ALI BARTHWELL: At Second City, we say we play to the height of the audience's intelligence; I go, my parents are now in the audience. So we can't have a scene where the summary is “racism is bad.” That is not playing to the height of my parents' intelligence. Like my parents who were alive and sat in segregated movie theaters, like that's not good enough. And I remember even as a student being like, what is the point of this? Like what is your intention here? To remind us that racism is bad? You can do that on your own time.

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ALISA ROSENTHAL: Hey all, thanks for checking out Chicago Humanities Tapes – we are the audio extension of the live Chicago Humanities Spring and Fall Festivals. I’m your host Alisa Rosenthal, here to help you find the answers to humanity’s biggest questions by bringing you the best of the best of our live festivals. If you’re in Chicago, check out some of our upcoming live events this spring 2025. Tickets are available now for ACLU president Deborah N. Archer and former executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth, plus great collaborations with the Old Town School of Folk Music and the Music Box Theatre. Head to chicagohumanities.org for ticket information and to sign up for our email list.

Today’s mini episode is a best of of writer and performer Ali Barthwell from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver from October 2024’s political comedy panel at Northwestern University. The panel is made up of some familiar voices, featuring Peter Grosz of The Colbert Report and Late Night with Seth Meyers, John Lutz of 30 Rock, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and Saturday Night Live, and is moderated by Second City's Kelly Leonard.

Chicago’s own Ali Barthwell’s work has been featured in Vulture, the Chicago Tribune, and The A.V. Club. A former member of the Second City National Touring Company and the Cards Against Humanity Writers Room, she shares war stories from the front lines of touring the country with Second City and the experience of being a Black voice in comedy writers’ rooms.

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ALI BARTHWELL: I started touring in 2015, the beginning of 2015. And I left touring in August of 2016. So I got in, saw the tide and was like, I gotta get the fuck out. And I remember we were writing material and it was during 2016, it was a lot of like, there's too many Republicans. They keep entering the race. That was the tone. And then it became clear of like, oh, this is probably going to be Trump. And I remember at a rehearsal, because there was sort of a sense of how do we make sure we talk about both parties and we want the show... And I remember sitting in rehearsal being like, can't we just say, don't vote for this guy? Like, why can't we? We all believe this. Every single person in this room believes that no one should vote for this guy. And we were just like, the tone was from the director, just like, we can't do that. We just sort of can't do that. And I remember going to places that, yeah, you'd get there - there was one place that we went on tour and they had something in there in that they have like a little thing of like, don't talk about this before you get there. And sometimes it's like, oh, there was like a tragedy in the town. Like, don't talk about this tragedy. And we got somewhere in Michigan and they go, don't mention the HOA. And we were like, what's going on with the HOA? So immediately we Googled the name of the town and HOA. And someone found out they had, to buy a house in the town, you had to join the HOA. To join the HOA, you had to be Christian. So they found this loophole that no one had, yes, correct face right in the front. And they vote on it like every year in the town, like local election. And the year we were there, it was like 51:49 in favor. It was like the most contentious close it had ever been. And so we would start a scene that was like maybe a little political. I had a scene that I wrote about doing a 23andMe test. And I get my test back and I have 0% African ancestry. Brilliant. When I left it never toured again. And we like started the scene being like, hey, guys, we all got our 23andMe. And we felt them be like, oh, no they know about – we just kept feeling them be like, they know about the thing. And so we would go places and they would have a sense, the audience would sort of be like, we know that we shouldn't believe these things. Or we know we shouldn't do these things, but we're going to do them. And we had to sort of decide, are we going to push and maybe have a bad show? Or are we going to back off? Or do we let them know, like, hey, this scene is about, it's about racial identity, it's not about your HOA. Like, relax, it's about race! You're a good all white audience in northern Michigan. And there was a sort of like, we were in this dance because I think a lot of people, it felt like something else is coming was sort of the tone a lot of the time on the road.

KELLY LEONARD: You all write comedy in conversation with an audience. You did that when you're at Second City. It's how comedy gets written. And I'm curious, even now, you don't necessarily need to be in front of a live audience, right? You're reading the comments, or if you're a healthy person, you're not. But I'm curious for you, what are audiences saying to you now?

JOHN LUTZ: I mean, I find, and you all might be an example of this, that there's a bit of a screening before entering a show, an event like this. I'm sure there's not a lot of close-minded people that are stepping out on a Saturday afternoon in Evanston's the Chicago Humanities Festival, who think that they're going to come ask me their questions. To me, it's like, tell me about the space lasers you and your people are building.

KELLY LEONARD: You should ask him, though, because the answer is very interesting.

ALI BARTHWELL: I believe we have a slide! No.

JOHN LUTZ: So I find that in person, the audiences are telling us, we're a lot like you, in many ways. Online, receiving a comment or something, that is just a soup of death. There's no way to figure out how to discern, because somebody could just be a totally normal person walking around, and then they get in their room, and they type their id into a computer.

ALI BARTHWELL: Yeah. We have an audience that is rabid and so excited. And the subreddit is so active, those little nerds. And they want us to go further and talk about more. And when I joined the show, I would get people pitching me. They're like, you need to talk about this. And this is going on in my town. I'd be like, I legally can't look at these. Please stop sending me these. So you have people that are just so excited and they want everything we talk about to work. And we get the reactions like we're not going far enough. We're not progressive enough, liberal enough. And then the other sort of interaction that I've had with the audience that was really stark, we wrote an episode about unemployment, the unemployment benefit. And I put in a joke about Elmo's mom. And I was like, we all know, we can all say it: Elmo is Black. We all know that. And he, Elmo's Black. He's one of us. And so I had a joke about Elmo's mom tying up her hair at night and this big run of like all her hair products. And there were like, like 70 black women that were like, who was at that show? Who taught him these words? Who did this? And so like they were just like, we've never seen this, like this sounds different. It looks different.

PETER GROSZ: It's coming out of a white British guy's mouth.

ALI BARTHWELL: It's coming out of the whitest British guy. And like I was trying to give him notes of like, John, we don't say it that way. And he was like, I can't because I'll get in more trouble. But so there is an awareness of like when the voice shifts a little or when people hear something that sounds a little more like them or something different. And in that sort of representational way. And then the reaction from that was they had a pitch that someone had pitched about the Crown Act about legislation to protect against discrimination for Black hair. And they were like, oh, we have someone who can talk about this now. Like we can actually write enough jokes to fill an episode. And so they came to me and were like, do you have interest in this? I'm like, sure. And then I just wrote a bunch of jokes about being in the hair salon and how long you're there and when your hairstylist leaves to go get her lunch. And you're like, bitch, where's mine? And then the reaction again of like this sounds different. There's something happening here. And like audience wanting to pinpoint and track along with the show of like the people writing here are different or they sound different or something's happening behind the scenes that we're like not aware of. And like people were like, "Black lady John Oliver" and like got to me.

KELLY LEONARD: Yeah, that's how you can find you. So I'm just curious. You know, what's the line and how does it change?

PETER GROSZ: John, you go first.

JOHN LUTZ: So… this is something we get from Lorne from SNL is that it's got to be a fair hit. So even if it's going to offend people when we make a joke, if it's a fair hit on Trump or on, you know, back in the day, if it was a fair hit on Barack Obama, like if it's a fair hit on somebody, we're going to we're going to go for it. But if there's times where it's just like we're just kind of making fun of a thing that's to – we we have to use better, we have to kind of take a little bit of a higher ground.

ALI BARTHWELL: I used to write for Cards Against Humanity, I was a staff writer there. So the line is a fiction in a certain way. But we were like part of the reason that they brought on external writers because when that game began, it was just like four or five dudes. And they brought on other writers. They're like we need to go back and examine things and bring in new voices and just like volume. But we had days where we would go through old cards and have to sit there and be like why is this in the game? Like why is this in the game? And we would have to go and play test, like you would find a group of people. You would bring them cards that had just been written or cards that were already in the game. And they would sit there and be like, no, I don't think this is funny. I don't get this. And sometimes you can engage with it. But sometimes you're just writing it down. But I remember there would be moments where we would write a card and then have to defend to the head writers or to the owners of like, yeah, we should print this. This isn't offensive. This is just funny. Or this is like a culturally relevant thing. But they had their kind of viewpoint on it. And it's like, I shouldn't have to explain to you why we should have a card that just says "Denzel." Like why am I going back and forth with you? Or like just because you don't know who Shonda Rhimes is doesn't mean that that's not applicable. And then the other thing of like working at Last Week Tonight, I've had conversations with John of like, he has to say it. So there are things that like aren't the line for me or things that I can get away with saying that I would say right now, but I won't because I don't [indiscernible] and but he said once he was like, people come up to me on the street when I'm with my kids and like yell at me. And so there are things that he's like, I understand or I know or we've talked to some experts that like this is ground that we're like firm on. But understanding of like it is coming out of his mouth. He doesn't say like, Ali wrote this one, go tweet at her. He says like, yeah, go yell – he's like – I'm not in New York. I live here. And so like he said, you know, I'm with my kids and I don't want to get yelled at. And specifically like an episode we did about Israel and Gaza. He was just like, yeah, I don't want to get yelled at.

PETER GROSZ: But, you know, to sit with that for a while was like, oh, yeah, there were a lot of decisions clearly that were made. Like, we're only going this far here. We're only going this far here. But we do are going to watch everything. I mean, the line, we touched on it. It's like, because I was thinking in terms of stand up and these types of shows and Second City. Like, if you're a stand up, like, clearly Dave Chappelle thinks that the line is nonexistent.

KELLY LEONARD: No, there's no line.

ALI BARTHWELL: We so when I was touring, I really wanted to do the scene Baseball People. It's Edgar Blackmon and Sam Richardson. If you know those two actors and they explain like the racial dynamics of Chicago using the Cubs and the White Sox. And they say "the Cubs are the N words of baseball." And I had to stop myself for a second to actually say the word because I got so used to doing it. We did it on the road all the time. And we had to sit and be like, can we do this on the road? And we looked at, they give you a thing of like, you know, if it's a this rated show, here's what you can say, here's what you can't say. And we realized the N word's not on that list because they don't think anyone's ever going to say it. So we were like, oh, we can, we can do it. And we had the debate of like, if we do a clean show where you can't go harder than like saying, damn, or, you know, hell, can we do go all the way over here? And like we ultimately were like, in a clean show, we're asking for to get a bad, to get a bad review and that venue maybe doesn't come back. But if it's a show where we can say, go all the way to saying, fuck, it's like, yeah, we're going to do it. And people would get offended and it would get weird. And we had to figure out also it's a scene of it's two men. And I was playing a man's part how to make it so that the scene would work with me as a woman. And we realized I had to smile the whole time because if I got angry, the audience got weirder faster. Like we like I would do it how Edgar does it. If you watch it, he's like energetic, but he's not happy the whole time. And we had to figure out I have to literally be like, "Man, fuck you!" the whole time because it wouldn't – and so it also like we said.

PETER GROSZ: "She's a Black and a woman and she's not happy –!"

ALI BARTHWELL: And so you there, it's like it's venue. It's the messenger. It's like, are we adapting something that works here? And then we have to and we would have arguments of like, are there two other baseball teams that we could map this to? Like what does the audience know about Chicago, know about the Cubs, know about the Sox, but like there's all this like alchemy. And but if it works, it works. And you just have to run with that and not like analyze once you get it to work.

JOHN LUTZ: Exactly.

ALI BARTHWELL: And I've talked about it like various places where I've worked at various stages. Like parents kind of reminded me, I will remind the people that I'm working for of, you know, at Second City, we say we play to the height of the audience's intelligence: I go, my parents are now in the audience. So we can't have a scene where the summary is racism is bad. That is not playing to the height of my parents' intelligence. Like my parents who were alive and sat in segregated movie theaters, like that's not good enough. And I remember even as a student being like, what is the point of this? Like what is your intention here? To remind us that racism is bad? You can do that on your own time. Go tell all the white people. We got other stuff to talk about. And I like, and working at Last Week Tonight, sometimes we'll come across something, I said in like an end of the year meeting, I was like, yeah, can we have fewer clips of crying Black people? Like why it's really hard to write a comedy show when the only time we see a Black person in a video clip in our well-researched program, they are crying. And I was like, can we, if we're talking about racism or how racism has affected something, can we have a black expert as one of the talking heads? And it's like, and I will remind they go, my parents are now part of the audience. So if we're talking to the audience what they know, what your writers know, like my parents know there are Black experts. And if they watch a show and there's no Black experts, they're gonna be like, where the fuck are the Black experts? And so like even in that intent in the audience, like understanding it's like, how can we, we can push a line, we can talk about anything if we're meeting the audience like where they're at and like giving the benefit of the doubt that they know things, they are engaged and they want you to like speak to their experience. And the step is realizing that like what that experience is, is probably more diverse, more interesting, more nuanced than we can, than is like the first, first assumption.

KELLY LEONARD: Yeah. All right. We're going to take your questions.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Do you still think there's an appetite for nuance within the audience? Or is social media kind of like giving what the audience wants?

ALI BARTHWELL: I think just like for my show or the show that I'm on yeah, we have 35 to 40 minutes. Like if we don't do a nuanced show in 35 to 40 minutes, that's not a good show. And we structure it. I always joke like we're just writing like research papers with jokes. Like that's basically my job. And so when you write a research paper, like if there are any college students present, you know, it's like I have to teach you this before I can get you to this. And then once I get you here, I can take you here and then I can wrap it all up. But yeah, if I'm doing a blackout, there's not a lot of nuance because I just have to get you to laugh within 15 to 30 seconds or that it's broken. So I like how much yeah, like the length of it and also just like how much information am I trying to get to you will give more or less nuance sometimes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: What's a fair hit?

JOHN LUTZ: What's a fair hit? When we say what's a fair hit, it means that that person like that person had to do something that they were the one who did an action that then oh, we can ridicule this. It's punching up. It's not punching down. It's not looking, it's not going like look at this dumb person. You look stupid. It's going oh, look at this person. You're stupid.

ALI BARTHWELL: Yeah.

JOHN LUTZ: That makes sense?

ALI BARTHWELL: Yeah, or sometimes you're like we can you know, it's like that you're not just making fun of somebody just so you can just so you can get a joke out or like well, we have to hit all sides. Like if a Democrat does something that is frustrating or does something is wrong, it's like let's actually talk about why that's wrong as opposed to just being like that's stupid. So you're not just or if it's like you can make fun of an example of like Joe Biden is old. He's very old. There's no problem with being old. That's not a fair hit. The problem is if you're a president and you maybe aren't giving people information about what is going on with your mental and physical state and you're not attending – those are all fair hits to be like we should have a president that goes to all the stuff they're going to go to and tells the people what's going on. The unfair hit is like old people smell like apricots. Like that's not a fair hit.

PETER GROSZ: I disagree. They do.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: You guys had mentioned something about you know, obviously not a lot of closed-minded folks, you know, probably a lot of open-minded folks here. And so when you're writing to mostly liberal audiences, you know, how do you ensure you're not pandering in your writing or, you know, just saying the obvious thing for the easy laugh?

ALI BARTHWELL: I mean, the easy laugh is also fun. Because sometimes you need like you need an easy laugh so that I can teach you something so I can make you laugh a laugh that's slightly more difficult. Like there if you watch like certain Second City sketches that are more difficult or go to an emotional or dark place, they start pretty light. And so we got to like get like all if you watch Last Week Tonight, like the main story, they all start with like here's a silly clip of this thing. Like here's a commercial, a PSA from 1970. And we're like that mime is weird. And then we're going to talk about like complicated tax policy. So but you have to like warm. So sometimes you pander because you're like, I need to warm you up so I can get you where I can like talk about something more difficult. And then I don't know. Personally, I'm also just like I'm always writing from my perspective and you know, there's not always people that share that perspective. So like the people that I'm pandering to is like a Black lady that grew up in the Chicago suburbs. Like there's maybe like nine of us. So like I'm fine if I'm pandering to the us's in the audience.

JOHN LUTZ: I also on our show, I think it's like Seth is always looking for hard jokes. So he wants it to be funny. He does not want applause jokes. He doesn't want to get people going, "Yeah, what you just said!" He wants to get a laugh. He wants it to be funny. And that's what he's always. He's always like this needs more jokes.

ALI BARTHWELL: And like every like sort of like the structure and the nature of a joke is always drawing like an in and out like there's it that like the nature of like some people get a joke and some people don't and I was like I was talking to a friend and I was like the joke that like everyone laughs at is probably like not a really good joke. It's like, “Oh man waking up in the morning. Am I right?” Like that's a joke but then like there's always one person in the back it's like, "Fuck you, I work nights!"

[Audience laughter]

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ALISA ROSENTHAL: That was Ali Barthwell, Peter Grosz, John Lutz, and Kelly Leonard, recorded live at the Chicago Humanities Fall Festival at Northwestern University in 2024. To check out more of these very funny folks, head to the show notes or chicagohumanities.org.

Chicago Humanities Tapes is produced and hosted by me, Alisa Rosenthal, with help from the hardworking staff over at Chicago Humanities who are producing the live events and making them sound great. If you’ve been enjoying our programming, the best way to support the podcast is to leave a rating and review, click subscribe to be notified about new episodes, and scroll through previous episodes for a gem you might’ve missed. We’ll be back in two weeks with another new episode for you. Thanks for listening, and as always, stay human.

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