The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table

A CONVERSATION highlighting the role of comedy as a political, moral and analytic tool in our time: Taboos are everywhere. Plain facts are being denied. Arguable propositions are foisted on us as if they were certainties. Decorum and politeness sometimes blind us or intimidate us or deceive us. The comic makes us laugh, for sure. But, in that act he also creates space for saying the unsayable. He...

Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by comedian Mia Jackson and Juanita Dworman to discuss the slap heard around the world.  Mia Jackson is a Georgia native now living in New York.  Her first half hour special is available on Epix and her second half hour special is on Comedy Central. She is a regular at The Comedy Cellar. 

Harrison Greenbaum is a magician and a comedian who began performing stand-up comedy while studying psychology and English at Harvard. He has been featured on numerous television shows, including NBC's America's Got Talent, NBC's Last Comic Standing, TBS's Conan and Comedy Central's This Week at the Comedy Cellar.  He is a regular at the Comedy Cellar. 

David Stone is a Comedy Cellar superfan. He has played in Scrabble tournaments since the mid-1990s and was once rated within the top 50 players in North America. Katie Hannigan is a stand up comic and actor. Her television appearances include The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central, Just For Laughs New Faces and MTV. She is a Comedy Cellar regular. 

Michael Mailer has been working extensively in the independent film world since graduating Harvard University. His first feature film, A Fool And His Money, starred Sandra Bullock and George Plimpton. Since then, Mailer has gone on to produce over 25 features. His father is the American novelist, Norman Mailer.  Nick Griffin has appeared on Conan, The Late Late Show, in his own half-hour Comedy Ce...

David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at NYU.  He is president-elect of the American Philosophical Association.  He is known for his formulation of the "hard problem" of consciousness, which inspired Tom Stoppard's play, The Hard Problem, and the idea of the "extended mind", which says that the tools...

Alan M. Dershowitz is Brooklyn native who has been called “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer” and one of its “most distinguished defenders of individual rights,” “the best-known criminal lawyer in the world. He was a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School for  fifty years.  He has published more than 1000 articles in magazines, newspapers, journals and is the author of fifty boo...

Frida Ghitis is a long-time world affairs columnist. She is a weekly contributor to CNN Opinion and World Politics Review and a contributing columnist for the Washington Post. In addition, she is an on-air analyst for CNN en Espanol, and provides her perspective across multiple television and radio outlets in the US and elsewhere in English and Spanish. Frida started her career at CNN, where she w...

Guests: Tanael Joachim (TJ) and Fred Kaplan.  Tanael Joachim is a standup comedian who has made appearances on Gotham Comedy Live on AXS TV and on Good Day New York on FOX. He is based in New York City but was born and raised in Haiti and is a regular at the Comedy Cellar.  Fred Kaplan is is the national-security columnist for Slate and the author of six books, including The Bomb and the Plot to C...

Coleman Hughes is a writer, podcaster and opinion columnist who specialises in issues related to race, public policy and applied ethics. He is also a jazz/hip-hop artist. 

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand discuss Joe Rogan, Covid and their lost podcast episode. 

Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand with Dov Davidoff.  His numerous television appearances include  Hustlers, Crashing, Shades of Blue. He is a regular at The Comedy Cellar.   

Al Lubel is a stand up comedian whose documentary, Mentally Al was chosen by The NY Times as best comedy doc of 2021.  

Zarna Garg is a TikTok comedy sensation with over 75 million views and 370k followers.  She is the winner of Kevin Hart's Lyft Comics comedy competition on Peacock and the winner of the 2021 Ladies of Laughter Newcomer Award.  She also won the Top Comedy Feature Screenplay Award at the 2019 Austin Film Festival.  The project is now in development.  She is a Comedy Cellar regular.  Uriel Epshtein i...

Dr. Alina Chan is a co-author of the book, VIRAL: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, and a researcher with a background in medical genetics, synthetic biology, and vector engineering. At the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard, Dr. Chan is currently creating next generation vectors for human gene therapy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Chan began to investigate problems relevant to finding the...

Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand sit down with Nick Griffin and Ryan Reiss.  Nick Griffin has appeared on Conan, The Late Late Show, in his own half-hour Comedy Central special and was featured on The Late Show with David Letterman eleven times.  Ryan Reiss can be seen daily opening for Seth Meyers.  They are both Comedy Cellar regulars. 

Alan Dershowitz and Lara Bazelon discuss Ahmaud Arbery, Kyle Rittenhouse and Larry David. Lara Bazelon is an author and Professor of Law. She is also the Director of the Criminal & Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinics at University of San Francisco School of Law. Alan Dershowitz is a prolific author and was a professor at Harvard School of Law for fifty years. 

Franqi French is one of 2020 Variety’s 10 Comics To Watch, reigning champion of Stand Up NBC and a regular at the Comedy Cellar. She can be seen on season 10 of Curb Your Enthusiasm. 

Ray Ellin is a comic and the Executive Producer of This Week at the Comedy Cellar on Comedy Central. He is the founder of www.comedycloud.co

Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching.  He has written for scientific journals and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of six books, including his...

Bo Winegard has a PhD in social psychology from Florida State University. He is an essayist who is interested in evolutionary psychology, philosophy, and literature. Marcus Monroe is the recipient of the prestigious Andy Kaufman Award, regularly performs all over the country, has made numerous television appearances and is a regular at The Comedy Cellar. 

Gianmarco Soresi is a stand up comic, actor and writer. His special, Shelf Life, is available on Amazon Prime. He just started performing at the Cellar. 

Ismael Loutfi is a stand up comedian in NYC who’s performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Bill Burr Presents, and has a Comedy Central Half Hour special coming out soon. He has written for Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj and is a Comedy Cellar regular. 

TJ is a standup comedian born and raised in Haiti, currently based in New York City. He started performing standup in 2012 and quickly became a rising star in the NY scene due to his caustic wit, fearless approach, and conversational delivery. He's a regular in all New York comedy venues, including the world famous Comedy Cellar. His debut special January 3rd is available on Amazon Prime.

Katherine Dee is an internet historian and writer based in the Midwest. You might also know her as Default Friend on Twitter. Jordan Jensen is from upstate NY where she started started doing stand up then after a brief love affair with Nashville, she moved to Brooklyn where she was selected to be a new face of Just for Laughs Comedy Festival. She is a Comedy Cellar regular and opens for Louis CK.