Best Of: Jon Stewart

Hi, my name is Dana. I am a subscriber to the New York Times, but my husband isn't. And it would be really nice to be able to share a recipe or an article or compete with him in Wordle or Connections. Thank you. Dana, we heard you. Introducing the New York Times Family Subscription. One subscription, up to four separate logins for anyone in your life. Find out more at nytimes.com slash family. I'm Kara Swisher and you're listening to Sway. I'm revisiting some of my favorite episodes this month. Today's pick is my conversation with comedian Jon Stewart. We spoke just months ago in March. He had taken a long hiatus after retiring from The Daily Show in 2015. And he was just emerging with a new Apple TV Plus show, The Problem with Jon Stewart. So I probed the comeback kid about his long break and his new show. And if he could do it all over again, whether he choose to leave his podium just before Donald Trump became president. Take a listen. Jon Stewart, welcome to Sway. What are you laughing already? No, that was, it was, would you have chosen to leave knowing Donald Trump was going to be there? And I think the answer would be resounding. Oh, most definitely. Most definitely. Okay, we'll get to that. But let's start first with what's going on in the news right now. Russia's invading Ukraine on a scale we haven't seen since World War II. Putin put Russia's nuclear forces on special alert. It doesn't seem to be going very well for Putin at the same time. I'd love to get, like, if you were making a daily show right now, how would you cover this? And how do you look at this crisis right now? You know, these are the kinds of things that are really difficult to cover because of the human element. Generally, the first order of attack would be on the powers that be. And the second order of attack would be on the way that the media covers the powers that be. In these types of situations, actually, the media generally shows what they're capable of. You know, this is it's the kind of crisis that their infrastructure in 24 hour, you know, kind of seven days a week urgency matches the moment. So it's one of those situations where you really go, oh, right. This is what they're built for. They seem to have moved beyond the, you know, crisis in Ukraine. Let's bring on Van Jones and Rick Santorum. What do you think? You know, they've moved beyond that kind of paradigm. So chances are what we would do, I think, is try and find an absurdity, but also recognizing that the immediacy of the human tragedy is one that you have to always be cognizant of. You can't be, you know, there are a lot of times at the show where we were more comedian than man. This is one of those situations where you probably have to be more, more human than comedian. So meanwhile, it is actually also a narrative. And Zelensky, Ukraine's president, is becoming a global hero, which, of course, is pissing Putin off. Zelensky came up as a comedian. And you recently said, we're watching Shecky Green, which is a great reference, transform into Churchill. Can you talk about that? Talk about Shecky Green? If you'd like to, but what's your observation? No, I think it's just- Explain Shecky Green for the people who do not know in the back. well so you're sort of a an old borscht you know there's a strong tradition of borscht belt tumblers and shicky green was just one of the best and i meant it you know look comedy is reductive when it comes to its references but just in the sense of watching someone elevate to a position to come from not to be drake in this situation but uh now we hear you know uh i think it's always impressive to watch someone meet a moment, no matter where they come from. But I think there's a special resonance if you feel like it's kind of one of your own. Like, you know what it feels like? Do you remember Working Girl? Do you remember the scene in Working Girl where like she gets in the corner, Melanie Griffin gets in the corner office and then everybody in the steno pool is like, yes! Like, I think there's something like that. Like, you just feel like- Is that what you're all doing in the steno pool of comedy? Yes. You're all going, yes. We're all in the steno pool going. Yes. But beyond that, though, I think it's tinged with melancholy because of why he has to meet the moment and the fact that, like, the moment's not over. Right. No, he's in a lot of trouble. He's in a lot of trouble. And, you know, your fear is that the media can make a hero and a narrative out of a moment. But this is an individual who now has a 40-mile convoy of artillery facing him down. And, uh, you know, I don't know how you, butch Cassidy and Sundance kid this thing. I don't know how you get out of this. And the other side of it is, I think I'm still a little bit in shock as to anytime newsreels come to life. I think there's always a little sense of, oh, right. This shit's way more fragile than we probably gave it credit for. And, and I think I'm still in a little bit of that. Like, wait, are madmen still allowed to roll tanks through borders? And there's also a little chauvinism involved, I think, because quite frankly, you know, Saudi Arabia is still bombing the shit out of Yemen. We bomb the shit out of Iraq. Like, I'm not saying it's an analogous situation, but those human beings on the other end of those armaments are as human being as the ones in Ukraine that, you know, everybody's got their flags up and there are other things. And right now, around the world, there are communities in terrible suffering from Yemen to Palestinians to all around the world. And this story has captivated people. I mean, he is using some of the techniques of an entertainer to do that, Zelensky. He's using photos. He's using Twitter. He's certainly trying to avail himself to narrative, which is a good narrative, which people get sort of, you know, Dr. Evil versus the good guy, essentially. Yeah, I mean, I think that's what you do. when you don't have a 40-mile convoy of armaments. Like, I have a feeling that if he didn't have to go on TikTok, he wouldn't. Right, if he didn't. But he's winning the social media game. Yeah, I mean, but that's going to be cold comfort when there's a giant crater near your house. Indeed. So one of the things that, meanwhile, the Republicans led by Donald Trump have been cheering on the other guy, Vladimir Putin. Are you shocked, surprised, neither? You had an interesting tweet last week. you said, for Fox News and Donald Trump, the American left and most of Europe are the evil empire. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, that that's been for years. That's not anything new. I think for years, it's been pretty clear that they would much rather do a deal with Putin than Pelosi. Like, I know it might be an easy and cheap thing, but like Steve Bannon, that's his strategy. Like he's working with those guys. You know, they're Hungary and Eastern Bloc dictators are their test kitchens in the way that like McDonald's will test a new sandwich in Columbus. Like they'll test media strategies they'll test other stuff that wing of it is in league they view putin as a defender of western civilization they view him as an ideological brother meaning they want to be him that's why they cheer him on presumably uh i don't know if they want to be him but i think they see his you know look it's an orthodox christian generally homogenous society very conservative unfriendly to gays and minorities like kind of their world isn't it you know if they were able to say what they really wanted to say and sometimes they do say it depending on which hour of fox you're watching well speaking of that tucker carlson was one of putin's early defenders i'm sorry what's the name tucker carlson you've ever heard of him no it sounds it sounds fictitious to me it sounds like something you would make up in a it's one of holden caulfield's friends i believe the one you don't like right um any he's really done a little now but russian state tv even used clips of tucker carlson this person you may or may not have heard of uh fox news shows some kind of bizarre support footage let's play one clip here here carlson is talking about how americans have been conditioned to hate Putin. Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs? These are fair questions, And the answer to all of them is no. Vladimir Putin didn't do any of that. So why does permanent Washington hate him so much? So your reaction? So that checklist that he ran down is actually used to be on my dating profile. So it would always be, you know, when I was looking for a prospective mate, it was always, do they manufacture fentanyl? Do they eat dog? Are they calling me a racist? If they could pass that test, we were ready to go share a meal or, you know, anything else that we might be able to come to. You know, when you deal with such a dishonest propagandist, and that is what he is, there's nothing you can take out of context because none of it is real. You know, he's admitted when he's cornered, he lies. When he doesn't, it's all a game and a performance. I mean, I honestly, I have no idea what the fuck that guy believes. Truly. You know, how does anybody go on television and say, why shouldn't I be rooting for Russia? Which, by the way, I am. I mean, just set it straight out. Right. Well, that's who I'm rooting for. He did not take your parking space, John. That's what it read like to me. He didn't take my parking space. And I was like, but isn't that the way we judge dictators and atrocities? Are they nice to me? You know, this Hitler guy, you know, yes, has he done some things? But I got to tell you something, always holds the door. Very polite. You know, in some ways, I think then you have to ask the question, why is Rupert Murdoch trying to destroy the fabric of this country? What's in it for him? Answer. What do you, why do you think? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if it's ideological or he just thinks this is where the money is. but how somebody can in good conscience put a shithead like that on television every night to say those types of things, that's where the responsibility lies in my mind. Because it's, you know, I always like to look at it as the difference between ignorance and evil, right? Ignorance is epidemic and an entirely, in some ways, curable condition. So I like to think that the majority of us are in our own way, just trying to create the world we would prefer to live in and trying to overcome the blind spots and the ignorance that exists in all of us in different ways. And then there's a few people out there who are dishonest and using disinformation to achieve nefarious aims. And that's the category I'd go there. So I try and draw a distinction because I think if you use a broad brush, you're less safe. And I really try hard not to dismiss all It does work. It does work with his listeners. But the difference is those listeners, many of them are redeemable, that have potential to grow beyond that or to get out of it. Or it's the cult leader is the one responsible, not necessarily the flock. The flock may be lost. They may be easily moved by that. So how do you separate them when this stuff does resonate? My mom listens to Fox News. she's like, well, Putin did anything to me. And I'm like, not today. But you love your mom. Yes. Yes. Kara. Kara. Kara. Not when she's a Fox News watcher. You love your mom. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And there are things about your mom that are redeemable Is your mom evil No Does she have blind spots Indeed Is she worth staying with Well what interesting is that the propaganda is so effective that it doesn ever leave. You know what I mean? It's very difficult. I think a lot of people are in that position of anyone who has someone who's moved down that road. They do listen to it. And more Republicans have a negative view of Joe Biden than of Vladimir Putin, according to one of the Fox News polls. This was before Russia invaded Ukraine. But you have you have to try. You can't stop. You know, my wife and I play a game. We live in an area that's very, uh, red. And so we like to play a game when we're driving somewhere called insurrectionist or just supporter. And so when we're driving, we'll see somebody and you know, you'll just be like, okay, that guy's got, okay, there's a flag on the truck, but nothing else. And that's a flannel coat. I'm going to go with supporter. And then you'll go by and you'll see somebody with like, don't tread on me, no more media bullshit and be like, okay, that's a guy who would probably take a shit in the rotunda if he had a chance to. But it's an important distinction. Your wife sounds very nice playing this game, even though she makes fentanyl and eats dogs, presumably. She actually runs a fentanyl dog eating business. It's one of the few businesses and it's drive-thrus, so it's convenient. No ads here now. Anyway, all right. So speaking of Tucker Carlson, your most famous moment was indeed. You know exactly who he is on Crossfire in 2006, which is a long time ago, when you told him, you're hurting America. It was a big moment for you. And for him, and at the time, he really was pushed back on his heels when you did that. What do you think the impact of that was? I didn't mean him personally. I mean, I think it's become sort of that. But I think that moment has been misinterpreted in a lot of ways. All right. Explain it. I think people saw it as a plea for civility and it wasn't. It was a plea for honesty. I don't care if people argue or if they get mad at each other, if they are angry, but I don't like dishonesty. I don't like dishonest debate. I have a view of the media as an important part of the immune system against authoritarianism and fascism and against bad governance. But when you set up the polarities of the media to be purely along the lines of a theatrical fight between the right and the left. That's what I thought was hurting. How would you deal with him today, Carlson, if you had another encounter with him? Boy, I mean, he's very tough to deal with because he understands his own dishonesty. So I don't think that moment could occur again. I think he's developed, you know, it's sort of like jet fighters. They'll release something that sends a thermal trail somewhere else, and then the missile will follow that. I think he's developed evasive maneuvers, one of them being his, you know, if you say anything that permeates his bullshit, he gets that look on his face like he's receiving a confusion enema. I can't explain. You're doing the Tucker Carlson face right now. Are you eating dog? Exactly. Are you taking phenythyl and eating dog? I'm just asking questions, sir. I'm just asking questions, sir. I mean, the dishonesty is so. So you couldn't. I think it'd be a lot harder to pierce that. Yeah. Because I think in that moment, he didn't, he hadn't quite developed that. He had it to a certain extent, even then, but he said himself, when he's cornered, he lies and he lies, by the way, lies when he's not cornered too. You're right. You have a show, which we're going to get to in a minute, but what would be your first question to him if he was a guest, if he agreed to be a guest on your show? Why did I agree to do this? The first question would be to me. I would ask myself. So that gets back to, I think, the larger point, which is engagement versus non-engagement. Ignorance, I think, is always important to engage with directly. I have a lot of blind spots and I have a lot of ignorance. And when I, there's nothing that pleases me more than to have those illuminated. All right. So in that regard, one of the things you missed, and this was talked about, this idea of disengagement, which you did when you left The Daily Show in 2015. You missed all the Trump years. Did you leave at the exactly wrong moment? I mean, I know you joked about it before, but... I mean, Kara, I was alive. I didn't miss it. I get that. I know you're not dead. I know you didn't miss it, but one of the things that was important was your voice. Do you think it was that you disengaged at the wrong time when there might have been an opportunity to get through to some of these people? I'm not saying you're the savior of all mankind, but you had a very important... I was going to say, almost everything that I believe and advocated for didn't come to pass and probably got worse. So you could almost say maybe I disengaged at exactly the right time and gave the world a chance. No, I don't... First of all, I think that's over-inflating the importance of a voice to a large extent. And I would say there was no... dearth of people pointing out his hypocrisies and his excesses and his absurdities and his contradictions. And yet nothing happened. And he would come out and he would say, you know, I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. Although I bet if he tried to vaccinate somebody on Fifth Avenue, he would lose votes. So it really is about the currency that I was operating in wasn't effective against that anyway. And I do think at times we confuse cultural power with power. And a clip of headlined with a clickbaity, Stuart eviscerates Trump's hypocrisy. It's pleasant. It's a distraction, but ultimately feckless. In a lot of ways, what happens with the show is when you're producing, and I think you probably know this from just being in media, when you have to produce content, there are times when you have to feign engagement or you have to feign an emotional connection and a visceral response to something that you don't necessarily feel. And when you get to the point where those moments are coming more frequently than you're comfortable with. When you start to become part of the dishonesty, you have to step back and you have to remind yourself, like, I have to connect to what's real. I don't know. I would have to push back on you. There was actually a column that was just recent. Wait, do you have to push back on me? I have to. I must. What kind of a program is this? Going to push back on you. Because I feel like you do have an impact. You and I have. I think Tucker Carlson's got never gotten more powerful by doing his version of engagement. And one of the things this was a calm. I'm sure you've read it in variety to borrow Stewart's phrasing during a time when identifying dishonest bad actors was as urgently necessary as any in recent history. Stewart chose to give up on engagement, making his statements now feel hollow at best. I think I did have an impact on people talking about Facebook. I do think. Can I push back on that for sure? Please push back. So what I did was I didn't give up on engagement. I changed the modality of it. I felt there was a certain impotence to the structure in which I was operating, that there was a recognition of the tricks and gimmicks of it. Because it was, you know, look, it's why, you know, what John's done with it and what Trevor's done, you know, it was time for new approaches, maybe to, you know, the DNA might still be there, but I think they created new models of it that could permeate what had become practiced. But let me push back on the other part. Okay. Because that's not giving up on engagement. That's leaving a television show. and what I began to do was engage in the real world in a way that felt more productive to me and more impactful and more satisfying. My wife and I began engaging with a food bank in our area, and we got a farm that had rescued. We tried to express our values through action and not talk. You know, a woman named Rosie Torres from a group called Burn Pits 360, reached out because there were a lot of similarities between what we had been dealing with with the 9-11 first responders and community and what veterans had been dealing with. So three or four years ago, we got involved in that. And I found efficacy in being able to use the things that I've learned and the whatever clout I may still possess to elevate those. Those issues. Not just those issues, but those individuals. Like sometimes it just means a lot to be a hype person for them. Did you ever think about running for public office? Oh God, how do you not? When you see the shitheads that are, how do you not when you watch all that and you're like, oh my God, what is it? This is terrible. It's sort of like, you know, when you get in a car and the one driver's drunk and you're like, you ever think about taking the wheel? You're like, yeah, I did. So, and? This was, you know, I don't know that I'd have the temperament for it. And I don't know that, again, that that would be. What would be your temperament problem, given the politicians we see arrayed before us? I mean, we've got a marriage of Taylor Greene over here. We've got Trump. We've got. Oh, yeah, no, that's it's patience with that. It's having the patience that like, how come that person gets to still be here? Why make that person leave? Well, AOC's done a good job saying that. that's saying those things like that. Yes. No, listen, I also think like there's a lot that goes around that that has nothing to do with passion or care about issues or wanting to help people that has to do with fundraising and the way the game is played and the, you know, the lack of perspective on it. And sometimes I feel like, well, I can be more effective on the outside than on the inside. So if it's President Tucker Carlson when he's running, what are you going to do? John. Jesus. Don't even say it. Like, that's just not even. I don't even say it. It's all over the place. It's all over Washington. You should ask around. What? Yeah. Why? That's the worst. That's terrible. We'll leave it back. You're bumming me out, dude. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. More with Jon Stewart after the break. A website should help your business grow, not slow it down. Framer is an enterprise solution with premium hosting, enterprise-grade security, and 99.99% uptime SLAs that gives the world's leading brands like Perplexity, Miro, and Mixpanel the confidence they need to build their websites in Framer. Learn how you can get more out of your .com from a Framer specialist, or get started building for free today at framer.com slash hardfork for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. Rules and restrictions may apply. 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 fax and make it faxes for 30 points. I'm guessing tanga is not a word. Let's see. Tanga 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 in 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 word game Subscribe now for a special offer on all of our games Before discussing his Apple TV Plus show, The Problem with Jon Stewart, I wanted to talk about a problem the internet recently had with Jon Stewart. He came under heat for his comments about podcaster Joe Rogan's troubles with COVID misinformation on Rogan's massively popular Spotify show. As the internet was coming after Rogan and Spotify, and as famous musicians were leaving the platform in protest, Stewart noted that the rhetoric was, quote, overblown. He advocated against abandonment and censorship and for engagement, which seems reasonable, but people did not want to engage with that idea. So I wanted to talk to Stewart about that controversy, if it was a controversy at all, and if nuanced debate is really possible in the age of Twitter. it's hard because unfortunately right now the real conversations that take place for people aren't based on other conversations they're based on encapsulations and synopses and headlines of those conversations what we're talking about right now doesn't travel in the same way that a headline, Stewart says, Carlson is a traitor and, or whatever it is, or Stewart defends, blah, blah, blah. That's what, but that's what travels. Yeah. And, but it's not. Meaningful. Right. Because conversations aren't meant to be encapsulated. Reductive is the word. It's so reductive. And it's, it's sort of like, you know, I'm not a tremendous social media individual, but now that I'm working again, I get a lot of emails and it's a lot of, you know, Hey, I've got those scripts and I'm going to send those over to you. And then I'll write, thanks. But when I look at it on the page, it looks shitty. Like I'm, like I'm going, Oh, thanks. And so I find myself throwing like exclamation points onto like, Thanks. You need to get up. What it does is encapsulations and the written word turn the inquisitive into the definitive. Right. So like with Rogan, like in that situation. So there's a huge headline. Stewart goes to bat again for Rogan's misinformation. So that's the headline. But what it doesn't say is I wasn't defending his misinformation. I was talking to an expert in misinformation from the Harvard Shorenstein Center. And I was asking, how do you deal with misinformation? So it was a discussion about that with someone that I thought could bring some authority and some perspective to that conversation. Now that gets reduced to some sort of strange defending misinformation. So now people on Twitter are reacting to fuck Stuart, fuck that guy for defending misinformation. I'm done with that guy. Fuck that racist piece of shit, both sides, Stuart. And you watch this thing explode and it has very little resemblance to what actually occurred. And you realize like the force amplifier that is these aggregators is a far more powerful actor than conversation. All right. So say then what you said from what your perspective that then got twisted, because I've been misquoted as kind of a famous tune for a lot of public officials, et cetera. It's not what I meant. I've taken out of context. And sometimes we do make fun of him. That's something you did on the show. you play the whole context. And it was exactly what people thought. We worked really hard to make sure that the context was correct. Right. So you thought the outrage was a mistake, correct? Or what? No. So again, so let's talk about tone, right? Because that's important. Absolutely. So, and let's also talk about where it's taking place. So we're on a podcast. It's a bunch of comics and Chelsea Devontes, who's our head writer says, what would you do? You know, these guys, would you pull your music from Spotify? And so it starts off with that, where I'm saying my music is very, very powerful. And I don't know that I could, you know, pull it from Spotify. You know, it's, it's that kind of thing we're fucking around. Yeah. But I said, you know, I don't know. I think it's a mistake because I always feel like engage and maybe that's fruitless. now that's very different than this is a mistake because it's not it lacks certainty i didn't go on there to make a statement of fact that those people were wrong my opinion was i tend to maybe to my error or you know because it or naive try to engage i think the one constructive criticism that comes out of it is pulling your music is a form of engagement. And I wasn't considering that, but that's not what went wide. What went wide was goes to bat for misinformation. Yeah. Did you feel caught up in a sort of a tidal wave in a lot of ways or a tsunami? I've been in that before and I know like I'm only caught up in it because the business model of the internet is arson. You can't make money unless you're setting fires in their mind. So the way that the world works now is people have conversations and within those conversations are small molecules of a lot of potential energy. and then there's an outer ring of let's call them 49ers that are panning for that gold oh he just said it's an overreaction now in the larger apartment it was nothing it was an offhanded comment meant to suggest that i always like to engage but sometimes that fucking gets me nowhere too but boy when you put that in a headline it can sound pretty definitive now the secondary and tertiary rings, the mediaites and all those others, now they grab it because, look, they got to eat too. So now everybody's trying to eat. So what you've done is you've taken this thing, you've changed the meaning of it to a large extent. You've made that now the fact. So rumor becomes fact, fact becomes canon all through this information and context laundering system. So essentially enragement equals engagement, right? Correct. Absolutely. It's, and by the way, that's the 24-hour news model, which is why it's so destructive unless it's 9-11 or an invasion of a sovereign country. Because now the gravity of the situation matches the urgency that they gin up. Now the emotional tenor of their work is actually matched by the situation. But in the absence of that, they have to gin up. To create the noise, to create a noise situation. That's right. So listen, and I'm a big boy and I've done this for a long time. And it's easy to forget, you know, it's a little bit of like, oh, I haven't played football in a while. So I just got to get hit a little bit, but I understand that the thing that they're reacting to is a caricature of me, not me. Right. So let's talk about the problem with Jon Stewart, not the problem with Jon Stewart, but the problem with Jon Stewart. What was the name you would have called it if it wasn't that? The real one that I was going to consider it is why not? I was going to call it originally when I thought of it and I was talking to my wife about it was why not? Because it was based in that feeling of why not? So we played around with that a little bit. And there were a few other titles. Why'd you dump why not? It felt too earnest. How do you like doing it? Because it is earnest. It's quite an earnest show. I was surprised. You've got your beginning part. Let me explain for people who haven't seen the show. You have a beginning part where you do your Jon Stewart thing with an audience at a Putin-esque desk, I have to tell you. It's a big desk. Oh, can I tell you that was beautiful. I can tell you like it. You touch it a lot. I'm fidgety. You're fidgety. It's in place of smoking. But nothing's on it. So it's very, very feng shui. Then you do a sort of a comedy act, essentially, or observational. Yeah, like more of what people would traditionally think. Of Jon Stewart. Yeah. And then you have a panel because every show is a different topic. And then you do an interview, a big interview. You did Gary Gensler in the one I saw. There's not a team. There's not a lot of people. There's not any stunts. beyond it. It's very different from The Daily Show. Talk a little bit about why you did it the way you did this. Well, all it really is, it's different from The Daily Show. And I think earnestness is probably a good thing. But, you know, people always viewed satire as kind of a cynical, kind of nihilist, everybody sucks, which isn't. I think satire is generally grounded in idealism and hope and earnestness. So all we've really done with the show is remove the fictional character who gives you what they really think through an arch perspective. The thing that we all kind of developed at The Daily Show, the whatever... The formula. Formula that you thought maybe was different was we turned what were more kind of rote, monologue-esque jokes that were kind of divorced from meaning into a more essayistic format. You know, it's turning a punchline into an essay, right? And so for this show, I thought the thing that was missing is let's set the table in the same way that I might've done in the old days, right? And then rather than have a fictional character come on in front of a green screen, let's have actual people who have an actual stake in these actual issues and let them talk. Who you've never heard of necessarily. Yeah, generally you've never heard of. And then let's go to somebody who might be able to do something about that and say like, hey man, how about doing something about this? This is fucking terrible. And, and yeah. Let me just say the people you're interviewing are surprised too. I thought Gary Gensler was expecting funny Jon Stewart and got pokey Jon Stewart, like poking at him. Is that different? Generally, I am pokey John Stewart. I get that. I get that. But it was funny, pokey. He's like, I'm sure he went back to his pair of people. I'm like, what was that? Because you're like, why do you suck so much, essentially? That's what you said. Well, that's funny. That's not funny. But I don't think he was expecting it. When you have the tone, when I say spare, it is spare. And it is serious and earnest. So what are you going for here? I'm having a hard time figuring out what you're going for. They're all very good shows. but you have to really pay attention and they're substantive. What do you think you're going? Because when I think everything I make, I'm thinking about what I'm going for. What am I trying? What is my goal here? Sort of like what I was saying earlier, which is the goal is identify an absurdity or a problem that seems like there's a solution that could be in the offing. Hear from people that are affected by it and then talk to somebody who might have the ability to change the calculus on it for the better. Which, you know, to be perfectly honest, that kind of, you know, I always find that question strange because we are inundated by shitty content. Yes, indeed. And so even if your goal was, I'm trying to not make shitty content. I'm trying to make something that, if I think noise is the antithesis of progress, what if we tried to make something that was a an equalizer that tried to bring some clarity to a noisy conversation in and of itself i think that's worthy so i'm always struck by that idea that it was like a lot of the the critics you know they were like what he doing It vegetables I saw a lot of that And do we need this And I like there like five CSIs What do you mean? We need those. How do you gatekeep television and content? Like, what are you talking about? And I understand that like I spend my career talking shit. and so you reap what you sow. And that is part of what we do. But I always find the self-justifying aspect of it a little odd. So what would be successful to you and what's successful say to Apple? What are the, illumination? Oh, those are very different things. All right, okay. Those are very different things. I mean, why did you pick Apple over, say, Comedy Central where ratings obviously are a big deal? Apple, who knows? They made more money from an iPod yesterday than you've made your entire career. Yeah. But they would let me do what I wanted. Right. That's why you went with them. Yeah. And it felt entrepreneurial in a way. And I also wanted to create this podcast. We wanted to try and create kind of a universe of information where we were boosting some of these voices and figuring things out. It's entrepreneurial to some extent. But also within that, what Apple gets out of it versus like, I'm not sure what they want out of a content company. I really don't. I don't know, you know, and in some ways we might be antithetical to their business model. Honestly, I think Apple wants to sell iPhones. I think Amazon wants to sell toilet paper. Right. But that's what I mean, that it may not be in their interest to have a provocateur. but I do know they've been incredibly supportive and have given us the resources to do it. And I think when you think about what success, success is not just about its impact in the world. It's also about its impact on the people you work with and their sense of satisfaction and growth and engagement. And I really want to make something that I feel like we're challenging ourselves to not to co-opt a phrase from my benefactors, think differently, but to look at issues not from the polarity necessarily of- Or in the immediate, or in the immediate, because topicality is hard because everyone's thinking about Ukraine right now and you have a show on the stock market of a story that was a couple of months ago. You focus on one, something I've been quite tough on, which is Robin Hood. How hard is that to get people's interest when that's the case? Oh, that I don't know. So the one thing you can never do with content is try and figure out if someone's going to be interested in it. Right. Like you can only make a Ukraine episode. You certainly could. You could. You know, people are paying attention to Ukraine. You could rush one of those episodes out. But that's. So one of the things this is also about one of my frustrations with the media is it's eight year olds playing soccer. So where's the ball? So there's this sense that there's only one story in the world, but like the stock market goes on, whether Ukraine, you know, what's the first thing they say? Russia has invaded Ukraine. And what will this mean for the stock market? Right. Yeah. Yep. So not climbing on the moment, I think is an advantage, not a disadvantage for the types of things we want to talk about. Right. I like to think of themes. And one of the big themes for me is that we are told that we live in a free market capitalist society. And everything that I see tells me we are not. If you give corporations access to the money hose, that's stimulus. But if you give people access to the money hose, that's socialism. this one is about if you turn on the news you will see the stock ticker and the dow jones industrial and you would be you would be reasonable to assume that okay this is i better pay attention to this because this is obviously the pulse and blood pressure of the american economy but it's not it's in no way indicative of it in fact it's an utterly skewed version of what is the actual economy. Those numbers that you see are owned by a small, 10% of the country owns 80% of those assets. It's like, it's just skewed. What you're trying to do here is quite substantive in topics that are not. Do you think if we're in a culture that is so twitchy and reductive, which is, I think you described well, how do you break through? Because Tucker Kaushin, getting back to him, has been very successful in being reductive. Can you be successful in doing what you're doing, which is vegetables in a lot of ways, perhaps delicious vegetables, but in that way it is. um so i know you know i'm a firm believer that you develop an internal barometer of morality and quality and you work with people who will be honest who will tell you tough things that you need to hear and will try and keep as clear an eye on that vision of funny smart thoughtful interesting as we can and fair but it is also reductive there is no you know comedy is in its purest form and incredibly reductive you know we are uh purveyors of bigotry everything we do is hey men you've women do but you know and you could be the king of disclaimers women i gotta tell you I mean, obviously not all women, but a lot of women love to shop. I mean, there's certain women, obviously, in different economic stratas that would have a difficulty in terms of gathering. But in general, I guess what I'm saying is upper middle class. That's the woke, unwoke comic you just did. Women, yeah. That's going to be my next special. Yeah, welcome. But I think one of the beautiful, frustrating things about creating something is it is no longer yours when it leaves your purview. And it's why you have to work with the people you work with as well as you can to create content that best exemplifies the intentions that you wanted to put into it and are the right recipe of fun and interesting and smart and thoughtful as best you can do, but when it goes, it goes. And how that breaks through or how it's received is no longer within your control. So you took over The Daily Show in 1999 when Bill Clinton was in office. Facebook wasn't a thing. Fox News was only a few years old. When you're coming back, is it fundamentally different now? So do you think about making things as fundamentally different? No, I don't. I mean, part of it is my brain is maybe not as elastic as, you know, technology to me is still an alien force. So that part didn't change. And the elements of what you're talking about now were there when I left. they might not have been there to the same extent but they were certainly there i mean i find the only thing that really has changed is you have to be more cognizant like a lot of times you know we we have a young staff and they'll say that thing you said like that's going to cause a problem and i'll say is it a is it a problematic thing and they'll say well i'm i don't necessarily think it's a problematic thing but i know how it may be taken and then then I'll have to say either like, all right, well, let's do that. But what I try and tell them is you can't outsmart the mob because the mob exists in so many different, every interest group has a mob. That's why I don't, you know, people say like, is there a, you know, cancel culture and a woke culture? But in truth, the internet is just a random wandering of a variety of mobs. Every interest, everything you have has people who want to engage honestly, people who want to engage with interest, people who are open, and villagers with pitchforks and torches. So the right has it, the left has it, music has it, comedy has it. We are all, it's a feudal system. So when you look at this, has, I don't mean to say has time passed you by, but you were talking about a different you were talking about a different way is you have the twitters the facebook's all this stuff has gotten this enormous power and enormous damage and you've got a population that's addled and streaming and getting all kinds of stuff in it can you catch their attention you know a lot of your stuff reminds me of tom snyder it reminds me of uh there's a lot kinds of shows i see in this charlie rose with 100 less sexual harassment for example but But, you know, that should be your tagline. What do you think? Will Apple like that? No. Yeah. So it wasn't, well, let me address the first thing first, which is, has time passed you by? Yes. Time passes all of us by. I'm not going to pretend that I'm not 60 next year. You know, we had a moment on The Daily Show, The kind of moment that is beautiful and surprising. And it was a moment that came. I was already, you know, 35, 40 years old. So it was one that I could really appreciate. But what I appreciate more than any of it is the opportunity to have lived a life, a creative one that I never thought would have been possible. And in the moments when, you know, I was working for a plate of hummus down at the comedy cellar and walking home and down to Canal Street at three in the morning and just looking up at this guy and thinking, I'm the luckiest motherfucker around. And I don't think I've ever lost that. I don't, I don't have a, I don't have a yearning to be, I guess what you would consider like on top or relevant. Like I'm grateful that my mind still works the way it works and that there's people that are willing to let me explore topics and do things that I think are worthwhile. And there's streaming and technology and all these other things. But maybe that means there's also still room. Like in some ways, I feel like it's a better pursuit now than it was before. but I also would say, what's my choice? Is your choice then to not make things? If you think to yourself, the world has passed me by and it's like, and by the way, like you get that online, shut the fuck up, go away. Yeah, yeah. But they're not, why would I listen to them? Why wouldn't I continue to make things if I am allowed to? And by the way, if Apple didn't allow me to, maybe somebody else would. Or now with the democratization of content, maybe you end up back at the cellar working for hummus and still, because ultimately it's a pursuit of expression. Yeah, 100%. Jon Seward on Substack, I see it. I see it. Patron, I'm going to go OnlyFans. Anyway, Jon, this has been great. What an interesting discussion. I've enjoyed it, Kara. Thank you. It's very, very nice to meet you. Sway is a production of New York Times Opinion. This episode was produced by Naeem Araza, Blake Nishik, Daphne Chen, Caitlin O'Keefe, and Wyatt Orm. Edited by Naeem Araza, with original music by Isaac Jones, mixing by Sonia Herrero and Carol Saburo, and fact-checking by Andrea Lopez-Crusado and Mary Marge Locker. Special thanks to Shannon Busta, Kristen Lynn, Christina Samulewski, and Irene Noguchi.икеое