I'm Ira Madison III.

And I'm Louis Fertile. This year, we're excited to bring you new episodes of Keep It, covering the Holy Trinity of Awards season, Emmys, Grammys, and the granddaddy of them all, the Oscars. It's like the Super Bowl for Hollywood, but with more sequins and fewer concussions.

And we are continually blessed by iconic guests like Michelle Yo, Tori Kelly, Andy Cohen, and Jinks Masun.

New episodes of Keep It drop every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcast, or subscribe to Keep it on YouTube for access to full episodes and other exclusive content.

You're listening to Comedy Central.

All right. All good? It's all good. Welcome home. Four, three, two. It's all good.

It's all Hey, Ears Edition listeners.

This is Juben Perang, co-executive producer and writer for The Daily Show. We are so happy to be back on the air with new episodes of The Daily Show, and we have a special treat. Today, I am joined by Daily Show show, showrunner, writer, and executive producer sitting right next to me, Jenn Flans. Hey, Jenn, how are you doing? Hi, Jube. How are you doing? Yes, clap, clap, clap, clap, friend, our on-again, off-again boss, the host of The Daily Show for 16 years, and again, Mr. Jon Stewart. Welcome to our new fancy podcast studio. Jon, what do you think?

Juben, your hosting skills in only nine years have improved. I don't know if you've gone to some type of adult learning center for the kinds of hosting skills that you're performing right now, but they've taken a leap forward that I enjoy very much.

Thank you. I have. I've been to several boot camps to learn how to host 24 hours. Wait, they have a podcast boot camp? They do. You have to spend six months speaking into a microphone. You do a lot of pushups for some reason. Then at the end of it, you have to successfully sell a Casper mattress or else you are never heard from again.

Can I tell you something? Yeah. That would make a really great podcast. Someone should do- Try to sell something to someone on the air.

That's a good idea.

Someone should do a six-month boot camp podcast.

I love it. I'm sure there's already six Bushwick guys who are doing that podcast separately. There's a lot of podcasts.

John's not really in our podcast studio. No, John, you are watching. But you can see how nice it is.

Yeah. Can I tell you something? It does look like definitely one of the places that they thought they might shoot between two ferns, but then decided.

It was an honor just to be there, though, to be in that conversation.

You were definitely in when they showed the three pictures to Zack Aleph and Agus and said, What about this?

And he went, It's close, but it may be missing one fern.

That's fair. It was our mistake.

If this were just two people around a fern, we could shoot that. I don't think it's right for between two ferns.

That was our mistake to put one fern in the room for between two ferns. One of us should have said something about it.

Where is that in the building? Is it in the building?

It's next to the green room. Remember how there's three?

The room that you're in is the room that I edited.

Yeah, it was your edit.

That's where we edited Rosewater. Yeah.

Was in that?

Oh, my God. Remember that?

There's a plaque here in the room very much. It says Rosewater was edited here.

Yeah, that's right. Oh, and by the way, it must be annoying for all the tourist groups to come by. Yes, it is. Because it is very similar to the Lord of the Rings tourism, where people, there's a whole Rosewater movie tourist industry where they come in and they're- Well, that's why we put the plaque up.

But we didn't want to just…

I will say a lot of my Iranian relatives- I missed you guys. A lot of my Iranian relatives would visit for that Rosewater site, though. I will say that.

Yes. No, it was a huge bootleg success.

Lots of my colleagues have VHS in Rosewater.

In Iranian communities, it was a huge bootleg success. That's for sure.

John, let's just get right into this. All right, we've dicked around enough. You've been back in the building for a few weeks now. The question, as in your mind, Jon Stewart is back. What do you make of the snacks? There used to be potato chips. There's now a lot of veggies sticks.

If people don't know, no, but it's not just veggies sticks, Juvin. Don't sell the place short.

There's popcorn.

There's popcorn. That's true.

But people don't know. What Trevor did not only was bring his own flair and intelligence and wit to The Daily Show. He apparently has a design sense. I did not know. I was there for 16 years. I did not know we were allowed to make the building and the office look nice.

Yes, that was a big innovation on Trevor's part.

He did walk in and he was like, Are we allowed to?

I had no idea.

There's tile flooring and there's steel-framed window panes that slide and open up into a coffee bar area.

When we were there, it was designed in a plebeian chic, I believe you would call it. It looked like a bureaucratic and administrative satirical movie about what it was like to work in a bureaucratic night.

It was like Trevor did when he came in, did have this idea of like, what if we had an office that did not make people sad when you walked in?

I didn't know we were allowed to do that.

I was like, We weren't sad, so we didn't know. We didn't know. I was like, Oh, we're having a good He's like, But it could look nicer. All right.

I think you'll also be happy to see that we have had what used to be, I think, just one variety of potato chip has now been replaced by just endless organic gummies. Flavors? Yes.

The snack game. Now, to be fair, advances in snacking over nine years, you are living in a different universe.

It's really not fair to compare it.

It's not. When I was there, the only snacks that were available to people, and obviously this was years ago, were crackers, salted and unsaltet. Those were the only snacks that were made. Then there was an explosion in ingenuity and in snack technology. When I look at it, and you got... Here's what people don't know. Do you know those racks? If you were to go to a CVS and they have that one little rack, it's like a tree, a beautiful Christmas tree that you can hang snacks on.

It makes the snacks even more appealing when they're hanging on that tree.

My question to you guys is, who stole it from a convenience store? From the CVS. Is it a wanted snack tree?

I don't think we should talk about that here because that would be... No. That would be... Maybe one of us had something to do with it.

Jen Flans, I remember you when you weren't a company woman. I remember you when you would speak truth to power.

I'm just trying to stay out of trouble so I could produce this show for you.

Okay. Not to be too real, but I think that snack tree is also a way to get around mice. I know.

I was just going to say it. I know. I was going to say it, and then I'm like, Should I give away the game? We've had mice here.

Do you remember Hot Dog?

Was Hot Dog a mouse?

Oh, guys.

No, I don't know who Hot Dog is.

You don't remember. That's one of Maggie's favorite stories. Oh, yes. Stories about The Daily Show. Yes, I do notice. We were doing a bit one night where we needed to get a mouse, and we got somebody, they went down to the pet store and they got a bait mouse.

Yeah, like a little feeter mouse.

That was about to We pray. When Maggie got wind of it, she promised me that we would keep him safe. We had to build a terrarium. She named him Hot Dog. I don't know if you remember, she made that big folder of all the care items, how to take care of Hot Dog. She brought it in.

I remember that. Oh, my God.

What happens to Hot Dog? I know the answer.

Okay, he lived to be 103. Oh, my God.

Wow.

All they knew is just a little bit-In mouse years. In mouse years.

No, what happened to Hot Dog was he became a brilliant French chef and moved. That's amazing. And lived lived in Paris, apparently under a different name, and became quite well renowned.

Oh, good for him. Good for him. I'm glad. I thought you were going to tell me he died. What? No, I'm sorry. And by the way, if Maggie comes to the show to visit, you will tell her-Oh, yes.

He moved to France to be a chef. That was the story that I told her.

He was at a farm in France.

That's right.

John, let me ask you something else. You know, John, John, the media. Yes.

John, the Media. Why do you keep saying my name? I feel like you're setting me up for something terrible.

It's that stuff when you say something over and over, get to remember what the name is. Juben. John. John Stuart.

Juben.

John, the The media has changed so much.

I have noticed you haven't said my name even more than one time.

Jenn, let me ask you a question. Jenn? Jenn?

Yeah. Juben?

Jenn and John. I, Juben. I'm asking you guys about all the changes that have happened There's a lot of changes.

Oh, yeah, there have been a lot of changes. There's been differences. But also not so many.

Not so many. But, Jenn, you've successfully navigated this show through many, many eras of The Daily Show. So many. So many. John, Trevor, I believe 250 guests hosts in the intervening years.

I was here with Craig. You were here with Craig. I saw John walk in the door. Sweet Craig Kilbour.

Jen Flans was there when I got there.

It was.

Jen, at that time, you were a PA, yes?

I was an assistant production coordinator, and I sat right behind reception Remember that little cubicle I had right behind reception? Yes. Before the conference room. I remember when you walked in, you were in your leather jacket, and I was like, This is going to be cool. He said, Hi to everyone. John, You asked me my name, and not to disparage anyone, I don't think Craig knew my name, and I was so excited. You are? I said, Jen.

Yeah. Awesome.

I was like, this is great. I love how you're the one person who was always fooled by leather jacket, no matter who.

I'm like, You're going to be cool. This guy's got to be cool. I was in a leather jacket, and I didn't say, What's your name? I said, E.

What's your name? He's like, What's your name?

You learned everyone's name pretty quickly, which I thought was so impressive. It's the one thing I have control of. Everything else is-It was so nice.

But anyway.

It's funny how hard that is now. In the old days, I used to be able to do that pretty easily. Now I made Jen give me a-A Facebook. Yeah, it's like a list of everybody that's there. I sit in and point at them. But even that, my brain is not as elastic, so it's…

It's tough.

We got a lot of people here.

We have more people than we did.

I'm calling everybody Jen. I'm just hoping that- I'll tell you, it's good to do that.

Everybody remembers when you say their name, which is why, John, I'd like to ask you. What? You know, John, the media landscape has changed so much. When you left the show, there was no TikTok. Now there's TikTok. They're a podcast now. They've blown up. There's YouTube. There's so much places to get misinformation. I'm wondering, John, where you get your misinformation.

Juben, when I started at The Daily Show, there was only two ways to get information. The streets.

What are the streets saying?

The streets. You would go out on the streets and say, Can someone tell me What a dirty Sanchez is? Somebody just said that. Does anyone know? They would say, Come over here. The other was, you had to wait for them to make a pamphlet from a printing press. These were the only two ways that you could gather information. It's relentless now. I thought it was relentless when I left. It's geometrically past the moment As I think the great Maria Ressa says, a lie travels six times or seven times faster around the world than the truth. I think it's a much more dire situation, but at least none of these social media entities have monetized that idea and incentivized the misinformation because that would truly be dangerous. That would accelerate it. I'm really glad that they fight it so vigorously.

Actually, I know somebody who who was a content moderator on Facebook, who was one of the people who had to go through all of the, I said really terrible paying-how can you make an individual do that?

That seems like an impossible test.

It's brutal. They were there for two or three days, and they're like, The amount of hideousness that you see, people just very casually posting up just videos of murders, videos of things that they are just putting up just to see if it sticks. But someone's got to go through that and take that down. That's certainly all the AI is being used instead to find out how to steal music and to write things instead of doing that. It's a very brutal job, but you'll be happy to know they don't pay very well.

Oh, then it cares everything.

They are addressing it.

I know how brutal it is. All I need to do is announce a tour date, and it's only two comments in before everybody's like, Jew. Oh, that's all right. That seems weird. True. But they go at it, man.

Let's ask a question here. All right. Specifically about, John, you're back to cover this election 2024. What is it about this election that you are most eager to take on? Because I personally don't know what much there is to satirize. The candidates are very of sound mind. The media seems prepared to root all the issues.

I think the word eager is the one that I find so interesting.

Sure, you can project that.

For me, it's not just about the election. It's if you want to be present in this world, you have to be present in this conversation, and you have to be as relentless and tenacious as the counter narrative that's being formed through... So much of the information that we see now is weaponized by all different, and it keeps taking exponential leaps, which is why... It's not just the election, it's AI. It's the way that we've militarized all our conflict. It all ties together to, I think, this one larger idea, which is the form of government that we cherish so much is really an analog, I don't want to say dinosaur, but it is analog. And the world now moves at an increasingly, infinitely digital pace. And reconciling those two things, I think is the challenge of the moment for people. And I'm excited to be with you guys again and the best fucking news team and to just be a part of that conversation because I think you have to register your thought and complaint so that it can be referenced. Because remember, AI is now the sum total of all that we do. Ai really is an information laundering system, a vacuum that takes up all the pieces of human information and then spits them back out in a reconstituted form.

If you want this world of the future to be informed by what you think is the right part of the present, you have to register it. You have to get it out there.

Yeah. If not to change the direction of the conversation, at the very least so that when aliens come to the smoldering ruins of mankind, they can see something that was like, Well, someone had a different idea for how this shit could have gone.

Someone raised this. Yes.

That makes a big sense.

Thank you, Juvin. That was much more succinct and much more on point.

Well, that's why I'm the host of this podcast.

Today in this one episode.

In this one episode.

I'm Aaron Madison III.

And I'm Louis Fertel. This year, we're excited to bring you new episodes of Keep It covering the Holy Trinity of Awards season, Emmys, Grammys, and the granddaddy of them all, the Oscars. It's like the Super Bowl for Hollywood, but with more sequins and fewer concussions.

And we are continually blessed by iconic guests like Michelle Yeoh, Tori Kelly, Andy Cohen, and Jinks Masun.

New episodes of Keep It drop every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts, or subscribe to Keep it on YouTube for access to full episodes and other exclusive content.

Hey, what's up, guys? Hey, everybody's all cleaned up. Look at that. The old suit, sir. I got the old suit on. It looks good. It looks nice. It still fits.

John, let me ask you a question. You'll be working with a lot of our correspondence. You know Jordan Klepper, obviously. You are the while... He was in the show while you were hosting? I don't. Oh, you never actually met him.

You mean Jen?

No, Jordan. It's close. It's close. There's a lot of Js.

A lot of Js around the building, yes. I can see you're the tall guy, floppy hair.

Tall Jen.

We look…

Yeah, I call him Jen. All is exactly the same. Yeah. It's easy to get.

No, Jordan is the man. For the moment, he walked in the door, by the way. He was just one of those dudes that... Because you remember how a lot of times with the correspondence, there is a learning curve, not on the comedy chops or not on the writing or things like that, on the mechanics of the job. Just the weird logistics of what news people work on through communications, go that, John? And turning the camera and making your... There's a mechanical part of this job that it does take most performers who are not familiar with that, some uptick and learning curve. Jordan was just like, Is this my camera? Boom. He knew all the the roots, man, right off the bat.

Yeah, his audition, we were like... I remember John came back. He goes, Yeah, we should hire that guy.

We're saying here is Jordan is very good at faking authenticity is what we're saying, and I agree with that. He is. There are other correspondence, though, you haven't worked with Desi, Roni, Costa, Dulcey. What so far you've seen, you haven't seen much of them, but so far, as you go in, what do you think their weaknesses seem to be?

Mostly, if I could be frank, health. It seems like there's a lot of, and I don't want I don't say tuberculosis because obviously that's-No, it's an assumption.

But we keep the vents unclean, and I think that's part of the reason. Yeah, air vents.

Now, whatever's happening looks to be the precursor to what happened in The Last Of Us. It could be a type of mold, a macellium. But what's really interesting about it, because we've always talked about this, is finding correspondence for the show is a really arduous thing because it's very rare individual that has the skill set. It's so many skills. That they have to be able to provide, and so many. You have to be a Swiss army knife, but like a five-tool player at all times. For you guys to be able to restock in that way, is very impressive.

Yeah. I mean, Joss and I watch so many people that...

Poor Jossy. She was on tape patrol back when I was here.

You left us. We're still on tape patrol over here. She's good at it. When we found Costa's tape, we were like, We got what? We're like, Ghostbusters, Antipodes. The feeling in that room. You're like, Oh, my God, we found it.

I remember Trevor. Do you remember when you put Trevor's tape in and it wasn't even a correspondence, I watched it for 10 seconds and I was like, That dude could do my job.

Literally, he said that. I said that. I've told this story before, but you said it. You left the room, you didn't watch It was like a letterman. He didn't even watch the whole thing. I just go, That guy could do my job. That guy is going to shake my chair one day, it was the quote. He walked out and we all looked at each other and we go, Is he leaving? We got so worried and upset. Then we were like, I mean, and then the story goes on from there. But it was like, yeah, when you find a good one, you're just like, That's it.

It's self-evenant.

It's so great. They're so great.

Jessica Williams.

I remember hers, too.

I watched Jessica Williams say it and I was It was one of those tapes. It wasn't submitted by an agent. It was one of those where you were like, Is that filmed in someone's kitchen?

What is happening? Do you remember? We plucked her from her parents' basement, I always said. Yes. She was like, She was in college.

But that's a person just doesn't... It's like a little bit of that supernova energy just doesn't come around that often. Whenever we'd find somebody like that, we were always like, We are going to lose them to SNL.

Immediately. No question. Michael Jay. Remember when Jay- Michael Che was here for three weeks. I always say I was so happy that you did your on-camera summer internship with us for three months. That's so funny. Yeah, he's so great. But yeah, it's that talent that you're like, Oh, this is- Undeniable. We got undeniable. But yeah, Desi, they're all just so talented.

I think what I'm really looking forward to this year is also them taking turns, being in the chair because each of them bring their own voice and their own perspective that I think is going to be really fun to just contrast with each other.

Wait, you're going to keep doing the show even not on Monday? I thought we talked about this.

No, we did. We were going to bring it up Monday. With you.

The thing is, yeah.

Take a nap and then- Paramount likes us to deliver multiple shows a week. How can we do that?

I'm only doing Monday. Well, that's the thing, though, right? Because you don't have to. But just in order to keep the office ratings up, the bracket our show, we got to have something on there.

I didn't realize.

They're just going to tip in.

I'm really sorry that you're going to have to be working like that.

It is so funny that when you leave on Monday night. If I may say, it's like a grind.

It's a bit of a grind.

But we're excited. I mean, there are guest host weeks. All of them were so funny. It's just like, I'm so psyched to see them at the desk.

But that was part of the thought process. Jen and I had talked about this. The guest hosting thing, it was really fun. There was a lot of great people to do it. But when you're doing a show that is central as a point of view show, you are asking the staff to create a completely different show every week with a different point of view. It's a really It was a difficult ask. I think part of this reset that was part of it was, let's let the correspondence take that role and everybody can calibrate around that sensibility. I think it's going to be really exciting to see what they do with it.

We know because we've been writing for their voices for so long and they're all friends.

Boy, John, I wish you had been, actually, in that guest host era where every week, the guests and their point of view was wildly Change, how I would have to explain just by looking at the writers in the room that that point of view was not going to fly this week. So the next week, they would say something, I'd be like, Good. The next week, they'd say something, and I'd just be staring them like, just trying to look while the guest host is I told you guys we are not going to fund Ukraine.

I told you guys that. And the next week, you're like, Ukraine, Slava, Ukraine.

The only thing standing between us is barbarism.

It's so funny. Yeah, that was hard. A lot of whipping.

But it was really great. Highest degree difficulty for a show. You guys earned your stripes on that. That's a very high degree difficulty.

I think we earned our-We had some fun people come through, though.

We earned our organic gummies, I think, for this.

We're the heroes. I did love Leslie Jones. I love her. The energy that she brought and the perspective. Pretty great.

We laughed so much. That studio was on fire. There were just a few people that were just so fun. Marlin was such a good time and just fun to work with. The respect that they had for the show and the desk because of you and Trevor. It's like they were so excited to do the show. It was really cool. That's nice. They're like, Oh, I can't believe I'm doing The Daily Show.

I was like- I can't believe you got a new desk. I walked in there and I was like, How tall was the previous host?

By the way, Trevor is deceivingly tall. Yes. Deceivingly tall. Deceivingly tall. He doesn't seem...

He seems average. And explicitly handsome. And I don't care for that.

Actually, we're getting another new desk.

Soon.

Wow, you're going to jump in.

To accommodate co-host. You dropped your voice there. I know.

I was like, what I can tell you. You know what I started thinking, can I say?

You just dropped a bombshell.

I was like, Am I allowed to say this? By the way, I'm like, We're in charge. But am I allowed to say this? I don't know. Anyway, it'll be new and accommodate co-hosts because we had a lot of fun when we did the Jordan Desi show and the Jordan- Yeah, I like the idea of trying out the two-man game, the two-host game. I think that's nice. Or like a panel. If you want to talk to a few people. Our desk currently doesn't really accommodate that.

The only thing that because I don't have the center of gravity of having my feet more firmly on the ground, that's a pretty slick plywood that goes beneath that thing. I'm hoping that at least put because I don't know if you remember, we nearly killed Jimmy Carter like 15 years ago.

Did he slide too fast out of the- Yes.

He went to slide back, and I don't think he realized no break.

Yeah, and the desk is on a platform, so you would drop off.

I think our stage manager might have saved his life.

Oh, my God.

A hero. But yeah, there have been multiple guests over the years that almost fly off.

That's the fun of it.

What a way to What a wait. Honestly, go big or go home.

It's like, they wake up in a hospital. What happened? You were plugging your movie. You were just thrown to a clip, and then- You rolled back and- The ambassador to Germany. That was it.

Oh, my God. Anyway, we'll watch for that with the new desk.

Yeah, we'll check out.

Maybe we'll just do a chair with no wheels. We'll see.

Just get some double-sided Scotch tape on there. That'll solve the problem, You do it, Juba.

What are you talking to me?

I'm not going to do it. Writing, producing, dressing the set, fixing the wheels.

It's a grind. No stop there. I'm aging six days for every day. That's the important thing. Well, look, guys, we We're so excited to be back on the air and to tackle all the issues and just fun characters and goofs and gaps that are going to be happening this election season. Let me ask you, John, before we let you go, what are you most excited for the viewers to tune in for this upcoming year?

I'm excited for the audience to experience that split second of vertigo that's going to happen when they see a familiar name in a familiar setting with a completely different face and head. I'm excited to see them go, Wait, is that also happening to me? Because that would be weird.

If he's older, that must mean I'm older. Wait a minute.

How fast does this accelerate? This gentleman is heading to the event horizon. What is going on here?

I'm sure that's why everyone will be watching.

Everyone's going to be watching.

It's going to be awesome.

Elections coverage. It's going to be great. Elections coverage is going to be fantastic. For the Ears Edition, I am Juben Perang, joined by Jenn Flange and the Jon Stewart. What's up?

Bye. Bye, bye.

Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcast.

Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11:00, 10:00 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus.

This has been a Comedy Central podcast. I'm Aaron Madison III.

And I'm Louis Fertel. This year, we're excited to bring you new episodes of Keep It covering the Holy Trinity of Awards season, Emmys, Grammys, and the granddaddy of them all, the Oscars. It's the Super Bowl for Hollywood, but with more sequins and fewer concussions.

And we are continually blessed by iconic guests like Michelle Yeoh, Tori Kelly, Andy Cohen, and Jinks Masun.

New episodes of Keep It drop every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcast, or subscribe to Keep it on YouTube for access to full episodes and other exclusive content.