It's the Late Show Pot Show with Stephen Colbert. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Ladies and gentlemen, my next guest tonight is a comedian you know from his stand-up specials and is one of the hosts of The Daily Show. Please welcome back to The Late Show, Josh Johnson. Hello. How you doing? Nice to see you again. It's good to see you again. Now, first time I saw you perform was right over here in 2022. Yes. You've had... Thanks for that, by the way. What? You let me, so thank you. No, thank you because you were funny. Oh, thanks. Okay. Back here in 2022 in stand-up, since then, you've put out your second comedy special, went on a multi-city tour, releases hours of stand-up on your wildly popular YouTube page, which I catch over there. You went from being a writer to a correspondent on The Daily Show and became one of the hosts of the show just last year. I'm just curious. There's a lot of talk that 2026 is the year of Anne Hathaway. I'm hearing it might be the year of Josh Johnson at this point. Oh, wow. How are you... How are you feeling about it? I feel good. I'm very thankful. All these opportunities have been coming in and everything that we look forward to for the rest of the year, like my tour, comedy band camp starts in June and everything. Comedy band camp? Yeah. Okay. When it comes to hosting, it's so fun and everyone is so supportive, but it is intimidating because it feels like... You look at something like Daily Show and it feels like you are borrowing your friend's car to drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just want to give the keys back and be able to smile at them. The car is just like you left it. It's actually... I mean, there's no blood on the front grill or anything. I didn't hit anything. I didn't ruin it. I didn't total it, you know? Well, has your family come to see you host? Yes, yes. So my mom, my girlfriend have come, but my mom tries to come to every show. How many times have you hosted? I've hosted for three different weeks and then a special, like, day of hosting. But that's three days a week for those three weeks. Yes. So that's more like a dozen times you've hosted this morning. Yes, yes. It's a lot of trips for mom. It is, it is. And it's always nice to see her there. Everyone loves her. They love her so much, it does make me question how much they love me. Because they're so excited to see my mom. They're excited to see my mom, like, that's their mom. And so then I'm excited to see my mom, but then sometimes somebody will come up to me after I've hosted. Like, they won't always know in the rotation, everyone in the building, what week is everybody's week. And so sometimes someone will walk up and be like, hey, is your mom coming today? I'm like, no, I'm not hosting this week. And they're like, oh, well, good to see you. I had the same kind of mom. I took my mom to see me, my agent once, and she goes, don't take her to auditions, they'll cast her. Yeah, yeah, that is how it feels. Okay, when you're not hosting the Daily Show, you're touring. How much time do you spend out on the road, and does that not exhaust you? No, it's not exhaust. It's cool to be able to do shows and meet everybody and everything. How old are you? I'm 36. Okay, yeah, well, so you've got energy. Yeah, yeah. So you've got knees and everything, that's good. Yes, yes. I still have knees, but they pop now. Yeah, yeah, but no, it's not necessarily that it's exhausting. It's just when you're out, when you're out from your home enough, you do have mishaps, you do have things that happen that are... Travel problems? Yes, like, okay, so I... Everyone had their experience with TSA whenever TSA was, like, bogged down and everything, and I was traveling and, you know, my bag got flagged, and anytime your bag gets flagged, you're kind of in this place of, like, what could it be? Like, I... You know what I mean? I know me, I'm not dangerous, but is there something in there? I know me. I know I don't have a gun. I know I don't have a gun. I don't need anything. Why are you stopping me? And then when I see it on the screen, because some of them you can see, and the person, the agent was like, do you have brass knuckles in your bag? And I was like, no, I don't have brass knuckles in my bag. Why would I have brass knuckles? So now I'm thinking, like, something happened. Like, you know how they say, don't leave your bag? They're like, never leave your bag at the airport. You don't know what people do. Some people have brass knuckles, and they just put them in people's bags and stuff like that. So, like, so now I'm like, did I leave my bag for a second? Because I put my head down to drink some water before I went to the... Was that when they did it? And then... And then they... They opened my bag, and it wasn't brass knuckles. Just like I thought it wasn't brass knuckles. It was, uh... It was toe spreaders. Pardon my ignorance. No, okay. Toe spreader? Yeah, so, Steven, look, I... I've had feet issues. I had very narrow feet. And at the end of the day, I'm just trying to make sure that all of my toes remember that they're toes plural, you know? And so, yeah, so then I will wear the yoga toes at night sometimes. Yoga toes? Yeah, they're like... They're like foot spreaders. They keep your toes apart. And so... Like you might use if you're getting a pedicure. Yeah, yeah. And so that... They opened my bag and they pulled those out. And he was like, what are these? Because he was like, you, he didn't know. And so I was like, oh, you know, those are like... You know, like when you do martial arts, sometimes you like to practice, so those are like practice knuckles. You know what I mean? It's like... Are they soft? Oh, very soft. I brought them. I brought them for you to see. So this is what they found. This is a marillade, if I've ever seen one. Yeah. Oh, wait a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can slip them in. And then your thumb goes in there or something like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, put them together. Yeah. Yeah. Look at that. Yeah. And these normally go on your feet? They do. And they're on my hands now? Oh. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. I would have brought hand sanitizer had I been thinking ahead. You got a new stand-up special coming out on the HBO, right? Yes. Yes. So... Okay. We understand that tonight the late show has an exclusive. Yes. Okay. Now it's right here, right now, when the special will be released. Joe, could we have a drum roll, please? Do I talk during the drum roll? Or do I wait until the drum roll ends? You got it. Okay. I think, and do not stop. Okay. I think that you would say is like, well, the name of the special is, and it will be released on... Oh, okay. This is the first drum roll I've ever had in my life. Right. This is... Oh, first drum roll, Joe. Yeah. First drum roll. Okay. Thank you so much. Enjoy it. Please, enjoy it. Yeah. Do not rush your first drum roll. Okay. Who knows how long it is going to be before you get another one? Yeah. Hey, everybody. My name is Josh Johnson. And my special symphony comes out on HBO Friday, May 22nd, at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. You're not much. Thank you. Natural. That's very kind. I appreciate it. So natural. Yeah. That... Wow. We got to go here in a minute, but I don't know. Why do you call it symphony? I have two main things that I both try to write all of my comedy by and live by. And they are basically that everything is connected, like all of us, everything that happens, there's connection and everything. And the second thing is that we're all pretty similar. We're all shades of each other and everything. And so I think that those things equal out to music. You know? Like I think that we are all playing off different notes of each other. And sometimes the music that you hear, you don't quite like or it might be a terrible song, but it also lets you know where you are. And so everything, everything that we do, all of this life we have together is us cutting an album. So... Is there a conductor? I guess... I just ask, is there a conductor? Is there a conductor? Kind of? I guess I'm a version of a conductor. Okay, if you mean conductor... Oh, so you're the conductor and we're all in your symphony as well. No, I guess conductor as in I understand your question now. I think that's probably God would be the conductor, right? Like that makes the most sense. I don't know. Asking you, I'm asking you. Yeah, yeah. So, I'm asking you, just for the special, is there a conductor that comes out and it's like... Not a metaphorical conductor, is there a literal conductor? Yeah, I didn't know if you were speaking literally or metaphorically. And so the metaphorical conductor is God and then the literal conductor doesn't come out while I'm doing the stuff for you. That would be distracting to the audience if the conductor came out at that moment. Yeah, especially if his arms like in the way, you know, if he had a baton or anything like that. Do you play any musical instruments? Nothing well. No. No, no. Well... Any time I hear someone who has an ear for music, like everything that they're doing over there is like magic. 100%. Yes. 100%. People, honestly, whenever people can even like sight read music, and this is just my own ignorance, but whatever people can like sight read music, just I'm like, you making it up. There's no, like, I'm like, that's not... You're just good at playing. I don't think you see anything. That's not real. Yeah, or people can just look at it and just sing the notes. Yeah, or when people have perfect pitch, I'm like, if you don't like it when I sing, just tell me. Like, don't tell me how wrong I am. People tell you how wrong you are? I don't sing often, but what I do is a mistake. Josh, so nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. The Daily Show airs weeknights on Comedy Central, and his HBO special Symphony premieres May 22nd. Josh Johnson, everybody, we're right back. Thank you for listening to the Late Show Pod Show with Stephen Colbert. Just one more thing, if you want to see more of me, come to the Late Show YouTube channel for more clips and exclusives. When beloved family patriarch Gary Ferris went missing, his family looked everywhere on their property until they came across something horrifying. It's a homicide. Absolutely. The blame game in this family went round and round. This is Blood is Thicker, the Ferris Wheel. I would don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy. Binge the full series, Blood is Thicker, the Ferris Wheel, on the free Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
