Wandering The Aisles W/ Andy Farnsworth

Adrian Lambrinos invited me to a sweat lodge ceremony in April and it was such a powerful experience it shut me up for about 9 months. This is my attempt to take you through it with me. Glad to be back.  @wanderingaisles

Preview of Andy’s new standup album. Roundup of where WtA has been the last few months and where it’s wandering next. This is a mini-episode clip show of: your refurbished host; the cinching of some bows on the past; and a sigh of hope for an amazing and stable new one. Highlights of a profound experience with Adrian Lambrinos, my ambassador to a sweat lodge ceremony which will air in its entirety soon. @wanderingaisles

A trip to Wal-Mart, a recent MS diagnosis, sobriety, dating in recovery, and a reconciliation with Lauryn Bunker. We spend a lot of time talking in my car, yelling and trading stories. Lauryn shouts at a man while driving past the strip club, and I yell about an amends gone awry with an ex-girlfriend that ended with the destruction of my old Volvo. We attempt to eat candy out of those "free" bins. Can't find any bins at Wal-Mart. Get kicked out. Then we go to another grocery store and find some bins. I follow up a couple months after to see how she's doing.  @wanderingaisles

Andy sets the stage for the first season of Wandering the Aisles. A trip to the Mormon Goodwill, known in Utah as "Deseret Industries," with photographer Natalie Simpson. Their afternoon thrift store odyssey yields Andy an old lady chair and an emotional breakdown in what may or may not be the dead kid stuffed animal section. @wanderingaisles @neverendinghike @beehivephotovideo

A harrowing camp story and comedian and actor Sharron Paul. You might recognize her once we start talking. She’s the voice of the mom, Francine, on the kids cartoon Fanny Fun Facts on Amazon, and she’s also in a webseries called “GhostedBusters." Sometimes I get a little nervous talking to guests, especially the part right there at the beginning. The hello. The handoff from being alone to being in someone’s company. But I was good with Sharron and we had a pretty epic conversation. Here’s us talking back in May in Prospect Park. @Sharronica @YarnWorthPod WYYW Website Support the show: patreon.com/yarnworthpod Next week we’ll be on the Staten Island Ferry with Comedy Central writer Tim Duffy. He tells some pretty amazing tales of the Hudson and we talk fat guy clothes. Have a good 4th.

Tim Racine and I on: cats that try to separate us from our lovers; frozen gummy bears; and lying about Pantera. Also, former NPR reporter Athena Desai ties a bow on a 14-year-old audio clip mystery I've been trying to get my head around since I left WBUR in 2002. @TimRacine  Athena Desai = @brighteyeslife 

A tiny documentary on what it's like to be in a friend's apartment when they're not there. Followed by me and Jeff talking about: people who don’t wring out the kitchen sponge; getting way deep into the nature of storytelling (he helps coach me through an impossibly climax-less story I keep insisting on telling). He comes over and cooks me the mushrooms I helped watch for him one weekend in March. Jeff’s a real heavyweight and it was an honor to have him on. He's “a storyteller, standup, and the guy behind "'And I Am Not Lying,' a variety show that combines stand-up, storytelling, burlesque, sideshow and music on the second Friday of every month at UCB East." He’s won a bunch of Moth StorySLAMS, And you may recognize him from stories on This American Life, The Moth, and some things he’s written for  The Paris Review Daily. He also teaches a storytelling class that's a "six-week workshop for experienced comics and storytellers, to teach the structure and technique of comedic storytelling." If you’re intereste

For better or worse, this episode is likely one of the first podcasts ever to provide an audio chronicle of the day before a colonoscopy.  This week my walking companion is Katina Corrao. Much has been written about her positivity, but what is sometimes left out is just how much loss she has experienced in her life. We bond over the grim and I marvel at the horsepower of her attitude. I hate the word "attitude," but she helps me accept it again.  This episode was recorded on January 27, 2016 and February 22, 2016 and is one of the longer ones I've done with a guest. And for good reason. Hang in till the end or just treat it like two back to back episodes, maybe.  Check out Katina's album Hot Date that debuted at #1 on iTunes or stream the live performance here. I enjoyed having her part my clouds for a while.  Music this week by Aaron Campbell, A guy drumming at the West 4th Stop, and Direwires 

Margaret Dodge is my traveling companion this week. Recorded in two parts: October 25th, 2015, on a visually and aurally beautiful day in Central Park; then, deeper into our respective issues and into the belly of her new apartment/feral cat cave at the end of February 2016. Basically, this episode bookends several months of substantial emotional fermentation.  Anyway, I’m making some progress and Margaret has become a good friend and has been pretty helpful with that. She's funny and easy to talk to.  @dodgecityradio Check out Dodge City Radio: Friday nights at 7pm on @radiofreebk   

This week I visit Eric Aleman, owner of the storied King of Kings Barber Shop in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. I’ve been going to him for a couple years and it's always an odyssey which begins on my scalp and ends in my heart.  Eric, like a lot of good barbers, is able to step in and out of conversation. He’ll talk if you want to talk. Or he’ll just step back and keep working on your hair. That’s part of why I like him.  He’s not only a really solid barber, he’s also a talented lyricist, hip-hop artist/ whatever you want to call it.  He’s a founding member of BLKLYST. Who you can check out playing at Littlefield’s or here on youtube.  If you listen real close here you can hear him shaving my neck at one point. It’s pretty hard to talk w a knife to your neck, but I did my best.  King of Kings Barber Shop #Barber #EricAleman #KingOfKings #HipHop #SunsetPark #NYC #WNYC 

It's one thing to be invited into the home of a comic, but to see them in the thick of motherhood is, to me, like the spotted owl of documentary conversation. Today's episode is a sort of extreme form of eavesdropping. An audio portrait of the sacred struggle to get a kid to bed with comic, mom, and brilliant facebook satirist Julie Kottakis. AKA Madge the Vag. I first saw Julie perform at the New York Fringe festival last year in her solo show "Does This Dress Make Me Look Alone" which she called an "Alone Woman Show. She did address the circumstances surrounding the conception and birth of her daughter, what it's been like to care for her on her own, but I hesitate to bring that up because there's a danger in thinking this was just a mom doing a one-woman-show about being a single mom. That sells it way short. Her performance spanned the range of comic and tragic registers and she laid out some rawness in a way I don't remember seeing before. Not tell it like it is stuff. Afterbirth type stuff. Literal and

It's impossible to tell the story of how I know comedian and psychologist Marc Gerber without getting into a host of sordid and vulnerable-making trauma from my past. He offered some perspective back in June that changed my life and comedy. Gerber is an atypical hybrid of a professionally funny and employably empathetic person. He and I met when I performed on a show at the PIT called Relationshit where he served as on stage therapist for a story I told about a piece of material about my own childhood sexual abuse. In this episode I play the recording of that performance along with another version I did more recently at a recovery show in New Jersey. The revision of this bit over time is the best example I have of how my perpetual over-disclosure has unintentionally helped saved my life. He also opens up about his own struggles and offers a much needed and practical solution for quelling loneliness, a call to 1-800-Contacts. Check out his weekly show at Comic Strip Live on Mondays called Three Day Weekend. @M

Ali Pearl, author of the recent New York Times Modern Love article 'On Tinder, Off Sex,' and I discuss: the intimacy of listening to Enya together; our emotional exhibitionism; and a grudge I had against her for not putting me in her article. I also take her to meet Chango—those badass EDM subway performers in Union Square wearing Mexican wrestling masks you may have been lucky enough to experience. On Tinder, Off Sex Ali's Blog @AliRachelPearl Chango's Facebook Page #‎AliRachelPearl #ModernLove #‎OnTinderOffSex #‎Changoliveset #‎Comedy #‎Podcast #SelfHelp #‎EDM #‎NYC #‎WYYW #UnionSquare

Over a year in the making, this epic episode spans several conversations with NYC comedian Aalap Patel. From Alpha Donuts in Queens, along Avenue A in the village, 3 of Andy's apartments, a rooftop in Brooklyn, and into the dark heart of one of New York's most beloved funny men.  [Correction: The poem that I read about 22 minutes in to this episode is by Greg Koehler and his name is actually pronounced "Keeler." Originally published in Ninth Letter as "Heart River Dirge," the poem is now titled "Mutual Testament" in the as of yet unpublished manuscript "Style, Elements." For now it's here. Check out Greg on Instagram. I've loved that poem for years and was finally able to track him down recently and get to know him a bit.]  

How ducks have sex; ways to call in sick to work; and "food brain"--just a few of the topics covered during this fantastic conversation with LA comedian Barbara Gray. We walked through Prospect Park in Brooklyn on a crisp afternoon and watched fall ripen around us. Listen to this episode of What's Your Yarn Worth? with Andy Farnsworth and then go listen to her on the popular Lady 2 Lady podcast over there on Maximum Fun.  Lady to Lady Podcast @BabsGray @Lady2LadyComedy Sauce  

I hope that this conversation with one of the best and brightest French people I know makes up for my lack of insightful commentary on the situation in France. Sami Bronowski is a NYC comedian who walked around Manhattan with me back in April. (I've been sitting on this episode because I was worried you guys might think it's too difficult/distracting to listen to a lively conversation which sometimes battles the sounds of dump trucks and helicopters.) We talked about the usual stuff: girls, mimicking people, food, death, and a lot of other very French type stuff. It's worth a listen. Very John Cage-esque if you go in for that sort of thing.  @SamuelBronowski

Livia Scott is not only a freakishly funny and compassionate person, who I was stoked to get to spend an afternoon in Prospect Park with, she also offers a compelling theory about my childhood that helped me find my inner 2nd-grader's Walter White. She explains the origins of her body suit and why she is so proud of a particular song she wrote, one that confirms all my worst fears about my genitals. Listen as we "embarrass our way to the right hand of God." And go see Livia in her shiny suit on the Livia Scott Sketch Program at the UCB Chelsea this Wednesday, November 11, at 9:30 @LiviaLove http://www.livia-land.com/

The inaugural episode of this podcast. (Originally "What's Your Yarn Worth? w/ Andy Farnsworth.") An honest, unvarnished conversation with James Greco: painter, inner monologue coach, and person I respect and love a whole lot. There's literally zero production on this first episode. Just a straight, conversational document. Pretty much every instinct I had at the time told me not to put this out there, but my friend Tasha listened to it and told me not to trust my instincts. It's advice that served as a guide for all the episodes that have followed. Anti-instincts. I'd say this episode is intense but what's intense you know? I probably wouldn't listen to it in front of kids, but maybe you're running some kind of experiment. Here you go. You can check out James Greco's work here [Correction: Just FYI I got a little carried away in this one when I was talking about the baby-smuggling grade school teacher. I actually didn't have her as a teacher. It was my sister that had her. Also, the teacher in high school I