Beginnings

On today's show we talk to stand-up Jackie Kashian. Based in Los Angeles, Jackie has been a touring comedian for the last fifteen years. She has her own Comedy Central Presents , was a finalist on Last Comic Standing and has appeared on everything from Tough Crowd to Premium Blend and even Murphy Brown . You can also hear her weekly on her fantastic podcast The Dork Forest , where she interviews p...

On today's show, we talk to Tom Purcell. Based in New York, Tom is the executive producer of The Colbert Report , and has won two Emmys for his work. Starting in Chicago with Second City, he eventually went on to write for Cosby , Bill Cosby's show from the late '90s and Grounded for Life with Donal Logue and Kevin Corrigan. In 2008, Tom joined Colbert and has been there ever since. A few weeks ag...

Holy mackerel! This may very well be our most fun live show yet! On January 8th, we were joined by Erika Forster and Annie Hart from one of our favorite bands Au Revoir Simone , one of our favorite performers Josh Patten (performer at UCB and a writer on SNL Weekend Update), and one of our favorite artists Molly Crabapple (the founder of Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School). We laughed, we loved, we hea...

On today's show we talk to writer and performer Sara Benincasa. While now based in LA, Sara got her start in New York, where she did everything from host a show on Sirius to make videos for the Huffington Post. She writes for Jane and Vice.com, and last year, her book Agorafabulous! , based on her-one woman show about her struggles with agoraphobia, was published by William Morrow. Right before Ch...

On today's show we talk to Nate Dern and John Frusciante, the Artistic and Associate Artistic Directors of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre NY. Founded in the late '90s by Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts and Amy Poehler, the UCB Theatre has come to prominence in the last decade as one of the best comedy theaters in the country, as well as a pipeline for many into industry careers, as grad...

On today's show we talk to New York-based writer and performer Elna Baker . Raised internationally, Elna moved to New York to study performance at NYU and soon became enmeshed in the stand-up and improv scene. Since then, she's co-founded the variety show The Talent Show and become a sought-after storyteller, contributing to places like This American Life . Her first book, The New York Regional Mo...

On today's show we talk to writer and performer Peter Grosz . Based in New York, Pete got his start in sketch and improv in Chicago with Second City and later in Amsterdam with Boom Chicago. Since then, he's written for Dave "Gruber" Allen and David Koechner's Naked Trucker show, wrote for The Colbert Report and most recently played reporter Sidney Purcell on HBO's Veep . A few weeks ago, Pete sto...

Holy heck. This may be one of our favorite episodes ever. Mystery Science Theater 3000 's Frank Conniff, author of the NYT bestseller How to Be Black Baratunde Thurston and hip-hop superstar Jean Grae joined us on a funseasonably warm December night at UCB East for a completely amazing live show where we talked about being forced into creative activities by our parents, berating people during phon...

On today's show we talk to Yael Kohen , a contributing editor to Marie Claire and author of the book We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy . Starting with Phyllis Diller, Elaine May and Joan Rivers, We Killed goes back through the last 60 years of comedy history and restores the forgotten and minimized stories of women in comedy. A few weeks ago, Yael came over to the Manhattan Wrestling...

Yow! We got a hot one for you this week. Due to a scheduling snafu, our monthly live episode at UCB East had to be pre-empted, so instead, we decided to put on one in Andy’s apartment with some of our favorite people: Ethan Berlin , co-creator of Bunk and writer on Billy on the Street and the new Best Week Ever , as well as neo-folk group Prairie Empire , who played two amazing tunes, and has a re...

On today's show, we talk to LA-based comedian Jerrod Carmichael . Jerrod started stand-up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina when he was 20, and through a great deal of hard-work has quickly become a notable stand-up, landing on Variety's Top 10 Comics to Watch list in 2011. While continuing to perform at places like Meltdown and the Laugh Factory, he's also branched out into TV, having contributed...

On today's show we talk to Jessie Stein of the Montreal-based multi-instrumental indie rock band The Luyas . Previously in the band SS Cardiacs, Jessie began playing music as a teenager, and formed the Luyas in 2006 with a number of other Canadian musicians. Since then, the band has released three albums, Faker Death , Too Beautiful to Work and their latest Animator , which was just released in Oc...

On today's show, we talk to writer Sam Lipsyte . Based in New York City, Sam has written for numerous publications including The New Yorker , Open City , The New York Times Book Review , Esquire and The Paris Review . In 2000, a book of Sam's short stories was published, and since then, he has released three novels - The Subject Steve , Home Land , and The Ask . In 2008, he was awarded a Guggenhei...

On today's episode we talk to Gavin Spieller and Geoff Garlock about the concept of game and the way the Upright Citizens Brigade school teaches it. Two of the best improv and sketch teachers at the UCB, Geoff wrote for years on the house sketch teams iBadger, The Skuntz and Slow Burn, and Gavin has been a long-standing member of the improv team Death by Roo Roo, which performs at the theatre ever...

On today's show, we talk to Greg Barris . Greg is a stand-up, musician and artist based in New York City. For the last eleven years, Greg has been performing and for the last two, he has helmed a bicoastal comedy event called Heart of Darkness , a communal show featuring music, stand-up and more. Recently, he released his first comedy album Shame Wave on AST Records. A few weeks ago, Greg came ove...

On today's show, we talk to Ben Blacker and Ben Acker of The Thrilling Adventure Hour , a podcast and staged show in the style of old time radio that frequently stars comedians and actors like Paul F. Tompkins, Paget Brewster and James Urbaniak. Acker and Blacker are also TV writers and have written for shows like the WB's Supernatural and networks like Fox, Nickelodeon and USA. They also work in...

On today's show we talk to Geoff Haggerty and Sam West, two of the creators behind The Onion 's YouTube webseries Sex House . Before becoming a writer on VH1's Big Morning Buzz Live , Geoff was the Creative Director for Onion Digital Studios and Sam is currently Head Writer. The remaining presence of The Onion in New York, Onion Digital Studios is responsible for producing videos for YouTube, whic...

On today's show we talk to Thu Tran. Thu is an artist and entertainer based in New York City. Growing up in Cleveland, she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Glass from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Since then, she's been a frequent collaborator with mash-up musician Girl Talk, and in 2009, she created the show Food Party for IFC, which ran for two seasons. Part cooking show and part pupp...

Yowza! This last Tuesday, on a rainy and cool night, we had some of our favorite comedians and one of our favorite bands sit down with us at UCB East for a delightful chat about the X-Men's Gambit, $10 words, the Lego stock exchange and everybody's favorite Christian rock band Switchfoot. Nate Bargatze ( Comedy Central Presents , his new AST album Yelled at by a Clown ) and Sara Schaefer ( You Had...

On today's show we talk with writer and actor Matt Oberg. With a background in theater, Matt moved to New York to pursue acting professionally and eventually made his way into the comedy world through the People's Improv Theater. He's had parts in many shows including 30 Rock and Delocated , and had major roles in two Onion productions, as the anchor in Sports Dome and as one of the many Tucker Ho...

On today's show we talk to the primary member of the band The Mountain Goats, John Darnielle. John first started The Mountain Goats in college, originally as a lo-fi solo act, but since 2002 has recorded with a full band, which often includes Jon Wurster of Superchunk. Highly literate, emotionally intelligent and with a background in poetry, Darnielle has been referred to by New Yorker critic Sash...

On today's show we talk to writer and performer Chris Gethard about The Chris Gethard Show . Starting as a stage show at the UCB Theatre in 2009, The Chris Gethard Show was a showcase for Gethard's love of akwardness, sadness and strange stunts. In 2011, Gethard took the show to it's bizarrely logical next step and debuted it on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network public access channel, where it's...

Yams! This last Tuesday, Lizz Winstead, creator of The Daily Show , founder of Air America Radio and author of Lizz Free or Die ; David Rees, author of Get Your War On and How to Sharpen Pencils ; and Carl Newman of The New Pornographers joined us for a fantastically fun episode taped live at UCB East. Beginnzers, buckle your hearing-enjoyment nodules to your skull 'cause this a real barn-burner a...

On today's show, we talk to Chris Gethard. Chris is a writer and prformer based in New York City, who started with the UCB Theatre over a decade ago and currently performs on their house improv team The Stepfathers. UCB is also where he incubated The Chris Gethard Show , a Best Show -like program which can be found weekly on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. On addition to this, Chris has also p...

On today's show we talk to Gabrielle Bell. Gabrielle is a comics artist based in Brooklyn, whose books and short stories have been published on a number of indie presses, from Drawn and Quarterly to Fantagraphics, and in anthologies like Mome and Kramer's Ergot . She also collaborated with filmmaker Michel Gondry on an adaptation of her story "Cecil and Jordan in New York" for the film anthology T...