Parenting is a Joke Podcast Por Ophira Eisenberg arte de portada

Parenting is a Joke

Parenting is a Joke

De: Ophira Eisenberg
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You know when you talk to your friends about your childhood and end it by saying, "But look at us, we're fine!" Here's my question: Are we fine? Because we're sitting here doused in CBD oil under a weighted blanket recording a podcast called Parenting is a Joke. Each week, host and standup Ophira Eisenberg talks to a different comedian about their career and their kids. Conversations tackle the tooth fairy, eating sticks, summer camp anxiety, the hidden horrors of childbirth, and the obvious horrors of our own childhoods. We celebrate the absurdity of shuffling a career with raising a kid, and highlight less traditional parenthood journeys, all while relishing in the fact that no one knows what they're doing, but we're all trying! Sometimes even our best. New episodes every Tuesday. New Season October 1st.2024 © Any use of this intellectual property for text and data mining or computational analysis including as training material for artificial intelligence systems is strictly prohibited without express written consent Crianza y Familias Relaciones
Episodios
  • Durable Gladness with Annabelle Gurwitch

    Durable Gladness with Annabelle Gurwitch
    Feb 24 2026
    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
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    34 m
  • Annabelle Gurwitch is Just Trying to Eat, Pray, Live Story

    Annabelle Gurwitch is Just Trying to Eat, Pray, Live Story
    Feb 17 2026
    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
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    42 m
  • Jon Fisch Explains Why Bedtime Is the Deadline

    Jon Fisch Explains Why Bedtime Is the Deadline
    Feb 10 2026
    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
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    37 m
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love hearing stories from other parents about things that their kids do and how the cope with it. makes me realize that all parents have similar struggles.

Great listen

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These are great conversations with real parents doing the hard work. Real conversations about family.

Funny, thoughtful conversations

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