Comedian, podcast host, and national bestselling author Moshe Kasher is coming to Spokane.
He's performing two shows each on Jan. 10 and 11 at the Spokane Comedy Club.
He spoke with SPR’s Owen Henderson about his life and work before his shows.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OWEN HENDERSON: So you've got a book that came out last year, Subculture Vulture, about some of the major forces that shaped who you are today. Walk me through some of those.
MOSHE KASHER: It's basically a memoir in six scenes. It's about the six different worlds that kind of created who I am. And those worlds are AA and the 12 steps. I got sober when I was 15 years old.
And then my next world was a very logical step from a drug and alcohol addiction recovery, which is that I started throwing, promoting and DJing raves in the 90s in San Francisco — all good sober kids need to end up in all-night warehouse parties.
The next world is the world of Burning Man. Last year was my 24th time there, and I worked there for over 15 years.
And then the world that I hope the people of Spokane will share with me this weekend, the world of stand-up comedy.
And then there are the two worlds that I was sort of born into. That's the world of deafness and sign language interpreting. All my family's deaf, my brothers, my half-sister, my uncle's father, mother, everybody deaf, except for me and my brother. And I became a sign language interpreter for 15 years, and it was the last job I did before comedy. I'll be telling that story this weekend.
And then finally the world of the Hasidic Jews. My dad became a kind of “born again” Hasidic Jew after my parents split. And I was a fully secular kid in public schools in Oakland, Calif., but my dad won visitation rights.
And I would fly back to Brooklyn in the summer to basically cosplay as Tevye, the milkman, for six weeks a year. And that's all of them. That's the whole book.
Each one of them gets like a little history, a little comedy, and a little bit of a memoir about my time in those universes. So we're going to touch on a few of those.
OH: I'm very curious how growing up in deaf culture influenced your comic sensibilities.
MK: Well, that's interesting. I definitely — it taught me a lot about facial expressions and mugging. I'm not exactly sure.
People sometimes have seen me subconsciously signing while I'm on stage. I don't even really notice that I'm doing it, but a certain hand gesture will become more akin to a sign.
But, you know, I think more than anything, being a part of all of these little weird worlds — and, you know, I always say like being born hearing in a deaf family is kind of like being born white in Wakanda. You know, it's like, you're welcome. You're a citizen of the community, but you're also kind of a member of the outsider.
So I think being an outsider and being a comedian, well, those things go together really neatly.
OH: As a kid, who were the funny people in your life? Who were the people that made you go, ‘Oh, I can do that too.’
MK: Well, I will tell you truly, you're asking me if deafness helped me hone my comedic sensibility, and in some ways, definitely. And being a Jew and culturally really in that world definitely helped.
My grandfather was a Yiddish novelist. My great grandfather was an old world Yiddish comedian and actor performer on Vaudeville but the truth is, the real thing that made me funny, I feel like, — or figure out that I was funny — was going to Oakland Public Schools and being one of the only white kids there.
It was kind of a social “sink or swim” situation. And you could either be ignored, be picked on or be funny.
And I chose option three, and that got you noticed and that got you respect and attention. So I would say my first, my internship in standup comedy was grades one through 12 in the Oakland Public School system of the nineties.
OH: Your wife, Natasha Leggero is also a comedian and the two of you host a podcast together as two people who already work in entertainment. How do you navigate mixing that personal relationship and then this thing that is work?
MK: You know, it's really difficult. I would say long weekends on the road for both of us really help give us the oxygen in our relationship. Because then we're always kind of in a state of missing each other, but yeah, we do "The Endless Honeymoon Podcast."
And I think part of what that is — it's a relationship advice podcast. People call in, we have live callers and then people also leave their deep, dark secrets on the secrets hotline that we've got.
And talking to other people about their love and their struggle with love and their struggle with their relationships and the struggle to find people or stay with people that they're with — I think that helps us shine a little bit of oxygen into our own relationship.
And you know, I'm lucky that I am married to a comedic genius and I get to have such an awesome partner in crime. So I'm pretty lucky.
OH: Do you guys as partners work on your bits with each other or is that kind of a line that you go, ‘No, that's work stuff. We're just going to be each other's partners right now.’
MK: No, a thousand percent we do. And it's not uncommon for one or both of us to get off stage and check our phone and have a list of notes from the other person.
I would say the bulk of Natasha's act these days is about what an ADHD adult slob I am and how difficult it is to live with me. And so that is a little bit more difficult to punch up at the end of her set — to be like, ‘You know, when you were calling me a repulsive pig, I feel like there's a sharper turn of phrase that you could operate with there that would really send this joke home.’
But you know what, my duty as a husband comes first and as a comedian comes first too. So I still give the notes.
OH: As a comedian, you don't shy away from religion at all. How do audiences often react to that? Do you find you need to ease them into the material?
MK: Well, I think, you know, things have become a lot more divisive in a thousand different ways over the last, you know, eight to 10 years.
And the rule of comedy hasn't really changed much. It's like: funny is funny. And if you're — if you find a way to be funny enough, people want to be welcomed into your world.
Even if it's a world they're not necessarily comfortable or familiar with, people want to be invited into a specific world, a specific universe, a specific point of view.
So like, I don't know, I found in the broader world, in the online world, in the regular world, as we say in Burning Man culture, in the default world, a lot more tension than I have found on stage at comedy clubs, because people are there to laugh first and foremost. And if the stuff's funny enough, then I feel like everybody has a good time.
What I'm grateful for, what I've realized more and more through the book, because the book is all about these different sets of people, of weirdos and freaks and outsiders, that I was lucky enough to stumble into the universe with them.
And there are these really disparate worlds that don't fit together, except in me. And I realized, I love people, weirdly, because I don't know if you've been checking out people the last few years, but they’re really starting to curdle a little bit — just people in general.
But groups are awful; people are cool. And what I really want to do is keep staying on stage and doing stand up and meeting people.
I do a lot of interaction in my shows, a lot of crowd work, it's a big part of who I am as a performer. And I still find the people that I meet to be fascinating and awesome and hilarious.
And I still love making people laugh, and I still love laughing. So I'm going to keep laughing, I guess.
