Comics Are Outting Their (Former) Teenage Selves in a Really Fun New Podcast Hosted By Alise Morales
Your teenage years? A tragedy. But that was long ago.
National Lampoon and All Things Comedy are launching a brand new podcast today, The Roast of Your Teenage Self, hosted by long time Betches contributor Alise Morales. The lighthearted and illuminating weekly video podcast series invites a new comedian guest every week, to talk about the ridiculousness of their teenage selves. It’s perfect quarantine comfort, and takes you out of the current craziness back to a time when your most pressing problems were some crazy cocktail of growing pains, who to date, how to cut your hair, what clique to blend in with, all while questioning your sexuality, identity, and hopes for survival. And the best part is, you get to look at and laugh at someone else’s pain, shame or glory, not your own.
In each episode of The Roast of Your Teenage Self, Alise and her guest break out some teenage talisman – usually old photos but sometimes a high school heirloom – and use that as a way in to roast the unique, but somehow universal, tribulations of being a teen.
The podcast builds upon Alise’s original show, performed live in clubs and at festivals across the country She had been touring the show since 2014 until last year when she got linked up with National Lampoon and started working with them. And then they linked her up with All Things Comedy, which is the comedy podcast network run by Al Madrigal and Bill Burr. Everyone agreed, the show would make a great podcast.
All Things Comedy is a great choice of a partner- they are, after all, the leading comedy podcast network.
And National Lampoon is a great fit for Alise, who embodies both the edginess that the Lampoon has always embraced, and the reborn network’s inclusiveness and forward thinking philosophy. “They have been really working hard to bring in new and interesting, diverse voices, and I feel like they’re staying true to the brand in that they’re trying to raise up and cultivate new talent, but they’re also modernizing it. The original National Lampoon was a lot of this straight white guys doing their straight white guys things, which I mean, I love all the original National Lampoon content too, but now they’re bringing in so many different voices and so many cool young people and it’s been really fun to be a part of that roster.”
Booking the show was a group effort with a stellar lineup thanks to ATC’s reach, the Lampoon’s draw and Morales’ own friends and colleagues. She’s thrilled with her guest roster that kicks off off with a huge bang, going back in time with Bert Kreischer, for some hilarious reveals about how the now legendary partier spent his high school years. Oh, and there are amazing high school Kreischer photos you have to see. In the weeks that follow, Morales talks teenage absurdities with Bobby Lee, Rosebud Baker, Hannah Berner, Jade Catta-Preta, Ron Funches, Zoë Ligon, Alyssa Limperis and Steve-O. Yes, that Steve O. Morales confesses she was a huge jackass fan when she was in high school. “I had said when we were saying who are our dream guests? Who were people that you would love to have on? I was like any of those guys, but particularly, it would be so cool to Steve-O,” she told me in a phone interview. “And they were able to make it happen, and it ended up being such an awesome conversation. And that was the one that I was like, if my 15 year old self could see me video chatting Steve-O right now, I don’t know what she would do.”
And she says like most of her guests, Steve-O’s high school stories were nothing like she expected. “That’s the really, really interesting part of the show as well.All these preconceived notions have gone into the show of, “Oh, this person was probably like this in high school.” Almost all of it has turned out to be really different.”
Like Bert Kreischer who shared stories of a surprisingly well behaved teenhood. “I was expecting for it to be a very drunk, rowdy high school experience,” Morales said about Bert. She said she prepared questions about drinking and partying. But in reality, “it turns out he was kind of a Catholic school boy in a way.” She added, “it ended up being so much more interesting to me that, that’s not what it was, but it taught me, kind of right off the bat, not to go in with too many preconceived notions about what people were going to be bringing to the table.”
The podcast isn’t meant to be a moral tale, it’s just a lot of fun, but over the course of the season she has seen a thru line emerge among her guests during their high school years: a desire for an identity. “This desire to be somebody, whether it be the really good boy at your Catholic school, or we have an episode with Hannah Burner or who is on the Bravo show, Summer House. And she was pursuing tennis at an insanely high level or Steve-O just really wanting to be at the center of attention at his school and stuff. So, the biggest through that I would see from all of these comedians or different people is just this a real desire to be somebody,” she told me. “And some of that comes from some pretty wild upbringings, but some of them come from being just kind of a suburban kid, like me. I feel like so much of being a teenager, you’re feeling so restless. You want to get out and you want to do all these things, but you don’t know how yet, and in the pursuit of that make a million embarrassing mistakes.”
Brooklyn based Morales is a comedy writer and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently the writer of the Betches Sup newsletter, and co-host of the Betches Sup podcast. Alise also performed on UCB’s Lloyd Night from 2015-2018. She has appeared in Hulu’s Difficult People, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and The Chris Gethard Show. You can catch her voicing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Showtime’s Our Cartoon President.
“The Roast Of Your Teenage Self,” premieres TODAY July 21 from National Lampoon and All Things Comedy. Listen on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts or on YouTube!
For more on ATC visit the website, subscribe to the ATC YouTube page and follow ATC on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
