The Incomparable Network

Author

Lukas Burk

Updated

September 27, 6:32 (UTC)

All-time stats

All shows on the network, first and last episode timeline.

Code

incomparable_episodes |>
  group_by(show) |>
  mutate(
    d_min = min(date),
    d_max = max(date)
  ) |>
  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(show, d_min))) +
  geom_errorbar(aes(ymin = d_min, ymax = d_max),
    width = .5, linewidth = 1, alpha = .85, color = inc_navy
  ) +
  coord_flip() +
  scale_y_continuous(
    transform = c("date", "reverse"),
    breaks = scales::breaks_width("2 years"),
    minor_breaks = scales::breaks_width("1 year"),
    labels = scales::label_date("%Y")
  ) +
  theme_incomparable() +
  theme(axis.text.y = element_text(hjust = 1)) +
  labs(
    x = NULL, y = "First to last episode date",
    title = "The Incomparable Network",
    subtitle = "Show timelines: first and last known episode dates.",
    caption = caption
  )

All episodes since 2011.

Code

incomparable_episodes |>
  count(show) |>
  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(show, n), y = n)) +
  geom_col(fill = inc_navy) +
  coord_flip() +
  theme_incomparable() +
  labs(
    title = "The Incomparable Network",
    subtitle = "All episodes since 2011, by show.",
    x = NULL, y = "Episodes",
    caption = caption
  )

Code

incomparable_episodes |>
  filter(year >= 2011) |>
  ggplot(aes(x = date, y = duration, fill = show)) +
  geom_point(shape = 21, color = "white", alpha = .6, size = 1.8, stroke = 0.2) +
  scale_y_time(breaks = hms::hms(minutes = seq(0, 300, 30))) +
  scale_fill_viridis_d(option = "rocket", guide = "none", end = 0.85) +
  theme_incomparable() +
  labs(
    title = "The Incomparable Network",
    subtitle = "Episode duration over time; one fill per show.",
    x = NULL, y = "Duration (HH:MM)",
    caption = caption
  )

Code

incomparable_episodes |>
  filter(year >= 2011) |>
  count(year, month) |>
  ggplot(aes(x = month, y = n)) +
  geom_point(color = inc_navy, alpha = .8, size = 1.2) +
  facet_wrap(~year, nrow = 1, scales = "free_x") +
  theme_incomparable() +
  theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1, size = rel(0.5))) +
  labs(
    title = "The Incomparable Network",
    subtitle = "Episodes per month since 2011.",
    x = NULL, y = "Episodes",
    caption = caption
  )

Episode duration by the 15 people most frequently appearing on the network:

Code

top_15 <- incomparable |>
  filter(year >= 2011) |>
  count(person) |>
  top_n(15) |>
  pull(person)

Selecting by n

Code

incomparable |>
  filter(person %in% top_15) |>
  group_by(person) |>
  mutate(mean_duration = mean(duration)) |>
  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(person, mean_duration), y = duration)) +
  geom_point(alpha = .4, position = position_jitter(height = 0, width = .25),
             color = inc_navy, size = 1) +
  geom_boxplot(alpha = .35, outlier.alpha = 0,
               color = inc_dark, fill = palette_incomparable[["cream"]]) +
  coord_flip() +
  theme_incomparable() +
  labs(
    title = "The Incomparable Network",
    subtitle = "Episode duration for the 15 most frequently appearing people.",
    x = NULL, y = "Duration (HH:MM)",
    caption = caption
  )

2026 hosts and guests

Code

incomparable |>
  filter(year == current_year) |>
  count(person, role) |>
  spread(role, n) |>
  replace_na(list(guest = 0, host = 0)) |>
  mutate(total = guest + host) |>
  arrange(desc(total)) |>
  datatable(style = "bootstrap", colnames = c("Person", "Guest", "Host", "Total Appearances"))

I opted to leave out the plot for that data because oh boy so many people, so I hope everyone will be happy with the table. It was artisanally crafted as a gift to The Incomparable panelists and fans <3

A searchable table of all the nice people*

* All the nice people and Philip Mozolak

Here’s a searchable and sortable list of all the episodes released in 2026 (UTC, no freedom timestamps, sorry). There are multiple rows per episode, because each person gets their own row, which should make it a little easier to find out which person participated in which episode. Because manually searching through https://www.theincomparable.com/person/ would be almost like work.

Code

incomparable |>
  filter(year == current_year) |>
  select(
    show, number, date,
    duration, title, person, role
  ) |>
  mutate(
    date = lubridate::as_date(date),
    show = factor(show)
  ) |>
  arrange(desc(date)) |>
  datatable(
    style = "bootstrap", filter = "top",
    colnames = c(
      "Show", "#", "Date (UTC)",
      "Duration (mins)", "Title", "Person",
      "Role"
    )
  ) |>
  formatDate(3, method = "toDateString")

2026 shows

TL;DR TeeVee is basically cheating.

Code

incomparable_episodes |>
  filter(year == current_year) |>
  count(show) |>
  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(show, n), y = n)) +
  geom_col(fill = inc_navy) +
  coord_flip() +
  theme_incomparable() +
  labs(
    title = glue::glue("The Incomparable Network — {current_year}"),
    subtitle = "Shows by episode count.",
    x = NULL, y = "Episodes",
    caption = caption
  )

2026 episodes

Code

incomparable_episodes |>
  filter(year == current_year) |>
  mutate(date = lubridate::round_date(date, unit = "week")) |>
  count(date) |>
  ggplot(aes(x = date, y = n)) +
    geom_col(fill = inc_navy) +
    scale_x_date(date_breaks = "1 month", date_labels = "%B") +
    theme_incomparable() +
    theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, vjust = 0.5, hjust = 1)) +
    labs(
      title = glue::glue("The Incomparable Network — {current_year}"),
      subtitle = "Episodes per week.",
      x = NULL, y = "Episodes per week",
      caption = caption
    )

Yearly episode output

All in all, The Incomparable published NA minutes of content, or NA weeks, which are numbers that exist as a concept in your head but not in reality.

Code

incomparable_episodes |>
  filter(year >= 2011) |>
  count(year) |>
  ggplot(aes(x = factor(year), y = n)) +
    geom_col(fill = inc_navy) +
    theme_incomparable() +
    labs(
      title = "The Incomparable Network",
      subtitle = "Episodes per year.",
      x = NULL, y = "Episodes",
      caption = caption
    )