{"id":36743,"date":"2026-08-10T16:15:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T11:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=36743"},"modified":"2026-08-10T16:15:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T11:15:40","slug":"how-the-midnight-boys-became-your-favorite-nerds-favorite-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=36743","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018The Midnight Boys\u2019 Became Your Favorite Nerd\u2019s Favorite Podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"has-dropcap body dropcap\">At one point while recapping a recent episode of HBO\u2019s <em>House of the Dragon,<\/em> the hosts of <em>The Midnight Boys<\/em>\u2014<em>The Ringer<\/em>\u2019s freewheeling, nerd-centric podcast\u2014started talking about incest. As <em>Game of Thrones<\/em> fans know, the practice is distressingly common among the noble families of George R.R. Martin\u2019s fantasy universe. And now House Velaryon\u2014an aristocratic clan that, unlike most in Westeros, is Black\u2014was engaging in it too.<\/p>\n<p>Van Lathan, who hosts the podcast with Jomi Adeniran, Charles Holmes, and Steve Ahlman, saw this twist as a feint toward equity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cThey wanted Black incest on this show to draw us into their fucking pit. They wanted it. They just didn\u2019t have enough Black characters on the show to even have incest, you know? They didn\u2019t even have it before,\u201d he said. \u201cBut now that they got \u2019em\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cDo you count this as a form of inclusion, though?\u201d asked Ahlman, the only <em>Midnight Boys<\/em> cohost who isn\u2019t Black.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cDepends on how you look at it. There\u2019s some white shit that we don\u2019t want to be included in,\u201d Lathan replied.\u00a0\u201cIncest. We don\u2019t need representation in incest!\u2026 If inclusion means I gotta fuck my auntie, I don\u2019t want to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">There are almost countless podcasts\u2014some owned by major media outlets, some run by hobbyists\u2014that recap TV shows and dissect movie trailers. What sets <em>The Midnight Boys<\/em> apart is how it views culture through a specific lens: one that\u2019s fan-driven, funny, and unapologetically Black. The show\u2019s hosts cover their subjects with both humor and a deeper level of analysis, treating a fresh episode of <em>House of the Dragon<\/em> the way <em>The<\/em> <em>New York Review of Books<\/em> might treat a new novel. Its loose structure allows for a wealth of tangents, touching on everything from whether HBO shows have the right amount of nudity to the hosts\u2019 personal lives.\u00a0And audiences are responding to its unique approach: For the <em>Midnight Boys<\/em> episode recapping the season three premiere of <em>House of the Dragon,<\/em> listeners on Spotify increased by more than 70% and consumption hours went up by more than 115%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Not all those listeners are Black. But the show provides an invaluable window into Black nerd culture, a critical mass that\u2019s grown substantially over the past several years. \u201cWhat they\u2019re doing to make the community more accessible, especially making Black people in the community more accessible, is incredible,\u201d says Frankey Smith, a popular nerd commentator who goes by Fantastic Frankey. \u201cThey\u2019re almost making us cool in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cIn the beginning of the podcast, people used to get mad at us for going on tangents, and now that is a part of the DNA of what we do,\u201d Holmes tells me during an hour-long interview with all four hosts. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about nerd culture, but we\u2019re also giving you a vantage point of, like, nerds have lives. We\u2019re not just talking about loving Spider-Man\u2014we\u2019re talking about loving him as adults, as kids, as teenagers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At one point while recapping a recent episode of HBO\u2019s House of the Dragon, the hosts of The Midnight Boys\u2014The Ringer\u2019s freewheeling, nerd-centric podcast\u2014started talking about incest. As Game of Thrones fans know, the practice is distressingly common among the noble families of George R.R. Martin\u2019s fantasy universe. And now House Velaryon\u2014an aristocratic clan that,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a75e99cbb3ca0dd530097cc\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/20260615_THERINGER_TALENT_PORTRAITS_THE_MIDNIGHT_BOYS_2708.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-gossip"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}