Podcast appearances and mentions of river zambezi

Welcome to this milestone episode of our little soundcast, which is – this week – celebrating TEN YEARS of doing whatever it is that we do. It made only be Episode 248 (maybe we didn’t drop installments quite as regularly as we should have for a big chunk of the past decade…), but it is still 10 friggin’ years of churning out that sweet, sweet soundcast magic. In honor of that, and the fact that we seem to be solidly on the downward side of the bell-shaped curve coming out of the coronavirus pandemic, the staff and management of this show have decided to return to our original title. Starting with this episode we are, once again Succotash, The Comedy Soundcast Soundcast. As we flip the first page on the next ten years, this is also now officially Season 5 – a fact you should see reflected in the refreshed show logo on the service where you’re downloading or streaming this show. If you’re a regular listener to Succotash (in or out of pandemic mode), you‘re savvy to the fact that we either play clips from comedy soundcasts around the web or that we do interviews with soundcasts, comedians, comedian/soundcasts, and other show biz folk. Well, this episode is going to be a little different. In observance of our decade of soundcastery, we’ve gotten a little self-indulgent. For the first time since we began, we’ve actually pulled together host Tyson Saner, producer/engineer Joe Paulino, booth announcer Bill Heywatt, and me, your humble executive producer and other host Marc Hershon. We cobbled together a multi-studio experience through Zoom and spend about an hour and a quarter talking about the show’s origins, the various features we've done, how Tyson came to us in the early going and got folded into our team, and more. We re-hash a classic old Boozin’ with Bill segment, in which our announcer almost poisoned himself and me with a noxious concoction so hideous it should have been criminal. Bill also favors us with a live show introduction, a live show close, and a live reading of a commercial from our long-running sponsor Henderson’s Pants – it’s an announcement of their release of a new product in honor of this show’s anniversary, Henderson’s Anniversary Pants. We also take a few minutes out to pay homage and send out love and healing energies to political and social comedian and commentator Will Durst,  longtime contributor to this show of our Burst O' Durst segment. Will suffered a severe stroke in the Fall of 2019 and is on the super-slow backroad to recovery. He's even getting back up a microphone now and again, and we play a little clip of his appearance from January on the San Francisco Points of View soundcast with Will Durst & Wille Brown. Will's recovery is a slow and expensive process. You can help out in a very real way by contributing to the GoFUndMe page that has been set up  as way to collect money to offset his hospital bills: https://www.gofundme.com/f/awukk-will-durst-needs-your-help Finally, interspersed within the show, we play some audio bouquets – well wishes from friends we’ve made during the last 10 years who have been featured either through clips, interviews and, in some cases, both. Those friends include: Cole Stratton, Dana Carvey, Davian Dent, Dean Haglund, Dom Risk, Dr. London Smith, Dr. Norman Trousers, Ed Wallick, Francis Cronin, Geoffrey Welchman, Hunter Block, Jason “Jabs” McNamara, Matt Knudsen, Matt WeinHold, Megan Pentecost, Phil Leirness, River Zambezi, Tommy Royal, and Travis Clark. Thank you, friends, for sending those along! That’s about it. We will continue to bring you clips of what we find out there in the soundcast wilderness, as well as chats with some of the interesting characters we collect along the way, each and every week. In return, if you’d be so kind as to rate and review Succotash, the Comedy Soundcast Soundcast on Apple and Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, the Laughable app, YouTube, Podbay, or anywhere else you happen to listen to us. Next week, Tyson will be back with a sheaf of clips for you in Episode 249, and I’ll be diving in the week after that for Epi250 (!), and so forth. In the meantime, be good to each other and if anyone asks if you’ve heard any good soundcasts lately, p-lease be sure to pass the Succotash! — Marc Hershon

Without realising it, the river guide and his clients were headed straight towards the rogue hippo’s territory

With search engine optimization changing so much, what's the secret to succeeding with SEO in 2018? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, SimpleTiger CEO Jeremiah Smith shares his insights on what's working - and what's not - with SEO. As the head of an SEO agency, he's worked with quite a few clients to solve SEO challenges and gets into specific detail on things like how to approach site structure, navigation menus, keyword and backlink strategies and more. He also shares his predictions for how voice search will impact the future of SEO.  So much good stuff - check it out! Listen to the podcast to hear Jeremiah's SEO insights and get specific, actionable things you can do now to improve your search rankings. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to The Inbound Success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and today my guest is Jeremiah Smith, who's the founder and CEO of Simple Tiger. Welcome, Jeremiah. Jeremiah Smith (Guest): Thank you so much for having me, Kathleen. I'm happy to be here today. Jeremiah and Kathleen recording this episode Kathleen: Awesome. Tell the audience a little bit more about yourself, and about Simple Tiger, and what you guys do over there. Jeremiah: All right. So I am the founder and CEO of Simple Tiger. We're a digital marketing agency that specializes in doing search engine optimization for softwares and service companies. We do a lot of the inbound marketing follow elements, but we really try to tailor everything tightly around how it impacts SEO, since that's been our specialty for over 12 years now. Kathleen: Great. And I had a lot of fun combing through your website, and particularly through your profile page on the website. The one thing that stood out the most was in your bios. You guys have these really cool answers to questions and one of them was shark diving, bungee jumping, or ... I think the other one was cliff diving. And you picked shark diving, which is probably the one that would be the last on my list. So- Jeremiah: That's funny. Yeah, I was thinking through those and I actually ... I always like to challenge myself but I'm pretty calculated with how much risk I can handle. So when it comes to bungee jumping, to me that's like right out, that's so dangerous and crazy, and it's not even enjoyable an idea to me, whipping my neck around and everything. Cliff diving is something I've actually done a lot of. And that's fun and easy to me. It's not as scary. Shark diving is that one that's right in the midst, the Goldilocks zone for me. That's dangerous, but it's somewhat safe. And so, yeah, that's pretty much where I land on that. Kathleen: So it's really funny. The reason that stood out to me was that I'm kind of familiar. I read what you wrote about trying to face my fears. And I have not done cliff diving yet, but I have done bungee jumping off of the bridge over the River Zambezi in Africa, which is ... At the time it was the second highest bungee jump in the world. Kathleen bungee jumping in Zambia And I did it back when I was 30-years-old. And it's so funny, because in the last few months ... I have this picture of myself launching off the bridge, that somebody else took. And the last time I looked at that picture, I was like, "Damn, it's a good thing I did that back when I was 30, because I would never do it now." Jeremiah: That's amazing. Kathleen: But I would never swim with sharks. I would never swim with sharks, though. So for me, the bungee jumping was the thing that was right on the edge, and the shark stuff is like, yeah, no way.  Jeremiah: That's so funny. It's funny how we're different like that. I'm sure someone out there is like, "Cliff diving? That's the one that's right on the edge for me." Kathleen: Totally. Totally. So I had a good chuckle reading that part of your website. Jeremiah: That's awesome. Kathleen: Yeah, so I was interested to talk with you because you all, as you said, you specialize in search engine optimization, and you work with a lot of SaaS or software service companies. And that's a super competitive field. And these are, in my experience, at least, having been in digital marketing agencies for a lot of years, I won't say how many ... SaaS companies tend to spend money on this kind of stuff. And so it's not like being a garbage hauler and the competition for your keywords isn't as strong. These are companies that are putting some dollars behind not only their pay-per-click marketing, but they're spending money to do SEO right. So I'm fascinated to learn a little bit more from you on both what you see as working well right now, and how you're helping to prepare your clients for the future, given all the changes that are happening in SEO these days. What's Working With Search Engine Optimization in 2018 Jeremiah: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. And I got to be honest, though. You're going to have to stop me at some point because there's so many answers I want to dive into on that. Kathleen: Go. Jeremiah: Let's see. So having been in this for 12 years now, there are so many different things that we've done that, at the time, were valuable things. And SEO is interesting because it's one of those things ... It's one of those marketing methodologies where there are trends within that space. So there are trends in the SEO that right now, for example, might be very powerful for SEO but a year or two ago weren't, and a year from now, won't be. So you've got to keep that in mind and adapt to those as they come and go. But there are some strong core elements that are always ... They're always strong. They may not be the leaders in the space, but they're strong. And if you do those well, you'll always be successful at SEO. And so a couple of things that we're doing nowadays that are just a little bit different than before ... One of the hot topics for 2018 has been content structure and structuring content on your site and navigational structure, which making sure that your navigation's set up in a way where you're actually able to dive in to the depths of the content on the site through the navigation. That's evolved quite a bit. Google's gone from hating large menus to loving large menus to hating them again to loving them again. And it's a little bit nauseating trying to figure that out. But we've determined some patterns and seen some sites that have really good navigational structures, really good content structures. And we've seen the benefits of that. Everything from a large enterprise eCommerce site, all the way to a small SaaS company that has one product, one offering, very simple. Like, for example, Stripe. You think about that. Such a simple offering. There's not much to it. But you can go deep on their content because of the developer applications and things like that. So we're finding the content structure's been a very powerful thing. And I think a large part of that actually has to do with the way Google has devolved in terms of adapting more machine-learning technology to enhance the user experience of Google. So Google's trying to get more intelligent about what they bring up or what they show as results. And as you're doing that, as you're reverse engineering that, you're noticing what they like more. And what they're liking more is just really, really good content structure, which, I guess good is a subjective term. But you almost have to know what I mean when I say that. I could probably explain that a little more, but I'd have to show you examples, really. Kathleen: Yeah, let's go back to the menu for a second because that's something that I think is interesting and easy to overlook, right? A lot of people build their websites and the navigation menu they think, "I need to get it right. But it's not something I need to spend a ton of time on." And I think a lot of folks don't even think of it when it comes to SEO. So can I dig a little bit deeper in there? And you mentioned larger menus. Are you talking about actually displaying a mega menu at the top of a site? Or are you talking about the page hierarchy and having several pages, subpages, etc.? Walk me through what that big menu looks like. Jeremiah: Sure, yeah. So the mega menu discussion is interesting because there are cases ... Theoretically, Google would say that they don't like mega menus. And when we talk about mega menu ... And it makes sense why they wouldn't because, from a user perspective, they're not great either, usually. What a mega menu means, when we talk about that, is usually a menu that contains upwards of a hundred navigational links or more, just massive. And you could just spend all day just trying to hover through this menu to get to where you want. That's too much. It's too much for a user perspective. It's too much from a search engine perspective, which mirror each other. And especially with the increase in users on mobile devices, mega menus just aren't making as much sense as they used to. However, in certain applications, on certain websites, for certain types of content, certain content structure, a mega menu is the only way. And it actually works really well. And so it's real interesting to see the cases where the rules can be broken. And that's probably the hardest thing to learn in SEO, is knowing where and when you can break certain rules in order to succeed because you're going to have to at some point. For example, Brian Dean does some really cool posts about breaking some of the most common rules in SEO. For example, he's got over 10,000 YouTube subscribers and he's only got 10 YouTube videos. That's a huge deal. You got a significant amount ... I think he has over 100,000 YouTube subscribers. He's got ... Whatever those huge tiers are, he's got it, right? He's only got 10 YouTube videos. Kathleen: And he just released a course on that, too, I think. I feel like he just released a course on YouTube SEO, to talk about how he did that. Jeremiah: Right, right. And that's a great example, though, of him breaking the common rules, where people think you've got to post a ton videos, you got to be on there every single day to get to 100,000 subscribers. He's only done a few, few pieces of content. They're rockstar pieces of content, and he is internet famous because of it. So when it comes to menus, for example, I think some of the larger sites that have a lot of complexity, over time, I think Google is going to get intelligent enough, and currently is intelligent enough, to deduce the fact that, "Hey, this is a complex subject, what this site is about." And it can be broken off into these relevant subsections or subcategories of deeper subjects. And it makes sense. Wikipedia is a great example of that, for example. You can't for the life of you use the Wikipedia menu to get where you want to go. You have to use search. And their search engine even sucks. So you have to use Google to get through Wikipedia, appropriately. But their content structure and linking to deeper, relevant subjects, cross linking, and all that kind of stuff, is really what makes them successful. So I don't know if that answers your question. But there's not really a one-size- fits-all menu solution. It really depends on the case-by- case basis. Kathleen: Okay, interesting. And then in terms of the other thing you mentioned was structuring your content well. So as you said, that's an easy thing to say but there's a lot of nuance behind that. Can we dig into that one a little bit deeper, and maybe give some examples of different ways that companies need to think about structuring their content? Jeremiah: Right, yeah. And I think the best way to structure content, honestly, I don't think is to look at it from a keyword perspective. We did that for a very long time. And we tried to nest everything under keyword umbrellas. And over time, what we learned is that actually the way the user is interacting with your website might be sequential and break from a keyword norm. So let's think for a second about an example software tool. And I'll walk you through how this might apply, and how we might structure content for this one client, where previously we would nest everything under a keyword umbrella. So let's think about ... I'll always pick on invoicing software, because I think that's an easy concept to understand and it applies to every business I'm talking to, so they get it. It's familiar. In this invoicing software, maybe our target is CFOs at software companies. And that's who we want to sell this invoicing software to. Well, that CFO at the software company has a certain list of pain points and things that they really want to work through and boxes they've got to check for them to procure a solution for their invoicing software. They know what they're looking for. So in the old days, what we would do is take "invoicing software" as a mothership term, and then play with subcategories of keywords related to invoicing software. In the new days, we'll still do that, but we're going to break out of that and we're probably going to structure it a way where it's the number one pain point the CFO might have with software. Let's do that as our first piece of content, even if that keyword is not our top target keyword. Because from an engagement perspective, that might be their top concern. But that keyword may not have as much search volume as some of the other keywords in invoicing software. And for our second piece of content, below that in the menu, is their second largest pain point, which, again, may not be a high volume keyword. By structuring the content like that, we optimize those pieces of content for the keywords that are relevant to them. And we do our best to promote other pieces of content that are relevant to the other keywords that are higher search volume, whether that's large blog articles containing an infographic with all kinds of clickable stuff in the content or not. But what we're trying to do is set up a flow of content on the site that's going to keep that CFO searcher engaged. And if we can keep that searcher engaged, that's going to trigger some new algorithmic metrics in Google that are actually going to help you rank better. So I'm starting to get into some deeper SEO stuff with what Google's doing in artificial intelligence here. But for the longest time, Google has looked at links as the number one ranking factor in search. And everyone always wondered, "How do you build links? How do you build links?" and just trying and competing with each other, and trying to find ways to do it naturally. And it's the hardest thing to do in searching software is link building. Period. No matter what anyone says, link building's the hardest. Well, Google has now, for the first time, overstepped links in their algorithm as the most important factor with another one, which is user engagement metrics. So Google is now using clickstream data through Chrome and through other clickstream data providers. If you have Analytics installed on your site, if you have Google AdWords conversion tracking set up on your site, I don't doubt for a second that they're monitoring traffic usage and how people are interacting with your site. They're not publishing that content or that information or that data anywhere because of encrypted relationships that Google wants to keep tight and internal and private. But they are using that data to determine how your site ought to rank. So if people are actively engaging with pieces of content on your site moreso than other pieces of content on your site, those pieces that they're engaging with have a higher likelihood to rank than the ones they're not engaging with, regardless of links. So that's a really interesting new frontier, if you think about it. Now that doesn't mean that links don't matter. Links are still extremely important. You've got to have those, too. When it comes down to it, if everyone has 10 of the same high quality links, then whichever pages are getting the best user engagement are the ones to get ranked. Kathleen: On the subject of user engagement, it's interesting that you bring this up because I've had a couple of other people get at this topic from different directions. One of the things that has come up is time on page, for example. And I think I had one guest who talked about how they're using more and more video on their pages because it tends to get people to spend a little bit more time. Are you finding that that's the case or are there other page elements that you've seen successfully keep people sticky on pages? Jeremiah: Yeah, I think any kind of mix of media that is set up in a way where it's going to either force or entice or you coerced the user into spending more time on the page is better. So what we're looking for, first and foremost, when we're dealing with your clients, a large portion of it is not that we're dealing with clients who just need to get users to spend more time on the page and don't know where to begin with that. Most of the time something is going wrong with their site that's causing users to leave early, like there are actual problems. And we need to address those first, because those are leaks in the ship. We've got to plug those holes before we do anything about racing the ship. So some of those plugs are like interstitial popups that we see that aren't working well, we'll try to kill those. If they are working well, we'll try to find ways to just make them a little less intrusive, a little bit of an easier interaction, an easy way to close out. For those who don't realize it, you can just click off of it or click the little X or whatever, try to find a way to close out faster. Random popups, random little engagement elements that interrupt the experience, we try to find ways to kill those if we see that they're killing conversions or that they're killing user engagement. Some of those things actually increase user engagement. For example, Drift is a really cool tool that allows for this whole conversational marketing element to take place. That tool alone increases engagement on your site or increases time on page if somebody interacts with it. If somebody clicks on it and they start a conversation, it doesn't matter that they're just ... the page is just sitting there in the background. Whatever page it is, suddenly they're interacting in this little chat box over here and that page has longer user engagement now. Little metrics like that, little things like that can help. I would recommend the use of video so long as it makes sense to the audience. That's something you need to test. When you do load video on your page, something I'd recommend is to use something like Wistia or some kind of video that allows you to have analytics within the video and see how many people are actually interacting with that video element out of the total visitors coming to the page. If it's a very small portion, it may not make sense and it may not help you. You may actually want to A/B test having the video on page versus not. One thing that I've seen work well is the promise of a video but the video's embedded way down the page, so it forces you to scroll. As you scroll, you're scrolling past really interesting images and bolded text and headings and things like that that catch your eye and slow you down, cause you to spend more time on the page before you even get to the video. These are all just interesting techniques that I don't think are manipulative, I think are intelligent. If you do it in a genuine way, I think it works really well. Kathleen: Now are you finding that you're building out or you're working with your clients to build out longer pages because of this? Jeremiah: Depends again. A lot of times, yes. A lot of times, the competition is showing long pages and that's what's ranking. We're in a position where we're either going to have to come up with some stellar short content that is just silver bullet short content or we're just going to have to play the game and write some long content, too. Most of the time we find ourselves in a position where we're trying to write a little bit longer content than whatever is consistently ranking well and just play leap frog. That just tends to be the name of the game. Now of course in that regard, you don't want to go stuffing fluff into content. That's something that we're very careful about and we steer away from. If we find that it's difficult for us to break an 800 word threshold on a subject, then we'll start digging into the search results for that subject and use a little bit of the skyscraper technique, which is where you take a keyword. You grab the top several results and pull from all those pieces as sources and rewrite some of that content into your own and reorganize it. You're adding the average value of the top 10 results in Google into one article. It tends to be a lot more weighty and help you in the rankings. That's what we find ourselves doing in the event that we can't fill up a piece of content as easily without adding fluff. Kathleen: Yeah. Gosh, there's so much here that I want to ask you about. It's interesting. To hit rewind, we have Drift on our site and we implemented it, I want to say, back in March. It's definitely increased engagement quite dramatically to the point where we originally had one person manning the live chat and now we have three. It's been very interesting to watch. I think especially if you have somebody good who understands how to engage in a live chat conversation, it can make a tremendous difference. I remember though we were worried at the time about what Drift was going to do to our page load speed, especially on mobile, because Google is looking so much more closely at mobile page load times. I don't think at IMPACT, we have not become subject yet to mobile first indexing, but that's something that we kind of obsess over. I know Drift loads asynchronously and so in theory at least, it shouldn't affect your page rank on mobile. But it's a cool product and it's hugely ... it's made a tremendous difference in terms of engagement. Jeremiah: Yeah. There is that challenge, too. This is a huge challenge for SEO specifically is the trade-off between user engagement ... well, it's not a trade-off between user engagement. It is a feature that may help user engagement in one way but hurt it in another where, just like what you're saying, where Drift improves user engagement because you're offering a feature that they didn't have before. There's a technical load that comes with it that actually slows down the experience and that actually hurts user engagement. It's trying to decide, well, is this worth it or not? Is this hurting us or not? There are a lot of those kinds of things that we run into where we have to make decisions. We have to tell clients to maybe cut features that are good features but they're hurting them technically. Kathleen: Yeah. Jeremiah: Just wait til a better solution comes around or try to develop one or find one yourself. Those are sometimes better options, but yeah, it's fun to have all these tools to play with, too. I think that that's something us marketers get carried away with is the next flashy thing. I know we do that at SimpleTiger all the time. We're big nerds, so you'll come to our site and we don't follow the rules we're talking about on our own site. We're testing everything. Kathleen: Neither do we. Jeremiah: Oh my gosh. I've got way too much code on the back end tracking everything. I've got Drift and all these things popping up and sliding in. You'd just be like, "Ugh, SimpleTiger's awful." But yeah, we're testing stuff to see what works, see what we like and what helps, what hurts. That way, whenever a client runs into an issue, we've seen it before at least on our own site. The very first client, we can go ahead and fix something for them. Kathleen: Amen. It's so funny because we are the exact same way. We are so "Do as I say, not as I do" because we're constantly testing to see if going the opposite direction of what everybody else is doing might work. We've always said we need to be a laboratory. We need to make the mistakes on ourselves and learn from them so that we are not exposing our clients to more risk than they need to have. It's an interesting dynamic with agencies where very often, they are not necessarily exemplifying best practices. That's because we are testing and trying to be a little bit more leading edge, which is interesting. Jeremiah: Yeah. I agree. My brother and I joked about starting a side business to be our guinea pig for everything so we don't ruin our agency with all the experiments we're running, you know? Kathleen: Yeah. I'm curious, you mentioned moving from Google used to be all about links and keywords. Now you're moving more in the direction of solving for the user. How much of that do you think is connected with this evolution that Google is undergoing right now from an algorithmic-based search result to using RankBrain and artificial intelligence and contextual information to deliver a search result? Jeremiah: Sure. I think something that's important to keep in mind when you're talking about this is the idea when we throw around the term 'artificial intelligence', we have a difficult time ... people dream up what artificial intelligence means on the spot. I think if you asked 10 people, their answers are going to be largely different. But really when we're using a rudimentary calculator, it is a form of artificial intelligence. It's just a very, very simple form of it, right? It's performing calculations that are very hard for you and me to perform in our minds for us right in front of us using simple inputs that were pre-programmed. It is an artificial machine. Google always has been, in some definitions, artificially intelligent. What we're going to see though is that Google is going to get so good at predicting what a user wants before the user requests it, that Google already is ready to serve that thing up and give it to them. They're going to do that by reading inputs and reading metrics ahead of time that we have given into Google to show them what we value. So Google's really following us and then forecasting out making predictions and then trying to provide that forecast right now so that it can get smarter. If we validate that forecast, then that checks one box over here for Google and they head more in that direction. If we invalidate it by scrolling through Google and not finding what we want, then they invalidate that forecast and they move a different direction. We're actually responsible for educating Google on all that and we do have to keep that in mind. That said, I think the best thing that you could do right now is if you've been playing the white hat SEO game all along, this is your renaissance. This is your chance to just really keep pushing hard with what you've always done because Google now has the system set up to especially reward that. What I mean by that is the way users are searching for things and engaging with content about their areas of interest and things that they find valuable is now going to become easier for them to do and easier for Google to reward those who provide a good experience for them. If you are genuinely producing good quality content, you know you are. You've been giving away the farm for years. You've been following the rules, you've been doing everything right, and you're still leaning forward. You're still being innovative, you're still pushing, you're trying to create new types of content, things like that.  You're going to start getting rewarded by watching competition disappear in search, the ones who are really trying to listen to their users in a human way, listen to your actual customers instead of surveys and things like that, have phone calls with them, listen to their pain points and stuff like that. By listening to that and then producing content, answering questions around it, doing it through social mediums that make the most sense to that audience, you're really going to be rewarded. One example I think of a company that's doing a very good job with that who's always done a very good job with SEO is Sierra Interactive. Will Reynolds has some really cool projects that he's worked on where they've done very deep, qualitative research into their clients' customer base to get a much better idea of what those customers value, what they're looking for, so that they know what they can provide in terms of content and experience and engagement on the site. Their clients have been massively rewarded with really good rankings, lots of good traffic, things like that from it. Kathleen: When you work with clients these days, are there certain things that you see when you go onto a new client's website that are really common items that should be addressed and that have been overlooked? I'm sure a lot of the companies you're working with have pretty good SEO fundamentals taken care of. They've got their meta titles and descriptions decently well-written. Their image sizes are compressed. I don't know, maybe they're not. What are the top five things that you're like, "Oh, that again"? Jeremiah: Yeah. That's a fantastic question. I've got to be honest, everyone's got a blind spot and nobody sees it better than the third point of view. Sometimes we are just in a beneficial position just because we aren't our client. If anyone was sitting in our position, they would have been better off to hire them as well as us. It doesn't matter. Just because we're the third point of view and we know what we know, we're able to help them with a lot of the blind spots. A lot of the stuff that we're seeing is actually stuff that ... well, for example in our industry, we tend to have SaaS companies are really, really good, I think, at simplicity to a large degree. We work with a lot of SaaS companies who are very lean, very simple, and I love that. They give us a very clean slate to work with. They are minimalist to a large degree. That can hurt you with SEO, but sometimes they understand that all that needs to be there is that which is valuable. So you look at their blog and you just find, wow, every article is very well-written. They only do one a month, but they're good pieces of content or something like that. That's not all the time, but what we often see though is that due to that minimalism, they're not honoring other elements that are actually going to serve their business. For example on that well-written blog, there is no way for me to engage deeper with your company or subscribe to your blog or to get some kind of a PDF download or to get something for giving you my email address. There's no offering, there's no carrot on a stick, there's no foot in the door offer. You're not trying to build a relationship with me, you're just showing me great content. I appreciate the great content. From an SEO perspective, that's awesome. Once the traffic gets there, what are they going to do? The only other option is for them to just decide, "Well, it's time for me to buy this." That is, as we know, not the case. People aren't just going to say "I want to buy this thing" right away, they want to get into a relationship. They want to progressively create buy-in. What we spend a lot of our times doing is actually suggesting stuff that's not directly related to SEO, but impacts it or impacts the results that make me look good. If I'm bringing traffic to your site but it doesn't move your company's revenue needle at all, you're going to fire us plain and simple. If instead, the traffic that's coming to your site stays the same and it gets higher quality and that moves your revenue, that looks good on us. If we can bring traffic to the site, it's higher quality traffic, but then we can show you how to convert that traffic into some kind of relationship, marketing or sales relationship, then the conversion rate really improves, then the revenue improves, and we really keep our job for the long haul. That's what we find ourselves doing most of the time is helping clients equip their sites to actually handle the traffic that we're going to send them. Sometimes by just putting that in place, they start getting conversions and they think we hit a magic button with SEO. We actually didn't do any SEO yet. We were just helping you get your funnels set up and then we're going to start doing the optimization and the improvements. Kathleen: Got it. How Will Screenless Voice Search Impact SEO? Kathleen: Now one of the big changes that I've been watching closely and I'm curious to get your thoughts on is the shift to screen-less search or voice search. I've got an Alexa. I've got actually two. Amazon Echo is in my house. One is called Alexa, one's called Echo. Jeremiah: Nice. Kathleen: We had to give them different names, otherwise everything starts going off at once now. When you think about ... and it's the same with Siri ... when you think about asking a voice search engine a question, really it seems like what we're moving in the direction of is search engines that only deliver one answer as opposed to the SERPs, which have delivered many, many answers and we can scroll through to find the best one. It feels like we're moving in the direction of letting the search engine do all that vetting and deliver us the one answer. What are your thoughts on that? How are you preparing your clients for that? What do you think is going to happen in voice? Jeremiah: Sure. We actually, luckily enough, get hardly anyone asking us about voice search for in regards to our clients asking us "We want to be prepared for voice search." It largely has to do with the industry that we're in. Our clients, there's hardly any commercial interest in voice search whatsoever for our target clientele. Now if you're out there and you are a pizza shop downtown or you're a restaurant in town or you're an oil change place or a plumber, an air conditioning company, something like that, voice search, I think is actually something you're gonna have to deal with at some point. And it is going to become more aggressive and there is going to be a future there but I don't think it's quite the final frontier that people that it is. I don't think that we're going to have a mass exodus from screen engagement into screenless engagement. I think it's just an additional feature, in the same way that the Amazon Kindle is to books. You know, you didn't get rid of books because we have the Kindle. Books still exist. You got a lot there, I got a lot over here, you know? Kathleen: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jeremiah: But, I still use my Kindle a lot and I love using my Kindle, it's fantastic. It's a new feature so I think that we need to consider that when we're thinking about voice search, that it is just a new way to search but I don't think it's a replacement for search. Now, that said, I think that since it's an input, the output is what we're always looking for as searchers. We're looking for the result. Well, is the result that you're looking for, is it contextually relevant to a voice environment or a screen environment? For example, if I'm looking for E-commerce products, I'm not gonna do that on voice search, unless I know exactly what it is that I was and maybe it's a model number and I rattle it off and my Amazon device verifies that model number, puts it in a shopping cart then I'm fine with that. But even then I still feel a little uncomfortable. I kinda wanna see the picture so I know that it knows what I'm talking about, right? But when it comes to what time is it, what's the weather like, when is the next full moon, when is Mother's day, things like that, you have a lot less commercial opportunity there, you know? Like what kind of companies could make money off of those searches? That's what you have to think about and the reason you have to think about that is because search is a money making industry. 98% of Google's market cap is ads wrapped around their search results. It's advertising. So on a voice search, if I asked for something am I gonna have to hear two or three ads spoken to me before I get to my result? Because if I am I'm not gonna be asking that machine a lot of questions, right? That's gonna drive me nuts. And if I don't hear a bunch of ads then who's making money off of that search, right? So you do have to think about that. However, pizza shop in town, A/C company, plumber, those kinds of guys I think are gonna have to deal with the fact that a lot of people are gonna start talking to their Amazon devices and using voice search to take care of almost like personal assistant tasks in a way and so that kind of stuff there is commercial intent for. The pizza shop in town's gonna have to find a way to get into whatever database Amazon considers important or Siri considers important when they go doing those voice searches and getting into those databases and playing with those algorithms because Amazon has usurped Bing and Yahoo as the second largest search engine. Kathleen: Yeah. Jeremiah: And so they're now up against Google and we have to keep that in mind. We talk to Google, we talk to Windows machines, Siri machines, Amazon machines. We now have all these new search engines that we get to optimize for based on what industry you're in. But again, I think it all goes back to commercial intent. Kathleen: Yeah. And side note, if you are an Alexa user, this podcast has an Alexa skill so you can go into the skills in your app and search for "inbound success" and you will find it there, if you want to hear these kinds of conversations once a week coming out of your Alexa. It's interesting. I don't know how that's going to do. I figured go play around and put it in there but it'll be interesting how many people actually listen to it. Jeremiah: Yeah. Kathleen: So I'm curious. In terms of delivering that one result I feel like the corollary on a computer to the voice search is Google Featured Snippets or what people are calling "position zero." Are you working with any clients on how to optimize for the Featured Snippet or for position zero? And also, have you seen your clients lose any organic traffic to position zero? Jeremiah: Yeah, yeah. So we've run into some interesting situations with the whole position zero thing. We've had a couple of clients perform well in that space, a couple of pieces of content that we wrote for them got picked and converted into those Featured Snippets and that's always like high fives all around the agency whenever that happens because we're like, "Look at this thing!" because that's completely automatic. Google is like, "Hey, we will decide if we are going to use that or not." And you really have to throw them something good for them to put it up there because they're trusting you with so much when they just say, "Yeah, here's what this one guy says is the answer to the problem of Google here." Kathleen: Yeah. Jeremiah: And so that's a big deal but at the same time we're finding that yeah, sometimes we do lose a little traffic to Featured Snippet results but I don't know that it's the best traffic that we're losing. Because, for example, some of our clients are actually, if they're considering, like for example, a SaaS product, they're gonna do a lot of research, they're gonna dig around and they're gonna make a decision after forging a relationship with someone. That quick little answer may have helped them for a brief moment but if that's all they needed then they're actually not the client that we wanted in our case. Now that's just us and that's our typical client. That's not everyone. So I totally understand that's not a blanket application there but I would say that, that's something to consider. That's something to keep in mind. Google ultimately thinks that by providing such a clear, simple result like that, that it's going to help users have better engagement with Google. But what we also have to keep in mind is how does that serve Google, right? In the long run, the idea there is if we give a good enough experience to the user then they will trust Google more, they'll use Google more and later on they may click an ad. But it's not all gonna go to this zero search result because if it did then when would people ever click on an ad? And Google would never make money again and now they're a non-profit search engine. That doesn't make sense, right? Kathleen: Right. Jeremiah: So I don't see them going that direction either. And I feel like I sound cynical talking about it like this but I just understand the direction of commerce so much that when something like that works well it's almost like a loss leader where they're trying to give us something to keep using Google but they really want us to go click on some ads, you know, once we get there. Kathleen: Yeah, I mean they're a business too. Jeremiah: Right. Kathleen: It's easy to forget that Google's a business too and they are in a competitive landscape and they have to stay on top. Jeremiah: Right, right. Kathleen: It makes sense. Jeremiah: Yup. They're not a free public utility. Kathleen: Yeah. I feel like I could spend literally hours asking you all of the SEO questions I have in my head that I want answers to but we have limited time and so I wanna make sure that I squeeze in the two questions I always like to ask every guest. Jeremiah: Sure. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: Just to get perspective. So taking a step back, you work with a lot of different companies. You obviously follow a lot of thought leaders online, you mentioned Brian Dean. Company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Who would you point to as the best practice? Jeremiah: I actually have several, to be honest. First of all, I wanna say I genuinely and without patronizing I genuinely think you guys are awesome. I've seen a lot of the work that you guys produce and everything at Impact and I'm blown away at just how simple and clean you guys make things sometimes. Kathleen: Aw, thank you. Jeremiah: I like good, clean execution of the inbound marketing methodology and you guys just do a rockstar job of that. It's so cool. Kathleen: Thank you. Jeremiah: Kudos to you guys on that. I think a couple of others that I'm crazy about that kind of come from my SEO industry and just like deep SEO nerds that have over time evolved as leaders, not just in SEO but in marketing in general and I've followed them from day one, would be Distilled and Seer Interactive. I really like what the guys do at those companies. Distilled, I'm really interested in the fact that they've got this, I think they call it, their optimization distribution network or ODN, and they're constantly using their own artificial intelligence to test their results against Google to see what they're doing for clients works best and then going that direction. So smart and so brilliant. Kathleen: Distilled has some pretty cool training programs too you can enroll in online if you wanna learn more. Jeremiah: Yeah. We've got our team, we have an account with them, Distilled U, and our whole team's gone through. We love Distilled. They're very cool guys. They give away a lot of cool stuff. And I know some people from there too, really good people. Kathleen: Yeah. Jeremiah: And then Seer Interactive, I really love them. Where Distilled might be that data heavy, data focused kind of side of things - I don't know if you'd call that right brain - Will is almost like the opposite, like left brain. I'm not saying he doesn't use data, he uses data too but he's kind of got this gut and he goes with his gut a lot and you just kind of see his ideas just work and they come off just as well in my opinion as Distilled. So when I look at the two of them, I'm like, "They're behemoths in my industry." I really love what they're doing, so. Kathleen: Yeah, it's like how can I combine the two? Jeremiah: Yeah. Kathleen: And master the world! Jeremiah: Right. Kathleen: I love it. Jeremiah: Seriously. Kathleen: Well, those are two really good ones for people to go check out. Jeremiah: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kathleen: And, you know, what we've talked today, it's such a great example of how quickly digital marketing is changing. I feel its sort of like when you go to the grocery store and they've rearranged the aisles and you don't know where to find the milk. Jeremiah: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kathleen: I feel like SEO is like that but like, so much faster. It's like they're rearranging the aisles every week or every day. Jeremiah: Yeah. Kathleen: How do you stay up to date? How do you educate yourself so you're on top of all that stuff? Jeremiah: Good question. In every space, everyone always says experience matters the most. I think in SEO, once you have two or three years under your belt of SEO experience and you stick with it and you just stay with it, you start to pick up the patterns and the trends that make sense ahead of time, where you can see. That's definitely gonna matter and this is definitely not like what people are talking about over here. It's not a huge concern. And that takes a while to develop that taste and that sense. When I first got started, Moz was it and back then SEO Moz, they were the ones that I looked to for everything SEO related. Search Engine Land, I followed as the news update there. And then over time I kind of got used to seeing things on my own that I wasn't as much going outside to get information as I was running our own tests internally and being like, "Well, I know what's happening here. I don't even need to ask someone else about it." And then I became kind of a thought leader and speaker on it, where now I'm telling people about it so it's a little odd. So kind of a flip, but I would say pay attention to the common core elements that are important in marketing all the time and you will know what really matters when people starting yelling "the sky is falling, SEO's over, here's the next big thing" and that kind of thing. You'll know what to do in those moments and you won't have that knee jerk reaction to do every new thing and wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night because you're not using Drift or whatever. You'll be okay when you figure those core things out. Kathleen: Yeah. I'm a big fan of - and I'm not a professional SEO, I mean, I need to know about a lot for my job - but I've become a big fan of just reading the Google Webmaster Central blog. Jeremiah: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kathleen: Just because it's quick, it's easy. They're short posts and if you can keep up with it, it's a great way to just know at least what they're focused on as well. Jeremiah: Right. And I would say that is definitely Gospel. Whatever you're hearing what Google is saying, they're usually serious about that and there are a few guys out there who will call them out publicly and say, "That's not what's happening. I got results to prove it." So if you know those guys and Google Webmaster Central I think you got all your bases covered. You'll be set. Kathleen: Yeah. I feel like Rand Fishkin is one of those guys. Jeremiah: He is. Kathleen: I always feel like he's like "Google, you're not telling the truth." Jeremiah: Right, right. Yep, I love that about him. Kathleen: Yeah. Awesome. Well, this has been so interesting. I love that you came and shared all this knowledge. I'm sure there are going to be people listening who have questions and wanna go deeper into some of this SEO stuff. How can they get in touch with you? What's the best way to find you online? Jeremiah: Sure, they can shoot me an email at jeremiah@simpletiger.com or they can just check out our website. We've got a lot of content on there. We've got Drift set up, so if you want to start a conversation, we'll be right there. If I'm on Slack that day, I'll answer right away. But yeah, they can just check us out. We love talking about this stuff and if anybody's interested in just getting a little bit of help or wants to dive in to some of the problems they may be having, then they can get in touch with us for that too. Kathleen: Great. I'll put those links in the show notes. Jeremiah: Awesome. Kathleen: Well, if you're listening and you found value in this interview, please consider giving the podcast a review on iTunes, Stitcher or the platform of your choice. It's super helpful for us in terms of getting in front of new and interested audiences so that's a favor I'm gonna ask if you're a listener. Go and leave us a five star review and if you know somebody who's doing kick ass inbound marketing tweet me @workmommywork because I'd love to interview them. And that's it for this week. Thank you so much, Jeremiah. Jeremiah: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it and I hope I provide a little bit of value here. So thank you for having me. Kathleen: Oh, definitely. This was fun and I learned a lot.

Oh my lord! In this skip back in time (quite literally, this was recorded 3 months ago FFS!), Dr Norman has a speech impediment (not drink related) and has face aids. Some bright spark has the idea for everyone to do accents... and it's about as ridiculous as you would imagine. Along with the normal shenanigans, there's dicks, blasphemy and for some reason, cock jousting. Poor old Stephen Hawking is dead, and they're still banging on about his dick. Finally Dr Norman gets distracted by River Zambezi ordering food at the end, so there isn't really an end bit (not that you'll mind I'm sure, you know how to find us). So if you ever thought the hosts were drunk before....well maybe you'll reconsider after listening to this one. Oh and did we mention there's a VERY special guest? (who didn't know that Bruce Forsyth was dead...)

Merry Christmas Everybody! Yes it's back for one last festive fling of the year. Well we say festive - as festive as a conversation about the nativity, flat earth and w@nk socks can be... But there's more than just inane chit chat (although we know you love it) as this year, Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi treat you to the Casa Mirth version of "It's a Wonderful Life" - featuring a star-studded cast in a (not entirely accurate) remake of the Christmas classic. We hope you enjoy the show!

Roll up folks! It's another episode of that podcast you easily forget you've missed so much! In this delicious slice of Mirth, River Zambezi takes over - and can't remember the name of the show. There was so much covered in the first hour it was difficult to keep up with note taking so let's just say that River and Dr Norman Trousers discussed a lot. It all gets a bit spiritual at one point, River "doesn't read the Daily Mail" and shouldn't be allowed pets. No sketches but lots of the ridiculously inane yet somehow hilarious chat you've grown to love (and love to groan about) makes this a great reminder that the mantra "quality over quantity" is definitely being kept to. oh and Dr Norman kicks off a fairly lively conversation that it's probably best you're not fore-warned about...

What??!! A second episode in the same month?? What is happening here!? Yes that's right - the boys are back in this (appropriately titled) Unplanned episode of your favourite podcast. Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi went to a beer festival ...all day. An impromptu recording session ensued, with virtually no planning - and it probably shows. In this slice of aural carnage, there's arguments about making tea and mobile phones, talk of fantasy women and recollection of a very deep conversation in the cab on the way home from the beer festival. Dr Norman can't remember pretty much anything, there's an attempt at answering a listener question that goes horribly wrong and the hosts are both entirely unimpressed with the latest charity single doing the rounds. With no ads, no sketches, and let's face it - no idea, this all wraps up into a welcome surprise episode from two of the biggest idiots in podcasting.

Yes, it’s me. Marc Hershon. Your host and 100 percent safflower oil for Epi151 of Succotash, the Comedy Soundcast Soundcast. We’re back with a Succotash Clips installment, featuring a bumper crop of comedy soundcast clips from around the internet. On tap this week we’ll be featuring The Bernie Sanders Show, Casa Mirth, Center City Comedy, The Chillpak Hollywood Hour, Crash On Your Couch, Guys We F****d, Human Echoes Podcast, and Teen Creeps. In addition, we have a lovely little shoutout from the boys over at The Anti Social Show, Tyson Saner and Hunter Block. As many of you know, Tyson is also THIS show’s Associate Producer – in fact, he harvested almost all the clips for this episode – so having him sing our praises is a little like the lavish praise that gets passed around the White House these days from Trump to Trump. But I’ll take it! We also have a couple of Bursts O’ Durst from our resident political comedian Will Durst. We also have a political song later this episode performed by Not The Presidents of The USA, courtesy of Tommy Royal, late of The Royal and Doodall Show. Plus this episode is being brought to you by Henderson Pants’ new Scavenger Slax! A LITTLE HELP? We are now six years into this mess I call Succotash and it’s incredible how many soundcasts have not only come and gone but how many shows there are currently clogging the soundwaves. My god. If we put out three shows a week I don’t think we could keep up with all of the content being generated these days. But we’ll keep on it, playing clips from shows both new and old, to give you a taste of what’s out there. And I thank you for downloading or streaming us, however you like listening, and whatever other support you can lend is also greatly appreciated. Money can be tight, but it doesn’t cost anything but a few minutes of your time to get up to iTunes to rate and review this show. Five stars helps out immensely in the scheme of what shows get noticed on that service. We’re also on Stitcher so you can thumbs up us there, or give us a big ol’ heart on SoundCloud… you get the idea. If you’ve GOT some money to spare, even a little bit, we’d love your help in offsetting the costs of producing this show. There’s hosting fees, publicity costs, and gas for Studio F. We have a Donate button up on our homesite, http://SuccotashShow.com, which is the most direct way to get us some bucks. But you can also click on the Amazon banner at the top our page next time you do your online shopping and they’ll shave off a tiny bit of whatever you pay them and they’ll send it over to us in a drone. Or just buy a damn coffee mug off from our Succotashery with the show logo on it and we get a little bit from that, too. THE SHOWS Chillpak Hollywood HourYour friends in soundcasting, Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness, the hosts and podcast royalty over at The Chillpak Hollywood Hour, are celebrating 10 damn years in this odd business. In their recent show #520 – five hundred and twenty! – they not only mentioned  me…  2) Marc Hershon mention  …but they also each reflected back on each of their favorite ten moments during their decade of doing the show. (Also, I just reviewed this particular episode in the This Week in Comedy Podcasts column for Splitsider.com.)   The Anti Social ShowA couple of episodes ago we featured a clip from The Anti Social Show, which is hosted by our own Tyson Saner along with Hunter Block. They mentioned Succotash in the wake of that playage and, heck, anytime a show mentions us as thanks for clipping them, that’s a good enough reason to clip them mentioning us, right? The Bernie Sanders ShowSoundcasting used to be the place where just comedians went to vent their spleens, sharpen their wits, and own their thoughts without worrying about bookings, hecklers, and other slings and arrows. But now everyone’s getting into the game, including presidential also-rans. The Bernie Sanders Show has joined the fray and it’s a great platform for Bernie to be…Bernie. One of his first episodes featured him talking with guest Bill Nye, as in Bill Nye, The Science Guy. Teen CreepsTyson grabbed us a chunk of Teen Creeps, a soundcast by comedians Kelly Nugent and Linsay Katai. Their focus is Young Adult fiction and in recent epi24, from back in February, they had comedy writer/performer/TV director and soundcaster Alex Fernie as their guest to help them get into The Hardy Boys. Crash On My CouchArden Rose and Will Darbyshire are a couple of YouTube darlings and 20-somethings with Crash On My Couch, a soundcast about conspiracy theories, other cultures, relationships, happiness — a virtual potpourri about slogging though life as a Millennial. For instance, could you have gotten through the next 24 hours without hearing about Pixar Easter eggs? Or the conspiracy theory that all Pixar movies exist within the same Universe? Me neither. Casa MirthSo you’re a comedy soundcaster and you’re saying to yourself, “Hey self! How the heck do I get a clip of my show up on that Succotash thingamabob?” Well, you can do what our friends Dr. Norman Trousers and River Zambezi did and use our direct upload link. They got us an MP3 clip by going to http://hightail.com/u/Succotash and got it right to us, along with this note: “Hey Marc! Thought it was about time we sent in a clip... Just a bit from season 4 episode 1 where River Zambezi and I were discussing the possibility of having a bit of a laugh at a local electrical retailers... all the best :)"   Guys We F****dIt’s hard enough to break through the glut of shows in Soundcastland, more today than ever, so one of these days I have to have Corinne Fisher and Kystyna Hutchinson on the show just so I can ask them why they titled their anti-slut shaming show Guys We Fucked. I mean the title makes sense and all BUT most places that distribute show – like iTunes – won’t let you spell out the word f****d. So while the title is attention-getting, even with the asterisks, it makes it hard to get the word out everywhere. But Corinne and Krystyna have a lot of listeners so maybe it’s working out just fine. This clip is from an episode from the end of March entitled, You Were The Queen of Impossible Crushes, and the ladies answer some listener email. Center City ComedyI’ve been hanging around the San Francisco and Los Angeles comedy scenes for, well, a long time now. I don’t get to the clubs very much these days so there’s a whole wave of comedians out there I don’t really know but one thing I do remember is that there is rarely a better time to be had than when you’re hanging out with a bunch of comics, shooting the shit and busting each other’s balls OR ovaries. Some of that spirit is captured every week on the Center City Comedy soundcast, where a passel of Philly comedy comrades — Derek Gaines, H. Foley, Kevin Ryan, Andrew Schiavone, Chris Cotton, and Dave Temple — who are now part of the New York scene, get together and kick stuff, and each other, around. This snippet that Tyson grabbed us is from their Epi166, with the memorable title “The Fatso, The Drunk, and The Wardrobe”. Human EchoesI know I keep yammering about how many soundcasts are out there with more coming online every week, but I’m amazed we’re still finding shows that have been on for years that we’re just now getting to share. Case in point: the Human Echoes soundcast with Tony Southcotte and Alan Berg. The have more than 200 episodes under their belts, where they toss around commentary on movies, genre fiction and, as they put it, “all things weird and wonderful”. In this chunk, it’s revealed that Tony has finally gotten around to seeing Jaws for the first time. (We also learn that Alan has never seen The Godfather.) So now they finally get a chance to talk about that shark movie. TRUMP Here are the lyrics to Trump, as performed by Not The Presidents Of The USA: Trump sat alone on his flabby arse Knowing his appointment to the Whitehouse was a farce With policies that would sound bananas He filled his cabinet with all his pet piranhas He's Trump, He's Trump, He's Trump He's off his head He's Trump, He's Trump, He's Trump In Putin's bed Trumps orange head ain't blessed with brains And his policies all come across as quite insane He'll stem the terror across the land By keeping guns and making sure that all the muslims are banned He's Trump, He's Trump, He's Trump His hands are small He's Trump, He's Trump, He's Trump He'll build the wall Trump'll take the healthcare you needed so much He'll look you in the eye then grab you buy the crotch He dreams of pissing on Russian sheets Then getting drunk and filling twitter with moronic tweets He's Trump, He's Trump, He's Trump He never thinks He's Trump, He's Trump, He's Trump He'd bomb the chinks Is this Trump out of his head We think so Is this Trump out of his head We think so Is this Trump out of his head We think so Is this Trump out of his head That’s going to do it for epi151. Thanks for listening and supporting comedy podcasts everywhere, and don't forget to pass the Succotash! Goodbye.  

Yes folks - the proverbial bad penny of podcasts is back with a bang! Apart from not knowing what they're doing, it's like they've never been away...ok so they never know what they're doing... This episode can best be described by a phrase that most men wish they could say; "It might be long, but it won't hurt". Ok actually it's more like "It'll be over before you know it". In this funtabulous episode, Dr Norman Trousers attempts a retrospective of 2016 focussing on celebrities who died with little fanfare - which is made harder by the fact that River Zambezi hasn't heard of any of them. Dr Norman just wants a "coffee" and can't do a Russian accent. There's a brief chat about advertising and the boys go off into their own little world after having an idea for "japes" at Currys (a local electrical retailer). There's an attempt to remember children's tv theme tunes that turns into a discussion that goes as well as you'd expect, and a chat about classic films reveals why Norman won't go on a cruise. Norman's given up bread and had a dream about a doughnut (that's donut) that leads to an inevitable question. Talking TV shows turns into a heated discussion about "romance" (well not exactly - but it turns out River's an old romantic at heart.) So sit back, grab a drink and get ready for another slab of mirth and merriment from your favourite idiots.

It's that time of year again folks! Roll up for the biggest, daftest, star-studdedest Casa Mirth podcast Christmas Special ever!   Dr Norman doesn't know how to pronounce David Bowie's name, 2016 has not been a good year to be a celebrity and the boys ponder the immortal question - who would win in a fight between Santa and Jesus? Bonn Voyage pops up for a quick Christmas conversation and Dr Norman and River discuss what happened in the years that they were born.   Alongside this, there's a couple of Christmas music classics played for your listening pleasure on Radio Mirth, a podcast star-studded episode of Celebrity Brainwave and the epic (literally it's massive) Christmas Special radio play.   This year it's the Casa Mirth version of the Bill Murray version of Charles Dickens' classic, A Christmas Carol. Featuring a whole host of podcast heroes, this version is guaranteed to be different to any that you've heard before.   Featuring (in no particular order): Marc Hershon, Tommy Royal, Samantha Pett, Stuart Buckland, Jason McNamara, River Zambezi, Angus Doodall, Paint it Black podcast, Bold and Belligerent, The LoFi Show, Dark Angels and Pretty Freaks, Old Man Orange, Nigel Boydell, Davian Dent, Megan Mohn, What a pair of Trousers, Bonn Voyage, Eric Furniss, The All Seeing Guys with Greg and Joe, Ice and the Face, Ed Wallick and Dr Norman Trousers. (hope we didn't miss anyone!).   So sit back, relax, grab some egg-nog or whatever your favourite Christmas tipple is and settle into Christmas with Casa Mirth.   Merry Christmas!

Just before you go about forgetting these two idiots, the Casa Mirth podcast is back! In this delectable slice of audio pie, Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi are joined by a very thpecial guest - Bonn from the Bonn & Obo Show, also known as Bonn Voyage from Strange Times and HandShandy786 on Tinder. Bonn's raised the game a bit and this episode shows that the hosts can actually be quite intelligent, with some interesting discourse. Sort of. River still loves a pickle, the spectre of self fellatio raises its head again and Facebook gets a brief mention but is stopped before it turns into another rant. Unfortunately River brings up an age-old argument and Dr Norman disagrees (again)- which turns into the kind of car crash you would expect. There's a discussion about toilets unsurprisingly, it all takes a serious turn with a discussion that touches on the threat of terrorism and Dr Norman goes off on one about tribute bands. Apologies to any deaf people who may listen to this episode... Never mind the girth...feel the Mirth!

Here we are again with another episode of your favourite podcast! River Zambezi and Dr Norman Trousers are back for another slice of daft. In this offering, the hosts discuss bad hand writing and chemistry lessons. Dr Norman has written a rhyme like you've never heard before and there's an almost intelligent discussion on the (host's) discovery of masturbation. There's a beautiful apology to a fan and both hosts are quite irritated by the thought of robots having rights. Even agreeing at the start can't avoid another argument, this time about sex dolls of all things! Finally, and almost inevitably, there's talk of a particular nature about...insects. Laughs aplenty in another fine outing from Messrs Trousers and Zambezi - get it in you right now!

Well it's been a long time coming, but your favourite podcast is back! Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi are joined by a very special guest for what is only the second episode of the year (but on the plus side, it's a two parter). There's legal beagles, censored material and ninjas. In part one, there's talk of animal husbandry, Hitler and cheesy balls, as well as the Channel Mirth News. River laughs, the special guest gets really stuck into proceedings and Dr Norman has an existential crisis after he upsets a listener. Also, a special tribute from Angel Barry White and some very rude but very funny chit chat make up the first installment of a well overdue episode - all of which will probably make you glad this isn't more regular... Having so much fun led to a really long episode, so this is part one - part two coming soon!

Social media and booze breaks; very dubious discussions of a sexual nature; new quiz show Celebrity Brainwave and disaster! Join Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi in another bonkers episode of your favourite podcast! It'd be the best if you can spare the time to rate and review the show on iTunes. Check out www.casamirth.com/3-1-rally-the-troops  for more show notes. Follow us on twitter @CasaMirth Enjoy the show!

They're back. Yes, a very drunk Dr Norman Trousers (having had an afternoon of Christmas drinks at work), and the first person to ever attempt to perform a magic trick on an audio-only podcast, River Zambezi.In this festive spectacular, we find that River doesn't like pastrami and Dr Norman's never had a spam fritter. There's an update on (and a song for) Ralph, River's new saying doesn't go down too well and there's a bit of a dark revelation about Finding Nemo.There was a bit of confusion over some of the articles for sale on Firebox, against all scientific evidence Dr Norman argues the toss about how hot a volcano is and both hosts get a little apologetic over the feel for the episode as circumstances meant that the recording session didn't follow "the process".Dr Norman's memory lets us all down and he forgets the name of the lovely person on Twitter who had some very kind words for the show (it was @DJSL22), and is aghast at the literally tons of crap games for kids this Christmas (and mixes up Poopy Fun Time with Poopy head - both are quite ridiculous although one may not even be real).A familiar face (voice?) is back for the Channel Mirth News, there's Film Club, Radio Mirth (with the world premiere of the Christmas song recorded especially for the Casa Mirth podcast, aka Casa Aid) and the highlight of the show, the "special" part of the Christmas Special - the star-studded Casa Mirth version of The Nativity.All this adds up to the best Christmas Special yet!Merry Christmas, one and all!

In yet another episode from the Halley's Comet of podcasting, we join Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi for more daft discussions and comedy gold. (ok white gold admittedly).In this show, an off-the-cuff comment leads to a disturbing discussion regarding sexual preferences (kind of), we find out that Dr Norman doesn't like mushy peas and has been refused booze again.The boys have been to a wedding (and got busted being a bit naughty), there's an elaboration on the tank paintballing story from the last episode and a stark warning on Dr Norman's web browser leads to a very serious and unsavoury news-story about an ex co-worker.We get to hear the award-winning Casa Mirth-produced Balderdash theme tune from the Paint It Black Comics podcast, River refuses to believe a story about a Mexican with a third leg and we find that it's not just Jesus's wang that's worshipped.All this, a new episode of Film Club (with tasty treats!), Redneck and Raunchy, more Radio Mirth and the ever present Channel Mirth News all combine into a great way to waste some time.

They're back! After a bit of a break, Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi bring you another episode of your favourite podcast. A slightly different feel to this one as "the process" was changed for the pre-show prep, so not so many tangents to be found in this one (normal service will resume for 2.5).In this show - Dr Norman is home alone and River doesn't know what a dutch oven is. There's tales of extreme breastfeeding, toilet paper issues on planes, swearwords and "meh" words and horny dead badgers.Norman suggests some charitable initiatives after a tangent discussion about Stephen Hawking's junk, there's a sexually liberated dolphin and it's Competition Time on Radio Mirth.All this, the Channel Mirth News, the reminiscent Frenchman and Angel Barry White add up to another great show for you to enjoy :)

Welcome back to season 2, episode 2 of the show that keeps on coming...just very slowly. From a slightly unexpected start, we join Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi in another mirth-filled slice of your favourite podcast.In this episode - the boys show a lack of knowledge around patron saints, River wasn't impressed with a recent eclipse, there's talk of airplane poo and Dr Norman's been doing some exercise.Talk of the generalisation approach in Psychology leads to a fairly odd outburst regarding monkeys, the miracle of make-up is debated and a conversation following Dr Norman's research into fetishes proves why you wouldn't want to take a bath at River's house.All this and there's the Channel Mirth News, alas without our usual anchors (as we bid farewell to a stalwart of the show), Carl Danger pops up - or should we say "drops in" and we meet a couple of Northern driving instructors for the first time. We also learn that neither host will be tongue-punching anyone's dirtbox in the near future, but for very different reasons.So sit back, relax, and get ready to be entertained and hopefully amused - this one was a blast!

It’s me. Marc Hershon, your host and busboy for Epi107 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. Since this is an edition of Succotash Clips, we have a Easter basket full of comedy podcast clips on hand to unleash on your ears. Many thanks, as always, to our faithful associate producer, Tyson Saner, for grabbing so many of these for us. And also to those of you comedy podcasters who sent in your own clips OR even someone else’s clips — that’s what we got this week, from our friend in the UK, Davian Dent. Davian sent along a pair of clips from shows other than his Strange Times podcast or his Bitter Sound show or his The Blank Planet podcast. Such a show of podcaster generosity has inspired a new feature we kick off in this episode. And we’ve got a jam-packed epi for you, including clips from Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast, Angelos & Barry, The Angry Chimp, Casa Mirth, Dark Angels and Pretty Freaks, Date Speeding, Everyone Has A Podcast, Hypernonsense, The Joe Rogan Experience, The Radio Dan Show, and Who The Eff Is Sal Calanni podcast. In addition we have another visit to the Podcast Graveyard to pay homage to a late, great show, as well as unboxing a double dose of our Burst O’ Durst segment with comedian & social commentator Will Durst (you can also catch Will tweeting @WillDurst!), the Tweetsack, and a new commercial from our friends at Henderson’s Pants, who are sponsoring this edition and promoting their new Money Maker Pants. Man, you’d think with this much show we’d be charging extra but, no, you’re getting all of this great entertainment for free! But that doesn’t mean you have to take advantage of our largess. If you’d like to give a little back, visit our homesite, at http://SuccotashShow.com, and give our Donate button a quick click to throw us a few doubloons. Or while you’re there you can click the Amazon banner at the top of the page to do your online shopping and they’ll kick us back a little piece of the action. OR click on the link to our Succotashery and purch some merch with our keen new Season 2 logo on it! See how many ways you can help to be a part of this show in a very real and financial way? Podcast Graveyard There are thousand upon thousand of podcasts out on the podwaves. Many of them in the past have had trouble sustaining themselves over the long haul. And many that are currently being produced now will eventually be gone. But we’d hate for any podcast to be forgotten, which is why we have open the Podcast Graveyard. This episode, our associate producer Tyson Saner has exhumed Making It With Riki Lindhome, a podcast that seems to have ended without fanfare in December of 2013. Riki is getting a lot of heat as one half of the Garfunkel and Oates comedy team, so maybe that’s what pulled her away from her show on the podwaves. Her last entry was Epi74 and her guest was Mike Farah, the president of production at Funny or Die.   Clips Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal PodcastWe hadn’t visited Gilbert Gottfried and his Amazing Colossal Podcast since it first dropped almost a year ago. But I got a note a couple of weeks ago from friend-of-the-show Shawn Marek over at the Sideshow Network, where Amazing Colossal lives. Shawn’s a big hotshot producer over there and he wanted to let me know that TV wildman and loose cannon Dan Harmon, the creator of Community as well as Adult Swim’s Rick & Morty (as well as host of his own Harmontown podcast) was on Gilbert’s show. Now you get to hear a snippet from that show, courtesy of Mr. Marek, when Dan explains the whole magilla that happened between himself and Chevy Chase. The Joe Rogan ExperienceWe’ve featured The Joe Rogan Experience a few times over the almost three years our show’s been around but not for a while. In this snippet, Joe Rogan's guest Bert Kreischer, a comedian and podcaster in his own right, along with co-host Brian Redban, chatter about comedian Colin Quinn, a type of comedy appears to be replaced, and our memories are likened to a computer’s hard drive. The Radio Dan ShowDan Delgado over at The Radio Dan Show has taken advantage of our instant upload link to shoot a couple of snippets from his podcast over to us. They’re short clips – less than a minute each, so I decided to make you a Radio Dan Sandwich or "danwich". I’ve wrapped both snippets around a tasty chunk of chat that I had with Dan last September in the Podcast Lab where we were both staked out during the 3rd Annual LA Podcast Festival. Date SpeedingSomeone else who took advantage of our Succotash instant upload was Jason Duplissea, who was one-half of the What Duvet Said podcast. (That show’s been on hiatus – Jason says it may get an overhaul and be kicked back into gear again. Hmm. If not, we might find What Duvet Said in the Podcast Graveyard!) Anyway, he’s got a new podcast up and running called Date Speeding hosted by the Reverend Rich Hugh. He says it’s advice for online daters and has a kind of Jack Handey/Deep Thoughts vibe, but with what he calls “a healthy dose of explicit language.” Angelos & BarryIn a world of confusion, media bombardment and mixed messages, it’s good to know the great philosopher's tradition still exists. Much like 70s comedy legends Derek & Clive before them, Angelos & Barry present a truly hysterical meeting of minds. Angelos Epithemiou was previously on cult UK comedy show Shooting Stars and Barry From Watford has graced TV, radio, and even our friend Davian Dent's shows The Bitter Sound and Strange Times. In this clip, the two discuss the possibly apocryphal events surrounding porn legend "King Dong" on a British 70s evening light entertainment show. The Casa Mirth PodcastIn this clip from the first episode of the new and second series of The Casa Mirth Podcast, Dr. Norman Trousers and River Zambezi discuss the differences between woman's swimwear and underwear. Everyone Has A PodcastAnother Tyson grab this week is a clip from Everyone Has A Podcast, with hosts Adam and Byron who, apparently, have no last names. According to their website, the guys are slowly building themselves a recording studio but started out doing their show by recording it into an iPhone. This clip is from their Epi3, entitled “Butt Crunch”. The Angry Chimp ShowOur friends Stu and company down under at The Angry Chimp Show uploaded us a clip from season 2 of their monkeyshines, which has just drawn to a close this week. Stu sent along a note with the clip that reads: “Hi, thought I would submit a clip from the second season of The Angry Chimp Show for your consideration should you be short on clips for upcoming epis. Hope you are well and keep up the good work! Stu” Thanks, Stu! These guys are a lot of fun and know how to work the audio sketch medium. Who The Eff Is Sal Calanni?There’s a podcast we’ve featured a time or two before that’s had a couple of permutations, including being called The Sal & Angelo Show. Now it’s called Who The Eff is Sal Calanni? and features San Francisco comedian Sal Calanni. He recently hit his 200th episode so I thought it was high time to check in, and he’s got a great story in the episode featuring the process he had to go through to audition for a movie that’s being shot in the Bay Area. Hyper NonsenseThis clip has a bit of a mysterious history. It was uploaded directly to us and with the show's information, and that it was from a recent episode of Hyper Nonsense. So I tweeted out a thank you and heard back from one of one of the co-hosts who claims that they never submitted a clip and where did it come from? Who knows, really. The hosts, Shawn Thorpe and his wife, Jen, are podcast vets, having started a podcast in 2005 called The Phantomfeed. Then they moved and launched a new show called Hyper Nonsense in 2006, which ran until 2009. In 2010 they started a new ‘cast called GeminiDragon, which ended in 2012, at which point they kicked off No Market Radio. Shawn wasn’t happy with that concept and so, in 2013, he and Jen decided to breathe new life into Hyper Nonsense and they swear on a stack of websites, that this one is here to stay. Dark Angels and Pretty FreaksI wonder if it’s time for a new adage, something along the lines of “the couple that podcasts together stays together”. There are a LOT of married couples in the podcast game, like our friends Travis and Brandi Clark from Tiny Odd Conversations, or Shawn and Jen from Hypernonsense that we also featured this show. There’s a show out of nearby Napa, California, called Dark Angels and Pretty Freaks, hosted by Annaleis and her husband Neil C. They’ve been really nice about retweeting a lot of our Succotash tweets but this is the first chance we’ve had to feature their show. The tagline on their website states, “Helping to Kill Your Commute”. It’s a conversational-style show with topics ranging all over the place, a lot of it focusing on things they do together. So maybe it’s kind of like real time couples’ therapy or something. I pulled this clip of them talking about a magic show they saw during a recent trip to Reno. That’s going to do it for Succotash Epi107. Thanks to our esteemed associate producer Tyson Saner, our producer/engineer Joe Paulino, and our booth announcer Bill Haywatt. Next time, in Epi108, I will feature my recent interview with comedy writer extraordinaire and podcaster David Feldman, and we’ll also have a Boozin’ with Bill segment, where our announcer will mix up a concoction he calls “The Roman Candle”. In the meantime, please feel free to pass the Succotash! — Marc Hershon

Welcome, welcome, welcome – to Succotash Clips, Epi101, the first episode of Season 2! As previously announced, my plan for Season 2 is to split our usual Succotash offerings – Clips and Chats – into separate shows. And that’s what you have here in the first show of Season 2. Succotash Clips. All clips. No interviews. My goal is to have these shows come in at about or under an hour. And they should be a little easier to produce as well.  Our Associate Producer, Tyson Saner, grabbed up a bunch of comedy podcasts clips. I’ve pulled a few. And so let me give you the rundown of the podcasts we’re sampling this time out: 80’s Reboot Overdrive, Comedy On Vinyl, Getting On, Hello Internet, The Kundalini Files, That Would Be Me and The Big Cat Show. In addition, we’ve got not one but TWO of our Burst O’ Durst segments this show, a classic Henderson’s Pants commercial, and the Tweetsack. IN REVIEW Now that the holiday break is over, I’m back posting podcast reviews. This past week, for This Week In Comedy Podcasts on Splitsider.com and Huffington Post Entertainment, I took a listen to a couple of very funny episodes of The New Hollywood Podcast with Brian Flaherty. On Monday he had a short 15 minute installment with schlocky 70’s film producer Alan Marlowe, followed on Wednesday featuring an interview with Alan McKay, Will Ferrell’s comedic partner in crime. The joke is that Marlowe is a character that McKay started riffing during his interview with Brian, so they went with it and made it a self-contained bit, which Brian then posted as a special episode. Check that out if you can – just follow the links above. (By the way, I also mentioned the Casa Mirth podcast with Dr. Norman Trousers and River Zambezi, and I also pinged the OnBrand podcast, which isn’t a comedy podcast but it’s about branding, which is my main day job, and host Nick Westergaard had my friend Pat Hanlon on as a guest so there.) Oh, and if you didn’t get a chance to catch the Casa Mirth Christmas Spectacular, you should, if only to hear my stirring introduction. THE JOB INTERVIEW Maybe it's because I just started a new job at the beginning of the year, but I found the video sketch The Job Interview, by our friend John Dredge (host of The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show podcast) to be pretty clever. THE CLIPS Getting On with James UrbaniakIf you’re a podcast aficionado, chances are that you’ve heard James Urbaniak appearing as a guest on any number of shows out there, including The Thrilling Adventure Hour and Comedy Bang Bang. He’s a very talented vocal artist as well as and actor and a comedian. And he’s had his own podcast for a while. He doesn’t release them regularly – in fact, since 2012, there seem to only be about 21 episodes out there. Each one features him “navigating the darkly comedic recesses of his troubled yet charming mind,” according to his homesite.   80’s Reboot OverdriveOur Associate Producer Tyson Saner stumbled headfirst into something called the Southgate Media Group. It’s a network of podcasts that got going about a year and a half ago, the brainchild of Rob and Martha Southgate. Almost every show on their lineup – and I counted 24 of them – is dedicated to a TV show. There’s also a show about video games and one potpourri crazy roundup of a show called 80’s Reboot Overdrive. That’s where this clip comes from, and it features host Dave talking to Southgate Media’s heads Rob and Martha Southgate, along with their 7-year-old daughter Molly, who co-hosts THREE of the podcasts with her parents. The Big Cat ShowWe haven’t heard from our old pal Lyonheart for a really long time. He had an internet radio show a couple of years ago, then he shut it down and headed out West for a bit, landing in San Jose to take care of some family stuff. But the West Coast didn’t suit him and he went back East once again, to New York this time with his buddy Matt. Hello InternetTyson tossed us a clip this week from Hello Internet, a show I’m not familiar with. It features hosts CGP Grey and Brady Haran. I’m not sure what’s up with the three initials – the CGP Grey thing – but according to their homesite, the two guys kick around YouTube, life, work, and whatever. Grey’s got several videos on YuTube under the title “Grey Explains” and there’s one on the Lord of The Rings, robots, and other interesting subjects. The Kundalini Files ReduxFriends-of-Succotash Davian Dent and Jason McNamara (also known as Jabs from The Dhead Factor podcast), had done a 6-part detective spoof podcast called The Kundalini Files a couple of years ago. Davian has re-cut and re-mastered those shows and put them altogether into something he calls a feature-length show he calls The Kundalini Files Redux. Comedy On VinylI’m going to assume that, if you’re a listener to Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast, that you’re a fan of both comedy and podcasts. That combo probably can’t get much better than on a show called Comedy On Vinyl. Normally the comedy nerds on the show, headed up by host Jason Klamm, talk about the greatest comedy vinyl albums of all time. Our associate producer Tyson Saner found an intriguing break from that format with their epi119, featuring guest Jimmy Pardo, host of the Never Not Funny podcast, who brought the chat around to the effect that Richard Lewis’ 1985 TV special “I’m In Pain” had on him. That Would Be MeAuthor Geoff Hoff does a lot of self-help books on writing and other topics, including an e-course on how to start your own podcast. He recently started doing a humor podcast himself, called That Would Be Me. Refreshingly, these are pretty short installments, and the subjects are presented in an observational style, which is a nice break from the glut of pop culture casts that seem to be propagating faster than ever. That's the lineup and the skinny for the first show of Succotash, Season 2. Drop me a line at marc@SuccotashShow.com and let me know what you thought of our first Succotash Clips show. Next we’ll have a Succotash Chats edition, so you can compare the two flavors of Succotash. One way you can help us out as we move into Season 2 is to get up to iTunes so you can rate and review us. You’d be amazed what a couple of sentences and 5 stars can do for our rankings. Neither of which costs you a dime. To help us out in a more material way, there’s the Donate button up at http://SuccotashShow.com and we also have t-shirts, mugs and other merch with our brand new Succotash logo up now at the Succotashery. Thanks for listening and be sure to pass the Succotash! — Marc Hershon

People of the internet! People who love podcasts! People with ears! Today we celebrate Mirthday!!That's right - the Casa Mirth podcast is 1 year old! Who would have thought from humble beginnings, sitting on camping chairs and drinking tea, a year later Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi would still be kicking around, persecuting their livers with gallons of booze and standing up during a recording session!It's been an amazing year. The boys have learnt a lot; they've argued a little. They've opened their souls to you, and you've opened your earholes to them...and altogether, we've peed our pants laughing.Here's a special edition of LBOTS - Little Bits on the Side to remind you that the immensely professional image that Messrs Trousers & Zambezi portray on the award-winning (not really) podcast, the Casa Mirth podcast, does sometimes crumble - but then, that's just as hilarious and they're not precious.Also in this special edition, quite a lot of un-heard additional content, an intro/outro from none other than Carl Danger, and some very special birthday, no, Mirthday wishes from some good friends.Special thanks to Bonn & Obo, the Bold & Belligerent podcast and the legends that are Royal & Doodall - the mere presence of whom is so exciting it would make a sandpit wet.

In this all-new episode, Dr Norman Trousers is suffering from the sinus AIDS (he has a cold).After a silky start to the show, Dr Norman tells tales of travel, espionage, guerrilla advertising and the difference in toilet flushing between planes and trains.There's a call to arms for our listeners, a discussion about a japanese sex doll ramps up into a bit of an argument and River Zambezi doesn't like the lucky waving chinese cat in the Casa Mirth studio.Dr Norman ventures past #172 on the telly and is surprised at the preponderance of both urdu and babestation channels, sparking a conversation that descends into an increasingly bizarre and entirely uninformed deliberation of online webcam porn sites.Unexpectedly, Dr Norman has a little rant of his own about people who diss the mediums by which this lovely show is heard, which River gets a little scared by. All this, shout outs to new friends, the ever-present Channel Mirth News, more wandering away from the point (how did we get here?) and a re-enactment of an uninvited "cold call",  make for another hilarious episode of your new favourite podcast!

So here it is folks! Episode 10 of the show that won't just molest your funnybone - it'll buy it a drink first and respect it in the morning.In this milestone edition, a debate around an ultra-orthodox religious act descends into a difference of opinion on self-fellatio. There's a white board (or maybe a wipe board); the premise of how a difference in spelling could distort reality (which does affect old favourites, the Channel Mirth News and Film Club) and there's a new approach to recording.Dr Norman Trousers gets his own theme tune; there's discussions around stunt cocks and dolphin rape and we hear all about River Zambezi's claim to fame.Dr Norman almost gets emasculated by Kathleen Turner, the boys discuss the benefits of reviewing the show on iTunes and we get to find out: who is Carl Danger?

That's right folks - it's another helping of the Casa Mirth podcast's "Little bits on the side". As surprising as this may be to some of you (ok maybe not), now and again there are mistakes in the recording of the show - and here's some for you to laugh at, along with some other bits that haven't made it into a full episode. Introduced by the one and only Angel Barry White, this is a selection of laughs, errors and mild hysteria brought to you by Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi. This should keep your humour hunger satisfied until the next episode of the Casa Mirth podcast - coming soon!

Here it is - episode 6 of the chucklesome car crash that is the Casa Mirth podcast. In this show there's a difference of opinion on what or where is "oriental", talk of farting in public and Dr Norman Trousers can't believe that River Zambezi doesn't know what a "shart" is.We find that River can't do tongue twisters, there's a chocolate-based re-imagining of one of the key scenes in "Scum" and the boys accidentally almost take out one of the podcast universe's brightest, yet darkest stars in the Napalm Pen.Add to that River's rapid rant, more Channel Mirth News and an introduction to the Casa Mirth Film Club, it's business as usual.Oh, and Dr Norman and River briefly discuss religion and consider starting a cult.

Yes they're back - and they've been drinking again.Join Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi for another episode of mirth and madness as they argue about pronunciation, compete over punctuation, talk Twitter and get deja vu. River gets wood, which may or may not be related to the fact that this episode is the fifth. Dr Norman elaborates after finding out what NSFW means, no-one wants to get knocked on the c*ck with a concrete block and Willem Dafoe is apparently a lucky lad.We hear more from the Channel Mirth newsteam and another lucky listener gets to nominate someone for the Napalm Pen. We also get to hear the results from the first Casa Mirth podcast competition, River's new theme tune and in the meantime, suffer from espionage...(do not adjust your sets - that static was put there by spies!!)

This is Episode 82 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast, and I AM your host, Marc Hershon. Terribly sorry for the delay between shows. My wife and I have been in the throes of moving - not far, really only about 10 minutes from where we were living - but you know what moving can be like. Especially for a podcaster - you misplace one box with important equipment in it and it's like your show never existed. Anyway, last episode I had fun with our Associate Producer Tyson Saner co-hosting the show. This time out our special guest is Hal Lublin from The Thrilling Adventure Hour and The David Feldman Show.  We first interviewed Hal last year when he was up for the 12th Annual San Francisco Sketchfest. This year he was up for the 13th edition and we caught up with him again. (During the interivew we had some short unplanned cameo appearances by Ben Blacker, Cole Stratton, and Scott Lifton, but that's what happenes when you set up in the lobby of the hotel Sketchfest was using as their main HQ for this year's event…) In addition to our catch-up session with Hal, we've got some clips and not one but TWO of our Bursts O' Durst with political comedian Will Durst. THE TEN MOST ACTIVE SHOWS IN THE STITCHER TOP 100 COMEDY PODCAST LIST Who moved the most up or down the Stitcher Top 100 Comedy Podcast list this past week? Just listen… AT                                                                       MOVED 22. What About Pod?                                                +732. The Brian & Jill Show                                         -1036. SModcast >> Jay & Silent Bob Get Old                 -1157. The Bryan Callen Show                                       +3464. Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine  +3673. Harmontown                                                       +3281. Where’s My 40 Acres Podcast                                 -890. Three Guys On                                                   +10292. Mr. No Good                                                      +10894. The Craig Shoemaker Show                                +272 Glad to see our old pal Craig Shoemaker vaulting into the top 100! We had him as our Special Guest back in Epi29 – maybe we can rope him into another interview soon. HENDERSON'S PANTS LOGO A few weeks ago, I tweeted that I would like to have folks submit designs for a Henderson's Pants logo, with the idea we might start to sell some t-shirts, open a phony website, who knows? Listener and podcaster Dr. Norman Trousers rose to the challenge and submitted several, one of which appears here:   I love it! Anyone else have an idea, you're going to have to go Doc Trow one better. Plus he and his co-host cut us a special clip from their Casa Mirth podcast for this episode! CLIPS What Say You?As you may know, I’m one of the gang of reviewers that contributes to This Week In Comedy Podcasts up at Splitsider.com every week, along with Zoe Schwab, Pablo Goldstein, Josh Sorokach, Robert Schoon, Scott Reynolds, and Jenny Nelson. This week I reviewed What Say You?, hosted by Brian Quinn and Sal Vulcano. If you watch Impractical Jokers on TruTV, these are two of those guys. And Brian is also part of the Tell ‘Em, Steve-Dave podcast on the SModcast network. What Say You? Is just these two guys – Brian and Sal – talking about whatever comes into their heads. The lastest epsiode has a story about a pair of women’s pants that Sal received via UPS by accident and what he ended up doing about them. It’s, well, not normal… And that’s how it starts. The story get so funny that Brian ends laughing so hard that he actually ends up throwing up. As I concluded on in my review on Splitsider for this show: Podcast Gold. Casa MirthI always appreciate when a podcast wants to send along a clip of their show. Promos I'm not as keen on but one thing that only happened  afew times in the almost three years that I've been doing Succotash is someone taking the time to put together a custom clip. Dr. Normal Trousers and his partner-in-podcasting River Zambezi have done just that. Coupled with the Henderson's Pants logo that Trousers did, Casa Mirth ranks right up there with the best! HMS CodcastAs I just got done writing about, I'm not a big fan of the pre-fab promo but I got one in that's from a pretty original show and put together by a fellow podcast who's recently had some tough breaks, healthwise. Nigel Boydell had been doing a very funny show called Uncle Arthur’s Bollocks as well as a second program, CSI Troutbeck. One of the complications from his health issues was that he had to have 16 teeth removed. Yikes! This has left him with what he calls "a pronounced lisp." But podcasting is what he wanted to do so he ended up WRITING one and engaging podcasters from all over the place to help read the passages from a series of continuing misadventures of a ship’s crew on a voyage to discover the New World. So far he’s got episodes voiced by the likes of the aforementioned Dr Norman Trousers (Casa Mirth), Matt LeRoy (Wicked Radio Network), Matt Brundage (Another Damn Trivia Show) and  Jenny Sorens, wife of podcaster Kat Sorens (Strange Times Show) Salty LanguageOne of our frequent retweeters is the Salty Language podcast with Bryan Stewart, Tony High, and Tate Hayes. These guys  and a gal talk about a lot of stuff and recently they were on about The Beatles big 50th Anniversary on the Ed Sullivan show. Tony isn’t on this clip which our Associate Producer Tyson Saner clipped for us, but you’ll get the idea of the show’s flow. The Bitter SoundA longtime supporter of Succotash is Davian Dent, the host of both The Bitter Sound podcast as well as co-host of The Strange Times podcast. The Bitter Sound is a truly strange and wonderful combination of odd ramblings, ambient music, disturbing soundscapes and visits from a variety of people. In fact, our own announcer Bill Heywatt is slated to be a future guest on the show. Me1 vs Me2I got a recommendation from Andy McHaffie, who tweets as @AndyMcH, to give a listen to Me1 vs Me2 Snooker, which features British comedian Richard Herring in an ongoing series of snooker games played by himself playing with himself. Well, not playing with himself. Playing AGAINST himself, really. And also serving as the commentators and the referees for the games. With a premise that odd, it had better be good. And so it is… Not too many clips this episode but the Hal Lublin interview runs about 50 minutes, so you're still getting a lot of show! Enjoy…and remember to please pass the Succotash! — Marc Hershon

As episode 4 of the Casa Mirth podcast is delayed somewhat, Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi have decided to provide for your listening pleasure, a little bit on the side. As surprising as this may be to some of you (ok maybe not) there are sometimes mistakes in the recording of the show - and here's some for you to laugh at, along with some other bits that haven't made it into a full episode. Undoubtedly, there will be more "Little bits on the side" in the future.

Hold onto your hats! Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi return for Episode 3! In this episode: Dr Norman channels Dustin Hoffman in "Outbreak"; River refuses to agree that Tracey Chapman could have been a man, when our hosts discuss an unfortunate drinking incident in Prague; We discover that Dr Norman has spent far too much time deliberating on the gravity of the situation when a superhero is struck with explosive diarrhoea; Finally we are introduced (for one time only) to a new segment in the show: "Desert Island Dicks", where we find out that River hates Bieber as much as Dr Norman hates Jordan. (not the country or the basketball player).

Join Dr Norman Trousers and River Zambezi for the second episode of the Casa Mirth podcast. Listen as the conversation covers digital nipples, drinking, toilet politics and more. Dr Norman mentally prepares himself for the office Christmas party and tries (and fails) to coin a new phrase. We also get a glimpse of the Channel Mirth newsteam and both Norman and River conclude that "Under the Dome" was a bit rubbish.