Shownotes Transcript
Introducing Instagram teen accounts. A new way to keep your teen safer as they grow. Like making sure they always have their seatbelt on. All right, buckle up. Good job. New Instagram teen accounts. Automatic protections for who can contact your teen and the content they can see. You're listening to Comedy Central. So I made a bet with a gentleman by the name of Jalen Bronson. He's a basketball player for the, we call him the New York Knickerbockers. He's a point guard.
for our New York Knickerbockers. He and I made a bet about two months ago. His bet was if the New York Giants lose to the Philadelphia Eagles in the regular season, I have to wear a Saquon Barkley Eagles jersey to Madison Square Garden. I accepted this bet even though this bet is an inevitability. Like, the Giants suck.
Like, the Giants won three games this year, and the Eagles earned the Super Bowl. And it's not like that surprised me. It didn't sneak up on me. Like, when he asked me, I was thinking in my head, like, but the Giants suck. But I didn't say, like, give me points. I just went like, okay. And so Saturday night, this Saturday night, I went to the Knicks game in a Saquon Barkley Eagles jersey and an Eagles bucket hat.
And I was in my home arena booed relentlessly. And by the way, like, not just in the arena, on the street. Like, walking by pretzel guys who were like, "You chug!" So that was my weekend. So good luck in the Super Bowl. - No question over here in the back? Yeah, over there, yeah. - How did you find your interviews here? - Some guy just, like, skid on the floor when you were singing. What'd he say? Oh, what are you doing?
This never happens, by the way. So I just walked backstage. I'll speak loudly because I'm not wearing a mic now, but they said that you're very excited today because today you just found out that you have become an American citizen. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. It's a crazy day. Thanks, man. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. You're the best. You're the best. All right. All right.
Worst interview ever. Just wouldn't leave. Yeah, it is a crazy experience to become a US citizen the same day you're supposed to interview Bill Murray. So I guess that's a... It's been a long day. I had to go for the interview. They asked you like 100 questions. It's questions which I bet none of you could f***ing answer. And I had to memorize how many colonies there were and there was like a state and who's the president right now. It was very difficult. Um...
Now, I'm going to bring out somebody right now who has also been through a lot. He is a correspondent on the show, but he hurt his foot. Yeah, he hurt his his fee fee. He tripped on a curb. So I'm going to bring him out now very slowly. But I want you to give him encouragement. Michael Kosta, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.
All right, hold on. You want to see? Here's my favorite thing about this. His crutches are my height. I'll tell you what. I mean-- How you feeling? I really did a number on my ankle. Do you want to tell them the story? So can I tell-- Michael is like an actual, like, real kind of world-class athlete, to be honest. Like, it's kind of unusual for comedy. Like, he has a functioning body and face.
So when he came in, I thought this was Michael was like a world class tennis player. And so I thought it was that. Yeah. And it was I fell off a curb. My wife and four year old went skiing. I was in charge of the two year old. So I took her to a water park. No one else got injured except for me.
I was the only one not doing anything. And I fell on a curb, and I'm at that age, John. I'm at the age where if I had fallen on a curb, I would no longer be working in show business. Well, and also, selfishly, people came over to check on me. I thought, they're really checking on my child. You had your child with you. I had my child with me. And she was crying, but she was more crying like, how did you f***ing fall on the curb? Yeah.
Anyways. It was a cry of disappointment. But you're okay now. Are you x-rayed? Is it broken? I'm not x-rayed. I know. It's super swollen. I also have to host this week, and I just... I get annoyed that you get so much attention on Mondays. Yeah. So I wanted to hurt myself. But you...
You played collegiate soccer. I did play collegiate soccer, but I will not to be self-effacing. It was in the 80s when soccer, I mean, the level of, we could still use our hands. It was really, at that point, American soccer was more like elevated kickball. What made you want to do entertainment, like late night TV?
Well, there's, like, the bullshit answer of, you know, it's important to question societal rules, and there's the real answer, which is I'm the youngest of four kids. I'm still trying to get my parents' attention. I... My mom tells this story that we would sit at this dinner table in Michigan, and when the sun would go down, this... the glass door would become reflective, and I could never sit in this one seat because I would just stare at myself the whole time, like...
And I was like, "Well, yeah, that's because you guys never looked at me." So I had to stare at myself.
I love comedy. Holy shit, do I love comedy. We get to make people laugh. Once your guard is down, we can maybe sneak an important message in, maybe not. It feels good to laugh for once. You feel present moment when you're laughing. There's very few rules in comedy. If I say something brilliant, it's like, holy shit, he's an excellent journalist. If I say something stupid, it's like, relax, I'm a comedian. It's like...
It's amazing that people get mad when comedians say things that are truthful and not as mad when politicians do. This is just such a wonderful... I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is a wonderful Midwest town of sensibilities of both sides, very educated, and I just think it just fits perfectly for me, and I'm thankful for that. And also...
How I ended up here, holy shit. This is like, there's very few places like this. I love late night. I told you when we first met, we came in today. There's no show. There's no show. There's a blinking cursor on a blank computer, and we create the show. We, meaning me. I write the show. No, there's two. There's a lot of people, but it's very fun. And here's the thing that's also fun, is that no matter how today went, tomorrow there's a show too. So we'll be back. Because we've already paid for it with our subsidies! I'm fucking saying! I'm fucking saying!
I'll be going to the hospitals. You know, it's important to remember who the real heroes are. So my favorite thing out of all that sort of Indy 500 pit stop trying to keep the car on the road was, and I'm not even sure who said it, but they just go, you want some duct tape on that? Old electricians. Old electricians trick. I'm like, sure.
For those of you who watched the show for many, many years, you will know this is the second time that I have, going for physical comedy, cut myself to the point where I need stitches. When did we do it the last time? It was a margarita blender with me and Oliver, and I hit it down and, like, just drew blood. And Oliver couldn't have been happier. I'd never seen anything like it. He sat there gleefully watching, and that was more of an artery.
I was just spurting everywhere. And at one point he yells at me, it's just a flesh wound. I'm not making such a big deal of it. That's not good. I'm probably going to need to go to the hospital. And as for you, Stuart, and your visibly, visibly injured hand, that's a genuine problem. That's a genuine problem. Don't, that's, that's...
We better hurry up this bit because I am bleeding out, mother . - John, that's it, toss it in. He can swab himself down. You're fine, you're fine. - Thank you all very much for being here. There's no dignified way to do this really, is there? And by the way, the story that I'm going to tell my wife and children when I get home, very different than the one that, "There I was on 54th and 10th, "an old woman being hounded by thugs and vulgarians."
I swung my fist. Was there a moment of empathy that stuck out with you at one of those rallies? A moment of empathy that stuck out with me? Something like time. No, that is a good question. You know what? There is one of the last rallies. Well, not even last. This last election cycle, I went to a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
And, uh, it was terrible weather, and we were talking to people in the morning, and, uh, as I was talking to people, there was this guy who dresses in a brick suit suit. It's a bespoke suit that looks like Trump's wall.
And he has a handlebar mustache, and he dresses like the wall, and he's one of the first people in line. And Trump often brings him up on stage. So he's a mini-celebrity there. And he started hounding us at this rally. And he was live-streaming, and he was saying, fuck these guys, don't talk to these guys, these guys are fake news. And to be fair, he's right. But he sort of trolled us for hours that day. He literally took out a phone and he stuck it into a wall. He's obsessed with walls.
to try to capture something. Our crew was on a smoke break, and he wanted to try to capture something to get them in trouble. And it was a long, hellish day of filming, and it was a snowstorm. And so we rushed to the airport, and we got snowed in to Green Bay, Wisconsin for the night, 'cause we usually try to leave. And so we stay in Green Bay, and the next day, we all leave on different flights. And I go to the airport alone, and I show up at the airport, and my flight is delayed 3 1/2 hours. And who is there but Brick Suit Man.
And this is the Green Bay Airport, so nobody else is there. And he looks at me and he says, "Do you want to talk?" And obviously I'm like, " , no, I don't want to talk!" This is a nightmare. This is before I'm traveling with four security guards. And Real Talk Security Protocol has changed the story.
But I sat down with him, and for the first half hour, we're all sort of feeling each other out. But then once we got past this fear, his fear that, like, I got a camera crew trying to catch him, and my fear that he's trying to have some sort of gotcha moment with me as well, we started talking about shit. I started to learn about him. He started to learn about me. I asked him about things I thought were BS about Donald Trump. He was open and vulnerable about the things and the weaknesses he saw in Donald Trump.
Like, there wasn't a middle ground that we found, but there was a softening in those relations. And I'd like to tell you that, like, BrickSuitGuy was crazy, and he's not. He was a smart guy. He was an ideological guy. He was a conservative guy, more libertarian, loved to be a shit poster on the Internet, but he wasn't an idiot. We talked for three and a half hours.
And and as we walk, we literally get on the plane. We walk. We're talking all the way up to get on the plane. And I show my ticket to the ticket taker and she goes, oh, you're in an exit row. And and I'm like, oh, and I'm like, she says, do you accept the responsibilities of being the exit row? I say, yes, I do. And then I turned to break suit guy and I say, I hope this freaks you out. And then you know what happens? He laughs. And to me, that is that is the whole thing.
Like, he wasn't offended. He didn't take it personally. He found humor in that moment. And-and I'm like, I-I find optimism in that. I don't know how to recreate three and a half hours in a Green Bay airport with a nemesis of yours. But I know that, like, there's a softening when you remove the cameras.
when you move the fear that this conversation isn't just transaction for a gotcha moment, but an actual conversation about the things that you care about and things you're unsure about. I think that kind of vulnerability, that kind of uncertainty is paramount in any kind of situation that you hope to find any kind of humanity or common ground. And so I think that is there. I don't think we live in a media environment that cultivates that situation, but I think we are humans that...
that necessitate it. And so that has not been erased by Donald Trump, but it has been pushed to the sides of the conversation. And so if we can find a way to allow that conversation to not exist only on the periphery, but somewhere in our own lives, I think we're gonna get through that. Cool? Let's do some Zen. Yeah. - What do you say to your critics who are saying that you're being light on the fascist message recently? - Oh, I tell my critics, "Shut up. You're a fascist."
So, I do appreciate that because I understand the desire, but like, I'm very big on, and I know it's annoying, but specificity and nuance. And I think if you cry fascism at every administrative overreach, even the ones that are constitutionally okay, you will find yourself out of fascism bullets when the time really comes to remind people of... Because...
You will I think what the media has done over the last 10 years is cry wolf To the point where they numbed everybody it was an anesthetic and it got to where what was the thing they litigated throughout this campaign? He's a fascist. He's a terrible person democracy is on the ballot Guess what lost at the back if you told us democracy's on the ballot well democracy got its ass kicked by a majority vote so
I'm very cautious about when to know like, yeah, hopefully I won't do it the night after Kristallnacht. I'll get it like, but it's like, when do you put your dog down? Like, it's one of those things like you're not quite sure. But, but I do understand how annoying that is. I was just wondering, you know, how do you maintain a sense of hope and levity when times... How do you keep laughing? Right. How old are you? I'm 19.
19 years old and the world's already beat the shit out of you. Isn't that? It's always the young dudes that are like, I have a quick question. I'm 19 years old. When hope is gone. When the darkness slowly creeps down. I'm 61. So I'm already in injury time.
So I'm good. I'm actually weirdly always optimistic. I think maybe that is the horizon of history. I came up at a time in the 60s where we had all these great leaders and we killed all of them, every single one. And then we went to Vietnam and law and then Watergate. Shit was just unraveling.
So I do think it gives you a sense of, oh, it's always a mess. And what that makes you realize is, oh, so it's just, that's the game. We buckle down, you got to lunch pail it, and you carry through. Like, you're 19. Like, you'll someday, when you're 61, and people will be saying, like, how do you maintain optimism? You'll be like, you have no f***ing idea what it was like when I was a kid. Like, you will be that guy to be able to say, like, you know what?
And obviously, look, it is. These are tenuous times. And maybe even we'll talk a little bit about that on the program tonight. Terrible times. It's a good thing. But because...
Part of the issue is, like, you just want someone to talk to you like you're a human, like you're an adult. Not like it's a work. Not like it's they're spinning you or any of those. That's my biggest complaint with all of this. Nobody expects perfection. Everybody knows that the obstacles and all the things that are going to be thrown in front of us are going to be arduous. That's life. Like, life is hard, you know? But...
You just want someone to not bullshit you when what you know you see in here is what you see. Like, that's all that you can really do. But how do you maintain? So you're 19. So are your friends optimistic or pessimistic or do they not talk about it? Or are they just on Discord being racist? What is going on? I think a lot of people are pessimistic. I mean, how do I maintain optimism? Yes. I try to laugh. I watch The Daily Show. Yeah.
So here's the only thing I would say. I'm glad you do that. But really, we write it for eight-year-olds. So 19 is a little above our pay grade. But is it... I do remember 19, like that age, there is a certain existential anxiety that creeps in because...
the world does, listen, it feels out of control. You probably know more about it now than we did when we, I think one of the things that's probably harder for kids now is you are, the amount of information that you absorb is probably, but I would imagine hopefully your brains will evolve to, you know, because when I was a kid, like TV happened and everybody's like, that will, don't sit in front of the TV and eat and just watch TV and now you'd be so happy if your children would do that, right?
You'd just be like, don't send pictures of your dick to people.