Jon Stewart, Desi Lydic, Michael Kosta, Ronny Chieng, and Jordan Klepper talk about their unique shared experience hosting The Daily Show in this Emmys FYC panel moderated by entertainment journalist Matt Belloni. The crew discusses how the landscape has changed since Jon's first era at the show, what a typical day behind the scenes looks like, their most-asked audience question, and more.
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Hello, it does all right? Are you having flashbacks?
Yeah?
Man, we were, we were.
We looked nice.
You did look nice.
Yeah. We're taking this very seriously.
All right.
So we got to start with John and the decision to come back, because I know I was shocked when I heard the news.
I think a lot of people were shocked.
So take us through your decision process and why now?
Why come back?
I was arrested for thirty two phones, thirty four phoners thirty four as part.
Of the community service to avoid jail time.
So I had been doing another program on a more boutique museum service is called Apple TV Plus and I have it, and I'm sure someone else does, but there weren't, and they felt that it would be better if I didn't say the things that I enjoy saying for them.
So I was, yes, there was.
It actually turned out to be a blurb, I believe in the post, and so.
I was out of a job.
And it turned out Comedy Central was in the midst of what appeared to be something going on with their choice for a new host.
I don't know if you.
You read about that as well, And so they called and said would you come back and host the show? And I said no, And then they said, well would.
You do it every Monday? And I was like really one day a week? And they're like yeah.
I was like, had Mattow started doing that? Like was there a model or did you? Was it like four? And like, whoa, this is something I didn't consider it.
Well, we had been I don't know if you we were at the Liberal Brunch where we go over a lot of the day.
I have her on speed dial and uh and Kornaki he gives us the data on how many days a week has I believe he calls it efficacy. Uh so yeah, so uh it came together. I was very nervous come back, not because these guys aren't phenomenal and I know so many of the people that run the show and they were still there from when I was there, and they're incredibly talented, but I was tired for working for corporate overlords that were fearful of of the You know, the nice part about Comedy Central in the old days was the kind of provoca stuff that we would maybe do they seem to think help them build their brand. Things have changed somewhat, uh, and so I had to be you know, speak with the Chris McCarthy who runs it and to get the sense that this guy would be okay with that, and it turned out he was.
And that's been true your experience throughout working there now.
No, once I signed.
Please go on, it was a lot of you know, at and T is all the biggest sponsor.
No, it's it's been. It's been phenomenal.
And the nice part is like, these guys are all, you know, such pros and I've been doing it now for so long and transitioning themselves into the host chair that you know, that's a really fun part of the dynamic as well for us. So it's been phenomenal and the support there. Look, I've worked there and you guys are in the industry.
I've worked through a lot of the c changes in the industry.
I was we had talked about this a little bit, but with Viacom in the old days of MTV with Tom Freston and Judy McGrath and Doug Herzog and people that believe that the creators meant something.
And then I also worked through other regimes.
Where they felt the star was real estate and they really didn't give a shit, you.
Know what was built there, that was to them, that's the star.
And so it's really lovely to come back to a place that you feel like values, ideas and thoughts and those types of things.
So that's the same love John that you come back one day a week and appreciate it so much.
So thanks budd, having every every Monday nice and the worst because we work real hard all day and I'm just like, bye, guys, have a great weekend, fun tomorrow.
But what did what did you guys think when you first heard the news?
I like, he's still alive. Relief, relief, you know, barely.
My first thought was the guy from half base.
Really okay, But you must have been exciting, very very exciting. I mean, honestly, it was a big reveal surprise to us and it was truly exciting.
It was wonderful. And then to work alongside him is great.
And then to kiss his ass publicly on the Paramount lot that's like my dream come true.
Nothing's better nothing than that.
They say never meet your heroes. I say, meet your hero and immediately get on his payroll.
Wow, you paid them off very well, so you come back.
Ronnie didn't answer that, just did everybody else answer?
I thought it was a step down, but no, yeah, we all who passed?
All right, So you come back and you've talked a lot about was the same? What was different in coming back to this job.
Nine years later? My bone density?
It's a very different environment, very different media environment, very different comedy environment.
I was it different?
Uh?
You know, I don't think.
I don't think it is particularly different. I think you know, look, when I was there, you faced corporate pressure or do you mean in terms of what you.
Can say different? What's funny is different. We've now gone through, you know, eight years of Trump and then what Biden and now we're back to the Trump and Biden show, Like these are things that did not know this when you were there last time.
No, But back when I.
Was there, it was you know, eight years of Bush and the Iraq War in Afghanistan. I mean, I think we always like to imagine that the time we're in now is just unprecedented. And the only thing I would say is the weight of the Internet and social media equity of it.
You know, we are all in that movie what's the movie? Uh? No, Gibson knows what everybody's saying about what women.
We're in that time now of everybody comments on every you know, what everybody is thinking at all times. When you used to do stand up, you know, you'd do a show and there'd be a couple of tables no matter what show you did that wouldn't dig it, and that'd be fine, like you'd register it, but then you'd go home. In the current social media environment, it's like you ride home in the cab with them and like and you just have to sit there the whole time, and like that guy sucks. Did you know he changed his last name from something very Jewish?
You know, like.
And you're you know it's all but but I you know, I think there's there's a whole thing out there of you can't say anything anymore, and I feel like we say everything. I mean, I came up in a time where like standards and practices would call us and say you can say dildo three times, but that but now unlimited bilbil.
Like I just I think I think the whole narrative of like we all have to.
Be so careful is insane. I think there's and there's industries that pop up of people that aren't careful and that's their brand. Everybody has their place, but we're more inundated with more speech and more variety of speech than ever in the history of speech.
The audiences have fragmented though in the last nine years, and social media is one reason. But back when you were hosting before, there was a sense, and I haven't looked at the demos, there was a sense that you were speaking to a bipartisan audience, that you were sort of the king of the liberals, but you would also bring in you would also bring in a conservative audience as well. And I'm not sure that is necessarily the case in television and media in general these days.
That could be because no, I just I just don't know. And I think you know.
The one thing that we never talk about, and you guys can can jump in here is the audience. I think the minute you the whole point of collaboration and being a team and creative endeavors is to calibrate your sensibilities, so you have an internal barometer of what's good content. The audience not to offend, like doesn't enter into the equation, and if they do, I think you're doing something wrong. This is about honing your ability. They'll tell you if they think it's funny or not. But just because they say that doesn't mean you even necessarily have to believe that. We don't design the show to think like, you know, we want to make sure that we hit the young demo.
Like I remember CNN used to do that for like presidential debates.
They would do debates and then like CNN would do a debate, and then MTV would co sponsor a debate, and all the presidential candidates would wear turtlenecks boxes of briefs, right, but the turtleneck because the kids would be like, hey, man, I don't hear anybody whose neck I can see like it's you know, I think we spend way too much time worrying about that shit and not enough time worrying about the quality. All you can control is the execution of your intention and your content. Everything else is out of your hands, So why spend any time on it?
So what makes a joke or a bit or a segment a daily show joke or a bit or a segment.
Well, I mean, to start the day, you look at all the clips and headlines of the news from that's happened from the day before. So I would say in a really non sexy answer, but it's the news that happened from the time the last show edited.
Yeah, but everybody's looking at that.
Thank you very much, Michael Costile.
That's the political analysis we need.
By the way, still sexy, don't in any way, Well nothing you can't do.
It's to say, yeah, we don't think about the audience.
I don't know about you, but when I host, I don't have to think about the audience. You're trying to write the show, rehearse, find the clips, so the audience does not come in mind. Now, sometimes we'll have a great show and then I'm stupid enough to say, in between acts three and four, hey, let's take a question from the audience. And then someone says, who go to pizza? Should we get here? And I go, holy shit, I wish I'd never talked to the audience.
Not this area.
We're all wonderful.
By the way, what kind of pizza should we get?
We want to know?
Can I tell you?
My favorite part of that though, is they'll always say, like, what kind of pizza should we get here? Which is the most common question We ever get there, and I'm like, oh, where are you coming in from? And They're like Ohio, and I'm like fucking anything. Anything you get, like go to La Familia and it will blow your mind, like you're you live next to Skyline Chili whatever pizza.
All right.
Also, you waited in line for six hours to talk to John Stewart. You have one question, and that's the one. That's the question, all.
Right for everyone else? What has been the biggest surprise about working with John?
You're not allowed to answer.
This appears very eulogy like.
You.
I will say this. I got to work with John four hundred years ago.
Thank you.
Yes, John hired me. Yes, I was a fan of The Daily Show. I got brought in.
John hired me on and it was I mean, it was my favorite show and to be birth into working on that was a career highlights, so much so that I will never leave working on that show because fear of losing health insurance.
So thank you. But I will say, on a nerdy level, what has been really cool about this new era that we are in?
Like we talked about this, We had a not to spill industry secrets. We had like a zoom call with all of us after the first couple of weeks where we all got to talk about the difficulties of hosting the Daily Show, and I will say hosting a late night show is a weird, lonely, strange job. I got to do it for a little while and I loved it. It was the best fucking job. But it was a lonely, scary, weird job that you had questions that nobody could freaking answer. And that like first week when we got to get on that zoom call and talk about mechanics, and it's not all high falutin conversations. It's like mechanics of telling a story, the ways in which to filter the news, the ways in which to react to clips that play on the air, Like there's an art to it. And so it's been really fun to watch John again now in his ninetieth decade of doing this show.
But to watch it from a perspective we get to host this.
Thing and it's an amazing vehicle to be behind, but to watch like the ways in which you can get better at it and the ways you can filter through it like that has been kind of a remarkable It's like the world's best master class.
To be a part of.
And there being a correspondent is one of the most difficult jobs you can do because you have to be versed in so many different things. These guys all come from improv and stand up, but you do so many things, some of it mechanical. In the field, you take on these certain characters that you play, usually you know, the high status idiot or one of those types of things. Or you go out in the field and you do improv scenes with people that don't realize they're in an improv scene.
Like, it's a really.
Difficult armed people who don't realize armed people.
I'm gonna ask about that actually, because I'm very curious, how have you not gotten your ass kicked?
Way more than.
You have kids? But one's that.
It's a somewhat serious question.
There, How have I not gotten my ass kicked? Well?
I have a couple things. One, I'm a white guy at a Trump rally. It helps I'm a tall white guy. And also for security guards, okay, which is wild. I will say when we started doing this, going out to the field, you didn't need a security guard because you were an improv teacher a.
Week and a half ago.
So the idea that somebody wanted to kill you or murder you seemed asinine. Yeah, and yet here we are walking into spaces to talk about politics with four armed guards.
But that's what comedy wants in twenty twenty four.
Yeah, to be honest, we do kick his ass inside.
It is very true. It is quite quite violent inside.
Sometimes you'll be You'll be stupid enough to read the YouTube comments of your piece and it'll be like, what a stupid question? Why does Costa look like he's sweating and indoors? And I'm like, because the guy was armed and he just told me he hated all my questions.
That's why I was sweating.
Yeah, so it is scary. It is scary, and we deserve all the credit we got.
But to Jordan's point about the Zoom meeting, I remember that with John this was super helpful and you said, how's it going hosting to all of us? And I said, I feel like I'm wearing my grandfather's suit and my dad's suit at the same time. And you said, if you want to see uncomfortable hosting, watch my first two years hosting The Daily Show. And I'm sure you were saying that to me nice, but that was tremendously helpful because it's very lonely hosting.
You don't have anyone.
There's no hosting red phone to call and say, please help me with this, so it's tremendously helpful to have that.
I also had to remind that, like, you know, on that call, we were just talking about like hosting the show as a very different now it's about channeling how.
You feel viscerally. You're no longer playing the role of what the bit may require of you. You're actually trying to, you know, channel things through your own point of view and bring.
Them out in a much more like humanistic way. And they would say that, well, you know, it seems to come more naturally to you, and I was like, yeah, you know, I've only done two.
Thousand of these and this is your third.
So I'm blown away actually by a how incredibly a depth they were at it from jump and then be how far they've even developed just in that short amount of time since then.
It's somewhat disconcerting.
One of the things that struck me in one of the things I wondered about when you agreed to come back was whether we would get Daily Show John Stewart or Apple Show John Stewart because your persona changed. It was a different version of you, and you seem to have pretty seamlessly slipped back into Daily Show John Stewart.
So Apple still owns that John Stewart.
And my phone just buzzed.
I don't know why if I am to use that John Stewart, I apparently I will be taken away.
Okay, but that's a conscious decision.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's funny that you said, because it feels to me like as me me, so I would think it's in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, that's wrong, I should have Yeah, but it feels the same to me.
But but maybe, but you're for instance, your interview with Ken Buck the other night, which was fantastic, you got away with a lot of things.
Yeah, it really is.
An amazing episode, But you got away with a lot of things in that interview because of the self deprecation and sort of laughing about certain things, and you were you approached that interview in a way that maybe you wouldn't have before at the Apple Show.
So the difference is honestly audience.
So when you have an audience in an interview like this one, you're constantly aware of that they're another character in the play. And so the Apple Show is waiting for GOODO. This is, you know, something that's a little bit more less existential. But like when you're sitting in a room with an Oklahoma State senator and there's no audience and he's saying to you, no more guns makes us safer, and you're like, when when does that happen? It's a different dynamic than when you have an audience, And you're also keenly aware of their patients for the different line of questioning where they might think they want a break. You know, I think it's got more to do with the environment in some respects makes sense.
Yeah, Ronnie, I want to bring you in a little bit more here.
Yeah, Ronnie, No, sorry, I'm just I'm interested in these answers as well.
Yeah.
What what what.
Have you learned just working around John so much the last few months?
Uh, you're asking what's surprising about working with John? Because when I joined the show, I took research very seriously. So I watch old episodes, You hear stories about John, you read the book The Daily Show, oral History, you guess, you know, and so you get a sense of the working habits of people. But when he when he came back, what was surprised? Despite knowing academically his strengths cleared your thought control of the medium.
But when you see.
That first episode, it's it's like watching of. It's like watching Jordan in ninety six direct the offense again.
Wait, is that the Wizards or that's before the Wizo.
I'm trying not to do a Wizards thing, but it's but actually, if you look at the Michael Jordan and the Wizards, this individual performance and actually granted team the team, yeah, you have one leg Jordan was actually individual status was amazing.
But and Jordan did retire, came back and he won two more Emmys, have it right?
They but interviewing Buck, Wait if I is the Apple Show when I was with the White Sox, is that when I went to.
So just just watching the control of because it's so weird to he's sitting right there and you're working with him, and you don't want to be too kind of like in AWE because you have a job to do. But you're watching someone who invented modern American satire.
He invented that format.
All right, now you know you know all these people doing the video screen above the shoulder, Yeah, he invented that. So he's the guy who and so he knows exactly how to calibrate every pile of the show to what he wants to say, you know. And so that's a level of control of hosting a daily show that I can only aspire to in my dreams, to be able to see all the angles that cleared the executed.
Ronnie Chang is so nice And this is the whole time that you know him that you're never sure when he's fucking with it like that sound nice?
Right?
How many times have we been talking to Ronnie and then I'll walk away like is he fucking?
He's so nice? He's right about one thing. You You were among the first, well I think he was right about more than your Your version of the Daily Show was the among the first to include the media itself in the in the in the joke, in the criticism, and you were great at it. And I'm curious how the media ecosystem has changed since you've been act to like it used to be. Tucker Carlson was your adversary. Now there's one hundred Tucker Carlson's. There's also still Tucker, but there's one hundred of them, and the entire ecosystem has changed.
How do you approach that.
I think they really took the note.
Because you you know, when I first became aware of you, I think was those Fox News segments that you used to do, and they were just eviscerating.
But it's almost really changed the landscape. It did.
Actually, I would argue that that they did.
The thing is even if it doesn't change the landscape, even if the efficacy you cannot relent. The difficulty we have with weaponized media is it is weaponized, it's tenacious, and it's purposeful. There media has been weaponized for a reason. That's not just something that's a phenomenon of now. That's you know, Randolph Hurst and Yell journalism, and you know that's been with us forever. What is generally not as tenacious is the hopefully the corrective course or the you know, coming back the other way, and you can't ever give up the post. There always has to be something as unrelenting and as tenacious, like all of this happens in a room.
None of this is by accident.
Fox News exists because Roger Ales in nineteen seventy three or four said we will never let something like this happen to a Republican politician again about Nixon, meaning, we will never allow the truth to sail.
By unopposed, and we will.
You know, this has been the purpose of that experiment over fifty or sixty years, has been the institutions that support the general foundation of American life and freedom and progress don't suit our agenda.
So we will build a.
Parallel universe of think tanks and universities and institutions and media, and we will shift when time is ready, we will throw the switch and shift society onto that onto that field. And you can only you can only take away its power by demystifying it's like and I don't mean this as a direct one to one. In the nineteen twenties, Kuklos Klan was ascended, and they were a powerful force in segregation and violence and intimidation and all those different things. And they ended not because people learned that racism was bad or that their views should change. Their ridiculousness was exposed, their traditions and their se sacred handshakes and their stupid symbols, and they ended up looking like buffoons. And it took the steam out of that movement. And that has to be done, even if it doesn't feel like it's working. You cannot stop.
Even if that you cannot good night.
To the ramparts.
That yeah, even if that ridiculousness has melded with the actual pillars of government to where they're calling each other back and forth saying.
What should we do? You should do this? During the Trump years, Wait, say that again, I'm saying that.
When you were hosting the Daily Show before, there was a clear dichotomy between the government and the media, and what we saw in the Trump years was the melding of those two where the media was essentially the audience was essentially.
But that was.
Happening his cue from the media, but that was happening in the bushes as well. The right has always been much more organized in terms of the media being a political arm of a movement. The left is is too organ disorganized. Now there is some influx of political players within that, but I can tell you the level of collusion between media and politics on the right is far more advanced and far more specific than you would ever see. Unfortunately on the left. Some of that having to do with generally the left being a more you know, fractionalized environment. You know, it's generally the left is just coalitions held together by some idea of you know, being nicer.
Uh separate topic.
You guys are going on the road for the conventions.
What you guys and I learned you guys never done the convention what so I will going to leave the stage for this part of the question.
No, DEAs you and I we will in.
The three of us were there twenty sixteen. It's going to be wild. It's going to be incredibly wild. Trump will be sentenced four days before the RNC Is that right?
Four or five days?
So that could change things. And according to my clue, there will be a delay. According to my clue, app I will also be on my period that week. So it's going to be really and I feel okay sharing that with all of you because I'm pretty sure the Republicans are already tracking. So we're in for it.
Did you guys get Were you on the convention floor when you guys went in twenty sixteen?
Yes, yeah, I remember. I mean the conventions.
For all the rot that exists in the political process, there's still something so beautiful about an arena of people celebrating the potential future. So there is there's a part of me I grew up a presidential nerd as a kid, and so like to be there and watch this pageantry. There's still part of me that has stars in my eyes. Although I do remember liked I mean, but I remember being on the floor for the Trump one as well, and the image that I have. I mean, you know, say a lot of things about Donald Trump, but sometimes they're so right on the nose you gotta give them credit, like the big brother image of Donald Trump's zoomed in head behind him as he was like, I alone can fix this.
We shall go forth. I remember watching it be like, oh, well, this can't possibly.
Win, but how funny to be here. So I'm excited to see the final chapter.
Be on the road is always fun. There's always like a fun energy.
I think with the Daily Show makes it a little different, gets everyone out of their comfort zone a bit.
The I do.
I maybe I'm wrong, but I always when I'm at these conventions are highly political rally events, I'm always like, these aren't normal Americans. These are the political Americans. Like they almost go to this like sports, you know what I mean. I don't even know if they care about the country as much as they care about the It's almost.
Like an event for them. It's like a sporting event for them.
So that so when I'm there, that's how I feel like. I feel like I'm in a sports event almost, you know, it's not even about the future or.
Issues or ideals.
It's like people who are there to witness, you know, their team versus some other team or you know.
I think the Democrats were really smart in a time of violence and upheaval to do theirs in Chicago.
Just really you really there is a potential that you know, protests and other things.
No, listen, man, it's you could how do you pick the city that in nineteen sixty eight exploded in protests in a time of anti work protest and like, you know, the left is really angry about this Israel Palestine thing.
You know, it would be funny.
I remember at the republic we did the Republican I can't remember it was the convention or the midterms?
And when did they do it in Saint Paul?
Was that.
McCain's year. I think that was the year that McCain did.
And this was when Antifa was not quite a branded organization yet. It was still just a bunch of kids in like black bandanas, pre pandemic, so nobody had to yell at.
Them about doesn't do anything. And they had on the bandanas and they had their lawyers' names. But it was a quaint time.
We were We were taping right in the street, and these just phelanx is of young activists, and you know, every few hours they would take out their anger on a Starbucks, like you know, they'd break a Starbucks window and all the sirens would blair. And I remember I was walking to the studio and I'm walking. I'm in the middle of this giant fucking protest of bodies and it's moving and the guy next to me turn and lowers his ban Daddy, and he goes, oh, Jon Stewart, I can't believe you're here in Minnesota.
This is so fun. And I was like, you're you're an anarchist and he's like, oh yeah.
But you know, if you guys want, you know, we're going up to the lake later and if you want to come up, and it's just like, I don't know what we're doing.
Guests on the show, you have had not the typical late night talk show guests on Monday nights, did you.
I'm sorry, my publicists going to say, no other late night talk show goes out on the road either, what are ones who want to well, sorry.
Well, you guys are the only ones going to the RNC, right, yes.
And also what people don't realize, and I haven't even done a convention, but I've done plenty of field pieces, is you know, we have a whole department that is out there in the morning shooting, editing, cutting, airing five hours later. And that is unbelievably difficult. You have to do comedy quickly, intelligently.
We get it right.
A lot of the times you don't always get it right. But that is what is so appealing to me about the Daily Show. It's like, go go now and make it happen, and it's going to air tonight. And what an opportunity for comedians to work on a show like that.
That's pretty sweet.
I will say this. You asked what has changed a little bit since I went? The level of expertise that these guys and the technical staff and the editors and the producers and the researchers and the writers display on a daily basis an hourly basis blows me away, like it's I have been there from the primitive evolution of when we used to still edit in the online room, or like you could do four roles and if you screwed up a role, you had to go back and start again. Pre Avid only had the AP news feed, so you weren't able to dictate what material you did.
You were just what was on the AP news feed. Oh, there's a story on healthcare and the celebration of the Black Nazarene in the Philippines. That's today's show.
Like technology changed the way we were able to do it, but it was still technology at that point. Now it's native and how they're able to synthesize because this isn't reporting the news, They're synthesizing a point of view, right, They're creating an essayistic form multimedia in that same timeframe, and they're doing it with such.
Alacrity and like precision.
That was the thing when I went back in I was just like it reminds me of I played soccer in college in like nineteen eighty two, and now I watch Americans play it now and I'm like, oh, like back when I was doing it, we were still using our hands like anyways, like it's it. My mind is blown on a daily basis. And Jen Flans, who is our executive producer and has been with the show. So Jen Flans, for those who don't know, predated me. When I walked in the door, she was already there. She was I think a pa at that point. She's now the executive producer. She is you know, she's mister crab, like she's the keeper of the recipe of the What are these references?
These are older, mister crab? What are we doing?
I'm what is the day? What is the day at the Daily show?
Like?
Like, give us give us your.
Oh, I think it's only a day. I don't want to I don't.
Want to know every detail, but give us the sort of cadence.
I'm going to tell you my yesterday. I wasn't even at the show yesterday. Ronnie was hosting the show yesterday. Yesterday, I was sitting down with the man in his home who successfully banned nine hundred books in Clay County, Florida in the.
Last two years.
No, you're not supposed to cloup, she said, successful, I thought.
I spent three and a half hours at his house, met his wife, pet his dogs, and spoke to him.
That was my day yesterday.
That's pretty good, right, But when you're when you're in the studio, when you're in the offices, what is the day like putting together that night show?
So my day yesterday? And Ronnie you hosted yesterday.
Walk us through you're hosting day.
Oh yeah.
You wake up in a panic that you're hosting. Your teeth hurt because you've been grinding your teeth all night because you couldn't sleep thinking about having to make TV.
And then you run to the office.
It's hot in New York now, so you're already sweating by time you get there. You someone hands you espresso, you're down it, and then the clocks are in nine fifteen and you're already late, and then you have to wait.
Someone hands you an expression.
Yeah, oh I'm sorry. Yeah, that's They told me I could do that because I was. They were like, you're the host now, you can't have whatever you want?
What do you want? I want to go home and light down in a ball.
You wait nine fifteen.
We have to preliminary scan the stories of the day. You pick some and then we view it in the big team writing room. All the writers make jokes about horrible things in the writing room, most of which we'll.
Never see a loud day.
Then we pick from there, we pick what we think the show is going to be, and then honestly, it's a blur.
It's a blur.
And then I wake up and then I'm home and the day was over.
Before that first meeting of the day, there's an entire department that spends the night before and early that morning collecting all of the latest news footage that they think could potentially work on the show.
I always what I what I love about it.
I come from the improv world, and like there's a lot of different mindsets people who come from more straight news, who work in some research elements. You have a lot of comedians, some stand ups, some improv. What I've always felt like mentally, the first half of a daily show day is an improviser's brain. In the second half is a stand ups brain, which is so fun in that, like you get there and you have to be open. You are building stuff, You're throwing ideas out there, you're saying yes to everybody. Like it's a very open creative space because you have a lot to do that day. And then the day kind of switches and it's like make this good now, And it's really fun to see people put on those different hats.
Like it goes from yes and to no, shut it up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The morning is lovely and nice and by the end everybody is selfishly talking behind everybody else's back about how much better they are.
Doesn't doesn't want cut it fine.
That morning meeting, that's at like nine with the writers, the big the big meeting that to me is one of the most pleasurable places to be ever in comedy because you have the clock is started on the day, you have your clips picked, you have a bunch of award winning writers and producers all in this room yelling stuff out. And if you can get that group of people to laugh, that that's immediately in the rehearsal script for sure. Now I do a great job of yelling out stuff in the room is just silent, and that is true panic at its worst, you know. But that morning meeting is really fun, and it's when the snowball starts for the whole day.
It's like sitting in a room with thirty five of your funniest friends. It is truly the best.
Yeah, it's what you what you think about when you think about working in comedy in America. It's that it's that room and everyone's so good at their job, and you're scared to say stuff that is you.
Know, might not be funny.
And then you you u we so everyone's like writing furiously and then we rehearse at around three pm or two, four, five pm, depending on you know, the day, we run it through, and you we do it.
Seems like a prisoner. You're and then I got shanked. I was shanked.
Take a ship in the middle of the room. No, it's different. It's different when you there.
You you know, you don't have the clout of John Stewart in the building. You're just you're just Ronnie changing to death and you're trying to You're trying to put on this jacket that doesn't fit.
Great.
It did so good, you did so good, so good.
I think the thing that that people don't realize sometimes is they think, like, oh, you guys do a late night comedy show, must be so fun. Like the biggest thing that is implemented at the show is infrastructure. It's it's the creative tent posts that you need to have in place, because this show happens every day and it's synthesizing a tremendous amount of material from all different portions of this organism, and if you don't have your shit together, it spins out of control really quickly. And it's not enough to make a good show. You have to make that process repeatable. And it sounds counterintuitive, but the creative process relies on repetition, hopefully not in a soul crushing way, so that there's enough oxyg within that process to still bring in inspiration. But it's the little changes that you make in a production schedule that allow this show.
To do all those various things.
Like so, when I first got there, the way that we did the show was every writer was probably ten or eleven writers, and they would just write. We'd give them some topics and they would write ten pages of jokes, and then when they were done writing it, this is around eleven or twelve, we'd sit in a room and each writer would read those ten pages and it would take an hour and a half.
And I was there for six weeks.
And then I finally went in one day and went, you know, I can read. And if we did it that way, we'd be done with this by eleven thirty. And then it's about making an iterative process. It's interesting how they talk about, you know, its stand up and its improv I always look at it as a refinery, which is a really sort of strange industrial way of looking at making comedy.
But the idea is you take your raw.
Materials in the morning and you come in and you dump them all down, and the rest of the day is about refining that product into something sophisticated enough that it's worth the audience's time. What you want to make is something you want. The thing about television, as you know, there's that great episode of Seinfeld where they say why am I watching this? And George says, because it's on television, and the Warren Littlefield character.
Goes not yet.
And that's really the point, Like, we're given this ridiculous gift. We're going to allow you to say whatever the fuck you want to America for twenty two minutes or twenty four minutes or thirty six minutes in a night. And that process is to create those thoughts that are the raw materials and winnow them down to something that when you present it to people, it looks like something effortless but isn't.
Is sophisticated.
It has you know, uh, it has, it's been worked. It's it's the craft has been applied to it to make it something worth your I was going to say television time, but obviously that's not how people worth you picking up your phone and looking at it, or however it is people watching.
Them do it takes come easy to you, Like, let's look at the Trump conviction happened on a Thursday. Yes, take us through the process that led to your Monday night. So that wasn't just about Trump. It ended up being broader about the media and everything.
Else because that was a function of insomnia.
So the what had been bothering me there was something The thing about stand up, good stand up, or good comedy, or good art or good anything, is that you can articulate something for an audience that.
Is feeling it in the ether but has not had.
Either the time or the desire to crystallize it into that resin that useful, articulated resident where you go like fuck, that's what I meant. And so it had been really eating at me this idea that everything that was occurring in the courts was a repudiation of our entire lived existence in the media over these last eight years, and I just couldn't get my head around what it was. And I was thinking about, oh, the court system has procedures in place, it has standards of evidentiary presentation that you must meet, and then it is and those things are standardized. And I realized what bothered me about the media is they had an opportunity to apply the same methodology because it's not an expertise that.
The courts are applying. It's a simple methodology of defining reality.
It's all they do. All they do is they bring you in and go what happened? And then someone starts to say what happens and someone will jump up and go, I object, and then you have to present like the thing that blows my mind. I don't remember when Gwyneth Paltrow got plowed into by a s's care It.
Was a while ago, but the trial I think was last summer.
I was delighted to watch.
But when I did, it struck me that being a lawyer blows. It's just you and four other lawyers sitting at a desk going.
Do you have page thirty eight? AC? Going did you get? And it's all just but that meticulous.
Dissection and determination of reality is what's missing in our media environment, and it can be done. I don't understand, and why you don't it is. It's not a method that's beyond you. It's not because it's happening too quickly. I don't know why it isn't done. I know that television has to be producible, and that when you're making it every day, seven days a week, twenty four hours.
But that's the thing that I.
Didn't you answer your own question where you said that being a lawyer is boring.
Being a lawyer is boring, But presenting your closing argument is what drama and movies is about. So yes, the meticulous defining of it is what we do during the day.
It's the refinery. It's taking all those.
Raw materials and testing them and measuring them against reality. And then once you have what you think is a refined product, that is the reality that you've helped define right through those procedures, then you present it to people in a way that's compelling because now you're presenting to them a condensed version.
Now you're a storyteller. Now it's now.
Now it's something that you can sink your teeth into and it's been tested so that it has context and fairness, and it's difficult then to overturn and submarine on appeal because you put in the fucking work.
And if we can do it and we're idiots, It honestly blows my mind. If I see one more newsperson on a meet the press or a CBS in the morning, go, will you say that you will certify the twenty twenty four election no matter what? And you're like, what if they're hit by a laser?
Yeah?
Like, what are you supposed to do with that?
Any question, every almost every question on a political panel should just be met with I don't know, no one knows. It's the future, but I can help you define the parameters at the present and of the past.
So you have that eureka you have.
This is why I can't sleep.
You come up with that take. Do you run into the meeting Monday morning and say I have a take? Let's do this? Or is it workshop?
Like?
How do you?
What's the process?
Like it's the sunshine boys?
Yes there John? You came in Monday pretty fired up?
You did?
You did? There? We go?
You John stood up the morning meeting, meaning you stood out of your chair.
That doesn't always happen.
I was a few minutes late, and I have never been late to a John meeting. I had a childcare issue and I come in late and I think, oh, I'll just slip in the back door. John was standing.
Right in front of it, and he was on it like he was gooding.
So I hid in my office, listened and took notes for about twenty twenty two minutes, waited for my opportunity to slip in there.
One time I stood up in the morning meeting and they said, sit the fuck down. Whom we John gets the stand up.
No, But to be fair, there are meetings where I do that and then research will come in like three hours later and go, yeah, we looked into that.
Not true.
So I do do that too. But when I get ahead of theme, it's hard.
But what I usually will send out, I mean I literally will bother them on the weekend and I'll just say like, can you guys, because what will happen is this guy Max, who's in charge of and Max and Justin, who are in charge of sort of the video catalogs, will look to see if sometimes a hunch is wrong, and that's what I meant by we put it through a process like that's the thing at the show, like the thing that people don't realize, and it's always an easy thing to go. You take things out of context too. No, actually we don't. We work really hard not to. That's not to say we don't miss but there is an appeals process in place at our show that could be put in place in any news organization. And we don't look at the minute two minutes to see what rates and what doesn't.
We just put our heads down into our work. And that can't be that.
A comedy show has that as its goal, and a news show has its minute to minutes to look at like that's just an upside down world.
I started ask before and just to finish the thought about guests, how do you think about guests on the show?
How do you all think about it? But particularly I go by race only Asian guests only Asian guests for me?
Can I can I tell we co host it? This is a John is spot on.
Ronnie is like the nicest guy, but you never know if he's joking, And nobody we co hosted.
He's modly nice.
We co host and we were on like a Slack Channel about who guests were, and Ronnie said, like, I only want because it's Jordan and Ronnie hosted, and they want half Asian, holl white guys. And that's what we got. Because nobody challenged that as a joke that it literally I was like, I don't know he said it that he seemed.
Really out of it.
I was like, I think that was a bit he was doing it.
It's like, anyway, welcome representative Andy Kim.
There's games and games you played to keep ourselves interested, all right, out of it is sometimes I don't know, We'll see whoever interesting guests.
Uh and uh.
I do kind of take upon myself sometimes to be like, we've never had two Asian guys on TV before. Let's try and make that happen. But uh so that is a factor. But obviously, like I I tried to get I was, I've been trying to get conservative people as guests. I managed to get one yesterday, George con Way, although you know how conservative he considers himself to being now but was anti Trump conservative just to get some you know a little bit of a less of an echo chamber, less of a preaching to a choir. Let's hear some you know, outside of let's see hear what they have to say. So I'm always trying for that, but it's easier said and done. Sometimes they think we're trying to trick them on the show, but.
We are generally trying to trick them.
John.
Obviously, Lena Kahan seems to have been a choice guest for you, given that that was some an idea you had at Apple and it was a great interview.
Yeah, she's I thought she was fantastic.
Yeah, she's the anti trust enforcer.
Yeah FTCM.
So do you think are you thinking that way?
Like, Okay, who's gonna who's gonna make headlines? Who's going to you know, give it back to me? What is what's your thought process there?
I think the thought process for guests is generally also in the same way of trying to I think the show works best when it has sort of a clarity vision and then a very much of flexibility of process and how.
We get there.
But there are broader themes that I think make the show feel more cohesive, and in this moment, I think it's we talk about Trump as the threat to democracy, or that the threats to democracy are autocracy they're external and they are you know, in opposition to a democratic system. But I think it may be more interesting to internalize why democracy is vulnerable to that, And so the FTC chairman or ken Buck or it's about looking at why is it that there is a feeling in America that the government is separate from the realities of the consent of the government. You know, what is it that where's that disconnect come from? And then you can explore it in whatever you know. You can apply that thought to pharma, you can apply it to you know, what happened in the pandemic. Well, you know there's the conspiracy theories, but there's also the reality that maybe they didn't. They weren't as transparent as they could have been, and that caused a lack of trust and an ability to exploit some of those those gaps. So what if we applied our process to where those gaps are. What if you look at Trump as a black hat hacker exposing where are the vulnerabilities on this map, and if he exposes them and we and we go in and we view those vulnerabilities and we can map them and see where you can strengthen them, well, then we can protect ourselves in a way from the ease in which demagogues can take control of the discourse. And so that's I mean, that's obviously. Look, that's the you know, the broadhead. And then our job is it's always the broad perspective. And then how do you deconstruct that into something usable for production? How do you go in and start to use that? And and so that's what we apply to all the different kinds of stories and things that you know that we look at.
That's a loftier goal for guests than guy with a movie.
They won't come on.
No, because that's you know, that's what everybody. Why are people watching this? And that's what you want to earn every day. It's like in stand up or in improv. Like the whole point is we've decided to pick a chair that's facing the audience. And if you're not going to take the time or effort to earn that chair every time you sit in it, what are you doing?
Perfect segue to my last question, You are committed through November? Any thoughts about possibly staying? I mean it's clearly working.
Yeah, John, wait, will you.
Yeah?
I mean, listen, man, this is ball and it's and it's been, you know, fantastic. And the one thing I will say is I walked away nine years ago because I was burnt and and I'm I don't feel that right now.
I feel reinvigorated.
I'm with people that are unbelievably talented, unbelievably uh dedicated, unbelievably mostly And and what they talked about that that meeting in the morning. You know when people say like, oh, did you miss did you miss having a platform? Did you miss the thing? I didn't miss any of that, but I did miss that. I missed that when you walk into a room with just smart, funny people and just and go at that creative process like there's nothing like it.
Nothing.
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