The Daily Show: Ears Edition - The Interviews | Evan Gershkovich, Marlon James, CMAT, John Wilson

Episode Date: October 4, 2026

Catch all of the past week's great guests in one place.  Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent Evan Gershkovich joins Jon Stewart to talk about his new memoir, “This Cursed Beautiful Land: A Russian-American Story.” Gershkovich, who spent 16 months imprisoned in Russia on false espionage charges, breaks down how a source, a second meeting, and a Putin pep talk to the FSB landed him in Russian prison. He discusses growing up in a Russian-speaking home, what drew him to reporting in Russia, life pre-imprisonment, and how he ultimately became a bargaining chip in a Putin-led prisoner swap scheme. He also weighs in on what a post-Putin Russia might look like and the totalitarian warning signs he sees in the U.S. Booker Prize-winning and bestselling author Marlon James sits down with Jordan Klepper to discuss his new novel “The Disappearers," which The New York Times called "the novel of the decade, if not the century.” James discusses his childhood in Jamaica, where he hid his sexuality by learning to disappear; his use of violence and sex in his work; and literature’s role in keeping a historical record for those typically erased from mainstream history. Irish musician CMAT joins Jordan to discuss her acclaimed third album, “Euro-Country.” They talk about how she weaves profound lyricism with Western melodies, what it means for her music to embody “funeral humor,” why the Irish psyche loves country music, and how the title track examines the repercussions of politicians’ actions. John Wilson joins Jordan to discuss his new documentary, “The History of Concrete.” The creator of “How To with John Wilson” shares how he finds beauty in the mundane through his unique shooting and editing style, how he scored an uninterrupted shot of Kim Kardashian at a fancy dinner party, and what happens when you spend your entire film budget on a creepy wax museum in Rome. Jordan also pitches an idea for Wilson’s next documentary project. -- The Daily Show airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central. Stream full episodes on Paramount+ Follow TDS: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Reporter, he was imprisoned in Russia for 16 months on false espionage charges. He writes about his experience in this cursed, beautiful land, a Russian-American story. Please welcome to the program, Evan Gershkovich. The book is phenomenal. Thank you so much. Beautiful writing. I'm telling you, there's an ancient axiom, an old saw, if you will. I don't know why they imprisoned journalists, because you remember everything. When are they going to learn?

You know, we'll see. Maybe if the book fails, that's a good idea. No, stop. No. When you were working in Russia for many years. Five and a half years at that point. Five and a half years. Your family background is Russian. Yep. And so you've always been drawn to this land. What drew you to Russia in the first place with that? I mean, I was working here in New York as a reporter. Well, I guess as a news assistant, I was trying to become a reporter. Okay. And Russia, I think, has drawn reporters for forever because of how fascinating it is.

danger kind of partly it, right? Things are always happening, developing. And so I was seeking out reporting opportunities. And I had colleagues at the, I was working at the New York Times, and colleagues were like, you speak Russian. You spoke Russian at home. You know, go take advantage of that. And there was an English language outlet working back then in Russia called the Moscow Times. Yes. They needed a reporter. I went over there. And it was incredibly fascinating when I got there. In 2017, that was. The writing that you have, I think we obviously have a caricature in this country about what Russia is like in the way that I think you sort of anywhere you live in middle America they think of New York but you can't even walk I was stabbed four times on

you know and then they get here and go like it's just musicals like the caricature of the way you write about Russia in 2017 you don't feel necessarily the autocracy in the way this is pre-Ukraine invasion yes well I mean not right right because he he already Crimea had happened Eastern Ukraine had already happened. An opposition activist or politician called Boris Nemtsov had already been murdered in the streets near the Kremlin for speaking out against the decision to forcibly annex Crimea. But it's a kind of, it's a kind of cosplay democracy at that point. So it's not a democracy, obviously, but they're trying to make it seem like it is.

And so they would allow, you know, Russian journals were facing pressure, but they could work. So independent newsrooms still functioned. the late opposition leader Alex de Novolny was still drumming up protests when I arrived. That was kind of like the big news story when I was there. At that time, as an American Russian journalist, did you feel more in a protected bubble than maybe some of your Russian counterparts might have felt there? Did you feel more protected? Yeah, absolutely.

So foreign journalists were treated as kind of like quasi-diplomats at that point. Right. You, you know, the Russian government was trying to censor information for its own people, for its own audience. But it wanted to project an image of being a normal country. And so foreign journalists help you do that. You know, you write for, you know, right for the world. The economy is doing fine. It's a normal place.

Like, it's a modern, you know, Moscow's modern. And so the worst that could happen then would have been your visa's not renewed or, you know, your... And that's a three-month-you-say in the book. Like every three months, you'd have to get your permit. It was a year then. And then when the full-scale invasion happened in 2022, they limited people to three-month visas. So at that point, only one reporter for the BBC in 2021 had been kicked out. But then they changed the rule, so it's three months.

And so we took that as a signal kind of like, you know, if they don't like us being there anymore, they can let these visas, you know, run out. Sort of the easy way of handling it. Was that for you? So now there's the full-scale invasion. and they're doing these three-month visas. In your mind, do you think, well, the worst that can happen is they'll boot me and I'll go somewhere else?

There was a really, you know, small percentage that we were considering and thinking about. I mean, maybe more than a small percentage. I mean, some foreign newspapers closed their bureaus. The New York Times shut its bureau down. Bloomberg News Agency did. We stayed, my bureau chief stayed in Russia and others did. And then the New York Times went back. And part of the thing that we were worried about was that Russia

had passed these censorship laws, incredibly draconian. If you called the war a war and not what they were calling it a special military operation, you could go to prison for 10 years. Huh. Very special, very short. Interesting. So you're saying they just change the names of things randomly and then penalized journalists if they don't go along with it.

Very easy. How weird. How weird. And obviously, look, I think it's easy to be flippant about this country and maybe a certain authoritarian creep and all that. But it's also, I don't mean to be glib about what you're actually facing there, which is really a different form of peril than here. Right.

But, you know, since I've been home, my newspaper has been sued and reporters have been called out in public. So it's not like it's super-farmic. It's not, you know, there's a little creep. But, yeah, it was a very different situation then for what we were going through. I mean, so after these censorship laws are passed, the, you know, foreign ministry spokeswoman told the, you know, we were asking them, what can we actually report? Like, does this apply to us? Do the rules apply?

Right. And, you know, Russian journalists had fled the country. And she said to us, you know, you call women men and men, women in the West. You can call this a special military operation. Are you, so they, they're literally just terminally on Twitter. Like, is that? Seems like it. We're X now.

since I got back, it's X now, apparently. Oh, now, I'm not aware of that. I missed that change. Oh, my goodness. I've been dead naming it all this time. Is there, in Russia, how aware are they of our cultural divisions and how much is that? You know, you do write in the book that people would say things like Ukraine would have fallen if the United States was not behind them and doing these various things.

They do seem to feel like we are playing a more intentional role in keeping Russia down. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's, I mean, most of the information in that country, if not at this point, like 99% is state-directed propaganda. And that's the drumbeat. That's the information that's being basically projected on the airwaves every single day. So it's what people are consuming. But, I mean, it's also rooted in reality, right? Ukraine is being buttressed and supported by the West.

Right. You know, Ukraine wouldn't be able to be fighting right now without it. So it's a very direct link. The grains of truth that lead to him. Half-truths, basically, is how propaganda works. That's right. It has to be something that resonates. And so in that environment, you are still reporting really sensitive things,

and you're going to the front, and you're doing all these really dangerous things, and a gentleman approaches you with what seems like a great story. Right. So I, you know, we were debating whether we should be there or not. And, you know, nobody was getting targeted at these censorship laws. I was even being followed outwardly at points, including when I was reporting near the border. And a couple of colleagues are there from the New York Times and the Guardian were there with me. But it felt like intimidation. So you're greeted when you arrived. But you knew you were being watched. Yeah, you know, you have two cars following you. You have a, you know, a security agent with a phone with a flash on. And that kind of thing has happened in other authoritarian countries before, like in China, too. And the read that we had was that, you know, they're trying to intimidate us,

or at least our sources who we're speaking to. At the end of 2022, Vladimir Putin addressed his domestic intelligence agency of the FSB, and he told them they need to catch us by. Well, you said it, and the terms were next year you need to do a better job. of catching traitors, foreign spies, and saboteurs. Was that like a pep talk he gave at the FSB? He usually, so what he does is he addresses them at the start of the year during the year.

You know, when the World Cup was taking place in 2018, he told them that they needed to catch more terrorists and extremists to make sure that the party wasn't ruined. So they went about arresting teenagers who were Antifa and anarchists. They have Antifa too? They have Antifa too. They have TNT, the TV channel.

They got a lot of things. They're just like us. like us. Except they eat more fish. And so it's sort of the normal, you know, he gives them a signal that they go and do it. 2023, I'm no longer followed outwardly, and that's a signal that I clearly missed. Okay. You know, it seems to me like they were trying to make me start, you know, start feeling comfortable.

Right. And you had a colleague. And they continue to give you that three-month extension. Yes, exactly. So right two days before I'm arrested, I get my last extension for my visa and the accreditation, the technical document you need to. to report in the country. And so, you know, Ukraine was saying that it was going to be doing this large counteroffensive

in the summer of 23. You know, the West was saying the same thing, and Russia was preparing for it, but there wasn't that much reporting on the subject. Right when Putin told his service to catch a spy, it also reported a story about how he was getting information from the front, making decisions about, you know, the war. So it seems like that wasn't, you know, maybe that was a signal for them. about, you know, this guy's up to something perhaps too sensitive. Plus, they were looking for an American as far as I can tell.

Right. Because right around then, the Russians were telling the Americans that Paul Whelon, who was arrested on espionage. Explain that. So when you say they're looking for an American, it is, in some ways like the NBA. A little bit. Matching trades. Right. So basically, they need a guy.

They want to get a guy out of prison, so they've got to arrest a guy that's also, like, at a mid-level exemption. They don't want to go over the second apron, so they want to get a report. Like that kind of thing. I mean, not to make it too cynical, but it's kind of like that because they have, so they have a person who's in Germany. For murdering a person in broad daylight, he works for the FSB, sent there on assignment. Yes. They have an assassin.

They have an assassin. A state, you know, a state assassin, one of the more elite ones. He worked in the alpha unit of the FSB. He was a bodyguard for Putin. Right. And Germany sentences him to life in prison. They have, you know, call him an asset, right? That's how they look at these pawns or rooks or knights.

Right. They have Paul Whelan on espionized charges, and they're telling the Americans he won't leave Russia, unless Vadim Krasikov leaves Germany. Right. And the Americans are... And they also have Navalny in their back pocket, who they can also use.

Could also use, potentially, yeah. So what they tell the Americans is, this is the trade. It's one for one. Make it happen. And the Americans say, well, that's insane. Germany is a third country, a sovereign country. Not going to do that trade.

Lo and behold, they catch me. And they say, you know, it's a two-for-one, like you put it. So then I think, you know, what they're looking for is a big, high, you know, sort of target that will cause a loud uproar. That's right. Here, and it's also what you're saying.

Are they paying attention to what's happening at home? Here, I think they are. Listen, the case was, rightfully so, international news. And it got everywhere. And it was a guy basically just coming to you and saying, this is sensitive here. So it's seen, you know, it was slightly more tricky. You know, so I think we were attuned to cases like, here, take a flash drive. There might be something interesting on it.

Right. I had a colleague who was, he had covered the Russian defense industry for years before the, the war started, or I mean the full-scale invasion. Right. And he had left Russia. And, but, you know, all hands on deck. Biggest ground invasion in Europe since World War II. Right. So he starts covering Ukraine, starts covering Russia, applies for a new visa to come to Russia.

They keep denying him. I'm in the country. And so he has this old source from a union boss for factories and there were else for, for, you know, about four years or so. And so we start reporting this story and talking in different sources, and he reaches out to that source. They kept in touch during the war, and the guy suggested he could meet, and my colleague can't meet, I can go meet.

So I go to the first meeting, and yet, he suggests that he can help us, that he can get some documents together. And that's really, you know, that's the main signal that we missed. I mean, myself, but us as a newsroom, and he said that it would take him another, it would take him some time, basically. And that was the second meeting. Second meeting, at the second meeting,

that's where I get arrested. And so my theory that I lay out in the book is that, you know, the big man's told them, we've got to go catch a spy. They start looking at their environment. There's a guy up to, you know, what we might call Brave reporting, maybe it's a little reckless.

They don't like it. They need an American. Everything starts fitting together. Plus they have a way to lure me into a trap. Lo and behold, they do. And then I think the first meeting is the way to sell it to him. They're like, well, we got one. And then he gives the green light the go ahead, go get him, the second one, exactly.

And then they can go, say, we caught him red-handed. And the rest is what was in the news for the six months. And you end up in this labyrinth for 16 months of really intensely harsh sort of concentric circles of hell that you're on a wider one and then you get further and further down. into their system. But what I found so fascinating is the strange, the Russians seem to be very aware that they are all fatalistically role players in a play that they are putting on. And you would say

to them, you know I'm not a spy right and they're like, what different? And me, we're all just, eh. I mean, there's my favorite moment with the warden of the first prison. Yes. When he comes to check in on me because they would check in on me before I see the US ambassador. And he asks me how I'm doing. And I told him actually, you know, like I'm kind of surprised that you even, you know, there's more care than I thought I would even have.

Like I hurt my knee exercising. Prison nurse checked it out. Even gave me some exercising. He goes, well, of course, we care about your health. I say to him, well, yeah, I mean, the package needs to be whole and undamaged. Otherwise, the value is going to go down to our trade analogy. And he checks his shoulder.

He gets all grave and really quietly. He says, you know, I didn't tell you this, but yes. So it's like, you know, the big secret has been revealed. It's shockingly nonchalant. But it's also, I think it's important to get for people, you know, people who don't know Russia that well, it's very calculating. So Victoria Rochina, Ukrainian journalists at this, you know, around the same time gets taken captive in Russian-occupied part of Ukraine.

Her stay in the prison system is much different. She gets killed and sent back in a body bag without her body organs. So her family can't figure out what happened to her. And so the Russians take me. in this, you know, it's going to be a loud case. It's a global uproar. They want to say, we have due process. We treat prisoners well.

Also, they're taking a journalist. He's probably going to write about it if they let him go home, right? And so I think they want to create this, like you said, apply a mirage. And so I, you know, you're talking about these circles of hell. Right. It's also important to know I had, you know, they're not fun conditions, but some of the best conditions, and people have it much worse. Are you right about when they have Ukrainian prison and they're torturing them?

Right, right. and they're getting. You end up, not in the first prison that you go to, but the second one, I guess, Central. Yeah, Central. Yeah, Central. Central. Yeah.

And in that, it's sort of this almost dystopian blade runner-esque. Everyone sleeps during the day, and then at night, the highways come alive and the ropes, and everyone is communicating and sending contraband and communicating through the food vent. The feeder. The feeder. The feeder. Right. It's this like, it's about the size of a human head, the window that opens in the cell door.

Right. And it's kind of low. But in that prison, it wasn't as, so I'm in two prisons, right? The first one's very high security. The second one, you're sent. You don't see anybody in the first one. At all. It's basically you and your roommate, and every now and again, you get to go for a walk in a very small room.

On the roof of the prison, there's, you know, there's just this, like, netting about you. And this is, the Fortoval. Lafortavo in Moscow. It's pronounced Lafortova. Correct. Or Le Fortevo, maybe. That's exactly right. I think maybe that.

It's French. Exactly. That's right. And so, yeah, they have this really, I mean, it's crazy. It's a wild system of they move you around the prison, snapping their fingers or clicking this kind of like metal. To make sure you don't see anybody. Exactly, to notify each other that they're moving people around. And in the second prison, they don't, you're sent back to where you ostensibly committed your crime for your trial.

So I've sent back to the rules. and it's much more open, and the guards are a bit more loose. And so these feeders, where you get your food through or letters or whatever, they leave them open so there could be air because it's the summer. And so every evening we stick our heads out onto the hallway and chat. And you kind of lean down and stick your head through. How long do you have to be in that prison before you trust that putting your head through a slot?

won't be the last thing you ever do in your life. I guess you're really lonely. You want to chat? You know, you start talking to yourself after a while when you're installed there. Well, you even say you didn't do it for a while. And when you finally poked your head through the feeder, they were all like, well, it's about time.

Exactly, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they were like, why weren't you out here? And I was like, well, I didn't know how to do this in the last prison. You didn't have this. It's not that obvious. But here's the thing. So for the reader of the book,

this is an extraordinary journey, and you write about it, really. with such great vivid detail and emotion and thoughtfulness. It really is a wonderful work. But like, I feel like you're just this dude that I'd be like watching a Giants game with. I kind of am. Right, I am.

But what is it when the ordinary meets the extraordinary and these, how do you find within yourself the resilience to overcome what is you may think that it's, it's not as bad as a body bag when no organ. Right. But it is objectively fucking terrible. Right. I mean, I got, you know, again, the luck part of it, or not the luck,

it's sort of, you know, blessed with a few things. One, I was working as a reporter for five and a half years. So when it happens, and they don't immediately torture me and subject me to the worst, you know, you immediately take that a signal as like, oh, who was a setup? And a setup for a specific reason. Right. And that means it's not going to be an espionage case for, you know, 20 years.

It's going to be... You did not fear you really were going to a gulag. I really feared at the beginning when they arrest me and put the hood over my head that they're going to be torturing me. Right. Trying to get information if they think I'm a spy, maybe trying to have me, you know, telling other people or whatever it is. And none of that happens. Okay. They just hand me my charges.

And then take me to Moscow and they kind of, you know, treat me generally well compared, you know, in the system. So I'd reported stories where somebody's sat on a chair tied to it, electrocuted. I mean, that's not. They do that. They do that, right? And so that doesn't happen to me. And so I have this kind of relief. and that, you know, and then I also know how these cases go.

I know how long they take. Right. There's no surprises in the penal system. You know, you know, it's fixed. And then, you know, that's one thing. Two, you know, I grew up in a Russian-speaking home, so I have Russian. I can communicate with my cellmates, with the guards, the prison officials. Right. Blessed with a sense of humor, luckily.

That, I think, is pretty important. Pretty immediately, you're tossing that out there. Although I imagine it can move into when you're doing that, there might have been moments where you thought, oh, not the time. No jokes, huh? Okay. I mean, but you also get in this habit. I don't know if it's just natural that, you know, like, generally oppressed peoples are the funniest,

but it's the way to deal with the situation, right? It's hard, so you make a joke. That's right. It's just what you do. And so have the, you know, the luck of the draw there. And then because they were treating me in a certain way, I had access to information and I have this great, you know, my newsroom backed me, my family backed me,

my friends back from me. And you're aware of the whole time that you're not. alone. One of the things I've seen in other countries is in sort of in Iran in particular they arrest you they put you in isolation and they want you to feel that the world has forgotten. Right. This was not the case. Jason resigned I think has that exactly. Jason resigned and Mazur Baharayshame. Exactly exactly and this was the opposite. I'm you know I get into into my prison cell and I have a TV and on state TV on the you know it's my second night in prison on a news show on a panel they say

you know, I think the quote, if I remember correctly, it was like, you know, it might be cynical to say, but we just replenished our exchange fund, they call it. That's what they call it in Russian. There's a term for it. They said that publicly. And you were, my first 24 hours. And you have TV, you're watching that on TV.

And so, I mean, again, bless them. It gives me a way to stay, you know, positive. You know, you think this is going to end much sooner than the term that you're actually going to receive. Would you go back to Russia? You clearly loved it. You love the country, you love the people. I'm of the people in a way, right?

I grew up in this kind of home. I met some of the best friends I'll ever have there. I met my girlfriend there. It's an interesting place to live and work. Now while he's alive or in power, right? Do you see a future for Russia without Putin? Two-part question. Future in Russia without Putin.

What might that look like? And in this country, are we being overly driven? dramatic when we talk about the clouds of authoritarianism gathering in this country. So, I mean, I think the Russia one is really complicated because these sorts of regimes kind of are, you know, Alexei Yorchuk, this Soviet historian wrote one of the best books about the Soviet Union called Everything is forever until it was forever until it was no more. And it felt like it was forever and suddenly it collapses and disintegrates and, you know, in retrospect, we try to connect the docks. But while you're living through it, it feels like that's it.

You know, if he dies tomorrow, it's hard to imagine a more, a less repressive Russia right now. You know, global conflict, developing an authoritarian axis is kind of deepening. And in those kinds of conditions, it's hard to, for me, it's hard to imagine a country just deciding, oh, we're going to start reforming. We're just going to loosen things up, sort of like the way when the Soviet Union collapsed. And the disastrous effect of what they thought that was, that we sort of tried to apply the purest form of capitalism over a system that was not ready for. And it... Huge poverty, drug addiction, broke the place. At the same time, you know, throughout Putin's years,

there was, you know, Boris Nemtsov, there was Alexei Navalny. The system does also produce people who... But if the people don't know that. If the people that live there are getting a completely separate story, then I guess even if he goes, they wouldn't understand why you'd reform it anyway, because it's all going great. I don't know if people actually think it's all going great.

I think there's a sort of, you know, it's really hard to pull in an authoritarian system and also a system where people are so scared that if, you know, I met a guy in prison read him out in the book, he was protesting the war by spray painting for anti-war words on a wall of a government building. He got arrested. He's ended up in double-digit sentence.

He was a 17-year-old kid at the time. And so if you're in a system like that and you think, you know, a pollster calls you, do they have pollsters? They have pollsters. They've independent pollsters. I mean, Putin just doesn't. were, by the way, great in the midterms. Right. Fantastic. Just perfectly.

I mean, his party, I think, captured 103% of... Couldn't do better. All the available seats. And the second part is, now that you're back here and you're feeling our country and you're on the ground, is there a sense of dread? Is there a sense of impending danger in your mind? Because you are, boy at heart, that journalism is running. through your blood.

So where do you see this going here? Yeah, I mean, it's this odd moment at the end of the book when I start reporting about how the swap came together, why I think I got arrested, you know, trying to piece it all together. And it's after the inauguration. And there's a sort of chill on D.C. People are meeting far from their offices.

They're talking whispers, checking their shoulders, asking if I'm on signal, which actually in the Russian system, they said, you know, one of the accusations of me being on signal meant that I was using CIA tactics, even though journalists use signals to protect their sources. Yeah, the topology reading your criminal report, is kind of amazing. It's kind of amazing. It's amazing.

That's all they have to do. But they just say there's three sentences that... Yeah, I'll say it's that, you know, the U.S. media is used by the CIA for intelligence gathering purposes according to an informed source. And then the Wall Street Journal's Moscow Bureau is used by the CIA for intelligence gathering purposes, according to informed source. Evan Gershkovich, which belongs to the apparatus. of the CIA. That's it. That's all you need. Right. And so there's a kind of, you know,

there's a fear, but I think direct comparisons aren't very useful. They're not apt. They're not, they're not always apt, but, you know, I think we can judge what's happening on its own. Right. You know, banning television channels from being in the pool just because you want to, doesn't seem like the, you know, the best way to, you know, uphold the First Amendment. Because it is, there's a lot. And the corruption that is now explicitly out in the open now is such, a hallmark of the system over there. I just wrote about it a couple weeks ago because I'm back to work at the journal and you know, the Trump's just opened or launching a Trump Tower in Tbilisi that we read about.

And that just feels like now just sort of par for the course, you know, when I was... Sure, they got a drum company, they work for the Pentagon, whatever, it's all that. But when I was moving to Russia 10 years ago, it was, that was still, you know, we still had some sort of outrage on that. But, you know, we published that story and then the next day, ProPublica blew us away with the Donald Trump Jr. wedding, right? And it's just, there's a story after story after story. It's nonstop.

Yeah, yeah. When you're at work now and, like, one of your colleagues is like, who took my peanut butter? Like, are you like, I was in fucking prison for 16 months? I'm hungry. Like, do you lord that over? I grew up in a Russian immigrant home, so we didn't have peanut butter. So I wouldn't take it. My parents hated peanut butter.

This post beautiful land, phenomenal book. Evan goes for this. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of

My guest tonight is a Booker Prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose latest acclaimed novel is called The Disappearers. Please welcome Marlon James. A plow is all around. I know. You have been getting your laurels. Yeah, I still like it, though. It's nice, right? I imagine it would be.

I'm like people clapping, these people not clapping. Yes, this is one. This is one of the best parts about this job is if they don't clap, we just do it again for me. So you got to get into this comedy business. Oh, I thought it was like some sort of a blackmail thing if they don't clap. Well, we do have the Social Security numbers of everybody here, so we will use it against them. This book is remarkable. Thank you.

But people are talking about it because right out the gate, it's shortlisted for the Booker Prize. And the New York Times had a wild review that called it The Book of the Decade, if not the Century. Yeah. We only have 705 more years to go. Yeah, there's a lot of time. But so 26 is pretty good. Twenty-six is pretty good. I mean, that's such a massive accolade to drop at your feet. What does that feel like?

What do you do with that? Well, what you don't do is impress your mother. No? Yeah. She's still like, those gutters not going to clean themselves. Yeah. Maybe she'll read it, though. Has she read it?

No, but I figured best of the century, she'll finally be impressed. She's like, I don't know, maybe last century. There's a lot of good stuff. I know. Last century. Yeah. You had to beat some pretty high praise. And I'm like, you know, she's like, I've cleaned her poop.

I've not, I'll never be impressed. I've been talking with my mom about reading this book. Really? Yeah, well, because my mom... That's going to be a moment. It is. Well, this book is intent. For people I've not read this book yet, how would you describe this book?

Actually, you know, it's a book that says between the 80s and in 2000s, and it's about a bunch of gay men who tried to put on a... this sort of subversive play in secret in Jamaica, which is not the most open-minded place, reggae people. And in the midst of it, they're attacked and pretty brutally beaten up. One of them dies. And some weeks after all of that attack,

two of the men just vanished without a trace. And, spoiler alert, sorry. They vanish without a trace. I'm not gonna say if they're found or not. But what happens next is that the characters who are left behind or left the reel from it. And they make all these wild decisions. Some race back into the closet.

Some try to live a normal life. One spends 20 years plotting revenge. And then that's what happens, basically. I mean, it is, I love this book. I found it very profound in, there are a lot of illiterate devices here that tell the story from a bunch of different angles. But you don't shy away from graphic violence.

There's cruelty that you live in for a while. There's the sex in it is graphic, and it's discussed thoroughly throughout when I think a lot about my mom reading this. But I do think what is remarkable about this, and you ask a lot from a reader. It's a 600-page book that you don't shy away from any of these issues.

And I found, as a reader, like, to be challenged in that way is something only an art form like literature can do. You sit with these people, you know these people. But I do think about the mothers who read the New York Times. who might not know your work beforehand, are gonna pick this thing up,

and they're gonna read the novel of the century. Like, do you... Do you wanna hear what they've been saying to me, though? I wanna know, yes. So the mothers who've been picking this up come to me and go, oh my god, your book is gonna be so hot. They, yeah. And they'll go like, you know, I'm hot right now.

And I go, I know, and I go, and if I played for that team, damn girl. Yeah, they haven't done the read. Yeah, so I, when I said when you're gonna, you might have an uncomfortable time with your mom. I think you're gonna be uncomfortable. Not her. Are you saying my mom's gonna leave my dad

because she's gonna read this book? Is that who's disappearing my mom? The book I wrote two weeks, two books before this, like I came up and go, dude, your book made me gay. And I'm like, I found it become what preacher has said the gay is. You know? I said, there's, it's, it's, it's, it's, That's a testament to this book.

There's times where it's not very enviable to be gay in Jamaica. No, it's not. I don't read this in like, I should be gay in Jamaica. Yeah, I didn't think so. For a while, I went to the church because the church made me straight. But, you know, about the violence and the sex, I think you just have to be real. They can't oversell it because then it becomes this kind of porn. Right.

And you can't undersell it either because then, you know, you don't get a sense of what's really happening and what's really going on. So you kind of have to be a reporter and just get the story. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's it. You know, I remember somebody saying about gratuitous sex, and I remember thinking, if you're not having gratuitous sex, what are you having mood? You know?

As for the violence, violence is violent. I was on this show once, and they asked me about it. And I think I got fed up, and I'm like, who are you kidding? you know you love it. But then I describe the type of movies they'll watch where the hero kills a hundred people and then walks off, not even with his girlfriend, but his dog.

And I said, yeah, you didn't think about any of those guys who died, did you? And I was like, and you think I'm weird? But, you know, violence has suffering. Violence has consequences. When I write for TV, I always ask him, so what gunshot do you want? Do you want a Hollywood gunshot or a real gunshot?

because the Hollywood, if I shoot you in the foot, in the Hollywood thing, it's a flesh wound. As you didn't realize, you're going to die. Well, you talk about writing for TV, you're right. I mean, this book, I feel like only lives in, I mean, well, I hope it lives in another format if you can make money off of that and somebody buys it and makes it. I'm always for making money.

You're always for making, so I don't want to take that away. But I think what is remarkable about this, unlike watching John Wick, where after two hours you watch 1,000 people die. Yeah. Like, this is a book that asks you to sit with it for weeks and spend time with it. Do you think about the rhythms of graphicness and how a reader reached it? I know you listen to music while you write, and music is such a profound element throughout this story. I think it really sets it in a time and a place.

The characters reach out for not the reggae music of their homeland many times. They go to American music and Kurt Cobain and what have you. Do you think about the rhythms of music when you write a book like this? Yeah. I think because I came from that generation, some of the stuff that, you know, like there are some passages about Bruce Springsteen, which may have come from me. They're pretty erotic passages about Bruce Springsteen. It's a lot about that Born to Run cover. I'm telling you, you don't have to worry about your mom. It's going to say it focuses more on him putting on jeans than it does the songwriting.

You won't have to worry about her. Uh-huh. But, you know, music was, you know, I grew up with a generation where you listen to the smits in your bedroom. Yeah, right? So, music is constant companion. You know, we're the first generation to have, like, walkman, walkman, whatever you pluralize that with. And it's, you know, it becomes part of your language, it's part of your vocabulary. I think at one point, Jordan says in the book, music was the first thing to love him back, you know, which is all I use.

used to feel about a lot of stuff in there. Like, you know, I remember where I was when Kurt Cobain died. Yeah. I remember where I was when Shinna Connor died. And these are two very, very, very important things to me. But also, you know, these characters are dealing with a music where their own country's music don't like them. Their own country's music said they should die.

So they're going to reach for something that will embrace them. So they'll go listen to relax, don't do it. And I love it. when, like, church ladies go, I love that little song. I'm like, you ever know what that song is about it? How do you talk about, you grew up in Jamaica? Yeah. You live here now.

You wrote this here. I'm curious what the reaction has been back there. It's a harrowing tale of what is happening in Jamaica in the 80s, 90s, 2000, and a lot of the laws that were on the books are still on the books right now. They're not supporting the LGBTQ community there. Yeah, there's a lot of that. But also, you know, the book ends in, in... in 2005.

I remember going back a few years ago, and there was an LGBT association for students, which I didn't even know it existed, and I'm giving them their It Gets Better Speech. You know, things are hard now. And you're like, we don't want to hear that crap. Do you know Beyonce? And I'm like, and I realize I'm surrounded by these teenagers

who are like, you know what? We reserve the right to be superficial. You know, a quarrel for us is Beyonce versus Rearie. They were like, not whether I'll get shot or so on. And there is that. There's a sense that the country has evolved and come a long way. But you don't have to go far to go. You know, I haven't gone far enough yet though.

Yeah. Because I moved back in the way. I have a house there. And you ask a taxi driver who's Marilyn and Jane. They go, oh, you mean the gay one? And I said, you know, I wrote a book. I wrote a few of them. So it is definitely different from the world of this book.

But I still think when you enter a room, you still kind of make a threat assessment. What's going to happen here? Can I even swish or not? Right. I mean, I think that's remarkable. There's so many passages in here that get inside the mindset of the threat assessments wherever they walk into spaces.

It's curious, I believe you say in the acknowledgments that I'm paraphrasing, but it's a work of fiction, but all of this is true. I heard you said this is an act of record keeping in some ways. And I think we are in a curious time right now where you see institutions like the Smithsonian. History is being rewritten. How do you see literature's role in record keeping

and keeping the stories alive for the future? Well, one thing literature does, and the literature I write, or like Edwidge Dan, is you're responding to erasure. So the stories aren't there in the first place. So you're writing them into being, and that's the first thing. Eventually, history catches up. You know, I tell you, history changes every day, depending on who's writing it.

So sometimes the stories that we need are the stories that reflect on people who are not leaders, you know, who are not famous, have to come from fiction, has to come from the books. There are certain things you're going to learn about the soul from Huckleberg. about the soul from Huckleberry Finn that you're not going to learn from, you know, from Shelby Foot. And what fiction does is that it starts to create a sort of internal history of how things were and how things could be that becomes very important. And I think you, when you read history through how people actually live it, which is what

I think a novel can do, then it becomes more important to you and you realize why you need to keep it, why you need to preserve it. Tell me about the act of disappearing, what that means in a novel. like this? It means a lot of things. One of the reasons why I could write it was that was a pretty good disappearer. I remember the kids who would call me names would take the six o'clock bus to school, and I realized if I take 615, I still get to school, or if I leave school later, or if I just

don't talk. And I remember, I knew I'd pull this off when the next door they were, came over to my mom's house and asked for recommendations on schools in America. because clearly Marlon has gone to school in America. And she's like, he passes your house twice a day every day. And I was like, damn, I did it. I vanished. I was reading a lot of X-Men at the time, too.

So I really thought... Was that a conscious choice at the time that you... I really thought out of superpower. Yeah. And now it's just called being rude, but I... Every now and then people go, weren't you at my party? I'm like, I was. Do you see it as an act of choice or an act of...

necessity. I think it's both. I think when you're in the margins, sometimes, you know, in order to not have the light turned on you and in order to not have the oppressors come and knock in your door, you find ways. And you know, Jamaica is small. So you have to learn how to vanish right in front of people. And sometimes it's to give them a reason to not look. And I think which is what some of the gay men did. It was like, how normal can I look? So like going into the closet is disappearing. I did it by going into the church, and that was wild, because they're surrounded by church gays,

and they were a bunch. You talk about the church gays. That's a movie here in the book as well. There's a scene in it where I outed one of them because this movie came out of the church, all the church gay was like, oh, my God, I'm going to do a dance tribute in praise of the crucifixion. And I looked at it and my god, you know what? Don't just stand here. Let's get to it.

strike a pose, there's nothing to it. And the horror on his face. And I'm like, mm-hmm. I see, you're trying to disappear, but I see you. Yeah, I see you, girl. It is a remarkable work. Congratulations on it and all of the accolades. The Disappearers is available now.

Marlon James. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19 speaker

AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility and optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations

for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Where some see heroes and others see egos, Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some, the future of money to others. We see crypto's trillion dollar swings. The end of jobs or the end of human struggle. We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype.

While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. A guest tonight is an Irish musician whose acclaimed third album is called Euro Country. Please welcome CEMAT. show. Thank you. I am so excited to hear. I got to meet you and see you at the Newport Folk Festival this year. Yeah. And that is

such a, it's such a beautiful festival. But what's amazing about that festival is it sells out before they know who's performing. So the audience is there just to see music. Yeah. But they don't necessarily know what they're going to see. Yeah. And watching you walk out on that stage and just own all of Newport was

incredible. Kudos. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I want to know, what is it, you're embarking, you've been on an international tour. Who has the worst audience? Is it America? No, no. Americans are amazing. Yeah.

America's never let me down, except for Los Angeles sometimes. Except for Los Angeles sometimes. You know, to say a crowd is bad is not a very nice thing. So I don't want to say bad, but maybe the crowd that I have the most difficulty with is Sweden. Is that right? Yeah. What are the sweets? Are they...

They see... So whatever about a festival, right? At a festival, people are paying for the festival. They're not there to see you. So if I'm like, let's do a little Tuesday, let's do the other thing, and they don't react. I'm like, okay, fair enough. You want to see someone else.

You want to see someone else. But, you know, in Stockholm, they're paying to see the C-Match show, and they're paying for the headline show, and they look angry that I'm there almost the entire time. They're kind of like this. It's up, woo! Woo! And they're like, you meet the match. afterwards and they're like, that was the best show I ever saw my life.

To be fair, in Sweden, it's a very cold country. They might just be paid to be inside for a lot of these concerts, right? It's not against you. They just need warmth. Yeah. But they're fabulous. You know, this is the thing. It's like, that's a very different culture than what I'm used to coming from Ireland. So different. And, you know, everywhere you go is different. And I think America is amazing. I think, like, the fans are so good here. but also, you know, we're talking,

there's 20, 30 different cities that we play regularly here, and they could all be their own country the way that they go on. It's, you know, it's very different. Playing a gig in Chicago, which is probably my favorite city to play in America. Is that right?

Yeah. You even slid into the Chicago at all. I love playing Chicago. They're amazing crowds. They're very music city. Playing Chicago is just so different to playing in like, you know, pioneer town in California.

Those are two, that's two entirely different types of people. I didn't even know that was a town in California. Pioneer Town? Is it like a Wild West? Were you playing? It's... It's... It's... It's... Pioneer Town is a fake Western village

that was built in the 1930s because I think Gene Autry paid to build it because they were filming so many Westerns at that time. They were like, well, we'll just build a functioning town that works as a set. That's a two-hour drive from LA. and the people live there now, because all the actors are gone, and the mayor is a chihuahua that wears a cowboy hat. Okay, let's see, Matt. Now, I don't think you should be mad at Pioneer Town.

I think you should be mad at your booker. I think your Booker is at Fall Tear. I love it. I've played one of the best shows in my life at Pioneer Town. I love it there. I'm not giving out. And Lawrence, Kansas as well. You know, it's like, I mean, I've seen a lot of this, I've seen every nook and cranny of this country. So I come kind of on the ground all the time

and experiencing how different everyone is to each other. And it's fabulous. Like, I don't have a bad gig here, honestly. I mean, you grew up in Ireland, but you had images of like American pop stars as sort of what you'd hope to be. Is that correct? Yeah, I thought it was going to be Britney Spears.

Yeah. I just thought it was going to be Britney Spears. I had like stickers over all over my window, and I was like, yeah, great, that's what I'm going to be, obviously, when I grow. And, you know, my family. were like, you're delusional. And they were actually right.

They were actually right. They're actually right. But you're not far off. You've achieved some pop stardom here. Yeah. On a D list level, I reckon, for now. But you know, we'll see what happens. But you're getting gosh darn close to what this dream as a kid is.

How does it compare to what you imagined it to be when you were little? I mean, when I was small, I mean, when I was small, I assumed I was going to be singing and dancing and doing all these things really well. And then I became obsessed with country and Western music. As a lot of people in Ireland actually are, like, we really love it and we really take to it. Why is that? I think depression. Okay.

Yeah. Fair? That's right. That's correct. Okay. I think, you know, and also we love stories and we love storytelling and we love a song that's like the man walked down the road one day and then got shot by his wife. Like, that's the best. That's whatever song that is, I don't know, maybe.

I think that's every country song. It's every country song. You know, I think there's something in the psyche that really likes to read and hear. a story and listen to someone talk about something from a very specific point of view. And what I love about country and western music is it is so simple. Like it's three to five chords maximum

anything else is overdoing it because the only information we actually want is the lyric and the lyrics, right? And so, yeah, I just, I don't know, I became unhealthily obsessed with Johnny Cash when I was like nine. Yeah. I thought he was, I thought he was, I,

In my head, I thought Johnny Cash was A, still alive. And B, that he was going to, like, I don't know, turn up and play the jingle bell ball or something. I don't know. I thought he was a contemporary of Justin Bieber at some point of my life. I don't know. Because you don't, you know, when you're... The education system in Dublin, not strong?

You don't have to weigh in on that. You don't have to weigh in. I'm saying none. I'm saying none. You talk about the lyrics being very important. What's so interesting about your album and your performance is your lyrics are great, but they're also subversive. I feel like you use this pop sheen and performance mixed with these country melodies, but also the lyrics, you're not, you don't shy away from political topics, emotional topics.

How is that balance? I think that that is a part of my own personality that has then... been extended out through my songwriting. I don't think it's like a choice that I ever made. I don't think I was ever sitting down going, I know what'll get them. I think that in general, when you're very sad about something

or when something terrible happens, you don't want to double down on the misery. And I think funeral humor is like a really big part of my whole songwriting process. You know when you're at a funeral and it's absolutely the worst thing ever and you're absolutely devastated. And then somebody farts.

And then the whole place is like, I think that's what songwriting is. You have that song that's just a long fart on this album that I thought was a very bold move and it's called funeral dirge, I believe. There's something in the body and the human psyche that wants to get through hard times. And I think humor is one of the roots.

Right. So it's like, yeah, it feels, I don't want to be the type of musician who doesn't say anything and doesn't have anything to say. I think I'm a very loud, gobby and opinionated ginger woman. And so if I wasn't expressing myself through music, I would be lying. But at the same time, I don't want to be standing on a soapbox every single show and be like, let me tell you how things are supposed to be. I think I think I'm just. I want to wrap it in this accessible, beautiful melodic form that is, you know, country pop, alternative, whatever the genre of music I make is I don't know, actually. Whatever it is. I think it's country music. And then I come over here and they're like, it's not country music.

That's not what that is. That's not this. This is not Johnny Cash. No, it's not. No, no. It's curious, you talk about, there's a big conversation that's happening right now with what happened with Ed Shearer.

and what musicians should do on stage and writing that line between being revolutionary in your performance and the things that you say there and also being acceptable to play at Robert Kraft-owned facilities. How do you see that playing out? Is that a pressure you have to deal with? I don't feel that pressure. I mean, I'm in a very different position to Ed Shearan.

Look, I actually, my hot take is that I actually feel bad for the guy because I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into. I think he could have absolutely said, no, cancel the tour then if you're going to cancel the tour. I want Malcolm Moore to stay on as my sport act. And I don't think anything would have happened, right? I think you can be a very, very famous person and a very, very rich person and a very, very celebrated musician.

And actually, I don't think you have to bow to those structures. But I think that people are, I think that famous people are often surrounded by a massive team of people who are making endless amounts of money off them that are putting loads of pressure on them to do the thing that upholds the capital value of their artistic product. So I think he was given really bad advice by someone with the various issues. Give him really bad advice. And I also think that maybe his problem was that he started identifying as Irish recently. So, so he, because, and this is the point I want to make, I don't want to rag on him because I think everybody's been going from and I don't think it's like super fair.

And the reason I say is this is like, this is a man who surrounded himself by Irish people. You know, his band was Irish, all his support acts were Irish. Maclemore is even Irish apparently He is, he's from I don't know where he's from The suburbs I think He has He has a song called Irish song

Does he really? Yeah Or Seattle, is he a Seattle? I thought he's maybe a West Coast guy? Yeah Anyway Anyway Don't know where he's from

But you know I think that If he wanted to identify As being Irish He wanted to reconnect to his Irish heritage and he wanted that to be a part of his personal brand and a part of his music. So he hired all these amazing Irish musicians, was supporting Irish musicians, was really

in there, like on the ground level in the Irish music scene, which was amazing. The problem then is that if something like this issue and if something like the issue of what I would refer to as genocide happens, then, you know, Irish people are going to hold you to account for that. What I think the actual issue is is that there are so many other musicians playing in massive stadiums that are not surrounding themselves with people that will hold them accountable so it doesn't get shown up. And I actually think that this is the problem. He's a guy that maybe got a bit unlucky by his choices.

I actually think there's a lot of people who are doing much worse than him. And that's why I think maybe a lot of the criticism is a bit unfair. I think there's a lot of people who are not saying anything or doing anything to help the power. to help the Palestinian people right now that are just not getting it in the neck because they refuse to be surrounded by people who would make it an issue for them. So you're saying the major problem is here

he's hiring Irish people, so don't do that. That's your advice to the music industry. Okay, I think I'm talking. The title track from Euro Country? Yeah. Yeah. What do you love about this song? This song is, I promise it's really fun and going to go. But it's about the economic crash that happened in Ireland in 2008. And I was a kid when that happened and I was about 12.

And it had a really, really devastating impact on the country. And I've been thinking about it a lot recently and I've been thinking a lot about how politicians make decisions. And we don't really feel the repercussions of those decisions until about 20 years later. And, you know, my generation of Irish people have all more or less emigrated because there's no work and no housing for them.

And I think I was really ruminating on this around the time that I was making the record and I wanted to make a song about it but I really didn't want to be hand-fisted in it and I wanted to just be like, look, this was what I experienced as a kid. and I know that if we start making the right progress now and we start, you know, helping people with housing

and helping people find employment and making the country a little bit more socialist, that in 20 years' time we will reap the dividends and there is still hope to be had and hope to be found and it doesn't have to be this big lost cause that everybody's making it out to be. So I really, yeah, I just wanted to have a song about how much I love art.

I guess, I don't know. It's... It's a beautiful song. It might be the most well-timed fart at a funeral home I've ever heard. I can't wait to hear it. Eurocountry is out now. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this.

Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio. system. This city demands agility and optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money.

Learn more at Bloomberg.com whose new documentary is called The History of Concrete. Please welcome John Wilson. Totally forgot there was an audience here. What were you expecting? I don't know. It's like a black box situation.

We're going to get into it. No offense, yeah. Yeah. Are you calibrating right now like, oh no, now I got to play out to it. I got to come with some jokes. I need to make these people love me. Yeah.

Don't worry. They're going to love you. Yeah, okay. Well, okay. History of concrete. Why concrete? I'll bite. Oh, why not? You know, I think it's

funny, it's funny stuff. It's a bedrock of humor that is there, right? Yeah, I think, yeah, I was dodging puns the whole time, I think. I can see in there, even talking about this movie with friends, like you can't help but constantly make concrete jokes. I know. Did you have internally

a number of concrete puns you could make in the film? Yeah, and I I think the one that I landed on was rockumentary. Yeah. I think that became the most enduring pun that I decided to keep in. And I think it ended up doing kind of interesting things in the film. Because the film was in serious trouble at one point of being uninteresting. Yeah.

It's not funny. Were you aware of that moment? I mean, what is it amazing about your work and what you do is you're, You're very articulating about the process that you're going through. Yes, I leave very little to the imagination. Where is the fear of like, oh, shit, this is uninteresting? You know, after a year of filming cracked sidewalk, I think, you kind of, you know, what's that definition of insanity kind of line?

You know, I was like, I need to change something because this isn't, looking down isn't getting me anywhere. I need to kind of get back to eye level. Yeah. From even a directional standpoint, you were making mistakes. Yeah, I was making mistakes. I should be filming things. Yeah, I'm not surprised that, you know,

it was a little hard to finance at first. Well, you talk, in the film, you go to Rome and you spend your entire budget in Rome? Yes. And to be clear, that makes up about 30 seconds of the film, if I recall. It didn't even look like you went into the Coliseum. It didn't seem like there was much to spend it on.

I went to a nice wax museum, though. Did you go to a wax museum? I talked to some police officers, and I went to a wax museum. That was the main activities. But, yeah, there was a nice wax figure of Anthony Hopkins. Yeah. Is that sort of your vision when you were like, when I dreamed of making a feature-like film,

I hope I would capture something just like this. Yeah, I was like, you know, I may have something now. I don't know. But, you know, they had these, you could, there was a QR code. next to the wax figures and you could scan it and it would give you a video of in like an AI mouth speaking through this wax sculpture which was it was very creepy yeah but it didn't seem to be something that anyone else was was interacting with at the wax museum yes and it seemed like kind of an afterthought but yeah on their website you can just download all the videos that they

have of those wax sculptures and I just use them in my movie. Is there a fear when you're seeing people not interact with something in your mind, are you thinking, oh, this is not at all interesting, I shouldn't film this? Or is that like, I need to run towards the fire? If the room is empty, I know I'm in the right place.

That's part of why you were so freaked out when you walked out here, right? Well, you have to, I mean, if people aren't familiar with your work, how-to with John Wilson, a fantastic show. It was just named after. one of the top 100 films of this century, correct? Shows. Shows of this century. Yeah, it's been a short century so far.

It's been short, yeah. Right. Was there anybody ahead of you? They were like, screw that show. Mad men, really? Cigarettes? Yeah. People smoking looking cool?

I know. You know what? You know, you know, mad men, I like that show. You're right. I shouldn't bait you into. No, no, no. Yeah, you're asking me to talk shit about my other 99 brothers.

Yeah, I was gonna say it. You're on a text chain now, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, part of the fun of, I think, watching your work is that you start out with a premise, and then we follow you tangentially to see kind of the world around you. I would say what I love about watching your stuff is that there's the serendipity that you experience in New York of what you stumble on and the people you meet is a beautiful thing and feels very resonant about people who live in New York or people just experience kind of life in that way.

What I would be curious is, is like, you seem to go out into the world with a camera in hand looking to find something beautiful. I'm curious what happens when you don't go with your camera and you see those beautiful things. Have you unlocked a way to see the world that is helpful, or are you just furious that you're missing something you could put into a piece of work? I mean, it's a bit of a curse at times and a bit of a sickness, I think, when you try to train your brain to look get everything a certain way. It's like, you know, I was only thinking about scaffolding for a long time, you know, when I made this. So I don't know it's so funny again. We all go through that

phase. Don't act like you haven't been there. Yeah, we've all had, yeah, we've all had scaffolding fetish dreams. Yeah, tied up. Yeah, I know. But anyway, the, but, you know, that becomes the way you see the world for a while, but then you kind of give yourself a new objective, and that kind of washes out the old stuff. But that doesn't stop people from continuing to send you stuff for years and years after that. I'm sure. But yeah, and then you just talk to people on the street, and I don't know. I try to treat every person like they're, you know, a celebrity and a celebrity like they're a person, I don't know, just like kind of treat everyone on the street like they're, you know, Douglas or something.

Yeah. Do you, I'm curious, do you have trouble getting people to talk to you on the street? Are people open to you when you're walking around with the camera? Do they want to be interviewed? It depends. I was, I was, yesterday I was in Midtown and I was just going up to different people that weren't wearing ties. I was trying to find someone with a tie, and I found it was hard to find someone wearing a tie.

So I was trying to ask people why they weren't wearing ties, but people not wearing ties are usually in a rush. and they didn't want to talk. Was that, is that when you, when you walked out, when you walked out of your, when you walked out of your, your apartment that morning, uh, what morning? Yesterday morning. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Was that your intention where you're like, I got to go film some people with ties? Or was, you know, this is what, yeah, this is what's going to happen when AI takes over. Everyone's just going to be on the street trying to fill their time with stuff like this. And you're telling me with ideas like this,

you had trouble financing this film, huh? Yeah, I know. That's the thing. That's the thing. You know, whatever. You capture, here's a moment I love it here too, is because you captured a moment you were at what looked like a very fancy private dinner for GQ.

The food wasn't very good. Was that very good? But people are toasting Kim Kardashian, who you're sitting like across from. Yeah, I don't know why. Yeah. Well, is that like, I think Dwayne Wade was next to her.

Yeah. You're filming. I'm wondering, are they noticing you filming at this moment? Are you like a pariah in this moment? Are they, what do they think of you? I mean, I'm filming. I mean, I'm like this far away, and I'm like, you're right there.

But it feels like a private moment, and everybody's celebrating Kim Kardashian, and there's John Wilson sort of like, oh, I might use this. Yeah, I don't know. I never know what anything's going to be for, but I knew it was a rare environment that, No one else was...

I mean, there are other people from GQ, I think, covering it, but I haven't seen any of that material. And I just... I don't know. I just had never seen an uninterrupted shot of Kim Kardashian before. And I just... I had to have it.

Do you... Yeah. We got it. I got it. Did she have to sign a release after that? I mean, I think, you know, she's a public figure. Right. I mean, anyone in public is a public figure is how I...

Is that how it works? I feel like we... I don't know. You know, you know, we... Yeah, we don't got to talk about that. All right, here's another thing I want to talk about. I'm curious, you collect all this footage, and then you sit with an editor, multiple editors.

Do editors love working with you? Do they hate you? What are you setting me up for? I just want to... I can see... You have a singular voice. You capture the world around you in voluminous amounts. Sure.

And then I'm sure you sit with an editor and be like, hey, we need to make something of this. And I'm wondering if those people are secretly, if they secretly despise you. I mean, I may never know, but I don't know. I work very closely with my editors. You know, my editor, Corey and Sasha Stanton, most recently. They are amazingly talented and they find stuff that's funny in the material that I may not realize

as funny just as like the person recording it and there's a lot of awkward moments and pauses they know how to play up and I don't know. I think it's, I can be a bit of a, like, what they call like a frame B. Sometimes where... Because I, sorry, I... They need a free jargon.

They got to get used to it, right? Don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. Where I'm like, you know, because I worked as an editor for most of my life. And so I'm like, and it feels like I enter a bit of a flow state when I'm cutting stuff. So I will like audition a bunch of stuff and then I'll give it to the editor. They'll put their twists on it. But then I'm also recording the narration.

So it has to be like down to the frame like where the joke hits sometimes. So it is like a shot by shot calculation. but it is super fun at the same time because, you know, I like to do stuff that I'm not, I wasn't allowed to do at work, you know. So, like, if, you know, if someone tells me, like, oh, you can't use that shot of that guy because there's a big tree coming out of his head

in the, you know, the way you frame it in the shot, that's kind of what I want to use. I want to, like, you know, even, I don't know, you stuff, you can't do here, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the Detritus becomes the beautiful thing that you highlight. Yeah, just because, yeah, it just feels like yours, you know.

Yeah. And then, you know, that's nice. You have such a unique style. I went to see David Byrne performed here at Forest Hills last weekend. And we're watching. I was there with my wife, and there's video happening behind David Byrne. And my wife's like, oh, this looks like a John Wilson video. And then I see your name at the end.

It's like, oh, this is John Wilson. Yeah, yeah. How is working with David Byrne on a project like that? He's great. We've collaborated a few times at this point. I made a tour documentary about him in like 2015, and then I did a couple of other small things with him. But yeah, this was just kind of a music video with clips harvested from how to

that was put to this song that he did. And yeah, everyone's been texting me, and everyone seems to like really love it. I actually saw him a couple nights ago, and he apologized for not having seen the concrete movie yet. Were you filming him while you were talking to him? Yeah. You are?

You were, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of my thing, Jordan. What's gonna be you talking about? Yeah. Again, I've mentioned, what you capture in New York feels so New York?

New York is a strange, beautiful challenge. place to live. And I think like it's often like, it's often best summed up in the weird characters. The other day literally I saw a man in front of my home on a city bike balancing a tire on his head as he went down the street. Right? And it was like a beautiful, strange thing because he had to move this tire a long distance and he's on a city bike. He had, he had to. I assume that I start telling the story that this is he needed to do this thing. He used a city bike and then and or, or, or, or, you know, or, Or he's just showing off and flexing. Yeah, yeah.

But you were able to find so many of those things. I wonder as somebody who has captured and seen New York for quite some time. Like what's sort of on your Mount Rushmore of New York moments that you've captured? Oh, I mean, oh, there was a bit of a scary, I mean, a lot of the great moments in the show, uh, my favorite moments were captured

by the second unit team, just because we had like four or five different teams at a time going out during the day and just like capturing whatever, just like throw a dart at the map. And I don't know, there was one, like, dog on a really high up ledge that was, like, caught up there. And it was really tense, and the whole crowd outside was really worried about it. And it was, like, a big public scene. But then the dog got back inside.

That was, yeah, I think Brittany shot that. But the... But I don't know why that comes to mind. There's a lot of good stuff in the concrete movie, too, that I don't want to spoil either. You're pitching this thing. I was like, is he going to talk about your favorite moment being when a dog died on camera? No, no, no, no, the dog lived.

The dog lived. There's tension there. Yes, tension, yes. I mean, that's the thing. You can show a dog doing anything, and that will give you all the emotion you need for, like, if you say something over it, you know. If you show a dog in the rain, it automatically makes people sad.

You know. Well, before I let you go, I will say that is true. But this documentary, it goes to such beautiful, strange places, but also doesn't let go with the idea of, like, concrete being this ubiquitous substance that we are constantly surrounded by. And sort of humans need to feel comfort by reliving things over and over again and these things around us. Like, earnestly, after living in this and making this film,

what is your relationship like with concrete? How do you see it different? Wow. I think, I'm so glad you asked. I mean, I'm trying to work on something new right now, so I kind of forget about it, but I also, I don't know. I feel like concrete is, yeah, it is everywhere, and it's kind of, it's like cyclically, you know, like renewed for sidewalks and everything, and I don't know.

I think there's an existential kind of terror there about, the fact that we're running out of a lot of the materials we need to make it, and we may not be able to make it for, like, another century, like, as we know, as we do it now. So, I don't know. I mean, you were saying backstage, I mean, brick is cool, I think. Yeah, I was telling you. Brick is cool, man.

Yeah, don't, I think it. Brick is cool. My dad was a brick salesman, and we were talking backstage. Everybody's like, what happens backstage at a TV show, I'm like, there's cool shit going on backstage. I'm talking about brick. You're talking about concrete. Like, we get into some stuff.

Let me tell you. Some real Hollywood stuff. But my dad sold brick for a very long time and understanding, like, the brick industry and the artisans who create something like this, this piece that is both a work of art and that is functional. And also it is an industry that has seen the erosion

of big tech and big companies as well. Like, you have such an American story in the materials that we use. and I heard people giggling, fuck you guys. I now feel you, John. I feel you. No, no, no. You reveal, like,

what you care about with these substances that we see. But this is who we are, all right? We are the stones that we build upon. We are the ground that we stand upon. These are the things that lift us up. Here we go beneath them when we die. Like, why shouldn't we not expose these things,

investigate these things, live in these things? Am I right? Yes. Yes, it is. Exactly, yes. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, yeah, it's all a political decision

in one way or another, you know, I think what we use, and I think Brick is cool. I just, I don't know. Yeah. You don't have to make it the focus of your next piece, but let me tell you, it's there if you're interested, you know.

All right, thank you. I'll, yeah, I'll let you know. John, it's a great film. It's a unique film. I laughed, I cried. I tried to wedge my brick side into the conversation. But I'm glad you're here. Yeah, yeah.

The history of concrete is in theater show. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast.

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