Josh Johnson’s formula for the perfect comedy special

Like imagine if the whole time Ye had clumpers

I just told you who I thought I was. No, I refuse. Do y'all ever wonder if the first chiropractor

was just bad at murder? You have a special coming out on HBO. Yeah

You put out essentially a special a week right now, I mean on YouTube

So what separates Symphony from what you're already doing? I think the weeklies are much more topical, much more try to meet a moment and everything

And to me, a proper special like what I'm doing with HBO needs to be a bit more timeless

The hope is that 30 years from now someone will watch it and it will hold as much value for them as it did for the people that I was performing it for

Because by having a sort of difference in what's topical and what's evergreen, you still share your perspective

but then that perspective is spread out over things that will never change, like family or your thoughts on religion and maybe your thoughts on politics

but not like a particular politician. Remember I was listening to some old, old, old like Bob Hope stuff

and he had these bits that were killing. It wasn't only the Senate. The entire Congress voted against it

When President Nixon heard the news, he said, a proxmire on both your houses

Senator Proxmire of Wisconsin went way out on a limb to defeat the project and his opponent started a cheese boycott

But because he was saying the senator's name, I didn't know who it was

So he's killing with these people. And I'm like, I'm sure he's even right

Whatever he's saying, I'm like, it must be killing for a reason. But it's like I have no grasp on who the House rep at that time was

So it's like this isn't hitting for me. Whereas I think if you look at someone like Carlin who's talking about systems

Best thing about this war, it's on every channel. And every channel has a slightly different war

Did you notice that? If you don't like the way it's going on channel two, try channel nine

Maybe your side is winning over there. Those systems are not like hopelessly always intact, but like unfortunately pretty consistent

And so I think if you speak to systems, you speak to a bigger thing that even if the exact party by name isn't in power and the exact mode of maintaining power isn't what's being used, I think those intentions are eternal

you know yeah the foundation of the joke or of the bit is set in something that is more universal The details which are where the jokes lie even if they listening to it five ten years from now

they can still get the point, as long as the foundation of the joke that they are listening to

is based in some kind of a universal reality. Yeah, like outside of human extinction, people will always have a brother

And that brother might be dumb. And so then a story about my dumb brother

if I had a brother, what might resonate with someone who either has a brother or has a family

member that does the things that my brother did, you know? And so those things are what I think

hold on to for much longer. And I don't control what happens with something once I share it

That's when you have to let go of all of your attachment to outcomes. But that's the hope

is that the specials that I make that are the thing that I set apart in any sort of way

will have a sort of timeless quality to them, that the things that when I'm working on week to week

I also would love for people to watch that back years from now

but I can't act surprised if a decade from now, people aren't speaking about or thinking about Luigi Mangione in the same way

You know? Like that... Yeah, you can't control that. Yeah, yeah. I just found out right before you got here that you filmed Symphony

and you got on a plane and you started writing the Afro Man Trial Explained on a Saturday

And then Sunday night you went up and you did that set. And then after you did that, on Tuesday you were hosting The Daily Show. Yeah

That's a wild four days And that doesn't sound And it sounds like

That's not abnormal for you No but like I don't know If you don't do anything else

You kind of Open yourself up To the opportunity To like hyper focus

On one thing Until it's Until it's done And then you hyper focus

On the next thing Well sure The amount of Great material That you put on

In YouTube Is crazy for someone Who doesn't have A nine to five job

And a demanding one At that Where you have to do where you have to put up four live TV shows a week

And on top of that, you're also touring, so you're selling out huge venues

I mean, it's like the amount of stuff that you are doing is crazy for three people

Like, how many clones are there of you? Because that the only way that I can explain how that works I feel like a clone would present more problems You know what I mean Because then a clone would be like saying something and you like wait no that not what I

It's someone you have to manage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like imagine if the whole time..

Ye had clones. No, I refuse. You'd be like, oh, oh, so which one was all of them

Or just two? How many clones? You know what I mean? I think a clone would be rough, because then clone gets out of line

How do you punish the clone? It's like multiplicity, where it's like, I believe that for Kanye

We need a copy from two. And you know how sometimes we make a copy of a copy that's not quite as sharp as, well, the original

This is like the third or fourth version of the Kanye clone. Yeah, I think most of it is just knowing that some opportunities are temporary

and wanting to not let anything pass. Like, I feel like for the most part, these are positions that you try to prepare yourself to be in, but like you can't possibly know

And then when you have the opportunity, you don't want to let it pass by

And so I think it's a lot of that hope for the best, prepare for the worst, but in a good way where, you know, for years I was not busy

So then you could be not busy again. And then what would life be like then

So I never wish away opportunities. And if anything, I hope that people get to realize those things that they want to do that sort of compound on each other or are running concurrently and everything

And, you know, in an ideal world, we would all be as busy as we want to be, you know

And so it's not lost on me that it's a lot, but it's also like a lot that I feel I've been prepared for over time through all those years of not being busy

It's like you also build up a bit of a stamina, even around traveling

It's like I don't really think about, oh, I just want to sleep in my own bed tonight

I'm like, there's a bed here. That's amazing. It used to be couches

That's where my head is at right now. So yeah, maybe there's an extra night in a hotel

because travel didn't go the way I wanted or anything. But as long as I make it to the show

as long as I'm able to fulfill these responsibilities that are really blessings I don think I could ever complain about the workload that comes with it Sure In a couple weeks you hosting the Webby This is the Internet biggest night

This is like the Oscars of videos that people actually watch. How are you feeling about that

I feel good. I'm like, everybody is so excited that it feels like..

I don't know if you've ever double dutched before. I've tried. Yeah, it feels like everybody's excited for you to double dutch

and then you're like, all right, I'm also excited. And like, well, hop in

I'm like, all right, hop in. I generally hate labels, but I'm kind of fascinated with how people answer this question

especially comedians that do so many different things. I'm kind of interested how you answer this question

If you could pick two. Yeah. Comedian, entertainer, artist, creator, writer It is tough, yeah

To just pick two I think that To me, I understand the ways in which it is singular

But to me, creator is I don't mean this negatively I mean it in the way that it compounds

Creator is like derivative of artist a bit. And I think that like writer is sort of all encompassing and comedian is sort of singular set aside from general entertainer

Because I can't really do many other entertaining things if I'm being honest

And so for me, it comes down to the three that sort of fall in are like writer, artist and comedian

And I've always wanted to be like the best writer. Like that's the thing that I would like to hang my sort of hat on and remember it as is like the best writer and, you know, wrote the most and everything

And so I think writer is like at least one of the two

and then I think that because I have intention to write as much stamp as

possible and perform as much stamp as possible, want to write as many other things as I can, I think artists falls in there as well. So it's like most of what

I write is funny but it's not everything that I write and so yeah

He ordered the lobster best. This man goes, oh she's thick