The Daily Show: Ears EditionStep behind the desk with Jordan Klepper, Ronny Chieng and Michael Kosta as they connect with the audience After the Cut.
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Yes, So, as someone who's raising a kid of your own, what advice do you have for young people when making well informed political decisions?
Oh my gosh, what advice do I tell my child? He's three and a half, So I keep them away from all news, I truly do. Uh and even pap patrol, which is just teaching him, indoctrinating a love of police and authority. So that's a problem as well. You see it seep in, you know it is.
To me.
I think exposure is the first step. Expose yourself to kids, is that what I'm telling you? I mean it comes from meeting other people, talking to other people, and and staying curious enough to understand where they come from. I think I've talked about this a little bit before, but when I go out in the road and I talk to people at rallies, and it's rallies, MAGA rallies, and even rallies on the left as well, I think the thing that I find least appealing is certainty. People have no sense of their being a gray area or being unsure of how something should play out. And it doesn't mean you shouldn't be strong in your convictions, But I think you need to leave space to be wrong and to be curious. And so I think with a total amount of certainty and a lack of uncertainty comes a lack of curiosity, in which case we just become these people lost in those silos. And so I think my job as as a dad, how I see it in terms of like what what am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to feed and water it, right, I think I got that feed water this child, But I think I need to I need to instill and maintain a sense of curiosity, a sense of confidence to walk into the world, and a sense of finding virtue and uncertainty as opposed to certainty. And then from there he needs to walk his own path. But that's simply because I can't afford it past eighteen. You know, when you're going to rallies and talking to people, you're kind of picking apart their answers to kind of send it right back to them really quickly. And that takes a lot of wit and kind of a lot of.
Like you know, mentalpacity. We kind of pick it apart. So what are the things that you're thinking of when you're hearing their answers that you want to pull.
Out or draw from. I will say this, the process of going into the field is, we're so many talented people here at the Daily Show, and a day or two before we go out into the field, we're watching the news. We're having the same conversation as you're probably having at home about people are talking about this. I hear the arguments on the right are this. I see hypocrisies here. And we sort of have almost debate prep among producers and writers here where we sit down a room, we're like, where do you see holes in these arguments? We start to find the humor in those holes, the obvious hypocrisy in those arguments. So when we go out there, we've kind of talked through, like where we see these holes that you could sometimes drive a pickup truck through. But then, I'm an improviser. That's where I came from. I'm not a stand up. I spent fifteen years doing improv in Chicago and New York. And the big thing about improv is when you get out there, you let it all go, and you let go of your preconceived notions and you listen and you listen hard. And so in those moments I have a great team behind me that we've done the prep work, and then you just you try to engage and be present. Because the things that you find, the moments of humor or the moments of revelation of a point of view that you haven't heard before, but you see somebody now spouting this at me, they come from that person feeling comfortable in the conversation with me. They come from that person saying something unique and me being open enough to actually hear it and to try to spin it. So I think it's a skill set that you use an improvisation. It's a skill set that you use it being a good husband, And it's basically like get out of your head and listen to what that person's saying. I'll tell you this though. A skill set that doesn't help being a good husband is finding that weird thing they say and try to use it against them. Now that I will say, my wife by saying that, that is it's a double edged sword, if you will.
But to other comedians is like.
Role models like Robin Williams or George Carlin or any like.
Yeah, role models, I don't know about role models, but comedy inspirations, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was. I always thought bill Bo was great and I got to meet him. He messaged me on Facebook one day when I was in Australia and his profile picture was a car, and so I didn't believe it was him. When he messaged me, I was like, I'm getting catfished right now by Bilburt. And he was like, hey, I saw your clip on the plane and you're really funny and hope we can work together, and it sounded so catfishy. I was like, yeah, whatever, truck right, and but then I thought like, oh, if I can live with being catfish, I can't live with if it was actually Bilbert and I said off. So I replied like, oh, hey, thanks, I'm a huge fan of yours. That's high praise coming from you. I live in Australia, so I don't think we'll ever get a chance to work together, but you know, hopefully one day, if I ever get to go to America, I'll see you in the circuit. And then he said, hey, I'm touring Australia next year, love for you to be on the show open for me and I was like, yeah, whatever, give truck. Yeah, this is it's a catfish it's clearly a catfish, and so I was like whatever, And then I didn't think too much about it, and I kept kind of doing my thing. And then a year later, Hey, I get this email to go to the theater. And the whole time I'm like, I'm gonna get murdered. You know, this is not gonna and I show up until I was in Bilbah's green room and he was like, Oh, this will be on the show Man. That clip was super fun. I saw you on the plane and uh. And he became a friend and a mentor and he uh executive producers my comedy specials now and uh it's a real crazy, rare story of our meeting of heroes and them being really cool and the n yeah so uh yeah, so uh Bilbah, And that's about it.
After all your.
Years at the show, what does the legacy you want to leave to your audience every night? The legacy I want to leave to my audience? Oh my, Uh, I gotta tell you, I haven't been here long enough for that. Give me some time to cruise some legacy and then we'll move on. I I'll tell you this though, perhaps I was a fan of the Daily Show before I was a worker at The Daily Show. I used to watch it in college. It was one of my first forays into being interested in news, and in fact, I watched it before that. I watched Craig kilmour and host the show when I was in high school, and I loved it. I thought it was so funny. I loved Craig Kilbourn. He looked great in a suit. We were the same height, was perfect. Incomes John Stewart and he's so insightful, thoughtful, and at college was like, oh, he makes the news compelling. I understand that he's not not cowtowing to one side. He's just calling out bullshit. And I like this guy. And I was a fan before before ever getting a chance to ever audition and be a part of the show. And so the legacy that had left in me was like, be interested, don't be afraid to challenge bullshit, and always look somewhere for more. And I think like that that thirst, of that hunger to know more, and I think that the basic idea of call out bullshit where you see it, I think it's sort of built into the institutional legacy of the show. And so that that is what I most problem with, what are your thoughts on the Tennis and Challengers? Oh great, you have an depending on this.
You mean the movie?
You mean the movie Challengers.
I talk so much about this movie, and I support women in the arts. Zendea is like my favorite. I love that they put a woman in sports. It's cool. I have a lot of problems with it. The two tennis players are hot. The two men they chose not up to par I want, like I want big Italians or like Serbian dudes, like I don't want these like Twinkie British guys.
And then remember remember when Mark Philip Pustas would practice with his shirt off.
I mean, I'm not even gay, and I was getting hard for that guy.
And he's when he was a coach, he was just a zaddy in the stands. It was I mean Tommy has oh He's men are beautiful. I lost track.
I heard the change challenges.
The biggest issue I thought was the grips, right, The grips were off.
The grip was so off. And I'm fine with her having a grip that's off. But if you're gonna say the greatest tennis player who ever played tennis and just put the grip, it's like a if a football player was like holding it from the back of the football.
It's like if I was like, hey, so this water is really delicious. And so when we say gripping me in the way they were holding the rat's.
Show a threesome show it.
Yeah.
I also never watched the movie.
Yes, that's my fam. I got my parents, my sister, my brother, my aunt, my uncle, my other uncle up there. Am I nervous? No, I'm not excited to do it in front of my fa I will say this. As cool as it is that my parents are here, it is not surprising because they came to every gosh darn show I've done and then it could come from. And a big part of why I am here is because I got into improv in at KLMZUO Michigan Kalamazoo College and I got on the improv team Munkepult and we did shows in a little black box theater for ninety five college students and two fifty somethings forty something. Sorry. My parents would come and they would support me, and I was I was a math major at the time, and I was spending my time doing improv and then traveling to the Improv Olympic here in Chicago. And then I came to Chicago, and I found another family at places like the Improve Olympic. I think Sharna Helpern is here tonight as well. There she is founder of the Improv Olympic. Gosh darn long form improvisation. Sharna Helpern right there. She gave me a space to fail and to succeed, and to fail and fail and fail again. And more often than not, my parents would hop in the car and they would drive over to Chicago and they would watch these shows at weird times with their son, who wasn't making any money. He was a substitute teacher at Chicago Public Schools, making a little bit of money during the day, not a lot. And my parents wouldn't judge it. They would just support it. They would love it. And I look back on that, and when I look back on it, frankly, I think it's responsible, not a smart move to let your child just do improv in Chicago for a decade getting paid paynuts. But I loved it. She let me find my family, let me find my people, the things that I loved, be surrounded by people who were interested in the things that I loved, and the things I like to do supported me when I went to New York and got to try out for fun things like this. And then a long seventeen years later, no, a long twenty four years later, I get to come to the at the Dam Theater where I used to do improv for the Chicago Improv Festival, and I get to do a walking great show on the Daily Show.
With you guys.
So thank you, Jilly, thank you.
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