Comedy

Phoebe Robinson has set out to change the demographics of comedy: "It's a very white male, straight male-dominated industry — and that can be exhausting," she says.

Saturday Night Live head writers and Weekend Update hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che are co-hosting the Emmy awards Monday night. They'll talk about their different approaches to it, and about working together on SNL.

Simon, who died Sunday, spoke to Fresh Air in 1996 about finding balance between his desire for leisure time and his need to write: "They were at odds," he says. "I'm my own odd couple."

After Tig Notaro stand-up set about having cancer went viral, she released the comedy special Boyish Girl Interrupted, and co-wrote and starred in the semi-autobiographical Amazon series One Mississippi. In 2015, she married actress Stephanie Allynne, and they now have twin boys.

A few minutes into her performance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night, comic Michelle Wolf joked that the event organizers should have done more research before booking her. By the end of the set, the organizers may have agreed.

In 2012, Saturday Night Live's Bill Hader told Fresh Air that watching old films as a child sparked his interest in Hollywood. His latest project is the HBO series Barry.

In 2018, Wood explained how the years he spent performing in comedy clubs in the South and Midwest — sometimes in places where he felt unsafe as a black man — prepared him for The Daily Show.

Comic Roy Wood Jr. is now a correspondent for The Daily Show, but he got his start performing in comedy clubs in the South and Midwest — sometimes in places where he felt unsafe as a black man.

John Oliver jokes that his satirical news show, HBO's Last Week Tonight, does a 22-minute deep dive on news that "no one in their right mind wants to hear about." In recent weeks, the show has covered, among other things, the Italian parliamentary elections and NRA TV, an Internet channel with NRA programming.

Former Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper remembers a time, not so long ago, when he was barely aware of far-right media outlets like Alex Jones' Infowars and Breitbart News. That changed during the 2016 presidential race.