Stavros Halkias

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:20)
Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximumfun.org and is distributed by NPR.

**Jesse Thorn** (0:40)
It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorn. My first guest this week is Stavros Halkias. Now, if you know Stavros by name, you're probably a fan. He's a stand-up comic. He was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. He cut his teeth playing clubs in New York. And hitting the road whenever he could. From 2016 to 2022, Halkias co-hosted a podcast with a name that we cannot say on the radio. What we can say is it was a two-word name. The first one we cannot say because it is sexual in nature and possibly, arguably also excretory. The second word of the podcast title was town. That show, which was also hosted by comics Adam Friedland and Nick Mullen, was a monumental smash hit. Halkias has parlayed that success into another huge hit podcast, Stavi's World.
And if your algorithm is anything like mine, you've probably caught at least a little bit of that show on social media. Halkias does interviews and dispenses advice. He does it from a couch, lying almost supine, often in a tank top baseball cap and shorts.
His hair is long on the sides, bald on top. His glasses are thick and big and wire-rimmed. His mustache is thin and elegant. He looks like a cartoon character of a sort of sly dirtbag.
Now, besides that career, he has another career in movies. He was in Begonia in 2025 with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. He was wonderful in that. And now you can catch him in Tony.
Tony is a biopic, sort of. Dominic Sessa plays a young Anthony Bourdain, and the film follows Bourdain as he travels to Cape Cod for a summer job, dishwasher at a local restaurant. The head chef who hires him is played by Antonio Banderas. Stavros plays another cook in the kitchen, one who basically seems to live to bully Bourdain. My dad's like one of the best chefs in New Jersey.

**Stavros Halkias** (2:46)
Oh, your dad, why didn't you say so?

**Jesse Thorn** (2:50)
Anyway, so excited to get to talk with Stavros Halkias. Let's get right into it.
Stavros, welcome to Bullseye. I'm so happy to have you on the show. It's so nice to meet you.

**Stavros Halkias** (3:03)
Good to meet you, Jesse. Thank you for having me.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:05)
Did you ever work in a kitchen?

**Stavros Halkias** (3:08)
I never worked in a kitchen, no. My mother was a waitress in a Greek restaurant while I was growing up, and my dad was a contractor. But in the Baltimore Greek community, the whole economy is Greek restaurant based. So you either worked for them or you built them or you did the bars for them and the tables for them or you painted the walls for them. And my dad built a lot of Greek restaurants. So I spent a lot of time in my life with my mom or with my dad in tangentially in restaurants.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:38)
But it was within a world of Greek restaurants. It wasn't because like East Coast diners are often run by Greeks in the same way that like Cambodians run donuts in Southern California.

**Stavros Halkias** (3:49)
Right, right, right. Yeah, no, a little bit. I mean, yeah, you're right. Greek diner culture runs so deep that my dentist also owned a diner in the same parking lot as where I got my teeth cleaned growing up.
So, you know, there were some diners in the mix for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, it was more Greek, traditional Greek restaurant, you know, Lambchops, Calamari, all that kind of stuff.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:12)
I know you worked sometimes with your dad when he was doing contracting work.

**Stavros Halkias** (4:16)
Right.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:17)
Was that your expectation for your life or did you have, always have a plan for something other than that?

**Stavros Halkias** (4:23)
No, it wasn't my expectation. In fact, it was my dad's, my dad's common refrain was, keep up on your grades or you're gonna end up like me. You know what I mean? This was, my dad was kind of running a scared straight program in many ways.
He was like, listen, hit the book. So you're gonna be making bookshelves and carrying them up with your fat 11 year old son. You're gonna be carrying them up four flights of stairs one day. So it was never the expectation. In fact, as the first born immigrant son who, I think I was just kind of a lucky precocious kid who tested well on standardized tests. That's just how my brain worked. But my parents were like, no, you are, you're going to law school. You are, take it out of this. I never thought I would be a contractor. By the way, I do not have the gene. I was a horrific carpenter's assistant. I mean, I spent most of my time watching Martin in the break room is what I was doing when I worked with my dad.