Episode 1273 - Hasan Minhaj

**Marc Maron** (0:09)
All right, let's do this. How are you, WTFers, WTF buddies, WTFniks, WTFtuplets? What's happening? I'm Marc Maron, this is my podcast. It goes on and on. The podcast keeps going every Monday and Thursday for many, many years.
WTF Podcast established EST period 2009 And we go and keep going. Always a new show every Monday and Thursday with all different people to talk to. What am I doing? Why am I talking like this? Established, founded, founded in 2009
Relax. Today I'm gonna talk to Hasan Minhaj.
You know him. He's the old Daily Show correspondent. He had his own Netflix show, Patriot Act. Had a Netflix standup special, Homecoming King. And right now he's in season two of The Morning Show on Apple TV touring. But it's interesting to talk to these young guys. I start to think about ambition, the nature of ambition, the nature of my own ambition. What does my ambition look like? Is ambition something that we all have? Is, I know one thing, that there is a type of person who might be mildly creative or creative enough that is so consumed with ambition that they begin to believe that ambition in and of itself is a point of view, which it is not. Ambition is not a point of view. I think ambition, you know what? Let's look it up. I'm curious.
There you go. A strong desire to do or to achieve something typically requiring determination and hard work.
Okay, okay, well, I guess I have that, but I don't know that I really think about it in that way. I get very myopic in terms of things that I want to do, but I don't, I guess it's about the payoff. What is the ambition? What is your ambition? What is it to win? Is it to succeed beyond your wildest dreams? Is it to own a jet, to have a plane? Like I was never really that kind of guy. It wasn't even about money or things. Cause when I think about it, it just was about being heard and getting my thoughts across, my point of view across. I wanted to succeed, but it was vague. The markers were not a big house. The markers were not a big car. The markers were not about winning some competition. It was all internal because I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I talked to Hasan today, and next week I think I'm going to put up a Ricky Velez interview. He's another comic. And just about the way these guys talk about starting out and what their goals were and thinking back on what mine were and where I am at. Obviously in terms of creating product for the masses and having a certain amount of entertainment business success, you look at someone like Hasan and he's definitely had it. And he definitely guns for it. And it's definitely what he does in terms of, not just comedy, but acting and his own show and also presenting his cultural analysis. I mean, these are all things I do.
And am I comparing myself to him? No, but I'm just kind of curious as to the drive shaft of ambition and who I was when I was a younger comic. But some people are all about ambition. And sometimes ambition, I've said this before, I believe, like with minimal talent can land you somewhere close to where you want to go. Ultimately, time will tell whether you can do the gig or do the job or show up for it. But sometimes just pure ambition is enough for people to sort of move through and kind of, you know, if you have an almost an intense or sort of energetic or furious ambition, you can dupe most people into thinking you've got it. That's for sure.
But with me, like specifically in talking about when I started doing comedy, like I talk about it with Hasan, you know, and I also talked about it with Ricky Velez, which you'll hear next week. There was this, they have this drive where they like, they wanna play the garden. You know, they wanna crush every time. It's about crushing, you know, go out there and crush.
Don't you wanna play the garden? I don't.
I never did. I never thought about it. You know, when I do think about it, I'm like, it's too, like what would I, you know, I can't do what I believe I like to do in, even now I'm pulling back from doing theaters that I could sell out to do smaller places so I can do what I do, which is connect, which is connect and be one mind. It's not about laugh to laugh. At some point, you know, I realized that, you know, getting laughs in a bing, bing, bing, bing, there was always this rule that hung over all of us at the end, you gotta get a laugh every 30 seconds. There's this like unspoken rule, get the laugh every 30 seconds, close big. And I know those rules. And when I started, you wanted to kill, you know, you do 10, 15, 10 minutes sets, 15 minutes sets, you want to close big, you want to kill, you want it all the way. And I did that work, but like was killing what it was about. And I don't think so. And I think I've talked about this before. I think that most of my ambition, all I knew is I wanted to be a great comic and I don't know what determined that. And I'm still not exactly sure what determines that because I'm still not exactly sure that I'm exactly where I need to be. I know I'm doing the best work I've ever done and I'm taking chances, but what determines being a great comic? Is it self declaration? Is it someone saying like, I'm the goat? Are there moments, are there hours where you know who is transcendent? I know who is transcendent for me and I know what makes a great comic, but for me, it was more, the ambition was to get my thoughts across, to express myself fully and to be seen for who I am. Now, I didn't know who I was at the beginning and I don't think many of us do as comics, but I don't think I knew as a person. So it was really building who I was on stage as a comic and it's taken me as long as it's taken me.