Twilight Zone Morality Tales: A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#52)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | July 15th, 2020

Some­thing’s strange… Is it a dream? If it’s a moral­i­ty tale with a twist end­ing, you’re prob­a­bly in the Twi­light Zone. Your hosts Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er, plus guest Ken Ger­ber (Bri­an’s broth­er) are in it this week, dis­cussing the thrice revived TV series. Does the 1959–1963 show hold up? What makes for a good TZ episode, and does Jor­dan Peele’s lat­est iter­a­tion cap­ture the spir­it? We talk about episodes new and old, the 1983 film, plus com­par­isons to Black Mir­ror and David Lynch.

The clas­sic episodes we focus most on (and might spoil, so you should go watch them) are It’s a Good Life, Will the Real Mar­t­ian Please Stand Up?, What You Need, The Howl­ing Man, Per­chance to Dream, and Nick of Time. The oth­ers Ken rec­om­mend­ed for us are The Obso­lete Man and The Masks. Mark com­plains about Walk­ing Dis­tance.

In the new series, sea­son 1, we do spoil Blur­ry Man and praise (but don’t spoil) Replay. We don’t spoil sea­son two at all, but rec­om­mend Try, Try and Meet in the Mid­dle and pan Ova­tion and 8.

Some arti­cles we looked at include:

A good video on the back­ground of the show is “Amer­i­can Mas­ters Rod Ser­ling: Sub­mit­ted for your Approval,” and you can find detailed dis­cus­sions of many episodes on The Twi­light Zone Pod­cast. Ken rec­om­mends The Twi­light Zone Com­pan­ion. Oh, and Chris Hard­wick real­ly likes TZ.

If you enjoyed this episodes, you might like our pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion with Ken on time trav­el.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This week, we con­tin­ue for more than half an hour, fur­ther dis­cussing the Twi­light Zone with Ken, which includes a look at the 1985–1989 series.

This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Does Every Picture Tell a Story? A Conversation with Artist Joseph Watson for Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #51

in Art, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | July 9th, 2020

Sto­ry­telling is an essen­tial part of Las Vegas artist Joseph Wat­son’s paint­ing method­ol­o­gy, whether he’s cre­at­ing city scenes or pub­lic sculp­ture or chil­dren’s illus­tra­tions. So how does the nar­ra­tive an author may have in mind affect the view­er, and is this dif­fer­ent for dif­fer­ent types of art?

Joseph is per­haps best known as the illus­tra­tor of the Go, Go, GRETA! book series and does online stream­ing of draw­ing ses­sions through Insta­gram and Face­book. On this episode of Pret­ty Much Pop, he joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to explore the pic­ture-nar­ra­tive con­nec­tion and more gen­er­al­ly how know­ing about the cre­ation of an image affects our recep­tion of it, touch­ing on Guer­ni­ca, Where the Wild Things Are, Dr. Seuss, The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, and more.

You can browse Joseph’s work at josephwatsonart.com, and you’re real­ly going to want in par­tic­u­lar to look at a cou­ple of the works that we con­sid­er explic­it­ly:

Oth­er sources we looked at in prepa­ra­tion for this dis­cus­sion include:

Fol­low Joseph on Insta­gram @josephwatsonart; also Twit­ter and Face­book.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This week, it includes a par­tic­u­lar­ly philo­soph­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tion of the notion of escapism and how dif­fer­ent that is from so-called seri­ous pur­suits. Is this just a ver­sion of the high-low cul­ture dis­tinc­tion that we large­ly reject­ed in episode one? This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Did the CIA Write the Scorpions’ “Wind of Change,” One of the Bestselling Songs of All Time?

in History, Music, Podcasts | July 6th, 2020

By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it seemed the fate of the Sovi­et Union was all but sealed. It would be two more years before the USSR offi­cial­ly dis­solved, and flew the Sovi­et flag over the Krem­lin for the last time, but the age of Cold War bel­liger­ence offi­cial­ly end­ed with the 1980s, so it seemed. Soft pow­er and sua­sion would fin­ish the job. And what bet­ter way to announce this tran­si­tion than with the soft-rock stylings of a pow­er bal­lad like the Scor­pi­ons’ “Wind of Change”? The sen­ti­men­tal song from Ger­man met­al and hard rock favorites was sud­den­ly inescapable in 1990, and it was not at all sub­tle about its mes­sage.

The song became a mas­sive hit and remains one of the best-sell­ing sin­gles of all time. It served as “a sound­track of sorts to a polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion,” writes Richard Bien­stock at Rolling Stone. Odd­ly, “espe­cial­ly in light of the Scor­pi­ons’ back­ground… ‘Wind of Change’ was about nei­ther the Berlin Wall nor their Ger­man home­land.” Instead, the song was osten­si­bly inspired by a his­toric two-day fes­ti­val the band played in Moscow in 1989, a so-called “hard-rock Wood­stock” fea­tur­ing met­al roy­al­ty like Ozzy Osbourne, Möt­ley Crüe, Cin­derel­la, and Skid Row along­side hard rock Sovi­et bands like Gorky Park.

Three months after the con­cert, the Berlin Wall fell, and Scor­pi­ons’ lead singer Klaus Meine wrote the words:

The world is clos­ing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like broth­ers
The future’s in the air
I can feel it every­where
Blow­ing with the wind of change

The icon­ic whis­tled intro and lighters-in-the-air video cement­ed “Wind of Change” as a defin­i­tive state­ment on how the “chil­dren of tomor­row” will “share their dreams” in a glob­al­ized world. Tan­ta­liz­ing­ly vague, the lyrics read like Sur­re­al­ist ad copy, slid­ing back and forth between dog­ger­el and weird Sym­bol­ist incan­ta­tion:

The wind of change
Blows straight into the face of time
Like a stormwind that will ring the free­dom bell
For peace of mind
Let your bal­alai­ka sing
What my gui­tar wants to say

These lines, it may not shock you to learn, may have been writ­ten by the CIA. At least, “that’s the mys­tery dri­ving the new eight-part pod­cast series Wind of Change,” writes Nicholas Quah at Vul­ture. (Lis­ten on Apple, Spo­ti­fy, Google, and on the pod­cast web­site.) “Led by New York­er staff writer Patrick Rad­den Keefe and pro­duced by Pineap­ple Street’s Hen­ry Molof­sky… the jour­ney takes us to a shape-shift­ing Won­der­land, a world where an Amer­i­can agency like the CIA may very well have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­duc­tion of pop cul­ture as part of con­cert­ed efforts to build sen­ti­ment against its ene­mies abroad. It might even be some­thing that’s hap­pen­ing right now.”

Those who’ve read about how the Agency has influ­enced every­thing from Abstract Expres­sion­ism, to lit­er­ary mag­a­zines, cre­ative writ­ing, and Hol­ly­wood films might not find these alle­ga­tions par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing, but as with all the best exam­ples of the ser­i­al pod­cast form, it’s the jour­ney, not the des­ti­na­tion that makes this sto­ry worth pur­su­ing. Keefe approach­es the sub­ject with a naiveté that might be delib­er­ate, play­ing up the idea of mass enter­tain­ment as “care­ful­ly devised and cal­i­brat­ed mes­sag­ing.”

The pod­cast is great fun (“it’s been described as This is Spinal Tap meets All the President’s Men,” writes Dead­line); its sto­ry, Keefe says in a state­ment, “stretch­es across musi­cal gen­res, and across bor­ders and peri­ods of his­to­ry.” Do we ever find out for sure whether the agency best known for over­throw­ing gov­ern­ments it doesn’t like wrote the Scor­pi­ons’ 1990 pow­er bal­lad “Wind of Change”? “Hear the music, and the accents and the voic­es,” says Keefe, “and judge for your­self who might be lying and who is telling the truth.”

If you ask Klaus Meine, it’s all a fan­ta­sy. (But, then, he would say that, would­n’t he?) “It’s weird,” the Scor­pi­ons singer com­ment­ed after learn­ing about Keefe’s pod­cast. “In my wildest dreams I can’t think about how that song would con­nect with the CIA.”  The idea, how­ev­er, would make “a good idea for a movie,” he says, “That would be cool.” A movie, maybe, fund­ed by the CIA.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the CIA Fund­ed & Sup­port­ed Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zines World­wide While Wag­ing Cul­tur­al War Against Com­mu­nism

The CIA Assess­es the Pow­er of French Post-Mod­ern Philoso­phers: Read a New­ly Declas­si­fied CIA Report from 1985

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

How the CIA Helped Shape the Cre­ative Writ­ing Scene in Amer­i­ca

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Michael Jordan’s “The Last Dance” and Hero Worship: A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#50)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sports, Television | July 2nd, 2020

The 10-part ESPN doc­u­men­tary dis­sect­ing Michael Jor­dan and the Bulls’ six cham­pi­onships has pro­vid­ed some much need­ed sports dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, rop­ing in even sports haters with a mix of game high­lights and behind-the-scenes dra­ma.

Your hosts Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er are joined by Seth from The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life to inter­ro­gate the event: Was it actu­al­ly worth 10 hours of our time? Did its “time-jump­ing” struc­ture work? Its its treat­ment of Jor­dan real­ly “hagiog­ra­phy” sanc­ti­fy­ing the man, or is the pic­ture of grudge-hold­ing ultra-com­pet­i­tive­ness actu­al­ly pret­ty repul­sive? Why was he like that? Why are sports amenable to cre­at­ing cul­tur­al icons out of its heroes in a way that, say, physics isn’t? Are we going to see many more of these long-form treat­ments of sports heroes?

For more dis­cus­sion, here are some arti­cles we looked at:

If you enjoyed this, check out our episode #25 with sports­cast­er Dave Rev­sine.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Rewatch Every Episode of The Sopranos with the Talking Sopranos Podcast, Hosted by Michael Imperioli & Steve Schirripa

in Podcasts, Television | June 30th, 2020

The Sopra­nos pre­miered on Jan­u­ary 10, 1999, and tele­vi­sion did not change for­ev­er — or rather, not right away. Though its treat­ment of the life of mid-lev­el New Jer­sey mob boss Tony Sopra­no drew large num­bers of ded­i­cat­ed view­ers right away, few could have imag­ined dur­ing the show’s eight-year run how com­plete­ly its suc­cess would even­tu­al­ly rewrite the rules of dra­mat­ic TV. More than twen­ty years lat­er, near­ly all of us place the begin­ning of our ongo­ing tele­vi­su­al “gold­en age” at the broad­cast of The Sopra­nos’ first episode. You can hear that epoch-mak­ing 50 min­utes dis­cussed in depth on the first episode of the new pod­cast Talk­ing Sopra­nos (YouTube — Apple — Spo­ti­fy), whose hosts Michael Impe­ri­oli and Steve Schirri­pa know the series more inti­mate­ly than most — not least because they were on it.

Fans know Impe­ri­oli and Schirri­pa as Tony’s pro­tégé Christo­pher Molti­san­ti and Tony’s broth­er-in-law Bob­by Bac­calieri. On Talk­ing Sopra­nos they “fol­low the Sopra­nos series episode by episode giv­ing fans all the inside info, behind the scenes sto­ries and lit­tle-known facts that could only come from some­one on the inside,” announces the pod­cast’s descrip­tion, which also promis­es “inter­views with addi­tion­al cast mem­bers, pro­duc­ers, writ­ers, pro­duc­tion crew and spe­cial guests.”

Among these voic­es there is, of course, one siz­able absence: star James Gan­dolfi­ni, Tony Sopra­no him­self, who died in 2013. But it shows promise that, just four­teen episodes in, the pod­cast has already brought on Edie Fal­co, who played Tony’s wife Carmela; Robert Iler, their son A.J. Sopra­no; Jamie-Lynn Sigler, their daugh­ter Mead­ow Sopra­no; and Michael Rispoli, the first sea­son’s short-lived Jack­ie Aprile Sr.

None of these actors would have made their mark on the show with­out the work of cast­ing direc­tors Geor­gianne Walken and Sheila Jaffe, who also make an appear­ance on the pod­cast, as does co-exec­u­tive pro­duc­er and some­time direc­tor Hen­ry Bronchtein. You can down­load Talk­ing Sopra­nos on its web site, sub­scribe to it on Apple Pod­casts and else­where, or even watch it on Youtube. If you’d like to sup­ple­ment all this with an even greater wealth of detail, pick up a copy of Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepin­wal­l’s book The Sopra­nos Ses­sions, an episode-by-episode analy­sis fea­tur­ing inter­views with fig­ures includ­ing series cre­ator David Chase. Nev­er has there been a bet­ter time to do a Sopra­nos re-watch of your own — and if you nev­er watched it in the first place, well, bet­ter a cou­ple of decades late than nev­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Chase Breathed Life into the The Sopra­nos

David Chase Reveals the Philo­soph­i­cal Mean­ing of The Sopra­nos’ Final Scene

The Nine Minute Sopra­nos

Mau­rice Sendak Ani­mat­ed; James Gan­dolfi­ni Reads from Sendak’s Sto­ry “In The Night Kitchen”

James Gan­dolfi­ni Shows Kinder, Soft­er, Gen­tler Side on Sesame Street (2002)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #49 Considers Conspiracy Theories as Pop

in Podcasts, Politics, Pretty Much Pop | June 24th, 2020

Ex-philoso­pher Al Bak­er works at the UK-based Log­i­cal­ly, a com­pa­ny that fights mis­in­for­ma­tion.

He joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to try to answer such ques­tions as: What’s the appeal of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries? How sim­i­lar is being con­sumed them to being a die-hard fan of some pop cul­ture prop­er­ty? What’s the rela­tion between per­ni­cious con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and fun spec­u­la­tion (like, maybe Elvis is alive)? Is there a harm­less way to engage in con­spir­a­cy the­o­riz­ing as a hob­by? Is some­thing still a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in the pejo­ra­tive sense if it turns out to be true?

We touch on echo cham­bers, the role of irony and humor in spread­ing these the­o­ries, how both oppo­nents and pro­po­nents claim to be skep­tics, Dan Brown Nov­els, Tom Han­ks, the Mel Gib­son film Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry, and doc­u­men­taries like Behind the Curve (about Flat Earth­ers) and The Fam­i­ly.

For expert opin­ions on the psy­chol­o­gy of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, try The Con­ver­sa­tion’s Antill Pod­cast, which had a whole series on this top­ic. For even more pod­cast action, try FiveThir­tyEight, BBC’s The Why Fac­tor pod­cast, Skep­toid, and The Infi­nite Mon­key Cage.

Here are some more arti­cles:

If you enjoy this, try Pret­ty Much Pop #14 on UFOs. The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life episodes referred to in this dis­cus­sion are #96 on Oppen­heimer and the Rhetoric of Sci­ence Advis­ers and #82 on Karl Pop­per.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Can Reality TV Save the Fine Arts? Body Painter Robin Slonina (Skin Wars) on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #47

in Art, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | June 17th, 2020

Fine art and real­i­ty TV are typ­i­cal­ly rat­ed our high­est and low­est forms of enter­tain­ment, yet cre­ative com­pe­ti­tion shows com­bine the two. Robin Sloni­na grad­u­at­ed from Chicago’s Art Insti­tute and lived in the gallery world doing sculp­tures, paint­ings and instal­la­tions for sev­er­al years before dis­cov­er­ing body paint­ing and open­ing Skin City Body Paint­ing in Las Vegas, per­haps the fore­most insti­tu­tion of its type in the world.

Robin then served as a judge (along with RuPaul!) on the show Skin Wars for its three sea­sons (2014–2017) before The Game Show Net­work decid­ed that the whole thing was too expen­sive to pro­duce. She joins Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an to  fig­ure out the degree to which the com­pe­ti­tion real­i­ty show for­mat lets the art shine through.

To learn more, scan these rel­e­vant arti­cles:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion with Robin about pub­lic art and the protests that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Are There Limits for a Sitcom Premise? A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast (#47) Discussion and Quiz

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | June 10th, 2020

Sit­coms pro­vide a form of escapism that does­n’t take one to a mag­i­cal world of pos­si­bil­i­ty, but instead to a basi­cal­ly unchang­ing, cozy envi­ron­ment with relat­able char­ac­ters engaged in low-stakes con­flicts.

So what are the lim­its on the type of premise that can ground a sit­com? While most of the longest last­ing sit­coms have sim­ple set-ups involv­ing friends or co-work­ers, stream­ing has led to more seri­al­iza­tion and hence wider plot pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Does this mean that the era of sit­coms has come to an end? Or has the genre just broad­ened to admit entries like Ricky Ger­vais’ After Life and Derek, Har­mon & Roi­land’s Rick & Morty, Greg Daniels’ Upload and Space Force, and Arman­do Ian­nuc­ci’s Avenue 5?

In this low-stakes, feel-good dis­cus­sion, Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an also touch on the Parks & Recre­ation reunion spe­cial, Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, It’s Always Sun­ny in Philadel­phia, Com­mu­ni­ty, Mod­ern Fam­i­ly, Red Oaks, The Simp­sons, Last Man on Earth, WOOPS!, the stain of Chuck Lorre, and more. Plus a quiz to guess which weird sit­com premis­es are real and which Mark made up.

Incor­po­rate these arti­cles into your sit­u­a­tion:

If you enjoy this dis­cus­sion, check out our pre­vi­ous episodes on Friends and The Good Place.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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