Parenting is a Joke

Ophira Eisenberg
  • 4.9 (18)
  • COMEDY INTERVIEWS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

You know when you talk to your friends about your childhood and end it by saying, "But look at us, we're fine!" Here's my question: Are we fine? Because we're sitting here doused in CBD oil under a weighted blanket recording a podcast called Parenting is a Joke. Each week, host and standup Ophira Eisenberg talks to a different comedian about their career and their kids. Conversations tackle the tooth fairy, eating sticks, summer camp anxiety, the hidden horrors of childbirth, and the obvious horrors of our own childhoods. We celebrate the absurdity of shuffling a career with raising a kid, and highlight less traditional parenthood journeys, all while relishing in the fact that no one knows what they're doing, but we're all trying! Sometimes even our best. New episodes every Tuesday. New Season October 1st.

  1. 6 HRS AGO

    Laurie Kilmartin Parents From the Green Room

    This episode of Parenting Is a Joke revisits Ophira Eisenberg’s conversation with comedian Laurie Kilmartin who recently wrote for the Academy Awards. They talk about  the realities of parenting a teenage son, sustaining a comedy career, and processing grief in real time. Kilmartin talks about raising her 16-year-old largely on her own while maintaining a relentless stand-up schedule—flying red-eyes from Los Angeles to New York to stack multiple sets in a single night—and how that work ethic shaped both her career and her parenting, from bringing her infant son into casino green rooms to relying on a hotel babysitting service while she performed. She explains her decision to keep her son’s identity private despite building material around him, even as he creates his own anime-inspired webcomic universe, and reflects on how growing up with a comedian parent gives him a creative “second base” advantage. The conversation moves between sharp bits—like ranking comedy clubs based on their food because her son only cares about burgers and pretzel bites—and heavier territory, including Kilmartin’s choice to live-tweet jokes during both her father’s hospice care and her mother’s COVID hospitalization, describing the surreal isolation of saying goodbye through iPads and gloves and how writing in real time helped her process events that didn’t feel real. Along the way, she shares her long-game parenting philosophy (minimal interference, maximum observation), her lack of initial desire to become a mother, and her very specific future plan to leave the U.S. and spend a year doing open mics across Europe once her son graduates, using a hard-won Luxembourg passport. The episode lands on the strange, funny, and practical intersections of comedy, caregiving, and creative survival, ending with Kilmartin half-jokingly pitching an expat comedy club chain while asking to be booked anywhere in Europe. Follow Laurie Kilmartin: https://www.instagram.com/anylaurie16 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    41 min

  2. MAR 31

    Good Mom, Bad Puppy with Ashley Austin Morris

    In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg revisits a favorite conversation with actor and comedian Ashley Austin Morris recorded while Morris was four months pregnant and still adjusting to the surreal reality of becoming a parent after never planning to be one. The two comics swap very specific pregnancy experiences from the perspective of performers who work nights, including the strange logistics of building a comedy career while anticipating sleep deprivation and childcare. Morris talks openly about miscarriages, including the emotional whiplash of feeling relief after one pregnancy ended because severe hormonal changes had left her sobbing on the floor and convinced she couldn’t care for the baby. She explains how an unexpected catalyst—a chaotic rescue puppy whose needs sparked a new instinct to nurture—suddenly rewired her thinking about motherhood. The conversation also gets into the uncomfortable realities of pregnancy culture: genetic testing debates with an OB-GYN, the anxiety-producing medical environment of New York prenatal care, body changes that hit faster than expected, and the strange intimacy of discussing weight and cravings with strangers. Morris reflects on recovering from a long struggle with an eating disorder, including a surprising pandemic-era scholarship that allowed her to spend 80 days in a treatment program and ultimately find a different path to recovery. Throughout the conversation, the two comedians bring their storytelling instincts to the everyday details of pregnancy life—from Morris eating jars of pasta sauce with a spoon to Eisenberg’s prenatal yoga class where everyone shared their cravings. 📍March Shows are in Bozeman and Helena, Montana, New York Follow Ashley Austin Morris: https://www.instagram.com/ashaustinmorris/ Buy her new book All Toddlers are Scorpios here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-toddlers-are-scorpios-johanna-gohmann/1147952953 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    48 min

  3. MAR 24

    Writing Horoscopes for Tiny Terrors with Johanna Gohmann

    On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg talks with author and humor writer Johanna Gohmann about her new book, All Toddlers Are Scorpios, an astrological guide that reframes toddler behavior—revenge plotting, emotional volatility, public nudity-adjacent costume choices—as pure Scorpio energy. Johanna shares how the idea struck while she was standing in the humor section at Barnes & Noble when her agent called with the concept, and how illustrator Emily Flake helped bring the tiny terrors to life. The conversation moves from toddlers wearing oven mitts on errands to rediscovered photos of her son teething on a copy of Screw Everyone, and the time he mistook a vibrator for a “soldering iron,” thanks to his dad’s gadget-building hobby. They trade stories about explaining menstruation on vacation (including an “orange pumpkin” misunderstanding in a Greek airport bathroom) and giving “the talk” to boys who immediately regret asking for it. Johanna also reflects on the creative life of writing comedy from a Brooklyn apartment before the 3:30 school-bus reset, researching astrology with a stack of books that initially included only Sex Astrology, and parenting a 13-year-old who loves Rocky training montages while being raised to name and feel his emotions. The episode captures the constant recalibration of raising boys in a culture obsessed with masculinity, managing YouTube boundaries, and finding humor in the raw, unregulated intensity of early childhood. 📍March Shows are in Bozeman and Helena, Montana, New York Follow Johanna Gohmann: https://www.instagram.com/johannagohmann Buy her new book All Toddlers are Scorpios here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-toddlers-are-scorpios-johanna-gohmann/1147952953 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    41 min
  4. Johanna Gohmann Declares All Toddlers Are Scorpios

    MAR 17

    Johanna Gohmann Declares All Toddlers Are Scorpios

    On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg sits down with humor writer Johanna Gohmann to talk about raising a teenage son while building a comedy writing career that includes pieces in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and The Wall Street Journal—and the release of her new parenting book, All Toddlers Are Scorpios (out April 7). Gohmann, a self-described astrology skeptic, explains how she researched zodiac lore to frame toddlers as tiny tyrants written in the stars—while admitting she’s a Sagittarius married to one and still not convinced any of it tracks. She shares what it’s like parenting her 13-year-old son, who is on the autism spectrum and currently obsessed with writing fake obituaries, navigating middle school graduation photos that made her cry, and growing up as an only child with two hovering creative parents. The conversation veers into her years living in Dublin after a one-night-stand-turned-marriage to her Northern Irish husband, how not being legally allowed to work unexpectedly jumpstarted her writing life, and why gray Irish summers require fires in August. Gohmann revisits the Moth StorySLAM win where she told the now-legendary story of mistaking postpartum diarrhea for a life-threatening hemorrhage—only to realize that once you’ve defecated on the delivery room floor, embarrassment loses its power—and reflects on parenting through grief, explaining death to a four-year-old who decided heaven might be an Arby’s. The episode moves easily between comedy and real-life stakes—misplaced lunches, replaced fish, helicopter parenting guilt, Catholic relatives in Indiana, and the strange Brooklyn playground hierarchy—capturing what it actually looks like to balance creative work, storytelling, marriage, and raising a kid who prefers writing obituaries to small talk. 📍March Shows are in Bozeman and Helena, Montana, New York Follow Johanna Gohmann: https://www.instagram.com/johannagohmann Buy her new book All Toddlers are Scorpios here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-toddlers-are-scorpios-johanna-gohmann/1147952953 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    52 min

  5. MAR 10

    Raising Responsible Subway Riders with Gideon Evans

    On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, writer and podcaster Gideon Evans joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about raising subway-riding kids in New York while building a creative life that has required real-time pivots from television to podcasting. He explains the surprisingly durable concept behind his history podcast Bad Elizabeth—born out of a pilot recorded with a former Daily Show colleague and eventually profiled in The Guardian—where he and his co-host explore notorious (and occasionally “badass”) Elizabeths, from Elizabeth Holmes to a Hungarian countess who allegedly bathed in blood. The conversation moves between career recalibration in a shrinking TV industry, the financial realities of podcasting (“the margins are thin”), and his complicated relationship with cable news, including why PBS NewsHour and Germany’s DW have become more tolerable household options than the sensory overload of Morning Joe. As a dad, he reflects on raising kids who take the subway alone, volunteer at food insecurity programs, and prefer Dungeons & Dragons at Brooklyn Game Lab over cable news debates, and he’s honest about masking his own nerves on train platforms so his son won’t absorb them. There’s nostalgia too—introducing his son to The Naked Gun, watching The Mandalorian together, and discovering that D&D’s gelatinous cube is both a metaphor and a legitimate threat—ending on the hard-earned parenting truth that sometimes you get swallowed, and sometimes you roll a fireball spell. 📍March Shows are in Bozeman and Helena, Montana, New York Follow Gideon Evans: https://www.instagram.com/gidevans/ Listen to Bad Elizabeth podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-elizabeth/id1832614771 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    38 min

  6. MAR 2

    Gideon Evans Confronts Mickey Mouse

    On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg talks with writer and producer Gideon Evans about raising two teenagers while building a career in comedy that’s ricocheted from scrappy theater internships to six years at The Daily Show. Gideon shares the surreal early days of hustling in Manhattan—once driving Frank Langella around in his parents’ station wagon to pick up a giant painted portrait of the actor—before landing staff jobs with health insurance just in time for a grueling two-to-three-year IVF process that included being dropped by a clinic worried about its “numbers” and producing a sample in his endocrinologist father-in-law’s office. The conversation moves easily between the practical math of raising kids in Brooklyn, the relief of finally getting dental insurance in middle age, and college tours at McGill University and Concordia University as his son explores art and coding. Gideon also revisits his formative years working for Michael Moore on TV Nation, including the time he snuck into Walt Disney World dressed as an eight-foot “corporate crime fighting” chicken to confront executives about labor conditions—only to be detained, photographed as both man and poultry, and officially banned for “chicken in the park.” The episode closes with the origin story of his meticulously researched podcast Bad Elizabeth, where each installment profiles a notorious Elizabeth—from Lizzie Borden to Elizabeth Holmes—proving that even after being hauled into Disney jail, he still has the trespass notice that literally lists his offense as “chicken in the park.” 📍March Shows are in Bozeman and Helena, Montana, New York Follow Gideon Evans: https://www.instagram.com/gidevans/ Listen to Bad Elizabeth podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-elizabeth/id1832614771 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    45 min

  7. FEB 24

    Durable Gladness with Annabelle Gurwitch

    On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg continues her conversation with Annabelle Gurwitch, focusing on community, money, anxiety, and what parenting looks like when your child is grown and the ground keeps shifting. Gurwitch talks about creating stability through “Stammtisch”–style standing lunches and Sunday meetups, describing how scheduled friendships became a lifeline after COVID and as creative communities fractured under self-tapes, remote work, and rising costs. She shares a formative early-career story from the Chelsea Hotel, where waiting hours to audition opposite Gary Oldman led not to a movie role but to a decades-long friendship, underscoring how creative life is often built sideways. The conversation turns to parenting adult children in an unstable economy—worrying about what you can’t give them, negotiating money without trust funds, and finding dignity in simply taking turns paying for lunch. Gurwitch revisits the pandemic moment that reshaped her family, recounting how a routine COVID test turned into a lung cancer diagnosis delivered by phone while stranded in a broken-down car with her son, forcing her to manage terror, logistics, and motherhood at the same time. She reflects on anxiety as a finite resource, the necessity of compartmentalizing fear, and her concept of “durable gladness”—small, survivable joys that replace impossible expectations of constant fulfillment—before the episode veers into comic relief with a riff about monetizing the phrase as luxury adult diapers, complete with branding ideas and a mock sponsorship fantasy. 📍February Shows are in Anchorage, Alaska, Pine Plains, NY, Nashville, NT, KY, Chicago, IL, Madison, WI Follow Annabelle Gurwitch: https://www.instagram.com/annabellegurwitch1 Buy her new book ⁠The End of My Life is Killing Me: The Unexpected Joys of a Cancer Slacker⁠ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    34 min

  8. FEB 17

    Annabelle Gurwitch is Just Trying to Eat, Pray, Live Story

    On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg talks with writer, performer, and memoirist Annabelle Gurwitch about parenting an adult child while still actively shaping a creative life that refuses to behave. Gurwitch reflects on writing The End of My Life Is Killing Me while navigating stage-four lung cancer treatment, explaining why she frames the book as a “second life” rather than a comeback story, and why she deliberately avoids language like resilience and mindfulness after watching those words get hollowed out by marketing. The conversation moves between parenting, storytelling, and art with surgical specificity: Gurwitch recounts negotiating with her 27-year-old son Ezra over what stories about him can appear on the page, describes him hiding under a hoodie at her Joe’s Pub show before offering a perfectly therapy-informed compliment, and shares how their relationship shifted during COVID when he moved home from Bard. She tells Ophira about being inundated with juicers after her diagnosis, her disastrous visit to a Malibu “healer” later revealed to be a litigious fraud, and the line Ezra delivers at a juice bar—“Eternal life sucks ass, Mom”—that she fought to keep in the book. Gurwitch also walks through her love of contrarian thinking, her anti–Eat, Pray, Love travel story involving a European heavy-metal band and a hotel with bleach stains and toenail clippings, and the surreal moment she opened her book-cover email in Barcelona expecting a Bernini sculpture and instead saw a chicken doing yoga, prompting Ezra to ask if there was “a story about chicken” inside. 📍February Shows are in Anchorage, Alaska, Pine Plains, NY, Nashville, NT, KY, Chicago, IL, Madison, WI Follow Annabelle Gurwitch : https://www.instagram.com/annabellegurwitch1 Buy Annabelle's new book The End of My Life is Killing Me: The Unexpected Joys of a Cancer Slacker See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    42 min
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4.9
out of 5
18 Ratings

About

You know when you talk to your friends about your childhood and end it by saying, "But look at us, we're fine!" Here's my question: Are we fine? Because we're sitting here doused in CBD oil under a weighted blanket recording a podcast called Parenting is a Joke. Each week, host and standup Ophira Eisenberg talks to a different comedian about their career and their kids. Conversations tackle the tooth fairy, eating sticks, summer camp anxiety, the hidden horrors of childbirth, and the obvious horrors of our own childhoods. We celebrate the absurdity of shuffling a career with raising a kid, and highlight less traditional parenthood journeys, all while relishing in the fact that no one knows what they're doing, but we're all trying! Sometimes even our best. New episodes every Tuesday. New Season October 1st.

Information

  • Creator
    Ophira Eisenberg
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    233
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    2024 © Any use of this intellectual property for text and data mining or computational analysis including as training material for artificial intelligence systems is strictly prohibited without express written consent
  • Show Website
    Parenting is a Joke

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