American history, badly behaved.
American Loser is a comedy-history show built around the messier corners of American stories. KP Burke steers tales of captured ships, casino bombs, pirates, showbiz myths, and historical weirdos with studio banter that keeps the pace loose and sharp.
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American Loser is a history-comedy show built for the parts of American history that sound too strange to be cleanly respectable. It favors people who made terrible choices, systems that failed at exactly the wrong time, myths that got polished into simple versions, and footnotes that deserve a louder room. The format is conversational and quick on its feet. KP Burke tells weird, messy stories from American history while guests and booth regulars interrupt with jokes, questions, disbelief, and side commentary. Recent episodes show the range clearly. The USS Pueblo story becomes a portrait of stretched military planning, bad communications, and a spy ship left exposed. The Harvey’s Casino bombing episode follows John Burgess Senior through gambling debt, a homemade bomb, and a crater in Lake Tahoe. Edward Low’s pirate story strips away the romance of piracy and leaves something much uglier behind. The Pocahontas and John Smith material works by separating legend from the stranger life around it. The show also makes room for Hollywood power, stage-magic tragedy, Arizona folklore, and wild political characters like Dan Sickles. Its style is not a classroom lecture. It is closer to a packed back room where the storyteller has notes, everyone has an opinion, and the funniest line may arrive right next to a grim historical detail. That tension is the engine. The show can be blunt, irreverent, and adult, but its best moments come from astonishment at how badly real people handled real situations. It suits listeners who want history to feel less sanitized and more human. It is especially good for comedy fans who like their trivia loud, skeptical, and full of detours. The result is a catalog of American failure that treats second place, bad judgment, and historical chaos as the main event.
Made for: For listeners who like history trivia with stand-up timing, blunt studio banter, and stories too strange for a neat textbook paragraph. It suits fans of oddball American history, dark comedy, and conversational deep cuts.
What sets it apart: American Loser makes failure the organizing principle, not a side note. Instead of polished hero stories, it follows disastrous plans, violent figures, overblown legends, and bizarre incidents through a loose comedy-room rhythm.
In a culture obsessed with winning, "American Loser" is the podcast that puts the spotlight firmly on second place. Comedian KP Burke and his handsome Father dive head first into the true stories of the biggest losers in American History. Our theme song is "American Loser" by the supremely talented Robert Rolfe Feddersen. All episodes recorded at A Shared Universe Podcast Studio in Eatontown, New Jersey
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
KP Burke makes historical fiascos legible by pairing comic conversation with close attention to motives, logistics, institutional failures, and damaged reputations.
American Loser Podcast turns historical failure into lively group storytelling, with KP Burke guiding accounts while others interrupt with questions, jokes, and comparisons.
A pirate shoots the dinner bell guy; KP Burke knows you'd want the rest of that story.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
The Pueblo story lands best when the episode stays with bad planning, weak support, and delayed help.
American Loser makes the USS Pueblo incident feel like a story of a spy ship left without much of a safety net, keeping North Korea's capture and the prisoner-of-war deal in clear view.
A casino bombing story shaped by debt and delusion.
American Loser casts John Burgess Senior as a cautionary figure, tracing a path from Nazi air force service and time in the gulag to gambling debt and the bomb that left a five-story crater at Harvey's Casino in Lake Tahoe.
American Loser's weird-history roundup leans on booth banter and the Chung Ling Soo story, where a stage trick turns grim.
American Loser pulls together some of its strangest material and gives the Chung Ling Soo story the heaviest lift: the London theater, the bullet-catching trick, the prop gun mishap, and the order to lower the curtain after the shooting form the episode's clearest and strongest…
Pirate mythology gets stripped down to hunger, violence, and nasty comedy.
American Loser turns Edward Low into a portrait of pirate violence with no romance left in it. KP Burke and Mike Harrington keep the pace loose and the jokes loud, but the episode keeps circling back to the same hard point: this is a man defined by hunger, cruelty, and murder,…
A sharp, funny debate that uses Rand to test liberty, charity, and self interest.
Ayn Rand gets treated here as a debate starter, not a monument. American Loser lets the guests work through Objectivism, libertarianism, and the uneasy business of helping people without turning generosity into a rule book.
Phoebe Judge narrates true crime history and interviews the authors who uncovered it.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Dana Schwartz narrates the violent lives of monarchs, warlords, and queens.
Tracy Wilson and Holly Frey narrate overlooked history, from Courbet's realism to IUD regulation.
Mike Duncan narrates Rome's full history solo, from Aeneas to Romulus Augustulus's exile in 476.
KP Burke and guest Tristian Bowling discuss the bizarre true story of the Red Ghost, a horrifying creature that roamed the Arizona desert.
American Loser covers Ayn Rand, objectivism, and why the hosts keep seeing her as a contradiction between Russian roots and American capitalism.
Luis J Gomez joins the host to discuss his favorite nicknames and tease the story of Dan Sickles, a wild figure in American history.
This episode of American Loser explores the chaotic life of John Smith before his famous encounter with Pocahontas.
Mike Harrington and LP Burke discuss the USS Pueblo, a US Navy ship captured by North Korea, and its ongoing status as a POW deal.
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["KP Burke turns American Loser into a rapid-fire reel of \"top WTF moments,\" starting with Squeaky Fromme, Jimmy Page, and the Gerald Ford assassination attempts.", "He follows with F.W.
American Loser 258 turns Edward Lowe into a pirate horror story, with KP Burke calling him "Hannibal Lecter at sea" and contrasting him with Jack Sparrow and Captain Blood.
KP Burke introduces a podcast episode about Marion Davies, a showgirl who had a powerful influence on media mogul William Randolph Hearst.