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Callaroga Shark Media. Hey there, I'm Johnnie Mack, and today
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I gotta talk about some other stuff as I've been
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talking about for the weekends of January. I just wanna
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just do some other things, experiment with the format a
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little bit. I was running the stats from twenty twenty
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five to see what was resonating or not. I'm always
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trying to grow the show and get more listeners in.
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I ran this through AI, and the AI tells me
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based on episode performance. Conflict driven stories outperform announcements. Comedy
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intersecting with politics, money or elite institutions drives engagement. Comedy
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intersecting with politics goes to both Colbert and Kimmel. Intersecting
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with money is the Rio Comedy Festival, and elite institutions
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is things around the White House or perhaps the Kennedy Center.
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The secondary episodes are comedians responding to comedians. So if
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I can find a story where you know, comedian calls
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out comedian, why those do really well and actually outperform
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the original event, that's interesting and what underperforms is neutral coverage.
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So you guys like me like a good fight, which
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brings me to today's topic of comedy neighborhoods. I use
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this website called refonic r E P h O N.
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I see. It's a podcast analytics platform that aggregates and
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models listener behavior. They pull it from the Apple podcast data.
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But what they try to do is visualize relationships between shows.
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They create this like really cool graphic where you'll see,
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like if I type in daily Coming News, they'll be
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lines connecting to other shows. So they kind of map
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it out the way they map out a star chart
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on your favorite science fiction show. So here in the middle,
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I see daily comedy news, and then there are lines
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to different shows, so I see like a direct line.
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One of the closest things is the Last Laugh podcast
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that makes sense. Lewis Black's Rant cast to the Netflix
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is a joke podcast. Then some longer line things like
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Conan O'Brien and Club Random and the Weekly Show even
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to Late Night with Seth Myers. There's an overlap between
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people who like the Seth Meyers podcast and me. Now
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that's funny. If we zoom out, we go deeper into
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the universe. Out past the Seth Myers orbit is the
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Cobert orbit. If you go out far enough, you'll go
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to pot Save America. That's interesting. But then even within
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these if you zoom in here, now here is what
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they call a neighborhood. And I have tenuous connections to
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some of these shows, but all living in what they
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call the same comedy neighborhood are Two Bears, One Cave
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and Bad Friends and Whiskey Ginger, Bill Burr, Tosh Are
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You Garbage? So like you could see all those shows
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kind of sharing an audience, and I only somewhat share
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an audience with them. So as we break this down,
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and again, I was looking at this because I'm always
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trying to grow the show, and I wanted to figure out,
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all right, people who like this show also like what show?
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Maybe I should talk about that stuff a little bit more.
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And you can go to this thing. It's rafonic dot com.
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Just look up comedy neighborhoods and it explains that each
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line represents shared subscribers. Distance matters. Shows that appear close
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together share a higher percentage of the same listeners. Clusters
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form when many shows share overlapping audiences. So that list
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I just gave you of like Whiskey, Junior and Bill,
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They're all sharing an audience together. And I'm a little
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further away from them. So what did Johnny Mack learn
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AI and tells me? The first clear observation is that
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daily comedy news does not cluster with stand up comedy feeds,
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Joe compilations, improv podcasts, or TikTok driven comedy properties. Instead,
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it sits inside a dense cluster of talk based, personality
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led legacy comedian podcasts. The closest and most consistently linked
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shows include Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. The show emphasizes
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extended conversation, recurring co hosts, and minimal topical urgency. WTF
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with Mark Maren, known for introspective interviews, long run times,
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and a focus on creative process SmartLess I should probably
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talk about those guys a little bit more. While lighter
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in tone, it is structural, similar long conversations, familiar hosts
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and minimal emphasis on topical comedy. And Fly on the
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Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade, which interesting enough
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talk about rhads not taken. I was with Cadence thirteen
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when they did that deal. I still don't know why
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they didn't ask me to produce that. It's fine, I'm
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not upset, and my mom was pretty sick at that time,
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so that might have been the choice that maybe my
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head wasn't totally in the game. That could be the reason.
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And I don't mean that as a dick. My boss
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was very very very very very I can't say very
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enough times, very very very kind. It gave me a
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lot of rope and a lot of space to just
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do what I needed to do at that time. So
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it could have been that that they didn't want to
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burden me with having to produce another show. Because I
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do play hard, so if you give me work, I
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will do it so as I do out loud therapy here.
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That might have been an act of kindness. But on paper,
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I'm the person you know, age wise or resume wise,
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I'm the person you probably would ask to produce such
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a show regardless. We share an audience to daily comedy
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news and Fly on the Wall, a nostalgia driven interview show.
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Now it's interesting here is Maren's older than me, Carvey's
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older than me. How old Spade he's older than me? Right? Yeah,
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Spade's sixty one. I'm fifty six. In case you're curious,
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I think Jason Bateman is my age. Bateman is fifty
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six might be fifty seven by the time you hear this,
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depending on what I deployed it. January fourteenth, nineteen sixty
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nine is his birthday. Happy Birthday, Jason Bateman. So yeah,
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all right, So it makes sense that people who like
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dudes in their fifties and sixties like other dudes in
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their fifties. Does that all makes sense to me? Like,
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I don't expect the TikTok comedian fans to dig what
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I'm doing here. As I was talking with Mike Chisholm
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from The Letterman podcast recently, I was like, you know,
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we're sitting here talking about a show that came out
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forty years ago. AI tells me, also appearing within the
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cluster or shows like Rob Low, Good Hang, and other
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personality led conversation podcast that prioritize familiarity and low conflict listening.
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The data indicates that listeners who subscribe to DCN are
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the same listeners who's subscribe to those shows. That implies
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a set of preferences to this is you guys. You
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guys subscribe to hosts, not formats. Thank you. I take
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that as high compliment. They value continuity over novelty. They
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tolerate long run times in conversational pacing. They're comfortable with analysis, reflection,
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and repetition, which reminds me one time, Joe Quoitnaw, I'm
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not going to do that today. Oh this is interesting.
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This cluster skews heavily towards comedian and entertainers whose primary
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career breakthroughs occurred before the rise of social media comedy discovery.
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These are not emerging voices. These are established figures using
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podcasts retain and monetize existing audiences. Very interesting. I've got
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more analysis after this break. Continuing our look at the
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Daily Comedy News comedy neighborhood where I find myself, AYI
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tells me. The map shows adjacency to a second, smaller
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cluster focused on comedy as process rather than performance. Shows
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like Block That's Neil Brennan's Pod and Good One appear
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as secondary neighbors. These podcasts explicitly analyze how jokes are written,
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how bits evolve, and how comedians think about craft. They're
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not built for casual listening. Their presence in the Daily
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Comedy News neighborhood suggests that a meaningful portion of the
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audience is interested in how comedy works, not just consuming it.
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That makes sense to me. I would imagine that is
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one of the reasons you pick this particular program. A
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third nearby grouping consists of comfort oriented conversational podcasts. Again,
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I will take that as a compliment. I'm just trying
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to keep you company here. I'm not a comedian. I've
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never performed comedy. I don't claim to be a comedian.
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I don't claim to be funny. Hopefully I'm amusing at times.
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There seem to be some recurring bits that people like,
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but I'm obviously not here shucking jokes. The AI says
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these are low stake shows designed for passive listening. Their
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connection to DCN reinforces the idea that this audience values
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predictability and routine. Finally, at the outer edges of the cluster,
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remnants of legacy late night television ecosystems appear. Podcasts tied
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to the daily show, late night hosts, and political comedy
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are connected, but with weaker overlap. Equally important is what
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does not appear near daily comedy news. This is interesting.
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There's little to no proximity to stand up album feeds,
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short form comedy podcasts, or personality driven, shock or argument
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based shows. Those live in separate neighborhoods with different listener behavior.
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The data suggests that daily comedy news serves an audience
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that uses comedy podcasts as contextual media, not entertainment first content.
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These listeners are tracking an industry, not chasing laughs. Some
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good analysis here by the AI. This data indicates that
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podcast subscriptions, unlike social media follows, are conservative. Listeners are
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reluctant to commit time to unfamiliar voices unless trust has
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already been established elsewhere. In effect, discovery has moved out
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of podcasts. Short form video platforms now handle discovery, podcasts
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handle retention. That division explains why comedians who break on
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TikTok or Instagram often struggle to translate that audience into
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podcast subscriptions, while legacy comedian maintain strong audio audiences even
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as their television relevance declines. Another conclusion from the cluster
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structure is tone tolerance. Listeners in this neighborhood tolerate introspection, repetition,
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and even periods of low energy Hi I'm Johnny Mac.
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What they do not tolerate is chaos. Podcasts built on confrontation, outrage,
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or aggressive performance styles are structurally absent from this cluster
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that makes sense. I'm not a yeller and screamer. The
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dominant cluster around Daily Comedy News reflects listeners who likely
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aged out of appointment television and high energy stand up consumption.
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These listeners still on comedy, but in a format that
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integrates into daily life rather than demanding attention. Interesting stuff there,
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and that's today's episode of Daily Comedy News. I'll see
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you tomorrow.