Spieling The Beans

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My guest this episode is Sadia Azmat, the brilliant and critically-acclaimed comedian, writer, producer, and podcaster. From reaching the final of Funny Women only 15 months after starting standup, her debut show ‘Please Hold - You’re Being Transferred To A UK Based Asian Representative’ was featured on BBC Front Row, followed up by her nationally-toured 2014 show ‘I Am Not Malala’. In 2018, she co-created the landmark (and Apple’s ‘Top Pick’) BBC Sounds podcast series 'No Country For Young Women', which she hosted alongside Monty Onanuga for its four seasons. And, as you’ll hear, in the days running up to the recording of this episode, it was announced she would be publishing her first memoir and has just been hired as the newest BBC Comedy Producer. Among so many other things, we talk about making BBC Podcast history (in two ways), writing memoirs vs standup routines, and being inspired by both the dark poetry of Bill Hicks and the interviewing style of Larry King.

My guest this episode is Charlie Dinkin - BBC Studios Comedy Staff Writer, Co-Creator of the BBC Audio Drama Award Nominated sketch show podcast SeanceCast, Edinburgh Fringe Award Nominated stand up director, and the first ever international student accepted into The Second City's Comedy Studies program, on what makes a great sketch, directing standup vs sketches, how anthropology relates to comedy, & importance of enjoy-it-all mentalities.

Welcome to Season 3 of what is now - officially - the World's 43rd Hottest Podcast, thanks to Podcast Magazine's voters! My guest this episode is Chris Yiu - Executive Director at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, where he leads leads the Technology & Public Policy programme - on how to create effective policy, why he's so optimistic about the decades ahead and why a 1999 episode of The West Wing was particularly prescient. (Also, head to podcastmagazine.com/hot50 to vote for this month's Official Countdown!)

A mini episode thanking you for listening and on the stories we tell ourselves. See you in 2021!

Recorded in 2015, my guest this week is the founding President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, The Right Honourable The Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers. This episode examines the difference in the Supreme Courts and constitutions of the UK and the US, whether he’d ever considered a political career, media itself acting as a lobbyist, and his almost eerily prescient visions of the repercussions of the then-upcoming 2015 General Election. You’ll also hear the story of how the interview itself, recorded when I was 18 and featuring my nervous teenage voice, actually came to be. (Interview expertly recorded by Giovanni Conte, Anjana Stephens and Anna Pledger, and co-produced by Ed Lawrence and Joe Nerssessian.)

My guest this week is Mary Houlihan, a New York based comedian, writer, animator and artist who's appeared on Broad City, Billy On The Street, Difficult People, The Chris Gethard Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and Rachel Dratch’s Late Night Snack, as well as in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s and Reductress. She also did the artwork for the Adult Swim show 'Joe Pera Talks With You'. Her work has also been celebrated by Entertainment Weekly, Vulture Magazine, Paper, Onion AV Club, and Forbes. Esquire Magazine even described her interview with Martin Shkreli as evidence that “justice still exists in our world”. She also created the Comedy Central hybrid animation miniseries ‘Learn to Paint With Mary Houlihan’ - which I urge you to check out on YouTube immediately. Over the course of the show, you’ll hear about art via painting versus performing, what makes alt comedy alt, performing absurdist standup in Montana and Edinburgh, the canon of Jack Nicholson, and so much more.

My guest, Professor A. C. Grayling, is a titan of British philosophy. The Bertrand-Russell-Award-winning author of over forty books - on everything from War to Friendship - is a representative to the UN Human Rights Council, was a Fellow of the World Economic Forum for several years, is fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts, a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, and has been a judge of the Booker Prize twice - the latter time also serving as its Chair.

Perhaps most notably, he is the first guest on the show (so far!) to have founded a university. In 2011, he created, and is the inaugural Master and Professor of Philosophy of, London’s New College of the Humanities.

Over the hour, we cover the power of effective storytelling in philosophy, education, democracy, constitutions, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and everything from the premiership of Gordon Brown to Christopher Lloyd’s Doc Brown.

Co-produced by Dom Stephens and Lara Taylor.

My guest this week is Don Roy King - quite simply, a titan of television. The director of Saturday Night Live since 2006, he has directed more live TV than anyone else in human history and won eleven Emmy awards for it. So far, he’s been nominated for 28 Emmys overall as a writer, producer and director.

Beginning his career directing The Mike Douglas Show, he spent 21 years directing Good Morning America and CBS This Morning before he began helming SNL. In fact, he’s so good at directing live television, he’s even directed fictional live television - playing Daybreak director Merv in 2010’s Morning Glory and himself in Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born.

We discuss the changes in comedy he’s witnessed, directing Presidents Obama and Trump, what Lorne Michaels is like as a boss, what it was like to be in the director's chair of CBS This Morning on the morning of September 11th, 2001, and the power with which television - and live TV at that - can convey, explain and entertain.

My guest this week is Matt Koff, an Emmy-award winning comedian who has been a writer at The Daily Show, with both Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah, since 2013. He’s also written for The Onion and Hasan Minhaj’s barnstorming White House Correspondents' Dinner, toured with both John Oliver and Bo Burnham, and, at the end of 2019, released his excellent debut standup album, Who’s My Little Guy. (If you haven't heard it already, do so immediately!) Recorded on 7 May 2020, we chatted straight after he finished a day of writing for the show, about the day’s top stories, writing late night in a pandemic, the importance of Monty Python, the surprisingly high-octane plot of Goodnight Moon and much much more. Bonus fun fact: this was the first interview we’ve had that spanned two days due to UK / New York time difference.