This week, Good One airs one of our favorite episodes: Daniel "Desus Nice" Baker and Joel "The Kid Mero" Martinez, aka the Bronx-born comedy duo Deus & Mero.The two met in high school and reconnected on Twitter. From 2013-2014 they cohosted their podcast Desus vs Mero, then went on to appear on MTV's Guy Code in 2015. Around the same time they launched their current podcast Bodega Boys, which propelled them towards their own TV show, first on VICE and most recently on Showtime.Jesse charts their careers to understand what sets them apart from other Late Night television personalities, examining their roots as well as how their definition of authenticity affects their comedy.Also included: puns.Follow Desus & Mero on Twitter and watch them on Showtime. Their new book, God-Level Knowledge Darts: Life Lessons from the Bronx, is out now. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.Good One is made possible by the team at New York Magazine. Subscribe today to support their work at nymag.com/goodone Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on Good One, host Jesse David Fox sits down with stand-up Ali Siddiq. Ali is best known for going viral in 2015 after performing a story called “Mexicans Got On Boots” for the Comedy Central storytelling show, This Is Not Happening. The story has nearly 10 million views on Youtube, and in this interview, Jesse and Ali dive into what happened that day before the joke starts, what happened after, how he became a “storytelling” comedian, and so much more.Coming 17 years into doing stand-up, with a number of TV appearances and three albums already under his belt, this one story was an unexpected jolt to his career. The next year he got a half hour special on Comedy Central, and in 2018 he released It’s Bigger than These Bars, an hour special shot in a Texas jail.You can watch Ali’s This Is Not Happening stories—Mexicans Got On Boots, Mitchell, and more—on Comedy Central’s Youtube channel. You can watch Ali’s special, It's Bigger Than These Bars, on Comedy Central. You can find Ali Siddiq on Twitter and Instagram, too. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram.We are conducting an audience survey to better serve you. It takes no more than five minutes, and it really helps out the show. Please take our survey here: voxmedia.com/podsurvey. Good One is made possible by the team at New York Magazine. Subscribe today to support their work at nymag.com/goodone Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, host Jesse David Fox zooms with stand-up Felipe Esparza! At the time of this episode dropping, Felipe won Last Comic Standing 10 years and one month ago. Since then his standing in the industry has only continued to grow, from his 2012 Showtime Special, They’re Not Gonna Laugh at You, to his 2017 HBO special Translate This. Now he’s celebrating the release of his newest Netflix special Bad Decisions, which he released in both English *and* Spanish.Felipe’s joke is about an episode of domestic violence in his home, quickly followed by a trip to Disneyland. In the episode he speaks with Jesse about how his journey to comedy started (hint: there’s a librarian involved), finding healing through reliving trauma onstage, and how he hustled his way to success without a car in L.A.We are conducting an audience survey to better serve you. It takes no more than five minutes, and it really helps out the show. Please take our survey here: voxmedia.com/podsurveyYou can watch Bad Decisions, in both English and Spanish, on Netflix. You can find Felipe Esparza on Twitter and Instagram, too. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Good One dives into the world of dramedy and traumedy with Dead To Me creator and executive producer Liz Feldman.Liz is a comedy writer who started performing stand-up at 16, and got her first writing and performing job at 18 on Nickelodeon’s All That. Since then she’s worked on a number of sitcoms and award shows, all before creating the four-time emmy-nominated Netflix hit, Dead To Me. In this episode, they chat about season two, episode two’s opening scene, and most importantly we find out - are semi identical twins actually a real thing?You can watch Dead to Me on Netflix. You can find Liz Feldman on Twitter and Instagram, too. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Good One celebrates its 100th episode! Well, its 100th Classic Good One Longform Interview (the 100th C.G.O.L.I!). And who better to celebrate with than Good One veteran, stand-up John Mulaney! Since John’s first appearance on the show, he’s hosted SNL three times, had an unbelievable broadway run with Oh, Hello, and sold out seven nights at Radio City Music Hall on his Kid Gorgeous tour (oh, and did we mention he won an Emmy for that special?)With all that industry clout, John knew what he wanted to do next: a throwback children’s musical variety show for Netflix called John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch. In this episode, he chats with host Jesse David Fox about some of his favorite scenes from his two-time Emmy-nominated special, like the kids movie focus group where John plays a movie producer getting a group of kids’ opinions on the next big animated blockbuster.You can watch John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch on Netflix. You can find John Mulaney on Twitter and Instagram, too. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week’s guest is Saturday Night Live star Cecily Strong. A cast member since 2012, Cecily had one of the most active first seasons in the last 20 years. In addition to being a stunning performer, Cecily has grown into a fantastic sketch writer as well, co-writing some of the best SNL sketches of the last few years: her Erika Jayne parody (that caused episode host Larry David to break), Hot Tub Christmas, and 80s Music Video, to name a few.In this episode, Cecily and host Jesse David Fox talk about the evolution of her Jeanine Pirro Weekend Update sketches, and receiving her first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series this year.You can watch old episodes of Saturday Night Live on NBC and Peacock. You can follow Cecily on Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Originally from Boston, longtime stand-up Sam Jay is an Emmy-nominated writer for “Saturday Night Live” -- her most notable SNL sketches include “Them Trumps,” recent “Black Jeopardy”s, and “Released Early” (from the “At Home” editions). In 2018, she made her Netflix debut on “The Comedy Lineup” and released her first stand-up album, “Donna’s Daughter.”In this episode Sam talks to host Jesse David Fox about her airplane joke, birthed from a fear of death plus an increase in air travel. She notes that most debut stand-up specials have some sort of airplane joke, but she doesn’t care; hers is still funny.You can watch Sam’s new special, 3 In The Morning, on Netflix. You can follow Sam on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Back in April, when most of the world had been in lockdown for about a month, we asked Roy Wood Jr. and Maria Bamford what it was like to try to perform comedy. At the time, the outlook for comedy (and the world) was uncertain and not especially hopeful.Four months later, Jesse David Fox checks in with five stand-ups to see how they’ve adapted, and how comedy has changed.Nikki Glaser (social media @NikkiGlaser) was all set to start her first theater stand-up tour when COVID-19 hit, and she decided to go back home to St. Louis to be with her parents for a week or two. Five months later, she’s still there, and wondering if stand-up will ever really return.  Los Angeles-based comedian Jenny Yang (@JennyYangTV) has taken Zoom comedy performances to a whole new level by hosting shows on everyone’s favorite social simulation video game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons.On July 3rd, Nore Davis (@NoreDavis) released his latest comedy album, Live from the Comedy Trap House, four days after taping it in front of an audience over Zoom. The album is the first of its kind, recorded in quarantine about quarantine.A writer on “CONAN,” Laurie Kilmartin (@anylaurie16) may be best known for tweeting and then filming a special of jokes about her father dying of cancer in 2014. She then wrote a book about the grieving process, Dead People Suck. So it may not have been too surprising that when her mother got COVID-19 early this summer, her first instinct was to tweet about it.Jim Gaffigan (@JimGaffigan) was in Europe when things started shutting down, working on a special in which he does a set of comedy completely about the country he’s performing in. He was only able to finish two countries in time - Canada and Spain. That special, The Pale Tourist, came out on July 24 on Amazon Prime. Now back in the U.S., Jim has tried performing shows at drive-ins, with the audience inside their cars. It’s as surreal as it sounds. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week’s guest is standup comedian, The Daily Show correspondent, and host of the podcast That Blackass Show, Dulce Sloan. Dulce has appeared on Good One before, as part of a Clusterfest panel with Trevor Noah and The Daily Show correspondents.In this episode, Jesse David Fox talks to Dulce about her standup. The joke she chose to discuss is about New York City, which she moved to when she joined The Daily Show in 2017. Dulce dedicated the first third of her 2019 Comedy Central half-hour special to how much she dislikes New York, especially after moving there from Los Angeles, and growing up in Atlanta.  You can listen to Dulce’s podcast, That Blackass Show, wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch her Comedy Central Stand-Up Presents half hour special on the Comedy Central website. You can follow Dulce on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As we pass the halfway mark on this unprecedented year, host Jesse David Fox and Vulture staff writer Kathryn VanArendonk review her rankings of 2020’s best standup specials so far. The specials discussed, in alphabetical order by first name:Dave Chappelle, 8:46, available on Netflix’s YouTube account.Fortune Feimster, Sweet & Salty (Netflix)Hannah Gadsby, Douglas (Netflix)Leslie Jones, Time Machine (Netflix)Marc Maron, End Times Fun (Netflix)Maria Bamford, Weakness Is the Brand (Amazon Prime / VOD) Patton Oswalt, I Love Everything (Netflix)Taylor Tomlinson, Quarter-Life Crisis (Netflix)Ted Alexandro, Stay at Home Comedian (YouTube)Yvonne Orji, Momma, I Made It (HBO) You can follow Kathryn VanArendonk on Twitter. Follow Jesse David Fox on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices