487 episodes listed below
Strange news, fast riffs, sideways stories.
Bananas is a rapid-fire comedy show built around ridiculous news stories, from robot vacuums and phone booths to blowtorches and suspicious pizza orders. The real engine is the sideways talk around each item: childhood woods, warehouse parties, bar crawls, Oscars chatter, and small-town dedications.
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Bananas is a comedy show about strange news, but the headline is usually only the match. Once lit, the conversation races through personal history, half-serious theories, guest riffs, and little pockets of absurd detail. A man stuck in a phone booth while trying to order a kebab becomes an invitation to marvel at bad decisions. A story about robot vacuums spins into jokes about control, cleanliness, and whatever else the room can reach. The show has a strong taste for ridiculous premises. It also has a soft spot for odd human behavior. Episodes move from Morrissey canceling a show because he is sleepy to Oscar-night chatter, exhausting travel logistics, and praise for comedy writers. They can jump from a Bob Dylan pizza legend at UMass Amherst to a full investigation of whether the old campus story was true. The rhythm is loose and highly social. Guests such as Pooja Mehta, Megan Gailey, and Kenice Mobley are pulled into a conversational style that values quick reaction as much as prepared material. The show also has recurring rituals, including dedications to small towns and sign-offs that lean into its own running mythology. Its comedy is often blunt, body-conscious, and happily immature, but the mood stays warm rather than mean. One minute is SantaCon, bar crawls, and questionable gallon drinks. The next is a childhood memory about carving a food bowl for a cat near a stream. That contrast is the point. Bananas keeps finding the tender little story hiding inside the dumbest possible setup. It works best for listeners who enjoy stand-up-adjacent conversation, playful interruption, and comedy that treats weird news as a trampoline. The show is not tidy. It is energetic, digressive, and built for people who like hearing a funny premise get pushed until it becomes something stranger than the article itself.
Made for: For listeners who like comedy podcasts that move quickly, chase odd details, and treat bizarre headlines as social fuel. Best for fans of playful, irreverent banter with room for guests, memories, and abrupt left turns.
What sets it apart: Bananas stands apart by making the detour feel as important as the news item. The stories are weird, but the show’s signature is how quickly a headline becomes a shared comic memory, a small-town salute, or an unexpectedly vivid tangent.
Each week on Bananas, Kurt Braunohler and Scotty Landes discuss the strange, fascinating and just plain bananas news from around the world. The headlines and weird news are lighthearted, unexpected and always fun. Like the time the delivery robot ran through a crime scene or the lady who took in a stray cat only to find out it was a mountain lion. Or the time Kurt and Scotty drove a butt across the country.Check your local listings because this feel-good comedy podcast often goes on the road for live shows and may be in a city near you. Fun fact: We also hear the banana boys are a favorite amongst listeners while at the dentist, getting surgery and even giving birth! Bananas is part of the E…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Bananas turns offbeat news into loose, observant banter by following every strange detail toward an even stranger personal connection.
Bananas treats a peculiar headline as a starting gun for Scotty Landes and Kurt Braunohler's comic curiosity. A report about thousands of Australian pub visits becomes a hunt for local slang and ideal destinations; elsewhere, holiday bar crawls prompt riffs on generational…
Scotty and Kurt get from a roof blowtorch to diner talk; can your attention keep up?
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
An ecstasy story turns wonderfully strange when a medicine ball meets a bouncy Williamsburg dance floor.
A stray question about ecstasy and cuddly octopuses turns into a sharper comic thread about altered perception, social dignity, and one deeply suspect medicine ball.
A carved cat bowl leads into wetlands, Thoreau, and the comic archaeology of childhood.
A strip of woods becomes the episode's comic center, as two kids with pocket knives spend four hours trying to carve a food bowl for Monk from a tree, only to realize they never brought cat food.
A SantaCon detour becomes a lively tangle of bar crawls, drinking acronyms, and comic disbelief.
Bananas turns SantaCon into a strange little anthropology lesson, with Megan Gailey joining the hosts to pick apart why the holiday bar crawl keeps surviving.
A hundred pizzas, Bob Dylan, and a Google search turn an Amherst campus legend into something stranger.
Bananas turns an Amherst pizza legend into a quick, loose exercise in escalating disbelief. The hosts begin at Antonio's in downtown Amherst, where someone claiming to be with Bob Dylan's road crew supposedly ordered 100 pizzas for a UMass show, then never paid and never picked…
A roof fire, Miami Mint, and liquid chocolate pull the hosts through one odd turn after another.
An ice storm hands the Bananas hosts a perfectly warped starting point: a Massachusetts man tries to melt roof ice with a blowtorch and ends up setting his house on fire.
A bizarre crosswalk fine opens into privacy worries, athlete home robberies, and a sharply personal turn.
A $6,000 fine for failing to yield to one's own children at a crosswalk sends Bananas down a stranger path than the setup first suggests. Athlete home robberies bring in social media, cameras, and the uneasy bargain of living less documented, before Hannah's mother arrives from…
A cheerful Australian pub guide turns into a riff on local slang, live music, and the proposed Kesey Crawl.
Pub Buds turns a tour of Australian pubs into a loose comic test of what makes a drinking spot worth the trip. The markers are unfussy: good staff, chatty locals, community, and live music. The scale, though, is part of the joke, with the pub guides having logged 2,904 stops.
Kurt Braunohler and Scott introduce a guest, Karen Kilgariff, and discuss upcoming live shows.
Kurt and Scotty introduce guest Jenny Zigrino on the Bananas podcast, discussing a bizarre story about Cormac McCarthy's ex-wife pulling a gun from her vagina during an argument about aliens.
Comedians Kurt Braunohler and Scotty Landis discuss a cat obsessed with roast chicken after brain surgery and promote their live show in Phoenix.
Kurt and Scotty introduce their guest Kenice Mobley, a stand-up comedian and filmmaker, with a humorous anecdote about a man with a bomb up his butt.
The hosts of the Bananas Podcast introduce themselves and tease a story about a Japanese astronaut who hated space, while promoting upcoming live shows.
Kurt Braunohler and Scotty Landes host comedian Abby Govindan on Bananas, where they discuss her solo show 'How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents'.
Hosts Scotty Landes and Kurt Braunohler kick off the year with a lighthearted episode of Bananas, focusing on funny and strange news.
Pooja Mehta says the Raj Mehta Day of Good began after her brother Raj died in March 2020, three weeks before his 20th birthday, and a Facebook birthday post turned into an annual April 15 call to do something good.
Bananas spends this episode on Adolph Sachs's horn, Stanley the Labrador's poison bottle, and a Ryanair passport emergency.
Bananas opens with a dedication to Manning, Alberta, Canada, population 1,126, and a bananimal named Krista before Scotty Landes and Kurt Braunohler bring in Megan Gailey.
The hosts of the Bananas podcast discuss Morrissey canceling a show due to being sleepy and share personal stories about their Oscar night and travel experiences.
Comedians Kurt Braunohler and Scotty Landis discuss a man rescued from a phone booth while trying to order a kebab, and share a neighbor party story.
A former Little Caesar’s employee allegedly sold 10 pizzas for $50 after breaking back into the restaurant.
Kurt Braunohler and Scotty Landes center the episode on Sheena Goodyear's CBC story about Galápagos sea lions that keep nursing well past the 1.5-to-4.5-year window.