Cat Greenleaf has always had a gift for making people talk. It’s what made Talk Stoop iconic—celebrities plopped on her Brooklyn steps, sudsy coffee in hand, opening up in ways they never planned to. She’s a four-time Emmy-winning interviewer for a reason. But on this episode of The Sober Curator Podcast, Cat reveals that sobriety has flipped that gift back on her—and this time, she’s the one doing the talking.
It’s the kind of episode that reminds you: sobriety isn’t neat, filtered, or curated to perfection. It’s messy. It’s wise. It’s ridiculous. It’s real. And in Cat’s case… it occasionally involves peeing your pants during a back-to-back guest booking with Tom Arnold and Art Alexakis.
The Moment Sobriety Got Real
Cat describes the early years of her sobriety as a kind of self-imposed exile. “I was a lone wolf,” she admits. “Until I started Soberness, I wasn’t part of any recovery groups. I was just out here in Coney Island trying to do it alone.”
It’s a familiar story to many of us who white-knuckled our way through early recovery, assuming we were the one person who didn’t need community. But Cat quickly discovered the truth: a lone wolf becomes a loco wolf. Isolation is the express lane back to crazytown.
What changed everything was connection. Interviewing celebrities about sobriety created a common language—an instant shorthand that made her feel less alone. “We’re picking up mid-conversation,” she says. “There’s no preamble, no explaining who we used to be. We just get each other.”
When Life Hands You Tom Arnold and Art Alexakis…
If you listen to the episode for one reason, let it be Cat’s now-infamous back-to-back booking mishap.
Picture it: Cat mid-interview with Tom Arnold, bladder on the brink, when Everclear frontman Art Alexakis logs into the Zoom waiting room ten minutes early. Before she can excuse herself, Tom insists she bring him in. Suddenly she’s hosting a one-woman Sober Jaws symposium—with two men out-trauma-bonding each other while she sits frozen in agony.
She held it.
She tried.
She lost.
She peed.
And in one of the best sober punchlines ever delivered, she announces: “I have to buy a new office chair.”
It’s not just hilarious. It’s profoundly relatable. Sobriety doesn’t turn you into a graceful goddess of emotional regulation. Sometimes it just hands you a pee story and says: Use it for the plot.
The Good, The Bad, and the Bedazzled
The conversation swerves—as all good sober chats do—from parental trauma to crafting while high to why nobody warned women that sneezing after 40 becomes a full-contact sport.
And then there’s her long friendship with Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman), including:
- birthday calls every hour on her birthday
- a collection of “beautiful, elaborate Christmas cards”
- which she didn’t know included hidden dicks until her husband pointed them out
Cat doesn’t just tell stories—she reveals humanity. Her humor lands because it’s grounded in grief, growth, and a sober awareness of the world’s ridiculousness.
What Recovery Actually Looks Like Now
Cat’s toolkit is simple and refreshingly unpretentious:
- Ocean singing. Her favorite audience.
- Coffee—by the stein.
- Work. Not hustle culture—creative service.
- Boundaries. Occasionally enforced with a bag of dog poop thrown (gently-ish) toward a guy who refused to pick up after his dogs.
Her life now isn’t perfect or highly optimized. It’s not a Pinterest board of sober aesthetic. It’s something better: aligned.
What Cat Teaches Us Without Saying It
The gold in this episode isn’t the humor—though there’s plenty. It’s the clarity that comes from a woman who’s lived many lives and finally decided to live the one she wants.
Cat Greenleaf is reinventing herself again, but this time she’s not doing it for a network, a brand, or a ratings sheet. She’s doing it with her sober mind, her full heart, and a microphone pointed inward.
Sobriety, she reminds us, is not about being good.
It’s about being here.
Being awake.
Being in your body—even when it betrays you during a celebrity interview.
And maybe that’s the real sober stoop: a place where we show up exactly as we are, laugh at the messy parts, and tell the truth anyway.
- Cat Greenleaf — SoberNess Podcast Website www.soberness.com
- Cat on Instagram @sobernesspodcast
Getting sober matters. Staying sober matters more. That’s the whole premise.
The Sober Curator Podcast brings sober lifestyle, pop culture and recovery to the mic with personality, perspective and a glitter bomb of honesty. Founder and host Alysse Bryson (sober since May 1, 2006, and self-described Kevin Bacon of Recovery) is joined by co-host and show producer Tamar Routly of Podcast Impact Studio, plus a rotating bench of global Sober Curator contributors who pull up a chair as co-hosts.
What we cover, episode to episode:
Happy Every Hour: zero-proof drinks, NA beer, spirits and cocktails, reviewed by people who actually drink them.
Health and Wellness: mental health, physical health and what recovery looks like on a Tuesday.
Lifestyle: dating, parenting, shopping, style and the everyday logistics of alcohol-free living.
Entertainment: quit lit, movies, TV, music, sports and celebrity sobriety, rated with our proprietary Sobees.
Spiritual Gangster: Jesus to astrology, stoicism to the Celtic calendar.
Travel: sober events, sober retreats, Sobriety in the City and global travel without a drink in hand.
We also review other sober podcasts on Recovery Podcastland, dig into sponsored product spotlights, and go deep with contributors on how they got sober and what keeps them there. New episodes drop as video on YouTube and audio everywhere you listen.
Want more? BACKSTAGE with The Sober Curator is our membership community with Media Nights, Studio Nights, Edutainment Nights and The Sober Curator Mixtape, a monthly mini-zine delivered in a cassette case. Details at https://thesobercurator.com/backstage-with-the-sober-curator/
Whether you’re sober curious or decades in, we’ve got you. We’re not here to help you get sober. We’re here to help you live sober and love it.
Rate, review and subscribe. It takes 60 seconds and we will love you forever.
Contact: thesobercurator@gmail.com
Every October, half the internet finds out what it’s like to be the one holding a club soda at a party. Some of us have been doing Sober October for years, and the drinks have gotten a lot better since the O’Doul’s days.
This week, Alysse and Tamar sit down with the two people who know exactly what to pour: Kim Parsley and Justin Lamb, who hold down The Sober Curator’s Happy Every Hour section. Kim covers NA spirits and cocktails. Justin is roughly 150 NA beer reviews in and still can’t find a non-alcoholic single malt scotch.
In this episode:
– Sober October, Dry January, and “the always forgotten Dry July”: eye roll, gateway drug, or marketing?
– Justin’s fall NA beer list from 2024 still pops off, and some of the breweries on it are gone
– Why celebrity NA beer brands might not want sober customers (and why there should be room at the table)
– The “drink as prescribed” rule for trying NA spirits for the first time
– Kim builds Justin an NA Negroni and Alysse a pink Barbie Cosmo on the spot
– The one drink each of us is pouring for the rest of fall, plus what we’re eating with it
CHAPTERS
00:00 Club soda at the party
02:01 The Sober Curator Mixtape
04:16 Sober October: eye roll or gateway drug?
09:44 From craft beer to NA beer
13:36 Kim’s piano bar and Tanqueray 0.0
17:55 The 2024 fall beer list, two years later
20:22 “The War on Alcohol” and the SNL sketch
23:37 “They don’t want recovered addicts”
25:23 TOMONOTOMO: drink as prescribed
29:30 What drink are you?
30:57 Which NA spirits can you sip neat?
33:41 “I drink Diet Coke”
37:48 One drink for the rest of fall
TSC Articles mentioned in this episode:
– Justin’s Top 10 Non-Alcoholic Beers for Fall
– Kim’s TOMONOTOMO Tobalá review
– SNL’s “Non-Non Alcoholic Beer” sketch, pro or con
– “It’s Always Sunny,” NA Beer and the Joke That Didn’t Land for Me
– The Sober Curator Mixtape (Sober Snail Mail)
– Backstage with The Sober Curator
Getting sober matters. Staying sober matters more.
SEASON 2 MERCH: https://shopthesobercurator.com/
SC RESOURCES:
– Alcohol + Substance Use Disorder Guide
– Recovery Nonprofit Resource Guide
– LGBTQ+ Recovery Resource Guide
CONNECT: www.thesobercurator.com | The Sober Sip newsletter: https://www.thesobercuratornewsletter.com/ | @thesobercurator on Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube + Pinterest
Love the show? Rate, review + follow. It takes 60 seconds and helps more people find us. Feedback + guest ideas: thesobercurator@gmail.com
Hosted by Alysse Bryson with co-host + producer Tamar Routly. For informational and entertainment purposes only; not a substitute for professional advice.
Music: TSC S2 theme “Sober Shots” created by Alysse Bryson using Suno AI, under Suno’s commercial license.
RECOVERY PODCASTLAND – SOBERNESS CAT GREENLEAF: Soberness—the podcast—is where celebrity raconteurs spill what broke them, what saved them, and what still f**ks with them today.
SOBER IN NYC: A Night to Remember: The Soberness Story Hour LIVE at The Algonquin – NYC
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More than a fashion column, Walk Your Talk highlights curated finds from our #ADDTOCART section, spotlights sober-owned small businesses, and showcases unique merch that makes your alcohol-free journey unapologetically chic. We proudly partner with the Break Free Foundation, bringing sobriety’s brilliance to the runway during New York Fashion Week and beyond.
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