Nerdist Industries - Lost & Unreleased Media

  NOTE: This page is still currently under construction. More info and corrections will be added soon.

Nerdist began as a blog by comedian and host Chris Hardwick in 2007 and, since then, has grown into a many-headed beast.

The blog spread to a podcast, The Nerdist, in 2009, and, as of 2014, Nerdist Industries includes a premium YouTube channel, a network of about 40 podcasts (both active and inactive), a news division, TV productions (including The Nerdist on BBC America, Chris Hardwick's All-Star Celebrity Bowling for ACM, and @midnight on Comedy Central), The Nerdist School, an LA based improv and sketch comedy training program, and NerdMelt, a performance space located inside Meltdown Comics in LA.

Through out the history of Nerdist Industries, various peices of work have been gone missing, or have been talked about but not released. (NOTE: This list does include recordings that have been deleted or are now unrecoverable. Due to the digital nature of podcasts, it's possible, and likely, that most of these recordings no longer exit.)

Videos
Here are the various videos either shot for the Nerdist YouTube channel, but not released, or released but later taken down.

"Shitzy the Christmas Moose"
Sometime in 2012 or 2013, a video of a stuffed Christmas moose, named "Shitzy" (???) and voiced by Chris Hardwick, making fun of various film trailers was uploaded to the Nerdist YouTube channel. According to Hardwick in the "Honestly 2013" episode of The Nerdist, the origin of Shitzy started in a comedy club:


 * "It was a Christmas moose that was at Zanies in Chicago that had been hanging behind the stage, and he had these pants -- 'Cause it was filled with bird seed -- that looked like he had filled his pants with shit. So over the course of five days, I kept reffering to 'Shitzy the Moose,' and his mythology grew wider and wider. So, for Christmas that year, Chloe [Dykstra, Chris' girlfriend at the time] had gone back after I had finished the last show, and the club gave her the moose and she gave it to me as a present. So we had Shitzy the Moose come on."

Chris went on to explain why the video is no longer avalible, saying:


 * "It was so hated, that I was like 'Well, the people have spoken!' and I took it down. So the Shitzy voice became the Pierre the Pelican voice."

When "the failed moose" was originally brought up during the episode by girlfriend Chloe Dykstra, Hardwick jokingly feigned anger and said "Never speak of him again!"

The video has not yet resurfaced, and it is unknown if anyone has archived it.

Episode 29: Todd Barry
On July 27, 2010, the 29th episode of The Nerdist was released, featuring guest Todd Barry. However, soon after, it was pulled and it's page on the Nerdist website was deleted. Asked about it during various live shows and hostful episodes, the hosts (Hardwick and comedians Matt Mira and Jonah Ray) would joke that they were oblivious to what they were being asked before Hardwick would quicky reply that it was pulled because of "audio problems" before moving on to a new topic.

On April 4, 2014, a full explanation was finally given with the release of episode 501, again featuring Barry. When Hardwick mentioned to Barry that he was "the infamous Nerdist Podcast number 29," Barry replied "Oh yeah, what happened there?" and Hardwick explained:


 * "You were the very first podcast that I did with a remote set-up [...] and I don't know what happened, but the audio was so inconsistant and bad, and I couldn't save it, and a bunch of people were like 'I can't hear this." It was the first time that I had that problem, so I felt really bad, but I -


 * BARRY: "Did you scrap it?"


 * HARDWICK: "I just it down. And then, for a while, it was really fun to just have this invisable podcast, where people were like 'What's podcast number 29?' and I was like 'I don't know what you're talking about.' [...] The podcast was great, it's just the audio was so unfortunatly terrible. But, I learned alot after that, about how to, I mean, you know --


 * BARRY: "Well, I'm glad I could help you learn how to do it right for the next guy who was on, who's album sales spiked."

The contents of the episode are not known, though Hardwick did mention that Barry's early career was talked about.

Though the episode was released, and it's fairly possible that somebody still has it downloaded, the episode has yet to resurface.

Kevin Pollak - First Appearence
During the Kevin Pollak's appearence on the November 15, 2010 epsiode of the podcast, it was revealed he had actually recorded an episode a few weeks before. However, Hardwick was unable to find the recorder usually used for remote podcasts and decided to use the voice memo function on his iPhone. Propping the phone up against a telephone system, Hardwick reviewed the recording later that night and, too his dismay, found that there was electrical interference through much of the episode. He deemed the recording unusable, and no excerpt has seen the light of day.

It's probable that this recording was deleted soon after recording.

Roger Corman (Unconfirmed)
The author of this page recalls that, during a live episode of the podcast, as a responce to an audience member's question, Hardwick revealed that he had recently recorded an episode with writer, director, and producer Roger Corman. Recently, I have been unable to find this live podcast, though I recall that this was also around the time Attack of the Show ran a promo of a taped interview with Corman that was also never released, and that co-host Matt Mira became intoxicated during it.

This episode, if indeed recorded, has never been released, and no mention of it has been made and why it was shelved has not been stated.

The Greatest Hostful Ever! - Lost Febuary 2010 Hostful
According to the Febuary 10, 2010 Hostful episode "Sound Board" (a "Hostful" being an episode with just Hardwick, Mira, and Ray), a different Hostful had been recorded the previous week. According to the three hosts, as Hardwick was running late, Mira and Ray started to record the podcast, and recorded roughly 15 minutes before Hardwick arrived. Hardwick joind in the recoding, and, according to him:


 * "I had the headphones plugged into the board, everything sounded fine when we were recording -- I could hear everyone fine in the headphones. I don't know what happened, but when I got the recording back, you could not hear me at all, and what I realized was 'Oh, my mic was dead the entire show.' I was kind of being picked up by your microphones, but not really. [...] It would've been so irratating and maddening for people to hear you stop and then hear '[mumbles softly]', 'Yeah, that's right!' [...] There was no way to fix it. There was no way to fix it."

Through out "Sound Board", the trio refered to the lost Hostful as the best one they had ever recorded.

Though the idea of releasing just the first 15 minutes, with just Mira and Ray, was considered, it wasn't acted upon. Currently, it has never been released in any form.