This week we bring you backstage with comedy writers at The Onion. They start with over 600 potential headlines for their fake-news newspaper each week, and over the course of two days, in the very tough room that is their editorial conference room, they select 16 to go in the paper. Plus other people speaking their minds in very tough rooms.
-
Download Control-click (or right-click) Tap and hold to download
- Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe in Apple Podcasts Subscribe
- Transcript
Prologue
Make 'em Laff
Host Ira Glass spends time in perhaps the toughest room on earth, the editorial meeting at the satirical newspaper, The Onion, where there's one laugh for every 100 jokes. (17 minutes)
Bar Car Prophesy
This story will be included in Rosie's upcoming collection of stories, entitled Drinking With Men.
Mission: Impossible
Tough News Room
Malcolm Gladwell is a best-selling author and famous journalist at the New Yorker magazine. But not always. Witness his story—which was recorded live, on stage at the Moth theater in New York—about his first job in journalism, and how terrifying it was. (12 minutes)
The Moth is a place where real people come onstage and tell true and tall tales.
Malcolm Gladwell is the author most recently of Blink.
Related
Act Two: Hotline Bleak
Act One
Act Two
Staff Recommendations
Five Women
A different kind of #MeToo story, about several women who worked for the same man.
Duty Calls
Josh's family didn't play much of a role in his daily life—until duty called, and they took over his life.