This is it. Deathember 13, 2021… One last day to save the show. Will Paul DaFoe and The Fakist news team rise to the challenge, or is the death of fake news inevitable? The Fakist: One Last Day, a standalone story set in the world of The Fakist, starting March 3, 2021.

When I started The Fakist, it was from a place of hope. I hoped it would work. I hoped it would be good. I hoped it would draw attention to my writing. It did some of those things. I even had a company offer to make it an actual TV show at one point, before the division got gobbled up in a corporate merger.

Season 2 was created in chaos. Late nights, constant adjustments, and a final product that, while I loved it, I wasn’t completely happy with. My attention was divided. I was stuck in a job I always dreamed of, that didn’t turn out quite how I planned.

The job was what I wanted, but it wasn’t what I needed. It took me two seasons of The Fakist to realize that. When I did, I stopped publishing it anonymously, took ownership of the project, and pray it wouldn’t get me fired since it has so many hot takes about the news industry. No, that’s wrong. I think I actually sort of hoped I’d get fired, so I could start figuring out how to get what I needed.

I didn’t get fired. A couple people mentioned it to me, but only to say how much they liked the drawing of me on the album art. Probably because Paul DaFoe has a full head of hair.
The job was full of friendly people and interesting challenges, but I knew it wasn’t getting me any closer to what I needed.

So, I quit. The plan was to wrap up The Fakist last summer, then move on to whatever came next. That didn’t happen because the world changed, but it gave me a lot of time to decide how I wanted to finish the series.

Since we had a lot of time off due to the pandemic, it made sense to tell a self-contained story that satisfied both longtime listeners and newbies. I decided to tell one season-long story about the last day of The Fakist news organization, but I needed a way in.

My struggle at my old job was front of mind when I started breaking the season, since it’s what kicked off this whole crazy project. What if I turned the storytelling lens towards the Fakist news team, and away from the lead characters, to tell nine short stories about what happens when you get what you want, only to discover it isn’t what you need? Every episode is a different genre, from RomCom to buddy picture to road trip to techno thriller. In my opinion, this is the most focused and funniest content we’ve done since the Christmas special, and I’m very proud of it.

I’m doing a live stream to introduce the cast and go over the process tonight, so I’ll just say recording live as a cast allowed us to bring a lot of improv into the show this year, which gives every scene a great energy. My cast stepped up and delivered a ton of jokes I never would have thought of. This season feels like a true collaboration in every sense of the word.
Big thanks to Tom Gehrke, Stephan Carroll, and Joe Carr for their help with the new album art and theme song. Steve and Joe I’ve known since high school. Tom, the illustrator, is a newer friend, and a great collaborator.

Even if you’ve never listened to The Fakist, I did my best to make this a self-contained story. If you have, there are plenty of payoffs and callbacks to honor what’s come before.
Subscribe by searching for “Fakist” in your podcast app of choice. I hope you dig what we’re putting down.