Comedian Josh Johnson On: Handling News Cycle Anxiety, His Insane Work Ethic, and Why AI is BS

Plus: Why acceptance isn't the same as resignation, a trick for gaining perspective, and the role faith plays in his life. Josh Johnson is an Emmy-nominated writer, stand-up comedian, actor, and NAACP award-winner from Louisiana by way of Chicago. He was just named as the newest correspondent on Comedy Central's Emmy & Peabody Award-winning program The Daily Show, where he was previously a writer for the past six years. Johnson is also a former writer and performer on NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he made his late-night debut in 2017. In addition, he is Comedy Central's 'most watched comedian ever' with 40M+ views to date across their platforms. In this episode we talk about: The difference between accepting a problem and simply giving up Why some anxiety is a rational response, not overthinking How he manages anxiety while covering the news every day on The Daily Show A simple trick for judging whether something is actually worth your worry What it's like growing up in church (and questioning parts of it as an adult) Why he thinks comedy helps people face hard realities instead of avoiding them The habit behind posting a new hour of comedy every single week for three years Why he believes AI's promised breakthroughs haven't actually shown up Why he thinks the public still has power to reject where AI is headed The advice about finishing your work that changed how he creates Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Additional Resources: This episode is sponsored by: iRESTORE: Unlock your best hair & skin with @iRestorelaser and HUGE savings on iRESTORE with code HAPPIER at irestore.com/HAPPIER http://irestore.com/HAPPIER! #irestorepod Cash App: Download Cash App Today: click.cash.app/ui6m/oh9jnxlq https://click.cash.app/ui6m/oh9jnxlq #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N. A., pursuant to a license from Visa U. S. A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Savings provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. OneSkin: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code HAPPIER at www.oneskin.co/HAPPIER https://www.oneskin.co/HAPPIER #oneskinpod To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

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

• 0:03Dan Harris?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Today, we have a fascinating, rangy, and super interesting conversation with the comedian Josh Johnson. We talk about how wild the mind is. We talk about dealing with the anxiety of the news cycle, the difference between acceptance and resignation, his extraordinary work ethic, and the kind of healthy obsession he has with comedy. And stay tuned, because after I say thank you, we actually have a long and really interesting discussion about AI and his very powerful negative feelings about AI. Just a little bit more on Josh before we dive in

• 0:48Dan Harris?

  here. He is one of the hosts and correspondents on The Daily Show, on Comedy Central. He's got a comedy special, an excellent one, on HBO Max called Symphony. And on his YouTube channel, he, and this gets to his work ethic, he has, for three years, posted a new hour of comedy every week. Take that in. A new hour of comedy every week for three years. Josh Johnson, a rising star in the comedy world, really interesting, really smart. Josh Johnson, welcome to the show.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  How's it going?

• 1:24Dan Harris?

  Going great. Nice to see you.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Nice to see you.

• 1:26Dan Harris?

  I'm a fan.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. Nice to meet you.

• 1:29Dan Harris?

  I want to play you a little clip, just to get us started. This is a clip of you.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Oh, well, uh-oh. One of the main things they talk about in meditation is that you should not, you cannot beat yourself up when you get distracted from meditation and your mind starts to wander. You just notice your mind wandering, bring yourself back to the point of not wandering, and then hold on to that moment for as long as you can. And then you'll start to think about stuff, but just come back. You'll be fine. And eventually, you'll get so good at not wandering that you'll really have like a calm mind. And it won't be every day, and it won't be all the time. But when you put your intention to it, you'll have a calm mind. So I sat down, I'm gonna meditate. I'm gonna, okay. I tried to like crisscross

• 2:15Speaker 01

  applesauce my legs, and I was realizing, I was like, mm, my right gonna fall asleep. I don't know why I'm not as flexible as I should be. And so I was just sitting, put my feet together and everything. I was like, okay.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Just breathe. Just breathe. Just think about your breath. Hold on to the ideas of your breath. Just think about how you're breathing. That's how you stay present. Every breath is important. Being present is important. Don't think about anything else. Don't think about how we left the gold standard, and so now there's really nothing but fear and anxiety backing up the dollar and the sort of like weighted debt system that we live in, because it really is the only thing holding us together, is like the expectation that it can't possibly fall apart. Because if it ever fell apart, it would fall apart for everyone. It's basically like our economy, our government is holding a gun to the heads of us and every other nation at the same time. And if we, and if we at all stop this

• 3:19Speaker 01

  thing, if we ever stop this machine from running, maybe we could like release ourselves from the idea of this like economic, like if we're being honest, like an economic enslavement to the dollar and to the ideas behind the dollar, and we could end up in a better world, a world where like maybe you could actually work with some sort of meritocracy for your, both your efforts and for your work. And if we got there, if we, if we were able to do that, I wandered. I wandered. I made me go on, okay. All right, all right. And so I went ahead and I stopped meditating.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  I stopped meditating. Maybe I'll start again one day. But I stopped meditating because it was bad for my mental health. At least the way I was doing it, because I was doing it wrong. It was basically just me crashing out with my eyes closed in a quiet room with a drippy faucet.

• 4:19Dan Harris?

  So I play that because I'm just curious. Is that your actual experience with meditation? Have you ever gone back to it since your gold standard jag?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I try to go back to it. But the thing, this is, this is my other thing about meditation, anxiety, even being depressed sometimes like that, is that like, this is not a popular thing to say, but sometimes those emotions are just like right. And that is a hard thing to sit with. Do you know what I mean? Like, sometimes you're anxious, and it's like, all right, maybe you're anxious because you're overthinking. Or maybe you're actually anxious because there are several reasons to actually be anxious right now. And so it's not as if I don't think meditation will help me, but it's more that even in the getting better at meditating, and even in staying within some sort of calmness, it, it changes your approach to like a present situation. It doesn't actually change the

• 5:13Speaker 01

  present situation. Do you know what I mean? Like, if you are in a bank heist, you're sitting there, and you've got, and you've got the zip ties on your wrist, we can breathe. It's not gonna change where you are. And so, and I don't want it to sound like it's frivolous by not changing where you are, because it would be much better to be able to be calm during a bank heist than to be freaking out and having a, what some would call an appropriate amount of anxiety, but it doesn't help you, and then you give yourself a panic attack. Like, obviously, that is not ideal either. But I think that as I get older, the thing that I'm trying to come to terms with, whether it's therapy, or it's meditation, or it's just like an overall outlook on life, is that there are certain

• 5:57Speaker 01

  things you can control, which is yourself, but then the, all the other things that you cannot control will still exist, no matter your approach to them. And so, so that is where my meditation's at. It's, it's actually why I want to get better at meditating, is so that I can hold on to my own attention longer, and so that I can like, address problems from a place of real conscious intention.

• 6:24Dan Harris?

  I think that's spot on. My, the way it, the way I experience it with meditation, therapy, whatever modality designed to regulate your nervous system, it doesn't change external reality. Donald Trump is still in the White House.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:39Dan Harris?

  And how do I want to be in the face of this? How do, I want to be maximally effective? And being calm, not anesthetized, but calm enough so that I can think clearly, that's where these tools come in handy. Does that make sense?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  That, that does make sense. And it's actually, I got in an interesting, I won't say argument, because it didn't rise to the level, but we, we definitely, my friend and I were having some conversation where maybe I wasn't expressing myself clearly enough, or maybe they didn't like my explanation, but I was talking to them about the concept of like acceptance in the face of a problem. And, and I was saying that in order to address a problem, you have to accept the problem. And, and by that, I just mean you have to accept that there is a problem.

• 7:25Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  You, you can't be like, oh, but also I don't care. Or also, it'll work itself. It's like, if it's a problem, then it's a problem. And I think that they were hung up on the, I don't even know if semantics is the right word for it, but they got hung up on the wording of accepting the problem, as in, I just will take it, or I'll just like sit with it. And it's like, no, it's just addressing it. And then acceptance was maybe not as good of a word as addressing, but I was trying to address through a real contemplation over, this is how it is. And if you don't like the Donald Trumps in the White House, what are we gonna do about that? That, there is an acceptance about that fact.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  And then what you do from it here on out is like, it can, you can only get to that step by accepting what the problem is.

• 8:15Dan Harris?

  Yes. I don't think it surprised you that I'm, you're right, and your friend's wrong. I'm, I'm being, I'm being harsh, but I do agree with you.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:24Dan Harris?

  Acceptance is different from passivity or resignation. Acceptance is just not being at war with reality.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:29Dan Harris?

  But, okay, yes, there are problems. I can see them clearly. Then I act. So it's acceptance and then engagement, which is exactly what I think I was hearing from you.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yes, because they were like, oh, and we weren't even talking about Trump being in office, but they were like, no, I don't accept that thing. And I'm like, yes, you don't accept it in that you don't want it to be happening, but like, and then every once in a while, you'll have a conversation with somebody that makes you feel like you don't have a grasp on your own language. This is my native language. This is how I've been speaking since I was a little kid. But for whatever reason, we're having our wires crossed, because then I was like,

• 9:05Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yes, I also don't accept it as in I will do nothing about it.

• 9:09Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  But we need to move together in the reality that this, that this problem exists.

• 9:14Dan Harris?

  Acceptance is a tricky word, because people hear it as resignation or passivity. Maybe another way to say it would be just clear seeing.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Yes, if you had been there, we probably wouldn't have even had the argument.

• 9:26Dan Harris?

  You know what? You just need my phone number.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:28Dan Harris?

  The next time this, this happens.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Yes, if you could have stepped in and been like, he means clear seeing. You can clearly see the problem, and now we're gonna do something about it together.

• 9:39Dan Harris?

  You mentioned, early on, anxiety and depression. Are these things with which you actively wrestle?

• 9:48Speaker 01

  I have, yes, for sure, for sure. I think, sort of the anxiousness, I don't want to, I don't want to speak for everyone, which is what I'm actually about to do, but I think that anxiousness is like a sort of resting state as a, as, as an American mindset. I think that if you live in the US, anxiousness kind of like comes with the territory. And not even an anxiousness that is like intentionally imposed, but it is the, the end result of a lot of thinking, because what is a person supposed to do but be anxious in the face of this thing? So you can have your, uh, school shooting drills with kids, and then be like, all right, go to sixth period.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  But anyone who's paying attention will be like, that was wild, right? That we all just practiced what to do in case one of us, the people here, decides to shoot all of us. And that's something that can be pretty anxiety inducing and for good reason. And so I think that there is a lot of structure around the things that should help, I guess, like quell some of the anxiousness. But it actually doesn't because it's like you acting like this drill is normal. While politicians go back and forth around if prayer still works. And, and while you actually have to live in the reality where you may need to remember everything that is in this drill, that, that's something that the people that aren't at

• 11:18Speaker 01

  your school may not have anxiousness around, but you in the actual situation, I'm sure are very anxious. And so I think that there's, there's things like that. And then there's just the general, um, I think misunderstanding of what it means to be content. I think in the American mindset, contentment is like a loss. It's resigning yourself to settling. There's always more and you're supposed to go get that more.

• 11:45Dan Harris?

  It's acceptance.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  And yes, it's acceptance. And then you put yourself in a position where through constantly change, chasing what it is not better is just different. It is anxiety inducing. Um, and then I think that, you know, without being a psychiatrist or psychologist myself, I think that enough anxiety will depress you. I think there are people that obviously have their actual clinical depression. There are people who go through rough patches in their life, but I also think that with enough stress can easily become depressed.

• 12:19Dan Harris?

  I've certainly had that experience recently. When you're in a rough patch or when you're dealing with whatever your, you know, baseline level of anxiety or propensity for depression, um, what, what's your go to?

• 12:33Speaker 01

  I try to remember a couple of things. One is that everything ends, uh, including me. So there's only so much time that I have and there's only so much, um, that I have to do with that time in the way of energy, in the way of, you know, like resources, everything like that. And is this something, and it genuinely does work a lot of the time. Is this something I will care about a year from now? Some things are worth your time and attention that you would only care about for six months. Like, you know, if, if someone disrespects you or if someone, um, has a problem with you and you didn't see that coming and it whatever hurt your feelings or, um, changed the dynamic of a relationship. It's like, look, you may not care a year from now, but right now you care and that's

• 13:18Speaker 01

  okay. So I don't chalk everything up to, will this kill me? If not, I don't care. I'm more just try to be honest about how I, I feel about it and what is ego and what is actually a problem. There are some times where something happens and it's your own ego making a bigger deal out of it than it is. And then there's things that maybe you try and make, you try to stop it from being a big deal because you just don't want to address it. And so I, I just try to file things, uh, and I think as I get older, I'm getting better at that as filing things in a quick enough time on how I really feel about them. And that has helped sideline a lot of what could have been anxiety or could have depressed me.

• 14:02Dan Harris?

  Sounds like perspective is helpful for you, putting it in its proper place.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Better way to say everything I said. That is actually, I should have you around all the time. That was, you, you saved me like 25 seconds. I could have just said that and then we could, we could be in a different part of the interview right now.

• 14:21Dan Harris?

  We, we wouldn't have much of an interview if your answers were all just one word.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Yes, but like, damn, I could, I could be less winded.

• 14:31Dan Harris?

  I like your current level of windedness. Just keep that same energy going.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  I appreciate it.

• 14:36Dan Harris?

  There are so many times in my life, and I suspect this is true for you, where you just need a little reset, some little hack to get you out of a thought spiral or to help you fall back to sleep when you wake up at three in the morning or help you recover from some sort of temper tantrum. You know what I'm talking about? Which brings me, uh, to a little meditation challenge we're launching over on my app, 10% with Dan Harris. Starting on Monday, September 21st, we're kicking off a five day meditation challenge. It's called reset and it's all about getting back on solid ground when life throws you for a loop, which is inevitable in all of our lives. This challenge is guided by the amazing Diana Winston, who's, uh, really legendary and fascinating and very nice meditation teacher.

• 15:20Dan Harris?

  And crucially, she has crafted each daily practice to be something you can actually do in a moment of suffering, when you're struggling in some way, large or small. These practices can literally help you reset. September 21st through the 25th, reset with Diana and friends and me over on the, uh, 10% with Dan Harris app. You can sign up now at danharris.com. Most of us can remember being about 15 and feeling completely invisible or worse, extremely visible, but for the wrong reasons. I remember one year when I was a teenager, I had a, a pimple in the crevice of my nose for the entire year. I didn't like that. Either way, even if we have painful memories of that age, most of us tend to soften it

• 16:03Dan Harris?

  in memory and it was actually harder than we remember it now. That is the territory of Carrie, now streaming on Prime Video, the first ever television adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie. Eight episodes from Mike Flanagan with Stephen King as an executive producer. Flanagan had described this show as a tragedy. It's about a girl who doesn't feel seen by anyone and about how small everyday acts of unkindness compound into something nobody meant to cause, which happens now at a speed and scale that would have been unimaginable not long ago. What I really appreciate about the show is that the show takes Carrie seriously as a person rather than as some sort of symbol. And the season keeps circling around one major question.

• 16:47Dan Harris?

  Are you watching the making of a hero, a villain? Or something more complicated than either of those options? Carrie is now streaming on Prime Video.

• 17:05Dan Harris?

  What about specifically handling news anxiety? Because you, as one of, uh, the rotating hosts of The Daily Show, which everybody should watch, you have to follow the news. I mean, there's, there is no escaping it for you. I can go days, even as a, I used to be an acrobat, but I'm not anymore. I could go days without checking the, the New York Times. You, you don't have that choice, um, because you need to be on, you need to be writing these excellent monologues that we see you deliver. How do you manage that?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, yes, please watch The Daily Show on Comedy Central at 11 o'clock central time. But I think that for me, it's, uh, recognizing that a lot of news is, um, cyclical of, of a bigger thing. And so I think that there are almost like, um, almost like orbits. There are several cycles happening at, at any given time. You'll see with, with Trump, for example, that he will be in a cycle with this war. He'll be in a cycle of, we're gonna, we're gonna do this thing and then we don't do it, and then we're gonna do it, and then we don't do it.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  And so I think that to get too caught up in every word he says as if his word is believable could put you in a state of anxiety that might be unnecessary because those things. He, he had us with the destroy a whole civilization.

• 18:34Dan Harris?

  Right.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  That one had everybody. And I don't just think this is a New York thing. I think if you had been walking around in lots of places in the country, the, the, the weekend that that went out and how it loomed over people. And then we were like, are we about to be like Germans? Like, are we going to look back on this time in history as we as a country destroyed a whole other country, even though it was not the will of, you know, the, the people at large right now? There are some people at best that don't care that we're at war, but I don't know too many people that are gung ho for this, uh, for this war.

• 19:11Dan Harris?

  Even some of his supporters?

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Even some of his supporters. And so, so that loomed over us and then it didn't happen. And then he hinted at it again and it had less juice this, this time, but we still didn't want it to happen. And then it didn't happen. Meanwhile, don't get me wrong, there are strikes. There are people dying, like this is still very serious, but this idea that we're just gonna nuke them or something like that, that, that keeps not happening. So that's one cycle of Trump says a thing and then he doesn't do that thing. And you could almost reliably sometimes depending on the story, count on him not doing the thing he said he was gonna do. If it's a promise, he won't do it. Like if it, if he promised you something, you could take it to the bank that he won't be at the bank.

• 19:52Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it's the taco thing. Trump always chickens out.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  And, and then there are bigger cycles that are even outside of, of Trump. And one is that war, especially war as other countries understand it is always happening. We are in a particular and privileged position that when we are at war, we don't have to feel it. We are the equivalent of going out with your friends to a bar and let's say it's six of you. And then five of those friends get in a fight across the bar and you're able to just sip your drink. Because when we are at war, we don't feel it. We don't see it. We see as much of it as we would like to see. And if we change the channel, then all of a sudden, a war is not happening.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  And so I think that there are some things that seem like undue anxiety on our part, which are really just us having the human experience that a lot of other people have that don't have the resources we have, the money we have, or the position on this part of the planet that we have. And so I think that there is a level of stress that is just human. And I try to accept the fact that, yes, I do this for my job, but I could turn it off. And a lot of people don't have that luxury. A lot of people are living it to the point where it can't be turned off. It's their life.

• 21:15Dan Harris?

  Okay, so I heard two things in there. I just want to make sure I heard it correctly. One is, again, kind of perspective. That you, yes, part of your job is you have to follow the news, but you know that really, if you didn't really feel like it, you could not follow the news. Whereas many people in many parts of this country, or more to your point in the world, have no choice because the war is in their backyard.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:40Dan Harris?

  The second thing I heard you say is like, you're not shooting for a no anxiety state, notwithstanding what influencers might be saying to you on Instagram. You're, you accept that this is part of the human condition.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Yes, because the best example I can give, I have a lot of friends who are having kids, right? And there's something very noble and completely understandable about wanting to give your kid a better life than, than you had. It is a driving force around like, why some people work so hard is that they want to make sure that they provide in the ways that they were missing. Some people even say that the way that you parent is like trying to heal your own childhood. You know?

• 22:19Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  But there are some people who are so okay, or already come from so much privilege, that to give their kid a better life would actually be to give their kid like a misunderstanding of what life is. It's like when you go on vacation. Vacation isn't life. So if you are on a great vacation and then, you know, last day vacation, all right, you're a little bummed out that it's over, but you're ready to get back to work. You're rejuvenated and you're ready to go. If you expect life to be vacation, you're actually having a pretty terrible life. There are a lot of parents out there that are like trying to shield their child from every bad experience, trying to make it so that they are able to get over these hurdles without realizing they're picking them up and putting them over the hurdle.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  They're not watching this child succeed for themselves. And so I think that all of the love and attention and effort that goes into that sort of thing is just a misplaced version of like, some of the same things people do when they don't care. Because you'll find, you'll find a kid who's never actually been told no, or had to like, fight for something, or had to work for something themselves, is actually somebody that nobody wants to be around. And so now you've actually given your kid a terrible life because they have everything. They have everything, but people don't really like them. They don't really have an appreciation for the things that they have. They might not have an appreciation for other people. I think it's very rare if something is just your exact lived experience for you to be able to step outside of that.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Like, you gain perspective from things changing. And so I, I, I look at anxiety the same way. It's like, yeah, life, life has its, its kicks. Whatever the thing is, it's like, it, the idea that I cannot be inconvenienced is, is like, it's so delusional. The idea that everyone has to like me, it's like, just, just because of the, the sort of puzzle pieces of the makeup of our brains, we're not all gonna like each other. And that's before politics. That's before all the other factors that people usually point to. I'm just saying like, in, in interpersonal dealings, you'll have a person who just like, whatever it is, maybe this person's too bubbly for them, or maybe this person's too flat. It just rubs you the wrong way.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  The idea that everyone should like me, I should always get good feedback. I should never have trouble with something is like, that's just not life.

• 24:45Dan Harris?

  You know, the question that's going through my head right now is I'm just sitting here across from you, you're, you're a young guy. Were you 30 something?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, I'm, I'm definitely 30 something, specifically 36.

• 24:55Dan Harris?

  36.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:56Dan Harris?

  So to me, young, you actually have quite a bit of innate wisdom. And I'm trying to figure out like, is that just something you were born with? Did you have really good parents? Have you had a really good therapist? You seem, as I listen to you talk, quite grounded and realistic and filled with perspective.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  That's very kind. I'm gonna use this the next time that I'm in an argument. You gotta have to clip this. I'll play, I'll play this exact thing. Be like, he said I was grounded. All right? I clearly must have a point.

• 25:25Dan Harris?

  I do want to say to whoever you're fighting with, I don't actually know you, so.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 25:30Dan Harris?

  You could be completely tricking me.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  We will need to edit this part out.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:37Dan Harris?

  So what's the answer? Where'd you, if, if this is legit?

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 25:41Dan Harris?

  Where does it come from?

• 25:42Speaker 01

  I think that if I'm being honest, I have to say it's a little bit of everything. Like, I have gone to therapy off and on. I'd like to think that while I couldn't always go to therapy as a, as a means, you know, like when I was in Chicago, I was like broke and, you know, I'm sure therapy would have been great, but I just couldn't afford it. And I'd like to think that I go, I have, I have a good insight on when I need to talk to someone, and then I'm willing to. But that isn't every week or every day. And it's, it's for whole portions of my life where I feel like, you know, I'm not internalizing things and I feel pretty good.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  And then I have my support system, my friends and family to talk to as well. And, and the, the issues that I'm having, I feel like they are equipped to give me insight on. So I think I'm good. And then whenever it's bigger than that, or deeper than that, then I, then I go. As far as how I was raised, you know, I was very blessed to be raised by not just good people, but I think really, really wise and earnest people. People who, you can, you can take them at their word, that they believe what they say they believe, and, and then I think a lot of things start from there. I think if, I think if you are, if you're not consistently lying to yourself about your beliefs,

• 27:08Speaker 01

  I think you're able to let that sort of branch out into the other things that, into your actions, into other things that you do. Like, not to go on too much of a tangent, because I want to answer the rest of your question, but like, I do find that there are some people who, underneath everything that they say they believe, they don't really. So then their actions don't reflect that, and their words are performative. So then for me, you know, been blessed with good friends, and then also been blessed with the right people in my life at the right time. And I'm sure some of that's a sort of like confirmation bias sort of thing, but I do really believe that. I think that whether it is conversations I've had that were 10 minutes long that stuck with me,

• 27:53Speaker 01

  or friendships I've had for my entire life, like, I, I've been really blessed that the right people have been in my life at the right times, and that whether it was life or my own personal choices, it got the people who were not good for me away from me.

• 28:09Dan Harris?

  Was faith a part of your upbringing and is it a part of your life now?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yes, I, I was raised in church, and I don't go to churches often now, but I, I feel like all of the, all the lessons that I took away from church as a kid, or a part of my life now, and I'd like to think that I am the, the beneficiary of a lot of good lessons. And I've also been able to, I've also been able to question the things that I don't think are congruent with like, the rest of the message, if that makes sense. In Kendrick Lamar's album, like Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, there's a, a song

• 28:55Speaker 01

  where he is basically asking the pastor in this lyric form, "Should we not love our neighbor? The rules of the land or the heart, what's greater?" Because it was his pastor coming down on his cousin, I believe, for being gay, or being trans, or you sometimes have, once again, like a real incongruence. There are these people of faith that teach a message of love, and then when you see them online, or when you see them even in person at a lot of different points, they don't seem to have that love that they, that they preach.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  And so I think that there's a, a real gap there, especially with modern Christianity and what it's sort of turning into through politics. And so I think that knowing when to side, sideline that stuff, that I feel like is specifically not what the religion is about, something so specifically cultural, in the moment, just like temporal, over things that are eternal, is like, that to me is the best way to digest everything that I've been taught. You know, like, like, there'll be Christianity after Trump, but there's a specific type of Christianity with Trump that doesn't seem like it's anywhere in the Bible.

• 30:17Dan Harris?

  Fair. I, I covered for a long time, I spent a lot of time when I was a reporter, covering evangelical Christians, even though I was raised in an atheist context, although I did have a bar mitzvah, but I often joke that I did that only for the money.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 30:33Dan Harris?

  And I, the evangelicals I met were very sincere. And I spent a lot of time with folks, and it was really, it was like I was a fish out of water, spending a lot of time with these evangelicals in the heartland. And I was actually, I really walked away in a lot of these cases impressed. And it, it jarred me out of the stereotypes that I held as somebody who was raised in Massachusetts. But now I look at the American evangelical scene, and I can't, I can't do the math on how they're down with a guy who, like this. But anyway, having said that, it seems to me that you're saying, okay, yeah, I, I set aside what I view as the hypocrisy of the modern manifestations of the faith, but like, the eternal parts around like, let's be a kind person, I'm down with that.

• 31:18Dan Harris?

  And actually, that kind of brings me to your recent special on HBO, Symphony. You should watch it, HBO Max, streaming right now. How'd I do?

• 31:28Speaker 01

  No, that was, that was great. If anything, I'm, I was almost gonna look into your camera after you did, but I'll just look into this camera and be like, yeah, thanks, he's right.

• 31:39Dan Harris?

  In Symphony, there's a whole part toward the beginning, I can't remember exactly what the context was, you're really just talking about how you put a lot of emphasis on being a kind and decent person. And I was curious, like, was that just part of the bit? Or is that really a thing for you? And is that based in the faith in which you were raised?

• 31:59Speaker 01

  So it is, it is a thing for me. One thing I'll say about kindness, especially in any form of the public eye, is you do have pretty far to fall as well. Like, that's the other, that's the other risk with being the whatever, like, nice or kind person, is that in any moment that your, your impatience, or in any moment that your anger bubbles up to the forefront, all of a sudden now it was all an act, as opposed to you having 498 good days and two bad days. Whereas if you are a little bit more, and I think

• 32:40Speaker 01

  it's why we have like the current political system we have, if you're a bit more like brutish, and if you're loud and obnoxious, then anytime you're not that thing, it's like, you know, I think beneath the surface, he's actually like a really good guy. And so there's, once again, a sort of like hypocrisy of our understanding of who people are and who they present themselves to be. And so to me, when I'm talking about being like nice in Symphony, or even when I'm talking about religion to a degree, there's, there's some aspect of it for me that is so much about what you know you are. And it's actually why some people need so badly to lie to themselves. Because if you were alone with

• 33:25Speaker 01

  yourself as you truly are, some people wouldn't know how to handle it. And so you come up with all of these like reasonings and ideas of why you did each thing and what each thing meant, and I only did it because of that, or whatever. But like, when you're really deep down by yourself, especially meditating, you kind of know. And that's something that I wanted to get to the heart of, on top of getting to the heart of other like, big ideas that are timeless, you know, like, like ideas around family, ideas around love, ideas around like religion as well. And so my attempt is to speak very like broadly

• 34:05Speaker 01

  and plainly about my experiences, how they fit through these lenses, or vice versa, like, like all of these things through my lens as well. And, and so that's what I, I hope people get out of it when they watch it.

• 34:18Dan Harris?

  Do you find that you're, like, you have a, a kind of internalized Old Testament God judging you on your level of kindness moment to moment?

• 34:29Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm sure this is like, not how some theologian would, would say I'm supposed to think about it. But I don't actually separate the Testaments in, in my mind. I think that separating them can get you into a bit of trouble on an understanding of what like the human experience is over time, and an understanding of, a misunderstanding of, of God in general. I find that a lot of the Old Testament thinkers are also the people who happen to like, love and serve a God who hates all the people they do. Because that, that is, was their takeaway from Old Testament. And they forget all New Testament,

• 35:09Speaker 01

  they forget the Beatitudes, they forget the, the little lessons of, of both like humility and charity that, that Jesus taught. And all that stuff is way more difficult. It's actually really easy to throw a rock. Like, if you, if you wanted to stone someone, I bet you could get that done in an afternoon. But if you want to love someone through addiction, that's going to be incredibly difficult. That's gonna, that's gonna be remarkably hard, because you're gonna have to contend with a lot of things at one time. There's the person that you love, the person that you at least believe that you know. And then there's someone who is struggling with addiction. And so there's a way that someone's going

• 35:49Speaker 01

  to behave through their, their struggle with their addiction. And then beyond all of that, there is like, a soul to be seen. And then in trying to connect with and, and see that soul, it's like, it, it can be marred by all of these actions and all of this thinking that might not even be the sort of like, right mind of the person. If the person had their addiction to put to the side, and had the decisions to make over again, would they make all the same decisions? Maybe, maybe not. But I think that when you are trying to behave and love in the way that Jesus taught, at least in the way that the

• 36:30Speaker 01

  new King James Version of the Bible with the red parts highlighted for what Jesus said, says, if you're trying to do all of that, that's gonna be way harder than God hates all the people I hate, you know? And so I don't, I don't separate them, because I feel like that would sidestep some questions. I think if you're just thinking New Testament, then you lose sight of how stark of a difference people's experiences were century to century, with, with God and with like, God's law and everything. And I think that there's a lot of anxiety inducing things that, that you can pull away from just reading the Old

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Testament. And I think there's a lot of delusion that you can read from just reading the New Testament.

• 37:21Dan Harris?

  Let me get back to Symphony for a second. In, in these anxious times, I'm curious what you think about the role of comedy. And there's a, I was struck at the beginning of your special, again, Symphony. There's a DJ on the street, and he's got a sign in front of him. Do you remember the exact words?

• 37:39Speaker 01

  So it starts with sort of a Baskett quote with my addition on top of it. So the quote, I believe if I'm crawling it exactly right, was, "If art is how we decorate space, and music is how we decorate time, comedy is how we decorate reality."

• 37:55Dan Harris?

  That Baskett quote and your embellishment on top of it was important enough to you to put right at the top of the special?

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yes, because it's, it's what the special and I aim to do. You look at art, and you see a blank canvas. And that blank canvas has this limitless potential in that space to be whatever. And then an artist comes along, and the artist has a vision in their mind of what that space could look like. And so they create it. And then we look at this painting, and we don't even see canvas. When you, when you see them, at least you don't think about the canvases underneath it. And, and when, when you see great work, you don't think about, oh, that used to just be raw, right? But it's very easy to look at a canvas and say, it is what it is. It's the artist that comes along and makes it something else. Music works the same way. Music is how we decorate our time. You could

• 38:48Speaker 01

  look at time as whatever, these seconds passing on a clock to track it, and it is what it is. It used to be three o'clock, and now it's four o'clock, right? But the artist comes along, and they're like, I want to fill that time that passes with music. And, and the music perfectly fills out that time. There are songs I can listen to over and over and over again, because the artist came along and decorated this space. And it doesn't have to be for my time, but they, they decorated it however they saw fit, and I choose to fill my time with it. And you could look at reality, a lot of acceptance is looking at reality as it is what it is. That is what happened. That just is how people are.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  This is what we do. I don't know. This is how it's always been done. This is what I think things should be like. And comedians come along, and they sort of decorate that reality. They decorate like, why do we do this? Like, a lot of good comedy comes from asking questions of yourself, and then of the audience. And so sometimes good jokes come in the form of a question. But it's like, why, why do we have socks? Who figured out socks? Now, you could just look at getting dressed in the morning, it's like, I put on my socks, I put on my shoes. But then the comedian comes along, and they're like, why aren't the bottom of shoes flat? Like, they have all these ridges. Are the ridges helping me? Like, what is the ridge for? Because I've worn Champions, I've worn Nikes,

• 40:15Speaker 01

  I've worn Adidas, and they have different ridges. And some of them got a circle ridge, what is that? And then some of them have like, a split in the middle? Like, am I walking around on buck teeth? And so then, you, you ask all these questions, and in, in the answering of those questions is a sort of decoration. It's no different than the decoration of space that, that happens on a canvas. And I think it's no different than the decoration of time that is filled with music.

• 40:42Dan Harris?

  But it, it strikes me, I love all of that. It strikes me that in a context of a lot of political and geopolitical tumult, that comedians can help us decorate reality in a couple of meaningful ways. One, give voice to our anger and anxiety and helplessness in a, in a way that's kind of constructive, in that it helps, helps us move through the emotions in a, in a way that gets us to a laugh, and makes us feel like we're all in it together. I, I started that as if it's a list, but actually, that's just the one thing that I was thinking of.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Sure. But I also think that there's sometimes a distilling of a lot of thoughts or feelings that come through in a joke for a person, like the comedian that told the joke. But they also end up being exactly how the audience distills those things as well. One of the things that I aim to do, whether it's the weekly sets that I put out on YouTube, which are more topical, or the, something that's meant to be timeless, like Symphony, that I hope for people to watch like 50 years from now, even if they don't know who I am, they just could turn it on and watch it and enjoy it, is, is that you are-

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Like in a, in a, in a universe that is so expansive, in a world that is so big and in the short amount of time that you have, not only do you matter, but you aren't alone. There are millions of people feeling the things that you feel like the idea that we even have a loneliness epidemic means that there are plenty of friends to be made and plenty of people who could benefit from, from being a friend or having a friend. And I think that with comedy, what you can do is you can take all these things that might just seem like platitudes if they're just said, if they're just tweeted out, if they're just like sitting in front of you. And then when colored with stories, both from your personal life or just like making

• 42:36Speaker 01

  an assessment of the thing that is happening, then uh, I think that you can show, you can show it more efficiently. This idea that you're not alone or this idea that you even matter, you know, like I, I, I think that a lot of people end up making art for a version of themselves that, that they needed, and that's why it like comes out of them. And I think that those were things that at any given point in my life I needed to hear. So you see something like the HBO special and that to me is like me trying to tackle things that will be around as subjects and maybe issues much longer than I'll be around.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Whereas the weekly that I put on YouTube, it's like, I will take something that's happening right now that you may not care about in two weeks and I will try to still that thing from a place of making it make sense through jokes. Like you look at someone like RFK Junior and how he's like the head of health. He's the, he's the head of, he's the top of health. He's the healthiest we have. That's terrifying. And not only is terrifying, it reminds me of the time where my school nurse was sick. So now you're sick and now she coughing. It's like, what are we supposed to do here? Cause she sounds terrible.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  And it's like, and that thing, that like my, my school nurse being sick is exactly what RFK Junior feels like as the head of health and human services, because it doesn't sound, I mean, from every report I've read, it sounds like mass checked out. It sounds like he shows up for press conferences, but like he hasn't been briefed on a bunch of things and it doesn't seem like he's trying to busy himself with like fixing problems. And I'm talking about the problems we have now, never mind, like we were supposed to make America healthy again by getting all the additives out. And I don't remember what happened to that. Skittles taste the same. Did you get anything out? Maybe you hit, look, maybe I don't know. Maybe the Skittles are completely different, but things, things that they don't ingest in Europe are ingested here.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, we're like, why are we the sickest people in the world? It's like, seems like you could put two and two together. There's just a lot of money to be made by keeping things the way they are with people who are already making money. And so maybe you could make your entire administration and your entire tenure as the head of health and human services as challenging all that. But I don't know if that's happening if you're, you know, taking pictures with uh, like fast food in front of you and stuff like that. It's like, I'm not saying that's a, a whole endorsement, but as a, as a guy who's skeptical of vaccines, you don't seem too skeptical of hamburgers. And I think that all of that stuff is, is something you could poke fun at and you don't have to be making the final statement on all of politics.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  I'm not trying to convince anyone uh, to believe exactly what I believe, but I do think by questioning things, I might make them question why they think what they think.

• 45:38Dan Harris?

  Yes, and it feels to me like you're actually kind of just helping us, you're helping reality go down smoother. You're actually getting us to acceptance, really. This is bringing the conversation full circle. That's one of the services you're providing, that you're helping us laugh about what's happening, process it together so that we can do the next thing, which is engage effectively.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  It's, it's definitely an aim and I've really wrestled for years. As long as I've been putting things out on YouTube, I've wrestled with the idea of like, okay, how should I go about doing that? Because is it always the right thing to do? I don't, I don't, I don't want to make the news go down easy enough that it feels normal, because these things are not normal. And some things are like, that's actually why sometimes I don't cover a topic, because I don't want to make the mistake of, something can be done about like RFK Junior being head of health and human services. He could be fired. Do you know what I mean? And, and something can be done about a lot of things, but then there are things that

• 46:45Speaker 01

  I think to get people feeling comfortable or to get people feeling okay with would be a disservice to, to what, whatever the topic is and to the people that I'm talking to. And so because my job is to do comedy and because my job is to make people laugh and, and we're supposed to come together and have a good time, I can talk about things that are serious as well, but I, I also don't take lightly the, the subjects that I choose, because I try to only choose things I really have something to say about. And I try to also give some insight on what I think can be done about it, because outside of that, you're just complaining.

• 47:24Dan Harris?

  Although I would say that sometimes the right type of complaining can be healthy catharsis.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, absolutely. I'm not saying I know what to do in every scenario that I've brought up, but I try to really be mindful of what it is I'm gonna say to people about, about whatever it is I'm gonna talk about. And I think that for something like Symphony, it was, it was a bit, the, the difficulty came from how do I hold up these subjects as pillars of the overall work and everything? And then the difficulty sometimes with the weekly is like, how do I break this thing down in a way that feels uh, digestible for the understanding? And then what, what would I do about it? And what am I doing about it? And maybe I just share that.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  And so, so it's, it's two very different types of contemplation that go into creating both things.

• 48:23Dan Harris?

  You've mentioned the weeklys on YouTube a couple of times and I didn't mean to ask you about them. How many weeks have you been dropping these hour long um, pieces of content on YouTube before?

• 48:36Speaker 01

  We just made uh, three years this week.

• 48:39Dan Harris?

  Congratulations.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Thanks, yeah.

• 48:40Dan Harris?

  And it's kind of insane. I mean, that's, it's an extraordinary achievement, but like to do a, an hour of new material every week on top of, in that same period of time, doing a, a full special on HBO and then being one of the, the correspondent and co-host of The Daily Show, that's just an enormous amount of work. So I'm just curious, like, how do you find the time and energy to do it? Why did you want to do it in the first place?

• 49:07Speaker 01

  I mean, some of it is uh, some of it is like obsession. I, I want to, I want to be my version of whatever the best is. And I look at comedians that um, I feel like are just so incredible. And I'm like, how do you, how do you get that good? Will you get that good by practice? And what's the best type of practice to do something every day? And then if you're doing something every day, makes sense to put out that work. Putting out work makes it easier for you to accept what the responses are to your work. Like all, all these things, every, every day is like practice for the next day, you know? And so I set out to become a better writer, a better comedian, and it's on my mind all

• 49:52Speaker 01

  the time. I'm like writing all the time and everything. And then through becoming more known and, and getting more popular, I've been able to be on the road and do shows most weekends. And by doing shows more often, I'm able to practice the actual stand-up more often. And then it just is a, yeah, it's a, it's a, a cycle that I'm on of like, what is the thing that I'm passionate about to talk about? Go out, talk about it, give it, give it away to the people who couldn't make it to the show and repeat that thing.

• 50:29Dan Harris?

  You basically had an audacious goal, which is I want to be one of the best, if not the best at my craft. And so how am I gonna do that? I'm gonna work my ass off and I'm just gonna create. And I think you in a, in a, an accompanying social media post around the fact that you just reached this three-year milestone, you, one of your messages to other aspiring creators of any type is you have to just start. And that appears to be what you did. Are you gonna keep going forever?

• 51:02Speaker 01

  I'm not sure. I mean, I think the thing that's nice about um, a pursuit of being the best is that in every art form, everything is so subjective and relative that like the best is like, it's nice because it's, it has a carrot in front of you that you're never gonna get to, but it keeps you like running a bit harder on the treadmill, which keeps you fit, if that makes sense. I look at getting better as something that only I will know. So it has to come with a little bit of acceptance that I'm getting better, but to call myself the best would feel like delusion. So I'll never do that. So then where does that leave you? And if you think about it too hard, it kind of leaves you in a weird limbo.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  But if you're, if you're like, oh, maybe I can be a little bit better tomorrow and maybe I could be a little bit better tomorrow. And you keep getting tomorrows and you keep making things, then I think that you're on track to be somebody's best. I can be somebody's favorite, can't be everybody's favorite, and I may never feel as good as the people I look up to, but that's okay. And, and as long as you inspire somebody, somebody enjoys you, someone had a phenomenal time, it's the best show that they've ever seen, then who's to say you're not on that path? And I think that one of the most like biting things I, I ever got as advice was not luckily, not even to me, or I think about it every day.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  It was to somebody else in my class where there was someone who came to speak to us and they were talking to us about our projects and.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  They had asked one of us about their story. They were writing a short story. And the person who was talking could tell them everything about the short story. They could even, they were even projecting how the reader would feel at certain parts of the story and like, and the twist and just getting it all out there. And then they were like, oh, can I read it? And they were like, oh, it's, it's not quite done yet. And simply, they just simply said, the most important thing about artists is that artists finish. And it's like, that's, that's it. We're all so worried about people who aren't even looking at us. You know what I mean? You could worry all day about how somebody's gonna digest something that you put out, or you could put it out and see, because you could be wrong.

• 53:23Dan Harris?

  Do you read the comments?

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:25Dan Harris?

  I'm sure at times that's unpleasant.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  It can be, but I mean, I've been blessed with an incredible community around me that I think are really earnest, both in their criticism and in their praise. And I try not to read too much, because I think it could sway you one way or the other. It could have you feeling like the best that ever did it off of opinions online, or it could have you feeling like you should quit off opinions online. Meanwhile, the thing you shared is a thing that the people in the video liked. That's one of the things in journalism that I sometimes was perplexed by. You would, you would see online, someone make a joke, and especially if it was stand-up, and especially if it was produced stand-up, right? There would be an anchor that would

• 54:10Speaker 01

  be talking with a panel about if a joke was funny. But then just play the clip. Are the people laughing? Then the people laughing found it funny, even if I don't find it funny. Like, there, there's plenty of things that I'm like, all right, it's okay. And then if you play the clip, the people there are dying, though. So it's funny to them. So it's, it's, it's a hard thing to say what is and isn't funny, and it's, and it's a hard thing to say what should and shouldn't be done. I can only control what I will and won't do, and what I find funny. You know, I, I think that, like, bombing is a good indication of whether or not you were funny.

• 54:51Dan Harris?

  In the three years, are there moments in any of the videos where you bomb and you've posted it anyway?

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Not really, no. There, there's definitely been some moments where I was like, let's, let's leave this in when I'm doing that, you know, like, like, sort of assessment of which show went the best. And my editors, like, editing it, I'll be like, maybe we leave this in, because it didn't get the biggest laugh, but it is part of my overall, like, idea that I'm sharing. So sometimes those things are important. And sometimes you'll, you'll find, like, this happens sometimes with late night. It also happens with produced sets by, like, some third-party company, where a comedian will perform. And then the comments will say,

• 55:38Speaker 01

  like, the audience didn't give them enough. And maybe that's even they, the audience wasn't mic'd as efficiently as possible, or things can happen. But people online are gonna have their specific opinion of whatever you did. It might be influenced by how it went, but they're gonna have their own opinion. And so, yeah, I, I find that the practice is what has helped me not have to wonder, oh, the set didn't even go well, but should I post it, just to say I'm keeping up? It's like, I haven't really had to make that sort of decision.

• 56:14Dan Harris?

  You've been very patient with all my questions today.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  No, it's not even patience. I like talking to you. But I also talk a lot. So if at any point you wanna chime in here, feel free.

• 56:26Dan Harris?

  That's not my job. My job is to get you talking.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Okay, if you say so.

• 56:30Dan Harris?

  Is there anything you were hoping we would get to that we haven't gotten to? Anything else coming up that you wanna?

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I can talk about the tour.

• 56:38Dan Harris?

  Please do.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm very excited, Comedy Band Camp, which is my new tour. And the tour is, and then the intention behind it is to give everyone the sort of, like, camp experience that I always wanted. There's a lot of different aspects to the world that you, that you're gonna be visiting. So there's a show. You can buy a ticket to a show and come enjoy the show. And the show's gonna have music, it's gonna have dance, and, and comedy. But there's also a personality quiz that we have that you can take. And you take the personality quiz, and it'll tell you what troupe you're in. And the, the troupe is based off of, like, different people's personalities. Like, if you're super independent, you might be Red

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Rogues. If you're a little mischievous, you might be Feisty Foxes. If you're, like, really into music and, like, have a, yeah, have like, a sense of awareness around your emotions. You might be Sapphire Blues and everything. You're more introverted. You might be Fuchsia Flames. And so, all these troops come together, and there's gonna be an aspect of the show where, you know, you can hopefully get to maybe meet your people. If you, if you got ivy leaves, and someone else got ivy leaves, and y'all are both wearing your ivy leaf shirt, then yeah, you might be able to strike up a conversation just on that. But the intention

• 58:05Speaker 01

  around it is to introduce as many people as possible to people who are like them already, not just in the fact that they wanted to go to a comedy show that night, but also in their personality. And, and like, and create these icebreakers, so people already have something to talk about outright. And then there's gonna, we're, we're gonna have, as far as the scope of the tour, as long as the tour lasts, there's gonna be games that come out, and, and different, like, meetups that we're planning and everything, and a scavenger hunt and stuff. So I'm, I'm working on making this, uh, something that people really can remember, and on top of coming to the show.

• 58:43Dan Harris?

  I love that. It's, it's, it's comedy, it's entertainment, but it's also like the antidote to the loneliness crisis.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  That's what I hope. Yeah. I, I hope there's a, a source and a means of community through people coming to the show.

• 58:57Dan Harris?

  Thank you for making time for me today. Really appreciate it. It was a pleasure to meet you.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great to meet you. And what a voice, by the way.

• 59:04Dan Harris?

  Oh, thank you.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  What, like, what an incredible voice.

• 59:07Dan Harris?

  I have a little brother, same voice.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Really?

• 59:10Dan Harris?

  Yes. Our parents and wives cannot tell us apart.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  On the phone?

• 59:14Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 59:15Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  This is incredible. Because here's the thing, sometimes when you're watching the news, you're thinking that's that person's news voice. Do you know what I mean? Like, this is the voice I have to have to tell you about the horrible thing I'm about to tell you about. Because honestly, I think you could deliver some real good bad news.

• 59:32Dan Harris?

  Yeah, well, that was my job for a long time.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I get, but, but here's the thing, I watched you on TV, and always thought, like, all right, he's gotta, like, center himself, he's gotta get himself ready, he's gotta, like, do the vocal, the vocal warm-up, just so he can hit us with, like, 12 people today, right? But you, you're over here, this is, this is how you order breakfast.

• 59:53Dan Harris?

  Yes. My first anchor job, I was 23 years old, and I looked like I was 12. But I had this crazy, deep voice that is really is what saved me in those early years.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Wow. I, I wanna hear a snippet of you kinda doing everything. That would be great. Have you ever thought about, like, lending your voice to, like, the audio version of an instruction manual?

• 1:00:19Dan Harris?

  Nobody's asked me to do that.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  I would ask you, if I owned an appliance, I would ask you to do that immediately.

• 1:00:25Dan Harris?

  You don't own an appliance?

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Well, I don't own a company.

• 1:00:27Dan Harris?

  Oh, I see. I see. Got it, got it.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  I mean, you could read it to me. You could come over, and then we could sit with my IKEA furniture as I put it together. And not only would it be a soothing experience, I feel like I would do it right. Because I'm just hearing me in my head when I read.

• 1:00:43Dan Harris?

  Yeah, you know, like, your version.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  No, I'm, I'm good on it. I'm all right. But you got, yeah, like, such a perfect delivering voice for information.

• 1:00:53Dan Harris?

  The, there, you know, there are all these sleep stories, the, the people read really boring stuff.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the Calm app.

• 1:01:00Dan Harris?

  Yes, the Calm app does that. I should probably do that. I could read.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  No, 100%. Are you, are you not doing that already?

• 1:01:05Dan Harris?

  No, I should do that.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Do you have to do this?

• 1:01:07Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Even if you just do it for 10 minutes as a joke, you, you have to do this. I'm telling you. And find something, you got, you gotta find something like, old school, like, like, I would say, read, um...

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  I would say read a little Shakespeare.

• 1:01:24Dan Harris?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Hit him with some Shakespeare.

• 1:01:25Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  And like, don't, don't emote though. Whether you're like the courtesan or you're the porter or whatever. Hit them with your.

• 1:01:33Dan Harris?

  Play.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:34Dan Harris?

  Monotone.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:35Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  I think you, you would, you would put them out.

• 1:01:38Dan Harris?

  And the thing is now, I don't even need to do it because AI can take a few snippets of my voice.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:45Dan Harris?

  And just, you just put the IKEA manual in it and it spits out me reading it.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Can I tell you that, that thing is something that I actually hate so much? I like, I don't, I don't necessarily hate all of AI, but the fact that like, we were promised cures.

• 1:02:05Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  And then, and then they're like, well, we could just steal your whole likeness. That's the same, right? Like, that's kind of like living forever.

• 1:02:15Dan Harris?

  That's curing you of having a job.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. We'll, we'll cure you of having a job and no one will even know that you're gone.

• 1:02:20Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  It's like, meanwhile, it's like, no, you said that cancer screenings would become like 99.9% more efficient. Like you would, what, what happened to that? It's like, oh, we're working on that, but we could, using just your retina, steal all of your personal information. What about that? That's good too, right? I have such a bone to pick with like, what we're being sold versus what we're getting. Because if they, if they had a couple of breakthroughs, I'd be like, y'all, I think we gotta let them take all the water. Do you know what I mean? But they don't. They're like, their thing, the biggest thing I've been trying to get people to understand

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  is that there is an, an attitude towards AI as if it is an inevitability, right? But who, who told us it was an inevitability? The people from the company. So we, we, we forget how Tim Cook came out and said that the Apple Vision Pro would be the future of work and play. Like this dude was, you will, you will, you won't want to take it off. Apple Vision Pro. And then it came out and then people were like, nah. Do you know what I mean? Like, these people actually know so little about people, about the future and about what we want or what has to be.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  And for whatever reason with AI, maybe because we're impressed by like, getting a whole portrait in two seconds or something like that, we're letting them in a way that doesn't make sense. You look at the metaverse. Zuckerberg was like, that's the future, you won't want to leave. He's selling you something. And they're all selling us AI right now. And the AI they're selling us isn't even the AI they're giving us.

• 1:04:03Dan Harris?

  Right.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  And that's what's so frustrating. It's like, if there was truly a thing that was cure, straight up curing people's cancer, I'd be like, yeah, I think you got to let the AI be the doctor. He, he cures, this AI cures, but that's not what's happening. What's happening is that they stole art and they stole art from artists. And then they fed it back to us because now if you type in a prompt and you get a picture, it's, it's based off of a mixture of other people's work. So AI almost doesn't exist. Like it's, it's almost a lot like when I'm like, hey, did you hear what he said?

• 1:04:43Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  That's like the best version of, the best description I have for AI. Like this generative idea that's coming up with, with tons of things on its own, that doesn't exist right now.

• 1:04:53Dan Harris?

  You think the promise is all bullshit? Like that, where, where none of this, none of the good stuff is going to come down the pike? That mostly it's just going to be theft and job erasure?

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Yes, because I think that the rate at which, I think that art was the perfect red herring and the perfect placement to look like it was doing things it couldn't do. If I go in for a scan and I'm worried I may have something wrong with my body, you can't then steal someone else's scan and steal someone else's results and then wrap it all up and then hand it to me and be like, here's your scan. You need to be able to do what it is you say you're going to do. With art, I could be like, can you show me Donald Duck fighting an angel? And you can mix Michelangelo and Walt Disney and a little bit of like Lex Fletcher or something like that. Like you can mix all these cartoonists up and then give me that.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  But you can't, you can't steal real results.

• 1:05:53Dan Harris?

  Right.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  And they have what they have by scraping all of our work and selling it back to us. And so I don't, I'm not saying that those things can't happen, but you would think they'd be working on them a little harder. OpenAI spent billions on Sora. They didn't spend billions on this medical equipment to make cancer screenings perfect. They could have, just like Zuckerberg could have spent $88 billion on something besides the metaverse, you know? And so it's like, I think that those promises are what they hold above our heads. I think these salesmen are becoming a lot like politicians where we have to give them something. They used to just have to make stuff and then sell it to us. But now they have to sell us a promise.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  And then that promise is going to be us giving them permission through legislation or through, putting the people in office who they're going to lobby to, whatever, to change our lives for the thing they're still dangling over us that is not going to happen. You know? And so I think that really coming to the understanding, you see, you even see grads doing it. Like you saw all those students booing those people, giving the commencement speeches.

• 1:06:59Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  And it's like, yes, because we are saying no, like we said no to the Apple Vision Pro. We are saying no, the same way we said no to the metaverse. The difference here is that they've lobbied our politicians and they've got, they've got things that they shouldn't have been able to get based off promises that they do not have to fulfill to get us in a position where only they benefit. And I think that teaching and believing that it is an inevitability gives up our agency in a way that is unnecessary. You know, I understand there's the feeling of you can't fight City Hall, you can't whatever. But I'm telling you, our rejection of the thing matters. And it matters more than we are being given credit for by the people who want to build

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  these data centers and communities that say no. It, it matters more than the politicians who literally need our vote to stay in power. And right now, I think in this specific moment, and hopefully this year is the end of it, we are seeing a complete disregard for the general public, for our effort, for our labor and for our intelligence, really. It's like the nerve it takes to take everything that I made and then sell it back to us as in someone else, my words, my, my work and my effort, but then also say, you don't need me. And they're finding now that like AI is not necessarily, at least in its current state, a net benefit to the market.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  It's, it's sunk in, what? There's, there's like 1.5 trillion dollars sunk into it. For what? Not for a profit. What, what other ideas? Imagine if we were like, hey, what if we put 1.5 trillion into hunger? You're willing to lose the money anyway. You're bad with the money anyway. So you might as well feed some kids while you do it. You know, $88 billion, like that, that's the thing, not to go on another tangent, but it was, you also may want to cut this. But one of the things that I would say to a friend about like, especially after that last shooting at the White House on the lawn, was like, all Trump would have to do is come out. Cause now we're talking, we're, we're losing count on attempts, right?

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  And so now all Trump would have to do is come out and be like, hey, you know what, y'all? Free school lunch. Y'all not gonna shoot free school lunch. All right? Free school lunch and, and you know what? I'm a, I'm a walk without a hat on. Free school lunch for everybody. I think that the, these people are, they're too, they're too set in their ways and I think they're too greedy and they're too blinded by what they think they can get to. They will, they will sink the whole world. They will burn it all down just to try to get to a version of AI that nobody asked for, that we don't need, that, that we have no plan. If, if the US was one of those countries that might genuinely be open to some sort of UBI, like if they were actually open to a universal basic income as, as a, like

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  a bipartisan effort, then yeah, let's give it a shot. Let, let's, let's give some of it a shot, not all of it, because you're still making all the water dirty. But like, let's give it some sort of shot, but you can't tell me that you're going to steal from me and then make me pay you for the things that used to be free, all while displacing me and think that nothing's going to happen. That's actually insane.

• 1:10:23Dan Harris?

  What I can say with some degree of confidence is the next five, 10, 15, 20 years are going to be tumultuous and, and largely because of AI. And we're going to need comedy.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Fingers crossed, yeah.

• 1:10:38Dan Harris?

  We're going to need comedy.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. That's why it's important to come see me in person. Somebody could steal my likeness and be like, I love Sora. Sora's the best event, I mean, somebody could clip it. Yeah. Come to the real show, be with real people.

• 1:10:54Dan Harris?

  Indeed. Just want to remind everybody, aside from your tour, again, you got that special on HBO, it's called Symphony. And you are a regular on The Daily Show.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can go to Josh Johnson Comedy on YouTube and you can go to joshjohnsoncomedy.com for tickets to the tour.

• 1:11:12Dan Harris?

  Great job. One last thing before I let you go. If you want to listen to the show without ads, check out 10% Happier Plus, which is a subscription that is available right inside Apple Podcasts. If you become a subscriber, you'll get every episode ad free. That's new episodes and all the episodes from our vast 10-year plus archive. Look for 10% Happier Plus in Apple Podcasts and just hit subscribe. And a quick heads up, if you're already a subscriber to my app, 10% with Dan Harris, you've already got access to ad-free podcasts. Ad-free listening is baked right into your app subscription along with everything else, so please don't pay twice. You can check out the app at danharris.com and you can check out 10% Happier Plus inside Apple Podcasts.

• 1:11:58Dan Harris?

  Thank you very much for listening to the show. I deeply appreciate it. See you soon. Deuces. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Marissa Schneiderman, DJ Cashmere, David Hart and Hayden Broome. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. And Nick Thorburn of the indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Thanks for listening. Peace.