In this special Thanksgiving episode of the "What's So Funny About...?" Podcast, brought to you by the ⁠Liberation Comedy Project⁠, I talk with comedian, producer, and actor Blake Pickens (see bio below) about his perspective on Thanksgiving, the balm of laughter, and all kinds of hilarity.

Blake Pickens is an Emmy Award winning Chickasaw comedian and filmmaker. Blake began his career writing satire for The National Lampoon, where he published numerous featured articles. He is a part of A Tribe Called Sketch, the first all Native American sketch show on a US Second City Stage. He can be seen performing stand up all over LA.

Blake was selected for the Time Warner Sundance Native Producing Lab and Fellowship and the Sundance Producing Fellowship for his film, THE LAND. The film premiered in 2016 at the Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically by IFC Films. Blake has produced content with a focus on diversity and inclusion, ranging from feature films to commercials and music videos. He has produced commercials that have won a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions two years in a row (2017, 2018), and won a 2018 Emmy for his P&G commercial, THE TALK. He also won an MTV VMA for his work on John Legend’s music video, SUREFIRE. His second feature film as a producer, WILD INDIAN, with Michael Greyeyes and Jesse Eisenberg premiered at Sundance 2021.

Blake was also selected for the inaugural 2020 Sundance Indigenous Intensive for his comedy pilot, THE WILDEST WEST, which was also selected for the Black List’s Indigenous List. He wrote on the Rugrats reboot for Nickelodeon and wrote on Spirit Rangers for Netflix. He is currently in post production on THE ROOF for Disney+/Launchpad and is part of Illuminative’s Producers Program.

Blake is a graduate of the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC, has an MBA from LMU, and is also a graduate of the University of Oklahoma.

Blake can be found on Instagram at @blakepickens and see some of his work at ⁠https://blakepickens.com⁠/.

The "What's So Funny About...?"Podcast is incubated by Mediators Foundation and managed by YOUnify.