Earlier this year I started seeing clips on Instagram for an improv game show. I was immediately curious. I found out it was on a streaming service called Dropout. No thanks, I have enough streaming services.
Clips kept popping up. There was another game show on the service that I started seeing clips for and my intrigue was growing. I decided I was going to have to give it a shot and signed up for a year. It was worth it. It’s so good, I can’t stop talking about it.
Make Some Noise is the improv show and it’s pretty simple that 3 contestants are given prompts to make up scenes or characters on the spot. I was a little worried that a full 30-minute show might be too much after watching short clips or that all the good stuff was posted online. Nope, it’s great and there are so much more in the show. There’s actually so much good stuff that they do a show at the end of each season compiling the best stuff they had to cut.
Make Some Noise was actually a spinoff of Game Changer, a game show that is a different game each time. This is the show. I can’t recommend it enough. The creativity and fun in this show is unbelievable. I don’t even want to describe too much and give it away. My favorite episode? Almost always the most recent one I’ve watched.
I’m getting to the point where I only have one more season of each before I’m caught up. I’m a little sad that I’ll have to be patient for new episodes.
There is a bunch more on the platform. Some led me to other shows and podcasts that have also become some of my favorite things and I’ll highlight them in the future.
Dimension 20 is on Dropout. I had heard of it before signing up but ignored it because I don’t know anything about Dungeons & Dragons and didn’t really have much interest. Just because it was there, I decided to check it out. I was hooked right away. There are something like 27 seasons now and they are looooong seasons. I’m getting to the end of season 4, which looks like it has an 8 hour finale.
What I’ve figured out is everything they put out is worth at least checking out. Now, when someone new is on one of the shows, it’s like a new friend because they rarely miss on who they have on.
My biggest complaint is how did I not know about Dropout before this year? This should have been everywhere during lockdown (maybe it was, but I missed it).
I’d say try it out, even if just for a month to see. While the shows I mentioned (besides Dimension 20) don’t need to be watched in order, start from the beginning. Game Changer just gets bigger and bigger and it’s worth watching it grow.
Tapestry was released this year and while I don’t have the stats, I’m going to guess it’s my most used app. It’s a replacement of some old apps that were missed with some new ideas that have changed some of my internet habits.
The most important part of Tapestry is that it’s a reader for social media platforms that support that sort of thing. Meaning it supports Bluesky and Mastodon. It combines those two sources and syncs where you left off in the feed on whatever device you were using. There used to be Twitter apps that did this but they were killed off and made Twitter useless to me (it later became useless to everyone). I don’t know why the social media apps don’t include this sync functionality. Why would Bluesky want to cater to sports writers but then have users catch up on their feed by seeing the final score first instead of catching up on the events of a game how it happened?
The new idea is support of RSS feeds in the same feed as the social platforms. This is what changed some of my habits. I follow a number of sites via RSS and treat it like email where I save some things until I am ready to read them. Some sites have smaller or more timely updates that I’d quickly click through. Turns out, they fit better in a social media feed setting, in an app I check more often. Almost half of my RSS feeds made sense to move over to Tapestry.
The app is on iPhone, iPad, and recently (and very importantly) Mac. It’s free to use with some ads. There is a paid tier for some extra features but all of the basics are free.
This is a Laud I wrote about Casuals.
Highlighting some “new to me” things to wrap up 2025, this one was actually new in 2025. It’s a sports podcast from Katie Nolan (you might remember from Fox and ESPN). I’ve listened to many of her previous shows – after almost a year, this one doesn’t feel off when she doesn’t do her Sports? intro.
The idea of Casuals is that it’s aimed at casual sports fans so they cover all sports big and small and try to keep it at a high level. They do this pretty well. One of the co-hosts was not a sports fan at the start and is their gauge for things getting too deep. As someone who used to be an anything but casual fan of every sport (but now only has time for baseball and Philly teams), it isn’t super basic. This is still sports fans talking about sports things.
There is tons of coverage of women’s sports, which is helpful as I know next to nothing. I was worried they’d get too deep into football when the season started but after some guests to preview the season it hasn’t been too much and most of what I know about the NFL comes from what I’ll hear on Casuals.
It comes out twice a week and it’s a fun group that keeps things light and entertaining.
This is a Laud I wrote on Laudn about Skill Up.
#1 on my YouTube Recap for 2025? Skill Up. Not too surprising when I think about it. A weekly news show that runs 30+ minutes and in-depth reviews that run about the same length. I watch almost everything on the channel, one exception being saving some reviews to watch until after I finish a game to avoid spoilers.
If you didn’t realize already, Skill Up is a YouTube channel about video games. I don’t follow too many video game channels. It takes a few videos to figure out if you agree with a lot of someone’s opinions. Plus, on YouTube, you don’t want ones that are too YouTube-y (clickbait, partner content).
What really drove it to #1 on my YouTube recap is the weekly This Week in Videogames shows. It includes news, recaps of what is coming out or announced, review summaries of new releases, and a few other segments highlighting smaller games. I’ve thought that if video game tv channels still existed (or maybe they do but does anyone watch?) this would have already been bought to air on one.
From that weekly series they launched a web site – This Week in Videogames that you should also check out.
This is a Laud I wrote on Laudn about chorus.fm.
I’d be curious to find out when I started reading chorus.fm. Well, it wasn’t called that when I started reading. It’s been chorus.fm for a few years now but I started reading when it was abolutepunk.net. It grew from its pop punk roots and expanded a little beyond the genre, even if I haven’t.
Since I was in college, if you told me 100% of the artists in my library I first heard on chorus.fm, I don’t think I’d bother debating that.
This was the site where I first heard about Fall Out Boy. Leading to me telling all my friends about them. Two years later they became huge and my friends were texting me every time they heard Sugar.
These days I follow chorus.fm via their RSS feed. Every week or two I click through all the posts to see what’s new – singles, albums, bands – and deciding what to add to my Apple Music library. When I hear talk of music discovery on Spotify or Apple Music I wonder if these people don’t have their own chorus.fm that does that work for them.
Visit chorus.fm
This is a Laud I posted on Laudn about No Such Thing As A Fish.
Having a favorite podcast is different from having a favorite tv show. A tv show will have a season for a few months and then you are on to something else. A weekly podcast might have 52 episodes in a year (and probably more). It’s a commitment. No Such Thing As A Fish has been around for more than 10 years. I’ve listened from day 1 and I think it’s been my favorite podcast for all that time.
I knew about the podcast when it started because I was (and still am) a fan of the BBC show QI. The 4 hosts are researchers on that show, and it’s still the same 4 hosts. Every podcast (even the live shows), they each share an interesting fact and discuss, sharing facts the others found after looking into the original fact. If there is a negative to this whole thing is that there is so much in each episode that I find I don’t retain very much unless I share something right after listening.
I don’t think the podcast is a whole lot different than their jobs as researchers, which is really interesting to consider how they go about finding their facts for either show. They’ll reference some book they were reading about the history of something or other that has to only be of interest to them. When they go on a trip somewhere, they’ll go to a museum or “historical” site that isn’t going to be found on any of the brochures. They should spin off a travel show. Over time you get to know the hosts and enjoy their banter and teasing.
They have a paid tier now with ad-free and bonus episodes. It’s the first podcast I signed up for the paid tier after hearing their monthly show where they respond to emails. It’s a much more laid back experience, not that the regular show is very serious. They have recently updated their membership levels (the email response show will now be twice a month!) with the new highest level including a quarterly Zoom Quiz. I haven’t made the jump yet.
Visit No Such Thing As A Fish
This jumped out at me because LEGO Party just came out and is on my Switch Wish List. What isn’t mentioned is how any of this works. Will it all be on phones like Jackbox games? Controller support on AppleTV? It says coming soon, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Funny enough, I just decided to take a Netflix break as the price has gotten out of control and today it expires. So this might be a reason to sign back up in a few months.
In what I think is the most intense extended acting he’s done on Late Night, Seth introduced the interns that have been working on the show.
On Kimmel, his brother did his Gavin Newsom impression and Seth got to play big brother (well, he is, but was also acting).
(The Newsom part starts at 8:45, Kimmel posts long clips instead of breaking them up.)
Finally, on Corrections, Seth goes all in on the whispering bit in one of the shortest Corrections ever.
Like the game Moving Out but wish you were driving a forklift in a warehouse? Then take a look at this.
Looks like it’s only coming to Steam for now, but this screams Switch game.
They also have a game called PEAK that came out this summer. You and your team climb a mountain. Doesn’t look quite as chaotic but likely stressful. Also only on Steam but should be on Switch.