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Welcome back to Worth the Listen!

The 2026 Las Culturistas Culture Award nominations came across my email last week and reminded me all over again why I fell in love with this podcast.

The full list is here. Take a look.

Las Culturistas is a bit of an acquired taste. If, after reading the nominees, you don't find yourself even a little intrigued, that is totally fine. I've spent 24 years at Comedy Central, and if I am convinced of one thing, it is that comedy and personal taste are wildly subjective. There is rarely a right answer about what is funny. So consider this your exit ramp for this portion of the newsletter. If these categories don't make you smile, head straight to the three other recommendations below. They sit on the other end of the comedy and pop culture spectrum and were chosen with that range in mind.

But if you find yourself intrigued and you have either never listened or stopped listening, you are in for a treat.

Las Culturistas is one of those podcasts that keeps getting better with age. Even as the hosts have gotten famous (and wow, Bowen Yang has gotten a LOT more famous since the show launched back in 2016), the pod still feels like a playground for the two of them. Granted, a playground with some razor-sharp wire around it, a few misshapen toys, and a real chance someone gets hurt. But a phenomenal playground regardless.

Let's step into the wayback machine for a bit of history on the pod and how we got here.

The premise of the pod is simple (many of the best ones often are). Two best friends, both deeply funny, both encyclopedic about culture, sit down each week and talk. Sometimes there is a guest. Sometimes it is just them. 

I came to Las Culturistas in 2018 while scanning Forever Dog's catalog as part of competitive recap-pod research for my work at Paramount on RuPaul's Drag Race. Forever Dog had a strong slate and a great reputation for putting out shows with strong POVs and had a big queer comedy slate by then. The pod had already been there for two years and I’d heard great things so thought I’d check it out. It got me almost immediately. They were just laser-sharp funny and had a very genuine lived in friendship and chemistry that carried every episode. And even though that chemistry and how they talk about things has evolved (included this great viral moment from Tina Fey on exactly what they can and can’t say as their frame grows), the show remains deeply compelling.

I came back in 2021 when Bowen led Hot White Heist, what I view as the first really successful ensemble audio comedy (feel free to @ me in the comments, I’m ready for it). By then Bowen was on SNL and Las Culturistas had moved to Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network and iHeart. The show was no longer a “find” but rather a mainstay of culture.

In 2023, Las Culturistas won Podcast of the Year at the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards. In 2024, it won a GLAAD Media Award. In 2025 it took Podcast of the Year at the iHearts again, won the Ambies for comedy, and the Lady Gaga episode was (correctly) named one of Apple Podcasts' Best Episodes of the Year. The annual Las Culturistas Culture Awards, which started in 2022 as a live show in New York, now airs on Bravo and streams on Peacock (it is a great watch and I believe the platonic ideal of what awards show can be today—a true live wire act where it feels like anything can happen).

Two months ago, Matt and Bowen signed a multiyear renewal with iHeart and Big Money Players to mark the show's tenth anniversary. They celebrated with a guest episode featuring Nicole Kidman. Will Ferrell called them great Americans. That is not a sentence anyone would have predicted in 2016. It is still exceptionally fun to type.

If you are new, two entry points work. The recent Nicole Kidman tenth anniversary episode is a clean introduction to the show's current scale. For the energy that built the cult following, the Lady Gaga episode that Apple Podcasts named one of the best of 2025 is the one. From there, pick guests you care about and work backward. This, by the way, is the joy of creating content that isnt highly topical, you get five hundred episodes of catalog to play with.

This is the show I recommend most often when someone asks me what they should be listening to in pop culture. It’s the best answer out there.

Steve Raizes has spent 15 years in audio, working on shows like 48 Hours, The Daily Show, and RuPaul's Drag Race. He covers podcasts for Pix Media, where he writes Worth the Listen. When he's not listening to podcasts, he's raising a 6-year-old and a ragdoll cat (possibly not in that order).

Currently listening to: The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe (iHeart / Novel). The British host voice still elevates everything. Three episodes in to the new season and Anna Sinfield has yet to misstep. If you missed Issue 1, now is the moment.