#36: writing funny: an interview with a standup comedian

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The comedian who’s my guest today is actually someone I’ve known personally for the past 5 or 6 years. Matt Balaker. He and I co-wrote a biography of the great standup comedian named Greg Giraldo, which was published in 2019. Matt is a really great guy, generous, easy to talk to, and very funny. It was a real hoot working with him. I’ve never actually seen Matt perform standup—he lives in the US and I live in Canada—and when I visited him while we were writing the book, we were concentrating on the book. So I wanted to ask him about the writing process in standup comedy, and also about his relatively new venture as a podcaster himself.