Five Amigos

 A few weeks ago, a new podcast appeared and has quickly become one of my favorites.  Strike Force Five is a cooperative effort of five late night talk show hosts: Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver, and Seth Meyers.  In their day (or night) jobs they are competitors, but on the podcast they give the outward impression of a group of true friends.  What began as an informal back-channel running group text thread and sometime Zoom meeting has become a fundraising effort for striking writers and crew members of the respective late night shows.  With sponsors like Pepsi and Ryan Reynolds' stable of companies including Mint Mobile and Aviation American Gin, the five hosts are using their unplanned sabbatical to generate a fund to be shared among the strikers.  Fortunately, the five are amusing and entertaining even without the support of their writers.  (We do learn that in his younger days, Colbert was a SNL writer who was partly responsible for one of my favorite classic sketches.) Talk on the show tends toward the "inside baseball" nature of showbusiness behind the scenes, something which I find fascinating.  There are also enough personal revelations to really humanize the showbusiness icons.  Over the course of eight episodes so far, we have learned about such things as a disturbing bathroom incident involving John Oliver's wife, the connection of Stephen Colbert's mother to a brutal central American dictator, and Jimmy Fallon's penchant for messy late night snacking in bed.  Other topics are not surprisingly out of bounds: Fallon's recent news has received nary a mention, and neither did Kimmel's recent case of Covid which cancelled a planned live charity event of a portion of the group.  The show even has had its first guest, former Daily Show host Jon Stewart, who left them with the sobering warning that they will all be quickly forgotten once they leave the host's desk.

With the writer's strike recently resolved, it is yet unclear if this podcast has a future. I certainly hope so, as it is leading the list of my favorite podcasts.  But if it does not continue, I'm hopeful that the merch I recently purchased with become a valuable collectors item.  Don't miss Strike Force Five, wherever you get your podcasts.