Bassem Youssef
speaker
1,048 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Apr 2024
last heard 5 Jun
Bassem Youssef’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It was a choice of exclusion. I mean, there's nothing else you can do with these high grades other than doctorate in engineering. I hate math, so go be a doctor. This is the Middle East. What do you expect? It's either, like in my joke, in my show, I said like there's, it can be one of three things in the Middle East, a doctor, an engineer, or a disappointment. That is the choices that you have.
So years after.
Can I tell you something? Yes. That actually I was thinking about why did I actually go into medicine? And why did I always choose the hardest thing although I didn't love it? And I have to tell you I had an epiphany only two weeks ago. And I don't know if that's actually related or not. You know, I remember when I told you I went to this school and I didn't have that much money.
And I didn't have the luxury of time or money to be with those people and do what they do. So by the time I finished school and everybody was going to university, oh, everybody in my school went to the AUC, the American University in Cairo. Of course, private, yeah.
like American education, party time, like, I mean, of course they're brilliant and everything, but they have, yeah, they have a different, you know, social life. And part of me now, I kind of like, I realize that just like very, very recently, Maybe I went to the hardest school ever so I don't have space to use other than studying. Because if I have that much space, what am I going to do with it?
I don't have that much freedom. I don't have that much money. I can't compete with those people going out. So maybe I need a solid excuse that I'm in a place where I don't have that much of a spare time.
Maybe, but when I left Egypt and I came here, I still had the choice to go back to medicine. But I hated it. I hated it. Medicine traumatized me. The amount of like, you give up. You know, my brother in Egypt, he had a daughter. She's a brilliant basketball player. She is in the national team, amazing.
I used to play basketball also in the Egyptian league, but I never, I was kind of like, my favorite position in the court was the bench. And... I was not as good as her, but she, and then he, it was time for her to go into college. And he didn't talk to me for six weeks. I said, Temer, what's happening to Farida? Which college? Like, I didn't want to tell you. She went into medicine.
I still did it, but I don't know. Is it because of the difficulty or because... because of what I told you, maybe I needed something, maybe because I was not very confident in my social life. So I needed a distraction not to be, to have that much of a social life. Oh, wow, okay.
Yeah, uh-huh. It's kind of loud because I will always have an excuse, I'm studying, I have something, I have exams. And I don't know, I kind of like self-sabotaged my own thing because I couldn't compete with... with those people on the outing and the money and whatever, so I need an excuse to be like, oh, he's a doctor, he's studying.
Yeah, yeah. I always felt as less because, I mean, I didn't have any girlfriends in school. I had a very latent life. Everything to me came to life, so I always felt... Even stand-up comedy. It came very late to me in life. So I always feel that I'm not good enough. I feel that I didn't spend the time to build the foundation that other comedians do. So I always feel that I am too lucky.
I always feel that this is a fleeting thing. And when I went, had the height and the fall in Egypt, when I went like the top of everything, I was like so famous. And then everything was taken away from me. That's like, ah, you see, I told you. That happens when you don't build foundation, you fall. So I always feel that I...
that I am not good enough, or if I am in a position where people think I am, deep inside I am not. Do you know that I have a speech impediment that I was not meant to be a TV presenter? In Arabic it's very obvious. I cannot troll my hours. I cannot say er, I cannot roll it. So in Arabic, like Spanish, it's very obvious.
So when I did my first video on the internet that made me famous, and then I got my television deal back there in Egypt, my partner at the time, he took the video and he went to a producer and said like, are you giving me a guy with a lisp? He couldn't, he should, that's why when I came on television, I was the first ever guy with a lisp. I had two things going for me, the lisp and the big nose.
And I was always bullied for two, for these two all the time. So I always felt less.
I was in a gym and I was running on the treadmill. And at that time, CNN was coming out on cable. And I was watching and there is this studio. I don't know what it is. So I put the earphones on and I started watching. And I was so taken by this that I stopped the treadmill and I just like stood for the 20 minutes like this on the treadmill. And then I just like standing there.
I didn't know what he was saying. I didn't understand what is Democrats, what is Republicans, what is, those names that he's saying, what is Fox News? I don't understand. But I was fascinated. There was something, you know when you don't understand the music, but you get the rhythm? It was that.
I didn't understand any of the references. But it is the rhythm.
You know sometimes when you even see like a comedy that's a language you don't understand, but there's a rhythm. Boom, boom. There's something in the music. So there's something with the videos and the pictures and he and the face and people reacting. What is this?
What is this? And we had the global edition.
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