The Sarah Silverman Podcast allows Sarah Silverman to have the freedom she wouldn't have on TV

The Washington Post

On one podcast episode, for instance, there is an interaction "about human behavior and our ability to reshape even the ugliest confrontations by trying just a bit harder," says The Washington Post's Geoff Edgers. "It also highlights Silverman’s special superpower, the ability to use her glow and an awwcomeonbuddy nudge to convert all sorts of nasty mojo. She would be delivering this story onstage now, except that there’s a pandemic and, therefore, no gigs. Or she might be telling it on TV, except that Hulu canceled her I Love You, America series in 2019 and HBO passed on her latest pilot last year. Then again, it makes cosmic sense that this is being told on her podcast, because it’s hard to imagine Silverman’s pot-fueled parable getting space to breathe on those other platforms. The HBO bigwigs would have told her to tighten up the anecdote. The rules of standup would have required the setup to be met by a punchline. Which is why The Sarah Silverman Podcast, launched by the longtime comedian a few months ago with little fanfare and a sense of resignation, may be one of the sneakiest successes of the pandemic." Silverman says of her podcast: "I mean, yeah, I came to it because my hands were bound. I couldn’t do standup and I had no place to put stuff. But now I realize this was really what I needed to do. I just can’t believe the freedom and the messiness and the looseness. It’s maybe something I didn’t realize I was missing.”