Episódios

  • LIVE C2E2 Svengoolie and The Sven Squad

    LIVE C2E2 Svengoolie and The Sven Squad
    Mar 30 2026
    The Beasts Of Berwyn joined ne live on stage to discuss their careers and their excellent Saturday night show on METV
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    50 minutos
  • History Of Sketch Comedy Dave Thomas and SCTV

    History Of Sketch Comedy Dave Thomas and SCTV
    Mar 29 2026
    SCTV Head Writer Dave Thomas joined to to discuss writing comedy, his love for Superman and promoting his sci-fi comedy book we wrote with Max Allen Collins
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    1 hora e 23 minutos
  • History Of Radio Sketch Comedy Phil Proctor

    History Of Radio Sketch Comedy Phil Proctor
    Mar 28 2026
    For Part 2 of my conversation on radio sketch comedy, we’re diving deeper with one of the true architects of the form, Phil Proctor from The Firesign Theatre. Long before podcasts made audio storytelling cool again, Firesign was bending minds and blowing up the rules with albums like Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers. Layered, surreal, and way ahead of its time. For anyone like me who grew up obsessed with what you could do with sound, characters, and pure imagination, Phil wasn’t just part of the act,he helped invent the language. In this second round, we go even deeper into the craft, the chaos, and the lasting influence of audio comedy that still echoes today.
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    1 hora e 14 minutos
  • History Of Radio Sketch Comedy THE USUAL SUSPECTS

    History Of Radio Sketch Comedy THE USUAL SUSPECTS
    Mar 27 2026
    Back in my WXRT days, when rock radio still had a little room to get weird, there was one audio ,The Usual Suspects. Their sharp, character-driven sketches didn’t just make me laugh, they lit the fuse for everything I later tried on The Score and even here on Word Balloon. Today, I’m talking with two of the masterminds behind that magic, Barb Wallace and Tom Wolfe, a brilliant writing team whose partnership went from Chicago airwaves to Hollywood success, with credits on shows like Murphy Brown and Welcome to New York, starring Christine Baranski and a young Jim Gaffigan. For me, these two weren’t just funny—they were the blueprint.
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    1 hora e 18 minutos
  • Miss Tessmacher Valerie Perrine RIP

    Miss Tessmacher Valerie Perrine RIP
    Mar 26 2026
    From 2021 Filmmaker Stacey Souther made an incredible documentary about Valerie Perrine , who made us all fall in love with her Superman performance as Lex Luthor's Moll not to mention Lenny, Slaughterhouse Five, WC Fields and Me and more. She was nominated for best actress in the Oscars for Lenny with Dustin Hoffman but then was in the Disco Bomb Can't Stop The Music with The Villiage People.

    I spoke to Stacey about the film and his longtime friendship with Valerie.
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    1 hora e 11 minutos
  • starfleet academy cancelled. why?

    starfleet academy cancelled. why?
    Mar 25 2026
    Ok, I gave Mitch Wayne and Franco the day off while I vent my spleen with the guys from Dork Court John Price a teacher and essayist who's been writing about Star Trek for Years, and Larry Young of Planet AIT LAR and the excellent Astronauts In TRouble series.

    I swear a lot on this episode. I couldn't hold back on my frustrations about Alex Kurtzman Star Trek.
    The confirmation that there will be no more than the 2 already amde seasons of Academy. Good.

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    2 horas e 17 minutos
  • Matthew Rosenberg King Spawn Sci-Fi Epics and More

    Matthew Rosenberg King Spawn Sci-Fi Epics and More
    Mar 24 2026
    1 hora e 32 minutos
  • The Fantastic Four were colonialists ? Dr Stanford carpenter

    The Fantastic Four were colonialists ? Dr Stanford carpenter
    Mar 23 2026
    Today on Word Balloon, we’re diving into one of those conversations that I love—because it’s not just about comics, it’s about how we read comics. My guest is Dr. Stanford Carpenter, cultural anthropologist, comics scholar, and one of the driving forces behind Comicpalooza University, and we get into a really interesting debate about the Fantastic Four.

    Stanford makes the case that the Fantastic Four can be seen as a kind of white colonial metaphor—a reflection of 1960s power structures, exploration narratives, and who gets to define “the unknown.” And honestly? I push back. Because while I absolutely get where that reading comes from, I’ve always seen the FF first and foremost as a family book—messy, emotional, human… and a product of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby trying to tell more grounded, character-driven stories in the middle of the space race.

    So this becomes a really fun, thoughtful back-and-forth about intent versus interpretation…
    about whether these stories reflect colonial thinking, or just the era they were created in…
    and how much meaning we should assign to that when we’re reading them today. It’s smart, it’s respectful, and yeah—we don’t totally agree. And that’s the good stuff.
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    58 minutos