125: Hidden ingredients with John Oliver | Soder Podcast | EP 123

hey everybody hope you enjoy the episode today golden retriever of comedy tour still going strong this week dallas you sold out you sweet sweet beautiful city houston we're going to be there friday oklahoma city on saturday dan soda.com for tickets and the tour keeps moving along huntington beach we added a show in long island dan soda.com for those and then i will see you in charlotte durham cleveland columbus the cities that keep on coming dan soda.com all the shows are listed go buy tickets uh before we tape this hour i hope you get to see it this has been easily the greatest tour time on the road i've ever had in my life so come check out these shows dan soda.com enjoy the episode john oliver was really cool also a huge garbage time fan we didn't get it on camera but he popped when he saw katie's hat and that made me very happy my dog has this favorite treat that's like a brain game for her where we just start recording um it's a my my father-in-law bought her this it's like a ball that you put a treat in and then they figure out how to lick the treat very right it's great for dogs they love it like a brain game is that kind of it's like proving yeah it like it stimulates her in a way we live in an apartment she doesn't have a backyard you have to find ways so that she's not like i want to jump out of this fucking window and and you get to get a sense of whether your dog is i'm gonna eat all of this i'm gonna find a way to digest yeah whatever this is it's pure primal motivation okay of her going i'm gonna get this treat this is the most delicious thing on the planet so we loved it my father-in-law bought it we're like mike this is great you know you refill it it's problem is it sounds like a truck stop blowjob so when you're in the room with her all you hear is like and i you know i was very excited you're coming on the podcast and i was doing a little all right what do i do with myrtle during the podcast i don't want her bothering people and i go i'll give her a treat and then we're going to get you and i just hear like and i'm like i can't have that it's the background noise of me and john oliver talking because when you're that specific about a reference that is not something you can ever forget you can't forget that and that'll stay with you i'm talking about a working truck stop i'm talking about a lot lizard before they automated the trucking industry who i'm talking at its peak can you please deep dive into what's going to happen a lot lizards with a highway automated it's going to be a problem there's going to be a period of adjustment like i need you doing 35 a lot like like in any industry there will be a period of transition and you need to take care of the baseline workers who are not expendable that's the thing yeah these women can't drink oil that's going to kill them you can't have them sucking off robot truck drivers they'll die that oil will erode their their esophagus their stomach they will die you have to it's like any workforce they need to be protected this is why unions exist this is hello hello unions i'm tired of saying it where are you unions you protect the hookers they've always protected the hookers they the barnacle on the ship yes of unions that's right they've always protected the hookers they've always protected the hookers they've always protected the hookers they've always protected the hookers they've always protected the hookers they've always protected the hookers they've always protected the hookers they've always protected the hookers they've always protected the hookers the barnacle on the ship yes of unions that's right are our sex workers don't tell me that the oldest profession in the world cannot survive automated trucking because i don't think that's going to be true could you imagine if sex workers actually unionized and became like as strong as the teamsters they've tried like there have been moves towards it yeah i wonder if only fans put the money in a place where they go we really have to unionize this i would maybe maybe because that's what unionizes anything when a lot of money comes into it like with stand-ups right like when they when they tried it in la and they tried it here too it didn't work it didn't work at all because here's what they didn't just like sex workers yes there's always a comic willing to take less that's the problem you are dealing with two groups with a lot in common the the venn diagram of sex workers and comedians both think that the other group is not an ideal way to earn a living both are right and wrong in equal measure nothing will hurt your confidence more than just a streetwalker and indianapolis going what are you doing that's right 50 every year i heard that set was rough last night hey hey hey i'm still we're both standing outside a steak and shake but only one of us is going in for a frisco melt yeah it is um that's i would say my problem with the the stand-up of the last 15 years were how many people over inflated its importance oh how do you mean like people going like no the world needs standing oh that is oh my god that is sure that's an over inflation well past bursting point that's what i mean it's never been a need to stand up most of the time we were just there as a way before we got executed yes that's right you go you don't see cave paintings and a guy standing at the side saying what is up with those mammoths he's like fire bad and other other other other came out and gone zach i've seen the fire bad we all know that you've just got the confidence to say it to people oh yeah the sky god chose you the industry yawn the saber tooth when you last week tonight uh you know i mean i've i've known i got to do your stand-up show which was great yeah which was uh thank you for that of course i think new york city there's a generation of new york city stand-up comedians that genuinely in fact you know who i was on the phone with today nate bargetzi and he said john oliver got it before a lot of people how how so how old how so about his stand-up people weren't booking him to do stand-up oh sure sure yeah and you put nate on yeah i think that was like that's what i mean there's a whole generation of us where i think comedy central might have not really warmed to the idea of us doing a lot of sets well sure and it was a push at that quote no it was that it was not always an easy sell yeah with comedy i remember in that first season uh i think there was they had some pushback to maria bamford being on i think what if we're going to argue about this we're about to have some really rough arguments because this is there is no discussion to be had here well what i liked about it is a lot of the times and and it's so different now because there is no industry in there or the stand-up industry has fallen to like people doing youtube and making their own right where there really isn't that person that go there isn't the caesar's thumb there isn't the yes they can be on tv no they can't be on tv what you did and what i loved about the show and being a part of the show was it was unrestrictive in a way that late nights weren't yeah for sure that was always was always great about the edinburgh festival in the same way because all the international festivals there is a season thumb involved like you get invited to montreal i think that barely functions as a festival in the true sense of that word right uh melbourne much closer to like that festival atmosphere but still curated internationally there is still a person saying yes or no edinburgh it is an open door policy and you'll get all the good and all the bad that comes with that and the bad makes everything better now i got to do my first fringe in 2019 and the advice i got from every comedian was go watch shows yeah because there are going to be times where you feel so insecure and horrible and then you're going to be times where you're like i don't think we're in the same field where you just watch it and you go yeah what did i sit through yeah but it was something that i i had been underexposed to uk comedy and what i saw there really opened my eyes to like it's kind of the way that new york used to on l.a all the time when i moved here we're like la they suck they don't write jokes and then colin quinn was like they perform their asses off yeah and you don't appreciate it and then you see it and you go oh they're way better performers than we are right and they should be they're where tv and films are made sure it makes sense we're in a tight room writing jokes yes in new york city and i think that the extreme on the other side of that is what was happening in the uk certainly there where there is almost no polish into a fault it's it's almost like pieces of wood passing themselves off as shelves there it was one time uh katie and i were at a concert in brooklyn and we were looking for a restaurant and we went to this place that looked like a very nice restaurant and we said hi can we uh can we see your food menu and the guy gave us a menu and went i want to let you know all our food is fish in cans and we were like we're gonna go to the restaurant and we're gonna go to the restaurant and we're gonna go to the restaurant and we're gonna go to the restaurant and we're gonna go to the restaurant and we're gonna go to the restaurant and we're gonna go to the restaurant and we're gonna go to the restaurant why would we eat here why you're just gonna hand us a king of the sea and then i gotta drain it like what is just push a grade c rating across the table it's crazy they go if it's sick it's really your fault you opened a bad can but i had a feeling like that when i went to the uk and i was like oh you guys are just putting raw materials on stage now some of those people you're like that might be one of the most talented people i've ever seen in my life people that can hold a room yes and also it becomes like a part of like a biological clock that you do edinburgh each year so the idea is you make an hour yeah ditch it make an hour again if you're not better in five years this was not the field for you well there are also people that you see it and and then there's there's parts of me like where you're like i wish you would have had three years with that hour yeah oh for sure because there's because you're like blown away but you leave going like i left coming back knowing a whole lot more people of being like oh i think my uh relationship with stand-up was fundamentally changed by seeing all those shows definitely and i think it becomes so there's different ways to treat it and there's different ways it's being treated either as a launching pad it can function for a very few people for that but it will definitely get your learning curve steeper and there's nothing you want more when you're starting to have comedy than that you just want to get better faster yes and it is a it's a speed run on you really running an hour michelle wolf though uh because her and michael che were the two people i was closest to that had done it and she was like when you come back you're gonna feel like a superhero and i came back and the first set i did i was like oh i was like oh my god because uh uk audiences listen there's a weird thing that they do that that fucks you up as an american whereas americans you're fighting when you come up in the clubs here you're fighting uh chicken wings uh drink specials buckets of beer yes you guys don't fight buckets of beers but your audiences are going see it out i remember reading about what do you call it the check check spot oh that's how i came up here yeah that's how i made my bones in new york yeah that is that really does put you in your place as a performer saying let's clear these checks before you finish so if you can allow for the transaction taking place that is the bedrock of what we're getting here a full transaction a full transaction you're bringing a man american express in a visa mastercard they're getting involved you might be splitting a check at a table dude i can't tell you john how many times i watched people split like three buckets of beer and it was me just bombing in front of patrice o'neill when he's waiting to go up this is the thing though isn't it like you say like this goes back to you saying people putting stand up on a pedestal like this is the most important profession really no really i'm not sure other key professions are dealing with a check spot no one is going hey as we plan our invasion of i want you all to look at your cable bills i've got all your cable bills we didn't have a bucket of this and then what's funny is now even with the check spots now comedy clubs are doing a thing where they're going put your phone in a bag so now we're watching the american public education system fail in real time when people have forgotten long division oh sure because they don't have their phones and they're going 40 divided by four you go divided by four come on we're standing at it oh it's just a decimal point over we're guys what is this that's where the disappointment lies that's where i could have told you our educational system was on the rocks 15 years ago where i go i'm watching the math in the room this isn't there you go there's the stand-up functioning as the canaries in the coal mine or the observers of the canaries yeah and this thing if you can't slide the decimal point we're in trouble as a society we are the lunatic that runs into the saloon when that solar flare knocks out electronics the purge is not going to take a business day but i will tell you how much we can split it by i will tell i'll show you the old school division ways of doing that i mean i think when you go from the daily show to last week to yeah last week tonight and you start doing these in-depth pieces did you watch the people around you like start recommending things that they want you to see oh uh death you mean like right now recommending stories or like recommending like someone you like your uncle being like oh hey what's up with this bill there was take this apart i will never forget this i was doing stand-up somewhere and this woman came up on a plane so i've got an idea for a show that is the thing where you think what exactly are we doing here you should really look into child protective services and like my instinct is i don't know man that's real dark she starts talking about it like three minutes later going i will look into that also that is such a i need to hear more because which angle are you coming from because they took my kid yeah and they shouldn't have taken my kid and you know i don't think you want a story how are you smoking on the plane yeah she goes oh i got a whole theory i got names i mean that's that's what i think um you know what's great is you guys write it so well and it's so funny and it's so funny that that's what i think is like um what journalism has to do now well it's like find a new way like a candy coating for that can send you in some dicey directions though i know that is i don't like it that is not journalism area to make it entertaining and it wasn't the fourth estate was supposed to be boring but so is policy so we're the majority of the vast majority we are aggregating the work of good journalism to then build something different right to try and put a whole bunch of stuff into one place and then write jokes on top of it but in doing that you might be interested in this like we want to put the writers in a position to succeed where it is possible to write jokes yeah in the pot and we we've got better at that like the first few years occasionally we were giving writers just the worst ingredients for story and saying so write jokes and you can see the point of saying i can do this maybe four times then i i don't know how you think there is nothing i can work with here to get to something funny so we try and make sure that we're at least giving them material like an episode of chopped that could yeah you that could make a joke without you're not doing you're not doing iron chef and giving them a car motor yeah and you want to make that edible yeah and you want to write about the material not have to write jokes off to the side all the time yeah because then you just like throwing flares out saying oh here's a funny thing not connected to what we're talking about at all you can get away with that a couple of times otherwise it feels like you're making two different shows i think that's why a lot of us feel so crazy right now is because we're making the clowns be the parent at the birthday party well that is definitely true because i think the inversion that's taking place over certainly the last say 10 years 10 years is that it used to be you would take something of substance and then you'd put sugar into it but now what you have to do is kind of turn that around and take something which is sugar based and reverse engineering to tell people why it's actually important yeah why a very dumb thing this very ridiculous human being has said is actually very important and i think that's like um you know everyone does the thing this happens every uh time but they go why isn't john stewart running for office and you go that's not the question you don't the question is why are we so broken that that's what we're looking to as the fix yes how about the adults in the room start doing policy making should be boring and not sexy yes so this goes as far back as kennedy trying to make the president cool i don't want the president to be cool yes i want him to be boring absolutely absolutely i want him to go like here's how we're going to fix health care and you go i just can you just fix it yeah my tolerance for the president being cool has got pretty pretty low now and it was like going back and looking at it it's like that scene interstellar where matthew mcconaughey is like screaming at the bookcase that's how i feel when i see that clip of clinton playing sax on arsenio i'm like now you're trying to make him cool and then he's just kidding he's like i'm gonna get my dick sucked in the white house you never want even with some of the obamas you never want to you don't want to be part of that group and they want to try and suck in celebrities and people in the arts and people from sports you just you never want to be that close you want to be at a as a personal remove personally i like a remove in general but also you just don't want to be in a position to be charmed by someone that you are eventually going to have to criticize you're putting too much cheese in it it's like where every american restaurant goes we added cheese it's like the new applebee's thing where they go art we cut our hamburger in half and then we just let it sit in a soup of cheese yeah and you go it's too much cheese right that's how i've always felt about when actors try to get political you go you're a professional liar you're a liar telling me which liar to pick i don't like any of that that's too much cheese i just can i get fucking can i get a salad feels to me like you're working out uh a cheese bit a cheese bit in real time that's too much cheese and then i look to the camera that's your hamburger i wish i had a hamburger john oliver if i had a hamburger i would be saying that's just that's too much that's too much cheese that's out to the crowd too much cheese good night if you think this episode's not gonna be called too much cheese you're fucked in the head because that's too much i know and the problem is it will haunt you because you'll think you've moved past the too much cheese bit but that crowd ain't gonna be ready no no no you come back and you do the too much cheese and then i get into a war with craft because they don't like where the new album's going but i got too much cheese and i want to know where the cheese is coming from man what does the too much cheese guys talk about i have absolutely no idea it's a pavlovian response ding-a-ling-a-ling all i know is i've eaten so much cheese i'm diabetic and i can't have fucking that's right yeah i'm trying to put i'm big cheeses behind my catchphrase how's dan he's a prisoner of his own success you'll see oh the cheese just look at his new poster he's huge in wisconsin to a problematic extent if you don't know where the cheese is coming from it's the house that he bought with all the cheese money it's outside it's in daily city it's a gigantic house and he is not happy in it no dairy no dairy allowed in it don't say the word dairy he'll find dairy um my question that i always love that i love asking especially comics that are from a different country that come here is when it's done well it's very refreshing when someone comes to the united states and goes like what the fuck are you guys doing dude were you worried when you came here about the fact that you didn't like the way it was done or were you worried about when you watch other comics do it poorly because there are comics that come here and go like fuck your president and you go well yeah as an american there's some comics where i go why do you i did i had a different relationship pretty early on with the country because i knew that i wanted to stay here before my immigration status made that a certainty or even a probability sure so i was talking from a slightly different position not as a tourist more as like someone who was trying to take ownership sure and as A British person taking ownership of a country historically has some red flags attached to it. I don't know what you're talking about. It doesn't matter. No, there's a whole reason that a continent a full world away worships your queen or your king now. I remember last year when Trump was talking to the president of Liberia and said, it's amazing that you speak English. And you go, oh, there are historical reasons for that dude that you do not want to get into and you will deny after being presented with the facts. Buddy, you're going to find in the last 200 years, the English has been pushed in a way that we're not too comfortable with. Teaching English as a foreign language to a genuine fault. That's always like when one of my friends goes, why are there so many Mormon Samoans? And you go, let's not. Do you want to? Do you want to? Because it can't be a short conversation. I don't think it's that they thought they were cool, that they got caffeine sucked too. Yeah, so I found that I wanted to come here not just as an external critic, but a critic from the inside. So I started changing the way that we were writing those chats at the Daily Show often went for the first year or two. It was often you, you, and the jokes were pretty reductive coming from you're doing this. And I then gradually changed that to we, because I've been there for long enough that you can't really play that card anymore. I remember talking to Ronnie Chang and saying when he first got here, saying it'll take about a year for you to like understand after doing stand up here a lot, what position you are occupying in terms of talking from, if that makes any sense. Yeah, that's, that's fascinating because, you know, I think when I went over to the UK and I was in, I did some shows in Ireland and I did some shows in London and then fringe finding that like, yeah, it's very tempting to come in and go, what the hell are you guys doing? And by the way, I'm guilty of it. If you were at any of my shows at the Soho Theater, there was like me going like, you guys run out of ice. And it's like a very American, you know. But of course, I think that's just a function of being in a place for a short amount of time. And you realize, and whether you're asking questions, of like, why do you do this in any kind of good faith and being interested in the answer? Yeah. So that's where it gets much deeper. Yes, because I've also seen just people come here and then they go so hard in the paint against our government and don't let up for so long that you go, you're almost like snap out of it and you go, motherfucker, you don't vote. Like there is that, and that happened to me early on when I moved to New York because I had the feeling, obviously it's not the same feeling, but when you move from outside New York to New York City, which you were experiencing at the same time as you're coming to the country, there's a feeling, New Yorkers are very like, yeah, why'd you look up? You know, you go, well, it's a giant building and they go, hey, don't look up. It's like a little thing where you go, that's such a natural response to be blown away by the architecture and then they go, it's fucking idiot. And you're like, I didn't know. Look at him. Look at the curiosity on this little deer's face. Yes. Oh, country mouse. Back to the woods in New Jersey. Yeah. And I'm coming from Colorado. My favorite thing was I had an ex-girlfriend whose whole family was like, New York, New York, New York. Like, I'm talking about five generations in a borough. So they're very like, you know, and her mom would talk to me like I was a mountain person. Like she would go like, she would say something. She'd go, do they have that in Colorado? And you go, yeah, we have streets and hospitals. You'd be blown away by the infrastructure that we've been able to build on the side of our mountain. It's flat if you've ever been to Denver, but there is this feeling of like, so I kind of understood. We've done it with less oxygen than you, which is more impressive. We also get storms thrown at us from the mountains. Like it's some sort of like Zeus is casting down lightning bolts. Fifth Avenue is icy. That must be tough. Oh, but these people don't know how to drive. You guys don't know how to drive. You're cutting people off at every fucking moment. Not once. You know, what's funny is the lamest I ever felt moving to New York was the first time I drove. And someone let me in a lane and I waved. And I was like, I shouldn't have done that. Yeah, that is some Midwest. That's some bitch shit. You do that in New York and you go, I guess I'm going to pee sitting down for the next week. You know what? Let's not just let New York ruin all manners everywhere. You could reintroduce the wave. Yeah, but that would be- You're pushing it. Just do it with confidence. I'm telling you right now, John. I am. I'm thankful you let me in. I refuse to be humiliated by expressing my opinion and my gratitude. Good day to you, sir. Thumbs up to you. I would tell you that would have to pair with a couple of assaults, very public assaults, to let people know, this guy doesn't fuck around. Really? You better wave back. New Yorkers only respond to violence. Just to be clear, Dan, I don't think that is the acceptable exchange rate for a single wave. Two assaults? No, one assault. No, it's a one for one. Okay. One for one. One assault for a wave for being let in. If the wave goes wrong. I'm just saying that the assault has to be the insurance policy on the wave, where if you wave and they don't wave, then commit an assault. I think that is a race to the bottom and you end up in the purge again. Okay. But what can come from the bottom but nothing but up? Oh, you're saying things got so bad, burn everything to the ground. And then the wave will be installed first. We're certainly tantalizing with that as a society, saying, could we purify this with flames? We could. Should we? That's a much, much more complicated conversation. Everyone look at your phone. The flames are grabbing everybody. You look at your phone and you go, the flames are everywhere. I can't fucking get out of this. Were you, when you moved here and you'd be, you know, you're working at The Daily Show doing standup, was there ever a, I want to just go back to the UK? No, never. Never. Never. Because I wonder at what point it pulls you. Like, do you go home and you go, ah, it would be nice to be here or spend more time here? No, not really. I mean, it's, I will say like, this goes back to what you were just talking about. The idea of being an outsider is helpful in comedy, right? You see things in a different way. So that becomes, there's a high function to that. So expressing yourself as an outsider while increasingly not feeling that way is an interesting position to write comedy from. Also, just being at The Daily Show at that time, that was pretty much the high watermark for doing the kind of television that I was interested in. So I'd done so many terrible versions of that show in England and I worked as a writer on bad, bad, bad shows. Oh, just clear knockoffs? This goes all the, yeah, but not without, with any sense of what the thing you're trying to knock off is fundamentally built on. I remember this goes right back to what you were saying earlier on. I did one terrible version of The Daily Show. We were writing, I remember this goes right back to what you were saying earlier on. We were writing a, writing a show where the host, there was one comedian, there was one newsreader and immediately that's not, you think that's a good idea from the outside. Sure. It's immediately a problem. He, he can't do this. He, not only does he not have any kind of comedic cadence, also he shouldn't be anywhere near this. We were doing this one. So wait, the newscaster was buttoned up. Was it one of those things where you had a, a straight man and a comic? Yes, but he, but was he, was the straight man trying to be funny? I think what they were trying to do was, well, let's do fake news in its most pathetically reductive form. I was on a real newsroom and a comedian, but he literally, you would pitch him jokes and say, I can't say that. I've got to read the news tonight. When you're right, you can't say that. So maybe you fuck off. So maybe this entire idea is fucked. It's a different job. Yeah. You shouldn't, we are tainting you by your presence here. So you shouldn't be here. You're actually the problem here. This ointment is fine. You're the fly. That is, to me, that's when actors try to do standup. But I think what they were, for sure, but I think what they were trying to do was emulate John, who was very clear about what he was, that he was a comedian in that job. Yeah. So all of those articles about America's favorite newsman, you're, you're putting that on him. There's a very clear consistency, albeit very clear, singular editorial point of view running from him through the show. So it was a total misunderstanding of how you make these shows. Now, when you get to your point of actors, I'm not sure that I've seen a single, maybe, but it doesn't count. I was going to say Jim Carrey's Andy Kaufman, which doesn't matter because it doesn't, of course, because he's paid his dues. He came, also, there's also guys, what's crazy is I think it's a very weird relationship acting and stand-up are where I think great actors can come from stand-up. Right. But I don't think great stand-up can come from actors. I think, I think when actors. Unless they've done it, right? That's the thing, unless they've done it. Well, that's what I mean. I mean, starting off, your base, right? Your base starting at stand-up, I think you can grow to be a great actor. Leave Michael Keaton, Tom Hanks. For sure. I think there were a lot of people that started doing stand-up that left it behind and became world-class actors. I've never seen an actor leave acting and become a world-class actor. I've never seen a world-class stand-up. Oh, yeah. Because the base is like so unimportant versus acting. Well, and also, it must be hard to start stand-up as a famous person because you're starting with an unhelpful amount of credit in the bank from an audience, right? Exactly. You can't help but disappoint them gradually and also, you're not going to fail in the ways that are important to fail to get good. It goes back to right what we were saying at the start, right? You need to be chiseled in the kiln of catastrophic failure. You need to be comfortable being painfully humbled. Yes. Painfully humbled. And I think that's why rich kids who start businesses never do well because they're like, when you hear about some famous person's child is starting this fashion brand, you go, well, I hope someone else is running it that started a small business and has failed because these rich kids, it's, you know, he sees me talk about this all the time, but I call it the mafia boss son. Like, Gotti's son could never be in the mob. He can't run the mob because the guys he's around, they're like, - Right. - We killed people to survive. And he's like, "I didn't get a Rolls Royce i was 17 right like it's just off tony got it from his dad but aj wasn't getting it from tony exactly that's exactly it like tony kind of saw the sopranos is like one of the best examples of it because aj you go well i don't want him to be a mafia member i want him to be a kid from the bird also torn sopranos that is an objectively funny show very so like pound for pound so many more laughs in there than it's ever given credit for and also on the rewatches you realize that there's like pratfalls that aren't supposed to be pratfalls like there's like the way bodies fall or like the way noises they make you go that's funny like i know we're in a serious scene but like the way tony will beat someone up and like do some of his hands and you go that's hilarious it's buster keaton if he bled yeah yeah someone said that was the pitch there you go i i don't know where this world's gonna be but it's buster keaton if he believes what if he's hanging off the clock but he's dislocated his shoulder visibly but the guy that owed him the money is holding him you yeah it is i mean i i think there is like when you go back and watch i like humor as a flavor i don't like it as a base when it's supposed to be something important right i think that's what we're kind of talking about definitely like i don't think you have if you're gonna be funny you add the sugar on the yes i don't i think that's why i love maria bamford so much because it's relentlessly funny yeah just constantly relentlessly funny but it is built on top of really dark truths yeah and interesting points of view something that always to me in uh people that are just funny it doesn't even have to be stand-up comedy is i always liked finding people that were funny because they had to be because it was a self-defense mechanism totally be like whether it be like uh depression or yes you know uh you look at maria bamford and you go she has to be funny to survive yeah yeah or else her brain would have taken her down years ago and i love watching that and that's why i like one of my favorite albums of all time is unwanted thoughts syndrome which she records at the ucb yeah yeah yeah and she just like it's basically like try to follow her you try to follow her and you're like i can't follow her line of thinking but every it's like she turns and does a bit turns and does it and every movement is funny and she's one of my favorite of all time yes and what's funny is to take her and go like i want her to do qvc for real that's what it feels like sometimes where they're like no i'm listening to this person for real and well she's very loudly mentally unwell i think you should probably just enjoy her being funny yeah she's the but that's where we're at now where everyone is accessible what i love about last week tonight is you still do the thing of like hey we got an episode coming out yeah so it'll be coming out yeah well also there's no like early on there was they were asking hbo saying can maybe it'd be good to like you know like some late night shows say what guest is on you say well you could say what you're gonna be talking about i think that is not inviting people in that is a repellent yeah if we say we're talking about mobile home financing well that is a hard skip for me this only works because it's like an audience that is then trapped and you're like i you have to trust us we've been working on this for a month and a half this is going to be funnier than it sounds for the first four minutes what if we put a little soccer ball icon when you guys talk about fifa let her know it's coming and you go no you can understand it from their point of view of course that is the way that marketing works however i promise you it is best if you don't list the word no one's gonna order it we're coming out with this flavor don't tell them juvenile justice for 50 minutes oh wow okay honey set the dvr sunday night and i'm tired john oliver's talking about roofing i can't wait to spend 50 minutes learning about the roofing industry is it worse than i think oh thanks where are the jokes here though shingles can cause cancer or shingles itself and then you're like oh what the fuck got worse during reagan okay oh fun um did you ever was there ever something that you were working on that you went this might be too dangerous like have you been dangerous yeah because sometimes you go into big shit where i feel like you're investigating in a way that does uncover some stuff that probably pisses people off sure you can't probably my better question you can't care about that though i genuinely do to my bones don't care i don't have a physical reaction to it like some i admire when we were i think it's just a night like when when we were doing one of the pieces on the sackler family i think at one point they called up demanding to come into the office like no you can talk to our researcher on the record that's so funny and that the sackler family thought they could come in and talk to you what was more chilling is you realize that that was their move it's like i'll get we go into the building well you're not coming to the b you can talk to the reason our researcher on the record you can do that i know you can talk to her on background but no there's a process here and it doesn't if if you think this is going to be a charm offensive please let me save you a trip i think i love that they thought they're going to come in there go how you doing have you ever been to our wing in the museum exactly come take a look at it and you go you started the opiate epidemic like you created oxycontin and ruined most of the rust belt in america i think that's always you know something that i was fascinated by beth macy's book dope sick and talking about the sackler family was this idea that they would always go we'll get out of this yes like a houdini also there's the amount of sacklers who in the research that people say oh we're on a different side of the family went to different side of the family how but we don't talk to those cousins and yet when the inheritance comes down you all get wet yeah they go you're gonna make sure you're on that side of the family when no when david dies my hands are clean yeah i think we disagree on what the word clean means can i tell you one of my boredom things you know i i i started hating social media pretty quickly being forced to do it or whatever but i found that i was a little bit after i read dope sick by beth macy one of my searches was i would go to one of the members of the sackler family because they were like an influencer and i just read the comments i know who you mean yeah and i just read the comments because i would watch her delete them in real time yeah they'd be like blood money and she'd be like new dress dropping and they're like i lost my mother to heroin because of you and then it's like okay that's not a sexy comment and watching that made me yeah i know this is sick but it brought me this like weird weird joy of like fuck yeah they should be pushing at that point when there was almost nothing to hope for in the way of justice it felt like that was the most justice you could hope for a stain yes even if it wasn't going to be a legal process you were going to be stained by it i think we're going to be going through that a bunch with this administration and what they're doing what a stain is going to have to follow some of these people for what they're doing for the rest of their life can i just tell you the system won't catch up to them i know i you're absolutely correct that the justice system won't my where i have to individually take responsibility is just hope hope that in two years my career isn't going so poorly that caroline levitt's sitting there and i'm going yeah it is a bunch of bullshit you know what i mean and going talking to mike going clip that that was real good well that was real good when i said that vanity therapy was bullshit you know what i mean like can i tell you that's where my worry is the algorithm likes it when you carry water for the trump administration who are we to argue with it john the views are through the roof yeah but it's like there's a part of me that like that's what i fear is that like oh god i hope i can fucking dig my you know because you don't everything gets turned around and these people do try to go like you don't genuinely fear that no that's a hundred percent of joke yes that's right there can't be any part of your moral compass yeah i genuinely try to hope i won't spit on these people like it's you know what i mean like there are people that i watch that make me so angry that i go i know you don't mean this well so there that goes back to what you were saying about like the process of comedy i don't know how i could do the kind of journalism that people that we speak to do without knowing at some point we're going to try and write a joke about it because it puts you in such an emotional spiral that's why i don't fuck with things get darker and darker like if we didn't as crazy as it can seem from the outside to try and write jokes about incredibly depressing world events i don't know how to deal with depressing world events without them i've always been um a big fan of watching comedians like bill hicks or like doug stanhope take these heavy heavy ideas they make very funny and i also think that was one of the first instances where i realized my restrictions where i go i don't think i can do that i don't because i think i get so fired up that it's like oh it's just gonna be me yelling it's not gonna be me oh really yeah my my humor comes from more of like an airport bar energy of like we're just sitting around bullshitting okay but i've never been the person i and i admire this in in comedians that they go i have a problem and i think i'm gonna have a funny part and then a solution and a funny part because i just go well then we just tear their eyes out and they go that's not funny at all you go right right it's not funny well i'll work backwards from there you go okay back up a little bit that's right just i can frame it in a different way but just know in my head my fingers are not going to be the same way i'm not going to be the same way that my fingers are in someone's sockets well yes when i was at serious xm and they would tell people they would like brief us when we were doing the show of like this person's going to be in the building i'd be like i'm afraid i'm going to shit in my hand and throw it at him like a champ you might have to keep i think it was steve bannon the first time he was coming through and it was like 2015 but i was just watching him and i'm not a political guy but i was like i was just kind of watching all the fuckery which by the way now that all the epstein files are out and we're finding out that not all not all not all of them but we're finding out that the culture war was manufactured by these people that's what i'm saying it makes me feel less crazy because at the time it was making me feel so crazy i go i know you don't really mean this i was just watching on the way over here dan gino's uh a video about to say it's it's just i can't wait to see every move that you would think you make listen when you get in there things are more complicated oh they're more complicated are they yeah than the reductive self-serving way that you sold it well no shit first off hell's hot but it's a dry heat and no one talks about that it's not humid satan and a lot of people don't know this he's in it he's frozen it's just about regular hydration it is that's really what it is you have to hydrate you just can't be outside the whole thing's air conditioned what are we worried about here demons is such a negative word what they are they're spirits we're all demons yeah it's sure it's a boiling river of blood and alexander is drowning in it for eternity or he's having a soak you gotta look at it differently that's what i mean of like how good we've gotten at like ignoring part of your brain and just going like just going like this is fine it's that meme with the dog with fire around it being like this is fine yes you go i don't think it is yeah and it's that that is it can be maddening on the outside and what i am glad that some people are coming to a realization yes in the wake of minneapolis of what this administration was always capable of it is more than a little frustrating yeah to hear any element of surprise about something that in this administration's defense they were openly considering 10 years ago yeah so it's absurd to and again i'll take people opening their eyes any way i can but to open your eyes and say nobody saw this is a lot of people well that's that's just funny because they go like uh they're like they're they're running on monster trucks should be driving around in the city i want to see monster trucks driving and you go i don't think that's a good idea and 10 years later they go my car got crushed by bigfoot and you go well yeah i told you monster trucks shouldn't be driving around the city no idea that they were doing they go really i don't know i think i'm going to defend them here yeah they they implied it pretty strongly i think you were willingly not listening what's it what's interesting is is everything is a pendulum so it's going to swing back of course it's going to swing back and what's going to be interesting is in 10 years if you if when it swings back to where the left is you go guys don't forget because in a lot of ways the the bad shit was a quick reaction to we're finding out it was all actioned yes i i would say like in terms of the pendulum it's always worth remembering it swings then back again right i think the most naive i was i've been is that after that first six months to a year of covid where it was clear that for many people who had not been watching systemic issues were exposed and undeniably laid in front of them i did remember thinking oh if we get through to the other side of this maybe we have a once in a generation chance to actually address systemic issues and we're going to have a chance to actually address systemic issues and we're going to have a chance to actually address systemic issues and oh man did i not give americans credit to go we can move straight on from this don't worry that is the most british thing you've done is you've gone well there'll clearly be a lesson at the end of this i know i'll change you go have you ever been on a double loop did he loop you go brother this roller coaster ain't over we're going backwards there you go how do you think you could do a loop did you loop backwards you go brother it's the only reason i came here i know that really is the feeling where you just if you've ever gone on a roller coaster it goes backwards you're like why are you doing this you're like i'm not doing this why are you doing this it's what so that is the one you know shining city on a hill gets vastly overused and was never really applicable in the way that reagan described it sure i will just say if this america if america is anything at its best and worst it is the double loop it's the double loop just get ready no one else would even think of doing it no do you go a loop is enough and america goes two loops and we're doing it again two loops do backwards and we're not fucking around we're not fucking around at all um and that's the cheese we gotta find that i forgot what the catchphrase was not enough cheese um when you uh as far as stand-up goes are you still doing stand-up i am i used to just get to do it every uh over the holidays i would do like a run up into new year that became it was a way to keep doing it it was also immensely frustrating because i would jump up a bit at the start of that week and i would do around clubs to try and remember how to do it oh it takes a few gigs of doing it uh to get anything close to competent by the end of it i've kind of fallen back in love with it and then have to stop doing it for another year yeah that was very frustrating so now once a month i do the beacon with seth oh yeah and uh brooks wheelan yeah and brooks as well and so uh he's the best and so now i get to do it at least once a month and that's probably the minimum amount i can do it and still feel like it's at my fingertips yeah i love that i just like uh i like seeing guys that i always like doing stand-up knowing they're still keeping their foot in it because nothing bums me out as a comic i like it's like i don't do it anymore you go why are you not doing i couldn't i was why you're not doing it is i genuinely feel that way i don't know understand why you wouldn't i remember my my wife when just before we got married i was working long hours of the daily show and uh i was doing non-stop stand-up so it's before we had kids it's an understandable conversation to have with her saying why why are you going out and doing two shows in these shitty rooms tonight and that that why has an answer but it's one that you know it's because it's where i'm happiest yeah it's because uh you know it scratches an itch it's immediate gratification immediate gratification it's there are lots of reasons to do it but it also feels like as part of a broader conversation i can i can and probably should do it less given how much i'm working at this other thing it's just a tough balance god what a relationship conversation that i'm not joking every comedian has had with a significant of course where they go every night you go every night i know i live this shit and finally they go will you live with me i know it took katie being like come on this is crazy it's entirely fair because i think she's right i think it is i think it is a little bit crazy and i think there is a healthier version of it that isn't the version that feels the best i started taking you know what i think you're absolutely right and also what it does is it it lets your gas tank fill up yeah definitely so then you go do stand-up and you go i have all these real situations i've lived in that help me write my jokes and that's where you realize the level of addiction stand-up can be at times because it is like saying oh really heroin heroin again today why it's not just a weekend thing yeah oh no we're doing it on a monday okay this might be a problem i remember um you know i quit drinking 13 years ago and joe list uh fantastic comedian he uh he quit before me and we were drinking buddy and we used to drink every night of the week yeah and we would take sunday off and we'd see each other monday and we go look at us being healthy and that's how it started to feel with stand-up i would be on the road i'd come home and do shows on sunday and then i took sundays off for the first time and i was like work life balance and then and then i started dating katie and we started getting together and she was like all right so you're gonna do five shows thursday friday saturday why are you doing monday tuesday wednesday i think she's right but i was very very very resistant it's a tough relationship it is it's tough because it's tough to be walked to the fact that you you're wrong it's crazy how quickly it's quickly how misogyny pops in where you go this dumb bitch telling me not to and you go wow oh it's because she loves you yeah that's where you go and you go oh she loves me and just wants to spend more time with me maybe i should go and analyze that maybe i shouldn't be seeing this as an attack exactly that's genuinely what it was where i go oh this isn't an attack she has so many times had to like a like a wild animal come up with the hands of grain and go hey hey buddy i just want you to be around more and i'm going like i'm just breathing heavy and kicking my fucking leg um dude thank you so much for doing also that must be the moment where she's having an internal dialogue with why do i want this wild animal around because it seems like i honestly think if there wouldn't have been covid that was the moment where we were together so much it was like great all right and then when i came back she softly was like maybe do spots yeah the other day i was like i'm not gonna do that i'm gonna do night and then it worked and i started liking it more and now i have this like much healthier balance with life look at you now look at us now i'm in the cheese game we're doing all the way in the cheese game i'm i'm pretty deep in the cheese game pretty pretty confident i'm gonna have caroline levitt booked in two years if she's not dead by a mysterious force if you don't get spotted by little baby bells from this episode baby bell where the fuck are you and capitalism doesn't work i mean honestly i don't even think america does the experiment is over give it back to the king we're fucking charles that's it that's all i want for any interview is to have someone say give it back to the king my work here is done you check in i'm off to do andrew schultz you go back i'm gonna get them all collect them all like pokemon uh you're the best dude thank you for coming on you're fucking hilarious i love your work thank you for real when they said you were coming on i was like no way and i cannot wait to tell katie that you popped seeing the garbage time hat that's the first thing i saw when i got in here start the online petition bring back garbage time show yes it should never have gone it should have never gone oh we're gonna you gotta clip that immediately uh you're the best thanks dude appreciate it awesome you