaker 12: montages or any of those kinds of things. If you
Speaker 12: made an error in the edit when you were putting
Speaker 12: the show together for rehearsal, avids weren't invented yet, so
Speaker 12: you you're the whole crowd like.
Speaker 1: What this is such an la audience avids, I don't understand.
Speaker 9: It didn't react to Trump being shot, but.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, the humanity, they don't even know Trump
Speaker 3: got shot.
Speaker 1: It was rough. Those were the days.
Speaker 12: And then when all of those technologies started to come
Speaker 12: on board and you saw how quickly it all changed.
Speaker 12: And suddenly what change was the agency that the show
Speaker 12: could have in terms of narrative direction. So you went
Speaker 12: from being sort of at the mercy as to what
Speaker 12: would be present to you to a kind of democratizing
Speaker 12: of what your intention could be. And so you could
Speaker 12: now run five tvOS and collect a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 12: And suddenly that's when sort of the more modern way
Speaker 12: of how we.
Speaker 1: Would put the show together.
Speaker 12: But even then it was rudimentary compared to like you
Speaker 12: guys say, you go in there and just redo the
Speaker 12: entire show and they'll turn it around in the render
Speaker 12: time of It'll be forty five minutes.
Speaker 4: That is one of my favorite parts studio production. This
Speaker 4: week before the big feud, Elon Musk didn't like The
Speaker 4: Big Beautiful Bill for four reasons and MSNBC had a
Speaker 4: read of that and it was slow and it was
Speaker 4: a boring read, and someone said, can we get a
Speaker 4: more exciting read for a different network? And then Justin
Speaker 4: Milkman is on the phone and in like twelve seconds
Speaker 4: there's a new read of a more exciting version of that,
Speaker 4: and it's amazing. You talk about like the tools that
Speaker 4: are fun to play with. They have these amazing toolbox
Speaker 4: and they give us the tools and it's very it's
Speaker 4: very cool to be a studio production. Remember when you
Speaker 4: would walk in and all the computers were recording all
Speaker 4: of television. It felt like you were getting radiation cancered
Speaker 4: in that room every single time.
Speaker 12: Look, that room was in the basement of our building,
Speaker 12: and for years we didn't realize it wasn't supposed to
Speaker 12: be moist like for some reason, it was this one
Speaker 12: room in the building that was always moist, and we
Speaker 12: just thought, like, is that necessary for the computers?
Speaker 1: And then somebody else was like, I think that's mold.
Speaker 12: Actually you would just you would just lose video editors,
Speaker 12: like they'd be like, where's he like tuberculosis, But it's
Speaker 12: all it's it's.
Speaker 1: Those things have changed.
Speaker 12: And even the funny part about working at the show
Speaker 12: is the people that are on there that do the
Speaker 12: guts of the show love it so much. Like Max,
Speaker 12: how many times have you been emailed on a Saturday
Speaker 12: on a like Monday night in the morning where like
Speaker 12: Max or Justin or somebody will go, like, send you
Speaker 12: a link to a thing that they found that's just
Speaker 12: the right, uh piece of information for the larger thought
Speaker 12: that you were going to put into the piece.
Speaker 3: It's honestly, one of the most interesting things in having
Speaker 3: been at the Daily Show for a long time is
Speaker 3: to see like how it's been adapted have well, I
Speaker 3: mean it's not Jurassic I think I was like Jurassic
Speaker 3: Lost World.
Speaker 12: Right, you were the fourth one once Chris Pratt entered
Speaker 12: the Yeah, Chris Pratt era, right, Chris Pratt where he's
Speaker 12: a raptor wrangler?
Speaker 9: Is that where that series went.
Speaker 8: On?
Speaker 4: The care found all six writers of that screenplay.
Speaker 3: You're right, don't worry. Your genius is Ai could never
Speaker 3: come up with an idea of that.
Speaker 1: Back then they had to use real dinosaurs.
Speaker 9: They did so impressive. What what has been so interesting?
Speaker 3: Like there's Twitter now that people get reactions to the
Speaker 3: news in real time, where in you know, twenty years ago,
Speaker 3: they would wait till the night to see how late
Speaker 3: night shows responded to it.
Speaker 9: Now they get in real time on Twitter.
Speaker 3: Now they get quick clips, and I think, like we
Speaker 3: have like this robust social team that has the ability
Speaker 3: to like respond in real time and so we can
Speaker 3: have like comedic conversations in real time throughout the day.
Speaker 3: I think then the show now can create craft a
Speaker 3: narrative in its first act which can play for like
Speaker 3: an eight minute narrative about what happened during the day
Speaker 3: or make a larger point. We have field pieces that
Speaker 3: can go out and they can kind of craft stories
Speaker 3: that are out there.
Speaker 9: We get to do specials. They get to have long narrative,
Speaker 9: We get to.
Speaker 3: Do clipped lives special There are great specials done by
Speaker 3: really intrepid reporters go into the fray, you know, finger
Speaker 3: it the finger who are not afraid to and finger
Speaker 3: the pulse. You know, it's just it's really intrepid work
Speaker 3: that's out there. But I do think like people often
Speaker 3: talk about like the way they engage with like daily
Speaker 3: show content, and sometimes people just get clips. They don't
Speaker 3: know it's from the Daily Show. They just know here's
Speaker 3: a funny thing. John Stewart said this funny joke. Ronnie
Speaker 3: Chang did this one interesting take, and it can play
Speaker 3: and I think the show crafts ways that it can
Speaker 3: play in that context. But also if you watch it
Speaker 3: on linear television, it plays with a narrative context, and
Speaker 3: then it also plays in a real time context, which
Speaker 3: I think that's like a testament to the structure that
Speaker 3: we have at the show that has the ability to
Speaker 3: be a comedy machine in real time and like have
Speaker 3: conversations on all those platforms.
Speaker 9: Yes, but is there a butt? No?
Speaker 1: No butt no, just yes? Yeah, yes, so did that surprise?
Speaker 12: So you guys were more grew up in that era,
Speaker 12: and I'll ask you how you sort of interact now.
Speaker 4: We grew up watching you, John, We grew up watching
Speaker 4: you grew up in.
Speaker 12: That era where you know, again, I was used to
Speaker 12: this linear idea of like I feel like like I
Speaker 12: run a tower records, do you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 12: I'm still like people if they want music, they've got
Speaker 12: to come into my store and go to the CD rack,
Speaker 12: you know, and everybody's like, it's there's I have a
Speaker 12: chip behind my ear and it gets me all the
Speaker 12: new bieber songs like it is. The delivery systems are
Speaker 12: so different, but the content, you know, I sort of
Speaker 12: like in it too. Like when I started, we were
Speaker 12: a McDonald and then like you open a drive through
Speaker 12: and like I'm like, wait, you can you can just
Speaker 12: go around the corner and just pick it up at
Speaker 12: the window. Has that change, but it still feels like
Speaker 12: content is king rather than the system by which it's delivered.
Speaker 1: Do you consume media in that way? Does it?
Speaker 12: Does it matter to you how you get it, where
Speaker 12: you get it. That's our show for today. It's it's definitely,
Speaker 12: I mean, it's definitely how I consume it. I think
Speaker 12: I get nervous about it. It's content.
Speaker 1: I've watched television.
Speaker 9: They see it, they see it like this.
Speaker 3: I think I think context is gone in so many
Speaker 3: ways in which people get media. That's what scares me
Speaker 3: about stuff is like you can get stuff out of
Speaker 3: context from TV, from shows, from CLI and so people
Speaker 3: don't know the grand scheme of things. I laugh when
Speaker 3: people see me on the street and if they're over forty,
Speaker 3: they recognize you from the Daily Show, If they're between
Speaker 3: thirty and forty, they recognize you from YouTube. And if
Speaker 3: you're under thirty, your content that they see, yeah right,
Speaker 3: and yeah you're influence influence exactly. I used to be like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's funny. I'm like, no, that is like canon. Now,
Speaker 3: like a twenty five year old just knows you in
Speaker 3: thirty second clips, which to me is worrisome and or
Speaker 3: at least a challenge in crafting something that makes sense
Speaker 3: within that thirty second clip. But it's also kind of
Speaker 3: the reality in which they are getting information, and I
Speaker 3: think the savvier ones are using that and then seeking
Speaker 3: out longer form stuff, even like a podcast. And then
Speaker 3: you have on the flip side where people will listen
Speaker 3: to people talk for an hour and a half about
Speaker 3: something as well. So I think like it's the context
Speaker 3: that shifts the platforms people. I seem to be like
Speaker 3: dipping in each of them.
Speaker 4: Idea, people listen to our show just the audio version
Speaker 4: of it with no other visual component, as a very
Speaker 4: popular podcast, they just sit on the train and listen
Speaker 4: to the audio of our show and it crushes, and
Speaker 4: they say costas audio crushes they say, they say that
Speaker 4: I added that last part, and you're not saying here
Speaker 4: we are technologies. Technology has ever been better, and people
Speaker 4: are still taking the audio of a video component and
Speaker 4: downloading it and loving it.
Speaker 2: But missed opportunity. They can't even see.
Speaker 1: Your abs exactly. And hard security area.
Speaker 8: I like coming out of the jungles of Malaysia, like
Speaker 8: I hear we stop Ronnie jesus As as a real
Speaker 8: immigrant here who actually overcame a vood I was raised.
Speaker 8: I always aspire to work at these American institutions of comedy,
Speaker 8: like you know, I that was my aspiration to work
Speaker 8: at you know, like sn Now Daily Show, you know,
Speaker 8: working American show business. I felt there was something aspiration
Speaker 8: of all these institutions. And you get to, you know,
Speaker 8: over the last kind of ten years, you're talking about
Speaker 8: the inn that kind of kind of white the algorithm
Speaker 8: kind of rewards quantity over quality.
Speaker 7: I think that's kind of what we're discussing here.
Speaker 12: By the way, that is Comedy Central's new tagline.
Speaker 7: Okay, well, I'm glad you could say.
Speaker 4: And are by the three are you're a buzzers buzzing
Speaker 4: in your back back there, don't go there, don't go there.
Speaker 1: But I do.
Speaker 8: I do feel that we've we've lived in ten years
Speaker 8: of this kind of quantity over quality internet content thing,
Speaker 8: and I feel like there is a bit of a
Speaker 8: reaction what humans are feeling.
Speaker 1: Sick of it.
Speaker 8: Some people feel sick of it, but they don't know why.
Speaker 8: But there is a reaction to this. This social media
Speaker 8: is making me sick. And I think one thing that
Speaker 8: the show does really well and and thank you John
Speaker 8: Stewart as well for doing this real is doing, uh
Speaker 8: is production value and quality over quantity, you know, and.
Speaker 7: I think that comes through.
Speaker 8: So there's a million people who can put on a
Speaker 8: suit and talk in front of a desk and talk
Speaker 8: about the news, but like it doesn't they don't have
Speaker 8: the same production value and comedy knowledge and you know, like.
Speaker 4: And we have a great, great, great group of writers, right,
Speaker 4: great group of writers, and so they turn shit out fast, funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh yeah, it's in the business.
Speaker 8: But I'm just saying that that quality comes through the quality, right,
Speaker 8: and people can feel it. I think people can feel it,
Speaker 8: you know, when John's on the show, they can feel
Speaker 8: it if they know this feels different to someone you
Speaker 8: know telling the news with a dance and not you.
Speaker 5: Know, it's that It's okay, I did that one time,
Speaker 5: one time, right.
Speaker 8: I just think that the I hope that well this
Speaker 8: maybe this is more hopeful than anything, but I hope
Speaker 8: that we are going back to a quality, kind of
Speaker 8: a quantity kind of world hopefully.
Speaker 4: I know, hopefully. I hope you're all clapping and hope
Speaker 4: it's true.
Speaker 12: Well it is, I mean, I think and for you
Speaker 12: guys also who you know, everyone out here who works
Speaker 12: in the business, I think we're feeling these kinds of
Speaker 12: the plates shift underneath us. And having experienced those shifts
Speaker 12: from you know, our more primitive days of no TiVos
Speaker 12: and and everything else to what we're seeing now, I
Speaker 12: think we're all sort of feeling like we're on a
Speaker 12: much more tenuous ground that you know. I think we
Speaker 12: still sort of cling to this idea that what we
Speaker 12: do is a craft, has an our teasonal purpose to it,
Speaker 12: that it's it's done for connection, and it's and it's done.
Speaker 1: For a reason.
Speaker 12: And the more that you see, the different you know,
Speaker 12: as we watch these tech companies get into content, you
Speaker 12: see that the ethos is, it's a very different ethos.
Speaker 12: You know when they talk about like writer's rooms. You know,
Speaker 12: it's really important for us that the writers are a
Speaker 12: part of the whole process and that people in the
Speaker 12: building get to put their hands and touch the macro
Speaker 12: of the art that you produce, because you want them
Speaker 12: to see that picture so that when they become creators
Speaker 12: they understand all the different elements and what the render
Speaker 12: times of certain things and how these things go. I
Speaker 12: think we all have a respect for the craft of
Speaker 12: working in a kind of a refinery where we're we
Speaker 12: really do go and we test the hops and we
Speaker 12: smell and you do all that, and then you know,
Speaker 12: a tech company comes in and buys it and goes,
Speaker 12: let's just have two writers and let's just have them
Speaker 12: be in a room, and when you're shooting the show,
Speaker 12: they're not there anymore. They don't have that connection to
Speaker 12: the legacy of passing down the craft that we've all grown.
Speaker 1: Up with, and I think that's a tragic thing to
Speaker 1: lose in this business. I mean, rehearsal, John is really yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: let them applaug. I'm sorry. Yeah, Well, now I built
Speaker 1: it up, and I don't even.
Speaker 12: Know by the way that speech was written by Ai
Speaker 12: chat GPT couldn't tell the difference. But I do think
Speaker 12: because everything that these guys are talking about is about
Speaker 12: touching every part of the process and valuing every part
Speaker 12: of the process, from the people that do uh the editing,
Speaker 12: to the people in the control room, to the people
Speaker 12: in makeup and wardrobe, to props, to every single part
Speaker 12: of that is a contribution to that greater whole of
Speaker 12: of quality. And I and I wondered, you know where
Speaker 12: you see that, do you worry about technology replacing that
Speaker 12: with the ethos of like Elon's kind of yeah, move
Speaker 12: fast and break shit and don't care at all about
Speaker 12: the people who make it.
Speaker 4: Every once in a while in the rewrite room, well
Speaker 4: we'll do something funny or say, right, say something funny,
Speaker 4: and I will think, oh, that'll make a good clip,
Speaker 4: and then I want to punch myself in the dick.
Speaker 12: By the way, we also have two people in the
Speaker 12: building whose gab it is is to punch Michael in
Speaker 12: the deck and that's a contribution as well. And I
Speaker 12: think we're I'm afraid we're going to lose that sorry,
Speaker 12: I hope.
Speaker 8: I just wanted to see what the sign language will Punchday.
Speaker 1: By the right?
Speaker 8: Can can someone you verify this is correct sign language
Speaker 8: by the way, because I don't want to end up
Speaker 8: on my own show with I hope the answer, John
Speaker 8: is what Ronnie alluded to earlier, that people there always
Speaker 8: will be a hunger for quality, and I hope, I
Speaker 8: hope we keep making quality and we have for the
Speaker 8: last thirty years.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, as can I do the act out that
Speaker 1: I was gonna do?
Speaker 4: So you talked about the brewmaster tasting the hops. I
Speaker 4: was thinking, that's cool because rehearsal is really just getting
Speaker 4: the script and kind of going, oh.
Speaker 12: Yeah, you know you're supposed to read. It's you, that's
Speaker 12: your problem. I needed to This is perfect. I did
Speaker 12: an act that wasn't really funny. John stepped in saved
Speaker 12: the day Daily shows Great. There we go, Bo. That's
Speaker 12: how it worked, the team working together.
Speaker 4: I blame the sign language the girl with the whole
Speaker 4: punching of the dick thing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 8: I worry about it. I don't know you you uh,
Speaker 8: I don't know. If this is the last of the
Speaker 8: movie is no.
Speaker 12: It feels like we're in one of those places. The
Speaker 12: one thing I will say is I remain optimistic that
Speaker 12: people feel the humanity that is infused in art, and
Speaker 12: if you remove that that will you will know it.
Speaker 12: I can't say it for sure, and maybe I'm lying
Speaker 12: to myself, but there is something about the connection between
Speaker 12: people and I see it now. Maybe this is a
Speaker 12: place to take it to a different place because each
Speaker 12: you know, each week that we host, we go out
Speaker 12: and we have sort of an audience with it. I'm
Speaker 12: noticing in the audience something that I haven't seen in
Speaker 12: a long time, and that is need, like a real
Speaker 12: need to be in that room together, to connect with
Speaker 12: each other, a real almost a sense of isolation and
Speaker 12: a feeling of like the world is a lot out
Speaker 12: of control and that room feels almost like a revival
Speaker 12: to some extent. Are you feeling a difference when you
Speaker 12: go out and talk to the audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 9: You do.
Speaker 5: They're just so with you the whole way through. Yes,
Speaker 5: it feels like we're thirsty to laugh. We need some relief,
Speaker 5: and I know for me, I feel it all throughout
Speaker 5: the day and talking about just the group collaboration, and
Speaker 5: from the first meeting of the day walking into a
Speaker 5: room of your funniest friends and finding the lightness and
Speaker 5: the humor and the tragedy that's happening in the world,
Speaker 5: and the fact that I get to work in a place.
Speaker 2: That is so deeply collaborative.
Speaker 5: And this is something that you instilled into the DNA
Speaker 5: of the show, and Jen Flans is a huge part
Speaker 5: of it as well. But you know, we have multiple
Speaker 5: meetings throughout the day. We talk to each other, we
Speaker 5: collaborate with each other. Anyone can pitch an idea and
Speaker 5: you feel it in the creative process, and then to
Speaker 5: get to sit in with the audience and process it
Speaker 5: with them, it feels much more like a collaborative experience
Speaker 5: with them than I've ever felt before.
Speaker 4: The one I've been getting a lot lately is thank
Speaker 4: you for making me feel like I'm not crazy. I
Speaker 4: think when the Daily Show gets turned on and people
Speaker 4: have all these thoughts about what happened to the news,
Speaker 4: and then we dissect or joke about what happened, and
Speaker 4: it's like, oh, no, I'm not crazy. They're they're pointing
Speaker 4: this out too. Deasy brings up a great point anybody
Speaker 4: can pitch at the Daily Show, anybody. Anybody can pitch
Speaker 4: an idea from an intern all the way up to
Speaker 4: the front. And it's really amazing how many different levels
Speaker 4: on the hierarchy have created jokes and pitches and ideas.
Speaker 4: I pitched an idea year ago about this woman in
Speaker 4: the Everglades who hunts pythons because the Burmese python. I'm
Speaker 4: sorry if this is going to turn anti Burmese for
Speaker 4: a second, but the Burmese python has wiped out rabbits, foxes, squirrels.
Speaker 7: It's a better animal. Maybe they should take Well.
Speaker 4: It's not supposed to be there in the first place. Okay, Well,
Speaker 4: well that's typical somebody if you're going on at the
Speaker 4: show now.
Speaker 12: For for some reason, Ronnie always feels the need to
Speaker 12: defend the Burmese python and we don't know why.
Speaker 1: Well, do you know where I'm going on Monday running.
Speaker 4: I'm flying the Everglade to fucking kill python with this lady.
Speaker 4: And I don't know if this might be the last
Speaker 4: time I ever do. Please vote for our Emmy Show
Speaker 4: nomination show. But I have to point that out because
Speaker 4: I that is one of my most favorite things of
Speaker 4: the Daily Show. And what I'm most proud of these
Speaker 4: package pieces that we do is that we go actually
Speaker 4: out there.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be with this woman in her truck.
Speaker 4: She gets paid sixty five dollars to kill a snake,
Speaker 4: and she gets like ninety dollars to get an egg,
Speaker 4: and you're not allowed You're not allowed to try the
Speaker 4: egg because I guess it's like the potential, like like
Speaker 4: even like a young child's life is worth more than
Speaker 4: our child, you know, our life. I mean, why did
Speaker 4: this get so dark? My point is the package? Yeah,
Speaker 4: the package point is you're not going to be in
Speaker 4: the office next week. Correct, I'm not going to the
Speaker 4: office next week? Well, Daisi said. Everybody pitches and I
Speaker 4: was like, that's right, that is and that is an
Speaker 4: awesome thing that I thought, except for my pitch about
Speaker 4: going to hunt pythons because now I actually have to
Speaker 4: go fucking do this piece.
Speaker 8: But but that's something we do at the Daily Show
Speaker 8: is field pieces. Right, the field, we got into the
Speaker 8: field and in your case talk to mentally ill people.
Speaker 3: And Americans it's Americans.
Speaker 8: Running and in your case, you kill local wildlife. And
Speaker 8: what about your piece where you want to kill fish?
Speaker 8: The bottom of the ocean. You shot the shot fish.
Speaker 8: We shot lion fish. They were in vasive species in Florida.
Speaker 1: And what did you shoot them with? With a gun?
Speaker 4: By the way, this is where we think the legal department,
Speaker 4: they're wonderful.
Speaker 8: But all these field pieces are like little short films,
Speaker 8: I guess, or snuff films if you want to, you know,
Speaker 8: like that's how it was, and we got there when
Speaker 8: you have to. You know, it's it's a real education
Speaker 8: in in in all aspects.
Speaker 7: Well Americana.
Speaker 8: I was going to bring it back to LA and
Speaker 8: be like of movie making, because you need to have
Speaker 8: writing skills, you need acting skills, you need improv skills.
Speaker 8: You need a producer who knows what they're doing. They're direct,
Speaker 8: you direct, need camera people. They need to edit it.
Speaker 8: So every of these these field pieces, you know, you
Speaker 8: see Jordan going all day. I just you know, and
Speaker 8: you think it's easy.
Speaker 9: You watched any of these pieces.
Speaker 8: No, just I don't know, I don't know what you actually.
Speaker 8: I know you go to the d C some special
Speaker 8: look at me and and you you see him do
Speaker 8: it and it looks easy. But that's because he he
Speaker 8: spends all time in edit and he's he.
Speaker 3: Woke a lot are the worst of complimenting people, the worst,
Speaker 3: the worst, and try to be like that.
Speaker 9: Where is there's like a genuinely nice thing.
Speaker 7: And yeah, okay, I'm getting to it, and I'm getting
Speaker 7: to it. I'm getting to it. And he's also.
Speaker 12: Every meeting at the show, I don't know how we
Speaker 12: get the show in the air.
Speaker 7: And he's also a lanky person who's he doesn't have.
Speaker 8: To enter into the conversation you've even seen who happens
Speaker 8: to be a world class improviser.
Speaker 7: Then that's why you get that's.
Speaker 9: Where that's where it is.
Speaker 12: That's a that's a beautiful ultimately within all that, I
Speaker 12: thought it was a beautiful than you imagine a Burmese
Speaker 12: probably one with something inside and you're like, what is that?
Speaker 1: It was a beautiful compliment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels like it's the snake eat in its
Speaker 3: own tail.
Speaker 12: If has has traveling around the country, has it reinforced
Speaker 12: stereotypes that you thought you had about Americans? Has it
Speaker 12: opened your eyes to certain things that you didn't think
Speaker 12: you would believe?
Speaker 1: Is it a more nuanced view.
Speaker 7: When I came out of the jungles of Malaysia?
Speaker 1: Yeah, here we go.
Speaker 8: We had Malaysian pythons and we had and I always
Speaker 8: wanted to come to America and travel. So I got
Speaker 8: when I go around America, I go with like, oh
Speaker 8: my god, I get to do I get to see America,
Speaker 8: you know, when I get to do field pieces, or
Speaker 8: when I do when I tour this NOOW comedy special,
Speaker 8: like I get to I get to like see all
Speaker 8: these different parts of America.
Speaker 7: And I got to tell you something.
Speaker 8: This was before the election, and every town I went to,
Speaker 8: I was like, you know what, there's more good people
Speaker 8: and bad people.
Speaker 1: Out here for sure.
Speaker 8: You know, every city, I don't care it's Republican or
Speaker 8: Demico whatever. Everyone was always super nice to me. They
Speaker 8: didn't know who I was, I think, and they was
Speaker 8: still nice. Everyone was respectful face to face people in
Speaker 8: America very respectful. And so I didn't go in thinking
Speaker 8: everyone's gonna be horrible in the middle of America. I
Speaker 8: wentan liking it, and I left the middle of America
Speaker 8: really liking it. Everyone was super nice. Everyone's trying to
Speaker 8: get by. Everyone was welcoming to me. They would show
Speaker 8: mutual respect, you know, and that made me hopeful. And
Speaker 8: then the election happened, and I was like, what the
Speaker 8: fuck happened there? Because everyone I met was.
Speaker 1: Like Americans as individuals, but not as a voting block.
Speaker 8: In the aggregate, they get a little weird, but as
Speaker 8: individuals they were great.
Speaker 7: Face to face, everyone's very nice.
Speaker 8: So I don't know, I don't know how to square
Speaker 8: that away, you know, with what I saw, you know,
Speaker 8: and the people I saw.
Speaker 1: And I think.
Speaker 12: It's generally people's experience with other humans is that they
Speaker 12: are you know. I think you would alluded to it
Speaker 12: earlier that the view that people have from social media
Speaker 12: and from being online is a truly warped perspective of
Speaker 12: how we interact with each other. And it does so
Speaker 12: because it's incentivized purely for outrage and hostility. You know,
Speaker 12: the people that you see online that make a name
Speaker 12: for themselves do it through provocation. They don't. There are
Speaker 12: very few people online that you're like, I just find
Speaker 12: that gentleman fascinating, Like it's it's just more like Wow,
Speaker 12: that fucking guy will say anything, you know, and in
Speaker 12: a horrible way, Like I.
Speaker 1: I always tell this story. It's a terrible story. Fuck
Speaker 1: it now.
Speaker 12: I'm not gonna talk, but I'll tell all right, but
Speaker 12: the world as it exists. So as like when people
Speaker 12: say we talk about not to bring up like Jews
Speaker 12: or anything like that, but like, oh, are you worried
Speaker 12: about anti Semitism, I'm like, no, I'm not worried about
Speaker 12: anti Semitism. I think anti Semitism will be fine. I uh,
Speaker 12: I think it's I think it's very resilient. And but
Speaker 12: the reason I say it is so I I had
Speaker 12: just gotten back to the show. I've been there for
Speaker 12: like a month, and my favorite dog passed away. His
Speaker 12: name was Dipper. He was three leg a dog pull
Speaker 12: we got him. So I went on the show to
Speaker 12: just mention it at the end of the show and
Speaker 12: ended up blubbering like a very, very emotionally volatile person.
Speaker 12: But the response from people was so wonderful that I
Speaker 12: post I did something I never do, which is posted
Speaker 12: on social media, and I put pictures up of my
Speaker 12: family and I when the first day we met Dipper
Speaker 12: at the shelter. And what was so interesting is the
Speaker 12: comment section on social media. People started posting pictures of
Speaker 12: their best dog. So the first post is, you know,
Speaker 12: this is Kibbles. He was our akda. I hope he
Speaker 12: and Dipper are playing at the Rainbow Bridge. Beautiful. The
Speaker 12: next one this is our King Charles Spaniel. It was
Speaker 12: the best dog we ever had and we miss him
Speaker 12: to this day.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. And then the third post was did you change
Speaker 1: your name? Juve?
Speaker 4: Look, I was going through some stuff that week and
Speaker 4: I just, you know, I apologize.
Speaker 12: The second part of that post post and this is
Speaker 12: our German shepherd Eva, and she said, I know, but.
Speaker 1: But my point being like.
Speaker 12: You would meet those people face to face and go wow,
Speaker 12: I had a great interaction with them, or we did
Speaker 12: a thing, because what you see online is such a
Speaker 12: perversion of who we are that when you see people
Speaker 12: in there, and I wonder, do you guys deal it
Speaker 12: all in social media? Do you delve into that you know,
Speaker 12: toxic factory of attacks and like the comments section, because
Speaker 12: it is those people I don't actually think exist, even
Speaker 12: the people that write those, that's not really who they are.
Speaker 12: It's that the algorithm has changed their wiring in that context.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've been hassled by folks in the Maga
Speaker 3: universe who then I meet.
Speaker 1: In the Maga universe now they're like Marvel, Yes, all right.
Speaker 9: I think the superheroes. Now, yeah, right, what do you do?
Speaker 7: Magu and sign language like this is that what it is?
Speaker 1: She's spelling it out spelling.
Speaker 3: I think it's also s o s.
Speaker 1: The mainstream liberal interpreters.
Speaker 3: I I have a like the vitriol online is is
Speaker 3: intense in these fears, and I feel like when I'll
Speaker 3: go there. There's a man I met who's called the
Speaker 3: Bricksuit Guy, who is famous in the maga world. And
Speaker 3: he wears a bricksuit that looks like Trump's wall and
Speaker 3: he uh but not actual bricks not it's bespoke suit.
Speaker 3: He five of them, and he gets brought up on
Speaker 3: stage and Trump parades him and talks to him, and
Speaker 3: he's a he's his leb at all these events.
Speaker 9: And he heckled us while.
Speaker 3: We were filming one of these one of these events,
Speaker 3: and he was posting about how terrible we were.
Speaker 9: He was trolling us and doing all this stuff.
Speaker 3: Long story short, I get stranded at the airport with
Speaker 3: him for three and a half hours. What just me
Speaker 3: and him, just me and him for you and bricksuit guy.
Speaker 3: Me and bricksuit guy and we talked for three and
Speaker 3: a half fucking hours about bricks about a little bit
Speaker 3: about bricks. I hear about his suits, his five suits.
Speaker 3: Three he keeps off site because he was burgled because
Speaker 3: he live streams his location and somebody got him to
Speaker 3: it and robbed him.
Speaker 1: This sounds like the worst Delta sky Club.
Speaker 9: But it's free eggs. You know you gotta do it.
Speaker 3: But long story short, three and a half hours with
Speaker 3: that guy. I'd love to tell you the guy who
Speaker 3: dresses in a brick suit, he has a handlebar mustache
Speaker 3: and trump brings on stage that he's an idiot.
Speaker 9: He's not. He's a smart guy, a nice guy.
Speaker 7: He got to you, he got to met to shit.
Speaker 9: He's kind. I voted for you know, he's good with
Speaker 9: the economy.
Speaker 7: I think in Michigan.
Speaker 3: But he has changed his tune literally online. We talk online.
Speaker 3: When I go to events. Now he'll come up to
Speaker 3: me and ask me about my family. It's one person
Speaker 3: who's changed the way they talk to me. But it's
Speaker 3: such a clear example that I've seen. I've seen it
Speaker 3: with many people I talked to, Like, I've seen your
Speaker 3: profile online and it's it's similar to the Big Man's
Speaker 3: profile online. It's cruel, it's vitriolic, it is aimed to
Speaker 3: be mean, and then I've met you in person, and
Speaker 3: when no camera's watching, you're thoughtful, you're interesting, your nuanced,
Speaker 3: You show a vulnerability about the things you don't know
Speaker 3: in a way that doesn't exist online. You can't be
Speaker 3: online if you're uncertain about anything, but in real life
Speaker 3: you are and you're compelling. I would spend two hours
Speaker 3: is okay, three and a half. It is a bit
Speaker 3: fucking much, but I think that's not who it is.
Speaker 3: It's it's an incomplete picture of these people that are
Speaker 3: out there, right. But I do feel for our job,
Speaker 3: I feel you gotta dip in. I feel I need
Speaker 3: to dip into X on the week of hosting. I
Speaker 3: gotta dip into these spaces to get a sense of what.
Speaker 9: That conversation is.
Speaker 1: It's a temperature.
Speaker 9: What is the temperature?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: What are the conversations? And then shut it out for
Speaker 3: my own mental health and be aware of what it is.
Speaker 1: Do you guys dip in? Do you do you find yourselves?
Speaker 5: I dip in right before a hosting week just to
Speaker 5: see what people are talking about.
Speaker 1: Yep, I feel this is awful.
Speaker 12: Before you're hosting meek, you literally like you come in
Speaker 12: and you just gotta like, do you your prep like
Speaker 12: you're gonna get the g forces.
Speaker 1: You gotta strategy. I'm a host this week.
Speaker 4: There was a field piece I did when Trump Keep
Speaker 4: the aired last season. Canada is the fifty first state.
Speaker 4: Of course, we go up to Canada. Let's meet some
Speaker 4: of these Canadians. Do some man on the street. We
Speaker 4: meet with this man who votes a Canadian and he's
Speaker 4: voted for Donald Trump in Canada as election. That's how
Speaker 4: much he loves Donald Trump. He's a roofer. He uh
Speaker 4: looks the way you would think he would look for
Speaker 4: a MAGA supporter. And you sit down with him in
Speaker 4: these one on one interviews. He comes in, he's getting
Speaker 4: the shoulders are out. I says, oh my god, this
Speaker 4: is going to be a rough three hour interview. And
Speaker 4: you get talking to him, you get to know him.
Speaker 4: He's really mad that Canada's taxes are high. He loves
Speaker 4: his kids, he's having a hard time paying for them.
Speaker 4: And he thought it would be a funny gimmick that
Speaker 4: would get some traction to vote for Donald Trump. And
Speaker 4: it's not like I leave loving the guy and I
Speaker 4: want him to come to Thanksgiving with me, but I
Speaker 4: understand him, and he's a good dude. Actually, So I
Speaker 4: don't know. Maybe what we're talking about here is that
Speaker 4: mob mentality is the problem that individually we're all okay,
Speaker 4: I don't know. Yeah, clap, everybody clap at the same
Speaker 4: time right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mob mentality is worse.
Speaker 12: Yeah, some of it may be that it really is.
Speaker 1: There's a certain k fabe to it all.
Speaker 12: The thing that I worry about with caveabe for those
Speaker 12: of you who are not arrested adolescent boys, k fabe
Speaker 12: is sort of the acting that takes place in professional wrestling,
Speaker 12: where there's heels and faces, you know, bad guys and
Speaker 12: good guys, and everybody acts in backstage they're all friends.
Speaker 12: The thing I worry about with k fabe is that
Speaker 12: if you act like something long enough, you become it.
Speaker 12: And I do think we do have a danger of
Speaker 12: that in the country, that the anger, even if it
Speaker 12: is artifice at first, somehow embeds itself in a way,
Speaker 12: you know. And the only the thing I will say,
Speaker 12: we sort of to wrap this thing around, because we've
Speaker 12: got to wrap.
Speaker 1: Up when we first started. You know.
Speaker 12: One of the things that I get from the audience
Speaker 12: almost all the time is this sense of.
Speaker 1: Like, how are you going to get through this? You know?
Speaker 12: And I'm always like, hey, man, tickets are free to
Speaker 12: shut the fuck up and watch your shop.
Speaker 13: I would say, but but I think, you know, people forget,
Speaker 13: like in early two thousands, you know, they argued to
Speaker 13: let for the unitary executive and that the vice president.
Speaker 12: I mean, there was an argument that the vice president
Speaker 12: had the power alone to institute the ability to torture people.
Speaker 12: You know, we forget our history is littered with these
Speaker 12: really tenuous moments where we find ourselves in a shaky place,
Speaker 12: and yet the resilience of the country finds its way
Speaker 12: not to perfection but past maybe those those really rough moments.
Speaker 12: And so in final going back to the show, do
Speaker 12: you still find yourselves optimistic about a our ability to
Speaker 12: try and synthesize and contextualize all these things that are
Speaker 12: going on in a funny way and the ability of
Speaker 12: the country to overcome that tenuous moment.
Speaker 1: And I will only ask.
Speaker 8: Ronnie coming out of jungle.
Speaker 7: Uh So, No, it's relevant.
Speaker 8: No, it's relevant because one cool thing about America is
Speaker 8: the separation of house is very strong. It is very strong,
Speaker 8: and people here complain about freedom of speech. But I
Speaker 8: can tell you, coming from places where there really isn't
Speaker 8: freedom of speech, the freedom free speech he still is
Speaker 8: is there. I mean, we've been shitting on him for
Speaker 8: twelve years now. He hasn't come after me yet, So
Speaker 8: I don't know, you know, says something there.
Speaker 12: So we've got a special surprise for Rannie.
Speaker 7: Ice is here for you right now, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 8: Uh So, I would say that I am hopeful of
Speaker 8: the resiliency of these American institutions which are being strained.
Speaker 8: I do think that people will get past it. I
Speaker 8: think I can feel the antibodies kind of growing a
Speaker 8: little bit on social media in the cory, this kind
Speaker 8: of resistance to this garbage that we can't even put
Speaker 8: a wood to. I can feel people they feel a
Speaker 8: little sick about it. But people don't know yet how
Speaker 8: to avoid being sick, but they can feel the sickness.
Speaker 8: Whether it's the political discourse, its social media, it's this
Speaker 8: and we're developing the antibodies for it. And it's a
Speaker 8: new medium, and so that makes sense, this Internet thing,
Speaker 8: It makes sense that we had to develop it, just
Speaker 8: like we had to develop it for TV when TV
Speaker 8: came out. Just like we had to develop it when
Speaker 8: newspapers were invented. We had to keep developments antibodies. So
Speaker 8: I am hopeful that we will get to a place
Speaker 8: where we can see some bullshit on the Internet and
Speaker 8: as as a civilization will be like, nah, that's bullshit,
Speaker 8: and then well, you know.
Speaker 1: That's a great point. You know.
Speaker 12: I think you know that the printing press was invented
Speaker 12: and everybody thought that ushered in the Enlightenment, But it didn't.
Speaker 12: It ushered in in like one hundred years of killing witches.
Speaker 1: The opposite of them. Yeah, it was the opposite of it.
Speaker 1: It brought in there. Do you guys have any thoughts
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 2: I'm hopeful, I mean hopeful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's always the best.
Speaker 2: Maybe delusionally, No, I am naive.
Speaker 5: I you asked if I check the comment sections and
Speaker 5: check in on Actasy what they're saying. I don't have
Speaker 5: to because I go home to visit my family.
Speaker 10: Podcast, Universe Bow your podcast, watch the daily show nights
Speaker 10: at eleven ten Central owns Comedy Central, and stream full
Speaker 10: episodes anytime on Paramoupo.
Speaker 2: Laugh Together. We can find some commonality, and I think this.
Speaker 9: Has been a comedy.
Speaker 2: Is the idea he has stopped talking to one another.
Speaker 2: That's scary.
Speaker 5: But if people continue to have conversations and not be
Speaker 5: so stuck in their silos, and you know, I do
Speaker 5: think that there's hope that we'll get through this thing.
Speaker 4: This might sound naive, but I am still impressed with
Speaker 4: the United States Constitution. It's roughly two hundred and seventy
Speaker 4: years old. It isn't perfect at all. The checks and
Speaker 4: balances system, though, blows my mind. And we're seeing some
Speaker 4: of it being executed now with some of Trump's executive
Speaker 4: orders and what's happening in immigration. And I'm hopeful that
Speaker 4: judges will realize that Trump will push things for further, further, further,
Speaker 4: for I mean, he's pushing him as far as they've
Speaker 4: ever been.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: And I just am hopeful that the checks and bounces
Speaker 4: will continue to work. That being said, other things I
Speaker 4: wake up thinking about in the middle of the night
Speaker 4: are are we making a really beautiful funny TV show
Speaker 4: on the Titanic while it's going down?
Speaker 1: That'll be my final thought.
Speaker 3: Take us home, Jordan Jesus Rice Titanic jungles that I
Speaker 3: wasn't aware of the python. Uh you know, yeah, I
Speaker 3: think you gotta find hope. I find hope in a
Speaker 3: couple places. I I just did a really great special,
Speaker 3: but I went into that. I went into that with
Speaker 3: a lot less hope because I was talking to kids
Speaker 3: who were maga kids and who I'd seen images of online,
Speaker 3: and online is a cruel fucking place. And when I
Speaker 3: talked to these nineteen and twenty year olds, I didn't
Speaker 3: agree with a lot of the things they had to say,
Speaker 3: but they weren't cruel and they weren't mean. And I
Speaker 3: talked to them about some big issues, the economy, immigration,
Speaker 3: When I talked to some of these culture war issues,
Speaker 3: trans rights, gay rights, they didn't take de bait. They
Speaker 3: didn't give a shit about it. They weren't upset about it.
Speaker 3: I think those kids are being preyed upon by institutions
Speaker 3: and by bad actors who want those eyeballs. They want
Speaker 3: to turn that naivete into weaponize cruelty, and they might.
Speaker 3: I think the way the tech is set up right now,
Speaker 3: that's where this endgame goes.
Speaker 9: But those kids, those kids were a lot like me.
Speaker 3: They were contrarians, they were nineteen, they were naive, they
Speaker 3: were looking for a place meaning and community and I
Speaker 3: think that's what we're all searching for, and I feel
Speaker 3: really grateful with having the show. We joke a lot
Speaker 3: about this, but I love coming to work. I think
Speaker 3: we laugh together in that room and we feel so
Speaker 3: lucky because the world does feel like it's on fire
Speaker 3: sometimes you watch the news, but our job is we
Speaker 3: get to turn on some of these clips and we
Speaker 3: can laugh at it, we can scream at it, but
Speaker 3: like our job is to find a fucking joke to
Speaker 3: take away a little bit of that pain and to
Speaker 3: also connect to one another. So I feel very, very
Speaker 3: fortunate that that exists as long as linear TV is
Speaker 3: still a thing.
Speaker 12: Right well, I have very much appreciate I very much
Speaker 12: appreciate you guys coming out.
Speaker 1: It's an honor and a joy to work with you
Speaker 1: guys every day. And thank you for coming out, you
Speaker 1: guys for real. Thanks all for coming out.
Speaker 7: Everybody, please don't one and only mister John Stewart