HOUSTON, June 29, 2024 — Hailing from Houston, Slade Ham has captivated audiences worldwide with his stand-up comedy, performing in 60 countries across six continents, primarily for the United States armed forces. Ham recently released a self-produced, feature-length comedy special titled "Signal/Noise," available on YouTube. His special delves into what is and isn't important in our lives, showcasing his signature storytelling style and clever social commentary.
Watch Slade on his YouTube Channel
Beyond the comedy stage, Ham is a multifaceted talent. He is the founder of a startup that has invented a paint capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a significant step towards combating climate change. Additionally, Ham has a respectable IMDb profile as a filmmaker, authored a book, and hosts one of the longest-running comedy podcasts in the world, "The Whiskey Brothers Podcast," which has been entertaining listeners bi-weekly since 2011.
Ham's ventures are not confined to comedy and environmental innovation. He also hosts "The Slade Ham Experiment," a weekly show, and is featured in over 30 episodes of "Slade Runner," a travel series documenting his global adventures. His book, "Until All the Dragons Are Dead," is a critically acclaimed collection of stories that further highlights his talent as a writer.
Ham is deeply interested in the intersections of industries, disciplines, and ideas, focusing on the people working in these overlapping spaces. This curiosity drives his creative endeavors and inspires his unique approach to comedy and storytelling.
Describing himself on social media as a Jedi, ninja, dragonslayer, and global explorer, Slade Ham continues to find innovative ways to bring intriguing ideas to life. His live performances remain his forte, where his stand-up comedy continues to captivate and entertain audiences around the world.
LN: Your comedy career has taken you to an impressive 60 countries, often performing for the U.S. armed forces. How has this global experience shaped your comedic style and perspective on life?
SH: One aspect of comedy is all about finding ways that things are like other things. The more experiences you have, the more perspectives you can see from, the more varied your grab bag of “things,” the more ways you can find to combine them. Also, the military is an audience of many backgrounds. You learn quickly how to find commonality among people from all 50 states.
But through personal travel too, spending time in places where the people do nothing the same way you do can force you out of your patterns. I like the way the Japanese are comfortable with public baths, or the import Ethiopia places on the ritual of coffee. I like the multi-generational homes of Spain and Italy. I like villages that still cook with wood and harvest their own animals. Anything that reminds me that home is just one way to look at it all.
LN: Congratulations on the release of your self-produced feature-length comedy special! What inspired you to take the leap into producing your own content, and what were some of the challenges you faced along the way?
SH: If you wait around for “them,” whoever they are, to come banging on the door begging offering help for your creative idea, you will likely die lonely behind that door. I was watching how most comics were releasing “specials.” Many of them adhere to the same clickbait rules that govern the rest of the internet. They’re all about retention rate in a modern swipe-right landscape. I wanted to make something that differed from that formula and would hold up even if we moved on from this careless, fast-paced method of consumption. To do that, I had to do it myself. Sometimes it takes less time to do it that way that to convince someone else to get out of their comfort zone and come with you. If I’d waited, I might still be convincing people instead of celebrating the finished film.
LN: With a diverse portfolio ranging from stand-up comedy to filmmaking, writing, and podcasting, how do you navigate between these different creative outlets? Do you find that each form of expression informs the others in some way?
SH: Each allows me to work out a different muscle, all in the name of storytelling. Each allows me to think about something in a slightly different way, so maybe if a particular idea has me stymied, I’ll write about it in text, but it also might make a segment of my podcast that week, or it might come out on stage. Draw a horse. Paint a horse. Sculpt a horse. What matters is that you’re thinking about horses in different ways.
LN: Hosting one of the longest-running comedy podcasts since 2011 is quite an achievement. What do you think has contributed to the longevity and success of your podcast, and how do you keep the content fresh and engaging for your audience?
SH: We’ve had cast members die, move on to write for national TV programs, and we’ve had them quit comedy altogether. If you’re an audience member, there’s a decade of a soap opera, filled with characters and road stories, and hilarious takes on all the big things that happen in the world. Some podcasts are informative, some are hilarious, almost all of them are self-indulgent to an extent.
But mostly, a podcast offers an opportunity to corral my thoughts weekly or monthly, to take stock of what I’ve been chewing on and to see what I think about X or Y. People always think of podcasts in terms of audience when they try to measure success, but I think they can be fun tools in service of other art. Almost my entire last comedy special was test driven in pieces on my solo show over the year leading up to recording. There can be so much more value than a simple follower count.
LN: You've authored a book as well. What was the writing process like for you, and what themes or messages were important for you to convey through your book?
SH: Prose is fun because it works off different rules than stand-up. On stage, everything must finish funny. Long-form writing, however, allows me to explore all the other emotions and ideas that might not lend themselves to my stand-up right now. My first book was a collection of comedy essays about life on the road. The new book is more memoir, using 60 countries worth of travel as a backdrop for the tiny truths I’ve discovered about life, people, happiness, and what we do with our time here.
LN: As someone who enjoys bringing interesting ideas to life, what excites you most about the current landscape of comedy and entertainment? Are there any emerging trends or technologies that you believe will shape the future of the industry?
SH: All the new technology has seemingly made it possible for anybody to enter the entertainment field. There are a lot of new tools that make it easy for people to moonlight. Like all things though, the industry has a noise floor – that batch of beginners who will only try once or twice. But the internet makes it seem as if these other artists are everywhere. Regardless of what is available to the average person, exceptional artists will go further. They’ll use the tools better. They will spend more time on the parts that the apps and the tech and the AI can’t do well. No matter how good the bottom gets, the top performers will always look for ways to stretch what’s possible and what is considered quality. I think there will be a lot more bad art going forward, but there will also be art and experiences borne from this technology boom that we can’t even begin to imagine yet.
LN: In your opinion, what role does comedy play in addressing societal issues and fostering meaningful conversations? How do you approach tackling more serious topics through humor in your performances and content?
SH: Comedy is good at showing similarities and differences between things that don’t have obvious points of comparison. How is a raven like a writing desk? Those overlaps are not just where the best comedy lies, but also where the best solutions to our other problems will likely come from. Comedians are good at building tension. Making you think that we’re approaching a topic from one perspective. Done right, you start to think about it from that place too, and just as you get mad or feel validated or whatever your stance usually is on the subject, we subvert that and make you see it from a different place. I have a joke in the new show about the American flag and some players’ decisions to kneel. It’s important that we consider how a subject looks from nay different POVs. I suggest that the flag means something different to a young black football player than it does to a veteran who saw it every morning when he fought in Afghanistan. Then I say, “If you ask the little Chinese girl who made that flag…” Suddenly we are taken out of the binary way we think about it in America. We’re presented with a third option, which can be either refreshing or disruptive depending on what you already believe.
When a comedian does his job right, don’t get told what to think, but we’re given something to think about. Oh wow, I never thought about it that way.
LN: Looking ahead, what projects or endeavors are you most passionate about pursuing in the near future, and how do you hope to continue pushing boundaries and challenging yourself creatively?
SH: I’m currently touring the first draft of the new special, which has been a blast to write. I’m enjoying the writing process on the new book as well. What’s most important is that nothing I work on is the same as anything else I’ve done before. I try not to think more than a few years in advance, so between those and a few curious science projects, I am happy to have found an interesting and rewarding playground to work in every day.
LN: Your work seems to gravitate towards exploring the intersections between industries, disciplines, and ideas. Can you share an example of a project or collaboration where you've found particularly fertile ground in these overlapping spaces?
SH: We trust what’s worked in the past when it comes to finding solutions to problems. Everything benefits from an outside perspective though, and we don’t invite those people in often enough. We need more neuroscientists talking to particle physicists. We need more engineers talking to artists. When I ask a cinematographer what he sees when he watches stand-up comedy, it’s different from what I see, and we both ship a better product because of it.
A good example: I was at a dinner party with a variety of friends with different backgrounds. I watched an artist friend discuss a hard space problem with one of the world’s foremost experts on the movement of liquids, and by the time they’d done some back-of-the-napkin math, they had a couple of unorthodox ideas that never would have made their way into a laboratory otherwise.
The carbon capture paint has been another project that has invited both creative and technical people to imagine together.
LN: As a founder of a startup focused on environmental innovation, can you tell us more about the paint your company has developed to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? What sparked your interest in addressing climate change through this unique approach?
SH: The company is The People’s CO2. We invented a paint that removes carbon dioxide from the air with the help of a mineral called olivine. The paint will sequester half its weight in CO2 over its life and lock it harmlessly in place as a carbonate for the rest of geologic time. It’s one of the first consumer-facing products for the individual and I think it’s a cool way of approaching climate change through the power of scale. We currently have an active Kickstarter campaign with paint rewards for anyone interested.
Where to find Slade Ham: Pronouns he/him.
Website for comedy: https://www.sladeham.com
Website for the paint: www.thepeoplesCO2.com