Comedian Ronny Chieng on Political Satire, Trolling Algorithms and Cerebral Dick Jokes

Emmy Award-winning comedian and actor Ronny Chieng is a self-described grumpy Malaysian who get to tell it like it is to Americans as aco-host and correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. Kara talks to Ronny about creating political satire during Trump 2.0; how his law degree helps him write pithy cerebral jokes, including for his latest (third!) Netflix special, Love to Hate It; his latest acting role playing Fatty Choi in Hulu’s Interior Chinatown; and why people still think Jon Stewart is the only host of The Daily Show. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kara Swisher?

  I'm doing comics all the time. I have them every six weeks because this is a bit

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:04Kara Swisher?

  Because everything else is about constitutional crises and

• 0:07Speaker 01

  It's pretty serious.

• 0:07Kara Swisher?

  And tech leaders taking over things, so.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it gets very bleak.

• 0:11Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, bleak.

• 0:23Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is Emmy Award-winning comedian and actor Ronny Cheng. If you've ever seen him, his shtick is kind of like being this grumpy disdainful foreigner who tells it to Americans like it is. And he also wants you to do better, wants all of us to do better. I love having comics on the show. I want to have them on all the time in this really difficult time. I also think that people like Ronny are doing very pointed political comedy, too, even though they often just say they're making jokes. He's a very smart thinker, and that's why I enjoy listening to him. Ronny's originally from Malaysia, went to school in Singapore, and launched his stand-up career after finishing law school in Melbourne, Australia. He's a globalist.

• 1:06Kara Swisher?

  He's been a correspondent on The Daily Show for a decade and part of the rotating lineup of hosts on the show since last year. I think it's a great way to do that show. In January, he had the Herculean task of hosting during the first week of the new Trump administration, when a list of executive orders was so long, they didn't have time to read them all. I wanted to talk to him about doing political satire in Trump 2.0 and about his recent Netflix special, Love to Hate It, which oscillates between cerebral, personal, and potty mouth, of course. There's always a dick joke, no matter how you slice it. And I want to talk to him about his acting career, which is going strong. He got a big break in Crazy Rich Asians, where he played a complete financial bro asshole. He did a great job.

• 1:47Kara Swisher?

  But since then, he's been in a number of films, including Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and the recent Hulu series Interior: Chinatown. Our expert question this week comes from Crazy Rich Asians and Wicked director John Chu. I think we all need a smart laugh right about now, so this should be fun, so stick around.

• 2:14Speaker 02

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• 2:59Kara Swisher?

  Ronnie, welcome. Thanks for being on On.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks for having me. Nice to meet you.

• 3:03Kara Swisher?

  I'm so glad. I'm a real fan. I was just talking to you earlier about some of the things. I've seen you and you've been in tons of stuff and obviously The Daily Show. But before we get started, I'm heading to Australia in a few weeks for my book tour for the paperback of my book. I know you've lived there for a decade and your wife is from Melbourne. Any suggestions, places to go, things not to say or to say? Should I just stay there?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  I don't know you that well, but I predict you're gonna go there and be like, I should probably stay here. Very safe and very socialist country in a great way. When you go there, when you do order coffee and they have the best coffee in the world, don't just say you want a coffee. You have to be specific. You can't just say, give me a coffee. You have to be, it's the place where you have to go. Espresso, flat white, or capuccino.

• 3:50Kara Swisher?

  All right, what else?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that, and don't, don't ask for hot sauce. Nobody knows what you're talking about. And don't be a blacklist. And you'll be great.

• 4:00Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, Afro-origines. I've been there, yeah. It's, thank you. Thank you for those pieces of advice. I've been to Australia once or twice before, but I love it. And the only person I have to deal with there is Rupert Murdoch, which I can handle considering who we're up against now. So anyway, thank you. Thank you. No more time for travel tips. We got a lot to talk about. Let's talk about you. You're a busy man. Been part of a rotating group hosting The Daily Show for the past year. Your third Netflix stand-up special came out last year. Love to Hate It, which I loved. You've done a lot of acting, including recently the Hulu Sears Interior Chinatown. That's your latest, which is awesome, let me just say also. So, talk to me about your multifaceted career. What is your favorite hosting, stand-up, acting? If you had to choose to do just one forever?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, I've been very lucky. Every job I do, I love doing it. So, if you, you know, put a gun to my head and make me pick, I have to go with stand-up comedy, just because that's how I started. That's where all my creativity seems to come from. That's where everything that happened to me started from me doing stand-up comedy. It's the most direct form of self-expression that I know, so.

• 5:12Kara Swisher?

  Do you like the interaction with the audience? Is that what it is about it? Or is it just you're more creative?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  The live aspect, there's really no filter. There's no, very few rules. And there's, it's so immediate. You're in the audience and you gotta figure it out in real time. And there's no one giving you notes on what you think is funny slash good and what you're saying to the audience. No one, no one's coming in between that. So, it's the most direct way of testing out your ideas, you know?

• 5:47Kara Swisher?

  What's a joke you cut that you wish you hadn't?

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Oh, I got a ton. I, I cut for time, honestly, because I, I believe that the stand-up comedy, comedy special or album should not be more than one hour. So, like I said, when you're touring, the hour, it just naturally grows because you keep adding jokes to it. So, you start off, you know, we all start our comedy routines with trying to figure out five minutes, 10 minutes, and then it becomes 20 minutes, then it becomes 30, and next thing you know, it's 45, and then you start touring 45, and then it becomes an hour, and then it becomes an hour 15. And so, you, you eventually have to like. In my opinion, you got to bring it back to under an hour because I think comedy is

• 6:32Speaker 01

  one of those things where less is more.

• 6:35Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  And there's a, there's a, there's a limit on how much comedy people actually want.

• 6:40Kara Swisher?

  So you don't want to be like the Joe Rogan of comics, like six hours.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  You don't want to do a podcast, yeah, you don't want to do a three hour comedy.

• 6:47Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  I, I, I don't have the ability to pull that off.

• 6:49Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  And, and I'm saying this versus music or musical or, or movie, right?

• 6:54Kara Swisher?

  Right, right.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Where you can go to a concert for two hours, but comedy, you can't, comedy isn't the same thing, you know, and I think it, I, I'm, I'm laughing because I think sometimes people, they just try to use comedy and music interchangeably because you have a microphone, that musician has a microphone, why don't I just put you in that situation?

• 7:14Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  And it's like, no, the context matters, yeah.

• 7:17Kara Swisher?

  So let's start with, with The Daily Show a little bit. You've been correspondent since 2015. I didn't realize it was so long.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:23Kara Swisher?

  So you made it just in time for Trump 1.0, congratulations.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's all I've known. It's all I've known.

• 7:28Kara Swisher?

  I know. You were hosting, well, there, yeah, you were hosting, there was a little Biden interregnum in there.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  There was Biden, but he was still around. Trump was still around. When Biden was there, it felt like Trump was still present.

• 7:38Kara Swisher?

  Right. So you were hosting the first week of Trump 2.0. From a comedic perspective, how is, the second coming, as you guys have dubbed it, he's calling himself a king, obviously, how is it different? Because, you know, you guys are doing pretty tough stuff. I love it. It's like, you're tougher than a lot of reporters, honestly.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know about that.

• 7:58Kara Swisher?

  I think so. I think so. So talk a little bit about the difference.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, you, you couched it as, from a comedic point of view, which I think is important. From a comedic point of view, what's different is, people are quite normalized to ridiculousness now. And so a lot of the, the first time around, a lot of the jokes were like, guys, this is kind of crazy. The jokes now seem to be coming from a place of like, This is crazy and we've, we kind of like, it's par for the course. Oh yeah, it's crazy, but yeah, we expect this.

• 8:36Kara Swisher?

  Is it hard to find humor in some of the stuff? Obviously, the Gulf, the Gulf of America just kind of writes itself.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. Yes, things get dark, you know, I, I, I know what you're saying. I think, uh, I, things do get dark and, uh, our job as far as I know is, that's why we get paid the bu- big bucks is to figure out how do you joke about this stuff, you know? And it's a tightrope and it's not easy and it's an art form and it's not science.

• 9:03Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  And people want to know how you do it, you know? And, um, my, my thing is like, our job isn't to teach anyone how to do this. So I don't care if anyone ever figures out where the line is.

• 9:15Kara Swisher?

  Where your line is.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  For comedy. I'm, my job is to, yeah, my job is to do the comedy.

• 9:19Kara Swisher?

  But is it harder, given the stakes have risen so high with this guy? Cause he's doing a very different presidency than he did before.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  So emotionally, yes, that's always in the background, but like, we can't focus on that to do the job, you know? And our job is satire and comedy. And I'm not saying that's a noble profession, I'm just saying that's what we do. So, uh, and I don't advocate anyone else do that, follow our point of view. But like I said, we're comics, we're kind of psychos. We're making fun, as far as I'm concerned, our job is to make fun of the asteroid as it's coming in to destroy it.

• 9:55Kara Swisher?

  Ah, okay, okay.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  We'll be, we'll be, we'll be making fun of it.

• 9:58Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, until the end, right.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Till the end, yeah.

• 10:00Kara Swisher?

  So, um, you've advocated for an Asian president as far back as 2019 because you said that Asians can arbitrate in the race war. Because they don't have skin in the game. Obviously Kamala Harris is both Asian and black. Um, do you think your job at The Daily Show would have been harder or easier if she had won? Maybe harder.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Um, harder or easier, you know, I mean, we, we had Biden for four years and there were still tons of jokes. So, you know, I, I, people ask about this, is it easier with Trump and do you like it? I mean, let me just say, first of all, I would, I would prefer to live in a country that is functioning and is good. So that's number one. I will gladly sacrifice any hypothetical jokes for that. Uh, and second of all, it's like, you, you find jokes in any situation, in any government. You can find jokes in any government, conservative, progressive. Humans are funny and crazy and politics is weird and the intersection of,

• 11:00Speaker 01

  you know, people in power and the real life culture that we live in is always funny. So is it harder or easier? I mean, I, I, I don't think it would have been harder or easier. I think it would have been the same.

• 11:13Kara Swisher?

  But are you writing jokes with a particular audience or political sensibility in mind right now? Has that shifted? Or there are things too serious to make jokes about? I don't think so, probably not.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  No, I, I think truthfully, if anything, we've become, uh, we were, we were always very joke focused and we never want to pander to our crowd. I think we've become even less pandering lately, if that, if that's even possible. Because like we want, I don't feel like we were pandering before, but from what I can tell, we, we came in pretty hard with, you know, Biden is too old. This guy's too old, shouldn't be running. Like, we're pretty, I think we call the balls and the strikes, right? The way they, the way we see them and which I think is important for satire, you know?

• 11:54Kara Swisher?

  For satire, absolutely. So now you've got a new character, a double-headed Hydra, Trump and Elon. Um, last year you called Elon a loser who's trying to buy friends with million dollar checks. Um, what are you, how are you looking at this new character for, for comedy right now?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Uh, he's not that new. He's been hovering around, so, uh, it's not like a Street Fighter, new challenger appears. I think he's been kinda, you know, he's been hovering around the thing for quite a while.

• 12:23Kara Swisher?

  It's a summer.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, well, even before that, I think he was hovering since Biden. He, he's been, he's been here since the first Trump one, obviously not to the same extent. But, um, yeah, how do you see him? I mean, uh, it's, yeah, it's another, it's another kind of mega figure who has his own orbit and quirks and weirdly intersects with everyone's life. And then he's also on the internet trolling. So in a lot of ways, it's like covering a Trump a little bit, right? So that, I mean, yeah, if you ask me off the top of my head, that, that's how I would see it. It's almost like covering like a. Second Trump stature level figure, right? That that has household name recognition.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  So you don't have to explain him like versus some other kind of um mega figures. Sometimes you have to set it up a bit, right? Whereas Elon, everyone immediately knows what you're talking about. And he's um uh always, just like Trump, you know, he's kind of using the same kind of trolly playbook. So a lot of stuff he's saying, sometimes you can't joke his trolling because that's kind of what he wants.

• 13:32Kara Swisher?

  Yes, that's correct. Yeah.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Right, so you can't go like, look how ridiculous is that he said that? Because that's kind of what he was trying to do in the first place, you know? Which is also like the Jesse Waters thing, right? Like he'll, Jesse Waters will say something outrageous. Our job at The Daily Show is satire and part of the satire is covering the news. And so we'll pull up a clip of him and we'll watch him and he's saying something ridiculous. And then it gets so ridiculous to a level where you're like, we can't even play this because he's clearly just saying it like it's not, we're not making a joke if we play it. Because he's actually, he knows he's, what he's doing is a joke. So we're kind of like joking the joke and what's the point of that? So, you know, that that's how I see Elon.

• 14:09Kara Swisher?

  Is Elon a good character from a comedy perspective?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Is he a good character? Damn, you you really look at this from a narrative point of view.

• 14:17Kara Swisher?

  Well, you're making jokes about him. Is he?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, it's fair. It's a, it's a fair question. Uh, is he a good character for comedy? Uh, I guess, yeah, I guess he is. I mean, um, he, he, he's always saying new stuff. And so that's good, that that's useful for a, a news satire show. Uh, I don't, I would, again, I would prefer not talking about him. But uh, he's made himself kind of the main character on the internet. So in that way.

• 14:48Kara Swisher?

  The neighbor who won't leave, you've been trolling him for quite a while. In May twenty eighteen, you responded to a tweet from Elon saying he was going to create a site to track the credibility of journalists by writing, please buy Twitter and shut it down, to say, to remember.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do remember that. That was when I still used Twitter. And I guess that's a, you remember when, when John? Stuart was begging Donald Trump to run for president.

• 15:12Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yes, that's right. Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so I was begging him to buy Twitter and shut it down. And you know what? He actually, not only did he buy it, in my opinion, he kind of did shut it down a bit.

• 15:22Kara Swisher?

  Well, for a lot of people, although they're raising the valuation of it. He's trying to sell shares now.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Oh, right. Well, I mean, you know, this is more your world than mine, but I do, I definitely feel that after he bought it, there, it, there was a bit of Exodus. So, thank you, Elon, for destroying it.

• 15:37Kara Swisher?

  Every week we get a question from an outside expert. This week, it's coming from someone you know, Crazy Rich Asians director, John Chu.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  Hey, Ronny, it's your old friend, John M. Chu. Here's my question. You've lived in multiple countries and cultures, Malaysia, Australia, the US, and how has that shaped your sense of humor?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Um, it's, uh, it's given me some perspective on America because I know, from outside a point of view, I, I have strong beliefs in what America does very well. And I can also see what America doesn't do that great, um, because I've lived in countries, other countries. And, uh, it also, um,

• 16:22Speaker 01

  I don't know, it make, it gives me a lot of gratitude to be in America. So, um, I guess that informs my comedy in the sense that I feel like all my jokes come from a place of, of, um, there's a, I think there's an undercurrent of, of, uh, of like love in it.

• 16:41Kara Swisher?

  That you love this place.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  I love this place and also I love doing comedy. I love doing comedy. I think, and I, I, I think that comes through in the, because I've been to countries where you can't really do comedy. I lived in countries where you can't really do it. So, I think that kind of also informs, you know, and I think it also makes me feel like I, I, my comedy should be a bit more edgier because I come from places where you can't say stuff that by American standards would not be considered edgy at all. So, they make, I think it makes me a little bit more fearless, you know?

• 17:12Kara Swisher?

  So, given things are going now, are you all afraid of retribution? Maybe sadists don't tend to do well in a Authoritarian regimes, as you noted.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Sure, um, I mean, we can't play scared, so I don't really play scared, I don't think. I don't think I've held any punches because I'm scared of retribution. I think we already had a Trump presidency. We, you know, we've run the experiment for eight years now. We've been talking shit for eight years and, you know, there's no retribution so far. So there's also that data point. And then, um, uh, also, um, yeah, I, I don't think he watches us.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  So that's, you know, uh, I, so far, so good, I guess.

• 17:54Kara Swisher?

  So far, so good. Do you feel any pressure from corporation or anything else? Or is you feel like, no, I mean, obviously Jon Stewart talked about it at Apple and, and this was pre this. Are you, are you worried or is the group there worried in any way about that?

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Not that I know of. I've never, you know, I've, I've been there, can't believe I've been there nine years now. I, I have never had a directive to go, go easy in the paint. I've never had someone, you know, from any, any anonymous source. I've never had a note handed to me from anywhere where it was like, hey, can you take it, you know, but I've never had that. And I, I, you know, I, I chalk that up to, we have good taste on the show, I believe, you know. The, I think The Daily Show as an institution, everyone who works there. We, uh, it, it, you know, they're very experienced. They're very, they're great comedy writers, you know. And part of comedy writing, as you know, isn't just saying the worst possible shit. You can, you know, that's being an edgelord.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Like comedy is kind of like the art of getting away with it, right? Saying something edgy and getting away with it. And I think we're good at that. And I, I, I think that's reflected in the fact that, yeah, I've never had someone give me a note to be like, hey, can you not talk about that guy who shot that guy in the head in New York City? Like, we just go hard. We just go hard. And, and that's why, that, that's also why I'm so grateful to be at, in America, at The Daily Show, doing standup comedy where it's just like.

• 19:18Kara Swisher?

  Nothing's off limits.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, room for people just trying to make jokes.

• 19:22Kara Swisher?

  You're, you, you don't want to be an edgelord, Ronny?

• 19:24Speaker 01

  No, I don't, Edgelord, no, I think that, you know, and that's a real shame, right? I think a lot of comedy, I think what has happened is that there's been a lot of really funny, edgy comics who've managed to find a niche on the internet and, and, and, you know, power to them and they're very talented people. And I think unfortunately what has happened is that they've kind of inspired a lot of these copycat, like, people who watch what they do and they, because when you're good at it, you make it look easy. And so you inspire all these kind of, quite frankly, untalented, like, angry, edgelord-y people who watch edgy comedy and they think, they think, oh, that's what it is, I can do it. Comedy is

• 20:08Speaker 01

  just about saying the most fucked shit you could say in any given situation. But they miss the nuance and they miss the art and they miss the, you know, they miss the, the, the underlying ability. Yeah. Um, and it's become this thing where people think comedy is just saying the worst thing. Edgelords, basically, yeah.

• 20:35Speaker 03

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• 20:42Speaker 04

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• 21:06Kara Swisher?

  I want to do, speaking of your latest Netflix special, I love To Hate It, we talked how you build your set in terms of time. Let's talk about topics. They run the gamut from you talking about carrying your jizz through Manhattan so you and your wife can freeze her eggs to MAGA and social media, to revealing the last Twitter post your dad probably read before he died. It makes sense while you're watching it. Talk about conceptualizing a show like that. It's beautifully constructed, I will tell you.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Thank, thank you. Thank you so much. Uh, I think um I I started doing stand up comedy in Australia. And Australia has a very kind of British sensibility with comedy, which is they they kind of favor that one man, one woman show format. Uh, so I think I kind of picked it up because I was in Australia, learning the craft and um they would always try to like have some kind of narrative thread. And I always kind of rejected that because I always thought just be funny, just have funny jokes. And then I kind of realized like you, if you have both funny jokes and a little bit of a narrative thread, you can kind of, you elevate everything.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Um, and so that's always in the back of my head when I'm doing an hour, but uh day to day, when I'm writing the hour, it is just what's the funniest jokes. And so I I just keep writing jokes. I see what's funny. I see what works in comedy clubs in New York City, which is, you know, as you know, New York City, you need to be funny fast. For a long time, you can't just tell some long story about your dad on Twitter. And uh you do these funny jokes and then just like David Lynch says, you know, you go from to this ocean of consciousness and then suddenly things just start connecting weirdly, you know, and then you start seeing the connection. So after you write the funny jokes, you put you lay all of them out in front of you and you're like, oh, there's a little bit of a connection here. And then you start crafting in that direction.

• 22:57Kara Swisher?

  What did it turn out to be from your perspective? What's the narrative you were trying to go for?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Uh, it unintentionally became a story about having kids, uh, thinking about having kids and and reflection on my father having me. And you know, it kind of became a little bit of that. It also became a little bit of a love letter to Hawaii, which I didn't intend, um, because uh I spent a lot of time in Hawaii filming a TV show, uh, uh, two seasons of this TV show, Dugi Kamaloha on Disney Plus. And um I became quite kind of, I really just connected with Hawaii a lot. I felt like it was

• 23:38Kara Swisher?

  I love Hawaii. It's my favorite place on earth.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it felt like the best of Malaysia and America in one to me.

• 23:44Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  And Hawaii was very welcoming to me. And so I decided before I even wrote a single joke, I was like, hey, I want to film my next special in Hawaii. And I want to kind of capture that Elvis in Hawaii, kind of kitschy.

• 23:58Kara Swisher?

  Blue Hawaii.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Show business vibe. Yeah. And so I had that.

• 24:01Kara Swisher?

  Little Don Ho thrown in.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Don Ho, all those guys. And I wanted to capture that. And that was before I wrote a single joke. And then as I wrote the hour, I didn't even realize until two months before I filmed it in Hawaii, that, oh, Hawaii comes up a lot in the special. I have a joke about MAGA Hawaii in it and how friendly they are. And then I have, I have a joke about at the end about my father kind of seeing a photo of me and my wife in Hawaii. And the fact that I filmed in Hawaii. Again, it's one of those weird.

• 24:32Kara Swisher?

  I love it.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  You know, universe things where suddenly everything comes together, you know?

• 24:36Kara Swisher?

  One of the things you do talk about is how men fall into self-help algorithm that leads them to following the kettlebell swinging guy. I love that guy. To Andrew Tate, to toxic masculinity, and then they end up storming the Capitol. Let me play a quick clip. I love this. This was fantastic.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  I'm not saying as a man, don't take responsibility for your own actions, okay? I'm just saying that YouTube algorithm is very alluring to straight guys. It sucks men in in a way that I don't think women understand. Like, it really preys on that men's need to seek guidance from somewhere. It's very hard to resist. It just draws you in. That's why fucking Mark Zuckerberg is trying to MMA fight Elon Musk right now.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  That guy fell for his own algorithm.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Do you understand?

• 25:24Kara Swisher?

  This is a really good point. It's absolutely true. The kettlebell swinging guy particularly is the gateway to hell. I'd love you to talk about that because I had this issue with my son, who, when he was 13, wanted to watch Ben Shapiro. I let him. I said, I think he's an asshole, but go forward and watch him.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Like a good progressive mom.

• 25:41Kara Swisher?

  Mom, exactly. I didn't want to be yelled at by Ben Shapiro, who later said I wouldn't let him watch it. But Ben, I let him watch it. He thought you were an asshole all on his own.

• 25:50Kara Swisher?

  But what was interesting, what bothered me and what I was making the point about, and actually Ben Mitz construed it. Was, he testified by Congress that I was trying to censor my son, but I wasn't. Anyway, here, there, there. But what I was upset by was, was it went right to algorithms that were really problematic. I was like, what are you watching now? What happened here? And he was leaning into it. He's a big kid and he just loved it and it moved him very quickly. So talk about this, this, this idea of what you were trying to get to.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  First of all, I love that, that went all the way to Congress.

• 26:22Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, it did. Oh, no, I was like, take back your testimony. I let him watch you.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. Um, I don't have kids, so I can't speak to that, that.

• 26:34Kara Swisher?

  No, don't worry about that. But this is a really very interesting. You're making a very important point about social media of the, of the way it goes down into, you know, insurrection alley essentially.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't, I can't speak to a 13 year old boy growing up in America's experience, but I can speak to being a man in this time. And I think that there hasn't been a good way for men to talk about things that they're feeling, you know, truthfully feeling deep inside. And, and then you keep bottling it up and then you feel, eventually you feel wronged because you, you feel like you've never got a chance to say this stuff and no one explained to you or gave you a fuller picture or even acknowledged when you are right, you know, sometimes. And so, and then that leads them down this dark path to, you know, because they're, they're looking for it from, from somewhere.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  They're looking for either advice or acknowledgement or, or commiseration from somewhere. And they just, they feel like they're not getting it from enough sources. And, you know, rightfully or wrongfully so, right? But that's how they genuinely feel. And then they, they unfortunately find on the internet and the internet, it just is not a good place to look for those things.

• 27:45Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  For, you know, for, for guys or for women. But again, I'm just going to speak from a guy perspective. And like you said, I think it's, it's, to me, it's become so obvious that.

• 27:54Kara Swisher?

  You, you do excellent attacks on social media. I always like, he totally understands. I mean, you're not a reporter, but you're writing about things reporters write about because you really, I can't tell whether you hate it or love it. That's the thing. Because you said you were off Twitter or what do you do?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  I am off Twitter.

• 28:11Kara Swisher?

  What do you do on social media now?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  So now.

• 28:14Kara Swisher?

  Besides, what's the kettlebell guy?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, uh, yeah, I'm, I, I'm off Twitter and Facebook and, and Instagram. As in, I still have accounts, but I'm not, I don't, I don't have notifications to my phone, you know? I honestly, I just kind of use it to make money now in terms of I need to sell tickets. I'll use it there and, and, and I, I understand what I use it for now. You know what I mean? Like I make no, uh, pretension about what it is. I'm here to make money on social media. So I'm here to advertise.

• 28:42Kara Swisher?

  For marketing.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  For marketing, yeah. And, um, as long as I don't get sucked into it, I feel like that's the best I can do. Uh, do I hate it? I do, I do hate it a lot, but you know, I'm, I'm lucky because I, I feel like I was the last guy to slip into old media.

• 29:01Kara Swisher?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Like I'm the last person who managed to get past the goalposts.

• 29:05Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Cause I get to work on The Daily Show, which is very old media. I sell tickets, which is the oldest form of show business. Um, and I'm lucky to get cast in TV shows and stuff like that. So I was lucky. I'm so grateful that I'm in a position to be like, you, Mark Zuckerberg, you can delete Instagram. I'll be okay. I'm okay. I, I, actually I'd probably be happier.

• 29:27Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  But you know, I've also seen the benefit from all my friends, you know, my fellow standup comics, who they put clips on the internet and that's the only way they were able to build a following and sell tickets. So, you know, that again, I, again, that's the love hate that you just perfectly described.

• 29:42Kara Swisher?

  Although it can lead to, as you said, a lot of bad comedy, um, or bad singing or bad anything.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 29:47Kara Swisher?

  I, I think your sound, Sam, is interesting from a technical point of view. You have these really long, smart buildups. You make analytical arguments and still manage to land the punchline. Let me play another moment on, uh, Love to Hate It. It's long, but that's the point. Let me play it.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  For example, MAGA, Make America Great Again. They have a point. America is not doing so great right now, right? Our, our kids' math scores are down.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Our children's science scores are down when judged according to international metrics. Healthcare systems are not doing so great. Wealth gap disparities increasing exponentially. There was an implied promise to a generation of Americans that if you do certain things, work hard, go to college, be a good person, you would have certain outcomes. And those outcomes didn't materialize for majority of people. Because baby boomers and trans and decision-making positions lowered the capital gains tax. So that their net worth essentially compounds year after year. And post-World War II, US leadership traded the domestic manufacturing industry for national security by making the US dollar the default international trade currency, which gave America the ability to impose economic sanctions on foreign countries through

• 30:57Speaker 01

  a US financial banking system, but consequently increased the value of the US dollar astronomically, which made it impossible for anyone to manufacture anything in America. Although the logic at the time was that Americans were supposed to upskill en masse or waver from the menial manufacturing jobs. But everyone hears too much of a dumbass to stay in school. So we just traded domestic manufacturing to Asia and the rest of the world at the expense of working-class families. But if you don't read enough, it comes out as, "Let's go, Brenda!" And it's like, you have a point, but you don't have the vocabulary to describe your reality, because you didn't read enough. You gotta keep reading beyond the hashtag.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  That's a book behind the word. You gotta keep going. You can go at your own pace, but you gotta finish the required reading, otherwise you can't have a conversation.

• 31:50Kara Swisher?

  This is a terrific joke. This is a tremendously well-constructed joke. Would you mind talking about it for a second? Because I thought this was, I love this joke. You're obviously doing a sort of a college lecture thing and then, but making it into a very funny and truthful.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, yeah, I just thought it was, uh, it's actually an argument, it's quite a centrist argument, actually. It's a, it's a call for like, hey, can we talk about actual issues and not just yell slogans? And, and also, uh, there's also this idea, I think, of like... People want five second explanations for everything. You know, especially in government or whatever, right? And not everything is a five second explanation. Some of these like are long, technical, like multifactorial issues that, you know, uh, require undergraduate degrees to learn.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  So, so a bit of it is kind of like a argument or, or maybe a, a weeping at the death of, uh, respect for expertise. You know, where everyone kind of like wants simple answers or believes they know everything. And also the, you know, like, as you mentioned, the, I thought it was pretty funny to just keep talking about this as long as I could.

• 33:05Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  How long I could, I could pull it off and, uh, you know.

• 33:09Kara Swisher?

  I think it's a perfect joke.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks. And I actually was, I never clipped it, you know? I, I never clipped that bit from my special because I thought it wouldn't work on social media because it's so long-winded. It, it kind of needs context, you know, to, to, to have it.

• 33:22Kara Swisher?

  Sure.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  But someone else clipped it and put it on the internet and then it started going, you know, viral.

• 33:27Kara Swisher?

  It really did. That was the one that really jumped out to a lot of people.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they did like, I saw like, they clipped their own version, but it was like the shittiest resolution, the subtitles were spelled wrong, someone sped it up. It was like 1.5 speed and I was like.

• 33:40Kara Swisher?

  That's all right. Doesn't matter.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  But for some reason that, you know, we spent, you know, for, for me as an artist, I spent so much time crafting the look and the timing and then this person totally fucked it up, but it went viral and so I'm like, all right, well, I don't know what to do about it.

• 33:52Kara Swisher?

  Well, it worked. It worked. That's okay.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Someone told me that on the, this is how bad I am with social media. Someone told me that the fact that it looks janky makes people trust it more.

• 34:02Kara Swisher?

  That's correct.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Because it looks like it wasn't like a marketing effort. It looks like someone clipped it and I'm like, I guess there's logic to that, but, but, you know, goddamn, this looks like shit. So.

• 34:13Kara Swisher?

  Right, right. Um, it reminds me that you went, it's so interesting because you're talking like a lawyer a little bit, which is interesting. You went to law school in Australia, you even passed the bar there. I, I know it was a massive career shift and you said it was going from corporate to the circus. Um, does, does your legal background help you at all? I mean, are you worried that, um, that it going over their heads or do you just have a dick joke in your pocket for an emergency?

• 34:36Speaker 01

  No, uh, I think that, um.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  I kind of refuse to dumb it down for the crowd.

• 34:44Kara Swisher?

  You don't, which I love.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Because I, I think you, one, I think people are smarter than you, people give them credit for sometimes. And also, I think you attract the audience that you want, right? So that's two. And then also, yeah, you're right, like you kind of undercut everything with a classic, just whatever dick joke you pull out just to make the, make the broccoli.

• 35:03Kara Swisher?

  Palatable, sugar, put sugar on broccoli.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Very disgusting analogy, yeah, put sugar, yeah, don't, don't put a dick joke on it, yeah, you put sugar on it, so, yeah. Um, and so there's that, right, you pull it out of your hat, right? Um, but also, the, the legal stuff, uh, the legal background, I didn't think it helped, but my wife always kind of points it out to me, like, the longer I've been doing comedy, the more it's like, oh, my style has developed this kind of like, I'm, I feel like I'm making arguments. You know, sometimes when you're doing standup comedy, you, you are arguing for uh, sometimes you're arguing for a very preposterous or depraved point of view. And so, I guess the legal background helps you in forming a coherent argument. It also helps in eliminating the irrelevant, which I've noticed a lot in, um, not just creative.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Creative, you, a lot of it is, as you know, right, a lot of creativity is cutting out stuff.

• 35:55Kara Swisher?

  That's correct.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Okay, we don't need that, we don't need this editing. And I think legal background helps with that, right, it helps you eliminate what you think you don't need. And

• 36:03Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Uh, quite frankly, I think sometimes when I talk to people about politics, or even, you know, when, when, when you argue about politics sometimes, it's like, you hear people bring up stuff and you're like, wait, all that stuff is kind of irrelevant.

• 36:15Kara Swisher?

  That's right.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  What we're talking about.

• 36:16Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I think it does help, because you are, you do, you cut away the crap, even if you like the joke. You know, I used to die when I cut out lines from stories and I'm like, oh, that was the right thing, even if I liked the line.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  I think the great comics, they all have this kind of logic to them, right? And I think people who don't study law, I think they, they kind of hate the idea of the, of the legal system and the legal industry for many reasons, but I think if you actually study law, you realize that this is the product of many, many people over decades or centuries figuring out the logic of things. So there is a logic to it that end of the day that it is quite stable. And so just being able to think logically is, I think, something that you get out of legal training.

• 37:01Kara Swisher?

  Who are your influences? Who are the ones that you think are?

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I mean, when I was coming up, it was, I love Bill Burr. And he actually EPs my specials now, so I'm glad to call him a friend and mentor. And I love Dave Chappelle. I loved everybody in New York City who was gigging, Todd Barry. I mean, if you were doing stand-up comedy, if you were a headliner at a comedy club, I loved you. Because I was watching these professionals, you know, like, man, I was like, damn, this is amazing, you know? So I was influenced by everybody, Seinfeld, yeah.

• 37:38Kara Swisher?

  You did sign for this thing, doing this three deal Netflix special. This was your third. Will you stay with the streamer? Are you looking, what is, what is that, that economy like now? You have to have these streaming shows?

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Wow, no one's ever, no one's ever asked me that.

• 37:55Kara Swisher?

  I'm a business lady, so.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  I, I think the business, it's very interesting you mention that because the power keeps shifting about who is the number one for comedy. You know, it used to be HBO. HBO was like a dream to do it. It was like, oh, my God, if you get HBO special, that means you are it, you know? And Netflix came along, Comedy Central was in there for a long time. Netflix has come along, you know, I can't tell who's number one. I think Hulu has just entered the chat with comedy specials. So I don't really know where the industry is going. And then now, right, people are just putting on YouTube now, entire specials.

• 38:35Kara Swisher?

  Right, why even bother?

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, why even bother? You know, well, I, you know, you can get paid on streamers, whereas YouTube, you're kind of going off your own back. So I don't know, I don't know where the power is. I think it really depends on, one, who's offering you? Because you can only accept offers that are made, so. Are you getting the offers? And two, uh, what your personal, uh, relationship to your fans is, you know? Like, some people are more men and women of the people. And so we're on YouTube, you know, we're underground. And that's cool, right? That's very cool. And then some people are like, we're on Netflix, you know, we're the Netflix comics, you know? And but, but, you know, all this is not up to us. This is up to the free market and the streamers have to make offers.

• 39:15Kara Swisher?

  There is an appeal to doing it yourself on YouTube. I can tell you that there is.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  There is, uh, but there's also an appeal to making money on a streamer.

• 39:24Kara Swisher?

  Right, that's true, which they do them. Right now, I think Netflix is ascendant. I think you're correct. Are you signing a new deal?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I hope so. I hope so, yeah. I hope they'll have me back. You know, Netflix stuck their neck out for me. Like, my first special, no one wanted it. My very first one, Asian Community and Destroy America. I was shopping around, I was asking people to come. And, uh, I say this with no bitterness because I get the game, but nobody really wanted it. And so I kind of gave up on trying to make one. I was like, I'm just gonna tour live. If anyone wants to ever buy it, I'll do it, whatever. And then Netflix, they stuck their neck out and was like, hey, we love it. Let's do it. And they've supported me ever since. And honestly, for me, having Netflix in my corner has allowed me to turn down many shitty offers that I would hate to do. And I get to do that because I'm like, oh, end of the day, I can do it with these guys. I, I have my special.

• 40:15Kara Swisher?

  What's your shittiest offer?

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Oh, you know, people will come in and be like, hey, can you do, you know, uh, we want you to go, you know, look silly and be goofy and sell this product. Like advertising, goofy advertising stuff, or like bad commercial, like, um, come and, come and do a stand-up spot for these rich assholes. Yeah, I, I, it basically just empowered me to be like, guys, I'm okay. I, I don't need unlimited money.

• 40:40Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Netflix is taking care of me. I, I, I'd rather do that. Like, meaning if you wanna, yeah, meaning if you wanna hire me, you, you have to, you have to kind of be on my, meet me on my terms and, you know.

• 40:51Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, Al Pacino was on Dunkin' Donuts.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I would do Dunkin' Donuts, no problem.

• 40:55Kara Swisher?

  He'll be Dunkin' Donuts, no problem, okay.

• 40:59Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 41:07Kara Swisher?

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• 41:51Kara Swisher?

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• 42:20Kara Swisher?

  I want to finish up talking about your acting career. You got your big break in Hollywood with Crazy Rich Asians. John Chu, who directed it, sent us questions. I was still waiting for him to get to Crazy Rich Asians 2. We'll see what happens there.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  He's the best.

• 42:33Kara Swisher?

  He is the best. Last year, though, you were in Hulu series Interior Chinatown, based on a book by Charles Yu. It's really stereotypical, even nonexistent about that, the stereotypical, even nonexistent Asian representation in Hollywood. The main character is Willis Wu, who wants to stop being a background character and becoming a main character, like Kung Fu Guy. You play his best friend, Fatty Choi, who goes viral as angry Asian waiter. Talk a little bit about this. I think this is wonderful. Talk about the character and how the storyline ties into the set.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll give you guys the quick pitch on the show. Like, who cares about me? The show is brilliant. The show is so smart. It's so mad. It's like Twin Peaks meets Law and Order. I guess because in the show, all these characters are on a TV show and they just slowly start to realize that they become self-aware that they're on a TV show. And that's not just, you know, the main characters are these two Asian guys, Jimmy Oh Yang and me, Willis Wu and Fatty Choi. But then there's also a Law and Order show happening in the show with these other characters and they also start to figure out that they're in a TV show. So everyone starts kind of like becoming self-aware. And it gets, it gets weirder, but there's a great social message behind that, which is kind of like

• 43:55Speaker 01

  people who feel like background characters in their lives, you know? And I think a lot of people in America feel that way. I mean, I think this show was written, obviously, the, the surface level is about Asian people feeling like background characters in America a lot of the time because we, we're not really active in politics or entertainment and we don't really have influence the way white people and black people have. So sometimes you feel like, oh, we're just here to, you know, vote for people. Sometimes they, someone will say hello to us in Chinese and then we're supposed to vote for them or, you know, whatever it is. And, um, uh, so they speaks to that. But honestly, it speaks to anyone who feels like a background character here. You know, black, Native American, Latino, you know, gay, whatever, lesbian.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  If you feel like a background character sometimes, I mean, that, this show is kind of about that, you know? And it's very smartly written. Taika Waititi directed the pilot.

• 44:45Kara Swisher?

  He did, amazing.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  And it was a dream project to do it, shot beautifully. And I think the, the ending is very satisfying, I think, yeah.

• 44:55Kara Swisher?

  So the book Interior of Chinatown came out in 2020. For people that don't know, that was after Crazy Asians. But since then, your Marvel movie, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings came out.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  I can't call it mine. I can't call it mine.

• 45:08Kara Swisher?

  And every, everything, everywhere, all at once, went big at the Oscars. And of course, you now co-host The Daily Show. Do you think things have gotten better in terms of Asian representation or any different, not? Cause there's a big push against DEI. I find it really interesting when a movie like, say, a Black Black Panther does well. They're like, oh, look at that. And I'm like, it's not a D E I movie. It's a great movie. It's just a great movie. So.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the problem.

• 45:34Kara Swisher?

  But that's the reaction, right?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Uh, so has it gone better? Uh, it's gone, I mean, a little bit better, sure. I mean, undoubtedly. Uh, I think the main problem is that this argument about diversity in Hollywood specifically is a bit of a, I feel like it's a bit of a misnomer sometimes because it's not about diversity in terms of statistical, how many Asians do we put in how many movies or whatever. It's about like authenticity and storytelling, like making good movies. And part of that is having Asian people in decision-making positions. You know, as producers or executives, because as you know, right? That's the layer that is like, you can be all diverse as you want here and whatever, but when you hit, you, you, as, when you're making something, you go up the chain of decision-making.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Eventually you hit this layer where suddenly everyone is like, we can't cast this person, obviously, because this person, you know, we need this, or we, you know, we need a gay Asian here. And then you're like, oh, this is where the, this is where the problem is, you know. The problem isn't down here with the creatives. The problem is in that decision-making layer, in Hollywood anyway.

• 46:42Kara Swisher?

  Right, absolutely.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, because you can, you, they can give people kind of like cursory, uh, decision-making power, but then really i- it's not there. Um, and so I think that affects the storytelling. Because you, you have people who are either, they're trying to tell diverse stories, but they fuck it up because they, they put the diversity before the story. And then everyone looks bad. The project doesn't go well. And then we're, we're worse than we were when we started, right? So I think that is the main problem to me. It's not casting, you know, on camera is one issue, but the executive level and the producer level, level is the other issue.

• 47:24Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it does. It's a story matters most of all. That's what always succeeds.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we all want good stories. We don't want to just make shit for the sake of it, just because it has a bunch of Asians or whatever, you know, we want to make. Good shit. So how does that happen? That happens because decision makers are able to have taste and tell what's good and what's authentic and not force inauthentic decisions on to good stories, right?

• 47:48Kara Swisher?

  Right, absolutely. In that point, I'm just wondering, what do you think the next step for you in terms of main character energy? Your next stint hosting The Daily Show is coming up in March. If you could get your own show, what would it be? I know, I think it's working rather well with all of you shifting, honestly. I know there was a big search for a, for a king, but, or not a queen, it would have been a king. But what, how do you like that? And would you like your own show or is this kind of group thing better, do you think?

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I love The Daily Show. I think the group thing keeps anyone, one person from burning out, which I think is important.

• 48:25Kara Swisher?

  It's a significant problem, yeah.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  It's a significant problem. It, it, um, I think it gives a different perspective every week, which I think is interesting. I think the truth of the matter is also that nobody really knows, as in the general public, I don't think they actually know who's hosting. So, meaning the way the show is consumed now is segments on social media.

• 48:50Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  No one is watching the whole show through, so as far as anyone's concerned, like Jon Stewart is still hosting it. And in many ways he is, he's hosting the whole show, we're just helping him out, you know what I mean? So the way the show is consumed has a, has a, has played a factor in terms of we don't have that linear television, here's the host and we're watching the show, appointment viewing, right? Now we're just watching clips.

• 49:14Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  So it almost doesn't have that bigger impact.

• 49:18Kara Swisher?

  Do you think that era is over? Would you want your own show? What would be different?

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Uh, when you say you want your own show, yeah, I would love to do my own show, but not a talk show. I'm, I would love to do a scripted narrative or scripted movie. I think, you know, because I get my rocks off doing to the camera satire from The Daily Show. And we're never gonna top that. This is the institution, it's the Harvard Business School of Comedy and Satire. So I think- The only other thing that what's more interesting to me is cracking scripted narrative and having social messaging through scripted narrative, which I think actually goes down better, you know, than someone to the camera kind of outrage, evisceration, lecturing. Because that kind of you kind of preach to the choir a little bit.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  You're better off doing a scripted narrative show that you tell a story that has a more impact in it that makes people see other points of view, right? So to me, that's for my own project, that's probably what I would aspire to, you know?

• 50:15Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, also an area under pressure, too, in a weird way, but at the same time. So last question, we talked about your career as an actor, a stand-up, a host, television, late-night comedian. If you could add another pillar, what would it be? I know you sell socks with your face on them. Do you?

• 50:32Speaker 01

  No, I'm okay.

• 50:33Kara Swisher?

  Do you want to do a fourth thing?

• 50:34Speaker 01

  No, I'm okay. I got I'm trying to figure out these dumb jokes in, in a, in, I'm trying to tell these dick jokes in a bar. That's all I'm, yeah.

• 50:42Kara Swisher?

  A dick joke in a bar? That's all you do? Just a simple dick joke in a bar?

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Dick joke in a New York City dive bar.

• 50:48Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, so you wouldn't want to do anything else? Would you go to politics or anything else?

• 50:51Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm, I get this, I'm just, I'm trying to literally get these jokes to work on the.

• 50:56Kara Swisher?

  That's it.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all.

• 51:00Kara Swisher?

  That's all, okay. Then I'll leave it at that. I really appreciate it, Ronny. You're a wonderful and creative thinker, and I really appreciate all you do.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on. Thanks for speaking to me and, um, yeah.

• 51:14Kara Swisher?

  On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yokum, Dave Shaw, Megan Burney, Megan Cunane, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you read past the hashtag. If not, go listen to a dick joke in a bar, or maybe on Pivot from Scott Galloway. Though if you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.

• 51:57Speaker 05

  We just moved into our new house and I didn't realize just how close we were to the neighbors. That's when my friend told me about Blinds.com.

• 52:05Speaker 04

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• 52:22Speaker 06

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