Robert Smigel’s new podcast, Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, opens with a comedy workshop and a live test. The debut episode pairs Smigel with Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell as they help The Harvard Yardbirds punch up a performance that needs more than strong harmonies.
The problem is plain: the group can sing, but the patter between songs could use work. Day, a longtime Saturday Night Live cast member, and Seidell, the show’s head writer, join Smigel in building jokes around self-deprecating Harvard material, a bit about one member looking for her third husband, alternate group names, holiday-song parody lyrics and a character concept called “Yale Boy.”
The payoff comes later, when the episode shows The Harvard Yardbirds trying some of the material in front of an audience. The reaction is described as surprisingly encouraging, and the episode also includes a surprise appearance by an SNL alum, a reminder that the show is built as much around comic chemistry as finished bits.
The format is also a fit for the company behind it. Humor Me is produced by Big Money Players, Will Ferrell’s podcast network and a partner of iHeartMedia, which has been home since 2020 to Las Culturistas with Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers. The roster also includes The Nikki Glaser Podcast, My Momma Told Me and The Amber & Lacey Lacey & Amber Show.
That matters because the episode is not just another celebrity conversation feed. It is a working session, and the debut makes clear that Smigel is using the podcast to show joke construction in real time, not just to revisit the finished product. For readers who have followed his recent work, including his support for Ashley Padilla’s SNL breakout, the new show extends the same impulse: he is not merely hosting comics, he is helping shape what they say next.
The unanswered question now is whether that workshop energy can keep translating beyond a one-off debut. If the first episode is the model, Humor Me is aiming to be a place where the laughs are built in public, then checked against a live crowd before they ever leave the room.
