Roy Wood Jr. Will Not Let This Interview Go Viral

America's podcast guest is a little burned-out. And yet the do-it-all comedian turned method unc is also a bard of modern content creation. So Roy Wood Jr. sits down with Pablo, on-stage at On Air Fest, to make sense of working under a hostile merger, while persevering the algorithm, learning from live-streamers and still focusing on himself enough to tell jokes as the chef intended — all without becoming part of somebody else's propaganda. Plus: Reading Rainbow, Street Fighter, the Dagobah system, funeral-home police scanners, murdering the defendants of slavemasters... and punching children in the face. • Watch "Have I Got News for You" with Roy Wood Jr. https://www.cnn.com/have-i-got-news-for-you • Watch the "Lonely Flowers" Stand-Up Special https://www.hulu.com/movie/roy-wood-jr-lonely-flowers-0bdefff9-def5-4e22-96d9-94fd899f0f83 • Read "The Man of Many Fathers" Memoir https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/771168/the-man-of-many-fathers-by-roy-wood-jr/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today you're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Rock hot too, doesn't like Jim Jung dash slash.

• 0:13Speaker 00

  That's the part we're gonna aggregate from this episode. Right after this ad.

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• 2:00Speaker 03

  I am here today to introduce Pablo Torre and his special guest Roy Wood Jr. Now Pablo Torre finds out is a sports show that I think sports lovers would love, but even I, who I don't really consider myself a huge sports lover. I love the Liberty, I love the Olympics. But Pablo covers things in such a way that even people who think they don't love sports will be so engaged. So, recent episodes include one with Sir Mix-a-Lot sharing his hot take on sports and butts. And I also really loved a recent episode where Pablo dug deep into Donald Trump's takeover of public historic golf courses in Washington DC.

• 2:42Speaker 03

  Just fascinating, looking at things from a social perspective, looking at things from a historical perspective, not just from a defense, offense perspective with his work. So, he's just great, a great conversationalist. We're so excited to have him here today. Again, this is Pablo Torre, but also with a special guest, Roy Wood Jr., who I know everybody in this room knows and loves from The Daily Show, and have I got news for you. Please welcome Pablo and Roy to the stage.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 3:23Pablo Torre?

  Hello, hello, hello.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Hello, Brooklyn.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Good to see you Pablo.

• 3:30Pablo Torre?

  Roy, I have questions for you.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  There's only like, three motherfuckers I would have left the house for.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Like, on some podcast chip, not like where I am now, right now. You, Bomani Jones, Trevor Noah. I think those are the three people that, Sheri, Tamron Hall, Sheri Shepherd Tamron Hall.

• 3:56Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  But they don't do podcasts, they do like the regular TV show stuff.

• 4:00Pablo Torre?

  The metal stand is getting crowded, let's stop you listing people before I get the motive.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  I said yes to too much [BLEEP] last year.

• 4:09Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, we're here to investigate Roy Wood Jr.

• 4:14Pablo Torre?

  I don't know if Roy realizes that yet.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  I don't, but I saw what happened between you and Mark Cuban, so I figured.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  There would be some, some sort of poking and prodding.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  I'm happy to be here, bro. All jokes aside.

• 4:42Pablo Torre?

  Legitimately, uh, not joking. We're gonna, gonna get into some of the metrics in your life.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:48Pablo Torre?

  Um, you were on, at our last count, at least 96 different podcasts.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Is that just last year?

• 5:01Pablo Torre?

  That was, that was, uh, yeah, Q4, actually. Um, trying to figure out the business term.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  No, seriously, in your research last year.

• 5:10Pablo Torre?

  It was, it was, we had to stop counting.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  I thought it was like 50 or 60. It was too many.

• 5:13Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, and so, and so.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  It was too many.

• 5:16Pablo Torre?

  You've, you've become a bit of a snow leopard. You were America's podcast guest.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:21Pablo Torre?

  And now, there's a point in the timeline where you stop showing up.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:28Pablo Torre?

  What, what, Roy? What happened?

• 5:33Speaker 01

  The burnout. Also, having a degree in journalism, and you will appreciate this. It becomes very evident. Oh, also, seven podcasts that still haven't been put out yet, that I did last year for a bunch of [BLEEP] who are just sitting on the content for no reason. And when they finally put it out, it's gonna be outdated as hell. I'm looking forward to the NFL season. That's like where it's.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  We have a champion.

• 6:04Pablo Torre?

  What takes they have from Roy Wood Jr. in the back of the fridge right now? What's sitting back there that you're like, man?

• 6:08Speaker 01

  That pisses me off. I will, I will say I did that many podcasts, and it's probably indicative of. Of my inability to tell people no sometimes, which is one of the first things that I had to decide to lock in on and start doing more of going into this year. So that's, that's probably where you saw like a clear cut drop off on pod episodes with my name. And I'm probably end of October, early November.

• 6:37Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  There were a couple of stragglers that were put out then, but I stopped recording, stopped meeting with people. And then I also got blessed. Um, I got booked for, they're doing a, they're doing a TV series of the barbershop franchise for Amazon. They're doing a sitcom. And so I get cast in a sitcom.

• 6:52Pablo Torre?

  And, and, and the character that you are playing, the, the, the casting call for that character, how do you describe what the, what the role is?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  I'm wearing a beard now.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  When have any of you ever seen me with a beard?

• 7:05Pablo Torre?

  That was my next investigation was why the [bleep] does Roy have a beard now?

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Cause I had to play older, like they weren't, I'm not quite Seth the Entertainer old, but my character represent, not to [bleep] on Seth, you know what I meant. But my character represents the wisdom and kind of the old sage oracle of the shop. And I just figured facial hair would, would help to convey that. And you wouldn't necessarily presume me to have a hot political take like I do with the goatee. So, but I got cast in the sitcom. And the blessing of it is that it's shot in Chicago. So I literally was unavailable for two and a half months. And it was like the perfect thing to wing me off of just saying yes to so much stuff. And, and I think part of it is that, you know, when I did morning radio,

• 7:53Speaker 01

  I did mornings in Birmingham for about a decade. And I remember so many people who just would not come on our show. They'd have a concert in town, literally just wouldn't come on the show. And we used to be so gracious and appreciative when people would come on. And then never the comedians who would come on and the show was already sold out. And they still came on. I remember appreciating those, the Bruce Bruces and the Sinbad's and the Wayans brothers of the world. Like they would just still come on and, and I just remember being so appreciative of that. So when you get emailed by like, it could be you one day and those go through the PR people. And then every blue moon, there's just a college student, hey,

• 8:37Speaker 01

  I'm doing episode two, you wanna [bleep] with it or not?

• 8:42Speaker 01

  And I remember being that kid. And so, you know what? Yeah, let's sit down. And you know how I am. I don't really have any restrictions on topics or anything. So like that, that becomes part of the problem in a way.

• 9:01Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Cause you'll sometimes sit with people that just don't have an agenda. They have, literally have no idea what they are doing. Or they're asking you questions that you've already answered 40 times. So how lively can I re-answer this? And I don't mean like promo questions like tell me about the book or tell me about the Hulu special. It's just literally, how did you get started? And you can Google that, bro. Come on, come with a better question than that. And so I started, I found myself showing up half-assed for a lot of podcasts. Because I knew that like within, by question three, I know what this is. And I've done 90 according to you. So I know.

• 9:43Pablo Torre?

  Ninety-six.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  I know where it's gonna go. I, based off question three, I know what the next seven questions are. I've already answered them in my head. I have a prompter up in the, like, at the home. Like if I'm doing an at-home podcast, oh, I got the prompter box set up, baby. And I'm mirroring my laptop screen on top of the camera lens and I'm surfing the internet. While just having a chit chat with a random person. And sometimes it's, it's interesting and I'm locked in. But I just felt like you shouldn't do that to yourself. And also there comes a point in your life and career where at some point you have to choose yourself and do something for yourself.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  And I've had a lot of time, now that I'm back, now that Chicago production is done, I've had time to lock in on other tasks and things that I really do need to work out. And now I sit here in the midst of a presumed merger of Warner Brothers who own CNN and like quietly figuring out, okay, this, we get canceled. What am I gonna do next? Maybe I should have been thinking about that last year. And so it's time to take a little bit more focus just on myself. It's not personal.

• 11:00Pablo Torre?

  Well, but the reason that you are the perfect person to sit here with me today is because I consider you somebody who is deeply savvy and preemptive about the business of media. Because I regard you as somebody who not only will be thoughtful in terms of how you do media, but you're out here trying to figure out who's getting won over me? How can I make sure that I am not losing the race that I'm not even aware is being run? And you're also somebody who is frankly, reporting on this stuff, even if it's just for your own personal edification. Like, the question of why is Roy not doing as many podcasts now? Was kind of an economic indicator to me.

• 11:41Pablo Torre?

  I was like, oh shit, what is Roy, what did Roy figure, what did Roy find out? And, and the thing about the instinct here, the instinct that I feel all the time doing three episodes a week, you know, which I can't say without a little bit of just edge. A week! And shout out to my producers for whom I do not forget the sacrifice we've made of our families to do that. The whole point is to say yes, is to always be churning. And so, I'm detecting in you, not just like, ah, mental sort of like reset, but also like, there's an inefficiency, maybe.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  It's, I've, I've said it too many other people's restaurants, I need to build my own. It's no disrespect, I don't have a restaurant. And it's coming to a point where everybody's gonna need a restaurant. The restaurant I'm currently working at is under a hostile merger from Paramount. And you have to be realistic about that. You have to be, and it's not to be pessimistic about whatever.

• 12:43Pablo Torre?

  Do you get, do you get updates from anybody from the inside who's like, you should know that this thing just happened?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  You can understand that. I'm on CNN, but we're a Saturday show. So it's like, you ever seen that trailer next to the public school? Like...

• 12:57Speaker 01

  We're over there. And it's by design, so that we're not too close to the newsy button down, so that we don't become that. So they have us up the street at the CBS Center. I get more Barry Weiss updates in the hall, because we're in the same building as CBS News. And so I'll see them in the hall, and I'm like, "What's going on?" And they're like, "Oof." I'm too busy trying to dodge her in the hall, because we've done jokes about her, you know. But I, I think that, you know, you look at something like legacy media like CNN, we're the number one show in our demo on the network, we're the number two show overall. I don't mean [BLEEP] if the president wants you out the door.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  And that could very well be a possibility, if it's about holding a grudge versus a numbers game, if it's about, do we keep the show that gives us good ratings, or do we get rid of the show because it makes the president feel bad sometimes? So, I have to be conscious of that, and figuring out how I'm going to build, you know, my thing. And that's probably something that I didn't really have to think about when I left The Daily Show, because I knew that I was going on tour to prepare the Hulu special, and I knew I was writing the book, and at the time, I had a, um, I had a pilot in motion with Fox. So, I had pots on the stove, we could focus on that. Well, now, we're on the other side of Hulu, we're on the other side of the book, and I

• 14:24Speaker 01

  think it's reasonable to think about that, even if we don't get canceled at CNN, it's not a bad idea to have something else. But just at the time, it was just, that was an overwhelming thing to think about, well, what's my show gonna be, and what's my thing gonna be, and trying to figure it out. And I, I had a podcast, but I knew it wasn't something that would live in a capacity like this. Like, it was a great niche podcast, it was called Roy's Job Fair, and we'd literally talk to three different people every week about their style of employment, and the nuances of their jobs, and what they do. And so, it was originally started during the pandemic to help people find jobs.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  So, when I did morning radio, we had a, we had a segment called "Who Got That Work?", and-

• 15:13Speaker 01

  And for the entire nine o'clock hour on the radio, if you are working somewhere that is currently hiring, call the station so that someone without a job can know where they can go look for a job today. And that was kind of the genesis. So people from emerging industries or whatever, that went ninety-nine episodes. Comedy Central owns the IP to that. So when I made the decision to leave The Daily Show, I essentially abandoned that podcast as well. And to still do a different version of that while doing book and tour and Hulu, like it just, I just didn't. But, you know, now I gotta figure it out.

• 15:47Pablo Torre?

  But on the job fair, what job were you most delighted to hear about that you didn't totally understand until you had them in your podcast?

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Crime scene investigator. We had a whole episode about dead bodies. So it was just jobs that involved dead bodies. And like if a dead body is anywhere within the skull, we had the funeral home director, but then, but the crime scene investigator was talking about the process of, I won't gross you out, but like the process of cleaning up, all of that type of stuff. I was like, that's a very interesting thing. And then found out that, didn't know this, funeral homes compete to get bodies from a crime scene. So there are a lot of funeral, he's nodding. I didn't know this at the time. Funeral homes have police scanners.

• 16:39Pablo Torre?

  I have my eye on the guy who knows this now. Very eagerly affirming Roy's observation.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Funeral homes have police scanners. And if they hear about it, yeah, there's been a bird up the street. You hop in the [bleep] hearse like the Ghostbusters and speed to the crime scene in the hopes that the family of the deceased will choose your funeral home because you're just, you're here. And like, that's fascinating to me. That's just oddly fascinating. So that was the, that was the show. And like, that was kind of the gist of it. But it's not a broader thing. Like Netflix isn't gonna call me, this is doing great. We gotta put this on the homepage. Like that's, so figuring out something that's a little bit more connected to people is what I've been exploring last year. I think I, I think I've figured it out.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  But I just knew in the meantime, I need to sit still. I need to start saying no. And just figuring out what's what for me. I've been in New York 11 years. I, I, there's nobody in the city that could say. I told them no, I might tell you not right now and figure out a different time. So I've been giving them my time. I feel like I've been benevolent and all of that stuff. So, you know, you, you, you have to, you have to pay it back. But I think it was that, bro. And then also there was a Club Shea Shea interview that I did. And.

• 18:04Pablo Torre?

  This came up in our research.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Well, which one? Which clip? The one that got me all the hate?

• 18:10Pablo Torre?

  I'd like you to explain the hate.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  We have to explain the clip first. Like, so I get, and this, and I, and I say this because this, this is what. The Correspondence Dinner was the first instance of this. But the Club Shea Shea clip.

• 18:30Pablo Torre?

  This is Shannon Sharpe's podcast. He's on like a Chase lounge. Roy's on an equivalent. Fainting couch of sorts. And there is a Cognac or something.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  It's cognac.

• 18:39Pablo Torre?

  Cognac, excuse me.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  That's not unsweetened tea.

• 18:42Pablo Torre?

  Undoubtedly sponsored.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, we're drinking. And we get, we get into, we get into a run talking about my ancestry and my lineage and all of this stuff. And part of me is talking about the fact that when I did, I did Finding Your Roots. And during the episode, they found the descendants of the people who owned my family members. And so I'm joking in the clip about finding the house where these people now live. The descendants of the old slave masters, great, great, great grands. And just pulling up to their house and asking for reparations.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  And then I joked, and then I said I zilloed their house. They don't have any money.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  And I said something along the lines about, yeah, I might just pull up on a house and see what's up. And there's a whole part, there's a whole preamble to that snippet that sets up that I'm joking. And that this is, I'm not really out to murder the descendants of slave masters. But when you clip that bitch just right,

• 19:56Speaker 01

  it looks like I'm out to murder the descendants of slave masters. So that clip goes flames online. And there's a couple of clips from the interview that all do their respective arguing and bickering about fatherhood and just, three hours in drinking, you're gonna talk about everything. But that clip gets put out into the right wing sphere as Roy-

• 20:20Pablo Torre?

  It breaks contain, yes.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Yes. Roy hates white people. He wants to kill white people. Um, what about the blacks that enslaved? You need to talk about that. I wish you would run up in my house, email box just,

• 20:36Speaker 01

  DMs, just, just a barrage of it. And I'm like, what am I doing? Like you go back and I go back and look at the Shea Shea interview and it's like, we're having these conversations and of course, anything we say now is going to be clipped and distilled down into something that's bite sized and profitable for whomever you're sitting with. And, you know, my buddy, my little brother's in the comments with, first off, I have two younger brothers that are psychopaths on the internet.

• 21:07Pablo Torre?

  How old are they?

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Um, thirty seven, two older beat psychopaths.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  And they are like going to war with people in the comments who are like bashing me and I'm like-

• 21:18Pablo Torre?

  The family members who want to defend the honor of their loved one is one of my most-

• 21:21Speaker 01

  I get it, but it didn't-

• 21:23Pablo Torre?

  It's tragic when my mom wants to go to war for me.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  No, but it didn't, like, it sucks that that happened, but that's on me. Because if you're talking in a way where you can allow yourself to get sliced and diced, they're gonna do it. When I did the correspondence dinner, they, um, I did jokes across the gamut of topics, across the gamut of political sides. And every outlet you could name took one of my jokes and used it to push their agenda the next day. No matter what it was. Fox News had a joke they liked, CNN had a joke they liked. I did a Vanderpump Rules joke, E, online. Roy Wood, at this rate, and even talked about Lisa Vanderpump.

• 22:05Pablo Torre?

  Did you do that with the knowledge that you would get aggregated by E! Online?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  No, I didn't know who Vanderpump was. I just trusted my writers. It was a joke about power and 50 Cent. It's online, you can watch it. But 50 Cent took a clip where I mentioned the television show Power. So everybody, whatever you say, you can become a part of somebody else's propaganda. And that's just what it is. And it's like, alright, well, if I'm gonna be snippeted up all the time for what I say, then I probably should do most of that in my own pulpit. So that there's a better context.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  And then I have control over how the clip is cut. I have no control over what Club Shay Shay is gonna do. Because at the end of the day, you know, Shannon Sharpe's editors, or your editors, or whoever, it's about whatever's gonna get the best engagement, or make the point that you want to make as the producer. So I'm not mad at Shannon, I'm not mad at the angry white boys who think that... You can push that lie, but I would hope that I have enough runway of precedent, behavioral precedent, where the average, proper-thinking person would know that that's not what I meant, and that's not my intent. I do still wanna meet those people, though. But not to murder, to have a conversation, and just...

• 23:33Pablo Torre?

  And to have their house reappraised.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:43Pablo Torre?

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• 24:53Pablo Torre?

  We say all the time on the show, we gotta self-aggregate. We gotta be ahead of the aggregators. At the very least, they're using the parts. We gotta give them an extra step if they want to be maximum lazy to then get their preferred version out. And maybe they'll keep the part, that little prelude part that's contact, maybe they'll keep that in because it's easier now to just like Twitter link it in bed and then send that off. But the other thing I've been thinking about, and I end up quoting, and this is a very OnAir Fest reference, former podcaster and current Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Reddick, who could have been, who could have been a contender.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:30Pablo Torre?

  JJ as a basketball podcaster was maybe Michael Jordan.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  He'd be on Netflix homepage right now.

• 25:36Pablo Torre?

  Absolutely.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Right next to Breakfast Club. He'd be right there.

• 25:40Pablo Torre?

  And JJ immediately saw the business that we're describing. And he was like, oh, wait a minute. Okay, so audio doesn't go viral, video does.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 25:51Pablo Torre?

  And I was like, oh, [BLEEP]. Like, he's right. And so the question is not, do we want to object to the principle of how dishonest some of the aggregation is? It's make peace with that being the business and then figure out, how do I preempt it?

• 26:05Speaker 01

  I still think the good stuff will be consumed properly. I think we are at a point with podcasting where, because there's so much out there, I believe people are a little bit more picky about what they want to consume. Because you named the topic, there's at least 10 people within that, within that sphere, except for employment. There was only four employment podcasts, and none of them funny. That was part of why I took... But like the idea that you can just go on and talk about something nonsensical, or you can ask lazy questions, because also, that was the other thing. If, if you're a fan of me, and I go on a new podcast, and they're asking old questions,

• 26:49Speaker 01

  well, why the [bleep] would you keep listening, like, and then you're on my ass to post the link of, hey, man, we did the episode, make sure you post, why? So my fans can hear me answer the same goddamn question again? Because you didn't think of anything creatively new to bring to the conversation, to bring to, like, that part of it, it, it's, it, you don't always know when you're getting something nutritious, but you know how you feel after you consume bull [bleep]. And I think podcasting is approaching that. And then we're gonna get to a point where the things that are not getting eyeballs, at some point, will fall by the wayside. And yeah, the streets get to choose, and YouTube gets to decide a great deal of what grows.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  But ultimately, I think we're in a place where, the same way the entertainment, like, right now, we make, I think, is it sixty, maybe forty, is, is either, let's just say forty percent fewer scripted shows than we did pre-COVID? Just because of industry contraction, and their hedging bets, and they don't wanna put a lot of money into everything? I think podcasting is something similar. Like, you're not gonna have these big podcast networks that are just throwing six-digit checks at people, hoping that something returns. The money train's gone. It'd be like fifteen years ago with the web series. I don't know if you remember Funny or Die, and Super Deluxe, and all of those websites. That was the way fifteen years ago. Just shoot your own web series.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  They were giving [bleep], they were giving like a hundred thousand dollars to creators to shoot ten episodes of a web series, just. That wouldn't happen now. You would have to shoot that yourself and then get traction. And then maybe you get some sponsorship deals or whatever. But yeah, I think that, I think video is what sells. And because you start talking about video, now it has to be something that's actually worthwhile. And then it's gonna push the envelope of how it's presented.

• 28:50Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm. Are you, are, do you ever think, and I, I, I confess that I think about this too much. Do you ever marvel, as I noticed by the way, that you're still wearing your beard? Even though the show's done taping.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  I can't cut it because they might do reshoots in April. And I've been growing it since October, so I'm scared. And even now, it's still patchy. Like, this isn't a trustworthy beard, you know?

• 29:13Pablo Torre?

  You're, you're, you're a method unk.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  I'll take that.

• 29:21Pablo Torre?

  But I wonder, as you inhabit this role, if you marvel at what is required? In terms of what the audience demands as per production value? Because I will scroll through my feed, and I'm somebody who fetishizes editing and, and camera work and production. And man, could you describ-, like, just, could you remember what it's like to be multi-cam and all that? And now what passes?

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Smooth edits.

• 29:51Pablo Torre?

  Yes!

• 29:52Speaker 01

  And now jump cuts are the norm. They're even preferred.

• 29:56Pablo Torre?

  Preferred?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  To some degree. Just get to the point.

• 29:59Pablo Torre?

  It's authentic to do a jump cut mid-sentence.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it used to drive me crazy with stand-up because I saw comedians who I knew would do the joke one-way live. And within the internet, they would cut out the pregnant pauses within the joke. And I'm like, what are you doing to part of the, hey man? I did my analytics and I noticed the thing went down and I started doing it like this and the thing went up. And I'm like, alright, I guess you can't argue with that. I just, I hate that we are enslaving our creative.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  To, to consumers who are behaviorally a school of fish. And you don't know which way they're going to change or turn. And I think it takes a lot to really stand tall in the midst of just going with the flow. Like, that's very, very hard. I'm not, I'm not crazy about it, but then I also, you know, when it comes to like, social media management, I've, I've, I've had a couple of different people and I remember at the Daily Show, you know, you would always take something and then you would show it to the interns before you posted it. And like, they just got here.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  But they're also the eyes that we want to consume this thing. And they would give you pointers and move this and they would be right. They would be right every time. I mean, right down to captions and how captions now move with one word and the pfft, like, that drives me up the wall. But if you're saying, "That's what I gotta do so that I can sell tickets in Toledo next month", then alright, fine, then that's what I have to do. I just have to hope that you will come see me live and get the more elongated proper version of the thing.

• 31:46Pablo Torre?

  As the chef intended.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, as the chef intended. And I, I really feel like, when you look at what's happening now with how we consume content, it's all short order, you know, the, the one thing that gives me some degree of hope is the, this Korean drama vertical thing that's supposedly gonna be the new thing, where it's 10 one-minute episodes of a thing. Like, nobody will watch a 10-minute webisode, but you'll watch 10 one-minute episodes. But it changes how you write because they write essentially cliffhangers every minute. And, and it's huge. It's huge over there and that trend is starting to happen over here.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  And so, if that becomes the new behavioral consumer habit, then I think slowly we revert back to people just watching a 10-minute thing. Cause if you'll binge 10 one-minute episodes, eventually your viewing habits will turn, will evolve into you just watching 10 minutes. Like, if you're a 20-year-old right now and you watch 10 one-minute episodes, by the time you're 30, you'll have the attention span, in theory.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  To watch something for ten minutes. And then we're back to twenty minutes. And then we're back to regular sitcom nineteen eighty-eight land.

• 33:02Pablo Torre?

  What if you, what if you read so many Cliff Notes that it was actually just the same length as the book?

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Maybe, like, that might be the world. Like, take a book and break it into, like, four volumes now. I, I, I look at that and I just wonder.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Cause also, I'm forty-seven. And I go, alright, well, who the hell is my audience? What am I doing? What do I wanna talk about? I like the news. I enjoy talking to strangers. That's one thing that I do know. And I feel like that's very across the board. You know, I used to love, I used to love watching Larry King Live with my dad.

• 33:39Pablo Torre?

  What about Larry King Live?

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Just regular people, bro. Like, when he would just have regular people calling in. There, there was, um, was it Tom Snyder? The Late Late Show. The Late Late Show before Craig Ferguson, if I'm not mistaken. It was Tom Snyder. And he would take calls. There's clips of this man on the internet. Tom Cruise is in the chair. And he goes, hang on, Tom. Yes, we got a caller. Call hello. And just a regular person is talking to Tom Cruise. It was fascinating to me. Jay Leno would do jaywalking. That was fascinating to me. Like, just the idea of connecting with people like that. So, that leaves me some degree of hope.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  But I, I, I just feel like I'm not going to creatively work from a place of what is there a market for?

• 34:32Pablo Torre?

  Well, well, let me, let me, let me do something based on your stated preferences. Which is that there is a job right now in which people are reacting spontaneously to live breaking events and dealing with strangers all of the time. And they're called streamers. They're called these, they're called Kaizenat and Speed.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Speed and all those kids.

• 34:52Pablo Torre?

  And, and, and these kids. And do you watch with curiosity any of, of what those kids are doing? And I wonder, Roy, if you, if you were, you know, born, I don't know, twenty years later, thirty years later, you might have been one of these very industrious young, young people.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  I would've had to have been a streamer. That's the way. I will, the one thing I am grateful for with these streaming kids when I see them is that I know that they've made more than enough money to be able to take the time that they're gonna need in their twenties to emotionally recover.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Like on some mental health.

• 35:33Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Because if you look at what Kai Sinat is doing now, Kai Sinat has transitioned off of streaming into fashion and this young brother doesn't stream nearly as much as he used to and he's having fallouts with his social circle from his streaming days and I don't click the links, but I see it and you know, you see a link and it's like, "Rock Hot Two doesn't like Jim Jung dash slash."

• 35:58Pablo Torre?

  That's the part we're gonna aggregate from this episode.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Roy Wood Jr. talks shit about Kai Sinat. No, like I, I see those kids and I'm like, "That's gotta be exhausting."

• 36:11Pablo Torre?

  Oh man, if you ever can look into the eyes, but if you can look into the eyes of these streamers during the part that they know isn't gonna go viral and they're just working on camera.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:22Pablo Torre?

  You can, you can, you can smell the burnout.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Correct. And so I'm like, "All right, I don't know what you graduate to next from that, but you've got more than enough money to go sit away for a decade." Now, average American makes three million in their whole lifetime. I know they've cleared that, at least. So you got time to go and sit, you know, but then you look at a kid like, a kid like Speed and this brother went to Africa for a whole two, three months, two, three weeks or so and showed sides of the country that I've never seen on any travel show and showed perspectives that we've never seen about the black experience and the global black diaspora that otherwise wouldn't have been shown. So it's like, "Thank you for that,

• 37:09Speaker 01

  but I also look at it and I know that's a sacrifice." Because I, I know what it's like, like just The Daily Show is a 12-hour shoot and we get to have a snack.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  You don't never see Speed having a snack like he. That boy was just go, go, go and he's running and he's learning and it's exciting. And I, I hate that I cannot remember his name, but I'm so happy that, that, that the young brother out of San Francisco, I think Michael, who's now the new host of Reading Rainbow and that's going to series. And that's someone that was just passionate about a thing. And it, and, and everything else found him. So I think if I'm passionate about whatever it is I really want to do, you find the people that are passionate about it and you build community together. I don't know if I could.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  I, I don't like, I, I have clips in my phone of stuff I was gonna post three weeks ago. I still haven't posted it. The idea of just a camera sitting in my face at all times. I just, I don't, I don't know. I don't know if I could do that. I also don't know. How you quantify, like, how does that grow beyond? Because I, I think the, the interesting thing that every streamer or internet sketch comedian has to contend with is the maturation of their audience. And eventually, if you start at sixteen, seventeen, and that's your audience, by the

• 38:39Speaker 01

  time they're twenty-four, twenty-five, their taste in humor is gonna change. Like, if you think about the things you laughed at at sixteen, that, that's why they say like, everybody has a period where they really loved SNL and then everything on either side of that, it's just, it's, it's kinda whatever, it's kinda take it or leave it. I think when I look at a lot of these streamers now, I'm curious of what they'll become when they, when they start approaching their thirties, because their audience isn't gonna be into the same things. And then unless you're marrying someone who's into that as well, but, you know, we had, this isn't the first generation, you know, of, of streamers, you know, there was a guy that I used to follow from while and out named Timothy De La Ghetto.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  And, and so Tim was OG 1.0 streamer, YouTuber, the whole nine.

• 39:28Pablo Torre?

  Filipino?

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, Filipino, don't make me guess, guess the race.

• 39:33Pablo Torre?

  Roy is too good at noticing the traps I'm trying to set for him.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, I'm talking in clips now, you ain't gonna get me.

• 39:41Pablo Torre?

  Malaysian?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Roy's guessed the wrong race and I'm gonna tell y'all I had Tourette's.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  So.

• 39:54Pablo Torre?

  He has a very specific.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm not ****ing on that guy. I'm just.

• 39:58Pablo Torre?

  It's highly specific and resonant to a certain demographic.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  What I'm saying is that you don't know if I'm telling the truth or not. So I'm gonna just start, I'm gonna use it. Like, the idea, so you look at a guy like Timothy De La Ghetto, who was 1 million percent open book to everybody. And then like that, it's like, nah. This is me, this is my family, here's what I will give you. And the rest of this is my life, it's my own personal place to be. And so I think age-wise, once they kind of hit that same turn, it'll be interesting to see what type of content they transition into, and what type of new style of content the next wave of kids get into. And that's why I don't think a network can really get behind it. Hell, Twitch don't even know what to do

• 40:45Speaker 01

  with speed half the time. You know, they don't even push them to the forefront half the time. So i- i- it's the idea of even understanding what that is, by the time you realize what it is, you'll be behind the curve. I just think young people, they're gonna continue to use tech and probably a little more AI to dictate how they entertain themselves. And I think just once you're 25 and over, then you're kind of into the more traditional ecosystems. All these broadcasters and streamers are gonna just they're gonna continue to merge and implode on themselves, and eventually just reblossom. The force will blossom again with way too many shows, the way it was.

• 41:41Pablo Torre?

  One of the things that I've made peace with, because I'm, I'm 40 and I have a six-year-old, is the young people who are.

• 41:52Pablo Torre?

  The classic case study of, man, I want to call them corner cutters and lazy because they're not doing it in the way that I did it. Journalism and rigor and-

• 42:01Speaker 01

  You didn't suffer how I suffered, so your accomplishments are not legitimate.

• 42:05Pablo Torre?

  For real, and the thing that I've made peace with as I watch the increasingly dead eyes of these streamers is that the issue is the opposite. They have such work ethic. And the work ethic is what I see in you, it's what I pride, I take pride in myself and in our staff at the show. And I wonder, you know, I don't want to set you up for like a motivational coaching pep talk, but it does feel like those who don't have that work ethic are probably [BLEEPed].

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Correct, and that all comes down to whether or not you have that degree of tenacity. I feel like Druski is kind of an interesting case study as well, where you have a kid who did quick and easy sketches online, same as everybody else, iPhone 8, low light, whatever, and then the next thing you know, he's in a wire harness floating like a Baptist mega church pastor. Like, high, tens of thousands of dollar budgeted level sketches. And that just came from repetition, repetition, also not being worried about rejection. And there is, there is a veneer of perfection that you believe that you need to always have at all times on the internet, and if you don't have the perseverance to push past

• 43:24Speaker 01

  that, like, the internet is like getting booed every day.

• 43:29Pablo Torre?

  How do you, how are your nerve endings on that?

• 43:32Speaker 01

  I'm indifferent, like, it doesn't bother me. Like, even like in the thick of racial slur, the only thing I don't [BLEEP] with is death threats. I take that series, I elevate that right up to CNN, Warner Brothers, FBI, motherfuckers or whatever, but- Like, everything else just does it, it's never really bothered me, but I got lucky because I came up at a time where live tweeting was just beginning to be a thing. And this is 2010, and we did Last Comic Standing, and the network contractually made us live tweet the episode under the hashtag every Monday night. I'm on the show for two months straight, I keep advancing every round, so every Monday night,

• 44:13Speaker 01

  for two hours straight, I'm under this hashtag, and you're to reply to anything about you. "Hey, Roy, it's funny, thank you, make sure you watch next week." But in between all of that is [BLEEP] him, and he's not funny, and you look like Kenan Thompson, and you look like a crackhead Kenan Thompson, is what they say, I was skinnier back then. Racial slurs, like, so just imagine for two hours straight, you just consume the worst of yourself, and then the west coast feed comes up. And you gotta do it all over again, so I did that for two months, and it was kinda like,

• 44:53Speaker 01

  I don't know, some sort of weird hatred, dig up a system, learn how to become a Jedi, at not letting things bother me, but when you look at, to that point of work ethic, you put out one or two sketches that suck, and everybody hates on you and tells you you're terrible, and then you cower and you stop, well now you're [BLEEP], and now the algorithm only rewards repetition and constantly being fed, so you have to persevere beyond that, and constantly, constantly put stuff out, and I think the thing that's always, that I've always found interesting, um, about Druski, and even Desi Banks, is the evolution

• 45:32Speaker 01

  of the content, and being able to be a little bit on the pulse of whatever we're talking about. You know, more culturally than like, it's not necessarily current event sketch like this happened yesterday. But it's more about, this is a conversation we're having at large as a people. And whether you think this stuff is funny or not, it doesn't matter because he's found the people that like it, and then he grows it. And I think you have to be able to persevere past somebody giving you a thumb down and saying you ain't [BLEEP]. And it's the same with the podcast. And because the one thing I learned over the years is that, nobody remembers what they hate. They just go, I didn't like it. Now, if you say something hateful, like we're getting into cancel culture, that's a different thing.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  But just, you put out a sketch today and nobody liked it? Alright. Put one up tomorrow, and keep it moving. And, or lean into the fact that it wasn't funny, and laugh with the people. So, I just think that, that's part of what separates the people who make it from the ones that don't, is that perseverance. And a lot of these kids are not battle tested, because they've come up, and everybody gets a hug, kinda culture, and I'm not trying to like, sound like an old man, but you need to get punched in the mouth a couple times. Proverbially, like, you need to get, you need to feel like shit.

• 46:55Pablo Torre?

  No, we're gonna cut it before proverbially.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Yes. You need to be in situations.

• 46:59Pablo Torre?

  Roy Wood Jr. wants to punch children in the face.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  I can't believe that Roy Wood, that Pablo would have on this racist! Um, I, I just, I feel like, that's the, that's the thing that, that separates a lot of people. And sometimes that's what stalls me, because I can overthink things now. Because I have the resources, and I have the people I can bounce the ideas off of, and analyze it, and I can, well, let me look at the market and see who else is doing what, and then, instead of just putting something out there, because there's stuff you'll see, like some podcasts you were following three, four years ago, and you look at it now and go, wow, that really grew. And all they did was just keep doing it. It's not like they did anything magical. What's, what's the number?

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Eighty percent of podcasts? Where they, they don't make it a year? Or something like that? Like, for all the podcasts we have... This time next year, 80% of them will be gone.

• 47:55Pablo Torre?

  It is like NBA player probabilities. We're going towards the complete unlikelihood that this will work out for you.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  But it's not like those podcasts were canceled. They didn't all have a deal.

• 48:07Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  You just stopped.

• 48:09Pablo Torre?

  But, but, but, you know, the, it, I realize that the saving grace of our experiences online when it comes to dealing with feedback is the same thing I struggle with, which is that all of this is so disposable. The thing that shouldn't keep me up at night, that comment, is also the thing that plagues the stuff I want to last forever, that I am molding with this staff of people at this show and, and hoping, you know, endures.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  But why do you want that to endure?

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Is it not the deal, especially if we're talking,

• 48:54Speaker 01

  especially if we're talking current events, depending on the nature of the pod? Like, if it's, like, I would argue, a lot of what you've done, especially in the last year, has been seminal in having and creating deeper arguments and discussions around entire industries. Like, that's, those are things that are long lasting. Like, when the Clippers have to go, "Oh, what are we gonna do now? Pablo didn't drop the podcast." Like, that, that shapes industries. That's going to change, it's going to, like, fiscally affect industries. Like, that, I think, when you set out to do that, did you know that? Did you treat it like that? Or did you just create?

• 49:39Speaker 01

  And I, I feel like so much of what we do, it just, it don't belong to us once we hit upload. Like, once we put it out there, my most viral joke is a joke that ain't even from none of my specials.

• 49:52Pablo Torre?

  What, what's the joke?

• 49:53Speaker 01

  It's a Street Fighter joke. And, and I say it with that snark, because I didn't put any effort into, like, it was just, it was a joke. Yeah, I like it. I did it on Comedy Central, but it wasn't like, like, when you do an hour special, these are jokes that I've slaved over for two years and polished each corner to make sure that every political point is exactly the way I want. And then [BLEEP] off at the Comedy Center one night, I do a joke about how Street Fighter, the people in the background, aren't paying attention to the fighting.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Forty million views.

• 50:29Pablo Torre?

  This sumo wrestler's karate chopping a car over and over again.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Thousands of comments, and they're like, "This was brilliant." I'm like, "You did not watch my [BLEEP] about gun control, bitch?"

• 50:40Speaker 01

  I've got stuff way more fire than the Street Fighter joke. But if the people have decided that what I've put out, that that's what they want to consume, I'm cool with that. And if anything, it makes me go, "All right, if I want you to come to my stand-up for the subliminal political thing, then maybe I would benefit from having a little bit of, you know, something a little lighter in there." I think that, as much as we want to dismiss people, we want to dismiss negative consumers, but then, all of a sudden, we, the ones who love it, we allow that to fill our soul.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  So, does the person who did not like it, for a reason, like, what, what was the reason? And you don't have to get into the silly metrics of when somebody punched out in a clip, but a lot of that, it's what's happening now. Like, when you, like, you ever, you ever notice when you watch a movie preview? Now, there's a preview to the preview. There's literally a three-second preview of what you're about to watch, and then it says, "Preview starts now." And then it starts, it's like, what the [BLEEP] but...

• 51:51Speaker 01

  If I want people to come see the movie, that's what I gotta do. I, I, I-

• 51:56Pablo Torre?

  They're gonna chew up the food and spit it into our mouths and make sure that we are gonna digest it.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  And I hate it. I hate it. But then, if you hold firm, 'cause you know, we're not talking if you're Christopher Nolan or Scorsese or some- you, you, you don't have to follow those. The Ryan Coogler is not gonna give you the preview to the preview. But if you're average Joe Blow filmmaker trying to get your second film greenlit or your third film greenlit, and you don't do the things that, that, because the corporations don't care. The corporations follow the people who wanna be spoon-fed. If you don't follow that, they use that against you to justify that you don't have what it takes. And I still think that somewhere in the midst of our short attention spans and this idea that most consumers don't know any better what they're doing,

• 52:46Speaker 01

  somewhere in there, they do know. And you just have to sift through those results and really get to the bottom and see what the criticism is. Because sometimes, somewhere in the midst of all of that, there are valid criticisms. And that's part of what helped me when I was doing Last Comic Standing. It's like, "Oh, well, that joke is just like so-and-so's joke," or that, "That's a point. That's a lazy joke." "Uh, maybe I need to hear that. Maybe I need to be challenged a little bit more." So, you would hope to get that type of critique from your colleagues and people you respect. But every now and then, it, it, it's, it's cool, like, which is why I appreciate Reddit. 'Cause Reddit, to me, is like the most thoughtful [BLEEP] use.

• 53:31Pablo Torre?

  I mean, we're grading on a tremendous curve here.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm just saying, if I wanted, if, if I'm getting criticized or having my work critiqued, Reddit comments are probably what I would put at the top tier. Because there's a lot of thought. It's a long, nice, it's eight, nine paragraphs. It's really, it's really laid out. Like, 'cause, oh my god, 'cause the, the, the show we do on CNN, it's a remake of a British, British show that's been on 30 years. And so the Brits was all scared that we was gonna [BLEEP] their IP. And the Have I Got News For You British page, there's a sub-thread in there that's just critiquing every episode of the American version. And I was in that bitch every day. When we first got on air and they're like, "It's not as bad as I thought."

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Which is a standing ovation

• 54:22Speaker 01

  from a British person. Uh, but yeah, I, I just think that

• 54:29Speaker 01

  we want, we want to create these things that are heralded, unlauded, and revered. When the truth is, some people just want a Street Fighter joke. And ain't nothing I can do about that. So, if you don't laud what I want you to laud, I can't, I don't accept that as a loss. And also can't get annoyed with you because you, you like what you like. Now, it's not your fault that you like Street Fighter joke because you've been [bleep] and brainwashed into thinking [bleep] is all you should consume. And maybe you should, like, I like the fact that we have these weird documentaries now, like, I think that any documentary

• 55:13Speaker 01

  where the subject is part of the production of the documentary to some degree is inauthentic. Because, it's like when the person is producing their own biopic.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  "Are you gonna really tell us all the truth about when you was [bleep] so?"

• 55:34Speaker 01

  But if watching a doc that has the person in the doc is the only reason a doc was made. They get you to watch a doc and you otherwise wouldn't watch docs, fine. And hopefully the next one that's actually got some teeth to it, you'll turn that one on.

• 55:52Pablo Torre?

  I look forward to you, uh, as a person without a podcast. I look forward to you hosting a Street Fighter podcast that subtly transitions into a multi-part investigation into reparations.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  That's a good place to end.

• 56:12Pablo Torre?

  Roy Wood Jr., thank you for saying yes.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 56:15Pablo Torre?

  Thank you to all you guys for joining us.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Thank you all. Good to see you, brother. Thank you all.

• 56:29Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out from Meadowlark Media. And we are obligated journalistically to point out that Timothy de la Ghetto somehow is tied.

• 56:41Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.