Hasan Minhaj Reveals What He’s Learned from Fatherhood, Career Adversity, and College Dance Shows

2 min readComedian, TV host, and YouTube creator Hasan Minhaj has every intention to kill fellow comic and actor Ronny Chieng—live, onstage—in their new stand-up show Hasan Hates Ronny/Ronny Hates Hasan. It’s touring now, but in October in Oakland the performance will tape for future streaming on Netflix. It’s during that show, Minhaj swears, that someone will die.This is, of course, all a joke, which arrives in a new episode of Esquire’s “What I’ve Learned,” streaming above. “Netflix has done a lot of things,” teases Minhaj. “They know that hatred, bigotry, it really does well on the algorithm. What if we did a full snuff film? And we just went for it?”It’s not all barbs and bits in the comedian’s sprawling new interview. Elsewhere, the 40-year-old dives deep into growing up second-generation Indian Muslim—which he says he only closely embraced after hanging with other Indian and pan-Asian dancers in college—his career in showbiz, and his tumultuous 2023.“What age has shown me,” he says, referring to the stretch of time that saw him embroiled in a media scandal and losing out on the Daily Show hosting job, “entering my 40s, is, Hey, adversity is coming. Whether it’s warranted or not. And I’m not here to litigate. What matters is: This happened, and what are you gonna do about it? How do you continue to create? How do you continue to maintain your level of curiosity and passion? And if adversity comes, do you have what it takes to dig deep within you? And do you have something else to offer?”Now Minhaj hosts his own YouTube channel and podcast, Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know, and is the cowriter and producer of the new Netflix film Best of the Best, out September 18. Minhaj wrote Best, he explains, during Covid-19, when he and collaborator Brashanth Bengadram looked back on their time in college going to dance competitions. Although Minhaj didn’t dance himself, he performed stand-up at the team’s parties, which he admits he did just to stalk the woman who would become his wife, Bina Patel. “That feeling of identity, coming into your own, seeing that Indian culture, South Asian culture being celebrated in this way ... we grew up kind of hiding having to hide our culture. And these competitions were the first time that I got to see, like, ‘Oh, it’s the coolest thing you can do.’ ”You can watch the full episode of above as well as on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.