Speaker 1: Of Course.
Speaker 2: Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode
Speaker 2: was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 1: Yo Yo, what up, y'all? This is Fante giving you
Speaker 1: this week's classic episode of QLs. On this one's comedian
Speaker 1: producer and late.
Speaker 3: Night old John Oliver talks about the craft and being funny,
Speaker 3: the challenges of political commentary and being timed about it.
Speaker 3: What he's thinking about when he brushes his teeth. That
Speaker 3: was way too much information, and that time he pissed
Speaker 3: off a real.
Speaker 1: Life war and I remember this after ships.
Speaker 3: Why this episode seventy one from February fourteen to twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: This was one times man, y'all check it out. Feel
Speaker 3: Les classic John Oliver fun to look Yessar.
Speaker 4: Supremo Sun Supremo roll call Supprimo Sun Sun Supremo role,
Speaker 4: Suprema son son Supremo role called Suprema son son Supremo role.
Speaker 2: I don't believe in the handouts, yeah, quest bags or gimmes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I ask you, John Oliver, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Recuse her something.
Speaker 4: Brema so supremo role called Suprema Supremo role.
Speaker 1: Call.
Speaker 3: My name is Spante. Yeah, And I thought I was pimping. Yeah,
Speaker 3: until I went to the church a perpetual exemption.
Speaker 6: So Suprema Son Son Supremo role called.
Speaker 7: My name is Sugar, Yeah, and yeah I'm Yiddish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, could be worse. Yeah, I could be.
Speaker 8: British son Son Supremo roll called pay Bill.
Speaker 9: Yeah, q ols we added Yeah, I'm sister act too.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Back in the habit.
Speaker 6: Supremo role car Suprema Son Supremo roll.
Speaker 11: Bill is here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're just clowning. Yeah, we don't give for what. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Janners from a county ro.
Speaker 6: Supremo Supremo roll came Sumo Son Son Supremo ro like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think we got him. Yeah, not trunk
Speaker 5: quite yet. Yeah, get John out.
Speaker 1: Of Supreme Supremo roll card.
Speaker 12: My name is John. Yeah to your good day. Yeah,
Speaker 12: you made this room smell like chick fil like.
Speaker 1: Supremo role.
Speaker 9: I'm gonna take a bite of sandwich brevava.
Speaker 11: Chick fil A.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Boss Bills, since you mentioned food, can we eat
Speaker 1: while we talk? Homophobia never tasted so delicious.
Speaker 11: That's your best line ever.
Speaker 1: That should be their new tag man, Homophobia.
Speaker 11: Never takes delicious.
Speaker 12: Come hats each with us. You still have not given up.
Speaker 3: Hell no, I haven't eaten it in a long time
Speaker 3: actually for health reasons, but I mean not no, for Mara.
Speaker 2: Stood wait, I should have solidarity for like a year
Speaker 2: and a half. And then black Twitter told me that
Speaker 2: now we're still eating Chick fil A.
Speaker 5: Look for the summertime when the frozen lemonade come out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Twitter, frozen lemonade and the h and they lemonade like
Speaker 3: just they in the in the peach that peach shakes,
Speaker 3: Oh yes, and the.
Speaker 5: Peach shake with the peach chunks in it only comes out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta get on it. You gotta get on
Speaker 3: the melon list for that, like, wait, there's Chick fil
Speaker 3: a melon.
Speaker 1: I mean you get there. Let you know, like the
Speaker 1: new Snacks is about to drop. What's I'm waiting. I'm waiting,
Speaker 1: you know what, I get it.
Speaker 2: You get to w just so I know, because there's
Speaker 2: one here because New York City, and yes, I know,
Speaker 2: I haven't introduced our guests yet.
Speaker 1: We got more important issues at hand New York City.
Speaker 2: New York City only has what three chick fil A's right, Yes,
Speaker 2: the n y U campus and the one that's Matan
Speaker 2: there's another one, so are there still lines around the block,
Speaker 2: because when I used to do it to the Tonight
Speaker 2: show that they used to it was like.
Speaker 5: Waiting for it that you're looking at because he's like
Speaker 5: the Chick fil A crazy that's his.
Speaker 2: Boss Bill, he did, Okay, it's you. I'm more I'm
Speaker 2: working the rules today. Yeah, our guest today is the
Speaker 2: hell of a comedian.
Speaker 1: Uh. Time magazine has called him the comic agent of change.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: He's been in the game for twenty plus years.
Speaker 2: He came to of course, national attention as the British
Speaker 2: correspondent on The Daily Show with John Stewart in two
Speaker 2: thousand and six, and he hosted his own called Classic
Speaker 2: Bugle Podcasts with Andy's Alten in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: He was also the professor of one of my all
Speaker 2: time favorite comedies Community Yeah with uh Boss Bill's.
Speaker 3: Favorite's favorite artist, Donald Glove exactly.
Speaker 2: But you know, he's now best known as the figure
Speaker 2: we turned to for absolute sanity in this in this
Speaker 2: upside down world that we live in.
Speaker 1: His Last Week Tonight six Emmys winning sends me straight
Speaker 1: on those point.
Speaker 2: I'm never going to see an I mean, I get
Speaker 2: it is last week Tonight on HBO continues to fight
Speaker 2: the powers that be with the most skating commentary this time.
Speaker 2: Yeah man, he fights a power. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome
Speaker 2: one and only John Oliver.
Speaker 12: Tasty chup d.
Speaker 1: So you know, well, I want I gotta ask how exhausting.
Speaker 6: Is it?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 12: It is not a great sign when you of anyone.
Speaker 12: It's pretty bad. I'm not gonna like to you. It's
Speaker 12: pretty mentally, emotionally and even physically exhausting, right, because if
Speaker 12: you're tense all the time, you know, chess players say
Speaker 12: they but a lot of calories, and you think that
Speaker 12: can't possibly be true, But apparently it's the nerves and
Speaker 12: the concentration. So it's that I feel like I'm in
Speaker 12: I mean, either really good shape or I'm about to die.
Speaker 2: Do you think, well, I do, just mean just in general,
Speaker 2: it's like, well, I know, I mean, obviously comedy has
Speaker 2: to be a love of yours or first love. But
Speaker 2: it's almost like now that you're stuck with here with
Speaker 2: us in America, you're almost you're you're our go to, Like,
Speaker 2: is there pressure for you too? In a clear and
Speaker 2: concise way to filter the fears and the and the
Speaker 2: and the and the concerns that we don't have because
Speaker 2: we don't have the platform that you have that.
Speaker 12: You I guess, well, that's well, yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 12: always it's pressure on pressure, right with with any job,
Speaker 12: you kind of want to put yourself under the maxim
Speaker 12: amount of pressure because you want to, like you want
Speaker 12: to earn the position that you're in now, particularly with
Speaker 12: HBO on a Sunday when I'm about to put you
Speaker 12: to sleep like an unlicensed anaesthetist. That's that comes with
Speaker 12: a lot of privilege, right because I get to say
Speaker 12: whatever I want about whatever I want, so I don't
Speaker 12: have to I don't have commercial pressures, we don't have advertisers.
Speaker 12: I can talk for a long time. There's no one's
Speaker 12: telling me what to do.
Speaker 1: So that is.
Speaker 12: That is a I don't take that lightly. I get
Speaker 12: that I'm lucky to have the platform that I have,
Speaker 12: so I try and use that. So we take big swings,
Speaker 12: and you know, one of these days will take a
Speaker 12: swing too big and it will all be over.
Speaker 1: But I'd rather swinging than board. Absolutely, Can I go ahead?
Speaker 7: Is there anybody saying that there's any limitations on what
Speaker 7: you see? Like I I meant the worst possible thing
Speaker 7: you could say that, you know, just without backing it up.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 12: No, we've got to back it up. We have lawyers
Speaker 12: and HBO as lawyers, so we have to back up
Speaker 12: everything that we say otherwise we're in serious shit. So no,
Speaker 12: that's that's why we work so hard to make sure
Speaker 12: that everything has a factual basis to it.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's over.
Speaker 5: So there is no list though this is there is
Speaker 5: no you know, Carlin list.
Speaker 12: Or no, there shouldn't be though because it's HBO, so
Speaker 12: they shouldn't have that list. Or if they have that list,
Speaker 12: they shouldn't tell me about it. I'm sure they have.
Speaker 12: Maybe they do have people saying we don't want him
Speaker 12: to talk about that, but that should never be communicated
Speaker 12: to me.
Speaker 5: A crazy question, But have you ever faced resistance since
Speaker 5: you know you're speaking on US and world issues, but
Speaker 5: you know from in your British I.
Speaker 12: Mean, I've lived here for eleven years, so this is
Speaker 12: my home right. I've got I've got an American wife,
Speaker 12: and i have an American son. I have an America.
Speaker 12: It's a very imperial way to say I have.
Speaker 11: I have an American.
Speaker 12: I've made an American I will make more uh so army,
Speaker 12: I don't. I mean, I kind of I slightly resent
Speaker 12: whenever people say you're not from here. That's a dangerous
Speaker 12: road to go down because I've been here for eleven years.
Speaker 1: It's my home.
Speaker 12: I have some skin in the game, so I kind
Speaker 12: of call bullshit on that idea. I'm here because I
Speaker 12: love it, Like after this show, I'll stay here. I've
Speaker 12: chosen this country as my home so and I've chosen
Speaker 12: it as my home now. So this is falling in
Speaker 12: love with someone not at their best.
Speaker 1: Right, That's true love. So you were you were born
Speaker 1: in the UK? Correct? Yeah, we'll part. I was born
Speaker 1: in Birmingham.
Speaker 12: My family is from Liverpool and I was raised in Bedford,
Speaker 12: just about an hour north of London.
Speaker 1: All right, So for those that aren't, because you know
Speaker 1: a lot of thiss, just think UK, oh London.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like is there? What's what's the main difference? Like
Speaker 2: you know for us, you know New York is different
Speaker 2: from Tennessee or you know, man Tianna.
Speaker 12: I can give you some parallels. Right, Liverpool probably, you know,
Speaker 12: once a strong industrial town, the industry died of the
Speaker 12: shipping industry, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, maybe Detroit, Troit big music history,
Speaker 12: you got Detroit, Birmingham, Birmingham would be you Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, okay, what was the industry in Birmingham?
Speaker 11: What was it was?
Speaker 1: It was?
Speaker 12: I think it was a lot of factory I can't
Speaker 12: actually remember what it was. I was only there for
Speaker 12: six years. That was there for the first six years
Speaker 12: of my life. So yeah, I don't know what. I
Speaker 12: can't think of what the exact one was.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you you.
Speaker 12: Bedford is now north of London, so that would be Jersey.
Speaker 12: You're in some version of a large town.
Speaker 1: In Jersey there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd lived there for like maybe three years, so
Speaker 2: I only know you were in London. Yeah, uh, Kinnish town.
Speaker 12: Okay, I was South I lived in like around the
Speaker 12: Brixton tells Hial Crystal Crystal Palace.
Speaker 1: Whoa, yeah, you were in the hood. Wait what why not?
Speaker 1: Why I've never No, No, I just never heard white.
Speaker 12: The most racist thing? What absolute animals down there?
Speaker 2: No, I'm just saying that, No, I know of no
Speaker 2: white person that's like, yo, I represent South London Like
Speaker 2: that would be why you told me that you grew
Speaker 2: up fifteen thirty Sedway Avenue.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 12: I think it's that's just where my friends were. So
Speaker 12: also it was affordable, you know, because a struggling comedian
Speaker 12: you're probably going to go to some of the cheaper
Speaker 12: areas of London. So now I loved it down there,
Speaker 12: so I stayed.
Speaker 1: When did you what was your interesting comedy?
Speaker 2: Because usually with with is there a worship like the
Speaker 2: worship that we have for I guess the go to stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean Benny Hill and Faulty Towers and wow, you
Speaker 1: just you just.
Speaker 12: But oh boy, yeah, you know Vanilla Ice, ice Cube
Speaker 12: guys that do the same thing.
Speaker 2: No, but it's almost like the sign of higher intelligence
Speaker 2: in America is saying that you watch British comedy on PBS,
Speaker 2: like I watched Faulty Towers, I watched Money Python, and
Speaker 2: I mean all of us just have.
Speaker 1: We there's a worship in America for Benny Hill. That's
Speaker 1: like probably to you that.
Speaker 12: Was yeah, but yeah, I mean what he was he
Speaker 12: was bigger here than he was in Britain. Yeah, he
Speaker 12: was more like an embarrassing export than he was. I
Speaker 12: think in Britain might say the same about me, But
Speaker 12: Benny Hill. Yeah, Benny Hill was not.
Speaker 1: He was not that popular in England. He was popular
Speaker 1: because they're sure titties on.
Speaker 12: Yeah they were, they were, and that was the apex
Speaker 12: of comedy in mister Hill's mind.
Speaker 1: He was. He died.
Speaker 12: He died very rich in a small house. I think
Speaker 12: he was surrounded by money that he hid everywhere. He
Speaker 12: was a strange man. His his chasing of topless women
Speaker 12: around in nuns outfits was not the weirdest side of.
Speaker 1: His The fact that he hoarded his money. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was a He was a weird guy. Yeah he did.
Speaker 1: That's what I remember he did.
Speaker 12: But that's you're not You're not bolstering his comedic credentials.
Speaker 12: I'm not saying he was funny. I'm saying he did
Speaker 12: show dem tatars.
Speaker 2: So for you, what was high level of British comedy
Speaker 2: that Americans might have been up born.
Speaker 12: When I was going up The most influential figure was
Speaker 12: Chris Morrison and armandoin Ucci. Amanucci who produced partries The
Speaker 12: Day to Day on the Hour, which is a radio show.
Speaker 12: He's vep is his show over here. That would be
Speaker 12: what Americas know him from what he'd did a Friday
Speaker 12: night and Saturday Night Armistice.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 12: He was kind of the north star of comedy for
Speaker 12: my generation, Amando Nucci. He was an amazing right round producer.
Speaker 2: So when did you decide that you wanted to get
Speaker 2: into comedy? Were you class clown?
Speaker 12: And then I was, yeah, I could, I could talk ship.
Speaker 12: And then if you get if you if you think
Speaker 12: that it might be possible to talk shit professionally, you
Speaker 12: take that chance. But I did it at college. I
Speaker 12: met a guy called Richard Iouardi and we wrote a
Speaker 12: lot of that comedy together at college. And it was
Speaker 12: after doing a couple of like two man shows with
Speaker 12: him on our own that I thought I probably it
Speaker 12: was just such a rush. I thought, I'm probably gonna
Speaker 12: want to do this forever. Whether I'm good at it
Speaker 12: or whether that leads to a dignified life is very much.
Speaker 12: You know, we'll see, But I knew I wanted to
Speaker 12: do it forever.
Speaker 5: How did you feed yourself in the bad.
Speaker 12: Just not not with any kind of nutritional balance. Yeah,
Speaker 12: the first years of doing comedy you're kind of rough
Speaker 12: but exhilarating because you're kind of learning to do something
Speaker 12: that you can't do yet. But there's nothing like a
Speaker 12: learning curve, right, There's nothing more exciting than a really
Speaker 12: steep learning curve.
Speaker 1: Was your family supportive of this decision?
Speaker 12: I actually did want you to go to school, And no,
Speaker 12: I think they were, they were, they were. I was
Speaker 12: very lucky they were pretty supportive of it. My uncle
Speaker 12: was a composer, so I think they had they had
Speaker 12: a sense of that someone could do something you couldn't
Speaker 12: even fathom for a career and make a decent life
Speaker 12: out of it. So I think he ended up giving
Speaker 12: me a bit of a cover fire.
Speaker 1: So was it a matter of you wanting to match
Speaker 1: like growing up? Who was your like?
Speaker 5: For us?
Speaker 2: In America, especially in the eighties, like Eddie Murphy was
Speaker 2: the apex of you know, I mean he was Michael
Speaker 2: Jackson because he reached white and black audiences, you know,
Speaker 2: at the same time. I mean, I guess Richard Pryor
Speaker 2: for more or less in the seventies older. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: But like, I just don't I don't know what if
Speaker 2: American comedy was looked down upon, I don't know how
Speaker 2: much Eddie Murphy's presence was over in the UK or
Speaker 2: in Europe for that much.
Speaker 1: Not as much. I guess his movies work.
Speaker 12: In terms of in comedy, Richard Pryor was you know,
Speaker 12: still seeing as this is the greatest stand up who's
Speaker 12: probably ever done it. So yeah, there's no one's ever
Speaker 12: been as good as Richard Pryor. So there were box
Speaker 12: sets that you could kind of make your way through,
Speaker 12: and I was pretty obsessed with him. In England in
Speaker 12: terms of voices, you might not know, Peter Cook was
Speaker 12: this guy. He was Dudley Moore's performing partner for a
Speaker 12: while and Peter Cook was about as funny as you
Speaker 12: can possibly get. He had funny, funny bones, and so
Speaker 12: he was a kind of national icon.
Speaker 1: Do you still see comedy or now today?
Speaker 2: Of course with YouTube and the internet just sort of
Speaker 2: nationalizing everything where a person can now go to furthest
Speaker 2: parts of the world and make a living. I never
Speaker 2: saw like to me, it was a big deal when
Speaker 2: at least in the early arts, when Chris Rock's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go tour England, is that even possible?
Speaker 1: Or even when.
Speaker 2: Richard what's his name, Billy Crystal, then we do, uh
Speaker 2: he did like a month in Russia. I believe that
Speaker 2: was Billy Crystal.
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember who man who was that. I
Speaker 1: thought it was Billy Crystal. I feel like it might
Speaker 1: have been Robin Williams or Robin It.
Speaker 5: Might have been comic Relief.
Speaker 1: No it was, it wasn't comic relief, but just the
Speaker 1: point that it was it was regional. Yeah, like we're
Speaker 1: how easy was it for? At least I can see people.
Speaker 2: From all parts of the world coming to America because
Speaker 2: it's a melting pot, or the idea of the melting
Speaker 2: pat But where American comedians ever.
Speaker 12: Like in Yeah, because the economics of comedy in England
Speaker 12: is slightly easier. There's a lot of claes. It's relatively
Speaker 12: easy to make a living as a stand up. There
Speaker 12: was when I was there, there was like ninety clubs
Speaker 12: in London alone. Now sometimes that is just like an
Speaker 12: evening in the in the roof of a pub, but
Speaker 12: you could still make money from that. The idea was
Speaker 12: that you would pay comedians, so I think American comedians
Speaker 12: were pretty attracted that you could work every night all
Speaker 12: the time. Also, nothing's that far in England, so you
Speaker 12: can one of the furthest gigs away and you can
Speaker 12: possibly drive to is probably going to be like six
Speaker 12: or seven hours. It was crazy to me when I
Speaker 12: first got here that you could fly for five hours
Speaker 12: in a plane and land in the same country. That
Speaker 12: scale is bananas to me. So in England you could
Speaker 12: drive back from most gigs if you're willing to drive
Speaker 12: back for a while. So the margins were just economically,
Speaker 12: the margins were easier and you could work all the time,
Speaker 12: so you would find rich Hall like he he moved
Speaker 12: to England. He spent most of his time in London
Speaker 12: because he realized he could make a career from live
Speaker 12: comedy much much easier in England than he could in America.
Speaker 1: So he just put me on the game because I
Speaker 1: thought it was the opposite. I thought like, oh, I
Speaker 1: had to leave. You had to leave the UK to.
Speaker 12: Make it's it's easier the kind of the grassroots of comedy.
Speaker 12: It's much easier to survive. It was in coming here
Speaker 12: that I realized how difficult it was as I started,
Speaker 12: like talking to Opening Apps. When I first started touring
Speaker 12: the country just doing comedy clubs, you think, holy shit,
Speaker 12: it is hard to make a career here.
Speaker 1: Did you re lead difficult?
Speaker 2: Did you cut your teeth in the American circuit in
Speaker 2: or did you come here at like as John Alva
Speaker 2: and finally make it like did you have to do
Speaker 2: the There's something that Neil Brennan always jokes about with
Speaker 2: like comedy condominiums, where he's like, that's the worst bit
Speaker 2: I skip that.
Speaker 12: I got lucky, right because I didn't have to do
Speaker 12: any of that. So I got to go straight to
Speaker 12: headlining clubs, bad clubs, not without a full contingent of
Speaker 12: people in them, and not necessarily people that were enjoying
Speaker 12: what was coming out of my face. But those were
Speaker 12: the only dudes that I played. The comedy condos I didn't.
Speaker 1: Have to do.
Speaker 2: You know about the legend of comedy condos, I mean
Speaker 2: it's the chilling circuit for comics where maybe if you
Speaker 2: own a comedy club, instead of wasting money on hotels
Speaker 2: and stuff.
Speaker 1: You own a condominium.
Speaker 2: Or maybe there's if you own a comedy club, maybe
Speaker 2: like the second or the third floor of the building
Speaker 2: that you're in, you'll just transform it into a condominium.
Speaker 2: But the whole point is that you know, night after
Speaker 2: night after night, four new strangers are in that apartment,
Speaker 2: and I was like a hostile kind of.
Speaker 12: Take care of themselves and then think about how well
Speaker 12: they take care of an apartment they don't.
Speaker 5: Own, crashing kind of like revealed.
Speaker 1: On board all the sheets nasty and yeah it's grim.
Speaker 12: Those those walls have have seen things.
Speaker 5: So it wasn't long. So how long in between you
Speaker 5: doing that? And then the Ricky like Ricky Gervais is
Speaker 5: like the reason that you're.
Speaker 12: Well, no, i'd already So Ricky Gervas recommended me to
Speaker 12: the Daily Show, and so I moved. I've not been
Speaker 12: to America before I got the Daily Show job, so
Speaker 12: so hence I got to skip key key steps, Key
Speaker 12: does playing steps and headline clubs. Again, not well and
Speaker 12: not full, but at least I was. It was clear
Speaker 12: that I was making a living. It was only at
Speaker 12: that point that I realized, Wow, to make this jump
Speaker 12: is hard.
Speaker 2: Did you notice that certain of your peers will feel
Speaker 2: a certain way that you didn't have to stand in
Speaker 2: that line like a guy like Okay, Now I'm gonna
Speaker 2: start mentioning a guy like Louis Okay at the Comedy Celler.
Speaker 2: He's so revered and so loved because it's like, hey,
Speaker 2: one of us, like one of us that lived in
Speaker 2: this hellhole called the Comedy Seller finally got out and
Speaker 2: you know made it and took us along with it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: But then I'll see a figure in comedy that you know,
Speaker 2: might have went from the fourth grade to high school
Speaker 2: and they'll they'll feel a certain way about you know,
Speaker 2: there were you treated different or no?
Speaker 12: No, because I think you know, I just played my
Speaker 12: dudes elsewhere. So yeah, I did an exchange student. Yeah exactly,
Speaker 12: I went through my version of shit. It's just a
Speaker 12: version of ship that it wasn't in America. So that's
Speaker 12: the the griminess was me like getting night buses back
Speaker 12: from again, not being died on my office the back
Speaker 12: of a pub. So yeah, I definitely feel like I
Speaker 12: jumped the line here for sure. But I had my
Speaker 12: fair share of failure in English.
Speaker 2: Well okay, because we mostly have music guest on the show,
Speaker 2: and you know, once in a while we'll have a
Speaker 2: comedian and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But I've always been curious.
Speaker 2: Because I feel that comedy is one of the hardest
Speaker 2: forms of entertainment because you can't.
Speaker 1: With me, I could do the same set.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, the audience might get bored, but I
Speaker 2: can do the same song they expect, the same song, Yeah,
Speaker 2: whereas you can't do you have to constantly no.
Speaker 12: Although there was that great Richard Pryor a bit where
Speaker 12: he talks about people mouthing along ye to bits that
Speaker 12: he was doing and then getting mad if he changed
Speaker 12: it at all. He just was saying, motherfucker didn't say
Speaker 12: that on the album, right, But that is rare because
Speaker 12: his standard was so great.
Speaker 1: It was like music, right you.
Speaker 12: Literally I would listen to those albums like I would
Speaker 12: listen to a music album and look forward to something
Speaker 12: that was coming, So you would your brain would be saying, oh,
Speaker 12: I can't wait until he says this bit the way,
Speaker 12: the perfect way that he says, the way his voice
Speaker 12: sounds when he says it. That is not the case
Speaker 12: with comedy generally, where it's like chewing gum.
Speaker 1: So what's the general rhythm?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: And to take us back to your early comics, like
Speaker 2: what's your general rhythm of preparation of seeing it a
Speaker 2: testing a joke to see if it works? How long
Speaker 2: do you let it stand in your repertoire before I.
Speaker 12: Guess, like when you're first starting off, the key steps
Speaker 12: you're going through. I don't know if this is the
Speaker 12: same as for music. Right first, you're just learning how
Speaker 12: not to humiliate yourself, because the reaction to comedy is
Speaker 12: pretty binary, unluck with music, Like they're either laughing or
Speaker 12: they're not, So there's no you can't really you can't
Speaker 12: pretend things are going better than they are. So you
Speaker 12: get a pretty good sense from an audience about whether
Speaker 12: you've done the job that you were supposed to be
Speaker 12: doing or not by the sounds coming out of their mouths.
Speaker 12: So the first phase is can I do that? Can
Speaker 12: I basically do this? Can I do I have the
Speaker 12: mechanics in me to make somebody laugh. Once you've got that,
Speaker 12: then you've got to decide, well, what do I actually
Speaker 12: want to do with this? Like how what if I
Speaker 12: can practically make people laugh, then what do I want
Speaker 12: to make them laugh about?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 12: What do you what's your voice? What's your comedic voice
Speaker 12: really going to be? That's the thing that takes a while,
Speaker 12: but that's the thing that's really satisfying.
Speaker 5: So was your voice always the same voice.
Speaker 1: Or did it even it changed?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 12: Because first you just it's like survival. Most you'll just
Speaker 12: say anything you can to make the audience laugh because
Speaker 12: what you're frightened off is the sound of your own footsteps.
Speaker 1: As you leave the stage, what was your first like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got them?
Speaker 12: Like do you remember like what it was like to
Speaker 12: like in the first gig like that I ever did,
Speaker 12: where just literally making people laugh for the first time
Speaker 12: from something that came in your head. That's a moment
Speaker 12: of going, oh shit, I got them. I just made
Speaker 12: that noise myself. But the much more satisfying thing is
Speaker 12: when you first do it with a degree of difficulty,
Speaker 12: when you first realize that you're talking about something that
Speaker 12: you want to talk about, that they might not want
Speaker 12: to hear about, but you're making them laugh anyway. That
Speaker 12: that is when it gets more exciting taboo elements. Yeah,
Speaker 12: or just like it feels like again, if you're in
Speaker 12: the back room of a pub and people are exhausted
Speaker 12: because they've been working all week, and you want to
Speaker 12: talk about something that they might not want to hear about,
Speaker 12: then there is a degree of difficulty on that die.
Speaker 12: It's like the Olympic dive, right, you're taking that you're
Speaker 12: not just doing the straights. Oh, I'll make fun of
Speaker 12: things that I know you're going to find funny, and
Speaker 12: I'll enter the water and you'll throw out numbers. This
Speaker 12: is like I'm deliberately making this hard for myself because
Speaker 12: I want to make you laugh at something that you
Speaker 12: wouldn't ordinarily do.
Speaker 1: Do you ever, do you ever find yourself with a
Speaker 1: challenge of.
Speaker 2: Serving your audience versus serving your eight comedic peers that
Speaker 2: might be in the back of the bar watching you.
Speaker 1: Sure, like what.
Speaker 2: Prevents you from doing your version of the Aristocrats? Just
Speaker 2: to make those eight guys lad that you know the joke's.
Speaker 1: Going to go over in the audience here.
Speaker 12: I mean, look, ideally, if you get the if you
Speaker 12: get the alchemy of it right, you're going to find
Speaker 12: a way to play to your version of the back
Speaker 12: of the room, but being more inclusive in it so
Speaker 12: that because what comedians will generally laugh at is something
Speaker 12: that you know might might be more difficult or that
Speaker 12: an audience might miss, or they'll just laugh at you.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 1: There was a gig.
Speaker 12: There was a gig in Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Festivor, which
Speaker 12: is amazing every every August that basically everyone in comedy
Speaker 12: goes up to Edinburgh and it was called Late in Life.
Speaker 12: It started at one in the morning and it was
Speaker 12: a bare pit, a rough, rough room. So they would
Speaker 12: when that audience turned on you. You they would tear
Speaker 12: or tear comedians apart, and so there was a bar
Speaker 12: downstairs with a feed of what was going on. And
Speaker 12: you knew you were in trouble if you started seeing
Speaker 12: comedians like walk in at the back because they were
Speaker 12: there to watch you die.
Speaker 1: So it is how do you deal with hecklers?
Speaker 2: And because you don't seem like the I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to judge you, you don't seem like the dudeou be like, motherfucker,
Speaker 2: I'll come down and be like.
Speaker 1: You ever see the clip of the guy that like
Speaker 1: has the guitar in his hand and he just over much.
Speaker 12: That is that is exactly how I behave motherfucker, I'm
Speaker 12: going to smash your face. Hold on, let me go
Speaker 12: get my guitar. You stay here, No, I mean, I
Speaker 12: don't you know. I generally when I do gigs now,
Speaker 12: it's generally theaters the people who come to see me.
Speaker 12: So heckling is within a certain range, right, So people
Speaker 12: will shout stuff out, but it's I love you. That's
Speaker 12: There's not There's not much you can do.
Speaker 1: Play.
Speaker 12: Free bird is a heckle that transcends industry.
Speaker 2: It goes someone did that to his one that of roots,
Speaker 2: what do you wish for? They knew, but well, I mean,
Speaker 2: do you like prepare like ahead of time.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I got this one for this guy.
Speaker 12: No, because again, there's probably two ways to do that.
Speaker 12: At the start, you know, there's a there's a bunch
Speaker 12: of lines that hack lines that you can use to
Speaker 12: shut people down. And when you're starting off doing comedy,
Speaker 12: you might just want to contain that situation right, because
Speaker 12: it's just about trying to avoid bullets, whereas now it's
Speaker 12: sometimes it's more fun like to be if you're a
Speaker 12: bit more present in a room to try and engage
Speaker 12: with what someone is trying to say. Again, the people
Speaker 12: the things that get shadowed me are generally a little
Speaker 12: more constructive. But also I'm slightly fascinated with the idea
Speaker 12: of someone who would heckle. I would never heckle.
Speaker 1: I don't have the balls to heckle.
Speaker 12: And I know that sounds perverse from someone who is
Speaker 12: standing on the state right now.
Speaker 3: You just don't go against somebody with a microphone like
Speaker 3: that's that's that's true, that's my thing.
Speaker 12: I'm like, Also, I just wouldn't want that kind of
Speaker 12: there's a lot of responsibility to shout out.
Speaker 2: So you're saying that even in your world that you're
Speaker 2: in now, a call out from the audience or a
Speaker 2: disruption of your narrative is a yes.
Speaker 1: I know. In what do you call it? An improud comedy,
Speaker 1: everything is a yes and you just go with whatever.
Speaker 12: I'm easily distracted when I'm doing stand up, so like,
Speaker 12: if someone shouts out normally, well, what's this guy's deal? Wow,
Speaker 12: what's he shouting at? And if he's angry, this can't
Speaker 12: just be about me. It's clearly there are some other
Speaker 12: things happening in his life that I'm becoming a lightning
Speaker 12: rod for.
Speaker 1: His frustration and hopefully rather than the security will eighty six.
Speaker 12: Although yeah, I don't get that.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 12: Maybe I don't attract rough enough crowds.
Speaker 5: I was gonna say at this point, you know, the
Speaker 5: trunk stragglers, they're not like coming to your show.
Speaker 1: Although although I.
Speaker 12: Did do have you ever done that? What's the odd
Speaker 12: ball festival that I did? Jones Beach, It's it's pretty bad.
Speaker 12: It's just a bunch of comedians doing outdoor gigs and
Speaker 12: I've never done that before. It's an awful place to
Speaker 12: do comedy, and there's too many people a comedy generally
Speaker 12: haven't worked in that many years, and especially outdoors, so
Speaker 12: it's you can risk playing to the lowest comedy denominator.
Speaker 12: It's just kind of unite people that aren't there to
Speaker 12: see you. So I did Jones Beach and there was
Speaker 12: definitely some Trump supporters there and I walked about half
Speaker 12: that audience. That's eight thousand people. I walked four thousand people. Shit,
Speaker 12: yeah really yeah?
Speaker 5: So what did I feel like on today?
Speaker 12: Like, it's kind of an amazing feeling because it's a
Speaker 12: very stupid situation, right, you realize they're all going, and
Speaker 12: you could see, because it's outdoor, you could see the
Speaker 12: car park, you could see cars leaving. I could see
Speaker 12: the tail lights leaving in the distance. So it's a
Speaker 12: pretty clear sense of this gig is not going very well.
Speaker 12: But it was fun.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: Damn.
Speaker 12: I want to know who they came to see someone
Speaker 12: before me?
Speaker 2: I think, is where you are now in your life?
Speaker 2: Is it more important than the search for the truth
Speaker 2: or the funny? Are you still about like where's the funny?
Speaker 2: Or is it just like I have to tell the
Speaker 2: truth and the truth is just funny.
Speaker 12: It's both like you should. You should because you know
Speaker 12: the truth on its own. You're literally not a comedian,
Speaker 12: then I don't know what you are.
Speaker 1: Are you a poet? I don't know. That's not commedy.
Speaker 1: You have to or do you still consider yourself a comedian?
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's the only thing I consider myself.
Speaker 1: Still, it's odd news for you, you transcended. I consider
Speaker 1: you like a real reporter.
Speaker 12: No, No, it's odd because sometimes that that question gets
Speaker 12: phraised by some journalists as a compliment, I think, or
Speaker 12: is it as what they perceived to be a compliment,
Speaker 12: saying do you see yourself as just a comedian? And
Speaker 12: there's a there says slight offense. I take to that
Speaker 12: with not just a comedian.
Speaker 1: That's my face.
Speaker 12: I hold that to a very high level. That's my
Speaker 12: favorite thing in the world to be. It's all I
Speaker 12: ever wanted to be. I think just a comedian.
Speaker 2: But I think comedy is you know, before really before
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven. Okay, well, actually start with Bush.
Speaker 2: So let's let's see the Clinton era. Let's say nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine. I mean comedy. I figure it was more
Speaker 2: of a thing that we went to escape and just
Speaker 2: laugh and laugh and laugh and then get back to life,
Speaker 2: whereas like now, you know, I can't wait to see
Speaker 2: SNL's weekend update, and I can't wait to see what
Speaker 2: Seth has to say, and I can't see your show
Speaker 2: and Daily Show and Trevor.
Speaker 12: It depends what you want it for, though, Like it's
Speaker 12: still this comedy is escapism, but still there. There's still
Speaker 12: great absurdist comedy. They're still just fun stand up around
Speaker 12: Jim Gaffigan. It's still he's as funny.
Speaker 1: As he's always been.
Speaker 12: Yeah, you don't go to him necessarily to have him
Speaker 12: like explain the world to you just go for like
Speaker 12: the release of like Guttural Laughs, So that still exists.
Speaker 12: I think it's like the comedy stays the same, right,
Speaker 12: It's just the world changes sometimes so that people are
Speaker 12: wanting different things from it, but the sense of escapism
Speaker 12: will always be there. Even I think there's a sense
Speaker 12: of escapism even in the kind of things that my
Speaker 12: show does, where you know, even though you're trying to
Speaker 12: frame complicated subjects sometimes for people in a way that
Speaker 12: they will learn something and laugh at it, you're also
Speaker 12: trying to get to a sense of catharsis. So like
Speaker 12: if you're unpacking the world, you're trying to have it
Speaker 12: be a cathartic experience. If they're feeling terrible about something
Speaker 12: they've just watched, laughing at it can be cathartic in
Speaker 12: a way. So there is a sense of escapism even
Speaker 12: without actually escaping.
Speaker 5: But do you let people's perception of the show influence
Speaker 5: to stand up? Because I wonder, like, do you feel
Speaker 5: the pressure when you do your stand up to be
Speaker 5: keep it political?
Speaker 12: Keep it really because that's the beauty of stand up
Speaker 12: is you can talk about whatever you want. You're completely
Speaker 12: accountable to yourself, so it doesn't you have total control.
Speaker 12: I don't know if you found like that, Like with
Speaker 12: a DJ set, you can do whatever you want right,
Speaker 12: You're making your own decisions and you live or die.
Speaker 2: Boce it's it's harder to buy it the years go by,
Speaker 2: my resistance to hold them hostage and see me as
Speaker 2: the curator and the leader versus I really need their
Speaker 2: love and adoration and approval. So I'm gonna play this
Speaker 2: Migo song. It's it's by the year it becomes more
Speaker 2: of a slow compromise where and that's my fear, Like
Speaker 2: I don't want to be the old guy that yeah,
Speaker 2: that just needs adoration and approval. So I'm gonna, you know,
Speaker 2: but yeah, every every day I'm on like, you know,
Speaker 2: blocks that I shouldn't be on before.
Speaker 12: That sounds really healthy. It's always gonna be a balance, right,
Speaker 12: isn't it between what you what you think, what the
Speaker 12: audience has come for, and what you.
Speaker 1: Want them to have come for.
Speaker 12: Right, You're gonna there's gonna have to be a blend
Speaker 12: of that.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but it's it's so hard now because I
Speaker 2: think the way that life is now, everything is about
Speaker 2: it's more gray matter as opposed to black versus white.
Speaker 2: Like I used to think, you know, stuff that was
Speaker 2: effective versus things that I personally like, and I just
Speaker 2: happen to personally like things that aren't, you know, necessarily
Speaker 2: that popular. But I'm also wise enough as a businessman
Speaker 2: to know that I have to serve my audience. So
Speaker 2: it's always again like, am I playing to the back
Speaker 2: of the room to the comedians that are watching me?
Speaker 1: Or am I playing to the audience that I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what like it, I don't know if you.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying if you value the intelligence of the
Speaker 2: audience that you're seeing, I would think that you think
Speaker 2: that if they're seeing you, that.
Speaker 12: That's what's a little easier, because I guess when you
Speaker 12: start stand up, what you're doing is basically inflicting yourself
Speaker 12: upon an audience that ask for you. Right, So if
Speaker 12: there's like five different comedians on, there's absolutely no reason
Speaker 12: to expect that they're going to be on the same
Speaker 12: page as you, Especially if you're taking like low percentage shots.
Speaker 1: You're thinking, this is this is something I really want
Speaker 1: to talk about.
Speaker 12: You're probably not gonna want to hear about this, So
Speaker 12: there's gonna be an element of friction there. Now when
Speaker 12: you start to find your audience, like the benefit to
Speaker 12: doing that. The upside of it is that if you
Speaker 12: can just start growing your own audience and squeezing out
Speaker 12: the people that are just not going to like it anyway,
Speaker 12: then the lower percentage shots become hyper ses.
Speaker 5: This is brilliant.
Speaker 2: Where do you Where do you work out of because
Speaker 2: in the club circuit a lot and I never really
Speaker 2: see you.
Speaker 12: I used to I used to bounce up all the time,
Speaker 12: but now I've got a TV show and a family.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. And it's harder.
Speaker 2: It is like, are you are you watching the is
Speaker 2: it a Viking funeral? Slowly watching the boat of comedy?
Speaker 2: That's going into your new life there?
Speaker 12: That's that's the thing, because it's like, it's addictive. It's
Speaker 12: the thing I love most in the world, right it's
Speaker 12: and there is a there is a slightly there can
Speaker 12: be a debilitating side to it as a lifestyle, especially
Speaker 12: live comedy. So it's like, you know, it's it's like
Speaker 12: if you if you liked Heroin and you thought, oh wow,
Speaker 12: well this is really great. I'm going to devote my
Speaker 12: life to this and be a really tremendous committed Heroin addict,
Speaker 12: But I want to have a family. Am I going
Speaker 12: to watch Heroin disappear at the distance. This may not
Speaker 12: be the perfect analogy, but I get miserable if I
Speaker 12: haven't done stand up for that long, So I try
Speaker 12: and do it as often as I can. Even John Stewart,
Speaker 12: while he was running The Daily Show, was trying to
Speaker 12: get up.
Speaker 1: He was trying to get up.
Speaker 12: Every few months he would do a gig somewhere, not
Speaker 12: because he needed to, but because.
Speaker 1: He had to. He had to do it. And you
Speaker 1: know what you need to.
Speaker 12: Well you mean, do you need to just to stay
Speaker 12: in shape? Yeah, right, yes you do because after you know,
Speaker 12: the first gig back after a while is not good.
Speaker 12: Like I did some gigs over over New Year, and
Speaker 12: the first one I did up in Connecticut, remember walking
Speaker 12: off stage going oh shit.
Speaker 1: And was it the crowd? They weren't respondib No, they
Speaker 1: were really.
Speaker 12: But that's the problem, right, because when you get to ald,
Speaker 12: you not this is a luxury problem, but it's a
Speaker 12: real problem, right because if you you can get bad
Speaker 12: at stand up real quick, when you get successful, you
Speaker 12: can fail lovewards. Yeah, because you just you there is
Speaker 12: so much good will you're on fumes from that audience
Speaker 12: and you can kind of cycle downhill. And so yeah,
Speaker 12: they were a really nice audience. I think they had
Speaker 12: a really nice time. I wasn't good. I don't think
Speaker 12: they noticed that, but but it's very important that I
Speaker 12: noticed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how can you tell you weren't good?
Speaker 12: Like because you're not like it doesn't feel right, you're
Speaker 12: not thinking fast enough, Like you're just a little bit off.
Speaker 12: It's like like when the athletes come back and they
Speaker 12: go and you like if you didn't know anybody got oh,
Speaker 12: he played pretty well and they say there was half
Speaker 12: a step yeah, or you like in football, like in
Speaker 12: English football when they're when they'll just say he's just
Speaker 12: half a step behind. This isn't quite right and it
Speaker 12: feels the same way. The problem is if you if
Speaker 12: you let, if you let an audience enjoying, you be
Speaker 12: that your sole barometer, you can get bad. That's where
Speaker 12: you see comedians get successful and then get not very
Speaker 12: funny quick.
Speaker 5: So how do you know when you're good because if
Speaker 5: they're laughing regardless.
Speaker 12: I guess it's like an internal You've got to have
Speaker 12: that internal sense of what your own, your own sense
Speaker 12: of quality control so that you can walk out of
Speaker 12: a gig that's gone really well and think I was
Speaker 12: bullshit there, or walk out of walk out of the
Speaker 12: gig that's gone badly for them and thinking, eh, they
Speaker 12: might be.
Speaker 1: A little bit wrong. Do you have a Neil Brennan
Speaker 1: or a Chris rack in your life? Neil and Chris Rocker, like.
Speaker 2: The comedians go to disapproving dads. Yeah, like I've never
Speaker 2: seen and I'm talking about top shelve. Established comedians will
Speaker 2: always want those two to come to the show and
Speaker 2: like borderline abuse them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anything, and this is Seppelle humor, like they they need
Speaker 2: their two cents, just a yeah, you just want to
Speaker 2: have someone those people in in your your your crew.
Speaker 12: That definitely like for the for the show that I
Speaker 12: write for HBO, that's that's all of us work together.
Speaker 12: And then Tim Carvell and I who run the show.
Speaker 12: He kind of he's very good at being a kind
Speaker 12: of a comedic conscience to kind of that might be
Speaker 12: a little cheap, you know you, I don't know if
Speaker 12: you need to say that. For stand up it really
Speaker 12: helps to have to have friends that you respect, who
Speaker 12: you can Helle might roll their eyes at a joke
Speaker 12: that just like did really well in the Laoides, going
Speaker 12: ooh man, that's some low hanging fruit you just feasted on.
Speaker 5: In my mind, is there like a group a supportive
Speaker 5: group text between you because Bill Maher, I say Bill,
Speaker 5: but he's a single man, so it's a little different
Speaker 5: in that way. But Bill Maher, John Stewart, Steve Colbert
Speaker 5: just being comedians the TV show Family Men, Like do
Speaker 5: you guys help each other through these journeys?
Speaker 12: It's a particular like the TV show thing. It's a
Speaker 12: very particular job and that demands a certain amount of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 12: and so you kind of end up having more in
Speaker 12: common with people that you might not have a.
Speaker 1: Lot in come with otherwise.
Speaker 12: They're like John Stewart was a hugely important person obviously
Speaker 12: in my life, and you know, Colbert I look up
Speaker 12: to very much. They're not entirely peers. So, I mean
Speaker 12: I text with Seth Meyers a lot because we did
Speaker 12: our shows around the same he was working for S
Speaker 12: and when I was working at The Daily Show, and
Speaker 12: then we got our own shows at similar kinds of times.
Speaker 12: We weirdly got married a similar times, had kids are
Speaker 12: similar times. So yeah, there's I think we feel like
Speaker 12: we probably have a fair sense of what each of
Speaker 12: us going through, even if we don't know what each
Speaker 12: other's doing that day.
Speaker 3: Is there a difference between stand up funny and TV
Speaker 3: show funny very different? Yeah, Okay, what's what's the difference?
Speaker 3: It's like, are there jokes that you have and it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: this was killing the club but on the show.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's yeah kind of. I mean, it's I guess
Speaker 12: it's the way that you would write for me in particular,
Speaker 12: Like our show is pretty tight, so there's not room
Speaker 12: to make jokes breathe necessarily, and also especially for those
Speaker 12: big stories that we do, the jokes are always in
Speaker 12: service to a very focused story, whereas stand up can
Speaker 12: be more erratic because you've got like an hour and
Speaker 12: a half to talk about whatever you want at whatever
Speaker 12: pace you want.
Speaker 3: What do you think it is about foreign I'd use
Speaker 3: that term loosely hood for comedians like particularly you and
Speaker 3: another one of my favorite comedians, Jim Jefferies, Like, you
Speaker 3: guys have the most biding commentary about you know, the
Speaker 3: United States, and this ship makes so much sense? Is
Speaker 3: it just I guess maybe kind of being an outsider
Speaker 3: and li like, what the fuck is going on for it?
Speaker 12: Like for comedians generally work better as outsiders anyway, they don't.
Speaker 12: Most comedians that you love don't function particularly well in society.
Speaker 12: These are people. These aren't people I can find it
Speaker 12: easy just being alive in regular cities.
Speaker 1: Were most well adjusted high school.
Speaker 12: So so like having a sense of being an outsider
Speaker 12: in life generally is a boon as a could be
Speaker 12: as an aspiring comedian, Like if you're literally not from here,
Speaker 12: if you're literally from outside the country. There's you already
Speaker 12: have a different eye on things. Now For me, it's
Speaker 12: like it's a blend again because I came here as
Speaker 12: a full on outsider. So when I was first, it
Speaker 12: was definitely a sense of what the fuck.
Speaker 1: Are you doing?
Speaker 12: This is all crazy? Now it has shifted a little bit.
Speaker 12: Right now it's what are we doing? It's not you anymore,
Speaker 12: it's we because this is my home. So there is
Speaker 12: still a sense of being an outsider, but it's honestly
Speaker 12: less than it was. Right, I've got an immigrants crush
Speaker 12: on this country.
Speaker 1: I love it here, So.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's it's not It's not the same thing as
Speaker 12: saying this place is ridiculous and laughing at it from
Speaker 12: a distance. This is laughing at it from inside.
Speaker 3: What was the most ridiculous thing like coming when you
Speaker 3: came here eleven years ago?
Speaker 1: What was the most thing that you saw when you
Speaker 1: first got here was like, what the fuck?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: What was the biggest culture shot?
Speaker 12: I went to a Walmart for the first time. I
Speaker 12: couldn't believe how big it Walmart. Oh wow, I couldn't
Speaker 12: believe referenced. I thought they were famously.
Speaker 5: Warm English.
Speaker 1: No I no, No, I thought, he said Warmart. I
Speaker 1: was like, is this a new white supremacist?
Speaker 12: Not necessarily not everything is a new white supremacist more
Speaker 12: than it used to be, to be honest. What that's
Speaker 12: the there there are still certain words as in the
Speaker 12: English accent that slide by American ears. It's that it's
Speaker 12: an odd it's an odd thing, like even with like
Speaker 12: automately phone lines, sometimes I have to adopt an American
Speaker 12: accent to make myself understood. So yeah, maybe Walmart is
Speaker 12: one of them. Walmart I went to. I went to
Speaker 12: a Walmart. It was just like so big. It was
Speaker 12: just so big, and I remember the socks were so cheap.
Speaker 12: I've never seen socks that cheap, and I was amazed
Speaker 12: and then immediately felt there's a problem here. It can't
Speaker 12: be that cheap without people getting hurt.
Speaker 2: You don't know the joy of life until you've been
Speaker 2: into a twenty four hour Walmart super in the morning.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that was my dream because it was after a
Speaker 12: show that I've done something. So it's out of town,
Speaker 12: I thought, I can I can buy any of this.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: Mind blowing.
Speaker 12: Yeah, like all that choice for all but all the
Speaker 12: bargains built on such human suffering.
Speaker 5: A gun depending on what.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, at three in the morning, no questions asked.
Speaker 2: So can you explain, besides your actual name being in
Speaker 2: the title, what were were the general differences between working
Speaker 2: on The Daily Show with John Stewart and doing your
Speaker 2: own show.
Speaker 12: Well, I guess it's a Cosmetically it might look similar,
Speaker 12: like again, the mechanics of it, it's very, very different.
Speaker 1: So I knew how to.
Speaker 12: Work within that machine, especially because like when John left
Speaker 12: for that summer, I kind of stepped stepped into his
Speaker 12: shoes for.
Speaker 1: A few months. Yeah, so I forgot I did.
Speaker 12: I did a version of his job less well for
Speaker 12: three months, so I kind of ran ish that show.
Speaker 12: I ran it a little bit for that for that
Speaker 12: few months.
Speaker 1: Why are you chosen? Was I chosen? And was it
Speaker 1: awkward for you to accept it?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 12: It was terrified because he called me and said, I
Speaker 12: got that movie I've been working on. I'm going to
Speaker 12: direct it. So I was kind of, oh, that's nice.
Speaker 12: This this feels like something that I didn't see what
Speaker 12: was coming, right, So that's an odd thing to decide
Speaker 12: to call me. How many people you call it today?
Speaker 12: And then he said so I'm going to be gone
Speaker 12: for a few months, will you host the show? So
Speaker 12: I just said yeah, I'll do whatever you want and
Speaker 12: then hung up the phone was sh So I just
Speaker 12: said yes because I would just I say yes to
Speaker 12: anything he ever asked me. But then I did not
Speaker 12: think about what I just said yes to until I
Speaker 12: put the phone down. So then I went to his
Speaker 12: office the next morning and said, Hey, well you really
Speaker 12: want to do this? Are you sure about this?
Speaker 1: You mean, yeah, you'll be fine?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: No, my go with Samitha were you know? I mean?
Speaker 1: But was it? Is it awkward being no?
Speaker 12: Because we were doing slightly different jobs, again than it
Speaker 12: might have looked like. I was writing on the show
Speaker 12: as well, so I was more embedded in every single
Speaker 12: part of that show than the other correspondents were. So
Speaker 12: I was there every minute of every day. So it
Speaker 12: was it was a much easier transition for me than
Speaker 12: it would have been for a correspondence one of the
Speaker 12: other correspondents to do it. They would have all been
Speaker 12: able to do it. It was just it was easier
Speaker 12: for me.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you said that, because having visited the Daily
Speaker 2: Show a couple of times, that's one of the most
Speaker 2: exhausting things I've ever witnessed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is I mean, what's the process like for research? Like?
Speaker 1: Because someone has to sit and watch.
Speaker 2: Everything fast news for four hours a day just to
Speaker 2: get that one sound?
Speaker 5: How many someone?
Speaker 12: So I can't speak to that show anymore because the
Speaker 12: show that I worked for literally doesn't exist. And I
Speaker 12: worked for John, So I don't know what Trevor's done
Speaker 12: to change that process.
Speaker 2: I know when you were there, when you were there,
Speaker 2: when I was there, When I was there, there was
Speaker 2: did interns have to sit and watch it?
Speaker 12: Not so much interns, because it was there was a hole.
Speaker 12: By that point, there was a whole footage department that
Speaker 12: we're looking at clips and that were presenting clips to
Speaker 12: the writer's room early in the morning, and so you
Speaker 12: were kind of what those They had curated clips that
Speaker 12: were interesting already, and so you were watching those together
Speaker 12: and everyone's coming up with ideas, and then assignments would
Speaker 12: go out and then you would have like one hour,
Speaker 12: maybe an hour fifteen minutes to write your first draft.
Speaker 12: There wasn't much margin for error in that day, right,
Speaker 12: you miss a deadline at ten fifteen in the morning,
Speaker 12: at eleven o'clock or at eleven thirty, you're in serious
Speaker 12: shit at six o'clock. It was tight that process. I
Speaker 12: don't know if that is that if they make it
Speaker 12: exactly the same way now, but we the way it
Speaker 12: was under John was that was a tight process.
Speaker 2: So the way that I mean things were just as
Speaker 2: crazy with the Abound administration, with the but to say boys,
Speaker 2: the Trump administration. So what if something were to happen
Speaker 2: at two or five pm and you still got that
Speaker 2: four hour winter before the show starts and you know
Speaker 2: it's going to be newsworthy?
Speaker 12: Is it just how you can do a little bit,
Speaker 12: but you've got four hour before the show starts, but
Speaker 12: there's a lot of production that needs to happen to
Speaker 12: make graphics, cut the soots, so that four hours gets
Speaker 12: dissipated down real quick. So the rules just so you
Speaker 12: can make you can make changes to a certain extent. Again,
Speaker 12: this is how it used to be. I don't know
Speaker 12: if you're going to be on time for or more
Speaker 12: or less on time for. When you start taping the show,
Speaker 12: you know that there is a certain amount of changes
Speaker 12: that you have budgeted in your time and in everyone
Speaker 12: else's time that you can make because it's all cogs
Speaker 12: in the machine, right, and you can screw someone asking
Speaker 12: for something that they can't do in four cogs time.
Speaker 2: So something say if the Daily Show were now and
Speaker 2: say that Trump fire is more in at four pm
Speaker 2: and you already have your show set, are you guys
Speaker 2: just like okay, we'll deal with that on tomorrow's show.
Speaker 12: That again, I don't know now, but then the practice
Speaker 12: then was that we would say something for two three
Speaker 12: minutes at the start, and then John was sad, we'll.
Speaker 1: Talk about it tomorrow.
Speaker 12: Now the I think it's changed a little bit now
Speaker 12: because the pace has increased so much that people want
Speaker 12: stuff quicker. So we were making that show before Twitter,
Speaker 12: so like there's there was a window which you haven't
Speaker 12: seen all the jokes on it. It was interesting watching
Speaker 12: the State of the Union last night. They're going live,
Speaker 12: so that finishes. Guess he finished pontificating at like ten thirty,
Speaker 12: So they're like daily shows on it travels on at eleven,
Speaker 12: seems on at eleven thirty five. You have not got
Speaker 12: much time to digest that. And also you're still late
Speaker 12: in a way because because there's a bunch of jokes
Speaker 12: that have gone around while he was still talking. So
Speaker 12: it's it's difficult. The pace of things have changed to
Speaker 12: the point that I think the process that I was
Speaker 12: involved in under John Stewart is slightly more arcane than
Speaker 12: you would imagine.
Speaker 3: Do you think your job would be easier if Hillary
Speaker 3: hit won, if we had someone else and others?
Speaker 1: It's the same.
Speaker 12: It's the same, the pace of things. It's difficult in
Speaker 12: a different way.
Speaker 5: Okay, so fast forward to last week tonight. Now you
Speaker 5: have a plethora of information of the pace is moving faster,
Speaker 5: and you have to decide how what you can put
Speaker 5: in this show in the week.
Speaker 12: So for us now, those decisions are different because those
Speaker 12: big stories that we do so basically from like after
Speaker 12: the first ten minutes what can sometimes be like twenty two,
Speaker 12: twenty five five, sometimes over thirty minute stories. Those things
Speaker 12: don't shift because those have been we've been working on
Speaker 12: those for weeks and there is they've been you know,
Speaker 12: been legally checked. Often they're irrelevant to the week as well.
Speaker 12: It's just when I start talking about it, it's not like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 12: I knew you were going to talk about diabetes medication.
Speaker 5: No, it's dope. Usually just making us aware of something
Speaker 5: that we haven't thought about or something.
Speaker 12: Yeah, but the start of the show changes, right, So
Speaker 12: the kind of decision process that we go through in
Speaker 12: our heads are like, if something crazy is happening on
Speaker 12: a Monday or a Tuesday, we're not gonna let's all
Speaker 12: those bones are going to be picked pretty clean of
Speaker 12: meat by all the different shows and the concept of
Speaker 12: jokes on Twitter. There's nothing really much that we can
Speaker 12: add to that. If something happens at four o'clock, five
Speaker 12: o'clock on a Thursday, that starts to change because then
Speaker 12: you know, at that point, Steve Seth, Samantha's off, they can't.
Speaker 12: There's there's no that orfuls to us. So from that
Speaker 12: point on Thursday five o'clock, any ship that goes down
Speaker 12: is ship that we need to eat in process.
Speaker 2: So for you, you hope that Thursday morning is just
Speaker 2: a sweet spot for you to get the goods early.
Speaker 1: Is it even important to get the goods early? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're the king of the Mountain and.
Speaker 5: It's Bill Mak's Bill Mark.
Speaker 1: Counter Damn.
Speaker 5: So the next question I was gonna ask doesn't mean
Speaker 5: anything because I was gonna say this, Bill mar even
Speaker 5: a factor because he's live on Friday.
Speaker 12: No, it doesn't really make it. We do, we do
Speaker 12: different things. It really doesn't make any difference at all.
Speaker 1: So Okay.
Speaker 2: Another good reason why I'm glad you're here is because
Speaker 2: of the time that we live in now, especially with
Speaker 2: the orange laught of the me too movement is is uh,
Speaker 2: for some shows, one of them I won't name, uh
Speaker 2: you know, there there's like a checklist like, oh, this
Speaker 2: guest can't come up on the show, this guest can't
Speaker 2: come on the show, this.
Speaker 1: Guest, you know, it's just like it's going to be awkward.
Speaker 2: And even for this particular show, there's about three or
Speaker 2: four guests that we were set to have on the
Speaker 2: show that now it's going to be kind of awkward
Speaker 2: because I don't know if I'm you know, at least,
Speaker 2: I mean, this show is under two years old, so
Speaker 2: I'm not I'm not at the fully confrontational point of like, okay,
Speaker 2: pointing out white elephants that easily.
Speaker 1: How hard was it? What was going through your mind
Speaker 1: the morning that you had to interview Dustin Hoffmann?
Speaker 12: So what yeah, my show, I don't those I haven't
Speaker 12: aready thought about. Last guess is because we don't have guests.
Speaker 12: So that's actually not something I've ever had to go through.
Speaker 12: So and the only reason I bring that up is
Speaker 12: it was that's what made that a different experience. So
Speaker 12: they'd like, they did you.
Speaker 1: Try to get out of it like, well, in a
Speaker 1: sense I did.
Speaker 12: And I offered them a chance for me not to
Speaker 12: do it, because they'd ask me to do it months before.
Speaker 12: I don't do many of those things. I don't think
Speaker 12: I'm going to be doing many of them. But so
Speaker 12: they said, here's that you want to do this like
Speaker 12: the dog screen. I said fine. Then they said, oh,
Speaker 12: Dustin Hoffin might be there. So I said to them, oh, okay,
Speaker 12: if that's true, you might need to get someone else
Speaker 12: because I would need to ask him about something, so
Speaker 12: that's up to you. And they went, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 12: I don't know, or maybe you know, maybe you won't
Speaker 12: be there. Then I find out week of think we
Speaker 12: think he's going to be there. So then again there's
Speaker 12: the sense of okay, then it's you might need to
Speaker 12: get someone else unless if you if you have a
Speaker 12: problem with what I feel I would have to bring
Speaker 12: up and they said, no, it'll be fine, And I
Speaker 12: think I said that they like the publichers and no,
Speaker 12: not the public like the it was the Tribeca Institute.
Speaker 12: That's that's the that was the charity event there was
Speaker 12: for it's the charitable branch of the Tribeca Film Festival.
Speaker 12: So then we're kind of locked in. I could not
Speaker 12: turn up just ghost the whole event. But that feels
Speaker 12: like a pretty monumental act of cowardice. Uh So I knew,
Speaker 12: So I just I did research. I thought about the
Speaker 12: best way to have a conversation he'd already made. It
Speaker 12: was one of those kind of bullshit pseudo apologies written
Speaker 12: by a publicist, kind of de facto admission without quite cross.
Speaker 1: The categorically deny. No, not not that I'm sorry, it
Speaker 1: was the work.
Speaker 12: It was the sometimes the categorically deny. I kind of
Speaker 12: got no problem with that's a point of.
Speaker 1: View, right, But when I hear that, I know publicists
Speaker 1: ruled it.
Speaker 12: Oh sure, But at least then there was a firm
Speaker 12: ground of I am going to this is I'm going
Speaker 12: to die on this hill. It did not happen, right,
Speaker 12: his his his statement for the bubbles. It was more
Speaker 12: I apologize to her if she felt upset. That's the
Speaker 12: stuff that's that this does not reflect who I am.
Speaker 12: That drives me nuts. So I wanted to unpick that statement,
Speaker 12: and then ah, it's escalated from.
Speaker 1: There, is it? Is it like all right?
Speaker 2: You know, like that whole i'll see you after class
Speaker 2: sort of thing, and you and you're like, you know,
Speaker 2: is it was it that was your heart racing? Or
Speaker 2: i'll see you after class? That's not a level of bravado.
Speaker 12: As a high school I capitulated in conversation it was
Speaker 12: if it was ever i'll see you after class that
Speaker 12: you won't day in the classroom, I'll wake you out.
Speaker 12: I'm not coming outside. I'll hide behind the teacher.
Speaker 5: But it could have gone either way, though the hands sweat?
Speaker 1: How do you?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 12: Yeah? How many horrible?
Speaker 1: An hour? Was it an hour? Was it a ninety
Speaker 1: minute thing? Like wouldn't you timement?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Okay, like forty five minutes? I'm gonna you know what,
Speaker 1: that is a great question.
Speaker 12: So because it's like it's a there's an audience have
Speaker 12: come to see Whack the Dog. Also, this this introduction
Speaker 12: is happening before the movie starts, So this is this
Speaker 12: is the needle that I'm having to thread. So I
Speaker 12: thought twenty minutes. Let's talk about what the Dog whatever.
Speaker 1: Then I'll raise this I didn't so at first, and
Speaker 1: then have a Q and A afterwards.
Speaker 12: I think I think they wanted to leave. I think,
Speaker 12: like the people on the stage wanted to go and
Speaker 12: have dinner or whatever.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 12: I wasn't invited anyway, they so I thought I talked
Speaker 12: about the movie for twenty minutes half an hour, because
Speaker 12: that's what people come to see. Raise this issue. We'll
Speaker 12: see see how long that takes. God, I can't remember. Oh,
Speaker 12: I think actually it was a forced segue, because.
Speaker 1: No, it was.
Speaker 12: Actually it was he said something that was a little
Speaker 12: glib about Also, you gotta remember, Whack the Dog is
Speaker 12: a movie about it's been in sexual harassment and or
Speaker 12: assaults within that we don't know in that story that
Speaker 12: was then buried and not addressed, and the and the
Speaker 12: way that you could powerfully bury it. So there is
Speaker 12: a gigantic elephant in the room. The very fact that
Speaker 12: this is the movie, is that he's sitting there talking
Speaker 12: about the fact that he or that anyone thought I
Speaker 12: wasn't going to bring it up is crazy to me.
Speaker 12: It kind of makes me think, what how little do
Speaker 12: you think of me. Did he not going to bring
Speaker 12: this up?
Speaker 1: Does he does he know? I mean, you know they
Speaker 1: could like he might want to talk about the issue, and.
Speaker 12: Did they tell him? Maybe I have no idea.
Speaker 5: But here's the question. See in even when you ask
Speaker 5: that question, like what did he expect? I think a
Speaker 5: lot of interviews, especially lately, everybody's trying to navigate what's
Speaker 5: the right way to go about this? So you kind
Speaker 5: of broke the mold with that. And I don't know
Speaker 5: if anybody else has followed it up in that way.
Speaker 12: I mean, it wasn't a thing. It wasn't on TV, right,
Speaker 12: this is just at the ninety second street. Why so
Speaker 12: what I was trying what I wanted it was I
Speaker 12: wanted to with any of these issues, They're all different,
Speaker 12: every single example is different. So it was a case
Speaker 12: by case by case basis. But you want to try
Speaker 12: and get to some introspection because in lots of these stories,
Speaker 12: it certainly makes me introspective, right in terms of workplaces
Speaker 12: that I've been in, like behaviors of my friends of
Speaker 12: mine that I may have like conveniently overlooked or turned
Speaker 12: like a long calloused blind blind eye to it. So
Speaker 12: it's it's this has really made me introspective. So the
Speaker 12: fact that there was absolutely no introspection coming out of
Speaker 12: him was irritating to me. And so he was like
Speaker 12: retreating from the position that he was, that he'd made
Speaker 12: in that statement and was standing his ground and then
Speaker 12: was coming at me, and I definitely was not gonna yield.
Speaker 12: So then we had a problem.
Speaker 1: So then like the.
Speaker 12: Funny now the dog, Well, that's the crazy thing is
Speaker 12: that you know, it's not that's not a very friendly
Speaker 12: audience for me there, because there's lots of fans of his.
Speaker 12: I didn't this was not a situation of mind making.
Speaker 12: I personally don't believe that the problems of my questions
Speaker 12: they were his answers. But there's still part of my
Speaker 12: head which is thinking, I got this kind of goes
Speaker 12: back to your early thing about what a thinking about
Speaker 12: what an audience wants. What the audience wants at that
Speaker 12: moment is for the tension to stop and they can
Speaker 12: watch this movie, which is fine. And so I was thinking, Okay,
Speaker 12: we've talked about this enough, let's bend this background. So
Speaker 12: I had a I can't remember what it was, but
Speaker 12: I had a way to get back to talking about
Speaker 12: Wag the dog. So we talked about that for another
Speaker 12: half an hour, but then he brought it back up
Speaker 12: because he wanted to go.
Speaker 1: Oh, so I couldn't get is the audience reaction though?
Speaker 12: Fully like, no, no, I mean it was free bird,
Speaker 12: you know, free buds would have been a great tension.
Speaker 1: Yeh, next time, audience, And what do you you have yo?
Speaker 5: So let me just ask you then on the subject,
Speaker 5: since you said you were introspective about the me too
Speaker 5: the times and a lot of people, a lot of
Speaker 5: women are feeling some type of way about men's reaction,
Speaker 5: men's vocal ability to speak on the subject. You have
Speaker 5: a new season starting in a week. Number one, how
Speaker 5: do you feel and what do you feel that something
Speaker 5: should be said from the male perspective? And number two,
Speaker 5: how are you going to do that on your show?
Speaker 12: I mean, I think something definitely should be said about
Speaker 12: from the male. I think it's important for men to
Speaker 12: talk to other men about this. It's not it's it's
Speaker 12: definitely not important for men to explain to women that
Speaker 12: this is an important issue.
Speaker 1: I want you to sit down so we can have
Speaker 1: a talk.
Speaker 5: But it is important for men to say it out
Speaker 5: out in front of women so that women understand you
Speaker 5: two counters.
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 12: But look, it's such a complicated conversation. I think it
Speaker 12: is important. I've I've talked to friends of mine about it,
Speaker 12: like it's it's this is conversation that a lot of
Speaker 12: us have avoided for kind of understandable reasons.
Speaker 1: With friends.
Speaker 12: Right when you see your friend doing something gross, you know,
Speaker 12: there are many very damaging inclinations to go, ah, that's
Speaker 12: just I know him.
Speaker 1: He's not like that. He's not like that to you
Speaker 1: trying to fuck you. That's that.
Speaker 12: But that's the thing, like you, I've met a lot
Speaker 12: of as these stories have started coming out, and sometimes
Speaker 12: I've thought, oh, that's weird. He was really nice to me,
Speaker 12: And you think, yeah, he probably fucking was nice to me.
Speaker 1: He's man.
Speaker 12: Yeah, but it's easy, like lots of the people have
Speaker 12: a natural charisma, and it's no one is just one
Speaker 12: thing either. It's it's complicated, like you say, it's there
Speaker 12: are shades of gray here. Not only is every single
Speaker 12: situation different, but.
Speaker 5: Uh, it's also allowed to play with comedy wise, and
Speaker 5: not for nothing. I'm just saying.
Speaker 12: Definitely, definitely, and in an in a fun way because
Speaker 12: it's a minefield and it's fun to run through minefield requirements.
Speaker 5: What's the eligibility is like?
Speaker 12: So yeah, I think it is important to I'm we're
Speaker 12: working on We're working on a whole bunch of stories
Speaker 12: at the moment. We're working on something.
Speaker 1: I don't know what.
Speaker 12: We've got to work out what we can add to it, right,
Speaker 12: what hasn't been said, and what we could say that
Speaker 12: would be constructive and funny.
Speaker 1: It's a blank canvas though, real, So we should have
Speaker 1: Russell on Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: I think we should naturally just with.
Speaker 12: Just play whack the Dog for everyone.
Speaker 2: Now, you know, because I think after a while it's
Speaker 2: just like everybody. Yeah, in about three years, it's just
Speaker 2: gonna be.
Speaker 12: But it's not binary. Again, It's not like everybody's guilty
Speaker 12: for start. That's such that's so depressing, that idea that
Speaker 12: everyone's good. That's the kind of level of cynicism that
Speaker 12: even I don't have, right, But I do think the
Speaker 12: important thing is for everyone to be introspective about it.
Speaker 12: I think you've got to look at yourself and your friends,
Speaker 12: and it doesn't not not every incident is going to
Speaker 12: require the same response.
Speaker 2: But so had he not just want hair doesn't not
Speaker 2: said or try to walk back the statement a little bit.
Speaker 1: The whole point of you calling him out on.
Speaker 12: It was wait, did you just undo the statement that
Speaker 12: you said that? Yeah, I think the post we have
Speaker 12: to talk about this. We're again, we're wag the Dog,
Speaker 12: the movie about sexual harassment that was squashed. So if
Speaker 12: you don't think this is going to come up, that
Speaker 12: is a level of indestructibility, which is in itself a
Speaker 12: real problem here. So, uh no, there was a way
Speaker 12: for that to go much smoother and be more interesting.
Speaker 12: And I don't think it was tally my fault that
Speaker 12: it didn't.
Speaker 1: Go that way. Fight the powers that being heisty chunk d.
Speaker 2: So where we are now with year one with this
Speaker 2: current administration, I mean, I go back to my first question,
Speaker 2: which is how exhausting is it?
Speaker 1: How do you have any hopes that Well, that's a
Speaker 1: complete question, hope, end of question.
Speaker 2: I meant, you know, I know that a lot is
Speaker 2: being put on you know, God, please let these midterms
Speaker 2: have a turnaround.
Speaker 1: Do you have faith?
Speaker 2: Do you have faith in in the system still in
Speaker 2: American people or you know, my thing is that if
Speaker 2: Russia did it once, Russia will do it twice.
Speaker 1: And of course you know, will will we be Okay?
Speaker 1: The twenty eighteen will we be here? You're going to
Speaker 1: put that on me? Will we be? Will? Will we
Speaker 1: be here in two thousand and eight?
Speaker 12: I mean, I guess there's there's degrees to that, right.
Speaker 12: I think if the if you're holding up the midterms
Speaker 12: as this kind of perfect silver bullet that's going to
Speaker 12: make everything okay, that is not going to happen. So
Speaker 12: you think we're gonna get four years of Trump? Four years,
Speaker 12: there's no reason to do. I think we're going to
Speaker 12: get eight years. There's a non zero chance we're getting
Speaker 12: twelve years of him, you really think so.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Even if I can't be here
Speaker 1: on earth that happens.
Speaker 12: But he is not this this is he is a
Speaker 12: deeply unpleasant human being. But the ship that he stirred
Speaker 12: up doesn't stop just with him, right obviously, So if
Speaker 12: the midterms flip, if he goes, there is someone else,
Speaker 12: the shit load of stuff still to deal with in
Speaker 12: its wake, the fact that he's churned up all all
Speaker 12: the problems with white nationalism. I'm only because you mentioned it.
Speaker 12: I'm not pointing to white we used to be. Yeah,
Speaker 12: all the kind of dog whistle racism which is now audible,
Speaker 12: which has now just become human whistle racism. That even
Speaker 12: that speech loss oh night last night, talk about it,
Speaker 12: the MS thirteen directly, that's some pretty toxic ship. And
Speaker 12: that doesn't go away when he does.
Speaker 5: How about the slave reference? Don't forget about the slave reference.
Speaker 5: When he pointed out the owner, the white owner of
Speaker 5: the business who just expanded into another building, and then
Speaker 5: he says, oh, and the black guy over there, Corey,
Speaker 5: he's a good worker. He works for that guy right there,
Speaker 5: and you know what he's gonna do with his tax break.
Speaker 5: He's going to take his tax break, he's going to
Speaker 5: buy a house, and he's gonna get education for his
Speaker 5: two dart.
Speaker 1: How can you.
Speaker 5: Because it was racis And I knew that a lot
Speaker 5: of people didn't plantation race, but I did because somebody
Speaker 5: needed to have the reference.
Speaker 12: Of yeah thirteen.
Speaker 1: I was waiting for.
Speaker 12: The thing is he is the he is the conductor
Speaker 12: of racism, is still going to be that when he's away.
Speaker 5: She can't wait for the black man to come out
Speaker 5: who had sex, will.
Speaker 12: Be those bigoted bassoons are still after twelve is stick around.
Speaker 1: But your girl recar her story the stormy, stormy weather,
Speaker 1: stormy Dan she like, she was like, no, it never happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how much did they give her?
Speaker 12: She's dancing? She moon walked it back, but then she
Speaker 12: shuffled forward again.
Speaker 1: I think it's not it's she camera walked, move forwards,
Speaker 1: camera walking, shout James Brown. Yes, yeah there was.
Speaker 12: Yeah, she was dancing around it on Kimmel. We'll see
Speaker 12: where she lands. But yeah, she uh, she moon walked backwards.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure I'm certain that you know there was
Speaker 2: another one hundred thousand dollars check written to go on
Speaker 2: and just say she's on a powerful.
Speaker 3: But she had already admitted to it like two other
Speaker 3: times back in the past, and both of those stories
Speaker 3: were the same, and they were.
Speaker 12: So she's I worry about too much attention on the
Speaker 12: storm with Daniel's think, because who gives a ship his wife? Sure,
Speaker 12: I get how you would care, I get how she
Speaker 12: would be piste off. Otherwise, this is this is not
Speaker 12: in the top one hundred things that we should be
Speaker 12: really concerned about. What is happening right now. It's it's certainly,
Speaker 12: it's certainly funny.
Speaker 9: I think it just shows the double standard. I think
Speaker 9: I think that's why it's become such a popular story,
Speaker 9: because it'sause it's shown the double standard. You know, if
Speaker 9: it was Obama that had sex with the porn star,
Speaker 9: then he would have if.
Speaker 1: Obama had liked an Instagram picture of some model chick.
Speaker 1: But this is not the first big double standard. No, no,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just you know, another in the long
Speaker 1: line of Yeah, and is that new?
Speaker 5: I mean, you could tell us better than anything, John,
Speaker 5: I mean, I know you've been for a let years,
Speaker 5: but when you're watching these stories, does it seem a
Speaker 5: little different than what's going on in England?
Speaker 12: A politician in England who was found dead masturbating with
Speaker 12: with a orange in his mouth. Please don't sure he had.
Speaker 1: Sex with a sound mirror episode it was.
Speaker 12: I think it was a Satsuma Clementine story. I just remember,
Speaker 12: that's a hell of a way to go baby.
Speaker 1: Nutrition environment. He died as he lived in search of vitamin.
Speaker 12: But yeah, I mean, Brittain is wrestling with a whole
Speaker 12: different kind of problems that Brexit is going to tear
Speaker 12: Britain and Europe apart for decades to come. So that
Speaker 12: is a whole different ship storm a little bit too.
Speaker 1: No, that is not on him, on him, where is
Speaker 1: that coming up? Remember to be like the ignorant generals,
Speaker 1: like can you still weigh in on issues over there?
Speaker 12: Like where you mean does anyone who hear it from me?
Speaker 1: No? I guess I guess not.
Speaker 12: You know, in the in the same way that people say,
Speaker 12: I don't want to hear it from a britt over here.
Speaker 12: You moved to American I'm a man without a country.
Speaker 1: So break down to brexit like for those of us
Speaker 1: like word exactly, it.
Speaker 12: Was a fucking stupid thing to do. Uh it was, well,
Speaker 12: I gain the first stupid thing to do was to
Speaker 12: call a referendum on it at all. So it was
Speaker 12: a like an incredibly self serving decision made from a
Speaker 12: prime minister who's not prime minister anymore, and the fact
Speaker 12: he made that decision will taint his record for the
Speaker 12: rest of his life. He should be he should struggle
Speaker 12: to sleep over calling that referendum. Then then you're getting
Speaker 12: into the complexities of the fact that the EU which
Speaker 12: will set up, you know, for good reasons, with good intentions,
Speaker 12: which is not perfect, which is flawed. UH has irritated people,
Speaker 12: irritates everyone, every everybody in it is irritated. You don't
Speaker 12: you know, you don't get to live in a perfect
Speaker 12: world all the time. And then there was a lot
Speaker 12: of anti immigrant stoking, race baiting, completely bullshit data where
Speaker 12: people will promise money that would not.
Speaker 1: Come back to them.
Speaker 5: That's where we start. Trump came in.
Speaker 12: There is it's made, that's the same ze. Source of
Speaker 12: discontent is UH made both decisions possible, both decisions which
Speaker 12: seemed like they would be impossible, made them plausible. And
Speaker 12: then of course like so that it made it did
Speaker 12: mean that having watched Brexit happened and it was just
Speaker 12: heartbreaking to watch that happen, knowing what that will do
Speaker 12: to Britain and to Europe.
Speaker 1: So how long does that How long do we have
Speaker 1: until that actually.
Speaker 12: Takes until it happens where we then negotiating now, so
Speaker 12: they instituted this article, so they're involved in these literally
Speaker 12: impossible negotiations right now.
Speaker 1: So so even when it does happen, that means what
Speaker 1: that is a that.
Speaker 12: Is a question you should ask the Prime Minister of
Speaker 12: the u K and the head of the EU it's
Speaker 12: not it's not clear. It's not clear who will be
Speaker 12: allowed to live where, who will be able to trade
Speaker 12: with whom. It's not clear if there will be a
Speaker 12: hard border in Northern Ireland again, which I don't know
Speaker 12: how much you knew about the trolls and here it
Speaker 12: didn't work out too well last time. There it is,
Speaker 12: it's almost it's almost bamboozling. The depth of complexity and
Speaker 12: problems with Brexit is absolutely mind blowing. So it's all
Speaker 12: you can say for sure is this probably isn't going
Speaker 12: to go well. But if I can flip that question
Speaker 12: back on you, is it going to be okay?
Speaker 3: I meka tell me it's going to be okay.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm only asking because well again, this also leads
Speaker 2: to the again back to exhausting impression. How real is
Speaker 2: the quote unquote John our effect in your head? Like
Speaker 2: do you wake up in the morning brust.
Speaker 1: Your teeth flight.
Speaker 12: I'm not even effective in shifting plot.
Speaker 1: Or I'm just saying that.
Speaker 2: Again, it's what does it make you paranoid that as
Speaker 2: quick as like Americans are world famous for building someone
Speaker 2: up just to tear them down, Like, so are you
Speaker 2: paranoid that you have so much. You you kind of
Speaker 2: have a power that sort of extends past what John
Speaker 2: Stewart was doing. And I hate to say that I
Speaker 2: don't anything.
Speaker 12: Honestly, don't know that's true at all. I think that
Speaker 12: the general effect seems like, I really it's bullshit.
Speaker 1: You're going to say it's a reach. You're going to
Speaker 1: say it's a reach. I know that. Let me just
Speaker 1: say it. I'm just saying that. I'm just saying that.
Speaker 1: I know you're going to think it's a reach. But
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is, are you at least on defense
Speaker 1: not on defense?
Speaker 12: I think I'm more aware if if I really think
Speaker 12: about like try to tap into your.
Speaker 1: And then oh, look for anything to discredit you to Oh.
Speaker 12: I mean, of course we've had like we've done stories
Speaker 12: about Russia, North Korea, and you know, I went to
Speaker 12: meet Snowden in Russia, so we've had like higher level
Speaker 12: cybersecurity for a while. I have a I have a
Speaker 12: healthy amount of paranoia, but I guess I guess in
Speaker 12: terms of my motivations for things, I basically I'm trying
Speaker 12: to think about this as honestly as possible. Right, I
Speaker 12: still fundamentally refute the premise of like this nebulous John
Speaker 12: Oliver effect. What I will say is I am cognizant
Speaker 12: of the fact that just by the by dint of
Speaker 12: being on TV and on being on TV with a
Speaker 12: show that people watch forever reason, there is a we
Speaker 12: do have an amplifier effect. So, you know, I think
Speaker 12: the first time that nonsense term came up was in
Speaker 12: the wake of, you know, the net neutrality debate, the
Speaker 12: first time people have been talking about net neutrality for
Speaker 12: a long time. There's a lot of people that have
Speaker 12: been writing detailed articles and good investigative journalism.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 12: Right, we were an amplifier, right, So we have a
Speaker 12: louder voice. So I'm definitely colnisant of the fact that
Speaker 12: we have a loud voice. And that's probably the only.
Speaker 5: Loud diminishes it is that just loud.
Speaker 1: It's accurate, it's.
Speaker 5: Accurate, and it's understandable, like people all levels can understand,
Speaker 5: and it breaks things down and.
Speaker 12: That I'm aware of, Like when we talk, I'm aware
Speaker 12: that people will listen and generally will when we say
Speaker 12: if we're thinking about getting people to do something, I
Speaker 12: do think about you know, sometimes in the past, like
Speaker 12: like even if we're writing things on the Daily Show.
Speaker 12: I think it would be funny if you did if
Speaker 12: people went and did this and the joke is finished,
Speaker 12: and that you don't want them to actually do it.
Speaker 12: I'm much more aware now of the fact that if
Speaker 12: we say do something, people might do it. So like
Speaker 12: that the Chechen Forlord, so like when we were just
Speaker 12: asking people to fuck with he lost his cat, and
Speaker 12: so we were saying he lost it. He has this
Speaker 12: dumb cat and he lost it, and so he's very
Speaker 12: active on Instagram, and so we just said to people,
Speaker 12: take photos of any cat you see and send it
Speaker 12: to on Instagram saying is this your cat? That was
Speaker 12: the first point that I kind of thought, that's a
Speaker 12: funny idea. I wasn't really anticipated they did it hard
Speaker 12: and he was pissed, pissed off a check warlord. At
Speaker 12: that point, I'm thinking, I probably need to think through
Speaker 12: when I say do something, what what was happened if
Speaker 12: people actually did it?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, what what areas you you along with
Speaker 1: that neutrality?
Speaker 2: Uh, you've taken on the tobacco industry like you've done
Speaker 2: a billion now, I mean Oprah tried this once.
Speaker 1: You could have put Oprah on me. Now that when
Speaker 1: she tried to go to the beef industry, they clap, clap,
Speaker 1: So you do it for the van, We do it
Speaker 1: for the bow van. I wish I have my sound
Speaker 1: effects class. That was awesome. What do you see a
Speaker 1: mountain you can't climb?
Speaker 12: No, because also with these stories, you gotta understand they
Speaker 12: know what's coming in. But we work with them, Like
Speaker 12: we're in contact with Philip Morris International as we're right
Speaker 12: in that story, just like we're in contact with coal
Speaker 12: companies that we talk about. There's a back and forth
Speaker 12: in Hey, this is what we're going to say about you.
Speaker 12: If you got anything to say about that. Oh, well
Speaker 12: that's not based on anything. Well, here is what that
Speaker 12: is based on. They know there has been we don't
Speaker 12: want to get anything wrong. So you know, if if
Speaker 12: there is correction, if things have been badly reported, we
Speaker 12: want to not amplify that bad reporting.
Speaker 2: But has there been an organization that has said no?
Speaker 2: I mean, oh, Shad said no, like scientology or whoever
Speaker 2: you want to investigate, Like, who's the one organization that
Speaker 2: you're trying to.
Speaker 1: Sort of move past this, uh, this gate.
Speaker 12: That I don't know if there is one, right, I
Speaker 12: mean it's I don't know if there is like it.
Speaker 12: There's there's no condis, there's.
Speaker 1: No Fortnight subject to you that you will not really
Speaker 1: not really.
Speaker 12: It's because whenever we're taking swings, we're trying to engage
Speaker 12: the people that we're taking swings at, so that so
Speaker 12: that we basically agree on the underlying facts. We just
Speaker 12: might have different conclusions to those facts, right, But but
Speaker 12: those facts have got to be accurate, and so our
Speaker 12: key difference of opinion is what those facts mean. But
Speaker 12: so yeah, I mean, I don't I'm sure that there
Speaker 12: have been many companies that are pissed off with us,
Speaker 12: but they can't dispute what we actually said. They can
Speaker 12: disagree with our opinions, but they can't dispute the facts
Speaker 12: that we cided.
Speaker 5: Have you gotten any feedback from any I mean, any
Speaker 5: activists in the community. I'm curious more now than Daily Show.
Speaker 5: It feels like since you're changing some culture a little
Speaker 5: bit more informing, there'd be some folks call you up,
Speaker 5: like you know Al Gore, like I'm so glad that
Speaker 5: you did.
Speaker 12: Our Gore does not have my cell number. If he
Speaker 12: ever calls me on my phone, I'm throwing it in
Speaker 12: the river.
Speaker 1: I'm burn. I don't go anywhere.
Speaker 12: I don't know anyone, So yeah, I live in There's
Speaker 12: not too many tentacles that people. But people pitch stories
Speaker 12: all the time and like as they do within our office,
Speaker 12: and we'll we'll look at them.
Speaker 5: Still, don't even think about it like that, Like now
Speaker 5: people are trying to get their word out through you.
Speaker 12: We don't really listen to many outside pitches, to be honest,
Speaker 12: So there's.
Speaker 2: No idea too silly, Like even the idea of you
Speaker 2: going to rush to interview him, that's a dumb idea,
Speaker 2: But that's that's literally asking for trouble.
Speaker 12: That was what's so exhilarating about it. Perhaps you just
Speaker 12: ask him because I thought I thought there was the
Speaker 12: thing that was mostly interested about with Snowden was he's
Speaker 12: an incredibly smart guy, but like lots of people that
Speaker 12: are smart in that particular way, he's not a great communicator.
Speaker 12: So like he releases incredibly important information for everyone to
Speaker 12: reckon with, and you might not like the way that
Speaker 12: he released it, but the fact is what he released
Speaker 12: is very important, but there's no value to that unless
Speaker 12: people understand it. So I wanted to I wanted to
Speaker 12: try and find a way to deal with the contents
Speaker 12: of that material in the way that made sense to people.
Speaker 12: So we'd reached out through his lawyer to say, would
Speaker 12: you ever want to do an interview. Also, the slight
Speaker 12: connection was that I had to Snowden. Was that John's
Speaker 12: first day having left that summer Snowden happened. So what
Speaker 12: was supposed to be a very first, very calm, first
Speaker 12: day in the chair for me, of old whatever, it's summer,
Speaker 12: let's just talk about different things, all of a sudden
Speaker 12: the Snowden story erupts. So I've always felt kind of
Speaker 12: very tied to him in that way. We're both in
Speaker 12: trouble in a similar way. So I talked to him
Speaker 12: on his encrypted line here and then we went to
Speaker 12: Moscow and Russians were not pleased we were there. The
Speaker 12: American government, I don't think we're thrilled that we'd left.
Speaker 12: So you kind of end up pissing off everyone. But
Speaker 12: what did they say, customers when you came back?
Speaker 1: Like nothing?
Speaker 12: We were worried, Like we were worried that we'd split
Speaker 12: the tapes amongst the crew in case one of us
Speaker 12: got pulled. So at least me you'll go through.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 12: And the crazy thing is I forgot about this. I've
Speaker 12: never had this happen on a flight before. But they
Speaker 12: when we landed from Moscow, Uh, they said there was
Speaker 12: They said everyone stay in your seats, like the FBI
Speaker 12: here to pick up a couple of passengers. So me
Speaker 12: and my producers, but it was it wasn't us.
Speaker 1: I don't know who it was. I was sticking around.
Speaker 1: I don't know who it was. They got.
Speaker 12: They got to maybe they got two people. Think yeah, no,
Speaker 12: they were we were walking part they were.
Speaker 1: They were there.
Speaker 12: They they were walking past. So they were going to
Speaker 12: get people as they as they pulled off.
Speaker 5: So how did you know America was pissed there.
Speaker 1: Because we were.
Speaker 12: Ye reached out to them after we've gone, just because
Speaker 12: we wanted to fact check everything he'd said. He wanted
Speaker 12: us to do that because he didn't want information to
Speaker 12: no longer be currently.
Speaker 1: He wants to be right as well.
Speaker 12: He doesn't want to be giving out bad information. So
Speaker 12: we reached out to the NSA and said, this is
Speaker 12: the stuff that we were I'm sure, I am sure
Speaker 12: they knew we were there. If if they didn't know
Speaker 12: we were there, that seems like I don't think it
Speaker 12: was a surprise that we were there.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm being getting on between you and Rachel Meadow.
Speaker 2: My money's on you to to break up and it's
Speaker 2: current administration.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you're back in the wrong horse.
Speaker 5: New season, let's go yeah that on a new season.
Speaker 5: Were there any stories that you were really wishing that
Speaker 5: you were on the air for.
Speaker 12: Not really, because we don't generally trafficking those. We do
Speaker 12: some slow cooking with our stories, so it's not we're
Speaker 12: operating in a slightly different, slightly different arena, So there's
Speaker 12: there's nothing particularly that we've missed that it felt like
Speaker 12: we were going to have much to add to other
Speaker 12: than everything. But you know, yeah, we'res When we were
Speaker 12: excited to come back, we got a bunch of ideas,
Speaker 12: some of which are related to everything that's going on
Speaker 12: and some of which not.
Speaker 1: It would totally kill you, but could you operate in
Speaker 1: a fifty two week.
Speaker 12: No, not making this show because we make mistakes, you know,
Speaker 12: it's just too intense that with making this particular kind
Speaker 12: of we could do a different show for fifty two weeks,
Speaker 12: but you can't do.
Speaker 1: This, So then that takes out my other question, could
Speaker 1: this be a daily No, okay, we could do it.
Speaker 1: We could do a daily show, but it wouldn't. You
Speaker 1: just can't.
Speaker 12: It's not physically possible. So it takes it takes longer
Speaker 12: to do this stuff. So we can only we can
Speaker 12: only do the amount of shows that we do because
Speaker 12: we need to build in breaks in the year where
Speaker 12: we're not doing shows, but we're still working because we
Speaker 12: getting If we make a big mistake, we're fucked right,
Speaker 12: because we've got we definitely have enough of a target
Speaker 12: on our back. Now that you get something wrong in
Speaker 12: a big way, it's kind of done.
Speaker 5: You want to tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 5: we're working on.
Speaker 12: What I've got in the slow coat. I don't know
Speaker 12: if we've got anything. That's one of the nice things
Speaker 12: I like about the show is I like the fact
Speaker 12: that you don't know what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 12: Right with lots with lots of late night shows, you
Speaker 12: basically know people are eating from the same buffet. And
Speaker 12: what's nice is that with those main that that main
Speaker 12: story that if we're going to say and tonight we're
Speaker 12: going to talk about charter schools, you think, okay, all right,
Speaker 12: let's see, let's talk about that's what we.
Speaker 5: Look forward to trying. Whatever schools is gonna be a
Speaker 5: story of charter schools. Don't really want to know.
Speaker 12: You know what, if we said it was no one
Speaker 12: would watch. We kind of have to trap you into
Speaker 12: watching something that you don't really want to see.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 5: But as a viewer, I'm already knowing you said charter schools.
Speaker 5: I want to know what the.
Speaker 1: Just you don't know.
Speaker 12: We have to explain this part of the writing, why
Speaker 12: something is important. So we were just like, guess what
Speaker 12: we're going to do something about Sinclair Board Broadcasting Group.
Speaker 1: People go, that sounds terrible. How many writers are in
Speaker 1: the room. It's not.
Speaker 12: It's not so much a writer's room in the traditional sense.
Speaker 12: But we have at the moment we have eight writers
Speaker 12: plus uh plus him and I. I think that's the
Speaker 12: current tally, and that's what we have right. We might
Speaker 12: we might get a couple more.
Speaker 5: Do I need to ardit your female male ratio? John,
Speaker 5: how your writer's room doing? How's it doing?
Speaker 1: Two to six? Right now? You try to go to
Speaker 1: his show?
Speaker 5: No, no, no, I'm just writers.
Speaker 12: It's not yeah.
Speaker 5: To see where you fit in I'm to see if
Speaker 5: I'm actually in there represented.
Speaker 12: That is entirely legitimate question. So two to six is
Speaker 12: not the balance that I'm happy with the moment. So
Speaker 12: we're in the process of trying to put that right.
Speaker 1: I have to that.
Speaker 12: We're in the process right now of hiring You.
Speaker 1: Just got somebody, no idea, no no, no, come on
Speaker 1: question question. Yeah.
Speaker 9: So we've we've talked a little bit about little bits
Speaker 9: and pieces about how the show is put together. Can
Speaker 9: you walk us through like an actual week is, like,
Speaker 9: you know, is every Monday pretty much the same.
Speaker 1: Because it's not really like one week.
Speaker 12: So those those main stories were on four week cycles, right,
Speaker 12: So like there's a week of like just research to
Speaker 12: check that the story it's been reported accurately, that hasn't shifted.
Speaker 12: And then like another week of research and footage looking
Speaker 12: for footage whether there's the ingredients in terms of other
Speaker 12: people's footage that we can use to tell the story.
Speaker 12: Then we start writing two weeks out from the show.
Speaker 12: Then there's the week of the show when we're starting
Speaker 12: to really coffee fact check everything exactly this is bad.
Speaker 12: So those parts of the show are on four week cycles.
Speaker 12: The top of the show is on the one week.
Speaker 11: Do you have a difficult time like establishing what's success
Speaker 11: and what's not because there are some Sundays where the
Speaker 11: next on Monday, everyone's talking about what John Oliver did
Speaker 11: on his show, and then some there's not.
Speaker 12: I don't really pay much attention to that because we're
Speaker 12: already worried about the next one. So yeah, like if
Speaker 12: you if I paid too much attention to the ripple effect,
Speaker 12: I'd either go crazy, I'd get frustrated kind of litigating
Speaker 12: why people were not taking it because it's I think
Speaker 12: what I find frustrating when something does get passed around
Speaker 12: is you can't control the packaging. So all that shit
Speaker 12: clickbait terminology of oh he destroys this industry, that's not
Speaker 12: what happened at all. Right, that was not my intention
Speaker 12: at no point was that part of it. But the
Speaker 12: fact it's been packaged that way, Yeah, and it recontextualizes
Speaker 12: what you've done and it changes the way that people
Speaker 12: watch it, and that can be frustrating. Unfortunately, it's nothing
Speaker 12: I can do anything about. So that's not dead frustration.
Speaker 12: That's not being on message boards that you shouldn't be
Speaker 12: on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, Look I'm just looking for remixes.
Speaker 12: For certain I'm trying to save you from yourself.
Speaker 1: We are are welcome to.
Speaker 12: It's basically an intervention with one different guest each week.
Speaker 9: I got one more question, So, were you guys actually
Speaker 9: surprised at how well or how much the internet took
Speaker 9: to some of the long form pieces that you got
Speaker 9: to do, because yeah, it's fourteen minute pieces.
Speaker 12: And fourteen it's way longer than look for a short
Speaker 12: short people like they are around twenty Like again, we've
Speaker 12: done more long show stories, longer than our show is
Speaker 12: supposed to be. So yeah, it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 12: I don't understand why anyone watches it or enjoys it.
Speaker 12: I have more than enough self clothing to find my
Speaker 12: success inexplicable.
Speaker 3: No, your show is made for the iPhone. Man, It's
Speaker 3: and you, I mean, you break things down. I think
Speaker 3: that's what one of the reasons I watch it, you
Speaker 3: break it and explain it.
Speaker 1: I think one.
Speaker 12: I think the one thing that is really useful for us,
Speaker 12: especially being on HBO, is because these stories are running
Speaker 12: twenty minutes, like they have an arc to them where
Speaker 12: we kind of need your full attention so we can't
Speaker 12: be breaking twice for commercials in there. Otherwise it's you
Speaker 12: kind of lose people's focus and then you've got to recap.
Speaker 12: So it's it's very very important to us that there
Speaker 12: is not a commercial break in there, partly because we're
Speaker 12: sometimes talking about companies, but mainly because we need like
Speaker 12: uninterrupted attention for twenty minutes.
Speaker 5: Fish for a compliment for HBO, But do you ever
Speaker 5: look around and feel good about being on that network?
Speaker 5: Seeing as though it seems like they support between Vice
Speaker 5: and Bill and like they support this voice of say
Speaker 5: what you want to say as long as it's truth
Speaker 5: and politics.
Speaker 12: And I guess, I mean, I can only speak from
Speaker 12: my experience. I'm sure people have been annoyed by them,
Speaker 12: work for them. I can only speak from my experience,
Speaker 12: which is that they said, you'll do what you can do,
Speaker 12: whatever you want, and and but immediately you think, well,
Speaker 12: that's bullshit. Everyone says that, and that conversation turns really
Speaker 12: quick when you start doing things they don't want you
Speaker 12: to do, and they have kept their mouth shut.
Speaker 11: So Sesame Street was told the same thing.
Speaker 1: Want the cursing mumpets.
Speaker 12: Curse, I want to talk ship about scientology.
Speaker 11: Subject I love scientology.
Speaker 12: Have you read you read that book?
Speaker 1: I've read the books books incredible, No, not Dianetics.
Speaker 10: No, the What's Clear Going, yeah, the movie. Yeah, the
Speaker 10: book I was that was that was amazing. I couldn't
Speaker 10: put that from Fuddled the whole thing anyway.
Speaker 12: On the other hand, it's a series of mechanics that
Speaker 12: can really help you turn you like. It really depends
Speaker 12: clear or Dianetics. I'd read that one first. This seems
Speaker 12: like I'm an amazing human being that just needs to
Speaker 12: access my full potential.
Speaker 1: Have one last, one last question.
Speaker 12: I really want to work on Tom Cruise's motorbike.
Speaker 1: What's it like to interview Stephen HARKing?
Speaker 12: Amazing? It was, honestly, Now, the reason I wanted to
Speaker 12: do that was that he's a funny guy. And so
Speaker 12: the thing about him that I find frustrating is that,
Speaker 12: you know, it's very, very easy to just objectify that
Speaker 12: guy as being a brain beyond most of our comprehension
Speaker 12: and that's it. Whereas he's a really he loves comedy, right,
Speaker 12: loves the Simpsons. That's why he does appearances something, and
Speaker 12: I know he's he has a good sense of humor.
Speaker 12: So I wanted to try and get at that, and
Speaker 12: that's not easy, right, because of his physical circumstances.
Speaker 1: And so what we had to do was.
Speaker 12: Write that interview back and forth beforehand, and he would
Speaker 12: trigger it up on his computer. So I would say,
Speaker 12: how I'm going to ask you this question. Then he
Speaker 12: would like say he would say, oh, this be my
Speaker 12: answer because it takes him a long time to communicate
Speaker 12: now uh, and then he would have his answers queued up.
Speaker 12: But you could see like a glint in his eye
Speaker 12: because I wanted him to like this would be a
Speaker 12: shit talking thing.
Speaker 1: I wanted to.
Speaker 12: It was really fun watching his face light up when
Speaker 12: he knew he was about to give me a give
Speaker 12: me the business, so yeah, like they like the anticipation
Speaker 12: on his face when he was about to drop a
Speaker 12: slam on me was fantastic. So it was great to
Speaker 12: just slightly waste his time.
Speaker 5: You just gave us an exclusive. I don't know, those
Speaker 5: are really his voices on like when he does the
Speaker 5: Simpsons and family guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a question. I was
Speaker 1: just that's not a question.
Speaker 7: I just wonder if you had any background or education
Speaker 7: in journalism, or if you learned all these journalistic skills
Speaker 7: at your job.
Speaker 1: It's not comedy jobs.
Speaker 12: It's not just me, right, So the journalistic skills come
Speaker 12: from my staff. So we got people from the Timers magazine,
Speaker 12: from Pro Publica.
Speaker 1: So you have no journalistics.
Speaker 5: I have.
Speaker 12: I'm like a journalism adjacent like that. They they have
Speaker 12: worked in journalism. But you no, no, no, no, I'm
Speaker 12: a comedian, not just a comedian. I'm a comedian, which
Speaker 12: takes me back to when do you think you will
Speaker 12: go in front of an audience and just tell us
Speaker 12: why the chicken cross the road? And changing diapers and
Speaker 12: and oh you mean what?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Diapers to pussy really fast because I.
Speaker 5: Would never say Oliver to do that.
Speaker 12: I'm not I once I once had a friend in England.
Speaker 12: He offered me like he ran a gig and he
Speaker 12: offered me fifty quid to do a dirty set and
Speaker 12: he said, but you've got to do it for five minutes.
Speaker 12: And I was in agony. There was like grants in
Speaker 12: for we can talk about the tatars w Yates.
Speaker 1: I believe where is that?
Speaker 12: I don't have a blue set in me?
Speaker 1: You know what I think?
Speaker 13: Uh?
Speaker 2: I think I know that the taboo interview show that
Speaker 2: you could tackle. It would be crazy. And I know
Speaker 2: he's going to grant an interview. Who I think you
Speaker 2: should interview O J.
Speaker 1: Simpson. I would the juice.
Speaker 12: I would the juice loose on Mike. I would love
Speaker 12: to we know, I know Ezra, Ezra Edelman. Yeah, who
Speaker 12: might might the Yeah he probably our documentary. I watched
Speaker 12: that four times already, so I think, yeah, I think
Speaker 12: he might be looking for Ezra before he's looking for me.
Speaker 1: But or or jay Z.
Speaker 12: Oh, yeah, that's true. He's writing a song about me.
Speaker 12: That's great.
Speaker 1: Grammys. I was just praying to guy that jay Z
Speaker 1: won that award just so so we can get O J. Simpson.
Speaker 1: It is OJ Prize.
Speaker 11: Lifetime.
Speaker 1: Think about that.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 1: Even even more than Army Winsde. I think like it's
Speaker 1: I know he's in.
Speaker 2: I know he's uh sort of putting feelers out there
Speaker 2: that you know he is the entry. Yeah, but I
Speaker 2: think it's more like for money, like the thing like
Speaker 2: I'll talk for five hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 12: He's motivated by money.
Speaker 2: Crazy to believe it or not? Right, Yeah, but I
Speaker 2: would think that would be an awesome interview.
Speaker 12: Look, the thing I loved about AS's documentary was as
Speaker 12: a British person, my encounter with Oja was airplane onwards,
Speaker 12: airplane to murder. So when that, when that story came out,
Speaker 12: it was more in England. Oh that guy from that
Speaker 12: funny guy in airplane he killed someone and so it
Speaker 12: was what I didn't understand was everything before then I
Speaker 12: didn't understand. I didn't like Kravins, I didn't. I understood
Speaker 12: he was a football player, but not exactly theology. I
Speaker 12: didn't understand the Hurts commercials.
Speaker 1: So uh, there was a.
Speaker 12: Lot in that I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Well, the the last o J, the party o J. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the OJ I knew. And you seen him dog
Speaker 1: the first time.
Speaker 12: We were going around her house, dropped him off.
Speaker 1: Seriously. I had dinner with oj one night. It was
Speaker 1: it was the surrealest thing in my life. What what?
Speaker 2: And so they see partly so I'm we're in Miami
Speaker 2: working on an album and not many people know.
Speaker 1: Well I don't know.
Speaker 2: If you know, you probably don't even know who Scott
Speaker 2: Storch is. Scott Storch is a former Roots member and
Speaker 2: he might be connected with some friends of ours. Way,
Speaker 2: hey whatever, anyway, he's saying friends of ours are also
Speaker 2: connected to OJ and they go golfing with him and everything.
Speaker 2: So I guess the stories that one of their wives
Speaker 2: was having a birthday dinner and Scott has ever so
Speaker 2: casually mentioned like, hey, you know, let's let's we were
Speaker 2: in the studio.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, let's go on a dinner break.
Speaker 11: So we Scott start dinner break, a three hour.
Speaker 2: Dinner break, and there was like, oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: OJ is going to be here too, And so think
Speaker 2: of like the the Last Supper. Oh my god, it's
Speaker 2: like a Last Supper scenario or or or very Got
Speaker 2: Fathers whatever, like just a circle of this thing of
Speaker 2: that whole Martin Scorsese thing where he's like all the
Speaker 2: characters and everything and Johnny two times and you know
Speaker 2: that got to get the pape, let's get the paper exactly.
Speaker 1: And so surprisingly, there's like the small children's table.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you have this Thanksgiving thing there,
Speaker 2: it's like the big fans sit there in yeah, so
Speaker 2: on the side so on the side in the smarts
Speaker 2: thanks Giving a different story, but the side table situation,
Speaker 2: there's like an additional nine people and it's like me
Speaker 2: Buster rhymes Scott Storts and O. J. Simpson, and you know,
Speaker 2: in the beginning was slightly awkward. I try to act
Speaker 2: as normal as I could, and he's like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: I used to have one of those. He's pointed at
Speaker 2: my afro and stuff. And then another conversation, let's.
Speaker 12: Go, let's go, let's go, let's go an ex life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go. Four bottles of wine, and and then
Speaker 1: like I don't want to be around drunkard.
Speaker 2: You don't and then you want four bottles of wine
Speaker 2: and he says to to Buster me and Scott, he's like,
Speaker 2: you know, you know her, Kate Carter, you know all
Speaker 2: the singers, Bob Dylan and them, they you know, they
Speaker 2: fought for Hurricane Carter's innocence.
Speaker 1: You know, I need the rappers to make a song
Speaker 1: about me. And we're all looking at each other. But
Speaker 1: here's here's the funny. He made a song about him.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, it was like that. So and then
Speaker 1: by bottle number six, I would have left the bottom
Speaker 1: number two. There was dark.
Speaker 2: There was there was a point when we started talking
Speaker 2: about Dart and Marsha Clark and stuff. And then like
Speaker 2: me and Scott's brother were like having that uh that
Speaker 2: trading places bathroom stall, feet raised.
Speaker 1: Up in the air so no one could see us.
Speaker 1: It was like, yo, are we all to be talking
Speaker 1: this sort of thing? Like we were like, we didn't
Speaker 1: know what we were. It was the weirdest three hours
Speaker 1: of my life.
Speaker 12: And so yeah, we that is a great fucking story.
Speaker 12: That is a hard social situation to navigate. And I
Speaker 12: find every social situation you introduced four bottle o j
Speaker 12: into that, especially saying you gotta just give me, just give.
Speaker 1: Me a song he wants. H Yeah, and you know what,
Speaker 1: there are knives on the table.
Speaker 12: Years later, jay Z gave him that song, just not
Speaker 12: quite the song that he wanted.
Speaker 11: Exactly what happened the second time.
Speaker 1: That was.
Speaker 13: Situation anyway, like that, don't worry about it, and uh,
Speaker 13: I'm Bill Sugar Steve. We are signing off Course of Supreme.
Speaker 2: West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 2: episode was produced by the team at Manadora. For more
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