Hoytus Interruptus
Jeff Hoyt is a writer and voice actor who loves to tap his memory banks for stories that either entertain or inspire. If they somehow do both, all the better! Jeff started Hoytus Interruptus back when so few podcasts existed that no one even knew how to access the content. Today, years later, he's back with a new stack of true stories from his life that will drop every Tuesday.
Episodes
43 episodes
#38 Bottom of the 9th
The idea for this episode came to Jeff in the middle of a recent recording session, when his client on the other end of the line heard a strange sound and asked about it. From there, the episode morphs into a story about the imaginary worlds we...
HOYTUS CLASSIC: The Bald Truth
Jeff was recently reminded of this 20-year-old Hoytus episode while officiating a wedding with a warm Joshua Tree desert wind starting to have its way with the perfectly-coiffed hair of the assembled friends and family. By the time everyone got...
#37 Poems That The Earth Writes Upon the Sky
Jeff has been thinking about trees lately (and Kahlil Gibran quotes, judging from the title of this episode). The beautiful maple that Jeff has been staring at from his studio window for a quarter century started dying in recent years. The whol...
#36 Synaptic Anarchy!
In this episode, Jeff laments the demise of the comedy album. Once upon a time, they were huge sellers. No longer, though. This fact did not, however, dissuade Jeff from joining a collective of Seattle writers, actors, and sound design...
#35 A Whale of a Tale UPDATE
Two decades ago on this very podcast, Jeff told the story of an orphaned baby orca named Springer that got separated from its family, forcing volunteers to attempt a daring rescue, rehabilitation and reunification with the whale’s family. Such ...
#34 Death Takes a Pie in the Face
Jeff’s parents passed just two years apart during the first week of April back in the late 90's. He and his sisters still refer to those seven days as “Death Week.” And it’s a clue into how the Hoyt family does death. Here on the doorstep of th...
#33 The Robin, the Snowball, and the Porcelain Horse
The Hoytus Interruptus Apology Tour continues with three stories from when Jeff was just twelve years old. He could have listened to the voice in his head trying to steer him clear of doing stupid shit. But for Jeff, twelve was the age when bad...
#32 Smoky Mountain Slowdown
Global tourism has more than made up for time lost to the pandemic. The hot spots are teeming with record crowds these days and the pushback from the locals is starting to get ugly. Here in America, some of our national parks have even had to r...
#31 Presidents of the Babypants of Chris
Every now and again, Jeff breaks away from telling his own stories to tell someone else’s. In this episode, you'll hear from former Presidents of the USA front man Chris Ballew. Interwoven with music from all three phases of his long career, Ch...
#30 Dozing in the Dark
Jeff Hoyt has never met a darkened theater in which he couldn’t fall asleep. For whatever reason, live theater makes his lids grow heavy. It’s usually only for a few minutes, which is fine when you’re ten rows back. But then there was the time ...
#29 The Summer of Renaissance
If there’s one thing about young love, the time spent apart can be excruciating. It’s really hard to go your separate ways when you’re only just getting started. So, when Jeff & Cindy started dating over fifty years ago, their first summer ...
#28 - HOYTUS SPECIAL: Being Amanda Knox
The Wikipedia page for Amanda Knox has 5,000 words devoted to the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher, her subsequent wrongful incarceration and conviction, followed by her acquittal, release, re-conviction, and ultimate exoneration.
TRAILER - Being Amanda Knox
Between seasons of my podcast, I'm posting interesting conversations with fascinating people, starting with Amanda Knox.It's been a decade since Amanda came home to Seattle after serving 4 years of a 26-year prison sentence for a crime ...
#27 - Now Arriving Vashon Island
If there's any one thing that is certain about living on this island, it's that everyone has an interesting story about how they wound up here. To wrap up Season Two of Hoytus Interruptus, here's our Vashon origin story.Big thanks to ou...
#26 - A Joint Session With Bill & Hillary
This week's episode is embarrassing. (But don't those make the best stories?) It's a tale that includes illicit substances (or at least they were at the time), driving under the influence and a lovely smattering of additional cringe-worthy mome...
#25 - Monkeys Monkeys Everywhere
This episode marks a return to a style I employed about 15 years ago in the original iteration of Hoytus Interruptus. I call it "lyrical storytelling." The idea is to let the musical under-bed dictate pace and push, even re-writing the st...
#24 - On to the (Not So) Empty Next
Today's story is for this year's small batch of friends who will watch their youngest child leave the nest a few months down the road. It's an emotionally-fraught moment that can temporarily obscure all the good stuff yet to come.With a...
#23 - Mrs. Palmer & The Good Doctor
Whenever I talk to students who are stressed out and unsure about their ultimate career path, I generally respond with, "Good! You're not supposed to know yet." Clarity often doesn't come till later, sometimes much later...
#22 - Hurling to the Oldies
Here's a story that's not for the faint of stomach. It's about one of the more inevitably reliable hazards of travel and how one of us Hoyts almost always seems to escape the worst of it, able to nurse the other back to health. Exc...
#21 - A Manufractured Fairytale
I've interviewed quite a few celebrities over the years, but I think I got my biggest personal thrill from talking to three legends from my childhood who largely toiled in obscurity. Such is often the life for voice actors in the field of anima...
#20 - That Swarm and Buzzy Feeling
I'm not sure how it's possible to both love and hate a story at the same time, but that describes my relationship with this one. Act One is horrifying. Act Two provides a (very tiny) bit of comic relief. TRIGGER WARNING: If you have a che...
#19 - Deer in the Deadlights
It seems that I've begun a pattern of telling a story about a hoofed animal every other week. (Who does that? Plus, I can't help wondering what two weeks from today will bring!) This week's story features...a deer that wound up in...
#18 - Yo Ho NO!
Had the pleasure of spending a few days with our daughter last week. Seemed like a good time to roll out a favorite story that used to embarrass her when we told it to friends (thankfully, she's past that). I take you back to when our little gi...
#17 - Take Me Out To The BALD Game
Seeing the Seattle Mariners make a push for the playoffs in the final weeks of the regular season conjures memories of a magical 7-year stretch when they were in contention every year and drawing near-capacity crowds night after night.
