Bill Maher was born William Maher in New York City, New York, and grew up in River Vale, New Jersey. His father, William Aloysius Maher, Jr., who was of Irish descent, was a radio announcer and news editor. His mother, Julie (Berman), was a nurse, who was from a Jewish family. Maher was raised in his father's Catholic faith. While attending Cornell University, he decided to try stand-up comedy. His first stand-up routine was in a Chinese restaurant on Route 17 in Paramus, NJ. He soon landed a regular gig at Catch a Rising Star in New York City. After a few years, he became a regular host at the club and was spotted by a scout for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962). Maher made numerous appearances on the show, and Carson had been a hero of his since childhood, but he always felt constrained by the rules of network television. During this time, he appeared in films and made guest appearances on numerous sitcoms. In 1993, Maher was offered his own talk show by Comedy Central. Maher developed the show as a round table discussion on current events. Politically Incorrect (1993) premiered to critical acclaim and attracted major celebrities as well as politicians and pundits. In 1997, the show moved to ABC where it aired to continued success. On September 17, 2001, Maher made controversial comments regarding the terrorists who orchestrated the September 11 attack on the US. Sponsors pulled their ads and affiliates refused to air the show. ABC canceled the show in 2002, citing "low ratings". Maher had been nominated for 11 Emmys for his work on the show. In 2003, he was able to continue his television work with a similar program on HBO titled Real Time with Bill Maher (2003). He remains single and lives in Los Angeles.

Payne Lindsey is an Atlanta-based director, award-winning documentary filmmaker, and the co-creator and host of the hit podcast “Up and Vanished.” Driven by a new found passion for both the true crime genre and investigative journalism, Lindsey decided to investigate the disappearance of beauty queen and school teacher Tara Grinstead, a notorious decade-old cold case from South Georgia. At the time, he hoped to develop Tara’s story into his own documentary film project. As Lindsey chronicled his investigation in real-time, week by week, in audio form, he ventured into a new field, podcasting. The events of the next 12 months turned Tara Grinstead’s case into one of the biggest crime stories of the year. With over 150 million downloads, “Up and Vanished” propelled Grinstead’s case into the mainstream media, uncovering new evidence that helped to crack the 11-year-old cold case in early 2017 and lead to two arrests. On the strength of the podcast’s success, Lindsey launched Atlanta-based content creation company Tenderfoot TV, along with his business partner Donald Albright. Under Tenderfoot TV, Lindsey will take on a new case in “Up and Vanished: Season 2,” take his documentary skillset to the TV screen with a docu-series for “Up and Vanished” in development with Oxygen, as well as investigate the infamous Atlanta Child Murders in a brand-new podcast “Atlanta Monster.” The core of Lindsey’s work, whether it is investigating, podcasting, or directing, continues to be storytelling that serves as a catalyst for change.

As a child actor, iO Tillett Wright turned his shoes around in the bathroom stall so that people would think he was a boy. As a teenager, he fell in love with both women and men. His life in the gray areas of gender and sexuality deeply inform his work as an artist.

Patrick is the founder of Theater Podcast Productions. He began his podcasting journey in 2013 as the creator, co-producer, and host of the popular Theater People podcast, a show featuring full-length interviews with Tony winners, Broadway legends, and today’s brightest theater stars. Theater People was recently included on NPR’s hand-picked list of the best podcasts on the internet, was included on Buzzfeed.com's list of the 22 best pop-culture podcasts online, and was named an honoree in the category of "Best Podcast" by the 2015 Webby Awards.  In partnership with TodayTix, Patrick launched Broadway Backstory in 2016. Through interviews with the creators, actors, writers, directors, and producers who lived it, Broadway Backstory finds out how beloved shows developed from an idea to a full Broadway production. Broadway Backstory is currently the number 1 Broadway-themed podcast on iTunes. In 2017, Patrick was tapped by Disney Theatrical Productions to produce and host The Official Disney On Broadway Podcast .  Each episode takes a deep dive into Disney's productions on Broadway and around the world.    He is also the co-author of The Whole World Was Watching: Living in the Light of Matthew Shepard and the author of The Q Guide to NYC Pride. 

Tom Segura is a comedian originally from Cincinnati, Ohio. Well known for his Netflix specials Completely Normal and Mostly Stories, Segura has also made televisions appearances that include Conan, Workaholics, Happy Endings, The Late Late Show, How To Be A Grown Up, and multiple stand up appearances on Comedy Central. Tom performs at the top comedy festivals in the world, including Montreal’s Just For Laughs Comedy Festival, The Melbourne International Comedy Festival, The Comedy Festival - Las Vegas, The South Beach Comedy Festival, and The Hong Kong Comedy Festival. Tom also regularly appears on XM radio comedy channels and fan favorites such as Bennington Show. Segura has been a regular guest on some of the most downloaded podcasts in the world of comedy such as The Joe Rogan Experience and WTF with Marc Maron among others. Additionally, his noted podcast, Your Mom’s House, which he co-hosts with his wife, comedian Christina Pazsitzky, was a finalist for Best Comedy Podcast at the Stitcher Awards and profiled by VICE. Tom recently released his third hour-long stand up album, which sat atop the iTunes and Billboard Comedy charts for consecutive weeks. Tom’s first two albums Thrilled and White Girls with Cornrows also debuted at number 1 and continue to play heavily on satellite radio and streaming music platforms. When Tom isn’t performing on stage or recording a podcast he’s watching College Football or waiting for College Football to come back. 

In a nutshell, I’m someone with a background in food and journalism who likes to eat, travel & take pictures as I go. Starting this brand was merely a happy accident. I am someone who has always loved & worked in food. I worked in restaurants for 10 years and went to culinary school. However, I mostly learned how to love food from my mother. She was a single parent who worked all day and came home to create magic from the refrigerator for our family every night. I have been fortunate to travel quite a bit, and all of my best memories of those trips revolve around food. To me, it is the best window into a new culture. I had sushi at 4am in Tokyo at Tsukiji Market, ate arepas as I walked through Pablo Escobar’s dilapidating house in Medellin, & inhaled street food all over Southeast Asia that probably should have killed me. I could spend every day of my life at La Boqueria in Barcelona, Pikes Place Market in Seattle, or Central Market in Florence. Plant me on a culinary adventure, and I’m a happy camper. In August of 2016 I walked away from a corporate job to run One Hungry Jew full time. I learned how to create content that I am proud of, and to me that was worth more than a traditional weekly paycheck. This has been an exciting journey into food & photography, but the best gift has been the people I’ve gotten to meet and share this with along the way. Drop me a line, say hello, ask me whatever. Thank you for stopping by and sharing what I love with me! 

Christopher Ryan Hardwick (born November 23, 1971) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, television host, writer, producer, and podcaster. He hosts Talking Dead, an hourly aftershow on AMC affiliated with the network's zombie drama series The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, as well as Talking with Chris Hardwick, a show in which Hardwick interviews prominent pop culture figures, and The Wall, a plinko-inspired gameshow on NBC. From 2013 to 2017, he hosted @midnight with Chris Hardwick, a nightly comedy-game show series on Comedy Central. In 2018, Hardwick was accused of emotional and sexual abuse by his ex-girlfriend Chloe Dykstra. Hardwick originated the role of Stacee Jaxx in Rock of Ages during its premiere run in Los Angeles (2005–2006). In 2011, he began hosting Ministry of Laughs, a BBC America Britcom block, and Talking Dead, a live hour talk show on AMC following episodes of The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead. In 2013, Hardwick hosted Talking Bad, a live half-hour talk show on AMC following the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad, and in 2016 he started to host Talking Saul for Breaking Bad's spin-off, Better Call Saul. He is also known for performing with Mike Phirman in Hard 'n Phirm, hosting Singled Out, Wired Science, Web Soup, and as the voice of Otis the Cow in Back at the Barnyard, replacing Kevin James. He also created Nerdist Industries, operator of the Nerdist Podcast Network and home of The Nerdist Podcast, which later left the network with Hardwick and was renamed to ID10T with Chris Hardwick. His podcast has broadcast 999 episodes as of April 2019.

CORINNE FISHER is a stand-up comedian, writer & actor originally from Union, NJ. She first made a splash with her debut one-woman show Corinne Fisher: I STALK YOU (Dir. David Crabb) which had a run at The Peoples Improv Theater (The PIT) in the Summer of 2010 and was featured in Time Out New York. Since then, she has been a regular on the stand-up scene playing anything from dive bars to world-famous comedy clubs like New York Comedy Club, The Stand, The Standing Room, Caroline’s, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, Broadway Comedy Club, Comix, Laugh Boston, The Stress Factory & Gotham. Her second stage show, Almost Former Reality TV Stars, had a run at The PIT in June 2011 and told the true (albeit slightly exaggerated) story of how CORINNE and her real-life best friend, actor/model THOMAS WHITFIELD, were hired, then fired from their very own reality TV show. Known as @PhilanthropyGal on Twitter (slightly tongue-in-cheek…), in 2012 CORINNE performed in a series of benefit shows for the AFGHAN WOMEN’S WRITING PROJECT alongside other female New York comedians including SNL alum RACHEL DRATCH. Over the past few years, CORINNE has been selected to perform in the prestigious BOSTON COMEDY FESTIVAL, the WOMEN IN COMEDY FESTIVAL, THE LAUGHING DEVIL COMEDY FESTIVAL & the SHE-DEVIL FESTIVAL. On YouTube, she is the messed up mind behind Internet vlogger GINA SPRINKLES and the voice of ‘TOIBA’ on the cartoon web series MYSTERY SQUAD GALS, the brainchild of RYAN DUFF.

Jocko Willink is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer, co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, host of the top-rated Jocko Podcast, and co-founder of Echelon Front, where he serves as Chief Executive Officer, leadership instructor, speaker and strategic advisor. Jocko spent 20 years in the SEAL Teams, starting as an enlisted SEAL and rising through the ranks to become a SEAL officer. As commander of SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser during the battle of Ramadi, he orchestrated SEAL operations that helped the “Ready First” Brigade of the U.S. Army’s First Armored Division bring stability to the violent, war-torn city. Task Unit Bruiser became the most highly decorated Special Operations Unit of the Iraq War. Jocko returned from Iraq to serve as Officer-in-Charge of training for all West Coast SEAL Teams. There, he spearheaded the development of leadership training and personally instructed and mentored the next generation of SEAL leaders who have continued to perform with great success on the battlefield. Jocko is the recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and numerous other personal and unit awards.   Upon retiring from the Navy, Jocko co-founded Echelon Front, a premier leadership consulting company, where he teaches the leadership principles he learned on the battlefield to help others lead and win. Jocko also authored the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, a New York Times Bestseller, and the best selling children’s books: The Way of the Warrior Kid, and The Way of the Warrior Kid: Marc’s Mission.

Holly Frey is cohost of Stuff You Missed in History Class, and she's also an executive producer for the HowStuffWorks podcast network. Her true historical passion is fashion from all eras. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and a small herd of cats. When she’s not obsessing over comma placement or talking about the past, she’s sewing, running, watching television, visiting a Disney park, rescuing animals, going to the movies, traipsing around town in a ridiculous costume or obsessing over delicious food. Sometimes, she does several of these things at once. Holly has her hand in many pies. She is one of the hosts of the award-winning Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast from HowStuffWorks, as well as another podcast she hosts with Bryan Young, Fauxthentic History. She also hosts videos for HowStuffWorks, covering everything from Star Wars Celebration to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. When she’s not talking about Star Wars or the past, she’s sewing, watching television, visiting a Disney park, rescuing animals, going to the movies, traipsing around town in a ridiculous costume or obsessing over delicious food. Sometimes, she does several of these things at once. Her guiding principle since she was a child is that no matter what turns life may take, as long as she can express herself creatively, there’s a way to get through anything.

Lulu Miller is a contributing editor and co-founder of the NPR program Invisibilia. Miller covers stories that challenge our assumptions about how the human organism works—from the story of The "Bat Man" (a man who is blind and uses echolocation to navigate the world), to the tale of Martin Pistorius (who was locked in his body for 13 years but found a way to emerge), to a surprising new way to overcome your demons, by, well, lying to yourself. She is always on the hunt for "stories in which Duct-Tape Solves the Ethereal Sadness," as she puts it. To hear more about that, take a listen here. In January 2015, Miller and NPR Science Correspondent Alix Spiegel created Invisibilia, a series from NPR about the unseen forces that control human behavior – our ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and thoughts. Invisibilia interweaves personal stories and fascinating new psychological and brain science in a way that, ultimately, makes you see your own life differently. The radio program is available in podcast form and excerpts are featured on All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Before that, she was a reporter on the NPR Science Desk. Prior to joining NPR in 2013, Miller taught and wrote fiction at the University of Virginia on a Poe-Faulkner Fellowship. Before that, she was with Radiolab, working as one of the founding producers on the weekly public radio show and podcast that weaves stories and science into sound and music-rich documentaries. Radiolab is produced by WNYC. Miller produced Radiolab for five years and continues to serve as a contributor. Her work has been recognized by the George Foster Peabody Awards, Third Coast, and The Missouri Review. Miller graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in History.

Madeleine Baran is an investigative reporter for APM Reports and the host and lead reporter of the podcast In the Dark. Baran's work focuses on holding powerful people and institutions accountable. Her reporting has exposed flaws in law enforcement investigations, forensic science, state-run mental health institutions and other areas. In 2013 and 2014, Baran exposed a decades-long cover-up of clergy sexual abuse in the Twin Cities archdiocese. Her reporting led to the resignation of the archbishop, criminal charges against the archdiocese, and lawsuits by victims of clergy sex abuse. In 2015, the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy. Baran's reporting has also appeared on NPR and has been cited by the New York Times. Baran has received numerous national awards for her reporting, including an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award, regarded as the Pulitzer Prize of broadcasting, a George Foster Peabody Award, a Gracie Award, and two national Sigma Delta Chi awards. Baran received her master's degree in Journalism and French Studies from New York University.

Bill Burr is an American comedian or a comedian from the North American Union, depending on when you read this. He grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts and did fairly poorly in school, despite the fact that he applied himself. Having first gained notoriety for his recurring role on the second season of Chappelle’s Show, Bill developed a comedic style of uninformed logic that has made him a regular with Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel. From January through May 2019, Bill toured the U.K. and Europe and on March 4 & 5 he shot his sixth hour-long special at London’s Royal Albert Hall. This summer Bill is shooting the untitled Judd Apatow/Pete Davidson film alongside Marisa Tomei, and he is working on the fourth season of his hit animated Netflix series, F Is For Family, featuring Bill, Laura Dern and Justin Long as the Murphy family. The third season premiered on November 30, 2018, the second season premiered on May 30, 2017, and the first season premiered on December 18, 2015. Bill can be seen in the films, The Front Runner, starring Hugh Jackman, Daddy’s Home with Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, Black or White with Kevin Costner, Walk of Shame with Elizabeth Banks, The Heat with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, Stand Up Guys with Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, and Date Night with Steve Carell and Tina Fey. Bill received raves for his recurring role as “Kuby” on the hit AMC-TV show, Breaking Bad and he was seen in multiple episodes of the hit Comedy Central show, Kroll Show. He guest starred on Fox TV’s New Girl in 2013 and contributed to the 2012 and 2011 ESPYS. One of the most popular comedy podcasts on the web, Bill’s Monday Morning Podcast, is an off-the-cuff, twice-weekly rant that has become a fan favorite. Bill began the podcast in May of 2007.

Peter Sagal is, has been, and perhaps someday will be again, a husband, father, playwright, screenwriter, author, journalist, columnist, marathoner, Jeopardy contestant, dramaturg, podcast host, documentary host, foreign correspondent, wedding officiant, and magician's assistant. As a playwright, his work has been produced or commissioned by the Long Wharf Theater, Seattle Rep, Actor's Theater of Louisville, Florida Stage, and many others here and abroad, and he's won awards from the Lannan Foundation, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, and fellowships from the Camargo and Jerome Foundations. His screenwriting career began and pretty much ended with Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights, which he wrote without meaning to. In 1997, Peter got a call from a friend telling him about a new show at NPR, which was looking for "funny people who read a lot of newspapers." He auditioned and appeared as a panelist on the first broadcast of Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me! in January of 1998, and moved with his family to Chicago to become the host in May, alongside the original judge and scorekeeper, Carl Kasell. In the two decades since, he has traveled the country with the show, playing in venues such as the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park, Red Rocks, Tanglewood, the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, and Carnegie Hall. He's interviewed two Presidents; a number of Nobel Prize winners; astronauts and rocket scientists; musicians Elvis Costello, Yo Yo Ma, and Ice Cube; actors Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson; and many, many others. Wait, Wait has grown from 50,000 weekly listeners on nine stations at its launch to over five million listeners on more than 700 stations, making it the most-listened-to hour in public radio. This, however, has not gone to his head.

Bharara was born in Ferozepur, India, and immigrated to the United States with his family when he was a young child. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1990 and his J.D. from Columbia Law School three years later. While attending the Law School, Bharara served as a member of the Columbia Law Review. Bharara worked as a litigation associate in New York City until 2000, when he was chosen by then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Mary Jo White ’74 to serve as an assistant U.S. Attorney in her office. For the next five years, he focused mainly on the prosecution of organized crime and narcotics cases. In 2005, Bharara moved to Washington, D.C., to serve as Senator Charles E. Schumer’s chief counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He also worked as staff director for the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, and helped lead the Senate’s investigation into the firing of several U.S. Attorneys during President George W. Bush’s second term. President Barack Obama nominated Bharara to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York post in May 2009. The Senate unanimously confirmed his nomination, and he was sworn into office that August. As the Southern District’s chief prosecutor, Bharara oversees more than 220 assistant U.S. Attorneys dealing with a wide range of cases, including those involving terrorism, narcotics, public corruption, organized crime, and white-collar crime. During the past four years, he has received praise for his handling of some of the most high-profile cases in U.S. history, such as the successful prosecutions of arms trafficker Viktor Bout, terrorist Faisal Shahzad, and hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam. In February 2012, Time magazine featured Bharara on its cover, referring to him as the man who is “busting Wall St.” In 2011, he was awarded Columbia Law School’s Lawrence A. Wien Prize for Social Responsibility.

On Dec. 7, 2009, Susan Powell disappeared. From the start, police suspected that her husband, Josh, was responsible, but until they found hard evidence, they weren’t able to press charges. They didn’t get that evidence in time. A little over two years later, on Feb. 5, 2012, Josh killed their two children, Charlie and Braden, and himself. With their lead suspect dead, police declared the Susan Powell case “cold” on May 21, 2013. For the last three years, I have been investigating the case myself. I've filed a public records request to get ahold of every document I can, I’ve visited the case scenes, I’ve interviewed the people involved, and I’ve put together everything I’ve learned in my podcast “Cold”. I believe that Susan’s story shows patterns of abuse that echo in families all over the world. I believe that Josh was groomed, by his father, to be a controlling and cruel husband. I believe that Susan knew she was in an abusive relationship but was unable to escape. It is my hope that telling her story will help people in abusive relationships recognize these problems and will keep them from suffering what she endured. I am Dave Cawley, an investigative reporter and the host of the podcast “Cold”. AMA.

The son of a scientist and a doctor, Jad Abumrad did most of his growing up in Tennessee, before studying creative writing and music composition at Oberlin College in Ohio. Following graduation, Abumrad wrote music for films, and reported and produced documentaries for a variety of local and national public radio programs, including On The Media, Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, Morning Edition, All Things Considered and WNYC's "24 Hours at the Edge of Ground Zero." While working on staff at WNYC, Abumrad began tinkering with an idea for a new kind of radio program.  That idea evolved into one of public radio’s most popular shows today – Radiolab.  Abumrad hosts the program with Robert Krulwich and also serves as one of its producers.  The program won the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award and explores big questions in science, philosophy and mankind.  Under Abumrad’s direction, the show uses a combination of deep-dive journalism, narrative storytelling, dialogue and music to craft compositions of exploration and discovery.  Radiolab podcasts are downloaded over 10 million times each month and the program is carried on more than 500 stations across the nation and internationally.  Abumrad is also the Executive Producer and creator of Radiolab's More Perfect, a podcast that explores how cases deliberated inside the rarefied world of the Supreme Court affect our lives far away from the bench. Abumrad was honored as a 2011 MacArthur Fellow (also known as the Genius Grant).  The MacArthur Foundation website says:  “Abumrad is inspiring boundless curiosity within a new generation of listeners and experimenting with sound to find ever more effective and entertaining ways to explain ideas and tell a story.”  Abumrad also produced and hosted The Ring & I, an insightful, funny, and lyrical look at the enduring power of Wagner's Ring Cycle.  It aired nationally and internationally and earned ten awards, including the prestigious 2005 National Headliner Grand Award in Radio.

Creator and original host of the popular true-crime podcast Sword and Scale returns as host in July.  Boudet will be replacing Tricia Griffith, who hosted the show for seven episodes and who will now be focusing on her true-crime forum WebSleuths.com.  The headliner change will also coincide with the public re-release of all Griffith-hosted episodes, this time with Boudet narrating. Mike Boudet’s stepped away from the show in March after an off-color joke that was reposted on Sword and Scale’s Instagram account, triggering an advertiser Boycott of the show.  Boudet has often publicly rallied against political correctness, which has angered many of his critics. The public pressure from the boycott which originated on Twitter and Facebook, was enough to pressure podcast network Wondery to part ways with Incongruity, Sword and Scale’s parent company. 

Along with Alix Spiegel, Hanna Rosin co-hosts Invisibilia, a show from NPR about the unseen forces that control human behavior—our ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and thoughts. Invisibilia interweaves personal stories with the latest human behavior and brain science, in a way that ultimately makes you see your own life differently. The show was nominated for a Peabody Award in 2015. Rosin's stories have won a Gracie Award and a Jackson Hole Science Media Award. Excerpts of the show are featured on the NPR News programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered. The program is available as a podcast. Rosin came to NPR from the world of print magazines. Most recently she was a national correspondent for The Atlantic, where she wrote cover stories about various corners of American culture. She has also written for The New Yorker and the New York Timesmagazine. She is a longtime writer for Slate and host of The Waves, a podcast about feminism, politics, and culture. She has been on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, when they were both shows, and headlined the first TED women's conference. She was part of a team at New York Magazine that won a National Magazine Award for a series of stories on circumcision, and she was nominated for her Atlantic story, Murder by Craigslist. She is also the author of two books, including The End of Men.

Rukmini Callimachi joined The New York Times in March 2014 as a foreign correspondent, covering Al Qaeda and ISIS. She is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, including in 2014 for her series of stories based on a cache of internal Qaeda documents she discovered in Mali. She is also the winner of the George Polk Award for International Reporting, multiple Overseas Press Club Awards and the Michael Kelly prize. Before joining The Times, Ms. Callimachi spent seven years covering a 20-country beat in Africa, first as a correspondent and later as West Africa bureau chief for The Associated Press. She began her career as a freelancer in India in 2001, where she was lucky enough to get one of the last seats on a plane to the state of Gujarat on the day of a catastrophic earthquake, filing her first story for Time magazine. Originally from Romania, Ms. Callimachi grew up in Bucharest; Lausanne, Switzerland; and Ojai, Calif.