Parenting is a Joke

In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg talks with Sona Movsesian, author of The World’s Worst Mom and The World’s Worst Assistant and co-host of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, about the strange overlap between parenting, creative work, anxiety, and the relentless business of keeping two five-year-old boys alive. Sona explains why she and her husband gave their twins the reassuringly ordinary names Charles and Michael—despite her Armenian family background and the guilt she still feels about not choosing more traditional names—and how giving them Armenian middle names became her compromise with her ancestors. She also describes writing The World’s Worst Mom while her sons were growing from three to five, which meant the book itself changed as the children did; one chapter, in which her subconscious addresses her, was so aggressively self-critical that her friend Nora told her to be nicer to herself, while Sona’s husband illustrated the transformation from her pre-kids “flower child” subconscious into something resembling the blob from The Substance. The conversation takes a much heavier turn when Sona recounts losing her Altadena home in a wildfire when the twins were three and a half, choosing not to tell them that their house had burned because she wanted home to feel permanent and safe, even as the adults dealt with their own trauma and the long process of rebuilding. There is dark comedy amid the loss—Sona is genuinely relieved that the fire eliminated their old diaper genie and some terrible shirts—but the things that mattered most to her children survived: the stuffed animals they had slept with since infancy. That instinct to protect children from adult fear runs through the episode, including Sona’s description of fertility treatment and pregnancy with twins, when she refused to “celebrate before you win the game” and kept baby preparations deliberately minimal until her sons were safely in her arms. Parenting then becomes an exercise in sleep-deprived consumerism as she recalls ordering every vibrating toy, pillow, sound machine, and supposed sleep solution she could find online when one twin would not sleep, including a $50 weighted suit that made the baby look like a gingerbread cookie and that he absolutely hated. The twins’ radically different personalities also shape the comedy: one stays relatively close while the other is a self-described nomad who wanders off, including at Disneyland and at a botanical garden, where Sona eventually received a call from a security guard after her son used the phone number she had taught him. As the boys prepare for school, Sona admits that having twins gives her a built-in advantage because each child has the other as a familiar face, even though one of them has melted down at virtually every camp or first day of school, dramatically reaching a hand toward her and yelling “Mama” while she has to walk away. The episode ultimately connects Sona’s creative career to the same instinct that drives her parenting: anticipating needs, managing logistics, and accepting that perfection is not the assignment, a lesson perfectly embodied by her fantasy for a third book, The World’s Worst Beach House Owner, followed by her modest new standard for success—buying another house that simply doesn’t burn down. 📍September Shows are in Toronto, Canada, Cleveland & Cincinnati, Ohio, St. Louis, MO, Saint Paul, MN, NYC Follow Sona Movsesian : https://www.instagram.com/sonamov Buy her book: The World’s Worst Mom: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/785801/the-worlds-worst-mom-by-sona-movsesian/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” as an ALBUM is available now 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

In the Season 5 premiere of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg talks with Sona Movsesian—co-host of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, former longtime Conan O’Brien assistant, and author of The World’s Worst Mom—about becoming a mother without ever having pictured herself as one, and about building a creative career around the unpredictable logistics of raising children. Their conversation begins with a fitting technological disaster: the two women spend 45 minutes switching laptops, sign-ins, servers, and microphones before finally getting the connection to work, with Sona appearing on video as a “foreheadless Sona” because neither wants to risk touching anything that might break the internet again. From there, Sona describes life with her five-year-old twins, Charlie and Mikey, and the unusual presence of her friend Brad, a comedian and writer who moonlights as their nanny and has become “Uncle” Brad to the boys. She recalls her pre-parenthood life as a five-a.m. party girl who kept toothpaste, deodorant, makeup, and a change of clothes ready for whatever morning she happened to wake up in, then explains how meeting her husband made her want “humans that are the combination of the two of us.” The discussion turns to fertility, the expectation that conception should simply happen, and the strange emotional math of discovering how common fertility treatments and miscarriage actually are; Sona jokes that she had taken the morning-after pill repeatedly before realizing she might have saved herself the money, while Eisenberg observes that if she had been slightly less responsible in high school, she might already have had a child in college. Sona also describes becoming pregnant with twins through IVF at 38, abandoning any romantic notion of childbirth once her doctors strongly recommended a C-section, and declaring, in effect, that after hormone injections and having her babies “manufactured,” she was perfectly happy to skip the water breaking and get everyone out safely. One of the episode’s most striking creative-life intersections comes when Sona remembers that Conan’s final late-night show fell exactly one week before her scheduled C-section: she hoped the boys would stay put long enough for her to attend, and they did, leaving her so pregnant at the after-party that several people had to help her stand up from a chair. Three days before the twins were born, her 96-year-old grandfather died, making the end of Conan’s show, the end of Sona’s role as his day-to-day assistant, her grandfather’s death, and the birth of her sons feel like an extraordinary cluster of endings and beginnings. The two comedians then make the surprisingly persuasive case that years of assisting Conan prepared Sona for motherhood, since anticipating where a 55-year-old boss will need to sit, eat, change clothes, find a bathroom, and get from one place to another is not so different from managing two five-year-olds—except, as Sona points out, she can finally prioritize the twins instead. The episode closes on the tension between competence and creative ambition: Sona jokes that if she had treated Conan the way she now manages her sons, she would have been the greatest assistant imaginable, but that this hard-won organizational skill came too late to help her write her first book while working for him. Her twins holding on long enough for her to watch Conan’s final show—and the image of multiple people physically lifting her out of a chair afterward—becomes the episode’s perfect collision of parenting, work, timing, and the absurd logistics of trying to do everything at once. 📍September Shows are in Toronto, Canada, Cleveland & Cincinnati, Ohio, St. Louis, MO, Saint Paul, MN, NYC Follow Sona Movsesian : https://www.instagram.com/sonamov Buy her book: The World’s Worst Mom: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/785801/the-worlds-worst-mom-by-sona-movsesian/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” as an ALBUM is available now 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

Host Ophira Eisenberg brings back this favorite episode with Adam Cayton-Holland in celebration of his new film See You When I See You recently featured at the Sundance Film Festival, the Nantucket Film Festival, and more.  They talk about the peculiar math of building a creative life around two young children, five-year-old Malcolm and a two-year-old, and how becoming a parent turned the ambitious comedian who once imagined “conquering the world” into someone who now negotiates club weekends down to the hour so he can catch the first flight home. His new special Wallpaper gets its title from his observation that once you have kids, you become the supporting character in your own life, and he admits that dialing back his career was less a sacrifice than a necessary recognition that his children changed what he wanted from his time; after two days away, he misses his boys enough to optimize every travel itinerary around getting home. That shift extends to his wife, who initially imagined she would be “alpha mom” but discovered she also needed time to be a person outside motherhood, and to the small rituals of being a touring dad, like bringing his wife coffee beans and his sons treats from airports—after learning the hard way that three stuffed animals are considerably less useful to a two-year-old than plane pretzels. The conversation also moves into Cayton-Holland’s history as a Denver comedian who helped build the city’s DIY comedy scene with The Grawlix, his early work as a substitute teacher, and the strange realization that he was good with little kids but terrible with middle schoolers, whom he describes as having adult feelings and no acceptable outlet except cruelty. The emotional center of the episode is his family history and the death of his younger sister Lydia, whose depression, OCD, and suicide forced him to confront his own anxiety and fears about passing mental illness to his children; he talks about EMDR therapy, the recurring traumatic memories he eventually learned to “file away,” and how writing his memoir Tragedy Plus Time gave him a way to tell Lydia’s story with the care he felt it required. Rather than treating comedy as automatic healing, he explains why he initially stopped performing altogether, then eventually returned through a one-man show where audiences understand that the story can be funny without pretending everything is okay. Parenting brings the conversation back to the everyday indignities of raising children, from a five-year-old who threatens to call the police because his mother ran a yellow light to the nightly competition over which parent gets chosen at bedtime, while Cayton-Holland quietly counts his teeth when his mind wanders—and still somehow insists there are 32 of them when he actually has 28. 📍August Shows are in Las Vegas NV, Los Angeles CA, NYC Follow Adam Cayton-Holland: https://www.instagram.com/caytonholland See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” as an ALBUM is available now 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

Carlos Greaves returns to the podcast for a closer look at the surprisingly authoritarian role of parenting, beginning with his 18-month-old daughter’s new favorite activity: climbing things that are clearly designed for five-year-olds and launching herself toward a seven-foot drop. With essentially no childcare experience before becoming a dad—he had never even changed a diaper until the nurse handed him his daughter in the hospital—Greaves describes figuring out parenting through research, YouTube, books, and an engineer’s instinct to identify what he doesn’t know, while remaining skeptical of advice that seems to reverse itself every five years. He and Ophira Eisenberg wrestle with the line between letting kids make mistakes and protecting them from hurting themselves or other people, with Greaves admitting that he currently operates at “dad reflex distance,” close enough to catch his daughter but far enough away that she learns to solve problems herself. That tension leads naturally into the mythology of childhood: Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the little stories parents tell to make life easier. Greaves remembers his father initially refusing to participate in Santa because he considered it lying, then eventually sitting his eight- or nine-year-old son down to explain the truth—only to be hit with the immediate existential question, “If Santa Claus isn’t real, does that mean God isn’t real?” Greaves now sees those childhood myths differently, remembering the pleasure of watching younger siblings discover Christmas magic and deciding that if you are going to lie to your kids, it should be for their benefit rather than simply to make your own life easier. The conversation also takes aim at the impossible standards of modern parenting, from organic cotton and wooden toys to BPA-free bottles and the endless question of what, exactly, has replaced the thing labeled “BPA free,” before Greaves offers his own survival tactic for parenting’s tiny dictators: eat your snacks in secret before they become smart enough to notice. When Ophira asks what he would tell a child who eventually wants to become either a comedian or a politician, Greaves’s answer is revealingly consistent with his satirical worldview: he can live with either, as long as they do not become an asshole—and preferably, she becomes an electrical engineer. 📍August Shows are in Las Vegas NV, Los Angeles CA, NYC Follow Carlos Greaves: https://www.instagram.com/shadesofgreaves Check out his new book Obey In Advance: How To Survive (And Thrive) Under Authoritarianism: https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/obey-in-advance-how-to-survive-and-thrive-under-authoritarianism See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” as an ALBUM is available now 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

Carlos Greaves joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about the strange math of building a creative career while raising an 18-month-old daughter, especially when your “job” is a shifting collection of satire writing, freelance work, teaching, and comedy. Greaves describes leaving electrical engineering after a film class convinced him he had chosen the wrong life, spending 12 years writing before opportunities at McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, and elsewhere made comedy feel possible, and then discovering that the creative life he wanted came with plenty of regrets—and very little stability. As a stay-at-home dad in suburban Charlotte, he is constantly negotiating what it even means to be a working parent when his work happens at night and on weekends, while his wife’s nine-to-five schedule means their respective “breaks” are essentially childcare traded for work; meanwhile, Ophira admits that 96% of her conversations with her husband are scheduling logistics. Their conversation turns to Greaves’s book Obey in Advance: How to Survive and Thrive Under Authoritarianism, co-written with Ginny Hogan, and the challenge of writing political satire when reality moves faster than a joke and social media can claim a premise before a book ever reaches publication. Greaves explains why the book targets the atmosphere and institutions surrounding authoritarianism rather than relying on familiar impressions, using forms like Mad Libs, word searches, and fake editorial templates to make frighteningly repetitive political patterns visible—and argues that preserving joy can itself be a form of resistance. That idea becomes especially complicated as a parent: Greaves admits that bringing a child into a world facing climate change and multiple other existential threats requires optimism, even as he feels the terror of having “a piece of your soul outside your body” that eventually has to go out into the world. The episode also connects his instinct for satire to his childhood as an intensely rule-following, oldest-child, parent-pleaser who quietly found ways around the rules, including telling his parents he was sleeping at one friend’s house when he was actually somewhere else. The conversation ends just as Ophira starts asking about the unavoidable dictator hiding inside every parent of a toddler—and Greaves’s Ferris Bueller-adjacent teenage rule-skimming is the last thing left hanging before they pick up the story in part two. 📍August Shows are in Las Vegas NV, Los Angeles CA, NYC Follow Carlos Greaves: https://www.instagram.com/shadesofgreaves Check out his new book Obey In Advance: How To Survive (And Thrive) Under Authoritarianism: https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/obey-in-advance-how-to-survive-and-thrive-under-authoritarianism See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” as an ALBUM is available now 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

Sabrina Bendory returns to talk about the origin story of her very first book, 10 Things Every Woman Needs to Know About Men — a title that started with her getting ghosted, then accidentally called back by the same guy who meant to dial his new hookup, and being sat down that same night by her male roommate and his friend for a blunt, point-by-point translation of everything men actually mean when they say things like "I've never liked a girl this much." She and Ophira dig into how that same decoding work now applies to men who come to her for coaching too — something she didn't expect until requests started arriving after Detached, including from tattooed, tough-looking guys admitting, unprompted, that they have "mother issues" they want to work through. The conversation turns sharper when Bendory revisits Nick, the ex from her book who told her he'd never "breed" with someone like her, and she names exactly what that relationship taught her: mistaking anxiety for chemistry, and hope for intuition. From there she and Ophira spend real time dismantling Sex and the City — Bendory explains how she rewatched the whole series during a COVID quarantine with three sick kids and no childcare, posted one TikTok tearing apart Carrie and Big, and woke up to it having gone viral days later — arguing that Big spends six seasons explicitly telling Carrie he doesn't want her (down to failing to say "you're the one" in season one) and gets rewarded with a Paris rooftop ending anyway. The episode closes on Bendory's clearest parenting-adjacent line yet: that picking a stable, undramatic partner isn't boring, it's strategic, because life, kids, aging parents, money, loss is already hard enough without a relationship that requires managing someone else's chaos on top of it. 📍August Shows are in Las Vegas NV, Los Angeles CA, NYC Follow Sabrina Bendory: https://www.instagram.com/sabrinabendory Check out her new book The Feminine Code: https://www.instagram.com/sabrinabendory Check out the kids album you'll love, Magnificent by Lachi: https://platoon.lnk.to/magnificent See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” as an ALBUM is available now 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

Author and Coach Sabrina Bendory brings her work as a relationship coach and author of The Feminine Code into the everyday reality of raising four young children, connecting the emotional patterns that shape adult relationships to the way parents respond to their kids in real time. She and Ophira Eisenberg talks openly about the bittersweet end of a decade spent pregnant, breastfeeding, and raising babies while remembering the postpartum anxiety that followed her youngest son's birth, when COVID, weeks of illness, and relentless handwashing left her coaching clients while quietly fighting panic. Ophira and Sabrina compare notes on sleep schedules, summer camp logistics, sibling dynamics, body image, and the impossible standard mothers are held to, while Sabrina explains why children need emotional attunement more than perfect parenting and why telling a child, "That was my fault, not yours," after losing your temper can interrupt generational patterns. Their conversation moves from Sabrina's painful memory of a boyfriend telling her he would "never breed" with her to a larger discussion about the "mother wound," people-pleasing, confidence, and teaching children that mistakes don't define them. Along the way, they laugh about children who think parents know everything, daughters agonizing over red-white-and-blue camp outfits, the myth that moms should do it all without help, and Ophira's son getting criticized for preferring vegetables over kid food, before landing on one surprisingly effective family tradition: everyone gathering around a giant puzzle with oversized and tiny pieces spread across the kitchen table. 📍August Shows are in Las Vegas NV, Los Angeles CA, NYC Follow Sabrina Bendory: https://www.instagram.com/sabrinabendory Check out her new book The Feminine Code: https://www.instagram.com/sabrinabendory Check out the kids album you'll love, Magnificent by Lachi: https://platoon.lnk.to/magnificent See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” as an ALBUM is available now 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

Author, podcaster, influencer! Jo Piazza returns to Parenting Is a Joke in the middle of a whirlwind tour for The Parisian Heist, discovering that the greatest luxury of author life isn't glamorous hotels but eating alone at Cracker Barrel, ordering room-service ice cream in a robe, and having nobody ask for a snack or an iPad charger. As Ophira Eisenberg and Jo compare life with a 10-year-old versus a nine-, six-, and three-year-old, they swap stories about a preschooler refusing to wear clothes to a fancy family dinner, settling for "parenting at 60%," and why every ambitious parent needs to stop whispering about having help and start saying it out loud. Their conversation moves easily from raising creative kids—who remake Jurassic Park, shoot stop-motion LEGO dinosaur films, and critique outdated '80s movie jokes—to Jo's meticulous writing process, explaining how she drafts dual timelines straight through before separating and rebuilding them, researches museums across Paris and Amsterdam, and even listens to Gwyneth Paltrow read her manuscript aloud. Along the way they explore the overlooked brilliance of Jo van Gogh, the real mechanics of art heists, why moms might make the best thieves because heists require planning and patience more than action-movie stunts, and how Jo's marriage began with spotting a promising "project" on a reporting trip to the Galápagos. The episode circles back to the small freedoms working parents crave, ending on Jo's perfect solo-tour ritual: eating a chocolate sundae in a hotel robe while watching The Silence of the Lambs instead of discussing tomorrow's family schedule. 📍July Shows are in NYC, Montreal for Just for Laughs Festival Follow Jo Piazza: https://www.instagram.com/jopiazzaauthor Check out her new book The Parisian Heist: https://www.jopiazza.com/#about-section See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” streaming right now exclusively on Veeps https://veeps.com/ophiraeisenberg or listen to the 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

In this Parenting Is a Joke Snack, Holly Rizzuto-Palker and Ophira Eisenberg trade deeply personal stories about building an interfaith family without reducing either tradition to a compromise. Holly reflects on growing up Italian Catholic, marrying a New York Jewish lawyer who initially assumed she was Jewish, and how surviving September 11 fundamentally changed the way she thought about faith, convincing her that her children needed a single spiritual foundation rather than two parallel traditions. She explains why she chose to raise her three children Jewish while fiercely protecting Christmas, Easter baskets, a twelve-foot Christmas tree, and her legendary Italian Christmas Eve celebration complete with karaoke, creating what she jokingly describes as a negotiated "contract" that satisfied everyone from Jewish in-laws to Santa Claus. The conversation moves easily between religion, identity, parenting, and comedy as Holly recalls her daughter's last-minute declaration that she didn't believe in God just days before her bat mitzvah, the secret baptism no one in her husband's family knew about, and the challenge of raising thoughtful kids without insisting they share every belief. Along the way, both comedians wrestle with how much influence parents really have, whether children inevitably become their own people, and the bittersweet reality that Holly's household somehow produced three athletes instead of a single performer. The episode ends with Holly laughing that after years of dreaming about school plays, she still had to skip Beauty and the Beast because Rookie of the Year had another softball game. ✨ Subscribe, rate, and review! Follow us on socials @ParentingAsAJoke and @OphiraE (or @OphiraNYC on TikTok). Check out upcoming live performances at OphiraEisenberg.com. 📍 July tour stops: Atlantic City, NJ, Montreal at the Just For Laughs Festival, New York Follow Holly Rizzuto-Palker: https://www.instagram.com/hollyrizzutopal See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events 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 Eisenberg: 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

Holly Rizzuto Palker joins host Ophira Eisenberg for a conversation about building a creative career while raising three kids, and why modern parenting can feel like an unpaid administrative job with impossible software. From comparing overflowing inboxes, Schoology confusion, and the endless stream of school newsletters to reminiscing about Holly’s childhood helping her mother run Brooklyn Gymboree locations, they connect the invisible labor of parenting with the work of performing, writing, and creating community through comedy. Holly reflects on leaving Los Angeles acting behind to start a family, following her husband’s legal career to London, and eventually realizing that motherhood and performance were never mutually exclusive. The conversation wanders through raising children in England, returning to New Jersey only to discover that "proper" school clothes had been replaced by Justice sparkles and sweatpants, surviving Singapore Math by drawing spiders instead of solving equations, and questioning whether iPads, AI, and the Common App have made childhood and education unnecessarily complicated. Throughout, Holly’s unmistakable Staten Island voice and Ophira’s own stories about fifth-grade graduation, lemon-whitened teeth, and notebook obsessions create a thoughtful portrait of parents trying to stay creative while navigating systems that seem designed to generate more work than wisdom. The episode closes with both of them wistfully agreeing that maybe the real innovation would be putting the notebooks back in kids' hands—and continuing the search for the mythical "magic notebook." ✨ Subscribe, rate, and review! Follow us on socials @ParentingAsAJoke and @OphiraE (or @OphiraNYC on TikTok). Check out upcoming live performances at OphiraEisenberg.com. 📍 July tour stops: Atlantic City, NJ, Montreal at the Just For Laughs Festival, New York Follow Holly Rizzuto-Palker: https://www.instagram.com/hollyrizzutopal See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events 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 Eisenberg: 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

Lizzie and Wendy Molyneux, the sister writing team behind Bob's Burgers and The Great North, join Ophira to compare growing up in a large family with raising seven kids of their own while balancing television writing, showrunning, and creative work. They swap stories about "feral" childhoods that somehow still included dinner together, debate what actually counts as being a strict parent, and explain why weekday iPad bans, family meals without devices, and simply convincing kids to shower can feel like the biggest parenting victories. The conversation turns to children's entertainment from the perspective of people who make it, touching on why professionally produced kids' shows feel safer than the unpredictable corners of YouTube, why parents inevitably ruin Bluey by recommending it too enthusiastically, and how video games sometimes function more like social time than screen time. They also embrace the strange reality that every generation of kids finds its own wonderfully bizarre obsession, leading to an unexpectedly thoughtful discussion about Skibidi Toilet, why children are naturally drawn to weirdness no matter how carefully adults curate their world, and why fighting every phase is usually a losing battle. The episode ends with everyone laughing over the fact that Ophira bought Skibidi Toilet mystery packs at Target hoping for a toilet-headed character and instead wound up with two cameramen. ✨ Subscribe, rate, and review! Follow us on socials @ParentingAsAJoke and @OphiraE (or @OphiraNYC on TikTok). Check out upcoming live performances at OphiraEisenberg.com. 📍 July tour stops: Atlantic City, NJ, Montreal at the Just For Laughs Festival, New York Follow Wendy Molyneux: https://www.instagram.com/thegreatnorthwendy Follow Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin: https://x.com/lizziemolyneux?s=21&t=jSf8B0HmwnlXV5P5Erva-A See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events 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 Eisenberg: 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

Best -selling author and podcaster Jo Piazza joins Ophira Eisenberg for a sharp, funny conversation about raising three kids while writing bestselling thrillers, hosting a hit podcast, and investigating the increasingly bizarre world of mom influencers. Piazza explains how her novel Everyone Is Lying to You grew out of years spent reporting on influencer culture, from attending lavish creator conferences to briefly attempting life as a momfluencer herself—an experiment that lasted about two weeks before her children and husband revolted against endless outfit changes and staged content shoots. The conversation moves between the realities of postpartum life that never make it into perfectly filtered Instagram feeds, the exhaustion that makes influencer fantasies so appealing to overwhelmed parents, and the strange cultural space between burnout-era “girlboss” expectations and the polished trad-wife aesthetic. Along the way, Piazza talks about having a third child after a very memorable Elton John concert, feeding her youngest “like the family dog” after abandoning precious organic baby food routines, blocking Cocomelon and Gabby’s Dollhouse with the same determination other parents reserve for adult content, and using everything from Star Wars to 1980s movies as opportunities to talk with her kids about media, gender, and storytelling. For creative parents trying to make room for ambitious work without losing themselves to performance—online or otherwise—the episode is full of practical honesty about time, attention, and the difference between real family life and the version designed to sell you something. The conversation ends exactly where Piazza’s reporting instincts thrive: questioning why anyone would willingly romanticize chickens when, as she puts it, they’re covered in chicken shit and “so dumb.” 📍June Shows are in Las Vegas, Nantucket, MA, New Haven, CT and NYC Follow Jo Piazza: https://www.instagram.com/jopiazzaauthor Check out her new book The Parisian Heist: https://www.jopiazza.com/#about-section See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” streaming right now exclusively on Veeps https://veeps.com/ophiraeisenberg 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

In this second conversation between our host Ophira Eisenberg and writer, performer, and donor dad comedian and writer Mike Albo, the focus shifts from how his unconventional family was created to how it has evolved over the last twelve years. Albo reflects on the surprising way a child instantly turned a collection of unrelated adults into a family unit, from annual birthday parties elaborate enough to feel like “a luncheon for the Obamas” to finding himself genuinely invested in catching up with grandparents whose lives might otherwise never have intersected with his. He talks about recognizing himself in his daughter’s ability to entertain herself for hours with thick Peanuts collections, seeing traces of his own creative childhood in the way she builds stories and worlds, and preparing for the role he hopes to play during her teenage years: a trusted adult outside the immediate family orbit. Along the way, the conversation moves through creative identity, aging, social media envy, queer culture, consent, and the ways parenting can quietly force a reckoning with habits and assumptions inherited from childhood, including a moment when a simple correction about personal boundaries made him rethink how casually children’s bodies were treated when he was growing up. For parents balancing artistic ambition with family life, Albo offers a perspective that is neither traditional nor detached, but rooted in showing up, paying attention, and staying open to being changed by the relationship. The episode closes with Albo describing his daughter watching movies on VHS tapes and winding down with cake-decorating videos while he marvels that her mothers somehow managed to make 2025 feel a little bit like 1982. 📍June Shows are in Las Vegas, Nantucket, MA, New Haven, CT and NYC Follow Mike Albo : https://www.instagram.com/albomike Check out his writing and work: https://www.mikealbo.net/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” streaming right now exclusively on Veeps https://veeps.com/ophiraeisenberg 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

Writer, comedian, actor Mike Albo joins host Ophira Eisenberg on Parenting is a Joke for a conversation about becoming a sperm donor for two close friends and finding himself in a version of parenthood he never expected. Albo traces the decision back to a deeper question—whether, as a gay man who came of age during the AIDS crisis, he believed he deserved the kind of full family life that once felt out of reach. What follows is both thoughtful and absurd: months of fertility clinic visits in Murray Hill, navigating the “Goldilocks” timing of sperm donation, getting performance reviews on his sperm motility from a stern Eastern European technician, and discovering that even sperm can apparently show up hungover. The discussion moves from the legal realities of donor agreements to the emotional nuances of being a child’s biological father without being a traditional parent, including why he avoids the word “dad,” how his role has evolved as his daughter has grown older, and why preserving his artistic life felt important both for himself and for her. Along the way, Albo and Eisenberg compare notes on horror movies, practical effects, creative identity, and the many ways families get built outside conventional scripts, all while reflecting on what children understand, what they need confirmed, and how relationships take shape over time. The episode ends with one of Albo’s favorite stories: his daughter, raised by two mothers and a gay sperm donor, casually asking, “Is Mike gay?” 📍June Shows are in Las Vegas, Nantucket, MA, New Haven, CT and NYC Follow Mike Albo : https://www.instagram.com/albomike Check out his writing and work: https://www.mikealbo.net/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” streaming right now exclusively on Veeps https://veeps.com/ophiraeisenberg 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

Jenny Hagel returns to Parenting Is a Joke to talk about the strange moral gray zones of raising decent kids while also living in the real world, from teaching a 12-year-old when swearing is funny versus when it turns aggressive, to bribing a five-year-old with 23 M&Ms to say “gracias” in Puerto Rico. Jenny explains how growing up in a strict etiquette-focused household shaped the way she now parents with more nuance, including why she refused to tell her son “we don’t use bad words” when there are already countless clips of her cursing online as a comedy writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers. Ophira and Jenny compare notes on raising boys in New York City, surviving messy apartments, losing keys for entire decades, and trying to create systems that stop family life from turning into chaos, leading to an unexpectedly passionate discussion about handwritten lists, highlighters, key hooks, labeled electronics baskets, and the packing spreadsheet Jenny has used for more than ten years. The conversation also circles around the emotional side of parenting advice — the judgment parents feel from each other, the pressure to raise thoughtful boys, and the fear of accidentally sending an incompetent future boyfriend into society. 📍June Shows are in Las Vegas, Nantucket, MA, New Haven, CT and NYC Follow Jenny Hagel: https://www.instagram.com/jennyhagel By her book now! https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Advice-No-One-Asked-For/Jenny-Hagel/9781668079614 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” streaming right now exclusively on Veeps https://veeps.com/ophiraeisenberg 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

Jenny Hagel joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about parenting through big feelings, awkward questions, creative careers, and the strange emotional math of raising boys while working in comedy. Jenny shares how her now-12-year-old son transformed from a tiny Brooklyn tornado she once carried out of donut shops “like a sack of potatoes” into a “fun, chill roommate,” and explains how one preschool meltdown led to the line “my mad is too big for my body,” which completely changed the way she thought about tantrums and emotional regulation. The conversation moves from Mad Libs ruined by the phrase “diarrhea juice” to surprisingly thoughtful discussions about kids’ emotional language, including Jenny’s son describing a crush as “a string” connecting two hearts. Ophira and Jenny also compare notes on parenting boys with huge emotions, the pressure put on working mothers, and the exhausting flood of parenting advice from strangers who assume every family has the same structure and flexibility. Jenny talks about building her live comedy show Advice Nobody Asked For during the writers strike, where audience members anonymously submit questions into buckets labeled “family,” “love,” and “job,” before a real therapist comes onstage to grade the advice — including the time Jenny recommended secretly vaccinating a relative’s baby while babysitting. Along the way they talk about single parenting, Late Night with Seth Meyers, queer parenting, American work culture, and therapy as an emotional toolbox. 📍June Shows are in Las Vegas, Nantucket, MA, New Haven, CT and NYC Follow Jenny Hagel: https://www.instagram.com/jennyhagel By her book now! https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Advice-No-One-Asked-For/Jenny-Hagel/9781668079614 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” streaming right now exclusively on Veeps https://veeps.com/ophiraeisenberg 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

When comedian and writer Megan Gailey joins Parenting Is a Joke, she and Ophira compare notes on raising kids while working as touring stand-ups, including the strange reality that dad comics are always available for podcasts while moms are constantly juggling childcare. Megan talks about performing stand-up deep into her pregnancy and loving the instant tension her giant belly created onstage, especially when she opened with “I’m eight months sober.” She shares stories about returning to comedy three weeks postpartum to preserve a sense of identity beyond “just being udders,” dealing with brutal online comments about her body only months after giving birth, and figuring out whether leaving home for road gigs feels worthwhile depending on the crowds, money, and homesickness. The episode also gets into bizarre parenting threats — including fake calls from Santa and a pumpkin-patch lifetime ban — plus Megan’s sports-filled upbringing as the first girl born on her dad’s side in 62 years. Between conversations about postpartum creativity, internet criticism, comedy careers, and raising a toddler obsessed with Shohei Ohtani jerseys, the episode ends with Megan describing her Pacers-loving father’s furious reaction to her son wearing a Michael Jordan Bulls jersey for school picture day: “bullshit.” 📍May Shows are in The Netherlands: The Hague, Nijmegen, Boston, Martha’s Vineyard, Scarsdale, NY, Guilford, CT Follow Megan Gailey: https://www.instagram.com/bettermegangailey See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” streaming right now exclusively on Veeps https://veeps.com/ophiraeisenberg 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/@ophiranycLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg talks with Christine Walters—comedian, former TV development executive, and creator of Three Day Champion—about building a creative life that moves between producing, performing, and parenting a now 17-year-old son on the brink of college, while still feeling the daily pull of waiting up for him at night and resisting the urge to track his every move. Walters explains how Three Day Champion grew out of watching Jeopardy! with her family and becoming obsessed with contestants’ awkward personal anecdotes, leading her to design a live storytelling format where comedians must deliver three distinct personal stories under pressure, revealing not just their material but their personality arc, all judged by rotating celebrity guests with their own criteria. She shares how her background developing shows for networks like Comedy Central and Nickelodeon shaped her instinct for structure, including her earlier parenting sketch series Other Mothered, which exaggerated the quiet competitiveness and judgment between moms—like escalating a child’s science fair project from cotton-ball clouds to nuclear fusion—while also reflecting her own experiences being called out by strangers, including a Park Slope drive-by critique of her baby’s exposed legs in a carrier that sent her into a spiral of self-doubt. 📍May Shows are in The Netherlands: The Hague, Nijmegen, Boston, Martha’s Vineyard, Scarsdale, NY Follow Christine Walters / Thee Day Champion: https://www.instagram.com/threedaychampion See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ And stay tuned to see her NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” coming out exclusively on Veeps on May 15th! 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/@ophiranycLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg opens with a very real parenting milestone—her 10-year-old son requesting “the talk”, leading to a blunt, anatomy-first explanation that immediately kills the mystique of sex. That mix of parenting improvisation and comic timing carries into her conversation with Christine Walters, a comedian, writer, and former development executive whose career spans shows like Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and The Chris Gethard Show, and who now runs the live storytelling competition podcast Three Day Champion. Walters talks about building a creative life from both sides of the industry—pitching shows, shaping other people’s stories, and then stepping back onstage herself—while balancing the logistical and emotional demands of parenting. The two get specific about what it means to produce creative work under time constraints, how live storytelling changes when your brain is split between childcare and deadlines, and why Walters structured Three Day Champion as a recurring, competitive format that forces comedians to sharpen personal stories into tight, high-stakes sets. 📍May Shows are in The Netherlands: The Hague, Nijmegen, Boston, Martha’s Vineyard, Scarsdale, NY Follow Christine Walters / Thee Day Champion: https://www.instagram.com/threedaychampion See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ And stay tuned to see her NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” coming out exclusively on Veeps on May 15th! 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/@ophiranycLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Corey Ryan Forrester talks about recalibrating a 22-year stand-up career around raising his almost three-year-old son, after years of touring 45 weeks a year led to panic attacks, canceled shows, and a long-overdue start in therapy before becoming a parent. He explains how COVID-era podcasting, Substack writing, and an unexpected book deal from HarperCollins created a financial cushion that let him stay home for his son’s first year, and why he still resists returning to full-time road work despite loving stand-up, calling live shows “the result of the work” and travel the real cost. The conversation moves through the physical and emotional crash that follows weekends on stage, the strange relief of having a kid who will lie beside him for hours watching all four Toy Story films in a row when he’s depleted, and the way parenting heightens everything from crying at commercials to worrying about how your choices look to other parents. Forrester also reflects on being raised by a deeply private father who never showed emotion—yet shaped his values around loyalty and caring for family—and shares how that legacy now shows up in small, repeated rituals with his own child, like reminding him to thank his mom and modeling daily check-ins with his own mother. The episode weaves together comedy, storytelling, and the logistics of creative work with a young kid, landing on a vivid origin story of how hearing a Tim Wilson CD make his grieving father laugh nonstop on a long drive to Florida clarified, once and for all, what comedy could do. 📍May Shows are in The Netherlands: The Hague, Nijmegen, Boston, Martha’s Vineyard, Scarsdale, NY Follow Corey Ryan Forrester: https://www.instagram.com/coreyrforrester See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ And stay tuned to see her NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” coming out exclusively on Veeps on May 15th! 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