By Josh Gondelman — 09 Nov 2026

#209. Jensen Huang and You

Hi everyone,

Since we last newslettered, the national mood has shifted from "hmmmm I wonder how this is gonna go" to "oh wow that turned out pretty well actually" for most of the people I know as well as millions of people I don't. The blue tsunami (or "tsunamblue" as no one is calling it) carried Democrats into national and local offices even in Republican strongholds like Texas and South Caroline. I hope that through a mix of personal integrity and being yelled at, Democrats can be convinced to work as hard for the causes of peace and social justice and healthcare as the Republicans have been working to actively erode those concepts. As my friend Madeline Hill posted, the feeling in New York is like when the Knicks won, but nationwide. The big difference is that I'm happy about the news and not bitter this time.

Amidst the sea change in political, I had the great privilege of guest hosting Please Advise on WNYC. New York City's public radio station features an hour-long pop-up advice show on Monday through Wednesday with rotating hosts, and last week I got to take a turn in that rotation. I thought that as a frequent public radio guest and a way-more-frequent podcast guest and host, the challenges of hosting would be mostly technical. I feel like Frasier was always pushing buttons when he was doing his radio show on Frasier, which is still what I think radio is like in 2026 I guess. But because–not to brag–I didn't need to cough while on the air and no one screamed a racial slur at me, there was very little button-pushing I had to do at all.

I'm standing next to a prop phone booth featuring an "ON AIR" sign. I'm wearing a black t-shirt and a pinnko/blue/orange floral cardigan. J. Crew, if you're curious! — It's okay I wasn't actually on the air when this was taken.

My big logistical obstacle was figuring out how to interrupt. Which, if you've ever talked to me, sounds ridiculous. I am a big interruptor. Usually I realize what I've done (Jewishly jump in with enthusiasm as part of a general instinct towards overlapping voices being the hallmark of a robust conversation) and apologize. But I rarely cut people off aggressively, or even proactively. I could feel my brain cramping as I juggled the audio necessities of looking at helpful notes from the producers, keeping track of time, soliciting the expert advice of the guest, and listening to the caller's words, all while gently probing for the right moment to double dutch my way in between their sentences and thank them for joining us on the show.

I hope that the steam escaping my ears (out of mental gears grinding, not rage) wasn't audible over the airwaves. It did feel satisfying to get smoother and more in flow with each show as I learned the rhythms of taking calls and responding to them. I love getting thrown into experiences where I have to learn new skills while the people around me are so talented that I am not going to launch the whole endeavor off a cliff while I get my sea legs.

ENORMOUS thanks to Meg, Kate, Zach, Sarah, Matt, Rebecca, and the whole team who brought me in and made the experience so smooth. And ANOTHER major thanks to my expert guests: Priya Parker, Anna Sale, and Chris Duffy. You can listen to all of my episodes as a podcast now if you want!

With Maris out of town for the weekend, I've watched a little more standup than usual, and I wanted to recommend you a few things I've really enjoyed lately. In full disclosure, I consider all these people to be friendly acquaintances at the very least, and I'm delighted that they released new art I can share. I haven't done a Wait Wait... taping with Zainab Johnson in a little while, but I loved her new Netflix special Toxically Optimistic. She just feels so in control as an artist who doesn't have to add any bells and whistles to translate her thoughts, feelings, and opinions into comedy. She explores whatever you call spectrum of topics from gun ownership to befriending an opossum, and it's all so funny and delightful. It's not conversational in tone, exactly, but Zainab is so at ease onstage, even when she's taking on really heavy topics.

On the other hand The Mandal Man's special has a wild, silly energy from the crackly video quality to Mandal's ruffled tuxedo shirt. He hits the ground running from sentence one and is relentless and fantastical while still putting his finger on real issues, even if those issues are sometimes girls not being impressed when boys know how do The Worm.

Benny Feldman writes some of the greatest and weirdest jokes of anyone working today. Legitimately, nobody is doing it like him. If I had to describe his style with legible references I would say: Mitch Hedberg raised by Reddit (in a good way) with Tourette Syndrome (actual diagnosis, not me being glib). He also takes five minutes or so towards the end and really makes clear where he stands politically and what his comedic philosophy is in a way that dovetails with and clarifies how gonzo some of the jokes are. And there are jokes throughout that part too.

I also found Kate Berlant's Parmesan on HBO to be really funny and compelling. I saw her do a version of the show live on tour, and I loved how personal and urgent the material felt. The special is shot so tightly, and the camera captures her playfulness and facial dynamism so well. Great direction!

In other very good comedy news: Stuart Laws put out a very fun and inventive special that I liked a lot. Chloe Radcliffe's new special Eyes Down Here is out now (via Comedy Central, a brand that just now remembered that it exists) and I'm excited to watch it! Same for Janelle James's upcoming Netflix hour!

Flyer for my show at the NYCF this week. — This again!!!

REMEMBER! My New York Comedy Festival headlining show at the Bell House is this Wednesday 11/11! It might be the only time I perform this full hour in New York City, so if you've wanted to see the jokes I've been working on, I'd love for you to grab a ticket. The show also features Mandal (mentioned above) and Brittany Carney! Leiby is going to host! Thursday I'm back at Bottle Rocket Social Hall in Pittsburgh, and Friday I'm at Hilarities in Cleveland, two places I love to travel! Then I am mostly home in New York (with one Wait Wait... taping in December) until the very end of the year! Oh and also Thanksgiving! I guess I'm not home that much after all, but it's all fun travel so let's GOOOO.

PEP TALK FOR JENSEN HUANG

Look at that leather jacket. This guy is pulling all the hot spies for sure!

I was all primed to write a pep talk for Cybertruck owners in the wake of Elon Musk's announcement that Tesla plans to wind down production of their gleaming silver midlife crises. But what can I say to guys who drive Cybertrucks that their court ordered anger management facilitators haven't already told them? If you have 100k to spend on a big metal toy manufactured by a white nationalist that falls apart when struck by a stiff breeze or a disapproving glance, you're already doing okay and not okay in a weird and possibly immutable ratio.

Then last night I read (okay, my wife told me) that Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia (the "Mmmbop" of the tech world, pronunciation-wise) is being investigated for having an affair with a woman who might be a Chinese spy. Now look, I understand that saying "Chinese spy" right up front feels like if I specified "my Black doctor." Like...why did you say that? What are you implying? But in this case it is pertinent to the story. The U.S. and China are locked in a race to see who can scale up their AI operations the fastest. It's like the space race with Russia, except the endpoint of this struggle will be mass layoffs (and, for sure this time, technology that can credibly fake a moon landing). So a spy from China is a little different in this scenario than one from Luxembourg or South Korea or Kenya, where it's kind of nice to see them finding some companionship amidst the lonely work of espionage.

Jensen Huang is often called a "Rock Star CEO" but to my knowledge he's not actually a musician. It's just that he wears a leather jacket and I guess now also because he cheats on his wife? The first thing is confirmed by his professional headshot. The second he recently confessed publicly, while apologizing to his family, just like Dave Grohl did that one time. Lots of guys cheat on their wives though. You don't even have to be good at guitar. You can just be an insurance salesman who goes to a lot of conferences and has no compunction about lying to colleagues. And calling someone a rock star because they have a cool jacket is like pointing at some dude who is asleep on the bus and going: "Wow that guy is just like Bob Seger. There he goes. Turn the page."

Nvidia makes GPUs necessary for large scale AI processing. So it's a little ironic that he couldn't solve the Captcha problem of pointing out which women expressing sudden romantic interest in him might be covertly employed by a government looking to learn his trade secrets. Maybe we aren't that much more advanced than the machines after all. I get it. Sometimes I can't tell what counts as a crosswalk and have to start over too. Maybe I am also a business genius?

I understand that the forces of capital have aligned themselves behind the companies that promise an AI-enabled future. The honest investors will say it's because they hate the rest of us and don't care whether we have jobs or clean drinking water. The smart ones say that maybe after we're all unemployed and dehydrated, Claude will get around to solving the problems its parent company and its allies and competitors have caused. Nvidia's stock has taken a hit because of Jensen Huang's indiscretions. That has broader implications for the entire economy. It feels pretty miserable to know that no matter how hard you work, or how prudently you sock away savings, your ability to retire in relative comfort hinges on a 63-year-old man's choice to get his dick sucked.

Plus he's a big time Trump ally who convinced the U.S. government to let him sell chips to China despite restrictions, which is a little more suspicious now than it was before, and it was already not exactly above board.

Jensen Huang I will say this to you: You may have had the most destabilizing affair in terms of international relations since Bill Clinton. So...congratulations on cheating on your wife in a situation where you weren't exploiting the boss/employee power dynamic. And even in the age of AI, you were allegedly tricked by old school analog misinformation. That's something, huh? (Is it elder abuse to potentially trick a man his sixties into giving up both professional and state secrets by seducing him? I am unwilling to wade into that conversation.)

Great work, Jensen Huang! By falling for a woman who was fake in love with you, you may have brought down your company that helps disseminate fake information and revealed that both international regulations for the sake of competition and the economy are, themselves, kind of fake. When the dust clears, you may be the first person to get so horny he causes a new Great Depression. Way to go, rock star!

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I didn't really edit this request because I thought that the a-grammatical phrasing was especially expressive. I did add the fairly sweaty nickname.

Ugh upcoming time with extended family who have very different views on basic rights.
- Fight For Your Rights At A Family Paaaaaaarty

I am going to assume for the sake of my response that you are in favor of basic rights. You didn't specify, but it would be a very strange choice if you were writing in to say: "Ugh! I have to spend time with extended family and they friggin' loooooooove basic rights. Dummies." I'm sure there are people with that attitude, but that's not how they phrase it. They're like: "I can't believe people these days want to marry their dogs!" or "Immigrants want to eat my husband (who is a dog)!" or whatever new thing Republicans make up to be scared of nowadays.

Your upcoming family visit feels adjacent to a few conversations I got to have while hosting Please Advise for WNYC last week, and I'd like to pass on some wisdom that I took in from my very smart guests, when I wasn't frantically being like...WHAT'S THE PHONE NUMBER I HAVE TO TELL PEOPLE TO CALL??? in my head.

On Tuesday, a caller dialed in to say that they are okay talking to people with whom they have disagreements, but they are unwilling to engage with someone whose politics deny their humanity. Guest Anna Sale very compassionately affirmed that it's not necessary to obliterate our own sense of dignity in the interest of "finding common ground." I think that extends to the dignity of other people too. Sorry about the clunky phrasing there. I couldn't figure out where to put the apostrophe in people's/peoples' so I flipped the words around. Peoples's? That's for SURE not right, is it?

You do not have to negotiate about the value of someone's life to appease a third cousin. Although, if you do feel like arguing–and sometimes that desire creeps up on you–Priya Parker, who literally wrote the book on how to fight productively, has some advice for that. She counseled one caller that before initiating a conflict, you should think about what you really want from the discussion and what you're willing to risk, as well as what you're not willing to jeopardize. She also advised a listener that a lot of healthy conflict is about building a stable relationship and creating a sense of safety and care. Do things together that are NOT fighting first. It's easier to have a good faith disagreement with someone you like and trust when your baseline interaction isn't screaming at each other. (Good insight, imo!)

These are beautiful and true pieces of wisdom to hold onto. But as usual I'm not an advice guy. I am a pep talk guy. So here's the pep: You can get through this! If you love your extended family, you will enjoy the good parts and clench your teeth through the hard parts, and maybe the people in your orbit will come away a little more full of love for their fellow humans thanks to your open heart. And if you don't like these relatives very much and the gathering is more of an obligation type of thing, you can comfort yourself with the reality that these people are not your people, and that they are depriving themselves of joy and community and probably lots of flavors of food because of their biases. They are making their lives small with fear. There is only so wide you can crowbar their mind open as a stepgrandma once removed or a great niece in law. But you are on the side of good, and they are on the side of incorrect, and they are outnumbered in the big picture (if not at the dinner table).

The national political posture towards human rights is variable, but no one has ever been vindicated by bigotry, and no one has ever regretted seeing the humanity in others. Although sometimes they've felt a little remorse over how they've articulated that compassion over Thanksgiving dinner.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Donwill + The Expert - "Pay Homage"

Donwill is the best. He's our regular DJ at Frankenstein's Baby. His newsletter put me on to the Che Noir song I shared a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to say so. He's got a new album coming out. "Pay Homage" is the newest single from that record, and it's really good. All the guest verses are great. There's a "Shoop" sample. It sounds like everyone's rapping from inside a cartoon. I can't wait to hear the rest of the songs!!!