Yes, the lovely podcast theme music. What's up, everybody, I'm Roy with JR. I am a correspondent for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and I am welcoming you to Beyond the Scenes. This is the podcast where we journey deeper into the topics and issues originally discussed on The Daily Show with the show's writers, producers, correspondents, anybody. Hell, if you got a Daily Show T shirt, we might want to talk to you as well. Basically, to put it in another way, beyond the scenes, it's like when you order fast food and like, you know, like when you order like fries, right, you order nuggets, and it'd be like the magic fries in the bottom of the bag. First off, those are the best fries, the fries. Any food that's freed, that's unexpected, that's the best food. This podcast is the bottom of the bag fries of the Daily Show. So you came for the Daily Show, but then you're rooting around the bottom of the bag. It's me sitting right there with the whole last podcast. It's for you. It's a little extra audio content from the show that we're giving you for free. Now make sure you share us with your partner too. Can't be hogging this podcast for those fries. You know you gotta share us, which you know you got a spouse or whoever you sleep with from time to time. Well, go and listen to Roy and beyond the scenes. Look the fastest way to the couch right there, it's hogging the bag. You know, you can't be stealing fries from nobody. We'll talk about that later. This this podcast is not about food, I promise you. Today we're talking about the state of black shit. So basically what the state of black shit is. This is a yearly segment where I deliver a State of the Union address documenting the highlights and some of the low lights of black life over the last year. Think of it as an answer a response to the president State of the Union address. Now I've had the honor of delivering this address in nineteen and most recently in one. I don't know why I didn't just say the last four years. That would have been quick play the cliff, get even in black people, African Americans and chick Hanks Wagwan careers and white Wow. Look, I'm coming to you from one of the blackest locations in America, the backyard with Megan Marco spilled the team to Oprah. Tonight, we black people are gathered here to once again ask ourselves the question where he is? Let's be honest. Was one of the most challenging years in recent history for the black community, beginning with COVID, which frankly is a racist virus, as it accomplished what the criminal justice system has been trying to do for years, lock up every black person in America. So to break it down, We're gonna be going beyond the scenes on the State of Black Ship with two of the daily shows, Emmy nominated writers. Please welcome X Mayo and Randall otisd X. How you doing. I'm good. I'm showing, you know, just not working out, just you know, being me x Mayo looking nice. Thank you. Your hair is always illustrious. Thank you. I am. I am. I am doing really well. I am working out. I have to. I'm not like Randall. Randall, he just he could eat pizza. It turns into abs, you know, And I look at pizza and my titties get bigger. I have to work out. So I've been working out every day, especially for my mental because you know, I have to work with white people, and I don't want to put my hands on them, so I have to. It helps me um my mental. I have the same problem with pizza. It also goes to my chest. Let's talk about the segment. There was a time where Trump was being extremely dismissive of black issues, and people would have asked Trump, Hey, what about this for the black sort about that? For the black sort about that? And it just became this thing where we were like, Yo, I think we need to do something that just let's black people know everything gonna be I or look how far we've come, Look how much further we have to go. And some of the stuff is serious, some of the stuff is lighthearted. So on your side of the building, I guess virtually now, what was the purpose and premise of the segment is supposed to be? Um Well, I was told when I got a sign to write it for a twenty review, was just that, um, you know, this is to let niggas know what's going on. My boss did say that because they're white. They didn't say that. That's that I broke it down in Layman's terms. They don't say that our I say that. But so I was told, like Roy does this thing like the State of Black Ship, so that everybody is clear on, especially Black people, on like our successes, our trials, our tribulations, and just to encourage us and to remove us forward in like a comedic way. Yeah. I mean it's similar to what access are you know, our white us comes in and just says your drops to let these nickas know and uh, but he's talking about Danna Meyer, the head writer. He's not talking about. But it's kind of, like you said, providing that balance between talking about the trials but also talking about the successes because you know, a lot of the times and if we're going back to trump um, people just frame the black community as being only paid only drama. Like I think he just said, it's like what do you have to lose? You live in hell. It's like, Okay, there's obviously like problems in the black community, but there's positive things as well. So it's kind of given that balance and that encapsulation. To me, what makes State of Black Ship unique is that it's one of the few times on the show where we talk about the future, Like so much of our show is reactive or exposing. We all saw that story. Here's our take on it, or it's here's something that you didn't know about that we're now going to expose to you, where this is completely Hey, this other stuff happening going on in the world that we can also talk about. And I think, to me, that's what makes it, that's what makes it uniquely different from anything else we do on the show. That's quote unquote a black segment. But I was just curious what you thought about that random But I guess it's different to me in the sense of just like how encompassing it is, because you know, it's the daily show, so we do things day to day. That's like definition in the name. And it's rare that we can step back on any type of issue and give it a much like more long term view. So while I was looking to the future, it's also a way of talking about the past in a scope that we normally can or normally don't do. The setting of State of the Black Ship is the part that always makes me laughing. Speaking to you from the capital of Black America. The corner boof of a waffle house in berman Ham, Alabama. A Popeye's in St. Louis owned by Cedric the Entertainment The backyard with Megan Markol spilt the team to Oprah speaking to you tonight from Harlem and New York City and not the getrified part with the white people and take it over with Muffin shops out in a church basement at four hundred and fifty third Street where it's blacker than a Woultang family reunion. That's one of the things that YouTube is writers that you all cook up that I have no input, Like, I'm legit. I legitimately enjoy being surprised, Like if it wasn't in the script rehearsal, I would love, Like there's days where you can do stuff on green screen and I don't even want to know what's behind me because I want that to kind of play somehow into my performance. X. What goes into choosing the particular locations. I can only speak for the year that I was there, but I think I mean the year before y'all was at the Wiffa House, so come on, oh yeah, yest and so. But when I was thinking about it, it was just like, what is the most niggerish place that I could put Roy? Like I have to Like, I was just like, what, well, where where where can I put him? That so stupid, and it just like, as soon as you see him there, you're gonna get an immediate laugh. That's what I want. I want to laugh immediately. I don't want any anybody in the audience to have to work for it. I want soon as they see that backdrop, they just laugh immediately. It's like, why the funk is he here? At a Like? I just so that was that was for that one. So Randa, are you the one that put me in the garden with open for the as individuals so much? Because Randul is from the verbs and he's like, let's put this nigg is in line at popyt Well. Originally I wanted, you know, in the locked hair carry products section of wal Greens, but I didn't know they got rid of that rule. Like I was like, I love the progress, but you ruined my job, you know. Papaye saw that right, No, you get free, you get free. No close like a shirt or something like. They were kind, but this was at peak chicken sandwich, like the way trying to find a PlayStation five right now, Like this was peak chicken sandwich. They was not coming up off them. Chicken sandwich is for the free. You'd be surprised how many brands watched the show and you mentioned them casually, like I remember one year it wasn't a State of Black Ship. At some point during the desk chat with Trevor, I pulled out a bottle of Hennessey. I was like a Southern Aristrican, I do the Claire, I'll say your fall horn leghorn, and then I just pulled out some Pannessy. And then like two weeks later in the office bottle of Hits, we mentioned, um Jack Daniels one time and um seepee time we're talking about Nearest Green and the distilling process for whiskey being created by this black man. And Jack Daniel was like, let's get you know, you need to put a PlayStation on, because I can't find you need to the only reason I've mentioned these last four things, Randall, is so that we can get a PlayStation, some Hennessy, some Jack Daniels, and a Popeye sandwich. She really thought I was going somewhere with that, No, man, I was trying to get some freciate what when when it comes to balancing, because when we talk about State of Black Ship, and you know, if we look at the one that we just did right. On the one hand, we go, Hey, Derek Chauvin found guilty and then less than a paragraph later, hey, we love Beyonce. How do you all balance the pain with the positivity? Like what's the most complex aspect of like trying to compose this segment? Yeah, because you it be funny, but you also wanted to be pointing. Yet so too much of one denigrates to the other. It is difficult, and it's it's a difficult. It's a difficulty more in communication of an idea rather than like creation, because I don't know. For me, I feel like for most black people, you know, the pain of you know, just being a black person next to the positive experiences that you know, that's just something you live with every day and so it's kind of like natural to you. And so I'm not as worried as doing those with doing those jumps, uh, for like black people as much because I'm like, you get it, that's like part of like how we live. But maybe like for other groups who don't understand things, you're like, oh, this is like the worst thing ever, and like how and you're like you get more trapped in that mindset, So it's kind of like, yeah, it's communicating that is the hardest part. Not it just comes down to me uh more with just like comedic techniques, you know, Mr X are always good to transition from topic to topic, you know, like we did that with Kamala, where you know, you think we're about to start talking about you know. I think I think the line was like, oh no, like an historic first by a black person this year an amazing thing. The first black Bachelor's like, okay, cool, for the first time in our history, we witnessed a black person assume one of the most important positions in America. Of course I'm talking about the first black bachelor. When you can like throw people and like confuse them for a second in that confusion is like easier to transition their emotional state. I feel, how much digging X are you doing because we're basically encompassing the year that was in pain and pride in four minutes. How do you go and find those stories? I think because I'm always looking at what then we're doing, what's going on in our community because it directly affects me and us. Um So I think, like there was a few things I had to look up. Um I am always on the route, Um gotta go shout out bossip I am. I am always on there. And then like, because I have so many black ass chat rooms, I don't go. I don't roam in the hellish fires of Twitter, but I have friends who do and they always send me ship. But like, there's a few things I had to look up and I found, like, um, the black dude who paid off like all of the loans the billionaire I think it is for everybody at my house. And then and then like the Hennessy was given uh scholarship money to HBCU. So that was like two things I had to look up for my joke. I just I'm always abreast to to what is going on, and like so many things that were like iconic that I know that like I try to balance it roy to where it's a big thing like Beyonce Homecoming, which I know every single white person know. And then you get into like the crux of it, like when we had that like yend Gang Twins joke, like I give a little for them and a little for me, like you know that right there, Then it seems like at least you can correct me from wrong, but it seems like for you it's also about proving that black people aren't monolithic in the sense we are. It is high brier educational, and it also sometimes it's a little wratchet. Sometimes we're gonna talk about Bridget and the pullout King and then we're gonna shift and talk about police for fall. And also I feel like this to Roy, like the state of Black Ship. Every year, we're gonna talk about racism. Every we're gonna talk about racial ship. That's just what's gonna be there. Like, that's just what the funk it is, like like white people just it took them four hundred years to learn how to say racism, It's gonna take them four hundred more for this ship to end. So I'm just like I already know we're gonna do the hard ship, and I can do that, but I'm just it's I take more time with the fun stuff, uh, like to make those jokes and everything like that, because the hard ship it's gonna be there. It's gonna be fun. And like Randall said, like I'm gonna have to do a quick smooth mr because there's a lot of jokes Roy that I wanted to do that We're like, as we say, like we're blue as fuck, but they were really hard for me, and I feel like if it was all black people in the audience, it would kill But I think those are the jokes that really make white people go like, oh should I be laughing at that? Or make them feel uncomfortable? This is beyond the scenes. Let's let's take a little breathe so I can get out this how to ask jacket. We've already talked a little bit about writing the segment that properly balances the pain of being black and honoring that while also offering something that's uplifting, um two black people. So with that in mind, Randall, how cognizant argue of what will black people think about this joke? I mean, you try to bounce as much as you can, but I this is honestly something that I learned from you before I was even at the Daily Show at all, because I remember I listened to you on a podcast and it struck a chord, which is like, anytime you're writing a joke about a community, you have to try to imagine, like will this community find that funny? Even if it's your own? So you know, I try to like have that in my mind first and foremost before um, you know, trying to make it intelligible or palpable, palatable for white people or Agian people or whatever. It is. Like, black community comes first, and it helps, you know, because we got a lot of black people on the show. So if there's ever a joke that I'm like, I like, but I'm feeling like, if you're about you know, I can run it by Josh, I can run it by X. I could run a by you, you know. So, And since you're the one who's eventually going to be performing this, I'm like, Okay, I have that second layer of somebody to check me. If they're like, hey, Randa, listen bullshit, I'm like, well, thank god I'm not the only black you're here, or else that would have just gone out. So it's good to have those safeguards. And and also, like I try to think about it from the jump. As a writer, you all have to write with the performer in mind, and so you have to know that k didn't. You have to know their style. Is there anything different with State of Black Ship? And I'm not coming at y'all like I'm some sort of amazing actor or whatever, the hell, but I do know that performatively, I'm trying to do something a little more preachery. Where did that come in State of the State of Black Ship, because I'm blacking from the South and I just saw a bunch of pastores and like like, oh, you're asking where this character. There was a gentleman, rest in peace, the Honorable Larry Langford, who used to be the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama. And I've known him since he was a mayor of one of the black suburbs. We used to go to the same him of my daddy was running partners And so Mayor Langfort could all talk like this a little slow and for no reason, get up here and tell y'all what is going on now? We got to get it together. We keep talking this rhetory over and over again. We spent eighty thousand dollars for a ridiculous documentary that absolutely produced nothing tangible for anybody in the city. We should have taken at eighty thousand dollars and bought some little row boats and put them at your house and on that half eventual rainfall, you can just vote your way on out the front door. We gotta get it together, Black people, now see we gotta bring it back down for a second and really focus on the problem. The problem is that the black man on Bridgetin keep pulling out, and that's why we got to focus on the police brutality and like he had this way of letting his voice dictate what you should feel. You know what I'm saying. I don't know. I've tried to play with it. I'm not Larry Langford, I never will be. But his oor rating skills were something that always stuck with me. He's kind of he's halfway to Leo Devlin in a way. But Leo Devilin is just gonna talk all the way through and just never run and never go up and down, and it's just gonna be one long, continuous thing. But Larry Lankford is gonna come up here and then I'm gonna come down here, and then we got to get it together and thank you, and and I don't think that that's spoken about enough. We have to say that the timing and performance kills or like the joke will live or die, like like Roy, no matter what the funk I write, when your ass gets up there and you do it, that's how the joke kills, even just a quick pause and hit to the punchline can take my joke to the next level. So shout out to you, because yes, we write it, but it kills because of your performance, you know what. Thank you, Thank you Dad Nabb. But I appreciate that. Also, Um, a little little trivial fact about State of the Black Ship. That black black it is on the seal. That was the last minute at the first time. All right, So Ronnie Chain fellow Daily Show correspondent. Ronnie and I share an office and we say a lot of weird ship to each other in confidentiality. You know, we're comedians, and most jokes start in a terrible indecent place and it ends in something appropriate that you actually will stand on and believe in. And so when I went to rehearsal for that first State of the Black Ship, they had the black fist on the podium to look like, you know, like in a parody of the seal, the Eagle Seal whatever, Right, and I go, well, you can't have a seal without the words around the outer ring, you know, like e plurbie, unimal, whatever you put around the second Well, if it's black people and this is for black people, what would the official Black Seal say, fucking Ronnie Chain just mumbles breath, black, black and black. I was like, Yeah, that's right, Ronnie, that is exactly what it was. Fantastic. All right, after the break, we're gonna talk a little bit more about how you all feel about the state of Black Ship in the real life. Uh, with regards to everything going on in the country. Not much longer, not much longer. Good start started writing down your notes, yes, which brings me to the future of Black Ship and what's in store for us this year. While the rest of America gets back to normal, this is the year Black America created a new normal because that old normal was some bullshit. I'm talking about a new normal for cops being held accountable isn't as rare as getting another Frank Ocean album. A new normal where I marched not because I need to fight for my rights, but because I need to get my steps in due to a predisposition to high cholesterol. A new normal where we can gather indoors with family and loved ones, but still tell our weird uncle that he has to hang in the garage just to be safe. A new normal where gorilla glue is hair jail. That's the new normal we must strive for and that I'm confident we will achieve. God bless you, God bless black people, and God bless the name of Michael. Jordan's looking at an I pad, I say, good. Even where do you all see the state of black ship for this year? Like, we've had some victories, okay, Like there's been some arrests of officers, there's been some convictions, there's been some sentencing. Probably not as many years as I felt like some I'm sure the guy, but it is what it is, better than five ten years ago. But then we also got a new DJ Kalet album, so X I'll start with you ultimately, how do you feel about, you know, the state of things for black people right now? I feel like we are where we usually are, tired and resilient. That's deep. I just really feel like that's what we are. Like, I've like we continue to soar, to progress, to uh, to make money. I mean black women are in the top or centile when it comes to entrepreneurs and making money. Like we are doing a damn thing. And I think like if we allow ourselves to um operate in the state of fear and terror and not go outside and go for walks and go jogging or drive, which are basically just fucking live because we we've been killed for every fucking thing. Um, I as one person cannot change an entire system of white supremacy. So I'm going to continue to do my job as a black woman into walking my authority and in the steps that God has ordered for me, and I hope that everyone else does that. But I just think that like we maybe be a little extra tired because uh, with social media and the fact that we have to stay home and we're in a pantomime. Uh that Um, we've been um like we've we've had questions from white people and all of the white tears come directly at us so much because they're just finding out. So that's why I feel we're like a little extra tire because it's just like we don't we don't even want to answer those quite. But some of us have the capacity and have done that. So I think that's what makes it a little more exhausting. Um. But yeah, I think that the state of black ship we are tired and still resilient. Randall, is it is it natural? Unnatural for us as a race to oscillate between tired and resilient. I mean definitely just because you know, tired, just because of the obvious you know, criminal justice system, the long history of slavery, being denied land, being denied loans, you know, everything, just in general. But resilience of course, partially because there's no other option. It's either be resilient or give up, and giving up not an option. So that makes sense. That's that's pretty much the perpetual state of the black community. I would say how I projected what I think about the future. It's difficult always to look towards the future, you know, because like when you write the state of Black shit, you know, you check out years past and I watched thee and it said, you know, the future is looking bright and said, no, it's not. The rest of the year said no, things were not actually right. So you know, it's hard to make predictions. But you always have an eye looking looking at hope, looking towards hope. And I'm gonna choose to be hopeful, you know, because there's we saw the largest protests in American history. Literally, we saw um, you know, a police officer actually get convicted for a crime that we all saw, which happened so many times that you feel like it's gonna be impossible. So it feels like the seal may have broken just just a little bit. And so I'm hoping that this isn't just you know, criminal justice system or the country in general, like throwing black people a bone, like here you get one, and now we're gonna forget it. I'm hoping, you know, when I see on a like a more local level with states or towns that actually seem to be taking to defund the police the idea more seriously and like reinvesting it into preventative measures of crime and things like that, that gives me hope. So even if it's not immediate, even if it's not federal and national, it seems like activists. It seems like people on the ground are very energized, mobilized, and their efforts are being heard and enacted. So that gives me hope. But we might have another pandemic, So who knows, dude, Like that's where my head always is. It's always this state of waiting for the other shoe to fall. It's like you don't know how the clapback is gonna be. All Right, Biden got elected. Oh, by the way, they've enacted thirty four states with the election voter laws that will guarantee that half the ways that you voted the last selection could never happen again. Oh Derek Chovan convicted. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna take mentors from your motherfucker's Now you can't even smoke away your stress. All right, then enjoyed life. So it's like there's always this because because even with Chauvin, I found it hard to like celebrate because I was like, all right, we had a conviction, and all it took was all it took was an uprising. All it took to get him convicted was an uprising video and his own police chief testifying against it, and an international protest, international protests like Niggas was in Belgium, like Black Lives Matter, like Motherfucker's was in Bosnia. People in Bosnia was like, who are black people? I've never seen? What is that? Everybody? Because sometimes, you know, it feels like that, because that's the cynical part me. It's like, you know, the system at large does look like, look we're shoving we like you, man, but we gotta sacrifice it. Look, we all know it's some bullshit, but you gotta take the fall. So I'm like nervous, like he's going to be the fall guy for the rest of the system. Exactly. It's like, Okay, you got one big televised moment, but everything else, we're just gonna wait, y'all forget now we can go back to normal. And so that's the part that it's always in the back of my mind or in the front of my mind. Even so off that point from Randall X, how do you see this segment evolving moving forward? Like how much is this what we just gotta keep doing or does the segment ever become just bright skies and good news. I am uh an incurable optimist, but I'm also a realist, and so I think that it would. I mean, it's so much of our laughter comes from I mean comes from pain. I mean, even like the iterations of the pandemic that black people have come up with just to like what we have to laugh, like we have to do that. So I think that when we look forward to the future with the state of Black Ship, I think it I would love to see it progress to that. Um, there's not just you talking like I would love to see dull say like I would love to see, like, especially from like a black woman's perspective, like what the funk we've been doing and what's been going on specifically towards us, because it is very hard for us, you know. Um uh So, I think I think that it would be dishonest Roy if ship was going down and all all we talked about was sunny skies. It was just like, wait, is this nicko tapped in? Did he not see what the funk happened? And I think we have to talk about it because we are talking about it. I think it would just be like Roy's playing himself. And I don't think any of us as right as we would never let you go out there and look crazy. Well, I can't thank you all enough, and I will say this much if I haven't learned anything else from this conversation. The State of the Black Ship is written by the people who write. The state of the Black Ship is in good hands, and we will now have a good standard the Black Ship not only in one but also I beat you good day. Listen to the Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to go even further Beyond the Scenes. Check out the video version of Beyond the Scenes on the Daily Show's YouTube page.

Yes, the lovely podcast theme music. What's up, everybody, I'm Roy with JR. I am a correspondent for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and I am welcoming you to Beyond the Scenes. This is the podcast where we journey deeper into the topics and issues originally discussed on The Daily Show with the show's writers, producers, correspondents, anybody. Hell, if you got a Daily Show T shirt, we might want to talk to you as well. Basically, to put it in another way, beyond the scenes, it's like when you order fast food and like, you know, like when you order like fries, right, you order nuggets, and it'd be like the magic fries in the bottom of the bag. First off, those are the best fries, the fries. Any food that's freed, that's unexpected, that's the best food. This podcast is the bottom of the bag fries of the Daily Show. So you came for the Daily Show, but then you're rooting around the bottom of the bag. It's me sitting right there with the whole last podcast. It's for you. It's a little extra audio content from the show that we're giving you for free. Now make sure you share us with your partner too. Can't be hogging this podcast for those fries. You know you gotta share us, which you know you got a spouse or whoever you sleep with from time to time. Well, go and listen to Roy and beyond the scenes. Look the fastest way to the couch right there, it's hogging the bag. You know, you can't be stealing fries from nobody. We'll talk about that later. This this podcast is not about food, I promise you. Today we're talking about the state of black shit. So basically what the state of black shit is. This is a yearly segment where I deliver a State of the Union address documenting the highlights and some of the low lights of black life over the last year. Think of it as an answer a response to the president State of the Union address. Now I've had the honor of delivering this address in nineteen and most recently in one. I don't know why I didn't just say the last four years. That would have been quick play the cliff, get even in black people, African Americans and chick Hanks Wagwan careers and white Wow. Look, I'm coming to you from one of the blackest locations in America, the backyard with Megan Marco spilled the team to Oprah. Tonight, we black people are gathered here to once again ask ourselves the question where he is? Let's be honest. Was one of the most challenging years in recent history for the black community, beginning with COVID, which frankly is a racist virus, as it accomplished what the criminal justice system has been trying to do for years, lock up every black person in America. So to break it down, We're gonna be going beyond the scenes on the State of Black Ship with two of the daily shows, Emmy nominated writers. Please welcome X Mayo and Randall otisd X. How you doing. I'm good. I'm showing, you know, just not working out, just you know, being me x Mayo looking nice. Thank you. Your hair is always illustrious. Thank you. I am. I am. I am doing really well. I am working out. I have to. I'm not like Randall. Randall, he just he could eat pizza. It turns into abs, you know, And I look at pizza and my titties get bigger. I have to work out. So I've been working out every day, especially for my mental because you know, I have to work with white people, and I don't want to put my hands on them, so I have to. It helps me um my mental. I have the same problem with pizza. It also goes to my chest. Let's talk about the segment. There was a time where Trump was being extremely dismissive of black issues, and people would have asked Trump, Hey, what about this for the black sort about that? For the black sort about that? And it just became this thing where we were like, Yo, I think we need to do something that just let's black people know everything gonna be I or look how far we've come, Look how much further we have to go. And some of the stuff is serious, some of the stuff is lighthearted. So on your side of the building, I guess virtually now, what was the purpose and premise of the segment is supposed to be? Um Well, I was told when I got a sign to write it for a twenty review, was just that, um, you know, this is to let niggas know what's going on. My boss did say that because they're white. They didn't say that. That's that I broke it down in Layman's terms. They don't say that our I say that. But so I was told, like Roy does this thing like the State of Black Ship, so that everybody is clear on, especially Black people, on like our successes, our trials, our tribulations, and just to encourage us and to remove us forward in like a comedic way. Yeah. I mean it's similar to what access are you know, our white us comes in and just says your drops to let these nickas know and uh, but he's talking about Danna Meyer, the head writer. He's not talking about. But it's kind of, like you said, providing that balance between talking about the trials but also talking about the successes because you know, a lot of the times and if we're going back to trump um, people just frame the black community as being only paid only drama. Like I think he just said, it's like what do you have to lose? You live in hell. It's like, Okay, there's obviously like problems in the black community, but there's positive things as well. So it's kind of given that balance and that encapsulation. To me, what makes State of Black Ship unique is that it's one of the few times on the show where we talk about the future, Like so much of our show is reactive or exposing. We all saw that story. Here's our take on it, or it's here's something that you didn't know about that we're now going to expose to you, where this is completely Hey, this other stuff happening going on in the world that we can also talk about. And I think, to me, that's what makes it, that's what makes it uniquely different from anything else we do on the show. That's quote unquote a black segment. But I was just curious what you thought about that random But I guess it's different to me in the sense of just like how encompassing it is, because you know, it's the daily show, so we do things day to day. That's like definition in the name. And it's rare that we can step back on any type of issue and give it a much like more long term view. So while I was looking to the future, it's also a way of talking about the past in a scope that we normally can or normally don't do. The setting of State of the Black Ship is the part that always makes me laughing. Speaking to you from the capital of Black America. The corner boof of a waffle house in berman Ham, Alabama. A Popeye's in St. Louis owned by Cedric the Entertainment The backyard with Megan Markol spilt the team to Oprah speaking to you tonight from Harlem and New York City and not the getrified part with the white people and take it over with Muffin shops out in a church basement at four hundred and fifty third Street where it's blacker than a Woultang family reunion. That's one of the things that YouTube is writers that you all cook up that I have no input, Like, I'm legit. I legitimately enjoy being surprised, Like if it wasn't in the script rehearsal, I would love, Like there's days where you can do stuff on green screen and I don't even want to know what's behind me because I want that to kind of play somehow into my performance. X. What goes into choosing the particular locations. I can only speak for the year that I was there, but I think I mean the year before y'all was at the Wiffa House, so come on, oh yeah, yest and so. But when I was thinking about it, it was just like, what is the most niggerish place that I could put Roy? Like I have to Like, I was just like, what, well, where where where can I put him? That so stupid, and it just like, as soon as you see him there, you're gonna get an immediate laugh. That's what I want. I want to laugh immediately. I don't want any anybody in the audience to have to work for it. I want soon as they see that backdrop, they just laugh immediately. It's like, why the funk is he here? At a Like? I just so that was that was for that one. So Randa, are you the one that put me in the garden with open for the as individuals so much? Because Randul is from the verbs and he's like, let's put this nigg is in line at popyt Well. Originally I wanted, you know, in the locked hair carry products section of wal Greens, but I didn't know they got rid of that rule. Like I was like, I love the progress, but you ruined my job, you know. Papaye saw that right, No, you get free, you get free. No close like a shirt or something like. They were kind, but this was at peak chicken sandwich, like the way trying to find a PlayStation five right now, Like this was peak chicken sandwich. They was not coming up off them. Chicken sandwich is for the free. You'd be surprised how many brands watched the show and you mentioned them casually, like I remember one year it wasn't a State of Black Ship. At some point during the desk chat with Trevor, I pulled out a bottle of Hennessey. I was like a Southern Aristrican, I do the Claire, I'll say your fall horn leghorn, and then I just pulled out some Pannessy. And then like two weeks later in the office bottle of Hits, we mentioned, um Jack Daniels one time and um seepee time we're talking about Nearest Green and the distilling process for whiskey being created by this black man. And Jack Daniel was like, let's get you know, you need to put a PlayStation on, because I can't find you need to the only reason I've mentioned these last four things, Randall, is so that we can get a PlayStation, some Hennessy, some Jack Daniels, and a Popeye sandwich. She really thought I was going somewhere with that, No, man, I was trying to get some freciate what when when it comes to balancing, because when we talk about State of Black Ship, and you know, if we look at the one that we just did right. On the one hand, we go, Hey, Derek Chauvin found guilty and then less than a paragraph later, hey, we love Beyonce. How do you all balance the pain with the positivity? Like what's the most complex aspect of like trying to compose this segment? Yeah, because you it be funny, but you also wanted to be pointing. Yet so too much of one denigrates to the other. It is difficult, and it's it's a difficult. It's a difficulty more in communication of an idea rather than like creation, because I don't know. For me, I feel like for most black people, you know, the pain of you know, just being a black person next to the positive experiences that you know, that's just something you live with every day and so it's kind of like natural to you. And so I'm not as worried as doing those with doing those jumps, uh, for like black people as much because I'm like, you get it, that's like part of like how we live. But maybe like for other groups who don't understand things, you're like, oh, this is like the worst thing ever, and like how and you're like you get more trapped in that mindset, So it's kind of like, yeah, it's communicating that is the hardest part. Not it just comes down to me uh more with just like comedic techniques, you know, Mr X are always good to transition from topic to topic, you know, like we did that with Kamala, where you know, you think we're about to start talking about you know. I think I think the line was like, oh no, like an historic first by a black person this year an amazing thing. The first black Bachelor's like, okay, cool, for the first time in our history, we witnessed a black person assume one of the most important positions in America. Of course I'm talking about the first black bachelor. When you can like throw people and like confuse them for a second in that confusion is like easier to transition their emotional state. I feel, how much digging X are you doing because we're basically encompassing the year that was in pain and pride in four minutes. How do you go and find those stories? I think because I'm always looking at what then we're doing, what's going on in our community because it directly affects me and us. Um So I think, like there was a few things I had to look up. Um I am always on the route, Um gotta go shout out bossip I am. I am always on there. And then like, because I have so many black ass chat rooms, I don't go. I don't roam in the hellish fires of Twitter, but I have friends who do and they always send me ship. But like, there's a few things I had to look up and I found, like, um, the black dude who paid off like all of the loans the billionaire I think it is for everybody at my house. And then and then like the Hennessy was given uh scholarship money to HBCU. So that was like two things I had to look up for my joke. I just I'm always abreast to to what is going on, and like so many things that were like iconic that I know that like I try to balance it roy to where it's a big thing like Beyonce Homecoming, which I know every single white person know. And then you get into like the crux of it, like when we had that like yend Gang Twins joke, like I give a little for them and a little for me, like you know that right there, Then it seems like at least you can correct me from wrong, but it seems like for you it's also about proving that black people aren't monolithic in the sense we are. It is high brier educational, and it also sometimes it's a little wratchet. Sometimes we're gonna talk about Bridget and the pullout King and then we're gonna shift and talk about police for fall. And also I feel like this to Roy, like the state of Black Ship. Every year, we're gonna talk about racism. Every we're gonna talk about racial ship. That's just what's gonna be there. Like, that's just what the funk it is, like like white people just it took them four hundred years to learn how to say racism, It's gonna take them four hundred more for this ship to end. So I'm just like I already know we're gonna do the hard ship, and I can do that, but I'm just it's I take more time with the fun stuff, uh, like to make those jokes and everything like that, because the hard ship it's gonna be there. It's gonna be fun. And like Randall said, like I'm gonna have to do a quick smooth mr because there's a lot of jokes Roy that I wanted to do that We're like, as we say, like we're blue as fuck, but they were really hard for me, and I feel like if it was all black people in the audience, it would kill But I think those are the jokes that really make white people go like, oh should I be laughing at that? Or make them feel uncomfortable? This is beyond the scenes. Let's let's take a little breathe so I can get out this how to ask jacket. We've already talked a little bit about writing the segment that properly balances the pain of being black and honoring that while also offering something that's uplifting, um two black people. So with that in mind, Randall, how cognizant argue of what will black people think about this joke? I mean, you try to bounce as much as you can, but I this is honestly something that I learned from you before I was even at the Daily Show at all, because I remember I listened to you on a podcast and it struck a chord, which is like, anytime you're writing a joke about a community, you have to try to imagine, like will this community find that funny? Even if it's your own? So you know, I try to like have that in my mind first and foremost before um, you know, trying to make it intelligible or palpable, palatable for white people or Agian people or whatever. It is. Like, black community comes first, and it helps, you know, because we got a lot of black people on the show. So if there's ever a joke that I'm like, I like, but I'm feeling like, if you're about you know, I can run it by Josh, I can run it by X. I could run a by you, you know. So, And since you're the one who's eventually going to be performing this, I'm like, Okay, I have that second layer of somebody to check me. If they're like, hey, Randa, listen bullshit, I'm like, well, thank god I'm not the only black you're here, or else that would have just gone out. So it's good to have those safeguards. And and also, like I try to think about it from the jump. As a writer, you all have to write with the performer in mind, and so you have to know that k didn't. You have to know their style. Is there anything different with State of Black Ship? And I'm not coming at y'all like I'm some sort of amazing actor or whatever, the hell, but I do know that performatively, I'm trying to do something a little more preachery. Where did that come in State of the State of Black Ship, because I'm blacking from the South and I just saw a bunch of pastores and like like, oh, you're asking where this character. There was a gentleman, rest in peace, the Honorable Larry Langford, who used to be the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama. And I've known him since he was a mayor of one of the black suburbs. We used to go to the same him of my daddy was running partners And so Mayor Langfort could all talk like this a little slow and for no reason, get up here and tell y'all what is going on now? We got to get it together. We keep talking this rhetory over and over again. We spent eighty thousand dollars for a ridiculous documentary that absolutely produced nothing tangible for anybody in the city. We should have taken at eighty thousand dollars and bought some little row boats and put them at your house and on that half eventual rainfall, you can just vote your way on out the front door. We gotta get it together, Black people, now see we gotta bring it back down for a second and really focus on the problem. The problem is that the black man on Bridgetin keep pulling out, and that's why we got to focus on the police brutality and like he had this way of letting his voice dictate what you should feel. You know what I'm saying. I don't know. I've tried to play with it. I'm not Larry Langford, I never will be. But his oor rating skills were something that always stuck with me. He's kind of he's halfway to Leo Devlin in a way. But Leo Devilin is just gonna talk all the way through and just never run and never go up and down, and it's just gonna be one long, continuous thing. But Larry Lankford is gonna come up here and then I'm gonna come down here, and then we got to get it together and thank you, and and I don't think that that's spoken about enough. We have to say that the timing and performance kills or like the joke will live or die, like like Roy, no matter what the funk I write, when your ass gets up there and you do it, that's how the joke kills, even just a quick pause and hit to the punchline can take my joke to the next level. So shout out to you, because yes, we write it, but it kills because of your performance, you know what. Thank you, Thank you Dad Nabb. But I appreciate that. Also, Um, a little little trivial fact about State of the Black Ship. That black black it is on the seal. That was the last minute at the first time. All right, So Ronnie Chain fellow Daily Show correspondent. Ronnie and I share an office and we say a lot of weird ship to each other in confidentiality. You know, we're comedians, and most jokes start in a terrible indecent place and it ends in something appropriate that you actually will stand on and believe in. And so when I went to rehearsal for that first State of the Black Ship, they had the black fist on the podium to look like, you know, like in a parody of the seal, the Eagle Seal whatever, Right, and I go, well, you can't have a seal without the words around the outer ring, you know, like e plurbie, unimal, whatever you put around the second Well, if it's black people and this is for black people, what would the official Black Seal say, fucking Ronnie Chain just mumbles breath, black, black and black. I was like, Yeah, that's right, Ronnie, that is exactly what it was. Fantastic. All right, after the break, we're gonna talk a little bit more about how you all feel about the state of Black Ship in the real life. Uh, with regards to everything going on in the country. Not much longer, not much longer. Good start started writing down your notes, yes, which brings me to the future of Black Ship and what's in store for us this year. While the rest of America gets back to normal, this is the year Black America created a new normal because that old normal was some bullshit. I'm talking about a new normal for cops being held accountable isn't as rare as getting another Frank Ocean album. A new normal where I marched not because I need to fight for my rights, but because I need to get my steps in due to a predisposition to high cholesterol. A new normal where we can gather indoors with family and loved ones, but still tell our weird uncle that he has to hang in the garage just to be safe. A new normal where gorilla glue is hair jail. That's the new normal we must strive for and that I'm confident we will achieve. God bless you, God bless black people, and God bless the name of Michael. Jordan's looking at an I pad, I say, good. Even where do you all see the state of black ship for this year? Like, we've had some victories, okay, Like there's been some arrests of officers, there's been some convictions, there's been some sentencing. Probably not as many years as I felt like some I'm sure the guy, but it is what it is, better than five ten years ago. But then we also got a new DJ Kalet album, so X I'll start with you ultimately, how do you feel about, you know, the state of things for black people right now? I feel like we are where we usually are, tired and resilient. That's deep. I just really feel like that's what we are. Like, I've like we continue to soar, to progress, to uh, to make money. I mean black women are in the top or centile when it comes to entrepreneurs and making money. Like we are doing a damn thing. And I think like if we allow ourselves to um operate in the state of fear and terror and not go outside and go for walks and go jogging or drive, which are basically just fucking live because we we've been killed for every fucking thing. Um, I as one person cannot change an entire system of white supremacy. So I'm going to continue to do my job as a black woman into walking my authority and in the steps that God has ordered for me, and I hope that everyone else does that. But I just think that like we maybe be a little extra tired because uh, with social media and the fact that we have to stay home and we're in a pantomime. Uh that Um, we've been um like we've we've had questions from white people and all of the white tears come directly at us so much because they're just finding out. So that's why I feel we're like a little extra tire because it's just like we don't we don't even want to answer those quite. But some of us have the capacity and have done that. So I think that's what makes it a little more exhausting. Um. But yeah, I think that the state of black ship we are tired and still resilient. Randall, is it is it natural? Unnatural for us as a race to oscillate between tired and resilient. I mean definitely just because you know, tired, just because of the obvious you know, criminal justice system, the long history of slavery, being denied land, being denied loans, you know, everything, just in general. But resilience of course, partially because there's no other option. It's either be resilient or give up, and giving up not an option. So that makes sense. That's that's pretty much the perpetual state of the black community. I would say how I projected what I think about the future. It's difficult always to look towards the future, you know, because like when you write the state of Black shit, you know, you check out years past and I watched thee and it said, you know, the future is looking bright and said, no, it's not. The rest of the year said no, things were not actually right. So you know, it's hard to make predictions. But you always have an eye looking looking at hope, looking towards hope. And I'm gonna choose to be hopeful, you know, because there's we saw the largest protests in American history. Literally, we saw um, you know, a police officer actually get convicted for a crime that we all saw, which happened so many times that you feel like it's gonna be impossible. So it feels like the seal may have broken just just a little bit. And so I'm hoping that this isn't just you know, criminal justice system or the country in general, like throwing black people a bone, like here you get one, and now we're gonna forget it. I'm hoping, you know, when I see on a like a more local level with states or towns that actually seem to be taking to defund the police the idea more seriously and like reinvesting it into preventative measures of crime and things like that, that gives me hope. So even if it's not immediate, even if it's not federal and national, it seems like activists. It seems like people on the ground are very energized, mobilized, and their efforts are being heard and enacted. So that gives me hope. But we might have another pandemic, So who knows, dude, Like that's where my head always is. It's always this state of waiting for the other shoe to fall. It's like you don't know how the clapback is gonna be. All Right, Biden got elected. Oh, by the way, they've enacted thirty four states with the election voter laws that will guarantee that half the ways that you voted the last selection could never happen again. Oh Derek Chovan convicted. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna take mentors from your motherfucker's Now you can't even smoke away your stress. All right, then enjoyed life. So it's like there's always this because because even with Chauvin, I found it hard to like celebrate because I was like, all right, we had a conviction, and all it took was all it took was an uprising. All it took to get him convicted was an uprising video and his own police chief testifying against it, and an international protest, international protests like Niggas was in Belgium, like Black Lives Matter, like Motherfucker's was in Bosnia. People in Bosnia was like, who are black people? I've never seen? What is that? Everybody? Because sometimes, you know, it feels like that, because that's the cynical part me. It's like, you know, the system at large does look like, look we're shoving we like you, man, but we gotta sacrifice it. Look, we all know it's some bullshit, but you gotta take the fall. So I'm like nervous, like he's going to be the fall guy for the rest of the system. Exactly. It's like, Okay, you got one big televised moment, but everything else, we're just gonna wait, y'all forget now we can go back to normal. And so that's the part that it's always in the back of my mind or in the front of my mind. Even so off that point from Randall X, how do you see this segment evolving moving forward? Like how much is this what we just gotta keep doing or does the segment ever become just bright skies and good news. I am uh an incurable optimist, but I'm also a realist, and so I think that it would. I mean, it's so much of our laughter comes from I mean comes from pain. I mean, even like the iterations of the pandemic that black people have come up with just to like what we have to laugh, like we have to do that. So I think that when we look forward to the future with the state of Black Ship, I think it I would love to see it progress to that. Um, there's not just you talking like I would love to see dull say like I would love to see, like, especially from like a black woman's perspective, like what the funk we've been doing and what's been going on specifically towards us, because it is very hard for us, you know. Um uh So, I think I think that it would be dishonest Roy if ship was going down and all all we talked about was sunny skies. It was just like, wait, is this nicko tapped in? Did he not see what the funk happened? And I think we have to talk about it because we are talking about it. I think it would just be like Roy's playing himself. And I don't think any of us as right as we would never let you go out there and look crazy. Well, I can't thank you all enough, and I will say this much if I haven't learned anything else from this conversation. The State of the Black Ship is written by the people who write. The state of the Black Ship is in good hands, and we will now have a good standard the Black Ship not only in one but also I beat you good day. Listen to the Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to go even further Beyond the Scenes. Check out the video version of Beyond the Scenes on the Daily Show's YouTube page.