Make Me A Nerd with Mandy Kaplan Podcast Por TruStory FM arte de portada

Make Me A Nerd with Mandy Kaplan
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Hey folks. Mandy Kaplan here. I’d like to share a bit about my intentions and mission for MMAN if you’ll indulge me. You will? Huzzah!

Look, I am a lot of things. I’m a writer, actress, mother, and lover of musicals and cats, but NOT Cats, The Musical. Give me a little bit of credit, would ya? So...throughout my life, I’ve been surrounded (and intrigued) by all things nerd. A sister who plays D&D, a Star Wars-obsessed husband, friends who love anime, comic books, video games, and...well, you get the picture. Somehow, I have always held it all at arm's length. Not to get too deep, but maybe I never thought I was smart enough to follow it. Or maybe I have control issues and have never been able to embrace fantastical things like dragons and time travel. Until now!

So, with an open mind and heart, I am ready to join this massive (and beautifully inclusive) club and GEEK THE #%$ OUT! It’s time for all my wonderfully strange friends to baptize me into NERD-DOM. Please join me on this journey. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover or remember a side of yourself along the way. Or at least make fun of me as I try!© TruStory FM Arte Ciencias Sociales
Episodios
  • The Stardom Burrito: Bo Burnham, Comedy Nerds, and Chipotle Metaphors with Tommy Metz III

    The Stardom Burrito: Bo Burnham, Comedy Nerds, and Chipotle Metaphors with Tommy Metz III
    Mar 2 2026
    There are two kinds of people in the world: people who cross their arms and dare a comedian to make them laugh, and people who show up already giggling before the lights go down. Mandy is firmly in the first camp, which makes it all the more remarkable that Bo Burnham's Make Happy got her — really got her — starting with the moment the man wakes up in full clown makeup and ending with a gut-punch silence that reframes the entire hour you just watched. Tommy Metz III, Mandy's most recurring guest, self-identified comedy nerd, and a man who has memorized entire comedy albums without meaning to, is here to explain why.The conversation covers an absurd amount of ground: the rise and fall of the eighties comedy boom (when every laundromat had a comedy club and every comedian got a sitcom deal they couldn't sustain past episode two), the alternative comedy movement that killed the piano-tie artifice, why Dane Cook was basically the MySpace version of Bo Burnham, and Tommy's deeply held conviction that musical comedy is like impressions — transcendent when it works, a hat on a much less impressive hat when it doesn't.At the heart of it is what Tommy catches on his latest rewatch that he'd never noticed before: the Chipotle joke isn't just a Chipotle joke. When Burnham circles back to "I wouldn't have asked for all that if you'd told me it would be such a mess," he's not talking about a burrito you guys — he's talking about fame, perfectionism, and the loneliness of building something extraordinary entirely by yourself.And then the special ends the way it has to: with silence, an empty room, and the quiet admission that people don't laugh when they're alone. They laugh in groups. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good argument for listening to this episode with someone. Go ahead. Introduce Grandma to Burnham by way of this podcast. What could go wrong?People & References Mentioned:
    • Bo Burnham — Make Happy (2016, Netflix), Inside (2021, Netflix), Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous (MTV)
    • Christopher Storer — Co-director of Make Happy, creator/director of The Bear
    • Stephen Lynch — Musical comedian, starred in The Wedding Singer on Broadway
    • Steve Martin — Comedian, actor, banjo enthusiast
    • Anthony Jeselnik — Comedian
    • Conan O'Brien — Late night host, former Simpsons and SNL writer
    • Andy Kindler — Comedian, comedy deconstructionist
    • Todd Glass — Comedian
    • Dave Attell — Comedian's comedian
    • Jeff Ross — Comedian
    • Dane Cook — MySpace-era comedy disruptor
    • Nate Bargatze — Comedian
    • Flight of the Conchords — Musical comedy duo
    • Tenacious D — Musical comedy duo
    • Matt Friend — Impressionist, TikTok
    • Rick Glassman — Comedian, host of Take Your Shoes Off podcast
    • Fred Armisen — SNL cast member, Nicholas Fehn character
    • Firesign Theatre — 1960s/70s counterculture comedy troupe
    • Mr. Show with Bob and David, Kids in the Hall, The State — Sketch comedy shows
    • Ben Folds — "Rockin' the Suburbs"
    • Zac Brown Band — "Chicken Fried"
    • Mortified — Live show and podcast where people read their childhood diaries
    • George Carlin — "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television"

    Tommy Metz III's Shows:
    • All the Feelings Presents: Still Adulting (with Pete Wright) — allthefeelings.fun
    • Sitting in the Dark — Horror movie monthly podcast
    • The Film Board

    Make Me a Nerd:
    • Website: makemeanerd.com/join
    • Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens
    • TikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast

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    56 m
  • Where's the Food? The Hunger Games Book-to-Movie Breakdown with Mona Chatterjee

    Where's the Food? The Hunger Games Book-to-Movie Breakdown with Mona Chatterjee
    Feb 23 2026
    Here's the thing about watching a movie one week after reading the book it's based on: you become the world's most insufferable viewing companion. And Mandy—who consumed Suzanne Collins's novel and then immediately sat down for the 2012 film like some kind of dystopian speed-run—has NOTES. Guest Mona Chatterjee is back for what is officially Make Me A Nerd's first-ever adaptation episode, and together they discover that reading the book first is both a gift and a curse, because now you know exactly what's missing and you will not shut up about it.What's missing, weirdly, is food. In a story literally called The Hunger Games, the movie manages to skip almost every meal, every hunt, every lovingly described roast beef with peas and bread and butter. Mandy invokes Andy Cohen's legendary insistence that Real Housewives viewers need to hear what everyone ordered at dinner, which is either the most unhinged comparison in podcast history or the most correct one.Beyond the missing meals, they devour the film's genuinely brilliant visual choices—the bleached-out gray of District 12 versus the candy-colored absurdity of Panem's Capitol residents (who look less Marie Antoinette and more "Andy Warhol meets Pablo Picasso"), the Apollo 11-style control room that gave Mandy exactly the behind-the-scenes Capitol view she begged for during the book episode, and Jennifer Lawrence's performance, which makes you forget you already know the ending.They snack through casting what-ifs (Kristin Chenoweth as Effie would have been INCREDIBLE, John C. Reilly as Haymitch would have been a disaster), why Lenny Kravitz as Cinna was "too mellow and sexy" for a character they both pictured as a fierce little costume gremlin, and the eternal mystery of why Hollywood cast four interchangeable pasty white guys as the male tributes and expected audiences to tell them apart during fight scenes. The answer, as always, is that maybe they all shouldn't have been white.Make Me a Nerd:
    • Website: makemeanerd.com/join
    • Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens
    • TikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast

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    Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.
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    46 m
  • May the Odds Ever Smell of Sweat: A Hunger Games Deep Dive with Mona Chatterjee • The Novel

    May the Odds Ever Smell of Sweat: A Hunger Games Deep Dive with Mona Chatterjee • The Novel
    Feb 16 2026
    Yes, I know—it's 2026, Hunger Games came out almost two decades ago, and we've all moved on now to whatever fresh dystopian nightmare is currently trending. But here's the thing: Suzanne Collins' story about state-sponsored child murder dressed up as entertainment has only gotten MORE relevant, and that should terrify us all.Mandy welcomes back Mona Chatterjee (Miscast alum, Billboard chart artist, international beauty brand impresario) to explore why a book that opens with "the day of the reaping" manages to hook readers from age 12 to 52, and why its themes of inequality, complicity, and manufactured spectacle feel less like fiction and more like tomorrow's damned news.The conversation goes deep fast. Both Mandy and Mona fixate on the people we DON'T see enough of—the peacekeepers who beat kids into submission then go home to dinner, the styling team who beautify tributes before sending them to die, Haymitch drinking himself unconscious because he relives his trauma every single year.Mandy pitches "Below Deck: Panem Edition" to explore how normal people participate in monstrous systems, and honestly? That's the Hannah Arendt question applied to YA literature, and it's exactly what makes this book endure. They also tackle Katniss's backwards trust issues (she trusts Rue immediately but not Peeta, who literally saved her life), the Kaplan Curse (of course Prim's name would be drawn when it's only in there once), and Mandy's recurring obsessions: Why doesn't anyone mention how everything smells?As Mona says, the Capitol's greatest fear isn't violence—it's hope. Hope is what sparks rebellion. Hope is what makes people believe things could be different. Collins wrote this in 2008, drawing on her father's Vietnam experiences and her concerns about reality TV desensitization. Every year since, it's become more prescient, more uncomfortably close to our actual world. So yes, we're still talking about The Hunger Games—because we're still living in the world that made it necessary.Make Me a Nerd:
    • Website: makemeanerd.com/join
    • Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens
    • TikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast

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    Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.
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    51 m
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