Working It Out
After listening to one episode of Mike Birbiglia’s podcast, Working It Out, I am hooked.
The premise of the podcast is simple: Mike and his guest share a half baked joke or story, and they evolve it together. It shows the work that goes into crafting something potentially wonderful.
In the first episode, Mike works it out with none other than radio royalty, Ira Glass. You get an amuse bouche of what Ira must be like in the writers and editing room of This American Life. Ira’s input is detailed and direct. And that’s what brilliant about this podcast. You rarely get to see what happens behinds the scenes.
At this point I listened to the John Mulaney and David Sedaris episodes. I have a long list of other episodes queued up.
I always thought Mike Birbiglia got discovered by accident when he contributed his sleepwalking story for This American Life. I’ve heard his story about what happened in the La Quinta Inn in Walla Walla, Washington, so many times. It keeps being great.
As I learned on the podcast, writing great stories is not something that happened to Mike by luck. He has been working it out for many years, crafting jokes, writing screenplays, telling stories, collaborating with other comedians, and doing stand up.
He just doesn’t come across as that punchline comedian. Instead he reminds me of that funny story telling neighbor from the movies, who overshares and regularly gets himself into some crazy situations. Here I was, minding my own business, when … We all have a friend or a neighbor like that.
The title of the article in The Atlantic captures it perfectly:
How Mike Birbiglia got sneaky-famous. The comedian who “invented storytelling”
PS - The podcast theme song is excellent and as raw as some of the half-baked stories.