FREE THE SHOW

Free the Show comes back to bring peace to an ailing world, and maybe even save us all. Like a shot of healing balm straight to the heart of the virus, Will and Jimmy fire up the old phone call machine and force some dear friends of the show to talk. We check in with Eric and Gabrielle and Sage and Sh*wn M*sgrave and Lea and Karl, and of course harass the Church of Scientology, the one place you're ethically allowed to prank call right now. Stay safe, stay warm.

Listen to Episode 221

In the late 90s, through most of the AUGHTS, most people who liked movies had a DVD collection, and probably lots of them who were young and didn’t own large pieces of furniture in which to house them kept their DVDs or CDs even in portable binders. These binders, like time capsules created and buried by school children, can now be unearthed and our tastes from decades ago can be examined and nostalgia can be felt. Will, cohost of Free the Show, has found his binder from high school, and we can now all collectively take a trip to the land of teenage boyhood. Would these movies hold up now? How many Kevin Smith movies does Will own? How high does Jimmy rank Fight Club in the echelon of cinema? Find out on the season 2 finale of Free the Show.

Listen to Episode 220

Free the Show’s bleeding edge content rarely feels repetitive; when it does, it’s because the creators are bored and have no original ideas, so they just repeat the most tepid bits of all in what critics might call “anti-humour,” were any British comedy writers to review the show. This week, the third iteration of hosts Will and Jimmy playing 20 Questions with each other, in which tables turn.

Listen to Episode 219

Being a young comedian with no real direction or representation in 2019 is a long, lonely road. There’s never really enough stimulation from successes, or validation through seeing a project do well, and when there is, it’s after a seemingly inordinate amount of time and hard work. So where should Will and Jimmy turn to get their immediate kicks in this hyper-modern entertainment age we live in? That’s right, it’s Jack’s own bloated Frankenbeast Twitter. We write some tweets.

Listen to Episode 218

Will and Jimmy are New Yorkers through-and-through. They get by on tomato sauce and pepperoni - subsist on melted mozzarella - their veins course with olive oil - they have pizza faces with all their acne. So it’s only natural to finally, FIIINNNAAALLLLLYYY, bring out their NYC pizza rankings for all to enjoy. This is it: the definitive list.

Listen to Episode 217

With Valentine’s Day rapidly approaching, Jimmy and Will decided it would be sweet and precious of them to call a bunch of Hallmark stores and talk to their sweeties about cards. They were so good this year and were such sweet boys that their reward is to talk to nice (mostly) ladies on the phone about why Mickey Mouse can’t fuck, like, Goofy or even Luke Skywalker or somebody on a Hallmark card instead of Minnie. What a wonderful treat, what a beautiful time of year, and what a sweet adventure we’re all having.

Listen to Episode 216

Refrigerator Magazine was founded in 1949 by a refrigeration enthusiast and his wife, Donna. As America’s (but not the world’s) leading refrigeration-focused periodical. Generational changes brought steady evolution to the magazine, including a name change to the simpler “Fridge Mag,” but the soul of the company was as bright as the interior bulb on a brand-new LG refrigerator. Now today, facing the hardships any small print publication must battle with in 2019, Fridge Mag staff holds a meeting unlike any in the company’s history.

Listen to Episode 215

Tone of voice. It’s a wily little thing, isn’t it? Think about it. Take the phrase “My dentist loves doing ecstacy,” for example. Here’s one way it could be read: “My DENTIST loves doing ecstacy.” But now imagine it this way: “My dentist loves DOING ecstacy.” Uh...what’s he doing with that ecstasy exactly? Is my dentist making love to it? Hard to say! Anyway, Will and Jimmy dive back into their old tweets, and try to give them a second chance at acclaim by reading them out loud, putting that on video, and tweeting the video out.

Listen to Episode 214

Folks, it’s January 17th, 2019, so you know what that means: it’s time to talk about 2018 year end lists! Listeners, we’re talking Billboard, we’re talking New York Times, we’re talking Obama, and Spotify. We want to know what everybody was talking about, what everybody was reading, what everybody was watching and listening to in the year of our LORD two thousand and eighteen. Mostly we just shrug about media we didn’t consume to be honest.

Listen to Episode 213

Time again, time again for all Christianfolk to gather round the decorated pine tree, chug a glass of milk, pound some cookies, and watch one of the dozen or so holiday-appropriate classic movies. This week, Will and Jimmy watch the all-time greatest xmas movie It’s A Wonderful Life to see if it’s good or not.

Listen to Episode 212

In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped the island of Elba, where he was exiled, and marched through France toward Paris, slowly but inexorably gaining soldiers and supporters with each passing day. Though his most powerful royalist enemies doubted him, even threatened him, they all eventually joined him as he walked through the capital. In August of 2018, Karl Rudeen finally broke the wills of the hosts of Free the Show, and was also banned to a small island to think about what he did. But slowly, inexorably, he marched back to Brooklyn, an army at his back as he crossed the bridge to land in Brooklyn Heights, turning generals to his cause on Tillary Street, marching then down Myrtle Avenue, until he reached Clinton Hill, and there reclaimed his seat in the studio of Free the Show.

Listen to Episode 211

It’s the drug craze that’s tearing through the nation like a pot-addled teen opening a baggie of kind. Will and Jimmy decided to see what the fuss behind CBD is about. It turns out it’s the non-psychoactive component of cannabis that promotes tension and pain reduction. The boys settle in for a very calm round of the Leonard Maltin Game.

Listen to Episode 210

Will and Jimmy are personal assistants to some of the biggest male stars over forty, don’t you know? We call some restaurants and try to get reservations for tonight for some of our clients like Laurence Fishburne, William Shatner, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. We want to get these old boys a little peace and quiet and some fondue on a Sunday night, is that a crime in 2018?

Listen to Episode 209

Hospital waiting rooms are among the most stressful places to pass time on this god-damned planet Earth. No one wants to be there. Everyone hurts, in big or small ways. But when two men, fated to cross paths in a Fargo-season-one kinda way, meet and swap stories in this particular waiting room… well let’s just say it’s a podcast episode we’re not even sure we can bring you without getting in trouble with the police.

Listen to Episode 208

The premise for this episode is that Will, one of the hosts of Free the Show, is in the closet for the whole episode. Not figuratively, it’s not some dumb joke. There is a closet right next to where Will and Jimmy record, and Will went inside of it and they recorded the podcast like that. Once again, after 200-plus episodes, the boundaries for sonic entertainment are still being pushed.

Listen to Episode 207

Once again, it is late October, and on Free the Show, we’re pretty keen on celebrating the holidays, no matter how trite and tired certain tropes might be. To wit - everyone knows what happens on Halloween, and yet here we are again bonding over an open fire, singing carols and exchanging gifts with loved ones, and it always manages to feel fresh and pure once again. Maybe it’s that untouched blanket of snow on the ground that purges any impurities away from our rotten souls. Merry Halloween, listeners, and to all a good night.

Listen to Episode 206

As you know, Free the Show could not bring you the kind of groundbreaking and innovative content we do without the support of listeners like you. As we simply must once every year, we are taking this week off our normal content to spend an hour with you talking about why we need money from you. Give us any kind of money. Big money, small money, green money, gold money, funny money, dirty money, blood money, piss money, shit money, fart money, et cetera. We’d just like you to give us money is all.

Listen to Episode 205