Hasan Minhaj Asks Barack Obama Who Really Curates His End-of-Year Lists: ‘Look Me in the Eyes and Be Honest’

Minhaj also asked the former president what would have happened if he failed to include Michelle Obama's 'The Light We Carry' on his Favorite Books of 2022 list

Barack Obama is getting candid about several topics with Hasan Minhaj, including how his famous end-of-year lists — which allegedly reveal the former president's favorite books, movies and songs of the year — are actually curated.

The former president, 61, sat down with the comedian for a one-on-one interview where he was subjected to Minhaj's line of questioning, which involved an intense interrogation right out of the gate.

“I need you to look me in the eyes and be honest with me," Minhaj, 37, said at the beginning of the interview. "Mr. President, when you do your end-of-the-year lists, do you really read all those books, watch all those shows and listen to all those songs?”

Obama immediately replied, “I do.”

When the comedian expressed doubt, Obama explained, “People believe the books and the movies, but the playlists, they somehow think... and this is somehow coming from young people like you. Somehow y’all think you invented rock and roll. You invented hip-hop.”

“And so the fact that my lists are, you know, pretty incredible, people seem to think, 'Well he must have had some 20-year-old intern who was figuring out this latest cut.' No man, it’s on my iPad right now,” he continued.

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Minhaj dubiously asked if the song “Life is Good” by SiR featuring ScribzRiley was on his iPad and what the plotline was for the book Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah — both of which made their way onto his 2022 lists.

“Look here’s the bottom line of my playlists, and my book lists and my movie lists: I am very scrupulous about making sure this is stuff I actually like,” Obama said.

“I will confess that there are times on the playlists, on the music playlists, where I will get suggestions because it’s not like I got time to be listening to music all the time,” he admitted. “So typically at the end of the year what happens is folks will be like, ‘Man, you need to listen to this. This is good.’ But unless I’m actually listening to it, watching it, reading it, I won’t put it on there.”

Before letting the topic go, Minhaj quickly asked what would have happened if Obama didn't choose his wife's book, The Light We Carry, as one of his favorite books of 2022. "Well that would be foolish, because we share a bank account," he responded with a laugh.

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Minhaj went on to tackle deeper questions, too, including asking Obama if he was depressed amid all the current events: the overturning of Roe v. Wade, book bans, multiple mass shootings and climate change.

“There is no way the 'Hope' and the 'Change' guy does not feel depressed," Minhaj said. "You are too smart not to feel depressed. You’re too intelligent.”

Obama responded: “First of all, there are times when I do feel depressed because objectively when you see an entire school terrified because a gunman is walking in with weapons of war, if your heart’s not breaking then something’s wrong with you. If you think that’s normal then you really do need some therapy.”

He also explained that climate change was another worry of his with record forest fires, and said there is evidence that “we’re not moving as fast as we need to” to fight climate change, but he tries to put things into perspective. Obama added that the key is “not to be blind to the genuine challenges and threats that are in front of us” but also to think about how far we have come as humanity.

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“We can go through some lists of moments that are significantly worse than this,” the former president said, listing big events like World War I, World War II and the Great Depression.

"You grew up and in some ways I grew up in this anomalous stretch of time in which even though bad things were happening, for the most part, the trajectory of humanity was things were getting better," Obama told Minhaj. "We’re becoming less racist and less sexist and less homophobic and better educated and healthier… ”

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