Andy Beckerman

Andy Beckerman is the co-host of Couples Therapy, a podcast based on the live show he hosts with his wife, Naomi Ekperigin. Follow him on Twitter here, and follow Couples Therapy on Twitter here.

Introduce yourself!
I'm a former philosophy professor, former casio pop practitioner and current podcaster and TV writer (I've written for everyone from Pete Holmes to Cedric the Entertainer [if that gives you some kind of idea of how strange this industry is] and currently am busy writing a pilot for Comedy Central). I've hosted a somewhat serious podcast about the childhoods of artists I admire called Beginnings for about a decade and last year, turned my live comedy show Couples Therapy into a podcast.

Tell us about Couples Therapy.
Couples Therapy is a live show and podcast that I host with my dear almost-wife, and one of the best stand-ups around, Naomi Ekperigin. For some reason, which I will delve into once I find a quality therapist out here in LA, I like to mix WORK and RELATIONSHIPS a LOT, and back in 2014, a few years into our love, we started hosting a stand-up show in New York, where comics who are close do sets together about their relationship. It isn't just romantic relationships - they could be siblings, exes, best friends and/or anything in-between!

Your podcast started as a live event. How did you decide to turn it into a podcast?
We moved to Los Angeles in the middle of 2017 for work, and I didn't know this before I moved, but there's apparently a city ordinance that everyone who lives in LA has to have a podcast. The reality, of course, is not that far off. We enjoyed doing the show, but moving out to LA was our part of our plan to professionalize ourselves more. There were very few live show podcasts - at the time 2 Dope Queens and Put Your Hands Together (both now defunct) were maybe the most well-known - and Couples Therapy was an experience that both performers and audiences both really enjoyed, so we thought turning it into a podcast was a smart next step. And besides business-y reasons, we're living in a true political nightmare at the moment, and really wanted to offer people a weekly respite from the living hell we're all currently burning in.

How is the podcast made? What is the process like?
Originally we wanted to do seasons of the show, and just give the audience a full live show every time, but apparently, it's difficult to sell advertising for non-weekly shows unless you're famous (no shade, just the realities of a sponsor-based monetization system). So the process itself is a little weird. We host the live show monthly in LA at The Virgil, record it, and then chop it up to make episodes out of it. But that only fills up half a month (more when we do live shows on the road), so we also do shows in studio. Sometimes we'll have a single guest come in and then we answer listeners' relationship questions and sometimes we'll have a couple come in and do a deep dive into their relationship. It's honestly a lot of work!

What's it like working with Naomi? Do you advise having shows or podcasts with SOs?
It's strange and lovely and difficult and joyous all mixing together like an emotional chemistry experiment. The difficult part is that Naomi and I have very different senses of humor - I'm a comedy math improv guy and she's a funny-from-her-very-marrow stand-up, and sometimes those clash. On top of that, I'm a "weird white" and she's a "dynamic black woman". But the joyous part is when all those things are singing in harmony and man, it's just rapturous making stuff with her. And worth it for all the times I make a reference to Guided by Voices, and she goes, "What??"

I think working with your SO just depends on what kind of couple you are. I think it can work if you're both on the same page about things and both kind of secure in who you are as people individually and/or if you communicate with each other well. Naomi and I may not be coming from the same creative place, but we have the same creative goals, and we're good at communicating with each other and discussing how we feel with each other.

What podcasts do you listen to?
I bounce between very silly shows like Comedy Bang Bang, Teachers' Lounge, Mission to Zyxx and The Flop House to silly/political shows like Chapo and The Dollop to straight-up political shows like Intercepted, Deconstructed with Mehdi Hasan and David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist Chronicles.

If you were going to start another podcast (don't worry about people liking it or any of the logistics) what would it be?
I legitimately have a list of 20 ideas for shows I want to do, including a sketch podcast (there really aren't a ton here in the US (Superego and Left Handed Radio and some of the only ones that spring to mind, though I'm sure there's others) and sketch is such a fun thing in an audio medium.

The one I've been thinking about lately though is a Silver Jews podcast. After Dave Berman passed away, I started to realize how much his music has been the connective tissue between so many of my friendships, and I thought it might be meaningful/interesting to do a show where each episode talks about one of his songs or poems, and then I talk to a guest about the music that has brought them closer with other people. I like the idea a lot, but it seems wrong to commodify my grief/DB's significance, so it might just live in the realm of the unrealized.

Why are podcasts so hot right now? Why now?
I wish there was a cultural reason for this, but I've been podcasting since 2010, and I think the real answer is that investment capital saw there was money to be made, so they started investing in the medium. I think in the wake of Serial and 2 Dope Queens' success, money started to pour into podcasting. So, what, that was a few years ago? And now you're seeing an explosion of podcasts. It's the same thing that happened to streaming television. Once Netflix started garnering attention and awards, everyone wanted to have their own streaming network. I think once investment firms realize there are not a ton of ways to make money outside of advertiser-support, the bubble will burst, but until then, I say take all of Wyatt Koch's investment money that you can to fund your American Dad recap podcast!