The collectors and curators of comedy history are rare, but they are usually delightful beings to not only shoot the breeze with, but learn the tenor of a comedy scene in decades past.

One of our favorite comedy folks, Mike Bridenstine, transplanted from a time period of Chicago comedy that has vastly influenced comedy at this very moment, has captured an exhaustive history of those years in his book The Perfect Amount of Wrong, which boasts the early days of Kumail Nanjiani, Hannibal Buress, Cameron Esposito, Jena Friedman, and many more. We talk to Bridenstine about what it takes to pull off a historical account of comedy, why to do it, and what is holding back TCB’s Jake Kroeger from doing his own comedy history book.

Also, Mike really wanted this episode to be called “Butthole Vietnam” and we love making our guests happy.

Follow Mike @mikebridenstine on IG & @brido on Twitter and listen to Hunk wherever you get your podcasts and, most importantly, pre-order his book The Perfect Amount of Wrong here or wherever you get your books.

The Comedy Bureau @thecomedybureau across platforms and please, please support TCB via Patreon or on Venmo (@jakekroeger).

Produced by Jake Kroeger
Music by Brian Granillo
Artwork by Andrew Delman and Jake Kroeger