Eleven Podcasts, Three Brothers — Who Are the McElroy Brothers?
Haunted dolls, crazy fast food updates, dungeons and dragons, terrible advice, and comedy out the wazoo — these brothers have it all. Taking over the podcast scene, the McElroy brothers work with each other, their father, and families on different shows — including, but not limited to, My Brother, My Brother, and Me, The Adventure Zone, and The McElroy Brothers Will Be in Trolls: World Tour.
Justin McElroy — born Nov. 8, 1980 — is the oldest brother, he attended Marshall University and lives with his wife and two children in the brothers’ hometown of Huntington, West Virginia. Justin began podcasting at Joystiq, where he worked as a journalist from 2007 to 2012. In 2012 Justin, brother Griffin, and Christopher Grant got together to co-found Polygon, a video game website, where he worked mostly as an editor-at-large. In 2014, the McElroy brothers and their father, Clint McElroy — former co-host of WTCR-FM’s morning radio show — began a tabletop role playing game podcast by the name of The Adventure Zone. In 2018, Justin and Griffin both announced their retirement from Polygon to focus on their podcasts and families. Justin and wife, Dr. Sydnee McElroy, also created a podcast by the name of Sawbones in 2013. In which they take a “humerus deep-dive into the history of medicine” — especially how wrong past medical practices have been. They released a book based on the podcast in late 2018 by the name of Sawbones: The Horrifying, Hilarious Road to Modern Medicine. In 2018 Justin started The Empty Bowl, a “meditative podcast about cereal”.
Travis McElroy is the middle-est brother, sharing a birth date with Justin on Nov. 8, 1983. He attended the University of Oklahoma and currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with his wife and two daughters. Travis began his career as a technical director at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company from 2009 to 2014. After My Brother, My Brother, and Me, and The Adventure Zone, he began co-hosting shows such as Can I Pet Your Dog?, a comedy podcast on — you guessed it — dogs. Bunker Buddies, a doomsday prep comedy podcast, and Trends Like These, “a weekly round-up of what’s trending on social media and all over the internet.” He also co-hosts a podcast by the name of Shmanners with his wife Teresa where they share tips on etiquette.
Littlest brother, Griffin McElroy, was born April 17, 1987 and also attended Marshal University where he studied journalism. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and son. His career follows brother Justin’s very close, as Griffin also began his career with working for Joystiq as a weekend editor in 2007. In 2008 he worked as a local journalist for West Virginia for MTV during the presidential elections. In 2012 he also left Joystiq to help found Polygon, then leaving with Justin in 2018. In 2017 he was listed on Forbes’ as a “30 Under 30” media luminary. Griffin worked as the game master for two of the main arcs of The Adventure Zone and composes original music for the show as well. He and his wife, Rachel, currently host a weekly podcast by the name of Wonderful! where they talk about things they enjoy. Before Wonderful!, the two hosted a show discussing popular competitive-dating show The Bachelor named Rosebuddies.
Their reign truly began in April of 2010 when they got together to produce a comedy podcast by the name of My Brother, My Brother, and Me (often, simply abbreviated as MBMBaM). The show was constantly on top 10 comedy podcast lists and was named one of the top 10 podcasts for The A.V. Club — an online newspaper — critics David Anthony and Colin Griffith. The podcast began because they wanted an excuse to keep in touch after moving apart from each other. When the first episode was a hit, they took off running. The show is a simple, weekly comedy podcast in which fans send the three brothers the weirdest questions they can find from the Yahoo Answers service; such as “what would a heaven for elephants be like?” or “if someone was the most wealthiest person in the world, could they buy the money factory where they make the money and the federal reserve too?” The brothers also answer fan-submitted questions that often deal with the question-asker being in an awkward social situations or witnessing crazy things such as, “I am a cashier at a farmers market in Michigan. We sell a huge variety of stuff, including fresh shrimp. Today, a toddler walked by our shrimp cooler and started chanting, ‘Shrimp! Heaven! Now!’ emphasis on the ‘now.’ Eventually leading his mother to say, ‘Please Daniel, we can’t keep doing this.’ What is shrimp heaven? Why does Daniel need it now? What are my responsibilities in this situation — if any?” There are currently 498 episodes released including tapings of their live show tours they’ve done around the United States.
In the episodes there are random segments based on what they could find each week. A since-retired segment by the name of “Farm Wisdom” had fans send in random facts and tips related to farming. Currently, the show gets interrupted with “Haunted Doll Watch”, where Justin goes on eBay to find strange listings of haunted dolls for sale and discusses them in-depth. “Munch Squad” is another segment by Justin, which he refers to as a “podcast within a podcast”, where he talks about ridiculous press-releases and P.R. stunts by fast food companies. Travis has a couple he preforms now and then such as “Sad Libs”, which is done mostly for live shows where he uses — to their protest — Justin and Griffin to create morbid mad lib style stories.
My Brother, My Brother, and Me also got a delightful, one season TV show in 2016 thanks to NBC’s Seeso. The TV show mostly followed the format of the podcast but included the brothers running around their hometown of Huntington, West Virginia causing absolute shenanigans. It ran for six episodes, and often featured their father and mayor Stephen T. Williams. The show was later sold to Otter Media to put on their streaming service, VRV.
On Aug. 18, 2014 — in place of a MBMBaM episode — the brothers uploaded a special episode of the three of them and their father, Clint McElroy, playing Dungeons and Dragons named The Adventure Zone, because Justin was on paternity leave. It was later fleshed out into its own biweekly podcast. The show began with Griffin as the dungeon master whileTravis, Justin, and Clint were the player characters. Travis was a human fighter/rogue by the name of Magnus Burnsides, Justin was a wizard elf named Taako, and their father played a cleric dwarf named Merle Highchurch. This first “arc” — named The Adventure Zone: Balance — followed these three characters on their quest to recover seven very powerful, and very dangerous, relics. Along their journey they run into many difficult and creative challenges, such as illegal drag race scenes, a town stuck in a never-ending time loop, and a mystical place of torture and hardships by the name of “Wonderland.”
The Balance arc ended after 69 episodes and The Adventure Zone continued with a few different mini-arcs hosted by Travis and Clint, followed with another big arc named “Amnesty.” Amnesty was, again, hosted by Griffin and followed the Monster of the Week format as opposed to Dungeons and Dragons. In this modern-day arc, Justin plays park ranger Wayne “Duck” Newton, Travis plays magician with actual magic powers, Aubrey Little, and Clint plays thief-turned-sideshow-store-owner, Edmund “Ned” Chicane. The arc ended after 36 episodes. It took place in the fictional ski-town of Kepler, West Virginia where the three players befriended crytids such as Bigfoot, the Mothman, vampires, and many others while they tried to stop other monsters from invading Earth.
Currently, the boys are releasing their third full-arc named The Adventure Zone: Graduation, which returns to the Dungeons and Dragons format and features Travis as the dungeon master. The Graduation arc features Clint, a water Genasi rogue named Argonaut “Argo” Keene, Justin, a nameless Firbolg Druid who simply goes by “Master Firbolg”, and Griffin, a half-elf barbarian named Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt, as they attend a school for sidekicks and henchpeople.
The Adventure Zone: Balance began to release graphic novels for each inner-arc beginning with The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins on July 17, 2018. It quickly rose to the top of the New York Times’ Best Sellers trade fiction list, making it the first ever graphic novel to do so. The series is illustrated by Carey Pietsch and published by First Second Books. The second book was released July 16, 2019 named The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited! and The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal is set to release July 14 of this year. An animated adaption of Balance was also announced to be in development by NBC for their streaming service, Peacock, though as of January 2020 it has yet to be picked up for a series.
Along with these two podcasts, the brothers also have a few small podcasts they do with each other. Each Thanksgiving since 2015, the brothers get together with Tim Batt and Guy Montgomery to produce Til Death Do Us Blart — where they review the film Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. In May of 2017, while Justin’s daughter was obsessed with the movie Trolls, they found out that the team had cast some YouTube celebrities in the film. So they did what any other sane humans would do — got together, took some edibles, and recorded a podcast named The McElroy Brothers Will Be In Trolls: World Tour to try and get themselves into the upcoming sequel Trolls: World Tour. Of course, this plan eventually worked, as they are now cast as some “creative” rolls in the film — as they put it.
The McElroy brothers have become some of the center of the comedy podcasting scene, and I can’t wait to see where they go from here.
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