The Lou Perez Podcast - Chris Freiman

Check out my book, That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637582455 I've been following Chris Freiman on X for a while. You should too. And while you're at it, subscribe to his Substack. I had a great time talking to the political philosopher about "degrowth;" automation; pickleball — which may be more fun to say than it is to play; and how those calling for collectivist communes are always the very people no one wants to commune with. I give Zora Neal Hurston's Why the Negro Won't Buy Communism (1951) a shoutout. And we hit on Cuba a little bit. A decade ago Michael Moynihan wrote in The Daily Beast: "Castro's Hipster Apologists Want to Keep Cuba 'Authentically' Poor." Sadly, little has changed on that front. One of the points I make in our episode is that even if I grant the commie apologists — who are never ever tweeting from Cuba — the bullshit point that Cubans have a longer life expectancy than Americans, I would no doubt trade a few months of my life to live it out in LITTLE HAVANA than Havana. Hell, I'd give up years if I got to spend some great months in Santa Barbara, California! The United States is such a special place. It's where bakers drive Porsches and at least one 42-year-old man ran up the Empire State Building in 17:01. Support that 42-year-old at www.substack.com/@louperez    Join my newsletter www.TheLouPerez.com  Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../the-lou-perez.../id1535032081  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2KAtC7eFS3NHWMZp2UgMVU  Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/.../2b7d4d.../the-lou-perez-podcast  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb5trMQQvT077-L1roE0iZyAgT4dD4EtJ  Who am I? Lou Perez is a comedian, producer, and author of That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore. You may have seen him on FOX's Gutfeld! and Open to Debate (with Michael Ian Black). Lou was the head writer and producer of the Webby Award-winning comedy channel We the Internet TV and produces Comedy Is Murder, a sketch comedy series with Free the People. Lou is a FAIR-in-the Arts fellow, on the advisory board of Heresy Press, and hosts the live debate series The Wrong Take and The Lou Perez Podcast.  During my tenure at We the Interent, I made the kind of comedy that gets you put on lists and your words in the Wall Street Journal: "How I Became a 'Far-Right Radical." How'd I start out? I began doing improv and sketch comedy while an undergrad at New York University, where I was part of the comedy group the Wicked Wicked Hammerkatz. For years, I performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater (both in NYC and L.A.) in sketch shows with the Hammerkatz and my comedy duo, Greg and Lou. G&L are probably best known for our sketch "Wolverine's Claws Suck," which has over 20 million views across online platforms. I was a writer for Fox Sports' @TheBuzzer; produced The Attendants with the Above Average Network; produced pilots for FOX Digital and MSN Games; and was a comedy producer on TruTV's Impractical Jokers. I hosted the stand-up show Uncle Lou's Safe Place in Los Angeles, performed at the Big Pine Comedy Festival, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, and co-created the political comedy podcast Unsafe Space. I taught creative writing at the City College of New York, "writing the web series" for Writing Pad, and comedy writing workshops for the Moving Picture Institute.