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As Santa Claus said after a day of delivering toys around the world, "Oy." This Epi78 of Succotash was intended to be our Christmas episode but between the crush of business, holiday shenanigans, a wicked cold and assorted other speed bumps, it's only getting out now. And how was YOUR holiday? We have a brief chat with Rachel Eaton, the Director of Content Partnership at Stitcher. We start out talking about the nominations for the 2nd Annual Stitcher Awards but they closed the Sunday before Christmas. Fortunately, Rachel also talks about the voting portion of the awards. The finalists to get your votes in each category will be announced on Tuesday, December 31st, after which you can begin voting at the Stitcher site. (I appreciate that Rachel took time out to talk via phone while on vacation visiting family back in Boston!) We've also got a bunch of clips for you - many of which were harvested by Tyson Saner, our go-to guy and Honorary Associate Producer. He's also one of the three folks who called into the Succotash Hotline and dropped a holiday greeting on our listeners, all of which are featured in this episode. If you'd like to hear more of his melodious tones, I've been chatting with him about co-hosting an episode of Succotash sometime in January. SONG OF THE SEASON Our friend, fellow podcaster (Functional Nerds) and novelty songster John Alealio re-released one of his holiday classics, Batman Smells (A Rebuttal), and it's out pleasure to feature it this episode to help us round out our post-Christmas non-stravaganza. Click on John's name to go visit his site and pick up some of his tunage, won't you? DOUBLE DOSE O' DURST We're featuring not one but TWO of our Burst O' Durst segments this episode, including comedian Will Durst's belated Xmas List for 2013. THE 10 MOST ACTIVE SHOWS ON THE STITCHER TOP 100 COMEDY PODCASTS LIST Here's the way the movers, shakers, and droppers shaped up this past week: AT MOVED33. Ari Shafir’s Skeptic Tank +2655. Cashing In With TJ Miller +3157. Improv 4 Humans with Matt Besser +3260. Thrilling Adventure Hour +4162. Nobody Likes Onions +5072. The Trev & Ben Show -1273. SModcast FeAB +2191. Jim Florentine’s ‘Metal Comedy Midgets’ +1293. The Dead Authors Podcast -1898. SModcast Edumacation -13 CLIPS Amish Baby MachineThis clip was a request I made of Tyson Saner after I read last week’s Top 10 Most Active Show On Stitcher’s Top 100 Comedy Podcast list. The show jumped up over 500 places to get in. So I asked Tyson to grab me a sample. In this taste, hosts Dags and Jeff welcome back Dan Simon, who shares tales from his recent African adventure. WTFOne of the best known podcasts around is WTF or What The Fuck, with Marc Maron. He recently hit his epi450 and had Will Farrell on as his guest, which I reviewed for This Week In Comedy Podcasts on Splitsider.com. A few weeks earlier, Marc had author David Sedaris on and he’s a favorite of our friend Tyson Saner, who provided us with this clip of Sedaris reading from Marc’s recently published book. (Marc's IFC TV series Maron returns in May of the new year.) Broadcast BasementChris Lanuti runs his show from an actual bar he has in his actual basement, surrounded by actual friends like Acoustic Mike and Wild Bill as well as whomever drops in. Chris is a former radio guy who knows how to run a show and I guess he’s the commissioner of the Broadcast Basement Fantasy Football League in which our Succotash Rocs did okay in this season, considering I know nothing about football other than the fact it’s the brown oblong ball. This clip focuses on that newish Christmas tradition: The Elf On The Shelf. Seven Days A GeekThe lads over at Seven Days A Geek recently held their “30 Days of Podcasting” event. These guys aren’t just podcasters but they also get into the nuts and bolts of podcasting a lot – well worth subscribing. In this clip, Jay “The Angry Ginger” and Jeremy McBlizzard discuss horror movies including The Human Centipede. The Black Guy Who TipsTyson Saner has clipped us a hunk of a pretty popular show featuring married couple Rod and Karen – no last names – who have been together since they were 16 and got marreid in 2002. They kick stuff around and also have interesting guests. This slice features the couple discussing R.Kelly’s ill-advised Q&A session via Twitter a little while back. Big & CleverThis podcast out of England has been around for three years and if it hadn’t been brought to my attention by one of our friends on Twitter, I still might have heard about these guys Danny Blaze and Keith True. They’re a pair of DJs and, much like our new friends Trev & Ben, they talk about news of the day, current events, pop culture and enjoy taking shots at each each other every now and then as well. There you go. A little over an hour of podcast gold. You can help us out for the new year by heading over to iTunes and gives us a nice star rating and perhaps a short review. You can also give us a "Thumbs Up" on Stitcher, Like us on Facebook, give us a heart on SoundCloud or Favorite our tweets when you see 'em on Twitter. You can also help us to offset expenses by clicking on the Donate button on the righthad side of our SuccotashShow.com website, dipping into your Christmas bonus and sending a little smidgen our way. We'll regale you in word and verse on the show. Best wishes for a great 2014 and we'll talk to you next year! - Marc Hershon
It’s your ol’ pal, Marc Hershon, once again and I’ve got Epi72 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast right here for you. I don't spend a whole lot of time jabberin’ because — as usual —I’m WAY behind getting the episodes out. And I have a healthy backlog of interviews from the 2nd Annual Podcast Festival from about 3 weeks ago now, which I can really only put these out one an episode AND still play clips from podcasts that were featured at PodFest. In addition, I’m now running into a pipeline problem in that the pipeline is filling up with content. Non-podfest content. Which is a good problem to have, but it means I’m going to interrupt the podfest interviews later this week and put out a show featuring two filmmaker friends of mine – Gabriel Diani and Etta Devine – because they just popped the top on a Kickstarter campaign for the new comedy feature film they putting together. It’s called Diani And Devine Meet The Apocalypse and so next episode that chat will be our centerpiece. After a bunch of clips are played, I have an interview with our Special Guest Shawn Merek. I got to know Shawn last year at the FIRST LA PodFest, when he was the producer for the PodCrash podcast with Chris Gore. He’s still producing for Chris but he’s also one of the guys helping to make all the shows go over at the Sideshow Network. Shawn popped into the Podcast Lab at the PodFest and we talked about him, his life as a producer and also where podcasting may be heading in the future. OTHER THAN CLIPS This episode, besides clips and the interview, we also have our Burst O' Durst with comedian Will Durst, a new song just in time for the upcoming holiday, A Stormtrooper for Halloween by John Anealio. John just released an EP with that song as the title track - one of four songs - that you can download for FREE at http://JohnAnealio.com (or you can also opt to kick John some dollars if you wish. WE did, but who are we to ask you for money?), and we also have a brand new Henderson's Pants commercial. TOP 10 MOST ACTIVE PODCASTS IN THE STITCHER TOP 100 COMEDY PODCAST LIST Exclusively from the Comedy Podcast Podcast, here's a list of the comedy podcasts that showed the most action - either up OR down the chart - from Stitcher's Top 100 Comedy Podcasts: 44. The Champs with Neal Brennan & Moshe Kasher +6048. The Artie Lange Show +1367. The Comedy Button +4468. The Dead Authors Podcast +11269. The Bone Zone +2289. The Dana Gould Hour -3294. Where’s My 40 Acres: Ratchet & Real +2395. Thrilling Adventure Hour -1397. Wits +1299. Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show +31 (Anyone have tips on how to get your Stitcher numbers up? Succotash is at 5859 this week. Which is up a thousand or so from last week, but still...) THE CLIPS Inverse DeliriumI like to think it’s a measure of this show's success that my supporting players are getting more airtime in Podcast Land than I am. Just this past week, Geoffrey Welchman over at the Inverse Delirium podcast tapped both my booth announcer Bill Heywatt AND the host of our Burst O’ Durst feature, comedian Will Durst, to provide their voices for a couple of characters in a sketch! Man SchoolJumping back a few weeks to the LA PodFest, we have a clip from Caleb Bacon’s Man School podcast which was done live at the Fest. You may remember that Caleb was the host of the Gentlemen’s Club podcast but hung up his bouncer’s dud for a professor’s hat when he debuted Man School. In this clip, we hear him with guest Chris Gore and Jason Smith, with kind of a sports/cosplay mashup chat going on. My Wife Hates MeTyson Saner - who continues to amaze me and delight you with his ability to send along multiple clips every week for this show - grabbed a clip from My Wife Hates Me with husband-and-wife comedians Rich Vos and Bonnie McFarlane, along with their guest (and past Succotash visitor) Andy Kindler. But we’re not done with Rich Vos yet. While at the LA PodFest, he hopped over and guested on… Road Stories with Murray ValerianoMurray was performing his podcaast live and I guess Rich Vos doesn’t just have it tough at home – he shared a couple of road horror stories from working gigs on the road… Story WorthyI ran into Christine Blackburn from the Story Worthy podcast in the Podcast Lab at the Festival. She hung out for a little bit – long enough to record an ID for the show but not a real interview. She had to run off to do her show, where one of the guest spinning a tale was Pearl Aday, who talked about meeting and bowling with Michael Jackson when she was just 10 years old. I Am IdiotI was trying to keep the clips on this episode reined in to just Podcast Festival shows, but there’s just too much going on. I like to celeberate when podcasts hit their Episode 100 but this time it’s a bittersweet hurrah. Our friends Howard, Keith and Ben in England, the brains behind the I Am Idiot podcast just dropped their centennial epi but, at the same time, they’ve announced it will be their LAST episode as well. Bummer. I swapped a couple of tweets with them and I found out that they had always planned to put in 100 shows and then move on to something else. So here’s a taste of the Final Idiot… Phil Hendrie's Hmm Mmmm with Bobby DooleyBack to the LA Podcast Festival, where Phil Hendrie was on hand with Phil Hendrie’s Hmm Mmmm with Bobby Dooley, one of the better known characters from Phil’s long running radio show. I’ve heard Phil as a guest on a couple of podcasts and, although he’s still doing some radio, he is embracing the podcast model. Here he is, as Bobby Dooley and her husband occasionally, along with his guest and Podcast Festival co-organizer Graham Elwood. The Science JerksTyson Saner found us a two-fer! One of the live shows at the PodFest was Stuff You Should Know with Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant. But they haven’t dropped their festival episode yet. They did sit down with Dave Ciaccio and Robert Chan, hosts of The Science Jerks podcast, for an interview in the Podcast Lab. Funny enough, I saw this interview going down about 6 feet away from where the Succotash table was set up. The guys talk about the theft of Einstein’s brain. Hope you don't mind that this show runs about an hour and a half with everything we've got going on. Once you've heard the clips, take some time out to go listen to these shows in their entirety. And, when you get done with that…don't forget to please pass the Succotash! — Marc Hershon
Singer, song writer, John “George R.R. Martin is Not Your Bitch” Anealio entertains at Balticon 45. Sorry the video gets cut off after 35 minutes. Visit http://johnanealio.com/ for more great stuff like free songs and his album.