North Pole Radio

This week Matt is joined by John Schimmel to offer some tough love to the Christmas community by addressing the problem of LGBTQ+ intolerance. It's a touchy subject for some, but I promise you we come at with all the respect and love in the world.

This week Matt is joined by Allan Siu, who talks about becoming Santa after being raised by Chinese immigrants who didn't celebrate Christmas, working at the Mall of America, and how Santa being diverse really does make a difference.

Matt is joined on this episode by Jenny Watt and John McCarty who are here to talk to him about their new book "A Hippopotamus For Christmas".

This week Matt is joined by his friend and fellow New England Santa Society member Nicholas Gillotte who talks all about his Santa journey, his after-Christmas "ski with Santa" gig, how he came to star in his own special copy of "The Night Before Christmas" and which mega-star's grandchildren he got to be Santa for!

This episode, Matt welcomes back Santa True, who lays out some potential futures for the art of Christmas performing. Some are great, some are not so great, and we talk about ways to make the great reality and avoid the not great.

It's time to go to music class as Matt is joined once again by his friend Bruce Kotowich who, this time, brings his expertise as a music professor to the podcast to teach us all about Christmas music, why it's important and how we can use it when performing as a Christmas character.

Matt is super excited this week to sit down and talk with official Rankin/Bass biographer Rick Goldschmidt, who had the distinct pleasure of being friends with Arthur Rankin, Jules Bass, Paul Coker and more of the Rankin/Bass crew and has written several books on the subject.

Matt is joined by his friends Gerry Davila from Totally Rad Christmas, Mike Westfall from Advent Calendar House and Charlie Ague from Closer to Christmas to count down each our top five favorite Christmas commercials!

On this episode Matt welcomes his pal Chris Parada who not only built his own beautiful Santa shack complete with custom sleigh, but keeps the spirit of classic Santas like Charles W. Howard and Jim Yelig alive and well.

Matt is joined on this episode by another U.K. Santa, Mike Facherty, who very cheekily waited to almost the end of the episode to share that he wrote some fun Christmas storybooks! Ho ho ho! Plus, he teaches Matt about a Christmas song that apparently doesn't exist in the U.S.