Ruddle Me This! with Taylor Ruddle

This week I got the privelige to interview two more Unified Championship Wrestling competitors in the UCW Heavyweight Champion Big Gun and the UCW Light Heavywight Champion Matt Attack who will be clashing on Feb 14 at the 2026 Southern Stampede in singles competition. I've been watching UCW wrestling for about 3 years now and therefore seeing Big Gun for 3 years, it was great to be able to sit do...

I'd been wanting to sit down with Chris Sainton Clark for years and talk about how he got started with his small theatre company Raising Cain Productions as well as some of the behind the scenes details of his show Pub Tales. Check out Chris' upcoming tour dates at www.christophersaintonclark.com and www.raisingcainproductions.com Follow me online! Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Tiktok | LinkTre...

I've been releasing a newsletter every month in 2025, trying to fill it with interesting content instead of just plugging my gigs, had about 100ish readers but it never really grew at all so I think it's back to the drawing board. I recorded a voiceover for each one and these voiceovers were all done in one take so there's a few mistakes as well as extra context or other little tidbits that I adde...

Another cheeky little bonus episode for the faithful Ruddlemaniacs still listening along to these secret episodes. This time I brought Grant Cattermole, a local comic who has become a very close friend of mine in the comedy scene and we did a post mortem about the JokeTober project we did in 2025 - a new joke posted to our socials every day from a list of prompts. We went through all the jokes we...

A cheeky little bonus episode for you. The podcast is still on hiatus in the sense that I'm not doing weekly episodes, but when the inspiration strikes or the right person comes along I'll be dropping episodes if I believe they've got something worth saying in them. In this episode Geoff and I talk about the tragic 2018 film A Star Is Born in our usual The Cost Of Greatness style. I never expected...

Hey Ruddlemaniacs, I'm going to be putting the podcast on ice for a currently undetermined length of time. The long and short of it is that I've been burning it at both ends for the past couple of months and the weekly nature of the podcast was beginning to grind me down. I've been sick as a dog for going on four weeks now and frankly I'm just knackered. Thankfully the last episode with Jeremy Red...

This is a HUGE get for the podcast, quite possibly the biggest guest I've had so far! Jeremy's a musician currently living in Holland but from NZ originally. Jeremy was in a band in 2009 called Midnight Youth who released some absolute bangers that I remember hearing all the time in high school. I heard one of them on the playlist at Little Andromeda several weeks back and ended up going down a bi...

Today's guest is Melissa Katherine, a stand up comic from Auckland who's been gaining a bit of traction online lately after discussing an Australian true crime event where someone poisoned some people with a beef wellington, she even got a cease and desist letter from the Australian supreme court as it's actually illegal to talk about crimes while the case is still pending. Fascinating stuff! We a...

Today's guests is one of my favourite people, Richard Dryden. I know him primarily as a stand up comedian but he's lived a whole life before we even met. The long and short of Richard's story is that he had a kidney transplant at 17, and tongue cancer resulting in a very hefty muscle transplant. He's worked in radio, he does stand up and music, and he's genuinely one of the sweetest guys I've ever...

To coincide with the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4, I brought Craig Westenberg back onto the podcast and we reminisced about the 90s, skate culture, extreme sports, music, jackass and the like and Craig walked me through the history of the Tony Hawk video games and why they are so meaningful to him. Follow Craig Online: https://www.facebook.com/CraigWestenbergComedian https://www.instagr...

Well folks it was inevitable, the geopolitical state of the world today was always going to come up on Hoss Town and so we've reached our inevitable episode about AI, War, Nukes, Geopolitics, and of course James Bond. Taylor got very briefly mistaken for Matt out in public again, so now the score is 2-1 to Taylor. We'll be honest this is probably going to be the last episode of Hoss Town for a whi...

Today my guest is Austin Harrison of Wellington and we had a yarn about some of the projects he's been working on, mainly I'm Proud Of You: Improvised Yarns With Your Dad and Coro, a homage to Coronation street. We also got a little bit into the nuts and bolts of making showbiz your living when you're just a battler and not somebody big off the telly. More to come on that front when Austin returns...

Today my guest is comedian Richard Dowling, an up and comer from Ireland by way of Wellington. I'm a big fan of Richard's work and work ethic so it was a delight to have him on the show. We initially sat down to talk about the Dark Souls series but the conversation naturally flowed and we ended up talking about health and mental health in comedy in what I think was a really nice episode. Follow Ri...

This week my guest is Anya Rzhevitskaya, a Wellington based comedian who produces gigs with Drug of Choice productions. Anya offered to come on the pod and talk about growing up in Russia, a country that I think we all find fascinating due to how similar it is to the United States but also completely different. This was my chance to ask any questions I had about what it was like growing up there t...

Ben "Tito" Caldwell is back for another guerrilla podcast while he dropped into Christchurch for a couple of gigs. Ben thought it would be a good idea to chat some more about local politics as in New Zealand the local elections are coming up soon and so we might help keep them in people's mind. We chatted about what it's been like working as a public servant as Ben has, what powers the local counc...

This week I decided to sit down and yap about a couple of books that I have read this year, I'm trying to be more proactive at reading books instead of doom scrolling on the phone or playing video games, other stuff like that we use to space out. This time I talked about The Invisible Hook by Peter Leeson, a book about the economics of Pirates, and also Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. --...

This week I'm joined by Mudit Mahajan, a young lad from the Auckland comedy scene. We worked together a bit a year or so ago on a project and I've caught him at The Classic a couple of times. We had been meaning to have a proper chat about wrestling for ages so decided to do so on the podcast! Sorry if you're not a wrestling enjoyer, but next week I'll be back with my Book Club talking about The I...

It's here! My reflections on what it's been like working as a freelance entertainer for the last 2 years. I broke this one down into things I'm grateful for and lessons learnt. And there were a lot more lessons learnt. Hope you enjoy it! What I'm Grateful For: I've paid all my bills for 2 years off the back of telling jokes and reading quiz questions I've begun to get some response from the conten...

It's my 2nd anniversary since going full time as a comedian! I was planning on doing an episode full of reflection and evaluation, but the week got away on me and so I've bumped up this episode instead. This week I'm delighted to be joined by comedian Tristan Miller, based up in Auckland originally from the US. Tristan brought a list of tiny joys for us to discuss, as well as comedy, culture and o...

Well there's a first time for everything and today's the first time I've had guests walk out on me during a podcast! Today I interviewed Unified Championship Wrestling's Light Heavyweight Champion Kawa Kupa and his manager Archie Bower. We got into how Kawa started wrestling, how they started working together, Kawa's attitude shift as of recently, what moves are the best to hit and which ones hurt...

Today I'm joined by April and Leland from the Crime To Burn podcast, a true crime podcast that focuses on crimes involving fire including arson and criminal negligence. April and Leland have been super supportive of my podcast and they often share my posts so I figured it was well overdue for me to try and help promote them a bit! April genuinely works in the fire safety industry so it's a really...

My friend Jarrod Cook and I decided to sample as many of the different flavours of Chicken potato chips that we could find in Christchurch and figure out which one was the best. We also made an unexpected stop in at the Christchurch City Libraries book fair at Pioneer stadium where we collected some books. This episode is definitely one of the weirder one I've done, and I wanted an ASMR element wi...

I recently finished the series Cobra Kai and was hit by the sudden realization of how much time has passed since I started watching in around 2019 which was when I had just got back to New Zealand after living in Japan. I suppose you would call that my "Spool of wire" moment, look it up on tiktok if you have no idea what that is. This is a solo episode where I go through a bit of a life update, wh...

The Big Man and The Medium Sized Man are back for another rambunctious visit to Hoss Town! This time the fellas ruminate on Matt's first time doing 60(ish) minutes of stand up comedy, Taylor's recent moderately viral Chris Luxon impression TikToks, tips on how you can make your own content pop off online. Matt's about to become an uncle or Funcle as he calls it, Taylor rang the bell and did ring i...

This week I'm joined by Paula Jane Newman, a clean comic living in the USA by way of England who runs her own comedy movement emphacizing mental health in Stand Up Comedy. She's also done a heap of meditation work and is just in general a really sweet and interesting character. I hope you enjoy it. Easiest way to check out everything Paula is up to is by visiting her website www.paulajanenewman.co...