Sleeping with Celebrities Maximum Fun
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- Comedy
Getting to sleep can be difficult sometimes. Now you can achieve that urgently needed rest by taking advantage of our most precious natural resource: celebrities. Each week on the slyly humorous and reassuring Sleeping with Celebrities, host John Moe talks with a different guest from the world of entertainment about something they know a lot about. The conversation is guaranteed to be just interesting enough to draw your attention away from your own swirling anxieties but never interesting enough to keep you awake. No startling revelations, no dramatic screaming confrontations, but plenty of low-key dialogue, intricately laced deadpan comedy, and a ticket to dreamland.
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David Plotz’s Tour of D.C.’s Civil War Forts and Fortifications
Look, we’ll admit right now that this week’s episode is interesting. We’ll stipulate that. David Plotz, CEO of CityCast.fm and longtime contributor to Slate’s Political Gabfest is fascinated by the measures taken around the nation’s capital to prevent a Confederate invasion that could tilt the balance of the war. He details all the forts that were constructed - many out of earthen materials - around the perimeter of the city and you will end up being fascinated as well. But shhh, don’t worry, because while it’s very interesting, it is not exciting. We know who wins the war. So you can get lost in the minutiae of these measures and drift off to sleep, far from the cannons’ blast.
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Brian Stack (Conan, Colbert) on Mild Encounters with Pleasant Celebrities
If you’ve watched Conan O’Brien’s shows or Late Night with Stephen Colbert, you’ve probably seen Brian Stack playing a wide range of characters, including Frankenstein and one of the Slip Nuts. He’s been a writer and performer for both shows, which has meant running across a huge number of famous people. Here, Brian counts down his top five celebrity encounters to lull you to sleep. Doze off to dreamland hearing about awkward conversation with Walter Cronkite and relationship advice from Mötley Crüe.
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Chris Fairbanks on the Intricacies of Skateboarding on an Artificial Hip at Costco
What do standup comedy, golf, and skateboarding have in common beside high degrees of difficulty and opportunities to humiliate yourself in public? Well, they have veteran standup comedian Chris Fairbanks, who walks us through the experiences of all three ventures. Chris, one of the hosts of the podcast Do You Need a Ride?!, joins us from his hometown of Missoula, Montana where he first learned to skateboard and where he golfed (golved?) with his father just the other day. Drift off to sleep hearing about these leisure activities without the rigor of actually participating in them.
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Jenny Lawson’s Enormous Army of Dolls
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.
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Comedian Rachel Feinstein Has Tons of Firefighters In Her House But Don’t Worry She’s Okay
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.
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Nate Corddry Explains the Intricacies of Tabletop Baseball Until You Pass Out
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.