I love podcasts. I listen to a bunch of them. If you do too (or you want to), then check a list of great, relatively recent podcasts that’ll satisfy you every aural need.
Hello From The Magic Tavern – This is my first and best recommendation to my friends who say they want to get into podcasts. It’s imaginative, creative and gut-bustingly funny. The premise of the podcast is that its host, famed Chicago improviser Arnie Niekamp, fell through a portal behind a Burger King and landed in the magical Narnia-esque land of Foon. He and his cohosts Chunt (Adal Rifai), a talking badger/shapeshifter and Usidore the Blue (Matt Young), interview a new guest every week while chatting in the local tavern, The Green Minotaur. Now, I know it sounds kind of dumb. But so does a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton (which just won a Pulitzer, by the way). Each guest is played by other figures of the Chicago improv comedy scene and the results are incredible. The show rewards the dedicated listener because, as improv comedy dictates, anything said immediately becomes truth, so throwaway jokes by the guest or hosts become canon and part of Foon’s ever-growing lore. Even if you aren’t into medieval fantasy, the pure joy of this podcast will make you feel like a kid again.
Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People – Stop the presses! Michael Hatchett’s gonna talk about Chris Gethard again! I should be ashamed or embarrassed that I’m mentioning him as much as I do, but he’s too brilliant of an artist for me to care. I’ll keep this short, though. In each episode, Gethard talks to an anonymous guest over the phone for an hour. No names, no gimmicks, just two humans talking to each other. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s just as beautiful as the title suggests. I recommend Episode Four, which is one of the best episodes of a podcast ever recorded.
Hollywood Handbook – Hardcore comedy podcast nerds have probably already heard of Hollywood Handbook, but in case you’re a real human being who, say, doesn’t dedicate their winter break to listening to Comedy Bang Bang!’s annual Best Of podcasts, here’s the deal. Two comedy writers, Sean Clements and Hayes Davenport (who have written for Workaholics, Family Guy, Big Lake and many others) play pretentious egotistical versions of themselves who are interested in giving listeners “an insider’s guide to kicking butt and taking names in the red-carpet-lined back hallways of this industry we call showbiz.” While that sounds kind of, well, terrible, it’s really just two best friends trying to crack each other up and using terrible grammar.
Their commitment to staying in character is impressive and Colbert-esque, even as their jokes and segments get more and more absurd. In terms of recommended episodes, I would advise scrolling through the list of episodes and listening to any episode that features a comedian you know and love, but if that’s too much work, Episode 25 (“Scott Aukerman and Jeff Ullrich, Our Business Associates”), Episode 14 (“Brian Huskey, Our Close Friend”) and the Tom Scharpling Trilogy (Episode 91, 96 and 101) are among the best and most hilarious.
Michael Hatchett, an A&E editor for the Voice, can be reached for comment at mhatchett16@wooster.edu.