Showing titles in Storytelling

[Contains explicit content] Copulating with conifers and barely tolerating office chit chat.

[Contains explicit content] Realizing that you live in the city chocolate built.

[Contains explicit content] Analyzing the president, the things he says on Twitter...and otherwise.

[Contains explicit content] Normally, when Eugene Mirman wants to pause a story to dig for some background information, he tends to do it in a recording studio. On rare occasions, he ventures outside, goes up to Canada, and does his detail-digging live onstage as part of the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. This is one of those rare occasions and the details he's digging for are provided by hilarious stand-up comic Cameron Esposito.

When applied appropriately, a little shame can be hot. But all too often when shame enters a sexy situation, it's not the fun kind.

[Contains explicit content] Josh Gondelman, standup comedian and writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, sits down with Eugene Mirman to go behind the scenes of a story about a post-show dalliance gone awry. In this tale from Bad Date Great Story, Josh’s unplanned hookup leads to a quest to prevent an unplanned pregnancy and things get a little weird along the way.

Mike Daisey is a fierce storyteller, one minute hilarious, the next minute sweet, with a fine-tuned ear for digression. He circles in on his uneasy subject matter, closer and closer, until he exposes the raw heart. The New York Times calls him "the master storyteller" and he has been compared to Garrison Keillor, Spalding Gray, and David Sedaris.

Noted storyteller, author and performer Milbre Burch combines personal stories with folk and fairy tales from around the world in this Grammy-nominated recording (2007). These unforgettable and moving folktales from Russia, Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, China, Thailand and beyond remind us that the world is often saved by unlikely heroes (like the hummingbird on its back, ready to do its part to hold up a falling sky), and that healing and hope can come from unlikely sources.

[Contains explicit content] Jean Grae is a rapper, actress, and comedian who is probably the only living person that can boast that she's guested on tracks with Immortal Technique, Talib Kweli, Wale, and Lil B, and has shared the stage with John Hodgman. Her eclectic career has taken her to many strange places, which means she has some stellar stories like the one about a crazy ride home that she shares in this live episode of Hold On at NYC PodFest.

Recorded at a show celebrating the sesquicentennial of the town of Brooklin, Maine, this 1999 audio features Tim exploring his roots in growing up in Maine (including Brooklin, where Tim’s mom was born in 1923). This album includes the amazing-but-true story of Tim’s 1956 Chevy - "The American Flag Car" - which sparked a media storm when Tim was attending art school in 1970.

[Contains explicit content] A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence is unexpected in a way that causes the listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. Emo Philips is a master of the paraprosdokian and a comedic genius, immediately recognizable for his pageboy haircut and wandering falsetto. Eugene Mirman is the host of Hold On with Eugene Mirman and a master of turning a live storytelling event on its head with his delightful questions and interjections.

[Contains explicit content] Julie Klausner (Difficult People, author of I Don't Care About Your Band) is a sharp-tongued comedian whose ability to dress down celebrities is well documented. When caught off guard by a rude stranger when she was visiting Italy, Julie responded in a less articulate but no less effective manner. Eugene Mirman brought her into the studio to share the ordeal and have a few laughs about it.

[Contains explicit content] Every romance begins differently, but for the ones that last, there's always a moment when you decide to commit — we call it your commit-moment. In this episode, two storytellers share the tale of their own commit-moments, and prove that real love can come from the strangest of places. This episode features "Wet Feet" by Emma Weisfeld for The Narrators, "How Nick's Mind Works" by Lesley Jones for Bawdy Storytelling, and an anonymous secret from BedPost Confessions.

Mike Daisey is a fierce storyteller, one minute hilarious, the next minute sweet, with a fine-tuned ear for digression. He circles in on his uneasy subject matter, closer and closer, until he exposes the raw heart. The New York Times calls him "the master storyteller" and he has been compared to Garrison Keillor, Spalding Gray, and David Sedaris.

[Contains explicit content] A live audience at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal was privileged with a very special live version of Eugene Mirman's comedic storytelling (and story explaining) show, Hold On, but we're not going to let them hoard that wonderful experience. Here's a live story told by the hilarious Aparna Nancherla about dating woes in the era of social media, plus all the probing questions and asides from your inquisitive host Eugene.

[Contains explicit content] Elna Baker helped hundreds of babies get adopted at her old job. No, not human babies. Elna was a fake nurse at a fake adoption center in FAO Schwartz, where she helped place realistic baby dolls in the homes of wealthy Manhattanites. Hear how she got attached to a little bundle of plastic joy in her story she told for RISK! in New York City. Host Eugene Mirman digs into the details of Elna's unusual job in this episode of Hold On.

[Contains explicit content] Moving back in with your parents is rarely a sign that your life is going in the right direction. On this episode of Hold On, host Eugene Mirman sits down with comedian Matt Braunger to hear a funny, but cautionary tale about a pivotal time in Matt's life. Hear why he was forced to live with his folks and what it meant for his relationship with them and his stand-up comedy career.

[Contains explicit content] The most unusual thing about comedian Moshe Kasher's mom is not that she's deaf. It's that she subscribes to some very liberal views in regard to sex. This, naturally, had a big impact on Moshe's childhood, as he detailed in his story from a Don't Tell My Mother show in Los Angeles. In this episode of Hold On, host Eugene Mirman digs deeper into how deafness, sexuality, and the 90’s rave culture informed Moshe's upbringing.

[Contains explicit content] Reggie Watts (The Late Late Show) is a comedic genius and musical mastermind, but he’s not a rude dude. Stopping a person telling a story is a rude dude thing to do...unless they're a guest on an episode of Hold On and you happen to be a master story-disrupter, like Eugene Mirman. In this excellent episode of his storytelling series, Eugene cuts into Reggie's thrilling tale of mushrooms and bathrooms to politely prod for more detail.

[Contains explicit content] Wyatt Cenac (The Daily Show, People of Earth, and Seeso's Night Train with Wyatt Cenac) found an interesting application of the scientific method while volunteering at a science museum: a drunk-driving simulator. Eugene Mirman had Wyatt call a cab to the Hold On studios to talk all the theories and hypotheses his unique experiments in virtual recklessness yielded. Drink a few digital beers and hit the road with Wyatt and Eugene in this very educational episode of Hold On.