“Comedy, Self-Deprecation & Punching Down" with Comedian Sammy Petersen

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

Society & Culture, Comedy Interviews, Self-improvement, Comedy, Education

4.5 • 905 Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Happy New Year, humans. Here's a funny, reflective start to 2026. Josh sits down with a stand-up comic who suffered a heart attack on stage at the age of 26 and emerged rawer than ever. Sammy Petersen joins Josh to chat about how comedians disarm audiences, whether "punching down" makes sense, and why humour can be both a shield and a form of truth-telling.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Gay, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Happy 2026. I hope your holiday season was
0:10.8	festive and delightful. And you're looking forward to the new year. This is a little palette
0:16.5	cleanser to kick the year off, something a little bit more entertaining and amusing.
0:21.2	Sammy Peterson is a stand-up comic. He's the former host of the long-running podcast Confessions,
0:27.3	which ran weekly for seven years. He's a fascinating person because as well as being funny,
0:33.1	he suffered a heart attack on stage at the age of 26 due to what turned out to be a congenital heart
0:40.4	condition and he took a six-year break from stand-up.
0:43.9	And that challenge, along with the fact that he was born with facial palsy, which he often
0:48.4	incorporates into his comedy as a way of disarming audiences, makes his experience of the
0:53.5	creative process really interesting.
0:55.7	We talked about podcasting and comedy and addiction and disability, self-deprecation,
1:01.7	and the ethics of comedy and punching down.
1:04.7	I hope you enjoy, as much as I did, the one and only Sammy Pips.
1:17.6	So your podcasts, you do out of your house.
1:18.0	Yes.
1:20.1	Which is probably more convenient and also more annoying.
1:24.6	More annoying because it's a setup every single time, which I had like a little... You don't have a room?
1:25.5	I don't have a room. I used to have a room. You don't have a room. I don't have a room. I don't have a room.
1:28.1	You don't have a room.
1:29.3	Get this swine out of here.
1:31.9	You don't even have a room.
1:32.9	He has not even a room.
	...

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