On today's show I talk to comedian Kevin Avery. Originally from San Francisco, Kevin currently lives in New York where he is a writer on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Previously, he was the head writer on Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell and wrote on Best Week Ever before that. Kevin's also a wonderful stand-up and podcaster - his first album is called Hardcore, and with Kamau, he hosts the Wolfpop podcast Denzel Washington is The Greatest Actor of All Time Period. This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on iTunes, follow me on Twitter.

Welcome to our perverse-free orb! On today's show I talk to musicians Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang. Damon and Naomi started playing music together as the rhythm section, co-songwriters, and sometime singers in Galaxie 500. When that band ended, they continued as a duo, first recording for Shimmy Disc and then on a series of albums for Sub Pop Records. In 2005, they formed their own label 20/20/20 and have since released three further Damon & Naomi albums. In addition to their work as musicians, Damon & Naomi are the publishers of Exact Change, a small press dedicated to avant-garde literature and artists’ writings. Individually, Damon is a writer, and Naomi is a visual artist.This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on iTunes, follow me on Twitter.

On today's show, I talk to Tony Award-nominated actor Reed Birney. For most of his career, Reed was a journeyman actor, but that all changed in 2008 when he starred in the OBIE Award-winning Sarah Kane play Blasted at the Soho Rep. Since then he's performed in a number of on and off Broadway plays and received a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk Award for his performance in Harvey Fierstein’s play Casa Valentina. Reed also plays Donald Blythe on the hit Netflix series House of Cards.This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on iTunes, follow me on Twitter.

On today's show, I talk to humor writer Simon Rich. Born in New York City, Rich is the son of New York Times and New York Magazine writer Frank Rich. Simon started writing at a young age, and has published two novels and three collections of humor. His most recent Spoiled Brats was released last year. He's also written for Saturday Night Live and was a staff writer at Pixar. Also, Simon created the show Man Seeking Woman for FX, which was just picked up for a second season.This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on iTunes, follow me on Twitter.

On today's show, I talk to artist and musician C. Spencer Yeh. Originally from Taiwan, Spencer's family moved to Canada when he was young, and later, Spencer grew up in the Rust Belt. As a musician, Spencer has released over twenty albums on numerous labels, many under the name Burning Star Core, and a number of improvisational collaborations under his own name - including collabos with everyone from saxophonist Paul Flaherty to avant-garde filmmaker and composer Tony Conrad. As an artist, his work has been featured internationally at the MoMA, the ICA Philadelphia, Kinomuzeum at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Liverpool Biennial, and in many other exhibitions. Yeh also collaborated with Triple Canopy for their contribution to the Whitney Biennial in 2014, and a collection of voice-based works, Solo Voice I - X, will be published by Primary Information this year.This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on iTunes, follow me on Twitter.

On today's show I talk to journalist and author Jon Ronson. Originally from Cardiff, Wales, Jon moved to London for university, and it was in England that his writing career began. He's created a number of documentaries for BBC radio, TV, and for similar places like Channel 4, and he's written a number of international bestsellers - some of which have been turned into films - including The Men Who Stare at Goats, The Psychopath Test, Them: Adventures with Extremists, and his latest, which is out this week, So You've Been Publicly Shamed. (They're all wonderful!)This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on iTunes, follow me on Twitter.

On today's show, I talk to comedian and host Amanda Seales. While born in LA, Amanda's family hails from Grenada. Amanda got her start in entertainment at a young age, with parts in films like Cop and 1/2 and a recurring role on the Nickelodeon show My Brother and Me. And since then, she's become a showbiz jack-of-all-trades: she's been a VJ on MTV, she was featured on Best Week Ever, she was a semi-finalist in the NBC Stand Up for Diversity, she has a weekly webseries for BET, and I'm not kidding when I say that's just scraping the surface. Oh, also you might remember Amanda from when she schooled that sexist dude on CNN with a healthy dose of side-eye.This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on iTunes, follow me on Twitter.

On today's show I talk to actor Lola Kirke. Lola comes from a family of artists and musicians - her father is Simon Kirke of the bands Bad Company and Free, her mother is Lorraine Kirke, a fashion designer and interior decorator, and her sister is Jemima, who plays Jessa on Girls. But at the age 24, Lola is no slouch herself. She's acted in films like Gone Girl and shows like The Leftovers, she plays the lead in the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, and she's one of the stars of Noah Baumbach's latest film Mistress America.This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on iTunes, follow me on Twitter.

On today's show I talk to stand-up David Smithyman. David hails from Sydney, Australia and moved to the US to attend college. Since starting stand-up, he's become a finalist in NBC's Stand-Up for Diversity and last year was named one of Comedy Central's Comics to Watch. Currently, he writes on the ABC show Fresh Off the Boat.This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on iTunes, follow me on Twitter.

On today's show I talk to comics writer Charles Soule. After getting his JD from Columbia Law School, Charles became a lawyer focusing on corporate law and immigration. Simultaneously, he also started his comics career. His first work Strongman was published on Slave Labor Graphics, and subsequently Oni Press began publishing his ongoing series Letter 44. Since then, he's written Swamp Thing, Red Lanterns and Superman/Wonder Woman for DC and Thuderbolts, She-Hulk, Inhuman and The Death of Wolverine for Marvel.This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on iTunes, follow me on Twitter.