College Stories

New grad Taylor Adams just got to New York from Indiana, and tells us about getting started in showbiz. Jaimie freaks when she hears about the Disney gig she just did. (Hint: The Little Mermaid, Belle, and Pocahontas were all involved). Taylor talks about how her group of college students contacted Kevin to come back...

We’re BACK from a looong hiatus, and we’re doing something new: for Back 2 School Month, we’re talking to RECENT college grads, about their college stories that JUST happened, and what it’s like getting into showbiz now. We’ve got Timmy McBride & Russell Stewart on the show today – Timmy hosted our old late night...

Anthony Devito! One of our favorite storytellers, a man who has been featured on This American Life, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert & Comedy Central, and who — more on topic for us — made future NFL players laugh at the University of Miami before bailing on his architecture major to do this for...

Look, this is five people who did a college TV show doing a Q&A about that TV show, and 4/5 of us are drunk. If that doesn’t sound fun to you, feel free to skip, and we will not be offended. BUT WE THINK IT’S FUN! Some stories told: Jaimie drunkenly tried to chase a...

SPECIAL EP. 100: This is the ultimate college story for our hosts: it’s the origin story of the College Stories podcast. Kevin, Jaimie, Jon, Shane & Elizabeth all met on a TV show they created at Ball State (that still exists today) which has a hell of a backstory. They worked together, lived together, eventually moved...

Mike Cannon is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet who also has insane stories about doing steroids. Mike played college basketball at Rockland Community College where he was point guard/artificially enhanced enforcer, and then he *almost* played at SUNY Geneseo. Mike made his money in college playing underground poker games in New York...

Asterios blew the fuckin’ doors off the show in episode #98. We start with a Marc Summers (of Double Dare!) college story, and end with a little shoplifting. Asterios is a comedian, comedy writer, and part-time ass-kicker of bigots on Reddit (our description, not his). He has an insane amount of stories, and we begin with when Asterios’s...

We’ve double-checked, and it’s confirmed Greg Burmeister is the first guest we’ve had whose college experience included a 4-day coma. The man is a party machine (although that is NOT what led to his coma!) and his college experience was less of the campus life, and more of the rock & roll life. Greg played...

Kenny followed a great high school basketball career by playing one more year at Drury University, then aiming his competitive spirit at All-America level partying, culminating in one of the most insane nights we’ve had on this show (beginning at about minute 50). He takes us through his transition from recruited college athlete to his...

Usually, we write a notable fact about the guest’s “college story” here. But for Mara Marek, all you need to know is that her life is NUTS. She’s had about 8 full lives, and she has no idea why she’s not dead. A rundown: she somehow went to college BEFORE she was done with high...

Cliff Cash is a very funny, unique comic who dropped out of college and made a bunch of money real fast. Like Bill Gates! Then, well, things got weird. But it was a baller couple years! He also started college at the top — had a private dorm room and a fake ID immediately, and...

Eric Schmidt: a funny, nice, tall man who attended two colleges, and was arrested at each. He even had to promise one school that he wouldn’t come back! Eric talks growing up in Florida, going to performance arts high school, and starting college at South Florida, which was basically a full-time Spring Break. He gained...

Georgetown’s Joe Gerics describes in great detail their beef with Syracuse, we talk about the shock of people in college who are incredibly comfortable being naked in public, moms who do your college applications for you, and how to say “King of Cocksucker” in German, and a few other foreign language swears. Joe was also...

Harvard’s Alyssa Wolff has one big thing in common with Ball State’s Kevin: drunk Halloween college fights. Dressed as a lady village person, Alyssa stood up for her friend at a Chinese restaurant bar in Boston and told us all about it. That wasn’t her biggest hit: she also crashed into a very important person’s...

It’s another deleted scenes episode! Sometimes, our guests have TOO much good stuff, and when that happens, we collect the tangents, and off-the-rails stories, and put them in a big grab bag of fun, and call ’em “Deleted Scenes.” On today’s episode #90: comedian/writer Steve O’Brien (original ep #72), MTV/VH1 producer Kim Reynolds (#74), director...

We play a lot of college hits in this episode with very funny comedian & author Alyssa Wolff (Lean Over: Women, Work, and Women’s Work)! Jon asks if Harvard is actually harder than other schools (spoiler: they have a class called “Cosmic Connections”), we talk about the unique kind of homeless person that hangs out...

Screenwriter Jeff Lock went to our alma mater (Ball State) in Muncie, Indiana, worked at Arby’s, then wrote a script about an Arby’s-like place in Muncie, and now it’s going to be a real movie that starts shooting soon. COLLEGE WORKS! Jeff also talks about how he got a later start in college after slacking...

Nick Blake survived the celebration of the Red Sox championship in 2004 (barely), and eventually things got even better: he met the girl who he’d marry, and he brought her back to campus to propose in a super college-y way. In this mini-episode that’s a follow-up to Nick’s epic story from #85, we also talk...

It’s Thanksgiving tradition to get into fights with your family, and when it comes to that, 2016 is looking like an all-timer! To commemorate that, here’s a short, special episode that features Kevin’s career highlight (performing stand up on Letterman) which came on Thanksgiving Eve of 2013, and the family fight it caused. To those of...

Nick Blake (TV producer/writer) happened to be just starting at Boston College when the Red Sox broke their “curse” and won the World Series in 2004, and he has an epic tale of being there on the scene to celebrate…and then having to pay the price for it. We also talk about sports fandom in...

Jay Nog is the comedian you’re not surprised was part of a fraternity that got kicked off campus. He went to SUNY-Albany (9-time #1 party school according to Princeton Review), pledged a frat immediately, had messy breakups with just about every roommate he ever had, and has a cautionary tale about having a long-term “friend...

Jason Kanter attended THE Ohio State University, and his stories are so nuts that he can’t include last names in almost any of them. Except NFL hall of famer Lynn Swann — that dude gets NAMED. Jason was president of his fraternity in college, and around him, cars were lit on fire (allegedly), beers exploded...

Oh boy, where do we START with this one? Subhah Agarwal (comedian/TV writer) drops by to talk about being a quasi-valedictorian, snorting things so she could work harder, and working as a clown, on a boat, in Pittsburgh. WHAT? Right. Subhah is an NYC-based stand up comic and regular at The Stand, and she has...

Patrick Monahan is a comedian who is one of the absolute best follows on Twitter. He’s got that blue checkmark, son! Check him out @pattymo and enjoy. Patrick is NOT the guy from Train (of the same name), but he IS the guy who helped popularize the “Ted Cruz is the zodiac killer” online, a Georgetown...

The junior year of College Stories kicks off with producer Nick Pride, who talks about a Florida summer camp he worked at in college where he got buff and found a wife. With Nick as a guest, we get the bonus of appearances of a bunch of camp weirdos via impressions. We caught up with Nick...

The school year is kicking off once again, and while new College Stories will be back every Thursday shortly, and for the duration of the school year, we bridge the gap with a re-posting of the very first episode about our 1st days of college. On the ep, all the Ball State attendees (not all...

Doug Smith (comedian, Montreal Just For Laughs Festival) grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, but then quit, HARD. He went to art school in NYC, 9/11 turned into his Home Alone 2 (we explain), he dropped out but didn’t tell his dad, and he was present for some serious arson. Doug brings the stories for real...

Gary Vider tells us everything about his time at U of Buffalo: pledging a frat, the insane hazing (and how that led to no particular lasting friendship), and his creative side-job that made him a lot of money and got his room broken into. We also talk about Gary’s run to the finals on America’s...

George Gordon accidentally ended up in ATO at Memphis University, lived on a dorm floor with one of country music’s biggest talents, and hit the biggest “college spring break locales”: Panama City and South Padre Island, with a pit stop over in Mexico. We talk cheap, awful liquors (cheap vodka is the best, relatively speaking),...

Alison Leiby (comedian/writer) is, in her words, “a monster.” She started at Cornell on the rowing team, and after injuries derailed that career, she took the athlete’s mentality to college partying. Alison and Kevin compare notes on blacking out and leaving class to go heave in sinks (incredibly similar stories, actually), Alison talks about the...

During an off week, we figured it would be a great time to re-post an old episode (original air date: 11/20/14) with a guest who has a lot going on today: Josh Gondelman. Josh was recently on Conan, also recently released an album (Physical Whisper) that hit #1 on iTunes, and is still writing for...

Kris Knight failed 7 different foreign languages in college, and now is a producer/director for Univision. Suck it, school! Kris attended Ball State University, just like our hosts, and helped produce another sketch comedy show on campus. He also worked as an RA, dealt with dummies (including a fog machine addict), and on one special...

Kim Reynolds helped bring you 6 years of VMAs (basically, she knows Jay-Z) and today she tells us about how she creatively paid for college spring break, how she chose a college (Rowan University), and she does it all while providing snacks and wine for the whole crew. What a gal! Follow Kim on her travels...

Part 2 of the “What I did instead of college” extravaganza with the story-filled Steve O’Brien. Steve tells us about growing up in the Chicago sketch & improv comedy scene, starting drinking, and getting electrocuted. Oh, and basically doing a Pee Wee Herman impression across the country. Also, if you haven’t heard part 1 with...

Steve O’Brien (actor/comedian, “Team Submarine”) is our first College Stories guest who straight up bailed on college, and instead, used that time to live some of the craziest stories we’ve had on this show. His age 18-22 college era involved running away from home, across the country, and not telling ANYBODY about it, and eventually...

Kevin has known Lance Weiss (comedian) for eight years, but only on this episode found out he was a kicker for his college football team. WHAT?! Lance shares the story about kicking for Georgetown’s (awful) football team, growing up in the deep South and wanting to get the F out, and his surprising romantic history....

Producer of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Matt Passett talks about the mini-college that is paging for the Letterman straight out of NYU, and NYU’s supposed reputation of being “filled with d-bags.” During college, Matt interned at Conan while majoring in politics, and rode that into a career of producing TV, obviously. He also...

Episode #69, dudes!!! We’re wrapping up 2015/beginning 2016 with our third deleted scenes episode. We’ve got talk about our biggest regrets, drugs, Nic Cage, and possibly Shane’s most epic story of all time. CHECK IT! (Appearances by: Kevin, Jaimie, Jon, Shane, Elizabeth Kuchta, Kristen Lavin, Matt Wayne, Pat Driscoll, Mike Trainor, Andy Bond)

On Christmas Eve, we do a #TBT to a previous episode, originally aired last Christmas, with Kevin and his two brothers, Joe and “Owen” (a med student, who should not be super-searchable via Google for, you know, professional reasons). The newest of the McCaffreys — Jaimie — is along for the hang as well. “Owen”...

Matt Passet, former Letterman Page, Conan intern, current John Oliver producer, talks about starting stand up in college, trying to be a serious writer in grad school at Columbia, his “very Jewish” fraternity at NYU, and a smoking-related throwdown with the NYPD. Oh, and Jon Daly shows off his incredible acting skills. Follow Matt on...

Comedian/Purdue grad Megan Gailey was a self-described “real piece of sh*t sorority girl” in college, and she tells us just how much of a piece of sh*t she was on this episode of college stories. There’s a spring break cruise, a psycho/love-stricken cruise ship piano man, a group of the scariest women in the world,...

Pat Driscoll is all New York: grew up in Queens, high school in Manhattan, college in the Bronx (Fordham). He regales us with tales of the “Ram Van,” the one magical place in NYC to get terrible (but useful!) fake New Hampshire IDs, and putting on a five-star classic wrestling match outdoors for a bunch...

Matt Zaller (Writer/Producer, Funny Or Die, Nat Geo) had a DOOZY of a college experience: interning for congressmen, going abroad to Paris, and pissing off a Nobel Peace Prize winner — who, if we’re being real about it, was a real piece of trash. Matt attended Kansas University and knows all about birds both real...

We talk about how Mike’s college got it’s wild team name, and Mike’s crazy past “partying” habits — and what incident made him slow the F down. It’s a doozy! Fun doozy! Jon Daly also talks about his brush with fame, and how many free hot dogs he ate while in the audience for the...

Matt Wayne joins College Stories for the second time to talk about commuting to Canisius College, drunken altercations, and peeing on guys heads. The formerly straight-edge Wayne took the occasion of his grandpa’s passing to begin drinking, and he hasn’t stopped since. There’s also Daly getting beat up, Elizabeth yelling at a graveyard, Nick Nolte,...

Filmmaker Andy Bond is our guest, and we talk about everything from Andy’s first drinks (with us, at our shared college of Ball State), to working on the TV show the College Stories gang all started, to becoming a producer on that show, to ultimately quitting in sensational fashion! Oh, and we also talk about...

In an all new episode (recorded a while back) we kick it with former Letterman writer Jill Goodwin, who talks about a campus serial killer at the University of Florida, and a creative, mace-related injury she suffered while at school. Kevin, Jaimie, Jon and Elizabeth also tell injury stories, although we still have no idea...

Good Lord, is this episode title meta. It describes what we talk about, and what we did while talking about it. This episode was recorded well over a year ago, the third show we recorded in a single night with Josiah Madigan (Quiz Life, NPR’s Ask Me Another). At this point, we were 2.5 hours into...

This week’s guest Rob Abner is a Lutheran pastor who presided over the marriage of Kevin and Jaimie — a new kind of “showbiz” representative on College Stories! Rob tells us about a girl he was into who made a major faux-pas when it came to bringing friends along to a party. We talk about...

It’s actor Paul Rescigno, who went to Syracuse with his twin brother & maybe never actually got into Syracuse’s acting program, but accidentally ACTED his way into it…and all the way to speaking at graduation. Genius! Paul also talks about his very first college party, the horrifying result, and his descent into a life of crime....

To celebrate the end of our Summer Series, and this particular time of year: it’s our first ever episode, where Kevin, Shane, Jon, Elizabeth and Jaimie talk about their first day at Ball State University. We’re back with ALL NEW episodes next Thursday! But for now, kick off the year with our most downloaded episode...