Send us a textThis is our first episode featuring a married couple! Bradley Michaud married our college bestie Jason Moyer, and we love them both so much we wish we were their sister wives. Regarding the topic of illness, one is a delicate flower who has barely had more than strep, and the other has survived two near-death experiences and talks about them as if they were trips to a theme park. Tune in for vivid descriptions of hospital room hallucinations, high school blood donations, a...

Send us a textDion Flynn is a comedian and staff writer on The Tonight Show, where he frequently appears as various outrageous characters who make Jimmy Fallon laugh his bum off. Dion talks to us about one of his early gigs as a standardized patient, which is an actor hired to simulate an illness for the purposes of helping medical students practice their diagnosing techniques. Wait until you hear about a fellow actor who often stayed after hours to endure up to 20 prostate exams at a time in...

Send us a textWali Collins is an award winning corporate comedian, actor, producer and author. He joined us shortly after his second bout with kidney stones, so the details were fresh in his memory and the stone was fresh in a cup next to his computer. Wali described what the stone felt like as it was passing through his "tube-age", and he and Julia bonded over their shared memory of a childhood game where kids squeeze each other until someone passes out. Charming! Ellie was horrified, ...

Send us a textHave you ever been recognized during an extremely vulnerable medical exam? Kit Green has! A multi-award-winning artist from the UK, Kit's work sprawls across theatre, music, broadcast and academia, and her own brand of 'experiential entertainment". She opens up about the benefits of being the only trans patient at a medical practice that mostly serves elderly Greek women, and she and Ellie bond over bizarre old British song parodies about Hitler only having one testicle. ...

Send us a textOphira Eisenberg is a Canadian-born standup comedian, writer, and host. She hosted NPR’s comedy trivia show Ask Me Another for 9-years and she now hosts the comedy podcast Parenting Is A Joke where she talks to other comedian parents about how the hell they do it. Ophira has had so many medical interventions in her life that choosing just one moment was almost impossible, so settle in for choice tidbits from encounters with cancer doctors, OBGYNs, radiologists, and more. L...

Send us a textComing to you from Frankfurt, Germany, we have our longtime friend Abigail Paul, a dynamic performer and BBC Writer’s Room Popcorn Award Nominee. Abigail is a self-proclaimed "big baby" when it comes to medical situations, yet she has knack for turning her uncomfortable encounters into highly amusing stories. She regales us with tales of two cysts, one which had to be dealt with on a college trip to NYC when she had no health insurance, and the other when she was living in Germa...

Send us a textWe are crazy about Kevin Allison, who you may know from The State , a cult classic show that aired on MTV from 1993-96. He is also the creator and host of the hit podcast, RISK!, where people tell true stories they never thought they’d dare to share. On this episode, Kevin tells us how his adult ADHD diagnosis might be the reason for many incidents throughout his life where he asked himself the question, "What the hell was I thinking?" You'll hear delicious details of a rusty na...

Send us a textToday's guests are the co-founders of Comedy Gives Back, an organization that serves as a safety net for the comedy community by providing financial crisis relief, mental health and chemical dependency treatment sponsorship. Amber J Lawson, Jodi Lieberman and Zoe Friedman have been working in comedy for decades, and as they share their stories of an infected tooth, a car accident, and a skin surgery, co-hosts Ellie and Julia wonder if these are medical stories or plot line...

Send us a textIt's our first "poopisode", and we can't promise it will be our last. Everybody poops - it's universal - so it was inevitable that our longtime friend Mike Dressel would relax us enough to let loose (literally). Mike Dressel is a writer, editor, former educator, and lapsed performer who went to college with Julia and Ellie. A friendship this long leads to the kind of belly laughs we have been craving, and we hope you enjoy Mike's tale of crapping his pants on Weiner Street as mu...

Send us a textIt's the very first episode of our brand new podcast! Co-hosts Ellie and Julia decide to save the guests' experiences for future episodes and instead, share their own bizarre medical encounters with each other. Even though they have been friends for 30 years, they each manage to tell a story that the other has never heard! If you've ever had inexplicable back pain or eaten mysteriously spicy tuna, this one is for you. Instagram @openupandsayhaYouTube @openupandsayhaFacebook...

Send us a textHere's a little teaser showing what you can expect from Open Up and Say HA!, a brand new podcast baby birthed and hosted by the creators of Circling the Drain. Subscribe here and follow @openupandsayha on all socials for updates and links. Episodes released weekly featuring hilarious folks such as Kevin Allison (Risk! and The State), Dion Flynn (Late Night with Jimmy Fallon), Ophira Eisenberg (NPR's Ask Me Another) and many more. If laughter is your medicine, open up...