In-Depth Comedy Talk with Jason Zinoman of the New York Times

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Calaroga Shark Media. I've got a
great one for you today. My guest

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is Jason Zenniman, critic at large
for the Culture section of the New York

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Times. Jason writes a column about
comedy, and we talked comedy for the

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better part of an hour on his
biopage on the New York Times dot com,

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Jason Wrights. I cover comedy with
critical rigor and curiosity and explore how

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it reflects and influences the broader cultural
and intellectual landscape. I'm particularly interested in

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work that is innovative or unexpected,
but it's enough if it's just really funny.

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My aim is to always capture the
comedy scene in its complexity while translating

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it clearly for a broad audience.
That is a theme that came up several

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times during this discussion. I just
want to give you some notes on the

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recording here. So we recorded this
on a program called squad cast, basically

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zoom for podcasters, and when you
do that, you don't quite get studio

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quality sound, and sometimes you get
little dropouts. The reason I'm bringing this

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up is I just want to be
clear. There were three different points where

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I used a program called descript which
has a feature called regenerate, where I

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used it to regenerate short phrases said
by Jason. Nothing materially changed, The

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words aren't changed. It just regenerated
the wave so that it didn't fade a

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little bit. Just want to be
clear about that. Also, when I

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use the script, it has a
couple of neat buttons that I use every

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day on this podcast. One is
remove retakes, so when I recorded every

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day, believe me, I stumble
and I start over and descript has a

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one button remove retakes. It's wonderful. There's also a feature that I used

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on this interview, which is remove
filler words, because when you listen to

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Johnny Max speak the way Johnny Mack
does over the course of an hour,

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there are a lot more ums and
you knows than you might get during a

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typical ten minute script that I've edited
down. And there's also a one button

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click called shortened word Gaps, which
just tightens the pacing. So I've used

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all those features on this interview.
Nothing materially changed. But I just want

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to be clear that I did in
a traditional podcasting way, nothing nefarious.

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I did edit the audio all right, And here's my interview with Jason.

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I've been a fan of your work. I don't even know how to explain

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it. It's not stupid. There's
a lot of stupid in comedy, and

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I don't feel like you do takes. I feel like you write really thoughtful,

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smart pieces. And I've been quoting
you in episodes for months and then

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the other day I freaked out.
I go, wait, what if his

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name is pronounced Zinoman? And I've
said it wrong forty five times? And

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then I actually checked. I was
like, anyway, So I'm curious about

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your approach as someone who just does
off the top of his head ten minute

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podcasts and maybe a half assed written
substack. I know how long it takes

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me to do that, so to
appreciate what you're doing for The New York

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Times. Also, you've got to
be putting out a ton of work.

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First of all, let me say, if you call me Zinoman, I'm

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not going to complain the it's like
cinnamon, but I'll take any reference.

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I'll take any pr is good pr
and the Zionoman sounds also always more like

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the superhero version of my name.
But yeah, it's a lot of work.

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It's a lot of work. Although
that makes it sound. Sometimes it

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comes very easily, as I'm sure, and sometimes more work doesn't always mean

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better work. Is one thing I've
learned, and that's one thing that's evolved

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over the course of this. For
instance, I would say when I started

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this job, I spent a huge
I spend a huge amount of time most

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of my time going out to see
shows clubs, and I still do that,

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but I don't do it as much
as I used to, and that

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has to do both with how comedies
change, but also I think that I

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try to spend a little bit of
time every week thinking about letting my mind

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roam and thinking of ideas, and
then if I have a good idea,

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I try to find the right form
for it that because so sometimes sometimes that's

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a review, sometimes it's an essay. Sometimes it's a bigger piece and it's

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a profile. And it's funny like
the things that I write in a in

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an hour or a half hour are
the most popular, and the things that

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I sweat over, like I'm working
on something now for months and no one

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cares. I feel like I totally
know that one yes, yes, and

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they're sometimes they're wrong, but they're
not always wrong. Sometimes you cannot trust

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you you. Let's put this way. As I'm first a critic and I'm

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a big believer in something, I'm
a big believer that your first impression isn't

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always right, but it's always important. So you have to be really sensitive

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to your first impression of something.
And it's why people like Pauline Kal,

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who's probably the critic who most inspired
me as a kid. She would write

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she would go see a movie and
go home write the review right away,

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and because she really valued that first
impression, I'm happy to hear that you're

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not clubbing as much as he used
to. One of my guilt trips.

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I run Serious XM Comedy for ten
years ten years ago now, but even

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then it was hard to go see
shows because I was still expected to be

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in the office and be a manager
from eight am until six call it.

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So to stay out till one point
thirty in the morning doing shows was difficult.

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I tended to rely on the people
who were younger on my staff,

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and then to keep my knowledge fresh, I'd hit festivals and as I always

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tell this audience, if you go
to a festival, don't go see Chris

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Rock. You can go see Chris
Rocks some other time, go hit all

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those smaller shows. That's where the
action is. I'm upset that Montreal is

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gone, or perhaps back or this
new group that bought it, But no

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Montreal. This summer is a bummer. It's interesting to hear what you do,

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because I think that's a very smart
strategy. It's I have taken the

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opposite approach, which isn't necessarily better, which is that, if anything,

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I undercover festivals because I feel like
a lot of the people you see at

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festivals I already see New York.
But what that means is like comedians from

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other cities when they come through here, I make a point of trying to

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see them, or I try to
go to La periodically to see that.

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But I miss things for sure,
And there's no question that you could.

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It's funny. The truth is that
there's like a pool of performers in New

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York, and if you go often
enough, you see them all and it's

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changing, but it doesn't change radically. It doesn't change like the number of

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people changed. I still like to
go, and I think I pick up

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things. I learned things from going. But now the thing is you could

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probably the most time efficient way is
probably just to look at your computer and

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fillow. Because everyone's online and there's
so much material online, and a lot

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of consumers of comedy are first accessing
comedy not from clubs but from a clip

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on a TikTok or Instagram. So
that has to change. I feel like

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if the way that we have to
have along with the consumers. Yeah,

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and for any content creator, no
matter of the format. We're all living

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in a headline world, right,
So the easiest thing to write is why

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Joe Rogan, Shane Gillis and Nikki
Glazer are something that'll get the clicks as

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opposed to Hey guys, Jen Marco
Cireesis awesome, Just it doesn't do the

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same. Uh. But CIESSI will
contact you and be like, how come

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you're not con righting about me?
He's fantastic Switching gears I wanted. One

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of the main things I wanted to
talk to you about Dave Chappelle. It

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bothers me that he has seemingly chosen
to turn his legacy into The second line

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in his oh bit is going to
be something about the trans community. And

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he's so much better than what he's
done on the last few specials, which

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is Jason you know why I had
you on today because of the trans And

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he slaps his knee and he mugs
for the camera and he gets a laugh,

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and he's so much better than that. And I don't know why he's

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dug in on that. To be
curious to your thoughts, it's a good

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it's a good question. Look,
I loved Dave Chappelle. I've wrote an

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ebook on Dave Chappelle eight years ago, searching for Dave Chappelle. I grew

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up in Washington, d C.
Where he's from. I have I'm around.

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He's a few years older than me, but I've been following his career

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since the since the eighties. I
have a tremendous he's incredible comedian. His

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sketch show, I think people have
now forgotten about it, but it's one

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of the greatest comedies ever on television, and he's one of the greatest.

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He's one of the greatest stand ups. I think it's his first specialist terrific

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and he still has a lot.
I say all this as a way to

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be like it's one of the I'm
agreeing with you. And one of the

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reasons it's depressing is that when we
talk about Dave Chappelle, we tend to

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talk about these culture war things and
because that's what he's put out put forth,

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and so why has he chosen to
do that? I think Gerard Carmichael

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made us ask the more question recently. My sense, if I again I'm

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just speculating, is that Chappelle always
liked two didn't you know? Prized?

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His freedom prize is independence he and
I think I think the good faith,

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genuine interpretation is that when he did
trans jokes and people said got offended or

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said, don't you his first instinct
is to then double down right, And

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that's always been his first instinct.
It's been his first instinct through his whole

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career. We can go chapter in
verse. Even before he was famous.

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I've written back before his Chapelle show, he had a big falling out on

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his comedy on a ABC show called
Buddies. I've traced this in ambols has

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served him in this case. Look, it may have served him well for

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his audience. He's still selling out, he's still popular, but for his

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art, I agree with you.
I think it's kept him in a rut.

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And I'm still optimistic when I see
a new Dave Chappelle thing. I

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hope he moves past it. But
yeah, what's interesting to me the last

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one came out is that I don't
even think it caused that much controversy.

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I think people are just bored.
Yeah, I imagine in your travels you've

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run into him. He'll do sets
and I'm being generous with that. He'll

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he'll take stage time and he's not
even really working out. He's just talking

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to the audience when he does that
downbeat, soft spoken Dave, and he'll

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just come out with some brilliant things
just to listen to that. Maybe it

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an't even funny and he's got that
there, and I just I'd like to

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just see him do something else.
But to your point, Dave Sapelle announced

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his new Netflix special already. The
conversation is going to be, is he

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going to bring this up again?
And it's I think he nailed it.

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It's boring, It's it's predictable.
I mean, like, if you were

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to say, like, what's the
least interesting thing for him to do next,

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it would be to talk about that
again. That's the part of it

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which flabbergasting. I think that the
thing the other issue might be is that

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he always had these two modes,
which was doing like a stand up set

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with this with more traditional collection of
jokes in his very idiosyncratic style, and

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what you described this like, he
would go into go into clevit. He

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would be on stage for four hours. And there was something incredible about those

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sets. He could go places that
others could not. And I believe he

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got she fell in love with that, and there's something indulgent about those and

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I think that's true for not just
in terms of the amount of time he's

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spending there, but also they became
very self serious. This bothers me less

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than other people. But I think
another reason people got bored with him is

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that he seemed his material seemed less
punchline driven. It seemed less about being

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funny and more about being profound.
And if he's saying things that are profound

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and poetic, that's fine, and
maybe it's better than fine, it's great.

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But if he's saying the same thing
over and over again, that's a

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problem. All right, new premise
off all the recent protests that Jerry Seinfeld

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ran into, I find myself wondering
what if Jerry went political? Now I

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know that's crazy. He's seventy years
old, and it's very easy to just

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write it out and go, hey, do you ever notice but what if

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Jerry showed off and went all in? Could you ever imagine that in a

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million years? No? But I
mean I would be interested. I think

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there's another question which is similar,
which is what if he went vulnerable or

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introspective personal? And I think there's
room for that. I think that he

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I don't think I think people would
be interested in either in going political.

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I don't think he wants to,
and I don't think he has to.

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I don't even think he's got to. Cut from the last interviews from him,

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he doesn't seem like he wanted it
to come out with any special ever

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again. And he wouldn't need to. He wouldn't need to see any people

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forget. But he came up at
a time when everyone didn't need to release

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specials, and he didn't. He
for most of his career he didn't release

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specials, and he could and he
did just he did obviously did just find

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Some people think that he has gotten
more political, but I'm with you.

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I don't think he. I don't
think he has. I thought I found

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all the backlash of the popsarts movie
bizarre. I liked it. I thought

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it was this is a silly movie. We're having fun, my friends are

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in it. Want you to turn
your brain off for ninety minutes. And

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people seemed like mad that that movie
even exists. It was weird. I

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know, you mean, I think
some people were mad about the interviews in

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which he said things like, you
know, the PC left and the were

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ruining sitcoms or whatever. But yeah, there was the initial response from some

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I think one film critic called it
the worst movie of the decade or the

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year or something, and I was
like, that made no sense to me.

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That made zero How you could that
there's something going on outside of the

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screen to think that a movie with
that ambition and also that amount of there's

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plenty of talent on screen there is
the worst movie. And it's not funny.

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I say ambition, a low ambition. It's not a movie that's swinging

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for the fences. Yeah, it's
not like he made some bro dude version

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of Oppenheimer and missed the politics of
it. It's a pop starts movie.

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Yes, it's a popp bar.
It's it was a it's a bizarre response,

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but I that's the age we're living
in, right that, I think

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the more hyper hyperbole you you mentioned
if you put Joe Rogan in the title

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against a lot of hits. The
other way to get it is to have

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a more extreme point of view.
Right, all right, we'll take the

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break here back with Jason Zenimann after
this the rest of Tom Brady, I

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feel like it. It cuts through, seems to have done well. Did

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Nicky Glazer step up in class?
Did Tony Hinchcliff step up in class?

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Or these now names that the civilians
would know? Actually, let me sidebar

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there. This comes up a lot. There are a lot of really popular

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comedians. But if you and I
walk down the street and grabbed one hundred

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people in New York City and said, hey, Andrew Schultz, what are

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we going three for one hundred,
I think you're right. I think you're

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right. Yeah. No, you're
putting your finger on a big phenomenon of

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the moment, which is like,
what does it mean to be a famous

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comedian? In twenty twenty four,
Andrew Schultz played Mason Square Garden, right,

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And there was a time when that
was like hardly anybody, hardly nobody

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had played Masters for a Garden,
but he's played massots for Garden, and

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as you said, I think most
people don't know who he is. But

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I think that's not just a question
of comedy. That's a question of the

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culture in general, which is that
it's so fragmented, it's so balkanized that

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you as long as you have very
passionate fans in your niche, you can

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sell a lot and be very successful
even without being widely known. I think

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it's also answers the previous question,
which is the wiser everyone so worried about

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Jerry Seinfeld. All the people who
became famous in that generation have a kind

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of fame that's way bigger than the
kind of fame you get now, with

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the exception of Taylor Swift, if
you manage to get famous. Even Drogan,

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I think, is an example of
this where Rogan likes to protact like

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he's anti establishment, anti mainstream media. But I have this sort of pet

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theory that the difference between his fame
and Tim Dillon Andrew Schultz, who will

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never be as famous as Joe Rogan, is that Joe Rogan was on Fear

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Factor, and Joe Rogan was on
news radio and he hosted a after Bob

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Costas left. Later he or he
had an NBC talk show for a second.

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Though, that's a bigger fame than
these podcast fames that you get now.

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It's a kind of fame that reach
which is a much broader demographic than

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you reach out. I must have
a race from my brain. There was

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a Joe Rogan late night show.
I did a piece a year ago.

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It's now it seems already maybe longer
than that seems very dated. When Daily

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Show was doing rotating guest hosts,
and I was making an argument for how

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this might not be a terrible idea
to do permanently. This is before they

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announce John Stewart, which is a
better idea, but are once a week.

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But although I guess they still do, I guess they are to entertaining

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guest hosts around with John Stewart.
And I was looking around for precedent,

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and I realized that in the late
nineties NBC did this after maybe an some

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of the details wrong, but it's
in my story. After you know a

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letterman, and they had a crazy
series of people who I like hosted for

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a week than a week, and
among those people were Joe Rogan and he

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had he interviewed and eight people he
interviewed. It was a similar version to

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his podcast, but it was on
NBC and I was really shock it.

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I couldn't find any versions of it
online, but I nailed it down that

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had happened. I found it on
an old like TV guy those things.

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Oh wow, You're gonna send me
down a rabbit hole, and I didn't

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forget. I will circle back to
my Nikki Glazer question, but now I'm

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like three questions deep. I just
had Mark malcoff on and he retriggered my

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late night obsession. And I spent
the week watching YouTube videos. And somebody

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made this homebrew thing about the Carson
Letterman, Tom Snyder trifecta, and I

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just I'm back into that whole move. And I know you wrote a Letterman

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book. Can you explain to me
why I worship twelve thirty Letterman lasted a

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year and a half at eleven thirty
Letterman after spending a decade going man.

259
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If only I didn't have to stay
up till one thirty in the morning,

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if only Dave were on at eleven
thirty, I would watch Dave every night,

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And then a year and a half
into it, I don't know if

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it was just I was in my
mid twenties and going out and doing things

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00:18:59.720 --> 00:19:03.960
people do and not watching late night
TV. But twelve thirty Letterman is my

264
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north star. Eleven thirty Letterman,
okay, And then he'll put out something

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on Netflix and it takes me three
weeks to watch it. What is wrong

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with me? It's so funny that
you asked me this question today, because

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you and I are identical on this
point. And just today somebody sent me

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a podcast in which it was the
guy who'd wrote that was the Letterman podcast,

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Mike Chris Som, and he said, oh, I mentioned you on

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a podcast, and he was on
a podcast with somebody else, sorry to

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be on a podcast talking about another
podcast, but my name came up and

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it was asking I guess the podcast? Hast said, how do you press

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him when he was on your podcast
about why he focuses so much on his

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late night twelve thirty show and not
on his CBS show, And there was

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a kind of there was a they
were upset, both of them because they

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both really there. They both liked
the CBS show. And it made me

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wonder for a second, because I
putting aside me for a second, I

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think to people who are younger,
who maybe didn't grow up with that show,

279
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the CBS show means more. But
I've watched both as an adult,

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so my opinions on them are not
just like nostalgic. And despite what they

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said in this podcast, the reason
I didn't is because I agree with you

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that from nineteen eighty two to ninety
three David Letterman on NBC made some of

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the most brilliant talk show comedy and
most innovative talk show comedy ever that really

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created a sensibility, invented all kinds
of forms mainstream to sort of irony.

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That is really significant, that deserves
that will be here to your point about

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legacy, that will be the lion's
share of his legacy. Now, his

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first couple of years in the CBS
Show are probably arguably the more popular and

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were more covered more because of the
late night wars, and some of them

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00:20:57.359 --> 00:21:00.880
were quite good, and they were
periods in the CBS show that were better

290
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or worse. But in my opinion, the NBC show was vastly more ambitious

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and better than the CBS show.
Now that again, there are big exceptions

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to certainly his response to nine to
eleven and many other ones. He still

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was David Letterman. He still was
doing great work. But and my book

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is essentially a book length answer to
the question of why right. If you

295
00:21:25.359 --> 00:21:29.359
want to know why, that is
by my book, Letterman Last China Malee.

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And part of it has to do
with him, Part of it has

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to do with the network, but
a lot of it has to do with

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what's around him and the writers around
him, and the relationship between the writers

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and Letterman and all that. I
would say that you were just smart and

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discriminating, and that's that's why I
think what attracted me to it was the

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whole twelve thirty vibe. And once
Conan found his fastball, he's had the

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00:21:52.119 --> 00:21:56.319
same vibe of maybe this bit isn't
working, but I know it, you

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00:21:56.400 --> 00:21:57.559
know what, we all know what. Let's just stick to it and left

304
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together with it. And then you
go to eleven, which is a different

305
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animal, and you have to wear
an o'mani suit, you have to wear

306
00:22:03.319 --> 00:22:07.480
shoes, and it just was more. I've always called it establishment Letterman as

307
00:22:07.519 --> 00:22:10.799
opposed to the twelve thirty, Like
we're off our game tonight, we got

308
00:22:10.880 --> 00:22:14.000
forty seven minutes left whatever, yep, yep, yep. No. I

309
00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:18.400
think it was clearly a bigger,
more show, busy show in a big

310
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theater where the previous show was intimate, and it felt like conspiratorial between the

311
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viewer and Dave, and it was
going backstage and doing all these fourth wall

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00:22:27.799 --> 00:22:32.519
breaking things. It was very different
there was It was a very I would

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00:22:32.519 --> 00:22:38.440
make the argument that it was the
things that really made him unique. The

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00:22:38.519 --> 00:22:42.880
new version of CBS was going directly
against. That doesn't mean that he was

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00:22:42.880 --> 00:22:47.480
totally different. He still had some
lot of reverence. And I think what's

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00:22:47.519 --> 00:22:51.160
interesting that you bring up what he's
doing now. It's remarkable if you would

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00:22:51.200 --> 00:22:55.160
have told me, the young version
of me who loved his late night show,

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00:22:55.839 --> 00:23:00.960
that Letterman would be now doing a
show in which he interviews famous people

319
00:23:00.359 --> 00:23:07.119
and is incredibly complimentary and gushing about
all of them and solicitous. What made

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00:23:07.200 --> 00:23:11.799
him really stand out as an interviewer
in the eighties, and you can just

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00:23:11.799 --> 00:23:15.440
go and look at the press on
this is he adopted a kind of almost

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00:23:15.920 --> 00:23:21.880
hostile, if not skeptical, attitude
towards the celebrities who came out and promoted,

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00:23:21.960 --> 00:23:25.240
and that was part of his appeal. So it's interesting he's I don't

324
00:23:25.240 --> 00:23:29.880
blame him, you know, but
it's quite a one eighty. The next

325
00:23:29.960 --> 00:23:32.680
rabbit hole I want to go down
is trying to track down clips of his

326
00:23:32.799 --> 00:23:36.400
daytime show. Until I watched that
Homebrew doc this week, I had no

327
00:23:36.480 --> 00:23:40.519
idea that Patricks or viewer mail were
leftovers from the daytime show. I've barely

328
00:23:40.559 --> 00:23:45.400
seen clips of that. It's incredible, it's incredibly out there. There are

329
00:23:45.480 --> 00:23:48.039
yeah, yeah, yeah, if
you go on YouTube, there's They're not

330
00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:51.880
all of them, but a huge
number of them. And he and Meryl

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Marco a lot of the great stuff
from the Late night if not most of

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it, were established in the Morning
Show. And they had Andy Kaufman as

333
00:24:00.440 --> 00:24:04.680
a maybe his most one of the
most brilliant appearances ever was on the Morning

334
00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:10.319
Show. There's incredible Steve Martin appearance
they did. I'm pretty sure they definitely

335
00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:12.160
did stupid Patrick's first in the Morning
Show. I think they might have done

336
00:24:12.240 --> 00:24:15.559
viewer mail, a lot of the
man on the Street stuff. Hal Gurney,

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00:24:15.599 --> 00:24:19.960
the director started with him on the
Morning Show, started there. It

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00:24:21.039 --> 00:24:26.000
was the wrong time slot, but
they were trying things there that it was

339
00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:30.400
the blueprint was established there and just
when they figured it out, they got

340
00:24:30.400 --> 00:24:33.599
canceled, and I think that that's
what was the secret sauce to the show

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00:24:33.680 --> 00:24:37.759
is that by the time that they
started on late night, they had a

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00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:41.000
much better sense of what they wanted
to do than they would have if they

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did have the morning show. When
I recently watched Mullaney, I went for

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a whole ride here. So,
just to catch you up on my resume,

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00:24:45.880 --> 00:24:48.279
a big chunk of it, I
worked in talk radio w or New

346
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York and did a lot of phone
screening, which is relevant to what I'm

347
00:24:52.119 --> 00:24:56.400
setting up here. As I was
watching Mulaney, my initial reaction was,

348
00:24:56.440 --> 00:25:00.000
oh, my goodness, twelve thirty
Dave is back. This is so loose

349
00:25:00.079 --> 00:25:03.000
and goofy, and I loved it. And then I started screaming and this

350
00:25:03.079 --> 00:25:07.599
is arrogant. Somebody needs to produce
this thing. And my sticking point was

351
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when they went to callers, because
as a call screener, I can tell

352
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you civilians cannot take tell a story. And I'm screaming at my TV saying

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Jerry Seinfeld is sitting there. I
could have hosted that when hey, Jerry

354
00:25:21.880 --> 00:25:25.720
has that movie going and then shut
up for ten minutes. I would did

355
00:25:25.759 --> 00:25:27.599
you enjoy me? Lee? I
really think something's there. I'd like to

356
00:25:27.640 --> 00:25:32.160
see more of it just and maybe
this is counter to my whole twelve thirty

357
00:25:32.240 --> 00:25:36.000
Letterman argument a little more focused.
Oh, I'm with you. I really

358
00:25:36.119 --> 00:25:41.599
enjoyed it because I like novelty,
and I like experimentation, and I like

359
00:25:41.960 --> 00:25:44.720
things that are different. So I
was tiggled by it. And just like

360
00:25:44.799 --> 00:25:47.799
you it Fello. There are bits
of cable access, there are bits of

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00:25:47.920 --> 00:25:51.279
we just with super famous people.
There are bits of Lettermen there. But

362
00:25:51.759 --> 00:25:56.920
it was interesting the incongruity between the
critics reaction, which was pretty glowing,

363
00:25:57.319 --> 00:26:03.839
and normal people's action, which almost
most people who I talked to loathed it

364
00:26:03.920 --> 00:26:07.480
or found it unwatchable, including I
should say, I'm not going to name

365
00:26:07.519 --> 00:26:10.240
it, but it was on my
Facebook page. People who worked for the

366
00:26:10.279 --> 00:26:15.200
first Letterman show the wow that And
I think the reason for that is one

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00:26:15.319 --> 00:26:18.759
is what you're saying is that like
he indulged a lot. There was a

368
00:26:18.799 --> 00:26:22.079
lot of dead air. There was
like having the call in go on while

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00:26:22.079 --> 00:26:23.920
you have these other people on the
show. It was the thing that made

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it exciting, which is like anything
could happen here is also what made it

371
00:26:29.640 --> 00:26:33.960
can make it tedious, and if
it was on for a month or a

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00:26:34.039 --> 00:26:38.480
year, I think that would have
been more clear that that would become People

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00:26:38.480 --> 00:26:41.559
are now saying, oh, we
should do it full time. And I

374
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saw he did an interview where he
was like, I'm intrigued. But I

375
00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:48.039
think that this was great for a
week during a Netflix festival where they could

376
00:26:48.039 --> 00:26:52.000
get every star in the world on
it and it was a lark if they

377
00:26:52.039 --> 00:26:59.799
if it was a permanent thing,
I think its flaws that you've enumerated would

378
00:26:59.799 --> 00:27:03.480
be more clear. Yeah, I
wear many hats, and in my career

379
00:27:03.480 --> 00:27:07.400
as a podcasting executive and bec as
a programmer, it's serious. I would

380
00:27:07.400 --> 00:27:11.119
explain to people talk to me about
show twenty three, because even I can

381
00:27:11.160 --> 00:27:15.759
call in some celebrity favors and I
can book a great week of shows just

382
00:27:15.799 --> 00:27:19.200
for myself. What happens when it's
week forty seven? And to your point,

383
00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:22.079
Jerry Seinfeld's not in town. Who
are you talking to? Who's the

384
00:27:22.119 --> 00:27:25.640
guest? Now it's back on the
host. They'll sample for the guests,

385
00:27:25.640 --> 00:27:27.039
they will come back for the host. Is the way I teach that what

386
00:27:27.160 --> 00:27:33.160
let me ask you what how the
call in aspect what works in that?

387
00:27:33.240 --> 00:27:36.319
What do you have to do to
make that? Because obviously that was a

388
00:27:36.440 --> 00:27:40.759
huge part of popular culture for a
long time, that you now that was

389
00:27:40.799 --> 00:27:42.160
one of the things about that Lenny
Show that I was like, oh,

390
00:27:42.400 --> 00:27:48.039
I it's interesting that he's doing this. It's not quite working. But not

391
00:27:48.079 --> 00:27:49.920
only was that on talk radio,
but Larry King used to do it.

392
00:27:49.920 --> 00:27:52.839
It's so, what's the secret of
that? And how come there's not more

393
00:27:52.839 --> 00:27:57.640
of it? Callers are diminishing returns, so the call screener needs to So

394
00:27:57.680 --> 00:28:00.599
if I'm interviewing, Hey, Jason, what do you want to talk to

395
00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:03.559
John about? And I have to
get it out of you, and then

396
00:28:03.599 --> 00:28:06.400
I have to really try and coach
you and go Okay, when you get

397
00:28:06.400 --> 00:28:07.759
on, don't bother saying Hi,
don't say thanks for taking my call.

398
00:28:07.799 --> 00:28:10.720
He knows we really appreciate it.
I want you to open up, and

399
00:28:10.759 --> 00:28:12.680
I just want your first sentence to
be hey, da da da da da

400
00:28:12.759 --> 00:28:15.599
da da da. Now, I'm
still on a tight rope because you might

401
00:28:15.640 --> 00:28:18.039
get on the air and be like, hey, thanks for taking my call,

402
00:28:18.079 --> 00:28:22.559
and it just drags everything to a
halt. Unless you have a really

403
00:28:22.599 --> 00:28:26.519
good caller, you just want to
take their initial point and fade them out,

404
00:28:26.559 --> 00:28:32.000
and you don't need them other than
to facilitate a discussion. Point that

405
00:28:32.279 --> 00:28:34.920
said, back in the day,
there were regulars who knew how to do

406
00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:40.039
it, but most civilians can't tell
a story interesting. Interesting, Okay,

407
00:28:40.319 --> 00:28:44.839
no, that makes sense. Saturday
Night Live, turning fifty will Lorne Michael

408
00:28:44.880 --> 00:28:48.480
stick around. I'm looking at this
and going take the victory lap. You're

409
00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:52.279
eighty eighty one years old. It's
not going to get any better. I

410
00:28:52.319 --> 00:28:56.119
don't see anyone going. Season fifty
two was great, Lauren. I think

411
00:28:56.119 --> 00:28:59.319
you got to get out here.
People who know him, like Seth,

412
00:28:59.440 --> 00:29:03.119
seem to think he's gonna stick around. What do you think? The short

413
00:29:03.160 --> 00:29:06.599
answer is, I don't know.
But as you say, the people who

414
00:29:07.200 --> 00:29:10.519
are closer to it than me think
he's sticking around, and the people who

415
00:29:10.599 --> 00:29:15.039
know him better than I do think
he's sticking around until he can't do it

416
00:29:15.039 --> 00:29:18.680
anymore. And it's such a hard
thing to replace him. I think,

417
00:29:18.759 --> 00:29:22.839
much harder than people realize that.
I don't think, And God knows,

418
00:29:22.839 --> 00:29:26.240
no one's going to push him out, so I can. I guess we'll

419
00:29:26.279 --> 00:29:30.400
still be, but who knows,
we'll see Look We're all gonna have to

420
00:29:30.440 --> 00:29:37.519
be thinking and writing and talking about
SNL next year for a year a lot

421
00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:41.480
more. Let's not do it now
because we're all gonna have to do it

422
00:29:41.920 --> 00:29:47.839
next year a lot. Will Ferrell
Tina Fey in the top thirteen SNL get

423
00:29:47.960 --> 00:29:51.519
ready for all there's people who got
it are gonna have to watch every episode

424
00:29:51.519 --> 00:29:53.920
of all fifty years. We're gonna
have to write lists. There's gonna be

425
00:29:55.240 --> 00:29:57.799
there's a book, The Lorne Bio
is finally gonna come out next year.

426
00:29:57.839 --> 00:30:03.680
Wow, by bye, Susan Morrison
from New Yorker. That's probably like the

427
00:30:03.720 --> 00:30:07.920
most anticipated comedy book of next year. And I imagine that will be a

428
00:30:07.960 --> 00:30:15.880
big doorstop with all sorts of comedy
dirt in it. Even if it wasn't

429
00:30:15.880 --> 00:30:19.640
the fair V anniversary, that would
be week a big source of conversation.

430
00:30:21.519 --> 00:30:25.079
Did you say this thing? I'm
sure you did with Kimmel and Letterman developing

431
00:30:25.119 --> 00:30:27.400
a talk show for Lunel. I
just saw that before I jumped on with

432
00:30:27.440 --> 00:30:30.920
you. That's like a real life
Hacks episode. I looked it up.

433
00:30:30.960 --> 00:30:34.359
She's sixty five, and when I
watched Hacks my initial reaction and they addressed

434
00:30:34.359 --> 00:30:37.559
it was like, they're not going
to give Deborah Vance a show at her

435
00:30:37.640 --> 00:30:41.400
age, and here we are living
a Hacks episode. Yes, I did

436
00:30:41.519 --> 00:30:45.000
see that. Well, I'll believe
when I see it, and I and

437
00:30:45.240 --> 00:30:48.279
but I think, why not.
I feel like she's one of these people

438
00:30:48.319 --> 00:30:52.519
who've been around for a long time. I think I saw her open for

439
00:30:52.599 --> 00:30:57.720
Kat Williams at Barclays a little while
ago. I just saw her pop up

440
00:30:57.759 --> 00:31:03.039
in a movie from like the nineties. Anyways, I think she so,

441
00:31:03.160 --> 00:31:07.160
yeah, she's paid her dues.
She deserves a show, just like just

442
00:31:07.200 --> 00:31:08.960
like Debora Vance says, all right, three hours ago, I asked you

443
00:31:10.039 --> 00:31:14.160
if Nicki Glazer has stepped up in
class. I think yeah. I think

444
00:31:14.240 --> 00:31:18.920
that she was probably the big winner
of the Netflix weekend. I think,

445
00:31:18.319 --> 00:31:22.559
although it's funny, I think there's
one what was interesting about her week is

446
00:31:23.519 --> 00:31:30.400
she was the star of the roast
on Netflix and then she released a special

447
00:31:30.839 --> 00:31:37.519
on HBO Max on Max and which
raises the question why didn't Netflix have that

448
00:31:37.720 --> 00:31:44.519
special? And I do think that
that points to another issue, which looking

449
00:31:44.559 --> 00:31:49.039
to the future, which is is
are these other streamers going to start to

450
00:31:49.039 --> 00:31:55.359
eat into Netflix's territory and the fact
that they didn't have Nicki Glazer, which

451
00:31:55.359 --> 00:31:59.240
they did have her previous special,
and she clearly is still figure on their

452
00:31:59.359 --> 00:32:01.119
streamer. Was interesting to me.
Did she raise the thoughts? Yeah,

453
00:32:01.160 --> 00:32:05.319
I think so. But she's been
steadily building for a while. You could

454
00:32:05.599 --> 00:32:09.480
her reality show is doing well.
She has an incredible First of all,

455
00:32:09.480 --> 00:32:14.440
I think I find her very incredibly
consistent, amazing work ethic, talented in

456
00:32:14.440 --> 00:32:17.759
a lot of different ways. She's
somebody who I think could go in a

457
00:32:17.759 --> 00:32:23.599
different direction with a special, could
be more. She's so on talk shows

458
00:32:23.640 --> 00:32:30.960
she's so good and so revealing and
so introspective, and on specials she is

459
00:32:30.039 --> 00:32:34.559
sometimes, but she's usually just like
a killer joke, just an incredible joke

460
00:32:34.599 --> 00:32:37.440
teller. I feel like if you
could sort of merge those two things,

461
00:32:37.680 --> 00:32:42.960
she'd have a real blockbuster. It
was a weird week of press. She

462
00:32:43.160 --> 00:32:46.720
crushed so hard on the roast,
there was no buzz on the special.

463
00:32:46.960 --> 00:32:51.599
It was very strange. The special
kind of came and went and people were

464
00:32:51.640 --> 00:32:54.200
still talking about the roast. I
think that's partly us to do with just

465
00:32:54.319 --> 00:33:00.920
Netflix and alsoasts that roast guy.
So, although I don't know, maybe

466
00:33:00.960 --> 00:33:04.880
you can know more than I,
but I felt like I saw conflicting reports

467
00:33:04.880 --> 00:33:08.519
about the ratings. That's another example
of something that was like an hour too

468
00:33:08.559 --> 00:33:14.000
long that if it was not live, there's no question it would have been

469
00:33:14.440 --> 00:33:19.319
edited down an hour and would have
been better, and probably I would assume

470
00:33:19.319 --> 00:33:22.759
it would have got higher ratings.
But I saw some reports that I got

471
00:33:22.759 --> 00:33:25.440
crazy ratings. I saw others that
Cat Williams got better ratings. Now who

472
00:33:25.480 --> 00:33:30.880
knows but the but I don't.
I think her special didn't do worse because

473
00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:34.039
of that roast. I think because
it's like you're saying before, there's still

474
00:33:34.039 --> 00:33:37.319
a ton of people who don't know
Nico Lasers right, He's a tremendous and

475
00:33:37.319 --> 00:33:43.079
successful stand up comedian. But that
that rose still raised her profile because it

476
00:33:43.160 --> 00:33:45.079
was a thing that everyone was talking
about and it was trending for days.

477
00:33:45.640 --> 00:33:50.319
So ratings wise, I think I
saw what you saw the first weekend,

478
00:33:50.359 --> 00:33:53.880
that more people watched Kat quote unquote
live than the roast. But I saw

479
00:33:53.920 --> 00:34:00.759
something last night that vague numbers here, two hundred and thirty nine million view's

480
00:34:00.799 --> 00:34:05.720
eyeballs whatever the Netflix metric is on
day one, but it held that number

481
00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:08.960
all week, so it seemed like
it had legs off the buzz. I

482
00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:15.599
think part of Nicky and you brought
up Netflix versus HBO, HBO Max,

483
00:34:15.760 --> 00:34:20.679
HBO Max. They've goofed up the
brand. So this week Hannah Einbender has

484
00:34:20.719 --> 00:34:25.960
a new special. Normally HBO specials
come out Saturday at ten pm, and

485
00:34:27.039 --> 00:34:30.920
Hannah is this out on a Thursday. And then I started wondering, so

486
00:34:30.119 --> 00:34:35.440
is this not an HBO special?
Did she get a Max special? And

487
00:34:35.519 --> 00:34:37.440
what the heck does that even mean? And does it matter? And it's

488
00:34:37.480 --> 00:34:42.599
just it's confusing. Most civilians aren't
gonna care. But I just looked at

489
00:34:42.599 --> 00:34:45.159
it and I'm like, so is
this special? Somehow? I don't mean

490
00:34:45.159 --> 00:34:47.760
this is dig but like lesser,
it's not the equivalent of a Saturday night

491
00:34:47.880 --> 00:34:52.000
HBO special from back in the day. It's a Thursday Max special. I

492
00:34:52.079 --> 00:34:54.559
don't know. They've confused me.
Yes, No, I think they that.

493
00:34:55.199 --> 00:35:00.800
I think they've given up a lot
of the prestige of their brand.

494
00:35:01.440 --> 00:35:05.760
That said, or that's said,
and clearly like they're that the company is

495
00:35:05.760 --> 00:35:08.760
not doing well. They're going to
lose Charles Barkley and inside the NBA that

496
00:35:08.800 --> 00:35:13.599
are in debt. Right that said, all right, let's try to defend

497
00:35:13.599 --> 00:35:15.599
them a little bit, which is
that what I think they're trying to do,

498
00:35:15.639 --> 00:35:19.920
which is the smart move that they
can't compete with Netflix in terms of

499
00:35:19.960 --> 00:35:23.760
money and in terms of scale,
And now you've got Hulu coming in which

500
00:35:23.800 --> 00:35:28.639
is going to have a big special
every month, and they've already signed up

501
00:35:28.679 --> 00:35:35.119
people like Gaff again and Savashia Mescalco. What what Max is doing, I

502
00:35:35.159 --> 00:35:40.840
think is trying to get the kind
of slightly ardier dar Carmichael, Julio Torres,

503
00:35:42.239 --> 00:35:47.280
Hannah Einbeinder. They're not going for
the biggest mass appeal in a way

504
00:35:47.320 --> 00:35:54.920
that I think is consistent with their
traditional brand writ large, but it doesn't

505
00:35:54.920 --> 00:35:59.760
mean the same thing that it did
in the seventies when they had the whole

506
00:35:59.800 --> 00:36:04.039
market it to themselves, or the
nineties when they had Chris Rock and it

507
00:36:04.079 --> 00:36:08.719
was like a major events. Those
days are gone, so now the big

508
00:36:08.719 --> 00:36:13.199
events tend to be on Netflix.
So what do you do if you're a

509
00:36:13.239 --> 00:36:16.119
secondary streamer? And I think they
have a decent strategy, and that's I

510
00:36:16.159 --> 00:36:20.760
think what I like. I agree
with your point that it's a mess and

511
00:36:20.840 --> 00:36:24.159
confusing to be a consumer of comedy
these days and to fight where everything is

512
00:36:24.719 --> 00:36:28.639
and I think in a couple of
years is going to look different. And

513
00:36:28.679 --> 00:36:34.199
what I hope it looks like is
that each of these platforms has a personality,

514
00:36:34.760 --> 00:36:38.960
has a style, and people who
want that can go there right what

515
00:36:39.000 --> 00:36:42.599
it will probably be will not be. That will be a mess. So

516
00:36:42.599 --> 00:36:45.320
that's why I like the fact that
h that Max, even though it's not

517
00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:52.039
Friday, seems curated in a specific
taste. Well they had even in this

518
00:36:52.119 --> 00:36:54.559
century, maybe not for comedy,
but for drama shows that they could have

519
00:36:54.559 --> 00:36:58.920
thrown this conversation on Sunday night at
nine pm and people would have sampled it

520
00:36:58.960 --> 00:37:01.079
and assumed it was prestige. Maybe
it is, maybe it's not, but

521
00:37:01.239 --> 00:37:05.119
we would have gotten the goodwill off
the first episode. People would have tuned

522
00:37:05.159 --> 00:37:07.800
in. That's true. That's true. No, it's interesting. I didn't

523
00:37:07.800 --> 00:37:12.519
realize about that Hers was coming out
on Thursday. That's I wonder why.

524
00:37:13.199 --> 00:37:15.199
All right, let's take one more
break here. Don't forget you can get

525
00:37:15.199 --> 00:37:16.599
these shows add free. You know, four ninety nine a month gets you

526
00:37:16.679 --> 00:37:20.519
this and all the other things on
the network. Link in the show notes.

527
00:37:20.559 --> 00:37:24.079
Go to Calieroba dot com slash plus
check it out. Maybe you can

528
00:37:24.119 --> 00:37:29.639
help me sort my feelings here.
I've been struggling with this one. As

529
00:37:29.639 --> 00:37:34.719
close as I've gotten is special versus
hour. So every comedian tweets out,

530
00:37:34.960 --> 00:37:38.440
hey, check out my new special
on YouTube. And if we graph everything

531
00:37:38.440 --> 00:37:42.440
out, at one end, I
don't know, there's Carlin at Carnegie,

532
00:37:42.840 --> 00:37:46.119
and at the other end there's I
happen to have a still camera at the

533
00:37:46.199 --> 00:37:51.840
Chuckle Hut Tuesday night at ten pm, and everyone's using the word special,

534
00:37:51.880 --> 00:37:54.159
and I have got a new special. I don't even know what I want

535
00:37:54.199 --> 00:37:59.480
from you, but help me not
everything is a special that. It's very

536
00:37:59.519 --> 00:38:04.199
fuzzy these days. Right, here's
my glass half full version. I feel

537
00:38:04.239 --> 00:38:07.280
like it's the best of times,
the worst of times. There's more specials

538
00:38:07.320 --> 00:38:12.480
than ever now are more releases than
ever, and the goods part of that

539
00:38:12.880 --> 00:38:17.400
is the funniest comedy out there.
Doesn't tend to be the most famous people

540
00:38:17.800 --> 00:38:22.239
for totally boring reasons. They have
other things to do then work on their

541
00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:27.320
jokes, right, They're busy,
right, So the people who tend to

542
00:38:27.320 --> 00:38:32.199
be have the most worked out jokes
are the kind of mid career comedians who

543
00:38:32.239 --> 00:38:38.239
have trouble getting a Netflix deal,
right, and now they have a place

544
00:38:38.519 --> 00:38:45.559
and an outlet to release their stuff
YouTube, right, so you see people

545
00:38:45.760 --> 00:38:52.360
like Nathan McIntosh who or the next
one I saw is Renon Hirschberg, or

546
00:38:52.559 --> 00:38:57.519
who has one coming up soon,
Liz Meal. These weren't a time where

547
00:38:57.559 --> 00:39:00.199
these people. Now you can see
their stuff not only as eavy as you

548
00:39:00.239 --> 00:39:05.360
can see the stuff in HBO,
but easier. And I think that's a

549
00:39:05.360 --> 00:39:07.159
good thing. And I don't want
to stay oither and that's not special.

550
00:39:07.199 --> 00:39:10.960
And this is special because not only
is it not true that they're worse there,

551
00:39:12.440 --> 00:39:15.920
in many cases they're often better.
But two, it's like, cool,

552
00:39:15.039 --> 00:39:20.320
what's the point in policing these genres? I do think we'll look back

553
00:39:20.320 --> 00:39:22.400
and we'll say, man, there
was more bad comedy then than ever,

554
00:39:22.480 --> 00:39:28.840
but there's also more great comedy than
ever. It's harder to find the good

555
00:39:28.880 --> 00:39:31.679
stuff now because there's so much of
it. And that's part of our job

556
00:39:32.360 --> 00:39:37.000
is to be like, hey,
like, all right, everybody knows Joe

557
00:39:37.079 --> 00:39:40.360
Rogan and the Roast and all this, but that's not really the best comedy.

558
00:39:40.760 --> 00:39:45.960
Nobody who knows comedy thinks that's the
best comedy. That's increasing to the

559
00:39:45.960 --> 00:39:47.639
point that we started with it,
which is like all right, how have

560
00:39:47.719 --> 00:39:52.559
our jobs shifted? We've got to
cover the big stuff because that's what people

561
00:39:52.559 --> 00:39:54.800
want to read, and that's important. But I think we have an increasing

562
00:39:54.840 --> 00:39:59.320
responsibility to be like, Okay,
let's look at what's going on in these

563
00:39:59.559 --> 00:40:02.559
on YouTube tube, on TikTok,
etc. And find the good stuff.

564
00:40:02.880 --> 00:40:07.000
You've been incredibly generous with your time. Let me pick your brain and I'll

565
00:40:07.079 --> 00:40:12.880
let you go about comedy snobbery when
I ran serious comedy. So I'm sitting

566
00:40:12.880 --> 00:40:15.280
at a desk five days a week, got the radio on from May to

567
00:40:15.360 --> 00:40:21.239
six. All I'm hearing is the
best stand up comedians performing their best material

568
00:40:21.280 --> 00:40:23.960
that they've pressed. And it fried
my brain. And I call it the

569
00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:28.519
Emperor of Rome syndrome. So if
I go see a show, I don't

570
00:40:28.599 --> 00:40:31.400
laugh. I am now a psychopath, but my brain is analyzing and going,

571
00:40:31.719 --> 00:40:36.000
oh that's hilarious, and I'm thinking
it just in the manner I did.

572
00:40:36.119 --> 00:40:38.360
Oh that's really funny, Oh great
callback, Oh wow, this is

573
00:40:38.400 --> 00:40:43.360
an awesome set. Has doing what
you do? Has it fried your brain?

574
00:40:43.719 --> 00:40:46.239
It's a really good question. The
short answer is yes, that when

575
00:40:46.280 --> 00:40:49.920
it becomes your job. First of
all, if you see comedians in the

576
00:40:49.960 --> 00:40:52.480
back of comedy clubs. They don't
laugh right the way regular people do,

577
00:40:52.920 --> 00:40:58.159
and it's no different than people like
you and I who do. Often you're

578
00:40:58.199 --> 00:41:01.760
not the best audience member. One
weird phenomenon of my job is I feel

579
00:41:01.840 --> 00:41:06.199
bad sometimes I think something's funny,
but I don't laugh, and I know

580
00:41:06.239 --> 00:41:08.840
it makes me a bad Sometimes I
fake laugh, just like if it's if

581
00:41:08.840 --> 00:41:14.880
I'm in a small room where the
laugh really matters, or having someone stonefaced

582
00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.679
is like going to disrupt the proceedings, like I'll fake laugh, which I'm

583
00:41:19.679 --> 00:41:22.880
not as convincing as a fake which
comes up ridiculous. You do what you

584
00:41:22.920 --> 00:41:27.519
do. But so I do think
that it's a danger of the job,

585
00:41:27.719 --> 00:41:30.880
which is you, and it's something
you have to be aware of and you

586
00:41:30.960 --> 00:41:37.400
have to factor in because you don't
want You want to be in touch with

587
00:41:37.559 --> 00:41:43.480
both your honest reaction to something and
also what how the ordinary consumer receives the

588
00:41:43.559 --> 00:41:46.760
stuff. I like it's self justifying, but I tend to think that the

589
00:41:46.800 --> 00:41:52.960
advantages of being experienced and well versed
in comedy and knowing the vast site of

590
00:41:53.000 --> 00:41:58.599
the history of the form and seeing
enough to know what's good versus bad must

591
00:41:58.639 --> 00:42:04.480
ambitions is not what didictable, what's
cliche? All that stuff outweighs the negative

592
00:42:04.880 --> 00:42:08.119
of becoming of not laughing quite as
much. And I also will say this

593
00:42:08.719 --> 00:42:14.360
that like the moment when you aren't
excited about seeing something, the moment when

594
00:42:14.400 --> 00:42:20.199
you get cynical or jaded about comedy
is when you when I'll quit. So

595
00:42:20.800 --> 00:42:23.440
that's something you got to always be
kicking the tires on, or I have

596
00:42:23.519 --> 00:42:27.840
to be kicking the tires on which
I do. Have you ever run into

597
00:42:28.119 --> 00:42:30.639
I ran into this early in my
career, not so much lately, but

598
00:42:30.920 --> 00:42:34.400
hey, you're not a comedian.
How come you're doing this and all this?

599
00:42:34.519 --> 00:42:37.000
And I was explaining, like,
I don't play guitar, but I

600
00:42:37.039 --> 00:42:42.000
can recognize that Eddie van Halen's pretty
good at it. Like I'm not claiming

601
00:42:42.039 --> 00:42:44.119
to be a comedian. I'm a
dude in a basement. Or I was

602
00:42:44.159 --> 00:42:46.840
a radio programmer. I don't know. Yeah, that doesn't bother me the

603
00:42:47.079 --> 00:42:53.320
If anything, I consider it a
benefit of plus because uh uh, in

604
00:42:53.320 --> 00:42:59.159
the fact, you'll never find me
doing the gimmick piece of oh. And

605
00:42:59.159 --> 00:43:02.320
then I went and tried stand up
and I bombed, and I learned how

606
00:43:02.400 --> 00:43:08.079
much I respected that to me,
respecting the artists, whether it's a comedian

607
00:43:08.199 --> 00:43:13.840
or whether it's a theater artist or
a film artist, is becoming as good

608
00:43:13.880 --> 00:43:17.760
as I can be at my job, which is fundamentally different, like comedians

609
00:43:19.760 --> 00:43:22.199
couldn't. Comedians are good at what
they do, and what I do is

610
00:43:22.280 --> 00:43:25.840
quite hard as well, And it
also looks easy, right, Just doing

611
00:43:25.880 --> 00:43:31.239
comedy is easy or looks easy,
but is actually incredibly hard. Being a

612
00:43:31.239 --> 00:43:37.039
critic covering an incredibly diverse, complicated
field is and then translating that into prose

613
00:43:37.400 --> 00:43:44.800
that both the expert and the casual
fan can understand without limiting the complexity of

614
00:43:44.920 --> 00:43:49.239
a nuance. That's very tricky,
and that's enough of a challenge for me.

615
00:43:49.559 --> 00:43:53.119
And I actually tend to think that
not being a comedian helps me in

616
00:43:53.239 --> 00:43:59.079
that job, besides the fact it
reduces the conflict of interests and keeps your

617
00:43:59.079 --> 00:44:04.880
independence, etc. But I think
that it's a fundamentally different skill set.

618
00:44:05.400 --> 00:44:07.679
And so when people say, oh, you're not a comedian, I said,

619
00:44:07.719 --> 00:44:10.320
that's right, I'm not a comedian. Yeah. Sorry. When I

620
00:44:10.360 --> 00:44:15.480
was programming the stations, and I
still program for Live one, I wanted

621
00:44:15.480 --> 00:44:17.960
to make sure I was coming in
at civilian eye level, and the civilians

622
00:44:19.000 --> 00:44:22.880
are listening to Jim Gaffigan. You
and I can go to a club and

623
00:44:22.920 --> 00:44:25.320
be too cool for school and deep
dive. But it's the same thing I

624
00:44:25.400 --> 00:44:29.559
brought up nine times, But play
the hits. No, You've got to

625
00:44:29.719 --> 00:44:32.239
look. I don't understand people who
do it my job. I know there's

626
00:44:32.280 --> 00:44:36.679
some of them who say this,
and I respect a lot of them,

627
00:44:36.960 --> 00:44:38.480
or I respect all of them who
it's hard. There's a hard job.

628
00:44:38.920 --> 00:44:45.440
But my audience, my primary audience, is the reader, and there I

629
00:44:45.440 --> 00:44:50.000
don't see. The comedy world is
not my community. I'm a journalist who's

630
00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:55.039
working in my and my audience is
the reader. I have obligation to be

631
00:44:55.079 --> 00:44:59.639
fair to the artists, and I
know I hear from them, and I

632
00:44:59.719 --> 00:45:04.239
know I want their respect as I
want anybody else's respect. But I do

633
00:45:04.280 --> 00:45:08.199
think it's important for people, just
as I think it's important for comedians to

634
00:45:08.280 --> 00:45:12.760
see their audience their primary audience,
not they're only audience, their primary audience,

635
00:45:12.800 --> 00:45:15.480
as they're people sitting in front of
them are watching their special that I

636
00:45:15.519 --> 00:45:21.639
have to think about what the reader
wants first, and when I get away

637
00:45:21.639 --> 00:45:23.960
from that, I think I could
run into problems. So yeah, I

638
00:45:23.960 --> 00:45:28.480
think there's room. People have different
points of view on this, but but

639
00:45:28.559 --> 00:45:32.960
yeah, it's funny because I'm a
critic, but I'm also a reporter,

640
00:45:34.119 --> 00:45:37.920
so I talk to comedians interview them. I learn a lot from that that

641
00:45:38.199 --> 00:45:44.000
helps me understand what they're trying to
do. There's value in that, but

642
00:45:44.079 --> 00:45:50.000
there's also value in independence and distance, and you sometimes can see and you

643
00:45:50.039 --> 00:45:54.440
know, comedians frankly understand this better
than other artists because they're often critics of

644
00:45:54.920 --> 00:46:01.400
whatever social conditions, politics, whatever, and they can often diagnose something more

645
00:46:01.400 --> 00:46:08.159
perceptively than people in the newscan because
they have or journalists can because they have

646
00:46:08.239 --> 00:46:14.400
a little more distance. So distance
can be an advantage as well, and

647
00:46:14.480 --> 00:46:19.519
it keeps you out of the fights. There are enough to name particular names.

648
00:46:19.599 --> 00:46:22.639
There are comedians who do really well
and aren't respected by the brick wall

649
00:46:23.320 --> 00:46:28.400
cigarette smoking crowd in the village,
and I will name names. I worked

650
00:46:28.440 --> 00:46:31.679
with the blue collar guys. Larry, the cable guy, Dan is the

651
00:46:31.760 --> 00:46:36.400
nicest guy you'll ever meet, unless
Jeff Foxworthy is in the room. They

652
00:46:36.400 --> 00:46:39.039
are awesome people, and you know, I've been backstage with them, and

653
00:46:39.159 --> 00:46:44.039
Larry would write Jeff a joke that
just didn't work for Larry's act, and

654
00:46:44.079 --> 00:46:45.880
Jeff would write something a little naughty
and pass it back and forth. And

655
00:46:47.079 --> 00:46:51.159
they're not They're just trying to make
people laugh. They're not going, oh,

656
00:46:51.360 --> 00:46:53.719
Larry the Cable Guy, this is
high art, like it's just jokes,

657
00:46:53.760 --> 00:46:58.920
and some of that, especially in
New York, that bitterness about somebody

658
00:46:58.920 --> 00:47:01.559
else's success would get fatiguing. You
know what else, Larry the Cable Guy

659
00:47:01.599 --> 00:47:07.599
is good at what he does.
I've when I wrote about them, I

660
00:47:07.679 --> 00:47:12.840
made a point of I went to
Beaumont, Texas to see that tour.

661
00:47:13.440 --> 00:47:16.239
I didn't I wanted to go to
like there, and I watched all of

662
00:47:16.280 --> 00:47:22.199
them, and Larry, I believe, came last. And I think that

663
00:47:22.360 --> 00:47:25.639
was the right move because he's a
he's a killer, and he is an

664
00:47:25.679 --> 00:47:32.519
incredibly dense, punchline rich set.
Not every joke is great, but if

665
00:47:32.559 --> 00:47:36.079
you don't like it, another one's
coming down the pipe fast. You know,

666
00:47:36.119 --> 00:47:39.760
it's not like the hippis obviously brand
of comedy, and it's a character

667
00:47:39.880 --> 00:47:45.239
driven comedy, which it feels there's
it's you don't see it quite as much

668
00:47:45.800 --> 00:47:49.079
in the clubs as he used to
but anyways, the Yeah, I think

669
00:47:49.119 --> 00:47:53.199
it's the kind of journalism that I
do, and not everyone has to be

670
00:47:53.360 --> 00:47:58.679
like this, but I try to
have Catholic tastes. I try to meet

671
00:47:58.840 --> 00:48:02.039
artists where they are. That doesn't
mean that everything is equally good, but

672
00:48:02.639 --> 00:48:07.119
I think that's part of the fun
of the job is seeing people of artists

673
00:48:07.119 --> 00:48:14.800
of wildly different genres, aesthetics,
ambitions. That's what makes this fun to

674
00:48:15.119 --> 00:48:20.360
follow. I love that you went
to Beaumont when I first put together Blue

675
00:48:20.400 --> 00:48:22.480
Collar Radio. The first time I
met them, I went to see a

676
00:48:22.519 --> 00:48:27.599
show. The show was a Nashville
and I specifically asked them, please don't

677
00:48:27.679 --> 00:48:30.039
vip me. Put me in the
upper deck with the civilians. And I

678
00:48:30.079 --> 00:48:32.440
sat there and I paid attention,
and I was just trying to take the

679
00:48:32.519 --> 00:48:37.920
vibe in. And I always remembered
the two things that got big applause where

680
00:48:37.119 --> 00:48:42.679
y'all ever been to the Walmart?
A mention of Jimmy Buffett and a mention

681
00:48:42.800 --> 00:48:46.119
of Elvis, And I factored that
into my programming. Whereas the Raw Dog

682
00:48:46.239 --> 00:48:50.760
Channel was if it were a person, maybe it would be Bill Burr and

683
00:48:50.800 --> 00:48:53.280
a real fu in a rock and
roll kind of vibe. And blue Collar

684
00:48:53.400 --> 00:49:00.119
Radio was god Flag country veterans,
straight people by acker barrel, straight down

685
00:49:00.119 --> 00:49:04.760
the middle, and it did tremendously
well. Yep, yep, No,

686
00:49:04.880 --> 00:49:09.800
it's true. And that's one of
the great things about stand up is that

687
00:49:09.920 --> 00:49:16.800
you've got all these regional forms that
are that do well. Sometimes I worry

688
00:49:17.320 --> 00:49:22.840
that the internet's sort of flattening that
out. And I wrote a story last

689
00:49:22.920 --> 00:49:30.840
year about how the internet is the
Internet hurting distinct local scenes because there used

690
00:49:30.880 --> 00:49:34.519
to be like Boston at a specific
aesthetic that you could have SA San Francis,

691
00:49:34.519 --> 00:49:37.519
which was different than San Francisco,
which was different than DC, which

692
00:49:37.559 --> 00:49:40.840
was different than Nashville. But now
since everyone is in the same room together

693
00:49:42.519 --> 00:49:45.639
online, this idea of oh,
the comedians and my senior are the only

694
00:49:45.679 --> 00:49:49.599
ones I know coming up is obsolete? And is that going to stand off

695
00:49:49.599 --> 00:49:53.199
the edges of local difference? And
I don't know some people I talked to,

696
00:49:53.239 --> 00:49:57.800
some people in various local scenes who
suggest that's happening. And there's so

697
00:49:58.000 --> 00:50:01.679
much out there. We're nearly an
we're in and we've really only talked big

698
00:50:01.719 --> 00:50:06.519
comedians'. We haven't talked alt,
we didn't talk improv, we didn't talk

699
00:50:06.559 --> 00:50:10.079
sketch. We didn't talk one person
shows like somebody like Natalie Palamini is just

700
00:50:10.119 --> 00:50:15.599
doing amazing work. There's just so
much out there. I just saw her

701
00:50:15.760 --> 00:50:19.800
new show, which, I'll be
honest with you, I was like,

702
00:50:19.840 --> 00:50:24.159
how can she top Nate? But
I saw her new show which at the

703
00:50:24.159 --> 00:50:28.480
Netflix Festival in la and it was
the best thing I saw there. It

704
00:50:28.519 --> 00:50:32.480
wasn't finished, but it was thrilling. Hard wait to see it when it's

705
00:50:32.519 --> 00:50:37.480
done. It's basically like a rom
com where she plays both She plays both

706
00:50:37.519 --> 00:50:42.920
parts of this romance, and the
physicality of it is incredibly inventive. I've

707
00:50:42.960 --> 00:50:46.679
neversed anything like it. Yeah,
the whole clowning scene is boom. That's

708
00:50:46.679 --> 00:50:51.000
just great. Jason. You've been
very generous with your time. I hope

709
00:50:51.039 --> 00:50:53.199
you'll come back down the road when
there's an excuse for me to ask you

710
00:50:53.280 --> 00:50:57.159
to come on again other than just
hey man, want to fill an hour

711
00:50:57.199 --> 00:51:00.239
for me. But this was fantastic
thing. This was incredibly fun. Thank

712
00:51:00.280 --> 00:51:02.519
you for asking, and it's great
to have a conversation with someone who knows

713
00:51:02.519 --> 00:51:06.400
their stuff. He was fantastic.
I enjoyed the heck out of that,

714
00:51:06.440 --> 00:51:08.960
and he was very gracious with his
time on this program. Tomorrow a look

715
00:51:09.000 --> 00:51:13.719
at the best comedy specials of the
year so far. See it then