The Dollop is a podcast hosted since April 2014 by American comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds. Each episode centers around an event or person from history selected for its humorousness or peculiarity. Typical episodes feature historical narratives - usually, but not always, from U.S. history - described by Anthony and commented on by Anthony and Reynolds.
Background
The podcast began as a way of preparing for Anthony's one-man show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. It was a solo project where Anthony would talk out loud about various subjects. Unsatisfied with the initial results, Anthony decided to change to a history focus, and invite other comedians to listen to the stories. Gareth Reynolds was the first guest; after his performance, Anthony decided to keep him as the only permanent guest. Anthony was inspired by the book A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn because it taught him that the history he was taught as a child was full of lies. Reynolds and Anthony have recorded a number of live episodes in various U.S. cities, as well as Canada and five tours of Australia. Live episodes performed outside of the U.S. have featured stories from those respective countries; for example, topics covered in Australia included the Emu War and Arthur Phillip. Live shows both inside and outside the U.S. often include additional guests, including Patton Oswalt, Wil Anderson, and Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff of the podcast My Favorite Murder. Occasional episodes reverse the format, and consist of stories selected and read by Reynolds to Anthony. As of late October 2019, the podcast has produced more than 400 episodes. On 5 August 2019, the first season of The Dollop: England was announced. The first of ten episodes was released on 15 August 2019. A sister podcast, called , was announced on March 16, 2020. It is a spanish version of the Dollop. It is hosted by Eduardo Espinosa who reads to José Antonio Badía as Dave does to Gareth on The Dollop.
Reception
Since shortly after its debut, The Dollop has consistently ranked in the iTunes top 100. In 2016, The Guardian rated the podcast as one of the 50 best podcasts of 2016.
Controversy
On July 9, 2015, Alan Bellows of the history website and podcast Damn Interesting posted an open letter, accusing The Dollop of plagiarism. Following this incident, Anthony claimed that all research and writing for new episodes was done by himself and others specifically for The Dollop, with sources referenced on a separate website. However, in August 2019, Slate's national editor Josh Levin alleged that Anthony performed a live episode of The Dollop in 2017 that lifted almost entirely from Levin’s reporting, with no public credit. Author Paul Brown further accused The Dollop of piecing together another 2017 episode from snippets of his book The Rocketbelt Caper. Anthony subsequently posted a public apology to Levin on the podcast's Redditdiscussion board, acknowledging this pattern as a personal failing and promising to do better in the future.
Book
In 2016, Anthony announced the upcoming release of a book featuring stories like those discussed on the podcast. It was revealed that this book would be titled United States of Absurdity: Untold Stories from American History, and would be released in May 2017. The book featured twenty-nine stories that had previously been featured on the podcast. As of June 2017, United States of Absurdity ranked #15 on the LA Times bestseller list.
