3 Things: Jenny Lewis, Taryn Englehart, and ProPublica

It's Saturday! Every week, I send out an email with one thing I think is great, one thing that made me laugh, and one thing I found interesting. Feel free to spread the word and share these emails with your friends. If someone forwarded this email to you and you want to start getting them yourself, you can sign up here.

Upcoming Shows

EVERYWHERE:
Season 2 of Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas is in full swing. Last night's episode was all about mental health in schools and why we tend to only talk about it after a tragedy. Link

You can listen to You're the Expert on any podcast app. Three comedians interview a scientist about her work and why it matters.  Link

NYC:
TONIGHT! Saturday, April 20 at 9:30 p.m. at The Brick. I'm on Bit Tank, a parody show where comedians pitch jokes to comedy entrepreneurs for real money. Link

Saturday, May 4 at 9:30 p.m. at The Brick. I'm on Carley Moseley's improv show alongside some of the funniest people in NYC. Plus everyone in the audience gets a snack cooked by a professional chef. Link

SEATTLE:
Saturday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall. Join me in the audience for Liz and Mollie's talk about their best-selling book No Hard Feelings. link

You can find ticket links for all upcoming shows online at my website here.

This week’s list

GREAT:
I love Jenny Lewis' new album On the Line. But I didn't know almost anything about her other than her music until I read this great profile of her in Pitchfork. "After a turbulent childhood and two decades of brilliantly vulnerable songs, the L.A. idol has finally arrived at something like happiness." She was born on Elvis' birthday, became one of the most famous child actors of her time, and then reinvented herself as a critically acclaimed musician. Jenny Lewis Escapes the Void


FUNNY:
Everything Taryn Englehart writes is perfectly crafted and hilarious. She's one of those comedy writers who sees the code inside the comedy matrix and can just pull punchlines out of thin air. (Does this Keanu Reeves metaphor make any sense? I bet it would've really resonated in 1999.)  If you watched last night's episode of Problem Areas, Taryn was the one who pitched "Adult Baby Walkers" and watching that idea come to life was incredible. She's also the author of some of my favorite Reductress pieces like "How to Stay Up Late for No Reason Other Than Ruining Tomorrow" and "People Think I Hate Millennials, But Really I Just Hate My Son, Brian" You can see more on her website here: Taryn Englehart.


INTERESTING:
Tax Day is officially past, so we've all settled up with Uncle Sam now. (If you're only discovering that your taxes are overdue right in this instant, I'm so sorry. But also, you need to hire an accountant.) Income tax in America is needlessly complicated, time-consuming, and expensive. (See Joe Zimmerman's perfect joke about this.) But it's also the way we fund so many crucial government services and programs. Which makes the lengths wealthy people go to avoid paying their fair share even more reprehensible. To put some numbers to the problem, "the top 0.5 percent in income account for fully a fifth of all [unpaid taxes]... that's more than $50 billion each year." ProPublica has an extremely important and surprisingly fascinating investigation into how they do it. The IRS Tried to Take on the Ultrawealthy. It Didn't Go Well.


Thanks for reading! If you like these emails, please forward to a friend or come say hi at a live show. If someone sent you this email but you're not yet on the list, you can subscribe here.

Enjoy the weekend,
Chris

3 Things: Maris Kreizman, Neil Goldberg, and Sarah Miller

It's Saturday! Every week, I send out an email with one thing I think is great, one thing that made me laugh, and one thing I found interesting. Feel free to spread the word and share these emails with your friends. If someone forwarded this email to you and you want to start getting them yourself, you can sign up here.

Upcoming Shows

EVERYWHERE:
Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas is back. Fridays at 11 pm on HBO. The first two episodes are streaming now. On last night's episode, Wyatt looked at school safety. Link

You can listen to You're the Expert on any podcast app. Three comedians interview a scientist about her work and why it matters.  Link

NYC:
Tuesday, April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at The Intrepid. I'm co-hosting a show called Attraction Lab, where with the help of a scientist I'll lead the audience in a series of interactive experiments underneath a space shuttle. Link

Saturday, April 20 at 9:30 p.m. at The Brick. I'm on Bit Tank, a parody show where comedians pitch jokes to comedy entrepreneurs for real money. Link

Saturday, May 4 at 9:30 p.m. at The Brick. I'm on Carley Moseley's show where some of the funniest comics and writers in the city improvise together and everyone in the audience gets a snack cooked by a professional chef. Link

SEATTLE:
Saturday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall. Join me in the audience for Liz and Mollie's talk about their new best-selling book No Hard Feelings. link

You can find ticket links for all upcoming shows online at my website here.

This week’s list

GREAT:
Maris Kreizman is a witty and insightful writer who also happens to be diabetic. She wrote a piece this week about how she grew up expecting a cure for the disease, but now just worries about people having access to the medicine they need. When you consider the fact that the inventors of insulin gave the patent away for next to nothing because they wanted it to be easily and widely available, it's unconscionable how the price has skyrocketed. Why I Am Stockpiling Insulin in My Fridge


FUNNY:
Neil Goldberg isn't a comedian, per se. He's an artist who's been displayed in places like the Museum of Modern Art. But his work often makes me laugh, like his collection of two decades of index cards full of random thoughts. One favorite is "I always feel somehow nurturing when I plug in my iPhone." Neil has a new book out called Other People's Prescriptions, which features photographs he took through different strangers' glasses. Like everything he does, it's playful, thought-provoking, and beautiful. Neil Goldberg


INTERESTING:
Miami is a beautiful city. It's got great food, beaches, art, music, and friendly people. It's also an insane place to buy a home if you understand anything about climate change. But people do buy homes there. Very expensive ones. So Sarah Miller went undercover in the world of Miami's high end real estate to try and understand "the cognitive dissonance up close." It's a wild look at what people tell themselves to avoid the obvious. Heaven or High Water


Thanks for reading! If you like these emails, please forward to a friend or come say hi at a live show. If someone sent you this email but you're not yet on the list, you can subscribe here.

Have a great weekend,
Chris

5 Year Emailversary! Wyatt Cenac, Gary Richardson, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Happy Saturday!

Before we get into this week's list, happy emailversary!

I've been sending out this email every week for five years now. I only missed one week in that time (for my wedding, so I think it was a pretty good excuse). Sending out this weekly newsletter has been a nice island of stability for me in a career where everything is fluid and unpredictable. When the news is so consistently depressing, I've also really enjoyed the practice of making myself notice and write down positive things each week that I can share on Saturdays. I hope you've enjoyed reading it too. I did not expect so many strangers to want to subscribe and I appreciate you giving me a little bit of your time and your brains each weekend.

By the way, if you're new to the email this week and have no idea what I'm talking about, welcome! 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.

Also, in response to last week's themed edition, someone suggested doing an "Ask Chris" edition where I'd answer reader questions. I'm totally open to that, so if you have questions you're curious about or would want me to answer, reply to this email with them and I'll compile them into a Saturday email in the near future. 

Upcoming Shows

EVERYWHERE:
Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas is back on HBO! Fridays at 11 pm. The first of 10 episodes on education in America is streaming now. Watch the full episode on YouTube if you don't get HBO. 

You can listen on any podcast app to You're the Expert, where three comedians interview a scientist about her work and why it matters.  Link

NYC:
Tuesday, April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at The Intrepid. I'm co-hosting a show called Attraction Lab, where with the help of a scientist I'll lead the audience in a series of interactive experiments underneath a space shuttle. Link

Saturday, April 20 at 9:30 p.m. at The Brick. I'm on Bit Tank, a parody show where comedians pitch jokes to comedy entrepreneurs for real money. Link

SEATTLE:
Thursday, May 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the Moore Theater. My final date of this tour with Pop-Up Magazine and XQ. This is your last chance to see the show. link

You can find ticket links for all upcoming shows online at my website here.

This week’s list

GREAT:
Getting to write for a comedian as thoughtful and interesting as Wyatt Cenac has been a real gift. And I'm especially glad that this season is about education, which is a topic near and dear to my heart. You can read an interesting interview with Wyatt here or watch the show for free here. (I promise I'll stop plugging it so much next week, but it's our premiere week, so I think a little self-promotion is acceptable, right?)


FUNNY:
Gary Richardson has such a crystal clear comedic voice. It's no surprise he was hired to write for Saturday Night Live or to star in an episode of High Maintenance. He's also one of my very favorite people I've met in comedy, because he's so thoughtful and intelligent and yet incredibly down-to-Earth. I'm a huge fan and I bet you will be too. Watch his short film, Places, Thank You Places and read his Shouts and Murmurs in this week's New Yorker: It's A Flat Earth


INTERESTING:
Undoubtedly America's best named newspaper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, went through yet another round of layoffs. Amazingly, the reporter who wrote the story about the cuts for the paper had already been laid off. This interview is a look behind the scenes at the rise and fall of local journalism in America and the very concerning ongoing collapse of its business model. The Reporter Who Wrote About Layoffs at the Cleveland Plain Dealer After He Was Laid Off


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 day!
Chris