Jan 23, 2019
Saluton and it is NOT your regular host, Tyson Saner, this time around but former host, executive producer, and folding plastic room divider Marc Hershon. That’s right. I will be filling in for Tyson for this, Epi186, and another one or two episodes as well because Mr. and Mrs. Saner are welcoming their first baby into the world!
Congratulations
from all of us here at Succotash to all of you Saners –
old and new – up in Humboldt County in Northern California. Tyson
needed to take some time away from his duties as host of this show
and I volunteered to step in for a bit so here I am.
If you would like to pass along your congratulations to Tyson, feel free to ping him on Twitter @RevT23 or you can email him at Tyson@SuccotashShow.com. You can even call our tollful Skype line and leave him a cheery message at (818) 921-7212.
If you don’t recognize my voice, that’s okay. I started Succotash back in 2012 and, after seven years of hosting the show, stepped away from the microphone almost exactly a year ago to make way for Tyson to take the reins. I’ve been in the background as the executive producer – posting the shows online and handling all of our social media stuff. And I’ve been busy trying to get a couple of new projects off the ground, too.
If you’re new to Succotash, the Comedy Soundcast Soundcast, this is where we feature snippets from other peoples’ comedy soundcasts in order to let you know what’s going on out there in the incredibly crowded field of soundcasting. We’re like a Whitman’s Sampler of rich, chewy soundcast goodness.
This episode we’ll be featuring clips from Armchair Expert, Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, Dave Hill’s Podcast Incident, The Smartest Man in The World, What A Time To Be Alive, and The Young & The Weary.
BTW, Succotash is brought to you by Henderson’s Pants new Toddler Trousers AND Trumpoetry.com.
One segment we WON’T be featuring this episode — and may not be for the foreseeable future — is our long-running Burst O’ Durst with political comedian and social commentator Will Durst. Will’s been doing this segments for YEARS, literally out of the goodness of his heart, and he’s taking a much-needed hiatus. And he’s not sure if it’s worth coming back.
Why, you ask?
We can’t afford to pay him for his excellent commentaries because we don’t have paying sponsors. We are totally listener-supported but no one clicks on our Donate button at SuccotashShow.com, or clicks on the Amazon banner at the top of that same page, or buys any of our merch. So we’d love to keep bringing you Will’s amazing take on the political and social landscape but the coffers are empty. If you’d like to hear more Durst, let us know at durst@succotashshow.com. And if or until he rejoins us on Succotash, you can always check him out at HIS website, at WillDurst.com.
Enough of that. Let’s get into the clippage, shall we?
Conan O’Brien Needs A
Friend
One of the
other things I do besides executive produce Succotash is
provide weekly reviews to Vulture.com’s This Week In Comedy
Podcasts. That online column used to be on Splitsider but it
was bought by Vulture and all us reviewers made the jump over
there, too. Recently I’ve reviewed several episode of the
relatively new Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend soundcast and
it’s pretty damned entertaining. The set up is that Conan
O'Brien are been hosting his TV talkshow for along time
but never really has time to make friends will all of his many
celebrity guests. This soundcast is meant to be the cure for that.
Recently, though, Conan had an actual friend on the show, none
other than Adam Sandler. They’ve known each other
for over 30 years, were on Saturday Night Live together,
and even live in the same neighborhood in Los Angeles. In our
snippet, they talk about their approaches to dealing with
audiences.
Dave Hill’s
Podcasting Incident
Dave
Hill is a quintuple threat — comedian, actor, writer,
musician, and radio/soundcast host. He originally hails from
Columbus, Ohio but is moored in New York these days, where he puts
out his Dave Hill’s Podcasting Incident whenever he can.
This past week he was out in my neck o’ the woods for the San
Francisco Sketchfest, which I was also doing, but our paths did not
cross. Nonetheless, we have a clip from his latest drop, Epi99,
featuring another multi-hyphenate, Sarah
Hartshorne, who is a writer/comedian/former America’s
Top Model contestant. In this clip, she and Dave talk about
her modeling in Germany and wearing a dirndl. (I mainly picked this
clip so I could say, ‘dirndl’.)
The Smartest
Man in The World
I figured it
was time to revisit The Smartest Man in The World, the
soundcast from past Succotash guest Greg
Proops, best known, perhaps, from Whose Line Is It
Anyway. He’s also a personal friend and improv cast member
with yours truly, and I think he’s one of the fastest, funniest,
people around. In this clip, Greg and his wife,
Jennifer, soundcast from the Fortress of
Proopitude and, in our sniplette, they get into some old Hollywood
lore and hijinks.
Armchair
Expert
A show that
popped into Soundcastland this past year or so is Armchair
Expert, hosted by actor Dax Shepard. Although
his interviewing style is a little scattershot, I enjoy the loose
informality he has with his guests, most of which he knows from his
rambling around Los Angeles for a number of years. Just recently he
hosted Sarah Silverman for a lengthy and revealing
chat. Another thing I like about Dax is that he doesn’t mind
venturing into areas that other hosts might feel uncomfortable
about – as in the segment we're featuring, where he talks to Sarah
about his reaction to her sexuality.
What A Time To
Be Alive
It is so hard
to keep up with the avalanche of soundcasts, comedy and otherwise.
Even as someone whose job is reviewing the damn things, I am
constantly finding not just new shows, but shows that have been on
for a while that completely slipped beneath my radar. One of those
is What A Time To Be Alive. It features three hosts —
Eli Yudin, Kath Barbadoro, and
Patrick Monohan — and, as they say on their
Patreon site, it’s “the only podcast that counts down all the
things each week that make you say the title of the podcast.” In
our clip, the trio get giddy over the topic of nunchucks and what a
ridiculous weapon it (they?) makes in the wrong hands…or even the
right ones.
The Young &
The Weary
Our final
entry this episode is from a new soundcast — just three or four
installments in — and it’s called The Young & The Weary.
Great title. And apropos. The "Young" is 32-year-old Jeremy
Pinsly, a comedian raised in Nashville, now based in New
York. The "Weary" is 88-year-old Dev Rogers, a
former occupational therapist, an author, and a budding comedic
actor from Buffalo, New York — she’ll be appearing in Comedy
Central's Broad City this year. As these two have gotten
to know each other during the first few episodes, they’ve kind of
revealed a lot. Like how they each lost their virginity. Our clip
is from the third episode, “Bad Language”, and they chat about the
use of dirty words in comedy.
Whew! I forgot how labor intensive Succotash can be to pull together. Maybe I’ll think of giving Tyson a raise. Especially now that he has another pair of ears to play soundcasts into. Of course, to do that, we’d need some money coming in. Remember? Donate button, Amazon banner, merch from the Succotashery? All available at our homesite – http://SuccotashShow.com
And if you can’t afford to give up the loot then how about rate and review Succotash Show up on our listing on iTunes? Doesn’t cost you anything than your pride and vanity.
It has been a pleasure spending this time with you, filling in for our hiatusing Tyson Saner. I may be back for another one or two of these but fear not – Mr. Saner will be back in the Big Chair before you know it!
A couple of reminders before I skedaddle. If YOU’RE a comedy soundcaster and would like to hear a clip of your show on our show, stay tuned for the closing credits where our esteemed announcer, Bill Heywatt, will give you details on how to upload those clips directly to us. And the other thing I want to urge you to do — whether it’s to your family, loved ones, friends, or even enemies — is to please pass the Succotash!
— Marc Hershon