After the Cut | Correspondents 2024 - Part 2

We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill.

PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one.

That's terrifying.

That's fair.

Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E.

We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs down.

I would love to see that.

We're on our way.

I hope so.

PG&E electricity rates are now lower than they were last year.

Hear what other customers have to say and what PG&E is doing about it at pge.com or head in store for more deals. That feeling of owning your first Mercedes-Benz is hard to believe, but it's real.
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Yes. Hey, so as someone who's raising a kid of your own what advice do you have for young people when making well-informed political decisions oh my gosh what advice do i tell my child he's three and a half so i keep him away from all news.
I truly do. And even Paw Patrol, which is

just teaching him, indoctrinating the love of police and authority. So that's a problem as

well. You see it seep in.
You know, it is, to me, I think exposure is the first step.

Expose yourself to kids. Is that what I'm telling you? I mean, it comes from meeting other people, talking to other people, and staying curious enough to understand where they come from.
I think I've talked about this a little bit before, but when I go out in the road and I talk to people at rallies and it's rallies, MAGA rallies, and even rallies on the left as well, I think the thing that I find least appealing is certainty. People have no sense of there being a gray area or being unsure of how something should play out.
And it doesn't mean you shouldn't be strong in your convictions,

but I think you need to leave space to be wrong and to be curious.

And so I think with a total amount

of certainty and a lack of uncertainty

comes a lack of curiosity,

in which case we just become these people

lost in those silos.

And so I think my job

as a dad, how I see it

in terms of like, what am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to feed and water it, right? I think I got that. Feed and water this child.
But I think I need to instill and maintain a sense of curiosity, a sense of confidence to walk into the world, and a sense of finding virtue in uncertainty as opposed to certainty. And then from there, he needs to walk his own path.
But that's simply because I can't afford it past 18, you know? Yeah. So when you're going to rallies and talking to people, you're kind of picking apart their answers to kind of send it right back to them really quickly, and that takes a lot of wit and and kind of a lot of like, you know, mental capacity to kind of pick it apart.
So what are the things that you're thinking of when you're hearing their answers that you want to pull out or draw from? I will say this. The process of going into the field is where so many talented people here at The Daily Show and a day or two before we go out into the field we're watching the news.
We're having the same conversations you're probably having at home about people are talking about this. I hear the arguments on the right are this.
I see hypocrisies here. And we sort of have almost debate prep among producers and writers here where we sit down in a room.
We're like, where do you see holes in these arguments? We start to find the humor in those holes, the obvious hypocrisy in those arguments. So when we go out there, we've kind of talked through, like, where we see these holes that you could sometimes drive a f***ing pickup truck through.
But then I'm an improviser. That's where I came from.
I'm not a stand-up. I spent 15 years doing improv in Chicago and New York.
And the big thing about improv is when you get out there, you let it all go. And you go of your preconceived notions and you listen and you listen hard.
And so in those moments, I have a great team behind me that we've done the prep work. And then you just, you try to engage and be present because the things that you find, the moments of humor or the moments of revelation of a point of view that you haven't heard before, but you see somebody now spouting this at me.
They come from that person feeling comfortable in the conversation with me. They come from that person saying something unique and me being open enough to actually hear it and to try to spin it.
So I think it's a skill set that you use in improvisation. It's a skill set that you use of being a good husband.
And it's basically like, get out of your head and listen to what that person's saying. I'll tell you this though, a skill set that doesn't help being a good husband is finding that weird thing they say and try to use it against them.
Now that, I will say, my wife might say that that is, it's a double-edged sword, if you will. You looked at other comedians as like role models like Robin don't know about role models, but comedy inspirations.
Yeah, yeah. I always thought Bill Burr was great, and I got to meet him.
He messaged me on Facebook one day when I was in Australia, and his profile picture was a car. And so I didn't believe it was him when he messaged me.
I was like, I'm getting catfished right now by Bill Burr. And he was like, hey, I saw your clip on a plane and you were really funny and hope we can work together.
And it sounded so catfishy. I was like, yeah, whatever truck, right? And, but then I thought like, oh, if I can live with being catfish, I can't live with if it was actually Bill Burr and I said, fuck off.
So I replied like, oh, hey, thanks. I'm a huge fan of yours.
That's high praise coming from you. I live in Australia, so I don't think we'll ever get a chance to work together, but, you know, hopefully one day if I ever get to go to America, I'll see you in the circuit.
And then he said, hey, I'm touring Australia next year. Love for you to be on the show.
Open for me. And I was like, ah, whatever, this truck, yeah.
It's a catfish, it's clearly a catfish. And so I was like, whatever.
And then I didn't think too much about it. I kept kind of doing my thing.
And then a year later, hey, I get this email to go to the theater. And the whole time I'm like, I'm gonna get murdered.
You know, this not gonna, and I show up until I was in Bill Burr's Burr's green room and he was like, this will be on the show, man. That clip was super fun.
I saw you on a plane. And he became a friend and a mentor and he executive produces my comedy specials now.
And it's a real crazy, rare story of meeting your heroes and them being really cool in the end.

Yeah, so Bill Burr and that's about it. After all your years here at the show, what is the legacy you want to leave to your audience every night? The legacy I want to leave to my audience?

Oh, my.

I got to tell you, I haven't been here long enough for that.

Give me some time to accrue some legacy and then we'll move on.

I will tell you this, though.

Perhaps I was a fan of The Daily Show before I was a worker at The Daily Show. I used to watch it in college.
It was one of my first forays into being interested in news. And in fact, I watched it before that.
I watched Craig Kilbourne host the show when I was in high school. And I loved it.
I thought it was so funny. I love Craig Kilbourne.
He looked great in a suit. We were the same height.
It was perfect. In comes Jon Stewart.
And he's so insightful, thoughtful, and at college, it was like, oh, he makes the news compelling. I understand that he's not kowtowing to one side, he's just calling out bullshit, and I like this guy.
And I was a fan before ever getting a chance to ever audition and be a part of the show. And so the legacy that it left in me was like, be interested.
Don't be afraid to challenge bullshit and always look somewhere for more. And I think like that, that thirst and that hunger to know more.
And I think that that basic idea of call out bullshit where you see it, I think it's sort of built into the institutional legacy of this show. And so that is what I'm most proud of.
We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill. PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one.
That's terrifying. That's fair.
Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E. We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs down.
I would love to see that. We're on our way.
I hope so. PG&E electricity rates are now lower than they were last year.
Hear what other customers have to say and what PG&E is doing about it at pge.com slash open dash lines. At Valley Strong Credit Union, we know that local businesses are the backbone of the Central Valley.
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Learn how our cash management services can support your business at valleystrong.com. What are your thoughts on the tennis and challengers? Oh, great.
You have an opinion on this. You mean the movie challengers? I talk so much shit about this movie.
And I support women in the arts. Zendaya is like my favorite.
I love that they put a woman in sports. It's cool.
I have a lot of problems with it. The two tennis players are hot.
The two men they chose. Thank you.
Not up to par. I want like, I want big Italians or like Serbian dudes.
Like I don't want these like Twinkie British guys. And then.
Remember when Mark Filipustis would practice with his shirt off? I mean, I'm not even gay, and I was getting hard for that guy. You know what I mean? And when he was a coach, he was just a zaddy in the stands.
It was, I mean, Tommy Haas. Oh, these men are beautiful.
I lost track. But, um...
The challenge is, like, the biggest issue, I thought, was the grips, right? The grips are off. The grip was so off.
And I'm fine with her having a grip that's off. But if you're going to say the greatest tennis player who ever played tennis, just put the grip.
It's like if a football player was holding it from the back of the football and throwing. It's like if I was like, hey, so this water is really delicious.
So when we say grip, I mean the way they were holding the racket. Also show a threesome.
Yeah.

Like show it.

Yeah.

I also never watched the movie. Perfect.
I was wondering if you were nervous to do the show in front of your parents. Yes.
That's my fam. I got my parents, my sister, my brother, my aunt, my uncle, my other uncle up there.
Am I nervous? No, I'm f***ing excited to do it in front of my family. I will say this.
As cool as it is that my parents are here, it is not surprising. Because they came to every gosh darn show I've done and then it can come true.
And a big part of why I am here is because I got into improv at Kalamazoo, Michigan.amazoo college and i i got on the improv team monkapult and we did shows in a little black box theater for 95 college students and two 50 somethings 40 something sorry uh my parents would come and they would support me and i was i was a major at the time, and I was spending my time doing improv and then traveling to the Improv Olympic here in Chicago. And then I came to Chicago and I found another family at places like the Improv Olympic.
I think Sharna Halpern is here tonight as well. There she is.
Founder of the ImprovOlympic, gosh darn long-form improvisation, Sharna Halpern right there. She gave me a space to fail and to succeed and to fail and fail and fail again.
And more often than not,

my parents would hop in the car and they would drive

over to Chicago and they would watch

these shows at weird times

with their son who wasn't making any money.

He was a substitute teacher at

Chicago Public Schools making

a little bit of money during

the day. Not a lot.

And my parents wouldn't judge it. They would just

support it. They would love it.
And I look back on that. And when I look back on it, frankly, I think it's irresponsible.
Not a smart move to let your child just do improv in Chicago for a decade getting paid peanuts.

But I loved it.

She let me find, my family let me find my people, the things that I loved. Be surrounded by people who were interested in the things that I loved and the things I like to do.
Supported me when I went to New York and got to try out for fun things like this. And then a long 17 years later, no, a long 24 years later, I get to come to the At The Damned Theater where I used to do improv for the Chicago Improv Festival.
And I get to do a great show on The Daily Show with you guys. So thank you.
Truly thank you. Explore more shows from The Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts.
Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central. And stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+.
Paramount Podcasts. We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill.
PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one. That's terrifying.
That's fair. Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E.
We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs down. I would love to see that.
We're on our way. I hope so.
PG&E electricity rates are now lower than they were last year.

Hear what other customers have to say and what PG&E is doing about it at pge.com slash open dash lines.