Our Time Is Up

Colin Quinn took one of the most notoriously difficult bookings in stand-up, the corporate gig, and turned it into a self-styled therapy session. Filmed in Washington, D.C., at the 2024 Psychotherapy Networker Symposium, the show finds Quinn performing to an audience composed entirely of psychologists and psychiatrists. The premise allows him to lay out his grievances with the modern world as if they were psychiatric symptoms, treating the crowd of mental health professionals as his collective therapist.

The 50-minute set targets the fragile state of the national psyche, the obsessive curation of online identity, and the modern urge to over-pathologize everyday life. One of the strongest segments breaks down the layers of modern ego: your persona is what strangers think of you, social media is who you think you are, and your search history is who you actually are. He also argues that society has overcorrected on conflict, humorously suggesting that a baseline level of mild bullying is actually a necessary evolutionary tool.

Quinn released the special on YouTube in May 2024. While corporate audiences are usually where stand-up sets go to die, the professional crowd here plays along, letting Quinn treat his own neuroses, and theirs, as a public service.