Hey everybody, I'm Audie Cornish. This is The Assignment. And in just the last few years, Ramy Youssef has been in an Oscar nominated film. He's earned a Golden Globe for his Hulu comedy. He even has launched a new comedy special on HBO Max. It's called In Love, and he's hung out with Elmo.

Mr. Ramy, what does Salam Malek Kum mean?

Well, salam means peace and it's a way to say hello in Arabic.

Oh cool, oh, Salam Malek Kum everybody.

Which did not go over as well as you might think.

Next, Bert and Ernie will be praying five times a day on Sesame Street facing East by the way...

'And that's probably because he's Muslim and Egyptian-American and frankly, a high profile advocate for the plight of the Palestinian people. And while he's not a household name yet, he is getting there. I mean, he popped into the assignment on the way to appear on The View.

I think simultaneously, meeting you felt almost as special.

So that means things are changing, right? The spotlight is hotter. And I wanted to know what that's like because the assignment is changing too. That's right. This is one of our last shows in this format but I want you to stick around because we have a special guest to talk about what is next. That's at the end of this episode. So here's the conversation with Ramy then stay with us.

I think for a time, like most comedians coming up, you're like the outsider, right? And then after a while, you're not the outsider. You're like an Oscar, darling. Like people are watching the TV show and they can identify you on the street and being able to do your third special. And I was thinking about how different it must be compared to your previous outings where I'd see like more hijabis in the audience. You know what I mean? It was much more like I felt like I was coming in and listening to someone tell jokes that people in their community really understand. And now it just feels like that's not an option for you.

Yeah, you know, there's always been this thing where I would always say the audience was definitely split between hipsters and hijabis. I think now it's gotten bigger and I think that the demographics are maybe the same, but I think when things are bigger, to your point, it just becomes kind of maybe a bit more in the consciousness of I would say like comedy in general, but I do think in a lot of ways, something that's happened is, I think the world has kind of caught up to things that I've been talking about for 10 years.

Give an example.

'Almost anything. I mean, I think in terms of even you mentioned the conversation around the Saudi Comedy Festival. I think the focus on what life is actually like for people in the Middle East and the diversity of thought, diversity of audiences, that's something that's been in my work from day one. I would have to explain some of that, I don't have to explain anymore. You know, whether it was between co-creating Mo or episodes that we had done on Ramy when we went into the occupied West Bank, we don't have to explain any of that anymore.

Yeah. But it also means people have more the mainstream version of those political contexts. Yeah. In a way, it's more complicated because just more people are in the room. And I think the example that I often come back to is Dave Chappelle leaving his show so many years ago because he heard someone like laugh a little too loud, right? At one of the jokes about race.

Yeah.

And when all of a sudden you're doing something for more people, really don't fully understand the context it does change the nature of the joke to my mind but i'm also not a comedian so I realize I should stop right now.

No, no, no. I get it. I think for me, for me it's very welcome because there's less, you don't have to set the table. The table is set and then you can kind of go way further. And I think I have never shied from going as far, I assume everyone knows the context, but I would say that even, you know, there are people finding my show on Hulu now for the very first time. And they are able to kind of just rock right away with it. As opposed to, I think when it first debuted seven years ago, there was people who totally got it and other people going, whoa, this is kind of weird. And like, he's really going into it. And this is like, I didn't even know what it was. And we're already on level 10. I mean, I used to get a little bit of a critique. I would get a critique that it was almost like we skipped having like a Cosby moment for Arab families and then going straight into this kind of nuanced thing. And I always felt, well, That's not my problem. You know, I didn't I don't that's not who I am.

'That's not who I am, though. I mean, for a time, like every comedian who came up got a sitcom, right? We're past that age. But when that happened, even if it was Margaret Cho or whoever, it was, as you said, Cosby style. We are introducing you to a bunch of cultural references you may or may not know. We're gonna make it as palatable as possible. And I feel like you very much did that millennial thing of just being like, Google it. Yeah, yeah, figure it out. I'm code-switching, and I'm just gonna make the show.

Just figure it out, because I'm going to go into like deep cut Ramadan nuances, you know? And if you want to roll with me, you can, and if you don't, then it's fine.

But that's generational privilege. I mean, maybe because I came up after 9/11, and it all of a sudden it felt like everything related, especially to Muslim communities, Arab communities had to be couched in all these terms.

'Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, look, I think that there's people who, even just a 10-year gap from me, who would change their name. Right? And our generation is like, no, you're going to learn how to spell Kumail Nanjiani. Figure it out. You know, and I think that that is generational privilege there. But I will say, you know, there were a lot of my peers who were not happy with me kind of playing an anti-hero right off the bat and not explaining and not table setting certain things. So I was getting criticism around, you, know, not doing the Cosby warmth explanation type stuff. Um, even if, you know, I think the ask was actually to do the cable version of that to do, or to do.

Of your friendly neighborhood muslim.

Yeah. Can you do the HBO version of the friendly neighborhood Muslim? It can still have a little edge, but why'd you have to go all the way there? Uh, obviously I, you know, rebuked all of those things. And again, now, um, we've made something that people find today and it looks like it came out today. And I think that's what I'm, you know, proud of.

Well, what's fascinating is now you've reached the point, which you point out in the show where there's some sort of cultural victory, so to speak, meaning in particular, the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York. And you have this great opening riff about like, oh, it's actually really hard to be on the winning side of something, right? If you've been used to shaking your fist at the sky and complaining about the man, and all of a sudden the man is your guy.

Yeah, it is this very wild phenomenon of people you really respect messaging you or calling you and going, listen, I know you're really close with the mayor and there's this issue we'd really love your help on. And I go. Whoa, hold on. He came up on stage and we had a comedy show.

You were the cultural mayor and now there's another guy. Okay? So you gotta step it up.

I go, whoa, man, I don't know. I mean, I feel for Zoran, bro, the way people must, you know, it's, it's but you know he asked for the job. And, you know, he's stepping up to the plate, but yeah, in terms of the culture shifts, it is something I didn't see coming and at the same time also doesn't surprise me just because I think that we are in a rebirth, we're in a massive shift, a shedding, you know where everything is really orienting towards, I would say truthful systems, the desire for truthful systems the desire for things that actually serve people. And so—

Say more because I'm drowning in misinformation and spending my days trying to tell people, you know, like what's going on about one thing after another. And honestly, some days I'm like, I don't know what people want out there. They want to click their way into oblivion. And so you're telling me you didn't think this was going to be a therapy session for me.

'No, I-

I need to know about emotional truth because I think that's what comedians get to do and engage in and like what makes it special compared to like what I do even though these days everyone's sort of talking about the news.

Yeah, what you do is inherently really difficult, because I think that there's the actual truth and then there is kind of the, look, I think there's a sport to the news. So look, you go out and play basketball at the park, it's different if you go and play basketball at The NBA where there's just certain rules. And I would say that the rules in modern news and media are built on of many frameworks that are just not true. And that's hard, you know, there are agreed upon frameworks that you kind of can't stray off of in order to speak to, you know the people that you speak to. What I like about comedy is I create my own framework. And if you wanna watch me, you can watch my framework and I work really hard to. Create a framework that I think is is obviously comedic in nature. It's abstract You know when I'm making stuff up because I'm doing it because I find it funny and you know That I'm going it because they find it. Funny I think the frameworks that exist whether it's American government or or you know, I mean it's it's really funny. It's even like things like the word genocide and all this like you know you know scared kind of moving and da da da and then two years later you know basically you got to say it if you want to be elected because it's true so you know and i think that the kind of slowness around that is um has to be really frustrating with art you're ahead of it because, you know, I don't have to, and I don t want to, and no one expects that. And I think that that's, you know, what's liberating about it. And so, you know, when I went to school, I studied political science, and I immediately dropped out because I said, I don't want to do this. I am not interested.

Well, can I stick with your streetball versus pro ball analogy for a second?

Sure.

One of the things I think the news is struggling with is we are all now being asked to play streetball ever since the Jon Stewartification of news, right?

Yeah.

I think everyone got their own desk and everyone was doing stuff and all the youngs were like, now this is reporting. Like it felt like the streetball game became the game, right. An old school game is like, man, we're not into this, but it's been really hard to figure out. Then what is the responsibility of the folks who have that position? Meaning Joe Rogan's at the Oval Office and Democrats are waving their arms in the air, being like, should we have our own Joe Rogan? Is it Hassan Piker? But what about these other things that they've said? Like, I feel like there's a little bit of a reckoning for the street ballers about like, okay, what are you doing here? What's the goal? What is your accountability, you know, when things go sideways due to your influence?

Well, it almost seems like the institutions that say they are the protectors of justice and accountability should actually do that. So it's like, I kind of don't.

'But do people want that? Like it's a vicious-.

Yeah, people want it. People want it!

'But I think there is this element of like, one of the things people came up in journalism who I think are struggling now with, and this is not my generation so much, but for the post-Watergate generation, there was this thing where like, you report it, the public hears it, there's an outcry, scandal, goodbye. Now that is broken. It's like, the public hears it, they fight about it on social media for two weeks. It disappears, like it's not clear that the accountability mechanisms work the same way with the voter.

'Look, I'm not smart enough to know when this happened, but at a certain point, everything got bought out. So, you know, when your government is super packed up and corporate funded. And that kind of spills over from Capitol Hill into major news and all that stuff. People just kind of start to smell something stale, and it's probably more like carbon monoxide than it is fire. And then these disruptors kind of come in and go, something's wrong, and something is wrong. Are they the actual right solution? Well, I don't know, but they're the ones saying, I think there's something in the air. So I kind of don't care about Joe Rogan. It's like, of course he's at the White House, because the vacuum has been created for that to occur. That's not his fault. I think he has a responsibility that he doesn't take. I think that he's jumped on a bunch of bandwagons because that's what happens when you're trying to grow your audience or whatever. But at the end of the day, I don't think he ever stood up and said, I'm the adult in the room. He's openly kind of not an adult. He just asks everyone questions and that's it. He's just kind of infinitely curious and then somewhere along the way strung together or philosophy, but you know, there's this idea that, you know, there are people who do the work and do the homework and actually want to serve the public. But I don't think anyone knows who any of those people are. And unfortunately, that's kind of like spilled over into the, you now, into media in general. And by the way, Hollywood's not exempt from this. So I'm not saying this is like just your field. This is also my field. And you even said the Jon Stewart thing, which I think is really eloquent, you, know. And it's like, even in comedy, You know, Jon was so fact-based actually and he made facts funny and that's put something on comedians to kind of wrestle with this thing of, wait, should we be doing the news? Should we be the thing that, well, we see this gap. Is it now our responsibility to be the honest truth tellers? Which I constantly rebuke because I go, that was Jon's voice. That's really true to Jon. You know, I think a lot of us are. That's not exactly what we want to do I just honestly have a lot of mercy for everyone in this too because I think you know All these systems have been going on for a really long time and so there's no one that I look at right now in this landscape and and and kind of say it's your fault It's more just we're kind of all again. We're in this there's this massive reshaping happening

Okay, stay with us. We're going to talk more with Rami Youssef about his new special on HBO. It's called In Love.

'I have to ask you about the show, because there's funny things in the show and I think it's interesting because you talk about being, and did I get this right, it says 35 no kids, you have a wife, you want to have kids, but you're at a particular point in your personal life where you're not quite, I don't know, you're Not quite at a certain point. I felt like you were wrestling with something during the show between talking about wanting kids, talking about your relationship with your parents. There was like a kind of in-between-ness.

Yeah, you know, there was just this observation of it's almost unfair to my parents because they're they are they want to be grandparents, you know, and that would give them a lot of purpose. Instead, they're kind of still, you know, randomly picking me up from places and they go, wait, what's going on? And they go, wait, what's going on?

The joke was funny because you were saying, I don't know how to relate to them. Like that was fascinating to me, where you were kind of like, what is the adult relationship if we don't have this binding agent that would be the next generation? And I was like, what? Like, what, what is going on there?

No, for sure. I mean, look, it's like, cause it's, it, you, you feel this thing of, you know, you have your friends and look at deep down, it like, you know, especially with, with my parents, with both of them, they're incredible. I mean we have amazing conversations. They're also just real, um, supporters of my work that I would not be able to do what I do without them because they were, um so encouraging. But I think what I kind of hit at in the special is at a certain point, yeah, your parents can be as cool as you want them to be. They're not your peers. You know what I mean? So it's like, there's this thing that's biologically supposed to happen where they help raise the tribe with you. And right now we don't have kids, we have a dog. And so, you know, my mom talks about my dog. Like it's her grandson. And that's not fair to her, you know.

But it's also a hard thing to talk about as a couple. I remember being that age, not being able to have kids for is there a pet there?

Speaking of, this guy just heard his name.

Oh, he's like, what?

He was like, why? He's like am I being mentioned?

Talking about me? Although after you told me your really twisted idea of what a dog might be thinking if we knew their thoughts, I'm looking at that dog totally differently. I'm not going to spoil it for people, but those are vulnerable things to talk about and things that I feel like I don't hear male comedians talking about all that often, which is it's a little bit like What is my place in the world right now? I'm not quite a dad, I'm not quite boy, like...?

'I think I have a responsibility to embarrass myself. I think that I have the responsibility to crack open things that I don't want to crack open if I'm going to ask people to listen to me for an hour. My hope is it's a bit of an offering to widen the space of conversation and self-interrogation. You know?

It's hard to tell because honestly, one of your defining, I think sort of in your visual style is a kind of slieness. Like it's often a kind of like injecting the joke. I'm making this motion because I think it's almost coming at us sideways. You're saying something, you're saying something, and you're seeing something. Oh, the aside is actually pretty intense and stark. And then you're like, kee, keee, keeee and the audience is like, he's so cute. I'm just like, wait a second, on paper, that's actually a pretty dark comment.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Don't read anything I've said on paper on paper, on paper out of context. Chilling. Yeah.

It is, it is. And then as you said, you said you look like Bad Bunny, which now I can't unsee. Prior to that moment, I had never thought that. And now I'm like, you know, he's so sweet with that joke about grok AI porn. That, that Ramy, he's...just a delight.

I have a deep belief that anything can be wholesome.

Yeah. Oh, can you say more about that? Cause I actually, I feel like that is one of your tricks. You are using your face to get away with a lot. I'm serious.

You know what it is, it's just, I think that there's no thought or feeling that is actually that bad, you know, what's bad is when you weaponize a thought or a feeling or when you suppress it and then do something with it that, you can hurt someone, create judgment, whatever it is. But I think, you know, this is actually where I am a hardcore American. Because I go, we should be able to say what we want to say in a way that, you know, um, allows us to really explore thought. Um, that doesn't mean that it should just be said without care. And I think that's my job. My job is to figure out how to kind of create, you know, look, even street ball has two hoops and has, and has an out of bounds and has a court. So, so, you know, I have to create. You know, a court for the thought. I can't just throw it all in there.

So then how do you think of what Dave Chappelle was saying about his trans jokes, right? Like recently he was talking about, I think it was on NPR, fantastic interview.

Yeah, great interview.

He says something like that he felt like what the things he was saying were being weaponized politically. Yeah. And in the comments, it's just like, yeah, dude, of course it was, you know, like people kind of, frankly, unsympathetic to this point of view. And I'd love to hear from the point of view of someone like yourself, who's like has to write jokes. And as you said, you don't believe anything is, no thought is the worst thought.

Well, I'll say that I infinitely respect Dave and he's an inspiration to me for why I got into comedy. And, you know, I think he's brilliant. I guess my question would be, when you tell the joke, who do you want laughing? And that's what I can't quite tell on that one issue. For me, you know, the way you describe that, um, coming from the side, whatever it is, I think that's because my goal is if I do it right, everyone should laugh, even if they don't think that they would have, you know? And, and, and so I think that there's just this, uh, gymnastics that, and I think Dave is a pioneer of that gymnastics. I also do think part of the stage that he's gotten to, sometimes it feels like he's saying. I'm the greatest of all time and I can do those gymnastics if I want and I also don't have to if I don't want to because I'm me, which is his prerogative. It's not something that I know or get and I'm not Dave Chappelle. So you know, he can, you know he's on his, you know, he's wherever he's at.

He is. So I think even he's learned the audience gets a say, right?

Well, you know, at the end of the day, right, the medium is audience based, so, you know, it's it's not canvas. But yeah, I think for me, it it's really important to try and and in a way, that's almost like for as weird as I can get, or as alty as I think that I may be ultimately very populist at the same time, I do sincerely want everyone to laugh.

I wish we had more time. There's one joke in particular that I really loved. Let me see if I can squeeze it in. You had this joke, which was about privilege, but you sort of talked about it. You used the word white.

Well, one of the punch lines was, you know, white is not a race, it's a place, you know, and I wrote it really in the context of being Muslim in this country and watching everything happening in Palestine and Sudan and in Lebanon and Iran and going, okay, those are my Muslim brothers and sisters, but, you know, um, compared to them, I feel white, you know, cause I'm not going through essentially like Muslim stuff. You know, they're going through some Muslim stuff and I, I, you know—

But you could have said American, and that's what I remembered, is there's a lot of ways you could've described that distance, that psychological distance.

Yeah, well, maybe I might've chose the word white actually, from a place of mercy, because in a way I don't really like how the conversation has also kind of turned into white people this, white people that, white people, and it kind of feels like, look, that is a very, very potent true thing to say you can say it and it's a hundred percent true. Got it, you know again in comedy where my job is to make things gray and to kind of play with it and bring everyone to the table It's just funny to me to give an inch and go listen like, you know white people, historically, you've ruined the world. Also now that we're at this point of the world I'm a little white too. You know, like that's just like giving an inch is funny to me. It's just funny, it's just funny to me, like I don't know what to say. It's not right, but it's funny and it feels like it opens up the conversation.

See, look at that face. That's the face I'm talking about when people see this on YouTube. You're just like, oh, well. He's like, yeah, third culture kids, you may be complicit. I'm cute.

I mean, we definitely are though, we may have more to answer for than anyone.

I mean, it's OK. It's OK, well, listen, you got places to go. The show is amazing. And I know everyone's going to want to talk to you about it. So thank you for taking the time out to talk to me and these questions. I was really impressed. It was very cool.

No, I really appreciate your questions and your sincerity and this was awesome.

Audie, as usual, you set such a high bar for these kinds of conversations. It's fascinating to hear Ramy talk, not only about how he writes a joke and how he makes something funny, but also where he situates it in this political moment and in the lineage of comedy and in his identity. And it's like all of these layers to the chess game that he's playing.

That's not my hype man. This is Ari Shapiro. You may know this voice, this face possibly from NPR and all things considered where we used to work together for a very long time. Ari, why are you spying on my interview?

Yeah, you have been rolling this rock up this hill with skill and grace for three years and I am here to help you roll it under a new name. Next month, we are going to be launching Engagement Party.

And it's a show about all the things. Like the assignment has been about what I've been engaged with. But Engagement Party is what you all are talking about. Kind of the ideas and the trends and the pop culture and all the thing that we are all engaging with now. And that's really more of a conversation. And for a conversation, you need a friend.

Can I tell you what I heard in that Ramy interview?

Ah, go ahead.

What was so interesting to me was that, you know, you mentioned Margaret Cho and Dave Chappelle, and he's clearly both part of this long lineage and he is evolving that lineage in a new way. I mean, you can go back even before Cho and Chappelle to people like Richard Pryor or like Mel Brooks. In the United States there have always been these comedians who come from marginalized communities whose comedy makes something that might otherwise seem foreign and scary feel a lot more relatable. And so in Rami's special he's got these jokes about women being dressed head to toe in black where you can only see their eyes. He's got jokes about men having multiple wives. He's got jokes about things that are touchy and political.

'Yeah. Yeah, and none of them are in the way that you might think, right, which he talked about. And I think what I appreciate about his career in this moment is I'm not sure there could be someone like this five years ago or 10 years ago. That like the politics of the Middle East, the politics in the U.S. At this moment, and then also the, as he's even a post-Colbert, post-John Stewart.

Completely.

Like somebody who has even a different appreciation of the value of comedy in the news space means that he's like he's actually a unique character. It's really interesting.

Okay, that's the other thing that really stood out to me. It was in that conversation about Streetball versus the NBA, blurring lines between them. I mean, here we are, two people who have spent our lives doing hard news in a solidly journalistic traditional space and we're making a podcast where we're make each other laugh. So is this the NBA playing Streetball? Is this like cosplay? Like the lines are getting so blurry in a way that I find really interesting and compelling. And to hear this comedian's take on it, who is talking about the news and also getting big laughs, shines a light on it from a different angle, I think.

Okay, okay, we can go on forever like this because that's how we are. There's going to be one more episode of The Assignment, but starting on May 22nd, you will be listening to Engagement Party. It's going be available on all the podcast apps, CNN All Access, Ari, of course, will be there and we hope you will too.

Audie, I can't wait to join you every week. Thank you for inviting me to the party.