By Nick A. Zaino III Updated October 17, 2024
A little over a week before his five sold-out gigs at Laugh Boston, Josh Johnson wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to say here. That’s not for a lack of material — quite the opposite. For the past year or so, the “Daily Show” correspondent has been filling his YouTube channel with extended sets, riffing on current events and personal stories. When he first started posting them, they ran at eight or ten minutes and covered everything from the “Barbie” movie to Donald Trump’s mugshot. Now, he’s releasing sets averaging around 23 minutes at least once a week, most often on Tuesdays.
And it’s not unusual for Johnson to go even longer. On September 24, he released a brilliant hourlong meditation on fame and abuse centered around the arrest of Sean “Diddy” Combs. And these aren’t hot takes. This isn’t a comedian or pundit rushing to TikTok to make sure they have something to feed the hashtag mill. Johnson is processing the insanity of politics and pop culture in near-real time as a thoughtful human being, albeit one whose thought process is naturally funny.
Johnson resisted the idea that he was doing anything different from what any artist or creative would do with their day-to-day feelings. “Spending the time with yourself to distill those feelings and distill those thoughts leads to thoughtful work,” he said. “So what might appear fast is really just being honest about how you feel about something, because when you ask someone their thoughts on something, and they start rattling them off, it doesn’t feel fast. It feels like a conversation.”
What he is doing is asking himself questions, sorting out his reactions in front of an audience in a live setting, and then letting his internet audience see that a day or so later. And it’s working. The “Diddy’s Collapse” hour had more than three and a half million views as of this week. His video on Harvey Weinstein’s health problems in prison, which he released a couple of weeks ago, has almost 400,000 views.
Johnson has always been more of a storyteller than a short-joke comedian. While he continues to release some shorter, more IG- and TikTok-friendly posts, the longer sets are much better suited to his style. It was a deliberate choice to offer his audience more. “I was like, well, you could either break it into parts and ruin it a little bit, or you could just put out the whole thing and see if people want to watch the whole thing. And so, I’ve been blessed that people do seem to want to watch the whole thing,” Johnson said.
The subjects aren‘t planned in advance — he records sets and releases what feels right to him. That might make the proposition of putting out another twenty-three minutes every week scary. But to Johnson, that‘s also what makes it fun and interesting. “If there‘s just a blank piece of paper and you’re like, ‘draw something now,’ it‘s like, ‘okay, this could be anything,’ which is the blessing and the curse,” he explained. “If someone told you to draw the most detailed dragon that you could, now you’re worried about your acumen at drawing and your details, and ‘am I going to get the shading right?’ and stuff like that. And you’re worried about a lot of things that are technical as opposed to just creative.”
Johnson honed his skill at creating topical material on “The Daily Show,” where he’s worked as a writer since 2017. He was promoted to a correspondent earlier this year, which was ideal training for what he’s doing now onstage. “The show definitely taught me how to tell stories and do them a bit more thoughtfully and universally than I was before,” Johnson said.
His YouTube sets aren’t the first time Johnson has experimented with his stand-up. In 2021, he released an album called “Elusive,” which he called a “mixtape,” blending stand-up comedy recorded in front of an audience with songs he wrote with musical collaborators. He has another comedy and music project coming in 2025, he said. With a touring schedule that will include more theaters in 2025, “The Daily Show,” and other outside projects, it’s a fair question to ask – how long can he keep the weekly posting up? “I think forever,” he said, “but we’ll find out.”
Although the social media output is what’s grabbing people’s attention about Johnson’s work, the primary focus is still on the live experience. “The main goal is to create all of these experiences for people in the way that’s most substantial, which I think is in person in real time,” he said. “And then the second goal is to share that with as many people as possible, especially those that want to receive it, which is online.”
As far as what Johnson will say tonight when he gets to Laugh Boston, he had some ideas. But a lot can happen in a week, and his experience this year taught him to stay open. To keep reading, to keep engaging. And to give himself the chance to create another new experience with the audience. “This year has been the real trust fall,” he said. “I’m gonna be figuring it out all week, and we’re gonna have a good time when we get to the show.”
JOSH JOHNSON At Laugh Boston, Oct. 18-19, laughboston.com
