Aussie Podcast Godfather
Charlie is an Australian actor and has been dubbed the 'grandfather of podcasting' in Australia. He hosts the weekly comedy podcast TOFOP alongside Will Anderson. Charlie also has is own solo podcast titled That's Aweson!
Charlie on Instagram:
@charlie_claussen
TOFOP Podcast:
www.tofop.com
Verbatim from the transcripts — each quote links to the moment.
“That's the saddest thing in the world, to be an OG podcaster.”
“The reason you like someone else's show is you would never have the idea to do it. You've got to do your own thing.”
“Like, the geeks have inherited the earth.”
“I think having a blue-collar attitude towards a creative pursuit... is the best combination.”
“You know, or to have the conversation. And, you know, I also think that it's too late to, to be conservative now, you know what I mean? Like, we're all in.”
“You just hear no and you're like, oh well, they've just said no. And in your head it's like this big faceless— but then, you know, there was a person who made the decision and I want to spoke to them and explained my position.”
What's the key to sustaining a long-running two-person podcast?
Consistency matters more than perfect conditions—keep publishing even when it's logistically hard (different time zones, bad hotel wifi); also avoid forcing content or scripting bits, since the best episodes emerge naturally when one host brings a story and the other instinctively reacts to it.
Should you turn down opportunities to appear on other podcasts or projects?
Say yes to opportunities (like appearing on other podcasts) by asking 'what's the worst that could happen?' and treat unpaid, low-stakes creative work with the same professionalism as big paid jobs.
Clausen describes finishing a Home and Away shift on Friday morning, flying to LA to perform a live TOFOP show the next night, then immediately flying back to Sydney to be at work Monday, losing money on the trip but doing it for the experience.
When Clausen joined Home and Away, Channel 7 asked him to stop his adult-content podcast; he complied until Jules Lund advised him to find and talk to the actual decision-maker, after which he got permission to resume, and the hiatus became part of TOFOP's mythology (spawning Will's spin-off 'Faux Fop').
Clausen recalls his family reluctantly attending his 1,000-seat Comedy Theatre show during the Comedy Festival and clearly not enjoying it, and his mother once telling him his Home and Away appearance 'wasn't embarrassing at all.'
Clausen describes starting as an unpaid writer at Melbourne production company Exit Films around 2001 alongside Michael Chamberlain and Charlie Pickering, given office space and gear to make sketches, before the founder's early (failed) attempt to predict online video content years before YouTube existed.
Clausen describes his solo podcast 'That's Awesome,' where he recorded long conversations with friends; his last three interviews were with his mother, who had stage 4 breast cancer, with the final one recorded two months before she passed, producing an unguarded conversation about death that had a huge emotional response from listeners.
Drawn from the episode transcripts.
Channel 7 raised concerns that TOFOP's adult content didn't fit the family-friendly show, so Clausen agreed to pause it; after talking to Jules Lund, who advised finding out exactly who made the call and speaking to them directly, Clausen got approval to resume once he explained there was unlikely to be negative crossover.
From episode 318→According to Clausen, it's difficult with a small population and CPM-based sponsorship models; he suggests pairing a podcast with a strong YouTube channel, aiming for brand alignment rather than pure numbers, and notes that even a well-received AFL podcast sponsorship dried up the following year as marketing budgets got diluted across many channels.
From episode 318→Charlie Clausen and Will Anderson began in 2010 after being inspired by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier's Smodcast during long drives on a stand-up tour; early episodes imitated Smodcast's loose, tangent-heavy style before TOFOP settled into its own rhythm of unstructured, no-premise conversation between old friends.
From episode 318→Every episode featuring Charlie Clausen on The Daily Talk Show.
