Adam McKay and Adam Davidson are an unlikely combination. McKay is a former head writer at Saturday Night Live who went on to create films in the Will Ferrell oeuvre like Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers. Davidson is an award-winning business journalist behind NPR’s mandatory-listening podcast, Planet Money. The two met when McKay hired Davidson as a consultant on his forthcoming genre-busting financial comedy, The Big Short, and a friendship was started.
“McKay and I developed a quick and deep friendship,” said Davidson. “We just kept noticing that we would have these very long conversations. At first about economics and finance and then lots of other things.”
Soon the two friends fell into a pattern of what Davidson described as trying to “out-fascinate” each other, attempting to show how the right information could make a subject that seemed tedious turn out to be extremely interesting. Davidson soon realized their conversations could make an interesting podcast, at least with a boost from what he described as “an Alex Blumberg level of editing and production”. Eventually, the aptly named Surprisingly Awesome podcast was developed with the Gimlet Media network, owned in part by Blumberg.
Why you should listen
The show is what Davidson describes as “two guys yakking” about subjects they find incredibly interesting, and they do their best to make the topics fascinating for the listener. Recent subjects have included basketball free throws, concrete and something straight out of the Egon Spengler compendium: spores, mold and fungus.
While neither McKay nor Davidson had time to add a podcast to their busy schedules, they decided it was worth the effort because it filled a need, not just for listeners or the podcasting landscape but in their own lives.
“Somewhere along the way I realized that my whole career has been reporting for people who take an active interest in public policy,” said Davidson. “I started to think about how you reach the people who aren’t actively participating in complex media. How do you interact with people who don’t want to read or listen to complicated stories about public policy? That’s been on my mind for several years.”
In his wide-ranging conversations with McKay, he realized that while the other Adam was an incredibly successful comedy writer, director and producer, he was wondering about how to engage with the bigger issues of the time on a more complex, sophisticated level.
“I think we happened to find each other exactly when we each needed each other,” said Davidson. “I was interested in working in a more broad and popular direction, and he was interested in a more substantive one.”
Their new podcast, which is just three episodes in, gives them a platform that works for both.
“The idea of the podcast was that it would be fun but would also, hopefully, over time, convey some smart and important things,” said Davidson.
For example, their first episode was dedicated to mold, which sounds, well, unfathomably nerdy and tedious. But Davidson had encountered mold and its impact while reporting on the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and knew it was both fascinating and pernicious.
“It started off with me being interested in: ‘What are molds and why are they so deadly?’” said Davidson. As they explored mold, the story ended up venturing into Irish history and bringing the hosts to Lake Oswego, Oregon, to talk to McKay’s long-lost great aunt.
“I like mold,” laughed Davidson. “It took us to some very odd and surprising places.”
Other episodes include deep dives on the song Tubthumping by Chumbawumba, Mexican ranchero music, interest rates and cement. (“I like cement. Cement is cool,” said Davidson, in a tone that was a dead ringer for Matt Smith in Doctor Who talking about his fez.)
While McKay and Davidson set out to surprise each other, which set the bar for success fairly high, Davidson, at least, feels like they’ve met the challenge.
“It’s a fact of reporting that whatever story you think you’re going to cover, whatever everyone is saying about it, when you actually go, you find out that it’s way different than you thought. That it’s more complicated, interesting, and nuanced, ” said Davidson.
“It’s been hard to truly convey that feeling. That’s what we’re doing – we’re trying to get that feeling.”
He added that the show is trying to capture “that thrilling endorphin-rush moment of learning something truly exciting and fascinating and it making you feel like you live in a richer and more exciting world than you thought. That’s the core of it. That’s what we’re going for.”
Three episodes in, Surprisingly Awesome has managed to live up to its name and its mission.
Where To Start: Mold, Free Throws, Concrete
Subscribe to Surprisingly Awesome on iTunes.
