Comedian Tom Papa

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Comedian Tom Papa wants you to focus on the small victories. The little triumphs in everyday life that add up to winning the war against cynicism. His new Netflix special, You're Doing Great! sums up his philosophy perfectly. So you're not killing it like everyone else on Instagram. That's fine! They're not really killing it either. You finally made it out of the house to run that errand you've been putting off all week? Now THAT'S killing it! That approach to comedy seems increasingly rare but Tom has made a nearly 30 year career on it. Tom joins us to talk about the moment when he decided to become a comedian, his familial take on comedy, and the resilience of his Nana.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:12.0	I'm Jesse Thorn, it's Bullseye.
0:21.3	There's a new special on Netflix that I want to tell you about.
0:25.0	It's by a comic named Tom Papa.
0:26.9	I loved it.
0:27.9	Tom is a comic called You're Doing Great.
0:29.9	Tom's been a comic for a long time.
0:31.9	He played the comedy seller in the early 90s.
0:33.9	He toured many times with Jerry Seinfeld and he has half a dozen specials on his resume.
0:39.9	This one though is a little bit different.
0:42.9	Tom has never exactly been a cynical comic.
0:46.9	He's always been the friendly observational type.
0:49.9	But on this special, he worked hard to erase the cynicism from his act,
0:54.9	which in my mind is partly why it's so remarkable that it's so funny.
1:00.9	The essential message of You're Doing Great is that You're Doing Great,
1:06.9	that the modern world is remarkable, that we actually have beautiful lives,
1:12.9	and that maybe we just need to readjust our expectations of what it is to be happy or successful.
1:20.9	Also, one heads up.
1:22.9	If it sounds like Tom and I recorded this interview inside our houses,
1:26.9	that's because we did record this interview inside our houses.
1:30.9	You might actually, at some point, hear my dog bark at a squirrel.
1:34.9	That's kind of what it's going to be like moving forward for a little while here on Bullseye.
	...

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