>> funding for "overheard" with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and from the texas board of legal specialization. board certified attorneys in your community, experienced, respected, and tested. also, by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. and viewers like you. thank you. >> i'm evan smith, she's an author, comedian, political commentator and activist, and cocreator of of "the daily show. she's lizz winstead. >> i guess we can't fire him now. >> i guess we can't fire him

now. >> the night that i win the emmy, being on the supreme court was an improbable dream. >> it's hard work and it's controversial. >> without information there is no freedom, and it's journalists who provide that information. >> window rolls down and this guy says, hey, goes to 11. >> lizz winstead, welcome. >> thank you,. >> so nice to meet you. >> thank you. >> this is a good time to be in the political talk show business. you're a cocreator of "the daily show". getting to be almost 20 years ago. this is salad days of the whole genre of programs. do you think the show is a refreaks of the times, those kinds of shows are a reflection of the times wes live in or are the times a reflection of the successes of those shows? >> i think that when we launched the daily show in '96, we

launched with a media landscape that was, if you'll recall, it was like all of the nighttime shows were magazine shows that were literally poisoning us. terrifying us, you know, your mattress, what you don't know might kill you. it was like -- right? constant. and then there was only cnn at the time. and so it was -- it was -- it was o.j. and it was not news, per se, but it was really just info tainment that felt very all purulent. when we watched the show, we were dealing with that media landscape, and so the show evolved with the media landscape that existed, so by the time 9-11 happened, the show would become something else, and as we watched ourselves go to war, on false information and things like that, the media then, and the show itself, then, became a whole different animal, and then john took over from craig

kilgore who was the host when i was there, and he did something that i think is really brilliant, we were more like colbert at the beginning, the host of the show and all of the correspondents were in character. nobody broke. the audience had to get it. what john did was, because jon is brilliant in and of himself to put him in a character made no sense. he's just a smart guy. so he became sort of the voice of the viewer, and asking a lot of questions about the hypocrisy that we were living in surrounding himself by the correspondence who still remained, you know, kind of the dim witted correspondents. >> you mentioned that you were gone by the time jon stewart was firmly in place. you must look at the jon stewart era of "the daily show" with pride. >> of course. what i always say is it's really great to have your instincts pay off and to know that the bones

of this house were really strong. and that we -- there was a media -- there is an appetite to have people looking at the media with a jaundiced eye, not just the media makers and to watch that it was able to evolve and that jon's voice was to be able to make it grow, and then become the juggernaut that it is. a lot of times people will say did you ever expect it to become this thing that it became, and there's two answers to that, one with jon taking it over, i kind of did, but the one i never expected is that our media would become so derilect that "the daily show" could rocket. >> it's about the decline of everything else. also "the daily show" and the shows like it, coal better, these days the john oliver program is in the same category, it's become journalism, right, in some ways, it's become a news show and doing journalism that

the regular journalists are not doing. >> shame on journalism, i might say. when you fact check the shows, they check out, and there is no need -- there is so much 24 hour news, some times when you watch it or when i watch it, i shouldn't say you, but when i watch it is the goal here to be first rather than right? because that's not helpful really to an electorate that really needs some information, you know, something gets spewed out there so that -- in an effort to be first and then it's wrong and then it perpetuates and then it gets tweeted and retweeted and all of a sudden there's inaccuracies, the jeannie is out of the bottle, and you can't put it back in sometimes. you end up saying, that isn't true. i'm sure we have parents who forward us crazy e-mails from their crazy friends, you know, barack obama was born -- where was he born now? >> well, the phenomenon is

absolutely the case, and that's -- it's great. these shows, the group of them, not to paint with one brush, but they all tend to be more liberal or they come across as more liberal politically, for a long time, as you know, talk radio is very conservative. air america which you were involved with cofounding is attempt to put some balance on the scale. >> yep. >> but this genre of talk show has largely been more liberal-leaning, it seems, is there a reason for that. >> if you fact check the daily show, it comes out accurate, and if it's liberal-leaning, one could deduce that if you're liberal-leaning, you're spewing out the facts. >> okay. >> i'm just saying, you could say that! [ laughter and applause ] >> you're welcome, i set that up pretty well. could a conservative version of one of these shows, you know, there haven't been any people who attempted. dennis miller has attempted, right? >> i would suggest all of you to

go back and look at the fox news attempt at about -- in 2007 or eight they tried a 12 episode show. >> didn't work. >> not at all. i think there's something to be said for the political philosophy of looking -- i mean it's mine and i think if you look at sort of all of these shows, it's -- if you look at somebody, who has been given the gift of power. >> right. >> and they use it stupidly, or they use it to manipulate the greater good, those should be your targets, right? so if you look at conservatism as a whole, which is like stay the course, you know, there's not a whole lot of like, let's open up our minds and look at this, like this seems to be working, this is our philosophy, it's -- we believe in, you know, faith and family and this, and the faith is christianity, and that doesn't expand too much, and the family is, you know,

straight, secular, husband-wife, traditional family instead of family means a lot of things, and so when you stick with the rigidity, it's kind of hard to then be like, hey, good news for the big guy, you know, that doesn't really resonate so well. >> but these shows, stewart, for instance, have come after people like barack obama, hillary clinton, they're bipartisan. >> if you're a political person who came up through the system, i think the party shouldn't matter. when there's so much money in politics now, and corporations are now people, you know, democrats and republicans alike -- >> doesn't matter, it's a target rich environment. >> it's a target-rich environment, you know, as we sit here and speak, drum beats to war are being -- are being, you know, beaten by democratic president, and, you know, there's -- if you're not targeting barack obama and hillary clinton and the democratic party as a whole, you're not doing your job as a

satirist, like that is just the bottom line, these are people running our lives. we are the lens with which we can take in information, spew it out with a little bit of humor, a little bit of outrage, and a lot of questions. i think that is what is fun about being a comedian who talks about the issues of the day is i have the same questions everybody else has, i just spend more time doing research sometimes because a lot of people are working. folks got to do to their jobs. >> and you have a venue, also, that a lot of regular people don't have to ask these questions publicly. why didn't air america radio which may have been ahead of its time attempting to do what has been accomplished on cable programs, air america radio is a version of what you see now with stewart and colbert and all of that. >> there's a documentary why it didn't work, in that we had people funding it who were not very honest. >> it was all about the business model. >> it was about the business model, when you look at the core team that was on air, mark merri

has a -- rachel mad dough is rachel mad dough, so there was a really strong group of people who were doing a real service, the statistics in talk radio are kind of staggering. there's 90 some%, i think it's 93, but i'm not for sure, but it's between 93 and 95% of all talk radio is conservative. >> is conservative, right. >> it's astounding. and so to try to fill that little niche with just some other information it's pretty tough. >> well, you either have a supply problem in that there's just not nearly enough of the counter balance to that. >> right. >> or you have a demand problem in that maybe the radio office as it's constituted doesn't want to hear that stuff. tv has been the reverse in the sense that the late night cable shows have been the opposites of the rush limbaughs and the glenn becks. >> it's advertiser supported, so when you look at we would get

advertiser blow back because we would be supportive of abortion rights or marriage equality. >> right. >> opinions that are -- that we believe are based in fact, and just humanity, but -- and advertisers would be like, no, we won't advertise on something that believes that, but they would advertise all day long on like -- on a show like rush or glenn beck, where people just made up stuff. it's like, wait a minute, you're willing to sponsor a lie that feels like it's values, right? but you're not willing to sponsor something that is just the way that some people live their lives. >> chasing an audience, right. >> it's amazing what they'll support, let me come back to this question of the late night show, so you've got colbert, stewart, oliver, mahr, all men. >> yes. >> lettermen leaves, replaced by colbert. craig ferguson replaced by

james, where are the women in late night, why haven't we seen evolution on the gender end of this where women are hosting these programs. >> nobody is psyched about that. >> i just would love to know if you have a perspective on why this is. >> the short answer is maybe guys are making the decisions? i think that -- [ laughter ] i think that from some weird reason, and i honestly would like to know the answer to this myself, is that people still look at women as op -- appealing to women. our humor is not going to be wide ranging and women talk about subjects that only women like, as opposed to men who we have all watched men talk about man things and we all seem to enjoy it, and turns out that there are things that women are -- can talk about that everyone enjoys, but that is somehow just not filling the

void, and i don't understand it. >> right. >> ellen degeneres would be amazing late night, like why is that even an issue? so the pipeline of what people think people want in late night is decided often by a whole bunch of executives who -- >> happen to be men. >> who happen to be men, who also don't happen to be seeing the impact that women have apparently in the comedy landscape, you look at tina fey, kristin wigg, sarah silverman. >> there's a lot of people who would be fine and amazing at hosting late night. >> and it's not as if these women and others you haven't mentioned aren't active out in the community talking about politics, talking about many of the same things. and in fact your career has morphed i would say a little bit from being a standup comedian, being an author, being a performer to being somebody who spends the bulk of her time as an activist talking about

politics, you're specifically focused on among other things reproductive rights and women's health. can you talk about how you got to that point? >> sure, i, you know, it's funny when you see that commercial con really resonate with people, this is -- people are really listening and researching and making a difference, when they hear the stuff, and i thought, well, a comedy show is a comedy show and first and foremost a comedy show is to make people laugh, so if you want to make people laugh and then also balance that out with making people think, do a little research on their own, getting themselves a little bit more motivated, then you have to make a decision that's what you're gonna' do, so i kind of want to try to push the needle a little bit, and for me what happened was i was writing my book, and i live in brooklyn now, but i'm from minnesota, and i couldn't finish my book, i went back to minnesota in 2011 to hunker down in a winter -- this is lizz free or die. >> lizz free or die. yep. >> came out in 2012. >> yeah. so i'm -- it's the new congress

in 2011 is being sworn in, you'll remember that's the very conservative tea party congress that kind of took over, and the very first thing they proposed, and we were coming out of the financial crisis and the job, there was no job, and the first thing they proposed to do is to defund planned parenthood, the national parks and i think public media, and i was like are they performing abortions on car talk in yosemite? did something happen that i'm not aware of? [ laughter ] because maybe we should talk about that. and turns out they weren't. [ laughter ] but a precedent had been set that they were really going after reproductive health and especially, you know, planned parenthoods and smaller clinics, on a state level the defunding started happening when that failed. >> right. >> and i said, wow, i got to go back to brooklyn, maybe i'll take my two dogs and on my way

back i'll drive and do some fund raisers and so i did. and i was learning about the laws in different states and i was talking to clinicians and i was talking to patients, and it was really a desperate time, and i thought, well, state politics could not be more boring. what if i infused some humor the way funny or die does, and with some facts and got some of my comedian friends together, and we started hammering at all of these different laws. >> this was ground up as opposed to at that top down. you got personally activated. >> yeah. and i realized that the messaging to young people just wasn't hitting. and so why not bring some of their favorite comedians, like amy schumer, and sarah silverman in, and do some stuff that will resonate, have them go, i like comedy, oh, that's going on in my state, wow. i come to texas and it's like i think there's more torchys than there are places you can get an

abortion in texas. i'm not sure i'm okay with that. >> torchy's is delicious. >> it is delicious, i would like there to be a balance between health care and torchys. >> let's get to that, let's get to that. what specifically happened. roe v. wade is more than 40 years ago, the thought on this issue, settle policy, settle law, what we've seen over the last couple of years is that it's neither. >> well, i think that the big step that people didn't understand, there was roe versus wade, then something called planned parenthood versus pennsylvania. that case went before the supreme court. what the supreme court said was you can restrict access to abortion care as long as it doesn't create a quote, unquote undue burden. so i think all of us are amazed at the -- the ways undue burden has been stretched to its heights in a state like texas

with millions and millions of -- >> or arkansas or north dakota where the restrictions are being put on this procedure and the reality is that although abortion remains legal nationally in some of these states they're basically limiting access to it to the point that the legal status is irrelevant. >> and the way that they can go around, keeping, saying it's legal, okay, you can have a clinic, but in order to operate that clinic, the physician has to have admitting privileges to a hospital, but the only -- within a 30-mile radius, well, every hospital in your 30-mile radius, might be a hospital that has a religious affiliation, or, and this is the one that really gets me, our tax dollar, we voted to not have our tax dollars fund abortion care, let's say, and you have a public hospital, if somebody were to go to the clinic and need to get admitting privileges from the public hospital, we won't -- it's not legal to pay for that procedure, because the public hospital, it's against the law to have public funds go -- it's a whole mess that they got to

sort of implement, and with all of these loopholes that make it really inaccessible, and for me, i -- i feel like we have dealt with a lot of shame and stigma around women needing health care, and instead of using medical books, we're using religious books and we're not looking at individual cases of why people need to have even birth control, you know, now we have hobby lobby and it's like that's not even about abortion care, that's about birth control, and they say it's because hobby lobby is a craft store that has a religious viewpoint, which i didn't know that craft stores were also churches. i thought they sold extent sills -- >> but of course the owner ship of the store is saying we have a religious point of view. yes, i hear everything you're saying, this is an issue for a long time has been difficult to solve politically. there's a lot of division politically on this, ultimately

politics is preceded by elections, in a lot of places where these issues are coming up, you might say that one way to change this is to change the people in office, so how do you get people -- how do you get -- if that's your perspective, how do you get people to turn out and advocate for the position that you're taking and ultimately change leadership. >> well, my goal with this sort of -- i've started an organization called lady parts justice -- >> you can say that on public television, that's fine. >> what we're trying to do is getting -- part of it is that people don't know the assault is so great and that it's coming on a state level, oregon is the only state that has not done some sort of curbing of reproductive health care law since row v. wade. it's kind of amazing, so if we can get people to understand that it's happening, because ten million more women than men voted in the last general, the big last presidential election. if we can get them to understand

this is happening, especially on a state level where you can make a difference, somebody is not political at all, they're going to be introduced to it for the first time, hey, this is happening, it's happening in your state, that guy that represents you is kind of a creep, turns out. [ laughter ] then people like, whoa, really? so what we're doing is we have started this year, september 27th, which will be before this airs, national day of action, where there's concerts and house parties going on all over the place. in the country, the concerts with medians, musicians, poets, cocktails, having a lot of fun and then talking about what's on the ballot in their state, and nine times out of ten it's women and not in a good way. so if we can get people to attend these house parties, interact with our website to learn about the laws in their state, gather with their friends to say i kind of want to get rid of that guy, i want to make the

commitment to get ten friends to go vote or whatever it is. we can kind of have this annual, basically the way the lgb. the community, we want women to start gathering in the late fall right before the election to say, hey, let's remind people what's at stake, there's an election every year, let's have some wine, let's have some fun. old fashioned political activism. we're sitting around going what are we going to do tonight? how about make some trouble? >> well, that would be one option. >> yeah. >> right. we have a couple of minutes left, lizz, you mention oud were from minnesota. oh, i sure am. >> this is a state that produced both al franken and michelle bachmann, explain that and help us understand the roots of your own issues going back to when you were growing up. >> it's funny, my dad is from philadelphia, mississippi, hot bed of liberalism.

my mom is from win sew at that, they met in world war ii in washington, d.c., my dad literally up until the day he died would go to the local cbs affiliate and bitch about hue bert humphrey and he died in 2005. >> a little longer than humphrey. >> yeah. so it's just as my father said to me, which is great, we have a very -- i'm youngest of five kids, catholic, again, that was in minnesota the lutheran police state, okay, we are the oppressed ones. so my dad was funny, my mom was funny, and my dad said, dang it, lizz, i raised you to have an opinion and i forgot to tell you it was supposed to be mine. [ laughter ] >> that happens. >> that happens, so the michelle bachmann thing happens and we're all wondering, we still all wonder, you know, it's a little bit -- it's a little bit odd, but minnesota is a funny thing,

because we passed marriage equality a couple of years ago, and i went back to door knock, this sums up minnesota to me in a nutshell. i went to a neighborhood that was working class neighborhood, a little bit of like some people for it, some people against it, so house to house you didn't know if you were going to get somebody who was for it or against it. so i knock on a door and a woman opens up, she goes, oh, hi, come on in. i walk in, so why are you here? maybe you should have asked me before you let me in, but okay. it's minnesota, it's how we roll. i'm here to talk to you about amendment 2, how you feel about it, this was the marriage amendment. she goes, oh, you know, i just -- i don't know, i feel real -- i feel real confused. i said, well, you know, can i help you. she said, well, here is my deal. i don't know that i'm okay with two guys getting married, but i don't want to be a jerk about it. [ laughter ] >> that sums up a lot of people.

>> it does. and, you know, if everybody could just kind of go with that flow, right. >> you were good with that. >> i was like, you know, exactly, so maybe just sit this one out. you're not sure, you know, if america would just say maybe i don't like this but i don't want to be a jerk about it. >> there's a political philosophy that can apply actually across the board. >> yeah. [ cheering and applause ] >> i think that's a very smart idea. >> i agree. >> wouldn't life be better -- i appreciate you making time to be here with us. >> thanks for having me. >> fun to visit with you, lizz winstead. good luck with everything you're doing. >> we'd love to have you join us in the studio, visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, q and a's with our audience and guests and archive of past episodes. >> if you special do things that are controversial, or edgy, you

never know when you're going to cross the line, and the line is always moving, and so because the line is always moving, you have to be confident in what you're saying so that you can defend it. >> funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation. improving the quality of life within our community. and from the texas board of legal specialization, board certified attorneys in your community. experienced, respected, and tested. also, by hillco partners. texas government affairs consultancy and its global health care consulting business unit, hillco health, and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and viewers like you. thank you.