General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

In the Know

In the Know is an American adult stop-motion animated comedy series that premiered on Peacock on January 25, 2024, created by Zach Woods, Brandon Gardner, and Mike Judge. It was Peacock's first adult animated original comedy series.¹ The show follows Lauren Caspian, billed as NPR's third most popular host, a well-meaning but hypocritical stop-motion puppet who conducts in-depth interviews with real, live-action celebrity guests while working with a puppet staff at a public radio station.² Peacock released all six episodes of the single season at once and canceled the series on December 31, 2024.³

Key fact	Detail
Format	Stop-motion animated puppet comedy combining animated staff with live-action celebrity interviews¹
Creators	Zach Woods, Brandon Gardner, and Mike Judge²
Premiere	January 25, 2024, all six episodes on Peacock³
Main character	Lauren Caspian, NPR's "third most popular host," voiced by Zach Woods²
Rating and runtime	TV-MA; average episode runtime 24 minutes²
Reception	Metacritic Metascore 69 from 7 critics; Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 71% from 14 reviews⁴^•⁵
Cancellation	Canceled by Peacock after one season, reported December 31, 2024³

Spoilers

Premise and characters

Each half-hour episode follows the making of an episode of the fictional public radio interview show In the Know, hosted by Lauren Caspian. The show's own tagline describes him as "a well-meaning, hypocritical nimrod, just like you and me" who is "also a stop motion puppet."² Lauren collaborates with a crew of public radio staff members, who are also puppets: researcher and fact checker Fabian, college intern Chase, executive producer Barb, sound engineer Carl, and culture critic Sandy.⁶

The voice cast paired each character with a performer: Zach Woods as Lauren, Caitlin Reilly as Fabian, Charlie Bushnell as Chase, J. Smith-Cameron as Barb, Carl Tart as Carl, and Mike Judge as Sandy.⁷ Woods and Gardner served as co-showrunners and executive producers.³

Satire of public radio

The series satirizes National Public Radio and the culture around it. Woods described the character of Caspian as "a Frankenstein monster" assembled from pieces of Terry Gross, Ezra Klein, Malcolm Gladwell, Ira Glass, Michael Barbaro, and the two creators themselves.⁸ In one episode, Caspian delivers a string of falsehoods claiming that Fresh Air host Terry Gross is "cold as an icicle and dumb as rocks"; in another, he is nearly wooed away from the show by a private podcasting network offering an $85,000 annual salary.⁹

Gardner said the creators chose a public radio station to explore characters like themselves: "very liberal, progressive people" who see "absurdity... and hypocrisy" in their own behavior relative to their ideals.¹⁰ Woods told WBUR that the aim was to critique white liberalism as a whole, not only NPR itself.⁸ Common Sense Media described the result as "blunt but compassionate commentary on the everyday hypocrisy of well-intentioned people who self-define as liberals," noting that viewers unfamiliar with NPR might not catch all the references.¹¹

Live-action interviews

A distinctive element is the hybrid format: the puppet staff conduct in-depth interviews with real human guests, shown as live-action video calls, in a style several reviewers compared to the surrealist series Space Ghost: Coast to Coast.¹² The guest lineup included Kaia Gerber, Jonathan Van Ness, Ken Burns, Finn Wolfhard, Norah Jones, Tegan and Sara, Nicole Byer, Roxane Gay, Mike Tyson, Jorge Masvidal, and Hugh Laurie.¹³ Only one interview was scripted, according to Gardner: a pre-interview between Fabian and the MMA fighter Jorge Masvidal, written for a specific story idea.⁸

Production

The idea originated in improv riffs Woods performed on the set of Silicon Valley, where Judge noticed Woods's "NPR adjacency" and his habit of interviewing friends and colleagues; Judge pitched him on a stop-motion show set at an NPR station with live-action interview segments.⁹ The development timeline ran from the initial idea in fall 2020, a pitch to streaming platforms in May 2021, a written pilot in summer 2022, and Peacock's pickup in fall 2022.¹⁰

The series was produced by Universal Television and Bandera Entertainment, the production company set up by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, with Alexander Bulkley and Corey Campodonico executive producing for the Portland stop-motion studio ShadowMachine, which also produced Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio.³^•¹⁴

Reception and cancellation

Critical response was generally favorable. The show scored 69 on Metacritic based on 7 critic reviews and 7.3 from 11 user ratings, and holds a 71% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes from 14 reviews.⁴^•⁵ Decider called it "a quirky, funny series that works on a few different levels" that "effectively combines animation and live action," while The New Yorker's Sarah Larson argued that jokes about NPR "feel about as timely and fresh as jokes about granola and tote bags" and that the series lacked the acuity of its creators' best work.⁴^•¹⁵ The series received one Primetime Emmy Award win with one nomination, and one Annie Award nomination.⁴

Peacock canceled the series after one season, with the news reported on December 31, 2024, roughly eleven months after the season premiered.³^•¹⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Animated television series (individual series) › Adult animated comedy series

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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