I'm Jonathan Kapart and welcome to Kapart. A Jewish man walks into a white

nationalist meeting. What could possibly go wrong? For comedian Alex Edelin,

this actually happened in 2018, and he's turned that unforgettable experience

into a hit Broadway stand-up called Just for Us.

That is now an HBO special debuting on April 6th.

In this conversation first recorded for Washington Post live on April 3rd,

Alex talks all about the special, how it came to be, how it became conversant with the times in the aftermath of

October 7th, and why the death of his best friend and work partner Adam played a role in his

decision to stop doing the just for us routine.

But we also talked about the mechanics of comedy and why he says, instead of comedy about

Jews, we should have comedy about what it means to be Jewish.

I feel like we have been sort of like ushered into this corner of like Jackie Mason like,

ere and it's just not reflective of like Jews or Judaism,

at least to me.

So I don't like it very much.

I respect Jackie Mason. Hugely, He's one of the greatest comics of the last century, but like comedy about what it means to be

something is always more interesting to me than comedy about the something because everyone

can relate to the comedy about what it means to be X.

I've already seen the special. It is, it's so funny and the ending is,

I'm not even going to give it away.

It is just...

Don't please don't.

...