Comedian and podcaster Steven Crowder joins us to talk about how he got into the business, how he became a podcaster, and what it's like to work for Steven and co-host his new show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
00:02:33.000And we just became kind of friends and it grew and grew and finally becoming more of a fixture on the show was supposed to be just like a few week thing.
00:02:42.000And that was, you know, in January of 2017.
00:02:48.000The numbers are consistently going in the same direction.
00:02:52.000Well, I've been doing comedy almost 10 years now and I was up in the Seattle area and just been doing comedy there for, I think it was like eight years, nine years before I met Steven.
00:03:02.000I had known who he was mostly from the change of my mind.
00:03:05.000Then I worked with him and was like, wow, this guy's hilarious.
00:03:41.000It's everything I thought it would be.
00:03:42.000Well, I had done Steven's show years ago, and then I get a call from Steven or Darren or whatever, and they said, we want to, you know, we want your show on the network.
00:04:17.000The way we joke about it And ridicule it.
00:04:21.000It just adds this layer to the message that we're trying to put out that I think is what makes the show unique and really the best show in this sphere.
00:04:31.000I started on the show about two years ago.
00:04:34.000Started as an editor shooting sketches and I work on The Daily Show running that and over pre-production and production.
00:05:31.000I try to see what the workload's looking like, what you guys see, how stressed out you are, so I'll know kind of what I'm walking into.
00:05:39.000I know it's early for BTS. So I had been with ESPN for just shy of a decade and I'd been listening to the Show on a regular basis.
00:05:48.000So I put my feelers out and I happened to see that there was a recruitment post on LinkedIn and I went for it and here I am.
00:05:56.000I'm wearing glasses that help them not burn out at 6 in the morning.
00:06:01.000We do a quick talk over for 15-20 minutes about the topics and then from about 6 to 8 we're to the grindstone.
00:06:09.000We're in a document Laying out the levels to the story, certain statistics, undergirding research, communicating with Steven or Gerald on certain changes they might want.
00:06:19.000And we have to start figuring out, okay, what can we keep in?
00:06:23.000And yeah, we basically just go through, we try and start at the top of the map and work our way down so that obviously what hits first is first out the door.
00:06:34.000I take a lot of pride in making sure that whatever we get out is actually useful for people.
00:06:40.000I think that's the biggest key takeaway from everything that we do.
00:06:43.000We do a lot of comedy, which is fantastic.
00:06:45.000I think that's kind of the backbone of what we do.
00:06:47.000But we give people information in a way that's useful.
00:06:52.000We have a little less than an hour to finish up any jokes you want to add to the show and kind of get together in a little huddle and go over a few ideas.
00:07:01.000I mean, I freaked out when I got here and I saw the production level.
00:07:04.000Yeah, I think I have the strongest team I've had ever.
00:07:22.000Very high-performing, I always want to say athletes, because it reminds me of playing sports where you really have to depend on people to do things in crunch time.
00:07:30.000In a live situation, and again, like I mentioned, that's not something you find in other jobs.
00:07:34.000Even Steven says, like, this place is the NFL of production.
00:07:38.000Like, this is where the best people come, and hopefully we get the best people.
00:07:41.000Even if they don't seem like it, like, they turn into the best people in production.
00:07:45.000Yeah, Matt is up to make this amazing team.
00:07:49.000We can work together in a way I never really have with others before.
00:07:54.000I think it really makes for a superior product.
00:07:56.000This is something that's different than what you're going to find out in the marketplace.
00:07:59.000It is truly a combination of late night and kind of politics, almost stand-up comedy in some ways, and then professional wrestling to a degree with skits and themes and all that stuff.
00:10:16.000She definitely went to Google and typed in gay font.
00:10:19.000Gotta add a little more blur, possibly, but you'll see this online.
00:10:24.000When we come in here to the studio to do run-through, and that's when Stephen will have a large number of his changes, which usually leads to, I want to call it a chaotic 30 to 45 minutes.
00:12:06.000So it's very high stress, but it's super rewarding because you get to see the fruits of your labor in real time and there's not many jobs that you can do that with.
00:12:13.000A lot of times in Run-Through we're more or less prepped for the show and then, you know, Steven being the creative that he is.
00:12:21.000Starts riffing off of a lot of the stories that he sees in the map.
00:12:24.000He'll be like, hey, maybe we should have had a Photoshop here.
00:12:37.000- Um, but if you're not validated, you're gonna say, you're gonna keep it light and faith.
00:12:43.000- It is an intense environment. - The pithers are people that were stopping. - The cuddlers getting revised. - They're getting secured to trade in. - How do you steal an election?
00:12:53.000We're allowed to talk about it on YouTube right now.
00:12:55.000We'll go through the five steps that can, and at least at some point have taken place, and Mug Club has an exclusive today, some undercover footage.
00:13:16.000By the time 10 after 9 is rolling around and the countdown clock is going, that's when we're getting still last minute changes.
00:13:23.000Sometimes even after the show started, we're getting changes in.
00:13:26.000There's such an intensity to the room when we're prepping for a show, when we're going into a show, even during a show, that it just makes the room electric.
00:13:40.000More difficult, but more rewarding than it.
00:13:43.000Run-through's sometimes more fun than the show, but I mean, that's when everyone's loosening up and getting all the stuff that you can't say on air out.
00:13:51.000Oh, now I'm going double Windsor, dude!
00:13:53.000I hope you're still tying the tie when the morning show news media is intense.
00:15:23.000So sketches, a lot more goes into them than it might seem.
00:15:28.000It's way more involved than I thought it would be.
00:15:31.000There's not another place in the industry where you could just...
00:15:35.000Change your role, or say, hey, I want to try mixing the show today, or I went over an audio, or, you know, you get to contribute, you get to be on cam.