Funny You Should Mention: Liza Treyger
The Gist
Mike Pesca
4.4 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2026
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Comedian Liza Treyger explains why she prefers the 1:30 a.m. Comedy Cellar crowd—the drunk, the horny, the post-Broadway undead—and why bombing early is harder than thriving late. Her Netflix special Night Owl doubles as a thesis on power, hypocrisy, and why men who "hate Taylor Swift" seem uniquely unable to stop talking about her. Treyger argues that worst moments often are the résumé, that comedy works better when it sounds unwritten, and that moral panic is usually just bad joke construction in disguise. Plus: owls, tattoos, true crime, and just a little but about Luigi.
Produced by Corey Wara
Coordinated by Lya Yanne
Video and Social Media by Geoff Craig
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's Friday, January 16th, 2026 from Peachfish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Peska. |
| 0:11.1 | And today is a funny you should mention day. Funny you should mention that Lisa Trager is on the show. |
| 0:17.2 | She's a very, did I say funny twice already? She's a very funny comedian. |
| 0:21.8 | She loves owls. |
| 0:23.7 | She loves weed. |
| 0:26.0 | She does videos where she talks about all the money she wastes, like on Moncichi |
| 0:31.1 | little purses and handbags. |
| 0:32.9 | But she also has, I guess, radical politics, which you'll hear by the end of the interview. |
| 0:38.1 | We get into one of the residents of the Metropolitan Detention Center, and that's Luigi |
| 0:44.9 | Mangione. |
| 0:45.6 | She is, I thought, as mostly a bit obsessed with Luigi Mangione, and I actually forgot to |
| 0:52.1 | ask about it during the interview. |
| 0:54.5 | And then my intrepid producer, and Lisa Traeger fan, Michelle Peska said, ask about Luigi, so I did. |
| 0:59.8 | Now you will hear her make some assertions about Luigi. |
| 1:03.5 | I couldn't fact check. |
| 1:04.5 | I couldn't fact check all of them in real time. |
| 1:06.0 | I couldn't exactly, didn't want to spar with her in real time. Sometimes the philosophy is, okay, let these |
| 1:13.6 | incendiary statements out there and give what pushback you can, right? The direct confrontation, |
| 1:19.5 | I think, and I shouldn't say confrontation, the direct challenge, I think, would have just |
| 1:25.4 | occasioned Lisa, you know, she's, she's funny, she's got a patter. |
| 1:29.2 | She'd maybe have gish galloped me, debating term. |
| 1:32.1 | So I just asked her about a couple implications of her love of Luigi and her, you know, |
... |
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