Podcast Corner: Storytime with Seth Rogen rolls out some funny tales
Seth Rogen now has his own podcast, entitled Storytime.
If you haven’t been paying attention, you probably still associate Seth Rogen with the 40-Year-Old Virgin and the Judd Apatow dramedies which defined the movie landscape for a few years over a decade ago.
But Rogen has been diversifying and branching out. He made his most Jewish film to date with last year’s An American Pickle (for more on that, check out his interview on WTF with Marc Maron from summer 2020. The first line of the episode description: “Trigger warning if you are an anti-Semite.”) He’s released a book of personal essays, Yearbook, and now, yes, he’s started a podcast.
Storytime with Seth Rogen (Earwolf) is four episodes deep and it’s not easily definable. It’s not quite celebs interviewing celebs nor is Rogan using it as a platform for his various ideas. Rather it’s like Heavyweight - the new season of which we wrote about here recently - in that it features a person simply telling Rogen a story about their lives that made them what they are today.
Those people are relatively famous, coming from Rogen’s world of comedy and acting - David Crosby is by far the biggest name thus far - but a great story is a great story.
Comedian Quinta Brunson’s tale in the opening episode weaves from doubts about life as a Jehovah’s Witness to going to see Inglorious Basterds on a date. Enter Paul Rudd, literally, who’s sitting in front of her in the cinema. Brunson’s eureka moment sees the episode turn into a story about celebrities being nice.
Crosby’s story begins with Rogen telling the listener to “smoke as big a joint as you can at this moment”. It involves Crosby’s first band, The Byrds, who record execs wanted to be America’s answer to the Beatles, which they weren’t.
But Crosby did get to meet said Beatles on a trip to England and they took a liking to him - mainly because he got them weed; he sat in, stoned, on recording sessions for Sgt Pepper’s.
George Harrison was his hero and became a friend, though Crosby confides that wanted to tell him to be sceptical about things. He wrote a song about Harrison that he considers the best he’s ever written - “because it makes me cry”. It’s called ‘Laughing’ and after hearing the story and history behind it, it hits hard.
The following two episodes are different again - like Rogen himself, you don’t know what you’re going to get next with Storytime, but you know you want to go along for the ride.
