This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, August 16th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Comedians trying to navigate a world where comedy itself is judged through a partisan lens have had well mixed

results. Comedian Lou Perez writes about comedy, politics, and what used to be

funny in his new book that joke isn't funny anymore on the death and

rebirth of comedy we spoke last week in about the past six years or so I feel like comedy has taken a beating. I have many thoughts about why comedy in

broad sense just ceased to be particularly good for a while. I feel like it's coming back.

Do you agree with that? Do you have that sense?

I mean I definitely feel that comedy is is coming back if it if it hasn't gone anywhere

for the past six years because you know as a comedian I'm sort of in the

thick of it so I spent a lot of time creating comedy instead of just being a consumer of it.

So I think if you're a consumer of comedy and you were looking at the places you're supposed to look for comedy like

late night shows comedy central Hollywood you know that sort of might, you know, turn around one day and say,

what, what's going on? What happened here? But I think that a lot of the,

the more interesting stuff is definitely happening online and that's kind of where I, you know, cut my teeth in comedy and in, you know, video production and that sort of thing.

And I think ultimately, I mean mean seems like that's what's that's going to save us is a more independent

Creators out there who thankfully have the technology and the means now where you're able to grow an audience that's able to fund your projects and you know you turn around you like oh wow

look I'm a you know I'm a working comedian now but I'm not on any shows I'm'm not in any movies, but somehow I'm still able to do this stuff.

So for my book, that joke isn't funny anymore on the death and rebirth of comedy.

It's definitely a you know a positive look to the future and a

positive look to where we are now to. What happened? I mean between you know so many people attribute this to Donald Trump making comedy not funny and people have many thoughts about why that is. What do you think?

Well I noticed something in 2016 when Donald Trump won the presidency for the first time. I'm just kidding. I, uh, when he, when he won,

...