This is a head, a podcast about jokes. I'm your host,

Fulcher Senior Editor, Jesse David Fox. Each episode, at least usually, more than that later, we have a

guest on to play one of their jokes and discuss how and why it came together.

In a way, today's episode is about one joke, the cosmic joke, that is the fact that we all die.

That's because our guest is Leslie Hedlund, co-creator and showrunner of Russian doll.

Truth is, this is not going to be a traditional episode of Good One.

Yes, at the core we're talking about one joke, which is kind of more like a runner,

as that joke happens over 20 times over the course of Russian Dolls first season.

Yeah, we're going to focus on every single death on the show, which is like the whole show.

If you want to see for yourself, Volchry actually made a super cut of all the deaths,

which we linked to in the show notes, and we'll also post with the episode on vulture.com itself.

So if you haven't seen Russian doll, I really, really, really suggest you rectify that.

First, it's great and you'll like it,

but also because this interview might, not might, will,

be kind of spoilery and at minimum,

just really thorough. If you have seen it, great, you'll love this

conversation. As Leslie walks me through the whole arc of the season offering just so much

insight on what is happening for the characters and why. But to summarize in it,

Natasha Leon plays Nadia, a tortured video game designer with a taste for destructive behavior,

who's celebrating her 36th birthday at a party thrown by her friend.

The problem is she keeps on dying, and increasingly and then decreasingly absurd ways.

And after each time she goes back to that party,

...