Meet the Moment: Hasan Minhaj says he wants to make art "with moral clarity"

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1:41Welcome back. Peabody Award winner Hasan Minhaj has done it all. Actor, writer, producer, comedian, and even co-owner of a chai tea company. Now he's got a new movie on Netflix. Best of the Best is a love letter, he says, to his heritage, centered on the world of collegiate Bollywood dance competitions. The 40-year-old who grew up in California is the son of Indian immigrants. He says his father warned him not to talk openly about being Muslim or about American politics. Instead, Minaj built a career doing both, from The Daily Show to an interview with President Obama. We made up in New York for a wide-ranging interview on the heels of his movie premiere.

2:51Be smart. Get wise business. Download the app. T's and C's apply. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools. No extra logins. Just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Make work less work. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at go.gle slash workspace with Gemini. Hassan Minhaj, welcome to Meet the Press. Chris, thank you so much for having me on the show. My parents are going to be watching this, and this is so exciting.

3:33Well, we are so excited. We're honored to have you here. So thank you. Thank you. There's so much to talk about. Congratulations on your new film, Best of the Best. Thank you. We're going to talk about it in a moment, but I want to talk about you and all of these different roles and titles that you have. I'm going to name, I think you have about six, if I'm not missing any. Film producer, writer, actor, podcast host, stand-up comedian, production company CEO, partner in a chai tea company. Did I leave anything out? Father. Father. Husband. Yes, the most important ones. Bae. B-A-E. Friend. Yeah.

4:14Friend. Which role are you enjoying most right now? Um... Father is really beautiful and really fun. And they are... There's this conversation that's happening right now about us being... They call it the sandwich years. So right now my parents, my father's in his mid-70s. I have this joke where I talk about my dad being 75, my son is five and I'm in the middle and I'm just watching them both freak out on their iPads, you know? And I'm the halftime show and I'm navigating these two worlds. And these two people that are they're just about out of diapers and about to go into diapers. But it's this feeling of this person raised me.

5:01I need to take all the heirlooms that he gave me and pass that on to my son. but what's the baggage that I'm going to get rid of? How do I update the software to the times that we're in? And that's the most meaningful relationship that I have right now. I'm very lucky that both my parents are still alive. Both of my in-laws are still alive. And I have two beautiful children that are eight and six. And it's what they have given me. How do you incorporate all of those blessings that you've been given into your personal life, into your professional life? I mean, comedy is... Comedy really is... There's an old saying that drama is in the close-up.

5:46Comedy presents itself in the wide. And so, you know, these ironic situations that you're in... You know, I'm on the train, and I'm getting a phone call from my doctor about a colonoscopy while a guy's taking a selfie with me. Like, these are inherently comedic. Comedy only comes from strangeness, weirdness, pain, humiliation, all those things. You're not afraid to pull on those personal threats and explore it. And it can liberate you, you know. And you know this as a journalist. One of the things we get asked as comedians all the time is, can you make a joke about that? Are you allowed to make a joke?

6:26You can make a joke about literally anything. Anything. Literally anything. And in fact, I don't think there's enough of a conversation around, not about the jokes themselves. There should be a larger conversation around, hey, when a person makes a joke about something incredibly painful, I think a lot of people don't realize for the performer, it's their way of looking at that thing. That thing's not scary anymore. That thing that I went through, that struggle that I went through, that humiliating thing that happened to me in my childhood, every time I hit the stage and talk about it, I'm actually liberated from that.

6:59It's your way of taking power over something that can be harmful, hurtful. Yeah, and comedy, as I've now been doing it 20 years, it's been a thing where, through writing, I've been able to almost, it feels like I'm quoting Lin-Manuel Miranda, but write my way through life. Well, let's talk about your latest project, Netflix project, Best of the Best. I saw this film. It's spectacular. Congratulations. Thank you so much. So you co-wrote it. You starred in it. You produced it. This is a film about Bollywood collegiate dancers and two best friends. Yes. Why was it important for you to make this film in this moment?

7:47So for me, this is a love letter to my community. It's a love letter to my upbringing. A lot of people don't know this. I've been asked this question. How did you come up with this world? And the crazy part is I didn't. This world actually literally exists. So competitive collegiate Bollywood dance has existed in the United States of America for 40 years. Since the 1980s, essentially a collection, a group of kids of South Asian descent from the diaspora, which is called the Melanated Brown Kids, wanted to celebrate their culture, celebrate the music that defined their culture through dance. and they started putting together these little circuits.

8:28And over the course, decade after decade, now over 150 schools do it. Thousands of people come and attend these. It's March Madness for Bollywood dance. And so there are these young kids that are brimming with potential, messing up their GPA, lying to their parents, all for the love of dance, to celebrate their culture and also grind on each other at after parties. And both of these things are equally important. It's meet the press, folks. Well, and it is, it's educational because while I may have been aware of these Bollywood collegiate dance competitions, you expose how competitive it is and the fact that it's a family.

9:08Yes. And how meaningful it is to your culture. Yeah, look, so for a lot of us and what I've tried to do in my art, to me the best art almost feels like a secret that you're sharing with the public. So when I think about Bollywood music, if you ask me, hey, what was it like for you growing up?

9:28Bollywood, specifically as a film, and many people, you know, everyone here on set is familiar with it, but as a film style, people know it's one of the largest film industries in the world, but it represents the cassette tape that my dad is playing in the Toyota Camry. It represents me watching, I'm going to date myself, a DVD with my grandmother of a great Bollywood movie, bootleg VHS tapes from the Indian grocery store that we'd all watched together as a family. These were kind of hidden pockets of our life. And then you come to college and you come to find out, oh, these competitive collegiate Bollywood dance teams, they're some of the coolest kids on campus.

10:04And so making this film really was a love letter to my community. And for a lot of kids that did this and do this, still do this, it's this celebration of who they are. I'm taking this secret from my living room and I'm putting it center stage. And it's a love letter to all of them. It's a celebration of your culture and it's a celebration, I thought in watching it also, of the strength of friendships between two strong young women, Anjali and Maya. What do you hope people take from their story? So I hope that people, I mean, when they watch the film, I hope they understand the power of friendship, sisterhood.

11:00But there's this new idea that I think is kind of new to America at large. In our culture, there's a thing called, hey, this is my family friend. And what they mean by that is generally for many children of immigrants, you immigrated, your parents immigrated to the United States during a particular period of time. And there were other aunties and uncles that collectively as a community here in New York City, that happens in Chinatown, Flushing, Queens. Hey, we all came together in the late 70s, early 80s. Auntie babysat me growing up. This is my family. But they're not just friends. They're literally your family.

11:36Hey, this auntie who was my next, she changed my diapers. She drove me home from school. So Chitra auntie is not literally my aunt, but she was my babysitter who raised me as a kid. And so when someone says, this is my family friend, they're not just a friend, they're family. And so what I thought was unique about this college movie, we've seen the college movie, two people move in together, you're my friend. But what if you guys grew up together the way we did as a community, and then that friendship fell apart? Well, that's more than just, I mean, and now your family's falling apart. And that idea of, at its essence, I think friendship and intimacy really is about, and I'm saying this as someone who's married, obviously we wrote for two women, but friendship and feeling disconnected is about not feeling seen.

12:25And it's this growing resentment that at times builds, saying, you should know me, why don't you see me? and that type of pain. I mean, how many times have you lost it? Me, guilty, with my dad or my family friends, my best friends, the boys that I grew up with. It's like, dude, you've known me since the second grade. How do you not get this? Talk about stakes for characters in a movie versus the traditional college trope of like, we're not friends anymore. And it's like, you guys met two weeks ago. What are you talking about? Why would you be friends? And that complicated process of finding a way back to each other that is also celebrated in this film because as families, that's what you have to do.

13:06And that we're stronger together. There is that thing. You know, there's something so American about radical individualism. But one of the things that I think is most beautiful about our culture is that, like, we're all in this together. Like, everyone here on set, lighting, gaffing, sound. Like, if you guys need a place to crash tonight, you can. Yeah. This is that feeling of, like, hey, if I know you, you can rely on me and you can count on me. There is something really beautiful in our culture that I wanted to share in that as well. And you have said that you met your wife while she was competing in Bollywood dance competitions.

13:41Did she inspire this film? All right, this film is based on painfully true events. When we took the script out, that was, it said, best of the best, written by Hassan Minhaj Prashanth and Ramanajan, based on painfully true events. Prashanth and I did not compete. I want to make that very clear. Was he in a competitive acapella team called Chai Town, which was an all Indian acapella team? Yes, he was. That being said, we would go to these competitions, obviously to celebrate our culture, but also for yearning and to meet girls. I'm trying to find a diplomatic meet the press. There's no diplomatic way to say it.

14:28That's what it is. I'm just going to say this. This is meet the press, baby. I had a huge crush on my now wife, Bina. Bina was dating somebody else. I was laying back in the cut trying to make my move. So, yes, the vibes were palpable. The yearning was real. I love that. And eventually I did win. You won. You won the competition. I won her art. I won her art. I won her. It was the best of the best. Yes. I won the competition. I was the best of the best. What was her reaction to this film? And to what extent did you have her in your mind as you sat down and wrote this? So if you freeze frame in the final competition sequence, you can see her sitting next to me.

15:06So it's very meta. My character, Professor Hamza Lateef, I play the professor in the film. And he's kind of unk. He's older and wiser. And he can help the girls navigate this very tumultuous time of your life. Look, college is this time where you're planting the flag of who you want to be and what mark you want to leave on the world. And one day you're going to understand.com. And once you hit your 40s, it's kind of like, hey, I've been punched a few times. I've been knocked down a few times. And you're a phone call away from losing a loved one or a family member. You've gone through real stuff.

15:41And you're able to look back on those things with a little bit of wisdom and have perspective. And that's what my character is there to tell them. But it was very meta in the sense of when I was writing that for my character, it's what I would have written to myself at that time of like, hey, all these feelings you're feeling, it's a lot and you should feel them. But just know the memories that you make and the friendships that you make, the journey itself, that's really what matters and who you're with. Well, let's talk about the journey. And to talk about the journey, we have to talk about your family, your parents.

16:19You're a first-generation Muslim American. Your parents immigrated from India, as you've talked about. And you said that when you were growing up, your father actually said, you know, it's not necessary to talk about your background, your Muslim background, politics. Instead, build a career apart from that. And yet, you have infused all of that into your work. How did you explain that choice to your father? How do I explain it? You know, he's still figuring it out. So we, you know, we said this to me off camera. You and I, we met at the White House Correspondents Dinner, but one of the most powerful moments in my career that was very just, you know, life-affirming and really beautiful is at that dinner, I'm at the dais and I'm roasting like Wolf Blitzer, but I look over and I see my mom and my dad, and my dad isn't laughing.

17:10He's looking at other people laughing. And, you know, you would have to interview him. He'd love to be on Meet the Press, quite frankly. He's invited. But I've always wondered what was he thinking. And what I was taking from his body language was, you know, my son's being pretty irreverent. He's saying some kind of wild, out-of-pocket things. And other people find this to be humorous. but kind of validating. And I think my dad was feeling this sense of like, this matters. Like, you believe that this matters. And that was very affirming for me. I couldn't have been more proud to be his son in that moment.

17:52I felt like, man, I hope you're proud. And I hope you're seeing that the house that I grew up in and the way we would talk about politics and the world, all of that influenced what I'm doing now. Well, your parents must be incredibly proud of what you're doing. They haven't set it on the record, but if you can get them on a laugh mic to do it on the record, please do. I will get them on the record. I'm sure they've expressed to you. No, no, no. You know, they really haven't, Kristen. Really? For example, yesterday at the premiere, it was sold out. It was packed. I go, Dad, what did you think of the film?

18:22And he goes, the theater was full. The theater was full. Really? And it was full. And why do you think that is? I think that, and we spoke off camera, you're married to a heterosexual man? Yes. So, just confirming this. I don't know if you're aware of this, but we're not really good at articulating our feelings. I am aware. Yeah, we generally, hey, how you doing? Fact check true. Hey, how you doing? Yes. Yeah. No, but is everything okay at home? Yeah. You know. Yeah. Right. These will be full sentences, if not paragraphs. So it's stuff like that. How do you think you talk to your kids about their culture, their heritage, in a different way maybe than your parents talk to you?

19:06Yeah, I think for their generation, they came to this country to survive. So it was put your head down and survive. And look, you know, if we were to put it into a narrative context, you're not the center of the frame. I'm sure you've heard about this from your Asian American colleagues, what Connie Chung represented to an entire community. It wasn't until I was older that I realized, oh, a generation of Asian American women were named Connie after her. But why? And I think it's because she was center of frame. She was driving narrative. Oftentimes news, politics, culture, it is given to us. We are the characters that are moving exposition forward.

19:50But in my art, I wanted to center us. And when I think about the way I talk to my kids, we're having this conversation. Today was my daughter's first day of third grade. And my wife went up to her and she goes, you're it, girl. You're it. And they were having this. And as a dad, I could see them bonding. And I'm like, what's happening right now? What do you mean you're it? And she's like, she's the it girl. She's it. And what she was saying, I think, what Bina really was saying is, you're the one. You're number one on the call sheet. You're the lead. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. And so when I called her, I was like, you know, you're it girl, right?

20:28You're like, you're the it girl. And that is what I want my children to know. I didn't always get that from my parents. I think they were too busy doing the best they could to get us through, take us to Kumon, get mad at us, get us into great schools. And both me and my sister turned out great. But that feeling of, hey, whatever you are, the way you are, I see who you are, and I'm gonna meet you where you are, and we'll go from there. That's very powerful because what you're saying, and now I'm connecting it to your movie, Best of the Best, which is to some extent about who is going to be the lead.

21:06Yeah, who is going to be seen, you know? And part of what you're saying is it's important that both in this film but in real life, you are allowing young Muslim girls to feel seen. Kind of brown girls across the diaspora. Maitreyya Ramakrishnan, she's Tamil Sri Lankan, Priyanka Kedia. You know, her family's from India. Lina Khan is a hijabi Muslim director. Like, what was really beautiful about the film and why I think it's a uniquely American film is, for a lot of us, we are children of a post-colonial diaspora. Post-1947, 1948, it was the creation of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka. It's kind of a byproduct of British colonialism.

21:52Because of language, religious, sectarian differences, those cultures were separated. Brothers and sisters were separated from each other. Because of immigration, diaspora kids moved to the UK, moved to Canada, moved to the United States. And they create a new genre as a love letter to their native land called competitive collegiate Bollywood dance. But it's a combination of all the forms, Bharanatyam, Kathak, Bhangra, Hindi film, which is a combination of all of those forms, plus jazz, contemporary, and hip-hop, to make something newly, uniquely American. We talk about Creole culture being a unique American culture.

22:33Why? French, Black, Indigenous, Caribbean. And it's created this new thing that's uniquely only kind of American. Yeah. Only America could allow competitive collegiate Bollywood dance. It allowed us to reconcile the paradox of post-partition and celebrate it through the best of all of our cultures And it's really beautiful. You know, just to look back broadly at your career, you started out doing stand-up in college. Yes. You then, as we all saw, became a correspondent on The Daily Show, which was so much fun. You hosted the White House Correspondents' Dinner, as we're discussing. You have two Peabody Awards now for your comedy special on Netflix.

23:26How do you think your approach to your comedy, to your work, to your art, has changed and evolved over the years? What I've always tried to do is, like I said earlier, hey, what is something that's burning inside of me? What is something that I've wanted to share that I feel like the world didn't understand? Sometimes, and they're wildly different. For example, the show Patriot Act. That show is literally named after a piece of legislation that a lot of people did not know about the illegal surveillance, or it wasn't illegal, rather legal surveillance of people that were considered to be enemies of the state, largely the Muslim community at the time, post-911.

24:07To me, that was a subversive flip on that title, right? Because when you think about, it's the Patriot Act, it's a very, like, you know, it's almost, it could be like a Fox News show, you know? Yeah, yeah. But I felt the same way with Best of the Best. Hey, this is something that I know. I know this world. How come I haven't shared this with the world? It needs to feel like this thing that's burning. I want to tell you this thing that shaped who I am. Do you feel like it's more powerful when it comes from a personal space? Because Best of the Best felt very personal. Yes. Yeah. Even before I knew the background.

24:48Yeah, look. Even before I'd done my research. I felt this is coming from his heart. Yes. It's... Look, we're having this conversation, and it's just debuting. I don't know how it's going to resonate with an audience, but I do know that when we were in this, and shout out to my dad being an organic chemist, when we were in that little Erlenmeyer flask, if you will, of creativity on set, shooting the film for 38 days, there were moments that felt profoundly special. I go, I cannot believe we're doing this. I cannot believe we're getting this level of choreography. All these dancers. wait, A.R. Rahman, Grammy Award-winning A.R.

25:24Rahman is doing our finale song, and the song cleared. It feels like these mini miracles that are just out... It's outside of me. It is this true kind of large collaboration that just feels magical. You have to humble yourself before. It's like, I'm just here to be like a steward of this. As a viewer, you wanted to get up on the stage and dance with this team of dancers. And I was crying at the same time. How do you accomplish all of that emotion? It's joy, it's celebration, as you say. It's nostalgia. Yeah. And it's incredibly powerful. I don't know if you feel this. I mean, some of our best horror directors right now were comedians.

26:13Zach Kregger was an incredible improviser. Jordan Peele, the incredible director, was an incredible improviser and sketch performer. But comedy and drama are essentially the same. You are building tension and then cutting it. And life is kind of like that. It is simultaneously a comedy and a drama at the same time. This message comes from Wise Business, the only account your business needs to scale globally. You're building a business with global ambitions, but hidden fees are eating into your margins. With Wise Business, you can pay overseas suppliers without exchange rate markups. Have customers worldwide get payment details in 22 currencies so you get more of each hard-earned payment without hidden conversion fees.

27:00Be smart. Get Wise Business. Download the app. T's and C's apply. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools. No extra logins. Just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Make work less work. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. You are creating all of this work, whether it's Best of the Best or your stand-up comedy. Yeah. Your podcast.

27:42Yes. against the backdrop of a very divided country right now. And some people embrace and love what you do and what you say wholeheartedly, and some other people may not. How do you navigate that? And how much of that do you let in? This is pretty, you know, this is... I want to ask you this, too, is you're a journalist in 2026 with a rectangle of sadness, which you don't know what's real, what's not. But it is very confusing and at times disorienting to try to figure out, but I think it's incumbent upon us to figure out what is signal and what is noise. That's really important. What is good faith criticism?

28:26What is bad faith criticism? What is clout chase criticism? And what is a Russian bot and or a 14-year-old in the Philippines trolling you via YouTube comments? You don't know. You truly don't know. But your discernment as I've gotten older, I have tried to navigate that and get better at that of like, oh, that actually is a good note. Okay, listen to that. But then during other times, like, hey, probably turn the volume down, put the phone down, touch grass, be with your kids, be with your spouse. Yeah. You know what I mean? And knowing when to touch grass, be with your spouse. Totally, totally.

29:01One of the most important aspects I would think of your work right now. Let me just say this too, you know, Kristen, you cover politics. And inherent within politics is obviously horrible things, war, destruction, famine, genocide. I mean, really heavy subject matter you have to cover. People's lives are on the line. Yeah. I also want to say that isn't what entirely makes us human. Laughter, joy, and love are also part of the human experience. I've talked to many black filmmakers that have really inspired me. The Spike Lees, the Jordan Peeles. They have also talked about this idea of black joy.

29:44And joy being in and of itself an act of revolution against that. Hey, I know you want to define me only vis-a-vis my suffering. There's this idea when even South Asian culture is looked at via poverty porn. But I also want to show elegance, sophistication, aspirational glamour. Glamour. Like, those things also exist. If I can see that in a Ralph Lauren catalog, Ralph, who was a Jewish immigrant, Ralph Lauren was literally a... that was making ties here in New York City, had an aspirational POV on what America could be. When I think about the Bollywood films that shaped my life, it's pure aspirational energy.

30:25We literally have magical realism. And it was a dream of mine for the past six years to go, Can I center our culture with this level of aspirational beauty? And that in and of itself can be really subversive and powerful. We are having this conversation at a moment when Muslim Americans have made incredible strides. Here we are in New York City where Zoran Mamdani has become the first Muslim American mayor of this city. What do you make of this moment? Do you feel that or do you see it differently? I think it's an incredible moment, and I think what Mayor Mamdani has showed us and what he has showcased to, I think, an entire generation of people.

31:06First of all, he's five years younger than me, and I think my dad is secretly more proud of him than he is of me. So this is a whole thing, Zoran. You really kind of ruined it for a lot of us. You know, it's like you failed at the whole rapping thing, and that was supposed to be the story, and then now you have, like, this moral clarity, and you're speaking truth to power, and it's like, come on, man. And I have to hear this from my dad. He's just nonstop YouTube WhatsApps. And you talk about social media presence. My man is flooding the zonks. That's one thing. He does have his social media work out.

31:35The mayor's doing that, right? That's for sure. But I think in all seriousness, the other thing that he has articulated for an entire generation of kids and politicians and journalists, I hope, is that you can position yourself. This could be a moment in time where you can move through the world with moral clarity. In the past, the way politics was kind of navigated was vis-a-vis this kind of negotiation. You give a little give and take, be practical. And I think here in New York City, we got to witness, hey, I'm going to do it my way. What if I win, lose, or draw, start a campaign literally from Jackson Heights, from Queens, from the forgotten boroughs of this city, in, I took it from the outside, in.

32:23And I think it's similar to art in that way. So many great stories are taken from the margins to the mainstream. But what's beautiful about this moment is this is a moment for a lot of us to walk and act with moral clarity. Hey, I'm not compromising my core beliefs. I'm walking through with this with clarity. Do you feel like you experience Islamophobia? Is that something that impacts you, that you think about? I think about people... I think about the... the taxicab driver. I think about the people that are being snatched up and detained by ICE. I'm thinking about the Senegalese immigrant that is waiting for his green card to go through.

33:06I'm thinking about the weak, the poor, the impoverished, the needy, you know, the people that give this country the most but are forgotten, that are on the margins of society. I'm lucky. I am lucky. I have this amazing platform. I have a semi-popular podcast on YouTube, which is doing pretty well. Semi-popular. You know, I'm a medium-famous person at a United Terminal. Other people would disagree with you and would say it's just popular. Yeah, but I'm a medium-famous person at a Delta Terminal, but I'm a very famous person at a hookah lounge. Me and Rami Youssef would shut down a hookah. I mean, Kristen, if we go to a hookah lounge tonight...

33:44I'm talking Harry Styles. It's big Harry Styles, actually. People would flip tables. Any lounge. Any lounge. You would be... No, no, no. Another lounge, Eric Adams. That's his home. Zero Bond. Shout out to Zero Bond and shout out to Eric. I see you. But, yeah. But have you ever felt like... Have you ever had moments in your career or in your upbringing when you went to college where you didn't feel seen, where you felt discriminated against, and do you draw upon that in your work? Sure. You know... I recently got to interview the amazing comedian Kumail Nanjiani on my show. And many of you know his work in comedy and acting.

34:22I know him from his abs. And I asked him, I say, hey man, do you feel American? And he says, it's not about how I feel. It's about the way the country sees me, right? Your belonging in a group is about the way the group sees you. I thought that was really powerful, But there's another really powerful concept that we articulate in the film. It's a word in Hindi called izzat, which means dignity and self-respect, meaning it doesn't matter what other people think of you. Think about how you should think about yourself. I think about my grandmother who raised me. She literally went to school under British colonial rule in British civil lines.

35:11So she was not seen as a whole person, and she persevered despite that. And when I see, when she raised me, God bless her, Tosif Rizvi, she's in heaven, she carried herself with such elegance and dignity. She was not defined by the way other people saw her, whether it was British colonial rule or the manager at Safeway that treated her a certain way. And when I think about that, I've really come, I recently did Finding Your Roots with Dr. Henry Louis Gates, and, you know, he stopped me a couple times during the interview, and he's like, you come from real people. You come from people. Meaning, and what it meant to me was like, hey, man, the generations that came before you, they're not just forgotten in the sands of time.

35:57These were incredibly resilient, strong people. So when I think about me being on stage, I think about Toseif Rizbi and Hashmat Hussain Osmani, the people that I come from that shaped me. And they're watching me. And that gives me fearlessness. So throw whatever you want at me. Double team, triple team, it is what it is. I'm doing this for Tosif and Ashmaqazanism. So much of the way that people like yourself are viewed now is on social media. You did something very notable on The Daily Show. Which is that you went off Twitter, what was known as Twitter at the time. It was this big moment. Yes.

36:34What is your relationship to social media today? and how do you navigate that for yourself and for your kids? So for me, like, the rule is very simple with my kids. I keep them off YouTube shorts. Keep your kids off YouTube shorts. Get them off YouTube shorts. And I know this is going to be a YouTube short, so it's getting very meta right now. But keep them off, okay? That is the new opioid epidemic. We need to stop. Look, and you know this as a journalist, media is important, but as the great Neil Postman says, in the incredible book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, which was written in 1985, short form content, and at the time he was doing a media critique on the news.

37:20We're talking about the Dan Rather news, like that type of news. He was saying to go from a news segment and then hard pivot into Toyotathon, 0 % down, 0 % APR financing. So you went from war footage to Toyotathon. What does this do to the mind? And what he was acknowledging in the book that I thought was brilliant is that the medium itself is an entertainment medium. You have to speed things up for brevity. But that is not the human experience. So when we talk about this idea of, hey, people are reading less, people are dating less. Forget about all of those things. What it's real about is people are living less.

37:59What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to share this moment? I know I may be being a little bit long-winded. I don't want to think about, is this a soundbite right now? I want to be just human. Yeah, I don't want you to talk in soundbites. Yeah. That's the great thing about this segment. You talk to enough politicians. And that's why this September, you're like, come on, please, do you have to? You really have to? Well, there are so many mediums that you are on and that you share your work on. Again, whether it's film, whether it's big screen, the small screen, podcasts. is there one where you feel like you're at home or are they all sort of equally relevant and important to you?

38:38Comedy feels the most at home. Like, it is this amazing magic trick where you simultaneously get to be joking, not joking, but I'm just joking, not joking. Like, you get to dance in between those two. Shout out to Humes from Das Racist. That's a bar from one of his raps. But that is what comedy is. You get to play with both reality and not reality. It really is amazing. And you get to make sense of a world that doesn't make sense. That's what comedy really has saved my life in that way. I had a very hyperactive mind growing up as a kid. It gave me agency and a place to put all that energy into something constructive.

39:15But really, my hope, my dream, to be a good comedian means you have to consistently deliver laughs over a period of time while you're on stage. You have to entertain. But when it's done at its best, you entertain and also edify. You can help improve or touch or move people. And that's really it. What do you mean by comedy saved your life? It gave me agency and control. You know, so much of showbiz is about being picked. What is your number? What number are you on the call sheet? Are they renewing your contract or not? There is something profoundly powerful about being... You can strip everything away from me.

39:57take the note cards away, take the prompter away, I can literally do it with a mic and a mic stand. And I can entertain an audience for an hour. There is something profoundly powerful about it. And it doesn't matter. What I mean by that is like, are you the biggest comedian? How many tickets? That's irrelevant. I have a skill set. I have a craft that I can share with people. And I remind myself constantly, you're doing it, man. You're doing it. And you did it. like, and I continue to remind myself of that. You've done so much already. What is it when you look to the future, Hassan, that you want to do next?

40:36What's on the horizon for you? I think as, you know, my R4, my L4, my back discs are starting to hurt a little bit more. I really... Is that from the dancing? It really is. It's not from the dancing. You didn't dance that much, but... You know what it is, is actually being in your 40s and being on the laptop. That's the crazy part. It's like, how am I blowing out my back like this? watching the U.S. Open, Ben Shelton, and these guys are playing for four and a half hours. And I'm just like, oh, QWERTY, you know? So as I've gotten older, I go, hey, what do I do with, you know, this back that's giving out on me and just the cartilage that's just slowly leaving my ACL and MCL?

41:14Well, here's what I have. I was thinking about this. There's two things that I've been doing this 20 years, and there's two things that I finally have on my side, which is wisdom and capital. And here's what I mean by that is I have gone through a series of experiences, wins, losses, some stuff has worked, some stuff hasn't. So when I give advice to young comedians or even when I'm writing a new act, I'm not going to say I'm right 100 % of the time, but I do know, hey, I might be right most of the time. I have good instincts here. Not through allegory, through literal anecdotes, personal things I've lived through.

41:57The second thing that I have is thank God, thank God I got through showbiz and I saved my money. So I don't always have to do a gig for money, but that gives you the opportunity to have choice and it gives me the opportunity to do art with moral clarity. This is what I want to say. Now, I may fail at that, but my intent was pure. This is the movie that I wanted to make, best of the best. This is exactly the way I wanted to make it. Everything I wrote here is exactly what I wanted it to be. And so those are the two things that I have. Unfortunately, I'll never be able to dunk, and I for sure, for sure can't ski or snowboard or do any real physical activity anymore besides pedal.

42:36Well, it's incredible to have that type of autonomy. Yeah. As you say, the power to choose what you want to do. Just a final question, Hassan. What do you hope? Your kids are still very young. Yeah. What do you hope they learn from you? What do you hope they take from your extraordinary career? I think So I'm not trying to brag here, but I will sometimes in in the morning my wife and I we will do a group exercise class Sometimes I'll be the only guy in the group exercise class but we'll do it before school drop-off and And I will get dominated by some of these ladies in the class that are deadlifting and squatting more than me.

43:19And my son and daughter, they see it. They see me failing. They see me not going deep in the squat. They see me sometimes cheating. The humility that you have to fail in front of them. Yeah. Daddy, deeper. Daddy, you have to go deeper. Your butt has to be at 90 degrees. that you know it's really humbling nothing like your kids to give you the truth but the thing that i think is really beautiful and is is that they're seeing me try and that's all i ask of them i i you literally cannot control outcome and i know this sounds trite or cliche but i truly believe i've been doing this a long time there's things that i've done that i thought would be a hit were not a hit there's things that i thought nobody cares became huge you are not in control of outcome as much as you think you are as much as you want to grab that steering wheel and lighten up you're not but you are in control of your effort and the way you respond to things and when they see me get my ass handed to me in a group class i'm like look i'm not the best but i am trying and i'm going to ask that of you i need you to give this thing called your all because i am i'm failing but i'm giving it my all what an incredible lesson to pass along to your kids Thank you, Kristen.

44:37Hasan Minhaj, thank you so very much. This was such a joy. Oh, my God. Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema, so I get how it can steal your time. Why let eczema take over? Flare less with EbGliss. About 4 in 10 people taking EbGliss achieved clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks, and most of these people maintained clearer skin at one year. EbGliss, Lubricizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per 2 milliliter injection, is a prescription RX medicine for people aged 12 and up who weigh at least 88 pounds with moderate to severe eczema, atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with RX topical therapies or who cannot use those therapies.

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