Audio from two old-school UCLA talks by comedians.

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On February 8, 1966, just six months before his fatal overdose, Lenny Bruce gave a rambling talk on campus, hitting on all the large topics he loved: law, church, state and free speech. He got off to a slow start, distracted as he was at the time with his own ongoing legal issues, but before finishing he’d argued with biting wit that churches were like fast-food franchises, science and technology polluted the justice system, Catholic rituals protected child molesters and “a country can only be strong by knowing about the bad things.”

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Long before she was a self-centered Republican lady worried about buying and selling as much crap as possible, Joan Rivers was a great stand-up. (And despite any personal unpleasantness and crassness, she still is.) On November 15, 1972, Rivers did a Q&A with the students, being brazenly honest on varied topics (feminism, Bill Cosby, talk shows, etc. ) and asking rhetorically, “If I was normal, would I be doing comedy?” Very funny stuff.