If you were a fan of The AV Club, as I was and largely still am, then it’s safe to assume one of the features you looked forward to at the end of each year was The Year in Band Names. The creator of that delightful and staggering annual piece of work was Kyle Ryan. And he’s taken that feature and turned it into a Substack called Band Name Bureau, of which I am a full fledged member. And it’s everything I hoped it would be!

I welcome Kyle to the show and we talk about his time at The AV Club, the current state of media (on which, Kyle has a ton of interesting insights), and spend the entire back half of this episode reveling in the absurdity of some truly strange band names. So! If you’d like to hear about luminaries such as Fartbarf, Ghost with a Boner, Cuddle Formation, Moat Cobra or a bunch of others, this is your episode! I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed more during an interview, and I love that. The first half of this chat is incredibly insightful about subscription models, venture capital/private equity and how to fund journalism; the second half is also insightful, but more in the vein of giddy fun. I love when conversations work on multiple levels, and talking with Kyle was a joy.

Be sure to read and subscribe to Band Name Bureau on Substack. You can follow him on Twitter @BandNameBureau and @Kyle_Ryan. And you can also check out the company he works for Exactly Right Media.

Available on iTunes, streaming on Spotify, on podcatchers everywhere, and at the Jon of All Trades homepage.

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