Hasan Minhaj is Trying Not to Care If You Like Him

Netflix series Patriot Act. At the time, Hussan relished his increasing popularity, but in our conversation, he revealed a desire to move beyond a career that's so dependent on whether or not people like him. Do you like me? How many millions of people like me? So I can hopefully continue doing this? Man, I don't want to participate on today's episode. What happens when our self worth and livelihood

rely on how much people like us? I'm maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans, A show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. Husson's brand of comedy is overtly political and often provocative. In his Netflix show Patriot Act. He took on powerful world leaders like the Saudi crown Prince and the President of China. You might also remember his speech at the White House Correspondence dinner back in

twenty seventeen when Trump was president. The leader of our country is not here, and that's because he lives in Moscow. It is a very long flight. It'd be hard for Glad to make it. Glad can't just make it on a Saturday. It's a Saturday. As for the other guy, I think he's in Pennsylvania because he can't take a joke. Hussan was initially drawn to comedy because it allowed him to hold people in power accountable. He's always liked playing the role of Jester and identity he talks about in

his Netflix special The King's Jester. It's a role Hussan began playing back when he was in elementary school. Comedians sometimes identify and they see the world as this thing where there's people in the front of the class and then there's people in the back of the class, and

there is a divide between those people. So they're kind of is the people in the front of the class that uphold the status quo, that are like goody goody students type a high achieving whatever the teacher tells me to do, that's like the Old Testament, and I take it as this is the Holy Scripture life. Yeah, it's a seven year old. Yeah, Jesus, I know. I'm so sorry.

As I'm like looking you directly in the eye, I'm like, there's there's a particular type of person that's yeah, person who I don't know makes up extra credit projects when they don't even exist. Yeah. And then there's people in the back of the room that's like, this is kind of insane. They kind of understand the cosmic joke, so to speak. Missus Ladington does not have all the answers. Mister DeMarco, the gym teacher does not have all the answers, and for him or her to be decreeing this to

us is absolutely ridiculous. So they're you know, shooting spitballs from the back of the class. And I definitely felt growing up that I was outside of the core group of thirty kids and I'm observing this thing. So there was this feeling where I always felt like I was the DVD commentary to the story that was happening in

real time. Where I'm like, WHOA, that's kind of weird that Andrew does this and Brittany does this, and I was able to kind of piece those things together in those moments where I would sometimes be a smart alec in class or growing up, it felt like all the code lined up in that moment, the tetris of my comedy logic lined up perfectly, and just for a moment,

I kind of felt a sense of agency. Is there a memory you have of a time when you felt like, oh, I got a knack for this, like I'm pretty talented at it. I was in the third grade in nineteen ninety three. I'll never forget this. Miss Anderson was my teacher of the third fourth grade combo. She loved diet pepsi.

This was during an era in the nineties where like a lot of adults would just not drink water, but they would pound eighty plus ounces of these big gulp diets because we were told there's no consequences, just like water. It's just like water. Who needs water? But kids couldn't drink it. This was also during an era where kids could not have soda pop right. It was a bad thing. And I remember she would sometimes have a case, like a twelve pack case on her desk, and I would

just observe her being yo. She is shotgunning diet pepsi throughout the day and nobody seems to think this is weird. And I remember one day I go, Miss Anderson, can I get a diet pepsi? And she's like, kids can't drink soda? Pop I go, okay, Miss Anderson. And then my dad loved watching sixty Minutes, and I remember there was this big investigative report on sixty Minutes about how diet soda causes cancer and I go, oh my god,

she's like shotgunning, you know, cancer juice. And I remember the next day I went in to class and I go, hey, miss Anderson, can I get a diet pepsi? And she goes, hassen, children cannot drink soda. And I go, you're right, miss Anderson. Only adults should get cancer. And I got I got in such big trouble. She like wrote it down and I got a pink slip and it was a whole thing.

Did the other kids in class laugh when you said that? No, they didn't laugh because they didn't know understand that's right. At I had seen the report, but you felt this is interesting, right, because you did not get any social

validation in that moment that you were funny. But I had asked you tell me about the time you realize that you're funny, and you're naming this moment, which means there was some confidence there that you knew you had landed this joke, that it was objectively funny, very funny. I was thinking about this too, where there's kind of this duality that I think comedians inhabit, where on one hand, you're like, I'm the shit, I deserve to be on stage and people should listen to what I have to say.

My opinions are probably the most important in this entire room. But there's also this extreme lack of self confidence of like, I'm pretty worthless, I'm not shit, And it's that duality. It's the arrogance and this complete lack of any self esteem that you vacillate between that kind of allows you to be a comedian, because I think our hippocratic oath for comics is I ain't shit, and neither are you.

So you have to start by interrogating yourself, and then that gives you license to be able to be like and you ain't shit either. So after many years, let's fast forward a bit, after many years of hustling, your big dreams start coming true. You get a job as a correspondent on The Daily Show, which on Stewart, which I imagine is just one of those like mind blowing moments of like, holy crap, I cannot believe this is

coming to fruition. Yeah, it was the first time in my life I felt like I was chosen and it really meant a lot to me. And it felt like making an entertainment. It's very competitive and it's not guaranteed, and there's so many people that I know that are super funny that just never make it and they never just get quote unquote chosen. So it was one of those things where it felt very validating that, man, this

thing I devoted my life too. At that point, it was ten years, one month in nine days that it was for something. And you know, the show's known for blending comedy and political activism. Right, I'm wondering if there's a memorable segment that you worked on in which you felt, maybe for the first time, the power of marrying comedy and political activism. Oh yeah, I think It's that perfect combination of silly and sincere. That's the perfect combo for me. So I remember I was at the Daily Show and

it was during the twenty sixteen election. That was one of my favorite pieces. And what's great about the Daily Shows you get to do it live from the conventions. And at that time, this was right, you know, peque Donald Trump, Mexicans are rapists, Muslim band moment, right, And so one of the things that you get to do what the convention is you get to meet delegates from

every state they're walking around. And so the segment I pitched was called Hustan's Farewell Tour, where I get to go up to people and I go, hey, I'm musamanaj where are you from? And you know, they go, ah, I'm a delegate from Montana. I go, oh my god, I've always wanted to go to Montana. What's Montana? Like, Well,

it's big scott country. We can't wait for you to check it out, and I go I can't and they go why and I go because the person you're voting for it wants to ban me from the country, you know. And then it's like, who Husting's farewell to her? And it's a montage like that. What's the best thing about Wisconsin Green Bay Packers and Georgia we have great whitewater rafting. I would love to go whitewater rafting. What's the best thing about Oklahoma? Yea, wow, I would love to go there.

Sometimes you're always welcome to car I would love to come down and see a game. Yes, I can't why I'm a Muslim. And if Donald Trump is elected, he's probably gonna throw me out. As we cut together the package, it just got more and more ridiculous and funny. And then at the end there was this really nice moment where someone was like, he's not going to do that. He doesn't mean that, and I go, really, And there'd sometimes be these older delegates and then be like I

would never let that happen. I go why not? And they go because you're one of the good ones, And I go, you know what, I feel the same way about you, and we'd kind of hug and embrace, and that to me is like the perfect cocktail. It's just the perfect cocktail of comedy and I love it. Some people get mad, some people feel righteous indignation. How could you say this? I don't care about any of that. The incongruity of all of this is fucking hilarious. That's

what I find so funny. After your time at The Daily Show, Yeah, Netflix green lights a show that you've created, it's called Patriot Act. Yeah. And I mean, this is the first time in your career where you were at the helm of a TV series and for your first episode, you end up taking on a particularly risky topic, right,

which is the Saudi crown prince. Yeah. And this is following the murder of journalist Jamal Kashogi who has murdered of the Saudi consulate in Isthanbul, and the story really blows up online, right, And I'm curious if you can walk me through the decision making calculus behind all this and then we can talk about what happened after. Yeah. So at that point in my life, the decision making

calculus always is chase the truth. And Hindi, there's this word called good goody, which means like a tickle in your tummy. And there's always whenever I'm writing a joke or I'm working on something, there's always this little tickle in my tummy of like what if I said this kind of like that miss Anderson moment, What if I said this in this moment, chasing that because that's a little bit out of your comfort zone, you're breaking with

the status quo is. And the calculus that I had was I know that every other show in late night right now does not know how to position themselves in relation to this subject. Like Stephen Colbert won't have the same angle I will be able to have here, and he won't be able to talk about being Muslim and having that relationship to Saudi Arabia as like an Indian, as an American, as a Muslim. He won't be able to triangulate that. So that's part of the math for me.

Just a few months ago, Prom Prince Mohammed bin Salman aka MBS was hailed as the reformer the Arab rule needed. But the revelations about Kashogi's killing have shattered that image. And it blows my mind that it took the killing of a Washington Post journalist for everyone to go, oh, I guess he's really not a reformer. Meanwhile, every Muslim person you know was like, yeah, no shit, he's the

crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Well. Netflix under fire today after its decision to pull an episode of a comedy show that was critical of Crown Prince Mohammed been Salman and his alleged role in the killing of journalist Jamaica's Shogi. So the episode gets banned in Saudi Arabia. It becomes a big international news story about tech platform censorship and what you can and can't say. I didn't know I'd be at the center of that. Are you talking the

special about how intoxicating it was? Oh, it feels great to get all of this attention right, to be trending on Twitter and all the likes, all the comments, all the retweets, comments, retweets. Give them to me. Tell me more about what that experience was like on a psychological level, like being almost confronted with a new tier of attention. Yeah, it is intoxicating. You feel like you're pretty drunk on it. You feel like you're the coolest kid in high school.

Like everybody's inviting you over to the blue benches and they're like, you're bucking awesome, and it feels like you're at a slot machine. You open up your phone and you just hit refresh and it's like, quote tweet, this guy's awesome. Quote tweet this is awesome. Quote tweet this

is awesome. It's this crazy feeling where pre social media you had to do a lot to curry favor and validation from people, but this puts that on steroids because everyone around the world can participate, pay in lifting you up and saying you're awesome. And the sick part of it is if you start to understand the rhythm of the algorithm, you can kind of break down how it works.

You say something divisive, irreverent, bold, and you find someone a point of your ire and you go, Okay, I'm going to target in on this person and I'm going to upload the video at nine am est. That way, everybody gets it burst thing in the fucking morning and they pull out their phone and oh you let it

rip all day long. So you talked about the fact that, at some point, working on these Patriot Act episodes, after getting recognized as one of times hundred most influential people in the world, your wife Beena observes that you seem to only care about certain topics when quote the cameras are on. Yeah, right. Was that the first time that you began noticing just how much you were being driven by the attention and recognition, Like was it in that

moment with your wife? Yeah? You know, Bean has always been kind of this jimminy cricket to me because she is one of the best people I've ever met in my life. And there's a reason why. Like the moment I met her, I just remember being like, she's one of those people that is a good person, whether or not there's social cloud or validation from it. She will do the right things privately when she checks me on stuff,

I really have to reckon with it. I mean, you've said that you don't want to be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, right, What are the wrong reasons to do something social signaling? You stand with Ukraine. You put up the black box or you do the hashtag because everybody that morning is doing it and you

want to be part of the end group. The right reason to do it is, you know, this is in every ancient tradition or faith right you give with one hand without the other hand, knowing like you own it anonymously on gofund me. This is so interesting, Hussan, because I think there are other comedians that would just hold themselves to a different standard. They would think look, the right reason is just being desirous of making people laugh

and engaging them. And so the fact that you're even asking yourself these types of questions shows me that you do identify as more than just a comedian. I want to be the best artist I can be, which requires honesty, and I just want to be a good person. And by good I mean the people that know me the most can testify and be like, he's a good dude, he is ethical, he is sincere, he is a person

of his word, like all of those things. And the people that can validate that are my wife, my two kids, the crew that I grew up with, my sister, my parents. All those people can really vouch for that. The thing that I'm noticing is that there are quote unquote good guys and good gals visa vie what they say on Twitter, but they ain't shit outside of that, and I think that's the social grift we're all observing. We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans. We're

back with comedian Hussan Minhaj. Hussan says he's eager to do things for the right reasons rather than for social cloud or validation. But I wanted to push him a bit on this desire for pure intentions. It seemed like he was holding himself to a pretty high standard, and I wondered whether the focus on purity might actually prevent

him from doing social good. I think one challenge I have around assigning so much importance to the purity of our motives is that I want to make sure that we're being reasonable with ourselves about what's possible to accomplish. And I say this only because, Okay, here's a hypothetical. Let's say that you, Hussan, have brought light to the fact that there is an innocent person sitting in a jail somewhere in the world, and as a result of your advocacy, a result of the fact that you shed

light on this right, that person is free. Yes, but then I maya the mad cognitive scientists have created this machine, what's called a hypothetical. How pure is this dude, really? MRI machine? Okay, I put you in the scanner. Yeah, and like we get some pretty troubling news. We find out, hey, actually seventy percent of Hussan's brain, you know, shine a light on this piece of information because he wanted a popular story on Instagram, but thirty percent of him cared

about the person. Yeah, and okay, I might think that's not great. I would prefer if Hussan got to one hundred percent in terms of his motives. But I would never have wanted that quote impurity to curb your behaviors because the behavior is now positive. But this is just a personal journey for me, maya for me, you know, especially because the Internet has now made the world the

quad at Davis High. Like everybody is now in the quad and it's lunchtime and the popular kids and the job everybody's that now it's eight billion people that are in this quad at lunch. So the reason why I have to check my motives is because it's becoming harder than ever to find out why you're doing something. And the thing for me is if I can lock in on what the truth is in my heart selfishly, it'll make me a better artist. I don't want to disappoint myself.

And if I can hold myself to that standard at least that I'm trying, then I can also be braver and more vigilant in my art because as an individual, I am seeking capital t truth, not consensus. And I wonder whether your aspiration to try your hardest to do the right thing for the right reasons is in some

way a stabilization exercise. It's grounding you in a sturdier place where because you feel so firmly in your own convictions and you have that inner belief, in some sense, it kind of insulates you from that noise that's happening on the outside, because you're like, you know what, I'm not as vulnerable as you think anymore, because I know I put up this episode for the right reason. I know I made this joke because I actually want to

help this person. So if you think it's lame, or you think it's stupid, or you think that I'm blah or this or that, like I'm a little bit more impenetrable than I was before. Correct, Yes, okay, so this is why I have to use this mental exercise to be like, I gotta know who I am, because otherwise I'm now relying on everyone else to tell me who I am all the time, and that's just too disoriented. Can't I can't. Yeah, that's too fragile. It's too fragile

a position to be in. I completely understand that what you're saying is for you to have a sustainable career, for you to feel like you can actually create the best art and create armor around yourself, because it's only going to get Sorry, I just feel cynical about the future, but it's only going to get worse. It's only going to get nastier because I mean more vehicles by which people are going to be able to troll you and

take you down and shake yourself confidence. And so it feels very wise to me that you're trying to put in that work now to create the only version of armor really that exists today, which is a sense of who you are and the reasons why you're doing the things you're doing. You know, when the special premiered, I did this event for Netflix employees, so they screened it at the Netflix offices, The King's Jester, and then afterwards

we did a Q and A with the staff. One of the employees at Netflix goes, hey, huss and we all know that you did comedy, much to the chagrin of your parents. If your daughter wants to do comedy, will you let her? I go No, Here's why I'm genuinely afraid, and I don't want my daughter to do comedy. I don't want my daughter to participate in an art form that is reliant on whether or not people like her.

From the moment she gets on stage at that first open mic in front of ten people at the Brainwash Cafe in San Francisco, the whole subtext of that interaction will be do you guys like me? To the moment she auditions for her first improv team, do you like me? Hopefully she advances, and she auditions for SNL Lauren SNL? Do you like me? Now? She has a career. Now she's doing that at scale. Do you guys like me? Oh? She has a pilot and it goes to air? Do

you like me? How many millions of people like me? So? I can hopefully continue doing this. Man, I don't want to participate in this business that's entirely dependent on whether or not people like me. This episode comes out, people are going to tweet I didn't like him. I didn't like that episode. I don't know if you had this in your community growing up, there was always that one kid that got into Stanford or that one kid that got into mit. So an art community, it was an

akilsachdev and I still believe this. People are like, are you happy with your life? I go. If I could go back in time, I would cut my own finger off to nakil sad stuff. I'm not lying, Maya. I've hosted the White House Correspondence dinner. Yeah, I'm doing pretty well. I would do anything to trade places. Why do we value that more? Well? Because what's beautiful about nikkil And it's funny. I'm still very good friends with Nikil Is.

He has created a line of work where his self worth is not linked to whether or not people like him. He works in like investment banking. You can't go after him on Twitter. You can't say he fell off. He can walk through the grocery store and with his partners lover, and no one's going to take a photo of him and be like, whoa, Nick's getting old. There is no thing like that. He is truly free. He's free from

all this, Maya. It's interesting because, like you said, he's not really beholden to anyone, right, His worth doesn't come from other people's approval or whether they find him funny or charming or whatnot. This is whying to kill sachtev One. He's not playing a game that's predicated on whether or not people like him. So how do you work with that? Because you know, it's one thing to make a resolution to yourself to say, look, I want to not care what other people think. I want to be proud of

the stuff that I do. I want to bring the purest motives and intentions. But it's not like overnight you're like, Okay, made that resolution, brain transplant, you know, accomplish Now I'm a new person and I've rid myself of all personal ambition and the desire to be loved and the desire to be liked and whatnot. Are there strategies that you're using to actively try and cultivate a more resilient mindset

or a more pure approach to the work that you do. Yeah, I think the ultimate way to defeat this thing, and it is the cosmic joke. I have to leave the game, like I got to graduate from the game and move on to something else. I think this industry will draw you crazy. So for me, I think there's a world where you know, I eventually move on from it and

I transition to something else. Yeah, and the thing you would transition to it would have to meet the criteria where whatever the next thing I do is, I'm going to be able to establish my self worth independently of other people's subjective assessment in me totally. Being an artist is who I am. I do have this need to express myself, but I have to find new mediums as my life continues that are less and less and less attached to whether people like me or not. Maybe it's writing,

maybe it's producing, maybe it's direct behind the camera. Yeah, but if you are to really go full Kama kazimission on this, then you actually have to leave the game and never come back. No. It's such an honest take because I think a lot of people they look, maybe the Buddhist monks are capable of this. They're like, I will transcend this shit. I will reach a state of enlightenment in which I do my best work. I am

an artist. I go up on stage, I do my stand up routine, and I just don't care what their response is anymore. And to me, that feels like an impossible task because look, part of the it's baked into the game, baked into the calculus of being a good comedian, to constantly be narrating in your own head and having this voice. Are people going to find this funny? Are

you gonna find this bit funnier than this bit? Are they going to think I'm a little bit too smartie if I were to say this thing, or any think of a little bit too humble braggy if I do it right. So that's such a hard tension to navigate. Yeah, was there a moment of reckoning in even just the

last year where you found yourself unhappy? You found yourself despite having all the dreams that little Hussan had for himself, Like you're sitting there and you're thinking, oh gosh, this is not I'm not having the experience I should be having given that I'm in this position. I think there was some morning I was getting some bad news, something was happening, and my son is really cute. He's too

He's like in he cute. Yeah, he still smells really good, and he just wants to nuzzle and cuddle and all that stuff, and I just I'm holding him, and then I got my phone in one hand and I'm dealing with just like some bullshit that's attached to just this stupid Hollywood stuff, and I'm like this is idiotic, Like this game I'm playing is so stupid because also the thing that I was dealing with was some like press

perception BS thing. It'd be one thing if I was like cuddling my son and I'm dealing with like notes about the set or there's something productive that's about again like what I'm talking about seeking truth. It was this just like ego cloud pr some email thing, someone said this about the special. Do you have a comment some like idiotic thing. What's your response to the critic? Yeah, what's Yeah? You spent two years of your life writing, performing,

crafting this thing. This person has a response to your thing. Do you have a response to their response? What are we doing? What on earth am I doing? I'm gonna miss these amazing moments with him for this, and I can't continue to be a part of this. I mean, the reason I love that you're saying this right now is that these are the kind of reflections people have when they're at the lowest part of their careers. It's how they find ways to rationalize the lack of success

or the great fall from a top. They say, you know, none of this stuff mattered anyway. I mean, what is fame? It's a flimsy thing. It's a transient thing. It was just based on, you know, whether other people like you. And I feel like I see it more as a retroactive rationalization of no longer being at the summit. And so what means a lot to me right now is that you're at the proverbial summit. Maybe you'll go higher, Hussan, but you're at the highest point you've been at relative

to the rest of your career. Yeah, and you're standing there and you're still able to see the cosmic joke you're You're still able to see with some perspective, how harmful, how pernician is, how destabilizing, Like we're all so vulnerable to the perils of this game. You know. Yeah, I can kind of feel like, yeah, this can't sustain itself. I'm getting older, I'm getting grays in the beard. It's

it's fine, it's okay. Just keep it moving and continue to find ways to express yourself and be honest in your art. But you only win by leaving the game. And again, I think that is actually the true comic understands the joke of it all. That would be the most comedian thing to do. Hey, thanks so much for listening. Join me next week when I talked to Vanessa Bonds, a social psychologist and author of the book You Have

More Influence than you think. Vanessa is on a mission to make us more mindful of all the ways we already exert influence, often without realizing it. It's not just the times that we're up in the front of the room. It's not just the times we're actively trying to persuade someone. It's also the times we just make a throwaway comment and suddenly that changes the way someone feels about something.

You know, It's just our mere presence in a room that changes, you know, how people talk about a particular topic. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our sound engineer Andrew Bastola, and our associate producer Sarah McCrae. Louise Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is

a production of Pushkin Industries. So big thanks to everyone there, and of course, of very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a slight change of plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker