THE THIS IS NOT HAPPENING CREATOR DISCUSSES WEED PARANOIA, SOCIETY’S SENSITIVITY AND THE INFAMOUS “KOBE TWEET.”

COMEDIAN ARI SHAFFIR IS READY to be back on the road. After a long COVID hibernation, the host of the popular podcast Skeptic Tank is happy to be back to touring and performing mainstream, dark stand-up. “Getting laughs where there shouldn’t be—that’s the fun stuff.”

When we connected by phone, the star of Netflix’s comedy special Ari Shaffir: Double Negative was eager to share his path through comedy, providing a thorough overview of his journey from Orthodox Jew to world-touring comedian. It’s a unique timeline from one of the more unique voices in the stand-up, and over the course of our conversation, Shaffir provided an intriguing perspective on everything from mushroom trips to negative weed spirals to the joys of giving compliments and everything in-between.

We understand you grew up going to Yeshiva. Did you have any comedy aspirations at that point in your life or did those come later as you navigated your path?

I didn’t have any of that back then. I used to like stand-up, but we didn’t even have cable. Occasionally on a Saturday night there was a Live from the Laugh Factory show, and once in a while, The Tonight Show. That’s pretty much all the stand-up I saw. I liked it a lot, I hella liked it, but comedy wasn’t even a thought.

Was there a specific moment or experience where you remember thinking, “Oh my God, people do this (comedy) for a living. I, too, can pursue it.”

I tried stand-up once at an open mic in northern Virginia or something, but there still wasn’t a thought that I could do it for a living. Even after college I was like, “Let me go to Los Angeles to be a stand-up.” It wasn’t even in terms of making money, I just wanted to get better at it.

So, at the time you’re saying it was more of an interest.

I was a year or two into stand-up, and I liked the idea of going on the road. So that was the goal. I was like, “Maybe I can get a road gig,” but not pay any sort of rent off of it. I wanted to have a job to pay bills, but none of my jobs I wanted to be a career. You just had to do something for money. And most of all, I didn’t want to get a job. I didn’t want some dumb job. That’s mostly what it was. Like, “Let me do something in the meantime.” It wasn’t so much pursuing comedy as it was running away from not comedy.

What was the moment when running away from having a job intersected with performing comedy?

I booked a commercial, which is sort of a low-level Hollywood job. Low-level Los Angeles comics do different things [for work] than [low-level] New York comics.