From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's the Treatment.

It's the treatment.

We're going old school with an old friend who hasn't been here in way too long.

W. Kamal Bell, he's on tour with his Who's With Me Tour? I'm with you.

Hey, there we go. We're done. I can leave.

Okay. Yes, that's right. Just leave a several bullet and move on your way. What you're doing in that show, what you're doing in your act.

Yeah.

What you're doing yourself, Sack, is about the ways that politics and popular culture intersect and that they're inextricably entwined. And I'm looking at your Instagram feed and just, and I just love what you posted about Kimball, but also you're making a point that Jimmy Kimmel was going to be okay. Yeah. Yeah, don't cry for Jimmy in America. I mean, you know, fighting for his job was a symbol of fighting for all of us and hopefully it gets us united to fight for all of us. But Jimmy was going to be fine. Oh, golly, of course, because he was even saying before Trump kind of called him out, he said, well, maybe I'll retire because my contract would be up next year. But I was like Trump just threw down the gauntlet. And in this weird way, by giving more oxygen to the opposition, he's actually helping.

Yeah, he's actually reinventing late night. Trump is actually bringing late night back to prominence. All these networks will be like, well, late night's going to phase out soon. We're going to phase out Colbert. But he's actually like, you know, he actually improved Jimmy Kimmel's ratings, which is the, you know, the stricent effect on steroids. It's the question. I think it's actually something we talked about the last time you were here, which is does it help to have an adversary or an adversary for comedy? Yeah, you can't have, even if the adversary is the missing sock in the dryer. You got to have something that you're, that is causing you dismay. You know what I mean? I think dismay is what the thing is where you're like, I thought it was this, but it is this. And that disconnect, that distance

between those things is where the comedy lies. But yes, certainly, you know, the president being

a fascist is a little bit more dismaying than the law sock in the dryer. Apologies to Jay

Seinfeld. But I think so much what you do is comes from a point in position of passion rather than a position of anger. And I feel that's always been the sort of dividing line between you and a lot of comics to deal in the kind of things you deal with. It's really as much about, it's more about passion than is anger. If I'm not fired up about something, I can't really tell a joke more than once or twice. If I'm not invested in it, like, I gotta get this out, then it's not going to work for long, especially in stand-up. Like, you can't tour the thing for months and months and months or years and years and years unless you're still, like, connected to the original idea. Also the passion about communicating your feelings about the idea, too.

Because, I mean, that really is the fun of it for me, because that's your delivery, the passion.

And I think it's one of these things that, because it can often be oratorical and fiery, people mistake that for anger.

The older I get, the more I feel lucky that I come from the greatest generation,

Generation X.

We call that the greatest generation, right?

The greatest generation.

And I think a lot of that generation, especially in the 90s when we were young, the old

days in the 90s, that it was about like expressing an idea and being able to do it

with naked passion, like not being sort of self-conscious about it.

Like this grunge movement is about like, we may not have all the right instruments or we

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