True stories with comic timing.
Story Worthy is built around personal stories that start fast and usually take the scenic route. Recent episodes move from Sunset Strip band scams and childhood crushes to weather jobs, student council speeches, and live Story Smash rounds.
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Story Worthy is a home for true personal stories told by people who are comfortable in front of a room. The tone is loose, funny, and direct. Recent episodes lean heavily on comedians, writers, and performers, but the subjects are less about career highlights than the odd little turns that made those careers believable. Tim Kirk tells a Sunset Strip story about heavy metal without actually being in a band. Fritz Coleman talks through the unlikely path from comedy to doing weather. Mike Drucker brings childhood, video games, sports pressure, and a painfully earnest elementary school crush into the same conversation. Rick Mitchell uses a student council memory as a way into speeches, writing, and the strange expectations put on kids and adults alike. Story Worthy also folds in Story Smash, a live storytelling game show with judges, contestants, audience-suggested topics, and a stage rhythm that can turn messy fast. Those episodes feel more panel-like. The regular interview episodes feel more like a guest being handed enough room to find the point in real time. That flexibility is part of the draw. A story can begin as a joke about a bad decision and drift into family tension, embarrassment, work, ambition, or loss without announcing a serious pivot. The show likes people who can laugh while correcting themselves. It also likes the unglamorous edge of show business: clubs, failed plans, weird introductions, and the practical luck behind public lives. Christine Blackburn appears as the steady stage manager of that energy, setting up the premise and keeping the conversation moving. The editing does not sand everything into a perfect essay. It keeps the sense of a room, a mic, and a person trying to tell it right. For PlayNext listeners, Story Worthy is best treated as a discovery lane for conversational comedy stories with enough heart to outlast the punchline.
Made for: For listeners who like comedians, writers, and performers telling real-life stories with loose banter, awkward details, and emotional turns. It especially fits fans of live storytelling, memoir-ish interviews, and show-business side roads.
What sets it apart: Story Worthy blends interview-driven true stories with the live Story Smash game-show format, so the feed alternates between intimate memory and rowdy stage energy. It keeps the human mess in the room instead of polishing every story into a neat monologue.
Each week Hollywood’s most talented people in the entertainment industry share true, personal stories on the Story Worthy Podcast. Story Worthy celebrates 15 years of podcasting in July 2025 and has over 850 episodes recorded. Christine Blackburn is the creator, host and producer of Story Worthy, Story Smash the Storytelling Game Show, and My Life In 3 Songs exclusively on Spotify. Listen to the entire episode wherever you hear podcasts. If you get a chance, will you please give Story Worthy 5 stars and a good review on Apple Podcasts? https://bit.ly/3Qk5UeL It always helps, thank you! And join the mailing list! https://www.storyworthypodcast.com/Follow Christine’s new show, My Life In 3 Son…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Story Worthy turns true accounts into comedy through attentive follow-ups, live-game pressure, and a willingness to let painful stories remain painful.
Christine Blackburn treats a personal story as both the main event and an invitation to keep talking. Her Comedy Interviews follow the telling into revealing side roads: Mike Drucker's childhood crush leads toward family expectations, while Rick Mitchell's student-council memory…
Storytelling roulette hands you childhood mortification, then grief that refuses an easy ending.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A live story that turns school trouble into blunt, self-aware comedy.
This live set turns school memory into blunt confession, moving through Mr. Norton, Mr. Dalton, the Warwick Library, failed drama, failed geometry, and a principal who grabbed Mr. Norton by the neck and threw him into lockers.
A memoir chat that turns childhood awkwardness into specific, sharply observed comedy.
Storyworthy gives Mike Drucker room to connect his memoir, Good Game, No Rematch, A Life Made of Video Games, to a childhood memory built from a costume, a walk down the block, and a door opening onto instant embarrassment.
A student-council setup leads to grounded advice on making a funny speech when the room is already rooting for the speaker.
Student council turns into a neat doorway for a conversation about performance anxiety. Christine Blackburn treats elementary-school elections as a strange early brush with politics, while Rick Mitchell keeps pulling the focus back to the practical problem of being funny in…
A live truth wheel turns one-minute stories into a comic contest with medical panic, applause, and cookies.
Story Smash builds a live contest around a wheel of truth, sending contestants into one-minute stories on prompts like vacation, grunt tank, breaking up, and hooking up before judges jump in.
A brother's account of sudden loss moves through shock, grief, guilt, memory, and the need to face what followed.
Albert Corrado's account of learning that his sister, Mellie, had been shot at Trader Joe's gives Storyworthy a somber center. The episode moves through the early confusion of calls, texts, Twitter updates, and word from Trader Joe's that she had been shot and might not have…
A live story game where a paper umbrella becomes the night's hardest prompt.
Story Splash turns a live storytelling game show into a test of nerve, with a wheel deciding what each contestant has to take on. Creator and host Christine Platt lays out a room built for audience energy, from shouted suggestions to a free space that lets a player pick any…
Ira Glass frames weekly theme-driven segments spanning family secrets to Portland's protest conflict.
Jonathan Goldstein tracks down people from someone's past to engineer real reconciliation.
Host Christine Blackburn re-airs an interview with Albert Corado about his sister Mellie, who was killed five years ago at a Trader Joe's in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.
Christine Blackburn hosts a live Valentine's Day edition of Story Smash, a storytelling game show, at The Lyric/Hyperion.
Comedian Emily James recounts witnessing her gardener in a violent fight on her front lawn, with one man in a headlock and the other bloody next to a running lawnmower.
Story Worthy features comedian Tom Dreesen discussing 14 years opening for Frank Sinatra, three years touring with Sammy Davis Jr., and his 50th year in show business.
This episode features multiple advertisements for ZipRecruiter's hiring platform, OrderlyMeds' telehealth weight loss services, and Ramp's finance automation tools.
Author Tim Kirk discusses his experience faking being in a heavy metal band on the Sunset Strip by paying for gigs in a scheme that exploited aspiring musicians.
This episode features multiple advertisements for ZipRecruiter, John Sewer plumbing services, and Mattress Warehouse promotions.
Comedian and weatherman Fritz Coleman shares the humorous story of how he landed his job at KNBC through a chance encounter at a comedy show.
The live story segment gets rolling fast.
Mike Drucker stops by Storyworthy to talk about his memoir, Good Game, No Rematch, A Life Made of Video Games.
Rick Mitchell tells Christine Blackburn how he ran for eighth-grade student council in 1993 mainly to earn a participation card and attend a water-slide field trip.
Story Worthy presents Story Smash, a three-round game show hosted by Christine Blackburn in which contestants tell timed true stories on topics selected by a wheel.
Comedian and entrepreneur Ian Stanley shares a personal story about being mugged at knifepoint when he was 15 years old.
Comedian Greg Baldwin shares a personal story about how his experience with meth addiction unexpectedly led to positive life changes in an interview on Storyworthy.
Television writer and author Shelley Herman shares insights about observing Johnny Carson backstage at NBC and learning from his broadcasting techniques.
Singer Paige Bryan recounts a chaotic family vacation on a houseboat that ends in a crash with jet skis.