Comedy

Brenner has written a new book about the pitfalls of traveling, called If God Wanted Us to Travel. He talks about his family's history in the entertainment industry, and how their Jewish faith affected their careers.

Cerf writes children's songs for Sesame Street and helped launch the humor magazine the National Lampoon. In 1978 he co-edited the journalistic parody "Not the New York Times." His most recent humor book is "The Book of Sequels," a spoof of current trends in the publishing and film industries.

Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson are cast members in the Canadian sketch comedy show, The Kids In The Hall. It's is produced by Lorne Michaels, and often features gender-bending humor.

Steve O'Donnell, the head writer for Late Night with David Letterman, writes many of the program's top ten lists. A new book compiles the best of these, called, simply, The Late Night with David Letterman Book of Top Ten Lists.

Carlin stirred up controversy with his bit about seven words inappropriate for broadcast. He joins Fresh Air to talk about about obscenity, performance, and his past drug use.

Rather than spend minutes setting up elaborate jokes, Wright comedian delivers one-liners in a deadpan, stoic manner. He has a new HBO comedy special coming up, and also appears in movies. Wright won an Academy Award for the short the Appointments of Dennis Jennings.

Since 1987, Maya has been performing his one-man show at clubs and performance spaces, mostly around New York. His style of observational humor focuses on his suburbia, current events, and gay politics. Maya came out publicly this year; he believes its important to emphasize his identity in his act to boost representation of gay people in popular culture.

Davidson's act earned him a spot on the sketch comedy show In Living Color, starring the Wayans brothers. He grew up in Washington, DC and began performing at a topless club. Davidson's comedy special will soon air on the Showtime network.

Comedian Dave Thomas. Thomas first hit it big as a member of the "SCTV" comedy series. He currently has a summer-replacement comedy variety show on CBS, called "The Dave Thomas Comedy Show."

Stand-up comic Jimmy Tingle.