Fast becoming more beard than man, Kyle Olson is an award-winning writer, producer, and host who has been podcasting since these shows were still casting onto pods. He co-hosted The Marvel Movie Minute for over three hundred episodes with his fellow true believer and partner in pods, Rob Kubasko. He's created several shows, the most notable of which are his audio drama series, The Swashbuckling Ladies Debate Society, his storytelling show, The Story Well, and he's a co-host on Craft and Chaos. He served as co-host on Sitting in the Dark in it's scariest early days.
He still has a lot to learn.
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The humor you love and the humor that comes out of you are, it turns out, almost never the same thing. Plus: a script ends up somewhere it has no business being, Pete discovers a word is calling from inside the manuscript, and Romance Novel or Death Metal Band returns to humble us all.
Alexander Pierce is having a terrible Tuesday. He’s just murdered his best government contact, his secret world-domination plan is humming along nicely, and now he has to stand in his own office and have a passive-aggressive standoff with the most morally uncomplicated man alive.
This week on Marvel Movie Minute, Nick Fury is dead — probably — and everyone who loved him is handling it. Meanwhile, Alexander Pierce would like five minutes of Steve’s time, which is definitely not suspicious at all.
Kyle saw a play that broke the rules. Pete wrote one in a weekend that made his wife cry. Kyle wrote one where a celebrity chef invites a comeuppance. Also: squirrel suits, The Lego Movie, and a listener asks whether posting about your creative process counts as art, therapy, or mild fraud.
This week, Nick Fury — director of SHIELD, the world’s most powerful intelligence organization — attempts to covertly warn Captain America of a massive conspiracy by turning off the lights, displaying a phone with the words “EARS EVERYWHERE” in approximately 96-point font, and then speaking out loud, twice, using his own name, six feet from the agents who are actively monitoring him. It is, to put it charitably, a choice.
Nick Fury attempts to go off the grid in Washington, DC, which is like trying to disappear at your own birthday party. Meanwhile, someone very dangerous is standing in the middle of the street, and he is in absolutely no hurry.
Mandy is broadcasting from Greece, where thousands of years of myth-making about heroes, gods, and monsters have made her absolutely certain the gang needs to figure out which god they worship, which hero they’d follow into a burning building, and why the shark in Jaws is the most terrifying monster in cinema precisely because it does not care about you at all.
Five minutes, two scenes: Steve Rogers’ most honest conversation and Nick Fury’s worst commute. Kyle, Pete, and Matthew figure out why they’re making the same argument.
Steve Rogers visits Peggy Carter, who is elderly, sharp-tongued, and running out of time to remember him — a scene so emotionally efficient it does three different kinds of grief simultaneously. Then Nick Fury finds a file he can’t open and immediately decides this is everyone’s problem.
Every creative is running on at least one magnificent lie — and this week, the crew confesses theirs. Pete, Mandy, Kyle, and Ryan name the fictions that get them to the keyboard, the audience living rent-free in their heads, and the craft rules they break without remorse.