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"Hit it, Brett!"
Unpopular Opinion is a Los Angeles-based comedy podcast network hosted by comedian and writer Adam Tod Brown.The show began in 2013 at Cracked Studios where Brown wrote a weekly column, The People Versus Adam Tod Brown. After a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2016, Brown left Cracked and expanded the podcast to ten episodes a week, most of which he edits by himself.
Unpops covers a wide range of subjects from movies, music, and comedy to politics, conspiracy theories, and fastball. Notable for its loyal fanbase, the Unpops Network often interacts with its community through call-in shows, comments, and shows streamed live from Adam's apartment. Though the network started on Connectpal it has since moved to Patreon, with free episodes posted weekly on Soundcloud.
Current Unpops Shows
- Unpopular Opinion: The main podcast hosted by Adam Tod Brown and featuring co-host Jeff May. Adam and Jeff are joined by guests, often fellow comedians, to discuss the topic of the week.
- Pretty Scary: Boo! Comedian Kari Martin joins Adam to talk about ghosts, serial killers, aliens, and tiny stalkers.
- Conspiracy! The Show: Adam and Connor McSpadden dive into conspiracy theories.
- What in the World?: Adam and Quincy Johnson change their focus from the United States to the crazy things going on throughout the rest of the world.
- List! Cast!: Adam is joined by guests live with their own picks for the best things ever, and the audience votes on the top five. Subjects covered include the best fast food, the best movie soundtracks, and the four-part best television episodes of all time.
- What's Your Problem?!: Adam and Chet discuss fitness, health, and personal improvement.
- Take A Walk: Vanessa Gritton explores Los Angeles with a guest, learning about the history behind locations around the city.
- You Should Watch This Documentary: Adam and Jess McDonald talk about some of their favorite documentaries.
- Profiles In Eccentricity: A show about weirdos hosted by John Fahy and Aaron Pitta.
- Brujaja: Anna Valenzuela, Vanessa Gritton, and Cindy Aravena discuss their their Latin identities and issues important to the community.
- Heart Shaped Pod: A Nirvana podcast hosted by Adam Tod Brown and Travis Clark.
- Best Bad Movie Ever: Tom Reimann and David Christopher Bell are joined each week by a guest and their favorite bad movie.
- Bleak In Review: Matt Brousseau and Kevin Anderson interview a comedian and are joined by interesting characters.
- You Do What?: Cindy Aravena interviews people about their odd hobbies, interests, or habits.
- Good Luck, America: Adam and Chet dive into current events.
- Outakes: A compilation series that features cut content from every podcast on the network.
Discontinued Unpops shows
- The Monday Show: Hosted by Adam, Jeff, and Raquelle Jason, the Monday show features a series of smaller segments that focus primarily on current events.
- If You Got a Problem: The spiritual successor to You People are Insane, Jeff and Raquelle respond to mail with competing advice and Adam chooses the winner.
- The Least Anticipated Podcast of the Week: Adam and Fastball enthusiast Chet Wild discuss the week's upcoming movies, television, and music.
- In Broad Daylight: Adam's solo podcast covers the details in Donald Trump's executive orders that the news has failed to cover.
- Get Lit!: An occasional book club podcast hosted by Adam and musician Danger Van Gorder of the Countless Thousands.
- Laugh Track to Your Life: A bi-weekly show where Adam and Danielle Soto discuss an episode of a classic sitcom with modern messages.
- Fight! Cast!: UFC vs. WWE. Is M. Night Shyamalan a good director? Who was the best Beatle? Adam moderates a debate between two or more guests and the audience votes on the winner.
The podcast contains examples of:
- Axe-Crazy: Kari Martin has some disturbingly vivid ideas for killing Jeff May.
- Since Jeff left the network she's shifted her focus to Chet Wild.
- Author Appeal: From Pretty Scary to Heart Shaped Pod, most of the shows on the network are extensions of Adam's specific interests.
- Berserk Button: Chet seems to have a handful, but insulting #FastballAtChets is the best way to get banned from Chet's living room.
- Don't tell Adam that he always wins List Cast.
- Don't shit on Don Rickles in front of Chet.
- Don't mention ghosts around Jeff.
- Big "SHUT UP!": When Chet is flustered he'll back away and shout into the mic from the distance. It's so common that Adam sometimes parodies it.
- Casting Gag: Chet's appearance on the second "Ad Campaigns" Listcast. He picked #FastballAtChets. It won.
- Catchphrase: "Gift of the Magi!"
- "Pretty Scary Boo!"
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Kari Martin and Caitlin Cutt both fit this trope.
- Kari has written to and flirted with people in prison, once rented a little person to round out a Halloween costume, and has an obsession with killing Jeff May.
- Caitlin collected padlocks when she was a kid. It was an obsession that went as far as picking bike locks.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Adam talks a lot about conspiracy theories. Some of his favorites are the bunkers in the Denver Airport, Kurt Cobain's death, and 9/11.
- As of May 2017 Adam hosts a podcast about conspiracy theories with Connor McSpadden.
- Cool Horse: War Horse began as a statue commissioned for the Denver Airport before it killed its builder. Then it finished building itself.
- Christmas Special: A Very War Horse Christmas, a radio drama.
- Dumbass DJ: Sometimes the Monday Show parodies morning zoo crews, with Jeff as the loud DJ, Raquelle as his beleaguered female co-host, and Adam as Wolfman Jack.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The show has changed a lot since it cut affiliations from Cracked, incorporating regular co-hosts and establishing more structure in its newer shows.
- Early episodes of Unpops featured segments which were later brought back for The Monday Show.
- Erudite Stoner: Adam smokes a lot during recordings.
- Genius Bruiser: Though he might play the oaf for comedy's sake, Jeff May is very much this. He's a former history teacher and comic book nerd who happens to be a giant and former boxer. Danger Van Gorder loves to call Jeff a "bully who beats up bullies."
- Insistent Terminology: Adam likes to remind guests that the "intensity eagle" sound effect is actually the call of a red-tailed hawk.
- Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Chet's list of terrible dates is so long that listeners regularly request that he do a podcast on dating.
- Mistaken for Racist: Chet, mostly because of his dislike for rap. To be fair, there aren't a lot of horns.
- My Country, Right or Wrong: Adam spent the better part of 2016 warning people about Donald Trump, but he's still quick to defend America if he gets the chance. It's not so much blind patriotism as it is people in other nations thinking that their countries aren't terrible too.
- Noodle Incident: No one knows why Adam was fired from Cracked but based on his occasional shade, the split doesn't sound amicable.
- No Sympathy: A popular example from Pretty Scary. The last few minutes of the Christmas episode feature Caitlin and Kari laughing hysterically as Adam throws up in the background.
- Product Placement: Brought to you by online-stopwatch.com
- Running Gag: During introductions of Unpopular Opinion, Adam will cut off one of his guests with an obnoxious guitar riff and his "this week in me" speech."You know the haaaardest part of this show for me is the first few minutes, because I spend all that time asking everyone else what's going on in their life when all I want to talk about is what I've been up to since last week..."
- Adam and Quincy would open every episode of What In the World with the promise of a recipe at the end of the show. It took a couple of episodes before people realized that there never would be a recipe, but they kept promising it anyway.
- "Smoke weed everyday!"
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: After Connor McSpadden's first appearance, a listener left a comment calling him toxic and telling Adam to cut Connor out of his life. This came as a shock to Adam and Brett who felt that he was just like any other guest. The next time Connor appeared on the show, an episode about Duterte and the Philipines, it quickly derailed into Connor taking jabs at the other guest, Cracked's graphics editor Randall Maynard. While Adam and Brett awkwardly kept the show moving, Connor and Randall took turns roasting each other for the full sixty minute show. To make the matter worst, it was the last episode affiliated with Cracked, and the last episode with Brett as engineer for a few years. A later episode attempted to mend the rift between Connor and Randall, but it went off the rails just as spectacularly as the first.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Chet seems to do this a lot. When discussing Jessica Jones he said he watched it "and not just because she's a hot girl!"
- Team Pet: Wolf Lamp, the heterochromatic wolf-headed lamp that sits in the middle of the recording table. It quickly became a fan favorite when they began recording live shows.
