The Comedian ‘Nostradamus’ Who Predicted America’s Demise

Over the course of his nearly 20 years as a stand-up comedian, Joe Mande has developed an uncanny ability to accurately forecast the utter stupidity of American culture. That unique skill led his friend John Mulaney to suggest that he’s more prepared for a second Donald Trump presidency than anyone else he knows.

In this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, Mande discusses his latest stand-up special, Chill, which premieres on Hulu this Friday, Dec. 13. It was recorded before the 2024 election, but includes some eerie predictions about how the country might change over the next four years. He also talks about his time in the trenches of the writers’ rooms for Parks and Rec, The Good Place, and Hacks, on which he appears as Ray, the Las Vegas hotel clerk who at least some fans want to see end up with Hannah Einbinder’s Ava.

Mande isn’t ready to predict that outcome quite yet, but he definitely wants it to happen.

“Hannah and I have talked about this at length and it just does feel like the natural conclusion to both of our stories,” he says. “We call it hashtag #Rayva, and we need to get this going.”

As Mande explains early in his new special, he chose the title Chill because he recently went on mood stabilizers to help control the outrage that has driven much of his comedy. “It’s clearly tongue-in-cheek, because I am still, despite the brain medications, deeply unchill, and I think that shines through in the special,” he tells me.

Before he became a headlining comic himself, he spent years opening for more famous friends like Mulaney and Aziz Ansari. Recently, Mulaney returned the favor when he appeared as a special guest at a monthly show Mande hosts at the Largo theater in L.A., which just happened to be scheduled for the Wednesday night after Election Day. The venue booked that show “thinking it was going to be some sort of raucous, celebratory night, and instead it was deeply weird,” he admits.

That night, Mulaney got on stage and declared that no one was more prepared for a second Trump term than Mande because he always thinks there’s another “Holocaust” around the corner.

“Even when Barack Obama was president, I was talking about how California needs to secede,” Mande says now. “So yeah, I feel like I’m just ahead of the curve on these things.”

Take, for instance, the infamous story from his 2017 hour on Netflix, Joe Mande’s Award-Winning Comedy Special, about getting high and attending a taping of Mike Huckabee’s Fox News talk show. In that bit, he refers to Huckabee as “former Arkansas governor and future ambassador to Chick-fil-A.”

When Mande first heard that Trump had nominated Huckabee to be his ambassador to Israel, he immediately recalled his joke and thought to himself, “I just can’t believe how stupid everything is.”

“I do feel like I am a sort of Nostradamus of American stupidity,” Mande adds. “I’m a seer.”

Even in the new special, he has a long run about how he does “support the troops”—just not the ones who are open white nationalists. This was before it was revealed that Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has multiple tattoos that some have claimed are tied to white nationalism, but Hegseth himself has described as merely “Christian.” Or as Mande puts it now, “A guy with literal Crusade tattoos on his bicep.”

Mande’s predictions aren’t just about politics. During his late-night stand-up debut on Conan O’Brien’s show in 2011, he joked, “Being Jewish is like anything, it has its pros and cons… like for example, I’m going to win an Emmy at some point.” It took a full 13 years, but Mande did win that award as part of the writing team for Hacks just this year.

And despite all of his stand-up and writing work, he’s already predicting that when he dies, the Emmys will play a clip from his recurring role as Ben on Modern Family during the In Memoriam reel. “And all my friends will be like, what was that?” he jokes.

Fans of his comedy had to wait a full seven years between his first hour-long special and this new one, and while he’d like to think the next one will come sooner, Mande fears there could be another long gap, ominously predicting that “another pandemic” will probably delay things.

When I end our conversation by imploring him to please start making more optimistic predictions, Mande unconvincingly rubs his temples and promises that “global warming is going to reverse and everyone’s going to be happy.”

Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.