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Cum Town
Presentation
Hosted by
Genre
UpdatesTwice weekly
Length60–90 minutes
Production
ProductionNick Mullen
No. of episodesRegular: 300
Premium: 279
(as of March 1, 2022)
Publication
Original releaseMay 11, 2016; 8 years ago (May 11, 2016)
Related
Websitewww.cum.town (Store)
cumtown.events (Events)

Cum Town is a comedy podcast founded in 2016 and hosted by New York City-based comedians Nick Mullen, Adam Friedland, and, until 2022, Stavros Halkias.[2] As of June 2022, Cum Town is the tenth most popular podcast on Patreon. It has featured guests including Tim Dillon, David Cross,[3] Bam Margera, Dan Soder, Bonnie McFarlane, Jim Norton, Kurt Metzger, Brandon Wardell, and Dasha Nekrasova.[4]

Format

Cum Town episodes is typically 60 minutes in length and is improvised. Mullen is the primary host and producer of the show.[5] Friedland, began as a frequent guest who first appeared in the show's second episode and often serves as the butt of Mullen's and Halkias's jokes and insults.

Many of the show's riffs come from crude puns and rhymes—for example, "Louis SeemsGay"[6] instead of Louis C.K.—and usually involve sexually explicit scenarios as well as ethnic and racial stereotypes. Conversations generally center on the hosts' personal lives, the news, the worlds of stand-up comedy and social media, and pop culture history.[1]

Mullen does many celebrity impressions, including Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Tucker Carlson, Michael Douglas, Dennis Hopper, E. Jean Carroll, Dwayne Johnson, Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, Patrick Warburton, Rip Torn, Gene Hackman, Jon Hamm, Norm MacDonald, Joe List, Mark Normand, Ice-T and Homer Simpson, with some episodes of the show featuring him trying to perfect a new impression on-air.

The first 24 episodes began with the theme song from 1990s sitcom Home Improvement.

Availability and listenership

Weekly free episodes of the show are available via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Audible, among other services.[7][8][9] Subscribers who contribute at least $5 per month via Patreon gain access to additional weekly premium bonus episodes.[10] During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the show was conducted via Zoom; episodes were broadcast live via YouTube.

As of June 2022, Cum Town was the tenth most popular podcast on Patreon and is the 12th most popular creator on the platform overall; with more than 20,000 paying members, the podcast has around $100,000 in monthly earnings.[11] Of note, it was the number one podcast on the platform for most of 2017 and 2018.[11] In the United States, the podcast is the 23rd most popular comedy podcast and 76th most popular on Spotify[12][13] On Apple Podcasts, it is the 17th most popular comedy podcast in the United States, and the 126th overall.[14]

Current hosts

Nick Mullen

Nick Mullen in 2014

Nick Mullen (born December 13, 1988)[15] is a stand-up comedian, comedy writer, podcaster, and actor based in Brooklyn.[5] Active since 2005, much of his comedy is ironic, observational and self-deprecating, and often focuses on internet culture.[16][17]

Originally from the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area, he began performing as a teenager, often at Wiseacres Comedy Club in Virginia.[18][19][20] Many of his comedic anecdotes draw from a string of service industry jobs he held at this time. During his early twenties, he was based out of Austin, Texas, (and briefly Los Angeles) and was a two-time finalist at the annual Funniest Person in Austin contest (2010 and 2011).[21][22][23][24]

A nationally touring stand-up, he was an opener for acts including Dana Gould, Jim Norton, Patrice O'Neal, and Hannibal Burress.[21] In 2010, he was named "Best of Fest" at the Laugh Detroit festival.[21] In 2012, he performed at SXSW as part of the Made in Austin and Weekend Spotlight comedy showcases.[23][25] That same year, he was named one of the New Faces Unrepped by Montreal's Just for Laughs festival.[22][26] Other festivals include the 2014 Bentzen Ball in Washington, D.C.[27]

From 2013 to 2015, he wrote a popular ironic parody blog under the name Nicole Mullen on Thought Catalog.[28] The blog featured satirical articles with titles like "Read This If Your Child Was Eaten By A Pelican", "Wape Jokes Awen’t Funny, And Neither Is My Speech Impediment", and "I’m Using Food Stamps To Pay For My Son’s Sex Reassignment Surgery."[29] He also had a prank call podcast called Help Me, I'm Old.[30]

In the mid-2010s, Mullen moved to New York City.[30] Before moving to Brooklyn, he lived in rented rooms in Chinatown, including an eight by six foot illegal single room occupancy in a commercial property. In a 2015 interview with Ari Shaffir, he spoke about living under the poverty line for a number of years, stating that he reported less than $7000 in income in 2014.[31] Prior to Cum Town, he was a finalist for New York’s Funniest Stand-Up at the 2015 New York Comedy Festival and has had multiple TV and radio appearances.[32][33]

During the late 2010s, he was a recurring guest on the Real Ass Podcast, Race Wars (hosted by Kurt Metzger and Sherrod Smalls), and Legion of Skanks.[34] His writing credits include Comedy Knockout on TruTV (premiered 2016), Make Me Understand with Jim Norton (2016 IFC television pilot), and 2017's Problematic with Moshe Kasher (Comedy Central).[32] He has also appeared as a panelist on Fox News's comedic talk show Red Eye.[35] As an actor, he has appeared in the feature films Giving Up (2017) and Jungleland (2019).

Adam Friedland

Adam Friedland (born April 10, 1987)[36] is a stand-up comedian, sketch comedian, and podcaster.[37][38][39] Born to South African Jewish immigrant parents, he grew up in Santa Monica and Las Vegas and lived in Israel for a year following high school;[40][38] he has since become a critic of Zionism.[41] He attended George Washington University and originally intended to attend law school.[42][43] After graduating, he worked as a paralegal at organizations including Vox Media (briefly).[44]

Friedland got his start in the Washington, D.C. comedy scene by running the punk house Subterranean A, a noted DIY venue begun with a friend following his graduation in 2009 and deferment from law school. Over its two-and-a-half year run, it hosted the likes of musical artists Radical Face, Tennis, Alex Bleeker and the Freaks, and the ensemble Secret Society, and comedy acts James Adomian and Wham City. It had its final show in June 2012.[43] He hosted a number of comedy shows, first at Subterranean A and then other venues in the city, gaining notability in the scene for his 'alternative' performance piece-oriented comedy.[45][46][47][48][49][50] He also aided in the live series You, Me, Them, Everybody.[51] He performed at the Bentzen Ball (in 2013 & 2014) and was named to the annual "Best of D.C." list by the Washington City Paper.[52][39][53][38] He moved to New York City in 2014.[54][37]

Outside of Cum Town, he is best known as the host of the live alternative comedy show Funny Moms; the show began in Washington D.C. in 2012 with original co-host Sara Starmour and transferred to Brooklyn in 2015.[55][39][54] He also co-hosted the sports podcast White Chocolate NBA Pipecast with Halkias from 2017 to 2018.[56] He is a recurring guest on Chapo Trap House. He is the former fiancé of podcaster and actress Dasha Nekrasova.[4][57][58]

Former hosts

Stavros Halkias

Stavros Halkias (born February 11, 1989)[59] is a stand-up comedian and podcaster.[60] Active since the early 2010s, he is based in New York City and tours nationally. As a stand-up, he has performed at venues like the New York Comedy Festival and has opened for acts including Wham City, Tom Papa, and Robert Kelly.[61][62]

Halkias was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, to Greek immigrant parents (a Macedonian mother and Athenian father) and attended the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, a public high school where he played football.[63] He began performing comedy while attending the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he hosted a monthly comedy showcase.[64][61][65] He stated on the podcast that he was a few credits short of graduating. During this period, he was active in the greater Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia area and, in 2012, was named Baltimore’s New Comedian of the Year.[65]

He later moved to New York City where he has since made numerous radio and podcast guest appearances, and has written and performed on Adult Swim, IFC, and MSG Network's People Talking Sports and Other Stuff.[61] He has appeared in the Comedy Central series Comedy Central Stand Up Featuring, Life Fails, and Sex Fails, and has acted in other internet shorts. Since 2019, he has co-hosted the basketball podcast Pod Don't Lie with Sam Morril;[66] prior to this, he co-hosted White Chocolate NBA Pipecast with Friedland.[56] He also hosts a Twitch series Stavvy Solves Your Problems.[67]

On June 25, 2022, Halkias announced that he was no longer part of Cum Town.[68]

Reception

Dirtbag left association

Cum Town is often associated with the dirtbag left, though it is not expressly political.[69][70] In a February 2020 article, New York Times described Cum Town (by allusion, citing its "unprintable name") as "bards of the new American left" alongside podcasts Chapo Trap House and Red Scare.[71] Several Chapo hosts, including Amber A'Lee Frost, Will Menaker, and Felix Biederman, have appeared on Cum Town; Mullen, Halkias, and Friedland have individually made multiple appearances on Chapo.

Though the hosts occasionally discuss their responses to current events and politics—with all three expressing support for 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders—they deny any specific political agenda. In May 2017, Friedland tweeted that "Cum town is not a socialist podcast it's not a fascist podcast it's a podcast about being gay with your dad."[72]

In July 2021, the hosts disagreed with Andrew Marantz's characterization of the podcast as a "flagship product of the dirtbag left" in an article in The New Yorker.[73][74] Halkias instead suggested that the motivating force of producing the podcast was not political but instead financial. The hosts initially believed the podcast would be unsuccessful, "and people are stupid enough to give us money, and we are trapped doing [the podcast]".[73]

Criticism

In association with their dirtbag left peers, the podcast and its hosts have received criticism for their use of ironic offensiveness. Critical bloggers have argued that the use of slurs and edgy jokes by the hosts, particularly Mullen, perpetuate harassment and continually cross the line into actual hatred and contempt.[75] Others have stated beliefs that criticism of "un-woke" media including Cum Town is non-objective as offensiveness is a subjective concept.[76] However, some on the internet have noted the podcast as a "refuge from toxic wokeness" online.[77]

Some online commentators have made a distinction between the podcast and their listeners, critiquing the fanbase of the show as opposed to the hosts themselves or critiquing both in tandem.[70] In 2020, the podcasts' subreddit (which was not moderated nor endorsed by the hosts) was removed from Reddit due to the platform's new policies on hate speech.[78] Since that time, a new subreddit dedicated to the podcast was created.[citation needed]

Cum Town received wider coverage after Saturday Night Live pulled Shane Gillis from its cast for making controversial jokes and remarks on his own podcast.[79][80] Gillis had been a guest on Cum Town and is a friend of the hosts.

References

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  3. ^ Halkias, Stavros, with Adam Friedland, Nick Mullen. Episode 11: Interview with David Cross. Cum Town (podcast).
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