“Off With His Head” is the new, aptly titled comedy special from stand-up comedian Hasan Minhaj. The former “Daily Show” senior correspondent and host of “Patriot Act” survived the comedy equivalent of a public execution last year and now, the dark experience is grist for his smart, funny and topical one-hour Netflix special that’s now streaming.

Minhaj, 39, became the center of a quasi-controversy over truth in comedy when the New Yorker published an article last year accusing him of fabricating personal events in his two Netflix stand-up specials, 2022’s “The King’s Jester” and 2017’s “Homecoming King.”

The focus was on his claims of being discriminated against because of his skin color and being profiled because he’s Muslim. The fact that the story gained any traction, let alone became a thing for about 10 minutes, is still a mystery. Or maybe it’s not. There are perils to joking while Muslim.

Minhaj released a video response explaining and defending the creative decisions he’d made in his specials, and he provided audio recordings, emails and context to allege that the New Yorker ignored context that he had given it for the story.

As social media argued the merits of emotional truth versus historical accuracy, Minhaj says he lost the most coveted gig of any comedian’s career: host of “The Daily Show.”

“We’ve all failed in our lives,” Minhaj said earlier this year while performing at the Netflix Is a Joke festival. “But have you ever failed so bad, you bring back Jon Stewart? I saved a dying institution. You’re welcome.”

Now he’s back with his head and sense of humor firmly intact with a special that explores gerontology and the U.S. Congress (“a mass nursing home.gov”), the cultural differences between Caucasia and Beige-istan — as he collectively describes such immigrant groups as Latinos, Indians and Arabs — and the joys of simultaneously teaching his small children and aging parents how to use an iPad.

This interview with Minhaj has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: The best stand-up comedy requires taking chances and making yourself vulnerable. Was it hard to get back to that place after your comedy was in essence fact-checked?

A: The beautiful thing about comedy is that it’s one of the only art forms where you do have to (talk about) the elephant in the room, even if you’re the butt of the joke. Keeping that in perspective is really, really important. Comedy is such a unique art form in the sense that you’re building pressure and then releasing it. It allows you to constantly have that release. You can take two things like joy as a form of release — just being silly, hilarious, naughty, irreverent — and emotions like pain, humiliation, then trauma and tragedy — and you can also have a release. That was my approach with it.

Q: Did the fallout from the New Yorker article cause you to change the way you approach writing and performing with this special?

A: No. I (already) put out a 21-minute video about what had happened. I showed the receipts and the material of the things that I provided that didn’t get included (in the article). So it was kind of entered into the public record, and that allowed me to (say,) “Hey, if you want to go discuss, talk about or litigate, there’s a whole deep dive on it — tape, emails, receipts, all there, beat by beat by beat.” Now we can focus on just this piece of work. I get to approach this hour as its own unique, individual piece of work.

Q: The special goes into a world that I’ll describe as a third-rail of race and cultural humor.

A: For the longest time, culture and the framing of the American cultural narrative existed in a black-white dichotomy. But there’s this third thing in America called Beige-istan, which is like Indians, Latinos, Filipinos, Arabs, wherever Bruno Mars is from. It’s this group of people that are immigrants by choice, that basically came to America and signed the iTunes user agreement of the empire. Beige culture has a unique set of like values, complexities that Black America and white America do not fully understand, that is such a rich vein for comedy. I loved swimming those waters. That was so fun and cool. I can’t wait for people to see how they feel about that.

Q: “Off With His Head” takes things back to a stripped-down, live-show vibe.

A: I wanted to strip away some of the visual elements, so it’s just the raw articulation of the ideas, and have the vulnerability and the comedy come through that way, without lighting changes (or) cue changes. Comedy, poetry and jazz are kind of cousins of one another. They are performed live in relatively intimate rooms. In the medium of television, broadcast, cable and now streaming specials, it essentially took an art form which was originally designed to entertain anywhere between 200 people to a couple thousand people, and now (is) broadcast in 190 countries. That took it from (a) performance and flattened it into a presentation. My whole goal was that I don’t want it to feel like a presentation. I want it to feel immersed. I remember (our) stage designer saw it and said, “Oh, it’s almost like a public execution.” I go, “Yeah, kinda.”

Q: Let’s talk about the new podcast, “Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know,” which introduces you as “a two-time Peabody Award-winning comedian and noted IBS sufferer.” It’s political humor like the “Patriot Act” but focuses on the interview. Your guests have included Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Lakers coach JJ Redick.

A: Bernie Sanders is obviously a massively influential, American political representative of the progressive left movement. But his personality? He is a walking human tweed jacket. The sincerity that he brings, and my ... let’s call it boisterous, manic, boy-like, energy … was just a whole lot of fun.

My whole ethos behind the show came out of (a thing that happened) over a year ago when President Obama’s team reached out and they said, “The president, he wants to do more interviews. He hasn’t been that active on social; he was a fan of your show. He’d love to do something.”

The format is really unique and interesting and something I wasn’t able to explore on “Patriot Act.” The traditional late night structure that has an Act 3 guest doesn’t really allow for this type of conversation. When you have an hour or (more), you can take the time to get past the talking points and get to, “What are your motivations behind the decisions that you make?”

Q: “Off With His Head” also has fun juxtaposing the individualism of American culture with the way your Indian parents raised you.

A: I talk about American society as a hyper individualist society. It’s always something I felt at odds with because in (Indian) households, we come from a hyper collectivist society. So it’s collectivism versus individualism, and playing those off each other was so fun to do in front of an audience deep in the heart of Texas. I got to say, “Let me get this straight, your dog has better healthcare than your mom? Sorry, you’ve lost the (expletive) plot.” It’s such an awesome, unique, way to talk about the heirlooms that are beautiful from our culture and the baggage that I think we (need) to get rid of. It’s the beauty and the messiness that I love.