The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

Ruby Karp made her debut on the Upright Citizens Brigade stage when most kids her age were barely out of kindergarten. By the age of 8, Ruby had appeared on Amy Poehler's Smart Girls at the Party webseries and had become a regular monologist for the UCB's premier improv showcase, ASSSSCAT. At 10 she began writing columns for the website, Hello Giggles, and at 13, she went viral for writing about h...

Alaina Bamfield is a Brooklyn-based stand-up comedian from Lansing, Michigan. She self-financed and filmed her debut comedy special, Untouchable , at The Independent Comedy Club just north of Detroit. Untouchable , which debuted on YouTube on June 7, 2026, is a half-hour of jokes that almost exclusively touches upon her experiences as a survivor of sexual abuse, one of 139 victims who took former...

Blink and you might've missed Damien Warren-Smith's Netflix debut, making a brief cameo onstage during the Stamptown variety comedy special. But New Yorkers can see all of him in the fall of 2026 as he has made his Off-Broadway debut with  Garry Starr: Classic Penguins , a hit show at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe and winner of best show at the 2025 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Classic Pen...

Elf Lyons is a British comedian and writer who performs in both the worlds of stand-up and clown, having studied in France with the late Phillippe Goulier. Her 2017 show, Swan , received a nomination for Best Show at the Edinburgh Fringe, while her 2024 show, Horses , earned Best Show from both The (ISH) Edinburgh Comedy Awards and The Comedians' Choice Awards. Her newest show, The Woman on The Ed...

Stuart Goldsmith is a British stand-up comedian who has performed on BBC's  Live At The Apollo  (BBC),  Conan, and  Russell Howard's Stand Up Central . He began his career as a street performer at age 17, and over the course of 32 years at the Edinburgh Fringe, has evolved into one of the world's preeminent climate comedians, speaking at global conferences about our world's ongoing climate crisis...

Dan Wilbur is a comedian and author of two humor books, "How Not To Read" and "Never Flirt with Puppy Killers." He released his first stand-up comedy album, Husband Material , in 2023, has been featured on CollegeHumor, McSweeney's and Someecards, where he also worked as the Ecards editor. Wilbur sat down with me over Zoom to talk about the thrill and agony of getting a Tumblr book deal, how he di...

Chloe Radcliffe is a comedian and actress most recently seen on the big screen playing a comedian and magician opposite Will Arnett and Bradley Cooper in the film, Is This Thing On? Radcliffe is based in New York City but came up out of the Twin Cities comedy scene in Minnesota. Over the past couple of years, she landed on a bunch of comedy watch lists, from Just For Laughs' New Faces to Deadline...

Jenny Gorelick is a comedian, author, actress and former Jersey girl based in New York City. She performs monthly at Club Cumming at her signature show Love, Sex, & Magic and played an adoring fan of "THE Che Diaz" in And Just Like That . Her personal essays and humor pieces have appeared in The New York Times ' Modern Love, Cosmopolitan , McSweeney's , and the New Yorker 's Shouts & Murmurs, all...

Kimmy Gatewood is a comedian, actress and director whose newest project is directing the 2026 movie Descendants; Wicked Wonderland , the fifth installment in Disney's musical cinematic universe following the teenage children of classic Disney villains. She previously has directed episodes of Ghosts, Girls5Eva, Going Dutch, and Sesame Street, the latter of which earned her a Daytime Emmy win in 202...

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 T...

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 YouTub...

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 Pre...

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 el...

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...

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 s...

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 co...

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 C...

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 Ge...

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...

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...

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 Corr...

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 ha...

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...

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...

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 H...