This is a headgum podcast. Hello and welcome to Good One, a podcast about jokes. I'm your host, Volcher Senior Editor

Jesse David Fox. Usually on this show, not always, but usually, you know what usually means.

Anyway, I have a stand-up comedian come on to play one of their jokes and we talk about

everything that went into writing it. That's kind of like what's going to

happen on this episode, but also kind of not like that, because the comedian

we're focusing on, The Marvelous Mrs Maisol, a free-willing stand-up from the late

1950s, never existed.

She's a character on a TV show played by Rachel Brasmehan.

She's the creation of Amy Sherman Palladino and Daniel Palladino,

you may also know from the show's Gilmore Girls and Bunheads.

So yes, this is an entry about the writing and performing and shooting

of a stand-up routine, but just the comedian is fake.

Considering that, you'll probably need a bit more context for what you're about to hear just

in case you don't watch the show already. The Marvels Mrs Maisel, which has

completed two seasons on Prime video, is based on Amy hearing the stories of her

father's time doing stand-up in in New York in the 1950s and 60s.

And while the show tries to be fairly accurate to the time, you also get a sense that Amy also

wants to capture the wonder she felt when she was first hearing the stories about this as a kid.

So this is what the show is about.

At the start, it's the late 1950s in Midge Maisel, a Jewish housewife living in the upper

west side of Manhattan, decides to dedicate herself to becoming a stand-up comedian after her husband Joel leaves her.

Throughout the first season she gets better and better at stand of working with her manager

...