'Good Noticings' Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton Have Good Timing

A spark remained amongst the ashes of the comics’ first two audio attempts, which led to Parker and Hamilton’s proper podcasting premiere. Celebrity Memoir Book Club debuted in September, 2020, with coverage of Jessica Simpson’s memoir, Open Book. Each week that followed, they pulled back the curtains of a different celebrity’s life via reviews of the memoirs the rest of us were too busy, lazy or simply uncompelled to read. Between bits of their own witty, silly banter, they tore through these stories, good or bad, exciting or pointless, offensive or completely lighthearted. From Lena Dunham to Gucci Mane to Prince Harry, no one was safe from their harsh but fair coverage of the topics these celebrities deemed worthy of memorializing over hundreds of pages.

After five years, though, it was time for yet another change. They’d garnered a dedicated fanbase, started a thriving Patreon page, quit their day jobs and become experts on the concept of celebrity and how to manage a podcast. They bid farewell to celebrity memoirs with Alyson Stoner’s Semi-Well-Adjusted, well-equipped to take a step away from the constrictions of CMBC’s format and towards more straightforward cultural commentary.

In Fall 2025 they launched Good Noticings, the fourth podcast from Parker and Hamilton. Every Wednesday, they go through a curated docket of news headlines, media moments and hot gossip that, like those celebrity memoirs, the rest of us may be aware of, but don’t have the time or effort to sink our teeth into.

This week’s episode dove into Manon’s hiatus from Katseye, Timothee Chalamet and Matthew McConaughy’s Actors on Actors interview, a brief history of Prince Andrew and his connection to Jeffrey Epstein and ended with their review of the political history book, The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins.

Parker and Hamilton understand that with this new format’s flexibility comes great responsibility, recently interviewing an ACLU lawyer about West Virginia vs. BPJ, a case handling transgender youths' right to participate in sports. Additionally, they give attention to the community that’s given them the foundation necessary to make this pivot, hosting live events for their fans (known as wormies) across the country. Recently, they hosted a discussion for their monthly book club in Los Angeles with Rachael King, a UC Santa Barbara English literature professor.

Just six months into Good Noticings and it's clear they’ve found their footing. The format allows for their most relevant coverage to-date, simultaneously featuring the pair as their most prominent selves. They cover any and everything, not without updates on Ashley’s dog, Bug, or Claire’s attempts at adopting a “grindset”.

Amidst the success, Parker and Hamilton sat down with PAPER to discuss everything from the rebrand, to social media’s impact on podcasting and the community they’ve fostered along the way.

You guys start each podcast episode by giving three recommendations. What do you recommend to PAPER readers?

Claire: I’ve recently taken to putting American cheese on my ramen, which I know is already very popular. I’ve historically been a bit perturbed by the idea of it. It freaked me out. But it’s so good on ramen that I’ve overspiced a bit. It balances it out. The second is the show Such Brave Girls on The BBC. It’s so good. Recommendation number three is my standup special, Claire Parker is 32. I’ve plugged it before but I spent a year working on it.

My friends and I did a watch-party for it. We loved it.

Claire: Oh my god, thank you.

Ashley: My recommendations are this white t-shirt from Jungmaven. My friend got it for me for Christmas. We’re always talking about basics we like. I think it’s so good. My second is the show Station 11. You know those shows that are sad but beautiful, and you finish it and think “that was lovely.” That’s this show. My third rec is any book by Kazuo Ishiguro. I really like his writing.

Claire: Where’s your skirt from? I want that recommendation.

This is annoying of me, but it's Heaven by Marc Jacobs from like, three years ago.

Claire: That’s not annoying. It makes me feel good about myself because it means I have a great eye.

It’s been six months since rebranding from Celebrity Memoir Book Club to Good Noticings. How has the pivot felt for you guys? What has the audience response been?

Claire: I feel really good about it. Looking at the numbers, the audience has stayed. With CMBC, the episodes were dependent on the book each week and who we were talking about. We had a high average and a low average of listeners. Our new number is the dead average of those two. We’ve maintained listenership. But we knew we couldn’t base our faith in the new pod on numbers, because the change was for us. We had to assume that we’d find an audience that loves the new thing. So personally, I’ve been excited. It’s a new challenge, figuring out how to make it really good. By the end of CMBC, it felt like we could do it in our sleep.

Ashley: It’s been invigorating to have something we’re trying to tackle instead of the same formulaic thing. We now have to figure out the beats and what people respond to. It’s so much more fun.

Claire: It’s given us the chance to expand the universe, too. We’re hosting our book club event, we do movie screenings. We’re interviewing book authors at their book events. People are responding to our branching out.

Does this transition feel different from your previous podcast changes? What was the timeline between wanting to end CMBC and start Good Noticings.

Ashley: It feels very different. This was a successful podcast we were making a living off of. Previously it was a fun side project.

Claire: This was the first time we had something to lose. Before, we had to transition because we knew it was not working.

Ashley: Because we’ve been podcasting together so long, we were confident that we could change the subject and still have people interested.

Claire: It was always in the plan. We weren’t gonna die doing celebrity memoirs, on our death beds talking about JoJo Siwa’s upbringing or something.

Gross. How do you decide on the weekly docket in this new format? What’s the split between media, hard news and more gossip/tabloid headline discussion?

Claire: We realize throughout the week what’s important. Then we round that out with what balances it out. It would be so easy to make it so heavy. We can’t talk about Epstein, ICE and the climate crisis in one episode. We let things catch our eyes, figure the same is standing out to our audience, then break it down for them. With Prince Andrew, for example, we did a deep dive into who he is and why he’s all over our newsfeeds.

Ashley: Our ideal for this podcast is that we’re all online. But we have the time to look into it, whereas someone with a full-time job might not. Ideally, our podcast is the rundown of that week with context.

What publications do you look to for sourcing?

Claire: The Cut, Vanity Fair, Harper’s. Harper’s did the gooning article everyone was freaking out about.

Ashley: I always check The Atlantic and The New Yorker.

Claire: For more political stuff, we bring in a wider range of sources.

Ashley: You can read four articles about the same topic and because of media slants, they can all look different.

What are the advantages for podcasting when it comes to delivering news?

Claire: So much is coming to people, these days, it’s hard to figure out what’s worth consuming. We made it our full-time jobs to find the background info for these people. When you’re scrolling, there’s so much quote-tweeting and headlines. You’re aware of the topics without the background. Podcasting allows for the work to be done.

You each have backgrounds in standup. What do you think the relationship is between your comedy and the pod?

Claire: We’re standups first. We have the podcast because of standup. That’s what standups do now. We were already funny, and the pacing and timing of standup is what makes our podcast a good one. We always want to be hitting a joke.

Ashley: The fun of our podcast comes from us trying to make each other laugh all the time. I think that is what people like about listening to us. We cool it when we talk about more serious things. We both like being funny and hearing each other be funny. That’s the core of everything we do.

Tonight you have the Wuthering Heights book club in Los Angeles. What’s it like putting on your live events?

Ashley: It’s really fun. Meeting people in real life is so different from DMs or comment sections. In real life, people are excited to meet and connect over what you have in common. Seeing our listeners gather is so much fun. When people gather online, it’s to commiserate, when they gather in-person it’s to celebrate.

Claire: It’s a “be the change you wish to see in the world” situation. These are culture-based, community events. Those are two things we care a lot about. Culture in a serious way and community.

Do you feel like the idea of celebrity has changed with the rise of social media? As experts on the subject.

Claire: “Celebrity” and “Famous person” are different. We need to come up with new vocabulary. There are people we all know. There’s a difference between Sydney Sweeney and a Halley Kate.

Ashley: With notable people, nowadays, the lines are so blurred. Expectations have been flattened. It’s interesting to see how people react to people they think they can reach, who they don’t believe are celebrities. They watch them as celebrities, and have expectations for them that they shouldn’t have. Someone can pop-off for posting TikToks in their bedrooms, then expect them to conduct themselves the same way someone who’s been a movie star for 20 years does.

How do you feel about your relationship to social media when it comes to promoting yourselves? Has it changed during your time as podcasters?

Claire: Part of why CMBC popped off is because it came when TikTok was becoming a thing. Social media has democratized promotion. There’s no more gatekeepers. Finding your community is easier than ever. We have a 92% female listenership. I don’t know that we would have that success if we were hoping a male agent would come save us.

Ashley: They still don’t understand what we have to offer.

Claire: We had an agent come see our sold-out live show that went really well. He came up to us after and said “That was cute. How do you guys think it went?” He refused to book us bigger shows. It was ridiculous. We pivot all the time on TikTok. You have to know how to maintain by adapting with trends and advancements. It’s a whole second job, managing our social media. It’s harder to be an artist these days. But more people are artists because of it. I like that it’s down to more hard work in your control.

So what’s next for Good Noticings? What are your goals together?

Ashley: We’re trying to write a TV show. If someone could pick that up, that would be great. Because you still do need an agent for that.

Claire: I see our career as a baby, and then the little kid version. You can match the features of the little kid to the baby in hindsight. But you can’t predict what the baby will look like. We’ve opened ourselves up to a lot of avenues. We’re throwing everything at the wall, and in five years something will have stuck. I can’t predict now, what that will be.

Photography courtesy of Good Noticings