Category: Uncategorized

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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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Featured: Nate Bargatze, Tom Segura, Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle, Rachel Feinstein, Andrew Santino, Matt Rife, Joel Kim Booster, Zach Braff, John Higgins

What’s in This Episode

• Ford partners with Nate Bargatze for mobile service ad campaign
• Nate Bargatze discusses comedy and relatability on Fox News
• Tom Segura announces Preposterous tour with 30 cities starting January
• Fastball Comedy Festival lineup includes Burr, Chappelle, and Segura in Mesa Arizona
• Matt Rife appears on Fox News discussing early comedy career
• Scrubs reboot season 2 premieres with new cast members Grant and Mimi
• Zach Braff explains J.D.’s new chief resident nemesis dynamic

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. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Watch out. Ford has teamed up with controversial mega comedian Nate Bregazzi. You know that guy.

He’s always mixing it up. Sometimes he’ll go to a UFC fight and get People get all upset about this guy while Ford is launching a new ad campaign starring the controversial mega-comedian Nate Bregazzi to promote its dealership centers. That’s right, the campaign will highlight the convenience of mobile service and pickup delivery options for vehicle maintenance. Let’s let Nate tell you about it. I don’t normally do commercials.

When I found out Ford Mobile Service will send a trained technician to my house at no extra cost to take care of my truck, I mean, blown away. I was like, do people know about this? So here I am letting you all know about it. Scheduling was simple. All it took was me stepping up and taking care of business.

Actually, sir, your wife took care of business. Oh, you’re good. A little too good. The controversial mega comedian went on the mega network Fox News to talk about how he makes his comedy relatable. I’m just having fun with the joke.

Relax, relax. Relax. It’s a bit. Just relax. The controversial mega comedian went on Fox News to talk about being relatable.

Let’s listen. I make fun of me. I make fun of myself. And I think that that, you know, comedy is is is I just try not to go outward. So I always say you can laugh with me or laugh at me.

And, you know, either one’s a laugh. So you can either relate to me or you can just think I’m dumb and it doesn’t matter. And so when you keep it that simple, it’s I think that’s why it works is because no one’s no one feels like when they come to the show that it’s like going to be about them or I’m going to be making fun of something that they like, don’t like, whatever it is. I’m just talking about me and my family and stuff that we go through and everyday kind of things. And so I think that’s why people can relate to it now.

I think it’s something authenticity is something that’s You know, it feels like with technology, with everything, it’s you never know what’s going on, what’s real, what’s not real. And, you know, and I think stand up comedy is something that can kind of stand the test of time of that because it can’t get any more authentic than just a person talking to an audience. Tom Segura announced a new leg of his stand up comedy tour. The tour is called Tom Segura Preposterous. Why do comedy tours always have to have hacky names?

Can’t you just be like Tom Segura on tour? Why does it need a name? Are people buying Tom Segura tour shirts? Maybe they are. Tom Segura Preposterous includes 30 cities, beginning with Baton Rouge on January 8th.

There’s a presale starting today at 10 a.m. General sale Friday, October 2nd. If you can’t wait that long, Tom Segura headlines the Fastball Comedy Festival at Sloan Park in Mesa, Arizona. That’s a baseball stadium also on the bill. So I don’t know if he’s the headliner here, the copywriter that put headlining there.

Is Tom Segura actually headlining a bill that also has Rachel Feinstein? She’s nice. Andrew Santino, he’s nice. Bill Burr and Dave Chappelle? Pretty sure Segura’s batting third in that lineup.

No? Yes. But that lineup’s no joke. Chappelle? Burr?

Segura? Santino? And Rachel? With Rachel being the fifth best on that lineup? That’s no joke.

Nice job, Fastball Comedy Festival. If you’re in the desert, and I know you are, go see the show on October 17th.

Speaking of Bill Burr, he will be the deep dive episode this Saturday in this…

I also need to remember to promote. I got to be better about this. I already recorded it to accommodate my schedule. The New York Times did an article about the top 100 television shows of all, not of all time, of the 21st century. And I didn’t react well to it.

I did the article cold as I tend to do article episodes. And as I was going, I lost my mind. So that’s Sunday’s episode, Saturday’s a Bill Burr deep dive.

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Also out this weekend, the new series is Late Night Dead.

I’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes because I have a Letterman story for you. But let me tell you, Matt Rife, he was on Fox News. All the comedians are doing Fox News. They’re all a bunch of controversial MAGA comedians. Here is a controversial MAGA comedian, Matt Rife.

Take a look. Thousands of seats. You used to play a comedy club that essentially had that many chairs in it. Maybe. Yeah.

I mean, the amount of times I’ve performed for single digit people is painful. You started when you were 15 years old. Yeah.

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And then you had a little success with those 15 people.

Yes. And you thought, you know what? I got to move to Hollywood. So you just up and moved from Ohio where you had a beautiful life. Well, I mean, I’m kind of from the middle of nowhere and nobody in my family had even been to college.

So, I mean, there was really nothing to lose. Worst case scenario, I could always just move back to my hometown and get somebody pregnant. You know what’s back on TV tonight? Scrubs. But here’s the problem.

I don’t know if I can watch Scrubs tonight because it’s either trivia. Well, it is trivia night. I mean, it’s definitely trivia night. I don’t know if I can go as I have some travel coming up and I have a lot of work to do and I want to go to trivia and then I’m going to get home late and I’m not going to watch Scrubs and then I’m on the road for a little bit and I’m not going to get to watch Scrubs. I know people enjoyed the Scrubs recap episodes from season one of the reboot.

I still intend to do them, but you might have to wait till next week and then you might get three in a row. Scrubs is back tonight with two episodes, which is pretty exciting. I feel like it just ended and already it’s back. Pretty cool. Joel Kim Booster, who played Dr.

Kevin Park in season one of the reboot, not back. There are new folks. John Higgins, you may know him from SNL. He’s one of the Please Don’t Destroy’s, right? He plays Grant, the new chief resident.

And Kayla Montaroso Mejia plays surgical nurse Mimi. Zach Braff explained the rationale behind Park’s departure and Grant’s arrival as a way to replicate the dynamic between J.D. And Dr. Cox. Braff explains, Joel was incredible.

I think we want to try and find a nemesis for J.D. Who was underneath them. Bill had this idea, well, there’s no one above J.D. Except an administrator, and we’ve seen that before. It might be fun if the person driving him nuts was an underling, a chief resident.

So that was rethinking where the thorn in J.D. ‘s side is. Obviously, J.D. Needs conflict, right, for the story to work. Things are going very well for J.D. That’ll get boring quick.

We need some conflict for drama and comedy. And I think the notion was, what if we introduce a fun thorn in his side, which is actually underneath them and drive some nuts in the way that J.D. Drove Dr. Cox nuts? Yeah, that was predictable.

Why didn’t you do that a year ago? That would have been my idea for the reboot. That’s also what they should have done with the back end of the office. They should have promoted Jim Halpert to the boss and then had Jim be the straight guy dealing with all the crazies under him and realizing that younger Jim was a bit of a douche.

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And now that he’s the boss, trying to be a grown-up, trying to run the office…

But instead, they brought in Andy Bernard. And what they did was they had scripts that said Michael Scott, and they crossed out where it said Michael Scott, and they wrote Andy, and just gave in that first season after Crowlithe. I mean, Andy is just doing poor man Steve. I digress. The back end of the office is a mess.

And you’re going to hear on Sunday, spoiler, for the Times list, they have the Office US ranked ahead of the Office UK, which is, of course, insanity. But we’ll get to that on Sunday. Zach Braff said we would have loved to have Exxon more. She’s just working so much and so busy and wasn’t really fully available. But we’re bringing in more nurses and more characters.

Michael James Scott really just popped and we love him so much. He’s so funny. Every single line he says on the show makes us all laugh and he’s really, really shining. The writers keep writing to him and I can’t imagine an episode without him. He’s so lovely to be around and such a good actor.

OK, that’s interesting. Let me check my notes. I know I just told you, but in my world, this was six minutes ago. Oh, Michael James Scott is the guy Dubois. He was the other charge nurse.

OK, yeah, he’s great. Great. In season one of the revival, only Braff, Faison and Chalk were series regulars. In season two, Ava Bunn gets promoted to a recurring. She plays Tosh.

Donald Faison said, I think the Ava Bunn storyline, she plays Tosh on the show, is something that needs to be explored. I don’t know if you’re on social media, but we’re on social media. And a lot of my diagnosis come from the doctors on social media and the things they say. And that’s something to talk about. This is a new wave of getting information, blah, blah, blah.

I’m bored. Sarah Chalk said, yeah, she’s great. She comes in with great ideas. She’s improving all the time and never delivers the same line twice, blah, blah, blah. Zach Braff says, though, unlike season nine, the show’s not going to pivot to being about a new cast of interns.

It’s still about the old gang, which is great. They do want to service the new cast. Braff said, one thing we did last year was we tried to service all the interns in every episode. And I think what we learned is we don’t have time in 21 minutes to give them enough story. So this year, we’re not putting each intern in every episode, but giving them their own episodes to shine.

And I think that’s a better strategy for the audience, getting their claws into them and getting to know them better and embracing them more. With the accession of Ava, who’s a regular, she’ll be in every episode. All right, some spoilers here for Elliot. She picks up again in season two where she’s mentoring Tosh, and obviously they become such great doctors and are really looking forward to this new chapter, blah, blah, blah. Elliot had a bit of a journey last season, says Chalk.

Now she’s trying to balance how he mentored this kid who was way too hard on her, then pulled back, and is now giving her some more rope, blah, blah, blah. Faison said with Turk, Deshana is already an example of excellence. She’s already at the top of her game. She’ll have Turk’s job in a few years. She’s that good of a surgeon.

She’s that good of a doctor already, blah, blah, blah. All right, Screen Rant also talked to the Scrubs gang. Nobody has said the words John and McGinley or Cox yet. More spoilers. We are learning that Scrubs will put Turk and Carla’s relationship through some new challenges.

You guys did that already on the original. Leave them alone. When Scrubs returns, Turk, spoilers, remains burnt out at work. He’s having a really hard time motivating himself to continue to be excellent at the job. Second, Turk realizes he’s gotten comfortable in the marriage.

Upon seeing how J.D. Is going way overboard in his relationship with Rachel Bilson’s Charlie, Turk realizes, I’m not doing any of this in my relationship with my wife. Turk wants to be with Carla and make her happy, and if he’s not doing that, he feels like he’s failing her. Here’s the issue, though. Reyes is still a recurring cast member, because she’s still on High Potential, which is returning for another season, so she’s not going to be in every episode.

We gotta do something about that. We need our Carla. Anyway, two episodes tonight, still no mention of Dr. Cox. Hmm.

All right, a fun Letterman story to help promote the new podcast, Is Late Night Dead? That is a new series hosted by me. It’s its own feed. It’s called Is Late Night Dead? I wax poetically about late night through my point of view, my North Star, 1230 David Letterman.

So that’ll be out on Sunday. I will eventually use the episodes in this feed, but not yet. But totally coincidentally, CinemaBlend, it’s hard not to say cinnamon blend, cinema blend, Talked about the Letterman-Leno rivalry, and I don’t know if I knew this one. This is fun. They quote Bill Carter’s The Late Shift, which I definitely read, but maybe I read it 20 years ago.

Carter wrote that the late show rose to the top of the late night rankings, so that’s Letterman winning. Even NBC executives were impressed by how easily Letterman adapted his act to 1130. Not me. I watched the first night of this. So this is the thing. 1230 Letterman was my jam.

And then I always said, boy, if the show ever was on at 1130, I’d watch it every night.

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And then the first year I watched it every night.

And then Dave was on for another 20 years. And I don’t think I watched another episode to the last episode. It just it didn’t have the magic. It was establishment Letterman. 1230 Letterman. Cool. 1130 Letterman.

Fine. I know. Again, I’m not saying anything bad about it, but like it wasn’t anything special that I needed to watch. It was just perfectly fine late night television. Anyway, Carter said NBC executives were impressed by how easily Letterman adapted to 1130.

Longtime Letterman producer Peter LaSalle believed Dave had treated the monologue as an afterthought. At CBS, he started selling the jokes like a guy who knew how good they were. Carter wrote of LaSalle, I mean, he committed to it. He had never committed to it before. Now he would just do a joke, stand there, receive the laugh with a big warm grin on his face.

Well, that’s something I haven’t seen him do before. Boy, did that excite me. LaSalle went on to describe Letterman as a real performer, a confident performer putting it out there. Dave seemed newly liberated at CBS. Letterman admitted he was enjoying getting a shot.

He said, why were we on at 1230 all those years? Because the 1230 show was amazing. So Jay Leno in second place decided to work harder, as Jay Leno does. He chose the monologue. Former Tonight Show writer Marvin Silberman recently told Late Nighter that Jay Leno’s jokes were designed to run past Letterman’s first commercial.

The analysis from CinemaBlend. Think about the plan. You’re watching Letterman. Dave goes to commercial. You have no cell phone to play with.

So you switch channels and you start watching Jay. If one of the jokes lands, maybe you stick around. That is really smart counter-programming. Anyway, is Late Night dead? We will answer that question eventually on the other feed.

Follow IsLateNightDead wherever you found this podcast. Janine Garofalo, you might know her from fake late night show The Larry Sanders Show. She is set for a recurring role in Protective Custody, an Apple TV comedy starring an executive produced by Ben Stiller. Interesting. We are told Protective Custody will follow a disgraced financer accused of massive fraud who’s thrown into Protective Custody where he must navigate prison politics, salvage his reputation and confront the consequences of his action while awaiting trial.

In New York City on October 14th, join comedian Sheba Mason at the Comic Strip Live for the Dead Comedian Contest. See your favorite comedians back from the grave, right? So how this happens, she’s actually Jackie Mason’s daughter. Anyone who wants to participate, come dressed as your favorite dead comedian, learn three to five minutes of their act, and do a live version of them. I remember 20 years ago, Jim Brewer did comedy covers.

I’m not saying Jim Brewer invented it. I’m not saying no one else can do it. I’m just saying we did it. And if I remember correctly, did Birbiglia do Hedberg? I gotta see if that’s online somewhere.

Anyway, if you would like to perform in Dead Comedians, email a link to a tape to Sheba at ShebaMasonShow. Sheba spelled S-H-E-B-A. ShebaMasonShow at gmail.com. That sounds like fun. Vulture has their list of comedians you should and will know.

Did I get the title right today? Who knows? One of them is Anya Magliano. And if you’re like, I know who that is. Yeah, she’s hosting Weekend Update on SNL UK.

So let’s debate this here. I don’t know. I’m like, yeah, we know who that is. Or is it that maybe we’re just in the weeds and this is a podcast called Daily Comedy News and you’re in the second half of the podcast and it’s people like us that watch SNL UK, but the civilians have no idea who this is. Okay.

They asked her two questions. At this point in your comedy career, is there someone you’ve proved wrong? If so, whom? Her answer, my boyfriend when I was 15 was really into stand-up, got me into it. He showed me a lot of American comics I hadn’t come across.

He wanted to be a comedian. One said to me, I hope you never try stand-up because you’ll be better at it than me. So I haven’t proven him wrong. I wish him well. He’s happily married with a wife and kids.

Shout out. Second question, if you taught a comedy class, et cetera, et cetera, the answer, probably to hone in on the stuff that feels really weird and specific and say that, huh, maybe she’d like to make 1230 great again. Not what Seth Meyers is doing. What is Seth Meyers even doing? I digress.

Of course, everyone wants to be a comedian these days because it’s rock and roll, but I think that means audiences see and hear the same things over and over and over. I think you can tell on some deep intuitive level when a comic is saying something they actually mean and is true to them. And while it can be more vulnerable to try to do that, the payoff of connecting with an audience that way is pretty special. And that is your comedy news for today. See you tomorrow.

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Featured: Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Amy Schumer, Howard Stern, Sam Morrell, Dane Cook, James Austin Johnson, Sarah Sherman, Jalen Brunson

What’s in This Episode

• Bruce Springsteen cancels Kimmel appearance replaced by Amy Schumer
• Sam Morrell Netflix special ‘Incorrect’ release
• Dane Cook documentary ‘Funny Money’ explores family theft scandal
• James Austin Johnson worried about Trump impression typecasting
• Jalen Brunson hosts Saturday Night Live with rigged trash can sketch
• SNL UK outperforming SNL US

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. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Boy, talk about a downgrade. Jimmy Kimmel’s doing his show from Brooklyn this week. The guest was supposed to be Bruce Springsteen, who has dropped out for reasons unknown.

His replacement, Amy Schumer. Not quite the same star power there. Springsteen had been scheduled to join Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello for both an interview and musical performance on tonight’s show, but Bruce has canceled. Morello will still go. Nobody knows why.

The other guest tonight, the formerly cool Howard Stern. People are not not digging this HBO show. Howard, we all loved you, but it’s over. It’s time to go. This will be Amy Schumer’s first visit with Jimmy Kimmel since 2022, when she was slightly more popular than she is these days.

Sam Morrell’s special is out on Netflix today. It is called Incorrect. In Incorrect, Sam Morrell tackles his worst one-night stand gone wrong, the dark humor of infamous assassinations, his bizarrely unorthodox war against rats, and more. Sam was on Good Day L.A. Where he introduced himself, and I pulled the clip and didn’t put it in the notes, but I remembered.

Here it is. Our next guest is one of the sharpest, most lethal joke-writing comedians in stand-up today. He’s built a massive fan base through late-night appearances, hit specials, and his wildly popular podcast, We Might Be Drunk. Now he’s back with a one-hour stand-up special, brand new, where no topic from disastrous hookups to historical assassinations disappears. Is off limits.

There was one of these new big budget movies and it just turns into a game of like, how long can this last versus me checking my phone? It’s not long. Some $ 500 million movie. I’m like, damn, turns out I’d rather watch a guy power wash a sidewalk on TikTok. This cannot bode well for the future of entertainment.

His new special, Sam Morrell Incorrect, premieres September 29th on Netflix. Please welcome me, Sam Morrell. Woo-hoo! You did a great job. How’d that feel?

You killed it. How’d that feel? Natural.

Also out today, that Dane Cook documentary.

Dane went on the Obsessed podcast and shared this anecdote. Dane said, my mom said on her deathbed, your brother, you got to look out for him. There was a long, wild conversation with my mom that ended with her trying to warn me. I didn’t want to accept that, but it was the beginning of me starting to look at things differently. It was the last gift my mom gave me before she passed away.

And lo and behold, I finally uncovered a real terrible truth in my family. You can watch Funny Money, the Dane Cook story, streaming on video on demand starting today. You know the story here. Apparently, Dane’s brother stole from Dane. Well, Dane is saying he offered to forget about the debt under one simple condition.

Dane said, quote, I wanted to sit with him. That was the one thing I told the director. I said, I want to sit with him. I want to sit opposite him. And there was a correspondence, not between him and me directly, but through our legal team.

I’ll just leave it at that. The plot thickens. I think that the bagel bite slash sauce era is over. I missed my brother. I missed him.

I missed the guy before that call. It was weird because I didn’t think I missed him anymore. I thought I got past it. And it was such a season of my life. And I’ve grown from it.

I’m better from it. But man, I forgot that I still missed having a brother. In case you’re curious what happened to the note about play the clip from Good Day L.A. Apparently someone pasted it below the Dane Cook story, but that’s neither here nor there. The New York Times watched James Austin Johnson’s special.

That’s the thing I forgot to watch over the weekend. I caught up on— I finished The Gentleman season two, which is awesome. I finished Tires, which was really good. I started watching The Paper, which is, you know, something to have on while you play with your phone. It’s not great.

It’s not awful. It’s just, you know, a thing. The Dark Matter episode that came out last week— Fantastic. And I forgot to watch James Austin Johnson. I did watch Nimesh Patel for like 10 minutes.

I was like, eh, I don’t care. Anyway, the New York Times caught up with James Austin Johnson. He seems worried about being pigeonholed as the guy who does Trump impression. I think he’s right there. They used him in a few more sketches this week, and he was pretty good.

But he told the Times, I fully believed I haven’t even started doing the thing that is the main thing I’ll end up doing. He first met Sarah Sherman years ago, and they crossed paths again during their SNL auditions. Sarah told the Times, I was having a crisis of conscience during the audition because I was like, what am I doing here? And he was like, dude, it’s a live comedy show. That’s the thing you love most in the world.

And that one line totally shifted my entire perspective. James thought he would only occasionally play Trump. Oops. That’s pretty much every week. In the beginning, doing impressions was a way to survive on SNL.

He said, it seemed like a way I could make myself useful. You quite did. But since Trump was reelected and has been around for a long time, he feels kind of pigeonholed. He explains his new special, Heal Ya. Is a showcase for both his range and taste.

He said he’s perfectly happy when a quarter of the room is losing their mind at half his jokes while the rest of the room is either chuckling or looking over at that group, wondering why they’re not part of the party. Interesting take from James here. I’ve always been a little bit skeptical of the comedian’s drive to murder every second of a set. When I go to a concert, not every song sends me through the rafters. You’re given peaks and valleys and moments in between and a bathroom song.

Don’t forget a bathroom song. Do you do a bathroom chunk in a comedy set? I don’t think so. You’re on a journey with a beginning, middle, and end.

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Speaking of the middle, here’s the break.

All right, don’t forget, starting this Sunday, it is the new series, Is a Late Night Dead? In which Johnny Mac will wax poetic about late night shows and eventually come to some sort of conclusion whether or not late night is dead. You will not get that answer in episode one. That’s not how the podcast works. This week on Sunday, I wax poetically about 1230, David Letterman, Late Night with David Letterman, which is my North Star.

So Check out Is Late Night Dead? It’s its own separate feed. I will eventually use the episodes as bonus episodes in this feed, but not yet. Did you watch Saturday Night Live with Nick’s superstar Jalen Brunson? He’s good at basketball, but he’s not great at Saturday Night Live, which we kind of knew going in.

You know, they handled him pretty well, kept him pretty reined in. He even made a joke in the monologue about you can tell how excited he is between his voice and his face. You know, not the best episode at all. One interesting note. There’s a sketch in which he plays an office guy who’s trying to shoot paper wads into a trash basket like one does in the office.

And Jalen’s character not good at it at all. SNL writer Dan Bula posted on Instagram and explained they had to make sure Jalen Brunson would actually miss. Dan explained on Instagram there was a blower in the garbage can, making it literally impossible for Jalen to score until the final shot. Dan said Brunson and the cast members had two sets of cue cards drafted for the ending. One if he made the last shot and one if he missed.

He, of course, made it. He’s Jalen Brunson. However, we’re told he missed it at the dress rehearsal, but he hit the shot on air because Jalen Brunson is built for the moment. Pretty good. Did you watch SNL UK?

You should get on board with that. It’s better than SNL US. This week was pretty good. Last week was probably better than anything SNL USA has done in a year and a half. There was one sketch this week that I particularly liked about wax museums.

I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s on Peacock if you want to watch it. I had shared in the Facebook group, which is Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. Trevor Noah did an advertisement for the National Team of Comedy. So Trevor is the captain, has some various comedians on Team South Africa. And I was wondering, and I’ll ask you and you can answer in the Facebook group, Daily Comedy News podcast group, who should be on the Team America national team of comedy?

I’ll give you my list in a second. This is all subjective, neither here nor there. But I want to annihilate. So I’ll tell you my four in stage order. First, I’m sending out Jeff Ross because I’m going to roast the hell out of your dumb ass country.

So Jeff Ross is going to open. Now, if we were doing some other sort of ranking, some other sort of competition, would you pick Jeff Ross? Probably not. But here, I’m sending out the roast member to roast you. Then, I just want pure laughs.

John Mulaney, always reliable. Increasingly a little out there. So I’ll put Mulaney in the two slot. Then I’m going to bring Bill Burr, because again, I don’t want to just win when we play Team South Africa or Team England in the comedy competition, whatever this thing is. I want to destroy.

And I’m going to get Bill Burr out there and I’m going to fire up Bill Burr as the coach. I’m going to go, hey, Bill, didn’t you play the Riyadh Comedy Festival?

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And then he’s going to get a little, yeah, you know, I played it, played it.

Yeah, that was like a lame ass mood. And I’m going to fire Bill Burr up and get the angry Bill Burr out there to just be on fire and do something similar to what he did in Philadelphia.

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And then my closer, you got to go with the ace, Dave Chappelle, top of the ga…

Some other people suggested, how about Louis C.K. Not an absurd pick. I would put C.K. Where I have Mulaney. But on my team, Ross, Mulaney, Burr, Chappelle.

Who’s your team? Facebook group, Daily Comedy News podcast group.

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Speaking of Bill Burr, he’ll be the Saturday’s deep dive in this feed.

In case you missed it, on Saturday we took a look at Marc Maron. People did not miss it. That episode did pretty well. And let’s take a look at one of Vulture’s comedians you should know and will know, or whatever they’re called. I told you I wasn’t going to remember what it’s called.

Anyway, Lee Jin-Hao tends to deliver his stand-up at a soothing, unhurried coup, writes Vulture. With his blend of surrealism, wordplay, and philosophical observation, his performances can feel like an MFA student’s spoken-world recital until he flips his affect, unleashing bursts of aggression and machismo. When he talks about his debut special Swimming in a Submarine about his mandatory service in the Singaporean army, for example, he mimes a gun with his fingers and childlessly says pew pew. Then a terrifying expression overtakes his face as his imaginary gun transforms into an assault rifle and he acts out mowing down civilians in violent combat. His quote, the first thing they taught us in the army is you pull the trigger not to hurt what’s in front, but to protect what’s behind.

Yikes. After completing military service in 2019, Lee began performing open mics in Singapore before moving to Scotland. After graduating in 23, he moved to London, where he continued to develop his acting. And reach the finals of the BBC New Comedy Awards. Then he did Fringe, nominated for Best Newcomer, and they had two quick questions with Jin Hal.

One, what’s the biggest financial investment you’ve made for your comedy? He explains, when I started, my mom and stepdad rented out my room back home in Singapore to help me. They live with strangers, so I could do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Wow. Second, when you think about the future of comedy, what concerns you and what excites you?

He says, I’m super excited that new subgenres of comedy are emerging, and from what I see, it’s no longer a simple binary of traditional versus alternative. I think of comedians as animals in a zoo, and it concerns me when the owl looks at the lion with jealousy and tries to imitate its growls without realizing that their specialty is staying up all night and being able to turn their head fully. It worries me when an artist measures their success Using someone else’s ruler. I worry. They compromised their voice for this.

I’m really sad that I’ve come to the end of the questions. Very philosophical. And that is your comedy news for today. I’ll see you tomorrow.

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Featured: Nikki Glaser, Brielle Adams Wheatley, Yakov Smirnoff, Joe Rogan, Taylor Tomlinson, Stephen Colbert, Byron Allen

What’s in This Episode

• Nikki Glaser apologizes for joke about trans influencer Brielle Adams Wheatley
• Yakov Smirnoff discusses escaping Soviet Union via Jimmy Carter’s wheat deal
• Taylor Tomlinson explains decision to leave After Midnight
• Speculation on CBS late night show cancellations and butterfly effect
• Taylor Tomlinson regrets not calling Stephen Colbert before quitting

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. Hey there, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Now, if you’re watching on YouTube and you’re like, hey, John, didn’t you wear that outfit yesterday? Yeah, I might have taped these back to back. What’s it to you?

All righty. Nikki Glaser in a kerfuffle of sorts, but I think we have sorted it out. You see, influencer Brielle Adams Wheatley called out Nikki Glaser over a standup joke via Instagram stories as one does. Now, relevant to the details here, Adams Wheatley was born with no limbs and is trans. Stay with me.

A fan messaged Adams Wheatley on Instagram to say they had attended Nikki Glaser’s show in Ridgefield, Washington. And felt that Adams Wheatley should know that she was being referenced in the set. The fan wrote, Adams Wheatley asked what had been said. The fan described the joke according to the third party of the article John is cribbing from said the fan said Nikki Glaser said. So let’s put a major asterisk out here, okay?

But that version of the story has Nikki Glaser saying something like, She said that you already have a hard life with no limbs but still decided to transition. Then something about how you had to since you rubbed your penis off with the way you drag yourself across the room. Again, that is attributed to Nikki Glaser. I was not in the audience. That got booed during the performance according to the recap I’m reading from.

Adams Wheatley then posted the conversation to her Instagram story, tagging Nikki Glaser and asking, Why are you making comments about what is or isn’t in my pants? Glazer responded, apparently, it’s a dumb joke. In messages later shared by Adams Wheatley, Nikki Glaser apologized and said she should have reached out before including her in the routine. We were told Nikki Glaser wrote, Nikki also addressed the framing of the joke, writing, Nikki then ended her message saying she would remove the joke from her set moving forward. Very interesting.

I found this next clip super compelling. I kind of wanted to lead off with it, but the way podcasts work, you got to lead with the tabloidy stuff. This one is a little more serious, but I found it super compelling. This is Yakov Smirnoff on the Joe Rogan experience. The topic, Yakov’s father listening to the Voice of America.

What did he get out of listening to Voice of America? Like what was he, did he talk about it? Yeah, yeah. I would then start also waking up and listening and it would be just, standard American thing. Give me you’re tired, you’re hungry, you’re poor, something like that.

And, you know, and they would that there’s a Statue of Liberty waiting to greet you if you come to the United States. And he would always say, you know, this this would be something that I would love you to experience. And and my mom was she hated that because she was afraid that we’ll get in trouble. And so she didn’t want to even talk about this. So if I drew a picture as a kid, I would draw a picture of Statue of Liberty.

And she would like, don’t do that. Don’t let anybody see this. We’ll get in trouble. And when after I experienced the cruises and got to know this different environment, I came home and I go, mom, dad, I think we should consider tried to get out of, and mom was like mad at my dad. And my dad stood up, which was good for him at that time.

Normally he would just be quiet, but he said to my mom, Clara, don’t you, would you like your son when he is my age, sit there by the radio and listen to Voice of America, hoping, wishing that he would be doing something like that? Or would you like him to be in America doing this? And my mom kind of went, you know what’s gonna happen when we apply for a visa? People who consider your friends, they will cross the street and they will not wanna talk to you and be seen with you and you’re gonna go through hell. And my dad said, yeah, We will.

And she said, well, if you’re willing to do it, so am I. Smirnoff went on to say Jimmy Carter wanted to see some human rights in the Soviet Union and the Soviet leadership. They were starving. They didn’t have food. So they needed food from America.

So Jimmy Carter made a deal that we’re going to give you green and you allow people to get out. And that’s how we were kind of exchanged for some wheat. You know, that’s how we got out. Joe Rogan said, wow, sometimes you need to be reminded how fortunate you are. You know, Americans in particular are You know, it’s not our fault.

People become accustomed to where they live, and they think this is normal, which is one of the reasons why this push towards communism among young people is so infuriating to me. But the solution is not to make the government decide who gets what, because they never decide the right way. Taylor Tomlinson has a new book. She’s making the rounds. We’ll be talking about her a lot as she does the publicity.

The Daily Beast zoned in on the part where Taylor Tomlinson tells Stephen Colbert, hey, I don’t want to do the 1230 show anymore. Taylor explains in the book why she chose to step down from, I’m trying to remember what the show was even called. John, you host a comedy podcast, can’t remember, later, later, after midnight, after midnight. That’s what it was called, after midnight. Taylor Thomas has said, I realized this wasn’t just a bad year, a tough moment, a difficult chapter.

It was the inevitable result of a decade of overworking myself. Quitting the show was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. Nearly 200 people worked on After Midnight. My leaving could jeopardize a job they loved. I almost stayed for that reason alone.

Let me jump in here because I have talked about this on the podcast before. But I’m heading somewhere with this. So here’s what I have floated as a theory. And before I float my theory once again, if you’ve heard this before, I am not blaming Taylor Tomlinson for anything. Did I say that clearly enough?

OK, but here’s my theory. All right. So CBS is sailing along. You may recall they had renewed the 1230 show with Taylor Thompson. They wanted it back.

And she had said yes. Then a couple of weeks later, maybe a couple of months later, she stepped down and then they decided, huh, what if we didn’t have a 1230 show? And my theory is because of that, that made them go, huh. What if we didn’t have an 1130 show, which led to Colbert’s demise? Because stay with me.

Assuming you take at face value that Colbert’s show was really expensive, etc. Etc. So what was the plan? Were they going to have Byron Allen at 1130 and Taylor Tomlinson off on an island at 1230? Or would they have moved Taylor Tomlinson to 1130, which is probably a less expensive show to produce than Colbert’s was, and Byron Allen at 1230?

So I think there might be a butterfly effect. Again, I am not blaming Taylor Tomlinson, but I think her decision to walk away maybe perhaps possibly led to executives who came to terms with the idea of not having a 1230 show and then somebody going, huh, what if we didn’t have an 1130 show? I’ve been in a lot of conference rooms with media executives, and I think maybe perhaps possibly that could have happened. Not blaming Taylor Tomlinson. Taylor says she didn’t talk to Stephen Colbert before deciding to quit, and she later regretted it when he called.

She said, I spent that call with Stephen, Mr. Colbert, not sure how to address him, crying and apologizing before I got off the phone, shaking with shame. I felt awful and guilty and yet again disappointing. Yeah, she probably should have called him if he was the godfather of the show. Yeah, that’s bad for him.

She continued, I understand why he was upset. He had told me to call him if I ever needed to talk about anything, and I hadn’t called him about this. I wasn’t trying to blindside him. I was just afraid to bother someone so important and busy. This is why we have agents.

Agents do this sort of thing. Taylor, you know this. Taylor, agents do this. Colbert discovered the star on social media, telling Entertainment Weekly in 2024. When she was just starting out, the algorithm started feeding her to me years ago.

I remember thinking, who is this special woman? Taylor said when Colbert got the news, it must have been infuriating and confusing. Watching someone you believed in, someone you would hire for what is objectively a dream job, throw it away. Nobody just walks away from a television show. Yes, Tomlinson wrote.

She wrote that the biggest change she needed was for CBS to allow a fill-in host when she was sick. She said, I was told CBS would just play a rerun and the crew would lose a day’s work. So regardless of my health, I never missed a day. She concludes, what’s the quote? You can’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm.

Some days this comforts me. Other days, I think I should have gone up in flames. Wow. All right. So this brings us to I’ve Started Another Podcast.

It is called Is Late Night Dead? Hopefully the title tells you what it is. It debuts Sunday. In its own feed, it is called Is Late Night Dead? I will eventually repurpose the episodes as bonus episodes in this feed.

But for now, it’s its own thing. And I’m eventually going to explore the premise of Is Late Night Dead? But I’m using the punchy title to get people to sample the show. I’m waxing poetic about my love of late night. And my love of late night all starts with Late Night with David Letterman, the 1230 version.

And that will be this weekend’s episode. So this week, I don’t solve the question, is Late Night dead? This week, I wax poetic about Late Night with David Letterman. So please follow the podcast, Is Late Night Dead? Now, as for the Late Night franchise itself, the 1230 NBC show, hashtag make 1230 great again.

I have many times spoken about how I just don’t feel like Seth Meyers is the worthy successor to David Letterman. And Conan O’Brien. I’ll leave Jimmy Fallon out of it. He had a cup of coffee there. But I just don’t feel like Seth is late night-y, you know?

If Seth was doing his thing at 1.30 or on another channel, fine. But it just doesn’t feel like the late night franchise to me. I want somebody who’s out there, like a Chris Fleming or a Robbie Hoffman would be amazing at 12.30. Come on. Anyway, Seth Meyers is back to work on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Hashtag make 12.30 great again. He’s also working on a new project with NBC called The Game Room. It’s a half-hour workplace comedy called The Game Room, and we’re told the log line is under wraps because, you know, you wouldn’t want that to leak out. And over at Colbert’s Old Haunt and David Letterman’s Second Haunt, or Third if you want to count the morning show, CBS has taken down Stephen Colbert’s name from the Ed Sullivan Theater. The marquee that had said Late Show with Stephen Colbert now says Ed Sullivan Theater, which people are outraged about, but I don’t think that’s crazy.

I am tremendously excited about this. If you watch Last One Laugh in UK, you know how funny Bob Mortimer is and you know how funny Richard Ayoade is. Now, what if we put them together on a show called Hot or Cold? This is heading to Netflix of all places. Hot or Cold is set inside a mysterious institution where contestants tackle challenges with no obvious logic.

That’s a lot of fun. The premise takes the classic childhood guessing game and hands it to adults who Netflix says really should know better. Players get no instructions. Their only guide is the room itself, which glows red when they’re getting warmer and blue when they’re getting colder. I love it.

Bob Mortimer said, Spending time with Richard Ayoade is one of my all-time favorite things to do, closely followed by playing hot or cold, so this has worked out brilliantly. Love that quote. Ayoade, best known for the IT crowd and the former host of Travelman, which is just a.. If you’ve never seen that, go on Amazon, look up Travelman. So basically, Richard Ayoade goes somewhere, usually in Europe, for a long weekend.

And is not impressed by any of it. It is one of my favorite pieces of television. I love him so much, and he should be the next Doctor Who. Can we all agree on that? How do we make that happen?

Richard said, although I prefer mild temperatures, it’s been instructive to participate in something as binary as this. Okay, that sentence alone, if you’re ever like, what kind of humor does Johnny Mac like? That’s it. That sentence about hot or cold, although I prefer mild temperatures. That is wonderful.

Right there is everything. Hot or Cold, coming soon to Netflix. James Acaster has suggested that having a lot of comedians on UK Celebrity Traitors could become a problem as the comedians could become obvious suspects. Hmm. Celebrity Traitors on BBC One and on the Pirate Ship, if you know what I mean.

I might go out to sea and watch an episode or two, just saying. Although I think Peacock actually shows those. So no, no, no Pirate Ship. Sorry. Subscribe to Peacock like a good, honorable citizen.

That’s all you have to do to watch UK Traders. Anyway, I’m all into it. Episodes will air, at least in the UK, two nights a week on Thursday and Friday. Some of the comedians include James Acaster, Joanne McNally, Joe Lycett, Rob Beckett, Miranda Hart, and Romesh Raganathan. Acaster joked about the odds being stacked against the comics.

He said, even though it could obviously easily be three people who aren’t comedians, meaning the Traders.. I don’t know how it works out, but if math turns against us, we’re in big trouble. So here’s my question to you guys. Who would be good on American celebrity traders? So I put some thought into this.

And I think you need a specific kind of comedian. Like the Austin guys, even if you got them to do it, they’re not going to take it seriously. Like Tom Segura is not going to take celebrity traders seriously. So I’m like, who would take it seriously? So you need somebody like Jim Gaffigan, I think would be great at celebrity traders.

Mulaney might actually buy into it. Controversial manga comedian Nate Borghese would probably be really good at it. So I think you need that type of comedian. Let’s hear when Carlos Mencia, too. He’s been very interesting in the press.

I don’t know. So go on the Facebook group, Daily Comedy News Podcast group. Tell me who would be good for American celebrity traders and comedians. And that is your comedy news for today. I’m going to go change outfits, even though I’m recording a bunch of these in a row.

So those of you watching on YouTube aren’t like, hey, does he ever shower? I shower, just not during a marathon recording session. See you tomorrow.

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Featured: Norm Macdonald, Judd Apatow, Chris Fleming, Anthony Jeselnik, Joe Coy, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Jason Segel, Taylor Swift, Bill Simmons

What’s in This Episode

• Norm Macdonald Netflix documentary premiere October 16th directed by Judd Apatow
• Chris Fleming loses Emmy to the Muppets, calls for late night hosting change
• Anthony Jeselnik launches book club podcast on Bill Simmons’ network
• Jimmy Kimmel late night show cancellation rumors and ABC denial
• Joe Coy weather forecast segment and Taylor Swift joke controversy

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. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. I can’t wait to tell you a story, but I shouldn’t do it at the top. It’s bad for consumption rates, but let me start with Norm, The Tale of Norm Macdonald. That will premiere on Netflix Friday, October 16th, directed by Judd Apatow.

The documentary offers an intimate look into the career of Norm Macdonald, who will be the deep dive on this upcoming Saturday. But let’s listen to the trailer. I.D. That is a strange abbreviation when you think about it. I is short for I-D.

And then D is short for dentification. It’s funny with Saturday Night Live, isn’t it, that people either go on to huge fame or they fizzle into oblivion.

And then there’s you.

No, but.. It won’t go away. When I was a kid, I walked into my parents having sex. It was the most embarrassing half hour of my life. I think it’s kind of useless to go to school.

Like, I never graduated college. I never went to college. I don’t know if I believe that. Remember when you came and visited the set of Man on the Moon? Oh, sure, yeah, yeah.

I was also in the film. I’m not political. In my opinion, if you’re going to fight the war on terror, a good place to start would be this nation’s haunted houses. They’re terrifying. We all went on a tour to do stand-up, and he goes, I’m the best comic out.

Of all of us, and everyone went, Yeah. That’s true. No one fought back. And why would they fire you? This guy, Don Ohlmeyer, who turns out to be the president, he goes, I’m firing you there from the show.

And then I said, oh, that’s not good.

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And then I said, why is that now?

And he goes, oh, you’re not funny.

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And then I said, holy Lord, that’s even worse news.

You know? I don’t like to act. Actors look on me the way vampires look on Count Chocula. We regard you as the best of the best, the guy who has it in every fiber of his being. You know, there’s no such thing as unconditional love with human beings, but dogs, they don’t care.

Hitler had a dog. Now, you think of that. There was a dog in history who loved Hitler more than anyone. He would wake up in the morning and go, where’s Hitler? Norm, the tale of Norm Macdonald, traces the life and career of Norm Macdonald from his rise as the anchor of Weekend Update to his enduring legacy as a comedian’s comedian, a master of the absurd, the dry, and the unexpected, built entirely from archival footage, personal photos, and rare home videos contributed by fans and friends.

Looking forward to this one. I was telling my college students this was coming out, and they were excited about it. So Norm has a cultural footprint, as they say, which is great. Let’s make 1230 great again. Chris Fleming is upset about not winning an Emmy.

He’ll explain why. As you can see, I am in mourning. I lost an Emmy to the Muppets. Now, don’t understand that level of humiliation. Cross-culturally, everyone, like, if you were to tell a child in Nepal or an.

Old man in the end of his life in Peru, they would both go.. On a body level, I would describe it. I hesitate to use this term, shrinkage. Uh.. There’s a chronic, maybe generational shrinkage that I’m experiencing.

And this isn’t even the Muppets of yore that I lost to. These are the Muppets that Jason Segel dug up during the housing crisis. These are the. Muppets that Jason Segel pet-cemetered when he claimed God. When we were too vulnerable as a nation to stop him.

I think it’s time we hand 1230, the late night franchise on NBC, over to Chris Fleming. Seth Meyers not getting it done for me. Anthony Jeselnik will have a book club podcast on Bill Simmons’ network. I listened to Jeselnik on Simmons for a couple minutes, and he just doesn’t seem like a guy I would want to spend time with. I’m sure he’s lovely, but I don’t feel his vibe.

And I was really picking up on, and I think we know this from his comedy, but even in his normal speaking voice, he over-enunciates everything. Yeah. And I find it a little jarring. Anyway, Anthony Justin’s Book Club Now podcast.

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And now with the five-day forecast, let’s go to KABC’s Joe Coy.

This is so hard. This is like, we’re doing a science project. I don’t even know how you do this. So we’re looking at downtown LA. Yeah.

Very easy. What’s going on? Oh, well, it looks like it’s cloudy and there’s an 84% chance of humidity right now. The dew point is at 66 degrees and the pressure is at 29. So be careful when you drive.

Keep your eyes on the road. Keep your hands off that cell phone. Visibility is at 10 miles. So the wind is picking up at two miles per hour. Out at Long Beach.

Out at Long Beach. You know, this is so hard. This is like doing a science project. I don’t even know how you do this. Because you’re reading the temperature.

All I do is lie the whole time. I don’t even know what I’m doing. Let’s just take our shoes off and let’s just relax. Oh my God. Do it.

Do it. I can’t do that. Let’s do it. Yes, you can. Do it.

Take them off. Whatever. Let’s go. All right, we got 70 degrees in Long Beach, 71 in. Well, no, no, I was looking at Lancaster.

You were pointing to Lancaster. But let’s just remember that Ontario will always be special and dear to our hearts, and it’s at 69 degrees. Absolutely, love Ontario. Looking at along the coast, temperatures in the 70s too. And there’s a lot of, yeah, a lot of clouds.

And what we’re expecting, temperatures by noon, lunchtime. Why’d you leave me? Oh, I’m sorry. Why would you just leave me here? I look so stiff.

I’m trying to come out so viewers can see exactly what’s going on. Oh, my double chin. See, this is why the green screen always adds 10 pounds. There it does. That’s the thing.

It always does. But you look great, Joe. Yes, thank you. We have some pressure coming up from Russia. Coming down through Alaska.

What’s happening is that an area of high pressure is just dominating Southern California. So that’s why we have these really warm temperatures these next few days. But the good news is, as we head into Sunday and eventually into Monday, we have that nice cool down. So it’s been pretty hot these last few days. It’s been hot.

But it’s going to cool down Sunday and Monday. So you can take the. Jacket off on Monday. Let’s do it. On Monday, yes.

LA and Orange County, 87 today, warming up to 90 by Saturday. Yes.

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And then we finally have that cool down.

Sunday and Monday is what we can look forward to. Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Temperatures, temperatures. This is why weather is a one person show. It’s not- Tell you what, this is the best weather you’ve ever seen.

Honestly, you guys. This is awesome. Why do I look massive next to you? Because I’m 5’3. Oh, my gosh.

I’m 6’3. I have to stand in. How did I just become Niku? Niku, get in here. Because we are fast running out of time.

I’m told we have five seconds. Thank you, Joe Coy, for being here with us. Niku, you were spectacular and very well informed. Love you guys. You may recall one time Joe Coy told this horrible mean joke about Taylor Swift, and people are not digging the Taylor Swift new song.

No, people were ripping that on Friday when I recorded this. But anyway, one time, Joe Coy told a horrible, just a vicious joke about Taylor Swift. I hate to even play it for you, but I must. 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.

So what’s going on with Jimmy Kimmel? On September 8th, news broke that Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show would end. Hours later, ABC denied that Kimmel is out. Calling news of his departure inaccurate. Radar Online points out, however, the denial did not announce a new contract for Jimmy.

Their source is kind of stirring things up, a source said. In other words, he’s a dead man walking. His days could be numbered, could. Is doing a lot of work in that sentence. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.

Source insists that ABC absolutely wants Kimmel to re-up. Again, Jimmy is just slightly older than me. What are you going to do? Record a podcast in the basement like a loser? No.

You have proper lighting on your show. Don’t walk away. John Cleese is unhappy with the BBC. John Cleese is always unhappy with somebody. He’s upset about the whole Mitchell and Webb look thing.

I told you the BBC pulled some clips. Cleese went on Twitter and said, if the BBC could prioritize making great programs ahead of social engineering, that might be worth the license fee. In another post, John Cleese shared something from James Dreyfuss, a star of BBC comedies Gimme Gimme Gimme and The Thin Blue Line. In that post, Dreyfuss wrote, So, the BBC have decided that 11 of Mitchell and Webb’s sketches are no longer deemed appropriate for modern-day audiences, despite the fact that all, in caps, their material comes from an intelligent source base that pokes fun at and ridicules the foolish and ignorant, and people have the nerve to suggest that we’d miss the BBC if it suddenly disappeared. Cleese responded, the BBC knows what’s best for us, and some of us know what’s best for the BBC.

Some more details on the cut sketches. In one, Mitchell and Webb play English Civil War reenactors who’ve grown bored of their roles and recreate a conflict between government forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a rebel militia. David Mitchell asks, are you absolutely sure that this isn’t racist? They agree to stop the reenactment at the first sign of racism. When one threatens the other with a machete, they halt the reenactment, concluding, it’s racist, very racist, shame.

In another sketch, Webb and Olivia Colman parried a makeover show and are confronted by a woman in a burqa. Then they cut to Webb discussing whether or not the sketch is offensive. The woman in the burqa removes her garment to reveal David Mitchell in blackface. John Cleese has been mad at the BBC for a while. In 2020, he voiced his disapproval.

Of a decision by the BBC-owned studio UKTV to scrub an episode of Fawlty Towers. UKTV removed The Germans from its Goldbox set of downloadable episodes, saying that it contained racial slurs. They weren’t specific about which one, but they believe it is in which the character, the major.. Uses the N-word when referring to Caribbean sportsmen. John Cleese said, Still some kerfuffle over Ali G, who is I, again, is spelled I-Z.

Some British comedians are arguing that the character is no longer associated with its roots of satirizing white men trying to adopt black street culture. Instead, they say Ali G perpetuates racial stereotypes. Deadline spoke with Colton Dunn, one of three black writers who worked on Ali G, Who Is I? Who said he didn’t recognize that criticism. He argued that Sacha Baron Cohen remains faithful to Ali G’s origins, adding that the jokes target the movie’s subjects rather than black people.

Dunn said, from my point of view, Ali G is not a racist character. Ali G is a tool to expose racists. He puts himself in the most ridiculous situations and he doesn’t do that because he’s racist. He goes into these crazy places, places where people would kill him if they knew it was going down. I don’t think he’s doing that from a racist point of view, me and Cohen.

That’s why I signed on. I wouldn’t sign on to work with somebody I thought was racist. That’s against everything I’ve ever done. All right. The story I couldn’t wait to tell you.

So a listener to the show, I don’t want to share which listener because, you know, the person’s private. Um, had mentioned to me that they were going to Iceland. And I said, okay, when I was in Iceland, I wanted to go to the hot dog stand that Anthony Bourdain went to, and I couldn’t go because when I went there at 11 at night, it was closed. So I sent the listener a picture of the hot dog stand and said, this is your challenge. Get a hot dog.

That’s it. I’m not telling you anything else. Find this place. That’s all I told him. Send him a picture.

And I just got like two seconds before I hit record the listener with a hot dog in front of the hot dog stand. Well done. You know who you are. Love it. Hey, remember Bowen Yang?

Remember him? He was really popular on his Saturday Night Live and walked away because he was going to do all kinds of really cool projects. Remember that guy? Well, he’s out hawking skin care. And he got one of those advertorial articles, and my comedy tracker caught it.

So Bowen Yang was asked, Bowen, as a chemistry major, how important is the science behind skin care for you versus word of mouth? Bowen Yang, who used to be the star of Saturday Night Live and left a little early to go do other things, he said.. I’ve always been fascinated by the industrial applications of chemistry, but in skincare I’ve always thought, I guess I’ll follow the trendy thing. Now, I have this wonderful dermatologist that I really rely on, who’s also Asian and very specifically understands the particulars of our skin. His training and understanding resonate with me, which makes me think I’m a little more science-minded behind skincare now.

You know. There’s a lesson here. Kenan Thompson, hey, Lauren, can I come back? Sure, Kenan. Kenan says yes.

Jost and Che, hey, can we come back? Lauren says yes, they come back. Remember Kate McKinnon? She was a bit of an SNL superstar. Yeah, she should start a club with Bo and Yang for people who probably should have stayed on the show longer.

It’s not 1975 anymore, guys. Ken Jeong discussed joining former Major League Baseball player Chan Ho Park’s consortium and buying a stake in the Sacramento A’s. And said that Chanho Park getting an ownership is a victory for Major League Baseball. Ken Jeong was on SportsCenter and said this is also a victory for Korea because Chanho Park is now the bridge between Major League Baseball and Korea. Jeong added that he’s lucky to be part of the A’s in any capacity.

He also said, how can I say no to Chanho Park? I don’t know. And let’s see here. I’m going to bump this time out, put out a list of comedians that they think you should know and watch. But I have some travel coming up and need to record like 17 episodes today.

So if you’re watching the videos and you’re like, hey, I saw that outfit already. Yeah, you did. So we’ll get to time out a different day. So that is your comedy news for today. See you tomorrow.

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Featured: Marc Maron, Barack Obama, Brendan McDonald

What’s in This Episode

• WTF with Marc Maron podcast ends after 16 years and 1,686 episodes
• Marc Maron’s final episode recorded in Barack Obama’s office
• Obama’s 2015 appearance in Maron’s garage as pivotal moment for podcasting credibility
• Marc Maron’s career trajectory from Air America to podcast success
• Burnout and decision to end WTF on their own terms

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. Has it been a year already? Hi, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News on Saturdays with Doing Deep Dives. And on October 13th, 2025, Marc Maron got in a car, drove to Washington, D.C. Walked into the office of Barack Obama and recorded the final episode of WTF with Marc Maron, episode 1686.

The first episode had gone up on September 1st, 2009, from the garage of Marc Maron’s house in L.A. Recorded on equipment that cost a few hundred dollars with an audience of basically nobody. Sixteen years later, the last episode was recorded in the office of a former president of the U.S. Who had appeared on the show once before in 2015, sitting in the same garage in L.A. Which was the moment that definitely answered the question of whether podcasts were a real medium or a niche hobby for people who couldn’t get on the radio.

We’ve known this was going to happen for a little while, and we thought it would be a fun idea. A great thing, an honor to have the president stop by on this trip to Los Angeles. I’m a little nervous because he’s the president and I’ve got to have a person in here. But that on top of the fact that they just swept my house with a dog. I had to hide my cats in the bedroom.

They had to sweep that separately. There was a lot of panic. I was in, as you know, in Hawaii. While a lot of this was going on, my producer, Brendan McDonald, was dealing with a lot of pre-prep. But today, they’ve tented my entire driveway.

I’m told there’ll be a sniper on the roof. There’s something in here that looks like an armed yoga mat I didn’t ask too many questions about. There are Secret Service everywhere. There’s people, three or four people, maybe five or six people out there with headphones on listening to this. Again, the entire walk from the street, that section of the street where the The motorcade’s going to come up.

It’s tented. Oh, see? Look at that. I should turn that off. I put a lot of pressure on myself about this kind of thing.

I want to connect, but I don’t want to do a policy discussion. I don’t want to do an interview that’s been done before. I’d like to connect with him as a person. I got to hope that happens. When I teach the subject to college students, I always share that as the definitive episode of podcasting.

If you listen to it, when Obama first gets there, he’s the president of the United States. He’s very serious.

And then along the way, he drops the president stuff.

And it’s just Barack hanging out in the garage with Marc Maron. You can hear him get comfortable. And it just it’s two guys talking now towards the end. I think Obama’s brain kicked back in and he became the president of the United States again and talked about issues. But for a while there in the middle, it’s just two guys in the garage.

What do you do to have fun? I mean, I can’t imagine what it’s like to raise a family in the situation that you’re in as president. It must feel sort of insulated. You know, the biggest fun I’ve had is watching my girls grow up. And they are magnificent.

Look, hopefully every parent feels the way they do. I do about my daughters. Yeah. But I think they are spectacular. And when Michelle and I came into office, the biggest worry we had was, is this going to be some weird thing for them?

And are they going to grow up with an attitude or are they going to think that everybody eats off of China? Right. Right. And are they? And, you know, it turns out that they’ve just become.

They’re kind, they’re thoughtful. They treat everybody with respect. They, uh, don’t have any kind of errors. Uh, they’re confident, but without being cocky, um, they’ve got great friends. They’ve been able to, uh, you know, they’re not stuck in the bubble the same way I am.

Uh, you know, they go to the mall, they have sleepovers, they go to prom, Malia’s started to drive. Um, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re doing great. So, My biggest fun has been watching them grow up. Now, unfortunately, they’re now hitting the age where they still love me, but they think I’m completely boring. And so they’ll come in, pat me on the head, talk to me for 10 minutes, and then they’re gone all weekend, right?

And they break my heart. And so now I’ve got to start thinking, well, what’s going to replace that fun? Right. But the one thing you don’t have to worry about is like, well, I hope they don’t get lost. That never happens.

Yeah. The other episode, Obama in his own office for the finale, was an acknowledgement from one of the most significant figures in American public life that WTF with Marc Maron had mattered, enough to warrant that kind of closure. Maron announced the show was ending in June of 2025. He and his producer, Brendan, who’d been running the operation together since the beginning, described themselves as burnt out and satisfied with the work. 16 years. 1,600 episodes. 55 million listens a year by the end, reportedly. 600 million total downloads by 2022. This started.

You know, the old garage, the, you know, just no one knew what a podcast was. I was coming out of a horrendous divorce. I was wanting to figure out how to continue living my life. Things were not looking good for me. Brendan McDonald, my producer who I’d worked with for years on other things, radio and streaming related.

And when Brendan and I started this thing, All we knew is we were going to do it every Monday and Thursday and there was no way to make money. There was no way that we knew how to build an audience or anything. And it was, it was crazy. We were doing it in a garage at the beginning. That was just a garage.

It was filled with junk and it, it slowly evolved into the show that became what you listen to twice a week, 16 years. We’ve been doing this and, uh, We’ve decided that we had a great run. They said they started it on their own terms. They grew it on their own terms and they were ending it on their own terms. Interesting to me, Marin got out right before the video boom or just as the video boom was starting.

And again, I can tell you when the camera is on, you behave differently. And I wonder if there had been cameras filming Barack Obama in the garage, would you have gotten the president of the United States to drop it and just be Barack? I’m not sure. Marc Maron, born in Jersey City in 1963, grew up partly in Alaska and partly in New Mexico. He went to Boston University, dropped out, drifted into stand-up in the mid-80s in San Francisco and then New York, and spent most of the 90s and early 2000s in a position that’s arguably the worst position to have in comedy.

Talented enough that the industry kept putting him in proximity to opportunities, not quite commercially viable enough that any of those opportunities converted into career stability. He was on Morning Sedition on Air America, remember that? The radio station for the left? He was on in the mornings. I’m gonna go out there and give them the best damn final show they’ve ever heard.

I’m going to embrace all my insecurities. I’m going to talk about candy and cats and iPods and my parents. I’m going to talk about the issues. And if all goes as planned, I’ll have a major meltdown, just like my bosses want. Yeah, everyone goes home happy.

And I get to do my final show. Ladies and gentlemen, for the last time on Morning Sedition, Mark Maron. Go. And writing geniuses, philosopher kings and queens, working class heroes, progressive utopians with no sense of humor, lurking conservatives. This is it, Mark Reilly.

This is the final show. We’re going to do it. We’re going to reflect. We’re going to get some closure. We’re going to talk to our friends.

We’re going to make it a nice time. We’re going to have a party. Is that all right with you? I’m fine with it. All right, Reilly.

How are you feeling, man? Are you sad? He had conversations about TV that didn’t go anywhere. This will shock you. He had a reputation inside the comedy world as someone who’s both genuinely brilliant and genuinely difficult, who could be his own worst enemy in rooms that required a certain kind of professional smoothness that Marc Maron didn’t consistently possess.

His stand-up from that era is good in ways that reward attention. It’s neurotic, confessional, self-lacerating in a way that felt specific rather than performed. Anxiety and anger and self-awareness folded together into material that the comedy community appreciated even when broader audiences weren’t getting it. You have a father, right? No, I was cloned.

I don’t know. You know, your popular TV personality, it could just, all right. Right, they may be in a lab, of course. I just have some advice. If you have a father and you’re a guy, what you gotta do is at some point, you just sit down with him over coffee, lunch, look him right in the eye and say, OK, is there any way I can avoid becoming you?

Is there any way? Because it’s happening and I want out. Did you keep a diary? Is there a map? Don’t look at me like that.

He was a comics comic in the sense that his peers recognized something real in the work, even when the commercial machinery was not amplifying it. Marin was, by his own account and by the account of most people who knew him during that period, not easy. He had relationships that ended badly, professional situations that ended badly. He carried things loudly and in public, which is what made him interesting as a comedian and what made him harder to work with as a professional. The podcast started in 2009, partly out of necessity and partly out of impulse.

He needed something to do. He had a garage, he had a microphone, a computer. He called comedians he knew and asked them to come on. Then he posted the conversations for free on the internet. An audience found it and then a bigger audience found it and a bigger audience found it and it kept growing in the way that things that are genuinely good keep growing when the mechanism for distribution is available.

What WTF was doing that no one else was quite doing in 2009 is more than just saying he invented the long form comedy podcast. It’s true. It gets the job done. But Marin was doing something specific with the interview that was different from what podcast interviews had been doing and different from what radio interviews did. He wasn’t asking comedians about their projects.

He wasn’t doing a press junket. He was asking comedians about their lives, specifically the part of their lives that shaped the work, the early years, the difficult years, the family stuff, the failure stuff. And he was doing it in a way you could tell he was actually invested in it rather than just professionally curious. He cared about the answers. You could hear it.

When he was talking to a comedian who had been through something specific, he was drawing on his own specific things, and the result was a conversation rather than an interview, which is a different kind of listen. The Robin Williams episode was entered into the National Recording Registry as the first one-on-one podcast episode to receive that designation, which is to say the Library of Congress identified that episode as a document of cultural significance worth preserving. You know, in the old days, yeah, there was that whole thing about just going from club to club to club. It’s one of my, yeah. Yeah.

There are a lot of people that was like, you would say like, there were styles and you’re like, but he’s doing him. I go, yeah, it’s, and a bird hurts doing Taylor Negron. Yes. You know, you go like at that point, you’re going, look at the blending. Well, that behind every genius, there’s a guy going, he stole my soul.

But it’s that whole thing of what’s the bitterness versus do you want to hang out? Do you engage it? And you say, what’s the truth of it? Yeah, I know the truth of the old days, but now it’s like, I don’t hang, so I don’t know. Well, that’s the weirdest thing is that there’s this idea that when you have show business, which is just a community of bitter people aspiring to something, and they’re children because what they’re aspiring to is ridiculous.

I mean, you’ve had a tremendous career for a lot of reasons. But there’s a lot of people that, you know, that they just they go to Hollywood. I used to do a line where I said it took me years to realize Hollywood wasn’t my parents. Wow. Looking for approval.

Well, yeah, just like I’m here. Where’s my where’s my trailer? And I think that the bitterness that when when people dismiss somebody who’s had a career, you know, as big and huge as yours, that the idea that like, you know, if he didn’t take that one joke, he wouldn’t be Robin Williams. I mean, it’s ridiculous. I mean, you look at even you look at someone like Pryor, who literally did Cosby for the first time.

Two years of his life. Before the auteur theory of comedy happened in the late 50s, where comics actually owned their point of view, I mean, it was what people did. I mean, you know, the Warshaw guys were like, are you doing that bit about the uncle tonight? Can I do it? All right.

And it was interchangeable. It’s also the idea of.. You know common ground when you say when there’s certain subjects you go you talk about you talking about the president i talk. About the president well yeah the obama garage episode from 2015 was the moment that made undeniable something that the podcast audience had understood for years which is that wtf had become a place where serious things happen where people said things they hadn’t said elsewhere and the format produced honesty that other formats didn’t produce. It’s kind of hard to say okay i okay look you know we had the fight like 10 years ago and I, I, I have held that against you for 10 years and that’s, that’s hard to even say because, okay.

I mean, from my point of view, it’s always been that you did something really, really wrong to me. And he, and then you just refused that. I mean, that’s the way that I looked, I looked at it, you know? And, uh, so the other day I was thinking about it again. I guess I hadn’t really thought about it for a long time, not in detail.

And I really went over in my head. I don’t, you know, I don’t know why. And, I realized that. It was my fault. Completely.

And it’s like, I was. A total asshole to you and I stopped being your friend. And I’m shocked now when I think of it. That I would ever. Have thought it was anything that you did.

You did nothing. And I know that now. And I don’t know how to look back at, you know, you look back at your actions and. Man I don’t know I don’t know if this has any meaning or worth to you and I don’t maybe this is just more of me being selfish but I just want to say Mark that I’m sorry and I wish that. I don’t know what else to say.

Okay is that it or. Yeah I guess so. All right. Well, I appreciate that, but I guess you don’t remember, but you came over here five years ago and said the exact same thing. I did.

Other great guests, Louis C.K. 2017, Lorne Michaels. That was a great episode. Robin Williams, Keith Richards, Carol Burnett, Conan, Jerry, Chappelle. It’s a document of the comedy world across 16 years. The interviews are durable in a way that junkets aren’t.

They’re real conversations. They don’t expire. Go back and listen to any of them. Along the way, Marin got sober. He started talking about that on the show.

And the audience started to include people who were listening for the sobriety material, the anxiety material, for the honest account of what it’s like to be a middle-aged man trying to figure out how to live without the things he’d been using to not live. There was a crossover audience, comedy fans and people in recovery, people with anxiety, people who just want to hear someone talk honestly about being a mess. Mark fell in love with Lynn Shelton. Who died unexpectedly in May of 2020. He talked about that on the show eventually after months of silence and grief that were documented in real time.

His special From Bleak to Dark, released in 2023, dealt with that grief directly and was the special that most clearly shows what WTF had always been doing, taking the material of a specific life and making something honest out of it. Not really therapy, not really entertainment for entertainment’s sake, something in between where the laugh and the real thing exist at the same time without canceling each other out. There was the documentary in 2025, Are We Good? Which tracked Mark’s return to comedy after Shelton’s death, the HBO special, and the process of figuring out what comes next. Since then, Mark has been on Stick on Apple TV Plus with Owen Wilson.

I also skipped over, what was the wrestling show? Glow on Netflix. Mark Maron, the actor. We will see what Mark Maron does as his career continues to evolve. On September 1st, 2026, Mark Maron posted briefly, just to check in, just to say hello and let the audience know he was still out there.

No announcement, no project to promote. Just a guy who would talk to an audience for 16 years, touching base, because that’s what you do with people you have a relationship with. WTF showed that you could have long-form conversations about comedy. Radio won’t do it. TV won’t do it.

Seven Minutes on The Tonight Show doesn’t do it. Promotional interviews don’t do it. WTF proved if you gave people access to those conversations in a format that had no time limit, no advertiser notes, and no producer in an earpiece telling you move on, people would listen. 55 million times a year by the end. The thing is, you can’t just do what Marc Maron did. There’s so much to the show that is unique to Maron.

The garage was specific to Marin. The cats, specific to Marin. The anxiety, specific to Marin. The anger, specific to Marin. You can take parts of that.

You can try, but it’s never quite going to be what WTF with Marc Maron was. The show worked because those specifics were real rather than performed. And an audience that’s been trained by years of media recognized the difference between real and performed and recognized it immediately. Mark Maron ended the podcast on his own terms almost a year ago. Barack Obama flew him to Washington to help close it out.

The National Recording Registry has the Robin Williams episode, 600 million downloads, and cat angels everywhere. That’s the show. It’s a show about them. And comedy is not therapy, just because it’s the truth. Wait a minute.

But if you’re talking about a show about them, if you’re saying that a person that talks about themselves on stage is not a comedian, then you’re dismissing a great many great comics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They did it wrong.

No, they didn’t do it wrong. Okay, you walk into a doctor’s office and he talks about his problems instead of one. Well, that’s an old joke. If a comedian talks about himself, and that is funny. If a comedian is a storyteller.

See, by your rubric, you’re dismissing people. He can’t work at State Fair. Who wants to work at State Fair, necessarily? Everybody. Really?

Yeah. So in order to work a state fair, you have to take the Gallagher class. You have to work faster and more general. There are families out there and they’re not interested in your long, subtle story. Okay, that’s fine.

That’s a state fair circuit. But the comedy club circuit, the cabaret circuit. Can indulge it differently. Why can’t you just see it as all being part of show business? Why are you angry?

Because there’s no show involved. There are a bunch of slovenly, they hunch over, they turn their back on the audience, they take a drink of water. That’s their style. It’s show business. Why are you drawing lines?

Why are you taking the other side of everything I say? I’m not. You are. Why did you want me to do this interview if you don’t think I know anything about what you’re asking me about? I’m just telling you.

You’re done? You’re just arguing. It’s Howard Stern. I’m not. I was just having a conversation.

I have more respect for comedy. You’re trying to be controversial. I am not. Yes, you are. You’re just arguing with me.

I have 30 years of experience. Well, then tell me about comedy. I just think that show business is show business. Well, then just why don’t. You do the interview and tell people your opinion?

We were having a good conversation. Oh, come on, Gallagher. All right. Well, that didn’t. Well, maybe it really went well.

I don’t know. I’m certainly not going to chase after him. That’s your comedy news for today.

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Featured: Stavros Halkias, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Jay Leno, Joe Coy, Nick Thune

What’s in This Episode

• Stavros Halkias on private equity ruining fast food quality
• Chris Rock seeks Adam Sandler’s advice on transitioning to dramatic roles
• Jay Leno defends avoiding partisan comedy on late night
• Joe Coy discusses evolution of comedy culture from cocaine-era 80s to modern vaping generation
• Nick Thune tapes special ‘Never Always’ at Den Theater exploring control and parenthood
• BBC cuts Mitchell & Webb programming
• Jalen Brunson to host SNL on Saturday

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

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

Let’s go Knicks. Jalen Brunson hosts SNL on Saturday. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Stavros Alkias is all fired up about the fast food, man. He was on Pablo Torre’s podcast, and I got a clip for you.

There are a lot of bleeps here, but here’s Stavros. I think it’s clear that what’s f * * * ing us up is, like, private equity and.. And money taking over these things that are all, products that are awesome, right? Let’s, sports is the easiest one, but the one I’ve actually latched onto recently that I think goes hand in hand with sports is fast food. Because everybody understands that Wendy’s has gotten here.

The spicy chicken sandwich now uses shredded lettuce. Exactly right there, that is private equity. That is someone saying, we don’t want a fresh head of lettuce, that costs more money. So we’re gonna get you bagged lettuce. And I know that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal, but people will notice Jersey Mike’s was bought, I think two years ago.

It started to get. It was one of the, it was the best sandwich chain. It’s getting because some head who’s never spread mayo in his life decided, oh no, actually instead of a sandwich, this is now a commodity, right? And what’s important is that by turning the buyer experience, the consumer experience shittier, I, some dickhead that’s never made a sandwich, gets a billion extra dollars. Chris Rock explained at the Toronto International Film Festival that he had to tap a friend to help him move from comedy to drama.

Now, who better than the great dramatic actor Adam Saylor to help you become a dramatic actor? Because that’s what Adam’s good at. He’s not good at comedy at all, unlike Chris Rock, who’s really good at comedy. But Adam Sandler, he’s got great films like Uncut Gems, Basketball Movie, Space Movie, and the ones with Drew Barrymore. Everything else is garbage.

But Chris Rock said he asked Adam Sandler for help. Are Rock and Sandler competitive when it comes to moving into dramas? Rock said, no, we’re not. I mean, please. He’s so far ahead.

See, Chris Rock recognizes the greatness of Adam Sandler, dramatic. Actor, supposed to unfunny comedian who makes. A lot of money. I get it. I get that he makes money.

You know, I can’t begrudge the guy for taking $ 50 million from Netflix to make garbage, but it’s garbage. Rock said, no, I just take notes from the Sandman. I did watch. I’m sitting there like, wow, Uncut Gems is amazing. Punch Drunk Love is amazing.

If you don’t remember Punch Drunk Love, that is from 2003. Adam Sandler played a man who’d been unable to fall in love until meeting a mysterious woman. Chris Rock says he doesn’t have Madagascar money anymore after divorce. He would like there to be a sequel to Madagascar. That’s funny.

He describes his new movie as Female Uncut Gems. I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Chris. Maybe find something else. He says, it’s weird how few movies have money in them, like on a regular level. In movies, usually money is like we’re robbing a bank or something, but it’s never like I need to pay my rent.

The movie Misty Green arrives in theaters October 9th. The worst person who ever lived, Jay Leno, you know, the jerk that takes care of his wife at night. Yeah, that guy, he’s the worst. He continues to face criticism, telling the Unexpired podcast that he’s getting criticism for avoiding partisan comedy. Apparently a lot of people would like to see Jay Leno comment on the president of the United States.

Jay said, I get beat up for this all the time, but as someone who works in the real world, when you go to Indiana, I’m sorry, a third of your audience is going to be Trump people. Christian Toto from the website Hollywood and Toto told Fox News Digital, late night hoes don’t care who they eliminate in 2026. They’ve chosen an audience period. Jimmy Kimmel infamously said of his Republican fans, not good riddance, but riddance that says it all. Some familiar beats from Jay Leno.

I mean, Johnny and I used to pride ourselves on making fun of both sides equally. Now I get beaten up for that, but OK, that’s all right. Toto said Jimmy Fallon had a chance to be the new Jay Leno. Sadly, after he tousled Donald Trump’s hair on the Tonight Show in 2016, he was hounded by the media and the left for humanizing the real estate mogul, which is not a sentence a human would say. That’s like not how you’d phrase it.

I don’t know. That’s a weird quote. Toto called Joe Rogan the new Johnny Carson. Tap the brakes. I mean, yes, Rogan has a lot of influence, but the new Johnny Carson?

Relax. Hey, Joe Coy, how do you tell someone who’s starting out in comedy how to manage late night culture when it comes to eating and drinking? Joe Coy, who once told a horrible mean joke about Taylor Swift. Do you want to hear it? Okay, twist my arm.

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. Joe Coy said when I was younger, I was around the old school vets. So my guys are from the 80s because I started in 89, 90. So I was the new generation of comics in the 90s.

And I’m being mentored by the guys from the 80s who were like really, really bad. Those were the cocaine guys. You know what I mean? Yes, I know what you mean. I’ve worked with some of them.

It was like cocaine, weird and beer, man. That’s all you need. And some bacon, you know what I mean? And I’m not saying all of them were like that, but it was a different time. They weren’t very health cautious.

Then my generation was very fast foodie. It was just a different time when I was coming up. But now I’ve noticed that you can see right now that these kids don’t drink. The drinking culture is not what it used to be. And I think it’s more the vape generation and the edible generation.

I feel like the comics I see coming up tend to be on the healthier side, but the late night culture is beautiful. So embrace it and enjoy it. There are late nights, but the camaraderie of comics is always fun. Imagine surrounding yourself with laughter the whole time. I remember doing a show and going to Mel’s Diner.

That’s in L.A. And I’ll be sitting with all these comics, you know, and just enjoying life. That’s from the L.A. Times. Nick Thune spoke to the NewCityStage.com.

He just taped a special last week at the Den Theater. The current name of the show, and it’s gone through a whole bunch of different variations, says Thune, is Never Always. The special is kind of in three parts. On the first part is like this fantastical world that I control and make-believe. Which is kind of like my older stand-up.

Then the second part is a world that I can’t control at all. That’s my son. Hmm.

And then the third part is me realizing that even if I don’t have control, I’…

The idea of never always comes from the idea that I’m out of control in life, but never always. It’s like a relief that there’s a bit of optimism. Nick Thune talked about working clean. He says his parents sheltered me from all of those topics, sex included. Part of the special is me going overboard in the other direction, trying to make sure that my 12-year-old son knows everything, and then realizing maybe there’s a middle ground.

He grew up in Seattle, admiring the comedy of Martin Mull, Steve Martin, and Chevy Chase. He admired Chevy Chase’s flesh, because I love the way the guy talked and the way that he confidently said things that didn’t really mean anything.

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And then I found that within Martin Mull and Steve Martin.

He even said, I learned how to confidently tell stories that were totally unrealistic and with a wink. Kind of knowing the nonsensical things that I was saying, and I think that Martin Mull was pretty good at that.

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And then later in life, I found out more and more different ways that I align…

I’m fascinated by his career. Anthony Jeselnik has a book club. The New York Times asked Jeselnik, describe your ideal reading experience. Jeselnik said, I’m sitting on an airplane in the dark with a Kindle lit up in my hands. I’ve got earplugs in and I’m tearing through a novel while everyone around.

Me is asleep. A flight attendant comes by once in a while to fill my water glass. That’s some pretty good writing there, Anthony Jeselnik. All right, why don’t you think men read fiction, dude? He said, this is a question that fascinates me.

I think a lot of men view reading fiction as a frivolous waste of time. We’ve been conditioned to ignore the beliefs of empathy. I think it’s a marketing problem. Reading should be sold to men like lifting weights for your brain. But it’s not just men.

People are happily staring at their phone all day, don’t want to pick up a book. Their attention spans are fried, but I’m hoping the fall of literature is just a trend. Trends can be reversed. Interesting. We learn Jeselnik Book Club’s motto is, you don’t shoot dogs.

He says it’s an unofficial motto we came up with to separate ourselves from Oprah’s book club. Why’d you start a book club in the first place? He said, I was really sick of podcasting. Hey! But as a Tory comedian, I wanted to maintain a presence online.

A book club felt organic to me, and I’ve always found success with things that come naturally. I wonder if he has a rivalry with the John Mulaney book club. How did your fans respond to what seems like a change in your image, Mr. Jeselnik? You said the fans who followed my old podcast weren’t surprised at all.

I was always recommending a new book at the end of every episode. And I’ve been doing a top 10 of my favorite novels of the year for a while. But it’s fun to see people who only know me as a stand-up react like Paul Giamatti started making porn. Comedy stock market. All right.

On the comedy stock market this week, if you’re new to the show, what we do is we buy and sell comedians. Hypothetically, of course, we’re not actually buying and selling people like stock in comedians. You get it. Comedy stock market. It’s in the me.

It’s in the name. I can’t explain it to you. That’s what it is. Here’s what we’re doing this week. We’re going to sell Andrea Santino and Tom Segura.

I don’t think this golf thing is going to be good. They’re both pretty near peak right now. So let’s cash out on those two. And make some money before everybody goes, wait, are you going for getsy on us? What is happening here?

So sell Santino, sell Tom Segura. Sell Nikki Glaser. She’s also at peak, and I think the backlash is coming. So let’s get out on top there. Let’s buy some Maddie Kelly.

I’m seeing a lot of buzz on Maddie. I’ve seen her opening for Otzko. Maddie is really good. Buy Maddie Kelly. And let’s buy Jalen Brunson.

You saw what he did with the Knicks. How could he not be great at Saturday Night Live? The man is great at everything. All right, so we’re buying Jalen Brunson and Maddie Kelly. We’re selling Nikki Glaser.

Andrew Santino and Tom Segura, that is your comedy stock market for today. Apparently Mark Maron is doing video podcasting just like me. Us old guys have gotten webcams now. So if you want to check out Mark Maron, I’ll let him tell about it. So this is it.

The new world. I’m you know, I got to figure out how to just sit here and talk on. Hey, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, I got to sit here, figure. Out how to to talk. On camera.

It’s a weird thing. This computer is the computer that I had out in the podcast studio for years, and I’ll just let you know what’s going on. It was the, what was it, the first year anniversary of the end of the podcast a few days ago, and for some reason over the last couple weeks, I’ve just.. Charlie, I’ve just now been able to break it down. So I took this out and I’ve set it up in here.

But all this stuff out there, the table, all the mics, just taking everything apart. It’s now all on the floor. Mics, mic stands, all the other crap that I had out there. Guitars, everything else. It’s all sort of broken down, but it took me a year and I didn’t wait on purpose.

And now it looks like a, like a garage sale in there. I got to figure out how to unload some pedals. That’s my, uh, that’s my project. I gotta, I gotta be a pedal pusher, but, um, so that’s done. And this is here.

I got a light. I got stuff. I know I’m a little late to the game on this long form video business. And I honestly don’t know that I’m going to do it regularly unless it feels good. But I’m here and I guess I can just try to tell you what’s going on in the world.

This is interesting for Mitchell and Webb. I don’t know if all of you know that sketch comedy series. It’s one of my favorites. The BBC has removed nearly a dozen sketches from that Mitchell and Webb look. After deciding they, quote, no longer work today.

That Mitchell & Webb look originally ran for four seasons, 2006 to 2010. The show recently returned to the BBC iPlayer to mark the 20th anniversary, but some old sketches, including one that showed the guys in blackface, have been cut. In a statement, BBC said, this is a 20-year-old sketch show in consultation with the program makers. We have included the ones that still work today, not the ones that don’t. So the sketches are in one Mitchell and Webb act as war reenactors in Blackface.

There’s also a sketch about a contestant on a makeover show wearing a burqa and a quote-unquote tribe living in a garden center. Mitchell and Webb did not comment, but fellow comedian Dom Jolly of Trigger Happy TV told The Times, I totally get it if the BBC is putting out something really racist, which is laughing at and encouraging other people to feel that it’s okay to do that, but it’s so clear that Mitchell and Webb are not doing that. Their intent was not to be racist. Jimmy Mulville, co-founder of Hat Trick Productions, which makes the British Have I Got News For You, said the BBC are in an impossible position. He said producers have to be careful, though, that this is not the thin edge of a wedge where we cut things out.

Mitchell and Webb are best known for the scene where they’re dressed as Nazis, asking the question, are we the baddies? That remains online. Very well. They’re coming. Now we’ll see how these Russians deal with a crack SS division.

Er, Hans? Have courage, my friend. Yeah, er. Hans, I’ve just noticed something. These communists are all cowards.

Have you looked at our caps recently? Our caps? The badges on our caps. Have you looked at them? What?

No. A bit. They’ve got skulls on them. Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them? I don’t..

Hands. Are we the baddies? And Walter put out their list of comedians you should and will know, or whatever it’s called. I told you I’d forget. One on the list is Dukes.

And if you haven’t heard of Dukes before, they say chances are you’re familiar with the two stars or at least come across their work online. Dukes’ Jane Wick line and Live a Pierce. Yes, that Jane Wick line from Saturday Night Live. Vulture, I think these are comedians we do know already, but okay. In their self-titled show, they performed in baggy button-downs with teenage boys still growing into his limbs’ physicality and casual ease.

That belie hard-hitting punchlines in one song. Pierce impersonates themselves as a teen whose attempt to seduce the mom of a child they’re babysitting gets sidetracked by the mom. Taking too much of an interest in their androgyny, Vulture had three quick questions with Dukes. One, what’s the biggest financial investment you made for your comedy? Jane said, our ill-advised off-Broadway show is a complete financial disaster.

We invested in ourselves by paying for production costs with our tour earnings. We’re recouping our losses with the currency of fun. Okay, if you taught a comedy class, what’s the most crucial lesson? Here said, I took a lot of comedy classes as a young adult in an openly careerist way. I really wanted someone to tell me how to get famous.

If I taught a class now, I’d try to weed out anyone who was sick like I was and kindly tell them that their goals are bad and they need to first figure out a way to enjoy toiling in obscurity forever. My solution has been to try and write and work with people that I think are one, geniuses, two, kind, three, available to hang out, and after that, Just try and keep up with them, which is quite enjoyable. All that said, I hope I never have to teach a class on comedy. I don’t know a thing. What’s your biggest goal, your most earnest goal?

Jane said to write earnest music. Beer said, I want my work to be so undeniable and so big that I get to throw my phone in the garbage. There’s sometimes a reductive narrative among young comedians that’s like, these digital natives can’t get enough of the internet. Their phone is their paintbrush and their canvas. Maybe this is because I’m at the older end of Gen Z, but it’s the opposite for me and most of my friends.

Many of us feel forced to make content online. Because we’re trying to keep up with the broader, often corporation-driven trends around media monetization and the evolution of digital marketing. Mark Maron and I say hello. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, and that is your comedy news for today.

Tomorrow, a deep dive on Mark Maron, actually. He’s tomorrow’s deep dive, and then Sunday should be a normal episode. You have an awesome day. Go Knicks, go SNL. That’s what I meant.

Go this guy, Brunson. Bye.

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Featured: Bill Burr, Aaron Sorkin, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Jay Leno, Paul McCartney, Jim Downey, Seth Meyers

What’s in This Episode

• Bill Burr Rolling Stone cover story on finding his voice
• Bill Burr stars in Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning
• Bill Burr discusses moving away from anger-based comedy
• Bill Burr commentary on Luigi Mangione and tech CEO accountability
• Conan O’Brien returns to guest host The Tonight Show
• Conan and Fallon discuss SNL 50th Anniversary encounter with Paul McCartney
• Seth Meyers announces new schedule with longer breaks

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. Should be an easy one for me today. I’ve got a ton of clips. Bill Burr got a cover story on Rolling Stone.

There’s a lot to unpack today. And we’ll pick at that for the next few days. Bill Burr stars in the Aaron Sorkin movie The Social Reckoning, in which Bill Burr plays an investor composite character named Charlie who confronts Mark Zuckerberg. That’ll be out in theaters October 9th. We’ll get a lot of press from Burr in the next couple weeks, including this from Rolling Stone.

Let’s just jump in here. Here’s Bill Burr talking about finding his voice. I feel like I’m finding it now. Yeah. Because I actually am who I would have been Like, that guy I was wasn’t who I was.

That was traumatized me. You know, fight or flight mode, alopecia, losing clumps of hair. And so I figure out, like, you know, I had a style. I had a thing that I was doing. I had something that was true to who I was, but I’ve changed now.

So, you know, that’s another thing about doing this stuff and that whole, oh, don’t get happy, whatever. It’s like, dude, if you’re funny, you’re funny. Like, imagine if you were angry, but you could sing. Right.

And then all of a sudden you weren’t angry anymore.

You can’t sing anymore. It’s like you don’t lose talents because of emotions. Yeah, really interesting. Burr is talking a lot about not wanting to be the angry guy. He wants to be the meat in the middle guy, which is a new Bill Burr.

Here he talks about anger. 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. It’s the thing that 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. It was just like, it would be like, okay, you’re going to write a song on this piano, but you can only use these notes, you know, as opposed to you can use the whole piano now, you know what I mean? So it’s like, I can still, believe me, dude, I can blow my top like anybody. You know what I mean? I know how to do that.

I got 50-something years practice that. I would like to learn how to do these other things. The social reckoning is not exactly a follow-up to the social network. I mean, it’s Aaron Sorkin, it’s Facebook, different cast. Bill Burr also talked about the East Coast versus the West Coast.

Here, I don’t disagree. You know, being in the East Coast, like, an East Coast thing is like, you know, hey, man, don’t lose your edge. Don’t go out to West coast and lose your edge. It’s like, what? Don’t start enjoying my life.

Don’t be a chill person to be around. And like, and that’s also another thing too, like that, you know, in comedy, there’s this big thing, you know, don’t get happy. You get happy. You’re not going to be funny. And it’s the exact opposite.

It’s, it’s, it opens you up. You can, you, you’re, you have access to all these emotions now that you can add into your act.

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And then also you can revisit all of these topics that you just, you just wer…

Like my favorite part of me, this whole journey of being a comedian is when I stopped doing this and started doing a little more of this. It’s like, dude, if you’re funny, you’re funny. And as Bill Burr talks about the social reckoning, he also got a little bit political. Here he talks about Luigi Mangione and stuff. You know, this whole thing that, you know, we live in a world where, like, if somebody’s..

Tells their version of the truth of what’s going on. And especially if it is true, like they have to like, you know, it’s like they’re trying to escape Russia in the 80s. It’s insane. And it’s like, I thought this was like, this is an American company. What’s going on here?

And they all seem to function like the CIA, which is really sort of like indicative of that you’re kind of doing something wrong. I mean, if you look at all of this stuff, like the response to the Luigi thing, was not to be like, well, hey, maybe we need to look at what we’re doing if what we’re doing makes some crazy person do this. Their response was to take their faces off of the internet and get security. It’s like, you don’t think you need to examine.. You know what I mean?

It’s like you’re not the president. You’re just the CEO of a of a business.

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Meanwhile, Conan O’Brien returned to The Tonight Show.

You may recall Conan hosted The Tonight Show for a little bit before the worst person who ever lived, Jay Leno, took the job back. Here is Conan and cracking up Jimmy Fallon. Welcome back. You look fantastic. I always love running into you and seeing you.

Although I have to apologize. I think the last time. We hung out, it was the Saturday Night Live 50th. Yes. Anniversary.

What happened? I interrupted you. I was so wasted. No you were not. I was not wasted.

I interrupted you, you were having a, there’s a very funny writer named Jim Downey. Yep. Who we both know. One of the great comedy writers of all time, yeah. He’s fantastic.

There’s a documentary about him on Peacock if you want to check him out. Eh, don’t watch it. All right, sorry, sorry, I take it back. We don’t have time to plug that. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

But he had an accident and he’s fine, but he had an accident and he was wearing an eye patch. I just remembered this. Yeah. And so I was walking around with Jim and you were talking, and I came over to do a bit, but you were talking to Paul McCartney. It’s not but I was talking to Paul McCartney.

I was talking to Paul McCartney. I know, I know, but this is a huge deal. I mean, we meet people all the time, but there’s a couple of people who will always be, you can’t believe, you step outside your body and you say, I’m talking to this man. He’s a legend. I was talking to him and you suddenly interrupted and you said, Conan, your Uber’s here.

Which is funny. But not while I’m talking. To Paul McCartney! But you looked at me, and I go, I pointed at Jim, and you go, hey, your Uber’s here. Yeah, and you pointed to Jim, who’s got an iPad.

And Paul is sort of like, and by the way, Paul was in the middle of telling me, I think he is very talented. And if you’d been in the Beatles, it would have been even bigger. That’s not true, that’s not true. And I said, well, gee, and then suddenly, ah! Hey, your Uber’s here.

You go, dude, I’m not doing a bit with you right now. I’m talking to Paul McCartney. I’m not doing a bit. Anyway, you go, don’t ruin this conversation. I said, don’t, I said, you can’t.

You can do bits whenever you want. I love the Uber bit. Fantastic. Like he legit told me this. Conan told Felon about his career.

I was working at the Simpsons when I got the job, the late night job. 24 hours later, I was the new host of Late Night. I fly to Connecticut. I go to this thing. No one knows who I am. I get there.

Johnny Corson. Who he qualified. This is how we’re all getting old. He had to tell people, Johnny Carson, the host of The Tonight Show, this show, for 30 years, when I was growing up, the most famous person in America for 30 years, and I teach college kids. They have no idea who that was, if you want to feel old.

The most famous person in America for 30 years, he’s standing there. Johnny told Conan, just be yourself. That’s the only way it can work. I decided, well, he’s right. I just got to go with this Conan thing, whatever that is.

Seth Meyers was back from seven weeks off. He sat down with The Wrap. He explained the new structure will have longer breaks. Oh, goody. Seth said, there’s a nice consistency to our show when it’s rolling, and we want to be able to provide that as much as we can, as much as it’s in our control to our audience.

Obviously, we’re not going to go straight through, but if we can find our way into that SNL schedule that relies on summers off to make sure that when more people are watching TV, we’re on with better regularity, we’re going to do that. Uh-huh. Totally not a budget cut. Totally not. He also did the podcast.

Views on some episodes of that topped over 1 million on YouTube. Seth explained, We didn’t want to disappear. We wanted people to know that we want to be making stuff for them. Sal and I always talk about how without the show as an outlet for our own anxieties and everything else, we go a little bit crazy. So it was a bit of catharsis for us, and we really enjoyed doing it.

Meyer said that they hope to stick to a similar time off schedule next year. We always really want to let people who would rather be doing the show than not. And if it was in our hands, there would be more weeks on the air for us, and people don’t quite believe that. Count me as one of them. You just pretty much told me.

Budget cut. Certainly over the course of a long summer break, people have every right to call us out for what they perceive as a sort of laziness and living a good life. What we want to do with Proof of Life, the podcast, was just kind of hammer home as much as we could by doing it. He was asked, is this the longest break you’ve ever had? Seth said, certainly without a writer’s strike, this was the longest.

Yeah, it felt reminiscent of what I was used to with SNL. Obviously, I’ve worked for a show that takes the summer off, but a seven-week break was very out of the ordinary for us, and I think everybody, based on the energy here, was chomping at the bit to get back. The goal is to have less breaks over the course of the fall, winter and spring. Obviously, we’re not going to go straight through, but if we could find our way to that SNL schedule, we’re going to do that. He was asked about there being one fewer late night show now.

He said, I think it’s too early to tell if it impacts bookings. It’s never been a situation where we’ve been upset about the quality of guests we’ve been able to have. One of the nice things is obviously Stephen was talking about politics. We’re talking about politics. There always seemed to be room for both of us, so it was never a case where we were anything but grateful that he was also on the air.

So we’ll see. One of the great things about Strike Force 5 was getting to know those guys as people, and that’s how I’ve seen them ever since. The way our show has ever worked is when we make the show we want it to be. So whether there were double the late night shows or one less, I think we’d have the same approach. Jalen Brunson, host of Saturday Night Live this week.

Can’t wait. You know he’s going to be great. He’s great at everything. Maybe we should give him 1230. Not the worst idea, but we need him on the Knicks.

Not yet. Maybe we’ll do 10 years of Chris Fleming at 1230, and then Jalen Brunson can take over for Chris Fleming when Chris Fleming gets the Tonight Show. I don’t think any of that’s going to happen, but it’s a plan. Jalen Brunson was on Tamron Hall’s podcast. He was asked if he was prepared for anything SNL would throw at him.

He said, probably not. Being honest with you, I have no idea what I’m walking into, but I know it’s going to turn out great. Will he sing? Jalen Brunson said, no. Pete Davidson was asked for advice and Pete said, Jalen doesn’t need any advice from me.

He’s New York royalty forever. He’s really funny and his podcast is great. He’s going to do great. I’m very excited for him. On Gossip Corner, the prime minister of Greece ran into Dave Chappelle at a Greek restaurant in San Francisco.

Paul Kirby is the managing partner at Kokari restaurant. He told the SF Chronicle Dave Chappelle stops by whenever he’s in town. A Greek news outlet posted video of the exchange with the prime minister and Dave Chappelle. Dave was asked about his relationship with his audience. Dave said, Meanwhile, Adam Sandler was spotted out on September 9th.

I think that’s his birthday. He turned 60. Sandler was dressed the way I do, kind of like how I’m dressed now, except Sandler’s hoodie was purple. It was a bright lavender zip-up sweatshirt pulled over his head. He was wearing a pair of dark sunglasses covering much of his face.

He paired the hoodie with a green t-shirt, loose white basketball shorts, and wildly colorful sneakers. I think Adam Sandler and I could be friends, except for the part where I don’t like his comedy work, and I think he does. The man accused of allegedly trying to extort money from Carrot Top says the public has the wrong idea of the case. The man even posted a video on YouTube responding to common reporting on the case. Blaming a judge for branding him vexatious.

That’s a Scrabble word. V-E-X-A-T-I-U-S. Vexatious. Use it in a sentence. The judge said I am vexatious.

The man says he was just following the judge’s orders. It’s not as black and white as people try to make it. The man said he will do any live interview at any time to clarify what’s really going on. And Vulture put out the list of the top comedians you should and will know. Did I get the title right today?

I’m not going to get it right every day. I’m not sure I did it today. First up, Jack Benziger. We’re told by Vulture Jack’s comedic universe is Saw-esque, filled with traps, ensuring no character he creates will ever see things go their way. He delights in the freaky, the grotesque, and the embarrassing.

Benziger came up in the Chicago improv and sketch comedy scene where he met future collaborators including Sarah Sherman, Connor O’Malley, and his Joy Tactics podcast co-hosts. Walter had two quick questions for Jack. First question, at this point in your comedy career, is there someone you’ve proved wrong? Jack said, I tried doing improv in Chicago for many years before realizing stand-up is a better fit. One time I had an improv coach tell me I should be myself less.

I don’t fault them because I was a nuisance to do improv with. I was doing written stand-up jokes in scenes and had a catchphrase. I was soaking wet one time, which isn’t cool. I was using my phone to Google things during scenes. Eventually I realized I should just quit.

But yeah, the person who said to stop being myself, I disagree, probably, in a sense. Question number two. When you think about the future of comedy, what concerns you? What excites you? Jack said, And not because they want to eventually start their own non-alcoholic beer or sexual liquor company.

Is the N.A. Beer a dig at John Mulaney? Who knows? All right, some housekeeping. This week’s Saturday Deep Dive will be Marc Maron, then the week after Bill Burr, and the week after that, Norm MacDonald.

Then on October 4th, I finally sat down and recorded at least one episode and a trailer of the Late Night series I wanted to do. That will be in its own feed, so make sure you subscribe to.. Is Late Night Dead. OK, the new show is called Is Late Night Dead. I will eventually use those episodes in this feed.

But for now, it will be its own separate podcast called Is Late Night Dead. And that will be out on October 4th, wherever you found this show tomorrow. Now, did you notice we up early Wednesday morning? Johnny Mac pre-taped the Friday episode because I teach on Thursdays. That’s why I do that a lot of times.

And I had misscheduled it. So if you were up early on Wednesday, you got the Friday episode early. But then I deleted it and it’ll be back. So if you already heard the Friday episode. So Saturday is Marin.

Sunday is normal.

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And then October 4th will be the Is Late Night Dead feed in.

Its own feed. And that is your comedy news for today. See you tomorrow.

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Featured: Tom Segura, Andrew Santino, Timothy Simons, Kevin Hart, Ron White, Joe Rogan, Brent Reid, Big Jay Oakerson, Carrot Top, Nikki Glaser

What’s in This Episode

• Golf Trip ensemble comedy film with Tom Segura and Andrew Santino
• Ron White on Joe Rogan Experience discussing Kill Tony and crowd work
• Ron White’s health transformation after moving to Austin
• Carrot Top hospitalized after suicide attempt
• Carrot Top extortion attempt involving explicit recording
• Nikki Glaser’s Sunday Night Football opening monologue
• Vulture’s 12th annual list of comedians to know

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. I’m glad a bunch of comedians are choosing to jump the shark together. Listen to this one. I hope this is good, but I have a feeling. Live Nation Studios, Heartbeat, that’s Kevin Hart’s company, and All Things Comedy got together.

They’re making Golf Trip, an ensemble comedy starring Tom Segura, Andrew Santino, and Timothy Simons. Some other people are in this. In Golf Trip, three best friends have their annual golf trip ruined while they’re paired with the universally dreaded single. You see, for 20 years, four best friends have held on to one sacred tradition, their annual golf trip. No matter how much their lives have changed, this trip has remained the one weekend they can count on to reconnect, compete, and briefly escape from the pleasures of adulthood.

This to me just sounds like the thing they just did with Marcelo Hernandez and Kevin Hart in Miami that was a bachelor party. It feels like that, but 20 years later. Because you see, when one of the four drops out at the last minute, the remaining three arrive at the picture-perfect golf resort, only to be paired by Chuck Wheeler, an aggressively friendly, completely unfiltered solo golfer with no sense of personal boundaries, which should be a relaxing weekend, veers off course as Chuck inserts himself into the group and tests the limit of their patience. Andrew Santino, who’s an avid golfer known for his podcast No Bad Lies, a golf podcast. He plays Jason and Simon plays Don.

The director of Golf Trip last sold the comedy pitch Fantasy Camp to Amazon. Nate Bregazzi is attached to start of this one. This is why I think this is going to be lame. I don’t think this is going to be, you know, Caddyshack 3. I think this is going to be tame and a waste of the talent.

I mean, you just have to listen to the suits. The head of film and television at Live Nation Studios said, Golf Trip is a great example of giving our Live Nation comedians an opportunity to expand their talents to scripted projects. We found a really hilarious story and assembled an incredible group of comedic talent that audiences will want to tee off with. Uh-oh. That sentence did not land well.

I almost threw up in my mouth. So they’re all jumping the shark together. Congratulations to those folks. Ron White was on the Joe Rogan Experience and says, but only for performers who are ready when the moment arrives. Rogan compared a successful Kill Tony appearance to landing a sitcom.

I don’t know about that, Joe, but Joe said it’s like the new Hollywood. You got a sitcom thing. Ron White cautioned that simply getting on the show guarantees nothing. Ron said if you’re prepared for the opportunity, then that’s the best thing out there for you. And if you’re not, then it was just another day at the park.

Both Ron and Joe pointed to comedian Brent Reid as an example. Joe Rogan praised Reid for being honest about his performance. Reid said, I just had to get my stuff together, man. I had to figure out what the hell I’m doing. Reed now opens for Ron White on tour.

Ron White says he does not allow his opening acts to perform crowd work because then they feel like they can talk to me, which they cannot. Ron said he once used crowd interaction for a practical reason when he had 41 minutes of prepared material but was expected to perform for 45. Crowd work helped him fill the remaining time. Once he had enough written material, he didn’t do the crowd work. Now he hears younger comedians announcing that they need to work on their crowd work, and he said, well, you don’t.

Rogan argued that crowd work can be legitimate when it supports a comedian’s material. He cited Big Jay Oakerson as an example. He said the crowd work is nice, but it’s not the only thing he does, whereas some people, that’s their whole thing. Ron White said, I learned this art form watching my uncle preach. He was very funny and always getting a laugh on stage, saving souls every week.

Ron has made changes to his health after moving to Austin. He said he arrived drinking heavily and carrying 30 extra pounds. Now he has taken weight loss medication, hormone treatments, and regular exercise. During a recent European trip, he said he was able to climb mountains in Switzerland without his legs failing him, but he said, out of breath, but my legs are fine. And let’s keep a good thought for Carrot Top.

Carrot Top has been hospitalized and is recovering after an attempt at suicide over the weekend. His representative put out a statement using his real name, Scott Thompson. Mr. Thompson is recovering in the hospital and is receiving the care and support he needs. His family and those closest to him are deeply grateful for the concern, prayers, and respectfully ask for privacy.

Born in Florida, raised in Cocoa Beach, Carrot Top appeared on Star Search in 1991. Even though he lost, he’s still impressed. Three years later, he won the American Comedy Award for Funniest Male Stand-Up Comic. In 1995, Jay Leno introduced Carrot Top on The Tonight Show as the comedian taking America by storm. In that appearance, Carrot Top came out in a dress that converted to pants and had two trunks of props, including a pasta strainer to be worn dangling from a belt to dissuade sniffing dogs, and three baseball bats for replacement players so they’ll get a hit.

In 1999, Carrot Top got a Razzie Award for his role in the movie Chairman of the Board. He also played himself in Pauly Shore as Dead in 2003 and played himself in Hacks in 2024.

Also over the weekend, TMZ reporting that Carrot Top’s legal team is speaking…

In a filing obtained by TMZ, the lawyer said that a man threatened to enter a sexually explicit recording on a USB drive depicting Carrot Top into a court’s legal docket unless he was paid $ 500, 000 as a settlement. If you or someone you know is struggling or is in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or you can chat with 988lifeline. Org. Did you watch Sunday Night Football?

Did you see the Nikki Glaser opening? Now, what’s really interesting is that NBC was able to use a Taylor Swift song. That probably didn’t come cheap, but it’s going to totally goof up my monetization here on YouTube. I’m totally going to get a flag for this. So that’s annoying, but not as annoying as Nikki Glaser.

Let’s listen. When you’re on top of your game, everybody roots for your downfall. People love a winner. Until they win too much. People want dynasties to die and for champs to become chumps.

And when that downfall finally comes.. They are out of the playoff picture for the first time since 2014. It hurts. Like a tush-push you weren’t expecting. But without the downfall, you don’t get the thing that people love most of all.

Showtime, this buzzer. The comeback. And for Chiefs Kingdom, the comeback starts now. You can never count out the Chiefs. Are you seriously not starting Mahomes and Kelsey in your fantasy leagues this year?

Oh, so you, like, love losing? Okay. You think you’re done seeing Andy Reid in chicken commercials? I don’t want to live in that world. And you know Collinsworth is going to keep gushing over Mahomes, changing his arm angle?

Oh, man. Are you ready for it? I mean, boy crushes like that are forever. And it’s safe to say the world’s greatest singer-songwriter is now a permanent fixture at Arrowhead. And I speak for all Swifties when I say we want more cutaways.

So here we go, Kansas City. Tonight, we take on the Colts. Before you know it, we’ll be back on top.

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And then the rest of you can go back to hating us all over again.

Vulture has put out their 12th annual list of comedians you should and will know. I’m going to have to memorize that phrase because I’m going to forget it. And every time I bring this up for the next three months, I’m going to be like, the comedians you should know or whatever they call it, Vulture thing. This is the list. Vulture says, here you will find dropouts, TikTokers, road dogs, competition winners, crap posters.

I almost said a naughty word there. We try not to do this on this show. Brits and clowns. They’re on tour in clubs, online, and in writer’s rooms. They polled over 200 comedy scene experts, including sources of comedy clubs, festivals, late-night shows, improv theaters, TV networks, podcast studios, record labels, production companies, and film studios, as well as comedians previously featured on the list.

I will pick at the list over the next few days, but the comedians are Jack Bensinger, Dukes, Grace Johnson, Hayden Johnson, Linjin Hao, Anya Magliano, Janet McNamara, Courtney O’Donnell, Milan Patel, Hassan Filz, Tanisha Just Nash Rice, Ethan Simmons Patterson, Ron Taylor, Sereny Wirasekera, Lou Wilson, Ivy Woke, is it Chloe or Zoli? I guess Zoli, X-H-L-O-E, and Natasha. Jimmy Kimmel back from vacation. How did the ratings do? He drew more than 2.5 million total viewers.

During the three new shows Labor Day week, it was a rerun on Monday and Friday. Jimmy Fallon also was up after two weeks of repeats. He averaged 1.311 million total viewers. So basically, Kimmel is doubling Fallon right now, which is what we thought would happen. And all that with Fallon getting a lead in from the NFL.

The show did kick off a little later than usual because of the NFL kickoff game and the Wednesday night game that opened the season. But Fallon was up, but Jimmy Kimmel more up. Colin Jost and Pete Davidson’s ferry had a ton of propaganda. Variety tells us the main room was packed because the ferry naturally didn’t have one big corridor. An overflow room projected a live feed of the main stage.

An event coordinator asked Variety, you’re media, right? The person said, yes. Well, then we better put you up here. The event coordinator whisked this Variety person straight up to the front, pointed at two young women who immediately jolted to their feet and shuffled towards the far end of the bench. The Variety person said, I’m sorry I took your seats.

The women glanced at each other and said, it’s okay, trust me. Variety says it took a couple minutes to figure out what they meant. Then, quote, I pulled out my phone to take a picture of the stage. A black bar stool, a glass, peach tea snapple, and a mic stand. I wasn’t just in the front row.

I was in the hot seat, the very hot seat, directly under the mic stand. Stage lights beamed down on me, and the ferry cabin itself was extremely muggy. We’re told the room skewed younger millennials and older Gen Z. I know some of us old Gen Xers tried to get tickets and couldn’t get in. This is interesting.

Most towards the front looked like or probably were influencers who look good on camera. I see what you did there, Pete and Colin. Okay. Variety says, usually I’ll recognize at least a few media friends in a crowd like this. Not here.

Hmm. At nine o’clock sharp, the lights went dark. Davidson and Jost emerged from beneath the neon Snapple Island ferry sign to applause. This would be the first and last time we’d see the two co-hosts all night. That’s lame, boys.

That is lame. Pete said, this is something we’ve wanted to do for like five years. Thank you guys for coming out. Thank you to our sponsor. Jost said, everyone feeling hot and nauseous?

That’s a good feeling. Obviously, we’ll get going soon. We’re going to stop at the Strait of Hormuz. Then Jost looked over at Pete to tee up the next punchline, and it became clear that the reference sailed over Pete’s head. No shocker.

Pete said back, I like how you thought I knew what that is. He glanced down at the clock, 8.17 remaining. Pete said, I love that this is our body language. It’s truly like we’re waiting for someone to start a fight. Joe said, we don’t exactly know what to do.

This sounds pretty rough, actually. We have an incredible show. There are so many great comedians here. Macklemore is here tonight. The crowd liked that one.

That’s a good joke. Matt Richards served as the emcee. Parentheses, filling the role many of us presumed Davidson and Jost would play. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Set the tone for the night by chugging an entire Snapple in one go.

And then he told a very naughty story that I’m not even going to go near. All right. He says Caitlin Palufo stormed the stage with material in the let’s call it advanced workshopping stages. Did everybody mail this show in? This sounds terrible.

The New York Times said Davidson and Jost performed a loose seven minute opening set before a lineup of well-known and rising New York City comedians. The Times pointed out poor air conditioning and a lack of ventilation made the upper deck performance area stiflingly hot. It was very hot in New York City on Thursday. I was in for the podcast conference and it was a hot day. The Times quotes a 35-year-old Lower East Side resident named Mia who had come to the event because she was a big fan of SNL and said, with such big names attached to it, I feel like you expect more.

But it was a fun time. Sounds like it wasn’t that good. That is your comedy news for today. I’ll see you tomorrow.

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