Gahey, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. What is the role of comedy,

specifically stand-up comedy, in this crazy new world? We had the Jimmy Kimmel Trump snafu. We had

Stephen Colbert being cancelled. We have these comedians going to Saudi Arabia and being

paid bucket loads of money to perform for a questionable regime. We have Mark Maron going out and

accusing his fellow comedy podcast bros like Joe Rogan of delivering unto the world Donald Trump

just because they couldn't say the R word and they were

all upset about cancel culture and it was a storm in a teacup. I wanted to sit down with Australia's

most successful and best known stand-up comic. I think that is fair to say. Will Anderson has been

gracing Australian television screens for almost 20 years on his flagship panel show.

It's called Gruen, and it's essentially an analysis of advertising, but through looking at

advertising and marketing and social media, it also looks at Australia and who we are and who we're

becoming as a species. He started out in radio, much like myself, but on the comedy side of things,

rather than the journalism side. He hosted the breakfast show on Triple J. He hosted a drive-time

radio show on Triple M. He was nominated for the highest honour in Australian television,

a Logie Award for most popular host. And he's just a wonderful person to sit down and rumble with, such a

quick wit and such a thoughtful person about social media, about what's happening to humankind,

about the unique magic of working a crowd with no camera recording his shows, no need to be

pandering towards the algorithm to create a viral clip.

We talk about his not knowing who Candice Owens is,

whether we have a duty to stay across the news in this crazy world or whether we're actually doing ourselves a service

and humanity a service by tuning out.

I hope you enjoy as much as I did, the one, the only, Will Anderson.

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