Endless Thread - Introducing Edge of Fame (and Norm Macdonald AMA)

Episode Date: January 26, 2018

Check out a new podcast from WBUR and the Washington Post called Edge of Fame.

Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR Boston. Greetings, Amory. Uh-oh. Now what? Well, I know. You're freaking out, right? Because it's Sunday, we don't release endless thread episodes on Sunday. We do not.

But we are a show about things found on Reddit, and you know what Redditors love? Pizza? Just joking. Jokes. They love jokes. Yeah, especially if they're like 9-minute Norm McDonald jokes. And so I wanted to put a little. teaser in our feed for Reddit and Norm McDonald fans.

Norm McDonald of SNL's Weekend Update and Comedy Genius fame is one of the subjects of WBUR's upcoming podcast, Edge of Fame. This podcast is made with The Washington Post, which, by the way, also has a presence on Reddit. Ben, if you try to say something like brand synergy right now, I'm going to smack you. I would smack myself first. But truly, we think you'll dig this new podcast, Edge of Fame. Norm McDonald is also doing an AMA on.

on Reddit this week. Ask me anything, eh? All right, I'm into it. Yeah, this is where, like, Redditors can ask Norm anything, and he answers those questions. He'll be doing that on Monday, the 29th. But today, Norm McDonald's epic moth joke.

You'll hear a little bit of Edge of Fame's host as well. Jeff Edgers, take a gander. But for me, Norm's leaving SNL was just the beginning. He started in a movie called Dirty Work that didn't make a ton of money at the box office, but was still very fun. He starred in two different sitcoms, and he developed a weird sideline as one of the world's greatest late-night talk show guests. I mean, one time he went on Conan and told this moth joke.

Seriously, you could boil this joke down to its essentials and tell it in 20 seconds. You probably know it. The moth goes to a doctor because he's depressed. A moth goes into a podiatrist's office, and the podiatrist's office says, what's the problem? And the Ma says, what's the problem? Where do I begin, man? He goes, I go to work for Gregory O'Linovich, and all day long I work. Honestly, Doc, I don't even know what I'm doing anymore.

I don't even know if Gregory O'Linovich knows. He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness. Norm turns this into like a seven, eight, nine-minute story that goes down all sorts of roads and dead ends and twist. He invokes Russian names that are almost impossible to pronounce. My other boy, Gregaru, Ivinolytivich. You know it's natural that he's doing this because he loves Russian literature. Not that you know it from his bits, but I'm telling you, this man reads Tolstoy religiously.

Anyway, he tells this joke that just goes on and on and on. People basically realize, I don't know what's going on here, but it's special. and I want to be part of it. He says, Doc, sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I'm a moth, just barely hanging on to my web with an everlasting fire underneath me. I'm not feeling good. And so the doctor says, moth, man, you're troubled. But you should be seeing a psychiatrist.

Why on earth did you come here? And then the moth said, because the light was on. So why isn't norm on TV? on TV? Why isn't he enjoying the kind of mainstream success that his peers have enjoyed? You know, why is Rob Schneider getting a show and Adam Sandler getting billions of dollars to make movies? Norm isn't getting those same opportunities. I think in large part it's because you can't describe exactly what he does. In a world of elevator pitches, Norm's unorthodox approach can be jarring, even unsettling. And brilliant. All right, that's our little teaser of Edge of Fame,

launches officially in February, but the first episode is up right now. Yeah, you can subscribe to Edge of Fame wherever you get your podcast, and you can learn more Monday when Norm does and Ask Me Anything or AMA on Reddit. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. That's right, more of endless thread coming at you this Friday. Support for this podcast comes from Nature is the Solution, a podcast from the Nature Conservancy. When it comes to the environment, it's easy to focus.

on doom and gloom, but that's not the whole story, especially when there are so many projects working towards bringing people and nature together. In this moment, optimism isn't naive, it's necessary. Follow Nature is the solution wherever you listen to podcasts and discover stories of impact and possibility.