Vivian Salama (1:54)

Yeah, should do it.

Narrator/Host (1:55)

Everyone's doing it for Saudis.

Hanna Rosen (1:58)

That was Shane Gillis who declined to go.

Narrator/Host (2:01)

Weren't those the 911 guys? Guys, it's that special time of year. It's the Riyadh Comedy Festival, and all of your favorite comedians are performing at the pleasure of Turkey.

Hanna Rosen (2:16)

Al Sheikh, that's Zackwood.

Narrator/Host (2:18)

Human Rights Watch has been begging the comedians not to participate in the whitewashing of the horrors that are ongoing in Saudi Arabia. Ugh, what a cockblock. Human Rights Watch is for comedy. Let's have some fun.

Helen Lewis (2:34)

Let's have some chaos.

Hanna Rosen (2:37)

Atsuko Okatsuka said she was offered a spot in the festival but declined. And then she posted on social media what looked like a contract where it stated that performers could not make fun of Saudi Arabia and its leadership, the Saudi royal family, and basically anything regarding religion. Now, the comedians who did sign on to the festival included some pretty heavy hitters. Dave Chappelle, Louis ck, Aziz Ansari, Kevin Hart, Pete Davidson, and Bill Burr, among dozens of others. The amount they were paid isn't known for sure, though at least one comedian has said he was offered $375,000 and that others receive more than a million, which is a lot more than some of them make in the US in an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday, Louis CK Said he had mixed feelings about attending.

Narrator/Host (3:33)

I think everything that's being said about it, about that's a worthy discussion. When are you appeasing? When are you engaging? And I have mixed feelings about it, too. I struggled about going once they started hearing what everyone was saying.

Hanna Rosen (3:47)

Jessica Kirson, who is a gay comedian with a big queer following, also went to the festival and then apologized to her fans when she got back. Aziz Ansari, meanwhile, told Jimmy Kimmel this week that he saw performing there as an overall good thing for Saudi Arabia.

Narrator/Host (4:05)

So you felt that it was that in the long term, this will be a positive. People seeing comedy and American comedy and freeze.

Hanna Rosen (4:13)

Yeah, I mean, so many people were there talking about stuff. I hope people see that and they go, wow, this was really great. And I want more of this. Not just in comedy, but in everything. All of this, whether intended or not, brought a lot of attention to a festival that otherwise may have gone largely unnoticed. So you literally just got back from Saudi Arabia?

Helen Lewis (4:36)

Yeah, my plane landed about two hours ago.

Hanna Rosen (4:39)

I mean, we even sent Atlantic staff writer Helen Lewis there.

Helen Lewis (4:43)

This is a country that has been a theocracy essentially, you know, practicing one of the most conservative forms of Islam. Some stuff was genuinely pretty groundbreaking. This is probably the first time that anyone has joked about dildos on stage in Saudi Arabia.

Hanna Rosen (4:58)

We'll hear more from Helen about what it was like to be at the festival later in the show. And in case you were wondering or waiting, I do not have a punchline to this setup. But in the end, maybe it's Saudi Arabia that gets the last laugh. Because the Riyadh Comedy Festival is just one small part of a much bigger plan the country has put in place that goes way beyond comedy. A plan to compete with its neighbors, pull in Western investment, dominate sports, and generally be known for things other than 9, 11 and human rights violations.

Vivian Salama (5:46)

You could really kind of envision the skyline of Dubai. You know, that it's a shopping hub and there's all these celebrities that go there, and it's glitzy and it's glamorous. Well, Saudi Arabia has a lot more money and kind of looked on all these years very jealously in some ways, of the fame and fortune that came with Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Qatar's transfer transformation. And it wanted that, but it had some restrictions.

Hanna Rosen (6:11)

That's my colleague Vivian Salama, who lived and reported in the Gulf for several years.

Vivian Salama (6:16)

After all, this is the home of Islam. Mecca and Medina hold very, very spiritual significance for Muslims around the world. Saudi Arabia was known for morality, police and things like that. It was not known for comedy and fashion and entertainment. And then all of a sudden, about a decade ago, you had a young crown prince who came in somewhere somewhat forcefully into power, pushing his cousin out of the way, and he vowed to change things. And that's when some of these new patterns began. And so it's been a gradual shift. Comedy festival being part of that bigger picture.

Hanna Rosen (6:54)

What is the bigger picture? Like, I've heard of Vision 2030. Like, what is that? What is that about?

Vivian Salama (6:59)

So Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who, by the way, just turned 40 years old. In August, he launched something called Vision 2030. He and others, the king included. Vision 2030 is their economic diversification plan, which, you know, gets very in the weeds in terms of the different sectors of development. But one of the big parts of this framework was that they were going to diversify their economic, social and cultural life. You know, if you read through this very long plan, you know, talks about the pillars for promoting a, quote, vibrant society among it, you know, getting its citizens to exercise more, getting them to spend more on entertainment, things like that. They really believe that they cannot rely exclusively on the fact that they are the world's largest exporter of oil as the sole basis for generating economic revenue. They needed to diversify, which is what, by the way, Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Qatar had been doing in the decades before. It's just a more sustainable model. And Saudi Arabia, up until about a decade ago, was really in trouble in that regard because of the fact that it needed to find other alternative avenues for revenue. They weren't getting tourism the way that Dubai and Qatar were. They weren't getting any of that other money. The retail, you know, shopping hubs were not looking to go there as partly because of their record on a number of issues. Human rights, for example, has been problematic all along. Repression of women was always something that was notable for Saudi Arabia. They have been trying to change this in conjunction with this diversification plan that they're also trying to execute on.

Hanna Rosen (8:37)

It's funny you're saying it in a straight way, but as you're saying, I'm like, this does not necessarily hang together. Like, how does Comedy Festival dropped into the middle of this make any sense? Comedians are known for making fun of everything. And so how do you think they thought through that? It's not a shopping center. It's a different animal.

Vivian Salama (8:57)

The fact that we are here talking about it is what they are trying to accomplish. They want to bring eyes and people's attention to Saudi Arabia for things other than, say, negative headlines or just the Hajj for the Islamic pilgrimage. They want to be known for other things. They want us to be talking about Saudi Arabia. Did you see that festival in Saudi Arabia? Did you see that fashion show in Saudi Arabia?

Hanna Rosen (9:22)

So Mohammed bin Salman, or mbs, has actually made headway in this goal, proving to the world that this is not your grandma's Saudi Arabia. He's also an ally of President Donald Trump. During Trump's first presidency, his very first international visit was to Saudi Arabia. In the spring of 2018, Trump hosted MBS at the White House for some classic Trumpian deal making.

Narrator/Host (9:47)

We've become very good friends over a.

Hanna Rosen (9:49)

Fairly short period of time. I was in Saudi Arabia in May.

Narrator/Host (9:54)

And we are bringing back hundreds of.

Hanna Rosen (9:56)

Billions of dollars into the United States. And we understand that. Then just about six months after that warm welcome in the Oval Office, news broke about the shocking killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Vivian Salama (10:10)

It was eventually determined by U.S. intel that the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, either knew about or directed the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, which was an extremely brutal event, as we know now, happened extraterritorially in Istanbul, likely with the use of a bone saw. And so you had this very jarring image of this journalist working for a Western publication who was brutally killed by this man. And at the same time, he was out there talking about, I'm a different kind of ruler, I'm a reformer, I want to engage with the West. And so you had this split screen situation. And it just so happened that the Trump administration had come into office right around that time. President Trump did acknowledge, with some trepidation, these reports he reportedly, according to my sources, told the Crown Prince and the king privately, I hope there wasn't a bone. So I'll be very mad if there was a bone saw. But also made very clear that he wasn't gonna get involved in their domestic affairs, that this relationship is a business relationship above all else. You know, we can help each other do really well.

Hanna Rosen (11:27)

Do you, as an observer of the country and its ebbs and flows, think that mbs, you know, for being young and kind of desiring this cultural opening has made any actual meaningful reforms?

Vivian Salama (11:41)

Oh, yeah, most certainly. I mean, when I last visited Saudi a year and a half ago, maybe I couldn't actually believe how much it had changed. There was a time less than a decade ago where I could not walk around without an abaya, the full dress that goes to the floor, that covers the very modest clothing. Oftentimes I'd have to have a veil, at least on hand, so that if anyone yelled at me, I'd just kind of throw it on my head, if not always wearing it. I walked around in jeans and a T shirt. Women were wearing bright, vibrant abayas that were open and showing their jeans and T shirts underneath. And I'm talking Saudi women. Their hair was exposed much more than I'd ever seen before. Women are now driving, which is one of the big headliners that came out during the MBS period. But also, you know, Saudi Arabia was a little bit of an interesting mix even before this, because you did have women who were involved in government, who were business leaders, and they've just been given a platform to expand their influence in the kingdom more as these reforms have set in over the years. And so definitely there's been significant changes, and you can see it even superficially when you go to visit.

Hanna Rosen (12:54)

So thinking about the comedy festival, again, one obvious argument is, you know, you have a comedy festival, you have comedians show up, Saudis are in the audience, they hear this kind of comedy. Even if it's not free comedy, it cannot criticize the crown prince or the government or the royal family. It's still an edgy kind of comedy. And that in and of itself has an opening effect. Do you believe that to be true?

Vivian Salama (13:19)

I mean, it is surprising to me, having been now traveling and or living in the Gulf for close to 20 years, it is surprising to me to see where we are. I mean, it's definitely a change. It has to be acknowledged. At the same time, you know, whether or not you can criticize the government, for example, I mean, that's obviously still a red line, and it's problematic. And a lot of these comedians just decided that they're not going to participate in a festival that draws red lines. Yeah, that tells them what they can and cannot say, because comedy is notoriously sort of, you know, free reign, or at least it used to be. I mean, things are changing even here. But, you know, the Gulf governments, and I'm not just talking about Saudi Arabia, governments in the Middle east across the board, don't take criticism very well. They're not a free speech society. By any stretch.

Hanna Rosen (14:12)

Yeah, I guess what you're observing is openness is a big, broad term. There is some openness in the way women walk around in the streets, the fact that women drive the kinds of comedians that were invited. But that doesn't mean all kinds of openness. It doesn't mean criticizing the government. It doesn't mean comedians can say what they want to say. And it doesn't necessarily even translate into the exact same standards for a Saudi citizen. But it is something different.

Vivian Salama (14:40)

That's right. That's right. And a lot of these comedians have just determined that any restriction is a no go after the break.

Hanna Rosen (14:47)

The view from inside the Comedy festival.

Vivian Salama (14:58)

Some tech leaders question whether we're in an AI bubble, but others say the best of what AI has to offer is yet to come.

Hanna Rosen (15:06)

Maybe in 10,000 years, AI will be based on physics that we don't even.

Narrator/Host (15:10)

Understand right now, and we'll have many different approaches.

Vivian Salama (15:14)

Join US Weekly starting October 15th for the most interesting thing in AI brought.

Hanna Rosen (15:19)

To you by Rethink, the Atlantic's creative.

Vivian Salama (15:21)

Marketing studio in collaboration with PwC. Wherever you get your podcasts.

Hanna Rosen (15:31)

When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com the Riyadh Comedy Festival just wrapped today, and as fans and comedians return home, a clearer picture of what the event was actually like is taking shape. Atlantic staff writer Helen Lewis just arrived home from Riyadh when we spoke.

Helen Lewis (16:18)

So we went to see the co headliners of the comedy festival who are Louis C.K. and Jimmy Carr, a British comedian, and they had a Saudi comedian as a support act. And he said, I just want everyone to give a big round of applause for Mohammed bin Salman. And I was just like, no, no. And obviously I don't applaud anything anyway. And I thought, well, this is what a way to go. What a way to be dragged off by the secret police is for showing insufficient enthusiasm for the comedic potential of Mohammed bin Salman. But this was organized by the entertainment authority. You know, this was a state sanctioned comedy festival. So I think performing there implies not even quite an endorsement, but certainly like a, you know, a level of comfort and ease with what the government is doing that even in an American context Never mind a Saudi context, I think lots of people would have a problem with.

Hanna Rosen (17:08)

So that expectation was not on the American comedians exactly like, share a big round of applause. But when comedian Atsuko Katsuka posted a picture of the contract, the contract was essentially. Essentially no insulting, degrading, embarrassing the leadership or religion. It was specifically about insulting the heads of state.

Helen Lewis (17:29)

Yeah. And I think that's really worth noting because actually the material was pretty blue. Pretty blue. So that is kind of interesting. This is a country that has been a theocracy essentially practicing one of the most conservative forms of Islam. So there was some stuff, was genuinely pretty groundbreaking. This is probably the first time that anyone has joked about dildos on stage in Saudi Arabia. Might not be the last.

Hanna Rosen (17:52)

Well, I was wondering about Jimmy Car. I was like, he is. He's a filthy comedian.

Helen Lewis (17:57)

He is a filthy comedian. I mean, about. I would say about 75% of his set is about, oh, wouldn't it be funny if I was a sex offender? And you're like, you do know that they kill those over here, Jimmy.

Hanna Rosen (18:09)

Yes. So how did that roll out?

Helen Lewis (18:11)

Well, actually, you know what, Almost all of it went down really well. And actually in this slightly intoxicated way where he kept saying, like, let's push it a little bit more, shall we? Which is something that came up in Bill Burr's reflect on the event. Right. That there was a feeling that people were really excited to be there. This was thrilling to them. This is kind of slightly titillating to hear this kind of, you know, what to you and me would be like, oh, you know, every 9pm at the Comedy Store, any night of the week, kind of sex kind of based comedy. This is the first time that's been heard in public. But I will say Jimmy Carr, I will give him some credit because he did. I mean, I think it was an unpleasant joke, but he did do a political joke, which was he'd done a long section on euthanasia that said, you know, we put a dog to sleep, but we allow people to go on living in what can only be described as. And then there was a beat, and then he said, Yemen.

Hanna Rosen (19:03)

Oh, my God.

Helen Lewis (19:04)

Wow. And there was genuinely a kind of collective. Because mentioning the Saudi war with Yemen and the bombing of the Houthi rebels. There is, you know, is an incredibly touchy political subject. Then he went back to some, you know, lighthearted anal sex material and everybody kind of calmed back down again. The other thing I thought was very interesting about Louis CK is he basically did. As far as I can Tell his current tour show. So he did a whole bit that was about how much he hates jury duty. Well, no one in Saudi Arabia does jury duty. And then he did a bit about how terrible it is when it rains. It's literally a desert.

Hanna Rosen (19:42)

So he's playing it safe.

Helen Lewis (19:43)

Yeah. And then he did a bit about how the woman down his hallway is really elderly and yet dark still, despite that, still wears a tube top and cropped shorts. And he finds this disgusting. And I was like, again, not a problem that these people will encounter in their day to day life. Louis CK So it was, you know, and he did do a bit about his own religion. He said, am I okay to mock my religion? Am I okay to talk about Catholicism? And so technically violating the spirit of the contract. Except that we all know that the spirit of the contract really was don't mock Islam.

Hanna Rosen (20:12)

There have been some comedians, like Aziz Ansari, for example, who have come out after the event and said, you know, I think it was net positive, like it was net good for Saudi Arabia. It exposed people to a kind of talk in humor that they hadn't heard before. On the Bill Burr podcast that we mentioned, you were not in this show. But he talked about a comedian who he did not name, who. When three members of the audience who are Saudi got up to go to the bathroom, this comedian who was gay said, oh, are you going to check Grindr? Which Bill Burr thought was like, whoa, that's really pushing it. And so there are some voices coming out of that saying, like, they really did push the boundaries in some way. Did you talk to any comedians? What was your sense of, did they feel good about what they'd done, whether it had had any impact?

Helen Lewis (21:03)

I mean, I talked to Andrew Maxwell, who I've previously done panel shows with comedy panel shows in Britain, and he gave a very interesting defense, which was, he's Irish. And he said, you know, I grew up in a de facto theocracy. Divorce was illegal, abort abortion was illegal. Homosexuality was completely frowned upon. And all that changed during the time that I was growing up. And Ireland is now a much more liberal society. And if this has a chance to do that, I want to be part of it. And I can see already, I can hear the bit in my head that's going, do we really think that Saudi Arabia is gonna creep towards Western liberal democracy through the medium of dildo jokes? Right. It seems hopeful, but I can understand the fact that this is a very young country. Right. It has de Islamized in very visible and obvious ways. So the Most obvious one is the way that the religious police no longer have powers of arrest. And, you know, if you went over 10, 20 years ago and you weren't correctly dressed or whatever it might be, you know, that was a really scary and repressive thing. And, you know, I'm not saying now it's a free speech paradise, but that is definitely something that has changed. So the paradox of Mohammed bin Salman's rule of Saudi Arabia is that you can liberalize up to the exact point that he allows, but no more, and you must never question how much or how little he has liberalized. So the most obvious example of this being around the time that women were allowed to drive. Also, a very prominent women's rights activist, Loujane El Hathloul, who was a big campaigner for women's driving rights, she was jailed. She's not been heard from in public since. She's not allowed to speak publicly. So. So the government has adopted this policy that they've said that her position was essentially the correct one, but she did it wrong because she spoke out against. She questioned the Saudi state. And that's the bit that I think, as people from Europe and America, it's hard to grapple with, is what price are you willing to pay for this liberalization? And what authoritarian penalty will you put up with? Should you be grateful for the good things while condemning the bad things? And also, part of this is, I think when I read all the defenses of the comedians about why they were doing it, two things came across. One was a kind of nihilism, which was a kind of, doesn't matter, you know, Tim Dillon saying, you know, they're paying me enough to silence the screams. I don't care. You just take the money, keep your head down. And then the other one was moral relativism, which was really, essentially boils down to, America's done some bad shit, too. Who are we to preach to other people? And I heard that sentiment, and I think particularly because of the, you know, Israel's war in Gaza, lots of comedians in that kind of sphere who took the. In invitation and took the money are like, our ally, Israel is bombing a country back to the Stone Age. Who are we to lecture Saudi Arabia on its human rights record? And I heard that sentiment again and again and again. And it's one that I think is quite widespread now among younger disaffected people who listen to that kind of podcast comedian sphere. A real deep dissatisfaction with American foreign policy, which is not a new thing. You could have said the same thing. Around the time of the war in Iraq in 2004. But I think it complicates what some people might feel that America is a great liberalizing force and is morally superior to other people.

Hanna Rosen (24:21)

So now that you've been there, which of those do you find the most compelling? Or do you think in the end they shouldn't? None of them should have gone.

Helen Lewis (24:30)

I mean, I wouldn't have gone. But then you and I are in a different position as journalists. Right. There's an honors system in Britain and sometimes people who are editors of newspapers take honours and they become, sir, such and such. And I think, what are you doing if the government likes you, you've done it wrong essentially as a journalist. So that's my perspective that I bring to this. And now it's not the same for comedians. And I think the bit that is kind of crucial to this is at what point did we stop having public intellectuals and we started having comedians and started treating them as kind of philosopher kings, Right? Yeah. You know, the idea is these are people whose job is it to, you know, like dinner theater? Like, you go out for the evening and they make you laugh. And I think I want to go back to why we've ceded this much moral authority to this class of people who are, you know, many of my best friends are standup comedians, but they are like heat seeking missiles for getting the right reaction from an audience. And that's not the same thing as telling the truth. Right. Sometimes the jokes are lazy or easy and those ones are the guaranteed laughs. So for me, this whole festival should make us reappraise why we take the political thoughts of comedians so seriously and whether or not they've really earned that right to be taken seriously. Under that argument, lots of American businesses already trade with Saudi Arabia. Why are we holding Bill Burr to a higher moral standard than chilies or Dunkin Donuts?

Hanna Rosen (26:02)

A last question, which is maybe the one I should have asked you first. Why did you wanna go? It's an interesting choice. It's not as if you cover the Middle East. I'm curious what you were looking for.

Helen Lewis (26:12)

I thought it would be funny.

Hanna Rosen (26:15)

That's not.

Helen Lewis (26:16)

In many different ways. No. Should I tell you what a. When I saw it, the two words, Riyadh, you know, the most austere Saudi city, the. The home of the Sauds, you know, the ruling family in conjunction with standup comedy. Then I saw the lineup and it was lots of people that I've covered for the Atlantic for a long time. Right. And you know, I was thinking about this, that the festival really owes its existence to two things. One of them is Mohammed bin Salman and his liberalizing regime, and the other one is cancel Culture. And you look down that list and it's Dave Chappelle, you know, huge backlash at Netflix over his jokes about trans people. You know, it's Louis CK Got me too'd. But that is a sense that in the last couple of years in American comedy that lots of people got pushed out of the mainstream and they rebuilt a whole new, you know, in the same way there was alt comedy in the 1980s. This is kind of old, old comedy, you know, anti woke comedy. So for me, this whole festival was really reflective of the state of American comedy and the new energy that pulsed through it and I think pulsed through it last year, leading so many of these guys to flirt with Trump, interview Trump, maybe full on, endorse Trump. And that, you know, that is a big challenge to people my age who've grown up with the default assumption that comedy is kind of liberal.

Hanna Rosen (27:36)

Well, Helen, get some sleep and thank you for talking to us after your trip.

Helen Lewis (27:41)

As ever, thank you for having me.

Hanna Rosen (27:45)

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Rosie Hughes and Janae West. It was edited by Claudina Baid. Rob Smerciak engineered and provided original music. Genevieve Finn fact checked. Claudina Baid is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. Listeners, if you like what you hear on Radio Atlantic, you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic journalists when you subscribe to The Atlantic at theatlantic.com/listener. I'm Hanna Rosen. Thank you for listening.

Narrator/Host (28:30)

Today's episode is brought to you by Eleven Labs, the company behind AI voices that don't sound like AI voices like this one. ElevenLabs powers companies and enterprises in building lifelike conversational AI voice agents. Their voice agents are used to handle everything from customer support, queries, appointment scheduling, and even offer personalized one on one tutoring. So join the thousands of leaders already using AI voice in their business. Visit ElevenLabs IO Atlantic to get started for free.