Hound Tall is one of my favorite podcasts, even if it can be hit or miss, I listen excitedly to every episode. The idea is an expert is there to discuss a topic and Moshe Kasher interviews them while three comedian guests do everything they can to get attention and create laughs. At its best it is an entertaining show where you learn a little and get a lot of laughs. At its worst it is a bunch of comedians completely derailing an otherwise intelligent conversation with dick jokes. When I found out the topic for this episode was the rise of electronic music and Rave culture I was pretty worried. Seemed like there might be a lot of opportunity for dick jokes there.
What I didn’t know beforehand was that Moshe Kasher’s expert for this episode, Sunshine Jones, would turn out to be a brilliant and enthralling man. It was definitely the best episode of the podcast I ever heard, and I am not just saying that because I was there. The episode has not come out yet, but make sure to listen to it when it does. If you don’t want to use iTunes like a normal person, or your favorite podcast app, you can find it here at the Nerdist site.
The main thing you miss by not seeing it live is Moshe Kasher opening the show with some standup and a lot of crowd work. He did a great job warming us up and there were some funny unique moments. Then show took its usual format opening with a fun song performed live by Drennon Davis and his musical partner Nick Stargu, then Davis did an electronic version of the theme song and was invited to join the panel.
Our expert Sunshine Jones was introduced first, then our comedians came out: Ari Shaffir, Chris Cubas and Phoebe Robinson. Like I said before, Sunshine Jones was a completely enthralling force of a person and it was fun to watch the panel, especially Shaffir, sit with a look of rapt attention on their face listening to this person wax poetic about the history of electronic music while being led by well informed questions from Kasher. Chris Cubas did the best job interrupting with jokes and actual questions. It was nice and his parts seemed to add to the conversation instead of distracting from it. As the conversation went on there were more and more interruptions as the comedians seemed to become more comfortable and curious about the topic. The only one who ended up keeping really quiet was Drennon Davis, which seemed strange since I would think he was the most musical one of the group.
I really can’t say enough how nice it was to listen to. All my notes from the show are just quotes of the insightful and interesting things Sunshine Jones had to say. All the things he said that really meant something to me. Instead of listing them out like I am tempted to I will leave you curious so you can listen to the podcast yourself and pick out your own favorites. Then tell me how it changed your life too.
You’re welcome.
