Gianmarco Soresi is a stand-up comedian, actor, and co-host of The Downside podcast. He joined Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to talk about his acclaimed new special Thief of Joy, the comedians flying to Riyadh to perform for Saudi royalty, and why “the court jester was never supposed to have a chair next to the king.”

Nathan J. Robinson

It is the greatest pleasure today to be joined by the comedian Gianmarco Soresi. His new comedy special, Thief of Joy, was called by the New York Post, of all places, “the best debut of 2025.” The New York Times recently called it superb and said in a profile, “Gianmarco Soresi thrives where theater kid and club comic meet.” But the feedback from the viewership is even better. Gianmarco Soresi recently posted a quote from a fan’s take: “Gianmarco’s videos are the only reason why I still want to see tomorrow.” High praise, indeed. So now lives are depending on you continuing to pump out the content.

Gianmarco Soresi

It’s a lot. I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but I have had people who come up to me and say, “I was having suicidal thoughts, and you helped me through it.” And every time they say that, I want to be like, “Which video was it?” Oh my god, which crowd work clip was the one that made you go, “You know what? Life does have meaning.” That was never my purpose. But I’m glad, as a secondary contribution.

Robinson

I think it’s more about—I think a lot of people watch you just because you’re likable to be around? I think there’s a parasocial thing.

Soresi

Yes, very much.

Robinson

You’re a person who’s full of life and joy. And I think that’s infectious.

Soresi

I think so. And it’s definitely an on-stage thing, because in real life, I can be quite quiet and sour. But I think what I’ve found is that I am my best self when people are paying attention to me, and I navigated a career where that occurred and we’re both getting something out of it.

Robinson

People do this with Current Affairs too. Someone said, “Your magazine got me through the darkness.” Because the magazine is very similar. It’s very joyful, fun, and funny. And I feel as you might feel when people say that to you: please don’t put that level of pressure on me. I don’t want to be the only reason.

Soresi

I know. You really understand why people, as they get more successful, lose their minds. Because, one day, my poke bowl order is messed up, and I’m like, do you know how many lives are dependent on me going out there and telling these jokes? Where’s my fucking poke bowl? And so you have to manage. What I always have to remind myself is, if it wasn’t me, it would be Josh Johnson. I’m glad I served that purpose, but there’s a line of people ready to take the mantle from me.

Robinson

Well, also you’re famous now, so for every interaction you have with people in public, you better be nice, because [then they’ll be saying] Gianmarco Soresi treated me like shit.

Soresi

I know, I know. And it’s tough because it happens all the time. I’ll be on a phone call with friends telling me a tragedy that happened in their lives, and someone comes up and goes, “Hi, how are you?” And as soon as I have a temper, not towards people, but if the train comes and keeps going, sometimes I curse into the sky, and someone’s going to get that on film someday. I’m just trying to get the word out now. I’m an imperfect person.

Robinson

Now I didn’t finish my introduction. Actually, I give people good introductions here.

According to his website, Gianmarco Soresi is known not only for his sharp societal observation but also for his spry, energetic stage presence. And if people watch the new special, which they should—you’ve released it free on YouTube for the whole world to see, so nobody has to pay to watch you—they will see that you are a man in motion. You have a beautiful Singin’ in the Rain-style streetlamp. And so one of the comments says, “I think what this has taught us is Gianmarco Soresi needs a securely mounted light pole next time his urge to sing in the rain is too strong.” And then someone else said, “Petition to have a lamppost on every stage Gianmarco performs on,” and then they said, “There’s chewing the scenery, but Gianmarco brings it to a new level of fucking the props.” People notice the physical dimension of your performances.

Soresi

I’m glad they do. Listen, I started in the theater, and I said that if I’m going to switch careers, I’m going to bring a little of the theater with me. So that’s what I was going for.

Robinson

No, it’s good. Listen, you’re out there on tour right now in America. You were just here in New Orleans. You had a punishing beignet-eating schedule, so you couldn’t drop by Current Affairs. We hope you’ll come by next time. But let me ask you this: what’s it like out there in America right now?

Soresi

It can be really tough, because my shows have a joy that I don’t think is in America right now. Especially when I’m in the South, I find that’s when the audience is, how would I say, even more visibly queer than in the city. I just did a show in Hattiesburg. And I think in Hattiesburg, I was probably the gay hang of the night. Sometimes people will say they’ll come alone to the show, and I hope they come alone and leave with someone. It’s a meet and greet. When I go to my shows, I always tell them, “If only the people in this room voted, Jill Stein would have had a shot.” There’s a joy there. America itself feels just bleak as fuck. And I’m starting to accept and understand my role, that even if I talk about current affairs, there is a degree of escapism. I’m saying, “Hey, let’s go in here for an hour and a half and just laugh at how fucked up it is.”

Robinson

A thing that I always remember is that when we talk about red states and such, oftentimes red states—even the reddest of red states—are 60/40 or 70/30. That 30 percent of people feel very lonely and unheard, but they’re real.

Soresi

They’re real. And I hope that’s what you feel when you go. It works in both directions, unfortunately, but when you go to a gathering, you really understand how many people share your values and beliefs. Whether it’s a Gianmarco Soresi comedy show or a Charlie Kirk memorial, you really go, Wow, there’s a lot! There’s a lot to contend with, either way.

Robinson

Now, you’re a pretty open leftist. You’ve even had the audacity to do a few jokes on the Israel-Palestine conflict in your act. Do you ever get in front of an audience and quickly feel this is not the place for this kind of material? How do you take the political temperature of your audience and determine what they’re ready for?

Soresi

Honestly, one of the benefits, and also, I think, detriments of modern-day comedy is our fan bases are so curated via social media. So in a way, I probably feel a safety at my own shows that will someday bite me in the ass, where I will forget that I’m at someone else’s show or just a comedy club, and I’ll have to be ready. I just feel like the harder shows were the early years. That’s where I would be in Florida, and I would look at the men in the audience, and aesthetically, they had copied Trump; they had orange fake tans. They look like they were on the waitlist for Mar-a-Lago. And that was more nerve-wracking than it is now, but that’ll be the challenge, I think. As you get comfortable in your own space, you expand. You push yourself to be sharper and follow your views to even more biting punch lines. And then do you have the chutzpah to do it when it’s on a TV show? Or I guess if you’re going to the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which I was not invited to.

Robinson

I’m going to ask you about the Riyadh Comedy Festival. But yes, you made local news anchors uncomfortable with a Luigi [Mangione] joke at one point.

Soresi

Yes, I knew I wanted to mention Luigi in some capacity; I had the idea in my mind. And these news shows, I’m not as practiced in them. They’re five minutes. They have all these very squeaky-clean questions to ask you. And then right at the last minute, I was like, I know how to say this. And the best part with news anchors, with morning shows, is, as inappropriate or whatever you might be, if they laugh, if they smirk, they can’t be mad at me. If you make the teacher laugh, you’re not going to get in trouble for being the class clown.

Robinson

The woman especially realized immediately she shouldn’t find it funny. News anchors are funny because when you can make them uncomfortable, there’s nothing more delightful than them trying very hard to maintain their professionalism.

Soresi

Yes. I’m glad they left it up for two days, and then they did take it down. They did take it down, and I have not been invited back to PIX11 New York.

Robinson

Oh, but they clearly loved you so much... Anyway, let me ask you about the Riyadh Comedy Festival. If people don’t know, a lot of major A-list comedians are accepting money from the Saudi government, who previously brought you the dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, the imprisonment and killing of a great deal of domestic Saudi human rights activists, and also possibly a little bit of 9/11. And people like Louis CK, Aziz Ansari, Pete Davidson, and Bill Burr [are going], which is a little bit disappointing.

Soresi

Everyone is bummed about it.

Robinson

He’s anti-establishment—doesn’t like the powerful and the rich? How much do you think he got? A lot.

Soresi

Oh, I’m sure. The numbers that I’ve heard floated at the top were like $1.6 million, and I would imagine easily that, if not more. Because I also think if someone like him dropped out, it would maybe make some underneath him feel comfortable dropping out as well. It’s unfortunate. It’s all unfortunate. Louis CK is doing it. I think it’s the worst thing he’s ever done. It makes me uncomfortable because I just go, clearly, comedy has become so much more powerful in the last decade, in a way where these are new ethical questions. I don’t think George Carlin would have ever performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, but he also was never asked. These comedians used to not enter the sphere of influence, and now, because of podcasting and the fact that comedians were kind of on the front end of that, and social media has just allowed our voices to expand, there are new questions. What are we? What is our role in America, let alone globally? It is complicated. I’ve performed in places whose governments I didn’t align with. However, I do think you can make distinctions, and the distinction should be made that the government is funding this, a government that you know has this history of human rights abuses. I forget which human rights organization called on the comedians to please don’t do this. And also, a lot of comedians these days have engaged in politics, have engaged in conversations about free speech and what a government should do, and the question is, can you maintain that comedic authority when you are selling out so easily for a very powerful government? Or having the president on your podcast? I think these are all kind of new questions.

Robinson

You didn’t get the call from them?

Soresi

No. It’s easy for me to stand high because I wasn’t invited to Riyadh. Trump did not ask to go on my podcast. Neither did Kamala. But I think we do need to reestablish what our expectation is. If a comedian like Theo Von is going to go on his podcast and cry tears over Palestinian suffering and then, two weeks later, have JD Vance on and joke about how he’s going to go hang out at his pool house, I hope that we cultivate an audience that goes, “Hey, Theo, what the fuck? That’s bullshit. I don’t buy this.” And whatever’s in their heart, who really gives a shit? It’s about their actions. And I hope that the stink of this Riyadh Comedy Festival is great enough that some comedians are forced to confront where they stand and what the responsibility is to themselves, to comedy, and to their audiences.

Robinson

We do actually know pretty definitively that being invited to this came with the implicit requirement that you not criticize the Saudi government. Tim Dillon said he was invited. He had agreed—he was going to take the money, and then he said something about how he’s going to overlook the slavery.

And then he got disinvited. What’s interesting about that is that it shows that there is a kind of—it’s not spoken. They didn’t tell him when they signed the contract that it would be canceled if you mentioned the slavery. But now everyone’s on notice that if they mention the slavery, they’ll get canceled. Some of these people present themselves as real truth-tellers, as edgy people, like Jimmy Carr, who loves edgy jokes. He’s there. There’s the guy with the mustache that I hate—Andrew something?

Soresi

Oh, Andrew Schultz.

Robinson

Yes. That guy. These guys who present themselves as independent figures, who nobody tells them what to say. They have been bought, and they know they’ve been bought.

Soresi

Yes. I think Tim Dillon, who, half the time, I get pissed off by what he does, there are other times he’s the one who’s willing to say something so critical, albeit in a roundabout way, that it gets them disinvited. I think there’s a real honor in a comedian getting disinvited from the political thing, and to go to the political thing and be so subversive or so critical that they do what Michelle Wolf did at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where they canceled it the next year. I say put her in the legends of comedy, because that’s what you do. Now, maybe I’ll be mistaken—maybe one of these comedians will go to this festival and be so punchy that they put him in jail, and it becomes a whole thing. And you know what? If that happens, I’ll go, okay, touché. However, I don’t think that will be the case. And furthermore, even if they are subversive, even if they do one Khashoggi joke or one 9/11 joke, ultimately they’re being used to present the government there as kind of chill and fun and “engage with us, there’s nothing weird going on here.” And it’s something so brutal that you could tell a joke to an audience that if they repeated that joke on their own Twitter account, they could be executed. Something about that, to me, is gross, in a way that I think, as a comedian, you should question your acceptance of the booking.

Robinson

Yes, it’s one thing to perform in a country, and it’s another thing to be hired by the government as part of an explicit propaganda project. We know the Saudi Arabian government is trying to cultivate an image of normalcy around the world, and we know that what it does is it sportswashes. How much money do we have to pay the world’s leading athletes and comedians to conspire to pretend that we’re a country that doesn’t execute dissidents?

Soresi

Comedians were never meant to have this much money to begin with. The court jester was never supposed to have a chair next to the king, and that’s just kind of where we’re at. Listen, I want money. I live in a capitalist world. I want comforts. There’s something beautiful about the way I make the majority of my money: there are a number of people who want to see me. There’s a middleman, of course, but they’re paying kind of directly to me to see me. There’s an exchange of goods for money. In this particular realm, the government is giving money to use your face for their own purposes. The show doesn’t fucking matter to them. You can bomb, and you still aren’t making a statement. They are using your face, and they’ve been using it for the past month to be like, “Hey, we’re cool. Don’t worry about those things that we did. Yes, it’s the same guy in charge who did those things too. Don’t worry about it, though.”

Robinson

One of the things that’s a little bit related that I wanted to ask you about is the idea of edgy or anti-woke comedy, which I’m sure you have a lot of thoughts about. I was struck by watching your new special about the number of kind of taboo topics that you joke about. As I was making the list, I almost didn’t even want to recite it because I thought it would give people a false impression of you. There are jokes about child labor, bestiality—you say the phrase “child porn” at one point—suicide, religion, and ethnicity. Actually, you cram a lot of very difficult, uncomfortable subjects into well under an hour. And as I said, when I describe that list, people might think you’re a different [comedian]—but you manage to do it. Those are edgy things, and your audience often has the reaction that comedians say they want, which is, “Can he say that?” But you do that without at any point violating leftist principles. I’m really interested in how you do edgy comedy without violating lefty principles.

Soresi

I just think edgy comedy sometimes gets conflated with having hateful views. I think people have passed off hateful views as edgy comedy for a while. And in my mind, edgy comedy is just talking about things that make you uncomfortable. And then within that, I want to make a joke. I think that joke comes from my own point of view. If it comes from my point of view, which is generally a leftist one, the joke will reflect that without even being preachy. Someone will go, “Oh, you did a trans joke.” And it’s like, no, I didn’t do a trans joke. I did either a joke about a specific trans person I know, or I did a joke about how I deal with, for example, something people have made a million jokes about: pronouns. And you could go, I have a pronouns joke. And my problem with most people’s pronouns jokes is they go, “This is stupid. I’m a helicopter now.” For me, I would like my pronouns joke to be when I put he/him, it feels like limiting to who I am sometimes, and I wish I could add a little asterisk next to it, and then I lay out what that asterisk is. So it is a pronoun joke, but it’s different from the hacky normal one because I’m talking about something very specific to my own feelings about me using it, as opposed to some grand statement. Look, you can even make a joke about a grand statement, and it’d be good, but a lot of people, their joke was essentially, “This is dumb; this is annoying.” And I’m like, that’s hacky because it’s not a very advanced thought. My dad could say that same thought. I think a really good sniff test for a hacky joke is, could your dad make that same joke?

Robinson

Depends on who your dad is. People have funny dads.

Soresi

They do have funny dads. But if you’re getting paid, you should be funnier than the guy not getting paid for it.

Robinson

Sure. Well, let me ask you this: do you think right-wing comedy can ever be funny, or is it inherently hacky? And do you think that your views on this are colored by your politics, so you don’t want it to ever be funny?

Soresi

I’m sure there are jokes that I love that my general fan base would go, that’s a hateful joke. And yes, I am sometimes more comedian than human being, or I’m more comedian than politician. I really think comedy is more nuanced than a two-party system to a certain degree. I know Norm Macdonald held some very conservative views, but his comedy was generally really funny. I could look at each individual joke and go, what are the politics, if any, of this particular joke? I think every comedian has their own level of how mean they will allow themselves to be. For me, I say jokes about my immediate family that are quite cruel, and because of that, I say some really fucked-up jokes about my family. I know some comedians who I admire, where they sometimes tell jokes that I think are so mean and fucked up, and I don’t think I would ever tell that joke, but it’s so good. But those same comedians, when their jokes are bad, I go, Ugh, that was just hateful. You’re operating in a different spectrum.

Usually I find that when jokes are really good, it’s because they’re nuanced. And I believe that when things are nuanced, that’s because you are looking at the details of something. You’re appreciating the details. And when you look at the details, I do think you stray away from a conservative position in general. Comedy is so dependent on the context in which it is told, and one of the fucked-up things about comedians becoming more powerful is suddenly jokes have more weight. There is a certain degree where it’s like if the only people listening to you are 50 in a basement dungeon comedy club, you can sometimes get away with some more fucked-up thoughts or thoughts that you’re not sharing to be policy. But what happens is, if you share fucked-up thoughts and then the next day you’re chatting with the Vice President, people go, “Okay, now I am more concerned about what your actual views are.” And that can be the enemy of comedy. Some comedy has terrible politics or is silly, and the joke is, isn’t this an absurd suggestion or an absurd worldview? So I never want to limit comedy. I just think every comedian has to take context into consideration, and understanding the ways in which they participate in the world might be changing the context of the entire art form.

Robinson

But I do think when you go near political subjects, one of the things I like and appreciate about your comedy is that I do feel like in many ways, and you may deny that it has much of an effect, but I think some of the jokes that you make can convey a left political point or analysis really succinctly and powerfully. You made a joke that is both about Charlie Kirk’s death and Israel. Not only is it a piece of edgy material and a very good line, but also, I think, a successful one-line indictment of genocide.

Soresi

And listen, I have no illusions that I’m going to persuade anyone who is going to hear that and go, “Huh, he’s right, it is a genocide.” That Charlie Kirk quip really changed my view on this. I sometimes think it’s just politeness and decorum, which I was not raised with much of, and I do think that’s why I’m drawn to comedy. Look, you’re wearing a suit. I’m wearing a Disney tank top before I go to yoga class. I have often found politeness and decorum to be weapons of people in power in so many ways, and by nature of who I am and how I was raised, I feel willing to say the rude thing that some people go, Jesus Christ, that’s so harsh—someone just died, and you’re making a very harsh joke about war crimes and genocide. And in my mind, the way that we don’t talk about this stuff is used to sweep it under the rug. Because of the way that the news doesn’t want to show images and videos of people suffering, people—unless they’re on Twitter, which my mother is not—don’t realize the atrocities that are being committed. So for me, I’m going to go into the polite space, or the place where people aren’t supposed to say these things, and then say it—throw a little word bomb in the air. And I think that’s a comedian’s function in life.

Robinson

Can I just say, having seen some of your videos on YouTube, I was honored that you were even wearing a tank top for us.

Soresi

Yes. Nothing underneath this, though. I kept the laptop very specifically placed.

Robinson

We’ve seen you do comedy in less. You mentioned that you’re talking about people in your life, and I always wonder about this. I’m a nonfiction writer who focuses on the external world. I never write about my personal life. I never write about my family. And I was wondering about writers who are novelists or who write memoirs and they draw from the material of their own lives. That must make immense interpersonal complications when people realize you’re writing about them in your memoir or your novel. For you in this new special, you don’t do the Israel-Palestine material; it’s mostly about family.

Soresi

I was hoping it was going to be resolved by the time it came out, so I decided to save it.

Robinson

How does that work? Are people in your life just mad at you all the time? Do you have clearance? Or what?

Soresi

I honestly think there’s a degree where it’s not to say that my family is completely uninvolved in my life, but because it was a little fucked up, because they didn’t always engage, I felt in a way my performance life was almost private from them. It was separate from them. You’d have to ask them to get a real answer. What did they think the first time they saw it? I honestly think my family, they each have an ego in that just to be talked about is almost flattering in and of itself. I remember my mom saw a show early on, and she was like, “You really only talked about your dad.” And I was like, “Okay, I’ll talk about you.” When I got a girlfriend, certainly there were conversations. And luckily, I don’t think I could be with anyone who was like, “Don’t ever speak about me.” But we had rules.

When we started couples counseling, she was like, “I’d rather you not make jokes about the couples counseling, at least in the beginning, because I don’t want you to feel like we’re sitting there and you’re thinking of jokes instead of participating,” which I understood. We’ve had disagreements before. Usually, for her, it’s not sex, it’s not fighting, but she’s a businesswoman, a very successful one. And she’s like, “I don’t want you to say stuff that makes me look unprofessional or incapable of being a professional.” Now, listen, I’m thankful because there’s a version of that where she says, “I don’t want any sex stories up there,” and that would be tough. That would be tough. I’d say, “Oh, baby, this is what you talk about.” I’m very lucky that she doesn’t feel that. And I’ll tell you, though, sometimes I get stuff about her family. I’ll spend time with her family, and I have jokes. Okay, this is new territory. Can I ask your sister if it’s okay for me to share this thing? So I think the older you get, the more complicated it becomes. But one of my special ingredients early on was I had a family who wasn’t paying attention, so I could say whatever the fuck I wanted.

Robinson

Can I ask about the crowd work stuff? Because people might be surprised by the new special. It’s very polished and clearly not improvised, and people might know you from these videos that you’ve done that have gotten millions of views, which are interactions with the crowds at your show. Every time I watch those, what I’m amazed by is how high-risk, almost, crowd work is. You’re really kind of depending on what the audience is. When you’re doing that material in the special, I get that you have all the time in the world to sit down and write and hone a sentence until it’s the funniest sentence possible. When you’re doing the crowd work, it’s like you don’t have any idea who these people will be, and you’ve got to work with whatever comes out.

Soresi

You never know. And there are plenty of times it goes sideways, or the person’s trying to be funny and it fucks it up, or they lie, or someone interrupts. So you’re only seeing the times that it works. Sometimes people will write, “He never misses.” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t caption the misses.” I don’t send those to my editor and say, “Let’s get this up on YouTube ASAP.” It’s always a risk. There are some days I’m feeling riskier than others, and some days I’m like, whether the audience is too far away or it’s too dark, I go, “It’s not going to work.” And then other times, a story just falls into your lap. And even though I’ve never surfed, I equate it to what it must feel like. You’re in a flow; you’re on a balance beam, and you’re like, “I cannot believe I’m still up here—I’m still walking,” and you decide, when do I need to jump off? And every once in a while, you’re up there, and you’re like, “Oh my God, I’ve been up here for 12 minutes.” This is so cool. It’s exciting. It makes me feel alive.

Robinson

Obviously everyone who watches thinks you’re very funny, but also my reaction is, with the most popular ones, “Wow, how lucky did he get?” You knew what to do with it. You still have to have the skill of bringing the humor out of it, but you’ve gotten so amazingly lucky a few times with things that you’ve been able to work with and create comedy gold out of.

Soresi

Yes, and that’s just the benefit of filming every show I do. Every single show. And I’m haunted by the early sets in my first couple of years, where I had a moment that I will only be able to tell people about, and I’m like, Oh, I wish... So I never make that mistake again.

Robinson

Congratulations on the new special. I think people can just read the YouTube comments, and people are impressed by your jokes-per-minute ratio and, as I say, what we might describe as your physical exuberance.

Soresi

Yes, that’s a nice way to put it.

Robinson

And you are on an incredibly punishing and brutal tour right now around the country, as we mentioned.

Soresi

Yes, it’s all over the country. Then I’m going to go back to Australia next year. I’m going to go to Asia for the first time, and India. I’m thrilled. And then next year, Canada. Everywhere. I love it, man. It’s brutal. But I really get to travel the world.

Robinson

You must get this question a lot, I’m sure—every comedian does who travels the world—but it strikes me as another thing that’s like taking on a huge comedy challenge: going to a country where you have to assess the national character in the first five minutes of being in front of new people. How do you do that?

Soresi

Honestly, being an American comedian, American comedians can’t complain to any other comedian in the world because our media is so shoved down everyone’s throat that I was able to make jokes about RFK in Milan. And that’s very fortunate. No Italian could come to a normal American audience and talk about Giorgia Meloni. So I do think, though, Tokyo and Hong Kong will be new experiences.

Robinson

So you’ve never done these places.

Soresi

No, I’ve never done these places. But I went to Istanbul, and I was like, “What can I say? What can’t I say?” The booker said, “You can say whatever you want. And he said, “There’s going to be a Muslim call to prayer in the middle of your second show.” And I said, “Can I joke about it?” He said, “Yes, joke, say whatever you want.” I was like, “you’re saying I can say whatever I want?” And he said yes. And I did, and it was great. Then I told him I was going to post a video, and he was like, “Do not post a video. Do not post a video if you ever want to come back to Istanbul again.” Okay, I’m learning. Basically, it’s okay in Istanbul; it’s not okay outside. And it’s like, fine. I will learn. My girlfriend is always telling me, “Please don’t go to jail for a joke.” Especially when there’s a Republican president in the White House. I think I’ll be a little more risky on the road, maybe when AOC—maybe she’ll bail me out. But right now, with Trump, there’s no way. There’s no way Trump’s making a swap for me.

Robinson

You did manage to make at least one Erdoğan joke.

Soresi

I did. Again, they said that was okay. I checked with them each time, but you know, I’ll find it. My friend Sammy Obeid couldn’t perform in Singapore because they didn’t approve his transcript. Sucks. It sucks, but he tried. He tried. And comedians, if you’re going to go to these new places, you at least have to swing. You have to take a swing. Be safe, but take a swing. Don’t do the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

Transcript edited by Patrick Farnsworth.