Johnny Mack Host Of Daily Comedy News Talks Letterman Influence And The State Of Comedy

hi this is Chris Harris and you are watching the Letterman podcast welcome once again to the Letterman podcast my name is Mike Chisum all right today we got Johnny Mack who's Johnny Mack W Johnny Mack is a podcast host of a podcast that has penetrated the shields of um my podcast viewing Tendencies it's called The Daily comedy news I did not know that this show existed before a couple of months ago and now that I have known that it is existed uh I listen to it almost every single day I'm I I catch myself up if I miss a day or two I catch myself up on the episodes that I missed it is a fantastic podcast and I highly recommend it uh to anybody who enjoys comedy in all of its disciplines comedy is as as a topic but stand up of course um people who want to stay uh caught up with the main happenings with in the comedy world this is the show for you now it's hosted by a guy by the name of Johnny Mack John mcder is his name Johnny Mack is his uh is his his Persona online and uh in front of the microphone um his lineage in comedy goes back a long time he actually started uh programming um at Sirius back in the day in ' 03 when they were in their infancy and creating uh the comedy channels on Sirius he was the guy and uh did that for a long long long time and and really at the end of the day Johnny is a part of our broadcaster series you know I I said this last summer it was the interns we had a bunch of interns on throughout the summer this summer here we're focusing on broadcasters because at the end of the day I love exploring the topic that David Letterman isn't just an Entertainer he isn't just a standup of course he's good at both of those things uh again we talk about his wit uh one of the sharpest wits in the west but what is Dave at his core and that was a broadcaster that a guy who got into to radio and television and and and really fell in love with that discipline and is using all of these other things to um to accentuate that and has become who he has become from the core of a broadcaster and through that he influences so many broadcasters out there John is one of them and uh we have a great discussion today about that we have a great discussion today about all sorts of things in the comedy world yes we talk about Letterman of course uh one of the reasons why we timed it this week is because recently Dave was featured um on a story on daily comedy news he uh there you know ripped from the headlines President Biden has decided not to seek re-election well there are ripples from that one of the ripples is something that Dave was going to be doing and so John and I talk about that and uh um just it's really really cool to talk to somebody who has this appreciation the way he does but also loves the behind- the-scenes stuff the way that he does we talk a lot about different things in the world of Comedy is it is so fun talking with Johnny and uh um I'm I'm so proud to present this episode of the letter Letterman podcast featuring uh the daily comedy News host and uh you know Mastermind really Johnny Mack John mcdermit please enjoy John first thing I gotta ask you um okay your stage name Johnny Mack how long have you been Johnny Mack when was the first time that that happened and uh oh there's so much to talk about today so excited for you to be here on the Letterman podcast when did you start being known as Johnny Mack I think I really took to it when I started hosting a weekly I do a weekly show called The Weekly comedy thing on the live One streaming app yeah so even though my name is John mcdermit and it's my name the N into the m is a little hard to say I Stumble over my own name uh when I did College radio back at Ford them in the 80s I would always stumble over my old name and somewhere uh at work at Sirius people started occasionally referring to me as Johnny Mack uh when I worked at Cadence 13 a couple co-workers started calling me mac so when I started hosting regularly just Johnny Mack is a little easier nobody really calls me that in real life most people will just call me mcdermit um but that that's become my air name okay um I you you talked a little bit about your CV here in that in that explanation uh I knew it didn't just start with daily comedy news but I got it before we get into uh going through your CV real quick and then we can get into just the comedy fun stuff we can have a great conversation today I'm so excited about this um I want to tell you that it is very tough to penetrate The Shield that is Mike chism's podcast viewing or listening uh uh um you know schedule or experience and you've done it since I have become aware of daily comedy news it has gone into uh my regular rotation of must listen to podcasts I love it so so much and I want to I just want to plug it so hard right now that anybody out there who's listening or viewing like the dozen of you that listen or view this listen to or view this show all of you uh like comedy for some reason in some slant uh in some spectrum of this beautiful beautiful art form you must subscribe to daily comedy news it is a fantastic uh short unlike this one uh not boring at all unlike this one podcast that comes out uh that that that will keep you up toate on all the happenings in all of uh you know standup for sure but also the late night guys um the the current events that are happening within the scene of stand-up comedy but comedy in general as well uh John you doing the Lord's work I just love your podcast how long you been doing it now and uh what was the uh what was the impetus for it and I do want to go through your CV because you have an extensive background that I don't know that listeners who just come on board right away um will appreciate so that's where I want to go in this part of of of what we're talking about if that's okay sure the podcast is five years old now uh I was thinking about doing a fifth anniversary show and I don't know what a clip show of me reading old news stories would be so I'm just going to let that go um the show as I was thinking about this conversation this morning uh I'm going to tie this back to Letterman a bit because there's an emotional component to this program so if you look at Dave you create all this wonderful intellectual property and then you move to CBS and some suit tells you you can't say Larry Bud Melman anymore and it and that's kind of annoying y so for me when I uh was dismissed from serus we had built up these wonderful comedy channels for 10 years and now none of its mine anymore it still exists out there and it's in good hands and I wish them well but it's not mine anymore daily comedy news is mine it's not for sale it's not going to be for sale you might like it you might hate it you might think I suck I don't care it's mine so that's that's my baby there and that's where that comes from the emotional need to have something that I canol controls a weird word but nobody's going to take it from me yeah and that's I can you're preaching to the the choir that is so important um I've had I've had very preliminary conversations with this show um with with folks who might uh you know hey we can help you accelerate the show and we can do this and we can do that and I have just said nope nope that's not my if worldwide pants were to come along that's one thing um and and I mean you know perhaps the right thing that might be another but watching uh and listening to you do what you do um it's it it's apparent that you get to do whatever you want for example you know your your your show's clean it's very very uh uh terrestrial radio like unless you have someone like Alex Bennett on a few weeks ago and and then you can you can go and you can break the rules and and and so you can make these rules in the structure and then you can break out of it have a lot of fun doing it um I I I love that that's the case also you seem to be building uh a monetization platform for podcasters or you're a part of one as well is that is this is this your baby as well the business end of it yeah sure uh my partner Mark Francis and I we have created a network called karoga Shark uh media calaroga being the street in Australia he grew up on a shark being the nickname for my long gone Golden Retriever and you got to call these things something so that's why it's called that uh and so I had asked Mark to work with us on a podcast called Palace Intrigue and that's about the British royal family the original program design there was going to be all right Prince Philips 97 the Queen's 93 there's some predictable events coming we'll talk about Kate meddleton what she's wearing and all that and then that blew up thanks to Megan Markle frankly uh we had the whole Megs at ARC um the queen dying is a big new story right that's the Super Bowl of Royal events uh but I sound like this and Mark growing up in Australia can do I'll tell you a story about that in a second sure can do a British voice so I asked Mark to host it and we started doing that so that was that's 10 minutes a day daily comedy news is 10 minutes a day and we decided all right let's do short form stuff we we call it lovingly the McDonald's of podcast if you want to pay Megan Markle $2 million an episode go nuts and good luck making your money back we're fast cheap and tasty I I'm not making a documentary I'm telling you that Jerry Seinfeld's going to win an award rip and read publish it and repeat that's what we're doing there so so back to the story with Mark um I'll just catch your your audience up so I ran the Serious XM comedy channels for 10 years there we go one of the channels the the dirty one is called raw dog comedy and we had a sales opportunity to do something uh related to Australia I forget why but but the point was can you guys put together an hour of Australian comedy sure so we needed somebody to host it and I asked Mark to host it however Mark having lived in New York City for 25 years didn't sound sound Australian enough even though that's where he grew up um his A's had flattened out to New York A's and um so we had Sal Deo who was our Imaging guy you know Italian American from New York City he went into did the crocodile dundy goody might and it and it sounded right to American ears to Australian ears it probably sounds like garbage um same thing I'm sure if you grew up in Liverpool you might listen to Mark's accent and be like ah I don't know if this guy's from around here um but to American ears it works just fine oh it's fun that we can still get away with some of that stuff I mean uh my wife and I watch Breakfast at Tiffany's every year and watching Mickey Rooney play uh you know somebody from somewhere in the in in the South Asian uh geographic region it's cool that we could still get away with some of that stuff you know John Wayne used to do the same thing you know John Wayne used to I think John Wayne played geneng genas Khan or something like that I think it was a it was a different time when you could get away with stuff like that and it's fun that you can still do it yeah uh you know we can get on a whole tangent there of acting now I think in some roles um you know casting is who you cast on the role makes sense I would be a terrible Queen Elizabeth for example um that I wouldn't be good there but you know you again into some of this stuff of can so and so play so and so and at some point it is acting that that's what an actor does they portray a different person you know where that line uh between I don't get on a whole tangent here of you know can I play Queen Elizabeth no but could like like I would say I would be a terrible James Bond yes but I would be a pretty decent Mr Cunningham if you want to reboot happy days so somewhere in there it would work I uh I went that direction for a reason we um okay one of the things I'm so proud of uh with this show is something that um I I won't be able to really talk about there are things that have happened in the world with some of the staffers that have happened as a result of this show good things like really good things uh and I'll never be able to talk about it there is one thing though that I can talk about that has happened as a result of this show and that is connecting reconnecting you and Alex Bennett and I am so delightful about I'm so delighted about that after uh after I you and I had had had spoken and Alex's name came up uh the next week when I went on Alex's show like I normally do um I said Hey do you remember a guy named Johnny Mack he's like I'm doing a show I'm doing a show I'm really excited about it and he had a blast with you and I was like oh we we were kind of the Catalyst for that I'm so excited now how does this relate to what we were talking about well for I think it was three years Alex Bennett was hosting I believe it was in Houston and his his name was James Bond and he had an English accent now we're talking about we're talking about a Jew from San Francisco making his way in the radio world back in the day and and and I I I don't know if he applied as a lark and sent them a tape of him as a British accent but he got the gig and for three years he spent time softening that accent So eventually he didn't have to have it anymore but I just you know you talk about a time in broadcasting um that that that is just so you know everything has changed so so much one of the things that hasn't changed and and we're doing this this summer you're the second and I think we're going to have probably two or three more uh broadcaster that we've had on the Letterman podcast and and the reason that we're doing that is because um you know there's been this premise that's been out there forever you read the bill Carter books uh uh Jason zinman's book of course talks about it as well David Letterman not a standup I mean he learned the discipline but he's not a standup he's a broadcaster and and that's always been the distinction that was made you know all throughout the years it was it was made uh you know the comparisons between him and Leno and and and many many many other times brought out there that he's a broadcaster and and the influence that he has had on people in the broadcasting business whether it be radio whether it be television uh cannot be understated a a huge group of the enthusiasts of this show are people who work in television and have forever for different affiliate stations all over the place all different roles technical uh uh uh in front of the the camera uh or the microphone that sort of a thing did what do you think David Letterman's influence on Broad cters comes from are you one of them are you influenced by this guy absolutely it it it's um the tearing down of the establishment that came before uh just the informality I really zero in on those first five years of late night and it was an insiders Club it's 12:30 nobody's watching uh but the people in the room with Dave and me and you and there's six of us that know about this show I I was thinking of comparing it to uh a cool band so I I'll specifically shout out you two yep being an Irish American from New York City I knew about you two earlier than most people did just because I don't know it just was in the bars well I was 14 I wasn't in the bar but you know they were around yep um and you had an album like Live at Red Rocks and you were in the no and it was super cool you go 10 years later you two is doing Zopa in stadiums and cool but it's not as cool and that you know that's more like the late that's more like late show to me zua but you go back to those early days and it's hey here's this cool band and Only We Know about it so you look at Dave just tearing down the establishment he's making fun of the bosses on the air uh it's you know hey we're gonna have Chris Elliott come out and do something and if nobody laughs we don't care it it just had that whole vibe of okay what can we do that hasn't been done before or I I think for me uh inspirationally let's not do it the way everybody else has done it you know there was a way to do The Tonight Show let's not do that um and and going back for you personally uh there's a point that you got into comedy and there's a point that you got into broadcasting how did that happen which happened first I got into broadcasting first I started at w New York City in 1992 as a part-time board op uh I left there uh 10 years later as I was the acting program director they were between PDS uh the new PD John Manelli was coming on board uh he asked me to stay but I had lined up my own gig to go uh PD a station out on Long Island so I had already left loved o that that will always be home to me uh but there I did 10 years of News Talk and I produced Dr Joy Brown which was a psychologist doing relationship questions I did a lot of Bob GR itical stuff back in the day you one day I wound up unemployed and my friend Sean said call Jeremy Coleman he needs somebody to run comedy at Serius and this was before anybody knew what satellite radio was uh and I had been out of work for and I called Jer and he's like you know when can you come in we're doing our schedules and he said I have free time this afternoon I was at a Toys R Us buying Christmas gifts for uh my children dressed pretty much like I am I ran home threw on a suit jumped on the Long Island Railroad WR thought about what comedy programming could be for 30 40 minutes uh met with Jeremy that afternoon and I I remember and I found out from co-workers after some of the other people they were looking at were comedy insiders and people who in 2003 definitely knew a lot more about comedy than I did but I took the approach of oh this is just music radio we're going to play the hits we're going to play Dane Cook instead of playing you and I Tre it the same way as hits radio and apparently that was the right answer Jeremy decided he wanted a radio guy not a comedy guy uh for the first six months of that job the entire comedy Department was me and when I got there someone else had loaded some comedy albums into the system if you had played every single clip in the system when I got there on day one you would start repeating things in 10 hours oh my gosh so I spent the first six months as a staff of one because I didn't need anyone else loading Comedy album so here's this new guy who sits at his desk all day with headphones on and all you see is me sitting there going and you know who's this weirdo listening stuff but I was just like inhaling the best standup comedy just loading things in loading things in loading things in and then eventually you know got some other people in and we started doing live shows and more stunts but that was 2003 and then uh a decade later when I found myself at k back doing more traditional News Talk podcasting stuff if I raised my hand to get involved with something comedy people were like you well you're the news talk guy and I'm like so I I've been like why are you running comedy for 10 years and then back to well you're a News Talk guy it's radio audio you know like you said things have changed but but the book was always if you wanted to get into this medium don't worry about format uh you know look at Dr Johnny Fever you know hey we're a country station put on cowboy hat and fake it we're a rock station okay now I'm Dr Johnny Fever I'm doc I'm Johnny Sunshine whatever you need me to be so I was a comedy guy for 10 years and you know came to love it uh this is very very cool I've got a whole bunch of uh uh tangents that we can go on and and by the way I'm going to tease uh you know again our dozen or so listeners and and say uh the reason that John's on this week specifically is actually David Letterman appeared uh on daily comedy news on a story this week and and I'm going to ask about that we're going to get into Letterman but I I'm super fascinated by this stuff and again I'm the guy when I listen to shows I always for whatever reason I don't know why I want to pull back the curtain I want to go behind the scenes and talk about these things going back to um 03 at Sirius when it was in its infancy and it was kind of figuring itself out this is when it was serious and then there was XM it's kind of like you know uh there's VHS and beta back in the day or or or or Blu-ray and HD DVD there's different brands out there they're trying to figure out this new medium um you're jumping down the comedy rabbit hole then there's also technical problems I believe I'm one of the I don't know what it was it might have actually been Alex's interview now that I think about it but every once in a while listen to daily comedy news and you throw in your little flourishes in between stories you'll throw in your your little bit of Personality um and and throw in these little little little tidbits one of the tidbits you've thrown in is that I believe you were trying to upload or not upload but but but digitize I guess uh comedy albums back then and some of the comedy albums just wouldn't do it from a from a technical standpoint Richard prior I think was one of them yes you you get into these old albums that are there classic stuff and and it you can't get it uh from a technological standpoint you couldn't even put it in these are some of the early infancy challenges of Sirus right yeah specific to that story uh I remember my boss Jeremy asking me how come we didn't play much Richard prior right on on any list of the alltime comedians prior finishes either first or second and Carin in the other position so why aren't you playing Richard prior and the answer was uh it at that time the recording sounded thin and then when you put them through the bandwidth of satellite radio which isn't quite as wide as an FM radio or definitely not a direct download it sounded terrible coming out of the speakers and I remember one of the Consultants had a sign that said in radio audio is a rather important element so I didn't play stuff that sounded bad now since they remastered the prior collection and it sounds fantastic uh but also back then there were a lot of Homebrew comedians there was a guy named Lou CK who had something out that probably could have been recorded a little better so you want to play these things but if they sound like garbage on the air you just can't play them and and and again like I just love I love that story so much because the generation that's out there right now that has so much of this comedy on demand and it's and it's everywhere and it does much of it does sound beautiful crystal clear all of that um it's just like when MP3 technology showed up and and I mean I'm a guy I love my music and always have loved my music and and and I was one of the people when everybody was jumping onto the MP3 uh Revolution and Napster and all that stuff I was like yeah but it sounds like garbage it sounds terrible you know I want my music to sound like I had I had studio quality speakers in in my house when I was really really young like that's the stuff that I love so much and and as you're building this new technology that must have been very frustrating coming from where you came from I'll actually go the other way with that as my answer especially um over the last 20 years we're all listening on iPods so yes we can go hang out in your basement with your awesome speakers and and appreciate what George Morton did but modern songs are crunched down to sound good in the pods like like on my podcast um I use a program called descript to clean it up it's fast is there a better edit to be had if I sit there for an hour absolutely but hitting the one button click of you know that eliminates all the pickups it just saves me so much time and I'd rather get moving because most people who are listening are going to be in the car or on a treadmill and they're not listening for the audio quality they're listening for the audio content yeah so I'll actually go the other way and be like pretty good is pretty good I'm not submitting a podcast for a Grammy you know if if you want to do something Grammy we'll mix it properly but sometimes fast is good and then back to you know the serious bandwidth you know same thing oh one of the one of the tricks I was taught by my elders is mix something on the worst possible speaker because if it sounds good on the worst possible speaker in your 1974 blown out GM with you know the speakers are gone if it sounds good on that it'll sound good on your basement setup with the 50 Foot speakers I uh I I love that and and to be to be very very clear MP3 now sounds completely different than MP3 back then like back then it was sort of the Wild West they were sort sort of figuring it out now you go on Apple music um and and I mean you know they've got the the the loss list quality and and things have improved drastically since then but yeah I get the point um so so like Letterman he shows up on this show and it is it's it's it's zany it's all of these things but you go back to Bass and Dave is always there as a broadcaster and presents things as a broadcaster we talk a lot about the moment with Jerry Lawler and Andy calman you know early on in in in in late night's run and and I just love the way that Dave handled that and now it was a bit of a it was a work uh there was there was something there but very few people were in on that work and and and the way that Dave you know when Lawler got up and smacked Andy and and as they went through that uh you know the leadup to that Dave would he didn't treat it like he was a standup although his razor sharp wit was there he was still a broadcaster and I think that style whatever the Alchemy is that led to that he's got the greatest wit in the entire world but at the same time he does know how to run a board he does know how to talk to the people in uh like like to Hal gurny and the people in the control room and he you know he talks to the to to the technicians that are around him knowing everything about that you're that guy too right you know how all of this stuff works behind the scenes and yeah and and I think for some reason I think that translated to us uh as the viewer I just I just think that that's a part of the magic that is Letterman when I was at WR in the 90s there was a patch Bay so what a patch Bay is is if you want to connect a piece of equipment to a different piece of equipment so I want to connect the cart player to the real toore machine in the corner and there's not normally a direct connection so I stick a cord in in one hole and another hole and it connects to each other a WR at that time had this Rat's Nest of patches that that nobody ever hardwired all these things and US knuckle had 20 year olds we used to play patch Bay roulette and the game was okay you have to pull a cord out without taking us off the air or you have to Forfeit the game and we'd be like all right let me see cart three doesn't really need to be up to real to let me pull that okay you go and we would just play P but yeah you know it's like Jenga oh yeah oh know uh I could run a board back in the day better than anyone um don't tell the bosses from 30 years ago we would do things so in in uh Network radio everything is hard timed for example an hour of radio would end at 5850 meaning 58 minutes 5050 seconds past the hour which leaves you one minute of commercials and a 10c ID then there's a newscast that goes exactly six minutes etc etc and we would in New York City Market One Challenge each other can you run the board with the speakers off just by looking at the clock okay it's 5850 the needles just went dead click let me hit the commercial okay it's been 60 seconds how tight can you run a board without listening uh and we would police each other even on a noral day if you were running the board if you left a quar second of dead air we would come in and R you okay so um this is this is exactly what I'm talking about this is exactly it's the same culture that Dave gr you know uh zinman's book Jason zinman's book uh about Dave talks about the one thing that I love about that book um very very very much is is how he went back to Dave's days in radio and early TV before you know as he was you know learning the craft of broad casting and all of that stuff as he was running the technical things and and there's a story about them uh you know this is on a television station but uh at the end of the day um you know the national anthem plays right and there's a graphic of the station and the national anthem plays and the broadcast day is over and then it goes to you know color bars or snow for for a few hours before the next broadcast day begins and and they would do things like this and there was a a guy who was in the booth uh with him or in the in the studio with him who said you know what I can rig it so when the show after the national anthem plays uh the the the picture of the television station of our television station of the office of our television station will blow up and we can make it blow up and it'll explode and and it's going to be the greatest thing in the world and these guys were there going oh this is going to be the best ever and and and they did it and no one noticed and it was one of those things where this is that kind of uh behavior that you're talking about where it's like okay we've got everything um you know tight as a drum let's see if we can mess with it because Antics are just human nature and and and uh yeah I I I I see through lines here I feel through lines here um do you enjoy being in front of the microphone or behind the microphone more uh for the first 20 something years of my career I was happier behind the scenes being a producer I had really had no aspirations of being uh Talent I'll use the word very Loosely but but being on the mic so so what happened was um after the series gig ended I started running the comedy properties for what was then called Slacker radio right now it's called live one I still do that and we were developing the weekly comedy thing which is a onehour show you can't really do a comedy countdown because the charts just don't move enough at all and Legacy albums you you might go and number three is Dane Cook's album from 2004 like it just it doesn't make sense to do a countdown so we came up with a format that's basically um you know news of the week uh can I tie together a theme based on a week there's a there's a segment called thanks Captain Obvious so like obviously it's July 4th so let's play some July 4th themes that kind of thing so as we were developing that we were trying out hosts and nothing was working and I was inspired by Phil Collins of Genesis so if people don't know the story yeah Peter Gabriel was the lead singer for Genesis and he left and they started auditioning people and nothing was working and Phil Collins who was the drummer during the Peter Gabriel years said can I try it and then Phil had a great career so I just raised my hand I'm like I don't know I'm writing the thing anyway let me just try voicing it here we are 10 years later and then from that from that show I had so many leftover stories I decided to create daily comedy news uh as the daily but now being uh on this side of the mic all the time I'm enjoying it I also host something called five good news stories with which uh was my wife's idea and you know kind of heavily influenced by something krinski did during the pandemic absolutely but it's me saying five news stories that are all good news and it's you know cat rescues and Guinness records and a quirky story what we would call a kicker in in show prep and that is super popular so I just enjoy talking now and and and it's fun it's different uh you know I still have my managerial role at calaroga shark media uh I get to do all of it I was doing uh an ad campaign before I jumped on the microphone with you so I still have my suit t-shirt version but I still have my suit persona but I love being on mic now and it's not something I ever aspired to do when I um you know when I came on your show as a as a guest I I I wanted to do some research and whatnot and see what the show was and and when I'm listening to you I'm thinking oh this is a guy like kind of like Alex except you know kind of you know a lot younger still Alex is in his 80s now uh but here's a guy who's been in radio forever and has been you know um assaulted by the changes of the times and and okay here's a guy who has been on mic forever and is now finding creative ways uh to to not be that guy but and as I've listened to it I've I've put pieces of your story together and it is delightful to me that you have found like very similar to me you know I'm a financial planner by trade but have actually always wanted to do this inspired by Dave and some of my other broadcast Heroes and never had the availability to do it so the time the times changing the way they have have made it so it's available for me uh to do it and it's just so much fun and it appears that you're having so much fun doing it yeah the democratization of the media has been just fantastic for example a financial planner is hosting a weekly show about David Letterman we couldn't do that in 1985 exactly and boy as a David Letterman fan I like listening to this I like that some other guys are doing a Star Trek show I like some that some other guys are doing a show there's one I love Dave and Dave Unchained they do a 4-Hour show once a month about Van Halen that's amazing to me I love it it's one of my favorites you know but we couldn't do this stuff so you know I just come back to that that same mindset of look I'm doing daily comedy news if you think it's great awesome I love you if you don't think it's great that's fine just happy doing it it's fun um it's neat how though you have brought so much of the Polish that you learned in classic broadcasting and and the the the tips tricks and techniques uh of of that it's it's it's extremely evident again the program I cannot gush about it enough um you talked a little bit earlier about okay uh format doesn't matter and I get that it totally makes sense learn the craft understand um really how how how it works but that being said uh you know a a DJ goes along and they have five or six different formats and then suddenly they fall in love with one along the way it feels like that's who you are when it comes to Comedy I I I was um I don't usually for these things get nervous anymore but I'll tell you this uh prepping for this episode today the nervousness that I have is very similar to that of Jason zinaman or Bill Carter or whatever you know a ton about comedy there's a lot of comics that you know about that none of us as the as the public have ever heard about it feels like as this format as you kind of entrenched into this format it uh it attached itself into the emotional components of your uh biology is that is that fair to say yeah I look at this I compare it to my humble brag I've run two marathons right so boy I I've run two more marathons than most people however people that know how to run are way better at it than I am they are faster they are stronger they they can do it better so when I look at comedy I know more about at this point than 98 99% of the general public however um I won't take on Jason zenman in a conversation he'll destroy me um I won't take on Bill Burr in a conversation about stand-up comedy he'll destroy me yeah so I I and this goes back to when I was at Sirus I approached the programming from the Everyman perspective so I have maybe a little more expertise or a couple more war stories but I like to come in it eye level uh they taught us in radio and it and it was true in comedy and it's true in podcasting play the hits yeah so if there's a story about Jerry Seinfeld that moves up to the front of the show because that's what Joe public knows Joe public knows Jerry Seinfeld if you want to go deep and start talking about a comedian that nobody knows and you put them in the headline well you get fewer downloads so the big story is hey did you see Will Smith slapped Chris Rock ride that horse for two weeks yeah that's a that's it's a great way of putting it um and and it's funny like you know pop music versus like you know there's a comparison that has been made and I think it was made in originally in the late shift I think Carter made it talking about Letterman and Leno and and and people would talk about the the general appeal it might have been in war for late night it might have been in his second book actually but but somewhere along the way I learned it and I was like yes this is the Perfect Analogy whereas Leno is like he's like a pop music he's like a Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake or whatever Letterman is like Pink Floyd and and it might not be as easy to access but at the same time the experience is a deeper whatever whatever you want to call it and I think I think that's such an apt description um for comparing those two and there's a place for both and if you want to make a career in monetization pop music is something where you know what that's something that that that kind of needs to happen I can certainly see how that would happen in comedy that being said for five years uh you have gotten to watch folks show up from you know the the the club of 27 people to going to stadiums um and literally and figuratively for that matter the analogies actually completely match right now the one that I see uh that has happened you have seen the rise of Nikki Glazer as you've done daily comedy news where uh this is somebody who might have been like a B or C Level story if you have time for that story you know you there there are many stories you leave on the table because it's just you want to keep the time uh concise it's very clear about that um but now she's one that's makes the headlines of your show you must have seen a few of those in your run yeah comedy has always been about uh 18year overnight successes and Nikki is one you know she was sailing along she's no more or less funny than she was three months ago yeah but eyes were on her at that roast of Tom Brady and she crushed yep and went Next Level now what's interesting about Nikki is that very same week she had a special on Max HBO Max what The Branding is that didn't have any buzz and that on paper coming off the roast should have been huge and I really don't hear anybody talking about that special they're talking about her appearance on the roast but her star has shot up and maybe that HBO special was too soon after the roast like if that hadn't existed and you announced today Nicki Glazer's gonna have an HBO special in September oh wow that's big news but you know timing is everything let's give John Melania a sitcom on Fox well that's the all-time lowest rated sitcom of all time hey imagine if uh before the scandals imagine if Louis CK had a sitcom on HBO that'd be huge well that happened nobody watched it they watched the FX one but nobody watched the HBO one so it's all timing there um you know I remember there was a lot of jealousy about D cook but danne had been around for a little bit you you just you see these like I said 18yearold 18y year overnight successes um but then here in the Tik Tok era where you can have massive acceleration and Matt R comes out of nowhere and all the guys who've been doing it for 20 years get really jealous all of a sudden yeah well look we're all trying to do the same thing there's some alchemy of some combination of zeitgeist uh the Youtube algorithm Apple podcast throwing your favor for your show my show somebody else's show something's going to happen and all of a sudden the numbers go from here to there Y and it and you didn't get any better or worse it's just I don't know somebody some headline some algorithm decided oh Letterman podcast y with Jason zinaman uh let let's move that to the top of the thing and suddenly your your listeners go tenfold you didn't get any better just luck I don't I don't know what that is it's just the way the world works yeah and and and uh just you brought up Dan Cook's name and I think that's a that's a really interesting one um a a good friend of mine has just is on the finishing touches of doing his document his uh autobiography documentary um and I think it's going to be fascinating it's going to be very interesting to see I predict there's going to be a Resurgence a big-time Resurgence with danne because you think about this 03 this this time you you mentioned that he was one of the hits at that point for Sirius that guy was huge like there weren't a lot of guys or gals selling out Arenas back then and I mean there's a guy who who who who really was doing that at a time when it wasn't happening um you know had his Cooling period had his time I loved when he was on Louis uh uh uh show on IFC it's IFC up here in Canada I don't know if that's where it was down in down in the US but um you know and and and danne went through his stuff I expect there to be a Resurgence for Dane Cook and because everybody does love a comeback Story and there's a lot of those in comedy aren't there and in Nostalgia you always want to tap the 20 year point so we're right at the 20 years of Dee you know he was he was great uh you know is he George Carlin he's not George Carlin not trying to be George Carlin he's a fun Storyteller with he brought to the stage um a body language the way he would prow around the stage a little bit more than say the generation that came before he was easy on the eyes um he figured out social media before the rest of y'all did sorry you're mad about that but he played the game a little better and did it help sell tickets sure but you still have to get up there and perform I could trick social media get 18,000 people to come see me I'm gonna suck I can't do an hour um you know so you still have to be good at it but yeah I'd love to see a little daaance that'd be fun a daaance oh you coined it right there that's excellent uh it's it's fun listening to some of the things that you do find joy in when it comes to Comedy and and and the asides that daily comedy nudes goes down um and and I've I've uh there was a bone I had to pick with you with the SNL Hall of Fame I love that episode I think that does a that episode does a really really good job of showing some of the fun things that you do you know so you're you're listening to your daily comedy news for me personally I don't listen to them daily I listen to them like once every three days and then I do three of them at once I listen to my podcast on double speed and it's perfect like it's just like like one's not enough for me uh I need two or three of your show to to to kind of scratch my itch uh because if I do listen to Just One you leave me wanting which is also a good thing by the way but then you come out with these cool special episodes um you know Saturdays you'll come up with an episode like Alex Bennett's episode is a great example of that where you go for an hour with him and you have you have long form or you'll come up with special episodes like the SNL Hall of Fame episode I loved that episode I thought it was it was it was absolutely fantastic um do you have a lot of those kind of uh premises written down and and it's like okay yeah this week we'll do you know this special one or that special one um or do they just literally come up you hear the good idea I think it was Kevin Hart that talked about the idea of the SNL Hall of Fame and it was like yeah okay let's just go go from there so I'm making 365 of these a year and I don't want to record every single day while I love doing it sometimes on a Saturday I like doing something else right yes uh so I'll probably record four days a week maybe five I quite openly try to do the weekends in advance uh I work I use a program called agenda and I have a file for each day so I'll have one for Friday July 26th and uh later today when I'm done with you I will write some stories that will go into that particular show but along the way I will collect some news that can wait uh so and so has a special coming out April 3D okay let me open up the April 3D Doc and I'll stick it there and save it for rainy day while I do that I will see things like the top 25 stand-up comedians of all time and I'll be like all right let me park that and when I'm in when I have some free time and I feel like I'm good on the mic on a particular day because some days just better than others I don't know why yep uh I'll be like all right let me bang this one out because I know I'm going to LA in October so let me just park this and I'll just record it and I'll use it that day so the the weekend episodes tend to be slightly more generic um slightly recorded slightly more in advanced but specific to who should be in the SNL Hall of Fame yes I was reacting to a Kevin Hart story that I saw maybe on a Thursday or Friday and I'm like oh this would be good for I I lovingly call it weekend filler uh you know hopefully it's not just total filler and apparently you really enjoyed the discussion so thank you yeah it was but and and that was uh I I didn't plan on making that as long as it was but I guess when you read 150 names even if you're just going yep nope nope yep yep it still takes eight minutes so then when I got through that segment I had some left over stories that can wait for a different weekend and so I just moved those ahead to maybe the following Sunday so that's that's where that came from I do have a bunch of things squirrel away I know I have some travel later in the year that I have planned I haven't actually recorded them um but they're just sitting there to give me an extra show when I need one I also have in the back end I have some things that have been sitting there for three years uh specifically the top 25 comedians of all time which is probably dated now there was this thing called covid going around and I assumed at some point I would lose my voice for four days that luckily never happened mhm um but I've got a few safety episodes sitting there and luckily I haven't had to use them I've been close there was one I got stuck at the Anaheim airport all night uh and didn't have a show up but they opened the airport lounge at 5: am.

and I just fell on my sword and recorded an episode into my phone and had fun with it that Letterman type inspiration of hey I'm here at the airport lounge and yeah it sounds crappy and the guy next to me is eating cereal but let's do a show and I think for one-offs the audience gets it it's fun absolutely and yes I I'm glad we've kind of circled back to that point I'm a little when it comes to this stuff when I get excited and again I'm extremely excited about your show I'm glad we went back around to this point you have this format and then you break the format and it's so fun um um John meany got married and and and you had a technological uh cratering of some sort on your end but this happened and so there's an episode that's I don't know a minute minute and a half long or something like that where it's and it's clearly recorded on a phone or something like that it's saying yeah hey in the daily comedy news today special episode John W got married and you you said what you knew and that was it and that was the whole uh episode I I love that it's it's it's it's really cool and again back to Letterman okay we have a format we have a format we have a format now let's monkey with it let's break it let's uh turn it on its ear whatever and you have that in your show did that happen right away was that always part of the plan as you started it or was that something that evolved along the way I I think that's always been in me going back to the day influence so the melenia episode specifically uh my MacBook was breaking the keyboard was shot I bought a new Macbook and I was doing the migration thing I had recorded the show for the day everything's fine uh let me have the old MacBook passed to the new Macbook and that ties up both computers for four hours and then I go out and I sat poolside and played on my phone and I'm like oh John meany got married kind of got a deal with that so I just bangged out the episode on the phone no theme music you know had no way to access anything and just put it out uh you know that the Letterman influence of hey let's just go with it it it's always been there uh something you mentioned earlier made me think of this so back at sirius on the raw dog Comedy Channel yep our station voice was Satan uh it was a character that Sao our Imaging uh director had done and Satan raw dog serus 104 hello this is Satan and we had an unofficial writer guide in our head that although the character was Satan there was nothing satanic about him it wasn't about devil worship we weren't trying to make a statement y The Writer's guide was he's a guy with a deep voice and we pay well and that was the point of view on the character now what happened as we wrote for that character over the decade is Satan became kind of my inner monologue uh combined with Sal's inner monologue so if if we thought something was stupid and we knew the audience would think was stupid we had the Satan character do it for example we were ordered to promote Oprah Winfrey radio which is you know fine love Oprah but not sure the raw dog comedy fans gave a hoot about it sure but we had it promoted so the way the promo went on air was like hello Satan here the bosses have told us I have to read this memo SiriusXM is very excited to announce Oprah win for radio launching August 1 and and then sa would just read it in this most disenchanted way of Satan and and then crumple up the piece of paper on mic and throw it away and then leave dead air and walk out of the room and and it was just our way of telling the audience like look man we got to do this we can't tell you what we really think but we're telling you what we really think and and it was just fun and and that all gets back to that first five years of Letterman kind of like we're just doing this we're making ourselves laugh and if you're into it fine uh that that is so liberating being able to do that and and and it's fun um being able to think around corners and again that's another thing that that they had to do uh they had to think around corners back in the day you know Johnny uh had a very specific set of parameters that they needed to stay away from and and and it it was easy but it it gave a framework you know it gave a framework to say Okay We're not gonna have a monologue we're going to do opening remarks and here's what it's going to look like and and now it's it's the game is okay if it's only three or four remarks uh how can we monkey with this and mess with it and make it more creative more fun more this more that it's it's it's I've said this to a lot of the or I've asked this question I should say to a lot of the writers that I've talked to do you prefer having a wide openen field being able to do anything or do you prefer a padic where there are a a specific set of of uh of areas that you have to stay between and you can't go around them what would you rather write and it's so funny how many of them would say oh I'd much rather parameters because then you give them the parameters and that creates a second set of creativity that's there other than just trying to find something funny because now you're trying to find something funny around obstacles yeah yeah I think we'd all go like oh I'd like to be able to do whatever I want but when you when you're in that box and you have to figure out all right what can we do within this box that's rascally and kind of misuses the original intention of the Box uh you know that's where the laughs come from and that that's it's that mischievous rebellious little kid in all of us who's like okay you want me to do this all right I'll do it just the way you asked here you go and it's just fun um I want to go back to a couple of the things you said first off the marathon uh when you mentioned the marathon thing that made me think back to an episode of SNL back in the day um I I believe Kevin nean was on Weekend Update and the whole thing was we're interviewing the person that finished the marathon last it's an inspirational you think that it's the New York Marathon um the the person who finished last we're g to have them on here and it's going to be an inspirational story you you're thinking oh it's somebody who might have have challenges of some sort or impediments that that that cause them and it's Chris Farley and Chris Farley shows up and he he had spent the entire time partying and he spent the entire Marathon bar hopping and so he finished the marathon after 20s something hours or whatever it was and it just that just made me think of that um and that is springboarding into this question here you have seen a lot of historical changes when it comes to Comedy and and cultural changes um and the cross point between the two you know I think back again to those years of Farley at that point Andrew Dice Clay that was around the time that he had hosted Saturday Night Live and a couple of the cast members said no we're not going to be a part of this because he was so uh third rail controversial at that point yet still selling out Arenas um comedy has always intersected with um with with with culture back then there wasn't Council culture but there certainly was PC culture um you've seen a lot of changes when it comes to that from 03 to where we are now 20 short years later uh I I thought you might have a very um interesting unique standpoint on that you know it's interesting whether it's music or comedy or pop culture you go back and you look at these things that were so outrageous like George Carlin has long hair oh my goodness Archie Bunker theoretically flushed a toilet upstairs cuz we heard it oh my goodness you know and these things that you look at like now like wait what uh I I've been on a mash kick and it's gone the other way like oh yeah you know Mash was this funny show and you look at it now and you be like you know these guys are a bunch of jerks cheating on their wives and they're alcoholics and they're and they're dumb and let's cancel Hawkeye and it's like what's going on like things have to live in their own time you know you pull it a little bit forward and comedy may have been a little edgier 10 years ago now because of and this is a comedy interview right so we have to spend a few minutes on cancel cult culture yeah uh you know this is the big Bugaboo of oh you're going to be canell except you know all the people that have supposedly been canceled are playing Arenas so somebody likes the jokes um you know what can you joke about what can't you joke about I I believe in the theory that there's a way to make anything funny um I'll temper that by there are instances where maybe you want to wait a minute before you make the joke but uh if we look very recently there was a major political story uh and you know somebody was killed during that event there's nothing funny about that um but you wait two days and you look at the central character involved who is a good comedic personality and people found a way to make it funny uh you know I'm not sure it would have been funny two minutes after but two days later there were ways to make jokes about it you know so so the bars always moving and and these outrages come along oh you know I can't believe so and so is doing such a thing and you go back five years later and the person's being lionized as a genius and a torch Bearer yeah it's so interesting to see how the pendulum swings it swings so far in One Direction and then you get a bunch of people who are like no it's swung too far and so they are over here doing their thing and it might not be appropriate to do their thing yet but at a certain point the pendulum swings right back to that point and it's very interesting to see that you know and we' we've seen that so many times in our life uh when you got these younger people who don't necessarily have that width and breadth of of of of experience you know they don't remember you know Andrew Dice Clay they don't remember some of these things back in the day or Carlin like you said that that's a great example as well um I think comedy for me I think there needs to be an element of Comedy that is always pushing the boundaries I think that uh for me I'm a big Free Speech Advocate and and comedy is one of the Guardians of free speech unfortunately it's a look at the people who are doing comedy they're not really Guardians so much but at the same time they are it's it's such an important medium and uh that's just the way I see it I I I think it's a really really important thing um I want to talk a little bit you mentioned Matt R earlier um do you watch a lot of these specials like I know you have to kind of skim the surface because it's so big there's so much now um and and if you're doing a daily comedy new show again you've got stories that you don't necessarily get to every day there's so much there uh but do you actually watch a lot of these specials like do you do you go down the rabbit hole with them I watch many of them and I tend to Gap them and I try to be honest with the audience that you know I do do other things yes um and uh one of the things about being around comedy is often I'm not in the mood for comedy like I've had enough of it for the day so I'll often have a Saturday night where I'll be like all right let me watch the three major specials or if there's if there's something really major I'll watch it ASAP uh but if something comes out I'll catch up with it when I can I'll I'll watch a Bunch I'll update my list of the year um along the way I'll crib off other people's reviews just to tell the listeners what other people are saying but it's a lot and you know where do you draw the line okay Netflix sure HBO sure uh Hulu in the fourth quarter is really gonna bring it they've hired Gaff again and Burr and a bunch so Hulu is going to be a major player uh but now all right uh somebody put out a YouTube quote unquote special there sometimes I'll wait to hear if I'm hearing buzz from other people about it uh I probably could every night watch three four hours of Comedy um that's why I asked because there's a lot but I don't want to and then back from the programmer's chair it comes back to play the hits so like I I need to watch um a live Special by Cat Williams because that's what everyone's going to be talking about I'm I need to watch the roast of Tom Brady do I need to watch something that came out on a Tuesday on YouTube Maybe not immediately uh you I look at my role of I'm playing the hits for you along the way I'm going to try and turn you on to some people that maybe you don't know or maybe I didn't know and I discover along the way but yeah I I I just I can't listen to three four hours of standup every night there's so much I think there's something like 300 things have been released already this year yep um okay so that gives me an indication so Matt R's last uh uh special on Netflix you watch that so yes and what I will do um like a consumer is I will hit play on something Y and it is the job of the entertainment product whether it's a podcast including mine a TV show a music album you gotta keep me and if you keep me you go to the toop my list and if I get six minutes in and decide you know what I I'm not feeling this one or it's not for me or I'm not the target audience or you're just not funny or I don't I don't like the way this one is shot uh Ramy Yousef um I bail and you can come back and tell me oh dude you should have stuck with it uh the last 54 minutes are great or oh you should have stuck with the show it gets really good in season 4 it it's not 1985 I've got choices I've got other things to do um EA has put out a college football video game for the first time in 11 years I'm playing that every night now for two hours so I'm not on YouTube watching comedians uh you know we're we're all competing for attention so if your special gets good in minute 8 sorry I didn't see it um before I get back to the uh to that point what platform are you playing the college game on are you a PS5 guy or an Xbox guy uh I was always a PlayStation guy but Game Pass is just such an no pun Game Changer y um that we have both systems and I'm playing on Xbox because of Game Pass it being quote unquote free as opposed to me Shing out 70 bucks so I I've become in this generation a big Xbox guy I uh I have an Xbox uh series X sitting in a box right now literally no pun intended and and uh I've got my PS5 that I've been playing uh um and and so I'm I know I'm going to make a migration and Game Pass is one of those things I'm okay I feel like we've done some good talking about this today uh but to go back to Matt R for a second the reason I'm asking and to bring it back to the to the cultural thing that we were talking about earlier um I'm also watching folks who are calculated enough or seem to be calculated enough and I wanted to know your perspective on this you know you got this guy Matt re who has um you know I found about I found out about Matt R from my wife who's in her early 50s huh shocker not not surprising at all that's the audience he's cultivated um I know that he has gone and and and uh and and done uh made a career out of crowd work and and and and women who are of a certain age just seem to really gravitate towards him and I knew that going into the special okay so I kind of knew that and my wife when my wife says to me uh hey let's watch a comedy special tonight I'm there I'm just like that because many times watching comedy specials it's exactly the opposite you know a a new bur special comes out candy can we please watch this tonight can we like can this be the show we watch tonight and and I'll have to convince her for it whereas she says to me hey Matt re's got a new special I'm like okay let's do it and watching the first five minutes of it I just I don't know I don't know if it's because uh I've got some pro wrestling stuff in my life and I I always think everything's a work I'm a skeptic when it comes to some of this stuff but I'm sitting there watching and listening to some of the things he's saying and I'm like okay so within the next five or six days there is going to be um a PC uh conversations that are happening and six or seven days after those conversations begin he is going to be coming back with onliners that absolutely decimate and just give him more and more and more and more more from it that was the first my first impression uh from from that and I think back to Dane Cook and what Dane Cook did with social media back in the day and I think about his monologue on SNL and how he was taking the times and really making it part of his comedy to grow him as a brand that sort of a thing that was what I thought when I saw Matt re anything on that does that does that does that uh ring a bell with any comedy out there today so for all of us including podcasters right you can play the game or not play the game you can play the attention game I could put out an episode titled um Jim Gaffigan and the 10 most overrated comedians of 2024 right the headline game the The Click clickbait yep that'll make somebody go what that's out radious I hate this guy um and then I'll double down and be like yeah he's terrible you know who else sucks it's Bill Burr he sucks too Y and and I I guess I could be that guy and go for attention um and and it might actually work and then people will book me like you you don't think think Bill Burr is funny no he's terrible right but it's not authentic yes um on the other side Dave Chappelle I could listen to Dave Chael all day every day he's compelling even when Dave gets up there and isn't even attempting to tell a joke and is just speaking about his point of view on whatever is happening in society I find him compelling I've been open on my show I don't understand why Dave has chosen that his obituary is going to be Dave Chappelle host of Chappelle show known for something something transgender Community something something I don't know why he wants that to be his a bit but he seems to want to talk about that but it's authentic I don't I I think he should move off it I I don't agree with what he says but it's authentic and and that I see as opposed to U manufactured comedy of let me just say something outrageous and get noticed uh some of the comedians who are fighting against cancel culture just to fight against cancel culture I'll show them you know do do you have something to say about Palestine or you just slamming the headlines so that you have a Tik Tok video yeah oh speaking just to go back to that for a second here isn't it interesting listening to Jerry Seinfeld uh uh you know uh go up against hecklers it's it's that's just been a lot of fun listening to that recently uh you know because people are deciding to um you know come at him during his live show I don't know if you've heard any of that stuff that that that's really interesting to hear so when he first started getting heckles um it happens at a College commencement and Jerry was a little flat-footed it was a little awkward he's a master of his craft he is um I didn't see some of the other comedians we've mentioned um I hadn't seen them live the people I've seen live Jerry is the best let me go into jury tangent um just to bring it back to Letterman yeah so when we would watch Letterman I I to younger people this is going to be like oh really you knew he was good before the TV show there were certain episodes of late night that I liked I liked when David Sanborn sat in it just brought an extra something Y and then I don't know once a month once or two months this New York comedian Jerry Seinfeld would get on and he was great back in that day great all right so bringing forward Jerry does the speech and gets kind of caught flat footed and it goes viral and and you know back to me all right there's a headline let me ride this for three days right y but when Jerry went down to Australia he had prepped some comebacks so they tried to Heckle him and he slammed them back and you don't think of Jerry as a Heckle comedian because why would you go to a Jerry Seinfeld show and Heckle him right they never came up before but now that it's coming up he's prepped for it and he's armed and shockingly he's hilarious right he he's the best at this you know he spent five minutes and thought about all right how do I handle this and and he's great you know it'd be like if you went to heckled Jim Gaffigan like what would Jim even do in his Persona like you know he he's got that softspoken Persona how would he encounter a Heckler I don't know uh and to bring it back to Letterman I mean that's that's some of the stuff that is that Legends are made of you know talking to some of his old friends um about his time at The Comedy Store you know and he's as he's making his way through and trying to prepare these pieces of material and if people turned on him or or or whatever that's when the show really began and the comics would come out of the they would they would sit in the back and they would watch Dave do that again the idea of of somebody heckling Jerry Seinfeld is is is it is it is laughable in so many ways but to actually see it happen and see him do this that is that is so much fun and and these are the types of things that you you cover you talk about things that are happening in the comedy world not just events people getting specials and things like that but you actually talk about that Chappelle thing is so funny you mentioned that I I've been thinking about that over the last few months as a lot of people have pondering you know the the how we got to this place and where and and and all that to me I don't know if it's necessarily just the trans issue I think it could be any issue where somebody is trying to shut Dave up about saying what he wants to say and I think he would come back with it with this much push back saying you can't tell me that I can't say something and by the way I'm going to be funny while I do it and and and I'm going going to say what I want to say and and it could be any issue uh it just happens to be this one that that was something that came into my head a few months ago and I I I hope that you're you're you're um I hope he doesn't die anytime soon because I think you're right if that were to happen that would be part of the obituary I think uh I think given enough time hopefully he'll be able to move away from that and there will be sort of a broader and and hopefully it is about free speech I hope that it has become about that where it's like this was the issue that we talked about back then similar to other Comics back back in the day in their career like Carlin for example you know um I I I I just it's a fascinating discipline and I just love that there are guys like you out there uh uh talking about this every day um I love your take on on on on on Trump how he's lwh hanging fruit I love I love how you talk about that how it's a little bit different making fun of him now compared to back in the day when they made fun of say the caricature of Bill Clinton or or or or George W or Ronald Reagan that kind of a thing uh the IAL stuff in comedy uh isn't it interesting now how Carson and Letterman could just make fun of whoever was President they didn't have to show their side who you know what what what they thought they could say you know Letterman famous uh during his Late Show years and I I don't even know about late night years he I don't even think he hardly talked about it he just made fun of stuff um I'm a registered independent but now all the late night guys or gals you know where they stand politically and is it because of who they work for is it because that's who they really are that sort of a thing um politics and comedy has evolved significantly since you've gotten involved in it as well yeah I I think um specific to the current ERA you know there are guys like coar and Kimmel who definitely have real opinions about Donald Trump and Donald Trump's presidency yeah but if you go up a level and you look at the way Jimmy Fallon is doing Trump jokes yep Trump is a character he's got a particular style of speaking he's got a particular style of haircut um there are just comedic elements to him whereas you know a a a different candidate just you don't what would you make fun of like we haven't yet figured out how do you make fun of JD Vance um you hillbilly something Mountain de something I don't know um this week well how do we make fun of kamla Harris um it seems to be that we're going to make fun of her laugh laugh but but all right you know that's it's dumb it's it's already boring so as we see more of Harris on stage what elements of her personality do you goof on there whereas Trump there's a lot there you know here's I grew up in New York City here's this rich guy that nobody took seriously even back then and uh you know he's got his name on everything okay and let's go see his TSH Mahal casino God this is Gody um then he had his Apprentice Persona so okay you're fired I actually um earlier today was prepping we we do another podcast called ballot uh which is a political podcast and uh one of the topics in the episode we put out was how Trump is making fun of Harris and so far the best Trump has is calling her lion kamla Harris and it's like dude that's lame and he also made a your fire joke and as the writer I pointed out you know Trump making a your fire joke is lame like that's the joke we make of the Trump character but now if you just going you're fired like it's lame uh but you know the other thing of playing in that Arena these days even on my podcast is you worry do you lean one way or another does the audience read something into it now my perspective as I'm doing the show is I'm just looking to see what everybody else is saying and reacting to it um and you know I don't want people to go oh he's for so and so so I hate this show now because of X now look I'm G to vote for somebody you're gonna vote for somebody now hopefully over the course of the five years of you listening to me every day you've decided I like Johnny Mack and maybe we don't agree on this particular topic because you're for x and I'm for y that's fine we could still be friends right um the environment's gotten to this like I'm right you're wrong and I have to punch you in the nose to prove that you're wrong and I don't I don't know why we're there um so I I like the the Fallon approach to Trump based comedy that's more just about the character um you know I think back to hanging out with my friends uh and we've talked about this when we would when we would goof on people it was really not about the person it was more about the absurdity so like for example uh if if we would just do a bit of like um if if you started pretending to be Batman we would be like what an idiot he has a beard Batman doesn't have a beard like so that's like you know that's not making fun of you it's not making fun of your beard we're not saying your beard is dumb it's just Batman doesn't have a beard Mike's being dumb yeah pretending he's Batman and it's just an absurd thing we're not trying to be vicious and I think that's where Fallon is coming from oh I am so I'm so grateful to hear you talk about this that way because there's something that I've uh I've been playing with this and I put up a like I was I was looking on the other side of the set I don't have it with me right now with Arms Reach if I did I would show it right now the reason I would show it right now is because I love pissing off a certain percentage of my audience uh as small as it is it's so much fun I've got a picture of Sarah Palin and it says to the Letterman podcast uh good luck with this and this is underlined like it's very sarcastic like it's good luck with this and I had a lovely conversation with Governor Palin and and and got her to sign the picture of it and whatnot because and and and I put up a uh recently even I put up so the audience knows I have this and it used to be sometimes it'll show up on the set and I'll just have fun with it um because it's fun to piss people off and uh I I I I uh I had this conversation with her and and said oh one day I would love to have you on the show and she just kind of looks at me and she just says you're bold you're so bold we're gonna throw rocks at you and I'm like okay well first off I'm Canadian so I think I have a little bit of diplomatic immunity here on this or something uh and I'm not sure if that's how that works but it might and and and so but the other part is wait hold on a second there was something that happened within the Letterman Mythos with with with her that literally transcended just folks who enjoyed late night television it was it was an event they were talking about on CNN and all these things there you know she had you know half a dozen or so good-hearted people that protested and wanted David Letterman to get fired and they talked about this to the point where the staff was like oh is this going to be a thing uh oh and then Dave actually came and did an apology but it was one of Dave's apologies where the apology was there but at the same time he still was able to kind of make his point it was it was such a cool time and I put in our Facebook group recently even I put up a poll should I if if I have the opportunity should we have Sarah Palin on the show and everyone was like no no like it was overwhelming about how no it was which makes me just want to go the other way and say yes and do exactly what you just said let's talk about this person or talk to this person like they're a person and let's talk about some of these events and not blow it up into what you were talking about uh you know that that that can happen you know you know maybe you have Sarah on and she's got some awesome Letterman stories and some awesome Letterman memories and you don't have to get into the politics of any of it that's exactly right yes you know you don't have to get out hey Sarah thanks for joining the show so we all love late night what's your stance on abortion like you you're the Letterman podcast it's not a political show talk to her about Letterman yes um I think she's another example of political comedy if we look at Tina Fay the famous impression of Sarah it's not mean it's based on Tina looks enough like her and put on the right glasses and did kind of a UB beta kind of impression there's nothing mean about that impression it's just taking a a over-the-top version of the character of Sarah out for a drive and having some fun with it and laughing at the camera and rolling the jokes but I I I don't think the that impression is mean by any happen stats it's just I don't F I don't exactly well and say yeah like to the point where Sarah appeared on the show and they they crossed paths and whatnot I think you know um and so even if it was mean having that person be able to come and Elevate back I can take the joke I can take it on the chin and we can do that I think that's a fantastic uh example of that I bring this up at this point because we do need to move to the clo I could talk to you all day about this I'm very glad that we're connected like John I'm so so so glad that we're connected and and um go ahead let me be your Tony Randall right anytime your guest cancels you go it case of emergency I'll come on oh I love hearing that thank you for saying that here um I I I've got a couple questions here and the first one is uh Letterman recently appeared on daily comedy news and and he was a story uh within the last few days anyway he was and so uh the the the the overarching question I have is um in the last five years the late night guys seem to here uh sporadically how many times has Letterman appeared at Daily comedy news has it happened very often but recently the reason that he appeared is because um he was going to actually he has moved away so he is so um it seems to be if you watch my next guest and some of the some of the things that he does say even on his YouTube channel um he will he will talk about uh former president Trump um with with with a tremendous amount of opposition and and that's something that is very new for Dave uh for folks who have loved him for a long time he usually doesn't weigh in on that kind of stuff yes they made fun of George W bush but who wouldn't make fun of George W bush I'm sorry the Great Moments in presidential speeches is again go to the Letterman YouTube channel they got a super cut of it it's one of the greatest things ever uh shout out to Tommy rupe who who was the uh The Mastermind behind that just fantastic but that was a different deal uh Letterman has actually come out and and and opposed um you know former president Trump a lot to the point where he was actually going to be uh hosting a fundraiser for uh President Biden and now of course ripped from the headlines Biden uh President Biden has said he's not going to seek re-election um Dave appeared on The Daily comedy news so so as a letterman fan when you see Dave appear in pop culture where you have a reason to put him into your show uh does that provide a little bit of delight for you oh absolutely you know I think if you're looking at Dave here uh here's someone I'll bring it back to where we talked about Jay Leno before uh the Jay Leno that appeared on Late Night with David Letterman was pretty edgy for the time comedian yeah um but when he gets the tonight's show people might describe him as more vanilla but Jay's got that edginess in him or at least he did 40 years ago and then but that's not the gig I'm the host of The Tonight Show on NBC I have to play to Middle America so here we see Dave and we've gone through anti-establishment Dave cranky Dave EST M Dave and now you have a David Letterman at a stage in his career where doesn't need the money doesn't need the fame doesn't care about the fame yes so he's going to use whatever Capital he has with his audience to influence the world the way he thinks it should be the same as Bruce Springstein might do yep and you know okay and if you're not down with Dave's messaging well don't go to the fundraiser that's fine and and and hopefully you don't go oh I can't believe Dave supported candidate X now I hate him even though he made me laugh for 40 years um you can choose not to consume everything the man makes yeah uh does he appear very often has he appeared in the last five years very often do you when when when a on a slower news day and a new my next guest comes out like when he had interviewed uh president zalinsky is probably a good example of that that sort of thing does he appear very much on daily comedy news only really when he's doing Netflix stuff just because Dave doesn't do much um now during the pandemic uh for weekend filler uh it was for the 40th anniversary of late night I did Sundays I talked about Letterman for I think five straight weeks oh I gotta go back and watch those that's awesome okay good thank you you know on a slow news day there are days and we had one this week where there was nothing to fill at all I'll I just I'll go on Google and I'll be like all right Chappelle nothing melany nothing crer uh seora Glazer uh and you just start going down just trying to find something to give you enough critical mass I don't really have um you know how long is daily comedy news it's however long it is on a particular day at some point it's too long and I rap and I bump stories at some point it's too short because we you know we're trying to make some money here so we got to get some commercials in so I can't stuff a three minute break into a four-minute show y um you know but I'll move stuff around but this was a week where there was one day was so slow I actually had had to pull forward some of the stuff I had stashed for a vacation later in the fall um but I told the audience I go today I've got exactly one story for you and the rest is filler I I I don't try to snow people that uh as not every episode is awesome right some are better than others you're preaching to the choir my friend you're preaching to the choir you know you've done around 150 of these now right th this might be the best episode the worst episode it's probably somewhere in the middle I hope I hope it's not the worst it might be number 149 not even close not even close you know some some shows are better than others and some days you feel good and and the topic is right and other days it's just not there and that's okay uh when I way back in the 90s when they taught me about talk radio don't over steer one show yeah it was great or that one was terrible it's the series of shows it's the better it's the body of work if we look at the first five years of Late Night with David Letterman some of them were awesome some of them were flat some of them were flat and Dave tried to save it by admitting that it was flat let me see if I can pull this back to okay and maybe those are our favorite episodes the ones that didn't work yep um but you look at the body of work and we're looking back at the body of work going that was great rather than oh man you know the August second episode was terrible yeah uh well Cole bear talks about that um he calls it the tissue box you know you pull out a Kleenex and there's always another there's another Kleenex that's what the shows are for them d um you know famously talks about some of the the mental health stuff that he went through in in in figuring it out but but one of the things that helped him uh get through that was knowing well okay there's always another show there's always another show there's always another show and and looking at it the long game um thank God you know I think about um if I have any skills at this whatsoever I go back uh to give myself context I go back to my first episodes I host a men's mental Wellness podcast as well and I go back to my very first episodes of those this was my first uh episodes I ever shot it's like oh my gosh yeah there's progression here thank goodness for that you know context uh of longevity is is very very important and um yeah that's a that's that's a that's a great point now that being said again some of these special episodes that you do I want to bring it back to I want to finish with daily comedy news because it is so good and I'm not just I'm not just saying this like when you when you talk about the Hank kazera stuff or Hank kazera doing the Bruce Springstein thing you know or the Weird Al the some weird owl stuff you know where where where where you spend a little bit of time on one of these topics I don't know if they are slow news day items or not that you're putting in but I'm sure grateful for it Bob newart passing I don't know if there was a slow news day which is why you added maybe an extra episode or a little bit of emphasis a little exclamation point on some of these events or some of these things that are happening I as the viewer or The Listener am grateful for it because you're you're you're you're you're putting emphasis on it the hanas are Bruce Springsteen thing is one of the funniest things I have seen in in in in for a long time and I would have known about it if it wasn't for your show so you're doing the Lord's work by doing this uh Johnny like seriously I I'm really appreciative of what you're doing oh thanks man so the aeria thing um so Hank iseria uh is doing an Bruce Springstein and the East Street Band cover band where he's staying in character as Bruce except when he tells the stories they're not stories of Bruce growing up in New Jersey they're Hank isaria stories so I saw this and a big Springsteen fan I'm like this is going to be terrible but I clicked on the video and Hank does a really good Bruce Springstein impression uh I played a clip of Hank Singing Glory Days and you can tell that Hank has listened to a ton of live Springsteen because he's hitting the vocals the way Springsteen does in a live version of Glory Days 40 years later Y and although you wouldn't have thought this uh in 1989 Hank aeri and Bruce Springstein look similar ish these days so it it kind of works so that was a story that I was genuinely really excited to share but that week was a busy news week I had it in Thursday show and bumped it I had it in Friday's show and bumped it again and then I made sure I got it in on Saturday but that was one that I was excited about but could wait because other things were going on whatever happened that week uh specific to new har anytime a comedian that big passes away I try and do immediately a quick oit episode um just to get it out there I normally record the show around early afternoon for the next day but if something big breaks Bob newart passes away okay here's an all-timer I try and do a quick obit episode that usually uh then gets wrapped around the normal episode because on that particular day I already recorded I think it was the Friday episode and no mention of new heart so I just put a lazy hey I didn't mention new heart today but check out earlier in the feed I did an O bit and then I try and come back and do the reaction episode specifically to see what the other comedians have said about uh whoever has passed away and those episodes you know no surprise do really well yeah oh absolutely and and they catch people up and again like um you're a torch Bearer for this stuff because you know there are people that influenced us we're kind of in that place right now and and it's a sad place I was just talking with um one of the members of Paul's band recently about about this um and and and their remark to me was um you got kind of a sad gig Mike like I know it's happy and I know you've had some good things happen and great things are happening but you've got kind of a sad gig because a lot we're all like like I think about Rick sheckman who who the show doesn't exists without Rick and and and and I think about him every single day and now I'm at the place where I've done more episodes you know Rick of course produced for Letterman for 32 years he was the film coordinator but he was way more than that and and and Alex's best friend by the way as well Alex and and Rick uh you you you want to catch up with Alex and get him to tell Shey stories he you'll you'll be there all night it's it's it's uh amazing talking to him but this this van M remarked to me he goes you got a sad gig because a lot of the people that you look up to you're going to be tributing um you know ously and and and you think about what you're doing as well um you know 03 serious you're sewing these seeds you're you're you're loving you know this idea of Comedy but a lot of the people that you do look up to like that is what your gig is going to be with this uh amazing indispensable as far as I'm concerned brand you're creating it goes with the field if I look back on my career the most exciting day in my career was September 11th 2001 a horrible day but in terms of we create the art of radio and I was in New York City and we could see the towers out the window there was a big bay window behind the studio yeah and we were we weren't watching it on TV we were looking at it doing radio that was you it sounds weird but I think you get where I'm coming from that was absolutely the the day where we did the craft this is what we do and today we're doing it um you you don't want these things to happen um I I I really took us level up in my career the 1993 World Trade Center bombing happened on a day WR was having a Sales Event so anybody who was anybody was at the sales event in New Jersey and they left us part- timr around and that happened and everybody's rushing back from New Jersey but suddenly I'm producing afternoon drive for the first time because I'm a live body and someone has to do it uh you know that's another day in my career I look back to so you know sometimes opportunity knocks and you jump on these things um I I was looking at uh the recent uh assassination attempt and some of the people who got on air because they happen to be at work at on a Saturday at 6:05 while Anderson Cooper was out at the Hamptons but hey man need you to Anchor this right now let's see what you got and and these things accelerate your career in terms of doing obituaries well of course you don't want to do them but it kind of forces your hand nobody was thinking like oh I I I should do a bob newart retrospective and if I had done a bob newart retrospective it probably wouldn't have done well uh you know I I don't want to jinx anyone I I could pick a name of a hat and go oh you know what on Sunday I'm going to talk about somebody's career for 10 minutes yeah and it would just be filler and if I hand in the same exact episode after the person dies oh that was really great it it's just it's just I don't know it is what it is right um a music's going to die and suddenly oh wow I I can't believe how much I really love the music of X let's listen to that person all weekend um well the music's there today why aren't you listening to it today I don't know I'm just not I'm doing something else but it's uh but the yeah and that's a great great example you know fairly recently at the time of this broadcast um sheno Conor passed like it's not that long since and that's one who you know I have loved sheno Connor no the Ops the Downs all of it always always always loved her and one of the things that I didn't like you know to bring it back to music and what you said earlier you know sometimes um you know the people who love something so much they hold on to it and they take ownership of it you know they want to protect it in art and and then something like this happens and then all these Johnny con come in and it's one of those things where it's like okay I want to I want to express how I really feel about this and and and and be precious about it while all this noise is happening in the background and I feel like that is who you are when it comes to Comedy listening to you talk about new heart the way you did and and just and I I am going back into the archives like I'm I'm back four or five months already since I've become aware of you and I do want to go back and and listen to these some of these shows uh that you talked about Letterman back in the day um I'm grateful for what it is that you're doing John I really really am and and and thank you very much for uh taking time today I know how many plates you have spinning I don't know how you are able to do all the things that you do um but you just have this drive and it's amazing and you've taken some of that precious time and you've given it to us today at the Letterman podcast and uh yeah man we could definitely use a Tony Randall and thank you for for thank you so much for um for reaching out to me originally and and and giving me the gift of your show it is uh it has penetrated that shield and it really is I I I could not endorse um The Daily comedy news uh more and I know that it's not that's just the crust of what it is that you're doing so thank you very much for everything that you're doing I just I can't tell you how much I appreciate it no thanks you make me laugh about fandom so someday when you're running Letterman Fest at the big convention hall yep we'll see the different camps so me and the cool kids will be over here in the corner wearing our Chris Elliot t-shirts and we're going to hate on the people who like visiting the hello and be like that part was stupid that's when Dave sold out and he wore our money and he's wearing shoes and and you don't know the real Dave and then there going to be other people who only know him from Netflix who were going to look at us old people and and that's what fandom is and the spirit of Letterman Fest would I think be to appreciate DAV Letterman um even though I'm gonna be wearing the Chris Elliot t-shirt hating on the newer people couldn't have said it better and it's like you've done this before segue the Letterman podcast has one sponsor one sponsor only that is hello- deli.com r may not own the deli anymore but guess what he owns the brand guess why cuz Dave is awesome and he gave it to him when he retired so the only place to get official Late Show with David Letterman merchandise is hellodd deli.com Rupert G himself packs it with care um and he won't add onions to the Order anymore but at the same time they'll smell better go to Hello jelly.com and uh this has been another episode of the Letterman podcast with Mike Chisum that guy there is Johnny Mack thank you and good night over coat and Underpants