Stand-Up Comedy Pt I

Chuck and Josh do their best to tackle “the craft,” which most normal people call stand-up comedy. Stand-up dates back to the vaudeville days but it really started to take off in the 60s when comics stopped wearing suits and started getting edgy. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:44Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:54Josh Clark?

  Waka waka, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And I just made sure to kick this two-part episode on stand-up comedy off in the worst way possible.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  You know what? This one has some COAs, unfortunately.

• 2:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, we're talking about genuine stand-up comedy, and you know, they're edgy. They push the envelope.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we're gonna, there are people throughout, peppered throughout this episode that, you know, some of them, they're like, bad people. Some of them have done bad things. But you can't talk about the history of stand-up comedy without talking about some bad people, as it turns out.

• 2:33Josh Clark?

  Are you talking about Frank Faye?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  I mean, there's a bunch of people throughout here.

• 2:38Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay. Well, I'm not familiar with a lot of the badness here, so let's just avoid it.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  That, and you know, this is a thing on stand-up comedy, so we're seeing our own A, because, like, you can't do justice even in a two-parter. Like, after we got all this together, I was like, oh, well, we're not even talking about truly weird stand-up, like Andy Kaufman and Zach Galifianakis, and we're not talking about this and this. And you just have to stop at a certain point and realize you can't cover something completely that's so deep and vast like this, you know?

• 3:16Josh Clark?

  For sure. Every once in a while, we record an episode, and then, like, the next day, I'm like, oh, I should've said this. I think that's gonna happen 15 or 20 times.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but we gotta let ourselves up, because I know we're gonna get emails, how could you not talk about blank?

• 3:32Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  It's just the deal, you know? It's too much to cover.

• 3:35Josh Clark?

  No, but shoot us those emails, especially ones we didn't bring up, because we might not have heard of them. And not only name-check them, send us your favorite joke of theirs, too.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  And I pledge to do a full episode on Andy Kaufman.

• 3:48Josh Clark?

  Okay. All right. Okay. Well, I pledge to do a full episode on Zach Galifianakis, then.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Hey, I'd do one on Zach in a second.

• 3:57Josh Clark?

  And one other COA, too, just to throw in. Some of these jokes are maybe slightly edgier than stuff we would normally say, but that's, you know, we're covering stand-up comedy, which is inherently edgier than what we normally do. All right. You ready?

• 4:12Speaker 01

  I'm ready.

• 4:13Josh Clark?

  We're talking about stand-up comedy, as we've said. And Livia helped us with this, and she points out that, basically, if you're talking about being funny in front of an audience, stand-up comedy is pretty much as old as humans are, as long, as old as human speech is, I would guess.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:31Josh Clark?

  Well, you could've made gestures that were funny, but to really just kind of shore it up, you wanna just zero in on vaudeville.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, a lot of this stuff we've covered in other episodes, it's funny, this is another one of those, we've danced around, like, we've done shows on specific comedians, The Science of Funny, and like, two or three other ones, and then, of course, vaudeville. But here we are with stand-up, but you have to start at vaudeville, because, you know, vaudeville had a lot of skits and stuff like that, but it wasn't too long before there were people, all of a sudden, whether they were hosting the night or something,

• 5:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  did something that resembled stand-up. And Charlie Case is, you know, one of those people that people say, like, hey, maybe he was the first person doing this.

• 5:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he was the son of a free-born black man and an Irish mother, and he was educated and became a lawyer and a salesman, but he also was known as a great storyteller. And so, starting in the, I think, actually, 1880, he joined vaudeville. And being a vaudeville performer of any race, he, whenever he talked about black culture, it was in a mocking way, he had to wear blackface, all that stuff. And eventually, he was like, I'm not really down with this. This is trite. So he moved on around 1900 to doing, essentially, what's a stand-up act.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, you know, a tried and true thing. He talked about his family a lot, and I found this part hysterical. At one point, his performance was, on the billing, was billed as the man who talks about his father, which could, you know, it's about, talking about parents is probably 90% of stand-up since then. But yeah, it was, you know, the 20th century had rolled around, and like I mentioned, being an MC kind of led, you know, at vaudeville, kind of led to, you know, hosting the night and telling jokes in between other acts, and that kind of morphed into what we would know as stand-up.

• 6:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's a guy, I already mentioned him, because you mentioned terrible people. His name was Frank Faye. He was the first one to really kind of take stand-up comedy out of the realm of, like, a pie in your face, or wearing baggy pants and suspenders, or making yourself the butt of the jokes at all. He was an acerbic wit, and he was very refined, and he gave us those kind of, like, the type of, the type of comedian like that David Letterman was in the vein of. But I really hesitate to even associate Letterman with Faye, because he was a Nazi and a virulent racist, too.

• 7:13Josh Clark?

  He really was a terrible person, but he, his form really created a certain type of stand-up comedian, and he was also one of the first stand-up comedians of any kind.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. And that's early 1900s. And then, you know, by the time you get to the 30s, you had something called the Borscht Belt, which were these Jewish resort communities up in the mountains in the Northeast, the Catskills and the Adirondacks. And, you know, I'm sure people who know anything about the history of stand-up know about the Borscht Belt. You know, comics would basically go and, like, summer there. They would do shows in New York City and stuff, but they would summer in the Catskills and the Adirondacks, just going, sometimes residencies, but going from resort to resort. You know, it was a kind of a Jewish medium at the time. A lot of jokes about Jewish life and Jewish culture and Jewish food, lots of self-deprecation.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  And this is where stand-up kind of take its, like, form that we know today.

• 8:12Josh Clark?

  Yes. And one of the kings of the Borscht Belt, who really broke out as a legendary stand-up comedian, was Henny Youngman. He was known as king of the one-liners, and he's best known for the line, "Take my wife, please." It's actually funnier than that. The full line is, "Women today are crazy. I mean, take my wife, please."

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was a social director at a resort, something called a tumbler, and this is where a lot of the stand-ups would get their start, as like, social chairs and social directors of these resorts.

• 8:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  And he was a big one. Like, this was a time where stand-up was, like, very much joke, joke-writing. It didn't, you know, we'll talk about the changes of stand-up over the years, where it morphed into, like, storytelling, and then alt comedy and all that stuff. But early stand-up, and you don't see a lot of that stuff anymore.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Brian Kiley, a pal of mine and a friend of the show, that was the, along with a couple of other guys, a monologue writer for Conan O'Brien for the entire run, and has written for the Academy Awards, and just like, a great throwback, like, joke-writing comedian that you don't see much anymore. So I love Brian's stuff.

• 9:25Josh Clark?

  Awesome. Shout out, Brian. There's a guy, there's a comedian named Jimmy Carr, who's British, who basically carries on the Henny Youngman mantle, but if I'm, it's way darker than anything Henny Youngman said. I turned up one that he was saying that he saw an ad for charity, and it said, "Little Zuki has to walk 13 miles a day just to fetch water." And I couldn't help thinking, she should move.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's dark.

• 9:56Josh Clark?

  It is pretty dark, but it's a one liner. That's all he does. Just like Henny Youngman did. Henny Youngman was known for doing like 50 jokes in eight minutes, which is less than 10 seconds a joke. Like that's, you just can keep people in stitches if you do that, right?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know, the Borscht Belt lasted way longer than I thought. Like it was a thing kind of through the 1970s and a lot of big comics got their start here. People like Mel Brooks and Jackie Mason and Sid Caesar. But Jerry Seinfeld even got his start in the Borscht Belt in the seventies at a venue, kind of one of the last Borscht Belt venues called Kutcher's Country Club, right there in the Catskills.

• 10:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And so the start of the, of standup comedy, especially as it came out of the Borscht Belt was very clubby, very Jewish, very male, but women were kind of, they kind of emerged a little later. I guess mid Borscht Belt, if it went into the seventies, Joan Rivers is a good example. And so was Jean Carroll. Both of them just basically, they broke a glass ceiling that was very much in place. And I think that, isn't Joan Rivers, her biography is what The Marvelous Mrs Maisel is based on?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think comedy wise, and I know sort of the look was based a little bit on Jean Carroll. So it was a bit of a mashup, but I quite, I think we, I watched the first couple of seasons of that show and quite enjoyed it.

• 11:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Well, Kevin Pollak's on it, friend of the show, Kevin Pollak.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  That's right. Pollak's great on it.

• 11:25Josh Clark?

  He started out as a standup too, didn't he?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:28Josh Clark?

  I just think of him as an actor almost through and through, but yeah, he was a funny standup.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. He famously got called to the couch with Carson. That was one of the big signs of respect. If you performed on The Tonight Show and Johnny Carson called you over to the couch afterward for a brief interview, that means like he liked you. So you get that stamp of approval.

• 11:46Josh Clark?

  Nice. I found a quick funny Jean Carroll joke. She said that she had a cold and the woman said, why don't you take something for it? And I said, make an offer. So we talked about the Borscht Belt in vaudeville. We also talked about the chitlin circuit, which was essentially the Borscht Belt for black comedians, a series of venues that black comedians played vaudeville-ish around the, the country, around the United States. And this is just like with the Borscht Belt, this is where black standup comedy started to emerge as well.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you can't get any better than Red Fox and Flip Wilson. Those guys definitely played the chitlin circuit as well as a very funny woman that who went by Moms Mabley onstage. And she had sort of a shtick, like she would dress up and had kind of an onstage persona. And as we'll see as we go, like there's lots of ways to skin a cat when it comes to standup, but one way is to be up there or something other than yourself. And that's what Moms Mabley did.

• 12:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah. One of the people who is usually pointed to is the guy who carried standup out of the resorts and into mainstream is Bob Hope, who's British. I did not know that, did you?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Uh, I think I do. He was born in Britain, but I don't, I don't know that he considered himself British.

• 13:08Josh Clark?

  So he was a, he was, his, one of his acts was about how rich he was and all that. It's very mid-century, but he, he also kind of broke tradition by having a team of writers working for him.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:23Josh Clark?

  And he would talk about current events, things that were going on like that day. You know, stuff that like, if you were looking through like Us Weekly today or something like that, you could get a bunch of jokes from. That's, that was his act. And he was also really well known for touring military bases around the world and performing. So he, he was the one who's like, hey, there's this thing called standup comedy and you guys should all start going to see it.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think Bob Hope is one of those guys where he, he was one of the first real big influencers of the, the craft. Because anyone that kind of followed after those years, if you ask them, they'll say like, like Bob Hope was kind of the guiding light.

• 14:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah. They actually based the soap opera guiding light on his life still.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  You should do standup. That's, that's gold.

• 14:15Josh Clark?

  Hey, we'll get to that about how being funny on a podcast doesn't necessarily make you a good, a good standup.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Well, I think you just spoiled that, didn't you?

• 14:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah. We'll edit in spoiler alert.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Sick comedians was sort of the next wave. In the fifties and sixties, there was a new style that kind of came around where it wasn't just like, hey, can you write a good joke? It was more like, hey, I've got a, a unique point of view, or I have a unique voice that's going to add to my act. And San Francisco was one of the cities where a lot of this is taking place, especially at a club called The Hungry Eye. And, you know, we'll go through a few of these guys, but Mort Saul was, was one of them. He started in 1953 and he wasn't doing one liners. He was like, he would sit down on stage with a newspaper sometimes and talk about like current events and politics and stuff like that.

• 15:14Josh Clark?

  Yes. And he kind of kicked off that preachy, hip, insightful, kind of biting, social commentary.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:26Josh Clark?

  Type of standup comedy. A lot of people associate that with Lenny Bruce. Mort Saul came first. One thing I saw about Mort Saul though, is he was, he was, I guess canceled in an early way. He, he kind of, he called it getting blacklisted. He said that the, the right never came after him, but that it was the liberals who supported Kennedy who kind of got him pushed to the side because they didn't like him attacking Kennedy. And his whole jam was going after whoever was in charge. That's who you attack. That's who you criticize because just by default, they were in charge. So they were probably doing something horrible too. But after it became, you know, cool to attack the establishment

• 16:08Josh Clark?

  again, after JFK was dead and America was mired in Vietnam, Mort Saul came back into fashion. But I thought that was interesting.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. Shelley Berman is noteworthy because he had a, kind of the first big comedy album that hit. It was in 1959 and the record was Inside Shelley Berman. And it was the first comedy record to go gold. And then the first Grammy award winning, like non-music Grammy award winner was Shelley Berman.

• 16:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Cute. It was cute stuff. Nothing like Mort Saul's stuff, but it was based on his personality, right? Not his ability to remember tired jokes.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:47Josh Clark?

  Dick Gregory, who's another, another one of this era too, he was really well known as being like a huge civil rights activist. He's come up several times in other non-comedy related episodes we've done. But he was also super funny too. And he started out as a standup. Apparently he started out because Hugh Hefner discovered him in 1961 and gave him time at his Playboy Club in Chicago.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Did you know Atlanta used to have a Playboy Club?

• 17:16Josh Clark?

  I didn't. I, I know pretty much every, every decent sized city did.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Oh, did they?

• 17:22Josh Clark?

  I think so. I could be wrong. If Atlanta had one back in the sixties, surely, you know? There was like a Kansas City one too, or something.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably. So Jonathan Winters is another that we should mention from early on. He did a lot of kind of character work that I don't think a lot of people were doing at the time. And he was one of the early people to kind of talk about the tragedies of his life in a funny way onstage because he, he would later on to be known as bipolar disorder, but he spent time in mental hospitals and he would take that stuff to the stage. And not many people were doing that kind of thing at the time.

• 18:00Josh Clark?

  No. And he was just totally making wacky fun of it. He, he called those places funny farms. Like it was not any, you know, tear jerking or gripping comedy from it, but just even making fun of it.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:14Josh Clark?

  For himself going through was something. Another big name of this era who was really different ish, he definitely had one foot solidly planted in the Borscht Belt still is Don Rickles. I think the funniest thing Don Rickles ever did was an inadvertent, unintentional facial expression where he got up to get the shotgun in Casino. I'm pretty sure it was Casino. When De Niro thinks that they're coming for him, Don Rickles gets up and goes and gets the shotgun and just the look on his face is hilarious.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  You think that's the funniest thing Don Rickles ever did?

• 18:51Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  I loved Rickles. I was a huge fan.

• 18:55Josh Clark?

  Really?

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, man. He was, he was great. Like I remember growing up, watching him on The Tonight Show and he would just send Carson into like stitches.

• 19:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that, that made it fun to watch Carson just lose it too.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was good stuff. And then you mentioned Lenny Bruce. You can't talk about this early generation without talking about Lenny Bruce. He was, he was a guy that kind of became, I mean, his comedy was great, but he kind of became famous for getting arrested. He would talk very frankly onstage in the, you know, like late fifties and sixties about sex and about religion and racism and stuff that was pretty controversial to talk about onstage, such that he was arrested many times on obscenity charges and was a huge, huge influence on people, the people that followed him.

• 19:42Josh Clark?

  Huge. He's also controversial in that, like calling him a comedian is, is odd because he wasn't that funny. It was just, he was a really important person in comedy and also in free speech in the United States too.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  I think he was very funny.

• 20:00Josh Clark?

  There were, yeah, he had some funny stuff, but I, yeah, I just, I mean, I guess I'm, I'm speaking for everybody from my opinion. Thanks for bringing me back down to earth, man.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, comedy is one of those things. It's, it's so subjective on what people find funny. Like I've had people say, you've got to watch this comedian special that I just literally did not laugh once during. And there are other people that I know I love that other people can't stand. It's just, it's, I think even, I think it's one of the most subjective sort of art forms, you know, even more so than some others.

• 20:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. Wrapping this up, and then I say we take a break. This was the fifties. This was a huge shift in comedy and Time Magazine noted it in 1959. They labeled these kinds of comedians that were personality based, sick comedians or sicknicks.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:50Josh Clark?

  In a very kind of loving way, but also in like a what, what the heck is going on here way. It was, it was pretty interesting, but I say we take a break and we're going to jump in. We're going to basically pass the sixties and really go into the seventies.

• 21:04Speaker 01

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• 21:05Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:25Josh Clark?

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  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 22:28Josh Clark?

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• 22:31Speaker 01

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• 22:47Speaker 03

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• 22:55Josh Clark?

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• 23:18Josh Clark?

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• 23:31Josh Clark?

  Sure.

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• 23:42Josh Clark?

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• 24:00Josh Clark?

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• 24:39Speaker 01

  All right, so we're out of the 50s. We're into the 60s in the wake of Lenny Bruce. We get a bunch of people highly influenced by him, willing to take a little more chances and a little more risks, I think, with their comedy. They talk about sometimes the holy trinity of the counterculture comedians of the 70s and late 60s. And that would be George Carlin and Richard Pryor and the great Robert Klein.

• 25:05Josh Clark?

  What? I don't even consider him counterculture. That was the only thing. He is funny, for sure. But he's much more observational and much less political.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 25:17Josh Clark?

  Carlin, I went and watched, he apparently started out like telling jokes in suits and like they were pretty clean. And I went and watched one of his early performances, and he's almost unrecognizable. And then he starts doing, you know, conversations with two people by himself. And I was like, oh, yeah, there's Carlin. But he switched over to the counterculture in the early 70s. And one of the, one of the things he became quickly famous for was the seven words routine, which are seven words you can't say on television, which also were words that I think Lenny Bruce got arrested for saying, like each one.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then, of course, Richard Pryor was the third. And he's another guy who started out a little more straight-laced. And then, you know, I feel like all these guys, what the switch was, was I'm going to start being myself a little bit more on stage and having the courage to kind of like, you know, speak in my own language. And whether it's like dirty words or in Richard Pryor's case, sort of really accepting like that he's a, you know, one of the great black comedians. And he can just sort of let loose.

• 26:24Josh Clark?

  Yes. He, he was, I guess, often pointed to as like the first black comedian who truly removed like the palatable jokes for white audiences. Like he just, he, he basically was a black comedian in front of white audiences that didn't code-switch. That's what it's called. He was probably the first black comedian to not code-switch. And then it's also even hard, it's not that hard. But I think of Richard Pryor more as just like a mega movie star because he was in so many great movies of my youth, like Stir Crazy, Silver Streak, Hear No Evil, See No Evil. Those were all what? Those were with Gene Wilder.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:09Josh Clark?

  Busting Loose, Moving, Brewster's Millions.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  What else?

• 27:14Josh Clark?

  Harlem Nights.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Okay, what else?

• 27:17Josh Clark?

  There's plenty others, but those are the ones that I watched a lot when I was younger.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, he, I mean, as you'll see, a lot of these comedians went on to have great careers as actors.

• 27:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Which is not always a given because a lot of stand-up comedians are really, really bad actors.

• 27:31Josh Clark?

  It's true. And it's really surprising how many of them become great actors. Like Tom Hanks started out as a stand-up.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, Tom Hanks is great.

• 27:41Josh Clark?

  But Peter Scolari? No.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  And then Robert Klein was the third of that trio. He grew up going to some of these Jewish kind of summer camps and resorts in the Borscht Belt and worked at some of them. And so he kind of got that education there. And he did, he did a lot of political stuff, a lot of social commentary, as well as just his Robert Klein-ness. And he was another guy that was really influential.

• 28:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and just beloved for his personality, like who he was.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:12Josh Clark?

  You know, like he told lots of stories. He didn't have like one liners or punchlines necessarily.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:20Josh Clark?

  So one of the other big things that happened in the 70s was comedy clubs started opening up. And the two that really kind of quickly jumped to the forefront was the improv and the comedy store. One of the other things that those, it kind of went hand in hand with these comedy clubs opening up across the country, was a switch from social commentary more to like observational stuff, too.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and those, those comedy clubs, all of a sudden, you had these places where you could, you know, go up a few times a week and really workshop your material. And, you know, very small audiences generally at these places. I think the improv eventually expanded into a chain. It started in, in New York City, but expanded to 15 clubs eventually. And then the comedy store, I know we talked about the comedy store before in other episodes, but it really changed the game in Los Angeles in 1972 when Mitzi Shore, Polly Shore's mom, took it over when she got it, won it in a divorce settlement and was, I mean, ran the show there for decades, basically.

• 29:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, she also went on to found the company that became Comedy Central, from what I understand. So, yeah, she was a huge influence in comedy. And then I also mentioned one of the things that was happening hand in hand with the 70s comedy clubs was that switch from political and social commentary necessarily, more to like personal stuff, observational stuff. And I found a great example of that in Elaine Boosler, who definitely helped kind of usher that in from the late 70s into the 80s when she was really big. But she had this joke that she said like she has six locks on her door now. And when she goes out, she only locks every other one because she figures that if somebody wants to come pick her lock, no matter how long they stand there,

• 30:17Josh Clark?

  they're always going to be locking three of them.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  The great Elaine Boosler.

• 30:22Josh Clark?

  That's great. Like it has, it makes a social commentary and crime exists, but that's about as far as it goes, you know?

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, she's, she's awesome.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Late night talk shows is where stand-up took a huge jump, too. And Ed Sullivan started all of that out in the 1940s. And then, obviously, when The Tonight Show came about in the 1950s, like I talked about eventually Johnny Carson, you know, anointing you as a very big deal as a stand-up comic. And then like records. I know we mentioned Mort Saul and some of these other guys with their early records. But once LPs came around and all of a sudden you could get your comedy on a, on a record and win a Grammy for it and like make money selling comedy records, that was sort of the early version of like the stand-up special that we have now was The Comedy Record.

• 31:14Josh Clark?

  Yes. I say that we take a break and come back and talk about some of the comics from this era, okay?

• 31:22Speaker 01

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 31:42Josh Clark?

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• 31:52Speaker 01

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• 32:05Josh Clark?

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• 32:20Speaker 01

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• 32:45Josh Clark?

  Everyone has a story to tell. What's yours? The moment you met your partner, landed that promotion? For people living with a rare disease, life can feel divided into before the diagnosis and all the after moments that follow. On Voices of Vivgart, Vivgart is also known as its generic name, Fgartigamod Alpha Fcab. You'll hear powerful stories from people facing challenges and embracing a life with a rare disease.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Join host Andra Stratten as she guides listeners through honest conversations about life after diagnosis. You'll hear how each guest worked with her care team on their treatment plan, as well as their personal challenges, setbacks, progress, and moments of connection.

• 33:21Josh Clark?

  These stories reveal that life is bigger than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Listen to Voices of Vivgart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:38Josh Clark?

  Hey Chuck, let's say you want to settle one of life's most important questions. What was the greatest era of skateboarding? Well, all you have to do is go to YouTube Premium, because YouTube Premium is the perfect place to investigate. Like, let's start by searching great skateboard videos and see where it takes us.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, of course, the mid 80s to mid 90s would probably be the greatest era of skateboarding. Like, I know that's our era, but even skate historians say so.

• 34:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well, the 80s are when Mike McGill invented the McTwist. Check this out. 720 degrees midair on a half-pipe.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 34:12Josh Clark?

  Amazing.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  How does someone even do that?

• 34:14Josh Clark?

  I don't know, man. It's just crazy. And that's where it came from, the mid 80s, thanks to Bones Brigade member Mike McGill. Plus also, the 80s were the era of Nodis Kappas, who's one of the most amazing street skaters ever. Check out this video of him rail sliding on the roll bar of a pickup truck.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  That looks like a video game.

• 34:33Josh Clark?

  It does. It's pretty amazing. I could watch skate videos all day, Chuck.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 34:37Josh Clark?

  And with YouTube Premium, exploring a topic like this is even more seamless because it has ad-free viewing, which means we can watch classic skate clips uninterrupted, and we can really dig into that debate about what the greatest era of skating is.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and with background play, it lets us keep listening with our screen locked, which is great if we're doing something else, which we always are, but you still want to hear the video content. And get this, with offline downloads, we can save videos ahead of time and watch them anywhere, even without Wi-Fi.

• 35:04Josh Clark?

  So back to that debate. If you go to the search bar of YouTube Premium and search for golden era of skateboarding, you can see that there's a bunch of different videos that come up, and they're from a bunch of different eras. There's like people skating in old pools in the 70s. There's, of course, the 80s, which were amazing to us. But there's still tons of people skating today that are amazing, like this guy Antoine Dixon. He was still doing amazing stuff this year in 2026. Check out this little video of him. He's amazing, and he's skating right now.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, so after reviewing the evidence, we may finally have our answer. Or maybe we've just uncovered more skateboarding debates we need to settle. But either way, that's the beauty of YouTube Premium. It's a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy everything you already love about YouTube. So if you like YouTube, fill up Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

• 36:12Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck, so we're back. And there, thanks to comedy albums, thanks to TV, like, there were suddenly way more places for comics to perform rather than just clubs and also get discovered. Joan Rivers is a good example of that. She started doing stand-up all over the place in New York. She had some hilarious bits. And then she got her big break on The Tonight Show, and a lot of people, from Steven Wright, one of the most amazing comics of all time, to Mitch Hedberg, another amazing comic, too, all got their break on late-night shows. And she was one of the early ones. And so she became a regular

• 36:56Josh Clark?

  because she killed so hard on the late-night shows that she almost took over for Carson. We've talked about this before. She upset him by trying to get her own show without talking to him first, getting his blessing first. But that's how good she was at late night. And she started out as just a stand-up comedian in the little clubs in New York, before the improv even.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, if you were a comedian back then, it wasn't like today where it's a, it was just starting to become a thing where like, hey, you can have a full career just doing this. Because a lot of these people did other stuff. Like, they acted. I know Joan Rivers acted in plays and movies when she wasn't getting booked. Red Fox did the same. He was, he was on the chitlin' circuit, but he was too raunchy for white audiences at the time. So like, he would put out an album, and they may not even sell it in mainstream stores. But then he becomes a huge star when he is an actor on Sanford and Son, one of my favorite shows as a kid.

• 38:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I wasn't allowed to watch it because my mom thought Red Fox was a dirty old man.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  He was.

• 38:08Josh Clark?

  I found a hilarious Red Fox joke. He said that, "I carry a knife now. I read in a white magazine that all black people carry knives, so I ran out and bought me one."

• 38:19Speaker 01

  He was great. I mean, he wasn't filthy on Sanford and Son, so I feel bad that you didn't get to watch the show.

• 38:25Josh Clark?

  Oh, I've watched it, for sure.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, you snuck it?

• 38:29Josh Clark?

  I watched it a little later. Yeah, I had plenty of other stuff to watch, like Flintstones and things like that. So I just saved it for later. I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much because I was five years younger than you. So I had to wait until I got a little older to really think it was funny. But it is a great show.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Great show. Steve Martin was another one. He was a comedy writer. He plays the banjo, I think, as most people know. So he would work that into his early nightclub shows and worked as a comedy writer for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and other variety shows. And then after SNL, and if you've seen the great documentary on Steve Martin, it's a two-part documentary. It's just fantastic. But he was, he was the first superstar of comedy. There had not been people that sold out basketball arenas before Steve Martin. And it was, it's an incredible thing to watch in this documentary. Like, just what a, he was like the, one of the most famous people

• 39:30Speaker 01

  in the world in the 1970s, and then just stopped, just walked away from it all and never did stand-up again, so he could do movies.

• 39:39Josh Clark?

  I know, which is sad because some of the stuff he was doing was so creative. Like, I watched his comedy act for dogs, which he did on Carson, where he had like four or five dogs just lined up right in front of him. And he told the viewers to bring, "Bring your dogs because this is gonna kill them. They're gonna love this." And then he did an act geared toward making dogs laugh. So they were all dog-centric jokes, not, not like about, like to owners, but to the dogs. And then at one part, he plays a little, like, a bit on a dog whistle that you can't, can't hear anything. It's just, it's amazing. And this is like the kind of stuff he was doing, not just standing there telling jokes, but like hilarious bits. So, yeah, just, he should have been a superstar.

• 40:24Josh Clark?

  He was so good. And I wish he was, I wish he would still do stand-up once in a while, you know? I can't imagine how many tickets he would sell if he came back and did stand-up once.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, he kind of does it, you know, he and Martin Short have a roadshow that they do together, which is essentially a two-hander stand-up. But, you know, in the documentary, he talks about just, he got so big that he was doing routines where the, you know how the audience will sing along at like a concert?

• 40:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Where the audience was saying punchlines, you know, 20,000 people saying the punchline out loud with them. And it just, I think it got to be too much. And he was just like, that's not what this was meant to be. And, I mean, he had to, it takes a lot of bravery and guts to just be like, you know what? I'm done with that part of my life. He totally walked away.

• 41:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like Dave Chappelle would later on, 30 years later.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, Eddie Murphy in between. Although there's rumors that Eddie's working on a stand-up set, which would just, that would, oh, man. That would be incredible.

• 41:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so that's Steve Martin, superstar. Another superstar that came out of the 70s was Robin Williams, who rose to fame, like, just completely fueled by cocaine and just totally out of his mind. And I assume that that's why he was always like, you know, going nuts and bouncing all over the place. Apparently, the exact opposite happened with him. Cocaine calmed him down. So he was naturally like that. And when he was mellow, it's because he was on coke, which I found quite interesting.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Well, he was obviously Mork from Orc, which debuted as a character on Happy Days in 1978. And then he got his own show, Mork and Mindy, that same year, another favorite show of mine as a kid. And he's another one of those that, like, he always loved stand-up and like, kept doing stand-up alongside of movies. Like, once he became even a dramatic actor at times. But he was, he was still loved going on stage and doing stand-up. And they've heard lots of stories about him, like, showing up at the Comedy Store and stuff, like, even in his later years and like, showing up to do a set, and it would just like floor people.

• 42:38Josh Clark?

  I'm sure. He also, remember, he appeared in our Coco Live episode because he got to go hang out with Coco for a while, and they just communicated.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were buddies.

• 42:52Josh Clark?

  Okay, so we've got like 20,000-seat stadiums with Steve Martin. You've got raunchy comedy albums with Redd Foxx. You've got Joan Rivers hosting late-night stuff as a guest. Cable was another thing that came along that really changed things for comedians for a couple of reasons. One of the big reasons was they could say stuff on cable specials that they could not say anywhere else except in person. And now you were saying this instead of to 50 people in a small club. You're saying this to millions of people who got to watch your stuff. And then you went from 50-seat small clubs to, you know, pretty large venues after that.

• 43:33Josh Clark?

  And then also, instead of like five minutes on a late-night show, you would have like an hour-long special. So you did your entire set. And that really changed things, as I said.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Like HBO, it just can't be overstated what an important thing HBO was to the rise of comedy in the United States, because that's where those first comedy specials started appearing. I think Robert Klein was actually the very first HBO comedy special in 75. And then Steve Martin, I think, kind of right after that. I almost called him Steven Martin. But then, and I know we talked about this in the Rodney Dangerfield episode, when Rodney started the HBO Young Comedian Specials, that run of 19 years from 76 to 95, I just, I remember watching this when I was a kid and seeing all these, like Sam Kinison and

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Roseanne Barr and Rita Rudner, Jerry Seinfeld, that's where he got his start. Like, I was just a kid sitting around watching, like, every bit of stand-up I could get my hands on, and HBO was definitely the place.

• 44:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Oh, it definitely was, especially before Comedy Central, too. Yeah. Basically, everything I ever put on HBO was amazing, because they didn't just give a special to just anybody. The cool thing was, is you didn't have to be an already-established stand-up. Like you said, Jerry Seinfeld got his start on that. You just had to be really good at what you did.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:03Josh Clark?

  One of the other ways that HBO helped, too, they helped a lot of up-and-coming black comedians on Def Comedy Jam, which ran for years and years and years. And essentially, any huge black comedian that you know of today got their big break on Def Comedy Jam. It was like that important.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Huge hats off to producer Russell Simmons for that. It was hosted by Martin Lawrence. And yeah, I mean, you name it. If you were, ended up being a famous black comedian in the 1990s, there's a pretty good chance you started on Def Comedy Jam. And that would lead, I know this is jumping ahead a bit in time, but to the Kings of Comedy Tour.

• 45:46Josh Clark?

  Man, that was so good.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  And then the original Kings of Comedy film of that tour from Spike Lee in 2000, of course, that was Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer, and R.I.P. the great Bernie Mac.

• 45:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. He was great. His show was pretty great, too.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  I loved the Bernie Mac Show.

• 46:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, still holds up.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I bet.

• 46:08Josh Clark?

  So, we mentioned Comedy Central, and that started in 1991, even though Mitzi Shore had established something before it, a few years before. Not sure why that's important, but I felt like I needed to mention it again. And the whole thing, I don't know if you remember this, I'm sure you do. It was just basically shows that were clips of comedians doing stand-up. That's how it started. And it was so pure, that that's all you needed. They would just figure out different ways to package it, short attention span theater, stand-up, stand-up, or whatever.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:44Josh Clark?

  But that's all it was. It was just stand-ups doing stand-up clip after clip, and it was wonderful.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was great. Those, you're right, there was a purity to those early days of Comedy Central. They did have shows that would come along, but they were shows from comedians like the great Chappelle Show, and I know a show that you and I both love, Dr. Katz Professional Therapist.

• 47:08Josh Clark?

  For sure. I'll always remember Don Marra saying, like, you can't, you can't get to a cat, like, you just can't get under their skin. Like, you could throw them across the room, and the cat would be like, "Thanks, my man. I was going this way anyway."

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Don Marra is so great.

• 47:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So yeah, Comedy Central was an enormous driver, too, as you can imagine. And Saturday Night Live, as we mentioned, like, it's pretty difficult to overstate the importance that Saturday Night Live's had on launching, like, stand-up comedians into stardom.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you know, we already mentioned Eddie Murphy, but that's where he got his start at age 19. Again, I highly recommend his documentary. It's really, really good. And then he had his proteges to follow after he put out his two kind of groundbreaking comedy movies, Delirious and Raw, both of which I think a lot of Gen Xers can kind of quote by heart.

• 48:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Let's see, what else, Chuck?

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Well, Chris Rock, he was one of those proteges. So, he came out of that Eddie Murphy school, was on the SNL cast, and had a nice run of HBO specials, too.

• 48:17Josh Clark?

  Okay, so, one of the other things, this is just, I love this part, because it's so nostalgic for me, but one of the things that people figured out pretty early on is you could take a stand-up comedian, and even if they couldn't act, they could at least pretty much act like themselves. So, shows that were based on that comedian's life, where they, they played themselves, like Seinfeld is an excellent example. Those have come out over the years, and some of them have been just amazing. Like, Seinfeld, obviously, was on for almost 10 years, no, more than 10 years, 11 years. And The Drew Carey Show was on for almost 10 years. Jamie Foxx Show was on for five. Bernie Mac was on for five. And it just keeps going on.

• 49:02Josh Clark?

  And then others didn't have quite as much staying power, but they weren't necessarily terrible. They just didn't draw the audience that the execs expected. Like, The Norm Show, or Whitney, or Mulaney, all had very short runs, but they were all based around stand-up comedians.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Louis CK had a couple of runs on TV. He had his, he had a sitcom, like an onstage, multicam sitcom called Lucky Louis, which not a lot of people saw, I feel like. He got a lot more attention with his show just called Louis. But, you know, Seinfeld was very famously, when he won an Emmy, got up on stage, I don't know if you remember this, and grabbed the Emmy and said, "I am a bad actor." So he was always very upfront about the fact that, like, you know, I'm not necessarily an actor, but I guess I'm myself enough on TV.

• 49:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  And then also want to shout out the Sarah Silverman program.

• 49:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Not only was that a great show, but a lot of, like, alt comedians got their start either acting or writing for that show.

• 50:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And that also kind of grew out of Mr. Show, which was a big deal for alt comedy, as we'll see.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:16Josh Clark?

  And Sarah Silverman was on, she was one of the actors on that show, too.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, those were all sitcoms, basically, where, you know, and they weren't all playing themselves, like, as comedians in real life. Like, Mad About You, it wasn't about a, you know, Paul Reiser, the comedian. There were other shows, sort of like Mad About You, where there were comedians playing either thinly veiled versions of themselves, or kind of like in Roseanne's case, she kind of took her act and formed that into the show, Roseanne. Obviously, The Cosby Show, Ellen, Steve Harvey, Everybody Loves Raymond, George Lopez. I haven't seen a lot of these shows, Home Improvement, and the great Bob Newhart Show. And we got to shout out Tig Notaro and her great show, One Mississippi.

• 51:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, she didn't play herself in that?

• 51:09Speaker 01

  She did not play herself, I don't think. I'm trying to remember now. I really liked the show. It had a couple of seasons, but I don't think she played a comedian. I'm trying to remember now, because I don't want to get called out.

• 51:24Josh Clark?

  So, I got you. So, there's also, at the same time, while people are standing there with a microphone, and there's a bar stool with like a vodka tonic on it, or something like that, during the 80s and 90s, there are also people doing their own thing, still. You got to shout out Gallagher, who definitely did his own thing.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:45Josh Clark?

  You have to shout out another prop comic, Carrot Top.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 51:50Josh Clark?

  You could shout out Jeff Dunham, who we talked about in our ventriloquist episode.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:57Josh Clark?

  Andrew Dice Clay was another one. He had his own shtick. And not only did he have a comedy album called The Day the Laughter Died, which I grew up on, he was also, he starred in his own movie, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. Did you ever see that?

• 52:12Speaker 01

  I never saw that, and I don't know why, because I really was into Dice for a while when I was in high school.

• 52:19Josh Clark?

  Did you dress like him?

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no, nothing like that. I just thought he was very funny.

• 52:24Josh Clark?

  He had some very recitable jokes.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:29Josh Clark?

  One other comedy album that was really influential on me at the time was Dennis Leary's No Cure for Cancer. That was really great, too.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was never into Dennis Leary, but I, but I got it. I thought his MTV stuff was pretty fun.

• 52:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  And you know what? I'm just now remembering, I think Tig Notaro played, I think it was one of those slightly different versions, because I think she played like a radio host or something, and not a comedian.

• 52:54Josh Clark?

  That's like Steve Harvey. I think he played a radio DJ or something like that.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so she stole Steve Harvey's bit.

• 52:59Josh Clark?

  So, I say we sign off for episode one, and we'll come back with episode two. But there's one thing I wanted to say that I didn't get to, but I real, I found out from researching this. You know that famous saying that ginger did everything Fred did, only backwards and in heels?

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 53:18Josh Clark?

  That's Joan Rivers.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Oh, that was her original joke?

• 53:21Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

• 53:24Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, that's it. Are we gonna do anything, aside from tell people our email?

• 53:29Speaker 01

  I don't think so. You know, we'll come back with part two, I guess, probably on, we'll probably do a Tuesday, Thursday, and we'll pick up with alt comedy in the 90s there.

• 53:37Josh Clark?

  Okay, so we'll, we'll see you guys Thursday. And in the meantime, if you want to send us your favorite comedian and their favorite joke, send it off to [email protected].

• 54:04Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 54:19Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford ability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today, and a great value tomorrow. Shop Toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Introducing Voices of Vivgard. Vivgard is also known as its generic name, Fgard Tigamod Alpha F Cab, and this new show features firsthand stories from people living with a rare disease.

• 55:01Josh Clark?

  Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of Vivgard. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. I am here to talk to you about Dude Wipes, who offer fragrance-free wipes that are made with 99% water and plant-based ingredients. So they're gentle enough for sensitive skin, but they're tough enough for even the worst messes. Water cleans better, and Dude Wipes flushable wipes deliver textbook freshness and ultimate clean.

• 55:42Josh Clark?

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