The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: HIT IT, BRUCE! (feat. Walmart Austin Butler)
11 Feb 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugatz Podcast.
Make sure to get me that Mad Dog Sound so I could get to it before the end of this hour. But we've got someone here who might even be funnier than Mad Dog Sound. He's buzzed about, right? He's the comedian right now that is super hot and he's selling out shows. On his national tour, lucaszelnik.com if you want full tour dates and
tickets uh thank you for joining us lucas i appreciate it and i'm wondering on your career path here what made you more nervous the first time you did stand up or when you told uh the people who love you that you wanted to be a comedian for a living you know what i think i made the right call and i didn't tell the people who love me that i wanted to be a comedian until after i'd done a fair amount of stand-up
Okay, so you weren't, was it because you weren't sure that you wanted to do it as a career or you weren't sure what they'd say?
It's just like being a comedian is kind of like being gay. Like you want to really make sure you are before you go out and tell all your friends you are. Nothing wrong with it if you're sure, but you don't want to have to walk that one back.
So how long did you go before you, like how much doubt was there before you realized, no, I'm going to go ahead and try and make a go of this and I can make a go of it successfully?
Honestly, it was like two, probably two years, which I think makes it different from the gay analogy. I think if you tried being gay for two years, you'd probably know pretty quickly. But comedy, I don't know, because the pandemic really changed how comedy was working. So I just didn't know if it was going to be like a career path. I know I liked it, but I was pretty bad when I started too.
So I just wasn't sure.
So where and when did crowd work make an appearance on the popularity scale? Because crowd work is now, and I know comedians have different opinions about this, but it's just a chance to be clever very quickly the way you've probably been all your life whenever you discovered funny, right? And so it's being rewarded and it seems to also be changing the game.
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Chapter 2: What makes Lucas Zelnick nervous about his comedy career?
And it did start from being bad at comedy and not being able to do my jokes, which is the that's the knock on crap work. It's like, oh, these are for guys that don't have good jokes. It was for me in the beginning. Nowadays, I think my act is a lot stronger, so I don't have to do it if I don't want. But You know, I enjoy doing 10, 15 minutes of it if I'm doing an hour set anyway.
No one needs more than 45 minutes of jokes. But I realized I was good at it, truly, because I think people started to give me more time up there, and I didn't have the goods for it. So it is kind of the negative stereotype. I was like, oh, I guess I'll just... Make fun of some guy in the front row, you know, and then and then I did that and that worked for me.
So then I that's but that all happened around 2021. And I think that kind of coincided with the moment that a lot of people were on TikTok discovering stand up comedy. A lot of people that, you know, the pandemic was happening. They had never been to a live show. Maybe they were young. Maybe they were under 21 years.
you know, when the pandemic started and then all of a sudden, you know, they could go to a live show when it ended. So I got very lucky with that timing and that kind of people were really eating it up on the internet back then. And that's when I started posting it.
It's interesting to me the role that social media has played when it comes to comedians who tour like yourself because comedians will post crowd work on social media clips because they don't want their material to be out there and you can see funny little snackable bites of crowd work and then I wonder do you get people at shows who maybe aren't regulars at comedy shows who see these clips and they think it's like a normal thing
for the crowd just to be interacting with the comedian all show? Yeah, it's possible.
As long as everyone's respectful, I don't really mind what they are expecting coming in. I deliver what I want to deliver, and I understand that not everyone's going to want to come back. If someone's bothering me or heckling me, I just shut it down right then and there, you know, and I'll have the club be pretty tight on it.
People in general get the vibe, I think, that they know that there's a difference between sort of being disruptive and interacting with me. And I think sometimes people will leave the show and say, I wish there was more crowd work because I don't do that much of it. And other times people will go, wow, you know, I'm so glad I came because I didn't know if you had any jokes.
And then I saw the show and I love your jokes. So I'm looking for those people because that's going to be what I do moving forward. Like the more experience you get as a comedian, the more terrifying crowd work becomes. When you're really bad, crowd work makes a lot of sense because you're like, anything's better than these terrible jokes that I've written about Hitler.
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Chapter 3: How does Lucas compare being a comedian to being gay?
But then you get...
you know you get older into it and once you have good jokes it's like you understand that crab work is a risk because it's not always funny and if you write good jokes those usually are funny at least more consistently than the crowd work so these days i do a lot more jokes just because i think the jokes are better than you know the average result i'll get from doing crowd work but
Crowdwork's still fun and then every once in a while, it can be pretty magical when whatever set of circumstances line up, when multiple people have something in common or someone's got a crazy story. When that kind of stuff happens, it can be the highlight of the night for sure.
What's the best chum for crowdwork? You walk out on stage, is it an overly confident guy? Is it a meek person? You're walking out on stage and you're like, oh, I'm going to hammer this person.
I always start with a dude because it's easier to be mean to a dude. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, pretty much, I hate to go back to this, but pretty much calling a guy, like a straight dude gay is pretty much always just going to be an easy in. Calling a gay dude gay, not as funny, I've found out. Actually, a hate crime. But, yeah.
That's where I start, but a lot of the time the things that I get known for are interacting with people that maybe people are more sensitive around, maybe a different type of group, whether that's someone of a different race or gender orientation or sexuality.
I typically have a skill in walking down a road that's going to make people nervous, that's going to make people think I'm going to say something really bad and then subverting that expectation. So I like that, but I do think it's not for the weak of constitution because you've got to trust me and also not be ā I like to treat everyone like they're normal people.
So some people do have the view that you can't treat certain people the same way as other people. I don't really subscribe to that for the most part. So if people don't like that, that can be an issue.
How often does it happen and how annoying is it when you point at somebody in the audience and their response is to obviously try to be funnier than you?
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Chapter 4: What role does crowd work play in modern stand-up comedy?
Like you don't want to just listen to what they want all the time. You want to try and push them a little bit, but if you're getting pushed back, you got to listen to that. So You know, when someone's funnier than me, I guess like I just let them be that for as long as they can. And then I'll comment on that.
But I try to comment on what I perceive the reality to be in the room when I'm commenting on it. And if I want to be doing jokes, I'll be doing jokes. If someone's interrupting that, that's a problem. I've never had it happen that someone's being like really disruptive and annoying and the audience likes them better than me. But if that happened, I guess I'd be at a bit of an impasse there.
That would mean I'm probably really bombing. Like the audience usually takes your side unless you're bombing, you know, you're bombing hard.
How does the feeling of killing a show compare to the feeling of bombing? Like which outweighs the other?
Oh, bombing is so much, so much stronger than killing. Because at this point, killing, I mean, you know, your ceiling, what you think is a kill always changes. The same with a bomb, by the way. Like, you know, when you're starting out, you, you know, what you think is a kill would probably now be a bomb for me all these years later. But killing feels like the job. You know what I mean?
Like, if I kill, if it's a really great set, I obviously have fun. I feel good about it. I'm happy. But I'm like, yeah, I delivered what these people paid to come see. If I bomb, I have like a crisis of identity because I'm like, you know, I'm trying to think of like, I guess, you know, with all entertainment, you're always taking the risk that you could go see it and it's going to be bad.
You know, you buy a movie ticket. Maybe it's bad. But there's something that feels so profoundly like. I cheated these people. If I really bomb, I'm just like, damn, because sometimes they pay a lot of money or they drive a long way. You know what I mean? And so to just like totally bomb, it's like it doesn't feel anywhere near like it feels so much more bad than a kill.
When's the last time it happened to you? When's the last time you feel like you are the worst of the bombs as you recall them most recently?
In Philly, like two weeks ago, there was actually someone that was really disruptive and they weren't. They were just kept heckling my set and I wasn't getting much help from the club staff taking care of them. They also weren't being funny. Also, they were the worst kind of heckler is someone that says it quietly. So like you can hear it.
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Chapter 5: Why do comedians use crowd work as a strategy?
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Don Levitard. I got somebody here making fun of me. How old do you have to be to reference Shecky Green? Man, I went comedically there with the funny name of a comedian. That's on you for not knowing who Shecky Green is.
Oh, you got to know who Shecky Green is.
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Chapter 6: How does social media influence the comedy scene today?
Do you get a lot of you look like Christian Yelich? Do you get a lot of you look like a professional golfer with the cap here? Do you get any of that? No?
No.
I think one of the ones I've heard, Walmart, Austin Butler, Tanner from Love on the Spectrum, I get a lot. I don't get that many sports comparisons. I'm trying to think. I don't know. I think people ā I don't quite look athletic enough. You've got one. Rory McIlroy. Oh, I get Rory. Sometimes I get Rory.
Yeah, professional golfer. So last thing on the way out, and again, lucaszelnik.com is where you go. Do you have a joke that represents the longest you've worked on a joke? Like ā Do you have a joke that you've been trying to perfect for months or years?
I have one of the jokes that I first ever wrote is still in my act. It's grown a lot. Like it now has like five things after it that are sort of all attached to it in a chunk. But this idea, it's one of my least likable jokes, one of my double down jokes for sure. But the joke is that I'm not religious because I grew up rich, so I never needed that excess
as hope and that's one that I that was like one of the first things I ever wrote because I was trying to do biographical stuff I was starting comedy I was like some rich New York City kid didn't think I had a place in comedy sometimes still don't but I wrote that joke early on now it goes a bunch of ways after that and it has a long way but that one's still in the act I don't know if it will be next year but I still tell it and I probably wrote that five six years ago now.
Lucas, thank you for joining us. Where are you getting most of your material these days? Do you have one place that by percentage is larger than all the others for your material?
I think the country's making it easy. No matter which side you're on, everyone's talking about the same stuff, just with completely different perspectives about it. So I usually start with about 15 minutes of political humor. If you can't make it through that, you're going to hate the rest of the show.
LucasZelnick.com is where you go. Thank you, sir. Appreciate the time. Thanks, fellas.
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Chapter 7: How does Lucas handle hecklers during his shows?
I saw at the beginning of what was happening with Pablo that Jeremy and Tony were on the same team, and I thought it was borderline evil the way that Mike Ryan took you and put you on his side.
No, no. So here's what happened, right? At some point, Pablo was talking about how the NBA, there's no rules. The owners don't follow the rules. Then the rest of the country, and I'm like, yeah. There are no rules. Have you not been paying attention, Pablo? I know you've been locked in on an aspiration. Nobody follows the rules anywhere. That's right. I think he noticed that.
The wealthy just have a weird relationship with punitive measures. They have zero relationship with punitive measures, which is another story. But as that's going, I'm going to jump in and say something, and then Pablo goes on for another five minutes of diatribe. So I'm like, all right, my window closed. Mike's like, hey, did your window close? I'm like, yeah, it kind of did.
He's like, all right, Jeremy, you go. So at that point, that's where I switch over and I go, all right, Reuben Bain over here, I'll mess it up on the other side. Yeah, but Jeremy didn't see it. Let's see what Jeremy's got to say here.
I think I did ask him at one point, you sure? And Chris Cody enjoyed too much. You got to go after a guy. You do. You do. He's right about that. Your yeah, though, supporting.
How are we not supposed to go after that, Dan? There's a video of Jeremy singing, and he's moving up and down the shoulders, like his eyebrows. His hands are moving now? No, this feels mean. This feels like too much.
He doesn't know we're watching him. This is vulnerable. This is voyeuristic. Oh, now it's too much. This is criminal. It's funny. Well, we never replayed the sound. Before we get to Mad Dog, please find for me the sound of you reading in another room that we meant to get to three or four shows ago when you didn't know we were watching you as you were trying to read. Just find that for me.
Take your time, guys. In the interim, let's go ahead and just play the Mad Dog sound that you guys have said I have to get to today. I have not heard it. Zaslow, do you want to give me any context here that doesn't spoil this sound?
Look, the biggest story in the NBA going into All-Star weekend is two things. It's tanking and it's load management. And Dog is on top of it. But I love here. I want to add a little more context. There's music underneath here. It's Bruce Springsteen. I edited a little bit so you don't hear too much of us and get us pinged. But he is like playing off of Bruce Springsteen throughout all of this.
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