This is The Last Laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and today I am thrilled to be joined by a stand-up comedian who has been making me laugh for a very long time. His latest special, Black Coffee and Icewater, premieres exclusively on Audible this Thursday, November 20th.

Pat and Oswald, welcome back to The Last Laugh. Thanks for having me back. I'm glad we can get over

the disaster that my first appearance was. I think I've issued every apology that I can.

Yeah, people probably don't remember how how disastrous it was but yeah

let's not go into that and I'm really sorry for what it did to the 2020 election again very

sorry for all that let's just have fun today let's move on and have fun good idea um this is actually

your third time on the show, so you join our

coveted three-timers club. So that's, it's very exciting for you. Nice to be a three-timer.

I'll take it. Thanks, man. I really enjoyed listening to your new special, which is not

something that I'm used to doing. I feel like I'm mostly watching specials these days, but this is an audio-only special. So what was the decision-making

going into that? Were you just sick of people looking at you? Or how did you get there?

I remember I got the offer from Audible, and it really struck me that I I except for my first two albums, I had always been doing like video and, you know, filming and thinking about the set, thinking about the wardrobe and the lighting and all the albums that really, really influenced me were just people being recorded talking and you listen

to the voice and your mind makes the pictures rather than you're being given an image. And I just

loved the idea of getting to go old school again. And then I loved it even more when I was

10 minutes into recording the set at the Manit Elaine Lane Theater. It took me 10 minutes to realize,

oh, I'm not on camera right now. This is just me talking and the audience responding, and it's very

real, and it's very immediate. And it was so immediately freeing. I felt fantastic. How did it change your performance? I mean, because you're still performing for the people

who are there who are watching you, but not thinking, you know, knowing that you're not on camera,

how did it actually change what you did? I think it made the performance even more alive and

electric because I'm performing for the people that are right in front of me.

And what the audio is capturing is that excitement of just being in front of an audience live

and not knowing what's going to happen next.

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