The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Atlantic Writer Helen Lewis on The Riyadh Comedy Festival and Hero Worship

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

While Noam Dworman is away, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by The Atlantic's Helen Lewis. They discuss The Riyadh Comedy Festival, Lewis's book, The Genius Myth and The Beatles. Then Sheba Mason drops by to talk about her play about her late father, The Jackie Mason Musical.

This is live from the table, the official podcast of the world-famous comedy seller, available wherever you get your podcasts, and in particular, available on YouTube, which is how podcasts are generally consumed nowadays. This is Dan Natterman. Noam is not here. We don't know where he is. Periel, do you know where he is? I have no idea where he is.

I tried to call him, and I got, like, a weird beeping, which made me think that, like, maybe he was in another country. We have no idea where Noam is. Suffice to say he's not here. We do have a guest coming. Helen Lewis will be joining us. She is a writer for Atlantic. But for now, it's just me.

And Periel, Ashenbrand, starting things off. That's a weird way to pronounce my name. Periel Ashenbrand? Periel. Isn't that what's pronounced? Yeah, you said Periel. I've never heard you say it like that. Well, I don't.

Okay, if you say that's how I... I mean, whatever. Anyway, Periel is here. And I'm back from my cruise. I wasn't here last week when you had on David, Wormser. Yeah, he was great. Yeah, he seemed like a nice guy. Listen to the episode. Did you like a knowledgeable guy? He was

extremely knowledgeable. I mean, Wormser's an odd sort of a name. It's got the word worm in it. But with a U. Yeah, he was an extremely nice guy, too. I really liked him. Yeah, I got that sense. But anyway, I'm back from the cruise. How was the cruise? It was rough. I'm not going to

lie to you. It was rough. Where was the cruise? I want to say rough. I don't mean the water was rough. I mean, it was rough. Just rough. You're there. for seven days and my show anxiety was in full tilt and the guy next to me

literally was under arrest the guy in the cabin next to me I thought they had like a separate jail on the ship I mean they got everything else but maybe they don't because he was being guarded and I don't know what he did all I know is the guards that's insane

there were two at all times they didn't wasn't the same two people but at all times for the last three days of the cruise. And they were in front of my door because it's narrow so they got to kind of like... So I had to like...

Every time I went back to my cabin, like I had to get past a security guy. So he wasn't allowed out? He wasn't allowed out. No. He was under arrest, essentially. I guess they were waiting because we were at sea for a day and then we were in the Bahamas, which in their private island. So I guess there's

no police there or I don't know what the protocol is, but I guess they were waiting to get him back to Miami to hand him over to the police. You have no idea what he did. No idea what he? All I know is he's on heart medication. Because he was yelling,

I need my medication for my heart. He was an older guy. And he was screaming about his medication. Did you see him like in handcuffs? No, he was in his room. I saw him. I caught a glimpse because the door was like partially open. They didn't want him to, I don't know if he was on suicide watch,

whatever. They thought he was going to jump overboard. Not that you could because the window. don't open on that floor. But his door was slightly open, and they were kind of keeping on. Were you curious as to what? Of course I was curious, but I wasn't

going to ask the guards what did he do. That's wild. I don't think they would have told me. What? But anyway. Did you go to show every night? No, we have one night off, but every other night. Two shows a night or one show a night? Two shows for three nights.

and three shows for two nights and one show for one night and one night off. Yeah, three shows is like, I, it's like, that's, that's, that's, it's, it's, it's, I, you know, and nobody likes it. But, you know, I mean, that's really, that one extra show is really, even though we're only doing like 15 minutes, but it's just, because it takes the whole night, like, because there's time waiting between, you. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't complain because normal people do work a whole day, but, it's a lot.

So what times are the shows? It was like on the nights that there were three. It was 7.30, 9.30, and 11.30. Yeah, so it's, you know, whatever. But the point is, with every cruise gig, you know, I have more coming up. Maybe I'll do them.

Maybe I won't. In my mind, I have to always allow myself that escape, that possibility that maybe I won't do it, you know. But anyway. In other news... Wait, but you only did 15 minutes, so there were other comics? Yeah, there were two other comics.

Did you know them? I didn't know them, but they're nice. They're nice, no. Yeah, this ship has three comics on board. That's how they do it, you know? And no frattingizing with a... Well, as you know, I'm... No, well, what do you mean still?

They haven't changed that policy. Well, I don't know if it's the same cruise. I don't know if they all have the same thing. Well, they all have that policy. Yeah, they're not allowed to fraternize with the guests. That is correct. which seems like a sensible idea to me I'm I'm uh you know if if I were gay

um you know by fraternize I mean sex I mean whether you're allowed to just have conversations with them yeah I'm not sure I you know but um but I do think it's a good idea that they don't allow that why because I don't think it's the guess is they'd have a good time not to get fucked by the greasy comedian

and not and not called again and being told, yeah, I'll call you, like and you don't call? But what if you do call? I mean, I guess if you fall in love, sure, but if you're falling in love, then it's not, then you'll say, look, let's wait until we get back on land. I really think you're cool,

but we'll wait until we get back on land and I'll email you. I don't know. I mean, it sounds like they're like consenting adults. Why do they care? Like, why are they trying to control who, the guests are allowed to do whatever they want. Why do they care?

What difference does it make to the crew? They don't want because they want to have a good time. Well, if they wanted to have sex with the greasy comedians, and I mean greasy. That might sound really fun to some of them. Well, I suppose, but I think they're trying to avoid a situation where it's like, the comedian, fuck me and didn't call. You know, in the complaint notice.

And then he wouldn't talk to me the next day. Right, that would be awkward. You know, the same reason it's like, it's a bad idea, though, It's not forbidden for co-workers to, you know, I mean, there's been cases where, like, a waitress will have sex with a con. And then you don't see that waitress again. She's gone. Why? Because now it's awkward.

Where the comic comes in the next night with some other chick that he met. Yeah. You know, and now there's fucking bad blood and people are angry. You got baby mama drama going on? These are adult decisions. I know, but I'm saying it's best to avoid it if you can as an employer to avoid it. Now, Noam can't, I mean, reasonably tell his staff that they're not allowed to do that, but a cruise line can. You're only there for a short time, and it's not an unreasonable.

I'm not that, I'm not that, I don't have much of a sex drive anyway anymore. Oh, my God. I'm just saying, like, it sounds like the perfect storm, like the perfect thing to do for a single guy or girl. There's plenty of guys they can have sex with on the cruise. But there's a lot to... But there's something of feeling about comedians, isn't there? Well, not to me, but, yeah, theoretically. But, but, but, um, right.

Yeah, okay, if they want, you know, but they can't do it. I mean, if the girl's sufficiently beautiful, yeah. Yeah, okay, I'll take the risk. Okay, that's what I was going to ask you. And then the worst-case scenarios, I don't work that cruise line again. Okay, that's what I was going to ask you. You know, sure, but... So they would have to...

So, they would have to... Yeah, if they did all the work, I would never, I would never, uh... And just to let the audience know, the reason you say French is because I always enjoy practicing French. Yeah. They would have to do all the work because I'm not going to, I'm not going to take the chance and hit on them. And they'll be like, no, I mean, I just, I was here for the show. Not for Dick. But then, but if she came up to you and she's like, oh, you're so funny and I like you so much.

Yeah. I want to go back to your room with you. I don't know if she's French or Israeli. That's definitely not Israel. Room. Room is Israeli. It's more Israeli. Well, you know.

You're saying you would break it if she hit all the marks. Yeah, probably. But, you know, it would be tricky because there's cameras everywhere, you know. But I guess I wouldn't work the cruise again. All right. You don't enjoy them anyway. You're right. There's worse things that can happen.

Anyway. It does sound stressful. I know I'm always like, oh, I'm sure it's fine. You're great. This, but that really does sound. stressful. That's a lot of like back to back pressure. It's a lot of shows. Yeah, it's a lot of shows.

And I don't, it's not like at the comedy seller. It's, it's, it's like home. On the cruise, I always feel like it's like these people that, you know, I always feel like it's an adversarial relationship almost. Like I'm nothing like these people and, you know, I'm just, this, you know, this, you know, this, uh, Jew from New York. And I just always feel like. What can I tell you?

I mean, I don't know how they perceive it. Probably not like that. And I'm thinking that there's no way these people are going to like what I have to say. And they usually do. They usually do. They usually do, yeah. But that's how I feel, you know.

And I'm not getting over it as long as I've been doing this. Yeah. I want it to be at TV and, you know. As you know, I wanted to be Seinfeld. I know. You know, and if the shit don't go, right, you do another take. You know, unlike stand-up, where it's like, you know, you don't do another take.

No, but you've done this. I know, and it scares me every time. I know. I'm very sympathetic to that. I just, I would imagine that at a certain point. Yeah, you'd imagine. You'd imagine. You'd imagine.

But, you know. So it's like, oh, I'm a, these people aren't like, oh, look at this Jew from New York. No, they're not, but that's how I'm thinking. Right. You know. Were you the only Jew on the cruise, do you think? Well, no, not in the cruise, because I heard Hebrew. So there was some Israelis.

And I saw one Star of David. Okay. So... Did you go say hi to them, the Star of David people? No, I didn't say, hey, you know. I didn't say, hey, you know, it's like... When two people have the exact same car and they give each other flash their headlights or whatever. No, I didn't do that.

But no, it's not an overly Jewish, you know, space. It's not like the show, you mean? Well, the show wasn't Jewish. No, this show. No, it's the opposite of this show. There's nothing, there's nothing Jewish going on. And were you the only Jewish comedian? On the cruise, yeah.

So maybe they were like this Jew? Well, one was black, one was just a regular white guy, and one was me. So, like, hey, we got our guests here, I think. Hello. Yeah. Helen Lewis, hello. Hello. We don't have the sound.

Hello, can you hear us? Do you read us? I can. Oh, wow, that's a good connection. Okay, let me just give you... I'm using the internet at this time of night. It's fine. Oh, you're from overseas.

I am. Is that England? Yes. Oh, I do want to discuss the genius myth. You know, because you originally contacted to talk about Saudi Arabia, but I do want to talk about the genius myth. If that's okay. And difficult women, I believe, is the name of your other.

Yes. You can put a copy of that behind me as well just for like ultimate promo. But that's probably enough promo. This is Helen Lewis is joining us via the miracle of remote, what do we call? Teleconferencing, which when I was a kid, you know, you saw them the Jetsons and that was the future. And now here we are. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she writes about culture and politics, and she's the author of the aforementioned, Difficult Women and the Genius Myth.

And her weekly newsletter, The Blue Stocking, is at helenlwis.substack.com. Helen, how are you? I'm all right, thank you. It's the end of my working day. Are you in England now? I am. I'm in London right now. I'm off to California next week, but, yeah, at the moment, I'm in the moment I'm in the drizzle.

That is, and it's like she's right next door, Periel. How do you like that for technology? It's remarkable. And this is just the beginning, because the robots are coming. And from what I see on YouTube, anyway, we're all doomed. But anyway, I've been in an AI rabbit hole, you know, and everybody's predicting doom.

But forget about that. We're here to talk about other topics. So you were at the Saudi Arabia comedy festival. Yeah, I went to Riyadh to watch Jimmy Carr and Louis C.K. And actually, as it turned out, another comedian that I knew, Andrew Maxwell was one of their warm-up gigs. And actually, they had a Saudi comedian warming up for them, too. A Saudi was doing their comedy in, I assume, Arabic.

Well, no, he was doing it in English, actually. But the thing that was very funny is that he started off his set by saying, you know, I just want everybody to, you know, give a big round of applause to our beloved Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. and I just kind of tried to imagine what that would be like doing that in any comedy club in America where you just, you know,

I mean, maybe you could do it was around Mumdami, maybe he's currently at the stage of popularity where people would be okay with that, but it just, the thought of anybody doing it about British Prime Minister Kirstama was just very funny to me. I think when Obama was first elected,

you might have gotten away with that. It would have been weird. It would have been weird. You would have gotten, you know, a lot of a... No, it's not... It is weird, I'll grant you. It is weird, and that brings us to the controversy. Comics that performed at the Saudi Festival were criticized, it seems to me, for two reasons.

Number one is, well, comedy is supposed to be about free speech, and you sign something saying you can't make fun of the government or talk about religion. And the second thing is that they were criticized because the Saudi regime was repressive. and that you shouldn't be working, you know, you shouldn't be doing a comedy show for a repressive regime. Yeah. Which to me is the graver of the two accusations. Yeah, I mean, I end up interviewing Andrew Maxwell

about why he'd agreed to do it. And he said, look, if you're a comedian, any corporate event that you do will have a list of restrictions, right? Like, by the way, do be aware that the CEO was just caught having an affair with the head of HR or like, you know, this company is just about to be bidding for a takeover league that there are the idea that the rest of the time and performing

in america comedians are just completely completely free to say exactly what they want doesn't reflect lots of their commercial reality um and i thought that was a kind of a reasonable point i mean i still i think the reason i mean you probably have a greater insight into this than i do but you know i wrote a piece about joe rogan last year i went to austin to go watch um comedy at the comedy mother ship. And it just struck me that he'd kind of created an alternative power base to like New York and L.A. in Austin for a different type of comedy. And actually between the mothership and kill Tony, you know, there was a kind of strain of anti-woke comedy that had just basically kind of come out of Austin. And a lot of that was predicated around the fact that

you can't say anything anymore. I mean, I find it really funny. I made me feel the oldest person in the world because I was watching people doing what I would consider like 1990s level battle of the sexes material, but giving this kind of like, and of course, you know, you can't save this anymore, overtone to it. So I think that's what really drove that massive backlash, right, was that a lot of the comedians who'd taken the money. So Dave Chappelle, Jimmy Carr, Louis C.K., had been in kind of brushes with council culture and had kind of sort of said, oh, everything's getting very censorious over here, and then they'd gone to Saudi Arabia. I think that's what made it kind of exquisite and tempting for their peers. On the other side,

of the political divide to mock them. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess if that's, your brand is saying what you want to say and you've fought against that. But in my comment, I just worked on a cruise ship, and obviously there's numerous

restrictions there, not just in terms of what I can say, but in terms of what I can do. Go on. Well, I can't have sex with anybody. On the crew. Well, only the other people that work on the crews. Okay, none of the guests. No, none of the guests. Right, but you can have sex with the staff?

Sure. Okay. That seems an arbitrary distinction. Go on. Well, I was talking to Periel, and I thought it made perfect sense, because they don't want the guests to have a bad time. Yeah, they might ask for refunds. Well, just because you know that you could get drama.

When you're talking sexual relations, you're talking potential drama. Is it possible? Everything is going to go great, and she's had the best orgasm of her life, and that's all she wanted, and that's possible. But why can't it go poorly with the staff? They don't care about the staff. The staff is not a paying customer. But you're still trapped in essentially a floating prison with these people

for a certain amount of time, which must up the drama stakes, presumably. Well, that's, yeah, because it does, and a lot of the people that work on the ship, I mean, you know, they are in relationships with each other. And they oftentimes will go from ship to ship if they have another contract of another ship and they'll go with each other to that other ship. But in any case. Yeah, I think that's...

Sorry, you've just reminded me about the fact that my very first boyfriend who turned... I mean, he said he turned out to be gay. He was always gay. But he ended up becoming an acupuncturist on a cruise ship. And I remember just thinking, Is there a lot of call for that? Well, yeah, they have a spa on board.

That's why I got my haircut, in fact. And I got a backwax, too. No. Why, you really were bored. Was that the first time? No, I've had it before. I've had it before. But I don't want to get into that too deeply,

because we're not here to talk about that. We do. Well, if you have any questions about it, yes, it's painful. And yes, it's worth it. That's all you need to know. know because talk to me about the fact that I'm really interested in this kind of well I read I read Andrew Hankinson's book you know oh yeah don't don't applaud either laugh

or don't all about that kind of very turbulent period and about CK's return to public life and you know and it just struck me that there is a kind of meta story here that I have read a little bits and piece about and I've written some of it about the kind of divergence of American comedy and the kind of alternative power center and the reset I guess essentially that there's been and I'm just interested in how that has all played out from your point of view well from my point of view um I mean I just you know I don't I'm I take the audience that I get you know yeah whoever's there and so my my restriction is not because I signed something if I'm performing in the city it's the restriction of what the

audience is going to accept and what they're going to talk I mean my job is to make the audience laugh so now if you have your own audience and they're and they're you know they agree with with whatever political positions you might have whatever controversial opinions you might have then you can say what you want here at the comedy seller you have an audience they're here they're tourists they come from all over the country they come from all over the world and your job is to make them laugh. And so, you know, you have to consider whether you're going to make them laugh or whether they're going to be upset or offended. And so that drives, you know, that's the restrictions that I work under and that generally speaking comics work under when they're hearing. And I think all comics,

and, you know, they're trying to get laughs. They're trying to appeal to the audience. But if you've just sold out Madison Square Garden or The Beacon and people are coming to see you, specifically, It seems that you can get... Well, then you have a little more leeway. Yeah. Because they're your fans. And so you can say, you know, what you want to say. But even then you have to have some mindfulness, you know,

what they're going to want to hear. Yeah. I mean, I do have... I think there are sometimes left-wing comedians who get slightly... Maybe it happens to comedians more on the right, too. Get slightly trapped by their fans into... You know, they get into a slightly kind of abusive relationship where their fans only want a specific to...

up a material or they don't you know they want to kind of control them and they can become kind of quite unhappy about that I think you know what I mean sometimes when people build they come to kind of hate their own fan base well I think so yeah I've seen that happen yeah that that makes sense if your fans want a certain type of humor you know or expect you to have certain views and God forbid you change your mind over the course of time and decide oh well you know maybe I don't agree with what I said five years ago or 10 you I mean it could be tricky And it takes a lot of courage to... You can't do nuance, right?

You just cannot do nuance in political comedy. Like, it's just impossible. So over here in Britain, I do a couple of different things. I did the news quiz for a while, which is a radio show, like a satirical weekly radio show, and I do a TV show occasionally called Have I Got News for You? And it's kind of fascinating because obviously trying to explain anything is the antithesis of comedy, right?

You have to make jokes based on everybody's shared assumptions and understanding of reality. so it's kind of I don't know I just political comedy I think is really hard for it not just to become booing the other team

because that's just I think that's what well I think that's what a lot of it is but I don't not necessarily agree that you can't do nuance I think there are also some comedians who are

extremely successful and you actually don't really know what they think. Well, if they're not politically oriented, sure, you know. But I've heard comedians dump on the left and on the right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, and, you know, and successfully. Successfully. Yeah. I think that that's, like, a really interesting and... I do think at the extremes, there's a big fan base to be gotten. And, you know, and so, you know, I think that's where we're, a lot of the action is, but I don't think that there's no room for nuance.

No, but I guess I was thinking about it, because when I watched Rogan do stand-up, it was really interesting to me because I think, you know, he's a very, very successful podcaster. His stand-up set, even in the room, is not to me that good, that technically accompanist.

I think you can see the same thing when you look at the Netflix special, which covered most of the same material. It's just very all one note, like, I can't believe this kind of stuff. And it was just really fascinating to me because I thought the problem is with him is that he's so successful

that he has been robbed of the useful feedback that you would normally get from doing work in progress, right? He never ever has to come in to do a, you know, an open mic night spot where everybody's just going like, come on, impress me. He's performing to his audience, exactly. So it's like he's doing a groomsman speech, right? Everybody's on his side from the instant that he's in.

Anyway, I told this to a friend of mine who's a comedian who said that another very successful British comedian has a thing that he does when he does work in progress which is such a great idea, which is that he goes in and he deliberately stinks for like the first five to ten minutes absolutely loses the audience and then he tries to see whether or not

he can from that point win them back and that's his way of dealing with the fact that otherwise people have just delighted to come for a night out just to see him. And I just thought I really, I wonder how many really successful comedians think about that whether or not you just become trapped in a prison of your own fans, essentially. You lose what was good when you started out.

Well, Seinfeld has said that they give you five minutes. For five minutes, they'll tolerate anything you have to say, and then you have to really be funny. So are they going to laugh at anything you say, or do you still have to bring the goods, you know? I think you get a little bit of leeway. I don't think you can say anything. No, I think the novelty wears off after, you know, I don't know if somebody like Rogan or Seinfeld walks in the room.

Eventually, if you're doing an hour, the novelty will wear off, and I agree with you, you do actually have to start to be funny. Now, maybe if you're that successful, you don't actually give a shit. And sometimes, by the way, sometimes, even if you're not funny, you're still interesting. You know, you might be saying something interesting. you know, if you remember Nanette's Hannah Gatsby. Yeah. You know, that wasn't comedy

in the traditional sense. A lot of it was tragic. But it was still interesting. And I think a lot of comics at a certain level of success, because I have to, you know, I have to make the audience laugh hard, every, however, whatever the interval is. Or I don't come back.

But somebody that will come back, can, can perhaps get away with, you know, several minutes of telling a story and the punchline doesn't come until, you know, the very end of it. I think Jimmy Carr's a really good example of that because I think in terms of technical joke writing, he's incredibly, incredibly talented and kind of wordplay and reversals. But the problem is I don't like watching his specials usually because it's like being machine gunned with puns and jokes. You know, it's just like the stuckearch. tempo of it actually over kind of an hour or 90 minutes just becomes a bit deadening but in his

last special he started talking about the birth of one of his children and it was actually you know quite moving and sad and I thought oh there is something here you can do this right you can have a longer in the set and take it to a different tonal place because you can instantly come back in at any point you need with a with one those very zippy one liners and it would it seemed to be a much more kind of mature and sophisticated approach to to building a set right rather than than just being constantly, I will deliver one laugh per minute for 60 minutes and then I'll kick you out the theater. Well, you know, I mean, you'll bring that up. Let me, let me plug our friend Jeff Ross's show, which I guess is coming out on Netflix. It was just on Broadway. I don't know if you saw it or not. Call take a banana for a ride. For the ride. For the ride. Sorry. And I, and Jeff Ross is, you know, has been throughout his career. Are you not familiar with Jeff Ross?

The Roastmaster General? Oh, my God. He's so good, Ellen. He has short little jokes. His whole career, 30 plus years, he's been short little, you know, quick jokes. And this was a one-person show insofar as he told about. He talked about the tragic history of his family

and his own health issues mixed in with jokes. And it was on Broadway where the audience isn't expecting, as a comedy club, you know, the expectation of the own. owner and the audience is a laugh a minute or two. On Broadway of course they're used to a different sort of a thing and so

a lot of it wasn't funny but it was all, it was interesting. But it was also funny. Well, but some of it wasn't funny at all. That's right. And some of it was the quick one-liners and some of it was longer stories that had funny parts in it, but

it should be coming out on Netflix anyway, I believe they just taped it for Netflix. I also think the thing about Jeff is that is unique about him is that he's really quite lovable. And he's always roasting people, right? So it's sort of anathema to what you would imagine. And that also really came through in the show. No? Well, yeah, no. I mean, at the end of the show, he roasted the audience. He just sort of did an extemporaneous audience roasting. But people really, Jimmy Carr does that too and obviously now the big trend is is that all comedians put all their crowdwork clips

up on Instagram and TikTok so you get to watch a lot of it and it's like a kind of it's like going to a theme park isn't it like it's kind of you know you know what I mean like you get to go on the ride and the ride is you get personally slagged off by someone you've seen on TV this is clearly a huge thrill to

a load of people and they absolutely volunteer for it I mean I sat in the front row at that Rogan gig because I turned up very early on my own and I spent the entire time in terror that I was there was going to be some kind of like audience participation segment that I was yeah just my absolute worst nightmare well I don't do what you mean about lovable comedians though I thought it was really interesting because on that bill the same night were Shane Gillis and um Tony Hinchcliff um and I watched it was the first time I'd really tuned into

Tony Hinchcliff and and I just you could tell you have that you know that kind of sizzle that people have around them when they're the kind of hot shit new thing and everybody's kind of like they're dangerous they feel like dangerous well i've heard tell that yeah right he had that kind of glamour around him at the time which i thought was kind of fascinating the sort of stage presence and this incredible self-confidence and so i went and kind of really checked out killed tony after that but but it was such a he was so dislikable it was so arrogant the stage person was so arrogant and it just it presented such an interesting contrast to Shane Gillis who I would put in that bucket of people where I could just hear him say anything and like his cadence is very funny

and he just comes off like a big kind of Labrador even when he's saying things that I mean he is fascinating on the Saudi question right because he didn't take the money and actually in a very soft way he kind of roasted all the people that he did he said he went on a podcast and said you know you don't 9-11 your friends am I really going to go and do a set where I segue from kind of you know doing something funny into going nine eleven what was that all about guys and it was you know it was quite a bold thing to do and lots of other people in his competitive set were all were taking the money and i just think he's got it was just it was such a contrast between him and tony and gil tony hitchcliff that they represented to me to almost sort of two archetypes of american

comedy at the moment right one of which is the kind of slightly stolid every man who's just got funny bones versus this very high-status wolf kind of figure. Well, I don't know much about Tony. I know he has a very popular show, Kill Tony. I haven't seen his act. It's mean. It's very mean. Well, Kiltony, I know.

It's like they have new comics come on and they critique them, which is, I couldn't do it because I'm not good at critiquing people. I mean, if that's what it is. I think that's what it is. I don't know. No, it is exactly what they do. People, like, draw stuff out of a bucket and they come on. But these people are there, they're there for that.

They know what's coming, so, you know. Yeah. And then they get critiqued by, like, Jordan Peterson or Tucker Carlson as well, which is very funny to me, if you might remember a number of years ago. Well, I got critiqued by Simon Cowell on America's Got Talent. He gave me a... He gave me a... I was ready to ring his neck.

Again, not someone I would look to... Not someone who seems to, I would say, understand your kind of the human concept of... of humor in anything that I've seen from Simon Cowell. He seems quite a serious person. Well, I'm not even sure. You know, I said on the show, I said, look, when it comes to music, you know, you're the guy,

but when it comes to comedy, you don't know shit. And I was, yeah, I was, I think I was being, I think I was being generous because does he even know music? I don't know. I mean, you know, somebody, maybe he does, you know. I mean, he got famous because he, yeah, It was funny. It was a funny thing, the character

where he was the snooty British guy. You know, insulting people. It was a funny idea. I never thought I'd be at the receiving end of it. That's funny. Yeah, it wasn't quite as funny when he was doing it to me. What do you think of the argument

that, you know, for example, Jessica Carson went there and apparently she talked about being a lesbian and she ended up giving all the money to charity because she regretted going. But what about the argument? But, you know, she went there

and she talked about being a lesbian and maybe doing comedy in Saudi Arabia will help to bring them into the 21st century, will help to affect change there. Is change happening in Saudi Arabia? You were there, you know. Change is definitely happening in Saudi Arabia, but in a limited way that I think it's maybe hard

for people to understand from the outside, which is that their ambition, really as far as I can see it, is to become a kind of a normalized Gulf state, right? So that Americans regard them in the same bucket as kind of Qatar or Amman or the UAE, i.e., you know, different, a society run on different principles to ours, but not like overtly medieval and barbaric and objectionable in a kind of gothic and arresting way. And so that's why, for example, a couple of years ago, they stopped doing the public beheadings. They now do the beheadings in private, which is much less upset.

to people. Oh, my God. No, I mean, they beheaded a lot of people last year. I think, well, they executed people, and we assume that those are by beheading, you know, and there's obviously I can get to be up on my moral high horse about this being European, because we don't behead anybody in Britain, whereas who knows what, you know, Alabama is going to have to turn to,

we don't behead people. Can't get the drugs for, yeah, but like they're having terrible problems getting the hold of the drugs for lethal injections, right? So it could be coming. By the way, when you get beheaded, I just want to interject if I may when you get beheaded

you're conscious for a few seconds afterwards according to they've done studies on like rats and you know you're being behead like you're looking you can you're like oh fuck I got no body like for like 10 seconds

you know you know you you've been beheaded how you're still I've always worried that the circuitry is not an urban myth there was always a thing about people in the French Revolution who'd get guillotined and then they'd get slapped

in the face and then they'd get slapped in the face and then they look really pissed off about it. No, they've done studies that you still have, the stuff is still going on up there in your head. The nerves are still firing for maybe a good 10, 15 seconds after being beheaded. That sounds like a really long time. Well, it's a very long time, especially when you have no body. Jesus Christ.

And you know what's happening. So, you know, that's pretty horrifying. That's another reason not to behead people then. But yeah, so that's the thing about. As though you needed another reason. Well, well, we do execute people here. Now I'm against it, actually. Now you've convinced me it's a bad idea.

But like, so I went with my editor who's gay and married to a man. And we did have serious conversations beforehand about whether or not that was, you know, that was safe. Because technically the law is still on the statute that homosexuality is illegal. The truth about it is that there's been a big underground gay scene in Saudi for a really long time. And actually it was almost easy for women to be lesbians, but actually given that the segregation of the sex. was enforced so strictly. Actually, there were lots of women who did find fulfilling relationships with other women

and that wasn't really that difficult a thing to do in logistical terms. I mean, obviously, if your partner found out, you could have been in very serious trouble. So, you know, I think you have to be, you know, not think that you are kind of falling into that trap of thinking I'm an American coming over to tell these people that some thing called gayness exists

because that's not quite true. But I think it was, I think, to kind of go over there and be gay and unashamed about it, probably was something that was quite radical. Yeah, I think that was really brave, I mean, despite anything else. Like, I think that it's one thing to go over there and take the money and do, like, a very safe set about, you know, something that they don't care at all about.

But to get on that stage and talk about being a lesbian, I think is really brave. But I didn't, I just don't have a feeling that that's now one of the trip wires. So the background to all of this for people who aren't tuned into Saudi Arabian politics, and why would you be, is that the ruler of Saudi Arabia, the current Crown Prince, who's the effective dictator, his father is king, is a guy called Mohammed bin Salman, who is basically my age, he's like early 40s. And he took over in a coup, really, a couple of years ago, and then locked up a lot of his rivals in the Brits Carlton, Riyadh, where I've got to stay. And it kind of took over all the branches of Saudi society. been on this tear called Vision 2030, which is aimed at reforming Saudi society. And that's partly about let's find out what we might do when the oil's gone. And partly about normalising this country

in the eyes of the rest of the world. And so for him, I don't think he really, well, the other thing is that the House of Saud, right, which is the Saudi ruling family that's now been installed for decades has always been relatively socially progressive itself, right, in the sense that you would have lots of princes who would have a mistress in Monaco, maybe some boys in the south of France, you know, there was always a thing that what they did behind their closed doors or in their yachts in the south of France was kind of not, you know, any business of the clerics. But the ostensible way that Saudi Arabia was ruled since, really since 1979, when some fundamentalists stormed Mecca and took over the carba, the big cube, was essentially that you had this

very, very strict form of Islam. So there was always a kind of sense that the sounds didn't really, you know, themselves weren't particularly austere, but they ruled with the kind of consent and backing of the clerics who were. And so you had all these rules like men and women absolutely no mixing, you know, women weren't allowed to work, went to allowed to drive, all of that kind of stuff. And NBS really, his signature achievement really is kind of marginalising those fundamentalist clerics. So my sense is, I don't know his personal feelings on homosexuality, but he certainly doesn't see it as a threat to his rule, which is basically the thing that he cares about. So I watched Jimmy Carr and Louis C.K. do these sets that were full

of jokes. I mean, I say like fully 50% of Jimmy Carr's actors about paedophilia. Louis C.K. did a long riff about necrophilia and breastfeeding from his mother's corpse. I mean, I just, it was very funny. Some of these people will have never seen any stand-up comedy before. Obviously, lots more of them will have seen a huge amount of it through YouTube. But I just thought, imagine if your first stand-up comedy king is going to see Louis C.K. talk about breastfeeding from his dead mother. You'd probably be like, wow, okay.

Well, the response was a positive response from the audience, I assume. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think Jimmy Carr went down better because I think his was a more crowd-pleasing kind of set. Whereas the over, I found the CK set just really quite morbid, quite miserable. In an, you know, even for him, really, right? There was a kind of sense of like, oh, death, despair and decay. Everything's cut.

Everything that is born and shall die. Quite a lot of the routine was about his father being in a memory care facility, which you know you can be funny about but that fundamentally is a profoundly horrible and tragic thing to happen to your family so yeah so that was my impression of it is that yes I think in some ways it was brave to go over there and do that material

but it wasn't actually that likely to land you in prison the truly you know the real tripwire would have been going over there and doing something about Islam and the real ultimate really do you have a death wish thing

would have been to go over there and to do some jokes about Mohammed bin Salman. You know, he's, for example, he has like a tick that is never reported on, never mentioned that is just a completely forbidden subject. Wow. In the Saudi...

You mean like a facial chick, tick? Yeah, like a kind of Touretti type. My colleague Graham, we went over to interview him a couple of years ago. Graham Wood, really brilliant piece called Absolute Power. He said it's like he sort of looks like he's a kind of pelican swallowing a fish. but this is just this is one of the same just simply you don't mention it

you don't question whether or not he's got more wives than is reported in the press like he's officially got one you don't talk about the fact that you know he once went to Mauritius I think it was Mauritius and a load of models were shipped in and given SDD tests afterwards you know

this is all the kind of stuff that's in the book Blood and Oil which is by two Wall Street Journal reporters you know that's the kind of stuff that you don't you don't question, you don't question his, his power because he, you know, he took an enormous gamble by confronting the clerics, by confronting the rest of the royal family and seizing all this power for himself, and understandably, he is quite paranoid about losing it again. So, you know, I think you have to understand the different gradations of, of what is offensive or risky material

in terms of Saudi. That's fair. Well, they said one of the restrictions was you can't talk about religion. What if, so even making fun of Judaism or Christianity, that would have not been, how that would have been received? No, because C.K. came on and he said, I'm going to, I hope you don't mind, can I do a bit of material about my religion, Catholicism? And we all went, ha, ha, ha, ha. Because, like, everybody, these people, you know, we're not stupid. These, these audiences aren't stupid. They don't, as far as that audience is concerned, all other religions are, you know, lies and blasphemy.

So that was absolutely fine. If he'd come out there and done a bit of his best, you know, Prophet Muhammad material, I think there may have been a problem, yeah. There would have been like real repercussions, like actual danger to do any of what you just mentioned, right? I mean, even Western comedians will say that. There's a bit in the last Jimmy Carr special where he does a whole bit about Christianity. And then he says, people sometimes ask me, why I don't do jokes about Islam? and he says something like, it's very simple, I haven't got a fucking death wish.

And so, you know, that's not limited to comedians in Saudi Arabia, right? In the sense that what do angry Jews do when someone introduces their religion? Well, you'll hear from them on... Right. Send a really vicious email. As my mother would say, I'm going to say something. Right. Right, and like I was raised Catholic, and the Catholics had an unbeaten multi-century record of setting people on fire when they were rude about Catholicism, but have really eased up on that in recent years.

Well, you know, and they're the but the Catholics are a butt of a lot of priest pedophile jokes, which I think is unfair because the rabbis have been doing it too. And, you know, I don't want to talk about the imams necessarily. They don't do it, of course. but but anyway solid clarification yes just covering

just to make sure like our position is clear here but wasn't no molested by a rabbi I think he said anyway don't start spreading

no he was rumors anyway is it rather abrupt transition but I did want to talk about the genius myth because

yeah okay sure I mean that's yeah okay because well we don't have things are kind of connected They're connected because, you know, some of this, you know, whatever. I mean, you've got...

One of the things I write about in the book is that the way that lots of bad behavior in people is excused because, you know, they're producing great work or because people are worshipping them and they don't want to hear bad stuff about them. Like I talk a bit about the fact that I walked out halfway through, at the interval for MJ, the Michael Jackson musical. Because I just, it was, it's set the year before the child abuse allegations came out. And then the end of the first act is him complaining about how mean the press are to him

and how much they harang him. And you're like, but in retrospect, it was weird that you had that chimp and you invited those kids for sleepovers. Like, I think on this one, the evil press kind of had a point, didn't they? But, and it is sort of linked to the Saudi Arabian piece too,

because whenever I write a long read or a feature, I always try and think, is there a theme to this, right? There's the narrative and the story. Maybe this happens to people's comedy sets too. But actually, you should also, if it's if it's really going to work it should have a one word thematic summation of it and for me the the point of that Saudi piece the one word that sums it up is complicity because I've always felt that laughter is complicity right if you are laughing at a comedian's joke you've kind of you know

you're you're in kind of communion with them and sometimes you can end up laughing at stuff that you feel bad about or whether or not you take the audience with you into a political place they didn't really want go but you know or like you know if someone's doing really old school kind of sexist material do you really want to be the one that kind of like huffs out of that or do you just chuckle along because you don't want to kind of make a scene and then that's the same question about going and playing for Saudi Arabia and taking the Saudi Arabian money or essentially are you now complicit and everything that that regime does that's the question and so quite a bit of the genius myth is about complicity too and it's about the fact that we want these really big towering

figures. We want these sort of demigods to walk among us. And that's a problem when everybody's human and everybody has flaws. So what do you do if your hero has feet of clay? But wait a second. Sorry, what's the answer? Are you, are you complicit? Yeah, I mean, I think we are, but I think you have to, that's why I kind of want to resist the temptation to hero worship people. And I talk in the book about moving from lionizing people to maybe lionising moments or works of art or you know the excitement of an invention itself rather than kind of deciding that you know you want to just put a person on a on a pedestal because that does kind of make it really uncomfortable and I have a whole chapter that's about the kind of relationship

of the art and the artist and I think it just you draw it in different lines in different ways don't you like for me I would have said I you know I'm I'm very happy to separate the two and I don't have this need to kind of purge my record collection or library or whatever it might be of problematic people. But I did find in the moment that that MJ that I just thought everybody involved in this is trying to make money out of this guy's estate. And in order to do that, they're going to have to airbrush out a fairly large part of his life. And I, and I, I don't like, at that point, Billy Jean begins to lose some of its magic. So, you know, I don't think anybody's got a particular simple answer to those questions.

I don't know where you guys draw the line. You know, yeah, I mean, I would probably have difficulty going to see Bill Cosby do a stand-up, but I... Yeah, right. Let's hear Bill Cosby's new material. People are. You know, I don't know how I would feel about watching the Cosby show because I don't know if it's on anymore, if you can do it anywhere.

Well, sure, you can watch it. I think they pulled it from everything, but, you know, in certain cases, maybe I would have. an issue with it, but mostly I think I can separate the two. Well, I listen to Pink Floyd, you know, and I don't like, I personally, and I don't want to get into this, but I personally do not like his stand on Israel, Palestine. You might feel differently. But Roger Waters. No, Roger Waters, I think, has been pretty blatantly and openly anti-Semitic from my point of view. Like, I think it's gone beyond criticism of Israel. And yet I still can't get enough

of the Gunner's dream. See, that's insane. My husband has banned, and loves it, but has banned him completely, he won't listen to Pink Floyd anymore because Roger Waters is such a vicious anti-Semite. It's a really interesting question. I don't know. I mean, I think that like maybe Elon Musk is like an example of this. You see people in America driving around with Tesla's and bumper stickers on them saying, I bought this before Elon was an asshole or whatever they're saying. I think historically so many of our heroes are such flawed. Well, our genius is more likely to be flawed, you know, or is it just that we know about those flaws? Yeah.

We don't know about the guy, you know, the guy down the street who's not famous with the same flaws as the genius might have. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question, because I did wonder about this, like, what way around does the cause and effect go? Or is it just that if you give people a huge amount of power and or money, any latent mad tendencies now get to exercise themselves, right? Like, had Bill Cosby just worked in an office, would he have been able to perpetrate the sex crimes on the scale that he did, right? I think he would have. I think he would have.

He may have tried, but I'm not sure he would have been quite as accomplished at it, yeah. Well, he wouldn't have done it with, you know, you know, famous models, for example, but he might have done it with... Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, he would have done it with, like, the women in the office down the...

the hole from him. I mean, there are plenty of really famous and successful people who aren't like raping 60 women, right? Like, I think if you... Well, I haven't done the research, but that seems like a... But okay, someone or more of an edge case is maybe somebody like Picasso.

I was just going to say that, exactly. That's a great example. And he leaned into this kind of mythology of him as the Piccador, you know, the bullfighter. Yeah. And several people around. him kill themselves, including Pableto who drinks bleach, including one of the mistresses who's Pobolito is one of the, who's Pablito?

His grandson. Oh, okay. You know, it was a dark and troubled family. Branclusi referred to him as a vampire. There's a bit in Marina Picasso's his granddaughter's memoir where she says he needed blood in order to paint, basically, that he was, he was one of those people who is stormy and self-involved and becomes the sun around which everybody else revolves. And I also think the other thing that kind of really came through to me when I was

writing about this stuff was the fact that we have to be acknowledged that some people, this is going to sound a very harsh way of saying this. Some people like being miserable, but close to somebody who's burning incredibly brightly. So to go back to your example of Elon Musk, it's really interesting when you read Character Limit, the book about his takeover of Twitter, there are several people who decide to like throw their lot in completely with the mad i'm going to work 25 hours a day and sleep under my desk you know kind of macho bullshit and sure enough about six months later you know Elon summarily fires them or they wash out or whatever it might be but they they kind of go along with

this you know his email that said he wanted people who were extremely hardcore because they think they're close to something dangerous and exciting and incandescent and that's kind of more exciting than living a normal, homely bourgeois, boring life. I think you see that pattern a lot, I think. If you are 200 billion, you have to be a bit of a nut because that means you are worth a billion and set the alarm for the next day. But also that you must just think, I can't believe that anybody who's like that ever thinks, gosh, like luck had an enormous part to do with this, right?

One of the things Walter Isaacson says in his biography of Elon Musk is that he has an incredible appetite for risk. And so one way of thinking about Elon Musk, apart from all the others, is that he's the guy who made, you know, seven massive bets and all of them paid off. And we haven't heard about all the other people who, you know, crashed and burned in that situation. So from his point of view, he can't possibly have been somebody who was, sure, talented, but also enormously lucky or in the right place and the right time. He has to be special, divine, chosen by the universe. And that's a pattern mentally that you. you see with lots of those incredibly

uber successful genius type people. But there are people that are, I assume, that are undeniably geniuses and that luck was, although luck is always there in the background, that was less of a factor. Were the Beatles lucky?

I mean, we bring up the Beatles a lot in this show because Noam, who's not here tonight as a musician and a huge Beatles fan. The Beatles, a very good example. I have a couple of chapters about the Beatles in the book. because they do illustrate the thesis, right? They were undeniably incredibly talented. You know, there were loads of other bands

that came out during the same time. And you would not have looked at the Beatles in 19... Whenever the first album comes out, early 60s, and said, you know, undeniably, these are going to be the greatest musicians of their generation because they were playing jingly-dangly three-minute, you know, Mersey Beat Pop, and they just matured incredibly as musicians.

I just read John and Paul over the summer, which is Ian Leslie's account of the relationship between the two and their songwriting. And it's just this most extraordinary account of musical development. You know, they just brought such different and complementary things. But at the same time,

if they hadn't gone on the Ed Sullivan show, the famous chat show appearance or variety show appearance that made them break America, you know, they turned up that morning as a band who were, you know, very little known. the next day they woke up as literally the most famous people in the world pretty much.

And that was just, you know, that was an extraordinary stroke of luck that this was a time in which if you think about the fact the baby boom generation, there were just a lot of young people around at the time. Youth culture was so much bigger and more vibrant than it is today because the, you know, the demographics were just so different. You had just got television into American homes, you know, a sufficiently large number that, you know, would now be expected to watch a show like that and be able to talk about it with their friends afterwards. It wasn't the case that only the richest person on the block would have

a TV. There are lots of things like that. They were phenomenally lucky in lots of other ways. You know, the original drummer dropped out and they got Ringo, which I think was enormously important for the stability. They booted him. They booted him. They booted Pete Best. And then, but also Stuart Sutcliffe was with them in Hamburg and they kind of got rid of him. And then they were very lucky in finding Brian Epstein, their manager, and were very lost after him. They were extraordinarily lucky to find George Martin as a producer. And they found him, they loved him because he produced comedy specials.

And they loved the timing of him, his producing the goon. The goonies. Let me get the start the way around. No, the goons. There we are. The goonies is the American film. But they, and Spike Milligan. He, they thought he had a real sense of timing because he produced comedy specials.

But, you know, he took notoriously, obviously, Paul never learned to read music. He took these incredibly naturally talented musicians and he shaped them into people with orchestration behind them. You know, they would have wild ideas and he could actually help them realize them. And they were so lucky to meet him. And there's all of those, you know,

the fact that they just had George Harrison, an incredibly good songwriter, just knocking around like a kind of third reserve goalkeeper, is kind of extraordinary to me. So, yeah, I think they're a really good example of the fact that they didn't. What about the fact that Paul and John found each other? There might have been some sort of synergistic effect that either of them separately. Although they wrote, they did write a lot of great stuff separately,

but together they seem to be more than the sum of their parts. Oh, undoubtedly. And I think you can see that. It's a day in the life, which has got a very obvious Paul section, a very sunny, upbeat, Paul section, and a very kind of dreamy, more. sarcastic john section you know that the two tones that they brought to the music also you know just incredibly complimentary in that sense i have a i have a chapter which is actually you know the

richard curtis film yesterday oh yeah yeah where they the guy wakes up and and nobody's ever heard of the beetles and nobody's ever heard of the beetles and the thing that i don't think that many people know is that's based on an original script by a guy called jack bath which is called cover version and in his version a guy wakes up and he's the only one who remembers the Beatles and he's like this is amazing. I'm going to make loads of money. People are going to be delighted to hear Eleanor Rigby for the first time. And it doesn't work. And it doesn't. And it doesn't work. And Jack said to me that he thinks, you know, the difference maybe between him and Richard Curtis is that, you know, he wrote a couple of episodes of The Simpsons. He's had a decent career, but not a kind of blessed, golden stellar one,

is that he doesn't think that if, you know, it's fundamentally optimism versus pessimism about whether or not talent will out, that, you know, he doesn't think if you came along and you, you, you, you play Love Me Do now. Love Me Do, I don't think... It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen with Love Me Do, but a day in the life... I think it's a more difficult question whether a day in the life or in my life or let it be. Those are long and winding road.

I think those might, you know, catch on. I don't think Love Me Do, I think you're right about Love Me Do, but those other ones... I think it's a more difficult question. to get through, they had to get through, please, please me, in order to get to the later albums. And they were very lucky that they were in an environment when they were able to do so and grow and development. And the other thing is that they were incredibly lucky

about the time in which they were performing, right? And that they took a huge amount, particularly from American girl groups. You know, they loved Little Richard. You know, they were a band who were completely shaped by the stuff that they've been obsessed with as teenagers. And I think this is something that maybe, and I'm interested here by like,

how this relates to you from a kind of comedy perspective. Because one of the things that's very hard for people to kind of intuitively grasp is the fact that to be really good at what you do, you need to know where the kind of bleeding edges. You need to know what everybody else in your kind of area is doing. And it's one of the reasons why minorities, I think, have traditionally really struggled is, you know, if you were a woman, you couldn't be a member of the Royal Society

and find out what the latest experiments people are doing and hear the paper being read out on evolution by natural selection. You know, if you were Jewish for a long time in America and in the 20s, you couldn't go into an I believe university because there were kind of pretty hard quotas. Obviously, if you were black in America, there were a whole set of restrictions on your life. But, you know, whether or not you could join the Royal Society of Art and learn how to do life drawing, you know, many of the best female artists before 1900 were the daughters of painters themselves, so people like Artemisia Gentileschi or Elizabeth Vigille-Lebrun,

because their fathers taught them to paint. if they'd been just a naturally talented female painter, they would have never got the academic training that they needed in order to be able to, you know, not just have acquired the skills needed to do it, but also just to know what everybody else was doing, like where the frontier was. And I think maybe that's something that we underrate

that kind of sense of existing in an ecosystem. And I think it probably is very true of comedy, right? You have to know what everyone else is doing. So people don't go, oh, that material is pretty hacky. Right. I need to know what they're doing to know what's just been done to death so I don't do it. And I need to know the level that I can try to surpass it. You know, I guess it's like with sports. I mean, you know, if you watch gymnastics from the 1950s, it's like they're doing somersault.

And then, you know, and then somebody had to surpass that, and then somebody had to surpass whatever level that was. And so I get motivated. I suppose it's the motivation, you know, when you see somebody doing something and you're like, okay, I need to go back home and get back on the drawing board because I'm not at that level. So if it were for that person, I might be satisfied with what I've been doing and say, oh, what I've been doing it? I can't do better.

This is as good as it can be. You see somebody doing it better and you say, oh, fuck, it could be done better. I better work on doing it better because it can be done better. Have you ever seen it? Have you ever watched a set? and it's just made you completely rethink what comedy can do. Like, have you ever had that kind of... Thomas Coon called it the paradigm shift, you know,

when just, you know, like Einstein coming up with special relativity and kind of demolishing Newtonian physics. Have you ever watched a set that's been that good where you've just gone? I didn't know a person to do that on a stage. There have been, you know, I mean, I don't know if I'd go that far that it just completely changed my whole perspective of what comedy can do, but there are people that, you know, I would say David Tell when he's at.

his best and uh and this guy i mean it's this guy no one's ever heard of named rick shapiro that no one's ever heard of and he never has no one ever heard of because he didn't he didn't you know he he first of all he's got health problems so he's not performing anymore but he's just way out there and you you can probably find his stuff online but i definitely think that there are it's a lot of stream of consciousness stuff and very non-linear type stuff and but there are people who are extraordinarily unique and you find them and you're like, wow, that's very different, right? And I think that even the most successful people in the world have heroes and people that sort of shift what they thought was possible.

But these people, by the way, aren't making me think, I got to do what they do. Right. Because I can't do what they do. But I got to do what I do better. Yeah. you know I get in my lane I got to up my game in my lane because I you know I can't necessarily do what other people do what Rick Shapiro's doing I can't do that I can't do I'm not going to do and I can't do what David Tell does but I got to do what I do at another level or try

right but also you might pick up bits from them right if you just see somebody who you know stretches a silence for an uncomfortable long time and then finds a very cool way to pull it back or you know what I mean like it's in the same way that that's true you know you you know I mean which musicians might do the same thing about you know retuning a piano in a certain way or like just you know like little tiny bits of craft that you kind of pick up from other people which is again like you just you can't be a comedian on your own never having seen at any other comedy right and also you need an audience that is kind of literate as well to some extent right They know what part of the fun of it is to play with what they're expecting to happen next and whether or not that does actually happen.

Well, it's so interesting to hear how you described what you saw in Riyadh because I think that when you're performing stand-up, it's so, you know, what you're talking about is generally like relative to what your audience is, like jokes that you could do in New York City on the upper west side and, you know, in my case, like maybe a very Jewish show for. example, would be jokes that would not work in some... Well, you can't talk about Zabars in Riyadh. Right. Exactly. Like, the references are really particular. They just don't make sense in, like, you know, Idaho or something. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I said this in my piece, actually, which was that, you know, like, it was quite funny to see, I mean, obviously, that the interesting thing about the Saudi audience is they must all have VPNs because they all clearly consume a lot of this content, even you know, even that which is, you know, to sort of allegedly frowned upon within Saudi Arabia. But Louis C.K.'s material, he did one about, he did a whole line about, you know, how it's always raining. You know, how she hates it when it rains.

I was like, these people very rarely see, I mean, this is notoriously a massive desert. You know, that was really funny. And there was one of, there was a whole riff about how there's a woman in his building who kind of elderly woman discussed him by wearing a tube top and a crop top, like a shot. pants and are cropped up and I was like again still considered quite spicy here to like show your ankles so they're not like this is this is not a relatable and then he did a whole bit about

jury duty and of course there are no jury trials in that's really funny extremely opaque court system but the interesting thing about it is that that it was it was the true triumph of america really because people still laughed at all that material because clearly they you know watched law and order and c s i so they like they're familiar with the concept of a jury trial even though sad Arabia does, has no such thing. So I guess there is a kind of broad, globalized American culture that you can rely on. Well, that's good. We're glad to hear that that's at least still the case. It is still the case. I mean, like, Andrew Maxwell did an interesting joke because he's Irish. He did a joke that he said, you know, I come from a small island that's full of alcohol, Bahrain. And they,

they went wild for that. And I thought, oh, right, is Bahrain? But Bahrain is an island? But, well, yeah, it's, of course, a little causeway. But it's pretty, no, too. Apparently, if you're a Saudi, it's like you're kind of, I'm saying, it's like they're Cleveland. It's like their fire island. It's their province town. Yeah, whatever you want to, like, so.

The town they like to make fun of it. Anyway, Helen Lewis, we have to go now. It's probably for the best. Yes, no, we didn't really talk on topic at all. Sorry. Well, we did, we did talk a lot. on topic, but it's okay. I think the topics we did talk about were

very interesting and engaging. We thank you for coming. I love talking to you. It was really interesting to, um, here. Well, um, I'm in New York a fair bit, so hopefully I'll see you. Well, yes, certainly come down. No, but I'm sure love to meet you. He's the owner of the club. I don't know where he is, but he's not here now.

But, uh, you've lost him. The book, and by the way, the book sounds fascinating, the genius myth. I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to read. Is it translated into French by any chance? It's translated into American. What, is that not enough? Well, no, because I like to read books in French to practice my French.

So I prefer to read in French. But I'll read it in English if I have to. Where can people find you, Helen? I'm afraid it's not in French at the moment. However, yeah, I can phone you up and read it to you in a French accent if you'd like. I'll cut and paste it into Google Translate. Yeah, that'll do it. Where can you find me?

You can find me at the Atlantic where I'm a staff writer, and I have a weekly email substack, which is Helen Lerner. Lewis.substack.com. Okay, thank you, Helen. Thank you so much. We'll see you in New York very soon, hopefully. Bye. Bye.

Bye, bye. Oh, that was a good interview. It was excellent. Helen Lewis, we have with us, by the way, stopping by joining us. Sheba Mason is here. Testing. Oh, we got it. We got it.

Okay. Sheba Mason is, she's here for the New York Comedy Festival. Yeah. Well, she lives in New York, apparently. I thought you lived in Florida. I see you all the time. I thought you were coming up from Florida. Well, when the last time I saw you?

I thought you had. moved. My sister said you live in Florida. No, no, I was there. I was there for, you know, for the winter. Oh, okay. All right. Why is your sister? Because my sister met you at a show. Yeah, she met me at the Boca Black Box. Yeah, and she wanted to hang out with you, but you were a bit, I don't know, whatever.

No, we hung out a little. Okay. Anyway, she's here. Lovely gal, your sister. Yeah, she's all right. Which sister? The older of the two. The grandmother. She's a grandmother.

The one whose house I want to? No. No, the other one. Okay. Yeah, she's a grandmother. She, I don't, I'm glad that's relevant, but I brought it. I'm sure she loves that. You brought that up.

What is that? Well, she loves being a grandmother. It's like the greatest thing that ever happened to her. What does that make you? A great uncle. A great uncle. Yeah, a great uncle. How many babies are?

She's got one grandchild, but another's coming soon. Wow, Mazel tov. Yeah, mausel. You know, yeah, I guess it's okay. Do you like, wait, do you like being a grand uncle? Well, it's no different than being an uncle. Equally as you don't do anything. You know, it's another text, happy birthday text once a year.

It's another one to remember. Doesn't, you know, yeah. You know, but, you know, she's cute. You know, the little, you know, the great, great knees. You like babies. Yeah, babies are great. You think, you know. Any other questions about my great knees?

How old is she? I think she's two. I'm not even talking about it. you. Hi, Shiva. Nice to see you. Thanks for having me. Yeah. She was once again repriezing her play. Yeah. So tell us. So I was so happy when I got the call from Lewis Ferranda about the Jackie Mason

musical. You know, Lewis, you know. Yeah. What's he doing now? He was the Booker at Carolines for... And he like runs the whole festival. Oh, and he runs a festival. Yeah. It's Caroline. Like, Carolines is the club closed down. Mm-hmm. Are they still involved with the festival? Festival? Yeah. Caroline Hirsch yourself? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's like under her auspice. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh... By the way, Caroline's is now a ping pong plays. I know. It is. So depressing when you

walk by. Well, I don't know. I mean, ping pong's pretty, you know, pink pong's kind of in now. Oh, God. Come on. There's a million other places they could have had ping pong. Well, look, I didn't work there that much anyway, to be honest with you. Oh. I think that was the first place I ever performed. I performed. I was the first place I ever did a taping at was Carolines. Yeah. And back in, I don't want to say the date because it's horrifying.

Horrifying date. Do you still have this? I mean, Sheba was barely born, I think, at that. And it was in 1995. Yeah, it was barely porn. You know, so this is going back 30 years. But anyway, and Ferranda was there then. Well, yeah, it's...

He looks good. But nobody... Guy works out, he looks good. Nobody leaves his business. I mean, you're leaving a body bag. Nobody gets out alive. Once you're in, you're in for life. So anyway, so...

On that note. Anyway, so yeah, so my play is called the Jackie Mason musical. It's been touring around. It was in Canada. That's the guy who plays Jackie Mason. We just did a show today at the Triad Theater. And we've got two more coming up. And my mother wrote it.

It's about her 10-year relationship with Jackie Mason. It's a whole big musical comedy with the cast of eight. And there's subplots. It's not only about Jackie and Ginger. I play my mother, Ginger. And I like the fact that it's not just about them. You know, there's like a whole long subplot going on, like any musical you would see, you know.

So exciting. Well, you have a, your relationship with Jackie was a complex one. Obviously, we've talked about that. But you still have great fondness for him, even though you didn't really have much of a relationship with him. I revere him, you know? And that's still, you still feel that way? Yeah, I revere him.

As a comic. Yeah. Like you might revere, say, a Dan Natterman. Exactly. Except I revere Dan Maderman even more. Do you think? All right. But like, you, you're a fan of his comedy.

Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, I really believe he was, I mean, you know, he was one of the best, you know. You know. Yeah, I think so, too. Yeah. I think he was certainly in that genre in particular. In general, he was a great comic, but within his lane of Jewish style kosher deli comedy,

he far surpassed anybody else in that lane. And he started out with a lot of Jewish stuff, and then he continued on with like the Jews versus Gentiles kind of thing. but it's funny because I'll perform in like Syracuse or like some middle of nowhere, you know, like Louisiana or like, and people know who he is. I feel like people over 43 like know who he is. I feel like that's the sweet spot.

Like even if they're Jews, Gentiles, you know, and whenever I only do the Jackie Mason joke on the road where I don't really do it in the city, you know, with the kids, the woke kids, but like I'll do it on the road where I talk about that I'm his daughter. And I'm so like amazed. It's like, wow, everybody's a place. applauding. Everybody likes him. I can't believe it. And that's really impressive. And I'm like,

wow, that's... How does your mother feel about him? Does she have that same sort of... I mean, obviously, they broke up, you know, and there was acrimony there. Sure. But does she still feel about him the way you do? Is she still a fan? You know, it's weird. Like, she is a fan, and she just didn't ever teach me resentment. You know, they were together 10 years. And she is remarried. She's married to a... Yeah, I think I met the guy.

Oh, yeah, you met him. met him at your own. Yes, I remember that. I was running a show, and I deliberately booked you because I thought my stepfather would like you, and he did. That's my demographic, 60-something, 3. There are a worse thing. Which is why my TikTok is not exploding. Well, let's not forget my mother loved your book, remember? Oh, okay. Remember my mother read your book? Oh, yeah.

And then I read your book. It was quite a book. It's excellent. It was a really great book. I read it for a second time. Oh, all right. Well, thank you. Did you? Yeah. Iris Vero before COVID, available on Amazon. And it made me cry the second time, too. It's really touching.

It's funny. It's everything. I might write another book. But I'll try to, if I write another book, it's going to have to be like something that's going to sell. Like, you know, somebody's got to get murdered or somebody's got to go missing or somebody's got to be aliens. Don't put aliens, please. Oh, all right, maybe not aliens. Just put ice in there.

I'll put illegal aliens. It must be really special that your mom wrote it, right, as opposed to, I don't know. Some, like, random other person. Like, it's such a personal. Yeah, it is very personal. Thank you. That's a great question. It is really personal and it's tender.

Yeah. You know, there's like a tenderness there. And, like, you know, the guy who plays him, she wants him to be portrayed as, like, you know, a really adorable, funny guy. who like is so charming and there's not a lot of resentment in there and it actually tells a little bit of his story like we address the Ed Sullivan thing where he may or may not have given it Sullivan the finger

but he didn't give the finger you know it's just a hearsay he was really one of the first victims of like the cancel culture you know because he actually didn't give the finger he was blackballed from Ed Sullivan and from network TV in general yeah he was in the jerk I know that

I mean right he wasn't in the he was in the jerk Oh, yeah. He played like a gas station guy. And he was in History of the World Part 1. Yep. Where he was on the wheel, that they were spinning the wheel. Yeah. But these were small parts.

He wasn't a well-known guy until he was about 57. Right. He's my go-to whenever I think to myself, oh, I'm getting old. I'm like, well, Jackie, you know, Jackie was 57. Yeah, exactly. And same with Rodney. But what happened was he was really doing well, and he was on the end. Sullivan show and Lyndon Johnson had to cut them off. You know how like you're supposed to do like your

perfect five or six minutes on a talk show, right? And Lyndon, they, they cut them off because Lyndon Johnson had to make an address. It was an emergency address about Vietnam. So Jackie went like this, not that. Okay. He was so confused. Like, why are they cutting me at two minutes when, you know, he didn't do this. He did that. So for people who are just listening and not watching. She put the no, the finger on the nose like you'd go to a little kid like, nah, nah, nah, nah. Yeah. So because of that, yeah, yeah, that's a really good description. I can't describe it better. He didn't stick up his middle finger. He did that. It was just like a stupid gesture, not an obscene gesture. So, but that was Lyndon Johnson, okay? Now, here's the trajectory. So because of that, his career was set back so badly that he was in Florida, traveling around for $10 a ticket. He met my mother. A ticket, but, you know, back in those days was, you know, $50. Yeah, I don't know.

I feel like everything. Maybe it was $2 a ticket. Yeah. It was very low price for a ticket. Okay. So then he meets my mother at Wolfie's delicatessen, and sooner or later, I was born. So if you really go back in time, if Lee Harvey Oswald hadn't killed JFK... Wait, was Jay...

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, then Lyndon would never be president. Then Lyndon would never be president, then I would never be born. so when people ask me why do I have a poster of him of Lee Harvey Oswald on my wall that's why that's really funny wait but if Lyndon Johnson always wanted to say that but but but Kennedy might have interrupted the the broadcast and yeah he doesn't interrupt he wasn't really an interrupter hilarious Shiva he wasn't an interrupt there he was very chill

I've said this to you before but I think even on this show like I really like admire your capacity for graciousness in forgiving your father for... Oh, thanks. Thanks. Like what I think is almost

impossible, really. I don't know that I... Thank you. I don't know that I like 100% forgive him. Forgive him. I understand. Sort of. Just to clarify because he didn't, he didn't

recognize you as his daughter. He didn't recognize me until he was court ordered to when I was two. Until he had to take a test. A blood test. Yeah. This was pre-Mori Pavich, but he took the test and I'm not the father.

Let's be honest about it. If I was, just, just, you know, anyway, whatever. But he did eventually pay child, he had to pay child support. And then it was recognized. It was all over the news. And back then it was kind of like a bad, thing to have a child out of wedlock and how old were you i was two at that time and a show

opened on broadway and it was like really we were on the cover of like a lot of newspapers wow her an affair entertainment tonight um sally jessie raldo how sally jessie raffaelle makes a living i don't know let's be honest about it is a woman she did i don't know what she does it's not like today she's like jana i don't know it's like today if you don't have an out of wedlock kid It's like, you're not even cool. But like back then, it was like really unheard of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, especially because he was a man of religious faith.

He was, right? He was a former rabbi or canter. Yeah. He considered himself to be a very religious guy, I guess. Yeah. Certainly very Jewish, but very Jewish doesn't necessarily mean religious. Mm-hmm. So was he kosher or just kosher style?

He was kosher. You see, because I'm kosher style. You are? Yeah, my comedy act is, I feel, is very Jewish, because, not just because of the way I look, but because of the self-deprecation, which I think is a particularly Jewish way of approaching comedy.

I thought you were like actually asking, did he keep kosher? Well, I just meant was he Jewish in religion or did he just Jewish cultural, you know, like? He started out an Orthodox Jew, and then he turned into like just completely debauchous. It's amazing how no matter what we find a way back to this. And that voice of his, is that real?

because it just seems so exaggerated. It was pretty real. Or if you talk to him, like, he's like, Hey, how you doing? You know. No, that was, like, real. Like, he sounded like that all the time. It seems like he's doing a pat,

like almost like he's like, it was kind of his voice, but then he just anted it up to like level 10. Yeah, you would think, but like that's really how he sounded all the time. Like if he's having sex, you know, that's how he's talking. Yeah.

You know, you like it. Nobody wants to think about what their dad sounds like having sex. Don't worry. I've had to think about it a lot to doing this play. but in the play we do answer the question because he did pass away and we answer the question which I can't answer on the air because they want people to come and find out the answer did he leave you anything in the will and I have an answer but I can't tell you on the podcast and where can people see the play well the play is going to be at the triad theater we've got

two more performances in the new york comedy festival that's going to be Saturday night at nine and Sunday night at eight and then Then, in December, it's going to be at Rodney's. Oh, wow. Yeah. Where Jackie actually used to perform. Back when it was called Danger. Yeah.

So there's like good vibe back. I got in trouble with Noam for performing at Rodney's on New Year's Eve, but that's another story. Well, no, you got in trouble. Well, because I canceled the spot. Yeah. Oh, well, that's different. Yeah, because. Not for performing there for canceling.

Right, right. You're right. That is different. That is different. Well, I, I, because it was like I asked Esty to move my, I didn't cancel. I asked Esty to, can you please move my spot? a little bit later so that I can perform also at Roddies and make a little bit of a little extra a few shackles a little bit extra but anyway so okay so Saturday and Sunday Saturday and

Sunday and in December at Rodney's going to be Christmas week December 26 through the 30th and what better way to celebrate Christmas than with a play about the least Christian man of all time thank you Shiba for coming that's our show what a show we had yeah it was Thanks so much for having me. We covered everything today. And we'll see you next time. And Norm will be back next week. And hopefully your back will be feeling.

Oh, yeah. You know, I totally forgot. My back, I think, is cured. Because my back was I fucking twist it. And, like, you know. That's the worst. Yeah. And I didn't even do anything.

I just moved to the right. And then all of a sudden, well, that's what happens when you're in your 50s. Anyway, that's our show. I think my back is good, but I'll know when I stand up. That's the true test. Okay. Thank you everybody for listening.