Robert Smigel Launches Humor Me With Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell
robert smigel opens his new podcast, Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, by putting Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell to work on The Harvard Yardbirds’ live act. The debut episode turns into a comedy workshop, with the group’s between-song banter getting the kind of rewrite attention usually reserved for a roomful of writers.
Day and Seidell join the first session
Day is a longtime Saturday Night Live cast member, and Seidell is the show’s head writer, so the first episode arrives with recognizable comedy firepower rather than a generic interview format. Big Money Players, Will Ferrell’s podcast network and a partner of iHeartMedia, produces the series, which places Smigel inside a wider audio slate that has included Las Culturistas since 2020.
The setup is practical from the start: The Harvard Yardbirds can sing, but their between-song banter needs help. Smigel, Day, and Seidell work through self-deprecating Harvard jokes, a running bit about a member looking for her third husband, alternate group names, holiday-song parody lyrics, and a character concept called Yale Boy.
The Harvard Yardbirds on stage
Later in the episode, the group tries that material in front of an audience, and the response is described as surprisingly encouraging. That matters because the podcast is not just packaging familiar names; it is testing whether a polished room can turn raw comedy ideas into usable live material.
An SNL alum also makes a surprise appearance, which keeps the debut anchored to the same comedy ecosystem that brought Day and Seidell into the project in the first place. Big Money Players’ roster already includes The Nikki Glaser Podcast, My Momma Told Me, and The Amber & Lacey Lacey & Amber Show, so Humor Me enters a network built around personality-driven formats rather than a one-off experiment.
Big Money Players since 2020
2020 is the key network marker here, because Big Money Players has been home to Las Culturistas since then and has kept adding shows with distinct voices. Smigel’s podcast uses that infrastructure for a different kind of comedy product: less celebrity chat, more live problem-solving with an audience listening in.
For anyone deciding whether to sample the debut, the value is in the format itself. Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends starts by showing how experienced comedy writers can sharpen a group’s act in real time, and the Harvard Yardbirds segment gives the series a clear lane from the first episode.
