Succotash Epi71: Podcastin' From the L.A. PodFest

Marc Hershon here, back from last weekend’s rousing 2nd Annual Los Angeles Podcast Festival! And what a festival it was. Held once again at the Delfina Hotel in Santa Monica. There were tons of live podcasts going off during the three days – or, really, two and a half days – of the festival.

Looking back on the schedule for the PodFest, I count 40 shows and that’s not counting the folks like us that were recording our own shows and interviews in the Podcast Lab. Speaking of which, the next couple of episodes of Succotash will hopefully come out very quickly. Bam, bam, bam. Because they’ll be focused around interviews I did while I was at the festival.

I’ll be playing clips from many of the episodes of the podcasts that were done at the festival as well. A big shout out to our Honorary Associate Producer Tyson Saner, who's been doing an amazing amount of clip harvesting on behalf of this show.

I got to be a guest on Chillpak Hollywood Hour during their live appearance at the PodFest, and you'll hear not only hear a clip from that episode but also some chats I had in the Podcast Lab with Dean Haglund, Phil Leirness, and Lily Holleman - all three not only associated with Chillpak with the still-in-production film The Ladykillers as well.

The 10 Most Active Show In The Stitcher Top 100 Comedy Podcast List

This is the rundown of the ten shows on Stitcher's Top 100 Comedy Podcast list that have moved up or down the charts the most this past week.

37. The Smartest Man In The World +28
42. The Mark & Lynda Podcast -34
63. The Dana Gould Hour +44
64. This Week In Blackness Radio +15
65. The Tenderloins Podcast +98
68. DVDASA with David Choe & Asa Akira -32
78. Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine +48
79. SModcast >> FeAB -40
82. Answer Me This! +16
91. Who’s Paying Attention +15

The podcast at the top of the list - The Smartest Man In The World - is hosted by improv great and friend Greg Proops, who is also releasing a video special on October 22nd. Available online, you can find Greg Proops: Live at Musso & Frank at Chill.com.

The Clips

The Steven Brody Steven Festival of Friendship
Our friend Tyson Saner harvested this clip from The Steven Brody Stevens Festival of Friendship podcast and I’m glad. I really like Brody and hadn’t had a chance to even hear his podcast yet. Plus I also like James Adomian, who is an amazing vocal talent and funny as hell to boot. His “Maron in Space” bit on the IFC Channel is hilarious.

Doug Loves Movies
My first clip from one of the LA PodFest shows comes from Doug Loves Movies with Doug Benson – one of the few podcasts out of the 40 they had that I actually had the time to watch. The one this year wasn’t as crazy as last year’s, which was unhinged. (The RC helicopter nametag was back, but no sign of last year's infant…) He had Jimmy Pardo, Nick Thune, DC Pierson, and David Huntsberger on stage with him, but this clip is before the guests even came out, when Doug clears the air about Mr. Belvedere’s balls.


Improv 4 Humans 
Matt Besser’s show was at the PodFest but THIS clip is from another live appearance that Tyson Saner grabbed. It’s from Bumbershoot in Seattle and Tyson says he liked this pull because it’s very “Hi, this is who we are and here we go!” Featuring Tim Meadows, Horatio Sanz & Brian Huskey, it’s also based around the Harold structure for you improv wonks, which lends itself pretty well to a podcast.

The Kira Soltanovich Show
Comedian Kira Soltanovich was all over the LA PodFest. Every time I turned around, there she was, either interviewing someone or being interviewed herself. She hasn’t really been on my radar until now, but I got to see her perform live at the late Saturday night Standup Smash! Show they did there and now I’m a fan. In this clip that Tyson grabbed, we hear part of Kira’s interview with Laraine Newman.

Just Jump To The End
It’s interesting to see how many siblings pop up as podcast hosts. One of the best ones is My Brother, My Brother and Me but there also the Sibling Rivalry podcast, the Kamenetsky Brothers Land O’ Lakers podcast and a whole bunch of other ones. One I just found out about is Jump To The End, featuring brother-sister team Scott Fitzman and Molly Harris. Their show’s Twitter page describes the p’cast as “Two grown siblings talking shit about people, places, and things.” In our clip they talk about revisiting cartoons and other entertainment from their childhood, and what it’s like exposing THEIR kids to it.

The Indoor Kids
Back to the LA PodFest, we get a taste of the live-in-front-of-a-live-audience version of The Indoor Kids. Hosted by the husband-and-wife team of comics Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon, this show focuses on video games. In this segment from the Fest with Blair Butler, they talk about video games that they’ve recently been depressed by and, also, games that they use as a carthasis.

Chillpak Hollywood Hour
For the last taste of the LA PodFest this episode, I pull a few minutes from the live Chillpak Hollywood Hour show, featuring Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness, with their special cameo guest…ME!

So there will be more clips from LA PodFest shows in the next few episodes. After that (or maybe in between some of that), I will have interviews with some comedians and some filmmakers who are in the throes of getting their Kickstarter campaigns rolling.

Rest up.

In the meantime, don't forget to pass that damn Succotash.

— Marc Hershon