An even bigger agency poached me after reading my script synopses. I landed at the desk of Martin Baum, famously one of the meanest bosses in Hollywood. He yelled at me daily, publicly, and with real flair. It was mortifying. I loved him.

I became a personal manager and signed Howie Mandel early in his career. Then Sandra Bernhard. I produced a few of Howie’s HBO specials and helped shape Sandra’s Without You, I’m Nothing from an off-Broadway sensation into a beloved cult film that still challenges its audience. It remains one of my proudest accomplishments. I was young. I had too much money. And I never met a drug I didn’t at least flirt with at a party.

Next were the bodybuilding years. (Yes, really.) Followed by the foggy, freelance-y, slightly feral unemployment years. Eventually, I pulled myself together and started a company—which, somehow, someone bought. Cue: Comedy World. (We’ll get to that. It deserves its own mixtape.)

After the dot-com collapse, I drifted over to Sirius Satellite Radio, programming all three of their comedy channels in the pre–Howard Stern days. Eventually, I landed at Discovery, where I zigzagged through nearly every network in the portfolio, including Oprah’s OWN for fourteen months. (There’s an NDA.)

In 2015, two dear friends pulled me over to National Geographic, and I’ve been here ever since—lucky to work with some of the smartest, sharpest, most marvelously off-center people I know.

You’ll also hear a lot about Bill Ledbetter, who left a permanent handprint on my heart. He’ll always be my Guyster.