Hari Kondabolu

Bio

Hari Kondabolu is a Brooklyn-based, Queens-raised comic who the NY Times has called one of the most exciting political comics in stand-up today. In March 2014, he released his debut standup album ͞Waiting for 2042 on indie-label Kill Rock Stars. He is currently NYU’s APA Institute’s Artist in Residence for the 2014-2015 Academic Year.

Hari has done standup on the Late Show with David Letterman, Conan, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Live at Gotham and John Oliver’s New York Standup Show. His Comedy Central Presents half-hour television special debuted on the network in February 2011. He was also a writer and correspondent for the Chris Rock-produced Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell on FX.

In 2014, he was interviewed on Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR. A regular on the public radio circuit, he has also appeared on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Studio 360, Bullseye and Soundcheck. He has also appeared on popular podcasts like WTF with Marc Maron, You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes and Too Beautiful to Live with Luke Burbank.

In the UK, Hari has established himself with appearances on BBC 3’s Russell Howard’s Good News, Live at the Electric and Channel 4’s 8 out 10 Cats. He also performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2011. He has also performed at such notable festivals as the HBO Comedy Festival, South by Southwest, Bumbershoot, Sasquatch, the Aspen Ideas Festival and Just for Laughs in Montreal and Chicago.

When in New York City, he co-hosts the mostly improvised talk show The Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Project with his younger brother Ashok (͞Dap͟ from hip hop group Das Racist) and their podcast The Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Podcast. He also wrote the cover story for Spin Magazine about Das Racistin November 2011.

He was also a former video blogger for WORLD COMPASS, a joint initiative between WGBH Boston, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Hari was born and raised in Queens, NY. He went to Townsend Harris High School and the school’s mascot, Hari the Hawk, was named after him during his senior year. (He sometimes fears that his greatest achievement was accomplished at 17.)

He attended both Bowdoin College and Wesleyan University, graduating from the former institution with a B.A. in Comparative Politics in 2004. A former immigrant rights organizer in Seattle, Hari also earned a Masters in Human Rights from the London School of Economics in 2008, writing a merit- earning dissertation entitled ͞Mexican Returnees as Internally Displaced People: An Argument for the Protection of Economic Migrants Under the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.͟ This is, by far, the least funny thing he’s ever written…including this bio.