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March is Women's History Month!

Lizz Winstead: The Dictionary From A To Lizz

Lizz Winstead. Her latest book of funny essays is <em>Lizz Free Or Die.</em>
Mindy Tucker
Lizz Winstead. Her latest book of funny essays is Lizz Free Or Die.

Lizz Winstead has an impressive resume. She's a veteran stand-up comic, co-created both The Daily Show and Air America Radio, and is the author of the book Lizz Free or Die. But Winstead is also a bonafide word nerd and game fanatic. Which means she was right at home on the Ask Me Another stage.

Winstead sat down with host Ophira Eisenberg to recount the origin story of The Daily Show, an idea that came to her during a disastrous blind date. It's clear, however, that Winstead's imagination is always running. As the child of a large, game-loving family, she's crafted her own party games, such as The Lifetime Game. (That's where you read the descriptions of Lifetime original TV movies and your friends make up ridiculous titles.) And she's even created her own Lizz vocabulary, filled with portmanteau words such as "packuum," "disdrain" and "anticipointment," to explain, for example, the experience of packing for a trip while in an emotional vacuum.

Given her love of wordplay, Winstead was more than game to lead a trivia round called "Natalie Portmantoast," which asked contestants to create words by combining a famous person's name with a food item. And later, the Minneapolis native proved her fierce hometown pride in an Ask Me Another Challenge entitled "Minnesotans We Have Known."

About Lizz Winstead

Known as as one of the top political satirists in America, Lizz Winstead has helped changed the way people get their news. She brought her political wit as co-creator, former head writer and a former correspondent on The Daily Show, and to Air America Radio, which she co-founded and for which she co-hosted Unfiltered with Chuck D and Rachel Maddow.

Lizz tours the country benefiting Planned Parenthood and NARAL and has co-founded a reproductive rights awareness organization called A Is For. When Lizz is not on stage, she writes for various publications and is a regular commentator on breaking news for MSNBC. Her first book, Lizz Free Or Die, a hilarious collection of personal essays, was released summer of 2012 by Riverhead Press.

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