Tell Your Friends! History's Greatest Podcast!

In this week's powerful Tell Your Friends! podcast repeat, Liam sits in Williamsburg's McCarren Park with the late comedian and classic New York City comedy character Gary Marinoff. Gary traces his career in standup, living with his mother while taking odd jobs. After her death, he descended into the homeless shelter systems of New York and Hollywood, Florida. Gary gave it all for comedy, his one love, and he talks about it all. Plus a story from Bob Powers and poetry from Dale Goodson. Support the Tell Your Friends! podcast at www.patreon.com/radio

Six years ago, Liam trekked out to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where cupcake maven Allison Robicelli and her husband Matt were neighborhood fixtures, having grown up there, and turned their bakery into an international institution.  Liam talked to Allison about her cookbook, the Robicelli's bakery, being famous in Japan, seeing their food used in porn, and her years managing the late Pip's Comedy Club in Brooklyn. Support the Tell Your Friends! podcast at www.patreon.com/radio

This week's Tell Your Friends! History's Greatest Podcast! is a corker, as this week's guest, writer/showrunner/show creator/comedy force of nature SHADI PETOSKY starts busting Liam's ball immediately. Shadi has created some great TV for kids and adults, from segments for Yo Gabba Gabba! to her own beloved show, Danger & Eggs. Shadi sat with Liam at the great Hollywood coffee shop Sabor y Cultura and talked about her career, why her very successful TV show had to go away, about why she left standup comedy after a group of her friends were forced to fight with a Midwestern hack over her honor, and why she doesn't want to consider herself a transgender role model. We also get into her time as podcast network owner during the most difficult time of her life, living in a house where she would see famous people coming in and out all the time, and a touching encounter with the late Brody Stevens. Also, Liam outs himself as a total bougie fancy lad. PLUS, in a mighty intro, Liam talks about the Gilroy Garlic fes

On this week's Tell Your Friends! podcast classic, Liam ventures in a NYC winter to the West Village home of Dave Hill where they talk about Dave's insane commute to his first writing job, what goes into a This American Life piece, and all about his vacation at a men's prison in Mexico where he played some music and almost got murdered. PLUS 2 stories from Bob Powers. Support the Tell Your Friends! podcast at www.patreon.com/radio

This week's episode of the TYF! podcast is a tribute to the great American iconoclast PAUL KRASSNER, a comedian, satirist, and editor and publisher of the great American magazine, The Realist. A founding member of the Yippies, he turned on to LSD with Dr. Timothy Leary, rode the bus with Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, and took Groucho Marx on his first acid trip. Liam was fortunate to talk to Krassner a few years ago, via phone, as he plugged his latest book, Patty Hearst & The Twinkie Murders, and we play their conversation here unedited. It was recorded at ShowBriz Studios in Manhattan by Alex Brizell. Liam and Krassner talked about his friendship, and working relationship with Lenny Bruce, about Groucho, about the famous "Twinkie Defense," a phrase he coined covering the case. Support the Tell Your Friends! podcast at https://patreon.com/radio

In this classic edition of Tell Your Friends! History's Greatest Podcast!, Liam sits in the Brooklyn home of "Guitar God" (per Rolling Stone) KAKI KING. Liam and Kaki discuss how she got her start busking in the subways, how she created her first album, about her tapping guitar technique, about writing a Foo Fighters song and touring with, and playing onstage with, the Foo Fighters in front of a hundred thousand people. Also, we check in with TYF! favorite guest MIKE DOUGHTY for the release of CIRCLES (et. al), a reimagining of some classic songs from the Soul Coughing catalogue. Plus a story from KAMBRI CREWS about how Satanic rock led to her salvation. Support the Tell Your Friends! podcast at www.patreon.com/radio

Will Hines and Billy Merritt are two masters of the improvisational comedy form, having worked at the Upright Citizens Brigade as performers and teachers for the past two-plus decades. They've written a book on their shared philosophy on performing called "Robot Pirate Ninja: An Improv Fable," available through Amazon, and Liam sits down to talk to them about how they got into improv, how they hooked up with the famed UCB at its beginning in NYC, and about what "Robot Pirate Ninja" means. Also, Emily Flake reads a page from Melania Trump's diary, and Liam shares fond memories of the 2003 NYC blackout which happened just as he was about to enjoy a free ticket to a Bob Dylan concert. You can support the Tell Your Friends! podcast at www.patreon.com/radio

In this live show recorded at The Bell House in Brooklyn, Liam hosts a  roundtable about TV comedy writing with comedy writing superstars ANDY BOROWITZ (The Borowitz Report, co-creator "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air"), JESSI KLEIN (Inside Amy Schumer, SNL), ANDY BLITZ (long-time Conan writer), BRYAN TUCKER (SNL, Chappelle's Show), and CHRIS GETHARD (The Chris Gethard Show). Plus stories from Ophira Eisenberg, Michele Carlo, and Bob Powers. Support the Tell Your Friends! podcast at www.patreon.com.radio

In the history of the Tell Your Friends! podcast, we've talked to some of the best singer/songwriters and musicians in New York City and the world. This week we hear performances and talk from some of those, including EDEN & JOHN of THE EAST RIVER STRING BAND talking to us about how they met and recruited legendary underground cartoonist ROBERT CRUMB to join their band. Plus, live performances from A BRIEF VIEW OF THE HUDSON, EYTAN MIRSKY, ALANA AMRAM, and MIKE DOUGHTY. Support Tell Your Friends! History's Greatest Podcast! at www.patreon.com/radio

On this week's Tell Your Friends! podcast, Liam sat in McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with musical comedian Rob Paravonian. Rob talks growing up Illinois, opening for legends George Carlin and Lily Tomlin, and being a YouTube star. Rob plays a few songs from his then-new album Keep Your Jazz Hand Strong, and demonstrates the power of the guitar to literally materialize a beautiful woman out of nowhere. Support the Tell Your Friends podcast at www.patreon.com/radio

Ritch Shydner is a classic comedian who achieved the kind of success starting in the 1980s that most working comics only dream of, scoring gigs on The Tonight Show with johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman, plus his own HBO special. After years focusing on his writing career, he returned to standup in 2010 as documented in the film I Am Comic.  He wrote about his career as a 1980s boom comic in the memoir Kicking Through the Ashes, and Liam talked to him in October, 2015, in his Los Angeles home. Support the Tell Your Friends! podcast at www.patreon.com/radio

In this encore episode of Tell Your Friends! History's Greatest Podcast!, taped live in a rock club in Manhattan, Liam talks to Lewis Black and Gilbert Gottfried about their careers, about how Gilbert learned that Twitter can be an expensive hobby, about his career as a Shoedini pitchman, and about how Lewis created a show for himself and was replaced by Kathy Bates. Support this podcast at www.patreon.com/radio

DAVID LOWE is a photo librarian at the New York Public Library and he created the Photographers' Identities Catalogue, a database allowing users to search the Library's collection of over 600,000 images by year, name, gender, location, and so on. CAROLINE KASNAKIAN is a blind psychologist at a large university. They've been shackin' up for the past nine years, and in this week's episode LIAM ventured out to the wild fringes of Queens to their apartment to talk to them about how they met, how they ran the NYC marathon last year as Runner and Guide, how they got into running, and about the first time Caroline saw David's face. Plus, a story from KEVIN ALLISON of the Risk! podcast about life, love, and the pursuit of romance in the big city. Also, Liam lets you in a little bit with a list of interesting facts about his life. Support the Tell Your Friends! podcast at patreon.com/radio. THURSDAY: A Tell Your Friends! podcast classic with LEWIS BLACK and GILBERT GOTTFRIED.

In this encore episode of Tell Your Friends! History's Greatest Podcast!, we listen to the first of many of TYF! favorite JULIA WERTZ's appearances on the show. Liam squeezes into her Hobbit hole apartment in Greenpoint to discuss her cartooning career, her life, her relationship with her fans and we discover with her how they knew where she lived. Plus a great story about love's labors lost from ADAM WADE. Support the Tell Your Friends! podcast at patreon.com/radio

David Itzkoff is a reporter on the culture beat for the New York Times who has written a stellar biography of the late great comedian Robin Williams, titled Robin, and available in paperback today through Amazon or your local indie bookstore. Liam talks to Dave about his career, rising from the lad mags of the turn of the millennium and how his first memoir got him noticed by and, eventually, hired at the Times. They discuss Robin Williams, and Dave talks about going comic book shopping with the man. Also, we get to hear the almost four year process of writing a book like this, and the toll of being a man in the world with a wife and a newborn baby and a book to finish. About how Dave got so much access to Robin Williams and his world and the people in it. Also, Liam discusses the new Bob Dylan documentary, Rolling Thunder, and discusses the value of honesty and truthfulness in art. That's not as unbearable as it sound. Support the TYF! podcast at patreon.com/radio

Liam sits on a park bench with former JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE producer Adam Spiegelman to discuss his career, starting as an open mic'er in New Jersey with JAY MOHR, and how that eventually led him to make the jump to guest producer on the show. Support TYF! at patreon.com/radio

On this week's TYF!, Liam talks to Jay Stern, director of Say My Name, a fun romantic comedy set in Wales. Jay talks about being a Jew from Alabama, about going to the prestigious Tisch School at NYU and realizing what a scam that is. About studying film in Vancouver, and about how the long road to filmmaking wound through the theatre and improv comedy worlds of NYC. And also, he tells us the secret of getting famous people to say yes to being in your films. PLUS: A charming story from Emily Flake brings us to the characters of the Breakfast Club twenty years after the events of the film.

On this week's rerun, Liam sits with Ophira Eisenberg, host of the smash radio hit game show "Ask Me Another," to discuss dating in NYC, moving from Canada to NYC and starting her career over from the bottom, and how she met and married her current husband. Also, a story from Moth Grand Slam champ Adam Wade.

This week, host Liam McEneaney visits the home office of comedy superstar Jim Gaffigan, and his wife and collaborator Jeannie Gaffigan. We discuss  Jim's latest special Noble Ape, how Jim and Jeannie met, how they work together, how writing a joke about Trump is a lot like writing about religion, and a lot more. Jeannie also talks about the pear-sized tumor that was removed from her brain stem, about how the work helped speed her recovery in a year's time from surgery to directing/producing/writing on Jim's latest special. In fact, she wrote a book about it available for pre-order RIGHT NOW; When Life Gives You Pears: The Healing Power of Family, Faith, and Funny People. All this, and storytelling legend Kevin Allison of the RISK! podcast tells a hilarious and true story about the search for love in all the usual places. All this, and Liam regales us with one of his road stories. Support TYF! at patreon.com/radio

This week on TYF! classic, we talk to singer/songwriter Eytan Mirsky, as he talks about his career, how he ended up writing the theme songs for movies like 'Happiness' and 'The Tao of Steve,' and the struggles of the creative life in central Queens. Plus, Eytan sings us a few songs. Also, public radio's Ophira Eisenberg drops in to tell us a story. Support TYF! at www.patreon.com/radio