Episode 86: Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile

Prompts: Brick, 9399, Poison

Guess who's back? Back again.

Well, it's not Slim Shady, but Neal did have frosted tips early on in his high school career!

Neal finished his latest book under a TIGHT deadline and is happy to be back. He thanks Lauren for holding down the podcast with solo and guest episodes, and thanks the listeners for their patience. He even shares an anecdote about writer brain and how it led to making a BIG mistake in the book, but thankfully he fixed it later.

In honor of his return, Neal goes first and gives Lauren a much deserved break by talking about the story behind Bell Biv DeVoe's "Poison," one of the most famous examples of New Jack Swing. The discussion ranges from the origin of the song, the original group that birthed BBD, and the famous group that BBD helped form! Plus, the most famous use of this song on television and the videogame that stole it!

Then, Lauren takes the mic and talks about the danger behind beautiful colors and how poisonous colors have a place in fashion and color history. From sea snails to expensive garments worn by royalty to colors literally causing illness and death!

On this week's episode, you get creativity under pressure, the evolution of art through experimentation, how innovation have often come with unintended consequences, and the cultural ripple effect of one song.

Next Week's Prompts: Orange, 1940, Linguist

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The Show: @curatedbychance

Lauren: @paisleylo

Neal: @nealefischer

E-mail us: ⁠[email protected]⁠

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Episode 85: Steve is Camp Blind

This week’s prompts: Stripe, 97, Green

In the last episode without Neal (who finished his book) Lauren, relaxed on the couch, invites a very special guest: her husband, Dr. Stephen Polly. Together they provide an intimate, deep dive conversation into Steve's favorite movie of all-time, The Fifth Element.

This episode, Lauren highlights Steve's total camp blindness, Steve talks about Moonstruck totally breaking him, and they both comment on how Luc Besson's candy-colored sci-fi spectacle feels lived in. But before they talk about Chris Tucker's unhinged but beautiful performance, Bruce Willis acting his ass off in plastic, and Milla Jovovich's star-making performance (in a made-up language) Lauren and Steve delightfully take us behind the curtain to when they met, a story that starts with bar trivia, bonding over documentaries, and ends up with being married with a kid. Plus, we get to hear from the designer of our very own algorithm, Chance, talking about the deeply unnecessary but very appreciated physics calculations. Why? When you have an expert on the show, you get the expert analysis!

Next week’s prompts: Brick, 9399, Poison

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Episode 84: Scrolls, Shrines, and Spring Break Delusion

This week’s prompts: 458, Salmon, Sleep

Lauren is back solo again — slightly overbooked, a little raspy, and fully in the thick of spring-semester chaos — with an episode that moves from museum donor events and teaching highs and lows to ancient Japan, Buddhist scrolls, and the enduring power of visual storytelling.

After a little life update from the MAG, the classroom, and the general circus of adjunct-professor existence, Lauren takes the prompts in a different direction and dives into Japanese art before 1333. Using a single extraordinary hanging scroll — The Death of the Historical Buddha — as a starting point, she explores Buddhist imagery, grief, animism, shrine rebuilding, narrative scrolls, and the long visual history behind everything from manga to robot dogs.

Along the way, she unpacks the spiritual and aesthetic traditions that shaped early Japanese art: the solemn beauty of Buddhist nirvana paintings, the Shinto reverence for objects and ritual, the rebuilding of the Ise Shrine every 20 years, the gendered distinction between “masculine” and “feminine” art forms in the Heian period, and the lively, sketchy animal scrolls that feel like proto-manga centuries before manga existed.

It’s a wide-ranging, deeply visual episode about how art, ritual, storytelling, and national identity evolve — and how some of the most ancient forms still feel startlingly modern.

PLUS:
🖼️ A gorgeous Buddhist hanging scroll full of grief, gold, and symbolism
⛩️ Why Japan rebuilds one of its most sacred shrines again and again
🧵 Broken needles, animism, and the spiritual life of everyday objects
📖 The Tale of Genji and the rise of “feminine” narrative art
🐸 Frolicking frogs, monkeys, and rabbits as the ancient ancestors of manga

Next week’s prompts: Stripe, 97, Green

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🎧 The Show – @curatedbychance
🎨 Lauren – @paisleylo
🎬 Neal – @nealefischer

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Episode 83: Sick Voice

This week’s prompts: Teal, Leg, 1960

Lauren is flying solo again and opens with a few updates from the past couple of weeks of guest episodes, a quick peek into the strange and wonderful conversations that happen at academic faculty parties, and a heartfelt shout-out to listener Dan for a timely and encouraging email. There’s also a little housekeeping about Patreon, reviews, and how much the show appreciates its listeners sticking with them during this busy stretch.

From there, Lauren dives into the life and work of Wilfredo Lam, one of the most fascinating — and often overlooked — artists of the 20th century.

Born in Cuba to a Chinese immigrant father and an Afro-Cuban mother, Lam described himself as “a mulatto of many worlds.” His art reflects that hybrid identity, blending Afro-Caribbean spirituality, Chinese visual traditions, and European modernism into something entirely his own.

Lauren traces Lam’s path from studying art in Havana and Madrid to joining the surrealist circles of Paris, where Picasso, Matisse, and André Breton became part of his artistic orbit. Despite those connections, Lam remained somewhat outside the traditional modernist canon — in part because his work centered Afro-Cuban culture and identity in ways that European audiences often overlooked.

The episode focuses on Lam’s most famous painting, The Jungle (1942–43) — a dense, eerie landscape of hybrid human-animal-plant figures emerging from sugarcane. Beneath its surreal imagery lies a powerful commentary on colonialism, tourism, and the exploitation of Afro-Cuban labor in Cuba’s sugar industry.

PLUS:
🎨 Lam’s friendships with Picasso and the Paris surrealists
🌿 Hybrid figures inspired by Santería and Afro-Caribbean spirituality
🌍 How tourism and colonial economics shaped Cuban culture
🖼️ Why The Jungle remains a modernist masterpiece hiding in plain sight

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Next week’s prompts: 458, Salmon, Sleep

Check Out Lauren’s Substack:
👉 https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/

Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:
🎧 The Show – @curatedbychance
🎨 Lauren – @paisleylo
🎬 Neal – @nealefischer

📧 E-mail us: [email protected]

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Episode 82: Princely Magnificence

This Week's Prompts: 1600, Divine, Royal Purple

With Neal out (we miss you, sir), Lauren brings in a guest co-host whose name is… suspiciously close. Enter Dr. Nile Blunt — museum professional, early modern historian, maximalist icon, and longtime friend — for an episode that begins at Wegmans and ends with a beheading.

Nile takes us deep into the life of Charles I of England, the famously ill-fated monarch who quite literally lost his head — but before that? Built one of the most astonishing art collections Europe had ever seen.

From fake-beard diplomacy missions in Madrid to being absolutely gobsmacked by the Spanish Habsburg art hoard, we follow young Prince Charles as he travels incognito to woo a Spanish princess… and instead falls in love with something else entirely: power expressed through art. After witnessing Philip IV’s jaw-dropping collection (Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio, Bosch — the greatest hits of Western painting), Charles returns to England determined to build something even grander.

And he does.

Lauren and Nile unpack how Charles’ obsession with collecting wasn’t just aesthetic — it was political. In the Caroline era, “good taste” equaled moral authority. Magnificence wasn’t just décor; it was divine-right propaganda. Surround yourself with beauty, and people might believe your soul is beautiful too — and maybe that you deserve to rule.

Spoiler: Parliament disagreed.

Along the way, the two explore:
• Why Charles River and the Carolinas are named after this doomed art bro
• The concept of princely magnificence (and why it mattered)
• How collecting art became a political loyalty test
• Fake beards, royal cringe, and the world’s most dramatic failed proposal
• Why London briefly became the Vatican–Louvre–Prado of the 17th century

It’s a story about power, ego, aesthetics, absolutism, and what happens when you mistake artistic discernment for political wisdom.

Plus: maximalism solidarity, pandemic friendships, and whether fake-beard diplomacy should make a cinematic comeback.

Next Week's Prompts: Teal, Leg, 1960

Check Out Lauren’s Substack:
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Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:
The Show – @curatedbychance
Lauren – @paisleylo
Neal – @nealefischer

E-mail us: [email protected]

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Episode 81: Magic Mike Walked so Heated Rivalry Could Run

This week’s prompts: Blue, Twitch, 15

Lauren flies solo — but not really — as she welcomes her longtime partner-in-podcast-crime Julia from Miss Information: A Trivia Podcast for a full-throttle celebration of the cinematic masterpiece that is Magic Mike XXL (2015). What begins as a prompt-inspired detour quickly becomes a passionate thesis: this is not just a stripper sequel. It’s The Odyssey. With abs.

The two dive into the eight-and-a-half-hour road trip that somehow takes three days, from Tampa to Myrtle Beach’s gloriously unnamed “Stripper Convention.” Along the way: Mad Mary’s voguing chaos, a gas station Backstreet Boys breakdown for the ages, Jada Pinkett Smith presiding over a velvet-draped Savannah hedonism palace, and Andy MacDowell hosting a Charleston book club that accidentally turns into foreplay.

Lauren argues that the film’s true message is simple and profound: stripping is healing. Julia charts the logistical madness of the Froyo truck crash, the montage sewing session, and the conference room glow-up that somehow transforms Resurrection into the 10:20 p.m. moneymaker. And yes — they break down that final mirror routine from Channing Tatum and the late Stephen “Twitch” Boss in reverent, breathless detail.

They also tackle the deeper questions:
Why is everyone littering?
How long are these women at the convention?
Why does no one slip on the dollar bills?
And why did the third movie even exist?

PLUS:
The Stripper Convention as American myth
Joe Manganiello’s Cheetos-fueled Backstreet Boys meltdown
Domina, Rome, and subscription-based beauty
Sex swings, Nine Inch Nails, and the most romantic wedding ever staged
Magic Mike Live in Vegas and the $87 spiritual awakening
Why you can skip Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and just watch this instead

No death. No brooding. Just friendship, fireworks, and finely crafted choreography.

Next week’s prompts: 1600, Divine, Royal Purple

Join us at Patreon for more fun:

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Watch Julia on Trivial Pursuit and listen to Miss Information

Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:
The Show – @curatedbychance
Lauren – @paisleylo
Neal – @nealefischer

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Episode 80: Dr. Dermis: A Brief History of Nudity in Film

This week’s prompts: Nude, Mirror, 2193

Neal flies solo this week — juggling book deadlines, radio producing, directing gigs, and on-camera classes — and takes the prompts “nude” and “mirror” as an invitation to dive headfirst into one of cinema’s most controversial, complicated, and endlessly fascinating subjects: nudity on screen. From the silent era’s flesh-colored body stockings and allegorical “Truth” figures to the Hays Code crackdown that scrubbed Hollywood nearly clean for three decades, Neal traces how filmmakers have used (and misused) the naked body for art, shock, comedy, horror, politics, and pure box office bait.

Jane Mansfield makes mainstream movie history. Blow-Up and Midnight Cowboy help dismantle the Production Code. The ’70s explode with art-house extremity and exploitation excess — from Last Tango in Paris to Carrie. The ’80s normalize teen sex comedies and birth the erotic thriller, giving us Phoebe Cates in slow motion, Richard Gere in full frontal, and the rise of the femme fatale as both fantasy and threat. And then the ’90s detonate the culture wars. Sharon Stone’s leg-cross in Basic Instinct becomes the most paused moment in VHS history. Showgirls tests the limits of NC-17. The Crying Game uses nudity as narrative revelation. Schindler’s List reminds audiences that nudity can devastate rather than titillate. Through it all, Neal examines the power dynamics behind the camera — from Maria Schneider’s traumatic experience on Last Tango in Paris to Sharon Stone’s later revelations about consent and deception.

This isn’t just a history of skin on screen. It’s a history of censorship, power, vulnerability, gender politics, commerce, shame, and spectacle — and how cinema keeps holding up a mirror to all of it.

Next week's prompts: Twitch, Blue, 15

Join us on Patreon to help support our efforts:

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Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:

The Show – @curatedbychance

Lauren – @paisleylo

Neal – @nealefischer

E-mail us: [email protected]

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Episode 79: Reclining Nudes and One Rude Dude

This week’s prompts: Nude, Mirror, 2193

Surprise! It's a solo episode, this time with LT! Neal is working on his book and way over his head, so we're changing things up a bit. He'll be back next week. Today, LT takes on the prompts of nude and mirror, and brings us along through a minor history of nudity... in what else? Art! LT talks about stereotypes in art, Manet, how nudes and class evolved over time, and maybe a hot take on Paul Gaugin?

Listen in for a great opening story that LT says might be the best compliment she's had in ages! Thank you to all of our Patrons for supporting the show. We couldn't do it without you! Join our patrons by going to:

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Next week: a solo show from Neal about nudity in... what else? Film!

Check out Lauren's Substack: https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/

Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:

The Show – @curatedbychance
Lauren – @paisleylo
Neal – @nealefischer

E-mail us: [email protected]

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Episode 78: Whose Cah We Gonna Take?

This week’s prompts: Holy, New England, 530

Neal and Lauren welcome listeners to the deep winter doldrums with an episode that starts cozy and conversational… and then quietly spirals into bank robbers, nun masks, American realism, and one of the most haunting paintings of the 20th century. It’s a classic Curated by Chance hang: warm, thoughtful, and gloriously meandering.

Neal takes Holy and New England straight into The Town (2010), Ben Affleck’s Boston-set crime thriller that doubles as a love letter to place, loyalty, and impossible escape. He breaks down how Affleck reshaped a bloated studio script into a lean, character-driven heist film; why Charlestown functions as both setting and prison; and how real Boston crime lore — from codes of silence to armored car robberies — found its way into the movie. Along the way, Neal highlights Jeremy Renner’s Oscar-nominated performance, the infamous nun masks, the jaw-dropping Fenway Park climax, and why The Town belongs in the modern heist-movie canon alongside Heat.

After the break, Lauren also follows New England, but through art history, with a rich and moving portrait of Andrew Wyeth, one of America’s most iconic — and most misunderstood — painters. She traces Wyeth’s upbringing under illustrator father N.C. Wyeth, his frail childhood and intense artistic training, and the profound impact of loss, isolation, and landscape on his work. Lauren digs deep into Christina’s World: its real-life subject, its emotional ambiguity, and why viewers can read hope, despair, or quiet endurance into the same image. She also explores Wyeth’s mastery of watercolor and egg tempera, the tension between “illustration” and “fine art,” and the controversial, secretive Helga paintings — a body of work that shocked the art world and complicated Wyeth’s legacy.

PLUS:
Nun masks, Fenway Park, and Boston as a cinematic character
Jeremy Renner’s breakout performance and Affleck’s growth as a director
Christina’s World and why it refuses a single interpretation
New England landscapes as emotional terrain
Andrew Wyeth, watercolor wizardry, and the thin line between intimacy and obsession

Next week’s prompts: Nude, Mirror, 2193

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/CuratedByChance

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Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:

The Show – @curatedbychance
Lauren – @paisleylo
Neal – @nealefischer

E-mail us: [email protected]

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Episode 77: Betty Spaghetti

This week’s prompts: Peach, Necktie, 309

It’s a solo mission this week as Neal takes the wheel for a heartfelt, history-rich deep dive into one of the most beloved sports movies ever made — a film that still makes audiences laugh, cheer, and maybe tear up just a little.

Neal takes Peach straight to A League of Their Own (1992), Penny Marshall’s classic underdog comedy about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during World War II. He walks through the film’s origins, from its real-life inspiration to its journey to the big screen, and explains why it remains one of the most enduring sports movies of all time. From John Lovitz’s fast-talking scout and the formation of the Rockford Peaches to the unforgettable chemistry of Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Madonna, and Rosie O’Donnell, Neal breaks down what makes the movie such a perfect balance of comedy, heart, and history.

Along the way, he digs into Penny Marshall’s legendary direction style, the intense baseball boot camp that put the cast through their paces, and the behind-the-scenes stories that gave us iconic moments like “There’s no crying in baseball!” Neal also explores the real women behind the story — the trailblazing athletes who kept professional baseball alive on the home front and whose legacy finally received long-overdue recognition at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

It’s a love letter to teamwork, sisterhood, representation, and the kind of feel-good storytelling that never goes out of style.

PLUS:
⚾ The real All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
👒 Rockford Peaches, Racine Belles, and the best team names in sports history
🎬 Penny Marshall’s boot camp, bruises, and baseball realism
💄 Charm school, skirted uniforms, and playing hard in a “ladylike” world
🏆 Why A League of Their Own belongs in the sports-movie hall of fame

Next week’s prompts: Holy, New England, 530

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