The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

In 2020, Tom Papa released his fourth stand-up comedy special, and first for Netflix, called You're Doing Great!. And Tom Papa is doing great. He's a regular performer on NPR, starring in his own segment on the weekly syndicated show, Live From Here, as well as a recurring role on the panel for NPR quiz show, Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! He also has a weekly SiriusXM show and podcast featuring his funny friends called Come To Papa. That's not to be confused with the NBC sitcom he once starred in called Come To Papa, or his former NBC reality show with Jerry Seinfeld called The Marriage Ref. Or Papa's current weekday SiriusXM talk show he co-hosts with Fortune Feimster for the Netflix is A Joke radio channel, What a Joke with Papa and Fortune. Did I mention Papa's bread-baking show for the Food Network, or his books? His second book, You're Doing Great!: And Other Reasons to Stay Alive, is available for pre-orders and more online now. Papa sat down with me at SiriusXM's Los Angeles offices to break it all down, and build us all up. So let's get to it!

Lizz Winstead is a Minnesotan through and through, even though she has spent the better part of the past three decades in New York City. Winstead first moved to New York to pursue her stand-up comedy career, became a segment producer for The Jon Stewart Show in 1995, and while that talk show ultimately didn't last long, Winstead found herself getting offered her dream gig by Comedy Central a year later. That gig? Co-creating The Daily Show. She later pivoted to radio, serving as the original program director for Air America Radio, where the 2004 lineup included Marc Maron in the morning, Janeane Garofalo at night, and Al Franken at midday — Winstead, meanwhile, co-hosted a show from 9 to noon with Public Enemy's Chuck D.. and a previously unknown radio host from Massachusetts named Rachel Maddow. Since then, Winstead has mounted a live parody of morning TV, written a book of essays called "Lizz Free or Die," and came out of that process realizing she could be even more activist in her comedy. Her book tour begat a new organization, first called Lady Parts Justice League and now known as Abortion Access Front, or Abortion AF for short. Winstead is currently touring towns and cities across America with her Feminist Buzzkills of Comedy Tour. I caught up with her during a break between tour stops, so let's get to it!

Derek Gaines grew up outside of Philadelphia, and moved to New York City with his "6 Foot Nothing" crew after cementing his status as one of Philly's Phunniest. After performing as a New Face in Montreal at Just For Laughs, Gaines began scoring TV credits, hosting MTV's Broke A$$ Game Show and delivering jokes on cable outlets from truTV to VH1 to AXS-TV. Since 2017, Gaines has steadily appeared in higher-profile roles and series, starting with the revival of Will & Grace on NBC, where he plays Sean Hayes's boss, and also including The Last O.G. with Tracy Morgan on TBS. In 2020, you can see Gaines on the big-screen in his former roommate Pete Davidson's movie, "The King of Staten Island," and you can hear Gaines on his first comedy album, Fuccboi Ground Zero. Gaines sat down with me to talk all about it, so let's get to it!

David Wain has been on the cutting edge of digital comedy since the turn of the century, making short films for his live comedy shows with Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black, debuting a webseries (Wainy Days) on the streaming platform My Damn Channel in 2007, helping Rob Corddry take his webseries Childrens Hospital to TV with Adult Swim and winning multiple Emmys for it, and adapting his first feature film, 2001's Wet Hot American Summer, into two separate spin-off series (a prequel and a sequel) for Netflix. He's directed multiple feature films amid all of that, including The Ten, Role Models, Wanderlust, They Came Together, and A Futile and Stupid Gesture. His most recent trick he pulled off? Getting the funny folks of Childrens Hospital out of the hospital and around the world on an action-adventure caper called Medical Police. The ten-episode season debuted in January 2020 on Netflix. I sat down with Wain before the series premiered to find out how he has adapted to all of the ways TV has changed in the 21st Century. So let's get to it!

Joe Pera is a Buffalo native who studied film and began his stand-up comedy career at Ithaca College. After college, Pera moved to New York City, where he started a regular showcase with his childhood friend Dan Licata and Charles Gould called the Dan, Joe and Charles Show. Pera's comedy voice made the leap to late-night TV in 2016 with the animated Adult Swim infomercial, "Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep." Adult Swim liked it so much they've kept bringing Pera back, first with the Christmas special, "Joe Pera Helps You Find the Perfect Christmas Tree," and two seasons of "Joe Pera Talks with You." You also may have seen Pera on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert or Late Night with Seth Meyers. I sat down with Pera in a diner near his Brooklyn apartment to talk about his life and career, and what may come next. So let's get to it!

In an email to me on Jan. 3, 2020, Chloé Hilliard proclaimed "This is the YEAR of CHLOE!" and she may well be right. Hilliard already kicked off 2020 by releasing her first stand-up comedy album, "Big Dick Energy," and has followed that up with the publication of her first book, "F— YOUR DIET: And Other Things My Thighs Tell Me," from Simon & Schuster. Hilliard, whose TV credits include The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Last Comic Standing, tells me about her previous life as a culture and entertainment journalist for for Essence, Vibe, and The Source, how she decided to make a break for it as a comedian instead, and why she wanted to write about society's relationship with food, and what it means for us. So let's get to it!

As we put a bow on 2019, it's time once again for me to sit down with New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman to look back on the year's best and brightest moments in comedy, and which comedians brought out the best. We couldn't help but discuss cancel culture, and whom that actually applied to this year. We also talked up the big years for Sebastian Maniscalco and Tiffany Haddish, the greatness of Gary Gulman and Anthony Jeselnik, and breakthroughs for Jacqueline Novak, Ronny Chieng and Ramy Youssef. We noted big years for Amy Schumer, Nikki Glaser and Julio Torres. We debated the relative greatness of Bill Burr and Dave Chappelle. We noted the other ways comedians made themselves noticed, whether they were clowns in real life, or amusing us via Instagram and Twitter. And we paused to reflect on how Joe Rogan became the biggest talk show host around. All that and more marked the year in comedy of 2019. So let's get to it!

Becky Robinson grew up in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, and studied business at San Diego State University before she threw her everything into show business. A video she made of a McDonald's wedding proposal gone awry went viral in the summer of 2015, leading her to multiple gigs, first going undercover as an on-the-street correspondent for Funny or Die, then as herself showing off her freestyle rapping chops on MTV's Wild N' Out with Nick Cannon. In 2018, Robinson went to Montreal to showcase with other New Faces in the Characters category, while also developing her own potential sketch comedy series with E! Comedy Central sent her to Comic-Con 2019 in character as techie Alan Gingrich. Now she's shopping her potential TV series to other networks, while also showing off her range in her first headlining tour, called Snow Circus. She sat down with me as herself in New York City just before her tour launched at Gotham Comedy Club, so let's get to it!

Abby McEnany stars as a fictionalized version of herself in the new Showtime series Work In Progress. On Showtime, Abby is a 45-year-old overweight queer dyke from Chicago who plans to commit suicide in 180 days if her live doesn't get any better. Can she become a work in progress before it's too late? In real life, McEnany is still queer and based in the Windy City, but a little bit older and happier, thanks in part to her longtime involvement in Chicago's improv comedy community — she's been a mainstay of improv Olympic's weekly improv group Virgin Daiquiri for the past decade. That group's alums include SNL stars Aidy Bryant and Cecily Strong. McEnany created Work In Progress with another Chicago improviser, Tim Mason, and they independently filmed the pilot, premiering it in January 2019 at Sundance. Showtime picked it up to series, and Lilly Wachowski came on board as a co-writer and showrunner. Abby walks me through all of those progressions, both personal and professional, so let's get to it!

Jeff Garlin is a comedian and actor who honed his chops in the 1980s with The Second City, alongside the likes of Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris. You know him from playing Larry David's friend Jeff Greene on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as playing the patriarch of the ABC sitcom family, The Goldbergs. You've heard his voice in such Pixar classics as Wall-E and Toy Story 3 and 4, and he has written and directed three feature films: I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With, Dealin' With Idiots, and Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie. Garlin goes even deeper into his movie credits during his 2019 Netflix comedy special: Our Man In Chicago. But as he'll tell you then and now, nothing is more fun than making it up as we go along, so let's get to it!