KFC Radio Best (And Worst) Of 2018
The Good (your voicemails), the Bad (my personal life), and the Ugly (Feitelberg) from KFC Radio 2018. It was a monster year for KFC Radio in all the best and worst ways. 2018 was the year we finally dove into getting guests on the podcast. Novel concept, I know. We also dove into a little known video platform called “Youtube.” Big year for exploring different content! Our wrap up video broke down the best guests, best voicemails, and best overall moments of the show for the last 365 days. Special thanks to MGM Springfield for setting us up for the night.
After 7 years of just doing the podcast with Feits (and previously Dan), we added guests to the repertoire and we did it in a big way. Actually kicked things off with our White Whale, Glenn Howerton aka Dennis from Always Sunny. Kinda weird to begin with the very top of your Wishlist, but thats the Barstool Difference I guess. And from there it was just a who’s who of our favorite comedians and entertainers. From Seth Rogen to Joel McHale, from Ken Jeong to Hank Azaria, Bill Burr, The Workaholics…the list of top notch actors and comedians was stellar. We also linked up with guys like Dan Soder, Ari Shaffir, Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer – who in my opinion are the funniest guys on the internet. The fact that Dan Soder isn’t making like $50 million a year is criminal. Anyway, sitting down the best of the best and getting them involved in our stupid world of Barstool podcast nonsense was incredible.
But the beautiful thing about Barstool is that despite all those names, the most important appearances on our podcast come in house. No exaggeration, appearances by YP and Frankie probably do more for the podcast than Glenn Howerton and Seth Rogen. Frankie talking about his weirdo friends and YP giving porn analysis moves the needle more than celebrities. Kmarko regaling us with stories of his landlords and breaking down the best TV has to offer is a bigger draw than that son of a bitch Ken Jeong. Large sitting in the third chair for an episode pulls more downloads than any outsider.
But the ultimate contributor to KFC Radio – the ultimate reason why 2018 was our biggest year yet, and why 2019 will be bigger than 2018, and why 2020 will be bigger than 2019, and so on and so forth – is the listener. KFC Radio has always been and will always be the People’s Podcast. Tens of thousands of voicemails deep, every week the highlight of this show is listeners presenting us with their stories or their predicaments. The third chair and the last co host has always been the collective group of KFC Radio fans. Since day 1 you guys (and girls. Lots of girls, strangely enough) have dictated where this show goes. From episode 1 when we were talking about roller blades vs midgets, to microwaving babies, to head scratching hypotheticals, to crazy sex stories and relationship advice, KFC Radio has always been what the people want to talk about. And because of that this show will always continue to thrive. No matter which co hosts come and go, no matter what public scandals go down, no matter what Barstool does, KFC Radio will always be here to spit the truth no matter how awkward, how incriminating, how embarrassing and how stupid it is.
PS – Professionally, the last few years for the show and for Barstool have been fantastic. Personally, the last few years have been rough, obviously culminating in 2018 which was the worst of my life. The blowback from my marriage falling apart and the affair being made public has been a disaster. No two ways about it. People tried to get me fired, people tried to get the other members of this situation fired, and a lot of the KFC Radio haters had this enormous amount of ammo to trash on the show John and I have built. But throughout that whole shitstorm I think the real, true supporters shined bright for me. I think casual fans/listeners/haters were blindsided and I think everyday listeners were not surprised and had a pretty strong inkling things were not what they might have appeared from an Instagram post here or there. Those people that offered their support despite me not really deserving any will forever be in my heart and in my head. Thank you to everyone who reserved judgment or respected privacy, or just simply didnt lets another couple’s personal situation affect their listening. Because there’s more to this show than just me. Feits, Bren and Logan all work hard to put out an awesome product and the normal people and the real fans sticking by while I jeopardized everything was very important and very clutch. I have always been an open book on the blog and on the podcast and being relatable was always the main hook. Be it life in the cubes, or life as a single guy in NYC, or living as a miserable sports fan, or trying to navigate the waters of being a husband and a father, the way I always found success was by just speaking honestly about my experiences so that other people going through the same shit had a voice. After the year that I’ve gone through, I’d love to try that again – this time sharing the experiences of a single dad and a disgraced husband trying to find his footing on this 2nd shot at life. Which, unfortunately, there are quite a bit of people that can relate. I think a lot of people were convinced there was nobody that could relate to me anymore after everything went public, and I think most of those people havent gone through much in life yet. I think, for better or worse, there are a ton of people who are in the same boat I’m in. Maybe not literally down to the specifics, but the boat being: married the wrong person and struggled to make it work and failed to do so in a major way…and honestly, thats a shitty boat ride that a lot of people are on. Id love to write my way and podcast my way through this next stage in life and share all the ups and downs as I have always done. I’m not sure if the fan base is ready for that yet. Based on a lot of the trolling and harassment that still goes on a year later, I’d say that they are, in fact, not yet ready. But I only know one way to get through this life and thats to talk about it and laugh about it and thats what we’ve always done on KFC Radio and thats what we’ll always do. So ready or not, 2019 is here and its time to move on from the past and start focusing on the present and the future and the content that I can provide on a road to redemption. If you’re down to ride and listen to me as I try to tackle this insanely huge hurdle, then lets fucking go. And if you’re one of those people out here who cant get over it and you’re not interested in that, best of luck to you, theres 50 other podcasts on the Barstool network for you. Thanks to John for never wavering for even a single second when things were shitty. Thanks to Bren for always being the backbone of the show. Thanks to our newest member Logan whos invigorated the show with new types of content. And thanks to the listeners for tuning in every day and providing us with the funniest original content on the internet.
