Moses Storm on his journey from Doomsday cult to comedy success

In first time he stood up special White trash, comedian Moses Storm describes himself as “from the dump to HBO Max.” But as he explains in this week’s episode of The Last Laugh Podcast, his real story is even darker, which makes the possibility of finding a lot of humor in it all the more remarkable.

During our chat, Storm shared that comedy has become the only way out of extreme poverty and why he backed off when privileged audiences tried to tell him that It’s annoying to use the word “homeless”. He also revealed how The late Bob Saget finally appeared in his new special, how Conan O’Brien changed his life overnight, and more.

When I asked Storm how he was feeling just days before his big premiere on HBO Max this Thursday, January 20, he readily admitted that he was “remarkably worried.” shy”. He wished he was one of those people who were too cool to care if people liked his work, but instead told me, “I care a lot and want people to like this work. a lot and really hope that people will watch it.”

White trash was a big deal for the 31-year-old comedian, who grew up “below the poverty line”, traveling across the country in a remodeled Greyhound bus with his parents and five siblings. , spread around the street corners about the apocalypse.

They’re basically an “apocalyptic cult,” though he’s hesitant to use that word, because cult is “something that succeeds, where people get fooled, but we’ve met a lot of trouble getting people to sign up.” There were times when Storm even felt “legitimately jealous” of the media attention to Westboro Baptist Baptist Church, which he later understood to be a rife “hate group”.

During the beginning of the special, Storm admitted that he doesn’t necessarily look like someone who grew up poor. “I look like I was conceived at the Ivy League a cappella concert,” he joked at one point, tacitly testing his white privilege. “It’s harder for some people who don’t look like this,” he told me, noting that he has managed to “cross over” his path to a successful career in show business. despite never going to actual school or learning to read and write until late teens.

Growing up, Storm always made his siblings laugh, but he never considered comedy could be a career one day because, as he puts it, he “believed that The world will end 46 minutes from now.”

“I was thinking, God is going to wipe out the Earth, so it doesn’t matter!” he recalls. It wasn’t until he got a job at a grocery store at 16 and shared his story with a female co-worker he liked that his world fell apart. “Just seeing my story emerge from a rational person, it clears everything up,” he said. “It’s a deprogramming.”

“Then, how do I get out of this? What am I going to do?” Storm recalls asking himself, “I can barely read or write. I have almost no social skills.” He tried to get a job at Taco Bell, but he misspelled too many words on his application and didn’t get hired, so he started doing stand-ups in front of open mics because that was really “the only thing” best” he could do to shave himself in Los Angeles.

In the end, he decided that “making money” from his pain while laughing was the only way he would avoid going through minimum wage forever and break the cycle of “generational poverty” that he He felt he had to suffer forever. Showing all of that in the new special is a way not only to get his parents forgiving but also towards a place where he can find a way to be funny without “blaming the crowd.” winter”.

His excessive sharing of his dark realities on stage led to some awkward moments with audiences, such as the woman who came up to him after a performance and told him he She should stop using the word “homeless” because it is considered offensive.

“I’m not one of those anti-PC comedians who are middle aged and have a particular show, like ‘Multiple Triggers?’,” he told me. If someone says, ‘Hey, this word hurts my feelings, so could you not say it?’ Then yeah, that’s it. You learn new words all the time.”

But when “someone from the privileged” did not share his experience “condescending” with him by saying he should use the word “unauthorized” instead of “homeless,” he said. We were immediately disqualified. “When you’re on the street, you want a roof, you want security, you don’t want a fun new name,” he said.

Listen to the episode now and subscribe to ‘The Last Laugh’ above Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Stitchers, Amazon Musicor wherever you get your podcast and be the first to hear new episodes as they’re released every Tuesday.