Godfrey was born in Nebraska to Nigerian parents who had fled that country’s civil war in the late 1960s.Godfrey grew up in Chicago, which is also where he started pursuing comedy – despite his pre-med psychology degree at the University of Illinois – and where he filmed his newest hour of stand-up comedy, Regular Black, for Showtime. You also may have seen Godfrey in memorable roles on the big screen in Zoolander, Soul Plane and Johnson Family Vacation, or the small screen as the 7-Up spokesman, multiple episodes of Louie, and before all of that, a Bravo reality show that followed aspiring actors that also included future Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner. Godfrey talks to me about all of that, plus working with Bill Cosby, in a lively if not also distracting conversation amid the hubbub of Union Square pedestrian traffic.

So let’s get to it!

Ms. Pat’s early career sounds a little bit like the role Sally Field’s in the 1988 movie about comedy, Punchline, except only Ms. Pat grew up in a bootleg house in Atlanta, became a mother of two by the time she was 15, sold drugs, was shot twice, and arrested multiple times all before she met her future husband at 19. Her husband brought her stability. Her comedy brought her joy and a newfound purpose in life. How she made that transition, from a big break opening for Katt Williams, through her first time appearing on radio’s Bob and Tom Show, through 2015 where she appeared on NBC’s Last Comic Standing and Comedy Central’s This is Not Happening. All of that, and how far Ms. Pat has come just in the six years since her first trip to Montreal as a New Face in 2010, she shares it all with me now.

Since our chat, Ms. Pat has received a put-pilot commitment from FOX to make a half-hour sitcom about her life, starring her and executive produced by Lee Daniels and Brian Grazer.

So let’s get to it!

Bert Kreischer is my special guest today, in an episode recorded in front of a live audience at the 2016 Just For Laughs festival in Montreal. He literally is the “Life of the Party.” That’s the title of his 2014 memoir — it describes how Bert's life changed as a sixth-year senior at Florida State University when Rolling Stone magazine visited and profiled him. That magazine article became the basis for the film, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, starring Ryan Reynolds as a buffer Bert. Kreischer currently hosts two different TV series for the Travel Channel: Bert the Conquerer, and Trip Flip.

Kreischer talks with me about how Oliver Stone and Will Smith served as his entry points to show business, how his first attempt in stand-up went awry before he found Barry Katz and his Boston Comedy Club, and proves himself to be as much a lover of comedy as he is of life and travel.

So let’s get to it!

Variety magazine named Cameron Esposito one of the 10 Comics to Watch in 2016, and there already has been a lot to see of Esposito this year – from her appearances on the big screen in Garry Marshall’s final film, “Mother’s Day,” to the small-screen on IFC’s Maron, performing stand-up on The Late Late Show with James Corden, and her first stand-up special, Marriage Material, on SeeSo. She’s got two other movie roles that brought her to Sundance this past winter, in “Operator” and in “First Girl I Loved.” With her wife Rhea Butcher, Esposito hosts a live comedy showcase and podcast each Tuesday at the UCB Theatre in Los Angeles, Put Your Hands Together, made a webseries for Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls called She Said, and will debut their first scripted series together, Take My Wife, this August on SeeSo. If that’s not enough, Esposito is writing her first book as well as developing a TV series for FX. There’s a lot more to her story, and I recalled some of it that even made news to her.

So let’s get to it!

Hari Kondabolu and I go back to the scene of his very first big break, showcasing for the 2007 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen and HBO, how that all happened, and how he managed to take a year off afterward to earn his master’s degree from the London School of Economics. Kondabolu since has enjoyed time writing and performing for late-night TV with Totally Biased, and just this summer launched a new podcast, Politically Re-Active, with his former boss, W. Kamau Bell. Kondabolu also just released his second stand-up comedy album, Mainstream American Comic, is working on a documentary about Apu from The Simpsons, and has a deal to develop his own TV series for TruTV. We talk about all of that and more, so let’s get to it!