Fonzie was impossibly cool.

Mork, played by Robin Williams, was my introduction to improv, and my first real peek behind the curtain of television production; I had seen Williams riffing on 'The Tonight Show' and soon put it together that certain scenes with Mork were not scripted.

It seems the more shallow and mean the candidates are the more they rise in the polls.

When I go in to 'Comedy Bang Bang,' I'll go in most of the time with some beats of where we're going with the idea. Everything else is improvised. Nothing is scripted. A lot of times I'll go in there with nothing and it's just conversation with the character.

When I started my own podcast, I realized I definitely wanted to do characters.

Ultimately, some of these things I did not get paid for, they did not further my career, they were done just for fun.

Part of our job is to dig deep and rediscover the joy that we had when we were first starting out. Also, when you gain responsibility, if you are the host of a TV show and you have responsibilities as a producer and a writer and so forth, you then have to deal with the mechanics of it, which is not always fun.

Some people just want to make up the funny things and play pretend.

I'm fascinated by people who can keep who they are in the midst of this business, which is all about not only pretending to be other people, but also that perception of who you are and how successful you are and your standing in the business.

The old Johnny Carson 'Tonight Show' was great in that he was so good with the guests, and it was not about him. I think he was very smart in realizing 'I have plenty of screentime on this show. I do my monologue and we do sketches and stuff like that.' During the interview, he really made it about trying to bring the best thing out of the guest.

What I do with impressions, I try not to be mean-spirited. To me, it's just about being silly.

Cake Boss, I guess, has been made aware of my impression and finds it amusing and recognizes that it's not a completely accurate impersonation of who he is in his daily life. He seems to be a good sport about it.

The ideas that you find funny and the things that you are offering to an audience are tied up with who you are and your soul and your heart.

Comedy Bang! Bang!' has meant so much to me over the years, and has brought me so much and so many new fans.

A big difference between podcasts and radio is the intimacy. Radio oftentimes feels big and loud. To me, podcasting is closest to that weird late night stuff, whether it's late night love song request lines, or it's some talk radio show where you feel like you're the only person listening to it.

I always like things that shrink the world for me, that make me feel a strange connection, not just to the person that I'm listening to but to the world.

In an effort to devote more time, energy and focus to fewer projects, I've had to make some tough decisions, and one such decision was 'retiring' from 'Speakeasy.'

Well 'The Pod F. Tompkast,' as much as I love the result of it, was a really labor intensive show. There's a lot of writing, there's a lot of scheduling, there's a lot of recording - it's not a show that we can necessarily do in one day because there are so many moving parts to it.

I consume a lot of podcasts. I'm a voracious podcast consumer.

I like 'Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period' podcast.

I love words, and I love that there's so many words available to make a point and to create a picture.

Just because I have a good vocabulary, I don't think of myself as anachronistic - just because I try not to use the word 'like' every other word.

You know, back when I was a kid who wanted to be in show business, everybody on TV wore nice clothes. They were very glamorous when they would be on the 'Tonight Show.' All the dudes wore suits and ties and that just seemed like real show business to me.

When I started doing stand-up in the late eighties, that was not an uncommon thing, that people dressed for the stage. I've seen that change as time has gone by to where, for me, it's something that people remark on. And that's when I started to really embrace it in a way and get more flamboyant and foppish with the way that I dress.

I just approach everything by just doing the best job I can do and try to be a pleasant person.

I long ago vowed, as Batman did before me, never to make fun of stuff that people couldn't help. Because it's (1) easy and (2) not fair. There are plenty of things that people have complete control over that are worthy of ridicule.

When the task is mocking pop culture, it's easy to make sarcastic comments and consider the job done. After a while, I began to feel like this route was completely pointless. Talking about silly, inconsequential stuff doesn't mean you can't put some effort into it.

On 'Best Week Ever,' I met a few previous 'Idol' winners, and they were the nicest young people you'd ever want to meet. It is a tribute to them that they emerged from 'Idol's' cynicism factory seemingly without mercury poisoning of the soul.

I think you can make jokes about anything. But you have to accept that there will be people who don't like it. And they are completely within their rights, just as you are completely within your rights to say whatever you want to say. They're within their rights to react how they're going to react.

I've said things that, now, I wish I hadn't said because times have changed and like the me of 15-20 years ago made a joke that I wouldn't make today because I - just because I look at the world differently now, you know. And because the world is different now. And, you know, it's all part of a maturation process, I think, for everybody.

The first thing you start with when you're trying to write something funny is it has to - it really has to come to you first. I has to be an idea that you have that first makes you laugh, that strikes you as funny.

I think that we all enjoy silliness to varying degrees but I think everyone can enjoy a relatable thing if it is expressed in a funny way.

We each have our own style but yeah, when you boil it down like there are certain things that human beings just are predisposed to laugh at and we're just kind of all putting our own spin on it.

Puppets can get away with saying things that human beings can't. Because they are cartoonish just to look at, they're not real, you can assign them insane things to feel and vocalize.

There's so much being said about Donald Trump already, all the time, and the more you joke about him, the more you risk making the same jokes other people are making about him.

When you're getting your facts from people, consider the way that they are being given to you.

I have Peter O'Toole's autograph on a first-edition copy of his autobiography that I acquired under false pretenses.

I always liked dressing up. I think, because I always liked performing, I always liked costumes and things like that.

I enjoy very traditional stuff, and I enjoy kind of outlandish stuff, and I just really like clothes. I always have.

For me, writing is just a means to an end. It gives me something to do on stage.

The podcasting world has changed the way I book my shows. I knew that I could announce a gig on a podcast and that people would hear it. People that like what I do would hear, 'Oh, he's in my city.' And that makes it so much easier.

Earwolf had approached me a long time ago, even before I had started the 'Pod F. Tompkast.' I knew that I wanted to do a podcast, and I knew everyone there and that it was something for me to do, but I didn't know quite what I wanted to do yet.

I think, in a way, the stand-up prepped me for the improv, because I do a lot of riffing in my stand-up.

Ice-T is a great sport about people doing impressions of him, apparently, obviously, and so I have no choice but to be a great sport about being pranked by Ice-T.

Dress how you like to dress. Don't worry so much about rules.

I would love to see the Replacements get back together at the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina, because I never got to see them live and I love Charleston.

An audience can become a mob very easily.

I have a hernia scar from when I was a kid. I had a hernia when I was like in fourth grade.

It is so easy to avoid getting in a fist fight. If you're at a point where you're squaring up against someone in public, then it's on you. There are so many ways to not get in a fist fight.

I think I've almost killed myself 1,000 times eating some sandwich as fast as I possibly could and almost choking. It's a miracle that I'm still alive.