Penn State’s Student Programming Association (SPA) brought childhood best friends Joe Santagato and Frank Alvarez from “The Basement Yard” podcast all the way from Queens, New York, to Penn State on Tuesday night. The show was free of charge for students before the duo starts its European tour next month.

Santagato started making YouTube videos in 2016 and first went viral for his series “People of Walmart.” He began creating content in his mother’s basement and joined forces with Alvarez during the COVID-19 pandemic. The podcast is the seventh-most popular on Patreon, with 965,000 subscribers on YouTube and 4.5 million followers on TikTok. 

Santagato talked about the change from recording episodes in basements to selling out auditoriums. He touched on the impact of social media, the effort that goes into maintaining their work, and the surreal feeling of success.  

“It feels kind of crazy… It doesn’t feel like normal, even doing this last year, and now we’re gonna be doing more shows this year like this one right now,” Santagato said. “When you’re in rooms where you see a bunch of people like this, then you can be like, ‘Wow, OK, this is kind of crazy.'”

The pair described the podcast as being about “mostly nothing” and related it to Seinfeld, where they just talk about everyday things. There is no preparation or structure, rather it’s just a conversation between two people who are simply talking about life.

The group came out on stage and got right into the swing of things, from talks about Kanye’s wife’s Grammys outfit to Alvarez’s degenerate college experience at New Haven, The Basement Yard’s show was nothing short of hysterical. 

Santagato and Alvarez talked about their experiences along the way, including a run-in with a 12-foot clown at a museum, an interaction on the side of the road with an armless fan, and a memorable show in Denver where every person in the audience was stoned.

With their first college stop in the books, Santagato and Alvarez turn their attention to their European tour, kicking off in Glasgow next month.