Show Notes
Jesse David Fox covers comedy for Vulture, where he hosts the podcast Good One. His new book is Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture—and the Magic That Makes It Work. “There’s a complete lack of anyone who’s ever written about comedy seriously compared to any other art form. There’s just nothing. … So the challenge was, how do you start a conversation that no one has been participating in?” Show notes:
@JesseDavidFox
Fox’s Vulture archive
3:00 Jason Zinoman’s New York Times archive
5:00 “What Is the Best Adam Sandler Movie?” (Vulture • April 2023)
6:00 Kathryn VanArendonk’s Vulture archive
8:00 “A Note About Splitsider” (Megh Wright• Vulture • Mar 2018)
11:00 “Jerry Seinfeld at Vulture Festival 2015” (Vulture • June 2015)
12:00 WTF with Marc Maron Podcast (Marc Maron • WTF • 2009)
14:00 “Jen Kirkman Turned Catcalling Into One of the Best Street Harassment Jokes Ever” (Vulture • April 2017)
23:00 “An Appreciation of the Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” (Ramsey Ess • Vulture • Mar 2018)
23:00 “Maria Bamford Wants to Tell You How Much Money She Makes” (Vulture • Oct 2017)
23:00 “How Funny Does Comedy Need to Be?” (Vulture • Sep 2018)
23:00 “Michelle Wolf on Correspondents Dinner, Social Media” (Vulture • Mar 2020)
23:00 “Disgust is Tom Segura’s Love Language” (Vulture • Sept 2022)
23:00 “The Story Behind Bert Kreischer’s ‘Machine’ Joke” (Vulture • May 2023)
23:00 “Katt Williams Explains Jacksonville Florida” (Katt Williams • Netflix • Jan 2020)
36:00 “How the Internet and a New Generation of Superfans Helped Create the Second Comedy Boom” (Vulture • Mar 2015)
37:00 Las Culturistas (Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang • iHeartRadio • 2016)
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Have you ever wondered how your favorite movie or book—or podcast, TV series, documentary, or article—got made? Origin Stories has you covered. Each week, veteran journalist Matthew Shaer talks to a different writer or director about the creation of a work close to their own hearts. Nothing is off the table: not the frustrations and the joys, not the setbacks and the successes. Intimate and incisive, instructive and eye-opening, Origin Stories is the ultimate podcast for anyone curious about the workings of the creative mind. Among the early guests are Noah Hawley, creator of the new Alien show on FX; Mimi Leder, director of The Morning Show; New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe; and Evan Ratliff, of Longform and Atavist fame. Hosted by Matthew Shaer, co-founder of Campside Media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and has written for Harper's, The New Yorker, and GQ. He is the author of Pulphead and the forthcoming The Prime Minister of Paradise: The True Story of a Lost American History. “I love making pieces of writing and trying to find the right language to say what I mean. It's such a wonderful way of being alive in the world. I mean, your material is all around you. ... I'm lucky that it has stayed interesting for me. It hasn't faded. The challenges of writing, they still glow.” Show notes:
The hosts answer a few listener questions. Evan’s picks for some podcasts to try:
Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author and journalist. His next book is The Message. “I don’t think we have the luxury as journalists of avoiding things because people might say bad things about us. I don’t even think we have the luxury of avoiding things because we might get fired. I don’t think we have the luxury of avoiding them because somebody might cancel some sort of public speech that we have. I then have to ask you, what are you in it for? Like, why did you come here? Did you come here just to make a living? Because there are many other things where you could make more money.” Show notes:
Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a co-host of Time to Say Goodbye. “At some point, you have to kick it out the door, and it’s never finished to the degree that you would finish a magazine piece. But it, in some ways, is more interesting because it is produced in a short amount of time, and it’s read as something that is not supposed to be complete. It’s just meant to provoke or to provide thought or whatever, to provide some sort of context on a certain issue or not. And I actually like that a lot better than the magazine writing. I respect the magazine writers—obviously, I was one—but for my disposition now, in my lifestyle, I actually enjoy having to produce this thing every week.” Have a question for the mailbag? Email the show or leave a voicemail at (929) 333-2908. Show notes: