On today's show we talk to Daniel Zott and Joshua Epstein of the electro-pop band Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Based in Detroit, Michigan, Dan and Josh met while performing in other bands, and in 2009 began to write music together. This would end up as their acclaimed debut album I t's a Corporate World , which was released in 2011. Since then, the band has extensively toured the US and Europe, performed on Conan , and released a number of EPs, most recently one named Patterns .A few weeks ago, while ...
May 23, 2013•1 hr 22 min
On today’s show, we talk to writer and director Mitch Magee . With a background in visual art, Mitch makes comedic videos and short films with a very unique aesthetic. His works have been part of the New York Television Festival, Channel 101, and HBO’s Funny or Die Presents, and he’s directed videos for websites like College Humor and Funny or Die. His short film “Thank You, Cabbage” is now in pre-production.A few weeks ago, Mitch came over to Andy's old Harlem apartment to talk about a wide ran...
May 16, 2013•1 hr 48 min
On this episode of Beginnings: Field Guide, we talk about casting with Katja Blichfeld . For beginning – and even seasoned – actors, the world of casting can seem incredibly random and opaque. To walk us through the ways in which casting contributes to the creative process of a project, we talked with Katja, who has cast a number of features and shows, including the The Carrie Diaries , as well as the entire run of 30 Rock .As well as the ins and outs of casting, Katja shares with us some storie...
May 09, 2013•1 hr 33 min
On today's show, we talk to cartoonist Bill Griffith . Bill began his comics career in the late 1960s in New York before eventually heading out west to San Francisco to be part of the burgeoning underground comics scene in the 1970s, where he co-founded the comics anthology Arcade with Art Spiegelman. Around this time, Griffith also created his brilliant daily strip Zippy the Pinhead , which runs today in over 100 newspapers and has been compiled in numerous collections.Earlier this month while ...
May 02, 2013•1 hr 31 min
Welcome to MoCCA Week on Beginnings! At the start of April, the Society of Illustrators helped us put together a live episode of the show at the annual Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) Festival , a convention in New York dedicated to indie comics, illustration and animation. We invited some of our favorite comics people on the show, and even had some surprise drop ins, and generally had a blast. Big thanks to the Society for welcoming us into the festival!Also, check out our 100th episode...
Apr 29, 2013•1 hr 7 min
On today's show, we talk to filmmaker and producer Michael Gottwald. Michael graduated from Wesleyan University in 2006 and went to work on a number of film and video projects - including producing Big Freedia's video for "Y'All Get Back Now" - before beginning production on the film Beasts of the Southern Wild with writer and director Benh Zeitlin. Since it's debut last year, Beasts has racked up a number of accolades including the Caméra d'Or award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, the Grand J...
Apr 25, 2013•1 hr 39 min
On today's show, we talk to actress and comedian Aisha Tyler . Starting stand-up in the early 1990s in San Francisco, Aisha's first break in TV came in 2001 when she began hosting Talk Soup . Since then, she's kept incredibly busy with roles on shows like Friends and Ghost Whisperer , and as Lana Kane on FX's Archer , as well as co-hosting CBS's The Talk and hosting her own hit podcast Girl on Guy . In addition to all of this, this year her second book Self-Inflicted Wounds will be released and ...
Apr 18, 2013•1 hr 25 min
I know that a large portion of the listening audience doesn’t live in New York, but holy heck are these live shows a lot of fun. And this recording still retains a guaranteed 75-85% of that fun, so please enjoy how great Jessi Klein (head writer of Inside Amy Schumer ), Alex Karpovsky ( Girls ), Jake & Amir (College Humor) and our musical guest Savoir Adore were last Tuesday at the esteemed UCB East Theatre!We’ll probably have a live show in May so look out for that, and in the meantime subs...
Apr 11, 2013•1 hr 22 min
On today's show, we talk to writer and artist Nicholas Gurewitch . Nick began writing and drawing his comic the Perry Bible Fellowship in his college paper, and since then, the comic has appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines and was released in two anthologies by Dark Horse Comics. Nick has also won some of the top awards in comics for the Perry Bible Fellowship including the Ignatz Award, the Harvey Award and the Eisner Award.A few weeks ago, while accidentally in town for a canceled...
Apr 04, 2013•1 hr 25 min
On today's show we talk to artist Steve Keene . Based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Steve has been called the "Assembly-Line Picasso" by Time Magazine because of his unique mass-production painting style. Steve likens this method to the way musicians work, and he's painted the album art for many indie rock bands, including Pavement, The Apples in Stereo, The Silver Jews and many others.A few weeks ago, we met up with Steve at his studio space, and got in deep about painting as performance, the satisf...
Mar 28, 2013•1 hr 2 min
On today's show, we talk to UK comedian Lou Sanders . Based in London, Lou has been performing stand-up for many years, with a number of appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe, where she had one of the top 10 jokes of the 2012 Festival. She also writes for TV and has worked on two series of C4’s Stand up for the Week , as well as BBC3’s Laughtershock & a number of pilots.A few weeks ago, while she was in town for a few days doing shows, Lou stopped by the Wrestling Team apartment to have the mo...
Mar 21, 2013•1 hr 20 min
Ka-zoink! My eyes just popped outta my head like a cartoon character thanks to this last live show at UCB East. We had a weird blast, and now you can join in on the fun we had with author and bon-vivant Dave Hill , Abbi and Ilana of the newly-announced Comedy Central show Broad City and Catherine and Amy of the band Hilly Eye . Not even a missing middle of the show can take away from our charming guests! Subscribe on iTunes and follow Andy and Mark on Twitter! See a live episode on April 2nd at ...
Mar 14, 2013•1 hr 13 min
On today’s show we talk to filmmakers Rob Hatch-Miller and Puloma Basu. Rob and Puloma are accomplished filmmakers and documentarians, and along with Best Show creator Tom Scharpling, they make up Production Company Productions. Over the last few years, the three have created a large number of funny and interesting music videos for acts such as The New Pornographers, Ted Leo, Ben Gibbard and Aimee Mann.Over the weekend, Rob and Puloma came over to the Wrestling Team apartment to get in deep abou...
Mar 07, 2013•1 hr 34 min
On today’s show we talk to Jonathan Mitchell. Jonathan is a radio producer, composer, and co-creator of the amazing podcast The Truth . As a producer, he's created pieces for many shows including Radiolab , Studio 360 , This American Life , and All Things Considered . As a composer, he's written music for PBS' Nova and the videogame The Sims , and his radio drama podcast The Truth was named as one of the best podcasts of 2012 by iTunes.Last week, Jonathan came over to the Wrestling Team apartmen...
Feb 28, 2013•1 hr 24 min
On today’s show we talk to author Ben Marcus . An Associate Professor at Columbia, Ben's work has appeared in Harper's , The New Yorker , The Paris Review , The New York Times , and many other publications, and he's won numerous awards including an NEA Fellowship. Ben's also penned four fantastic books: The Father Costume , The Age of Wire and String , N otable American Women , and his latest, The Flame Alphabet , which was just released last year by Alfred A. Knopf.Last week, Ben was nice enoug...
Feb 21, 2013•1 hr 44 min
On today’s show we talk to musician Hayden Desser . Hailing from Ontario, Hayden released his first album Everything I Long For in 1995. Somewhere in-between alt-country, indie rock and any other number of genres, Hayden simply writes beautiful and emotionally-involving songs, and since 1995, has recorded six equally engaging albums. His latest, Us Alone , was just released on Arts and Crafts earlier this month.Early last week, while in town for a show, Hayden was kind enough to sit down with An...
Feb 18, 2013•1 hr 6 min
Yow! We celebrate our one year anniversary of the live show at UCB East with our most packed line-up yet including head writer of The Colbert Report , Opus Moreschi; indie rock guitarist Marnie Stern; host of The Chris Gethard Show , Chris Gethard; musician Andrew W.K. and comedian Reggie Watts. Holy heck! Here's to 1000 more years of live episodes! Subscribe on iTunes and follow Andy and Mark on Twitter! See us live in March at UCB East! (probably!)...
Feb 14, 2013•1 hr 33 min
On today’s show we talk to playwrights Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen and Oliver Butler, collectively known as The Debate Society . The Debate Society is a Brooklyn-based theater company that specializes in creating unexpected stories set in intricately-detailed, cinematic worlds. Named Ars Nova’s 2013 Company-in-Residence, Bos, Thureen and Butler’s latest show Blood Play will be featured at ArtsEmerson’s Next Thing Festival in Boston later this month. Last week, Hannah, Paul and Oliver stopped by the...
Feb 07, 2013•1 hr 30 min
On today's show we talk to stand-up Jackie Kashian. Based in Los Angeles, Jackie has been a touring comedian for the last fifteen years. She has her own Comedy Central Presents , was a finalist on Last Comic Standing and has appeared on everything from Tough Crowd to Premium Blend and even Murphy Brown . You can also hear her weekly on her fantastic podcast The Dork Forest , where she interviews people about their obsessions. A few weeks ago, while in town for the inaugural NYC Podfest, Jackie c...
Jan 31, 2013•1 hr 41 min
On today's show, we talk to Tom Purcell. Based in New York, Tom is the executive producer of The Colbert Report , and has won two Emmys for his work. Starting in Chicago with Second City, he eventually went on to write for Cosby , Bill Cosby's show from the late '90s and Grounded for Life with Donal Logue and Kevin Corrigan. In 2008, Tom joined Colbert and has been there ever since.A few weeks ago, Tom came over to the Wrestling Team apartment while Colbert was on break for the holidays and chat...
Jan 24, 2013•1 hr 30 min
Holy mackerel! This may very well be our most fun live show yet! On January 8th, we were joined by Erika Forster and Annie Hart from one of our favorite bands Au Revoir Simone , one of our favorite performers Josh Patten (performer at UCB and a writer on SNL Weekend Update), and one of our favorite artists Molly Crabapple (the founder of Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School). We laughed, we loved, we heard about their earliest creative memories. And even did a little demo work for a PR firm that paid u...
Jan 17, 2013•1 hr 12 min
On today's show we talk to writer and performer Sara Benincasa. While now based in LA, Sara got her start in New York, where she did everything from host a show on Sirius to make videos for the Huffington Post. She writes for Jane and Vice.com, and last year, her book Agorafabulous! , based on her-one woman show about her struggles with agoraphobia, was published by William Morrow.Right before Christmas, we sat down with Sara at The PIT, hours before her stand-up show, and talked about everythin...
Jan 10, 2013•1 hr 30 min
On today's show we talk to Nate Dern and John Frusciante, the Artistic and Associate Artistic Directors of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre NY. Founded in the late '90s by Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts and Amy Poehler, the UCB Theatre has come to prominence in the last decade as one of the best comedy theaters in the country, as well as a pipeline for many into industry careers, as graduates have gone on to Saturday Night Live , The Daily Show , The Office and many other TV shows and ...
Jan 03, 2013•1 hr 23 min
On today's show we talk to New York-based writer and performer Elna Baker . Raised internationally, Elna moved to New York to study performance at NYU and soon became enmeshed in the stand-up and improv scene. Since then, she's co-founded the variety show The Talent Show and become a sought-after storyteller, contributing to places like This American Life . Her first book, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance , which chronicles her dating life as a Mormon in New York City, was pu...
Dec 27, 2012•1 hr 17 min
On today's show we talk to writer and performer Peter Grosz . Based in New York, Pete got his start in sketch and improv in Chicago with Second City and later in Amsterdam with Boom Chicago. Since then, he's written for Dave "Gruber" Allen and David Koechner's Naked Trucker show, wrote for The Colbert Report and most recently played reporter Sidney Purcell on HBO's Veep .A few weeks ago, Pete stopped by the Wrestling Team apartment to talk with us about ripping off Stephen Wright, following your...
Dec 20, 2012•1 hr 44 min
Holy heck. This may be one of our favorite episodes ever. Mystery Science Theater 3000 's Frank Conniff, author of the NYT bestseller How to Be Black Baratunde Thurston and hip-hop superstar Jean Grae joined us on a funseasonably warm December night at UCB East for a completely amazing live show where we talked about being forced into creative activities by our parents, berating people during phone sex and a Minneapolis Arby's that's afraid of a homeless man. CHECK THIS OUT! Subscribe in iTunes ...
Dec 13, 2012•1 hr 22 min
On today's show we talk to Yael Kohen , a contributing editor to Marie Claire and author of the book We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy . Starting with Phyllis Diller, Elaine May and Joan Rivers, We Killed goes back through the last 60 years of comedy history and restores the forgotten and minimized stories of women in comedy.A few weeks ago, Yael came over to the Manhattan Wrestling Team apartment to discuss her book, as well as some larger questions dealing with gender and comedy....
Dec 06, 2012•1 hr 35 min
Yow! We got a hot one for you this week. Due to a scheduling snafu, our monthly live episode at UCB East had to be pre-empted, so instead, we decided to put on one in Andy’s apartment with some of our favorite people: Ethan Berlin , co-creator of Bunk and writer on Billy on the Street and the new Best Week Ever , as well as neo-folk group Prairie Empire , who played two amazing tunes, and has a record out on Trailer Fire Records. It was a super fun time, and we even debut a BRAND NEW SEGMENT: Fr...
Nov 29, 2012•1 hr 28 min
On today's show, we talk to LA-based comedian Jerrod Carmichael . Jerrod started stand-up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina when he was 20, and through a great deal of hard-work has quickly become a notable stand-up, landing on Variety's Top 10 Comics to Watch list in 2011. While continuing to perform at places like Meltdown and the Laugh Factory, he's also branched out into TV, having contributed to Odd Future's Adult Swim show and landing a supporting role on the Fox sitcom The Goodwin Games .L...
Nov 21, 2012•1 hr 36 min
On today's show we talk to Jessie Stein of the Montreal-based multi-instrumental indie rock band The Luyas . Previously in the band SS Cardiacs, Jessie began playing music as a teenager, and formed the Luyas in 2006 with a number of other Canadian musicians. Since then, the band has released three albums, Faker Death , Too Beautiful to Work and their latest Animator , which was just released in October. A few weeks ago, The Luyas were in town in the direct aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. After the...
Nov 19, 2012•1 hr
