Lewis Black's Rantcast

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...

Two weeks into 2022 and the disquieting sense of déjà vu persists. While the title of this week’s episode would be a great title for a disco song, it’s not great as an apt description of the new year. The same issues that plagued 2021, including an actual plague, continue to hamper any sense of progress or anything that doesn’t resemble a rudderless drift. For example, this past week the anniversa...

Lewis rings in the new year by taking a look back at all the wonderful and joyous events of 2021. And like many things in the media today, that previous sentence bears only a partial resemblance to the truth. While some ostensibly good things happened last year, it has mostly left us with more questions than answers. For instance, why will people refuse to get vaccinated but will avail themselves...

In the final Rantcast of the year 2021, Lewis ponders the unfathomable contradictions and conundrums evident in the pluralistic American society. How can a group of people who can't seem to get anything done on time still manage to shop themselves into Yuletide oblivion and get all the Christmas gifts under the tree in time to perpetuate the myth of Santa Claus (or Father Christmas for the Angloph...

Having left the great state of Florida, the land where freedom goes to get sun-baked into insanity, Lewis reports in from a parking lot in suburban Baltimore. While he enjoyed his time in the sunshine state, the governor there seems to be lost in a florid freedom fog of Covid-denial, and the populace is following suit. Fortunately the audiences at the shows were able to enjoy their theater-going l...

This week's Rantcast comes from an undisclosed location in Florida. As your host tours the Sunshine state, it's important for him to not just maintain social distancing, but to hide from the sun-baked masses entirely. The citizenry there acts as though there's no global pandemic occurring and mask wearing is not even an afterthought. Despite this alternate reality, the shows in Florida have gone w...

After a hiatus to get ready for appearing in public again, Lewis is back with a new episode of the Rantcast. And while he spent his time away preparing his new act, the rubber chicken started working on getting his degree in psychology. That advanced education will come in handy as not a day goes by that doesn't traumatize the American psyche. From new COVID variants to the undermining of basic ci...

Hello everyone and Happy Thanksgiving! As we all sit around and give thanks for making it another year during these uncertain times, we thought it would be great to revisit an older episode of Lewis Black's Rantcast. We decided to visit last year's Thanksgiving episode just to take a visit to where we were this time last year and remember that we've come a long way, even if it doesn't seem like we...

Last October, the folks at NY Comic Con asked its festival-goers to submit their rants about one of the nation's largest pop culture events. They then invited Lewis to perform those rants as part of a special edition of the Rantcast for their Metaverse online programming. As the 2021 festival just wrapped, Lewis is diving into his archives to deliver a never-before-available to the public NY Comic...

Lewis is finally back on the road, as the “It Gets Better Every Day” tour gets rolling throughout the lower 48. To start, he performed six shows in four days at Hilarities in Cleveland, a comedic version of spring training. There he was treated to some excellent food including a fantastic walleye and a great Greek salad. The shows there went well, with the support of the club’s owner Nick, who, un...

Twenty years after the September 11th attacks it’s hard to say that we have learned any valuable lessons from that tragedy. Do we have more common sense and a better understanding of foreign relations? Nope. Do we care about the people of New York more than we did 20 years ago? Fuhgeddaboutit. And after two decades of daily being told to never forget, the one thing we can’t seem to remember from t...

Twenty years ago this week, the United States suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history. Following the horror of that triple death-from-above assault, the country was about as united in purpose as it can be, and in agreement, mostly, about what we saw happen. Not so much now when we cannot even agree on what reality is. Our views on the events of the world have become so distorted through...

The good news of the week: Lewis' Baltimore Orioles finally won a game! Also, he had a birthday. The bad news: the endless cycle of problems of the world. Hurricanes, COVID, Afghanistan, the assault on voting rights. The same horrors on repeat, all with a moronic dose of grandstanding and unnecessary risk. First up is Lewis’ mainstream media pal Al Roker, who, as he is wont to do, reported about a...

While the tribulations of the world were on an endless loop of Haiti, COVID, and Afghanistan, Lewis' anger this week comes from a very personal place, but with a universal lesson. After a year and a half of being extra careful with everything germ-related, Lewis and a group of fully-vaccinated, often-tested friends had dinner together last week, only to find out the next day that one of their fell...

A week off did nothing to temper Lewis’s anger or his sense that history has folded in on itself. Twenty years of US intervention in an Asian nation and it all ends in an ill-planned fleeing on overcrowded flights. Kabul in 2021 or Saigon in 1975, either way the images of departing Americans should forever dispel any further imperialist notions. Your host has himself visited Afghanistan, having pe...