Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Yes, So, as someone who's raising a kid of your own,
Speaker 2: what advice do you have for young people when making
Speaker 2: well informed political decisions?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, what advice do I tell my child?
Speaker 3: He's three and a half, So I keep them away
Speaker 3: from all news, I truly do. Uh and even pap patrol,
Speaker 3: which is just teaching him, indoctrinating a love of police
Speaker 3: and authority. So that's a problem as well. You see
Speaker 3: it seep in, you know it is.
Speaker 4: To me.
Speaker 3: I think exposure is the first step. Expose yourself to kids,
Speaker 3: is that what I'm telling you? I mean it comes
Speaker 3: from meeting other people, talking to other people, and and
Speaker 3: staying curious enough to understand where they come from. I
Speaker 3: think I've talked about this a little bit before, but
Speaker 3: when I go out in the road and I talk
Speaker 3: to people at rallies, and it's rallies, MAGA rallies, and
Speaker 3: even rallies on the left as well, I think the
Speaker 3: thing that I find least appealing is certainty. People have
Speaker 3: no sense of their being a gray area or being
Speaker 3: unsure of how something should play out. And it doesn't
Speaker 3: mean you shouldn't be strong in your convictions, But I
Speaker 3: think you need to leave space to be wrong and
Speaker 3: to be curious. And so I think with a total
Speaker 3: amount of certainty and a lack of uncertainty comes a
Speaker 3: lack of curiosity, in which case we just become these
Speaker 3: people lost in those silos. And so I think my
Speaker 3: job as as a dad, how I see it in
Speaker 3: terms of like what what am I supposed to do?
Speaker 3: I'm supposed to feed and water it, right, I think
Speaker 3: I got that feed water this child, But I think
Speaker 3: I need to I need to instill and maintain a
Speaker 3: sense of curiosity, a sense of confidence to walk into
Speaker 3: the world, and a sense of finding virtue and uncertainty
Speaker 3: as opposed to certainty. And then from there he needs
Speaker 3: to walk his own path. But that's simply because I
Speaker 3: can't afford it past eighteen. You know, when you're going
Speaker 3: to rallies and talking to people, you're kind of picking
Speaker 3: apart their answers to kind of send it right back
Speaker 3: to them really quickly. And that takes a lot of
Speaker 3: wit and kind of a lot of.
Speaker 4: Like you know, mentalpacity. We kind of pick it apart.
Speaker 4: So what are the things that you're thinking of when
Speaker 4: you're hearing their answers that you want to pull.
Speaker 3: Out or draw from. I will say this, the process
Speaker 3: of going into the field is, we're so many talented
Speaker 3: people here at the Daily Show, and a day or
Speaker 3: two before we go out into the field, we're watching
Speaker 3: the news. We're having the same conversation as you're probably
Speaker 3: having at home about people are talking about this. I
Speaker 3: hear the arguments on the right are this. I see
Speaker 3: hypocrisies here. And we sort of have almost debate prep
Speaker 3: among producers and writers here where we sit down a room,
Speaker 3: we're like, where do you see holes in these arguments?
Speaker 3: We start to find the humor in those holes, the
Speaker 3: obvious hypocrisy in those arguments. So when we go out there,
Speaker 3: we've kind of talked through, like where we see these
Speaker 3: holes that you could sometimes drive a pickup truck through.
Speaker 3: But then, I'm an improviser. That's where I came from.
Speaker 3: I'm not a stand up. I spent fifteen years doing
Speaker 3: improv in Chicago and New York. And the big thing
Speaker 3: about improv is when you get out there, you let
Speaker 3: it all go, and you let go of your preconceived
Speaker 3: notions and you listen and you listen hard. And so
Speaker 3: in those moments I have a great team behind me
Speaker 3: that we've done the prep work, and then you just
Speaker 3: you try to engage and be present. Because the things
Speaker 3: that you find, the moments of humor or the moments
Speaker 3: of revelation of a point of view that you haven't
Speaker 3: heard before, but you see somebody now spouting this at me,
Speaker 3: they come from that person feeling comfortable in the conversation
Speaker 3: with me. They come from that person saying something unique
Speaker 3: and me being open enough to actually hear it and
Speaker 3: to try to spin it. So I think it's a
Speaker 3: skill set that you use an improvisation. It's a skill
Speaker 3: set that you use it being a good husband, And
Speaker 3: it's basically like get out of your head and listen
Speaker 3: to what that person's saying. I'll tell you this though.
Speaker 3: A skill set that doesn't help being a good husband
Speaker 3: is finding that weird thing they say and try to
Speaker 3: use it against them. Now that I will say, my
Speaker 3: wife by saying that, that is it's a double edged sword,
Speaker 3: if you will.
Speaker 5: But to other comedians is like.
Speaker 4: Role models like Robin Williams or George Carlin or any like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, role models, I don't know about role models, but
Speaker 5: comedy inspirations, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was. I always thought
Speaker 5: bill Bo was great and I got to meet him.
Speaker 5: He messaged me on Facebook one day when I was
Speaker 5: in Australia and his profile picture was a car, and
Speaker 5: so I didn't believe it was him. When he messaged me,
Speaker 5: I was like, I'm getting catfished right now by Bilburt.
Speaker 5: And he was like, hey, I saw your clip on
Speaker 5: the plane and you're really funny and hope we can
Speaker 5: work together, and it sounded so catfishy. I was like, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 5: truck right, and but then I thought like, oh, if
Speaker 5: I can live with being catfish, I can't live with
Speaker 5: if it was actually Bilbert and I said off. So
Speaker 5: I replied like, oh, hey, thanks, I'm a huge fan
Speaker 5: of yours. That's high praise coming from you. I live
Speaker 5: in Australia, so I don't think we'll ever get a
Speaker 5: chance to work together, but you know, hopefully one day,
Speaker 5: if I ever get to go to America, I'll see
Speaker 5: you in the circuit. And then he said, hey, I'm
Speaker 5: touring Australia next year, love for you to be on
Speaker 5: the show open for me and I was like, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 5: give truck. Yeah, this is it's a catfish it's clearly
Speaker 5: a catfish, and so I was like whatever, And then
Speaker 5: I didn't think too much about it, and I kept
Speaker 5: kind of doing my thing. And then a year later, Hey,
Speaker 5: I get this email to go to the theater. And
Speaker 5: the whole time I'm like, I'm gonna get murdered. You know,
Speaker 5: this is not gonna and I show up until I
Speaker 5: was in Bilbah's green room and he was like, Oh,
Speaker 5: this will be on the show Man. That clip was
Speaker 5: super fun. I saw you on the plane and uh.
Speaker 5: And he became a friend and a mentor and he
Speaker 5: uh executive producers my comedy specials now and uh it's
Speaker 5: a real crazy, rare story of our meeting of heroes
Speaker 5: and them being really cool and the n yeah so
Speaker 5: uh yeah, so uh Bilbah, And that's about it.
Speaker 2: After all your.
Speaker 3: Years at the show, what does the legacy you want
Speaker 3: to leave to your audience every night? The legacy I
Speaker 3: want to leave to my audience? Oh my, Uh, I
Speaker 3: gotta tell you, I haven't been here long enough for that.
Speaker 3: Give me some time to cruise some legacy and then
Speaker 3: we'll move on. I I'll tell you this though, perhaps
Speaker 3: I was a fan of the Daily Show before I
Speaker 3: was a worker at The Daily Show. I used to
Speaker 3: watch it in college. It was one of my first
Speaker 3: forays into being interested in news, and in fact, I
Speaker 3: watched it before that. I watched Craig kilmour and host
Speaker 3: the show when I was in high school, and I
Speaker 3: loved it. I thought it was so funny. I loved
Speaker 3: Craig Kilbourn. He looked great in a suit. We were
Speaker 3: the same height, was perfect. Incomes John Stewart and he's
Speaker 3: so insightful, thoughtful, and at college was like, oh, he
Speaker 3: makes the news compelling. I understand that he's not not
Speaker 3: cowtowing to one side. He's just calling out bullshit. And
Speaker 3: I like this guy. And I was a fan before
Speaker 3: before ever getting a chance to ever audition and be
Speaker 3: a part of the show. And so the legacy that
Speaker 3: had left in me was like, be interested, don't be
Speaker 3: afraid to challenge bullshit, and always look somewhere for more.
Speaker 3: And I think like that that thirst, of that hunger
Speaker 3: to know more, and I think that the basic idea
Speaker 3: of call out bullshit where you see it, I think
Speaker 3: it's sort of built into the institutional legacy of the show.
Speaker 3: And so that that is what I most problem with,
Speaker 3: what are your thoughts on the Tennis and Challengers? Oh great,
Speaker 3: you have an depending on this.
Speaker 1: You mean the movie?
Speaker 3: You mean the movie Challengers.
Speaker 4: I talk so much about this movie, and I support
Speaker 4: women in the arts. Zendea is like my favorite. I
Speaker 4: love that they put a woman in sports. It's cool.
Speaker 4: I have a lot of problems with it. The two
Speaker 4: tennis players are hot. The two men they chose not
Speaker 4: up to par I want, like I want big Italians
Speaker 4: or like Serbian dudes, like I don't want these like
Speaker 4: Twinkie British guys.
Speaker 2: And then remember remember when Mark Philip Pustas would practice
Speaker 2: with his shirt off.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not even gay, and I was getting
Speaker 3: hard for that guy.
Speaker 4: And he's when he was a coach, he was just
Speaker 4: a zaddy in the stands. It was I mean Tommy
Speaker 4: has oh He's men are beautiful. I lost track.
Speaker 1: I heard the change challenges.
Speaker 3: The biggest issue I thought was the grips, right, The
Speaker 3: grips were off.
Speaker 4: The grip was so off. And I'm fine with her
Speaker 4: having a grip that's off. But if you're gonna say
Speaker 4: the greatest tennis player who ever played tennis and just
Speaker 4: put the grip, it's like a if a football player
Speaker 4: was like holding it from the back of the football.
Speaker 3: It's like if I was like, hey, so this water
Speaker 3: is really delicious. And so when we say gripping me
Speaker 3: in the way they were holding the rat's.
Speaker 4: Show a threesome show it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also never watched the movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's my fam. I got my parents, my sister,
Speaker 3: my brother, my aunt, my uncle, my other uncle up there.
Speaker 3: Am I nervous? No, I'm not excited to do it
Speaker 3: in front of my fa I will say this. As
Speaker 3: cool as it is that my parents are here, it
Speaker 3: is not surprising because they came to every gosh darn
Speaker 3: show I've done and then it could come from. And
Speaker 3: a big part of why I am here is because
Speaker 3: I got into improv in at KLMZUO Michigan Kalamazoo College
Speaker 3: and I got on the improv team Munkepult and we
Speaker 3: did shows in a little black box theater for ninety
Speaker 3: five college students and two fifty somethings forty something. Sorry.
Speaker 3: My parents would come and they would support me, and
Speaker 3: I was I was a math major at the time,
Speaker 3: and I was spending my time doing improv and then
Speaker 3: traveling to the Improv Olympic here in Chicago. And then
Speaker 3: I came to Chicago, and I found another family at
Speaker 3: places like the Improve Olympic. I think Sharna Helpern is
Speaker 3: here tonight as well. There she is founder of the
Speaker 3: Improv Olympic. Gosh darn long form improvisation. Sharna Helpern right there.
Speaker 3: She gave me a space to fail and to succeed,
Speaker 3: and to fail and fail and fail again. And more
Speaker 3: often than not, my parents would hop in the car
Speaker 3: and they would drive over to Chicago and they would
Speaker 3: watch these shows at weird times with their son, who
Speaker 3: wasn't making any money. He was a substitute teacher at
Speaker 3: Chicago Public Schools, making a little bit of money during
Speaker 3: the day, not a lot. And my parents wouldn't judge it.
Speaker 3: They would just support it. They would love it. And
Speaker 3: I look back on that, and when I look back
Speaker 3: on it, frankly, I think it's responsible, not a smart
Speaker 3: move to let your child just do improv in Chicago
Speaker 3: for a decade getting paid paynuts. But I loved it.
Speaker 3: She let me find my family, let me find my people,
Speaker 3: the things that I loved, be surrounded by people who
Speaker 3: were interested in the things that I loved, and the
Speaker 3: things I like to do supported me when I went
Speaker 3: to New York and got to try out for fun
Speaker 3: things like this. And then a long seventeen years later, no,
Speaker 3: a long twenty four years later, I get to come
Speaker 3: to the at the Dam Theater where I used to
Speaker 3: do improv for the Chicago Improv Festival, and I get
Speaker 3: to do a walking great show on the Daily Show.
Speaker 5: With you guys.
Speaker 3: So thank you, Jilly, thank you.
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