After the Cut | Correspondents 2024 - Part 2

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 3 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 What advice do I tell my child?

Speaker 3 He's three and a half, so I keep him away from all news.

Speaker 3 I truly do.

Speaker 3 And even Paw Patrol, which is just teaching him, indoctrinating, a love of police and authority.

Speaker 3 So that's a problem as well. You see it's deep in.

Speaker 3 You know, it is

Speaker 3 to me,

Speaker 3 I think exposure is the first step.

Speaker 3 Expose yourself to kids. Is that what I'm telling you?

Speaker 3 I mean, it comes from meeting other people, talking to other people, and staying curious enough to understand where they come from.

Speaker 3 I think I've talked about this a little bit before, but when I go out in the road and I talk to people

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 People have no sense of there being a gray area or being unsure of how something should play out.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And so I think my job as 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.

Speaker 3 Feed and water this child.

Speaker 3 But I think

Speaker 3 I need to instill and maintain a sense of curiosity, a sense of confidence to walk into the world,

Speaker 3 and a sense of finding virtue in uncertainty as opposed to certainty. And then from there, he needs to walk his own path.

Speaker 3 But that's simply because I can't afford it past 18, you know?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 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 kind of a lot of like, you know, mental capacity to kind of pick it apart.

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 3 I will say this. The process of going into the field is

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And we sort of have almost debate prep among producers and writers here where we sit down in a room and we're like, where do you see holes in these arguments?

Speaker 3 We start to find the humor in those holes, the obvious hypocrisy in those arguments.

Speaker 3 And 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And the big thing about improv is when you get out there, you let it all go. And you let go of your preconceived notions and you listen and you listen hard.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 They come from that person person saying something unique and me being open enough to actually hear it and to try to spin it.

Speaker 3 So I think it's a skill set that you use in improvisation, it's a skill set that you use in being a good husband. And it's basically like,

Speaker 3 get out of your head and listen to what that person's saying.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 I will say,

Speaker 3 my wife might say that that is, it's a double-edged sword, if you will.

Speaker 2 You look at other comedians as like role models like Robin Williams or George Carlin or any like yeah role models uh I don't know about role models uh but it uh

Speaker 2 comedy inspirations yeah

Speaker 2 yeah yeah

Speaker 2 I was 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

Speaker 2 and 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 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

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 But then I thought like, oh, if I can live with being catfish, I can't live with if it was was actually Bill Brett. And I said, f off.
So I replied, like, oh, hey, thank you. I'm a huge fan of yours.

Speaker 2 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 hopefully, one day, if I ever get to go to America, I'll see you in the circuit.

Speaker 2 And then he said, hey, I'm touring Australia next year.

Speaker 2 I'd love for you to be on the show.

Speaker 2 Open for me. And I was like, yeah, whatever, this f ⁇ ing truck.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's a catfish. It's clearly a catfish.
And so I was like, whatever and then um I

Speaker 2 didn't think too much about it I kept kind of you know doing my thing and then a year later hey he I get this email to go to the theater and the whole time I'm like I'm gonna get murdered you know this is not gonna and I show up until I was in Dobo's green room and he was like ah this will be on the show man that clip was super fun I saw you on the plane and

Speaker 2 and he became a a friend and a mentor and he

Speaker 2 executive produces my comedy specials now. And it's a real crazy rare story of meeting your heroes and them being really cool.

Speaker 2 That's about it.

Speaker 2 After all your years, you had the issue of what is the legacy you want to leave to your audience every night?

Speaker 3 The legacy I want to leave to my audience?

Speaker 3 Oh my.

Speaker 3 I gotta 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.

Speaker 3 I'll tell you this, though.

Speaker 3 Perhaps

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 We were the same height. It was perfect.

Speaker 3 In comes Jon Stewart, and he's so insightful, thoughtful, and at college was like, oh, he makes the news

Speaker 3 compelling. I understand that he's not kowtowing to one side.
He's just calling out bullshit. And I like this guy.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 don't be afraid to challenge bullshit

Speaker 3 and always look somewhere for more. And I think like that that that thirst and that hunger to know more and I think that

Speaker 3 that basic idea of call out bullshit where you see it, I think it's sort of built into the institutional legacy of the show. And so that is what I'm most proud of.

Speaker 3 What are your thoughts on the tennis and challengers?

Speaker 4 Oh, great.

Speaker 4 You have an opinion on this.

Speaker 4 You mean the movie challengers.

Speaker 1 I've talked 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.

Speaker 1 The two tennis players are hot. The two men they chose,

Speaker 1 not up to par. I want like, I want big Italians or like Serbian dudes.
Like, I don't want these like twinky British guys. And then.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 4 You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And when he was a coach, he was just a zaddie in the stands. It was, I mean, Tommy Haas, oh, these men are beautiful.

Speaker 1 I lost track.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 2 I heard the biggest game. Challenge or challenge.

Speaker 2 The biggest issue I thought was the grips, right?

Speaker 3 Their grips are off.

Speaker 1 The grip was so off. And I'm fine with her having a grip that's off.

Speaker 1 But if you're going to say the greatest tennis player who ever played tennis, and just put the grip, it's like if a football player was like holding it from the back of the football.

Speaker 2 It's like if I was like, hey, so this water is really delicious.

Speaker 2 So when we say grip, gripping in the way they were holding the rack.

Speaker 1 Also show a threesome.

Speaker 4 Like show it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I also never watched the movie.

Speaker 6 Perfect.

Speaker 6 I just was wondering if you were nervous to do the show in front of your parents.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 3 That's my fam.

Speaker 3 I got my parents, my sister, my brother, my aunt, my uncle, my other uncle up there.

Speaker 3 Am I nervous? No, I'm excited to do it in front of my family.

Speaker 3 I will say this.

Speaker 3 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 any could come to.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 a big part of why I am here is because I got into improv in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Kalamazoo College. And

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 40-somethings, sorry.

Speaker 3 My parents would come and they would support me. And I was a math major at the time, and I was spending my time doing improv and then traveling to the Improv Olympic here in Chicago.

Speaker 3 And then I came to Chicago and I found another family at places like the Improv Olympic. I think Sharna Helpern is here tonight as well.
There she is.

Speaker 3 Founder of the Improv Olympic, gosh darn long-form improvisation, Sharna Helpern, right there.

Speaker 3 She gave me a space to fail and to succeed and to fail and fail and fail again.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 He was a substitute teacher at Chicago Public Schools, making

Speaker 3 a little bit of money during the day, not a lot.

Speaker 3 And my parents wouldn't judge it. They would just support it.
They would love it. And I look back on that.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 when I look back on it, frankly, I think it's irresponsible.

Speaker 3 Not a smart move to let your child just do improv in Chicago for a decade getting paid peanuts. But I loved it.

Speaker 3 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 liked to do, supported me when I went to New York and got to try out for fun things like this.

Speaker 3 And then a long

Speaker 3 17 years later, no, a long

Speaker 3 24 years later, I get to come to the Athena 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.

Speaker 3 So thank you.

Speaker 3 Truly, thank you.

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