Each week we usually have one person who's never done the show before. Last year we had close to 60 who'd never done the show before. We're constantly booking new people, sometimes to the consternation of people who live here who do the show regularly.

I probably felt some sense of relief, because when you're on this continuous production cycle and you're doing a show for a network where they expect you to come back every May or every June, you just don't get time to sort of recharge.

Not everyone can be as successful a performer as myself, who gave 10 great performances the first time I ever did comedy, and then toiled in obscurity for years.

I always viewed [the podcast and the TV show] as two separate things.

A lot of good things can come from not expecting anything.

You have to pay your dues. And what's nice, after booking a lot of new people... I counted the other day. We're in September and we've already booked between 30 or 40 people who've never done the show before.

When people look at the ratings and they're bad, I think people can get an idea of "Why would they even make the show?" And to a certain extent, original programming for any network is a loss leader to try to get you to keep the channel on your cable package.