The ''Rooster Teeth Podcast'', formerly known as the ''Drunk Tank'', was a

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

produced by

Rooster Teeth Rooster Teeth Productions, LLC was an American entertainment company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Founded in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola, and Joel Heyman, Rooster Teeth was a subsidiary o ...

that aired weekly from December 9, 2008 to April 22, 2024 and featured various members of Rooster Teeth's staff discussing different topics each week. Throughout its run, main hosts included Rooster Teeth founders

Gus Sorola Gustavo Raul "Gus" Sorola III (born February 22, 1978) is an American actor and podcast host. Early life Sorola was born in Austin, and raised in Eagle Pass, Texas, near the Mexico–United States border. After choosing to drop out from Rice ...

Burnie Burns Michael Justin "Burnie" Burns (born January 18, 1973) is an American actor, writer, producer, comedian, host, and director previously based in Austin, Texas. He was a co-founder, former chief executive officer, and former chief creative offic ...

Geoff Ramsey Geoffrey Lazer Ramsey (born Geoffrey Paul Wright on June 19, 1975; later Geoffrey Paul Fink) is an American voice actor, film producer and internet personality. He co-founded the production company Rooster Teeth and is known for voicing Dexter ...

and

Joel Heyman Joel Pearce Heyman (born September 16, 1971) is an American actor, best known for voicing Michael J. Caboose in the Rooster Teeth web series ''Red vs. Blue'' from 2003 until 2020. He co-founded Rooster Teeth with Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, G ...

as well as

Gavin Free Gavin David Free (born 23 May 1988) is an English actor, director, cinematographer and internet personality. He is best known for his work at Rooster Teeth—where he formerly served as creative director—featuring in many of their projects, ...

, Jack Pattillo and

Barbara Dunkelman Barbara Julie Dunkelman (born July 2, 1989) is a Canadian actress and internet personality. She is known for her work with the former production company Rooster Teeth, where she served as a Creative Director and was formerly the Director of Soci ...

while Armando Torres, Griff Milton and Andrew Rosas acted as its final hosts. It is sometimes advertised as simply The ''RT Podcast''. It was named Best Gaming Podcast by the

Podcast Awards The People's Choice Podcast Awards, better known as the Podcast Awards, are global awards given annually to the best podcasts as voted by the general public. Founded in 2005 by Todd Cochrane of Podcast Connect Inc., the Podcast Awards changed han ...

in 2012 and 2013.

History

On December 9, 2008, after temporarily reviving a feature on their website from their previous website, 'drunkgamers.com,' Rooster Teeth released their first audio podcast, ''The Drunk Tank'', available for download through

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

Zune Marketplace Zune is a discontinued software program that was developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows that functions as a full media player, library, media streaming server, mobile device management, and interface for the discontinued Zune Marke ...

, and their website. It soon became one of the most popular features of the site, at one point becoming the #1 most downloaded podcast on iTunes, as well as a featured podcast in the iTunes Store. New episodes have regularly been released every Wednesday since April 10, 2009, with occasional special episodes or multiple releases in one week. In 2009 they began uploading podcast themed "let's play" style videos on Rooster Teeth's

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

channel. They later moved these videos to their own Let's Play channel in 2013. On June 23, 2010, the podcast changed to a .m4a "enhanced" format which allows listeners to use an interactive "link dump" to be able to view more information on the topics of the week's podcast. On September 28, 2011, co-host and Rooster Teeth founder

announced ''The Drunk Tank'' was to be re-christened ''The Rooster Teeth Podcast'' to create a more unified public image for the company. On August 18, 2010, the podcast was officially implemented into the Rooster Teeth website. To celebrate their 100th episode on February 9, 2011, they released their first-ever video podcast which featured Sorola,

and

with

Griffon Ramsey Griffon E. Ramsey (formerly O'Connell; born April 23, 1980) is an American chainsaw carving artist known for her pop-culture wood sculptures which have appeared at the Australian Chainsaw Carving Championships and the Butler Chainsaw Carving Invit ...

as a guest. On January 18, 2012, the podcast gained its first sponsor, Audible.com.

Pizza Hut Pizza Hut, LLC is an American multinational pizza restaurant chain and international franchise founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas, by brothers Dan and Frank Carney. The chain, headquartered in Plano, Texas, operates 19,866 restaurants worldw ...

sold an official Rooster Teeth Podcast pizza in 2014 as part of a brand campaign with Fullscreen, which was nominated for a

Streamy Award The YouTube Streamy Awards, also known as the Streamy Awards or Streamys, are an awards show presented annually by Dick Clark Productions and Tubefilter to recognize excellence in online video, including directing, acting, producing, and wri ...

the following year. In 2016 Pizza Hut sponsored multiple episodes of the podcast as part of a partnership with Rooster Teeth, which received multiple nominations at the 9th Annual Shorty Awards. A weekly series called ''Rooster Teeth Animated Adventures'' features short stories told from the podcast in the form of animation. On September 26, 2016, Sorola unveiled the new set along with the new logo, replacing the one that had been in use since 2011. A live ticketed event was held for the 500th episode. In July 2020 the podcast was part of Spotify’s Vodcast launch lineup. A 2014 conversation on the podcast about a hypothetical scenario involving an immortal snail became the source of a recurring meme on social media. Videos discussing the snail on TikTok had amassed over 230 million views by November 2021. Rooster Teeth founders Geoff Ramsey and

as well as Jack Pattillo have all previously served as main hosts of the podcast until individually stepping down, with Heyman having since left the company. Founder Burnie Burns was a regular host until September 2019, but briefly returned in 2020 before leaving the company that June. In May 2023, Sorola announced he would step down as the podcast's host in June, having worked on the show for 15 years since its inception. In June 2023, the remaining main hosts

and

were also announced as leaving the podcast alongside Sorola with Armando Torres, Griff Milton and Andrew Rosas taking over as permanent hosts. In April 2024, following the announcement of Rooster Teeth's shutdown the previous month, it was announced that the podcast would end while various former hosts returned to guest star in several of the remaining episodes. The final episode was released on April 22, 2024.

Format

Since its inception, the podcast has usually featured three or four Rooster Teeth staff members as the main hosts as well as the occasional guests such as other Rooster Teeth employees, their families and friends or celebrity guests such as

Zachary Levi Zachary Levi Pugh ( ; born September 29, 1980) is an American actor. He starred as Chuck Bartowski in the action comedy series ''Chuck (TV series), Chuck'' (2007–2012), and as Captain Marvel (DC Comics), the titular character in the superher ...

. The podcast is largely a comedic commentary on the

popular culture Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of cultural practice, practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art

f. pop art F is the sixth letter of the Latin alphabet. F may also refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * F or f, the number 15 (number), 15 in hexadecimal and higher positional systems * ''p'F'q'', the hypergeometric function * F-distributi ...

or mass art, sometimes contraste ...

of the week, including video games, recent news, website features, sports, movies, and television shows. It is also used to announce the company’s upcoming projects, live events such as RTX, as well as occasionally highlighting fan-made projects.

References

External links

* {{Rooster Teeth Productions Comedy podcasts Video podcasts Video game podcasts Rooster Teeth Audio podcasts 2008 podcast debuts American podcasts