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:
You can listen to every episode of You're the Expert, my podcast where three comedians interview a scientist about their work and why it matters, on our website or wherever you get podcasts. Link
My wife Mollie's book comes out on February 5th. It's called "No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work." You can see more about it and pre-order here: Link
A few years ago, I visited a friend who writes for The Onion and while I was in the office, they had me pose for a stock image. So now, every couple years, an article gets reposted with my photo in it. This week, I've been getting a lot of texts congratulating me on my responsible life choices because of this headline: "Responsible Man Sets Aside Small Portion of Each Paycheck for Bank to Gamble With"
NEW YORK CITY:
Saturday, January 26 at the Brick Theater. I'm improvising with some of NYC's best at Carley Moseley's very fun show Monster Mash, where a chef makes a dish for the audience and then we all do a show inspired by it. Funny and delicious! Link
Tuesday, February 5 at Powerhouse Arena. Come join me in the audience for Mollie and Liz's official book release! They're going to have prizes, a station where you can make your own stress ball, and of course, they'll be reading from their newly published book. It's going to be great and it costs zero dollars. Link
As always, you can find my schedule with all upcoming dates online here.
This week’s list
GREAT:
Noah Sheldon is a photographer who's won accolades and had exhibitions all over the world. I'm most interested in his ongoing project "Work Is..." It's like if Studs Turkel had an eye for amazing short films (and lived in China). "The popular story of working life in China did not correspond very well with Noah's own encounters with Chinese workers and their workplace. 'Work is' sets out to catalogue the labor force of China in a more intimate and granular way, using voices and personal histories to color the notion of what it means to be working in modern China." A good place to start is his lovely short film about Wu Guo Jie, a woman who makes a living reselling styrofoam boxes. Styrofoam (h/t Jason Kottke)
FUNNY:
Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher are two of the best sketch comedians in the country. They're currently writing for Saturday Night Live, but they've also written for How I Met Your Mother, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and so many other great shows and movies. Their sketch group is called BriTANicK and it's so funny. I first saw them at SF Sketchfest about five years ago and I was blown away. Since then, I've watched every video they put out. It's been awhile, since they've been busy with SNL, but they released a new video this week and it was worth the wait. The Mystery
INTERESTING:
She's been in Congress for less than a month, but she's already generated more media attention than most representatives get in their entire careers. Personally, I find Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be inspiring and an exciting new voice in politics. But even if you disagree with her positions, I think it's important (and also interesting) to see the facts behind them. This op-ed about the economics of higher taxes from a Nobel Prize winning economist was very eye-opening for me. It's interesting that in debates over issues like this, no one ever stops and says "Um, actually both conservative and liberal experts agree this works. No one really disagrees on this except for pundits." The Economics of Soaking the Rich
Thanks for reading! If you like these emails, please forward to a friend or come say hi at a live show. If you're reading this for the first time (maybe someone forwarded you this email?), you can subscribe here.
Have a great week,
Chris