Jackie Kashian

Jack­ie Kashi­an has been doing stand-up com­e­dy since a time when the drink­ing age in Wis­con­sin was 18 and heck­ling Sam Kin­i­son seemed like a rea­son­able activ­i­ty, albeit one fueled by youth­ful exu­ber­ance and, by her own admis­sion, tequi­la. Decades lat­er, Kashi­an remains a fix­ture in the com­e­dy land­scape – a pro­lif­ic pod­cast­er (The Dork For­est, The Jack­ie and Lau­rie Show), a relent­less road com­ic, and a voice blend­ing sharp obser­va­tion with an under­cur­rent of cheer­ful prag­ma­tism, occa­sion­al­ly boil­ing over into right­eous anger. Inter­viewed by Valerie Lopez for Com­e­dy Wham dur­ing the 2025 Moon­tow­er Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val, Kashi­an offered insights into a career built less on grand strat­e­gy and more on a per­sis­tent love for the craft itself.

Kashian’s entry into com­e­dy was­n’t exact­ly planned. It involved being 19, legal­ly able to drink in Wis­con­sin at the time, and present at a Sam Kin­i­son show at his broth­er’s club in Madi­son. After a few too many shots and beers, an ill-advised com­ment dur­ing a pause in Kin­ison’s set led to an inter­ac­tion where, as Kashi­an puts it, Kin­i­son ​“inten­tion­al­ly mopped up the floor with me, but I would­n’t shut up.” She attrib­ut­es the heck­ling less to brav­ery and more to liq­uid courage: ​“Right. That was… that was… Oh, it was­n’t… it was­n’t… it was­n’t guts, it was drunk­en­ness. I blame it on the tequi­la.” The club man­ager’s inter­ven­tion (“Hey, open mic is on Sun­day. Shut up.”) plant­ed the seed. Three weeks lat­er, she was on that open mic stage.

The imme­di­ate effect was pro­found. Kashi­an describes the feel­ing as falling into ​“what I assume is like falling into a vat of hero­in. It was delight­ful. I loved it with the pow­er of the sun.” This new­found pas­sion prompt­ly tanked her GPA to a star­tling 1.8 dur­ing a peri­od where she per­formed stand-up near­ly every night for eight months before the club unfor­tu­nate­ly burned down. Yet, despite this all-con­sum­ing love, prac­ti­cal­i­ty dic­tat­ed near­ly two decades of bal­anc­ing com­e­dy with day jobs. She final­ly quit her admin posi­tion at a closed cap­tion­ing com­pa­ny in 2003 after receiv­ing $15,000 for her first half-hour spe­cial – a sum she knew was­n’t life-chang­ing mon­ey but was enough to take the leap into full-time comedy.

This blend of pas­sion and prag­ma­tism seems intrin­si­cal­ly linked to a per­son­al­i­ty trait Kashi­an read­i­ly admits: she’s an intro­vert who just hap­pens to have a very pub­lic-fac­ing job. She tours exten­sive­ly, hosts two pop­u­lar pod­casts requir­ing con­stant inter­ac­tion, and main­tains an active, often polit­i­cal­ly charged, social media pres­ence. Yet, her pre­ferred state involves qui­et soli­tude. ​“I’m a bit of an intro­vert… I like being alone,” she states, adding, ​“I would pre­fer to sit in my room and read com­ic books and nov­els and play video games… And then some­one go, do you want to do stand up? And I’m like, yes.”

This inter­nal pref­er­ence for qui­et clash­es amus­ing­ly with her exter­nal real­i­ty. Kashi­an jokes her ide­al super­pow­er would be tele­por­ta­tion, sole­ly to elim­i­nate the trav­el aspect of tour­ing and max­i­mize time at home with her hus­band, pets, and books. Her descrip­tion of bring­ing mul­ti­ple books on the road, some­times scat­ter­ing them around her hotel bed ​“like a weirdo,” paints a pic­ture of some­one find­ing solace in soli­tary pur­suits amidst a demand­ing, inter­ac­tive career. This per­haps explains her self-described ​“DIY” career path; while she has rep­re­sen­ta­tion (a per­son­al appear­ance agent she recent­ly start­ed work­ing with), the under­ly­ing engine seems to be her own relent­less pur­suit of the work itself, rather than exten­sive net­work­ing or team-building.

Kashi­an does­n’t shy away from con­tentious top­ics, par­tic­u­lar­ly pol­i­tics. In the inter­view, she was sport­ing a shirt spread­ing infor­ma­tion about Plan C abor­tion pills by mail (“abor­tion pills by mail” with a QR code to planC​.org); some­thing not nec­es­sar­i­ly wel­come every­where. Espe­cial­ly while per­form­ing in states like Texas with restric­tive laws, despite her father’s pleas to be less political. 

She views engag­ing with cur­rent events, includ­ing the rise of Don­ald Trump and what she terms ​“the Nazi par­ty,” as unavoid­able for her com­e­dy, reject­ing the notion that such sub­jects ​“write them­selves” or that she should fol­low the advice to ​“stick to com­e­dy.” Her approach to online detrac­tors is sim­ple: block, don’t engage. She some­times types the part­ing thought, ​“Let me help you away from me,” which she amus­ing­ly notes they nev­er get to read because she blocks them immediately.

This line, which she men­tions is part of a joke she’s work­ing on explor­ing non-vio­lent protest and per­son­al ethics in tur­bu­lent times (“I’m a rule fol­low­er, but I like to think that I would hide Anne Frank. And I’m about to find out.”), reveals the seri­ous under­pin­nings of her recent work. Kashi­an acknowl­edges the dif­fi­cul­ty and uncer­tain­ty of the cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate but finds hope in his­tor­i­cal resilience, cit­ing post-WWII Ger­many’s even­tu­al re-emer­gence of intel­lec­tu­al­ism and diver­si­ty (“full of weirdos”) after the Nazis attempt­ed to erad­i­cate them. While her stand-up incor­po­rates this ​“rage” and socio-polit­i­cal com­men­tary (jok­ing she’s ​“made of bees”), she also express­es sat­is­fac­tion in recent­ly writ­ing apo­lit­i­cal jokes, like a chunk pure­ly about driving.

Ulti­mate­ly, what seems to sus­tain Kashi­an through decades of demand­ing trav­el, indus­try vagaries, and polit­i­cal tur­moil is the fun­da­men­tal act of per­form­ing com­e­dy. While acknowl­edg­ing career frus­tra­tions exist, she notes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to per­form often neu­tral­izes them: ​“I tend to for­get uh to be angry about com­e­dy because I get to do anoth­er set.” This focus on the imme­di­ate act of cre­ation and con­nec­tion like­ly fuels her pro­lif­ic out­put, includ­ing sev­en albums, mul­ti­ple spe­cials (with anoth­er planned for record­ing in Novem­ber), and well over a thou­sand pod­cast episodes across her two long-run­ning shows, The Dork For­est and The Jack­ie and Lau­rie Show.

So, while the ini­tial spark might have been tequi­la-fueled brava­do, Jack­ie Kashian’s endur­ing pres­ence seems pow­ered by a qui­eter, more per­sis­tent force: a deep-seat­ed love for the work itself, an intro­vert­ed nature chan­neled into pub­lic per­for­mance, and an unwill­ing­ness to stay silent, whether onstage or off. And, just for fun, she owns Fam​i​lyPetAnces​try​.com, which redi­rects to her main web­site, Jack​ieKashi​an​.com, part­ly because, as she puts it, ​“it’s fun­ny” and she liked the absurd premise of peo­ple check­ing if their cat came over on the Mayflower. It seems even her domain name strat­e­gy blends prag­ma­tism with a touch of the absurd.

Fol­low Jackie

• Web­site — jack​iekashi​an​.com
• Insta­gram — @jackiekashian
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​j​a​c​k​i​e​.​k​a​shian
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​u​s​e​r​/​J​a​c​k​i​e​_​K​a​shian

Jack­ie can be seen and heard:

• Spe­cials
  • Lat­est Spe­cial: Look­ing Back
  • Stay-Kashi­an
  • Com­e­dy Cen­tral Presents: Jack­ie Kashian
  • This Will Make an Excel­lent Horcrux
• Pod­casts (avail­able on Youtube and your favorite pod­cast player)
  • Jack­ie and Lau­rie Show (over 400 episodes)
  • The Dork For­est (over 700 episodes)
• Album
  • Cake is Not My Down­fall (2004)
  • Cir­cus Peo­ple (2007)
  • It is Nev­er Going to be Bread (2010)
  • I Am Not the Hero of This Sto­ry (2017)
• Writ­ing
  • The Com­e­dy Film Nerds Guide to Movies
  • Comics Comics Quarterly