Roy Wood Jr. on the Moment He Knew America Wasn’t Going to ‘Make It’

Roy Wood Jr.’s new stand-up special Lonely Flowers starts—and ends—with the phrase “We ain’t gonna make it.”

What the longtime Daily Show correspondent-turned-CNN host is getting at is the way in which our lack of human connection as a society could spell the end of American civilization as we know it. “I just don’t see how we become as connected as we once were ever again,” he tells the Daily Beast in a new interview.

And in this exclusive clip from the new special, Wood points the finger directly at the type of dehumanizing technology that was supposed to make things easier but has only driven us further apart.

Like, for instance, the self-checkout machines at grocery stores. “I do not like it!” he says from the stage. “I do not work here, I just arrived.”

“Only time you see an employee at the grocery store is when you do self-checkout wrong,” Wood adds. That’s when one of the machine’s “overlords magically appears” to remind you just how much you don’t understand about what human cashiers used to do for a living.

Wood, who returns as our special guest on The Last Laugh podcast this Wednesday, says he decided to focus his new hour on the “loneliness epidemic in our society” when he looked around and realized how disconnected Americans are from each other.

“Man, remember when there was a cashier and you talked?” he asks wistfully. “That was different.”

This theme of connection runs through the entirety of Wood’s new hour, which premieres on Hulu this Friday, Jan. 17. And it also forms the basis of our latest podcast conversation, which covers his decision to leave The Daily Show before the announcement that Jon Stewart would be returning, finding his groove as part of the CNN family as host of the comedy quiz show Have I Got News for You and more.

Follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear our new episode with Roy Wood Jr. when it drops this Wednesday, Jan. 15.