I'm Not Joking

Jack Shih is an Emmy Award-winning animation director and producer known most notably for his work on South Park. He also has a side hustle as a voice-over artist. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Solo community today: petermcgraw.org Peter McGraw Twitter Peter McGraw LinkedIn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information abou...

Steve Stoliar is the author of Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho’s House, a bittersweet memoir of the last years in the life of Groucho Marx. He has also written material for Dick Cavett as well as penning episodes of such television series as Murder, She Wrote, Simon & Simon, The New WKRP in Cincinnati and Sliders. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join th...

Claire Downs is a comedian, writer, and producer who lives in Los Angeles. A graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, she does a bit of everything, sold pilots, written scripts, and written for Cosmopolitan, The Daily Dot, and VICE Motherboard. One of her UCB sketches has 108 million views on YouTube. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Solo community today: p...

Danielle Perez is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actress best known as the woman in a wheelchair, with no feet, who won a treadmill on The Price Is Right. A 2018 StandUp NBC Semifinalist, she has performed at comedy clubs and festivals across the country including Laughing Skull Comedy Festival, SF Sketchfest, Brooklyn Comedy Festival, and All Jane Comedy Festival. Love the show? Subscribe, rate...

Mike Reiss has won four Emmys and a Peabody Award during his 28 years writing for The Simpsons. He ran the show in Season 4 which Entertainment Weekly called “the greatest season of the greatest show in history.” Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Solo community today: petermcgraw.org Peter McGraw Twitter Peter McGraw LinkedIn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz...

Nicole Blaine is a stand-up comic. She has been seen on NBC’s Today Show, E’s That Morning Show, San Francisco Sketchfest, Laughing Skull Comedy Festival, among other festivals. She is the executive producer of the HBO comedy special, Burning the Light. For six years, Nicole and her partner Micky produced the monthly hit show, Virgin Sacrifice, at the Westside Comedy Theater. Nicole is the head co...

Will Hines has been a performer and teacher at Upright Citizens Brigade since 2000. He’s appeared on television shows such as Broad City, Inside Amy Schumer, Brooklyn 99, Community, and My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. He’s written several books on improv, including Pirate, Robot, Ninja, which he co-authored with Billy Merritt, a previous guest on the podcast. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and sh...

Esther Kustanowitz is a writer, editor, and consultant. She is a contributing writer at the Los Angeles Jewish Journal and a columnist at J. The Jewish Weekly of Northern California. She was founding editor and contributor at GrokNation.com, has written for Modern Loss, Haaretz, JTA, The Jewish Week, The Forward and eJewishPhilanthropy. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How...

Adam Barsky is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on how people use emotions to make ethical decisions and judgments and, more recently, what makes things funny. He is the co-founder and COO of a social enterprise dedicated to helping ethical consumers make more informed and impactful choices. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!...

Kym Terribile is a writer, Reiki practitioner, and a certified yoga teacher. She is a graduate of the University of Hawaii with a degree in English Literature. She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her two dogs. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Solo community today: petermcgraw.org Peter McGraw Twitter Peter McGraw LinkedIn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz com...

Joel Warner is an award-winning former staff writer for Westword and International Business Times who’s been published in Esquire, WIRED, Newsweek, Men’s Journal, Men’s Health, Bloomberg Businessweek, Popular Science, and Slate. He’s co-author of The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny published by Simon & Schuster in 2014 and author of the forthcoming The Curse of the Marq...

Mark Masters is a comedian based in Denver, Colorado. He specializes in clean material and has performed in showcases in New York City and Miami. He is just kicking off his career and recently published a book, Not Good Yet, that addresses his first six months as a comic. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Solo community today: petermcgraw.org Peter McGraw Twi...

Chester See has been nominated for 6 Streamy Awards with one win for Best Original Song. He has starred on Broadway as Rock Star Stacee Jaxx in Rock of Ages. He has sold over 2 million downloads of original music without the help of a label, and was one of the first 100 people to garner over a million subscribers on YouTube. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the...

Gia Cognata is a makeup artist, stylist, photographer and writer from Los Angeles. She loves pickles and finding a balanced between the arts and analytics. Despite her passion being happy and correct she shells out terrible advice to horny teens on twitter. She has most recently worked in behavioral therapy with autistic children focusing on independence training. I randomly found her on Instagram...

Julie Seabaugh is the only full-time freelance comedy journalist in the United States. She has contributed to Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, GQ, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, The A.V. Club, The Village Voice, The Huffington Post, Spin, and Playboy. Julie has covered the modern roast and published the 2018 book, Ringside at Roast Battle: The First Five Years of L.A.’s Fight Club for Comedi...

Donnie Lichtenstein is one of Pete’s senior colleagues at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. He attended the University of Alabama for his undergraduate degree in Marketing and received his PhD from the University of South Carolina. He was an assistant professor at LSU prior to joining CU, where he has been since. He has taught a wide array of classes and has served as both the...

Your host makes a few announcements and updates about the podcast. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Solo community today: petermcgraw.org Peter McGraw Twitter Peter McGraw LinkedIn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Shane Mauss is a stand-up comedian. He has appeared on Conan and Jimmy Kimmel, has Netflix specials, and headlines on shows all over the world. More interestingly, Shane does comedy about science. He hosts the podcast, Here We Are, where he interviews scientists about their work. Shane is the subject of the documentary film Psychonautics, a comedic exploration of psychedelics. He is currently tour...

Bob Mankoff is the Cartoon and Humor Editor for Esquire and former New Yorker Cartoon Editor. A student of humor and creativity, Bob has devoted his life to discovering just what makes us laugh, and seeks every outlet to do so, from developing The New Yorker’s web presence to integrating it with algorithms and A.I. He kicked off his career by quitting a PhD program in experimental psychology at Th...

Luisa Diez is an anthropologist, museum worker, and comedy booker in New York City. She splits her time between making exhibitions and producing and watching comedy shows. She currently books Too Many Cooks, a weekly show in Manhattan, as well as one-off shows at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn and other venues around NYC. Jason Zinoman writes the On Comedy column for The New York Times. In 2011,...

Kendall Carroll started her career as a high school theater teacher in small town in West Texas. She made her way to the MBA program at the University of Colorado Boulder. While in the MBA program, Kendall has focused on Marketing, serves as the MBA Association President, and is my teaching assistant. She has accepted a job as a Product Marketing Manager at NetApp. Love the show? Subscribe, rate,...

Michael Smith is a musician, veteran, husband, and father. He graduated from Heidelberg College with a Bachelors in Music with a focus on clarinet. He also received a Masters in Musicology from the University of Rochester. He spent the majority of his career with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as Orchestra Manager, then General Manager, and then Vice-President and General Manager. Now retired,he j...

Wende Curtis started as a cocktail waitress at Comedy Works in Denver, moved on to general manager, and is now the owner and operator of comedy works in Downtown Denver and in South Denver. Wende expanded her business to include Comedy Works Entertainment, a concert promotion and talent management division, which has promoted such acts as Dane Cook, Carlos Mencia, and Brian Regan. Wende was honore...

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. He is the best-selling author of Irrationally Yours, Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Solo community today...

David Thomas is an assistant professor attendant in the Department of Architecture at the University of Colorado Denver. His studies the aesthetics of fun and the value of play. For nearly 20 years prior, he was a professional game journalist writing, with his work appearing in the Denver Post, Edge Magazine, and Wired. With John Sharp, he recently published the book: Fun, Taste and Games: Aesthet...