Jena Friedman Knows Grief is a Real Motherf*ker

**Jena Friedman** returns to **Parenting Is a Joke** with a now four-year-old, a new solo show called *Motherf\*cker*, and a lot to say about what happens when motherhood, grief, politics, and a creative career start occupying the same space. She and host **Ophira Eisenberg** talk about the strange economics of being a working comedian—including Jena’s son looking at her $40 stand-up paycheck and asking, essentially, “That’s all you make?”—as well as the practical reality of getting to Edinburgh for 17 performances while trying not to be away from her child for too long. Jena explains how losing her mother to pancreatic cancer while she was 34 weeks pregnant changed the way she talks to her son about death, including the decision to make mortality less mysterious through conversations, *The Lion King*, *Coco*, and Día de los Muertos. She remembers being devastated while her eight-month-old son gently tucked her hair behind her ear, and later records a conversation in which her three-year-old tells her he doesn’t want her to die, listens to her explanation about death, and then immediately announces that he has farted on her knee. The conversation also turns toward the complicated guilt of considering another child, the fact that Jena froze her eggs, and the larger anxiety of raising a kid while worrying about climate change, artificial intelligence, regulation, and a future involving drones and locked bank accounts. That political anxiety feeds directly into *Motherf\*cker*, which Jena describes as using the political comedy she knows how to do as a way to approach the grief she doesn’t know how to do; she also argues that comedy can become more interesting with age because perspective accumulates, illustrated by the brutally specific joke she delivered to younger colleagues grieving Trump’s 2024 election victory: wait until your mom dies. The episode keeps finding that same uneasy intersection of the personal and the political, ending with a shared desire for a mug that simply says, “Don’t talk to me until your mom has also died.” 📍October Shows are in Watertown, SD, Pennsylvania, Niagra Falls, Canada, Washington, DC, Catskill, and NYC Follow Jena Friedman : https://www.instagram.com/jenafriedman Get tickets to her Off-Broadway Show Motherf\*cker: https://www.sohoplayhouse.com/see-a-show/jena-friedman-motherfucker See Ophira LIVE:https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/eventshttps://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” is AVAILABLE on Amazon Primehttps://www.ophiraeisenberg.com Listen to it as an Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/1rHqPoBYc78gzMnCrCFoZy SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices