Podcast Recommendation

"Oh, Hello: the P'dcast"

Photo by SLT

If one is a fan of somewhat absurd improv humor, I would recommend Oh, Hello: The P’dcast from Nick Kroll and John Mulaney. It is based on characters developed on Comedy Central’s Kroll Show and later developed into a show on Broadway (which can be seen on Netflix–and I would recommend it as well).

Ostensibly, the podcast is about Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland (Kroll and Mulaney) doing a podcast about the death of Princess Diana. It includes some general send-ups of Ira Glass-style podcastery (as well as semi-parodies of The Daily and WTF). There are also interviews and other nonsense. Quite frankly, it is worth for the absurd made-up commercials that pepper each episode.

No doubt this is fully sense-of-humor-dependent (if you like Comedy Bang! Bang!, you’ll like this).

Vulture had a good review (Oh, Hello: The P’dcast Is Just About Perfect), which includes this dead-on accurate assessment:

Much of this has to do with the fundamental pleasures of the core Oh, Hello experience, which you get in buckets off each episode: mis-emphasized pronunciations, delusions of grandeur, liberal orientations cut with egregiously outdated views, dense rapid-fire joke delivery, nearly infinite personal biographies, and so on. As performed by Kroll and Mulaney, two wildly talented comedians, Faizon and St. Geegland are memorably strange characters who never stop never stopping. One is sweet though slightly childlike, the other scheming and probably sociopathic; both are amusingly tragic.

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Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. Michael Reynolds says:

    Off topic and please feel free to delete this, but the link to today’s forum appears to be broken, at least to my Chrome browser. Not sure if it’s just me.

  2. @Michael Reynolds: That extremely weird, as it has been active all day.

  3. Mister Bluster says:
  4. Jay L Gischer says:

    Ok, I just listened to the latest episode. It’s funny for sure, but I feel I only get about a quarter of the jokes. One of those “inside New York” things. I’m pretty sure it’s meant to make fun of a lot of that, but I just am not up to speed.

    Also, audio-only humor is tough. Never underestimate the humor potential of a moue. It may be that it’s harder than written humor, too.

    I did like the “Who’s on First” kind of think they did at the end, (“do the right thing!” “She’s all that!”)

  5. @Jay L Gischer: I haven’t heard the latest yet, but yes, it clearly has a context.

    1
  6. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Mister Bluster:

    I’m still getting a bad entry note. Trying to avoid clearing out my cache. Never mind, it’s hardly vital.

  7. MarkedMan says:

    @Michael Reynolds: FWIW, as of 6:30 Wednesday morning, this post is showing first and Wednesday’s forum is showing up immediately above Tuesday’s.

  8. James Joyner says:

    @MarkedMan: Not sure what happened there. The Wednesday Forum had a Tuesday timestamp. I changed it to Wednesday and it’s now on top.

  9. @James Joyner: Likely user error on my part.