Sleeping with Celebrities

We wouldn’t advise you to have candy before bedtime. That’s certainly not going to be helpful for your sleep efforts. But having the hilarious and delightful Jo Firestone run down her ten favorite candies of all time? Why that’s just the thing to send you off to dreamland. You might know Jo from the Dr. Gameshow podcast or television programs like Joe Pera Talks With You, What We Do in the Shadows...

On the HBO show Barry, for which comedian Emily Heller is a writer, there is a great deal of suspense, gunfire, and overall tension, which would make it hard for those characters to ever get any sleep. And come to think of it, we never see them do so. Fortunately, in real life, Emily has interests that are much more pastoral. She enrolled in a program by which she replaced her lawn with a variety...

Dave Hill is many things. He’s a musician, an actor, a podcast host, and an author. So four things. But it’s five things if you count his role as hockey sweater collector. Dave has a lifelong obsession with the hockey sweater, or jersey as one might call it in the States, and he recounts many of his favorites in this dreamily unfocused conversation that also includes discussions of Norway, Pantera...

Jack Reacher, lead character in the Reacher series, is tall, imposing, and a noticeable presence in every town he rolls into. But just about anybody would be noticeable rolling into the town where Andrew Child, one of the writers of the series, lives. That’s because there’s almost no one in Tie Siding, Wyoming, a town listed as “uninhabited” by the U.S. Census Bureau. Still, according to Andrew, t...

Halle Kiefer and Alison Leiby are obsessed with crows, and not simply because they both host the horror podcast Ruined. Horror buff Halle knows that crows feature prominently in the genre–and our nightmares–for a reason: they’re crazy smart and are known to hold grudges. In fact, all birds in the Corvus family, like ravens and magpies, are intelligent. They even hold funerals when a fellow bird fl...

John Ross Bowie, who pronounces his last name like Maui and not like David Bowie, is perhaps best known for his recurring role as Kripke on The Big Bang Theory. That show is, of course, a high-energy comedic romp with jokes dropping every few seconds. And that show is not this show. John Ross Bowie, without his funny voice from BBT, joins Sleeping with Celebrities to walk us all through the step-b...

The actor, writer, comedian, and bon vivant Michael Ian Black is an enthusiast of the word game Scrabble and, in particular, the very short two-letter words that can make all the difference in a competitive game. Sure, lots of players want to use long words of seven or even more letters but a well-placed QI or a sly ZA can rack up more points than one might have ever thought possible, and Michael...

THIS IS THE SLEEP SAFE VERSION OF THIS EPISODE. THERE IS NO JARRING INTERRUPTION IN THIS VERSION. Beloved actors, comedy people, and podcast bon vivants Janie Haddad Tompkins and Paul F. Tompkins once took a vacation to the beautiful nation of Iceland and they took a lot of photos. So many photos. And they would like to share them with you in this episode. But wait, you say, isn’t this an AUDIO po...

THIS IS THE SUDDEN, JARRING NOISE VERSION OF THIS EPISODE. DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS VERSION IF YOU ARE TRYING TO SLEEP Get ready for thrills, you not-so-sleepyheads. Because entertainment superstars Paul F. Tompkins and Janie Haddad Tompkins are here to blow your minds with audio descriptions of photographs of their 2016 trip to Iceland! And as if that isn’t enough to distract you into relaxation or...

Chris Gethard is an actor, writer, comedian, and podcast host. He was the host of the aptly name Chris Gethard Show on various forms of cable television for many years and hosts the also aptly named podcast, Beautiful Anonymous, which is a beautiful show where Chris interviews anonymous people. Like a shaken-up bottle of soda, Chris Gethard is ready to explode with knowledge about the various smal...

Andy Kindler is a veteran stand-up comedian and actor, known for his work as Mort the mortician on Bob’s Burgers and as Andy on Everybody Loves Raymond. And Andy loves coffee. Like, really, really loves coffee. And he joins us to talk about all the particulars involved in making the perfect cup of coffee: what kind or roast to look for, how to grind your beans and with what, what brewing equipment...

Susan Orlean is one of the coolest and best writers we have going in the whole world. This is simply a fact. Why, she wrote The Orchid Thief and The Library Book and Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. Meryl Streep played Susan, or a version of Susan, in the movie Adaptation, which is certainly not a thing that happens to most of us. With all her credits, you might think Susan Orlean would have...

You might have caught Molly Wood’s work in the New York Times or the public radio program Marketplace or her new podcast, Everybody in the Pool , which is all about Climate Solutions. Or maybe you didn’t catch those. Look, who are we to judge? Regardless, Molly is a professional smart person with a lot of sharp insight as well as voluminous knowledge about certain areas that might put you to sleep...

Gary Gulman is a deeply funny and quite tall comedian who has appeared on HBO specials and every late night comedy talk show you can possibly think of and probably a few you’ve never imagined. In this episode, he takes us on a casual stroll around his neighborhood of Harlem, New York. We see the sights, virtually pop in to area restaurants, and, most notably, hear all about Gary’s unique sport of...

Here are some things you might have done. First, you might have heard James Urbaniak as the voice of Dr. Venture in the hit animated series, The Venture Bros. Secondly, you might have seen James acting in The Fabelmans, Difficult People, Henry Fool, and American Splendor. Thirdly, and most importantly for our program, you may have wished to know a lot more about what it’s like to spend one’s early...

“Sara Schaefer is an American stand-up comedian, writer, and author,” says the website Wikipedia. And who are we to disagree with such a characterization? Our only quibble with this description is that it fails to list her notable status as a miniaturist. That’s right, Sleepyheads, Sara builds tiny, tiny versions of things that are, in real life, quite a bit larger. We think you’ll enjoy this jour...

Jean Grae is a self-described “gender transcendent entity made of fine silks. Multipotentialite autodidact. Genius.” As a 70s kid who lived in NYC’s Chelsea Hotel growing up, she’s seen some things. If you ask Jean what her top five fabrics are, she can give you an answer without having to think too long about it. She can probably out-haggle you at a silk market, and has spent a lot of time resear...

You may know Baratunde Thurston as the host of the PBS program America Outdoors or as the author of the best-selling book, How to Be Black. Or you may know Baratunde as the guy behind the loud noises coming from his house as he uses a variety of tools to carve up ice. A bread knife, for instance. Baratunde is on a lifelong odyssey to make ice that is as clear as possible, free of the little frost...

You might know the Sklar Brothers from your television. They hosted the ESPN Classic program Cheap Seats , acted in Better Call Saul and What We Do in the Shadows , and served as reporters on the series Battlebots , wherein robots fight one another. So Randy and Jason have some exciting credits. But they’re not on our show to be exciting. They’re here to talk about various rule changes in college...

If you’ve been watching The Simpsons lately, you are familiar with the work of Broti Gupta. She plays Bart. No, not really. Broti is a writer for the long-running series as well as being the co-host of the Lecture Hall podcast. On our program, here, this week, Broti sends you off to dreamland with a rundown of the Kenwood Mall, located in Cincinnati, Ohio. At least the mall as it existed ten or so...

There was a brief period in the late 60s and early 70s when Jonathan Katz could walk into any table tennis club in the country and know which players, if any, could beat him. There weren’t many, because Katz was an elite player. Before becoming television’s Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist , he was the New York State Champion of table tennis. And if had been born in Stockholm, instead of New York,...

You might know Scott Thompson as 20% of the legendary sketch comedy group, The Kids in the Hall. You might not know about his strong feelings regarding porridge. Scott shares hot cereal lore from Chilliwack to Toronto to the kitchen pantries of his KitH troupemates. Is porridge fascinating? No. Is it just interesting enough to distract you from your swirling thoughts such that you can sleep? Oh ye...

Linda Holmes is a best-selling author and one of the hosts of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. But you know what an hour is that wasn't always happy? Melrose Place. Oh, it's true. Melrose Place was a nighttime soap opera in the 1990s and it told the stories of the residents of a fictitious apartment complex in Los Angeles where everyone's lives were complicated. The people were complicated, the relat...

But if we were to judge her by her parking habits alone, she is a very bad person who hurts other motorists and harms society itself. Maria once parked her car in front of a fire hydrant. At Los Angeles International Airport. And then just left it there. For days. And she’s been known to hog the bus stop with her car, thus inconveniencing the entire public transit system. But Maria wants to be bet...

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