Adrienne LaFrance is the executive editor of The Atlantic; her profile of the subject of this episode, "The Godfather of American Comedy," appears in the magazine's June 2024 issue. Before joining The Atlantic in 2014, she worked as a reporter for WBUR, Hawaii Public Radio, Honolulu Weekly, and Nieman Journalism Lab. Albert Brooks is a wildly talented comedian, writer, director and actor, and if you don't know his work, get on it. 

Steve Stoliar has been a professional writer for more than 40 year. For television, he wrote episodes of Murder She Wrote, Simon & Simon, The New WKRP in Cincinnati, and others. Before that, while a student at UCLA, he was Groucho Marx’s personal secretary and archivist and later wrote a book based on that experience, Raised Eyebrows.The book is currently being developed into a film version starring Geoffrey Rush as Groucho.Dick Cavett is a legendary talk-show host, comedian, and author.

David Bianculli has been the TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air since 1987, and is currently a professor of television studies at Rowan University in New Jersey.  His books include Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously, and Dangerously Funny, The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Among his many other accomplishments, Mason Williams wrote and performed one of the biggest-selling instrumental records in history--"Classical Gas."

Laurie Gwen Shapiro is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, New York, the Daily Beast, and many other publications. Her documentary film awards include an Independent Spirit Award for directing IFC's Keep the River on Your Right and an Emmy nomination for HBO's Finishing Heaven. Her forthcoming book is Amelia and George--"Amelia" being Amelia Earhart. Abigail Thomas is a novelist and memoirist, and probably the best writer you've never heard of.

Gene Seymour spent years working for big-city newspapers as a reporter and movie and jazz critic. He's the author of a young adult history, Jazz, the Great American Art.  These days, he lives in Philadelphia and contributes mightily on a remarkable range of subjects from baseball to crime novels and many steps in between to The Nation, book forums, CNN. com, The New Republic, The Washington Post, and others. Ishmael Reed was born in 1938, and as a novelist, poet, essayist, and provocateur, has been at the center of American letters since the 1960s.

Michael Tisserand is a Minnesota-based writer whose books include Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White. It's the Eisner Award-winning biography of the creator of the classic comic strip Krazy Kat. Jules Feiffer was born in 1929. He's probably most famous for the comic strip he contributed weekly to The Village Voice for more than 40 years, but that's only the beginning of his accomplishments.