397 episodes listed below
Pop culture banter with a loose fuse.
Double Threat runs on rapid banter, old television memories, show-business detours, and bits that mutate before anyone can file them neatly. Julie Klausner and Tom Scharpling keep the premise moving through mock arguments, callbacks, and gleefully over-specific pop-culture archaeology.
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Double Threat is a comedy banter show with the engine left running. Julie Klausner and Tom Scharpling take pop-culture fragments, half-remembered TV moments, celebrity names, bad products, internet detritus, and private irritations, then push them through a fast series of jokes until the original subject has changed shape. It is loose, but not lazy. The looseness is the point. A line about Charlie Chaplin can lead to Marla Gibbs, Sesame Street, old Apple commercials, and a hospital chaplain bit before the show even settles into what it is doing. A discussion of the Afro man trial can veer into the Streisand effect, Drip, Charles Manson records, Saturday Night Live bookings, and British rock bands without treating any turn as a problem. The show likes a premise that should probably collapse. Then it decorates the collapse. Carson appears often as part of the room, fielding questions, cues, camera jokes, Patreon logistics, and sudden comic pressure. Guests fit into the same current rather than slowing it down. Patton Oswalt joins a March Sadness episode that runs through music, voting, and bracket-style comedy business. Vic Berger IV and Brett Boham are named in episodes built around their own strange premises. The recurring appeal is not a clean segment format. It is the speed and specificity of the riffing. Double Threat can spend real energy on Papa Johns, Trader Joe’s, toll tunnels, high school musicals, cruise fantasies, fake wikis, fake theater troupes, and the emotional burden of having a stupid parody song idea. The tone is irreverent and sharp, but there is warmth underneath the bickering. Jokes are corrected, topped, renamed, and brought back. The show rewards listeners who like callback-heavy conversation, comedy history, old-media references, and bits that become funnier because they are held slightly too long. It is not tidy. It is very much awake.
Made for: Best for comedy listeners who enjoy rapid exchanges, deep-cut references, running bits, and conversations that zigzag through television, music, food, internet culture, and minor public absurdities.
What sets it apart: Double Threat stands apart through its speed and recursive joke-building: a tiny reference can become a whole comic ecosystem before snapping back into the episode. The show’s duo rhythm makes digression feel like structure.
Comedy legends Julie Klausner (How Was Your Week) and Tom Scharpling (The Best Show) team up for a journey through the best and worst of pop culture. Produced by Forever Dog.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Julie Klausner and Tom Scharpling turn forgotten clips, celebrity oddities and internet ephemera into escalating comic investigations.
Double Threat with Julie Klausner & Tom Scharpling turns pop-culture debris into elastic banter, with Julie Klausner and Tom Scharpling following each reference until it produces a stranger one.
A hypothetical $3 million Mickey Rooney body swap is your cue to let the tangent win.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loose anniversary special where alliterative names and generational memory keep pulling the conversation into stranger corners.
The anniversary special treats its milestone less like a formal occasion than a chain reaction of jokes, starting with Cliff Clavin's possible naming history and drifting into alliteration, older cultural references, and Carson's unexpected fluency with them.
A paid appearance gives Julie and Tom room to imagine all the misery happening just outside the frame.
A mock hospital farewell sets up a funny dig through old performance footage, with Julie Klausner and Tom watching along as they try to piece together why a paid appearance happened in the first place.
A paid cruise exit turns into tunnel tolls, a bleak motel rhyme, and a call for favorite clips.
The episode builds its comic spine around the first-ever Double Threat Cruise, treating Malaysia, a paid exit, and the threat of caning as a premise loose enough to drift into tunnel tolls and the Lincoln Motor Inn.
A courtroom win opens into a loose, funny music-and-culture riff with Patton Oswald in the mix.
A courtroom win gives the hosts a sturdy comic spine as they track the Afro Man trial's accidental publicity bump and name it as the Streisand effect.
A Fortnite loss turns kitchen duty into a referendum on responsibility.
Double Threat starts with a loose debate over whether life is a carnival and lets the hosts' wordplay-heavy chemistry do most of the driving. The opening ricochets through Fun, punctuation, George Carlin, and Michael Richards before settling on Theo Von with the Rizzler, whose…
Tom offers Julie $3 million for six months as Mickey Rooney. She wants $10 billion.
Tom asks Julie what it would take to spend six months as Mickey Rooney. His offer is $3 million; hers is $10 billion. Soon the bargain has become a curse cast by an ancient warlock, with Julie stuck trying to persuade her friends that she is still herself inside Rooney's body.
Tiny debates, treated with heroic seriousness.
Julie Klausner and Tom Scharpling open their podcast by questioning their role after producer Carson presents a reversed Hulk Hogan polka clip.
Tom Sharply promotes depression naps and Kid Cat Bars with humorous advertising.
A humorous discussion about sports team names and the podcast 'Double Threat' with Julie Klausner.
Double Threat with Julie Klausner and Tom Scharpling opens with 'fun with a period,' Michael Richards' audiobook, and a Chinatown quote before bouncing into Jack Nicholson and Allen Houston.
Double Threat marks its 6-year anniversary and episode 300 by revisiting listener-voted clips from the Patreon chat.
["Double Threat with Julie Klausner and Tom Scharpling pivots from a Charlie Chaplin riff to a Mickey Rooney \"Twilight Zone\" clip where Rooney keeps saying he does not remember \"The Last Night of a Jockey.\"", "Carson, the producer, gets dragged into jokes about LMFAO, the alphabet, and the show's habit of comparing itself to Cum Town, This American Life, Freakonomics Radio, and Smartless.", "A long eBay detour centers on a 1976 Craft Master Cotter's Sweat Hogs Epstein paint-by-number kit listed for $10.99, with the hosts debating Mr.
Double Threat turns public caning into a live-show business model, tying the joke to Michael Fay, Singapore, a $1 entry fee, a $60 exit fee, and lashes that lower the price.
Double Threat with Julie Klausner and Tom Scharpling opens on Afroman's Ohio trial, the Streisand effect, and the Lemon Pound Cake song that came out of police footage.
A humorous conversation about a forgotten TV show and a bit involving a microphone attack.
Two comedians riff on the absurdity of sharing stupid thoughts and the exhaustion of being serious about the world.
A podcast episode featuring a casual pre-show conversation about camera angles and room temperature before an interview with Brett Boham about Trader Joe's.
A chaotic and playful conversation about fun, metal, and life as a carnival.