On Sunday, December 6 at 7 PM, The Sam Sanders Show takes over Dynasty Typewriter for a rowdy, no-holds-barred LIVE Christmas showdown!

Sam and a panel of opinionated guests will go head-to-head in a pop culture bracket tournament to crown the ultimate Christmas champion.

Mariah Carey. Home Alone. Elf on a Shelf. That one neighbor who goes WAY too hard on the decorations. But which one truly makes Christmas Christmas?

Expect laughs, live music, a few surprises, and plenty of audience participation. You might even get called up to defend your holiday hot takes in front of the crowd.

Whether you celebrate or not, come for the chaos!

Schedule

6:00 PM — Doors Open

7:00 PM – 8:30 PM — Sam Sanders Show Live: Christmas Showdown

Sam Sanders

Sam Sanders is an award-winning podcast and radio host. He’s been named best podcast host by both The Ambies and the iHeart Podcast Awards. He was one of the founding hosts of The NPR Politics Podcast and the host who launched both It’s Been A Minute from NPR and Into It from Vulture.

Elise Hu

Elise Hu is an LA-based journalist and podcast host who spent more than a decade at NPR, as a correspondent and host, and worked as a television correspondent for VICE News Tonight. Today, she’s the host of TED Talks Daily, the parenting podcast Raising Us, and a co-host of Forever35. As an international correspondent, she reported from more than a dozen countries and opened NPR’s first-ever Seoul bureau in 2015. Her experiences in Seoul inspired her debut non-fiction book, Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital.

H. Alan Scott

H. Alan Scott (@HAlanScott) is a writer, comedian, and Senior Editor at Large for Newsweek. Host of Newsweek’s Parting Shot Podcast with H. Alan Scott, his work focuses on celebrity interviews and pop culture. He’s been seen on The Jimmy Kimmel Show, Ellen, CNN, MTV, and is the subject of the documentary film Latter Day Jew. As his drag persona, Sadie Pines, Scott co-hosts Out on the Lanai: A Golden Girls Podcast on Forever Dog’s MOM podcast network. He and Eliot Glazer just launched their new gay comedy podcast, Soft Serve. You’ve probably liked a meme he’s made.

Christiana Mbakwe-Medina

Christiana Mbakwe Medina is a British Nigerian from South London who’s spent the past decade in the U.S. A Columbia Journalism School alumna, Christiana has forged a unique path, cutting her teeth in both newsrooms and TV writers’ rooms.

As a journalist, she’s written features on topics as varied as Baltimore’s underground Black skateboarding scene to how divorced Chinese émigrés in New York City use WeChat to find love. Her cultural commentary and distinctively international worldview have attracted a cult online following, including highly influential followers from film, music, literature, and academia.

She was a staff writer for The Daily Show and Head Writer for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2023. Most recently, she wrote on season 4 of Apple TV’s The Morning Show and co-hosted What’s Now? with Trevor Noah. She hosts the Pop Syllabus podcast, which was selected as one of Spotify’s best podcasts of 2026 so far, and its corresponding Substack, which has become a permanent feature in the Substack culture charts.

Brennan Villines

Brennan Villines is a singer-songwriter, concert-level classically trained pianist, international musical director and composer. With residencies at Soho House, the Beverly Wilshire and Club Hue, Brennan is in a committed open relationship with some of LA’s finest haunts. He’s shared stages with Grammy Award-winning artists including Corinne Bailey Rae, Melissa Etheridge and Kirk Whalum, and performed at both the Primetime and Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

When he’s not tickling the ebony and ivory (or whoever else is lucky enough), or serenading crowds with his soulful tenor voice, Brennan is a producer, stage and screen actor and also the co-host of The Ben and Bren Show, a podcast where anything goes. He’s a man of many talents… most of them suitable for public consumption.

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