Josh Johnson is the new appointment viewing
The comedian, part storyteller and part philosopher, uses his own experiences to delve into history, politics, and pop culture.
By Shalise Manza Young
Appointment viewing no longer exists—shoutout to my fellow 1980’s babies who were always in front of the TV on Thursday night for “The Cosby Show”—but a growing number of people have Tuesdays at 9 p.m. set as a reminder in their calendars.
That’s when comedian Josh Johnson releases a new stand-up set on his YouTube channel, centered around one of the previous week’s big news stories.
That’s not an exaggeration: Most stand-ups spend months refining their material for the 60-75 minutes they’ll use on a tour, but Johnson writes a new one-hour set at least once a week, and sometimes more. This month, he did a sold out, five-night, 10-show stop in Boston and, as one YouTube commenter noted, not all those shows featured the same material.
Johnson is part storyteller and part philosopher, weaving his own memories, his reading on history, politics, and and pop culture observations into whichever topic he’s diving into that week, never not finding a way to make it funny. It’s an incredible feat.
All of it is delivered with a slight Louisiana twang (he was born and raised in Alexandria), rarely includes curse words, and increasingly features using physical comedy to great effect (his depiction of Katy Perry floating and singing Louis Armstrong on the 10-minute “space” flight she and other women took in April was gold)—and sometimes is punctuated by his own “heh-heh-heh” laugh.
And always, always, Johnson is in the same uniform: a light grey full-zip hoodie, dark-rinse jeans, and black sneakers, his long twists pulled back into an elastic, save for one that hangs in front of his left ear.
During an April show centered around the coming recession—not exactly something you’d expect to laugh about—he said this of the billionaire class:
What keeps me up at night is that these people are siphoning all of this money—they siphon it from the government, they get benefits from the government, they get tax cuts from the government, they siphon all of this money, they siphon your wealth from you. They siphon it in wages by the fact that they don’t increase, they siphon it off, like, shrinkflation, when they act like they—they cry poor and they charge you more for less.
They siphon all this money, all to what end? To have a few people have all that money. All of that money, more money than anyone will ever need in their lifetime, and you know it because they don’t spend it. They siphon all of this money out, they are literally parasitic, and then—
They dress like me!
According to Johnson, his unique approach was born, as so many things have been, because of the pandemic. During an August appearance on the “Colin & Samir” podcast, Johnson said he was slated to record a special pre-Covid with Comedy Central, and of course that was pushed back. So when he finally got the green light for the taping months later, the material he’d planned to use in the special wasn’t topical anymore.
Johnson wrote a completely new set in a week and a half.
“Once I did that that one time, I was like, ‘oh, I feel like if I can do that I should do that because it keeps everything as raw and as, like, honest and interesting as possible’,” he said.
His December set on Luigi Mangione, written and produced in less than two weeks, was on the Emmy ballot.
In recent months, Johnson has riffed on topics as disparate as the Coldplay concert kiss-cam couple, the absurdity of Jeff Bezos’ $50 million Italian wedding, why Canada will never be the 51st state, and Donald Trump’s takeover of Washington D.C.
His YouTube channel is now just shy of 2 million subscribers, and though he does have a paid option that sporadically offers additional content, nearly everything Johnson posts is free. He’s kept the cost of his live show tickets reasonable, and loathes re-sellers trying to gouge his fans: In March he refunded the cost of 900 tickets to a New Jersey show after he learned $59 tickets had been sold for $149; he did the same thing this month for a Sacramento show.
Now 35, Johnson has been a writer for “The Daily Show” since 2017, appearing on-camera as one of the show’s cast of faux-correspondents since 2024. But in July, he did a three-night stint as the show’s host, a job that has rotated between the other correspondents and a mix of celebrities since Trevor Noah left as host in 2022. Johnson’s first night was a ratings boon, on par with Monday nights, when the beloved Jon Stewart is back in the chair.
Of course Johnson is trying to make those in the crowd and his growing legion of YouTube subscribers laugh, but my favorite set, the one I might or might not have watched at least a half-dozen times, is the one he did in the days after Kendrick Lamar’s epic Super Bowl LIX halftime show. It’s funny, of course, but he explains the Black experience in America that Lamar told through the show and that Johnson has lived in a way that is thoughtful and deep with frequent moments of levity.
Though the show was in February, which, given the stream of horrors we’ve witnessed in the seven months since, feels like it was seven years ago, Johnson’s final message resonates today even more than it did then. It is only growing in significance as we see employees punished for not sufficiently mourning a man whose public commentary centered on hate and journalists fired for posting the truth.
Referencing those who believed Lamar’s performance was revolutionary vs. those who believe he hadn’t been strident enough, Johnson said:
“I can tell you this: Art can save your life. Art can absolutely save your life. I believe it from the bottom of my heart. But believe me when I tell you that entertainment will never be your salvation, alright. Art can save your life, but entertainment, entertainment by and large is escapism.
“And no one has ever escaped their chains by forgetting they were there.”
Shalise Manza Young was most recently a columnist at Yahoo Sports, focusing on the intersection of race, gender and culture in sports. The Associated Press Sports Editors named her one of the 10 best columnists in the country in 2020. She has also written for the Boston Globe and Providence Journal. Find her on Bluesky @shalisemyoung.
I'm one of those subscribers, Josh is just one of the best. It's his sense of humanity and just plain old fashioned caring. In these cockamamie times? I am so glad there is a Josh Johnson.
He's terrific. Hope he gets all the things.