The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 452. The Loudest Woman in Comedy | Roseanne Barr

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Dr. Jordan Peterson sits down with actor, standup comedian, and podcaster Roseanne Barr. They discuss her recent voice acting role on the new show Mr. Birchum, how humor shines a light on and disperses darkness, the rarity and hardships of being a female comic, her overnight success in Hollywood, and what really matters in living a good (and humorous) life. Roseanne Barr is an American podcaster, writer, producer, actor, and stand-up comic. She was awarded both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her hit show “Roseanne” which ran for nine seasons. She has written two books, ran for president once, and recently taken up podcasting with her son, as well as a voice acting role in the DW+ show Mr. Birchum.  - Links -Website https://www.roseannebarr.com/?_sm_nck=1 The Roseanne Barr Podcast on Rumble https://rumble.com/c/roseannebarr  The Roseanne Barr Podcast on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@roseannebarr 

Hello everybody! I got the opportunity today to talk to Roseanne Barr. We talked about her recent work with the Daily Wire Plus crew on Mr. Bircham. She plays a high school principal near retirement in that show. Then we talked a fair bit about comedy as such and exactly what a comedian does, what it's like to hit the mark so precisely that you can tell the truth in a manner that also opens people up and brings that unconscious joy that's associated with spontaneous laughter. Trying to nail down exactly what that means.

It's part of this broader phenomenon that we see where so many people that are making their mark on pop culture are comedians, former and present, Rogan, of course, springs to mind, Russell, Russell Brand, many, many people, Dave Rubin, Steven Crowder, Theo Vaughan. There's so many comedians that have made a name for themselves as interviewers. We talked about that a fair bit. Her experience with cancel culture and class discrimination

or difficulty in making class adjustment, let's say in Hollywood. Her more recent experiences on the comedy scene in Austin, which is a real up and coming comedy renaissance city in no small part as a consequence of Joe Rogan's enterprises there. So join us for what proved to be a very interesting and enlightening conversation. Let's start by talking about Mr. Burcham. You're working with the Daily Wire Plus crew. Yeah, and so how's that going? Oh, it's just been a blast.

It's just been so fun. I like their process. I like the people. I love Adam Carolla and the other comics. It's just been so fun to be part of something that is. So on the line and purposely offensive. It's just great to offend, you know? And I think for an audience that likes that sort of thing,

you know, it's great accepting. And for people who really wanna think and rearrange furniture in their mind, it's fun to be a part of that. The problem with rearranging furniture in your mind is the snakes and the spiders tend to crawl out from underneath. Isn't that true? It's definitely the case.

So tell everybody about Mr. Burcham because there'll be lots of people watching and listening who don't know about it. Well, it's a 30 year dream of Adam Carolla to portray this character. I guess it's based on a real-life teacher of his, a shop teacher, who was, as I understand it, I hope I'm not miss speaking it for Adam, but he was very influential to Adam and he had a different approach to teaching. It was unconventional. And some people would probably right now he'd, you know, people will be up in arms about the way he taught, but he not only taught but reached people and, you know, challenged them to do their best. So that's kind of what is so great about the cartoon because it shows a teacher that cares

in an unconventional way and actually moves students to think and do their best work and the and he's up against like you and I and people who are thinkers up against this huge Force of You know, yeah evil the collective You know the collective that's what I just call it now that has You know their fascist call it now, that has, you know, their fascist

definitions of everything where people must obey, must bow, must repeat, must parrot. And so in all of that, there's this one gifted teacher who wants to do it his way. And he is of course under scrutiny by all the collective. And I played the principal who's about two weeks from retirement and doesn't give it down, just wants to get the retirement and is trying to do what she has to do.

And is kind of is a veteran. And so she's kind of on Mr. Burcham's side, but she has to obey the protocols. And this, the one character, oh my gosh, I'm blank on his name, but is played by Tyler Fisher. I'm so sorry, Tyler, but he plays Carponsi. Yeah. And he's really a lib. He's a real like pronoun type, you know, guy that is all that. And he's trying to get Mr. Burcham fired, you know, using the rules that Mr. Burcham doesn't follow. And so my character is like trying to protect Mr. Burcham and trying to protect her retirement. So... The best comedies, animated or otherwise, often have a very sharp and biting satirical edge, but underneath a certain amount of heart and genuine human connection.

This was something that was very marked about The Simpsons, for example, because it was completely satirical. But at least for the 13 first seasons, and there were some stellar shows after that too. Really what made the series so remarkable was the fact that you actually ended up identifying with and liking the characters despite their manifold flaws. Do you ever watch the Trailer Park Boys? Have you ever seen that?

Oh yes, I love that show. Okay, so why do you love the Trailer Park Boys? Because I also love the Trailer Park Boys, which I'm very sad to say, but I'm like a super fan and it has the same quality, right? I mean the characters are completely reprehensible most of the time, but there's a connection. They have a connection underneath that's genuine and that gives the show it's not just cynical, and it is genuinely funny. And so, what is it you like about the Trailer Park boys?

What is it you like about the trailer park boys? Well I like just that it's absurdist. It's so based in reality that it's absurd, which is like what reality is right now. It's just so absurd. It's hard to write jokes when you're in the middle of an absurdia because you can hardly top how ridiculous and absurd everything is. just absurdia because you can hardly top how ridiculous and absurd everything is. You just maybe need to just hold up a mirror. And that's what I like about it

because I had so many people in my life who are just like the trailer park boys. I think the trailer park boys have a lot of insight that the people like that, they do have a lot of insight that the people like that, they do have a lot of insight. But, you know, I think that it speaks greatly to class consciousness, which is what fascinates me more than anything else about, you know, American culture, and the and you know, American culture and the Canada and the UK and I guess the West, the fact that everybody is kind of blind to the fact that we live in such a class-based culture. It's like the last thing that anybody ever notices or talks about, but it's just so present in that show.

And it's just so hilarious. All the things that come with that whole working class thing, which I just love it. One of the things that always struck me, the town I grew up in, the town I'm in right now, cause I'm up in Northern Alberta, is a working class town. I suppose climbed the class ladder after I left Fairview. But one of the things I really missed as that happened was humor.

I mean, the people I grew up with here, basically all we did to amuse ourselves was to engage in competitive bouts of humour. And so, and that was ridiculously fun. It was a way of gaining status too, because the funniest people had the most status and also obviously the people that could take a joke. In working class jobs, you need to be able to take a joke, that's for sure. Well, everyone does all the time in life. But, you know, among

the intellectual class, frequently, especially among the posers, there's an absolute lack of humor. And that's very annoying. It's, it is absolutely true. It's very dull and, and pretentious. And you know, one of the things too, that I've really learned, I think you can, you can tell people who are dangerous because that I've really learned, I think you can tell people who are dangerous because they hate comedians and they hate automobiles. I never thought about the automobile. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the same.

It's the same. So I think it's that private personal mobility and freedom that, you know, I mean, car culture was always a working class culture. And the thing about a car is you can go anywhere you want, whenever you want, with no restrictions or very limited restrictions, and no one can tell you otherwise. Plus, it's super private, or it was until you had OnStar and all these bloody things that monitor you 100% of the time while you're driving now. But cars, to me, really signify freedom. And, well, comedy is the same way because you get to

say whatever you want as long as it's funny. I had a good friend of mine once up in Northern Alberta, his rule was you could say anything you wanted as long as it was funny or true. And funny and true, man, that really tops the charts, if you can pull that off. That's what I like for sure. My family too was, of course, it was a dysfunctional family and you know like everybody's I guess, everybody has an element of that but we could say whatever we we couldn't ever we weren't allowed to say we were angry or that something was wrong, we weren't ever allowed to whine, as it was called. But we could tell a joke expressing dissatisfaction or anger or rage or anything. And it would be accepted, everybody loved it, we'd laugh it off. And that is like how we communicated the darker parts of our psyches, and it was okay.

But if you would tell a joke and it would bomb in front of my dad, then you'd get slapped. So I got robotized into being a comedian because it was a way to express and to survive all of this stuff. So I learned it that way. But it was kind of like that in all my friends' house too. If you were snappy with your wit, your parents appreciated it, even though they wanted to, you know, beat the hell out of you. Sometimes they didn't.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the thing about discussing dark things with humor is that it has two advantages, I think. The first is you get to shine a light on the thing that's dark. But more importantly, you get to show that you can stand seeing it and also that you can transcend it at the same time, which is really what you're doing when you laugh it off. So you're showing that there's something there that's negative and maybe even that's causing suffering,

but at the same time, you're indicating everybody's willingness to look at it and also to rise above it. So that's a pretty damn good deal. This is why I think media- Also to dispel its power over us. Right. I always thought that comedy was, I mean, I do feel it's a gift and a lot of us

comments when we're drunk and sitting there talking to each other seriously, which we do when we're drunk and drinking and stuff and getting serious about comedy, which we do, but it's probably really boring to non-comedians. But we talk about what a kind of a holy thing it is to be a comedian, to have the power of naming, you know, being able to name something and then to dispel its power over us, but more important than anything, the way I look at it and I always bring it up is To laugh power to scorn they cannot Right by that and so we look at it as like oh it is a holy calling

in a kind of a working-class way of Telling the the king or the emperor, hey, you're naked as hell, buddy. Yeah, well, there's two things there you point out that I think are really interesting. I had never thought about that relationship between comedy and the power to name. So that's what God grants Adam in the story of Adam and Eve, right?

He's supposed to, God, in fact, God brings everything in front of Adam to see what he'll name them. And it's interesting because naming something actually has that real tight alliance with wit. It's really hard to coin a word or a phrase, right? You have to hit the target dead center before you can come up with a new phrase that will spread.

That happens very rarely. That's real mark of precise aim. And so, and you're absolutely right. Precise aim is so much a part of it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And then the scorn issue, that's also dead relevant. Well, I think this is partly why you can tell the tyrants

because of their attitude towards comedians is that it's the people who don't want to be unmasked and especially who don't want to be unmasked in relationship to the fact that all their vaunted compassion is nothing but a play for power. They're the ones that detest comedians and have absolutely no sense of humor. That's a very dangerous thing in a person to have no sense of humor.

And so what does that mean if you have no sense of humor? Well, they have no sense of humor. Watching comedy, I've always been a comedy fan and so was my father. He wanted to be a comic too, and I think he made me one. But they He wanted to be a comic too, and I think he made me one. But the content of the humor they like, because everybody laughs at something eventually, but the content and politics of the humor they like is something that I've studied as a comic for a long time.

It's by class the way I look at. And it is kind of by class. The way I look at it is very much by class. And it's also by sex. And, you know, it's also by, you know, a few other factors. But in my mind, but these people, they will laugh. But we always say they laugh downward. They laugh at their quote lesser, like less, they're less, I always call it academentia. They're less academentia, you know, riff-raff or whatever but

and sometimes they'll laugh upward and Sometimes they'll laugh laterally, but it's very subdued But the the thing they will never do is laugh at themselves, right? Right and they really despise anything that puts them as a joke. I got fired because I made fun of the Obama administration and their policies in the Middle East, even though they tried to say it was about something else. But that is what my tweet was about that got me fired and my work of a lifetime stolen, everything they did to me, and also misrepresenting

what I meant and not allowing me the chance to explain or anything, just deadheading me. But he and those leftists around him, leftists don't have sense of humor at all. But they definitely don't want to be made fun of at all. And they resent it. They get so angry. Because, you know, the one thing I always say about fascists, two things they despise, dialogue and humor, you know, conversation and actual dialogue about an idea. They despise that and any kind of humor that includes any discussion class or that kind of thing, you know. And well, it might maybe it's maybe it's harder on the Democrats to have working class humorists

go after them because in principle, they're supposed to be advocates for the working class. And so if it's working class humor, which does tend, in my experience, to be very self-denigrating, right? And I do think that's a real mark of character. It's one of the things I really like about British humor, and I think Canadian humor's got that edge too, in the sense that the Brits are very, very good at laughing at themselves. The Monty Python troop was unbelievably good at that because their humor was all unbelievably good.

And it made the comedy in some ways timeless too, because it wasn't focused exactly on the political or actually very rarely on the political. And so it's very strange to see that some of the jokes from the 1970s, many of the skits that the Monty Python troupe pulled off in the 1970s are still funny as hell. And still, you know, I talked to John Cleese at one point, and he told me they were planning to do a Broadway revitalization of the life of Brian. Oh, what? You know, they wanted to cut out the, you remember there's one section with the little cabal of

left-wing radicals that the movie centers around. One of them, I can't remember the comedian, decides that he's a woman about halfway through the movie. Oh wow. Yeah, yeah, it's very funny. It's ridiculously funny. Yeah, yeah, it's very funny. Oh yeah, it's very funny. It's ridiculously funny. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they obviously, in some spectacular way, foreshadowed all this trans nonsense that's been coming down the pipeline.

But they were very resistant. The people who were going to produce it were very resistant to continuing to include that in the Broadway revival. I don't know if that ever did get sorted out because Cleese was not happy about it. But that's also a testament to their satirical brilliance to have managed something, it's 40 years ago now, that still hits the target viciously enough to be of concern to the woke dimwits today. And it's so interesting because in the movie, In the Life of Brian, the desire

of this character to be a woman is actually treated with a fair bit of, is it dignity? Well it is, it's satirical dignity. So there's nothing about it that would offend anyone who had the least iota of sense. Quite the contrary, it's very, very hilarious. But it is a good example of that inability to laugh. It's worth it. I haven't seen it in so long. It's definite.

I watched it recently. Again, I think after I talked to Cleese, I was curious about it, maybe before, because I wanted to pop it back up in my mind. But it's aged very well. I would say it's probably more relevant today than it was when they released it. That's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. Well, because it's such a... When comedy does that. Yeah, well, it's... it's... it zeros in so tightly on radical leftist nonsense. And, you know, that was a problem in the the 70s But it was nowhere near as much of a problem in the 70s as it is now

so it's on We're in uncharted territory. We are we are They have it all nailed down. So it's just so great down here in Austin, which is a blue city and You know, I was nervous to come down here. My daughter and son were with me and a friend, we went to the comedy club and I'd had a few drinks and I was pretty loose.

My friends were there and one of them wanted me to come on stage and my daughter, my daughters are liberal and oh my God. So she goes, mama, don't go on. it's a blue city. They're gonna hate you And um, I went i'm going on. I just was brave enough. Whatever. I was in the mood because my friends were there Well, so I go on and I just it was just Fantastic that I think a lot of it's because it's austin because it's a different kind of a blue city, and they're young. But they loved it.

I was shocked, my daughter was shocked, and it got me to move here because a smart comedy audience is never woke. They're not woke. They want to be challenged. They want to laugh at ridiculousness. And they want to laugh at themselves, you know? And they want to hold their beliefs and their ideas up to the light and examine it. They're not cowed into silence like so many of the blue thing,

just howled into silence. Because it is so huge. How are you gonna fight it? It's so huge, it's everywhere. It's a monolith. And they want to dictate everything we think, do and say. And they think they're justified to do it. And they have no idea that they're fascists.

They have no idea. I found on my tours that the most enthusiastic audiences are in the most liberal cities. That's what it was. I was shocked. Yeah, yeah. Well, I also think, you know, you said that people are censoring themselves, and they don't even know it. And so, one in the, let's say, when I've gone to Portland, Portland's a good example, because I have very enthusiastic crowds in Portland and large crowds. That's been the case for

all the left-wing cities that I visited, even Berlin. We did a show in Berlin that was in the middle of the communist district. The Berliners regarded that as a provocation, the real lefties. Well, I didn't bloody well know that the theater was in the middle of a communist district. You know, essentially, I probably wouldn't have rented it if I would have known that. I'm amazed they rented it to me. We had a fair number of protesters, but the response was very enthusiastic. A large part of it is just, it's relief on people's part. You know, they don't even know that they're under this weight of

continual lying, having to censor. No. And so then they go somewhere where that isn't happening and it's like, Oh, freedom, you know? And so, and so that's a relief. And that puts everybody in, well, the sort of mood that you're in when you're around people that you can actually talk to and think with.

Well, it's great down here at Joe's Comedy Club because it's dedicated to freedom of speech and for comics so that we can do our best work. Yeah. And that feeling of freedom is why comics from all over the country are moving here to Austin to be able to work. Yeah, yeah. And it's just great because it feels like a comedy renaissance, you know. Exactly.

You know, we can't, we can't challenge ourselves more and there was a there's it had been such a long time work you know the world of comedy premises was decreasing decreasing getting tighter and tighter because there's just so many things that you couldn't say or you'd be attacked and run out of town you know but this is just a real free and freeing feeling and it's just wonderful to look out and see people of all shapes, colors, sizes, ages laughing together at just the ridiculous absurdity of it all. It feels like revolution, like we've always dreamed of, a revolution for free thoughts, free ideas, free people. It's just wonderful. When I go on stage there, I always say, I always thank Joe for

creating the place for comics to have free speech. And then I say, my goal is to get 86 the hell out of here, to go so far, because comics, we like to get in trouble. Well, the thing is, the funniest things you can possibly say are right on the ragged edge of disaster, right? You wanna push it right, absolutely, you wanna push it right to the point of no return. And if you can dangle there, that's hilarious. You want people to be thinking, I can't bloody well believe she said that.

And it was so perfect, right? Now, if you go too far, well, then it's trashy or genuinely offensive or cheap. But it's a very, very, very delicate line to walk. I always get the crazy thing. She's crazy. Well, I've said for my whole career, you know, that I have mental health issues. So it is kind of funny that they...

It's kind of like they're saying she has so many mental health issues that she's completely mentally health challenged. Well, yeah, that's why I'm a comic. Yeah, well, the thing is that pure crazy isn't funny. Like, it's just sad. I've been to comedy shows where, comedy shows where the people, and these are usually, you know, very early career comedy shows, let's say, where people come on stage and really do nothing but confess their sins,

let's say, sexual and otherwise, and that is not funny. That's just sad. And so anything that, I don't think anything that's funny is ever reflective of mental illness. I don't think those two things go together at all. I mean, you can say crazy things. No, if it's funny, if it's funny, it's sane, and it doesn't really matter.

You know, and the thing about comedy too that's so interesting is that it operates at this profoundly unconscious level. You know, one of the things I noticed about having little kids is that even before they could speak, they had really good senses of humor that was associated with play. And so, comedy, humor is so deep that it's there before words. So that's really something. And then, everyone laughs in an audience before they think.

Then everyone laughs in an audience before they think. Right, if you have to, so that's what makes comedy reflective of, well you said it was holy in some sense and it is because you're talking directly to someone before their filters are up. And if you laugh, the laugh catches you. It's not something you do, it's something that happens to you. And so that can't, if it's faked or forced, you can tell because the laughter isn't genuine and it's also not any fun.

It's so interesting, it's such a mystery. I've never been able to figure out how it is that something as sophisticated as a sense of humor can develop, say, before even language. And it's definitely something that bonds people together, right? Because one of the ways that you bond with your little kids is with jokes and games. And even peekaboo is a joke, that's right. I'm gone, I'm here, babies will laugh like mad about that.

They laugh with repetition that's disrupted in a surprising way. It's very, very interesting. Well, one of the great joys, I have 10 grandkids, so one of the great joys is, you know, trying to see how young you can get them to laugh. Me, I mean, I just love to see, where is it where they find the funny? I love to watch where is someone finding the funny. And- Yeah, no kidding. It seems like universal that you find it in the, you know, reflexive body issues like farting

and stuff like that, or Belching kids love that. I'm a huge star to my grandkids in the comedy department for all that kind of thing. But, you know, and- Well, it was something I really enjoyed about having little kids because I kept that sort of tradition that I grew up in of competitive comedy alive in the house.

And so I was always- That's so good. Oh, it was so fun. And my kids both have great senses of humor. Like I don't think my daughter, Michaela, I don't think she ever says anything that isn't a joke. And so, and that's where she's most comfortable. I mean, it took my wife quite a while to realize this. She probably only said this to me about 10 years ago.

She came up to me and she said, you know, I think everything Michaela says is a joke. And I thought, yeah, that's exactly right. I'm glad that you got that. And so, and because there's always an edge to it, you know, and, and it's a, it's a challenge to in some ways when you, when you speak and play like that, because the challenge is to see if the people that you're interacting with can, well, can tolerate that and can understand it and can understand it and can appreciate it. It's a lovely thing to be able to speak about serious things

with that comedic edge. I mean, that's a real art, man, to transmute suffering into joy. That's for sure. I said that last night. It's so funny. They wanted me to come down because they were having an open mic night

and they had a Young woman and she it has a disease. I can't remember the name, but she is in a wheelchair doing comedy It's like an MS kind of a disease. Yeah, yeah, and she's beautiful girl young student and she did just a great set she did just a few minutes, but so they I'm kind of like the comedy grandma and they all roast the people, but I don't want to do that because I said, oh, I'm too famous and rich and good looking to do that, so I have to do the grandma thing. Plus, I love to mentor the young ones. And so I said to her, you know, you, you are so lovely and people really love you. They love your comedy because you have the essence of comedy in you to be able, we all see that you have reached

down into the, that pool of pain that you obviously have lived through in your life and brought out beauty and joy. And that is so important for people. And that's the essence of comedy. And you are going to be a huge star. Yeah. Well, one of the things I noticed, like my daughter was extremely ill when she was a kid. She had terrible juvenile arthritis and she had her hip replaced when she was 16 and her ankle replaced when she was 17. It was really bad. She was in like excruciating pain for about 15 years, which is really quite a long time.

And she has talked about that publicly and I've been at some of the events, they haven't been taped, some of the events where she spoke about what happened to her, and she's able to make her stories of that period of time often screamingly funny. And that's actually a real indication of recovery, right? It isn't that you can just talk about it without emotion, it's that you can, what would you can say? You see it, is it the absurdity? I guess it's the absurdity. It's something like that. But that is, that's a real art form to be able to take those, those excruciating moments and to make them into something that's shareable and that enables everybody to rise above the pain at the same time. And you know, What is that? Trying to think of the word that, it used to be medieval where you

would where they would talk about transforming 10 into alchemy. Yes, that's what it is. Yeah, right. Absolutely. Alchemy. Yeah, yeah. What, you know, you were talking about laughter before and for comics. Well, we love to get people to where they can't stop laughing. They want to laugh. And the other thing is, you know, when you were in school and you weren't supposed to laugh but something made you laugh, that's the best thing to watch from the stage when

you see people going through that, and then you just push on and tell people, we always say like when the head goes back and there's an intake of breath, that's what you're killing because you actually are killing them in a way, but it's a good kind of kill. You know, what I used to go work out with a couple of friends of mine in Boston, and one of the games we would play was to tell a joke when people were bench pressing. Because, well, when you laugh, you lose all your muscular force. And that's really interesting too, eh? Because it, and I've been trying to figure that out as a psychologist. It's like, obviously laughter is associated with play. And play is the opposite of power and aggression.

Play is truly the opposite of power. That took me like four decades to figure out that play is the antithesis of power. And it's so interesting that when people laugh, they go, yeah, it's a very good thing to know, you know, especially in your relationships, because if you're playing with your children or you're playing with your wife, then you know that you're not being a tyrant. And you can do almost anything in a spirit of play. I mean, it's hard when you're suffering, that's for sure.

It's hard to transmute real pain into play. But if you're doing anything perfectly, you're doing it in play. And it's so interesting to see that when you make people laugh, they lose all their muscular force. You know, they collapse into laughter, they dissolve into laughter and it takes them over. And so-

And they do that. They do that. You know, sometimes if we're getting real spiritual with it and we say, it's that universal ha. It's the expression of, you know, the ha. You know, because when you're a meditator, you know, it's the, it's the, you know, inhale and the exhale. So it's like the exhale and the letting go of, you know, secrets almost. Yeah, right, right. Ghosts and devils.

Right, right. It's really powerful. Well, it's interesting to have people do that communally too, because what that means, this is something that's profound too. And it is really something that Joe Rogan is managing to foster this again in Austin, because it also takes a lot of trust to laugh jointly at a joke, right? Because especially if the joke is off key or pushing the limits, the fact that you'll laugh with others means that a situation of trust

is being established in the room, right? And I've spent some time thinking about trust. I actually think that the only true natural resource is trust, that if people trust each other, they can make the desert bloom. That's right. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely the case. And comedy is an endeavor that's predicated

on a tremendous amount of trust, right? Because the audience has to trust the comedian and the comedian has to trust the audience. I mean, one of the things I've learned to do, you tell me about this for you. Before I go out on stage, I always remind myself that the people that are in the audience, this might be easier for me.

I think it's more true for my audience for a variety of reasons. They're on my side and as long as I'm grateful that they're there, and I'm communicating honestly, everybody is aiming at the same thing. Now, I know in a comedy situation, it's more complex because there's going to be cynics in the audience more. But what's your attitude to your audience, do you think? How do you conceive of your audience and how did you learn that?

Well, you know, I've been a comic for almost 40 years. So you learn it by trial and error and by going in front of different kinds of audiences and trying the same thing to see how it will work in front of this specific group until it works everywhere. So you know, you, it's trial and error, but it's so many other things like, you know, you could tell a joke and if you don't do the right rhythm of the joke or have the right

inflection, it won't work. So it's like so many things that are combined in it. But I think that what I've learned is when the audience knows or trust that you are having fun us that you are having fun and that you're enjoying it and yeah, that you have gratitude that they've come there to see you and they love you and then you can't help but love them back. I mean, already you love them because they're your fans and they keep you alive. And there is a tethering between me and my fans and I suppose every other comic might have that same view. I don't know, but it's a tethering to reality and to the best in humankind.

in humankind. They want, you know how Virginia Woolf said that the job of the writer is to put the severed parts together, right? I think she wrote that in Three Guineas, one of my favorite books. But anyway, I always think of comedy like that because we're putting the severed parts together that other people may not see. And that's mostly what we do, things that seem disparate, I guess. But then when you really look at them under a microscope there, they're very connected and people are like, oh, yeah. Right, right, right. That's an insight. Yeah, right. That's an insight. Yeah, yeah.

That, that, that, that drawing of connection. Yeah. And once you do that and they, they, um, appreciate that it's well thought. Yeah, definitely. Thought out. And then they're, they're kind of like, well, I thought that way too. There's that too. Yeah, I think that way too. But I, I couldn't didn't occur to me in that way. But you gave words to something that was like vague and spinning around in my head. You gave me the building blocks for that. So

me the building blocks for that. So, you know, thank you a lot of love. It's just really a lot of love. And, you know, such a great positive energy thing to be able to affect that and to watch it. People don't, people don't often, I don't hear them talk a lot about being on stake. I mean, we talk about some stuff like, you know, doing a great set or killing or, you know, having a good one or bombing or whatever. But don't talk about that relationship that you're building, this beautiful relationship, it is so spiritual to watch people get it. To be the person in the arena. That's fun. Yeah, yeah, that's so fun.

Well, so my tour manager was a standup comedian for a long time, John O'Connell, and he toured with stand-up comedians professionally as well as a manager. And there's a lot of similarity between what I do and what stand-up comedians do. And one of the similarities that I've really started to understand is I've talked to a variety of comedians. Jimmy Carr really helped me think this through,

because he's thought a lot about what he does and is able to articulate it well. You know, Carr said that, and I know many comedians do this, and maybe you do this when you're preparing a set, is that, you know, he'll go, when he's preparing new material, he goes to smaller clubs and tries out his new material and some of the jokes land and others don't. He just collects the jokes that land. I thought that was so interesting because stand-up comedy looks like it's a monologue, but it's got that dialogical element in the initial practice because he helped me understand that you could be a comedian by telling a lot of jokes and seeing which ones people laughed at and then

just collecting those. And you don't need much of a hit rate, right? If you need to generate 90 minutes worth of material and you have five hours of jokes, you can just get rid of the 80% that aren't any good. The audience will tell you what's funny. And one of the things I love about the lectures that I do, which are spontaneous. So I'm always watching people, you know, in the audience. I'm always talking to someone and I wanna see them,

I wanna see their eyes light up. I wanna see them be struck by something, right? I wanna give words to something they already know, but can't say. And people have told me that a lot, that they like my lectures because I say things they know to be true but haven't been able to articulate. And certainly, comedians do that. Well, they do that all the time.

And it is great because often, if I can make a point that has that characteristic but is also funny. I mean, that's a real, that's a blast if you can manage to pull that off. It's a real blast too. And when you're writing your set, you know, cause I do 90 minutes, but you do it in groups. You know, you do your jokes in groups

to build on an idea that culminates, you know, it's like little groups are probably five to seven minutes. And you start at one premise with a joke. And then the next joke is that kind of built on that previous premise. And it goes a little bit deeper. And then the next one goes deeper. And then by the fifth part of the bit, you have blown up the whole premise and showed that it was bullshit

and all along. That's what I like to do. And it's like turn everything on its head from its head. I can't really explain it. But that's my favorite part because it's like, Oh, she went. We thought she was going to go left, but she went right. I mean, I'm not talking politically. We thought she was going here, but the whole time she was taking us here. I love that misdirection stuff because that gets the biggest laughs because they thought they were getting set up for something completely different.

I like to remove their expectations where they go, where they go, oh yeah, I've heard this before you know yeah yes a minute ago and I know you know by virtue of the fact that I've always been one of few women in comedy um that that's been a plus for me you you mentioned earlier you mentioned earlier that you have thought through comedy from the perspective, I think you said age and sex. What else? And so talk a little bit more about being a female in the comedy industry because most comedians are men.

My experience has been that truly comical stand-up comedian females are very rare. Yeah, hard. It's too hard. It's so hard. But, you know, one thing I found out, probably because I have five kids, you know, that's one of my good jokes. I say, you know, I have five children. I used to be kind of pro-life.

That's a good joke. Yeah, that's a good joke. But my friends are all comics. But you know, all these guys, I always ask people, because I'm nosy, I'm a nosy old Jewish woman. And so I'll ask them, they always have the funny mom. So much to the heart of it. Oh yeah.

You know? So they... That's interesting. You know, my mother, my mother just died. She died this week. And one of the great memories I have of my mother is, and this is something I always knew about hers, I could always make her laugh. And so that was a big basis of our relationship. I could always make mom laugh by teasing her. In fact, I think the last thing I said to her when she was in the hospital, I was giving her hell about being in the hospital

because my father was ill and so we were worried about him. And then she ended up in the hospital and I gave her a rough time and that made her laugh. And so that's interesting. And I haven't heard anyone say that that relationship of comedy with mother is so particularly important, but that was definitely the case in my household.

It was my mom that I could really make laugh. I wonder, I wonder why that is exactly. Form of, it's obviously a form of play, but I wonder why it would be sex linked like that. Well, I want to hear more about your experiences as a female comedian. Hard life on the road, eh? So that's part of the barriers. Well, I didn't go on the road too much until I was older. I didn't come up like a normal

comedian because I had so many kids. But I did go on tour for 18 weeks with Julio Iglesias as his opening act there was the beginning of my bigger career. And yeah, that was so difficult. Oh my God, it was so hard to live through that. But when I started comedy, it was 1980 and they didn't like women. They didn't't you know, nobody liked women too much then If they do now, I don't think they do but any what they really don't like funny women and they didn't like women comedy

And they didn't like Women's comedy they didn't like women's anything to do with it because it was so all about men, you know, it was all men and and it was very it was fraternal and very collegiate and I was not any of those things but they they didn't like me and that was like the first time I got deplatformed or whatever, calling it censored. They didn't like me. And so they refused to let me work there at the comedy club in Denver.

And, but I wanted to do it. And so I had to go to these alternative places to do comedy. Like I would go to punk clubs and I'd end up in a mosh pit with no microphone doing comedy. That's why my voice is so loud. Cause I learned that there just telling jokes in a mosh pit. I mean, I can't believe it sometimes,

but I mean, I learned so much. I go to biker bars, I go to jazz clubs. I go to Unitarian Church lesbian lunches. To 20 people in small groups. And it made me way better. It made me fearless. It made me way better. It made me fearless. It made me- I bet.

More determined. It made me better because it made me fearless. And, you know, fighting to keep my head above water until finally some men comics from LA came and they saw me and they went to the club that had censored me and said, you really should let that girl, that's what they called me, you should let that girl on, she's really funny.

They pressured the club to let me back in and so they did, because I had these really strong male comics who were well known who were traveling through Denver advocate for me. So had I not had that, I don't know what would have happened, but they kind of treated me like a nice sister. They were very brotherly to me. Once that happened, I kind of took off. That was only a matter of about four years. Then I went to Hollywood and I had one of those overnight things that happened. I was there one night and I got all these breaks

and ended up on The Tonight Show. And my first time on The Tonight Show, Julio Iglesias was a guest and picked me to go on tour with him and I got my TV show from that. So it was really a matter of one night. So why did Iglesias decide that a comedy show was a good way to open his his his? Everybody had a comic opening for him back then and you know I was doing housewife jokes and his fans were you know women and he thought it would be a

Good idea and it was it was a blast. Oh my gosh, it was so fun. I had not ever really been in front of big crowds before because I had just been in Denver, but like to play the Astrodome in front of 50,000 people as just, you know, a standup comic, it was just, it was overwhelming and fantastic to stand there on stage in front of that many people and hear the

laughter coming down off the walls like is raining down from heaven it it was just wonderful and we did that all through the United States and so that made me more efficient as a comic you you know, and more excited and... More efficient, what do you mean? What do you mean by more efficient? No, oh, to be able to, as Mitzi Shor called it, who's the mother of all of standup comic, really, from the Comedy Store in LA, she would always say,

your job is to deliver the mail. You were up there for two minutes and you didn't deliver the mail. You're fumphering and humphering and you weren't delivering the mail. She always say that. So the efficiency of set up punchline next, just the efficient rhythm of no fat, no long premise with extra words. Right. Right.

No, you know, edit to go. And you know, I had famous comic friends who they befriended and mentored me like, you know, I met Rodney Dangerfield and he chose me to play his wife. He never had done that. Oh yeah. And you know, Bob Hope even, and Phyllis Diller, and Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, all these people I could name that I love so much,

would sit around and speak with me about comedy. And they taught me about removing the fat. Even an extra word is making you less efficient because you want to say the least amount of words and the perfect amount of rhythm with the right inflection and expression and uh you know that's a lot of stuff for sure and a lot of editing plates it's like that guy right spinning the air. And then boom, you got to come in at the right time. Yeah, be laughing really hard for a long time. And that screws up your punch line. And so you kind of get mad like, shut up, I'm trying to deliver the

punch line and you're laughing. But then you go, hey, they're supposed to ask what you're here for. Just you know, you're gonna have to to ask what you're here for. Just, you know, you're going to have to chill. So you have to figure out how am I going to navigate this to get the best punch line because I know it's a good punch line and I want a huge laugh. I don't just, you know, because I monitor the laughs we all do, like, oh, I'm only getting a six when it should have been an eight. You know, you're just the thing about my boyfriend is a musician too. We always talk about music and comedy is just a great way of being in the now.

You're so in the now. You know, you're not thinking about yesterday, tomorrow, nothing even a minute ago. You just have to be in the now to deliver the mail, you know, deliver the punch, deliver the art. Yeah, well, so you're touching there on a lot of motifs with regard to the sacredness, let's say, of comedy as well. It's like we have to separate the wheat from the chaff, so you have to be efficient. I love Mitch Hedberg for that reason because he could just deliver like God Amazing amazing ability to just deliver non-stop short jokes and and often so perfect So and then you talked about plate spinning one of the things I really find fun about lecturing and I think this is one

Of the things that makes my lectures akin to a comedic act is that I like to bring five or six stories that I haven't told together and then to see if I can weave them so that right near the end of the lecture they all come together and make the same point. We call that callback. So that, you know, when you build the story and you get to where you're reminding them that you were talking about that before and, you know, when you build the story and you get to where you're, you're reminding them that you were talking about that before, and, you know, the relationship come together. Those are the most fun when a callback will occur to you and you, because you will get the biggest laugh and applause on callbacks.

It's the most fun thing that one. You just feel like it's a gift from God and I. And I do feel like so much of it is a God thing. Because I always tell people when we're getting real spiritual with stuff, I'm like, well, God wrote me some great jokes today. Because they do come in like that. I'll be sitting there writing, writing, writing, and it's just crap, three pages of crap. There's a certain feeling, physical feeling, like suspended animation is what it feels like. And the top of my head actually opens in some way, and God inserts an idea in there. And it's, it's my best job. I don't, it doesn't feel like I'm doing it. Because I, it

just is a whole other thing. That's, that's like when you're in the wave, you're in the channel, you're in the groove, you know, like a lot of musicians, yeah, when they're playing jazz musicians, you know, it's just the phrase comes in. But he'll just lay these jokes in there. That's why I always say God's the funniest comic of all, because look what he does in the world, it's all hilarious. His sense of relationship and the way people live that they

don't see it is the funniest thing in the world to me. How funny he is, like I'm trying to think of how to illustrate that. It'll come to me, but it's not right now. But I get my best jokes, just they just, it's like a download. Well, there's, and it's interesting though too, because you said that that often happens when you've

written three pages of second rate material. To get those moments, you have to put in that counterproductive work too. When I'm writing, I throw away 80%, 90% of what I write and that's often painful because, well, when I was finishing up my last book, which was only a week ago, like I was cutting half chapters that took me a whole month to write. But it doesn't matter, right? Because the fundamental issue is that you conserve that wheat and you get rid of the chaff. And the more that you get rid of that second rate, the better you have, the better what's left over is. And you know, the other thing that's kind of sacred

about the comedic act is that you said that you're in the moment is that you really have to pay attention to the audience and not be afraid of them because then you can feel where everyone is, like you're having a conversation with someone, because you are when you're on stage, even if it's a monologue, the audience has to be along for the ride.

And that's where you can capitalize on timing. This is something I'm not great at. Like I can't really tell jokes. I can be funny on stage, but it has to be spontaneous. I've never really learned the art of telling a joke that I already knew. It isn't a skill that I've managed to develop, but I can see the connection with the comedic world

by watching comedians pay attention to the audience, because timing is everything, right? You have to be dancing with the audience and they have to be in that zone. And lectures exactly the same way, you know, you want to, you want to make sure that the words are landing exactly when they should. And that you're, it's been hard for me also to learn

because I'm often lecturing about serious things and I'll throw in a joke. It's been hard for me to learn to take the time to let the audience have a bit of a breather around the joke, you know, and to, and not to rush ahead. Yeah. Yeah, that that's exactly right. You know, taking a drink of your Coke, you know, we all have, we all have learned those little things to let them catch up to you, let them catch their breath, reset their brain.

Cause especially if you've taken them into new territory, they need a little rest, you know, and so do you. But, uh, it's just the greatest thing. It's, uh, I'm so, I'm so thankful that I was given a gift there. I do consider that I was given a great, I was given a wonderful gift that helped me. The only thing I can really compare it to is a great musical performance.

Yeah. And that's got that same, what would you say, magic that pulls the crowd in. And that, there's a tremendous amount of attention that goes along with that too. The great musicians, this is one of the things I love about listening to Billie Holiday, for example, because every single word she sings is attended to. Every word is a little work of art, you know, she's got that intense attention. And I've been curious too about why so many people who are successful on YouTube were

comedians. But I think it's because of their ability. Well, first of all, a sense of humor helps in your, if you're an interviewer say, but I suspect that what it really has to do with is the ability of comedians to pay attention. Yeah. Right? Because you're nowhere, you can't be funny unless you're paying attention. You have to be, as you said, right in the moment.

You have to see what's the right next thing to say to keep the conversation flowing, to throw in something from left field, but not to left field. So- Yeah, it's the plate spinning thing. Yeah, right. You have to be, you know, when you get real meta with it, it's like, well, you're kind of in the past, the present and the future all in the same now.

Right. Cause you have to think about how am I going to follow this up and especially in my shows, people they like to heckle me in a friendly way or just start talking for some reason, you know, because it is like a conversation and you know, I love it too. And for some reason, that's when I really love it because I love when my brain is working on three or four channels at once. All comics love that because like I was so sharp and you're telling your friends, I was on it.

I did one more bragging to each other or explaining to each other. But yeah, it's a heightened awareness thing. And I don't know, if you're funny in life, you're even funnier on stage because you got the stress and the pressure of, I better be good and you know, and it propels you but... How did you cope with, how do you cope and did you cope with jokes that aren't, that don't work?

I mean, part of the reason I think I've had a hard time telling jokes on stage is because I get self-conscious if halfway through the joke I get self-conscious. That's really the problem, you know. And then of course it doesn't work because I screw up the timing. But there are a few things more awkward than making a joke that isn't funny. And you said you played in some pretty rough places and obviously you exposed yourself to enough of that to... But I'm curious about why you were able to tolerate that to begin with, because it's

actually pretty painful to tell a joke that doesn't work, especially if you know it's funny and you just screwed it up. So why do you think it was that impelled you to get through those bouts of self-consciousness that paralyze most people to the point where people are terrified you know, people are terrified of public speaking much less doing stand up comedy. So how, why, how and why did you persevere through that? Yeah, I wonder that myself sometimes, but it was a, I, because it was such as, I think it's because it was such a, so it was such a survival mechanism in my family and my childhood.

And it was a self-defense mechanism for me to survive a lot of crazy and painful things. That in a way, I'm friends with Mike Tyson and it's a lot like boxing. I always talked about, we always compared when we talked about it. It's so much jousting. It's mental jousting to be on stage and to stay in control of

one woman with, you know, with, with no props, with no orchestra, with no video, just stay in control of a, you know, 5,000 seat room, just with your voice. Cause it's a lot of mental jousting and well, they're not going to defeat me. Not after what I went through as a kid. not going to defeat me, not after what I went through as a kid. I'm not going to let them defeat me because I can't be defeated. Right. So that's an attitude of challenge rather than fear. Yeah, it's like, no, they're not, you know, it's like I always feel somehow it's a God thing to me and it's like the devil ain't getting me. I'll take the devil down,

that's why I'm on stage and he isn't going to get me. That's what I do. When I screw up, then I just feel bad and embarrassed, but I go home and I go, I'm going to make it better. I never feel defeated. I don't allow myself to feel defeated because Comedy is a living thing and you can always get better. You can nobody can stop you from getting better

You can always agree right right and i'm not going to let them stop me I'm going to just keep getting better no matter what they tried to do to stop me They're not going to till I have my last breath. I'm going to be saying fuck you Because that's how I feel, you know, uh, they're not going to stop me. They're not going to. Till I have my last breath, I'm going to be saying fuck you. Because that's how I feel. They're not going to stop me. Unless they gag me. There's things they can do to me, I guess. They've done enough. But I respect and believe in and live for the truth. And comedy is truth. And you know, you're trying to tell the truth to people to make the world better. You're not trying to make light of people suffering, you're trying to get at power and bring it down and make it easy. So it feels like I'm, I guess I feel like a, you know, a warrior, a word warrior. And, you know, for me, it's also like for all the people who were told to shut up, I'm

there there with me too. You know, I see it so I see it so deeply like that. Because you know, it's, geez, it is like that, you know. Yeah, well, it is. Well, I especially, I think that's especially the case if you're a comedian who's popular among the working class, you know, because working class people, the sensible ones, and I think most working class people over about 40 are pretty damn sensible. That doesn't necessarily mean they're particularly articulate.

You know, and people can be wise without being articulate and then if you're a working class comedian then you have the, as you pointed out, you have the opportunity and the privilege of articulating that and that is a big deal. And it is something that's going to make people love you because people like to have the words at hand to say what they know to be true. And it is a very peculiar thing too, isn't it? I love the idea on my show. I've probably written 120,000 jokes.

Part of the joy of it is when I was on my TV show was, I would think, oh, here's something that some fat lady or some fat guy is gonna say at the water fountain at work. Right, right. So it's like arming people who may have suffered or felt, you know, marginalized. Here's a little bit of something for you, you know uh marginalized here's a little bit of something for you you know because when I'd watched comedians as a kid with my dad on id Sullivan and hear Richard Pryor people man I felt

like I was being gifted especially Pryor but uh you know all of them really. But I loved Richard Pryor. He is my idol and became a friend, which was a wonderful part of being the comic. But you know, to get, I got what he was doing as just a little tiny girl. I saw the implications of everything he was doing. I knew. I knew that he had gone, I knew that he was inside a stereotype, kicking down the walls from the inside. I knew that. And I said, I can do that. I can do that. My friend, Michael Malus, I don't know if you know who

he is. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know. He's very's a very Michael's very funny He's very funny and he told me he goes God with you. It's Pathological he always tells me you're you're funny is pathological. You can't turn it off, you know Oh, well, I can private and you know, I it is pathological but You know when I'm in the mood for it but and I'm a crusader and a lot of us are you know, when I'm in the mood for it. But, and I'm a crusader, and a lot of us are, you know. Richard was. Well, tell me a bit more about Roseanne and how that started up and why it was... The show?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me about the show and why it was that it turned into such a smash hit. What do you think you did right? I mean, first of all, it was very unlikely, right? You said you had these weird coincidences happen to you when you went off to Hollywood and it all came together pretty quickly. So how did you like, what did you say yes to and why did you make it work? How did you make it work? Oh my gosh, that one's real. You know, I have the story I tell normal people, you know, and normal press people. I always wanted to be a comedian. And so I started at age 28 to tell jokes.

But the real thing is when I was little and would watch TV and see like father knows best in all these shows, I'd look around and go, hell, this is nothing like my family. Nobody has diabetes and none of the men are fat and covered in hair. It was nothing. I go, this is nothing like anything I've ever seen. Where are these people? They're not screaming, they don't eat with their mouth open.

You know, they, you know, isn't, and I had it in my head since a young age. Boy, I want to get on TV and have my show. And I want to do the Roseanne show where I show people that I know on TV. How come there's nobody like our family on TV? But we did have the Honeymooners, I remember. Right. I loved and I also idolized Jackie Gleason. I loved the Honeymooners so much because that was a real working class miracle, that show.

Still, that one stood up over time, over a century, it's still brilliant. And just like a bare set and human dialogue. That guy was so great. Charlie Chaplin, all these things. You know who I really love, Mr. Bean. That guy doesn't even need language. He's so great. But, you know,

so I always had the fantasy, someday I'm going to get on there and show a family of fat people that fight. It was always in my head. And I wanted to show another less perfect thing and it was always in my head. And so after the Julio Iglesias tour, Hollywood came knocking to do a show. And so I said, yes, I'd like to do that. And I don't know, I thought it was gonna be a lot easier than it was. Once I signed up and got into it,

like so many people say, especially comedians, and then you see how the shit works. How the sausage is made. Yeah, how the sausage, it's like, what have I done? Right. What have I got myself into? And just trying to keep your head above water where they're trying to drag your feet down. Well, it's a production mill, eh?

So, I mean, it's a funny thing for a comedian to do a sitcom because those aren't the same thing. They're really not the same thing. And you could see very funny people become less and less funny as their sitcoms progress. Partly because I think they just get exhausted. It's like, well, there's only so many golden eggs the goose can lay. And then there's so many people that you have to please too.

Which, whereas when you're on the stage, well, you have to please yourself and your audience, but there isn't that your group of 40 people, even if they're on your side. I don't know how, it's gotta be very difficult to do comedy collaboratively. So. Yeah, I tried it.

And, you know, I worked out a system that kind of followed along with being a mom. I'll have the final word, you guys can play, you can put in things, but I'll have the final word. I could write a joke, I could overwrite. I don't want to say they had shitty jokes, but a lot of times they did. And I'd just snap it in because I have pathological joke writing ability and I cannot not do it. I cannot not correct a joke. Right, right. I can understand that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that was just part of just the whole gestalt of what I did. That's a sign of expertise. When great chess, there's as many chess possibilities in a single chess game as there are atoms in the observable universe. Yeah, so there's a lot, but an expert chess player can look at a board and know what to do. Like it's a gestalt and that expertise you're talking about

with regards to jokes, that really is the sign of being an expert. You see the patterns and if you see them, it's like seeing an obstacle in front of your path or something like that. You can't not see it. And you said you wrote 120,000 jokes. How many of them do you think were funny?

What percentage do you think were funny? Like truly funny? All. I'm talking about on my show and the jokes I've told over the years. Oh, oh, oh. I probably have like six hours of jokes that I've told as a standup comic. And then the show, what was it,

three or four, 10 years of 20 to 30 episodes a year. It's a lot of jokes. That's for sure. And they didn't get on the show unless they were funny, you know. How many jokes do you think you wrote that weren't that weren't that didn't make the cut because I'm trying to get at how much work you had to do to get that expertise, right? Right. 10,000 that sucked.

But I keep tinkering on them. And sometimes just putting the word and in there would make them work. You know, like I said, there's so many levels of it. Sometimes just moving words around or saying it with a different inflection would make it work. So it's just like a tinkering, a craft. It is a craft, you know, to craft those ideas into a sellable joke that you can deliver.

There's so much to it. I mean, I can't even, it'd probably be a real bore to sit and talk about that with people who weren't really. Well, it's interesting to try to figure out why really pointed communication works. I mean, there isn't any more pointed communication than jokes. Absolutely, man, you't any more pointed communication than jokes. Absolutely, man, you got to be right on the money.

And so it's definitely worth some analysis because it's hard to get it right and it's so perfect when it is right. Do you think, you know, one of the things that we've been dancing around here is the notion that the truth stated most perfectly is comedic and isn't't that amazing that what you get with the right kind of truth at the right moment

is like a burst of pleasure, a release of tension. That's so amazing. And you gotta kinda wonder as a consequence of that just how far you could push that. We talked about the fact that if you do things right, there's an intense play in that. And about the fact that if you do things right, there's an intense play in that. And I truly believe that if you were the master of the moment, you'd be playing all the time.

That's a hell of a... That's a hell of a... Yeah, right, right, right. Right, that's a good thing to aim for. My wife and I have been practicing that very hard. She had a bout of both of us. We had bouts of dear fatal illnesses a couple of years ago. We had a pretty good relationship before that, but it's better now because I think we both

take less for granted. Maybe that's part of it. It put a new seriousness into our relationship, but we're trying to bring that spirit of play to every moment. And man, you know, if you make that a game, an aim and a game, then well, you get better at it. And that's, there isn't anything that's more fun than that. Now you're- I was just thinking when I ran, you know, I ran for president in 2012 on the Peace and Freedom Party, which my idol Dick Gregory also ran on that party as a presidential candidate in the 60s. And they say had votes really been tabulated correctly, he might've actually won.

But considering the fact that he wasn't on every state ballot, but that always intrigued me. So I wanted to do the same. And because we agreed on so many things, it's deep thought, deep political thought goes into comedy, too. But when I ran my speech, I said, I'm the only serious comedian in the race. Yeah, right Because these other guys are just jokers But i'm a serious comedian and so, you know, I I did it in a um Humorous way, but uh, you know, I said, you know, they just go for the laugh

Because that's a lot of comics too, you know, just going for, you know, a... Cheap laugh. A cheap laugh, yeah. I guess the cheap laugh is one that's not connected to anything else, hey? Cause you, you know, you pointed out that in a good comedy set, you're weaving things together and the more complex humor is going to have a story associated with it. There's gonna be interweaving across the set.

I mean, some comics do more of that than others, but. Like, they should build out of that brilliant. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, that, yeah, he's a really good example of that. He's a real storyteller. Bill Cosby was really good at that too. I know it's illegal to say his name, but God, he was funny. He was another idol, another idol. Well, I saw him in Edmonton in the mid-70s, I think,

a long, long time ago. And he came out on the stage with just a stool and a cigar. And he had people laughing so hard in the audience that they were literally hyperventilating. It was amazing things to watch. And he was a real storyteller, right? It wasn't, I mean, there are comedians like Mitch Hedberg that are like, their stories are one joke long.

And Jimmy Carr does that too, you can pull that off. But Cosby was a real storyteller. And it was amazing thing to watch his mastery of the stage. Such a catastrophe when things blew up, when he blew things up around him, that was such a drag because on the surface he had done so much good and he was so funny. I mean, he was crazy. He was a crazy master of the stage. Well, you know, it's like they say there's such a thin line between, you know, madness

and talent. He's the textbook exempt. Yeah. His shadow got the best of him. Right. So many comics have the same problems with their outlets and how they don't have a lot of self-control there. But on stage, it's a master. with their outlets and how they don't have a lot of self-control there. But on stage, it's a master. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, so now you're spending a fair bit of time. We talked a little bit briefly just before the podcast started. You're spending a fair bit of time in Austin and you're going to be doing shows at Joe's at Rogan's Comedy Club, eh? The Mother Ship? No, I'm doing it at another place called Cap City.

Cap City Comedy Club, and I'm going to be there in Austin, June 17, 18, and 19. How big a venue is that? I think it's pretty small, maybe 300 seats, but it's a good place to work it. And you always try. It takes about a year to get a whole new, you know, and you know, you always try it takes about a year to get a whole new hour. Right, right. And then you have to tool it. And so it's, it's at the point to take it to an audience.. So I do look forward to it.

Yeah, it's going to be the last. Okay, now you did say that you had performed at Rogan's Comedy Club though. Yeah, I have some sets there, but we only do like 15-20 minutes. Oh, I see. So you're developing a whole... Aha, aha. And when was the last time you did that? Oh my gosh. I think, well, I guess it was about a year and a half. Aha.

When I did. So what, now you're working on Mr. Burcham. What do you have active, what are your plans for your future? I mean, you've had a bumpy ride with all the cancellations. Yeah. Yeah, I'm doing a podcast on, you know, I guess it's where everybody is doing podcasts,

YouTube, Rumble, Apple, you know, it's called the Roseanne Barr podcast, which I'm really getting into. I've done 49 of them now. Oh yeah. I'm just loving that the conversation with conversations with intelligent people and fighting the good fight trying to wake people up trying to say the things that aren't that are like missing I like to

Go to the places that are not really being talked about. How are you picking your guests? I pick them by, well, mostly it's people who call and want to be on, because a lot of people are calling and wanting to be on, which is flattering. And I'm like, yeah, I'd love to interview. I just had Tulsi Gabbard on

and that was a fantastic interview because- She's a tough cookie. Yeah, we both are from Hawaii. I mean, I also live in Hawaii part of the year. And to be able to talk about Hawaii and how it creates a different kind of culture and a person with a different sort of point of view than the mainland. We got to talk about that and then talk about politics. Of course, you know, I'm a huge Trump supporter.

And so I like to talk about that's the whole point of everything. What do you think of Trump as a comedian? I think he's funnier than hell. The guy has so much fun. I've got this book that someone put together and they gave me. It's a library edition, so it looks like a very professional hardcover and it's called The Collected Poetry of Donald Trump. I have that book. You have that book?

It's hilarious. It is hilarious. It's all his tweets. Oh, you have that book. That's so funny. Yeah. But I read through that and I thought, oh man, like he's definitely underappreciated as a comedian because like he's very pointed like very very

pointed but that's a hilarious collection it's ridiculously funny and I know that's part of the reason he connects with working-class audiences because he's got that vicious wit yeah oh yeah he's just hilarious and people love it that's what I appreciate most about him is how funny he is. And when they don't like you, like when they don't like me and they start writing your jokes up as if they're serious, that's serious too. Just to be part of that or read it or watch it, it's like how arrogant they are. That'd be like, remember Henny Youngman's joke, take my wife, please. Remember? So that'd be like if the press would go Henny Youngman is trying

to traffic his wife. You know, they write it as a joke as if it's a serious thing. Because they don't like we smile. That's also what humor what humor well it's also one of the real dangers about being funny and telling jokes because a Really good joke taken out of context looks often looks very dark and bad Right. It has to be because it's it's something that only works in the moment. You have to set it up properly It's very context dependent. And so it's very easy for someone who wants to savage someone's reputation to take a joke out of context and to use it as a bludgeon. And so it's one of the... That's what happened to me but you know they had been trying to do that to me since I first walked into Hollywood because I thought it was like how dare she who didn't go to

How dare she who didn't go to? Harvard has no degree how dare she reach people right right right It was so the class issue was always so hard when asked me about Hollywood It was always that Right right well, you know Trump Trump has faced that too. Hey, I mean he's always been My my impression is that he's always been, my impression is that he's always been an outsider to the elites, you know? And I also think that's part of the reason

that he's attractive to working class people is, you know, it's partly because they look at Trump, they look at an Ivy League educated, what do you call them, academic individual and think, well, that's outside of my realm of possibility, but what Trump represents is something that I could conceivably have. So there's an American dream variant there, and I think that's realistic. And I know Trump is also good when he's

talking to military people, for example, and that's a hard thing. That's typically a very hard thing for politicians to pull off. Imagine he could probably do that because he's had a fair bit of experience with working-class people on the construction side of his life, which is also a difficult thing to manage. I think it is that he speaks from the hip and from the heart. He doesn't filter it through a bunch of horse shit and lies like they do. They don't mean anything they say. And everyone knows it. And everyone got used to, oh, politicians,

we don't believe anything. We just think we vote for the lesser of two evils. You know what I mean? 2% less evil than the other guy, so we'll vote for him. We know they're all lying. They're all full of it. But Trump was a shock to the system of that because he's like, we can do better and we can use, you know, everything at our disposal to make

things better and make it better for our people. Nobody had ever heard anything like that since Kennedy. And it's a shock to that system of, you know, that big boat they don't want rocked. And of course I was so excited because I love rocking that boat, you know, and it was very plain-spoken. It wasn't in that academic, removed, insulated, ivory tower voice that tells us what's good for us. You know, it was like, you know what? You guys are our servants, okay? Yeah.

You are our public servants and you're no good at the servant business. That's one of my bits where I go, you suck at the servant business, you ought to be fired. You're like this kind of servant that comes into work and steals our spoons. You ought to be in jail. And, you know, it's just a turning, they call it the fourth turning, you know. What I was going to say is the most exciting thing for me, recently in the last, well, you know. What I was going to say is the most exciting thing for me recently in the last, well, you know, the last few years, maybe 20 off and on, but I also, I love to talk about the Bible

and I sort of, I'm a Jew, you know, so I sort of teach Sunday school in a way, but how funny the Bible is, you know, if you look at it correctly and read it right, it's hilarious. Like I say, God's the funniest comic. It's just hilarious how God turns things out. But I like to talk about the humor in the Torah stories and make them funny because they are so funny and they are so give me an example give me an example well the my favorite example is when we left egypt and uh you know that the uh the uh people who left slavery the the Israelites there, the tribes, they've just been taken out and had the sea open for them.

They had all these great miracles. They get to the other side dry and live, and the first thing they do is start bitching about. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Complaining and whining. Yeah.

Wishing that your name was found. At least in Egypt we had fresh fish. That's hilarious. Yeah, that's for sure. That is hilarious. Hey, they, what's the matter? They didn't have graves in Egypt? Yeah.

To bring us out here in the desert, to bury us, you know, no concept of gratitude, nothing. It was all gone after these major miracles because that's kind of the nature of people. If they can't have their complaints and they're blaming, that's the nature of slavery, I mean. Yes, that's right. To leave slavery, the message of it was still within the people's minds. That's why it took 40 years to run. Yeah, right, that's exactly, yes, absolutely. Until they were able to free up that system.

So, I mean, it's just humorous that, you know, unlike the story of- You know, there's a scene in Exodus where the Israelites are complaining about not having anything to eat, and God sends them so many quail that, like, there are three feet of quail everywhere, as far as you can see, and they're literally eating so much quail that the bones are coming out of their noses. Right. Bones are coming out of their noses. Right, right. And there's a scene too in the story of Adam and Eve when after Adam and Eve fall and Adam is hiding behind a bush

because he knows he's naked, God comes along and says, what the hell are you doing hiding from me? And Adam says, well, you know that woman you made me. And so it's so great because he blames the woman for his trouble and his nakedness and his cowardice, and he blames God at the same time, which is also a very nice little bit of comedic twist. And those are great, comedic premises, you know, that God gave us because we're supposed to see ourself in them and go, hey, maybe I can't

– well, we're not supposed to say maybe, but we're supposed to recognize that we need to change that in ourselves. Yeah. So, men should stop blaming women and God, you mean? Well, you should be accountable for what you yourself do. That's the hardest thing. It's the hardest thing for human beings to go. I have made a mistake that needs to be corrected. And the real hard thing for human beings, just as I've found in my life, is to say, I am sorry. Hardly anybody can say that.

The left never says that when they're proven wrong over and over and over, and they ruin people with the jackboot on their face. I say the rainbow-colored jackboots. They never say, oh, we're sorry we were wrong. They never do that. Well, you know from Exodus that it's in the nature of the tyrant to double down in the face of error, right? That's how you make sure the plagues get worse when you could have just learned the first time. Oh, that's a great, that's a great one. Yeah.

Well, there's the other part of that too, you know, which also sheds a light on refusal to admit to error, you know, because the Egypt or the Israelites, they escaped from the tyranny, but they're not in the promised land. They have to spend those years in the desert. And so lots of people will stay in the tyranny because they don't want to be in the desert because it's tyranny desert promised land, not tyranny promised land. So, you know, once you give up your idiocy, you're lost for a while and that's painful Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's painful. That is so bright. Yeah. Yeah It's that's the process of bringing your mind after you freed your body

That's even harder. Yeah, right, right. Well, that's exactly that's exactly what that story reflects. Yeah All right, we should we should wrap this up. We've gone longer than we had planned, which is exactly fine as far as I'm concerned for everybody. I very much enjoyed talking with you too. The next time I come to Austin, maybe we could meet. I would like that. Maybe we could go to one of the comedy clubs together. I'd love to take you down there. Yeah, that would be fun. So I'm going gonna come to Austin probably in July. I think I'm gonna go see Joe in July So, you know, let's let's do it Absolutely. Oh, I you know this guy that placed Tyler Fisher. I was gonna tell you

That place Carpons. He does the best Jordan Peterson. Oh, no, I was gonna tell you that plays Carponsa. He does the best Jordan Peterson. Oh no. I have your text, so I'm gonna text it to you. He does you on the money. I'm gonna send it to you, it's so brilliant. Oh, that's a terrible thing to even contemplate. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that. All right, so let's get together when I come down to Austin. I think that would be fun. All right. All

right. And for everybody watching and listening, I'm going to continue to interview Roseanne on the daily wire side for another half an hour. I think we'll probably talk a little bit more about cancellation and yeah, I think, I think we should delve into that and into the how you've coped with that and what you plan to do about it in the future and what people should be done when they find themselves in that situation and what you've done. So that's what we're, if you guys want to come over onto the Daily Wire side, everybody watching and listening, I think that's where we're going to go with that.

And so thank you very much for talking with me today. It was a pleasure walking through your thoughts on comedy with you for sure. And I'm looking forward to meeting in person. Me too. All right, and everybody watching and listening, thank you very much for that. And your attention is much appreciated.

The film crew here up in Fairview, Alberta, thank you for your making that possible and we'll talk soon. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"]