Jay Jurden: High Profundities Per Minute

Summary

The Gist – "Jay Jurden: High Profundities Per Minute"

Date: December 19, 2025
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: Jay Jurden
Summary By: [Your Name or Initials]

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Episode Overview

In this episode of "The Gist," Mike Pesca sits down with stand-up comedian and actor Jay Jurden. The episode mixes comedy craft, insights on contemporary performance, and sharp cultural observations, embodying the show’s mission to challenge its audience and eschew ideological rigidity. The conversation ranges from Jay’s theatrical background and Mississippi upbringing to the evolution of stand-up in an era defined by virality and crowd work, all underscored by Jay’s signature rapid-fire wit and layered punchlines.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sports Analogies and Southern Roots

• Pesca’s Premise: Mike goes meta, noting the oddity and joy of discussing college football with a gay comedian, given both his and Jay’s Mississippi roots.
• Jay’s Expertise: Jay’s cultural familiarity and passion for Southern college football allow him to craft unexpectedly apt analogies between sports and comedy craft.
• Notable Quote:
  • “I can't believe a gay man just gave me the greatest [sports] analogy.” (Pesca, 35:43)
• Timestamp: [35:03-36:27]

2. Comedy Craft: From Theater to Stand-Up

• Background: Jay’s extensive theater training (BA, BFA, MFA) profoundly informs his approach to stand-up, particularly his kinesthetic awareness and use of act-outs.
• Insight:
  • Act-outs and physicality are intentional: Jay choreographs movements for maximum comedic impact, eschewing mere “coasting on charisma.”
  • He intentionally cultivates specificity and intention behind stage movements, a skill honed in theater and applied rigorously in his comedy.
• Notable Quote:
  • “If you're very mic stand, no hand movements... you are leaving a lot of meat on the bone. If I can be Southern and use an expression, there's so much more there you are allowed to embody.” (Jay, 17:13)
• Timestamps: [15:33-21:12], [22:03-23:21]

3. The Comic’s Persona and Delivery Style

• Persona Construction: Deliberate use of theater training to present multiple authentic personas and maintain each joke’s freshness.
• Delivery: Rapid-fire punchlines, continual movement, and references create a “game” for the audience—rewarding quick wit and attention over “entry-level” comedy.
• Inspirations: Robin Williams’ "cartoon landscape," paralypsis (the art of saying by not saying), and the importance of keeping audiences intellectually engaged.
• Notable Quotes:
  • “My comedy is not an entry-level course. It is 300 and above.” (Jay, 27:29)
  • “Sell those fucking knives! Even if some of them are dull. Sell those knives.” (Jay, 25:13)
• Timestamps: [23:21-28:14], [25:13]

4. Pushing Boundaries and “Profundities Per Minute”

• Ethics & Edges:
  • Jay navigates taboo topics by assuming shared morality in the room, allowing for comedy about difficult subject matter (race, sexuality, disability) as long as irony and intent are clear.
  • He pursues the “75% good, 25% evil” mix needed for sharp, layered comedy, seeing the “pebble in his shoe” as essential to being a compelling comic.
• Examples:
  • Tackling trans jokes, wheelchair jokes (with references to Governor Abbott), and the layered use of language.
  • Discusses the evolution and necessary context for “offensive” material.
• Notable Quotes:
  • “You have to be kind of mad at somebody.” (Jay, 30:54)
  • “Technique is taught to be forgotten.” (Jay, 47:12)
• Timestamps: [29:11-32:17], [45:08-47:12]

5. Crowd Work, Virality, and the State of Modern Comedy

• Viral Culture:
  • Jay critiques comics who chase viral moments or crowd work clips instead of honing craft (“dropping back and scrambling”), comparing it to football strategy.
  • He uses targeted crowd work with prepped material (especially jokes about Southern states) to maintain set flow and retain show control.
• Take on Viral Fame: He values being "good before being famous" and resists algorithm-driven attention.
• Notable Quote:
  • “If you don’t get five yards, five yards, three yards, they’re never gonna respect the play action pass because you keep scrambling.” (Jay, 35:03)
• Timestamps: [35:03-37:31], [48:08-52:20]

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• On Comedy as Advanced Study:
  • “My comedy is not an entry-level course. It is 300 and above.” (Jay, 27:29)
• On Act-Outs and Physical Specificity:
  • “The physical joke there has to be just as good as the written joke.” (Jay, 19:15)
• On Crowd Work:
  • “Practicing crowd work will make you better at crowd work sometimes. But even then, the variable of people... is something that comics have dealt with kind of forever.” (Jay, 36:00)
• On Audience Engagement:
  • “You have a compact with the audience.” (Pesca, 24:44)
• On Chasing Virality:
  • “People chasing virality in a way that doesn’t necessarily help them get better... is a problem.” (Jay, 48:16)
• On Stand-Up and Personal History:
  • “If I would have started stand-up comedy first... I would not be as successful or confident on stage if I had not gone through college.” (Jay, 56:10)

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Important Timestamps

• On Jay’s Early Life and Mississippi: [09:12–15:14]
• On Theater Training and Physical Comedy: [15:40–21:12]
• Wheelchair Joke & Joke Evolution: [20:15–21:12]
• Persona, References & Delivery Style: [22:52–28:14]
• The Paralypsis Technique & Multiple Viewpoints: [28:33–29:42]
• Mixing Morality and Edge in Comedy: [29:56–32:17]
• College Football/Comedy Analogy: [35:03–36:27]
• Crowd Work Commentary & Execution: [37:31–39:54]
• On Social Media, Virality, & Old School Chops: [48:08–52:20]
• Jay’s Special & Album Details: [56:49–57:12]

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Closing Thoughts

Mike Pesca wraps by highlighting Jay’s new special, “Yes, Ma’. Am.,” which streams on Hulu and is available on other digital platforms, as well as an audio album release.

Jay Jurden’s blend of Southern charm, academic rigor, and lightning wit make for a comedy style both profoundly funny and intellectually engaging—a high “profundities per minute” ratio, as Pesca calls it.

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Further Information

• Jay Jurden’s Special:
  • Title: Yes, Ma’. Am.
  • Where to Watch: Streaming on Hulu (from Dec. 8), available to buy/rent on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+, album on all music platforms from Dec. 5.

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This summary skips ads, intro/outro, and focuses exclusively on the conversation’s rich exploration of comedy, performance, and culture.

Transcript

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[Mike Pesca]

It's Friday, December 19, 2025 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca and we bring you a funny youy Should Mention episode with with the Very funny the Very game Jay Jordan and Jay Jordan, as you will hear in this episode, dropped on me the greatest analogy to sports. Analogizing something in the arts to college football. I think it was and I was blown away. And I do let loose because he talks about this a lot in his act. Can't believe a gay guy just made the greatest college football analogy I've ever heard. I will say that like Jay Jordan who is very into college football because he's from Mississippi, I too this year got a little bit into college football. And in fact the game I'm most interested in will occur this Saturday and it is a game concerning his alma mater, one of his two alma's Mata Ole Miss Good Ole Miss. Not so good to all the people of Mississippi, but Jay roots for them because Ole Miss is playing Tulane and my son decided to go to Tulane and of all the schools he decided to go to, it was one that weirdly made the college football championship. So I watched a lot of Tulane games and I got into college football. And I do have to say, having gotten into college football, not that you cared, but you know, this is the classic interview with a gay comedian where college football comes up a lot. Not that you care. I found it entertaining, which really is the whole point of college sports. It's not about student athletes and it's not about elevating the academic experience or rooting for old Nassau or any of those things. How the physical and the intellectual combine to one to make the better person. It's just an avenue of entertainment for people like me who are sitting at home and rooting for the green wave. And I can't say that it made me realize that college football was anything other than the corrupt thing I thought it was. Anything other than the cash cow that is diverting resources that I thought it was. But like I said, it's supposed to be entertaining. And all I am saying is I found this piece of entertainment actually as entertaining as was reported to be. Let me put it this way. Jay made an analogy. I'm going to make an analogy. It's like if I won a scratch off lottery card and then I bought another one and I won that too. I wouldn't think that scratch off lottery cards were good for America. I wouldn't prescribe scratch off lottery cards as anything other than they were. I would just say these avenues of entertainment actually entertain me. Good job. Scratch off lottery card. I hope a lot of people don't throw away their savings on them. And I hope that a lot of schools in the Midwest and South don't throw too much of their fortunes away on high profile coaches await. That's already happening. As the coach of each of these schools, Ole Miss and Tulane have been poached to bigger, higher paying institutions. This has been the. Funny you should mention sports corner. And now we go to the actual humor. Jay Jordan. Enjoy. Well, owning a home is great. I kind of love my home. My wife has done it upright. But you know what she didn't do? She didn't go into the wal walls and fix the pipes until boom. Literally happen. Pipe burst and repairs and the repair company and definitely the insurance you have do not care about your budget. They care about theirs. So to protect your house as you do your health, your car, your phone. Homeserve is there. Regular homeowners insurance does not cover a lot of the wear and tear the day to day like an H vac breakdown or an electrical issue. But HomeServe, which is subscription service for your home, like all these subscription services for pieces of entertainment or pieces of information, we're talking about your home. 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I know it hasn't torn and also a wind resistant, insulated, very comfortable hoodie that I'm a little embarrassed to tell you is the would be hoodie, but it is and it works well. Upgrade your day with work wear built like it matters because it does get 15% off your first order@True Work.com with code the gist. Often spell. These often spell the names of sponsors, but this time pay attention because there's a twist. It's T R U E W E R K dot com. Remember, use the code the gist. Hello, welcome back to Funny you should mention where we talk about. Well, I think the tagline is find profundities in punchlines. And we are talking with Jay Jordan, who has a lot of profundities. When I say a lot, they come in rapid fire. So some of this stuff's maybe not profound, but profundities per minute ratio, it's pretty much up there. Jay's out with a new special called. Well, I think the title is yes, ma'.

[Jay Jordan]

Am. Yes ma'. Am.

[Mike Pesca]

But I think you're right. I think you're supposed to emphasize yes, ma'.

[Bridges]

Am.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, yeah. Very Southern of me. It's not yes, ma', am, it's yes, ma'. Am.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. It could be sarcastic. Yes, ma'.

[Jay Jordan]

Am.

[Mike Pesca]

Get out of the vehicle, ma'. Am. So before we started rolling and yeah, we talk before we start rolling, we're talking about your hometown of Canton.

[Jay Jordan]

Canton, Mississippi.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes, yes, yes. And so Canton, Ohio, is where the football hall of Fame is. Fame one hall of fame. If there were to be a Hall of fame in Canton, Mississippi, what would the hall of Fame be?

[Jay Jordan]

Racist movie in the 90s. Hall of Fame, pretty much.

[Mike Pesca]

My dog Skip. Wasn't that racist?

[Jay Jordan]

No, not at all. Everything else, the time to kill, Mississippi, burning over the wherewithal. There was clans, there was clan activity in every movie.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. There was. There were extras wearing clan outfits walking around town.

[Jay Jordan]

And they weren't even cast.

[Mike Pesca]

No, they were just hoping. They were just aspirants. Like, I have my own outfit. If you did that now, in some places, you would have to. You know how when they. You live here in New York, when they block out a street for filming, they put up all the signs about what's going to happen. You'd have to literally put up trigger warnings around town in some places.

[Jay Jordan]

Or you just have to be like, listen, these are not actual racist. If you're looking for the actual racist, it's two blocks over.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, it's the people who aren't stupid enough to dress in the Klan outfit.

[Jay Jordan]

Exactly.

[Mike Pesca]

Which is something Kanye got wrong.

[Jay Jordan]

I think.

[Mike Pesca]

That'S how we knew he wasn't a real Klansman. It's one of the tells and.

[Jay Jordan]

Cause he ordered it in black, which they hate. Like, there's one color they don't want.

[Mike Pesca]

I think that. I don't know. I think that if they're in red, they look like one of the extras in one of the later Star wars movies. It does kind of undermine. I once read. Don't get the wrong idea, but I once read. I forgot what it was called. They have a lot of puns.

[Jay Jordan]

Clan. Was it the application process?

[Mike Pesca]

No, it wasn't.

[Jay Jordan]

It wasn't.

[Mike Pesca]

It was like, just a list of what their titles were in the clan.

[Jay Jordan]

And, like, Wizard. Grand Dragon.

[Mike Pesca]

There's wizard, but there's everything. There's like, 12. Myth.

[Jay Jordan]

It's.

[Mike Pesca]

They're playing Dungeons and Dragons.

[Jay Jordan]

Griffin. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

You could be a griffin.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, they. You listen. An eagle.

[Mike Pesca]

Harry Potter. Clan overlap.

[Jay Jordan]

Eagle and a lion can mix, but not white people and black people.

[Mike Pesca]

No, that's right. We have our standards. Head of a lion, tail of an eagle. But definitely no such thing as a biracial person. So was it. Was it racist compared to. First of all, you didn't know, right?

[Jay Jordan]

You were a kid, surely. I was a kid.

[Mike Pesca]

So looking back, were there signs that it specifically because it was Mississippi was more racist than you'd want some other typical community in America to have been in the 1990s?

[Jay Jordan]

No, only because I was extremely insulated from it. I grew up on the black side of town. There specifically is, like, railroad tracks. There's a white side of town and black side of town. I was the first person in my immediate family to go to a fully integrated K through 12. My mom was born in 58, so she. Her high school was integrated, her middle school, they were starting it. But Mississippi, it took a while. So I never felt the kind of, like, sting of racism, but I saw the remnants of it. Like, when you grow up in Mississippi, you learn about slavery in third grade just because they have to teach social studies. And you start learning about the social studies of Mississippi, so they have to name some of the things you figure out. Oh, there was a war. Oh, there was slavery. So you learn about it relatively early. So it wasn't more racist. I mean, the craziest thing for me is looking back on it, I was really lucky because I just kind of was like, oh, there's a lot of grass. There's a lot of fields. And then sometimes you would drive and be like, oh, that. Oh, that's what that field was.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did they teach it when they taught slavery? Did they teach it from the Lost Cause perspective?

[Jay Jordan]

No, they weren't like, they're two sides. What happened in fourth grade is that I think it was. If it wasn't Ms. McIntosh, I just remember there was a specific part of the lesson plan where they're like, okay, well, slavery did happen. And I remember being like, oh, Mississippi was a slave state. And Mississippi was so much of a slave state that they were the second state to secede. So each kind of, like, in elementary school, you learn a little. Middle school, you learn a little bit more. In high school, I had a pretty cool quote, unquote, like, Progressive High School, AP U.S. history Teacher, and she just basically told us flowers. She was like, mississippi loved slavery. Mississippi still loves slavery. So many of the counties. So many of the cities were either named for, kind of named by racist and racist people. We had a Lee county named after Robert E. Lee. Like, I mean, at one point, Mississippi wanted to celebrate Robert E. Lee Day and Martin Luther King Day on the same day as, like, a compromise, which is hilariously insane, but, like, that's a compromise. That's the great compromise.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. What kind of. What kind of position is the Robert E. Lee people in that they could bargain. It's almost like Zelensky Putin thing.

[Jay Jordan]

We're gonna take a day off work. Can I at least say it's because?

[Mike Pesca]

Can I. Or the other part, maybe you could say, can I just pretend it's a different King Albert King? He was, you know, Bluesinger.

[Jay Jordan]

I would have gave him Elvis. He can be the King. He's from Tupelo.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, is. And then Mississippi is also. Wait, am I getting this right? That's where Emmett Till was killed, right?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, yeah. Emmett Till. He was from visiting. From Chicago. Family from Chicago went down to Mississippi to visit cousins, and that's where he was lynched.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. We don't want to, you know, cast aspersion, say the most racist state, but this is where they love slavery and still love slavery.

[Jay Jordan]

I went. We were talking about this before the camera started rolling, too. I went to the University of Mississippi. University of Mississippi. They are still the rebels. They have sort of, like, whitewashed it. Whitewashed it. They've sort of sanitized it and said, oh, like, you can rebel in anything.

[Mike Pesca]

Sure, it's a goth girl who doesn't like her dad. Although, why is it a guy with a big bushy mustache who looks just like Yosemite?

[Jay Jordan]

You could be like, no, we're talking about Star Wars. And I love, I love my time at Ole Miss. Ole Miss was foundational for, like, the way I look at acting and the way I look at comedy. But I am very aware that, like, on Saturdays, there were some Saturdays I was like, go Rebel. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I can't just say, go specific player. Go Patrick Willis.

[Mike Pesca]

Go Rebel alliance, which is, of course, it might be Chewbacca, it might be Rogue One. Okay, so I do want to talk to you about your extended education. You have a ba, an mfa, a bfa. If there's an A on the end of it, yeah. You were in school for how many years?

[Jay Jordan]

I was in school for? So it was six for my two undergrad degrees and another three for my grad school. So nine years total.

[Mike Pesca]

Nine years. So in your comedy, a lot of comedians, it's a standard of the set. Unless you're one of these very kind of dry stayed Steven Wright joke, only to do act out. That's part of it. Now, I've been analyzing some of your act outs and I think, okay, I'll give you two examples. But my theory is that because of your theater background, you're more attuned to what's going on. So one of your jokes is you talk about how you can't be canceled.

[Jay Jordan]

But do you understand how hard it's gonna be to cancel this? I'm black, I'm queer, I'm left handed.

[Mike Pesca]

And then the joke ends. I won't give all the way with middle of the joke. But you say goodbye to her with a hand motion.

[Jay Jordan]

With a push off.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, the push off. And then you say about the push off. And one of the best jokes in.

[Jay Jordan]

The special, that was me rolling her into affordable housing.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. So this is very funny, but my theory. And then I'll tell you another joke. You do an extended riff around soon to be retiring, we have found out, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. And at some point, she's typing something like this and you explain, these are hooves. Hooves. People could say, oh, a devil hooves. Think that if you want, but you'll see what's going on in the joke. But this is my theory that because you have this theater training, you're very intentional about what you do. I'm sure you're also instinctive. But do you think that came into play that you, more so than another comic would be thinking why you're doing this or thinking where you're pushing the girl in the wheelchair off into the.

[Jay Jordan]

Element and the power behind movement and act outs. And being kinesthetically aware and aware of your body on stage, to me is sometimes a superpower that if you're. If you're kind of very mic stand, no hand movements, mouth to the mic, just delivering punchlines, I think you are leaving a lot of meat on the bone. If I can be Southern and use an expression, there's so much more there that you are allowed to sort of embody. And for the longest time, I wanna say, for like the first two years of my standup career, because when you're black and when you're queer, you kind of think everyone's gonna say, oh, you're just kind of coasting on charisma. Are you a good enough joke writer? Are you a good enough joke writer to actually get by with just your jokes? So I would kind of scale. But then I realized I was like, oh, I did all this theater training. I did all this movement and actor training. I do want to have some of it be showcased in my set. So I pick and choose the moments when I want to go really big with it. And I do want them to be adding kind of texture and more information to the joke. Because that joke that you just described, hilarious visually. But if you just get the audio, you didn't. You don't get to see the push off. You don't get to see the typing for the reveal that those are hooves. So I want to make sure in the special that it's also visual, visually dynamic, because it's gonna be. We're putting out as an album on December 5. But I wanted the people who saw the special to really get the full kind of breadth of my skills.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. And I also, I. I haven't done much theater training. My sister has when there is a miming or action, the director. And you've been in this position. Right. You have undergraduates. If you tell someone, open the window and they do it kind of sloppily, or they do it where their hands aren't matched, you will always tell them no. How does that. Maybe you won't say no, but you say, think about where the window is. Think about how your hands would have to be. Do you find when you look at yourself that you're doing that with a push off?

[Jay Jordan]

Here's my question. That's best advantage of movement.

[Mike Pesca]

You're pushing a person in a wheelchair is different from another comedian doing that same act out because your hands are aligned and you actually maybe put a little more shove into it when there's resistance.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. I think also I think because I do a double take on that joke. I push and then I go. I pull her back and I push again. And the reason I do that is kind of the setup that I. That this movement is so specific, I'm gonna make it funny twice. And it's almost gonna be the equivalent if you, like, kind of watched it in reverse and then watched it again. I want the physical joke there to be just as good as the written joke. So, like, there's a specificity and an intention behind the choreography, as it were. Like, the blocking for that section that I was pretty proud of. And that joke's been with me for a while. And I love when people notice stuff. I get so happy because it's hard as a comic to even talk about some of this stuff. Cause you go, oh, well, do you really wanna talk about it, or do you just kind of wanna, like, be surfaced? Cause there's so many choices you make before you get to the final kind of version of the joke. And even then, that was the version of the joke that night. But also because it was captured, that's what it's gonna be kind of in Time Memoriam. But I love that physicality.

[Mike Pesca]

What were earlier versions of that joke?

[Jay Jordan]

Earlier versions? There was one version where I said, okay, you got it. Little Miss Hot Wheels. But then Jasmine Crockett's called. Jasmine Crockett called Abbott Governor Hot Wheels. And I didn't want anyone to think I was taking cues from Jasmine Crockett talking about a different Republican, kind of famous Republican politician.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Jay Jordan]

So I cut that. So then the physicality had to be just as funny, if not funnier than the phrase Little Miss Hot Wheels.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, right. Because for a couple of reasons, you don't want to say Little Miss Hot Wheels. That someone could have the association. Oh, is he making a Jasmine crowd? Koke? It just pulls them out of the situation when they have to think about something that you don't mean them to think about.

[Jay Jordan]

And timeline wise, like, I wrot before she said that. But then by the time the special would have come out, it would have just been. So I was happy not including that. And I was. You know, as a comic, you're always coming like, okay, let me make sure I do this so I don't get called out for this later. Cause I shot it in April when.

[Mike Pesca]

Jasmine Crockett called him Hot Wheels. Just assess the comedy. Was that a good comedic line?

[Jay Jordan]

It's a good comedic line. I think that, like, it's. There's so many jokes that you want to kind of like skirt around when it comes to Governor Greg Abbott. Because wheelchair jokes can sort of be local hanging fruit. So you do want to figure out how to both be tasteful, but also kind of like pun woefully unintended. Cut him off at the knees.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

You really want to figure out how even your disabled fans would be like, oh, that was a good one.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. So the standard way is mentioning his disability. That's a no go zone. You just talk about his policies and his maybe his past and how he is kind of stiff and always gets played by the people who are more Republicans in the state.

[Jay Jordan]

But.

[Mike Pesca]

But I bet you would argue, because I've seen your comedy. There are good wheelchair jokes.

[Jay Jordan]

You could make about tons of good wheelchair jokes. I mean, one of my favorite kind of things that a lot of people who live in Texas say about him is they go, I'm not mad at him. I'm mad at that tree for not finishing the job. Like, there are people.

[Mike Pesca]

He was paralyzed when jogging and was hit by a tree.

[Jay Jordan]

And I had a clip that did at the Village Underground that was explaining, like, that's how it happened. Like a tree fell on him. Like Looney Tunes. And to me, having sort of a Acme Company, Wile E. Coyote kind of this haphazard villain story is way funnier than talking about, you know, how troubling it is to have to deal with, like, being disabled. I think that, like, his evil manifesting in the form of cartoon level evil and cartoon level villainy that is funnier than me, than being like, okay, let's talk about him being in a wheelchair.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, Right. So another question I have that I thought of knowing your theater training a lot of comedians. I mean, you develop your Persona over time and you talked about it a. How you pull back in the beginning. But the most common way while honed is for a person to say, this is me. But as you know, there are many different versions of you, many different iterations of you. So you had a choice about how to construct this character. Did you consciously or unconsciously use theater training in that choice?

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, I consciously used theater training. The only leg up you have when you. I started comedy pretty late. I. My. The first mic I ever went to in New York city was in 2017. And the one thing I had over anyone who'd been doing comedy in New York City longer than me was that I had probably been on stage more than them and probably had performed for more people than them. So it was never a world where I was like, oh, it's too many people out there. I've never had that feeling. Just because in theater, you don't even get to really address them because of the fourth wall and stand up, you go, oh, I can actually look at y' all too great. I had a lot of stage experience. And so the theater training that, like, kind of, like, made me better at standup was. Was I treated my jokes like they were lines of dialogue instead of treating it like it was a diary. So I always would, like, go, okay, I'm gonna, like, make sure this is interesting every time I say it. I'm gonna try to make sure this sounds like it's new and fresh and alive and active every time I do it. Because if I don't care about this, why should they care about that? And that's from my theater training and, like, what I would teach when I was a theater instructor.

[Mike Pesca]

It is crazy to me that in the indie comedy world, it is still acceptable when you say to make it interest to them and also not to be, like, a diary, that people will still get up there and go, all right, what else? And, like, look at their book. Like, you have 10 minutes on the stage.

[Jay Jordan]

Less than that.

[Mike Pesca]

Usually you have to be shot out of a cannon. But why would you spend time doing that? You have a compact with the audience and what else?

[Jay Jordan]

But that's also that sensibility. It both helps me stand out, but it also is so old school. Like a lot of my fans who. And a lot of my supporters who happen to be older, even if they don't relate to everything material wise, the one thing they always say is they go, Jay really executes. Jay really likes performing me, and so.

[Mike Pesca]

Does Governor Abbott, by the way.

[Jay Jordan]

He really executes. When I was also. When I was kind of coming up early, someone said this phrase to me, and it stuck with me. If you're a comedian, you're essentially a salesman. Sell those fucking knives. Even if some of them are dull. Sell those knives. Because they don't know those are dull knives. Sell those knives. And that's how I kind of look at my bag of jokes. I go sell these jokes. And there's some jokes where you go, oh, I don't love that one as much yet. But how do I figure out how to at least, like, make it so that they don't know how much I feel, how I feel about this joke? Like, there's this weird sort of casual, nonchalant air that can work as a character for stand up, but if that's actually how you Feel if you actually don't care. Care about whether or not these people laugh, you kind of are. Because these people, they notice that instantly. And they will check out. Any audience will go, oh, he doesn't care. Right.

[Mike Pesca]

Tell me about your specific delivery style, which is often joke, joke, joke, and then on to the next thing. But the joke was just a little behind. Yeah. Right. So, and so what else? There are other. There are some comics that I was thinking of, but maybe you tell me if there were any that more than you just admired, but that maybe you were inspired by the antiqueness is a little Robin Williams.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. Yeah. You get it. Yeah, you get it. Okay. So part of. I just. It's so funny. I literally just watched Aladdin on a flight here. I wanted my special to feel like a friend. Like me. Yeah. I wanted my special to feel like you witnessed a person turn this world into a cartoon landscape where they can do anything, any references possible, any sort of, like cartoon mimicry and physicality as possible. And you have to keep up. So that was basically keep up. Yeah, you have to. Exactly. And part of your reward is if you keep up, you're smart enough and you get to laugh at these jokes. If you don't keep up, what you miss out on is you go, everyone's laughing. What'd I miss?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the way where you do the joke and you don't hit him with the punchline and stop.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

You go on to the next thing. It's a challenge. Challenge to them. And maybe after 10 minutes of it, they're saying to themselves, all right, this is the game that I've signed up for. Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

And the game is like, do you understand all the references? Do you understand all the tags? Did you hear the throwaway line? Are you. Are you well read enough? Are you worldly enough? Are you a comedy aficionado enough? This isn't. You know, I love novices, but my comedy is not an entry level course. It is 300 and above. And primarily I do that so I can, like, have really good comedy fans. That's how I get a bunch of gay people who think they don't like comedy to come love me because they go, oh, just reminds me of the Birdcage. And I get a bunch of straight guys who go, ooh, I love. I love Mark, I love Sam. Why do I like Jay so much? It's because I'm kind of maintaining a comedic legacy that's not. It's not gone. But it is kind of an old school approach.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. Like caring and trying.

[Jay Jordan]

And I'm polishing this stuff for you to present it to you. So Robin Williams is a perfect. It's. You got it.

[Mike Pesca]

I was thinking there was. There was a bit that reminded me of Dom Aero or certain bits where he does. Do you know his bit where it's like. I wouldn't say that. Would you? I would not say the thing.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

So you might know this. Actually, of all the people I've talked to since you have this MFA training, there is this Greek concept or Greek figure of speech called paralypsis.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

Which is saying by not saying. Yeah, I'm not saying. I'm just saying. I wouldn't say this. I'm just saying, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

So when you're on stage, specifically with the way that I do comedy, you are allowed to take multiple sides of arguments, and so many people forget that, that you can have an internal battle, kind of reflect externally, and you physically can take both sides of these arguments and play to multiple angles.

[Mike Pesca]

What's an example of that?

[Jay Jordan]

So, I mean, if you. If you look at the special, I have an angle where I basically. I do the cancel bit and I say, like, oh, you know, and then I talk about, like, I'm not progressive enough. So then I take the opposite angle where I say, being progressive, it doesn't mean you're perfect. It means you're getting better little by little. Have you ever had a thought that's kind of progressive and regressive at the same time? Here's one. So I basically made them go, oh, I can trust Jay. Wait a second. Can I not trust Jay? Oh, I can trust Jay.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Jay Jordan]

So it's back to. It's even when I.

[Mike Pesca]

By the way, maybe some of the people are like, well, the regressive part is where I could trust Jay. My identity is. I know all these progressive people, but Jay gets it with some of the progressive shit.

[Jay Jordan]

But that's also what I'm saying when it comes to, like, the idea that, like, you should be able, as a comic, to. Maybe you only give it 10% of the attention, but you do want to be able to give it a little. Like, I have a current joke. I'm very happy about where I say, america, be nice to trans women. Trans women are not terrorists. Because, you know, some people are trying to say that if a trans woman uses the bathroom, they're gonna get a terrorism charge. Do I know a few trans women who have blown up a bathro? Yes, but not like that. So that's me taking a Republican Argument about them doing bad stuff and then kind of making it my. My. My North Star, my guiding light is trying to be very funny while also maintaining, like, 70% to 75% good person. That 25% evil is what you need. Sometimes to be a good comic, you have to have a pebble in your shoe. You have to be kind of mad at somebody.

[Mike Pesca]

That's right. Well, it's also like the line in I'm going to forget the movie American. Well, anyway, it's like a line that a Jennifer Lawrence character once said where every great perfume has that, like, 10%.

[Jay Jordan]

Putrid smell that keeps you coming back. Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

There's something about that rotten eggs, that little hint. You have to do American Hustle.

[Jay Jordan]

I think American Hustle. You have to do something Christian Bale. Yeah. You have to do something kind of up. And I am. I'm lucky that, like, it's why I talk about my queerness and I say I'm. I'm bi. I get. I say I'm gay, and then I reveal that I'm actually bi. Because there always has to be something that you're kind of throwing people off with in comedy. And it's also why I kind of speed blitz people, because I don't want you to be able to guess. I hate the fact that, like, sometimes you go, please don't let me telegraph this joke. Please don't let me telegraph this joke. And that's a fear that I have for me. And over the past 15 to 20 years, because we've had so much comedy, there's been a deluge of comedy. Comedy's at the core and the center of American culture. Trump won twice because he was kind of funny to some people. There is an emphasis and the outsized amount of attention focused on comedy right now. People have gotten very quick. People have gotten very smart, and people have gotten very kind of. They can tell where you're going with things. So you have to be able to throw these people off.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, Right. Mike Birbiglia says Trump is the consummate middle act. Yes. Yeah. He, like, understands the beats of comedy. Might not be brilliant, but, you know.

[Jay Jordan]

He'S definitely been trained Atlanta city. He's making some money.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. He also steals directly from comedians. Like, remember when he was speaking in front of the Suffolk Police Department and he did this bit about when you put the guys in the car, why you have to protect their head? It's an old cliched comedy.

[Jay Jordan]

I mean, he stills from tons of comics where he talks about another guy's he talks about Arnold Palmer's dick and he says, I'm, you know, I'm. I. I'm as straight as they come. But he was a whole man, you know, like, there are levels of comedy that have basically wedged themselves in society that we'll never be able to excise. So as a comedian, when the non comics, when the lay folk get super funny, you have to get funnier.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. And sometimes it's surprise. It's the act of surprise, and sometimes it's transgression.

[Jay Jordan]

A lot of times it's speed. And sometimes it's a kind of irreverence. And sometimes, sometimes it's a reference that doesn't necessarily match the comic you're watching. It's all of these.

[Mike Pesca]

What's an example of that?

[Jay Jordan]

So the fact that, like, I have all of these, like, silly references that are kind of old or the fact that I go that. Okay, so perfect example is when I'm talking about the Golden Bachelorette, and I say this. This pussy was. This pussy was your granddaddy's Vietnam just chopping down a bunch of foliage. John McCain, what are you doing here? The John McCain is surprise. Because that has nothing to do with the Golden Bachelor, but it does have everything to do with Vietnam. And I want it to have a fun reference for people who are like, oh, ho, wait a second. Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay, Jay, another one is your offensive rebound joke.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, offensive rebound joke. I love that joke. And to me, that's a joke where I'm getting away with saying the word oriental, but I'm making fun of the offensive nature of the phrase. And offensive rebound, which is I talk about still, like, in sports and how I'm a bad gay because I know what an offensive rebound is. Yeah, it's. It's. To me, there is a level of care that all comedians kind of have to take now because we do have a lot of attention, a lot of focus on us. But don't you want to be good? My, like, my big metric, it's not to be liked, but it is to be respected by my peers. I want even people who don't necessarily agree with me on every front politically, and even people who I might not get along with, like, peer to peer. I want them to have to go, God damn it, Jay's fine money. God damn it, Jake. And shake a fucking room. That's. I have to have that.

[Mike Pesca]

So given that you're talking about your. You come from the theater, you're an entertainer, you want to make them know the knives are sharp. What do you think of this trend of going viral through interaction with the crowd.

[Jay Jordan]

Okay, it's funny. I talked about this today. Sports analogy. Sports analogy number two. So many people are so scared to just get 5 yards, 3 yards, 5 yards that they keep. They drop back, they scramble. They completely let the play fall apart. The offensive coordinator, the head coach are irate on the sidelines. They're throwing a clipboard. Down they go, this is not what we did in practice. And then they go back and say, oh, coach, did you see what happened? Yeah, but that's not the play. So if you don't get 5 yards, 5 yards, 3 yards, they're never going to respect the play action pass because you keep scrambling. Now they know they can send whoever.

[Mike Pesca]

I can't believe a gay man just gave me the greatest allergies.

[Jay Jordan]

But it's true.

[Mike Pesca]

It's true. It is very.

[Jay Jordan]

And everyone thinks they're Mike Vick. You're not. You don't have four, two speed. Especially. Imagine if you could, like, edit all these clips. It's like when you see. I mean, it's when you see people not really understand that the way you make a joke better is you have to practice the joke.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Jay Jordan]

Practicing crowd work will make you better at crowd work sometimes. But even then, the variable of people going to comedy shows and wanting to become this show is something that comics have dealt with kind of forever, that it's happened since comedy has started. What comics have always attempted to do is shut them down and get back to the show. But if they realize they are the show, then you've given them so much power.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, right, right, right. And there is a way to do crowd work, like a run first quarterback or design run.

[Jay Jordan]

I do it. I have the whole flowchart. I do it in the special. It was filmed in New Orleans. So I have a joke specifically for Louisiana, and they have another joke for New Orleans. I wrote 10 jokes about Southern states. So if I ever am on the stage at the Comedy Cellar, downstairs at the Vu, you've seen these clips. I'll say, is any. I'm from the South. Any Southerners here? A Southerner will say something. They'll say, where they from? I'll go, Texas. I go, great. Here's my Texas joke. They go Arkansas. Here's my Bill Clinton joke. They go Louisiana. Here's my Louisiana joke from Mississippi. Oh, we got a lot of stuff. Tennessee got it. Kentucky got Florida. There's so many South Carolina. I have a joke for every Southern state. They get. They get the facsimile of crowd. But it's always gonna go back to me. They got the dopamine of the interaction that is like, call on me, pick me, raise my hand. And then. And the best part is that with all of Those, I wrote 10 jokes about 10 different Southern states. And then let's say a person hears and goes, I'm from Michigan. The crowd laughs because they didn't understand the assignment. And we still kind of get the idea that crowd work happens. And then I get back to my set.

[Mike Pesca]

But by the way, like, the upper peninsula of Michigan, it's kind of the south.

[Jay Jordan]

The up you go so north you get south. I performed in the up.

[Mike Pesca]

Really?

[Jay Jordan]

You Canada's basement? Yes. Michigan Tech. I went there, performed Love, beautiful trees. I had to get out. I had to fly, I want to say into Green Bay and drive to get there. And then I flew out because there was a connecting flight that got me back to Chicago and back to New York.

[Mike Pesca]

Is your hub airport when Green Bay.

[Jay Jordan]

Is the big city?

[Mike Pesca]

When Fond du Lac is the destination. We'll be back with Jay Jerden more in a second.

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[Jay Jordan]

Santa, did you get my letter?

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[Mike Pesca]

We're back with funny. You should mention Jay Jordan's here now. Jay, before we took the break, you were saying that you love to use comedy to play with ideas and maybe say the opposite of ideas. Will you present and not eventually correct or bring it around to what you quote, really think? Will you ever present ideas that you don't quite agree with? But the comedy's there, the joke is 100%. I mean, think of an example.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, currently I have a joke that I think is hilarious because it is true for me, but not true in the way that I want people to sort of like advertise. I go, as a bisexual man, I'm gonna tell y' all something. Being gay is a choice, and it's also the lucrative one for me. I think that, like, that's true for me as a bisexual. I don't think it's true that sexuality is something you pick and choose all the time. But I think that, like, that's an idea that if you take that statement alone by itself, I think it's inaccurate. But if it's couched in a joke and with context, I think it's very funny. I think misogyny can be very funny. If you, as a kind, dim witted man, are engaging in misogyny on stage accidentally by putting your foot in your mouth, that's hilarious because the smart people in the room go, what an idiot. Yeah, what a dummy. That it's to me sometimes.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, Sarah Silverman had a whole character based on that and she jettisoned it. But maybe she, she got bored by it. At the time she jettisoned it, the public, or elements of the public were at least pretending to be offended by it. I don't know that they were, but I think, I think exactly what you're saying was a great character because the identification of the smart people in the audience, and I got to think all of our audience was. We know that this is a person who is worthy of mockery.

[Jay Jordan]

And even, I mean, it's, it's. When you kind of like bring up any sort of these extremely taboo topics, not necessarily just race or gender or sexuality, but when you talk about necrophilia, when you talk about pedophilia on stage, there is an understood agreement that everyone in this room thinks is terrible. Right, Correct. And then I'm so glad you brought up Michael Biglia. And he did it in his special, which I. I love that he did this. And something I never would expect from him. He had a great pedophilia joke. A great pedophilia joke. And to me, I was like, that's so outside of the jokes you think he's gonna tell, right?

[Mike Pesca]

Cause with Louis, it's. Yeah, it's proforma.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, he shit in the tone. Yeah, everything.

[Mike Pesca]

But specifically pedophilia, he always tells a pedophilia joke. But yeah, with Birbiglia, who I don't know if he has a theater background, but he directs all the great stuff.

[Jay Jordan]

And he's done so much stand up in theater spaces.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. So as a person who you before made a reference to the 300 level. Yeah, that's an analogy we all get. But is there something you probably have taught the 300 level course literally in college?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, I taught like a two. I taught 200 level course before.

[Mike Pesca]

And then you do the intro.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, I taught intro theater.

[Mike Pesca]

What are some differences between those? Like we, I think we understand when you're teaching a guy who's about to go into business school, it's one thing, but what are some differences, real differences, between the 100 and the 200 that you know as a teacher? And can you apply that comedy?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. So introduction to theater, both from a non major standpoint and like an introduction to acting standpoint. So from an introduction to acting standpoint, when you see a first year person on stage, what you're trying to do is get them to neutral. You go, I have to take away some of these habituals. I have to get you out of these habits. I have to at least scrub some of this so that we can put a character on top of it. Because right now, now the canvas, while interesting, while colorful, while dynamic, and it's gonna take away from any character you're trying to portray. So I do have to get you to neutral. And for.

[Mike Pesca]

If you're always bringing Steve to the role, you'll never be.

[Jay Jordan]

So what you do when you teach theater kids is you kind of work in tandem with voice and speech, especially in the south, is you try to. You really try to get them to be less southern sounding. And you kind of also try to get them to move in a way that is a bit more kinesthet aware because they have all these body habits and all these voice and speech habits. And then from an acting standpoint, you're just trying to get them to sound honest. You want them to at least be able to drop in and be truthful for a millisecond.

[Mike Pesca]

So by truthful, do you mean the thing they say? If it's a line of dialogue, it should give the impression that this is the character first time saying, first time thinking of it.

[Jay Jordan]

Not only first time saying and first time thinking it. Maybe not first time thinking it, but. But it's them actually saying it to another person in a real world that is not aware of all of this shit. So you basically have to go, listen, I want you to say hello, like you are saying hello to this person. I want you to maintain eye contact with this person. I want you to be able to sit next to this person and say, I'm tired. I need there to be a sort of, like, very private amount of honesty and intimacy on stage, and then we can start working. So that's why sometimes as an acting instructor, your job is to make kids stare at each other and just breathe and see if they can do that. Your job is to make people kind of shake hands and say, introduce yourself. No, for real, do it again. Your job is repetition, to get them to a place of neutrality. So that's like level one.

[Mike Pesca]

So what's the comedy version of that?

[Jay Jordan]

So the comedy version of that is, can you get on stage and at least exist? Yeah, yeah. Can you walk? Can you hear your name get called up, whether it be from a bucket or from a host? Walk on stage, Stage, See there are people there and not look at your shoes? Can you look at them? Can you look at wherever the camera's gonna be? Can you look past the camera? Can you not be engulfed in sort of like almost swallowed up by the moment that is your presence on stage? And can you be you just for a little bit? Can you walk on stage, look at them, hear those people clapping after they said your name, and then get into your jokes? Can you do that? Because that is tough and it's hard. And that's the first step from a 300 level standpoint. What you basically try to tell kids that junior year and that senior year is, hey, guess what? We worked a lot. I love to see you stretch and grow. You figured out how to get a bit more neutral. But these next two years, your junior and senior year, let's focus on what you do well so we can make sure you get cast. And so as a comic, you go, ooh, your third, fourth year, fifth year, sixth year, seventh year, eighth year. Year, you go, what do I do really well, you're in your eighth year, right? I'm in my year. You go, what do I do well? What do I do really well? What can I. Laser pinpoint. Okay. That's what I'm gonna lead with. Okay. That's also gonna help me get cast. So now from an. From a comic standpoint who, like, auditions for stuff, when people go, ooh, we want Jay in this, it's because they saw a standup clip.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

So they want that version of me. So they want speed, they want fun, they want irreverent. They want fun. That's like a thing that is hard to explain to people because you go, oh, but you. You told me I need to get neutral. And I go, yeah, we worked on that. You can get neutral when you have to. And it takes a little bit more time and concentration. But yeah, but now we need you. We need you turned up. We need the version of you on stage.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. I think I get that. I think maybe something like, to be a very good abstract painter, you probably need to be able to paint realistic or somewhat realistic figures.

[Jay Jordan]

Mike, I'm glad you said it because of my favorite acting teachers, Seth Pan. And she said technique is taught to be forgotten. It doesn't necessarily always work with stand up, but with ballet, I can tell you a perfect example. Ballerinas and ballet dancers. And dancers at the highest level, they don't go, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, four, one. They go. They just do the movement. Right, Right. The same way, you know, if we take it back to sports, football players, they don't say, am I out of bounds? They go, I know where the sideline is. I know I have to drive. Drag my foot no matter what. It's instinctual. I'm going to drag my foot. If I don't drag my foot, my body is not work. I know. That's the only thing I know to do.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. By the way, I can't thank you enough for making all these analogies that appeal to all four vectors of society. I try couple a couple other questions about specific jokes. You joke about hawk tua and you don't like Haktua.

[Jay Jordan]

I don't like.

[Mike Pesca]

Doesn't go far enough.

[Jay Jordan]

No. Yeah, yeah. She's. She doesn't finish the job.

[Mike Pesca]

Now, is there something about her being from Nashville that also bothers you?

[Jay Jordan]

Well, no, I mean, I think she's a scam artist. Apparently, that was the thing. So her being a bit of a scam artist in her. And we can Tie this to comedy. It is related to comedy a little bit. People chasing virality in a way that doesn't necessarily help them get better at stand up is a problem that we will continue to have to address as we've talked about on this podcast. I'm a bit of a traditionalist. I'm a bit of a purist. I think that her. Her fame was accidental, sadly. She asked for that guy who filmed her to take that video down. Then it blew up. And then people.

[Mike Pesca]

I didn't even know that.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, she didn't want the video to blow up because they're talking about sucking dick. Understandably.

[Mike Pesca]

She threatened her job in the factory.

[Jay Jordan]

Exactly. I mean, some people do a special about it, but I. I, like, just saw a lot of people being like, ooh, a man on the street. Viral moment is my chance to get famous. And as a comic, my goal was never to get famous. Before I got good, I wanted to be so good that people were like, oh, he's known. I'm lucky. No one ever goes, oh, what's Jay on TV for? People? Oh, stand up. But there is a connection between Hawk to a crowd war, social media dynamics, and this idea. You don't have to be good, you kind of just have to be omnipresent.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Jay Jordan]

And I don't love that.

[Mike Pesca]

No.

[Jay Jordan]

I'm sort of old school in my.

[Mike Pesca]

Approach to things hurting to the people who are good but haven't blown up.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

That's the thing. Like, you could point to many examples of people who got some version of fame or even a lot of fame because they thought they saw a demon on the plane and now they're, quote unquote, an influencer. And Maya represents that. I thought she was, like, snapping in the corner, but she was cracking her knuckles, which was really cool. So, yes, there are a lot of those, and it's infuriating. And there's also a lot of really talented people, maybe people who have been doing it for a while and got and were good before the viral video became important and haven't gotten the viral video. So you can't really say for sure. Stick to the craft that'll come. Sometimes it doesn't. And you can't really say that going down the path of just chasing virality will never work out, because sometimes it does.

[Jay Jordan]

And not only does chasing virality sometimes work out, sometimes. Sometimes there's a shift in your overall approach to what your social media strategy was going to be, because one thing worked, and now you have to do that one thing all the Time I think about. I think about a person who probably had one bad day and they screamed in their car. Now every video, they have to start screaming in their car, even if that's not how they're feeling.

[Mike Pesca]

I talked to. And this will tell you, this will exemplify the trend. I talk to a guy who goes by the liberal redneck. I can't remember his name.

[Jay Jordan]

And that's the point.

[Mike Pesca]

Point.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

At this point, he even said it really helped me in the beginning. I was, yes.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

He's just another great Southern guy.

[Jay Jordan]

I love Corey. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

So. But he regrets it. He regrets that that's how it happened.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. And I think it's hard because so many people tell you in this industry, they say, keep going. Whatever works. Keep doing it. Keep doing it. And there's a part of you as an artist, and I'm so lucky because I do get to decide what I want to be put out. Like, I had, um. I had two videos that were downstairs at the vu. They both did a million. And I didn't pin those videos and keep trying to make videos because they were based on, like. One was the SEC interaction where I yelled at the LSU fan.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

The other one was about Greg Abbott. I didn't make another SEC video and another Greg Abbott video. I didn't say, ooh, every week I'm going to give you an SEC joke and a political joke. I just kind of kept posting my other jokes and those videos blew up. But I didn't pin them. I didn't make them my calling cards, primarily because I know how. How there's a dopamine and an addictive quality to giving the algorithm what it wants that badly. And I didn't want to do that.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

And some people go, oh, well, then you're never going to be super famous. And I go, well, I do like the trajectory I'm on, and I feel like I have a fun amount of fame right now, so I'm okay with that.

[Mike Pesca]

Have you gotten this special or any spots or anything because of your virality? Because some of those clips have gone to a million.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, I mean, I got to do a couple of spots on MSNBC because I. I had a Marjorie Taylor Greene joke that eventually became the Marjorie Taylor Greene joke that was in the special where I did get to talk politics, but I'm okay making jokes politically, I'm okay with those sort of opportunities because it's just me going on the news or going on like a half hour cable news show and being kind of silly and then I get to go back and tell all of my other jokes. It never kind of, like, stymied me or put me in a corner. There are also moments where I think that if I wanted. This sounds so cocky, but I will say it. If I was out there fishing for a crowd work moment every week, I could find it. It's not necessarily what I want. Right.

[Mike Pesca]

What do you think of Marjorie Taylor Greene leaving Congress and also eschewing toxicity along the way?

[Jay Jordan]

I think that, like, I really hope that. I hope that she has seen the air of her ways, specifically when it came to her very early and odd anti Semitism that she still really hasn't kind of, like, talked about. Because this was. I mean, she was like, oh, I'm so concerned about the children of Gaza. But I was like, yeah, but like, you were talking about j. Jewish people here and how they were evil. And that's different.

[Mike Pesca]

She was saying, you know, she would say, to be fair, I think the blue lasers came from the Rothschild.

[Jay Jordan]

How is that related to the Jews? So that. It was just. So it was just plausible deniability. There was just like a level of like. I mean, for her to be right about one thing, which is like, we don't want to see children dying and children starving. She was also wrong on a hundred other things.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Jay Jordan]

So it is hard for me to be like, oh, she fixed it. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

And also the big pass fail test was, do you want to see children die?

[Jay Jordan]

Exactly. Wow, you nailed it for the Pope. And the fact that the big pass fail test was like, oh, I can't run for Senate now. Oh, well, they're evil.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, Right. And also, let me add, do you want to see children dying? No. But also, who's killing them? Oh, yeah. I get a little bit of cred.

[Jay Jordan]

With the same exact Rothschild crowd. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

One more question about a joke and then one more question about your career. Monkeypox. You're afraid of monkeypox. Two things. One, it's supposed to be called mpo. This is a choice that, you know, why do you call it monkeypox?

[Jay Jordan]

I call it monkey pox because it was way more. It's a funnier term. And I had a joke earlier.

[Mike Pesca]

Monkey is a funny word.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. I had a joke earlier when I was like, I basically. This is kind of at the height of it because in the special, it's kind of like, gone through different waves. I was like, monkey. I was like, hey, you got just so, you know, call it anything else. I was like, you could call it Tupacs for All we care, like monkey. And then someone was like, no, just call monkeypox because it came from Africa. I was like, know, you making it worse. You're making it worse. But, yeah, I made that decision to tell that specific story about that summer and to phrase it that way, because it's the most familiar. Sometimes I have a joke about Austin in this special, and it's not the Austin that people make fun of now. It's kind of, I'm making fun of Austin for being a blue dot. I'm not making fun of Austin because in comedy circles, people go, austin's conservative, but kind of writ large. Austin is so very liberal. It's a very blue city in Texas. So there's something. Things that if you know, like the inner workings of things, I could get more specific. Like, I could have called it in pox. That's a new, updated term. But I chose to kind of go the funnier, a bit outdated route just for clarity's sake.

[Mike Pesca]

So you were in academia. Undergraduate, graduate, add them all up. How many years did you say?

[Jay Jordan]

Nine.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay. And you're been in comedy in? Eight.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

So which has cost you more money?

[Jay Jordan]

I got scholarships for college. Comedy has definitely paid me more than the academia, but academia paid me for a little bit.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. And we've established how the academia helped you. How do you think your life would be different if you had done them in reverse order?

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, my God. If I would have started standing up comedy first. I don't know. And this is crazy to say, I would not be as successful or confident on stage if I had not gone through college specifically. If I had not come out and been like, you know, happily partnered and like, been okay with myself and my sexuality. If I had not done. Done college in an extensive undergrad and graduate level education first. Also wouldn't be nearly as like, historical and kind of like verbose on stage. I wouldn't have the command of the English language and the malleability of language if I hadn't done theater first.

[Mike Pesca]

And the physicality.

[Jay Jordan]

And the physicality.

[Mike Pesca]

Jay Jordan's new special is yes, ma'. Am. Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes, you can see it.

[Mike Pesca]

And you can see it where Jay on Hulu.

[Jay Jordan]

And exclusive. Exclusive. Starting December 8, you can purchase it or rent it on Amazon Prime. You can also buy it on Apple TV plus and Apple tv. And we're going to turn the special into an album. Yes, ma'. Am. The album is out December 5th on All Music streaming platforms.

[Mike Pesca]

Or just like, listen to one of those serious comedy channels and yeah, seriously, hope it comes around in like 3 minute bursts.

[Jay Jordan]

I get the checks from it.

[Mike Pesca]

Jay, thanks so much.

[Jay Jordan]

Thank you for having me.

[Mike Pesca]

All right, thank you. And that's it for today's show. The Gist is produced by Cory Wara. Kathleen Sykes helps me with the Gist list. Text Mike to 33777 for a discount on the Gist list list. Lia Yane is the production coordinator. Jeff Craig does all things visual. He's a visual guy. I've seen him move in 22 or 24 frames per second. And Michelle Pesca is CEO of Peach Fish Productions. Improve and thanks for listening.

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