“What I like about the show is that we will commit completely to the absolute dumbest idea and then find a way to make it stupider.”
Photo: Zac Wolf
In 2015, comedians Nick Wiger and Mike Mitchell grabbed a couple of microphones and started gabbing about their favorite chain restaurants. They never stopped. Ten years and possibly millions of milligrams of sodium later, Doughboys has grown into your favorite podcaster’s favorite podcast, the kind of show that leads to people like Jason Mantzoukas and John Hodgman leaving voice-mails on the fan hotline. It’s a comedy saga disguised as a Spurlockian fast-food endurance test, in which reviews of chain restaurants are just a front for radio plays, musical sketches, and miniature game shows. But above all, it’s maybe one of the best portraits of the complexities and neuroses of male friendship in all of pop culture.
The show’s special alchemy is owed to the Odd Couple energy of its two hosts: Wiger, the analytical one, a TV writer whom the show’s very own fan page describes as “known for his near robotic like persona,” and Mitchell, the bleeding-heart character actor. One is a SoCal surfer dude, the other is a classic Masshole, and both of them are at odds with the food they’re consuming, the industry they’re in, each other, and themselves. Ahead of the podcast’s tenth anniversary today (and its 500th episode, which is just weeks away), I went to their Silver Lake recording studio to interview the duo. Evan Susser, frequent Doughboys guest and self-styled “commissioner” of the show (he joins the co-hosts for free meals and helps plan themed series, like their annual “Munch Madness: Tournament of Chompions”), briefly crashed the interview. In true Doughboys fashion, what was intended to be a celebration of the podcast’s highest highs turned into a deeply heartfelt couples-therapy session — from ruminations on mortality to laughing at the idea of a talking toilet eating cum — with perfunctory talk of fast food itself. Members of Spoon Nation who are reading this wouldn’t have it any other way.
How are you feeling on this auspicious occasion? Ten years!
Nick Wiger: Chiefly, old. I’m an old piece of shit, much closer to death than when we started the show — not just because of the years but also because we’ve been eating garbage.
Mike Mitchell: It goes against the show to say I feel proud, but —
N.W.: I don’t feel proud. I’ll say that on the record.
M.M.: I’m happy that I’ve had an outlet. Nick and I were doing stuff at UCB before the podcast, and as you get older, you think, How do I continue creating stuff? I’m grateful that people are still engaging with it and still like it. As annoyed as we get with the show, our listeners are with us. There have been bad spells in the show, and there’s been stuff that we’re happy with and proud of, but they’ve stuck with us throughout the whole thing, and that means a lot.
N.W.: I’ve vacillated between liking doing the show, being at peace with doing the show, loathing doing the show and wanting to do anything else, and wanting to leave podcasting entirely. Now, where I am again is: This show is an incredible blessing, and it really has given us everything. Because of the show, we were able to opt out of the entertainment industry, which is rotten to the core. It’s utterly impossible to make a living as a working-class writer, in my case, and actor in Mitch’s case. At a certain point, roughly during the pandemic, I just decided that I was less interested in pursuing TV-writing jobs anymore. I had that freedom because we have the revenue we make from Doughboys, which is our own show that we own. And because of the support of our listeners and our fans, we were able to have not just a creative outlet but a way to support ourselves.
M.M.: He’s right. I also want to say that I love the movie studios. I’m a working actor, and, uh, all the studios — Universal, MGM, Paramount — I love all those places. But Nick is right. It’s a frustratingly hard business already.
N.W.: Even if you’re working! That’s the whole thing. It’s not like, “Oh, we can’t book anything.” We were working steadily for basically the entirety of Doughboys!
M.M.: Early on, I didn’t know how podcasting worked, and Nick said that we should pay our guests as soon as we started making money. We were losing money for forever.
N.W.: A lot of shows a lot more financially successful than ours were not compensating guests.
M.M.: I heard Obama didn’t get paid for WTF.
N.W.: Mitch and I were losing money until we launched our Patreon in 2017. Since then, we’ve paid our guests, and we try to pay our staff well. That comes from Mitch and I being on the shit end of the stick for a bunch of our careers and not wanting to do that to anyone else.
I don’t even think the show is good, but it’s ours. We don’t have to answer to anybody, and we do it on our own terms. And as much as I grouse about them at times, I’m so fortunate to have the fans that support us.
The other thing is I’ve had other podcasters, who I won’t name, get mad at me for saying this, but podcasting is easy. And I think if you’re a podcaster, you have to admit that. You’re working a lot less than a regular job. And having worked a ton of different jobs over the course of my life, both in the entertainment industry and outside the entertainment industry, this has been the best job I’ve ever had — and the easiest job I’ve ever had.
M.M.: I do think the tide is turning a little bit in entertainment. A lot of these streamers pay really shitty amounts of money; the bigger they are, the worse they pay. I said this on an episode where I went off on a certain streamer, and we put it behind the paywall because I am nervous about speaking out about it, but I wish that people who made millions of dollars didn’t take big deals from companies that are trying to actively destroy movies and TV. The podcast became a necessity, in a way. We did it because we thought it would be fun, of course, but I don’t think either of us imagined doing it for this long.
N.W.: Our goal wasn’t “Hey, we’re gonna sell this thing off to Wondery” or whatever. We weren’t thinking of this as a long-term investment plan or anything. I think we benefited a lot from first-mover advantage. We were pretty early, still on the pre-bubble in terms of podcasting, when we started the show in 2015, even though there were podcasts that started in 2007 and had been around for much longer. But we were early enough to benefit from being part of the podcasting boom, especially getting on Patreon. I honestly can’t say enough about how grateful we are for Patreon and how by letting us have our own way to let our fans subscribe, it has been an irreplaceable revenue source for us.
You were really early adopters of the Patreon bonus-episode podcasting model.
M.M.: I remember when we changed networks, we met with a couple of people who were like, “We want you to get rid of your Patreon.” We were like, “No way on earth.”
It’s sometimes unclear how much of the show’s dynamic is playing into the bit. Sometimes it seems like you’re leaning into this depressive or antagonistic dynamic.
M.M.: When you work with someone so much and you know their tics, they’re bound to annoy you sometimes. I’m an annoying man! I think that when we’ve been uncomfortably upset with each other, people have noticed. We had a big fight on the 400th episode, and I think that’s probably the closest I came to being upset. But that stuff happens all the time. Also, we’ve grown together. We work better together now.
N.W.: We always have the energy of a performance on the podcast, and that puts you in a state of heightened emotions. But we both know when we’ve crossed a line. Neither of us likes hurting the other’s feelings. We always regret it, and we always apologize.
M.M.: I will bully Wiges a lot on the show. Our relationship started with us texting back and forth bullying one guy we know, Matt Kowalick, and also bullying each other a lot. But I don’t ever want to really hurt Nick’s feelings, and he doesn’t want to hurt mine. I feel like a dork that we even have answers for things like this, that we’ve thought about this. But it’s ten years!
But even now, in this interview, you talk about the podcast sucking or that it’s not good. And, obviously, thousands of listeners disagree.
M.M.: I think Nick is very self-conscious about stuff like this. I think when he says it sucks, it’s like him saying, “I’m listening to myself talk about food, and it sounds boring to me.”
N.W.: It’s incredibly boring, talking about how seasoned a chicken tender is.
M.M.: I’m definitely proud of some stuff that we’ve done, like the themed tournaments, our October months, and Munch Madness. I am proud of a lot of the bits we’ve done, like when we did Philadelphia cream cheese with Carl Tart. That was a great moment. We did a thing called the Doughathon, where we recorded for 25 hours straight and raised $250,000 during the pandemic. Did we give it to a company that maybe just stole the money? We don’t know! But we raised that money! And there are people I know who have gotten jobs from this show.
Evan Susser: I have! When I met with Dan Goor, who’s the creator and showrunner of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I had a recommendation from a writer there, but the first thing he said when I met him was “Commissioner!” The people who listen to this podcast are cool people. I’ll also say, to get to the answer of what you’re proud of, I think you guys would agree: Commitment to the bit is one of the great things about Doughboys. A good example of this is “Let Me Be Frank,” which was Mitch’s idea for a segment that was going to be hot-dog news, and Nick gave kind of a lackluster introduction to the segment that turned into a big fight.
M.M.: Because I thought there’d be a whole song or something!
Susser: And it proceeded to become one of the signature Doughboys bits, where both guys do an incredible performance number, which there’s no reason for.
M.M.: We have an upcoming tour, and we were just discussing a thing that would possibly cost us thousands of dollars for “Let Me Be Frank.”
Susser: And there are so many examples, not just “Let Me Be Frank.” Early on, when I did Steak ’n Shake, we realized that the only real Steak ’n Shake we could go to was in Victorville. So we drove to Victorville. You’ve done episodes on airport lounges that required taking a flight.
N.W.: Oh yeah, I forgot we flew to Vegas to do Chili’s Too in the airport.
Susser: The idea that, from episode to episode, there’s still a commitment to Well, we actually have to review the food is so funny. I really do think Doughboys is kind of a Velvet Underground of podcasts. There are so many people who listened to Doughboys and wanted to start a podcast because of it.
I’m so glad you sat in on this, because Nick and Mitch were never going to say this about themselves.
M.M.: I mean, look, we should be in therapy — together, probably. But there’s a push-and-pull with me and Wiges. Nick is also committed to the bit, in his way. He’s the driver, so he’s the guy who makes this thing good.
N.W.: I don’t like that you’re selling yourself short. You’re minimizing your role. I wanted to do a podcast with you because you’re the funniest guy I know. You bring you, and you can’t help but be earnest, and be real, and be yourself, and be —
M.M.: Annoying.
N.W.: But that’s part of the package. You’re very funny because you are singular, and there’s no artifice about you. That’s what people respond to. So it doesn’t matter if you’re not the guy who’s figuring out where the hotel is on tour, because I understand what this dynamic is.
M.M.: I think we’re optimistic pessimists. We’re defeated and dark a lot of the time, but there’s an optimistic side to it.
N.W.: There’s cynicism, but there’s also hopefulness. The other thing I like about the show is that when we started the podcast, we had the foresight to recognize that we weren’t going to do a character podcast, but Mitch and I did not have our own comedic personas. It’s not like we came from stand-up, where you’re presenting a version of yourself as a performance. We did improv and sketch. We were always doing characters. So I feel good that we did something as ourselves and that people responded to it.
M.M.: If we had to do characters, the podcast would be over. We’d be fucked.
N.W.: There might have been an audience for that, but we wouldn’t have been able to sustain it. More so than that, as stupid as it sounds, it was a challenge to just talk honestly on a podcast.
You’ve said before that you had dates in mind to end the show, which you’ve since surpassed. When did you come closest to pulling the plug, and what has kept you going?
N.W.: Probably during the pandemic. First off, my instincts were wrong. Because when lockdown hit, I was like, We are fucked. People don’t have commutes anymore. They’re not going to their jobs in person. They’re not going to the gym. All of these contexts where someone would listen to a podcast don’t exist anymore. Podcasting is gonna die. So I was like, We’ve got to figure out an exit plan. I was completely wrong. Our Patreon went up. People were isolated, and podcasts felt like companionship. But during that time, I was losing my fucking mind. And our fans were at their most annoying, so I got to a point of asking, Do I want to be doing this anymore?
M.M.: The world was particularly bad, and I think people were frustrated, and people didn’t know what to do with their anger online. Another thing we were wrong about is that it would be Zoom from here on out. Coming back into the studio saved the show.
N.W.: The other thing is, because we cover fast food and chain restaurants, there was this grim aspect of going to a fucking Subway, and the poor employees are masked, and I have to make them make a meatball sub so I can give it three forks so I can pay my own rent.
M.M.: Those were dire times.
The tone of the joking on the show hasn’t always been the same. There have been waves when it’s more pointed.
M.M.: In some of the early days of Doughboys, we joked about stuff that doesn’t age well. But we’re trying to change with the times.
N.W.: And then I think we overcorrected for a time in response to our fans. We were almost being a little bit too delicate. Now, I’m not saying we’re doing perfectly, but I think we settled into a place where we know this is a disgusting comedy show, and we can make a joke about hotwifing and not worry about I hope we’re not kink-shaming any of our listeners who are into cuckoldry. We’re not walking quite on that level of eggshell.
M.M.: In fact, we love all our hotwifing listeners. And, also, we’ve mentioned annoying listeners, but we have so many supportive listeners who have been so good to us. It’s maybe 50 people who are being annoying online.
Looking back, which Doughboys moments or episodes stand out for you?
M.M.: The first live performance of “Let Me Be Frank,” when you sang it.
How about a time you laughed the hardest on the show?
N.W.: There’s a recent one that’s so disgusting I don’t want to say it. We were doing a riff with Johnny Pemberton about a talking toilet that we were shitting into. And Mitch, you pretended to jack off into it and said, “Were you expecting shit?”
M.M.: They’ll love that answer. Speaking of Johnny Pemberton, “oven fries” is another moment.
N.W.: I don’t really love travel, but when we did our theme month in Toronto, we rented a studio, set up shop for a week there, and got to go to restaurants and do episodes, and I got to see the city. That’s the way I’m fine with touring. I would have never gone to Toronto otherwise.
M.M.: I remember another moment that is recent: “Is Mac Culkin second to Santa, as far as fame goes?”
N.W.: We would rather do a bit too many times than not enough. We’re very much into beating a dead horse for the sake of beating a dead horse, just because it makes us laugh. Somebody got mad at us for saying Christmas wasn’t a cookie holiday, so for the next year, we asked every guest the entire year if Christmas was a cookie holiday, and it was basically because it tickled the two of us, and then it pissed people off, and then people started to like it. Again, doing something for an entire year for no real reason is a thing that we’re good at.
M.M.: I hung out with Wiges’s parents and brother in San Diego. That was a great moment for me.
Wiger’s family isn’t really incorporated into the show, but there is so much Mitchell-family lore.
N.W.: I’m a very private person. I will share disgusting personal details on the podcast, but people don’t know much about my life. I like it that way. Mitch is much more of an open book, but I’ve always been more guarded. I’m like Val Kilmer in Heat, ready to walk away at any time.
M.M.: Jesus. I feel like when the show ends, it could just be Wiger going “Good-bye” and walking away.
N.W.: Another fun dumb thing is movie months. We called a whole month “May-nk,” because we covered the films of David Fincher all May, and he made Mank. We did it again with Alexander Payne, and called it “Pank.” So now the portmanteau is removed from May entirely, and it’s a portmanteau of Mank.
M.M.: We decided against “Munk,” which would have been Muppet-Mank. And then there was “McQunk,” which is Christopher McQuarrie.
N.W.: What I like about the show is that we will commit completely to the absolute dumbest idea and then find a way to make it stupider. And from a food standpoint, it’s great to have someone on the show who knows what the fuck they’re talking about, like Farley Elliott.
It’s really in the spirit of Doughboys that we’ve been talking for over an hour and haven’t got to the part where we talk about food yet. So: How have you been able to eat this way and keep the pod going for ten years?
N.W.: I can feel my body decaying by the day. I can feel the conveyer belt to the grave speeding up. So it’s really fucking bad. No one should eat like this.
I would say that it has been instructive of just how broken our food system is that this ultraprocessed and extremely unhealthy food is what people oftentimes eat by necessity. We used to go to, like, a TGI Fridays and order everything. Now, any time I’m going to eat some garbage for this shitty show, I will eat a piece of fruit first.
M.M.: There are the realities of being a 32-year-old man versus being a 42-year-old man. When I was 32, I was like, I’ll eat whatever the hell I want. Who cares? Food is one of my true loves in life. Same with Wiges. And we love shitty food on top of it.
N.W.: One-hundred percent. Since day one of Doughboys, we knew there could have been an approach to make fun of the trash, but we love the trash, so we always wanted it to be more about our enthusiasm about chain restaurants and fast food. Generally speaking, I always think you’ll have more success covering something you care about versus something you despise.
M.M.: When I’m 70 years old, if I make it that long, I probably will still love a Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich. Also, as of last year, I’m on a GLP-1. We both have a complicated relationship with food. We love it, but it’s complicated. Food is comforting, and in a fucked-up world, it’s more comforting than ever. I still remember the first time we went to Chili’s with Eva Anderson and the sizzling platter coming out. If you listen to that episode, it’s like a season-one Simpsons episode, where it’s so different from what the pod became.
When you started this ten years ago, it sounds like you were mostly doing it for fun. Now, it’s become a career. What do you think about how podcasting has changed in that time?
N.W.: The biggest change from ten years ago is video. We’re doing this interview in our Headgum studio. We have three cameras pointed at us. Now, we have to not look like complete shit when we record, which sucks.
M.M.: I never think about that.
N.W.: I love Headgum, for the record, but when we were doing our podcast in Mitch’s living room for many years, we could just show up in whatever the fuck and not worry about anyone looking at us. Now, we’re basically making a TV show. We’ve changed as people over time, too, and that is reflected in the show. It’s another thing I like about it. It’s a bunch of snapshots.
M.M.: When the show is still at its most fun to me is Nick and I speaking with other funny friends we know, and that has never changed.
N.W.: I stopped feeling any sort of rush from performing in front of an audience before we even started Doughboys, but I do genuinely enjoy having a personal connection with a fan. I do enjoy it when I get to talk to somebody and they tell me they like the show. We have created something that people use to get through a dull or unpleasant part of their life, and I like that we can be a companion for people in those moments.
Last question, one-word answer. Will the final-ever episode be McDonald’s?
M.M.: Yes.
N.W.: No.
