Does it smell bad when you skin an animal? Who do you call if you break a leg in the wild? Why does outdoor clothing have to be so ugly? These are just some of the questions Texas-based comedian Ivy Le — an indoor aficionado and self-described “flaming bisexual” — poses in her Spotify podcast “FOGO: Fear of Going Outside.”
Its celebrated, 10-episode second season launched in February and is streaming now on all major platforms to rave reviews.
“‘FOGO: Fear of Going Outside’ is a nature show — by the most reluctant host ever,” it’s officially described. “Most nature shows are hosted by reckless white men, but avid indoorswoman Ivy Le is an Asian mom with severe allergies. Last season, Ivy conquered camping. She’s back braving the outdoors to go hunting — or die trying!”
The podcast premiered in 2021 after Le launched a Kickstarter and participated in Spotify’s inaugural Sound Up Bootcamp. The audio platform created the workshop to help aspiring podcasters from underrepresented communities “get their feet and mics in the door,” focusing on women of color.
Out of 18,000 applicants, Le was among only 10 creatives chosen.
“That was kind of the origin story,” she explains. “I was in the first cohort and they were not expecting that many applications. It was such a rewarding experience to meet other women of color who are passionate about storytelling.”
The bootcamp gave Le a chance to celebrate her unique perspective with others, something that’s on full display in the first and second seasons of “FOGO.”
An openly bisexual mother, a child of Vietnamese refugees and a first-generation American living in Texas, she’s candid about her marginalized experiences while showcasing what also makes her special outside of them.
“I’m a comic and I do things to make people laugh,” Le says. “I purposely picked this genre to make a show where my point of view matters, but it’s not about my trauma in America, blah, blah, blah. It’s a show where I can just be a fun person because I am a fun person.”
The reception surprised her.
“It turns out that’s been rather radical,” Le says. “Most people have not had access to seeing an Asian American woman as a full human being and I’ve gotten a really strong response that I just didn’t expect.”
Another element that helped inform the show is Le’s love of nature shows, if not nature itself.
“Have you ever driven by a car accident and found yourself rubbernecking?” she explains. “There’s that thing that draws you to rubber neck even though you know you need to mind your own damn business and keep the traffic moving. That’s what draws me to nature shows.
“I’m also just a really curious person,” she continues. “I draw inspiration from all kinds of different topics and there’s really not anything that I can’t find something interesting in. Nature shows give you the highlight reel of Earth.”
As for a highlight reel of “FOGO,” Le’s key takeaway from its first, 10-episode season is that “camping is wildly overrated.”
“In season one, I do everything it takes to figure out how to go camping and I actually do it,” she notes. “It was not that cool. The resilience of being queer in a city absolutely transfers and you realize how much competence you actually have out there.
“Hiking is literally just walking — I can’t believe we let outdoor people rebrand it — so if you want to go, just go,” she adds. “If you don’t, listen to my show instead!”
Le says that season two, which focuses on hunting, has been more of a challenge.
“If you’re an indoor person, you may not understand the nuances of camping and hunting,” she says. “You may think hunting sounds harder than camping, but you have no concept of scale for how different they are.”
The second season details how. In teasing it, the podcast says that Le “fights the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt,” begs and bribes prospective mentors to take her hunting, tracks animals, butchers a hog and even goes on a second amendment talk radio show.
The host also “runs into just about every obstacle there is to become a first-time hunter.”
“The stakes are much higher going out into the woods with people with guns compared to going out in the woods with people who eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” Le muses. “I do consider that a threat, but not in the same way.
“Whatever you think is gonna happen, you’re wrong,” she continues. “Whatever you think is coming up next, you’re wrong. Because no one could have predicted any of these things. I want listeners to be a part of all of it.”
Building that rapport is something Le does indoors as well. It’s a key tenet of her longstanding mission “to queer comedy and decolonize everything.”
“I host the only queer comedy open mic in Austin,” she explains. “The show is called ‘Tongue and Cheek’ and I started it because so many traditional comedy spaces have been damaged by misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, racism and other words that we haven’t invented an ‘ism’ for yet.”
She says creating a space for new comics while cultivating the talent of existing LGBTQ creators has been incredibly rewarding.
“The only barriers to entering comedy should be for unfunny people,” Le laughs. “Most LGBTQ people I know are automatically funnier than 80% of the people doing open mics out there. I do this to increase the pipeline at the top.”
That’s because representation matters.
“I worked at the Texas Civil Rights Project for several years and young activists impressed upon me that one of the ways my generation pursued LGBTQ civil rights was through bi erasure,” she says. “They made bi visibility a key pillar of their strategy now that they are taking the reins, and because of them I started being explicit.
“I put it in my actors bio. I talk about it on stage as a comic,” she continues. “I live here in Texas and they’re out here trying to kill trans kids, you know what I mean? These kids need us to use our straight-passing privilege. If we have any privilege at all, they need us to use it.”
Le’s outlook is just one reason to tune into “FOGO,” which she bills as “a comedy that’s super fun, wild and interesting.”
“No matter how much of that chaos I am able to convey in the show, know that there were things that we just couldn’t fit in,” she says. “Know that no matter how much chaos you hear, it was worse in real life. We cannot convey how actually chaotic it was in only audio. It was nuts and a total circus.”
Tune into the first and second seasons of “FOGO: Fear of Going Outside” on Spotify and all other major audio platforms. You can learn more about the podcast and Le’s comedy at FOGOPodcast.com and IvyLeWithOneE.com.
