“What’s your favorite thing you buy from school lunch?” Peyton asks his co-hosts. He’s a 14-year-old boy with vocal fry, thick Coke-bottle glasses, and shaggy hair. His nickname, McLovin, stems from Instagram commenters pointing out his resemblance to Superbad star Christopher Mintz-Plasse.
“Probably like … nachos grande,” his friend Ryan replies. He’s 13, with a mischievous grin; the fans call him Chub Perm, because of his heavyset frame and mop of tawny curls. “And when there’s not anything I like, I just get the Uncrustables. Those burgers look weird! They’re just sitting in the juice. It’s gross.”
Peyton nods sagely in assent. So do their two other friends and co-hosts, Emmett (known as No Name) and Jackson (Nonchalant).
This 25-second discussion about cafeteria food exemplifies the repartee on the podcast MD Foodie Boyz, which is made by four eighth-grade BFFs from Harford County, Maryland. Other segments focus on favorite pizza toppings (“I don’t really like pepperoni. It’s kind of a weird taste”), movie-theater snacks (“Popcorn gets stuck in my teeth, but I like it if you put enough butter on it”), and raisins (“I don’t like raisins. They’re, like, weird.”). It feels a bit like watching Joe Rogan, except cursing isn’t allowed and the discussion topics are about Double Stuf Oreos instead of ivermectin and ayahuasca.
Foodie Boyz first took off last November, when their social-media manager — Ryan’s 19-year-old brother — posted a clip of an extensive discussion about celery on their Instagram account, which got 5 million views. They have since amassed nearly 200,000 followers on that platform as well as a devoted fan following on TikTok (“Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Chub Perm,” someone recently commented). They’re also on Cameo, where they charge $200 to send inspirational messages to fans (“Big congrats on that 400-meter time. That’s fire!”). In early March, Dave Portnoy invited them to the Barstool Sports office, where they appeared on the company’s Fish Bowl podcast and Portnoy’s YouTube show One Bite Pizza Reviews. “He was one of our biggest inspirations,” Ryan told me. “That’s kinda how I realized what a big deal we were.”
The kids from Maryland are perhaps the most prominent example of an emerging trend: teens and tweens launching their own podcasts. Inspired by the enormous success of podcasters like the Paul brothers, Theo Von, and Joe Rogan, they’re trying their hand at the form, donning hoodies and headphones to shoot the shit with their friends. There’s also SaltyBoys, a lo-fi podcast in which a group of teen boys quote Bible verses and swap fitness tips, and the co-ed LOL Podcast, featuring floppy-haired YouTubers participating in games like “Brutally Honest Truth or Dare.”
These newcomers are “chasing the tail” of podcasters who saw a lot of success last year, particularly leading up to the election cycle, says AJ Feliciano, the general manager of the Roost, a video-first podcasting platform. He cited Rogan and Von — both of whom interviewed Donald Trump last year — as examples. Feliciano thinks podcasters like the MD Foodie Boyz are “looking up to these long-running YouTubers and saying, ‘If I do something similar, I wonder how I would fare.’”
There’s not a lot of data on podcast listeners under the age of 18, but it seems to be a fairly large untapped audience: Approximately 66 percent of all podcast listeners are between the ages of 12 and 34, and there are an estimated 24 million monthly Gen-Z podcast listeners. YouTube, the most popular platform among Gen Z and Gen Alpha, has more than a billion monthly views for podcast content alone.
These staggering numbers led pocket.watch, the kids’ entertainment studio best known for representing the immensely popular YouTuber Ryan Kaji of Ryan’s World, to start its scripted-podcast division in 2023. So far, pocket.watch has launched a show hosted by the 11-year-old YouTuber Love, Diana as well as a mystery series featuring the GEM Sisters, who became famous for their comedy sketches and family vlogs. “We were like, ‘Okay, if podcasting is important on YouTube right now, kids are going to embrace the trend in their own way,’” Amanda Klecker, senior vice-president of marketing and franchises at pocket.watch, told me.
There are a number of podcasts by tween and teen girls — like Girl Talk, where teen girls model prospective Coachella outfits and gossip about internet beef, and RockPod, whose hosts discuss first kisses and ex-crushes. Yet the Foodie Boyz appear to be modeling themselves after bro podcasters like Rogan and Portnoy, whom they cite as major influences. They record every Friday evening after school from a local studio space they have access to through a parent, which is how they have all that high-end podcasting equipment at their disposal.
This trend makes sense in the context of a wider shift in the digital-media industry, in which influencers are pivoting from making shortform content on Instagram Reels and TikTok to making longer-form content on platforms like YouTube. Podcasting has the benefit of being cheap and “lower lift” in comparison to other types of content, says Feliciano. And if you look at the comments section for the MD Foodie Boyz’ content, it’s clear that the off-the-cuff vibe is a huge part of their appeal. So is the anodyne nature of the show; one word that consistently shows up in the comments section is “wholesome.” “We don’t really talk about anything controversial,” says Peyton. “It just doesn’t come to mind when we’re doing this stuff. It’s just about food.” That also likely makes them more appealing to potential advertisers. (They currently have brand deals with Taco Bell, Buffalo Wild Wings, and CAVA, according to the boys’ social-media manager.)
There is, however, a small handful of teen and tween podcasters entering the political space. Max and Will Morstad are the 13- and 11-year-old brothers anchoring GSD Nation, a politics podcast that records out of the boys’ hometown of Phoenix. On GSD — which is short for the perhaps less than child-friendly acronym “Get Shit Done” — the boys espouse hustle-culture tips and chat about their favorite video games between musing about tariffs and pronouns. In one episode, they shift seamlessly from debating the pros and cons of ice water to discussing the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
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The boys’ father, Matt Morstad, is a former senior vice-president at Axon, a technology and weapons manufacturer. On the podcast, Morstad, who self-identifies as “conservative, not Republican,” steers the discussion topics and acts as co-host. “I see a lot of young people that are always on their phones without guidance, and they’re looking at garbage online,” he says. “They’re just consuming and not producing. I look at it as my kids are building skills and being productive.”
Morstad says the show only has about 1,000 downloads per episode, but it’s already featured a number of big-name guests, including RFK Jr. adviser and MAHA guru Calley Means and right-wing YouTuber and podcaster Brandon Tatum. The Morstads had the opportunity to network with conservative influencers at a Turning Points conference they attended last December (“Ben Shapiro signed my football,” Max excitedly told me when he briefly wandered into the frame of the Zoom call.) “With kids involved in it, there’s kind of a soft spot. People are comfortable talking to kids and they don’t feel like they’re going to get trapped or anything,” Morstad says of booking high-profile interview subjects. “They know kids are just curious and trying to learn.”
The show also features roundtables with other teens and tweens from across the political spectrum debating each other on everything from the war in Ukraine to their favorite pizza toppings. Some of those clips, including a surprisingly wonky discussion on tariffs, have gone viral on Instagram, presumably due to the jarring effect of seeing an 11-year-old boy in braces talking about inflation. But it has also invariably led to a slew of negative comments accusing Morstad of brainwashing his sons. Morstad denies this, even though his sons espouse pretty much the same political views that he does during our conversation.
“I get hate comments and threats all the time, like, ‘Oh, your kids are going to be flaming liberal transgenders in a few years,’” he says. “But people don’t see the conversations that we have behind the camera. I’m trying to teach them to think critically about topics.”
In most respects, GSD Nation and the Foodie Boyz have little in common. Yet they’re both striking in how much they mimic the template established by Rogan and Von. It feels like you’ve just stumbled on a group of bros broing out, even if the subject matter is as trivial as reviewing Wawa pizza.
The MD Foodie Boyz say they’re already seeing tons of imitators, including some kids in their school who have started their own podcasts. But they’ve failed to recapture the lackadaisical charm of the original. “People try, but none of them have real podcasts,” Peyton says. “Like, they mess around and try, but —”
“They call it a podcast,” Ryan interjects, “but they’re just sitting in front of a phone camera and talking about situations.” In a recent Instagram Reel, they talk about trying Buffalo Wild Wings ranch dressing for the first time, a product of one of their first brand deals. It has more than 353,000 views.
