Will Menaker

Will Menaker is a co-founder and co-host of Chapo Trap House, a political comedy podcast whose first episode was published on 14 March 2016. Before and alongside the show he has worked as a book editor.

Chapo Trap House

The show’s first episode, “THA SAGA BEGINS (3/12/16)”, was published to its public feed on 14 March 2016 and described in its own notes as “the inaugural episode of the Chapo Trap House Podcast”. Those notes name the three hosts by their Twitter handles: “Felix Biederman (@ByYourLogic), Matt Christman (@Cushbomb), and Will Menaker (@willmenaker)”.

The show opened a Patreon campaign on 23 May 2016 and has been funded by listener subscriptions since. As of 1 September 2026 that page described the show as “News, culture and comedy commentary from Will Menaker, Felix Biederman, Matt Christman, Amber Frost & Chris Wade” — listing Menaker first — and its page data recorded 33,742 members on the paid $5-per-month tier alongside 29,775 on a free tier.

Menaker was still presenting the show a decade after its launch. A cross-posted episode of the podcast Panic World, published on 1 October 2025, introduced him as “host of Chapo Trap House”, and he recorded an Oscars preview for the show’s film series in March 2026.

Movie Mindset

Since April 2023 Menaker has co-hosted Movie Mindset, a film series produced under the Chapo Trap House banner with Hesse Mattson. The first episode, “Tony Vision”, published 27 April 2023, paired two Tony Scott films and stated the series’ distribution model plainly: that episode was “available for free anywhere you get podcasts”, while “subsequent episodes will be released exclusively for Chapo Trap House subscribers on Patreon”. A second season began in April 2024 and a third in April 2025; annual Oscars preview episodes were released in March 2024, February 2025 and March 2026.

Publishing Work

The Library of Congress created a name authority record for Menaker in 2018, on the basis of the title page and author note of The Chapo Guide. That note, transcribed in the record, reads: “Will Menaker is in the publishing industry, editor of books and graphic novels. He lives in Brooklyn.”

The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason was published by Touchstone in August 2018, credited to Chapo Trap House and to Biederman, Christman, Brendan James and Menaker; Atria Books issued a subsequent edition.

In 2025 the show moved into comics. Chapo Trap House: Year Zero #1, published through Bad Egg and listed for sale from 1 July 2025, is described by its publisher as “the first of three oversized books” collecting five stories by Amber A’Lee Frost, Chris Wade, Menaker, Biederman and Christman. Menaker’s contribution is credited as “Clinton Hill Horror”, with artists Simon Roy and Sergei Nazarov and letterer Jodie Troutman.

Family

The show’s own notes for episode 188, “Menaker Facts Stated” (26 February 2018), state that the hosts “get to the bottom of Will’s secret family history with the help of his father, Daniel Menaker”, who appeared as the episode’s guest. The Library of Congress name authority record for Daniel Menaker, born 17 September 1941, identifies him as an author and editor who worked as a copy editor, fact checker and editor at The New Yorker and later as an editor at Random House.

What Is Not Established Here

This page was previously a three-line stub asserting only that Menaker co-hosts a podcast that “built a large listenership for its commentary on media, politics, and culture.” That characterization is not carried here, because listenership figures for the show could not be obtained from any source that was fetched and read; the only audience figures established are the Patreon membership counts above, which measure paying subscribers rather than listeners.

Not asserted for want of a source meeting this project’s standard: a birth date. The Library of Congress name authority record carries 10 August 1983, but the record’s own stated basis for it is the Famous Birthdays website, so no birth year appears in this page’s frontmatter. Also not asserted: the identity of any publishing house Menaker has worked for — the Library of Congress transcription establishes that he is a book and graphic-novel editor, but names no employer; the “dirtbag left” characterization commonly applied to the show, which is a label applied by others and is not attributed to a source here (the same characterization was removed from the Matt Christman page in this pass); any claim that the show or its hosts caused a style, movement or shift in political media; and any current follower count on Twitter/X, which cannot be retrieved by any client available to this audit.