During my morning commute lately I’ve been eschewing NPR one day each week and instead listening to Pre-Recorded Late Night, an improvised comedy podcast with “fake” guests. It’s sort of like The Daily Show, except it’s entirely improvisational.

Imagine a typical late night talk show… there’s a desk, a couch, a host and a sidekick. People are invited on to talk about their recent project or accomplishment. We’re doing the same thing, but the guest has no idea who they are until we introduce them. We record a conversation through Skype with different guests, and we all rely on our improv comedy training to make it through to the “goodnight, everybody.” We get separate audio tracks from everybody then mix and edit until the awkward pauses are scientifically adjusted to be just long enough.

You can subscribe with iTunes.

2024-05-14: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.