Whatever Happened to Chris Hardwick?

Marc Maron, for good reason, gets most of the credit for popularizing the comedy podcast, but some may have forgotten that Chris Hardwick launched his Nerdist comedy podcast less than six months after WTF with Marc Maron. There was no rivalry between the two, nor any reason for one, but throughout much of the 2010s, they dominated the format much like Letterman and Leno dominated late-night talk shows in the ’90s.

Hardwick, however, is probably closer in personality to Jimmy Fallon: an excitable, enthusiastic fan of both comedy and nerdery who is effusive in praising his guests. Before the format became inundated with hundreds of other options, Maron and Hardwick were my main listens (outside of This American Life and Reply All). And for several years, Hardwick was basically omnipresent—not just with his podcast but also as the host of @midnight on Comedy Central for five seasons, as well as a number of AMC aftershows back before podcasts replaced them. During the height of The Walking Dead, Hardwick’s The Talking Dead was often the top-rated weekly program aside from The Walking Dead itself. He also extended that format to Talking Bad and Talking Saul, aftershow discussions about Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

Not bad for a guy who basically got his start as the host of an MTV dating show with Jenny McCarthy, Singled Out (it took me a long time to square the Singled Out host with The Nerdist podcaster).

Everything came crashing down, however, at the height of #MeToo in June 2018, when an ex-girlfriend of Hardwick’s wrote a Medium post alleging emotional and sexual abuse. Hardwick was pulled from The Talking Dead, his name was erased from Nerdist (the site he founded), and he stepped away from moderating panels at San Diego Comic-Con, where he’d been a regular fixture.

AMC conducted an investigation; Hardwick’s ex-girlfriend chose not to participate, and eventually he was reinstated as host of The Talking Dead (and his name was returned to the Nerdist site, though Hardwick no longer has an affiliation with it). But the allegations clearly dented his career, compounded by the waning popularity of The Walking Dead and the general softening of interest in Comic-Con over the years, hastened by the pandemic.

Hardwick did continue podcasting, rebranding The Nerdist as ID10T, which ran until 2022. In March of that year, however, the podcast simply stopped releasing episodes. Hardwick and his wife had a baby — something he said he’d never do during the early years of his podcasting career, then joked/threatened to do in later years. He put the podcast on hiatus, something he had the resources to do (he is married to Lydia Hearst, daughter of Patty Hearst and great-granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst).

For the better part of three years, Hardwick basically fell off the map.

But a few weeks ago, he returned to podcasting, rebranding ID10T as I Think You’re Overthinking It, which is essentially the same podcast it’s always been, only now more openly infused with his neuroses. In his introductory episode, he said he only meant to take six months to a year off to care for his newborn, but his interest in continuing waned, and the podcast space became so crowded with new voices that he didn’t feel he had anything unique to contribute.

Still, he brought it back, now as more of a biweekly show. His first guest was Ben Schwartz in June, and as recently as this morning, he hosted James Gunn, who appeared to talk about the forthcoming season of Peacemaker. Hardwick almost certainly no longer commands the sizable audience he once did, and in the James Gunn episode, he spends most of his time gushing over his guest. But he’s back in the podcasting world and even mentioned taping new episodes of The Wall, the plinko-style game show that will eventually air on NBC.

So, while he did take three years off, Hardwick is still around, doing his Hardwick thing — talking about raising a newborn, frequently referring to his wife, and glazing the hell out of his guests. I had not listened to a Hardwick podcast in probably six or seven years, but it’s clear that little has changed.