Finding Meaning in a System Built to Fracture You with Josh Johnson

Speaker 1 Put your hand together for Josh! Josh!

Speaker 1 The newest correspondent, he's an Emmy winner. He's got millions of followers online.
Wired magazine called him the funniest guy on the internet, and that's a big place.

Speaker 1 Josh is putting out a weekly special every single Tuesday on his YouTube channel. I'm gonna have to sit there listening, watching the Super Bowl halftime show to Spanish.

Speaker 1 I'm gonna have to sit there with my guacamole and my chips in my lap, listening to Spanish.

Speaker 1 His channel has gotten over 350 million views, and all this success has actually landed him a hosting spot on The Daily Show.

Speaker 1 He has a dream that one day he will not be judged by the content of the Epstein Files. I can't stress enough how much I'm enjoying what I'm doing and like how obsessed I am with comedy in general.

Speaker 1 This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

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Speaker 1 Do you remember you had a gag about that, Eugene, back in the day?

Speaker 2 About Dexter?

Speaker 1 There was a joke. What are you looking at?

Speaker 1 What were you doing? I'm looking at something.

Speaker 1 Do you remember there was a joke you... I feel like it was you.
You had a joke about how

Speaker 1 it was something about like attempted murder. Yeah.
Ah, man. Tell me more.
Oh man. What was it?

Speaker 1 I feel like the premise was something to the effect of you should get like more of a punishment for attempted murder than murder. Because like attempted, like you're not good at what you did.

Speaker 1 It wasn't you? No. Maybe it was me then.

Speaker 1 That's so funny. Does that ever happen to you?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I've definitely been like, this came to me too easy. I wonder, like, is it somebody? And then I look back at my notebook and I wrote it and then forgot about it.
Yeah, sometimes I think it's.

Speaker 1 Are you sure? Yeah. Hmm.
I'm going to go look and see if I ever. This logic is solid, though.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because, like, if somebody hits you, if somebody try to hit you at your eye, they hit you above your eye. You get more bad.
Because you're like, you tried to hit me in my eye.

Speaker 2 My one was like, if we could figure out a way to make a body disappear, more murders would happen. Because it seems like a body, once someone is dead,

Speaker 2 that thing becomes very famous.

Speaker 1 Oh, so if we just like, if it just evaporated, yes.

Speaker 2 But now a body is very hard to disappear.

Speaker 1 Huh.

Speaker 2 If people roll it in carpets, put it in drums, pour acid over it, put it in dustbins to get rid of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. People will make the whole mess bigger or they'll make the thing they got to get rid of bigger.
Because you put, if you put a body in an oil drum, that's a bigger thing you've got to put.

Speaker 2 Oh, you got a problem.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And it becomes heavier.

Speaker 1 I've never thought of it like that. No, my squat is already bad.
So then just. Because you've added oil drum.

Speaker 1 Because you also don't think, look, if you commit a crime of passion, you don't factor in you're going to be tired. So then now you've killed somebody.
I think first is regret.

Speaker 1 Hopefully, if you're not like a sociopath, but even sociopaths only have so much muscle. So then now you're like, all right, I got to move the body.

Speaker 1 And it's like trying to move a body, I imagine, if you've ever caught a person, do you know what I mean? Like if you've ever like tried to pick someone up. Especially dead weights.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's a reason they call it that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's reasons why people wake their partners up from the couch, yeah, like

Speaker 1 time to go now. Yo, gotta go sleep now, yeah,

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 There are people that think they could pick people up because you picked someone who was excited up for sex.

Speaker 1 If there was a crime that you had to commit, what crime would you trust yourself best to commit?

Speaker 1 Uh,

Speaker 1 this feels like it'll end up in a death position. Uh, wire fraud, maybe

Speaker 2 look Look into that camera.

Speaker 1 Say things to that camera too, Jeff.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 here's the thing about wire fraud. Here's the thing about wire fraud.
Everybody already does it by accident. Wait, what is wire fraud again? In America?

Speaker 1 Like, there's like, to me, my understanding of like wire fraud is like misrepresenting a transaction. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I'm pretty positive that that's most of Venmo.

Speaker 1 Like, like, most of Venmo. You say, like, what your payment was.
Yeah. And it's like, you're lying.

Speaker 1 Do you write the real thing?

Speaker 1 I try to write the real thing so I remember the real thing.

Speaker 1 I've had to pay people before for like a service. Like I'll pay someone and it'll be like a studio, like a music studio.
And so I'll just say studio time. I don't say sandwich.
That's boring.

Speaker 1 You got to say sandwich, Josh. That's what makes Venmo fun.

Speaker 2 What crime would you perform?

Speaker 1 Is when you who me? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I feel like crime is a performance. If I had to pick planned, there's

Speaker 1 crap. If I should pick what I think I would be best at, if it was committing a crime,

Speaker 1 I think I've always thought I'd be like a good getaway driver.

Speaker 1 That's what I would pick. So like aiding and abetting would be

Speaker 1 getting away. Like the driver.
I'll just be the driver. We drive in.

Speaker 1 You know, like the transporter, those kinds of things? Yeah, I'm like, I think I would do that.

Speaker 1 I think I would be really good.

Speaker 1 I'm just going off of the court term. Like, like, I think you'd be like aiding and abetting a heist, like a robbery.
Wouldn't you just be part of it if you're the driver?

Speaker 1 Is that what they give you less of a sentence?

Speaker 1 i'm positive they give you less of a sentence because sometimes there are people who have the plausible deniability of like especially if you're if you're just like like criminals and we we aren't boys so then i get pulled in to do this thing i can be like hey he put a gun in my head and said drive i was just chilling but if there's four people that go we did not you could also just say like you were just driving these people

Speaker 1 why yeah yeah

Speaker 1 I'm a, it's an Uber. It's a very, I wonder if you could get away with that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I wonder if you could be an Uber driver who's planning to rob a bank with your crew.

Speaker 1 You

Speaker 1 wait outside a place. They jump in.
You run. And then if they catch you, no, but

Speaker 1 you go like, I thought it was my fare. Yeah.
I wonder if that would.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't want you. I would get you excused from my jury.
That's what I would do. That is also a thing that I'm saying.
You're a skeptical person here. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like people, people have done a crime and then gotten an Uber. And yeah.
And the Uber driver was like, guys,

Speaker 1 I don't know this person at all. But why did he give you five stars?

Speaker 1 Nobody gives five stars. What crime would you commit?

Speaker 2 I think already being a comedian, you're committing the biggest crime of them all.

Speaker 1 Damn. By doing what?

Speaker 2 Making them believe that what you say is real. You've thought about this.

Speaker 1 When did that start, by the way?

Speaker 2 What? Stand up?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. No, no, no.

Speaker 1 No, I'm saying, like, when did that start?

Speaker 2 Like, you know, podcasting to radio presenters is a crime. It shouldn't exist.
Okay. Yeah, because they're thinking, this is, I have a boss.
I got voice training. I read.

Speaker 2 And then next thing you know, you know what the thing is? Which crime would you

Speaker 2 go? You know, me, I work for a living. So already this in another planet, alternate universe, the crime.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but what I'm going back to is the stand-up thing. Yeah.
When did that start?

Speaker 1 I don't know how, how long have you been doing stand-up, Eugene?

Speaker 2 Sure, maybe Labo, ma'am, drink 50 years.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Almost 17. 17 years, Josh.

Speaker 1 I am at

Speaker 1 almost 13. 13 years.
Yeah. So same.
17, 17, 17, maybe 18. No, we still at the same time.
So whatever your number is, must be my number. But

Speaker 1 I remember a time when like comedy was the thing that wasn't real

Speaker 1 and you would say it on stage.

Speaker 1 And then one day comedy was the thing that was real

Speaker 1 that even if it wasn't real. Does it make sense? Yeah.
I feel like some of that happened with like prior because he was telling us his real life. You think, oh, with Richard Pryor.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think that he was telling us his real life and he was like giving us like cultural takes off of it in a way that hadn't, it had been very danger field up until that point. It had been very like.

Speaker 1 I have a shtick or here's like my character on stage.

Speaker 1 Or even if I am actually married, I'm not talking about my wife. I'm talking about the idea of a wife.
And Richard Pryor was like, no, this is, this is what I do when I'm not on stage.

Speaker 1 This is where I come from. This is also how I actually feel.
When you see me

Speaker 1 in the street and like something racist happens, this is how I feel about it.

Speaker 1 So then everything with Richard Pryor, even if he was embellishing now, he'd literally have to talk about like a person flying for you to not think he wasn't talking about.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the fucking dog ghoul. Because he must have.

Speaker 1 He started talking about like his life. Like that was, that was him.
And I think even if people did it, you know, before him, he was one of the first people to get popular doing it.

Speaker 1 So he gets kind of like a credit for doing it at such a high level. Do you remember when your comedy became more about the real?

Speaker 1 Because I, because I, I, I've, let me think of when I first saw your comedy. First time I saw Josh Johnson's comedy, I think it was around just before when you joined the daily show.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you,

Speaker 1 you weren't, you weren't surreal, but you, you were definitely doing stuff that wasn't like real, real. Yeah, I was like very silly.
And, oh, thank good you saw, oh,

Speaker 1 man

Speaker 1 this man saw me just in time if you had seen me

Speaker 1 off if you had seen me two weeks before we wouldn't we didn't even know each other like that

Speaker 1 because i was like you know you start out and you're like a version of yourself but you're like you're such a baby in the things that you like doing and you're such a baby in like what you what you even know works for you so now if you gave me like 10 topics and you told me to write 10 jokes off of them or if you asked me if they relate to 10 stories in my life i could find that and I could find how that relates to an audience.

Speaker 1 If you did it right before you met me, maybe the day before you met me, I'd be like, ah,

Speaker 1 ooh,

Speaker 1 I'm just keep working at the grocery store because this seems too difficult. I don't know, man.
I feel like, maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like you've always been a.

Speaker 1 I can't imagine you not being, not this version of comedian, but not this person, this version of Josh. Like,

Speaker 1 I'm yet to meet a good comedian

Speaker 1 who I don't think I could meet as themselves as a child.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's that's interesting. That's that's very interesting.
Like, I've never heard of that. Like, what was little Josh like? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was, you know, what it is now, to your point, is that I feel like I

Speaker 1 it took me, if you want to talk about like a journey, it took me up until now to find the place in the jigsaw where I fit in.

Speaker 1 So it's like I've changed the way that people change from kid to adult, but I haven't changed fully. And so, like, it was me not fitting for for the entirety of my life up until

Speaker 1 two years ago.

Speaker 1 And now, I like everything that everything I know to do that's like true to me makes sense now, as opposed to, like, I was a version of, oh, I, cause it, ooh, the story I told you when I was in when I was in college, I went to like my first bar.

Speaker 1 And I was like, ooh, y'all, this markup bad. Y'all know if we just buy the bottle at the store, we could have a, we could, y'all could get so much more drinks easy.

Speaker 1 And so so i'm not even drinking and i'm ruining everybody's time because i'm like guys no y'all saw at the store where this bottle was 13 but the cocktail 13 so like

Speaker 1 this is crazy right and then everyone's just holding their drink like yeah

Speaker 1 yeah and i now i know i now i know where to do that And it's like, oh yeah, now you got

Speaker 1 now I've aimed it to where it's like, I'm not doing it all the time to everyone, to everything.

Speaker 1 And I've aimed it at like, okay, this is the thing you save for stage and not even every stage.

Speaker 1 Cause when you do a comedy club, there'll also be people being like, oh yeah, they are making me buy two drinks at an insane market. This is what you save for like, you're doing an outdoor event.

Speaker 1 You're doing a state festival. It's like your inside voice and stage voice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's essentially what it is.
100%.

Speaker 2 Do you apply the same logic when you think of maybe we see a comedian or an actor? Then you go, you know, your uncle tells the same stories and you pay him nothing.

Speaker 1 You mean like about the funniest view?

Speaker 2 You added the mock-up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, I used to think that. And then I started to understand, at least for me, the difference between being a comedian and being a funny person.

Speaker 1 So I often tell people, I'm, and I mean this genuinely, I'm not the funniest person I have known in my life ever, ever, ever. Like by far, by far, by far.

Speaker 1 There are too many people in my world where I go. You're yourself, man.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Yuji. I've seen you.
You have moments.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much, Yuji.

Speaker 2 When you put on the person boots.

Speaker 1 Man, this is why you got to have good friends. Thank you, man.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 When when you're also in your insecure moments i think you're the funniest thank you so much how's my afro today oh man that's what that act that actually wasn't a joke but okay thank you

Speaker 1 actually that wasn't while we're on the topic of the afro one thing i'm very jealous about with you is that because this is my thing look look just between us right yeah i was doing i'm young i was i was doing yeah

Speaker 1 i was like i was like doing i was doing an afro for a long time and what i was doing was like not correct like it was it was like falling off of my head a little bit because it was getting so big that the right side was bigger than the left side.

Speaker 1 And it was just it was my mom would tell me I looked like a spaceship, right?

Speaker 1 And then and then Trevor goes all natural. You know how bad your hair has to be for your mom to roast it because moms are the last people to ever see anything wrong about you in life.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And your mom was like, hey, what's going on, spaceship boy? What's up if the battle star hasn't arrived?

Speaker 1 I would go home and my mom would ask me what the plan was

Speaker 1 wait okay so i remember i remember this afro yeah yeah but what was the so look at the space when when you when when you uh started growing out your hair but you had like a plan you were like oh okay i'm gonna grow it out and you you had you were like reasonable about it that was what like really clued me into what i was doing no no no no no i think you're being kind i never i never because remember where it started COVID was like the real the real kickoff, right?

Speaker 1 That's the jump off. That's when my hair starts growing again.

Speaker 1 Up until then, I was like, you got to cut your hair, got to cut your hair, got to cut your hair, got to cut your hair.

Speaker 1 For work, yeah, for work, and for school, and for like everyone tells you, cut your hair, cut your hair, cut your hair.

Speaker 1 There's a certain way to look, cut your hair, cut your hair, cut your hair, cut your hair. COVID comes, can't cut your hair, can't cut your hair, can't cut your hair, cut, cut your hair.

Speaker 1 Then we're like deep into the pandemic. No one's cut their hair.
Then

Speaker 1 restrictions started like calming down a little bit. People were like, all right, maybe you can go to a barber.
Maybe you can. But I was like, I don't know, man.
Don't want to sit in a chair.

Speaker 1 And then people are coughing on me. And now I'm in.
I was like, I don't want to risk it for a haircut.

Speaker 1 There's no haircut in my world that is worth dying for. Okay, okay.
This is how you can tell somebody has a good face. Because they're like, there's no haircut.

Speaker 1 Worth dying for. No, no, no.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. Worth dying for.
With their people.

Speaker 1 Josh is like, some of you should die. No, no, I'm just saying that, like, this is a person who's put together where it's like, oh, it's just hair.

Speaker 1 There are some people that are hanging on by a thread who are like, my hair,

Speaker 1 my suit got a bit, you know, me, because they just know they're working with less. I hear you.
But what I'm saying is,

Speaker 1 this was death we were talking about. Remember this? This is death.
Yeah. No, I'm with you.
You're going to booty calls, my man. Yeah.
During COVID. And what happened to some of them?

Speaker 1 They died because of that. Some of them have babies.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 But some of them. COVID babies.
Some of them are dead. Those things are wild.
Yeah. Ha!

Speaker 1 So, so this is what I'm okay. So this is what I'm saying: is we were all

Speaker 1 in this journey together, right?

Speaker 1 I think the difference between you and I was that because I was like on camera all the time, there were more people who felt like they couldn't just let me go on with like, it's like someone, someone along the lines randomly was like, hey, man, at least get a lineup.

Speaker 1 That's what someone would say. Someone said that.
Yeah, yeah, someone would be like, same thing as you say to me. You'd be like, yo, man, at least, yo, come on, man, at least.

Speaker 1 You know, people would be like, look like someone's child. Just look like someone's child.
That's what they would say to me. Right.
right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, I think the only difference between you and I is because you were not in front of the camera at that time. Sure, sure.
Nobody was like, you weren't shaming other people.

Speaker 1 You were just shaming yourself. Yes.
With the spaceship box haircut. Because it would be like, I would do like a

Speaker 1 virtual live show or like a whatever. Yeah.
And then people in the chat would be like, hey,

Speaker 1 these are people who paid a dollar to get into the thing. And they'd be like, hey, my man, like, I know this time has been rough on everybody.
I know, like, it would be like that. Damn, Josh.

Speaker 1 You're a strong man.

Speaker 1 I would feel so insecure.

Speaker 1 Josh and I used to roll.

Speaker 1 And we both had, at some point, it looked like the theme of the tour that we were on was unruly hair.

Speaker 1 But Josh's hair got so big and weird that sometimes he'd be on stage.

Speaker 1 And you know, when the cameras like got a shot of you, the background would be black, but Josh's hair was so big, it had three different colors.

Speaker 1 The hair closest to his head was the darkest, and then it would get lighter and lighter. But because of the background and the darkness of his hair, it looked like Josh had there was nothing.

Speaker 1 No, it looked like there was nothing.

Speaker 1 And on top of it, there was like a floating. He looked like he was wearing one of those Russian hats.
You know those furry, furry hats. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 You look like you're wearing one of those Russian furry hats. Because I did a thing that was just out of the pandemic that was like,

Speaker 1 it was at the seller. And they did a live stream/slash like taping of it.
And

Speaker 1 they had extra lights because they had cameras. And so then those extra lights, I saw it later and I see what you were talking about.
I was like, ah, this is. And it.

Speaker 1 It looked like you literally put on that hat. It was like your thing.
Yeah. Josh, you're on in five minutes.
Hold on. Let me get my hat.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 then I think when you, the first time you got a, like, a cut from how it had grown was when I was like, oh, life could be different.

Speaker 1 Life's very different. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, for you now, I mean, like, life is very,

Speaker 1 very, life is different in every way I can think of. It's been so much fun watching it from my perspective because

Speaker 1 I've known

Speaker 1 like multiple versions of Josh

Speaker 1 in how life is like responding to you, if I can put it that way. Yeah, no,

Speaker 1 So I knew the Joshua, you know, I met you. You were already working at,

Speaker 1 you were working at Jimmy Fallon's show when I met you, right? No, no, I had just left. Okay, so you had just left.
But I'm just like touring.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I knew you were like, okay, comedian is like doing things and whatever.

Speaker 1 But you were this guy who was like, hey, man, I don't know what's going to happen. I'm seeing what the world is going to throw my way.
I'm just trying to hustle.

Speaker 1 I'm writing a joke, doing a thing here. And then, you know, then you went through the hair phase and it was like, all right, I'm still hustling.
And also, you see my hair.

Speaker 1 And I don't know where this is going. Yeah, I don't know where this is going.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then, oh, and then Josh went through this phase. Yo, then Josh started lifting.
You remember when you started lifting?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Because at the time you had nunchucks.

Speaker 1 Yo, this man. Yeah, it was around there.
Yo.

Speaker 1 Yo.

Speaker 1 This man. This is where it's a horrible time to meet a person because he met me during nunchucks, which is also just like, oh, this is guy that's.

Speaker 1 That is one of the the most random moments to meet a human being. Why did you put that chain? Why did you have nunchucks? I was like, look,

Speaker 1 you can't have a gun, but people are crazy in New York. And I don't know, like, we thought, like, a lot of people thought it was like low-key, the end of the world.
We were just being chill about it.

Speaker 1 So I was like, I need something. And you thought nunchucks.

Speaker 1 And I can't get a sword. And so, like, I'm like, let me just have something that's like a little bit.
And then I saw the news report because it was a news report about how they had lifted.

Speaker 1 There was like a nunchuck ban in New York City.

Speaker 1 it was for a while and then when they lifted it i was like i was like hey then we ride and if i get good then i at least get it extends my safety one more arm

Speaker 1 do you know i mean wait hold on i could defend myself one more arm's length away just one further yeah i think if nunchucks work cops would have had them Sure, they do have more.

Speaker 1 They have a version of nunchucks. They have the baton.
They have the skills. The baton is like a version of a nunchuck for a less skilled individual.

Speaker 2 And you know why the baton works?

Speaker 1 Because it's like it's like idiot.

Speaker 2 You know why it works. No, because simply let's let's let the nunchuck expert here tell us why.
A baton, would you want to go in a fight with me if I had a baton and then you had nunchucks?

Speaker 1 Who do you think would win? Here's the thing. Here's the thing.
Here's how I'll put it. Okay.

Speaker 1 The baton is more practical. The nunchuck is crazier.
Would you rather fight someone who maybe isn't skilled? Is what I'm saying? Or would you rather fight someone who you knows bites?

Speaker 1 Because nunchuck is the bite. It's like, I might hit you.
you, I might hit me.

Speaker 1 I'm crazy.

Speaker 2 That's why there's a phrase called blunt instrument because anyone can use it. What you have is nunchuck is, requires a skill set.

Speaker 2 Me, if I'm angry enough with the baton, you are dead.

Speaker 2 You have to know a certain level of skill to manage nunchuck. Because nunchucks are almost like a boomerang.
Because people never account for the fact that you have to wait for it to come back.

Speaker 2 And it only comes back if it doesn't hit anything.

Speaker 2 Then it goes, goes,

Speaker 1 then you hold. Yeah, but nunchuck is the, yeah, then you hope.

Speaker 2 Better believe that you're going to be hoping it hits something. Yeah.
Because it can also hit you.

Speaker 2 You've experienced that.

Speaker 1 When nunchucks come back, are you good at nunchucks now? No. Oh, God.
No,

Speaker 1 not at all.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. I thought you at least got to like the

Speaker 1 arm stage. I got to the arm stage, but the arm stage is half, that's a wrist away from me.
I need to be good at the.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? If I'm good at this, when you're really good at the Bruce Lee stuff,

Speaker 1 somebody can still get very close to you.

Speaker 2 Yes, but here's my thing with Nanchuk.

Speaker 1 While you're going, shoot, shoot you, whoosho, whoosho, whoo shoo.

Speaker 2 That doesn't account for you hitting anyone.

Speaker 1 No, it does. It does.
Because then if you're hitting here,

Speaker 1 if you're in here,

Speaker 1 bow.

Speaker 1 Swing it out. Yeah, now you can't see it.
So you don't know what direction I'm about to swing it from under my arm.

Speaker 2 And let's say you hit me.

Speaker 1 Bam.

Speaker 2 And then what happens to the nunchuck that left? Because there's two of them. I mean, there's one that you're holding.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And there's one that left.

Speaker 2 That's the one that hits you. What happens to the part that hit me?

Speaker 1 The part that hit you goes down. But now that it's down, I can hit you in the back of the head.

Speaker 1 You see, this guy was in it.

Speaker 2 You know what I'm loving? I've seen Josh with those nunchucks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you don't know. I think he injured it.

Speaker 2 He self-defensed himself more.

Speaker 1 He protected himself from himself. 100%.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm imagining? I'm imagining the person who was walking through New York City, seeing you with your spaceship pair and the nunchucks.

Speaker 1 And then they were like, I need to go to to self-defense training because New York is full of crazy people.

Speaker 1 No, because I'll tell you right now, the hair saved my life because then I'm over here practicing, and I brought, I bought two practice ones. I bought one that was like foam, okay.

Speaker 1 But the foam one is like it's gonna break in a day. Like, you can't.

Speaker 2 That's how dangerous these things are.

Speaker 1 Do you know what I mean? The foam one, you can't. So then you have to use the wooden one.

Speaker 1 Because I was never going to buy the metal one because the metal, the metal one, you could accidentally kill somebody and now it's swinging from your hand, but you're like, uh,

Speaker 2 uh, and you wait for the accidentally kill someone.

Speaker 1 I just haven't to defend yourself because, okay, the same way where you're trying to defend yourself, you know, out of box, and then you and then you and then you punch somebody on the chin, right?

Speaker 1 But you end up knocking them out and they fall. And the way they fall, they die, right? It's like that could happen.
The metal nudge

Speaker 1 is for murder. Like, like that, that one I still don't think should be legal.

Speaker 3 We'll be right back after the short break.

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Speaker 2 Can we go back to the episode?

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Speaker 1 This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Eat well for less.

Speaker 1 You know how Thanksgiving always sneaks up on you? One minute, you're eating leftover Halloween candy and the next, everyone's arguing arguing about who's making what for Thanksgiving dinner.

Speaker 1 Who are you talking to? Luckily, Whole Foods Market makes it easy to pull it all together.

Speaker 1 With great prices on turkey, sales on baking essentials, and everyday low prices from the 365 by Whole Foods Market brand, you can actually prep for the holiday without losing your mind or your budgets.

Speaker 1 Yo, why are you speaking like that? They've got high-quality organic produce. and grab-and-go sides, which honestly saved your life when you said you'd bring something and completely forgot to cook.

Speaker 2 Is this an ad? Do you just teleport us into an ad?

Speaker 1 The 365 brand is all about better everyday essentials, affordable pantry staples, baking must-haves, all the basics that still meet Whole Foods Market's quality standards.

Speaker 1 So, whether you're hosting, contributing a dish, or just showing up hungry, Whole Foods Market has everything you need to make this holiday season easier and more delicious.

Speaker 2 We're sponsored!

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Speaker 2 Can we go back to the episode?

Speaker 1 What's the first fight you were ever in as a kid?

Speaker 1 Like the biggest, like the fight you remember. Did you ever fight? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, well, fight implies

Speaker 1 a length that I

Speaker 1 made the fight continue. I was like beat up sometimes as a kid,

Speaker 1 but like I would, I would like try to fight back. Who was beating you up?

Speaker 1 Just other kids like it was and it wasn't even like were these like bullies bullies or were these just other kids two of them were like bullies bullies okay yeah okay but like but the thing is it's like the same awareness that i think a kid doesn't have of like where their elbow is so they knock a glass over is the awareness of like strength that i lacked for something i wanted to do So like, for instance, there was one time I like stood up to a bully.

Speaker 1 Like, I really like stood up to him. What was that? Wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 1 Set the scene. What was their name? We all remember our bullies' names.

Speaker 1 Look, I won't say his name. Yeah, I will say his name, but it rhymes with

Speaker 1 wheat. Okay, wheat.
And so, so then

Speaker 1 you've been picking on me.

Speaker 1 So, Pete is

Speaker 1 bully. We got peak wheat.
Yeah, you must know one. I don't know one anyway.

Speaker 1 But then, how old are you? I have to be

Speaker 1 maybe eight. Okay.
Or like nine, something like that. And I had enough of it, right?

Speaker 1 And I just like, and I even had like a little speech planned if he, if he like came up on me, rolled up on me, messed with me, right? And so I said all the stuff and then I

Speaker 1 like reared back, which he was also surprised by. Like this also, I could tell is a big kid because he was more surprised than threatened.
He was like, wow, something's about to happen. This is crazy.

Speaker 1 And then I reared back and I punched him as hard as I could and I managed to punch him like in the in the chin a bit like like kind of like like yeah like yeah back jaw right and then he like grabbed his face because also when you're a kid and nobody's like really hit you or hit you back yeah yeah yeah it's surprising so you know he's like

Speaker 1 and then he walks away and then as soon as he walks away i'm like

Speaker 1 Like I'm like grabbing my head because I hadn't like put it together that this would hurt. Yeah, no one shows you.
I mean in the movies they don't show you that. And for the most part.

Speaker 1 and they're not hurt like bruce lee never finished the fight after everybody was down was like ah ah like this never happened jackie chan did yeah he was the he was the honest fighter he was the he's what got us closer to john wick yeah because john wick will end the fight and be like jump oh god like i still don't like that he got hit by a car and carried on

Speaker 1 john wick didn't he jump a bit man i don't know he jumped a bit though i don't know i you you know, what I

Speaker 1 really like John Wick, yeah, the movies. The only thing you also like the Matrix, yeah, but he's the same guy, yeah.
But the difference there is it's not the real world. So, I'm

Speaker 1 John Wick gets hit by a vehicle

Speaker 1 and then he just gets up.

Speaker 2 But it's not the real world again between John Wick and The Matrix.

Speaker 1 No, The Matrix is not the real world. Oh, what I'm saying is in John Wick, John Wick is the real one.

Speaker 1 You know what, Josh, let's carry on.

Speaker 2 So, a geriatric version of Neil.

Speaker 1 Josh, let's carry on. Guys trying to...

Speaker 2 Where instead of being led by a black man, he's led by a dog.

Speaker 1 It's more.

Speaker 2 But I was... It's much more real than

Speaker 1 the Matrix.

Speaker 1 Because they said it wasn't... Anyway.
So, wait, wait.

Speaker 1 Did Bully ever come back? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Different day. But yeah, damn.
And then by then. So this isn't like a victory story.
This isn't like Josh Johnson. No,

Speaker 1 I won a half a battle and I lost the next battle. Like, it wasn't even a war.
It was just like...

Speaker 1 Because I was just an easy target too, because I think I'm openly like sensitive and I am not like a big guy. So I didn't have a big, I did, I never had a big frame growing up.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So even in high school, the people who picked on me was like, yeah, it's like easy picking. It's like I, I look like I almost don't exist in my clothes.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're sweet,

Speaker 1 poetic. You are.

Speaker 1 You're timid in your vibe. Sure.
Like just as Josh, like, as I've always known you, you're really considerate.

Speaker 1 you're a perfect like bully fodder in that way and it doesn't help that i was always like read like when your head is down for reading you're a perfect target for anything i'm like reading i'm like reading all the time i'm like reading for fun and so now i genuinely don't know what's about to happen until the book gets slapped out my hand and then i look up and i'm sure any bully that saw me was looking at me and i was looking at them like like just because i'm the shock of like the book's on the floor what's about to happen yeah yeah yeah you know what i mean so and i and i don't think i like carried an awareness for defense enough ever really until until maybe like i really became an adult even being in chicago i was like look

Speaker 1 apparently you know especially when you go to like some some clubs where like on the south side and people would either you would either know something happened or people would say something had just happened at some point and so i was like i like i'll be fine i'll just run And then whatever bullet hits me was meant for me.

Speaker 1 Do you have me? You were never about that life. You were never like, I'm going to stand up, fight, do a thing, handle it.
No.

Speaker 1 No, even when I tried to like roll with other kids that were like tough, they were even like, you're too sweet for this thing. Like, you're not like a tough.

Speaker 1 Like, even kids in my neighborhood would be like, yeah, but you're not like.

Speaker 1 I like that. You know what I mean? No, I just, you know, I look, at the time, I looked back on it as like, why is everybody

Speaker 1 so, what is it? Why is everybody so

Speaker 1 like patronizing? Yeah, yeah. And now I look at it as if, like, almost, and you know, whatever, this is going to sound however it sounds, but it's like, almost by like

Speaker 1 some truly like divine design, everybody that was in my life was put in my life for a reason, helped keep me on the right path.

Speaker 1 Even when I wanted to do something bad, they like, they like made it so it's like I didn't even have the opportunity. Like, I did, like, like all these things came came together.

Speaker 1 Even the people who like pushed me out of their life, it's like their life went in like a horrific direction. So it's like they push me.

Speaker 1 It's almost like pushing someone out of the way of a car. Cause I'm like, I'm trying to like roll with this kid or be like this kid.
And then this kid is like, hey, this is like not for you.

Speaker 1 And then, and then something even ends up happening to that person or they go down a worse path or something.

Speaker 1 So now everything that's happened, like I can be nothing but, but grateful because like at the time, I'm sure, especially when i used to this is going to sound self-deprecating and it's not meant to be but like the realization that i've i've come to about myself especially over time is that like all of the things about me that i like and that people like are because i'm not like

Speaker 1 conventionally cool like i'm not like a cool guy who is like um

Speaker 1 wow, I want to be like that guy the way you want to be like James Dean. Like I'm not that I'm not that type of guy.

Speaker 1 So if I, if I I stop trying to be that type of guy and I just like, hey, look, I like Rubik's cubes. I like comic books.

Speaker 1 I like, and you just, you just become, it's, it's things we've been taught since we were little, the best version of yourself, the best, like, the most honest version of yourself.

Speaker 1 That's where all of your like

Speaker 1 cool will come from because everyone who likes those things will be like, wow, you openly like those things.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm like, I'm over here doing the Rubik's Cube when it used to get slapped out your hand. And now people on the internet are like, he did it in in a 0.4 seconds.
Yeah, now it's become a, yeah.

Speaker 1 But it's like, if you're like an O, if you're like an OG of that thing, and don't get me wrong, I wasn't even good.

Speaker 1 So now me watching, watching me do the Rubik's Cube was a waste of time because it wasn't like I was like, hey, Trevor, you want to see something cool?

Speaker 1 It'd be like, hey, Trevor, you want to see something cool?

Speaker 1 Can you mess it up again? Can I restart? It's like, it's like that.

Speaker 1 But then, like I said, everything in life led me to the point, at least in the feeling of about two years ago where everything fits into place. I felt like I fit in at different points in my life.

Speaker 1 When I lived in Chicago and started doing comedy, I finally had the

Speaker 1 conduit. I finally had the vehicle for all these things I had ever been and ever done and ever talked like and ever.

Speaker 1 And then found my people. And then moved into New York felt like,

Speaker 1 it did feel like a mistake for the first like six months. It did like genuinely, it felt like maybe I had made a mistake until I got hired at Fallon.

Speaker 1 But every, everyone that I was meeting, I used to do storytelling open mics, comedy open mics. I used to do variety shows, like all stuff like that.

Speaker 1 Were you working at that time doing like a job job as they say? Yeah, I was like working at a grocery store. In New York.
Yeah. What type of grocery store?

Speaker 1 The Trader Joe's variety. Okay.
What were you doing there?

Speaker 1 everything. Like, I was a cashier.
I did everything but fill orders because I was like, y'all, if you make me, because they would try.

Speaker 1 Anytime you have a good attitude and like you're on time, so people start trying to give you more responsibility because they're like, this is the person that won't mess it up.

Speaker 1 But I'm like, y'all, I know my limit. And if you put me on freezer, y'all are going to have 6,000 ice creams and no frozen turkey.
Like, I'm just, I'm telling you that right now.

Speaker 1 I don't have that attention to detail, you know? And so I was like, cashier, didn't want to become a manager, didn't want to become an assistant manager. Why not? Because in my head, I was like,

Speaker 1 I thought I had found, and I'm glad I was wrong because I wouldn't be here now, but I've worked at a couple of grocery stores and I've worked, you know, odd jobs and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 And I found that, like,

Speaker 1 at least in most situations, I can be happy. And so I was making enough to live, but I hadn't met any of my goals yet.
But I was still doing stand-up at night.

Speaker 1 And so I was like, happy, like, like, even in unhappiness, happy. You know what I mean? Like, you deal with terrible customers or you like, you're low on money.
So you got to eat.

Speaker 1 Dude, I've talked to this before, but I knew I was broke in Chicago when they put the door knocker thing for the pizza on there. My roommates and I, we see it's a deal because this place just opened.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's five, no, it's three pizzas for $15.
So it's like. Every pizza, $5, whatever.
We each order a pizza. We get violently sick.

Speaker 1 And I knew I was broke because I was like, next day, I'm like, I'm going to eat one more slice. And then I got to be done with this place.
But like, in the off chance, I was just sick.

Speaker 1 And then my roommates, you know, like, what do you mean? You were just sick. We all threw up.
And I was like, yeah, but look, maybe this slice will be different. And then I'll throw the box away.

Speaker 1 But like, I don't have money to just. You got to give the slice a chance, man.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so I just found that I was happy.

Speaker 1 I was so happy in Chicago, literally just making ends meet, but could not even save money, but I was doing stand-up at night and figuring myself out and everything.

Speaker 1 And I feel like now it's just a reminder to like stay in that place, even if circumstances change.

Speaker 1 Because now it's like, okay, like I'm not, I'm not

Speaker 1 completely broke, but like, what do I need? And it turns out I don't need much.

Speaker 1 If I can take care of my mom and take care of my aunt and just take care of like myself and my girlfriend, put on good shows, nothing else really matters. So that I don't really need that much money.

Speaker 1 Like, and so now if you don't need that much money, you don't need to do whatever, whatever, whatever.

Speaker 1 So now some of that noise gets like shut out a little bit because like, yeah, sometimes you'll be in a situation where somebody wants you to do this thing, somebody wants you to do this thing.

Speaker 1 And if you don't really know what you want, you might end up doing it and not liking it or looking back on it and not liking it.

Speaker 1 And I'm not saying I love everything I've ever done completely, but like

Speaker 1 the path that the internet and the people that I'm meeting along the way have allowed me is to like do things that are completely consistent with how I feel about how my career should go and building a catalog that I think will like stand alone.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 something that you're proud of because you wanted to do it for the reasons that you wanted to do it which is a unique moment to get to yeah

Speaker 1 as an artist but i think as any any human on this planet i was i was thinking about it this morning exactly what you're saying i was i was in the shower and i was going

Speaker 1 are you picturing me in the shower now

Speaker 1 so i was in i was in the shower and

Speaker 1 i i had this thought genuinely where i was going

Speaker 1 It's hard for people to understand. It's hard for any of us to understand this.

Speaker 1 because money is oftentimes the thing that connects you to all choice power um whatever it might be

Speaker 1 but pursuing money is almost the worst direction you can ever take right if you say to yourself in life i'm going to pursue money

Speaker 1 you could just take money out of an old lady's wallet then you've the money is there now right i think what we haven't been taught for the most part because society doesn't oftentimes tell us enough, is that money, especially in a well-functioning society, money is a byproduct of a job well done.

Speaker 1 And so if you have the luxury of doing the thing that you love doing and you get to do it well, you'll find that money somehow slips into your ether.

Speaker 1 It starts to come in. And that's like I say, in a well-functioning society, as capitalism goes extreme and it deteriorates in its late stage, people now can only earn money from certain things.

Speaker 1 But when I look at you, I go,

Speaker 1 it's the perfect example. Like,

Speaker 1 you'll tell me if I'm wrong, but I feel like this version of Josh Johnson,

Speaker 1 like the person we know you as today,

Speaker 1 you couldn't exist the same if the internet wasn't what it is now.

Speaker 1 No, no.

Speaker 1 Do you know what I mean? I know exactly what you mean. And I think about that a lot because I had found some

Speaker 1 mainstream and like legacy media success, but not enough to live the way that I'm living or make the choices that I make. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Like I had done Fallon, I had done Conan.

Speaker 1 I got like a Comic Central half hour. I've done the route.
Like I got new faces for JFL. Like I did a lot of the route stuff you're supposed to do.
Yeah, you want to. It's like an up and comer.

Speaker 1 There's all the stations along the way.

Speaker 1 And then there's a place that you end up. For some people, it's after they do JFL new faces.
For some people, it's after they get their half hour.

Speaker 1 And for for some people, it's like even after they've been on a sitcom or something like that, where now there's like, there is no more up and coming. You're, you've, you've come.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And so what does that, yeah, I mean, yeah, you, you, yeah, you're just like here. You can't win this new artist anymore.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They give it to you one time. And if you lose the time, you're up for it.
That's it.

Speaker 1 You're also not going to, you're just, look, I'm new to people, but I'm saying like the ways in which an industry could

Speaker 1 could elevate a person along the way, way, I had got a lot of that stuff. And then there was a gap between, does he have his own show? Is he writing a show? Is he selling shows?

Speaker 1 Yeah, is he a touring, headlining comedian? Is he, and so there was a gap there. The internet closed that gap.
The people closed that gap.

Speaker 1 And that's why I have a bit more confidence because one thing I'll say about the era that we live in now versus even 25 years ago is that the industry used to be able to close that gap for you.

Speaker 1 They're like, you are

Speaker 1 this A-list star, and we're going to treat you like this A-list star when you're actually really young, just because we, like, as a studio, believe in you.

Speaker 1 And you used to just be signed to like one studio.

Speaker 1 And so, anyway, the industry used to close that gap. But then, if industry betrayed you, blacklisted you, you'll see McCarthy stuff, whatever.

Speaker 1 Once that thing happened, you didn't have connection to the people. So even if the people liked you, they'd be like, oh, why have you been in a movie in forever? And blackboard.

Speaker 1 Because no one picked up my calls and no one's calling me.

Speaker 1 But that can never happen again because like if you, if you have connection to people and if you've built community, then you'll always be a version of what you're doing now, especially if you're not doing it to be number one.

Speaker 1 And the thing that we're lucky about, what makes us different from sports, is that like there can really be no number one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so it's like, because there's no number one, you can just be like your number one. You can be like the best you.

Speaker 1 And for some people, like that, like for plenty of people, Trevor Noah is like the goat of comedy, right?

Speaker 1 And that, and it taps into their sensibility. Your timing is their timing of how they think.
Your humor, it connects with everyone that

Speaker 1 follows you, that believes that you are like the best of all time. There's going to be a Chris Rock as the goat.
Dave Chappelle is the goat. Like, goat, go, go, go, go, go, go.

Speaker 1 But because it's not a foot race, there is no,

Speaker 1 as long as you don't, there's no clock. So as long as you don't convince yourself that there's a clock, you can just carry on.
You know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so it's like, I want to be the best like comedic writer ever. I also know that's not going to happen, but I know that it will happen in someone's mind that connects with my work.

Speaker 1 And that's enough. And I really want it to happen.
And I want it to happen in the way where everybody says it. It's not going to happen.

Speaker 1 But like at the same time, chasing that now, like money is like.

Speaker 1 But that's what I mean.

Speaker 1 It sounds to me like you fell in love with the process, essentially. Yeah, because the process, the process is like the reward

Speaker 1 that will always yield a return, right? If you fall in love with the process in your life, then the outcome just becomes the bonus at the end of it, you know.

Speaker 1 And I've seen this with friends who like cooking. Like they try to get me into cooking because I like food.
I like eating food. And then they would go like, you should learn how to cook.

Speaker 1 And then when I would try to learn how to cook,

Speaker 1 even if it came out right at the end, I was like, I don't like this. Yeah.
I like eating the food. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Because when you eat the food and you didn't cook it, you're not sweaty.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Now a sweaty version of me is what I'm talking about, man.
Jabby.

Speaker 1 I'd just be like, yo, man, I get to the end of this journey. What are you guys cooking? But if you, what do you mean?

Speaker 2 That makes you sweaty.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's just processed. You know how it is, man.

Speaker 1 If you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. Oh.

Speaker 1 You don't sweat when you cook.

Speaker 2 Maybe that's why. What are you guys cooking?

Speaker 1 Just anything.

Speaker 2 Give me an example of what you made that made you go, yay!

Speaker 1 Okay, one day I was trying to make a stew. I've only tried it once.
And one time I was trying to make a stew. And then it just involved me with a pot, with water, with ingredients, with the thing.

Speaker 1 No, I had to keep opening the lid to see what was bubbling. I had to keep closing the thing.
Normal, opening.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And in that process.
How close were you to this lid?

Speaker 1 I wasn't measuring, Eugene. I wasn't measuring my distance to the...
Maybe this is why I'm not a good cook. I was just like opening, closing, opening, and closing.

Speaker 1 It would be very funny if you were laid it in too close. And you were like, man, cooking is hot.

Speaker 1 I'm like,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 No, but what I mean is, like, I don't think there's anything wrong with liking or not liking certain things.

Speaker 1 But I think people take for granted that if you fall in love, if you find a passion for the process,

Speaker 1 then the outcome just becomes a bonus. And if you love the outcome, then your joy is always going to oscillate between

Speaker 1 good and bad, good and bad, good and bad.

Speaker 2 I think that point of view is a privilege. We've had this conversation, but in another form, I'm always like, that point, making that point, you can only make it from a point of privilege.

Speaker 2 So if people with a skill, a rare skill, a talent, like a surgeon who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars a month can say, you know, I just like operating on people, but you're like, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 I don't know what I'm going to eat tonight. So you can pursue your passion.

Speaker 1 Yes, when you talk about money.

Speaker 2 No, yes. So I'm talking about money versus when people say, no, yes, just I love the process.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 So the average person, I think, this is my opinion, does not have the luxury to think about their passion. Yes.
But they're thinking about what am I going to do now? What am I going to eat now?

Speaker 2 And obviously, when you tell the story about how you grew up and when you were eating the pizza that made you throw up, if someone would have walked into that dorm room while you were eating $5 pizza and told you, just enjoy.

Speaker 2 Just enjoy the process, not about the money. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Amen. No, that is what people said.
They were like, that's. And what did you feel? No, but I guess I'm thinking also once again, from privilege, it's either privilege or experience.

Speaker 1 Because I think saying fall in love with the process is a thing that comes from the experience of like, if you have

Speaker 1 sometimes it's just good advice from somebody who did it the other way. So yes, it's from like a point of privilege to say like, don't worry about money.
And I'm not saying don't worry about money.

Speaker 1 I'm saying people have put me in a position where I don't worry about money the same way. So

Speaker 1 I'm also saying I don't necessarily, I think it might be a luxurious way of experiencing your own mind, but I don't think it's an unattainable luxury. Right.
And here's, here's why I'll say this.

Speaker 1 When you started comedy,

Speaker 1 if you remember your journey, it was not paying anything. Comedy literally paid us no, there wasn't even an idea of the possibility.
When we were doing comedy in South Africa, starting up,

Speaker 1 the concept of getting paid by anyone or anything.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we paid to do comedy. There wasn't even like a 20 bucks, well done.
No, that came over time, right?

Speaker 1 But we fell in love with the process. And what I mean by that is, I don't think everything has to be contained in one space, right? Right.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 when you look at

Speaker 1 somebody who likes knitting,

Speaker 1 I would always be fascinated watching somebody knit.

Speaker 1 And I'll go like, what, what are you doing? And they're like, I'm knitting. And I'm like, oh, are you trying to make something? And they go like, well, sometimes they even go, I'll see what it is.

Speaker 1 I'm just starting with this block for now. And then it will grow into something else and it'll become something.
And then I'll decide what I want to make.

Speaker 1 But they go, I like knitting. Knitting is the thing that they actually enjoy.
On the other side of knitting is the garment that you've created. Do you get what I'm saying? And so, what I'm saying is

Speaker 1 it's noisy. That's why I completely agree with you.
It's noisy. It is hard.
to appreciate process. It is hard to appreciate passion when you're hungry, right?

Speaker 1 But it's, it is those people sometimes who are the ones that'll make you, the ones who can do it in those moments, they're sometimes the, the, the, the people who inspire me the most because they can and they do.

Speaker 1 Like when my family was at its worst, you know, my mom loved gardening. We didn't have anything.

Speaker 1 We did like literally, I remember nights where it's like we're eating more punnyworms because it was like the cheapest thing we could buy. It's like a dried caterpillar type.

Speaker 1 How would you, is it caterpillar? Yeah. That's like the only thing we could afford for a moment.
Then at some point, we couldn't even get more punnyworms. All we could get was more Rojo.

Speaker 1 That was like it. And this isn't like a long, it's not years in my life, but like a few months.
I just remember we couldn't afford meat and we couldn't afford a certain type of protein.

Speaker 1 And so now we're buying like grass essentially is how it seemed to me as a kid. Because when you introduced this to me late in life, I'm just like this.

Speaker 2 Eating kale and quinoa all day.

Speaker 1 It's ironic, by the way, because I remember the first time. Someone came with kale in America.
Then I was like, I'm not going back.

Speaker 1 I escaped this trap. I'm not going back to this.

Speaker 1 But Murojo and Kayla are very, I still think like, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 1 But the thing that amazed me was she still found joy in her processes.

Speaker 1 Just doing something in a garden, going and

Speaker 1 I think like that's that's what you're talking about. Like when I listen to you, there's an element of Josh Johnson that's just like, you're just like obsessed and in love with the process

Speaker 1 that you're pursuing. Because then it's like the thing, I guess if you were to put yourself back in different moments, right?

Speaker 1 Because don't get me wrong, I am never, I am never, it's never lost on me that like

Speaker 1 I am the exception and not the rule. And so I even tell people, I'm like, look, everybody's on their own journey.

Speaker 1 I don't want you to think that like there's, there's some aspect of if I can do it, you can do it.

Speaker 1 And then there's also an aspect of if I can do it, you can do it, being weaponized to keep people in a bad place. Yeah, I hate that if I do that.
You know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because it's like, because people have said that to me who were tall.

Speaker 1 And now I'm like, what do you mean, dunk? And they're like, look, you work hard enough. You work on your game.
If I can do it, you can do it. Swish.
And then I'm like, all right, I believe you.

Speaker 1 And then brick, brick, brick, brick, brick, because

Speaker 1 I actually can't. And I also, to be fair, don't love basketball enough to like learn and fall in love with process enough to even see if I can.
Right.

Speaker 1 But now if you're talking about, if you're, if you're talking about a, a, a system where people can make their money or just have like a life, there's just

Speaker 2 what they want.

Speaker 1 It's so much more profitable to keep that as a carrot that you hang in front of someone than it is to just let them have it.

Speaker 1 Because if everyone's okay, less people are, are rich, which is like a side note thing. But the process thing that I'm...

Speaker 1 fall in love with and that I think is like so important is that it started so much longer before anything was working out.

Speaker 1 The same way that like I've been my like, the way that I've been myself and like weird, and it didn't, oh, did work for like all of life until like

Speaker 1 a little bit of college, it worked. Cause a little bit of college, I'm finally meeting people who are also kind of like me.
Then it worked in Chicago. I started doing comedy.

Speaker 1 That's the, that's the thing I should have been doing this entire time. Then it worked for a little while in New York.
And then, like, I had my ups and downs.

Speaker 1 And now it works in a big way because I'm finally like doing everything I think that I was meant to do. Yeah.
And so the reason I say

Speaker 2 meant to do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because then I think that it started in Chicago when I started doing comedy, but I'm working at the grocery store and I'm like

Speaker 1 working on bits all day, but then also having conversations all day.

Speaker 1 Okay. So you would be on register for like two hours.
Okay. They do a two-hour block.
So now I'm talking to people and I'm not necessarily like.

Speaker 1 running bits by people, but I am like getting to know people. You get to know your regulars.
You get to watch stuff. And now it's like,

Speaker 1 you're just, yeah, you're just, you're just feeding off of like all these interactions that are so interesting.

Speaker 1 And especially if you decide to be personable, because I worked with plenty of people who decided to like be miserable in that moment. But in my head, I'm like, guys, I'm here.

Speaker 1 Like, there's nowhere else I can be. And so this is either a waste of my time, which means it's a waste of my life, or it's my life.
So now I'm just here.

Speaker 1 So then let me talk to this person, ask them how their day is. Let me like, like, have you had these? Because I haven't had these.

Speaker 1 I know that's bad to say say because i work here but like are these good because i'm gonna get them if they and now i become the person that's personable enough that people got in my line and so now you build a rapport with these people and then when i'm over here stocking the freezer stock in the fridge i'm thinking about bits or i'm thinking about what people said to me yeah so now when i go up in chicago everyone's like oh you don't ever repeat or you don't it's like because i'm excited about like

Speaker 1 I'm excited about what this thing is that happened today, or I'm excited about building on this idea that I had last week, but now I've reworded it, or like whatever.

Speaker 1 And so it seems like a wealth of like, oh, you must just be writing all day. And in my head, I was like, I am, but I'm not.
Like, it just came from such a genuine place.

Speaker 1 It didn't become more like proper, proper writing until Fallon. Because I was a monologue writer at Fallon.
That's when you had to get into that. That's the croft of it.
Now it's like 150 jokes a day.

Speaker 1 Or you're just, you're even writing. When I was at Fallon, I was trying, I was so thirsty to get a joke on.
I was writing jokes in the hope that like

Speaker 1 Jimmy got lost in the building and then like wandered to my office and was like, hey, what, how you doing? I'm like, oh, I'm great. I got a whole page of jokes.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, I'm like going crazy because also it's like your first job. So you're extra.
And it's like major job. Major job.
Yeah. And then I got hired at Daily Show.

Speaker 1 Like when you hired me, I was like, okay, this is a chance, especially because of how collaborative the process is.

Speaker 1 This is a chance to take everything I've been writing, all the ideas I'm always having, all the conversations that I have, and like hopefully apply them in real time to whatever the news of the day is.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, right. And then it like, yeah, I was writing it daily show, which then taught me how to tell stories better of things that people had no context for.

Speaker 1 So like watching you, I was able to be like, oh, you know what? Like there's this thing that happened to me that people won't

Speaker 1 have any frame of reference for.

Speaker 1 How do I tell them about that?

Speaker 1 So when you would talk about South Africa or when you would talk about your travels and you're talking to Americans who are the perfect audience of like untraveled people, like everything is new,

Speaker 1 they'll be like, They'll be like, Malta? Is it chocolate? They like they, you know, we don't know.

Speaker 1 Cause it's like, because also you, you were the first person that like showed me how big the world was in a way.

Speaker 1 And like, talking to you, talking to Celeboho, talking to all these people showed me how, how

Speaker 1 well

Speaker 1 the world gets on in spite of and sometimes without the U.S. because

Speaker 1 growing up here, you're like,

Speaker 1 this is the lie that keeps things the way they are, maybe forever. Is that you are taught that the U.S.
is number one. We're number one because we deserve it.

Speaker 1 We're number one on merit, but we're also number one in everything. And so, if anything is bad here, best believe it's worse somewhere else in the world because they're not even as good as us.

Speaker 1 So, if you, if you are hungry in America, imagine how hungry you'd be in Mexico. Imagine how hung, and you could even point at other Western countries.

Speaker 1 It's like they would do, like I had teachers that would do this where they'd be like, Australia, nice and everything, but what do they build?

Speaker 1 What adventures do they have?

Speaker 1 Like, because it teaches you to have like, like, being, I don't even know where you learn it, but like being the center of entertainment, especially, and entertainment being such a strong, um,

Speaker 1 like a strong conveyor of stories and stuff like that. It teaches you a sort of American excellence that probably even used to be earned, but then has slowly been slipping away over time.

Speaker 1 And now your assumption is that no matter how bad things get, we could have like a civil war and you'd still point at another country and be like, well, they're having a coup.

Speaker 1 And it's like, yeah, but look at the 99 other countries that are fine today on like a regular Wednesday.

Speaker 1 And so rather than teaching you out of your supposed like excellence and number one, because it's also a very inconvenient truth truth that like the number one title comes from like just like a boxer who's number one and has a team that's built up of people from all sorts of backgrounds with disciplines.

Speaker 1 There's a number oneness that gets lost in that, oh yeah, well, we needed the scientists to come here. We needed the engineers to come here.

Speaker 1 We taught some of our people, but then they went over and learned from other people and then came back.

Speaker 1 Number one is just number one because we're number one. And so then that keeps people in the thing of like, you'll see where another country, another Western country as well.

Speaker 1 So you don't even have to worry about like communism, socialism, whatever.

Speaker 1 Another Western country will figure something out and we still won't change because the idea of looking at someone else as an example is unacceptable.

Speaker 1 And so being around you and being around people who had like a different experience of life, being around your opioid, being around all these people was the first time that I was like, not only is like the world obviously much bigger, but like comedy is so much bigger.

Speaker 1 Because now I like it made me curious enough to like start watching comedians where I just needed the subtitles. Cause I was just like,

Speaker 1 I was like, let me just like. Yep, Joe, Opio subtitles.
I'm with you.

Speaker 1 We're going to get a dig in at Joe. Come on, man.

Speaker 1 But that's, but like, so every, I said all that to say that like,

Speaker 1 all of that? It's not, no, no. It's like, it's not lost on me that not only have I been incredibly fortunate, I've been given a lot of opportunities.

Speaker 1 And then even within those opportunities, I was like put in the right place at the right time to have the right experience to make what I'm doing now possible. And that's the part.

Speaker 2 See, that's the part where

Speaker 2 whenever you get great advice about pursuing your passion,

Speaker 2 no one ever says at the end, that's the long way of saying,

Speaker 2 do the thing that you can when you can. Then someone might select you to be the person that can and ends up becoming the person that will.

Speaker 2 And also what I realized was when you were telling your story, because I worked in retail for a long time and I realized I had the most amount of fun doing doing comedy when I was in retail before I knew it was comedy.

Speaker 2 There was no pressure.

Speaker 1 You had to refresh your jokes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's someone coming in and out all the time, but they've seen you so many times and you can't say the same thing to them. And there you are now at Fallon.

Speaker 2 Now you're doing this thing for a living. And they've said to you, you don't have to worry about the money now.
Just do this thing. And then all of a sudden it becomes difficult.

Speaker 2 And I thought there was a phase where comedy was making fun of people that are doing their best to try and survive.

Speaker 2 You know, there would be television like, hey, imagine have you, you guys coming back from work. Hey, work, how's work? Ooh, every day, traffic.
And I'm like, yo, when did we get here?

Speaker 2 Like, I started hating the way I was doing some comedy because I would, and I'd realize it was all about, for me personally, it was about fitting in.

Speaker 2 Because even in retail, when you're working there, you realize that you're not fitting in here. That when you get out, you're like, how shitty was that job?

Speaker 2 But it came with how people measure success, maybe.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. And it also just comes from a place of like, this is how you're supposed to feel.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And it's like, if you keep falling for how you're supposed to feel, I mean, that's, that's very convenient for someone. You'll keep buying what you're supposed to buy.

Speaker 1 You'll keep, you'll keep voting for who you're supposed to vote for. You'll keep, and then you, you just have to,

Speaker 1 there's a level of curiousness that I understand that when you're hungry, because I've been hungry. When you're hungry, you're thinking about hungry.
So you're not thinking about some of this like.

Speaker 1 the hoity-toy stuff and it doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you a dumb person.
It doesn't make you less than. It's just literally,

Speaker 1 that's why it's so so convenient and so important to

Speaker 1 keep you

Speaker 1 like, not just down, but like to keep a controlled, I started working on this bit a long time ago and I did not like finish it in a way that's like worth it.

Speaker 1 Maybe I'll get there one day, but I'm like, you don't get paid to do your job. You get paid not to riot.
They pay you just before riot.

Speaker 1 Yes, but you pay for it.

Speaker 1 If they paid you any less, you'd riot. And they know that.
So they're like, because you got to remember, especially in the U.S., we did have slavery, and they've slowly been trying to get back.

Speaker 1 As soon as they lost it, they were like, that was some good stuff. That's crazy.
It's like, it's like having antimandium in the

Speaker 1 Black Panther.

Speaker 1 And so it's like, imagine they took all of it away. You got to use regular metal now.
And you're like, guys, I'm getting shot. Like, this is

Speaker 1 getting through. Right.
So now, so now I'm coming from a place of like,

Speaker 1 I understand that even

Speaker 1 if we're not even going to get like conspiratorial with it, it, right?

Speaker 1 Even in the way that we say left and right works as a function to keep us at the tug of war and the middle of the rope in the middle, because the fact that like there it can't be lost on us that like somehow everyone, as in one person, is a full representative of the right.

Speaker 1 And every one person, just one person, is a full representative of the left.

Speaker 1 So, based on algorithms, after something happens, something, something,

Speaker 1 whatever you want to picture, you are by algorithm and by who you've chosen to follow, either served contempt or compassion. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you are served contempt or compassion, as in that is the way it is. This is your window into the internet.
And your window isn't wrong, but it's not the full picture.

Speaker 1 So then you'll say, everyone on the left is doing this. Everyone on the right is doing this.
And then someone who argues with you, they saw a different mix.

Speaker 1 They saw a different cocktail of compassion and contempt. So now they are being like, no, that's not happening.
This is what's happening. Both are happening.
Everyone is everything.

Speaker 1 You can have QAnon or Blue Anon or whatever. And I'm not making like false equivalencies.
I'm just saying that like we're all capable of like everything. That's what makes a person a person.

Speaker 1 And so I think that keeping you there keeps you broke. Keeping you there keeps you like, you know, complying without realizing you're complying.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 when someone is, especially is trying to like follow a passion and someone says, don't necessarily worry worry about the the money you're going to be worried about something because now that i'm not worried about the money i worry about the quality you know i mean yeah there's always going to be something that you want to do so like so that that is a thing that like pops out at me where i'm like i don't know when i'll be like

Speaker 1 because you don't like your body tells you when you get old you're not you don't say a number and go i'm old now you get out of bed and you pop okay

Speaker 1 like i'm not used to popping and that is what quality does there we go let's go back to complying you said say the thing you said again about complying We don't we're trying to resist to comply No, it's just what keeps you complying is that like it's very easy if like if Trevor wants something right and what he and what he wants is the the last slice of pizza, right?

Speaker 1 It's very easy for him to get that last slice of pizza that we could all three have if he keeps us distracted fighting about the pizza.

Speaker 1 Now I'm looking at you, you're looking at me and he's eating, right? And I feel like that's how a larger portion of every political game and every like socioeconomic game works.

Speaker 1 And I think that by me being, you know, left and you being right and us arguing and only focusing on each other, you forget that like we were initially fighting over the pizza.

Speaker 1 And now where's the pizza? It's gone. Well, it's gone because it's your fault.
No, it's your fault.

Speaker 2 You know what I'm saying? I think society made

Speaker 2 that argument very easy for politicians and people who run countries after COVID because we got to see what class really is.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It happened in real time. Rich people did not die in droves because you also saw Madonna in that bathtub.

Speaker 1 And I was like, that's going to rack a lot of somebody. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Some countries and somebody.

Speaker 1 Madonna being in that bathtub.

Speaker 1 And then her being like, oh, we're all going through it. I'm like, not the bathtub.
Oh, man.

Speaker 1 Guys, if I,

Speaker 1 I need you.

Speaker 1 I'm telling you right now, if we're ever having a global crisis and I post a video in a bathtub talking about how we all struggling i need you to call me

Speaker 2 yeah there were a lot of people who were out of touch in that moment yeah but but i'm saying that in a grand scale that's what you're experiencing as inequality and someone having to look at the other side and go i'm stuck here i'll even pitch you this

Speaker 1 take take uh like any sort of like hollywood example acting comedy whatever right

Speaker 1 this is this is also how it happens

Speaker 1 i'm not speaking to the merits of anyone's talent i'm just saying what I've noticed is that there will be a certain amount of positions. They'll be like the DEI positions, right?

Speaker 1 And you could also tell that the DEI positions, mass people get at DEI, this is the thing that tells people like, this is how many we're going to do. It's like it's the quota.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like, this will be the quota. Yeah.
So I don't even know why you get mad at DEI because they've already basically said, we'll only get 20.

Speaker 1 So like, you won't have to worry about them taking your job. Maybe you, but like, as a large swath of of the industry, we're going to let 20 in, right?

Speaker 1 So now people are mad at these like DEI jobs, jobs only established to try to like find some sort of base, all the stuff, all the stuff we already know. But then people are mad at them.

Speaker 1 These people now feel like they have to prove themselves. They're mad at the, you know, the other people coming at them, everything.
Meanwhile, there is no quota and

Speaker 1 there is no number that is capped for the amount of like legacy kids that get into the right colleges or Nepo babies that get the job or whatever. And it's like, it's like that thing.

Speaker 1 Obviously, some people are waking up to that fact and being like, oh yeah, why are there only 20 spots for anybody? Forget DA. Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.

Speaker 1 And it's like that, but that's also part of the game.

Speaker 2 But that's what a quota does. A quota exposes how many spots are no longer available to those it was available to before.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 2 That's true, actually. So now you can quantify it.
You can count. Oh, 20 people used to be there.
Now they're not anymore because these people are there.

Speaker 2 Quotas are never about if the person can do their job or not. Because I'll tell you this much.

Speaker 2 People who are put in because of affirmative action will never outnumber the people that were there already.

Speaker 2 It will never be 50-50. It will never be 50, you were here, legacy, 50, you are new.
We're just putting you in.

Speaker 2 Because then you could measure how did the quality of work drop since the new people came in.

Speaker 2 But if you put 20% in and the other 80%, they stop performing their duties because they're disgruntled by the people that they feel like they don't deserve to be there, then that's when the quality of work drops.

Speaker 2 Then you can always blame it on the new guy.

Speaker 1 Sure, sure. You know what? I love listening to this.
Like,

Speaker 1 these are always the moments when somebody walks into a room and there's comedians talking, and then I'll always hear them say,

Speaker 1 I thought you guys told more jokes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. No, no, no.
I've always wondered. I was just listening to you guys now, and I was like,

Speaker 1 it's really interesting to me how

Speaker 1 comedians, no matter where they are in the world,

Speaker 1 will always get into the

Speaker 1 is it the anomalies? Is it the inconsistencies? Is it the, do you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 No, I was just listening to this now and I was going, it's, it's funny how

Speaker 1 because comedy, let's think of it this way, because comedy is like the icing on a cake, it's sweet, it's generally very delicious, it's it's easy to consume.

Speaker 1 People often think that the raw ingredient for it is also that in that way. And I know sugar cane is, please don't get me wrong.
But I'm just saying, I'm watching this right now.

Speaker 1 And no, no, forgive me. It made me wonder.
It's like,

Speaker 1 I wonder if like you get into comedy because you're seeing an inconsistent world or if part of comedy helps you process the inconsistency of the world. Maybe.

Speaker 1 I mean, I imagine it's like if you, if you're a singer, right? And you're like, I can do something real weird with my throat. Yeah.
I can do something real weird with my voice.

Speaker 1 And then you do it to drums and people are like, I think I'd pay to see that. It's like, it's like

Speaker 1 you fall into the thing. No, but I mean the thinking of it.
Like, okay, let me ask you this question.

Speaker 1 When was the first time in your life when you can remember thinking this didn't make this doesn't make sense?

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 you know how

Speaker 1 this is two moments that stick out to me.

Speaker 1 You know how the dentist gives you a lollipop? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You see? There you go. And I was like, hey,

Speaker 1 my man, what you doing?

Speaker 1 You try to catch me slipping. I didn't have any cavities.
And now you're giving me sugar? This is crazy. How old were you when you had this thought?

Speaker 1 Maybe 10. I don't know.
Like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but that's, but you see what I mean? It's like something like that.

Speaker 1 What's the first thing you can remember thinking, this does not make sense?

Speaker 2 I think it was when I was watching my grandfather and my parents watching the news and believing all of it

Speaker 2 you wait you were watching them watch the news yes and they were believing all of it because in my head i was like this this what they're saying here didn't happen here

Speaker 2 wait what wherever this happened whatever they were saying in the news they were like in soweto in wherever i was like yeah where we are everything is fine So oh, so you were going.

Speaker 2 Yes, so it was burning on TV. Okay, got it.
At that place. And I'm sure by now they've extinguished the fire.
Because the seven o'clock news

Speaker 2 outside. That's fine.

Speaker 1 But when they shot a news, this is actually really fun. the sun was out.
This is so funny. This is actually really funny.

Speaker 2 Why are we worried about the emotions as if it's happening outside and if it's happening now? Then I'd watch them getting emotionally invested at seven o'clock about

Speaker 1 so bad outside. That's fascinating.
So you were thrown by the fact.

Speaker 1 I mean, you see, it's extremely logical as well.

Speaker 1 Because you're going, it's not burning outside.

Speaker 1 It's not even, it's not even, the sun is not even out in the middle. Yeah, it's daytime in the news.
Yes. But it's not, it's nighttime now.
Yes.

Speaker 2 And everyone who was supposed to do their job did it. The fire trucks trucks were there, the cameras were there, the reporter filed the story, and so you would put on a jacket.
Yeah

Speaker 2 In fact, in fact, in my head, I was like, the reporter that reported on the story is also home watching the news now.

Speaker 1 You know, what's so funny about this is that it's the third level of the thing. I thought you were just going to say, why are they believing everything? Because people lie sometimes.

Speaker 1 That's just even much more of a child thing. Yeah, no, no.
You're like, you're like, no, no. The car that was on fire has clearly been extinguished by now.
Long ago.

Speaker 2 Insurance has been contacted. The claim is being processed.
Now we're just waiting for opening hours for tomorrow so you can look at another car if you really want one.

Speaker 2 But I would watch the real emotion

Speaker 2 and my parents being invested on something. Yo, that's bad out there.
And I'm like, no, it's great in here.

Speaker 2 We're watching these people. Our car is not burning.
And that's when your house is.

Speaker 1 So your brain at that point is just going, this doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2 Yes. And also because I think when I started exploring comedy, I realized that's what people are doing.
They're reacting to something that I say that's not real

Speaker 2 i say things and then they're like yeah net and i'm like yeah and i think that's why maybe we see comedians unable to uh fight extremism uh when people are being extreme about their views and ideas and rallying people and filling up arenas and domes and people are just coming to listen to them and social media we can say anything we can fight that because we're essentially doing the same thing but we're doing it on a happy side we're galvanizing people to come into a room to laugh but there's on the other end of it it has never been like it is now.

Speaker 2 Well, you find in the other side of things, the same arena.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's that's two weeks from now. I don't agree with that, actually.
There's someone who's going, we are getting the guns. We are going to fight.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 There's a different type. Oh, man, that's an interesting thought.
There is like a

Speaker 1 it feels like at least

Speaker 1 more and more places in the world have... an economy or there's like a circuit around anger and hatred in a way that it didn't exist Yes, because

Speaker 2 trouble making thanks to stand-up has become performative. So if you look at all the rallies of all people stirring up what we call trouble, they also have a stage.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they tell jokes, by the way.

Speaker 2 And now they don't have paper anymore in their hand.

Speaker 1 No, they tell jokes.

Speaker 2 They mess it up. Play music a little bit, mess around and get people worked up.

Speaker 1 Some of them tell the same jokes. I mean, they do it.
They work at like a set. You remember back in the day, and I mean, he still sort of does it now, but not as much.

Speaker 1 I feel like now he's like retired. Trump used to work out bits on the campaign trail.
So he would say something, he would do it. And then he'd go, I used to say that and it didn't work.

Speaker 1 I used to say it didn't work. Now it works.
The one that he had was,

Speaker 1 I'm trying to think of which one he had. I think it was Crooked Hillary or one of those, but he had a previous version.
Yeah, Crooked Hillary. And he had a version and it was like, it didn't hit.

Speaker 1 But he found a one-and-he found like a switch and he changed it. But he said, which was interesting to me, he said

Speaker 1 at a rally, I used to say it like this and people didn't respond. Now I say it like this, and they do respond.

Speaker 2 Yes, but stand-up was the original research and development of how to become extreme in an idea. When people say, Okay, there's no paper, it's just a microphone, just stage.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just give me a group of people, don't sit down even to stand up, let's do this thing.

Speaker 2 Because music did not have the same impact as now when you have a singular person trying to convince a horde of people to take action. But the action now is the other way around.

Speaker 2 It's no longer just go.

Speaker 1 It's a home and not action to happiness.

Speaker 2 Yes, because also stand-up did a a lot to remind people how great their lives are.

Speaker 2 But this form of extremism, which is performative as well, is doing a lot to remind people how shitty their lives are. Where else we would make fun of

Speaker 2 someone who has a normal 95 job, these people are saying, why do you have a normal 95 job?

Speaker 1 Don't press anything. We've got more.
What now? After this.

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Speaker 1 It's amazing how powerful it is when when you switch it. You know, it's funny.

Speaker 1 You know, because

Speaker 1 you are in a moment right now

Speaker 1 that's amazing and it's new and

Speaker 1 it's obviously being looked at from so many different places. You know, so like it's Josh Johnson, the magazines look at you, the entertainment industry looks at you.

Speaker 1 And then people often phone me and they go, what do you think of what Josh is doing? And they all have a different lens through which they wish to see it.

Speaker 1 You know, what do you think it means for the entertainment industry? What do you think it means for comedy? What do you think it means for...

Speaker 1 And I remember once I was trying to think of this for myself, and I went,

Speaker 1 one of the things you're doing with your stand-up, like the sets that you're doing now every single week on YouTube, is in a crazy way, I was like,

Speaker 1 you're also just like establishing a bit of reality. I don't know if you've noticed that.
And I don't know if you're doing it on purpose.

Speaker 1 I mean, some people say that what I'm trying to do is be like, this thing,

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 what we have become, I think is a problem,

Speaker 1 like as comedians, and what we mean to people and what we and

Speaker 1 how we like

Speaker 1 structure our careers around that thing. I think that people are playing games right now that are going to bite them eventually, where you play with people who are struggling.

Speaker 1 You play with people who are like based on like even no fault of their own, but a systemic level. They are mentally unstable.

Speaker 1 You play with people whose only hope is something that is like, you know, in the ether as a conspiracy. You play with all that.
You make your money and then you think you go home.

Speaker 1 But especially if you're chasing money, especially if you like money and especially if you can't stay at home, you keep doing it and you keep doing it and you keep doing it. And then

Speaker 1 you you become a different thing to them than you can ever get back. Do you know what I mean? Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 And so like, I think if I stay as as much of a stand-up as i can and obviously sometimes i talk about politics but my thing is that i talk about everything so the people who think that i talk about one thing i can tell what videos they've watched i've been told by people that i only talk about black culture then i've been told by other people i only talk about trump then i've been told about from other people yeah that i i do like regular jokes again yeah then i am told by people that they're like i love your stories i love this story whatever yeah yeah yeah and it's like i i don't think and this is i'm not upset about or whatever but i don't think that people are fitting into the picture that I am trying to.

Speaker 1 And as a result, talking about everything. Yeah, but you see, this is, this is,

Speaker 1 I do get upset about it, not just on your behalf, but on society's behalf.

Speaker 1 One of the best things I ever learned was from a friend who was a computer scientist, and he taught me about a concept known as the second system effect. And he said, whenever you're programming,

Speaker 1 one of the things you learn as a coder is when you change change one aspect,

Speaker 1 you might think you're fixing one thing. You don't realize the second system effect that is created by that.

Speaker 1 You've created a second system, and the effect of that is something that you may not have been aware of. You know,

Speaker 1 I think of that with algorithms.

Speaker 1 We used to live in a world where

Speaker 1 the broadcast was decided by a few and it went to the many.

Speaker 1 So, one news network, 100 million people would watch it. One journalist, 50 million people would know them.
You know, one newspaper could define a whole country's trajectory.

Speaker 1 And then over time,

Speaker 1 that started diminishing, like

Speaker 1 their power started going down. But what also started happening is it started diffusing.
So there'd be more newspapers. more news agencies, more television shows, more movies.

Speaker 1 So there's more who have less power, more who have less power. This is a good thing because reality shouldn't be defined by one person or one small group.

Speaker 1 But then we get to the point of the algorithm, and the algorithm does this on steroids.

Speaker 1 It becomes

Speaker 1 super, super, super tuned

Speaker 1 to getting as few people as possible, or rather as many people as possible, an opportunity to talk to as many people as possible.

Speaker 1 and you you like cut down where the message goes from and who it goes to it's like everywhere it's diffused you know what i mean it's like everyone can say it to everyone everywhere but then what it also does is it says i'm just gonna give you this slice of the reality you know i mean

Speaker 1 so now josh johnson's out there trying to be the full human being who is josh johnson

Speaker 1 The algorithm goes, I noticed, Trevor, that you really liked Josh Johnson's stories about hair. I'm not just going to give you all of his hair stuff.
Just you and you and him, Afros.

Speaker 1 That's all I'm giving you.

Speaker 1 And then it goes, Eugene, I noticed you, you like the thing when Josh Johnson was talking about working in a grocery store. I'm just going to give you his retail stuff.

Speaker 1 And now you extrapolate this into politics and views on the world. And what's crazy and terrifying to me is that there's a person out there who only knows one slither of Josh Johnson.

Speaker 1 And as you said, they either have contempt or compassion for that person or that side of you.

Speaker 1 And I go,

Speaker 1 as we get to the second system effect of everything going to everyone in the most perfect way, you don't have one big broadcast. You have a billion small broadcasts.

Speaker 1 But those billion small broadcasts are only your world now.

Speaker 1 And where before you had to share a world where a car was burning for everyone, your family is watching the news. Now you watch the news.
You watch the news.

Speaker 1 Everyone in the house is watching different news, but they're all living in the same house. Yeah.
And I, I, I genuinely, the reason I'm upset about it is not like anger.

Speaker 1 I'm like, I'm almost terrified because I go,

Speaker 1 what does that do to us when we don't see the full complexity of each other? Like you and I talk about this all the time. I go,

Speaker 1 I want to live in a world where more people see friends disagree.

Speaker 1 Because we make it seem like people disagree because they don't live in the same world.

Speaker 1 You know, like when you walked in today, we were watching videos on the internet about mediums and sidekicks and all of that stuff.

Speaker 1 And I said to you as my friend, I was like, Eman, I don't believe this, but there's also something here that I don't get. There's something I don't get.
And I'm not going to say it's not real,

Speaker 1 but I'm letting you know my current position is I don't believe this. And then you're going, I do believe this.
And let me tell you why. And we're sharing this with you.

Speaker 1 But we don't exist on, you know, like opposite ends of anything.

Speaker 1 There are some parts of you that are far away from me. And there are some parts of you that I can't separate from my own skin.
We are the same in that way.

Speaker 1 And that's a big thing that worries me.

Speaker 1 I go, imagine if somebody like Josh Johnson, who in my opinion is one of the kindest, most caring most considerate people imagine if they could slice you into slithers of an idea what are they doing to the rest of everyone in the society do you know what i mean sure and also through the structure of like what keeps you on they follow behavior so because they follow behavior we assume that everyone always wants to be agreed with yeah some people actually and the algorithms have already figured this out because it happens to me it's like some people through

Speaker 1 being curious about what other people think are served nothing but

Speaker 1 bad, like I would just say bad stuff. Oh, man, that's not how you went to my Twitter.
So then it's like, it's like,

Speaker 1 it then makes me feel like, oh, everyone's so angry and hateful.

Speaker 1 And then, then this is, okay,

Speaker 1 no one's on board with this idea. I've talked about this idea with friends.

Speaker 1 I did this idea at a show. Okay.
All right, cool. I was like, guys, they found now,

Speaker 1 it's like they finished a study that half the internet is bots. Isn't that great?

Speaker 1 And everybody's like, why would that be great? I'm like, guys, there's way less Nazis than we thought.

Speaker 1 Just imagine if you thought there was a room with 100 Nazis in it, and it's two. Two's still bad, but two's not 100.

Speaker 1 And then one of my friends was saying, But yeah, isn't it horrible, though, that somebody would go to the trouble of engineering the troll farm to make us think there's more Nazis? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes, that's still not as bad as 100 actual Nazis.

Speaker 1 If you had

Speaker 1 a hundred cakes at your door that say the N-word or two Nazis, you'd be way less scared than if there were a hundred Nazis at your door. Yeah.
Yeah. Two cakes.
Yeah, with two cakes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we got to keep the cakes. We got to keep the cakes.
But like the fact that this bot problem is actually so big, it both means that like

Speaker 1 to me, at least I could be

Speaker 1 no, I like this view. I'm actually on board with this, actually.
It's an optimistic way of looking at it. It also means that the companies also like are artificially propping themselves up.

Speaker 1 We think that they are like the full

Speaker 1 purveyors might be the right word, but that they are the full end-all be-all of human connection now.

Speaker 1 And that would be advantageous for us to believe that because

Speaker 1 we would then go to them for the communication.

Speaker 1 First of all, everyone forgets outside.

Speaker 1 The fact that people, even in New York, people talk about New York, most people are so much more polite than any internet comment section would ever have you believe. Yes, definitely.

Speaker 1 People bump into me. They apologize.

Speaker 1 Because you're carrying nunchucks. Of course.
Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1 Let the hair get frizzy.

Speaker 1 But I just find that that thing clued me in that, okay, now

Speaker 1 I already try to take a beat. I already, I already, to my detriment, don't get angry enough about bad things happening in real time, even when they happen to me.

Speaker 1 Sometimes someone's rude to me and then they walk away. And then I'm like, actually, that wasn't okay.

Speaker 1 I already tried to take a step back as my like personal.

Speaker 1 Now I take a second step back, especially when I'm online, because I'm like, is this person real? Now that sort of like, that sort of thing could drive a person crazy.

Speaker 1 But to me, because I'm also being served so much like hateful stuff and because hateful stuff is more engaging than love,

Speaker 1 it does then make me go, okay, what's the likelihood that people spreading love or bots and people spreading hate or bots? This is a hateful thing that I see. And it also isn't like original.

Speaker 1 This is how I feel like I'm getting good at picking out the bots because then when something racist happens and they're like, they're like, we should get him fired for his job.

Speaker 1 And then they're like, probably doesn't have a job to fire from. And then the next three people are like, probably doesn't have a job to fire from, probably doesn't have a job to fire from.
I'm like,

Speaker 1 maybe this is like one angry person. That's just multiple.
Yes. And maybe no racist people.
Who knows? Because the comments are racist. The The other person's just angry.

Speaker 1 They're like, we should get him fired from his job. This is insane.
Right.

Speaker 1 And so now it's like it changed my outlook on the world in a way that might be naive and it might be a little bit like

Speaker 1 wishful thinking,

Speaker 1 but it still is like. information that I'm basing my no,

Speaker 1 I think it's the right way to see it, actually. It's like finding,

Speaker 1 you know, we've had a lot of conversations on the podcast with different, I mean, everyone from, you know, doctors who are here to talk about how to find the best in your kids.

Speaker 1 We talk to world leaders.

Speaker 1 One of the common threads I find is like finding the hope, you know?

Speaker 1 And what you're saying ties back into that is finding,

Speaker 1 you have to find that thing. You got to find, you were hopeful enough to eat the second slice of pizza.

Speaker 1 And desperate. Yeah.
Fourth. Yeah.
Fourth. The three were the night before.
But I like this.

Speaker 1 What type of pizza was it, by the way? It was just pepperoni pizza. There's no reason for this.

Speaker 1 Can you eat pepperoni pizza today? Yes, because, okay, I've been poisoned many times, but there are certain types of pizza.

Speaker 1 Like a badge of that's how Joshua's like, I have been poisoned many times. There was a time in my life where if food was 250, I would eat it no matter what.

Speaker 1 That was the most adventurous I've ever been. Now, when I actually go places that someone's like, oh, try this as a delicacy, but it looks a little bit like squid guts.
I'm like, I think I'm okay.

Speaker 1 But had, if it had been 250 in 2014 in Chicago, I'd be like, hey, bottoms up, right? And so

Speaker 1 the time I got poisoned at the Chinese place, it took me years and years and years to eat Chinese again. Huh.

Speaker 1 Because everything about the feeling, everything about the smell, oh, yeah, I mean, that's the violent, whatever. Now it got to a point for a year.

Speaker 1 Anytime I passed like any sort of Sechuan place, I was like, I could feel it. Oh, man, I'm so hungry now.
You just got me hungry.

Speaker 1 You just said Seschuanese food. I started thinking of pig trotters.
Are you in, Eugene?

Speaker 1 I don't even think you understand. You just, oh, man.
Sorry. You're pain.
Tell us about your pain again. But it's just, I apologize.
I've never drank in my life, but it's the closest.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, what? Whoa, what?

Speaker 1 I thought you knew. You can't just drop bombs like that

Speaker 1 in your life. I knew you don't drink.
No, no, I never drank. You have never consumed alcohol.
No, no. Nothing.
Even in church, nothing. No, no, we didn't go to that type of church

Speaker 1 there's some churches that give you some blood of jesus and it's wine yeah some are wine we at we at welch's oh the the grape juice grape juice okay okay okay okay all right never consume not we're not talking about never drunk never consumed alcohol

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 is there a reason for this uh yeah it it so initially I was definitely before I was like of age, too scared to get in trouble. Okay, cool.
Then I was like not,

Speaker 1 then, then I really went to this transition where I became known as like the sober guy. Okay.
Like that would be the guy who like walks you back to your dorm, whatever. Yeah.
Then

Speaker 1 I was broke.

Speaker 1 So then I was broke. But then this is also what made me useless, though, is that I can't drive.
So then I couldn't even be the designated driver.

Speaker 1 I would just be in the car with the designated driver and everybody else sitting in the back sick. And I'm like, y'all, y'all paid too much for this.

Speaker 1 So then

Speaker 1 I moved to Chicago. Yeah, that story.
Can I just say that story takes on a whole new complexity of annoying?

Speaker 1 It's one thing for somebody to be hanging out with you at a party, drinking with you, being like, have you guys noticed how much we pay for this alcohol? We could be paying way less.

Speaker 1 No, sober Josh is just standing there pointing at your drink, being like, you could have saved $50.

Speaker 1 You could have saved $25.

Speaker 1 You could have saved $17.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 All right. Shotgun, shotgun.

Speaker 1 This is so wild. And then when I moved to Chicago, I didn't have money to afford to like a new thing.

Speaker 1 And then after I moved to New York, I felt like, even though I was still in like my mid-20s, I felt like

Speaker 1 I had missed a little bit of the boat. And that if I were to find out, because the way you find your drink and the way you find out how much you can drink is through trial and error.
Definitely.

Speaker 1 And the errors get less and less cute the older you get. This is true.
And so now I'm like, ah, yeah, I missed it. Because now also.

Speaker 1 So there's no like curiosity even that makes you and I'm not advocating for it, by the way. No, no, no.

Speaker 1 I'm intrigued by this. The other reason was that I was like, I don't think I can do anything like smoke or drink or any of that.

Speaker 1 Especially like it was like a focus thing as well. Cause I was like, I want to be able to take care of my mom, take care of my aunt, and like, you know, just like.
make sure that they're good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right. Cause like, and especially after like my dad passed and everything.
And so then anything like that just seemed like

Speaker 1 a potential distraction. And just from the outside looking in, I had never seen anyone be their best self drunk, even the happy drunks.
Right.

Speaker 1 There were some people that are like, oh, he's so fun when he's drunk. And I'm like, y'all know he's like fun regular, right? Yeah, yeah.
But you just got to ask him the right questions.

Speaker 1 And so how old were you when your dad passed? Um, 26. I think 26.
I could have been 25. Did you feel like that, um,

Speaker 1 Because I'm listening to you, and it sounds like to me it jolted you into like a different type of manhood or responsibility than you felt before. Yeah, especially because I was now going to like

Speaker 1 hopefully live longer than my dad. Damn.
And so now it's like I already had what felt crazy to me is that my dad pretty much, if I have the math right,

Speaker 1 I was the age my

Speaker 1 dad was when he had me when he died.

Speaker 1 So if I'm like 25, 26, I'm pretty sure he had me at 25, 26. So just as I was like gaining an appreciation for what my dad must have been going through and have a kid, I like lose my dad.

Speaker 1 And so these are conversations I never end up getting to have with him of like, hey, just so you know, like I get, I get, I get you a little bit more now. I know what I can,

Speaker 1 I can't know what it was like to be a baby with me. I can't know what it was like to have like annoying cries that are like, eh? You know what I mean? Yeah.
Because I'm inquisitive.

Speaker 1 I like, I can't go back in time and like really get it, but I'm starting to get it because I can't imagine having to like deal with what you and my mom dealt with when you were.

Speaker 1 my age. Right.
Me being this now. Then losing my dad, I was like, oh yeah, like anybody can go.

Speaker 1 So now I make sure, or at least do my best to like, I'm still not perfect at it, but like everyone that I love, I let them know all the time and I don't worry about being embarrassed because it's like I, I

Speaker 1 told my dad I loved him the last time and

Speaker 1 wasn't feeling sure that he heard me. You know what I mean? And I had the opportunity to tell my dad that I loved him plenty of times before he got sick.

Speaker 1 And so it's like, I never want to waste that again on anybody. And like, I've lost people since then and

Speaker 1 got to feel

Speaker 1 at least somewhat better because every time, I'm not saying this to like to freak you out, but it's like every time I leave someone, I'm like, they could die. Yeah, that does.
I could die.

Speaker 1 So, like, I'm sorry. Don't put that juju on me, Ricky.
But I'll tell you, I love you all the time. I love you too.
Yeah, you know, I love you too. Yeah.
But don't put that juju on me. No, 100%.

Speaker 1 Look, we're going to live forever. That's literally why I say it all the time.
I say every time I'll be, people will be like, are you, are you hurt? I'm going to live forever.

Speaker 1 When I fall, people are like, ooh, that looked bad. I'm going to live forever.
It explains a lot of your like, I don't know, man. You've always had

Speaker 1 a beautiful appreciative. Like, we used to come back from shows and you would look at me and you'd be like, hey, man, thank you for that.

Speaker 1 And I was like, okay. And that's why I'm shocked that you don't drink because I genuinely thought some of those times.

Speaker 1 I don't mean this in a shitty way. I swear I'm not.
I'm with you. I'm with you.
I'm with you. You had the sincerity of a slightly inebriated person.
And I also stopped talking. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I realized I did the same thing to Khaled Kaepernick. When I met Colin Kaepernick, I was like, hey, man, you and me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and that's what you do. And it's all.
So, Josh will look at you, say something,

Speaker 1 not finish a sentence, but his intonation will make it seem like something was coming. So he'll look at me and be like, hey, man, I just wanted to say thank you.

Speaker 1 Then I'll be like, oh,

Speaker 1 for what?

Speaker 1 You know.

Speaker 1 Do you know? No, I do know. No, and then

Speaker 1 I mean, I've known you for years now, but back then I was just like, oh man, I was like, my man's, you know, he's had a few. It's been a night.
It's been a journey. And I appreciate him still.
And

Speaker 1 so, so,

Speaker 1 I mean, it must be, I can only imagine what it must be like for your mom, though, seeing this. Because there's no mom who doesn't enjoy seeing their child

Speaker 1 fly.

Speaker 1 Especially when you quit the grocery store. Especially where you're like, you're like, mom, I think I got this.
And she's like, are you sure?

Speaker 1 Like, because it's not my mom never, like, she, my mom is very supportive, believed in me, all the things. But any mom is going to be, especially any black mom is going to be pragmatic.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 If your mom supports you going into comedy, I don't know if you've got a great mom. I'm going to be honest.
But your mom should support you doing comedy as like a side. But if your mom

Speaker 1 is like, yeah, if you go, mom, I'm quitting my job to do comedy and your mom's like, good for you. I don't know if your mom actually likes you.
I'm going to be honest.

Speaker 1 Most moms, all moms should just be like, do that for fun. And I told my mom that I got the job at Tonight Show and she was even still like,

Speaker 1 okay, and that's enough money to.

Speaker 1 Like she, like, she's still like,

Speaker 1 and this is, this is good. You can assist me.
You can survive it. You'll be taking care of yourself.

Speaker 1 And so it's like, even for something that she knows, because I watched the tonight show with Johnny Carson when I was little. Like, I don't even remember some of this stuff.

Speaker 1 And she will tell it to me that she's like, you would, you cried. You cried so hard.
I think I was like late to school

Speaker 1 when they announced on like the Today show that Johnny Carson wasn't going to or whatever morning show. Yeah.
I watched Johnny Carson. I loved Johnny Carson so much.
And so I like cried.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I don't remember this at all. And she's like, yeah, you were like four or whatever.
Like, like I was like little.

Speaker 1 And I don't even know if it was the announcement so much as me finding out, but it was like, it was just, it was Johnny Carson and Big Bird got like, tear me up. Right.

Speaker 1 And so, so then I think that for her, seeing me do well and especially seeing what we've built, like we have a real community of people who come to the show, like to laugh, take a break.

Speaker 1 And like people really take care of each other and everything. And people are like,

Speaker 1 you know, obviously, like, internet's internet, so there's going to be like mean comments, whatever. But for the most part, like, people are like, um, so kind.

Speaker 1 They, they, they're very kind towards me and they're kind towards each other. And it's like everything, I'm hopefully making everything that would make her, you know,

Speaker 1 happy when she sees it. And she's seen it a few times now.
And now she's seen it a couple times as my show. And so then she sees like what I'm doing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And so even though she'll still, whatever if i if i swear i

Speaker 1 bro when i tell you i don't even like curse like that i don't even but if i let anything slip she's like i heard that uh that b word

Speaker 1 you think that that's banana yeah i mean like yeah it'll be like it any cursing is just like is is like um

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 she clocks it right right and but i think that now for her seeing that i'm doing well seeing okay and like once again i just i can take care of her. I can take care of my aunt.

Speaker 1 And like they can ask me for things and it's not a huge deal. Yeah.
Cause that's been like the dream.

Speaker 1 Like people would say, like even when people said I was like good at comedy, I'd be like, I'm not good at comedy until like my mom is taken care of. Man, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1 Because then it's like, now, now you've, now you've reached some sort of goal. Right.

Speaker 1 Like now you're like, because funny is like, this is the, the thing about like the hubris behind comedy sometimes that I think even gets comedians trapped in.

Speaker 1 I think why so many comedians leaned into politics in the way of wanting to be attached and not just wanting to comment. Because wanting to comment is like what we're supposed to do.

Speaker 1 Being attached is like, now you're entering a weird, now you're like a mouthpiece. When you're like in with them, in with them, you got to be very careful because now you're talking about your friend.

Speaker 1 Because you have to know them. Yeah.
No, but that's actually true. You're talking about your friend and now you can't tell the truth.
Now you can't tell the truth because you're like, no, I was there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. And he didn't mean it that way that it came out.
So I know it's ridiculous. The funny thing is they're not your friend.
They're not your friend.

Speaker 1 That's the thing I think a lot of people don't realize in these situations. It's like you'll cozy up to a politician, right? They'll cozy up to you, but they're not your friend.

Speaker 1 Unless they are, but they, most of the time, they're not.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 you're so enjoying the proximity to power

Speaker 1 that you're quick to go like, they're my friend. And it's like, they're your friend.
It's like, yeah, I love them. They're cool.
They're this, they're that.

Speaker 1 And then when the power does something that you don't agree with, people are like, why is your friend doing this now you're like well i mean they're not my friend i don't like no yeah exactly i don't like know them like that i mean but it's like but you told us you vouched for them and you said they were great i'll even tell you this right now you if you are a politician to be your friend you got to find a powerless politician that person be a genuine that person the person who's like y'all they block me i can't like like an alderman city council, they probably your friend.

Speaker 1 They like your friend friend. Yeah, yeah.
But like once you get to

Speaker 1 high up, once you get to prime minister, once you get to like president, once you get to people with like real power and a stake and an image that they use to like catapult them to the next thing, you got to be very careful.

Speaker 1 Because look, look, what's his name? I'm sure Rodney Dangerfield was friends with Reagan or whoever, like, you know, I mean, like, might have been, you know, might have been buddies, you know?

Speaker 1 So then he does whatever.

Speaker 1 I don't think it was White House correspondence dinner back then, but he does whatever roasting thing. And then like the president at the time is eating it up.
It's like, they might be friends.

Speaker 1 And then you also have to factor in like celebrity to it, too. Of like, maybe this president just, that's what's happening with the, with the fighters now.

Speaker 1 Like, now these fighters will go to a country and hang out with like the country's dictator. Yeah.
And then they'll be like friends. And then the fighter gets back to the U.S.

Speaker 1 He's like, hey, you know, he skins people, right?

Speaker 1 It's like, what?

Speaker 1 He just wanted to take the picture and go like that. Like, that's why I went.
It's like, why would you go?

Speaker 1 Well, he paid me a hundred thousand dollars it's like oh yeah you didn't you didn't you didn't check so so when you so when you're building this world of yours

Speaker 1 what are you what are you building towards and what are you trying to build away from I think I think the and I've said this before and I'll keep saying it on stage it's like I think the the when when your life is over when everything is done the only real measure of a man is like what you build and what you break and so it's like I'd like to

Speaker 1 build up a lot of like goodwill things that I think that people still have in them, but they just don't exist as much just for free in the ether.

Speaker 1 And I'd like to like break some ideas that people have of each other, even though that's going to be hard because like you said, it's like the, the, the algorithm doesn't aid in those things.

Speaker 1 The same way you think you can use a politician and they're using you, I think algorithms work the same way. Oh, no, definitely.
Where you're like, no, I've gamed it because I'm always nice.

Speaker 1 And it's like, well, first of all, no one is always nice. And sometimes you're willing to be nasty about someone who's being nasty or sometimes you have a very human moment.

Speaker 1 Now, just like the problem that we have now that we refuse to accept because as soon as the thing becomes about you, it takes you out of the game a little bit is that

Speaker 1 you watch reality TV. And now we know enough to know these people have been coached or these people are being produced to be the most entertained version of themselves.

Speaker 1 Sometimes the most entertained entertained version of themselves is the worst version of themselves. And now algorithms and platforms are doing all of that to us.

Speaker 1 We are not, we are not our worst moment.

Speaker 1 We are also not our like

Speaker 1 marriage proposal. No one is as cute as, as sweet as, as nasty as, as whatever.

Speaker 1 Even if you put a bunch of that stuff out, no one is one thing, right? Whatever it is, good or bad. And so I think that now you could look at every person.
We literally call them channels.

Speaker 1 You have a YouTube channel. You have a a Instagram page.

Speaker 1 You have a book about you being written. You have a TV show about you being produced.
And those things work the same way. Even if you're like, well, no, I control it because it's mine.

Speaker 1 You don't control who it goes out to and how it goes out.

Speaker 1 And then one thing that I've noticed is like the favorite things that people say they're the favorite that I've done are.

Speaker 1 never the thing that not only never the thing I think it would be never the thing that is the most popular hmm the One of the favorite, favorite, favorite like videos I've had that people have ever put out,

Speaker 1 I mean, that I've ever put out that people come to me about is this one that I did that I just did like on a whim, just to put it out for fun. It wasn't even a Tuesday video.

Speaker 1 I was like, I think it was extra. It's like a Thursday video.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I was like, there's a, the, it's called the priest and the pickle.

Speaker 1 And it's just a time in my life where I had conversations with a priest and a guy who was like a, like a, a pickle slash pickle juice thief. And it's like that thing is for a lot of people.

Speaker 1 Some people say you talk about Trump, you talk about black culture, you talk about, talk about, talk about. But if we talk about favorite, for whatever reason, that thing peers through.

Speaker 1 I think anything that I put out that people connect to is hopefully, and I think by virtue of what people tell me, is

Speaker 1 the thing where I'm being hopefully like the most human. And so I'm not interested in being right.
I'm not interested in being like

Speaker 1 into bringing the country into like whatever political form. I just like want to remind everybody that like, at least in this aspect and to real world consequence, you are being produced.

Speaker 1 So whatever you watch, whatever you do, take it with a grain of salt. Could this be a bot? Also, am I being served something because of how I'm feeling? Yeah.

Speaker 1 The same way that like, if you, if you're, if you're with your girl and your girl knows what you, that you're upset and she also knows what you're upset about, she's going to bring you a different thing.

Speaker 1 So sometimes it's like, you just had a bad day.

Speaker 1 I'll make you a little something. Or if someone did something to you, hey, we need to talk because I can tell you need to talk it out.
Yeah. Algorithms are serving you the same way.

Speaker 1 We do not give, we give AI and AI that doesn't even exist yet all the credit of intelligence and manipulation that we should be giving the algorithms that already serve us.

Speaker 1 And so I just like, hopefully, even in being manipulated by it, even in even in serving the machine to hopefully like serve the people, some good can come out of that.

Speaker 1 But like, there's so much more that I need to do. Like, I think I should just be like writing a lot of this down and making it, making it like

Speaker 1 hopefully a book. Cause then a book is like harder to,

Speaker 1 you only saw the snippet of the book. Yeah, that's true.
That's true. People don't clip books.
Yeah, yeah. And it's like, and even when you do, it's like, ah, that's boring.

Speaker 1 Like, even when somebody tries to like clip, like,

Speaker 1 it doesn't hit the same. It doesn't hit the same thing.
It never hits the same. Even when it's like a slam.

Speaker 1 It does not hit the same. It's like, I.
You got to read it in your head. Yeah.
It's not the same. Yeah.
And then now I said it. See? That's the most annoying thing.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you've said that, but like that is a real phenomenon that's happening. Somebody finally reads anything and they go.

Speaker 1 It's like when someone repeats your idea back to you because they weren't listening, but they were listening enough for it to go in. And then they say it.
And then they say it. That's what people do.

Speaker 1 You should do that with reading, but people do it with reading like they're the expert.

Speaker 1 Actually, now that I think about it, my whole eighth-grade science book was really my idea. I don't even know why you teach in the class.

Speaker 1 Like that, like that's the huber, like that's the crazy attitude that people have now. And it's why people are like, yeah, don't trust experts sometimes.

Speaker 1 Cause it's like, well, I also am well read about this. It's like, you're not well labbed about it.
You haven't clocked the hours. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Only when you speak to comics do you realize that, one, we're privileged in more ways than we can ever imagine.

Speaker 2 And I think right now we're living in a world where we've over-ordered from the menu and now we don't know what to eat first.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 2 I think of social media, I'm like, you know, you can erase all the apps and just leave the one that you like to communicate with people. And also, it's social media, not interactive media.

Speaker 2 If you're not using it to socialize the people that you want to socialize with, you're the one opening up the door for people that you don't want in your life.

Speaker 1 Yeah, now it socializes you.

Speaker 2 Yes, but I also think the more time you have in your hands, the more you earn, the more time we have, and this debate has been going around since the beginning of time.

Speaker 2 Well, it was big with fast food. Remember when people would say, yeah, are you eating junk food? Yeah, you're eating unhealthy.
Then people were like, maybe I like it.

Speaker 2 And maybe that's all I can afford. Yeah.
And it's also the same with what people call trash television.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're not wrong. It's the same trend.
People just want to.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they just want to watch that.

Speaker 2 If you feel like you know that Kim Kardashian doesn't look like that all the time, that's good for you.

Speaker 2 But they just just want to watch, they want to watch shows about marriages not working out because theirs is probably not working out as well. So they don't want to feel alone.

Speaker 2 But I also feel like the people, I feel the same about sport, organized sports, the same way some people feel about social media and the comments and the bots and reality television.

Speaker 2 Because if all sports was real, why is it that when match fixing happens, it's a scandal?

Speaker 1 What sport? Like what matches for what sport?

Speaker 2 We had a case in South Africa where it was a huge one. South African cricket team.

Speaker 1 Pulse was real.

Speaker 1 Say that statement again.

Speaker 2 So here, in reality television, you and I can always say it's overproduced. There's some acting going on over there.

Speaker 2 But for someone else, it's reality. Kim Kardashian looks like that all the time.

Speaker 2 People who love sports, organized sports, think those people show up at that time. They get paid this much at eight o'clock.
They're going to play for 90 minutes, right? And it's real.

Speaker 2 The tackle was real.

Speaker 2 The goal was, the dive was real.

Speaker 2 Until match fixing happens. And then someone realizes that that match that they spoke about with their friends with such conviction

Speaker 2 two years ago, all of that. Yeah, someone was paid to take a dive or to pretend that they were hurt.

Speaker 2 So if in that reality, we go real organized sports is real.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 The same way someone feels about reality television. It is their reality.
It is their reality.

Speaker 1 I think the difference, I'll just pitch you this. I do think the difference, though, is that even in a fixed match, nobody like flies.

Speaker 1 Like, like this, all the

Speaker 1 stuff that would happen in a match still happen.

Speaker 1 There are people who literally get,

Speaker 1 there are people who literally get pissed off.

Speaker 1 I just said nobody flies. Yeah, because like if you were like,

Speaker 1 oh, sports isn't real the way reality TV is real.

Speaker 2 No, we compared the Kardashians and a soccer match.

Speaker 1 Yes, exactly. So with the Kardashians, right?

Speaker 1 There's a chance that Kim's not even that mad at Chloe, but she's now been produced to almost come to blows with her sister, which is not like real because it's not based off a real conflict and it's not something that would have happened if we weren't looking.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Everything that happens, even in a fixed match, even if you just paid the ref, they still shot the ball. They still kicked the ball.
They still did the stuff. So it's like, yes, it's

Speaker 1 still to me, it's just as real because whether someone takes a dive or not is like, it almost doesn't factor into the equation because you also don't know who's like, if the keeper's girlfriend broke up with him and now he's like distracted, so he's not playing at his best.

Speaker 1 It's like, it's still all the stuff stuff that was going to happen still happen in a way that in reality tv you can tell sometimes they pick the sweetest people and then they get them to yell things that they would like they mess with your mind to the point and i think that with sports is at least like no he was always gonna try to kick it in he just tried less because like somebody paid him

Speaker 1 what i'm what i'm hearing you both say funny enough i know we're gonna have to wrap up soon anyway but like i don't think you're saying something too different

Speaker 1 and i think

Speaker 1 you know what it is? It's...

Speaker 2 Choreograph.

Speaker 1 No, but more than that,

Speaker 1 it's just, it goes back to the question I asked you about like your first experience as a young child doing what you sort of now do as a stand-up comedian.

Speaker 1 And it's the challenge that we all face in the world.

Speaker 1 You have to watch the people around you watch the news.

Speaker 1 And you have to deal with the paradox of what they're experiencing versus the reality that's actually outside.

Speaker 1 You have to find a way to bridge that divide. And then on the other side, in a similar world, it's like, go to the dentist.
Go to the dentist, but also ask yourself why they gave you a lollipop.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's,

Speaker 1 you did it. You brought it all home.

Speaker 1 That I feel like is what we should all do. Josh Johnson, this was dope, man.
This is great, man. I miss you.
I miss you too.

Speaker 1 I don't miss you as much as you miss me because I see you all the time on the internet, which is great for me. Oh, but it's bad because then I don't get to hang out with you like this.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 We can hang out anytime I'm in town. Yeah, that's never.
No, no, it's never. That's a traveling comedian's way of saying, like, see a sucker.
No, we can hang out anytime I'm around.

Speaker 1 I'm here four days.

Speaker 1 I still need to go to a UFC match with you. That's all I want.
I still say,

Speaker 1 this is the channel that the world deserves. Josh Johnson commentating on UFC.

Speaker 1 This man single-handedly got me into UFC.

Speaker 1 And I have never enjoyed a match as much as I have when he...

Speaker 1 You should... Have you ever tried doing one of those

Speaker 1 second screen type things? Oh, no, no, I haven't. I mean, maybe don't because you love UFC.
I don't want to spoil the thing that you love, but let me tell you something, man.

Speaker 1 Especially in 2020, man.

Speaker 1 Let me tell you something.

Speaker 1 This guy, UFC,

Speaker 1 you don't even understand. I would have never met.
Josh would make me think I know.

Speaker 1 UFC. By the time the fight starts, I would be like, Khabib.
Oh, let me tell you about Khabib.

Speaker 1 You don't even understand, man. Oh, so here's the thing you got to understand about Dagestani wrestling, right? So you see the Dagestani technique, and I'm going to be like, where did this come from?

Speaker 1 And then Josh is this there in the corner, like, yeah.

Speaker 1 No, I'm saying, you got to do it. You really do.
Dude, I'm telling you, especially in 2020, that was a good time to get in because

Speaker 1 there were no crowds, you got to see what like a fight was like because you could hear them. No, you could hear them.
You could hear them.

Speaker 1 So, not only could you hear them, you could hear when they were surprised about what was happening. I'll never forget when Kevin Holland fought, and I don't remember who grabbed him.

Speaker 1 Somebody grabbed him, and he went. Like, he's not on mic, the cameras are over the cage, so the cameras pick him up, going, Oh, you strong.

Speaker 1 Like, as a, but you're like, this is a professional elite fighter. Do you remember the other one? Wait, there's another one that we, you showed me.
Oh, man. It was, it was similar to this.

Speaker 1 Someone turns to their corner in the fight during, it was the same time. There's like no crowd, yeah, and he like turns and he's like, I don't know what to do.

Speaker 1 Like in the middle of the fight, yeah, he's like in the middle of the fight, he's like, He's like, Hey, hey, like, y'all, y'all said like he was, it was so good.

Speaker 1 And then the other one that we, we were laughing, we were like crying about is this because heavyweight fights are also like, these are the biggest, most dangerous men in the world, yeah, but they're also scared of each other.

Speaker 1 Yes, so it's like now

Speaker 1 they're like that's a big guy. And remember when we were in the car and we had missed the actual fight because we were like traveling for it and it was in, I think, Abu Dhabi.

Speaker 1 So it was a different time and everything. And anyway, the heavyweight dude kicked,

Speaker 1 like did like whatever, kicked, like oblique kick. And the other guy went, ah, ah.
And then he started walking away. He just walked away.
He just walked away.

Speaker 1 Like he was like, I'm going home. Even the ref is like, like the ref starts running to try to stop it because you're like, you know, you got got to intelligently defend yourself and everything.

Speaker 1 But even the ref was like, what is he doing? And then the dude like hit him once and then he, you know, like, but he was still holding his side.

Speaker 1 And you would never hear the like, ah, like, and now because of COVID, they've actually brought back a lot more, like, ring side, coach, corner. Like, they had some of it before, but nothing.

Speaker 1 They're bringing it more in. I'm telling you, Josh, you got to do it, man.
But yeah, Josh Johnson, UFC commentator and part-time non-chuck user. Ow, ow.
Ow, ow, ow.

Speaker 1 He works, walks the streets at night.

Speaker 1 His afro casting a menacing silhouette. Hello? Who is that? Hello?

Speaker 1 Hello?

Speaker 1 Are you the guy from the grocery store?

Speaker 1 Josh Johnson is none chuck.

Speaker 1 What now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jess Hackle.
Rebecca Chain is our producer.

Speaker 1 Our development researcher is Marcia Robiou. Music, Mixing and Mastering by Hannes Brown.
Random Other Stuff by Ryan Harduth. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 1 Join me next week for another episode of What Now.

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