Rachelle Hampton & Madison Kircher

Rachelle Hampton and Madison Kircher are the co-hosts of ICYMI. Follow Rachelle on Twitter here, Madison on Twitter here, and ICYMI on Twitter here.

Have you two been friends for a long time? It sounds like it!
Rachelle: So Madison and I had never actually met before we auditioned together for the show. I don’t even think we followed each other on Twitter? So we had both gone through another audition before we did ours together and I remember thinking, I’m not really sure this is something I want to do because I had largely been writing up until that point. But after the audition with Madison, I was sold. The chemistry was instantaneous and I truly don’t think I could do this show with anyone else.

Madison: I feel like I’m about to blow our cover here, but Rachelle and I haven’t known each other very long at all! We met at the beginning of the year during an audition taping where we were thrown together with no prep. I got off the Zoom and immediately knew I wanted to make this show together if given the chance. We’ve really only hung out in person twice, since we currently make the show remotely due to the parabola. Can’t wait until we can actually be in a studio together.

What else could ICYMI stand for?
Madison: Internet Creates Your Mental Illness.

What do you hope ICYMI does for people?
Madison: It’s our signoff, but I really do hope listening to our show helps people disconnect a little bit more. Which sounds counterintuitive, an internet culture show that wants you to log off. But I think we’ve done our best work if a listener vaguely registers something happening online and doesn’t bother to investigate further because they know ICYMI will cover it in a way that is (hopefully) concise, funny, and nuanced.

Do each of you have a culture wheelhouse? What is the thing that makes each of you go nuts?
Rachelle: For me, reality television. It’s honestly a lot like the internet in that they both really have an ability to capture the era they’re made in, in a more honest way than a prestige television show. You can kind of track the changing mores and morals of society by watching six seasons of the Bachelorette back to back. Our producer, Daniel Schoeder, calls reality tv the great American art form and I think that’s pretty accurate.

If you were going to start another podcast, don't worry about the logistics or if it would even make sense, what would it be?
Rachelle: I’m fully obsessed with the War of the Roses/early Tudor Era and you will hear me attempt to bring it up at any given opportunity so in a dream world with unlimited resources I’d love to do a really deeply-researched podcast about the Lancasters and the Plantagenets. They were all so messy! The Real Housewives of their time.

How do you decide which internet stories make it to the show?
Rachelle: We plan episodes on Monday and Wednesdays so some of the decision-making process comes down to: do we think this will still be interesting by the time the show airs in two or three days. We’re also a pretty small team and Madison and I do all the research ourselves. We have to move fairly fast and we don’t really have the time or the resources to break news, which means we lean a lot on our ability to situate what sometimes looks like an isolated piece of internet ephemera within a broader context. So we often pick a story based on how many avenues of potential discussion it opens up. It’s a really good sign during planning meetings when we already start riffing before doing any of the actual prep work.

Who are your fans? Who is listening?
Madison: We have the best fans. This is a scientific fact that is not biased in the least. Really, though, we love hearing from our listeners. They are so plugged into the internet, and even better, how the long hand of the internet shapes our IRL world. We just did an episode where we asked for people to send us voice memos describing what the TikTok algorithm thinks it knows about them. (For example, TikTok thinks I’m an ex-Mormon.) We got some really wild and insightful responses. You can hear the episode here! I’ve also been surprised to find our audience spans a pretty wide age range. Turns out wanting the internet explained to you knows no generational lines.

Is the internet good for us?
Rachelle: Ooh a loaded question. I don’t really think most things are unequivocally good or bad, besides like…fascism which is obviously bad. On the show, you’ll often hear me and Madison start off hot and then end up deeply ambivalent by the end of the episode and I think that’s pretty indicative of the internet writ large. The internet has given us access in a way that would’ve been unimaginable a few decades ago. The fact that I can go on my phone and find out in real time what thousands of people across the world are doing or thinking or listening to is kind of mind-blowing. But, like most money-making ventures, the platforms we all use are always going to prioritize profit over safety.

Which podcasts do you listen to?
Madison: Going to take this question as an opportunity to gush about one podcast I love called Maintenance Phase. It’s hosted by Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon and it’s just the best reminder that the diet and wellness industry is a complete shitshow. They did an episode about Halo Top -- the “healthy” protein ice cream that mostly tastes like ass, er, well, let’s say tastes not like ice cream -- at the beginning of this year that absolutely hooked me and I’ve been a regular listener since. Highly, highly recommend to anybody who has been forced to suffer the mortal horror that is having a body on this planet. (Yes, I do mean literally everyone.)

Thanks, Rachelle and Madison!