Parenting is a Joke

Ophira Eisenberg
  • 4.9 (212)
  • Comedy Interviews
  • 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. 2d ago

    Willie Macc Is Laughing His Way Through Hell

    Willie Macc Is Laughing His Way Through Hell Comedian Willie Macc joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about becoming a father at 17, raising a son who is now 24, and discovering that sometimes the best parenting lessons come from the mistakes you make along the way. Willie explains the philosophy behind his comedy special Good Dad, Bad Father, including why he let his son figure things out for himself, how his own strict religious upbringing shaped his early parenting, and the extraordinary story of how money intended for an abortion ended up buying tickets to an *NSYNC concert. The conversation also turns deeply personal as Willie shares the loss of his adopted daughter, Michaela, at 17, the devastating grief his son Malcolm experienced, and how father and son found a way to keep moving forward together. Willie reflects on his late autism diagnosis, struggling in school despite his intelligence, and learning to recognize the same unconventional thinking in his son rather than punish it. He even reads a letter he wrote to his future self at age 11, revealing a creative kid whose love of storytelling was often mistaken for lying. Along the way, Ophira and Willie compare their very different parenting timelines, question whether schools know what to do with kids who don't fit the mold, and find surprising common ground in the idea that being understood matters more than being corrected. And there's the story of a chance encounter with Bernie Mac that changed Willie's comedy career—and gave him his stage name. Follow Willie Macc : https://www.instagram.com/williemacc Watch his new Comedy Special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1eGWdU4LnI Check out Ophira’s NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” is AVAILABLE on Amazon Primehttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H8NVMB3B?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback Listen to it as an Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/1rHqPoBYc78gzMnCrCFoZy Come see Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ 📍November Shows are in Niagara Falls, Easton, PA, Aruba, and NYC 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

  2. Nov 3

    Marilu Henner Refuses to Raise a Brat

    What does it take to raise two boys without raising Hollywood brats? Marilu Henner joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about motherhood, working in entertainment, and the parenting philosophy behind her book I Refuse to Raise a Brat. Marilu shares why she believes “no” is a complete sentence, how consistency and boundaries helped her raise two hardworking sons, and why she never felt guilty about building a career while raising a family. She also tells the unbelievable story of giving birth to her younger son Joey just hours after performing at Comic Relief — with a documentary filmmaker capturing the whole thing. Then there's Marilu's extraordinary highly superior autobiographical memory: she can recall the details of experiences dating back to early childhood, including what people wore and what the weather was like. The conversation also turns to The Ask, her current off-Broadway play with Stranger Things actor Shannon Purser, which explores generational differences around feminism, activism, and politics. And if you're wondering how to improve your own memory, Marilu has a suggestion: scroll through your day while brushing your teeth at night. Follow Marilu Henner : https://www.instagram.com/therealmarilu See her in the Off-Broadway Show, The Ask through to Nov 22nd: https://theaskplay.com/ Check out Ophira’s NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” is AVAILABLE on Amazon Primehttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H8NVMB3B?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback Listen to it as an Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/1rHqPoBYc78gzMnCrCFoZy Come see Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ 📍November Shows are in Niagara Falls, Easton, PA, Aruba, and NYC 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

  3. Oct 27

    Repair the Rupture with Hillary Frank

    Podcaster and Author Hillary Frank returns to talk to Ophira Eisenberg and offers a deeper look into what she’s learned from years of reporting on parenthood, why conventional parenting advice so often misses the mark, and how to survive the transition from little kids to teenagers without losing your mind. A standout theme is the gap between the parenting we’re told to expect and the reality: Hillary remembers feeling that the exhausting early days would last forever, until a friend gave her the phrase that became the title of The Longest Shortest Time. She shares how she turned a daughter-and-friend squabble into an unexpected moment of peace by doing a headstand in the living room, why she has a love-hate relationship with the relentless positivity of fitness influencers, and how her daughter’s cautious approach to social media shapes their conversations about its benefits and dangers. Hillary also reflects on the stories she’s collected about fertility struggles, doctors who become more empathetic after experiencing parenthood themselves, and the persistent tendency to treat parenting content as a niche market—even though, as she points out, desperate parents are very appealing to advertisers. When Ophira asks for advice about her ten-year-old’s first hints of puberty, Hillary offers a practical reminder that things will fall apart sometimes, and what matters is learning to repair the rupture afterward. Follow Hillary Frank : https://www.instagram.com/thisishillaryfrank Listen to her new Audiobook “Wedlocked”: https://www.hillaryfrank.com/work/wedlocked  Follow and Listen to Longest Shortest Time: https://www.instagram.com/longestshortesttime Check out Ophira’s NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” is AVAILABLE on Amazon Primehttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H8NVMB3B?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback Listen to it as an Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/1rHqPoBYc78gzMnCrCFoZy Come see Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ 📍October Shows are in Watertown, SD, Pennsylvania, Washington, DC, Catskill, and NYC 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

  4. Oct 20

    Let the Teenager Teenager with Hillary Frank

    Hillary Frank, creator and longtime host of the award-winning parenting podcast The Longest Shortest Time, and author of the new Audiobook Wedlocked joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about the gap between what motherhood is supposed to look like and what it actually feels like. After a difficult childbirth left Hillary with years of chronic pain, she struggled with feeling like a failure because her experience didn’t match the idealized version of birth she’d read about — and she eventually confronted midwife Ina May Gaskin about how those expectations had affected her. That experience helped shape Hillary’s new fictional audio thriller, Wedlocked, about a fitness influencer whose alarming health symptoms are repeatedly dismissed, exploring the pressure on women to smile through pain and the consequences of being medically gaslit. Hillary also explains how loneliness and postpartum depression inspired her to start The Longest Shortest Time, why she faced judgment for choosing to have one child, and how she learned to stop treating every teenage slammed door as a personal emergency. Along the way, she shares the story of the doctor who sent “shame letters” to six colleagues who had misdiagnosed her, while Ophira reflects on generational stoicism, inherited emotional habits, and the challenge of giving a ten-year-old more independence in the chaotic streets of Brooklyn. Their conversation makes room for anger, repair, and the possibility that parenting gets better with age — especially when you finally learn to let the teenager teenager. Follow Hillary Frank : https://www.instagram.com/thisishillaryfrank Listen to her new Audiobook “Wedlocked”: https://www.hillaryfrank.com/work/wedlocked  Follow and Listen to Longest Shortest Time: https://www.instagram.com/longestshortesttime Check out Ophira’s NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” is AVAILABLE on Amazon Primehttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H8NVMB3B?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback Listen to it as an Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/1rHqPoBYc78gzMnCrCFoZy Come see Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ 📍October Shows are in Watertown, SD, Pennsylvania, Washington, DC, Catskill, and NYC 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

  5. Oct 13

    Jena Friedman Wants to Feel It, Not Act It

    Jena Friedman talks with Ophira Eisenberg about the strange collision of grief, motherhood, politics, and the practical business of being a working comedian as she brings her solo show Motherf*cker from Edinburgh to New York. She explains why the missing “you” on the show poster is intentional—a visual representation of the hole grief leaves behind—and how a painting she made of her mother in high school ultimately became the poster after Jacqueline Novak suggested it during a FaceTime call. Jena also recounts the spectacularly dysfunctional Edinburgh venue where she performed: puddles of water around electrical cords, filthy fans, unreliable Wi-Fi, a separate box office that left audience members unable to get into the show, and Jena eventually standing outside with a bucket collecting ticket money. On one particularly brutal night, grief overwhelmed her during the final five minutes of the performance and she ugly-cried while continuing to deliver jokes she had memorized, then had to go outside and collect cash and loose change from the audience. That experience becomes part of a larger conversation about performing grief without turning it into acting, finding the right level of emotional control onstage, and what happens when audiences come backstage carrying their own losses; in Edinburgh, as many as ten people from a 120-seat audience might approach her after a show to tell her about someone they loved who had died. Jena talks about how her mother’s death while she was pregnant continues to surface in unexpected ways, including seeing her mother in her young son when he suddenly says “let me finish” over Vietnamese food, or hearing herself say the exact little phrase her mother used to say at night: “Kitchen is closed.” The parenting conversation then widens into Jena’s complicated hopefulness about raising a child in the age of AI and social media, her belief that despair can become a form of complacency, and her affection for the idea of “F**k You Joy” as a way of staying engaged with life when the world feels bleak. By the end, the conversation has moved from the mechanics of collecting ticket money after crying onstage to the much quieter realization that Jena will never get to know her mother as a grandmother, a loss that surfaces in the simple thought that her son will never have the kind of elementary-school photo with grandparents that other families take for granted 📍October Shows are in Watertown, SD, Pennsylvania, Niagra Falls, Canada, Washington, DC, Catskill, and NYC Follow Jena Friedman : https://www.instagram.com/jenafriedman Get tickets to her Off-Broadway Show Motherf*cker: https://www.sohoplayhouse.com/see-a-show/jena-friedman-m**********r See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” is AVAILABLE on Amazon Primehttps://www.ophiraeisenberg.com Listen to it as an Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/1rHqPoBYc78gzMnCrCFoZy 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

  6. Oct 6

    Jena Friedman Turns Motherhood and Grief Into A Hit Show

    Jena Friedman returns to Parenting Is a Joke with a now four-year-old, a new solo show called Motherf*cker, and a lot to say about what happens when motherhood, grief, politics, and a creative career start occupying the same space. She and host Ophira Eisenberg talk about the strange economics of being a working comedian—including Jena’s son looking at her $40 stand-up paycheck and asking, essentially, “That’s all you make?”—as well as the practical reality of getting to Edinburgh for 17 performances while trying not to be away from her child for too long. Jena explains how losing her mother to pancreatic cancer while she was 34 weeks pregnant changed the way she talks to her son about death, including the decision to make mortality less mysterious through conversations, The Lion King, Coco, and Día de los Muertos. She remembers being devastated while her eight-month-old son gently tucked her hair behind her ear, and later records a conversation in which her three-year-old tells her he doesn’t want her to die, listens to her explanation about death, and then immediately announces that he has farted on her knee. The conversation also turns toward the complicated guilt of considering another child, the fact that Jena froze her eggs, and the larger anxiety of raising a kid while worrying about climate change, artificial intelligence, regulation, and a future involving drones and locked bank accounts. That political anxiety feeds directly into Motherf*cker, which Jena describes as using the political comedy she knows how to do as a way to approach the grief she doesn’t know how to do; she also argues that comedy can become more interesting with age because perspective accumulates, illustrated by the brutally specific joke she delivered to younger colleagues grieving Trump’s 2024 election victory: wait until your mom dies. The episode keeps finding that same uneasy intersection of the personal and the political, ending with a shared desire for a mug that simply says, “Don’t talk to me until your mom has also died.” 📍October Shows are in Watertown, SD, Pennsylvania, Niagra Falls, Canada, Washington, DC, Catskill, and NYC Follow Jena Friedman : https://www.instagram.com/jenafriedman Get tickets to her Off-Broadway Show Motherf*cker: https://www.sohoplayhouse.com/see-a-show/jena-friedman-m**********r See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” is AVAILABLE on Amazon Primehttps://www.ophiraeisenberg.com Listen to it as an Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/1rHqPoBYc78gzMnCrCFoZy 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

  7. Sep 29

    Giving Up Control with Marc Kaye

    In this snack-sized follow-up with host Ophira Eisenberg, comedian and author Marc Kaye digs into the split between fitting in and belonging that gives his essay collection its spine, admitting he's spent a lifetime chasing the former while quietly resenting how much it costs him, a distinction he says reframed the whole book once he stopped blaming other people for his own discomfort. The conversation turns most vivid around "Chance of Showers," the essay Mark almost cut from the manuscript because writing it forced him to relive the five-hour drive dropping his son Elliot off at college in Pittsburgh, where he realized the grief wasn't really about the empty bedroom. It was about his own unlived dreams, the ones he'd been shoving, as his girlfriend puts it, under "the lumpy rug." He walks through the advice he actually gave Elliot before move-in (make the kind of mistakes that become funny stories at 40, not the kind you carry as regret) and his own unfulfilled curiosity about a guided psilocybin retreat, name-checking Michael Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind" and the documentary "Fantastic Fungi" while making clear he wants a real facilitator, not "somebody hanging on South Street." He also traces the origin of his comedy album title, "I'm a Good Dad," back to a running joke with his kids after his own less-than-proud parenting moments, including the story he tells to close the episode, about buying his son a bulk box of Costco condoms before college, only to find it ripped open "like a monkey" on a closet shelf a year later while his own unsuspecting father stood right next to him. 📍September Shows are in Toronto, Canada, Cleveland & Cincinnati, Ohio, St. Louis, MO, Saint Paul, MN, NYC Follow Marc Kaye : https://www.instagram.com/awkwardlymarc Buy his book: A Is For Awkward https://www.marckayetoday.com/a-is-for-awkward See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” is AVAILABLE on Amazon, Google Play and Apple!https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com Listen to it as an Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/1rHqPoBYc78gzMnCrCFoZy 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

  8. Sep 22

    Marc Kaye’s Kids are 1 in 8 Million

    Comedian and debut essayist Marc Kaye joins host Ophira Eisenberg mid-vacation, sweat-soaked from a Yellowstone-to-Badlands road trip, to talk about the strange math of raising kids you can't actually engineer — a fitting theme from a guy with a mechanical engineering-turned-raver son and a musical-theater daughter now working inside the Bureau of Prisons at Fort Dix. Mark, who spent a year teaching biology in Camden through Teach for America, walks through the genetics lesson that quietly reordered his whole parenting philosophy: two parents, 23 chromosome pairs each, roughly eight million possible combinations before you even get to eye color, proof, he argues, that most of what parents take credit for was never in their hands to begin with. That idea threads into two very different formative stories: his post-college stint as a Big Brother paired with a kid with "violent tendencies" (a 138-pound psychology grad's crash course in letting go of outcomes), and the moment his son, mid-meltdown, declared the family dog-attacked stuffed animal "Bob is blind" — a small domestic crisis Mark still can't quite explain his own panic over. He and Ophira also dig into growing up with older, more rigid parents shaped by World War II, DIY households versus outsourced adulthood, and Mark's theory, half joke, half warning, that couples should have to do a Catholic-style pre-Cana before marriage, since nothing prepares you for becoming "a different person" alongside another one under exhaustion and diapers. Mark's new essay collection, "A Is for Awkward and Other Reflections on Belonging," and his comedy album "I'm a Good Dad" both hover in the background of a conversation that keeps circling back to one blunt, useful phrase he uses often with his now-grown kids: you get what you get, and you don't get upset. 📍September Shows are in Toronto, Canada, Cleveland & Cincinnati, Ohio, St. Louis, MO, Saint Paul, MN, NYC Follow Marc Kaye : https://www.instagram.com/awkwardlymarc Buy his book: A Is For Awkward https://www.marckayetoday.com/a-is-for-awkward See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” is AVAILABLE on Amazon, Google Play and Apple!https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com Listen to it as an Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/1rHqPoBYc78gzMnCrCFoZy 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

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4.9
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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
    264
  • 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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