In the first episode of People Overheard Talking About FX’s The English Teacher, two hosts set the scene: They are at Pressed Juicery, listening to two moms talking about television.
“She overhears juice mom talking about this TV show,” one says. “And not just any TV show. She’s like, this is the best comedy since Seinfeld. The show is called the English Teacher. It’s on FX.”
“Have you seen it?” the co-host asks.
“No, I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard it’s supposed to be really funny,” she responds.
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The eight-minute episode moves quickly, assuming the rhythm of any normal podcast duo engaged in conversation on their chosen topic. At times, the discussion edges into intense promotional material, singing the praises of English Teacher creator and star Brian Jordan Alvarez.
“He’s got that, like… kind of awkward but, like, endearing energy,” the co-host says at one point. “You can’t help but kind of fall in love with him.”
The result — and, let’s be honest, the mouthful of a title — leaves one wondering if the project is secretly sponsored by FX, or maybe even Alvarez himself. But neither theory would be true. Nor, it turns out, are the two hosts even real. People Overheard Talking About FX’s The English Teacher is entirely AI, produced by two unnamed superfans of the show.
(One potential clue would be the incorrect styling of the show’s title; the podcast displays it as The English Teacher, whereas FX’s series is actually just English Teacher.)
Since its first episode was released on Sept. 2, the podcast has since dropped nearly 40 more installments, each one no more than ten minutes long. The first dozen came spaced out every few days, but more recent episodes have been released within hours of each other.
Across the episodes, the deepfake co-host voices reference articles from the Los Angeles Times and other outlets, and cite fabricated conversations about English Teacher overhead in places like a Harvard Linguistics Lab, the National Weather Service and a Deep Cave in Montana.
An Oct. 9 episode claims — completely falsely — that Epic Games announced that new Fortnite animated dance moves were inspired by scenes from English Teacher. Another recounts a 911 operator who forced a patient to watch an episode of the show before receiving care, and there’s also one in false conversation with a psychic discussing dead people’s fandom of Alvarez’s work.
Epic Games did not respond to The Hollywood Reporter‘s request for comment on the matter, nor did FX.
Though this podcast in particular doesn’t boast a large following — it has only two reviews on Apple Podcasts — the weirdness of its conception seems part of a growing trend of AI podcasts, many from NotebookLM, Google’s experimental new website that will turn any user-uploaded document into a podcast.
One user fed the tool a credit card receipt, and in return received a “7-minute podcast about how I spend too much on Uber.” Others have said they can use it to summarize reading required by school or jobs. Will Hollywood turn toward it, too?
