This Podcast is a Bad Idea

600 men embarked on a voyage, and only 1 came home. Froo and Murph channel their theater kid energy into Epic: The Musical a pop-opera retelling of The Odyssey that got really, really, really big...on TikTok. They go saga by saga so Murph can to flex his classics knowledge while Froo shakes their fist at the clouds all in the pursuit of determining if violence is good or not.

TIMESTAMPS

00:48 - What is Epic?

10:34 - What is The Odyssey?

13:53 - Spoiler Free Thoughts

24:35 - The Troy Saga<...

In our first proper Minisode of Season 2 Murph elaborates on his journeys south, which invariably leads to a discussion about failed Peanuts characters. For Show & Tell Froo will bring the smiles and Murph shares his favorite Reddit post of 2025.

The Podcast that refuses to die is back with a new format. In Season 2 we're skipping right to the main topic (or in this cause topics). Murph was away at the South Pole looking for Santa and needs to be caught up on the culture of the internet going in to 2026. It's up to Froo to bring our lad up to speed and tell him what he missed.

Timestamps

00:50 - Season 2 Starts Now!

04:20 - Words of the Year

10:43 - Pantone Color of the Year

13:58 - Heated...

Blood the trade, dear listeners! In this episode Murph leads Froo down a tuna-scented rabbit hole of internet madness. This five year tale spreads from the Mommy Blogs of Get Off My Internets, the Blog Wars of Serge and Monica, Cambridge huckster Caroline Calloway, and even some famous pies from Kutchie’s Key West Cafe. No cap cap cap cap cap cap, and certainly No foretold!

If that is not enough, we get an update on Etsy darling Cowboy Wormie, and Murph gets the definitive answer on if he would have survived a school shooting.

Cr...

We're gonna level with you listener: The Main Topic for this episode is a 2 hour breakdown of each historical American Girl doll. There is no spin or twist. Froo and Murph read the wiki entry for all 23 American Girl dolls and give them a letter grade. Interesting questions will be asked, such as "Is it okay to claim an indigenous tribe as American?" or "Do the 1990s count as historic?" but it's still a frank discussion of American Girl Dolls.

Outside of that lengthy Main Topic, Froo listens to the latest Smokey Robinson Album, we explore the...

Gel your hair and crank that Nelly Fertado, cause Froo and Murph are taking the wayback machine to nearly two decades prior to talk about E3 2006 as presented by G4 TV (as presented by Mountain Dew and Scion). Back when Olivia Munn was just the winner of a reality show, when the price of the PS3 was still unknown, and when Reggie Fils-Aime was the biggest rizzcake on the block. Our hosts will get to the bottom of the question: Was this really a better time for gamers?

To excavate this time of booth babes and JRPG...

Whoa, where does the time go?

Murph and Froo come back from hiatus to talk about the vague and nebulous topic of "Art depicting childhood characters as adults." What if Max Goof grew up to be a lumbersexual? What then? Have you even considered that he might?

Also on the docket of ideas is Murph's Job-Hunting Hell, Andrew Llyod Webber's School of Rock (With Friends), and The Annual Sanrio Popularity Poll.

Would you believe Episode 20 was originally much squirrellier?

2024 was just too jam packed with mess for us to contain to a clean runtime, so cuts had to be made for the sake of appearing mostly professional and respectful of our listeners' time.

For those that want to hear all the half-and-half induced trauma dumping and memes from the main topic you've come to the right place.

Before the horrors of 2025 take total precedent, Murph and Froo want to confront the horrors (and small joys) of 2024. Murph breaks down his favorite memes and posts of the year, while Froo elaborates on the various "messes" that fueled the discourse slop pile.

In the Decompress we have an update on Murph watching Professional Wrestling, and Froo let's us know Buffalo Bill is coming.

You better watch out, You better watch out!

For this Bad Idea, Froo and Murph stare directly at the Lumistella Star and it's corporate spawn, The Elf on the Shelf. Began in 2005 as one family sharing their holiday tradition of Santa's government-issued snitches, Elfing has seen a boom in the social media age that has led to an expansion of the brand and way, way too much lore to support it.

Also in the kringle sack is historical precedent of German folktales, discussing gentrification with hot sauces, and what it means to be a Bingleholic<...

Froo and Murph celebrate their 2 year podiversary by taking a look into the books of Booktok. Ostensibly, Booktok is just a tag on TikTok for talking about literature, but has increasingly grown associated with a particular genre of books and book discourse. Froo does her level best to de-mystify the tag, talk about some of the heavy-hitters, and opens the discussion to why we can't seem to let women have their kinks.

Also in the episode we discuss horror icons (for better or worse) Junji Ito and Russ McKamey alongside a brief snippet of Froo and Murph...

As clinically as it can be put: In 2012 there was an intense fandom surrounding The Once-ler from the animated Lorax movie from Illumination Entertainment. The Once-ler was played by Andy from The Office.

Froo and Murph try to make heads and tails of this bizzarre fandom that went as quickly as it came, a perfect storm of Tumblr Sexyman, Hotboy Villain, and...and...self-shipping? If you didn't know before, the details contained within may prove shocking.

And if none of that isn't your cup of tea this episode will also contain impressions of the D23...

What if you could live forever? What if you were in the vast emptiness of space with only two other people to talk to? What if football, but with tornados?

Froo and Murph examine such questions through 17776 a work of high-concept sci-fi multimedia fiction published innocuously to a totally normal sports blogging website in the year 2017. It's a comedy, it's an existential horror, it's a refutation of Protestant work-ethic.

Hut hut hike listeners, this one goes places.

In this Bad Idea we're gonna take you to the past to talk about The Sims 2 machinima's that were sub-quality. Now that Roosterteeth has officially shut the doors (and their content is made increasingly scarce by Warner Bros.) we decided this was the ideal time for Froo to wax nostalgic about one of the first media conglomerates born of the internet. Murph doesn't wax nostalgic at all, he only watched Red vs Blue.

Froo and Murph float down the chocolate river to Glasgow, Scottland to unpack the generated Willy Wonka pop-up event allegedly* written wholly by AI by a grifter to extract the glaswegian people of their hard earned pounds.

Come for the full reading of the script, stay for the trial of Jojo Siwa.

*It was, absolutely, without question.

Froo and Murph take the Wayback Machine to a time that was four years ago, but feels like six months ago, to talk about the 2020 underground webcomic Mr. Boop by Alec Robbins.

What began as a daily comic with one joke slowly turned into a statement on sexuality, copyright law, and how Amazon workers deserve bathroom breaks. There's also some slow-burn psychological horror, because COVID lockdown did strange things to all of us.

It's an episode you'll have to tell the fellas at work about.

The Etsy episode was already long, but would you believe it was even longer?

Froo and Murph just couldn't resist looking at each sellers' store page and riffing on additional products (as well as a dip into the Elf on a Shelf official website).

This minisode is just the Main Topic section of the Etsy: The Price is Right, but leaving in those tangents, equating up to an additional 90 minutes of goofs and content.

Froo and Murph put on their appraising caps to dive into the internet's foremost crafts market known as Etsy. It's a battle of wits as they play a game of The Price is Right and see who is too thrifty, and who is wise to the ways of the internet grift.

Play along at home with the TPIABI: Etsy: The Price is Right: The Home Game!

With supreme lateness, Froo and Murph join together to talk about the 2023 animated series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. It's been a long time coming to finally get a faithful adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's comic.

...That's what this is...right?

Episode contains spoilers for the entire show.

Froo and Murph do a review of six prominent cartoon pilots that premiered directly to YouTube including Bee & Puppycat, Long Gone Gulch, The Amazing Digital Circus, Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, and Lackadaisy.

In this, our Bad Idea podiversary, Froo and Murph decide to do a redux of their first episode by looking at what's new in internet horror. For this they have to learn how to noclip and acquire a taste for almond water as they delve into the turbulent fandom of The Backrooms. What began as just a series of disquieting pictures of liminal spaces morphed into something burdened by lore and children with no restraint.

Do you wanna hear about how the real world's the place for me?

In this episode Froo and Murph warp back to the first-half of the 2010s to experience Video Game High School, the first full series from Rocket Jump and Guitar Hero Savant Freddy Wong. It's a jumping point for discussing the rise of new media and the commercialization of our internet funny people.

Trigger Warning: Harry Potter is brought up an unintentionally large number of times.

Believe it or not, there was a time when folks thought we had this whole Internet thing figured out and they wrote down a meme-filled creed to commemorate that fact. Little besides a rule about porn remains.

Murph and Froo put their heads together to unpack the enigma of "The Wonderbread Guy," a strange soul known for his prolific and highly specific fetish art commissions.

KUNGALOOSH Dear Listener,

In this episode Murph and Froo don their booney hats to travel the breadth of Disney Parks to piece together the network of easter eggs and breadcrumbs that make up the S.E.A, the Society of Explorer's and Adventurers. This secret club hides in plain site of most Disney Park rides, connecting them through an ongoing story line of archeology and exceptionally literal last names.

Who are the S.E.A, how long have they been A Thing™, and where are they going?

Also on the explorer's docket: A Ki...

Not so long ago, in the mysterious land of Toronto, Canada, Bryan Lee O'Malley got inspired by a Plumtree song...

In this episode Froo and Murph espouse nostalgia and introspection as they look back at the mid-2000s comic series Scott Pilgrim to see if it still holds up to their rose-dyed memories and 20 years of public scrutiny.

Is this the ultimate story for incels? Is Ramona Flowers a manic pixie dream girl? Does Murph really not like the movie??

All this and more answered in this hipster-flavored episode!

This is the uncut version of the Kingdom Hearts episode that contains additional inquiries from Froo and what Murph dubs the "Conspiracy Section" regarding the build up to Kingdom Hearts IV.

The additional content begins after the synopsis of Dark Road, right at the 1:33:44 mark.

The Bad Idea this week is surmounting the allegedly impossible task of synopsizing all thirteen entries in the Kingdom Hearts series of games. From the PS2 original Kingdom Hearts to the recently concluded Dark Road, our franchise expert Murph teaches us all about keyblades, X-Blades, and dudes that say "As if!"

The season's upon us, and Froo and Murph are gathering by the fire to tell ghost stories of fandoms of long long ago.

The issue is that this fandom ain't dead. In fact, Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons has seemingly outlived most of the movies that it draws it's material from. Is there a secret to this 2010s crossover premise that our hosts can discover?

Other topics include Christmas Carol Adaptations, Seth Green's NFT Show, and Listener Mail.

Thanksgiving is imminent. In this episode: astonishingly thorough parade wikis, epic video essays, Tony Hawk, 9/11, and James Cameron's eternal passion project, Avatar.

It's Mischief Night and our hosts are up to no good. Murph's been watching the WWE of monster hunting shows. Froo has been brushing up on dark internet rituals. Our main topic tonight is the old guard of Creepypasta. Where are these killer, slender, and hyper-realistic legends now?