The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 452. The Loudest Woman in Comedy ｜ Roseanne Barr

00:00:00.960 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:06.480 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:12.740 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:00:20.100 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:27.420 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:00:35.360 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:00:41.780 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:00:47.460 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:00:57.420 Hello, everybody. I got the opportunity today to talk to Roseanne Barr.

00:01:14.460 We talked about her recent work with the Daily Wire Plus crew on Mr. Burcham.

00:01:19.480 She plays a high school principal near retirement in that show. 0.92

00:01:23.220 And then we talked a fair bit about comedy as such and exactly what a comedian does, what it's like to hit the mark so precisely that you can tell the truth in a manner that also opens people up and brings that unconscious joy that's associated with spontaneous laughter.

00:01:45.460 Trying to nail down exactly what that means, it's part of this broader phenomenon that we see where so many people that are making their mark on pop culture are comedians, former and present.

00:02:00.860 Rogan, of course, Russell Brand, many, many people, Dave Rubin, Stephen Crowder, Theo Vaughn.

00:02:11.360 There's so many comedians that have made a name for themselves as interviewers.

00:02:16.380 We talked about that a fair bit.

00:02:19.160 Her experience with cancel culture and class discrimination or difficulty in making class adjustment, let's say, in Hollywood.

00:02:27.800 Her more recent experiences on the comedy scene in Austin, which is a real up-and-coming comedy renaissance city, in no small part as a consequence of Joe Rogan's enterprises there.

00:02:41.820 So, join us for what proved to be a very interesting and enlightening conversation.

00:02:49.480 Let's start by talking about Mr. Burcham.

00:02:52.320 You're working with the Daily Wire Plus crew.

00:02:55.460 Yeah.

00:02:56.000 And so, how's that going?

00:02:57.800 Oh, it's just been a blast.

00:03:00.160 It's just been so fun.

00:03:03.040 I like their process.

00:03:04.960 I like the people.

00:03:06.500 I love Adam Carolla and the other comics.

00:03:09.840 It's just been so fun to be part of something that is so on the line and purposely offensive.

00:03:21.820 It's just great to offend, you know.

00:03:24.580 And I think for an audience that likes that sort of thing, you know, it's great accepting.

00:03:32.700 And for people who really want to think and rearrange furniture in their mind, it's fun to be a part of that.

00:03:42.260 The problem with rearranging furniture in your mind is the snakes and the spiders tend to crawl out from underneath.

00:03:48.620 Isn't that true?

00:03:49.620 Isn't that true?

00:03:50.100 It's definitely the case. 0.62

00:03:51.980 So, tell everybody about Mr. Burcham because there'll be lots of people watching and listening who don't know about it.

00:03:57.280 Well, it's a 30-year dream of Adam Carolla to portray this character.

00:04:02.960 I guess it's based on a real-life teacher of his, a shop teacher, and who was, as I understand it, I hope I'm not misspeaking it for Adam,

00:04:15.440 but he was very influential to Adam, and he had a different approach to teaching.

00:04:22.560 It was unconventional, and some people would, probably right now, he'd, you know, people would be up in arms about the way he taught.

00:04:33.540 But he not only taught, but reached people, and, you know, challenged them to do their best.

00:04:41.860 So, that's kind of what is so great about the cartoon because it shows a teacher that cares in an unconventional way

00:04:49.720 and actually moves students to think and do their best work.

00:04:54.220 And he's up against, like you and I and people who are thinkers, up against this huge force of, you know,

00:05:07.500 Yeah, evil.

00:05:09.800 The collective, you know, the collective.

00:05:12.980 That's what I just call it now.

00:05:14.500 That has, you know, their fascist definitions of everything where people must obey, must bow, must repeat, must parrot.

00:05:26.420 And so, in all of that, there's this one gifted teacher who wants to do it his way.

00:05:33.040 And he is, of course, under scrutiny by all the collective.

00:05:37.500 And I play the principal who's about two weeks from retirement and doesn't give a damn, just wants to get the retirement and is trying to do what she has to do.

00:05:50.520 And it's kind of, is a veteran.

00:05:52.920 And so, she's kind of on Mr. Bertram's side, but she has to obey the prodigals.

00:05:59.500 And this, the one character, oh my gosh, I'm blank on his name, but is played by Tyler Fisher.

00:06:09.580 I'm so sorry, Tyler.

00:06:11.100 But he plays like.

00:06:12.220 He plays Carponzi.

00:06:14.040 Carponzi, yeah.

00:06:15.100 And he's really a lib.

00:06:17.700 He's a real, like, pronoun type, you know, guy that is all that.

00:06:22.860 And he's trying to get Mr. Bertram fired, you know, using the rules that Mr. Bertram doesn't follow.

00:06:30.900 And so, my character is, like, trying to protect Mr. Bertram and trying to protect her retirement.

00:06:36.780 So, the best comedies, animated or otherwise, often have a very sharp and biting satirical edge, but underneath a certain amount of heart and genuine human connection.

00:06:54.500 This was something that was very marked about The Simpsons, for example, because it was completely satirical.

00:06:59.660 But at least for the 13 first seasons, there were some stellar shows after that, too.

00:07:05.660 So, really what made the series so remarkable was the fact that you actually ended up identifying with and liking the characters, despite their manifold flaws.

00:07:20.120 Do you ever watch The Trailer Park Boys?

00:07:22.200 Have you ever seen that?

00:07:23.520 Oh, yes.

00:07:24.120 I love that show.

00:07:25.520 It's just.

00:07:25.900 Okay.

00:07:26.100 So, why do you love The Trailer Park?

00:07:28.080 Because I also love The Trailer Park Boys, which I'm very sad to say, but I'm like a super fan.

00:07:33.680 And it has the same quality, right?

00:07:36.880 I mean, the characters are completely reprehensible most of the time, but there's a connection.

00:07:43.540 They have a connection underneath that's genuine, and that gives the show.

00:07:47.780 It's not just cynical, and it is genuinely funny.

00:07:52.200 And so, what is it you like about The Trailer Park Boys?

00:07:55.800 Well, I like just that it's absurdist.

00:08:00.480 It's so based in reality that it's absurd, which is like what reality is right now.

00:08:06.900 It's just so absurd.

00:08:09.560 It's hard to write jokes when you're in the middle of just absurdia, because you can hardly top how ridiculous and absurd everything is.

00:08:21.680 You just maybe need to just hold up a mirror.

00:08:25.240 And that's what I like about it, because I had so many people in my life who are just like The Trailer Park Boys.

00:08:32.380 Maybe they don't.

00:08:33.560 I think The Trailer Park Boys have a lot of insight that the people like that.

00:08:39.060 They do have a lot of insight, but I think that it speaks greatly to class consciousness, which is what fascinates me more than anything else about American culture and Canada and the UK and I guess the West.

00:09:02.680 The fact that everybody is kind of blind to the fact that we live in such a class-based culture, it's like the last thing that anybody ever notices or talks about.

00:09:15.420 But it's just so present in that show, and it's just so hilarious.

00:09:24.540 All the things that come with that whole working class thing, which I just love it.

00:09:30.620 One of the things that always struck me, the town I grew up in, the town I'm in right now, because I'm up in northern Alberta, is a working class town.

00:09:39.180 And I suppose climbed the class ladder after I left Fairview.

00:09:45.260 But one of the things I really missed as that happened was humor.

00:09:49.760 I mean, the people I grew up with here, basically all we did to amuse ourselves was to engage in competitive bouts of humor.

00:09:59.360 And so, and that was ridiculously fun.

00:10:02.820 And it was a way of gaining status too, because the funniest people had the most status.

00:10:07.340 And also, obviously, the people that could take a joke.

00:10:10.300 And in working class jobs, you need to be able to take a joke, that's for sure. 1.00

00:10:15.440 Well, everyone does all the time in life.

00:10:17.820 But, you know, among the intellectual class, frequently, especially among the posers,

00:10:23.160 there's an absolute lack of humor.

00:10:27.340 And that's very annoying.

00:10:28.520 It is absolutely true.

00:10:30.300 It's very dull and pretentious.

00:10:34.480 And, you know, one of the things, too, that I've really learned,

00:10:37.380 I think you can tell people who are dangerous because they hate comedians and they hate automobiles.

00:10:43.180 I never thought about the automobiles.

00:10:47.220 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:10:48.140 It's the same.

00:10:48.900 It's the same.

00:10:49.480 So, I think it's that private, personal mobility and freedom that, you know,

00:10:53.860 I mean, car culture was always a working class culture. 0.99

00:10:56.920 And the thing about a car is you can go anywhere you want, whenever you want,

00:11:02.140 with no restrictions or very limited restrictions, and no one can tell you otherwise.

00:11:05.920 Plus, it's super private, or it wasn't until you had OnStar and all these bloody things that monitor you

00:11:11.700 100% of the time while you're driving now.

00:11:14.520 But cars, to me, really signify freedom.

00:11:17.980 And, well, comedy is the same way because you get to say whatever you want as long as it's funny.

00:11:23.240 I had a good friend of mine once up in Northern Alberta.

00:11:25.500 His rule was you could say anything you wanted as long as it was funny or true.

00:11:30.180 And funny and true, man, that really tops the charts, if you can pull that off.

00:11:34.720 Yeah, that's for sure.

00:11:36.400 That's what I was like for my family, too.

00:11:38.280 Of course, it was a dysfunctional family, and, you know, like everybody's, I guess.

00:11:43.720 Everybody has an element of that.

00:11:45.400 But we could say whatever.

00:11:48.220 We couldn't ever.

00:11:50.840 We weren't allowed to say we were angry or that something was wrong.

00:11:57.420 We weren't ever allowed to whine, as it was called.

00:12:00.700 But we could tell a joke expressing dissatisfaction or anger or rage or anything.

00:12:08.900 And it would be, you know, it would be accepted.

00:12:11.540 Everybody loved it.

00:12:12.660 We'd laugh it off.

00:12:13.440 And that is like how we communicated the darker parts of our psyches, you know, and it was okay.

00:12:19.940 But if you would tell a joke and it would bomb in front of my dad, then he'd, you know, then you'd get slapped.

00:12:27.400 So I kind of got robotized into being a comedian because it was a way to express and to survive all of this stuff.

00:12:36.900 So, you know, I learned it that way.

00:12:39.680 But it was kind of like that in all my friends' house, too.

00:12:43.960 If you are snappy with your wit, your parents appreciated it, even though they wanted to, you know, beat the hell out of you.

00:12:52.520 Sometimes they didn't.

00:12:54.820 Yeah.

00:12:55.360 Well, the thing about discussing dark things with humor is that it has two advantages, I think.

00:13:01.700 The first is you get to shine a light on the thing that's dark.

00:13:05.800 But more importantly, you get to show that you can stand seeing it and also that you can sort of, you can transcend it at the same time, which is really what you're doing when you laugh it off.

00:13:17.540 So you're showing that there's something there that's negative and maybe even that's causing suffering.

00:13:22.840 But at the same time, you're indicating everybody's willingness to look at it and also to rise above it.

00:13:28.700 And so that's a pretty damn good deal.

00:13:30.500 And also to dispel its power over us.

00:13:35.080 Right.

00:13:35.420 You know, I always thought that comedy was, I mean, I do feel it's a gift.

00:13:41.280 And a lot of us comics when we're drunk and sitting there talking to each other seriously, which we do when we're drunk and drinking and stuff and getting serious about comedy, which we do.

00:13:52.660 It's probably really boring to, but it's probably really boring to non-comedians.

00:13:55.180 But we talk about what a kind of a holy thing it is to be a comedian, to have the power of naming, you know, being able to name something and then to dispel its power over us.

00:14:16.180 But more important than anything, the way I look at it, and I always bring it up, is to laugh power to scorn.

00:14:24.320 They cannot survive that.

00:14:27.560 And so we look at it as like, oh, it is a holy calling in a kind of a working class way of telling the king or the emperor, hey, you're naked as hell, buddy. 0.57

00:14:45.520 Yeah, well, there's two things there you point out that I think are really interesting.

00:14:51.300 I had never thought about that relationship between comedy and the power to name.

00:14:57.440 So that's what God grants Adam in the story of Adam and Eve, right?

00:15:00.820 He's supposed to, God, in fact, God brings everything in front of Adam to see what he'll name them.

00:15:06.860 And it's interesting because naming something actually has that real tight alliance with wit.

00:15:13.520 It's really hard to coin a word or a phrase, right?

00:15:16.580 You have to hit the target dead center before you can come up with a new phrase that will spread.

00:15:23.460 That happens very rarely.

00:15:25.160 That's a real mark of precise aim.

00:15:27.920 And so, and you're absolutely right.

00:15:30.480 Precise aim is so much a part of it.

00:15:33.500 Yeah, exactly.

00:15:34.780 Yeah, yeah.

00:15:35.720 And then the scorn issue, that's also dead relevant.

00:15:39.440 Well, I think this is partly why you can tell the tyrants because of their attitude towards comedians is that it's the people who don't want to be unmasked and especially who don't want to be unmasked in relationship to the fact that all their vaunted compassion is nothing but a play for power.

00:15:56.700 They're the ones that detest comedians and have absolutely no sense of humor.

00:16:00.420 That's a very dangerous thing in a person to have no sense of humor.

00:16:04.780 And so what does that mean if you have no sense of humor?

00:16:06.980 Well, they have no sense of humor.

00:16:08.820 Watching comedy, I've always been a comedy fan and so was my father.

00:16:13.720 He wanted to be a comic too and I think he made me one.

00:16:18.540 But the content of the humor they like, because everybody laughs at something eventually, but the content and politics of the humor they like is something that I've studied as a comic for a long time.

00:16:37.720 And it is kind of by class the way I look at it.

00:16:41.160 It's very much by class and it's also by sex and it's also by a few other factors in my mind.

00:16:53.280 But these people, they will laugh, but we always say they laugh downward.

00:16:59.620 They laugh at their, quote, lesser, like less, they're less, I always call it academentia.

00:17:12.520 They're less, you know, the riffraff or whatever. 0.99

00:17:18.840 But, and sometimes they'll laugh upward and sometimes they'll laugh laterally, but it's very subdued.

00:17:27.620 But the thing they will never do is laugh at themselves.

00:17:32.680 Right, right, right.

00:17:33.460 And they really despise anything that puts them as a joke.

00:17:39.440 You know, I got fired because I made fun of the Obama administration and their policies in the Middle East, even though they tried to say it was about something else.

00:17:51.760 But that is what my tweet was about that got me fired and my work of a lifetime stolen, everything they did to me. 0.95

00:17:58.760 And also misrepresenting what I meant and not allowing me the chance to explain or anything, you know, just dead, deadheading me.

00:18:10.620 But he is, he and those leftists around him, leftists don't have a sense of humor at all. 0.75

00:18:21.120 But they definitely don't want to be made fun of at all.

00:18:25.840 And they resent it.

00:18:27.140 They get so angry because, you know, the one thing I always say about fascists, two things they despise, dialogue and humor.

00:18:34.740 You know, conversation and actual dialogue about an idea.

00:18:39.900 They despise that and any kind of humor that includes any discussion of class or that kind of thing, you know.

00:18:48.620 And going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight.

00:18:55.380 Most of the time, you'll probably be fine.

00:18:57.160 But what if one day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do?

00:19:03.100 In our hyper-connected world, your digital privacy isn't just a luxury.

00:19:06.860 It's a fundamental right.

00:19:08.160 Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.

00:19:17.480 And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.

00:19:20.360 With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins and credit card details.

00:19:28.120 Now, you might think, what's the big deal?

00:19:30.180 Who'd want my data anyway?

00:19:31.740 Well, on the dark web, your personal information could fetch up to $1,000.

00:19:36.340 That's right, there's a whole underground economy built on stolen identities.

00:19:40.380 Enter ExpressVPN.

00:19:42.120 It's like a digital fortress, creating an encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet.

00:19:46.420 Their encryption is so robust that it would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to crack it.

00:19:52.500 But don't let its power fool you.

00:19:54.300 ExpressVPN is incredibly user-friendly.

00:19:56.660 With just one click, you're protected across all your devices.

00:19:59.680 Phones, laptops, tablets, you name it.

00:20:01.860 That's why I use ExpressVPN whenever I'm traveling or working from a coffee shop.

00:20:05.980 It gives me peace of mind knowing that my research, communications and personal data are shielded from prying eyes.

00:20:11.720 Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash jordan.

00:20:16.420 That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash jordan and you can get an extra three months free.

00:20:22.960 ExpressVPN dot com slash jordan.

00:20:27.700 Well, maybe it's harder on the Democrats to have working class humorists go after them because in principle, they're supposed to be advocates for the working class.

00:20:38.680 And so, if it's working class humor, which does tend, in my experience, to be very self-denigrating, right?

00:20:46.320 And I do think that's a real mark of character.

00:20:48.940 It's one of the things I really like about British humor.

00:20:51.140 And I think Canadian humor has got that edge too.

00:20:54.120 You know, is that the Brits are very, very good at laughing at themselves.

00:20:57.320 The Monty Python troupe was unbelievably good at that because their humor was all unbelievably good.

00:21:02.700 And it made the comedy in some ways timeless too because it wasn't focused exactly on the political or actually very rarely on the political.

00:21:11.620 And so, it's very strange to see that some of the jokes from the 1970s, many of the skits that the Monty Python troupe pulled off in the 1970s are still funny as hell.

00:21:21.260 And still, you know, I talked to John Cleese at one point and he told me they were planning to do a Broadway revitalization of the life of Brian.

00:21:32.780 You know, they wanted to cut out, you remember there's one section with the little cabal of left-wing radicals that the movie centers around.

00:21:44.460 And one of them, I can't remember, the comedian, decides that he's a woman about halfway through the movie.

00:21:53.020 Oh, wow.

00:21:54.020 Yeah, yeah.

00:21:54.500 It's very funny.

00:21:55.240 Oh, yeah.

00:21:55.660 It's very funny.

00:21:56.600 It's ridiculously funny.

00:21:58.020 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.64

00:21:58.760 And so, they obviously, in some spectacular way, foreshadowed all this trans nonsense that's been coming down the pipeline. 1.00

00:22:06.840 But they were very resistant, the people who were going to produce it, were very resistant to continuing to include that in the Broadway revival.

00:22:15.440 I don't know if that ever did get sorted out because Cleese was not happy about it.

00:22:19.680 But that's also a testament to their satirical brilliance to have managed something, it's 40 years ago now, that still hits the target, you know, viciously enough to be of concern to the woke dimwits today.

00:22:33.680 I mean, and it's so interesting because in the movie, In the Life of Brian, the desire of this character to be a woman is actually treated with a fair bit of, is it dignity?

00:22:47.880 Well, it is.

00:22:48.960 It's satirical dignity.

00:22:51.140 So, there's nothing about it that would offend anyone who had the least iota of sense.

00:22:56.000 Quite the contrary.

00:22:56.900 It's very, very hilarious.

00:22:58.780 But it is a good example of that inability to laugh.

00:23:02.460 I haven't seen it for so long.

00:23:05.680 It's definite.

00:23:06.700 I watched it recently.

00:23:08.000 Again, I think after I talked to Cleese, I was curious about it, maybe before, because I wanted to, you know, pop it back up in my mind.

00:23:14.640 But it's aged very well.

00:23:17.700 I would say it's probably more relevant today than it was when they released it.

00:23:22.400 That's fantastic.

00:23:23.960 Yeah, yeah.

00:23:24.180 Isn't it great when comedy does that?

00:23:26.360 Yeah, well, it zeroes in so tightly on radical leftist nonsense.

00:23:34.640 And, you know, that was a problem in the 70s, but it was nowhere near as much of a problem in the 70s as it is now.

00:23:40.760 So, it's un...

00:23:43.760 We're in uncharted territory.

00:23:46.580 We are.

00:23:47.500 We are.

00:23:48.280 I think they have it all nailed down.

00:23:51.060 So, it's just so great down here in Austin, which is a blue city.

00:23:55.160 And, you know, I was nervous to come down here.

00:23:59.460 My daughter and son were with me and a friend.

00:24:02.040 We went to the comedy club and, you know, I'd had a few drinks and I was pretty loose.

00:24:07.320 My friends were there and one of them wanted me to come on stage.

00:24:10.240 And my daughter, you know, my daughters are liberal.

00:24:13.980 And, oh, my God.

00:24:15.440 So, she goes, Mama, don't go on.

00:24:18.260 It's a blue city.

00:24:19.180 They're going to hate you.

00:24:20.800 And I went, I'm going on.

00:24:23.800 And I just was brave enough, whatever.

00:24:26.620 I was in the mood because my friends were there.

00:24:29.440 Well, so, I go on and I just...

00:24:32.740 It was just fantastic that...

00:24:35.380 I think a lot of it's because it's Austin because there's a different kind of a blue city.

00:24:39.740 But...

00:24:40.220 And they're young.

00:24:41.900 But they loved it.

00:24:44.280 I was shocked.

00:24:45.500 My daughter was shocked.

00:24:47.280 And it got me to move here because this...

00:24:51.900 A smart comedy audience is never woke.

00:24:55.320 They're not woke, you know.

00:24:56.960 And they want to be challenged. 0.96

00:25:00.840 They want to laugh at ridiculousness. 0.83

00:25:03.260 And they want to laugh at themselves, you know.

00:25:06.860 And they want to hold their beliefs and their ideas up to the light and examine it.

00:25:11.540 They're not cowed into silence like so many of the blue thing.

00:25:18.020 Just cowed into silence.

00:25:20.120 Because it is so huge.

00:25:22.160 How are you going to fight it?

00:25:23.520 It's so huge.

00:25:24.440 It's everywhere.

00:25:25.460 It's a monolith.

00:25:26.900 And, you know, they want to dictate everything we think, do, and say.

00:25:32.120 And they think they're justified to do it.

00:25:35.620 And they have no idea that they're fascists.

00:25:38.740 They have no idea.

00:25:40.600 I've found on my tours that the most enthusiastic audiences are in the most liberal cities.

00:25:48.480 That's what it was.

00:25:49.600 I was shocked.

00:25:50.980 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:25:51.540 Well, I also think, you know, you said that people are censoring themselves.

00:25:56.040 And they don't even know it, eh?

00:25:57.480 And so, in the, like, say, when I've gone to Portland.

00:26:02.380 Portland's a good example.

00:26:03.520 Because I have very enthusiastic crowds in Portland.

00:26:06.260 And large crowds.

00:26:08.240 That's been the case for all the left-wing cities that I visited.

00:26:12.220 Even Berlin.

00:26:13.800 We did a show in Berlin that was in the middle of the communist district.

00:26:17.040 Like, the Berliners regarded that as a provocation.

00:26:21.060 The real lefties.

00:26:22.340 Well, I didn't bloody well know that the theater was in the middle of a communist district.

00:26:26.380 I, you know, essentially.

00:26:27.340 I probably wouldn't have rented it if I would have known that.

00:26:29.760 I'm amazed they rented it to me.

00:26:31.740 We had a fair number of protesters.

00:26:33.380 But the response was very enthusiastic.

00:26:35.680 And a large part of it is just, it's relief on people's part.

00:26:40.060 You know, they don't even know that they're under this weight of continual lying.

00:26:44.660 Yeah, they have no idea.

00:26:45.920 No, and so then they go somewhere where that isn't happening.

00:26:49.180 And it's like, oh, freedom, you know?

00:26:52.500 And so, that's a relief.

00:26:54.580 And that puts everybody in, well, the sort of mood that you're in when you're around people that you can actually talk to and think with.

00:27:01.660 Well, it's great down here at Joe's Comedy Club because it's dedicated to freedom of speech.

00:27:07.220 And, you know, for comics.

00:27:09.500 So that we can do our best work.

00:27:11.860 Yeah.

00:27:12.080 And that feeling of freedom is why comics from all over the country are moving here to Austin to be able to work.

00:27:20.340 Yeah, yeah.

00:27:21.600 And it's just great because it feels like a comedy renaissance, you know?

00:27:25.340 Exactly.

00:27:25.780 You know, we can't challenge ourselves more.

00:27:34.160 And it had been such a long time where, you know, the world of comedy premises was decreasing, decreasing, getting tighter and tighter because there's just so many things that you couldn't say or you'd be attacked and run out of town, you know?

00:27:51.480 But this is just a real free and freeing feeling.

00:27:57.140 And it's just wonderful to look out and see people of all shapes, colors, sizes, ages laughing together at just the ridiculous absurdity of it all.

00:28:09.580 It's just it feels like it feels like revolution, like we've always dreamed of, a revolution for free thoughts, free ideas, free people.

00:28:19.440 It's just wonderful.

00:28:20.820 When I go on stage there, I always say, I always thank Joe for, you know, creating the place for comics to have free speech.

00:28:29.580 And then I say, my goal is to get 86 the hell out of here, you know, to go so far, you know, because, you know, comics, we like to get in trouble.

00:28:41.180 Well, the thing is, the funniest things you can possibly say are right on the ragged edge of disaster, right?

00:28:51.540 You want to push it right, absolutely, you want to push it right to the point of no return.

00:28:57.660 And if you can dangle there, that's hilarious.

00:29:01.540 You want people to be thinking, I can't bloody well believe she said that.

00:29:05.800 And it was so perfect, right?

00:29:07.800 Now, if you go too far, well, then it's trashy or genuinely offensive or cheap.

00:29:13.200 But it's a very, very, very delicate line to walk.

00:29:17.720 I always get the crazy thing. 0.99

00:29:20.160 She's crazy. 0.97

00:29:21.260 Well, I've said for my whole career, you know, that I have mental health issues. 0.98

00:29:24.880 So it is kind of funny that they, it's kind of like they're saying she has so many mentally, mental health issues that she's completely mentally health challenged.

00:29:38.720 Well, yeah, that's why I'm a comic.

00:29:42.740 Yeah, well, the thing is about, the thing is, is that pure crazy isn't funny.

00:29:48.180 Like, it's just sad.

00:29:49.760 I've been to comedy shows where, comedy shows, where the people, and these are usually, you know, very early career comedy shows, let's say, where people come on stage and really do nothing but confess their sins, let's say, sexual and otherwise.

00:30:07.220 And that is not funny.

00:30:08.680 That's just sad.

00:30:10.220 And so anything that, I don't think anything that's funny is ever reflective of mental illness.

00:30:16.240 I don't think those two things go together at all.

00:30:18.320 I mean, you can say crazy things.

00:30:20.740 No, if it's funny, if it's funny, it's sane, and it doesn't really matter.

00:30:26.320 You know, and the thing about comedy, too, that's so interesting is that it operates at this profoundly unconscious level.

00:30:34.620 You know, one of the things I noticed about having little kids is that even before they could speak, they had really good senses of humor that was associated with play.

00:30:45.540 And so comedy, humor is so deep that it's there before words.

00:30:51.120 So that's really something.

00:30:52.300 And then everyone laughs in an audience before they think.

00:30:57.440 Right?

00:30:57.600 If you have to, so that's what makes comedy reflective of, well, you said it was holy in some sense.

00:31:05.180 And it is because you're talking directly to someone before their filters are up.

00:31:11.860 And if you laugh, the laugh catches you.

00:31:16.300 It's not something you do.

00:31:17.520 It's something that happens to you.

00:31:19.780 And so that can't, if it's faked or forced, you can tell because the laughter isn't genuine.

00:31:24.980 It's also not any fun.

00:31:26.760 It's so interesting.

00:31:27.640 It's such a mystery.

00:31:29.180 I've never been able to figure out how it is that something as sophisticated as a sense of humor can develop, say, before even language.

00:31:37.480 And it's definitely something that bonds people together, right?

00:31:40.560 Because one of the ways that you bond with your little kids is with jokes and games.

00:31:45.480 And even peekaboo is a joke.

00:31:48.020 It's right.

00:31:48.880 I'm gone.

00:31:50.320 I'm here.

00:31:51.660 Babies will laugh like mad about that. 0.99

00:31:53.640 They laugh with repetition that's disrupted in a surprising way.

00:31:58.660 It's very, very interesting.

00:32:01.160 Well, one of the great joys, I have 10 grandkids, so one of the great joys is, you know, trying to see how young you can get them to laugh.

00:32:10.180 Me.

00:32:11.000 I mean, I just love to see where is it where they find the funny.

00:32:16.980 I love to watch where is someone finding the funny.

00:32:22.220 Yeah, no kidding.

00:32:23.640 It seems like universal that you find it in the, you know, reflexive body issues like farting and stuff like that.

00:32:33.960 Or belching.

00:32:34.580 Kids love that.

00:32:35.900 I'm a huge star to my grandkids in the comedy department for all that kind of thing.

00:32:41.180 But, you know.

00:32:42.340 Well, it was something I really enjoyed about having little kids because I kept that sort of tradition that I grew up in of competitive comedy alive in the house.

00:32:52.120 That's so good.

00:32:52.620 I was always.

00:32:53.580 Oh, it was so fun.

00:32:54.900 And my kids both have great senses of humor.

00:32:57.260 Like, I don't think my daughter, Michaela, I don't think she ever says anything that isn't a joke.

00:33:03.420 Wow.

00:33:03.860 And so, and that's where she's most comfortable.

00:33:06.400 I mean, it took my wife quite a while to realize this.

00:33:10.360 She probably only said this to me about 10 years ago.

00:33:12.880 She came up to me and she said, you know, I think everything Michaela says is a joke.

00:33:17.740 And I thought, yeah, that's exactly right.

00:33:19.760 I'm glad that you got that.

00:33:21.700 And so, and because there's always an edge to it, you know.

00:33:24.940 And it's a challenge too in some ways when you speak and play like that.

00:33:30.820 Because the challenge is to see if the people that you're interacting with can, well, can tolerate that and can understand it and can appreciate it.

00:33:39.180 It's a lovely thing to be able to speak about serious things with that comedic edge.

00:33:44.640 I mean, that's a real art, man, to transmute suffering into joy.

00:33:50.240 That's for sure.

00:33:50.860 I said that last night.

00:33:52.040 It's so funny.

00:33:52.900 They wanted me to come down because they were having an open mic night.

00:33:56.800 And they had a young woman and she has a disease.

00:34:01.140 I can't remember the name, but she's in a wheelchair doing comedy.

00:34:04.480 It's like an MS kind of a disease.

00:34:06.440 Yeah, yeah.

00:34:07.200 And she's beautiful girl, young student.

00:34:10.480 And she did just a great set. 0.97

00:34:12.600 She did just a few minutes. 0.97

00:34:14.620 But so they, I'm kind of like the comedy grandma.

00:34:19.120 And I, you know, I'm, they all roast the people.

00:34:25.200 But I don't want to do that because I said, oh, I'm just, I'm too famous and rich and good looking to do that.

00:34:33.040 You know, so I have to do the grandma thing.

00:34:35.420 Plus, I love to mentor the young ones.

00:34:38.180 And so I said to her, you know, you, you are so lovely and people really love you.

00:34:44.880 They love your comedy because you have the essence of comedy in you.

00:34:49.460 We all see that you have reached down into that pool of pain that you obviously have lived through in your life and brought out beauty and joy.

00:35:00.100 And that is so lovely for people.

00:35:02.620 And that's the essence of comedy.

00:35:04.520 And you are going to be a huge star.

00:35:06.680 Starting a business can be tough.

00:35:09.760 But thanks to Shopify, running your online storefront is easier than ever.

00:35:13.900 Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business.

00:35:18.140 From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage.

00:35:23.080 Shopify is here to help you grow.

00:35:24.880 Our marketing team uses Shopify every day to sell our merchandise.

00:35:28.440 And we love how easy it is to add more items, ship products and track conversions.

00:35:32.520 With Shopify, customize your online store to your style with flexible templates and powerful tools.

00:35:38.460 Alongside an endless list of integrations and third-party apps like on-demand printing, accounting and chatbots.

00:35:44.740 Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout.

00:35:49.060 Up to 36% better compared to other leading e-commerce platforms.

00:35:53.140 No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level.

00:35:58.880 Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash jbp, all lowercase.

00:36:05.400 Go to shopify.com slash jbp now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in.

00:36:10.780 That's shopify.com slash jbp.

00:36:15.340 Yeah, yeah.

00:36:17.000 Well, one of the things I noticed, like my daughter was extremely ill when she was a kid.

00:36:21.320 She had terrible juvenile arthritis and she had her hip replaced when she was 16 and her ankle replaced when she was 17.

00:36:28.600 It was really bad.

00:36:29.540 She was in, like, excruciating pain for about 15 years, which is really quite a long time.

00:36:35.800 And she has talked about that publicly.

00:36:38.960 And I've been at some of the events.

00:36:41.620 They haven't been taped.

00:36:43.120 Some of the events where she spoke about what happened to her.

00:36:45.680 And she's able to make her stories of that period of time often screamingly funny.

00:36:51.480 And that's actually a real indication of recovery, right?

00:36:55.920 It isn't that you can just talk about it without emotion.

00:36:58.840 It's that you can, what would you can say?

00:37:01.880 You see, is it the absurdity?

00:37:04.960 I guess it's the absurdity.

00:37:06.440 It's something like that.

00:37:07.900 But that is, that's a real art form to be able to take those excruciating moments and to make them into something that's shareable and that enables everybody to rise above the pain at the same time.

00:37:19.520 And, you know, like I said, I'm trying to think of the word that, oh, it used to be medieval where you would, where they would talk about transforming tin into alchemy.

00:37:32.860 Yes, that's what it is.

00:37:34.540 Yeah, right.

00:37:35.100 Absolutely.

00:37:35.760 Alchemy.

00:37:36.540 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:37.220 Watch, you know, you were talking about laughter before.

00:37:40.280 And for comics, well, we love to get people to where they can't stop laughing.

00:37:47.900 They want to laugh.

00:37:49.580 And the other thing is, you know, when you were in school and you weren't supposed to laugh, but something made you laugh, that's the best thing to watch from the stage when you see people going through that.

00:38:04.360 And then you just push on and tell people, we always say, like, when the head goes back and there's an intake of breath, that's what you're killing.

00:38:15.800 Because you actually are killing them in a way, but it's a good kind of kill.

00:38:21.640 You know, I used to go work out with a couple of friends of mine in Boston.

00:38:26.660 And one of the games we would play was to tell a joke when people were bench pressing because, well, when you laugh, you lose all your muscular force.

00:38:36.580 And that's really interesting, too, because it and I've been trying to figure that out as a psychologist.

00:38:41.900 It's like, obviously, laughter is associated with play and play is the opposite of power and aggression.

00:38:49.020 Play is truly the opposite of power.

00:38:51.020 That took me like four decades to figure out that play is the antithesis of power.

00:38:55.720 And it's so interesting that when people laugh, they go, yeah, it's a very good thing to know, you know, especially in your relationships, because if you're playing with your children or you're playing with your wife, then you know that you're not being a tyrant.

00:39:11.220 And you can do almost anything in a spirit of play.

00:39:13.800 I mean, it's hard when you're suffering, that's for sure.

00:39:16.340 It's hard to transmute real pain into play.

00:39:19.000 But if you're doing anything perfectly, you're doing it in play.

00:39:23.000 And it's so interesting to see that when you make people laugh, they lose all their muscular force.

00:39:28.380 You know, they collapse into laughter, they dissolve into laughter, and it takes them over.

00:39:33.680 And so…

00:39:34.860 And they do that, you know, sometimes if we're getting real spiritual with it, and we say it's that universal ha.

00:39:41.940 It's the expression of, you know, the ha, you know, because when you're a meditator, you know, it's the, you know, inhale and the exhale.

00:39:53.160 So it's like the exhale and the letting go of, you know, secrets almost.

00:39:59.260 Yeah, right.

00:39:59.860 Don't you love that?

00:40:01.220 Ghosts and devils.

00:40:03.160 Right, right. 0.66

00:40:04.480 Ghosts and devils.

00:40:05.700 It's really powerful.

00:40:07.920 And, you know…

00:40:08.920 Well, it's interesting to have people do that communally, too, because what that means, this is something that's profound, too.

00:40:15.340 And it is really something that Joe Rogan is managing to foster this again in Austin, because it also takes a lot of trust to laugh jointly at a joke, right?

00:40:25.980 Because especially if the joke is off-key or pushing the limits, the fact that you'll laugh with others means that a situation of trust has been established in the room, right?

00:40:38.160 And I've spent some time thinking about trust.

00:40:41.200 Like, I actually think that the only true natural resource is trust.

00:40:45.660 That if people trust each other, they can make the desert bloom, you know?

00:40:50.400 Oh, that's right.

00:40:50.980 Yeah, yeah, it's definitely the case, and comedy is an endeavor that's predicated on a tremendous amount of trust, right?

00:41:00.460 Because the audience has to trust the comedian, and the comedian has to trust the audience.

00:41:07.080 I mean, one of the things I've learned to do, you tell me what you… tell me about this for you.

00:41:12.580 Before I go out on stage, I always remind myself that the people that are in the audience…

00:41:19.100 And this might be easier for me, I think it's more true for my audience, for a variety of reasons.

00:41:24.440 They're on my side, and as long as I'm grateful that they're there, and I'm communicating honestly, everybody is aiming at the same thing.

00:41:34.300 Now, I know in a comedy situation, it's more complex, because there's going to be cynics in the audience, you know, more.

00:41:40.800 But, like, what's your attitude to your audience, do you think?

00:41:45.060 Like, how do you… how do you… how do you conceive of your audience, and how did you learn that?

00:41:51.340 Well, you know, I've been a comic for almost 40 years.

00:41:55.740 So, you learn it by trial and error, and by going in front of different kinds of audiences

00:42:01.940 and trying the same thing to see how it will work in front of this specific group until it works everywhere.

00:42:09.560 So, you know, you… it's trial and error.

00:42:12.860 But it's so many other things, like, you know, you could tell a joke,

00:42:16.360 and if you don't do the right rhythm of the joke or have the right inflection, it won't work.

00:42:25.300 So, it's like so many things that are combined in it.

00:42:32.140 But I think… I think that what I've learned is when the audience knows or trusts that you are having fun

00:42:50.720 and that you're enjoying it, and, yeah, that you have gratitude that they've come there to see you

00:42:56.620 and they love you, and then you can't help but love them back, you know.

00:43:03.280 I mean, already you love them because they're your fans, and they keep you alive, you know.

00:43:08.760 And there is a tethering between me and my fans, and I suppose every other comic might have that same view.

00:43:16.520 I don't know, but it's a tethering to reality and to the best in humankind.

00:43:24.160 They want… they want… you know how Virginia Woolf said that the job of the writer is to put the severed parts together, right?

00:43:34.460 I think she wrote that in Three Guineas, but… one of my favorite books.

00:43:38.360 But anyway, I always think of comedy like that because we're…

00:43:41.700 we're putting the severed parts together that other people may not see.

00:43:45.220 And that's mostly what we do, things that seem disparate, I guess.

00:43:54.240 But then when you really look at them under a microscope there, they're very connected,

00:44:00.220 and people are like, oh, yeah.

00:44:05.040 Right, right, right.

00:44:06.100 That's an insight.

00:44:07.140 Yeah, yeah, that drawing of connection.

00:44:10.220 And once you do that, and they appreciate that it's well thought…

00:44:19.840 Yeah, definitely.

00:44:20.560 …thought out, and then they're kind of like, well, I thought that way, there's that too.

00:44:26.740 Right, yeah.

00:44:27.280 I think that way too, but I couldn't say it in that way.

00:44:31.080 Yeah.

00:44:31.380 Or it didn't occur to me in that way, but you gave words to something that was like vague and spinning around in my head.

00:44:40.080 Yeah.

00:44:40.140 You gave me the building blocks for that, so it's just a lot of love.

00:44:47.420 It's just really a lot of love.

00:44:50.700 And it's just such a great, positive energy thing to be able to affect that and to watch it.

00:45:01.620 People don't often, I don't hear them talk a lot about being on stage.

00:45:08.500 I mean, we talk about some stuff like, you know, doing a great set or killing or, you know, having a good one or bombing or whatever.

00:45:15.620 But don't talk about that relationship that you're building, this beautiful relationship.

00:45:25.620 It is so spiritual to watch people get it, to be the person in the arena.

00:45:37.560 That's fun.

00:45:38.340 Yeah, yeah, that's so fun.

00:45:40.020 Well, so my tour manager was a stand-up comedian for a long time, John O'Connell.

00:45:44.920 And he toured with stand-up comedians professionally as well as a manager.

00:45:51.280 And there's a lot of similarity between what I do and what stand-up comedians do.

00:45:56.760 And one of the similarities that I've really started to understand is I've talked to a variety of comedians.

00:46:04.740 Jimmy Carr really helped me think this through because he's thought a lot about what he does and is able to articulate it well.

00:46:11.000 Well, you know, Carr said that, and I know many comedians do this, and maybe you do this when you're preparing a set, is that, you know, he'll go, when he's preparing new material, he goes to smaller clubs and tries out his new material.

00:46:25.900 And some of the jokes land and others don't.

00:46:29.880 And he just collects the jokes that land.

00:46:33.340 And so, and I thought that was so interesting because stand-up comedy looks like it's a monologue.

00:46:39.640 But it's got that dialogical element in the initial practice because, like, he helped me understand that you could be a comedian by telling a lot of jokes and seeing which ones people laughed at and then just collecting those.

00:46:55.640 And you don't need much of a hit rate, right?

00:46:57.500 If you need to generate 90 minutes worth of material and you have five hours of jokes, you can just get rid of the 80% that aren't any good.

00:47:03.960 The audience will tell you what's funny.

00:47:06.280 And one of the things I love about the lectures that I do, which are spontaneous, is I'm always watching people, you know, in the audience.

00:47:14.340 I'm always talking to someone, and I want to see them, I want to see their eyes light up.

00:47:19.660 I want to see them be struck by something, right?

00:47:21.880 I want to give words to something they already know but can't say.

00:47:25.660 And people have told me that a lot, that they like my lectures because I say things they know to be true but haven't been able to articulate.

00:47:34.400 And certainly, comedians do that.

00:47:37.400 Well, they do that all the time.

00:47:39.180 And it is great because often, if I can make a point that has that characteristic but is also funny, I mean, that's a real, that's a blast if you can manage to pull that off.

00:47:51.780 It's a real blast too, and when you're writing your set, you know, because I do 90 minutes, but you do it in groups, you know, you do your jokes in groups to build on an idea that culminates.

00:48:05.200 You know, it's like little groups are probably five to seven minutes, and you start at one premise with a joke.

00:48:12.320 And then the next joke is that kind of built on that previous premise, and it goes a little bit deeper.

00:48:18.580 And then the next one goes deeper. 0.98

00:48:20.840 And then by the fifth part of the bit, you've blown up the whole premise and showed that it was bullshit all along. 0.99

00:48:28.160 That's what I like to do. 0.98

00:48:29.940 And it's like turn everything on its head from its head.

00:48:34.460 I can't really explain it, but that's my favorite part because it's like, oh, she went...

00:48:42.320 We thought she was going to go left, but she went right. 0.99

00:48:46.680 I mean, I'm not talking politically.

00:48:48.640 We thought she was going here, but the whole time she was taking us here.

00:48:52.380 I love that misdirection stuff because that gets the biggest laughs because they thought they were getting set up for something completely different.

00:49:00.640 I like to remove their expectations where they go, oh, yeah, I've heard this before.

00:49:06.060 You know, just come in and go.

00:49:08.300 And I think, you know, by virtue of the fact that I've always been one of few women in comedy, that's been a plus for me.

00:49:19.480 You mentioned earlier that you have thought through comedy from the perspective, I think you said age and sex.

00:49:31.080 What else?

00:49:32.020 So talk a little bit more about being a female in the comedy industry because most comedians are men.

00:49:37.780 Like, my experience has been that, like, truly comical stand-up comedian females are very rare. 1.00

00:49:48.320 Yeah, or comedy, it's too hard.

00:49:51.420 It's so hard.

00:49:52.640 But, you know, one thing I found out, probably because I have five kids, you know, that's one of my good jokes.

00:49:59.060 I say, you know, I have five children.

00:50:01.720 I used to be kind of pro-life.

00:50:03.420 That's a good joke.

00:50:05.960 Yeah, that's a good joke.

00:50:08.020 But my friends are all comics.

00:50:11.560 But, you know, all these guys, I always ask people because I'm nosy.

00:50:16.200 I'm a nosy old Jewish woman.

00:50:19.220 And so I'll ask them.

00:50:21.400 They always have a funny mom. 1.00

00:50:24.740 So much more art of it.

00:50:26.860 Oh, yeah.

00:50:27.820 You know?

00:50:30.080 That's interesting.

00:50:31.060 You know, my mother just died.

00:50:33.740 She died this week.

00:50:34.840 And one of the great memories I have of my mother is, and this is something I always knew about her, is I could always make her laugh.

00:50:42.300 And so that was a big basis of our relationship.

00:50:45.580 I could always make mom laugh by teasing her.

00:50:47.660 In fact, I think the last thing I said to her when she was in the hospital, I was giving her hell about being in the hospital because my father was ill.

00:50:54.360 And so we were worried about him.

00:50:55.620 And then she ended up in the hospital, and I gave her a rough time, and, you know, that made her laugh.

00:51:01.200 And so that's interesting.

00:51:02.940 And I haven't heard anyone say that that relationship of comedy with the mother is so particularly important.

00:51:10.580 But that was definitely the case in my household.

00:51:12.620 It was my mom that I could really make laugh.

00:51:14.440 I wonder why that is exactly.

00:51:18.180 It's obviously a form of play, but I wonder why it would be sex-linked like that.

00:51:23.120 Well, I want to hear more about your experiences as a female comedian. 1.00

00:51:27.240 It's a hard life on the road, eh?

00:51:29.020 So that's part of the barriers.

00:51:30.220 Well, I didn't go on the road too much until I was older.

00:51:36.440 I didn't come up like a normal comedian because I had so many kids.

00:51:41.640 But I did go on tour for 18 weeks with Julio Iglesias as his opening act there was the beginning of my bigger career.

00:51:52.700 And, yeah, that was so difficult.

00:51:56.400 Oh, my God.

00:51:57.360 It was so hard to live through that.

00:52:00.900 But when I started comedy, it was 1980, and they didn't like women. 0.99

00:52:07.820 They didn't, you know, nobody liked women too much then.

00:52:11.100 If they do now, I don't think they do.

00:52:13.600 But anyway, they really didn't like funny women, and they didn't like women comedy, and they didn't like women's comedy. 0.99

00:52:20.700 They didn't like women's anything to do with it because it was so all about men, you know.

00:52:27.200 It was all men, and it was fraternal and very collegiate, and I was not any of those things.

00:52:36.980 But they didn't like me, and that was like the first time I got deplatformed or whatever we're calling it, censored.

00:52:46.400 They didn't like me, and so they refused to let me work there at the comedy club in Denver.

00:52:54.480 But I wanted to do it, and so I had to go to these alternative places to do comedy.

00:53:02.740 Like I would go to punk clubs, and I'd end up in a mosh pit with no microphone doing comedy.

00:53:12.040 That's why my voice is so loud because I learned that there.

00:53:14.940 Just telling jokes in a mosh pit. 0.90

00:53:19.720 I mean, I can't believe it sometimes, but I mean, I learned so much.

00:53:23.000 I'd go to biker bars, I'd go to jazz clubs, I'd go to Unitarian Church, lesbian lunches, and, you know, to 20 people and, you know, small groups.

00:53:40.740 And it made me way better.

00:53:45.280 It made me fearless.

00:53:46.840 It made me more determined.

00:53:49.420 It made me better because it made me fearless and, you know, fighting to keep my head above water until finally some men comics from L.A. came, and they saw me, and they went to the club that had censored me and said,

00:54:09.540 You really should let that girl, that's what they called me, you should let that girl on. 1.00

00:54:15.680 She's really funny, and they pressured the club to let me back in, and so they did because I had these really strong male comics who were well-known, who were traveling through Denver, advocate for me.

00:54:35.420 So had I not had that, I don't know what would have happened, but they kind of treated me like a nice sister.

00:54:44.000 You know, they were very brotherly to me, and once that happened, I kind of took off.

00:54:53.780 And that was only a matter of about four years, then I went to Hollywood, and I had one of those overnight things that happened.

00:55:03.660 I was there one night, and I got all these breaks and ended up on The Tonight Show.

00:55:09.760 And my first time on The Tonight Show, Julio Iglesias was a guest and picked me to go on tour with him, and I got my TV show from that.

00:55:18.620 So it was really a matter of one night.

00:55:23.080 So why did Iglesias decide that a comedy show was a good way to open his concerts?

00:55:29.560 Well, everybody had a comic opening for him back then, and I was doing housewife jokes, and his fans were women, and he thought it would be a good idea.

00:55:42.120 And it was.

00:55:42.900 It was a blast.

00:55:45.140 Oh, my gosh, it was so fun.

00:55:46.540 I had not ever really been in front of big crowds before because I had just been in Denver, but to play the Astrodome in front of 50,000 people as just a stand-up comic, it was overwhelming and fantastic to stand there on stage in front of that many people.

00:56:05.660 And here, the laughter coming down off the walls, like it's raining down from heaven, it was just wonderful.

00:56:15.420 And we did that all through the United States.

00:56:18.980 And so that made me more efficient as a comic, you know, and more excited.

00:56:28.340 More efficient.

00:56:29.480 What do you mean?

00:56:30.020 What do you mean by more efficient?

00:56:31.500 Oh, to be able to, as Mitzi Shore called it, who's the mother of all of us stand-up comics, really, from the comedy store in L.A., she would always say, your job is to deliver the mail.

00:56:45.540 You were up there for two minutes, and you didn't deliver the mail.

00:56:49.320 You were fumpering and humpering, and you weren't delivering the mail.

00:56:53.100 She always say that, you know.

00:56:54.720 And so the efficiency of set-up, punchline, next, you know, just the efficient rhythm of no fat, no long premise with extra words.

00:57:09.240 Right, right.

00:57:10.080 Edit to go.

00:57:11.840 And, you know, I had famous comic friends who they befriended and mentored me, like, you know, I met Rodney Dangerfield, and he chose me to play his wife.

00:57:25.300 He never had done that.

00:57:27.620 Oh, yeah.

00:57:28.040 And, you know, Bob Hope, even, and Phyllis Diller, and Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, all these people I could name that I love so much, would sit around and speak with me about comedy, and they taught me about removing the fat.

00:57:45.240 Even an extra word is making you less efficient, because you want to say the least amount of words and the perfect amount of rhythm with the right inflection and expression, and, you know, that's a lot of stuff.

00:58:02.620 For sure.

00:58:03.660 That's a lot of editing.

00:58:05.760 It's like that guy spinning in the air, and then, boom, you've got to come in at the right time.

00:58:11.780 Yeah.

00:58:12.100 Because they might be laughing really hard for a long time, and that screws up your punchline.

00:58:17.420 And so you kind of get mad, like, shut up, I'm trying to deliver the punchline, and you're laughing.

00:58:21.800 But then you go, hey, they're supposed to, that's what you're here for.

00:58:25.220 Just, you know, you're going to have to chill.

00:58:27.100 So you have to figure out, how am I going to navigate this to get the best punchline?

00:58:33.240 Because I know it's a good punchline, and I want a huge laugh.

00:58:37.040 I don't just, you know, because I monitor the laughs we all do, like, oh, I'm only getting a six when it should have been an eight.

00:58:45.020 You know, you're just, the thing about my boyfriend is a musician, too, and we always talk about music and comedy is just a great way of being in the now.

00:58:56.340 You're so in the now.

00:58:58.340 You know, you're not thinking about yesterday, tomorrow, nothing, even a minute ago.

00:59:02.260 Well, you just have to be in the now to deliver the mail, you know, deliver the punch, deliver the art.

00:59:11.080 Yeah, well, so you're touching there on a lot of motifs with regard to the sacredness, let's say, of comedy as well.

00:59:18.860 It's like, well, you have to separate the wheat from the chaff, so you have to be efficient.

00:59:22.800 I love Mitch Hedberg for that reason, because he could just deliver, like, God, amazing, amazing ability to just deliver nonstop short jokes and often so perfect.

00:59:33.240 So, and then you talked about plate spinning.

00:59:37.760 One of the things I really find fun about lecturing, and I think this is one of the things that makes my lectures akin to a comedic act,

00:59:45.060 is that I like to bring five or six stories that I haven't told together and then to see if I can weave them so that right near the end of the lecture,

00:59:56.660 they all come together and make the same point.

00:59:58.680 We call that callback, so that, you know, when you build the story and you get to where you're reminding them that you were talking about that before and, you know, make the relationship come together.

01:00:12.740 Those are the most fun when a callback will occur to you and you, because you will get the biggest laugh and applause on callbacks.

01:00:20.660 It's the most fun thing.

01:00:22.300 That one, you just feel like it's a gift from God.

01:00:25.680 That's for sure.

01:00:26.520 I do feel like so much of it is a God thing, you know, because I always tell people when we're getting real spiritual with stuff,

01:00:34.400 I'm like, well, God, God wrote me some great jokes today.

01:00:38.260 Because, you know, they do come in like that. 0.99

01:00:40.780 I will, you know, I'll be sitting there writing, writing, writing, and it's just crap, you know, three pages of crap. 0.95

01:00:47.860 And there's a certain feeling, physical feeling, like suspended animation is what it feels like. 0.94

01:00:58.480 And the top of my head actually opens in some way, and God inserts an idea in there.

01:01:05.400 And it's, it's my best jokes.

01:01:09.220 I don't, it doesn't feel like I'm doing it, because I, it just is a whole other thing.

01:01:15.800 That's, that's like when you're in the wave, you're in the channel, you're in the groove, you know.

01:01:20.680 Yeah, yeah.

01:01:21.180 Like a lot of musicians say, yeah, when they're playing jazz musicians, you know, it's just the phrase comes in.

01:01:27.720 But God put these, he'll just lay these jokes in there.

01:01:32.440 And that's why I always say, God's the funniest comic of all.

01:01:36.060 Because look what he does in the world.

01:01:38.220 It's all hilarious.

01:01:40.060 His sense of relationship and the way people live, that they don't see it, is the funniest thing in the world to me.

01:01:50.320 How funny he is, like, I'm trying to think of how to illustrate that.

01:01:54.820 It'll come to me, but it's not right now.

01:01:56.540 But I get my best jokes, just, they just, it's like a download.

01:02:04.460 Mm-hmm.

01:02:04.960 Well, there's, and it's interesting, though, too, because you said that that often happens when you've written, you know, three pages of second-rate material.

01:02:14.760 To get those moments, you have to put in that counterproductive work, too.

01:02:20.820 I mean, when I'm writing, like, I throw away 80%, 90% of what I write.

01:02:26.780 And that's often painful because, well, when I was finishing up my last book, which was only a week ago, like, I was cutting half chapters that took me a whole month to write.

01:02:36.800 It's like, but it doesn't matter, right, because the fundamental issue is that you conserve that wheat and you get rid of the chaff.

01:02:44.980 And the more that you get rid of that second-rate, the better you have, the better what's left over is.

01:02:50.600 And, you know, the other thing that's kind of sacred about the comedic act is that you said that you're in the moment, is that you really have to pay attention to the audience and not be afraid of them.

01:03:03.160 Because then you can feel where everyone is, like you're having a conversation with someone, because you are when you're on stage, even if it's a monologue.

01:03:11.120 The audience has to be along for the ride.

01:03:13.500 And that's where you can capitalize on timing.

01:03:17.760 It's something I'm not great at.

01:03:19.680 Like, I can't really tell jokes.

01:03:21.360 I can be funny on stage, but it has to be spontaneous.

01:03:24.020 I've never really learned the art of telling a joke that I already knew.

01:03:29.820 It isn't a skill that I've managed to develop, but I can see the connection with the comedic world by watching comedians pay attention to the audience.

01:03:42.160 Because timing is everything, right?

01:03:44.940 You have to be dancing with the audience, and they have to be in that zone.

01:03:48.740 And lecture is exactly the same way.

01:03:50.920 You know, you want to make sure that the words are landing exactly when they should.

01:03:55.980 And that you're...

01:03:56.800 It's been hard for me also to learn, because I'm often lecturing about serious things, and I'll throw in a joke.

01:04:02.500 It's been hard for me to learn to take the time to let the audience have a bit of a breather around the joke, you know, and not to rush ahead.

01:04:11.980 Yeah.

01:04:12.620 Yeah, that's exactly right.

01:04:15.220 But, you know, taking a drink of your Coke, you know, we all have learned those little things to let them catch up to you, let them catch their breath, reset their brain.

01:04:30.120 Because especially if you've taken them into new territory, they need a little rest, you know, and so do you.

01:04:36.540 But it's just the greatest thing.

01:04:41.300 I'm so thankful that I was given a gift there.

01:04:47.220 And I do consider that I was given a great, I was given a wonderful gift that helped me.

01:04:56.520 Yeah, well, the only thing I can really compare it to is a great musical performance.

01:05:02.040 Yeah.

01:05:02.580 Right?

01:05:03.100 And that's got that same, what would you say, magic that pulls the crowd in.

01:05:09.960 And that, there's a tremendous amount of attention that goes along with that, too.

01:05:13.640 The great musicians, this is one of the things I love about listening to Billie Holiday, for example,

01:05:18.800 because every single word she sings is attended to, like, every word is a little work of art, you know?

01:05:26.960 She's got that intense attention, and I've been curious, too, about why so many people who are successful on YouTube were comedians.

01:05:37.380 But I think it's because of their ability, well, first of all, a sense of humor helps, if you're an interviewer, say.

01:05:43.680 But I suspect that what it really has to do with is the ability of comedians to pay attention.

01:05:50.200 Yeah.

01:05:50.900 Right?

01:05:51.200 Because you're nowhere, you can't be funny unless you're paying attention.

01:05:54.340 You have to be, as you said, right in the moment.

01:05:57.060 You have to see what's the right next thing to say to keep the conversation flowing, to throw in something from left field, but not to left field.

01:06:08.420 Yeah, it's the plate spinning thing.

01:06:11.060 Yeah, right.

01:06:11.680 You have to be, you know, when you get real meta with it, it's like, well, you're kind of in the past, the present, and the future all in the same now.

01:06:23.900 Right.

01:06:24.940 Because you have to think about, how am I going to follow this up?

01:06:27.780 And especially in my shows, people, they like to heckle me in a friendly way or just start talking for some reason, you know.

01:06:37.740 Because it is like a conversation.

01:06:40.020 And, you know, I love it, too.

01:06:41.880 And for some reason, that's when I really love it.

01:06:45.960 Because I love when my brain is working on three or four channels at once.

01:06:52.460 All comics love that.

01:06:53.860 Because, like, I was so sharp, and, you know, you're telling your friends, I was on it.

01:07:00.320 I, you know, I did, you know, one more bragging to each other, you know, or explaining to each other.

01:07:06.860 But, yeah, it's a heightened awareness thing.

01:07:11.720 And I don't know, you're just, if you're funny in life, you're even funnier on stage because you've got the stress and the pressure of, I better be good.

01:07:24.060 You know, and it propels you, but.

01:07:28.580 How did you cope with, how do you cope and did you cope with jokes that aren't, that don't work?

01:07:38.260 I mean, part of the reason I think I've had a hard time telling jokes on stage is because I get self-conscious.

01:07:43.840 If halfway through the joke, I get self-conscious.

01:07:46.720 That's really the problem, you know.

01:07:48.720 And then, of course, it doesn't work because I screw up the timing.

01:07:51.160 But there are few things more awkward than making a joke that isn't funny.

01:07:55.800 And you said you played in some pretty rough places.

01:07:58.640 And, obviously, you exposed yourself to enough of that to.

01:08:02.540 But I'm curious about why you were able to tolerate that to begin with.

01:08:06.100 Because it's actually pretty painful to tell a joke that doesn't work, especially if you know it's funny and you just screwed it up.

01:08:12.380 So, what do you think it was that impelled you to get through those bouts of self-consciousness that, you know, paralyzed most people to the point where they won't, you know, people are terrified of public speaking, much less doing stand-up comedy.

01:08:29.000 So, how and why did you persevere through that?

01:08:32.280 Yeah, I wonder that myself sometimes.

01:08:35.560 But it was a, I, I'll, because it was such a, I think it's because it was such a, so, it was such a survival mechanism in my family and my childhood.

01:08:50.320 And it was a self-defense mechanism for me to survive a lot of crazy and painful things that it, in a way, I talk, I'm friends with Mike Tyson, you know, and it's a lot like boxing.

01:09:11.780 I always talked about, we always compared when we talked about it, it's so much jousting.

01:09:20.320 It's mental jousting to be on stage and to stay in control of one woman, you know, with, with no props, with no orchestra, with no video, just stay in control of a, you know, 5,000 seat room, just with your voice.

01:09:36.820 Because it's a lot of mental jousting and, well, they're not going to defeat me, not after what I went through as a kid.

01:09:46.220 I'm not going to let them defeat me because I can't be defeated.

01:09:51.940 Right.

01:09:52.140 So that's an attitude of challenge rather than fear.

01:09:55.640 Yeah.

01:09:55.940 It's like, no, they're not, you know, it's like, I always feel somehow it's a God thing to me.

01:10:02.300 And it's like, the devil ain't getting me.

01:10:05.780 I'll take the devil down. 0.89

01:10:07.300 That's why I'm on stage.

01:10:08.520 And he isn't going to get me.

01:10:11.720 And so that's what I do.

01:10:13.540 And when I screw up, then I just, you know, feel bad and embarrassed.

01:10:19.220 But I go home and I, I go, you know, I'm going to make it better.

01:10:22.820 I never feel defeated.

01:10:24.420 I don't allow myself to feel defeated because comedy is a living thing and you can always get better.

01:10:30.420 You can, nobody can stop you from getting better.

01:10:33.180 You can always, and I'm not going to let them stop me.

01:10:38.060 I'm going to just keep getting better no matter what they tried to do to stop me.

01:10:42.520 They're not going to till I have my last breath. 1.00

01:10:45.640 I'm going to be saying, fuck you, because that's how I feel. 1.00

01:10:49.020 You know, they're not going to stop me unless they gag me. 1.00

01:10:52.840 I mean, there's things they can do to me.

01:10:54.740 I guess they've done enough, but, you know, I, I respect and, uh, I, I respect and believe in and live for the truth and comedy is truth.

01:11:06.100 And, uh, you know, you're trying to tell the truth to people to make the world better.

01:11:12.480 You're not trying to make light of people suffering.

01:11:17.240 You're trying to get at power and bring it down and make it.

01:11:20.940 So it feels like I'm, I guess I feel like a, you know, uh, a warrior, a word warrior.

01:11:30.640 And, uh, you know, for me, it's also like for all the people who were told to shut up, I'm there, they're with me too.

01:11:39.080 You know, I see it.

01:11:41.140 So I see it so deeply like that.

01:11:45.760 Cause you know, geez, it is like that, you know?

01:11:49.360 Yeah, well, it is.

01:11:50.820 Well, I especially, I think that's especially the case if you're a comedian who's popular among the working class, you know, because working class people, the sensible ones.

01:12:02.320 And I think most working class people over about 40 are pretty damn sensible.

01:12:07.920 That doesn't necessarily mean they're particularly articulate, you know, and people can be wise without being articulate.

01:12:14.640 And then if you're a working class comedian, then you have the, as you pointed out, you have the opportunity and the privilege of articulating that.

01:12:22.040 And that is a big deal.

01:12:23.100 And it is something that's going to make people love you because people like to have the words at hand to say what they know to be true.

01:12:30.220 And it is a very peculiar thing too, isn't it?

01:12:32.380 I love the idea on my show.

01:12:34.160 I've probably written 120,000 jokes.

01:12:39.940 Wow.

01:12:40.080 Part of the joy of it is when I was on my TV show was, I would think, oh, here's something that some fat lady or some fat guy is going to say at the water fountain at work.

01:12:54.500 Right, right.

01:12:55.600 So it's like arming people who may have suffered or felt, you know, marginalized.

01:13:05.560 Here's a little bit of something for you, you know, because when I'd watched comedians as a kid with my dad on Ed Sullivan and hear Richard Pryor people, man, I felt like I was being gifted, especially Pryor.

01:13:22.700 But, you know, all of them really.

01:13:25.280 But I loved Richard Pryor.

01:13:29.060 He is my idol and became a friend, which was a wonderful part of being a comic.

01:13:33.680 But, you know, to get, I got what he was doing as just a little tiny girl.

01:13:40.620 I saw the implications of everything he was doing.

01:13:43.500 I knew, I knew that he had gone, I knew that he was inside a stereotype, kicking down the walls from the inside.

01:13:54.480 I knew that.

01:13:55.180 And I said, I can do that.

01:13:57.860 I can do that.

01:13:58.800 My friend, Michael Malice, I don't know if you know who he is.

01:14:01.740 Oh, yeah.

01:14:02.240 Yeah.

01:14:02.440 Yeah, I know Michael.

01:14:03.660 Yeah, he's very, Michael's very funny.

01:14:06.220 He's very funny.

01:14:07.320 And he told me, he goes, God, with you, it's pathological.

01:14:10.980 He always tells me, you're funny, it's pathological.

01:14:14.380 You can't turn it off, you know.

01:14:17.220 Oh, well, like in private.

01:14:19.460 And, you know, it is pathological.

01:14:22.140 But, you know, when I'm in the mood for it.

01:14:26.120 But, and I'm a crusader.

01:14:29.100 And a lot of us are, you know.

01:14:31.940 Richard was.

01:14:33.340 Well, tell me a bit more about Roseanne and how that started up and why it was.

01:14:39.120 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:14:41.500 Tell me about the show and why it was that it turned into such a smash hit.

01:14:47.240 What do you think you did right?

01:14:48.940 I mean, first of all, it was very unlikely, right?

01:14:50.840 You said you had these weird coincidences happen to you when you went off to Hollywood and it all came together pretty quickly.

01:14:56.800 So, how did you, like, what did you say yes to and why did you make it work?

01:15:01.380 How did you make it work?

01:15:02.940 Oh, my gosh, that one's real.

01:15:05.000 You know, I have the story I tell normal people, you know, and the normal press people.

01:15:16.900 I always wanted to be a comedian.

01:15:19.220 And so I started at age 28 to tell jokes.

01:15:24.960 But the real thing is, when I was little and we'll watch TV and see, like, Father Knows Best and all these shows, I'd look around and go, hell, this is nothing like my family.

01:15:36.060 Nobody has diabetes and none of the men are fat and covered in hair.

01:15:40.920 You know, it was nothing.

01:15:42.920 I go, this is nothing like anything I've ever seen.

01:15:45.980 Where are these people?

01:15:47.600 They're not screaming.

01:15:49.220 They don't eat with their mouth open, you know.

01:15:51.260 You know, and I had it in my head since a young age.

01:15:56.700 Boy, I want to get on TV and have my show.

01:15:59.860 And I want to do the Roseanne show where I show people that I know on TV.

01:16:06.560 How come there's nobody like our family on TV?

01:16:08.860 But we did have the Honeymooners, I remember.

01:16:11.480 Right, right.

01:16:12.080 I loved and I also idolized Jackie Gleason.

01:16:14.660 And I loved the Honeymooners so much because that was a real working class miracle, that show.

01:16:24.540 Still, that one stood up over time, over a century.

01:16:28.260 It's still brilliant.

01:16:30.360 And just like a bare set and human dialogue.

01:16:34.620 That guy was so great.

01:16:37.060 Charlie Chaplin.

01:16:37.820 All these things.

01:16:41.280 You know who I really love?

01:16:42.860 Mr. Bean.

01:16:43.840 That guy doesn't even need language.

01:16:46.000 He's so great.

01:16:48.600 But, you know, so I always had the fantasy.

01:16:51.300 Someday I'm going to get on there and show a family of fat people that fight.

01:16:56.060 It was always in my head.

01:16:57.940 And I wanted to show another less perfect thing.

01:17:06.100 And it was always in my head.

01:17:09.500 And so after the Julio Iglesias tour, Hollywood came knocking to do a show.

01:17:17.700 And so I said, yes, I'd like to do that.

01:17:23.580 And I don't know.

01:17:26.080 I thought it was going to be a lot easier than it was. 0.99

01:17:29.600 Once I signed up and got into it, like so many people say, especially comedians, and then you see how the shit works. 1.00

01:17:40.360 How the sausage is made. 1.00

01:17:42.580 Yeah, how the sausage.

01:17:44.080 It's like, what have I done?

01:17:47.660 Right.

01:17:48.280 What have I got myself into?

01:17:50.500 And just trying to keep your head above water where they're trying to drag your feet down.

01:17:55.000 Well, it's a production mill, eh?

01:17:58.600 So, I mean, it's a funny thing for a comedian to do a sitcom because those aren't the same thing.

01:18:05.740 They're really not the same thing.

01:18:07.260 And you could see very funny people become less and less funny as their sitcoms progress.

01:18:12.380 Partly because I think they just get exhausted.

01:18:14.700 It's like, well, there's only so many golden eggs the goose can lay.

01:18:19.400 And then there's so many people that you have to please, too.

01:18:23.420 Which, whereas when you're on the stage, well, you have to please yourself and your audience.

01:18:27.240 But there isn't that your group of 40 people, even if they're on your side.

01:18:32.960 I don't know how.

01:18:34.400 It's got to be very difficult to do comedy collaboratively.

01:18:39.540 Yeah, I tried it.

01:18:42.020 And, you know, I worked out a system that kind of followed along with being a mom.

01:18:50.360 You know, I'll have the final word.

01:18:51.980 You guys can play.

01:18:53.040 You can put in things.

01:18:54.600 But I'll have the final word.

01:18:56.080 And because I could write a joke, you know, I could overwrite. 0.96

01:18:59.720 You know, I don't want to say they had shitty jokes.

01:19:03.620 But a lot of times they did. 0.86

01:19:04.900 And I'd just snap it in because I have pathological joke writing ability.

01:19:11.120 And I cannot not do it.

01:19:12.960 I cannot not correct a joke.

01:19:15.900 Right, right.

01:19:16.620 I can understand that.

01:19:17.900 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:19:18.760 And so that was just part of just the whole gestalt of what I did.

01:19:28.440 And that's a sign of expertise.

01:19:30.820 You know, when great chess, there's as many chess possibilities in a single chess game as there are atoms in the observable universe.

01:19:41.400 And so it's very, yeah.

01:19:42.700 So there's a lot.

01:19:43.720 But an expert chess player can look at a board and know what to do.

01:19:47.460 Like it's a gestalt.

01:19:48.840 And that expertise you're talking about with regards to jokes, that really is the sign of being an expert.

01:19:54.100 You see the patterns.

01:19:55.020 And if you see them, it's like seeing an obstacle in front of your path or something like that.

01:20:01.300 You can't not see it.

01:20:03.620 And you said you wrote 120,000 jokes.

01:20:06.620 How many of them do you think were funny?

01:20:08.500 What percentage do you think were funny?

01:20:10.900 Like truly funny?

01:20:13.420 All.

01:20:13.940 Well, I'm talking about on my show and the jokes I've told over the years.

01:20:19.660 Oh, oh, oh.

01:20:20.580 I probably have like six hours of jokes that I've told as a stand-up comic.

01:20:26.100 And then the show, what was it, three or four, ten years of 20 to 30 episodes a year.

01:20:35.500 It's a lot of jokes.

01:20:37.240 That's for sure.

01:20:38.920 And they didn't get on the show unless they were funny, you know.

01:20:43.320 How many jokes do you think you wrote that weren't, that didn't make the cut?

01:20:48.620 Because I'm trying to get at how much work you had to do to get that expertise.

01:20:53.100 Right.

01:20:53.380 Right. 0.96

01:20:53.440 Like 10,000 that sucked.

01:20:56.400 But I keep tinkering on them.

01:20:58.720 And sometimes just putting the word and in there would make them work.

01:21:04.300 You know, like I said, there's so many levels of it.

01:21:06.840 And sometimes just moving words around or saying it with a different inflection would make it work.

01:21:15.720 So it's just like a tinkering, a craft.

01:21:18.360 It is a craft, you know, to craft those ideas into a sellable joke that you can deliver.

01:21:27.860 There's so much to it.

01:21:29.840 I mean, I can't even.

01:21:31.480 It'd probably be a real bore to sit and talk about that with people who weren't.

01:21:37.220 Really.

01:21:38.080 Well, it's interesting to try to figure out why really pointed communication works.

01:21:43.900 I mean, there isn't any more pointed communication than jokes.

01:21:46.840 Absolutely, man.

01:21:47.820 You've got to be right on the money.

01:21:49.560 And so it's definitely worth some analysis because it's hard to get it right.

01:21:55.420 And it's so perfect when it is right.

01:21:57.060 One of the things that we've been dancing around here is the notion that the truth stated most perfectly is comedic.

01:22:05.820 And isn't that amazing that what you get with the right kind of truth at the right moment is like a burst of pleasure, a release of tension.

01:22:16.440 That's so amazing.

01:22:17.840 And you've got to kind of wonder, as a consequence of that, just how far you could push that.

01:22:22.880 You know, we talked about the fact that if you do things right, there's an intense play in that.

01:22:27.440 And I truly believe that if you were the master of the moment, you'd be playing all the time.

01:22:32.920 That's a hell of a...

01:22:34.160 Yeah, right.

01:22:35.080 Right, right.

01:22:36.300 Right.

01:22:36.620 That's a good thing to aim for.

01:22:37.880 My wife and I have been practicing that very hard.

01:22:40.980 She had a bout of both of us.

01:22:43.280 We had bouts of near-fatal illnesses a couple of years ago.

01:22:46.200 We had a pretty good relationship before that.

01:22:48.100 But it's better now because I think we both take less for granted.

01:22:52.020 Maybe that's part of it.

01:22:53.500 It put a new seriousness into our relationship.

01:22:56.200 But we're trying to bring that spirit of play to every moment.

01:22:59.460 And man, you know, if you make that a game, an aim and a game, then, well, you get better at it.

01:23:08.980 And that's...

01:23:09.820 There isn't anything that's more fun than that.

01:23:11.760 I was just thinking when I ran for president in 2012 on the Peace and Freedom Party, which my idol Dick Gregory also ran on that party as a presidential candidate in the 60s.

01:23:28.140 And they say had votes really been tabulated correctly, he might have actually won.

01:23:37.520 But, you know, considering the fact that he wasn't on every state ballot, but that always intrigued me.

01:23:46.980 So I wanted to do the same.

01:23:49.500 And because we agreed on so many things, it's deep thought, deep political thought goes into comedy, too.

01:23:56.680 But when I ran my speech, I said, I'm the only serious comedian in the race.

01:24:04.680 Yeah, right.

01:24:05.700 And because these other guys are just jokers.

01:24:11.520 But I'm a serious comedian.

01:24:14.260 And so, you know, I did it in a humorous way.

01:24:19.240 But, you know, I said, you know, they just go for the laugh.

01:24:23.560 Because that's a lot of comics, too.

01:24:25.440 You know, just going for, you know, a...

01:24:29.700 Cheap laugh.

01:24:32.940 A cheap laugh, yeah.

01:24:33.940 I guess the cheap laugh is one that's not connected to anything else, eh?

01:24:38.360 Because, you know, you pointed out that in a good comedy set, you're weaving things together.

01:24:42.760 And the more complex humor is going to have a story associated with it.

01:24:47.740 There's going to be interweaving across the set.

01:24:51.480 I mean, some comics do more of that than others.

01:24:53.500 But there is a difference.

01:24:56.620 Like, Dave Chappelle does that brilliance.

01:24:57.680 Yeah, right.

01:24:58.320 Yeah, yeah.

01:24:59.220 He's a really good example of that.

01:25:00.780 He's a real storyteller.

01:25:01.860 Bill Cosby was really good at that, too.

01:25:03.500 I know it's illegal to say his name.

01:25:05.340 But, God, he was funny.

01:25:06.420 Yeah, he was another idol.

01:25:07.720 Another idol.

01:25:08.360 Well, I saw him in Edmonton in the mid-70s, I think, a long, long time ago.

01:25:14.620 And, you know, he came out on the stage with just a stool and a cigar.

01:25:19.480 And he had people laughing so hard in the audience that they were literally hyperventilating.

01:25:23.900 It was amazing things to watch.

01:25:25.440 And he was a real storyteller, right?

01:25:28.140 It wasn't—I mean, there are comedians like Mitch Hedberg that are like—their stories are one joke long.

01:25:33.860 And Jimmy Carr does that, too.

01:25:35.640 You can pull that off.

01:25:36.640 But Cosby was a real storyteller.

01:25:38.460 And it was an amazing thing to watch his mastery of the stage.

01:25:41.960 Such a catastrophe when things blew up—when he blew things up around him.

01:25:46.000 That was such a drag because, on the surface, he had done so much good.

01:25:50.400 And he was so funny. 0.87

01:25:51.740 I mean, he was crazy. 0.94

01:25:54.080 He was a crazy master of the stage. 0.94

01:25:57.320 Well, you know, it's like they say there's such a thin line between, you know, madness and talent, you know?

01:26:07.260 And he's the textbook example.

01:26:11.420 Yeah.

01:26:12.060 Yeah.

01:26:12.280 Yeah, well, his shadow got the best of him.

01:26:15.340 Right.

01:26:15.740 So many comics have the same, you know, problems with, you know, their outlets and how they don't have a lot of self-control there.

01:26:26.480 But on stage, it's a master.

01:26:29.500 Yeah.

01:26:30.160 Yeah.

01:26:30.600 Yeah.

01:26:30.840 Hey, so now you're spending a fair bit of time—we talked a little bit briefly just before the podcast started.

01:26:36.960 You're spending a fair bit of time in Austin.

01:26:38.760 And you're going to be doing shows at Joe's—at Rogan's Comedy Club, eh?

01:26:42.900 The Mothership?

01:26:43.400 No, I'm doing it at another place called Cap City Comedy Club.

01:26:48.620 And I'm going to be there in Austin June 17, 18, and 19.

01:26:53.980 How big a venue is that?

01:26:55.580 I think it's pretty small, maybe 300 seats.

01:27:00.300 But it's a good place to, like, work it, you know?

01:27:05.080 And, you know, you always try—it takes about a year to get a whole new hour.

01:27:09.940 Right, right.

01:27:10.780 And then you have to tool it.

01:27:12.800 And so it's at the point to take it to an audience.

01:27:17.560 And I'm kind of excited about it.

01:27:19.380 I haven't done a 90-minute show in Austin yet.

01:27:27.180 So I do look forward to it.

01:27:29.280 Yeah, it's going to be the best.

01:27:31.100 Okay, now you did say that you had performed at Rogan's Comedy Club, though.

01:27:35.280 Yeah, I can sense there, but we only do, like, 15, 20 minutes.

01:27:39.340 Oh, I see.

01:27:40.140 So you're developing a whole—ah-ha, ah-ha.

01:27:42.920 And when was the last time you did that?

01:27:45.880 Oh, my gosh.

01:27:47.060 I think—well, I guess it was about a year and a half when I did.

01:27:52.820 So what—now, you're working on Mr. Burcham.

01:27:56.300 What—do you have—what are your plans for your future?

01:28:01.140 I mean, you've had a bumpy ride with all the cancellations.

01:28:04.940 Yeah.

01:28:05.560 Yeah, I'm doing a podcast on—you know, I guess it's where everybody is doing podcasts.

01:28:11.800 YouTube, Rumble, Apple, you know, it's called the Roseanne Barr podcast, which I'm really getting into.

01:28:21.640 I've done 49 of them now.

01:28:23.920 Oh, yeah.

01:28:24.220 And I'm just loving that, the conversation with—conversations with intelligent people and fighting the good fight, trying to wake people up, trying to say the things that aren't—that are, like, missing.

01:28:41.060 I like to go to the places that are not really being talked about.

01:28:49.860 And—

01:28:50.660 How are you picking your guests?

01:28:53.460 I pick them by—well, mostly it's people who call and want to be on, because a lot of people are calling and wanting to be on, which is flattering.

01:29:05.160 And I'm like, yeah, I'd love to interview.

01:29:08.500 I just had Tulsi Gabbard on, and that was a fantastic interview because—

01:29:13.500 She's a tough cookie.

01:29:14.640 Yeah, we both are from Hawaii.

01:29:17.140 I mean, I also live in Hawaii part of the year.

01:29:20.020 And to be able to talk about Hawaii and how it creates a different kind of culture and a person with a different sort of point of view than the mainland, we got to talk about that and then talk about politics.

01:29:34.020 Of course, you know, I'm a huge Trump supporter, and so I like to talk about that and what that means.

01:29:41.040 To me, it means populism and the awakening of populism, which I think that's the whole point of everything.

01:29:55.240 What do you think of Trump as a comedian?

01:29:58.200 I've got this book—

01:29:58.660 I think he's funnier than hell.

01:30:00.720 The guy is so funny.

01:30:01.200 I've got this book that someone put together, and they gave me.

01:30:04.200 It's a library edition, so it looks like a very professional hardcover, and it's called The Collected Poetry of Donald Trump.

01:30:09.880 I have that book.

01:30:10.660 You have that book.

01:30:12.100 It's hilarious.

01:30:13.300 It is hilarious.

01:30:14.120 It's all his tweets.

01:30:15.300 Oh, you have that book.

01:30:16.300 That's so funny, yeah.

01:30:17.460 But I read through that, and I thought, oh, man, like, he's definitely underappreciated as a comedian because, like, he's very pointed, like, very, very pointed.

01:30:28.060 But that's a hilarious collection.

01:30:30.720 It's ridiculously funny.

01:30:32.680 And I know that's part of the reason he connects with working-class audiences, because he's got that vicious wit.

01:30:38.620 Yeah.

01:30:38.940 Oh, yeah.

01:30:39.440 He's just hilarious, and people love it.

01:30:41.680 That's what I appreciate most about him is, you know, how funny he is.

01:30:47.980 And, you know, when they don't like you, like, when they don't like me, and they start writing your jokes up as if they're serious, that's serious, too.

01:30:58.060 Just to be part of that or read it or watch it, it's like how arrogant they are.

01:31:03.200 That would be like, you know, remember Henny Youngman's joke, Take My Wife, Please?

01:31:08.780 Remember?

01:31:09.720 Yeah.

01:31:09.980 So that would be like if the press would go, Henny Youngman is trying to traffic his wife.

01:31:16.100 You know, they write it as a joke as if it's a serious thing.

01:31:21.400 Yeah.

01:31:21.500 Well, that's also one of the real dangers about being funny and telling jokes, because a really good joke taken out of context often looks very dark and bad, right?

01:31:37.980 It has to be, because it's something that only works in the moment.

01:31:41.300 You have to set it up properly.

01:31:42.680 It's very context-dependent.

01:31:44.120 And so it's very easy for someone who wants to savage someone's reputation to take a joke out of context and to use it as a bludgeon.

01:31:52.860 And so it's one of the-

01:31:53.660 That's what happened to me.

01:31:55.480 But, you know, they had been trying to do that to me since I first walked into Hollywood, because I thought it was like, how dare she, who didn't go to Harvard, has no degree, how dare she reach people?

01:32:10.120 Right, right, right.

01:32:11.160 It was so, the class issue was always so hard when you asked me about Hollywood.

01:32:16.980 It was always that.

01:32:19.800 Right, right.

01:32:20.800 Well, and, you know, Trump has faced that too, eh?

01:32:23.960 I mean, he's always been, my impression is that he's always been an outsider to the elites, you know?

01:32:31.880 And I also think that's part of the reason that he's attractive to working-class people is, you know, it's partly because they look at Trump, they look at an Ivy League-educated, what do you call them, academiced individual, and think, well, that's outside of my realm of possibility.

01:32:48.180 But what Trump represents is something that I could conceivably have.

01:32:52.200 So there's an American dream variant there.

01:32:54.200 And I think that's realistic.

01:32:55.460 And I know Trump is also good when he's talking to military people, for example, and that's a hard thing.

01:33:01.640 That's typically a very hard thing for politicians to pull off.

01:33:05.720 I imagine he could probably do that because he's had a fair bit of experience with working-class people on the construction side of his life, which is also a difficult thing to manage.

01:33:17.000 He speaks from the hip and from the heart.

01:33:19.660 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

01:33:20.440 He doesn't filter it through, you know, a bunch of horse shit and lies like they do. 0.99

01:33:26.880 They don't mean anything they say. 1.00

01:33:28.340 And everyone knows it.

01:33:29.820 And everyone got used to, oh, politicians, we don't believe anything.

01:33:33.160 And we just, you know, we think we vote for the lesser of two evils, you know?

01:33:37.700 Yeah.

01:33:38.560 Two percent less evil than the other guy, so we'll vote for him.

01:33:41.940 We know they're all lying.

01:33:43.420 They're all full of it.

01:33:44.580 But Trump was a shock to the system of that because he's like, we can do better and we can use, you know, everything at our disposal to make things better and make it better for our people.

01:34:00.360 Nobody had ever heard anything like that since Kennedy.

01:34:03.880 And it's a shock to that system of, you know, that big boat they don't want rocked.

01:34:10.060 And, of course, I was so excited because I love rocking that boat, you know?

01:34:15.940 And it was very plain spoken.

01:34:18.720 It wasn't in that academic removed, insulated ivory tower voice that tells us what's good for us.

01:34:28.200 You know, it was like, you know what?

01:34:30.920 You guys are our servants, okay?

01:34:34.740 You are our public servants, and you're no good at the servant business.

01:34:42.640 That's one of my best. 0.99

01:34:43.640 I go, you suck at the servant business, and you ought to be fired. 1.00

01:34:48.200 You're like this kind of servant that comes into work and steals our spoons. 1.00

01:34:53.900 You ought to be in jail. 0.89

01:34:55.280 And, you know, it's just a turning.

01:35:00.500 They call it the fourth turning, you know?

01:35:03.060 What I was going to say is the most exciting thing for me recently in the last, well, you know, the last few years, maybe 20 off and on.

01:35:12.980 But I also, I love to talk about the Bible, and I sort of, I'm a Jew, you know, so I sort of teach Sunday school in a way.

01:35:24.900 But how funny the Bible is, you know, if you look at it correctly and read it right, it's hilarious.

01:35:32.000 Like I say, God's the funniest comic.

01:35:34.400 It's just hilarious how God turns things out.

01:35:39.800 But I like to talk about the humor in the tourist stories and make them funny because they are so funny and they are so.

01:35:51.820 Give me an example.

01:35:52.800 Give me an example.

01:35:53.640 Well, my favorite example is when we left Egypt and, you know, the people who left slavery, the Israelites there, the tribes, they've just been taken out and had the sea open for them. 0.76

01:36:20.240 You know, they had all these great miracles.

01:36:21.860 They get to the other side dry and alive, and the first thing they do is start bitching about.

01:36:27.980 Right.

01:36:28.380 Yeah, absolutely.

01:36:29.440 Complaining and whining.

01:36:31.040 Yeah.

01:36:31.420 Wishing the tyranny was found.

01:36:33.540 At least in Egypt, we had fresh fish.

01:36:36.920 That's hilarious.

01:36:37.700 Yeah, yeah.

01:36:38.340 Yeah, that's for sure.

01:36:39.440 That is hilarious.

01:36:40.640 Hey, what's the matter?

01:36:42.040 They didn't have graves in Egypt?

01:36:45.140 You had to bring us out here in the desert to bury us?

01:36:48.320 You know, no concept of gratitude.

01:36:51.860 Yeah.

01:36:52.560 It was all gone after these major miracles because that's kind of the nature of people.

01:36:59.080 If they can't have their complaints and they're blaming, that's the nature of slavery, I mean.

01:37:05.400 Yes, that's right.

01:37:06.440 And to leave slavery, the vestige of it was still within the people's minds.

01:37:12.380 And that's why it took 40 years to run.

01:37:14.920 Yeah, right.

01:37:15.540 That's exactly.

01:37:16.000 Yes, absolutely.

01:37:17.000 Until they were up to that system.

01:37:18.600 So, I mean, it's just humorous that, you know, and like the story of...

01:37:25.140 You know, there's a scene in Exodus where the Israelites are complaining about not having anything to eat.

01:37:31.640 And God sends them so many quail that, like, there are three feet of quail everywhere, as far as you can see.

01:37:39.300 And they're literally eating so much quail that the bones are coming out of their noses.

01:37:43.640 Right.

01:37:44.120 Right.

01:37:44.860 Right.

01:37:45.460 And there's a scene, too, in the story of Adam and Eve when after Adam and Eve fall and Adam is hiding behind a bush because he knows he's naked, God comes along and says, you know, what the hell are you doing hiding from me?

01:38:00.540 And Adam says, well, you know that woman you made me?

01:38:03.840 And so it's so great because he blames the woman for his trouble and his nakedness and his cowardice, and he blames God at the same time, which is also a very nice little bit of comedic twist.

01:38:16.500 And those are great comedic premises, you know, that God gave us because we're supposed to see ourself in them and go, hey, maybe I can...

01:38:26.580 Well, we're not supposed to say maybe, but we're supposed to recognize that we need to change that in ourselves.

01:38:32.080 Well, yeah, so men should stop blaming women and God, you mean?

01:38:37.380 Well, you should be accountable for what you yourself do.

01:38:42.140 That's the hardest thing.

01:38:43.820 It's the hardest thing for human beings to go, I have made a mistake that needs to be corrected.

01:38:50.840 And the real hard thing for human beings just to, I've found in my life, is to say, I am sorry.

01:38:58.240 Hardly anybody can say that.

01:39:02.440 The left never says that when they're proven wrong over and over and over, and they ruin people with the jackboot on their face.

01:39:11.800 I say the rainbow-colored jackboots.

01:39:14.780 Right, right.

01:39:15.760 They never say, oh, we're sorry we were wrong.

01:39:19.940 They never do that.

01:39:21.880 Well, you know from Exodus that it's in the nature of the tyrant to double down in the face of error.

01:39:28.140 Right.

01:39:28.460 And that's how you make sure the plagues get worse when you could have just learned the first time.

01:39:33.280 Oh, that's a great, that's a great one.

01:39:35.100 Well, there's the other part of that too, you know, which also sheds a light on refusal to admit to error, you know, because the Egyptians or the Israelites, they escape from the tyranny.

01:39:46.820 But they're not in the promised land.

01:39:48.620 They have to spend those years in the desert.

01:39:50.640 And so lots of people will stay in the tyranny because they don't want to be in the desert.

01:39:55.640 Because it's tyranny, desert, promised land, not tyranny, promised land. 1.00

01:40:00.440 And so, you know, once you give up your idiocy, you're lost for a while. 1.00

01:40:06.660 And that's painful. 1.00

01:40:08.320 Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's painful.

01:40:09.700 That is so right.

01:40:11.060 Yeah, yeah.

01:40:11.980 It's the process of freeing your mind after you've freed your body.

01:40:18.080 That's even harder.

01:40:19.260 Yeah, right, right.

01:40:20.120 Well, that's exactly what that story reflects.

01:40:22.900 Yeah.

01:40:23.780 All right, Roseanne, we should wrap this up.

01:40:26.940 We've gone longer than we had planned, which is exactly fine as far as I'm concerned for everybody.

01:40:35.040 I very much enjoyed talking with you too.

01:40:37.220 The next time I come to Austin, maybe we could meet.

01:40:40.320 I would like that.

01:40:40.960 Maybe we could go to one of the comedy clubs together.

01:40:43.300 I'd love to interview you too.

01:40:44.520 I'd love to take you down there.

01:40:46.580 Yeah, that would be fun.

01:40:47.740 So I'm going to come to Austin probably in July.

01:40:50.120 I think I'm going to go see Joe in July.

01:40:52.600 That's the tentative plan at the moment.

01:40:54.060 All right, well, I'll be here.

01:40:54.480 So, you know, let's do it.

01:40:57.000 Absolutely.

01:40:57.760 Absolutely.

01:40:58.740 You know, this guy that placed Tyler Fisher, I was going to tell you, that plays Carponzo,

01:41:05.420 he does the best Jordan Peterson.

01:41:08.400 Oh, no.

01:41:09.200 I have your text, so I'm going to text it to you.

01:41:14.420 He does you on the money.

01:41:17.540 I'm going to send it to you.

01:41:18.620 It's so brilliant.

01:41:20.060 Oh, that's a terrible thing to even contemplate.

01:41:22.520 So, yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

01:41:24.380 All right, so let's get together when I come down to Austin.

01:41:28.300 I think that would be fun.

01:41:29.720 All right, all right.

01:41:30.400 And for everybody watching and listening, I'm going to continue to interview Roseanne on the Daily Wire side for another half an hour.

01:41:37.160 I think we'll probably talk a little bit more about cancellation.

01:41:41.800 Okay.

01:41:42.060 Yeah, I think we should delve into that and how you've coped with that and what you plan to do about it in the future and what people should do when they find themselves in that situation and what you've done.

01:41:55.480 So, that's what we're, if you guys want to come over onto the Daily Wire side, everybody watching and listening, I think that's where we're going to go with that.

01:42:02.900 And so, thank you very much for talking with me today.

01:42:05.620 It was a pleasure walking through your thoughts on comedy with you for sure.

01:42:10.780 And I'm looking forward to meeting in person.

01:42:14.200 Me too.

01:42:14.660 All right, and everybody watching and listening, thank you very much for that and your attention is much appreciated.

01:42:22.080 The film crew here up in Fairview, Alberta, thank you for making that possible and we'll talk soon.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - June 03, 2024

452. The Loudest Woman in Comedy ｜ Roseanne Barr

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript