Brian Copeland

I’m often asked how I’m able to switch back and forth between standup comedy and talk radio, as I’ve been doing for a dozen years now. Well, it’s been relatively easy, because the issues I deal with during my KGO program are, for the most part, issues I deal with onstage.

My performance comedy deals with social and topical issues in the Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Richard Pryor tradition. I write material culled from a daily dose of information overload that consists of seven newspapers, several newswires, a dozen Web sites and the obligatory cable TV blowhards.

I print this info on a few reams of paper and then file it away—some into my radio file, some into my Copeland’s Cornerfiles and almost everything into my standup file. So the material for my radio show and my comedy have the same origins; what differs is whether the punch line is a joke (standup) or a jumping-off point for vigorous debate (radio).