Lewis Black's Rantcast

It's always good to travel internationally, as it gives the traveler the opportunity to tune out the troubles at home and embrace the local culture. And this week your host was fortunate enough to visit our neighbors to the north and perform at the Falls View Casino in Niagara Falls, Ontario. With a view of the eponymous falls, the hotel and casino complex lets the American traveler escape from th...

Summertime and the living isn't so easy. So it's time to reclaim the joy of the season and have fun, fun, fun until our collective T-Bird gets taken away, or yet more of our Constitutional freedoms are negated by radical, extremist justices who wouldn't recognize fun if you spotted them the F and the U. The warm glow of summer also gets diminished by the constant reminder that every new high tempe...

Lewis is met with another week of ridiculous news in what seems like a society that's continually going in the wrong direction. But hey! There's maybe some good news... for the people of England. Well, at least we'll get to see a possible court case when they question a fetus on the stand, huh? This week Lewis reads rants submitted from his fans and they have some really important things to get of...

Happy 4th of July! Don't we all feel super patriotic right now? Another day in America brings us another mass shooting at a parade in Chicago while we get the second opportunity to witness folks in the city of where our Declaration of Independence was signed run in fear from more gunfire as the Rocket's Red Glare fills the night sky. As if that wasn't bad enough, airlines are kicking us in the nut...

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it does. We're completely dumbfounded by the lack of leadership going on in the political spectrum right now. From new Supreme Court rulings that are about as politically motivated as can be, to an ineffective government that appears completely broken. Lewis attempts to make sense of it all. The live rants this week come from the Wind Creek Event Ce...

We are now entering the summer of our discontent and Lewis is aware of it, from the latest revelations from the conservative questioned during the ongoing January 6th Committee hearings. But there's no shortage of things to rant about from rapid inflation that continues to ask the working man to make the most sacrifices while your host doesn't have the highest of hopes for the results of the impen...

From gun control to climate change to preserving democracy, the litany of issues not being fully addressed keeps getting longer. And at a time when we desperately need to get on with ensuring a safe and sane future, the larger cultural and political forces in the country continue to stand in the way. Across the political spectrum leadership has taken a holiday, forced by a compromised electoral sy...

The 84th edition of the Rantcast is about guns and gun control and the scourge of gun violence in America and the inability of the large majority of the country to summon the political will to keep our schools, churches, supermarkets, streets, and other public gathering places from continuing to be the sites of mass death. It asks when will enough be enough. It asks how many more children have to...

In this week's episode, Lewis remembers his friend Bruce MacVittie, an accomplished stage and screen actor who passed away earlier this month. Lewis met Bruce through their work with 52nd Street Project, a community-based arts organization that brings NYC tweens and teens together with professional artists to create a variety of works of art. Aside from working with the kids, there was also some t...

In an America where almost anything jurisprudence-related – no matter how unreasonable it seems in the current context – can be justified if you can find a quote from an old, dead Englishman, it's a good time to reflect on the Bard's sentiments regarding the legal profession. Among Shakespeare's most famous locutions, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" (Henry VI, Part 2) can be in...

In this week's episode, Lewis delves into the history of May Day and why in the US we moved the celebration of labor to the end of the summer. Honoring the working class at the same time as the rest of the world was too communal an experience for our nation of rugged individualists, and it was stained by links with socialists and anarchists and by fears of association with the 1886 Haymarket Riots...

In this week's episode, Lewis pays tribute to his friend and fellow comedian Gilbert Gottfried, a foul-mouthed angel who made a career out of finding the line of taste and then crossing right over it. He revived the Aristocrats joke as a way to recover from a post-9/11 moment of comedic transgression, and could make almost anything funny, including waiter’s trays. He will be terribly missed and if...

The rubber chicken is on leave after pumping out an extraordinary quantity of eggs for Easter. And like his coworker, Lewis is also on vacation, enjoying some rounds of golf and some time away from America's work-in-progress infrastructure. The live rants come from the show in Huntington NY on April 3, 2020. The show went so well that Lewis will be back at The Paramount on May 15th to film his nex...

This week's episode comes from somewhere on I-20 near the Georgia/South Carolina border, possibly the bumpiest stretch of road for a locale that doesn't see much wintry weather. The bumps in the road (sorry) is a theme that carried forward from the previous night in Atlanta, where one of the patrons had had a little too much to drink and not enough talk about the current president. The gentleman i...

From a time when the Kansas Jayhawks don't exist, this week's Rantcast celebrates the brave, valorous young men of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels basketball team who defeated the despised Blue Devils and sent Coach K on his merry way. In another televised display of possibly manufactured animosity, there was the slap heard round the world at the Oscars ceremony, with slapper Will Smith...

Lewis is ready for spring temperatures, but the climate will not comply. While he's waiting for the vernal season to kick into high gear, and recovering from the Pat's vs. Geno's cheesesteak challenge, the main distraction from the madness of March is March Madness and the joy/trepidation of his UNC team facing the despised Duke Blue Devils. Go Heels! With the turn of the seasons, it is also a tim...

This special Rantcast episode comes from the National Comedy Center in Jamestown NY. The Comedy Center is the only American cultural institution solely dedicated to comedy. Located in Lucille Ball’s hometown of Jamestown, New York, the museum documents the history of comedy through exhibitions about comedians, cartoonists, writers, and other artists whose work exemplifies the full range of comedic...

There's on old adage about New England that if you don't like the weather, just wait. And just like the wearying vicissitudes of the northeastern climate, the wider human experience provides an endless variety of new ways to redefine insanity. From war to pestilence to trading for Carson Wentz as your solution at QB, no amount of reason can sway certain members of the species from terrible decisio...

Coming to you from somewhere along the treacherous, no guardrail road from Loleta to Redding, this week's episode answers the timely question of what kinds of infrastructure in Humboldt County need to be fixed. The answer: all of it. From the bumpy roads to the lack of phone and internet service, the pot basket of America is in sore need of better streets and the ability to connect to the outside...

Amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lewis escapes to the real magic kingdoms in California, Napa Valley and Humboldt County. They are lands of free-flowing wine and wondrous strains of weed, and great places to be while the world reaches a new level of self-immolation. From the horrific images on television to the absurd support for the Russian leader from members of the right wing, the cups a...

While stuck in traffic somewhere on I-80 west of the Donner Pass, Lewis recounts his travels in the Golden State and while highlighting one of the best rants from the weekend, gives his review of the George Romero film "Monkey Shines". The live rants come from the shows in Reno, NV, Monterey, CA, and Turlock, CA. Check out Lewis’ Grammy-nominated special, Thanks For Risking Your Life https://tlbre...

As Lewis traverses the frigid upper Midwest, the news from unseasonably warm Washington is as surreal as the weird Mid-Atlantic weather. First, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is spying on members of Congress with a reconnaissance force called the “Gazpacho Police”. Gazpacho of course being the Gestapo of soups (h/t to whomever first uttered th...

Originating from yet another undisclosed location somewhere on America's interstate highway system, this week's episode features a rubber chicken who has had enough of overland transportation. It is no way to travel for a fake fowl more acclimated to a warmer, sedentary lifestyle. So, he, like many of his fellow Americans, is ready to go on strike to get the better working conditions that he deser...

Coming to you from somewhere near the Kansas-Oklahoma border, this week's episode features your host using words that only someone who has spent too much time in the flat part of the country would use. Gussied? Check. Crinoline? Check. And while Lewis was not able to visit Tulsa's own Oral Roberts University, he did have time to address the current great effort at overweening religiosity, book ban...

Recorded live somewhere on an interstate near the Colorado/Kansas border, Lewis recounts the news of the past week, which, very much like the terrain he is transiting, is a lot of endless gray sameness. The live rants come from the Broome County Forum in Binghamton, NY on March 5, 2020. Check out Lewis’ Grammy-nominated special, Thanks For Risking Your Life https://tlbrecords.lnk.to/LewisWE New ep...