Josh Kornbluth

Josh Kornbluth (born May 21, 1959) is an American comedic autobiographical monologist based in the San Francisco Bay Area who has toured internationally, written and starred in several feature films, and starred in a television interview show.

Kornbluth was born in 1959 to mother "Bunny" and father Paul, the oldest of four children. Raised in New York City, he briefly attended Princeton University but dropped out, never completing his undergraduate degree.

Kornbluth's live and filmed works are almost entirely solo monologues based closely on events and people his life, his upbringing, and his career. As such he is among a small group of artists that includes Eric Bogosian, Lily Tomlin, and Spalding Gray.

Most of Kornbluth's monologues relate to personal and societal ethics, self-fulfillment, and the role of the individual in society, drawing a connection between his own personal foibles and larger issues of citizenship. Playing a hapless, sincere, and sometimes buffoonish everyman caught up in world events, he demonstrates the relevance of these concepts to daily life. His live performances occasionally include a question-and-answer session with academic lawyers or other experts and scholars. Despite the serious messages and somewhat dry themes his works are all lighthearted and highly humorous.

Major filmed work includes:

Live monologues and other staged works include:

Kornbluth hosted a television talk show,The Josh Kornbluth Show, for two seasons (2005–2007) on KQED 9, San Francisco. Guests included Alan Alda, Rita Moreno, and Amy Sedaris. The show often included a "man on the street" segment, "Wandering Josh".

In 2017, Kornbluth served as an Atlantic Fellow with the Global Brain Health Institute at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. For this fellowship, he created and hosted a video series, "Citizen Brain", in which he and neuroscientists discuss brain science in connection with topics including empathy, ageism, and social justice.[10] In 2020, Kornbluth created a new solo show, also titled "Citizen Brain", based on these topics.[11]

Kornbluth worked as a copyeditor in New York before moving to San Francisco in 1987. He is married to wife Sara Sato, with whom he has a son, Guthrie.[12]

Since 2012, Kornbluth has participated in the annual Team in Training endurance bike ride, a fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.[13] In 2014, Kornbluth served as the inaugural artist in residence for the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco.[14]