The 25 Best Comedy Podcasts of All Time, Ranked
Seventeen years of garages, improv riffs, bad movies and dream meals, boiled down to the 25 shows that defined the medium.
The best comedy podcast of all time is WTF with Marc Maron, and it is not especially close. Over sixteen years and nearly 1,700 episodes, a struggling comic interviewing his peers in a Los Angeles garage invented the format that now dominates the medium. But comedy podcasting is broader than interviews: improvised character shows, bad-movie panels, investigative series and pure hangouts have all produced masterpieces. These are the 25 we think matter most.
This page is the ranked canon. If you want to understand the different kinds of comedy podcast and how the business works, read our guide to comedy podcasts. If you are new and just want three shows to try, our start-here listening guide is shorter.
How we ranked them
We weighed four things: how funny the show is at its best; how much it influenced what came after; how well it holds up in the archive; and whether it did something only audio can do. Longevity counts, but a brilliant ten-episode series can beat a decade of filler. We only included shows whose primary purpose is comedy, which rules out some excellent comedian-hosted culture and true-crime shows.
The ranking
WTF with Marc Maron
Maron started WTF with producer Brendan McDonald in 2009, when his career had stalled, and recorded most of it in his garage in Highland Park. The interviews were long, nosy and often about Maron's own grudges and anxieties, which turned out to be the point: comedians opened up to someone as messy as they were. The 2010 conversation with Robin Williams, the 2015 visit from President Obama and hundreds of comics talking frankly about addiction, depression and craft made it the oral history of a generation. The show ended in October 2025 with Obama returning as the final guest. See our Marc Maron profile.
Comedy Bang! Bang!
Scott Aukerman's show began as Comedy Death-Ray Radio on a Los Angeles radio station in 2009 and became the template for the character podcast: a celebrity guest chats with Aukerman, then improvisers arrive as absurd characters and the episode spirals. Regulars such as Paul F. Tompkins, Lauren Lapkus and Jason Mantzoukas have built a whole recurring universe. It spun off an IFC television series and the Earwolf network. Our Earwolf and CBB guide covers its history.
The Best Show
Tom Scharpling's call-in show began on the free-form radio station WFMU in New Jersey and continued independently after 2013. The heart of it is the long, scripted-and-improvised calls from Jon Wurster, who plays a gallery of deluded local characters while Scharpling plays the exasperated host. It predates podcasting and invented much of what character podcasts later did.
How Did This Get Made?
Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas watch a terrible movie and try to work out how it happened. The format has been copied endlessly, but the chemistry, Raphael's precision, Mantzoukas's fury and Scheer's glee, has not. The live shows, with audience Q&A and "second opinions" from online reviews, are a highlight.
Hollywood Handbook
Hayes Davenport and Sean Clements play smug, oblivious versions of themselves who believe they are A-list insiders, and they never drop the act. Guests either play along or get gently steamrolled. It is the most committed anti-comedy in podcasting and rewards long-term listening more than any show on this list.
My Brother, My Brother and Me
Justin, Travis and Griffin McElroy answer listener questions and strange Yahoo Answers posts with escalating nonsense. It made the McElroys a podcasting empire (their tabletop show The Adventure Zone followed) and proved that brotherly chemistry could carry a show for over a decade.
The Adam Buxton Podcast
Buxton's "ramble chats" with comedians, musicians, writers and actors, bookended by jingles and walks in the Norfolk countryside. He is the warmest interviewer in the medium, curious rather than probing, and the British answer to WTF.
Off Menu
Ed Gamble and James Acaster invite a guest to their imaginary restaurant and ask for their dream starter, main, side, drink and dessert, with Acaster as a genie waiter. It sounds slight. It is one of the most consistently funny shows ever made, and it became one of the UK's biggest podcasts. See James Acaster.
Beautiful/Anonymous
Chris Gethard takes one anonymous phone call per episode and talks to the stranger for an hour, whatever happens. Some calls are hilarious, some devastating. It is less a comedy show than a show made with a comedian's instincts for listening.
Judge John Hodgman
John Hodgman rules on real disputes between friends and family (chores, inherited furniture, whose turn it is to drive) with Maximum Fun founder Jesse Thorn as bailiff. The fake courtroom gives Hodgman's pompous persona a frame, and the verdicts are often surprisingly wise.
The Ricky Gervais Show
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant mostly asking Karl Pilkington what he thinks about things. It was the first comedy podcast to reach a mass audience, entered the record books for downloads, and was later animated for television. Pilkington's baffled worldview is the reason it lasts.
Lolita Podcast
Jamie Loftus's limited series on Nabokov's novel and the decades of adaptations, marketing and misreading that followed. It is funny, angry and rigorous, and it showed that a comedian could make a narrative investigative series without draining the jokes out. Ghost Church (2022), about American Spiritualism, and Aack Cast, about the comic strip Cathy, are her other essentials. See Jamie Loftus.
Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend
The late-night host found, in a podcast, the looseness network TV never gave him. The guest interviews are good; the riffs with his assistant Sona Movsesian and producer Matt Gourley are often better. It is the best case for a famous comedian moving into audio.
Hello from the Magic Tavern
Arnie Niekamp fell through a portal behind a Burger King into a fantasy land and now hosts a podcast from a tavern there, with a wizard and a shapeshifter as co-hosts. Chicago improvisers play every guest. It is a fully improvised sitcom with a continuous storyline, the purest example of audio fiction built from improv.
Doughboys
Mike Mitchell and Nick Wiger review chain restaurants, ostensibly. In practice it is a show about two friends with completely incompatible personalities, and Mitchell's chaotic energy against Wiger's precise food knowledge is one of the great double acts in the medium.
Never Not Funny
Jimmy Pardo's conversation show was among the first comedy podcasts and one of the first to ask listeners to pay for a subscription, years before Patreon made that normal. Pardo's speed and gift for tangents make it a masterclass in how to be a good host.
Threedom
Scott Aukerman, Lauren Lapkus and Paul F. Tompkins, three of Comedy Bang! Bang!'s best performers, just hang out, with no guests and no format. It is the purest distillation of what the Earwolf generation sounds like when it relaxes. See Paul F. Tompkins.
The Dollop
Dave Anthony reads a story from history to Gareth Reynolds, who doesn't know the topic in advance. Their incredulous back-and-forth turns obscure and appalling episodes of American history into comedy, and spawned dozens of imitators.
Blank Check with Griffin & David
Griffin Newman and film critic David Sims work through the filmographies of directors whose early hits gave them a "blank check." It is the best of the movie-comedy podcasts, equal parts riff and real criticism.
Poog
Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak discuss wellness culture, face creams and spiritual consumerism with dense, self-aware, gleefully overthought riffing. Two of the sharpest stand-ups of their generation, at full speed. See Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak.
Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast
Live interviews in front of an audience, ending with Herring's absurd "emergency questions." Herring is a veteran of the 1990s British alt scene, and his catalogue of guests now amounts to an archive of British comedy.
U Talkin' U2 to Me?
Scott Aukerman and Adam Scott set out to analyse U2's discography and almost never do. The show (and its R.E.M., Talking Heads and other spinoffs under new titles) is a long study in two friends deliberately derailing each other.
Superego
Matt Gourley, Jeremy Carter and Mark McConville's sketch show presents its characters as psychological "case studies." One of the earliest comedy podcasts and still the best example of densely edited audio sketch comedy.
Las Culturistas
Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang talk pop culture with the intensity of critics and the energy of a sleepover, and the show has grown alongside Yang's SNL career. Its "I Don't Think So, Honey" segment, a timed rant, is a format others now borrow. See Bowen Yang.
Harmontown
Dan Harmon's live show, recorded in a Los Angeles comic shop, mixing drunken monologues, audience members and a Dungeons & Dragons game. It was uneven and often uncomfortable, but nothing else captured a creator's mind so openly. A documentary about its live tour came out in 2014.
Honourable mentions
- Stop Podcasting Yourself (2008–): Vancouver comics Graham Clark and Dave Shumka. The friendliest hangout show going.
- Improv4Humans (2011–): UCB co-founder Matt Besser's improvised scenes inspired by listener stories and topics.
- Spontaneanation: Paul F. Tompkins interviews a guest, then improvisers build scenes in a location chosen by that guest.
- The Bugle (2007–): satirical news, started by John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman and continued by Zaltzman.
- Doug Loves Movies and The Flop House: two of the oldest movie-comedy shows.
- You Made It Weird (2011–): Pete Holmes's long, searching interviews about comedy, sex and God.
- The Comedian's Comedian: Stuart Goldsmith's craft interviews with working stand-ups.
What's not on the list, and why
The Joe Rogan Experience is probably the most listened-to podcast ever hosted by a comedian, and its influence on the medium's business is enormous. But it is a general interview show, not a comedy show, so it doesn't belong in this ranking. The same goes for SmartLess, a hugely popular celebrity-chat show that rarely aims for anything stranger. Kill Tony is a live stand-up competition first and a podcast second; it is a phenomenon, but it belongs in a conversation about stand-up and roast culture rather than audio comedy.
Where comedy podcasting is now
The medium has changed since its garage era. Video is now central, with many shows filmed for YouTube first. Networks have been bought and merged; Earwolf became part of SiriusXM, and Conan O'Brien's Team Coco followed. Listener-funded models through Patreon and Maximum Fun's annual pledge drives keep many smaller shows independent. And the end of WTF in 2025 closed the founding chapter. For how all that works, and what kinds of shows exist, see our comedy podcasts guide. If you want to make one, start with how to start a comedy podcast.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best comedy podcast of all time?
Our pick is WTF with Marc Maron, which ran from 2009 to 2025 and turned the long-form comedian interview into the medium's defining format. Comedy Bang! Bang! is the strongest pure comedy show and a close second.
Is WTF with Marc Maron still going?
No. Maron and producer Brendan McDonald announced in June 2025 that the show would end, and the final episode, with Barack Obama as guest, was released in October 2025. The archive is still available.
What was the first comedy podcast?
Comedians were podcasting by the mid-2000s. Ricky Gervais's show for The Guardian (2005-2006) was the first huge hit, and Never Not Funny, Doug Loves Movies and Superego all launched around 2006. The Best Show is older but began as a radio show on WFMU in 2000.
Which comedy podcast should I start with?
If you like stand-up and long conversations, start with WTF or The Adam Buxton Podcast. If you like improv and silliness, try Comedy Bang! Bang! If you want something easy and food-based, Off Menu. Our start-here guide at /podcast has a fuller path.