Hello Listeners, 

It’s been going on two years since the last new episode, and I really wasn’t sure if there was going to be another one, but I came across someone whom I just had to invite on, and she said yes, and we had a lovely chat in July, and here we are! Whether this will be a coda or a reboot, we shall see - I’d love your input on that

From Ayun Halliday’s website: “I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and came of age at the height of the preppy craze. For some unfathomable reason, my grandparents had a subscription to The New Yorker. Every week, I’d paw through it, daydreaming of a glamorous future in which I’d be a celebrated stage actress, living in sin with some hot, devoted trumpet player in a Greenwich Village loft with a skyline view I’ve since learned is possible only from downtown Brooklyn or the western shores of New Jersey.”

Ms. Halliday is a writer, actor, performance artist, zinester, the list goes on and on! She pubilshes the Zine The East Village Inky. It was and still is written and illustrated entirely by hand. 

I could spend a good while longer discussing some of her many other theatrical and publishing achievements, but what brought her to my attention this spring was the publication of her latest (7th) book, Creative, Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto, a compendium of Halliday’s words and illustrations along with input from a variety of creative people (I just can’t get myself to take the noun “creatives” seriously) who comprise “99.9% of all humans who … have not been and will never be rich as a result of their art. Nor will we be famous…at least not as famous as we deserve.”

I heartily encourage you to look up any of the artists mentioned in our conversation and, especially if you’re a lil spud, to pick up a copy of the Small Potato Manifesto, available through Ayun’s site or wherever books are purveyed. 

For all episodes of this show, from small fries to Sedarises, please find us on the social mediae (insta/twitter) at 15minsjamieb, on facebook by just looking for the name of the show, or at 15minutesjamieberger.com, or email me at [email protected]

-Jamie

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In celebration of the end of the Trump era, here's an old favorite from just a few months in, George Saunders, from back in early 2017. Belated Happy New Year and continuous happy (or at least way less sad) post-Trump to all!

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David Sedaris and I talk about celebrity, grace, inappropriate jokes (this episode is NSFTG, not safe for Terry Gross, btw), being recognized in airports, our mothers, going on Colbert, agents, what’s good on pizza, Stormy Daniels, George Saunders, John Updike’s quote that “Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face,” getting laughs, the preciousness of anonymity, being mistaken for a woman, and MUCH MUCH MORE. Enjoy, and after you enjoy, please pass this one on. A much happier 2021 to all!

-Jamie

(Image by Anja Schutz)

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Hello friends. No time to talk. It’s 11/2/20 and I need to get this up today. I talked with A.R. Moxon, essayist, novelist, and twitter godsend these last four years, about Trump, Trumpism, the future, twitter virality leading to finding a publisher for his novel The Revisionaries, published last year and coming out in paperback in December, piano practice, 538, America, the future …. Find A.R. Moxon at http://armoxon.com and or @JuliusGoat on twitter. Deep breaths, everyone, deep breaths. -j

http://15minutesjamieberger.com

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I was a guest on the Meat for Tea Cast after my essay "Itch Itch Itch" was published in the stellar literary magazine of the same name earlier this year.

Now I understand why some of my guests hesitate to post about our episodes. It leaves them in the position of writing to friends, family, and fans saying “Hey everyone here’s a conversation focused on ME! Awkward.

With that in mind, Meat for Tea is a great magazine with a nifty podcast and host/publisher/editor Elizabeth MacDuffie and I had a long and enjoyable talk, for the two of us anyway.

So Hey everyone here’s a conversation focused on ME!

(and here's a link to the essay, which I read out loud at the end of the episode)

https://psiloveyou.xyz/itch-itch-itch-8934f97ed7ed

Stay Safe.

Vote.

BLM

xox

-Jamie

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Here’s my conversaion from back in February (2020), aka a zillion lifetimes ago, with podcaster, Maximum Fun creator, and, perhaps most publicly, Judge John Hodgman bailiff Jesse Thorn. That's him with the glorious facial hair, above. (photo: Ibarionex Perello)

It’s nice, you’ll like it.

Re: my callout to you all in the intro, you can reach me at [email protected] or find me on Insta or twitter at @15minsjamieb.

Thanks!

-jb

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Back in 2016, aka a zillion horror-movie lifetimes ago, my friend Eugene and I had a late-night conversation about fame, comedy, having a newborn baby boy, and much much more. I re-edited it to put it back out here on the occasion of the streaming release of the wonderful documentary "It Started as a Joke," which follows the decade long run of the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival along with the parallel story of Eugene and his wife Katie's battle with her cancer. That may sound like a rough juxtaposition, but it's extremely well done. You'll laugh, you'll cry - see it, it's not like you don't have any free time right now.

http://prettygoodfriends.com/it-started-as-a-joke

Best to all in these strange, tough times.

-j

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Re-edit reboot of my 2017 two-episode conversation with Beth Lisick on the occasion of the publication of her great new and first novel, "Edie on the Green Screen." Congratulations, Beth!

The episode starts with a serious #metoo conversation before moving on to lighter topics. So if you're needing light in these heavy times, after the intro, jump ahead about a half an hour.

Best to you all, I wish you the best lives you can possibly live right now!

-jamie

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Back in 2017, I spoke to actor/writer/comedian Michael Ian Black for this show. At the time, I broke our conversation up into two episodes, each preceded by a long rant by me about the political and social injustices of the day. Well, it's the end of the year, and I'm exhausted by injustice, and decided to re-edit the conversation into a single, more entertaining whole. I think you'll enjoy it. We talk about fame of course, and about our mothers, about toe fungus, his feud with Marc Maron, the list goes on. Listening back, I found this, on how what's better than being a lead, the famous one, on a TV series, is being somewhere around 5-7 on the call list:

"“If I knew that I would have an acting job for the next five years on a network show, where I didn’t even really have to think, it was just showing up, doing some scenes, having a free lunch and collecting a fat paycheck, I would like to do that for the next five years with the full knowledge that at the end of the five years I’d have enough money in the bank to write a novel, devote myself to the podcast, five years of being number 5-7 on the call sheet. There’s a sweet spot there that’s just ideal. I don’t want to be in every scene, I don’t want to solve the crime.”

***

I wish us all better times, and a free and fair election, in 2020.

-Jamie B.

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My dear friend and former San Francisco Public Library colleague, skater, certified arborist, actor, adventure traveller, and raconteur, on how he brought punk and skateboarding together; the splendors and hazards of trimming Sharon Stone's trees; and other gems. A perfect example of the hardest-to-lure guest: the decidedly non-famous person who wants to come on a podcast and dig into the topic.

It's still one of my favorites, back from when I didn't know what I was doing at all but sometimes it worked.

Enjoy!

-Jamie

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If you listened to Episode 72, with John Hodgman, or even if you didn't (you should), here's Episode 1, as promised, with same. Warning: there's a lot of ambient, though not unpleasant, noise (of a busy bar) in the interview, and then rather low sound quality for the Judge John Hodgman meetup, which ostensibly wasn't being recorded for the podcast, but which I wanted to include here for the true JJH Stans out there jonesin' for a deep cut. Image is a pic from the poster for the event at the Rendezvous in Turners Falls, MA, back in 2015 (yes I dithered an entire nother year before launching the show - don't do that!), designed by Anja Schutz.

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