Happy Saturday! Every week, I send out an email with my upcoming shows, one thing I think is great, one thing that made me laugh, and one thing I found interesting.
UPCOMING SHOWS
EVERYWHERE:
This week's episode of You're the Expert features Dr. Brooke Flammang talking about sharks, the fish that latch onto them, and super-intelligent underwater laser robots. Link
NYC:
TOMORROW! Sunday, September 16th at 7:00 p.m. at Caveat. You're the Expert is taping live with comedian Gary Richardson (SNL), author Maeve Higgins, and podcast star Dylan Marron (Conversations with People Who Hate Me). Link
LOS ANGELES:
Sunday, September 23rd at 7:00 p.m. at Dynasty Typewriter. I don't make it out to LA all that often, so I'm very excited to be back. We're doing a live taping of You're the Expert with panelists Aparna Nancherla, Max Silvestri, and our expert Jess Phoenix, who studies VOLCANOES. This is likely my only show in LA for the year, so don't miss it! Link
WASHINGTON, D.C.:
Saturday, October 20th at 7:30 p.m. at National Geographic. I'm doing a live taping of You're the Expert with panelists Jo Firestone, Josh Sharp, and an incredible scientist who is named Dr. Jennifer Lopez (not a joke). It's going to be amazing. Link
As always, you can find my schedule with all upcoming dates for both standup shows and You're the Expert tapings online here.
This week’s list
GREAT:
Before I did comedy full-time, I worked as a fifth grade teacher. I loved the job. There's something magical about spending your days inside an elementary school as tiny humans are discovering how the world works for the first time. That's not to say there weren't also extremely gross or annoying things too (every teacher I know has a shockingly high tolerance for seeing bodily functions go wrong). But the excitement and expectations of a new school year is something I find myself thinking about and missing every September.
This twenty minute profile of teacher and children's book author Daphne Kalmar captures the magical feeling perfectly. She talks about making sure each of her students feels seen and what it's like to "fall in love with a new batch of kids every September and then let them go." One of Those Teachers (h/t Bianca Giaever)
FUNNY:
BoJack Horseman is my favorite show on television. It manages to make me laugh, cry, and even think about big, existential questions. That's pretty remarkable considering it's a cartoon about a half-man / half-horse who used to be a sitcom star. The fifth season is out on Netflix now and I'm very excited to binge it all. The show's look and feel were created by Lisa Hanawalt, an artist who makes surrealistic paintings of anthropomorphic animals with a slightly dark sense of humor. Her paintings are beautiful and strange (a Westminster competition for hot dogs, a flock of birds robbing an apartment). I loved reading about how she went from self-publishing comics to having a cult-favorite television show. The Origin Story of the Depressingly Good "BoJack Horseman"
INTERESTING:
Marilyn Geewax spent her career covering business news and economics for NPR. Now that she's retired, she had some free time to go back to her hometown and attend her 45th high school reunion. What she found while catching up with old classmates is a portrait of how the enormous shifts in the US economy over the last fifty years affected everyone in her high school's lives. This is a piece of economic reporting that has real heart but also dives into some very interesting big-picture trends. A High School Reunion Reveals: When Steel Mills Fell Silent, Fates Got Flipped
Thanks for reading! If you like these emails, please forward to a friend or come say hi at a live show. If you can't make it yourself, please tell any friends you think might enjoy it! The biggest way new people hear about my shows is from people on my mailing list.
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Have a great day!
Chris