In this episode of Democracy on Fire, Kay Brown talks with songwriter and performer Lauren Mayer about the power of political satire to expose hypocrisy, challenge those in power, and help people move from frustration to action.

Lauren shares how her weekly political satire songs began, why laughter can make overwhelming political issues feel less paralyzing, and how humor can help people find the courage to participate. They also discuss Lauren's upcoming Power of Participation event in Palm Springs and the importance of community, voting, and staying optimistic in difficult times.

Mentioned in this episode:

Leigh McGowan UAN Promo Stinger - Short -[2026]

My biggest objective is to poke holes in hypocrisy because that's what really burns me up.

And that, I think, makes it kind of easy to make the point when people are saying one thing and doing another or lying to the public, I feel like that is something.

By poking fun at it, I can help expose that.

Hello and welcome to Democracy on Fire.

I'm Kay Brown and I'm glad you're here today.

The topic is humor with purpose, the role of satire in achieving political change.

And my guest is Lauren Mayer, a prolific composer, lyricist, music director and performer.

Lauren is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale where she studied songwriting and theory.

Music theory.

She's written several children's musicals and released several albums of her own comedy songs, which are also performed by cabaret artists, including Liz Calloway.

Lauren is a five time recipient of the San Francisco Cabaret Gold Award.

For the past 14 years, she has written and posted weekly political satire songs which have attracted millions of views and almost as many trolls.

In her spare time, she teaches tap dancing and occasionally sleeps.

Thank you so much, Laura.

And I'm really so pleased to have you with me.

I'm delighted to be here.

Thank you for asking me.

Yeah.

Well, what motivated you to get into this line of work?

Well, I've always been a songwriter and I've always written comedy songs because I like things that are funny.

There were some politicians making some really rotten statements.

And I remember thinking at the time, oh, this is the worst I've ever seen partisanship get.

It would never get this bad again.

Ha ha.

And I was also, to be perfectly frank, going through the worst of menopause symptoms.

And so I was not in a very good mood.

And my husband and then teenage sons very, very gently suggested that I stop yelling at the television news and maybe do something creative because, you know, they knew I was a songwriter.

So I wrote a song, just complaining about ranting about what was going on in the election.

And I joked, this is my first weekly musical rant.

I just meant it as a joke, but people kind of took it seriously.

And I got some nice comments and a fair number of views.

And I thought, well, people like it.

I guess I better start doing this every week.

And in those days, you even got a little monetized and so first I was doing it, to be honest, to become a YouTube star, which didn't quite happen.

But then I thought, wow, people like this, I'm making them feel better.

And it makes me feel better to look for something funny in the news or something positive.

But it also feels like satire has always been an important part of political resistance.

And I realized maybe I'm part of that tradition.

And so I've kept going.

Are there specific things you're trying to achieve with your music and your satire?

My biggest objective is to poke holes in hypocrisy because that's what really burns me up.

And that, I think, makes it kind of easy to make the point when people are saying one thing and doing another or lying to the public, I feel like that is something.

By poking fun at it, I can help expose that.

And the other thing, honestly, is I see so many people giving up because they're so discouraged about what's going on right now.

And they, you know, they're doom scrolling.

They're looking at the news and going, we can't do anything.

This is so overwhelming.

And, and I feel, and people will tell me sometimes that when they laugh at becomes less overwhelming and they're not quite so discouraged.

And then they might go be part of a postcard writing campaign or a voter registration drive, or write or contact their congressperson.

They're a little bit less paralyzed if they realize, oh, these people are ridiculous, I can laugh at them and then I can go do something.

So that has lately become my biggest objective is to kind of shake people out of the doldrums.

Why?

What is.

What really makes humor work?

What makes something be funny?

How do you.

That's a huge, huge topic.

I actually sometimes teach classes on this and my favorite is, I think it's a.

It might be attributed to Mark Twain incorrectly, but at least it's attributed to him.

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog.

No one learns very much and the frog dies.

So trying to figure out what makes things.

I mean, there's, you know, these comedy classes, the rule of three, something's funny in three certain words.

What I find makes people laugh is ridiculousness.

And sometimes it's the expectation of a rhyme if you do it in song.

If one of my favorite words is schmuck because it's just so.

I like a lot of Yiddish.

I'm Jewish and Yiddish words are funny.

And so if I set up something with a, you know, saying oi in the middle of a country song, people laugh at it because of the incongruity.

So I think that makes people laugh.

And I don't believe in punching down, making fun of people who have less power than I do.

But certainly I think it's fair game.

People who are making powerful decisions, if you can find something ridiculous about what they're doing, I think that's funny.

I think setting things to music is funny because we all connect with music on a different emotional level.

So.

And sometimes it's just what.

What hits me with some of my songs is if I see a protest sign or a meme.

The one I put out today was I saw a cartoon with a certain presidential person renaming Lake Ontario.

And the old mnemonic for the Great Lakes was homes for Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior.

But changing Ontario to America, that doesn't work.

So someone said you have to change it to shame.

And I think renaming, you know, national parks, lakes and gulfs is shameful.

So that kind of.

But that's funny that you know.

And you're making a point too.

So I don't think I've really answered your question about what makes something funny, but that struck me as funny.

I laughed at it because it was so silly, yet true, if that helps.

Yeah, it does.

So as you think about our current situation, the political environment that we're struggling to deal with, how are you processing that and what things are occurring to you is worth satirizing?

Oh, my gosh.

Well, I used to joke I had a hard time coming up with something every week, you know, doing these every single week.

There would be times where I.

What am I going to talk about?

I could write.

I get 10 ideas a week because there's so much that's ridiculous.

And especially the stuff, the norm busting right now.

I mean, the fact that the media had their.

Were all up in arms because President Obama wore a tan suit, and that was somehow shameful.

And here we've got a president who can't speak the language very well, makes up words, seems impressed.

And I don't want to get too partisan, but that this guy was dismantling all the.

Basically getting rid of all the experts in government, and then suddenly they're shocked to find out that, oh, you need people inspecting produce to avoid cyclospora outbreaks.

And the, the disdain for intelligence and expertise really bothers me.

And we're seeing the consequences of it now.

And that, and then going back on women's rights and reproductive rights really gets to me.

And voter suppression, I mean, these are things that I.

You wouldn't think would be partisan, but they've become that way.

So I'm kind of like, I'm trying to vary it.

Like, okay, I did voter suppression a few weeks ago, and then last week I made fun.

I don't often pick on individuals, but sometimes that whole Natalie Harp story was just so over the top, I couldn't resist.

So, yeah, there's just.

There's so much to write about.

So I try to cover a range of things.

I haven't done anything about climate change in a while, so I'm overdue for that because again, we're seeing that happen with the floods in Grand Canyon and.

Everything and in Nepal, certainly there is just shocking.

Well, tell me about the show that you're going to be doing soon in Palm Springs, the Power of Participation.

We're really.

I am so excited.

This.

So the person who brought me in is Wanda Royce.

And I've known Wanda for years.

Her kids studied voice with me when they were teenagers, and I knew her through the theater community.

She's a director that I had worked with sometimes, and we ended up working on various.

I just always adored her.

And we've stayed in touch since she moved from the Bay Area down to Palm Springs.

And she came up for a visit and we were having lunch and just talking about everything that's going on and how I, you know, I want to come down and visit her.

And I said, if you ever have anything going on where you think a little bit of humor would help, I'm there in a heartbeat.

And that's kind of what got her started organizing this.

And I think because she's part of a group, I think, through her church, that's trying to, you know, raise voter awareness and.

And support registration.

And so it's this.

And I love this concept of the power of participation, which aligns exactly with what you and I were talking about, of trying to help people not feel so discouraged.

And every time I do these kinds of benefits, people are so excited to realize they're not alone.

And you don't have to have a lot of power or money.

We just need a lot of people, and that's what we've got.

So I'm going to be doing a song after every speaker, kind of tying in with what they spoke about.

And Wanda is going to sing a couple of them with me, which I'm really excited about, because I just love her voice.

She's a wonderful singer if your listeners haven't heard her sing, so.

So that's what I'm going to be doing.

And then Getting to meet some amazing people.

I'm thrilled with the speaker lineup.

I'm so excited to meet these folks.

Well, it is a really wonderful effort, which is we want to keep things focused on what we can do, because there's certainly a lot of things going on that just seem overwhelming.

Like you said, the role of satire in achieving political change is something that is historic.

Right.

I mean, it's not.

It is this moment, but it's been in history.

I grew up.

Yeah, I grew up with it.

My parents were big fans of Tom Lair and George Carlin, the Smothers Brothers.

I grew up with Smothers Brothers records and, you know, comedians like Lenny Bruce, but, you know, any of these sort of satiric comedians or songwriters.

And it's powerful because it can help be a catalyst for people to connect.

And also.

Oh, yeah, I feel that way, too.

So I love being part of that tradition.

And it is a, you know, like, the whole idea of this power of participation.

We all contribute what we can.

This is my contribution.

It's what I'm able to do.

I don't have money.

I don't have time to.

You know, I wish I could go do voter drives and, you know, swing states.

I can't do that.

I'm a working musician.

But it's what I can do.

And when I get to do it in community, it's especially wonderful.

Yeah, well, people come to understand things through different voices and different avenues.

I think, you know, the more variety that we have in how we're speaking to our fellow citizens and encouraging them to take part right now, it's never been more crucial than right now.

Absolutely.

Because, you know, things have really deteriorated on so many fronts.

And I know there's, you know, a lot of anticipation about our opportunity to turn things around and that.

Well, and I.

And I, just to add to what you said, I think a lot of why it's gotten so bad is that so many people are afraid.

And that's certainly true with the people who are enabling the worst of what's going on with the administration.

I don't think everybody who is, you know, in the Republican Party is an awful person.

And a lot of them aren't supporting this, but so many of them are not because it's what they believe, but they're afraid.

They're afraid that Trump or that MAGA folks will primary them.

So many people are afraid.

And I feel like when we all show that we think our voices matter, we're not operating as much out of fear, and that's Where I feel like satire.

The two things that seem to help with fear are making this is a lot harder to be scared of something if you can laugh at it and if you've got community with you.

So if there's lots of people, you know, if there's more of us than there are of them, we don't need to be afraid of them.

Bullies succeed by everybody fearing to confront them.

But once the whole group of people that's being bullied says no bullies back down.

So.

And we've unfortunately got some bullies on the stage.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

So how do people find your work if they are interested in seeing some of your weekly.

Oh, great.

Thank you for asking.

I have a YouTube channel.

I know that's old school, but, you know, a lot of my followers like that.

My YouTube channel is psycho super mom, because that's what my kids used to call me.

So it' YouTube.com and Psycho Super Mom.

I'm on Instagram and I did Lauren's comedy songs there and it's lauren mayor.com.

I have a website, so that's how people can find me.

And it's L A U R N M A Y E R. Great.

Well, any last thoughts you'd like to add before we wrap things up?

Well, for any of your listeners who are in the Palm Springs area, I hope they come to our event on September 13th.

It's going to be really fun with a nice mix.

I love a mix.

I mean, I have a little bit of comedy, a little bit of really interesting sort of analysis.

It looks like there's going to be some good motivational speaking.

And every time I do something like this, I find people get so energized by the speakers and the humor and most importantly, being around other people who also are frustrated about what's going on in government and want to do something about it.

And just there's something energizing about that.

So I hope people come and get to enjoy it.

I hope so.

It'll be at 2 o' clock on September 13th at the Meisel center and all are welcome.

And I want to thank you, Lauren, for being with me and for your inspirational work.

I love your stuff.

Well, thank you.

Is indeed an important tool as we work to impede the slide into authoritarianism.

Yes, is on fire.

But we the people have the power and right now we have the momentum as well.

So don't be distracted by the noise and the naysayers.

Just focus on getting everyone out to vote.

Your vote is the antidote.

Yeah, I Love that.

Ooh, that may be a song pretty soon.

Kay.

Because sometimes a phrase sticks in my mind.

The.

Our vote is the antidote.

I love that.

May I borrow that?

I will credit you with it.

You don't have to credit me.

I will, though, because it's a great phrase.

Yes.

Somebody else wrote us.

Had a sign that I saw, and I thought, that's great.

And it rhymes.

I love it.

Well, say.

And I love wordplay, too.

I mean, I'm also, you know, I grew up with, you know, Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim, and I love really good, juicy wordplay in my lyrics, so I have to work on that.

Well, we're looking forward to your lyrics written for this event.

The power of participation.

And that's what it's about, getting everybody to participate.

I know some people feel like my vote doesn't matter, or I'm just disgusted with politics because it's so messy and so ugly.

But, you know, it's the path.

We have to make changes.

So we've got to reassure everyone that their vote does matter and that, you know, we can turn things around if we stick together and.

And get everybody out to vote and be an optimist.

I love the optimist joke about, you know, the kid with the piles of horse manure, and he's saying, hey, this is great.

There's a pony around here.

Some way, we're dealing with a lot of manure right now, but there will be a pony.

You know, we there.

I honestly think this is going to be one of those pivotal moments in our country's history where we look back on it years later and go, that's when things turned around.

And it really feels like this midterm election is that kind of opportunity.

So I'm cautiously optimistic and very excited about this.

All right, well, thanks again.

Thank you so much for having me.

This is delightful, and I look forward to meeting you in Palm Springs.

I'll see you there.

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This is Democracy on Fire on United America Network.