The delightful charm monster, Patrick Holbert, joins us to pick away at PAIN in stand-up comedy. We talk about how pain is the source of much of stand-up, both physical and emotional, and how usually the audience needs to know that the pain is ultimately “ok” in order to laugh. We cover generational pain, the occupational hazards of talking about pain, how to refocus personal pain onto a “shared” experience rather than just making it about you, and how Patrick went about talking about his painful experiences the first time. It’s a fun talk with old friends about a major element of comedy as a whole, and stand-up in particular, which we trace through a few key bits from Patrick’s own material and a seminal late night set by Gary Gulman.

The "illustrious" Jay Jurden gayly talks about gay humor and also humor about gayness in this episode where we examine the relationship between stand-up comedy, homosexuality, and homophobia, tracing a path from Richard Pryor to the present.

The Daily Show's Roy Wood Jr. examines MORALITY in the context of stand-up comedy and gives real advice to young comics. Some of the best parts of the interview are at the end where we talk about the road, how Roy worked the system to get ahead, the way he organizes his material, and when gives advice to inexperienced comics.

NBC's Bring The Funny & Fallon alum, LeClerc Andre, explains CALLBACKS in stand-up comedy via jokes by Patrice O'Neal, Moshe Kasher, and LeClerc himself.

In this second part of our CLEAN comedy interview of the pathologically nice Steven Rogers, we jump right into great material. We listen, laugh, and geek out over it through the lens of everything we explored about clean comedy in part one, so if you haven’t listened to the first installment, do that now. The bits we picked are fantastic–you’ll get some legendary Ray Romano, a taste of the genius Finish comic, Ismo Leikola, and some early hilarity from the brilliant buffoon that is Nate Bargatze. And we listen to Steven's appearance on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert! The episode touches on about how clean comedians get creative with curse-substitutes, how clean can be just making the audience fill in the filth themselves, “I know I look like” jokes, clean comedy and irony, logical absurdity, ya know, more things.

It’s hard to say whether Steven Rogers is nicer than he is funny or vice-a-versa, but with Stephen Colbert and Brian Regan giving him their official thumbs up, the formula works. Steven will hate this description, but he’s so neighborly, let’s call him stand-up’s young Mr. Rogers. As such, Mr. Rogers, Jr., joins us to discuss CLEAN as it relates to stand-up comedy, and we get some great insights as Steven shares his experiences of opening for Brian Regan and doing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

The way-too-likable, philosophically funny comic, Bret Raybould, explores the role of PRESENCE in stand-up from a makeshift recording studio inside Bret's private plane. We break this topic down into "being present" and "stage presence", touching on the stages of learning, flow state, body language, not giving a fuck, and knowing your act. Bret tells us how dealt successfully with following SNL's Leslie Jones after she brought down the house. We dig into these aspects of presence and a lot more via bits by Brody Stevens, Patrice O'Neal, and Dane Cook. All this while we eat gold-crusted caviar off the backs of Bret's devoted team of silent manservants.

The loquacious, award-winning raconteur and NYC stand-up comic, Jeff Simmermon, hopped on the mic for the show's second foray into COMEDIC STORYTELLING using the principles he has taught and written about. This episode features his own published material and a story by Gastor Almonte from Comedy Central's "This Is Not Happening"

Former NYC comedy wunderkind, now a full grown rocket-to-the-top funny manchild, Usama Siddiquee, returns to the show to explore the central pillar of laughter, CONTRAST, through killer bits by Nate Bargatze, Andrew Schulz, and Demetri Martin.

Hilarious comedy legend, Jackie Kashian, explains how to joke about FAMILY in stand-up via bits from her 4 albums, incl. #1 best seller, "I Am Not The Hero Of This Story"

Undeniably funny, whitely awkward Geoffrey Asmus joins us to explore THE SETUP in stand-up comedy. Like most things in life, most of the work goes into setting up. If the punchline is the slide, and the setup is the stairs to the top. What is a setup? How can you rework a setup to fix a joke? And even more comedy nerd questions! We also have a great time listening to and frog-dissecting material from two opposite ends of the stand-up spectrum: Rodney Dangerfield and Ari Shaffir.