As Ride recently wrapped its season three finale, it felt like the right moment to say this plainly: this podcast is something special. It would be easy to dismiss it as just another celebrity podcast, but it’s not. Co-hosted by multi-hyphenate queer besties Mary Beth Barone (or MB for short) and Benito Skinner (Benny, Benjamin, go wild), Ride is a podcast that feels like discovering a friendship already in progress and being invited in anyway.
I haven’t even listened to every episode yet. But if you love someone, you don’t wait until you’ve seen all the episodes of their life to tell them that. That would be absurd! At this point I think it’s not only safe to say that I love Mary Beth and Benny, but that it’s statistically significant.
I first found Benny through Overcompensating, his Amazon Prime Video series that I watched with my husband. I loved it; my husband cringed the entire time, which, if you’ve seen it, means it worked. From there, I started following Benny and Mary Beth on Instagram and quickly learned about Ride, which had just transitioned into a video podcast for season three. I jumped in midstream, immediately felt excluded by inside jokes, and was instructed by the hosts themselves to do my homework.
So, I did, and almost immediately, they were referencing their old podcast (she who shall not be named, but let me just say I was obsessed).
I went back to the beginning, and I would recommend doing the same (it’s a good idea, right?), though maybe not while weightlifting. I nearly dropped dumbbells on my face at the gym from laughing so hard listening to these idiots.
For the uninitiated, Ride is a lifestyle and pop culture podcast with comedy as its foundation. Each episode is structured really nicely (if you consider changing the subject every ten seconds structured). They begin with a loosely planned intro, where Mary Beth and Benny vomit their thoughts all over each other, often reading from a shared notes file that seems to psychically connect their brains. They talk about updates from the week, pop culture headlines, minor grievances, observations that probably didn’t need to be shared but absolutely should
have been, you name it. After the intro, they transition into two main segments where each host presents something they “ride” for; and finally, the titular verdict—ride or die—where they decide whether they agree with each other.
If I were on an episode with my husband, I’d ride for something like Tomb Raider starring Angelina Jolie. My husband, on the other hand, would ride for something mundane like municipal water supply systems or highway traffic control videos (marriage is about compromise).
I listen to Ride everywhere—on walks, in the car, folding laundry—but I also don’t want to fall behind. So, at night, after my husband falls asleep on the couch, I’ll turn on a video episode from season three. Unfortunately, he’s not a Baronie.
A Baronie is someone who loves the Christopher Nolan movie Interstellar, changes the subject mid- conversation, takes care of their health by drinking AG1, and is truly obsessed with Ride and its co-hosts. The name came from Mary Beth’s last name, because being called “Skinners” lost the vote by two points. It’s less a fandom and more a personality type—just ask the Baroneies (plural of Baronie, original spelling).
What makes Ride work isn’t just the format, it’s the tone. The show is deeply unpretentious. Mary Beth and Benny are funny, obviously, but they’re also candid, generous, and genuinely curious about each other’s inner worlds. They talk freely about ambition, insecurity, health, relationships, work, and the weird psychological terrain of being online for a living. The good they’re doing for the queer community—offering connection, understanding, and pure joy—deserves to be recognized. Despite being extremely successful junior celebrities,
they’re still small enough in Hollywood to feel accessible, which makes the show feel less like content and more like companionship.
That accessibility is striking when you consider what they’ve already accomplished. In 2025, Benny wrote andproduced Overcompensating alongside Jonah Hill and A24, with Mary Beth starring as a main lead. The showwon Best Unsung TV Show at the 2025 Dorian TV Awards, and Benny received the Rising Star Award in theLGBTQ+ Cinema and Television category at the Critics’ Choice Awards.
Beyond that, there’s Benny’s Venmo ad, his Polo Ralph Lauren collaboration, and him and Mary Beth co-hosting British GQ Men of the Year. Mary Beth was also a correspondent at this year’s Golden Globes, interviewing senior celebrities with ease and sharp comedic timing. She appeared in a Ruel music video, has a Netflix comedy special (Galaxy Brain) on the way, and has been interviewed by Vogue. The dynamic duo was also named to Out Magazine’s Out100 list.
Their trajectory is unmistakably upward, but Ride captures them in motion, not retrospect.Season three’s shift to video has only strengthened the connection listeners already feel to Mary Beth and Benny. Watching them together adds layers that audio alone can’t capture—the eye contact, the physical comedy, the moments where a thought lands visually before it does verbally. That said, part of me hopes future seasons continue to move fluidly between video and audio formats. Video episodes are something I want to watch. You’ll never catch me listening without watching (I would never not come to dinner). But audio alone lets the podcast live everywhere else in my day without experiencing FOMO.
I’m still catching up on all the episodes. And I already know I’ll relisten and rewatch everything someday—maybe in my old age, maybe even in a Baronie retirement community, reminiscing about the era when two people started a podcast and somehow made something that felt like home.
Love you sweat.
