Good One

This week, host Jesse David Fox goes global, calling comedian Hannah Gadsby all the way in Melbourne, Australia. Hannah began her career in comedy in 2006, but found international success in 2018 when her special Nanette debuted on Netflix. Nanette won the top prizes at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017, and its Netflix release won Hannah an Emmy and a Peabody Award.

While Nanette tackled weighty issues and questioned the very meaning of comedy, in her newest special, Douglas, Hannah mostly just tries to be really funny. It has a ton of jokes, some structural inventiveness, and more. It’s hard to say the special is about one thing, but as Hannah and Jesse discuss, it’s largely about showing us how she thinks the way she does and then trying to explain why, as she tells the story of how she was diagnosed with autism. As she puts it, it’s meant to be a romantic comedy.

You can watch Hannah’s new special “Douglas” now on Netflix. You can follow Hannah on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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This week, Jesse David Fox welcomes Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland to the show! Gil and George are two 70-year-old jerks slash roommates slash Alan Alda fans, living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, best known for their fish-themed prank show “Too Much Tuna.” After a successful “Oh, Hello” Broadway run and subsequent Netflix special, the guys decided to try their hand at the hottest new trend, launching a murder mystery podcast called “Oh, Hello: the P’dcast, The Life and Death of Lady Di.” 

In this free-flowing interview, Gil and George speak about their co-collaborators, Nick Kroll and John Mulaney, and which of their projects they were keeping up with and which they reckon you could skip. They also dive into their podcast-making process, and tell us about all the great people they got to work with, like Ira Glass and Sarah Koenig.

Note: We used a site called Squadcast to record the conversation, and Jesse gets dropped from the interview a couple of times. The plus side is that this results in a makeshift song performed by Gil and George that makes it all worth it.

You can listen to their podcast “Oh, Hello: The P’dcast” wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow Gil and George on Twitter. You can follow Nick Kroll on Twitter and Instagram, and you can find John Mulaney on Twitter and Instagram, too. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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This week on Good One we have a sequel! That’s right. We’re joined again by Patton Oswalt, nearly two whole years since his Good One debut in May 2018. In that episode we discussed his special Annihilation, which we touch on again today. 

But this episode is mainly about the evolution of a joke about breakfast cereal from his new special, I Love Everything. When preparing, we found him doing a version of the joke on Conan in August 2018. The joke stays structurally the same, but it clearly changed quite a bit over the next year, leading up to its recording in September 2019. Jesse David Fox dives deep into why Patton made the changes he made, and how his approach to standup has changed, now that he’s turned 50 (!).

You can watch Patton’s latest special “I Love Everything” now on Netflix. You can follow Patton on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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This week, Jesse revisits his interview with comedian Aparna Nancherla of Comedy Central's Corporate and Netflix’s The Standups. The joke is from her debut album, Just Putting It Out There, which came out in 2016. Aparna first started doing this joke when she moved to New York from L.A. in late 2012 to work on Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. Around then, Jesse would see her perform her deeply silly act around Brooklyn. And then, he distinctly remembers when her material shifted. The silliness was still there, but now Aparna was also talking about her struggles with depression and anxiety. This episode is about that breakthrough, how her career in comedy is connected to her history with mental illness, and how her comedy isn't as much about anxiety and depression as people think. And, you know, writing very good jokes.

You can follow Aparna on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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This episode, Jesse talks to stand-up comedian and TV writer Sara Schaefer. Back in 2013, Sara and fellow comedian Nikki Glaser adapted their podcast “You Had to Be There” into the MTV late night show Nikki & Sara Live, which ran for two seasons. Since then, Sara has written for numerous TV programs, including The Fake News with Ted Nelms, The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and Problematic with Moshe Kasher.

Sara started working on the joke discussed here in early 2017, before performing it as part of her Edinburgh Fringe Festival show that summer; however, the version you’ll hear is from her 2019 album LIVE LAUGH LOVE. It’s a sixteen-and-a-half-minute magnum opus about her first trip to Hobby Lobby—you know, the arts & crafts chain store that won a Supreme Court case allowing them to not cover contraceptives in their employees’ health insurance plans? Yeah, that one. In the joke Sara tries to reconcile her views on the company with her desperate need to get a basket for her crafts nook. It’s an epic journey. 

You can listen to LIVE LAUGH LOVE wherever you buy or stream music. You can pre-order a copy of her memoir Grand, which comes out August 11, wherever books are sold. Follow Sara on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

NOTE: In the interview, Sara misidentified a radio host who was fired for making racist tweets. It was not Opie, but Opie's former co-host, Anthony Cumia.

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This episode, Jesse talks to Scottish comedian Daniel Sloss, who made a name for himself at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which he started performing at as a teen and has since done 10 full shows. Daniel’s joke started as a tweet in 2012, was workshopped at multiple Edinburgh shows, evolving as he continued to have new experiences with it, including an eye-opening trip to America in 2014, finally ending as part of his 2015 show, titled Dark. But the filmed version of Dark wouldn’t come out on Netflix until 2018, which meant Daniel worked on and performed multiple shows in between. 

For Daniel, this joke marked a turning point in his comedic development, where he began talking about topics that were meaningful to him as opposed to generic observational comedy. Since then, his specials have tackled difficult subject matter such as toxic masculinity and early childhood tragedy. NOTE: This episode contains a discussion of sexual assault and a significant amount of profanity. 

You can stream Daniel’s specials Dark and Jigsaw on Netflix and his special X on HBO Go or HBO Now. Follow Daniel on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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In this week’s episode, Jesse talks to comedian Chelsea Peretti, who in early 2019 left her role as Gina Linetti on the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine. After departing the show, she decided she wanted to spend time following her muse. And her muse turned out to be ...coffee. 

With the help of her friend, music producer Kool Kojak, she recorded dozens, if not hundreds, of songs just about coffee that are not actually just about coffee but actually are definitely just about coffee. The songs are funny, except when they’re not. And, in those cases, the comedy comes from the fact that a person put this much work into a serious song about coffee. 

On the day this episode comes out, Chelsea is dropping an EP entitled Foam and Flotsam, as well as two music videos. This will be the first of two EPs, with a full album scheduled to come out in June. She also put together a Spotify playlist of nearly 250 songs called “Extremely Meaningful Music.” In this interview, Chelsea explores just why she went to such lengths to make an album about coffee, and what it says about comedy now.

You can hear all of Chelsea’s music on Spotify or wherever you stream music. Follow Chelsea on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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On this week’s episode, Jesse talks to actor/writer/director David Wain, whose wide body of work ranges from films Wet Hot American Summer, Wanderlust and Role Models to TV series Children’s Hospital and Medical Police.

David’s career began in the late 80s in a comedy troupe called the State, which was started by a group of college friends at NYU. After graduation, they convinced MTV to give them a sketch show -- and David and the other 10 members of the State wound up writing, acting in, directing, and editing the entire show. Although the series only lasted 26 episodes, the State gained a cult following, and it’s now considered one of the most influential sketch shows of all time.

The sketch David and Jesse talk about in this episode, “Taco Man,” epitomizes the State’s version of highbrow/lowbrow comedy -- a simple premise (a mailman who delivers tacos) that leads to comedic moments both silly and profound. David calls it one of his favorite State sketches, and you will too. 

You can stream The State on MTV Hits or rent/purchase it wherever you get your TV series. Stream David’s most recent series, Medical Police, on Netflix. Follow David on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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On this week’s special coronavirus-focused episode, stand-up comedians Roy Wood Jr. and Maria Bamford discuss how comedy has been affected and has adapted to COVID-19 and self-quarantining. First, Roy explains just how radically different it is for stand-ups to be unable to perform in front of audiences, and how the temporary closing of clubs (and the resulting recession) will cripple comedy club employees and touring comedians. Then Maria talks about what it’s like to perform comedy every day to 100 silent strangers over Zoom.

Follow on social media: Roy Wood Jr. (Twitter, Instagram); Maria Bamford (Twitter, Instagram); Jesse David Fox (Twitter, Instagram)

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On this week’s episode, Daily Show senior correspondent Ronnie Chieng talks about his journey to his first Netflix stand-up special, Asian Comedian Destroys America!

Born in Malaysia, Ronny grew up in Singapore and began doing stand-up in Australia, where starting comedians quickly put together hour-long sets to perform at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. So when Trevor Noah tapped him to join the Daily Show in 2015, Ronny moved to New York and faced a very different comedy scene in a very different country.  

Four years later, Ronny’s joke examines American consumerism from the perspective of an outsider who has embraced American values, for better, and for worse. NOTE: This interview was recorded in January 2020.

Watch Asian Comedian Destroys America! on Netflix. Follow Ronny on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.

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