James Adomian goads us to laugh our way through the absolute absurdity of our moment

James Adomian is a brilliant stand-up comedian, voice actor, writer and impressionist known for his work on Comedy Bang! Bang!, Last Comic Standing, and his many hilarious podcast appearances. He's also one of the funniest people in the world. Renowned for his impressions of figures like Bernie Sanders, David Attenborough, Elon Musk and Mike Lindell, Adomian's recent comedy special Path of Most Resistance showcases a remarkable range of talents, including the ability to skewer some of the central political absurdities of our time. There's a tendency to see comedy as political in a sort of surreptitious way: sneaking it past people by making them laugh. ‪@JamesAdomianXOXO‬ is a good example of this, but in our conversation he discusses the different strategies comedians take today to commit to what's historically been called "gallows humour." Do artists build trust with their audiences so that they can bring them to the gallows, or is it better to find a tactic that puts them immediately off-balance: bombarding them with the obvious perils that populate the world?In the places where Path of Most Resistance dives into these lived realities, Adomian can bring you through that peril using a dizzying array of characters. One of the things he explains is that comedy has been hamstrung by the paucity of opportunities to do real sketch comedy. The centrality of Saturday Night Live means that the sketch work that exists in its orbit really stays in the shadows, unless it buys into the lowest common denominator logics of "the algorithm."This is where James is at his most vociferous: eviscerating the "brute force" dumbing down of audiences today that are being made more vacuous by a highly resourced right populism and dog whistle politics of division and discrimination thriving on social media. One of the most fun interviews I've ever done. Hope you enjoy!

Watch Path of Most Resistance on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ5DFrdOyig