If you see people in banana costumes wandering around The Waterfront this weekend, it means comedians Kurt Braunohler and Scotty Landes are in town. The duo hosts Bananas, a weird news podcast with a dedicated fanbase they lovingly call "the Bananimals."
Braunohler and Landes will appear at the Pittsburgh Improv on Sun., Dec. 10, concluding a nationwide tour that has taken them to cities like Richmond, Raleigh, and Atlanta. They also plan to stop in Philadelphia and, as Braunohler explains, create a friendly rivalry between Bananimals in the City of Brotherly Love and Pittsburgh.
"We have a show in Philly and then we have a show in Pittsburgh the next day, so we have made it a competition with the Bananimals," Braunohler tells Pittsburgh City Paper. "We're only going to release one of the episodes that we record. So whoever is the better crowd, that's the episode that will get released."
The fan devotion comes from a justifiable place, as the Los Angeles-based pair started Bananas in April 2020, when, as Braunohler puts it, people were looking for a lighter alternative to the onslaught of COVID-related bad news.
Landes, a screen and television writer whose credits include the 2019 horror film Ma, tells City Paper, "Our whole thing is we try to be an oasis for people that are sick of the sad news and the tragedies and the politics of everything. We try to just get in there and have a good time and encourage people to be as absurd and silly as they possibly can, even if it's a small amount once a week."
Helping people get through a worldwide pandemic seems like an honorable mission for a comedy podcast, even if it does cover wild news stories from around the world, ranging from an alligator orgy in Australia to a woman mistaking a block of cheese for soap. These subjects are spiced up in many episodes by guest appearances from fellow comedians, podcasters, and celebrities.
The show also welcomes audience interaction, as many of the stories Braunohler and Landes cover are submitted by fans. "That's pretty much where we get all of our stories, which is pretty fantastic," says Braunohler. "But it also means that we have a ton of DMs that we're always searching through."
That intimacy has extended into post-pandemic activities as well — in July, Braunohler and Landes hosted Splitty In The City, a short, non-competitive run that encouraged participants to dress as, you guessed it, bananas, and served as a fundraiser for the L.A. Food Bank.
The podcast adds to the relationship between Braunohler and Landes, who first met in 2005 at Hot Tub, a variety show Braunohler hosts with fellow comedic actor Kristen Schaal. From there, the two men worked on various projects together, including pilots for MTV and Comedy Central.
When, in 2019, Comedy Central passed on one show idea, described by Braunohler as an "all strange news Daily Show," the writing partners decided to spin it into Bananas. The show was then picked up by Exactly Right, the podcast network created by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark of My Favorite Murder fame.
Over the past few years, Braunohler and Landes have covered enough stories to have their favorites. Braunohler recalls one in which a NASA-funded project to teach dolphins how to speak English spiraled into giving the sea mammals LSD and handjobs. It was eventually shut down by none other than Carl Sagan, the famed syrupy-voiced astronomer who, at the time, was a top official with NASA.
"What's fascinating is we get a lot of different stories about dolphins and Beluga whales, specifically, that are trained as spies," says Braunohler, citing a recent story about a Russian spy whale that got lost in Finland. "And the Finnish government was like, 'Do not touch the Russian spy whale.'"
Landes admits that he likes stories with a "Rube Goldberg" quality, recounting one reported incident where a woman, after being spooked by a spider, drove her car off a dock and onto two boats (thankfully, no one was hurt).
"I really like a little starting point that explodes into this domino effect of bizarre behavior," he says.
As for the live show, Landes says audience members can expect a "bigger, more fun" version of the podcast, with a few other surprises.
"We have a confession box that we leave in the lobby that all our fans can write true confessions anonymously and we answer those for about 25 minutes," he says. "That's where people tend to get pretty wild. We've had people admit to some serious insurance fraud."
As for which city will win the Pennsylvania cross-state podcast-off, Braunohler, a New Jersey native who, for 13 years, dated a woman from Pittsburgh and has visited the city "a lot," has a prediction.
"I think Pittsburgh can do it," he says.
Bananas Live. 3:30 p.m. Sun., Dec. 10. Pittsburgh Improv. 166 East Bridge St., Homestead. $25-75. improv.com/pittsburgh
Bananas podcast tour pokes fun at weird news and pits Pittsburgh against Philly
