CG: I’ve become really obsessed with this idea that I want my work to always be funny but that’s the baseline. If it’s funny plus something else, that’s even better. So if it’s funny and sad, funny and happy, funny and surprising, I think that’s a level to take things to that’s interesting for me as an artist. The Chris Gethard Show has somehow wound up being able to do that.

Something like panic attacks… I have them and they’re really horrible, but why can’t they be funny? At the end of the day, a grown man crying for no reason, there’s something funny about that. I had one a few days ago, I’ve got a lot of pressure on me right now and I wound up having a panic attack in my kitchen. Just putting my head down and crying for an hour. I don’t know, it was really scary and sad, but at the end of the day, the fact that my fiancée is just going about her day and vacuuming around me while I sit there and cry, there is something funny about that.

I think if I didn’t recognize the humor in that, then I’d have panic attacks more often.

CD: What kind of shows do you watch in your free time?

CG: I almost never actually watch comedy for entertainment. If I have a few hours to spare, I’ll watch a documentary. Usually I aim towards sad documentaries.

CD: What’s a documentary you liked?

CG: I just watched the entire Ken Burns documentary on World War II. Not all in one sitting, obviously, but really it was super brutal. A lot of those images are hard to see and experience. But that’s how I spend my time when I’m free is seeking out that kind of sad stuff. I watch a lot of shows about real-life murders too.