William Denton is a scholarly analytics and mathematics and statistics librarian at York University in Toronto. He is also a man interested in the music of everyday sounds. He created STAPLR, which is a program that takes all of the noises around the reference desks of his library and live converts them into synthesized music that anyone in the wor…

On this, our 26th episode of 25 Minutes of Silence we go on a retrospective of the best moments from our first 25 episodes and boy, have there been some good ones. In just 25 episodes we’ve had everyone from a New York Times best selling author, to a former astronaut to a former presidential candidate, to an Emmy Award winning writer to the lead si…

Ken Bone’s life changed on October 9, 2016 after asking Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump a question about energy policy during the second presidential debate. His bright red sweater, glasses, disposable camera and genuine demeanor skyrocketed him to “internet meme” status within hours. The internet obsession with Ken Bone lead to endorsement deals, …

Matt Besser is one of the founding members of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade sketch group and theater. Together Besser, Amy Poehler, Matt Walsh and Ian Roberts helped revolutionize sketch comedy in the 1990s with their Comedy Central series and with the thousands of students that walk the halls of the UCB Theater each year, the UCB Four have become …

In 2016, Cartoon Network rebooted the classic 90s series The Powerpuff Girls. Today’s guest isn’t one of the show’s writers or one of the show’s artists, it’s nine of them! The series writers, Jake Goldman and Haley Mancini as well as many of the artists that create the Emmy nominated series each week joined me in this Powerpuff spectacular. I coul…

Emmy award winning comedy writer Mike Upchurch literally wrote the book on sketch comedy. His University of Nevada master’s thesis, “The Poetics of Sketch Comedy” acts both as a history lesson, and a how to guide on all things sketch. Besides his Emmy winning stint in The Chris Rock Show writer’s room, he’s also written for classic sketch comedy se…

John Cage was an experimental composer famously called “one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde.” Perhaps one of his most known works is 4’33”, a music piece where the composer sits at a piano in complete silence for the duration of the piece. Since John Cage is no longer with us, I figured it would be a great idea to have the John C…

Marques Ray is an actor and comedian who has performed stand up on Conan on TBS as well as Montreal’s Just for Laugh’s Comedy Festival. You may also know him from Fox’s sketch comedy series Party Over Here or as Juan Julio in the ABC series Dr. Ken among other places. Marques’ subtle character choices are nothing short of genius and he is easily on…

Live theater originated in ancient Greece nearly three thousand years ago. Since then, an uncountable number of entertainers have done everything from comedy to drama and everything in between to delight and mystify an audience. Instead of doing any of that, I sat in silence with an audience for 25 minutes at Pack Theater in Los Angeles on December…

“Dude, you’re getting a Dell” is one of the most recognizable commercial catch phrases of the early 2000s. That line was performed by actor, yogi and musician Ben Curtis. The “Slacker Steve” commercials aired from 2000 to 2003. Since then, Ben’s appeared in Law & Order, The Jack and Triumph Show on Adult Swim among other productions. When he isn’t …

Katie Willert is one of the stars and writers of the long running, Webby Award nominated series After Hours on Cracked.com. Founded in 2010, the series is an institution of online culture and Katie’s stern, yet charming character is one of the series many highlights. With multiple web series and hundreds of millions of views under her belt, Katie i…

Ron Gilbert is a legend in the video game industry. He designed the PC classics Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island and other successful point and click adventure games and created the SCUMM scripting language. Arguable the best thing about Ron’s games is his strong comedic voice. Ron’s games ooze humor. I could have spoke with Ron about hi…

As of 2015, Lindsey Beer is one of only two female screenwriters to contribute to the multi-billion-dollar Transformers film franchise. Besides writing for the upcoming “Transformers: The Last Knight”, Lindsey is also writing the upcoming films “Barbie” staring Amy Schumer, “The Kingkiller Chronicle” and “Dungeons & Dragons” among many other films.…

Many people know today’s guest as classic Conan characters “Tony The Cameraman” or “Comic Khan” but I know him as Andres Du Bouchet. In his time writing for Conan on TBS as well as its precursors The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien and Late Night With Conan O’Brien, Andres particular brand of comedy has been a part of the late night world for nearl…

Ariana Lenarsky has lived an interesting life. As a former professional lullabyist she sang people to sleep for a living. Articles she’s written have appeared on McSweeney’s, Elle and The Huffington Post among other places. Under her twitter handle @aardvarsk, she was named one of the”48 funniest women on Twitter according to some of the funniest w…

Jerry M. Linenger is a former NASA astronaut who flew on the Space Shuttle and Space Station Mir and a retired Captain in the United States Navy Medical Corps. In 1997 he spent 132 days, 4 hours and 1 minute in space. This was at the time the longest duration flight of an American male. While aboard Mir, he faced many harrowing circumstances includ…

Founded by Amanda Meadows and Geoffrey Golden, The Devastator Press is the only all-comedy book publisher in America. Amanda and Geoffrey created “The Devastator” in 2010 as a means to promote comedy books and writers that they love. Since then, their books have been reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Wired, The A.V. Club, Bleeding Cool and ComicsAllia…

Ahmed Bharoocha is a stand up comedian and actor who has performed on Conan, Tosh.0 and Adult Swim’s Dream Corp LLC. He recently released a very funny Comedy Central half hour stand up special as well as his debut stand up album “Almond Badoody” on Comedy Central Records. From his times touring the road, to his days ruling the internet with his ske…

Sovereign Syre is a stand up comedian that has opened for Marc Maron. She is host of the podcast “Observations” on iTunes and also a former adult film actress. We spent close to an hour talking about the struggles of transitioning between entertainment mediums, male privilege and the difference between the sketch and stand up comedy scenes in Los A…

Zoltan Istvan is journalist and entrepreneur who is running for President of the United States of America under the Transhumanist Party ticket. He currently writes the blogs “The Transhumanist Philosopher” for Psychology Today as well as “Transhumanist Future” for Vice’s Motherboard. He even gave a TED talk called “The Beauty of Being Alive” about …

Gina Ippolito is a comedy writer who wrote for the ninth and final season of Cartoon Network’s Emmy Award winning program Regular Show. She also wrote for the 2016 reboot of the classic cartoon The Powerpuff Girls among other shows and is a co host of the G.I. Joe themed podcast “Knowing is Half the Podcast.” We could have talked about her extensiv…

Chris Ballew is the lead singer and ‘basitarist’ of the triple platinum selling alternative rock group The Presidents Of The United States of America. He also releases childrens music under the pseudonym Caspar Babypants. With his POTUSA’s songs “Lump”, “Peaches”, “Kitty” and “Love Everybody” Ballew’s music was basically the soundtrack to my youth.…

If you were to describe Scout Durwood in two words, those words would be “boundless optimism.” Whether she’s acting as Jordan, co star of the MTV show Mary + Jane, acting as herself in Oxygen’s Funny Girls or performing stand up and music in some of Los Angeles’ best comedy clubs, Scout does it with optimism. Scout and I talked for close to an hour…

Matt Lieberman is a social media renaissance man. He is a correspondent for Sourcfed, a writer / performer for the sketch comedy youtube channel Nuclear Family and io West’s DJ Faucet, and a life advice guru for all of his Lieberfriends. Matt understands the internet and content creation in a way that few people do and we could all benefit from his…

Diona Reasonover is one of the funniest people that I know. From playing the role of Charmaine on the TBS series “Clipped” to performing on Maude Night at the UCB Theatre with her team “Bombardier” to her stints writing for truTV’s “Adam Ruin’s Everything” and Jill Soloway’s “I Love Dick” Diona is a shining example of hard work paying off. With her…

You may know Maddox as the author of the New York Times best selling book “The Alphabet of Manliness,” the creator of ” The Best Page in the Universe” or as the host of the podcast “The Best Debate In The Universe.” He and I had a long conversation about what it takes to be successful as an online content creator and he really opened up to me about…

Beth Appel is the current Artistic Director of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. You may have seen her on MTV and TruTV or in her hilarious one woman show “Beth Appel: Sexiest Woman Alive.” Between Harold Auditions and her many credits, there was a lot to talk about. Instead, we sat in silence for 25 minutes. I believe she used …

The theme song to the podcast "25 Minutes of Silence." If you want to pretend you're a guest on 25 minutes of silence, just listen to this and then sit in silence for 25 minutes.Von Joey Clift