• In the print version of the magazine, but not online, How Was Your Week?, by Awl pal Julie Klausner, got tied for his final pick. That's... nice that it got a mention! It's very good. Perhaps you will enjoy, if you can stand the fact that Julie doesn't have a penis.

• There is also the podcast of Ronna and Beverly, who are barren harridans.

• Throwing Shade, with Bryan Safi and Erin Gibson: they talk about lady and gay stuff! But that's so marginal, so be careful if you listen.

• You Had To Be There, with Nikki Glaser and Sara Schaefer, which happens in Sara's apartment, so you know it's all "domestic" (probably about oven-cleaning techniques?).

• There is Elizabeth Laime's Totally Laime Podcast, which is about advanced tatting and needlepoint.

• There is also Who Charted?, with another man-woman team, which is about the pop culture that is popular (but probably dumb).

Surely there are more? Tell us about them!

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Years before he created Nerdist Industries, Chris was already sowing the seeds of his enterprise. He spent his adolescence seeking out nerd artifacts such as comics, video games and comedy tapes as if they were the missing shard of the Dark Crystal. Here, he talks about working with David Cross at his first job, what nerds did before the Internet, and how building Nerdist Industries has been like a game of SimCity.

Grace Bello: You wrote in Wired that nerds were "once a tortured subrace of humans condemned to hiding in dark corners from the brutal hand of social torment [and are] now captains of industry!" How do the fans of your show and your podcast feel about that? Do they agree? Or do you get emails that say, like, "Oh, actually, I'm still a closeted nerd"?

Chris Hardwick: Well, more and more people are "coming out" about it as nerds. If you were a nerd when I was growing up, in the '80s, you were socially ostracized. We were just into things that most other kids were not into. There was a consumer electronics thing happening, but it's not like every store sold computers; there wasn't an Apple store. You'd have to build your own computer. And most kids who were concerned with being popular wouldn't take the time to do it. It took work. And the only reason you would do that extra work and sacrifice any kind of social life is if you were really passionate about what you were pursuing. And we were. And those were things like computers and chess club and comic books and things like that. But now everything's so readily available everywhere, all the time. People don't necessarily have to be into just one or two things anymore. Also, when I was growing up, nerds weren't billionaires yet. So the popular kids now have sort of glommed on to the nerds because now nerds are powerful. There was no money for nerds then, which meant that there was no political gain, which meant that there was no manipulation of the nerds. If it manifested itself in any way, it was sort of like nerds tutoring the dumb, popular kids. That was the sort of power that the nerds would have.

Through your podcast, you get to meet some really amazing people, like Jon Hamm, Patrick Stewart and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Of the guests you've met, who have you been the most starstruck by?

Most of the people who have been on the show are friends of mine. I knew Jon for years before he did the podcast. Patrick Stewart, I'd never met before; I was pretty starstruck by him. Neil Tyson, I had not met before—and is it weird to say you're starstruck by an astrophysicist? He would actually mathematically be able to tell me the impact of how starstruck by him I was. It's great. Every nerd icon I've always looked up to, I'm systematically interacting with all of them in some sort of capacity. I always flash back to me as a kid; if someone were to have told me then, "Someday, you're going to be friends with Weird Al." It's like, "What?" I almost can't process it. I'm a fanboy as much as anyone else in this community. I think I've managed to compartmentalize my brain and hold the fan stuff down really deep, and it comes out when I'm not around people.

How did you cultivate your interests in comedy and comics while growing up? That was pre-Internet, so were you lurking in arcades and comic book shops?

That's exactly it. The distribution is much wider now, but back then, we just had a different way of acquiring that content. If it meant something to you, you would find it. It was almost more satisfying as a nerd, in a way, because you did have to go on a quest for those things. And they were treasures that you had to hunt to find, whether it was underground comedy tapes that you would trade with someone or old comic books that you would trade—it was more in the physical world and it wasn't a digital process. It also wasn't instant gratification. It was definitely delayed gratification and a little bit of a crapshoot with what you'd be able to find. Then you'd also get accidentally exposed to things, and there was kind of a nerd pride to being aware of things that people didn't know. You had discovered this hidden treasure that was very personal. Whereas now, you click on a website, and there's a suggestion engine. We take for granted that you can find anything and that you're going to stumble across stuff. But there was a time when you actually had to work for it.

I don't know if anyone chooses to be a comedian; I think it's something that you feel compelled to do. It's pretty unrewarding for a long time, you know. You're performing for two people, and you're constantly asking yourself, "Am I doing the right thing?" If it's not something that you are genetically predisposed to doing, you'll quit doing it. The only reward that you have for so long is just the fact that you're doing it. So I feel like I don't know what else I would have done with my life. It just so happens that all my sub-interests were things like technology and sci-fi and video games and comic books. But stand-up comedy was always the thing for me.

Who were your comedy heroes when you were growing up?

Steve Martin. I had all the Steve Martin records. George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Hicks, Emo Philips, Bill Cosby... If there was a comedy special on TV, I taped it. I watched everything. It wasn't like I limited myself to one kind of comic. I liked all different flavors of comedy. And people don't really watch comedy that way anymore; we're such a niche-y culture where you can surround yourself with very specific kinds of things. But I watched any kind of stand-up. I loved it all.

Do you find doing the podcast as fulfilling as performing stand-up in front of an audience?

Well, it's fulfilling, but it's fulfilling in a different way. They're completely different forms of communication. In The Nerdist podcast, we're conversational, and we don't go out of our way to craft jokes in the podcast. There isn't a live audience for most of the podcast; although we do live shows every once in a while. But stand-up is just you and the audience. And you have jokes that you've written: some of them are going to work, some of them may not. If they don't, you've gotta figure out how to make them work really fast. They're completely different but both satisfying.

What advice would you give to a young, aspiring comedian who's trying to start his or her career?

We talk about this on the podcast a lot. There's not really any advice other than "you have to start performing." You can't even give someone advice until they've been on stage a bunch of times. It's not anything that you have to prepare for six months to do. You just get up and start doing it. That's how you figure it out. There's no fast track way. There's no real way to prepare for it because it's unlike anything else you've ever done. Find open mics in your area, go to open mics, get up on stage as much as possible. When you've been performing for a few months, then you can kind of take stock and figure out where you're at and what you seem to be gravitating towards. It's really about getting onstage and being comfortable talking in front of people.

Can you tell me about what it was like working on "Trashed," the MTV game show you hosted in 1994? I mean, what was it like working with Brian Posehn and David Cross back then, both of whom would later go on to do "Mr. Show," among other awesome things?

Yeah. Doug Benson worked on that show, Janeane Garofalo did stuff on the show, Steve Higgins—who was the head writer for "SNL" and who's the announcer on the Fallon show, Joel Hodgson from "Mystery Science Theater 3000"... It was an insane group of people to work with as my first job. All I can remember is not really knowing what I was doing. I was shouting a lot because I thought being louder was more entertaining. We were all young comedian types trying to figure it out, but it was such an amazing group of people, and at the same time, the people in that cast were in this sort of parallel alternative comedy scene that had just migrated from San Francisco down to L.A. That was the group that sort of spawned the David Crosses and Patton Oswalts of the world. When I look back on it, it's not like anyone was going, "We're all a part of this scene that's gonna ultimately yield a bunch of delicious comedy fruit!" They were just like-minded comics who weren't getting stage time at the clubs and made their own thing happen. It was great for me. I was right out of college and I was working on MTV. It was a weird, fun experience.

You know, "Trashed," I thought, was going to be a big hit show. It was fun, and I thought, "Of course people are going to watch this fun show!" And no one really watched it. So it went away pretty quickly. So when they offered me the job hosting "Singled Out," what I had learned was that, well, shows get cancelled right away. I was not mentally prepared for that show to be successful at all. It wasn't until three seasons in that I finally thought, "Oh, maybe it is doing OK." I don't know; I guess it was the right show at the right time with the right age group, you know? I'm sure the show would be ridiculous and tame by today's standards. At the time, there really wasn't anything else like it. I don't know why it resonated so much with people in a certain age group. But now, if I meet people who were between the ages of 13 and 24 when that show was on the air, those people still remember it.

Nerd culture seems to be reigning right now; Comic-Cons and superhero movies are really huge franchises. What are some of the more under-the-radar things in nerd culture that you're into right now?

Every year, we do a stand-up comedy special on the podcast—an episode where it's maybe comedians that people haven't heard of yet—just because I was so influenced by comedy specials when I was growing up. That's a good place to start with under-the-radar comedians. There are some British sci-fi shows that I really like. There's this show "The Misfits" that's really fun. Um, "The Fades," premiering on BBC America right before "The Nerdist." I'm a huge "Doctor Who" fan; that seems to have caught on quite a bit in the States, which is good. I always go to Reddit.com; maybe that's more like memes and nerd silliness.

I guess Reddit is a pretty good source for up-and-coming stuff. I mean, that's where these really strange memes come from, like Goths Up Trees.

Yeah, so many things come out of Reddit. It really is a petri dish of memes. It's sort of a playground. I'm really liking Google Plus; I've been using that. Obviously, I'm still on Facebook and Twitter. I still have a MySpace account—it's like an abandoned mining town. All the windows on my profile are probably broken and shuttered. A bunch of graffiti. There's probably a hobo sleeping bag in there that's covered in cobwebs. Google Plus, it's really just a good microblogging service. And now, since Nerdist.com has become more of a website that's not necessarily about me anymore, I wouldn't really put silly, personal things on there. Like, I was in Portland over the holidays, and I passed by this old store, and there was this big sign that said that they were selling cat stickers. So I took a picture of it, and it wasn't really appropriate for Nerdist.com because it's not really a story. It's really more of a Tumblr thing; I have a Tumblr account, I don't use it. But it's perfect for Google Plus. I can put the picture on there, it's in the stream, I can write a little story about where I was and share that. So I feel like it's a cleaner version of Facebook right now.

So, at the moment, you're juggling a ton of things: you're hosting "The Nerdist," you're hosting "Web Soup," you write for Wired, you wrote a book. Is there anything that's still on your comedian or nerd bucket list?

Oh, yeah. There's a ton of things. The whole Nerdist Industries thing that we're building is like a game of SimCity. I want to see how we can grow it and expand it. That's all exciting to me. Now I've partnered with a guy named Peter Levin, who's great. We have this premium YouTube channel. We're doing a bunch of great stuff at Comic-Con. And we have a live theatre space where we do a lot of shows in L.A. It's not like we're going to go start a Nerdist steakhouse or anything; everything is related in some way. It's realizing, "Oh, we have a podcast network! Well, we have a live theater space where they can perform and record shows and do comedy shows and stand-up! And, oh, those podcasts can be developed into television shows!" So everything is complementary. So as far as a bucket list... Oh, I'll tell you something that's on the nerd bucket list: a glass dome underwater lair. I think if Nerdist Industries could be in a glass dome on the ocean floor somewhere, then that would be a big one for me.


Interview condensed, edited and lightly reordered.


Grace Bello is a freelance writer based in New York. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic and on McSweeney's.

Photo by Gilles Mingasson/BBC America.

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Oh right. Scott Thompson. And Graham Chapman, of Monty Python. These two might prove a comedy "rule" that gays are often funny when in groups of straight people. Or when they are English: Stephen K. Amos, Simon Amstell, Matt Lucas, Julian Clary, Paul O'Grady. And Kenny Everett and Frankie Howerd and Kenneth Williams, RIP! Or when they are of an English province: Trey Anthony, say, from Canada. And Tommy Sexton. And I guess Trevor Boris counts! Then there's... oh, Dave Rubin!

There's a pretty equal number of ladies, of course. Don't ever confuse Judy Gold and Julie Goldman. (Jews! I know!) Also don't confuse Wanda Sykes, Elvira Kurt and René Hicks. That's racist. (I'm kidding, it's not. See what I did there?) Margaret Cho still counts. Also I will namedrop Alec Mapa in the interests of diversity!

Of the greats, you have Rip Taylor and Lily Tomlin. And more, hmm... I guess Eddie Murphy, if you count those who may prefer our sexual partners to be in that wonderful middle ground between gender norms. And Andy Dick counts. (There is such a thing as bisexuality!)

But now. Think of the least funny people you know: Susan Sontag, Bret Easton Ellis and Jeffrey Dahmer. All gay. All devoutly unhumorous. Why aren't gay people funny?

Nature
They're not funny from birth. Like, genetically. (I think that was the plot of Gattaca.)

Nurture
Their parents raised them to not be funny.

And that's it.

Oh.

Well, there's one possibility we can't discount. Let's call it the Tina Fey thesis.

The Tina Fey Thesis
So you know how ladies are treated kind of as a sidebar in comedy? Or as a flavor? (Like the way the blacks are treated in the visual arts world. Like, "Oh look, Mark Bradford can hold a paintbrush!" Not like, "Oh look at this awesome painting," period, the end. Yeah, sorry, pet peeve.) Well, the ladies are taking up "all" the space. (By "all" I mean the 22% remaining space not taken by straight men.) They are the flavor. Who needs gay flavor when you have lady flavor?

Plus most of the straight men in comedy want to have sex with the ladies, though some of them aren't so picky. As you know!

Meanwhile, straight guys think the lady-gay pact is out to get them. Why did Nick Di Paolo finally just get his first one-hour Showtime special? "Because the people in the industry are dumb fucks. They’re too busy looking for, you know, for the next funny chick or funny gay guy. I’m just another white guy in the mix."

Oh, that's why. (Wait, no it is not. It's actually because Tim Allen was finally too busy and/or dead.) But I do believe that he believes this.

But the gays also did this to themselves.

So right: women in comedy were choosing between being in a boy's club or doing comedy about being a lady, and sometimes doing both. The gays had less of an option of being in a boy's club, so quite frequently they did comedy about being gay, so as to build an audience, but also, regarding which, zzz. Ellen's sort of an exception, but not totally: it was all subtext. (The shoulder pads mostly.) Gay comics hit a ceiling because, um, even gay-topic comedy gets boring to (fickle) gays soon. And it certainly doesn't interest straight people.

Mmm, message comedy. God bless! So with the gays in this box—which was a profitable box for some of them!—there was nowhere to integrate. They weren't going to shame their way into writer's rooms for sitcoms, weren't going to do that well in TV in general. (They do so-so, to be fair. I mean, "Will and Grace" exec producer Max Mutchnick is back with "Shit My Dad Says"! That's... grreaat. Enjoy.)

So now women are busily on a militant task force to take over comedy, while they are sucking all the gay air out of the room inadvertently. (We should all demand more pieces of a smaller pie, not a bigger pie!) It's very, very violent, this struggle. They started with equal space on Chelsea Handler's show ("lucky them") and they will next launch an assault on, I dunno, Craig Ferguson or something.

But eventually the women will bring some gays with them. Because all women are equally nurturing and fair-minded. That will be in the year 2035. Then we will know the truth about whether gays can actually make with the funny.

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After the first time I watched The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad, I aped the dialogue like a crushed-out teen with love song lyrics. I contend that the star-studded booth of broadcasters was some of the best satire ever on sports and broadcasting. The baseball scene introduced me to the sustainably absurd. One evening, in the din of M*A*S*H reruns with my dad, we stumbled upon HBO replay value we’d never known. I didn’t understand the brilliance of a full-body condom at the time, but he did. I caught the woman showering in the background of the police station. He didn’t. There was so much for both of us. The movie was everything we wanted, and it all centered on the shoulders of Leslie Nielsen.

My father went on to show me the Airplane movies, the Naked Gun sequels. Later, I saw that many others failed to feel the glee I experienced with Wrongfully Accused, Spy Hard, Repossessed, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It. I was a junkie. Nielsen's stock goofy-yet-staid facade against anarchy was addictive.

Through the years, he was less and less involved in Hollywood proper. "The studio just doesn’t get the joke though," one of the Zuckers said when Naked Gun 4 was declared never to be made, and that was a reflection on Nielsen. He'd been working for two and a half decades before Airplane!, and so he was aging and it showed. Unlike the shtick of Rodney Dangerfield (which never got old even as it got tattered), Nielsen suffered publicly without new or undiscovered material—shunted to the sidelines of the next generation of youth-oriented shtick comedy with the rise of the Scary Movie franchise. He became a ghost of TBS.

Aided by my current unemployment, today I will watch as much Nielsen as I can handle. I’ll Youtube, watch for reruns, rent, search. Between "The Simpsons" seasons 3-9, Nielsen and the occasional flash of genius this world has to offer ("Arrested Development" immediately comes to mind), there isn’t that much comic genius to go around, and you must celebrate it when you can.

Nielsen bridged gaps. His shock of silver hair and unbreakable facade created a self-selecting, non-exclusive fraternity. When people frowned at Nielsen's work, I knew they weren’t bad people: they were just misaligned. They found the obvious humor Neilsen presented detrimental to their own idea of comedy. But they were mistaking the art for the artist.

The money quote there from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (about a minute in): “I definitely don’t think they are crazy, I just think they have a justifiable grudge against a lot of the B.S. we see in the world.” (If you watch all three parts of the making of Naked Gun 2 ½), you see how serious the labors were that Nielsen performed for comedy.) Abdul-Jabbar was talking about the directors, and that was why Nielsen was their avatar. In part three of the Cinemax special, Nielsen says of himself and his own "serious" movie-making history, in which he briefly was a romantic lead, a potential box office commodity: “The expectation of myself, I really think that followed me all my life. Now I can be as dumb and as stupid as I want.”

Their dumb and stupid work together presented an opposing view to the plot-driven “Animal House” or “Blues Brothers” line of comedy. Where those comedies relied on real-life absurdity, situational comedy, Airplane and Naked Gun supplied an absolute zero, of sorts, for comedy lovers. Nielsen was cartoonish and garrulous while keeping his character in place. In opposition to that line—Belushi’s overpowering scenes, Farley’s lovableness, Ferrell’s character-acting, Carrey’s overacting—Nielsen nursed the scenes through their conclusion. Whether falling down stairs or telling a woman he loved her, he was in control by proxy.

Still hanging on the wall of my old Astoria apartment is the yellowed Village Voice obit for Richard Pryor. Now here in my North Carolina apartment, I'll put up Nielsen’s, and I’ll persevere the way I always do in times of tragedy. I have even prepared a statement in case anyone asks me how I'm dealing with Nielsen’s death: “I just think about baseball.” This is just one more terribly austere situation; how can you not laugh?

Jeff Laughlin is the editor of 10 Listens and is finishing a new book of poetry called “Alcoholics Are Sick People."

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