Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers were not fast friends. Now the co-hosts of the pop culture podcast, Las Culturistas, the two lived on the same floor of their freshman dorm at New York University (NYU) — where they had little to do with each other. Smash cut to 2019 where they are now both emerging voices on the comedy scene. Yang was recently getting hired as a writer on NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL), and the duo are also planning a national tour together based on "I Don't Think So, Honey!" — a recurring 60-second segment about a frustrating cultural phenomenons, which ends every episode of their podcast.
Before jumping into comedy and entertainment, Yang was a self-described mediocre chemistry major "who somehow ended up with a B.A. — not a B.S." in the subject. In an interview with Ophira Eisenberg, host of NPR's Ask Me Another, at the Bell House In Brooklyn, New York, Yang explained how even before a career in comedy seemed viable, he would always make a point of asking the college tour guides, "So do you have any improv groups?"
Yang's early pre-med aspirations still had some foundation in his love of pop culture: He confirmed to Eisenberg that his path to becoming a doctor was inspired by Sanrdra Oh's character on the ABC medical drama series, Grey's Anatomy. He attributed this miscalculation to "bad" or "double-refracted representation," that he first thought he wanted to be a doctor like Oh's character, before understanding he actually wanted to go into entertainment, like Oh herself.
Years later, things came full circle when Yang met Sandra Oh, first while serving as a writer on the 2019 Golden Globes, and again later in the year, as a writer on SNL. Not only was he able to meet the woman who indirectly started it all for him, and tell her how much he loves her work, but appear alongside her in a sketch when she hosted SNLin March 2019 — portraying North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, opposite her, as his translator.
Yang was also joined on the Bell House stage by his Las Culturistas co-host, comedian Matt Rogers. While they began recording their show together in 2016, the two met six years prior as students at NYU — although they did not initially get along. Rogers elaborated, "There was a degree of animosity between us" over a girl that they both claimed to like. Rogers clarified, "This is when we were both closeted. It happens. It's happening now." Even after they had both separately come out of the closet, Rogers and Yang noted how they resented the external pressure they faced from peers to become friends that appeared to be hinged solely upon their shared sexual orientation. "We were like, 'You think we're going to be friends just because we're gay? No way!'" exclaimed Rogers.
It wasn't until a Halloween party where Yang and Rogers discovered they both knew all of the words to rapper Nicki Minaj's 2010 hit single, "Super Bass" that the two finally struck up their now-storied friendship upon which Las Culturistas is built. "At the time—!" begins Rogers before Yang interrupts to finish his sentence, "Was just a bonus track and not a single. It was a deep cut."
In their first Ask Me Another challenge, Rogers and Yang face off in a game inspired by the closing segment of their podcast — titled I DoThink So, Honey! — in which they decide whether a given fact about honey is true or false.
In their second match-up, Rogers and Yang compete to identify critically-panned films starring famous divas, based off of the film's negative description on the review aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes.
And the special guests became contestants in the show, meaning the winner of the two challenges advanced to the final round.
Heard on Bowen Yang And Matt Rogers: I Don't Think So, Honey!
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