Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today you're going to find out what this sound is. Rock Ha 2 doesn't like Jim Jung Dash slash. That's the part we're going to aggregate from this episode. Right after this ad. I'm taking you to see the wizard. There's no going back. So what you also look, Prime Video. Here you look at everything. Prime is a challenge, except to buy or buy. In-house can be offered 18+. All the rules are of use. to Pablo Torre and his special guest, Roy Wood Jr. Now, Pablo Torre finds out is a sports show that I think sports lovers would love, but even I, who I don't really consider myself a huge sports lover. I love the Liberty. I love the Olympics. But Pablo covers things in such a way that even people who think they don't love sports will be so engaged. So recent episodes include one with Sir Mix-a-Lot sharing his hot take on sports and butts. And I also really loved a recent episode where Pablo dug deep into Donald Trump's takeover of public historic golf courses in Washington, D.C. Just fascinating, looking at things from a social perspective, looking at things from a historical perspective, not just from a defense, offense perspective with his work. So he's just great, a great conversationalist. We're so excited to have him here today. Again, this is Pablo Torre, but also with a special guest, Roy Wood Jr., who I know everybody in this room knows and loves from The Daily Show and have I got news for you. Please welcome Pablo and Roy to the stage. Hello, hello, hello. Hello, Brooklyn. Good to see you, Pablo. Roy, I have questions for you. There's only like three motherfuckers I would have left the house for. Like on some podcast, like where I am now, right now. You, Bomani Jones, Trevor Noah. I think those are the three people. Tamron Hall. Sherry, Trevor, Tamron Hall. Okay. But they don't do podcasts. They do like the regular TV show stuff. The metal stand is getting crowded. Let's stop you listing people before I get demoted. I said yes to too much s*** last year. I was going to say, we're here to investigate Roy Wood Jr. I don't know if Roy realizes that yet. I don't, but I saw what happened between you and Mark Cuban, so I figured there would be some sort of poking and prodding. I'm happy to be here, bro. All jokes aside. Legitimately, not joking. We're going to get into some of the metrics in your life. Okay. You were on, at our last count, at least 96 different podcasts. is that just last year that was that was uh yeah q4 actually um trying to figure out the business no seriously in your research last year it was it was we had to stop counting 50 or 60 it was too many yeah and so and so too many you've you've become a bit of a snow leopard you were america's podcast guest yeah and now there's a point in the timeline where you stop showing up yeah what what roy what happened the burnout the also having a degree in journalism and you will appreciate this it becomes very evident oh also seven podcasts that still haven't been put out yet that I did last year from a bunch of f***ers who are just sitting on the content for no reason. And when they finally put it out, it's going to be outdated as hell. I'm looking forward to the NFL season. That's like where it's... We have a champion. What takes do they have from Roy Wood Jr. in the back of the fridge right now? What's sitting back there that you're like, man... That pisses me off. I will say I did that many podcasts, and it's probably indicative of... of my inability to tell people no sometimes, which is one of the first things that I had to decide to lock in on and start doing more of going into this year. So that's probably where you saw like a clear-cut drop-off on pod episodes with my name. And I'm probably end of October, early November. There were a couple of stragglers that were put out then, but I stopped recording, stopped meeting with people. and then I also got blessed. I got booked for, they're doing a TV series of the Barbershop franchise for Amazon. They're doing a sitcom. And so I get cast in a sitcom. And the character that you are playing, the casting call for that character, how do you describe what the role is? I'm wearing a beard now. When have any of you ever seen me with a beard? That was my next investigation. Why the f*** does Roy have a beard now? Because I had to play older. like they want i'm not quite set the entertainer old but my character represents not to on set you know what i meant but my character represents the wisdom and kind of the old sage oracle of the shop and i just figured facial hair would would help to convey that and you wouldn't necessarily presume me to have a hot political take like i do with the goatee so but i got cast in the sitcom and the blessing of it is that it shot in Chicago so I literally was unavailable for two and a half months and it was like the perfect thing to wean me off of just saying yes to so much stuff and I think part of it is that you know when I did morning radio I did mornings in Birmingham for about a decade and I remember so many people who just would not come on our show they'd have a concert in town literally just wouldn't come on the show and we used to be so gracious and appreciative when people would come on and then there were the comedians who would come on and their show was already sold out and they still came on i remember appreciating know the bruce bruce's and the sin bads and the wayans brothers of the world like they would just still come on and i just remember being so appreciative of that so when you get emailed by like it could be you one day and those go through the pr people and then every blue moon there's just a college student hey i'm doing episode two you want to with it or not and i remember being that kid and so you know what yeah let's sit down and you know how i am i don't really have any restrictions on topics or anything so like that that becomes part of the problem in a way yeah because you'll sometimes sit with people that just don't have an agenda they have literally have no idea what they are doing or they're asking you questions that you've already answered 40 times so how lively can i re-answer this question i don't mean like promo questions like tell me about the book or tell me about the Hulu special. It's just literally, how did you get started? You can Google that, bro. Come on. Come with a better question than that. And so I started, I found myself showing up half-ass for a lot of podcasts because I knew that, like, by question three, I know what this is. And I've done 90, according to you. So I know where it's going to go. based off question three, I know what the next seven questions are. I've already answered them in my head. I have a prompter up in the, like, like at the home, like if I'm doing an at home podcast, oh, I got the prompter box set up, baby. And I'm mirroring my laptop screen on top of the camera lens and I'm surfing the internet while just having a chit chat with a random person. And sometimes it's interesting and I'm locked in, but I just felt like you shouldn't do that to yourself. And also, there comes a point in your life and career where at some point you have to choose yourself and do something for yourself. And I've had a lot of time now that I'm back, now that Chicago production is done, I've had time to lock in on other tasks and things that I really do need to work out. And now I sit here in the midst of a presumed merger of Warner Brothers, who own CNN, and like quietly figuring out, okay, we can cancel. What am I going to do next? Maybe I should have been thinking about that last year. And so it's time to take a little bit more focus just on myself. It's not personal. Well, but the reason that you are the perfect person to sit here with me today is because I consider you somebody who is deeply savvy and preemptive about the business of media. Because I regard you as somebody who not only will be thoughtful in terms of how you do media, but you're out here trying to figure out who's getting one over me. How can I make sure that I am not losing the race that I'm not even aware is being run? and you're also somebody who is frankly reporting on this stuff even if it's just for your own personal edification like the question of why is roy not doing as many podcasts now was kind of an economic indicator to me i was like oh what is roy what did roy figure what did roy find out and and the thing about the instinct here the instinct that i feel all the time doing three episodes a week, you know, which I can't say without a little bit of just edge a week. And shout out to my producers for whom I do not forget the sacrifice we've made of our families to do that. The whole point is to say yes, is to always be churning. And so I'm detecting in you not just like a mental sort of like reset, but also like there's an inefficiency, maybe. I've said it too many other people's restaurants. I need to build my own. It's no disrespect. I don't have a restaurant. And it's coming to a point where everybody's going to need a restaurant. The restaurant I'm currently working at is under a hostile merger from Paramount. And you have to be realistic about that. You have to be, and it's not to be pessimistic about whatever. Do you get updates from anybody from the inside who's like, you should know that this thing just happened? You can understand that. I'm on CNN, but we're a Saturday show. So it's like, you ever seen that trailer next to the public school? Like, we're over there. And it's by design so that we're not too close to the newsy button down so that we don't become that. So they have us up the street at the CBS Center. I get more Barry Weiss updates in the hall because we're in the same building as CBS News. And so I'll see them in the hall. I'm like, what's going on? They're like, ooh. I'm too busy trying to dodge her in the hall because we've done jokes about her. But I think that you look at something like legacy media like CNN. We're the number one show on our demo on the network. We're the number two show overall. I don't mean d*** if the president wants you out the door. And that could very well be a possibility. If it's about holding a grudge versus a numbers game, if it's about do we keep the show that gives us good ratings or do we get rid of the show because it makes the president feel bad sometimes. So I have to be conscious of that and figuring out how I'm going to build, you know, my thing. And that's probably something that I didn't really have to think about when I left The Daily Show because I knew that I was going on tour to prepare the Hulu special. and I knew I was writing the book. And at the time I had a pilot in motion with Fox. So I had pots on the stove. We could focus on that. Well, now we're on the other side of Hulu. We're on the other side of the book. And I think it's reasonable to think about that. Even if we don't get canceled at CNN, it's not a bad idea to have something else. But just at the time, it was just, that was an overwhelming thing to think about. Well, what's my show going to be? And what's my thing going to be? and trying to figure it out. And I had a podcast, but I knew it wasn't something that would live in a capacity like this. Like it was a great niche podcast. It was called Roy's Job Fair. And we literally talk to three different people every week about their style of employment and the nuances of their jobs and what they do And so it was originally started during the pandemic to help people find jobs So when I did morning radio, we had a segment called Who Got That Work? and for the entire nine o'clock hour on the radio, if you are working somewhere that is currently hiring, call the station so that someone without a job can know where they can go look for a job today. And that was kind of the genesis. So people from emerging industries and whatever, that went 99 episodes. Comedy Central owns the IP to that. So when I made the decision to leave The Daily Show, I essentially abandoned that podcast as well and to still do a different version of that while doing book and tour and hula like it just i just didn't but you know now i gotta figure it out but on the job fair what job were you most delighted to hear about that you didn't totally understand until you had them in your podcast uh crime scene investigator we we had a whole episode about dead bodies so it was just jobs that involve dead bodies and like if a dead body is anywhere within the skull we had the we had the funeral home director but then but the crime scene investigator was talking about the process of i won't gross you out but but like the process of cleaning up all of that type of stuff i was like that's a very interesting thing and then found out that didn't know this funeral homes compete to get bodies from a crime scene. So there are a lot of funeral homes. He's nodding. I didn't know this at the time. Funeral homes have police scanners. I have my eye on the guy who knows this now. Very eagerly affirming Roy's observation. Funeral homes have police scanners, and if they hear about it, there's been a murder up the street, you hop in the f***ing hearse like the Ghostbusters. And speed to the crime scene in the hopes that the family of the deceased will choose your funeral home because you're here. And that's fascinating to me. That's just oddly fascinating. So that was the show, and that was kind of the gist of it. But it's not a broader thing. Like Netflix isn't going to call me, this is doing great. We've got to put this on the homepage. So figuring out something that's a little bit more connected to people is what I've been exploring last year. I think I figured it out, but I just knew in the meantime, I need to sit still. I need to start saying no and just figuring out what's what for me. I've been in New York 11 years. There's nobody in the city that can say I told them no. I might tell you not right now and figure out a different time. So I've been giving them my time. I feel like I've been benevolent and all of that stuff. So, you know, you have to pay it back. But I think it was that, bro And then also There was a Club Shea Shea interview That I did And This came up in our research Which one? Which clip? The one that got me all the hate? I'd like you to explain the hate We have to explain the clip first Like So I get And I say this because this is what the correspondence dinner was the first instance of this but the club chaise clip this is shannon sharps podcast he's on like a chase lounge roy's on an equivalent fainting couch of sorts and there is uh cavassier or something it's cognac and it's real that's not and it's undoubtedly sponsored Yeah, we're drinking. And we get into a run talking about my ancestry and my lineage and all of this stuff. And part of me is talking about the fact that when I did Finding Your Roots and during the episode, they found the descendants of the people who owned my family members. and so I'm joking in the clip about finding the house where these people now live the descendants of the old slave masters great great great grands and just pulling up to their house and asking for reparations and then I joked and then I said I zillowed their house they don't have any money and i said something along the lines about yeah i might just pull up on a house and see what's up and there's a whole part there's a whole preamble to that snippet that sets up that i'm joking and that this is i'm not really out to murder the descendants of slave masters but when you clip that bitch just right it looks like i'm out to murder the descendants of slave masters so So that clip goes flames online. And there's a couple of clips from the interview that all do their respective arguing and bickering about fatherhood. And just three hours and drinking. You're going to talk about everything. But that clip gets put out into the right wingosphere as Roy. It breaks contain, yes. Yes. Roy hates white people. He wants to kill white people. What about the blacks that enslave? You need to talk about that. I wish you would run up in my house email box just DMs, just a barrage of it. And I'm like, what am I doing? Like you go back and I go back and look at the Shay Shay interview. And it's like we're having these conversations. And, of course, anything we say now is going to be clipped and distilled down into something that's bite-sized and profitable for whomever you're sitting with. and you know my buddy my little brother's in the comments first off I have two younger brothers they're psychopaths on the internet how old are they? 37, too old to be psychopaths and they are like going to war with people in the comments who are like bashing me the family members who want to defend the honor of their loved one is one of my most I get it, but it's tragic when my mom wants to go to war for me no, but it didn't like it sucks that that happened but that's on me because if you're talking in a way where you can allow yourself to get sliced and diced they're gonna do it when i did the correspondence dinner they um i did jokes across the gamut of topics across the gamut of political sides and every outlet you could name took one of my jokes and used it to push their agenda the next day no matter what it was fox news had a joke they liked cnn had a joke they like i did a Vanderpump Rules Show, E! Online. Roy Wood eviscerates and even talked about Lisa Vanderpump. Did you do that with the knowledge that you would get aggregated by E! Online? No, I didn't know who Vanderpump was. I just trusted my writers. It was a joke about power and 50 Cent. It's online. You can watch it. But like 50 Cent took a clip where I mentioned the television show Power. so everybody whatever you say you can become a part of somebody else's propaganda and that's just what it is and it's like all right well if i'm gonna be snippeted up all the time for what i say then i probably should do most of that in my own pulpit so that there's a better context. And then I have control over how the clip is cut. I have no control over what Club Shay Shay is going to do because at the end of the day, you know, Shannon Sharpe's editors or your editors or whoever, it's about whatever's going to get the best engagement or make the point that you want to make as the producer. So I'm not mad at Shannon. I'm not mad at the angry white boys who think that you can push that live, but I would hope that I have enough runway of precedent, behavioral precedent, where the average proper thinking person would know that that's not what I meant and that's not my intent. I do still want to meet those people, though. But not to murder, to have a conversation. And just to have their house reappraised. Yes. We gave Times employees a preview of cross-play from New York Times games. And here's what they had to say. I can finally play with other people. Play with friends that you already know, or you can just be matched with someone else in the world. I have a J for 10 points, and I can put that on a double letter. So J-A-M, that's 24 points. I'm going to take facts and make it faxes for 30 points. I'm guessing tanga is not a word. Let's see. Tenga is a word. Oh. I don't know what tanga means, so I'm going to press down on the word. And oh, definition popped up. As an English as a second language speaker, I like to learn new words. I'm pretty competitive. It's fun to beat friends and co-workers. New York Times game subscribers get full access to Crossplay, our first two-player word game. Subscribe now for a special offer on all of our games. We say all the time on the show, we got to self-aggregate. We got to be ahead of the aggregators. So at the very least, they're using the parts. We got to give them an extra step if they want to be maximum lazy to then get their preferred version out. And maybe they'll keep the part, that little prelude part that's contact. Maybe they'll keep that in because it's easier now to just like Twitter link it in bed and then send that off. But the other thing I've been thinking about, And I end up quoting, and this is a very Honor Fest reference, former podcaster and current Los Angeles Lakers head coach J.J. Redick, who could have been a contender. Yeah. J.J. as a basketball podcaster was maybe Michael Jordan. He'd be on Netflix homepage right now. Absolutely. Right next to Breakfast Club. He'd be right there. And J.J. immediately saw the business that we're describing, and he was like, oh, wait a minute. Okay, so audio doesn't go viral, video does. Correct. And I was like, oh, shit. Like, he's right. And so the question is not do we want to object to the principle of how dishonest some of the aggregation is. It's make peace with that being the business and then figure out how do I preempt it. I still think the good stuff will be consumed properly. I think we are at a point with podcasting where because there's so much out there, I believe people are a little bit more picky about what they want to consume because you named the topic, there's at least 10 people within that sphere, except for employment. There was only four employment podcasts and none of them funny. That was part of why I took, but like the idea that you can just go on and talk about something nonsensical or you can ask lazy questions because also that was the other thing. If you're a fan of me and I go on a new podcast and they're asking old questions, well, why the f*** would you keep listening? And then you're on my ass to post the link. Hey, man, we did the episode. Make sure you post. Why? So my fans can hear me answer the same goddamn question again because you didn't think of anything creatively new to bring to the conversation? Like that part of it. it's it you don't always know when you're getting something nutritious but you know how you feel after you consume bullshit and i think podcasting is approaching that and then we're going to get to a point where the things that are not getting eyeballs at some point will fall by the wayside and yeah the streets get to choose and youtube gets to decide a great deal of what grows but ultimately i think we're in a place where the same way the entertainment like right now we make i think is it 60 maybe 40 let's just say 40 fewer scripted shows than we did pre-covid just because of industry contraction and they're hedging bets and they don't want to put a lot of money into everything i think podcasting is something similar like you're not going to have these big podcast networks that are just throwing six-digit checks at people hoping that something returns. The money train's gone. It'd be like 15 years ago with the web series. I don't know if you remember Funny or Die and Super Deluxe and all of those websites. That was the way 15 years ago. Just shoot your own web series. They were giving like $100,000 to creators to shoot 10 episodes of a web series just that wouldn't happen now you would have to shoot that yourself and then get traction and then maybe you get some sponsorship deals or whatever but yeah i think that i think video is what sells and because you start talking about video now it has to be something that's actually worthwhile and then it's going to push the envelope of how it's presented are you are do you ever think, and I confess that I think about this too much, do you ever marvel as I noticed by the way that you still wearing your beard even though the show on tape I can cut it because they might do reshoots in April And I been growing it since October so I scared And even now it's still patchy. Like, this isn't a trustworthy beard. You're a method unk. I'll take that. but I wonder as you inhabit this role if you marvel at what is required in terms of what the audience demands as per production value because I will scroll through my feed and I'm somebody who fetishizes editing and and camera work and production and man could you describe like just because you remember what it's like to be multi-cam and all that and now what yes and now jump cuts are the norm they're even preferred preferred to some degree just get to the point it's authentic to do a jump cut mid-sentence it used to drive me crazy with stand-up because i saw comedians who i knew would do the joke one way live and within the internet they would cut out the pregnant pauses within the joke i'm like what are you doing the partner there amen i did my analytics and i noticed the thing went down and i started doing it like this and the thing went up and i'm like all right i guess you can't argue with that i just i hate that we are enslaving our creative to to consumers who are behaviorally a school of fish and you don't know which way they're going to change or turn and I think it takes a lot to really stand tall in the midst of just going with the flow like that's very very hard I'm not I'm not crazy about it but then I also you know when it comes to like social media management I've I've had a couple different people and I remember at the daily show you know you would always take something and then you would show it to the interns before you posted it and like they just got here but they're also the eyes that we want to consume this thing and they would give you pointers and move this and they would be right they would be right every time i mean right down to captions and how captions now move with one word and like that drives me up the wall but if you're saying that's what i got to do so that I can sell tickets in Toledo next month, then all right, fine. Then that's what I have to do. I just have to hope that you will come see me live and get the more elongated, proper version of the thing. As the chef intended. Yeah, as the chef intended. And I really feel like when you look at what's happening now with how we consume content, it's all short order. The one thing that gives me some degree of hope is this Korean drama vertical thing that's supposedly going to be the new thing where it's 10 one-minute episodes of a thing. Like, nobody will watch a 10-minute webisode, but you'll watch 10 one-minute episodes. But it changes how you write because they write essentially cliffhangers every minute. And it's huge. It's huge over there, and that trend is starting to happen over here. And so if that becomes the new behavioral consumer habit, then I think slowly we revert back to people just watching a 10-minute thing. Because if you'll binge 10 one-minute episodes, eventually your viewing habits will evolve into you just watching 10 minutes. Like if you're a 20-year-old right now and you watch 10 one-minute episodes, by the time you're 30, you'll have the attention span, in theory, to watch something for 10 minutes. and then we're back to 20 minutes and then we're back to regular sitcom 1988 land what if you read so many cliff notes that it was actually just the same length as the book maybe that might be the world take a book and break it into like four volumes now I look at that and I just wonder because also I'm 47 and I go alright well who the hell is my audience what am I doing what do I want to talk about I like the news. I enjoy talking to strangers. That's one thing that I do know. And I feel like that's very across the board. You know, I used to love watching Larry King Live with my dad. What about Larry King Live? Just regular people, bro. Like when he would just have regular people calling in. There was, was it Tom Snyder? The Late Late Show. The Late Late Show before Craig Ferguson, if I'm not mistaken. and it was Tom Snyder and he would take calls. There's clips of this man on the internet. Tom Cruise is in the chair and he goes, hang on, Tom. Yes, we got a caller. Call him hello. And just a regular person is talking to Tom Cruise. That was fascinating to me. Jay Leno would do jaywalking. That was fascinating to me. Like just the idea of connecting with people like that. So that leaves me some degree of hope, but I just feel like I'm not going to creatively work from a place of what is their market for well let me let me do something based on your stated preferences which is that there is a job right now in which people are reacting spontaneously to live breaking events and dealing with strangers all of the time and they're called streamers they're called these they're called kai sanat and speed and and and and these kids and do you watch with curiosity any of of what those kids are doing and i wonder roy if you if you were you know born i don't know 20 years later 30 years later you might have been one of these very industrious young young people i would have had to have been a streamer that's the way i will the one thing i am grateful for with these streaming kids when i see them is that I know that they've made more than enough money to be able to take the time that they're going to need in their 20s to emotionally recover. Like, on some mental health s**t. Yes. Because if you look at what Kai Sinat is doing now, Kai Sinat has transitioned off of streaming into fashion, and this young brother doesn't stream nearly as much as he used to, and he's having fallouts with his social circle from his streaming days, and I don't click the links, but I see it. You know, you see a link and it's like, Ra-Ka-2 doesn't like Jim Jung Dash slash. That's the part we're going to aggregate from this episode. Roy Wood Jr. talks s*** about Kata-Natchin. No, like, I see those kids and I'm like, that's got to be exhausting. Oh, man, if you ever can look into the eyes. But if you can look into the eyes of these streamers during the part that they know isn't going to go viral and they're just working on camera, you can smell the burnout. Correct. And so I'm like, all right, I don't know what you graduate to next from that, but you've got more than enough money to go sit away for a decade and a half. Average American makes $3 million in their whole lifetime. I know they've cleared that, at least. So you got time to go and sit. But then you look at a kid like Speed and this brother went to Africa for a whole two, three months, two, three weeks or so, and showed sides of the country that I've never seen on any travel show and showed perspectives that we've never seen about the black experience and the global black diaspora that otherwise wouldn't have been shown. So it's like, thank you for that, but I also look at it and I know that's a sacrifice because I know what it's like. Like, just the Daily Show is a 12-hour shoot, and we get to have a snack. You don't never see Speed having a snack. Like, that boy's just go, go, go, and he's running, and he's learning, and it's exciting. And I hate that I cannot remember his name, but I'm so happy that the young brother out of San Francisco, I think Michael, who's now the new host of Reading Rainbow, and that's going to series. And that's someone that was just passionate about a thing. and everything else found him. So I think if I'm passionate about whatever it is I really want to do, you find the people that are passionate about it and you build community together. I don't know if I could. I have clips in my phone of stuff I was going to post three weeks ago. I still haven't posted it. The idea of just a camera sitting in my face at all times, I just I don't I don't know I don't know if I could do that I also don't know how you quantify like how does that grow beyond because I think the interesting thing that every streamer or internet sketch comedian has to contend with is the maturation of their audience and eventually if you start at 16 17 and that's your audience by the time they're 24 25 their taste and humor is gonna change like if you think about the things you laughed at at 16 that's why they say like everybody has a period where they really loved snl and then everything on either side of that it's just it's it's kind of whatever it's kind of take it or leave it i think when i look at a lot of these streamers now i'm curious of what they'll become when they when they start approaching their 30s because their audience isn't going to be into the same things and then unless you're marrying someone who's into that as well but you know we had this isn't the first generation you know of streamers you know there was a guy that i used to follow from wild and out named timothy de la ghetto and and so tim was og 1.0 streamer youtuber filipino yeah filipino don't make me guess the race roy is too good at noticing the traps i'm I'm telling you, I'm talking in clips now. You ain't going to get me. Malaysian? Roy's guessed the wrong race, and I'm going to tell y'all I had Tourette's. So. He has a very specific issue. I know, I'm not going to **** on that guy. I'm just saying that. It's highly specific and resonant to a certain demographic. What I'm saying is that you don't know if I'm telling the truth or not. So I'm going to just start. like the idea so you look at a guy like timothy de la ghetto who was one million percent open book to everybody and then like that it's like nah this is me this is my family here's what i will give you and the rest of this is my life it's my own personal place to be and so i think age wise once they kind of hit that same turn, it'll be interesting to see what type of content they transition into and what type of new style of content the next wave of kids get into. And that's why I don't think a network can really get behind it. Hell, Twitch don't even know what to do with speed half the time. You know, they don't even push them to the forefront half the time. So it's the idea of even understanding what that is. By the time you realize what it is, you'll be behind the curve. I just think young people, they're going to continue to use tech and probably a little more AI to dictate how they entertain themselves. And I think just once you're 25 and over, then you're kind of into the more traditional ecosystems. All these broadcasts and streamers are going to just, they're going to continue to merge and implode on themselves and eventually just re-blossom. The force will blossom again with way too many shows the way it was. one of the things that i've made peace with because i'm i'm 40 and i have a six-year-old is the young people who are the classic case study of man i want to call them corner cutters and lazy because they're not doing in the way that i did it journalism and rigor and you didn't suffer how i suffered so your accomplishments are not legitimate for real and and the thing that i've made peace with as i watched the increasingly dead eyes of these streamers is that the issue is the opposite it they have such work ethic and the work ethic is what i see in you it's what i pride i take pride in myself and in our staff at the show and i wonder you know i don't want to set you up for like a motivational coaching pep talk but it does feel like those who don't have that work ethic are probably f***ed. Correct. And that all comes down to whether or not you have that degree of tenacity. I feel like Drewski is kind of an interesting case study as well, where you have a kid who did quick and easy sketches online same as everybody else iPhone 8 low light whatever And then the next thing you know he in a wire harness floating like a Baptist megachurch pastor Like tens of thousands of dollar budgeted level sketches. And that just came from repetition, repetition. Also not being worried about rejection. And there is a veneer of perfection that you believe that you need to always have at all times on the internet. And if you don't have the perseverance to push past that. Like, the internet is, like, getting booed every day. How are your nerve endings on that? I'm indifferent. Like, it doesn't bother me. Like, even, like, in the thick of racial slur, the only thing I don't f*** with is death threats. I take that series, I elevate that right up to CNN, Warner Brothers, FBI, motherf***ers, or whatever. But, like, everything else just doesn't, it's never really bothered me. But I got lucky because I came up at a time where live tweeting was just beginning to be a thing. And this is 2010, and we did Last Comic Standing. And the network contractually made us live tweet the episode under the hashtag every Monday night. I'm on the show for two months straight. I keep advancing every round. So every Monday night for two hours straight, I'm under this hashtag. And you're to reply to anything about you. Hey, Roy, it's funny. Thank you. make sure you watch next week but in between all of that is him and he's not funny and you look like keenan thompson and you look like a crackhead keenan thompson that's what they say i was skinnier back then racial slurs like so just imagine for two hours straight you just consume the worst of yourself and then the west coast feed comes up and you got to do it all over again So I did that for two months and it was kind of like, I don't know, some sort of weird hatred, dig up a system, learn how to become a Jedi at not letting things bother me. But when you look at to that point of work ethic, you put out one or two sketches that suck and everybody hates on you and tells you you're terrible. And then you cower and you stop when now you're and now the algorithm only rewards repetition and constantly being fed. So you have to persevere beyond that and constantly, constantly put stuff out. And I think the thing that I've always found interesting about Drewski and even Desi Banks is the evolution of the content and being able to be a little bit on the pulse of whatever we're talking about, you know, more culturally. then like it's not necessarily current event sketch like this happened yesterday but it's more about this is a conversation we're having at large as a people and whether you think this stuff is funny or not it doesn't matter because he's found the people that like it and then he grows it and i think you have to be able to persevere past somebody giving you a thumb down and saying you ain't and it's the same with the podcast because the one thing i learned over the years is that nobody remembers what they hate they just go i didn't like it now if you say something hateful like we're getting into cancel culture that's a different thing but just you put out a sketch today and nobody liked it all right put one up tomorrow and keep it moving and or lean into the fact that it wasn't funny and laugh with the people so i just think that that's part of what separates the people who make it from the ones that don't is that perseverance and a lot of these kids are not battle tested because they've come up and everybody gets a hug kind of culture and I'm not trying to like sound like an old man but you need to get punched in the mouth a couple times proverbially you need to get no we're going to cut it before proverbially you need to Roy Wood Jr. wants to punch children in the face. I can't believe that Roy Wood that Pablo would have on this racist. I just feel like that's the thing that separates a lot of people. And sometimes that's what stalls me because I can overthink things now because I have the resources and I have the people I can bounce the ideas off of and analyze it and I can, well, let me look at the market and see who else is doing what. And then instead of just putting something out there, because there's stuff you'll see, like some podcasts you were following three, four years ago, and you look at it now and go, wow, that really grew. And all they did was just keep doing it. It's not like they did anything magical. What's the number? 80% of podcasts? They don't make it a year or something like that? Like for all the podcasts we have, this time next year, 80% of them will be gone. It is like NBA player probabilities. We're going towards the complete unlikelihood that this will work out for you. But it's not like those podcasts were canceled. They didn't all have a deal. You just stopped. But, you know, I realize that the saving grace of our experiences online when it comes to dealing with feedback is the same thing I struggle with, which is that all of this s*** is so disposable. the thing that shouldn't key me up at night that comment is also the thing that plagues the stuff i want to last forever that i am molding with this staff of people at this show and and hoping you know endures but why do you want that to endure is it not the deal especially if we're talking especially if we're talking current events and depending on the nature of the pot like if it's like i would argue a lot of what you've done especially in the last year has been seminal in having and creating deeper arguments and discussions around entire industries like that's those are things that are long lasting like when the clippers have to go oh what are we gonna do now Pablo didn't drop the podcast like that that shapes industries that's going to change that it's going to like fiscally affect industries like that I think when you set out to do that did you know that did you treat it like that or did you just create and I feel like so much of what we do it just it don't belong to us once we hit upload like once we put it out there my most viral joke is a joke that ain't even from none of my specials what what's the joke it's a street fighter joke and and i say it with that snark because i didn't put any effort it's like it was just it was a joke yeah i like it i did it on comedy central but it wasn't like like when you do an hour special these are jokes that i've slaved over for two years and polish each corner to make sure that every political point is exactly the way I want. And then f***ing off at the comedy solo one night, I do a joke about how Street Fighter, the people in the background, aren't paying attention to the fighting. 40 million views. This sumo wrestler's karate chopping a car over and over again. Thousands of comments, and they're like, this is brilliant. I'm like, you did not watch my s*** about gun control, bitch? i've got stuff way more fire than the street fighter joke but if the people have decided that what i put out that that's what they want to consume i'm cool with that and if anything it makes me go all right if i want you to come to my stand up for the subliminal political thing then maybe i would benefit from having a little bit of you know something a little lighter in there I think that as much as we want to dismiss people, we want to dismiss negative consumers. But then all of a sudden, the ones who love it, we allow that to fill our soul. So does the person who did not like it for a reason, like what was the reason? And you don't have to get into the silly metrics of when somebody punched out in a clip. But a lot of that, it's what's happening now. You ever notice when you watch a movie preview, now there's a preview to the preview. There's literally a three-second preview of what you're about to watch, and then it says preview starts now. And then it's like, what the f***? But if I want people to come see the movie, that's what I got to do. They're going to chew up the food and spit it into our mouths and make sure that we are going to digest it. And I hate it. I hate it. But then if you hold firm, because, you know, we're not talking if you're Christopher Nolan or Scorsese or something, you don't have to follow those. The Ryan Coogler is not going to give you the preview to the preview. But if you're average Joe Blow filmmaker trying to get your second film greenlit or your third film greenlit and you don't do the things that because the corporations don't care, the corporations follow the people who want to be spoon fed. if you don't follow that, they use that against you to justify that you don't have what it takes. And I still think that somewhere in the midst of our short attention spans and this idea that most consumers don't know any better what they're doing, somewhere in there they do know. And you just have to sift through those results and really get to the bottom and see what the criticism is. because sometimes somewhere in the midst of all of that, there are valid criticisms. And that's part of what helped me when I was doing Last Comic Standing. It's like, oh, well, that joke is just like so-and-so's joke or that's a lazy joke. Maybe I need to hear that. Maybe I need to be challenged a little bit more. So you would hope to get that type of critique from your colleagues and people you respect. But every now and then, it's cool, which is why I appreciate Reddit because Reddit to me is like the most thoughtful f*** yous. I mean, we're grading on a tremendous curve here. Yeah, I'm just saying, if I'm getting criticized or having my work critiqued, Reddit comments are probably what I would put at the top tier because there's a lot of thought. It's a long, nice, it's eight, nine paragraphs. It's really laid out because, oh my God, Because the show we do on CNN, it's a remake of a British show that's been on 30 years. And so the Brits was all scared that we was going to f*** their IP. And the Have I Got News For You British page, there's a subthread in there that's just critiquing every episode of the American version. And I was in that bitch every day when we first got on air. And they were like, it's not as bad as I thought, which is a standing ovation. From a British person. But, yeah, I just think that we want to create these things that are heralded and lauded and revered. When the truth is, some people just want a street fighter joke. And there ain't nothing I can do about that. So if you don't laud what I want you to laud, I can't. I don't accept that as a loss. and also can't get annoyed with you because you like what you like. Now, it's not your fault that you like Street Fighter Joke because you've been brainwashed into thinking is all you should consume and maybe you should. I like the fact that we have these weird documentaries now. I think that any documentary where the subject is part of the production of the documentary to some degree is inauthentic. It's like when the person is producing their own biopic. Are you going to really tell us all the truth about when you was an a**hole? But if watching a doc that has the person in the doc is the only reason a doc was made and it gets you to watch a doc and you otherwise wouldn't watch docs, fine. And hopefully the next one that's actually got some teeth to it, you'll turn that one on. I look forward to you as a person without a podcast. I look forward to you hosting a Street Fighter podcast that subtly transitions into a multi-part investigation into reparations. That's a good place to end. Roy Wood Jr., thank you for saying yes. Thank you. Thank you to all you guys for joining us. Thank you all. Good to see you, brother. Thank you all. Thank you. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out from Meadowlark Media. We are obligated journalistically to point out that Timothy De La Ghetto somehow is tied. I'll talk to you next time. Thank you.
