In preparation for my appearance on the one-part mass-appealing, other-parts hyper-niche to Hauppauge Everything A1 Podcast last Tuesday, I fired up a couple episodes of the humor and pop culture enterprise to refamiliarize myself with a couple of old buddies.
The moment I heard long-ago teammates of mine, Bill Emig, 26, and Bob Smith, 27, sarcastically list “Mr. Moseby from Suite Life of Zack and Cody” as their childhood Disney Channel crush, I remembered exactly why I first befriended this duo.
They’re hilarious.
The pair themselves first got to hanging early on in high school when Emig was a freshman, and when Smith was a sophomore. They would break off from a friend group quartet one day to start their own two-person side adventures, culminating in daily trips to Taco Bell on Jericho Turnpike. “I really thought to myself ‘yep, this is going to be a life-long friendship,’” said Emig.
Fast forward a decade later: they realized they could combine their respective sensibilities and interest in the podcasting platform into a full-blown collaboration with unscripted conversation.
“Since 2018-2019, I was always very intrigued with podcasts and what they really bring to the table,” said Emig. “The amount of content and information you can put out and create is truly endless. I was always told I was a funny guy, and I told myself, ‘if I can make people laugh as a job for the rest of my life, it would be a dream.’”
Drawing his podcasting inspiration from Barstool Sports’ Spittin’ Chiclets, Smith serves as the editor of the podcast, with his film and arts degree and tech savvy coming into play when cutting together audio files. The proudly “Meek Millified” Emig, the proverbial funnyman, sees that his pulse on comedy translate to social media boosts for their operation. Together, Smith and Emig have transformed their “bromantic” chemistry into an Instagram and Spotify-certified podcasting powerhouse–one even Thanos would deem “inevitable.”
And they’ve done it all from Emig’s garage, and of late, over Zoom.
“My advice for anyone looking to start a podcast would be to just do it,” Smith urged. Emig added, “..take that leap of faith.” The boys thrive thematically on “no theme at all.” Instead, they work freely within the confines of recurring segments like life recap, media reactions, and Instagram poll-based brackets that rank everything from “old school Nickelodeon” to popular cereals. Emig says these brackets are what his mother, an avid listener, especially loves.
“My whole immediate family listens to the podcast. Growing up with all of them, they know how out of pocket I can be so it’s no surprise to them that I can get carried away on the podcast,” said Emig.
Starting out, the sometimes R-rated and unfiltered duo were worried their memory lane expeditions could alienate listeners in their circles. “I remember in our early episodes I would think about how people are going to react to what we talk about or things that we say,” said Smith. “But now that we are 20-plus episodes deep, that anxiety is gone because we’re just having a good time. We’ve gotten so many good pieces of feedback from people who enjoy listening to us.”
Smith added, “I love hearing from people who listened to an episode and will DM me or text me saying they remembered a story I was telling because they were there when it happened and they get to relive it through me sharing it on the pod.”
Every storyteller at the 1-yard line experiences the initial reluctance each felt about their now 18-month-old endeavor. But it takes one to know two: when you prove you’re in the business of making your hometown the teller of the joke, not the butt of it, things can only go up from there.
As far as local dream guests go, Smith thinks it would truly be something if they could somehow get the owner of Golden Dragon on the air. Meanwhile, Emig has his sights set on standout Hauppauge athletes like swimming sensation Justin Plaschka (Class of 2014), and professional baseball players Matt Reistetter (Class of 2010) and Nick Fanti (Class of 2015). One of these three may be an easier guest to book than the others.
Bill and Bob: thank you for name-dropping me on your pod, and for inviting me on after a run-in on the LIRR. Thank you for allowing me to wax romantic on everything from (1) my tenure at The Messenger Papers; (2) the path to escaping youth baseball politics by way of conducting men’s league orchestras; (3) The Boardy Barn, RIP; and (4) reminiscing about how I counseled the class clown who never uttered a word in class on how to run a PG-13 campaign to superlative victory. It was the honor of a lifetime to be afforded the chance to bring my words to life. And I wish you nothing but the best and continued success as you do the same for yours.
Hauppaugian or not, you as a listener are under the care of a pair of A1 gentlemen, in Bill Emig and Bob Smith, with affirmative staying power; both as podcasting co-hosts, and in general.
Listen to Episode 27: “The Hauppaugians Featuring, Mike Reistetter” of Everything A1 Podcast with Bill & Bob, released to Spotify on Monday, August 15, and remain for the rest of their excellence. Follow them at @everythinga1podcast on Instagram.
