1408 Dean Obeidallah Returns + News & Clips

Stand Up! with Pete Dominick

Pete Dominick

Racialjustice, Comedian, Democracy, Comedy, Environmentaljustice, Politics, News, Organizedlabor, Standupcomic, Covid, Petedominick, Trump

4.9 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Born in the Great State of New Jersey, Dean Obeidallah's comedy comes in large part from his unique background of being the son of a Palestinian father and a Sicilian mother. Dean, an award winning comedian who was at one time a practicing attorney, co-starred on Comedy Central’s “The Axis of Evil” Comedy TV special. He is the co-creator of Comedy Central.com’s critically acclaimed Internet series “The Watch List” featuring a cast of all Middle Eastern-American comedians performing stand up and sketch comedy. Dean has appeared twice on ABC’s “The View,” on the nationally syndicated TV series “Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen” and was one of five comedians profiled in the recent one hour TV Special entitled: “Stand Up: Muslim-American Comics Come of Age” which aired in the US on PBS and internationally on BBC World and Al Jazeera.

Dean co-directed and co-produced the award winning documentary “The Muslims Are Coming!” featuring a tour of American-Muslim comedians performing free comedy shows across the heartland of America in the hopes of using comedy to foster understanding and dispel misconceptions about Muslims. The film also features special guest interviews with various well known people including: “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart and Assif Mandvi, Russell Simmons, Soledad O’Brien and Ali Velshi, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, comedians Lewis Black, David Cross, Lizz Winstead and Colin Quinn as well as Congressman Keith Ellison, and many more. The film is now available on Netfilx, iTunes and Amazon.

Dean co-created the comedy show “Stand up for Peace” along with Jewish comic Scott Blakeman which they perform at colleges across the country in support of peace in the Middle East and as a way of fostering understanding between Arab, Muslim and Jewish-Americans.

He is writes for MSNBC, CNN and The Daily Beast as well as other publications.

Dean is also the co-creator and co-producer of the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival .He is also proud to serve as the Executive Director of The Amman Stand up Comedy Festival – the first stand up comedy festival ever held in the Middle East

Dean is proud to have received the first annual “Bill Hicks Spirit Award” for “thought provoking comedy” (named after the late comedian Bill Hicks) from the NY Underground Comedy Festival and the Hicks’ Family.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, it's Friday. It's the first day of August. How are you feeling? I am trying to clean up my act, get it together, and back in the groove with my practice. And it begins today. So I appreciate your encouragement. But yes, have not been writing and reading and meditating and exercising the way I need to on a regular basis to stay fit mentally, emotionally, and physically.
0:31.7	But today, August 1st, I am back.
0:35.9	And so if you want to hold me accountable by making fun of me or asking me about it, by all means, you are welcome to it. And you are welcome to join me on a journey of emotional and physical wellness. I don't know what any of that means. I'm happy to have you here on the podcast. I'll probably go buy a six-pack get stone and watch Rememiam Alex, the amateur, at least I'll have taken a run, and so I'll somehow justify it all. All right, well, listen, I'm doing my best. I'm trying, and that's the whole point. You are as well, and so I hope that you are hanging in there. There's been a lot of news this week. I was so happy to see so many of you at last night's hangout.
1:12.0	We had a great time, a great chat. We were there for almost three hours. And you can watch
1:16.6	it or listen to it because it's recorded and I share it. And you can, if you're a paid subscriber,
1:23.9	access it. So if you get the email today, then you should see that link in there along
1:28.7	with a shot of vitamin N. Each morning you get a shot of nature from another listener in the
1:34.1	stand-up community and you should submit yours. Hashtag vitamin N. Send me something. No man-made
1:40.0	objects. I can't wait to see your August shots of nature. Get outside. It's getting cold here in
1:46.7	the Northeast, by the way. We baked all week. It has been really hot. And now it is pretty cold here
1:54.1	this morning on this first day of August, this Friday. First Friday of August. We should
1:59.6	probably get job numbers for July, right?
2:02.3	We'll see about that.
2:03.5	And also just want to mention and promote Farm Jam.
2:07.1	That's right.
2:07.8	It's Farm Jam, September 5th through 7th.
2:11.6	Me and a bunch of my friends, hopefully you will be hanging out for a couple days in
2:16.0	Central New York, where I am from at our good friend, Kevin Richburg's Farm Slight Hill Edible Forest.
2:22.8	Learn more about what we're going to do at Farm Jam. Check on over to standup with pete.com.
2:27.9	Check the website and all the details and links are in the show notes if you want to join us for subscribers only, of course,
2:36.2	because we are hanging out at Kevin's property.
2:38.6	But I was just up there visiting my parents and went over to Kevin's farm, had some kind of hybrid fruits, plums, apricots that he's growing in there.
	...

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