Maria Bamford Wants To Join Your Cult
The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum
Meghan Daum
4.7 • 855 Ratings
🗓️ 31 August 2023
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
To kick off The Unspeakable's fourth season, comedian Maria Bamford joins Meghan for a conversation about many unspeakable topics. Maria's new book, Sure I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir Of Mental Illness And The Quest To Belong Anywhere is a rollicking homage to the power of groups. From 12-step meetings to game nights to dog parks, Maria loves gatherings of people. But she's also spent a lifetime struggling with mental health issues that make her anxious around people.
In this conversation, Maria talks with Meghan about financial survival in the creative economy (she made her first appearance on The Tonight Show while working as a receptionist at NBC), her love for Debtor's Anonymous and her fascination with money in general, what it's like to use dating apps when you're a celebrity, and much much much more.
Paying susbcribers to The Unspeakable With Meghn Daum on Substack get to hear Maria staying overtime to talk about being 53 years old, which is also how old Meghan is. They also talk about Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, "sexual anorexia," regular anorexia, eating rice cakes, and choosing not to have kids. Become a paying subscribers at https://meghandaum.substack.com/.
GUEST BIO
Awarded Best Club Comic at the American Comedy Awards and Breakout Comedy Star at the Montreal Comedy Festival, Maria Bamford's critically acclaimed work includes her web series The Maria Bamford Show, Ask My Mom, and her Netflix series Lady Dynamite. Maria's writing has been featured in The New York Times, LA Weekly and The Onion. She played Debrie Bardeaux on Season 4 of Arrested Development and has contributed comedic voiceovers for such animations as Netflix's Big Mouth and BoJack Horseman, Cartoon Network's Adventure Time, PBS's Emmy-winning series Word Girl, Nickelodeon's Kung Fu Panda and Legend of Korra, and the international hit Talking Tom and Friends.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Megan. Before we get to the conversation, I want to tell you about an exciting event coming up in Los Angeles. |
| 0:06.3 | It's a debate brought to you by the free press that poses the question, has the sexual revolution failed? |
| 0:12.9 | On one side is Louise Perry, the author and podcaster, along with Anna Kachian of the Red Scare podcast. |
| 0:19.4 | On the other side is my co-host from my other podcast, |
| 0:22.5 | Sarah Hater, along with the musician Grimes. It's moderated by Barry Weiss, and it's happening |
| 0:28.5 | on September 13th at the Ace Theater in downtown L.A. at 7 p.m. For tickets and information, |
| 0:34.9 | go to the FP, that's FP as in freepress.com slash debates. |
| 0:40.8 | I'll be in the audience peering through my fingers, and I'd love to see you there if I can see you through my fingers. |
| 0:49.6 | I had been not good at a food service, and somehow, for whatever reason, I was okay with that. |
| 0:56.3 | But then when I moved to Los Angeles, it was just, it's not an option. |
| 1:00.4 | I mean, people are professionals here. |
| 1:02.0 | People are extremely good at it. |
| 1:03.7 | And so I was put into the back of a bakery loading trucks at night. |
| 1:10.6 | And not that that's a great job to be grateful for. |
| 1:14.4 | If you can lean, you can clean. |
| 1:16.2 | I always make me laugh when comedians were canceled |
| 1:18.8 | will say like, what else could I do? |
| 1:21.6 | What else? |
| 1:22.7 | I've been a comic for 40 years. |
| 1:25.3 | Almost anything. |
| 1:27.3 | You can do almost anything. Jesus Christ. |
| 1:33.4 | Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Down. We are back from our little |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Meghan Daum, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Meghan Daum and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.