this is the fourth annual awesome listener question show.

this episode is all about you, the girl on guy army. revel in the great damp swirling you-ness of it all.

and stick around for the end of the show for a personal statement from aisha.

mad, delirious love to the girl on guy army.

this episode of girl on guy is with the unparalleled charlize theron.

that is fucking all.

join aisha and astrophysicist neil degrasse tyson as they talk about rejecting stereotype, destroying constraint, overcoming expectation, sprinting towards destiny and defying gravity. plus neil explains everything and aisha struggles to keep up.

girl on guy is taking copious notes.

“you have this fantasy of what you’re going to do [in success] and when those moments happen they’re beautiful, but they’re ephemeral. you really have to just be good at being yourself.”

this episode is with the firecracker fire-tongued firebrand chelsea handler.

that is all.

girl on guy is spitting hot fire.

“All the weird actors and fucked up people were in this one room and finally I felt like “you get what I feel. I had such a commonality of pain with other people”

this episode of girl on guy was recorded in front of a live audience of girl on guy at the fourth annual GOG fan appreciation event, held at the US Grant hotel, the historic home of the very first comic-con. so much goodness.

girl on guy loves the fans more than cake. or beer.

“I don’t watch myself. I feel terrible sometimes because people are like ‘oh, that movie!’ and I’m thinking ‘I ain’t seen it.'”

join marianne jean-baptiste of blindspot, broadchurch and without a trace and aisha as they dissect consuming your work, finding your voice, living your character, making it up as you go along, and emerging from the wilderness.

plus marianne and aisha fall for los angeles. reluctantly.

girl on guy is finally an LA woman.

this episode is with the extraordinarily superlative viola davis.

that is all.

“looking back, I wish denial had kicked in. there was no room for denial. [it was] fight, get through it, or death.”

join iconic axe man dave navarro of jane’s addiction and ink master and aisha as they drive through tragedy, transformation, trials and triumph, and the reunion of jane’s addiction. plus dave finds strength and transcendence in facing down the events that changed his life forever in one terrible, violent night when he was young, in the documentary “mourning son.”

girl on guy is trying to avoid slow motion sickness.

at long last, this is the second half of the wide-ranging and revealing sheryl underwood conversation.

plus aisha announces exciting news, including the launch of the kickstarter campaign for her new film, AXIS.

girl on guy’s riding on all four cylinders.

join comedian, producer and aisha’s the talk co-host sheryl underwood as they discuss family, transformation, service, bravery, grief, finding your voice and discovering strength in the midst of unbearable loss.

plus sheryl and aisha figure out which one is michael and which one is tito. it’s a toss-up.

girl on guy wants you back.

“when I turned 40, I said, I’m going to say yes to everything. [I’m going] to kick my own ass.”

join taye diggs of hedwig and the angry inch and murder in the first and aisha as they contemplate pursuing art, defying terror, embracing challenge, transcending change, and saying yes.

plus taye is a classic man about town. then things go terribly wrong.

girl on guy has to hit the head.

it’s the awesome listener question show for 2015! as you will discover, some things never change.

and some things do.

girl on guy is happy it took the red pill.

“as an actor, fear helps you make better choices.”

join omar benson miller of hbo’s ballers and aisha as they wander through culture, art, film, sacrifice, public image, personal responsibility, and working with spike.

plus omar broke the vcr. it couldn’t be helped.

girl on guy is trying to be gentle with technology.

“i have burst into tears in more public places than i [care to mention].”

join sarah burns of how to get away with murder and the film slow learners and aisha as they wax both awkward and prolific about playing alone, dreaming big, living large, scene stealing and going toe to toe with viola.

plus aisha and sarah plan on doing some day drinking.

girl on guy has nowhere to be.

“my dream as a person is to wake up without any electronic [assistance].”

join comedian and writer wayne federman and aisha as they pick through the interior life of a comedian. it’s not pretty. but there is basketball.

plus wayne and aisha share a coke and a very awkward smile.

girl on guy would like to teach the world to sing. right after a long nap.

“[to prepare for fargo] i didn’t do anything [for three days] but practice my lines and watch kung fu movies.”

join bokeem woodbine of fargo and aisha tyler as they jam through aimless youth, punk rock days, magical nights, chasing your passion on foot, the fate of good fortune and meeting tupac.

plus bokeem and aisha go back in time.

girl on guy is fighting crosstown traffic.

join robert patrick of scorpion and a zillion other things and aisha as they slice through discovering yourself, losing your roots, finding your way, staying on top, and working with clint. plus robert rises from the ashes stronger than ever before. like, terminator strong.

girl on guy cannot be bargained with. it cannot be reasoned with.

and it absolutely will not stop.

“i had no plan b.”

join criminal minds joe mantegna and aisha as they mull over family, history, growth, transformation, going west, and going home.

plus, joe tells a bunch of killer stories.

girl on guy just adores a great story.

“even if i fall sometimes and it takes me a while to get up, i’ve always gone straight at the monster.”

join travis van winkle of the last ship and aisha as they discuss travel, vision, fear, bravery, destruction, rebirth, dropping out, turning inwards, giving back, and reaching out.

plus travis and aisha share a cup of java, commando.

girl on guy takes her coffee strong and black. like her women. badumpbump.

“i need to forever remember what it’s like to have nothing. that’s the only way I get hungry every day. strip me down to nothing because i never want to be spoiled by what i have.”

join bestselling author, comic book and television writer and presidential confidante brad meltzer and aisha as they whip through enduring rejection, pursuing gratification, remembering your roots, fighting your nature, revisiting revisionism and going back to your old school.

plus brad finally gets the girl.

girl on guy is still waiting to get asked to the dance.

“life is always going to go on. it’s always going to keep moving. enjoy the good, acknowledge the bad, and then… keep moving.”

join comedian jay larson of best bars in america and the crabfeast podcast and aisha as they discuss life, death, comedy, lost childhood, missed parenthood, lifelong secrets, old mistakes and new discoveries. plus jay has an audition go wrong. very, very wrong.

girl on guy says it’s nothing a drink won’t fix.

“my dad was kind of like picasso. when [someone’s] a person of that genius, you don’t get in the way.”

this is the 200th episode of girl on guy.

it is with kelly carlin, the only daughter of one of the greatest american comedians of all time.

she is as thoughtful, funny, smart, bold, honest and unapologetic as you would think the daughter of george carlin would be.

happy 200th birthday, army. you don’t look a day over 199.

“the kind of parasites that I met when I was raising money (for my film) I thought only existed in  in Bret Easton Ellis novels. I lost a little bit of faith in that place. after that I was more fearless, because I was more afraid.”

join daniel gillies of the originals and vampire diaries and aisha as they wade through trying to be cool, suffering for art, why films hold up, and why they break you down. plus they disagree thoroughly on the merits of robocop — both one and two.

girl on guy wants you to put down your weapon. you have twenty seconds to comply.

“I never really fully thought ‘I’m going to be an actor.’ I never expected that. I’ve just kind of been riding the wave.”

join grant gustin of the flash and aisha as they discuss small towns, human resilience, reviving lost arts, blind devotion to craft, the power of self-isolation, fighting a foregone conclusion, and becoming the fastest man alive.

plus grant is a renaissance man. don’t make him tap (dance) on that ass.

girl on guy needs to limber up.

“i’d rather be on the train doing a monologue on the platform for change than be successful in a cubicle. the struggle at least keeps me aware that I’m hungry and alive.”

join andre royo of the wire and empire and aisha as they christen the brand new girl on guy bunker and discuss growing up in the boogie down bronx, theater’s war on television, why you should be nice to your local bouncer, and being a part of the greatest television series of all time. plus, andre reveals what it’s like to be TOO good at your job.

girl on guy’s gonna need a tissue.

this episode was recorded live at LA Podfest on September 20, 2015. aisha was running on four hours of sleep, and horatio had to pee like a racehorse. madness ensued. consider yourself warned.

girl on guy is going to need a minute.

the girl on guy season 4 finale is with rap legend ll cool j.

that is all.

girl on guy is jinglin’ baby.

go head baby.

“if you stop chasing your dreams, you’re already dead.”

join comedian steve mazan and aisha as they wade through loving what you do, pursuing what you love, never giving up, and chasing your dreams against all odds. plus steve shows aisha what relentlessness really means.

girl on guy hates to say it, but you only live once.

but seriously. you only live once.

“[at my first audition] my enthusiasm really heavily outweighed any kind of skill or talent. [but I thought] even if I starve for the rest of my life, and I’m doing theater in the basement of a church, I’m good.”

join kevin durand of the strain, vikings, and dark was the night and aisha as they dig deep and wreck sh*t live from the annual girl on guy fan appreciation event at the us grant (home of the very first comic-con!) at comic con 2015.

it’s all about the army.

“I’m afraid to stay in one place too long, because that will become my existence. I’m a gypsy.”

join milo ventimiglia of the whispers and aisha tyler as they sail through being present, making choices, keeping in motion, chasing growth, obviating regret and aiming high. plus milo is always prepared. maybe too prepared.

girl on guy’s going to need a bandage.

yes, it is magic mike xxl month on girl on guy. and yes, that is a thing.

rejoin adam rodriguez of magic mike xxl and aisha as they talk about changing priorities, increasing scope, simplifying decisions, and not giving a f*ck. plus adam is about to break off a piece of that cookie.

girl on guy welcomes you to the empire.

“i still work hard. i still burn myself every night. i still drink water out of plastic cups. i still sweat. i’m cooking my liver slowly.”

join chef michael voltaggio of ink, ink sack and top chef and aisha as they discuss self-startership, self-sufficiency, self-isolation, self-immolation and self-destruction. plus michael isn’t in this to make friends. he’s here to make food.

girl on guy wants your hands up and utensils down.

join robert lasardo of the new film anarchy parlor as well as a million other things and aisha as they drill through old relations, new families, tough love, the marks of experience, the power of story, and transcending circumstance.

girl on guy wants to tattoo you.

“every day was a new battle. which was exciting, and scary. suddenly, every day had this shape.”

join alison rosen of the carolla show and alison rosen is your new best friend and aisha as they talk pursuit, independence, love, mixed signals, cross purposes, bad plays, unexpected upheaval and rolling with the punches. plus alison is not that girl. not anymore.

girl on guy is over you. seriously.

“you can have your private agenda as far as the kinds of parts you want to play but you’re going to break those rules inevitably.”

join sam rockwell and aisha as they reminisce over plans and their destruction, relative poverty, jedi training, dance moves, life altering experiences, youthful facades and working with walken. plus sam does a dance with a moving truck and lives to tell the tale.

girl on guy is done standing on the side of the wall.

join entourage’s jerry ferrara and aisha as they rip through childhood nerdery, adult emergence, pickup lines, fresh kicks, grand gestures, big moves and bigger dreams. plus jerry is grateful for your offer. he really is.

he just doesn’t want to take it.

girl on guy knows it’s 4:20 somewhere.

join emily bett rickards from arrow and aisha as they discuss intellect, recklessness, independence, self-knowledge, bravery, liberty, terror, tattoos, and saving the world. plus emily dazzles herself into a job, and girl on guy is indeed dazzled.

girl on guy won’t fail this city.

“this is a survivor’s game. it’s not about being on the cover of people at 25… it’s about being in your 50s and still in the game.”

join actor and director tony goldwyn of scandal and aisha as they tear through enthusiastic fans, truculent executives, resistant parents, relentless producers, naked auditions and the power of perseverance. plus tony lives through the family business and survives.

girl on guy is walking on the moon.

join jaime camil of jane the virgin and aisha as they discuss love, loss, music, destiny, the pull of family, the pursuit of dreams, backhanded slaps and the heat of the telenovela. plus jaime stands astride the border like a giant, and gets the best of both worlds.

girl on guy es un poquito excitado.

“When you’re driven for other people you go harder than you do for yourself. Only selfless people understand that.”

join record-setting running back thomas q jones and aisha as they sprint through mine life, working the hoot owl, going hard for others, wanting to win, moving the goal posts, revising expectations and hitting the reset button. plus thomas pulls back the curtain on loyalty in the league.

girl on guy is playing moneyball.

“I had a straight up hillbilly accent… I was terrified to speak to anybody.”

join jesse l. martin of the flash and aisha as they race through a delicious bottle of rye whiskey, and discuss all things theater, broadway, new york, television, film, vision and charm. plus jesse has a terrible experience with whiskey. aisha can relate.

girl on guy needs a moment. and maybe some fresh air.

“Even as a young kid I felt I was meant for something big. I didn’t know what.”

join rock star chris daughtry and aisha as they discuss what it’s like to come all the way from a small town to american idol to the fastest selling debut rock album in history, and everything — delightful and otherwise — that comes after.

girl on guy is a little pitchy, dawg.

“there were many moments in my twenties when I thought, this probably isn’t going to happen — you’re probably going to be a high school teacher for the rest of your life.”

join novelist, screenwriter and game of thrones co-creator david benioff and aisha as they talk about compulsive reading, pathological lies, urban childhoods, rural college years, surmounting rejection, enduring success, and adapting the unadaptable. plus david revisits his childhood in the creepiest way possible, and a self-inflicted wound unfolds live during the show.

girl on guy is ready for winter.

“I spent five days with four infantry soldiers in a bradley fighting vehicle…  the actual usable space is probably that king size bed over there.”

join new york times’ op ed columnist frank bruni as they talk food, books, love, criticism, drama, hate, fear, ideas, war, sex, identity, and death.

plus frank kills a celebrity. figuratively, anyway.

the rumors of girl on guy’s demise are highly premature.

“I literally felt I had walked myself into a prison and closed the door.”

join jessalyn gilsig of vikings, glee, and nip/tuck and aisha as they sail through summering in Ireland, nonverbal communication, blind ambition, on set bravery, off-set kindness, breaking patterns, surrendering to the moment, and not being ready for success.

plus jessalyn abuses the hell out of an answering machine. the machine had it coming.

girl on guy is headed for valhalla.

“if you are able to love, and allow yourself to be loved, then I think you can achieve anything.”

join leland orser of faults, the taken franchise, and a zillion other things and aisha as they talk about being dedicated to art, committed to love, ripe to possibility, impervious to rejection and open to change.

plus leland apologizes to a bird. you had to be there.

girl on guy isn’t quite vegan yet.

“everything good that came out of my career was out of the absolute worst moment… if this is as bad as it’s going to get, I’m not crossing the Edmund Pettus bridge… I’ve still got a computer. Go write some shit.”

join oscar winning screenwriter, novelist, director and showrunner john ridley of american crime and twelve years a slave and aisha as they chop up polymathy, relentlessness, optimism, restraint, prolificacy, intractabilty and radical creative flexibility.

girl on guy will not stop.

join dean winters of oz, 30 rock, and battle creek and aisha as they power through combat, death, rebirth, late life renaissance, truth telling and transformation. plus aisha and dean drink quite a bit of bourbon, and dean gets thrown off an island.

girl on guy is staying out of da club.

“yo. this wednesday you want to f*ck and eat celery, or what?”

join actress, writer and poet amber tamblyn and aisha as they say every naughty thing you’ve ever wanted to say out loud in a public place but couldn’t, obssess about funyons, wonder about angelic climax, rhapsodize over poetry, and create a new body part.

and then they savage tinder.

girl on guy promises to swipe you right.

“as I’m relapsing, michael moore starts telling us a story about why he thinks OJ is innocent.”

join comedian dan st. germain and aisha as they discuss process, takedowns, breakdowns, resurrections, and second lives.

girl on guy may need an adrenaline shot to the heart.

“hip hop was becoming very gangster… it just didn’t feel authentic to me.”

join romany malco of amazon’s mad dogs, weeds, last vegas and the 40 year old virgin and aisha as they discuss self-knowledge, self-respect, self-liberation, self-discipline, self-loathing and self-love.

yes, that last one was definitely a masturbation joke.

girl on guy needs to order some dick products.

“it hasn’t even gotten into double digits in the morning yet, and we are already saying terrible stuff… things we would never be allowed to say on E!”

join comedian and chelsea lately writer sarah colonna and aisha as they dig through what it’s like to write for a hit late night show, living in the writer’s room, competitive dick jokes, surviving open mikes, turning the room, living through hell gigs, and gutting it out in a burger joint.

girl on guy is all guts, no glory.

“every few months I would get jumped at knifepoint. a lot of knives and guns pulled on me.”

join jesse thorn of bullseye; jordan, jesse, go!; judge john hodgman; and maximum fun, as he and aisha go maximum deep into their childhoods in their beloved hometown of san francisco.

this show has art. this show has pathos. this show has terror. this show has burritos.

girl on guy is jonesing for carnitas.

join hardcore horror multi-hyphenate derek lee and aisha as they bite into the anatomy of making a horror film on a miniscule budget, take a stab at what’s fresh and what’s stale about found footage films, slice through the state of the vampire movie, punch through the pain of doing your own stunts, flay open how to make just a few dollars look like a million on screen, and dissect how to live through a headshot.

plus derek gets to fly. seriously.

girl on guy is sick with jealousy.

james byrkit has worked on a lot of big films: the pirates of the carribbean franchise, rango — but when he wanted to make his own movie, he had to go guerilla. he needed to make a small film — shot in just a few days on a microbudget — feel expansive, impactful, elevated and surreal.

the result is an elegant, thoughtful horror movie that relies on urgency, intimacy, improvisation and rock hard science to scare the living shit out of everyone who watches.

if you have ever wanted to make a movie, are curious about how movies are made, or just love freaking movies, this episode is for you.

girl on guy is feeling a bit incoherent.

this show was recorded in front of a live audience at the inaugural maui comedy festival. it is full of revelations, profanity, honesty, sex, death, kindness, laughter and excellence. plus todd and aisha compete over who likes boys more. it may be a tie.

girl on guy really likes guys. like, really.

the end of the year brings many questions. this episode brings many answers.

you have asked. i have answered. not all answers will satisfy.

this is the nature of being human. this is the nature of being alive. this is the nature of the army.

the question is out there, girl on guy, and it’s looking for you.

and it will find you if you want it to.

“my mom would read my papers. first she would get angry, then she would get really sad, then she would just start cackling.”

join the soup and community’s joel mchale and aisha as they sift through the tender tendrils of their historical connection, work through doing the same job, dissect the nature of dyslexia, then insult the sh*t out of each other for an hour and a half. this is the talk soup smash holiday episode you have been waiting for your entire life. you’re welcome.

girl on guy wishes you a very soupy holiday.

“the most challenging thing has been trying to become an honest person in a community that rejects it.”

join the exes’ kristen johnston and aisha as they talk the exquisite beauty of construction, the abject terror of self-destruction, and the transporting joy of resurrection.

girl on guy is just happy to look another lady in the eye.

“i’m a representation of what America is becoming. everybody’s mixed at the end of the day. everybody’s banged someone else from something.”

join steve byrne and aisha as they discuss race, family, comedy, identity, self-image, finding yourself, and finding a way to accept what you find.

plus we try not to be racist, and fail miserably.

girl on guy is perfectly comfortable with sh*t as it is.

“there’s this stigma of soap people being just pretty and dumb. you cannot be on a soap opera and not be incredibly sharp… the amount of dialogue we have to know and say on a daily basis would kill people.”

join actor joshua morrow and aisha as they cut through growing up with a single dad, lifting the workload of daytime television, the unbearable lightness of competition, being in a boy band, trying to remember a lot of sh*t, and the love of zombies.

girl on guy needs gingko biloba.

“I so want to be grown up. And I’m not grown up.”

join walking dead executive producer scott gimple as they discuss trying to be adult, and talk all things comic book, being adult, breaking into television, and raising the walking dead.

girl on guy is protecting its soft parts.

“you gotta be unafraid to suck. if you stay away too long it’ll scare you to death.”

join mike and molly’s billy gardell and aisha as they muse about creative transformation, artistic growth, maintaining hunger, the origin of greatness, working clean, mining pain, and trying to recapture fire.

plus, billy goes back to college. things don’t end well.

girl on guy could use some ibuprofen.

“i come from cholera, motherfucker. being a vampire is fucking awesome.”

join true blood’s kristin bauer van straten and aisha as they bite through freeing yourself from expectation, finding your patch, being and doing, telling stories, living in the present, fighting for life, letting yourself off the hook, and how nothing is ever as you think it will be. plus kristin and aisha try to figure this shit out. it’s a start.

girl on guy is here. now.

“we’re not a fucking band! I’m gonna get killed! i did a movie called A Walk to Remember!”

join salem’s shane west and aisha live from the microsoft gaming lounge at comic-con 2014 as they pound through growing up punk, how babies ruin the band, backpack roles, becoming an extraordinary gentleman, life imitating art imitating life, becoming shanewreck, and getting roofied on the sunset strip.

plus shane invents the best word in the history of the english language: crybating.

you know you’ve done it.

what girl on guy does is secret.

“look, i’m a grown ass pig. don’t fuck with me.”

this episode is with my friend marc maron. it was recorded live at la podfest. it is delightful, and disturbing, much like marc. enjoy.

“i learned very early on it is such a privilege to be on stage, any stage, and how hard people fight to get up there. sometimes you’re up there doing a shitty show, but at least you’re up there, man.”

join the hilarious kristen schaal and aisha as they sprint through drinking old bourbon, taking mad tumbles, bathing in filthy lucre, never holding back, throwing out material, making cartoons, solving for comedy and feeling other people’s shit. not in the way you think.

or maybe entirely the way you think.

girl on guy isn’t a mind reader.

“people would come into the comedy store at night, and I’d be working the cover booth, and they’d be like, ‘wait, aren’t you the guy from punk’d?’ and I’d be like, ‘yeah, yeah.’ ‘are we getting punk’d right now?’ ‘no, no. this is my life. My life is a punk’d.’”

join the league’s steve ranazzisi and aisha as they penetrate vaginal hubris, manger destruction, the vagaries of the draft, the joy of shittalking, crapping your pants, and having sex with a unicorn. plus steve has strawberry blonde hubris. it hasn’t served him particularly well.

girl on guy can’t stop tinkering.

“everybody takes their cue from you. if you’re an asshole, then people have permission to be assholes. if you’re not, if you show up on time, if you come out of your trailer when you’re supposed to, then no one else has permission to do those things.”

join arrow’s steven amell and aisha as they power through the comic-con maelstrom and chop up the power and burden of being number one, fighting walking pneumonia, enduring awkward sex scenes, wearing a junk bag, being devoted to your art, getting cut out of the picture, getting naked for hung, and getting your shit together.

plus stephen vows to never drunk email again, and aisha cosigns fully.

girl on guy will never fail this city.

“People shouldn’t have to choose between committing their entire lives and relationships and sanity to a career in the entertainment industry, versus never acting again. That sucks. That’s a shitty choice.”

join corey stoll of the strain, this is where I leave you and homeland and aisha as they slice through joining the marvel universe, double penetration at comic-con, the minimalism of fincher, the maximalism of del toro, building a house of cards, the freedom of fatality, the terror of worms, cracking up tina fey, and delusional self-confidence. plus aisha has a shitty memory, and corey is nice enough to ignore it.

girl on guy needs gingko biloba.

I kind of learned that I was gay from other kids. I didn’t know what that meant. When you’re that young, you don’t know who you’re attracted to. You don’t know anything. I just knew I was different and I realized by the way other kids treated me that I was gay and that for them, it was not okay.

join modern family’s jesse tyler ferguson and aisha as they dissect being an indoor kid, escaping albuquerque, snaps on the bed-stuy train, gay brunch, playing it straight, working with al pacino, wet porn and barbecue tongs, and bringing marriage equality home. plus jesse gets caught with something down his pants. and haven’t we all.

girl on guy is back. ready your body.

” I never got into it to be rich. Had I still been on the road in Canada, working every weekend, to me that would have been successful. my motivation was never dollars. it was just the love of making people laugh.”

join russell peters and aisha as they kick off the show talking about mature internet porn. things go downhilll from there. plus russell has so many self-inflicted wounds stories we can’t fit them all in.

this is the explosive finale of season three of girl on guy. don’t spend it all in one place.

girl on guy is going to miss you while it’s gone.

“I was catholic but people [would] call me the asian jew… it became a staple.”

join glee’s jenna ushkowitz and aisha as they talk about being bougie, pretend friendships, confusing people, bailing on auditions, achieving above your dream level, deconstructing fame, and that dazzling last name. plus jenna and aisha go to a charity event and then spend their time day drinking.

girl on guy is boozing for the children.

“my thing is to play the guy you love to hate. my job is to offset the hero… that’s just the guy I am meant to be. the villain is the hero of his or her own story.”

join wil wheaton and aisha as they warp through fishy mouth porn, the undisclosed location of greg kinnear, acting heartbreak, the nature of the con, divorcing a show, fighting depression, the end of the world, and releasing the kraken. plus wil has a very unfortunate encounter with his own junk. the resulting beverage is not what you think.

girl on guy is iron born.

“you really have to make a choice. at some point you have to own up to what your life has been and you either choose to make it more than what it’s been or you wallow in where you’re at.”

join adam rodriguez and aisha as they dance through sympathy versus empathy, being at the center of the bubble, surviving baseball, escaping dream killers, choosing happiness, life in Miami, the self-destruction of actors, and the magic of mike. plus adam writes himself into the movie, and then gets written out again.

girl on guy might be standing in your light.

“you can’t offend me. being offended is the action of a powerless person.”

join bert kreischer and aisha as they giggle through coming in hot, having a fragrant liver, losing your creative way, trying to be kind, hate mail from drunks, pooping blood, potty mouthed kids, meditating on race, and becoming vulnerable. plus bert touches his junk until it breaks. and then he touches it again.

girl on guy misses quantum leap.

“we all think we’re better than average attractive, and we all also think we’re more than average intelligent — just above average at least. And that can’t be true.”

join silicon valley’s digital pimp tj miller and aisha as they cocktail through false altruism, crippling insecurity, embracing inadequacy, sleepless nights, the power of industry, pushing past your limitations, diversification, coke and horses, and working with the late tony scott.

plus tj is on the verge, and he’s not sure he wants what’s on the other side.

girl on guy, however, wants a golden boat.

“if you get them pissed off, you get them thinking — you get them emotional — you still got ’em.”

join far cry 4 executive producer dan hay and aisha as they debrief E3 2014, drink stout, and wastrel their way through the world of video game development.

there is beer. there is laughter. there is profanity. there are tears. there is conference heartbreak, simulated espionage, online controversy and crossbow assasination.

there is a glorious, weaponized elephant.

girl on guy just found its spirit animal.

in honor of E3 week this episode is with actor carlos ferro, who plays dominic santiago in the juggernaut franchise gears of war (in addition to lots of other things). he is a dj, a theater-trained actor, a collector and a wild-eyed cat lover. we talk about all things videogame, and all things everything else.

this would be longer but girl on guy is buried in controllers.

“I was so sure that it’s what I was supposed to do and I was actually annoyed when people would tell me my sister was famous, because I’d be like, ‘I’m famous too, you just don’t know it yet’.”

join sara gilbert and aisha as they chat through being born into showbiz, sitting at the feet of giants, drinking the kool-aid, struggling through silence, navigating yale, life on roseanne, and breaking your nature. plus sara goes to great lengths for art, and ends up in the hospital.

girl on guy is all about the work.

“I was on stage and this one girl was pointing and laughing and she goes “your fly is open.” and I looked down and my fly was open. and I zipped it up without even turning around and said, “could tonight get any better?” and two people maybe laughed… and then noise from the kitchen.”

Join comedian and @midnight writer blaine capatch and aisha as they titter through first night destruction, memorizing the classics, hothouse flowers, backseat gaming, sketch writing pre-internet, falling in love with crazy, and relationship euthanasia. plus blaine does something disgusting with his son. legal, but disgusting.

girl on guy admonishes you to trust, but verify.

“a lot of my male comedian friends call me mommy, like ronald reagan calling nancy reagan mommy. I don’t know how it happened.”

join comedian, writer and letterman vet carol leifer and aisha as they discuss how to break hecklers, keeping the bus on the road, pitching absolutely everything, the power of social interaction, and being the easy hang. plus carol shares what seinfeld taught her. it’s not just the yada yada.

relax. girl on guy has everything under control.

“the way that I conquer fear is I don’t conquer it . I never conquer it. It doesn’t go away. I just keep walking. I just keep doing what I’m supposed to do until I realize I’m not afraid anymore.”

join sons of anarchy director and director’s guild of america president paris barclay and aisha as they burn through weaponizing your name, having nothing to count on, making the tile, having too much hope, flunking out of harvard before you begin, explosive parties, shooting LL Cool J, getting derbrided, and being a real life mad man. plus, paris ends his long, illustrious love affair with alcohol, and finds a new love in the process.

girl on guy said knock you out. I’m gonna knock you out.

“i did not think i had cancer. i’m relatively young and healthy, as embarrassing as it is to say, i thought because my chest is so small, i was like, I don’t have cancer. I wasn’t scared… not to spoil the ending, but I had cancer.”

join tig notaro and aisha as they wade through living vicariously through others, flying under the radar, poseur cowboys, alone time, losing direction and finding it again, rejecting reconstructive surgery, telling the whole truth on stage, and what middle america wants to see at eight o’clock on a thursday. plus tig lives through the worst year imaginable, and emerges stronger than ever.

girl on guy is titanium.

“i ended up getting shot in the middle of the street. it was a quarter of an inch away from me being a quadriplegic, and a half inch away from me being dead.”

join malik yoba and aisha as they power through the origins of yoba, becoming nature boy, knowing your future, divine ambition, continuous recalibration, getting new york undercover, fighting for hot food, the acting hall of fame, and the painful origins of compassion. plus malik sees his life flash before him, literally.

girl on guy is continuously recalibrating.

“failure should affect you. it should bring you as much pain as possible.”

join the originals’ charles michael davis and aisha as they sprint through conquering fear, embracing failure, finding yourself, taking a vision quest, maintaining your solitude, freedom above all and the consequences of hydration. plus charles throws everything away, and it all comes right back to him again.

girl on guy is trying to remain calm.

“I knew what I had to do. I knew I could do it. I don’t know where the belief came from. I got to the airport and my mom and my brother and sisters were there, and they were crying and I was just smiling on the inside — I am getting off this island, and I am never coming back.”

join three-time nba champ rick fox and aisha as they dribble through escaping punishment, escaping canada, escaping the bahamas, escaping family, and escaping yourself. plus rick throws into stark, unflinching relief what it feels like to be a pro basketball player. it is everything, and nothing, that you think.

girl on guy is all baller.

this is part one of a special two-part girl on guy. the second half is bonus episode x26, available solely to premium subscribers, and worth every penny. subscribe now at girlonguy.net to get the second episode, plus an additional 11 exclusive episodes per year.

“i would open for sheena easton at the queen elizabeth theater, and the next night I’d be at the drake strip club hosting for the strippers. I had to do a half-hour, and then I had to windex the pole.”

join ryan stiles of whose line is it anyway and aisha as they muddle through masturbating to house of cards, getting fired from golden girls, retrieving a bucket of steam, athleticism in the face of weed, organic assassinations, opening for sheena easton, adorable misanthropy, and drug-addicted squirrels. plus ryan is an international superstar comedy recluse, and all he wants to do is pet puppies.

girl on guy is making this up as we go along.

“integrity is great. but you know what? shut up about it.”

join jake johannsen and aisha as they push through being a control freak, the curse of early success, intimidation in a small town, making a living in obscurity, the poetic wisdom of rocky balboa, self-deprecating party music, the difference between dude junk and lady junk, and being a ninja dick. plus jake gets a colonoscopy, and then screws himself. metaphorically, anyway.

girl on guy is superfly for a white guy.

john cho is hilarious, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be contemplative. despite being a blunt-smoking, cheetah-riding, intergalactic badass on the big screen, in real life john is a dad, and being a father has made him thoughtful and introspective.

being one of just a handful of prominent asian actors can be both elating and isolating. trying to find a balance between making personal creative choices and somehow representing your entire ethnic group can be a big fat pain in the ass.

if anyone can find that balance, it’s john, who navigates the space between blockbuster comedian and tentpole action hero effortlessly. but that doesn’t mean it comes without question or compromise. he may look cool on the outside, but on the inside, john, like the rest of us, is figuring it out as he goes along.

which makes him both incredibly human and wonderfully awesome all at the same time.

join john cho and aisha as they warp drive through killing chickens, being hugged by strangers, difficult furniture, being super asian, choosing when you have no choice, getting trek, surviving your midlife crisis, and figuring out your parents. plus john gets a body part frozen to a metal pole, which we both take very, very seriously.

girl on guy is trying not to be a jazzhole.

i have known bob oschack for years. he is one of the most thoughtful and meticulous writers i know, and a blast in a writer’s room. so much fun, in fact, that I hired him to write on a television pilot i developed years ago. bob is a standup, and a funny one, but he excels at writing, and now writes for craig ferguson on the late late show. bob understands the complexities of phrasing and word choice, and knows how subtle changes can completely alter the nature of a comedy bit. and while he has spent years on stage honing that talent, bob prefers to labor behind the scenes.

that is why it is so ironic that one of his few forays back front of the camera went so completely awry. and because bob prefers to labor in shadows, that single, explosive, comedic misstep has marked and followed him for years. this is a story about how social media can be a tool for both fame and infamy, and how rejecting it can both free you and imprison you at the same time.

join late late show writer bob oschack and aisha as they they barrel through workplace drinking, teasing dicaprio, the heartbreak of idols, consistent villainy, conquering fear, the horror of the open mike, getting out of memphis, taking the swing, and caring for your lane. plus bob is driven from the internet forever, which in internet years, is a mighty long time.

girl on guy is going to do this one analog.

dave anthony was furious.

for years, that rage fueled his comedy. it infused everything he did: his family, his art, his relationships, his career. it was the fire and the engine that drove them all forward.

and ultimately, burned them all down.

after every bridge was cinders and ash, and dave had run out of cities to burn, he realized he had to make a change. the hard-won result is a comedian who is funnier and more prolific than ever before, with multiple podcasts, a new comedy album and successful television shows under his belt, along with a burgeoning podcast festival that grows in scope and success every year.

dave anthony found a way to unpack his rage and put it away. and now he only brings it out for special occasions.

like children’s parties.

join comedian dave anthony of walking the room and aisha as they burn through the solitary creative life of comics, avoiding leadership, resenting employees, absentee parenting, working clean, blowing up the club, walking the room, old people versus technology, and righting the wrongs of your childhood.

plus dave escapes the drug capital of the world, and then escapes himself.

girl on guy is feeling much better now, thank you.

paul gilmartin is honest. remarkably so. honest about his drinking. honest about his struggle with depression. honest about his bouts of suicidal ideation.

and you would think, considering the subject matter, that paul would be kind of a bummer to be around.

miraculously, he isn’t. paul is a comedian, a man who made his living making other people laugh while simultaneously struggling to wrestle his darkest impulses to the ground. at his most successful, he was also his most depressed, and also his most self-medicated.

but out of that darkness came an idea — a way to give voice to that darkness, and bring it into the light. paul started a podcast about mental health, sobriety, and honesty, called the mental illness happy hour — a place where he, and others, could tell the truth about the darkest parts of themselves and feel at home. he lived through, and continues to triumph over, depression and addiction. and somehow he makes it all hilarious.

paul gilmartin is funny, but he also tells the truth. which is usually the most hilarious thing of all.

join comedian paul gilmartin and aisha as they grapple with night terrors, wrestling bears, crappy reincarnation, checking the toilet, evil obituaries, emotional incest, tumorous parents, getting your medication right, cutting out your parents and losing respect for sunset boulevard. plus paul and aisha overdose on chocolate. or something like that.

girl on guy has a tummy ache.

you know scott foley. you have known him for years. he has been on so many of your favorite shows that you have lost count. even now, despite yourself, you love scott foley. his recent, explosive resurgence on tv’s juggernaut scandal notwithstanding, scott foley has been a huge television star for a long, long time.

but that doesn’t mean scott’s path wasn’t hard fought nor his success hard won. his biggest break may have been on a charming show about adorable, brooding, lovestruck college kids, but his own youth was anything but charmed.

scott was a renegade who lost his mother as a teen, dropped out of school, fought, drank, smoked, and did everything he could to burn the world down around himself.  but when he discovered acting, scott finally found a place to put all that intensity. and the fire that had fueled his self-destruction became the engine that drove him relentlessly forward. and onto one hit television show after another.

you may find scott foley to be thoughtful, articulate, measured and contemplative, but underneath all that cool, his engine runs extremely hot. it’s just that now all that fire has somewhere to go.

join scandal’s scott foley and aisha as they burn through teenage rebellion, battling your maker, rejecting structure, crapping money, building momentum, killing feelings, burning it all down, and surviving the j. plus scott throws it all away and then has his dreams dashed by donkeys.

girl on guy says smoke ‘em if you got em.

mehcad brooks is not just a pretty face. in fact, at one point in his life, he wasn’t a pretty face at all.

born premature, mehcad developed slowly and late. he was tiny, smaller than all the other kids his age. he needed braces to walk. doctors told him he would always struggle to get around, and that he would never run.

mehcad didn’t buy a word of it. he dreamt of being an athlete, and he never accepted limitations, from himself or from others. working harder than everyone else, never doubting himself, mehcad chased what he wanted. and eventually, his body caught up with his dreams.

mehcad walked, then he ran. he even refused to stay little. in his teens, mechad sprouted several feet in just a few years, growing so fast in fact, that he was in constant, excruciating pain.

but even that didn’t slow him down. mehcad kept going, eventually becoming an athlete so competitive he was offered scholarships at major universities. he turned an athletic career into a modeling career, and a modeling career into an acting career, where he portrayed, among other things, a pro football player. quite convincingly.

mehcad wasn’t going to let a few naysayers tell him what he could be or how far he could go. first he walked. then he ran. then he took off sprinting, and he never looked back.

run, mehcad. run.

join mehcad brooks of true blood and necessary roughness and aisha as they sprint through starting small, living through tragedy, the illusion of control, quantum physics, being eggs, learning how to read, loving what you do and escaping death. plus mehcad visits the other side and returns to tell about it.

girl on guy is living through this.

andrew rannells is a great storyteller.

though somehow it feels like he shouldn’t be. he’s too sweet. too genuine. too, well, midwestern.

but despite his wholesome ruddy-faced omaha roots, andrew spits hot fire. he’s acerbic, quick-witted, dryly sarcastic, and unflinchingly barbed. and he’s never more dry or barbed than when he’s talking about himself.

andrew’s story is like many others: loved theater as a child, moved  from nebraska to new york city to study theater, dropped out of college to become a star. but unlike other stories, this one doesn’t end with andrew smoking hand rolled cigarettes under a bridge. it ends (well, begins, actually) with andrew being cast in one of the biggest broadway blockbusters of all time — a juggernaut of a production in which he was one of the original cast — the book of mormon.

and that is the story of how a sweet churchgoing guy from the midwest, who dreamed of being a performer, moved to new york, got his big break, and stood on stage every night singing some of the filthiest lyrics ever written into the faces of delighted theatergoers, with a huge shit-eating grin on his face, and an even huger shit-eating grin in his heart.

andrew rannells helped make book of mormon the musical juggernaut it is today. maybe someone needs to write a book about him.

join andrew rannells of girls and book of mormon and aisha as they dance through an omaha childhood, halfhearted catholicism, shaky confessions, bombing at the apollo, being the cut, bullshit hollywood meetings and the seductive power of jake ryan. plus andrew does one of the creepiest things ever, and no one can really blame him.

girl on guy wants to run its fingers through your hair.

misha collins is a smart fella. artsy. thoughtful. a poet. articulate. reflective. he even reads n’ shit.

too bad (for him, not for us) he is also a major heartthrob on the cw hit supernatural, a testosterone-fueled series about demon hunters that most people would dismiss as that show with the hot guys on that network that teens watch.

but misha, and the show, are so much more than that. the show itself is smart, considered, and in it’s ninth season now, stronger than ever. and misha, now a bona fide star on a irrefutable hit, has to deal with all that fame.

luckily (for him, and for us) he is so down to earth, self-effacing, and earnestly, unflaggingly, unimpressed.

misha loves what he does, and he does it well, but it doesn’t define him. he knows he’s lucky to be part of a phenomenon. and luckiest of all, it hasn’t changed him one bit.

join misha collins of supernatural and aisha as they kick around angel sex, little bear, dennis hopper’s sandwich of choice, how he got that name, forlorn trim, pot-smuggling toddlers, getting drunk on junk food, visiting skywalker, and working with a wet leg. plus misha is the worst person to sit next to on a plane. the worst.

girl on guy is hitting the call button.

constance zimmer is a rarity in hollywood; a working actress who really works. a lot.

constance zimmer has been on what seems like every tv show ever. yes, that is an exaggeration. however, a cursory view of her imdb page reveals that she has done more shows than i can remember. more shows than i can list here. more shows than even she herself can recall. constance zimmer needs the internet to remind her of all the work she has done. constance zimmer is always working.

and while her life may seem charmed, it most certainly is not. the life of a working actor — a smart, competitive, talented, working actor — is much like yours. long periods of trial, uncertainty and self-doubt, punctuated by brief moments of creative and personal transcendence.

oh, and carpool and grocery shopping and pta meetings and traffic and shit like that.

constance zimmer is incredibly talented, unbelievably hardworking, relentlessly driven, and wildly down to earth.

you don’t know constance zimmer, but you know her. and after you listen to this show, you’ll know her even better.

join constance zimmer of netflix’s house of cards (returning february 14) and hbo’s the newsroom and aisha as they rip through the nature of marriage, rich people in newport, making it in a bmw, the invention of french bread pizza, hemp seed nightmares, angry high school letters, winging it at julliart, being a cable darling, and staying wildly busy. plus we have a long and pornographic conversation about hostess fruit pies.

girl on guy is about to get all up in that fruit filling.

all his life, jason somerville has wanted to be the best. incredibly competitive, relentlessly one-pointed, blindingly driven, he became one of the youngest online poker earners, turning a “free” five dollars in to $100,000 before he was eighteen years old.

jason has gone after everything he has wanted with a focus and intensity so hot, that at one point, it almost killed him. and when he converted his online play to the real world card table, he was unstoppable.

jason loved poker, loved playing, loved competing, loved winning. he gathered information about others, dissecting their behavior, drawing out their deepest secrets and intentions, and using that information to beat them at the card table.

but the one secret he kept from others was the one that eventually set him free.

join poker pro jason somerville and aisha as they bluff through the worst road trip ever, family game night smack downs, growing the dojo, turning five bucks into a fortune, losing $40K in a single day, false tells, being homebound, opportunity versus motive, living in a cage, and gathering infinite information. plus jason tells aisha about the best day of his life, and we get some consensus on moving the goal posts.

girl on guy’s got a handle on your tell.

romeo and juliet. oz. lost. matrix. sons of anarchy. best man holiday. zero dark thirty.

harold perrineau has done all of the awesome things. you have seen him in something you have loved, and more likely, in all of the things you have loved. a dancer, a shakespearean actor, a singer, a violinist — harold is classically trained and extraordinarily accomplished.

but all that classical training wasn’t always a good thing. a self-described “little kid” who grew up in the projects, carrying a violin case didn’t do much for his street cred. harold was skinny, musical, tiny, weird. he always felt like an outsider, an oddity, looking to find his place in a world, and later a business, that constantly seeks to categorize, define, stereotype, and isolate.

he resisted categorization, fighting to be recognized for who he was rather than who others wanted him to be.  eventually that oddity that confounded others, including his family, became the very thing that made him special. and once he started working, the floodgates opened. harold has finally made peace with being the weird kid. what happens next is up to him.

join harold perrineau and aisha as they talk about being the golden child, discovering you’re black, druggy uncles, loving the projects, confounding your parents, surprising yourself, risky art, trouble in mexico, and jacking into the matrix. plus harold hates pudding. you must listen to truly understand.

girl on guy is stoked about the red pill.

rob corddry is hilarious.

he is funny, smart and quick. and most of all, he is nice.

he loves imaginary grapes and hockey fight porn. he is a terrible neighbor.

rob corddry has a mind like water. rob corddry is at inbox zero.

you love rob corddry. you do not know why, but you do. deeply.

even more than that, you would love to be rob corddry.

you cannot be rob corddry. but you can listen to this show.

welcome to 2014. i bid you happy new year.

back by popular demand, it’s the second annual awesome listener question show!

i answer your burning questions, read your letters, give shaky advice, dole out admonishments, and round up the year with a bang.

it’s uncensored, it’s supersized, and it’s all yours.

happy new year!

adam shankman is a hustler. in the best sense possible.

he is ambitious and hardworking. motivated. driven. adam makes, and exploits, his own luck. when opportunities present, adam jumps in, doubts and the devil and a lack of previous experience be utterly and completely damned.

it is that jet-fueled work ethic that took adam from dancer, to choreographer, to producer, to incredibly successful film director in what might seem to an outsider to be a meteoric shot.

but that ascent was hard-won, and would have been impossible without his steel-grit hustle. a hustle which inevitably brought stumbles and bruises — wounds both exterior and self-inflicted — including an early bout with drug use that haunts adam to this day.

no matter. adam isn’t just a hustler. he’s a fighter. he is tough, he is motivated, and he is relentless.

and contrary to what anyone may think, adam is just getting started.

join film director and dance maven adam shankman as they stomp through meeting rick james, toddler identity crises, evil therapists, teenage addiction, learning from falling down, fleeing your sexuality, filthy film sets, the joy of blowing shit up, nuclear halos of sadness, and making the dewan-tatum baby. plus adam tries to jump from a speeding car, and we say goodbye to cory monteith.

girl on guy thinks it can dance.

ever since he was a kid, kii arens was obsessed with fonts. maybe it was the icy midwestern childhood. maybe it was that he was a stringy little thing that everyone called “bird”. whatever the reason he loved fonts. he was an odd little kid.

kii also loved rock and roll. undaunted and passionate, kii threw himself into the music world without restraint: playing in an alt rock band, becoming a dj, reinventing himself as a rapper, working with prince, and directing music videos.

but kii really hit his stride when he was able to take his love of fonts and his love of rock and roll and violently smash them together. the result has been a dazzling body of art created for some of the biggest musical artists in the world.

kii arens makes devastating rock posters. he’s done art for bands like devo, queens of the stone age, franz ferdinand, alice in chains, muse, band of skulls, and death cab for cutie. he also directs music videos, creates album covers, and generally makes killer art all freaking day long.

kii arens is obsessed with fonts and rock and roll, and he can’t stop.

join rock artist kii arens and aisha as they churn through the pussy riot dilemma, treacherous ice, the krofft feud, art snobbery, farmland murders, making a logo, rebooting woodstock, idea theft, and following your gut. plus kii makes his film debut in graffiti bridge, and gets upbraided by prince himself.

girl on guy is bathing in the purple rain.

Dan Savage does not care what you think.

He is not concerned with social mores, cultural propriety, or the delicate rules of polite conversation. Dan Savage is here to tell the truth. The truth about sex, homophobia, bullying and matrimony. About religion and parenting and infidelity and fetishism and blow jobs.

Yes, the truth about blow jobs.

Dan Savage has a savage mouth and he uses it as a weapon. Dan does not care if your feelings are hurt. He has pissed off everyone from the Catholic Church to the gay community and everyone in between. He will say exactly what he thinks, and occasionally what he doesn’t think, to provoke a response.

Dan Savage is a warrior for freedom. Personal freedom. Sexual freedom. Intellectual freedom. And yes, the freedom to get, or give, blow jobs. Or, all of the above.

If that’s your thing.

join columnist, author and activist dan savage and aisha has they rage about sucking it up for jesus, being hot for leif garett, honoring thy father and mother, sympathy for ted haggard, redefining marital success, double bagging it, honesty versus kindness, and obliterating the center. plus dan says exactly the wrong thing at the right time, every time.

girl on guy is avoiding dishonest necrophiliacs.

owen benjamin isn’t afraid to have feelings. he grew up the freakishly tall, piano-playing son of weird, artsy professorial parents in a small, parochial town. fat, weird, nerdy, musical — owen was such a target of bullies that he once got shot in the eye by asshole kids. even the injury became the target of an entirely new round of bullying. finally owen realized the way to get on top was to be funny. and he found a unique outlet at the county renaissance faire, where he finally found his weapon — humor. and finally, the fat weird brunt of everybody’s jokes was slamming people to their faces in broad daylight and getting blow jobs in corn fields.

owen figured out who he was, and where he wanted to be. and he hasn’t looked back since.

nothing like alfresco fellatio to give your life a purpose.

join sullivan and son’s owen benjamin and aisha as they joust through life on the road, low expectations, getting jumped at the dance, courting the back of the room, the emptiness inside, comedy making you sad, being a good drunk, sexualizing grandmothers, contemplating your mortality, and rebooting your life. plus owen plays bach and talks about his dick, and aisha ruins breaking bad.

girl on guy wants to high five you till it hurts.

cheyenne jackson is born again. but not in the way that you think.

raised in a deeply conservative, evangelical family, cheyenne lived a childhood in shadows. he grew up in a small town, where everyone knew each other, in a fundamentalist family where interaction with the outside world was limited and controlled. extremely tall and handsome, cheyenne stood out. but he still found a way to hide. hide who he was, how he felt, what he believed, whom he was attracted to.

but at eighteen, cheyenne was reborn. depressed and isolated, he came to the stark realization that he wasn’t who his parents wanted him to be, that he didn’t believe what they had raised him to believe, and that everything he thought he had known up to that point was no longer true. he was faced with a choice: continue to live as the old cheyenne, lying to the world and to himself, or start living the truth — to shed his old shadow life, and live a new one in the light.

on that day, the old cheyenne died. and a brand new cheyenne was born.

cheyenne jackson is a phoenix. he has emerged from ashes more than once. and he continues to rise.

join cheyenne and aisha as they discuss nazi neighbors, mormon handjobs, gifts of the spirit, joining the circus, terrible gaydar, moving to babylon, batting booze cleanup, getting clarity, being gentle and strong, and burning down your life. plus aisha makes uncomfortable eye contact and cheyenne has a secular rumspringa.

girl on guy has an adorable girl boner.

you can’t help but like matt mira.

he knows more about computers than you. he knows more about podcasting than you. he knows way more about star trek than you.

somehow, all that makes him a delight. a fixture on chris hardwick’s nerdist podcast since its inception, matt is quick, funny, opinionated, knowledgeable, and as powerful in film nerdery as anyone you have ever met. since its inception, the nerdist podcast has grown into an empire, a veritable podcasting deathstar with tentacles across media, and as it has, so has mira’s own reach. he now hosts a second podcast, his own branded comedy show, and was the gadget pr0n correspondent on Attack of the Show until G4’s untimely demise.

and he knows a shitload about star trek.

join the nerdist’s matt mira and aisha as they haze aisha’s assistant and discuss jobs in landscaping, hipster glassware, building models, frakes’ beard, hollywood’s lack of vision, old television, the math of the a-team, making the pro-you decision, and being a self-starter.

plus matt and aisha go deep into darkness, then matt lives like a baller for a painfully short amount of time.

girl on guy says kirk went dick first.

dan bucatinsky is having a moment.

it may feel like an overnight moment, like a just been discovered moment, like a where’d this guy come from and aren’t we so smart for finding him kind of moment.

but this moment has been a long time coming.

dan has been doing brilliant, surprising, delightful work for a long time, not just as an actor, but as a television writer, producer, author and director. he should be a household name already. but sometimes it takes the right project, the right fit, the right alignment of planets, to give an artist a chance to show the world what they can do.

the role of james novak, on scandal, has been that role. first it gave the world a taste of what a smart, bold, fearless actor dan was.

and then it got him an emmy.

dan’s been doing killer work for quite a long time now. and finally, he’s getting the recognition he deserves.

join scandal’s dan bucatinsky and aisha as they debate being post racial, television humjobs, not apologizing for torture, obeying the animal mind, the management of fear, marital murder threats, giving yourself permission to be creative, having to come out repeatedly and web therapy. plus dan and aisha reminisce about their good old days, and dan’s kid makes him black out.

girl on guy is a gladiator.

david wain is a big time fancy pants movie director.

he’ll deny this, but it’s true.

also true: david was a member of the supernova 90s sketch group the state, and went on to co-found the dark fringe sketch group stella,  direct wet hot american summer and the ten, write and direct adult swim’s children’s hospital, and do a zillion other very cool funny indie-type things. david is very alternative. david is very fringe.

but try as he might, david can’t obscure the fact that he’s directed two huge, successful studio films — role models and wanderlust — movies full of big fat stars and made big fat money. despite his gritty roots and indie street cred, his guerrilla film start and internet series oeuvre, david wain is wildly successful.

he’ll just have to learn to live with it.

join director, writer and actor david wain and aisha as they amble through uncontrollable somnolence, the cocksureness of youth, sterilizing the yak, the implosion of the state, comedy for gracious living, the mad tv debacle, liars with money, resisting panic and purchasing your own work. plus david has an existential crisis and aisha does everything david tells her to.

girl on guy wants to be your prefriend.

gabby reece has always stood out.

the only tall girl. the only blond girl. the unsaved girl at the christian school, the white girl on the island, the big girl in the middle. she’s always known what it was like to feel different, to wish you could blend in, match, disappear.

but the other side of standing out, of people seeing you as different, is that try as you might, you can’t blend in. when you’re already singular, remarkable, other, there’s nothing keeping you from being extraordinary, superlative, special. when others have no expectations of you, you don’t have to live up to any one’s expectations but your own.

gabby went from being a wayward partying teen to a fashion model to a record-setting college athlete, then on to become one of the most recognized professional volleyball players in the world, and finally a powerhouse global fitness brand. along the way she has never shied away from controversy or challenge, never paused, never apologized.

what was once a handicap — being unusual — has become her calling card.

gabby reece has always stood out. at first she couldn’t help it. now, she wouldn’t have it any other way.

join powerhouse athlete gabby reece and aisha as they smash through training dolphins in mexico city, horrifying height realizations, drinking rum in the islands, shacking up with the principal, outselling michael jordan, the controversy of submission, and funny times in the waffle house parking lot. plus aisha and gabby reflect on being big bitches, and gabby is living in the movie point break.

girl on guy is done with sketchy guys.

nick kroll is hilarious. that is all you need know about that.

he is on an FX show called the league, and a comedy central show called kroll show (née the nick show kroll, which is a delightful mouthful, hilarious, and confusing besides, much like nick.) he has been on a lot of other tv shows. this is neither here nor there.

nick kroll is a pinch hitter. a laugh ninja. a comedic surgical strike. he is irrefutably hilarious and undeniably consistent. when nick shows up, comedy shit happens.

nick shows up, and nick delivers. that is all you know, and all you ever need know.

join nick kroll of the league and kroll show and aisha live at the la podfest as they bleat about pitching harrison ford, fetishizing jews, playing a caveman, weiner camels, living in richchester, black people on friends, and words that start with m.

plus nick and aisha get drunk and ignore the audience, nick makes one of the most disgusting dick jokes ever, and aisha can’t stop laughing at it.

girl on guy is going to take a pass on the spicy mayonnaise.

greg grunberg is that guy.

you don’t know how you know him, but you know you know him. you haven’t just seen him in something, you’ve seen him in everything.

a litany of hit prime-time shows. countless commercials. jj abrams blockbusters. playing guitar in that band from tv. he’s a hero, a g-man, a roommate, a best friend. greg grunberg is everywhere.

greg is also a philanthropist, an activist, a guy who has tirelessly put his money and his time where his mouth is, working to educate people about epilepsy, a disease that afflicts his son. he’s on a relentless mission to help people understand epilepsy, to talk about it, and ultimately, to end it. and he and his band have raised millions of dollars to make that happen.

yeah. greg grunberg is that guy.

join greg grunberg and aisha as they blow through growing up bel air adjacent, driving joel silver, f-bombing auditions, transactional respect, double fisting network shows, winning the internet, cannabis therapy, having a monster best friend, escaping a big ass spider, and rocking with the band from tv. plus greg helps demystify epilepsy, and aisha pronounces machete really hard.

girl on guy needs a really big can of bug spray.

jared padalecki first appeared on girl on guy for a truncated, beer fueled, yet thoroughly enjoyable conversation back on episode 62. and somehow, much like the T2000, aisha knew he’d eventually be back. so for the first annual girl on guy listener appreciation event at comic-con 2013, aisha invited jared to return for another confab — this time with the fans. they settled in with drinks again, and recorded a sequel — bigger, better, and more padalecki than ever.

this is padalecki 2: the padaleckalypse.

(okay, a bit dramatic, but this is comic-con. grown adults are walking around dressed like voltron.)

join supernatural’s jared padalecki and aisha along with of a gathering of the army at comic-con as they rant about sweating antihistamine, new york minutes, rejecting fame, geriatric zombies, selective disasters, entering the fishbowl, homoerotic fan art, nightmare casting directors, the ninth season of supernatural, the lonely concept of bros before hoes, and ceiling pipe pull-ups. plus jared pulls a ballsy he-man on the eurostar.

girl on guy promises that unlike terminator 2, the sequel is even better than the original.

 — photo at left courtesy of stardust and melancholy

greg miller peaked early.

his entire life he only wanted to do one thing: write about video games. he knew it from the time he was a kid, and once he pointed his rocket in that direction, greg never wavered. he went to journalism school. endured the suspicion of classmates and the derision of colleagues. weathered serial rejection. and kept on going.

and at 23 years old, after an almost pathological pursuit of a position at the country’s premiere gaming network, ign, he finally, incredibly, got just what he wanted. his dream of being a game reviewer had come true. at an alarmingly young age, greg had hit his bullseye.

but getting there would cost him. a marriage. stability. family. and he would eventually have to fight through a cancer diagnosis to keep his hands around his dream. no matter. to his delight and disbelief, greg was doing the one thing he had wanted to do since he was a kid. there was no way he could stop.

greg miller peaked early. so he moved the peak, and then attacked it all over again.

join ign’s greg miller and aisha as they walkthrough getting your dream job, wearing your own swag, being persistent, internet hypocrisy, not being that guy, moving your goalposts, comment responsibility, giving the audience everything, oreo porn, and making a movie calzone. plus greg explains why PC gamers are so rabid, and aisha still doesn’t get it.

girl on guy really wants a golden birthday cake.

in a world that seems alternately deeply ambivalent and wildly unhinged, josh radnor has made a radical decision. josh has chosen to focus on happiness.

you might think he’d have enough in his life to make him plenty happy. one of the biggest hit comedies ever. a burgeoning career as a director. international fame, and the notoriety, adulation, and wealth that go along with it.

none of that matters to josh. what he really wants to do is be kind. to tell stories that celebrate heroism. to be a force for good in a world that prizes possessions over positivity, self-promotion over selflessness, conflict over kindness. josh doesn’t care about keeping up with kardashians. josh doesn’t care about keeping up with anyone.  he’s decided to reject the race altogether.

is he idealistic? ingenuous? naive even?

maybe so.

but is any of that so wrong?

josh takes the pursuit of happiness very seriously. and that pursuit may be the only race that counts.

join actor-slash-director-slash-jedi of kindness josh radnor and aisha as they… wait for it… hug it out over the power of words, avoiding the news, milk with dinner, funereal liars, doing one thing at a time, radical acceptance, the nature of suffering, and girls that make you feel something. plus aisha sets a record for gleeful swearing, and josh makes some bad choices in a small town.

girl on guy is super sorry about your mom’s car.

rock royalty.

adrenaline junkie.

recovering addict.

enfant terrible.

husband.

father.

producer.

film maker.

clean and sober.

completely misunderstood.

jack osbourne has seen more, done more, lived through more and survived more than most of us could imagine in even our wildest rock-fueled fantasies. and somehow he’s managed to step out from the bullet train ride of his own childhood focused, determined, driven, and devastatingly well-adjusted.

if you thought you knew jack from the osbournes, the tabloids, or your own hazy half-baked assumptions, well, you don’t know jack.

join rock prince jack osbourne and aisha as they go off the rails over the cocaine 80s, fucked up chicken, automobile somnolence, offstage ambivalence, onstage rage, hiding your prescriptions, hanging with incubus, surviving a rock star father, running for your life, the origins of the osbournes, telling the whole truth, and ozzy’s jar of shadows.

plus jack needs a good hosing down, and he and aisha come up with the best name for flavored booze, ever.

girl on guy is gonna need a change of clothes.

girl on guy is on hiatus until september 17 so aisha can climb trees, wrestle puppies, eat ice cream, punch druids, and make a hammock out of the delicate hairs plucked from the necks of hummingbirds. oh, and also drink beer and play videogames and sleep and stuff.

in the meantime, get her new book ‘self-inflicted wounds,’ available in hardcover, ebook and audiobook; watch her every tuesday on the brand new whose line is it anyway? tuesdays on the cw; see her every day on the talk on cbs; enjoy GOG episodes you haven’t listened to yet and re-listen to ones you have; and visit girlonguy.net to get your premium subscription and enjoy exclusive episodes of girl on guy that are only available to very special people like you.

this hiatus will be over so quickly you won’t even remember it happened — much like college, or the ufc 157 rousey/carmouche fight.

armbar!

levar burton was going to be a priest, because he wanted to make an impact.

proof of his own philosophy that you have to be flexible and open to what’s in front of you, he eventually decided to leave seminary school to explore acting. and while studying theater at USC, he went on his very first audition, for a little television miniseries called roots.

it was his first audition. he got the job. and his life was instantly, and irrevocably, changed forever.

roots remains one of the biggest television events of all times, and didn’t just make an indelible impact on television, but on race relations in the united states. levar went on to join pbs’ reading rainbow, which made an indelible impact on children’s literacy in america. and then he went on to play geordi laforge on the reboot of star trek, which launched innumerable films and trek spinoffs, making an indelible impact on sci-fi geeks and nerds everywhere. and from directing television to launching the digital reboot of the reading rainbow brand, he continues to impact lives constantly.

levar burton has never had a plan. but things have always worked out. and while he never became a priest, he’s been preaching to a much larger congregation than he ever could have hoped, for a very long time now.

he’s just getting started.

join intergalactic groundbreaker levar burton and aisha as they boldly explore being an army brat, finding heroes, exiting the seminary, being an overachiever, escaping college, surviving fame, rebooting trek, going to directing school and relaunching the rainbow. plus levar teaches millions of kids to read and still has time to act.

butterfly in the sky, girl on guy can go twice as high.

chali 2na is always swimming.

he holds the unique advantage of being a part of not one, but two seminal hip-hop groups that burst onto the scene in los angeles in the late 90s: ozomatli, a delirium-making mashup of latin influenced hip-hop and rock and roll, and jurassic 5, a unified team of mcs joined by two extraordinary djs who spit rhymes in perfect unison, creating hip-hop’s very own verbal version of a wall of sound. he moved between the two seamlessly, doing all he could, whenever he could. making as much art as possible.

perhaps the key to chali’s prolificness is his origin story: a chaotic childhood surrounded by fear and madness, a narrow escape to the streets of los angeles, and a second rebirth in the crucible of art that is hollywood. chali has always been a hustler, an observer, a jack of all trades, doing all he can — by his very own account,  a painter who also happens to rap. that life has brought him extraordinary satisfaction and extraordinary pain, including a near death experience that unfolded while he was fast asleep.

chali has seen a lot, but one thing he never lost sight of is the truth. and now that J5 is reunited and touring again, that truth is even more evident: art saved his life once before, and it will save it again.

join mc chali 2na of jurassic 5 and aisha as they dig through escaping madness, the refuge of comic books, early birds and their worms, painting outside the lines, meeting hollywood royalty, the sting of brutal honesty, curating your audience, the half-life of a band, playing punk audiences, and getting on magazine covers. plus hip hop saves chali’s life, and hip hop almost ends it.

girl on guy finish first.

kumail nanjiani is the most all-american guy ever. went to college in iowa. loves video games. tweets incessantly. married a nice redheaded southern girl. can’t get his printer to work.

but kumail was born and raised in pakistan. he didn’t come to the united states until he was 18 years old.

kumail was raised in a muslim country where perspectives on world affairs and american culture were almost a complete inverse of our own, where western villains were domestic heroes, nuclear war with india loomed large, and where he never touched or interacted with a woman who wasn’t a blood relative until he was an adult. at the same time, he spent his childhood bingeing on mad magazine and baywatch episodes, dreaming of america, a place where women all sprinted from place to place in slow motion, their hair swaying in the breeze, their lovely bits jiggling.

and then kumail moved to the american midwest and discovered the united states was not all jiggly blondes in red bathing suits. despite the initial disappointment, kumail had found his home, eventually becoming a comedian whose take on american culture is somehow both singularly unique and familiarly homegrown.

join kumail nanjiani of the indoor kids and the new comedy central special beta male and aisha as they dig through difficult names, how google is stalking you, the virus of bad information, the twitter pit of unfounded rage, being into weird meat, disproportionate assured destruction, mad magazine, personal freedoms, ancient beefs, all of the video games ever, and being your own brown person. plus kumail really likes shaking hands, and aisha is cut out of bioshock infinite.

girl on guy would like to shake your hand. like, a lot.

this is girl on guy 101.

the guest is chris rock.

that is all.

jeri ryan has absolutely no right to be as nice as she is.

jeri is tall. talented. smart. accomplished. driven. drop dead gorgeous. and has been on more hot tv shows than can be listed here.

by all metrics, she should be impossible to be around.

instead, jeri is shockingly lovely. quick to laugh, at herself as well as others. self-possessed. humble. funny. intellectually curious. utterly no-bullshit. and still, of course, drop dead gorgeous.

all of which make her insufferably adorable, impossibly delightful, and much like the borg,  frustratingly irresistible.

relinquish your struggles. resistance is futile.

come celebrate girl on guy’s 100th episode with brilliant intergalactic fox jeri ryan and aisha for a very special girl on girl 100th episode as they warp speed through multilingualism and francophilia, the horrors of dissection, the mystique of hollywood, saying no to voyager, becoming human, droopy bras, chronic dehydration, and old guys and hookers. plus jeri has a serious case of starstruckism, and aisha is gearing up for a monster july.

girl on guy  will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.

chef edward lee’s story is a classic american one.

the son of hardworking immigrants. raised in brooklyn. on the grind his entire life. worked his way through school while pulling long hours in the kitchen of the family diner. and then finally, after college, realized that his parents’ dream, the one of him becoming a lawyer, was not his own.

so he started over. not in culinary school, not in the hallowed cuisines of Paris, but by walking into a restaurant on the lower east side and asking for a job. he washed lettuce. he washed dishes. he worked his ass off, and made himself indispensable. edward slowly worked his way to the top. and when he got there, he left it all behind.

edward made the most unlikely move ever, from manhattan to kentucky, bringing his northern roots and modern sensibilities to bear on everything unique and delicious about the south. and now, with two popular restaurants, a hot-streak run on top chef, and a new cookbook under his belt, edward is living a new story — one part korean, one part southern, one part bourbon-loving badass — a story that is wholly and singularly american.

join southern gentleman chef edward lee and aisha as they slice through bourbon collecting, the half-life of restaurants, the chemistry of bread, escaping top chef, proving yourself in the kitchen, defying convention, and giving the people what they didn’t know they wanted. plus ed’s parents spend his college fund on a diner.

girl on guy wants a julep.

michael kosta didn’t know it, but he’d been training to be a comedian his entire life.

he thought he was going to be a professional tennis player. and he actually became one. from the time he held his first racket as a toddler, he spent long grueling hours training on the court, and innumerably bleak hours waiting off of it. in hotel rooms. on planes. in locker rooms. in countless, unnamed cities, one tournament blurring into the next.

every once in a while, these far flung sojourns resulted in a win. but more often than not, like most athletes on the pro tennis circuit, michael knew before even stepping on the clay that he was in for a beating. but that never stopped him. nothing could stop him.

but the siren lure of comedy.

from the first moment he took the stage, michael knew immediately there was one thing he loved more than tennis: comedy. he left his first love for his second, and he never looked back.

join ex tennis pro and comedy marvel michael kosta and aisha as they swing through comedy club destruction, remembering summer, becoming spicoli, destroying your parents dreams, sex with the audience, committing cultural suicide, slutty olympians, crotch karate and poop art. plus kosta gives an audio tour of the girl on guy requisition room, and aisha has a technical meltdown.

girl on guy is headed to the creek.

joe manganiello isn’t at all what you think.

he may seem like a golden boy, tall and yoked, insanely fit and unnaturally good looking. the kind of easygoing, charming human magnet that guys want to be around and women want to be on top of. or under. or wherever.

but joe is a worker, driven and self-made. born in pittsburgh, he was a guy with an incredible amount of talent and drive, but hamstrung by his own lack of focus and tendency to party hard. very hard. well-meaning people told joe he had “potential,” which is just another way of saying he wasn’t living up to it.

still, joe’s talent and passion brought him huge early successes. but somehow, he couldn’t get out of his own way. and eventually, his appetite for self-destruction caught up with him, and he lost everything he had. everything.

it was either time to quit, or start over from scratch. with a vengeance. and joe is definitely not a quitter.

he picked himself up, humbled himself, and decided to pour every ounce of energy into fully living up to that great potential everyone had always told him he had.

the spectacular result was a newer, better, faster, and most definitely bigger, joe. and the rest is lupine history.

for joe, there is no fate but what we make. and he is busy tearing destiny from the jaws of fate with his bare naked hands.

join one-man wolfpack joe manganiello and aisha as they tear through the allure of pittsburgh, becoming alcide, aggressive nudity, anticipating the wave, googling yourself, unique forms of self-improvement, drunken shakespeare, and rising from the ashes of your own making.

plus joe shames aisha for not utilizing her dvr in the way nature intended, and aisha takes her licks.

girl on guy invites you to insert your preferred wolf-related innuendo here.

ty pennington can’t sit still.

from the very start, he was a wiggly toddler. a fidgety kid. a spazzy teen. an agitated adult. ty had a lot of surplus energy. a lot. more than he knew what to do with.

he put that energy into everything he could. comic books. sports. setting fires. art. building. creating. ty would take things apart and put them back together again, just to see what would happen. his curiosity and energy led him to create things, but just as often, it led him to wreck stuff. sometimes spectacularly.

and then one day, he got wrecked himself. and everything changed.

ty left his old frenetic life behind, eventually landing a job making old spaces new again, making magic with his hands in record time. suddenly his whirlwind energy and manic sleeplessness had direction. purpose. that purpose eventually led him to front a team of dream builders on a show that worked miracles, in miracle time, for families who truly needed transformation in their lives.

but in the end, ty found, he was the one who was transformed.

join mad designer ty pennington and aisha as they tear through destructive tendencies, bouncing off walls, trading spaces, going without sleep, crying in the mud, building up, tearing down, figuring out your brain, and what being broken can bring you.

plus ty wants to wrestle a whale shark. the shark will probably lose.

girl on guy wants you to move. that. bus.

aisha’s head has been invaded by billions of tiny biota and she was too sick to record an episode this week.

so! enjoy this premium conversation with the wild-eyed and brilliant prince of punk rock, henry rollins. try not to get hit as henry rollins and aisha rant about having nothing to lose, the genius of constant creation, being a nonviolent assbreaker, self-hatred, audience contempt, the power of fear, and escaping a punk band with your life.

plus, aisha uses big words to impress henry, and henry is not impressed.

girl on guy. don’t start nothing, won’t be nothing.

this is a republish of a previously premium episode from november 2011. 

marcus samuelsson’s life, by his own account, has been like a dream.

born in ethiopia, adopted by a swedish family at three, he arrived in northern sweden as if waking from a reverie. he grew up eating, and later making, his adoptive grandmother’s nordic specialties in an industrial port town in the frigid north. meatballs. herring. blood sausage. lingonberries.

then came culinary school, a move first to switzerland, then to the us, where he quickly became one of the youngest head chefs in the world. since then he has opened countless restaurants, written a pile of books, and brought his unique polyglot culinary vision to people around the world.

and though he now heads a culinary empire that spans continents, he has never lost sight of where he came from — the importance of place, the influence of family, the power of hard work, or the impact of truly delicious food.

marcus’ run so far may have been like a dream, but he knows better than anyone that dreams take work. hard work.

join international culinary superstar marcus samuelsson and aisha as they discuss the mysteries of fate, waking up from a dream, making blood sausage, giant meatballs, getting fired, cooking for the president, being in the weeds, and excellent opportunities to screw up. plus marcus gets in the weeds and stays there, and aisha eats her weight in herring.

girl on guy has had too much aquavit.

matt walsh is a fabulist.

he likes to make stuff up. so much so that he became a professional improv artist so he could make stuff up for a living. first he and his friends made up funny stuff, then they made up a comedy troupe, and then they made the troupe they made up into a business, and then an institution. and now the upright citizen’s brigade is revered and beloved, both on television and in real life, in theaters in new york in los angeles, and in all of the hilarious film and television projects spawned by ucb alumni since its founding more than two decades ago.

matt’s improv background keeps him hilarious and menacingly sharp. it has made him a perennial favorite of director todd phillips (of the hangover infamy). and even though he’s gone on to make dozens of movies and star in the hit hbo series veep, matt still finds time to perform at the ucb theater weekly, when he’s not directing improv films or riding the rails of the california southland.

matt walsh is making it up as he goes. and he is killing it every step of the way.

join upright citizen and veep honcho of hilarity matt walsh and aisha as they spit about being valley strong, confounding public transportation, working on a psych ward, improv as mental calisthenic, building an edifice, wearing an ascot, visiting the white house, being a doer, and celebrating the gentleman gingernut.

plus, aisha is bizarro matt, and neither of them know anything about stuff of any kind.

girl on guy needs a monocle.

rob delaney is smarter than you, because rob delaney has figured out what twitter is for.

twitter is not for communicating with your friends or excoriating your enemies. twitter is not for baby videos, pictures of your pedestrian breakfast, your dirty bathroom mirror selfie, or your endless lolcats and star trek memes. twitter is for jokes. pure and simple.

and while others are posting photos of their boring repasts or retweeting cataclysmic rumors already debunked by snopes, rob is writing jokes. lots of jokes. rude, offensive, shocking, delightful, wildly reckless, undeniably hilarious. rob says what he wants, when he wants, to whomever the hell he wants. rob does not stop, he does not falter, and he does not apologize. rob is a machine.

if a joke doesn’t play, rob deletes it, with extreme prejudice, and without hesitation. rob does not give a shit. twitter is a weapon. and rob is seal team six.

rob’s writing on twitter has garnered brought him writing offers, accolades, and almost a million followers. but none of that matters. he is writing, and he is touring, and he is busy making funny shit. get in line, or get out of the way.

join twitter ninja rob delaney and aisha as they rave about the awesomeness of vaginas, the delight of boston ice cream, the allure of live tweeting, the agony of marathoning, puking before you perform, tony robbinsing your way out of things, and extreme self-medication.

plus rob is flung off a balcony by a neo-nazi, and is somehow undeterred.

girl on guy has a few contusions.

carlton cuse’s mom wanted him to be a doctor. and he could have been, but for a small technicality. blood made him faint.

it’s not like he didn’t have the goods. carlton cuse was a smart kid. boarding school in new england. studied at harvard. he was smart and offbeat and highly motivated. he could have been anything he wanted.

and what he wanted was to became a writer. he worked his way up the ranks in hollywood, as an assistant, a gofer, a script reader, and more. he hustled. he wrote. he paid his dues in metaphorical sweat. and when opportunities presented themselves, he didn’t consider whether he was ready or not. he threw himself into his work with a fervor. with the mental intensity of an ivy league rower with absolutely nothing to lose.

his path led him through several television series and eventually to lost, a show with an escher-like premise and a delicate, dali-like grip on reality. the show was a huge risk, incomprehensible to most who read it and creative kryptonite at the network that had green lit the pilot. but carlton, along with his partner, damon lindelof, knew that if they stuck to their creative guns, the project had the potential to be truly groundbreaking.

there was no room for compromise. even if it was only for a few episodes, or for a season, they were going to swing for the fences. and swing they did. like madmen.

the result was utterly confounding, undeniably delightful, and  relentlessly labyrinthine. it was also a huge hit, and one of the most creatively influential television series in modern history.

carlton cuse could have been anything he wanted. instead, he chose to be everything he wanted — a doctor, a lawyer, a business man, a cop, a con man, an outlaw, a cult leader, a rock star, a supernatural being — and so much more.

join lost and bates motel executive producer carlton cuse as they piece through the oppressive press of fandom, new england hippies, complexity in filmmaking, the insanity of rowers, cauterizing wounds, what makes a script good, being a creative decathlete, existential mysteries, and cannibalizing your life for tv. plus carlton takes a leap — literally, then creatively. both hurt at first, but turn out spectacularly in the end.

girl on guy really needs you to push the button.

oscar nuñez doesn’t give a shit. he came to make a bang.

oscar’s family escaped the cuban revolution when he was just a child, first to south america and then to boston. they gave up everything they had — home, career, property — to make a better life for their children.

as a result, oscar never felt very precious about holding onto the trappings of safety or remaining mired in propriety or convention. he has thrown everything away, more than once, in his relentless pursuit of happiness.

that pursuit led him from design school to the nation’s capital to miami and murky destinations beyond, and then finally, inexorably, to comedy. and when he stepped onto stage with the groundlings in los angeles, he knew he had finally come home.

oscar knows exactly how awesome things have turned out, and the bleak fate he barely escaped. and he’s not about to hold anything back.

join the office’s oscar nunez and aisha as they power through the terrible inaccuracy of wikipedia, escaping the revolution, the kindness of strangers, the heyday of studio 54, being a manny, terrifying emails, being paralyzed with fear, and throwing it all away. plus oscar plays it uncomfortable but never safe, and aisha laughs at ham.

girl on guy wants to join the finer things club.

ron funches is a delight.

which is confounding, because honestly, he shouldn’t be. ron has gone through a lot. rough neighborhood. rougher school. escaping one abusive step-parent only to be hounded by another. even a thwarted attempt on his life. through it all, ron found refuge in comedy, developing a skewed perspective on the world that would eventually fuel his wonderfully biting comedic voice.

with all ron has been through, you might think he’d have become jaded, despondent, angry, or bitter. instead, he is lovely, optimistic, clear-eyed and raucously hilarious. rather than being soul-crushing, that awful childhood was a chrysalis. and ron is a big, brown, adorably funny butterfly.

who may or may not have pooped in your garage.

join ron and aisha as they discuss catholic school, rappers, claiming your set, getting into montreal, being robin hood, tribble runs in montana, breaking your mind, and emerging from a place where nothing is possible. plus, ron has an adorable laugh that will infect your mind like a fungus. try to escape it. you can’t.

girl on guy wants less jokes, more you.

richard roeper always wanted to be a newsman.

so much so that he wrote and placed his first piece while he was in middle school. richard knew what he wanted, and he went after it, pitching stories to local papers while still a teen, then interning, sweeping up, answering phones, taking notes, anything to be immersed in the world of journalism he loved. anything to be learning.

that unflagging hustle paid off when he joined the chicago sun-times right after journalism school—the venerable paper where he still writes to this day, on everything from politics to media to culture, and yes, on the movies.

for almost a decade, richard sat across from roger ebert in the balcony on ebert & roeper, ranting, raving, and dissecting the thing they both loved best, films. it is a job at once delightful and exhausting, transporting and enervating. richard watches movies for a living, a job we’d all kill to have, but as he’ll tell you, sometimes it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

it’s better.

the day after his longtime collaborator and friend roger ebert passed away, richard and aisha wade through being a junior reporter, the allure of carson, on the job training, urban legends, porn stars, hanging with mellencamp, being trapped in the theater, why movies are still awesome, and wrecking bring your child to work day. plus we remember roger ebert.

girl on guy is gonna need more popcorn.

steven yeun’s life has been a series of happy accidents. lucky breaks. twists of fate. each moment, seemingly discrete and unconnected, leading somehow to an unexpected opportunity, an extraordinary experience.

not that he hasn’t worked extremely hard. trained. performed. honed his craft. put in his dues, and had his fair share of disappointments. but somehow, just after defeat would come a triumph. sometimes small, sometimes monumental, always leading inexorably forward. and after a particularly disappointing professional setback — losing out on a network pilot that he thought he had wrapped up — he was completely free and available to audition for a weird little cable drama. one that had taken years to get made. one no one thought would work.

a little cable drama about zombies.

years later, that little drama — the walking dead — is the biggest show on television. and looking back, it seems to steven that every moment, every experience, disappointing or triumphant, led him to that one.

you might call it all luck. steven would call it providence. and he isn’t letting one single moment of it pass him by.

join the walking dead’s steven yeun and aisha as they shamble through korean jet packs, cruising high school, lukewarm parental praise, audition nightmares, dirty wells, puppetry of the penis, and the changing (and changing again) of the walking dead guard. plus steven sets his sofa on fire, and then commits cold-blooded insecticide.

girl on guy goes hard every day.

minnesota vikings punter chris kluwe believes deeply in freedom.

he believes in it so deeply, so thoroughly, that when he sees it being infringed upon, he gets angry. and one day in 2012, after a certain maryland politician wrote to the baltimore ravens, excoriating lineman brendan ayanbadejo for supporting marriage equality for gays, chris got furious.

he couldn’t stop thinking about it. he couldn’t sleep.  finally he did the only thing he could think of. he wrote a letter.

only this letter was better, more explosive and epic, than any letter you or I have ever written to a politician. this letter was indignant. it was thoughtful, well-constructed, impassioned. and shot through with some of the most elegant and delightful profanity ever set to paper.

chris sent it to the sports website deadspin, where he figured a few hundred people would read it. instead, many hundreds of thousands saw it. the response was startling. massive. and overwhelmingly positive.

a straight athlete in a notoriously homophobic league stood up for the rights of gays to marry, and it was a lightning rod for a surging movement of professional athletes who have come together to stand up not just for marriage rights, but for the right of professional athletes to come out as well.

chris kluwe believes deeply in freedom. especially when that freedom involves calling a politician an asshole.

join viking punter and hellraiser chris kluwe and aisha as they wade through reading obsessions, repetitive surgeries, position depth, the melancholy of camp, the loneliness of kicking, personal freedom and political douchebaggery. plus chris makes up some killer new curse words, and aisha has book title envy.

girl on guy never wants to piss off chris kluwe.

jesse williams is a handsome, talented guy who stars on one of television’s biggest hit series. admit it. you’d probably like to hate him.

unfortunately for you, that’s an exercise in futility.

jesse is nice. easygoing. funny. self-deprecating. a hard worker in a business of complainers. a man dedicated to service, who wants to do good with what’s he’s been given. a nice guy in a bad town. what’s worse, before jesse became an actor, he was a giving, altruistic, self-sacrificing teacher.

just give in. it’s impossible to hate this guy.

join jesse williams and aisha as they redline drinking the kool aid, escaping crack, criss cross braids, daddy book reports, obscene afros, hating la, and the impossibility of doing everything. plus jesse’s computer attacks, and we give a team lesson on conversational evasive maneuvers.

girl on guy’ll make you jump.

maria bamford is furious.

she is smart, an delicate, and charming, and self-aware, and lovely, and hilarious, and artistic.

and she is totally fucking enraged.

this is one of the best and most compelling episodes of girl on guy ever. it is honest and difficult and wonderful, confounding and enlightening. honest, surprising, unforgettable. much like maria’s comedy, it is singularly riveting, and not to be missed.

join brilliant comedy dervish maria bamford and aisha as they dissect psychophantry, suicide notes, champagne problems, art sharks, not being good for company, hopeful despair, human ambivalence, and getting everything you ever dreamed of. Plus, maria is really fucking pissed off, and aisha wants tamale pie.

girl on guy. why so angry now?

this episode brought to you in part by amazon. visit girlonguy.net to shop amazon and support the show, to preorder “self-inflicted wounds”, to donate, and for all your many podcast needs.

kevin smith has done a lot of stuff. a lot.

directed ten films. produced nine others. built a media empire singlehandedly out of drive, enthusiasm and sheer ballsy will. kevin is prolific, he is driven, he is unstoppable.

except that kevin is stopping. directing films, at least. that’s what he says. he claims he’s lost the passion for filmmaking that for two decades drove him to make iconoclastic, deeply personal, occasionally shocking and decidedly uncommercial films. and though people struggle, even refuse to accept it, he seems resolute in his decision to never make another movie again.

but lest people think he is retiring or licking his wounds, kevin is hard at work making a shitload of other stuff. television shows, comics, books, live tours — and so many podcasts that his fledgling podcast network smodco has turned into a swirling hive of conversational activity. kevin may be quitting, but he is definitely not quitting.

on the contrary, this fast-talking, unrelenting, bus-traveling contrarian is just. getting. started.

join kevin smith and aisha as they natter over cosmic injustice, pot burritos, doggy cunnilingus, ambivalent parenting, the transformational power of talk, traveling by magic bus, building an empire on words, and throwing it all away. plus kevin has an existential breakthrough, then offers a few choice words to, well… everybody.

girl on guy made this guerrilla-style.

cash levy and aisha are old friends. they started doing standup together. weathered the trenches, the slings and arrows, the deeply scarring psychological trauma of being baby comedians — enduring insult and injury from contemptuous club owners and contemptible audiences alike — leaning on their colleagues for comfort, and occasionally for money to buy beer.

eventually their paths separated. aisha came to los angeles and became a candy-assed actress. cash went on to be a touring comedian, performing in the us and overseas, making the troops laugh in war zones and generally being much more hardcore.

now they find themselves together again, these old friends. and as you would imagine, they do a bunch of reminiscing that no one gives a shit about. but they are also old friends who are both standup comedians, so while they may be reminiscing about stuff you have no recollection of, you can be sure there will be mayhem, verbal abuse, and a surfeit of jokes.

join comedian cash levy and aisha tyler as they muse over enraging baby gangs, whore heartbreak, tenacious asians, eucalyptus farts, stealing set lists, talking back to your superiors, cashing in, and blaming the audience. plus cash has a terrible time closing the deal, and aisha and cash compare self-abuse notes.

girl on guy needs some new hobbies.

sam ross makes drinks for a living.

it’s not the easiest job in the world — long hours, deafening music, surly patrons — but honestly, it doesn’t suck. sam ross is a bartender at one of the most exclusive bars in the country, milk and honey, a place almost as hard to find as it is to get into, a haven for cocktail enthusiasts, where spirits are handled with care, drink fundamentals are revered, and no one has ever opened a bottle of sour mix or served anything lite, premixed, or blue.

milk and honey is a part of a rarified club of bespoke cocktail houses: pegu club, death & company, painkiller new york, pdt – that are remaking the way americans drink. and sam ross is at the forefront of that movement. he wants us all to drink better, and having created the cocktail programs at several prominent american restaurants, he is making it so. with two new establishments bearing his amaro-stained handprint — hinoki and the bird in los angeles, and his own drinking establishment, attaboy, on the verge of opening in new york — sam is a very special kind of superhero — someone who makes others happy in a wonderful and specific way, by crafting bespoke cocktails, perfectly made and served with passion.

join cocktail jedi sam ross of new york’s milk and honey and attaboy and aisha as they drink negronis and hash over top-ups, good ice, filial competition, shitkicking, late night starts, velvet ropes, bacon sandwiches, and difficult italian booze. plus has a magic satchel full of cocktails and aisha weeps with unadulterated joy.

girl on guy needs to harden the fuck up.

w kamau bell came to comedy the long way around.

he stated comedy late. developed his craft slowly. stumbled upon his comedic voice almost by accident. and after years of doing standup that by his own account was just okay, kamau finally developed a one-man show where he could talk about what he really wanted to talk about — race — in uncompromising terms, without hedges or apology. and where club crowds had squirmed uncomfortably, theater crowds embraced him warmly. he had finally found his cut, and it involved making people delight in their own discomfort.

eventually kamau’s show caught the eye of comedy jedi chris rock, and the rest was history. only that history was pockmarked by excruciating delays and punishing self doubt. the eventual result is fx’s totally biased with w kamau bell, an uncompromising, unflinching, undeniably hilarious look at our culture through the eyes of a guy whose belief in bravery is finally being rewarded.

through it all, kamau has known that every step has been a gift, and if it all goes away tomorrow, he will have left it all up there in the powerpoint presentation.

join comedian w kamau bell and aisha as they saunter through expressing rage, avoiding cynicism, devastating afros, building an hour, magician strippers, saying things you don’t believe, the quicksand of porn, and eating it in Okinawa. plus kamau goes to the whiteboard and gets very, very personal.

girl on guy wonders if this is racist.

few comedians understand the value of free speech like eugene mirman.

his scientist parents fled government oppression and censorship in pre-glasnost russia. they eventually settled in massachusetts, where a young eugene was not only strange because he was a weird kid into science and language and difficult prose, but because, as his classmates would often point out (while literally pointing at him), he was a dirty, filthy communist. this was reagan-era america, where the accusation of being a commie wasn’t the punchline to a hipster joke or a murmured aside from karl rove at a dinner party, but a scathing indictment of one’s world view, or at least a convenient tool of social ostracism.

eugene was a weird kid and he was reminded of it every day.

undaunted, and with steely eastern european determination, eugene turned that weirdness into an asset, becoming a comedian and opening for alt bands like the shins and modest mouse, creating his own unique brand of humor, and launching an eponymous comedy festival that is at once shockingly ambitious and delightfully successful. eugene’s weirdness matured into funny, and that funny matured into a unique and diverse career for which eugene has never once had to pretend to be normal. ain’t democracy grand?

join comic émigré eugene mirman and aisha as they wander through fleeing censorship, enduring taunts, doggie suicide, creepy love letters, hating cable companies, losing festivals, the death of aspen, and helping the audience laugh. plus aisha wants some barbecue, and how eugene met jon .

girl on guy needs to change its shirt.

despite all his efforts to the contrary, chris d’elia was destined to be an arty fuck.

from the time he was little, he thought of every moment, every room or situation, as an opportunity for comedy. as a toddler he idolized jerry lewis and thought of every bedtime as a shot to crack up his parents. his father is a television producer, his brother a filmmaker. there was no way chris couldn’t end up an entertainer.

yet somehow it took chris a while to find his calling. standup was daunting, so he attended theater school for a bit, eventually dropping out. but when he finally tried his hand at comedy, everything changed. chris went on stage that first night, and then another, and another. and he kept going up. it became a habit, then an all-consuming passion. chris had fallen into his cut.

he has never looked back since.

join standup comic and “whitney” leading man chris d’elia and aisha as they discuss life as a bear, living with no regrets, fearing batman, falling in love with standup, meeting bill shatner, fighting the audience, and cursing into your mom’s face. plus, chris has a literal self-inflicted wound, and aisha struggles with chris’ sobriety.

girl on guy thinks yesterday was awesome.

eddie ifft is battle tested.

he has lived through fan attacks. google bombs. anguished managerial breakups. surly audience revolts. festival failures. feature film crashes. and one very tenacious girlfriend from hell.

all of this might have crushed a weaker man. turned him to paste. sent him running for a day job in a safer, more welcoming, less punishing profession. instead, this trial by fire just made eddie stronger. less risk-averse. more brazen. and above it all, undeniably funny.

eddie has come through a lot. and while he may be bloodied, he is definitely unbowed.

join comedian eddie ifft and aisha as they wade through evil fans, podcast shitheads, cancer jokes, bombing in montreal, hurdling anguish, penis injuries, and losing everything but not losing yourself. plus, aisha and eddie whine about making their podcasts, and eddie engages in some high-stakes hostage negotiation.

girl on guy wants you to know — it’s not me, it’s you.

antonia lofaso has always loved to cook.

from the time she was young she would make meals — for her italian-american family, for her friends, for whomever would eat her food. granted, sometimes the meals were centered around hot dogs, but they were grand repasts nonetheless, and cooked with passion. as she grew up and was exposed to new, exotic foods, her love for cooking grew, taking her to culinary school, then to the proving ground of beverly hills’ famed spago restaurant, and then, in a twist of fate both wonderful and horrifying, to the bare-knuckle no holds barred food brawl known as top chef.

chef antonia competed in the fourth season and then again as an all-star in the eighth,  and she understands the punishing experience of being a top chef contestant like no one else. top chef is thrilling. punishing. exhilarating. soul-crushing. people are separated from the families, at odds with each other, the judges, their food, and themselves. top chef is not for pussies.

antonia made it to the finals twice, excelling at both cooking and navigating the labyrinthine rules of competition. and she is not afraid to tell the sticky, dirty truth.

ever wanted to know what it is like to be a contestant on top chef? get ready to eat a massive plate of humble pie.

join top chef all star antonia lofaso and aisha as they unpack top chef’s sticky little secrets, dish on what it’s like to be an all-star, and rant, puke, cry, scream, eat and drink their way through what it takes to be a competitive chef. plus antonia tells the truth at judges’ table, and aisha eats at antonia’s restaurant and is a greedy little bastard.

girl on guy will never pack its knives and go.

like the character he plays on tv, kunal nayyar is a nice guy.

smart. polite. industrious. well-dressed. enjoys musical theater. more than willing to put in the long years of grueling training and hard work needed to succeed in the entertainment business.

luckily for kunal, he didn’t have to. kunal’s first network audition was a pilot for a show called the big bang theory. needless to say, he got the job. soon after that he bought a european sportscar, rented a modern loft with no doors on the bathrooms, married a brilliant, gorgeous and utterly delightful former miss india, and is now is a member of the cast of the number one comedy on television. his life is insanely awesome, and pretty much nothing like the character he plays on tv.

you’d think that might make him a dick. but kunal is thoughtful. reflective. honest. no bullshit. sharp tongued. a beer aficionado. loves nineties rap and rap-related puns. and unlike his television character, kunal doesn’t need a beer to help him open up to a girl.

although it doesn’t hurt.

join big bang theory’s kunal nayyar and aisha as they crack a beer and solve for bieber lesbians, hip hop preachers, monsoon weddings, space travel, mystery boners, turning into that guy, and why TMZ is racist. plus aisha is curiously curious about indian stuff, and kunal tries to class up the podcast, then discovers this is an exercise in utter futility.

girl on guy is a tempest in a teacup.

you asked for it, you got it. by popular demand, aisha answers as many of your questions as she can get to in an hour and a half (or something like that). plus aisha reads your list of suggested names for the new girl on guy headquarters and picks one, or at least narrows it down somewhat. finally, aisha reads a few very special letters from members of the girl on guy army, reflects on the year that was, the year that will be, and everything between. girl on guy is completely full of auld lang syne.

for the last day of christmas, girl on guy gives to thee, the old spice guy. he’s the man your man could smell like, and so very much more.

yes, you or your man could smell awesome like this man. but for you or your man to be awesome like this man, you’ve got to more. a lot more. be a college football star. an nfl wide receiver. a restauranteur. an actor. a showman. a man who sounds like john cleese, billy dee williams, james brolin, and batman had a baby, put him on a horse, gave him a fistful of diamonds and taught him how to bake elaborate special event desserts.

with diamonds.

yes, isaiah mustafah is full of awesome. and he’s about to unload all that awesome right into your face.

army, you are welcome.

join isaiah mustafah and aisha as they gallop through no quarter at comic-con, the hard knocks of pro football, losing your mind in barcelona, wee hour hijinks in east oakland, enduring sloshy roommate sex, losing everything, winning it back again, and being the black kato. plus, isaiah enrages the internet and aisha is highly sympathetic. girl on guy smells like a romantic millionaire polo playing jet fighter pilot.

i’m on a horse.

rove mcmanus is delightful. a bit too delightful to tolerate.

cheery, hardworking, focused, self-effacing, funny without trying, friendly without being treacly, dazzled by such simple things as turkey wraps and candied yams — rove is entirely too lovely to be a late night personality, let alone one of australia’s most well-known and beloved comedians, host of a show where guests drink, swear, dance badly and occasionally engage in full-frontal nudity on high-speed amusement park rides.

rove has always wanted to do things differently, and once he got on television, rather than rest on his laurels, he set about breaking every rule he could get his hands on. refusing to be either jaded or complacent, when things don’t feel right, he had the discipline to walk away, as he did after ten years on his successful show rove live. after a hiatus, the show is back, in a new iteration based in los angeles. on rove la, rove is back to doing what he does best, bringing celebrities together for wide-ranging, uncensored, and often drunken, sprawling, spectacular and slurry conversation, punctuated by jabs of his own smart, bawdy, and uniquely australian sense of humor.

rove is hilarious, punchy, dry, charming and utterly forthcoming. it’s enough to make you want to puke. politely, of course.

join aussie late night sparkplug rove mcmanus and aisha as they walkabout contempt for the fit, wondrous american foods, chasing sasquatch, embracing earnesty, rejecting cynicism, royal ejaculation, tall poppies, going off script and kicking ass. plus rove goes native and aisha puts another shrimp on the barbie, and then immediately apologizes.

girl on guy is lying in a den in bombay.

seth green loves the future.

from the time seth was little, he wanted to be a superhero — to comprehend science, slice through time and space, beat back the cloak of evil, master the complexities of human interaction. since this was not possible with the technology available to him at the time, seth did the next best thing.

he became an actor.

since then seth has done almost everything. worked with practically everyone. not content to make others’ dreams come true, he started making his own projects, producing his own masterpieces, forging his own heroic destiny. his most successful effort, adult swim’s hilarious robot chicken, created along with partner matthew senreich, is a wildly ambitious and wide-ranging synthesis of all the things seth loves best: cartoons, superheroes, robots, video games, chicken, action figures, pop culture, clay, nerd lore, tongue depressors, sketch comedy, television, anime, cyborgs, stop motion, voice acting, and chicken. originally created as a fun side project, the series is about to start its sixth season, and while it is still fun, the success of the show, and its creators, is deadly serious.

seth is making shit. seth is hustling. seth is chasing the future like a champ. seth is too busy killing it to wait for the rest of us to catch up. seth green loves the future. good thing we’re living in it right now.

join futuristic hustler seth green and aisha as they dissect american exceptionalism, racist cake, owning your goals, revenge of the nerds, defending the zone, superhero tragedies, hustlers and customers, and beating the rope. plus, seth and aisha freak out about the future, and aisha wants to hold seth’s gun.

girl on guy is encased in carbonite.

felicia day is undisputedly the reigning nerd empress of our time. and she had the punishing childhood to prove it.

homeschooled by a counterculture mother who believed public schools couldn’t hack it, felicia grew up precocious, accelerated, self-starting and socially isolated. she loved computers, was an early adopter — logging on to billboards in between long violin practice sessions to chat with strangers back when “the internet wasn’t creepy.” technology was a wonderland, free and new, full of friendly compatriots who shared your interests and were up for meeting at a local arcade after a spirited conversation in cyberspace. felicia loved technology and everything it represented to a young, prodigious shut-in — freedom, friendship, entertainment, strength, unlimited mage powers.

it still means all those things to an adult felicia, who took her love of technology and the internet and created something that could only live in the place of its birthing — the guild, a web series about a group of world of warcraft enthusiasts that is one of the most successful original series on the web. created, written, produced, directed and edited by felicia, the guild has won multiple awards and propelled her into the rarified firmament of internet stars who have created something impactful and wide-reaching on their own, without studio, network, nudity or adorable kittehs. in the process felicia has become both revered flag bearer and reviled target for geeks, gamers and outsiders everywhere.

heavy lies the crown.

join nerd empress felicia day and aisha as they talk vintage internet, pixellated boobs, being a wunderkind, buried acting rage, extreme panic attacks, being the best at doing nothing, filling up your bunny, avoiding youtube comments and becoming a cartoon version of yourself. plus they pick apart the girl gamer controversy, and aisha gets felicia to curse. girl on guy wants to date your avatar.

if the adage is true — that tragedy plus time equals comedy — then ryan sickler has paid his dues on the left side of the equation. raised in baltimore, a town which one doesn’t leave so much as escape, he lost his father when he was a teen, was thrown into the street by his mother, and after that, bounced from one relative to another. it was finally a great-aunt who gave him the chance to get back on his feet, and when he finally did, he did that shit like he meant it.

ryan worked, saved, finished school, packed all his stuff into garbage bags and drove to los angeles to follow his dream of being a comic. and while his early years might have seemed rocky, that tumultuous childhood gave him both fodder for material and armor against the relentless onslaught that is life as a standup comic.

now ryan is in the trenches every day, performing, touring, and hosting the crabfeast, the popular and hilarious podcast he created alongside comedian jay larson. inspired by the town where he was born, the show celebrates the things ryan loves most — storytelling, comedy, and, well, boobs. for the month of october, the show focused on raising money for breast cancer research and prevention. ryan is a breast man, and he has put his money where his — ahem, mouth is.

join comedian ryan sickler of the crab feast podcast and aisha for a drunken girl on guy live from the la podcast fest as they talk jesus’ haircut, pussy wagons, comedy competitiveness, hometown rage, sex and car horns, suicide by marriage, hand job killers, terrible road stories, and heckling people into submission. plus ryan and aisha do some daytime drinking, then ryan does his part for boobs.

girl on guy says it ain’t christmas without casserole.

dave attell likes porn. he doesn’t care who knows it.

years on the road as one of the country’s premier standup comedians left dave with an abundance of free time. he has used that time to become a porn connoisseur, specifically porn of a vintage provenance. if it was originally released on VHS, reel-to-reel, laserdisc or nickelodeon, chances are Dave has seen it, reviewed it, and stashed it in a banker’s box for careful safekeeping.

dave is not a tourist. he knows his porn.

as dazzling yet discomfiting as that may be, the porn is just a distraction from a career spent destroying crowds in every possible corner of the country, earning him the love of fans and the idolatry of fellow comedians. dave is a comic’s comic, a brutally honest storyteller and meticulous joke writer who pursues the truth no matter how ugly, revering honesty above all else, even when that honesty means revealing the worst truths about himself. dave attell is comedy royalty, unabashedly honest, unflinchingly forthcoming, unapologetically dirty and undeniably hilarious.

and he really likes porn. so much so that he turned his encyclopedic knowledge of the pornographic arts into a television show, where he shares his collection with the world. and for that, we should be truly thankful.

join dave attell and aisha as they rip through comedic snake pits, advising baby comics, reading the crowd, avoiding the stink of failure, rejecting fame, the bitterness of old comics, reluctant adulthood, and enjoying vintage porn. plus dave is not a joiner, and aisha avoids a sticky situation. literally.

girl on guy is all about the money shot.

kevin allison didn’t come out until he was an adult.

he knew he was gay from the time he was three years old. but kevin came from a midwestern, deeply catholic family, and while he knew who he was on the inside, it felt dangerous to express it on the outside.

coming out was a risk.

so kevin expressed himself in other ways, eventually moving to new york and joining the comedy aggression scrum the state, where he could express every weird, odd, outlying idea he had, loudly and in the boldest of strokes. in comedy kevin found his home, and it was comedy that eventually gave him the bravery to come out and fully be himself.

that bravery led again, after many twists and turns, to risk!, kevin’s popular podcast about the act of risk-taking in its most radical and personal forms. there, again, kevin found a creative home. he blossomed, then exploded, and the result has been extraordinary.

it took kevin a good part of his life to be able to tell other people who he really was. but when he finally did come out, it was with a vengeance.

join kevin allison of the risk podcast and aisha as they bear down on midwestern wholesomeness, naked dolls, groundbreaking priests, massive failures, horizontal slap fights, open relationships, erotic biting, and embracing risk. plus kevin attempts prostitution, then politely requests a spanking.

girl on guy is looking for a safety word.

saul williams has always stood out.

from the time he was young, he was different. he didn’t look like everyone else. he didn’t think like everyone else. he was too thoughtful. too politically conscious. too outspoken. too skinny. too dark. and others made a point of letting him know it.

but what everyone else saw as weaknesses were saul’s greatest strengths. being an outlier gave him vision. perspective. fortitude. fearlessness.

that fearless vision drove him, pushed him, freed him to look at the world from the outside in — to comment, reflect, and transform his ideas into eviscerating lyrics, made him a pointed poet and devastating emcee.

saul wrote, and he performed, and he pushed, never resting. the result has been a career full of extraordinary and transformational art. films. books. albums. live performances. poetry grand slam championships. work with rick rubin. trent reznor. grand jury prizes at sundance and cannes. a staggering body of work that continues to grow. saul’s work is complex, jagged, expansive and unapologetic. he is relentless and unflinching. he constantly challenges his audience. he constantly challenges himself.

and he took what some called a handicap and turned it into a shield.  then armor. then a banner.

then a weapon.

join volcanic poet and emcee saul williams and aisha as they blast through life as an expatriate, saying yes to everything, whether cello is hip hop, niggas in paris, escaping arrogance, embracing happiness, not fearing ideas, ambition versus surrender, and creating without compromise.

plus saul parties like a rock star, and aisha goes gorillas.

girl on guy has a list of demands.

tom papa is a dreamer.

from the time he was a little kid in jersey, he gazed upon the skyline of manhattan and dreamed of being part of it. doing what, he had no idea. but the kid was bright-eyed, the kid had dreams, and the kid was going to follow them, no matter what.

those dreams eventually brought him to manhattan, and a career in standup comedy. and despite several detours, his hard work was rewarded — a successful touring career, films, television shows, comedy specials. so did long periods of privation, self-doubt and sacrifice, as well as the death of one of his closest friends. but through it all tom never forgot who he was or why he came.

tom papa came to make you laugh. and while he may seem like a softie on the outside, on the inside tom is a bloodthirsty juggernaut hell bent on comedy destruction, and he will not leave until he has had satisfaction.

either that, or he’s going to get high and have some chips.

join tom papa and aisha as they rip through the allure of smoking, fear of running, the power of comedy, self-sabotage, being a weed, staying in your lane, and defying destruction. plus tom reflects on the life and death of greg giraldo and aisha is a shameless embezzler.

girl on guy is dying for a bagel.

matt iseman has always been a go-to guy.

hardworking, wholesome, good looking, matt would be the kind of guy to make women swoon and men key his car, if he wasn’t so freakishly great to hang out with. smart enough to earn a medical degree, good looking enough to get the girl, self-effacing enough to be your buddy, with an unnatural love of chip-based foods, matt’s the kind of dude people take to right away. the kind of dude who’ll loan you money. the kind of dude you call in the middle of the night when you have a flat in the rain. that kind of go-to guy.

too bad he threw all that shit away, including a burgeoning medical career, to be a comedian.

no one ever said he was perfect.

luckily everything worked out. matt went on to host cable hits like clean house, sports soup and american ninja warrior, while performing for the troops and consuming mass quantities of orange foods. and when matt and aisha reunite for girl on guy, they take a trip down memory lane that is hilarious, surprising, and finally gut-churning.

including a self-inflicted wound story that will join the pantheon of girl on guy’s best.

see, matt is even your go-to guy for that.

join american ninja warrior’s matt iseman and aisha as they talk being a butter slob, breaking your parents’ hearts, the sadness of sobriety, drinking at altitude, rupturing your spleen, the horror of hot yoga, and triumph over tragedy. plus matt gives jon benjamin’s siw a run for its very dirty money.

girl on guy is going to let itself out quietly.

jim rash looks funny.

that’s not to say he’s funny looking, or unattractive, or has an oddly shaped head — he is a lean and rakish southern gentleman. jim is a guy that, when you look at him, you think, “man. i bet that dude is hilarious.”

and he is. a veteran of the groundlings and multiple network comedies, you recognize his face, because the guy works. and unless you’ve lived under a rock for the past few years, you know him now as dean craig pelton, the ambiguously gay dean of greendale community college, a cross dresser with an affinity for men in dalmatian suits and a very special man crush on joel mchale’s disgraced attorney. like a strike force ninja, jim steals into his scenes with surgical precision, wielding his body like a billy club of hilarity, facial expressions like comedy katanas.

the dude is just fucking funny.

but what you may not know is that he’s also an oscar winner, for the screen adaptation of the descendants, an independent film starring a little-known actor by the name of george clooney that did quite a bit of damage at the 2012 academy awards. the entire thing was a bit of a surprise, and for a guy who is always thinking of a good punchline, it was quite possibly the only time he would ever be up on that stage. jim knew exactly what to do with his 70 seconds of stage time. he struck a pose.

the aftermath was mayhem.

join oscar winner jim rash of community and aisha as they race through the madness of television pilots, crazies with microphones, the evil of southern politeness, packing up your macintosh plus, lying about special skills, fleeing crazy agents, and furtive sex with mannequins.

plus the internet is furious with jim rash, and aisha has a sexual fantasy about an oscar. girl on guy is going after its pledge brother.

kevin heffernan will do anything for comedy.

wear a ridiculous mustache. affect an absurd accent. drink a vat of beer the size of a volkswagen van. strip off his clothes and cover his naked body in powdered sugar. when it comes to comedy, the man is highly motivated, totally committed, and utterly without shame.

kevin is so naturally funny, so offhandedly sharp, he seems destined for a life of comedy. and for him and all of the members of broken lizard (née charred goosebeak), it does seem as if the winning formula was deceptively easy. attend college with a group of equally crazed yet strangely ambivalent sketch comics. throw together a comedy troupe to exploit an oversight in college funding. start making short films to fill up the time between sketches during live shows. parlay that into a feature film, that feature film into a blockbuster, and that blockbuster into a steamroller career as one of the most well-known comedy troupes in america. but of course, it was a bit more complex than that.

what you may not know is that kevin has a law degree. kevin is a member of the bar in not one state, but two. kevin is not dying to drink the shot of jaeger you just sent him. kevin can buy drinks just fine on his own, thank you. kevin is thoughtful and hardworking. kevin would like a nap.

kevin heffernan is everything and nothing you would expect. and beerfest is just a morsel of the story.

join broken lizard’s kevin heffernan and aisha as they hose off the fallacy of the class clown, ruling by fiat, getting kicked off campus, the loneliness of the road, defense against the dark arts, cursing in front of children, catching hell about poop from a british roadie, aggressive nudity and powdered sugar. plus, aisha is a green room grinch and kevin is the otter of the day. girl on guy is the barbra streisand of podcasts. this podcast brought to you in part by audible. go to audiblepodcast.com/girlonguy for your free audiobook download. and visit the brand new girlonguy.net for all your podcast needs.

jared padalecki’s life is full of awesome.

he threw away a potential career as an engineer to become an actor, and then was almost immediately cast on a huge network show. he’s been on not one, but two long-running drama series. his current show, supernatural — once pegged for cancellation — has a wild-eyed, growing fan base, and is set to launch its eighth season.

he kills demons for a living. he drives a muscle car. he drinks beer for breakfast. he occasionally wields a machete.

you would think a guy whose world was so chock full of goodness would be intolerable company. but jared is super friendly, insanely down to earth, and completely forthcoming. he is handsome without being self-conscious, cool without being a douche, funny without trying too hard. it is impossible not to like this guy.

if you drew up blueprints for an awesome friend who was razor smart, casually funny, crazy good looking, totally self-effacing and tall enough to get you shit off of high shelves, you would come up with jared padalecki.

and he doesn’t even have the good sense to be a dick.

join jared padalecki and aisha as they down a couple of frosty ones and hash over comic-con madness, the awesomeness of austin, the terror of parenthood, alcoholism and knives, being a mathlete, government booze, the duck dynasty, and making time for pancakes.

plus, jared wakes up naked and alone, then stares down his critics.

girl on guy just christened the pool.

shirley manson doesn’t have time for bullshit. she is busy making art.

the brilliant and striking garbage frontwoman is done with pleasantries. after a seven year break, one of the biggest rock bands in modern history is back with a new album and a new tour, and they are everything you remember about the band and more — smarter, cooler and better than ever — pushing all the buttons they touched in their early days, with both fists and all the confidence that comes from living through the sturm and tumult of twenty years in rock and roll.

that time in the rock business has not made shirley jaded. instead it’s turned a wild-eyed, defiantly jagged artist into a cool-headed, supremely confident firebrand who embraces self-direction, exudes creativity and refuses to be silenced.

and although shirley is a bona fide rock star, she engages in none of the crap that comes along with it. she shows up early, rolls solo, speaks frankly, and isn’t afraid to own it when she’s wrong. she is reflective, outspoken, passionate, sarcastic, forthcoming, and unrelentingly hilarious.

everything you want your rock star to be.

join garbage frontwoman shirley manson and aisha as they slice through the evil of precociousness, the inevitability of rebellion, being ahead of your time, stupidity vs. innocence, embracing the darkness, rejecting the machine, and breaking all of your shit.

plus we bandy big words about with wild abandon, and aisha teases things out of shirley that shirley does not want teased out.

girl on guy is not fucking about.

nathan fillion is a charming and rakish scoundrel. you can empty the barrel of superlatives at him —  raffish, affable, beguiling, genial, sly musical stylist. he is funny, self-deprecating, easygoing, laid back, a bro. nathan is a guy men like and women like to be around. (he was a spaceship captain, for chrissakes. it doesn’t get any cooler.)

but as a kid, nathan was anything but swashbuckling. he collected comic books. he dreamt of having superpowers. he wanted to be a schoolteacher. he rode a unicycle. he was a classic nerd.

and raised in the frosty reaches of northern canada, he hated the cold. when he wasn’t fantasizing about saving the world, nathan dreamed of warmer climes, palm trees, girls in bikinis, and perennially balmy weather.

years later, fueled by persistence and the heady early technology of the vcr, nathan got his wish. thanks to the cult of firefly and serenity, he is a nerd culture superstar. thanks to his own love of video games, he is a gaming world luminary. and thanks to his hit network drama, he doesn’t fantasize about palm trees or girls in bikinis anymore. he is drowning in that shit.

nathan fillion got everything he wished for all those years ago up in icy, frozen alberta. maybe he actually does have a superpower after all.

join aisha and nathan as they obsess over technology, talk dirty to siri, sink into hollywood despair, argue superpowers, examine cult status, and compare gaming cred. plus halo is the golf of our generation, and nathan has a run-in with a dangerous cocktail.

girl on guy is gonna need a sippy cup.

chris henchy always wanted to be a comedian. but he was also a practical guy. so he finished high school. went to college. got a job. packed a lunch. wore a suit.

but try as he might to toe the line, he couldn’t get comedy out of his head. so he finally moved to new york. still practical, he got a job on wall street, but it was all a ruse, an elaborate farce meant to get chris closer to the art form he loved.

problem is, when he finally got the stones up to try stand up, he had to follow a musical act. the sheer terror of having to follow a guy doing a bit about ghandi on an acoustic guitar (a bit that was killing, btw) was enough to send him fleeing into the street. but chris didn’t give up. he eventually tried his hand at comedy writing, where he could mine the gems and others could take the risks (and eventually, reap the very generous rewards) of his toil.

there were points both high and low, and dry spells along the way, but eventually chris’ talent landed him in the company of adam mckay and one will farrell, just as they were forming a new company whose sole goal was to make funny shit — or die trying. years later, that company is both a popular website and a household word, and funny or die — as well the production company will, adam and chris run as a team, gary sanchez — makes wildly popular films, cult-forming television shows, monster viral videos, and a gargantuan amount of mayhem.

and now that dude never has to wear a suit again.

join gentleman writer and comedy cowboy chris henchy of gary sanchez and funny or die and aisha as they discuss getting off the res, the misery of the boot-cut jean, updating your rolodex at work, the obsolescence of the brad, making it through the dry spells, surrounding yourself with excellence, why the bits always win, and why you can’t monetize boo.

plus chris hits the ER at four in the morning like a champ, and aisha pulls a podcast foul.

girl on guy’s about to get in a bat fight.

broken lizard’s comedy is of such jagged intensity, such wild-eyed abaondon and balls-driven ferocity without regard for rule or consequence, that one can’t help but think it was formed over some kind of boozy weekend blitzkrieg that ended with everyone parting in silent shame, stumbling into the dawn light without eye contact.

and that’s not far from the truth. broken lizard, née charred goosebeak (only slightly less difficult of a name) was birthed from the beer-soaked loins of beta theta pi at colgate university, and is everything you would imagine a sketch group with that pedigree would be: booze-fueled, pot-tinged, driven by hubris and passion and pure what-the-fuck.

that hubris brought the group to start writing and making their own films, and founding member jay chandrasekhar to direct one broken lizard feature, and then another, finally creating a body of work revered by many and reviled by a cheerless few. his latest, the babymakers, isn’t an official broken lizard film, but it shares much of the dna of earlier films, a few of the cast members, and all of the unadulterated raunch. it’s a film about having kids that is decidedly not kid-friendly.

judge all you want. jay and broken lizard don’t make comedy to please anyone but themselves. they are on a breathless comedy streak that started almost unexpectedly when they were kids and has blossomed into a career-long party. luckily, they’re kind enough to let the rest of us in on the rager.

join broken lizard’s reluctant overlord jay chandrasekhar and aisha as they ram through arranged marriages, being an inside outsider, unfortunate stage names, faking it till you make it, sizing up your opponent, impersonating a doctor, the origin of ‘meow,’ writing for white people, and trying to avoid being called a dick.

plus jay recycles his dirty needles, and aisha spins some mildly racist tracks.

girl on guy ate just eight gyros at four in the morning.

in the world of drag, there is one queen who rises above all others. one who leads, defines and transcends the genre of cross dressing, leaving all them other sad bitches floundering in his glitter-strewn wake. he defines glamour. embodies fabulosity. he is the tip and the peak and the sharp end of the spear of the wildly complex, fiercely dramatic and utterly fascinating world that is drag.

he is so supremely fabulous that, like just a handful of other creative superstars, he requires only one name. no matter who you are, or how familiar you are with gay or drag culture, he has crept into your field of vision.

everybody knows rupaul.

but everybody may not know how he came to be. the man who redefined glamour and fierce femininity strutted his jimmy choos down a long, challenging road to get where he is today: world-renowned, universally admired, a television star, musical artist, beacon for a culture, a fierce role model for those who still have relatively few idols, a firebrand and icon even to those outside the culture. rupaul had a vision for himself, and once he embraced what he believed he could become, he got to work. rupaul came from very little, but in the soaring spirit of drag culture, he took a sow’s ear and made that shit into an entire silk ensemble.

dude doesn’t just occasionally look like a lady. dude puts all them other bitches to shame.

join drag superstar rupaul and aisha as they strut through loathing school, traffic rage, being pushed out of the closet, running away from home, running towards yourself, accepting your nature, saying yes to everything, the revenge of the rejected, and embracing self-destruction.

plus, rupaul stays fabulous, and aisha takes copious notes.

girl on guy betta work.

if ufc president dana white looks like he might’ve had it rough growing up, it’s because he did. dana grew up in a las vegas that was less sinatra, steaks, and luck and more street fights and brickbats amidst sweltering heat.

finally escaping a city where high school rivalries were settled with mass brawls, and gangs of teens eager to throw down would show up routinely in his front yard, dana moved east. he took his love of fighting off the street and into the gym, first training, then promoting fighters.

dana had an unwavering passion for boxing. until he saw his first ultimate fight.

when the opportunity came up to purchase a floundering ultimate fighting championship, dana saw gold. he persuaded a couple of childhood friends to buy the declining organization for just two million dollars. and then spent the next decade turning that anemic, failing group into a billion dollar business.

that’s right. the ufc is now worth a billion dollars, mixed martial arts is the fastest growing fighting sport in the world, and dana sits atop the pile. and now the guy who once worked as a bellman and rode his boxing equipment across town on a bicycle because he couldn’t afford a car is now president and co-owner of a billion dollar fighting organization widely seen as the preeminent promoter of professional combat in the world.

not bad for a dude from the desert.

join UFC sensei dana white and aisha as they pin down fighting off a teenage mob, the power of apology, saving saturday, perfecting the ground game, being pinned by a girl, and knowing when to tap out.

plus, dana has a few choice words for the internet, and aisha chimes in recklessly.

girl on guy is about to enter the octagon.

chuck klosterman is a curious guy.

maybe it was a childhood of physical isolation on a rural farm outside a satellite of a satellite of fargo, north dakota. maybe it was an adolescence of cultural isolation, fixated so rigorously on heavy metal that he hid his first REM album in a sock drawer to keep it from sullying his otherwise untainted collection. maybe it was an early career as an arts critic for newspapers first in fargo, and then in akron, two places where the scope of arts beat was decidedly less than sweeping.

that curiosity led chuck to a voracious consumption of all things music, sports, culture… well, of all things.

chuck klosterman knows more about rock music than you. he knows more about sports than you, he knows more about 1980s pop television than you. and, somehow, he knows how to tie all these things together, along with a passing comprehension of midwestern hunting laws and a passion for dinosaurs, into writing both cohesive and compelling. it is some kind of a magic trick. it is literary alchemy. it is dazzling, confounding, confusing, and wonderful.

this ability has led him to the bestselling authorship of seven books: fargo rock city; sex, drugs and cocoa puffs; killing yourself to live; chuck klosterman IV; downtown owl; eating the dinosaur; and the visible man. it has brought him to write for magazines like spin, rolling stone, the believer, the washington post, GQ, esquire and more. it has brought him, most lately, to a post as the new york times’ ethicist, where he brings his uniquely nuanced perspective on moral ambiguity to bear on uniquely western problems with his trademark directness and blunt self-possession.

curiosity may have killed the cat. in chuck’s case, it made him a literary superstar.

join rockstar author and music critic chuck klosterman and aisha live from st. george spirits as they muddle through midwestern isolation, the intimidation of panhandlers, the fear of introspection, the musicality of wasp, the horrors of self-reading, the problem of justin bieber, why haircuts are important, and how to pronounce sigur ros. plus, chuck hates, then loves the smiths, and aisha fears the beard.

girl on guy stays metal.

if you are lucky enough to speak with lisa kudrow for longer than thirty seconds, you are immediately struck by how smart she is.

not in that presentational, “here’s how many words I know, feel free to hit up wikipedia later to clear up any murky bits” way. more like in an “i know a lot of stuff and am staring through you into your very soul, and therefore do not need to impress you or the room” kind of way. lisa is smart. dryly, cuttingly, self-deprecatingly, hilariously, blindingly smart.

so it won’t surprise you that at one point in her life, she planned to be a doctor. it also won’t surprise you that when she used to watch television, she would analyze jokes and think, “that could have been delivered better.” thankfully, she took the adage “physician, heal thyself” to heart — well, kind of — abandoning medicine to demonstrate to herself and the world just how comedy should be done.

while the rest may be history, it is a varied and compelling one, with roadblocks and crushing setbacks sprinkled throughout. lisa may have eventually become one-sixth of one of the biggest comedy teams in television history, but her life, and her work, are much more than that. and in her (relatively) new role as fiona wallice on the showtime comedy web therapy, she gets to bring that early medical training to bear on the role of a therapist who only thinks she is smarter than you. and will definitely take the time to tell you so. in three-minute increments.

spend just a few minutes with lisa kudrow and you can see she is a monster comedy mind. luckily, we get her for ninety.

join comedic surgeon lisa kudrow and aisha as they dissect growing up in the valley, the phenomenon of friends, keeping your shields up, letting your guard down, making things for the internet, the thin line between fantasy and batsh*t madness, good news gone bad, and why horrible people are so incredibly funny.

plus aisha is stricken with terror on the friends set, and lisa quits smoking. very slowly.

girl on guy is about to inhale.

when he was young, ken marino was one of those unique kids who swung both ways: he played sports and he loved theater. eventually, his coach gave him an ultimatum. he couldn’t be an athlete and also do musicals (coach failed to see the raw athleticism inherent in ‘pippin’). ken had a choice: be a jock, or do theater. luckily for ken, it wasn’t much of a dilemma. he quit sports, pulled on some tights, and the rest is history.

ken went on to be a member of the seminal comedy troupe the state, and star in a multitude of films and television shows, including wet hot american summer, dawson’s creek, party down, and children’s hospital. not content with just being a comedic actor, he went on to write screenplays for films including diggers, the ten, role models, and wanderlust, as well as direct and produce. his latest effort, a jarringly hilarious satire of dating shows called burning love, manages to thrill, delight, and deeply alarm all at the same time.

ken clearly isn’t good with ultimata. but now, instead of choosing one path or the other, he chooses them all. ken is a wild-eyed multi-hyphenate comedy hydra who does whatever the hell he wants.

suck it, coach.

join internet firefighter/lover ken marino and aisha as they burn through technology addiction, violence at the state, douchebag coaches, wet hot american summers, prison sex, terrifying clown makeup, urine soaked breeches, and soul-deadening adulthood.

plus, acting class in hollywood is worse than you imagined, and aisha tries to beat the truth out of ken, but ken remains stoic.

get the towels. girl on guy is about to start waterboarding.

when you dig into a comedian’s past, you often find gritty, turbulent, even dark beginnings. in cedric yarbrough’s case however, the beginnings were quite opposite. cedric grew up in the midwest. enjoyed a bright, sunny, suburban childhood in safe suburban minnesota. came of age surrounded by friendly, welcoming neighbors in the land of 10,000 lakes.

oh, wait. one more thing. he was a jehovah’s witness.

how does a kid emerge from a joyless childhood bereft of birthday parties, celebratory milestones and christmas presents to become a hilarious sketch and improv comic? with a vengeance, that’s how.

a long, cool midwestern tide of burning vengeance.

in harem pants.

join improv and sketch thundercat cedric yarbrough and aisha as they claw through what paradise looks like, the jehovah’s witness art department, auditioning for the boondocks, the kindness of the midwest, being a joyless black family, getting blue paint in your special places, lord of the rings the musical, and how everyone in hollywood is crazy.

plus, cedric has a very unwelcome houseguest, and aisha has amnesia.

girl on guy’s elven cloak of diversion is at the dry cleaners.

when you say the name jonathan silverman, invariably, people say they know who he is.

but if you ask them where they know him from, they can’t always narrow it down. a brat pack rom-com? some murky bret easton ellis adaptation? a sparkly 90s sitcom? do it now. try to figure it out. truthfully, people have a hard time pinpointing exactly what jonathan’s been in.

that’s because he’s been in everything.

from his broadway debut while he was still in high school, to his feature film bow in the adaptation of neil simon’s brighton beach memoirs, to countless television comedies, dramas, and every kind of iteration between, jonathan works. the minute he dashed his parents’ dream of following in his rabbi father’s footsteps into dust, he poured himself into acting, and built a career for himself varied, diverse, and, occasionally, quite surprising.

jonathan’s been making television and films for over two decades, which is longer than most can claim. and now, having just directed his first feature, he’s embarking on a third.

you rack your brain, and finally blurt out you remember jon from the seminal 90s film weekend at bernie’s.

well, you’d be right. but that’s far from the whole story.

join misunderstood nice guy jonathan silverman and aisha as they stumble through going to beverly hills high, ministering to jack ruby, being a work slut, nbc’s sirloin days, the groin-knotting terror of fronting a sitcom, the joys of dirty jokes, and taking a dump in the batcave.

plus jon runs into the boss, and it is not pretty.

girl on guy was born to run.

when rap luminaries want to pay respect to the most influential lyricists of our time, like as not, they name-drop talib kweli.

after underground success with mood and reflection eternal, kweli exploded onto the scene as one-half of the seminal collaboration black star. and while that one-off effort with mos def produced just a single album (all that was ever intended) fans swear black star has been around for years and produced multiple records, so impactful was that album’s creative effect.

black star’s outward ripples still shake hip-hop today, almost twenty years later, a collaboration at once epochal and apocryphal.

evidence: stars from kanye to jay-z to waka flocka flame point to talib as rap’s resident young buddha. laser-driven, unrelenting and dedicated to prolific output, wide-ranging collaboration, experimentation and lyrical excellence, talib may circle the twilight between radical creative innovation and widespread commercial success, but his focus never wavers, his flame never dips.

seated at the high table of conscious hip-hop alongside artists like the roots, common, lupe fiasco and tyler the creator, talib presides over an art form that he sees as ever-changing, holding a vision of a creative tent big enough to accommodate minaj and grae, nelly and yelawolf, l’il wayne and oddfuture in one massive, banging, aggressive fuckin’ hip-hop scrum.

talib kweli is the han solo of hip-hop. the tony stark of rap. yoda with a notebook and a mic. and after ten albums, two music labels, and countless mixtapes and collaborations, he is just getting warmed up.

join blazing hip-hop icon talib kweli and aisha as they slice up battling in the park, cutting brooklyn tech, hip-hop as jazz, building an artistic army, rejecting creative judgement, being a shark, staying prolific, fighting commercialism, and hating your pandora station.

plus kanye shuts down the mall, and black star is the cher of hip-hop.

girl on guy stays sucka free.

comedian jo koy is having trouble sleeping.

not the kind of trouble you have sleeping. jo doesn’t toss and turn or need a drink of water. he doesn’t need an extra blanket. he doesn’t have to pee.

jo suffocates, slowly, on his own flesh, one breath at a time, all night long. jo chokes to death on absolutely nothing the minute he closes his eyes at night. jo has a nuclear case of sleep apnea. jo struggles not to die in his sleep.

a warm glass of milk ain’t gonna do shit.

fighting a slow death from apnea made jo a fighter. or maybe he was already one to begin with. a turbulent childhood, fear, violence, and domestic upheaval didn’t stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a comedian. he fought, and struggled, and hustled his way on to shows like comic view and the tonight show, a regular spot on chelsea lately, then sold-out tours around the world.

and regardless of where that fight may have came from, it hasn’t faded with success. jo still hustles. only now he’s able to travel a bit more comfortably. play theaters instead of tiny clubs. and every night he puts on a mask that literally blows life back into his lungs one breath at a time.

jo may not have to fight anymore to take a breath, but the fighter’s hustle in him will never die.

join peripatetic comic jo koy and aisha as they discuss evil children, filipino street cred, how the hell he got that name, wearing your auntie’s underwear, falling in love with standup, the comedy of honesty, losing your family, and finding it again. plus jo does a face plant into a rock as a kid, and aisha tries to recreate it as an adult. it ends badly for everyone.

girl on guy is about to tell the truth. this might hurt a bit.

anthony bourdain lives exactly the life you think he does.

he travels the world relentlessly. sleeps late without guilt. drinks copiously at noon. dines wildly at midnight. eats rarified foods and washes them down with oceans of booze. curses, unfettered, at friend and foe alike.

he also gets stranded in airports. blinded by piercing intestinal distress. fed parts of animals best left to carrion. trapped by bombs in active war zones. and perhaps worst of all, is occasionally forced to eat really, really bad food.

anthony bourdain is a vagabond poet living a kerouac life in the era of zuckerberg. he does what he wants. eats what he wants. goes where he wants. says whatever he wants to whomever the fuck he wants. anthony is pure id, wrapped in the shaggy, reckless, haunted vessel of a latter-day hunter s. thompson.

and while the rest of us fantasize about roaming the world, doing shots with ex-guerillas in the dark crevices of some seething, humid city over bowls of steaming pho, anthony is doing it.

and he got someone else to foot the entire bill.

anthony lives exactly the life you think he does, and he is not afraid to rub it in your face.

join rock star food renegade anthony bourdain, of no reservations and the layover, and aisha as they hack through getting high in the walk-in, butting heads with ted nugent, the politics of food, the stink of western optimism, earning respect on the yard, the pleasure of pain, and the implied consent of the hot dog.

plus aisha enrages koreans, and tony eats a piece of ass. just a tiny piece. to be polite.

girl on guy is gonna need antibiotics.

there are few sketch groups as beloved, as seminal, as devastatingly funny or as fully off-kilter as the kids in the hall. a whirlwind of wildly imaginative characters, intense absurdity, and bold sexual farce, the canadian squad burst onto american television from the north and dominated american television, first airing on HBO and later moving to CBS late night in the plum spot behind letterman. their deconstructed approach to sketch comedy and fearless irreverence made them an odd fit, attention-getting fit for american television. which was just how they liked it.

even though the group spent a huge amount of time in drag, the only gay member of the group was scott thompson. a wild-eyed performer who was unafraid to try anything and often tried everything, scott stood out as a killer performer in a group of killer performers. he was bold, driven, and as first revealed in theater school, not afraid to bleed for his comedy.

after a meteoric reign, the group disbanded in rancor. scott went on to a frenetic run in films and television, battling cancer and his own demons along the way. today, healthy in more ways than one, he’s repaired old wounds and rejoined the reunited group, whose popularity has waned little in the years since their pilgrimage south.

young sketch comics still mention that their strongest influence was the kids in the hall, a raving gang of comedy toughs, whose most devastating skill was their ability to make you laugh uproariously and feel deeply uncomfortable at the same time. and maybe that was the point.

scott would tell you that was definitely the point.

join kids in the hall’s enfant terrible scott thompson and aisha as they skate through surviving childhood, squirrel racism, d*ck bells, violent improv, sex magic, hating brecht, harassing upwards, live-saving gunfire, and embracing the terror of comedy. plus, scott dares you to punch him, then pulls a john mcclane.

girl on guy. schiessen die fenster.

wayne brady works harder than you.

he makes it look easy; being able to effortlessly move from sketch comedy to music, dancing, acting, improvising entire songs in minutes, performing on broadway, touring nationally, and hosting one of the most well-known game shows on television. the dude’s got an arsenal, and in his hands it seems effortless.

but make no mistake. wayne is always working. the dude grinds.

not that he hasn’t had moments of weakness. he’s only human. but wayne gets up earlier, works harder, and does more in a day than most of us do in a month. he’s won emmys. been nominated for grammys. performed on broadway.

maybe he’s obsessive. maybe he’s hunted. maybe he’s got something to prove.

regardless of what pushes him, one singular fact remains. the man is driven. and after meteoric stints on whose line is it anyway, the drew carey show, the wayne brady show, how i met your mother, on broadway in chicago, in his own show in vegas, and now at the helm of the revamped, reinvigorated, reborn let’s make a deal, wayne brady refuses to take a breath. his relentlessness is borne of a work ethic that has driven him since childhood. he shows up early. stays late. works hard. does not suffer fools gladly.

and, if someone makes the mistake of screwing the pooch, yes. wayne brady just might have to choke a bitch.

join comedy chimera wayne brady and aisha as they break down hollywood bullsh*t, premature resignation, malaysian queens, brady balls, twitter shade, leaving las vegas, and exploding your nice guy image. plus wayne goes berserk while dressed like a cop, then calls bill maher onto the mat.

girl on guy is making it up as we go along.

jay mohr is the kind of guy who can’t turn it off.

his mind, and his mouth, go a mile a minute. always thinking, always joking, always pitching, jay’s performances are an assault, alternately wildly presentational, savagely personal and devastatingly, piercingly filthy. when comedians are in the room jay kills the audience and the back of the room alike. he is a machine gun, both precise and scattershot, throwing out a litany of razor-sharp shots in quick succession. jay mohr does not stop.

jay mohr is a runaway train.

that intensity has led to reams of success. crushing standup performances. indelible film roles. multiple television series. but it also spun jay out of control, into vivid, paralyzing panic attacks, and manic runs of comedic delirium. for years, jay was hilarious, relentless, brilliant, frenzied and haunted. his intensity took him to creative peaks, and into the depths of blinding addiction.

now, sober and a family man, jay is no less intense. but the gatling gun has become a sniper rifle, and the guy who used to crush everything in his path like a steamroller now takes his time, clear-eyed, to smell the roses.

jay still crushes. he is no less funny. no less intense. but he is decidedly less likely to tase you in the lobby of a comedy club. twice. approach with confidence.

join rapid-fire sidearm jay mohr and aisha as they break down giving up porn, becoming a bottom, getting snl, losing snl, the light of chris farley, fighting through panic, quitting comedy, and over the counter destruction. plus, we imagine sex at ina garten’s house and a baby plays with knives.

girl on guy. enter the manticore.

standup comedian retta (née marietta sirleaf) defies stereotype. an unapologetic science nerd who once held physics parties, in high school retta joined the cheerleading squad, excelled in math, and still found time to befriend both the jocks and the burnouts.

in college she killed at pre-med, organized campus symposia, drank with the basketball team, and concealed her intellectualism at the kfc. after graduation she experimented in peptide chemistry, listened to hip-hop in the lab, and secretly pursued a life in comedy. she is funny, well-adjusted, well-liked, well-read. she has absolutely no business being a standup comedian.

if the world was a movie, retta would be ferris bueller. a very funny, very profane, unhinged ferris bueller.

a touring comedian with with her own comedy central special and a regular role on parks and recreation, retta continues to defy expectations. no wilting lily or treacled patsy, retta takes all your stereotypes, balls them up, throws them on the bar, and sets them on fire.

retta is unfettered, unvarnished, unabashed and definitely uncensored. which is just how girl on guy likes it.

join comedian retta of parks and recreation and aisha as they break down losing your mind, living beyond your means, blanking on stage, the ball gauntlet, fighting the food court, peptide chemistry, and dancing around a different kind of hood.

plus retta rages against the smoothie machine, then doesn’t start, but definitely ends, a girlfight.

girl on guy’s about to throw them bones.

with a first name like his, you might make a bunch of assumptions about who baratunde thurston is. where he came from. what he’s done.

you’d be totally wrong.

a graduate of sidwell friends who later got his degree in philosophy from harvard, worked as a corporate consultant, moonlighted as a blogger and standup comedian, and then went on to write four books, found an influential political website, and run the digital division of the onion, baratunde is a conundrum, wrapped in a riddle, and shrouded in the kind of mystery that can only be described as black nerdism, or blerdism.

he self-publishes satirical tomes. he quotes kant. he rides a bike around manhattan. he has a whole different kind of street cred.

with an enviable position at one of the most influential comedic websites in the country and a new book, how to be black, on the new york times bestseller list, baratunde is an incandescent fixture of the burgeoning blerd firmament. and when he and aisha sit down to talk, what follows is a black nerdsplosion of epic proportions.

a nuclear blerdsplosion.

blerdageddon.

you feel me.

join onion’s director of digital and reigning blerd prince baratunde thurston and aisha as they masticate the allure of the free drunk, analyze the lack of nordic exceptionalism, discover why baby blue satin isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, enrage an already livid new england city, and demonstrate how to kick someone’s ass. literally. plus aisha forces baratunde into a reluctant aristocracy, and we reinforce every stereotype you have about harvard nerds.

girl on guy is looking for a panty-dropping algorithm.

david myers floated into becoming a chef the way a shark floats into a sea-slick of chum: aggressively, with a frenzy both terrifying and awesome.

an upstart who prizes hard work, aggression, and relentless vision over traditional vocational training, david pursued his dream of creating extraordinary dining experiences with something akin to bloodlust. from the minute he walked into his first kitchen, david has known what he wanted to do, and nothing — not burns, knife injuries, sh*tty coworkers or imperious chefs — would keep him from that mission.

david was hell-bent. god help the poor soul who got in his way.

the result has been a burgeoning culinary empire that spans two continents and dazzles and delights diners around the globe. but the chef is still the same man: driven, unguarded, focused, passionate, and able to take a life-threatening knife injury without blinking. david myers is a gentleman firebrand, and he is just getting started.

join culinary wunderkind david myers and aisha as they slice through dude cooking, the hubris of youth, the real meaning of “bone,” miles davis in paris, washing the lettuce, screwing the pooch, and why chefs drink.

plus, aisha is a blathering obnoxious foodie, and david loves sushi. like, a lot.

girl on guy never burns the sauce.

evan glodell’s is a cinderella story.

if cinderella was a dude, had a childhood filled with near-death brushes with explosives, dug around in abandoned factories for spare parts to make electrified car seats, dropped out of high school, spent his rootless twenties selling blood for beer money, moved to hollywood and spent three homeless years making a movie with every spare cent and moment he could scrounge, using cameras he built himself from scavenged parts, and eventually submitted the resulting dreamlike meditation on the decay of relationships and the end of the world to sundance.

and got in.

and sold the movie.

and completely changed his life.

evan glodell loves movies. he loves making things and explosions and fire and passion and art. but most of all he loves movies. so much so that he gave up everything he had to make one. that film, called bellflower, sold at sundance, got film distribution, and is out now on itunes and dvd. but how it was made, and how he got here, much like the film, is a story that has to be heard to be believed.

join wild-eyed dreamer and bellflower director evan glodell and aisha as they talk about the end times, wasted youth, building rudimentary bombs, building more complex bombs, making a movie with nothing but sheer will and frenzy, selling blood for beer, and following your dreams no matter the cost. plus, aisha is ashamed of her feelings, and evan knows how to make way cooler sh*t than you.

girl on guy is meeting up with evan after the apocalypse.

there is no one with even a passing interest in standup comedy that does not know dana gould. a man who by his own admission was honing his art as a toddler, dana has been a killer standup for longer than many of us have been alive. and those years have produced an inspired artist at the height of his craft.

dana has done everything. every comedy club. every armpit one-nighter. every late night talker. multiple comedy specials. television series. a writer on the simpsons. dana has been a dominant figure in the comedy field for almost three decades, his relentless assault on the comedy ramparts fueled by equal parts passion, brilliance, and sheer, abject despair.

because if there is an archetypically bruised psyche wedged beneath the furrowed brow of the standup comic, dana has it. a fractured and outsider childhood led to years of untreated and often crippling anxiety, anxiety he has alternately battled and exploited for most of his life. dana emerged finally from years of paralysis with crisp clarity and raucous perspective, but no less cuttingly analytic or devastatingly hilarious. well-adjusted, happily married, a father, a comedian at the peak of his game, and now a podcaster, dana gould has come through hell to get here, dear friends. and he has brought a shitload of jokes along with him.

join comedy firmament fixture dana gould and aisha as they discuss the tyranny of children, old guy resentment, growing up unsupervised, new england taciturnity, living in squalor, doing crimes, and the horror of the blacklight. plus, boston is a bastion of tolerance, and aisha gets the heebie-jeebies.

girl on guy needs hand sanitizer.

with a name like jimmy pardo, it seems foregone this man would one day become a comedian. yet jimmy’s path to standup was tortured and circuitous, set upon by unsupportive audiences, angry bosses, judgmental family members and a very long, very explosive bout with alcohol. jimmy made it through all of this funnier than ever, and with the clear-eyed sanguinity that only comes with dragging oneself from the ashes by one’s own singed and blackened bootstraps.

walking through that fire made jimmy a lot of things: brave, forward thinking, wild-eyed, unflinchingly honest, maybe a little crazy. it also made him start a podcast at his kitchen table at a time when the word podcast was a made-up thing that webcasting nerds used to make themselves feel important. now, five years later, his never not funny podcast is insanely successful, and one of the only subscription-only podcasts out there that actually makes money. while the rest of podcastdom flails about in aimless confusion, jimmy consistently puts out an impeccably hilarious hour of internet radio, and people are willing, and have been for a long time, to pay for it. jimmy is the plastics guy in the graduate — he saw this shit coming.

join comedian and podcaster jimmy pardo and aisha as they dig through why you can’t go home again, integrating the neighborhood, bobby brown’s love of ice cream, accidental racism, media bloodthirst, pulling a costner, and epic meltdowns. plus, touchy subjects, uncomfortable silences, and for once, aisha isn’t the only insensitive lout in the room.

girl on guy is avoiding high school reunion.

you watch sports television 16 hours a day. you obssess about it. sweat during it. rant over it. scream at it. weep uncontrollably in front of it. you feel confident you could do a better job than the slobs in suits yammering about random stats behind that gaudy neon desk… but let’s face it, you can’t.

you’re an armchair pundit at best, a drunken superfan with rage issues at worst. that job is savagely difficult, the culmination of a lifetime of devotion and tireless research, and the guys behind that desk are the real fucking thing. and rich eisen is here to prove it to you.

a guy who loved sports from an early age despite an almost pathological lack of ability, rich always knew he wanted to be a sportscaster. he dreamt about it, and then, unlike you, he did it. wrote sports columns for his college paper. moved to pot-lousy northern california to be a small-town sports jockey, covering girls’ volleyball and pop warner scrimmages. and when the call came, he was ready, with a VHS audition tape worthy of vintage south park. he moved to new jersey, joined the preeminent sports network in the world, and the rest is post-game analysis. after being a part of the most well-known sportscenter duo in espn history, eisen moved to the nfl network, where he talks football ad nauseam with some of the biggest names in pigskin, including michael irvin, warren sapp, kurt warner and steve mariucci. with vip sideline access, hall of fame co-anchors and stat assistants, eisen is literally living the dream. and he’s nice enough not to rub it into your face.

well, not too much.

join sports journalist rich eisen and aisha as they pound out small town sportscasting, the olbermann doctrine, twitter haters, racist accents, getting recognized in the hood, grown men who cry during friday night lights, and deion sanders’ ridiculous closet. plus eisen has an award for your ass, and aisha insults an unidentified ethnic group.

girl on guy is about to go for two.

there are few comedic actors out there more consistently funny than gary anthony williams. period.

a guy who can claim he grew up a “poor black child” without any trace of irony, gary started out as a theater and sketch actor after throwing away his childhood dream of becoming a trucker, just to spite others. his finely tuned sketch characters, bullet-train wit and bottomless self-deprecation soon pulled him from the small pond of atlanta to los angeles, where he soon began working incessantly. so incessantly in fact, that even if you cannot recall gary by name, you have seen him in something. and probably a whole mess of somethings.

from malcolm in the middle to mad tv to boston legal to reno 911 to undercover brother to the boondocks to harold and kumar to co-creating the biggest comedy short film festival in america, gary works. and keeps working. constantly. and the reason why is that the dude is insanely f*cking talented, and insanely f*cking funny. gary is a longhorn comedy bull with an empty stomach and a grad-school vocabulary, and the world is his china shop. we can try to keep up, but in the end, it’s best just to get the hell out of the way.

join crazed comic maestro and boondocks star gary anthony williams and aisha as they unpack growin’ up in the holler, runnin’ moonshine, pimp relations, porn industry employment, chillin’ with snoop dogg, uncle ruckus’ self-hate, and sophia vergara’s lady parts. plus, gary outrages tyler perry, and aisha outrages everyone else.

girl on guy was born a poor black child.

peter facinelli is not who you think.

the first-generation american son of italian immigrants met as teens and married young, peter didn’t grow up fancy. his dad worked three jobs to provide for his family. peter grew up painfully shy, not a grandstander, no showboat, a good catholic boy who rode a bus across town to attend school, wore a shirt and tie to class, and dutifully put aside his dreams of being an actor to please his family.

it was only in college that the acting beast awoke. in quick succession his talent won him roles on some pretty iconic projects: dick wolf’s law and order. riding in cars with drew barrymore. jumping out of them in mcG’s series fastlane. and then he nabbed one of the biggest brass rings of all: playing dr. carlisle cullen in the steamroller mega-franchise twilight. the twilight films have grossed almost two billion dollars. girls across the planet squee at his mention. people may not be able to pronounce “facinelli,” but it’s still a household name.

to peter, no matter. he may have lost the queens accent, but he hasn’t lost one bit of the hardworking, sleeves-rolled, straightforward work ethic his father instilled in him back in the borough. he still busts his ass: working multiple jobs. writing, producing and creating his own projects. starring in six feet under. damages. nurse jackie. and he’s just getting started.

join peter and aisha as they discuss booze snobbery, catholic school PTSD, the immigrant work ethic, whinypuss actors, buying your way into a role, and how twilight can get you laid. plus, peter and aisha forget the names of those closest to them, and aisha fangirls all over the place, then pokes herself in the eye.

girl on guy is totally team carlisle.

tom lennon and ben garant have had it tough.

you may not be able to tell from their delicate hands and soft exteriors, but tom and ben have had to weather an inexhaustible litany of personal challenges. they first met in a pre-bloomberg new york, when bandits and hookers roamed freely, muggings were an every day occurrence, and even the pigeons packed heat — and barely made it out with their lives. out of that crucible came the state, a sketch comedy troupe so fraught with comedic genius and simmering creative tension that meetings would devolve into late-night benders, and members often punched each other square in the face.

after an abrupt and ignominious end to the state, tom and ben went on to create such seminal comedic touchstones as viva variety, reno 911, and the night at the museum franchise. as they detail in their new book, writing movies for fun and profit, the films they have written as a team have grossed more than a billion dollars at the box office. that’s right, billion with a big, sticky, filthy “b.”

and yet, along the way, they never lost their sense of awe, bright-eyed wonderment, or taste for a two-dollar beer or a reckless, profanity-laced rant. tom and ben ran the comedy gauntlet and came out on top. or as they would say, at the very top of the middle, astride a massive stinking heap of money.

join tom, ben and aisha as they discuss drunk walking, shit bakeries, manager perfidy, f*ck ninjas, fisticuffs at the state, ending jimmy fallon’s movie career, and the art of spectacular self-immolation. plus, there’s no dangle if there’s no brain, and new york tries to kill tom. repeatedly. girl on guy. warriors… come out and play-ay…

dwayne perkins is an international man of comedic mystery. a dry, thoughtful comic who got his start in the rough trade of the new york comedy scene, dwayne worked his way up through the ranks the old fashioned way — he earned it.

diametrically different from the bombast and rant so popular in comedy today, dwayne’s affability, sly sarcasm and off-handed, cutting brooklyn style has taken him far — around the world, in fact. he’s parlayed his smart, decidedly atypical act into a varied career, with standup performances around the globe, a litany of television commercials, a comedy central special, and multiple appearances on the tonight show, late late show with craig ferguson, and every single iteration of the conan o’brien show.

smart, restrained, and drily surprising, dwayne is everything and nothing you’d expect from a standup from brooklyn. he works constantly, travels non-stop, always writing, always moving, always hustling.

and in his infrequent breaks, he finds time to make a little toast.

join aisha and dwayne as they chop up british inflexibility, law and order london, frigid chicks in miniskirts, the loneliness of the road, trolling in hong kong, getting banned from dubai, jumped in south africa, and what not to say on a train. plus dwayne loves the honeys, and aisha insults korea.

girl on guy. roll the window up, son.

greg proops may just be the smartest man in the world.

a veteran standup comedian and improv comic who has performed all over the globe, greg has made the art of delivering thoughtful, incisive, personal comedy seem effortless, if not downright alchemical.

raised in the san francisco bay area (this girl’s hometown), greg honed his improv blade first in san francisco and later with first the british and then the american iterations of the vaunted improv troupe who’s line is it anyway? he now brings that razor-sharp improvisational wit to bear on his popular podcast the smartest man in the world, where he regularly skewers pop culture icons, political talking heads, american cultural tropes, and himself, with unflinching severity and unrelenting hilarity. intelligent, sarcastic, throat-parchingly dry, greg proops is a delight to talk with and even more of a delight to see live, and reminds us why it is we go to see standup — to be dazzled, delighted, intrigued, challenged, and maybe, just a tiny bit, shamed.

comedian and smartest man in the world greg proops and aisha hash over the joys of podcasting, hipster douchebaggery, audience hate, plump dancing celebrities, mucky reality television, network wood, and who might best jump out of a cake. plus greg uses big words, and aisha insults the founding fathers.

girl on guy needs to read more.

in the nuclear meltdown that was NBC’s spectacularly aborted effort to rejigger its late night lineup, the person that may have been heard from least is andy richter, conan’s compatriot and erstwhile sidekick. yet his take on those events is unvarnished, unflinching, and deliciously uncensored.

exuding a midwestern charm so heady he could weaponize it, andy richter often seems to radiate sweet sidekick wholesomeness. in reality he is razor smart, icily cutting, and wonderfully, unapologetically dirty. insanely hilarious in his own right, andy started out as an improv artist and comedic writer, and was there from the nascent days of late night, a friend and foil to an early conan o’brien who had almost no live performance experience and was often pulled rigid by nervousness. originally hired as a staff writer, andy and conan had almost instant chemistry, and through early screen tests andy proved himself a quick and funny conversationalist. from the inaugural show, andy was conan’s partner in crime, and has been ever since.

andy left late night in 2000 to spearhead several scripted shows, including fox’s andy richter controls the universe, and nbc’s andy barker p.i.; both were well-received by critics but never found their stride. he rejoined conan on the revamped tonight show, writing and eventually joining conan back on the couch. the subsequent epic bed-crapping by the network is the stuff of infamy, with conan eventually taking his show on the road with andy at his side. now reunited on tbs’ conan, andy is enjoying the kind of creative freedom not seen since those early years at nbc, when network interference was low, risk-taking was high, and comedy was all that mattered. it is a very good place to be.

join writer, improv comic and late night two-man wolfpack member andy richter and aisha as they discuss the flop-sweaty early days of conan, internet profanity, development hell, the infamous tonight show implosion, going on tour with coco, the icy grip of creative fear and doing whatever the f*ck you want in late night. plus, andy gets drunk and naked and aisha draws a crude venn diagram.

girl on guy is totally team coco.

margaret cho is a warrior.

a comedian who started making people laugh before she was old enough to patronize the clubs she performed in, margaret has challenged cultural norms while making people laugh for more than two decades. along the way she has eviscerated stereotypes: about what it means to be female, to be asian, to be straight, even a comedian. from producing her own films to recording musical albums to designing clothes, margaret drives herself constantly to create, to be new, to never rest on early laurels, positive or otherwise.

margaret’s comedy is bone-baringly, often shockingly, honest. she talks about everything from her eating disorder developed while filming her ill-fated sitcom to her subsequent depression and substance abuse, her unabashed sexual curiosity, her support for the gay community and unwillingness to compromise or hide even the most intimate of personal secrets from the world. razor-blade sharp, unapologetically political, unrelentingly raunchy and explosively funny, margaret is always pushing, not just the audience, but herself, into often challenging and even frightening territory, in her quest not just for laughs, but for the truth.

people may call her raucous, filthy, indelicate, outrageous. an agitator. a firebrand. a hellion.

but the one thing people cannot call margaret is a coward.

join fearless comedian margaret cho and aisha as they tear through sh*tty british audiences, performance inadequacy, drunken club employees, comedy nerdery, the icy fist of fear, the creative fuel of self-destruction, motorcycle love, and excrement emergencies. plus, margaret is a chubby chaser, and aisha insults the dorsally challenged. girl on guy. back away slowly.

it would be a coy understatement to say that touré is a controversial writer. he’s been excoriated in social media, screamed at by political talking heads, dismissed by intellectual hardliners and vilified by pop-culture mavens. to some he’s too political, too strident, too incendiary, too black. to others, he’s a crossover hotshot, a mainstream conformist, not a team player, an uncle tom, not black enough.

all of these people are wrong.

and maybe none of them are. touré is a complex and evolving contradiction. a prep school scholar who dropped out of college. a hip-hop critic who rhapsodizes about radiohead. a black socio-culturalist who argues against black culture as monolith. a manhattan intellectual who skydived, wrestled a snake, and worked briefly as a rodeo clown. touré is everything you expect, and not at all who you think.

in his new book, “who’s afraid of post-blackness,” touré argues against the idea that there’s only one way to be black. and through interviews and personal experiences, he illustrates vividly what many of us have been saying all along — that there are as many ways to be black as there are black people in this country, and that as a culture, they are very far from in lockstep.

touré will infuriate you. he will delight you. he will enrage you. he will surprise you. if you think you know what it means to be black in america now, those tropes are about to be shattered.

and if you ever wanted to know what frasier and niles crane might sound like if they were black (and one of them was a woman) well buddy, your prayers are about to be answered in full.

hold tight as firebrand author, critic and provocateur touré and aisha rant about prep school antics, twitter wars, wallet caddies, sh*tty tippers, holding grudges and exploding black nerdery. plus, touré blows up tyler perry, and aisha insults harvard.

girl on guy. welcome to the blerd nation.

george stromboulopoulos is a very unlikely celebrity. he wasn’t discovered by a hollywood agent. he didn’t write himself a million dollar check while living in his car. he doesn’t have a sex tape. hell, you can’t even pronounce the guy’s name (save yourself the agony — just call him strombo.)

what george stromboulopoulos is, is driven. earnest. humble. and a bona fide, one hundred percent, fangs-down hustler. george got what he has by working — hard, without expectation, entitlement, backstabbing or guile (maybe it’s because he’s canadian).

you may not know george’s name, but he is the number-one personality in canadian late night television. his talk show on the cbc, strombo tonight, has featured guests as wide-ranging as nick cave, tom cruise, ice cube, louis ck, neil young and the canadian prime minister. he is smart, coolly funny, well-researched, articulate, and an effortless interviewer who is truly interested in what his guests have to say and can make a late-night publicity jaunt feel like an authentic conversation. on top of that, he is a true fan — his job hasn’t left him jaded — a guy who got his start in radio, loves music, comedy, and art, and is often encyclopedic about all three. george is killer at what he does, and one of the best guys in late night that you haven’t heard of yet. canada is good for much more than just limp bacon and bruisers on skates — you’re about to be schooled, canuck style.

join canadian late-night prince george stromboulopoulos and aisha as they muse about hollywood douchebaggery, holy rollers, heavy metal, the genius of def leppard, what works in comedy, why we drink, why we don’t, and being on the grind. plus, we meet frosty the hobo, talk sh*t about michael richards, and someone uses a very dirty word. twice. girl on guy. this one tastes like maple.

australian joe hachem has a great story. the best kind of story, in fact. the kind of cinderella story we americans love: a regular joe with a regular life — wife and kids, a chiropractic practice — discovers a hobby he loves, and turns it into a job, then into a calling… and then he hits it big.

it’s almost a hollywood movie. pabulum. a cliché.

only in Joe’s case, the story is real, and the hobby is poker. joe went from being forced into early retirement from a job he absolutely loved to being a world class poker champion. and this regular joe doesn’t just hit it kinda big. he wins a major title and hits it insanely big. like, $7.5 million dollars big.

and then, he does it again.

joe hachem is one of only five guys in the world to win the “double crown of poker,” first winning the world series of poker in 2005, and then the world poker tour’s five diamonds poker classic in 2006. he is a millionaire many times over, ripping success from thin air with nothing but his own smarts, skill, determination, focus, discipline, passion for the game and, of course, a little bit of luck. that, my friends, is poker.

join world class poker champ joe hachem and aisha as they talk having the nuts, being a control freak, staying steely in the weeds, reading the table, taking the tough laydowns, chasing the elusive triple crown, having all your dreams come true, and not letting it go to your head.

plus joe bathes in a tub full of money, and aisha gives up her tell.

girl on guy. we are always all in.

the rock music firmament is an intemperate and dangerous place. bands are concepted every day, logos designed, t-shirts printed before they’ve ever played one live show. driven by the corporate marketing machine they rocket to notoriety, enjoy a few brief moments of incandescence, then hurtle back towards ground.

silversun pickups are wholly different. the musicians that comprise the band are committed to art, driven by a love of experimentation and live performance, and bonded by a longtime devotion to true musicianship.

named after a corner store in the silver lake neighborhood of los angeles where they would grab beers to fuel late-night rehearsals, as young musicians they attended each other’s shows, sold each other’s music, recorded collaborative albums, formed the indie rock ship collective, and forged a bond sparked in the independent club scene and cemented by exploration, love of originality, and passionate self-promotion. their work and core ethic are a fusion of their own sprawling creativity and the bold ambition that is los angeles.

the result is a body of work that expressive, transporting, surprising, and extraordinarily unique. silversun pickups’ viciously dreamlike music can soundtrack both a bourbon-fueled all-nighter or a lazy day spent in bed — it is both buoyant and dark, intelligent and subversive, emotional and razor-sharp.

join christopher guanlao and nikki monninger of the silversun pickups as they hunker down with aisha to discuss indie rock, star wars heartbreak, self-startership, staying committed to vinyl, tour bus hygiene, death trap road trips, and getting to the greek. plus self-inflicted wounds is a four-human pile-up, and we all learn a valuable lesson about robot sex.

girl on guy. we stay independent.

the hip-hop game is upside-down. rave djs produce alt-rap mashups and spin them for straight-edge teens in shanghai. rich kids bump it at the mall while drinking vegan smoothies. the grit and slice of street life has been traded in for t-shirt lines and multiple maybachs. and everywhere, the crushing effect of corporate influence can be felt. while there may be plenty of love left for hip-hop, it’s getting harder to find something to love.

but if there is anyone straining to pull it back to its underground edge, to both meet and explode rap expectations, it is jean grae. named after a member of the x-men who died heroically and rose from ash, fully steeped in both street knowledge and nerd lore, jean is a walking contradiction. both gritty and intellectual, rage-driven and kind, personal and topical, deadly serious and insanely hilarious — at times possibly even jean can’t define exactly where her niche lies.

and maybe that’s the point. at a time when music is neatly categorized, predigested and fed back to fans in easy-to-swallow pop slices, jean is working the edges to defy expectations, both others’ and her own. the result is dazzling, confounding, foundation-rocking and devastatingly unique.

join singular rap mc jean grae and aisha as they rant about blacking out onstage, plump slave leias, representing the misfits, drinking to punish others, drinking to punish yourself, checking out other chicks’ racks, being a reluctant superhero, and what wins in hip hop.

plus jean gets wasted on a stereotype and still puts on a show, and aisha starts a new drinking game.

girl on guy. you need to drink this one to the head.

tom morello was probably destined to be in a rock band. from feeling like an outsider in his small midwestern town to having his heart broken by an exotic older woman while in college to having an almost crippling dedication to musical excellence, tom was batting a thousand in terms of teenage angst. but tom wanted to do more than just rock. he wanted to make a statement. he wanted to start a revolution. cue the violins.

but hold the smugness a second. true, it’s an old adage that politics and commercial success don’t mix. and when rage against the machine first started writing their hardcore political anthems, they didn’t think they would ever get booked to play clubs, let alone get a record deal. but now, twenty years and several multiple-platinum albums later, rage is one of the most iconic hard rock bands in history. now reunited, they continue to light up stadium crowds whenever they perform, while never compromising their personal principles or professional musicianship.

with similarly dazzling success in the subsequent superband audioslave and as the nightwatchman, tom clearly isn’t planning to start compromising anytime soon. and after releasing his fourth nightwatchman album and launching a new comic book that throws light on class and poverty struggles in a futuristic dystopia, tom morello may just be helping to fuel that revolution he dreamed about.

join aisha and tom morello of rage against the machine and the nightwatchman discuss small town bigotry, political smut, arena rock guilt, the destructive powers of success, comic book creation, why rage broke up, why rage got back together, and tom’s short but productive life on the pole. plus tom and aisha get soused on whisky both foreign and domestic, and aisha insults a major rock label.

girl on guy. time to wake up.

people love to throw the word “extreme” around. extreme energy drinks. extreme comedy. extreme clothing. extreme tortilla chips.but none of these have dropped 300 feet from a rock cornice into the unknown and icy below. as one of snowboarder magazine’s top twenty most influential riders, travis rice has.

at the ripe old age of eighteen and with almost no prior competitive success, travis snagged a competing spot at mammoth mountain’s superpark competition, and as a total unknown, won. he then went on to dominate in national and international competition, becoming one of the country’s best-known snowboarders. unwilling to rest on his laurels, he founded a film company dedicated to changing the way snowboarding movies are made, started self-financing dazzlingly innovative snowboarding films, and in the process, changed the face of big mountain freeriding forever.

travis is now widely held to be the best all-around snowboarder in the world. travis rice lives day to day, without fear, chasing his dreams furiously, with only a plexiglass and metal board and his own steely discipline between him and his destiny. travis rice is redefining extreme.

join travis and aisha as they rave about howitzer guns, TNT, disappointing your parents, delighting your friends, broadswords, homemade bombs, living without a helmet and being willing to fail. plus, travis spends a week as a junkie, the cops in san diego are dicks, and aisha insults canada.

girl on guy. careful. this may leave a mark.

there are a lot of royalty in the nerd world. intergalactic warriors. elven kings. cloak-wearing magi. chris hardwick. but if there is one single nerd king inhabiting this lowly realm who has seemingly overnight ascended to the iron throne of nerd primacy, it is robert kirkman.a kid who grew up in a small town in rural kentucky and went on to build an ambitious and sprawling creative business, robert turned his love of comic books into a prolific and vaunted career. fiercely devoted to original ideas and self-startership, he created book after book and character after character, failing and succeeding in turn, but never abandoning his own dreams or his singular and personal vision, and the result is a burgeoning media empire, built entirely on his own terms.

let’s face it: no one thought a show about the zombie apocalypse would ever work on television. but now, almost a decade after kirkman wrote walking dead #1, the walking dead television series is a massive, instant phenomenon, and both nerds and non-nerds everywhere are riveted.

robert kirkman is an overnight sensation, yes. and it took him years of hard work and focus to get there. you don’t become the creator of a hugely successful television franchise without breaking a few eggs. or in kirkman’s case, several thousand zombie skulls.

join robert and aisha for a sprawling rant about limb amputation, zombie rules, corpse camouflage, post-apocalyptic amorality and why everyone in the walking dead is batshit crazy. plus we unpack the kirkman manifesto, robert tries to buy a date, and aisha fangirls herself into an absolute tizzy.

girl on guy. you gotta shoot ‘em in the head.

warning: this episode contains walking dead graphic novel spoilers.

when we talk about the wars in iraq and afghanistan, we talk a lot about numbers. number of troops in the field. number of years on the ground. number of dollars spent. number of american soldiers killed or wounded. we rarely focus on the actual soldiers, american men and women who have made intense personal sacrifices on behalf of our country, passionately and without complaint, often with deeply personal and irreversible consequences.

in honor of veteran’s day, i sat down with a young veteran and wounded warrior — army corporal jeremy kuehl — to talk not just about his sacrifice, but his life, his dreams, how he got here, and where he’s going. it’s a great conversation, honest, funny, unvarnished and real.

i hope it makes the meaning and impact of the overseas conflict a bit more personal for you, and I hope you enjoy it.

every kid dreams of being a rock star. they buy the guitar. wear the clothes. paint their nails black. generally act like a douche. and never actually do any of the work it takes to get there. yeah, most kids dream about being rock stars. most kids are posers.for two decades, clutch has done the gritty, unrelenting work of making that dream a reality. practicing constantly. touring endlessly. walking on stage night after night, town after town, delivering artful no-bullshit music to enthusiastic rock purists.

and while you probably know their music (the anthemic electric worry has been used to promote everything from zombie kills to cop dramas) you may not know their name. that changes now.

devoted to the dying art of the live performance, clutch tours mercilessly, playing hundreds of concerts a year. they release their own music on their own label without outside input or compromise, and have crafted a career for themselves that is both personally satisfying and creatively influential. they refuse to bend to trends, cranking out explosive blues-tinged hard rock that manages to be intelligent, wry, prophetic and unabashedly muscular. clutch is real.

clutch is not on facebook. clutch does not tweet. clutch isn’t dating an out-of-work actress. clutch is uncompromising, unflinching, unadulterated. clutch is relentless. clutch does not fuck around.

and then there’s those fearsome beards.

join lead singer neil fallon and aisha as they jaw about the paralyzing fear of being onstage, the misery of touring with a bunch of dudes in a van, the death of payphones, stabby truckers, judgemental hardcore assholes and the end of days. plus neil and aisha bond over their love of beer, then stroke/strike norway.

girl on guy. pure podcast fury.

if you don’t know sal masekela by name, you definitely know him by sight. the face of extreme sports on ESPN for more than a decade, including their wildly popular x-games, sal definitely stands out. in the extreme sports world — typically a sea of almost entirely homogenous faces — sal is that ‘black dude with the dreads’ in the forefront at every major event.but sal isn’t just a sportscaster, or some television executive’s idea of a unique casting choice — he’s a guy who knows his shit, because he’s lived it. a black guy who has skated, surfed and snowboarded almost his entire life, sal is used to standing out.

in fact, sal has always been a singular dude — some might say unique, unusual, weird even. the only black guy in his new england school to skate and listen to punk music. the son of a world famous musician who got pulled out of school to go on world tour (and got all kinds of lucky along the way). the east coast kid who moved to california and shocked everyone by blowing off football and music to become a surfer. the kid with the famous last name who worked as a busboy to feed his surf habit rather than take money from his wealthy father. the guy who parlayed a job answering phones at a surf magazine into a dominant career in extreme sports through passion, drive, and sheer force of will.

sal is used to standing out, and often, standing alone. that outsidership has made him brave, ambitious, humble, and fearless. and his passion for boardriding has made him the face and voice of an entire sports culture.

join sal and aisha as they bond over their mutual love of board sports, their outsider childhoods and shared time at e!, and how getting exactly what you don’t want can be the best thing that ever happened to you. plus sal puts the moves on christie brinkley and vows to never drink gin again.

aisha does not join him in this rash and foolhardy decision.

girl on guy. we are going to rip this shit up.

when adam savage was a little boy, he built complex cities out of legos, and dreamed of one day unleashing his awesome powers of construction on the world. now, years later, he builds much bigger, much better structures… and then blows them all to shit.a veteran effects man and model builder who spent critical years at george lucas’ industry-leading industrial light and magic effects house, adam has worked on such star wars episode 1 and 2, AI, terminator 3, and this girl’s favorites, the matrix:reloaded and the matrix:revolutions.

but it is his work alongside taciturn co-host (and former boss at M5 industries) jamie hyneman on the seminal discovery show mythbusters that has really brought adam’s genius to the fore. everyone who watches mythbusters is gripped by it. from tossing people over waterfalls in barrels to catapulting bloated carcasses over castle walls to blowing up… well, pretty much everything, mythbusters is a 13-year old boy’s wet dream come true. and after ten insanely successful years on the air, that lego-obsessed kid’s now got way better toys to play with.

join adam and aisha as they spaz out about robots, guns, legos, explosions, action movies, rotting corpses, sex on pirate ships, destroying things for a living, and why star wars episodes 1-3 sucked so very badly.

plus adam almost drowns in an upside-down car, and aisha tells hollywood it sucks to its face.

girl on guy. in every tool there is a hammer.

ben gleib is a young comedian, still reveling in the heady salad days of his career. since his television debut (in college, no less) he has been on a slow, steady and inexorable rise to the top. young ben gleib is funny. young ben gleib is earnest. young ben gleib is steeped in the fresh-faced bravery of youth, which has, in turn, bestowed him with huge balls. massive, dangling, stainless steel cajones. you’d think this might make him a jerk, but to the contrary: he is self-effacing, funny, kind, and eager to complement and laud other comedians whenever possible.that still doesn’t mean he hasn’t engaged in one act of reckless hubris after another, including several that could have gotten him arrested by both vice cops and immigration authorities, and one that ended in sucker-punch fisticuffs with a certain greasy dirtbag fauxlebrity. the kid’s practically top-heavy with sack. and he’s not afraid to use it, usually to discomfitingly comedic effect.

join ben and aisha as they kick around masculine beverage choices, racist accents, joke theft, and why having big swinging balls isn’t as good an idea as it sounds. plus aisha joins a truckin’ convoy and calls out nancy grace.

girl on guy. um, you might want to get those looked at.

most comedy teams never make it far, doomed to fall prey to the vagaries of ego, ‘creative differences’ and the inevitable coke-fueled downward spiral towards a failed 70s rock album and subsequent job as a clinically depressed mall security guard.the sklar brothers are unique. not only have they been a comedy team since they were teenagers, they have been and continue to be incredibly successful at it. a big part of that comes from their work ethic. from the beginning they have worked tirelessly to turn their ideas into wildly original comedic programming, from mtv’s apartment 2F to espn’s cheap seats to their current comedic masterpiece, sklarbro country, a podcast as polished and well-produced as it is dazzlingly funny and purely original — a distillation of the best of sports talk radio smashed together with high-speed comedic riffs, slapshot banter and interviews with both real and imagined celebrities. the sklars are a comedic powerhouse, cranking out the comedy nonstop. all while holding onto their dazzling midwestern charm.

plus there are two of them, which makes things twice as fast, twice as funny, and, occasionally, twice as dangerous.

join randy, jason and aisha’s comedy threesome as they stomp through adolescent joke theft, how to eviscerate hecklers, why everyone’s winning at a strip club, and how not to dismount after sex. plus we make some poor parenting choices, and aisha abuses the word erudite.

girl on guy. stay tuned for the big rap finish.

to innovate is difficult. to innovate in hip-hop is almost impossible. to quote questlove, “no rap group makes it past the ninth record.”to constantly innovate while remaining influential, relevant and plain badass over 19 years in the rap game is a feat only multiple grammy-winning band the roots have accomplished, while maintaining their creative integrity and artistic aggression. from busking the streets of philly to their debut album organix, to their groundbreaking record things fall apart to the hip-hop radicalism of phrenology and game theory, the roots always innovate. and as the coolest band in late night, the roots are bringing that innovation to late night with jimmy fallon, to epic effect.

as drummer and musical id of the roots, ahmir “questlove” thompson has been as influential on other musicians and bands as on his own, producing, arranging and drumming for acts as wide-ranging as joss stone, amy winehouse, john legend, jay-z, zack de la rocha, john mayer, the beastie boys, karmin, fiona apple and evanescence. and that eclecticism reaches beyond hip-hop to include an unapologetic love of mad men, harry potter, radiohead, punk music and legos. that’s right. those legos.

questo is the nerd overlord of hip-hop. questo the dumbledore of rap. questo is the ned stark of musical innovation. and winter is coming.

kick it backstage at fallon as questlove and aisha discuss how to get over, hip-hop nerd revenge, the power of fear, and how to pull a helmet. plus, cloris leachman drops it down and backs it up, we figure out who in the roots is in griffyndor and who is in slytherin, and aisha angers baseball fans.

girl on guy. we are all about to be schooled.

maggie q is tougher than you. don’t take it personally. she’s tougher than most people.it’s not just that she left home alone at seventeen for asia without knowing one word of chinese, or that she slept on a stranger’s floor for a year while fighting constant rejection and abuse from agents, or that she told the biggest action star in the world she wouldn’t work with him if it meant compromising her principles, then worked her way up to being one of the biggest female action stars in asia, all on her own terms. maggie also does all her own stunts, works longer and harder than anyone around without gripe or complaint, and can jump and wrap her legs around a man’s neck from a full stop at three meters. plus she once wrestled a full-sized buck. that’s right, a deer. with antlers. in real life.

maggie q rescues wayward pit bulls. maggie q speaks multiple languages. maggie q does not fuck around. maggie q is a stone-cold, ass-kicking fox.

and yet somehow she has managed to remain kind, generous, professional, loyal and maddeningly down to earth. i mean, what the fuck is going on?

join maggie and aisha over a ripstop pancake breakfast as they rant about holding onto your integrity, turning down jackie chan, why american actors are such whiners, and who in hollywood deserves to get punched in the throat. plus bagel weaponization, the danger of dark matter, and aisha tells her very first self-inflicted wounds story.

girl on guy — loyalty. integrity. pancakes.

cliff bleszinski (aka @therealcliffyb) started designing video games when he was just a little dude. since then cliff has applied his mad genius to some of the most seminal video game franchises of our time, including unreal tournament, lost planet, bulletstorm, and this girl’s favorite, gears of war. cliff is now a very, very big dude. like, over 13 million units sold worldwide for the gears franchise alone big.

the dude is huge.

with the long-awaited third installment in the cock-diesel EPIC franchise thundering out September 20, aisha flew to nyc for the gears of war 3 worldwide game launch, and a little quality time with cliff.

grip your controller as cliff and aisha chainsaw through the satisfaction of nerd revenge, failure as a winning strategy, how to talk to your girl, and the joys of bludgeoning an opponent with his own arm.

plus, really happens in a mexican resort when dude huge gets his hands on some some tequila.

one hint: crossed swords.

in a parallel universe, aisha tyler would be a bizarro chris hardwick. or maybe chris hardwick would be a bizarro aisha tyler. either way, once they crossed the space-time barrier and met face to face, there would probably be some kind of highly inappropriate yet visually tantalizing rift-generating physical mashup.

to wit: both are standup comedians. both hosted cringe-worthy dating shows. both worked at e! and both have embraced the crushing nerdiness of their childhoods, turning it into a frayed and brazen badge of adult comedic courage.

chris has done so to wildly successful ends, launching a massively popular blog and podcast, both entitled, appropriately, the nerdist; appearing on not one, but two television shows: web soup and attack of the show; and building a podcast production business that now offers other nerds their own shot at world domination.

with a new book, the nerdist way, out this fall, a television version of his podcast due to air september 24 on bbc america, and a burgeoning podcast empire that threatens to engulf all who venture near like some nerd event horizon, chris has every right to be a steaming plate of high-rolling jerk. instead, he is smart, genuine, self-deprecating, forthcoming and wonderfully hilarious.

oh, and very, very filthy.

join aisha and chris as they wax highly inappropriate about self-abuse, sex with Aeon Flux, scaring the sh*t out of yourself, and trying to trick college girls into sleeping with you. plus, the plural of pussycat is not pussyscat, and we all pile on the kardashians.

my dear mr. hardwick, welcome to girl on guy. we have been waiting for you.

jackie kashian barely escaped childhood with her life.at least, that’s how she tells it. and she tells it hilariously. the “youngest of six children, and raised by wolves… that meant well and did their best,” jackie has used her feral, lupine childhood experiences to fuel a career as a nationally touring comedian, hilarious writer, and prolific podcaster. she enjoys the broad respect and envy of her peers, saw her comedy album “it’s never going to be bread,” rise to one of last year’s top ten on amazon, and has managed to stay about as cool and approachable as any salty, road-hardened comedian possibly can. which is to say, she is hilarious, awesome to be around, and tells killer road stories.

jackie’s long-running highly-rated podcast the dork forest welcomes guests of all stripes to unleash their inner dork. it was one of aisha’s first stops this summer (check out tdf ep 48). now jackie returns the favor.

try to keep up as jackie and aisha rant breakneck about enraging sam kinison, why female hecklers are the worst kind, drunken road sex, and why the only safe bed in a comedy condo is the floor.

plus, random, unprovoked violence with beer, and whom not to call when you’ve lost all your money.

it’s the inaugural girl on girl episode of girl on guy. try not to touch yourself.

adam carolla is not fucking around.from the minute he pulled himself, phoenix-like, from the ashes of his former life as a carpenter/boxing coach/beer drinking ne’er-do-well, adam’s been working like a spartan. from loveline to the man show to crank yankers to the adam carolla show, nothing has stopped him, including having his wildly successful syndicated morning radio program canceled to make way for some bullshit top 40 format radio.after the morning show was axed, adam did what felt right: he kept making his show. granted, it was a podcast, at first out of his home office, and about as guerilla as it came. but now the adam carolla show is the number one downloaded podcast in the world, podcasted five days a week from a brand-spanking new studio filled with shining equipment and extraordinary guests. and where there was once the dated computers and exposed wires of a home studio, there are now cherry vintage race cars and mountainous piles of gold dubloons. this is the house that 60 million internet downloads bought.join aisha and adam as they talk about their mutual love of fast machines, the early days of adam’s podcast, how persistence and stalking are remarkably similar, and why everyone else in hollywood is such a pussy.

plus, why being married in hollywood is just the same as being married anywhere else… and adam pukes in your margarita.

aisha and adam have a long, fraught history. it started when aisha was on talk soup and became obsessed with a brilliant little adult cartoon called sealab 2021, which featured characters from 70s eco-cartoon sealab 2020 doing terrible things to each other, themselves, and a mop handle dressed like a fashionable lady.flash forward. aisha and adam now work together on a brilliant little adult cartoon called archer. the animation is light-years more elegant, the characters sexier, the dialogue smart and earhole-burningly raunchy. the characters still do terrible things to each other and themselves. and unfortunately for cyrill figgis, the mop handle is still around… and she ain’t so fashionable anymore.

join adam and aisha in this supersized episode as they discuss corporate embezzlement, booze’s critical role in the creative process, adam’s alarmingly feminine hotel room habits, and the global appeal of the hand puppet. and adam unspools an epic self-inflicted wounds that will make you feel better about all of your life choices up to this point.

plus, adam and aisha make up a new word, and aisha insults the swiss. take that, switzerland.

brett erlich and I have a lot in common. we both grew up in california. we both hosted low-production value basic cable shows with a rabid cult following. and we both love a good poop joke. brett is hilarious and has hosted not one, but two shows on al gore’s current network: rotten tomatoes, which he created and was co-executive producer of, and infomania. so he is actually way, way ahead of me.

having bid farewell on july 15 to the long-running infomania, which is being cleared off current’s schedule to make way for 21.7 hours a day of keith-olbermann-centered programming, brett joins me to discuss why movies are sucking in triplicate, the soul-crushing joys of hosting a basic cable show, the finer points of fruit-flavored alcoholic beverages, and how not to impress your college girlfriend.

plus, we see how many poop jokes we can jam into an hour.

answer: a lot.