Did you did you like those audiences? I mean, they're international.

So the Fringe is like boot camp for me.

I go there with like a 80 percent of my show written and then I just fine tune it and make it make it better there.

This time was particularly challenging because the venue that I chose without touring it was like the worst possible.

It was the worst venue I've ever performed at.

It was through the Monkey Barrel, which is like the cool kid comedy venue, but it was called Hive One.

I don't think that venue exists this last year because I think the place has been condemned.

Yeah.

I totally agree.

We have regulated nucle- nukes.

We've regulated cloning.

We don't have armies of human clones.

We can regulate AI.

But what about China? China is, like, taking cues from, like, American AI companies.

We can shut down data centers.

Thank you.

Mm, right.

I've, I've had friends kind of talk about it after I posted it.

My first instinct was to text two of my friends who don't look like Mitt Romney.

Uh, my one friend who is Muslim and Iranian and coming, was coming back from TED, and I was like, "FYI, don't tell them you're a comedian." And then I texted another friend who's a political comic who's not white.

And then I was like, I can't not post about this 'cause this is crazy, but it's also really scary as, like, a woman on the internet to, to tell a story or some...

Because then ultimately you're just kinda exposing yourself and being vul- vulnerable online, which is terrifying.

And so, but I did post about it.

the way to get the message out is to make it back, and then like you said, then tell everyone.

Um, and so talk a little bit about the book, um, w- w- what sort of prompted you to write it, and then we'll get a little bit into some of the material.

Sure.

Well, I think it was during one of the lockdowns [laughs] when I was like, "You know what would be a fun thing to do right now since everything's shut down? Uh, finally write that book." And I had, um, I had a little, uh...

When Twitter was still called Twitter, um, I had tweeted something and it went viral for all the wrong reasons.

Like, well, okay, I'm, I'm paraphrasing.

I, I did, like, a fake breaking news tweet, which w- I thought at the time was funny because, you know, I have, like, comedian in my bio.

I say, "Don't quote me." It was right at the time of the Republican National Convention when they had the McLo- when I saw an announcement that the McCloskeys, this couple in St.

Mm-hmm.

And how soon after it happened do you feel like you started processing it in the form of expression?

I mean, well, as it was happening, I was working on my true crime show, so if you watched the last episode, which is about the death penalty, I'm massively pregnant greeting my mom on camera.

I'd never been busier professionally.

Like, when she died, I had a book about to come out, a stand-up special that smells like natural gas, a stand-up special that I was taping, I found out she was sick a day before I taped the special, and then the show that I was making.

It just was the most.

I think it was because I had it.

Honestly, I had a penis inside me.

we're going to fifth street i feel like this is second this is third so we're going up two more

[laughs]

Well, okay, so that happened, and what was so interesting, I, when I, when, after it happened, 'cause I remember, like, I got through, and then I was in a bookshop, and there was a guy in the bookshop.

Like, I was, like, shopping for a present for my toddler, and I wanted to be like, "I just was asked this at the border," and then I just didn't say anything 'cause I'm like, "I just gotta get home and be safe and," you know.

And I, uh, then when I got home, a friend of mine works for Adam Schiff, and I said, "Hey, this just happened." And he sent me a meme that I just had posted the p- maybe, like, the previous day or around, like, a couple days prior that, uh, I could show it to you.

It says, "Stop," like, stop at the border is, like, um, drugs, weapons, something else, and ideas.

And then, and it was in Politico.

They posted this on social media, and then they took it down 'cause it obviously, uh, freaked people out.

It's fucked.

Well, my algorithm's, like, front page of The New York Times, Washington Post, uh, clickbait stuff.

Well, I mean, they're not getting clicks, but there are tons of stories of, like, you know, a woman who had to be medevaced, who was lucky enough to be medevaced to another state, but she was like, you know, like a well-to-do white woman in Texas, and she had, like, a fetal abnormality that was gonna, like, kill her if she didn't, you know, get an abortion, and then she had to be, like, uh, medevaced to another state to do it because of these crazy laws.

Somebody who has, like, an ectopic pregnancy, which is, like, a non-viable pregnancy, the hospital won't operate on them because it's like they're afraid that they're gonna get sued because it's a fetus even though it's outside of the u- whatever, fallopian tube.

I don't know.

I'm, uh, I was on a Red Eye last night.

But anyway, but, like, y- these people have to go to hospitals outside of state.

You know, the, the woman, um, who ended up, uh, being...

[laughs]

[laughs]

If you work in this space and you can't answer that with a definitive no, then maybe we should slow it down a notch, take a few weeks off, like a fired and then rehired federal employee under DOGE.Either way, I'm not that worried about my stand-up comedy being replaced by AI because my stand-up comedy is not that profitable.

[laughs]

Our raw, authentic, unfiltered selves that might not always be likable, relatable, or profitable.

Those are the things that separate us from machines, for now.

When all of our TED Talks get fed into machine learning algorithms, robots may evolve to understand why someone might say the word abortion in a talk, despite the fact that it could alienate 50% [laughs] of people watching, even though it shouldn't, 'cause it's just healthcare.

But un-

Yeah.

And so, um, I th- I'm very proud of that episode because we were able to make a show that really, um, reframed the narrative.

I was worried about, um, will this episode be, uh, an ad for the defense attorney to get him more work if we do it wrong? And we got this grizzled veteran cop on, and she was like, "Everybody knows when it's, like, a sex crime, like, you just blame the victim.

That's, that's what you do.

It's called, like, the rough se- sex defense or the con- consent defense."

Okay.

Because the paper was, it was so benign, it was so tame, but I was looking at improv...

Uh, this is gonna sound so wonky, but I...

Right.

I've, I've had friends kind of talk about it after I posted it.

My first instinct was to text two of my friends who don't look like Ann Romney.

Uh, my one friend who is Muslim and Iranian and coming, was coming back from TED, and I was like, "FYI, don't tell them you're a comedian." And then I texted another friend who's a political comic who's not white.And then I was like, "I can't not post about this 'cause this is crazy." But it's also really scary as, like, a woman on the internet to, to tell a story.

And so, because then ultimately you're just kind of exposing yourself and being vul- vulnerable online, which is terrifying.

And so, but I did post about it.

I didn't say my response, which wasn't important to the larger point.

The way to get the message out is to make it back, and then, like you said, then tell everyone.