Roy Wood Jr. (7:19)

You're a good liar. Thank you.

Mike Peschino (7:20)

Yeah, he hosts a show called have I Got News for you. He was Daily show correspondent. He did the White House correspondence dinner. Think I've watched all his specials and a couple of his live sets. And we're going to get into it. Roy, thanks for coming on.

Roy Wood Jr. (7:33)

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Mike Peschino (7:34)

So usually on this show, what I like to do is, oh, I almost used the word interrogate. Explore the comedian's points and, you know, understand that comedy is about laughter. But you're out there making a point for sure. But before I even get into that, I was studying your upbringing and I know that your dad, who the audience can properly infer, was Roy Wood Sr. A journalist. Not just a journalist, an eclectic journalist, a great journalist. And it does strike me that a lot of the great African American comedians who do, let's say political commentary have some connection to that world. Chappelle's dad was a professor. Chris Rock's dad delivered the daily news. And so my question about your dad, having read about him in the Sphinx, the AFIA magazine, is, did you grow up reading the news? Was that a big part of your life? What was going on in the world?

Roy Wood Jr. (8:22)

Yeah, yeah, I did. I mean, my father was a journalist, so I definitely came into this game of journalism from a place of already being curious about the news. My dad watched C. Like, people go, who watches C span? Fucking father. That's who did. Like, he would have. But my dad would watch C SPAN to watch congressional hearings on bills and would have a tape recorder set up by the TV that just recorded C span.

Mike Peschino (8:51)

Right. Because this was like pre VCR technology.

Roy Wood Jr. (8:54)

Yeah. This is pre DVR. You can't go on YouTube and find the clip from last night of what the congressman said. My dad wants to be able to play a sound bite of the congressman saying the thing.

Mike Peschino (9:04)

Yeah.

Roy Wood Jr. (9:04)

So that's what he would listen to in the morning. He would listen back to the C SPAN feed, basically like a podcast. And so, you know, I also have two. Two brothers that were in journalism for some decades, and one of them at the time was a. Was an anchor for the NBC affiliate in town. So we watched him every night out of family support and whatever the fuck. And. And then we read the paper all the time. Like, that was just. I mean, I started out just reading comic strips. I enjoy comic strips. So I found Garfield and Calvin and Hobbs and Family Circus and then just started. You read the comic strip, then you read the entertainment section. You get older, you start going to the movies. So now you're reading the movie. The movie listings used to be in the paper. That's how you knew what time I was in sports.

Mike Peschino (9:52)

Of course.

Roy Wood Jr. (9:52)

Yeah, in sports. So on the other side of that, you start reading a local section, and then you get to middle school, your name start getting in the paper. Cause of some sport game thing you did, or your scout troop did the thing. And that's just how it grew. So, I mean, my relationship with the news has always been close because of my dad's relationship to needing to ingest it so that he could be good at his job. My father was a radio news reporter. So the same way Anderson Cooper would go out for television, my dad did that for radio at a lot of terrible places where terrible things were happening. So he'd go with a tape recorder and do interviews and then come back to the studio and do the news that morning and play back sound bites of somebody he talked to about the thing. And. Yeah, so, yeah, it was a lot of that.

Mike Peschino (10:44)

So a couple observations. One is, I don't. You don't strike me as a big Family Circus guy, Jeffy, like Calvin and Hobbs, I get. But not that one particularly. But understand, it's like the gateway.

Roy Wood Jr. (10:55)

That was me all day. I grew up an only child. I had a bunch of half siblings, but I grew up in the house alone. So I was always blaming it on not me.

Mike Peschino (11:05)

Something's lost now, right. When you talk to audiences or just try to experience the news, I mean, it's so fractured and there is no agreed upon reality or news. I mean, you gotta feel that in your work and in your life.

Roy Wood Jr. (11:20)

Yeah, yeah. I think that there's truth and then there's what we want to ingest to make us feel good.

Mike Peschino (11:29)

Right.

Roy Wood Jr. (11:29)

And I think that's the issue that we have drifted into a place where a lot of people only want to consume the things that make them feel good instead of the things that are actually, hey, this is what's really happening. You can't run from this.

Mike Peschino (11:44)

Right. So in I think your most recent special, that phrase you just said, people just want to feel good. Good. That is a mantra. You come back to that. And there are classic reasons why all sorts of speakers might weave a through line in spoken word.

Roy Wood Jr. (12:02)

Anything to feel good. That's what we after now. But whatever you got to do to feel good, do that shit. Like, at this point, life is basically a crab leg and we're just all trying to work that and trying to find that one little nugget of feel good inside that. Oh, no. Oh, oh. I found a little feel good today. I found just a little bit.

Mike Peschino (12:27)

What does the point of. So I have a two prong question. Have you done that before? Do other specials have one thesis, I guess that you repeat? And what is the. So how. Why was that? What function was that serving in the special? People just want to feel good.

Roy Wood Jr. (12:43)

The. The special also available for free on YouTube. Imperfect messenger. Thank you, Comedy Central, for not taking my shit down after I left. You just start writing and you start with an idea and then you start. I started noticing that most of the material that I was writing was kind of gravitating, was all within the orbit of that idea, not by intention. It Just you start looking at, okay, like, so here's how I construct a special. And it's hard to say that because every special isn't constructed the same way. You have your first special as a comedian, where it's essentially the greatest hits of everything you've ever done in your career up until that point, Right. If it connects, cool. If it doesn't, cool. You may have some jokes that are a little more reflective of where you are now at that moment in your career, but for the most part, here's all the really solid shit. And then jokes from back in the day that I know how to perform the proper way now, right? Your second special is just the material you've written between those two mile markers. And depending on the amount of time between those two specials, maybe you've had some time, maybe you haven't. In my case, I had about a year and a half between specials, which isn't a long time, in my opinion. I know some comedians can crank them, right?

Mike Peschino (14:12)

But special one, I mean, you've been a comedian for what, 15 years at that point? So special one, 15 years of Runway special two, year and a half.

Roy Wood Jr. (14:19)

Special two, year and a half. But with the muscle memory and know how of 15 years of experience, right? So it's not the same as a year and a half of material when you were doing standup in year five.

Mike Peschino (14:30)

Sure. A year and a half at the height of your game.

Roy Wood Jr. (14:33)

Right. I would have preferred a little more time with that special, but there was some contractual stuff going down that I wanted to have an angle on, so I opted to put the special out a little sooner. Third special is unique because I feel like most specials, for me, I think there's two types of jokes. There's a joke that informs the viewer of who you are, and then there's a joke that informs the viewer of how you feel. And there's jokes that can accomplish both in the same stroke. The only jokes that matter, in my opinion. Check one of those two boxes. If the joke doesn't, it's. It's junk food, right? There's. There's no nutrients in it. I don't care how hilarious it is. It's junk food to me. So.

Mike Peschino (15:20)

But is it always the explicit. What you're explicitly communicating a joke, is that always literally how you feel, or might you be saying something because it's actually an inversion of how you feel? Or. I'll give you an example. You make a joke about. One way that the police could get goodwill in the community is just to release someone Every once in a while.

Roy Wood Jr. (15:38)

The other thing the police could do, this would really build a bridge. Every cop in this country, once a month, let a nigga go. I'm serious. Not every day, not every shift, not every week, but just once a month, just let a nigga come. Like someone who you know for sure should be going to jail. You got them dead to rights. You got all the evidence. You could take them in, just open the car door, just. You good, bro?

Mike Peschino (16:13)

Just randomly release someone on crack now is that. Or whatever. Like even for a serious crime, you could go, and then the next day with that guy, I'll be like, actually, the police released me once.

Roy Wood Jr. (16:24)

Exactly. Be nice. No reason to a single black person. And then when there's anti police rhetoric from the black community, you guaranteed to have at least one black person who goes, well, not all cops right? Now that's an extremist idea, but the core of it is me going, if police were nicer to black people every now and then, you would have more black people that would defend you when you feel undefended by the black community.

Mike Peschino (16:51)

But you also say that since some. Then you talk about this in the show. You were let off for maybe driving under the influence.

Roy Wood Jr. (16:58)

Yeah, the dui. The South Dakota dui. Well, almost dui, right? Yeah. So that's me then telling a story, right? So I start with, you should let people go. Then I tell you about me, and that's a joke about me, but I'm using a story about me to inform you how I feel about the world. So, yeah, I get in, I get the cop. The. The cop pulls me over, I blow like point. I don't know, point three. In a 0.5 state or whatever it is, I'm a tenth, maybe two tenths off. But if the cop runs, drain that last bit.

Mike Peschino (17:37)

Like the bit of scotch that mixes with the ice. If you had killed that, you would have been over.

Roy Wood Jr. (17:42)

Or if the cop had pulled me over maybe an hour earlier.

Mike Peschino (17:44)

Right, right.

Roy Wood Jr. (17:45)

If I'd have left the bar an hour earlier. There are a bunch of different variables, but legally, I'm not drunk. But DUIs and DWIs are at the discretion of the officer. It's not the law. That 0.08. Sorry, bitch.05. Give me my keys.

Mike Peschino (18:02)

Right, right.

Roy Wood Jr. (18:02)

The cop could still go, you're drunk. I'm still gonna take you.

Mike Peschino (18:05)

He's an officer of the peace. And if he thinks you threaten it. Yeah.

Roy Wood Jr. (18:08)

Okay. So then this cop takes my keys, puts them at the hotel front desk, makes me walk about A mile and a half in a South Dakota winter. It was like two. I did not have a coat for that. But I also never forgot that. And that is a story that I can then use to bolster the bigger point about. Yes, there's a problem with police, but let me tell you this one story, right? But I also have to be sensitive to know that my experience is not gonna be everybody else's experience. So I can't use my story to devalue what you've done or what you've been through. This police officer was a man of his word. At the front desk was my car keys. And he had them wrapped up in a nice little Jesus brochure. I didn't like that. That I didn't like. Cause he was treating me like I needed aa, like I needed Jesus or something. He had all the Bible verses, the little bro. You know how, like, you get drunk and they give you them get your shit together brochures? He had my car keys stuffed in a bunch of them get your shit together brochures. And I'm like, I don't need Jesus. I just need to use my turn signal. We would have never met, but that moment, man, that moment changed my trajectory for the rest of my life. I never buzz drive, drunk drive, never did anything of the like again. And I didn't have to go to jail, learn that lesson. And I'm thankful to that cop for doing that. Like, I really appreciated that. And it's a story I never forgot. And it's also a story I could never share at a black barbershop. Right. I've also had cops point a gun at me and consider whether or not they should pull the trigger. Three of the four times I've had a gun pulled on me, it was the police, really. The fourth was some Jamaicans. And I can't remember who I was talking to when I talked about it. But in those instances, I felt safer having a street motherfucker pull a gun on me. Because I felt like if I'm arguing with a non cop and they have a gun, which one is more confident that they could get away with killing.

Mike Peschino (20:13)

Exactly.

Roy Wood Jr. (20:14)

Right? So who would you rather have the gun? So it's like you can address it from a bunch of different sides, but for me, it's just figuring out what joke informs you about how I see the world or informs you about me. So with the third special, the biggest difference between the third special and all the others was that it was written during COVID but before COVID and then during COVID So then when I taped it in 2021, we were still under capacity restrictions in America.

Mike Peschino (20:45)

Right. And when you were saying people just want to feel good, people were taking that as, yeah, this is a terrible time in.

Roy Wood Jr. (20:52)

Everybody was misera. So I am here to report on the now that is how I view my comedy and the now that I'm observing based on what? The way y' all behaving and the thoughts that I'm feeling inspired to write down is that we lack connection. So the material is all gonna come back somehow to this desire that we all need to feel good.

Mike Peschino (21:17)

Yeah.

Roy Wood Jr. (21:17)

Now that's what we're all after. We are all after the dopamine of satisfaction. So then example 1, example 2, example 3, reset the premise. Example 4, example 5, reset the premise. That's the game.

Mike Peschino (21:31)

Yeah, yeah.

Roy Wood Jr. (21:32)

So then you're just reordering jokes to decide the best way through telling that story.

Mike Peschino (21:37)

So when you in our conversation first raised the idea of people want to feel good, it was in contrast to there is the truth and there is what people seek out for feeling dopamine. That is true. I took that comment to have a little bit of a negative valence on people just want to feel good. This, they're avoiding the truth in order to feel good. But in your special you were saying, I think it's a more neutral or explanatory valence that this is the driver and motivation for most people. So both it's, it's a useful phrase cuz it could be a good thing or a bad thing. But what it is is like most good explanations of human behavior, it's just an accurate thing and an apt thing.

Roy Wood Jr. (22:17)

Correct. And we are still a social species so we have to figure out ways to get along or ways to cope with all of this. I think that's where like we talk about it. We're the superior animal and blah, blah, blah. I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if feelings make us weaker.

Mike Peschino (22:37)

Oh yeah, that's true.

Roy Wood Jr. (22:38)

It makes us less absolute in our behavior and our choices. Right.

Mike Peschino (22:42)

You know, does a wildebeest have, you know, social cachet to worry about?

Roy Wood Jr. (22:47)

I didn't, I didn't, I didn't tell the story the right way in the third special. But I was trying to use as an analogy about our society, fire ants. And how when, when a fire ant mound is flooded, like during a hurricane, there is all the ants get together and they get in one big ass ball and that ball just floats with the floodwater until it finds dry land. But part of the ball, this ball of ants, just all linked up. Part of the ball is always submerged, but the entire time the ball is floating, ants are rotating from the top of the ball to the bottom of the ball, all taking turns being underwater for the sake of the buoyancy of the whole fucking.

Mike Peschino (23:39)

Yeah.

Roy Wood Jr. (23:40)

Is it ant hive? Ant tribe, colony. Yeah. Colony colony.

Mike Peschino (23:45)

Don't ask me about murderer crows, though.

Roy Wood Jr. (23:47)

No one. No one in the human race wants to be at the bottom of the ball. Right. Right. And so that, to me is. At least that's how I felt at that time. So that's what I wanted to reflect. So for me, a lot of it boils down to what do I want to say about where we are right now? I think the news cycle moves too fast to have. If you're talking about news and emotion and people in the times we're in, it moves too fast to have a timeless classic. This is just a time capsule. You watch any of my specials? It's just a time capsule about where we were. My first special, I was talking about freeway protests and national anthem protests and taking a knee and all of that. That's not really the conversation right now, but, you know, so for me, I try to write stuff that's reflective of how I see what's happening in the moment.

Mike Peschino (24:47)

So on the subject of not being able to perfectly encapsulate what's going on in a timeless way, have you ever. And I have one in mind, but have you ever told a joke, made an observation that proved prophetic, that essentially came true? It was somewhat ridiculous, fanciful, hey, wouldn't this be a good idea? And then the idea actually was more or less implemented.

Roy Wood Jr. (25:19)

Not that I could think of. I've seen parts of my jokes in action before, and that's made me laugh. But that's partly because the joke was rooted in truth. Right. I talked about. I told a bit in my first special about how you have to respect any white person that works at a civil rights museum.

Mike Peschino (25:44)

It's so good. It's such a good bit.

Roy Wood Jr. (25:46)

How many extra questions did he have to answer? Cause you black and old, it ain't shit to work at a civil rights museum. You just walk in, that's me on the picture, You filling out paperwork for you on the wall. But if you white, you know they grilling that dude, asking them all kinds of questions. They had nothing to do with black history. All in that dude face. Paperwork looks good. Everything checks out real quick. At what temperature do you deep fry catfish? Mm. 350. That's what. Okay, that's more. Because their job interview was probably tougher than everybody else's and then the whole debate.

Mike Peschino (26:39)

But as opposed to the older black person who comes in and their job interview is.

Roy Wood Jr. (26:42)

Yeah, that's me on the picture over there. Like if you're an old black person, you're probably in one of the photos in the exhibit. Yeah, should be enough.

Mike Peschino (26:50)

No, look left at the dog and right of the hose. That's me.

Roy Wood Jr. (26:52)

That's me. I'm hired. When do I start versus being from.

Mike Peschino (26:55)

Birmingham, by the way, greatest civil rights museum I've ever been to.

Roy Wood Jr. (26:58)

Yeah.

Mike Peschino (26:59)

Is that. Yeah, you've been to that?

Roy Wood Jr. (27:00)

Oh yeah, that was, that was required class field tripping. Growing up in Birmingham city schools. Atlanta's got a good one. Memphis is stepped.

Mike Peschino (27:08)

And you also lived in Memphis.

Roy Wood Jr. (27:10)

Yeah, right. We didn't like the second or third grade.

Mike Peschino (27:12)

So I mean this is a good way to form. Excellent civil rights material is you. You're the perfect person to have the best civil rights museum jokes in hindsight.

Roy Wood Jr. (27:23)

I remember in first grade and I have a picture of it, we took a class field trip to Alex Haley's house.

Mike Peschino (27:29)

Really?

Roy Wood Jr. (27:29)

In Tennessee. This is a kid who wrote Roots and. Not that I'm like, oh, I'm like, God damn. First grade we was talking about the transatlantic heavy, baby. Should we have lightened it up a little bit? But you know, predominantly black school systems and you know, black ass cities like that, they're gonna make sure you know the history. And so, you know, I'm thankful for that. Yeah, Definitely influence the standup, you know, to, to a great, to a great degree, clearly.

Mike Peschino (27:59)

So the white person at the civil rights museum will have a harder time. And what came through was, what came.

Roy Wood Jr. (28:05)

True was that I saw, I ended up at like a, like some civil rights exhibit. And I saw like three or four white people working. And it was so nice. And the joke, the joke that I do in the special is how I feel like you would rather have a white civil rights. If you're a white person at a museum, you should have a white tour guide if they know the shit. Because if you're dealing with a black tour guide, that black person has been working there all day, staring at the worst moments in their history. By 4:30, they're gonna be a little uptight and probably start cussing out the patrons of the museum. Like that's the joke. But a white person would be very nice. And I just remember being at this like, just really nice exhibit and the white people who worked There were just so kind, like they knew they were like stewards of the culture. And just let me show you this. And I just want to say I love the daily. So I'd say that's probably the only time I've seen a joke come to life. I mean, I don't really do predictions. I do post game analysis.

Mike Peschino (29:13)

Well, you do. You did this joke about which is good political advice that probably the Democrats would have been better off for taking. You've got to run on the lie. Donald Trump talks about his fence, talks about his wall, and the Democrats have all these programs just run on the lie. He has wall. You have wall with a missile. Say it's true, run on the lie. Well, they should have done that out.

Roy Wood Jr. (29:39)

Lie the liar and then get honest on the back end. But you can't. Democrats never do that because there's a degree of, you know, nobility and honesty and being open. But if people are open to lies and you're trying to look, man, you're trying to get these fucking undecided voters, you got to get them on weird shit.

Mike Peschino (30:02)

People are open to lies because they just want to feel good. It goes back to that, right? So you, you tell them a thing that isn't true, but it's a emotional truth or it resonates. And then maybe if you have ethics, you could say, okay, now here's the real deal.

Roy Wood Jr. (30:16)

Yeah, but the people who are judging you solely on ethics because they think that that still matters. Yeah, before policy, you're gonna lose their vote. That's true. And that's, that's the thing. But I do wish that there was a little bit more bombastic extremism sometimes from the Democrats to offset the ridiculousness that sometimes the right is able to use to, you know, basically feed their bass a little bit of red meat.

Mike Peschino (30:42)

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Roy Wood Jr. (33:00)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Peschino (33:01)

So what does it tell us that you approved now 100? What does it tell us about our current moment? That that joke will not fly.

Roy Wood Jr. (33:08)

Everybody is politicizing everything. Politicizing it before the storms even land. You got people who don't even agree that nature made the storm.

Mike Peschino (33:16)

Now, right?

Roy Wood Jr. (33:17)

We're past flat Earth. Flat earth is that's 1.0 ideology. You got people who just straight up go, yeah, the storm. I don't the government made the storm with their weather machine and that's why the storms come. Okay, that still doesn't change the fact that the storm's coming. It's going to destroy everything you're going to evacuate or no.

Mike Peschino (33:35)

So when you made that joke, what has changed from then to now? You didn't foresee that that would not be a constant, that people come together like the ants in a rainstorm? That people naturally come together when faced with acts of God.

Roy Wood Jr. (33:50)

I was watching Independence Day with my child and I feel like, number one, the CGI still stands up in Independence Day, shout out to Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. But the societal point of it, I don't know if we are still capable of what that movie was attempting to say about society, which is that we can put our differences aside if we actually stopped and Tried and tried to stop a murderous invasion of fucking alien locusts coming to kill us. But the idea that if you gave a bunch of strangers fighter jets and they would all agree that that alien really is there and really is here to kill us, how many of those people would just turn on Americans, right, and try to join the aliens or say that there's a. Like, there would be so much infighting, the aliens would have had a four game sweep on our ass. If you wrote that movie today, I.

Mike Peschino (34:56)

Mean, one of the actors fighting the aliens was Randy Quaid, and look what happened to him.

Roy Wood Jr. (35:01)

That would be Randy Quaid in real life. Would be more representative of what the type of people would be in a film like that.

Mike Peschino (35:08)

Right? And think about Bill Pullman, the negative campaigning they do against him. So he'd never come be able to sniff the presidency and make that speech from Independence Day.

Roy Wood Jr. (35:17)

Correct.

Mike Peschino (35:18)

Think about all. He put a tampon in a boy's bathroom and his career would be done or whatever.

Roy Wood Jr. (35:22)

Yeah. I mean, in Independence Day Part 2, which wasn't as good, but the CGI does stand up. The Bill Pullman's character is like, he's not disgraced, he's a hero. But he's also seen as a little bit of a whack job because the aliens have fucked with his brain and all of this shit. So I definitely feel like, Yeah, I don't know if the hurricane joke stands up or I would have to be more specific about. Everybody's got politics until they're on the roof. That was the original way that joke was written, and it was strictly a joke about how white people have boats, black people don't. But I didn't want to say it that blatantly to make it a race joke.

Mike Peschino (36:03)

Right.

Roy Wood Jr. (36:04)

If you camouflage it in politics and you're able to make the point in a deeper level, you know, at a different. From a different angle. Like, what's the original version of that joke? Like, say what you want about them. Racist. Oh, you know, the origins of that joke. That joke was about how everybody should have one Trump supporting friend.

Mike Peschino (36:26)

Right.

Roy Wood Jr. (36:27)

Even if you don't fuck with Trump or Trump voters, you still need. Everybody needs at least one white friend who lives in the woods, right?

Mike Peschino (36:36)

The Cajun Navy, one of these guys.

Roy Wood Jr. (36:38)

Because when the zombies or the alien, whenever, whatever the fuck else comes, right, you're gonna be happy that you got one of them. Say what you want about them races, but when that storm come and them boats, boy, like, you be right there waiting patiently. Like, that's why I got. What was the rest of the joke? That's why I keep two Trump hats in my disaster. In my disaster kit, so I can put them on so I can get picked up first. Like, it's just. But even in that joke, you're just calling all white people with boats Trump supporters. So it's a generalization that could work, but it wasn't. I don't want to do that.

Mike Peschino (37:20)

Right.

Roy Wood Jr. (37:21)

So I just distilled the joke down to just, to get a boat, you need people who have boats pick up. So you make it an economics joke.

Mike Peschino (37:30)

You obviously. And a comedian has to look through the world and note things and note differences. And then from what I understand, most every black person will always be doing this as they operate through the white world. And so the whole. White guys drive like this. Black guys drive like this. Like, it's very unavoidable.

Roy Wood Jr. (37:47)

Yeah, but I don't.

Mike Peschino (37:48)

But what you have to do is find a way to point out these things that we don't even see it coming. And so this joke about. And I love words, ancestors versus forefathers is a white people versus black people concept. But it's so skilled, and it hits us in a way that we don't expect it, that it's a great observation.

Roy Wood Jr. (38:11)

I called my uncle. This is why I knew my uncle was going through some shit. I called my uncle. I said, aunt, what's going on? He said, well, you know, ain't nothing that the ancestors can't get me through. I was like, oh, shit. This motherfucker is summoning dead black people. That's when, you know, black people going through some shit. When you start calling on the ancestors, calling on black people floating around, you're protecting. Which should just go to show you that's how stressful it is being black. Even after you die, you got to stay on Earth to give motherfuckers tips. Can't even go to heaven. Soon as you. You get to floating up to heaven, somebody down on earth, ancestors, I need you. Ain't this a bitch? Well. Cause it's a type of black person versus a type of white person. You know, just when we talk about dead relatives, black people talk about their ancestors. White people talk about their forefathers. It's like, you know, and the idea of being an ancestor. And so you make that observation, then you go, okay, well, what are more of the differences of an ancestor versus a forefather? Well, we believe ancestors are present and watching and looking over us. Where when you talk about forefathers, it's Always. Well, I think this is what they would like. There's no idea that they are here and talking. And I talked to them and they told me it's just. Nah. I'm pretty sure this is what bro would have wanted 200 years ago because he knew this was coming. He understood the nuances of abortion when he was right.

Mike Peschino (39:39)

They wrote the Constitution at a time when they were aware of six planets.

Roy Wood Jr. (39:42)

Everyone should have a gun. When guns all shot six bullets like.

Mike Peschino (39:48)

They were front loading most of them.

Roy Wood Jr. (39:49)

If they. If they would have said everybody's entitled to artillery.

Mike Peschino (39:54)

Yeah.

Roy Wood Jr. (39:54)

Then that's more of a one to one to where we are ballistically.

Mike Peschino (39:58)

Yeah.

Roy Wood Jr. (39:58)

For what you can have in your home. Oh.

Mike Peschino (39:59)

But the other thing is they could play it both ways. Where the forefathers definitely wanted this thing that exists now. But also, you know, they were flawed and it was a different time. People don't say that about their ancestors. Their ancestors are like ghosts with wisdom. They never.

Roy Wood Jr. (40:12)

Right.

Mike Peschino (40:12)

No one would ever say my ancestors said this. Like, what was their knowledge of the germ theory of disease.

Roy Wood Jr. (40:20)

Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's. There's definitely a weird way of doing a bit like that. Like, I just enjoy. You can show differences in people, but it doesn't always have to boil down to the words white or black. That is a white and black joke. I'm not saying I do. Don't do race humor sometimes, but I'm trying to find a different entry point so that acoustically you are not presuming. What have you. You seen that shit on the Internet where they talk about how the human mind works and how I can show you a word and misspell three or four letters in the word.

Mike Peschino (40:58)

Right.

Roy Wood Jr. (40:59)

And you still know what the word is. I can show you incomplete sentences and your brain immediately fills in. It's predictive. It's like. It's how AI behaves. Right. Right. It's the same way predictive text is. So from a humor humiracle. That's not a word from a humor. Anticipating you trying to figure out where I'm going with the joke. If I say white or black, that's already gonna predispose you to particular assumptions. And I want you as much of a clean slate as possible, as long as possible before I hit you with a punchline.

Mike Peschino (41:32)

Right.

Roy Wood Jr. (41:32)

So if I go white people, black people, that's an easy entry point. And then you're guessing. And if you're ahead of me, you're not gonna laugh as hard. It doesn't hit as hard So I don't want to do that.

Mike Peschino (41:43)

Right. Because humor relies on surprise and upended expectations.

Roy Wood Jr. (41:48)

Reversals. Yeah.

Mike Peschino (41:49)

Yes. So then why is so much political humor playing to a crowd who not only knows what come. What's coming, but demands that that particular punchline be delivered? Where is the surprise in political humor these days?

Roy Wood Jr. (42:05)

People just want to feel good. They don't really care about life. The same goes for the performers to a degree. We can't act like comedians aren't going through this world unaffected, emotionally, by everything that's going on. And so if you're into the dopamine of applause or some comics are into the dopamine of booze, you know, it's just bdsm. It's performative bdsm. You know, I like to be. Some dudes like to get punched in that ball. Some dudes like to go on stage and make people groan is reactionary. So the reaction has substituted the punchline for a lot of comedians. And the same goes on the left for comics who perform for applause breaks instead of laughs. So if you're saying something that, you know, the crowd already agrees with and then they clap. Was that a joke? No, I'm not saying that you haven't said something funny at some point and there isn't something else coming along, but there's a lot of that shit out there, too. Same way that there's like. I don't know when you're putting this shit out, but it's like with Tony Hinchcliffe at the end of October at the Trump rally at Madison Square.

Mike Peschino (43:13)

Thank you for that. This will be after we're going to air this in December, but I did want to ask you about that.

Roy Wood Jr. (43:17)

So it's like, okay, well, Hinchcliffe did what he does. All right, cool. Well, I assure you there's comedians on the left who, if you showed their set to an average comic. There we go. There's no jokes. The crowd left pleased, and they gave him money. So at the end of the day, they left affirmed. But maybe that was enough for them. Maybe that's all they wanted to feel because they're at home alone fucking crying because the world is burning. So they just wanted someone to tell them, I see it too. It's going to be okay. Here's a couple of three star jokes, but I'm not going to write a five star because we all know this will be fine and you'll come see me again next year. And so that's happening on both sides, politically, performatively speaking. So that's why I think that you have that type of humor out there. And you know, I know that like some comics, left side or right side, there's going to be punchlines, there's gonna be jokes, but conversely there's gonna be people that don't like it because it don't make em feel good.

Mike Peschino (44:15)

Yeah. Also specifically that joke from just a joke writing perspective and not being able to see it coming. I mean, you saw it coming. Everyone in that room saw that Jo miles away. The one about the floating pile of garbage. He wasn't really even, he wasn't even doing a misdirect. You just thought he was talking about what he would or what he was already talking about. Just Puerto Ricans.

Roy Wood Jr. (44:36)

Okay, but there are, if you put, if you put that set earlier in the political cycle, does it make the same noise? If it's not the issue of Latinos having shown a lot of support and they don't want to lose Latino votes? You know, the Trump campaign didn't want to lose Latino votes. I don't know. If Tony's at a Trump rally a year ago, does that make the same noise? I don't know.

Mike Peschino (45:06)

Oh, totally not. But everything gets priced in in terms.

Roy Wood Jr. (45:09)

Of the outrage of it. That was not jokes, that was hate speech. Okay, I ain't here to disagree with you if that's what you feel. But you also never the audience for that joke, there were already people already thought that he was hate speech or not. Good. That. So if you're Tony, what do you give a fuck? Take the money, go do the show. The people who love you will come back and follow you. Outrage isn't enough to end any comedian's career anymore and it hasn't been that way in a decade. So on the same side, if you have a comic that's a hardcore leftist or hardcore feminist, there's going to be people that are never going to like anything that comedian says.

Mike Peschino (45:49)

Well, you know, I saw Anthony Jeselnik in an interview quoting Andy Warhol and his take on the idea of you're going to do what I do. I like getting punched in the balls. I'm trying to make people groan and then taking offense at the people grown. His take on that was to quote Warhol and say, art is getting away with it. And so if you say this and all everyone does is groan and call you a racist and all you do as a comedian is say, you, you don't understand comedy, it's not racism, we can at least agree you haven't gotten away with it. So it doesn't at least fit that definition of art.

Roy Wood Jr. (46:25)

Yeah, but gotten away with it in the terms of approval. And that's the thing. That's the thing that I still have a difficult time defining is that you didn't get away with it because everyone didn't like it or because people were offended. Okay, fine. But if I'm profiting like a motherfucker off my podcast and I still have a live show that I can take around the fucking country and make my money and people fuck with me, am I getting away with it or not?

Mike Peschino (46:55)

Right? Not. I would say not artistically, but economically.

Roy Wood Jr. (46:59)

Well, that's still objective. There's people that thought I sucked at the correspondence dinner. Billionaire named Harlan Crow flying Clarence Thomas all over the world on unreported trips. Like an Instagram model taking Clarence to the Maldives and the beaches. And all paid for his mama's house. This billionaire paid for Clarence Thomas mama's house. I gotta give it up to billionaires. Billionaires. Boy, y'. All. Y' all are relentless. Y'. All. Y' all always come up with something new to buy. Like, just when you think of everything you could buy on Earth, billionaire will come up with a new thing. Y' all buy space rockets. You bought Twitter. This man bought a Supreme Court justice. Do you understand how rich you have to be to buy a Supreme. A black one. On top of that, there's only two in stock, and Harlan Crow owns half the inventory. We can all see Claremont Clarence Thomas, but he belongs to billionaire Harlan Crow. And that's what an NFT is. I would say I walked away from the Correspondents Dinner without any one general group feeling offended, per se. The weirdest thing about a correspondence dinner was that the day after Fox News said I roasted Kamala, I think MSNBC said it was great and good for Kamala. And, like, across the board, it was like I did a Vanderpump Rules joke that ended up on e.com. so it's like everybody took from that set what they wanted to help push whatever agenda or thing I mentioned. Power 50 Cent had a clip of my shit up, like. So it's like, you can take my set and go, oh, it was like this. No, it was like this. Oh, that commit. Like, I didn't get praised by Fox News for, like, coming down on the Biden administration, but I didn't necessarily get a shit ton of hate. But if you go online and you talk to a lot of people, there's a lot of people thought it sucked. Yeah. And so getting away with it versus bombing, versus getting booed. To what end? You know, like that's the part, like by and large in that venue. I do not think Tony Hinchcliffe got away with all of it in terms of boo. The boo to laugh ratio or the grown to laugh ratio. But what does that. How are we defining good and bad comedy? So. Oh, well, you weren't good. Yeah, because I did comedy for a bunch of people a week before their election and they need to chill out on this rhetoric. But if it was a year ago, y' all probably would have been chuckling it up and repeating this shit. The left would still be pissed. Yeah, so I think there's a degree. Also the other thing, we gotta stop putting comedians behind podiums. That shit change how the jokes hit. You just feel like a speaker.

Mike Peschino (50:18)

That's right. Or with no cards that you stack like this.

Roy Wood Jr. (50:21)

Yeah. They always have that stupid presentation microphone. And comedians should have a stick mic in their hand like a rock rapper and just stalk the stage like Chris Rock. And then it feels more performative.

Mike Peschino (50:36)

But right, the same thing with the headset microphone. No great comedy can ever come of that. Maybe a good TED Talk, we go.

Roy Wood Jr. (50:43)

That'S bad comedy and that's racist. Okay, fine. Now what?

Mike Peschino (50:47)

Yeah, well, now what? Mark Marin has posted. The anti woke flank of the new fascism is being driven almost exclusively by comics. My peers. I mean, what do you think of that?

Roy Wood Jr. (51:00)

What? The comics are fanning the flames of people who are making right wing stuff more digestible. Right wing ideologies more digestible almost exclusively, he says. Yeah, yeah, I could agree with that. But to then turn around and call the comics fascists? I don't know if we can do that. I mean, are you an enabler because you had so and so on and helped normalize them? Yeah, absolutely. Because you made them seem more down to earth instead of challenging their views. But what then? What do we shut them down? Because what you can't do, you can't fire none of these motherfuckers no more. You can't deplatform them no more. We're done with the days of Louis getting canceled or Shane Gillis getting pulled off snl. All these dudes that are pissing everybody off are all self made, right? And that's have been for the past 10 years because nobody will let them play in those sandboxes. So the thing that's different now from like 2015, 2016 is that you can have all the outrage in the world, but there ain't shit you can do to Come for. If your podcast got a couple sponsors, fine, you can't sell Casper mattresses anymore. Anymore. But in terms of do I think that all of these comics should stop talking to these right wing people and never have them on the podcast because you're making the country a worse place? No, I don't think any comedian is going to stop doing that.

Mike Peschino (52:23)

Right. I think. Not that you asked me, but I think there's a difference between comedians who have talk shows and the word you use, I think it's overused, but in this case, normalize the right winger and never say what a comedian should say, which is, okay, come on, that's. Say it maybe in a funny way. Say it in a truthful way. A difference between that and a comedian doing jokes that sometimes they're not going to land. But the real intention is to get everyone to laugh, to show things in a different way, to show things in perhaps an offensive way.

Roy Wood Jr. (52:55)

I think, I think that Bill Maher and Jon Stewart got a lot of thinking that that shit is easy. What they do and having conversations of that caliber at that level of intellect. Most comedians ain't got that. Most niggas with a podcast ain't got that level of intellect, so they're not interested in that. Theo Vaughn is not interested in getting to the bottom of Trump's policies and making him explain in detail what his campaign platform is. Right. He's just gonna talk with the dude because that's what Theo does with everybody. It's not a detour. So if you bring on right wing weirdo and just talk to him and then you bring me on and just talk to him, I don't know what the difference is. I, I know that one person is definitely more damaging, but I think that the idea of if comedians stop talking, like if, if Rogan didn't talk to. I don't want to name names because I don't want to. If Rogan didn't talk to the people who we think push those ideologies, do those people go away? Do they have a harder. Do they have a harder go at being exposed? Absolutely. They have a harder chance at reaching the people that agree with what they do because then those people are going to take those lies and go out and spread them out into the world. Right. But I don't think that any comedian, if we fan. If a comedian having on a right winger helped fan the flames of disinformation. Yes, yes, it does. What the comedians not platforming these people stop the forest fire? I do not think so.

Mike Peschino (54:28)

And is that because you don't think the effect will be what we want, or there are competing virtues and one virtue is an anti censorship virtue. Or if you throw away the content that we find offensive, then that opens the door to throwing away and policing the content that some other side finds.

Roy Wood Jr. (54:46)

Yeah, I think so. But I think also, also, I think also it's hard to gauge how normalcy to some degree is relatable and identifiable because we don't have a way of measuring the metrics of a centrist viewer or centrist voter going, oh, yeah, I saw Kamala on. Like, if Kamala did. She did Shannon Sharp's podcast, which is A1 Black Men is the audience right for that podcast.

Mike Peschino (55:21)

She did all the Smoke. Did you hear that one?

Roy Wood Jr. (55:23)

She did all the Smoke as well. A couple weeks before those two podcasts. A one black male audience who at the time Kamala was trailing or wasn't polling well with that demographic. Okay, so if she comes on there, we'll never know who she flipped. Right. Because the people who get flipped or the people who are indecisive, they're not going to say, I was voting for Trump, but man, yeah, I saw him on Rogan. He seemed like a dumbass.

Mike Peschino (55:51)

Or they're the people who might have stayed home, but we're telling everyone, yeah, I'll vote. But without her going on, the show would have not voted. But because they heard her on both those shows, they'd be like, yeah, I should vote. There's no way to pick because that.

Roy Wood Jr. (56:02)

Person might not be watching CNN. Yeah. And might not be watching 60 Minutes. And so we don't have. And we'll never have the data on that side of the game. But I mean, we're talking a little bit about two different things because we're talking about candidates versus talking about pundits and wannabe people that are, you know, opinion scammers.

Mike Peschino (56:22)

Right, right. So I do wanna ask you if, as you and I agree that Clapter and just chasing. We understand it, we've diagnosed it, it's about dopamine. You also pointed out to me that you comics, as humans want to feel that hit from.

Roy Wood Jr. (56:36)

It's the same reason people argue with motherfuckers on Twitter. Some people like that.

Mike Peschino (56:39)

Yeah, but I watch your specials and it's not that you're going for Clapter at all, but there are moments where you attempt to. I think how it lands with me is there's some wisdom there and there are some pauses with the direct injection of comedy. You talk about how you try to get a guy out of jail and then you talk to the family member of his murder victim who you knew and were close with. And there are jokes around that. But I don't think the real point of that was to get jokes. I think it was to be a little deeper and to instill some wisdom. And I don't think that's Clapter, but I do think that the takeaway from an hour long show and it doesn't work in a Daily show context and it probably doesn't work in a 20 minute set, it's very additive. It makes your special, it makes your hour more substantive. And even though it's not the jokey as part of the hour, I think it really works. So that's a compliment. But how are you thinking of that and strategizing how you're going to use that in the special?

Roy Wood Jr. (57:46)

I mean, a story like that, though, I can only do later in the set once I've earned the trust of the crowd. That's why I always say right now, the best comedian working right now is Ali Sadiq. He's the only person who can start a comedy special with a 20 minute story. He might get one laugh out the gate and then Ali can go on an eight minute story, nothing. And then that laugh at minute nine or minute ten.

Mike Peschino (58:17)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Roy Wood Jr. (58:20)

He's earned the trust over numerous specials to be able to do that. I had not. My first two specials was quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Cause it's Comedy Central, your attention span is short and I know you the third special where I know it's going to be on Paramount plus, and, oh, it's streaming, so streaming rules. So I can sit in a story a little bit longer if I want to. So that's what I did there. Like, I can't even remember. What I was trying to say with that, with that story. For the viewers who don't know, there was a murder in Birmingham in the early aughts where I knew the killer and the victim, I knew them both. And so the guy that I know that was convicted was the getaway driver. He was not in the store.

Mike Peschino (59:27)

But they have felony murder rules, which means that if you're involved in the crime, you did the crime.

Roy Wood Jr. (59:32)

Yeah. Which was like the only laugh in the beginning. They have a law where you murdered. We murdered. Just terrible. But it's like, let me just give you a chuckle before I get into the darker shit. And so, long story short, that kid's been gone almost 20 years. And I started thinking about it, I was like, man, he should fucking be free. So that's no. And he didn't know, it's like, no. So then I called the son of the victim, who I'm also very good.

Mike Peschino (60:07)

Friends with because his dad helped you out and sold your early work. And as you explained, the definitely a record store.

Roy Wood Jr. (60:13)

Yeah, yeah. And so that man and his father, the reason why I was able to move myself to Los Angeles, their store sold my old comedy prank call CDs and shit. And so. But when I talked to the sun, there was details that I wasn't privy to, you know, about just the whole, the thing as a whole. And you can process something one way, but in trying to fix your own pain, you could be inflicting pain on somebody else. And you have to be considerate about that too, because he's closer to the shit than me. And so, you know, it's, it's one of those things where I think he and I agree to disagree, but I think any charge that's led where that is concerned, any change in feelings of sentiment has to be led by him and his siblings. And then I co sign that. Right. But me starting my own thing, I cannot do. And so the conversation around healing and pain and in healing and trying to feel better yourself or trying to help someone else, we're not always as considerate about other people. So that whole story is just really a run up about a lesson I learned about having to be considerate of other people's pain, which is something that we're not in this society, which is to go back to the joke shit, that's part take a joke. Well, you don't know how that joke affects me and you don't know how. Now when I go to school, I'm dealing with all this extra bullshit because of jokes like that. And that joke reinforces that. So you can say it's just a joke, but be a fucking man and acknowledge that there are societal ripple effects from that ideology being out there. Even if that wasn't your intention, acknowledge that that's happening. And I don't think there's enough comedians willing to even fucking say that. And so that makes people. There's more vitriol and more hate and more fuck you, right?

Mike Peschino (62:29)

Well, it's hard to say that you need three years, you need the second, third or the last third of an hour long special. You need many, many jokes beforehand to ingratiate yourself with the audience.

Roy Wood Jr. (62:42)

That's a hard thing to do to take you down this road in this conversation and that, you know, that's something that you know. I don't know, man. That one, that one's just not my call. Yeah, that's. That's for. Cause you know, you are. You have the potential to devastate more lives in that way.

Mike Peschino (63:07)

So last thing I'll ask you about is you're now hosting have I Got News for your on CNN.

Roy Wood Jr. (63:13)

Jake Tapper dated Monica Lewinsky. Oh. The two went out on one date in 1997 and the date was G rated. So that night he wasn't Jake Tapper. He was Jake. Respect. Oh, shit. Points. Aren't all first dates G rated. Oh, Roy, you poor sweet boy. Roy G. Wood. The G is for gentlemen. Now that second date, we getting it on.

Mike Peschino (63:54)

Second day's for Wood.

Roy Wood Jr. (63:55)

Oh, yes.

Mike Peschino (64:05)

It's a funny news quiz. It's based on the BBC show you're doing. I hosted. Wait, wait, don't tell me a lot. I understand what you're doing. I understand the purpose of that. Is there anything to be said for the serious stakes of what's going on set against Juxtaposed? And it's not like you guys give anyone a pass but juxtapose the light frivolous nature of that format?

Roy Wood Jr. (64:33)

I don't think so. I think if you want to be serious about the news, you've got Daily show, you've got Oliver, if Bill Maher. To a degree. Maher can get playful.

Mike Peschino (64:47)

Yeah.

Roy Wood Jr. (64:47)

But he brings on people that are for real and serious about the shit. We're here to just talk about what has happened. Our show is for the least informed viewer. I'm serious. It's half this shit you may not even know happened this week because you just don't want to touch the news because everything is so serious. So if there is ever a place to get a thousand level freshman year core course in current events, every week it's our show and we're just going to hit you with laughs. We aren't because we don't have the time and we have so many mouths to feed on the panel every week. I don't have time to get into the causation of this or who's responsible.

Mike Peschino (65:29)

And solution for the American version is 22 minutes. In Britain it's 44. It's a lot different feel.

Roy Wood Jr. (65:35)

Yeah. So I think that that's part of it in that we. Okay, like there was a. What did. Like we. Like. So for the people don't know, the show is a fake quiz show presented as a. It's the news presented as a fake quiz show to Educate you about the news. Oh, what did Trump call Kamala last week at the rally? And then the panel, all guesses. And then we play the clip and he called her stupid or he called whatever insult this week.

Mike Peschino (66:08)

Yeah.

Roy Wood Jr. (66:10)

And we move on. We don't have time to get into how misogyny has dominated the political cycle. And it has been one of the guiding weapons for the Trump campaign to drive a wedge between you get what I'm saying?

Mike Peschino (66:23)

Yeah.

Roy Wood Jr. (66:24)

That's not our place, Right? Go fucking watch Abby, Phillip. She'll tell you about it. Laura Coates and Kaitlan Collins, they'll tell you about it. We're also on a network where we have to assume everybody's ingested all of the angles of it. So if it's a new person coming on, because there's a lot of people that watch the show in spite of it being on cnn, because a lot of people don't fuck with mainstream media, but they fuck with jokes and they fuck with me. So hopefully that's enough to get you to watch for just 30 minutes. Just. Just Saturday night. Will ya like. And start there as your entry point into the news. Because a lot of people don't fool with the news anymore. If it don't come up in your TikTok algorithm, you are oblivious to it. So I think that the show serves a purpose in being kind of a. Kind of a lighthouse off the rocky coast of current events to guide people on where to kind of go to make sure you're not getting into something that you don't feel like getting super deep into. And I just take it as a something better than nothing equation.

Mike Peschino (67:29)

Roy Wood Jr. Is a preeminent political satirist. Great standup. And now we find a lighthouse character keeper. Roy, thanks so much.

Roy Wood Jr. (67:37)

Hey, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, man.

Mike Peschino (67:45)

The Gist is produced by Corey Wara. We had help today from Leah Yan. Kathleen Sykes helps me with the Gist list. Jeff Craig does so much with the video and the socials and the visual. He's a master of the visual in this a primarily audio form. Michelle Pesca also works with the visuals, but is mostly the visionary improve do Peru. And thanks for listening.