Comedy MVPs of 2025 with Jason Zinoman of The New York Times
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
It’s the end of 2025, which means it’s time once more for my annual December to remember the year in comedy with my friend and colleague in comedy criticism, Jason Zinoman from The New York Times. Which funny people met the moment to become Comedy’s Most Valuable Performer for 2025? Late-night TV certainly faced a political crisis on top of its existing existential crisis this past year, with CBS jettisoning both of its late-night franchises, and ABC threatening to follow suit with Jimmy Kimmel. We also saw major push back within and outside of comedy regarding the inaugural Riyadh...
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Mike Bridenstine: author, director, and GM of the Lyric Hyperion
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Mike Bridenstine appeared on this podcast three years ago in Episode 417. Since then, he has written and published his second book about comedy, “Kansas City Comedy: The Unbelievable True Story of Stanford & Sons, Its Outlaw Owners and the Most Infamous Stand-Up Sets of All Time.” Brido also has begun working behind the scenes as general manager of a cherished Los Angeles comedy venue, the Lyric Hyperion in LA’s Silver Lake neighborhood, where he and his team also have launched their own production arm, Spesh!, filming and distributing comedy specials. Brido directed the first Spesh!...
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Xhloe & Natasha
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland met in high school in Maryland and have been making magical two-handed theater shows ever since. Now based in New York City, they have taken three shows to the Edinburgh Fringe since 2022, winning The Scotsman’s Fringe First Awards for writing for each of them: And Then The Rodeo Burned Down; What if They Ate the Baby?; and A Letter To Lyndon B. Johnson or God, Whoever Reads This First. At the end of 2025, they also began debuting their latest work-in-progress, The Doctor Was His Mother, which ditches their usual narrative arcs and sociopolitical commentary for...
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Jono Zalay
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Jono Zalay began his standup career in Boston while simultaneously earning his Doctorate in Neuroscience, where his research work included giving cocaine to rats. Since dropping his science hobby to pursue comedy full-time, Jono has done standup for The Late Late Show on CBS, Netflix is a Joke, and LMAOF on OnlyFansTV. He also has worked behind the scenes as a story producer or consulting producer on Peacock’s Stormy Daniels series, CNN’s The United States of Scandal, and Amazon Prime Video’s This Giant Beast That is the Global Economy. Jono sat down with me over Zoom to talk about all...
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Jamie Linn Watson
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Jamie Linn Watson is an NYC-based actor and comedian. You may have seen her as Joanna Roscoe in season 5 of What We Do in the Shadows, a judgy church girl in Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, or as the Sprintern in many national commercials for the company formerly known as Sprint. Watson performs with the Upright Citizens Brigade on one of their house character teams, with former SNL cast member Chloe Troast on the improv team A Crazy Amazing Friendship, with the sketch group LISA, and goes on tour with the Story Pirates. She’s also the star of a new movie about the...
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Saaniya Abbas
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Saaniya Abbas grew up in New Delhi, attended an all-girls Catholic school in the Himalayas, and only discovered herself once she found herself divorced in Dubai and starting a new life as a stand-up comedian. She amassed a half-million followers on Instagram hosting live videos in the pandemic, and as a comedian has toured the UK and India, and took her first one-woman-show, Hellarious, to the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe. Abbas and her furry cat ears have come to America in November 2025 for the New York Comedy Festival, but first she took some time out over Zoom to tell me about what she has...
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Lou Wall
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Lou Wall is an Australian comedian whose two most recent shows were both nominated for Most Outstanding Show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Wall has appeared on Australian TV panel shows, and also appeared in the ABC Australia and Netflix series, Fisk. I’ve seen and reviewed all three shows Wall has taken thus far to the Edinburgh Fringe, from their breakneck breakthrough performance about their best frenemy in Lou Wall vs. The Internet, to 2024’s The Bisexual’s Lament – an hour of deranged PowerPoints, gay (derogatory) musical comedy and mentally ill hot...
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Chanel Ali
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Chanel Ali is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actress based in New York City. You may have seen her on MTV’s Girl Code, TruTV’s Laff Mobb’s Laff Tracks, Starz’s Night Train with Wyatt Cenac, or two showcases she did for Comedy Central in partnership with Refinery29. She also released a full special for Unprotected Sets, available on MGM+. Deadline named her as one of their 15 Comedians to Watch in 2025, based on the success of her debut one-woman show, Relative Stranger, which she took to the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe and the 2025 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. In her show,...
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Dylan Adler
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
A San Fransisco native who’s based in both New York City and Los Angeles, Dylan Adler is a musical comedian who performed and wrote for The Late Late Show with James Corden. Before that gig, Adler was named a Comic to Watch by the New York Comedy Festival and a Comedian You Should and Will Know by Vulture. He took his solo hour, Haus of Dy-lan, to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2025, and sat down with me between shows in Scotland to talk about how he differentiates himself from his identical twin who also wants to be a comedian, working through trauma onstage by writing the album and...
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Britt Migs
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Britt Migs is a stand-up and sketch comedian based in New York City who was named a Creator to Watch at the 2024 New York Comedy Festival for characters such as her Italian publicist for the Pope. Migs manages Cracked magazine’s social media and runs the Cracked Comedy Club showcases. In addition, she also has written for Reductress, co-hosts Sunday Sauce monthly at Union Hall with her Meat Cats collaborators, and has previous experience behind-the-camera as a producer on TV shows such as Dr. Oz and Deal or No Deal. In 2025, Migs brought her debut solo show, Dolphin Mode, to the...
info_outlineCalise Hawkins is a stand-up comedian and writer based out of Jersey City, where she raises her daughter, Asha. You may have seen her stand-up on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (NBC), Russell Simmons Presents Live At The El Rey (Comedy Central), Stand Up in Stilettos (TV Guide Channel), and Nick Mom’s Night Out (Nickelodeon). She was a cast member of Oxygen's Funny Girls and has written for multiple shows on Comedy Central and the Disney Channel. Among them: Disney's Walk The Prank, Disney's Just Roll With It, Adult Swim's Soft Focus, Comedy Central’s @midnight, Comedy Central's Hood Adjacent, MTV’s Totally Clueless, Girl Code, Charlemagne’s Uncommon Sense. For her 40th birthday in 2020, she recorded and released her first comedy album, “Calise Hawkins is 40 AF.” Hawkins spoke with me over Zoom about helping other comedians in show business, learning to help herself, single motherhood, how Hollywood writers room experiences left her feeling insecure, and what she learned in the making and writing of Comedy Knockout on truTV. So let’s get to it!