| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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Connecting Through Comedy
00:03:02
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| My guest this week is Kelly Carlin, daughter of the legendary comedian George Carlin. | ||
| Kelly is an author and a speaker whose work connects many of the dots her father's life was all about. | ||
| I've known Kelly for about four years now after connecting with her on Twitter because of how much I admired her dad. | ||
| We've become great friends. | ||
| Kelly has welcomed me into her world and the comedy community she's part of here in LA. | ||
| I thought Kelly would be the perfect guest this week, not only because of her new book about growing up as a Carlin, but also because of all the issues her father's comedy was about that have become central themes of what we do here on this show. | ||
| George Carlin was a relentless defender of free speech, using words and language to push the limits of what society found acceptable at the time. | ||
| He railed against political correctness like no other comic before or anybody since. | ||
| He dissected the absurdities of life that ultimately bring us together rather than rip | ||
| us apart. | ||
| I can't tell you how often I'm watching some campaign nonsense or some ridiculous | ||
| politically correct crusade and think, "Man, I wish George Carlin was still alive to tackle | ||
| this." | ||
| Not only do I want you to see George Carlin in a new way by sitting down with Kelly, but | ||
| I also want to use our chat as a living, breathing example of something else that's going on | ||
| As I mentioned, Kelly and I met on Twitter. | ||
| All I was to her was another person tweeting at her and 140 characters who had some connection to her father like millions of other people. | ||
| But through social media, we met, we became friends, and now we share so much of our lives and our passions together. | ||
| To me, that's what's so cool about what's happening here with you guys. | ||
| The reaction to what we're doing has gotten to a whole new level. | ||
| I've been getting emails from literally all over the world, from Denmark to Saudi Arabia to Mexico. | ||
| We're connecting because of the same ideas that George believed in, which I believe in, and which you believe in. | ||
| By the way, that doesn't mean that we agree on everything. | ||
| Actually, in almost every email I get that's heaping praise on me, you guys manage to tell me something that we disagree on. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| That's what this is all about, and it's precisely what the far right and the regressive left fear. | ||
| If the rest of us can wake up and realize that we can come together despite differences, then they can't control us. | ||
| It's really as simple as that. | ||
| The authoritarians that exist on both sides want control, and the best way to do that is to keep everyone hating on each other all the time. | ||
| For all the things that Milo Yiannopoulos and I disagreed on, this is one spot we had total agreement. | ||
| The Rise of the Cultural Libertarians is here, and it contains people from all over the cultural map, from Chris Rock to Bill Maher, from Maajid Nawaz to Sam Harris. | ||
| If George Carlin was still around, I think he would fit right in there, but would have also been sure to make fun of any group that would have accepted him as part of it. | ||
| The point of all this is that every week, actually every day that I've been doing this show, I see this movement getting stronger. | ||
| You guys are not only connecting with me, but with each other. | ||
| And now when I see the usual regressives spout off their nonsense, there's an army of people calling them out on it. | ||
| That is literally as important as anything that I do. | ||
| George Carlin's most famous routine was the seven dirty words you can't say on TV. | ||
| We live in a time that's getting dangerously close to the several dirty ideas that you can't challenge publicly. | ||