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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What Is a “Casual Game?” Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #46 Talks to Nick Fortugno, Creator of “Diner Dash”

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | June 3rd, 2020

Famed game design­er Nick joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to con­sid­er fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the activ­i­ty of gam­ing (Nick calls games “arbi­trary lim­its on mean­ing­less goals”) and what con­sti­tutes a casu­al game: Is it one that’s easy (maybe not easy to win, but at least you don’t die), one meant to be played in short bursts, or maybe one with a cer­tain kind of art style, or just about any game that runs on a phone? Nick­’s most famous cre­ation is the casu­al Din­er Dash, which can be very stress­ful. Vast­ly dif­fer­ent games from very hard but very short action games and very involved but sooth­ing strat­e­gy games get lumped under this one label.

Our con­ver­sa­tion touch­es on every­thing from cross­words to Super Meat Boy, plus the rela­tion between psy­chol­o­gy and game design, whether casu­al games real­ly play less than hard­core gamers, the stig­ma of an activ­i­ty that was for mar­ket­ing rea­sons at one point brand­ed as being just for ado­les­cent boys, and even heuris­tics for beat­ing slot machines.

Some sources we looked at include:

Just so you don’t have to write them down, our rec­om­men­da­tions at the end were:

You can fol­low Nick @nickfortugno.

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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Is It Rude to Talk Over a Film? MST3K’s Mary Jo Pehl on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #45

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | May 28th, 2020

We live in a com­men­tary cul­ture with much appre­ci­a­tion for camp and snark, but some­thing spe­cial hap­pened in the ear­ly ’90s when Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000 pop­u­lar­ized this addi­tive form of com­e­dy, where jokes are made dur­ing a full-length or short film. Mary Jo Pehl was a writer and per­former on MST3K and has since riffed with fel­low MST3K alums for Riff­trax and Cin­e­mat­ic Titan­ic.

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an briefly debate the ethics of talk­ing over some­one else’s art and then inter­view Mary Jo about how riffs get writ­ten, devel­op­ing a riff­ing style and a char­ac­ter that the audi­ence can con­nect with (do you need to include skits to estab­lish a premise for why riff­ing is hap­pen­ing?), riff­ing films you love vs. old garbage, the degree to which riff­ing has gone beyond just MST3K-asso­ci­at­ed come­di­ans, VH-1’s Pop-Up Video, and more.

Fol­low Mary Jo @MaryJoPehl.

Here are a some links to get you watch­ing riff­ing:

Dif­fer­ent teams have dif­fer­ent styles of riff­ing, so if you hate MST3K, you might want to see if you just hate those guys or hate the art form as a whole. The alums them­selves cur­rent­ly work as:

Here are a few rel­e­vant arti­cles:

Also, PROJECT: RIFF is the website/database we talk about where a guy named Andrew fig­ured out how many riffs per minute are in each MST3K episode, which char­ac­ter made the joke, and oth­er stuff.

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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Does Local News Deserve More of Your Attention? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #44 w/ Deion Broxton of Bison Meme Fame

in Media, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | May 20th, 2020

Is news enter­tain­ment? To what extent has local news con­sump­tion decreased giv­en the alter­na­tives? Deion is an on-air reporter for NBC Mon­tana who was recent­ly memi­fied for flee­ing amus­ing­ly from some bison. He joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss what we might be miss­ing out on, the uses and abus­es of news cov­er­age, real­i­ty vs. media por­tray­als, and the cur­rent sta­tus of “trust­ed news reporter” in our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness.

Here are a few rel­e­vant arti­cles to peruse:

Read that sto­ry about the mur­der that Deion refers to. Deion’s bison encounter has been cov­ered on the Today Show, Time, Huff­in­g­ton Post, etc. Fol­low him @DeionNBCMT.

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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Decoding Korean Cinema: A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast (ep. 43)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | May 13th, 2020

We’re see­ing a lot of Kore­an media in Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture nowa­days, what with Par­a­site win­ning the Oscar for best pic­ture and K‑Pop and K‑Dramas find­ing an increas­ing Amer­i­can cult fol­low­ing. This is not an acci­dent: The Kore­an gov­ern­ment has as an explic­it goal the growth of “soft pow­er” through export­ed cul­tur­al prod­ucts. This Kore­an Wave (Hal­lyu) was aimed fore­most at Asia but has reached us as well. Suzie Hyun-jung Oh joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to explore the con­text for this spread and fig­ure out what exact­ly feels for­eign to Amer­i­can audi­ences about Kore­an media.

This is our first attempt to get at the zeit­geist of anoth­er cul­ture to bet­ter under­stand its media, and the pri­ma­ry focus of our immer­sion (the part of the wave that’s not aimed at teens) was film: In addi­tion to the work of Bong Joon-ho, we touch on The Hand­maid­en, A Train to Busan, The Burn­ing, A Taxi Dri­ver, Lucid Dream­ing, Among the Gods, and oth­ers.

We also talk a lit­tle about Kore­an teen cul­tur­al prod­ucts, fam­i­ly life and reli­gion in Korea, the aes­thet­ic of cute­ness, M*A*S*H, and whether Amer­i­cans will read sub­ti­tles.

Some arti­cles and oth­er resources that helped us:

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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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #40 on #MeToo Depictions in TV and Film

in Podcasts, Politics, Pretty Much Pop, Television | April 22nd, 2020


These sto­ries are all heav­i­ly watched, which means they’re enter­tain­ing: The 2019 film Bomb­shell (about the pre­da­tions of Roger Ailes), Apple TV’s The Morn­ing Show (about a dis­graced anchor), and Net­flix’s Unbe­liev­able (about report­ing rape) and 13 Rea­sons Why (about teen sui­cide result­ing from sex­u­al assault). But what’s “enter­tain­ing” about sex­u­al assault and harass­ment? What makes for a sen­si­tive as opposed to a sen­sa­tion­al­ized por­tray­al?

Eri­ca, Mark, and Bri­an con­sid­er which sto­ries work and why. How much diver­gence from true events is allow­able in Bomb­shell or Con­fir­ma­tion (about Ani­ta Hill)? By hav­ing char­ac­ters inter­pret their sit­u­a­tions (Eri­ca gives an exam­ple from the show Sex Edu­ca­tion), are writ­ers essen­tial­ly telling audi­ences how to feel about their own expe­ri­ences? Should cer­tain depic­tions be ruled out as poten­tial­ly trig­ger­ing, or is it good to “bring to light” what­ev­er ter­ri­ble things actu­al­ly hap­pen in the world? Should shows delve into the psy­chol­o­gy of the per­pe­tra­tor (maybe even treat­ing him as a pro­tag­o­nist), or must the mes­sage be whol­ly and unam­bigu­ous­ly about the vic­tim? 

Art is about risk-tak­ing and cap­tur­ing dif­fi­cult ambi­gu­i­ties; this does­n’t sound much like a pub­lic ser­vice mes­sage. So what respon­si­bil­i­ty to do show cre­ators have to con­sult pro­fes­sion­als about how to present dif­fi­cult top­ics like this?

We drew on some arti­cles to help us look at these ques­tions:

Here’s that weird scene where Jen­nifer Anis­ton and Bil­ly Crudup sing on The Morn­ing Show.

If this top­ic is too depress­ing, check out our episode #39 from last week about what to watch on TV dur­ing quar­an­tine:

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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