Stand-Up Pt II

The Roots of Alt Comedy

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1:52Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

2:01Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too. And we are kicking off part two of our two-part episode on stand-up comedy. And I think, if I remember correctly, Chuck, it was a couple of days ago, but you said something about alt-comedy. We were going to talk about that. That's right. What is that? Alt-comedy is something that came about in the early 90s with a group of comedians performing in, I don't know if that's where the term comes from,

2:32but performing in alternative venues. They weren't performing, and, you know, of course, they would all go to perform in comedy store and all that kind of stuff too, and comedy clubs, but they were well-known for performing in, like, piano bars or, like, bookstores and things like that. And, you know, people like Jeanine Garofalo, the great Dana Gould, who is a wonderful comic and human being still, they started out at performing at a place called Big and Tall Books in L.A.

3:02The Luna Lounge in New York, and Largo, the original Largo in L.A. were all sort of home bases for these comics. Yeah, we did a show in Largo. Was that the original Largo? No, the original was, like, this little piano bar. I see. But the new Largo's great, too. It's awesome. For sure. So I mentioned Mr. Show before. If you're familiar with Mr. Show, with Bob and David, that is essentially alt-comedy at its core.

3:33And most of the people associated with the show, if not all of them, were alt-comics of the time, early, mid-90s, right?

3:41Patton Oswalt, Maria Bamford, Mark Maron, PFT, the great Paul F. Tompkins. Yeah. One of the funniest people alive.

3:50Mary Lynn Raskub. Raskub? She's great. Yeah, I was like, who is that? And I went and looked her up. I'm like, oh, okay. I had no idea that she started out as a stand-up. Yeah. But she was great on Larry Sanders as the booking assistant to, I think, Janine Garofalo, right? Yeah. Janine Garofalo was on that show. And she's probably more well-known by Mainstream America as a character on 24. She was on 24 basically the entire run of the show. I'm not sure what she did, though, because I didn't watch it. Yeah, she was great.

4:22She was part of that crew. I know you mentioned Maria Bamford, but if you've never seen Maria Bamford's comedy, please go see it because she's still one of the most original comedians working today, for sure. Yeah, and you said still because most of these comedians, the ones who are still alive, are still working and still doing stuff. And a lot of them are still doing stand-up. Like David Cross, he's had some Mondo TV hits. Like he was on Arrested Development. Yeah. He was on Mr. Show. He's been on just tons of movies

4:53and just killed on all of them. He still does stand-up pretty regularly, as a matter of fact. Oh, yeah. Does Patton Oswalt still? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So these guys are still doing stand-up, which is really to their credit because most of them, I mean, Patton Oswalt was on what? Was it King of Queens? I don't know. I don't remember either, but he had a huge role in like a major network television show. Like, I just think it's amazing

5:23that they're still doing stand-up because as we've seen, people like Steve Martin and Robin Williams and all that, it's like once they became huge, they left stand-up behind. The early 90s, all comics did not. And they had some other, there were some other characteristics besides just appearing in small, like alternative clubs too. Yeah, for sure. You know, it was, I guess, sort of an alternative point of view. And this was in the 90s at a time where alternative music, that was just sort of the buzzword for anything that kind of broke

5:53from the previous main streams of the 80s. Yeah. So a little more like, they were making like insider references more, a little less like set-up punchline and more sort of observational, like wry humor about life and telling stories about their lives and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. What else? They eschewed the racism, generally, homophobia. Essentially, if you're familiar with Don Rickles, imagine the antithesis of Don Rickles.

6:24Yeah. One of the alt comics from this time too is very sadly no longer with us because he was also one of the funniest people around. His mind was just a national treasure, was Mitch Hedberg. Yeah. Were you into him? Yeah, he's the greatest. We've talked about him on the show before. Mitch Hedberg is very, very sad that we lost him because he was just kind of getting started, I feel like. Yeah, he really was. I came across, I think, a BuzzFeed list of 275 of his jokes

6:56ranked from worst to best. And there really was no worst one on there. They're all just wonderful. God bless you, BuzzFeed. Would you like to hear one? Sure.

7:10Alcoholism is a disease, but it's the only disease you can get yelled at for having. I think I remember that joke. And his like delivery too was just amazing. Yeah. Like it just made, his whole act was great. So yeah,

Pushback Against the Scene

7:25I'm sad he's gone too. There was a thing though with alt comedy where some like club comics would sometimes sort of deride that scene. I know Bill Burr in 2012 called it that scene like you were in a comedy womb. Yeah. Like it was a real safe place to go and you weren't just going up in front of like a potentially hostile. I think there's like this idea that you earn your stripes by going in front of hostile crowds that might hate you and might heckle you and you got to earn your stripes that way.

7:56In the comedy world and I think that alt comedy scene there were some comics that thought that that was probably not going to happen there. So it was a little too easy. Yeah. He definitely thought that. And I think his point was if you took those comedians and put them in a regular club they would not do very well because they aren't, they hadn't gone through heckling or something like that. And I think more to the point I read the transcript of this. It was on some podcast,

8:27a comedy podcast. And he was saying that one of the things that really rubbed him in the wrong way was that if their jokes bombed or something like that, they just told the audience that the audience was too dumb to get what genius they were. And I was like, as I was reading that, I was like, totally, I could totally see most of these alt comics that I've mentioned like telling the audience like they're, they're not getting it, but that's why they're not laughing that it's them. And he called that out and I was like, okay, I kind of get that.

8:58It was a little more nuanced than that. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I never thought I'd be standing here defending Bill Burr, but you know what I mean?

9:06You know, with the rise of podcasting, you talked earlier about comedy podcasts and that's such a huge thing now. Like most of the shows I listen to are comedy shows. And Mark Maron's WTF, of course, was an interview show. And the Joe Rogan experience, you know, Joe Rogan started out as a standup. Both of those shows were created in 2009. And, you know, before Joe Rogan experience became like super, super political, it was much more of a, and I think he still does some of that stuff now

9:37with this whole comedy crew, but it was much more of like a Marin, like let's just have comedians on kind of thing. Yes. He, he very frequently referred to it as the craft. And I don't think I've ever seen a commenter online talk about him saying the craft and not deriding that term. It is a craft. I guess you just can't say that out loud, huh? For sure. Yeah. There was a great takedown video of him by another standup when he did that

10:07recent live stream comedy standup show Joe Rogan did. Okay. Apparently it didn't go all that well. All right. And this standup basically just disassembled it and pointed out all the reasons why and it was very funny. But supposedly Joe Rogan used his clout to get it taken down at YouTube, which is not super cool. Interesting. Yeah. I didn't hear about that. But you, like no matter what you think of Joe Rogan, his politics, the people he has on, his views, his opinions, it's indisputable that he's had

10:38an enormous impact on comedy of all kinds in the 21st century because of how huge his podcast is and because of how, how often he'll use his platform to bring on like up and coming comedians. But because of the politics, most of those comedians have, are like at least center right, if not full on right wing comedians. Oh yeah? And it's a huge, yeah, it's been a huge shift.

11:08I mean, you know, in the United States it's been an enormous shift and Joe Rogan's a huge reason why that's happened. I didn't know that actually. I guess I don't keep up with the comedy scene as much so I didn't know that was sort of a thing.

Podcasts and New Gatekeeping

11:21Well, let's talk about that. So yes, those same alt-right comedians are often criticized in the same way that the early 90s alt-comedians were that that was like Bill Burr said it was a comedy womb that they weren't exposing themselves to the, you know, what club comedians normally did. And the same thing is with the alt-right comedians today because they start out on podcasts usually. Not even necessarily as stand-up. They're just funny guys

11:52on podcasts and they go out and they get nothing but love on these podcasts and then they go out they've generated enough followers on Instagram or whatever to automatically get booked in a club. Yeah. Like apparently I read somewhere that like 250,000 followers on Instagram is like an automatic yes for a weekend at a club. Maybe even headlining there. But they have, some of them have zero experience doing stand-up. Oh, interesting. And so the criticism

12:22is like that's not good for the person coming to see you because they paid that money and they're expecting a good stand-up performance when you're taking this funny guy on the podcast out of the conversation and all that stuff and it's just that person on stage. Yeah. It doesn't always go very well. They don't always necessarily become a good stand-up because they're funny on a podcast in just the same way where like that funny guy at work Right. wouldn't necessarily do very well as a stand-up either because it's a totally different context. Yeah.

12:54Yeah, for sure. You know, or they might. Like I always encourage funny people to try it because you never know and we'll get to that at the end like kind of the best steps for dipping your toe in that pond. But yeah, you're right. I mean, the gatekeeping is different these days. Of course, with social media and podcasts it's not like the old days where you would, you know, get up at coffee houses and open mic nights and then eventually maybe try and crack in to doing five minutes on like a local comedy night

13:25or something like that at a real club. Right. If you have that social media following like you were talking about if you have your own podcast like you can bypass sort of what used to be locked gates. Right. Marc Maron shout out. And it's just a different different scene now. You know, I don't know if it's good or bad. I think a lot of the old school comics probably complain about it. But I'm not a stand-up so I just sort of see it for what it is, I think. Yeah, and it's tough at the end of the day

13:56to feel good about arguing about democratizing anything. Yeah, true. I think the point is is that there's more non-funny stand-ups potentially than there ever have been in the history of the world right now. Yeah. Agreed. That's not to say that all people who get their start on social media or podcasts aren't great at stand-up. Do you remember the girl and her boyfriend who was hanging out backstage with us in Toronto?

14:26I think you met them briefly. Yeah. That was Michelle Swee and Yumi found her on Instagram and she is hilarious. Not just like on Instagram but also in person. She's like a very, very early on in her career stand-up. But Party Hardiston, Patty, I can't remember her last name. You know, Party Hardiston, she's kind of she appears on Tim Robinson's stuff sometimes. I know her as an actor and she is totally weird and amazing.

14:57Yes. If you follow her on Instagram she's just constantly bringing the good stuff. So, yeah, it's not a total critique of social media or podcasts in general. It's just a it definitely has had a massive impact on stand-up comedy. Not all of it good. Yeah, agreed. Should we take a break?

15:16Yes. All right, we're going to take a break and talk about the transition to the one-person show right after this.

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16:09invented the Mick Twist. Check this out. 720 degrees mid-air on a half pipe. Oh, my God. Amazing. How does someone even do that? I don't know, man. It's just crazy. And that's where it came from. The mid-80s, thanks to Bones Brigade member Mike McGill. Plus, also, the 80s were the era of Nautas Kapas, who's one of the most amazing street skaters ever. Check out this video of him rail sliding on the roll bar of a pickup truck. That looks like a video game. It does. It's pretty amazing. I could watch skate videos all day,

16:40Chuck. Yeah, me too. And with YouTube Premium, exploring a topic like this is even more seamless because it has ad-free viewing, which means we can watch classic skate clips uninterrupted, and we can really dig into that debate about what the greatest era of skating is. Yeah, and with background play, it lets us keep listening with our screen locked, which is great if we're doing something else, which we always are, but you still want to hear the video content. And, get this, with offline downloads, we can save videos ahead of time and watch them anywhere, even without Wi-Fi. So, back to that debate. If you go to the search bar

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The One Person Show

20:13All right. I promised talk of the one person show, and that is, it's sort of a thing where it's stand-up, but it's skinned a little bit differently in that they're often, it's usually billed as like a one-person show or like an evening with or something like that. Right. And it's definitely comedy, but there can be very deep, sad moments of pathos and just sadness. There's usually a very well-crafted kind of arc to the show. like it feels

20:45much more sort of plotted out. Mike Birbigley, of course, is one of the masters of this craft.

20:54Alex Edelman and his great show Just For Us that ran on Broadway. Gary Gullman, one of my favorite comedians of all time, he has kind of made that transition in the last few years to a little bit more of a one-person show rather than straight-up joke telling. And our buddy, John Hodgman. You know, John always calls his stand-up imitation stand-up. Like he won't say he does stand-up. And it's definitely sort of a one-person show, but it's, all of this stuff is always very, very funny.

21:24It's just sort of slightly different than like a standard stand-up set. Yes. And those are all great examples too, not just of great like one-person shows, but also great examples of why a lot of people are like, that's not stand-up comedy. That's different.

21:42That just seems to be like an unnecessary controversy. I don't think it really matters, but there are definitely purists out there if it hasn't become clear yet who are like, this is stand-up comedy, everything else ain't. And that's one of the things that they point to frequently is like, that's not stand-up comedy. One huge target was Nanette from Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby that came out in 2017 and was a massive like cultural tidal wave here in the United States

22:13for sure and I think in a bunch of other countries too. And like there, it was mostly like gut punches with some funny stuff carrying it between, but it was like, and it was not funny. And in fact, she almost kind of uses, if not directly, I haven't seen it, but I had to read a bunch about it. It seems like she uses or she points out that comedy can be harmful because it can take,

22:44you know, stuff that really needs to get out and just kind of keep it simmered. Like it doesn't let it out all the way. And so a lot of people are like, that's not, don't call that comedy. And it gets called comedy because Hannah Gadsby started out as a stand-up. Yeah. I think Seth Meyers coined a term called claptor comedy rather than laughter comedy. And this, it's like a show where like the audience will give applause in agreement with the person on stage and the points that they're making rather than like

23:14having people rolling in the aisles laughing. Yeah. And in the case of Nanette, it's like they're clapping like you're so brave for doing this. And she is indisputably brave for having done that show. But yes, she's not really making people laugh or if she's making people laugh, they're laughing out of relief because it's carrying them out of this horrific story that she's just finished, you know? Yeah, for sure. You know, Tig Notaro is a very, very funny comedian and she actually had us perform live

23:45at her comedy festival and is a wonderful human being as well. But she, Tig is, is probably one of the biggest risk takers in comedy, I think. And also just from hearing interviews with her and, and seeing her work, like, seems to care as little as any comedian I've ever seen as to what people think about her and her, and her stand-up. That's, like, just totally comfortable

24:16in her own skin, does what she does. She very famously performed Topless after her mastectomy and her breast cancer. So, you know, that's what Tig would do or when she went, I don't know if you ever saw when she went on Conan and moved the chair around for her whole act. No, I didn't. She went on stage and instead of doing comedy, she, I guess in, in rehearsals, I think as the story goes, she had a routine but realized that this chair

24:48made an awful, like, squeaky sound when it moved across the stage. And so she got up there and she moved this chair around for five minutes.

24:59That was it. Like, was she talking while she was doing it? No. So she just wasn't talking, she was just moving the chair. Moving the chair, but stop. That's funny. Get a reaction, move the chair. Conan is doubled over laughing, like, on the side about just the, you know, the chutzpah of Tig Notaro doing something like that. Yeah, for sure. One more thing on claptor, it doesn't have to just be, like, brave or you're a risk taker or something like that. It can, it can just be as simple as, like, preaching to the choir. So telling, you know, Democrat jokes

25:30or Republican jokes to an audience full of liberals, that's claptor, you know? Yeah, sure. Or like us on stage. Yes, for sure. That's why I'm saying I don't think I would translate to a good stand-up because, like, talk about a womb. Like, everyone who's there knows who we are. They listen to us. They came to see us expecting exactly what we're doing. But if you just pull, remember that, that group of women at the casino in Ottawa?

26:01Yeah. Yeah. I have no idea if they thought we were funny at all. They had no idea who we were. They just came because they got comp tickets by the casino. And it's still not clear to me whether they thought we were funny or if they sat there because we called them out at the very beginning of the show and they felt obligated to sit there now. Oh, I bet they had a good time. Yeah. I don't know if they thought we were like the funniest comedians they'd ever seen, but they stayed. They did stay. You can't argue with that. Yeah. What else? Cell phones is a big deal these days

26:33because, you know, you can get famous and go viral for taking down a heckler on stage, which has, you know, nothing to do with your actual stand-up set. It's always fun seeing a comedian take down a heckler, but in the days of social media and people with their phones in the audience, you might become like super, super famous as a stand-up for like somebody that like jumps up on stage and physically attacks you or something.

27:03It's an interesting time. Yes. Or the crowd work is all, it's not even putting a heckler down. Like it's, with a lot of younger stand-up comedians today, it's like prompted like, hey, how are you doing? Are you here tonight? And then instead of making a joke and moving on, that's like five minutes of material. Like talking to the person on the front row? Yeah. And then moving on to somebody else and it's not even necessarily funny. It might be funny throughout, but not all of them

27:33are really particularly funny. And like crowd work is the bulk of that, that act. And again, the club comedians, the purists are like, what are you doing? That's not stand-up comedy. You're not even writing anything. You're just sitting there riffing with people in the audience, you know? I'm a sucker for crowd work. Well, okay. Well, then you would like this guy. I discovered him from researching this. His name's Big Jay Oakerson. I'm not sure his sense of humor is exactly dovetailing with yours,

28:03but I think it's enough that you would find him funny. But he interacts with the crowd by basically, it's almost like improv where he's like, what kind of joke do you guys want to hear? And somebody will say something and he just makes up a joke on the spot and it's not like a one-liner necessarily. Yeah. Might even be like a little plot to it or something, but it's pretty impressive what he's doing off of the cuff. Well, I mean, Rory Scoville does that. He's probably my favorite stand-up right now. He's great. He and Gary Gullman,

28:33but Rory, I mean, he has shows where he writes a set and does that and that's great, but he will also do these, a lot of times, it's like five nights in a row in a city where he will tell everyone ahead of time like these are improv stand-up shows and man, you talk about the guts to stand up on stage with no material and just start making stuff up and it's not a 10-minute set or whatever, like he's up there for an hour just making stuff up and it's so, so funny. Yeah, well, that's the thing. He's funny. Yeah. Like his mind is capable

29:04of doing that, you know? Yeah. So you mentioned Rory Scoville working today. There's a bunch of other people working today that are great in addition to him. Kyle Kinane is another good one. Love Kyle. My favorite though, can I just go ahead and say who my favorite comedian of all time is though? I think you might know. I think I know, but go ahead. Anthony Jezelnik, is that who you're going to say? That's who I was going to say. I don't know that there's ever been a funnier person on the planet than Anthony Jezelnik. He's great

29:34and we know some people who know him and he's a really good guy too. Right, yeah. And he right now, I don't know if you know this, you probably do, but he's got a book club now that he's started and like promoting literacy is one of his big jams now and I guess sort of a joke around that was he was, when he's promoting this stuff and you know, he has that delivery and he said that, you know, people tell me they don't like to read and I always tell them you're just reading books that are too long.

30:06So all of his books and his book clubs are like really short and that's his argument is that like people think they don't like to read because they're trying to read stuff that's too long and so he's genuinely promoting like reading literacy and stuff. It's pretty awesome. It is. That is the opposite of what his persona is. Like his persona is insult comic but also really dark and really, really egotistical and arrogant and yes,

30:36he's not really like that in real life but he's managed to keep that going, that persona going for like 20 years. He has, I think, three Netflix specials, all three of them kill. Every time we've ever seen him in person, it's just like, you just, like you said, we were like Conan like doubled over laughing. Like laughing as hard as you ever have out loud, the bunch of other people laughing, a bunch of other people who aren't laughing because they had no idea what they were going to see and if you're not prepared to go see him,

31:07especially if you're sensitive at all to some types of humor, you're not going to have a good time but I would, I would suggest everybody go look up Anthony Jezelnik. Yeah, he's great and you can't do much better these days than Mulaney still. Like he's, he's one of those that I think has sort of mastered the craft such that he just can do no wrong and he, next year, I try to get tickets to some of these but have you heard about his Mulaney Takes Manhattan run that he's doing? He's doing Seven Nights

31:37in New York in a row and he's starting out at like the Comedy Cellar and then it's like Comedy Cellar then Bowery Ballroom and then he goes up and up and up through Carnegie Hall, Radio City and then eventually Madison Square Garden and all of those, you know, I signed up for the list to try and get into any of those shows and could not get into any of them. Yeah, I believe that though. Except for Madison Square. Man, that's big time, dude, to sell out Madison Square Garden. Yeah, I mean, dude, I think he last year

32:08went on a run where he sold out like multiple nights in a row at Madison Square Garden. He's just crushing it. Yeah. I have one more anecdote about Anthony Jezelnik. All right, let's hear it. We went and saw him at Funny Bone, which was the one that was on Roswell Road. I don't think it's there anymore. I think Funny Bone. Funny Bone, no, that was out in Roswell. This is the Punchline. Punchline, okay. So we saw him at the Punchline, which is a really tiny club for any of you who've never been to the Punchline in Atlanta. I mean, like maybe a 75,

32:39maybe a 100-person seat club. So it was really small. And this was the first time we saw him and we were just laughing. But Yumi was like really, really laughing. I think the joke that got her, he was saying that his family scattered his grandma's ashes outside of the funeral home because that's where his arms got tired from carrying the urn. And just, it just got Yumi. So she's laughing, crying. Yeah. So much so that

33:09he stopped the show and asked her like, he's like, what's your name and everything. She said, Yumi. And he goes, I want all of you laughing like Yumi. I want Yumi, Yumi, Yumi. That's great. Yeah. So that's how hard we laugh at Anthony Jeselnik. And if you go check out Anthony Jeselnik and you're like, this is wrong. Don't judge us. Right. No, he's great. I love that. I wish I could have seen that. Yeah, it was great. Should we take a break? I think we should. Is this our first or second?

33:41I think it's our second break. Okay. Well, we'll find out in the edit. Yeah. We'll come back and talk about some less fun stuff like the psychology of stand-up right after this. Hey Chuck,

34:12YouTube Premium has become one of those things that makes your everyday YouTube experience a little better, especially if you're a dog owner. Because if you wanted to go find out more about how to train your dog, all you have to do is go on to YouTube Premium, type in dog training videos, and sit back and learn. Yeah, between Gibson and Momo, we're constantly looking up something dog-related, like when Gibson suddenly decided barking at the mailman was his full-time job. Yeah, or Momo likes to chew things a lot, and sometimes it's not always things that she should be chewing.

34:42Yeah, so naturally, YouTube is one of the first places someone might use for training tips. Everything from stopping barking and jumping to getting maybe a little bit better at walking on a leash. But what about dog nutrition, too? You got to know about that these days, and there's an endless world of videos about dog nutrition on YouTube Premium. What foods are actually safe? Is homemade dog food a good idea? Yeah, I mean, look at this one right here. This is veterinarian approved, and look at this lady. Her name is Dr. Wolf. Are you kidding me? So, YouTube has a ton of creators, not just Dr. Wolf, who can help you

35:13learn a lot more and make everyday pet parent decisions feel a little less overwhelming. Yeah, I mean, that's where YouTube Premium really comes in. It takes something you already love, which is YouTube, and makes it even better because you get an enhanced, supercharged YouTube experience. It's got benefits that make it easier to enjoy the content and creators that you're into whenever and wherever you need them. Well, and now here we are watching guilty dog videos, which is my guilty pleasure. Look at these guys. Yeah, I know. I feel guilty watching them, but you just can't look away. It's too adorable and sad. I know.

35:43Poor buddies. And since YouTube Premium has ad-free viewing, we can watch guilty dog videos uninterrupted. Plus, background play means we can keep listening to those poor guilty dogs with our screen locked, which is pretty handy when you're walking the dog, right? That's right. And with offline downloads, you can save videos ahead of time, which is awesome, and access them even when you don't have Wi-Fi. So, if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Whether you're figuring out the latest weird dog behavior or looking for something useful for your next walk or maybe just indulging in your guilty pleasure, guilty dog videos,

36:14YouTube Premium makes the whole experience more seamless. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

36:27We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep, but what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views

36:57across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends. Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions. And listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. You know what I love about cooking? The endless inspiration,

37:27sharing exceptional flavors, and of course, the best ingredients. I refuse to make a dish without them. McCormick has been, and is, an essential in the kitchen. Now McCormick's new line of signature seasonings make bringing fresh inspiration and endless versatility to everyday dishes easier than ever. There's the everyday essential, garlic and olive oil, the savory sweetness of caramelized onion, and globally inspired flavors like the herby

37:58with a touch of heat, chimichurri, and chili garlic that elevates everything from ramen to stir fry to even grilled meats. Try the chimichurri blend to make your steaks delicious. Each signature seasoning is crafted by flavor experts to make every dish more delicious. When you want to make your best, it's got to be McCormick. Find your favorite at mccormick.com. Okay, we're back, Chuck,

The Psychology of Comedians

38:41and as you promised, we're going to stop talking about funny stuff. We're going to talk about the psychology of being a stand-up because there, as you can probably guess, there's this specific type of person who makes a good stand-up, and it's actually been studied a little bit here or there. Yeah, you know, I don't think it's any secret that most stand-ups will say that, like, their comedy oftentimes comes from pain. If you polled 100 stand-ups, you'd probably be in, like, the 80-something percentile

39:13of people that weren't like, yeah, I had a great childhood, and I grew up, and I was just happy all the time, and everything was awesome in my life. But they have studied it. There's a guy named David Webb on the All About Psychology sub-stack who found some studies and found that, you know, as it bears out compared to population averages, stand-ups have higher rates of depression, anxiety, and emotional distress, which is not surprising. No, and actually, to kind of dig in a little further, there's something called the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory

39:44of Feelings and Experiences, or O-Life, and there are some dimensions that pop up that comedians score higher on that if you put the whole thing together, you're like, yeah, I can kind of see that's a stand-up comedian. They score high on unusual experiences, so they perceive things differently, use magical-style thinking. They make unexpected connections that other people might not make. There's your jokes right there. For sure.

40:14One of the other ones is cognitive disorganization, so a thought style that may be a little more scattered or shifting kind of quickly between things. A lot of times, that can really be gasoline for getting great ideas, even though it may not be the easiest thing, like, in life. No. I mean, living with a disorganized mind is very difficult. Also, so can introvert of anhedonia be difficult because you might have trouble

40:46making social connections and yet at the same time, you want validation from people, so you go get it from strangers on stage. Yeah. You know? It's kind of lonely and you don't enjoy being around people. And that's a stand-up comic if I've ever met one. Yeah, for sure. And then the last one was impulsive nonconformity. So, you know, someone who will break a rule, push a boundary, obviously someone who will say something that no one else would say, like in public,

41:16they would say it on stage. And it's not, you know, you know, there's like a Venn diagram when it comes to this stuff. It's like a combination of different things out of these lists will maybe make someone a little more inclined to do stand-up or maybe be good at stand-up. Yeah. But, you know, you have to be someone who's quick-witted and make quick associations between things and be comfortable not, you know, necessarily being a part of the middle of the road of life, you know? Yeah. You know, when I read this

41:47and think about it, when I see all those components broken out, I see Dave Attell standing there as like the example, the illustrated example of the stand-up comedian. One of the all-time greats. Yeah. And he's like, he's like Norm MacDonald in the sense that he's like a comedian's comedian. Yeah. A lot of people might not find him that funny. Sorry, Dave. But pretty much every stand-up comedian, especially the club comics, are going to just say like that guy's a legend. Oh, yeah. And you can still,

42:18I mean, you can go see Dave up on, in the Comedy Cellar in New York on any given like random Tuesday. You know, he's still just like, I feel like guys like that and performers like that just love being on stage and doing it. And like, it's not about, like, you know, Patton Oswalt's still doing stand-up. He doesn't need to do that kind of thing. He's made a great living as an actor, but they just love getting up there and telling jokes and making people laugh like and being in a room with that energy. Who doesn't?

42:46Seriously, I mean, I think anybody would love to have all their jokes laughed at, but it's just whether your jokes are actually funny or not is the key. For sure. You know, if you're stand-up, like I mentioned, you might have had like a rough go as a kid. You probably had to not, like, found humor as a, maybe as a defense in life. Like, maybe you were bullied or maybe it was a bit of survival skill in your own family. Obviously, in the worst situations if there's real abuse, but at the very least, just like,

43:16maybe a happy, not-so-happy family with family tension and it was a survival skill for you. Mm-hmm. Yeah, when you're being threatened to be beaten up by a bully, you'd say something like, take my lunch, please, and then the bully would just crack up and let you go. Classic move. There's some other things that don't fare well for being a stand-up, too. According to a 2016 study done by Australian researchers, the average stand-up comedian dies 10 years earlier

43:47than people in the general population. Yeah. That's a significant amount of time. Yeah. How do they explain that? Think about how much life you could pack into 10 years, Chuck. I know. I'm thinking about my first 10 years. I accomplished a lot.

44:03Exactly. But they looked at 200 stand-up comedians and they compared them to comic actors and dramatic actors and stand-ups died younger than both, although not as much as compared to the general population. Yeah, for sure. I think 80% of those stand-ups still died of natural causes, but they were likelier to die from non-natural causes like accidents or obviously overdoses is included in that or by suicide. Or slipping on a banana peel,

44:35which is the classic way for a stand-up comedian to die young.

Steps to Start Stand Up

44:39So what if you want to be a stand-up? What should you do? What are the steps you should take? Oh, there's a lot of stuff you can do. It turns out there's a lot of people on the internet who like to write blog posts about that. And we looked through a bunch of them and found that they all kind of generally fall into the same handful of categories. One of the basic ones obviously is come up with material. You say, duh. But there's some things you have to do to come up with material. I think most comedians suggest you start with a solid five minutes of material. Most of the reason why

45:09is because wherever you get like your shot at getting up on stage, especially as somebody brand new, you're probably going to get five minutes. So you just want to have that prepared and you want to prepare way more than five minutes of jokes just to start, right? Yeah, for sure. Have you seen the latest Bradley Cooper movie that he directed with Will Arnett? Is this thing on? No. It was actually pretty good. You're the only person I've met who said that. That said it was pretty good?

45:39Mm-hmm. Oh, I liked it quite a bit. It's about this guy who accidentally stumbles on stage for an open mic night. Mm-hmm. Just this, you know, dad and a family going through a divorce and stand-up ends up being kind of the thing that he loves doing. Yeah, I liked it. Cool. That's awesome.

46:00Who said they didn't like it? Everyone else that you spoke to about it? Well, people online, typically. Oh, okay. I didn't see that it was very well... You're the only person I know who's seen it, actually. Oh. I just, from my impression, it just wasn't very well-received. Well, hey, buddy. I received it. Okay, well, now you give me a reason to go check it out. If you thought it was good, you got good taste in movies. I know that. I appreciate it. I thought it was pretty good. But that was a sidetrack. After you have your material, you got to practice it, of course. Mm-hmm. Especially, like, you can get away

46:31with having notes on stage if you're, like, a super well-known comic and you're, like, workshopping new material and you can make a joke about, like, oh, the notes are on my stool, but, like, you don't want to get up there looking at any notes if you're just starting out. Like, that's a bad look. No, and actually, that brings up another Jeselnik anecdote. The first time we saw him was at South by Southwest years and years and years ago, and he was part of, like, four or five other comedians, and he was, like, one of the last ones to get up, and all the other comedians had their little notebooks that they were basically

47:01reading off of on stage. Yeah. And Jeselnik gets up there. His stuff's totally polished and everything, and he's, like, I don't have my notebook with me. I feel so unprepared. That's good. Then he proceeded to kill. Of course he did. So once you have that material, once it's practiced, you want to, you know, you want to make it really good, and so that means you need to do it in front of people. So pick something very low stakes. Obviously, if you're someone who's never done it, you're not going to have any other choice but low stakes. Yeah. It'll just be a local open mic

47:31or something like that. But that's where the rubber meets the road, and that's where you're going to figure out, like, not only what's funny but, like, how you tell it. Can you tell it in a different way? Can your timing be a little different? Can you stress a certain word or pace something in a little bit different way to make something that wasn't funny one night funny the next night? Yeah, and it'll also give you some real insight into how you should structure your five minutes, right? So what joke goes where? You want to start with something strong, often like a one-liner. Then you put your riskier stuff

48:02in the middle, which doesn't necessarily mean just, like, you know, potentially tasteless jokes, but, like, weird jokes, maybe something that doesn't have a punchline. Yeah. And then you follow with, like, your biggest joke, the one you know you're going to get the most laughs from because then you get to walk off stage to that applause while people are still laughing. Yeah, and not always, but oftentimes that last joke is a rejoinder where you might circle back to something from the beginning. Again, there are no rules, but that seems to be

48:33a formula that works pretty well. Yes.

Are Any Topics Off Limits

48:36Okay, Chuck, here's a really important question that I'm interested in exploring because no one's answered it and it's certainly not settled, but the question is as follows. Should there be any topic that's off-limits for stand-up comedians? What's your answer? Well, my honest answer is no because it just feels to me like a medium that should just be completely wide open, but it's like that free speech thing,

49:06not free from consequences. If you want to get up there and say awful things about a group of people or something, like, I think it should be allowed, but people may hate it and people may put up a big fuss and hate you because of it. Yes. Okay, well, you're in good company because basically every stand-up comedian on record who's gone on record about it is like, yes, or no, there should not be any topic that's off-limits for stand-up comedy. But if you dig in

49:37a little further and go one layer deeper and you say, well, wait a minute, do you mean that no topic should be off-limits for any comedian, any individual comedian, or you're saying that for stand-up comedy in general, no topic should be off-limits? And then a division starts to come about because you reach the question, who can say what about who, right? Yeah. And that's where the debate really starts to begin. Yeah. I mean, for sure. What do you think?

50:08I think it cuts both ways. I think that if you think that you have something very funny and insightful that you could make basically anyone laugh with that's offensive and you're willing to take the risk, more power to you. And I hope it is funny because something like that can just be groundbreaking. On the opposite side, if you're offended by a joke,

50:39I think that it's incumbent upon you to stop and say, why am I offended by this? Yeah. Like, what is actually offending me personally about this? Or am I being offended on behalf of some other people who may not even be offended by it? And if you start traipsing into that territory, I think you should examine yourself a little further and your sensitivities because I think that that's something that can help people in life in general, not just in taking stand-up comedy in ways that

51:09it can just make you laugh. Yeah, for sure. You know, there have been cases where there have been comedians with, like, certain disabilities that get up on stage and part of their act, sometimes a big part of their act, is making fun of that disability in a certain way. So, you know, that's a case where obviously someone that, or, you know, like any sort of ethnic joke, if someone is of that ethnicity, it's obviously going to go over a little bit less with less controversy.

51:41If you're not of a certain ethnic group and you're making fun of a different group other than yourself, like, I still say more power to you if that's your thing, but just be ready if it's, like, not good or doesn't work, you know? Yes. I think the key, the through line here is if it's funny. If it's so funny that that group that you're making fun of or that is involved in the joke, even if you're not making fun of them, if they will laugh, then it's just

52:12legitimately, objectively funny, I think, at that point. Yeah. And it also depends on how much people love you. Like, people generally kind of love Sarah Silverman. I know, obviously, she has people who don't like her, but she's sort of a beloved comic, and she has got a, you know, in her past, like, some derogatory ethnic slurs in her routines. She's made, very famously, had some rape jokes in her past routines. She wore blackface,

52:43and Sarah Silverman always seems to bounce back, and I think it's because people like Sarah Silverman, and I love Sarah Silverman. She's very lovable, and the thing is she's not beloved by, you know, like, racists. She's beloved by, like, the people who kind of lean social justice warrior, and yet, she's extremely well-known for telling racist jokes. I think the reason why she's able to traverse those very dangerous waters

53:14is because at the end of the day, her racist jokes are not putting down any group. She's actually pointing out the, like, the secret thoughts that people like her or in her group feel guilty about having. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. She's pointing down black people. She's pointing out how, you know, like, white people, like, inadvertently think of black people and don't even, aren't even aware of it. She points that out.

53:45Yeah, exactly. And it obviously also matters like the power structure and the power dynamic as a comedian. So, Ronnie Chang is, his last special was incredible. Yeah, it was. And he makes fun of white people a lot in that show because, and he can get away with that because he's an immigrant to the United States who is in a position of less power than the white people that he's making fun of. Right. So, he's, he's punching up and you've heard of like punching up

54:16or punching down. Like, punching up is, is almost always funny. Punching down is, is usually not funny. Yeah, it's just really not. I mean, it's just not. Like, textbook humor, it's not funny almost ever. Yeah, and I love Dave Chappelle but I, he seems to have just gotten kind of mean with some of his stand-up and that's to me where it kind of crosses the line is like, and it's just a personal opinion but I don't know, I haven't found him as funny.

54:45I, I hate to say it but I agree with you. I don't think it's because he's being mean. I think it's because he's turned kind of preachy. Yeah, maybe. And he's gotten away from jokes more. Yeah. I think he's just, I think he's become so uncoupled from, you know, the average person because he's just become so vastly wealthy Yeah. that it's hard for him to relate and then also I think he doesn't like being come after. I think that that's really like affected him and so he's coming out offensively. Even harder, yeah, that's true.

55:16But, you know, like, like we said, it's like, you can say what you want but the audiences are the ones who are going to have the final say so it's society who's going to ultimately decide like what's funny and what isn't and who should be allowed to say what or not, you know, because that's what you're doing. You're getting up on stage in front of people and saying judge me basically and people will judge you one way or the other. Right, for sure. There's one other thing that really stuck out to me too was you had said,

55:47I don't know if it was in this episode or the last where you weren't familiar with the alt-right comedy becoming a big thing like around Joe Rogan. I saw a really good explanation for why that's emerged and that was that back in like the 70s and 80s America was very, very conservative and so it made sense for left-leaning liberal thinking comedians to be huge because the comedian's job is to basically take on the establishment, to criticize the establishment.

56:17Well, if you follow the arc of American society through the 90s it got way more liberal, way more politically correct and so the people more on the outside of that type of society are right-leaning and they became the ones whose role it was was to attack the establishment. That's the best example I've seen or best explanation I've seen for the rise of alt-right comedy. Interesting. I thought it was interesting too. Yeah. Hopefully these two episodes

56:48were interesting and people weren't just like, you know? I don't think so.

Listener Mail and Closing

56:52Okay, great. Well, Chuck doesn't think you guys fell asleep. which I think means it's time for listener mail.

57:00This is, we got shouted out in a book yet to be released and so we're going to plug that book. Author Sarah Addison. Hey guys, I'm reading an advanced copy of Sarah Addison Clark's new book, Paper Ghosts. It comes out Tuesday next week so I guess it'll already be out by the time this comes out. Sure. Y'all got a shout out in the book, guys. It's somewhere around chapter 18 although they may change since this is an advanced copy but one of the main characters had been talking with her friend on the phone about the main plot line

57:30and the next sentence is after they hung up, Bailey cued an episode of the Stuff You Should Know podcast, this one explaining chaos theory which seemed appropriate. I saw that. Pretty great. Sarah Addison Allen, well wait a minute, said Clark earlier so I'm not sure if that was a typer or what but the author is Sarah Addison Allen. Okay. It's from North Carolina so a lot of her books if not all are set in the Southeast. I haven't read them all but I've enjoyed the ones I've read so far so I thought I'd share. That is from Abby Sellers.

58:01That's awesome. Thanks for pointing that out, Abby and thank you to Sarah Addison Allen too for including us. And by the way, you have great taste because that is one of our best episodes, the one on chaos theory. That's right. Everyone go out and get paper ghosts. Yeah. Great, Chuck. That was well done. And if you have seen us out in the wild and want to share a story about it, we'd love to hear that kind of stuff. It's thrilling. You can send it off to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com.

58:32Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

58:48Introducing Voices of Vivgard. Vivgard is also known as its generic name, Efgard Tigamod Alpha FCab. And this new show features firsthand stories from people living with a rare disease. Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the voices of Vivgard. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeartRadio app,

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