Comedian and writer Laura Merli announces new episodes of How To Be Less Awkward

NEW YORK, NY - Comedian Laura Merli (a writer for satirical websites Reductress, The Hard Times and McSweeney’s) has announced new episodes of her podcast, How to Be Less Awkward, an independently-produced show that features comedians discussing horribly cringeworthy and hilarious stories in unflinching detail.

The podcast, which recently graduated from the Women In Comedy Festival podcast network, began in 2017 and has featured interviews with comedians such as Myq Kaplan (Conan), Jamie Loftus (a writer for Robot Chicken) and Jamie Morton from the hit podcast, My Dad Wrote a Porno. New episodes will be released every other Tuesday.

When asked what prompted her to create the podcast Merli said, “I started thinking, ‘what’s something that I could talk endlessly about?’ I arrived at awkwardness because a lot of my comedy naturally comes from awkward things I’ve done. And that seems to be what audience members most want to talk about after they see me do stand up.”

Each episode features a guest, generally a fellow comedian, revealing their most awkward encounters. “Everyone has an awkward story to tell,” said Merli. “I later found this to not be 100% true after I attempted to interview my former-prom-queen sister and she said ‘I don’t still feel bad about things, I just feel like it was a bad situation.’ However, it’s almost universally true of comedian-types, so that’s who most of my guests are.”

Guests on Awkward have shared real-life stories on everything from pooping their pants on a destination hike (Ep 9 Stand up, Business, & Poop w Chris Duffy), to the downside of putting your penis in a mysterious hole (Ep 3 Glory Hole w Terence Pennington), to being a young comedian in a 20-something-plus-year-old world (Ep 16 Young Comedian w Maeve Press).

“The Glory Hole episode is actually still one of my favorites,” Merli said. “Because a story like that could have easily just been said in a way to shock people, but Terence really talked about the experience in a way that was genuine and touching. It also left me with many questions… particularly, ‘How many glory holes are really out there??’”

Merli hopes to someday turn How To Be Less Awkward into a live show and generate enough income from the podcast to take time off from her day job and release episodes weekly.

“If I could go back and say something to my younger self--who was really banking on becoming hot and cool--I’d say: you’re only gonna get slightly less weird, but you’ll have some fun stories to share.”

How To Be Less Awkward is available on iTunes, Stitcher and everywhere else podcasts are found.