All right, so I just plug this guy in here and turn this on.

And we are good to go.

This is the last laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast and we are back. We have been on a longer than expected

hiatus over the last several weeks, and a lot has changed since we last brought you a new episode of

this show. Like the rest of the world, I am now recording this podcast from my house in Los Angeles,

and for the time being, I'll be interviewing

my guests via Zoom. All of this presents some new and interesting challenges, but I am excited

to bring you episodes during this time that I can promise will be both hilarious and at times

kind of intense. And I'm not going to lie, today's episode gets a little dark. But if you stick

around until the end, you'll get to hear a truly insane story about that time Ira Glass got

blackout drunk. So, you know, at least there's that. I actually recorded my conversation

with the brilliantly funny Eugene Merman long before the coronavirus pandemic began.

You might know Eugene as the voice of Gene Belcher on Bob's Burgers, but he is also one of the

most innovative stand-up comics of his generation. This month, Eugene and his longtime collaborator,

Julie Smith-Klemm, released their new documentary.

It Started as a Joke, on iTunes, Amazon, and a bunch of other platforms.

So I decided to do a quick check-in with him from his home on Cape Cod

and then share our longer interview from last year's South by Southwest Festival after that.

But first, let's hear a clip from it started as a joke.

The film chronicles the legendary Eugene Merman Festival,

which literally started as a joke and then ended up running for 10 years in Brooklyn.

In this clip, Eugene and previous Last Laugh guest, Mike Berbiglia,

...