The Plug w/ Justin Jay

Michael Che is the co-anchor of Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live and the comedian behind the new Netflix special Shot in Minnesota.
We sit down to talk about how an hour like Shot in Minnesota gets built, what more than a decade inside SNL has taught him, and why bombing is part of the job.
Che came up on Chris Rock, George Carlin and Patrice O'Neal, comics who didn't waste words, and he brought that economy to the Update desk. He's willing to bomb with a joke for a year or two because he can see the spark: "It might take me two years to get this right, but I'll know when it's right." His view on edgy material: "We're like doctors being afraid of blood. We work in words. In the right hands, anything can be funny."
We get into the origin of Joke Swap with Colin Jost, born from jokes that died at dress rehearsal, and why Che pushes back on fans who love "the racist jokes segment." His answer: it's about making each other uncomfortable. He takes us inside the machine, a show written on Tuesday and live on Saturday with nine sets in one room, explains why he leaves the sketches to Kenan, and shares the card Lorne Michaels sent with flowers the night he taped the special: "Please don't embarrass me."
More than a decade at the Update desk, and he's still willing to bomb for a joke he believes in.
00:00 Intro
02:02 Shot in Minnesota and the Update desk
05:42 Callbacks and Lorne's card
07:51 Likeability and bombing for a joke
11:50 Joke Swap with Colin Jost
17:01 The r-word and the N-word
23:19 Character, trust and dark material
25:25 SNL's stakes and the weekly machine
33:28 Bombing, Norm and today's Update
39:22 The Plug: Ashley Padilla and listening
YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@theplugwithjustinjay
Website → https://www.theplugwithjustinjay.com
Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plug-w-justin-jay/id1517322794
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3M3BwnadvgbuwtErUHN1pl
Email → theplugpodcast.jj@gmail.com
Justin Jay Photography → https://justinjay.com
HI 1K - 10 Years / 1000 Moments On Hawaii's North Shore by Justin Jay → https://www.hi1k.com

Mark Ronson is the Oscar- and Grammy-winning producer behind "Uptown Funk" and Amy Winehouse's Back to Black.
ENCORE EPISODE — With Night People now out in paperback, we're revisiting this conversation.
We sit down to talk about Night People, his memoir of the downtown New York that made him, years before the hits, when he was the most in-demand DJ in the city.
Ronson went on to produce for Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, Adele, Dua Lipa, Jay-Z and Paul McCartney, and curated the Barbie soundtrack. But Night People isn't about the studio. It's a portrait of a grittier, unpolished New York during hip-hop's golden age, and of a career that ran from early acclaim as the city's "It DJ" through post-hype setbacks to reinvention.
We get into the unwritten rules of DJing, why you should never play a hit to an empty room, and the thrill of turning a skeptical crowd into a sweaty, euphoric mess. He also traces how Giuliani-era crackdowns and the rise of bottle service turned NYC nightlife from a chaotic melting pot into velvet-rope exclusivity.
The city in the book is gone. The rules he learned there still run the room.
YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@theplugwithjustinjay
Website → https://www.theplugwithjustinjay.com
Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plug-w-justin-jay/id1517322794
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3M3BwnadvgbuwtErUHN1pl
Email → theplugpodcast.jj@gmail.com
Justin Jay Photography → https://justinjay.com
HI 1K - 10 Years / 1000 Moments On Hawaii's North Shore by Justin Jay → https://www.hi1k.com

Fab 5 Freddy is a founding figure of hip-hop culture and the original host of Yo! MTV Raps.
This episode we sit down with Fab 5 Freddy, artist and filmmaker, for a conversation about the exact moment graffiti, breaking, rap, and downtown punk culture stopped being separate scenes and became one culture: hip-hop.
Fab was there for all of it. In his new memoir, Everybody's Fly, he traces the whole arc, from a Brooklyn childhood spent skipping school for the museums to the making of Wild Style, the film that first put the culture on screen.
We get into what actually happened the night he realized the audio from Wild Style's climactic concert scene was completely blown out. The reshoot came a year later, and by then Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had already blown up too big to get back in front of the camera.
Fab also talks candidly about running with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring back when all three of them were broke and sneaking onto the subway without tokens, and what it was actually like watching two of his closest friends become two of the most famous artists in the world.
Plus: the letter PBS sent calling the idea behind Wild Style "trash," the real story behind Debbie Harry's "Fab Five Freddy told me everybody's fly," and growing up with a father who marched on Washington with Martin Luther King and was in the room the day Malcolm X was assassinated.
Hip-hop didn't have a name yet. Then it did.
YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@theplugwithjustinjay
Website → https://www.theplugwithjustinjay.com
Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plug-w-justin-jay/id1517322794
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3M3BwnadvgbuwtErUHN1pl
Email → theplugpodcast.jj@gmail.com
Justin Jay Photography → https://justinjay.com
HI 1K - 10 Years / 1000 Moments On Hawaii's North Shore by Justin Jay → https://www.hi1k.com

Dave Taylor is the owner of Waco Surf, the 500-acre surf park that brought wave culture to the middle of Texas.
We sit down for a wide-ranging conversation about building something from scratch, the culture of surfing, and what it means to bring a coastal lifestyle to the heart of the Lone Star State.
A Southern California native who spent years in entertainment and the restaurant industry, Taylor stumbled into wave pool ownership almost by accident. A three-day visit to Waco Surf in 2019 — while he was weeks away from retiring to Mexico with his pregnant wife — convinced him he couldn't walk away. What started as a beat-up water park with a rough reputation has become a surf destination drawing everyone from professional surfers to first-timers who've never seen the ocean.
We get into the real costs and regulatory hurdles behind building a surf park, why a Texas zoning loophole called the ETJ made it possible when California couldn't, and how Waco Surf carved out its identity as the "people's pool" in contrast to Kelly Slater's Surf Ranch. Taylor also gets philosophical about whether a perfect wave on demand carries the same meaning as one you earned in the ocean — and what it looks like to build a genuine surf culture somewhere that's never had one.
A laid-back Californian bet everything on Waco, Texas. It paid off.
YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@theplugwithjustinjay
Website → https://www.theplugwithjustinjay.com
Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plug-w-justin-jay/id1517322794
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3M3BwnadvgbuwtErUHN1pl
Email → theplugpodcast.jj@gmail.com
Justin Jay Photography → https://justinjay.com
HI 1K - 10 Years / 1000 Moments On Hawaii's North Shore by Justin Jay → https://www.hi1k.com

Nikolai Fraiture is the bassist and a founding member of The Strokes.
ENCORE EPISODE — To celebrate the landmark performance The Strokes delivered at Coachella 2026, we're revisiting this conversation.
We sit down to talk about what it actually looked like from the inside of one of the most hyped band launches in rock history, and what's happened in the two decades since.
We get into the Grammy win for The New Abnormal and the making of Reality Awaits with Rick Rubin in Costa Rica — and what it took for Rubin to get a band that started in a New York basement back to playing like one.
The Strokes were the first band any of them had ever been in. After 20 years, Nikolai describes a lock-in with his bandmates that he says can't be manufactured: "I wouldn't walk away from something that special that comes along so rarely." And he's candid about early fame in a way that doesn't feel performed: "I don't think I handled it very well."
Reality Awaits is coming. This is where it started.
YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@theplugwithjustinjay
Website → https://www.theplugwithjustinjay.com
Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plug-w-justin-jay/id1517322794
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3M3BwnadvgbuwtErUHN1pl
Email → theplugpodcast.jj@gmail.com
Justin Jay Photography → https://justinjay.com
HI 1K - 10 Years / 1000 Moments On Hawaii's North Shore by Justin Jay → https://www.hi1k.com