Stand-up Comedy Podcasts

Partway through a set review on Building an Hour, a comic says the problem out loud: "I was counting on everybody to laugh the way you both laugh." The others then go to work on it. They suggest slowing a line down and some physical business. That is one thing a stand-up podcast can do: let you hear an act being made. Other shows put the act itself on the feed, one minute at a time. Many simply let you sit in the green room with people who are funny for a living.

Wichmaskinen does similar work. Morten Wichmann invites comics to develop half-formed material. The episodes are long, 83 minutes for Sofie Skriver, which gives an idea room to wander. In that episode a dog command that sounds like "abort" turns up as a possible bit with no destination yet. Nikolaj Stokholm turns to notebooks, phone notes and a book assembled from old notes.

Not everyone wants the blueprints. In Season 2 Eps.3 Green Room Fails & Mississippi heartache, the hosts of The Alex & Scott Show, who run a booking agency in Jacksonville, wave off process talk from unknowns: "why would I want to know your process?" The same episode argues, without settling it, over whether to add laughter to social clips.

KILL TONY makes the live set the starting point. In #758 - DONNELL RAWLINGS + TREVOR WALLACE, the host explains the rules. Names come out of a bucket, each comic gets 60 seconds uninterrupted, a kitten sound means wrap it up, and then he conducts an interview. By his count, over 300 comedians signed up that night. The appeal is the swing from a rehearsed minute to an improvised interrogation, and two comics leave that episode with golden tickets. The cost is real, though. Much of the material is crude and racially loaded, and the panel's roasts can land hard on nervous newcomers. DEATHSQUAD, Brian Redban's feed, carries 2023 episodes such as KILL TONY #629, in which Ric Flair sits in on the panel.

The Debaters is gentler. Comedians argue silly propositions, and the live audience picks the winner by applause, with Steve Patterson hosting. In Shh! Is silence golden? Does a smoothie make a meal?, Charlie Demers argues against silence by pointing out that "The term for silence here tonight is dead air." Prepared rants give way to quick quiz rounds, and the carpet bout in Is carpet superior to hardwood? Does nothing beat living in a university town? ends in a tie. It is a CBC production, so the Radio Comedy page is a natural next stop.

In Inside Thoughts Episode 133 ft Sam Salem, Inside Thoughts with Nick Jordan has the host talk solo before the interview. Salem then explains that he is still technically available to substitute teach and picked his jobs by the school lunch. Holler & Whine swaps the club for a drink. Kelly Zemnickis asks guests what they have to holler or whine about, then ends with an affirmative tarot reading. In Jennifer Layne: Beautiful Vibrations, the host's grudge against a song that convinced her it never rains in Southern California becomes "A falsified weather impression." All three lead naturally to the Comedy Interviews page.

This is where the familiarity question bites hardest, because the pleasure is the company. On Tuesdays with Stories!, Joe List and Mark Normand tell this story through interruption. In #646 Impulse Bi, the story is a suitcase that never gets unpacked, a torch lighter inside it, and an airport supervisor baffled that its owner doesn't know the lock code.

Never Not Funny: The Jimmy Pardo Podcast has been unscripted since 2006. In 38G - Josh Day, the panel spends a stretch arguing over the difference between a rally and a volley. The free feed carries shortened cuts (38F - Matt Weinhold runs 24 minutes), and near the end it directs listeners to a subscription for the full episodes.

Penn's Sunday School takes on the genre's own argument. Early in Rock Jumps Won’t Kill You Until One of Them Does, the conversation turns to how crowd work became comics' online calling card.

The Doug Stanhope Podcast is the least filtered of these, built from people Stanhope meets on the road and at home in Bisbee. Near the end of I Don't Have The Gloves For That, it runs through police-blotter items about cats.

Some comics need a subject to push against. Probably Science reads real science news and lets it go sideways, with Matt Kirshen and Andy Wood among its hosts. In Episode 612 - Alison Leiby, a case of heart trouble triggered by joy at a daughter's wedding prompts the aside that "it could also be bad, such as a wedding, or good, such as a breakup."

Bananas - Funny news from around the world with Scotty Landes and Kurt Braunohler does the same with weird headlines. Day of Good with Pooja Mehta gets a lot of mileage from researchers giving octopuses MDMA and watching them get close.

Positive Anger is the furious version. In Black Friday Deals Worth Trampling For 2025 Ep. 441, Nathan Macintosh scrolls through retail deals and judges which ones are worth trampling someone for.