You're listening to Comedy Central. Hello, and welcome to The Daily Show Ears Edition. I'm Josh Johnson, correspond for the Daily Show. I'm here with Kat Radley and David Angelo, writers for the Daily Show. We're also all Stamp comedians. So today we're gonna be talking about writing for the Daily Show as stand up comics and let's get into it.
Thanks for having us, Josh, really great to be here, and thanks everyone at home for listening. And those of you in the car eyes on the road.
Yeah, yeah, people in New York. A car is.
A car is what your uber is for the person who owns it.
The thing you sit in the back of.
Yeah. So I guess starting off, we all started when Trevor was here. So what do you think the biggest adjustment was for each of us having done stand up to a late night show like this.
Well, for me, it was my first writer's room ever. Before that, I was teaching, tutoring, driving, lyft uber.
All that random stuff.
I was just like pumped to be in a writer's room and then talking to people like you had been in other writer's room. You guys were like, this one's great. So for me, I was excited to have my job be writing jokes all day, whereas before with you know, when you're working part time jobs and doing stand up or full time jobs and doing stand up, you're trying to like squeeze in the joke writing whenever you can.
And it just felt pretty awesome, just be like I get to write jokes all day, Like that's what I am supposed to do.
This is it?
So it was I was pumped.
It was great.
What about you, David, Well, you know, I came from some other shows. We both worked at Jimmy Fallon at different times. Yeah, a lot of the other shows that I worked at, they would get canceled before they started airing, which you know, like if you get an E talkshown, do you remember the Channel E exclamation point?
Yeah. Yeah.
They would keep bringing me in be like we got a new talk show, like okay, what is it? This was like it's gonna be this, and they'll talk about the Kardashians or whatever, and then you'd be there for three weeks and then before the first episode they'd be like, Okay, guys, you did great work. We're canceling this. We're gonna air those three episodes you work on and then it was
just kind of that kind of cycle. Yeah, so this is one of the shows where they don't go away like no one here is like the show's gonna get canceled, whereas every other talk show you're just like, this is absolutely getting canceled. Yeah one, yeah, possibly, Yeah, there's no way this will last more than six weeks.
Yeah. I mean when I started, I got hired by Trevor, and coming from stand up, I hoped it would be a little bit similar because I knew du'll say already, and I feel like there was one other person I knew before I got here, and they were kind of talking about how yeah, you just sort of pitched to the room and everything and like pitch everything out loud and there'll be a time to just write later, but you mostly pitch in the room, which I remember I
was terrified by because I was like, yeah, I'm gonna pitch a joke. It's gonna bomb, and then everyone will be like, all right, we gave the new guy a chance.
I do remember, because it's for people don't know that, you know, we have a big morning meeting first thing in the morning, and we're encouraged to just you know, we watched clips of the news, and we're supposed to kind of pitch any idea or joke we have right there in the room to get things flowing figure out what the show might be. And I remember I was also scared my first day, Josh, because I just had no idea what to expect. And Jubin Peng our head
writer at the time, now one of the producers. I remember he, you know, he was one who like met me, you know, at the beginning of the day and gave me a tour of the building and stuff before the workday started, and he told me something that I like remember to this day and I tell other new writers in case they don't hear it. But he was like, pitch jokes in the room, be vocal. Trevor loves just hearing people's ideas, and he's like, don't be afraid to bomb.
That's okay.
We'd rather you pitch and say something and bomb then sit there quietly. And I believed he meant it, so I took it, and I but it helped because I, you know, I pitch, I get some good laughs. Sometimes you pitch and it goes nowhere. But it helped me because I still believe it to this day as you've
been so hopefully you still mean it. But it was good for me because I was like, Okay, good, I won't be afraid, and I really kind of forced myself to like not be scared and just if I had an idea to throw it out there or joke to throw it out there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have no memories in my I don't know. I can't remember that at all. I need to go get blood tests after this.
Yeah, I don't know what he did. Yeah. No, I remember my first laugh in the room, and it was because there was an election happening in a country that has like elections, right, that doesn't really have and so the police ran into the polling station and just started beating everybody. And I was like, they did hit a lot of people without asking who they were voting for. They could have been voting the right way, you know what I mean. And I remember from like Trevor and
everyone laughing at that. I was like, oh, okay, this is kind of like when you are just riffing with your friends in the green room, that same vein where nothing's going to make people be like you should leave, you know.
Yeah, No, one's going to like boo you if you tell a bad joke too, And sometimes your joke will lead to someone else thinking of the better joke. So it's all about the riffing or what terrible thing you might say will inspire the good thing and someone else.
Yeah, I guess I just never cared if a joke didn't do well, as you will hear throughout the length of this episode people at home. For some reason, that's not my fear.
Yeah, I don't know why.
Maybe it should be.
Kat, you had a joke yesterday that killed me, oh in the morning when when we were going over that story of theos.
It might be on the show tonight, but we could I mean no.
No, I mean we don't. We don't have to say it now, and I didn't want to do it poorly in front of you, but I just wanted to shout out that that was very I thought about it the rest.
Of the time. Oh.
Thanks, Yeah, we can tell them that the show will have airred by now, and you guys will know if we got cut ed up, like people getting arrested into and Kikos for having bullets in their luggage that they didn't know, which is illegal. Turks and Caicos and then you get twelve years and like America's trying to get these Americans out and not serving twelve years of prison
in Turks and Caicos. The joke was just something like I can imagine trying to call to get the prisoners out and you're like, hey, Turks, are you gonna really release the prisoners? No?
Okay, let me talk to Keikos.
Yeah. Yeah, And if this were up to me, I'd had those Americans back in a second.
It just takes one simple phone call.
Hey Turks, Hey, can you release the prisoners please?
No?
All right, let me talk to Kekos. And it's funny you say that because it was a joke.
You know, like we'll watch a story and then move on, and sometimes you'll think of a joke right after we've moved on. You're like, I can't go back and dig up this story that we've already moved on from. But it was sometimes if you have a joke, you're like I want to though, So it did. It was the very end of the meeting. They were about to like dismiss it, but I was just like, well, we're gonna sh have this one more joke. In there and it had to do well. Luckily it did do it really
well and get a big laughing room. Otherwise I would have been like, well, I'm glad I prolonged this meeting for this.
Yeah. Yeah. It Also there's a nice little like boom in the room and you can tell everyone is laughing at your joke when you when you pitch it. And every once in a while I'll have the like you know what I mean, like like the breath, and then there's a difference between like the breath and like the boom of like everyone at once being like that is funny.
I like that. I think we all three have good hit rates.
Like a lot of us will pitch a joke in the morning meeting that gets a big laugh.
Or I have a good hit rate at calling out my own bad jokes.
Which also is great for a lot.
Yeah, sometimes I'll pitch something I know it'll say anything. I'll be like, y'all are right, that was y'all are right.
I think that's where stand up comes in, because that works in stand up shows too.
If you do something new or something that bombs in a stand.
Up show, yeah, you just be like, all right, well fuck me. I guess or something like that that will usually get a laugh. It's kind of a similar skill.
Yeah, I mean, okay, So with the differences between stand up and working on the show, do you feel like because I know I don't almost I almost don't care as much about when a new joke bombs in stand up because I know I'll have like an infinite amount of times to make the joke better and work on it. But when a joke that I really believe bombs in the room, I get genuinely upset with myself. I'm like, cause there's no there's no going back and rewarding it
for new people. We all work together all the time.
That was your shot, man.
Yeah, so sometimes you've burned the joke by now pitching it horribly because.
You don't always craft it perfectly in your head the first time. You're usually sitting in the meeting kind of thinking it might come to you right away, or sometimes you're gonna.
Like, oh, I have a joke here, but I'm the wording rate, so I can't say it out loud yet.
Yeah.
Really, it's taken a risk and you got a time it Yeah.
Yeah, because then that's the other thing of like have we moved on, or is the is it winding down? Or sometimes someone will not have the joke I have, but I'll be just similar enough that I'm kind of making the same joke, and I'm like, it's almost better to just let them hang their hat on that one, and then I can pitch mine when we write, because for anyone listening, basically the way the day works out
is that we all have the morning meeting. At the morning meeting, we listen and watch different clips of news that we might cover, and that's what we're talking about, where we're pitching jokes off of all of those news clips in like real time too, because a lot of times we haven't seen the thing beforehand. And so then after that we usually go and we we gang out, which is yeah, so ganging is basically all of us working on the same set of jokes or the same
topic at the same time. So they just call it ganging out an idea or ganging jokes. And throughout the script we get told, hey, we need a joke for this, we need a joke for this. Does anybody have a take for this? And then we are writing that stuff all day. Then we go to rehearsal then after rehearsal, sometimes there is a rewrite, and within rewrite, we'll basically do the process over again, keeping all the things from rehearsal that worked and replacing things that we feel like
we can beat. And then you see the show, which is the end product of all that work, minus whatever time the network says, we don't have to do these things. And I guess for me, when you look at that whole process with stand up, it's like, because it's like a new group of people every time that don't know how you worded it before you do get a clean slate, And I feel like, not only is there no clean slate within the day, but it just becomes a harder
battle to fight. If you really believe in a joke and you've botched it once or even twice.
What is this joke? Tell us the joke that didn't work?
Uh, it's so many let's.
Work shopping now. You know it's funny because what you're saying it's true. But it's also like we have a new show every single day, and usually the topics are so disposable, like I mean, yeah, you know, it's not like you can be like, oh, well, that didn't work. Here at the show, but I'll go do it in my like like your Turks and Kekos. It's very hard to go out on the road. And did you guys hear about this story five months ago with a guy you had bullets and you know you have to explain
like the whole thing your time up. Yeah, so, like it only would work at the show, but then if it doesn't work, then it's like, okay, well tomorrow there'll be like a whole new set of stories. It's not like that traumatic, maybe, I guess to me.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, well I wouldn't say traumatic. It's more just like the frustration.
Of like, yeah, I know a lot of therapy for it, right, yeah. Yeah.
Also, can't you rework it if it's a premise and then you just be like, you know, I'll wait for another story to come up. Because usually one thing you notice when you work in like a topical talk show is like the news just repeats itself. Yeah, it's like you know, history is it's like there's only like five hundred events that ever happen, and then they keep happening over and over again. Yeah, like we'll be some other person who gets arrested in the Caribbean for something funny.
Yeah, yeah, I think I think it's more I had a sort of paranoia when I first started, of like, oh, I really want to like have a good showing of a strong perspective, right, because in my mind, if I have enough perspective, then it's like, oh, Okay, this guy's pretty good even if he doesn't have the best hit, right or whatever. And so I'm more speaking to that sort of thing, which is very old, like you know that's been I think the change for me now is
that I do miss writing because I don't know. I also like needed to be in the writer's wing when I was writing. Now I do feel like I'm bothering y'all.
Oh yeah, people, people need to understand Josh was a writer. H So you didn't see him for a long time. Yeah, and now he's on TV. Yeah, he's in a different You're in a higher cast system now, I mean that's the way to say. So, like Josh Johnson's coming by, you know, we all get a little more. You know, it's kind of a bigger deal.
He gave us permission to make eye contact during this highest I so.
Now you know your higher level, higher status. But you don't write anymore on the show unless it's for you.
I guess, yeah, yeah, so I'm still will pitch for myself and stuff, but I don't know.
Yeah.
So, we used to just write for Trevor, and then there was a whole year where we wrote for a bunch of guest hosts. And now it's a little bit of a rotation where we have John on Mondays and then we have whichever of the Correspondence on the rest of the days of that week. I don't know about y'all, but because I started writing for Trevor and then switched over to that guest host year, I actually felt pretty prepared to write for the correspondence in those alternating weeks.
But I'm interested in what y'all felt while it was happening.
Yeah, I think what's unique about our show too is we were always writing for Trevor, but we always had correspondents right where we would do chats or segments, even like you know, Lewis Black coming in to do a
whole segment in Act two sometimes. So I think we all had the skill of being able to switch from one voice to another because we could write for correspondence on any given day in addition to writing for Trevor and so I feel like that really served us well in the guest hosting era because we all had fine tuned those skills of writing for different voices. And not to toot our own horn, but I think a lot of the guest hosts even commented, like, Wow, you guys
are really good at writing for me. You gave me so many good jokes that I love. They're for me, they're in my voice, and we did it in just that four day period they were hosting. So I think that's something that we are particularly good at and that I really love doing too. Not that I don't love writing for one host, but it is kind of fun to challenge yourself stimulates your joke writing brain a little bit more to adapt the types of jokes you can and can't tell for different people.
Yeah, and I don't know that, like, I'm not like a big voice shifter person. I feel like there's that usually is to me in like a setup or just the wording of whatever the joke is. But I feel like you could package any joke into anyone's voice kind of at least that's what I'm doing. Maybe I'm bad at it now, actually doing something different.
No, I think you're right.
Yeah, I just kind of shoehorn it, like I kind of know, like, oh, well Ronnie would do he'd be more like upset or something. You know, you have a concept of a joke, you can kind of just like finesse it and like, you know whatever, it's not. To me, that's not that hard.
I feel like you've described it perfectly to me. Voice. It's so rare for a comic or really any performer to have a distinct voice. And I feel like in all of entertainment that I've ever watched, of all of stand up, there's only a few people that I'm like, this on paper I could recognize as this person's joke. I think that most people their voice quote unquote is the funniest joke in the way they want to say it.
But I think a lot of people think of voice as only this person could tell this joke, which I think is only true of a few people ever.
Right, Well, it might be like if you had someone like if Rodney Dangerfield was hosting, then I'd have to sit down and be like, Okay, I have to construct like these types of jokes.
Yeah, these types of one liners.
Right, but when you're doing like here's a show about current events coming out of clips, it's like that's what the jokes are going to be, and then the voice is just sort of like how would this person say it? But that's kind of the less hard part than the joke. Yeah, to a point where it's like I don't even really think about it that much.
I think I might just do it naturally.
If I know who I'm writing for, I'm only really thinking of jokes. I think I imagine them telling mm hmm, and then maybe if I had the same story with a different host, I'm curious when I come up with the same joke but in a different way. Because for me, I do think of voice a lot, Like I remember when I was like doing late night packets submitting for stuff, and when I submit for the Daily Show, I just like kind of binge Trevor's stand up specials and binge
some episodes at the Daily Show. So it's almost like when you get like a song in your head. I would kind of just have Trevor's voice and rhythm in my head as I was going in to write the packet. So I do think of it a lot as like
voice and rhythm. At least it helps me to kind of be thinking like that person as I'm trying to write for them, gotcha, But maybe it probably is like I mean, yeah, we're writing about turks and caicos for this person, but it could be any person who knows it might end up being the same joke.
We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back, welcome back. So, Kat, do you think that as you've settled in, because we've all been at the show for years now, do you think that there's anything that you've learned at the show that you brought back to stand up?
I think just knowing that you can write a lot of good jokes amount of time, because I think before I would imagine we probably spent more time really being like, oh what is this bit?
How do I write it?
And now I have the confidence to know, like, oh, I want to do a joke about that thing that happened to me on Saturday. I can sit down treat it like an assignment that we would have for work, and I can actually like come up with here's the joke,
here's the punchline. And I think it's given me that confidence in my stand up and my joke writing ability to be able to produce that content more quickly and kind of being less precious about it, knowing that it's a skill that I've been honing over the past seven years.
Yeah, I think for me, I really did when I start working here, and really it was being around you all as well, like being around other stand ups who were writing for the show, who were kind of in a way going through the same thing that I was. I feel like what it made me really good at is knowing what to sort of chuck and what to keep, like being a little bit more ruthless with what's really worth it. And then also just that clarity of like,
am I even making sense in this joke? Because if I'm not, then no amount of saving myself on stage is going to make up for the fact that the joke actually isn't that funny.
Yeah, and just a general work ethic too, you know, Like I mean being in the show and uh where it's during the workday right now, I think it's rehearsals happening. I don't know, we've been hanging out. Yeah, I don't know what's going on actually at the show right now.
Our phones are blowing up right now, They're like, we need you on what are you doing?
Yeah, but I don't know how about you? How about going from to corresponding? Now you're on camera. Now you're an on camera TV person, but you still have to go do you're still doing club stuff? What's the difference there?
I think for me, I definitely now understand why some stuff that I wrote for other people got cut, because now that I have to say everything, I am like, oh, this is what it sounds like. What I say it like like because the joke just writing is funny in my head and have a good reaction because I am doing it in their in their sort of quote unquote voice, And so I think all of this stuff is gonna
line up. But there's still a person that has to say this thing and has to deal with people coming for them after.
They make the Now you get blamed.
Yeah, yeah, And it's like.
Right, that runner about how Taylor Swift's a fraud, that's you cut that. That was never you cut that you said because you said I don't believe that. You said I don't believe that, and I thought that was a good choice you made.
I appreciate you. I appreciate you.
It is fun when you're writing for other people, you write a joke in your head, You're like, I would never tell this joke in my stand up, but here you go.
Yeah, yeah, And I do think that's that's somewhat of a I know for angles as well. Sometimes there's a there's a perspective that I have that doesn't feel like it'll ring true coming from me. But if if I were to write it for h DESI or for Duel, say back in the day, it made a little bit more sense, and I think would have been better received from them, you know what I mean. And so for me, I think that that's the biggest difference is now having to say every joke that I think of and that
is written for me with other writers. And then the other thing is I really thought that my days would be a little bit lighter going from writing to correspondent, and they're busier now because I think that I in a weird way, I get pulled in a couple different directions that I didn't have when I was writing.
Yeah, so.
Kat, you are a new man, which congratulations. I've seen pictures and they are adorable.
Thank you, and just want to know he said they because I had fucking twins.
Yeah, yeah, I wow, wow the adjustment both like you coming back after your leave and you doing stand up again, do you feel like because that's such a world shifting thing of what's of what's happened now like it. I'm I'm always blown away when people that I know become parents, because I'm like, I know you before and after one of the biggest things. And you don't usually get that with people. You usually meet them and they're sort of who they are, you know, the whole time.
And so do I seem different?
I wouldn't say that you seem different, but there is, like in Earnest, there really is, like it's a slightly different presence that you have, and there's a there is a light around, Like everything that you.
Do smell worse now, Josh, you can say it a shower less and I smell worse.
No, you don't know, you don't. I'm telling you. I think that it's been amazing for you. And I always thought you were hilarious and funny before, but I think that also there's something like you're very happy, least at least that I consider job pretending there and that's.
Bad for comedy.
It is that's bad for comedy. So the fact that your jokes are still so funny is a testament.
Well, see, they have to be They had to be funny because now I got more mouths to feed.
Yeash, I need this game. Well, thank you. That's nice.
I would say it definitely makes me grateful for a job like this, where, you know, having a late night job is one of the more stable things you could have in the comedy industry, and it's nice when you do have kids and have a family, but it's definitely harder for stand up because now I am, you know, working during the day and trying to find the time to go out at night when really, like I go home, I want to see them too, because I get to see them.
For an hour before work, an hour after work before bed.
So I can sneak out after they go to bed to like do shows, and I try to as much as I can. But then once I'm home then I'm just like, oh fuck, I'm tired. I want to go to that too. So it is, but I'm now anyone out there who's been postpartum, multiply it by one hundred for having two at the same time. And then also you just like don't feel like yourself after having kids, going through the trauma of labor and all that stuff, and you know, figuring out how to be a parent.
But I think just in the past six months my kids are fourteen months now, I finally started feeling like myself again where I could actually kind of like think of jokes I wanted to tell and find humor in my personal life, whereas before I was just like crying on the toilet and like nothing was funny. Yeah, So now I am finally like feeling that spark again, that
kind of like motivation and vigoration. You really need to have the energy to go out at night, you know, leave your partner, leave your family, whatever it is, to like go tell jokes to strangers in a basement at eleven o'clock at night. So I'm kind of feeling that again, but finding myself kind of struggling to get back into the stand up scene too, because I've essentially been out of it while I was like pregnant and having kids and all that stuff.
So the scene changes quickly.
So I am kind of like finding the internal and external, you know, factors of getting back out on stage, but doing it. I'm ready I'm, you know, writing jokes I had again about my personal life, which has been nice, feeling more like myself.
Do you think that they are of the same variety as before? Do you think a lot of it is in the present, Like a lot of it is about being a parent, a lot of it is about how your life is changing.
I think I am working on jokes that are more specifically. I'm trying to talk more about being pregnant and having kids and having twins. So I'm it's kind of good to give me a focus to try to focus my things on writing about that, to maybe make a special whether it's twenty four minutes or an hour that is kind of one focus as opposed to a lot of specials that can you know, jump around. It's like, oh, here's the hour of jokes I happen to have now.
I feel like it would feel good to put out something that's a little more cohesive, maybe focused on one topic, kind of like like Burbiglia. Does you know stuff like that where it's got a beginning, middle and end.
Gotcha, gotcha Angel?
What about you?
Yeah? I don't have kids, but I still kind of I'm on that schedule. Yeah, just wake up screaming, crying myself.
Yeah, making sure you get your naps in.
Yeah. Yeah, I'll be on solid Foods next year.
Oh so you add a YouTube special that you self produced and released. It's out now. He tell us the name and what the process was like making it.
Oh well, I'm happy to josh. It's called New York Legend and it's on YouTube if you look up New York Legend and my name, which is David Angelo. And uh, it's only twenty four minutes, which I you know, I was thinking I can't ask too much of this, you know, because I'm not famous. So if you're if you're not famous person asking someone for an hour, it's a little it's a little egregious, I think. So it's like, I'm
just gonna do twenty four minutes. And I also when I watch specials around that mark is where I, even when I like it and it's really funny, that's where I start to be a little like, all right, right, might pause this and come back later. It's just hard to go through an hour at home.
Yeah.
Yeah, So it's twenty four minutes. It's kind of like it's almost like a short movie. It's a little bit different than in format. But yeah, I made it last I don't know what it was November, and it's out now and you can you can watch it, you can leave a comment, you can share. If you have fifty thousand friends, you can share it with. I appreciate it. Just get some views out there.
Does I mean?
Yeah, fifty thousand very close friends that I will be putting on to the special. Once they listen to this, they'll head to a special right after.
Ah, that's great, that's great, and you know, I think they'll like it. It's kind of you know, it's set New York, New York legend. A lot of movies that are like love letters to the city. This is more like hate mail. And you know, it's just kind of my experience fictionalized of course, meaning not at all in the New York comedy scene. And that's kind of what it's like.
I'm excited for after this one, after the fifty thousand hits that you get from the likes and you you delve into the next one.
I can't wait for the next one. That's gonna be thirty six minutes. I want to know what the rest of the hour is.
I'm going shorter I'm good. You're just gonna get down.
To That is a fun format though, it's like you just keep doing like like second, third, and fourth and they're shorter, but then you put the whole thing together and it's an hour.
Yeah. Yeah, different parts, they'll be different ages. Yeah, that's how you do it. That's how you build a catalog.
Yeah, you know, awesome.
I'll say for me, I have local shows in New York that are gonna be happening I think before this airs, but I'm building some dates out to get back on the road since my husband's great and he's gonna take care of the kids and let me go to shows on the road. So you can check out Katradley dot com or follow me on Instagram, Twitter, all that stuff to check out places you can see me in New York or out on the road.
Hopefully. What do you got, Josh, What do you have going on?
I do have dates coming up. You can go to Josh Rohnson Comedy dot com to get those dates and to be added to the wait list. In case we add a show, we will email you and it's the best way to get the link directly. Just because there are scammers out there that are charging what I would never charge.
I have my own website Josh Johnson dot net. I can get it to you at a lower price.
I finally caught you. I finally found you. But yeah, let us know. So so as far as people following you on the Instagram, Twitter, also that are you cat Radley everywhere?
Yeah, I'm Kat Radley on Instagram, on Twitter, and my website is Katradley dot com.
I got them no one else, no one else was trying. I got them.
You smoked them.
And then for Angelo, I'm mister David Angelo on all platforms, it's Mr David Angelo. I also have a razor company. This is a little out out of left field, but Western Razor dot com. I sell razors and these are you know, they're good razors. They're no plastic. You can buy replacement blades or less than a dollar, so you you know, you save money too. It's all made in America. Go check it out just out of curiosity. I'm sure you're like, what the hell is that? Go look at it.
Yeah, And I am Josh Johnson Comedy on pretty much everything, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube where I put up stand up every week. So you can follow me there and enjoy and watch. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been Josh Johnson, Kat Radley, and David Angelo. Thank you for listening to The Day Show Ears edition. We'll see you next time.
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