Paula Poundstone Still Thinks Stand-Up ‘Greatest Job In The World’ After 40 Years
Paula Poundstone performs at the Buckhead Theatre Friday at 8 p.m.
Rich Fury / Invision/AP
Veteran stand-up comedian Paula Poundstone’s curiosity has fueled her career for the past 40 years. Her quest for knowledge informs her stand-up, her book, and her current podcast, “Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone.” And it’s part of the reason she does so much crowdwork during her shows.
“I do the time-honored ‘where you from, what do you do for a living?’” she tells “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes, “and then people get talking and little biographies of audience members emerge, and I use that from which to set my sail. Most people’s lives are not boring. Most people, when you get them talking, are fascinating.”
Despite the numerous other jobs and opportunities she’s had in her career, including as a panelist on NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me,” Poundstone says that stand-up will always be her main gig.
“If I never did anything other than stand-up comedy for the rest of my life, I would be the luckiest person in the entire world,” she says. “I can have any kind of struggle in my life, and I go on stage and I make jokes about it and it often turns out I’m not the only one. It’s incredibly healing, it makes you feel like you are a part of a whole.”
Paula Poundstone performs at the Buckhead Theatre Friday at 8 p.m.
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