Sleeping with Celebrities

Matt Young, Adal Rifai, and Arnie Niekamp are well-known to fans of their podcast  Hello from the Magic Tavern as Usidore the Wizard, Chunt the Badger, and, well, Arnie Niekamp. They step out of character to join John Moe for a broad ranging, fairly vague, and very entertaining journey through movies that they all saw a long time ago but don’t remember all that well. Was Jessica Tandy in all movie...

Of course you know Allison Rosen because she’s your best friend. How could you not know the host of the podcast Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend ? Alison spent her childhood being friends to a great number of birds, including baby chicks that grew into chickens, baby ducklings that grew into ducks, and a quail named Robert who pretty much just stayed a quail named Robert. Everyone involved in...

Music fans know Rhett Miller as the lead singer of Old 97’s , a beloved band that has released 13 studio bang-up albums over the last 30 years, including 2024’s American Primitive. Disc golf players, of which Rhett is a dedicated one, think of him as a disc golfer, which he is, as I just said. Besides, they’re too busy getting annoyed at people calling it Frisbee golf. In this soothing, beddy-bye...

Here’s the truth, if you’re ready for it: airline miles programs are a convenient way to earn upgrades and passage to exclusive pre-flight lounges but they do require some degree of careful record keeping. So that information doesn’t so much blow you away as blow you gently whilst you stay in place. Todd Barry has been a comedy icon for decades as well as an actor in, for instance,  The Wrestler ...

Is this a feat that the beloved author, actor, and host of Maximum Fun’s Judge John Hodgman can actually pull off? Well, no, probably not. There are over 4,600 such islands and he’s only one mortal human. Come on. But will he make a pretty game attempt for a little while and invite you to join his efforts as you drift off to sleep? Oh yes. Oh absolutely yes. And together, we’ll learn about geodesi...

In that he, Josh, the notable comedian and all-around nice guy, GETS his dog, Bizzy. Josh understands Bizzy. Which is important because Bizzy, a pug, is seventeen dang years old. Which is really very old for a dog. As of the taping of this interview and, we hope, the airing of this podcast, Bizzy is still alive and we certainly hope that remains the case for as long as, well, we just like this dog...

Laura Merli is an acclaimed comedian and TikTok celebrity. Sarah Hester Ross is a comedic musician who has appeared on America’s Got Talent , because she’s from America and has talent. Like so many of us, they are older now than they have ever been but they do remember how things used to be before. Back when they were younger. Travel with them to dreamland on a boat made of memories of clunky home...

Twice the number of guests means twice the opportunity to fall twice as asleep in half the time. Or something. Michelle Biloon is a Philadelphia-based standup comedian who has appeared on many late night shows and released two comedy albums. Kevin Avery is a comedian in LA and the former head writer on Totally Biased with K. Kamau Bell . John Moe, the host of our podcast, is in Saint Paul, meaning...

You might know the very funny Helen Hong from TV’s Silicon Valley, the film Inside Llewyn Davis, NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me , or Maximum Fun’s quiz podcast Go Fact Yourself . If you live in South Central L.A., you might know her as the lady with four chickens in her backyard and a really disappointing crop of snap peas. Helen tells us all about her chickens Fifi, Coco, Athena, and Ditsy, includ...

This week, we travel all the way inside the Moe household as host John interviews his wife Jill. She is a bona fide celebrity within the narrow, odd, and passionate world of crop art. It’s what it sounds like: art made out of seeds, leaves, anything that grows. The world capital of crop art is in Saint Paul, home of the Minnesota State Fair and home of the Moe family. Jill describes some of her fa...

Look, we’ll admit right now that this week’s episode is interesting. We’ll stipulate that. David Plotz, CEO of  CityCast.fm  and longtime contributor to Slate’s  Political Gabfest  is fascinated by the measures taken around the nation’s capital to prevent a Confederate invasion that could tilt the balance of the war. He details all the forts that were constructed - many out of earthen materials -...

If you’ve watched Conan O’Brien’s shows or  Late Night with Stephen Colbert , you’ve probably seen Brian Stack playing a wide range of characters, including Frankenstein and one of the Slip Nuts. He’s been a writer and performer for both shows, which has meant running across a huge number of famous people. Here, Brian counts down his top five celebrity encounters to lull you to sleep. Doze off to...

What do standup comedy, golf, and skateboarding have in common beside high degrees of difficulty and opportunities to humiliate yourself in public? Well, they have veteran standup comedian Chris Fairbanks, who walks us through the experiences of all three ventures. Chris, one of the hosts of the podcast  Do You Need a Ride?! , joins us from his hometown of Missoula, Montana where he first learned...

Humorist Jenny Lawson collects many things, including: devoted readers of her numerous essay anthologies, acclaim for her brilliant and hilarious writing, taxidermic mishaps, and also dolls, dolls, dolls. We concentrate on the dolls in this episode with more information than you ever sought about Blythe dolls, Pullip dolls, and ball joint dolls. Find out which dolls are spooky and which are flat o...

You may have seen Rachel Feinstein perform her comedy on late night shows, on YouTube , and on Netflix for her latest special, Rachel Feinstein: Big Guy . If you’re a firefighter in Queens, you may have seen her in her own home while you were stopping by to attempt some home repair at the behest of her husband, also a member of the FDNY. She walks us through her life as the spouse of firefighter....

You may know the very funny and talented actor Nate Corddry from one million television programs and movies he's appeared in over the years, including Ghostbusters , Mom , The Daily Show , and Yogi Bear . You may not know him as a high-level player of a style of baseball played with dice, pencils, and pads of paper, yet that is exactly what he has been for many years. Listen to Nate tell you all a...

Yes, toys are delightful and fun and even exciting. But for our purposes, that might all get a little TOO exciting. We’re here to put you to sleep after all. That’s why Emily, co-host of Maximum Fun’s newish Free With Ads podcast, will go into detail on exactly how to clean the various action figures in her rather sizable collection. A lot of the toys are Power Rangers and she even managed to not...

The path from Silicon Valley computer programmer to rising star in standup comedy is not one that’s well traveled. Nor is the opposite path for that matter, where one leaves behind a world of headlining clubs and making specials to write code in a cubicle somewhere. But Richard Sarvate, former programmer and current standup, is a trailblazer. He fills us in on his former life, including why “spagh...

New York's Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is 13,700 feet long. Comedian, Rifftrax star, and MST3K alum Bill Corbett is at most six feet long, maybe even a little less. Still, Bill has a lot more to say about the bridge than the bridge can say about him because bridges can't talk. Bill's funnier too, by a lot, whereas the bridge has its own strengths like 13 lanes of traffic to Bill's none. Bill, a nati...

When Julia Duffy is not filming something to entertain and delight you, chances are she’s reading a book. It’s generally non-fiction, often historical, and in one notable recent case, it was all about a tiger. Don’t worry, there isn’t enough action in her detailed descriptions of these books to keep you awake at night. It’s more like Julia, who starred as Stephanie on Newhart and as Mary Jones Dav...

Yes, that headline can be confusing. Read it slowly. We’ll wait. Lindy West is an acclaimed author, podcaster, and all-around funny person. Her best-selling book, Shrill , was adapted into a series for hulu starring Aidy Bryant. Lindy finds it relaxing to surf through YouTube videos of expert gamers performing “speedruns” through popular games, especially games that Lindy herself played as a young...

Ray Ellin, according to Wikipedia, is a comedian, talk show host, producer, writer, and director. According to Sleeping with Celebrities , he is also a fairly fanatical devotee of the television series Little House on the Prairie and he discusses it freely, openly, and in great detail on our latest episode. He’s so into the show, Ray hosts the Wild Nights on the Prairie podcast. Learn what sparked...

Honestly, we haven't had that many people on our show who have started entirely new religions. Most of the time, if someone wants to be religious, they simply follow one of the existing faiths that are out there in the world in great abundance already. But Marsha Warfield, who played Roz the bailiff on the classic sitcom Night Court and who appears in that show's newer reboot, has developed a reli...

The hilarious Rob Haze, a rapidly rising star in stand-up comedy, has loads of sneakers. Really a disproportionate amount of sneakers compared to the cubic footage of space he lives in. He doesn’t go into great detail on every single pair he owns in this interview, mind you, but he does provide enough information to lull you into a sleepy state with a smile on your face. Rob also describes how Mic...

Dickey Simpkins loves breakfast. So much so that this Australian wallaby started a blog about breakfast, which led to a podcast about breakfast, which is now one of the most popular podcasts in the world. This is that story. We would like you to support Sleeping with Celebrities during the Max Fun Drive. To make this prospect more appealing to you, we are charming you by presenting mini-sodes of u...