The McElroy brothers--Travis, Justin and Griffin (pictured above)--host weekly podcasts providing comedic advice for their listeners. The show has massive popularity from fans. The brothers have also branched out to produce their own content (Courtesy of mcabain from creative commons).
The problematic mommy’s boy himself Sigmund Freud was the first to recognize humor as a form of aggression. According to Psychology Today, this aggression stems from the creation of an in-group that makes jokes at the expense of some dissimilar out-group—often this means ridiculing and making that group seem lesser. Identity-based humor is no-good, nasty and nefarious toward anyone unfortunate enough to fall outside some pre-established in-group.
Freud’s observation is an obvious problem with an obvious solution; identity-based humor can’t be a problem when any person of any race, creed, gender identity or sexuality is welcomed to be part of the in-group. Such a comedic venture celebrates the proverbial Us without disparaging any other group, and one could argue that it’s impossible. That person would be wrong, however, as it turns out nothing is impossible for three frumpy, boisterous brothers from Huntington, W. Va. Inclusive comedy is a challenging endeavor, but one that has been honed and perfected over the years by podcasting’s first family, the McElroy’s.
The McElroy brothers—the oldest brother Justin, the middle brother Travis and the sweet baby brother Griffin—started their flagship podcast “My Brother, My Brother, and Me” in 2010 as a way to keep their family together while separated by state boundaries. Now, after releasing their 500th episode on Monday March 2, the McElroy brand has expanded to cover an entire empire of multimedia products that all work at the same goal—cultivating laughs and welcoming audiences to join their proverbial Us without ridiculing any kind of “other.” How do they do it? McElroy brothers, WTF?
The McElroy’s have accomplished the feat by developing their own language across their decade-long podcasting career. Jokes are called “goofs,” a plan that doesn’t work is a “dog that don’t hunt” and the one you hear most is that any conceivable person or object can be referred to as a “Boy.” The brotherism that got me hooked was when Griffin described “slapping a pound of cream cheese between two round boys,” I haven’t called them bagels since.
There is perhaps no comedic trope funnier than insistent terminology, which is a comedic device where a character or person regularly corrects a particular word—insisting on referring to it by another name. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet but insisting that a rose is in fact called an ouchie flower is far
more entertaining. Insistent terminology also happens to be the foundation upon which the entire McElroy brand is built.
MBMBaM is billed as “an advice show for the modern era,” where the brothers crowdsource questions from their audience or discover them from the internet’s cesspool—Yahoo! Answers—and turn those questions “alchemy-like into wisdom” over the course of a weekly hour-long podcast episode. An official-sounding announcer discloses at the beginning of each episode that, in fact, “the brothers are not experts, and their advice should never be followed.” What follows isn’t true advice, but rather an improvisational, comedic playground inspired by a week’s given slate of questions.
The resulting oddball advice show is a combination of witty familial banter, seductive weirdness and wet-and-wild stunts—which happens to be another brotherism. MBMBaM’s greatest hits include the time Griffin and Justin made up ice cream lyrics to the tune of “Do Your Ears Hang Low,” the goof where Justin unleashed a spot-on impression of Amélie and an infamous question involving an overheard child pleading for “Shrimp! Heaven! Now!”
If it sounds chaotic and ridiculous, that’s because it is. The show’s appeal comes from the brothers’ explicit family dynamic and the way they invite listeners to join that family. A 2017 episode of NPR’s “Bullseye” even saw Griffin mentioning how fans began to call the brothers by their childhood nicknames—Juice, Travvy and Ditto. The family dynamic is enhanced because of the inside jokes inherent in becoming accustomed to McElroy-speak.
Across the show’s 10-year run, it’s found a surprising following. One of the trio’s most high-profile fans is Broadway’s own Lin-Manuel Miranda, who was so inspired by the brothers’ antics that he included McElroy-inspired lyrics in his smash-hit musical “Hamilton.” During the song “We Know,” the show’s cast is repeatedly heard singing the word “Unless” in a cadence famous to MBMBaM listeners.
Miranda’s fandom doesn’t stop there, as he has written no fewer than three songs in the McElroys’ honor. In an Entertainment Weekly interview about their 500th episode, Griffin explained how “[Miranda is] very close to the fam now at this point, which is a great thing, because he’s a super-good dude.” Other notable celebrity friends of the show include Justin’s favorite musician—Mr. James Buffet—and fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss.
Other products under the family’s umbrella include a variety of spin-off podcasts featuring each brother and their respective wife, a wildly popular Dungeons and Dragons podcast called “The Adventure Zone”—featuring the boys’ dad Clint—and a short-lived, hysterical internet TV show currently found on VRV.
MBMBaM’s 500th episode proved to be a self-indulgent, earnest and heartrendingly sweet celebration of the brothers’ career so far. On the next 500 episodes, Justin told Entertainment Weekly, “I wish I knew what the next 10 years would hold for us personally, but I think My Brother, My Brother and Me will continue to be a reflection of whoever we are as people.”
As much as I have come to respect these goofy boys, I have yet to follow each episode’s ending advice to “kiss your dad square on the lips.” You probably should, though.