Legendary Comedy Cellar Owner on Louis CK, Comedy & Cancel Culture
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 8 minutes
Words per minute
178.23495
Harmful content
Misogyny
10
sentences flagged
Toxicity
90
sentences flagged
Hate speech
20
sentences flagged
Summary
Noam Dworkin is the founder and owner of the legendary Comedy Cellar in New York City. He s been in comedy for a long time and has been a member of the stand-up comedy club scene for a lot longer than that. In this episode, Noam talks about how he got started in comedy, why he started the comedy cellar, and what it s like to be the owner of a comedy club.
Transcript
00:00:00.400
Why do you think that we've reached this point where people are afraid to speak out and people are afraid to say what they think and to challenge ideas?
00:00:07.960
It started with just more and more solicitousness towards young people to not be offended by this and not be offended by that.
00:00:15.460
Has that changed comedy, the introduction of social media? Do you think people now say things differently or come and do shows differently or anything like that?
00:00:23.220
It's not just social media. It's the fact that everything is forever.
00:00:27.160
I think what is really important, is not mentioned enough, is that we really are living in a golden age of comedy.
00:00:33.780
The cellar must be empty because the world is furious that the cellar allowed Louis C.K. to perform.
00:00:41.620
They were pretending to be much more really bothered than they were.
00:00:44.560
That's why I say Louis won a Grammy, but it was a secret ballot.
00:00:47.980
I'm sure many of those people who voted for him would never admit that they voted for him or wouldn't have voted for him if their vote was going to go public.
00:00:54.260
But privately, they didn't care enough not to give him the Grammy.
0.99
00:00:57.920
If two idiot comedians start a podcast and start talking to people, that's brave.
1.00
00:01:03.820
Hello and welcome to Trigonometry on the road from the USA.
0.99
00:01:21.140
And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:01:26.020
Our terrific guest today is the legendary owner of the legendary comedy cellar here in New York, Noam Dworkin.
00:01:43.420
And I said to Francis, I better not fuck up Noam, sir.
0.98
00:01:51.980
But a lot of people who are watching the show will not have any idea who you are because you're a behind the scenes kind of guy.
00:02:03.340
And also tell us about the journey through life of the comedy cellar itself because it's a family thing.
00:02:11.080
I've been the owner of the comedy cellar since 2004 or so when my father died.
00:02:19.280
So, before that, I went to University of Pennsylvania Law School.
00:02:27.500
And then I started, people will think I didn't start it, but I started a club called the Café Wah, which now has a reputation for having existed all these years.
00:02:37.820
But actually, the Café Wah originally closed in 1968.
00:02:41.340
It was the place where Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan.
00:02:43.180
Anyway, I took that name and restarted a nightclub.
00:02:46.040
And I spent like 20 years just on stage playing music.
00:02:53.080
And then I had to make some tough choices and I sold the Café Wah.
00:03:02.380
My dad started the comedy cellar with another guy named Bill Grunfest, who's not in the picture down here anymore.
00:03:14.420
He had a Middle Eastern nightclub where the Café Wah is now.
00:03:17.640
And this was a room he didn't know what to do with.
00:03:22.400
And he had like Brazilian musicians down here and stuff.
00:03:25.080
And this guy named Bill Grunfest, who is now a Hollywood writer, I think he was head writer on Mad About You for a while.
00:03:31.580
He came down and had the idea initially to bring comedians down here.
00:03:36.260
And he was the house emcee for a number of years.
00:03:38.400
And then he left and then my father ran it by himself until he died.
00:03:42.320
And just being here now, as somebody who is a comedian but also a massive comedy nerd, I feel so honored.
00:03:50.780
But secondly, what do you think is so special about stand-up comedy?
00:03:55.440
Why do you think it moves people and people want to travel from across the country, in fact, across the world,
00:04:01.100
to sit in a small room with around 120 people and watch a person on stage saying jokes?
00:04:13.640
Working backwards in a certain way, I think right now we're in a golden age of stand-up comedy quality.
00:04:23.140
I was just, I'm in the middle of a project now where I'm digitizing maybe 500 or 700 VHS tapes from old shows from the 90s.
00:04:42.100
I mean, just the, and it's not just that it didn't age well.
00:04:46.800
The laughs are mediocre and people, you know, it's just not the same response at all.
00:04:53.100
So, part of the reason I think, it's like supply side, part of the reason is just that comedy is much better now.
00:05:02.560
You know, there's always stand-up, I mean, sitcoms, humorous things have always been good.
00:05:11.840
You know, part of the reason we're busy here is not just for comedy.
00:05:17.240
It's that it's a place to go with your friends, have drinks, get a date, whatever it is.
00:05:24.040
But I think what is really important that is not mentioned enough is that we really are living in a golden age of comedy.
00:05:31.560
In the way that music in the late 60s and early 70s, like, why was music so popular then?
00:05:36.220
But if you realize, you go back and listen to it, well, actually, it really was an unusual time for music.
00:05:44.460
So, I think comedy right now is really better than it's ever been.
00:05:49.280
That's so interesting because people would say, well, look, we've got cancel culture now.
00:05:54.100
And, you know, the fact is that the Overton window in comedy is shrinking.
00:06:04.120
I've never been seen any good empirical data of how many people are really on board with cancel culture as opposed to how many people are simply intimidated by it and trying to stay in its good graces.
00:06:26.760
I mean, everybody I know just talks about being afraid to say the wrong thing.
00:06:32.100
Of course, people who come to the comedy club mostly don't come here if they're particularly easily offended, right?
00:06:42.200
I've compared this to a speakeasy during Prohibition.
00:06:46.120
The people who wanted, you know, who were pro-Prohibition didn't show up to the speakeasies.
00:06:51.520
So, we get here, the people who really want a drink.
00:06:54.020
But in general, look at the people who are huge.
00:06:57.800
Rogan and Schultz and all these people on YouTube who are, I mean, it seems like the biggest comedians are the ones who are not towing the line in cancel culture.
00:07:14.240
The whole world is against him, but he's still the biggest comedian in the world.
00:07:17.600
So, Louis, after all he went through, just sold out Madison Square Garden and won a Grammy.
00:07:29.660
One of the things that I think was a little bit eye-opening for us coming from the UK where there's one comedy scene and we have a different culture when it comes to freedom of expression in the UK.
00:07:39.760
We don't have a First Amendment or a First Amendment culture.
00:07:42.800
Whereas we came here with our kind of very British views on these things and talking to you and seeing, you know, seeing Rogan's Club in Austin.
00:07:50.080
And we kind of got the sense that it is a lot freer here.
00:07:53.740
And that is one of the things that, like, we took away from that trip.
00:07:57.740
And it seemed like, you know, we came to see a show here.
00:08:01.180
That wasn't really an issue, people being offended and complaining and all that sort of thing.
00:08:05.200
Are the rank-and-file people in England actually offended or, I mean?
00:08:11.760
You know, if you talk to people who are regular MCs, they will tell you the number of people complaining about comedians and jokes has gone through the roof.
00:08:24.120
But you don't know what it represents in terms of actual numbers.
00:08:26.940
Like, the number of tweets about people being offended has gone through the roof.
00:08:31.680
Has comedy changed in other ways in the time that you've been?
00:08:36.760
But is there anything else that you notice that is kind of in the time that you've been the custodian of this place?
00:08:42.640
So in the digitizing project, I'll let you see it.
00:08:50.980
People might not, so just explain who she is to you.
00:08:53.520
She was like a modern day female Don Rickles stuff, making like really harsh, in your gut, ethnic jokes and stuff like that.
1.00
00:09:02.760
And I went back and listened to it and I had forgotten just how over the top these jokes were.
00:09:11.400
I would have to say she couldn't do that set anymore.
1.00
00:09:14.380
Even I was like, you know, at some point, though I hate to admit it, this stuff does seep into us in some way.
00:09:25.580
Not that we're actually offended, but it's just like the mores change.
00:09:29.600
The norms, it's just like certain things you just don't say anymore.
00:09:49.080
I mean, like, okay, so like in, remember when George Bush had a shoe thrown at him?
00:09:55.660
And we all got the lesson that, well, actually, if you show the sole of your shoe to someone, this is the ultimate disrespect.
00:10:02.820
And Arabs and Muslim people I knew were horrified to see this shoe with the president.
00:10:11.320
That's not a healthy thing because it's not actually based on anything.
00:10:14.560
So it may not always be a bad thing, but we'd like to think that if we have negative reactions to things which are actually demonstrably negative, not just something somebody's trained us to react against.
00:10:29.180
And do you think part of the problem is, is that, you know, we talk about these big subjects which are incredibly controversial, like race, when COVID was happening, COVID.
00:10:41.240
And it seems that sometimes when you see a comedian on stage, they just have to mention a word.
00:10:47.380
You know, and I just realized maybe I didn't answer the question you were asking.
00:10:50.620
You're asking, is it a good thing that people are more sensitive to these matters?
00:11:03.580
Because I'm torn about it because on the one hand, I don't want comedy to get pussified over time and society to get pussified.
00:11:09.860
On the other hand, there are certain things I hear being, you know, said or joked about in the 70s and 80s.
00:11:14.980
And I'm like, whoa, I'm glad that's not happening anymore.
00:11:18.100
Well, the most powerful example that comes to mind is the way we used to joke about gay people.
0.91
00:11:28.800
So when Lisa Lampanelli would tell jokes about black people, stuff like that, I don't know that it was really mocking, even though it might feel mocking in time.
0.54
00:11:40.140
But it was really open season to mock homosexuals for a long time.
00:11:45.080
And it's not anymore, I think because there was a huge mass insight and empathy into, that changed most, many people's views about being gay.
00:12:03.320
So to the extent that it's changed because people don't care to make those jokes anymore because they feel that it's mean, of course, that's a good thing.
00:12:15.060
But what wouldn't be good is if all of a sudden you can't make a joke about anything gay anymore.
0.50
00:12:19.940
You can't make a joke about anything Jewish anymore because you should be able to joke about anything.
00:12:25.740
But if you're not doing it because you realize that you've been mean or bullying or, you know, cruel, then, yeah, of course, it's a good thing.
00:12:33.980
But no, I mean, that's probably why you're torn, right?
00:12:36.740
Because both of these things are true at the same time.
00:12:41.040
Like, I can make a joke about whatever it may be, let's say Jewish people, in my heart, I'm not being anti-Semitic.
0.97
00:12:52.180
All of a sudden my brookings are disappearing into the air.
00:13:00.780
But somebody who is in the front or second row may feel that it's anti-Semitic.
00:13:11.600
Yeah, there's no answer to this, but I think that, and I would say this to Jewish people,
00:13:18.680
it's way better to err on the side of being thick-skinned and giving people the benefit,
00:13:27.940
that you've got to view people as innocent or proven guilty about what their intentions were.
00:13:32.760
At some point, if it becomes so obvious that somebody actually is full of hate or anti-Semitic,
00:13:38.800
then you might have to say, listen, you know, I'm just not comfortable with this anymore.
00:13:44.940
Yeah, and I think sometimes as well is that everybody has the thing that they're particularly sensitive about,
00:13:51.980
whatever it may be, your ethnicity, religion, you know, political views.
00:13:56.220
And I think when somebody makes a joke on that, everybody gets a little bit more touchy about that thing.
00:14:03.480
You know, first of all, being Jewish, you know, I mean, among Jews, Jews are making all the same jokes about Jews
00:14:13.820
that we consider anti-Semitic when they come from non-Jews.
0.94
00:14:16.740
If you, same thing with gay, like all the gay comics now, they make the very same gay jokes, which we used to say,
1.00
00:14:25.460
So you might say that in some way, this is because there is some grain of truth to some stereotypes, right?
00:14:36.600
I was like thinking like, you ever see one of those studies where they take zodiac signs and then, or horoscopes,
00:14:41.340
and then they mix them all up and give it to people who don't correspond to the,
00:14:44.800
and everybody says, oh, this is me, exactly. It's like a very good proof that zodiac is bullshit.
0.99
00:14:52.500
Like if I tried to stereotype Jew people, these, or-
1.00
00:14:55.860
Yeah, Jews are really athletic, and they're great in the NBA.
00:15:00.120
So at some point, we have to probably all acknowledge, you know, there's something to these things that come from somewhere.
00:15:05.640
Our challenges in life to be good people is not to pretend that something that's true is not true,
00:15:11.000
is to say, despite whatever may be true, our highest calling is to judge everybody as an individual.
00:15:21.020
So, you know, these jokes, I give people some latitude because if they're joking about the same kind of things that I'm observing myself,
00:15:32.600
I have to let that go. I'm just, you know, like, how can I get outraged when I might make the same joke myself?
00:15:40.520
Yeah, it's such a good, you know, it's such a good point that we need to have latitude.
00:15:45.420
And also we need to, we need to accept that not all comedy is for us specifically.
00:15:52.900
You know, my mother's from Venezuela, you know, there may be somebody who does a very good routine about why socialism is great.
00:16:00.000
It doesn't mean that it invalidates my experience, and I may not particularly like it, but if it's crushing in the room, then fair play to them.
00:16:07.980
And another problem is like, you know, this is not that dissimilar from these classic arguments about pornography.
00:16:13.920
And Potter Stewart, he said, I know it when I see it.
00:16:22.140
That was mocked, but yet people still mention that, you know, because there's something true about that.
00:16:30.880
And this applies to being offended or judging whether somebody is coming from a good place or a bad place.
00:16:39.400
Sometimes you know it when you see it, and sometimes you're wrong when you know it when you see it.
00:16:42.680
But there are certain things which are, come down to some sort of deeper human, unquantifiable perception of matters.
00:16:59.100
Here you are, there's no problem with, you know, freedom of expression in the New York comedy scene.
00:17:09.460
How, what are you interested in that's, that's brought us here?
00:17:21.360
You guys are on a much deeper level than comedy.
00:17:23.300
In my opinion, you're fighting to be able to discuss the ins and outs of every matter that comes before society.
00:17:37.260
And in so many issues, you're not allowed to do that.
00:17:42.960
You're, you're, you're supposed to recite a party line.
00:17:46.560
And this is vitally important, what you guys are doing.
00:17:50.960
So, I mean, I don't, you know, you guys do a lot of stuff on trans stuff lately.
00:17:56.400
I'd be shocked to find out you're actually anti-trans in any way.
00:17:59.640
We employ two trans people, so it'd be quite hard.
00:18:05.200
Yeah, we beat them every day, but apart from that.
00:18:10.100
No, we pay them more because they're actually men.
00:18:18.520
Look, you have to be able to discuss everything.
00:18:21.300
You have to be able to discuss everything and anything, even to find out that you're wrong.
00:18:26.840
And there's, there's a small number of people like you guys who are brave enough and intellectually curious enough and smart enough to undertake this, you know.
00:18:40.360
I don't think there's anything brave about what we do.
00:18:42.300
Like, brave is, you know, people who go into combat or people who, you know, do acts.
00:18:46.280
Have you ever spoken to people who, who are considered brave in combat?
00:18:51.560
I'm just doing my, you know, like the, the brave people, but it is brave in some way.
00:18:57.960
If we are brave to be raising these issues, what does that say about the society we live in?
00:19:04.880
If two idiot comedians start a podcast and start talking to people, that's brave.
1.00
00:19:17.040
I mean, this is, I asked, um, Yasha Monk one time.
00:19:23.940
And I, I asked him, um, do you think you would have the, like, I'd seen some, uh, documentary
00:19:30.140
of people just going off to enlist after World War II.
00:19:32.860
I said, do you think you would have the bravery to just go enlist to die?
00:19:41.400
He said, but history teaches us that actually that kind of bravery is a lot more common than
00:19:46.500
people who are willing to buck their peers on ideas.
00:19:51.340
You know, people just shut up and go along with stuff.
00:19:56.700
It just, there's a small percentage of people who are wired like you are.
00:20:07.720
And do you think that things have got worse when it comes to that?
00:20:11.480
As in we, you know, or better, as in people were more willing to buck the trend?
00:20:20.720
It's definitely gotten worse because, um, it's gotten worse.
00:20:25.600
I mean, it's almost a trite thing to say because the left, which always stood for free speech,
00:20:32.360
has now seemed to come to the opposite conclusion.
00:20:37.780
And the right still stands for free speech, but the right is not progressive, right?
00:20:45.120
But so they're not going to, you know, so, um, it's, it's gotten way worse.
00:20:51.800
And when you, when I saw that clip of the, in the, was it Stanford law school where they
00:20:58.340
I mean, this is not the way law school was when I went.
00:21:05.200
Why do you think that we've, we've reached this point where people are afraid to speak
00:21:09.580
out and people are afraid to say what they think and to challenge ideas?
00:21:13.960
You have to ask people like John Haidt or whatever it is who really followed this, um, piecemeal.
00:21:18.320
But I, I think as I gather what they, he said is it started with just more and more solicitousness
00:21:25.660
towards young people to not be offended by this and not be offended by that.
00:21:30.460
And we, we thought this was just like part of youth, but then it didn't, they didn't shed
00:21:38.720
it and it just became more and more a cultural norm that you just don't talk this way and
00:21:45.700
And it's kind of a, a hyper concern for, um, you know, marginalized groups or whatever
00:21:53.180
And, uh, I don't know, it just became that way.
00:21:57.560
It's weird as well, because one of the things that I really dislike about one of the changes
00:22:02.460
that happened is, you know, the reason people go, people like doing comedy, I feel, and
00:22:08.760
playing sports is that you, not quite entirely correctly, but you still, you think these places
00:22:15.200
And there's been, in my opinion, a consolidated attack on merit, because as soon as you start
00:22:21.120
picking people based on things other than merit, you're, you're attacking merit, right?
00:22:25.400
Well, the failure of meritocracy has been, um, you know, it's a very uncomfortable issue
00:22:34.140
Obviously the, what we're talking about, it goes beyond that, like, you know, but where,
00:22:38.940
where, where, like, for instance, you know, they have the movement is to stop testing people,
00:22:46.960
stop testing kids rather than to look, look at in the face of, of how badly they're doing.
00:22:54.740
Um, yeah, I, that, that's, I have an, I have another theory that, um, you know, that no
00:23:06.180
So every civil rights movement just goes on forever.
00:23:09.980
And I remember one time my father once made an offhand comment that stayed with me that
00:23:14.000
every, well, everything looks, I was, it was mixing music actually.
00:23:17.200
And, uh, I was focusing on, on something and he said, well, don't listen to it that way
00:23:20.480
because everything looks bad under a microscope.
00:23:22.200
But always, that comment always stayed with me.
00:23:24.020
And I think that, you know, we look through something in a microscope and it looks ugly.
00:23:29.820
This could be the culture in the sixties and we got rid of segregation, we got rid of this
00:23:34.480
and, you know, we changed that and then it looks good and they say, okay, let's double
00:23:40.060
And we just keep doubling the magnification and, and we're, we're like, you know, 1012 or
00:23:45.160
2020 or whatever magnification now as a culture.
00:23:48.020
And we will always double it to expose, to make it look bad.
00:23:55.600
So we're, we're, we're somewhere into that endless loop of just, we'll, so the things
00:24:00.120
that we're reacting to viscerally now, we react to them with the same chemical reactions
00:24:05.400
and the same intensity that we would have reacted to poses on black children trying
00:24:11.920
But we're reacting to things which are almost nothing.
00:24:15.620
I mean, if you told them back there, you're like, so in some way that's like a perception
00:24:20.680
We just can't ever say, well, actually things are pretty good.
00:24:25.860
No, my cause is, is, you know, gays or blacks or Jews or whatever it is.
0.68
00:24:29.500
And I will never be satisfied because there's always, I can always double the microscope and
0.87
00:24:34.120
I'll always show you things which look horrible.
00:24:38.000
And now we can, that's a brilliant metaphor.
0.99
00:24:39.520
And now, and this is what I was going to ask you is, now we can make that shit viral.
0.99
00:24:44.520
You stick it on social media and it gets amplified.
0.99
00:24:49.560
And one of the things I was going to ask you about, you see, you know, hundreds, thousands
00:24:54.340
One of the shifts I noticed in my lifetime in politics was when social media came, because
00:25:01.260
prior to social media, debates in the House of Commons in England, right, they were all,
00:25:09.820
Even though these two parties disagreed, it was robust debate, but there was a kind of,
00:25:17.440
And that, those rules were, they had, there was a decorum.
00:25:20.560
There was a, there was no sense that you were here pandering to a gallery of your own
00:25:25.580
fans who all, whose only interest is that you destroy the enemy, right?
00:25:30.040
Has that changed comedy, the introduction of social media?
00:25:33.700
Do you think people now say things differently or come and do shows differently or anything
00:25:42.700
So, so in, in the nineties, if somebody said something, and it happened, but somebody would
00:25:47.680
say something horrible on stage and the New York Post would actually pick it up.
00:25:51.780
And for 24 hours, people would be talking about it.
00:25:55.680
And then the, the paper would go in the garbage and, or maybe, you know, this is, I'm talking
00:26:01.380
about nineties before the, the paper would go in the garbage and the memory fades.
00:26:05.620
And unless you were going to go to the library and get microfiche, this just, it goes away.
00:26:12.600
If you Google somebody, whatever, that becomes the top thing that comes back.
00:26:18.480
I'm so like, well, my great grandkids are going to see what you said about me in the
0.99
00:26:24.200
And, and it really bothers me because people think it's true.
0.99
00:26:27.500
So everybody is, is very aware now that everything is forever.
00:26:40.380
And also what it does is it eliminates forgiveness.
00:26:48.340
And we've seen this numerous times where people have transgressed.
1.00
00:26:55.920
And I look, I believe if you've done something wrong, absolutely, absolutely apologize.
00:27:00.860
Otherwise you're never going to be able to build that bridge again.
00:27:03.940
But what's the point in an apology if it's only going to make the mob stronger?
00:27:11.800
I mean, are you apologizing for a strategic reason or are you apologizing because you're
00:27:15.220
If you apologize because you're sorry, then you should say you're sorry.
00:27:19.940
But are you going to say you're sorry if it means that the mob is going to become ever
00:27:23.940
more emboldened and do more to destroy you?
0.63
00:27:28.600
So like, like Louis, um, in retrospect, I wonder, I don't speak about this, but I wonder
00:27:37.560
if like maybe he should have never admitted and never said he was sorry because they just
00:27:43.420
Um, because when you say sorry, part of saying sorry is, I guess there's different scenarios.
00:27:48.460
When you, the admission that you've done something that you could still deny or hasn't been clear
00:27:56.620
They, they used to be like you would, you would confess and say, well, he admitted it and
00:28:02.980
Like Bill Clinton, when he finally came clean, this worked for him.
00:28:14.280
I think when you are already caught red handed, if you are actually sorry, that probably doesn't
00:28:27.500
You can go through different scenarios, but there's different times when the apology,
00:28:33.520
I, I still think there's times when apology helps you.
00:28:37.840
And sometimes it might also might hurt you short term, but longer term, you will be happy
00:28:45.320
And no, one of the things that really stayed with me from our last conversation.
00:28:50.380
It worked when Joe Rogan, all that N-word stuff came out.
00:28:53.720
His apology was good and it was read as sincere.
00:29:04.960
And one of the things that really stayed with me from the last time we were here and we
00:29:08.740
weren't on camera, but we were just chatting was Louis.
00:29:12.900
You had a very interesting take on that whole thing that I hadn't really heard from many
00:29:20.440
Well, my, my, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but my recollection is you were
00:29:23.960
kind of like, well, I think what society is grappling with really is the fact that there
00:29:29.080
have always been and will always be people who do bad things.
00:29:32.560
And get away with it because society does not have a criminal justice system or the justice
00:29:37.240
system or whatever is never going to properly take care of every situation in which someone
00:29:42.520
And we have to have a system where we maximize as much as possible justice, getting justice
00:29:50.640
for people who are victims of something, who have been affected by something.
00:29:53.340
But that will inevitably mean that we have to find a line where it's like, well, this was
00:29:59.900
But do we just get on Twitter or in the newspapers and end someone's career?
00:30:04.680
Let's say that's how that was the real conversation.
00:30:07.380
And your, my recollection of your take was you said, if this had been a bar person that
00:30:12.340
I employed, who, who'd done what, who was alleged to have done what Louis did, I couldn't
00:30:19.780
So how are you expecting me not to give this guy stage time?
00:30:23.180
I thought the whole thing was, was ridiculous in many ways that, that, um, we all know people
00:30:29.980
If I had a bartender who came and told me, you know, 10 years ago, I was in a violent
0.60
00:30:37.040
gang and, um, you know, we beat this shit out of people that I'm, you know, I'm sorry
0.89
00:30:45.260
You know, but I would, I would never in a million years think, well, I'm not, you can't
00:30:52.680
Um, so the notion that I was supposed to take action against somebody who had done something
00:31:03.460
15 years ago in some other context without even getting to the idea that I don't even
00:31:09.760
know what really happened is conflicting stories is no, nobody's under oath.
00:31:13.660
Nobody, you know, this, we haven't heard anything, right?
00:31:15.840
Just a few sentences in the New York times that I, and I knew stuff about that New York
00:31:20.460
times article, which, um, which made it unreliable.
00:31:26.020
So yeah, I think this was very much for show, but on the other hand, and this goes back to
00:31:32.660
what we were saying earlier, I didn't know it initially, but it had zero effect on business,
00:31:40.000
The, the, you would think from the papers, the seller must be empty because the world
00:31:45.620
is furious that the seller allowed Louis C.K. to perform, but actually nothing changed.
00:31:51.660
So there weren't that many people who were, who were that bothered by it, bothered by it
00:31:58.280
enough that they would stop coming to the comedy seller.
00:32:00.780
You know, they may have been bothered by what Louis admitted to doing, but you know, they,
00:32:09.020
they were, they were pretending to be much more really bothered than they were.
00:32:12.480
That's why I say Louis won a Grammy, but it was a secret ballot.
00:32:16.760
I'm sure many of those people who voted for him would never admit that they voted for him
00:32:20.800
or wouldn't have voted for him if their vote was going to go public, but privately they
00:32:24.120
didn't, you know, they didn't care enough not to give him the Grammy.
00:32:26.100
And, and that's the problem though, is not enough people are willing to stand up and
00:32:33.200
These are my opinions and this is why I'm doing this.
00:32:37.920
Because if there were more of us who go, look, there is nuance to this issue, to this
00:32:42.860
story, to whatever it may be, just because it's gone viral on a social media platform and
00:32:48.320
everybody's saying that this person is, you know, an abuser, whatever else, doesn't mean
00:32:57.380
I don't know if you use this or not use it, but this is, but I interviewed Malina Rizik,
00:33:06.940
And originally there was a rumor around on gawker.com, I think it was, about these stories about
00:33:17.260
And the, the, the, the rumor was that he had blocked the door.
00:33:23.980
So then the, the story came out and then she interviewed the, the women in question.
0.95
00:33:32.620
So I asked her, did you ask the women whether he blocked the door?
00:33:37.560
Because that was the part of the story, which was most disturbing because that could actually
00:33:48.840
I said, well, why didn't you write that in your article?
00:33:54.220
I said, well, you would have thought it was relevant if they had said yes.
00:34:00.360
This is, I mean, you could listen to my, it's like, so that immediate, like, like, like,
00:34:03.880
that's the kind of thing you don't know what you're reading.
00:34:10.380
And then later on, I was interviewed by the Times and they wanted, when Louis came back,
00:34:17.240
this was after he came back and they wanted a statement from me.
00:34:20.220
I said, I'll give you my statement if you promise to run it verbatim.
0.99
00:34:24.800
She says, I don't see any problem with that.
1.00
00:34:35.120
You know, Bill Clinton was, you know, Monica Lewinsky was just disinvited from a, this was
00:34:41.840
Because Bill Clinton was going to attend and Mike Tyson is starring on Broadway.
00:34:46.900
So I, you know, these people are accused of basically the same thing or worse as Louis.
00:34:52.360
So I don't see any, I don't see any objective standard here.
00:34:56.620
And I like to operate by principles and objective standards.
00:35:03.300
And she says, if you're going to mention Bill Clinton, we can't run the statement.
00:35:11.360
You want to know what my reason, this is actually what I'm thinking when you're asking me,
00:35:17.400
She said, well, we're not going to run it if you're going to use Bill Clinton.
00:35:21.280
So they rewrote my statement and I, and I signed off on it.
00:35:26.620
But they actually massaged the news to satisfy them to the extent that, you know, I was the
00:35:35.000
news, which I must've been because they wanted, you know, the story was about me.
00:35:38.980
People have no idea that this kind of stuff goes on.
00:35:42.620
But I think they're becoming more aware of it now though, when they've seen how the mainstream
00:35:47.680
media have not been honest in a wide variety of different subjects.
00:35:54.820
Like they're asking me, why did you, if it was a TV show like Face the Nation, I would
00:36:02.580
But just to think, to be a journalist and to think that it's okay to put your own fingerprints
00:36:11.280
on the story is such a corruption of what journalism is.
00:36:16.360
Your fingerprint should never be on the facts of the story as reported.
00:36:20.160
Well, I mean, it's been my experience that no amount of faith in the media survives first
00:36:29.100
But do you think that in covering the story, like the big beasts, the Louis CKs of the world,
00:36:38.600
you know, I was actually troubled by what the revelations were, the allegations at least
00:36:43.460
But nonetheless, it sounds like, from your experience, that these are just scalps.
00:36:48.880
This is a scalp for the journalist to get.
0.99
00:36:51.740
They don't give a shit about Louis CK playing here or not playing here or anything.
0.96
00:36:55.480
It's just somebody, a big guy they can take down so they can pin it on the wall and just
0.98
00:37:01.700
Well, you're troubled by the allegations, of course.
00:37:04.260
And I mean, I had a big fight with Michael Barbaro about this.
00:37:07.240
And of course, he didn't run that in the interview either, where he was accusing me of blaming
00:37:16.880
Of course, the allegations are troubling because they're allegations of misbehavior.
00:37:24.440
The mistake is that to think that we want to embrace a secondary system of justice, a scarlet
00:37:34.020
letter system of justice, where a mob decides, based on New York Times stories, a couple sentences
00:37:41.740
as biased as biased as what I've been describing, to decide they know what's happened.
00:37:47.200
And now we're going to mete out punishments way worse than any court of law would ever have
00:37:57.480
People do things that are bad, and that's just the way it is, and you can't get to the bottom
00:38:10.400
Even if you could get to the bottom of it, I am not, I don't know, I just, I don't feel
00:38:22.480
Louie's not my employee, but just, you know, if I found out that they had done something
00:38:28.300
If I had joked, like, if everybody does something bad in their life that they should be ashamed
00:38:32.200
of, were to disappear, like that last scene in Infinity Wars, you just see people, everybody
00:38:48.900
People do, how many dudes do we know who have not at some point in their life done something
00:38:55.980
they were ashamed of in a sexual situation with a woman?
0.97
00:39:01.720
It was, I can't believe I fucking, you know, I got carried, you know, like, this is bad.
0.96
00:39:09.100
I'm just saying that this is the way human people are, and if something rises to the level
00:39:18.960
And that system, you know, considers people innocent, so proven guilty, and then you really
00:39:25.980
And like I had said to this New York Times reporter, I said, there's one little thing
00:39:30.980
This could have been like five hours of testimony from this side, from that.
00:39:35.340
Like, we don't really know all the nuance of what we're describing here.
00:39:39.600
Certainly not in any way to say, and because of these two sentences, nobody should ever hire
00:39:46.920
Like, you know, not even 7-Eleven should hire them.
00:39:49.000
Literally, they should get a check from the government and stay home, because this, you
00:39:53.500
know, and that's, you know, they don't follow anything through to their logical consequence,
00:40:01.880
For me, when I saw that, the Me Too movement, I made the point, which a lot of people at the
00:40:08.420
time got very upset by, and they were like, this is justice.
00:40:13.060
And revenge and justice are two very different things.
00:40:17.440
And I think that, you know, the urge for justice, I mean, it's righteous in some way, but there's
00:40:30.540
a lot of damage that's, collateral damage that's caused by that.
00:40:35.020
And, of course, the inconsistent application of it is repulsive.
00:40:42.700
I mean, you're even seeing it, it's kind of like with Clarence Thomas.
00:40:46.600
I don't know the nature of, I don't know if you could follow this, you know, he has a
00:40:50.420
rich person who he's friends with, who, you know, he's taking vacations with and maybe
00:41:01.960
This is nothing in an objective sense compared to, I'm going to give the vice president's
00:41:07.300
son millions of dollars for a fictitious job because I know his dad is overseeing the
00:41:20.880
This very, very same people who, you know, who are defending like this, this Hunter Biden
00:41:26.340
Like, you know, so the application of it is so inconsistent.
00:41:32.760
So, Bill Clinton, he's pretty credibly accused of rape, as credibly accused as, you know, and
00:41:43.040
The problem is it's all, if it's a team game, then people don't give a shit about the truth
0.98
00:41:49.240
Well, yeah, the people who was, who told us, listen, lying about sex is different.
00:41:57.760
So now, of course, you know, and that was even a little glib because Bill Clinton was
00:42:03.340
accused of lying about sex, but he was lying about sex in the context of trying to get
00:42:07.520
himself out from under what was, what amounted to a sexual assault charge from Paula Jones.
00:42:13.040
So he was perjuring himself, perjury's a serious guy, he's perjuring himself in, and this was
00:42:18.280
a matter of evidence which had been passed recently that this is considered relevant
00:42:29.220
And the very same people who were, you know, that's just lying about sex.
0.95
00:42:32.640
Like, and Trump paid off that mistress and, you know, like, and, and the, the hypocrisy
0.97
00:42:37.980
is so rank and they don't like, I don't know.
0.53
00:42:43.360
Do they not see it in themselves or they don't care or I don't know what it is, but you're
00:42:49.340
And this is the danger of one of the dangers of mob justice.
00:42:59.420
People who are disliked never get a fair shake.
00:43:07.320
And people who are beloved will always get a pass.
00:43:13.040
And, and people who have the right opinions are going to be judged much less harshly than
00:43:18.320
those who have the wrong opinions and may even do a far, you know, a far worse, a far
00:43:25.800
I don't know if it's the case here, but certainly in the UK, the nicer comedian is on stage,
00:43:34.500
Like if the male, all the male feminists, they're secretly groping someone in the green room
1.00
00:43:42.240
I mean, Trump is, you know, he has a consensual affair with a mistress.
00:43:50.480
We have to say that in the UK so we don't get sued.
00:44:01.580
And then, and then she's obviously hitting him up for money because nobody just, and people
00:44:06.320
want to see, could anybody actually be upset with him about it?
00:44:11.680
But he's hated, so he's never going to get a fair shake.
00:44:14.260
And the other thing that upset me about the Louis thing was,
00:44:18.020
people going, oh, you know, I used to really like him and now I can never like him again.
00:44:24.740
And you just go, when did we want our artists to be perfect human beings?
00:44:31.620
Like, I read an article in The Guardian a few weeks ago about protests outside a Picasso
00:44:36.160
exhibition because apparently he wasn't great with women.
0.86
00:44:48.040
And if you follow to his natural conclusion, the, the outcomes are just, the cure becomes
00:44:56.780
This is, you know, when things weren't like they were now, I had, um, but this was at the
00:45:00.780
time when, when Louis Farrakhan was in the news for saying Hitler was a great man or whatever
00:45:05.280
When he first came out that he was, you know, really an anti-Semite.
00:45:08.120
And I had a musician I was working with who walked in with a Farrakhan t-shirt.
00:45:14.020
I remember, and, and, and I didn't even, I, I couldn't rule out that he was wearing it
00:45:21.160
Like, just like to fuck with me a little bit.
0.99
00:45:24.380
And I remember, what am I going to do about this?
1.00
00:45:28.120
And I said to myself, I'll just let it go.
1.00
00:45:31.520
Like, and then who cares is actually very constructive.
00:45:33.780
Now, of course, if you, if you transplant that today, if I had to, if I had an
00:45:38.080
employee who wore a Farrakhan t-shirt and I told him like, go change or whatever, people
00:45:44.480
I'd be, but if I had someone who came in and wore some sort of, uh, anti-black t-shirt
00:45:49.780
and I said it was okay, people would freak out at me for that too.
00:45:54.820
So it's just, you know, and, but obviously the totally contradictory, they're both basically
00:46:02.820
So again, they, they, they, they, they'll pick and choose.
0.95
00:46:06.840
They will, they'll, well, I'm not going to say it again.
00:46:09.480
So, so my attitude is it's just better if we just let things go.
00:46:14.180
I don't want more laws, but if, if there was a law which forbid business owners from taking
00:46:22.120
any actions whatsoever based on the private lives, politics, and any sense of their employees,
00:46:32.740
I, I know they're a Nazi, but you know, I'm compelled to, to hire Nazis because it's,
0.86
00:46:43.860
Well, there's two reasons you get to say that.
0.99
00:46:46.380
You own your own club and who gives a fuck.
1.00
00:46:48.340
But really the reason you get to say that is you're Jewish, right?
0.99
00:46:51.900
You can say that a, just a non-Jewish person couldn't say that.
1.00
00:46:58.200
And that's kind of the world we're in, I think.
00:47:01.560
And so even those of us who I think resent the very idea of identity politics, I think
0.99
00:47:06.980
it's really stupid and quite dangerous, actually.
0.99
00:47:09.660
We're still playing by their rules, aren't we?
1.00
00:47:13.500
Sometimes it's impossible to get out from under it, you know.
00:47:18.960
You know, my wife is Puerto Rican and Indian.
1.00
00:47:23.780
But my kids are all, you know, extremely aware of identity and everything.
00:47:30.040
And that's purely from what they're learning in school.
00:47:37.940
Now, my daughter, I don't think she had any idea that my wife and I were different colors.
00:47:41.320
I don't know what it was like through the eyes of a first grader, but there never been
00:47:46.020
any indication that she understood anything much about race.
00:47:50.360
And she came home and says, Daddy, you're white, right?
00:47:59.400
Did you ever see Daddy treat anybody badly?
0.92
00:48:01.320
She says, well, we learned in school that white people treat people badly.
00:48:05.860
I said, you learned that white people, she said, or maybe that white people used to treat
0.98
00:48:12.380
And I wanted to go up to the school and, you know, scream bloody murder.
00:48:16.860
But I didn't because I'm a coward, because I know that I'm kind of high profile and somebody
00:48:20.740
would, you know, and then I'd go viral, whatever it is.
00:48:24.300
My daughter was, I still believe in Santa Claus, because her mother's not Jewish.
1.00
00:48:31.560
And I don't know, to make themselves feel better, these, you know, expert educators
00:48:37.880
think that they need to start teaching her stuff at an age where she really can't comprehend
00:48:46.100
They're re-racializing society and they're brainwashing kids into shit that you have to
1.00
00:48:53.480
A seven or eight year old doesn't think about race and this person's this and this person's
00:48:58.740
that and these people did, because they're smarter than these 30 year old educators.
00:49:06.020
Well, you know, one of the things I've said to people in the past is, you know, maybe it
00:49:12.160
would be healthy to start by visualizing where we'd like to be someday.
00:49:16.980
If the goal is to be a non, a society, you know, multiracial society that doesn't consider
0.98
00:49:23.920
race, that considers race as, you know, as Sam Harris wants to say, as inconsequential
00:49:27.420
as hair color, like, then much of what we're doing now is obviously wrong because there
00:49:34.160
is no path from what we're doing now to what we claim we want, the eventual outcome.
00:49:38.700
Even on the issue of, when that issue of blackface came up, I'm not soft on blackface.
0.92
00:49:44.580
But there was this thing where you have little kids who, you know, want to go as Black Panther.
00:49:56.980
No, we will never let you little kids go as Black Panther because we want you to always
0.99
00:50:02.560
be imprisoned to the past mocking of black people as blackface.
00:50:08.820
As opposed to maybe at some point we have to say, well, okay, we can teach about the
00:50:14.020
past, but we can also embrace a new future where actually every little kid can dress up
00:50:27.880
Wouldn't that be, it's like, wouldn't that be beautiful?
00:50:29.880
Someday in the future, this didn't matter anymore.
00:50:32.120
And if you're a little, if you're a little white kid, love Black Panther, he could dress
00:50:38.340
We shall never allow that because we will always want to be imprisoned by what happened
00:50:47.540
And one of the things that I, one of the things that I think sums this up beautifully is the
00:50:52.080
fact we talk about slavery and the West African slave trade, which was obviously awful, but
00:50:57.080
we don't talk about the fact that we have modern slavery and it enslaves millions of
00:51:04.700
Yeah, Coleman Hughes has talked about that, that we're more psychologically obsessed with
00:51:14.880
Now, of course, slavery is obviously something we need to be extremely concerned about and
00:51:22.020
study and, and try to untangle to the extent that it's real, how it still impacts our history
00:51:32.480
Having said that, you know, that doesn't mean that every single thing which is attributed
00:51:35.700
to slavery is actually, you know, because of slavery, right?
00:51:39.580
And you guys feel like you have the right to talk about that.
00:51:43.700
Like, well, let's, somebody said that slavery is responsible for today's economic prosperity.
00:51:50.180
Let's have a interview with an economist who has, people will call you a racist.
00:52:00.600
And I, I, that's, I think one of the big problems in society now is so many things are
00:52:05.320
an empirical issue, but we don't talk about them in that way at all.
00:52:08.560
It's all, it's all about people's feelings and emotion and that gets melded into, which is
00:52:17.120
Actually, all of us, because it's, we know that, that that is not an issue about which
00:52:28.440
Now, what are your, what are your plans for, for the seller?
00:52:32.980
You know, what do you see, what do you see coming and culturally and in every, like, just
00:52:40.500
Well, we just bought a new building around the corner that used to be a McDonald's and
00:52:49.260
Of course, in New York, it takes, it takes forever to get anything open.
00:52:58.960
Zooming out, I'm very much, and this came from, you know, the way my father lived his
00:53:03.980
life, I'm very much, I see everything that I do essentially as trying to enjoy myself.
00:53:12.440
And I really don't distinguish very much between my work, my music, my kids, whatever it is.
00:53:17.520
So what's in store for me is, you know, whatever interests me and, you know, money is, you know,
00:53:28.240
a very fortunate byproduct of everything that I've done, but I'm, I consider myself so fortunate.
00:53:33.540
Like my father used to say that most people, he said, no, most people hate their jobs.
00:53:41.340
This is never be one of those people, you know.
00:53:45.500
And I just, you know, every day I just do whatever I want to do.
00:53:51.980
Noam, you've seen some of the greatest comedians in the world come through here.
00:54:05.360
There's no one thing, but it is, it is, it, it, repetitively you see is a healthy dose
00:54:16.420
The same, the same exact lines and, you know, coming out of two different mouths is not the
00:54:24.240
Of course, you have to be funny, whatever that means.
00:54:26.980
Um, and I, I think that, although I hate to say this because it's, you know, I, I hear
00:54:37.220
The audience does read you if you're not, uh, honest and true to yourself.
00:54:49.140
And, and, and these are, I think the same general rules that apply almost to all art
00:54:58.360
I remember reading the first, uh, page of Isaac Stern, the famous classical violinist,
00:55:03.460
his autobiography, and he talks about his mindset that he gets on a stage.
00:55:07.860
I think classical music now is important to understand.
00:55:13.560
There's no latitude, there's no, like, and he says, you have to get out there and you
00:55:18.540
And like, he talked about this, this amazingly bold, charismatic mindset of a classical musician.
00:55:26.080
Like, listen to me, you know, this is an attitude that, um, that performers have in every, uh, art
00:55:34.980
form of performance that I think is common in the successful ones.
00:55:40.900
And they just understand about gripping that audience, whatever it takes.
00:55:45.320
And when you see, you know, people like Patrice O'Neill, who used to grip, who used to grace
00:55:54.380
We had a, we had a rocky relationship with, with Patrice actually.
00:55:58.320
Um, well, Patrice used to, if, listen, Patrice was a genius and Patrice is one of the most.
00:56:14.220
Patrice was a top, you know, 10th of 1% insightful person.
00:56:21.220
And he saw things and spoke honestly about real things in the human condition that people
00:56:29.920
were feeling and thinking about, which stayed with people.
00:56:33.480
And, and I think, um, have really stood the test of time.
00:56:36.220
And maybe his, his respect has only grown since he, he died.
00:56:45.600
Having said that, you've seen the cold, you know, was, or how do you pronounce that
00:56:58.920
Day to day, Patrice was a, was a, was a more mixed bag.
00:57:03.200
So if Patrice didn't do well, he would take a flamethrower to the room.
00:57:08.500
I mean, he would be, you know, lay into people in the audience.
0.98
00:57:11.500
He did not give a shit about the fact that there was a show that had to continue for another hour and 15 minutes after he left the stage.
0.97
00:57:21.480
And that obviously caused friction with, you know, money-grubbing club owners like me.
0.99
00:57:30.300
You know, on top of everything, artistry-wise, in my opinion,
00:57:36.860
there is still a certain social contract that a performer has with an audience who has made their plans,
00:57:43.980
gotten a babysitter, put down their money, and comes and expects to see your good-faith effort to entertain them.
00:57:51.800
And he was one of those comedians, rest in peace, I love the guy, who didn't feel he had to honor that social contract.
00:58:00.580
If this is about me, if I'm not feeling it, or if I'm pissed off, I have no responsibility to the room or the audience or whatever it is.
00:58:11.400
But nobody ever, we never, I mean, he always worked here, and nobody ever thought he wasn't funny.
00:58:20.800
And this is, I mean, yeah, you can't slice and dice people, and oftentimes a negative quality in somebody is also part of what has made them successful
00:58:35.800
and contributes to their positive qualities.
0.54
00:58:37.960
People, there was some dumb club owner who was complaining about Seinfeld being snooty to him or sarcastic with him.
0.53
00:58:44.060
And I'm like, do you think Seinfeld would be Seinfeld if he, like, you want to take out the essence of Seinfeld
0.94
00:58:50.520
and think that everything you love about Seinfeld would still exist?
00:58:57.600
That's why he became the most successful comedian in the world.
00:59:00.420
And that's why you got a little sarcasm in person.
00:59:07.820
You know, it was, there were, I think there was a chair thrown.
00:59:11.760
Like, it was really, like, when Patrice went out, we were all, like, sweating bullets.
00:59:15.900
Like, you know, let's just, but we always put him on because we always recognized what a great talent he was.
00:59:23.840
There was a time he didn't perform here for a while.
00:59:25.540
He had a thing with my father or some sort of fight, but that's another matter altogether.
00:59:31.240
And who were the people who produced the greatest work on the stage, looking back?
00:59:37.180
Who were the people that when you saw them, you went, wow, that's so different from what?
00:59:47.640
The ones who were brilliant, you know, it's no, this is the thing.
00:59:52.240
It's obvious to everybody who the brilliant ones are.
00:59:56.620
There's no club owner or booker who has any particularly deep insight.
01:00:03.260
Like, when Chappelle was, like, 18 or 19, whatever he was, the first time he came on, and my father said something like this, you would not have needed to speak English.
0.86
01:00:13.560
You could have just been in the room hearing a foreign gibberish tongue and said, holy shit, that 19-year-old must be something special.
0.95
01:00:23.020
And all these greats, like Jon Stewart, Dave Chappelle, Michael Che, you know, all of them, virtually all, not 100% of all of them, but almost all of them.
01:00:33.400
But I can remember the first time I saw them because it was like, it was ingrained in my memory.
01:00:41.680
And that's not just, like, I've forgotten the people.
01:00:46.760
I can remember them very well because they were just, they cut something into your brain.
01:00:52.380
And it may not have been necessarily what they were saying.
01:00:58.460
And, Noam, this is perhaps a sad question to ask, or it depends on your answer, I suppose.
01:01:02.540
But if you inherited this from your father who built it up, do you think if your kids were interested in continuing to run it,
01:01:12.060
I'm asking more about stand-up comedy as a genre.
01:01:14.960
Like, are people 20 years from now still going to want to come out and sit in and have the meat suit experience,
01:01:21.300
sitting here with 120 other strangers and watching a guy on stage, or are they just going to be on their phones?
01:01:28.060
No, I think, well, let me answer and tell you what it made me think of.
01:01:33.740
I think that the idea of people wanting to go out with human contact, live, seeing something real,
01:01:41.320
I don't, I think this is human nature, and I don't think it's, I don't think it's going away.
01:01:48.520
As much as everybody is on their phones now all the time, business is way, way busier than it's ever been.
01:01:55.920
So I think social contact is one of the basic human instincts.
01:02:01.880
I don't know if it's interesting to you, I did not want to take over the Comedy Cellar
01:02:06.980
because I did not want to be, compared to my father, who was a much, really a larger-than-life person.
01:02:19.400
I had already had major success with something I liked doing, and then my father and I kind of had to take over the Comedy Cellar,
01:02:29.040
and I did not, I was not immediately embraced or respected by the comedians.
01:02:36.520
And I knew that, they weren't mean to me, but it's the kids taking it over.
01:02:44.520
And this is a group of people who were, by nature, looked to make fun of everything.
01:02:49.840
So it was only after I think that I actually made certain moves and expanded the place and grew the place
01:02:57.500
and various things where I kind of rose to the occasion that I think if I get some respect now, it's because I earned it.
01:03:05.020
I don't know necessarily if my kids will be able to do that.
01:03:08.800
And if they can't, it can be psychologically damaging to them.
01:03:15.760
And, you know, there's a lot of kids out there of famous people or successful people who were miserable
01:03:23.020
and just they can never get out from under the shadow of their parents, Ron Reagan Jr. types, you know, like, you know.
01:03:29.900
I've never heard of him. I didn't know he existed.
01:03:31.780
Oh, you didn't know? I think that's your point.
01:03:33.360
Oh, no. So he spoke. Anyway, so I want my kids, this is such a fantastic lifestyle.
01:03:41.380
Like, you come to work and it's fun, whatever it is, and the money's good, and you meet interesting people.
01:03:45.880
So I would love to have that. I'd love for my kids to have that for themselves.
01:03:50.060
But I also want them to have a certain sense of their own accomplishments.
01:03:55.200
And I don't know how much room for growth there will be or what they can do.
01:03:59.780
If they can't accomplish or put their own, you know, what's the word, put their own stamp on the business,
01:04:08.280
they may never feel that good about it. I don't know.
01:04:16.040
Because, you know, you have a deadpan stare, you know.
01:04:19.900
You're like a comedian, always worried about how good your answer was.
01:04:25.440
We're going to take you to locals where we ask questions from our audience.
01:04:28.620
But before we go there, we always end the main interview with the same question,
01:04:31.740
which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think really should be?
01:04:37.000
Oh, you know, does everybody have to answer this question?
01:04:42.900
Well, this is, you know, because we've really talked about the things we should be talking about,
01:04:49.060
I would say that this may be not exactly the answer to your question,
01:04:54.660
but personally, one thing that disturbs me that is not being adequately spoken about,
01:05:03.440
is what I consider to be the very important defenses for the state of Israel,
01:05:10.780
which young Jewish people, and I'm not excusing whatever things Israel does wrong,
1.00
01:05:21.260
but young Jewish people, even intellectual Jewish people,
0.99
01:05:25.320
are so ignorant about the history of that country
0.99
01:05:30.660
and why it's in the predicament that it is
0.95
01:05:33.440
and how it has tried to extricate itself from that predicament,
01:05:37.800
that they are unable to have the argument anymore.
01:05:50.740
not only for Israel, but for the Jewish people all over the world.
01:05:58.840
And this is not to say that Israel is right about everything,
0.87
01:06:07.480
And as they say, you know, if you're not for yourself, who will be?
01:06:10.080
If Jewish people can't make their own arguments,
1.00
01:06:12.780
no one is going to make it for them, and that worries me.
01:06:22.200
do you know how it is that Israel came into the occupied territories?
01:06:28.480
Like this is like the most fundamental question about the whole couple.
01:06:33.740
Do you know about the Clinton attempts to make peace?
01:06:57.380
I read stories all the time now about like kids at Columbia
01:07:00.200
and I would never think about taking a semester abroad in Israel.
01:07:02.920
We have a Jewish star in the window of the olive tree upstairs.
01:07:12.160
this was seen by the general public as no different
01:07:20.280
good for you or are you taking a stand, are you?
01:07:23.380
You know, like they're seeing it as this almost like
01:07:30.620
Like every ethnic restaurant, you know, it's an Israeli restaurant.
01:07:33.940
Every ethnic restaurant has some sort of ethnic symbol.
01:07:36.760
No, no, Jewish people, their ethnic symbols are controversial.
01:07:51.600
they come and check out A Night of Comedy here,