Actor and comedian Ed Helms will remain a podcaster as iHeartPodcasts and FilmNation Entertainment have announced that his show SNAFU has been picked up for a fourth season with a new weekly format. The renewal comes as SNAFU this week begins rolling out episodes in season three of the show, which dissects some of history’s greatest screw-ups.
SNAFU will feature Helms (The Office, The Hangover) inviting some of his favorite celebrity guests on to hear a new, shorter SNAFU in each episode during season four. It will also include a video component for the first time. The fourth season of the series, which is also produced in a partnership with Pacific Electric Picture Company and Gilded Audio, is currently in production for 35 weekly episodes and will launch this summer.
“We’re thrilled to expand ‘the SNAFUniverse.’ We are so grateful to take the kind of sophisticated yet commercial storytelling our two companies already love producing across film and TV and bring them to new formats through the SNAFU Media partnership — whether it’s audio, video, print or beyond,” Alyssa Martino, SVP of Podcasting at FilmNation, and Mike Falbo, partner at Pacific Electric Picture Co., said in a joint statement.
In the meantime, SNAFU listeners will find episodes of the third season rolling out which continues the narrative docu-format from previous seasons. Titled “SNAFU: Formula 6,” it follows New York City’s Chief Medical Examiner Charles Norris and Forensic Toxicologist Alexander Gettler as they try to uncover what was behind a mass wave of deadly poisonings during the 1920s. The season investigates how gun-slinging Prohibition agents, Washington politicians, and a raging culture war led to so many people dying when they imbibed. Special guests in season three include Terence Winter, the creator of HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” and Josh Graham Lynn, the CEO and Co-founder of the grassroots organization RepresentUs, who will provide insights into Prohibition’s lawlessness and the government’s extreme measures to curb drinking.
“Prohibition was obviously a colossal SNAFU, but it turns out enforcing it was way darker than I had ever imagined,” says Helms, who is also an Executive Producer of the show.” Forget flappers and jazz, this season we go deep into our own government’s bizarre choices and their very grim consequences,” he says.
In addition to the podcast’s renewals, the producers have also announced that Helms has a new book titled “SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History’s Greatest Screwups” set for release on April 29. The book, from Grand Central Publishing, elaborates on some of the craziest SNAFUs since World War II. They include stories about planting nukes on the moon to training pigeon spies to selling radioactive toys to children.
The collaboration of iHeartPodcasts and FilmNation on the first two seasons of SNAFU resulted in the show winning the 2024 Signal Awards for Best Writing and Best Host in the category Limited Series and Specials. The two companies are also behind the new original podcast Greatest Escapes with Arturo Castro, which is currently in release.