Coward Hour is the least-informed podcast in America. Each week, leading cowards/disgraced comedians Brendan Krick & Nik Oldershaw spiral on mic, commit gaffes, and descend into conspiracy-laden mental illness. Trust your gut, and prepare for The Event.
New to the show? Listen to our “Best Of” episode.
We record one last bonus episode before Nik trades his life for $4000.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Duke University mathematics professor Richard Hardens shocked and awed the academic world today by publishing his incredibly horny, but accurate proof, finally proving that 8=D.
“For decades, we had been trying to prove C=B, but the variables just weren’t adding up,” Hardens explained. “By proving 8=D, we have opened the door for new kinds of science and technology that could usher in a new era for humanity. I’m both excited and aroused at all the advancements we are going to make with this new information.”
According to the United States Department of Education, the 8=D proof will appear in every child’s mathematics textbook in the country by 2022, either printed as chapters or drawn in by aspiring mathematicians in the margins.
“I don’t even think this is close to the end for this project,” Hardens continued. “I think we have a long hard road ahead of us, figuring just how versatile this proof is. We’ve already quickly proven 8==D and 8===D, and it’s looking incredibly likely that the equation will work for an infinite number of equal signs. If true, that would have a tremendous number of applications in the real world. Honestly, we’re all just oozing with excitement.”
At press time, the Duke University team was reportedly working on a new paper, after shocking the math world once more with their discovery that one can enter number 5318008 into a calculator and flip it upside down.
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WESTEROS — Following an exhaustive contact tracing study, a recent Riverlands wedding has been linked to 3,500 deaths, sources report.
“The band had just finished playing ‘Thinking Out Loud’ and started up the first few bars of ‘Rains of Castamere,’” said a man known only as “Bloodhorn” who was in attendance at the ill-fated wedding, wiping an inhuman amount of blood off of a large dagger in his possession. “Suddenly, thousands of people started coughing and saying they couldn’t breathe, and next thing you know their throats had somehow slit themselves.”
“I think this will be a wake up call for everybody seeing what happened here,” he said, putting on a bloody cloth mask over his mouth and nose.
Dr. John Tully, a physician and head of the Westeros Department of Public Healing, took a contrary stance by asserting that the amount of people gathered at the densely-packed wedding played no part in the massive loss of life.
“In Westeros, there is a constant threat of having your throat slit. Gathering at a wedding makes no difference,” Tully explained. “It could happen at a concert, it could happen in the town square, or it could even happen while you’re sleeping. I think it would be a mistake to shut down the Riverlands just because of this. It’s nonsense, and I fully expect everyone who thinks this to eventually be baked into a large pie.”
When asked what he believed the cause of death to be, Dr. Tully was clear.
“Oh, no, yeah, they were murdered. No question. It was an act of brazen disregard for human life, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story. A lot of these people who died could have had a pre-existing condition of pissing off a bloodthirsty lord.”
At press time, Bloodhorn and his fellow survivors were urging the public to stay away from large gatherings with the warning that the rate of violent deaths in Westeros would soon increase drastically.
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Some artists leave such an impression that their music begins to feel like home. Regardless of mood or situation, these bands transport you to a comfortable and cozy place. Today, we revisit Weezer’s discography because we’re thinking about repainting this room and we lost our color swatch.
“Weezer” (1994) – An undeniable classic, Weezer’s debut serves almost as a greatest hits album, containing some of their most identifiable anthems. It has a familiar, relaxing effect, one that might serve well if we decide to convert this room to a study. More importantly, it has the exact shade of “ironically distant blue” our partner had mentioned. It’s literally the perfect color for this room and we doubt any further albums will provide this level of satisfaction. But just in case, let’s listen to 13 more albums so we can get disappointed over and over.
“Pinkerton” (1996) – Another classic. Misunderstood when it came out, Weezer’s sophomore effort has become a hallmark of ’90s emo. Despite the name and our tendency to take things literally, the art has very little pink in it. This black and white color scheme simply isn’t going to work.
“Weezer” (2001) – While there may be some mild appeal here, we’re worried these tones may lead to an overall disappointing theme to the room. It’s a great shade of green, but honestly, now we just want something blue. It’s fine, but we’re gonna have to pass. We’d hate to paint the room and have it fail to live up to expectations.
“Maladroit” (2002) – Not great, not terrible. The soft coloration here could be good. We could use this for the sunroom. That room always seems like it should be fun but after spending 3-6 minutes in there, we remember why we leave this room alone.
“Make Believe” (2005) – We can’t imagine why anyone would paint a room like this.
“Weezer” (2008) – Yeah, we’d paint a room this shade of red too if we thought the room had something to prove. Look, we know some of these color schemes may be disappointing but this one almost approaches self-parody.
“Raditude” (2009) – This is self-parody, right? Or is this what it looks like when Weezer makes a joke unironically? Either way, the dog on the cover rules but our partner said no.
“Hurley” (2010) – Heh heh, remember Lost? Yeah, that was a good show. Lost. We even liked the finale, we think. We don’t think we’d want that guy’s face as our wall though.
“Everything Will Be Alright In The End” (2014) – Is this a real album? Weezer’s our favorite band and we have literally no memory of this.
“Weezer” (2016) – Look, we get it. They may have jumped the shark, but this one is actually pretty ok. Alright? It’s fine. And white is a pretty classic room color. You can do a lot with white. It would be great to paint a room like this if we didn’t want to overthink anything. Or maybe we’re just happy that it doesn’t look as shitty as we’ve grown to expect.
“Pacific Daydream” (2017) – Didn’t we already do this one? Oh, that was “Everything Will Be Alright In The End.” Shit, these guys have a lot of albums for a band with like 13 good songs.
“Weezer” (2019) – Teal? Fuck. This. Seriously, we wouldn’t paint the room this if our lives depended on it. We’re not so trite as to sacrifice our originality for some hokey nostalgia-fueled cash grab. Say what you will about how shitty some of these albums were, at least they were original. WE DON’T NEED A COVER OF AFRICA!
“Van Weezer” (2021) – This comes out next year but we’re gonna go ahead and give this one a “no,” unless the “van” in question is on the album cover and it’s airbrushed by Frank Frazetta. If so, we’re going with that for the baby’s new room.
BETHESDA, Md. — Uber Eats is critically overburdened by President Trump’s quarantine and is begging for FEMA assistance after just a few days, according to frightened sources who describe the situation as a state of emergency.
“It’s absolute chaos here,” confided Uber Eats CEO Gavin Archer while running down a hallway and shouting frantic orders to passing employees. “Trump has always been our biggest customer. But we had no idea how much a quarantined Trump would overload our system. We desperately need FEMA to step in with financial assistance and on-the-ground support…Hey everybody, listen up! We need nine Happy Meals en route to Walter Reed, stat! AND DON’T FORGET THE FUCKING TOY!”
White House sources have offered differing accounts of the president’s health, but one thing they all agree on is that he has made full use of the robust delivery options offered by Uber Eats.
“You’ve never seen such a healthy appetite!” boasted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. “The doctors are amazed. They keep saying, ‘We can’t believe how well you’re doing!’ or ‘Sorry, but the cafeteria doesn’t have any more salt shakers, President Trump!’ Is Uber Eats a little overworked right now? Maybe. But that’s not the big takeaway here. The next step is to roll out the experimental treatment President Trump has received to the general public. We’ve already started mass producing IV bags full of honey mustard to send to hospitals across the country.”
Uber Eats delivery drivers have felt the brunt of President Trump’s quarantine diet, with many echoing the company’s call for FEMA aid.
“I haven’t slept since Thursday,” explained Erica Graham, a 21-year-old Uber Eats driver. “I was assigned to the pizza squad, so I’ve just been driving back and forth between the hospital and Pizza Hut. We really need FEMA to come and bail us out, maybe get the National Guard deployed to make these deliveries. The staff at Pizza Hut is completely swamped, too.
They ran out of tomato sauce yesterday and just started using ketchup, but that only made Trump order more. And then in the little instruction box he asked them to stuff the crusts with Diet Coke. How the fuck did this guy live to be 74 in the first place?”
At press time, FEMA had stepped in to help Uber Eats acquire a fleet of 18 wheelers to handle President Trump’s daily breakfast order from Cinnabon.
Is there anything better than an ice-cold beer? I don’t know about you, but at the end of a hard day, or when the impending doom of a dying democracy hangs over our heads, nothing makes my mind words go bye-bye like a few pints of ice-cold beer. The colder the better.
Maybe I’m just saying this because I haven’t seen another human being for six months, but man, I can’t wait to get together with a good friend and have a few beers. God knows I’ve been practicing! But what about grabbing a beer with a potential leader of the free world?
Everyone knows who the candidates are, but which one would you rather have a beer with? Since the days of George W. Bush, this is a question that has been at the forefront of what think-tanks pay the media to make us think. W himself famously seemed like a guy you’d like to have a beer with. Even if you didn’t agree with his politics, you knew you’d get a good story out of it. Just don’t let him give you a ride home!
This year, we have two candidates who from afar, seem like almost mirror images of each other. Grizzled 70-somethings with a long history of weirdness. Both proud men. Probably too proud. One is probably even more of a proud boy than a man, but growing up sucks, and he doesn’t seem to know how to wear a tie anyway. Frankly I would have a drink with either one of these guys, provided that drink was laced with a fast acting and incurable poison.
Cyanide in their beer? Cyanide in my beer? Doesn’t matter. The point is if I’m going to be forced to sit with either one of these assholes for the length of an entire beer, cyanide needs to be involved.
The thing about alcohol is the pain only goes away temporarily. Could you really imagine spending the rest of your life living with whatever horrors were revealed to you after a couple of drinks with Trump? How will you shake the image of Biden staring at you awkwardly while licking his lips and winking when you’ll have to see his image on TV for the rest of your life?
Being forced to share a beer with either of these men is the exact sort of scenario cyanide was invented for. There are certain forms of torture that are just too much for any person to bear. There’s no shame in it. Under the circumstances, it’s the honorable thing to do, and if God feels differently then God is wrong.
Anyway, get out there and vote. If it comes to it, the flavor notes of cyanide are best paired with an oatmeal stout or nutty brown ale.
SEATTLE — Local guitarist Sadie Love swore today that her new button maker will be well worth the startup cost once she hits her break-even point after selling her 40,000th button, skeptical sources confirmed.
“Why should I put money into the pockets of Zazzle millionaires when I can invest in myself?” Love said, while nursing her carpal tunnel from mashing buttons for her band The Ran Damns all day. “After the initial cost for the machine and the materials, we can sell these at our merch table for pure profit. With no middleman, I project to be out of the red somewhere around late 2027. They don’t even have to be band-specific — we can just use old magazines or photos or whatever. People love buttons, and they’re going to sell like crazy.”
Love’s bandmates, however, don’t share her optimism.
“She’s already running out of ideas and making buttons from her high school journal. Who would buy that?” lead singer Sarah Page said. “We could’ve just ordered 100 buttons and sold them for slightly more than we paid. It’s not rocket science. But now [Love’s] apartment is a mess with materials, and it’s not safe to walk because of all the open pins laying around.”
“And now she wants to make buttons out of our hair?” Page added. “This is getting out of control, and does not seem worth $0.50 a piece.”
Economists also seem to side with the rest of the band over Love.
“We are in a bit of a button depression. This was not the right time to buy a button maker, “ UCLA economics professor Belinda Graves explained. “The market is saturated with niche homemade buttons, which has sent button inflation through the roof. Sure, you still have your collectors and vest wearers — maybe the amateur collector pinning to their backpack — but the bubble has popped. What she should have invested in is cross stitching: that market is hot, hot, hot.”
Love’s bandmates have also had to forcibly stop her from ordering a silk screen printing press off eBay for the band’s shirts.
BOSTON — Researchers have made an astonishing breakthrough in the study of time and space, discovering a measurement small enough to determine the exact amount of time next-gen consoles were available for preorder.
“Until now, the smallest unit of time was the Planck, which is quicker than the time it takes for light to travel the width of a single neutron,” said Dr. Rosemary Tubbs, a leading particle physicist at M.I.T. “Obviously, that’s much too large to measure how long the Xbox Series X was available from the Microsoft store on September 22. We needed to rethink everything.”
The project was a joint venture between M.I.T., Harvard, Oxford, and CERN’s large hadron collider, costing nearly $1 billion in funds pooled from governments worldwide. Scientists insisted the work was more than worthwhile.
“Science has taken on a lot of mysteries, whether it’s the origins of the universe, or the relationship between matter and energy. This question was probably our toughest yet. I mean, after all the money they spent marketing these consoles, and all the time they had to prepare for the demand, how do we fathom just how quickly every single site ran out of stock? A lot of people thought it would be impossible to measure,” said Tubbs. “We showed them.”
Gamers were elated to see their struggles recognized by the scientific community.
“I’ll never forget how it felt when I got up on the 22nd, opened four different sites on two computers, refreshed at the right time, and still came up empty. I was like, man, I got fucked,” said local gamer Hans Weltz. “But now I can say I got fucked, like, scientifically.”
Scientists have yet to name the new units of measurement, but possible titles include Time Mini, Time Slim, and the Artificial Scarcity Series X.
WALLA WALLA, Wash. — Patrons at a local McDonalds restaurant were caught off guard earlier this week as God, alleged creator of the Earth and Heavens, was spotted walking into the establishment to perform a modern miracle, repentant sources confirm.
“This old dude walks up to my table and just grabs my McRib right off my tray,” complained customer Randy Muldoon. “I was just about to kick his ass when I realized it was God Himself. Before I knew it, He’d taken that sandwich and made some sort of woman out of it. Wish He’d have paid me back the $3.69 though.”
Other customers corroborated Muldoon’s story, claiming that God, upon grabbing the limited release sandwich, called out to longtime McDonalds mascot Ronald McDonald to introduce him to his female companion, the newly created Rhonda McDonald.
“Go forth and prosper, my children,” God is reported to have decreed to Ronald McDonald and his new bride. “From this moment on, I give you dominion over all the animals—and whatever the hell Grimace is. You shall rule over this Paradise called McDonalds PlayPlace from the depths of the ball pits to the highest peaks of those plastic tubes that you can crawl around in. From any Happy Meal you may eat freely; but filling your water cup with soda you shall not, for on the day that you drink Hi-C fruit punch without paying, you will surely die.”
Following their introduction, Ronald and Rhonda McDonald seemed to hit it off immediately.
“I’d been pretty lonely for a while,” McDonald admitted. “It’s hard being a clown sometimes, ya know? You’re expected to paint on a big smile to cheer everyone else up when inside you’re as broken as an ice cream machine. For the first time in a long time, I can look at myself in the mirror and say ‘I’m lovin’ it.’ The McRib she came from may be a limited offering, but the love I share with Rhonda is here to stay.”
At press time, The Hamburglar was overheard convincing Rhonda that everyone uses the water cups to get Barq’s root beer for free.
NORWALK, Conn. — Local punk and low-ranking member of his friend group Brandon Smith is reportedly completely unaware of his status in the hierarchical structure of his social circle, slightly annoyed sources confirmed.
“Let’s be honest: Brandon’s always been just… kind of there,” said legitimate player in the squad Dave Walsh. “Like, he’s fine to have around, and he’s funny sometimes… but he certainly doesn’t make or break a hangout situation. He’s the last person we text if we need another player for pick-up basketball or something, and some of us even hide our video game consoles when he comes over just so he doesn’t try to play with us.”
For his part, Smith has tried to be more active in recent weeks, trying to make plans around his work schedule, starting new group chats, and asking others to spot him financially.
“Who the fuck does he think he is? Like, if he’s around, it’s always fine… but he invited himself to the movies the other day and asked me to split popcorn with him. Come on,” said Omar Klein, who is often described as a “solid bro.” “Brandon’s not even part of going to the movies usually — that’s my thing with Laura, Christian, Dave, Big Tom, Chip, Medium Tom, and Sammi, you know? When the movie was over, we went to the bathroom and he stood at the urinal right next to mine, even though all of them were open. It’s not a huge deal, but still weird.”
Smith’s own mother admitted her son struggles with a lack of judgement.
“I don’t know what Brandon’s thinking — he’s textbook definition adjace. He’s been that way his entire life,” said Linda Smith. “I don’t know if it’s something I might’ve done to warp his perception, but he always invites himself to my cookouts and birthday parties, and I just want to be like, ‘This is for your older siblings, maybe just stay home next time,’ but I never do. I guess I just feel bad.”
At press time, Smith was sending a mass text suggesting the gang get matching tattoos.
