Podcastration #2 - Jon Stewart
This Podcastration will be a two-fer. Jon Stewart on Smartless in 2021, and the second covers his more recent appearances on Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend.
All excerpts contain slight edits for clarity. I suggest listening to all of them, especially his guest appearance on Conan's podcast; it was essentially an audio improv show. The quotes I pull are basically for my own personal use, and may not resonate with you. Nevertheless...
Podcast: Smartless
Episode: “Jon Stewart"
Release Date: September 27, 2021
On the ‘why’ of satire...
Stewart: Satire has always been a way of processing things that mean a lot to you.
On the sentimentality for The Daily Show of yore...
Stewart: There is a nostalgia that grows around something that you remember more fondly than perhaps at the time. And at the time we were inconsistent… we were controversial. I took my fair share of shit… There is a certain golden glow that nobody remembers more fondly. But remember, there is also the reverse of that—Nothing turns to disappointment and anger faster than love.
On playing the drums as a creative outlet...
Stewart: The thing that’s incredible about [playing the drums] is—it’s all about limb independence, and creating these rhythmic connections that didn’t exist before. You can’t do it when you first try. But if you slow it down, and you go through it kind of mechanically, and with purpose; slowly, you rewire. Suddenly, now, you can do it at speed. You’re creating connections that never occurred. You can almost feel the synapses in your brain crack—it’s like the opposite of death. And for me, I just like making shit. That’s what gives me a feeling of well-being or purpose or anything along those lines.
On his leadership role at The Daily Show...
Stewart: …[As] far as leaving The Daily Show, I didn’t leave because I didn't care anymore. I left because I couldn't think of another interesting way to evolve the show...I don't feel public pressure. I feel the pressure from the people that I work with. Like when you're leading one of those shows, you owe it to them to try and kind of inspire them to come in with a certain amount of enthusiasm and a certain amount of directionality and a certain amount of, you know, leadership.
On his ambivalence toward what The Daily Show accomplished politically/culturally...
Bateman: But your ability to deliver the news and let the medicine go down easy is just incredibly valuable
Stewart: But I wonder sometimes if that’s even a good thing. I got to a certain point where—if the medicine goes down so easy, maybe you don’t even realize you need medicine.
Bateman: But if the only other option is that people simply won’t even seek out the medicine, I’d rather it go down easy than them just keep their head in the sand and watch Judge Judy.
Aside: This podcast was released in the run-up to his Apple TV show. This quote portended the more excoriatory and heavy-handed approach the show took in dealing with political content (from a few limited viewings). But since his return to The Daily Show (again based on my few limited viewings), his approach returned to the "let the medicine go down easy."
Podcast: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
Episode: Jon Stewart
Release Date: September 30, 2024
On what it feels like to base your emotional well-being on trivialities...
Stewart: And the door opens and it's the booker. And he looks in with a look on his face of that look that maybe doctors had two weeks into the pandemic. And he goes, "Hal Lyndon said, 'No'". And we all went, what? Barney Miller's not going to do the show? And it was then that I realized like, oh, I think I'm going to jump off a building because my emotional well-being is now... tied up in these unbelievably trivial moments that didn't matter even five feet outside of that door.
On taking things too personally, and then eventually realizing this cognitive distortion...
Stewart: But I had [Conan O'Brien's] experience of like, this is my shot. Like this is it. My name is on this. This is a manifestation of who I am as an artist, as a person. If it gets rejected, I am rejected. I wasn't sleeping. I was really miserable. I was drinking like a motherfucker. Like all those different things. And one night, in my insomnia, at three o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, I just remember thinking, you're gonna have had your own talk show with your name on it, where you could do whatever you wanted... And people are gonna say, "Did you enjoy it?" And I would have to say, "I hated it and I think it nearly destroyed me." And what a dumb fucking response. And that morning, I got up and was like, I'm gonna enjoy the shit out of this. And I don't care anymore. And it was revelatory. And it was such a, I felt it physically like that relief. Now, the blow of the story is, they canceled it pretty soon thereafter.
On bombing in comedy...
Conan: I'm sorry. If you're in comedy, you're always, I think, potentially 20 minutes away from bombing. It's just the way it is. And I always think about this in, when someone says, I'm doing a benefit, you can come out and I always think, well, okay, but I gotta really think about it. And they're like, no, you don't, it's a benefit. People have already paid the money and they just want to know the name and that you're gonna be there. And I think, no, no, no, it has to be good because when it doesn't, I don't care, when I'm 90, if you go out there and it doesn't feel right and it doesn't go well, it feels worse than anything I ever felt in my life.