Julia Sweeney is an actress, comedian, writer and film director. She was a memorable cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1994. After SNL she became most well-known for her monologues. Her first one-person show, God Said, Ha!, dealt with her brother’s and later her own cancer diagnosis and treatment. It played on Broadway, became a film, and was nominated for a Grammy. Subsequent monologues chronicled Julia’s quest to become a mother and adoption of a child as a single person, and her loss of faith and embrace of science. Her memoir, If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother, was published in 2013. Her new show, Older and Wider, debuts at Second City in Chicago on Friday January 12. We talked a few months ago about astrology, genetics, cancer, family, and her life as a Neanderthal churchgoing atheist.

#3 Julia Sweeney

Conversations with participants in and observers of the worlds of science and medicine from the creators of Genome magazine.