Comedy

Standup comic Patton Oswalt on life and comedy in the Trump era, and the sudden death of his wife last year which he talks about in his new special, Annihilation.

Growing up an only child in Massachusetts, humorist John Hodgman longed to be considered interesting. In high school, he grew his hair out, wore a fedora and carried a briefcase in an effort to look like Doctor Who.

A rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes made comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh uneasy about performing live. Then she remembered a childhood experience that helped her regain her footing.

New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast is a city person. She grew up in an apartment building in Brooklyn, N.Y., and though she moved to the suburbs as an adult when she was pregnant with her second child, she never stopped loving the grit and excitement of New York City.

David Litt is a former speechwriter and joke writer for President Obama. And he was the lead writer of four White House Correspondents Dinners, where the president did standup. He has a new memoir.

In our 2005 interview with Jerry Lewis he talks about how he got started in show biz, his partnership with Dean Martin, and his film career.

Klausner plays an unsuccessful comic who quips about celebrities in her Hulu series, which recently launched its third season. Originally broadcast Aug. 16, 2016.

When comic and cabaret performer Bridget Everett takes the stage, she really takes over. Everett, who is 6 feet tall and plus size, has been known to sit in audience members' laps and even coddle their heads between her breasts during her raunchy live act. "Somebody used to call me a cabaret hurricane," she says.

Comic Jessica Williams talks about getting hired by The Daily show at the age of 22, while she was still in college, growing up in LA, and not fitting in.

When it comes to comedy, Late Night host Seth Meyers is clear about what drew him in: "I got into it because it looked like the most fun job in the world," he says. "And it has not led me astray."

After forty years in comedy Al Franken became a U.S. Senator for the state of Minnesota. He's now in his second term. During his first term he did his best to not be funny so that his voters and congress would take him seriously. He'll talk about his life and transition from comedy to politics.

Comic W. Kamau Bell has spent much of his life feeling awkward. A self-described "tall, rangy black dude," Bell was often mistaken for a basketball player growing up — except that serious asthma and allergies meant he spent the bulk of his childhood indoors watching TV.

The HBO series is now in its sixth season. Producer Frank Rich also writes a column for New York magazine about the intersection of politics and popular culture.

Sasheer Zamata has been a cast member of Saturday Night Live since 2014. Now she has new stand up special titled Pizza Mind.

Rickles, who died yesterday, mined racial, ethnic and religious stereotypes for laughs. "I crossed the line when nobody else could do it," he once said. Originally broadcast in 2008, 1998 and 2007.

Alec Baldwin has been keeping busy lately. The star of the animated film The Boss Baby has a new memoir out and also keeps popping up on Saturday Night Live to play President Trump.

Full Frontal host Samantha Bee makes no bones about the fact that she was caught off guard by Donald Trump's victory on election night.

Anderson delivers a standout performance as the mother of an embittered rodeo clown in Baskets, which is now in its second season. Originally published March 2, 2016.

After working mostly as a behind-the-scenes guy on Chappelle's Show and Inside Amy Schumer, Neal Brennan is now stepping out as a performer.

Tom and Dick Smothers came to CBS in 1967 not really intending to lead or support a revolution. They just got caught up in it — and they happened to have a network program "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour", with some 30 million viewers, on which they criticized the war in Vietnam, celebrated rock 'n' roll music and satirized politics and politicians.