Studio: Caustic Soda
Category: Comedy
What It Is
Three comedians and, usually, a guest host discuss disturbing topics.
Technical Details
Episodes run somewhere between an hour and an hour-and-a-half. A new one drops every week or so. Around the most recent fifty episodes or so can be found on the iTunes page. For the rest of the extensive archive, check out the official website.
What About It
So, this show has a really great premise. These three Canadian comedians take a topic with a lot of really disturbing elements to talk about, like say shipwrecks or torture or abortion, and they talk about it with a guest expert while attempting to be funny. And basically always succeeding. The three hosts are all quite different in personality type and they have great chemistry. They usually talk in a more general way about the subject, then move into historical events tied to the topic, then into a pop culture segment where they talk about movies or books that include the subject in some way. Some of these episodes are just insanely hilarious and often very disturbing as well and also really interesting and surprising in terms of the facts they find out. If you can listen to the episode on lice without feeling like things are crawling on you for the rest of the day, you’re better than I am. All in all, this is one of my favorites. Your mileage may vary depending on how squeamish you are.
4 stars.
Essential If
You can’t get enough of Canadians saying “sorry.”
Avoid Like the Plague If
You have ever been offended by any joke about anything.
Best Entry Point
I want to highlight a couple here. First of all, the show often does episodes focused on particular people or even couples. It’s the Evil Dudes or Dames or Duos From History series. Best one for my money? Well, they had do to a two-parter to cover him. Yup, it’s Stalin; part one & part two. But I think the test for you is going to be their episode on infanticide. Yeah, dead babies. Murder, accident, recent, throughout history, human, animal, all kinds of dead babies. So, yeah, if you’re down to spend an hour or so laughing about dead babies, this is the show for you.