The Newsletter
A weekly dispatch on stand-up comedy specials — what's new, what's worth watching, and what's coming next.
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New specials, notable performances, and things worth watching.
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Jeff Arcuri Puts the Crowd on Mute
In a baseball stadium, the physical body of the comedian is just a rumor in the distance. The business of standup has outgrown its buildings.
Jeff Arcuri Made the Algorithm Pay Out
The algorithm demands sixty seconds of crowd work, but Netflix still demands a full hour of comedy.
Deniz Göktaş Itemized His Underwear For The State
A Turkish comedian goes viral, gets investigated by the government, and issues a statement itemizing his packed underwear.
Ricky Gervais Sold His Silence
Cancel culture is a highly lucrative business model if you know how to sell your own suppression to a major streaming platform.
Kevin Hart Industrializes the Open Mic
Netflix is attempting to optimize the highly inefficient market of standup comedy with reality television mechanics.
CBS Swaps Stephen Colbert for Cheap Syndication
CBS has replaced Stephen Colbert with a twenty-year-old panel show to save forty million dollars, proving the spreadsheet has defeated the monologue.
Morgan Jay Tries to Autotune Wembley
Morgan Jay just announced a massive UK arena tour, raising the question of how you autotune fifteen thousand British people at once.
The Roast of Kevin Hart Was a Culture War Pit Fight
Being a harmless, sponsor-friendly celebrity is a great way to make a hundred million dollars, until Netflix hires Shane Gillis to host your roast.
Nate Bargatze Fills the Intuit Dome
The industry has taken the most intimate art form and placed it inside an airplane hangar to see what happens to the punchlines.
Jeff Arcuri Broke the Standup Comedy Ladder
A club comic bypassed the entire gatekeeping apparatus to sell out theaters, proving the traditional standup ladder is officially dead.
Ari Shaffir Raided the Comedy Central Tomb
Comedians used to complain about network executives, but now they make enough podcast money to fund the formats themselves.
Kevin Hart Bought Six Billboards
Watching a man who employs hundreds of people complain about his lower back requires a specific kind of suspension of disbelief.