Podcast / Distractible

"This podcast is a cautionary tale if ever there was one."

— Mark, Hold My Beer

Distractible is a podcast hosted by Mark Fischbach, Wade Barnes, and Bob Muyskens.

Every episode, two of the show's hosts compete to "bring the most captivating stories to the table" regarding a particular topic, and will be judged by the third host, the winner of the previous episode. The podcast updates every Monday and Friday. Excerpts from the episodes are posted on the official YouTube channel throughout the week; animated shorts based on stories from the podcast are periodically posted on Mark's channel as well.

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This podcast provides examples of:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: Frequently used in the early intros; for example, this one from "Waste of Money":
  "Good evening, gentle listeners, and welcome to Distractible — a Wood Elf production — with your hosts: munificent Mark, what-wielding Wade, and bountiful Bob. This week, the wanton wasters wax worldly about the perfect ease of purchasing preponderances. Yes... it's time for: a waste of money. Please secure thy purse, and enjoy the show."
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Wade. Big time. Wade repeatedly points out that he easily gets lost in his own train of thought and stops paying attention to what others are saying. Wade admitting that he stopped paying attention to whatever Mark and Bob were saying is a regular occurrence. Subverted in "Hypocrisies" where Mark points out that Wade does this for a bit, and that the three of them are aware that Wade pays close attention to everything being said.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite their comic personas, Mark, Bob, and Wade are Heterosexual Life-Partners who like and respect each other, and occasionally the podcast will shift into Sincerity Mode. One example is at the end of "The Distractible Threesome," where Wade tells the other two what he appreciates about them and they do the same for him.
• Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop:
  • One story from Bob in "Disappointing Our Parents" involves Bob and some friends driving home at 3 AM from a midnight movie premiere, only to be pulled over by dozens of police cars who apparently mistook them for some gas station thieves. Even after it becomes clear that these high school kids in pirate costumes aren't the crooks they were looking for, the cops are very rude and condescending to them, demanding that Bob wake up his parents so they can back up his story, refusing to lend them some badly-needed gas, and even contriving a reason to search their car just as they were about to let them go.
  • In "The Atrocities of Summer", Mark recalls that when his dad's car was stolen by a Psycho Ex-Girlfriend, the cops bluntly refused to do anything about it, without giving any solid reason.
• Berate and Switch: According to Wade in "Disappointing Your Parents," his mom wasn't mad at him for going to a strip club, but for not taking her with him for his first visit.
• Big Eater: Wade. They don't call him the King of Meat for nothing. Bob, who is no slouch in this department himself, has no idea how a skinny guy like Wade can eat the equivalent of "a quarter of a cow" without complaint.
• Cats Are Mean: According to "Pet Stories," Wade's cat Keeters is a brutal Serial Killer who tortures and kills squirrels, mice, and birds with impunity, usually leaving the mutilated corpses on his doorstep. Keeters was declawed as a kitten, but apparently that doesn't slow him down much. Mark says his old cat, Maximilian, was similarly deranged.
• Complexity Addiction: The guys' plans to make a best friend in "How to Make a Best Friend" involve kidnapping, deception, secret lairs, and copious amounts of blood.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Discussed in "Conspiracy Theories" and "Curious Conspiracy Corner", naturally.
• Disappointed in You: "Disappointing Our Parents" has the trio sharing personal stories of this nature. Obviously.
• Don't Try This at Home: Halfway through "Hold My Beer," Wade reminds the audience not to attempt any of Mark and Bob's college shenanigans, as any one of them could have easily gotten someone hurt or killed.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Subverted in "Bob's Fridge"; while the deliverymen were indeed frustratingly incompetent, it was ultimately their Smug Snake attitude — and their unwillingness to take responsibility for their escalating mistakes — that truly pushed Bob to his Rage Breaking Point.
• Eviler than Thou: In "Who's the Worst", Bob suffers early on because he hadn't picked up on the fact that he was supposed to be coming up with immoral responses to Mark's prompts, letting Wade get a significant lead. Once he does figure it out, however, Bob comes back with a vengeance, winning all but one of the remaining rounds by invokedCrossing the Line Twice. Hilariously, this newfound evilness ends up costing him the game when he forcibly swaps cases with Wade, which gives him 1 point to Wade's 75 and leaves him a sputtering mess.
  Wade: In one episode, we saw Bob's villain arc complete!
• Gallows Humor: Wade admits that this is his defense mechanism in response to crises. After relating the story of his cat Keeters' harrowing ordeal at the vet - which culminated in him almost literally coming back from the dead - he starts calling Keeters his "zombie cat."
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • In "Who's The Worst" during their Deal or No Deal-style game, Bob feels confident enough near the end to steal Wade's case that he held on to for most of the episode. Mark suggested it as a joke, but Bob insists despite Mark thinking it was a bad idea. With that, Bob basically handed Wade the victory since he originally had the case with 75 points. In Wade's former case? One point.
  • In "Anything Goes," Mark has an alarm goes off at random intervals so whoever is talking gets a randomly assigned amount of points. Wade keeps missing the timing and Bob accrues more points. Twenty minutes in, he suggests having negative points being added to the randomizer to make Bob lose points. This puts Wade in the negative for the rest of the episode. It only got worse when closer to the end since he suggested widening the margin from -10—10 to -25—25, despite both Mark and Bob insisting that it's a bad idea and it doesn't have to happen. While this does hinder Bob and narrow the gap for some points, it doesn't get Wade out of the negative, ending him with -6. The only time he managed to get a net positive total^note His highest score was 2 points is before the negatives were introduced.
    Bob: You did this! You are the one who did this!
• Lovable Sex Maniac: If someone makes a sex joke, nine times out of ten, it's Wade.
• Marshmallow Hell: In "Supernatural," Bob tells the story of the hantu tetek, a creature from Malaysian folklore whose preferred method of dispatching its victims is by smothering them in its rear-facing mammaries.
• Non Sequitur: You could make a Drinking Game out of all the times Wade derails the conversation with an innuendo or some other random comment.
• Off the Rails: Happens almost every episode. Part of the fun of listening is seeing how far the boys can derail the original topic before the host puts them back on track.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Bob had the misfortune to host an episode on a topic nearly identical to a previous one (aging/getting older). When he realized his mistake, he was crushed and dubbed it the "Worst Piece of Sh*t Episode Ever," and the other two have never let him forget the time he hosted an episode twice.
• Potty Emergency: "Oh Shit Moments" is about stories of this nature.
• The Power of Hate: "Fuck You Energy" has Bob and Wade telling stories of spite-motivated accomplishments, such as the time the latter ran for president at his high school's bar association because he didn't like the attitude (and three-page campaign speech) of the student who spoke before him. Wade won in a landslide.
  Wade: Fuck your dreams. Fuck your nightmares. I'm gonna beat you.
• Riddle for the Ages: In "Pet Stories", Mark, while telling the story about his dog and a Roomba doing its job far too well with disastrous results, admits how he still have no idea how the Roomba ended up in the corner upside-down.
• Running Gag:
  • Mark's pre-recorded intro for Morbid Mysteries of the Missing Millennium, which he plays every time he tells a story of the paranormal. It gets to the point that the trio can't get through the entire thing without invokedCorpsing.
    "When I turned around..."
  • Wade's dogs and Bob's fridge is fine, thanks for asking.
  • "This episode of Distractible is sponsored by <brand we just roasted>!"
  • "We're getting older. We should do an episode about that!"
  • "Expound!" The obligatory response whenever one of the contestants gives a vague or overly simplistic answer to a question.
  • "One of us speaks in riddles, the other speaks in rhymes."
  • Wade loves Shakira. Also, boats.
  • Did you know Mark really loves camera lenses?
• Scare 'Em Straight:
  • Various methods to do this are discussed in "Beware the Candy Uncle." The one that provides the episode title is to hire a Candy Uncle: someone who pretends to be a distant relative at family gatherings, and then "dies" the instant a kid misbehaves, horrifying them enough to never do it again.
  • In "Who's the Worst," Bob is asked how he would deal with a delinquent teenage son who'd just robbed a liquor store with some friends. His response is to don a ski mask, track down the teenagers, and destroy their car with a baseball bat while screaming obscenities at them (while pretending to be the store owner).
    "THAT'S FOR MY STORE! YOU CAN'T STEAL FROM ME! YOU THINK YOU CAN STEAL FROM TWO-TOES JOHNNY!?"
• Signing-Off Catchphrase: "Podcast... out!"
• Straight Man: The host of the week has the dubious honor of setting up topics for the other two to riff on. He also has to keep the discussion at least somewhat on track. His effectiveness at this varies.
• That Poor Plant: In "Pet Stories," Wade describes a time he and a friend caught a racoon in a tree in their front yard by cutting off every branch one by one. The tree only survived another year, which Wade admits was probably his fault.
• Token Evil Teammate: Wade often acts like this for a gag, being the first to suggest violence or deranged behaviour in response to a "what would you do" prompt.
• Too Dumb to Live: "Hold My Beer" has Mark and Bob telling college stories of near-lethal stupidity, such as:
  • Mark attempting parkour with an inexperienced group of freshmen, a story he titled "The Day I Broke My Ass" (animated here);
  • Bob making a four-hour road trip on his motorcycle, during which he nearly froze to death; and
  • Mark and Bob, who were roommates in freshman year, crudely bunking their beds together using plastic clothes hangers as anchors rather than metal pins (animated here and here).
• Trauma Conga Line: The story of "Bob's Fridge," in which Bob's efforts to have a new refrigerator delivered to his new home begin with an excessively long wait time, develop into the first delivery team bringing a dented fridge (and managing to set off the earthquake detector on his home's gas line, leaving the home without heat), and culminate in the second delivery team shearing off a PVC pipe that was part of an irrigation system, flooding the backyard and possibly ruining the refrigerator.
• Uncertain Doom: In "Hold My Beer," Mark recalls a fellow college freshman breaking several of his ribs attempting parkour. Later in the episode, Wade inquires what happened to the guy, and Mark realizes that he never actually saw him again...
• Wildlife Commentary Spoof: Baldemort's intros to each episode definitely have this vibe, thanks to his whimsical tone and very strong accent.

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