How podcasting’s ‘first family’ can help you find your voice

There are a lot of entry points to the McElroy brothers universe; almost as many as there are to the Marvel equivalent. Maybe you’ve heard the chart-topping podcast these three lovable goofballs started in 2010, My Brother, My Brother and Me. (The formula: Justin, Travis, and Griffin try to answer offbeat requests from Yahoo Answers, or from listeners, succeeding only in cracking each other up). Maybe you jumped aboard on the advice of a fanboy named Lin-Manuel Miranda, or saw one of the many fan-made animations of MBMBaM’s best bits on YouTube; one or two of you may even have caught their short-lived TV show.  

Maybe you entered via one of the McElroy spin-offs, which can often be better than the original. I adore the hilarious and compelling Dungeons & Dragons podcast they’ve done with their dad since 2014, The Adventure Zone, and its bestselling series of graphic novels. My wife devours one of the many podcasts the brothers do with their spouses (in this case Sawbones, Justin and Dr. Sydnee McElroy’s tour of medical history). There’s a chance you heard them first in Trolls World Tour, in which the brothers appeared because they lobbied for roles by — you guessed it — starting yet another podcast.

It’s hard not to be envious of their idea factory, even if you’re one of the millions who’ve never heard a McElroy goof in your life. (The trio know they’re merely “podcast famous,” or, as Travis puts it, “balloon-boy famous.”) Envious, more to the point, of the creative energy to actually turn all these ideas into things. The next best thing to bottling and selling what they have is to get it down in print, which is what the McElroys have done with the just-released book Everybody Has a Podcast (Except You): A How-to Guide from the First Family of Podcasting. 

It isn’t the most comprehensive or most business-focused guide ever written on the topic, and the brothers freely admit that some of its technical advice is questionable — such as Griffin’s insistence, even now, on using clunky-but-free editing software Audacity; Justin and Travis vehemently denounce him in sidebars. But it is probably the most fun, definitely the most readable, and one hell of a pep talk to boot. If you haven’t started work on the podcast idea burning in your brain by the time you reach the last page, you likely never will. 

The book’s most salient advice: Don’t worry about the tech, not at first. Don’t worry about your title (they would not have chosen My Brother, My Brother and Me if they’d fretted over SEO). Don’t even worry so much about your topic, although it is an excellent idea to have an obsession you can’t stop gabbing about. Just do the podcasting equivalent of punk rockers playing three chords in a garage. Grab a phone with a voice recording app, grab a family member or friend (virtually, in this day and age), hit record and go. 

Then cringe as you listen back over the conversation. Then do it again. Learn. Get better. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

“We had fun doing it, that was it,” says Justin of MBMBaM‘s origins. The show began life as a way to force the three of them to sit down together remotely for an hour once a week — Justin was in their hometown in West Virginia, Travis and Griffin were in Ohio. And what do you talk about when you get together? “The house we grew up in, putting the energy into making someone laugh was a way of saying ‘I love you.'”

That, in podcasting terms, is what you might call a competitive advantage. Comedy-loving dad Clint McElroy was a veteran radio DJ who would do occasional on-air skits with the kids. At home their essential education was not neglected: Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, Mystery Science Theater, a modicum of Monty Python. The rambunctious patter they developed around the dining table is at the root of their appeal. Listeners feel like part of the family.

At its best, MBMBaM is an inside joke and catchphrase-creating improv machine, a triple act with no straight man. While Justin and Travis describe themselves as “buffoons” who delight in provoking the youngest, most strait-laced brother (Griffin) into exasperated outbursts, Griffin is often the one to hit the next level of a gag (like his recent take on Ratatouille with rats under every chef’s hat). “We’re all collaborating to build a bit to its funniest point,” he says. “Nobody can really sit out on that process, or the bit doesn’t make it on the show.”  

‘Just say some garbage’

That process of going from pretty good to great can take literally hundreds of episodes, even when you have a family history of chasing the funny. Think you’re embarrassed by your early podcast episodes? Guess what, so are the first family of podcasting. “Real listeners don’t start until episode 250,” says Travis, who is less than half joking. (MBMBaM is now closing in on episode 450; keeping up with the McElroys and their millions of inside jokes is a full-time job.) 

In the very early episodes, before joining the Maximum Fun network, the brothers made all sorts of mistakes, such as using an unlicensed ABBA track for the theme tune. The next theme, which musician and podcaster John Roderick let them use for free, was hastily dropped in January 2021 when Roderick became infamous online one Saturday as Bean Dad. 

True to his hey-kids-let’s-put-on-a-show spirit, Griffin sat down at his piano on Sunday, and took 16 minutes to concoct a new theme. One running joke is that the only thing Griffin knows how to play is the theme from Rugrats. So he played it, “dropped a three-legged drum beat loop on it, and just said some garbage.” 

Just say some garbage, in fact, might be the perfect alternate title for the book. Say your garbage, say it with gusto and love, say it until the garbage gets good. Delight your audience by being delightfully yourself, not by cookie-cutting yourself into some pre-defined media-friendly shape. 

The McElroys, despite their Trolls adventure and an animated Adventure Zone series in the works at Peacock, have retained rough edges that resist Hollywood-ization. They find their hilarity in mundanity. They’ve had talks with agents who want to slot them into branding categories by asking them, say, what kind of event TV aftershow they’d enjoy hosting, doubtless expecting an answer like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead. “I would say it’s going to be an aftershow where we talk about Ellen and discuss fan theories,” deadpans Justin. 

That’s one idea unlikely to enter the McElroy cinematic universe. But given that we’re talking about the co-creators of a podcast about cereal, an abandoned podcast about the Bachelorette, and an annual Thanksgiving podcast devoted to repeated reviews of Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, you probably shouldn’t count out the possibility altogether. 

In the meantime, if your podcast passion happens to be Ellen recaps or anything else, the brothers say: Go for it. Good luck. Great job.