Happy Saturday! Every week, I send out an email with my upcoming shows, one thing I think is great, one thing that made me laugh, and one thing I found interesting.

Upcoming Shows

EVERYWHERE:
This season of You're the Expert just wrapped up but you can listen to all of the episodes online or wherever you get podcasts. Link

My wife Mollie's book just got a great writeup in Time.  It's called "No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work" and it comes out exactly one month from today (February 5th). You can see more about it and pre-order here: Link

I'm still on a bit of a break from performing this week, but starting in February, I'll be on a national tour and I'm hoping to have all those dates official and announced in the next two weeks. As always, you'll be able to find my schedule with all upcoming dates online here.

This week's list

GREAT:
This past week, Jo Firestone wrote about handling the death of a friend for The New York Times. The piece is funny, it's moving, and it's beautiful. "Accept the lasagna. Do not read that Joan Didion book." For anyone who's dealt with (or is currently dealing with) loss, Jo captures the confusing swirl of emotions perfectly. The world is a better place with Jo in it and I admire her as a comedian and a human. Tell Me One More Time What to Do About Grief

(Adina, who Jo's writing about, was an amazing writer as well and I strongly recommending pairing Jo's piece with Adina's essay "I Must Have Been That Man.")

 
FUNNY:
Austin Kleon is a visual artist and poet, but he's also become one of the leading voices writing about creativity. His bestselling books Steal Like An Artist and Show Your Work are excellent primers on creative life and his blog is full of small, useful tips and observations. While reading his year-end roundup, I stumbled across some of his posts about parenting, which made me laugh a lot. Especially the way he and his wife reacted when they discovered their son had drawn in crayon all over their new expensive couch. I love it. Accidents Will Happen


INTERESTING:
In a perfect combination of all the themes in today's list (from childhood to loss to creativity), Bianca Giaever produced a fantastic audio episode of Frontline for kids about the global refugee crisis. Using real questions from kids in the U.S. and then getting answers from children growing up in one of the world's largest refugee camps in Kenya, her story manages to be funny and insightful. It cuts through the noise in a way that many pieces about migration unfortunately do not. And it's certainly worth listening to no matter what age you are. Muzamil's Day (After you listen, look at the accompanying photos and multimedia piece too.)


Thanks for reading! If you like these emails, please forward to a friend or come say hi at a live show. If you're reading this for the first time (maybe someone forwarded you this email?), you can subscribe here.

Happy New Year!
Chris