Brennan Lee Mulligan

Summary

Podcast Summary: What's Our Podcast? with Beck Bennett & Kyle Mooney — Featuring Brennan Lee Mulligan

Episode Date: September 24, 2025
Guest: Brennan Lee Mulligan
Main Theme: The search for a podcast identity, with guest Brennan Lee Mulligan pitching "proprietary" as a concept, plus deep dives into improv, D&D, and satire on tech culture.

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Episode Overview

This episode continues Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney’s meta-podcast journey, where each week, a guest proposes what their podcast should be “about.” This week, Brennan Lee Mulligan—comedian, writer, and renowned Dungeon Master from Dimension 20—joins to riff, reminisce, and pitch his idea. The episode blends comedic banter, sincere storytelling about growing up nerdy, and a satirical examination of “proprietary” tech-driven media.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Opening Banter & Friendship Dynamics

Early minutes revel in Beck and Kyle’s signature, self-deprecating humor and surreal riffing—Kyle’s feet keep “shooting up,” repeated faux-apologies for “bad things” done to each other, and tongue-in-cheek admissions of their friendship’s absurdities.

• Notable Quote:
  “You stretch my penis hole and put things in there.” —Kyle (03:05)
  “Just to see if—what’s going to happen this time, because I can’t believe it happened the first time…” —Beck (03:08)

2. Podcast About “Nothing”—But Maybe Something

They reset the conceit: they don’t actually know what their podcast is, so each guest pitches a premise. Last week Bobby Moynihan suggested “about beef.” This week, Brennan is handed the reins.

3. Childhood, D&D, and Getting Bullied
   Brennan shares how growing up homeschooled in New York (splitting time between Hell’s Kitchen and upstate) and being bullied in elementary school led him to embrace nerd culture, D&D, and the LARP camp The Wayfinder Experience.

• Notable Quote:
  “I was enough of a dork that the bullying got intense enough that it was like, let’s remove this child from the immediate physical danger he seems to so regularly find himself in.” —Brennan (12:25)
  “Talk about a great called shot—my mom was like, I think D&D would be good for you. And lo and behold…” —Brennan (16:16)

Impact of D&D on Life and Career

• Discovered D&D at age 10, started DMing immediately.
• Ran games through childhood, college, and adulthood—one legendary campaign lasted 14 years.
• Mother’s influence—herself a comic book writer—was seminal.

4. Being a Parent

All three discuss the transition to fatherhood, the hilarity and chaos of having young children, and intergenerational bullying (“my kid bullies me now!”).

• Memorable Moment: Beck recounts cooking an odd meal for his son, who responds: “yucky, yucky, yuck, yuck… Die, Dada.” (19:05)

5. D&D as Lifelong Passion & Modern Boom

• Brennan details his unbroken love of D&D through evolving “chapters”—from playing with local friends to running enormous multi-year campaigns, even as a young camp counselor.
• Explores D&D’s present “golden age”—with more widespread, mainstream engagement thanks to streaming and podcasts.
• Notable Quote:
  “Calling it a resurgence… numerically, this might be more of a golden age than the 70s and 80s… this is kind of the age at this point.” —Brennan (19:48)
• The professionalization of being a DM, including shows like Dimension 20.
  “Without that 14-year home game, there’s no universe where Dimension 20 happens for sure.” —Brennan (27:52)

6. Improv Roots & UCB

Brennan explains his improv and teaching journey at UCB, which led to CollegeHumor—connecting sketch, improv, and nerd culture.

• Notable Quote:
  “I felt like I had to put LARP and D&D behind me. Time to focus… time to get a career going. Let’s go do improv.” —Brennan (32:34)

7. Intersecting Comedy, D&D, and Media

Brennan illustrates how Dropout’s focus on novel, niche programming created the perfect storm for a D&D show—capitalizing on skills from improv, sketch, and geekdom.

8. The Podcast Pitch: “Proprietary” (Main Segment: 37:29–61:00)

Brennan pitches "proprietary" as the subject—a riff on intellectual property and tech’s role in media.

• Argues for viewing content not as art for its own sake, but for its potential to be trademarked, platformed, and monetized—a satire on Silicon Valley’s soulless “innovation.”

• They riff on the podcast as a product-turned-app (with merch, premium tiers, and intrusive data collection), parodying current tech and entertainment trends.

• They joke about collecting data, selling it to “Palantir” (tech surveillance company), and the slippery slope of commodifying art.

• Notable Quote:
  “Rather than making something from the heart… you should be using the most destabilizing innovations of the tech industry to create art and media you can capitalize on…” —Brennan (39:51)

  • Moment of confusion and recursive humor arises as Beck and Kyle try to understand the “nougat” (essence) of what the proprietary podcast would be—leading to a meta-spiral and comic frustration.

• Notable Quote:
  “Everything you said is wrong. I disagree with all of it.” —Brennan to Kyle (51:31)
  “Do people attach to things because it adds value and meaning to their life, or do they attach to things because we got round one funding from venture capital firms?” —Brennan (52:06)

9. Satirical Corporate Brainstorm

The trio satirize the process of commoditizing creativity:

• Pitching proprietary business models
• Talking in circles about branding, apps, and consumer loyalty
• Inventing fake “proprietary” segments (e.g., “Sexiest Proprietary”—Beck names Brennan)
• Notable Quote:
  “You have to be willing to kill some dogs and cats if you’re gonna make...” —Beck (55:28)

10. Deconstructing the Satire

Brennan ultimately “breaks the bit,” explaining his true motivation—that the “proprietary” framing is his way of not imposing a real topic on Beck and Kyle, and, in earnest, is a satire of how soulless tech culture has infected real creativity.

• Notable Quote:
  “This exact kind of soulless, valueless tech language is the vine strangling the tree of our democratic institutions and population, and I hate it…” —Brennan (60:29)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Notable Quote / Moment | |-----------|---------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:05 | Kyle | “You stretch my penis hole and put things in there.” (surreal, absurdist friendship riff) | | 12:25 | Brennan | “I was enough of a dork that the bullying got intense enough that it was like, let’s remove this child…”| | 16:16 | Brennan | “Talk about a great called shot—my mom was like, I think D&D would be good for you…” | | 19:05 | Beck | “[My son] looked at me and went, die Dada.” (on the brutal honesty and comic harshness of parenting) | | 19:48 | Brennan | "Calling it a resurgence...numerically, this might be more of a golden age than the 70s and 80s..." | | 27:52 | Brennan | “Without eridan, without that 14-year home game, there’s no universe where Dimension 20 happens…” | | 39:51 | Brennan | “Rather than making something from the heart… you should be using the most destabilizing innovations…” | | 51:31 | Brennan | “Everything you said is wrong. I disagree with all of it.” (meta confusion at pitch) | | 52:06 | Brennan | “Do people attach to things because it adds value… or because… funding from venture capital firms?” | | 55:28 | Beck | “You have to be willing to kill some dogs and cats if you’re gonna make…” (satirical escalation) | | 60:29 | Brennan | “Soulless, valueless tech language is the vine strangling the tree of our democratic institutions…” |

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:00–10:00 — Goofy banter & friendship intro
• 10:30–21:00 — Brennan’s backstory, D&D origin, and bullying
• 21:00–28:00 — D&D, LARP, campaigns, and nerd adolescence
• 28:00–37:00 — CollegeHumor, UCB, and building a career as multi-hyphenate nerd
• 37:29–61:00 — Main segment: Brennan’s “proprietary” podcast pitch; recursive meltdown; satire on tech and creativity
• 61:00–63:00 — Brennan plugs upcoming Dimension 20 shows, podcasts, and where to find him

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Final Thoughts and Tone

• The episode is a swirling blend of meta-comedy, sincere storytelling, and sharp cultural satire.
• The hosts and guest riff with a unique brand of absurdist, improvisational humor—breaking the fourth wall, lampooning themselves, and skewering contemporary media trends.
• The “proprietary” pitch simultaneously lampoons startup culture and provides a commentary on the pitfalls of tech’s encroachment on creative expression.
• The conclusion is both an intentional anti-climax and a genuine celebration of question-asking, collaboration, and friendship.

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For New Listeners

Listening to this episode offers:

• A showcase of Beck and Kyle’s improvisational chemistry and absurdist humor
• Insights into Brennan Lee Mulligan’s creative origins, D&D journey, and comedic perspectives
• A multi-layered satire on the state of media and the urge to monetize art

Don’t miss the “Sexiest Proprietary” segment (56:32) and the meta-meltdown about podcast format (“nougat”) (51:31–54:39)—quintessential moments illustrating both the show’s charm and its wit.

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Find Brennan Lee Mulligan:

• [Dimension 20 live shows, including MGM Grand in November (61:00)]
• [Worlds Beyond Number podcast]
• Instagram/Bluesky: @BrennanLeeMulligan

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Verdict: Not just a goofball riff-fest—this episode blends irreverence, genuine vulnerability, and sharp critique of modern media, earning its laughs (and its moments of real insight).

Transcript

[Kyle Mooney]

This is a headgun podcast.

[Beck Bennett]

We're. Are we recording.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Off the rail, dude?

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

I'm like, you have your headphones on.

[Beck Bennett]

Your ears and I don't guess I'm like, what are we doing again? Oh, my God, your feet are shooting up for those.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

For those of you who can't are listening.

[Beck Bennett]

Kyle's feet just shot straight up.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Can we get a shot of those feet?

[Beck Bennett]

Oh, my God, we're having so much fun here on the pot already. Wow, that was great. Welcome back. I forget, do we wear our headphones?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Oh, his feet are up again. His feet are shooting street. Welcome. Welcome to what's Our Podcast?

[Beck Bennett]

Where we are trying to figure out what the hell our podcast is about.

[Kyle Mooney]

That's right. We're gonna have. We're gon a guest come in, and they're gonna pitch us an idea for the podcast. We don't know what the fuck our podcast is about.

[Beck Bennett]

Oh, man. Yeah, well, that rules. What else is going on?

[Kyle Mooney]

The B man, the K man coming.

[Beck Bennett]

At me right now.

[Kyle Mooney]

I'm sorry about some of the stuff I've ever done in the past.

[Beck Bennett]

Thank you for saying that because I've been thinking a lot about it. We've interacted a couple times in the past week or so, and I've just been thinking about that and when I was gonna hear from you on your behavior and everything like that. Yeah, yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

I have done some bad, bad things to you.

[Beck Bennett]

Oh, there go the feet again, ladies and gentlemen.

[Kyle Mooney]

They're shooting up.

[Beck Bennett]

Kyle's feet are erect, but I think you're great. Thanks, man.

[Kyle Mooney]

You don't deserve any of that from me. And I think it just shows more than anything the work I have to do on myself. And it comes from, I think, my own demons and in my own fears and absolutely shouldn't be projecting that on you.

[Beck Bennett]

Right. I know. And. But it just. When it continues to happen, like, every time I see you, whether, like, yeah, it's just kind of like, yeah, you come at me. You kind of. You say it's a bit, and you, like, kind of knock me. When I saw you, you kind of knocked me silly with a little can of Lacroix. Kind of knocked me over the head with it. And then it's okay. It's okay. And then you kind of just pull my pants down and slap me around and. But it's okay. Just try not to do it next time. But I'm still gonna want to hang and be boys and all that, so it's all good. Let's just kind of focus on having a great episode.

[Kyle Mooney]

Thanks for always. But you've all. And, like, you always forgive me after all of these years.

[Beck Bennett]

Of course you're my boy. Because you always forgive me after all the stuff that I say to you and do to you.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yes, lest we forget.

[Beck Bennett]

Lest we forget. I've also had my bad times, my peccadillos. Yes, of course.

[Kyle Mooney]

Because you like to stretch my.

[Beck Bennett]

Put things where they don't belong.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yes, exactly. You stretch my penis hole and put things in there.

[Beck Bennett]

I do, I do. Just to see if. What's going to happen this time, because I can't believe it happened the first time, and I just keep trying to see what's going to happen.

[Kyle Mooney]

Welcome to my crazy whole life.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

That is your.

[Beck Bennett]

This is your crazy whole life. That's a hole with an H. Yeah, yeah, I got that. Yeah. Not like W. Correct. The W hole also has an H, though, for everybody out there. Oh, Kyle's got to tie his loafer. His boat shoe. Because. Because you're doing so much walking around on the couch over here. No, dude, but it's honestly good to see you.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah. We haven't seen. We've been seeing a lot of each other.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah. A couple birthday parties.

[Kyle Mooney]

I actually did. We. We went to a. We went to a. A travel. A destination party.

[Beck Bennett]

A travel. Destination party.

[Kyle Mooney]

New Orleans, I think I. There was a moment where I did actually give you, like, sort of. And I'm sorry if I think I did give you one of those.

[Beck Bennett]

Is that right?

[Kyle Mooney]

Well, it wasn't more of an apology. It was more of just like a sort of admittance. And this is who I am.

[Beck Bennett]

Oh, yeah. Do you want to talk about it now or do you want to talk about more later?

[Kyle Mooney]

I won't talk about it myself because.

[Beck Bennett]

We'Re mic'd right now. Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah, exactly.

[Beck Bennett]

And it was all good, though, right?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, okay. Okay, good. I'm glad we caught up on that. But, yeah, no, we had some parties and it definitely feels like summer right now.

[Kyle Mooney]

This is.

[Beck Bennett]

This is gonna be. This. This episode is probably gonna be releasing at a later date. Probably not during summer anyway.

[Kyle Mooney]

I wouldn't have. If I were you. I wouldn't have.

[Beck Bennett]

Do not talk about time.

[Kyle Mooney]

I have not.

[Beck Bennett]

I should not. Right. I'm talking. That was advice for myself. Okay. So anything else going on? Or, like, I guess if we shouldn't talk about time.

[Kyle Mooney]

Oh, I guess maybe we should briefly talk about the podcast. Are there any. So our last episode was with Bobby Moynihan.

[Beck Bennett]

Bobby Moynihan. Yeah. And he pitched us an episode, a podcast idea.

[Kyle Mooney]

About beef.

[Beck Bennett]

About beef.

[Kyle Mooney]

I guess that's the other thing. It has been a while since our last episode.

[Beck Bennett]

Yes, it has. At some point, it'd be nice to get into a rhythm here, and I.

[Kyle Mooney]

Feel like we had a good groove.

[Beck Bennett]

We did, because we did three episodes in one day.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

And now it's been three months since we've sat down, and we don't even remember what this is or how to do it.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

But that's okay. I'm sure we'll find our groove.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

Just start podcasting, Kyle. All you gotta do is just podcast.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

And how do you podcast?

[Beck Bennett]

And by the way, don't talk about time. Yeah, good luck with that, because you always talk about what you did, what's going on in the present time and everything and all that. So it's kind of, like, hard to not talk about time.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Hmm.

[Kyle Mooney]

The moustache has spoken. Okay, where were we?

[Beck Bennett]

I don't know. It's a pretty good app so far.

[Kyle Mooney]

We're back.

[Beck Bennett]

We're back at the pod.

[Kyle Mooney]

We did have a. We celebrate. There was a party yesterday or. Sorry, Saturday.

[Beck Bennett]

Of course. Of course. And then there was.

[Kyle Mooney]

Our children were together.

[Beck Bennett]

Our children played together. And I think they're, you know, they're getting closer to the age where they could interact. Your daughter is still a little bit too young.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

To interact with. My son is popping off a little bit.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

But I think.

[Beck Bennett]

But they're.

[Kyle Mooney]

They arguably know each other.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, I think they do. And they're sharing the same space.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

You know, handing each other things. Yeah, it was very sweet. It's nice.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

And then.

[Kyle Mooney]

Sorry to go back to the podcast, which has been such a blast to do with you because, like.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

And you got it. You have to admit, this goes back to, like, the old USC days when we started just doing, like, improv and sketch together, and we were just riffing.

[Beck Bennett]

Around in a room, just kind of messing with each other sometimes.

[Kyle Mooney]

They were structured games, of course, because there was World's worst.

[Beck Bennett]

Well, that was improv. Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah. And then, of course, there was also pan left. Pan.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Right.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, that was the. Our college comedy groups.

[Kyle Mooney]

And so, yeah, I was talking about being on the improv group together. What were you talking about?

[Beck Bennett]

I was thinking about, like, early days usc. Oh.

[Kyle Mooney]

Just sort of being around at the school.

[Beck Bennett]

I was actually thinking early days commitus. Or early days, good neighborhood and sort of.

[Kyle Mooney]

Oh, that's okay.

[Beck Bennett]

End of. End of college. So still, early days still college.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

Early days in college, but early days of good neighbor while we were still in college. That's what I was thinking.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah. Sort of like the wild, wild west of YouTube.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah. Like, who knew what could happen? TikTok didn't exist yet.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah, that's where we are, folks.

[Beck Bennett]

This is. Welcome to my awful life.

[Kyle Mooney]

We've got TikTok thoughts.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

TikTok thoughts with Beck Bennett. Wow.

[Beck Bennett]

So TikTok is like, who knew where that was coming from? It came out of nowhere. Right. And it's taken the world by storm, so that's something.

[Kyle Mooney]

But, okay, we need. So are there any changes you want to. You had some very specific ideas coming into today about when our guest walks, when we introduce our guest.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah. In the past, up until this point, we've just been rolling straight through. We're recording as they walk in. We're kind of like, hey, yeah, this is the podcast. This is part of it. Maybe I'll just try introducing Brennan before he's here. And then we cut. And he's sitting here. Okay, that could be.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Oh, I like that.

[Kyle Mooney]

We're like, should or should he. No, wait. Or should he. Or should we do it in front of him? I got an idea.

[Beck Bennett]

Oh, Kyle's got an idea.

[Kyle Mooney]

I got an idea. Just to be clear, where do we end up sitting?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I'm gonna sit over there.

[Beck Bennett]

You're gonna sit right here in the middle.

[Kyle Mooney]

What if we. This is actually gonna be. This is actually. I don't think you're gonna like this.

[Beck Bennett]

I don't think I am either.

[Kyle Mooney]

We scoot over there, we get into our seats and we go. Ladies and gentlemen, Brennan Lee Mulligan. And then we gesture to this side and. And then we'll cut. And he's already here.

[Beck Bennett]

Do you guys like the sound of that? Casey, Anya, does that work for you? I think that's fun. All right, let's try it. Let's see what happens. So now. Okay, you put that here. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, Brandon.

[Kyle Mooney]

No, no, that's not where it starts. That's not where it starts. That's not where it starts. Okay, let me start. Let me start. Let me start.

[Beck Bennett]

I've tried. I'm giving you a gap.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Let me.

[Kyle Mooney]

Be quiet.

[Beck Bennett]

If you would stop talking, you could actually start.

[Kyle Mooney]

Let me start.

[Beck Bennett]

Oh, my God. The headache that I'm going to have after this is going to be pounding for weeks.

[Kyle Mooney]

Oh, yeah? Well, I got an Advil waiting right here for us.

[Beck Bennett]

I've taken plenty of those. They never work.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah, well, this one's going to really take that pounding away with an extra added pounding. Brought to you by Dr. Kyle. Doctors say don't leave without it. All right, it's time for our next guest on our show. What is our podcast? Of course, this is.

[Beck Bennett]

Of course, this is Beck Bennett, and.

[Kyle Mooney]

I'm Kyle Mooney, and we are excited.

[Beck Bennett]

To introduce Brennan Lee Mulligan. Brennan is a comedian, writer, and actor who you might remember from college humor or might know as the dungeon master on dropout's DD show Dimension 20, or from his many, many other shows on Dropout or on pretty much any other of your favorite podcasts.

[Kyle Mooney]

Here he is.

[Beck Bennett]

Brennan Lee Molykow. Yes.

[Kyle Mooney]

Wow. Where are you coming from?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I'm coming from another time and another place before I was here. Exactly where I want to be. Thank you so much for having me. Wow.

[Kyle Mooney]

Wow, we're so excited. Wow, you're incredible.

[Beck Bennett]

Holy crap.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

You came from another time and place.

[Beck Bennett]

Just Kate appeared on our couch. It's crazy. I've never seen anything like that. I can't do that.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Wow. Well, thank you so much for having me. Dissolve in right here into the sofa. It's a pleasure and honor to be here. Holy shit. Thank you.

[Kyle Mooney]

We're so excited. Yeah. Are you comfortable? Does everything feel okay?

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah. And the couch and everything? Do you have any. Do you need any waters or.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

The couch. The couch is great. I'm good on water right now. Are those real grapes or are those fake grapes?

[Beck Bennett]

Oh, we haven't been able to figure out. We keep eating them. We don't know.

[Kyle Mooney]

Becky, they're fake.

[Beck Bennett]

Oh, crap. That explains all the. All the stuff that comes.

[Kyle Mooney]

Seriously not nervous.

[Beck Bennett]

They look juicy. Every single time I sit down, so I have a bite, and they feel pretty good in my mouth.

[Kyle Mooney]

You still have a chance to leave.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

If you'd like, you know. No, I'm strapping it.

[Beck Bennett]

He's absolutely strapped in. Brennan. He's fully strapped in.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

He's not leaving. He wanted to leave.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Click buckle, buckle down.

[Kyle Mooney]

Where do you. You hail from?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

New York City.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

New York City, New York.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I'm from New York.

[Kyle Mooney]

You were born and raised in city proper.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I've spent part of the time with my dad in Hell's Kitchen, part of the time with my mom in a little town called High Falls upstate.

[Beck Bennett]

Okay, and you were. You were homeschooled, is that correct?

[Kyle Mooney]

Yes.

[Beck Bennett]

Okay. And so what were you always, like, with your mom, you were homeschooled or with your dad? Like, did you. How did that work? Splitting up?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I went to. I went to public school For a couple years as a kid, like elementary school was public school and you know the things that. I was enough of a dork that the bullying got intense enough that it was like, let's remove this child from the immediate physical danger he seems to so regularly find himself in.

[Beck Bennett]

So that's tough. I'm sorry.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

That's a lot, a lot of trash cans. A lot of.

[Kyle Mooney]

That's like cartoonish.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Like cartoonish like bullies were. You're like, nah, see? And you're getting shoved in a trash can.

[Kyle Mooney]

This is 1942.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

1942, exactly.

[Beck Bennett]

So this was upstate New York, you said. So like small schools or like big schools or like, you know, like I talked to a friend who had like a younger sister went to school upstate New York. And the schools were so small that the. They ended up like sending the kids to private schools because there were only like a couple kids per class or something.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

The school was not that big. It was, it was the. But I remember this was like there was a period in the 90s. It feels like by the time I.

[Kyle Mooney]

Was Ren and Stimpy.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Ren and Stimpy. Of course.

[Kyle Mooney]

I was just thinking about Pee Wee.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

You know what really always locks me into that time period is the Burger King kids. You know, Kid Vid, he was like a digital.

[Beck Bennett]

Absolutely.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Very cool. Extraordinarily cool that time period. I don't know how to say. By the time like the 2000s had rolled around, there was a real anti bullying full court press that was non existent in the 90s. It's like, I'm being bullied. And the teacher was like, that's life, baby. I'm being bullied. What do you want me.

[Beck Bennett]

Teachers do get bullied and we don't really realize that.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

No, they do. They get bullied by their adults. By the children.

[Beck Bennett]

By the children.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, for sure.

[Kyle Mooney]

I'm sorry you had. But it ultimately, I don't want to say it worked out, but you're able to transition into a better, safer environment.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, homeschooling. I went to. Went and did homeschooling. And then when I was 14, I started taking classes at our local community college, which has become a. Oh, Doogie.

[Beck Bennett]

Doogie. Okay. He's got the brains.

[Kyle Mooney]

Call you Doogie.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

They every so often they do. They do.

[Beck Bennett]

Oh, they doy very cool.

[Kyle Mooney]

Or they do or they doy Doogy or they do.

[Beck Bennett]

They doogy or they dogi. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

They do. They, they did. They did GE Call me Doogie a couple times and that was but it was, you know, that.

[Kyle Mooney]

That's almost bull.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Did I bully you into saying didgy? A little bit.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Ever so slightly.

[Kyle Mooney]

Did you. So you're. You said 14?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

And are you interacting with persons who are 18 or older?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, for sure. So it wasn't an uncommon thing for kids that did homeschooling in that to take classes at the community college, which the year we joined actually joined the SUNY system. So it was SUNY Ulster Shout Out, SUNY Elser Proud Alumnus. And it was great. It was a great system.

[Kyle Mooney]

Are you full. So are you only doing that or are you also doing homeschool?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

A little bit of all of them. Right at that time, too, I was working like summers as a staff member at. We had. I went to a live action role playing.

[Beck Bennett]

Is it Wayfinder?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

The Wayfinder experience? Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

I looked this up. I watched the trailer for the camp and I cried.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, you.

[Beck Bennett]

And so, like. But like, just to go back a little bit, you were. Your mom introduced you to Dungeons and Dragons, right?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

And. And so she introduced you to Dungeons and Dragons and you went to this camp. Like, you did homeschooling. It. It kind of like brought you into this world. And now it's. I mean, like, now it's obviously your career. You have a big following. You sell out shows at Hollywood bowl and Madison Square Garden. Correct.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

It's crazy.

[Beck Bennett]

It's pretty incredible. So to go from like the bowling thing to be like, well, look who's laughing now, baby. It's a great story. And the fact that your mom introduced you to it and, you know, you went to this camp and everything.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

And she really talk about a great called shot of like, I think D and D would be good for you. And lo and behold, she was a comic book writer. And so she knew through comic books all these different nerdy pursuits in D. And D was obviously on her radar. And absolutely wild call to be like, my child is being so badly bullied that I think D and D would be a promotion.

[Beck Bennett]

It's gonna help him out.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

It's gonna be a step up, a step in the right direction. And it worked out great. And it genuinely was like DD for being as much of a basement, in my mom's basement playing DD kind of thing. You do need four to six friends to do that.

[Beck Bennett]

And that's all you need for anything. Like, you don't need tons of friends, you just need like four good ones.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I agree. I actually agree. Especially now, especially. It's like different life cycles you go through. I'M a father now.

[Beck Bennett]

Yes, we are too.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Beck Bennett]

How old are your children?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Are one 20 months. My daughter's about to be 20 months old.

[Beck Bennett]

Congratulations.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Thank you very much. How old are your kids?

[Beck Bennett]

24 months over here. Two years.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah. Happy birthday.

[Kyle Mooney]

And a daughter.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Pow.

[Beck Bennett]

And I've got a boy and he's a little bit older, so it's. I'm not in the same club as you guys. We can't relate on anything.

[Kyle Mooney]

His boy is strong and he's, and.

[Beck Bennett]

He'S beating, he's bullying me. He's just a full ball. He's just ripping kids up now. He's, he's a real sweetie.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I, I'm, I'm getting to the age now where I can be pushed around by my child. The other day, which is great. The other day I was. Had a yogurt, those little yogurt pouches. She put the lid in my mouth, closed my mouth and went, shh.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

And I really love that kind of authoritative.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah. I made dinner for my son on. I like make a lot of the food in the house and. Yeah. And I'm amazing. I'm so good. And he just loved it. End of story. No, he, I made. It was one of those, it's one of those times where I was like, I'm just not going to do like a quesadilla or like Mac and cheese, whatever like the go tos are. And it was. We also didn't have much in the house and I was trying to make something sort of healthy and it was like, it was, I would call it like gruel. Just like, just slop, just like bad. Just stuff you can put and eat in your body and give you, give you fuel. But it was quinoa, black beans, some ground turkey with like a, like a sauce and some.

[Kyle Mooney]

This is getting to him being aggressive with you in some way.

[Beck Bennett]

Yes, yes. And he chopped up some spinach, very small, just a bit just to put it in there and put it down in front of him. Anyway, first he went, yucky, yucky, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck. And then, and then, and then it was like, and then my wife was like, sweetie, like, that's not nice to say. Let's, let's, let's try it first. Let's just have a bite of it and see how it tastes. And he went, he looked at me and went, die, Dada. And it was like. Never heard him say die or death or dead or anything.

[Kyle Mooney]

I just feel like it's been so fascinating having a child.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, that's really interesting.

[Kyle Mooney]

Kyle, I was gonna ask age you started playing dungeons and dragons.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

10 years old.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay.

[Beck Bennett]

And you were dungeon mastering.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

10 years old.

[Beck Bennett]

10 years old.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay. So now as I, as I said somebody who, I don't know that I've ever actually played it, I may maybe once in my life, but it feels like, let's say, I'm gonna roughly say the last decade, maybe the last 15 years, there seemed to be some sort of resurgence, like. Or some sort of like big time.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

Now between when you were a child through that until now, did you ever drop off or were you consistently playing through it?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Totally consistent, Totally consistent. You know, it was the main through. It was my number one hobby, like activity, and I went through different chapters of it in my life and ran different big campaigns, you know, like. And by the way, the resurgence you're talking about. Absolutely true. Even calling it a resurgence now, like on a numerical level, this might be more of a golden age than even the 70s and 80s where you think about it in like the public consciousness in terms of the share of the population that's playing it. Like, this is kind of the, the age at this point there's a, you know, When I was 10, I started playing it. I learned how to play it from some older college age folks that were kind enough to teach me how to play. I immediately took it and said, okay, now I want to run it for my friends and started running the game. I ran a campaign from the age of like 11 to 17. Damn. Which was wild. And we went from first to 20th level. Also a very funny experience to be in a world that was designed by an 11 year old. As a 17 year old, you're like some of the sort of big pillars of this world are kind of childish, but like an island full of dragons that have like jobs and go to work. And as an 11 year old you're like, this is sick. At 17, you're like, I don't know, man. Ran another campaign all throughout college that was a big A West marches style campaign. I ran it while I was a camp counselor, which meant that there were tons of players swapping in and out because like week to week different counselors are at different camps and you don't want to exclude anybody. So you're like, yeah, jump in. It's like a big party game for four years essentially. And then I started a game when I was 21 that I ran for 14 years now.

[Kyle Mooney]

And just to clarify, for those of us who don't Know a ton about it. When you say you start a game for 14 years, what you said.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

That means that the group of people you're playing with this game is actually continuing on for 14 years.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

It's like, if you can really slot it in to that old school idea of having like a long running poker night, you know, like, it's that thing where it's like, oh, we're gonna. It's this crew of friends locked into this game for years.

[Beck Bennett]

And it doesn't change people at all.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Right, like, change them on an internal level.

[Beck Bennett]

Well, no. Would, like.

[Kyle Mooney]

Well, they probably evolve as humans over the course.

[Beck Bennett]

Sure. But like, it's the same players.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Oh, yes. The people do not change. People are changed.

[Beck Bennett]

Yes, of course, you grow incredibly.

[Kyle Mooney]

And they have the same, they have the same character throughout.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah. And sometimes, sometimes they die.

[Beck Bennett]

And how, how often do you meet and how long are you going in? But yeah, like in between.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So. So when we start, let's, let's take that 14 year home game as like a, a jumping off point. We would play for usually like once or there was a period of time where it was five of us living in New York and one of us living in Philly, who would take the bus up and that would go for. We would sometimes play for like eight hours in a row. Sometimes we play two days in a row for a couple hours a day. Yeah. Usually like once a month.

[Kyle Mooney]

Once a month. Okay.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Couple years into the game, three of us had moved to Los Angeles, one of us had moved to Chicago. We were flying across the country once every three to six months, and we would play for a whole weekend. And then that got hard enough pandemic started and we would play virtually, so we would get on like a Zoom call. We'd have a virtual tabletop to play there, which was great. I mean, we prefer that over not playing, but obviously it didn't have the same juice as like being in the same place. And we ended the campaign. It was a few months before my daughter was born, and I reached out to everybody and you could feel this shift where in previous years, you know, 10 years into playing the game. We were like, we want to play this forever. And there came to be a point where we realized we loved this story so much that the time had come to finish it. Cause you basically go, well, what's the deal? We're gonna play this until suddenly we can't schedule it anymore. People are going to graduations for their kids and stuff. And not that people can't play as parents, but Just being like, everyone's 20th level. The storylines are all converging. You've beaten so many of your villains, and the villains that are left in the world are your greatest advert. The. But we're coming to an actual conclusion. I'm about to become a father. I don't know how much time I'll have for anything outside of spending time with family on the weekend. So let's send this off. And we got an Airbnb in New Paltz, New York, for a week and played for a week straight, and they won the revolution, defeated their archenemy, and saved the day.

[Kyle Mooney]

That's awesome. And I have two questions in regards to that. So you were the Dungeon Master one. What are you prepping leading into that final week?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

If anything, dude, it was crazy. So the document I had for my notes on the campaign. And as far as Dungeon Masters go, I'm one of the worst note takers of all time.

[Kyle Mooney]

Again, sorry to interrupt you. As a Dungeon Master, you're not participating as a character as well. Or you are.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

You are participating as every character who is not a main character copy. So if you take like Star wars and you say that's a D and D campaign, probably like Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie, you know, and R2 and C3PO, those are your. Those would probably be players, right? Yes. I would be playing IG88. Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

Nice. Gamorrean Guard.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Gamorrean Guard, Right. I'm playing the Gamora. I'm Oren Garde. I'm Jabba. I'm Darth Vader. I'm Obi Wan Kenobi. So you're not just bad guys, but you're basically the characters that are there supporting the central storyline of these heroes.

[Kyle Mooney]

Right?

[Beck Bennett]

Okay.

[Kyle Mooney]

Oh, wait, but I didn't let you finish your thought in terms of you don't take a lot of notes, but.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Oh, yeah, I don't take that many notes. Or. No, sorry, I take a lot of notes. Very poorly organized. So my document at the end of 14 years was a 412 page document that was just a running list of all of my prep and everything that had happened during the sessions. And for that last week, my prep was like reviewing that entire document and trying to wrap up every single story thread. Weirdly, in some ways, the prep for that last week was the hardest thing I've ever done. But actually, I would say more so.

[Kyle Mooney]

Hardest thing you've ever done? Like, in terms of your life.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

D and D prep. But in terms of, like, in other ways, I actually think There were parts of it that were way easier. Cause at a certain point I didn't have to create. You're like, well, this is the ending time to pay off every single thing we've set up. So in a weird way it's just like taking inventory. What's every single part of this world that's unresolved? What are all of the wishes and desires that the PCs have? What are the last challenges they'll face? It was sort of at a certain point as you're ending a campaign, it's just dominoes falling. Right?

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah. Okay. And that's, I mean it's fascinating. It's such a big world that I like.

[Kyle Mooney]

Two questions.

[Beck Bennett]

Okay, I was just gonna say, I was going to say one thing.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay.

[Beck Bennett]

I was going to kind of say something.

[Kyle Mooney]

I just want to make sure I got a chance.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah. I was just going to say that it's.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So we're going to go here and then we'll get. Second question here.

[Beck Bennett]

Not even a question. I was going to say as somebody who does not know the world, it's. That's like so intimidating. That's like such a big commitment. It's like, it's just like I'm like a 15 year, 14 year long campaign. A game that you are playing like and being invested in it. So it's really remarkable.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

And do it. And yeah, it's a lot of work. You know, you're just sitting there, you're doing monster stats and other stuff like that and, and you're trying to like make cool treasure for them to find and do these like dungeons and story modules that are fun and engaging. There's a lot of work that goes into it. But also it's like that work. If I had not done that, I would not have been like, that's your training for then when you get to do it on a professional level. So like, you know, without eridan, without that 14 year home game, there's no universe where dimension 20 happens for sure. You had.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah. What's your question? Here it comes. Everybody get ready.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay, here it is.

[Beck Bennett]

And then I think we got to move on to our podcast.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yes.

[Beck Bennett]

Within the podcast.

[Kyle Mooney]

Well, this I think even though I wanted, I did want to get into a little. Maybe after this you can give us a brief sort of tell us how the intersection of that and doing UCB in New York and.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Is that your second question?

[Kyle Mooney]

It's not my second question.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Okay.

[Beck Bennett]

Okay. So what was that?

[Kyle Mooney]

Here's the second question.

[Beck Bennett]

Like a preface of something coming. The future.

[Kyle Mooney]

I Actually am really gonna ask you to be kind to me today.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, I'm doing the best I can, brother.

[Kyle Mooney]

Cuz like, it's cuz like no. And I don't. And I know what you're doing and I know that you're. Do not touch me like that.

[Beck Bennett]

Doing the best I can, brother. Robin. Kyle showed for the. For the.

[Kyle Mooney]

How do you know my. How do you know the spots that make me love you again?

[Beck Bennett]

I know. I know the way Kyle's hard shoulder right here.

[Kyle Mooney]

Forget that question, okay, because you're so. Because this is your work and you're so closely associated with. With this.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

How.

[Kyle Mooney]

How much do you enjoy or not enjoy conversations like this where people like, don't know about the how much do you like or not like, re explaining this or like, you must have to have this versions of this conversation all of the time.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

That's so funny because it's such a meta question. But I actually love it and I've never gotten it before. I love having this conversation. And I think you're right in that obviously, you know, I'm bringing a world that, for my friends in comedy and for peers and other people that I have admired for a long time and people that are finding out about this for the first time, the questions remain pretty consistent because obviously you're kind of heralding this big world that people know exists, but if you've never had contact with it, it is sort of a mystery even amongst Dungeon Masters. I know. I actually feel like way, way more than a lot of even other people I know that, like, to proselytize tabletop roleplaying games have taught people the game and I love doing it. We did a season of Dimension 20 called Dungeons and Drag Queens where we had four of like the greatest drag performers on the planet. This was Bob the Drag Queen, Monet X Change, AK Thunderfuck, and Jujubee, who if you're a fan of like Drag Race or you're a fan of drag in general, these performers are like Apex.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

They all agreed to come do a thing for the very first time on camera. Right.

[Beck Bennett]

That's wild.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

They all came and played D and D and it was fucking awesome. And you can watch them as brand new players. Right. I think Monet had maybe played one time before, but like brand new players coming with totally open hearts and. And hitting the ground, like not only running, but just like a duck to water, like, they just took to it so well. Cause I think getting to your third question about ucb, there are a lot of transferable skills. Right. If you are a comedian, you're an improviser, you're a sketch comic, you're a standup, and in their cases, you're like a drag performer. You absolutely have these skills that are going to immediately go to work for you as you realize, like, oh, yeah, this is a game. But the game is kind of embedded in this group storytelling that absolutely jives with all of these creat.

[Beck Bennett]

Endeavors that I've.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

These Personas and characters and.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, totally. I love that question. Because the truth is, I really do never.

[Beck Bennett]

Good job, Kyle. I do really good job.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

It's a great question. I do. Because obviously I was just like, I don't know.

[Kyle Mooney]

It was just something I was curious about.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

No, and you. You. Yeah, that was great, Kyle. Really good work.

[Kyle Mooney]

I don't know. Sometimes I'm like, oh, if you. If you're thinking about it, might as well ask it.

[Beck Bennett]

Maybe get the answer. Yeah, you got. Because don't think in your head, oh, it's stupid. I'm not gonna ask that. And actually go for it. You did, buddy.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Listening to that voice in yourself that tells you to be brave and ask a question is especially, like, important if you're hosting a podcast. Because in some ways, you have to get over that internal fear trepidation and be like, I have to ask a question. Because we're recording.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

And you're our guest, and we want you to be comfortable. We also want to learn about you big time. So thank you for the. I'm glad that you liked the question. Cause that. That means that maybe we're doing something right.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah. Or like, you're even a question like, would you. Are you more into potato chips or chocolate?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Chocolate.

[Kyle Mooney]

It's a kind of a savory.

[Beck Bennett]

That's a pretty good question, too, I guess.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Have you ever had the chocolate question? Potato chips?

[Beck Bennett]

Yes. I love those. Best of both worlds.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Best of both worlds.

[Beck Bennett]

You're.

[Kyle Mooney]

You're not answering that. You didn't answer the question.

[Beck Bennett]

You said chocolate.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Chocolate.

[Kyle Mooney]

You're being a. Yeah.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

What about you?

[Beck Bennett]

I beat potato chips.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah, me too.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

But to answer the UCB question that you asked, your question three was the. There's absolutely overlap. And it is crazy because I like. You know, I was a LARP writer. I was doing D and D, and I did D and D all throughout my time at UCB in New York. But it was really funny because I felt like I had to, in some ways, put LARP and D& D behind me because I was like, time to Focus. Time to get real. Time to time to get a career going. Let's go do improv and let's put real career. Let's put all of our chips in.

[Kyle Mooney]

That and give us an era. What is the time period you're doing this?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So I started. Let me see. I graduated from SVA in 2009. I think I started classes in 2012. 2011. 2012. I had a very opposite journey of a lot of people where I was not there out of a sense of competitive spirit. I was not there really, even with a knowledge of the inner institution, but because there was this year where 32 people got. They basically made eight new house teams. I was part of this wave of people that got put on the new house teams at the Lower east side theater and then was a house performer and got put on Herald Night. And I became a teacher and started coaching improv. And it ended up becoming like, that's how I sustained myself. Was teaching improv for many years there, and it was fucking great. And that community led directly to getting recommended for college humor. And so the rest is history.

[Beck Bennett]

And then you decided to bring in Dungeons and Dragons into that world and have. And create a show and do all that.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

That was the crazy thing was like, again, everything is luck and timing. When I got to college humor, they were gearing up to launch Dropout. And so they had gone to all these, you know, collegehumor for years had been like the hardly working sketch team that was there. And I was psyched. I mean, I'd been watching Josh Rubin and, like, a bunch of people you guys know of, like, Streeter, Seidel and other people like that. There was these college humor icons that I've been watching for so many years and ended up getting to. Getting to the job being like, I'm excited to just make sketches. And then they said, check it out, all of you need to be showrunners tomorrow. You all need to pitch a show because we're making a platform and we need content. And I went, oh, shit. And all of a sudden, the weird thing of reaching back to D and D, which I never could have anticipated, was I had left that to go to improv and sketch and then went, oh, now I'm in that environment. And now DD is the thing that differentiates me. So as we're all pitching shows, it's sort of like, what do you have to bring to the podc? And I go, well, shit. Actual play. Like shows like Critical Role and Harmon Quest and the Adventure Zone are, like, taking off. And if you need something that is definitely easier to produce than, like, a single cam narrative show. This is storytelling and narrative that can exist on the platform and be filmed in one studio set and create hours of content with great performers that people are. That seems to be like, year after year, more and more people are discovering it and love it. And so it was a true act of serendipity. It was crazy cool.

[Kyle Mooney]

That's great.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

And it all freaking worked out.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

And it all frigging worked out.

[Beck Bennett]

It all frigging worked out perfect.

[Kyle Mooney]

What show would you have pitched?

[Beck Bennett]

Probably Fresh Perspectives. My YouTube show.

[Kyle Mooney]

There's. In a world where it already existed.

[Beck Bennett]

Or it hadn't, that's probably what I would have done. What about you? What's your show that you would have pitched?

[Kyle Mooney]

Well, you're. You said you're, like, kind of pulling from your. Your. Your tool bag, so to speak.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, totally.

[Kyle Mooney]

Probably something where. Like this, like, the wildest voices.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, definitely. Okay, so that's great.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

We.

[Beck Bennett]

I think we should move on to the podcast.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Can I dig into the wildest voices? We have to move on right now. Can I dig into the wildest voices?

[Kyle Mooney]

Just a small amount. Just for like.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, for like 15 seconds.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah. So what sort of. What. When you say that, do you have a structure?

[Kyle Mooney]

It's basically like, it'll. So it'll be me on camera and, like, I just do some of the wildest voices that people have ever heard.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

But based on what. Or like, what prompt kind of goes.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah, you know, it changes.

[Beck Bennett]

And that's all the time we have for the shot. Kyle's show. Wildest voices that he would have pitched if he was working at college Schumer and coming up with some shows for the dropout at that time. But that's great.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Wild voices.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay, so, Brandon, you.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

You're here.

[Kyle Mooney]

You have a vague idea of how this show works? We're going to.

[Beck Bennett]

We're trying to figure out.

[Kyle Mooney]

We haven't figured out what our podcast should be about, and we understand that you have a pitch for what you think we. It should be, so. What. What. Yeah. What is that?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

In a word? Proprietary.

[Kyle Mooney]

Oh.

[Beck Bennett]

Oh. So we're gonna go to Try to do a podcast about propy.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Okay, we're in trouble.

[Kyle Mooney]

This might be. I might have to. I might have to. I might have to check out miriam-webster.com.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Check out my friend Miriam real quick. Can we hop on that old. That old MW and grab a. Grab a text book of. Of proprietary.

[Beck Bennett]

Proprietary.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Damn it.

[Beck Bennett]

Proprietary.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

It's getting worse.

[Beck Bennett]

Getting my head about prom printing. Okay. Proprietary.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay. Anya's got something for us.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

We got it. So there's kind of two. It's either marketed under.

[Beck Bennett]

Protected by registered trade name, or as.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

If one were the owner of someone or something.

[Kyle Mooney]

That sounds like property.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

No, like be. Sorry. Behaving as if one were the owner.

[Beck Bennett]

Of behaving or something.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So. So, yeah, Proprietor. Right. Proprietary. My pitch for you guys is. Look, I don't know if you guys can smell where the wind is blowing, right?

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, I can. I can. I can smell where the wind.

[Kyle Mooney]

And that's my fault.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, I know. Whether the wind with my friend Kyle here, because he's always like, something out.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So that bit right there, that's a perfect example. It's a killer A plus bit. Right? That bit is gold.

[Beck Bennett]

Right?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So.

[Kyle Mooney]

So he's doing wildest voices.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So that's killer a plus bit. Now, does that bit fly off into the Creative Commons? Does it go off into sort of independent space where people kind of can do what they want with it and you're sort of seeing yourself as artists first and you're sort of putting your work out there into the world to sort of, you know, increase culture? Or is that bit trademarked? Is there a unique character associated with that bit? Can that bit get sort of stamped into a formalized process where you then own that bit? And actually, that bit serves as a platform for other people to riff on that bit in a way where you own their derivations. Right. And their ecosystems are leading back into you.

[Beck Bennett]

Right, I follow that. I follow, I follow, I follow. But wait, should we save this for the pod?

[Kyle Mooney]

No, no. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

You wanna save it for the pod?

[Kyle Mooney]

Was there one? Yeah, go ahead.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

When I say proprietary, I just think that whatever you guys are gonna do. Right. Whatever you guys are gonna do, Rather than making something from the heart that speaks to how you feel about this fragile human condition, you should be using the most destabilizing innovations of the tech industry to create art and media that you guys can capitalize about saying something true and meaningful later.

[Kyle Mooney]

Copy that should be starting point. The content almost is secondary. Is that accurate?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Oh, absolutely. Because content can be anything, right? Content can be literally anything. Right? Content can be literally anything.

[Beck Bennett]

Absolutely. Absolutely. I do a lot of content.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, for sure.

[Beck Bennett]

And it's anything.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay, well, I think we got something to go off of. Yeah, I agree with Beck. I feel like we shouldn't go into it too much now. I think we gotta start the podcast.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Before you have the idea, you need to think about how you're going to exploit it.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah, this is going to be.

[Beck Bennett]

It's going to be very, very fascinating. Fascinating. Let's go try our podcast. Proprietary.

[Kyle Mooney]

What's up, everybody? This is Kyle, and of course, I'm always with Back Bennett over here.

[Beck Bennett]

Of course.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yes, man. How have you been?

[Beck Bennett]

I've been amazing.

[Kyle Mooney]

Crazy.

[Beck Bennett]

Thank you. Yeah, I've been working on myself. Yeah, I've been putting a lot of work into how I look.

[Kyle Mooney]

Compliment. More of just like, whoa, what's going on?

[Beck Bennett]

What does it look like? I didn't look at myself earlier when I walked out of the house. It's just. Is everything.

[Kyle Mooney]

Oh, okay.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

All right, well, everybody's getting older.

[Beck Bennett]

Everybody's getting.

[Kyle Mooney]

All right, well, everybody's getting older, so everybody's getting older.

[Beck Bennett]

So things happen. We didn't plan.

[Kyle Mooney]

We gotta look the same. You did, but you also look crazy, too, man. Crazy, too.

[Beck Bennett]

There's things that weren't there before.

[Kyle Mooney]

That's true. No, we got. We got another episode of our. Of our. Our show. You know what it is? That's why. That's why you're tuning in, ladies and gentlemen.

[Beck Bennett]

It's proprietary.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So this says proprietary, which is proprietary. Did I miss an R? There's an R in there.

[Beck Bennett]

I thought I was gonna mess with Beck and Kyle.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I did not propriet. Proprietary.

[Beck Bennett]

And that's what I said. Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

That's our podcast. That's our podcast. Proprietary.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I want to be clear. I don't want to make anyone feel bad. I don't want to make anyone feel like they made a mistake. Okay.

[Beck Bennett]

So we've been doing this podcast. Proprietary. And we've been saying it wrong.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

You've been saying it wrong.

[Kyle Mooney]

I don't know who does the art.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, dude.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, here we are. And we've a huge realization at the proprietary. You know.

[Kyle Mooney]

You know, it's interesting. Before we started doing this podcast, most of our podcasts were about things like cats.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Really? I was at. Yeah, I was at. Yeah. They said a word. And so. And so I met. So I just. I gave a word. I'm sorry.

[Beck Bennett]

Stuff.

[Kyle Mooney]

Because, like. And get your.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Get.

[Beck Bennett]

Get a download from your brain on what's been going on with the proprietary things. And.

[Kyle Mooney]

And, like. Because you are. Because I feel like you have so many opinions on it. And by the way, we're. The stuff you've done with dementia 20 and dropout. You see, B. And you know, I think of, like, you know, you have such a fascinating story coming from, like, homeschooling, you know, you now, correct me if I'm wrong, you were community college, like, 14, maybe.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, for sure.

[Beck Bennett]

That's amazing. That's earlier than most guys.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, for sure. Does this. Yeah, yeah. You guys edit this, right?

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, we edit everything.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Does this conversation exist in a different area or time than the conversation that we concluded mere minutes ago?

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, it's like an addition. It's like.

[Kyle Mooney]

It's like we've all been working. We've been working our way to be able to do this because this, in theory, is our new podcast.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah. We don't know. We don't really know how this show works, but we're trying to do. You come in, we talk to you a little bit, you give us what. You tell us what our podcast should be.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Gotcha.

[Beck Bennett]

And then we. And we go off.

[Kyle Mooney]

One word well enough.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

But also be our podcast. So less than 15 minutes ago, on a different podcast, Kyle asked me how it feels to be asked the same question a lot. And let me understand. We will be asking those. Those same exact.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay, that was just that. That was me just introing you and sort of.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Gotcha. Okay.

[Kyle Mooney]

What I. What we. What we. And what the. The world knows about you, for sure. No, this is an entirely new podcast, dude.

[Beck Bennett]

This is. I mean, it's. It is our podcast. What's our podcast? But we are trying out. We're just. We're like. We're like, let's give it a go. Let's give proprietary a go. Let's see what proprietary. The podcast.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I'm just gonna talk.

[Beck Bennett]

Our guest, Brennan Lee Mulligan looks like.

[Kyle Mooney]

And I'm sorry to. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just want to go. I want to get right into it. Your thoughts? Give it proprietary.

[Beck Bennett]

Because, honestly, honestly, just why do you.

[Kyle Mooney]

Know, why do you. Why do you need to get in here right now? Let's let and say what he wants to say.

[Beck Bennett]

And I said, honestly.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Oh, honestly. Great.

[Kyle Mooney]

So you got dots, right?

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, I'm rattled, but we all are, dude.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Everyone's rattled. I've made a choice. Everyone's sad, and now we're gonna keep chugging right along.

[Beck Bennett]

But as far as preparing, we just.

[Kyle Mooney]

Need an R in there, right?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

We just need an R. Yeah, just an R, basically. So the. So essentially. So essentially. Well, talk about proprietary. The reason that I thought this. This word was a good place to start is, as we know, you know, Hollywood entertainment media is in a time right now where media is. Is sort of the. The attempt from financial business forces in the United States of America is that media should really just become a wing of the tech industry. Right, sure. And so that's what I was telling you.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah. And I don't agree with that. I think it should be artists doing their thing.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I agree with you. I also think it should be artists doing their thing. But we have to adjust with the times. And so doing a podcast, which is our.

[Kyle Mooney]

This is our podcast.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

This is the podcast.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yes.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So doing a podcast proprietary with Beck and Kyle is, I think, great, because what you can do, right, what do we see? We see Disney making live action remakes of movies that they already made. Right, right. We see decisions to, you know, like, yeah, we don't want to necessarily make a risk and bet on new ip. We need to make a version of the Boggle movie so that we don't lose those rights. Right. Like all of that, that's sort of where we've been for a long, long time. You guys. Making a podcast where we sort of revisit the ground of a previous informational, interview based podcast in a new format. You're right in the main drag of what the future of media is.

[Beck Bennett]

Yes, we are. Absolutely.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

You're in the main line.

[Beck Bennett]

Absolutely. So you're saying my question, and my question to you is also, how do we do that? Like, so we got all these ideas, whether it's. Whether it's smelling. Smelling Kyle's farts, being able to smell the direction of the wind because Kyle's farts and stuff like that.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

Now how do we trademark do we. You're saying we trademark that idea and we create a movie based on that.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So here's a great point. What do you guys. So we're recording this right now. What's your guys plan for where this is going to live digitally? How are people going to interact with what you're recording right now?

[Beck Bennett]

The podcast app and YouTube.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Okay.

[Beck Bennett]

And Instagram. I don't know. What is that? Right. I don't know.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So it sounds like, it sounds like you guys are planning on releasing this on an RSS feed, right?

[Beck Bennett]

Exactly. Definitely on RSS feed.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

On an RSS feed which goes out to podcatchers and different apps all over. But it's, it's an open form of technology that, that the Internet has, has provided.

[Beck Bennett]

Right.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

That allows for you guys to, you know, attain this massive, massive reach. But how do you monetize that exactly? Ads? Is it ads, ad share maybe, or proprietary with Beck and Kyle isn't a podcast, it's a podcast app.

[Beck Bennett]

Oh, okay.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

You guys create an app, upload it to the app Store people download it to get access to not only the proprietary podcast, but to. What's this podcast? Right. They go. They had to go a step back to see where the genesis of this was. After this is concluded, we record behind the scenes footage of making a podcast based on the interview from a previous podcast. Now, people have a third way to engage with the same set of questions. Right?

[Beck Bennett]

Right.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

They come in, why do you need the app? You need the app because there's an in app merch store where you can earn points from buying that merch. Right. And at this point, people aren't listening to a podcast and they're generating an identity around themselves as consumers by saying, it's not that I'm listening to Beck and Kyle. I'm a Beck and Kyle listener. And that's why I've given them my Social Security number, my home address, and a tracking data that you guys can sell to Palantir and that way. Palantir.

[Beck Bennett]

What's Palantir?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Palantir is a company that built.

[Beck Bennett]

I don't think it's that one.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Palantir. Palantir is a Peter Thiel funded, sort of like data and surveillance company. Okay. That is working with the US Government as a surveillance force. Right. Named after the evil crystal balls from Lord of the Rings.

[Beck Bennett]

Holy crap.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Does anybody know about this stuff?

[Kyle Mooney]

Now?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

A lot of people.

[Beck Bennett]

We gotta get this out to the public.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Gotta get it out there.

[Beck Bennett]

We have to get people to know about. This is a huge national threat.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, but. But you can be a part of that huge national threat by getting people on your app and get their data and sell that data.

[Beck Bennett]

Okay. Now will you.

[Kyle Mooney]

Kyle Brennan.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yes.

[Kyle Mooney]

Thank you again so much for being on our show. Proprietary.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

You got it.

[Kyle Mooney]

We love. I. Speaking for myself, I love everything you're talking about.

[Beck Bennett]

I do too. And I actually do want to do. Do the model.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, man.

[Kyle Mooney]

Am I. Am I allowed to finish or is this. Is this a. I just want to.

[Beck Bennett]

Say I want to do the model. Go ahead.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Go for it, please.

[Kyle Mooney]

Now, speaking as the longtime co host of this podcast show.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

Or I guess it's. Or arguably the first time ever.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

First time. We're just trying.

[Kyle Mooney]

We're trying it out, but I'm trying to make it seem like I'm a pro.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

And are you a longtime host or are you a longtime founder of a experience based app?

[Kyle Mooney]

Well, that's.

[Beck Bennett]

Which one is.

[Kyle Mooney]

That's actually where I'm. That's where actually where I'm going here.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Okay.

[Beck Bennett]

Okay.

[Kyle Mooney]

Our job, if we're stepping out if we're breaking character for a moment, if we're coming out of format.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Okay, great.

[Kyle Mooney]

Was to find what our podcast should be about.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

So is our podcast that's about proprietary, which I feel like you're pitching ideas surrounding that or almost better things we can do than just, say, start a podcast.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

We still need to have our podcast within that.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Right.

[Kyle Mooney]

And that podcast, as far as I know that I'm trying to host, is called proprietary. So what am I doing on that specific podcast?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Well, can I. Can I react to that in. In real time, please? Everything you said is wrong. I disagree with all of it.

[Beck Bennett]

Yes, you are wrong, Kyle.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So.

[Kyle Mooney]

So this. So what we're doing right now, this is not my podcast or our podcast called proprietary.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

This is a lead up to an experience based on being a fan of the podcast.

[Beck Bennett]

And what is the podcast?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

God damn it. Okay, so you guys are trapped in this artist.

[Kyle Mooney]

I think we're trapped in the format of our own. Of what we think our. Yeah, our show should be.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Right. But while you're thinking about formats, ask yourselves, is a form. Do people attach to things because it provides adds value and meaning to their life, or do they attach to things because we already got round one funding from venture capital firms, right?

[Beck Bennett]

Yes.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I've taken out a $400,000 loan in your guy's name.

[Beck Bennett]

Get out of here. Are you serious?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

For real?

[Beck Bennett]

This is huge.

[Kyle Mooney]

Well, then my pitch. Okay, I don't think. I don't want this to be the podcast that is holding down our ass.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Great. Declare bankruptcy. We're going to make a fortune. And by we, I do mean me.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay. I declare.

[Beck Bennett]

Okay, so. So maybe it's kind of. Maybe the pot. Maybe the podcast is like characters.

[Kyle Mooney]

I think this might be our last episode.

[Beck Bennett]

I don't know if proprietary is going to be the. The podcast that we go with, but.

[Kyle Mooney]

But I think it can. Maybe. But we could utilize what we've learned from recording the podcast.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yes. Put another way. Okay. And by the way, I want you to know I'm not heartless. I'm sensing pushback on the fact that this idea does not at this moment have anything other than kind of a fractal recursion into itself where we never touch.

[Beck Bennett]

Fractal recursion is actually my exact. I was exactly thinking fractal.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I'm feeling a lot of alignment with Beck, and I'm feeling almost no on with you. What do you think that is?

[Beck Bennett]

You know?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

And you can say, Kyle.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Well, I. I think.

[Kyle Mooney]

I mean, I I think it's just, you know, seeing fragments, essentially seeing these different parts and not seeing them come together. That's more of a recurrent, you know, and. And. And I. I think I. I think about.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

You know, you seem afraid to say recursion, and Beck said it twice so far.

[Beck Bennett]

I'm loving it.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

You know, I mean, where I come from, it's not something we just throw around, but. Yeah, you know, I see what you're saying.

[Beck Bennett]

So father was a recursion.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I'm sorry. And incredible.

[Beck Bennett]

Pretty sensitive to it.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So it feels like we're bumping up against here. Because I can sense that we're bumping up against it. Is that you're saying. If I can understand it, the branding being the mission statement is tough because we seem to be. We seem to all agree that we should be making this proprietary. But should that. That also be what the actual sort of nougat is? Is that the center.

[Kyle Mooney]

Initially, I thought the idea was the nougat.

[Beck Bennett]

Right?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah. So, yes, it should be, because you go to that nougat and it's nothing there. But the there is going to be provided by the people engaging on the proprietary platform.

[Beck Bennett]

I see.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

So in other words, the content is going to be. You get people excited about this idea, they come to it and they say, what is a podcast about? Proprietary. Like, I want it about cats because I like cats, or I want it about dogs because I like dogs. And you say cats and dogs is what proprietary is about. Because you're on our platform posting pictures of your cat. Post pictures of your dog. We own your cat. We own your dog. We'll kill your dog if you don't give us your life savings.

[Beck Bennett]

That's what I've been trying to do.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Exactly. Do you see? Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

You have to be willing to kill some dogs and cats if you're gonna make.

[Kyle Mooney]

Sorry. And I'm gonna step back for just one second.

[Beck Bennett]

And we do have to wrap up.

[Kyle Mooney]

This part of the pod, just so I'm totally cute.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

You are 14 years old, going to a community college.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

That's way too early. I mean, they must. You must have been seeing stuff.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

You were not. Were people drinking at college just in class? Yeah, I was 14. Most people were like, 18 to 22. It was also. It had been a community college, so there were a lot of continuing education people. There was one dude who was in his, I think, 40s or 50s, named Dino, who was awesome. And he.

[Beck Bennett]

You know, Stephanopoulos.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Honestly, that might have been his last. I don't know what his last name was, but there were. College ruled. It was great. Yeah. Well, let's.

[Kyle Mooney]

Why don't we do. Before we close out our favorite segment of the proprietary podcast, it's me.

[Beck Bennett]

Really?

[Kyle Mooney]

It's time for our favorite segment.

[Beck Bennett]

Sexiest proprietary. Okay.

[Kyle Mooney]

What's your sexiest proprietary?

[Beck Bennett]

My sexiest proprietary is probably Brennan.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Wow.

[Kyle Mooney]

Agreed.

[Beck Bennett]

Honestly, you were great. You are bringing sexy back to proprietary. Honestly, like I. It was. And before we started this podcast, I didn't know much about proprietary stuff. And now that we did it, I am actually thinking get on board the Peter Thiel stuff.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

Oh.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Or wait, no, see, I just clip this by itself.

[Kyle Mooney]

No, wait.

[Beck Bennett]

Who's the guy who had the thing.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Thing, huh?

[Kyle Mooney]

Who's the guy?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Peter Thiel is the vampiric billionaire who owns.

[Beck Bennett]

Is he the guy who had the website?

[Kyle Mooney]

For sure.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Beck Bennett]

All right, so I think it's. Brennan is my. My sexiest. What about you? Proprietary.

[Kyle Mooney]

Remember Cindy Crawford?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Awesome. Okay.

[Beck Bennett]

And what about you?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

To find out my sexiest proprietary, you need to download proprietary, which with Beck and Kyle, the number one proprietary app for podcast based experiences, live events coming to your place of work and your federal detention center soon.

[Beck Bennett]

Move over, Peter Thiel. We have Brennan Lee Mulligan here, but don't.

[Kyle Mooney]

But don't mind stopping by. Cindy Crawford, thanks again for being here as always.

[Beck Bennett]

This was a great episode on proprietary.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

When did you know that Cindy Crawford meant a lot to you?

[Kyle Mooney]

When my mom purchased the workout video. And I. I enjoyed it.

[Beck Bennett]

Hell yeah. All right, see you guys next week on proprietary pr.

[Kyle Mooney]

Brennan, how do you. How. Multiple questions here. I'm getting some feedback. I'm going to take these off.

[Beck Bennett]

Probably mine. My headphones that I put in the mic, I popped them off.

[Kyle Mooney]

You're fine.

[Beck Bennett]

Don't worry. I'm popping off.

[Kyle Mooney]

How do you. So how do you think we did.

[Beck Bennett]

You don't have to.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Could we. Could we. Could I break it into categories? Can we do it by category rather than an overall.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Enthusiasm, A plus.

[Kyle Mooney]

Okay.

[Beck Bennett]

That's great.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Pep, 100% great.

[Kyle Mooney]

Those seem similar.

[Beck Bennett]

Enthusiasm and pep.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Okay. No, you don't have.

[Kyle Mooney]

I'm not saying you have to change it.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Joie de vivre. Through the roof, I'd say yeah, for sure. God, if I'm looking for. If I'm. Those are my roses. If I'm trying to think of my thorn there.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

The thorn from my rose. I think we had to stumble out of the gate with the fact that the word wasn't spelled right and that's.

[Beck Bennett]

Gonna be on Kyle right there. Well.

[Kyle Mooney]

Well, you know what? The thing is, immediately when I was writing it, I was like, I'm probably spelling this wrong. Yeah, I was gonna say something about it. I was gonna try to preface it, but I thought maybe I could get away with it.

[Beck Bennett]

Yeah, I thought it was perfect.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Oh, thanks. You know, for me, it was like. You know, I know you guys have been doing this search for your. For your podcast, and without. I think, if I'm being honest, the reason that I went with the idea of proprietary being kind of what the podcast is, is that the thought of taking you two, whose work I just really respect and admire and am a fan of and have been a fan of and sort of telling you guys what the content should be just struck me as conceited. And so I would never want to tell you guys what the song in your heart is.

[Beck Bennett]

Thank you.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

But I did want to come and tell you how to package that song in your heart in a way that would repel as many decent people as possible. And to me, that kind of proprietary tech model does exactly that.

[Kyle Mooney]

So, yeah, this is. This is not something you're actually encouraging.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

To take the mask off for a second. This exact kind of soulless, valueless tech language is the vine strangling the tree of our democratic institutions and population, and I hate it. With a burning fire that is hard to articulate without just sort of of frothing at the mouth.

[Kyle Mooney]

Yeah. So to me, that feels like it shouldn't be our podcast. Brandon, what do you got? You got.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

What's going on?

[Kyle Mooney]

What's going with you these days, man? Anything?

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

We should be excited. Well, we got. So Dimension 20 is doing some live shows. We have a show coming up in November, first the MGM grand in Las Vegas.

[Beck Bennett]

Wow, that's exciting.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Come check it out. It'll be a joy, but be a real hoot. And then you can find my work on Dropout TV and a bunch of awesome shows there, including Dimension 20. If you're into podcasts, you can check out the podcast Worlds Beyond Number, which is a sick actual play podcast that I do with Lou Wilson, Aabria Iyengar, Erika Ishii, produced by Taylor Moore. And you can also find me at Branley Mulligan on bluesky and Instagram.

[Beck Bennett]

You guys find him there.

[Kyle Mooney]

Go find Brennan, and don't forget. It's wonderful. It's always good to try to find.

[Beck Bennett]

Out what our podcast is with you.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

This was heartfelt. Yeah, yeah.

[Kyle Mooney]

And don't forget to check out Wildest Voices.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Hello Gumna.

[Beck Bennett]

What'S Our Podcast is a Headgum podcast created and hosted by Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney. The show is produced and engineered by Casey Donahue and Anya Kanovskaya with production support from Marika Brownlee, Rachelle Chen, and Ali Khan. Our executive producer is Anya Kenovskaya. Katie Moose is our VP of Content at Headgum. Our theme music is made by us. For more podcasts by headgum, visit headgum.com or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

I'm Tig Notaro.

[Kyle Mooney]

I'm Mae Martin.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

And I'm Fortune Feimster.

[Beck Bennett]

And together we're Handsome.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

What is Handsome? Well, it's a state of mind. It's how you feel. It's whatever you want it to be. Handsome is also a podcast hosted by us three stand up comedians you may have seen on your tv. We swap stories, share life updates, and occasionally laugh until we cry. Every episode we answer a question from a celebrity friend.

[Kyle Mooney]

People like Sarah Silverman.

[Beck Bennett]

It's Stephen Colbert.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

It's Reese Witherspoon. My name is Mindy Kaling.

[Beck Bennett]

Hello Handsome Podcast.

[Kyle Mooney]

It's Jen Aniston.

[Beck Bennett]

Here you gorgeous w. So if you're.

[Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Looking for a positive, joyful show guaranteed to make you giggle, check out Handsome. Jump right in with whatever episode tickles your fancy. Or start from the very, very first episode. Listen to Handsome on your favorite podcast.

[Beck Bennett]

App or watch full video episodes on YouTube. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. And don't forget, keep it Handsome.