Parenting is a Joke

In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg revisits a favorite conversation with actor and comedian Ashley Austin Morris recorded while Morris was four months pregnant and still adjusting to the surreal reality of becoming a parent after never planning to be one. The two comics swap very specific pregnancy experiences from the perspective of performers who work nights, including the strange logistics of building a comedy career while anticipating sleep deprivation and childcare. Morris talks openly about miscarriages, including the emotional whiplash of feeling relief after one pregnancy ended because severe hormonal changes had left her sobbing on the floor and convinced she couldn’t care for the baby. She explains how an unexpected catalyst—a chaotic rescue puppy whose needs sparked a new instinct to nurture—suddenly rewired her thinking about motherhood. The conversation also gets into the uncomfortable realities of pregnancy culture: genetic testing debates with an OB-GYN, the anxiety-producing medical environment of New York prenatal care, body changes that hit faster than expected, and the strange intimacy of discussing weight and cravings with strangers. Morris reflects on recovering from a long struggle with an eating disorder, including a surprising pandemic-era scholarship that allowed her to spend 80 days in a treatment program and ultimately find a different path to recovery. Throughout the conversation, the two comedians bring their storytelling instincts to the everyday details of pregnancy life—from Morris eating jars of pasta sauce with a spoon to Eisenberg’s prenatal yoga class where everyone shared their cravings. 📍March Shows are in Bozeman and Helena, Montana, New York Follow Ashley Austin Morris: https://www.instagram.com/ashaustinmorris/ Buy her new book All Toddlers are Scorpios here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-toddlers-are-scorpios-johanna-gohmann/1147952953 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg talks with author and humor writer Johanna Gohmann about her new book, All Toddlers Are Scorpios, an astrological guide that reframes toddler behavior—revenge plotting, emotional volatility, public nudity-adjacent costume choices—as pure Scorpio energy. Johanna shares how the idea struck while she was standing in the humor section at Barnes & Noble when her agent called with the concept, and how illustrator Emily Flake helped bring the tiny terrors to life. The conversation moves from toddlers wearing oven mitts on errands to rediscovered photos of her son teething on a copy of Screw Everyone, and the time he mistook a vibrator for a “soldering iron,” thanks to his dad’s gadget-building hobby. They trade stories about explaining menstruation on vacation (including an “orange pumpkin” misunderstanding in a Greek airport bathroom) and giving “the talk” to boys who immediately regret asking for it. Johanna also reflects on the creative life of writing comedy from a Brooklyn apartment before the 3:30 school-bus reset, researching astrology with a stack of books that initially included only Sex Astrology, and parenting a 13-year-old who loves Rocky training montages while being raised to name and feel his emotions. The episode captures the constant recalibration of raising boys in a culture obsessed with masculinity, managing YouTube boundaries, and finding humor in the raw, unregulated intensity of early childhood. 📍March Shows are in Bozeman and Helena, Montana, New York Follow Johanna Gohmann: https://www.instagram.com/johannagohmann Buy her new book All Toddlers are Scorpios here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-toddlers-are-scorpios-johanna-gohmann/1147952953 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg sits down with humor writer Johanna Gohmann to talk about raising a teenage son while building a comedy writing career that includes pieces in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and The Wall Street Journal—and the release of her new parenting book, All Toddlers Are Scorpios (out April 7). Gohmann, a self-described astrology skeptic, explains how she researched zodiac lore to frame toddlers as tiny tyrants written in the stars—while admitting she’s a Sagittarius married to one and still not convinced any of it tracks. She shares what it’s like parenting her 13-year-old son, who is on the autism spectrum and currently obsessed with writing fake obituaries, navigating middle school graduation photos that made her cry, and growing up as an only child with two hovering creative parents. The conversation veers into her years living in Dublin after a one-night-stand-turned-marriage to her Northern Irish husband, how not being legally allowed to work unexpectedly jumpstarted her writing life, and why gray Irish summers require fires in August. Gohmann revisits the Moth StorySLAM win where she told the now-legendary story of mistaking postpartum diarrhea for a life-threatening hemorrhage—only to realize that once you’ve defecated on the delivery room floor, embarrassment loses its power—and reflects on parenting through grief, explaining death to a four-year-old who decided heaven might be an Arby’s. The episode moves easily between comedy and real-life stakes—misplaced lunches, replaced fish, helicopter parenting guilt, Catholic relatives in Indiana, and the strange Brooklyn playground hierarchy—capturing what it actually looks like to balance creative work, storytelling, marriage, and raising a kid who prefers writing obituaries to small talk. 📍March Shows are in Bozeman and Helena, Montana, New York Follow Johanna Gohmann: https://www.instagram.com/johannagohmann Buy her new book All Toddlers are Scorpios here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-toddlers-are-scorpios-johanna-gohmann/1147952953 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, writer and podcaster Gideon Evans joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about raising subway-riding kids in New York while building a creative life that has required real-time pivots from television to podcasting. He explains the surprisingly durable concept behind his history podcast Bad Elizabeth—born out of a pilot recorded with a former Daily Show colleague and eventually profiled in The Guardian—where he and his co-host explore notorious (and occasionally “badass”) Elizabeths, from Elizabeth Holmes to a Hungarian countess who allegedly bathed in blood. The conversation moves between career recalibration in a shrinking TV industry, the financial realities of podcasting (“the margins are thin”), and his complicated relationship with cable news, including why PBS NewsHour and Germany’s DW have become more tolerable household options than the sensory overload of Morning Joe. As a dad, he reflects on raising kids who take the subway alone, volunteer at food insecurity programs, and prefer Dungeons & Dragons at Brooklyn Game Lab over cable news debates, and he’s honest about masking his own nerves on train platforms so his son won’t absorb them. There’s nostalgia too—introducing his son to The Naked Gun, watching The Mandalorian together, and discovering that D&D’s gelatinous cube is both a metaphor and a legitimate threat—ending on the hard-earned parenting truth that sometimes you get swallowed, and sometimes you roll a fireball spell. 📍March Shows are in Bozeman and Helena, Montana, New York Follow Gideon Evans: https://www.instagram.com/gidevans/ Listen to Bad Elizabeth podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-elizabeth/id1832614771 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg talks with writer and producer Gideon Evans about raising two teenagers while building a career in comedy that’s ricocheted from scrappy theater internships to six years at The Daily Show. Gideon shares the surreal early days of hustling in Manhattan—once driving Frank Langella around in his parents’ station wagon to pick up a giant painted portrait of the actor—before landing staff jobs with health insurance just in time for a grueling two-to-three-year IVF process that included being dropped by a clinic worried about its “numbers” and producing a sample in his endocrinologist father-in-law’s office. The conversation moves easily between the practical math of raising kids in Brooklyn, the relief of finally getting dental insurance in middle age, and college tours at McGill University and Concordia University as his son explores art and coding. Gideon also revisits his formative years working for Michael Moore on TV Nation, including the time he snuck into Walt Disney World dressed as an eight-foot “corporate crime fighting” chicken to confront executives about labor conditions—only to be detained, photographed as both man and poultry, and officially banned for “chicken in the park.” The episode closes with the origin story of his meticulously researched podcast Bad Elizabeth, where each installment profiles a notorious Elizabeth—from Lizzie Borden to Elizabeth Holmes—proving that even after being hauled into Disney jail, he still has the trespass notice that literally lists his offense as “chicken in the park.” 📍March Shows are in Bozeman and Helena, Montana, New York Follow Gideon Evans: https://www.instagram.com/gidevans/ Listen to Bad Elizabeth podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-elizabeth/id1832614771 See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg continues her conversation with Annabelle Gurwitch, focusing on community, money, anxiety, and what parenting looks like when your child is grown and the ground keeps shifting. Gurwitch talks about creating stability through “Stammtisch”–style standing lunches and Sunday meetups, describing how scheduled friendships became a lifeline after COVID and as creative communities fractured under self-tapes, remote work, and rising costs. She shares a formative early-career story from the Chelsea Hotel, where waiting hours to audition opposite Gary Oldman led not to a movie role but to a decades-long friendship, underscoring how creative life is often built sideways. The conversation turns to parenting adult children in an unstable economy—worrying about what you can’t give them, negotiating money without trust funds, and finding dignity in simply taking turns paying for lunch. Gurwitch revisits the pandemic moment that reshaped her family, recounting how a routine COVID test turned into a lung cancer diagnosis delivered by phone while stranded in a broken-down car with her son, forcing her to manage terror, logistics, and motherhood at the same time. She reflects on anxiety as a finite resource, the necessity of compartmentalizing fear, and her concept of “durable gladness”—small, survivable joys that replace impossible expectations of constant fulfillment—before the episode veers into comic relief with a riff about monetizing the phrase as luxury adult diapers, complete with branding ideas and a mock sponsorship fantasy. 📍February Shows are in Anchorage, Alaska, Pine Plains, NY, Nashville, NT, KY, Chicago, IL, Madison, WI Follow Annabelle Gurwitch: https://www.instagram.com/annabellegurwitch1 Buy her new book ⁠The End of My Life is Killing Me: The Unexpected Joys of a Cancer Slacker⁠ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg talks with writer, performer, and memoirist Annabelle Gurwitch about parenting an adult child while still actively shaping a creative life that refuses to behave. Gurwitch reflects on writing The End of My Life Is Killing Me while navigating stage-four lung cancer treatment, explaining why she frames the book as a “second life” rather than a comeback story, and why she deliberately avoids language like resilience and mindfulness after watching those words get hollowed out by marketing. The conversation moves between parenting, storytelling, and art with surgical specificity: Gurwitch recounts negotiating with her 27-year-old son Ezra over what stories about him can appear on the page, describes him hiding under a hoodie at her Joe’s Pub show before offering a perfectly therapy-informed compliment, and shares how their relationship shifted during COVID when he moved home from Bard. She tells Ophira about being inundated with juicers after her diagnosis, her disastrous visit to a Malibu “healer” later revealed to be a litigious fraud, and the line Ezra delivers at a juice bar—“Eternal life sucks ass, Mom”—that she fought to keep in the book. Gurwitch also walks through her love of contrarian thinking, her anti–Eat, Pray, Love travel story involving a European heavy-metal band and a hotel with bleach stains and toenail clippings, and the surreal moment she opened her book-cover email in Barcelona expecting a Bernini sculpture and instead saw a chicken doing yoga, prompting Ezra to ask if there was “a story about chicken” inside. 📍February Shows are in Anchorage, Alaska, Pine Plains, NY, Nashville, NT, KY, Chicago, IL, Madison, WI Follow Annabelle Gurwitch : https://www.instagram.com/annabellegurwitch1 Buy Annabelle's new book The End of My Life is Killing Me: The Unexpected Joys of a Cancer Slacker See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this second conversation with Jon Fisch, Ophira Eisenberg and Jon settle into the daily mechanics of parenting two young kids while maintaining a working stand-up career, from navigating December birthdays, redshirting anxiety, and Malcolm Gladwell math, to the quiet shock of realizing your kid suddenly wants to walk to school alone. Fisch talks through the practical negotiations of comedy life now that bedtime matters—calling clubs to ask when he actually needs to arrive, setting a firm four-figure holiday minimum for skipping Passover, and learning how to sneak out of the house mid-Hot Wheels race without triggering tears. They compare notes on sibling dynamics as Fisch describes his daughter’s recent 180 into devoted big-sister mode, reading books to her brother for an hour while grandparents watched football, and reflect on the strange intimacy of bringing a child to shows where she colors on the floor, doesn’t look up once, and later proudly announces, “You were talking about me.” The episode threads through modern parenting pressure points—YouTube shorts bans, grocery store toy ambushes, American Girl’s Hot Wheels crossover, and the slow realization that kids’ programming is one story told with dogs, trucks, or monsters—before circling back to the moment Fisch explains why leaving for a gig feels hardest when his son suddenly has “a thousand things to say” as he’s reaching for his coat. 📍February Shows are in Anchorage, Alaska, Pine Plains, NY, Nashville, NT, KY, Chicago, IL, Madison, WI Follow Jon Fisch: https://www.instagram.com/jdfisch See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg sits down with longtime friend and comedian Jon Fisch to talk about becoming the parent he always knew he wanted to be—just not in the order he expected—starting with the moment he learned his girlfriend was pregnant while sitting across from his mother at a Cheesecake Factory in the Natick Mall. They trade stories about raising young kids during COVID, from how lockdown accidentally turned Jon’s son into an early, voracious reader thanks to curbside bookstore recommendations, to navigating a preemie birth amid constantly shifting hospital rules that changed by the nursing shift. The conversation drifts easily between creative life and parenting logic, including Jon’s observation that stand-up used to provide “purpose” at night until kids rewired the entire day, and how slowing down during the pandemic made comedy feel more enjoyable again. The heart of the episode lands on a darkly funny family legend involving his niece’s beloved owl lovey—one of many identical backups—which Jon confirms his brother once decapitated in a moment of exhausted bedtime brinkmanship, a parenting move so extreme it later came full circle when that same niece gifted her remaining owls to Jon’s newborn daughter. 📍February Shows are in Anchorage, Alaska, Pine Plains, NY, Nashville, NT, KY, Chicago, IL, Madison, WI Follow Jon Fisch: https://www.instagram.com/jdfisch See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, Ophira Eisenberg reconnects with author, dad, and tattoo artist Phuc Tran for a conversation that zigzags from Star Wars as a childhood lifeline to parenting philosophies shaped by motorcycles, rotary phones, and letting kids touch the metaphorical hot pipe. Tran talks about growing up Vietnamese in a town where missing one TV network meant missing cultural shorthand, and how Star Wars became a rare common language that let him belong, a feeling he’s intentionally recreating with his own daughters by showing them the films before they develop a critical eye. They get into raising kids amid microlabeling culture, with Tran explaining why he wrote “labels are for jars” on the family chalkboard, as well as his years teaching Latin, Greek, and German, arguing that Latin slows kids down in a way modern life rarely does. The conversation moves easily between creative work and parenting ethics, from why he stopped talking tattoo clients out of bad ideas after becoming a parent to how children’s books often serve adult anxieties more than kids’ curiosity. Throughout, Tran frames creativity as something lived rather than branded—whether it’s daughters trading sketchbooks at restaurants instead of phones, apprenticing at the tattoo shop, or his own belief that punk rock shouldn’t be a lifelong personality—before landing on the story of calmly watching his toddler pick herself up in public while a stranger yelled, a moment that neatly captures his faith in letting kids learn by standing back. 📍January Shows are in Las Vegas, NV, Beacon, NY and New York, NY Follow Phuc Tran: https://www.instagram.com/phucskywalker/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ophira Eisenberg sits down with author, tattoo artist, and Maine-based dad Phuc Tran for a wide-ranging, grounded conversation that moves from frantic school drop-offs and topping off windshield wiper fluid before a storm to the deeper anxieties of becoming a parent after trauma, bullying, and immigration. Tran talks candidly about growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in small-town America, finding safety in classrooms when home wasn’t safe, and how punk rock, tattoos, and books became both armor and language. The two bond over raising kids while making creative work that pays unevenly, advocating half-jokingly for plumbing and electrical careers, and embracing Maine’s culture of the multi-hyphenate as a survival skill rather than a branding exercise He also reflects on fearing he’d be a bad father, how therapy reframed imperfection as necessary, and why parenting teenage daughters now feels like his area of expertise after decades teaching middle and high school. They also get into luck versus merit in publishing, how his memoir Sigh, Gone led—almost accidentally—to a bestselling children’s book series about big feelings, and why emotional batteries, not discipline charts, determine household peace. The episode circles back to physical objects as emotional anchors, landing on Tran’s red rotary phone—kept for Maine power outages and the unmatched satisfaction of slamming down a receiver when a conversation is truly over. 📍January Shows are in Las Vegas, NV, Beacon, NY and New York, NY Follow Phuc Tran: https://www.instagram.com/phucskywalker/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Carole Montgomery and Ophira Eisenberg zoom out from early parenting to talk about what happens after the kid grows up, moves out, and then… moves back in. Carole describes her son’s room as a frozen time capsule—albums, toys, and CDs untouched—while explaining how his first attempt at college lasted six months before the classic millennial boomerang returned him home, a pattern she sums up as “they leave, they come back; I moved—he found me.” She reflects on the anxiety that followed him into adulthood, her belief that anxiety is practically the baseline setting now, and the emotional whiplash of touring for weeks before constant phone contact existed, including the moment her six-year-old calmly told her she was “solid” and could go back on the road. The conversation weaves through parenting philosophies shaped by Vegas cul-de-sacs and open-door houses, her resistance to overscheduled childhoods, the reality that almost no kids actually go pro despite intense sports pressure, and the great trophy purge that left only signed baseballs and, somehow, her husband’s awards. Carole also digs into the creation of Funny Women of a Certain Age, venting about theaters that expect comics to sell tickets, sweep floors, and manage social media while still questioning whether women-led comedy events can sell, all before landing on the oddly satisfying moment she told a woman in her mid-30s she was simply too young for the show. 📍January Shows are in Las Vegas, NV, Beacon, NY and New York, NY Follow Carole Montgomery: https://www.instagram.com/carolemontgomerycomic/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this New Year’s episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg talks with mystic, Reiki practitioner, and parent Jennifer Wai about raising kids while trusting intuition in a culture obsessed with rules, experts, and productivity. Jennifer explains what it actually means to be a mystic—describing herself as a human antenna fine-tuning static—and traces that sensitivity back to a childhood marked by literal thinking, bullying, and parents who didn’t quite know what to do with a kid who felt everything. They compare notes on parenting highly perceptive children, including how Jennifer’s early ability to anticipate her kids’ needs sometimes backfired by discouraging them from speaking up, and how her own children have been “socialized out” of mystical thinking, even as they casually tolerate card pulls and energy talk. The conversation moves easily from Reiki as “gentle jumper cables” for the nervous system to the emotional labor of rejecting people-pleasing while doing psychic readings, before landing on practical parenting ideas for the year ahead—like offering kids a “third option” instead of a hard no, or sitting through Fortnite matches just to stay connected. The episode closes on Jennifer’s big theme of grace—grace around self-care that looks like binge-watching, grace around messiness, and grace delivered with a laugh as Ophira admits she’s now calling “grace” her personal Pantone color. 📍January Shows are in Las Vegas, NV, Beacon, NY and New York, NY Follow Jennifer Wai: https://www.instagram.com/thejenniferwai/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Comedian Carole Montgomery joins Parenting Is a Joke to talk with Ophira Eisenberg about raising a kid while building a stand-up career that never paused, even when everyone told her it should. Carole traces her path from starting comedy at 21 in male-dominated Brooklyn clubs to touring relentlessly as a new mom, pumping breast milk backstage and leaving her six-month-old with a six-foot-five tattooed bouncer who didn’t know how to remove a baby from a car seat. She reflects on the blunt warning from a manager who said pregnancy would ruin her career—followed almost immediately by a Showtime taping—and the practical choices that shaped her parenting, like stopping road trips only when her son needed his own airline seat. The conversation moves through her years hosting a topless revue in Vegas while serving as PTA vice president, her zero-nonsense style as team mom who swore at line-cutting kids, and the strange mix of guilt, stamina, and pride that comes from doing school drop-offs after midnight shows. Throughout, Carole and Ophira trade observations about creative work, class differences in parenting, and how kids remember presence more than perfection, circling back to the image of a tiny Lane being rocked by a nervous nightclub bouncer—an early sign he’d grow up completely at home backstage. 📍Remaining December Shows are in New York, NY Follow Carole Montgomery: https://www.instagram.com/carolemontgomerycomic/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Comedian Mike Feeney joins Ophira Eisenberg in the thick of brand-new fatherhood, talking through life with his 15-month-old son Leo while juggling touring, illness roulette from daycare, and a self-imposed creative gauntlet that included shooting, directing, and editing a high-concept Comedy Cellar special when his baby was just ten weeks old. Feeney gets specific about the early months—the shock of sleep deprivation, the grim honesty of telling each other “we made a terrible mistake,” and the strange relief when sleep training worked so fast it felt suspicious, complete with his mom stepping in while he and his wife hid out at a nearby hotel. The conversation moves through IVF logistics, postpartum preeclampsia that sent his wife back to the hospital days after delivery, and the whiplash of supporting a partner’s health while hopping on the subway to make stage time. Feeney’s comic brain shines in granular parenting moments: the deep-crib back pain of sliding an arm out from under a sleeping baby, screen-recording bedtime attempts like wildlife footage, and the quiet dread of being turned away from daycare because of “a little gunk” that turned out to be pink eye. He reflects on how parenting has narrowed his creative window in a way that sharpened his writing, forced clearer priorities, and made him ruthless about which projects survive, all while admitting that FaceTiming from the road thrills Leo for ten minutes before it completely backfires. The episode lands on a perfectly lived-in note with Feeney describing that heart-stopping morning scream when his bedroom door opens and Leo charges in “like a bat out of hell,” a wake-up call that’s both terrifying and somehow the best part of the day. 📍Remaining December Shows are in New York, NY Follow Mike Feeney: https://www.instagram.com/iammikefeeney/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranycLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, comedian Emily Walsh talks to Ophira Eisenberg about becoming a parent later in life and being labeled “advanced maternal age” by New York doctors while taking “nightly little baby aspirin” she was told “sometimes works” for reasons no one could explain. She describes meeting her tiny five-pound newborn who arrived a month early with “newborn fuzz” on her ears and back and a full head of hair that proved her pregnancy heartburn was accurate karma for marrying a very “hairy man.” Parenting for the first time at 40 means learning everything on the fly — sometimes quoting TikToks as if they were books — while hoarding three different “booger-sucking robots,” including a hospital-grade model she gleefully uses every morning. She shares postpartum rage (“Don’t kill your husband” turned out to be wise advice), frustration with breastfeeding (“barbaric,” she says), and the absurdity of pumping in Times Square between comedy sets because the manager can’t comprehend her need to schedule pumping. A broken ankle took away her baby-calming outdoor walks, she hasn’t made a “mom friend” yet, and her social circle is still figuring out she’s “not dead,” even as she continues podcasting, stand-up, and raising a baby who dressed as Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park with her bassinet converted into the Jeep and her husband in an inflatable T-Rex suit. 📍December Shows are in Boulder, CO, Westchester, NY, and good ol’ New York, NY Follow Emily Walsh: https://www.instagram.com/thefunnywalsh/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, Ophira talks with comic and new mom and comedian Emily Walsh, who shares how she spent her twenties and thirties convinced she didn’t want kids, only to find herself writing an Edinburgh show about that exact ambivalence and then trying to conceive between gigs in Atlantic City. Emily describes entering stand-up at 30 after years painting sets for Blue Bloods—so many beige walls she started an Instagram called “Beige Bloods”—and navigating a scene of young men who only acknowledged her existence after she did well onstage. She and her husband weighed whether comedy’s unpredictable grind should dictate their future, eventually trying minor-science fertility help because their work schedules kept missing the 18-hour ovulation window. Emily recounts giving birth a month early with the flu, spending twelve hours in a triage room where nurses kept losing the baby’s heart rate, avoiding a balloon induction only because she was already three centimeters dilated, and delivering after an emergency episiotomy followed by the infamous “puppet moment” when a surgeon had to reach in by hand to remove her placenta—much to her husband’s horror when he asked if she’d please double-check with an ultrasound. 📍December Shows are in Boulder, CO, Westchester, NY, and good ol’ New York, NY Follow Emily Walsh: https://www.instagram.com/thefunnywalsh/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this Snack episode, Ophira catches up with author and storyteller Katy Strange, who talks about the very specific chaos of raising two tweens while publishing her debut novel The Manly Man of God. Katy explains how her book’s bold, saint-like cover—complete with a mysteriously floating eggplant—has sparked confusion among some readers, including a man at her book launch who sincerely asked if the story involved a farmers’ market subplot. She and Ophira dig into the megachurch culture that inspired the book, including the time a stranger on a Vancouver bus tried to flirt with Katy only to pivot into trying to convert her, not realizing she understood church history well enough to corner him with questions about communal living. Katy also shares how writing the novel began during nap-time marathons, how a women’s business incubator with drop-in childcare became her creative lifeline, and how her family’s “Yes Day” tradition has evolved from toddlers eating crackers on the couch to tweens burning through budgets on Shake Shack, fancy haircuts, and sneaker hunts. And at the end, Katy describes how her 13-year-old now treats Warhammer figurines as a non-negotiable expense, as well as expensive haircuts from the mall salon that is covered in ring lights. 📍December Shows are in Boulder, CO, Westchester, NY, and good ol’ New York, NY Follow Katy Strange: https://www.instagram.com/realstrangekaty/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, Ophira talks with author and storyteller Katy (Katharine) Strange about the tangled realities of raising tweens while untangling a past shaped by evangelical culture. Katy shares how moving 17 times as a kid primed her for reading a room—and for assuming friendships were optional until she realized she wasn’t relocating again. She talks about letting her 13-year-old navigate Seattle’s public transit with “mixed results,” including surprise solo detours through the city, and about trying to teach her kids religion only to have her son declare he’s an existentialist who’d rather stay home and play Halo. Katy also opens up about stepping away from the church, wrestling with belief through therapy, and finding her way back to spiritual curiosity while writing her debut novel Manly Man of God, which pulls from her upbringing in Christian fundamentalism—with zero Cologne-drenched megachurch teenagers harmed in the process. And in the final moments, Ophira asks Katy about her son’s readiness for confirmation, prompting Katy to admit that he took one look at her lesson plan and said, “I don’t believe in any of this—I’m an atheist,” before returning to his video game. 📍November Shows are in Philadelphia, PA, Boston, MA, Westchester, NY, Guadalajara, Mexico! Follow Katy Strange: https://www.instagram.com/realstrangekaty/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this snack-sized conversation, Ophira Eisenberg talks with author and newly certified parenting coach Kerri Smith-Maher about how years of teaching writing, her daughter’s struggles, her own sobriety journey, and a crash course in perimenopause all pushed her toward parent coaching. Kerri explains how a psychologist friend steered her away from graduate school and toward certification at the Jai Institute, where she dove into nervous system science, attachment theory, and the iceberg model of behavior. She shares why Dr. Becky Kennedy’s Good Inside is her go-to recommendation, how a family DBT course helped them decode behavior “under the surface,” and why the real breakthrough in her house came when she learned to regulate herself instead of rushing to fix her daughter’s reactions. Kerri also describes how Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance finally taught her to “pause” by practicing it during calm moments—helped along by an iPhone alarm labeled “pause” three times a day. The episode ends with Kerri revealing that her best creative work happens only after caffeine, dog-walking, and a strict morning writing window, a habit she built during her daughter’s three-morning-a-week nursery school era. 📍November Shows are in Philadelphia, PA, Boston, MA, Westchester, NY, Guadalajara, Mexico! Follow Kerri Maheri: https://www.instagram.com/kerrimaherwriter/ To learn more about her coaching: https://www.instagram.com/thewellresourcedparent/ See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices