Month: October 2026

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Featured: Bill Burr, Patrice O’Neal, Tracy Morgan, Dom Herrera, Louis C.K., Dave Attell, Jim Norton, Jay Leno

What’s in This Episode

• Bill Burr’s 2006 Philadelphia Comedy Festival rant and standing ovation
• Patrice O’Neal’s influence on Bill Burr’s comedy philosophy
• Late 1990s New York City comedy scene and honest performance style
• Patrice O’Neal’s career highlights and Chappelle’s Show appearance
• Bill Burr’s Monday Morning Podcast launch in May 2007
• Patrice O’Neal’s death in November 2011 and Bill Burr’s tribute

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. It is from 2006 in Philadelphia. You might already know where I’m heading. It starts with Bill Burr walking out in front of a drunk afternoon crowd that had already destroyed everyone who came before him. Tracy Morgan bailed after seven minutes.

Dom Herrera got booed from the jump and the crowd was fully hostile. By the time Bill Burr stood up, he was supposed to do a set and he didn’t. Instead, for 12 minutes, he unloaded on the entire city of Philadelphia. The sports teams, the fans, the stadium, the culture, the character, the population. It’s an escalating, profane, furious monologue that went so far and stayed there for so long that by the end of it, the crowd gave him a standing ovation.

He won them over by attacking them. You don’t stop talking, do you? I’ll just cook this side for a while. I’ll just. Do you know what’s funny?

I’m cooking my brain talking about nothing. I’m just walking around like, yeah, I just got a cheeseburger. You know what? I hope you all die, and I hope the Eagles never win the Super Bowl. How’s that?

No, I’m segueing into my next joke. You can all relic my friend nuts. All of you. You can line up in your Harold Carmichael jerseys. People on acid.

Be up here talking about Hitler. That ain’t going to work. What do you want me to talk about? Throw out some topics.

Let’s talk about heart disease.

Something you’re all going to die of. And I’m going to laugh at your funerals. It’s going to be great. You’re all going to get cancer, which is fantastic because all your heads are shaved anyways. No one’s even going to notice.

You’re going to get fired for coming. To work too late because they’re not going to notice that you have bone marrow cancer. The only thing that’s going to give it away is me laughing at you in the background. You bunch of losers with your cell phone pictures. That is the Bill Byrd template.

That’s the thing he figured out in the grinding years. He’s not performing anger. He wasn’t doing an angry character. He was an angry person who figured out how to make that anger funny. The real thing in the performed versions of anger are different objects.

Audiences, the good ones anyway, know the difference. Philly knew the difference. That’s why they gave him the standing O. Not because he was nice, because he was real. Bill Burr, born in Canton, Massachusetts, June 10th, 1968.

He graduated from Emerson College in Boston, same school as Jay Leno, with a degree in radio. In another life, he could be hosting a podcast in a basement. Bill Burr worked in a warehouse after graduating, started doing stand-up in Boston clubs in 92, moved to New York in 95, and spent the rest of the 90s doing the thing you do in the city. You get every open mic you can, every late spot, every bar show, you hope someone notices you. Now we’ve got to talk about the late 90s New York City comedy scene.

Patrice O’Neill, Louis C.K. Dave Attell, Jim Norton, a specific generation of comedians. There’s a vibe there. They developed in proximity to each other. Argued about comedy constantly and pushed each other toward material that was more honest and less polished than what the commercial comedy infrastructure was asking for.

Bill Burr absorbed all that. The anger was already there. That comedy scene gave him the framework to turn it into something coherent. Bill Burr was friends with Patrice O’Neill. I’ve said on this podcast many times that I did not enjoy Patrice O’Neill’s company, so I’m not going to lie here and say that I never said that.

But Bill Burr was friends with Patrice O’Neill, and that’s who we’re talking about today. They were close friends who argued about everything. Bill Burr said in multiple interviews and on the podcast over the year that Patrice O’Neill changed the way Bill Burr thought about being honest on stage. Not just what to say, but the philosophy of why you say the true thing instead of the safe thing. Patrice O’Neill believed that performing a softer version of your actual beliefs is a form of dishonesty that the audience can feel even when they can’t articulate it.

Patrice O’Neill. What I’ve loved about him is he’s fat and arrogant. It’s the oddest combination I’ve ever seen in my life. He refuses to do comedy. He actually feels that he’s above it.

I will not do comedy. Patrice, your whole act is perfect for that show. You do 11 minutes, you pretend to talk about Russia.

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And then you do 52 minutes of pussy jokes.

And you won’t do comic view? I mean, Patricia, you’re so comic. You got a deal for your own TV show. You blew all your money on a pinky ring, a used Cadillac, and football jerseys. And you won’t do comic view?

Patricia, you are comic view. Why don’t you. At least get your teeth fixed? Bitch, you have the worst teeth in entertainment. None of them match.

I worked in a dental office for five years. I’ve never seen anybody with a molar in the front. You have no business having a headshot. I heard Feller called. He wants his old teeth back.

Look at the space between his front teeth. He looks like a fat 50 Cent. I’m just, I gotta. Do this thing, I’m getting the most crumbs here. Patrice is fat.

Patrice has that awful fat person bad breath where you don’t know if the smell’s coming from his mouth or the folds in his neck. Patrice’s breath smells worse than Jim Norton’s chest. I make fun of Patrice. I make fun of Patrice only because I’m jealous of his career. Seriously, he’s doing great.

He just booked the lead to the sequel to Mighty Joe Young. Spielberg got a little TV in the late 90s. Standard stuff. Late night with Conan O’Brien, an acting role here or there. Some credits.

He had this great appearance on Chappelle’s show in 2004, which put him in front of an audience that was paying attention in a big way. Do you remember this one? All right, coming up now are the Jews. Many have speculated about their pick. I’m guessing they’re going to pick Madonna and finish off the job Kabbalah started.

Yes, well, Rob, she was born and raised Catholic. Then she became a whore. But over the last decade, she has studied the Kabbalah. And she even wrote a Kabbalah’s children’s book. Chappelle Show audiences didn’t just watch.

They memorized, quoted, and passed the clips around. Being on Chappelle Show in 2004 was a specific kind of credentialing. When Patrice died in November 2011 at 41 years old, Bill Burr’s response was public and clearly not promotional. He helped organize fundraisers. He talked about the loss on the podcast for years.

The grief was real. The influence was permanent. And you can’t really understand Bill Burr without understanding Patrice O’Neill. Bill’s new theater tour kicks off February 21st with six shows at the Wilbur Theater in Boston. I swear to God, you are hilarious every time I see you.

And I want to make sure we get this out. The Patrice O’Neill benefit is next Tuesday at the New York City Center. And this is very important. Yeah. This is something that you’re doing to.

This is going to raise money for Patrice O’Neill, one of the great, great, funniest stand-ups ever. Funniest comic I ever saw. Unfortunately, passed away. I’m going to try to get through this and. It’s all right.

That’s all right. By doing this, you’re going to raise. Money for his mom. Money for his mom. And his wife.

And this is huge. This is huge. Patrice O’Neill benefit next Tuesday at the New York City Center. You’re a hilarious man. More important, you’re a very good man.

Bill Burr, thank you very much. You had a great time. Bill launched the podcast, Monday Morning Podcast, May 2007. That puts it in the same early podcasting era as Marin.. Whereas Marin’s show was about conversations mostly with other comedians, Monday Morning Podcast was Bill Burr alone, talking to his audience, ranting about sports and relationships and whatever was in his head that week.

Hey! What’s going on? It’s Bill Burr. This is my podcast. And Bobby Kelly set it up.

Isn’t this interesting? Listen, I’m going to figure out how to do this thing. And if it’s already bored, you just hit the stop button. The format is essentially the podcast equivalent of the Philadelphia rant. It works because Bill’s interesting and the voice is genuine.

It’s not the biggest podcast that hasn’t redefined the medium, but it has kept going. In 2012, Bill Burr founded the All Things Comedy Network with Al Madrigal. That’s kind of the modern template. Comedians building the infrastructure rather than waiting for the infrastructure to come to the comedians. It gave other comedians a home under the umbrella that Bill Burr had already built.

Bill’s first major special is Why Do I Do This? In 2008. Voice is already fully formed the anger is already doing the structural work and you can also see some of the edges still being worked out. We’re gonna end up like china they got like over a billion people just just jam-packed every day it’s like the subway if you just stand there you can’t even fall asleep just jam-packed you never think about that just standing i’m gonna be sitting there. First of all how easy is.

It to get away with the crime over in china you know first of all you pick somebody’s pocket you don’t you don’t have to run away just weave your way back in the crowd stand over here. It generated its first wave of criticism from women’s groups over bits about relationships and violence. Bill addressed it on the podcast and then moved on.

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Let’s get to the complaints this week, everybody.

Some lady just absolutely lost her mind. That would become a pattern. A lot of Bill controversies over the year. 2010’s Let It Go was tighter and more willing to go somewhere uncomfortable and stay there. 2014’s titled, That would become a pattern. A lot of bill controversies over the year. 2010’s Let It Go was tighter and more willing to go somewhere uncomfortable and stay there. 2014’s title tells you everything. It’s called I’m Sorry You Feel That Way.

Now the comedy snobs were paying close attention. 2017’s Walk Your Way Out filmed in Boston, a hometown show. Longer at the leash, more personal, and an audience that’s been with them long enough to take in more setup to the jokes than you would do in a room full of strangers. Now, it’s hard to tell where the cutoff is in the Bill Burr stories. The modern discourse is about how Bill has lost the anger. We’ll get to that in a second.

And then at some point, it felt like Bill Burr became establishment Bill Burr. Is it 2019’s Paper Tiger filmed at the Royal Albert Hall in London? Got a Grammy nomination for best comedy album. It’s the commercial peak of a standup career, a strong piece of work. And here’s Bill Burr from Canton, Massachusetts, playing the same room as the Beatles.

This is Establishment Bill Burr. In 2020, his Saturday Night Live monologue during COVID. No live audience. And instead of calibrating for the moment, he just did his material. The monologue went after white women specifically, made arguments about the relative recognition of various groups’ suffering that no one was expecting from an SNL cold open, and landed like a grenade.

Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Burr! I am so excited to be here. These difficult times, you guys all look like surgeons with your masks on. Makes me feel comfortable that you’re wearing masks. I like people who wear masks.

That’s good. You’re listening to the eggheads, the people we all cheated off of in high school, right? Keep listening to them.

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And then if you don’t wear a mask, that doesn’t bug me either, right?

Take out your grandparents, you know? Take out your weak cousin with the asthma. I don’t care. It’s your decision. There’s too many people.

It’s a dream come true. If you’re that dumb and you want to kill your own family members, by all means, do it. Stop you from reproducing. It’s literally a dream come true. Think pieces came fast.

They were numerous hashtag campaigns. None of it affected Bill Burr’s ticket sales didn’t drop. His podcast numbers didn’t drop. The audience that had been listening to Bill Burr on this podcast since 2009 wasn’t going to stop because David Cross wrote something on social media. In 2025, Bill Burr performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia.

Other performers included Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K. Kevin Hart, Pete Davidson, Andrew Schultz, and 50 other comedians. Human Rights Watch called that festival a whitewashing campaign. Marc Maron condemned it publicly. Shane Gillis condemned it.

David Cross wrote a statement calling out Burr by name. Saying he was disgusted and deeply disappointed by Bill Burr and arguing that comedians who perform for authoritarian governments forfeit the right to complain about cancel culture or censorship in the U.S. Bill went on the Monday Morning Podcast and then Conan’s podcast, and in character, he called the critics sanctimonious. I think the. General consensus is how dare you go to that place and make those oppressed people laugh.

I can’t believe you went to that place I can’t find on a map and this bot said I was upset about it, so. Now I am. It’s one thing to wear clothes made by sweatshop labor. It’s quite another to go to the factory and make them laugh. I can’t believe how much anger I had about this issue after it went viral.

So you’re here to apologize? No. Burr said he had no idea it would generate this kind of response. Burr said it was one of the top three experiences of his life. He said he arrived expecting machetes and found an audience that genuinely wanted comedy.

He told Conan, If it affects my career, I’ve sat at LAX enough in my life. I’ll sit home a little bit. LAX is actually slightly sadder than Saudi Arabia. And that last line is the Bill Burr move. Deflect the serious charge with a joke that’s funny enough that you have to acknowledge that it’s funny, even when you disagree with him.

Bill Burr is also known for some acting roles. He was on Breaking Bad as Patrick Kuby and on The Mandalorian as Migs Mayfield. I’m a survivor just like you. Let’s get one thing straight. You and I are nothing alike.

I don’t know. Seems to me like your rules start to change when you get desperate. I mean, look at you. You said you couldn’t take your helmet off, and now you’ve got a stormtrooper one on. So what’s the rule?

Those characters work because they’re in the neighborhood of the Bill Burr in your mind, morally complicated, physically capable, operating in worlds where violence is a consideration. Bill Burr is a specific person, and the roles that land are the ones that find use of his specific persona, rather than ask him to disappear into something he doesn’t do naturally. In recent times, Bill Burr has talked about himself and the younger Bill Burr and how the younger Bill Burr was angry. Most recently, he did a cover story with Rolling Stone magazine where he talked about all that. Anger to me was embarrassing because it reminded me of my dad who had no control.

And I used to always be like, I’m not going to be like him. And what happens? Yeah. There you go. You’re doing exactly what he was doing.

So I always felt shame and all of that. I hated it. Then what made me hate myself, which made me go darker, which made me get angrier because I didn’t know how to get out of it. It was just this spinning down thing. Bill Burr has produced a body of work that has aged a lot better than a lot of comedy than people from that generation because the material is built on coherent worldviews.

Does Bill Burr still believe in the material? We’ll have to ask him.

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Featured: Bill Burr, Pete Davidson, Taylor Tomlinson, Stavros Halkias

What’s in This Episode

• Bill Burr discusses bombing in Vegas and emotional growth in Rolling Stone interview
• Bill Burr on parenting philosophy and avoiding toxic masculinity with his children
• Bill Burr’s Broadway experience in Glengarry Glen Ross and newfound appreciation for theater
• Pete Davidson co-owns ferry with college comedy shows, daughter Scotty will inherit
• Taylor Tomlinson leaves After Midnight hosting job due to health struggles
• Taylor Tomlinson on mental health crisis during late night show filming
• Stavros Halkias discusses comedy snobbery and achieving career goals

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Bill Burr, who’s the subject of the deep dive on this very feed tomorrow, told Rolling Stone, I know a lot of angry people that like my comedy. I want to tell them, look, if I get on the other side of it, anybody can, because I was a first ballot lunatic. I didn’t want to be the angry guy. My whole career was like, oh, you’re the angry comic.

It was always embarrassing to me. They asked Bill when he last bombed. He said, oh, recently I was in Vegas and I opened with that Luigi stuff. Oh my God, that ate it. I’m paraphrasing here.

He’s a little more vulgar than I like to have the show.

And then what’s good about getting on the other side of my emotions, it didn’…

I went, all right, I get it. You came to Vegas, you blown off some steam. I get it. I was wrong. I came out too hard.

So how’s everybody doing?

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And then they were all laughing because I did come out guns a blazing.

Bombing never goes away. If you’re going to continue to try new jokes and push yourself, it’s all part of it. It’s like boxing. You’re going to get punched. It’s going to hurt.

And even if you win, you take the hit and you get back up. We learned about Bill Burr the parent. Bill has a daughter and a son. And Rolling Stone was curious how Bill Burr helps his son avoid the men can’t cry vibe. Burr said, I just let him be who he is.

I let my daughter be who she is, and then I just go, hey, a little too much of this or that. Guys, ease up. I expose them to all different kinds of music and sports and stuff, and I see what they gravitate towards. My wife’s amazing with that. I learn a lot by watching her.

It helps that I remember what it was like to be a kid, to be scared, not be listened to, and all that awful stuff. I learned how to be a really good father by not doing what I saw. I remember the first time it felt like I was working with my daughter. It was probably two at the time. There was something that was upsetting her.

I was sitting on the stairs, and I said, well, come over here and talk to me about it. She walked over, and both of us just held each other’s hands.

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And then at that point in the clip, Bill Burr started crying.

They segued to Bill getting into acting. He explained, I like hearing other actors say a line and thinking, wow, I would have never thought to do it that way. I’ve gotten better just watching the choices and see somebody fearless as an actor. The way I gravitated towards a fearless comedian to be like, okay, what is being fearless as an actor?

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And then seeing that, it’s the same thing.

It’s like, oh, that’s like some David Tell stuff, but in the acting world. Bill did four months in Glen Gary, Glen Ross on Broadway. Bill explained, it combines stand-up and acting. In stand-up, I say the thing, you guys react positively and negatively, I get immediate feedback, and silence is bad. On a set, silence is a good thing.

If somebody doesn’t come up to you after a take, that means you did a good job. With theater, there’s feedback. And when you’re with the other actors, you’re seeing how everyone else does it and how it changes every night. It made me love theater. I was a typical sports guy.

I thought theater was cats. It’s like, I don’t want a bunch of people dressed like felines. I never had plays growing up. That was for the kids that got beat up. I was trying not to get beat up in high school, so I went back and I read a bunch when we were doing Glengarry.

Great stuff. Made me want to do more of it. They pointed out there’s a revival of Cats. Bill, do you want to do Cats? No.

Again, Bill Burr is tomorrow’s Deep Dive episode, the weekly Saturday Deep Dives.

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And then in eight days from now, Norm MacDonald.

Bill Burr played the Riyadh Comedy Festival. So did Pete Davidson, who co-owns a ferry with college shows to be joked. Scotty, his daughter, will inherit this one day. I’m very lucky and excited to be a dad. It’s been a real joy and it’s awesome.

I can’t wait for her to come and see wacky stuff like the ferry show. That’s going to be so cool. Taylor Tomlinson spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about her new book, in which she talked about After Midnight and said, The truth is, I took the job because I was lonely. She explains, I do remember when I was deciding whether or not to take the job. If somebody offers you a national television show, a late night show, say yes.

I do remember when I was deciding whether or not to take the job. I was like, it’d be great to have a reason to be in L.A. And it did anchor me to L.A. In a way that I hadn’t been, because if you keep adding shows on the road, you’ll stay out there forever, and then you come home just to drive your car so the battery doesn’t die. They were curious how she started to realize how unwell she was.

She said, I didn’t know what’s going on. I just kept thinking if I keep pushing, I’m going to get better. It’s going to be fine.

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And then for months and months and months, it didn’t get better.

And it was one of those things where if you don’t have a life-threatening illness, you keep pushing. That’s showbiz, baby.

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Also, everybody was meeting me for the first time and everybody met me very s…

It was tough because I was trying to make a good impression. I was trying to do a good job in an altered state and telling myself this will resolve itself. Because that’s what you do. I’ve been doing that on the road for years, where I go, just push through this, it’ll be fine, you can crash for a few days. When you’re doing a late night show, there wasn’t enough time to crash and recover.

So for the first five months of the show, I wasn’t doing stand-up, I wasn’t touring, I was just doing the show for three days, then I’d be in bed for four. Everyone who worked with me on set from day to day was lovely, and I wish I had said more about that in the book. They saw me every day. They had the best understanding of where my health was. They were like, hey, what can we do?

Do you want to do the table read from home? Do you want to sleep in? Maybe we could put your dressing room somewhere that’s less crowded so you’re not worried about germs. As for walking away from the show, she said, it wasn’t a thing where I just woke up one day and was like, yeah, I’m done. It was months of me thinking about it.

I had this tour and I was like, I don’t know if I’m going to make it through the tour. And because I owed Netflix another special, I moved up the Netflix special, got through that, then canceled the rest of my tour, which was so much time and so much money. That was another wave of disappointing people. And that one was super hard because I disappointed a lot of my fans who had followed me on the road for a long time and my personal team had known me for 10 years. Going back on tour now, but it took 10 months off, which is insane.

But After Midnight was objectively a dream job. And it’s why I was so devastated that I left the job and disappeared. It was such a special group of people. And for someone to be able to go in and host four episodes three days a week in L.A. What an amazing job for so many comedians.

And there were so many who would have been amazing at it. So it was hard for me because I was like, I’m so unbelievably lucky to have these opportunities. How can I not rise to the occasion? But I’ve been rising to the occasion for 10 years and I pushed it too hard for too long. Stavros Algeas, he’s having a moment.

And I feel like, justifiably, everybody likes him right now, which is just great to see somebody like that. He’s funny, he’s personable, everything he’s in is really good. Anyway, he spoke to CBS about being a bit of a comedy snob. I started set up when I was 19. And all you want is to make it happen.

All you want is to get specials. You know, like Tires is a dream. To get to do bit parts in movies was like.. You know, the utmost dream, but you get that stuff and you’re like, well, what is it? What does any of this mean?

And I’m tired of hearing it from baby boomers, right? Like their lives were so easy. You could just win a house at a carnival back then. You know what I mean? People now, you know, they interact with stand-up at like 45 seconds at a time or a minute at a time.

And to me, I am kind of a purist. I’m kind of a comedy nerd. Yeah. Where I love the idea of like, you know, I mean, you talk about early stand-up, they never change their act. They did the same hour their entire lives and maybe every year the worst 10 minutes would come out and they would bring in a new 10 minutes.

They would keep it fresh that way. The stand-up special started because There were these huge titans in comedy, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and most people didn’t ever get to see them. They heard about them. They maybe listened to an album. To the albums.

Right? Albums were huge. That’s what it used to be, right? Almost no one got a special. Trevor Noah and Jimmy Carr had a fun discussion about speaking English.

Have you seen what non-English speakers do to the English language? They give it.. You guys don’t have that at all. I’m not. No, I don’t.

I mean, technically.. You guys. Say things like bang, which is terrible. I don’t even have. I don’t even have an accent.

This is just how things sound when they’re pronounced properly. That’s what I’m saying. You are, you are like literally the, have you heard the, like, like if you were to tell a story of, um, someone threw something at your head and it just narrowly missed you, how would. You tell the story? I would say those words in that order.

Ah, you see now. Yeah. Whereas with us, we’d be like, yo, Eugene Mfana, let me tell you what happened to me the other day. So I’m walking, busy walking. Next thing I see, this guy pops out.

This guy’s there, throws the thing at me. You don’t have that in language. Yeah, I mean. You know that shwaba is a sound of a thing. It has a meaning.

It has a meaning. Shwaba. Shwaba. Joe Coy recalled meeting Robin Williams. They were there at a show many moons ago.

Robin Williams was scheduled to go on stage. Joe Coy said other comedians started arriving after hearing Robin was performing. Initially, Joe Coy was supposed to be the one to introduce Robin Williams, but Bob Saget showed up saying he had a routine he usually did with Robin Williams. Joe Coy tried to persuade Saget to let him have the honor. Saget said no and introduced Williams himself.

But then Robin Williams noticed Joe Coy and asked why Joe Coy didn’t bring him on stage, because that was the plan. Joe Coy explained Saget, blah, blah, blah. Robin Williams said, introduce me again. Joe Coy said that was genius. So Jokoy goes to the mic and introduces Robin Williams for the second time, telling the audience the next comedian was somebody they wouldn’t believe.

It’s Robin Williams. The crowd erupted when Williams walked back on stage. The two performers spent several minutes improv-ing. Jokoy said for like three, four, five minutes, it was just him and Robin Williams improvising on stage. Now, if you’re like, who’s Jokoy, John?

The name’s familiar. That’s the guy at one time on the Golden Globes. He told this horrible, mean joke about Taylor Swift. Here, let me remind you. As you know, we came on after a football doubleheader.

The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL, on the Golden. Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift. Robin’s daughter, Zelda, would like you to cut it out with the AI crap, please. In September, there was a clip of not Robin Williams saying that he had been in this industry a long time and seen things before adding, The real elite, the ones at the very top, they don’t just play power games. They worship something much darker.

Zelda Williams said that supposedly private video of Dad talking about conspiracies is clearly AI and not even particularly convincing AI. Anyone who claims to be a fan who believes it, clearly listen to his movies on mute because that voice is robotic and terrible. Comedy stock market. Every week on the Comedy Stock Market, I give you some recommendations on if comedians were stocks, who should we buy? Who should we sell?

Where’s the value? How would we make money off all this? You know what a stock market is. It’s just a gimmick bit. Do I have to really explain it?

It’s the comedy stock market. Here’s what we’re doing this week. We’re going to buy some Norm MacDonald. Here’s why. The Netflix documentary about Norm is coming out in a few weeks, and I mentioned it to college students.

Now, usually college students, anything I mention in popular culture, they have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m such an old man. Even if I’ll be like, do you guys know who Bill Burr is? And some of them will stare at me like I’ve never heard of this person. They all lit up when I said Norm MacDonald.

Very, very interesting. So let’s buy Norm MacDonald. Let’s also load up on Nathan Fielder. All the cool kids are raving about You Can See Everything, the Elizabeth Holmes documentary. I don’t know if this has quite hit the mainstream yet.

Anybody who has seen this doc says it’s amazing. So let’s get in front of that. Nathan Fielder, he’s on a roll. People in the know know how great he is, but we should load up on Nathan Fielder and load up on Norm MacDonald. And that is your comedy stock market for this week.

Don’t forget, on Sunday, it is that new podcast, Is Late Night Dead? In which Johnny Mac waxes poetically about various late night shows. It’s not the history of late night, so your favorite host might not make the podcast. And I’m writing it as we go. It’s not like I’ve already banked 15 episodes, but episode one for this week.

Is about 1230 Late Night with David Letterman, back when 1230 was truly great. Not what Seth Meyers is doing. Make 1230 great again. But Dave, Dave was great, and we’ll talk about that on Sunday. That is its own feed, Is Late Night Dead?

Wherever you found this show, you’ll find that show. And I will eventually repurpose the episodes in this feed, but not yet. So go check out Is Late Night Dead? That’ll be out Sunday. Courtney O’Donnell is one of Vulture’s comedians you should know and watch, or whatever it’s called, alongside comedian Chelsea Morgan.

Vulture tells us O’Donnell posts clip frame videos from a fake podcast called Yep, She Went There with her pseudoscientific chatter is like Connor O’Malley for a maha susceptible girly population. Girly population is a great word. Well done, VultureWriter. All of those elements are at work in her one-woman live show, Planet Courtney, where she plays a resident of the titular planet, where the hospital is run by Chipotle, the Air Force is controlled by Aritzia, and the Sprinkles Cupcake ATM downtown is now taking ancient Sumerian shekels. It’s Barbie’s World from Barbie if Barbie’s World was completely taken over by GLP-1-friendly slop balls and VC-backed DTC brands.

It’s exhausting. Yeah, it was exhausting to explain it to you, but it sounds funny. But breathtaking to witness the amount of world-building and referential jokes O’Donnell packs in when she’s just doing a 15-minute shred of her full act. Two questions for Courtney. One, if you taught a comedy class, et cetera, et cetera.

Courtney says, do things that feel fun to you, not what you think is going to be funny. A friend of mine recently gave me such a nice compliment. She said, you have so much joy for the things you make, and I’ve never stopped to think about how important that is. This is not an easy career, so if doing comedy doesn’t make you feel like you’re 10 years old laughing on the playground with your best friends, you should go into tech sales. And second question, what’s the most earnest goal you have?

The answer, I want to play Mary in Oh Mary, and I want to act in a dramatic role. I would like an herb garden. And that is your comedy news for today. All right, tomorrow, Bill Burr deep dive. Sunday, I should have promoted this all week.

The New York Times did an article about the top 100 TV shows of the 21st century, and I reacted to it on the fly. And let’s just say Johnny Mac didn’t like the list, okay? Bill Burr deep dive tomorrow, Times 100 on Sunday. See you then.

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Featured: Dane Cook, Michael Che, Maria Bamford, Chris Hardwick, Colin Jost, Scarlett Johansson

What’s in This Episode

• Dane Cook porch pirate theft – dog treats stolen from doorstep
• Dane Cook documentary on Netflix – career retrospective and personal story
• Michael Che new Netflix special releasing October 13th
• Maria Bamford documentary ‘Paralyzed by Hope’ on Netflix October 23rd
• Chris Hardwick special ‘The Middle Ages’ on Guerrilla Comedy Plus October 5th

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Jam-packed one today. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Dean Cook is asking the public to help identify a woman who Dean Cook says stole a delivery from his doorstep. Dane posted a video on social media captured from his home surveillance system.

One angle appears to be from his doorbell camera. The other looks out to a street. The video footage shows a woman wearing a baggy, sleeveless tank top that says, I love L.A. And she’s wearing flip-flops. She walks up to Dane Cook’s front door.

She shuffles off, holding a large brown bag in her right hand. The other angle shows her running to her SUV, a white SUV, and driving off. Dean Cook says, this haggard porch pirate got away with our dog treats. I mean, not funny. Don’t rob Dean Cook.

What are you doing? But anyway, we’re on the lookout for a woman in a white SUV, that narrows it down, wearing a baggy sleeveless tank top that says, I love LA. She was wearing flip-flops. At six in the morning, when she stole Dane Cook’s dog treats, Dane posted on Instagram, she says I love L.A. As indicated on her unwashed loose top, but what this action really says is I don’t love myself and want to be caught before I get into my angel white Range Rover and dash to the next porch.

Let’s find her L.A. And give my dogs the treats they’ve earned from sit, stay, and don’t bark at strangers unless it’s a sea hag taking your delights. Now, what’s really strange is that Dane Cook’s dog treats were stolen on a day where he was promoting a new video on demand movie. Isn’t that a weird coincidence? You don’t hear from Dane Cook for months.

And then on the day he’s promoting his new movie, somebody steals his dog treats. Wow. What a coincidence. Dane spoke to Deadline and said, when I was approached by the producers that I made the film with, I knew the moment was finally coming to light. Where I was like, I feel like I can own this moment as a creative person.

I feel like I can tell an incredible story that also includes the highs and lows of the career. And I really looked at this, I love this line because this is the money line, and I really looked at this like the Empire Strikes Back story and the greatest story of my career. Does that mean there’s a third act in Dane Cook’s career? Huh. Deadline was like, why tell the story now?

And they weren’t talking about the suspicious dog biscuit robbery on the day Dane was promoting a new movie. No, no. They were curious about the documentary itself. And of course, he was already saying, well, I wouldn’t do it the other way anyway. When I sat in the chair, I said, I’m going to give you everything I have in this moment.

So if you ask the question, there’ll be no barrier. I’m really ready to put everything I have into this moment. And he asked everything that I think you’d want to understand and even beyond that. So ready for it. Strong enough to share the story, but also in a place in my life where I was a better person from this.

I was happier, healthier. It was more in my faith. I was in an incredible relationship that would turn into a marriage with my best friend, and so why wouldn’t I now want to own our darkest capsizing moment when I’m at the happiest, most fulfilling moment? There is a lot of this. We’ll picket it over the next week or so, but I don’t want to roadblock the show with nothing but Dane Cook because we have so much to get to, including the Michael Che trailer.

He’s got a new special out on October 13th on Netflix, and I’ve made a slight edit for language. Here’s Che. You know what really bothers me about Colin being married to Scarlett Johansson? Is that he acts like it’s normal. That’s annoying.

He acts like it’s. Not a miracle. Because we don’t live that far from each other. We live like five minutes away from each other. Sometimes he’ll like call me and be like, hey man, we’re having dinner at the house.

It’s just me and Scarlett. Why don’t you bring a date? We could do a double date thing. I’m like, I can’t bring the women that I date. To Scarlett Johansson’s house.

I don’t need her calling my phone like, hey, I think your date stole our silverware. I’m like, yeah, she do that sometimes. She gets nervous. I thought I heard her jingling in the Uber. I’ll keep an eye out for you, Scar.

Can I call you Scar? Good stuff there, but what’s an even better trailer, and that’s not a backhanded compliment to Che, I just love this trailer for the Maria Bamford documentary, and I’m not a Bamford stan. I know the comedians love her, and I find her okay, but this trailer is fantastic. Oh, hello. Hi, Maria.

We don’t know if you want to take part in making a documentary, but regardless, you wanted money for today. Yes! I don’t know if that’s how it works, but maybe we have no ethics here. When I first. Moved out to Los Angeles, I wanted to be rich and famous.

But then I found out about clerical work. The first time I saw her, I didn’t get what she was doing. What do they all say when you start a new job? We do things a little differently around here. What am I watching?

So hold on to your hats. It’s gonna be a wild ride. But it never is. Sometimes it feels like you’re talking to a lobster whose shell has been removed, and it’s just feeling every single molecule in the room. Mom told me recently, hey, when you don’t.

Wear makeup, you look mentally ill. Now I’m sure to wear thick green eyeshadow and a line of lipstick around my lips. Baby, look pretty now, mommy. When I was around 9 or 10, I remember just feeling like there is something desperately wrong with me. I was a bit of a dark kid growing up.

Occasionally, I’d stage my own death for fun. My mom would say, sometimes I just couldn’t find. You in the house. And I just thought, we’re just going to have to drag the lake. I’d always known I had depression, and there was bipolar in my family.

But at a certain point, I started feeling extremely depressed. Marie was on this very, very risky adventure of becoming a comedian. It did give me some relief being on stage. There’s a lot of memes out there for health that are sort of like, hey, tell someone about it. Hey, you okay?

Feels emotionally honest. Think of all the people for whom her experience is real. It’s all funny and heartbreaking at the same time. She’s my favorite comedian. I am not a good time.

I am an assignment from a therapist. I am something comics go to see to go, huh. Maria is just a true net positive in this world. Old MacDonald had a pterodactyl E-I-E-I-O with a. Paralyzed by Hope will see Maria Bamford unpack the mental health journey behind her Fuhler’s comedy.

That documentary is out October 23rd on Netflix. Chris Hardwick has a new special. It is called The Middle Ages. It’ll be out on the 5th on Guerrilla Comedy Plus.

And then it’ll be on the regular 800-pound Guerrilla YouTube channel, 7 o’clo…

In the Middle Ages, Chris Hardwick takes on middle age, marriage, fatherhood, and a rapidly changing world. Now in his 50s, welcome to the club, he finds comedy in the indignities of aging, from growing pill collections and questionable digestive choices to prostate exams and realizing Gen Z are time millionaires. Here’s Chris Hardwick. We appreciate immature humor, say aye! Aye!

Speaking of butt stuff, poca poca. Poca poca, look who brought a knife to a tickle fight. If you’re 25 years old, you can just get out of bed in the morning and. Leave. I do feel for Gen Z, you will never know the absolute satisfaction of slamming down.

A telephone in anger. We didn’t have TikTok. In those days. How did you know which relatives were racist? We called that Thanksgiving.

And now let’s play the quiet game. Oh, you’re already lost. Let all the kittens sing.. Chris says the foundation of the set came from his tour back in 2019-2020 with the intent to shoot the special in 21, but the pandemic had other plans. In January of 2022, we had a baby.

I paused work stuff for what ultimately became a three-year hiatus. But in that time, I learned piano, became a parent, and got even more middle-aged than I was before. So in a weird way, the delay actually kind of helped the set. I’m super excited it’s finally happening. Huge thanks to the 800-pound gorilla, etc.

Etc. Zaynab Johnson has her second comedy special, this one called Toxically Optimistic. This, co-produced with the Obamas. Yeah, Obama’s Higher Ground have a production credit on this. Toxically Optimistic will premiere on Netflix on October 27th.

The special’s based on a show that she performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, which was nominated for Best Comedy Show at the List Festival Awards. In Toxically Optimistic, Johnson said, I gave myself permission to be silly by inviting the audience to focus on the good during a time when the chaos and fear are at an all-time high. I encourage everyone to find a little whimsy in the most unexpected situations. I was planning on watching Sam Morrell’s comedy special, plus or minus the travel that I have this week, and plus or minus baseball playoffs. But Jason Zinnemann, friend of the show, and Jason from the New York Times, wrote about it.

He seemed to like it. He wrote, Sam likes a dirty joke, but not as much as a precisely awkward phrase. Morrell follows the seedier and overlooked corners of show business, small-time agents, trash-talking magicians, and especially that much-mythologized brand of stand-up, the hard-living road comics. The debauched loner, traveling from town to town, making drunks laugh. Some versions, like, say, Doug Stanhope, adopt a renegade philosopher streak.

Others pander for cheap chuckles or wallow in the muck. Then there are the joke merchants. Muriel is one of the best and most prolific today. He’s the kind of technician who responds to groans over dark material while asking the crowd to at least admire the structure. And he usually has a point.

Zidman writes, When a disappointed woman he just slept with asks, Is this a joke? He responds, No. My humor is much more layered and complex. Love that. The New York Times, not Jason Zinneman, to be clear, but the New York Times once had the headline, Andrew Schultz might be America’s foremost political journalist.

Let’s just sit that with a minute. Okay. Andrew Schultz might be America’s foremost political journalist. The New York Times printed that sentence, released online. I don’t know if it was actually in print.

It’s not like I have a framed copy of that issue of the New York Times, although I probably wish I did. But it’s definitely online because I checked the exact phrasing before I recorded today. Andrew Schultz might be America’s foremost political journalist. He’s also going to be one of the stars of Miami Vice 85, starring Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler as Tubbs and Crockett.

Are you kidding me? Michael B. Jordan as Ricardo Tubbs? I’m less excited about Austin Butler as James Sonny Crockett in the movie that will explore the glamour and corruption of mid-1980s Miami as it follows two detectives who work undercover. Hear me out.

I think they should flip them. Because Tubbs always does like that BS Jamaican accent and sounds ridiculous. What if I told you Michael B. Jordan played a cool ex-football player who lives on a boat and has a crocodile and his name is James Sonny Crockett? That would work.

And then make Austin Butler a guy named Ricardo Tubbs who does a BS Jamaican accent. I mean, let’s flip the casting there. Miami Vice 85 is said to be inspired by the pilot episode of Miami Vice. You know the one with Phil Collins in the air tonight.

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And also the first season of the landmark TV series.

Want to talk about something that is right in my wheelhouse? Miami Vice 85, dudes. It’ll be out in IMAX May 19th, 2028. No, not 2027. 2028. We’ll be talking about this one for a year and a half, apparently.

Controversial mega comedian Nate Bergenzi. He’s out there. He’s all about the cars. And he wrote for website fromtheroad.ford.com. It’s almost as if he were paid to write this.

But who knows? Maybe in his heart, He just wanted to write about cars. The controversial MAGA comedian wrote a while back, I got a call from Ford asking if I’d help get the word out about the real pros working at their dealerships every day to keep all our cars and tracks running. They also helped me to host Ford’s Accelerate the Essential Economy conference. The controversial MAGA comedian said, I was excited to be asked, but also worried they might have called the wrong person.

I don’t know much about cars. Time out. Money has a way of making you do things, Nate. Just saying. Time in.

When I first got my used car in high school, the stick shift was sticky to the touch, so I put a tennis ball over the knob to keep my hand less gross. That’s the first and last time I tried to fix a car. But seriously, I was honored to be asked, and quite possibly paid. I was always dreaming of working with Ford and loved my Bronco. Nate Bregazzi is telling us he always dreamed of working with Ford.

Now, I’ve read a lot of interviews with Nate over the years. I’ve never heard that as one of his career goals. But OK, I accept your premise, Nate said. I often talk about Ford as the type of comedy I want to build. Their work is quality and it’s a family owned business that people not only want to work at, they want their children and grandchildren to work there, too.

But could I, controversial mega-comedian Nate Borghese, be the spokesperson for real parts, real pros, real easy with this little knowledge about cars? And what’s the essential economy anyway? When I met with Ford for the first time, they made it really straightforward. I didn’t need to know about the real parts or be one of the real pros. They already have people for that.

I’m the real easy, which is a position I feel very qualified for. This campaign isn’t about me knowing things. It’s about me getting paid. No, sorry, I misread that sentence. He said, it’s about me not knowing things and that being totally okay.

That’s because Ford has the parts needed to fix your Ford. The people in the service department are pros that know what they’re doing, and they can even come to you, saving you a bunch of time. The new TV season is underway. Jimmy Kimmel Live won the premiere week in late night in both total viewers and adults 18 to 49 for the week of September 21st. Kimmel averaged 2.29 million viewers and a. 21 rating in the 18 to 49s.

The number two show is The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon with 1.3 million viewers. And Byron Allen thing on CBS, 704,000 people in the first half hour, 521,000 in the second half hour, all at 1130. Audible’s got a new thing called The Moons of L.A. An Audible comedy series. Ken Jeong, Randall Park, and Daniel Dae Kim star.

The Moons of L.A. Premieres October 8th. In the coming-of-age comedy, we follow Chloe Moon, a precocious middle schooler obsessed with true crime podcasts. Who dreams of becoming an investigative journalist when she discovers her parents’ marriage is on the rocks. Oh no, Chloe does what any aspiring detective would do.

She launches an investigation. Okay, good job there. Vulture has their comedians you should know and will know. Did I get the title right today? I think I did.

I could check, but that’s not fun. One of them is Janet McNamara, and Vulture tells us in Janet McNamara’s 2026 YouTube special Not Smart Enough, She describes the experience of trying to get an autism diagnosis, it’s a defining part of her story, in an episode of This American Life. McNamara details years of wondering why she can’t perform the social niceties other people handle with ease, which has made her day job as an accountant increasingly difficult. Her first experience with fame was in 2010, when she filmed a deliberately cringe-inducing audition for American Idol that went mega-viral 16 years later. That performance of a woman clueless about her own awkwardness has morphed into McNamara’s more settled, self-possessed stage persona.

Two quick questions with Janet from Vulture. Question number one. What non-comedy skill do you possess that you’re most proud of? She says, I had a full-time job as an accountant up until a few months ago. I didn’t BS my day job as an accountant.

I was good at it, and I worked hard. Audits are fun, at least when they don’t find anything. Question number two. What is the most earnest goal you have? McNamara said, I’d like to be able to complete a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle in less than an hour.

Right now, it takes me about four hours. But I’ve been studying professional puzzlers on YouTube, and I think with the right focus, I can make it happen by 2030. That’s your comedy news for today. Don’t forget, out this weekend on Sunday, Is Late Night Dead? Johnny Mac’s new sister series about late night.

This week’s topic, 1230 David Letterman. That is its own feed. The show is called Is Late Night Dead? Where have you found this? You’ll find that.

Hit the follow button. I will eventually use those on this feed, but not yet. On this feed this weekend, Saturday is a deep dive about Bill Burr. Sunday is a look at the New York Times horrible list of what they said are the top 100 TV shows of the 21st century. And my goodness, are they wrong.

So check that out and I will see you tomorrow.

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