Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend

My God, who names these episodes? Just kidding, it's me, the person who was awake for a harrowing surgical prep and who has maybe changed her mind a little about Versed because it turns out certain kinds of discomfort cut right through the haze and wake you right the fuck up. Also waking me up? The steroids they put in the IV during the last egg retrieval. But this episode isn't only fert alerts,...

I met Jay Larson back when I was a guest on The CrabFeast and have wanted to have him on my show ever since. It finally happened and I learned all sorts of things about the man like the fact he has about 12 memories of his father, he now auditions for parts where the characters are described as “surprisingly handsome” which has got to be a bit of a kick in the nuts since he was THE SHIT in high sc...

Sure you could let Ryan Seacrest count down your New Year's eve but wouldn't you rather do it with us, your new best friends? We did a full on count down with noisemakers that you can sync up to midnight. Did Alison's landlord call in the middle? Oh yes. But surprisingly it wasn't about the noise! Also on this special year end episode I recount Daniel and my New York odyssey which included a lot o...

Writer, producer, cinematographer Alex Buono (SNL, Documentary Now!, Bigger Stronger Faster) and writer, director, producer Rhys Thomas (SNL, Documentary Now!, Staten Island Summer) head up Saturday Night Live's film unit which means they're responsible for shooting all those funny filmed bits you see on the show. They also handle SNL's opening credits every year—a discovery which led to my learni...

Our Christmas episode doesn't start out very Xmasy if I remember correctly and warning for those who listen around young kids who still believe in Santa: at one point someone blurted out that Santa isn't real. We also talked about Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays and my strange relationship with Judaism and why it sometimes feels icky when people make a point of saying "Happy Holidays" or rat...

Bill Schulz (Red Eye, NY Times) and I go way back to my early-ish days in New York when we both worked for magazines and played on separate competitive skee-ball teams. We forgot to talk about skee-ball but we talked about everything else and I mean EVERYTHING, even when it got a little uncomfortable. Anyway, as I explain on the show, I worked for a magazine and had started appearing regularly on...

Greg and his somewhat productive cough are back which means this episode wastes no time in jumping into the most important topic of the day: Jenna and #AL's avocado tree. Also we talk about Daniel and my upcoming trip, The Salmon Incident, what might be on your phone, superhero comics, what kind of kids we all were and whether we wanted to be older, get rich quick schemes, male vs. female therapis...

Zoe Lister-Jones ( Whitney, Arranged ) stopped by this episode of Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend to talk about Consumed , the dramatic indie thriller she and her husband Daryl Wein recently made which is the first narrative film about GMOs—and we did talk about it—but first we had to chat about the period of time she and her husband had an open relationship and the movie they made about that...

Greg was sick for this episode and afraid to spread germs to the newest member of the Thursday gang plus the people who care for her so he sat this one out but sent a very special recorded message which was only rivaled in beauty by length. Sitting in for Greg was someone who is vaguely similar, recent Monday show guest Mike Carano. I say vaguely similar because like Greg, Mike also wonders if Jen...

Jack Barakat, lead guitarist for the pop punk band All Time Low and co-host of the Full Frontal Radio podcast was scheduled to be the only guest on this episode so I was surprised when two faces greeted me at the door. "This is my buddy Justin," Jack said as he walked in. "Is it cool if he sits in?" I agreed, since I am an agreeable person, but spent the first many minutes before the mics were on...

Samantha Moss makes her Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend debut on this episode and by that I mean she was sleeping like an angel a few feet from the table while we all cooed and our hearts melted. Before the show Greg met her for the first time and announced, "I like holding babies. Holding babies is a thing I like to do." So if anyone is wondering, that's where Greg stands on baby holding. On...

Dana Gould and I sat down for a very rare, honest and unflinching conversation about his recent breakup and divorce along with his experience adopting three children. We also talked about the genesis of his podcast, his thoughts about gun control and the NRA, Al Anon and the two memories that bookend his marriage. I say "rare, honest and unflinching" because I am under the impression Dana doesn't...

Daniel and I just had a hearty debate about whether it's a mistake to reveal whose nose was whistling right in the episode title. I pointed out that we already revealed it on last week's show but then he said it's possible people might have missed that one and he personally enjoyed the way it "revealed itself organically." And now here I am, non-organically shoving the info into the show title. Ex...

Though I only met comedian and author Josh Wolf (Chelsea Lately, The Josh Wolf Show, Fairly Normal with Josh Wolf podcast) over Twitter a few weeks before we did this episode, I felt like we were fast friends. We chatted about all sorts of stuff including toxic work environments and not wanting to work with assholes, covert assholes, his experience being a young single guy raising three kids, visi...

Last week Greg regaled us with stories of his fractious former neighbors. What he didn't say, or maybe he did and I forgot, is that they were so loud he was able to record them from his kitchen. He sent me the audio clip but was hesitant to have us play it on the show because he's a decent person. So I did the only smart thing someone in my position could do: listened to it 900 times in order to t...

Matt Nathanson and I went to college together and as I confess to him early on in this episode, I've come to feel like he and I are on similar journeys in life. It's an incredibly squishy and drippy thing to say and if I read it or overheard it, I'd probably roll my eyes. And yet here I am, coughing it up for you right here and also on the podcast. Back in the day (and also on the tenth episode of...

On this episode which we recorded one day before Jenna's due date (spoiler alert: she's still pregnant) we talked about cervical ripeness, my buying pre-peeled hard cooked eggs because I'm a "useless sack of shit," how to properly boil eggs at home, mint ice cream and whether it's gross or not (#AL and #ALISON say it is), Greg officiating at his sister's wedding, books vs Kindles, eating dogs and...

I suspected I would love talking with Mike Carano ( The After Disaster, 5 Minutes with Mike, Miscellaneous Adventures from the World of Mike Carano ) and I was right because he's incredibly honest and open about all the stuff that goes through his head. We discussed how he feels uncomfortable all the time, trespassing, decision making, his childhood and his stint in a cult, his relationship with h...

On Saturday night, Jenna and Al had all of us over to their new place for an extra-curricular hangout. On this episode, Daniel, Greg, Jeff, Jenna, Al and I recounted the festivities complete with Greg's assessment of Jenna and Al's avocado tree, pistol racking, more dirty diet coke talk, spear-fishing, Greg's car troubles, whether women can be creepy or not, Jenna's due date, what truly happens wh...

Writer and comedian Josh Gondelman ( Last Week Tonight, Billy on the Street, New Yorker ) traveled all the way from New York to be on my podcast and while he was in town he stopped by the Emmys. Or maybe I have that backwards. Regardless, he was in town and we talked about all sorts of stuff including his experience writing on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Y ou Blew It! An Awkward Look at th...

This was supposed to be our spooky Halloween-themed episode and it started that way, with horrifying talk of my new obsession with Dirty Diet Cokes and some riveting Gal Chat regarding nails but then talk turned to Greg's unanswered questions about how I met Daniel and then how Greg met his wife and how Al first described Jenna to his parents and it became a very romantic Halloween show.  But then...

Michael Showalter and I go way back to 2006-ish when I did a series of interviews for Time Out New York/PS1 Radio (they were very early podcasts, actually) and he was the first person I interviewed. Over the years I've interviewed him many more times and I always love talking with him, probably because I'm such a huge fan of his work from The State to Wet Hot American Summer to Stella and now Neft...

I included Dirty Diet Coke in this episode title because ever since Jenna talked about it on the show, I can't stop thinking about it. I am to Dirty Diet Coke as Greg Heller is to Mormon Funeral Potatoes. Also, I've decided to write these show descriptions in a different way. What do you think? Lemme know. I can easily go back to taking myself out of the description however let's be real, I am wri...

Shane Dawson returns to Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend to talk about his controversial past year, coming out as bisexual, his decision to make the video where he announced his sexuality and his journey to discovering his sexuality including the period of time he wondered if he was transgender, his second book (follow up to I Hate My Selfie), bulimia and body image, his relationship with his...

On this episode Alison is  joined by Ben Gleib, Molly McAleer, Daniel Quantz and Jeff Fox to talk about the whereabouts of Greg, Jenna and Al, people who are right for you "on paper," dating in general, BCC and whether a particular email situation Alison has been involved in twice is a thing, the merits of teriyaki, Molly's lingerie, Molly's date tank top, Soho House, the intersection of incest an...