Andrew Schulz Has Advice for Dems, Jews, and Comics

Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today

Each one of us has a different conception story. For some parents, it’s a romantic night out, maybe over a candlelit dinner. For others, like Bari and Nellie, it involves a trip to a fertility clinic in a mall that doesn’t even validate parking.

And of course, for some it’s a long, challenging, emotional process involving needles, hormones, and many false starts. We know a lot of our listeners, gay and straight, can relate to that.

Now, the topic of infertility often seems like the purview of a doctor’s office or a self-help book, or maybe a women’s health column. Where you might not expect to hear about it in painstaking detail is in Andrew Schulz’s new Netflix special. Schulz’s special is vulnerable, obviously funny, and a look into the taboo topic of male infertility. It’s called Life, and if you haven’t already seen it, blow off your plans tonight and watch Life instead.

Now, the last time we had Schulz on this show was three years ago. It was in the thick of the woke culture storm, and Schulz was about to release a comedy special on Amazon. But when the streamer asked him to do what a lot of people at the time were being asked to do in comedy—censor his jokes—Schulz said no. He bet on himself and released the special independently. As he tells Bari today, he ended up making five times what he would have made with Amazon.

We’ve been talking a lot on this show about the vibe shift that’s come for politics and tech. And it’s obviously come for comedy. But actually, we think you could make the argument that comedy created the vibe shift that we’re seeing in so many other parts of the culture. And perhaps that’s because comedians with podcasts have become like the Walter Cronkites of American culture. Theo Von is almost Barbara Walters at this point. And Andrew Schulz has found himself right in the thick of it.

Last October on his podcast, Schulz sat down with then-candidate Donald Trump as he was running for president, for a candid 90-minute conversation. You can imagine the type of response he got for that.

Today on Honestly, Bari asks Schulz about that interview with Trump and whether there are certain people who are beyond the pale. They talk about his difficulty conceiving, what it meant for his masculinity, and she asks about the decision to put his—and his wife’s—vulnerability on camera. And finally, she asks how to resist audience capture.