🌶️Too Spicy for Public Radio🌶️

The views expressed in the piece below are solely my own, and they should not be understood to reflect the beliefs of anyone else associated with the projects discussed. As always, I speak only for myself!

In my professional life, I’m not often one to air dirty laundry before it’s had some time to rinse out. But I’m going to make an exception with this story because I think it’s relevant to some broader cultural conversations we’vebeen having lately, and also because, frankly, I have a show to promote.

For those of you who don’t know, one of my major creative projects is producing and hosting, alongside an incredible team, the Chicago chapter of the show Mortified, a comedy podcast and live storytelling show that started in Los Angeles in 2003 and has since spread to over a dozen cities around the world. The show involves participants sharing artifacts they created in their adolescence — diaries, poems, songs, art, etc. — in front of a live audience in order to empathetically bond over the schadenfreude of growing up. The show makes the argument that all of us were little weirdos, and that maturing is tough and full of awkward moments, but when we get together and laugh at those moments as adults, we get to look back with care on the strange creatures that we were as well as celebrate with joy the cool adults we all are. I love making this show; I feel it’s one of the most meaningful things I do, and I sometimes joke that I feel like a comedy therapist, because I think people genuinely feel better after performing in the show or sometimes even just attending it. When you turn shame that used to be private into something to laugh at with a bunch of strangers, that shame feels less present. It’s pretty lovely. The folks who birthed this show were really onto something.

For the last few years, Mortified Chicago had been partnered with our local NPR affiliate, WBEZ. That partnership was an incredible boon — in audience size, in marketing capacity, in the collection of venues we were fortunate enough to get to play (Thalia Hall in particular will forever be a watershed moment for me. They gave us branded socks!!). This partnership was only one of sponsorship — WBEZ had no creative input on the show and in fact specifically said that they didn’t want any. They felt only that Mortified was a cool event to add to their stable, and we agreed.

As you may be aware, public media is currently under substantial, even existential threat from our federal government. So I guess it wasn’t the most surprising when, a few days before our last show a few weeks ago, our liaison at WBEZ called me with a directive.

“We need you to be less political in your upcoming show. We have to take a non-partisan stance,” I was told.

Apparently, something I said in my opening monologue for our prior show, in June, upset some people at the station. You can watch my remarks starting at 12:20 in the embedded video below (honestly the whole show is great, and boasts some serious talent, including Dropout’s Rekha Shankar!), but I’ll write out what I imagine is the offending joke below:

Now, I want to take a second here to say that at a show we did a few years ago, someone sent WBEZ a comment that said [in funny voice] “I don’t like when the host gets political in his introduction.” He actually sounded just like that. I just knew it.

I have news for you all – you’ve bought tickets to a show that is (A) sponsored by public radio and (B) powered by empathy. So, as Mon Mothma said, “welcome to the Resistance.”

If that joke offends you, there’s probably multiple bars streaming Newsmax or OANN up in Edison Park that you can head to right now. If you don’t get that joke, Edison Park is the first city ward since 1992 to cast a majority vote for the Republican nominee for president. And I know that because I fuckin listen to WBEZ.

I think we can all agree this is a pretty milquetoast series of bits, and also, not to toot my own horn, but if you watch the video above, you’ll hear the crowd erupt for them. This was the atmosphere in the room, in the city, that I was addressing. Back in June, among all the other shit thrown at us by the Trump administration, quiet ICE abductions had begun in Chicago, and there was a tense uncertainty in the air. By the time of our next show, on October 24, Operation Midway Blitz was in full militaristic swing, and that uncertainty turned to full-on fear.

This is, of course, the same atmosphere that WBEZ was responding to when they handed down their directive of nonpartisanship. At this point, I feel the need to hammer home the point that I was not and have never been an employee of WBEZ, nor was I even really a contractor — I was a vendor, selling a product that they purchased. Of course, companies have the freedom to choose the vendors they work with for any reason at all. But forcing a non-partisan stance on a comedy show doesn’t really sit right with me. I was riled.

I told our Music Producer and one of my best friends, Dwight, what was going on, and he acknowledged that he was pissed too, but he also correctly observed that the show is ultimately about the storytellers, not the host, so the cool thing to do would be to play ball so as to not upset the experience of the folks taking the stage and making themselves vulnerable for our show. The rest of our team agreed. And so, knowing that ultimately I’m a smartass who doesn’t like to be told what to do, I decided that the most reasonable action for me was remove myself from the position that could upset WBEZ — I stepped aside as host for this show, and asked Dwight to do it, since he understood the assignment, as they say. And we proceeded to have a killer night; one of the best shows we’ve done as a team, I think.

Ultimately, though, our adjustments weren’t enough for our partners. Whether it was the lightest of political jokes in the opening monologue (“Thanks for coming out in the middle of a war zone,” which is fucking funny and, again, taps into the feeling in the room), or my dear friend and house bandmate Katie wearing a “fuck ICE” shirt, WBEZ was not appeased. A few days after the show, they sent this email:

In other words — we are installing our people on your team, so you don’t do anything that might appear biased.

It’s also worth mentioning that this email was sent to Katie as well as myself, despite Katie not being a producer on the show — WBEZ just wanted them to know that they did a naughty thing by wearing that “fuck ICE” shirt. (Worth saying, by the way, I’m proud of Katie for wearing that shirt. I wish I had done similarly.)

At this point, let me say, I was pretty fucking livid.

Before I tell you how this resolved (if you couldn’t guess), I want to make something clear: the Trump Administration was and is illegally and violently occupying Chicago, abducting our neighbors, friends, and valued community members. You can see the videos of the raids; you can read the words of the judges who have condemned their thug tactics; you can look up the statistics that show that barely over 2.5% of the people taken had criminal records, despite the federal government’s insistence that they were only targeting “the worst of the worst” (actually, I’m just going to link to that one because Jesus Christ).

And truly, anyone the Feds didn’t like could be a target. Literally the day of our show, goons abducted the night manager of the fucking Laugh Factory, a comedy venue a mile and a half from our show’s location, for trying to intervene in another violent and illegal arrest. There were raids, tear gas, humvees, the whole deal, four blocks from our show a few hours earlier in the day. Comedians, families, law-abiding citizens — all victims of Trump’s occupation.

This is the climate that exists in Chicago while my team and I are producing a live comedy show that runs on empathy and vulnerability. And you expect me not to address it, even as part of a joke? How is that honest? What kind of connection are we making with the audience (who clearly are also all thinking about it)? What kind of art are we creating? If we’re not being truthful, what’s the point?

So I talked with my team, and we came to a consensus about the future of our relationship with WBEZ. And then, acting only as myself (but incorporating thoughts that came out of our team discussion, which I deeply appreciated), I sent the following email to Chicago Public Media (text below the paste):

To be blunt: there is no way Mortified can accept these terms. We are a show that depends on cultivating vulnerability in our performers and empathy in our audiences. How comfortable do you think folks will feel being vulnerable if their expressions are being monitored and sanitized by, to use your words, a media outlet that demands itself to appear “unbiased” and “non-partisan” -- in its comedy programming of all things?

Coming from the music world as you do, *****, I expect you know that no art is apolitical, and Mortified is a great example of this. Even the question of who our society encourages to document their adolescent feelings, of who keeps what records, involves cultural politics. How are we supposed to, for example, put on a Pride show when we’re telling the people on our stage that they can’t say anything that might appear political? During a time when just their existence has been cast as political by the people you’re bending the knee to not offend? Even the concept of empathy itself has been politicized!

“We’d never restrict lgbtq+ stories,” you might say; “that’s not what we’re talking about.” If I had told you a year ago that we would be given the edict not to say, even as part of a joke, “fuck ICE” -- fuck the people who are illegally kidnapping our neighbors and friends off our streets, and who did so blocks away on the day of our last show -- you would have said that was ridiculous. But here we are. So what happens in June if the federal government declares Pride illegal/immoral/verboten/whatever? Will you suddenly change your stance about political content, or will you decide once again not to rock the boat?

And here is the truth of it -- the people who hate you, who frothed at the mouth to take your funding away -- there’s nothing you can do to win them back. No amount of appeasement will make them happy or bring back your funding. While you equivocate and give comedians a stern talking to for wearing a bold shirt or making a very meager joke, those people are still spewing vitriol about you. And meanwhile, the Chicago community that truly needs a strong, independent journalistic outlet is being failed by a media organization who, like so many others, has lost its backbone in the face of a naked emperor.

Without question, WBEZ had been a great partner to Mortified Chicago for the last few years. But this level of content interference and censorship is simply untenable. You are of course allowed to do whatever you’d like with your programming, but so are we. So, no, we will not be moving forward with this partnership.

I sincerely hope that you both -- that all of us -- make it through these next years with our freedoms and our communities intact. And if you do make it to the other side, I hope you can give some serious consideration to what it means to be an independent journalist in a world like this. Because ultimately, journalists and comedians both need to speak truth to power. Obviously your ability to do that has been compromised. But ours will not be.

Be well.

I want to be clear here that I am not asking for adverse action against WBEZ. I don’t want to rally people against them in Mortified’s name or whatever. I meant what I said; Chicago needs independent journalism. I’d like BEZ to get their shit together and make it through this. In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying reading Block Club Chicago and The Triibe.

What I am asking for is twofold: first, to contribute to the conversation about how our institutions continue to fail us in this age of rising fascism. It’s a story we’re seeing play out again and again; you can probably think of a handful of new examples even this week. I talked to my therapist about this incident and this was his takeaway — that I shouldn’t minimize what happened to our show because it’s concrete proof of a thing we keep hearing about often abstractly, the erosion of open speech in the face of institutional fear. And yes, I understand why, on a personal level, folks who work at places like Chicago Public Media would be afraid — we’re all afraid! But as an institution, they have more power than most of us do. So when those institutions genuflect to our occupiers, they shift more of the burden of resistance and even survival onto us as individuals. It’s disappointing as fuck. I guess, as a great poet once said, “We are our only saviors.”

Second — boy, doing Mortified Chicago is going to get a little tougher in 2026, but we’re keeping on. I love this thing we create and I think our audience does too. But, it’s going to be harder to find that audience without the marketing power of Chicago Public Media behind us. My team and I are committed to this challenge, but I want to take advantage of the avenues we have available, including this one! So, with that said, tickets for our next show — our annual Doomed Valentine’s celebration — just went on sale today. Last year, we sold out Valentine’s Day at 950 seats. I’m hoping this year we can at least get close to 250 with our return to Lincoln Hall, one of my favorite independent concert venues in the city (I just saw Craig Finn there in October, and what a show!). If you live near Chicago and Mortified sounds like a fun date or anti-date night, it’d be mighty swell if you wanted to snag some tickets, or just tell a pal. We actually were able to reduce the ticket price from the last few years of shows, too, in opposition to the cost of basically everything else right now.

Ultimately, I don’t know how much difference the words and actions of me and my team have made in the immediate term, beyond adding some difficulty to our own creative process. But, like I said in my email to WBEZ, I’m not going to produce a show where our participants are censored out of fear of cruel, soulless autocrats who think empathy is a dirty word. And I hope and believe that our decision will continue to help us foster a warm, inclusive atmosphere where people embrace their vulnerability. That’s what this art is all about. Fuck the institutions who would take that from us. And, without a doubt, fuck ICE.

I need to shout out the incredible team that I’m lucky enough to work with on Mortified Chicago. I didn’t mention all of them by name above partially because I don’t want them to feel like they have to co-sign what I’m saying, but I am so appreciative of the hard and brilliant work of Mary, Marnie, Allison, Brianne, and Jeff in addition to the aforementioned Dwight and Katie.

I also wanted to note that a lot of the Mortified Chicago team, including myself, donated at least a portion of our earnings for our October show to various causes helping the immigrant population in Chicago. One I chose to give to is the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights, who does really great work. If you’re looking for folks that could use help this holiday season, they’re at the top of my list.

I did also want to give a heads up that I’ll be posting a lot this month, with some year-end wrap-ups coming, plus another installment of Main Character Energy (finally!). So I hope you like seeing me in your inbox, folks, cuz the posts they are a comin’.