One of my favorite podcasts is The Rad Dudecast, a small-time podcast out of New York that I had accidentally stumbled upon in college. The show is hosted by Greg Stone, Anthony DeVito, and Brendan Eyre, and their show is disorganized and raw. A fair portion always seems to be Brendan yelling at the other two for not focusing. I was used to podcasts with producers, studios, and technicians who would edit down the shows. With these three, each weekly episode came completely genuine and untouched, recorded themselves with finicky Radio Shack microphones in the apartment shared by Greg and Anthony in Astoria.
It became a breath of fresh air for me, a lovely break between the other content-driven, celebrity-hosted, over-produced podcasts that I’d gotten used to. I went back to start at episode one and experience firsthand where they started how they’ve evolved. I learned that in this case, as in most cases, The Rad Dudecast is again unique in that their first is scarcely different than their 50th. Same squabbles, same shoddy equipment, same weird and loveable dudes.
Each week, one of the three was responsible for making up a game to play on the show. Unless it was Brendan’s turn, the games were always fumbled together on the spot. For example, one week when it was Anthony’s turn, they played a game he created called Weather or Not, which is exactly what it sounds like.
“Hurricanes!”
“Weather.”
“Cars!”
“Not weather.”
“Rain!”
“Weather.”
“Clouds”
[pause] “...not weather?”
I loved their offbeat humor and my favorite snips from their episodes began to make it onto my weekly comedy radio show. Most of their episodes were just tangential conversations that ebbed and flowed between the three of them, but one of my favorites was a live recording of a game of Monopoly. The game pretty quickly devolved into Greg using a huge action figure as a piece and stomping up and down the board. The arc of the game, actually, wasn’t terribly different than what happened when my brothers and I played Monopoly as kids. Other episodes include things such a reading of the screenplay to Forrest Gump or guest appearances from Bernie Mac, back from the grave. The latter of which was an episode when Greg was mysteriously absent whenever Bernie Mac was around.
On one of their earlier episodes, Greg gave out his cell phone number. Most comedians I listen to are uncomfortable even disclosing what suburb of LA they live in. A part of me couldn’t accept that they would be so careless. So I called.
When I had a passing moment of courage, I dialed the number that I had scribbled down while listening earlier that day. I didn’t completely know what I was doing, but when the voice that I had become so familiar with answered, I was instantly shot into reality. And just as instantly, I hung up. I throw my phone down on the seat next to me and stared at it. I had almost caught my breath when it started to ring.
“Hello?”
“Hi, did you just call me?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn’t have, I didn’t think it would actually be you.”
I spoke to Greg on the phone for about thirty seconds. As I could have guessed, he had no memory of ever sharing his actual number on the show.
The next night, I was sitting in a diner with my friend Hailey. It was a Sunday night and we were both lingering at our table, putting off going home and getting started on the week’s assignments. When we were readying to leaving, I looked at my phone to check the time and I saw that I had two missed calls from Greg’s number. I began to tell Hailey what had happened. She couldn’t believe that I had called the number in the first place and considered my action incredibly brash. She wasn’t wrong. But as I was telling her what had happened, my phone started to buzz again, I tensed up and quickly dashed out of the loud diner to answer.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Hey, Katie! This is the Rad DudeCast, you’re on the air!”
“Oh goodness. Hi! Hello everyone haha.”
They were all talking at once, clearly surprised that I had picked up this time.
“Katie you’re on the cast-” Anthony started.
“Hey Katie-- do you want to be our new weather-woman?” asked Greg.
“Your weather-woman?” I laughed and told them it was snowing. I was in upstate New York in February-- it was always snowing. They went on to ask me all sorts of questions, how I heard about the show, where I’m from, what I study, if I’m single, etc.
“Is it okay if we put this on the podcast?” Brendan asked. “I hope you say yes because we don’t know how to edit…”
“I figured you didn’t know how when you let Greg’s number get out there.” I laughed.
“I don’t mind!” said Greg. “What am I gonna do, you know? If people call me that’s cool, I’ll just answer and talk to them.”
I spoke and laughed with them for the next few minutes, and afterward I immediately called my best friend, followed by my mother, who was now convinced I was famous.
This started a trend of them calling me each Sunday night when they were recording the week’s show. We would talk and laugh together, and they would have me do the weather report. And because it was winter in Hamilton, each week I got to say-
“It’s snowing.”
“It’s snowing again.”
“It’s still snowing, guys.”
We became friends and we would talk periodically about my comedy radio show, and the possibilities of hiring them to come up and do a stand-up show at my college. A few months later I was in New York City for the summer. I was technically in the city taking summer writing classes at NYU, but I was determined to spend all my free time going to stand-up shows and interviewing as many comedians as I could. I knew that these three had to be my first interviews, and they graciously agreed.
As I could have guessed, Brendan was 20 minutes early, Anthony was on time, and Greg was 45 minutes late-- exactly in keeping with their personalities as I had come to know them through the podcast. Once the interview began, I quickly realized that trying to keep three comedians on topic proved much harder than I anticipated. The combination of the easily distractible comedians and my nervous energy kept the interview from ever going somewhere too poignant. It was strange to hear the same voices I was used to hearing through my headphones, now matched with bodies, faces, and mannerisms. It took me back to that first time with Demetri Martin when it dawned on me that comedians were still real people.
Throughout the two hours I spend with them, I was often doing my best to continue steering the conversation back to stand-up.
“No, it’s fine,” I would laugh, “I just wanted to finish...”
“I thought you’d be a lot uglier.” Greg joked.
“Oh really?” I snorted.
“You’re a very pretty woman,” said Brendan.
“Why did I turn this into that? I have a girlfriend. He’s open, though...” Greg pointed to Brendan.
“You don’t want that,” Anthony said, and we all laughed.
“Katie, what were you saying? You said that thing about the lifestyle, and then uh, I don’t know what happened.”
I have their attention for another few minutes, and we discuss the lifestyle of the working road comic.
“I like your nails, by the way,” Brendan tells me.
“I like your eyes.” Says Greg.
“I like your ... body. You’ve got a great body.” Anthony adds, not to be left out.
Despite these distractions, I was still able to get some really interesting sound-bits. We talked a lot about the weird combination of high self-image and low self-esteem that always seems present in modern comedians.
“The people that are hard on themselves and demand a lot of themselves tend to be more successful, I think. I think that’s really just life.” Brendan said.
“I mean I hope that’s the case,” Anthony added. “Jesus Christ.”
“Anthony’s so hard on himself. He gets really upset after a bad set.”
“Even my last set. My last set was good, you know what I mean? But it wasn’t great… It has stuff to do with ego, too. It’s this crazy belief, it’s not so much belief, but it’s like ‘Well, this is the greatest joke in the world. And if you don’t treat it as such, I don’t know what’s happening.’”
After about two hours of talking, the interview had to end because Anthony had a fifteen-minute spot at a show at UCB East. I went with him to watch, and seeing Anthony perform I felt a strange sense of pride as I watched him do the very thing I heard him gush about for the previous two hours. I had loved comedy from afar for years, but after sitting down with these men and being brought into their world I felt like I was seeing it all from the inside out, and I had no intention of ever being on the outside again.
I used this newfound perspective and courage to continue interviewing comedians and inching my way into their world. In those early interviews, I said as I was writing a book as a way to gain access to their minds, not unlike pretending to be a reporter for the school paper in high school. However, once I gained access and my love and curiosity continued to grow, I realized that my lie was slowing becoming the truth. I knew that I had to write the book.
I’m not a regular on their show as a weather girl anymore, but I hear myself coming up in conversation every few weeks. At one point their audio equipment failed, and I helped support them purchase a new recorder. Two summers after I sat down with them, I was back in New York interning at Stand Up NY, a terrible but charming club in the city. I saw the boys now and then at the club when they would come by for shows. One day that summer I was listening to their podcast on my commute home when I heard my name.
“How about Katie?” I heard Anthony ask. “She sent us this thing and now she’s the intern at Stand Up NY.”
“Yeah, we really made her career.” Said Greg, laughing. “We did! I’m gonna take full credit for it.”
“She’s gonna be something, she keeps climbing the ladder like this.”
“She already forgot about us.”
“Really?” Asked Brendan. “No…”
I have by no means forgotten them, and I never will. I am eternally grateful for these three men for taking the time to meet with a random 20-year-old fan who wanted to learn more about stand-up. They will always be three of favorites and when they make it big, I also take full responsibility.