J: What do you do now that you’ve been humiliated like this?

JH: Mainly I’m just really into making eggs the best way I possibly can. But it’s a reasonable question because – perhaps not so obviously -- I was joking about the end of the world. I understood that it was a joke – a sincere joke, in the sense that I started thinking about the end of the world when I turned 40. That’s when most humans start thinking about the end of the world because they’re facing their own personal apocalypse as they start to see the trajectory of their lives heading toward death.

Most humans are narcissists so they become fascinated with apocalyptic and dystopian stories because their feeling is they’re so important to this world that if they die, they’re going to take the rest of us jerks out with them. It was a joke but one that came from a sincere place of being terrified. But also in a weird way, taking perverse comfort in this idea that it’s all going to end, and there’s nothing we can do about it, and it will all happen all at once, and it will be all over with. It will be like peeling off a band-aid of doom.

So when you look up the next day, and that hasn’t happened, and you’re facing the dumb rest of your life, it is kind of scary. Even though I was joking, I told the joke so many times that not professionally, nor personally had I prepared for the idea that life would go on and I would have to fill it up with new endeavors.

J: How should a viewer cope with this realization that you’re giving them?

JH: Different people are going to react to it in different ways. Anyone under 35 believes they are immortal and says that dumb joke doesn’t matter to me. Anyone over 35 who’s beginning to appreciate that they are dying, I hope will feel a certain sense of catharsis. I do. Even though the apocalypse I put forward was only one of my own imagination, I am glad the world didn’t end. I’m finding it really interesting to figure out what I do next. A lot of that has to do with starting from scratch basically, as a creative person.

J: Are you bringing your current act around the country, spreading the gospel?

JH: I’m not spreading a new gospel here – I’m just a guy who predicted the end of the world and it didn’t happen, who has to answer for himself the question ‘Now what?’ As a guy who cannot help but go on a long monologue about making eggs, and construct an alternate reality in which you are one of the world’s leading scrambled egg bloggers, that happens naturally in my brain, to create alternate realities and exist within them pleasantly, but the alternate alternate reality, which is the truth, is that’s just me and it’s much more of a revelation for me to get onstage and just be open about – just be myself.

Even though a lot of my comedy is insincere or fake, it’s sincerely insincere and it’s a new pleasure for me to just get up and not feel like I have to bend my comedy into a particularly persona – or not even bend my comedy but bend whatever stories I’m going to tell into a particular persona, but be able to jump around between scrambled eggs and the lives of my human children – to literally just wear the clothes I feel like wearing that night as opposed to wearing a costume I have to wear.

J: How should one prepare to sit down and view the special?

JH: First of all you have to be a subscriber to Netflix. If you are a subscriber to Netflix, then thank you. Please turn it on, sometime on June 20, and then let it run. As I always promised with my books, if you buy it, it frees you from the obligation to read it, as far as I’m concerned. But it does not matter to me if you do not watch it, so long as you subscribe to Netflix, stream it on June 20 and let it run all the way through. Because as you know, Netflix is watching all of us and they will see what happens if you pause it and don’t come back to it. If you do that, they will come to me and take one of my children.

J: Well that’s no good. People have to watch.

JH: It’s serious business and not entirely in that sense. I hate to couch it in these terms but this special is really exciting and important to me, and I’m really excited to be able to do something on Netflix because I feel as though this is the way filmed entertainment is going to be made and distributed. I’m a Netflix user and a Netflix lover, so I would love to do more stuff like this in the future. If you enjoy the special, that’s not only wonderful for me and I’m grateful, but it also does its own work, because you enjoy it and watch it. If you only merely support what it is I’m trying to do, which is survive, it would be very helpful to me if you watch this special, and didn’t not watch it.

J: Well I’m already subscribed on Netflix and will play it again, because I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, or your family. Is it OK to watch on the days after the 20^th, or only on the 20^th?

JH: Of course, on the days after. Especially for subscribers, it costs you nothing to keep screening it over and over again. Boy oh boy that would be great. But in a new era, after the world has not ended, I’m being a little less cagey and coy in my comedy, and a little more transparent in talking to fans. Part of the thing I’m saying is ‘you do what you want and love what you want. I totally respect the decisions you make. If you happen to want to support me, this is how you do it.’ We have to be open about these transactions if we want the art we love to work and to survive.

There are a lot of people in the world who think they’re supporting “Community” by torrenting it five months later. That’s great – and great for them for spreading the word in chat rooms and on social networks, but if you really want to support the thing you love, figure out how they want you to support it, and do it.