Satire Podcasts

Somewhere around commandment number nine, the hosts of The Steve & Jeff Show stop sounding like comedians and start sounding like two men reading a memo they have been told to love. The list in Encore - The New Ten Commandments grows more authoritarian, and the hosts nod it through. Then one of them hears the phrase "one leader" and drifts into a thought about value: "one leader is good, but I always used to buy the two liter bottles myself." The pun is silly. The satire is in the agreement, the sound of people accepting the unacceptable because it works out cheaper per ounce.

Radio Party! applies the same idea to campus morning radio. Its hosts are billed as would-be journalists, and the call letters, KCPR 91.3 FM, get shouted between bits. In Moon Landing was Fake Party!, Buckbrush returns from a song break sad that footage of 1960s astronauts in training was all "fabricated." A counter-case arrives citing evidence from the Soviet Union, China and Japan, and the JFK moon speech ends up recited over the argument. The refrain "Love life. Moon landing's not real." makes the joke land on conspiracy confidence, not on NASA. Jesus gets with Us Party! adds an Easter candy tier list. The Morning Shows page is a natural next stop.

Radio Party! mocks the broadcast. TOTAL TRASH LIVE! with Pete Zias mocks the coverage. Zias reads tabloid stories and performs sketch material around them, answering viewers' comments as they come in. In TTL PODCAST #33 A David Affair?, a mock promo for "tonight's Unlisted Unsolved Mysteries" sets up David Geffen's divorce. Zias announces himself as "your Barbara Walters," and a running storyline about his daughter Lumina, who has supposedly blasted off with Gayle King and Katy Perry, is resolved near the end at the door. The target is the gossip register itself: a headline is read aloud, then inflated until it bursts. In TTL PODCAST #31 She's Tariffs She's Terror! the show declares, "This is investigative journalism." The chaos is part of the act. TTL PODCAST #34 Versace through the Door! includes the confession "I'm in an abusive relationship with my printer." The celebrity material is camp invention delivered at full volume, and some of the language will not suit every ear. The Pop Culture Comedy page is the place to go next.

Satire gets louder and less tidy when it is folded into daily talk radio. The Von Haessler Doctrine airs weekday afternoons on 95.5 WSB, and these episodes keep the pile-on rhythm of a panel. In The Von Haessler Doctrine: S16/E098 - Uniboob, Eric Von Haessler recalls reading about the talking stick in the Utne Reader as a young progressive and thinking it was the dumbest idea he had ever heard. Later, a question about the length of the national anthem produces "38. If you finish it, you pass away," until someone checks and finds four verses. The best moment in that episode is the bit running, then the room testing it. The Von Haessler Doctrine: S16/E130 - Dense But Accessible turns an item about an 84-year-old man suing Waffle House into a small moral comedy: "when you get sued by an 84-year-old man, then you have to be mean to an 84-year-old man."

The Walton & Johnson Show, a Gulf Coast morning show on air since 1983 by its own account, runs hotter. In Did Gavin Newsom Accidentally Let a Killer Go - FRI 7.1, after Steve Johnson gave everyone the morning off, the host brings in comedian Jesse Payton and opens the phones. The talk moves from Elizabeth Banks's press tour to the trial of the rapper C-Murder to a claim that Democratic voters learn about consequences too late. Those opinions belong to the hosts, and the aim in that episode is openly partisan. The Radio Comedy and Morning Shows pages lead on from here.

For satire that works slower and closer, Mumford & Kaiser seats the satirists Jane Mumford and Renato Kaiser in a show full of Swiss detail: worries about sounding too Zurich, a cinema trip in Bern, ten francs stolen in childhood. In Dogs on a train!, a story about a man drinking single malt on a train becomes one speaker's argument that unasked-for public commentary seems statistically to be a cis man's habit. From there it turns into an oddly tender riff on a newspaper piece suggesting a dog stops registering you once your smell fades. When the dog debate threatens to offend listeners, one of them says: "This is just a satirical podcast." Near the end comes the claim that they "never actually cut anything," followed by "Actually, I've already cut something." The comedy lives in these revisions. Tschugger vs Joker turns the same scrutiny on film, tentatively calling Tschugger the best that progressive mainstream German-Swiss comedy can manage while hearing humour "out of the 90s." The Conversational Comedy page suits listeners who like this pace.

Some satire aims at a way of knowing rather than a person. In Campfire Tales: Is Santa Claus a cryptid?! With special guest Matt Lake, Greg's Cryptid Corner runs Santa through a checklist of cryptid traits: elusive, region-specific, consistently described by witnesses, lacking conclusive evidence. The case collapses on contact. Someone objects, "I do get presents every year," and someone else notes that Santa visits every chimney on the planet. The gentle target is the solemnity of monster-hunting itself.

Optimism Vaccine works from the other side, judging satire as critics. In Run, Don't Walk... Away From Your Television, the hosts measure The Running Man's staged manhunt against the manipulation behind reality shows like Vanderpump Rules. One host doubts the film says anything convincing about surveillance "other than like, you know, TV sucks." That is a fair standard for every show here. If the hosts matter more to you than the targets, the Comedy Interviews and Stand-up Comedy pages, the Dark Comedy page, or the wider Comedy guide are a short step away.