The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

Michael Cruz Kayne is a comedian, actor and writer based in NYC. He wrote for the last six seasons of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he's an Emmy nominee again in 2026. At the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, he co-wrote and starred in Terrible Babysitters, a 2013 webseries with D'Arcy Carden, and directed Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson in their two-person musical,  Fucking Identical Twins, which ultimately became the 2023 feature film, Dicks: The Musical. You may have seen Michael Cruz Kayne in a supporting role on Severance, or seen him tell jokes on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Ten years after one of his sons died shortly after childbirth, he went viral on Twitter writing about how he realized a decade later he needed to talk about his grief all the time — that ultimately led to an off-Broadway run with Audible for what became Sorry For Your Loss, released as a comedy special on Dropout in March 2026. Michael Cruz Kayne sat down with me over Zoom this past week to talk about his life and career and what comes next, even if the heat wave fried our Zoom in the process. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Jourdain Fisher is a Brooklyn-based comedian who has written for 50 Cent's BET sketch comedy series, 50 Central, appeared on After Midnight, and performed stand-up on both Comedy Central and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. His debut self-produced hour Bits & Pieces premiered exclusively on 800 Pound Gorilla's new streaming service, Gorilla Comedy+, in May 2026 with a worldwide YouTube release slated for June 2026. Fisher sat down with me over Zoom to talk about the economics of stand-up comedy today, how much the comedy landscape has changed in the decade since he moved to New York City from North Carolina, how his Tonight Show debut led to a writing gig for Fallon inside 30 Rock, how the pandemic brought him back to Carolina but also gave birth to his social-media character, "Gangster Chef," and why he doesn't do Southern accents much in his stand-up but will pull out a killer Trump impersonation. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Emmy Blotnick is a New York-based comedian who has written for and performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. You may also have heard her joking multiple times on NPR's Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me! or seen her performing stand-up on  The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Conan. Her writing credits are even longer and more varied, including not just Colbert and Fallon, but also The President Show, Mel Brooks's History of the World: Part II, English Teacher, Bust Down, Pause with Sam Jay, Nikki & Sara Live, Not Safe with Nikki Glaser, plus a few roasts, including Netflix's most recent live Roast of Kevin Hart. Her new stand-up special, What's Her Secret?, premiered in May 2026 exclusively on the new streaming service, Gorilla Comedy+, and will be available on YouTube starting June 16, 2026. Blotnick caught up with me over Zoom to talk about her experiences behind and in front of the camera, how her new hour evolved over the course of four years, and how this special finally got her posting on Instagram again. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

When Netflix held its first-ever Netflix Is A Joke festival in Los Angeles 2022, stand-up comedian Leslie Liao was working for Netflix in human resources and had to buy tickets to see shows in the festival. For the second Netflix Is A Joke fest in 2024, Liao had just quit her day job, and her former Netflix co-workers paid to see her headline a festival show. In May 2026, she was already booked elsewhere, and celebrating the release of her debut comedy special, Silky Smooth, out now through 800 Pound Gorilla Media. She caught up with me over Zoom to talk about the art of writing hyperlocal comedy routines while performing on the road in far-flung places from Maine to Alberta, how she put aside fears of starting comedy at 30, and what it was like trying to balance her day job at Netflix with her nights and weekends developing her stand-up voice. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

If you listen to Pod Save The UK or The Bugle, or you watch Taskmaster, then I don't have to explain Nish Kumar to you. The British comedian  — twice nominated for Best Show at the Edinburgh Fringe — sat down with me over Zoom to talk about his new stand-up special, Nish, Don't Kill My Vibe, out now via 800 Pound Gorilla Media. Kumar spoke about how this special allowed him to experience America in a new way, how Chris Rock inspired him as a teenager, how podcasts have distorted the economic reality of making a living as a comedian, algorithms as the new gatekeepers, and how it makes a difference when comedians making fun of each other are friends versus foes. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Kelly MacFarland is a stand-up comedian with TV credits on NBC, Comedy Central and AXS Gotham Comedy Live. MacFarland also has performed at Denis Leary's Comics Come Home at Boston's TD Garden, and more recently put out a half-hour with Dry Bar Comedy and a set with Don't Tell Comedy. Along the way, she also has released three comedy albums — her newest, Hot Gnome, she self-financed as a video special on YouTube in 2025, with the album released in April 2026 via Blonde Medicine. Kelly and I caught up over Zoom to talk about why and how she has so many newer projects — another special, Wit Happens, is available for rent on Prime Video — how her career ambitions have changed since losing both of her parents, the ramifications of appearing as a contestant on the inaugural season of NBC's reality-TV weight-loss series, The Biggest Loser, and what keeps her going in stand-up while living in the suburbs of Boston. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Named one of Variety's Top 10 Comics to Watch in 2025, Joe Dombrowski first broke through in 2017 when he went viral for pranking his fourth-grade students and landed multiple appearances on Ellen. Now with more than 1.3 million Instagram followers, and another 1.6 million on TikTok, Dombrowski released his first hour special, Dad On Arrival, in April 2026 through 800 Pound Gorilla Media. The comedian sat down with me over Zoom to talk about those pre-Ellen years, when he was moonlighting as a spin instructor, and summer coordinator at the Detroit Zoo in addition to developing his stand-up, sketch and improv chops in the Detroit-area comedy clubs; how he convinced Louis Faranda at Carolines on Broadway to take a one-nighter chance on him as a headliner; the importance of establishing "My Straight Friends" as a monthly showcase at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles despite living in Seattle; and how much it meant to him to perform stand-up on the final season of Late Show with Stephen Colbert. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Troy Walker is a writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live! who also wrote for Kimmel's turns hosting the Oscars, but he came up through the Denver comedy scene while also graduating from law school and working in money laundering compliance. Walker returned to Denver to record his debut comedy album at Comedy Works. Esquire debuted in February 2026 via Blonde Medicine, with Walker joking about growing up in Colorado and eventually making his way in LA. Walker sat down with me over Zoom to talk even more about that, explaining what has made the Comedy Works in Denver one of the nation's premier comedy clubs in the eyes of headliners and new comics alike, how he balanced one-nighters in Wyoming and Colorado with law school, and how seeing his peers enjoy success helped convince him to try to make it in Hollywood, too. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Maggie Winters is a South Side Chicago comedian who came up in improv with iO and as a stand-up through Lincoln Lodge's FemCom program, and she first found a wider audience online with millions of views for her front-facing character videos on TikTok and Instagram. 2023 was a breakthrough year for Winters, as she appeared as a recurring character assisting the youth group in HBO's The Righteous Gemstones, as well as a "New Face" at Montreal's Just For Laughs. That same year, she debuted her one-person show, Marguerite, which she took to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2024, and filmed in 2025 at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. The show combines onstage storytelling with video clips from her life growing up on the South Side of Chicago. Marguerite premiered on St. Patrick's Day 2026 on the UCB's YouTube channel, co-produced by Abso Lutely, and Winters sat down with me over Zoom to talk about her comedy start, adapting her show for people outside of Chicago, and what comes next. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Mark Vigeant blends clown, improv, physical theater, and multimedia to create interactive comedy shows such as The Best Man Show, which he took to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2024 and 2025, and released as a special on Dropout in February 2026. Vigeant is based in Los Angeles, but started his career with the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City where he performed improv and sketch, played Trumpet Boy for The Special Without Brett Davis, hosted a series online for Seriously.TV, and earned himself a screen-test audition for Saturday Night Live. Vigeant caught up with me over Zoom to talk about how his brushes with near-stardom, as well as his 2021 documentary about the "Pizza Rat" phenomenon, influenced his views on fame and ambition; how he was inspired by seeing other Fringe shows by the likes of Moses Storm, Natalie Palamides and The Umbilical Brothers, and how releasing a Dropout special has influenced what he's doing next: a 2026 Fringe show about a YouTube survivalist called Out There. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Jamie Lee is an Emmy-winning writer and producer on Apple TV's Ted Lasso who began her comedy career in the press office of Comedy Central. Her first break in front of the camera came via panel shows, most notably MTV's Girl Code, as well as performances on both Conan and The Late Late Show with James Corden. As a writer, her credits have included HBO's Crashing, TV Land's Teachers, Peocock's Killing It, Hulu's Chad Powers, and of course, Ted Lasso. Her book Weddiculous, led to her starring in the Netflix series, The Wedding Coach. But her current passion project is a stage show, My Friend Katy, investigating how and why her childhood friend died suddenly and mysteriously while Lee was in college. Lee took the show to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2025, and she caught up with me over Zoom in March 2026 between shows at Union Hall in Brooklyn as she prepares to adapt her stage show into a special. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Matt Koff is a Brooklyn-based stand-up comic and Emmy-winning TV writer who has spent more than 13 years writing for The Daily Show. His own stand-up was featured on Adam Devine's House Party on Comedy Central, and earned him the title of New York's Funniest in 2023. In addition to his writing for The Daily Show, Koff also has written for The Onion, Trevor Noah's keynote at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and he co-wrote the former Twitter account, @TrumpComedyNerd. His new hour special, Cat Man, premieres March 10, 2026, on VEEPS, with jokes about divorce, middle age, and of course, cats. Koff sat down with me over Zoom to talk about his first big break in TV via the Game Show Network, an even earlier live theater project he worked on called Saturday Night Rewritten (which proved to be a great training ground for his writing for The Daily Show), and how he separates his often political comedy day job from the comedy he pursues in the clubs at night. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Steve Sweeney is a comedian and actor from Boston's Charlestown neighborhood who has performed on big stages and bigger screens for more than four decades. His newest project is Townie, a documentary-style stand-up film making its North American premiere at the New York Comedy Film Festival in February 2026. It's executive-produced by Peter Farrelly, one of the Farrelly Brothers who previously have employed Sweeney in memorable supporting roles in films such as Me, Myself and Irene and There's Something About Mary, where he played a cop confronting Ben Stiller's zipper scene. Sweeney, who has his own intimate comedy club in Quincy, shared stories with me reminiscing about his performance on the HBO Young Comedians Special hosted by John Candy, attending USC with Judd Apatow, what he learned working with and befriending legends such as George Carlin and Rodney Dangerfield, how Colin Quinn pushed him to become more vulnerable onstage for Townie. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

A dozen years removed from his debut stand-up special, Beta Male on Comedy Central, Kumail Nanjiani's fans can finally see him in a new hour, Night Thoughts, which premiered in December 2025  Hulu and Disney+. In between, he and his wife Emily V. Gordon received an Academy Award nomination for their screenplay for The Big Sick (and won Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards). On his own, Nanjiani has earned two Emmy nominations (first for guest acting in The Twilight Zone, the second for his lead performance in a limited series for Hulu's Welcome to Chippendales). He also shared in a Screen Actors Guild Award win with the cast of Hulu's Only Murders in the Building. Night Thoughts finds Nanjiani in contention for his first Golden Globe, for Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television. His performance catches fans up on how fame has and hasn't changed him, most strikingly by how the public reacted to his body transformation for Eternals, and then for their reaction to the Marvel movie itself. I caught up with Nanjiani over Zoom to see whether all of that therapy has translated into better mental and emotional health for him in receiving both validation and criticism from strangers online, and how he's slowly become more comfortable putting himself out there in bigger and bigger pop-culture franchises. In 2026, you're already guaranteed to see him in the second season of Amazon Prime Video's Fallout, as well as the upcoming season 21 of Taskmaster. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

It's the end of 2025, which means it's time once more for my annual December to remember the year in comedy with my friend and colleague in comedy criticism, Jason Zinoman from The New York Times. Which funny people met the moment to become Comedy's Most Valuable Performer for 2025? Late-night TV certainly faced a political crisis on top of its existing existential crisis this past year, with CBS jettisoning both of its late-night franchises, and ABC threatening to follow suit with Jimmy Kimmel. We also saw major push back within and outside of comedy regarding the inaugural Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia; the end of an era with Marc Maron closing the loop on his WTF podcast coinciding with the WTF-ness of video podcasting reigning supreme; the eccentric choices from the likes of Nathan Fielder and Tim Robinson; and a year in stand-up specials that smiled upon relative newcomers big (Hulu) and small (Dropout), with an uncertain future for HBO. As always, there's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Mike Bridenstine appeared on this podcast three years ago in Episode 417. Since then, he has written and published his second book about comedy, "Kansas City Comedy: The Unbelievable True Story of Stanford & Sons, Its Outlaw Owners and the Most Infamous Stand-Up Sets of All Time." Brido also has begun working behind the scenes as general manager of a cherished Los Angeles comedy venue, the Lyric Hyperion in LA's Silver Lake neighborhood, where he and his team also have launched their own production arm, Spesh!, filming and distributing comedy specials. Brido directed the first Spesh! special, Emily Browning: Temporary, Beautiful, which came out in September. On the weekend before Thanksgiving, I sat in on the Lyric's taping of a new hour from Ahmed Bharoocha, then met up with Brido the following day in Lyric's green room to talk about where his own path in comedy has taken him, and what he has learned about talking with other comedians and working with them more closely. Brido — who appeared this year on an episode of High Potential — he has come a long way from Iowa and iCarly. Which means there's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland met in high school in Maryland and have been making magical two-handed theater shows ever since. Now based in New York City, they have taken three shows to the Edinburgh Fringe since 2022, winning The Scotsman's Fringe First Awards for writing for each of them: And Then The Rodeo Burned Down; What if They Ate the Baby?; and A Letter To Lyndon B. Johnson or God, Whoever Reads This First. At the end of 2025, they also began debuting their latest work-in-progress, The Doctor Was His Mother, which ditches their usual narrative arcs and sociopolitical commentary for some simply silly and laugh-out-loud physical comedy. Their work always blends absurdist clown work, modern dance and satire in a way that separates them from most of their peers working onstage today. In December 2025, they're enjoying an encore run of What If They Ate The Baby? at the SoHo Playhouse in Manhattan, and joined me over Zoom from their dressing room backstage to talk about their writing process, how they had to gamble on themselves in Edinburgh before gaining any real exposure in the States, and what sets them apart from the rest of the clowns currently influencing the comedy scene in the mid-2020s. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Jono Zalay began his standup career in Boston while simultaneously earning his Doctorate in Neuroscience, where his research work included giving cocaine to rats. Since dropping his science hobby to pursue comedy full-time, Jono has done standup for The Late Late Show on CBS, Netflix is a Joke, and LMAOF on OnlyFansTV. He also has worked behind the scenes as a story producer or consulting producer on Peacock's Stormy Daniels series, CNN's The United States of Scandal, and Amazon Prime Video's This Giant Beast That is the Global Economy. Jono sat down with me over Zoom to talk about all of that, how he has pranked the DMV, and what made his latest comedy album so special. On Beat Life to Death, he jokes about reaching his midlife years and tells stories about his dad — which makes this extra special, since he recorded this, his third album, just days before his father had quintuple bypass surgery. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Jamie Linn Watson is an NYC-based actor and comedian. You may have seen her as Joanna Roscoe in season 5 of What We Do in the Shadows, a judgy church girl in Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, or as the Sprintern in many national commercials for the company formerly known as Sprint. Watson performs with the Upright Citizens Brigade on one of their house character teams, with former SNL cast member Chloe Troast on the improv team A Crazy Amazing Friendship, with the sketch group LISA, and goes on tour with the Story Pirates. She's also the star of a new movie about the early days of online content creators — SKIT debuts November 14, 2025, on Tubi. Watson sat down with me over Zoom to talk about her own experience with YouTube and social media over the years, what she has learned from watching her peers succeed, and what kind of characters she loves to portray the most. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Saaniya Abbas grew up in New Delhi, attended an all-girls Catholic school in the Himalayas, and only discovered herself once she found herself divorced in Dubai and starting a new life as a stand-up comedian. She amassed a half-million followers on Instagram hosting live videos in the pandemic, and as a comedian has toured the UK and India, and took her first one-woman-show, Hellarious, to the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe. Abbas and her furry cat ears have come to America in November 2025 for the New York Comedy Festival, but first she took some time out over Zoom to tell me about what she has learned from cosplay, social media and experiencing different environments around the world. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Lou Wall is an Australian comedian whose two most recent shows were both nominated for Most Outstanding Show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.  Wall has appeared on Australian TV panel shows, and also appeared in the ABC Australia and Netflix series, Fisk. I've seen and reviewed all three shows Wall has taken thus far to the Edinburgh Fringe, from their breakneck breakthrough performance about their best frenemy in Lou Wall vs. The Internet, to 2024's The Bisexual's Lament – an hour of deranged PowerPoints, gay (derogatory) musical comedy and mentally ill hot takes. One of their bits from that show went viral, prompting them to write this year's show, Breaking the Fifth Wall, which sold out its Fringe run and has brought Wall to New York City to perform for the first time in an Off-Broadway run at SoHo Playhouse. Wall eventually found a wall-free space where they could connect with me to talk about their life, career and how truth fits or doesn't fit when it comes to great comedy. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Chanel Ali is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actress based in New York City. You may have seen her on MTV's Girl Code, TruTV's Laff Mobb's Laff Tracks, Starz's Night Train with Wyatt Cenac, or two showcases she did for Comedy Central in partnership with Refinery29. She also released a full special for Unprotected Sets, available on MGM+. Deadline named her as one of their 15 Comedians to Watch in 2025, based on the success of her debut one-woman show, Relative Stranger, which she took to the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe and the 2025 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. In her show, she recounts bouncing around the foster care system, and how a DNA test for a 23andMe commercial revealed a brother she never knew about and how she ultimately found her biological father. Ali spoke to me on Zoom just before her off-Broadway run at SoHo Playhouse, produced by Sarah Cooper. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

A San Fransisco native who's based in both New York City and Los Angeles, Dylan Adler is a musical comedian who performed and wrote for The Late Late Show with James Corden. Before that gig, Adler was named a Comic to Watch by the New York Comedy Festival and a Comedian You Should and Will Know by Vulture. He took his solo hour, Haus of Dy-lan, to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2025, and sat down with me between shows in Scotland to talk about how he differentiates himself from his identical twin who also wants to be a comedian, working through trauma onstage by writing the album and show, Rape Victims are Horny Too with Kelly Bachman, and what he has learned from touring the world with Atsuko Okatsuka. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Britt Migs is a stand-up and sketch comedian based in New York City who was named a Creator to Watch at the 2024 New York Comedy Festival for characters such as her Italian publicist for the Pope. Migs manages Cracked magazine's social media and runs the Cracked Comedy Club showcases. In addition, she also has written for Reductress, co-hosts Sunday Sauce monthly at Union Hall with her Meat Cats collaborators, and has previous experience behind-the-camera as a producer on TV shows such as Dr. Oz and Deal or No Deal. In 2025, Migs brought her debut solo show, Dolphin Mode, to the Edinburgh Fringe, where she is reliving how she emerged out of her flop era of divorce to embrace a happier, hornier life. Migs sat down with me to talk about the emotional healing in her show, attending a prestigious performing arts camp in her middle-school summers, how to work in the clip economy without succumbing to the algorithm, and what her relationship with a trans man means to her as a comedian and as an American in 2025. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Grace Helbig is a legendary YouTuber, etched officially into the VidCon Hall of Fame earlier in 2025. The comedian and actress who began documenting her daily life in 2007 through solo videos, two-hander sketches with her college bestie and Brooklyn roomie Michelle, and then DailyGrace on MyDamnChannel, eventually went on to write two New York Times best-selling books, and hosted her own talk show on E!. Helbig provides the voice of Cindy Bear in the HBO Max series, Jellystone, and before that, made and co-starred in two films — Camp Takota and Dirty 30 — with her good friend, Mamrie Hart. Grace and Mamrie continue to produce regular episodes of their podcast together, This Might Get Weird. But for the first time, in 2025, Helbig finds herself onstage by herself, recounting her bout with breast cancer in a one-woman show, "Let Me Get This Off My Chest." I caught up with Helbig at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe festival, where she spoke with me about finding value outside of subscriber and view counts online, overcoming burnout and criticism from all sorts of media, and what her life is like now after almost two decades of content creation. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Ismael Loutfi is a comedian and TV writer currently working on the animated series Mating Season from the makers of Big Mouth. His previous credits include writing for After Midnight, Ramy Youssef's #1 Happy Family USA, and Netflix's Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. As a stand-up, he has a half-hour on Comedy Central to his credit, along with appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Bill Burr's The Ringers showcase. His new one-hander, Heavenly Baba, documents his life growing up in central Florida with a Muslim father so devout he fully decorated the outside of the family car with Islamic messaging. Loutfi sat down with me at the start of the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe to talk about what his early comedy days and nights were like in Orlando and then Atlanta, what he has learned from the older Muslim-American comedians who came before him, and how he wants to use his voice comedically as part of our society's current conversation. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Tamara Yajia's family immigrated to America from Argentina twice before she became a teenager, and the second time prevented her from becoming potentially Argentina's version of Britney Spears, for better or for worse. Yajia documents it all in her new memoir, CRY FOR ME, ARGENTINA: My Life as a Failed Child Star, and she sat down with me to talk about how she dealt with the pangs of life not meeting the expectations her family had given her growing up, how she strayed from performing for more than a decade and what drew her back to show business, where she has worked in the writers rooms of Apple TV's Acapulco, Hulu's This Fool, and Netflix's upcoming show Strip Low. Her own script was picked up for development by an actual former child star in Selena Gomez, but I'll let Tam tell you all about the importance of having celebrity mentors and surviving mishaps and family embarrassments. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Originally from Caracas, Venezuela, Veronica Osorio moved to New York City after spending her teen years clowning and acting in South America. Once in America, she joined the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, where she performed on house sketch teams with Kate McKinnon, Nicole Byer, and Natasha Rothwell, among others. In New York and Los Angeles, she has started and/or hosted all-Spanish and all-female shows, and co-hosted a Star Trek podcast, Treks and The City. Her screen credits include film roles working with the Coen Brothers in Hail, Caesar! and with Steven Soderbergh in The Laundromat. And she has two different stage babies: Medicine Woman, where she puts her certified healer work to test with live audiences at Fringe festivals from Hollywood to Edinburgh to Brighton to Adelaide; Cherry Baby: Lover Girl, a clown where she tries to find a spouse before the show is over. But as we caught up over Zoom, she's also about to deliver a real-life baby. She shared her journey with me, talking about the dangers she faced in Venezuela, the difficulties in her path trying to find acceptance with her American comedy teammates, and how what's happening now to her loved ones and other Venezuelan refugees in America, along with her impending motherhood, has impacted her work onstage. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

I spoke with comedian Nimesh Patel when he thought he had licensed his new hour, Instant Karma to Netflix. Shortly after our chat, Netflix decided to film a brand-new hour with Patel instead later in 2025. So our chat found him at a crossroads — Patel had just filmed an episode of CNN's Have I Got News For You, and subsequently performed a second time on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Our conversation spanned from his earliest video sketches and emails with me back in 2010, and tracing his time with Michael Che as part of the Monday night Broken Comedy showcase in Greenpoint, where Chris Rock saw him and hired him to write for Rock's stint hosting the Academy Awards in 2016. Patel told me how he felt inspired  watching his peers find fast success, how he handled free-speech backlash at Columbia University well before Columbia made nationwide news for it in recent years, and how Patel's approach to crowd work has changed since it has become the trendiest thing to see on TikTok. Patel released his previous specials on YouTube, and filmed a short set for Netflix's Verified Stand Up showcase in 2023. As he preps his new Netflix hour, he is embarking on a live theater tour that extends through the end of 2025. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!   Go see Nimesh live on his theatre tour which is happening now through the end of the year. For show and ticket info go to www.FindingNimesh.com

The comedian James Tom now jokes about having told they/them pronoun jokes as far back as 2013 quote-unquote "before most non-binary people were born." Back then, Tom felt alone in the world and in the comedy community. But now, living and performing as a gay trans man, Tom told me over Zoom that he feels more like "the estranged father of the non-binary transmasc comedy community." We also spoke about Tom's unique experience getting Just For Laughs New Faces in 2021 when the pandemic forced the festival out of Montreal to Los Angeles, writing for the queer pirate comedy, Our Flag Means Death,  on Max, what to make of Dave Chappelle and JK Rowling's obsession with trans people, and what it has felt like to watch other comedians such as Molly Kearney and Mae Martin successfully navigate similar spaces in show business. Tom's credits also include appearances on Life & Beth, Tuca & Bertie, an Off-Broadway run in 2023 of one-person-show, Less Lonely, and the 2024 Netflix stand-up showcase, Hannah Gadsby's Gender Agenda. We spoke about all that and more just before hitting the road for a West Coast tour. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Rory Rosegarten started his career as a comedy manager by the time he was 20 with a whopper of a first client: the already legendary Robert Klein. More than four decades later, as founder and still president of The Conversation Company, Rosegarten manages a small but highly successful comedy clientele — his longtime roster includes both Brian Regan and Ray Romano, his newer client Tom Green recently premiered a documentary, a stand-up special and a docu-series all this year on Amazon Prime Video, and he's currently working with comedian Gary Valentine on a TV series based on golfer John Daly. Rosegarten sat down with me over Zoom to talk about his teenage years interviewing celebrities first for his high-school and then for Playboy magazine, how he recruited other comics to work with a manager younger than them during the 1980s comedy boom, and how some things change and some things never do in the comedy business — including the fact that Rory has done it all while always living in Long Island. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Mike Drucker is an Emmy-nominated and WGA-winning writer and comedian living in New York. Drucker's comedy career really began with an internship at Saturday Night Live, where he later contributed to SNL's Weekend Update as well as The Onion before leaving the city and the East Coast for a gig writing for video games with Nintendo of America. So it makes sense that his memoir, Good Game, No Rematch, would share his love letters to video games and their place in his life and comedy. Drucker sat down with me to talk about how he kept his comedy career humming in the background while he worked for Nintendo and later IGN, before returning to NYC, where he eventually found himself at Full frontal with Samantha Bee, rising to the level of executive producer and head writer by the end of that late-night talker on TBS. He also has written for The President Show, Adam Ruins Everything, Bill Nye Saves The World, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and has enjoyed two stints back in 30 Rock writing for Jimmy Fallon on both Late Night and The Tonight Show. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Fooling media outlets into thinking she created the Netflix series Emily in Paris may have won the comedian and Fordham grad Abby Govindan plenty of new followers on Twitter in 2021, but it didn't go a long way in making her the pride of her Indian American family back home in Houston. It's just one of the stories Govindan shares in her debut Off Broadway one-hander, "How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents,"produced by the comedians Hasan Minhaj and Daniel Sloss. In the show, she reveals how she struggled with her mental health before finding therapy and stand-up comedy, and learns how to love or at least understand her father's responses in the family's group chat. Just 24 hours before her opening night at New York City's SoHo Playhouse, Abby sat down with me over Zoom to talk about how much has changed for her in the past five years.  She explains what she has learned from social media and working with and for more famous comedians, and how Jungle Cat, the stand-up showcase she co-hosts with Mohanad Elshieky, has helped her both mentally and professionally. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Brad Alexander composes music for television and musical theater, whose notable works include the music for  See Rock City & Other Destinations, which won the 2011 Drama Desk Award, Richard Rodgers Award and BMI Foundation's Jerry Bock Award, and more recently served as lead composer for the PBS/Amazon animated series, Clifford The Big Red Dog. I remember seeing and hearing Brad as a piano whiz as early as the second grade, as we were elementary-school classmates and friends growing up in small-town Connecticut. We had a great time catching up on how his career went from the Berkshire Theatre Festival to ad agency music producing, working in piano bars both as a soloist and as a dueling pianist — eventually owning his own business, The Flying Ivories . His other staged works and collaborations include Click, Clack, Moo, We The People: America Rocks!, the Emmy-winning PBS series, Peg + Cat, and he wrote the music for Dog Man: The Musical, which is currently on tour across North America. We spoke about all of that, plus the work he's currently engaged in adapting the film Bread & Roses, into a stage musical with his wife, actress/singer/writer Jill Abramovitz, who's on standby for the cast of the new all-star Broadway production, All In. There's definitely a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

What's in a name? Since its launch in 2016 by comedy managers Ryan Bitzer and Damion Greiman, along with founding members Ian Adkins and Anthony Leo, 800 Pound Gorilla Media has grown from a small record label into a king kong of comedy distribution, working with everyone from Kevin Hart's LOL Network to Bill Burr and Al Madrigal's All Things Comedy, and releasing a cool 100 comedy specials on their YouTube channel in the year 2024. 800 Pound Gorilla Media also celebrated a new licensing deal with Hulu in 2024 that sees at least one of their specials premiering exclusive there once a month, and in this weekend's Grammy Awards, they're not only the record label for nominee Nikki Glaser's Someday You'll Die, but also the record distribution partner for Netflix's nominees, too. I sat down with Anthony and Damion at the end of April 2024 to talk about how the comedy business has changed in recent years, and how 800 Pound Gorilla Media has adapted to change with the times. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

We did it, comedy fans. We withstood another year of craziness, hundreds upon hundreds of comedy specials, and have gotten my friend and colleague in comedy criticism, Jason Zinoman from The New York Times, to join me for another December to Remember and try to make sense of it all. 2024, a year that started with a fake AI George Carlin and a captivating Katt Williams performance on Club Shay Shay, that saw the relaunch of @Midnight as After Midnight on CBS, that saw Just For Laughs go bankrupt and cancel their Montreal bash only to promise a revival in 2025, that saw the major presidential candidates sit down with so many comedians for election-season podcasts, can we make sense of all of that? It was a year when Netflix went live in a big way, but were their specials funnier than the hundreds of offerings on YouTube, and can upstarts at Hulu, Veeps and Dropout provide some much-needed competition? What does it say about comedy that a comedy D&D show, Dropout's Dimension 20, as well as a glorified Gong Show in Tony Hinchcliffe's Kill Tony, both sold out Madison Square Garden? And who were our Comedy MVPs for 2024? It was obviously a big year for Nikki Glaser, who will host the Golden Globes to kick off 2025, and another banner year for Nate Bargatze. It was also a breakout year for Cole Escola and Alex Edelman, each of whom won over Broadway. Josh Johnson and Conner O'Malley won the internet, or showed us how to defeat the algorithms. Whom else did we give shoutouts to? What made us worry about comedy trends? There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Kelly McCaughan is an actor, writer, comedian and clown whose show, Catholic Guilt, was nominated for Best Newcomer by the 2023 ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards, and then brought back the following Fringe, where her show received a Best Show nomination from the 2024 ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards. Originally from outside of Pittsburgh, McCaughan went to college with fellow renowned clown Natalie Palamides where she studied theater, learned improv through the Upright Citizens Brigade, and Bouffon from Red Bastard. Her TV credits include roles on HBO's Crashing and Apple TV+'s Servant, and she has taken her Catholic Guilt show across America. I caught up with her during her SoHo Playhouse run in New York City in November, which took place the weekend after Election Day. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Chad Daniels is a Minnesota stand-up comedian with more than a billion streams to his credit, and in July 2024 released his 10th comedy special and first for Netflix, Empty Nester, marking his freedom from raising two kids as a single dad in small-town Minnesota. Daniels sat down with me over Zoom to talk about how he balanced it all in his early years as a stand-up, what he learned from working with Mitch Hedberg as a young comic, why he resisted the pull of Los Angeles and New York City, and how landing his 2017 album on Pandora gave him both a new set of fans and placed a new set of expectations upon himself. Since that 2017 album, "Footprints on the Moon," Daniels has put five hourlong specials across YouTube, EPIX, MGM+ and Netflix — and that's not even counting another hour he has in the can for Netflix already. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Kyle Ayers is a comedian from Missouri currently based in Los Angeles who hosts the popular podcast and live show, Never Seen It, where comedians rewrite famous movies and TV shows they've never seen. You may have seen Ayers perform his stand-up on Conan or on the OnlyFans comedy showcase, LMAOF. Ayers also created and hosted the live comedy show, Boast Rattle, which as it name suggests is the opposite of Roast Battle, and which he adapted for the aborted streamer Quibi as Nice One! Ayers met up with me during the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe, where Ayers has debuted a new hour, Hard To Say, in which he describes his ordeals with chronic pain since 2017, when he discovered he was suffering from Trigeminal Neuralgia, a condition also sometimes referred to as Suicide Disease. Because of the subject matter, I also want you to know that if you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available by calling or texting 988. Kyle Ayers may seem like he's more than OK joking about it on the outside, but how is he holding up on the inside? I asked him. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

The state of the comedy industry, like most everything else in 2024, feels very much in flux. Danny Frenkel and Alex Dajani have seen firsthand how technology and social media have changed the relationships between performers and fans in the 21st century, and have set about finding a better way for them to connect today. Danny worked at Facebook since 2010 in various aspects of marketing and data strategies, while Alex was a software engineer at Apple and Meta — until they partnered up to launch PunchUp Live in 2023. Their platform, which had about 200,000 monthly active users when I spoke to them earlier this year, aims to serve up data for comedians to better grow their fan bases, while providing those fans with ad-free viewing experiences, bonus content and a better ability to know when their favorite comedians are performing near them. Steve Byrne was the first comedian to visibly promote PunchUp in 2023, but the ranks have grown to include Sam Morril, Mark Normand, Michelle Wolf, Liz Miele, Joe List and more. Danny and Alex sat down with me over Zoom to explain how they got into the comedy business and what they hope to prove with PunchUp Live. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Ashley Gavin is a comedian from New York City who studied computer science and helped craft the curriculum for Girls Who Code, before deciding to embark on her own path in comedy in 2012. Gavin says she became Carnival Cruise Line's first openly gay performer later that decade, and when the pandemic shut down that gig, she pivoted to podcasting and social media, where she has found even greater success. First with a hit podcast, We're Having Gay Sex, and then accumulating more than 1.4 million followers on TikTok. Gavin's self-released special, Ashley Gavin: Live In Chicago, has garnered upward of a million views since she uploaded the hour to YouTube in April 2023. Gavin sat down with me over Zoom to talk about her inadvertent branding of a look, how she applied her coding experience to navigating the new technologies for comedy and show business, the art and science of crowd work, and what she has learned from going viral in both the very best and very worst possible ways. Gavin is bringing her new hour to the Edinburgh Fringe, My Therapist Is Dying, which goes back farther into her childhood. Her comedy may be dark, but she most certainly isn't. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

I spoke to Sam Reich on this podcast back in the fall of 2020, when he was in his first year running Dropout, the subscription-based streaming platform he founded as a follow-up to CollegeHumor where he had worked for much of his adult life. Four years later, Reich and Dropout are ready to graduate to the big leagues, with one of their shows already selling out Madison Square Garden for a live event months in advance, and other shows eligible for the first time for Emmy consideration. Reich talked to me this time about what it's like seeing his name on an Emmy ballot for the first time — he hosts the game show Game Changer — and why Dropout now is producing and releasing comedy specials. Dropout's first comedy special from YouTube star and VidCon founder Hank Green debuted in June 2024, with more to come, including two shows Reich saw in 2023 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Sam sat down with me over Zoom to talk about all of that, and how he successfully runs a streaming platform when the rest of the industry feels upside down and backward. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Hank and John Green began influencing online viewing long before we tied the word influencer to social media, launching their Vlogbrothers YouTube channel on Jan. 1, 2007, 17 years, 3.77 million subscribers and almost a billion views ago. Three years later, the brothers founded VidCon, the first and largest global gathering of YouTubers, growing since 2010 to include video pioneers, stars and would-be stars on YouTube, Vine, Facebook, Twitch, Instagram, TikTok and whatever comes next. Hank Green also co-created The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a YouTube adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that in 2013 became the first webseries to win an Emmy (for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media – Original Interactive Program). Hank, who majored in biochemistry in college, then earned his master's degree in environmental studies from the University of Montana. Hank has mega millions of viewers these days — watching him host the educational Crash Course series or SciShow on YouTube, or following his exploits on TikTok, Instagram and X/Twitter.  Although you may have laughed more than once at his videos, Hank Green never toured as a comedian until he decided to present his diagnosis and recovery from Hodgkin lymphoma as stand-up. His debut special, Pissing Out Cancer, came out in June 2024 as the first of six comedy specials for Dropout, the subscription streaming platform that rose out of the ashes of CollegeHumor. Green joined me over Zoom to talk about making his debut comedy special, making it for Dropout, how he can still enjoy making videos for any brand of social media in 2024, and what he expects to see when he attends his first VidCon in four years at the end of June in Anaheim. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

At the age of 49 — three decades removed from an FBI drug bust that sent him to prison, and 24 years into his career as an ex-con turned stand-up comedian — Ali Siddiq was still seeking his big break in show business. His debut special, It's Bigger Than These Bars, found him back in a Texas jail performing for inmates, but it came and went on Comedy Central after a few airings in 2018. The following summer, NBC put him in primetime where he competed against a similarly then-unknown Matt Rife on Bring The Funny (Siddiq won that round). But come 2022, Siddiq, just like Rife, found himself on his own, producing and releasing his next stand-up special straight to his YouTube channel. And just like Rife, Siddiq's career and fame have skyrocketed since. The Domino Effect: Part 1 has earned more than 15 million views in just over two years, and landed Siddiq on multiple year-end best of 2022 comedy lists. But unlike Rife, Siddiq's viral fame has yet to lead to a lucrative Netflix deal, even while he continues to rack up massive viewership on YouTube.  The subsequent two chapters of The Domino Effect (with some 20 million combined views and counting) have followed Siddiq as he tells the rest of the story of how he grew up in the Houston projects, wound up selling drugs, and eventually getting busted at 19. The fourth and final chapter, The Domino Effect: Pins & Needles, premiered last month on the subscription platform Moment (making him Emmy-eligible), and drops for free on his YouTube channel just in time for Father's Day.  Siddiq sat down with me to talk about how far he has come without taking a Netflix deal or leaving his hometown of Houston, and how Father's Day hits different for him now that he finds himself as a successful comedian trying to raise both an adult son and a teenager who will never truly understand the struggle he endured. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Zoë Coombs Marr is an Australian comedian who won Best Newcomer at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2012, then returned four years later to win Best Show in Melbourne and receive a Best Show nomination in Edinburgh in 2016 for Trigger Warning, which she performed in drag character as a misogynistic male comedian named Dave. Coombs Marr brought Dave out of his "coma" in 2023 to comment obliviously on everything he'd missed during #MeToo and "cancel culture." The show she did in between those efforts, Bossy Bottom, was released as an Amazon Original on Prime Video in the spring of 2020, just in time for pandemic lockdown viewing. Now she's back with a new show that promises to talk about "Every Single Thing In My Whole Entire Life" and she sat down with me over Zoom to talk about how her early efforts, both comedic and dramatic in Sydney, coalesced into a stand-up career, the importance of creating "Dave," and how her stunt marriage to comedian Rhys Nicholson may have inadvertently prompted Hannah Gadsby to begin writing her game-changing show, Nanette. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Janine Harouni is a Staten Island native who began her stand-up comedy career in earnest only after moving to London, England, in 2012. Harouni experienced her first viral success as one-third of a sketch group called Muriel whose YouTube fame prompted deals with both the BBC and Quibi, and she's also appeared onscreen in a recurring role on ITV's Buffering and a much more supporting role on the big screen in The Batman. Her first solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe, Stand Up With Janine Harouni (Please Remain Seated) directed by the late Adam Brace, earned her a Best Newcomer nomination in 2019. She returned four years later with a more personal and provoking hour about her impending motherhood, Man'oushe, which earned her a Best Show nomination from the Fringe in 2023. Harouni has taken Man'oushe back home to the States for its first big American tour, and sat down with me between shows to talk about her life, career, family, and what she has learned along the way. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Dave Merheje is an award-winning Canadian stand-up comedian and actor who co-starred in the Hulu series, Ramy, and recently co-starred on the big screen opposite Daisy Ridley in the film, Sometimes I Think About Dying, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and is available now to buy or stream. As a stand-up, Dave won the Just For Laughs 2011 Homegrown Comic competition, made it to the finals of the 2013 Seattle International Comedy Competition, and won the Juno Award for Comedy Album of the Year in 2019 for his special, Good Friend Bad Grammar. He also had a special included in Netflix's Comedians of the World showcase. Dave joined me over Zoom for a wide-ranging conversation that touched upon forming friendships with other comedians in a competitive industry, which not only helped him land a role on Gerry Dee's Mr. D but also Ramy Youssef's Ramy, how it feels to see his friends succeed, what it means to make specials or shows just for his native Canadian audience and what it meant to include his family in his Crave special, I Love You Habibi. We also dished on some of his earliest gigs, which included a regular on-air presence on MTV and landing his first TV credit in Australia years before he ever ventured Down Under. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Neal Brennan's first big claim to fame came two decades ago when he co-created, wrote and executive produced Chappelle's Show with his friend Dave Chappelle (with whom he'd previously collaborated on Half Baked). Since then, Chappelle has become both the biggest stand-up comedian in the world and a lightning rod for criticism. Brennan, meanwhile, has released three stand-up comedy specials of his own, and directed acclaimed specials for Al Madrigal, Michelle Wolf, and Seth Meyers. Crazy Good, Brennan's fourth special, and third for Netflix, premiered in April 2024. Before that, he sat down with me on April Fool's Day to explain why it's foolish for us as a society to put our faith and trust in comedians to be our sources of news and/or moral leadership. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Rob Haze is a comedian from Atlanta who currently makes his living in Los Angeles performing stand-up and writing for comedy shows on TV — among his credits are Sherman's Showcase, the ESPY Awards, Kevin Hart's year-in-review specials for Peacock, sketch comedy for Bleacher Report, stand-up on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and most recently, an appearance on the late-night CBS comedy show, After Midnight. Haze released his debut comedy album in 2019, and in March 2024, his second album, Frontin', is also available with bonus features on video via YouTube. Haze sat down with me to talk about his path from Atlanta to New York City to LA, and what he has learned from watching his peers along the way. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!

Cara Connors grew up in Chicago but began her comedy career in Toronto, where she studied with The Second City, created and starred in original series for CBC, provided social media humor for the series Workin' Moms, and earned herself a New Faces slot with Just For Laughs. Since moving back to the states and settling down in Los Angeles, Connors has been seen on E! in the series Dating #NoFilter and launched her own queer-friendly live comedy show, Straight For Pay. That's also the name for her one-person show that received rave reviews from me and others at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, and has become both her debut stand-up comedy album and special. The album came out in 2023, the special in March 2024 via Comedy Dynamics. Connors sat down with me over Zoom, where we talked about the process for getting onto the cast of The Groundlings, how an American comedian starts her career in Canada, finding her true voice onstage and off, her perspective on comedians like Meg Stalter while working the Edinburgh Fringe alongside her, starting over in L.A., how she almost performed on NBC's Bring The Funny primetime comedy competition series, and the importance of hosting and producing her own live show. There's a lot to get to, so let's get to it!