David Sean Anthony is an American comedian, actor, screenwriter, and podcaster.
Early life
Anthony was raised in Marin County near San Francisco, California. He attended Marin Catholic High School. He is open about his childhood and growing up with a neglectful, alcoholic father and a mother who was raised by alcoholics and was emotionally unavailable. He cites his neglected childhood as the source of his mental health and anger problems, and based his 2015 comedy tour and subsequent album Hot Head around this topic.
Career
Anthony is best known in recent years for the comedy podcast The Dollop, which he co-hosts with comedian Gareth Reynolds, which presents an event or person, usually from American history, selected for its humor or peculiarity. The podcast is on the All Things Comedy Network. He was also the creator, producer, and editor of Walking the Room, a podcast that he co-hosted with comedian Greg Behrendt from 2010 to 2014. They hosted a show together on the ComedyWorld Radio Network in 2001 and collaborated again on The Greg Behrendt Show in 2006–2007. Anthony regularly appears as a guest on various other podcasts, including FOFOP where he has been given the endearing name of "Guest Charlie Number One". Anthony has had numerous roles in television, films, and commercials, and has been a guest on various late night shows including Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Late Late Show, where he appeared as himself doing stand up comedy. He has acted in various television programs including The Office, Arrested Development, Maron, Hello Ladies, Boston Legal, Veep, Hidden America with Jonah Ray, Comedy Bang Bang, and Entourage. He was a guest panelist twice on @midnight. He was a recurring character on Maron on IFC, where he played an exaggerated role based on himself. Anthony has written extensively for different mediums. He was a contributing writer for SuicideGirls and the Comedy Film Nerds websites, and had a blog called Stop All Monsters. Anthony is also a television writer. He has written on AMC's Talking Dead, Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, Pretend Time, and The Greg Behrendt Show He wrote on Maron for three seasons. He also directed one episode, as well as appearing as an recurring actor. He was nominated for a WGA Award in 2015 for a Maron episode he wrote titled "Racegate." Anthony has performed stand-up all over the world, including the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2015, where the Herald Sun gave his show Hot Head a 4 star review and called it "Hugely Enjoyable." In 2015, he also appeared on the nationally televised Cracker Night as part of Sydney Comedy Festival 2015. He has released two comedy albums, Hot Head and Shame Chamber. He frequently performs around Southern California. Anthony wrote a book with fellow The Dollop podcast co-host Gareth Reynolds based on the podcast titled "The United States of Absurdity: Untold Stories from American History."
Plagiarism allegations
On July 9, 2015, the history website and podcast Damn Interesting posted an open letter titled "A Special Note to the Writers at The Dollop", accusing Anthony of plagiarizing Damn Interesting's original content for use on The Dollop. The post included a 2,670-word example of text Anthony plagiarized primarily from Damn Interesting, with smaller portions taken from KnowledgeNuts and Slate Magazine. In response to these allegations, Anthony stated on reddit that "historical facts are not copyrightable". On August 25, 2019, author Josh Levin posted a thread to Twitter accusing Anthony of plagiarizing one of Levin's articles for a Dollop live show at Chicago's Athenaeum Theatre in 2017. The thread included screenshots of the Dollop's transcripts beside his own text, showing several nearly identical passages. In a reply to Levin's Twitter thread, author Paul Brown stated that The Dollop plagiarized sections of his own book The Rocketbelt Caper for a 2017 Dollop episode. The Dollop hosts have stated it is a Fair use podcast.
