Journalism is not standup comedy. We’re not in the same world.

So what do you think your responsibility is?

My responsibility is to make you laugh. And, if I’m being malicious, people know. People know if you mean it or not. So what people did—you people, you journalists, for a while there, and not even because you gave a fuck, just because it was the hot story—all of a sudden, you’d finish your act, and somebody’d be, like, “I want to talk to you about some of the statements you made.” “Statements? I was up there telling jokes.”

One of the great things about standup comedy is the freedom and the irreverence of it. I’m not saying that it can’t be done in the wrong way. I’m not saying that there’s never been a racist person onstage doing jokes, somebody ignorant. There’s that in every business. But what they were doing is they were using that to try to shape the art form. Liberals were doing that, trying to control the fucking art form. And liberal comedians who sucked were then using that as a way to try to get more clicks and elevate themselves.

I’ve had people who’ve said fucked-up shit about me on the internet, and then they come up to me—“Hey, Bill, how’s your family?” And I want to be, like, “You don’t give a fuck about my family.” But I can’t, because they’re a white woman, so I can’t say anything because, Oh, my God, when a white woman complains, people fucking listen. So I’m just cordial. And those are liberals, dude.

Are we only going to talk about this? Because I don’t want to be like this political-ideology guy.

No, no, that’s fine. [At this point, I tapped the screen of my phone to make sure that it was still recording, and my lock screen lit up: a photo of my two young children.]

That’s life right there, man. You’ve got two kids?

Yep.

What do you got?

Two boys. So far.

Oh, that’s awesome. [Burr lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles, but during the run of “Glengarry” they’ve spent long stretches of time apart.] That has been the hardest thing about doing this play.

I’ve done a lot of work on myself with all of this alone time. I’ve really been on this mission to get rid of my hair-trigger temper, which, I found out, comes from all the pain in your childhood. So especially with my wife, like, I have a thing that when somebody disagrees with me, I go back to being a helpless child when no one was listening to me. That’s how my brain is wired. And that’s not fair to my wife, because we’re just trying to decide what restaurant to go to.

I’ve had these really deep and sometimes painful conversations, you know, because I don’t like revisiting that stuff. Who does? Who wants to go back and mulch over shit that wasn’t fun? And just because all of this bad stuff is happening right now, this heartless time that we’re in—these robber barons, these new robber barons—that doesn’t mean that you have to give in to that mentality. So I’ve really—I used to be a wallflower, and I’m not now. I’m realizing one of the things that comes with age is this great responsibility to be encouraging and to help out younger people. And I love doing it. It feels good. It gets me out of my own head.

That’s why I stopped watching the corporate news, CNN and Fox, because these people would rather win than be right. They’re just trying to win. They’re not really trying to find the solution. And that was, like, overwhelmingly depressing. So my phone was probably listening to me as I was talking about this, and all of a sudden this thing came across my Instagram feed, because I’m not reading now, and it said that the ancient Greek philosophers had these two mind-sets: there’s philosophia and philonikia. Philosophia is the love of knowledge and growth, or whatever. I get into a disagreement with you—my identity is not my opinions. So I can listen to you, respect you, and I can be swayed if what you’re saying has merit. And then philonikia is the love of victory, which is great if you’re playing sports, but not if you’re, you know, talking to your wife. Like, I don’t know how many times I’ve been in an argument with my wife or somebody, and halfway through it, I realize I’m wrong, and in my head, I’m just thinking, Dude, you’re wrong. You’re wrong. And I just won’t tap out.

But I’m finding, with my wife, that if I just stay in that—“I’m not trying to win anything here. I’m just trying to hear what you’re saying”—and I don’t raise my voice, then she comes back down again. I’ll tell you this: if you actually listen to the woman in your life, it borderline blows their mind.

So I’m trying to live right now in empathy. I have a tremendous amount of empathy for everyone, unless you’re going around hurting people. I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what your political leanings are, what music you listen to. I don’t give a shit. You’re a fellow-human and I want to vibe with you. I want to find the common ground. I don’t want to get into this arguing shit. That is how they separate you, and then they take these big oversteps. Because these guys right now doing this shit, banning these books—you think they’re gonna stop at these books? We’re going back to the Industrial Revolution now. All of these people died and got their heads kicked in so we could work, and we’re just letting them take it away. They used to have five- and six-year-olds working ten-hour days around machinery, losing fingers and stuff, and they didn’t give a fuck. Those heartless people, they’re the same heartless people today. They don’t care.

I just want to point out that you’re the one who keeps bringing up politics.

I know. I’m trying to be a man of the people. ♦