Vir Das Became India's Biggest Stand-up Despite Government Resistance

Good One: A Podcast About Jokes

Vox Media Podcast Network

Comedy, Comedy Interviews

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vir Das lost his voice just six weeks before he had to film his new Netflix special 'Fool Volume', and on this week's episode of 'Good One' he walks us through how Adele's doctor helped bring him back, facing legal consequences for his work, and how much better it actually is to be an Indian comedian. 00:00 Intro00:01:23 Funniest thing of the week00:03:06 Starting stand-up in Mumbai00:06:23 Being an Indian comic00:07:54 Branching out globally00:15:24 Losing his voice00:23:19 Making the special00:30:28 Legal controversy00:34:47 Protecting fellow comics00:36:02 The magazine profile he didn't do00:38:53 Making comedy with legal risk00:43:55 His performing style00:50:23 The Laughening Round Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:31.8	slash podcast offer, all lowercase. Support for the show comes from Grooons. If you're looking for a new tasty nutrition
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0:47.2	packed into eight daily gummies. Grunes is not a multivitamin, a greens gummy, or a prebiotic.
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1:02.1	whole food ingredients. Get up to 45% off when you go to grooms.co and use code Vox. That's G-R-U-N-S.com, using code Vox for 45% off. And they were like, hey, can I talk to the police officer in all these stations? And I was like, yeah, you can. Do you also want to talk about jokes? You know? And then they were like, should we send somebody on the day your special comes out?
1:27.8	Do you think you'll get arrested again?
1:29.3	Yeah, yeah.
1:30.3	And I was like, I hope not, and shouldn't you hope not as well?
1:38.3	This is Good One.
1:40.3	I am Jesse David Fox, senior writer at Vulture and author of Comedy Book.
1:43.3	My guest this episode is Veer Das, the biggest English-speaking comedian in India and, frankly, the world.
1:50.7	When I first interviewed Veer in 2021, he was filming sets on top of a mountain deep in the jungles of Goa
1:56.7	because he was worried about his speech being infringed upon by the government and the police.
2:01.3	He spoke ominously of what might be coming next.
2:04.2	As if on cue, months later, Veer performed a piece about inequality called two Indias at the Kennedy
2:09.2	Center. It went viral, but like not in a good way. It led to a week of controversy in India
2:14.5	and many, many police complaints. Everything was resolved legally, but Veer is still impacted by that moment.
	...

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