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Seth Romatelli: It's about being alive right now, about living in America right now, and wondering what the fuck is going on. We lay out all the things we notice that have happened in the week and are like "Is everything gonna be OK?" It's about what's going on with tech, the internet, social media, communication, personal lives, love, kids, aging.
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I would say our place is nonexistent.Jonathan Larroquette: We don't communicate much with that world.Despite being under the category of comedy on iTunes?
Romatelli: We run a comedy podcast on iTunes but are not really a part of that community. Not having guests, the biggest hurdle is that our listeners only hear our voices every week. There's no celebrity or comedian crossover. Also, we're not stand-ups, so comedy is not a world that we inhabit in a social way.Larroquette: The majority of the shows in the comedy podcast community have allegiances with other shows. They interview one another. Another difference is that our show started as a podcast. We decided, like dummies, to be like, "Let's start a podcast." For most other podcasters, it's some annex to whatever else they do.I mean, it was brave…
Larroquette: Nobody was listening in the beginning. So it was a safe place to figure out how to be funny.Romatelli: We're super lucky that we have the best moms and that they love us, because they were the only two people who listened. And then there was Serial. And now Marc Maron's interviewing the president! Like, what the fuck happened? Are you kidding me? I was in that garage once!Serial changed everything. Did you guys find your listenership grew after that?
Larroquette: No. We have grown, and we continue to grow. I don't know if we benefitted from all the stuff that's come in from the top. We were already there, and people continue to find us in their own weird, organic way.
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Larroquette: But being funny isn't easy. We don't think that what we do is easy. Seth does a lot of research and makes sure that there's a phenomenal amount of information that, for most of our listeners, I don't think that they would otherwise come across, even if they're an internet-savvy person. On top of it, hopefully, our spin is funnier and more relaxed and cooler than all the other people who are chiming in about shit.What's your recording set-up like?
Romatelli: It's just in my living room.Larroquette: No headsets, no boom mics.Romatelli: The president can't come. He can't sit on my shitty couch, because there's a hole in it from me watching TV. Like where's the president gonna sit? I'd have to go buy…Larroquette: A president couch.Romatelli: Yeah, a president chair.Why do you think that people like you?
Larroquette: I think it's a combination: I don't think anyone would be able to deal with one of us on our own. Together, there's something about us that you can trust in. If we're on a point and egging each other on, we remain, in essence, in agreement. Most other duos have some sort of ball-busty dynamic, where it's like "I'm gonna fuck with you!" We don't do that. We are different people. We have different ideas about things. But we feel very similarly about quite a few things. Not to talk shit…
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Romatelli: Maybe we should be talking more shit! We need some Twitter beefs. Then maybe someone would know who we were, and we wouldn't just be sitting in my living room.What's your relationship with fame like? Do you consider yourselves famous? Larroquette: My dad's famous. So that's my relationship.Is that your peripheral experience then? Do you consider your fame in comparison to your dad's?
Not in comparison. I just think that I have an idea of what it is to be famous. Famous is when people recognize you, and they don't know who you are. They would know my dad was on television and not know what show he was on or what his name was, but they would still ask to take a picture with him and sign an autograph.Do fans ever recognize you?
Romatelli: Yes. It's different, though, because they're recognizing us on a deeper level. Talking to our fans is different than me seeing somebody who's a tertiary character on a CW show. What's your relationship? They go to a set on a TV show. This is our whole fucking life.Is it important to you to be famous?
Oh God, no! What's important to me is that when you do something, you hope that people respond positively to it. The more people that do that, the better.So, your fans mean a lot to you then.
Larroquette: Every time we do meet-and-greets, people tell us the craziest shit, amazing things.Romatelli: Some things are deeply personal, and some are very funny. They've given you their time, their energy, their mind. And you wanna squeeze them and say thank you. It's the ultimate. You put everything into something that means the world to you, and when people like it, it's treasured. Who gets to do that? That's rare.
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Larroquette: I was so nervous [at the Toronto live show]. I was shaking. I don't know what happened. I was all ready to go, and then we got out there, and my leg started going, and I got scared. Seth reminded me that if we were doing it at home, I would be taking a piss and then smoking a joint through the window, and then we would sit down and do two episodes back-to-back, because we've been doing that lately, and then you go home. That's it. It would be so easy and second nature. But because these motherfuckers are sitting there, waiting, you're just like "Ahhh!"
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Romatelli: Our first idea was to charge people a little bit per show. But we've built this relationship with them, and now we're gonna ask them for money? That's tacky.Larroquette: It's tacky, and also you can't give somebody something for free forever and then take it back and ask for money after five or ten years. We wanted to figure out how to make it so that nothing changes.Romatelli: This went on for like three or four years. We still loved making the show, but we weren't getting any younger. We talked to a lot of different networks.Larroquette: We also talked about going subscription-only, completely offline, where we would email you the show if you wanted it. But if we did that, we knew that we risked completely fading out, having our ranking fall on iTunes, which is the only way that anyone's ever found us, just by being in the Top 50 [of comedy podcasts]. I don't think we've made it easy on ourselves. But that was for the sake of the show staying good and the same. The same is a trip, though. The same drives you insane after a while.
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Larroquette: It's still fun. I still laugh my ass off.Romatelli: It's still the best hour of my week. I look forward to him coming over.Larroquette: Sometimes, I'm coming up with excuses to cancel, but within ten minutes of being at Seth's place, it's all gone. It's still the best thing that I can do for myself. It's truly one of the only things that I've done for this long and this consistently in my whole life.I mean, I think you're good role models. You're realistic role models.
Romatelli: We're doing this thing, and hopefully people listen, and it's about finding people who are fans, who enjoy it. It has nothing to do with fame or being fanatical. They're like, "I like this. It makes me laugh." That's nice! Talking about it seems inherently obscene.Larroquette: I mean, we have to move into some other realm at some point.Romatelli: But it's also just one of those "take it day-by-day" things. Hopefully we'll do another episode, and then we'll see how many times we can keep doing that. That's all we've been doing. And now we've been doing it for almost ten and a half years.Follow Jess Carroll on Twitter