{"id":2816,"date":"2018-08-30T14:41:22","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T18:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=2816"},"modified":"2018-08-30T14:41:22","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T18:41:22","slug":"dot-ep69-writer-comedian-and-goddess-guy-branum-plus-new-music-from-pr-newman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2018\/08\/30\/dot-ep69-writer-comedian-and-goddess-guy-branum-plus-new-music-from-pr-newman\/","title":{"rendered":"DoT EP69: Writer, Comedian, and Goddess Guy Branum, plus New Music from PR Newman"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am honored to have Guy Branum<\/a> as my interview guest this week. He is an accomplished television writer, having worked on Chelsea, Lately<\/em><\/a> and written for Joan Rivers<\/a>, as well as one of the most consistently entertaining sitcoms of the past decade, The Mindy Project<\/em><\/a>. He also currently hosts Talk Show The Game Show<\/em><\/a> on truTV<\/a>, on which guests get points for witty stories, just the right amount of name dropping to avoid getting a yellow card, jokes, and applause breaks. It\u2019s a fresh and funny show and reminds me of Match Game<\/em><\/a> in a way that the Match Game revival doesn\u2019t. And he puts his pop culture knowledge to good use on the Pop Rocket<\/em><\/a> podcast on the Maximum Fun network. <\/p>\n

The bulk of the interview is about Branum\u2019s new book, My Life As A Goddess: A Memoir Through (Un)Popular Culture<\/em><\/a>. The book shows off who Branum is at his core. It\u2019s funny, compassionate, sarcastic, smart, and poignant. Branum tells the story of how a kid from a small but diverse agricultural town in California went from law school to the entertainment industry, how he came out and dealt with both self-loathing and the reproach of his family, and how important television was and is to him. Along the way, you can learn about pop culture, world history, and mythology, among other things. The goddess in the title is a reference to a particular important mythological figure in Branum\u2019s personal history \u2013 Leto, sister and lover of Zeus and mother of Apollo and Artemis. Branum tells of how Zeus’s wife, Hera, cast Leto out of Mount Olympus and cursed anyone who would give her shelter. She was forgotten and abused for nine months. The phrase that stuck with Branum comes when Leto had had enough and \u201cThen she remembered that she was a goddess.\u201d That is a kind of personal mantra for Branum, and we start the conversation with that idea. <\/p>\n