The Stand Comedy Club presents: 10 For 10 Podcast

Most crowd work is a comic asking strangers what they do for a living. Mike Falzone built something else. His show Surrounded puts the comic in the middle, boxed in on all sides with the whole room in play, and it got good enough that Meta licensed it and filmed it in VR for the Quest, with a lineup including Nikki Glaser, Nicole Byer, Pete Holmes, and Moses Storm. Falzone, the self-described “prolific podcaster,” pulls up to 10 for 10 to trace how he got here: quitting baseball to be a rock star and breaking his parents’ hearts, drifting into comedy once he realized he liked the talking between songs more than the songs, why it takes 15 years and 100 sets to find your point of view, and learning stand-up the hard way in LA before coming back east. See Surrounded at The Stand. Follow Mike Falzone everywhere, and listen to his podcast Dynamic Banter, now 10 years deep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Comedian Andre Kim pulls up to 10 for 10 with a run of Artie Lange road stories, including the time he raced a high Artie across two states to make his drug court date, dodging an 18-wheeler while Artie admired the "beautiful turn" from the passenger seat. The Stand regular also gets into why getting passed there is harder than an Ivy League school, bombing his first seven sets and nearly quitting, and the worst gig of his life: doing stand-up between 30 port-a-potties at a beer convention. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carlos Sanchez is the godfather of stand-up in the Dominican Republic, and he built it from scratch by studying Jerry Seinfeld. With no YouTube and barely any HBO back home, the little monologues Seinfeld did at the top and tail of his show were Carlos's only reference, so he became the first comic in the country to do a full stand-up set. Twenty-plus years later, a whole movement has grown up behind him. Carlos pulls up to 10 for 10 to talk about finishing his law degree and walking straight away from it, the "comedy grenade" (the silence before a one-word punchline that makes a room explode), why he tells young comics to "get a life" because punchlines can't get you through one, and how he stopped chasing English sets and rode the Spanish-comedy boom instead, now playing cities that had never seen a Dominican comic. Plus his teenage daughter who's decided he's no longer a hero, learning to "stop being a comedian" on a film set, and why nothing beats live. Carlos stars in the new film La Vida Chueca, directed by Manny Pérez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stand-up isn't "Bob at the office cracking jokes for money" — and after 29 years in it, comedian Bret Ernst would know. Bret pulls up to 10 for 10 to break down why stand-up is a lifestyle, not a hobby: the trial-and-error grind of turning a set into an actual work of art, and why so many people fundamentally don't get that. From there he walks through 29 years of watching the business change — catching the tail end of comedy's "development era," when execs would see a 10-minute set and build a sitcom around you, then getting swept into the reality-show and social-media booms. He's convinced it's the best and most oversaturated time ever to be an artist, thinks there are way too many podcasts (says the guy who did one for 20 years), and cops to the one regret that still gets him: never having kids. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Just be yourself." "You're funny." "It'll be fine." Emma Willmann will tell you straight up — none of it helps. Comedian Emma Willmann pulls up to 10 for 10 and breaks down the real anatomy of stage fear: the dread that hits harder than nerves, why hosting can feel more nerve-wracking than a set, and why every reassurance your friends offer bounces right off. From there it's the ones that got away — blowing off Ali Wong before a bus trip to Boston, and brushing off the creator of Girls after auditioning for the show 19 times — plus growing up in Maine, the years-long grind of getting "passed" at The Stand, and the panic attack she had at South by Southwest right after her fiancé kicked her out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices