Episode #225: Mo Mandel

Mo Mandel is a stand-up comedian who created and executive produces Comedy Knockout for truTV, where comics zing each other and try to win over the studio audience. Before that, he hosted truTV’s BARmageddon and appeared more than 40 times on the panel of Chelsea Lately. You’ve seen him as a co-star on such TV […]

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Episode #224: Sam Morril

Sam Morril is one of New York City’s rising stand-up comics, having just come off hosting two seasons of People Talking Sports on the MSG network. Morril also has performed on America’s Got Talent, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Conan, and Last Comic Standing. He’s risen from Comedy Central’s Comics to Watch to his own hour special on the network, […]

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Episode #223: Jonathan Katz

Jonathan Katz won Comedy Central’s first-ever Emmy Award for his critically-acclaimed animated series, Dr. Katz, in the mid-1990s. He followed that up with a Peabody Award in 1998. Twenty years later, he’s entertaining us anew with therapy sessions with his famous funny friends in a brand-new Dr. Katz: The Audiobook, for Amazon’s Audible. But before […]

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Episode #222: Elayne Boosler

Elayne Boosler’s comedy career began by working the door as the hostess at the original Improvisation club in New York City in the 1970s. For over forty years, she has appeared on seemingly every talk show ever on TV, has written and starred in five of her own one-hour Showtime stand-up comedy specials, written and […]

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Episode #221: Maeve Higgins

Maeve Higgins was a bestselling memoirist and comedian in her native Ireland when, at the age of 31, she decided to move to America. So immigration isn’t just the subject of her hit podcast, Maeve In America: Immigration IRL, but also a first-hand experience. She co-hosts Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk on National Geographic, as well […]

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Episode #220: HBO’s Crashing with Judd Apatow and Pete Holmes

Judd Apatow and Pete Holmes first met on a podcast, and ever since, have developed a wonderful working relationship. Holmes first pitched the idea for Crashing to Apatow on his late great TBS late-night show, and I caught up with both the stand-up comedian and the writer/director/producer on the set of HBO’s Crashing at The […]

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Episode #219: Zainab Johnson

Zainab Johnson had other plans for her life, perhaps professional basketball or teaching, before a tragic accident changed her life and her worldview. Johnson tells me how she absorbed the lessons of the comedians she hung out with before jumping into comedy herself. So far, so good. After being named a New Face at Montreal’s […]

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Episode #218: Rafinha Bastos

In 2011, Rafinha Bastos was named the most influential person on Twitter. Not then-President Barack Obama. Not the Pope. Brazilian comedian and TV personality Rafinha Bastos. Bastos has upward of 12 million Twitter followers now. He sat down with me during Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival to talk about how his dreams shifted from journalism […]

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Episode #217: Paul Mecurio

Paul Mecurio is seen every night by audiences of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, as he warms them up before the CBS cameras turn on for taping. Mecurio graduated from law school and started out on Wall Street, though, before ever discovering his passions for comedy and getting a big break by selling a joke to Jay Leno. Mecurio has […]

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Episode #216: Allan Havey

Allan Havey is a comedian and actor who hosted a late-night talk show for the Comedy Channel (before it was Comedy Central) called Night After Night with Allan Havey. You might not have heard much from him in the 1990s and much of the 2000s. But he’s certainly enjoying a renaissance in the past decade, since acting […]

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