TCB Infomercial: Kathleen Madigan

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Speaker 2 My mom was a nurse for 30 years.

Speaker 3 She's retired. I said, out of nowhere, while we're pushing a cart, God, I have a splitting sinus headache.

Speaker 1 She goes, oh, here, and roots to her giant purse and goes, take this.

Speaker 3 And I took it.

Speaker 2 And about a second later, I hear, oh.

Speaker 4 I said, what? What was that all about?

Speaker 2 She goes, you swallow that?

Speaker 4 Yep.

Speaker 1 Sure did. Swallow it.

Speaker 2 What color was it?

Speaker 4 I don't know, mom. I don't know.

Speaker 3 I didn't look at what color it was.

Speaker 2 Kathleen, why didn't you look at what color the pill was?

Speaker 4 Why?

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 5 Because you're not somebody I met at a party.

Speaker 5 You were my mom. You were a nurse for 30 years.
I bought the whole story. I did.
I trusted you. I ate it blind.
I just ate it blind.

Speaker 1 On this episode of the Commercial Break.

Speaker 1 There's these, you know, thousands of people that are watching you, and it's just you with a microphone. That's it.
That's got to be a strange sensation.

Speaker 2 If you think about it too hard, you will run away. Thank you.

Speaker 2 You will just go, this is crazy. What do we do? You know, I started at a funny bone in a mall.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 2 maybe 50 people on a Monday night, you know, not like, this is crazy. You can't overthink it.
Me and Ron White always talk about that.

Speaker 2 He's like, you can't think about it, just act like it's the funny bone, just walk out and do what you do.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, yeah, I mean, I've never freaked out enough to actually think about running away, but if you thought about it too long, you might.

Speaker 1 The next episode of the Commercial Break starts now.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, cats and kittens. Welcome back to the Commercial Break.
I'm Brian Greene. This is my dear friend and the co-host of this show, Chris and Joy Hoadley.
Best to you, Chris. Best to you, Brian.

Speaker 1 And best to you out there in the podcast universe. Thanks for joining us.
Here we are in yet another Tuesday morning or Tuesday afternoon or whenever you're listening to this.

Speaker 1 It's a TCB Infomercial Tuesday with noted, storied comedian

Speaker 1 Kathleen Madigan coming in. This one is years in the making actually

Speaker 1 for us.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we've been trying to get Kathleen on the show for a very long time and we're super excited that it finally our schedules collided in the universe and we're finally now getting Kathleen in here.

Speaker 1 Kathleen has been around for a very long time. I don't want to date her.
She's a young lady, but I still want to share that she's she's grown up with some of the best.

Speaker 1 The Jerry Seinfelds of the world, Lewis Black, Mitch Hedberg, Jerry Seinfeld. Did I already say Jerry Seinfeld? I'll say it twice.
Jerry Seinfeld, because, you know, he's a big deal.

Speaker 1 Chris Rock, she's been around for a very long time.

Speaker 6 Tons of specials, tons of touring.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 she grew, I think she kind of hit her stride during the Comedy Central boom when Comedy Central actually had comedians on.

Speaker 7 That's how it started.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's how it started. That's how Comedy Central started.
Comedy Central used to be three to five minute clips. Like MTV was videos three to five minutes.

Speaker 1 comedy central 24 hours a day would do nothing but play little sets from stand-up comedians they would go in they would record a set they would cut it up they would put it on in rotation and i will always remember when comedy central came on the television watching that endlessly like just watching comedian after comedian after comedian i think at first they didn't even have commercials it was just them doing comedians which was really cool but oh how things have changed i mean Comedy Central is still a good channel, whatever.

Speaker 1 They still have good comedy shows. But Kathleen is here, and I can't wait to dig into, you know, some of her.

Speaker 1 Whenever somebody comes out like Louis Black or Margaret Cho or Kathleen Madigan, when you have someone who's been around for a long time, you get to dig into some of the dirt, like figure out, you know, they've been around long enough to see some things happen.

Speaker 1 And so I get curious about what was it like when? Who is your favorite? What did you do? Where did you go?

Speaker 1 How things changed. Yeah, how are things changed? Yeah, and you know, listen, when you're an old codger like me, when you're an old coot like Brian

Speaker 1 and you want to reminisce about the old days, yeah, it's like two, just two people sitting around the retirement home,

Speaker 1 remembering when.

Speaker 1 You know, when I go to my mom's retirement home and they're always playing that old music, and I, every time I go there, like I went there the other day, you think about Pearl Jam being like, I think about Pearl Jam being played,

Speaker 1 yeah. Pearl Jam is now classic rock,

Speaker 1 it is. I'm not even kidding.
I heard a live on a classic classic rock radio station. This is a couple months ago.
We went down to Florida to have my surgery. And so they didn't have Sirius in the car.

Speaker 1 So I just

Speaker 1 oh my god, there's still people asking about that.

Speaker 1 Did I miss the Daniel Point shows? Yes, you did. But good news.
So did we.

Speaker 1 We also additionally missed the Daniel Point shows.

Speaker 1 No, there's no Daniel Point on the not on the calendar yet, but we're getting there. First, we're going to do a Netflix show and then

Speaker 1 to Daniel Point.

Speaker 1 You might be waiting a while. I was laughing so hard.
We got a group text going the other night. I was laughing so hard thinking about Daniel Point.

Speaker 1 Oh, Astro. I was like, your family

Speaker 1 fall bought on to.

Speaker 1 I know. They still.

Speaker 1 They are still waiting.

Speaker 1 Here's the funny funny part. I mean, it's just kind of adjacent, I guess, to Kathleen Madigan's.
And she's like, that's what she does. She's just stand-up.

Speaker 1 The funny thing is, we were going to go to Daniel Point, and it's close to where a lot of Astrid's family live. So they bought a bunch of tickets, and God bless them.

Speaker 1 And they have no fucking clue what the commercial break is all about. They have no idea.
They think it's just some fun project Brian's got going on on the side.

Speaker 1 They still think I'm in real estate. And so,

Speaker 1 and I'll keep it that way as long as possible.

Speaker 6 Yeah, keep that perception. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 So, we canceled those Daniel Point

Speaker 1 shows because I was not feeling well, but we still managed to make it to Spain a couple weeks before my surgery to go to the go to a wedding that I talked about.

Speaker 1 And everybody, and I mean, everybody is like, Oh, I got tickets to your show. When is the, you know, when are you changing the show for? I'm like, oh,

Speaker 1 hold on tight.

Speaker 1 Keep those safe in a drawer. That's right.
I'm not even sure cell phones will be a thing anymore by the time we get to Daniel Point.

Speaker 1 Take a screenshot.

Speaker 1 We'll get to it, I promise.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 anyway, I'm really interested to talk to Kathleen because I know she's been around the block and she's seen a few things. And

Speaker 1 I like to dig into that stuff. You know,

Speaker 1 we have a lot of new comics that come on. I say new comics.
They've been doing it for a long time, but they're just kind of hitting their stride. And Kathleen's been doing this for a long time.

Speaker 1 One thing I've noticed about Kathleen following her on social media is that she sells out theaters. I mean, she's doing theaters.
And to be a comic. She's had a big fan base.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And to be a comic for that long and still be selling out theaters is, you know,

Speaker 1 there's got to be a real sense of accomplishment about that. You've hit it.
You've done it.

Speaker 1 You're moving into your, you know, the later stage of your life and you're still selling out theaters.

Speaker 1 I wonder if you ever, like, when you're a stand-up comic like that, do you think about retirement? Or do you,

Speaker 1 you know, like like here with the commercial break, and this is not a joke, I've actually thought about this, like, how long can we actually do this? I've thought about it too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, do we go to we're 55? Do we go to we're 60?

Speaker 1 I mean, I guess that largely depends on how little money we make over the next couple of years, but it's like, how long do we do this before we just say, okay, I think we're too old to be doing a comedy podcast that's any, that's at all relevant?

Speaker 1 I, you know, well, we'll see. It might be next year.
That's right. It might be next year

Speaker 1 to dictate. Well, the market is already smoking, Chrissy.
The market is already smoking. We're just not listening.

Speaker 1 So, KathleenMadigan.com is where you can get tickets to her tour. She's on the never-ending tour.
This is not like Kathleen is doing a tour. It's not Ari Shafir.

Speaker 1 She's not going away next year to go on a long tour. Yeah, it's not a farewell tour.
She is doing this all the time. So it's likely she's going to be somewhere near you.

Speaker 1 Kathleen is really funny. If you go check out.

Speaker 6 Tickets are on sale this week, right?

Speaker 1 Tickets are on sale this week for her fall tour. She is currently on her spring tour, spring and summer tour.

Speaker 1 And I was just looking, there's like 26 more dates still available for the spring, summer tour. I'm sure she takes a little bit of a break and then she'll do the fall tour.

Speaker 1 And that's going to be extensive. Also, she has many specials available.
You can go to kathleenmadigan.com. She's got Netflix specials, Amazon specials, Comedy Central specials, YouTube specials.

Speaker 1 She's got all kinds of material out there. And she's really funny.
She's got that Midwestern charm and politeness with a very witty and edgy sense of humor.

Speaker 1 You have to be good at what you're doing to do it for 30 plus years. This is love what you're doing, I would think.
Oh, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 6 And you can tell,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 like some other folks we've had here, or some comedians who have been doing this for a long time, Chris Rock, you know, Jerry Seinfeld.

Speaker 1 You have to be really good and you have to really enjoy the art and craft of stand-up.

Speaker 1 And that is not easy because, like like we've talked about with so many comedians on this show, this is not Led Zeppelin. You don't get to go and play your greatest hits.

Speaker 1 You have to keep coming up with new material. If Kathleen wants to sell out some shows in Chicago in 2025 and then do it again in 2026, you just can't do the same act over and over again.

Speaker 1 You have to put it on.

Speaker 6 You can't really be coming up with fresh new material.

Speaker 1 Yeah, evolve. But the thing about Kathleen is she kind of reminds me of a lot of my aunts.
Yeah. Yeah.
She's got that same sense of humor. It's dry.
It's witty. It's funny.
She makes up words.

Speaker 1 You know, like she makes up words for things.

Speaker 1 She calls people by little like terms of endearment, but it's really not a term of endearment. You know, oh, little chicken.
Bless your heart. Bless your heart, little chicken.
And it's just not.

Speaker 1 It's not in a term of endearment. It's a term of biting and cunning.
And she is just like my aunts in that way. It reminds me so much.

Speaker 1 She actually reminds me of one specifically, my Aunt Sandy, who has since passed, who was one of the funniest ladies ever.

Speaker 1 Aunt Sandy had the entire family convinced but not talking about the lady she lived with for 47 years of her life was just her best friend. Oh, yeah.
It was just her best friend.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was such a Catholic thing to do. Totally.
Yeah, it was so Catholic. I mean, short hair, both of them, short hair.
They would work out together.

Speaker 1 They had naked statues of women everywhere around their house. They both drove a jaguar.

Speaker 1 I have never seen a more lesbian couple in my entire life, but no one ever said it out loud, and everyone pretended like they were just best friends living together.

Speaker 1 And that's what they told the kids. Oh, they're best friends.
They live together.

Speaker 1 Now, I also lived with my best friend, too, who was a guy, but that lasted for about six months until the apartment got too smelly, too full of beer cans,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 too much biohazard material around. And then we, until we forgot to pay rent, and then we got kicked out.
I mean, this was not that. These two were definitely

Speaker 1 married, essentially, for so many years and it was a loving relationship but the and I'm not saying that's Kathleen that's not what I'm not saying she's trying to hide the fact of anything but she reminded but Aunt Sandy was so funny because I think she had this different perspective on life and her comedy was sly biting under it was just quiet it was quiet comedy and if you didn't if you weren't picked she was so smart too and if you weren't picking up on it then you may not have known that aunt sandy was actually making fun of you but i quickly caught on to it and i loved it everything about Aunt Sandy was awesome to me.

Speaker 1 I really enjoyed it, including the statues of the naked ladies all around her house. That's true.
It was my favorite house to go to.

Speaker 1 And I don't think my mom brought us over there very often because of all the naked ladies hanging out.

Speaker 1 All the pictures and portraits of nude women all around the house. Anyway, you get what I'm saying.
Okay, KathleenMadigan.com. Links in the show notes.
Chrissy, let's do this.

Speaker 1 Why do we not take a break? And then when we get back, through the magic of this awkward transition phase and telepodcasting, we'll bring Kathleen Madigan on from wherever in the world she is.

Speaker 1 I think Nashville.

Speaker 1 We'll grab her. We'll talk to her.
We'll keep her here as long as we can. Like a hostage situation, we'll keep her here just as long as we can.
Yes, let's do it. Let's do it.
Let's do it. All right.

Speaker 1 We'll be back with Kathleen.

Speaker 9 Hey, it's Rachel, your new voice of God here on TCB. And just like you, I'm wondering just how much longer this podcast can continue.
Let's all rejoice that another episode has made it to your ears.

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Speaker 1 This episode is sponsored by our longtime sponsor, Squarespace. I am working on a new project, Information TBD.
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Speaker 1 And thank you, Kathleen, for joining us. We really appreciate it.
How are you? Hello.

Speaker 2 I'm good. I'm good.
I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to hide from a tornado tonight with my bottle of Jameson and a hockey map.

Speaker 1 There you go, the important things.

Speaker 2 Because I don't have a basement in Tennessee because they said it would cost too much money to blow up all that rock.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you can't dig in the rock.

Speaker 2 No, when they call it Rocky Top, that song's not kidding.

Speaker 1 That's real. What do you you got under you? What's under there? That's granite under there or what's going on down there?

Speaker 2 Hard white rock.

Speaker 1 That's all I know.

Speaker 2 Like to build a basement would be like an extra 200 grand because of the dynamite.

Speaker 1 Yeah, don't do it. Yeah, it's not worth it.

Speaker 2 Daniela think 95.5 rule, 40% I might die?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 95% chance I won't.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you could get stuck by a bus tomorrow, though. So you take your chances.
You know, $200,000, that's a lot of money. That could go to Good Muse somewhere else.

Speaker 1 You get a pool. I mean, you get a pool for $200,000.
You got a pool over there in Nashville?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I got a pool. That wasn't cheap either.
That was a big dynamite. That was a big blast.

Speaker 1 You'll be fine from the tornado. Do you live in the city of Nashville? Are you like city proper?

Speaker 2 Well, Davidson County, but I'm not like, I'm not downtown. I'm out by the airport, which is even better.

Speaker 2 It's only eight minutes door-to-door from the airport, but it's on a lake, which is really a river.

Speaker 2 I've come to figure out Tennessee. We all have different definitions of lakes.

Speaker 2 This is a working river, like barges come through and stuff. Oh, like, yeah, and I was fishing like three coves over, and there were actually cows in it.

Speaker 1 So, you know, they came down to get a drink and they went all the way in.

Speaker 2 But I just wouldn't wear your best swimming suit here. Probably not a not a white one.

Speaker 1 Not a white one.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'll still get in and I'll still eat the fish, although I probably should. There's a DuPont chemical factory, not Du Not.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 but i i ate a bass out of here like two years ago i'm fine yeah you're still alive and you're looking great hey yeah

Speaker 1 chattahoochee river is very much the same way we've talked about this on the show the chattahoochee which runs through atlanta the chattahoochee coochie all the way down there there's you know they have they find cows floating in there like upside down cows floating in there you just don't want to eat anything that comes out of the river and the people who tube down those rivers they're young and they have immune systems that can deal with it not us yeah

Speaker 2 snakes the good thing though if you're on a river the snakes are less likely than a man-made lake where they get very comfortable in those coves.

Speaker 1 They sit there for years.

Speaker 2 Yeah, for years and years. And the water vaccines are violent, they're aggressive.
And here, the river part at least keeps everything moving. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, yeah. You have been doing stand-up comedy for

Speaker 1 a lot of years. And I wanted to ask you a question.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Has there ever been a time or a gig, like a specific thing you could think about where you were just like, holy shit, I'm gonna, this is the worst. I'm quitting.
I'm done with this. This sucks.

Speaker 1 I've had the worst night of my life or run of my life and this is it. I'm wondering, because you know, some of the comics that we talk to are fresh-faced comics, right?

Speaker 1 And that they don't have the experience behind them. I think maybe to experience those ups and downs.

Speaker 1 But has there been a moment when you could think of where you're like, holy shit, I'm done with this?

Speaker 2 No, I would have, I would never go beyond the night I'm in. But that's just

Speaker 2 that's kind of how I live my entire life. Like I, there have been nights or a corporate gig that's just terrible.
Like I did one in Miami and half of them didn't speak English. I'm like, really?

Speaker 2 Dude, it was, I think it was Deutsche Bank. I'm like, did we have to ask this on the questionnaire? Do you speak English?

Speaker 2 I thought that was a given.

Speaker 2 There have been nights that have been very frustrating, but

Speaker 2 that's the great thing about stand-up to me is that it every tomorrow's a brand new day.

Speaker 2 This is where I was saying to my brother after the

Speaker 2 Super Bowl, like if you're Patrick Mahomes, you have to wait all the way till next September to

Speaker 2 be able to correct that. Yes,

Speaker 2 like you have to sit with a bad show for months and months and months and months and months versus stand-up. Okay, say I suck tonight.

Speaker 1 Well, I'll go tomorrow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's a whole new day.

Speaker 2 It's a very lucky position to be in because a lot of people, whether it's sports or

Speaker 2 just other entertainment,

Speaker 2 you don't get that chance the next night.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, it's true.

Speaker 1 And also, you depend only on yourself

Speaker 1 at the end of the day, right? So it's like you, like Patrick Mahomes, he depends on however many other people to make sure that he wins from challenge, from season to season.

Speaker 1 For you, you can just kind of throw some cold water on your face and say, okay, Kathleen, you know how to do this. Go up and get them next.
Go to get them tomorrow night.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I like being solo because I feel like it's all on me, whether it's good or bad. That's why I hate improv.
Like, I just don't want to rely on other people. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like, if we're going to win, I'm winning. If I lose, I lose.
But this whole,

Speaker 2 you know, there's six of us and let's see what happens.

Speaker 2 I used to do a joke a long time ago about the figure skaters that are the pairs. And like, you know, when the other person falls, the other person's always very nice about it.

Speaker 2 And I just don't know that I could control my temper like that. Like, I might skate around just to chop off one of his fingers while he's down there.

Speaker 2 And then, and then go, yeah, so this is why we're not on the cereal box

Speaker 2 because you couldn't keep your shit together. And now I don't get a medal.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 2 I don't know that I could be that forgiving when all you've done for 10 years is work on one thing.

Speaker 1 Right. And then fuck it up.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You also say at the end of the joke, you also say at the end of the joke, you say, I'm skating up to those judges and goes, I don't know who that fucking guy is.

Speaker 1 I don't know why we're wearing the same thing.

Speaker 2 That guy threw me way too far.

Speaker 1 We practiced that a million times.

Speaker 2 That was complete bullshit.

Speaker 2 And I think I deserve another chance. That would be my argument.

Speaker 2 I just don't, I like that stand-ups all by ourselves. The only time I feel weird about it is like in the Chicago theater or something very large.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I feel like, God, I don't have any dancers or like

Speaker 2 I'm only five foot tall. I just don't feel like I'm enough for a stage that large.
It seems like we're missing

Speaker 1 people.

Speaker 2 You feel like

Speaker 1 your actual physical presence. You're like, I need something to fill the stage out.
That's got to be

Speaker 1 a kind of strange feeling is when you're in those, you know, wherever you are.

Speaker 1 I don't know where you're playing, but and it's just you sitting on the stage and there's these, you know, thousands of people that are watching you and it's just you with a microphone. That's it.

Speaker 1 That's got to be a strange sensation.

Speaker 2 If you think about it too hard, you will run away.

Speaker 2 Like you would just go, this is crazy. What do we do? You know, I started at a funny bone in a mall.
Like, did you, maybe 50 people on a Monday night, you know, not like, this is crazy.

Speaker 2 You can't overthink it. Me and Ron White always talk about that.
He's like, you can't think about it. Just act like it's the funny bone.

Speaker 1 Just walk out and do what you do.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, yeah, I mean, I've never freaked out enough to actually think about running away, but if you thought about it too long, you might, I think.

Speaker 2 If you're a normal person and not some crazy, malignant narcissist, I mean, you're going to go, whoa,

Speaker 1 of course.

Speaker 1 Do you still get nerves?

Speaker 2 Only at corporate gigs, and I try not to do them anymore.

Speaker 2 Because people don't understand that a corporate gig not everybody there wanted to see comedy they're not my fans they're whoever they are it's playing russian roulette yeah there's going to be four shows that went fine but two are going to be bullets to your soul yeah and they will kill you and it's awful but otherwise no i don't get nervous

Speaker 2 it's good money but it's not it's good money but you just don't know what you're getting too many x factors there's too much yeah that's ill-defined and at this point thankfully i make enough money i don't need that money so i I can just pass.

Speaker 2 Which is great.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You have such

Speaker 1 a long and storied career, and you're still doing it very successfully. Over all of these years,

Speaker 1 you've seen comedy.

Speaker 1 When did you get started, Kathleen? When was your first gig at The Bone?

Speaker 1 The Bone.

Speaker 2 Yeah, The Bone.

Speaker 2 But I was lucky because I was in St. Louis and that was their headquarters back then.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 as soon as I got good enough to be an opening act, they booked me in all the funny bones twice a year. So, boom, that's a 30-week.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I started in 88, like going to open bike nights and stuff. And then in August of 89, I went on the road like forever.
Like, I never came back.

Speaker 6 So, yeah, you just travel constantly.

Speaker 1 I'm sure.

Speaker 2 That's why when people go, how long's the tour? I'm like, well, so far, 35 years.

Speaker 1 Right. I'll let you know.

Speaker 2 I'll let you know when I put my suitcase away for real and the cat doesn't get mad at me. I'll let you know.

Speaker 1 But right now. Yeah, we were talking about this before you came on and I was telling the people here in the studio, I was like, I don't think Kathleen ever stops touring.

Speaker 1 I think she's every time I look, she's doing another, you know, there's another reel, there's another post, she's got another set of shows coming on.

Speaker 1 But I think that's, I guess, after 35 years, that feels very normal to you.

Speaker 1 And, you know, do you enjoy that part of it, like being out and traveling, or would you rather spend more time kind of sitting and doing what you want to do?

Speaker 6 And do you have any true pet peeves when you're out on the road like that?

Speaker 2 I still love the road. I don't care where it's at.
I'll go anywhere. I just like to, I like to see what's going on.

Speaker 2 I like to know, I don't care if it's Cedar Falls or Chicago or Minneapolis, wherever. I don't care if it's cold.
I just, I like the, I don't like the

Speaker 2 airport part.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 that part, even if you have all the fancy stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, I have clear and I have TSA pre-check. Doesn't matter.
No, the only flying first class now is really privately.

Speaker 1 Yes. I mean, come on.
Yeah, they put you in a room, essentially.

Speaker 1 Right, right, right.

Speaker 2 So that part absolutely sucks, and it keeps getting worse every year, every year, every year.

Speaker 2 That's why when I see the older flight attendants, I know they're going to be crabby because they're my age and they've been doing this forever. And the situation gets colossally worse every year.

Speaker 2 People are crabby. The planes, there's doors flying off for Christ's sake.

Speaker 1 It's crazy.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't necessarily,

Speaker 2 I never thought about it. Well, if I'm in the exit row, if that door flies off, I used to always go for that.

Speaker 1 Not anymore. I'm going to sit where there's no door.

Speaker 2 So I hate that part, but I like when I get there, I have so much fun to see what's going on. So I, but I never wanted to do anything else either.
Like, I know a lot of people like acting and

Speaker 2 no, I do zero interest. I went one time, Lewis Black's one of my best friends, and he was doing an episode of the Big Bang Theory, and he made me go.
I did not want to go.

Speaker 2 I'm like, Lou, I'll watch it when it's on. I don't want to seven hours

Speaker 2 four to eleven me and his assistant drank a bottle of wine i i memorized his lines i memorized the whole script by 11 o'clock at night

Speaker 2 and i'm like was this fun for you lou because you're not making good money yeah like you'd have made a lot more money going on the road this week um like did you enjoy that now he does he likes acting lou's been in a bunch of movies and he likes the craft of it or whatever whatever we have

Speaker 1 i don't know yeah we had Lewis on. It's one of my favorite guests.
He's so good at what he does.

Speaker 2 He's a ton of fun and he's got a lot of interests.

Speaker 2 He writes plays and I always make fun of him. I'm like, you majored in playwriting.

Speaker 2 What year was that?

Speaker 2 That's like saying you're a cobbler.

Speaker 1 Who does that, Lou?

Speaker 2 And he's like, oh, they just didn't reach the Midwest, Kathleen. You don't know.
There's things going on. There are things going on.

Speaker 2 He's right. In New York, it's a thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he was a playwright. His origin story is rather weird.
Yeah, he had a rather strange origin story. It was like writing one-act plays down in some basement in New York or something.

Speaker 1 And people didn't know it. Yeah, people didn't like it.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 he was the weirdest person I think I ever initially met. Like, we were at Catch a Rising Star in Chicago.
It was like in a hyatt. And he went up and I'm like,

Speaker 1 who is this?

Speaker 1 What is he doing?

Speaker 2 He is not doing traditional stand-up. I mean, I'd only been doing it maybe four years, so I wasn't, I hadn't seen everything, but I'd seen a lot.

Speaker 2 And I'd seen the ones, you know, everybody, the Jeff Fox were these Seinfelds in the clubs, Rich Jenny, all those guys.

Speaker 2 And then Lou comes, I'm like, oh, he doesn't understand this format at all, but I love it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Like, it was crazy.

Speaker 2 It was, it was a crazy person. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I liked it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was when he was on Comedy Central, when he was on the daily show, which is, I think, where a lot of people got exposed to Lewis Black and en masse.

Speaker 1 It's just, he's so cantankerous and so smart and so sharp at what he does. It's hard to ignore the brilliance in all that screaming, right?

Speaker 1 It's, and I think for me, that just really, that was a really attractive form of comedy to me, is the way that he was doing it.

Speaker 1 And he said, I used to take headlines up on stage, and that's what I would do. I'd read the newspaper, I'd circle headlines, and that's how I got started.

Speaker 1 I'd just yell and scream, and people liked it. And he said, okay, why not?

Speaker 2 I had to teach him, though, like in the Midwest. I remember we did Omaha one time, and we were, I guess, I, we were co-headlining maybe.
I said, I'll go first. You go second.

Speaker 2 I, I, I'm always, I'll go first, first one to the bar. Yeah.

Speaker 1 As soon as I'm done, I'll go to the bar. That's true.

Speaker 2 I don't have an ego thing about being the headliner or going last, but

Speaker 2 he, he was going on stage and he was, he's always very political. And we're in Omaha, Nebraska.
And he's like, I don't think it's going as well here. I said, here's the thing, Lou.

Speaker 2 It's the Midwest. We're a little polite and we'd like to, maybe you could open your act with like something about the weather.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Just a little tiny thing that's not hard.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Like, yeah, you don't need to come out screaming to George W.
Bush is an asshole. Like, let's just maybe start with your impression on Nebraska.

Speaker 2 And he was like, yeah, you're right. I'm probably, I'm a little, I go, you're a lot for the Midwest.

Speaker 1 You're a lot.

Speaker 2 You're a big barking dog. And they don't know if you're friendly or not friendly.
So come out a little friendly. He got it.

Speaker 1 That's a smart observation. As a a guy who grew up in Chicago, you have a very familiar sense of humor, way of talking.

Speaker 1 That Midwest, that flavor of Midwest comes out in you. And I think that feels very familiar to me.

Speaker 1 It's like what I grew up around with the voices that I heard and the kind of sharp-witted but quiet and polite comedy that you do is very, it's very good.

Speaker 1 Do you, is there a place where you feel, where your comedy feels,

Speaker 1 I guess, people respond to it better. Like when you go to the Midwest, do you feel like you get a warmer reception than you do in certain places in the country?

Speaker 1 Or does your comedy, have you been doing this for so long, your comedy kind of resonates wherever you're?

Speaker 2 Well, that was the weird thing. I was terrified being from the Midwest.
Like my first Road Week was the Philadelphia funny mode, and Philly,

Speaker 2 Philly, to this day, is

Speaker 1 and they know it.

Speaker 2 They're a hard, it's a hard city. They are hardcore.
They, and I mean, I got it now. But initially, I was like, are they going to laugh at the same stuff? And they did.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think always my act will be more,

Speaker 2 it'll resonate more with the Midwest or South

Speaker 1 than,

Speaker 2 like, I'm not very woke. But I don't like the term woke either because it implies the other side's asleep.

Speaker 1 I'm like, no.

Speaker 2 I'm like a dog on an old dog with one eye open on the couch.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Kind of awake.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But I'm not woke.

Speaker 2 I'm never going to be the one like trying to,

Speaker 2 I don't know, make new waves or convince people of anything. It's complete nonsense.
Like, I view my act like the movie Arthur, which I love.

Speaker 1 Oh, I love that.

Speaker 2 It's an hour and a half. It's an hour escape.

Speaker 2 You're not going to probably, well, you might learn a few things, but they won't be valuable.

Speaker 1 They'll just be inane facts.

Speaker 1 That's the new tagline for our podcast.

Speaker 1 You might learn some things.

Speaker 1 But it's not valuable.

Speaker 2 I mean, it'll help you maybe in a fun bar conversation.

Speaker 2 And there are a couple of legal advice things I throw in there from my dad. It might help you if you're like, get a DUI.
Just keep your mouth shut. But,

Speaker 2 you know, like, I'm never going to be known for like a lot of comics are like, oh, that's so groundbreaking or edgy. Or I'm edgy in my own Midwest polite way.
Yes.

Speaker 2 But you have to be looking for, you have to know exactly. I'm tricking people sometimes, I promise.

Speaker 1 I see what you're saying, and I agree with you. So, here, the funny thing is, is the bit about the ice skating, the ice skaters, right?

Speaker 1 And practicing all your life to do this one thing with somebody else who might fuck up, that comes from one of your Comedy Central specials that was way back when. And I just watched that last night.

Speaker 1 It popped up on my YouTube, and I'm like,

Speaker 1 let me watch this. Really funny, but you are edgy in your own way, but it is kind of this polite Midwestern way.
You're kind of sneaking in the back door, right? It's edgy, and there's some

Speaker 1 commentary there, but you have to know where to find it. You have to know how to listen to it in that own Midwestern way.
You have worked with probably

Speaker 1 a lot of the greats, Seinfeld, Lewis Black. And

Speaker 1 I was always wanted to ask a question.

Speaker 1 Do you ever get advice from one of those people, like one of those huge success stories, that you were like, I don't think that's great advice?

Speaker 1 They gave you advice, and then you were like, I actually don't think that's great advice.

Speaker 1 You don't have to tell me who.

Speaker 2 No, yeah, but no, I can't even remember who.

Speaker 2 It's somebody who paced a lot. Like,

Speaker 2 it might have been like Chris or something. We're like, Madigan, you got to move it a little bit more.
I'm like, no, I don't.

Speaker 2 The job says stand-up comedy.

Speaker 1 I'm standing up. It doesn't say walk around.

Speaker 2 It doesn't say, me and Ron White, who's one of my best friends, we are of the opinion for us,

Speaker 2 if you can stand still for an hour and keep keep everyone's attention your material is great true fair enough i the like it used to and i became friends with robin williams because we did all those iraq tours he's a very sweet man and but the running around and the sweating and the jumping

Speaker 2 I want to grab him and go just stand still for two jokes.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 Just to humor me.

Speaker 1 Just stand there.

Speaker 2 But, you know, everybody's got their own little style. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Robin was one of the best, in my opinion. He, but he was frenetic.

Speaker 1 And I think watching some of his old stuff, like back in the 80s, sometimes it's a little bit disconcerting how much he's moving around.

Speaker 1 And obviously, I think he's powered by something besides weevies. Do you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 I mean, he admitted what was going on.

Speaker 2 She also shouldn't be sweating that perfusion.

Speaker 1 Right. I'm like,

Speaker 2 let's like in a theater, they'll go, do you need any towels? I'm like, if I need a towel, you need to take me to a hospital.

Speaker 1 I'm going out there talking.

Speaker 2 There shouldn't be any sweating involved.

Speaker 2 The lights aren't that hot.

Speaker 1 Like, come on, you guys.

Speaker 2 They're not.

Speaker 1 Do you want to know where I found the most touching Robin Williams documentary film footage? Was not on a Robin Williams documentary. It was on that Christopher Reeves documentary.

Speaker 1 Because I had no idea the two of them were like best friends.

Speaker 1 And then when they got to the part where they started talking about how when, after Chris had his accident, Robin was there, but they never talked about the accident or his disability. And

Speaker 1 one of his children was saying, i think that robin gave uh chris some sense of normalcy back and because he never mentioned anything about the accident or anything about um being in a wheelchair or anything like that and i found i don't know there was something very touching and sweet about that he's like they both kind of uh confided in each other robin was amazing it's it

Speaker 2 how sad were you guys when how many shows did you guys do together how many tours did you go on my oh well we went on two but they were long they were like all of december And here was the craziest thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 I've never been around a global star.

Speaker 2 Like, I've been around comedians, you know, Gary Shan, like people that were stars here.

Speaker 2 Even Roseanne, like, she really wasn't a movie global star, like Robin. Like, so everybody knows Robin, everybody.

Speaker 2 And we were in a hospital, and they said there's this is how not paying attention I was. They're like, oh, there's some soldiers from Georgia.
And I was like, what? Like, from Atlanta? Yeah.

Speaker 2 They meant the country.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 Right. I forgot there was a country in Georgia.
But they kind of speak Russian. And Robin went in there to this kid, like an 18-year-old guy, and just started speaking Russian.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 2 It was the craziest shit I've ever seen. I'm like, is that from Moscow on the Hudson? Did you really learn

Speaker 1 all that?

Speaker 2 He's like, Yeah, I just became interested. It was crazy.

Speaker 2 It was like watching, I don't know, like a magic travel.

Speaker 1 A magician, yeah, I was going to say.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he was very sweet and soft-spoken. I actually preferred his serious work over the comedy because the comedy was too frenetic for me.
But

Speaker 2 he knew that. I told him that.
I'm like, I wish you would just settle down.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't disagree with you. I think some of the stuff that he did on film that was more serious just felt more earnest to me.

Speaker 1 And sometimes I think he could be more funny when he was delivering a rye line rather than something, you know, jumping out of a box and, you know, with suspenders and trying to make everybody laugh.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like Awakenings was a great movie.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, there's where he, that to me, was the real Robin.

Speaker 2 And then the stand-up, like, he's an act, he went to Juilliard. He's an actor.
I felt like sometimes he was an actor acting as a comedian.

Speaker 1 Ah, that's a very interesting observation.

Speaker 2 And, you know, no harm, no fall. Sure.
People can do whatever they want on stage, but I just preferred the regular guy that I sat on a bus with for hours riding around Afghanistan.

Speaker 1 That guy. Yeah, I preferred his awakenings to his Morgan Mindy years.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Although as a kid, I really did look for Morgan Mindy that took 7.30 on Tuesday nights. I remember when it was on.

Speaker 1 It was very interesting. So you are a storyteller by nature.
I would share that you're a storyteller. Do you ever tell stories about people in your personal life where they're like, yeah.

Speaker 1 I prefer that you don't share that story. Right.

Speaker 2 No, I think I'm a pretty good editor in my mind of what my family will tolerate. Although I did post a joke from a while back about me, quote, ruining Christmas, my sister.

Speaker 2 My sister goes, this was recently. She goes, hey, all these people from Facebook, all my friends are calling.
I never said you ruined Christmas. I said you absolutely did.

Speaker 2 How do you think I, I didn't write that as a joke?

Speaker 1 That whole situation happened.

Speaker 2 She goes, oh, well, maybe I did. I said, I have never said anything on stage.
It did not happen or was not the truth. Now, like, let's say a sibling gets divorced and it's terrible.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to watch.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And there's seven of us. And, you know, my dad passed away, but my mom's alive.
So I have eight people. So I'll just move off you.

Speaker 1 If your life is sad, I'll just move off. I'll follow somebody else.
I'll just focus on somebody else for a while. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We do a lot of content here. We do.
I mean, we're on 700-plus episodes at this point, thousand hours of content. We pull from everything.
Yeah, we pull from everything.

Speaker 1 But I have learned, and I learned very quickly: there are people aren't volunteering to be on your show. This wasn't their life choice, and you have to be careful about what you say.

Speaker 1 But it's easy to edit and change names and flip things around. When you tell the story, you just change the faces and the names just get changed to protect the innocent, Chrissy.
That's how you do it.

Speaker 1 But still, some people know, like, you know, if I tell a story about my brother, I'll change some of the details. But sometimes he's like, dude, I really didn't want that share.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I didn't even say, you you know, you know, how no one would ever piece that together, but they know. And he gets up, you know, sometimes he's gotten upset.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, okay, I'll meanwhile, I will

Speaker 6 be on the show.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I will run it by him if I think I'm on the edge.

Speaker 1 That's okay.

Speaker 1 That's a fair policy.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Like, I'm like, do you care if I say Matt, that's my sister, one of my sisters' husbands.

Speaker 2 that when you met Matt, he didn't know what religion he was.

Speaker 1 Like, is that going to make him seem stupid?

Speaker 2 Or she goes, oh, I don't think he'd care at all. I'm like, great, okay, great.
Cause I'm already doing it on stage. I just wanted permission to do it on film

Speaker 1 on April 26th.

Speaker 1 Wait, can we follow this down the rabbit hole just for a second?

Speaker 1 What? Your brother-in-law did not know what religion he was?

Speaker 2 Not really. No.
So my sister, we're all Catholic. And like, if I married you, I don't really care if you become Catholic.

Speaker 2 But my sister did because they're going to have kids and she wants this cohesive.

Speaker 2 And I think on some level, my sister still thinks you might not make it into heaven if you didn't sign up like i i i don't agree with that but this is where we part ways she's got catalyst

Speaker 2 and matt's like well i'm christian he's he's like a rural guy at rule rural to us and i go right

Speaker 2 but what kind of christian he goes well kathleen i don't i don't really know i go okay matt when you drove up to the building what did it say did it say like united methodist or lutheran he goes well i don't think it really said anything Just a white building.

Speaker 2 I'm like, well, this is some little house on the prairie shit, man.

Speaker 2 Like, wow, it's just a white country building.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I go, so you were obviously some form of Protestant. He goes, no, no, we weren't protesting nothing.

Speaker 1 I'm like, okay.

Speaker 2 All right, Matt. I'm just telling you, don't agree to her terms because if you have, it's like six weeks of classes.
It's not like joining a megachurch where you just walk right in.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's it. No, no, no, no, no.
It's six weeks of classes, and then you got a whole Lent situation you got to deal deal with every year. You got to give up smoking, drinking.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 But here was the greatest part, though, about making fun of people in your own personal life. So the last Amazon special I did,

Speaker 2 or it might have been the Netflix, one of them. I don't know.
It doesn't matter. They were like, oh, you have all these jokes about your parents.

Speaker 2 And do you think you could get them to sign a like a disclosure saying it's okay? I go, not.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I go, no, I don't. I go, I've been making fun of my parents for 35 years.

Speaker 2 And I go, you know what's going to be great? If you want to get that, they go, well, we email you the disclosure. And then they could

Speaker 2 print it out and scan it. And say, oh,

Speaker 2 I go, you know what? I'm going to give you their cell phone number.

Speaker 2 And if they answer, which they won't because the cell phones are never charged. And I'm going to give you their email.
They'll probably open it in 2027.

Speaker 1 I'm not doing that.

Speaker 2 I'm not going through that with my mom and dad. So you're just going to have to take the risk that I've made a lot of fun of Jack and Vicki.
And I just, that's the first time anybody ever said.

Speaker 1 That's a ridiculous amount of ass covering right there.

Speaker 2 Isn't that like, well, you really think my own family is going to sue you for employing me? Yes. Like, I was just like, this is really, I guess it's cover your ass, but I mean,

Speaker 2 Jack and Vicki at age 78, really, I mean, he was a lawyer, but he's not even licensed anymore.

Speaker 1 He can't do anything.

Speaker 2 That expired years years ago.

Speaker 1 He's a shark who's lost his teeth. He's not going to do anything.
You're not going to worry about it. Don't get all fussy about something.

Speaker 1 If that's the level of ass covering that Amazon is doing with all of these specials, I can only imagine.

Speaker 2 Right. But then on Baby Reindeer, you didn't check anything.

Speaker 1 I'm like,

Speaker 2 oh my God, you're telling me that I need to get all this clearance to make fun of my mom and dad at Home Depot or something. Meanwhile,

Speaker 2 you have a lady's life that you said is a true story, and that's not the lady.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's true. That's true.
That's true. Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 I'm like, where were your lawyers then?

Speaker 1 Where?

Speaker 2 I don't get that. I never did get that one.

Speaker 1 That is selective lowering.

Speaker 1 Were you the wrong woman?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 they didn't do one thing to change her identity, but they matched it identically. She was

Speaker 2 a little overweight, Scottish. um a lawyer those were her jobs so all you would have had to do is make her american or why can't a crazy person be skinny skinny?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Make it a skinny lady or make her British. Or they just copied.

Speaker 6 Exact.

Speaker 2 And then the internet immediately knew exactly who she was. It's Fiona.

Speaker 1 Uh-oh.

Speaker 2 And you presented it as a true story. And then when you go look at it all, she didn't go to prison.
There's all kinds of stuff in there that's not true.

Speaker 1 Well, he presented it as a true story to Netflix. Netflix took it on verbatim.
They didn't do it. Right, they didn't check.
They didn't check. And now the judge went.

Speaker 1 So she sued them for like $150 million. She's going to win.
She's going to win. She's going to win.
Yes. Because they did nothing to protect her identity.

Speaker 1 And Kathleen's right. All they had to do was

Speaker 1 skinny African-American

Speaker 1 church secretary. And then

Speaker 1 you could have made the case that, oh, this was a fictional story that we made up whole cloth, even though it was very similar to something that happened to me.

Speaker 1 So while this guy got all these props and it was a true story, that makes that, it makes it interesting, but it would have been interesting even without the true story part, right?

Speaker 2 Or there's just one word missing based on, yeah, that's it. They were two words.
They just said, This is a true story. Yes, I mean, you, the, the, I'm not the first one to bring that up.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying I'm a genius, but they, that's it. Based on based on is different,

Speaker 1 and then they will, and then they could have just said, well,

Speaker 1 kind of

Speaker 1 loosely based on you, but it wasn't you. Yeah.
Do you remember every time we think, I think about like based on true story, do you remember when Fargo came out, the movie, the movie Fargo? Yeah.

Speaker 1 In the beginning of the movie, it said, you know, the events in this movie are all true. Right.
And everybody was like, when did this happen? Where did this happen?

Speaker 1 Well, the thing that the Cohen brothers didn't mention is, yeah, all the events are true, but they didn't happen in one story. That's like a hundred stories they took the pieces from.

Speaker 1 Those guys are so genius. I know.
I think. I know.
That's one of my favorite movies. Is quintessential Midwestern Fargo.

Speaker 1 And I know that it's exaggerated you know accents and you know kind of tropes but when you see that movie if you grew up in the midwest if you've ever been up there then you that really hits home to you like oh yeah that's that's how they talk oh yeah that's how they act oh yeah that's how polite they are in the face of murder

Speaker 1 do you have a um

Speaker 1 Do you over the years that you've been doing comedy, has there been like trends that you've seen in comedy? Have you changed your comedy over?

Speaker 1 I know your comedy has evolved over the years, but is there like a trend and you're like, I'm not jumping on that bandwagon? No, thanks. Like,

Speaker 1 now I feel like comedy is some comedians, they're not really comedians. They're

Speaker 1 clickbait, so to speak, right? They are going for shock value.

Speaker 1 The louder we can be, the more edgy things we can say, the more people we can offend, then the better off I'll be because I'm doing it for the algorithm and not for

Speaker 1 comedy purposes. Now, some people, I'm sure, like that,

Speaker 1 but that's how

Speaker 1 some comedy feels to me right now. Have you seen trends where you're like, oh, no, no, no, this is just not

Speaker 1 great?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 this wasn't really a trend that would have affected me, but I never stopped laughing. For a two-year period, every guy sounded like Mitch Hedberg.

Speaker 1 Like, oh, my God.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. I would just sit in the back of the room and go, no, no, no, there was only one Mitch.

Speaker 2 He's not here anymore.

Speaker 1 We're moving on.

Speaker 2 trends, the trends that I always see and they come and they go is dirty comedy, clean comedy. And like this whole not cussing thing, I'm going on stage and being who I am.
So exactly.

Speaker 2 You can take it or leave it. I'm clean at a corporate event because I am paid specifically not to cuss.
But in real life, I cuss.

Speaker 2 It just to prove that to me, like the cussing debate, words don't matter. It's the person receiving the words.
It's on you.

Speaker 2 Because like I I had this homeless lady come down the street in Oklahoma City and she was dragging a blue tarp and she was, she, she clearly, um, she was smoking like an unlit SIG.

Speaker 2 And I had a lighter. So I thought, well, I'll light it.

Speaker 2 See if she was a light. But she already came up yelling at me in Spanish, just screaming.

Speaker 1 And I was like, I don't know, lady.

Speaker 2 I don't know what she said. She could have called me a hundred cuss words.
It doesn't matter because I didn't understand it.

Speaker 2 It's your interpretation of that.

Speaker 2 So the clean, dirty thing

Speaker 2 i've just always well i've never been like dirty like i'm not gonna get up and do the the the yeah you're not doing sad jokes yeah no i'm not i'm not i just wouldn't ever don't we have anything else to talk about i mean my god like i just always thought that was low-hanging fruit yep i'm not doing it and clean define clean i I don't, I don't even like the labels of all that.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 2 I mean, people are making money off of it. Good for you guys, but I just don't,

Speaker 2 what does that mean? So, it's not offensive to an eight-year-old?

Speaker 2 But I mean, that's fine if that's what you want to do. But, you know,

Speaker 2 I'm 38. I'm 48.
I'm 58. I'm not eight.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know. It's true.
Yeah, it's true. And I think that there are comedians who do that to great effect.
Like, I think Nick Bargatzi is an example of this, right? His comedy is slow.

Speaker 1 It's plotting, but it's funny. And there's not a cuss word in there, right?

Speaker 1 And I think there are other comedians, who I won't name, I don't want to offend anybody, who just don't do it to great effect. I think think they're just like the, I agree with you.

Speaker 1 Why are you not saying the words that you could say?

Speaker 1 You could punctuate these things with something a little bit more if it's your normal right now.

Speaker 2 I mean, my parents,

Speaker 2 it was always breaking news to me that, like, in the South specifically, God damn is more offensive than other words that you would

Speaker 1 think would be more offensive.

Speaker 2 But like when my, my mom, I mean, that was said every weekend

Speaker 2 in my house. But like like when my mom would say, God damn it, I really thought she was asking God to damn it.

Speaker 2 I mean, it wasn't just a throwaway word. She was pissed.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 the crock pot didn't broke or something.

Speaker 2 And then it would be like, God damn it. And I thought, okay.
Yeah. And they never seemed to care if we said it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, as when we were like eight, not one word, eight, eight to 18.

Speaker 2 So I don't have the same relationship. Like cursing was going on in my house all the time.
Not, they wouldn't go, say fuck or they wouldn't go that far, but shit, and goddamn it, and all that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so to me, that's just the way you talk.

Speaker 1 I couldn't agree with you more. I don't shy away from cussing around the kids.

Speaker 1 Again, there are some words that I just choose not, like I'm not going to teach them at their young, tender age, but then I let them know that this may not be a word you want to say in public because other people might be offended by it, right?

Speaker 1 But words are just words, it's not, you know, it's not going to slice anybody open. Their eyeball is not going to come out because you said shit.
It's not going to happen.

Speaker 1 And I think the general attitude toward cussing has got much more

Speaker 1 loose since the 80s. I mean, if you heard the word shit on broadcast television.
Yeah, on TV, they knew that. That was a big deal.
Now there's a shit every 15 seconds on NBC at 7 o'clock at night.

Speaker 1 You can't even watch Jeopardy without hearing the word shit. I mean, it's a.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they keep expanding the. And not that everybody needs to talk.
It's the clean, dirty. And then there's specifically a lot of women comics that I think go dirty er to try to be one of the guys.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And

Speaker 2 you can, I can feel it when it's happening. I'm like, oh man.
And I know they're smarter than that.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 Like, that's the frustrating part. Like, there are some really dumb road comics out there that get up and do dick jokes, but you go drinking with them.

Speaker 1 I'm like, oh, sweet, sweet little, sweet little rabbit's not smart.

Speaker 2 Sweet little rabbit can't think of nothing.

Speaker 1 This is, and then I don't hate him. Then I'm like, okay.

Speaker 2 Oh, tiny dancer.

Speaker 1 You just can't, you know, know, this is all he's got. So, okay.

Speaker 2 Those people never

Speaker 2 make me frustrated because they're doing what they can do.

Speaker 2 That's the best they can do.

Speaker 1 I bet off air, we could name three of them. I bet we'd be thinking about the same people.

Speaker 2 There's at least 10 throughout the years I could put on a, on a, on a vision board that I remember from the day. And they make their money, they get their free drinks, and they're happy.

Speaker 1 So, you know,

Speaker 2 it's a nice little job if you don't mind being gone.

Speaker 2 We got a dumb rabbit with a dumb act, but hey, it was five bucks to get in, and it's a Tuesday.

Speaker 1 They got three drink tickets and a shitty cheeseburger, and they're going to stay the night at the Howard Johnson, at the Hojo.

Speaker 1 What are you going to do? It's Schoenberg, Illinois. What are you going to do? Right.
Right.

Speaker 1 You have got to have seen and done a lot of sets with a very successful, famous comedians. Ron White, you've been mentioning is one of your friends.
You guys, you guys hang out a lot, you and Ron?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. He came up here during COVID.
He had he had nowhere to go.

Speaker 1 Oh, you guys just hung out during COVID?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I go, well, you last I heard, you have a bus and a plane.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And like the golf court, we like to golf and he loves to fish. I'm like, yeah, come on up.
So he was here for a while

Speaker 2 a few weeks at least. And he was like, after a week of it, he goes, Matty, isn't it just amazing how seamlessly we've slipped into retirement?

Speaker 1 I love it. I go, I love it.
I love it.

Speaker 2 I don't miss the road. I don't need to be on stage.
I mean, I love the road, but this is awesome.

Speaker 2 I might get a cat.

Speaker 1 This is crazy.

Speaker 2 I've never been home for more than two weeks in a row since I was 23 years old.

Speaker 1 This is hello.

Speaker 2 We had a blast. We got up, we went fishing, then we go golfing, then we come back and go fishing again.

Speaker 2 It was just fine, and like anything we wanted to do was still open, like he lost the lake, he did no golfing.

Speaker 2 Um, even the golf course up by my house has like outdoor outdoor bar and all that, so we could still drink and perfect like

Speaker 2 Lewis was trapped in an apartment in New York. Yeah, couldn't go and he started going crazier and crazier, like week by week, like this cooped up, crazy person.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, dude, you need to get out of there. Yeah, so then he came here, and I'm like, you're going to have to,

Speaker 2 he was screaming at the television. Yeah.
Dude, I am already in relaxation fun mode. Yeah.
And you're going to need to catch up. Yes.
Or you're going back to New York to your little chicken

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 2 put you back there because I can't live like this. I know.
I know. I know.
It's just so maddening. Like he, then Roger's like, let's go get a 12-pack of Mickeylom

Speaker 2 and fireball shots in case we get a birdie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right. Yes.

Speaker 1 That's what I want to do. To be the bartender at the outdoor bar where Lewis Black, Kathleen Madigan, and Ron White show.

Speaker 1 It's like a life's achievement. I could die happy if I'm the bartender at the golf course.
And for a few weeks, that's all what I've got in my bar is those three just entertaining me.

Speaker 2 And I felt so bad saying, like, well, I'm having a blast during COVID because like I have relatives that are nurses and teachers, and it was brutal.

Speaker 2 My one sister's a teacher and Zooms and the kids aren't showing up and people are yelling and hollering. And I was like, oh, yeah, I don't know.
I caught three crappies.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 And Adam Margarita. And a Ron White.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And me and Ron saw two snakes.

Speaker 1 That's my day. That's my day.
You know, that was when COVID happened. Our first episode was released like the same week that all of the lockdowns started happening.
So April 15th, 2020.

Speaker 1 And this podcast may have saved my life because at least I had something to come do. Like I had some outlet, some way.
And we just didn't talk about any of it.

Speaker 1 I mean, occasionally, you know, of course, we mentioned masks or whatever on occasion, but we just didn't talk about any of it.

Speaker 1 That's why the show is named Commercial Break. But

Speaker 1 so we would just kind of shut it out. And I got to be honest, that hour and a half or two hours at that time, once a week, that

Speaker 1 once a week. Yeah, now it's four times a week.

Speaker 1 That really. like allowed me to decompress in a way that I think saved me from just going absolutely fucking stir crazy.

Speaker 2 Were you guys in Atlanta then?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we were in Atlanta.

Speaker 2 Okay, because the South was a lot more loosey-goosey with the rules.

Speaker 1 If you remember, our governor opened up the bowling alleys and the nail salons.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 1 And I thought to myself, I mean, at the time,

Speaker 1 now at hindsight, I think it was a good idea that he was saying, hey, we can't just shut down everything forever, right?

Speaker 1 But at the time, it was the funniest thing ever to know that our governor had made some decision somewhere at the highest powers of local government. He said, nail salons.
Bowling.

Speaker 1 That's it. He had to get her nails done.

Speaker 1 That's what he said. That's it.
He liked bowling or something.

Speaker 2 The nail one makes more sense to me than the bowling one. I mean, I'm not against bowling.
I've done it when I bartended, like it for fun and all that, but that's a very odd,

Speaker 2 especially if you're not a professional bowler. Like, I'm touching

Speaker 2 strange bowling balls,

Speaker 2 strange shoes.

Speaker 1 Everything's Everything's borrowed. Yeah, you're touching everything everybody else touches.

Speaker 2 I think there'd be an indoor sport that would be less kind of gross. Like, you know, I'm wearing someone else's gross shoes no more.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 at the time, no one would have accused Brian Kemp of being the sharpest tool in the shed. Now he's proven to be somewhat smart on occasion.

Speaker 1 But at the time, you would have gone, well, that makes a lot of sense for Brian Kemp. But we were doing video.

Speaker 1 We were doing it over video for like the first month and a half. And then we're like, okay, let's just test and

Speaker 1 get together.

Speaker 1 And that just kind of saved us. And

Speaker 1 I can only imagine that for you, like your entire life changes. No more shows.

Speaker 1 We're not doing any more shows. We're not doing any more traveling.
A complete disruption. But then you've got Lewis Black and Ron White to come over and keep you company.
That must be. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then there's like Brian who owns Zaney's here in Nashville.

Speaker 2 Little Dorf. He's out there golfing every day.
Like all my friends, Nate was here. All my good golf buddies are here and friends are here.

Speaker 2 And we all still, nothing really changed except we're outside.

Speaker 1 I mean, but we're out there anyway.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't really, turns out I don't do much inside.

Speaker 1 So, yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, you could still go on these awesome. Then I got every hike that was available to Tennessee that I always wanted to do.
I could drive up to Missouri and hang out in the Ozarks.

Speaker 2 That was, we went viral.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Remember that?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 2 no, I did not partake in that. But that's just because I know everyone's pissing in those pools or drinking.
And I'm not, yeah, that's not about COVID. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's just, that's too many young people and not for me anymore.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 I just feel like the South and the Midwest was a little more unleashed than

Speaker 2 New York.

Speaker 2 Oh my God, New York. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 And how long did it take you to actually go back on the road after?

Speaker 2 Well, as soon as they let us, I wasn't going to do that. Like, let's do a comedy show on Zoom.
I know younger people need the money, so they took the gigs.

Speaker 2 I get it, but I didn't have to do any of that.

Speaker 2 They got, um, but as soon as they said, okay, we're back up and rolling, and then I was like, huh, I'm gonna get my, I'm gonna get my ass down to Zane's and remember my act because that's the problem with me.

Speaker 2 You can't tell me I'm off for a year and expect me to do anything until that 11th, the 11th month.

Speaker 1 I'll go, okay, I gotta get serious. Now I gotta get the muscles going up.

Speaker 2 I'm not gonna do anything in those other months except have fun. Right.

Speaker 1 Just fuck off. And

Speaker 2 yeah, there's an old saying, never give an Irish person enough money. And it's very true.
Don't, like, I have enough. You're Irish.
I don't, I don't need,

Speaker 2 I'll never understand

Speaker 2 the, the people, the Elons, the Dick Cheneys, like, how much money do you have to have? Yeah. Well, when is it enough? When is enough enough? For me, I know it's enough when all the bills are paid.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 2 And then there's a retirement savings. And my brother says I'm good.
Yeah. Then that's enough.

Speaker 1 My grandfather put out, and I've said this a couple times on the show, he was in a nursing home with and he was unable to walk because he had so many broken hips, colon cancer for the second time.

Speaker 1 You know, he was like 98 years old, and he was taking his resume and giving it to the nurses in the nursing home and telling them to please fax it to this phone number.

Speaker 1 He tried to find work until the day that he died because he had a very, he was Irish too, and, you know, of Irish descent, and he had a very similar way of thinking.

Speaker 1 It's that you work or you die, right? Number one. Number two, never give me too much money because, you know, what do they say? They say an addict's worst enemy is time and money.

Speaker 1 I really think that's an Irish person's

Speaker 1 worst enemy is time and money. You don't want either of those things.
Yeah, because

Speaker 2 time, it was always the devil's workshop, according to my grandma. You've got too much free time.
It's a devil's workshop.

Speaker 1 Devil's money.

Speaker 1 Kathleen is on the never-ending tour.

Speaker 1 One of your dates, the tickets go on sale this week. So the tickets are either now available or will be available over the next couple of days for your fall dates.

Speaker 1 Yes. And then there'll be the winter dates and then the spring dates and then the summer dates until Ron comes back over and kills another three or four weeks with you.

Speaker 2 That's right. Until he retired and then he unretired.
So I lost my retirement buddy. He's got to retire again.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And listen, I know we aren't great friends, but next time you, Ron, Lewis, and Nate get together up there to play around at golf,

Speaker 1 I'll carry your bag. I'll carry drive from Atlanta.

Speaker 2 There's really, there's no rules on our golf course. We could go out as a five-sided.
It's no problem. I don't care.

Speaker 1 There's no rules. I love it.

Speaker 1 I love golf and I'll be happy to play around with you. I'll even pay for the fireball.

Speaker 1 I'll put a link to all of Kathleen's stuff inside of the show notes. I could talk to you for another hour and a half, Kathleen.
I hope that you come back because

Speaker 1 I enjoy your comedy and I think you're a great person to talk to. This is a ton of fun.

Speaker 2 Thanks, guys. I had a good time, too.
I watched some of your other ones, too. So I'm just here to say, as a customer viewer person, you should go watch their other ones.

Speaker 2 The one with Fortune, I liked a lot.

Speaker 1 I love Fortune. I love Fortune.
And

Speaker 2 I watch

Speaker 2 a lot of Lewis's, but I just feel like he's just in my living room.

Speaker 1 So I'm like, okay,

Speaker 1 he's, yeah. I feel the same way about my own.

Speaker 2 It's a good podcast.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Congratulations.
Your podcast is great, too. Podcast, which,

Speaker 1 and can I just share one thing with you, Kathleen? Please don't take any offense to this.

Speaker 1 Put a microphone on your producer.

Speaker 2 No, they don't. No.
No, okay.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 she says no.

Speaker 2 She says no. I have to respect that.

Speaker 1 Oh, she says no. Yeah.
She doesn't want it. I can't, but I want to hear what she has to say, and I can't hear her.

Speaker 2 She doesn't want it. She wants no part of

Speaker 2 like, so I'll do the comic trick. I repeat what she says.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 But, but I can't make another adult. And that was my tech guru during

Speaker 2 COVID when I started the podcast. So I

Speaker 2 can't fire paddles.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, no, don't fire her.

Speaker 1 I just, I was listening to, or watching it actually on YouTube this morning, and I was like, I can't hear what she's saying. But you do repeat a lot of the stuff that she says.

Speaker 2 I try to repeat it. I take no offense to the, believe me, I've heard it before through the team email and stuff.
And they're like, give her a microphone.

Speaker 1 I'm like, I can't make adults do what they don't want to do.

Speaker 2 Well, and then I just say it's free, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah. If you hate it.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
That's what we've said to you. That's what we've said, too.

Speaker 8 Sorry we've offended.

Speaker 1 It's not for everyone. We've had a million tag lines.

Speaker 1 And we'll have a new one after this, too. So, Kathleen Madigan, you're fantastic.
Thanks. And you're welcome back anytime.
And we hope you do come back. Bye.
All right. I'll see you in Atlanta.

Speaker 1 Bye. Bye.

Speaker 1 Let me do something Brian has never done. Be brief.

Speaker 9 Follow us on Instagram at The Commercial Break. Text or call us 212-433-3TCB.
That's 212-433-3822. Visit our website, tcbpodcast.com, for all the audio, video, and your free sticker.

Speaker 9 Then watch all the videos at youtube.com slash thecommercial break. And finally, share the show.
It's the best gift you could give a few aging podcasters. See, Brian?

Speaker 1 That really wasn't that difficult now, was it?

Speaker 9 You're welcome.

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Speaker 1 Okay, Kathleen Madigan.

Speaker 6 What a delight she was. That's

Speaker 1 fun. Yeah.
I I mean, we say this a lot, but it is true. I mean, I don't want to just sound repetitive.
But it is true. But it is fun talking to these people because, you know,

Speaker 1 they're human beings, but they don't have to be interesting and fun to talk to. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 If I went to a bar tomorrow and I talked to 20 people, I think probably 10 of them at least, I would be like, eh, okay, all right, whatever.

Speaker 1 I don't wish to have another conversation with them. And then five of them would be kind of interesting and then five of them you would want to follow up with.
You'd be like, those are cool people.

Speaker 1 You know, I want to hang out with them. I'd think 90% of the guests that we've had on the commercial break are people you want to hang out with against them.

Speaker 1 They probably aren't saying the same thing about us, but at least, at least, we have a good impression. At least from our perspective, it was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 And Kathleen was, and I swear to God, that is like my dream date. Get Nate Bargazzi, Lewis Black, Ron White, Kathleen Madigan, and a bottle of fireball, and let's go play 18.
Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 And fish. Yeah.
Yeah. And go see fish.
Let's all go see fish. That's what it is.

Speaker 6 Well, we also have a new tagline.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's it.

Speaker 6 You're going to hear a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 You're going to hear a lot of stuff. Most of it's not valuable.

Speaker 1 Not anything of real value. No value in this.
Yeah, there's no value. Fun stuff.
We're not Joe Rogan.

Speaker 1 We're not informing you about how Doge is saving you money. That's not our lot in life.
Ah, good old Joe. I wanted to really ask her about her thoughts on.
Well, never mind.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to get into it. I wanted to ask her her thoughts on something, but I refrained.
Maybe conversation number two. I'll ask her about

Speaker 1 some of the quote-unquote comedians that are out there right now doing their thing. Anyway, she's got PubCast, which is her, I think it's weekly podcast.

Speaker 1 You can find that wherever you're listening to this. You can go on the free Odyssey app.
Of course, all of the podcasts are free. You can download that.

Speaker 1 You can also get the commercial break there and a lot of other great podcasts where that's our home.

Speaker 1 But Kathleen's podcast is available everywhere you're listening to this podcast, Apple, Spotify, Google. And then, of course, tickets to her fall tour are now on sale at kathleenmadigan.com.

Speaker 1 I will put that link in the show notes for you.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Lincoln Bio, Lincoln Bio. Lincoln Bio, Link and Bio.
And yeah, of course, there's a special right around the corner, but we can't talk about it.

Speaker 1 Keep an eye out for Kathleen's new special sometime later on this year, I would imagine. She's working on it.
She's working on it. As are we.
We're working on it too. All right.
Well,

Speaker 1 what else is there to say?

Speaker 2 She's great.

Speaker 2 It was so easy and

Speaker 9 just relatable.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 She's my Aunt Sandy.

Speaker 1 Well, without the gay part. I mean, I don't know if she's gay and who gives a shit anyway.
It doesn't really matter. Anyway, it doesn't really matter.
But I'm saying Aunt Sandy is Kathleen.

Speaker 1 Kathleen is Aunt Sandy.

Speaker 1 They both have the exact same sense of humor. It's so familiar and relatable to me.
That's so good. Yeah.
I wish Aunt Sandy was still here. I know.
I wish she could come on the phone and

Speaker 1 talk. Because you would be like, she's

Speaker 1 a laugh a minute. Yeah.
She made and lost hundreds of millions of dollars in her life. Hundreds of millions of dollars.

Speaker 1 Not as much as the cat lady. Not as much as the cat lady who lost billions of dollars.

Speaker 1 Well, Aunt Sandy lost it for a different reason, but I won't get into all the family drama.

Speaker 1 But I will just share this: that Aunt Sandy, for one of our birthdays, came to our house in Chicago, picked Kevin and I up, took us to Toys R Us, gave us each a cart, and said, go for it.

Speaker 1 Can you imagine? Of course. Best day of my life.
Oh, God. I saw G.I.
Joe's left and right, a Teddy Ruxpin. Crazy.
I think I got a speaking spell. I think I even got a Cabbage Patch doll,

Speaker 1 which my mom, like, you know, went to war over to get us for Christmas. And then Aunt Sandy comes and we just throw it in the basket.
Yeah. Swooped in.
Mom got us one Cabbage Patch doll.

Speaker 1 I should be that aunt.

Speaker 6 I think I'm going to be that aunt.

Speaker 1 You should be that aunt. You're going to need a different job, but you can be that aunt.
Right. You're going to need a different line of work.

Speaker 1 Or at least not this podcast. Anyway, Anyway, all right.
212-433-3TCB. 212-433-3822.
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Speaker 1 Okay, Chrissy, I guess that's all I can do for now. I think so.
But I'll tell you that I love you. I love you.
Best to you.

Speaker 1 And best to you out there in the podcast universe. Until next time, Kirstie and I will say, we do say, and we must say.

Speaker 1 Goodbye.

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