The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness
Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone, the comedy podcast
Cats, Cops and Stuff
Paula Poundstone Goes to Harvard
The French Trump Weekly Press Conference
Paula Poundstone (born December 29, 1959) is an American stand-up comedian, author, actress, interviewer, and commentator. Beginning in the late 1980s, she performed a series of one-hour HBO comedy specials. She provided backstage commentary during the 1992 presidential election on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. She is the host of the podcast Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone, which is the successor to the National Public Radio program Live from the Poundstone Institute. She is a frequent panelist on NPR's weekly news quiz show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, and was a recurring guest on the network's A Prairie Home Companion variety program during Garrison Keillor's years as host.
Poundstone was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the daughter of Vera, a housewife, and Jack Poundstone, an engineer.[1] Her family moved to Sudbury, Massachusetts, about a month after her birth.[2]
Career
Poundstone started doing stand-up comedy at open-mic nights in Boston in 1979. In the early 1980s, she traveled across the United States by Greyhound bus, stopping in at open-mic nights at comedy clubs en route. She stayed in San Francisco, where she became known for improvisational sets at Holy City Zoo on Clement Street and The Other Café comedy club in Cole Valley.
In 1984, Robin Williams saw her act and encouraged her to move to Los Angeles. She performed her act when Williams hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live.[3] That year, Poundstone was cast in the movie Gremloids. She continued as a comedian and began appearing on several talk shows. In 1989, she won the American Comedy Award for "Best Female Stand-Up Comic".
In 1990, she wrote and starred in an HBO special called Cats, Cops and Stuff, for which she won a CableACE Award, making her the first woman to win the ACE for best Standup Comedy Special.[4][5] In March 2019, comedian Tig Notaro named "Cats, Cops and Stuff" one of The 5 Funniest Stand-Up Specials Ever for TIME Magazine.[6] Poundstone went on to another first with her second HBO stand-up special, Paula Poundstone Goes to Harvard, taped on campus in Sanders Theatre. Poundstone had her own Bravo special in 2006 as part of their three-part Funny Girls series, along with Caroline Rhea and Joan Rivers, titled Paula Poundstone: Look What the Cat Dragged In.
In the mid-1990s, she was featured in a series of instructional, hybrid animation shorts that were called "Another Pointer from Paula Poundstone." These were used as bumpers for PTV Park, a PBS children's programming block that was the precursor to PBS Kids. These were directed by Francesca Rizzo and animated by Gene Mackles.
Staying with the makers of Science Court, Tom Snyder Productions, she was the voice of the mom, Paula Small, in the cartoon series Home Movies for the show's first five episodes, which aired on UPN. Between the show's 1999 UPN cancellation and 2000 revival on Cartoon Network, Poundstone chose to leave the show and was replaced by Janine Ditullio.
The show's character, Paula Small, was named and loosely modeled on Poundstone.[7]
Poundstone is a frequent panelist on National Public Radio (NPR)'s weekly news quiz show, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me.[8] In 2017, she launched a new science-comedy-interview program on NPR called Live from the Poundstone Institute that released episodes weekly, then stopped suddenly, saying “the semester is over”. In July 2018, Poundstone began hosting the information-based, comedy podcast "Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone" with Adam Felber, who appears on every show.[4][9]
Poundstone tours the country extensively, performing stand-up comedy in theaters and performing arts centers. She is known for never doing the same act twice and spontaneously interacting with the crowd. Writes Nick Zaino III of the Boston Globe, "Her crowd work has always been unusual—her natural disposition, curious and ever-perplexed, allows Poundstone to aggressively question audience members without ever seeming threatening. And no one does the callback better." She has released three comedy CDs: I Heart Jokes: Paula Tells Them in Boston on April Fools' Day 2013;[10]North by Northwest: Paula Poundstone Live! (her first double album) in June 2016;[11] and I Heart Jokes: Paula Tells Them in Maine in January 2009.[10]
Poundstone at a book signing in 2007
Poundstone's first book, There Is Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say, was published by Crown in 2006. Her second book, published by Algonquin in May 2017, is titled The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness. She also wrote the column Hey, Paula! for Mother Jones (1993–1998) and articles for The Los Angeles Times, Glamour, and Entertainment Weekly, among others.
An avid reader, Poundstone has been the National Spokesperson for the American Library Association's "United for Libraries" since 2007. It is a citizens' support group that works to raise funds and awareness for their local libraries.[12]
Poundstone is No. 88 on Comedy Central's 2004 list of the 100 greatest stand-ups of all time.[13]
Child endangerment, child sexual charges and legal issues
In October 2001, Poundstone was charged with felony child endangerment in connection with driving while intoxicated with her children in the car. She was also charged with three counts of lewd acts upon a girl younger than 14.[4][19] The charge involved inappropriate touching of a 12-year-old girl.[20] In a plea bargain, she changed her earlier plea of not guilty, and in exchange prosecutors asked for the court records to be sealed, dropped three counts of committing lewd acts against a child, and added a misdemeanor count of inflicting injury upon a child.[19][20] Poundstone also pleaded no contest to one count of felony child endangerment.[20] She was barred from taking in foster children again, sentenced to five years of probation and six months in rehabilitation, and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service, attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and a child-abuse program, and receive random drug and alcohol tests.[20] In 2002, Poundstone talked about her personal responsibility for the events that led to her arrest and the steps she has taken, including a six-month treatment program for alcoholism, but she said that she did not commit any lewd acts or child abuse.[20]
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! is an hour-long weekly news radio panel show produced by WBEZ and National Public Radio (NPR) in Chicago, Illinois. On the program, panelists and contestants are quizzed in humorous ways about that week's news. It is distributed by NPR in the United States, internationally on NPR Worldwide and on the Internet via podcast, and typically broadcast on weekends by member stations. The show averages about six million weekly listeners on air and via podcast.
Home Movies is an American animated sitcom created by Brendon Small and Loren Bouchard. The show centers on an eight-year-old aspiring filmmaker, also named Brendon Small, who makes homemade film productions in his spare time with his friends Melissa Robbins and Jason Penopolis. He lives with his divorced mother Paula and his adopted baby sister Josie. He develops a skewed father-son-like relationship with his alcoholic, short-tempered soccer coach, John McGuirk.
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↑ Poundstone, Paula (2006). There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say. Three Rivers Press. ISBN9780307382283. Archived from the original on July 21, 2018. Retrieved November 23, 2019. I'm an atheist. The good news about atheists is that we have no mandate to convert anyone. So you'll never find me on your doorstep on a Saturday morning with a big smile, saying, 'Just stopped by to tell you there is no word. I brought along this little blank book I was hoping you could take a look at.'
↑ Meyer, Ronald Bruce (February 11, 2011). "December 29: Paula Poundstone (1959)". Free thought Almanac. Archived from the original on October 31, 2020. Retrieved November 23, 2019. My family, we are atheists, and many times people have had the nerve to say to us, because this is a terrible thing to say to anybody, but they say it to me: "Where will your children get their moral guidance without religion?" And I quickly assure them that we have three seasons of "Lost in Space" on DVD [which, she says, "we use for moral and spiritual guidance."]. So I believe we're covered in that area.
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