CinemaPsych Podcast

Join Alex and guest host Dr. Chelsea Robertson as they discuss the tragedy and the triumph of a mother and her 5-year-old son in the heart-wrenching book adaptation of Room (2015). They explore the social and cognitive development of Jack, the little boy, who for five years, has only known the inside of a shed that they call "Room." We also explore the role of trauma in both Jack and his Ma, Joy, as they navigate their life inside and outside of Room. It's a tough book, it's a tough movie, and of course, it's going to be a tough chat with hard-to-discuss topics — take breaks if you need to!

Check out East Tennessee State University's Strong BRAIN Institute!

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Join Alex and guest host Dr. Sy Islam as they discuss the smash-hit from 2023, Oppenheimer! Christopher Nolan's three-hour peek behind the creation of the team that formed the Manhattan Project and the literal fallout from the creation and dropping of the first atomic bombs, featuring the amazing performances by Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, and Josh Hartnett, among many many more others. The pair discuss the formation of the "Physics Avengers" from an Industrial-Organizational Psych perspective, while exploring how they prevented the bias groupthink from pervading the critical decisions. It's a wild ride!

Follow Sy on Twitter/X or on BlueSky!

Check out his recent book on Amazon about the other kind of Avengers: Leaders Assemble! Leadership in the MCU (Exploring Effective Leadership Practices through Popular Culture)

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Join Alex and guest host Dr. Phil Duncan as they discuss cinema's first documentary, Nanook of the North (1922), which was actually the second filming of said documentary! Dr. Duncan is a cinema studies professor and documentarian filmmaker, so he comes with receipts about how this documentary is more like a docudrama, with behind-the-scenes drama and some piping hot tea about the filmmaker, Robert Flaherty.

Check out his documentary, Mississippi Mud: The Natural History of the Blues

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Join Alex and guest hosts Dr. Jim Davies and Hollywood composer Joe Kraemer as they discuss the powerful music of composer John Williams' immaculate score of Star Wars (1977) and its subsequent film franchise. In 2015, the two guests hosts wrote a chapter — after decades of friendship and a shared love of nerd culture and music — on the psychology of the music from the famous sci-fi/fantasy film from George Lucas. The trio chat about how the music makes the viewer feel and how Williams uses the concept of leitmotifs to signal how characters interact and why certain sounds within music theory are associated with deeply subconscious processing. For the listener of the episode, we have s special treat of the music underscoring their chat, with a little bit of Joe's riffing and ad-libbing with his piano!

To read the chapter in our discussion, from the unauthorized book Star Wars Psychology: The Dark Side of the Mind (Volume 2), head here: The Symphony of Psychology: The Music of Star Wars

Find all of Jim's work: jimdavies.org

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Join Alex as he discusses wonderfully brilliant biopic of John Forbes Nash, Jr. in A Beautiful Mind (2001). The movie focuses on John Nash's struggle with finding an original idea to make his mark while also battling schizophrenia and the paranoid delusions and hallucinations it brought. The episode takes a an accuracy approach, since we are talking about an actual historical figure. What was true about Joh Nash's experience with the psychological disorder and how did director Ron Howard portray that for the audience in the film?

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

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Join Alex and returning guest host Jason Spiegelman as they discuss another one of Quentin Tarantino's classic, dare we say, most popular film, Pulp Fiction (1994). Much like their last episode, they spend most of the time just chatting about their favorite scenes and lines from the classic gangster-like film that weaves in and around different converging storylines. Live from their hotel room at the 2023 AP Psych Reading, they celebrate the podcast's fourth anniversary. chatting about morality, religion, and nihilism! The episode IS a TASTY burger!

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Join Alex and guest host Sophie Halliday as they chat about the historical and psychological impact of Stanley Milgram's famous experiments on obedience and social influence in Michael Almereyda's Experimenter (2015), the other historical psychology movie that came out that year. This biopic stars Peter Sarsgaard as the titular character, with Winona Ryder, Jim Gaffigan, and several other star appearances as participants in the obedience studies. This witty drama-comedy takes the audience into the creation and data collection of the shock studies, but also other social influence experiments Milgram conducted over his 30ish year career. There are so many fourth wall breaks, you feel like Milgram is talking directly to the audience, to get his side of the story that followed him throughout his career. Would you shock someone because the experiment — AND SCIENCE! — demanded it?

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

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Join Alex and guest host Dr. Sheila Thomas as they chat about the connection and the eventual schism of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud in David Cronenberg's psychological thriller (?) A Dangerous Method, based on the book A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, and the stage play The Talking Cure. The film stars Michael Fassbender as Jung and Viggo Mortensen as Freud, with Kiera Knightley as Sabina Spielrein. Spielrein enters Jung's life as a woman with hysteria (not a real disorder), but that turns into an affair with Jung, as he grapples with expanding psychoanalysis into something bigger than what Freud says he wants (lol, to be "empirical" and a "science!"). So strap in (is that a penis joke?) and grab your biggest (another one?) unexplained dream as we chat about these titans of psychological history!

Email Sheila for tutoring or other psych chats: [email protected]

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

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Join Alex and returning guest host Dr. Wind Goodfriend in a discussion of the psychological concepts in Steven Spielberg's critical hit drama The Color Purple (1985), which stars a breakout performer Whoopi Goldberg, amazing Oprah Winfrey, and the immaculate Danny Glover (albeit a terrible character)! The main topic on the agenda: intersectionality, and what it meant for Black folks in Jim Crow rural south, but also Black women and the bonds they make and break. It's a window into a challenging life, where women were treated as pawns and subhuman. It's based on the book by Alice Walker, and there's a lot of psych found within. Join us!

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

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Join Alex and guest host Dr. Chris Miller as they discuss the wild and crazy Richard Linklater film Dazed and Confused (1993), a movie that came out in the 90s, but set in the mid-1970s. The film follows teens, such as Jason London, Anthony Rapp, Adam Goldberg, Parker Posey, Joey Lauren Adams, and Ben Affleck, as they end the school year with epic hazing for those matriculating students and a wild party in the forest. There's a lot of adolescent and young adult drama, as well as some solid social psychological concepts found in this film. So, have a listen, and as breakout performance star Matthew McConaughey said, "it'd be a lot cooler if you did!"

Catch Chris on Twitter: @psychisnonlinear

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

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Go to this link to read a transcript generated by Whisper AI Large V3 Model. Disclaimer: It is not edited and may contain errors!