The 40 Greatest Comedy Podcasts of All Time, Ranked
The canonical ranked list — interview, character, panel, and investigative formats
Comedy podcasting is now roughly seventeen years old as a working medium. Marc Maron's WTF launched September 2009; Scott Aukerman's Comedy Bang! Bang! launched in mid-2009 as Comedy Death-Ray Radio. Everything on this list is either part of the founding generation or a meaningful downstream extension of what that generation established. Our Earwolf page covers the network infrastructure; this list ranks individual shows.
Definition: a comedy podcast is a scripted or loosely-structured audio program whose primary purpose is comedic performance. Included: interview shows, character shows, panel shows, investigative shows. Excluded: comedians appearing on non-comedy podcasts, late-night television clip compilations labeled as "podcasts," and the various talk-radio-adjacent shows that happen to include comedians as guests.
The Top Five
WTF with Marc Maron (2009–Present)
See our Marc Maron profile. The show that substantially invented the long-form comedy-interview format. Canonical episodes: Robin Williams (Ep. 47), Louis C.K. (Ep. 67, with subsequent complications), Todd Hanson (Ep. 189), Barack Obama (Ep. 613). The single most-important comedy podcast that has ever existed.
Comedy Bang! Bang! (2009–Present)
See our Earwolf page. The character-podcast template, invented and sustained over fifteen-plus years. The cumulative fictional universe built across the show's run is one of the largest single sustained character-comedy projects of any medium.
How Did This Get Made? (2010–Present)
The panel-comedy format at its peak and most durable. The format's specific structural simplicity — three comedians unpacking a bad movie each episode — has been imitated hundreds of times and rarely matched. The three-host chemistry is the show's actual subject.
My Brother, My Brother and Me (2010–Present)
Three brothers from West Virginia giving advice solicited from an advice-column format. The specific sustained family-banter chemistry is unmatched in the medium — there is no substitute for the three-brothers dynamic. The show's multi-hundred-episode run has produced a specific cultural universe that listeners return to for its own sake, not just for individual-episode content.
Beautiful/Anonymous (2016–Present)
Gethard takes an hour-long call from a random anonymous caller each episode. The format's specific constraint — the caller can say anything, and Gethard cannot see their face or know in advance who they are — produces consistently surprising and often genuinely moving episodes. One of the medium's most-specific-to-audio formats.
6–15: The Canon
Judge John Hodgman (2010–Present)
Hodgman adjudicates real-life disputes between friends, family members, and partners as "Internet Judge." The format's specific structural conceit — pseudo-courtroom comedy with real-stakes interpersonal disputes — is unique in the medium. Bailiff Jesse Thorn's presence completes the chemistry.
Hollywood Handbook (2014–Present)
Character-comedy at full sustained commitment. Sean and Hayes play fictional versions of themselves as confident, dim-bulb Hollywood insiders; the show never breaks the frame. A test case for whether character-podcasting can sustain a decade without the frame wearing out — it can, and has.
The Adam Buxton Podcast (2015–Present)
Adam Buxton's interview podcast, recorded often in cars or on walks across English countryside. The specific sensibility — warm, detail-specific, refusing the aggressive interview register — is a British counter-offer to the Maron interview tradition. The subject pool leans British (Louis Theroux, Zadie Smith, David Tennant) and the show benefits from it.
U Talkin' U2 to Me? / R U Talkin' R.E.M. RE: Me? (and various sequels, 2014–Present)
The multi-iteration "two comedians allegedly reviewing a rock band's discography" podcast series. The format's specific achievement is to do essentially no actual music discussion across hundreds of hours — the show is entirely about the Aukerman-Scott dynamic, a specific type of decades-deep friendship chemistry that is hard to manufacture.
Lolita Podcast (2020)
See our Jamie Loftus profile. The clearest canonical demonstration of the investigative-comedy-podcast form. Ten hours of sustained research on Nabokov's novel and its cultural life. The format's specific possibilities are substantially what Lolita Podcast demonstrated.
Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend (2018–Present)
Conan O'Brien's interview podcast, the format's most-successful late entrant. The show works because O'Brien has retained the improvisational comedy-host instincts that defined his Late Night era; the conversations find genuine comedic territory with guests who might be more-conventionally interviewed elsewhere.
Hello from the Magic Tavern (2015–Present)
Arnie Niekamp's sustained-fictional-universe podcast. Niekamp plays a Chicago podcaster who fell through a Burger King portal into a fantasy world; each episode is an interview with a fictional character from that world, performed by a rotating cast of improv comedians. The canonical descendant of Comedy Bang! Bang!'s character-podcast template, applied at a more-sustained fictional frame.
Bitch Sesh (2015–2022)
The Real Housewives-discussion podcast that demonstrated how narrow-subject panel-comedy could sustain a decade of episodes. The specific chemistry, the subject-deep knowledge, and the refusal to pretend the material was anything other than what it was are the elements.
Doug Loves Movies (2006–Present)
Doug Benson's movie-trivia-and-comedy format, live-recorded in front of audiences. One of the oldest working comedy podcasts. The format's specific working element — comedian guests playing a trivia game that is secondary to the comedian-on-comedian riffing — has been imitated across the medium.
Reply All (2014–2022)
Technically a technology-and-internet-culture podcast, but consistently comedic in register. Worth including because the specific investigative-comedy sensibility Reply All developed (PJ Vogt, Alex Goldman) influenced the subsequent wave of investigative-comedy-podcast work substantially. The show concluded in 2022 after internal controversies at Gimlet.
16–30: Essential Continuation
SmartLess (2020–Present)
The late-arriving celebrity-interview podcast that demonstrated how much headroom the medium still had for specific-chemistry shows. Each host surprises the other two with the episode's guest. Commercial success is unusual at its scale; critical engagement is more limited.
Fly on the Wall (2022–Present)
Two SNL alumni interviewing other SNL alumni about their SNL years. The show's specific historical archive of the SNL writers'-room-and-cast experience is useful for understanding the institution as primary-source documentation.
Improv4Humans (2011–Present)
Besser's long-form improv podcast, the closest direct continuation of UCB's long-form improv aesthetic into the post-UCB-closure era. Each episode is improvised scenes with rotating guests. For listeners interested in the Del Close-lineage improv tradition, this is the canonical primary-source document.
The Ringer Podcasts (various, 2016–Present)
The Ringer's extensive podcast slate is comedy-adjacent rather than exclusively comedy, but shows like The Rewatchables, The Big Picture, and various sports-comedy crossovers demonstrate how the network's specific voice has built a sustained alternate approach to the comedy-adjacent long-form discussion.
My Favorite Murder (2016–Present)
Comedy-adjacent true-crime podcast. Worth including because the two hosts are genuinely comedians and the show's sustained sensibility is comedic even when the subject is murder. The commercial scale of the show is unusual for a comedy-adjacent podcast; the chemistry is the reason.
Never Not Funny (2006–Present)
One of the very earliest working comedy podcasts. Weekly, subscription-supported, sustained over nearly two decades. Historically important and still running.
The Flop House (2007–Present)
Bad-movie panel format from 2007 — predates How Did This Get Made? by three years. The three-host chemistry is distinct from the HDTGM model; both shows occupy the bad-movie space for different-but-complementary reasons.
Threedom (2018–Present)
Three-host panel show that functions as a showcase for the specific chemistry between three Earwolf-era regulars. The specific value: you cannot manufacture the chemistry the three hosts have, and the show benefits from it.
Monday Morning Podcast (2007–Present)
Bill Burr talking to himself into a microphone, twice a week, for almost twenty years. One of the most-sustained solo-comedy podcasts. Specific to Burr's voice; not influential in the same way the more-widely-imitated shows are, but a genuine long-running specific-voice artifact.
Ghost Church (2022)
See our Jamie Loftus profile. The peak investigative-comedy podcast of the 2020s to date. Nine episodes on American Spiritualism, centered on Cassadaga, Florida.
The Best Show (1999–Present)
Tom Scharpling's long-running call-in show, originally on WFMU radio and now independently distributed as a podcast. Predates the comedy-podcast era entirely. The call-in format with regular caller-characters (John Wurster's various recurring bits) is one of the most specific-to-audio comedy practices ongoing.
Poog (2019–Present)
Two-host wellness-and-aesthetics podcast. The specific cultural register — examining contemporary wellness culture with the same density of thought most podcasts reserve for prestige television — is worth engaging with. See our Novak profile.
Aack Cast (2022)
Loftus on Cathy Guisewite's comic strip Cathy. Underseen; worth finding.
The Bechdel Cast (2016–Present)
The long-running feminist-film-criticism podcast, formerly co-hosted by Jamie Loftus (through 2024) and currently hosted by Caitlin Durante.
How to Talk to People (2020–Present)
Representative entry for the 2020s wave of mid-career-comedian-launches-a-podcast that have become a standard industry pattern. Specific shows rotate in and out of currency.
31–40: The Deeper Canon
The Ricky Gervais Guide to... (2006–2011)
The first genuinely large-audience comedy podcast. The Karl Pilkington dynamic was the show's actual subject. Historically important; not a continuing show but a durable artifact.
The Joe Rogan Experience (2009–Present)
Included for completeness. The show is comedy-adjacent rather than centrally comedy, and its cultural position in 2026 is substantially different from what a comedy list of this type would normally address. A historical-context-only inclusion.
Kreativ Kontrol (2007–Present)
The indie-music-and-comedy interview podcast from Toronto, with a substantial Canadian alt-comedy guest roster across two decades.
You Made It Weird (2011–Present)
Pete Holmes's interview podcast, which has interviewed substantially the whole 2010s American alt-comedy roster at some point. Less-remembered than WTF but generative in its own right.
The Tobolowsky Files (2009–2022)
Character actor Stephen Tobolowsky tells stories from his life. Hundreds of episodes. Not strictly comedy, but the specific register — sustained personal-essay monologue — overlaps significantly with contemporary alt comedy.
My Year in Mensa (2020)
Four-episode Loftus investigation of Mensa membership. Brief and entry-level into the Loftus catalog.
Scriptnotes (2011–Present)
A screenwriting-craft podcast rather than a comedy podcast, but consistently adjacent to comedy-craft conversations. Worth including because the specific craft-discussion register has influenced comedy-podcast culture substantially.
Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) (2024–Present)
Loftus's current ongoing investigative podcast. Each episode a single accidentally-famous person. The ongoing version of the investigative-comedy method.
Who? Weekly (2016–Present)
A celebrity-gossip-comedy podcast about minor celebrities specifically — the "who?" of the title refers to celebrities whose names you might not fully recognize. The specific sensibility is generative; the show has developed a deep listenership over its decade-long run.
Las Culturistas (2016–Present)
Two-host cultural-commentary podcast that has substantially tracked the 2010s-2020s alt-comedy moment. The specific chemistry is the show's subject; both hosts have grown significantly in public visibility across the podcast's run.
What's Not on the List
Brief notes on deliberate omissions.
Louis C.K.'s podcasts. C.K. has maintained various audio projects; they are not on this list for reasons covered in our 2010s decade page.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape and similar "smart people interviewing smart people" podcasts. Substantively interesting, not centrally comedic.
The vast true-crime-with-comedic-framing category. Represented by My Favorite Murder; not exhaustively listed.
NPR comedy-adjacent programming. Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, Ask Me Another, and similar are more radio-tradition than podcast-tradition, and belong to a different lineage.
Stand-up-clip-only podcasts. Various platforms package stand-up clips as podcasts; these are not comedy podcasts in the sense this list assesses.