Sleeping with Celebrities Maximum Fun

Humorist Jenny Lawson collects many things, including: devoted readers of her numerous essay anthologies, acclaim for her brilliant and hilarious writing, taxidermic mishaps, and also dolls, dolls, dolls. We concentrate on the dolls in this episode with more information than you ever sought about Blythe dolls, Pullip dolls, and ball joint dolls. Find out which dolls are spooky and which are flat out evil. We even broach the subject of Hagen-Renaker glass animals, of which Jenny has billions. It’s a delightfully fun trip to dreamland.

You may have seen Rachel Feinstein perform her comedy on late night shows, on YouTube, and on Netflix for her latest special, Rachel Feinstein: Big Guy. If you’re a firefighter in Queens, you may have seen her in her own home while you were stopping by to attempt some home repair at the behest of her husband, also a member of the FDNY. She walks us through her life as the spouse of firefighter. Because that firefighting sounds pretty exciting and because Rachel has a lot of energy, we periodically slow things down by reading from the New York City fire code.

You may know the very funny and talented actor Nate Corddry from one million television programs and movies he's appeared in over the years, including Ghostbusters, Mom, The Daily Show, and Yogi Bear. You may not know him as a high-level player of a style of baseball played with dice, pencils, and pads of paper, yet that is exactly what he has been for many years. Listen to Nate tell you all about how to play this soothingly complicated version of America's pastime and soon you will be sleeping as soundly as Nate's five-month-old twins who somehow remained peaceful for the duration of the interview.

Yes, toys are delightful and fun and even exciting. But for our purposes, that might all get a little TOO exciting. We’re here to put you to sleep after all. That’s why Emily, co-host of Maximum Fun’s newish Free With Ads podcast, will go into detail on exactly how to clean the various action figures in her rather sizable collection. A lot of the toys are Power Rangers and she even managed to not lose their tiny plastic weapons. Playing? Yes. Fun. Not sleep inducing. Cleaning? Well, get ready to saw some logs.

The path from Silicon Valley computer programmer to rising star in standup comedy is not one that’s well traveled. Nor is the opposite path for that matter, where one leaves behind a world of headlining clubs and making specials to write code in a cubicle somewhere. But Richard Sarvate, former programmer and current standup, is a trailblazer. He fills us in on his former life, including why “spaghetti code” became such a problem, and also his near death experience in Puerto Rico that led to his career change. That last bit is a little exciting but don’t worry, it’s a happy ending and you’ll fall asleep.

New York's Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is 13,700 feet long. Comedian, Rifftrax star, and MST3K alum Bill Corbett is at most six feet long, maybe even a little less. Still, Bill has a lot more to say about the bridge than the bridge can say about him because bridges can't talk. Bill's funnier too, by a lot, whereas the bridge has its own strengths like 13 lanes of traffic to Bill's none. Bill, a native New Yorker, fills us in at great length about New York's second most famous bridge, the Andrew Ridgely of bridges, really, the Andrew Bridgely so to speak in a long and sleepiness-inducing conversation that also veers into discussion of the Texas rock boogie band ZZ Top, who may have crossed over the bridge at some point, we just can't really tell. Bill and the bridge both debuted in the 1960s, a fact that doesn't come up.