‘Comedy Nerd’ Judd Apatow Returns for Our Final Episode

Obsessed: The Podcast

The Daily Beast

Tv & Film

4.5 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Judd Apatow didn’t realize it at the time, but as a young teenager growing up on Long Island in the ‘70s, he was inventing the comedy podcast by doing the first-ever long-form radio interviews with his stand-up heroes. So it’s only fitting that he’s the last guest ever on The Last Laugh podcast. In his fourth and final appearance on the show—taped before the tragic deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele—Apatow reflects on his early experiences as a proto-comedy podcaster and explains the “lifelong obsession” that inspired his new book, ‘Comedy Nerd.’ (Proceeds benefit the youth writing charity 826 and the Los Angeles wildfire relief organization Fire Aid.) The writer, director, and producer also discusses the state of the studio comedy in 2025, and how some of his most beloved films and TV shows took years to find their audiences. And ahead of his definitive two-part documentary about Mel Brooks coming to HBO in the new year, Apatow breaks down the power of satire to hold the powerful to account. This year, nobody did that better than ‘South Park’ creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. And Apatow has a theory for why Donald Trump has stayed conspicuously silent about their humiliating portrayal of him. Stay tuned to this feed for the premiere of Obsessed: The Podcast, coming in January from the Daily Beast. Follow Judd Apatow on Instagram @juddapatow Follow Matt Wilstein on Bluesky @mattwilstein Follow The Last Laugh on Instagram @lastlaughpod Watch full episodes of The Last Laugh podcast on the Daily Beast’s Obsessed YouTube channel Highlights from this episode and others at TheDailyBeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, everyone, it's Matt, and today is the last episode of The Last Laugh. Thank you for listening to one, some, or all of the over 300 episodes we put out over these past six and a half years. But, you know, I also have some good news. A new podcast will be appearing in this feed starting in early January. It's called Obsessed the Podcasts, and it will bring you new conversations with
0:21.4	great guests like the ones we've been doing on The Last Laugh, but now with even more, more episodes
0:26.5	per week, more pop culture coverage, more Daily Beast voices. And one of those voices is with me right now,
0:32.8	the founding editor of the Daily Beast Obsessed, who will be a huge part of this new podcast, Kevin Fallon.
0:38.9	Kevin, thank you so much for being here with me. And yeah, I just wanted to get a chance to tell people about what this new show is going to be. So, yeah, can you give us some more info? How are you feeling about it? Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited about this, aren't you? Yeah, I'm really excited to do this.
0:55.0	We're going to be doing three episodes a week,
0:57.0	which is a lot more than the one episode a week that I've been doing over this past, you know, several years. So it's going to be a lot, and I'm really excited to get into it. And I think we're going to get to talk to a lot more people and people of different parts of the entertainment industry and pop culture,
1:11.4	you know, not just comedians. So I think that's going to be really fun as well.
1:14.4	I know we're going to be ranting and raving about all the TV shows and movies and celebrity
1:19.7	gossip that I know that everyone else is also thinking about all the time like I am.
1:25.1	And what I really hope is that it feels like we're all at brunch together,
1:29.7	screaming about our opinions, about the TV show that we just watched or that celebrity
1:34.0	divorce that just happened that we all have opinions about. I think it's just going to be a blast.
1:38.9	Yeah. And this new podcast is going to have a new regular segment called Unmissible that breaks
1:43.8	down the one piece of pop culture that you have to see on any given day.
1:48.0	So it's really like whatever we are most excited about on that day, on that week, something that's coming out.
1:54.0	And so with that in mind, I asked my guest today, Judapital, for the one unmississible project from his career. Basically, it's like what
2:02.1	people should see if they could only see one thing that he's made and he has made a lot of
2:06.1	stuff. And he also told me the one thing that he thinks people should miss, which was funny
2:11.0	as well. So definitely stick around for those answers at the end of this episode. Yeah, Kevin,
2:16.6	is there anything else that you feel people
2:18.2	should know before they start tuning into this new podcast in the new year?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Daily Beast, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Daily Beast and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.