Comedian Bassem Youssef’s Honest Reflection on Fame, the Pressure of Representation, and What it Means to be American
Notes from America with Kai Wright
WNYC Studios
4.4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Egyptian American satirist and comedian Bassem Youssef was once known as “The Jon Stewart of Egypt,” after gaining notoriety for his criticism of the government during the 2011 Egyptian revolution. But it wasn’t long before the doctor-turned-comedian was forced to leave his home country and start over in the United States.
Ten years later, as he ends the U.S. leg of a world tour for his new stand up show, he’s gained a whole new crowd of supporters and critics — not for his comedy, but for his biting critique of U.S. policy in Gaza.
In this episode, Youssef sits down with host Kai Wright to tell the story of his turbulent ride as a political satirist in both the U.S. and Egypt — and the pressures he faced to be the voice of a movement.
Plus, we open our listener mailbag and get your responses to some of our recent shows.
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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What made you want to come out to the show tonight? |
| 0:04.5 | Definitely seeing Basm Yussif's interviews, |
| 0:07.5 | especially with Pierce Morgan that really brought light |
| 0:10.0 | to how awesome he is and made me want to come and see him in person. |
| 0:15.0 | He really put his heart out there like for what millions of people are actually expressing |
| 0:18.7 | and I wanted to really go see him in person. |
| 0:20.6 | We have been supporting Bessam for a couple of years and we're just here to kind of support |
| 0:26.2 | Arab Americans who are trying to make and foster change within America. |
| 0:30.4 | I feel like he's a good person to represent the Arab community and to represent the |
| 0:35.2 | situation that's going on. It's so nice that we can do large events where we're |
| 0:39.0 | speaking the truth and it's capturing a lot of views and I'm just so proud to be |
| 0:41.8 | a part of it. I appreciate that he's using his voice for the people who don't have a voice right now or even who have a voice |
| 0:46.1 | but no one's listening to them. A voice is the voiceless, he's representing us. |
| 0:48.8 | He's basically giving us a voice. Yeah. It's notes from America. I'm Kai Wright. Welcome to the show. |
| 1:15.6 | We connected with the people you just heard while they were waiting online to see Egyptian |
| 1:20.2 | American comedian Basam Yuss, take the stage in Detroit. |
| 1:24.8 | And as you heard, a lot of people have been coming to his shows because they feel like |
| 1:30.4 | he's given them a voice. But that is a complicated idea for Basm Eusef himself. |
| 1:38.0 | First off, you've got to understand his own story, which is fascinating and remarkable. In Egypt he hosted a |
| 1:45.3 | television show of political satire that made him a mega star throughout the |
| 1:50.2 | entire Middle East. That stardom, born from his relentless critique of the Egyptian government, |
| 1:56.3 | also made him a target. He was forced to flee the country to avoid becoming a political prisoner. |
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