Episode 149: Josie Long

“It’s woven very densely into the fabric of my life,” explains Josie Long. “It happens when you do your accounting every year. You look at your receipts, and everything there you’ve written about.” The comedian began her standup career at the tender age of 14, scoring a BBC New Comedy Award three years later. Having spent more than half her years on Earth as a standup, it’s certainly understandable that comedy has become the filter through which Long examines her life. I caught up with the comedian ahead during a week-long string of shows in New York. She’d been out swimming in the ice cold Atlantic in the midst of an autumn chill, her voice slightly worse for wear. But she happily spoke the cross section of the personal and professional, an area she had been mining heavily for the set she was performing later that evening.  Cara Josephine trades her often political source material in for stories about family and failed relationships, making for far away Long’s most personal show to date.