Meet the Talk Tuah super fans
Cam George and Peter Ditzler are Talking Talk Tuah.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Coincidentally, I conducted this interview via Zoom in Haliey Welch’s hometown of Nashville. —Kate
Is hosting and producing a regular 90-minute video podcast the furthest anyone has ever taken a bit? In Talking Talk Tuah, which has now spawned six hours of detailed analysis across YouTube, TikTok, and wherever you get your podcasts, the comedians Cam George and Peter Ditzler thoughtfully analyze Talk Tuah with Haliey Welch, the (for a moment, at least) wildly popular pod the Hawk Tuah girl launched on Jake Paul’s media network Betr shortly after finding viral fame with her charmingly crude man-on-the-street advice for how to make a man go crazy in bed.
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George and Ditzler comb through Welch’s predictably inane podcast with the focus of an ESPN broadcaster and the sagacity of an NPR host, glasses of wine in hand. “Socrates and aristotle in 2024,” a commenter wrote on a TikTok clip in which the pair discussed inconsistencies in guest Wiz Khalifa’s “craziest high thought.”
They also never break, not even in this interview. Ahead, we discuss Haliey Welch’s star power, their own community of “junior analysts,” and how Matt Rife is the biggest and best comedian of all time.
Did you discover Haliey when she first went viral?
Cam: We found out about that a little bit after she was an up and coming podcaster.
Peter: It seems like people want to reduce her to a singular moment. She has now built a series with 11 episodes behind her and it's only growing from there, and it deserves some critical analysis.
Cam: Sometimes the internet just wants to condense everything and flatten things. Like, for her, they're saying she's like a one-note creator. And we're trying to actually expand that a bit and break it down and say, no. She's an industry disruptor. She is punching above her weight with the guests she has on, and she's able to have conversations with them for upwards of an hour. She locks it down.
What do you think gives her that it factor?
Peter: I think it's definitely a Southern-fire brand.
Cam: You're referring to Harley.
Peter: Well, she does have this alter ego, Harley, that comes out when she drinks Fireball. Apparently Harley was who was captured on camera in that [Hawk Tuah] moment.
Cam: It's like an M. Night Shyamalan moment, sort of Split. I think the biggest thing about her to me is she's not artificial. There's a lot of people in LA that come from fame or wealth, and this is someone that, you know, she's authentically herself. She's just gonna speak out with these Halieyisms. I think that's what helps her resonate.
You do these really in depth analyses. What's goes into staying up to date with and picking apart these episodes?
Peter: Well, we were actually, I feel like, a bit slow to the jump. We started covering her when she was already a couple episodes deep and we're still actually catching up. It takes weekends, nights after work.
Cam: Well, that's the thing. We get a lot of comments from some junior analysts in our community that like to poke fun at how this is an unemployed podcast, but I sometimes work between 50 and 60 hours a week, and he does a nine to five.
Peter: We really do just find the hours. A lot of times when we record, you can see it's nighttime outside. We'll be going till sometimes two, three AM just to get the full breakdown coverage of the episode and then go back and revisit moments to analyze for clips.
What are some of the standout moments from the Talk Tuah podcast so far, in your opinion?
Peter: For us, we had to jump on the moment of the Pookie reveal. That was actually a moment where it was a long day at work for me, and I got home and I wolfed down a burrito, and we watched through this episode that had dropped earlier in the day, and then we provided about two hours of commentary that night, and then edited it and then put it out on out online. I would say that was a pivotal moment for us. People were craving an analysis in Pookie's reveal. They wanted to see just what this moment means for the series.
Cam: Well, and even coming from me—I don't wanna get too into the weeds, I don't wanna upset my co-host here, but I'm certainly team Matt Rife, when I look at Haliey and I think of what an amazing power couple in Los Angeles could look like, it's gonna be with the biggest and best comedian of all time.
Peter: I'm not saying that Matt Rife isn't the biggest or best comedian.
Cam: Oh, of course not. But even coming from me in the Matt Rife camp, I was stoked for the Pookie reveal. And we just want what's best for Haliey.
You mentioned your audience—how do they respond to your analysis?
Peter: I think in creating this, we've realized just how much of a hunger there was for this analysis. 'Cause other people, other junior analysts, have hopped into our threads to share their own insight. Some of it's very helpful and illuminates our thinking in clips that we've recorded since reading their comments.
Cam: Dasha was recently on the podcast and she was telling this story about her wildest night out at this London club, The Box, where she claims to have seen someone shitting on stage and eating it. And she mentioned that she flew Southwest from the States to London. And some of our junior analysts actually caught the fact that Southwest doesn't charter those flights. It's a domestic airline.
Peter: So we were just wondering just how much of that story might have been embellished? It was helpful to get other analysts' perspectives and insight.
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There is a club called The Box in New York and that behavior wouldn't necessarily be out of place at that location. I wonder if there was some conflating.
Cam: I don't think Eric Adams would tolerate something like that.
This is true. Maybe he had something to do with the airline.
Peter: Just to go back to other breakout moments, there's also the Wiz Khalifa episode. We spent some time breaking that down last night. Throughout the episode, he's just smoking on marijuana, and so we decided we would partake in that too, to get in the spirit, recreate the vibe that they were in for that episode to get into their head space. So that was another fun moment in the series' trajectory.
What are some insights you've gleaned about who Haliey is from this analysis?
Cam: Well, it's tricky because Haliey, she is a traditional southern woman in a lot of senses, but she's also very...you can't put her in a box. She's very centered on family values, but then at the same time she's experimenting with Soho House and seeing what's going on in LA.
Peter: She also has a lot of entrepreneurial spirit in her. She talks a lot about wanting to start her own pickle brand or weed company. So it's interesting to see how far she can take this. She's also very charitable. I mean, she started this [campaign] to help foster animals, which is pretty admirable.
Cam: I don't know. She's very much a disruptor. You see it from even the second episode of her podcast where it's almost shot like an homage to vlogs. She goes and visits her granny and her granny is the guest on the second episode rather than some big Hollywood star.
Have you ever had any contact or interaction with Haliey?
Cam: So we've actually gotten reached out to by some of her guests. We had engagement from Kaitlyn Bristowe, who laughed at one of our breakdowns of her episode. We also got a comment the other night from Dasha so I feel like we're maybe closing in. We're attracting some of her guests and we'd love for the opportunity to have some of her guests come on and break down their episode further.
Peter: And look, I think if the time is ever right, we'd love to talk to Haliey. Certainly we have a duty to cover the show until that point, if and when it comes.
Would you ever go on her show?
Peter: I think so.
Cam: I think we'd have to as long as we were able to break it down the following day.