Daily Comedy News Podcast Transcripts

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Featured: Conan O’Brien, Michelle Obama, Stephen Colbert, David Cross, Cameron Esposito, Derek Stroup, Matt Kauf, Mario Adrion, Kathleen Madigan

What’s in This Episode

• Conan O’Brien on Michelle Obama’s podcast discussing optimism and resilience
• Stephen Colbert receives Walter Bernstein Award at WGA Awards
• David Cross releases new special ‘The End of the Beginning of the End’
• Derek Stroup Netflix special ‘Nostalgic’ about 90s childhood in rural Alabama
• Matt Kauf special ‘Catman’ about divorce, middle age, and cats
• Mario Adrion special ‘My Struggle’ premieres on YouTube
• Cameron Esposito announces new album ‘Person of No Consequence’
• Kathleen Madigan’s 1978 Hoop Shoot Championship win revealed

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. Oh boy, on a day where my script program says, no, I can’t make the font any larger. I’m Chawi mag with your Daily Comedy News, daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. Assuming I can even see my script, I’m not kidding. I went to make the text larger, and there is no larger.

Oh bye. Code And O’Brien was on Michelle Obama’s podcast. As one does. Conan’s not some sort of insider who has fancy celebrities at his holiday party. You know, he’s this rascally outsider guy.

Conan telled Michelle Obama. I always say I’m a fifty one to fifty two percent optimist. I do say the world has always been filled with horribleness. There’s always been trouble. When young people preach to me it’s all over, say it’s the end of the world, I say, you have to understand this is the way it’s always been and this is how it feels.

Conan referenced the movie The African Queen. Spoilers for the nineteen fifty one film starring Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogard Good film, you should see it. Conan calls the African Queen a great metaphor for life. In the movie spoilers, you had some time there, Hepburn and Boguard are lost in the thick woods. They’re exhausted from trying to drag their boat forward.

Convinced they’ll never get out, they give up, unaware that they’re just feet from the river. Conan said, I always think about that. I think I’ve been there probably thirty five times in my life when I thought I was on the boat and I’m dead on the boat. Then I make it past that. He said.

Nearly every stage of his career has come with one of those moments. You may recall critics did not think he would last on the Late Night Show and said, then I make it past that. Later on I got the Tonight’s show and I think I’m in good shape. Nope, that blows up, and now I thought it’s really over. No, it’s not.

Keeps happening over and over again. There’s this learning to roll with it. Okay, what’s my next opportunity? Reset, recommit, look for the next opportunity. That is something I try to import to my kids.

Good advice there Conan. Conan ads I’m a poster child for incredible luck. I’ve been very, very lucky, and I give it up for that. I also know that I work really hard, and I prepare and I try to treat people the right way, but I get very angry when people don’t give it up for luck. I’m also aware that what was my path as a white male coming up in the nineteen eighties nineties a lot easier than a lot of other people in comedy and probably in any profession.

We’ll have a lot of Conan this week. He is hosting the Oscars on Sunday. The Hollywood Reporter did one of those fancy cover stories with him on Monday. I’m saving that for Saturday’s Oscars preview episode.

Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert was at the Writer’s Guild of America Awards on Sun…

Colbert was given the Walter Bernstein Award, which is for a member who has demonstrated with creativity, grace and bravery a willingness to confront social injustice in the face of adversity. Colbert said he doesn’t deserve any parallels to the namesake Walter Bernstein, who was blacklisted during mccortheism in the nineteen fifties for being a member of the Communist Party. Colbert said, this is not the nineteen fifties. This is not the Red Scare. And as far as I can tell, no one in Late Night is fermenting a revolution.

As we know, the revolution will not be televised. It’s going to be televised. But then Paramount bought it. Great joke, great, great joke, he continued. Evidently the revolution was losing like forty million dollars a year.

It had to go. I hear the revolution is thinking about starting a substack good stuff there. Hey, where did the next story go? Oh? Here it is.

It’s supposed to be third, it’s moved itself to fifth. I don’t know how that happened. David Cross has a new comedy special. It’s already out. It’s called The End of the Beginning of the End.

It is the ninth of his career. It’s available on his website already. They announced this on Monday and they were like, it’s already out, but it will be on YouTube. April seven. Filmed in David Cross’s home state of Georgia at the historic forty Watt in Athens, David Cross tackles the chaos of modern America head on, skewering authoritarian politics like what what are you talking about?

Really? Reproductive rights rollbacks, religious extremism, late stage capitalism, and uniquely American obsession with hoarding sneakers. Cross jokes the whole thing was written by some of the cheapest AI available. Cameron Esposito has announced a new album. It is called Person of No Consequence.

It’ll be out Friday, March twentieth on a special Thing Records. Cameron is fantastic. Used to have a podcast where they would have local LA comedians. Was really good. What was that called?

It’s been gone for like ten years already. That was a really good. Anyway, It’ll come to me as soon as I stop recording. Derek Stroup has a Netflix special out today, part of Nateland. You’ll find Nostalgic on a Netflix.

In Nostalgic, Derek Stroop dives into his experience being a nineties kid in rural Alabama and everything that came along with it, from partying with friends to board games and parental relationships. Daily show writer Matt Kauf has a new special out today Catman, It’s on Veeps. In Catman, Matt Kauf discusses divorce, middle age, and cats, sharing his thoughts on the world’s bias against men with cats. He says people love cats, but men with cats make people uncomfortable, including me. I’m a man with a cat and I’m creeped out by myself.

Also also also out today, German American comedian Mario Adrion his special My Struggle, which is a tongue in cheek nod to the title of a famous German leader’s book. You know, the really really really really really really really evil guy that wrote a book Mario specials called My Struggle. That’ll be on YouTube starting at nine a m. Pacific today. This one was filmed across four sold out shows a Dynasty typewriter in La Mario tackles his cultural experience as a German comedian living in America, exploring his German guilt, his German Jewish marriage, and how La is a bit different from a small hometown where he grew up chopping wood in the Black Forest.

Kathleen Madigan, I love this one. This was in the Star Telegram. We learned that Kathleen Madigan back in nineteen seventy eight won the Mid Missouri Hoop Shoot Championship. Kathleen Madigan made fourteen out of fifteen attempts back in nineteen seventy eight, all underhand, and she said, that is true, and then I retired. You have to remember back then, this was not some school sponsored thing.

This was through like the Elks Lodge. There was some random thing my dad signed me up for because he treated the girls like the boys. My dad was a lawyer and he saw sports for girls as a dead end. The next round was in Kansas City, which is why I wanted to do it. We lived in Saint Louis and I wanted to see Kansas City.

There were seven kids in my family. I know such thing as travel sports back then with my parents was like if you can walk to the game, you can play, but we’re not driving you. That reminds me when I was eighteen, I coached baseball. I just wanted to coach baseball, so they handed I don’t know what they were, how old were these kids would have been like six seventh graders to some eighteen year olds. And this was in Queen’s I didn’t have a car.

We would just walk to these fields like neighborhoods away. You think the parents would drive some of us. Now, I would carry this big bag on my back and go coach baseball. I loved it. And there wasn’t travel baseball back then.

This was cyo baseball and Queen’s I was still doing cyo baseball as late as the turn of the century.

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And then you’d hear like the really good kids would be like, I’m playing trav…

You’d be like, what’s that now? I mean, twenty five years later, forget it. Especially soccer, boy, the big money came into soccer in the right around twenty ten, the big money, the Brits all came over and just basically town soccer fell apart, county soccer fell apart. You have if you want to play anything, at least big competitive, you had to pay play in these travel leagues, and those were all like four thousand dollars. So everybody sport the World Baseball Classic.

Because what I want to do is I’m gonna move to London and I’m going to open up Big Apple Baseball. I’m gonna ramp up the accident a little bit and be like, hey, you want to be like Wan Soto let me show you how to do it, and then George British parents four thousand dollars for me to teach them how to play baseball, and they’ll be like, oh, he’s from New York City. Sounds right, like I don’t know if these British guys weren’ty good at soccer, they just looked right. I don’t know. I digress.

Ye. My wife just texted me asking me if I want McDonald’s. The answer is yes, hold on, Wow, Wow, she’s the best. I got to hold on to her. I just ordered a two cheeseburger meal to die coke.

And case you’re curious, where were we and why don’t you edit that out? John? The answer, as always is because that’s not fun. Kathleen Madigan was talking about travel sports and said, look at the commitment, all this money. My sister called me from jim Issareli.

I remember all that She’s hoping and praying her kid would lose in the volleyball match. That’s what I was saying. You’d be in this soccer chortament at like eight in the morning, and if you win, you get to play in the championship game at like four point thirty on a Sunday two and a half hours from your house, and like part of you is like, yeah, I totally hope they win. It would be a shame if we didn’t get to hang out here in these fields, in the middle of nowhere all day. Call.

He said, I stay in Marriad courtyards all the time, and I see the parents of the kids sports team. They’re always just hanging out in the lobby, just drinking all the time.

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Speaking of sports, did you watch the Knicks on Sunday?

You were like, Hey, did Amy Schumer dance? No, it was a road game. Bill Maher was there. He was sitting in the front row. Bill Maher’s got a lot of money.

He was sitting courtside at the Lakers game. So whatever you think of Bill Maher, he’s done a right for himself. Anyway, Lakers guard Marcus Smart crashed into Bill Maher in the middle of the game. I saw this myself on live television, wrote myself a note Bill Maher in the script. Thing that seemed to Bill Maher’s finger got slightly injured.

It was a little bit swollen. Hopefully Bill Maher is doing okay. Marcus Smart re entered the game and defeated the Knicks, which was very disappointing. Now, last night Johnny Mac had to stay up late because the Knicks were playing the Clippers, and you know who used to be on the Clippers, Blake Griffin. Blake Griffin has tried stand up comedy.

See how I tied this all together. You couldn’t plan it any better, thanks NBA schedule. Blake Griffin compared to stand up comedy to the NBA. He said, you finish a good game, you get the text from the people, you talk to people that were there. You feel a certain energy that’s riding above everything else.

It’s the same when you have a good comedy set. I haven’t had many of them. You definitely feel this higher energy. Comedy is the same way as basketball. For me, putting in the time, going about constructing jokes, constructing a set the right way.

It’s important to me. I don’t want to be this hack who only goes for the low hanging fruit.

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Meanwhile, from tennis dot Com, you’re home for comedy news.

Matt Rife took a tennis lesson with Chris Eubanks and discovers that Spanish grunting improves shot quality. I think we all knew that Chris Eubanks, who as you know, is the twenty twenty three Wimbledon quarter finalist, shared on social media. Super Lucky. Matt Rife asked Tennis Channel for the opportunity to get a good tennis coach. So who else to bring besides myself?

Matt Riife said, the wrist is everything. Rife explained. Tennis Channel asked me if I wanted to embarrass myself. They were like, I’ve ever played before. I said, not a day in my life.

So then they brought in the best. They warmed up doing some groundstrokes. Then matt Rife was taught on the art of grunting. Chris you Banks said, maybe let the grunt determine the quality of the shot. Raife took the advice.

You Banks told matt Rife, I feel like your shots are getting better with it and you’re just letting go of atension. When it was all done, Riife said, that was tremendously harder than I thought it was going to be. He went to collect the balls. A young fan yelled out from above the court. Matt Riife yelled back to the mom, he should have no idea who I am that’s terrible parenting.

Mom said, he’s never seen your stuff. Matt Rife gave the young man some advice. Nice to meet you, buddy, Enjoy your future detentions. Well, if you’ve had the TV on, you’ll see that we’re bombing a run for some reason. Stock market down, gas price is up.

Over the weekend, the President of the United States showed up at the Daynified Transfer ceremony in a baseball cap. That’s just your news recap. Fox News caught up with Max Amini. Now. The setup for this was like a lot of the articles lately about how Maximini has gone from Who’s that to We’re all going like, wait, who sold out Madison Square Garden?

And then you answer the question Maximini. But what interests me today is Maximini is of Iranian descent, born in Arizona. In nineteen eighty one, when he was eight years old, the Emini’s left Arizona and moved to Iran. Max lived there until he was seventeen. He explained, I was born into this family who promoted the Iranian culture in a very positive way to us.

So I learned all the best things about my culture, and I was very lucky to be raised in America in an environment that was very patriotic. Max told Fox News he’s not interested in bringing division onto the stage. He explains the beauty of stand up comedies. You sort of take a perspective and you decide this is who I am, and you go on stage and you present that. I never like politics.

I hate politics. I just can’t tell you how much I feel like politics is negative. It’s a power game. It divides people, it makes you lie, it makes you do things just to in for your party. I’m very simple.

I don’t like the feeling of that complexity. Fox News points out that Max’s interview with Fox took place before the recent news events, but Max did say freedom is something that today we understand is the most important thing for any human. If you can imagine how hard it is to be in any country, as someone who lives in this beautiful country, can you imagine that they strip away all your rights. You’re afraid of what you’re saying. You can’t do simple things in life, singing, dancing, you know, basic basic things we take for granted.

Women cannot sing or dance in public, They can’t go out without their significant other freely and people cannot exercise their beliefs certain religions. It’s very unimaginable for people who live in a free country like the US or European countries that have so much respect for human rights. Max described the Iranian people saying they’re fun, they’re hip, they’re fashion forward. When you understand just their taste in music and the way they enjoy their gatherings and how they live, you’ll be surprised what the media shows and what the reality is. So I hope everybody gets a chance to see that soon.

Again, this interview took place before recent news events. Max said, Historically, when a country held in this situation, they’re held hostage, there is a regime that’s absolutely brutal and they’re killing their own people. The intervention is a must, and the rescue mission is the most beautiful act a country can do for these people. They’re screaming out for help. And I think on that note, it is time to wrap up today’s podcast, and that is your Daily Comedy News for today.

Don’t forget to vote for Comedy Survivor. When I last checked, the Facebook group was starting to gang up on tig Nataro, which is very interesting. I think we’re down to seven names in Comedy Survivor. Now it’s gonna get down to the nitty gritty.

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Also, i’ve seen John Malaney got his first vote.

I think that’s his first vote of the contest so far. If you’re like, what is all this? John? Here? Do this?

Go to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast group. There you’ll find a picture of Bert Kraser and me. We’re both wearing shirts. Boy, I try to make a little cartoon image of Survivor every week. I didn’t even tell you guys.

Last week to get Kevin Hart to render correctly took twenty tries. It kept making Kevin Hart, who will admit not being tall, absurdly absurdly tiny, and I just everything get rendered. I’m like, I’m not handing that in. So I finally got to do something.

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And then this week it just would not depict Burt Krescher with a shirt off.

I think it thought I was asking for something naughty, and I’m like, Burt Krascher is known for not wearing a shirt. Here’s images of Burt Krescher not wearing shirts, and it just wouldn’t do it. So Bert Chrayscher’s wearing a shirt and so am I because you nobody needs to see that. No, no, no, I mean maybe in a shirt off contest. If I was standing next to Bert Krascher, you might be like, Hey, that guy on the right there has got it going on.

But you know, a normal company, you nobody, nobody needs to see that. Okay, tm I Johnny Mac. That’s your comedy news for today. Oh, here’s what you do. Facebook group, Daily Comedy News podcast group.

Find the drawing vote see tomorrow.

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Featured: Nikki Glaser, John Mulaney, Sebastian Maniscalco, Tig Nataro, Sarah Silverman, Leslie Jones, Otsko at Kotska, Bert Kreischer

What’s in This Episode

• Comedy Survivor Episode 10 voting results
• Bert Kreischer eliminated by AI tiebreaker
• Listener alliance strategy in Comedy Survivor
• Otsko at Kotska survival streak despite weekly votes
• Sebastian Maniscalco flying under the radar in competition

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. Oh. Outbit outlaugh Outlast. This is Comedy Survivor. Comedy Survivor is getting more and more interesting as listener alliances form.

Hello, I’m Johnny Mac and welcome to Comedy Survivor. Many weeks ago, we stranded sixteen comedians on Comedy Island. Each week, the listeners go to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group and they vote one comedian off Comedy Island. Still in the game, Nikki Glaser, John Mulaney, OT’s go at Coonska, Sebastian Maniscalco, Tick Nataro, Sarah Silverman, Leslie Jones, and Bert Krascher. And I’ve seen some discussions.

Some of the listeners are really fed up with some of the comedians still on the island, and they have aligned. Have they gotten enough votes to vote that person off? I’ll tell you the votes. Heather votes for Leslie Jones, Mike votes for Bert Kraser, Michelle votes for Bert Kraser. That’s two votes for Bert Kraser, Matt votes for Bert Krazer, three votes for Bert Kraser.

Von votes for Osco at Cotsca, Dylan votes for Otsco at Cotska. Lee votes for Otsco at COTSGA, three votes for Otsco, three votes for Bert Kracher. Aaron votes for Oscar at Cosca, four votes for Otsco at Costco. Scott votes for Tignetzarro, Leslie votes for Otsco at Costca, five votes for Osco, Raffi votes for Leslie Jones, Barbe votes for Bert Kracher. That’s four votes for Bird Kracher, Cheryl votes for Bird Kraser, five votes for Bird Krascher, Andrea votes for Nikki Glaser, and Andy votes for Leslie Jones.

Oh, no, another tie. Under the rules of Comedy Survivor, when there’s a tie, the AI settles the tie. I can’t believe we have another tie. You guys are killing me. Spruce the AI are you there.

I’m here and ready to settle this tie. It looks like it’s at Psuko versus Bird. I’ll break it down and make the call. Please check my work. How do you count the votes?

It’s a tie between Atsuko, Akaska and berg Kreischer, each with five votes, So under your rules, the AI would break the tie. Let me know who you’d like to eliminate, or if you’d like me to choose based on any criteria. Oh, absolutely, you choose not me. All right, I’ll break the tie since Berd Kreischer received a surge of votes that suggests moments and was building to remove him. So in the spirit of dramatic gameplay, Bird’s torch is officially snuffed.

Farewell Bird, the island just got a little quieter. Let’s see who’s next. Wow, the AI sense Berd Krazier home. Wow. Now some of you might be like, but those Berd Krasier votes came in earlier the week.

All I do is I go from top to bottom, and I’m letting the AI rule here, which means Otsco at Cotska stays alive yet again, which, honestly, as someone hosting a show, is way more fun. All Right, we’ll take the break and we’ll come back and see what all this means. What a fun result. I love it, the AI says. The tribe is now clearly split into factions.

The Otsco block has been remarkably consistent for weeks. Avon has been campaigning against her like it’s a weekly ritual, says the AI, and that persistence continues to pull voters in. But despite that, Osco keeps surviving. Is comedy survivor still in the game. Otsco five votes this week, still standing, Sebastian Maniscalco being floated openly as the guy sliding through.

No one is voting for Sebastian. He’s just quietly in the game. We’re never talking about him. Leslie Jones got three votes again. She’s been in the danger zone, even went to the tiebreaker one week and still around.

Nikki Glaser had a few votes last week, only one this week. She’s hanging Sarah Silverman off the radar. John Mulaney invisible in the vote total. Is John Mulaney going to take this whole thing astray? Vote this week for tig Nataro.

She was in trouble in the early weeks and that’s kind of calmed down. Eliminated from Comedy Survivor. Amy Schumer, Adam Sandler, Joe Cooy, Ron White, Jay Leno, Seth Meyers, Jim Gaffigan, Kevin Hart, and Bert Kreischer still in the game. The list is getting smaller. Who will be the Comedy Survivor.

As a listener, you’re going to go to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News podcast group. You will find a picture of Bert Krascher and me. I’m the one with his shirt on in that thread clearly vote someone off Comedy Island. Still in the game Nikki Glaser, John Mulaney, Sebastian Maniscalco, Tig Nataro, Sarah Silverman, Leslie Jones, and Otsko at Kotska.

Also note the split there five women, two men still in the game.

Write down one name you are voting someone off Comedy Island. One vote per person. Voting ends end of day Thursday. See in the Morning with a regular episode. This is fun.

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Featured: Theo Von, Conan O’Brien, Michelle Obama, Jerry Seinfeld, Amy Schumer, John Mulaney, Mike Birbiglia, Chris Fleming

What’s in This Episode

• Is Theo Von on The Masked Singer as High Voltage?
• Conan O’Brien hosting Oscars and delivering Harvard commencement address
• Conan O’Brien discusses comedy on Michelle Obama’s podcast
• Jerry Seinfeld spotted at Massachusetts restaurant ordering lemon chicken
• Amy Schumer dancing on Knicks game camera
• John Mulaney book club recommendations

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. Hi there, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News, a daily briefing on stand up comedy, comnians, and a comedy industry even on a slow news day. Theovon is he on the mass singer? People think theovon might be on the mask singer. There’s somebody performing as High Voltage?

Is it theovon hiding beneath that lightning bolt costume? I have some opinions, but I won’t share them yet. Some clues High Voltage’s first clue package dropped hints about leadership and American influence. High Voltage’s opening statement said, when I first began my career, the idea of blending in was my biggest fear. There have been some visual hints power lines, grease canisters, a map of the United States, a bald eagle.

The audio clip highlighted how High Voltage had become a patriot and revolutionary changing American culture. Growing up references included slurpees, Van Halen, MTV, and backyard Goat cookouts. This week’s clues featured heavily on bands, breakups, and going solo. High Voltage tells us I grew up listening to Ozzie. Now I have a clip from High Voltage.

Let’s listen to High Voltage sing and you tell me if you think this is THEOVON. Big list, old ruses, sweet been taps this way back when these wheels in the sin new hits, new seeds, no hiss, still read, and you just can’t fake this. So let’s change that. Girl. Let’s go put some miles on the back of the Chevy with the engine run.

I’m gonna vote heavy. Not that that is not THEOVON. That doesn’t sound like THEOVON at all.

Also, I’ve seen the body type of High Voltage.

I don’t believe it is THEOVON. Conan O’Brien will deliver the keynote address at Harvard’s three hundred and seventy fifth Commencement ceremony in May. Now let me just take a time out here. We all love Conan, and we’re gonna hear a lot about Conan this week because Conan is hosting the Oscars on Sunday, So a lot of Conan coming up this week. And we all love Conan.

Johnny Mac loves Conan. I’m not being sarcastic here. You can listen to all the hours I’ve done with Mike Chisholm from the Letterman Podcast, both on my show and his show, and you’ve heard me say, I like Conan, we all love Conan, but you knew that bo was coming. Let’s stop acting like he’s some sort of outsider. He’s hosting the Oscars for the second time, he’s doing the commencement speech at Harvard, and I I’ll tell you in a couple of minutes.

He was on Michelle Obama’s podcast. But this is an insider, So let’s stop pretending like he’s some wacky outsider. He’s not. We all love him, I love him, but he’s not some wacky outsider. He will deliver the keynote address at Harvard’s three hundred and seventy fifth commencement ceremony in May.

Meanwhile, Conan was on Michelle Obama’s podcast like regular people do all the time. I’ve been on it four times myself. Conan and Missus Obama discussed the White House Correspondence Association dinner and Conan and explain that is not a normal crowd. They’re thinking a lot about their own world, and you need to be funny, and you can’t act like you know too much, because then they’ll resent you for that or think you don’t belong. ConA and O’Brien told Michelle Obama, I’ve talked to your husband about this.

In case you’re not familiar with Michelle Obama, her husband is Barack Obama, who used to be the President of the United States. Conan told Michelle Obama, they make you follow the leader of the free world. He goes first and kills it. Then it’d finished and like drop the mic crowd going crazy and a voice would go, ladies and gentlemen, Conan O’Brien, and you see people like what who would go now? So you got to way through with that a little bit.

But it’s all calculating for what’s the assignment. He compared the correspondence dinner to the Oscars and said, now I’m gonna speak to a bunch of alist people who don’t really like to give it up for anybody. But that’s all calculation. You got to calculate and then have fun. Michelle Obama asked Conan O’Brien if comedy’s more fraught these days.

Conan O’Brien told Michelle Obama, are you getting how like inside this is? I think they’re all very talented. They’re really good people. They’re in a tough situation because your job is to go out and talk about the news every day. I was never strictly a comedian that lives off the news.

I usually try to find things that were silly and funny outside of the news, but we also had to do the news. Things are so diverse right now. I think it’s got to be a really tough task. And I do have empathy for the people who trying to figure out what’s funny in this because I know it just as a citizen. I get up in the morning and I look at what’s happened in the news.

I like to be funny, but my first instinct when I read the news is nothing here gives me joy or is making me laugh that hard. But if you’re doing one of those shows, how do you not talk about it? How do you not wear your heart on your sleeve? Maybe get mad? So it’s difficult.

Johnny Mac, is it a slow news day now? Why do you ask? Jerry Seinfeld was spotted at a Massachusetts restaurant. That’s right. Jerry was in Wooster last week.

Did a couple shows at the Hanover Theater. The Theater Cafe posted on Facebook that Seinfeld ordered a pre performance dinner. We are told Jerry Seinfeld requested the lemon chicken, which sounds like a joke. I don’t know what’s the joke about it, but it sounds like one. Jerry Seinfeld requested the lemon chicken.

But not just that. Jerry Seinfeld requested the lemon chicken grilled Faroe Island on salmon steam, vegetables, brown rice, and a green salad. And mass Live points out no soup was ordered. Well done. Amy Schumer hit up a Knicks game.

Johnny mag has a slow news day? Now, why do you ask me? I got plenty today? I know what you’re talking about. That’s right.

She went to see when the Knicks played the San Antonio Spurs, and we are told Amy Schumer appeared to be ready when the camera panned to her, and she got up and danced. She showed off her dance moves, well decked out in Nick’s gear. Later in the day on Instagram, she wrote, mom, dance cam coming in hard. I thought I’d check in on John Mlanie’s book club and you’re like, John, is it a slow news day? And I don’t know why you keep asking me that stop.

But I hadn’t seen anything about John mulani Reads, which is the hashtag Mullenie reads for the John Mulaney book Club. But if you went on John mullani Facebook, you would see two books this month. One led me to the other. The first book, John Mulaney recommends here Beside the Rising Side Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead and an American Wakening by Jim Newton says in bad times we need reckless troublemakers to pursue absurdity and offer something stupid, fun and free. I’ve read half a dozen books about The Grateful Dead.

Jim Newton’s new contribution is totally different. Then in all caps, m’laney yells at us and says, you did not have to be a deadhead or even fan. I appreciate this chronicle now. It’s interesting. I was on the Gianmarco Soresi Seraisi book Club and he recommends you’re beside the Rising Tide shirt No sorry, cheap shot at Ton Marko love Jen Marko front of the show.

It’s a joke, Gianmarco Soresi. You know that was funny. You know I’m on your team. You me Chris Fleming. We’re going over to by Biglia’s house and we’re gonna I don’t know, I know what we’re gonna do.

We’re gonna give him a thumbs down. We’re not violent people. We come in peace. We’re just gonna stand outside Mike Birbiglia’s house. You me, Chris Fleming, and we’re just gonna stand there with our thumbs down.

If anyone wants to join us, let us know. Tell Gianmarco Soresi on Instagram we’re doing this. Mulania has a second recommendation for us. It is Ken Casey’s sometimes a great notion. John tells this is a propulsal family story of a logging community in Oregon in the nineteen sixties.

I loved this book and really isolated outcast community. The people that populate the book are outcasts from each other. John tells us, I don’t know what it’s like to be driving around the country in a bus on acid for half a decade. While he was doing that, Casey wrote a true great American novel. Okay, Meanwhile, there’s the Anthony Jessnick Book Club, and you’re like, John, You’re sure it’s not a slow news day.

And I’m telling you it is not. My friend jessel Nick has recommended Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. The short novel builds to an unforgettable, haunting and beautiful ending. The book was published in nineteen sixty two. Jessel Nick said, I read it twenty years ago, but it’s one of my favorite Vonagut novels and extremely relevant today.

I might have started a book club over here. I’m a simple man, though, I’m gonna tell you to read a Tom Clancy novel. I’ll work on that. I haven’t figured that out yet, Johnny MacBook club coming soon, but probably not. Ah.

The folks at snl UK put out a trailer. I’ll give you a little taste of it, but I’m gonna clip it because after the guy says, live from London, it’s mostly music, but you’re kind of curious what it sounds like. Here, let’s listen live from London. It’s Saturday night, so the music is go by the Chemical Brothers. Sure to get the YouTube version of this podcast demonetized now.

In their little opening thing there, they didn’t have the voiceover person mention who the people are, which I thought was weird. Okayse, you’re curious they are Hamed, Annamashan, Larry Dean, Celeste Drink, George four Acres, Anya Magliano, Annabel Marlowe, Al Nash, Jack Shepp, Emma Cidy and Patty Young. Congratulations to Matt Rife the Stay Golden World Tour appearance at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, where you could have had jury duty and then walked across the street to see Matt Rife. But luckily jury duty is over. I am a free man.

I have completed my service. The federal government thanked me for calling a phone number every night pretty much for two weeks. But I didn’t have to go to Newark. But had I been in Newark and walk across the street to the Prudential Center to see Matt Rife the Stay Golden World Tour, I would have been one of the eighteen thousand and four and eighty six people who set a new record for most people attending a comedy show in the Prudential Center eighteen for eighty six breaks Sebastian Maniscalco’s record of eighteen four fifty seven. That broke Sebastian Maniscalco’s previous record of eighteen oh three three, which broke Kevin Hart’s record of sixteen nine to fifty six, which broke Dean Cook’s record of fourteen eight forty three.

Coming up at noon Eastern today, the results of Comedy Survivor. It was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun recording it. It’s another wonderful result. No spoiler’s ear come back at noon Eastern.

Comedy Survivor Mike Barenholtz has launched a weekly trivia podcast with celebrity guests. Not like those trivia guys at Morristown. The biggest celebrity in the place might be me. What a ridiculous thing to say, but it might be true. I’m trying to think, trivia guy, who’s the biggest celebrity that’s come to Trivia Night Anthony Glennbrook Brewery in Morristown, New Jersey on Wednesdays to see best man trivia?

Who? As we learned on Sunday, they’ll go to San Diego if you pay them. I’m trying to think, if I’ve been there and like somebody of like any kind of fame has been there, some loser doing a podcast can’t be the biggest celebrity. And I’m all saying this with a big goofy grin on in case you can’t tell, I don’t take myself very seriously. I’m gonna guess it’s not me, You know who I’m gonna guess it is.

I’m gonna guess.

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And now I don’t know for a fact if this person has ever gone or not.

But Anthony vulpi who’s the shortstop of the New York Yankees. He’s a local, and sometimes I’ll hear that he’s out. Now, I’ve never known him to be at trivia, but I’ve known that he’s been out in the neighborhood because the young kids tell me that he’s out in Morristown occasionally off season. Of course, this time here is clearly focused on baseball, so it’s possible Anthony Vulpey showed up a trivia I digress. What are you even talking about?

John? Is it a slow news day? No? I don’t know why you keep asking me that. Ike Barnholtz will launch a new weekly trivia podcast that’s called Funny You Ask.

Each episode blends fast paced trivia with comedic storytelling, bringing together major names from film, TV and comedy for what is described as competitive conversation driven gameplay. You know, I have a question about this podcast. On this podcast, are the winners always going to be from upstairs? Because you know, sometimes you go to trivia and the people upstairs seem to win a lot. It seems to be a lot of like young kids who win trivia every week, and they always seem to be upstairs.

I wonder what that’s about. Maybe there’s good cell phone service. Oh stop, stop, stop, stop, John, the trivia guys will get me many all right, shut up. Now, the trivia guys know I’ve learned four years ago. I used to argue about questions and it was a jack hole, especially after the third beer.

Now half the time I don’t even have one beer because I’m driving. You’ll see me in my corner, my big thing of water, and I don’t argue the questions anymore. Let it go. It’s just trivia night. Have fun.

Love the trivia guys. Ike Barnhold said in a statement, I recently learned about a new medium called podcasting and figured I’d dip my toes into these uncharted waters. Funny you ask, because the show allowed to do two of my favorite things at once, asking and answering trivia questions and hanging out with funny friends of mine who just happened to be famous. Funny you ask will debut March twenty fifth. Margaret Show has let everyone in the world know she needs you to know this.

She went full Amy Schumer. She’s just saying, you know, Donald Trump begged her to be on The Apprentice. I’m sure he did. I have no doubt. I mean, I’m sure Donald Trump repeatedly called Margaret Chow to be on The Apprentice.

I have no doubt that this story is true. Margaret Show said President Donald Trump was a huge fan of hers. However, she had a bad feeling about doing The Apprentice, so she never became a contestant. Margaret said, I was asked several times to be on it season after season, and they kept saying, well, Donald Trump really loves you, please come on. Uh huh.

I had a bad feeling about it because I did go on one of the challenges because my friend Cindy Laupper was competing one year and she did something in a diner. So I went and I helped out and to get myself some credibility. Even Margaret Chow finds it bizarre that the President was fond of her comedy nett Is your comedy news for today, coming up at noon Eastern Comedy Survivor back in the morning with a regular episode. See you then

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Featured: Gabriel Iglesias, Joe Koy, Steve Carell, Bill Lawrence, John C McGinley, Greg Gutfeld, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Jay Leno, John Mulaney

What’s in This Episode

• Gabriel Iglesias and Joe Koy sell out SoFi Stadium with 70,000 person show
• Steve Carell’s HBO show ‘Rooster’ receives mixed reviews
• Late night hosts joke about Trump firing Christy Noem
• John Mulaney’s comedy trip to India

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. Hooray Daylight savings Time. You people that don’t like daylight savings Time don’t want to hear it longer daylight after work and now it’s starting to get warm, which has nothing to do with the daylight I’m on team Daylight Savings Time. Hi. I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News.

I’m in a good mood. I just recorded the results of Mondays at Comedy Survivor. Wow. Another interesting result. So you’re gonna want to come back for Comedy Survivor at noon eastern daylight time on Monday.

Well, let’s do some comedy stuff, John, all right. The late night guys were talking about Christy Noam. You saw she got fired. Greg Gutfeld with a good joke, and I’m sure he told it even better than I will. He said, Trump fired DHS Secretary Christy Nooaman, and no one is more disappointed than her dogs.

Jimmy Fallon said, you never know what Trump. He either thinks she’s bad at her job or he wants her to be the new Supreme Leader of Iran. Fallon again, Yeah, Noam is the first cabinet secretary Trump’s fired since returning into office, he was like, man, I forgot how good this feels. Get Cash Bettell in here, Jimmy Kimmel, The funniest thing would be if they deport her to l Salvador. On HBO, Tonight’s is a new show by Bill Lawrence.

Now, who’s Bill Lawrence. That’s the guy that made Scrubs and the guy that made ted Lasso and some other things. Right, so we like him. He’s good at stuff. This stars Steve Carell.

It also features John C McGinley, who is sometimes Doctor Cox on Scrubs. So we’ve got some really good pedigree here today. Although I have seen mixed reviews possible spoilers here, I haven’t actually read the reviews, just the headlines. Daniel Feinberg is one of my favorite TV reviewers. He’s in The Hollywood Reporter.

His headline Steve Carell college comedy bos. The Stellar Cast can’t figure out what it wants to be. Daniel writes, it’s a show with an excess of undeveloped identities rather than a lack of identity, spackling over its poorly few story elements, with a sense of humor that’s sometimes appealing and frequently desperately hacky that’s not good. Rooster is the story of an introverted pulp fiction author played by Steve Carell, who was nothing like his macho alter ego, but gets the opportunity to change his life when he gets a job as a writer in residence at a small New England college that gives us the gimmick of reuniting him with his daughter, who’s an art history professor dealing with a crumbling marriage. But Finberg got a little funny here, he wrote, or perhaps a poetry teacher at a small New England college is looking forward to a reunion with her best friend newly hired as writer in residence, only to have the school’s president, John C.

McGinley, give the job to a schlocky pot boiler scribe played by Steve Carell, who doesn’t even want the job now, Finberg writes, Okay, Rooster absolutely is in the last show I mentioned, though there’s certainly a subplot, Findberg writes, it’s a truth near universally acknowledged that Bill Laurrence shows generally work best when they dispatch with or at least deemphasize the gimmicks and just becomes stories about damaged people, hanging out, making mistakes, and hugging. It’s completely possible that by the end of the ten episode first season, Rooster will have found its story, resolved its most discordant pieces, and become another of those charming and more Bill Laurrence shows.

Meanwhile, Variety hes headlines Steve Carell’s HBO comedy Rooster is dated a…

Ooh, that’s not good. I thought I had the good review. Second, I guess not. Oh I already ready the good review. Oh no, Steve Carell, Bill Lawrence, John McGinley, uh Oh, Variety wrote, Unfortunately, Rooster is full of predictable characters and circumstances, adding up to a lackluster narrative.

Oh No. Rooster is especially disappointing because there’s much to be said about the relationships between fathers and adult daughters, but that dynamic is barely explored here, despite its star power and creator Lawrence’s previous work on series like Ted Lasso, Shrinking and Cougartown no mention for Scrubs, Dude, do I have to am? I gonna have to get up a Scrubs posse and come and wag our fingers at you in front of your house. What do you mean you didn’t mention scrubs. Rooster is a dull regurgitation of previously explored themes and figures Corell has portrayed before Rooster HBO Tonight.

Meanwhile, the La Times profiled an upcoming concert. It’s going to be at so Fi Stadium in Los Angeles and it features Joe Koy and Gabriel Iglesias. Gabriel Iglesias. Now, if you’re like, who’s Gabriela Glacis, remind me who he is. He’s the guy.

His nickname is Fluffy and he recently played the Riyadh Comedy Festival. Some people call him a sellout. I don’t care. Yeah, I bought a house with that money, so I don’t care what you say. He said.

The fact that we’ve known each other as long as we’ve had is wild. We’ve known each other since we both had long hair. On March twenty first, Sofi Stadium will be filled with more than seventy thousand people. The one night only show will not be televised or recorded as a special. It’s meant to be a party for comedy fans who have supported gab Iglesias and Joe Koy since their early days and now feel like John.

Who’s Joe Koy again? Can you remind me sure? I’m happy to do that. Before Nikki Glaser hosted the Golden Globes, Joe Koy host of the Golden Globes. Now you might not remember that year.

That was the year he told this horrible, mean joke about Taylor Swift. Here, let’s listen. 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.

Love that bit, Gabe and Jokoy. We’ll pass the mic back and forth throughout the night. The night will feature special guests, surprise moments, and a copywriting rule of three plenty of other unplanned interruptions. They’re expecting a four hour show. Gab Iglacias said, it’s more sweet because it’s taken so long.

This wasn’t an overnight thing. Now, what as everybody wants everything so fast. Between the two of us, we’ve got about sixty years of comedy experience. Joe Coy said, it’s insane. I can’t explain it.

Every time we come here, and look up. I’m like, there’s gonna be a stage here. The size of the end zone. Wow, I didn’t even set this next thing up. I didn’t read this far ahead in the article before.

Right now, they quoted in the La Times, Jay Leno, Yeah, the worst person whoever lives said. My attitude when I came to this town is if you can’t get in through the front door, go in the back door. And they didn’t do it the traditional way. They got to where they are as comedians, one audience member at a time. The show is already completely sold out seventy thousand tickets.

Gabe sat at a certain point, It’s like, we’ve been doing huge stand up shows for so many years, it becomes normal. What do you do to change things? What do you do to grow? The worst thing that happens is it fails. But at least we know we try, all right, Now we know what our ceiling is.

But now this is at the ceiling the only time tells us. Unlike a typical arena show, which takes several months to coordinate, their big night at so Far required a full year of planning. The production in stage is three times the size of their normal stages and we managed by the same team that produces stadium shows for acts like Bad Bunny. Why the President of the United States isn’t going to like this show?

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Meanwhile, in the Hindustan Times, your home for comedy news, they recapped G…

They quoted Gianmarco Soresi Is saying being a New Yorker has prepared me for the phrenetic energy of being on the street, and India was like New York in advance mode. But you never feel alone in India, and I do like that. The food was incredible, although I was heavily monitored to not eat anything that would have disrupted my stage performance. So I fantasize about coming back here with enough time to be a little riskier with spice. Gianmarco Soresi said one of the highlights of his trip was hitting the vegetable market Mumbai at five am.

Going to the spice market, flower market and fish market. Gianmarco Soresi said, I got to see the inner workings of how everything works in the chaos, any incredible nature of how people will fill the streets and then clear them out every single day. I wish I didn’t have to wake up at five am and I’ve had that experience. I’m glad to have done it. Wudson never again, So please feel encouraged to join us in the Facebook group, which is Daily Comedy News podcast group.

And the other day I saw Jeff posted that he was off to go see Gianmarco Soresi Seresi in New York City, and then I ran into Jeff in real life the other day. You know why. Jeff is one of the infamous trivia guys, and I did some field reporting while at the brewery. Hright, you hear me talk about the trivia guys. I’m here with the trivia guys.

Jeff went to see Gianmarco Soresi. I did at theater adult last night at jose Pum. I was it. It was great. I didn’t initially realize I had bought tickets for the theater adults.

I thought I was just going to see Gianmarco Soresi. Oh okay, but now you thought the whole cabaret. I got the whole thing. So then, as a former theater kid now sort of theater adult myself, it resonated. It was a wonderful Morgas born of comedy.

It started out with the piano companists came out and warmed us up. Had us sing a little bit of be our Guest from Beating the Beast. Then Doug Goodheart came out and master it. He told us how to master five musical theater moves, very important. Then Gianmarco Soresi came out, did about twenty five minutes.

Or so wow. And had people in the audience talk about their experiences doing musical theater, and had a couple of people come up out of the audience, catrolled them to do a song, which was fantastic. Then Ben Platt came out and opened with luck be a Lady in Hebrew from his days at the Jewish performing Arts camp as a kid, and then they had a nice chat and Ben did a Corner of the Sky from Pippin and all the roles in Your Fall from into the Woods, and then they dueted on Your Nothing Without Me from City of Angels, which was fun and it was great. So it was it was good to see Gianmarco Soresi doing a little theater instead of just kind of talking about how he doesn’t do theater anymore right, and that the bits were funny and it was a great night. We look forward to the next one.

And the whole Mullaney rip off thing. I don’t see it at all. And I can’t imagine after he saw the cabaret version. Yeah, yeah, it’s ridiculous. No, I don’t.

I don’t see him as a ripoff of Malina at all. So one of the unanswered questions when I talk about you guys is what is the geographic circle? Like? Will you go to San Diego? Is it just northern New Jersey?

How how far away can I see comedy? No to hire the trivia guys, that’s men trivia. Yeah, No, we pretty much stay Morris County, New Jersey. Ish, we’ll go down to where’s the where’s the other county? We go to you know, Somerset County occasionally, Essex County occasionally, but we’re pretty local.

We’re getting We’ll go to San Diego if somebody right, if someone wants to hire is we’ll figure out a way to make it work. I would pay a little t anda exactly sure is the flyest sound to say? Sick? I can say, Now, that’s like me. I want to cover the Sydney Australia Comedy Festival, but on someone else’s time.

Exactly, all right, I know you got to set up, so let’s do Old man questions tonight eighties music. I know this ari on a grande stuff. You bet I appreciate it. Do Our best friend of the show, Jason Zinneman. In the New York Times, the headline the funniest special of the year, Dylan so far is drunk on words.

I might have added the Dylan part. Dylan is one of the guys in the Facebook group who watches fifty times the comedy specials. I do, but Dylan’s not feeling the Chris Fleming special. That’s okay. I don’t like Adam Sandler.

It’s fine. Comedy comes in many forms. We all like different things. Zinnaman agrees with me that Chris Fleming is the funniest special of the year so far. We are aligned at zennymon Rights.

Chris Fleming is a singular comedian for many reasons. His dynamic physicality, hopping, trotting, even moonwalking through jokes, the absolute finesse with which he delivers an insult so that it barely makes a mark, the unpredictability of his digressions, and the deadly seriousness he applies to subjects like the art of leading a conga line or Paul Dano’s smile see. This is why we need people who know how to write, like Jason Zinnaman from the New York Times, because he asked me and I go, oh yeah, it’s funny. Or I might say like, oh yeah, and he moves around a lot. I’m like a hack.

I can’t go more than like two sentences and I move on. But in front of the show jason’ Zenneman of The New York Times, right, it’s the magic trick of his act is that Chris Fleming marries a wild improvisational sense of constantly flying off the handle with a rightly precision with language. Usually you get one but not the other. Why you don’t hear the term alt comedy much anymore? That’s true, you really don’t.

Hmm. I wonder why it is, because now you hear bro comedy all the time. I guess the alt comedy guy’s one who knows why you don’t hear the term all comedy much anymore. There are plenty of odd ball comedians flourishing outside clubs and confessional solo shows. Sarah Sherman has turned Splatter and Go into a winning aesthetic, and Julio Tauris relies on flamboyant costumes and the abstraction of evoking colors and shapes.

Then there’s the booming clown scene. Yeah, that doesn’t get enough courage. I’m glad Jason pays attention to the clowns. The clowns are good. Pay attention to Natalie Palamedes if she’s not on your radar.

Natalie is fantastic. And Jimmy Fallon was on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Late Night reminds us Fallon had appeared on Colbert’s Late Show three times before, including in the premiere, but never as a guest. Colbert, on the other hand, has been a guest on found Tonight Show twice. Colbert has popped up twice remotely, once with Conan in twenty eighteen as part of Fallon’s monologue, and in twenty nineteen to perform a duet of The Never Ending Story along with Fallon.

That’s really good work there by the Late Nighter folks. Anyway, I’m going to leave you with this Jimmy Fallon, who is super talented. You hear me stick up for Jimmy Fallon on this show. Now, sometimes the comedy lacks a little punch, but I do understand that Jimmy Fallon understands what the Tonight Show is and isn’t. But Fallon did a personalized version of Frank Sinatra is my way, and I’ll let that take us out and I’ll be back in the morning with a regular episode.

And then Monday at noon in eastern daylight time is comedy Survivor. All right, Jimmy Fallon, take us home. And now. The end is near, and so you face the final curtain. But Trump, he made it clear he wants you gone of that.

We’re certain you’ve been a gracious host. We’ve loved you since the old report days much more than this. You did it you. Yes, they send you to knock down to just two Jimmy’s. But wait.

Before you go, Can I please have one of your Jimmies go? Now? What will you do? Dance with the stars or move to Norway? In twenty eight you’d have our vote.

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Featured: Jim Gaffigan, Nate Bargatze, John Mulaney, Jimmy Kimmel, Chelsea Handler, Chris Fleming, Mike Birbiglia, Jim Brewer

What’s in This Episode

• Jim Gaffigan cast as Grover Cleveland in The Gilded Age Season 4
• Nate Bargatze tops Billboard Comedy Box Score for January 2026
• Jimmy Kimmel pitches himself to host White House Correspondents Dinner instead of mentalist Oz Pearlman
• Chelsea Handler interview on comedy’s purpose and responsibility
• Chris Fleming and Mike Birbiglia feud escalates over impression accusations
• Jim Brewer discusses process of writing local material while touring in Baton Rouge

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. A daily briefing on stand up comedy comedians in the comedy industry. A sentence the algorithm loves, so I’ll keep saying it. Boy, Big exciting news from Jim Gaffigan.

You’re never gonna believe who he’s going to play in season four of HBO’s The Gilded Age? Are you excited for Season four? In Season four of HBO’s The Gilded Age, Bertha changed society at a cost. Now her family must reckon with the consequences as Agnes seizes an opportunity to regain her position.

Meanwhile, Marian forges a new path for herself, and Peggy works to be accept…

In this new era, you must be careful what you wish for. And you’ll never guess who Jim Gaffigan’s going to play in season four of HBO’s The Gilded Age. Have you guessed correctly? That’s right? He will play Grover Cleveland, the twenty second President of the United States.

In season four of HBO’s The Guilded Age, Jim Gaffigan’s President Grover Cleveland comes to New York to curry favor with the elite class. Congratulations to Nate Berghatzi. He is back on top. In Billboard’s monthly Comedy box score recap for January. Nate had been on top from August through November, but John Mulaney took the top spot in December.

Well, Nate is back on top. His seven shows grossed five point one million dollars and sold sixty four thy one hundred tickets. The rest of your list in fifth place, Jim Gaffigan grossed a million and a half. He sold seventeen thy nine hundred tickets across ten shows, So Jim is playing two thousand seat theaters. Thought he’d be playing a little bigger room.

Matt Riife grossed a million and a half two shows, seventeen thousand, nine hundred tickets. Bert Kreischer a million, six seven shows, twenty six thousand tickets. Number two, John Mulaney two point nine million, twenty nine one hundred tickets twelve shows, and again Nate six shows, sixty four one hundred, five point one million dollars. Jimmy Kimmel has a great idea that Jimmy Kimmel should host the White House Correspondence Dinner, and his logic makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, Kimmel is not hosting it.

As Kimmell explains, this year, I guess Trump didn’t want to be made fun of by a comedian, So the host is a mentalist. We’ll have a mentalist and a mental case on stage together. Send your letters to Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel explains, the mentalist is a guy named Oz Perlman. He’s an amazing performer, and I’m sure he’ll be able to predict what Trump isn’t thinking.

But this feels like a cop out to me, and I want to address the President directly on this. Mister President, please let me host this dinner. I’ve never asked you for anything before. Can you imagine you, me, the commissioner of the FCC, all at a table together. Think of the ratings.

That’s not a joke. That would be amazing. Kimmell said, I’ll even throw an award. You like awards. I’ll give you a brand new award.

The corresponding the Dundee corresponding, no one will ever get it. Besides you, please give the people what they want for once. This is our destiny together, you and me think about it. Let’s make it the greatest, hottest, most spectacular dinner of any kind ever. Chelsea Handler, who wants data, Joe Cooy, who once hosted The Golden Globes, who once made a joke about Taylor Swift, but I’m not doing that bit today.

She caught up with Cleveland dot Com. They were curious if Chelsea Handler feels more free on stage now is supposed to ten years ago. Chelsea said, freer and more responsible at the same time. As a comedian. Right now, it feels purposeful to give people a reprief from the world we’re living in, which is a very dark chapter in this country’s history.

I take having a good time very seriously, and I take making sure my audience has a good time very seriously. That matters. Cleveland was curious, what do you think comedy is actually for right now? The comfortable or the uncomfortable. Chelsea Handler said, definitely the uncomfortable.

Comfortable people don’t usually have the best personalities. I’m not trying to supply comedy for them. Comedy is for people who are struggling, who are being targeted, who want more humanity, not less, people who care about community, about families staying together. That’s who I’m talking to, all right, Chelsea, anything off limits in your comedy, she said, I don’t make fun of children, especially not ugly children. That’s not funny.

Otherwise, I pull from my stories, my adventures, my magnetic attraction to outrageousness. That’s where everything starts. Chris Fleming was on Caleb Heron’s podcast and the name Mike Birbiglia came up. Now, you may recall recently Mike Birbiglia passed a note to John Mulaney and Berbiggs apparently had written down the name of a comedian that those two think might possibly, perhaps maybe be doing an impression of John Mulaney. Now, in the Great Comedy War of twenty twenty six, I’m on team Gianmarco Soresi SERSI against those mean bullies Berbiglia and m’laney, And I think we could put Chris Fleming on the side of Gianmarco Soresi again.

When the Great Comedy War breaks out, I’m choosing sides and I’m going with team fun. Anyway, here’s Chris Fleming. You say things about people that I’m like, if I did that, I would be in trouble. No, but it only makes them wilder for me when I say it. Yeah, Barbiglia won’t stop ringing me.

Yeah. Have you said things about Mike, Oh, so many things. Yeah, I can’t stop talking about You really get away with these things? I don’t know how. Yeah, I think it’s a kink people have.

We’ll have to say. See if for Biglily a response to that. Maybe he’ll pass a note. I don’t want to get a note. Jim Brewer caught up with The Advocate ahead of some recent shows down in Baton Rouge and they were curious if Jim would be doing any Baton Rouge jokes.

Jim said, Yeah. Before the show, I usually hit a downtown area and I walk around. I hitting coffee shafts, so I haven’t lunch in town, maybe listen to conversations, or I just try to get the feel of the area. And that’s usually my opening couple of minutes, trying to get the local field before I launched into what I’ve loosely planned for the evening. I have told this story before, but I will tell it again.

Absolutely he does that. I’m positive that we were at the Aspen Comedy Festival. I went out to breakfast with Jim and Pete Corielly. We got like pancakes or something. It was snowing outside, and at one point Jim goes, there’s no festival in this festival, and it was just a thought, and we went on and had our breakfast, and then I don’t know, fourteen hours later, at a show that also included Dave Chappelle, Brewer got up and did ten minutes on there’s no festival at this festival, and did a whole routine about snowballfis, etc.

That I can guarantee you did not exist before we sat down for breakfast. So I absolutely believe it when he says he walks around town and looks for inspiration. Been there, done that, seen it? Jim, can we bring kids to your show? He said, I never suggest small kids, and only because they can’t understand half the material.

But I call it PG thirteen. And the only reason I say PG thirteen is more the awareness. I don’t curse, I don’t swear. I’m not going to go into subjects to make you cringe. I’ve been doing that for fifteen years or so, maybe more so.

No worries about bringing younger people. Jim described his comedy style as observational. He said, I say clean Richard Pryor, if that makes sense, because Richard Prior make deserve life and we tell it, and that’s all. I’m a storyteller. I’m too dry today, ice coffee, everybody.

I can’t get my Brewer growl on. I live life and then I turn around and tell it and whatever’s going on in life that everyone relates to. Jim, what did you take away from your time on SNL. I know it sounds crazy, but what I took away from it was I mostly wanted to control my own destiny in my career and being home more after that show and set my own pace in life and in this business. Again I worked with Jim.

It’s probably twenty years ago now, Yep, that’s exactly where he was. Just wanted to be home with his family, taking care of his dad, looking out for the kids, and did not trust the industry at all. Jim, do you still pursue film roles? This is a good interview, Jim said, I never really got to do films I truly want to do. I’m literally at the stage now where I started writing more and honestly, I’m more in a drama than anything I’ve ever done.

Back then, I was chasing harder to be in movies and being the spotlight. Well, that’s the last of my desires these days. To me, I’m more about inspiring, inspiring, healing, helping people through with laughter. I’ve written some I’m writing one now. I don’t even think i’d be in it.

To be honest with you, I think I’m too old to play the part. I got to get down to Australia. I was in Australia at the end of twenty fifteen. I loved Australia like I love it, I’m obsessed with it. I mean, the weather’s awesome, the people are super nice, the country’s pretty, and it just seemed like less complicated, maybe just less developed, Like you know, there was not everything was a parking lot, yet not everything was a TJ Max and a Target and a Starbucks.

Like it just seemed like, in some ways, a simpler version of America. I’m not sure the Australians would appreciate that description, but I mean that with love, and I would love to actually live there, at least for a while. I also love living in America. Let me be clear, I’m not saying I’m not saying America sucks. I’m just saying I also like Australia.

I also really like France. I also really like Ireland. I also really like Italy. So what we’re gonna have to do is run more mid roll commercials so I can fund my international nomad life telling you about comedy festivals like the twenty twenty six Sydney Comedy Festival. It will present over four hundred shows in its biggest program ever.

I’ll be coming up in April. If you’ve listened for a few years, you know that I like to cover that one a lot and play some cliffs on some people that are not normally talked about on this American focused program. Some names you don’t know. But I think it’s just fun to take a look at what else is happening in the world. And it is a great festival.

You know, if you guys want to write me down and cover it Sydney Comedy Festivals to shoot me a note. The festival announced some international and local talent, including Daniel Slass, David Darney, Josh Thomas, Cilia Pacola, Joanne McNally and Reuben Kay. They joined the already announced Tiffany Hattish Any creator of Baby Reindeer, Richard Gadd. The Sydney Comedy Festival General manager James Declass who should email me? Invite me?

He said, With almost four hundred shows over five massive weeks of coming, We’re pleased to welcome you to the biggest Sydney Comedy Festival program ever. Get ready to laugh, Sydney. We have many surprises in store for you.

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Meanwhile in Perth, also in April and May.

Hey, Perth, guys, I’ll come. Shoot me a note. They have also announced Daniel Sloss, Joanne McNally, Barcelona based Irish comedian Kyla Cobbler, and Canada’s Colin Mockery Very International Festival in Perth. They are also announcing the return of Malaysian doctor turned comedian doctor Jason Long UK born Australian resident nurse Georgie Carroll, Hong Kong’s Shawn Locke, Tim and an annual visitor to Perth, Ireland’s David o’darty. Some more Irish folk coming Chris Kent Andya Martin, Mike Rice and Alison Spittel from England, elf Lyons, Russian British comedian Oga Koch, Festival stalwart Stephen k Amos, He’s really great and UK drag Queen Myra Dubois.

Vanity Fair had put out an article a couple weeks back. It’s been busy around here. The headline Bowen Yang, Brittany Broski and eight other hosts who are shattering the talk show format. Tap the brakes there, Vanity Fair. They tell us the talk show is alive and well and living online.

It’s Jennifer Lawrence sobbing convulsively as the effects of Hot one Spicy Wings kick in, Tina Fey reading Bowen Yang, the Riot Act on Las Culturistas, and some other examples. Vanity Fair tells us for decades cheeky daddy figures from Jack Paar and Johnny Carson to Jimmy’s Fallon and Kimmel sat atop the Hollywood food chain. You know, I love Late Night at all, but if your premise here is going to be like poking Jack Parr, I mean really, I mean, why don’t we talk about like comedians like Mark Twain used to wear seer sucker suits and now Matt rif’ces on TikTok. I mean, what are you talking about? Did Mark Twain wear a seer sucker suit?

Is that an accurate description? It created a mental picture, It got the job done. They were industry gaatekeepers presigning over es, central press, tour pit stops, and thresholds where an up and comer could become a household name overnight. The newer and more democratized model, where digital influencers wield more clout than many traditional stars, relies on realness. Dude, None of this stuff is real?

Are you kidding me? Between the sets and the filters and the gimmicks like, for example, Hey, celebrity, come over and eat some spicy wings. You think that’s real? Come on. Royal Court creator Brittany Broski said, the whole point of these internet based shows is people crave a real, parasocial connection with their favorite celebrities.

There used to be this barrier between celebrities and the average person, and that is kind of dissolved. Has it is Pete Davidson having you over to his garage Vanity fairs? Brain kickback in and they wrote, talk shows have always been performative, conjuring an illusion of intimacy between strangers surrounded by lights, cameras and a studio audience.

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And then they’re brain short circuit again, They wrote, the new crop up celeb…

Yeah, like you know, feeding somebody spicy wings. Nothing artificial about that. To stop with this, I can’t with this. Go read Invanity Fair. This makes me want to throw my computer across the room.

I’m gonna wrap up for today and go back to my cabin in the woods. Up on Old Men Mountain Metric Company News for Today, Say Tomorrow

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Featured: Zach Braff, Bill Lawrence, Aseem Batra, Sam Lloyd, Joel Kim Booster

What’s in This Episode

• Scrubs Season 10 Episode 3 ‘My Rom-Com’ recap and analysis
• JD and Elliott’s divorced relationship dynamics in the revival
• Directorial choices in filming separated characters
• New Scrubs revival set design and production in Vancouver
• Original Scrubs filming locations and North Hollywood Medical Center history
• Lloyd’s Junction bar tribute to Sam Lloyd
• Scrubs Season 9 retconned from canon

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 Scrub, Season seven, Episode three, My rom Com Original air date March fourth, twenty twenty six. Hi, I’m a Johnny Mac and we are already a third of the way through the Scrubs revival as I record this Friday afternoon. The ratings for this episode are not out yet, nor has the show been officially renewed. I will be stunned if this doesn’t get another pickup. Everything screams that this is what passes for a hit in twenty twenty six.

You know, people don’t watch network TV, and this one has buzz, and the people that work on the show seem nice to work with, and you want to be in the Bill Lawrence business. And the premiere did pretty well. I’d be shocked if this doesn’t come back. In my rom Com, we saw j D and Elliott fighting at work again. Elliott believed that JD had it in for her.

They are divorced. Now we see JD in the doctor kel. She wants to keep a patient. JD is like it’s time to discharge her. The patient didn’t want treatment.

There’s no reason to be in the hospital. We got a business here to run. Elliott does not appreciate any of that. It’s just so weird to see JD in the Kelso role, but it makes sense now. One thing to keep an eye on in this episode.

I saw on the Reddit somebody thought that perhaps, possibly maybe that JD and Elliott film their scenes separately, because you would only see one of them in the camera shot as they talk to each other, but I disagreed. I was paying a lot of attention to the episode. I had seen that Reddit post before I put the episode on, and I was looking out for it, and at the beginning I was like, oh, yeah, that does look a little funky. But what I realized was it’s a directorial choice, I think because j D and Elliott are not together, so in camera they are not together. Now, as the episode goes on, the two have a nice conversation.

JD tells Elliott he’d like to find their core friendship and connection again and it was just going to take time. And in the scene JD walks into Elliott’s frame and now they are side by side. They are visually together again, So I think the director made a choice there. It’s subtle. There’s also a b plot involving Churk and the surgical Internsamara, the one that’s not confident, and Dashauna, who I think is fantastic and my favorite of the new bunch.

The actress is doing a great job. The role seems a little more fleshed out. She’s got great chemistry with Turk. We get to spend some time with some of the newer characters. Ellieed goes and hits up the IT guy, who is a bit of a character.

He shuts down the hospital’s electronics systems, which is fascinating because that’s the same plot happening in the pit. So I just find it interesting that the pit and the scrubs are aligned on their plot lines. It guy, we learned plays Dungeon and Dragons on Sunday with Turk. So Turk has this whole life outside JD. Now twenty years later, there’s another another uplot about finding the sick patient’s ex husband and how he looks like the main character from the movie Up.

They have some fun with that. We get some scenes out of new annoying HR Lady Carla does appear in this episode special guest Judy Rayis. I noticed in the credits. I don’t think we saw Joel Kim Booster’s character at all, so that’s interesting. Show Runner Assim Batra explained the deal with JD and Elliott to tv line.

She explains, if you go back and look at the first run of Scrubs, they always had a tricky relationship, and it’s just real statistically in terms of marriages, we don’t know what we’re gonna do with the two of them, and that’s exciting. Again, that suggests a season two. It gives us a lots of right to we get to see dating episodes again, we get to see them have a journey together again. Of okay, if it’s not gonna be this, how do we still keep loving our relationship? Watra notes, if we had JD acting the way he was in his twenties would probably drive a lot of people crazy.

He’s not there. He’s a grown up, and we don’t really want to see a guy controlling what his ex is doing. That’s kind of an old thing. As for making him get along now, Botra says, when you’re in a space of always being contentious, the comedy gets tamped down. We wanted them to be in a good space so they can have those fun light moments.

Do we find out what led to the divorce spoiler not this season. Bocher says, if we have more episodes in a later season, we can unpack that in a way of like, well, what was the origin of this? And I think that will be interesting for me. This episode was another winner. Now, about ten minutes in, I was like, Oh, this one’s not that funny, but I’m glad Scrubs is back, and I like spending time with these characters.

But then there were a couple really JD fantasy moments involving wrestling. You could tell there’s a little more budget for that stuff this time around. The times we saw the wrestling ring were hilarious. There were a couple one liners here and there. They got to chuckle out of me.

So maybe the beginning of the episodes is not that funny, but in the end I was like, oh, I’m glad Scrubs is back. One of the listeners sent this to me. Thank you listener. You know who you are.

And now when I get emails, a lot of people just prefer to stay anonymous, So …

The original show’s production designer Cabot McCullen is not back. The new guy is Roger Fires, and some fans are noticing some of the set looks different. That’s because they couldn’t use the original location. I think that building was torn down. However, they’ve done updated versions of the hallways, operating rooms, and even the gift shop.

I feel like at some point it looks like the background is CGI can’t really tell. Sometimes the back looks a little funky. We’re told when Zach Braff came to see the new set for the first time, he was speechless for three minutes, looking at us like I can’t believe you guys did this. If the audience at home as the same reaction, I think that’s successful. The original pilot for Original Scrubs was shot at the fully operational Women and Children’s Hospital in Valley Village.

Once the series got picked up, they filmed it at North Hollywood Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley, a real hospital that had been shut down. Seasons one through eight took place there. They also had rooms for makeup, wardrobe, editing, swedes, sound studios, and more, and instead of trailers, the cast was given old hospital rooms. That’s fun. For season nine production moved to Culver Studios.

But there is no season nine anymore. What are you talking about? There are eight seasons and then we call this one season ten. Season nine never happened. It’s been d cannoned.

Back in the old days, they had to put up a huge sign that said this is not a working hospital. Don’t come here for emergency care. North Hollywood Medical Center was torn down to twenty eleven. Uh, I was right what I said earlier and is now luxury apartments. So for the revival, a set was built to mimic the original.

The new set is in Vancouver. The only exception is the entrance to the hospital that was not built. It was created using an optical illusion. Fires recreated the entrance using a three D photo of the original entrance that has quote reverse perspective that tricks the eyes. I don’t think in the new series we’ve gone to the bar yet.

Maybe I’m forgetful. In the new series, the bar is called Lloyd’s Junction. It is canonically the same bar that they hung out in olden times. The original bar never had a name, but apparently all along possibly it’s been called Lloyd’s Junction. Anyway, the new name is a tribute to Sam Lloyd, the actor who played Ted Lawyer.

Sam passed away a couple years, so a nice way to honor Sam Lloyd over at Lloyd’s Junction. And that is your Scrubs Season ten, episode three recap. I’m so happy the show was back back in the morning with a normal episode

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Featured: Gabe Iglesias, Mark Maron, Chris Fleming, Jim Jefferies, Taylor Tomlinson, Shane Gillis, Nate Bargatze

What’s in This Episode

• Gabe Iglesias defends Saudi Arabia comedy booking and house purchase
• Mark Maron praises Chris Fleming’s new HBO special
• Scrubs reboot gets 11.36 million viewers in first five days
• Comedy championship belt discussion with Jim Jefferies
• Late night coverage of Iran and Pentagon’s Operation Now What

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. Oh this one should be fun. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News and daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. We got to talk about Game Iglesias, but first, hey, check in with a late night Jimmy Fallon reminds us the big story continues to be Iran as we’re in day four. When he told Joke of what the Pentagon is officially calling Operation Now What Michael Costa said, it’s definitely not expanding into an ever widening regional conflict that puts Americans in immediate danger.

Fallon again. President Trump took questions in public for the first time since he attacked Iran, and he admitted he has no plan for who should take over the country. Apparently he’s very close to listing it on Facebook Marketplace love It. Colbert said, they’re going to have to post the job on Indeed, the boasting supreme leader qualifications, charismatic, proficient in Excel, not deada plus Game Iglesias. Dude, you know I met Gabe once.

He was part of the launch of Comedy Central Radio. He was awesome, But Gabe, Gabe Gabe, Gabe, this is a bad look. Gabe Iglesias was at the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He got his star. Congratulations, well earned, and this is just a bad clip.

Here is Gabe Iglesias, my agent, Matt Blake. Matt has a book means around the Planet, and yes, yes he booked, means Saudi Arabia. I don’t care. Yeah, I bought a house with that money, so I don’t care what you say. Fluffy is a sellout, Damn right.

I am a sold out Dodgers Stadium and Sofi Stadium, so say hello to that sellout. So on the one hand, I appreciate the honesty. Like Pete Davidson, who I still can’t believe played that festival. At least he was like it was a lot of money, and Gabe is just saying it’s a lot of money. And I get it, guys, but you know, most of the world, except for one cranky guy in his basement recording a podcast, has kind of moved on from this topic.

And Gabe, you just waved the red flag in front of the bull, and it’s just it was not a good look for you. Don’t do that again. That’s bad. Mark Maron was on Facebook he loved Chris Fleming’s new special. Have you watched it yet?

I’ve been trying to get you to watch it. I know I’m just a lunatic in abasement, but maybe you will trust the opinion of esteemed comedian Mark meron Here’s Mark, I made a couple edits for language. Chris Fleming I think is single handedly saving stand up comedy. Chris Fleming is a marvel to behold, A true artist, a true artist of improvisation, and just totally full of surprises and a bit of an edge. I watched Chris Fleming Special on HBO, and he gives me hope for comedy because for so long now it’s been so locked into the same boring frequency.

Of bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah, just. Like interchangeable comics. So when anybody pops out of that, out of what has become understood is stand up comedy and crowd work and everything else the same pattern. I mean, this guy like a rocket ship. Great, check out that Chris Fleming special.

Something new man finally, something new, real art, real stand up comedy. Just put them all to shame. No, I know you’re like Johnny Mac you never talk about Chris Fleming. Well, Chris Fleming is the guest on Caleb Hearing’s podcast. If you want to check that out.

Thank you Heather for sending that over. How about this for Scrubs, we got some updated numbers. I had telled you other ratings the other day, but then the modern metrics where they look at how it streamed in its first five days. New Scrubs tallied eleven point three six million total cross platform viewers in its first five days. That includes the audience for the original linear premiere.

Linear is network speak for what civilians would just call TV, as well as encores and streaming across Hulu, Disney Plus and digital platforms eleven point three six I imagine if it hasn’t already by the time you hear this, I imagine that show will be picked up for a season two and then we can get more Doctor Cox. By the way, someone in my house we have Hulu and there’s an account clearly labeled Dad’s account, and then the other family members have their own accounts on the master Hulu account. So I sat down last night to watch the Scrubs and I’m watching it and I’m like, wait, this just feels like out of time. And I went back and my rewatch is the middle of season five, someone else in the families rewatch and she did cook a fabulous dinner. If you want to hint as to who I suspect it was, had my account in the middle of season two.

When I hit next episode, it just showed me a season two episode and I watched the whole thing, and then I was like, ah, wait what so I reset its season five flog in as yourself people, And while I’m ranting, can you how do I get my family off my iCloud. So I have two options. I could bail and create a sub account, but then I have to remake all my music playlists and I’m the one paying for the iCloud, or I kick them all off. Now, I have told the children when you turn thirty, and they’ve got some time. When you turn thirty, I’m kicking you off iCloud.

You get your own Netflix. I’m kicking you off everything. It’s not about the money. It’s about I want to log in hit play and Scrubs play season five. Although kicking my children off is not going to solve the Scrubs issue.

Then I mentioned she cooked a delicious dinner. In case you want to hint, who I suspect is logging in his me cut it out. Jim Jefferies was on The Life Without Andy Show and he was asked if comedy had a championship belt, who would hold it? Right now, now there’s a topic for a slow news day, which is not today, but the next time we have a slow news day, that is a great topic. Who holds the comedy championship belt?

To me, it’s pretty obvious, but Jim Jeffries threw out a different name. He said the current title holder would be Shan Gillis. He’s the one selling the most tickets. Well, as you’ll hear tomorrow, he’s not the one selling the most tickets. Nate forgets.

He’s the one selling the most tickets. Shank Gillis is the one that seems that the left and the right love the most.

And also he was canceled and he’s completely fine, you know what I mean.

But he would be the one that would be the biggest for ticket sales. Gabriela Glacias. No one sells more tickets than Gabriellaglacias. Man he sold Dodger Stadium twice, plus he sold out the Rio Comedy Festival, which bottom of a house. Yeah, I bought a house with that money, so I don’t care what you say.

Fluffy to sellout, Jim said, I’m just happy where I’m at, even if I’m at the bottom of the table. I’m happy to be playing in the Premier League, and I could be relegated at any time. I love it. Taylor Tomlinson said, playing cruise ships are really tough because everybody’s coming to see you, essentially for free, just in another activity that’s available on the boat, and you’re not as good as a water slide. That’s hilarious.

Most people were there with their families or on their anniversary, and I was like twenty one talking about dating being weird. I usually did a lot of CrowdWork on cruise ships. The other comic that would be on with me, he’d have an hour about the cruise ship and I was like, oh man, I’m not good at this. I think those were the hardest for me. Churches, if you’re clean, they’re pretty nice.

We have to be squeaky clean. I’m not talking like send your transcript to the tonight’s show and have them reprove it. I’m talking insanely clean, no innuendo, no light swearing, don’t get too dark or too negative. But if you could stay within those parameters, as the audience tends to be supportive back at serious, I always had the hardest time programming the clean comedy channel. First of all, there’s not all that much clean comedy.

You would think that would be the easy one to do. No, the dirty channel is very easy. To do the clean channel. You have to find material, and then people like Bill Cosby, who were the bulk of your library, you know, kind of getting the news, and then you have to pull all the Bill Cosby clips out, and that makes life even harder. But as a rascally young man who grew up in New York City, I had a different feel for what for what is clean or not.

I eventually settled in on like Dolly Parton jokes, if you know what I mean, Like, there’s a way to do a Dolly Parton joke without saying anything. I kind of drew the line there, but boy, I kept having it dial the language back. There’d be words that would be like, really, you were finit that at okay, Folks did not like any sort of coded drug reference. So that had to come out. So I hear you, Taylor Thomason, She said, I could tell you when I was twenty one and it was opening for Big Church Comics.

It was like a thousand dollars a show that was hard to lose. At a certain point, I told my manager I couldn’t do churches anymore. She told the managers, just don’t even tell me if we get offers. The last one she told me about was like three thousand dollars for like thirty minutes. When you’re twenty two, I two TV credits and don’t sell tickets.

That’s pretty crazy. It’s a lot of money, but I couldn’t do it. They asked Taylor Thompson about Late Nights. You know, she walked away from the Late Late show. My personal conspiracy theory.

And again I can’t scream this loudly enough. I’m not blaming Taylor Tomlinson, but I do think Taylor Thompson walking away from After Midnight did open the door to a discussion of do we need any of this? Again, I’m not blaming Taylor Tomlinson. I just think it’s a butterfly effect. Taylor said, I can’t believe they canceled Cold Beer.

It’s interesting how the argument is, like nobody wants to watch people talk. People are watching hours of people talking on podcasts on YouTube and now Netflix. I’m doing all these podcasts and it’s so interesting too, because you’ve got to go to some studios. It’s a TV show. They have a team of eight or nine people, twenty lights, and a beautiful setup.

As for walking away, it was tough. I decided that I couldn’t come back before the show was renewed. It was sort of a muddy timeline because the decision had been made to be renewed, but I didn’t know about that, so it wasn’t as simple as they told us you being renewed and I went, no, thank you. That’s not what happened. From the beginning.

I was always like, if I can do both, I will do both. But reach a point where I was touring, I was doing press for the show, I was doing the show, and I had some hell stuff going on. I just couldn’t do both things anymore. I so badly wanted them to just hire someone else to host it, because I think there were so many comedians who would have been absolutely amazing hosts for that show, and it’s unfortunate that they didn’t go that direction, because in the two seasons we did, we got it to a format that CBS seemed to feel good about. It’s a very different show than one I saw non for and I was really happy with it and proud of where we all got it.

The hardest decision I’ve ever made professionally, by far, was not to come back for a third season. But I couldn’t sustain it. You know. That got me thinking, I wonder if they’ll bring that back, Like, could you just did eleven thirty, do a show called before Midnight and get a new comic in there and run that format because that one’s not that expensive to produce, Or do you just throw on CSI reruns and get the same number? Probably that the Hollerd Report said to Taylor, what was surprising is the format seemed like a workable evolution for late night.

Panel shows are less expensive and do well in other countries, and Taylor at it it was a great opportunity for comics to get in front of a new audience and get a TV credit and make jokes in a way that didn’t burn material on stage. I’m really grateful that I got to be part of it as long as I did. But when Colbert got canceled, it was like, holy cow, Really, how long would we have been on if they were going to cancel Colbert? You know what, Taylor, My guess is a long time. Comedy stock Markets.

Thank you, Burt Reynolds. You know I was on with the sales department the other day. This is a real thing that happened. They’re like, do you have any repeatable segments we get sponsored. I’m like, dude, comedy stock Market, where every Friday we look at the comedians and we try and find value when we buy low and we sell high.

Last week I was very positive. I was just telling you to buy bye bye. Today I have one buy one sell the buye. Let’s get some more Chris Fleming. You listened to me last week and you bought Chris Fleming stock.

Right, Your Chris Fleming stock is way up, and I think there’s a lot more upside there. So let’s buy some more Chris Fleming for my sell. Let’s get out high and gave a galazias. I just I don’t like the look. Again, I get it.

It’s a lot of money. But dude, you have a lot of money, and it’s just it’s not a good look. So simple comedy stock market today, we will buy Chris Fleming and we will sell Gabe A Galacias. Yeah. I bought a house with that money, so I don’t care what you say.

An article in Deadline as Netflix targets podcast comics weigh the risk of leaving YouTube, They point out not too many comedians have jumped to Netflix podcasting. Sure, there’s been a few notable exceptions, Chelsea Handler and The Workaholics, both coming through a deal with iHeartMedia. Netflix first commission in original was The Pete Davidson Show, but Deadline right still. Given Netflix’s outsize role in today’s comedy business, with the Comedy Festival coming up in May, many expected to see more comic driven podcasts bound for the service by now. Some sources have attributed the lack of comedians to the way the streamers structuring its deals.

As a license, Netflix does not have an official podcast boss. The deals are run through the teams of Laurence Smith, VP of Content Licensing and Programming Strategy, and VP of Nonfiction Series in Sports, Brandon Reeg. The Netflix podcasts have been required to strip their feed of new video episodes from YouTube, which stands in contrast to Hulu’s strategy. Hulu is windowing episodes so they premiere on Hulu and then they can go on YouTube the next day. Netflix pointed out there are audio fees for every podcast, so you can listen if you want.

What’s the big deal, a source is the price to engage with comedic podcast talent has been a lot higher than he believes the streamer expected. The quote, I don’t think they realize just how much money some of these talents are making when they are majority participants in AD supported revenue. Alan Abdean is the head of AD revenue and Partnerships at y m H Studios, you know, the company founded by Tom Sagora. His advice, regardless of how many millions of dollars are being offered, he would never advise talent to take a new captive audience at the expense of alienating the Cora audience that got you to where you are now. I’ll translate, you go behind the bay wall and a lot of people don’t follow you, he says.

You’re basically telling your community you’ll watch it where I tell you to watch it versus we’ll meet you where you live. He explained the money. You can have your ad sense those are like Google ads. You can have your host red ads. You can have dynamic and programmatic ads.

Dynamic ads or ads that you could swap in. So there are baked in ads like if I were to read you a commercial for say an iced coffee, if I bake it in, it means it lives in the episode forever. A dynamic ad is what you normally hear on the show where I like, clearly kind of take a break in the middle of the show, and then you get some commercials. Those are dynamic, and those are individually served to you based on your listening primarily your location. So if you’re in New Jersey, you’ll get some New Jersey based ads, and if you’re in suburban Vancouver you’ll get some Canadian stuff, et cetera, et cetera.

You can have dynamic and programmatic ads, you can have product placements, you can have brand deals, you can have clips. You’re condensing all that and known one number for Netflix, which I think probably changes the dynamic one executive wondered, Now, this is very very smart. This is the whole key here for comedians. The executive wondered, if Netflix feels like they can get your audience every week from your podcast for a relatively low price, are they going to then be incentivized to get your special or these bigger projects from you. An agent representing audio stars agreed, saying these concerns are top of mind.

It’s something that we’re discussing internally in a very coordinated way because we’re cognizant of the potential impact that it might have on other pieces of the business. We don’t really want to continue to be in a race to the bottom, right, So if you’re Shane Gillis and you throw your podcast up there, well, Shane’s on Netflix all the time, So what makes us special? It doesn’t. Boy, that’s really really interesting. We’ll see what shakes out.

Until then, I’ll be down here in the basement doing it myself. That’s your comedy news for today. Oh boy, all right, I’ll see you tomorrow.

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Featured: Marc Maron, Dan Soder, Conan O’Brien, Nate Bargatzi, Chris Fleming, Maria Bamford, Charlie Barns, Eric Andre

What’s in This Episode

• Marc Maron bombed in Australia and was sent home early
• Dan Soder’s confidence restored by Conan O’Brien on late night
• Nate Bargatzi moved back to Tennessee for daughter’s normal upbringing
• Chris Fleming’s new special Live at the Palace reviewed
• Maria Bamford receives four-star review from The Guardian
• Charlie Barns discusses comedy’s role in bringing people together

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 mag with your Daily Comedy News, A daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. A sentence that I can’t memorize for the life of me. But also the algorithm loves I’ll keep saying it. Mark Maron once performed a comedy show so terrible that it cost him three weeks of work and forced him to fly on a twenty two hour flight around the globe.

That’s the headline from Entertainment weekly I love It. Maren was on Eric Andre’s podcast and said I was sent home from Australia because I bombed so hard it was the worst. Apparently, Maren was booked to headline three weeks of shows plus one week of previews at a club in Australia in the early nineties, but the problem was Maren only had thirty minutes of decent material when he took the job, so he says, So I flied Australia, I get there, this is billboard of me, like a painted billboard of me, with a fake quote about my act, like this guy’s a star. So right away that’s not true, and I knew I was gonna have to stretch, but I thought I could handle it. I don’t even like being away.

I was springing out on all levels. Didn’t have the confidence, didn’t have the act. Do not like to travel. Maren said he wasn’t used to shows that have intermissions, explaining the first time you deal with it, you’re like, what are you doing? You’re stopping the whole flow.

So I’m just sitting there watching the show going. I’m eft and I go out there the first night and struggled. It’s okay. I stretched at the end, but it’s okay. And I got through a whole week of previews where it’s just getting worse and worse.

I get out there, I’m the headliner and I’m smoking. You could smoke. Then some guy yells, where’d you get that jacket? And it was an America dude? And I was so effed up in my head confidence wise, that just shut me down.

There was a point where all I could hear in a room full of four hundred was the embers of my cigarette burning. It’s not just a silence, it was like a suction to it, and I felt myself leave my body. It was literally like I’m gonna go watch from over there.

And then I got off stage and the owner comes up to me and he’s that look of s…

This is weekend. I’m supposed to do three more weeks. And he goes, I don’t think this is working out, and I’m like, okay. He goes, I think maybe you should just go home. Wow.

Andre asked if Maren got paid. Maren said, I don’t even know. I don’t even think I cared. I knew I had to play along and be like, oh, really, I think it’ll get better. So I said that on my mind, I’m like, thank god, less funny.

I had been sober for about a year, and on that plane ride back got totally s face, totally relapsed. I just drank the whole way home. Dan Soda recalled having his confidence shattered during a twenty fourteen set, and the person who turned his night around was Conan O’Brien. Soda said of Conan, he did one of the coolest things that I’ve seen in the business. The second time I did Conan, I did, like my set didn’t feel like it went well.

He called me to the couch to say good night. He did something cool where at the end of the show he went, all right, that’s all my time. He thanks the guest. He’s like, Dan, Soda, thank you guys, good night. Conan turns to Soda.

How do you think you did? Soda said, I hated that set, And as Soda remembers it, ConA looks at the crowd and goes, day effing sucked. Soda says, it made me feel so much better instantly. Nate Bergatzi explained to you people why he moved back to Tennessee ten years ago. He wanted his daughter, who’s now thirteen, to have a grounded, average upbringing.

Got to keep getting average in there. That’s the whole brand, apparently, got to keep working that word in. Nate said, we live in a great neighborhood. We’re in a cul de sac. No one who’s really an entertainment lives there.

It’s people have regular jobs or friends. So everything that she’s around now she’s not around this, meaning the entertainment business. She knows I do it, and I have her introduced me in my specials. So she sees sights of it, but overall she’s going to school and living a normal life. Johnny Mac, you never talk about Chris Fleming.

I know, did you guys watch the special yet? Did you stick with it? Did you trust me? Did you go through the whole? Hey, this is weird.

Johnny Mac must be on crack. Why is he telling us to watch this thing? And an hour lady, We’re like, oh, yeah, that was really good. Have you done that yet? Rolling Stone profiled Chris Fleming.

Chris Fleming would like to make one thing clear. He’s not weird, he said over zoom. I’m very normal. Maybe I’m insane, because I don’t think I’m insane, but I don’t see my work as weird. I like to keep things surprising, and I like to surprise myself in my writing.

That’s how I would view it as a surprise party. I would describe it as weird, but very very funny. Fleming tells Rolling Stone, my comedy is like hear me out, it’s too frantic to describe. I had a locksmith who I made the mistake of telling I was a comedian, and then he was watching my clips on his phone silently for the entirety of trying to fix my locks. In Live at the Palace, there’s no thematic through line, rolling Stone writes.

In fact, many times in the show it feels like Fleming is just hearing his own material for the first time. Sometimes he pauses in the middle of the act, noting punch lines that the audience doesn’t laugh at, and redoing the joke with a pointed aim. Other Times he abandons a tangent altogether to point out and audience members laugh. The end result is a charming, surprisingly intimate look into fleming stream of consciousness. Fleming’s not worried about the numbers, he said, we’re focusing too much on numbers.

Virality whatever, people can go viral and then they can’t sell out one hundred seed venue. You could have one million followers and not be able to get twenty people to show up to a show. So if you can land in people’s hearts, it’s way more important f awards, f numbers, f viral. If there’s something that I’ve done that you think about a feel later down the road, that’s the key. That’s what art should be.

The Guardian went to see Maria Bamford. They gave Maria four stars out of five and describe Maria Bamford as an unflinching comedian in complete command of every joke and every step. Maria Bamford asks the audience why did Americans decide to elect a dictator for a second time? The answer money. She sounds like she’s teaching my college classes.

I tell them. No matter what question I ask you, guys, ever, the answer is always money. We are till Despite inheriting what she calls generational wealth after the early deaths of both her parents, Bamford still approaches the world with a fundamentally economic mindset. That’s the idea on paper. In practice, Bamford has never been one for clean narrative arcs.

Instead, she draws us in with bursts of manic physical expression. She runs in tiptoed circles before dropping fully outstretched to the floor, all while holding the mic. Bamford is a comedian in complete command of every joke, every step. Is this her most focused work? Probably not, but she remains a gloriously absurd and rapid fire presence.

She tells the audience about being a comedian, this is a job. The New York Post caught up with Charlie Barns, who says there’s enough polarization going on right now to or I don’t have much interest in that. I have interest in finding ways to bring us together, like out to a club or to a theater or whatever. I think when you get people in the same room, and you get people who may not connect on other things, connecting over something just gives more touch points to know. They’d even have someone has an opposite view to you.

They’re not the devil, you know. You gotta have common ground. Barns was raised in Wisconsin and has eleven siblings. He explains, my first special was sort of about the Midwest. The new one, Neighborly, is more about the world from a Midwest guys perspective.

It also goes deeper to my family. I love gambling with my grandma, I love fishing with my family. It’s just kind of a lot of stories about growing up. I’m one of twelve kids, so I’m mass produced. I got that going for me.

In Minnesota, comedians have been responding to the presence of ice up there. Ben Kantzener is one of three Minneapolis comedians who hosted a roast of ice. He had seen some videos of ice agents and Cassner said that could easily be me. There’s no reason it wouldn’t because all the indiscriminate nature of how our government and our police and our agencies all out towards people of color and people in the community. So yeah, it’s fear all the time.

Another Minneapolis comedian, Comrade Tripp, said, when you’re going down swinging, you’re always punching up. It’s the elephant in the room, it’s the donkey on our necks. Jenny’s a Greenow talk to the Minneapolis Post and she said, I would have loved to have been a political comedian in a world where your politics aren’t your sole identity. F ice can I say that? Don’t forget to vote for Comedy Survivor.

What you do is you go to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. There you will find a picture of me extinguishing the torch of Kevin Hart. Write down the name of the comedian he would like voted off Comedy Island this week. No Knicks game tonight after two nights. Tracy Morgan is a big Knicks fan.

He explained how he got Daniel Radcliffe, who also become a Knicks fan. They’ve been attending games together, and Tracy gave some tips to Daniel Redcliff and said, Daniel, chill out. He’s yelling clean that glass eye raf as soon as the referees missed a call, clean that glass eye, and I gave him that to yell out. DJ Miller is dropping hints that he could get back into these Deadpool movies, said he had recently spoke to Ryan Reynolds, the guy’s at WRIF Radio. Asked TJ Miller, all right, to you back in or is that chip sailed?

TJ Miller said it has not sailed. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Okay, Marvel gets so weird about this stuff. They’re just like, don’t talk about it, don’t talk about it. Mike Epps is tired of apologizing.

He was on Dion Cole’s Funny Knowing You podcast. Mike said, look, I’m exhausted. I’m tired of apologizing. I’m a comedian, a crack jokes. Everything I say is not to be analyzed and put on blogs like I’m a bad person at crack jokes.

It’s funny. I’m a comedian. The stuff is exhausting. F off Man, it wasn’t even a real story. It was a joke.

No, I didn’t leave a homeless family on the street. Did I meet a homeless family help them? Hell yeah, I help them. Did I crack a joke and make a joke of it at the end? Yeah, I made it funny.

Damn I’m a comedian. TMZ reported some SNL staffers were scared after a musical guest, Cardi B, had a meltdown over joke during weekend Update. The joke was about Nicki Minaj aligning herself with the President of the United States after hearing the Maga manage joke. Sources at SNL alleged that Gardi B destroyed equipment, punching a screen in the producer’s office until it was broken. They also claimed that the rapper threw her phone at a TV backstage after threatening to leave the show and not perform during the episode Wow.

TMZ says the joke was then taken out of the show. That is your comedy news for today. All right, go vote for Comedy Survivor and meets you back here tomorrow.

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Featured: Kat Williams, Dave Chappelle, Shane Gillis, Jim Gaffigan, Kyle Kinane, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Chris Fleming

What’s in This Episode

• Late night hosts joke about President running war from Mar-a-Lago
• Kat Williams’ ‘The Last Report’ hits 7.1 million Netflix views in first week
• Comedy special viewership comparison across streaming platforms
• Kyle Kinane performs at Phish’s Cancun resort weekend
• Chris Fleming profile in Vulture discusses his rare Nissan Figaro car
• Nate Bargatze addresses quit stand-up rumors, discusses touring and acting
• Maximini phenomenon: most popular comedian selling out arenas with crowd work

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 and Hews, A daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. A sentence the algorithm loves. On Late Night, they were talking about the war. Did you see the President was running the war out of mart Lago over the weekend?

Because you know, why would you run it out of the White House? Seth Myers said, I had a more secure room when I was trying on jeans at Old Navy. You started a war in the Middle East and you didn’t even go to the office. You’re gonna work from home? It How am I going to get my writers to come into work when the President of the United States treats war like a team’s meeting.

Stephen Colbert said, fun fact epic fury is an anagram for forget Ebstein. An interesting article in Deadline about how these comedy specials are doing in the ratings. They say Kat Williams’s latest special, The Last Report, released on February tenth, has gotten seven point one million views in its first week. That’s up ten percent from Kat’s previous special, twenty twenty four’s Woke Folk It is the eleventh biggest US debut for any Netflix special going back to twenty seventeen. Some other info, Dave Chappelle’s twenty nineteen Stix and Stones has the biggest US viewership of any Netflix special in the last decade, plus thirty five point three six million debuts.

However, that trails Shane Gillis Live in Austin on YouTube and fifty two million plus views. Shane’s Netflix special twenty twenty three’s Beautiful Dogs has twenty eight million views on Netflix. Deadline points out YouTube counts thirty seconds of streaming as a view. Netflix divides the title’s total hours by its runtime to calculate views. Over on Amazon, Jim Gaffigan’s twenty nineteen Quality Time sixteen point four million views.

Nate Berghatzy’s Hello World thirteen and a half that came out four years later than the Gaffigan one, Eliza Slessinger Is a Different Animal came out last year one point three two million views so far. The biggest on Amazon this year is Kathleen Madigan, hence The Family Thread, which came out in November of last year that has one point two eight million views. On Hulu Kamail Nanjianni’s Night Thoughts, which came out late last year, is the Streamers number two special in the fifty two weeks ending February fifteenth, twenty twenty six, Hul’s third biggest specials since twenty twenty four, trailing Jim Gaffigan with The Skinny and Bill Burrs the Drop Dead Years. Nola caught up with Kyle Kinane. Kyle was recently asked if he wanted to perform comedy during Fish’s four day takeover at a Cancun resort.

Kyle was like sure and ended up seeing Fish three times that weekend. He said, I’m like, well, I’ve kind of made my mark on that community and they don’t like me. Anytime I kneed jerk reaction is like this is gonna suck. I kind of have to do it. If it sounds like a bad idea, well why don’t you go find out for yourself instead of just from a distance pointing your finger and judging.

So I said yes to it and woind up having a great time. Kyle told the gambit try to find the micro happiness because the world will not make you happy. The universe is crappy, so try to be a champion of yourself and find the happiness in your own little microcosm. Kyle says, over the last couple of years, I’m realizing that fame and success are different. I’ve accomplished what I want to.

I might not be outwardly successful in terms of what other comedians have, but I’m grateful for what I do have and appreciative of the friends and what I’ve gotten from comedy. Johnny Mac, you never talk about Chris Fleming. I know, right, Vulture did a big profile of him. Have you watched the special yet? It’s really good, Vulture says.

Chris Fleming arrives at the hotel and an absurdly tiny, sea foam green car, a Nissan Figaro, an obscure nineteen fifty style convertible with chrome detailing and tiny around headlights and a right side steering wheel. Fleming is six y two, and when he sits in the driver’s seat, his knees falled up to his chest, so they started driving around. The writer says, this is like Seinfeld doing comedians and cars getting coffee. Fleming says, f that’s a huge problem. If this is what this is giving off, damn it Chris is asked if he cares about cars in general.

Is this a hobby? Oh god, no, this is pure esthetic. I love it. I got to look up now, I’m curious what this car looks like Nissan figure O. Oh yeah, you gotta look this thing up.

This thing looks like it belongs in a retro movie, said in like Europe somewhere. This thing is tiny. What a cool looking car? Though, we learned in the profile, Chris Fleming’s mother realized his talent, and when Chris was sixteen, mom drove him to his first open mic. Flemming remembers mom saying, you want to be like Robin Williams, Right, well, you got to do stand up mf R.

I was like, oh, I don’t want to do stand up. Stand up sucks. I don’t like watching it. I wanted to be in movies and I found stand up tedious. People Magazine profiled Nate Berghansey as part of the game show Yeah it’s Wednesday, It’s Scrubs Night, Trivia night, game show night, Schrodinger’s Dree Duty Night.

And I’m a little worried as I record this on Tuesday. Now, I was expecting they would tell me to call back on Wednesday. They told me to call back on Tuesday nights. I’m a little worried that they’re gonna get me. I might actually record two episodes while I’m sitting here in the studio and actually home.

Nate cleared up some other rumors about him quitting stand up. He said, I’m not quitting stand up right now. I got this current tour. We’re doing another tour, but there’s gonna be a point where it’s gonna get hard to travel on the road. Is We’re creating so much stuff and making these movies, and then I want to go help find the next generation of comedians or actors writers.

At least I wanted to stand there and tell them I’ve done what I’m asking them to do. Last week, Jason Zenniman, friend of the show in The New York Times, he wrote, the most popular comedian You’ve probably never heard of. That person is Maximini, who I had never heard of. Remember, at the end of the year, Deadline kind of was like, Hey, Maximedi’s selling out places, and I was like, who, Well, Maximedi is the most popular comedian you’ve probably never heard of, Correctly pointed out by Jason Zenneman of The New York Times. Jason went to see Maximedia at the Garden.

All this before the current war. I just want to point that out, Jason writes. Arenas like the Garden aren’t built for crowd work. In the upper balcony, you can’t hear, let alone see half the conversation. But this didn’t stop a meeting who made small talk with ticket buyers for twenty straight minutes.

Jason writes, the Maximini phenomenon reflects a transitional moment in an increasingly globalized comedy scene, upbending two common beliefs. The firstes that fans just want great jokes some do. What you see from Amini is an artist less interested in putting together clever punchlines than in creating a sense of an event, a warm vibe, a show that becomes a community. On Sunday, when Dean Cook introduced Amini, he didn’t trumpet the younger comics funniness, but his ability to connect and unify. Dean Cook didn’t expect that name in this story.

At one point, a drunk audience member hijacked the show, and another woman told a long story about seeing a medium that almost no one in the arena, could hear I mean, he got his biggest laughs, mocking the audience members, calling back to them, weaving them into a story. What becomes clear is they’re not just seeing the show, they are the show. Judging from the crowd of the garden, his audience comes from nearly every continent, and a meaning made sure that his material is accessible to them all. As subjects were universal and bland, dating, family music, and he never went deeper specific enough to confuse anyone. His examination of Iranian culture often applies to other immigrant experiences.

Again, this show and the article are from before the war. Jason Zinnemann wrote at that time, A Meanie’s only really challenging material came at the end of the show when he stopped choking and told the crowd that thousands approacheds had been killed in Iran and that what was happening there was quote the biggest revolution in our time unquote. Then he showed a series of short videos of scenes of violence, protesters getting run over and attacked, and as a narrator in towned freedom is not a punchline, don’t forget to vote someone off the island. On Comedy Survivor Regular Survivors on TV tonight too, so we got that and Scrubs Trivia and I got a nixed the nix aer. On tonight they’re playing the champions Big Night Comedy Survivor sixteen comedians one island.

Half of them have already been voted off by the listeners. What you do is you go to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. There you’ll see a picture of me extinguishing the torch of Kevin Hart from last week, and this week you’ll vote someone off the island. I took a quick look this morning. I look like Burt Kraser is in trouble.

So if you’re part of the Bert Krascher alliance, you’re happy. And if not, you guys want to form an alliance and vote someone else off to save Bert Kraser. All that’s up to you, guys. I’m just the host. Radar Online says that Stephen Colbert’s ratings are pretty bad and the CBS can’t wait for it to be over.

The phrasing from Raider Online is bosses are counting the days until he’s out while telling him not to let the door whack his behind on the way out. The series finale is May twenty first, that it can’t come too soon for CBS big weeks, who note that the comic is facing his worst January ratings in the twenty five to fifty four age group. Ever, with just two hundred and eighty five thousand viewers, that is not a lot of people. An insider said, the final show can’t come soon enough for most folks at the network. They’re sick to the back teeth of Colbert’s raging ego, his constant attention seeking and petty historyonics.

The feeling’s pretty mutual, to be fair, Steven’s only going through the motions at this point, but that makes for a lousy vibe, and it’s doing nothing to improve the shattered morale of his employees. Most of them will be out of a job soon enough, no thanks to him, The insider said. The fact his ratings are in the pan does justify the decision to cut Ties, but it also means the sharp decline in revenue, and there are some folks at the network who are fled a lot out, accusing Steven of sabotaging the show on his way out the door. Whatever his motive, the next few months can’t pass soon enough. Wow, Jimmy Carr is getting another season of his TV show, Am I the a Hole?

Car said of UKs Comedy Central, We’re bringing back m Ida Hole and I’m hosting again a guest. Comedy Central figure when it comes to a Hole’s game recognizes game. On m Ida Hole, judges judge members of the public on their questionable behavior and morally dubious actions. For example, say you played the ri Odd Comedy Festival, they would say, hey, are you an a hole?

And then the judges would decide whether or not that was something that would…

But hey, at checks at check right. President Trump has announced on social media that he will participate in this year’s White House Correspondence Association dinner. In the past that was hosted by comedians who would roast everyone in the room, including whatever person was the sitting president. This year’s host is celebrity mentalist Oz Perman. I’m not familiar with mister Perlman’s work.

Roman was profiled, apparently by The New York Times back in October. The headline on that article said, it’s not cheating, it’s reading minds. Oz Perlman has revealed Joe Rogan’s ATM code on air and entertained NFL stars. Now the manosphere’s favorite magician wants more. Okay, that’s all I know about this person.

And now he’s hosting the White House Correspondents Dinner, which will be attended by the President of the United States, who posted on social media during the war in honor of our nation’s two hundred and fiftieth birthday, and because these correspondents now admit that I am truly one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country. The goat wait is the President, saying he’s only one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country. I thought he was the greatest according to himself. No, he’s only one of them. I wonder who else is on his list.

Anyway, the President said he will help make the dinner the encaps greatest, hottest, and most spectacular dinner of any kind ever. White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levin, taking a break from answering questions about the war that Congress did not approve, posted will be fun. And I’ll leave you with this today. I put this last on purpose. Listen to me, because I’m going to prove it, and you’re you’re going to struggle to make it to the end of today’s show.

But this will prove my point. This is why I put it last. When Jim Gaffigan is not doing polished written material, he is horribly, horribly unfunny. I will prove it to you. Jim Gaffigan went on social media.

He had a message for you. I defy you to make it to the end of this clip. Hey everyone, it’s Jim gaff again. I just want to let you know that my forehead is still large. I do have some kind of exciting news coincidence.

I don’t know, maybe conspiracy theory. Recently I passed a million subscribers on YouTube. Now I’m not saying that had anything with the Supreme Court overturning the tariffs, but it seems a little like, you know what a coincidence, right? You know, It’s like stock market reaches fifty thousand and then it goes down, Big coin goes down. You know, all those ships are moving to you know them, you know, in position in Iran, you know, and then my YouTube subscriber goes up to a million.

I mean, I don’t anyway, Thank you if you have subscribed and watched the Bourbon. Side Jim Gaffigan, Holy cow, that was bad. Not your comedy news for today. I think I’m going to record Thursday while I’m here. I got a bad sense about this Jerry duty call, so so let me make sure you have a show so I can see you tomorrow

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Featured: Conan O’Brien, Chris Fleming, Jim Carrey, Alexis Stone, Stavros Halkias, Gabriel Iglesias, Mindy Kaling, Jenna Fischer

What’s in This Episode

• Conan O’Brien interviews Chris Fleming for Interview Magazine
• Jim Carrey clone rumors and appearance at Caesar Awards
• Makeup artist Alexis Stone claims to be behind Jim Carrey look-alike
• Stavros Halkias partners with Manscaped for hairball charity auction
• Gabriel Iglesias receives Hollywood Walk of Fame star
• Office cast reunion at Actor Awards
• SNL Cut for Time sketch mocking Tourette’s disability sparks backlash

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 Shinny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. I’m freezing es in the morning again. Please stop. This is your Daily Comedy News and daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry.

A sentence the algorithm loves for some reason. I’ll keep saying it. Conan O’Brien caught up with Chris Fleming for Interview magazine. Did you watch Chris Fleming on HBO Max? I’m curious what the quote unquote the normies think of this.

This is not you know, Bill Burr in front of a brick wall. This is something else entirely. I sent it to my friend Mark and I’m like, watch Chris Fleming and when you think it’s weird, stick with it. And he wrote back to me, I’m glad you told me to stick with it, because I totally would have bailed it’s weird. I loved it.

I thought it was fantastic. That is currently the number one special of the year. Chris Fleming and Conan O’Brien in Interview Magazine. Fleming said, have you seen this magazine? Usually it’s like Alexander Scoresguard interviewed by Judge Judy or Fiona Apple interviewed by the Tinder Swindler.

But you and I actually make sense together, Gonu said. This makes sense because I have a hard time imagining who I can relate to more than mister Fleming. Here, your ridiculous figure. I’ve been enamored with you for a long time, and I wish I were talking to the late illusionist Doug Henning. Conan said, I can see you took my advice.

I told you long ago, don’t move around so much. O’Brien said, I said, I want you to wear very masculine, working class clothing. Fleming said, you gave me a Men’s Warehouse gift certificate, and you whispered in my ear stillness is king. Now, if you haven’t watched the specially, you have no idea why that is so funny. Gonan, make sure all the references are accessible to all age groups.

That means none of your trader Joe’s marginalia no takes on NPR. And I insisted that you talk at length about the nineteen seventy five Red Sox and bring up fred Lin repeatedly, and you said, got it.

And then to my surprise.

I tune in and you’re up to your old high jinks. You imp. Chris said, I had a manager who said, I don’t know what you’re talking about ninety percent of the time, Conan, you’ve established a rhythm. It’s completely yours. You lull people into the state where suddenly they know what everything about this specific guy who’s serving you a boba t and we’re all just there with you, even though I shouldn’t know what you’re talking about because I’ve never had bobat in my life.

Funny shange here, Conan says, just today, Jon Appatow found a clip at me from nineteen eighty six in the background at some comedy event that he’s doing a documentary about. Chris said, oh, I didn’t know he did documentaries, Conan. It’s a documentary about the time he stopped doing documentaries. Fun stuff there at the interview magazine. We’ll talk more about Chris Fleming in the second half.

Are you following this Jim Carrey thing? Did you see this? Last week? There was an award show and Jim Carrey showed up, or maybe it wasn’t actually Jim Carrey. Did you see this?

People are like, is that Jim Carrey. It kind of looks like Jim Carrey, but yet not at all like Jim Carrey. Is Jim Carrey doing a bit? Did Jim Carrey have botox? Did Jim Carrey have plastic surgery?

Did the Illuminati replace Jim Carrey with a clone that’s not that good? Nobody knows what’s going on. Well, there’s a new wrinkle to this that I love. Makeup artist Alexis Stone claims that it was he who appeared last week week as Jim Carrey. On Instagram, Alexis posted Alexis Stone as Jim Carrey in Paris.

The post included two photos of quote unquote Jim Carrey at the event, and one photo of a masked teeth and a dark wig that resembled Jim Carrey’s new look. Now, the Cesar Awards say that Jim Carrey worked on his speech in French for months and that there is no clone. In a statement, Gregory Collier, the General Delegate of the Caesar Awards, said the rumors are a non issue. Jim Carrey’s visit has been planned since this summer. From the outside, it was extremely touched by the Academy’s invitation eight months of ongoing constructive discussions.

He worked on a speech in French for months, asking me about the exact pronunciation of certain words. He came with his partner, his daughter, his grandson, of twelve, close friends and family members. His longtime publicist accompanied him. His old friend Michael Gondrey, who’s made a film and too serious with him, was there and they were delighted to see each other again. For me, it’s a non issue.

I just remember his generosity, his kindness, has benevolence, his elegance. I think this is hilarious. Stavros Halkias is pairing up with manscaped together. They are auctioning off a hair ball collected from the head of Stavros Halkias. At least I assume it’s the head.

Jimmy Stark is the creative director at Quality Meats, a creative agency with a quirky name. Jamie Stark says, we can neither confirm nor deny the sources of the hairs for making of this hairball. We’re pretty sure there’s one hundred percent genuine human body hair in it, including Stavros’s. We like to think of it as a hot dog styled hairball and that you don’t exactly know all the sources of the hair meats it’s made up of. You’ve already missed out on the auction.

Sorry I didn’t tell you in time. You could have had the hairball for just five hundred ten dollars. Proceeds from the auction went to Manscape’s brand partner, the Testicular Cancer Society, supporting awareness, education and resources for men’s health. Are you in Hollywood? Once you head on over to the Hollywood Walk of Fame around eleven thirty today and you might see Gabriel Iglesias.

I hope you see him because he’s supposed to be there to get his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A bunch of the cast from the Office reunited at Sunday Nights Actor Awards. It was Mindy Kaling, Jenni Fisher, Angela Kinsey, and Ellie Camper, which let me decide by here. When I was driving around with my wife over the weekend, I was just raving about scrubs. Have you caught on that Alex Scrubs?

And how hard it is to even get everyone back together. And I said, for example, if they brought the Office back, you would get Jenna Angela, Kevin Creed, Oscar, they’d all do it in a second, and yet there’s no way Steve Crall would do it, and there’s no way Krasinski would do it.

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And then my wife was like, what about Dwight trut And my take is that Rain Wi…

Jenna Fisher recalled the relentless schedule of the Office. She said it meant Christmas episodes and Valentine’s episodes and super Bowl episodes and sometimes filler episodes that were kind of bad. Ellie Camper said, but it didn’t matter because there was always another one right around the corner. The Actor’s Awards revealed the reunion was all down to Mindy Kayling, executive producer, who told Variety we had reached out to her about being presented, and she came back with the idea of what if I did at reunion with all the women of the Office, and we were like yeah. Within like an hour, she had texted them all.

She basically booked them all for us. Some folks are mad at Saturday Night Live for a sketch that didn’t even air. Apparently, there was a Cut for Time sketch in which SNL sent up the BAFTA racial slur incident. Anyway. In the Cut for Time sketch titled Turet’s, a host of celebrities including JK Rawling, Mel Gibson, Army Hammer, Louis C.K.

And Bill Cosby claim they suffer from Tourette’s, which would explain the problematic stuff they’ve been involved with. Tourette’s Action CEO Emma McNally was not happy with this. She apparently sent an email to Deadline. This is not acceptable, she wrote. Mocking and disabilities never acceptable.

It would not be tolerated for any other condition, and it should not be tolerated by people with tourets. In the sketch, host Connor’s story played Army Hammer saying not many people know this, but one of the most common side effects of Tourett’s cannibalism Ashley Pitty is JK. Ralling said that Tarrett’s isn’t just blurting out offensive word. It could be a year’s long obsession with something like trans writes Keenan Thompson. As Bill Cosby claimed to suffer from drink.

Turett’s Kanye West, played by Cam Patterson, in a rare appearance, declared he has like three different types of Turetts. Even Michael Jay made an appearance saying Tourett’s makes us do horrible things to the white guy we work with. The sketch was sponsored by the National Workforce of Rethinking Disabilities aka n WORD. Late Night reports that they had to scrap the original cold open. In the original version, it would have been The State of the Union, with James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump making jokes about deflecting from the Epstein Files and claiming that New York City Mayor zooron mom Donnie was thirsty for him.

That all got scrapped and we got a pretty bad version of James Austin Johnson as Trump at two in the morning announcing the war. I used to really like James’s impression. It is really drifting now, and I don’t know what SNL’s got to do with Trump. I don’t know if James needs to just like sit home for a week and tweak it, but that impression is just really drifting. Let me just take a second here to just like thank so many of you.

First of all, the feedback I got on the Pete Holmes interview, thank you. I got a lot of lovely notes. It seemed that people really dug it. First of all, thank you to Pete Holmes for doing it and the people at the eight hundter Bound Guerilla who made that happen. But thank you.

You know, the notes on the side means something because otherwise I’m just a guy in the basement, you know, basically talking into the wall, and sometimes the dog stares at me while I do it, So thank you for that.

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Also, people have been sending in things.

I’m sitting on a few things from a production standpoint. Jay Leno had talked about his Mount rushmoref comedy. I’m sitting on that. There’s a great article about how Scrubs was able to recreate the hospital. I’ll probably do that later in the week, but I’m still on Schrodinger’s jury duty.

I had a call again on Monday night. I have to call again Wednesday night, so like, I never know what my next day is going to be. So some of this stuff that I’m holding on to is just because I can’t even judge my own production schedule right now. There is in the back end. There’s an episode it’s probably like four years old and definitely has the old theme music on it.

Of like just me riffing on what at that time was somebody’s list of the top fifteen comedians. That was like my what if I get COVID episode that I was just gonna play someday if I couldn’t talk. I’ve never had to use it, but it’s just sitting there knock on wood anyway, thank you for all the notes, and Richard sometimes sends me notes when I screw up the uploads. Richard appreciate that my email address is in the show. Not It’s always great to hear from people.

Don’t forget Comedy Survivor roles are in oh wait, Actual Survivor. I’m still picking away at episode one of that first of all is up against Scrubs three hours of Survivor of like, Real Survivor is like way too much, guys, Just you can’t hand it in a three hour episode, Like it’s just my numbing. I’m sitting there and I’m like, there’s still an hour left of this. I can’t But Comedy Survivor is a lot of fun. Head to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News podcast group Vote Someone Off.

It’s starting to get down to it now, and I’ve already started scribbling down. I’ve got this idea for Comedy Survivor, Heroes and Villains. I’ve got an idea for that. But when we get to the end of Comedy Survivor, I’m gonn I let it take a break. I don’t want to, like endlessly do it.

I think I think that kind of thing works best if like, we do it for a while, then we don’t do it for a while, and then we bring it back again. But I’m kind of scribbling down a heroes and villain’s idea for season two of Comedy Survivor. Take a look at the ratings. Scrubs did pretty well. The debut episode pulled in four point four to one million viewers, did a point six six rating in the eighteen to forty nine s.

The second episode average three point five to two million viewers and a point five to five in the eighteen to forty nine So I did see sim people on the Reddit saying they didn’t realize there was a second episode. After the second Scrubs was the premiere of Nate Brighetzi’s The greatest average American that true two point three eight million viewers. So we had Scrubs with four forty one, then Second Scrubs three fifty two, and then Nate two thirty eight, which seems like a bad number. However, it did better than The Golden Bachelor did in the same spot last fall. And you know how much budgets there was on The Golden Bachelor and Nate’s thing, you know, giving away sixty seven grand is probably dirt cheap to produce.

That thing might run for fifteen years just because of the money of it all. Friend of the show, Jason Zinneman in The New York Times wrote an article five great specials to stream this winter. He writes, Taylor Thompson, Kevin Neal and Chris Spencer, Isabelle Hagen and Jackie Kashan deliver very different but very funny hours to get you through the cold. Let me go first, I watched a bunch of specials. Chris Flemings is the best of the year.

It’s hilarious. I totally get if you put this on and you’re like, this is not for me, I get it, Okay, something a little more traditional, Pete Holmes. I think we all have a crush on Pete Holmes right now. All right, So Pete Holmes special was really good. Jackie Caation’s special on YouTube was very, very funny.

Enjoy that a lot. Cant Williams, I liked a lot. I have that probably at two, maybe Pete at three. Right now, it’s early in the year. I’m not sure Kats was pound for pound funny, but he’s an entertainer, and just the hour went by really quickly.

I did not like Taylor Thomason’s special. It just did not grab me. I just was not interested in at all. Jason Zinniman in The New York Times says Tominson makes her most deeply felt points through confessional jokes. Not takes a comic who favors concision.

Sheakespan’s her palate in this special, offering an elaborate theatrical spoof of a Christian comedian, but also digging deep into Bible stories, finding a fresh comic take on the absolute bleakness of Noah’s Ark. Jason like Kevin Nila, and even though he’s been a successful comic for four decades, I did not realize how funny Kevin Neilan was until I heard him on Conan’s pod Neilan is a terrific joke writer, alert to paradox statements of the obvious and the silliness of language. Chris Spencer’s goat adjacent on Hulu and you know my take on Hulu specials Zinneman writes. In the middle of this well made fifty minute special with the feel of a confidently hosted Hollywood dinner party, Chris Spencer interrupts a joke to look down at a man in the front row and offer a note that note, I’m gonna need you to laugh sometime today. That’s pretty funny.

Isabelle Hagen at the bitter end. That’s on veeps. Isabelle tells dirty jokes in between playing the viola. She’s a Juilliard trained artist who uses classical music to set up punchlines. Love it Once, she gets last from Mela Conolly, premises like a persuasive, defensive regret.

Hagen is not the first comic to deliver deadpan one liners with resting sad face. As she puts it. At first, the viola music merely helps match the respectable with the raunchy. What becomes clear is that Hagen is something more ambitious in mind. She wants to introduce Bach to comedy fans, to build a place where she can play her instrument and have that stand by itself independently of jokes.

Love it Jackie Kashan’s altercation Cashen is the kind of comic who turns fury into eloquent goofiness. I thought that one was very good, and I’m going to leave you with this. I haven’t talked about the war. I suspect on tomorrow’s show there will be a lot of stuff about the war because we’ll have cycled through the late night shows at least once, so tomorrow is likely going to be somewhat political. But there was a video that started circulating on Saturday and I have played it, I don’t know fifteen times.

It is a AI generated music video by a Flock of Eagles and a Flock of Eagles hit song Iran. I will play the audio for you here. I encourage you to seek out the video version of this on Twitter, where we see President Trump in a new wave flock of seagulls style hair singing the song Iran. It looks like an old style MTV video. It is just amazing.

I’ve sent it to everybody I know, and I keep playing it. So that is your comedy news for today. And we’ll pick up midstream here with Iran by a flock of eagles. I feel like I’m getting this. This is like a Route Warner Mergin, a rock quarn, no legend, I go go those oil supplies.

Be a shamed of someone invade you, if someone invade ed. You, and iron I ran so far away above them night and day. But to show USA, a. Drone appears above you, and a more bounds of falling down on you, falling down on you. The fleet is moving.

Here is still the straight of warms. It comes in mute. After the oil must flow through, and there a RN so far away. Upomb married upomb them n M. But just for USA, that’s sunny.

Here. It’s a big rid. Button, atomic bombs composing down on you. How much room clouds in view? Send out a tweet.

To let you know well, because Israel told me too often. It’s a Yahoo. And r D wrest so. Far away, bombard upon them night. And day, and ur arres so far away.

From end upon them night and hoday. What destroyed us a

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