Clean listener stories with messy human timing.
That Story Show is a listener-story comedy show built from bad shopping trips, childhood trouble, church-sign complaints, parenting chaos, and bodily awkwardness. James Kennison and John Steinklauber keep it casual, teasing each other while letting ordinary disasters become the joke.
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That Story Show is a clean comedy storytelling show with a pleasantly messy center. The basic shape is simple: listeners send in real-life stories, and James Kennison and John Steinklauber read them aloud. Then the show starts wandering. A story about Heelys becomes a complaint about putting wheels in shoes. A church sign turns into a broader rant about religious cheesiness. A store checkout moment becomes a whole miniature study in introversion, politeness, and not knowing what to do with strangers. The show is brisk, but it is not tightly polished. It likes interruptions. It likes side roads. It likes the moment when a throwaway detail becomes funnier than the story’s original point. That looseness is a major part of the appeal. James and John sound comfortable enough with each other to tease, disagree, recover, and keep moving without making a production out of it. The material is clean in the sense that it avoids going fully explicit, but it still has plenty of body-function jokes, mild gross-out moments, and blunt domestic absurdity. Episodes bring up Disney sky buckets, bad church signs, awkward shopping encounters, childhood stories, parenting exhaustion, dog trouble, public embarrassment, and the strange dignity of trying to live a normal life while everything gets slightly out of hand. The listener community is not just background decoration. Submissions, reviews, names, callbacks, and requests are part of how the show breathes. Even the closing recap songs feel like a running contract with the audience. They can be clumsy, specific, and gleefully unnecessary, which is exactly why they work. For listeners who want comedy that feels conversational rather than engineered, That Story Show offers a familiar rhythm: one story, three tangents, a complaint, a laugh, and a song that probably should not work but somehow does.
Made for: For listeners who like casual comedy built from real-life embarrassment, domestic chaos, and friendly back-and-forth. It especially suits people who want clean humor that still has bite and oddball specificity.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is not just the submitted stories, but the loose commentary around them. Its recap songs, listener callbacks, and James-and-John rhythm make it feel more like an inside joke that keeps admitting new people.
That Story Show is a clean comedy podcast featuring hilarious, listener-submitted real-life stories from all over the world. Real-life stories from real people.Hosts James Kennison and John Steinklauber bring a warm, down-to-earth vibe, like you’re laughing along with old friends. With an unpredictable batch of new stories each week, every clean comedy episode will leave you laughing and will literally make your day brighter!Submit your own stories and hear them on a future show! Podcasting since 2006, listen in and join one of the best podcast communities there is.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
James Kennison and John Steinklauber make listener stories funnier by surrounding them with quick reactions, personal memories, and deliberately unruly recap songs.
That Story Show turns everyday embarrassment into conversational comedy, with James Kennison and John Steinklauber moving between listener-submitted stories and their own loosely connected memories.
An awkward Walmart checkout becomes a story you might finally forgive yourself for retelling.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Christmas comedown slides into a hemorrhoid prayer request and a fully committed recap song.
A Christmas comedown drifts into a graphic prayer request about hemorrhoids, with James Kennison and John Steinclover tracking the escalation through rubber gloves, possible patron-only territory, and a closing recap song.
A dry church-sign gripe that keeps circling back to the annoyance.
That Story Show opens with a dog complaint about a back porch and a concrete block, which gives the segment a domestic, irritated start before James Cuddison and John Steinklober pivot into church-sign humor.
Loose, scrappy banter that turns small embarrassments into easy laughs.
That Story Show opens on a muddled Disney memory, with sky buckets and a fifth grade boys do something stupid from a safe distance kind of energy, then slides into a Walmart run that starts out plain and ends with an awkward Bible study invitation.
A loose comeback that turns free ice into a proudly terrible finale.
After roughly five months away, James Cousin and John Stanklever ease back in with caffeine, listener goodwill, and a St. Louis story about meeting Boaz, also known as Fiddler Rockstar.
A loose, funny return that turns story rules, school talk, and audience notes into sideways comedy.
That Story Show finds its comedy in the practical mess of listener submissions. James Kennison and John Steinklauber explain why some stories may never make it on air: they are not generally clean, need more polish, run long enough to fill an episode, or turn a family-tree…
A loose domestic comedy stop where career hopes, Walmart avoidance, and retirement logic do the heavy lifting.
That Story Show turns a familiar parenting joke into a small comic equation: James Kennison and John Steinklover weigh whether a parent eventually has to pick a favorite, then wonder which child might one day repay the investment.
A prepared recap song turns a loose backstage chat into a reason to stay through the credits.
That Story Show builds this episode around a tiny end-credits anxiety: James Kennison worries people bail before the recap song, then makes the case for sticking around.
Dating chaos, retold with comic nerve.
Shame, spun into communal comic relief.
Hosts James Kennison and John Steinklauber share a humorous listener-submitted story about a loose tooth being pecked out by a chicken.
Hosts James and John introduce a batch of hilarious real-life stories submitted by listeners, starting with Valerie's tale of a brush battle in Italy.
Hosts James Kennison and John Steinklauber share listener-submitted funny real-life stories and personal anecdotes.
Hosts James Kennison and John Steinklauber open with Christmas reflections, including a chaotic church visit and a family gift-tag tradition.
Episode 514 of That Story Show has guest hosts Nathan Caldwell and Keith Helsley filling in for John while he is on vacation.
James Kennison and John Steinclover open episode 511 of That Story Show recapping their quiet Christmases, holiday gifts, and a toy giveaway their church ran with over 22,000 dollars worth of donated merchandise.
James Cuddison and John Steinklober open with stories, week chat, and listener-written material.
James and John open with Disney nostalgia.
James Cousin and John Stanklever are back after the show had been down for roughly five months, and they ease in with caffeine, sounding half-asleep on last week's episode, and the listener response before James mentions meeting Boaz, known as Fiddler Rockstar, in St.
James Kennison and John Steinklauber explain why some listener stories never make it onto the show.
Hosts James and John share hilarious, listener-submitted real-life stories in a clean comedy format.