Shownotes
The Renaissance of Men podcast, hosted by Will Spencer, invites listeners into a captivating discussion with Wade Stotts, host of "The Wade Show With Wade" on CanonPlus and a thought leader in political comedy. The episode delves deeply into the transformation of comedy in the age of anxiety, examining how comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert shaped the landscape of political humor.
Wade shares insights into his own approach to comedy, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a sense of playfulness and enthusiasm in the face of societal challenges.
The conversation explores the uneasy relationship Christians often have with comedy, highlighting the need for humor that is both entertaining and thought-provoking. Additionally, Stotts discusses the significance of citing sources and drawing from historical thinkers to enrich modern comedic narratives, offering a fresh perspective on contemporary issues.
Takeaways:
- The podcast discusses the evolution of late-night comedy and its shift towards political commentary.
- Wade Stotts emphasizes the importance of humor in addressing serious topics like politics and culture.
- Wade shares insights on the influences and challenges in creating comedic content today.
- There's a focus on how modern comedy often reflects societal anxieties and political tensions.
- The conversation highlights the role of comedy in questioning and reflecting on cultural and political issues.
CONNECT WITH WADE
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
- "Change Bank" SNL Sketch
- "Learning in Wartime" - CS Lewis
- "Anarcho-Tyranny USA" - Sam Francis
- "How To Write Funny" - Scott Dikkers
🌟 The Will Spencer Podcast was formerly known as "The Renaissance of Men."
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Transcripts
My name is Will Spencer, and you're listening to the renaissance of Men podcast.
Host (Will Spencer):My guest this week is a thought leader and the host of the Wade show with Wade on canon plus and YouTube.
Guest (Wade Staats):Please welcome Wade staats.
Guest (Wade Staats):You are the Renaissance.
Host (Will Spencer):Let's talk about obsession.
Host (Will Spencer):No, not with your ex.
Host (Will Spencer):You really need to let her or him go.
Host (Will Spencer):I'm talking about obsession with a pursuit.
Host (Will Spencer):Something you love, something you study, something your energy flows towards, no matter what you do about it.
Host (Will Spencer):I'm not just talking about a hobby, which is something you do in your spare time, with your spare money.
Host (Will Spencer):Those are fine, and every man and woman should have them.
Host (Will Spencer):I'm talking about something else, though.
Host (Will Spencer):Something that occupies your waking thoughts, your falling asleep, imaginations, and even your dreams.
Host (Will Spencer):Okay, maybe obsession isn't the best word for it.
Host (Will Spencer):Maybe you'd prefer the term passion, vocation, or calling.
Host (Will Spencer):Whatever it is.
Host (Will Spencer):It's the thing that you'd do if you didn't have to do anything else.
Host (Will Spencer):Do you know what that is?
Host (Will Spencer):Or did you know at one time?
Host (Will Spencer):Because it's obsession that makes for excellence.
Host (Will Spencer):It's how all the great chefs, painters, artists, entrepreneurs, engineers, poets, sourdough bakers, candlestick makers, and dog walkers became elite at what they do.
Host (Will Spencer):Their curiosity became their interest, became their hobby, became their pursuit, became the profession, became their obsession, either over a period of time or sometimes right away.
Host (Will Spencer):And talking with people who have walked that road is one of my favorite things to do, in part because they can illustrate for me dimensions of the things that I enjoy that I wouldn't have considered.
Host (Will Spencer):I think I'm not alone in that.
Host (Will Spencer):Appreciating men and women who have worked so hard to hone their craft that they can talk with infectious enthusiasm for hours about the thing they love.
Host (Will Spencer):It inspires us to pursue that level of excellence in the things we do, however humble they may be.
Host (Will Spencer):And also, if you ask me, it's just cool to see people light up as their enthusiasm illuminates whole fields of study that I'd never explored, leaving me brimming with curiosity.
Host (Will Spencer):Which brings me to my guest this week.
Host (Will Spencer):His name is Wade Stotts and hes the host of the Wade show with Wade on Canon and YouTube.
Host (Will Spencer):You may have heard of Wade because a recent video he did about the untimely death of the Constitution went viral, being featured everywhere from Alex Jones to Tim Poole.
Host (Will Spencer):Thats right, the upper echelons of american politics were fully wade maxing a daily practice I recommend.
Host (Will Spencer):But like all overnight successes, theres nothing overnight about it.
Host (Will Spencer):As you'll hear in this podcast.
Host (Will Spencer):Wade has been studying political comedy for years, observing late night television, Weekend Update, Norm Macdonald, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and many others, while the rest of us merely watched.
Host (Will Spencer):You might call Wade obsessed, because thankfully a jury hasn't.
Host (Will Spencer):At least not yet.
Host (Will Spencer):But what that means is that the way Wade articulates the things he's learned can also help lend us insight into the world of comedy and comedic writing, which surrounds us to such a degree that we take it for granted.
Host (Will Spencer):This is what I mean about enthusiasm illuminating a field of study.
Host (Will Spencer):Because yes, Wade and I could have talked about the dead old constitution making a whole lot of conservatives angry as they clapped their hands, hoping to revive the rule of law as if our founding document were a dying tinkerbell.
Host (Will Spencer):But see, right there, ive already told you all you need to know.
Host (Will Spencer):So instead, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Wade, where he shares things you might not know and that I certainly didnt.
Host (Will Spencer):So we can all enjoy his enthusiasm, curiosity, and passion for comedy together.
Host (Will Spencer):Because those kinds of conversations are my obsession.
Host (Will Spencer):See how that all works out.
Host (Will Spencer):In our conversation, Wade and I discussed Jon Stewarts innovation and Stephen Colberts boring sincerity, what happens when comedy becomes self important, why Wall e is a right wing robot, how conservatives havent conserved conservatism, the essence of comedy writing, the naivete of modern christians, and calculated nastiness as winsomeness.
Host (Will Spencer):If you enjoy the renaissance of Men podcast, thank you.
Host (Will Spencer):Please give us a five star rating on Spotify and a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
Host (Will Spencer):If this is your first time here, welcome.
Host (Will Spencer):I release new episodes about the christian counterculture, masculine virtue, and the family every week, and please welcome this week's guest on the podcast, the host of the Wade show with Wade on Canon, Wade Staats.
Guest (Wade Staats):Wade, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast this week.
Wade Staats:So glad to be here.
Wade Staats:Thank you, Will.
Guest (Wade Staats):I've been a huge fan of your content of the Wade show for the past few months that I've been watching it for many reasons.
Guest (Wade Staats):But one of the big reasons is because when I was still a liberal about a decade or so ago, I was a big fan of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
Guest (Wade Staats):And to see, and obviously I don't agree with any of their politics anymore at all.
Guest (Wade Staats):And I can't believe that I ever did.
Guest (Wade Staats):But to see you doing something like that today in the christian counterculture has been incredibly exciting for me.
Guest (Wade Staats):So thank you for being here.
Wade Staats:Well, thank you.
Wade Staats:I love doing it.
Wade Staats:I have a similar sort of experience with having watched a lot of those guys.
Wade Staats:Yeah, I was a late night fiend back in the day, but, yeah, I love being able to do the wait show and, yeah.
Wade Staats:Every week, being able to tell people, yeah.
Wade Staats:Basically do a format that I really love and be able to talk about things I care about and not whatever those guys care about.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):Well, let's.
Guest (Wade Staats):Let's talk about that, because there, I think there was a moment where, like, comedy, tv news, like comedy central kind of stuff actually was kind of news.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right.
Guest (Wade Staats):I mean, at least it seemed that way to me.
Guest (Wade Staats):And, or maybe I was asleep.
Guest (Wade Staats):I mean, was that what was going on?
Guest (Wade Staats):Or did they change or was I wrong?
Wade Staats:The question is, were they news?
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah.
Wade Staats:Were they back in the day?
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):I mean, yes, of course they have a bias, like, setting that aside, but I don't think they're the same anymore.
Wade Staats:Right.
Wade Staats:Well, they were definitely, that was definitely Jon Stewart's innovation in the whole late night space.
Wade Staats:So the Daily show before he took over was basically a parody of the news.
Wade Staats:And so they would do sort of goofy jokes about, like, here's a, you know, squirrel on a jet ski or whatever, and, like, just make it into, like, this is a parody of the local news, and this is our parody of the sports guy and this is our parody of that.
Wade Staats:But what it became during Jon Stewart's tenure, and especially after, like, after Bush came into office, was a kind of point by point breakdown of some happening of that day.
Wade Staats:And so, yeah, it became a center.
Wade Staats:I think there was a survey that happened to sometime within, I think Jon Stewart was there for ten years or something.
Wade Staats:Sometime within there, there was a huge portion of young people that saw him as their top news source.
Wade Staats:They weren't getting news anywhere else.
Wade Staats:So you could walk away from, you could walk away from a Jon Stewart segment feeling like you have digested the news of the day when really you've just listened to a ten minute comedy monologue.
Wade Staats:And so it really did, it really was going through details, but there was, yeah, the slant was always there.
Wade Staats:And Stuart and Colbert had their very different kind of paths for it.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, that was a huge innovation in that space around, around the turn of the century for those guys because mostly late night tv was, it was topical because they have to do a show every night and the jokes are going to be, you have to have new material.
Wade Staats:You're not just going to every night, try to come up with some new observation about, like, you know, when you're eating a hot dog and you're like, whatever kind of like Seinfeld kind of thing.
Wade Staats:So, like, the comedy had to be topical, but those guys turned it into.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Here is the way you should be thinking about the news, which puts a lot of power in their hands, and folks followed them because they were very funny and because, and so a lot of times that skill of comedy writing, which is a skill, can make you swallow the underlying premises.
Wade Staats:And so the, it's all about subtext.
Wade Staats:And so whatever, the, if the, if the text is done skillfully and they've, they've gotten you to laugh at the people they want you to laugh at for whatever reason, then you, you go along with it.
Wade Staats:So you don't, it's, it's kind of like, it's kind of like public school.
Wade Staats:I went to public school, but, like, it's kind of like public school where you walk away from it feeling like you've learned about World War Two or you feel like you've learned about the Civil War or you feel like you've learned about Vietnam War and you've got, like, maybe a paragraph worth of information in your head.
Wade Staats:What you've got is a story that is very, like, again, it's sort of summarized, easy to summarize, easy to, like, spit out, but you haven't gone through and done a lot of the work, so you haven't learned how to learn.
Wade Staats:You've just kind of been handed, oh, I feel like I know a lot about x.
Wade Staats:And so you get, like people of my generation, the millennials, walking around assuming that they know quite a bit more than they actually do because that's the way they've learned how to learn.
Wade Staats:It's just sort of give me the bullet points and I won't have to dig any further because, well, Jon Stewart summarized it for me, or I went to college, and I feel like I know a lot about history, but really it was just a process of, I don't know.
Wade Staats:Yeah, it's like instilling a certain amount of unearned confidence.
Wade Staats:And I think the entertainment does that.
Wade Staats:I think education does that.
Wade Staats:And I hope not to do that in my show, mainly because I hope to cite my sources and force people to do work outside of my five to ten minute little excursions.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, I love the format and I love the potency of it, and I can see how potent it is to be able to change people's minds.
Wade Staats:But I also just, I mean, it's a fun, entertaining way to do the kind of communication I want to do.
Guest (Wade Staats):Well, actually, I want to come back to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for in a minute.
Guest (Wade Staats):But since you mentioned it, I'm curious about what does go into producing your monologues, because I can feel it now, as you articulate, this is what I create and the ethic behind what I create.
Guest (Wade Staats):You're not just trying to pre digest information and hand it to people so that they believe it in terms of, you just accept this unearned confidence, as you said, in information you have no background in, like, oh, well, Jon Stewart said it, so therefore, it must be true.
Guest (Wade Staats):Versus the idea that citing your sources or putting forth something that isn't necessarily designed to tell people how to think, it's designed to make them think.
Guest (Wade Staats):Is that about right?
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:And my hope is, like, as far as what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert would do, they would make a, they would do a joke and make you dislike Rand Paul because his hair was weird, you know, so, like, you find.
Wade Staats:I find myself every time I see Rand Paul on the tv because, oh, I watch this.
Wade Staats:There are still jokes from Stephen Colbert that stick in my head where, like, I think there's one particular joke about a, somebody had, like, a half of a percent in polling and, or, and then it said, like, or as they know, in the poll, as they call it in the polling world, one Santorum.
Wade Staats:And I was like, that's a great, that's a great joke.
Wade Staats:And it's.
Wade Staats:And, like, it always, like Rick Santorum.
Wade Staats:No, I like the Rick Santorum.
Wade Staats:So it's no knock on him, but I always have that in my head as, like, a little bit of a, like, I don't know, like a mini denigration of this guy that I actually do respect.
Wade Staats:But, but anyway, I think there's, there's, there's a, there's a potency in it.
Wade Staats:And so, like, like you said, what, what I try to do is, yeah, push people, but also, like, encourage people who are already kind of suspecting something.
Wade Staats:So I think the videos that have done the best on the channel have been typically ones that you may sort of.
Wade Staats:That have the common factor of you've probably been feeling a kind of cloud of x that sort of feels like a big cloud of undefined anxiety about x topic.
Wade Staats:Well, here's a case that might provide some clarity for that cloud so that somebody out there might be able to go, oh, that's it.
Wade Staats:That's the thing I've been saying.
Wade Staats:But I haven't had, haven't exactly had words for it.
Wade Staats:I've heard Pastor Wilson, Pastor Doug Wilson talk about his ideal audience is a young man, a young reformed man in a church who doesn't have words to describe the chaos he seems around him.
Wade Staats:And then when he reads Doug, for him to go, that's it.
Wade Staats:That's what I've been seeing.
Wade Staats:And so I've got a similar kind of presentation thing.
Wade Staats:And so a lot of that is just trying to clarify things that seem unclear.
Wade Staats:And so we've got, yeah, I've admired a lot of folks who've been able to do that kind of translation work, but honestly, like, along with that the whole time, I want it to be entertaining.
Wade Staats:So the, in one sense, I see it as like, oh, I want to clarify.
Wade Staats:It's stuff I care about, so I want to talk about it.
Wade Staats:And it also, so in one sense, it helps me get my thinking straight on some particular issue because I've said it before that, like, I've heard it many, many times, but writing is thinking.
Wade Staats:So when I'm writing my thing, it's me just trying to explain it to myself.
Wade Staats:And if I can get me on the page, then I'm pretty good.
Wade Staats:If I can explain it to where I can understand it, then hopefully other folks can come along and grab on as well.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, that's the kind of encouraging side and the entertaining side.
Wade Staats:I want it to be something that's pleasant to watch no matter what the topic is.
Wade Staats:We get into some pretty depressing, sad kind of stuff on the show.
Wade Staats:I'm talking bad about the late night guys, but they actually do a pretty decent job of that.
Wade Staats:If they're going somewhere that they think of as dark and they're going to make a case that I'm going to disagree with.
Wade Staats:But they go there and they go in a dark place and they're like, we can still have our humanity intact even as we go into a dark, weird place.
Wade Staats:Comedy is really great for that.
Wade Staats:Some of the best stand ups can pull you along.
Wade Staats:They can do that in a subversive way, or they can do that in a positive way and pull you along and try to make a point that you wouldn't have agreed with otherwise.
Wade Staats:Start by pulling you in, getting you to trust them, and then saying, hey, we can still have fun here.
Wade Staats:We're still having fun in this uncomfortable, weird spot.
Wade Staats:So that's, that's the thinking behind what I'm doing.
Wade Staats:But hopefully, hopefully if people watch it, they don't have to, you know, really, like, dissect what my thought is behind it.
Wade Staats:But that's, that is what it is kind of behind the scenes.
Guest (Wade Staats):I remember before Stephen Colbert became a late night guy, when he was sort of Jon Stewart's the companion show, and he was kind of doing a character like a skit.
Guest (Wade Staats):He was doing like a Fox News kind of character, right.
Guest (Wade Staats):And so a lot of people probably might not remember pre Covid Stephen Colbert or pre network television Stephen Colbert.
Guest (Wade Staats):He was a completely different.
Guest (Wade Staats):He was a completely different guy.
Guest (Wade Staats):And so the gag between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert was like MSNBC and Fox News.
Guest (Wade Staats):And there was a way in which it was really entertaining to engage with that.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yes, of course.
Guest (Wade Staats):Hard, liberal slant, caricaturizations, all of that.
Guest (Wade Staats):But I felt like I walked away at least entertained, and now it feels like there's a lot less of that entertainment that's happening now.
Guest (Wade Staats):It feels like I'm going to lead with the slant, and then if you happen to laugh, cool, but I'll take some applause instead.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Well, it turned out that Stephen Colbert sincere is really boring, just like a really boring guy.
Wade Staats:He may have all the same talents.
Wade Staats:He may be able to do all the same little, like, cool funny motions or do the voices and all that kind of stuff, but, like, without that layer of irony, he just doesn't have much going on.
Wade Staats:And I liked the old show.
Wade Staats:I thought it was really well done.
Wade Staats:The idea that somebody could do a character for ten years, every night for 30 minutes, and stick to it was amazing.
Wade Staats:Like an amazing feat of entertainment.
Wade Staats:And so, yeah, like, it goes back into the.
Wade Staats:Like, the skill.
Wade Staats:There really has been a change in recent years, and I think the Colbert change was much more of a.
Wade Staats:Was.
Wade Staats:Was, in a lot of ways, a format change in that he had to drop one of the things that made the show funny.
Wade Staats:So if.
Wade Staats:Even if he were expressing his sincere and dumb opinion about something, it was always, he was expressing it the opposite way, which automatically turned everything into a joke so that it had one.
Wade Staats:Like, if there was a funny joke, then the layer of irony on top of it made it a double funny joke.
Wade Staats:And so the more layers of that, the funnier he's gonna come off being.
Wade Staats:But if you take off that layer of irony, you get less.
Wade Staats:And then each one of those jokes gets evaluated based on its own merits and not through the character filter.
Wade Staats:So I think that has a lot to do with it.
Wade Staats:There was also a huge.
Wade Staats:I mean, you talked about pre network Colbert.
Wade Staats:He was such a.
Wade Staats:He came on to network tv around the same time that a lot of other shows changed hands.
Wade Staats: And so this was all, like,: Wade Staats:Here's my opinion.
Wade Staats:Jokes, you know, weaved into it.
Wade Staats:And before, like, I.
Wade Staats: te night, when I think of the: Wade Staats:Not the kind of, like, again, sincere political, like, begging the audience to take the Trump trial seriously or whatever, but it was, like, much more silly, goofy people in horse costumes.
Wade Staats:And that was.
Wade Staats:That's.
Wade Staats:That's my, like, I love that era of late night, but, yeah, like.
Wade Staats:And then Letterman left.
Wade Staats:Conan was still doing his thing on TBS.
Wade Staats: g Ferguson left at the end of: Wade Staats:So a lot of these guys who were less political passed off the shows around the time when the world got more political.
Wade Staats:And so it's odd that it happened at the same time that.
Wade Staats:That these shows were handed to more political people as, I mean, as, like, negative world started.
Wade Staats: , Aaron Rin's negative world,: Wade Staats:So when we think back on a period of late night that I liked a lot, we typically think about a time that is basically neutral world in Aaron Wren's scheme.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, so I think there's part of it was late night itself and these people and the talent, but a lot of them were also following.
Wade Staats:So Colbert changed into the sincere character away from the Fox News character around that same time.
Wade Staats:And I think, yeah, for some reason, that's fascinating to me.
Wade Staats:And late night itself losing a lot of its prominence, but also becoming much more shrill, much more preachy around the time everybody else did.
Wade Staats:So you can say Trump did it, but it was also that all of the pieces were on the board before Trump came in as a political figure.
Wade Staats:So they did a year of Seth Meyers on NBC before this whole thing came out.
Wade Staats:And then now, of course, everything is about Trump, so he becomes the face of, oh, Trump must have changed late night, but it was.
Wade Staats:It was these guys who didn't really have anything until Trump came along.
Wade Staats:So they were all like, they're all making a show for a year, trying to figure out what they are, and then all of a sudden, hey, now, I know it's gonna be this.
Wade Staats:It's gonna be the orange guy.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, I'm getting off on a hugely.
Wade Staats:This is great because I love this stuff.
Guest (Wade Staats):No, this is great because one of the things that we all live in every day is we live in a world of television comedy, but it's one of those things that it's kind of opaque.
Guest (Wade Staats):The art of comedy, you might say, the science of comedy, the people behind the scenes, how it all comes together, is something that's invisible to a lot of people.
Guest (Wade Staats):We consume the product of it, of writing staffs and teams and decades long careers, but we don't ever see how the sausage get made, because if you look at it, it makes the jokes not funny.
Guest (Wade Staats):So this kind of stuff really helps surface a whole world that most of us will never get a chance to experience.
Guest (Wade Staats):So, by all means, please, go crazy.
Wade Staats:I am.
Wade Staats:That's what I'm doing.
Wade Staats:Yeah, man.
Guest (Wade Staats): pened to cable news is during: Guest (Wade Staats):It's like, who are we?
Guest (Wade Staats):16?
Guest (Wade Staats):Who are we?
Guest (Wade Staats):What are we about?
Guest (Wade Staats):Does anyone care?
Guest (Wade Staats):Do they need this much news content in their lives?
Guest (Wade Staats):And then Trump came in.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's like, now we're going to talk about Trump all wall to wall all the time, right?
Guest (Wade Staats):And it sounds like the same was true for late night comedy as well.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, who are we?
Guest (Wade Staats):What are we doing?
Guest (Wade Staats):Trump gives us all something to talk about.
Guest (Wade Staats):So I guess the question then is, like, would Trump have been, and I mean this, like, as big a deal negatively if there hadn't been this entire class of people that were invested in making him a negative big deal, to make themselves a big deal in response?
Guest (Wade Staats):Does that make sense?
Wade Staats:Yeah, no, that's a good question.
Wade Staats:I think there's, it's, it is a fascinating, like, study of their estimation of him.
Wade Staats:And also it, like, we realized at that point that these shows became extensions of the news networks because they were all hated the same thing.
Wade Staats:And so it wasn't jokes about the Kardashians or whatever anymore.
Wade Staats:It was all, like, explicitly, like, this is White House.
Wade Staats:We're talking about the White House, constantly talking about presidential politics, because that's where the threat was.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, the, you could see the kind of the rabid hatred slowly turn them into unfunny people in the same.
Wade Staats:Edwin Friedman.
Wade Staats:I love Edwin Friedman, but he talks about how you can gauge the anxiety level of a society or of a family or of anything like that based on its capacity to be playful.
Wade Staats:So that playfulness and anxiety are like a seesaw effect where you don't, you can't.
Wade Staats:If you are anxious, then you're gonna be less fun.
Wade Staats:And if you're fun, then that actually chases away quite a bit of anxiety.
Wade Staats:And so you see that with tv, the funny goes out, whereas I think, yeah, so it's kind of this.
Wade Staats:You can see during, like, the Obama years, these guys basically felt safe.
Wade Staats:And so any of the political jokes didn't have to be very high stakes.
Wade Staats:It wasn't.
Wade Staats:None of them saw themselves as saving the country or fighting satan, whereas what they saw themselves then as doing, they felt, we are now on the front lines.
Wade Staats:And as soon as comedy becomes, I've talked in this interview about how potent I think it is and how potent I think, making funny stuff is.
Wade Staats:But as soon as comedy becomes self important, then I think it's a way gone.
Wade Staats:Like, it just goes out the door.
Wade Staats:And so I think, yeah, I think, like, Colbert and Kimmel and those guys way overestimate the, I don't know, their own effectiveness or their own power in being able to do this stuff when really what they're doing is just relaying all the opinions of the people who are more powerful than they are because they feel like they, there's always the, like, punching up aspect of comedy where you want to, like, you want to be the rebel, you want to be the guy in the back of the class.
Wade Staats:You want to be the jester who can make fun of the king or whatever, and that's, like, that's what people think of themselves as being.
Wade Staats:But what they're actually doing is just fighting the, like, person that's getting everything taken away from him.
Wade Staats:So, like, they're, they're laughing hard at a guy who's, like, who ran for president and for all his, like, all his trouble, got, like, prosecuted for years and now is getting, like, you know, could get thrown in jail, but, like, they're, they're beating down a guy who's actually below them in the societal hierarchy, but that helps them hold onto their jobs, and they still get to feel transgressive.
Wade Staats:They still get to feel like, oh, I'm the punk rock guy because I'm fighting Trump.
Wade Staats:He was the president.
Wade Staats:He was, he has a lot of power, but not, he's was, yeah, he's not really the guy in charge of everything.
Wade Staats:So, yeah, it's fascinating to, like, think of the psychology of these people who come out every day, every night, and are you?
Wade Staats:I don't know.
Wade Staats:They think they're doing one thing when they're doing something else.
Wade Staats:And most of the country is understanding that they're not.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Is understanding that the actual reality instead of whatever is going on in their.
Guest (Wade Staats):Head, that's so interesting, because you're right.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, how can they possibly conceive of themselves as the comedic underdogs, right, when you represent the regime?
Guest (Wade Staats):I'd never really thought of it that way before.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's like, how can you possibly consider yourself an underdog?
Guest (Wade Staats):You are literally the empire.
Wade Staats:Yeah, yeah.
Wade Staats:Well, and if they weren't, if they actually did anything to risk their careers, then, yeah, they would lose all their advertising money.
Wade Staats:If they did something that was really transgressive to the culture that they were living in, then, yeah, they wouldn't have their jobs.
Wade Staats:But for some reason, yeah, that cognitive dissonance of I am on the cutting edge of fighting comedy, but actually also, all of my opinions are the same opinions of every major pharma company and the same opinions of NBCUniversal all the way to the top.
Wade Staats:And, you know, I have my complaints about Letterman.
Wade Staats:I used to watch Letterman every day.
Wade Staats:Huge Letterman fan.
Wade Staats:I've made complaints about him.
Wade Staats:But what was great about him is whatever network he was on, he would always make fun of the network.
Wade Staats:He would make fun of the tv shows that were on the network.
Wade Staats:He would make fun of the executives by name on the show.
Wade Staats:So, like, when he was on NBC, he would, like, talk bad about NBC and how lame it was when some new company bought NBC from RCA, he was like, he would make fun of the idea that they were, yeah.
Wade Staats:So it was just, it was like, it was actually like, to a point where there was some amount of risk involved and he ended up, like, leaving NBC because of the tension that it created while he was there.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, these guys still have jobs.
Wade Staats:They're not in any danger.
Wade Staats:And they get to, yeah, just kind of, I don't know, break in their millions of dollars and still think like, oh, yeah, this is, we're, we're fighting the system.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, they're totally, totally embedded in it and, yeah, I don't know.
Wade Staats:Yeah, those, those, yeah, like I said, the psychology of that person is fascinating to me.
Guest (Wade Staats):So maybe, maybe what we can do is we can talk a little bit then about David Letterman and Jay Leno and Johnny Carson and some of this, some of this era of comedy that preceded where we're at now, because I think there are a lot of people who really just started paying attention to comedy in the post Trump era when comedy stopped being funny and started being overtly political.
Guest (Wade Staats):But there was a whole shame.
Guest (Wade Staats):It is.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah, but there was a whole era where comedians were actually funny, even the political ones like George Carlin, nakedly political comic.
Guest (Wade Staats):But at least he would make you laugh.
Guest (Wade Staats):He made me laugh.
Guest (Wade Staats):And, of course, and there were pre political comics as well, so maybe we could talk about some of those.
Guest (Wade Staats):Some of those and remind people of the good old days, right?
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Well, my favorite stand up will always be Norm Macdonald.
Wade Staats:And it was mainly because I think he, like, had a good head on his shoulders, knew how to make a.
Wade Staats:And knew how to, like, tell the truth in a really brutal way, but also to not be.
Wade Staats:He.
Wade Staats:He was, he was a guy who understood.
Wade Staats:I watched.
Wade Staats:There was a great interview of Norm where he's talking to his sister in law on canadian television.
Wade Staats:His sister in law was a canadian television presenter, and she says something about, will you ever make a Trump joke?
Wade Staats:Or will you ever do Trump humor or stuff like that?
Wade Staats:He was talking about how it's kind of easy.
Wade Staats:And what he said is that Trump is often, when he's being ridiculous, he's often doing self parody.
Wade Staats:And that when you start doing.
Wade Staats:When you start parodying self parody, then you look like an idiot.
Wade Staats:And so that's like, that was the most succinct way to describe exactly the problem that was going on around him.
Wade Staats:But he saw that and it's just bad comedy.
Wade Staats:So he was making a judgment about, oh, your instincts are bad.
Wade Staats:You're following the wrong path on how to make a good joke.
Wade Staats:If you want to hit somebody, hit them for real things.
Wade Staats:And not like, when Trump is being bombastic, because that's like a joke.
Wade Staats:Like, when he's, when he's talking about himself in the third person or doing something goofy like that.
Wade Staats:Why make fun of somebody who's making fun of himself?
Wade Staats:Or at least is like, again, doing self parody.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, Norm was always great, and Norm did get political, but it was usually just sort of like, cutting through the crap kind of political.
Wade Staats:So that when it.
Wade Staats:So that, like, the.
Wade Staats:His whole OJ saga of him on Saturday Night Live, he was, he was, he was the weekend update guy when OJ was going through the trial, when the verdict was handed down, and he did not let up.
Wade Staats:And it wasn't, it wasn't like presidential politics in the same way, but it was.
Wade Staats:It was an actual, like, huge political force in America that wanted people to say, no matter what, that OJ should get off, even if he did it.
Wade Staats:Or like, there was actually quite a bit of pressure from the network and quite a bit of pressure from just generally the culture you don't want.
Wade Staats:Like, people were calling him racist, people were doing all sorts of things.
Wade Staats:And Don Olmeier who was the president of NBC at the time, was close friends with OJ.
Wade Staats:And so he had every incentive to stop making those jokes, but he didn't.
Wade Staats:And Jim Downey, who was the writer there at the time, the head writer of Weekend Update, they were going to fire Jim Downey.
Wade Staats:They were going to fire the head writer and leave Norm on because they didn't want to lose him because he was successful and good.
Wade Staats:And so they were going to blame it all on the head writer.
Wade Staats:And Norm said, no, if Jim's not here, then I'm not here.
Wade Staats:So they fired him both.
Wade Staats:And so you have a guy with a lot to lose and ends up losing it because he did his job, and doing his job meant making fun of actual powerful people and just saying true things.
Wade Staats:There was a great norm, when the verdict was handed down, that he was not guilty, that OJ was not guilty, Norm came on and just said, well, everyone.
Wade Staats:Well, ladies and gentlemen, murder is legal in the state of California.
Wade Staats:And that was like, again, just cut through everything.
Wade Staats:It was well crafted.
Wade Staats:And that was the case with a lot of his OJ jokes and his other kinds of jokes.
Wade Staats:You can find huge compilations of his really politically incorrect stuff, which wasn't popular at the time.
Wade Staats:So political correctness has been around for a long time, and he had, again, every cultural reason to stop doing what he was doing to be safe.
Wade Staats:Political correctness wasn't to the point that it is now.
Wade Staats:So he was still able to say it on there, but he had plenty of pressure.
Wade Staats:So, yeah, Norm will always have a place in my heart, not just because of the courage.
Wade Staats:It feels strange to say the word courage when you're talking about a nightclub comic, but he actually was just gonna say the thing that he thought and also just the skill.
Wade Staats:Everybody, everybody in comedy will acknowledge Norm MacDonald.
Wade Staats:Best stand up like he, or at least like, among the greats.
Wade Staats:So anyway, I have loads of respect for him, and I think he was.
Wade Staats:I think it's obvious that he was a secret right winger.
Wade Staats:He was a Christian.
Wade Staats:And I, like I said, just very, very cool guy, rough guy.
Wade Staats:So if any of your listeners don't listen to it with your kids in the room or whatever, but, yeah, it's worth going down that rabbit hole.
Wade Staats:He's.
Wade Staats:Yeah, he.
Wade Staats:The best.
Wade Staats:The best.
Guest (Wade Staats):Makes me think of Dennis Miller.
Guest (Wade Staats):Dennis Miller did weekend update guy when I was a kid, and I loved the Dennis Miller.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, what's a, you know, what's a kid doing enjoying Dennis Miller?
Guest (Wade Staats):But there was something about the way that he put it.
Guest (Wade Staats):It was just he had this.
Guest (Wade Staats):He had this style, and then he disappeared.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like Dennis Miller is.
Guest (Wade Staats):He's vanished from the stage.
Guest (Wade Staats):I don't know.
Guest (Wade Staats):Is he around?
Guest (Wade Staats):Does he still do comedy at all or he.
Wade Staats:He does a radio show or.
Wade Staats:I think he used to do a radio show.
Wade Staats:I wish.
Wade Staats:I wish I knew exactly was doing right now, but for a long time, he did a radio show, and then that transitioned into a podcast.
Wade Staats:But he's like, he's very talented.
Wade Staats:Like, and on.
Wade Staats:He was.
Wade Staats:He was update before norm was, and then.
Wade Staats:And then Kevin Nealon was after.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, like, Dennis Miller.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Is like, kind of fox News conservative guy, like, and got kind of exiled into that, where he would do, like, weekly spots on the bill O'Reilly show after all.
Wade Staats:Wow.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:And that's where I found out about Dennis Miller.
Wade Staats:My dad watched Bill O'Reilly every night, and I would watch when Miller time came on.
Wade Staats:So when it was, they always had a Dennis Miller segment, and Dennis had some, like, prepped punchlines.
Wade Staats:I didn't understand any one of them, but it was, like, the most opaque references.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, that's Dennis.
Wade Staats:And what I love about Dennis.
Wade Staats:Dennis, if you listen to him talk about how to write a joke or how he's processed for everything, I've heard him say something about rhythm jokes where it doesn't have to really make sense.
Wade Staats:He just needed to get somewhere.
Wade Staats:He needed to get off of the topic to get somewhere else.
Wade Staats:And so he's like, so that's kind of a rhythm joke.
Wade Staats:I love that category of, like, oh, I didn't have.
Wade Staats:I didn't know how to transition out of this, so I just kind of went, ba ba da ba ba ba, and then we're out.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, his.
Wade Staats:His.
Wade Staats:Dennis Miller has, like, a musicality to him that is just so fun to listen to.
Wade Staats:No matter, even if you don't understand exactly what's going on, you want to laugh and you want to understand it, which is.
Wade Staats:Yeah, like, any kind of comedy that can, like, make you sit up and go like, oh, I wish I got that.
Wade Staats:I think that's.
Wade Staats:That's an achievement.
Wade Staats:And you get that with a, like, you got that with a lot of jewish stand ups where they would use, like, they would use yiddish terms in their jokes.
Wade Staats:And so you had a lot of people sitting up and going like, I wish I knew even what that meant.
Wade Staats:And so, like, people would try to, like, even understand.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, I think that's always.
Wade Staats:I don't know.
Wade Staats:I think that's an achievement where you, like, where at some level somebody wants to even get your little in jokes.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):I think it's making me realize I hadn't actually put these pieces together.
Guest (Wade Staats): ate going all the way back to: Guest (Wade Staats):And you roll that forward all the way to some of the late night guys.
Guest (Wade Staats):But then also you had, like, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, this whole big tradition that they, that these guys have inherited now almost feels like they're squandering it.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right?
Guest (Wade Staats):They're wasting it in a way.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Well, like, back in the day, like, back in late night or back in, like, the Saturday Night Live weekend update stuff, there was always set up punchlines, and it wasn't, nobody was trying to figure out what the beliefs of the anchor were of weekend update.
Wade Staats:It was always just about, like.
Wade Staats:And they weren't putting those on display quite as much.
Wade Staats:And they were, I mean, all the bias was there, but it wasn't about that.
Wade Staats:It wasn't.
Wade Staats:It was just like everybody was speaking from their, like, admittedly terrible worldview and admittedly terrible way of thinking about the world.
Wade Staats:But once in a while, they would land on something true.
Wade Staats:And when they did, man, that really hit.
Wade Staats:And you could admire the, like, skill that it took to get there, even if you disagreed with the, like, underlying subtext of everything going on.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, there was none of the guys got into it for, I don't know.
Wade Staats:They didn't get into it to express their political opinions.
Wade Staats:And I don't think even Colbert did.
Wade Staats:I think Colbert was a guy who wanted to get into comedy and then ended up getting into political comedy.
Wade Staats:And then now is a voice for a particular political persuasion.
Wade Staats:But now, I mean, we talked about Jon Stewart earlier.
Wade Staats:Jon Stewart began the really started enhancing the research departments of his late night show.
Wade Staats:Interesting.
Wade Staats:His research department just became huge.
Wade Staats:And they were the ones Jon Stewart became famous for.
Wade Staats: dy say this at CNN, on CNN at: Wade Staats:oh, cool.
Wade Staats:We'll scrub through our tapes.
Wade Staats:So they had, like, tapes recording each one of these huge research staffs trying to grab all these clips, writing all these, all these things.
Wade Staats:And so these research teams then became a huge part of turning it in.
Wade Staats:So, like, there were no research teams on, like, most of these late night shows.
Wade Staats:And if they were, there was a research team that would have just go out and try to find setups.
Wade Staats:So they would.
Wade Staats:They would go like, here.
Wade Staats:Here are 20 things that happened today.
Wade Staats:Can we find one setup, 100 setups?
Wade Staats:Give me punch, like, and write a bunch of punchlines for those.
Wade Staats:We'll weed it down and we'll turn it into something.
Wade Staats:But now, yeah, late night before was, like, one setup, one punchline, one setup, one punchline.
Wade Staats:Maybe, like, three at tops as to how many punch lines per setup.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, Jon Stewart was the guy who transitioned late night from being something that was.
Wade Staats:That turned into something that was one topic for ten minutes or eight minutes, whereas a real breakdown.
Wade Staats:And that's more of what I'm doing.
Wade Staats:So I'm making fun of him and making fun of the transition, but that's really the kind of animating force of what I'm doing as well.
Wade Staats:So, yeah, it was a time where, like, everybody who got into Saturday Night Live back in the seventies was from National Lampoon, and they were people who were Harvard Lampoon people, and it was just guys who wanted to perform.
Wade Staats:There were guys who wanted to write comedy.
Wade Staats:That was it.
Wade Staats:So they were confused about the world, and that showed up.
Wade Staats:But you could, like, when you walked away from it, you were trying to figure out if it was funny or not, and that was the arbiter.
Wade Staats:Like, that was the standard everybody used.
Wade Staats:Whereas now.
Wade Staats:Yeah, now we've.
Wade Staats:It's always been easier.
Wade Staats:Everybody's always had the card to play.
Wade Staats:Like, oh, I'll just say something everybody agree with, and then everybody will clap.
Wade Staats:For me, it's not something brand new, but it is something that everybody's leaning on now, so that you're not necessarily depending on the craft of somebody trying to put something together, but, like, oh, you know, Colbert said something bad about unvaccinated people, you know, all right, yay.
Wade Staats:I'll clap.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:So it's always been there.
Wade Staats:And, like, that was.
Wade Staats:Norm talked about that in his memoir, which not really a memoir.
Wade Staats:It's the kind of memoir where he dies and meets God halfway through.
Wade Staats:It's a weird little thing, but in his memory, he does talk about a weekend update.
Wade Staats:People were.
Wade Staats:There was a time where they wanted, like, yeah, somebody just said, like, we're never gonna go for applause.
Wade Staats:If we have a choice, we're never gonna go for it.
Wade Staats:And Jim Downey talked about Norm, that Norm was always the guy who, if the joke got a huge laugh, but he didn't feel good about it.
Wade Staats:He would always cut it.
Wade Staats:He's like, I don't like that joke.
Wade Staats:I don't like that laugh.
Wade Staats:I don't.
Wade Staats:Even if it was a huge one and it was like, everybody would love it, he's like, I don't want that one.
Wade Staats:I don't want that laugh.
Wade Staats:And it doesn't seem like that's, that's not, I mean, when you have, when you're very talented like norm is, and when you're, when you have a ton of writers like Norm, like the weekend update crew did, then they were able to turn down stuff and then just sub in something else.
Wade Staats:I would rather like, they would rather get a laugh.
Wade Staats:They believed in laugh for a joke that they liked than a cheap laugh for a joke that they were like, ah, it's, I don't know.
Wade Staats:I don't know.
Wade Staats:Like I said, cheap.
Wade Staats:I don't want to, they didn't want those cheap laughs, which I liked.
Wade Staats:I liked those guys.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):They wanted to edify and inspire, and they didn't want to be maybe bitter or shrill or there's a way in which, like, speaking truth to power has a necessarily combative kind of quality to it, but you don't want the audience to walk away feeling ugly as a result of it.
Wade Staats:Right.
Guest (Wade Staats):And as a comedian with the ability to kind of, it's a form of, I don't want to.
Guest (Wade Staats):Hypnosis isn't the word, but I can't think of a better word at the moment.
Guest (Wade Staats):You want to handle that responsibility lightly because you can really shape people with comedy.
Wade Staats:Totally.
Wade Staats:And, I mean, back to the point about playfulness, there's a certain kind of humor that really can't be done now that when you watch back to Saturday Night Live in the nineties, back to Jim Downeye, I feel like I'm just talking about all my little weird pet things that I like.
Wade Staats:No, this is, but back to Jim Downey.
Wade Staats:He did a great sketch called Change bank.
Wade Staats:And if anybody hasn't seen the change bank sketch by Jim Downey on Saturday Night Live, it's brilliant.
Wade Staats:And it's just silly.
Guest (Wade Staats):Put it in the show notes.
Wade Staats:There we go.
Wade Staats:Please, please go watch it.
Wade Staats:But it's just silly.
Wade Staats:And it is not.
Wade Staats:Nobody's trying to.
Wade Staats:It's nothing.
Wade Staats:It was, you watch it and you go, the reason it couldn't be made now.
Wade Staats:And it's not like blazing saddles can be made now.
Wade Staats:It's not like, oh, this is too offensive.
Wade Staats:It's just like, it's the kind of place that your mind doesn't go.
Wade Staats:If you're anxious all the time, and if you're scared that, like, fascism is gonna take over America tomorrow, then you're not gonna sit around and go like, oh, I have this, like, silly idea for a change bank sketch.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, like, the kind of movies that couldn't be made now.
Wade Staats:Like, people talk about that a lot where it's like, oh, I wish.
Wade Staats:Yeah, blazing saddles could be made.
Wade Staats:Or, like, tropic thunder or whatever.
Guest (Wade Staats):Airplane.
Wade Staats:Airplane, yeah.
Wade Staats:Like, when people have those examples, they tend to be because they're too offensive or, like, too politically incorrect.
Wade Staats:And that annoys me too.
Wade Staats:It annoys me that, like, the politically correct stuff, like, is a hindrance to creativity, but anxiety is a huge hindrance to creativity.
Wade Staats:And so, like, silly stuff can't make it.
Wade Staats:And, like, if Conan were making his show from the nineties now, it wouldn't be near anxious enough.
Wade Staats:It wouldn't be near, like, abrasive enough, because we're just in a different time.
Wade Staats:And I, at some level, wish that, like, there was an opportunity to make stuff and people were still doing that because I loved it.
Wade Staats:I was such a fan of it.
Wade Staats:But we still have those, you know, we still have the YouTube clips, and you're, it's in the show notes.
Wade Staats:So everybody go watch Exchange bank.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, we still have them.
Wade Staats:And, yeah, what I want, obviously, I want a healthy society for lots of reasons, and for us to be on the same page about a lot of things for a lot of reasons.
Wade Staats:But one is, it just opens people up in a huge way.
Wade Staats:So, obviously, a personal psychology, you can escape that.
Wade Staats:You can escape the anxiety that's around you constantly, individually.
Wade Staats:And you can do that in maybe, like, a small crowd of people that are, oh, these are the people I talk to, and they're not anxious.
Wade Staats:And so you can be more creative, and you can make more cool stuff.
Wade Staats:But generally, the vibe of our culture right now is not one that's really conducive to people just kind of letting their minds go to a really funny place.
Wade Staats:It's not good for creativity.
Wade Staats:And I think that's as much to blame as political correctness as such for, like, the lack of creativity and where late night goes.
Wade Staats:And I think where Hollywood goes, comedy, generally, people can.
Wade Staats:Comedy movies are things that people aren't really making now because it feels frivolous, because the world's gonna end.
Wade Staats:And why would we, why would we make, I don't know why would we make a $4 million comedy movie when fascism's gonna take over America tomorrow?
Wade Staats:But, yeah, I think that's a problem, and I think I want societal health for lots of reasons.
Wade Staats:One of them is the comedy is going to be way better and the narratives are going to be way better.
Wade Staats:People are going to be writing and working hard.
Guest (Wade Staats):That's funny that you say that, because it speaks to something that I couldn't put words to, which is sort of, yes, let's get our product in.
Wade Staats:Everyone, like and subscribe.
Wade Staats:Wade show with Wade and reformation coffee.
Guest (Wade Staats):Sub free sub free reformationcoffee.com comma, sub free one free twelve ounce bag of coffee.
Wade Staats:So good.
Guest (Wade Staats):Exactly.
Guest (Wade Staats):So I've noticed the same phenomenon in music.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's almost like, can we just be free to listen to music these days?
Guest (Wade Staats):Or does everything have to be political?
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, can we let go of the world for 30 seconds to just enjoy something?
Guest (Wade Staats):Or does everything always have to be like, the world's going to end?
Wade Staats:Yeah, well, music is totally that.
Wade Staats:And it's just.
Wade Staats:It's just a symptom of the broader, like, politicization of everything.
Wade Staats:So when, when everything gets politicized, that means that everywhere is a fight.
Wade Staats:And so, like, you can't really go.
Wade Staats:There are very few places you can go where it's not a battleground.
Wade Staats:And that's an exhausting place to live.
Wade Staats:Like, that's an exhausting place to be.
Wade Staats:And so, so, like, the pop music that's out now, then everybody's trying to figure out all the evil things in the new Taylor Swift album, and I'm sure there are plenty.
Wade Staats:I haven't listened to it, but because the culture war stuff is real, actually, there are some gross things that are happening in the culture, then anything that comes out is at some level participating in that.
Wade Staats:I don't believe in moral neutrality.
Wade Staats:I don't believe in institutional neutrality or anything like that, but I do believe in the kind of institutions where everybody's on the same page.
Wade Staats:So, like, I believe in, like, unified institutions and, like, people who are trying to make stuff out of the same kind of worldview.
Wade Staats:And that seems to be something that, I don't know, that's a way forward, is not.
Wade Staats:It's not.
Wade Staats:Let's get back to neutral, but let's get back to, like, good.
Wade Staats:Let's try to make something good and get everybody on the same page, and then we can all kind of work with the same assumptions.
Wade Staats:But, like, yeah, because, yeah, music, comedy, movies, entertainment is.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Is politicized because everything is, and we all kind of have been aware that things have become battlegrounds when we didn't realize that they were battlegrounds before.
Wade Staats:It's just that now we're kind of losing them.
Wade Staats:And so, like, at the time when we've basically lost all these places, then we realized, like, this is kind of, they've, the enemies planted their flag and said, like, this is ours.
Wade Staats:Then we realized, only then do we realize, oh, we're at the end of the battle.
Wade Staats:And I think that's sad.
Wade Staats:It's like, it's not something I often think about.
Wade Staats:Like, people like Jim Downey, who was, I don't agree with him on everything, but he was a, like, conservative guy.
Wade Staats:He would write for some conservative magazines.
Wade Staats:He would show up on the Dennis Miller show and come in and do, like, political stuff.
Wade Staats:And so he was a guy, and he was head writer of Saturday Night Live for years.
Wade Staats:And I think about that guy.
Wade Staats:And, like, that guy, no matter how talented Jim Downey is, he's not getting into Saturday Night Live because, well, that's a battleground.
Wade Staats:And even if he got like, four jokes on every week, it would still be like, well, the show itself is like, hates him.
Wade Staats:And so it wouldn't like Jim Downey if Jim Downey couldn't get a job there.
Wade Staats:And it's not because he's too, it probably is like, private thoughts, politically correct, because the jokes, again, like, nobody watches change bank and goes like, get this right winger out of here.
Wade Staats:But, like, when, but he was just very talented.
Wade Staats:And if it were any worse, if he were any less talented than he wouldn't have made it.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, because it's a battleground.
Wade Staats:We're, like, kicking out a lot of talent and we're not, I don't know.
Wade Staats:It's in a bad way for lots of reasons.
Wade Staats:But one of them.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Is that anxiety and the kind of, I don't know, there's the hopelessness and the fighting and the pugnacious attitude that a lot of people have.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:There aren't very many culture.
Wade Staats:There used to be some cultural points where you could go and maybe get away from that for a second, but sadly, not so much anymore unless you have a pretty robust community.
Guest (Wade Staats):So let's shift this then to sort of talk about what you're doing with the Wade show, because I agree with you that there's no such thing as neutrality.
Guest (Wade Staats):But I think that there was a time where christians were willing to look at various cultural outlets in America and say, okay, Saturday Night Live is not christian but at least they're not coming after us, right?
Guest (Wade Staats):And now with everything becoming hyper politicized with Christians being in crosshairs now, it's like, well, we didn't want to have to do this, but now we're going to do this.
Guest (Wade Staats):Okay.
Guest (Wade Staats):If we're going to turn Christian, if we're going to turn comedy into a battleground over, I guess, religion or religious informed values, then let's go there.
Guest (Wade Staats):And that's sort of what you've stepped into.
Wade Staats:Well, I hope so.
Wade Staats:And I think there's maybe not overtly.
Guest (Wade Staats):You know what I mean?
Wade Staats:Yeah, yeah.
Wade Staats:Well, I mean, I hope that what I'm able to do is do something that makes sense now, because even though I wish that I could write stuff like change bank from a skill level, I'll never be as good as Jim Downey.
Wade Staats:But I love that the era that you could be a little more frivolous and silly and, like, the joke was the joke.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, what I hope to do with the show is to try to make something that is recognizes that we're in a hyper politicized age, and nothing can really stay entirely out of that.
Wade Staats:And so even jokes from the nineties where you watch these stand ups and they're talking about, like, you know, men are like this and women are like this, you're like, oh, that sounds subversive.
Wade Staats:That sounds like if somebody did that.
Wade Staats:Yeah, if somebody did that now, then it would, yeah, it would be categorized as, like, right wing comedy when Bill Burr basically.
Wade Staats:Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of that with Bill Burr.
Wade Staats:And, yeah, Bill Burr is a funny case study.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, what I hope to do with this show is, yeah, recognize we're in a political time.
Wade Staats:My show's gonna be political.
Wade Staats:And not everything has to be about presidential politics or about elections or whatever, but, like, hey, if this is what it's gonna, if this is the kind of fight we're in, then, yeah, I'm happy to do that.
Wade Staats:And hopefully bringing some of that, the love of the comedy and the love of that history with it so that it's not just like, I think there are some, what I don't want to do is like, I'm a right wing, hyper political guy, and so I got to figure out how to put some, like, comedy sprinkles on that.
Wade Staats:So my hope is to try to do the thing that comedians are doing and do it from my own perspective.
Host (Will Spencer):So you actually brought up a question.
Guest (Wade Staats):That I wanted to ask, which was, so you're in this tradition of topical political comedy in an age of anxiety.
Guest (Wade Staats):And that's the need.
Guest (Wade Staats):That's the moment.
Guest (Wade Staats):That's, I guess, in a sense, an open door.
Guest (Wade Staats):But you said that you would like to do more change bank style comedy, sort of, if you could.
Guest (Wade Staats):Now, I've never seen change bank, but I'm familiar with the kind of comedy.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, this is just about laughing and having a good time.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, a good example is like, the movie misses.
Guest (Wade Staats):Doubtfire comes to mind.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, yes, of course you could use that movie to make all kinds of hyper political points about all this stuff, but really, can we just laugh our way through this film?
Guest (Wade Staats):It doesn't have to be this way.
Guest (Wade Staats):But then there's also this category of stuff that it's just fun, and let's laugh for the sake of laughing.
Wade Staats:Yeah, well, I've been surprised.
Wade Staats:I mean, you look back at, like, I.
Wade Staats:One of my kids favorite movies is Wall E, the Pixar movie.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:You watch it now, and that's.
Wade Staats:That's.
Wade Staats:Yeah, it's like, it's.
Wade Staats:You watch it and you realize this is kind of right wing.
Wade Staats:Like, this is kind of like.
Wade Staats:You're like.
Wade Staats:But.
Wade Staats:But it's.
Wade Staats:It only is because, like, every other.
Wade Staats:Every other, like, version of it, every other way of thinking about it, like, every other way of thinking about these issues is, like, totally gone now.
Wade Staats:And so, like, you couldn't.
Wade Staats:You couldn't say that.
Wade Staats:Excuse me.
Wade Staats:Excuse me.
Wade Staats:But the, like.
Wade Staats:But Wall E itself is something that fit there, because it was kind of reasserting normalcy at some level.
Wade Staats:It was just kind of like a portrayal of normalcy, and it actually, like, yeah, just this kind of, like a guy who's supposed to be cleaning up things, and, like, the entire resolution of the movie is a guy, like, turning the ship off of autopilot and just being like, no, I'm the captain of the ship, and I'm gonna take it back down, and we're gonna retake Earth.
Wade Staats:It's like, oh, dude.
Wade Staats:Like, yeah.
Wade Staats:Like, we ruined the planet, and we, like, ran away from it, and we're all fat and watching our screens, and now we're gonna take it back, and we're gonna be human, and we're gonna walk around and not sit in our chairs.
Wade Staats:It's like, yeah, dude, that's.
Wade Staats:Yeah, let's wall e.
Wade Staats:The right wing, you know, propaganda.
Guest (Wade Staats):But, like, right wing robot.
Wade Staats:Yeah, Wally the right wing robot.
Wade Staats:But, like, what I.
Wade Staats:What I love about that, though, is it doesn't.
Wade Staats:It's nothing.
Wade Staats:It doesn't talk about anything.
Wade Staats:It's just a, again, reassertion of normalcy done by very talented people.
Wade Staats:So Andrew Stanton directed it.
Wade Staats:Ben Burtt was the sound designer on it.
Wade Staats:It's extremely well done.
Wade Staats:It's Pixar.
Wade Staats:They're gonna make it good.
Wade Staats: ight wing art, it came out in: Wade Staats:But what they were doing was just speaking normally.
Wade Staats:It was the kind of dystopia that was just like, oh, I actually just love the planet.
Wade Staats:And it seems like we're being lazy, and it seems like we're, like, messing up our world.
Wade Staats:And so, like, maybe we should, like, stop being lazy and take it back and start, like, you know, again reasserting humanity, reasserting a man and a woman, even though they're, again, male and female robots.
Wade Staats:But, like, there's, it's, again, the kind of right wing art that's not overtly, like, talking about civil war or doing some kind of, like, particular, I don't know.
Wade Staats:It's something that could be done and something that has been done, but it's making its case.
Wade Staats:And it didn't feel at the time like somebody made fascist art or whatever.
Wade Staats:Nobody, like, calls Wally fascist or whatever, but it was, yeah.
Wade Staats:Again, the reassertion of normalcy, I think, is enough, especially if you're telling a story and if you're making a joke that is, that, like, can at some level feel just like a silly joke.
Wade Staats:At some level, there's something assumed there.
Wade Staats:So, like, if you, if there's a healthy foundation of life and, like, what men and women are like or whatever, then you can make what feels like just a kind of anodyne observation turn into something very funny.
Wade Staats:Like, again, the observational comics back in the day would, but, yeah, because we're afraid to go places and also because we don't really even know.
Wade Staats:Again, we're so torn up about what's possible to even joke about, then, yeah, why would we joke in such a tough time?
Wade Staats:It's almost like learning in wartime.
Wade Staats:Have you read that CS Lewis essay?
Wade Staats:Anyway, it's a great point about where he's talking to, I believe, undergrads during World War Two.
Wade Staats:And it's just talking about the, it's great.
Wade Staats:But he's talking to them about, like, there's a war on.
Wade Staats:And the best thing for you to do is to be right here and doing this because we have to have something, and we have to have, like, once the war is over, then we have to have something that we're, we have to have a society that we're still building.
Wade Staats:And, I mean, England was basically crushed after the war, but the fact that there were still people after that could continue to build lives was the result of people actually just trying to live life, trying to, like, they're out there protecting something, and we have to, like, we have to have it in order to, for that to be worth anything.
Wade Staats:At least that was his argument in the essay.
Wade Staats:But I thought, I thought, I think I, it's related to that.
Wade Staats:I think there's a sense that people like, why would we do anything so frivolous during wartime?
Wade Staats:I was like, well, we might as like nothing.
Wade Staats:You know, I've used the example constantly of Robin Hood where it's like there's a certain amount of, like, fighting that he does, and it's not an anxious fighting.
Wade Staats:You admire him for his clarity of mind.
Wade Staats:He knows that, you know, Prince John is not the rightful king.
Wade Staats:He knows that King Richard is going to come back someday.
Wade Staats:But he also knows that in the meantime, I'm living out in the woods and I'm, and I've got my buddies with me, and we're going to keep, like, sticking it to Prince John.
Wade Staats:That's, that's, and like, so he's, he's not, he's not the kind of guy who is sitting around, like, whining about it.
Wade Staats:He's just like, things are really bad.
Wade Staats:Robin Hood's going to have a great time.
Wade Staats:And it's, and he's, he's the guy who, with the, with the, like, the spirit of it is much more fun, even though things are really ugly.
Wade Staats:And that, to know that that's possible, it requires just a wild amount of psychological health that I don't think many people have.
Wade Staats:And so, like, even having heroes like Robin Hood just shows us, hey, we can actually do stuff like music.
Wade Staats:We can sit down and learn how to play the guitar, or we can sit down and learn how to play the piano, even though that doesn't feel like, oh, it's, well, there's this guy out here and he's on the news, or he's the guy who's in politics or whatever, and so he's doing the real fight.
Wade Staats:But there's something we have to be able to preserve something.
Wade Staats:There are people out there fighting.
Wade Staats:They're on the front lines of whatever culture war, political war.
Wade Staats:But what they want when their fighting is done is for there to be a society left that is worth preserving, so why destroy the thing that they're fighting for?
Guest (Wade Staats):Okay, so you said a wild amount of psychological health, and you talked about a couple different things.
Guest (Wade Staats):A wild amount of psychological health that one has to possess during wartime.
Guest (Wade Staats):And I think the question that raises for me is, I think that there are people who haven't yet acknowledged what time it is.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right.
Guest (Wade Staats):You mentioned this in your constitution video.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, no, it is wartime.
Guest (Wade Staats):And so in order to properly relate to the moment, you have to be able to perceive it as wartime, and then you have to go through that whole journey to have psychological health, to be able to laugh again.
Guest (Wade Staats):But people won't even take that first step to recognize that we are a war.
Guest (Wade Staats):There's this resistance to acknowledging the uniqueness of the moment.
Wade Staats:Well, yeah, and I think that there's.
Wade Staats:People know themselves at some level, and they go, well, if I believed that, then I would lose all hope.
Wade Staats:So with.
Wade Staats:With the Constitution is dead video, then I think a lot of people reacted negligently to that because they've always thought of the Constitution as their secret weapon.
Wade Staats:And so if.
Wade Staats:If the constitution's dead, then I got nothing.
Wade Staats:And so, like.
Wade Staats:And I don't.
Wade Staats:I don't agree.
Wade Staats:I don't think that that's the.
Wade Staats:Like, I think there are plenty of things to love about America and plenty of reasons to be patriotic, even if we don't live under that order anymore, that constitutional order anymore.
Wade Staats:But they've thought of that document, again, as the thing that they can use to fight back.
Wade Staats:But if they can face that and if, you know, hey, I can get through this on the other end, and it's gonna be fine, and at least I'm gonna be okay, and I'm gonna try to figure out how to make sure my family's okay, then that's where you gotta go.
Wade Staats:So, yeah, if you can't, I mean, we've got the leadership and emotional sabotage book here, and I get.
Wade Staats:I'm a big Edwin Freeman fan, but his concept of being well differentiated is not like, if you're having to lead through a really messy situation, then it really will do you no good to not acknowledge the severity of the situation.
Wade Staats:But once you've acknowledged it, then you can see it as something outside of yourself and something that you've got to, like.
Wade Staats:You can.
Wade Staats:Okay, I'll figure out what to do.
Wade Staats:I'll know what I can do and know what I'm.
Wade Staats:Is out of my hands.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, it doesn't do you any good.
Wade Staats:It actually is possible to see how bad things are and to also go, okay, it's my responsibility.
Wade Staats:I'm gonna take the responsibility to make this better.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, I think broadly, christians are just afraid of realizing how bad things are, especially.
Wade Staats:I mean, in kind of the more optimistic, more like people, maybe with an optimistic eschatology, people have more of that kind of thing.
Wade Staats:They might not be okay with saying, like, not be okay with acknowledging how bad things actually are now.
Wade Staats:So there's.
Wade Staats:But there's nothing contradictory between saying that things are really ugly here.
Wade Staats:Things are really ugly and bad now, and I can still work, optimistic or not, I can still be faithful during this period.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, I do think that people use optimistic eschatology as a way of, like, getting out of uncomfortable realizations and also getting out of some responsibility.
Wade Staats:So I think some people will, like, say, well, things are going to turn out fine, and God's going to save the world.
Wade Staats:People are going to be evangelized, and everything's going to be great.
Wade Staats:I'll just sit on my hands in the meantime, and I'll just trust.
Wade Staats:If I just sit here and trust in post millennialism, then I'm going to be okay, and everything's going to be fine.
Wade Staats:But I think that's a mistake tactically.
Wade Staats:And also just not a good reading of post millennialism.
Wade Staats:Not a good reading.
Wade Staats:It's not a good statement of that eschatology either way.
Wade Staats:No eschatology should give you permission to be unfaithful or permission to neglect something that matters, especially like, neglect your duty.
Guest (Wade Staats):I'm glad you said that, because that was kind of my feeling about people who have a more pessimistic eschatology, is that somehow both of these eschatological positions can be flipped in on themselves to kind of say.
Guest (Wade Staats):To kind of say, well, Jesus is going to come back soon and going to make it all okay.
Guest (Wade Staats):So I can withdraw from the public square and retreat into my basement bunker.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right?
Guest (Wade Staats):Or also just kind of trusting that the constitution will save me.
Guest (Wade Staats):At the same time, it's this weird.
Guest (Wade Staats):This weird contradiction is going to draw.
Wade Staats:Me to heaven, right?
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yes, exactly.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's like the constitution with, like, a big s on its chest or something like that.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's going to fly in and bail us out.
Guest (Wade Staats):But, yeah, there is also a way that the post millennial position can be like, well, I mean, God's obviously going to make it all work out for America.
Guest (Wade Staats):That's just how it is.
Guest (Wade Staats):Well, neither of those might be true.
Guest (Wade Staats):We might actually have something to go through here, because that's the biblical pattern.
Guest (Wade Staats):You read the Old Testament, you see, the Jews went through it quite a few times because of their faithlessness.
Guest (Wade Staats):And are we experiencing something similar now?
Wade Staats:Yeah, no, I think that's true.
Wade Staats:Yeah, I think any category of theology, yeah, you can abuse it.
Wade Staats:And so, like, you can abuse true theology.
Wade Staats:You can abuse false theology, whatever you.
Wade Staats:Whatever you believe about eschatology.
Wade Staats:Again, it doesn't give you any kind of permission to sit on your hands or to despair.
Wade Staats:And so, like, you can.
Wade Staats:And it also doesn't give you permission to not acknowledge again, how bad things are or how, like, ugly something's gotten because, yeah, like, you can.
Wade Staats:You can, but you can.
Wade Staats:It is possible to retain your faith through realizing that, and it is possible to retain your sanity and, like, health and again, playfulness through all this.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, again, I think that's the place that I've been able to see at least comedy help in some of the things I'm doing.
Wade Staats:Hopefully, that's.
Wade Staats:Hopefully the spirit of the show is much more an entertainment kind of show so that people can, again, watch and go, hey, the constitution's dead.
Wade Staats:And I'm not sitting there with, like, my eyebrows like this, but I don't know, it's.
Wade Staats:I talked to one of the guys.
Wade Staats:Somebody on Twitter said something about, like, it's the best, the best video about the constitution, including, like, fish and hot dogs.
Wade Staats:Like, jokes about fish and hot dogs or whatever.
Wade Staats:Or, like, they're saying, like, you're treating this.
Wade Staats:You're treating this serious topic.
Wade Staats:And there's another person who said, like, you're treating this serious topic with frivolous jokes about psycho and, like, Norman Bates mom, it's like, oh, like, we're having fun.
Wade Staats:Like, and I can be like, why in the world would I treat a serious topic with despair if I don't, if that's not a good way of doing that, why would I fight in an ineffective way?
Wade Staats:And why would I, like, if I'm trying to get people over to believe something I believe, then why would I think, why would I want them to think, well, if I believe that, then I'm going to be angry and sad.
Wade Staats:Like, Wade is.
Wade Staats:Like, it's an unattractive thing and it's also, yeah, it's unattractive, it's ineffective, and it's also just not faithful.
Wade Staats:It's not a good attitude to have.
Wade Staats:Nobody wants to be sadder.
Wade Staats:Well, if I agree with him, then I'm gonna be sad.
Wade Staats:Okay, well, then I'm out.
Guest (Wade Staats):Well, but I mean, yes.
Guest (Wade Staats):And you can think about what Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart or any of the late night guys are doing right now is that they're not trying to make people sad per se, but they're trying to push on some sensitive spot overtly, like in this shrill tone where everyone's like, yeah, those anti vax people are terrible.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right.
Guest (Wade Staats):And it's so like there's a way in which you're maybe adhering to the unwritten rules of comedy that were there until this previous moment.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like we just understood that we don't do that or that we don't have to do that.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's like maybe you're a traditionalist in a way.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Well, I hope so.
Wade Staats:I mean, the best of the spirit is like, the best part of that spirit of comedy is.
Wade Staats:Yeah, just like, well, no matter what, at the end of the day, it's gonna be a weird, it may have been a weird day in the news, but at the end of the day I can laugh about it.
Wade Staats:And that was the positive of a lot of late night shows.
Wade Staats:And they knew how to rip apart something and do it in a pleasant way.
Wade Staats:Yeah, I think that the spirit of playfulness has just really gone out and yeah, it takes no matter how talented you are, and Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and Conan are very talented, but no matter how talented you are, your anxiety is going to push out your playfulness.
Wade Staats:It's going to lower your comedy IQ.
Wade Staats:It just works that way.
Wade Staats:That's the spirit I've tried to put together in this show.
Wade Staats:And I hope it translates.
Wade Staats:I hope it works.
Wade Staats:We'll see.
Wade Staats:If you want to find out if I can do it, subscribe to the Wade show with Wade.
Wade Staats:Is it possible?
Guest (Wade Staats):Yes.
Guest (Wade Staats):Canonpress.com.
Guest (Wade Staats):yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right.
Guest (Wade Staats):Wade 99.
Wade Staats:Wade 99.
Guest (Wade Staats):So for people who.
Guest (Wade Staats):So Tim Pool just shared your constitution video, I think it was today.
Wade Staats:Right.
Guest (Wade Staats):And then Alex Jones shared it last week.
Guest (Wade Staats):So world is way maxing.
Guest (Wade Staats):But you started the show.
Guest (Wade Staats):Was it six months ago?
Guest (Wade Staats):Something like that?
Wade Staats:I started it last year, in February of last year.
Wade Staats:So I've been doing it.
Guest (Wade Staats):So over a year.
Wade Staats:Yeah, almost a year and a half.
Wade Staats:Yeah, it's wild.
Guest (Wade Staats):Okay.
Wade Staats:It's been fun.
Guest (Wade Staats):So can you walk us through some of the signature episodes or some of the touchpoint episodes as it's evolved to get to the point now where, like, Tim Pool and Alex Jones agree on something?
Wade Staats:Yeah, it's very fun.
Wade Staats:That attention from those guys has been very fun.
Wade Staats:But I like those guys and I'm glad they've enjoyed the content, the show itself what I wanted to do originally was more of a, I had quite a bit of more setup punchline kind of news monologue where it wasn't one story, and then, so I would do several stories within five or six minutes.
Wade Staats:Here's the news of the week, here's a quick breakdown of it.
Wade Staats:And at a certain point, I just started to realize that it's hard to click on something that's about three different things.
Wade Staats:And so if I click, then I assume I want to know what this video is about.
Wade Staats:And if it's about three different things in six minutes, then that's too much.
Wade Staats:So anyway, I started moving more toward doing one story or maybe two stories within, and then try to tie those stories together with a thought.
Wade Staats:But I realized a lot of the ones that were getting more attention were ones where I started doing this year, which was breaking down and doing essays.
Wade Staats: Francis article from back in: Wade Staats:And I just kind of presented his argument with trying to bring in contemporary examples and also, again, make it into a comedy monologue.
Wade Staats:But it became just breaking down the essay that did well, and I was encouraged by that because I assumed people were going to be more hungry for the news type content.
Wade Staats:But people liked this.
Wade Staats: Again, quoting an essay from: Wade Staats:So I kept doing that this year.
Wade Staats:And so it's kind of evolved to wherever that's the main focus of the channel.
Wade Staats:So most of my videos now, I'll still do a random news one if something big happens, and I try to tie in news stuff with my essays.
Wade Staats:And so if I think there was one week where there was a big, when Boeing, a bunch of Boeing lawsuits started happening, and I was able to tie that in with some essay from whatever early 19 hundreds.
Wade Staats:So just try to figure out ways of bringing, bringing things that have benefited me and be able to translate those in entertaining format.
Wade Staats:But that's been very fun.
Wade Staats:And one of the big ones, as you mentioned earlier, was the why everything is political now video.
Wade Staats:And that was the first one that Alex Jones at Infowars shared, which I was very pleased with.
Wade Staats:And Mark Hemingway and Molly Hemmingway have also been very kind of with their retweets and reposts of my videos.
Wade Staats:So there have been a lot of folks, Arn McIntyre, another one who consistently has been very encouraging to what I do and a big influence on me, a big influence as far as the translation of something that's heady and might be a little bit hard to grasp and try to translate that in a way that's informative, entertaining to folks.
Wade Staats:RMAC guitar is great.
Wade Staats:So yeah, that's been the trajectory of it.
Wade Staats:It's kind of morphed from more straightforward news, topical kind of thing into something that is topical.
Wade Staats:I do bring in news stuff, but it's mostly about like it's become mostly about tying the news to older topics or things.
Wade Staats:Oh, that reminds me of this Chesterton essay I readdeze.
Wade Staats:Oh, that'd be great.
Wade Staats:Let's talk about that.
Wade Staats:So yeah, that's kind of the structure of the channel.
Wade Staats:And folks have really again latched onto the ones, the friend enemy video.
Wade Staats:Why everything's political now that one was a Carl Schmitt essay and I've pulled in people like Mary Rothbard, people like Russell Kirk, Chesterton, like I mentioned.
Wade Staats:And so it's fun just to kind of like plumb the depths of right wing thinking.
Wade Staats:It's been kind of happening for a lot longer than I've been around.
Wade Staats:And I'm working on one on Edmund Burke right now with his takes on the French Revolution because again, these are all people who are wise and have been talking about this stuff for a long time.
Wade Staats:And we as America has kind of lost.
Wade Staats:We talk about how conservatives haven't conserved much.
Wade Staats:That's a pretty common refrain.
Wade Staats:But one thing that conservatives didn't conserve was conservatism.
Wade Staats:And so the old school, like the people that they, people like Russell Kirk just kind of get, nobody reads him anymore.
Wade Staats:Same with again, Chesterton and some of these other guys.
Wade Staats:And so I think the real, like a lot of people who are right wing and probably knew where we were headed have just not gotten the short shrift from conservatives in the same way that we've dropped the old conservatives, just like we've dropped all the old values that they stood for.
Wade Staats:But yeah, so my hope is to present those and be able to again turn those somehow, somehow turn a Russell Kirk essay into a comedy monologue.
Wade Staats:That's my weekly challenge.
Guest (Wade Staats):So this is what you mean by sort of citing your sources.
Guest (Wade Staats):So it's not just here's a news story that I'm going to kick around for a little bit.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's like here's actual know deep thinkers over the generations that have thought about issues related or parallel to this that can help people who are listening and watching understand how to process this moment.
Guest (Wade Staats):Because it's really not all that new in some ways.
Guest (Wade Staats):I mean super new in some ways, but in other ways.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like conservatives have been talking about this for generations.
Wade Staats:Yeah, well, everything that we're seeing is the end result of a trajectory.
Wade Staats:And so we might as well talk to the, like, might as well listen from the people who saw what was coming and could tell all, tell us all the dynamics that were happening when that trajectory was not nearly as clear.
Wade Staats:Right.
Wade Staats:So, like, people like Chetcherton, it's amazing what he was able to see.
Wade Staats:When you see like the whole, like the whole cliche about like if you turn, make one small turn, then you're going to end up, you know, 100 miles off course no matter how, like the further you go, further off course.
Wade Staats:Chesterton was a guy who saw that one degree turn and said, guys, this is where it's headed.
Wade Staats:And you read back and you go, how did he know?
Wade Staats:It's like, oh, no, he was just a clear thinker who could, again, he had eyes in his head and somehow he was able to track stuff way better than we can.
Wade Staats:And so we can learn that and we can see little ways in which we might go wrong and obviously big ways in which we have gone wrong.
Wade Staats:So, yeah, I want to incorporate, that's the conservative in me.
Wade Staats:I'm not sort of a, there are ways in which I'm not a conservative in the sense that I want to restore something that doesn't exist anymore.
Wade Staats:You know, like there's, but the conservative in me just wants to hold on to, again, the wisdom that has been built up in the way of doing things.
Wade Staats: erican order is the result of: Wade Staats:And so if we can, if we can take advantage of that, then we can actually build something in the future that feels american because it's taking all of that into account.
Wade Staats:It's taking in all of that thrust.
Wade Staats:And so I think that's, that's, I don't know.
Wade Staats:That may not be an exact answer.
Guest (Wade Staats):To your question, but no, no, I.
Wade Staats:Hope it was at least interesting, interesting for the audience.
Guest (Wade Staats): n experiment is the result of: Guest (Wade Staats):It can't be out of nowhere, right?
Guest (Wade Staats):Because liberalism, progressivism, whatever it is, has its own lineage.
Guest (Wade Staats):And so it didn't just spring out of the ground out of nowhere and they have their own texts and stuff like that.
Guest (Wade Staats):So there's this way in which these two ancient traditions are colliding right now in everyone's lives from top to bottom, left and right.
Wade Staats:Right.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:And I think that there's a, the only way, the best way I've been able to figure out how to, or best way I've heard being right wing described in a succinct way is that like right wing means is like pro order and left wing is pro chaos.
Wade Staats:And so, like, if you've got this american order that again is a unique thing.
Wade Staats: That's the result again of: Wade Staats:Then you've got people who want to tear that down.
Wade Staats:Well, that's a pretty easy thing to do.
Wade Staats:So in a sense, that's a very old tendency, the entropy tendency, the tear it down tendency.
Wade Staats:So in a sense it's very old, but it's new because it's tearing down something particular.
Wade Staats:It's tearing down this new thing.
Wade Staats:And so it takes on a new form.
Wade Staats:But that's a, yeah, it's an old school mentality that again, is applying itself now.
Wade Staats:But I think that the particular incarnation of it gets a lot of attention because we can talk about Marxism, we can talk about wokeism and those are, again, particular incarnations of this, this thing that is.
Wade Staats:Okay, well, it seems like it's all coming from ingratitude.
Wade Staats: hing that we've inherited for: Wade Staats:So everybody starts from there.
Wade Staats:And there's also envy and bitterness toward the people that gave us that.
Wade Staats:So not honoring your father and mother, there's a reason that God included in the ten commandments because we're all tempted to not honor our father and mother.
Wade Staats:And so if we treat our tradition, if we treat our forefathers, the broad, like our fathers in the broad sense, if we treat them poorly like that is just acting according to our sin nature.
Wade Staats:So that's like a very blatant way of everybody always, there's always something to grab onto when somebody wants to tear down something.
Wade Staats:And like the ingratitude of the inheritors of the american tradition is always easy to grab onto because we always are pulled in that direction naturally.
Wade Staats:And, yeah, so we've torn it down ourselves.
Wade Staats:And there's also been, again, an alien force of just destruction.
Wade Staats:Things go that way.
Wade Staats:But yeah, sin is ugly.
Wade Staats:I guess that's my, I've heard stories.
Guest (Wade Staats):I wonder if the distinction that the right wing enjoys order and the left wing enjoys chaos.
Guest (Wade Staats):I wonder if that's valid, because I think to see the way the left wing actually does something, because here we are during it's not pride month, it's shameless month, because it's not pride that we're seeing, it's shamelessness.
Guest (Wade Staats):And so what they're actually proposing isn't chaos, it's actually a hyper order, like at the end of Marxism.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah, it's not chaos, it's totalitarianism.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like Oren McIntyre's book the total state, which I haven't read yet, but certainly it's been highly recommended.
Guest (Wade Staats):So I wonder if what we're seeing with leftism and woke ism is a push towards such insane levels of order and what's on the right, the counterpoint, isn't necessarily chaos.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's just more like boundaries.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's like boundaries versus hyper order.
Guest (Wade Staats):I don't know if those are diametrically opposed enough.
Wade Staats:That's interesting.
Wade Staats:Yeah, well, I mean, there's a certain kind of order that is at heart.
Wade Staats:I don't know, maybe we're going too deep into this, but the, like, have you seen the movie Brazil?
Wade Staats:Terry Gilliam, Brazil?
Guest (Wade Staats):No, I haven't.
Wade Staats:No.
Wade Staats:Okay.
Wade Staats:That's a great movie about, like, it's about a lot of things, but one of them is bureaucracy.
Wade Staats:And so there's this guy who finds himself a part of a bureaucracy and he hates it more than anything.
Wade Staats:And one major characteristic of this bureaucracy, it's like post, it's a sort of dystopian.
Wade Staats:It's really great.
Wade Staats:You should go watch it.
Wade Staats:But it's kind of order that's like bureaucratic order that doesn't ever get anything built or done.
Wade Staats:All it can do is kind of build ugly glass boxes.
Wade Staats:So you get like, you know, gropius building these ugly, ugly buildings, and you get, again, bureaucracies that are impermeable.
Wade Staats:You can't get any, like you have to fill out 18 forms before you can get some particular thing done.
Guest (Wade Staats):So that's a documentary?
Wade Staats:Yeah, you'd think so.
Wade Staats:But, but it's, it's a great movie.
Wade Staats:And, and there's, there, in a sense, yes, it's ordered because, well, they have a form for everything and everybody knows who their job is and everybody's got their little office and all that.
Wade Staats:But at bottom of it, I think the heart of it, it's like, yeah, it is this odd blending of the worst kind of order with, like, the worst kind of chaos because it's not like nobody's.
Wade Staats:Nobody's safe, nobody's happy, and there's no real.
Wade Staats:Yeah, it's a bureaucratic order.
Wade Staats:It's like, it's an ugly, soulless order.
Wade Staats:And I think there's a kind of.
Wade Staats:What's the.
Wade Staats:There's some meme that's, like, has a tree and then a bunch of leaves branching off of it and then, like, this.
Wade Staats:That's order.
Wade Staats:And then, like, somebody, like, then somebody plucked a bunch of leaves off and just put them all in line.
Wade Staats:Like, lined up all the leaves and go, like, that's chaos.
Wade Staats:So, like, it depends on, you know, what your version of what your vision of order is.
Wade Staats:So, like, there's a certain amount of, like, if you.
Wade Staats:If you lay out all the, all the leaves on a tree and lay out all the branches and sort everything based on color and size and all that, then, yeah, you could say it's ordered, but you could.
Wade Staats:But it's dead and it's certain.
Wade Staats:It's a.
Wade Staats:It's the kind of thing that doesn't.
Wade Staats:It doesn't grow anymore while we cut it up and we, we put it on the table.
Wade Staats:And so, yeah, you could.
Wade Staats:So maybe order and disorder, you could also, like, sub in life and death.
Wade Staats:So that, like, that's Russell Kirk talked about.
Wade Staats:I keep quoting him.
Guest (Wade Staats):That's a great.
Wade Staats:But he talked about how he ends his essay, the order, the first need of all, which is intro to his roots of american order.
Wade Staats:The last line of his essay is the traveler in the wilderness searches for living order.
Wade Staats:So what is a tree except for order that's growing and headed somewhere?
Wade Staats:So it's not the kind of order of a concrete block or concrete structure or a porta potty sitting out in the middle of the wilderness.
Wade Staats:If there's some kind of wander in the wilderness, he wants to sit under a tree.
Wade Staats:Not that there's something else.
Wade Staats:Not that the other things wouldn't give him shelter, but that is something you can build on.
Wade Staats:It's something that's living.
Wade Staats:It's something headed somewhere.
Wade Staats:And so it's a promise of life.
Wade Staats:It's a promise of the future.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, I think that there's a kind of.
Wade Staats:There is a dead order, and there's a living order, and we don't want the dead one.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, I did a video about order the first need of all, the Russell Kirk essay on the Wade show with Wade.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, I think that's part of it.
Wade Staats:So, like order.
Wade Staats:Yes, but living order.
Wade Staats:And there's a dead.
Wade Staats:Yeah, hyper order might be an interesting way of saying that.
Wade Staats:Again, fascinating to think about bureaucracy and modern architecture as being.
Wade Staats:Yes.
Wade Staats:Ordered, but also unnatural.
Wade Staats:And I don't know, we may be getting too into the weeds, but, yeah, I would just say that there's, there's a certain kind of order that looks orderly but is also just like its own little sub brand of chaos.
Guest (Wade Staats):It makes me think of that hideous strength by Cs Lewis.
Guest (Wade Staats):I mean, that's kind of what the nice is doing, is they're taking the small english countryside kind of town and they're killing it to make it like the surface of the moon.
Guest (Wade Staats):I think one of the characters actually says there's a way in which, yes, it's ordered what they're trying to build, but it's also dead.
Guest (Wade Staats):So is that, in a sense, that's.
Wade Staats:We killed it.
Guest (Wade Staats):We killed it, exactly.
Guest (Wade Staats):But it's.
Guest (Wade Staats):Everything's in its place, but it's dead.
Guest (Wade Staats):So is that order or is that chaos versus.
Guest (Wade Staats):Versus healthy human flourishing, which is alive but a bit messier.
Wade Staats:Right?
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Life and death is probably better than ordering chaos.
Wade Staats:Yeah, that's fascinating.
Wade Staats:I'll think about it more.
Wade Staats:I'll make a video about it.
Guest (Wade Staats):Excellent.
Guest (Wade Staats):Excellent.
Guest (Wade Staats):So.
Guest (Wade Staats):And I think people are looking.
Guest (Wade Staats):So let's go back to the Constitution video again, because I think people feel this attempt to, whether it's to create hyper order, whether it's to create chaos, or whether it's to kill something, I think people are all feeling this anxiety of that something valuable is under attack.
Guest (Wade Staats):The attack isn't new.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's been going on for a number of years at this point, but now the illness has become acute.
Guest (Wade Staats):Now you can no longer say that this isn't a problem.
Guest (Wade Staats):You can only cover your eyes and cover your ears so often and for so long until even the reality breaks through that now something serious is going on.
Guest (Wade Staats):And I think people, it sounds to me they expected that they'd be able to hold up the constitution as this magical shining talisman that would drive back Gandalf on the pell in our.
Guest (Wade Staats):Well, it's Gandalf on the Pellanur fields, driving back the Nazgul holding the constitution.
Guest (Wade Staats):And you sort of contributed to the piercing of that veil, it sounds like for some people.
Wade Staats:Yeah, well, and it's never, I hope people don't take that as any kind of insult to the thing.
Wade Staats:So, like, saying, like, you like, making fun of the idea that the constitution is a talisman is not any kind of disrespect to the work of these men 200 years ago.
Wade Staats:Of course not.
Wade Staats:No disrespect.
Wade Staats:But, like, if you asked them and you, like, if you said, could somebody treat this as some kind of talisman?
Wade Staats:And, okay, sure, you can do that with anything.
Wade Staats:But, like, we get superstitious about stuff.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, it's no insult to the men who were involved.
Wade Staats:It's no insult to the order.
Wade Staats:I'm sad that we lost the old constitutional order.
Wade Staats:There was something that, that written constitution was trying to preserve that we don't have anymore, because we just lost the will, I think.
Wade Staats:And because we act, we lost the will in one sense, and on the other side, we had people who were actively fighting against that order.
Wade Staats:And yeah, we're always tempted to throw away something that people have given, but, yeah, I hope that it has open people's eyes to it, but not, again, not in a despairing way, and not in any kind of denigrating of the past, because anything that I want to build in the future is going to have to.
Wade Staats:I said this in the video, but I want it to be american.
Wade Staats:Whatever comes in the future, I want everybody to be able to recognize that's american.
Wade Staats:And we're still, like, we're still doing 4 July fireworks in 500 years.
Wade Staats:That's what I want.
Wade Staats:That would be great.
Wade Staats:And so I, yeah, I celebrate America.
Wade Staats:I celebrate anything that we do next.
Wade Staats:We've just also got a, like, the point of my video was more just that we gotta acknowledge that we're not being ruled by this thing anymore and recognize again that we're not.
Wade Staats:That it's not gonna save us, it's not gonna burst through the bulletproof glass, start, like, punching out all the tyrants.
Wade Staats:Like, though that would be great.
Wade Staats:I would love that.
Wade Staats:But it's just not going to work out that way.
Wade Staats:And, yeah, it's going to be all right, though.
Wade Staats:We'll figure it out.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's not just going to burst out of our chest like alien either, right?
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Well, I hope not.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right.
Guest (Wade Staats):So as this has now percolated into the political, socio political, even religious environment at the levels that it has, what's been the response that's been coming back to you?
Guest (Wade Staats):You mentioned that you don't know if the word you use was entertained, but you've clearly seen some of the responses to it.
Guest (Wade Staats):What's that been like?
Wade Staats:I love it.
Wade Staats:It's the kind of thing where, like I said, I knew it was a hot topic.
Wade Staats:I knew I wanted to drop something.
Wade Staats:There was a fight that was already happening, and I think I just dropped something in the middle so that everybody could fight over it.
Wade Staats:And I think that the response to it, I'm encouraged by, largely because I think that it's kind of, I've gotten all sorts of responses where, like, I've been accused of being too hard on something or too soft on another thing.
Wade Staats:And just like, it's actually really, it's fun to, when something does get out there and you're getting every kind of accusation and also a bunch of like, but your people, who you trust, really like it.
Wade Staats:That's really fun.
Wade Staats:And so I knew within 24 hours or so, all my pastors reposted it.
Wade Staats:And so, like, that, that felt really great.
Wade Staats:You know, it's like, okay, well, no matter what anybody else says about this video, it's gonna be fine.
Wade Staats:Like, my people like it, and we're all, we're on the same team.
Wade Staats:And so, yeah, that's been really cool.
Wade Staats:It's honestly, like, I, like you said, the video is about knowing what time it is.
Wade Staats:And I'm encouraged to know that people want to know what time it is and want to talk about it and want to have a further conversation because like I said earlier, I hope that this video doesn't end the conversation and doesn't become like, oh, that he already did all the work.
Wade Staats:My hope is when people saw it, what they said was, oh, man, now I feel like I have a whole reading list.
Wade Staats:It's like, that's great.
Wade Staats:I love that.
Wade Staats:So then they said, well, could you link all the books that you mentioned in the description?
Wade Staats:I still, I need to do that.
Wade Staats:But, but that people wanted, that just makes me go, oh, cool.
Wade Staats:This is like, we're headed in a great direction.
Wade Staats:When people are getting curious and when the videos themselves are not serving as, like, me, I'm not using, it doesn't become about like, yeah, the end result of the action is not just like, and subscribe to the Wade show, though.
Wade Staats:I would like for that to happen.
Wade Staats:Definitely everybody should do that.
Wade Staats:But the end result is, like, more work.
Wade Staats:Like, oh, cool.
Wade Staats:I have something to do now, and I have responsibility after watching this video, which is more fun.
Guest (Wade Staats):So you mentioned that all your pastors reshared it.
Guest (Wade Staats):Maybe, like, there's a way in which this is feeding into the Moscow mood a little bit because I think the kind of comedy that you're doing does not seem like the sort of thing that's common for evangelicalism for a while outside of the Babylon bee.
Guest (Wade Staats):But a lot of churches, a lot of church communities wouldn't support the kind of thing that you're doing in that way.
Wade Staats:Yeah, well, I'm honestly very pleased as long as I've been doing because I did comedy writing back when I lived in Texas as well.
Wade Staats:And I had a great pastor there who would watch the stuff that I would do and would talk to me about it.
Wade Staats:And since being here, I've been able to show my pastors I do this stuff for Canop Press.
Wade Staats:And so I've always recognized that I don't want to do any of these things that I'm doing without being under authority, without recognizing that, like I can get things wrong.
Wade Staats:And when you're in creative mode and when you're in like brainstorm mode, you're gonna miss and it's gonna be kind of messy and you don't always know editing wise what, you know, what really works and what doesn't.
Wade Staats:So that's why, yeah, it's encouraging to have that kind of feedback here.
Wade Staats:And yeah, I also recognize, um, it's, it's the kind of place and, and being, being involved in Moscow.
Wade Staats:I always know that no matter if I get big views or I get small views, uh, I know that my pastors aren't going to factor that into their care of me.
Wade Staats:You know, like they're, they're not, they're not coming over and going like, well, we gotta not step on, we gotta make sure to not uh, you know, ever tell wade that he sinned because, well, he gets all these views.
Wade Staats:Like, I love that.
Wade Staats:So like I, no matter, like, and the reason it's funny is because you can't picture like good men doing that, but you can picture like weasels doing that.
Wade Staats:You can picture weasel pastors just sort of like sucking up to people because, well, he's famous and he comes to our church and, well, and like, I'm not saying I'm famous, but I mean, like you could picture like weasel pastors at like megachurches who are like, well, we don't want to get this person mad because, well, it's kind of a big deal if they come to our church.
Wade Staats:But, but like, I love that.
Wade Staats:I love the accountability.
Wade Staats:I love, yeah.
Wade Staats:Being under authority and being under authority of people that I really trust and I know are, yeah, are good pastors, good men and will talk to me and engage with the stuff that I'm doing, always very encouraging.
Wade Staats:So, like, that's, even if the videos that I do get a handful of retweets or whatever, as long as they're like, people I respect and people that matter to me personally, then I go, okay, I'm on the right track.
Wade Staats:If I get a retweet from Will Spencer, then I know I'm doing the right thing every day.
Guest (Wade Staats):Well, I mean, there's a way that I think one of the things that people look to Moscow and what they want for themselves is they want that sort of what appears to be like an esprit de corps.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, here we all are.
Guest (Wade Staats):We're all together in this town.
Guest (Wade Staats):We're all here together.
Guest (Wade Staats):And, you know, we're moving forward.
Guest (Wade Staats):We're moving the cultural ball forward and the american landscape, the american political landscape and the american evangelical landscape.
Guest (Wade Staats):And I think men look around at their church communities and like, well, I can barely move the ball forward in this church.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right, or in this small town.
Guest (Wade Staats):And so, like, but there's a way in which all these men coming together in this place can have an outsized impact.
Guest (Wade Staats):Every single one of them, by supporting each other, can really push things forward.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Oh, yeah.
Wade Staats:I've felt that in a lot of ways.
Wade Staats: my family and I moved here in: Wade Staats:A lot of what I did was trying to work behind the scenes to get stuff out in the open.
Wade Staats:So trying to grow our YouTube presence and try to get folks, yeah.
Wade Staats:Just kind of catch people up with all the, again, amazing material that's been coming out of here for a long time.
Wade Staats:And so I wanted to insert myself in first as somebody who's here to, again, serve outsiders by presenting again the value that I've gotten here.
Wade Staats:So it's been fun to be able to participate in that after, again, two years of, of, again, promoting other people.
Wade Staats:But that's my heart, really.
Wade Staats:I love canon.
Wade Staats:I love the vision that's here, and I love the Moscow in particular.
Wade Staats:I love being here.
Wade Staats:It's been great for my family.
Wade Staats:And, yeah, there's a positive spirit of, hey, we're all working toward the same things.
Wade Staats:We want normalcy.
Wade Staats:We want good stuff.
Wade Staats:And, yeah, it's a fun team to be a part of.
Guest (Wade Staats):Do you have time for just a couple more questions?
Wade Staats:You bet.
Guest (Wade Staats):Okay, so as we discuss all this, if you could have it all your way and the Wade show could have the impact that you wanted to have.
Host (Will Spencer):What would that be?
Guest (Wade Staats):What kind of change would you like to create?
Guest (Wade Staats):Or what would you like to create with the Wade show?
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Well, if any particular video had the impact that I wanted to have, what I wanted, the impact that I want to have is some of what I was talking about earlier with, like, just people walk away from it feeling informed and entertained and curious about follow up.
Wade Staats:So it makes them, it's, something sticks in their head or like, I don't know.
Wade Staats:I see Lloyd show, this is, I don't use this as a bad word, but as propaganda.
Wade Staats:I see it as more just like, hey, we're here to, like, we're going to communicate things.
Wade Staats:It's going to be simple, and then there's going to be like, it's a loyalty kind of thing.
Wade Staats:I'm just expressing my loyalties, expressing my opinions, and trying to get, trying to get this, again, high minded stuff that might be coming out.
Wade Staats:So again, it's like, entertained, enlightened, and also curious for further stuff.
Wade Staats:When people are in the comments asking questions and going like, oh, what about this?
Wade Staats:And what this makes me think of that and what I love that.
Wade Staats:I love when something spurs on discussion.
Wade Staats:I said this in the description of my constitution video.
Wade Staats:I said something about, like, constitution is dead.
Wade Staats:And if you don't believe me, just watch the video.
Wade Staats:And if you still don't believe me, then just argue in the comments.
Wade Staats:It's really great for the algorithm, but I actually, I do love the engagement.
Wade Staats:And so I hope to be, like, starting a conversation, pushing things forward, and also just hopefully modeling a spirit of playfulness.
Guest (Wade Staats):And so if there's a young man listening right now who's wanted to get into comedy, you know, maybe he's, maybe he's in his twenties, maybe he's in high school, and this is a direction that he sees himself wanting to go in.
Guest (Wade Staats):What kind of advice would you give?
Guest (Wade Staats):What kind of advice would you give to that young man, you know, based on your experience having gone through this world and now to where you are today?
Wade Staats:I would say 20 jokes a day.
Wade Staats:And, like, there are books to read about this.
Wade Staats:There are books, like, there's a book called how to write funny by Scott Dickers, who started the onion.
Wade Staats:There's a bunch of other great ones that are just not coming to my head right now.
Wade Staats:But there's a bunch of great stuff if you really want to get into it.
Wade Staats:So how I want to describe comedy writing, or any kind of writing, is that it is a trade.
Wade Staats:Like, if you treat it like a trade, if you treat it like I want to learn this, it's not, it's not.
Wade Staats:The less you think of it as kind of, like, my self expression and my art and more of, like, I got to learn this.
Wade Staats:Like, this is a weird skill that I want to learn.
Wade Staats:I really want to learn woodworking, and there's a guy who wants to do that, so I got to learn this, then the better off you're going to be.
Wade Staats: like, all right, clocking in: Wade Staats:If all 20 of them are bad, that's fine, and I'm going to turn it over the next day.
Wade Staats:But I did this.
Wade Staats:I wrote jokes.
Wade Staats:And again, I don't see myself as, like, the greatest comedy writer ever, but I used to write jokes every day on my lunch breaks.
Wade Staats:I worked at the call center at Ligonier ministries, and I would write, and I would write my monologue jokes every day.
Wade Staats:So it was just, like, set up from the news, and then punchline, and I tried to write, like, three punchlines, perennial set up, and then I would get to my 20, and then I'd finish up and eat my little, like, you know, lasagna or whatever.
Wade Staats:And so that, that was, that was how I tried to work it into my day, because I, for some reason, I don't know why, I wasn't ever gonna, I wasn't gonna go work for David Letterman.
Wade Staats:David Letterman had already retired, but it's still, like, I thought of it as, at the time, I just thought of it as a writing exercise because I've always respected writers and thought, like, well, a joke.
Wade Staats:What is a joke but a sentence?
Wade Staats:And what is, like.
Wade Staats:And it seems like if you're working on a sentence, that you want it to be as punchy as possible, and it seems like it's like a joke is the kind of sentence that has a goal, and it's to make somebody laugh.
Wade Staats:So, like, very, very few sentences, you kind of learn how to.
Wade Staats:Hopefully, it's turned me into the kind of writer who can be writing in a direction and pushing people forward and knowing where to put some particular syllable or word in word order.
Wade Staats:So it's, comedy writing is like a.
Wade Staats:Yeah, it's a, just like any kind of writing is a weird trade that you've got to be kind of obsessed with in a weird way.
Wade Staats:And if you find yourself, like, getting bored by it, then you're not quite ready.
Wade Staats:But if, like, it may not be for you, and that's fine.
Wade Staats:If you're, if you're like, if 20 jokes a day sounds like I wouldn't even care, or like, it's a matter of just like, putting in a, like, weird amount of hours, and then in the end, you're still going to write stuff that you don't really like, and you're still going to write stuff that's like, some stuff that's going to come to you and you're going to go, that is amazing.
Wade Staats:I love that.
Wade Staats:And other ones are just not going to.
Wade Staats:Not going to quite sail.
Wade Staats:But yeah, I'd say just, it's the practice and it's also just like finding mentors of people that you like.
Wade Staats:So if you like late night, then watch great late night things, find their little transition phrases.
Wade Staats:Again, this is like nuts and bolts stuff, so it may not be super interesting, but little transition phrases are really helpful.
Wade Staats:Learning the rhythm of those things as well as.
Wade Staats:But if you want to be a stand up, if you like stand up and want to get into that, then study people who are very good at that.
Wade Staats:Neighbor Gatsby is really good.
Wade Staats:I mean, Brian Regan, the kind of obvious example is Jim Gaffigan.
Wade Staats:I talked about Norm.
Wade Staats:He's my favorite.
Wade Staats:But yeah, like, there are people who are doing it who are very good, and there are patterns, and it's the same kind of thing with music where you can learn the instrument, you can learn the basics, but at some level, it's about picking up the patterns over the course of years.
Wade Staats:And that sounds.
Wade Staats:That sounds.
Wade Staats:So it's kind of, it's just a skill.
Wade Staats:So I'm not trying to glorify it and turn it into, again, it's some kind of, it's not a special kind of skill.
Wade Staats:It's just like anything else where you pick up what you pick up.
Wade Staats:And it's usually you just kind of in the same way with music.
Wade Staats:If you are spending enough time doing it, then you recognize when something isn't going to work.
Wade Staats:And your radar for oh, that.
Wade Staats:If I do that, if I write that out and then I try to perform that, that isn't going to work.
Wade Staats:So developing that instinct is also an important part of it.
Wade Staats:But yeah, if you want to get into comedy, there are ways in and there, I don't know about, like, the comedy business, but if it's something that you, I don't know anything about the comedy business, but if you love doing it and it's worth it to you, then just do it and do it a bunch.
Wade Staats:And it may not be like, it may be that in the end, all you're doing is you just have a really entertaining Twitter presence, and the world needs more of those.
Wade Staats:But, like, in the same way that if somebody says, like, I love writing short stories and it doesn't, like, I know I'll never sell them, because short story collections are things that just don't go anywhere anymore.
Wade Staats:Nobody sells short stories.
Wade Staats:You don't sell them to magazines anymore like you used to.
Wade Staats:But somebody just, I love the form.
Wade Staats:I love Flannery O'Connor.
Wade Staats:I want to be the next Flanner of Connor.
Wade Staats:I want to write the greatest short stories.
Wade Staats:That's fine.
Wade Staats:And it may be that, like, you're the only person who reads them or you self publish them, but, like, it's, it's, it's a form that is really cool and it's worth.
Wade Staats:Worth doing, worth trying out, but, yeah, I feel like I'm now discouraging people from, from doing it.
Wade Staats:But it's, it's a, it's a very interesting, it's, it's very fun if it only happens if you get obsessed, like I said, just like anything, if I am, I am a musician.
Wade Staats:And so, like, I had, at a certain point, I did have to get obsessed with learning to sound like this person, or I would do audio recordings.
Wade Staats:So I would record on my computer and just, like, study the way somebody did something and be like, oh, it sounds like the reverb's in this ear, but the signals here.
Wade Staats:So how do I get that?
Wade Staats:And figuring out little technical solutions to stuff.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Joke writing, it's much more like brick laying than it is, like, I don't know, ascending to the heavens and just receiving amazing comedy.
Wade Staats:You don't go on an ayahuasca trip, and they just get great jokes for some reason.
Wade Staats:You just got to sit down every day and write these stupid jokes that you hate until you don't, don't get.
Guest (Wade Staats):Me started on ayahuasca.
Wade Staats:Oh, I'm sorry.
Wade Staats:Yeah, no, I forgot that I was bringing up.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):Oh, yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):We can go there.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):I don't know.
Guest (Wade Staats):There are actually, on instagram, there are comics that do kind of new age comedy, ridiculing some of those communities in Los Angeles primarily.
Guest (Wade Staats):So sort of like the, and it's funny, but I actually interviewed a comic who that was what he did.
Guest (Wade Staats):And so we did a whole bit to begin with.
Guest (Wade Staats):You and I talked about that, and then we did an actual interview.
Guest (Wade Staats):And then during the course of the actual interview, I discovered, like, no, he actually believes this stuff.
Guest (Wade Staats):I was like, I was trying to square that.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, wait a minute.
Guest (Wade Staats):I thought together we were going to be poking holes, and it was, like.
Wade Staats:Fun of these guys.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah, exactly.
Guest (Wade Staats):No, he actually believes this.
Guest (Wade Staats):And that's the thing about that, is that they make fun of it from within their own worldview.
Guest (Wade Staats):Okay.
Guest (Wade Staats):I guess I get it.
Guest (Wade Staats):But, like, there's an uncritical nature to that.
Guest (Wade Staats):I'm not sure what the word is.
Wade Staats:Sure.
Wade Staats:Right.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:It seems like you'd take your own jokes to heart at some level.
Wade Staats:If I'm making fun of this, maybe I'm a dope.
Wade Staats:I'm making fun of myself.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right.
Guest (Wade Staats):Maybe I'm gonna make fun of this world, but maybe I shouldn't be in this world.
Guest (Wade Staats):You know?
Guest (Wade Staats):Big surprise.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):And that's.
Wade Staats:I want to listen to that interview now.
Wade Staats:Everybody here should go listen to that, too.
Wade Staats:So.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah, that's the one with seven figure shamanism.
Guest (Wade Staats):I'll put that in the show.
Wade Staats:Okay.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah, that was fun.
Guest (Wade Staats):I mean, he and I worked together on a skit beforehand, and then we did the actual interview.
Guest (Wade Staats):And as I'm talking to him through the actual interview, it's dawning on me that it's like he really believes this stuff.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, what am I going to do?
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, how am I going to.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):So I did get to preach the gospel to him a little bit at the end.
Guest (Wade Staats):So.
Wade Staats:I watched a little bit of the clip, and it does seem like it seemed like a funny guy.
Wade Staats:Seemed like a very talented guy.
Wade Staats:I'm glad you had him on.
Wade Staats:That's cool.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah, it was a fun experiment.
Guest (Wade Staats):So then I guess the last question I have is, are there comedians that are out there working today?
Guest (Wade Staats):You've mentioned Jim Downey and Norm MacDonald, who passed away.
Guest (Wade Staats):Are there comedians that are out there today that are still doing good comedy in this age of anxiety?
Guest (Wade Staats):Okay.
Guest (Wade Staats):I mean, yeah, I'd love to hear some of those names.
Wade Staats:Yeah, I mentioned Nate Bergazzi earlier.
Wade Staats:I think he's one of the great stand ups going right now.
Guest (Wade Staats):I don't know how to spell that name.
Guest (Wade Staats):Nate Bergatz.
Wade Staats:Yeah, Nate.
Wade Staats:And then b a r g a t z e.
Wade Staats:He's very funny.
Wade Staats:He's a great stand up.
Wade Staats:He just.
Wade Staats:I think he had a special that came out last year on Amazon prime, but he's got Netflix specials as well.
Wade Staats:He did comedy central for a while.
Wade Staats:He's such an interesting guy, and I'd love to meet him someday, but he's originally from Tennessee, small town in I forget exactly what.
Wade Staats:New old hickory.
Wade Staats:Old hickory, Tennessee.
Wade Staats:Small town Tennessee guy.
Wade Staats:And then moves to New York to go pursue stand up.
Wade Staats:And really, he gets his chops up in New York, and then as soon as he gets to the point where he can, like, from what I could tell from, like, sustain his family on touring income, he moved back to Tennessee.
Wade Staats:So I think he's in Nashville now.
Wade Staats:So, like, he's a guy, like, a guy who loves where he's from, but also, like, he's just very talented.
Wade Staats:Very, very funny.
Wade Staats:Mostly observational stories.
Wade Staats:And his, his comedy Central album, full time magic, is, has a, has a, like, that's, that is a great one.
Wade Staats:That's a great record.
Wade Staats:But his, that was, I think, going on when he was living in New York City, he was married, they had a young daughter, and then.
Wade Staats:Yeah, but as soon as they could, they moved back to Tennessee.
Wade Staats:And now a lot of his stuff is much more personal and much more like family kind of storytelling.
Wade Staats:But I think he's very talented.
Wade Staats:He's got a certain.
Wade Staats:His rhythm is really, like, really infectious.
Wade Staats:He's got a podcast called Nate Land, and I haven't listened to the podcast quite as much as I'd like to, but very funny guy.
Wade Staats:I'm trying to think of other examples.
Wade Staats:Most of the examples of guys that I think are doing it now that are good.
Wade Staats:I think Jim Gaffkin is very funny, but he's far from being a right winger.
Wade Staats:But I think he's.
Wade Staats:As far as the skill goes, I think he's very good.
Wade Staats:I mean, Dave Chappelle is still doing stuff, and Dave's.
Wade Staats:He's very talented, very blue, but I don't know, it's kind of.
Wade Staats:Yeah, it's hard to recommend, but similar with Tim.
Wade Staats:Like, comedy right now is in a fascinating place because especially stand up.
Wade Staats:Stand up is.
Wade Staats:It used to be that stand up, you would go and you would sell, you would try to work with a club owner.
Wade Staats:So if I'm working with a club owner in Spokane, Washington, and I'm trying to book this thing this night, then I need to go.
Wade Staats:I'm going to fly to Spokane.
Wade Staats:I need to get there.
Wade Staats:And then the next, like, Friday, I'm doing the Friday and Saturday, I'm doing the morning radio shows to try to sell tickets to my show that night, whereas now.
Wade Staats:And Chris Rock would always say, I'll know I've made it when I don't have to do morning radio anymore.
Wade Staats:And so, like, that was the level people wanted to get.
Wade Staats:They wanted to get famous enough to where they didn't have to do morning radio.
Wade Staats:And the, but that was the kind of grind of a comic.
Wade Staats:What's happening now is you've got comics now who are having to grow a podcast presence, and so that's the way they market things.
Wade Staats:So it's kind of replaced the morning radio, so they grow the audience there.
Wade Staats:And so you've got kind of some comics that are splitting into comics who are very good at podcasting and may not be as good at stand up.
Wade Staats:And there are others who are really good at stand up and are not as great at podcasting, but they're trying to do both in order to build those audiences.
Wade Staats:So I think Mark Normand is very funny.
Wade Staats:I think he's also very blue.
Wade Staats:And Tim Dillon, similar kind of things.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, again, very talented guys.
Wade Staats:And guys, I love listening to who I.
Wade Staats:And on the weirder side, this is very much on the weirder side, but a guy named Connor O'Malley, I think, is like, anything he does always makes me laugh, and it's very goofy.
Wade Staats:It does get, like, it does get blue, but you can usually skip his stuff when he does that.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, Connor O'Malley.
Wade Staats:C o n n e R.
Wade Staats:O'Malley.
Wade Staats:But anyway, there are people doing stuff, and it's very good.
Wade Staats:And those are people who have influenced me, and not everybody has to watch them.
Wade Staats:Not everybody has to like them.
Wade Staats:And like I said, if.
Wade Staats:If.
Wade Staats:And if anybody watches those things and goes like, it's.
Wade Staats:Well, Wade is telling me that it's okay to say this ugly thing that Tim Dillon said.
Wade Staats:I am not saying that.
Wade Staats:I'm just saying that there are people who are still very funny and are still doing cool stuff.
Wade Staats:And I like Theo Vaughn.
Wade Staats:I like Theo Vaughan a lot.
Wade Staats:His podcast is good.
Wade Staats:I wish I could think of more examples.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, people are doing comedy, and it's good.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, they tend to be people a lot of times who are outside of some part of the system.
Wade Staats:So I mentioned Nate Brigadsy.
Wade Staats:He's in Nashville now, and he's not a part of, like, his.
Wade Staats:His place is probably not anxious.
Wade Staats:He's.
Wade Staats:He's not.
Wade Staats:He's, like, has a pretty.
Wade Staats:His storytelling stuff.
Wade Staats:It seems like he has a pretty normal life other than touring, which I'm sure takes up a lot of his weekends.
Wade Staats:But, yeah, like, the more.
Wade Staats:The more like cosmopolitan comics or the more like people who just kind of live, live nowhere and are constantly on the road.
Wade Staats:That's a, that's, that's also, yeah, your comedy kind of gets less grounded in that way.
Wade Staats:So, yeah, like I said, I continue to, I'll just, yeah, maybe I should have just recommended Nate Bragazzi.
Wade Staats:And if anybody in your audience again watches something dirty and then blames me for it, I apologize in advance.
Guest (Wade Staats):We both take that on.
Guest (Wade Staats):So, actually, this reminds me of another question.
Guest (Wade Staats):So the uneasy relationship that christians have, not necessarily with secular comedy, but with comedy as a concept in general, it almost feels like sometimes maybe it's a lack of playfulness thing, but it's almost like, are we allowed to poke fun at the world?
Guest (Wade Staats):Are we allowed to poke.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah, everyone's made in the image of God, but can I, but even though that's true, can I make fun of that person?
Guest (Wade Staats):And it's almost like, ugh.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's kind of this strange thing, but it leads to this joylessness.
Guest (Wade Staats):And I'm sure this is something that you've had to encounter over and over again, whether or not blue comics or not.
Wade Staats:Yeah, there's like, can you make fun of person x because they're made in the end of God?
Wade Staats:I think that's, yeah, that's understandable.
Wade Staats:There's a certain, I think, naivete that is particular to christians, and that's not an insult to Jesus to say that, but I think that what christians can think is that if this person is presenting as nice, then they're not a threat.
Wade Staats:And so a lot of times people can really be threats and not make it really obvious.
Wade Staats:So they're not like, doing Mister Burns fingers and they're not doing anything, but you, you see it.
Wade Staats:And if somebody can actually recognize, you know, this person's acting like a bad person and can say that out loud, a lot of times that will feel like you're the person who drew the gun first.
Wade Staats:Right?
Wade Staats:So, like, if somebody's presenting as nice and not and trying to be doing the, there's a very calculate, like we talked about, we talk about winsomeness a lot, but, like, there's a very calculated kind of winsomeness that's really nasty.
Wade Staats:That can be nasty, but with, with a big smile and sweet, I, but if you hit back and you just go like, oh, no, that's not the way things actually are.
Wade Staats:Or like, no, you're just lying to me and you just, like, want my church to be destroyed or like, I don't know, you're trying to break down my marriage or that kind of thing.
Wade Staats:If you're, if you like, actually, if you actually sometimes just call things by what they are, then yeah, sure.
Wade Staats:Like, we're not.
Wade Staats:It may be insulting to somebody, but it's also telling the truth and calling it like it is.
Wade Staats:So I would rather tell the truth than lie and be thought nice.
Guest (Wade Staats):I think that's a very important distinction of being able to call out wolves in sheep's clothing and to be able to do it in a way that makes people laugh and entertains them at the same time.
Guest (Wade Staats):That's okay.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Oh, yeah.
Wade Staats:Well, and it's disarming to a lot of folks because what I recognize in some people is if I once, sometimes I'll make a joke or make a video, and some people will respond like, will sub tweet the joke, be like, oh, this.
Wade Staats:Or like, even with the Constitution video, it's like if somebody talked about, well, with all this bad talk about the Constitution is dead.
Wade Staats:Like, they're obviously talking about my video but not talking about it.
Wade Staats:But if anybody watched it, then they would again realize, like, the first thing they would hear is me making a joke about a fish shooting a dog, you know, and it's like all of a sudden, then all of a sudden your defenses are a little bit down and you're like, oh, I thought we were going to be self serious here.
Wade Staats:I thought we were going to be like, you know, I thought we were going to, again, eyebrows.
Wade Staats:I thought it was going to be like this, but no, it was like, and so I think it's disarming at some level to just, again, we're, hey, we're going to have fun here, and that's much, much more fun.
Wade Staats:Way to make it spirited.
Wade Staats:I've always admired the kind of debates, I mean, we, with collision.
Wade Staats:Like Doug and Christopher Hitchens documentary back in the day, that was a very funny, there were very funny moments in that documentary, and those guys genuinely enjoyed each other and they had great quips and lines.
Wade Staats:And in the end, nobody hated each other.
Wade Staats:And what happened was like, they were opponents.
Wade Staats:They were opponents, and they treated each other like opponents, but they were also having a good time.
Wade Staats:And that's much more fun.
Wade Staats:It's much more rewarding, and it's not as tiring.
Wade Staats:You don't get quite as tired.
Guest (Wade Staats):Yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):There was a way in which there was a spirit about that.
Guest (Wade Staats):Like, we can be in diametrically opposed worldviews, and yet we're still men together.
Wade Staats:Right?
Wade Staats:Right.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:There's yeah, men together is a great way to put that because there's something.
Wade Staats:There's something human, there's something inhuman about just being, like, logic choppers, where we have to have everything.
Wade Staats:Everything on a diagram, but, like, much more.
Wade Staats:It's much more human.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:To kind of relate to somebody and use an analogy that's, like, true to life and just the kind of things.
Wade Staats:Again, analogies.
Wade Staats:Analogies don't occur to you when you're anxious.
Wade Staats:Analogies, like, even just that little bit of creative thinking actually takes some amount of being removed from the situation and start to think, oh, this is kind of like this.
Wade Staats:And that's, again, a way of thinking that's foreign to somebody who's, again, logic chopping and just like, can't handle anything that's not furrow browed.
Wade Staats:Serious discussion, but, yeah, unattractive, not fun.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's not a debate.
Guest (Wade Staats):It's rhetoric, not a debate.
Guest (Wade Staats):Right?
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:Yeah, totally.
Guest (Wade Staats):Well, thank you so much for your time today, sir.
Guest (Wade Staats):I must say that Ken did a great job finding the correct Wade for the Wade show.
Wade Staats:Long audition process, I got to tell you that.
Guest (Wade Staats):So many wades out there.
Guest (Wade Staats):So where would you like to send people to find out more about you and what you do?
Guest (Wade Staats):And I'll link the constitution video on the show notes so everyone can watch it.
Wade Staats:That'd be great.
Wade Staats:Yeah.
Wade Staats:So I'm on xtats.
Wade Staats:I'm also on YouTube.
Wade Staats:Wade show with Wade and our main hub where we keep it, our kind of cancel proof thing is canon plus, and that's where I post every week there.
Wade Staats:And we also just have tons of tons, tons and tons of content that have been building up over the past Dec.
Wade Staats:Few decades.
Wade Staats:We got documentaries that come out there all the time.
Wade Staats:If you want to find my stuff, my twitter is a good way to see stuff that I'm pointing people to.
Wade Staats:That's wonderful.
Guest (Wade Staats):May we all begin?
Guest (Wade Staats):Wade maxing, please.
Wade Staats:Please, everyone.
Guest (Wade Staats):Cheers.
Wade Staats:And if you want a mug, if you want a mug, canonpress.com dot check it out.
Guest (Wade Staats):That's going in the show notes, too.
Wade Staats:Oh, yeah.
Wade Staats:Gotta get the mug.
Guest (Wade Staats):Thanks for listening to this episode of the Renaissance of Men Podcast.
Guest (Wade Staats):Visit us on the web@renofmen.com or on your favorite social media platform at Ren of Men.
Guest (Wade Staats):This is the renaissance of men.
Guest (Wade Staats):You are the renaissance.