"Ike Barinholtz"

Jason Bateman opens the show alone in New York, defending his sugar-free granola and his directing prep, before the guest reveal: Ike Barinholtz, a twenty-year friend of all three hosts, joining from a London hotel room with his microphone propped on a rolling suitcase. He's there because The Studio is nominated for a BAFTA as best foreign show, and he's three weeks from wrapping its second season — a shoot that included two weeks in Venice with Madonna, with the season due out in March 2027.

The career story runs on the classic mid-90s Chicago ladder. Barinholtz grew up in Uptown, a mile from Wrigley Field, went to Boston University planning to be a politician, and went off the rails within a semester — his parents found out he'd been kicked out from a letter that arrived while his dad was taking him to Las Vegas as a reward for finishing his first year. Back in Chicago, seeing Amy Poehler, Adam McKay and an especially funny Tim Meadows at Improv Olympic's tenth-anniversary show converted him; he bussed tables at Second City while watching a just-starting Tina Fey, got hired by Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, then moved to Los Angeles with Seth and Josh Meyers. Five years on MADtv (where Jordan Peele became one of his best friends) ended in restlessness and three and a half years without work, until Danny McBride cast him as a pitcher on Eastbound & Down. From there: six seasons of The Mindy Project, and eventually co-creating Running Point with Mindy Kaling and his writing partner Dave Stassin.

The hang produces the episode's best stories: Katherine Hahn discovering that the person she'd been texting for ten years as Laura Dern was actually Tina Fey's stand-in from This Is Where I Leave You; a long-forgotten table read of Jerry Lewis's never-released Holocaust clown movie The Day the Clown Cried with Will Arnett, David Cross, Jon Glaser and Rob Huebel; and Ike recounting the 2019 Emmys, where he mentioned his ACLU work to Bateman and got back, 'Have they filed a lawsuit yet?'

It closes with Ike's new solo trivia podcast, Funny You Ask — which Will was supposed to guest on before bailing to golf with Bateman — and a live round of questions. Bateman, it turns out, is the trivia ringer of the three, while Ike casually mentions he's a Celebrity Jeopardy champion.