Ep.30 - Sebastian Scales

Explicit content warning

11/30/21 • 90 min

Sebastian Scales is a stand up comedian, host of the What Happened to You Podcast, and founder of the What Happened to You Foundation. For our fellow nerds – he graduated from Cornell with a degree in engineering which launched him into a career at Microsoft, which after 2 years, he walked away from to do far far far more important work. He embraced his powerful, important and truly challenging mission of using laughter and the art of stand-up comedy to normalize conversations of trauma. He is boldly, compassionately and shamelessly (in all the most essentially healing ways) sharing the story of his childhood molestation so that others may feel comfortable and safe to talk about their traumas, whatever they may be. Not only does Sebastian emanate the deep joy, and love of life that comes from healing the scars of our past but he is a beacon for all other to follow. I feel so honored to get to share a little of his energy and story with you all today and open up a little more about mine. Together, we hope to inspire and invite you all to not hide from the things that hurt but to consider that they might be the very things that will make you smile like you’ve never smiled before and laugh like you’ve never laughed before.

Sebastian and I could talk for for ever about this topic so we had to make some cuts a long the way – so forgive the random mentions of mushrooms and other non sequesters – we swear it was super funny - but we figured we would get right down to it...

Previous Episode

Ep. 29 - Mansi Mehra

My guest this week is my kinda cool: a degree in electronics, masters in computer science, and she started stand up after breaking up with her boyfriend of 3 years who is a successful stand up comedian. Mansi Mehra is truly my kinda renaissance woman. Sure her IQ is clearly impressive but her EQ is top of the class. She was also top of her class growing up in India as the head girl of her school - a self professed shy nerd who, no one would have believed would move to America become a stand-up comedian and be the host of major live shows for crowds of thousands.

I am so impressed by how gracefully and vulnerably Mansi is forging through the challenges of being an Indian female comedian and I hope you find her perspective on her culture as interesting as we did. I get the feeling my new bestie Mansi is one to keep your eye on and I wouldn’t be surprised if that ex of hers will soon be saying “I knew Mansi before she was famous!”

Next Episode

Ep.31 - Dr.Catherine Franssen - The neuroscience of comedy

For the next three weeks I will be talking with the brilliantly insightful interesting, wise and wisdom packed Dr. Catherine Franssen. Catherine, along with being one of my very fav new friends of 2021 is a Life scientist at the Science museum of Virginia who is described as a multi-faceted scientific communicator with deep knowledge at the intersection of brain, behavior, and biology. She has made it her personal mission to advance scientific literacy using the lens of neuroscience to explore daily life experiences, such as stress, parenting, joy, decision making, and more. So basically she has made a career of answering all those questions we have ever had about why we do the things we do – so cool!!

This week Catherine and I are going to dig into the neuroscience of comedy! I am so excited to explore why we laugh why comedians chose stand up as a career and so many more quandaries I’ve always had about this bizarre world of comedy.