Parenting is a Joke
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.
Episodes
December 16, 2025 • 35 mins
In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, comedian Emily Walsh talks to Ophira Eisenberg about becoming a parent later in life and being labeled “advanced maternal age” by New York doctors while taking “nightly little baby aspirin” she was told “sometimes works” for reasons no one could explain. She describes meeting her tiny five-pound newborn who arrived a month early with “newborn fuzz” on her ears and back and a full head of hair...
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December 9, 2025 • 45 mins
In this episode, Ophira talks with comic and new mom and comedian Emily Walsh, who shares how she spent her twenties and thirties convinced she didn’t want kids, only to find herself writing an Edinburgh show about that exact ambivalence and then trying to conceive between gigs in Atlantic City. Emily describes entering stand-up at 30 after years painting sets for Blue Bloods—so many beige walls she started an Instagram called “Bei...
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December 2, 2025 • 26 mins
In this Snack episode, Ophira catches up with author and storyteller Katy Strange, who talks about the very specific chaos of raising two tweens while publishing her debut novel The Manly Man of God. Katy explains how her book’s bold, saint-like cover—complete with a mysteriously floating eggplant—has sparked confusion among some readers, including a man at her book launch who sincerely asked if the story involved a farmers’ market...
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November 25, 2025 • 50 mins
In this episode, Ophira talks with author and storyteller Katy (Katharine) Strange about the tangled realities of raising tweens while untangling a past shaped by evangelical culture. Katy shares how moving 17 times as a kid primed her for reading a room—and for assuming friendships were optional until she realized she wasn’t relocating again. She talks about letting her 13-year-old navigate Seattle’s public transit with “mixed res...
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November 20, 2025 • 30 mins
In this snack-sized conversation, Ophira Eisenberg talks with author and newly certified parenting coach Kerri Smith-Maher about how years of teaching writing, her daughter’s struggles, her own sobriety journey, and a crash course in perimenopause all pushed her toward parent coaching. Kerri explains how a psychologist friend steered her away from graduate school and toward certification at the Jai Institute, where she dove into ne...
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November 18, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode, Ophira Eisenberg talks with author and parent coach Kerri Maher (aka. Kerri Smith–Maher and also Kerri Majors) about the many names she has published under, the publishing-industry lunch where her team rejected both “Smith” and “Pasqualetti” for SEO reasons, and why she ultimately adopted her grandmother’s maiden name as her pen name. Kerri recalls handwriting her first unfinished novel on her dad’s yellow legal pa...
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November 13, 2025 • 39 mins
Comedian Julia Scotti joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about the long, winding path that brought her back to stand-up after transitioning and a decade away from comedy. Julia reflects on raising three children amid multiple marriages and constant touring, her fear of repeating her own fractured childhood, and the painful 14-year estrangement from her kids after she came out as transgender. She recalls coming out mid-set at a blue-col...
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November 11, 2025 • 44 mins
In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Andy Richter joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about raising three kids across two generations—his 23-year-old son, 18-year-old daughter, and a four-year-old he’s helping raise with his new wife. Andy reflects on how parenting feels different now that he’s happier, newly remarried, and out of a long stretch of depression. He shares how his youngest daughter “runs the household,” including her si...
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November 6, 2025 • 23 mins
In this Parenting Is a Joke snack episode, Ophira Eisenberg chats again with Kate Auletta, Editor-in-Chief of Scary Mommy and Romper, about her years as a journalist and the surprising turns that led her from travel writing to parenting media. Kate recalls running HuffPost’s “How to Raise a Kid” conference in 2017—pulling together experts to talk about money, race, sex, and digital literacy right as the Trump era began—and how it f...
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November 4, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode of Parenting is a Joke, Ophira talks with Kate Auletta, Editor-in-Chief of Scary Mommy and Romper, about raising two sons in the suburbs after growing up as a “true East Side” New Yorker. Kate shares how her mornings start with Picture Day chaos, a barking dog, and kids who quiz her about world politics before breakfast. She describes her nine-year-old as a relentless question machine and her older son as a newly mi...
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October 30, 2025 • 33 mins
In this Halloween “snack” episode, Ophira Eisenberg reconnects with horror writer and fellow Brooklyn parent Brooke Mackenzie to dig deeper into her psychic and supernatural experiences. Brooke explains that she once asked “the powers that be” to remove her ability to see ghosts through deep meditation—but kept one lingering gift: premonition dreams that sometimes predict people’s deaths, a trait she says runs in her family. She re...
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October 28, 2025 • 44 mins
In this Halloween-timed episode, Ophira Eisenberg talks with Brooklyn-based horror author and poet Brooke Mackenzie, who balances writing ghost stories with parenting her five-year-old daughter. Brooke describes her haunted Minnesota childhood home—once owned by a member of the Pillsbury family—complete with a female ghost in the basement and a handsy spirit in an old pony shed. She recounts asking “the powers that be” in college t...
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October 23, 2025 • 34 mins
Actor and comedian Mary Lynn Rajskub joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about raising her now 18-year-old son while continuing to perform stand-up, act, and write. She recalls being visibly pregnant during her last season on 24, with body doubles and stunts ruined when her belly showed up in the shot. She describes her early comedy experiments with Girls’ Guitar Club—two stand-ups who couldn’t play guitar but turned awkward banter into...
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October 21, 2025 • 36 mins
Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about raising his two-and-a-half-year-old son, Witt, while juggling a career built on improv, political satire, and late-night comedy. Klepper recalls misjudging the mattress size for his son’s bunk bed—leaving a four-inch gap that could double as future deposition material—and justifying his “safety plan” with a beanbag chair under the danger zone. He rails aga...
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October 16, 2025 • 27 mins
In this snack episode, comedian Tony Deyo regales Ophira Eisenberg with some of the strangest leaps he’s taken, from auditioning disastrously for Stomp—where his lack of dance skills left him drumming on himself in front of professional dancers—to jumping out of airplanes during Army ROTC, even though the first time he’d ever flown was on the way to jump school. Now a parent, he admits that those risks have given way to new kinds o...
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October 14, 2025 • 52 mins
Comedian Tony Deyo joins Ophira Eisenberg this week to talk about balancing creative work with family life, starting with his strict morning writing routine that often happens next to his son playing video games. He describes raising his now-11-year-old, the youngest in his class, and reflects on being the youngest in school himself. Tony shares the story of meeting his wife in college marching band — he was a drummer, she played c...
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October 9, 2025 • 20 mins
In this snack episode, John Moe—host of Depresh Mode and Sleeping with Celebrities—shares memories with Ophira Eisenberg of sneaking into R-rated movies as a kid, including the terrifying but oddly comical Alien chest-burster scene that was softened by nearby jokesters comparing it to a hot dog with ketchup. He recalls being deeply shaken by The Exorcist and a low-budget Bigfoot “documentary,” which hit especially hard growing up i...
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October 7, 2025 • 45 mins
In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, John Moe talks to Ophira Eisenberg about raising three kids while juggling multiple jobs in public radio, writing, and podcasting. He recalls his parents’ Norwegian roots, including summers spent above the Arctic Circle and the bone-dry humor of his father, whose jokes sometimes landed days later. Comedy became the family’s shared language, even as emotional expression was stifled at home, an...
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October 2, 2025 • 41 mins
Rachel Dratch joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about raising her 13-year-old son Eli, reflecting on how his confident, social personality contrasts with her own bookish teen years. She recalls once assuming she wouldn’t have children, only to be surprised when a channeler predicted she’d meet someone and have one child—a prophecy that eerily came true when she met Eli’s father months later and became pregnant at 44. Rachel discusses ...
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September 30, 2025 • 43 mins
Comedian Jordan Carlos joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about parenting two kids with very different personalities—his 10-year-old daughter, a perfectionist baker supplied with Costco-sized vanilla extract, and his six-year-old son, who polices Halloween candy wrappers with post-it notes. Jordan shares how his daughter’s three grandmothers got her hooked on baking, and how his son’s sharp eye caught him sneaking Whoppers late at nigh...
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