Parenting is a Joke

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

Jena Friedman Wants to Feel It, Not Act It

October 13, 2026 • 31 mins
Jena Friedman talks with Ophira Eisenberg about the strange collision of grief, motherhood, politics, and the practical business of being a working comedian as she brings her solo show Motherf*cker from Edinburgh to New York. She explains why the missing “you” on the show poster is intentional—a visual representation of the hole grief leaves behind—and how a painting she made of her mother in high school ult...
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Jena Friedman Knows Grief is a Real Motherf*ker

October 6, 2026 • 36 mins
Jena Friedman returns to Parenting Is a Joke with a now four-year-old, a new solo show called Motherf*cker, and a lot to say about what happens when motherhood, grief, politics, and a creative career start occupying the same space. She and host Ophira Eisenberg talk about the strange economics of being a working comedian—including Jena’s son looking at her $40 stand-up paycheck and asking, essentially, “That&rsquo...
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Giving Up Control with Marc Kaye

September 29, 2026 • 29 mins
In this snack-sized follow-up with host Ophira Eisenberg, comedian and author Marc Kaye digs into the split between fitting in and belonging that gives his essay collection its spine, admitting he's spent a lifetime chasing the former while quietly resenting how much it costs him, a distinction he says reframed the whole book once he stopped blaming other people for his own discomfort. The conversation turns most vivid around "Chan...
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Marc Kaye’s Kids are 1 in 8 Million

September 22, 2026 • 50 mins
Comedian and debut essayist Marc Kaye joins host Ophira Eisenberg mid-vacation, sweat-soaked from a Yellowstone-to-Badlands road trip, to talk about the strange math of raising kids you can't actually engineer — a fitting theme from a guy with a mechanical engineering-turned-raver son and a musical-theater daughter now working inside the Bureau of Prisons at Fort Dix. Mark, who spent a year teaching biology in Camden through ...
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Sona Movesesian is the World’s Best Mom

September 15, 2026 • 33 mins
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...
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Sona Movsesian: Two Moms, One Computer Connection

September 8, 2026 • 36 mins
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 ...
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Adam Cayton-Holland Is On the Big Screen

September 1, 2026 • 43 mins
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 &...
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A Bit of Magic with Carlos Greaves

August 25, 2026 • 28 mins
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 i...
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Carlos Greaves Is The Satirical Dad

August 18, 2026 • 48 mins
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&rsq...
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Dating Like A Man With Sabrina Bendory

August 11, 2026 • 30 mins
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 ...
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Sabrina Bendory Names the Mother Wound

August 4, 2026 • 49 mins
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 post...
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Jo Piazza Knows Moms Could Pull Off a Heist

July 28, 2026 • 38 mins
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-o...
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Blended Religions with Holly Rizzuto-Palker

July 21, 2026 • 30 mins
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 nee...
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Holly Rizzuto-Palker Went for Gymboree to Comedy

July 14, 2026 • 50 mins
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 th...
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Lizzie and Wendy Molyneux Trust Weird Kids

July 7, 2026 • 26 mins
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 m...
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Jo Piazza Sees Through the Trad Wife Dream

June 30, 2026 • 44 mins
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 ...
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The Automatic Family with Mike Albo

June 23, 2026 • 42 mins
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 ...
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Mike Albo Deserves to be a Daddy

June 16, 2026 • 45 mins
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 ...
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That’s What The Job Is with Jenny Hagel

June 9, 2026 • 29 mins
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 nuanc...
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Jenny Hagel Gives Great Advice (That I Asked For)

June 2, 2026 • 53 mins
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 ...
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