Episode 90: Rain Pains

Prompts: Wound, 1300, Walnut

Wow! We are 10 episodes away from 100. Crazy that we've come this far and we cannot thank YOU, the listener, enough!

On this week's episode Neal is battling an oncoming migraine from the huge weather shifts (that have given him six days of migraines) and Lauren coins the best description of it ever. Hint: It's the title. After a little catch-up, the episode goes full speed.

Lauren starts with The Side Wound of Christ (Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg) and discusses how the side wound wasn't just artwork, but was used for deep devotion and carried unexpected erotic and queer interpretations which have since challenged modern assumptions of medieval beliefs. Lauren's lesson shows us that the Middle Ages were actually full of complex, layered thinking about gender and were far from the “dark ages” stereotype we see in popular media.

Neal goes to the 1300s, but in film form, and breaks down The Seventh Seal the highly regarded film from arguably Sweden's greatest filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman. Here, Neal talks about Swedish cinema, the behind-the-scenes magic, and filming perhaps the most famous chess scene of all time that itself, was inspired by a piece of artwork! And he surprises Lauren with that fact.

Next Week's Prompts: Hell, Gray, Baby Blue, 106

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Episode 89: Swimsuits and Social Revolutions

This week’s prompts: Bathing Suit, Mint Green, 1964

This week, Lauren and Neal kick things off by reading YOUR suggestions for open-house names and Neal comes up with a million dollar idea for a book villain that he may or may not use. Only time will tell. The pair then talk about movies that turn your brain off, and Neal recounts trying to watch a Jason Statham movie in six minute increments.

To start the episode off, Neal takes the reigns and uses 1964 and bathing suit to talk about the creation and evolution of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue from its beginnings as a January filler to becoming a billion-dollar cultural juggernaut. He talks about the first cover mode, the female editor who helped build the franchise and make it a household name, the controversies, and of course, the supermodels the magazine minted.

Lauren picks up the conversation with a deep dive into Rudi Gernreich, the Austrian-born American designer whose fashion inspired social critique. Gernreich is perhaps best known for the topless monokini but throughout all of his work, saw clothing not just as style, but a way to challenge repression, rethink gender, and push modern fashion. Lauren details his refugee background and anatomical eye to his futuristic unisex looks and even talks about the unforgettable, very real, pubikini. And yes, it's what it sounds like.

Thank you to all our patrons for your support. We LITERALLY could not do this without all of you.

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Episode 88: Willem DeFoal

Prompts: Natural, Currency, LXXXV

Today's episode goes from house hunting to Russian realism to a sweaty 80s crime thriller with some serious C.S.I. nudity!

In a pre-prompt discussion, Lauren gives listeners an update on her house-hunting journey and decides, along with Neal, that they need fake open house names from YOU to help them as they peek around listings and hopefully don't see a Todd in the way. IYKYK. Neal talks about one of his radio shows and how terms like HELOC are going right over his head. But today's prompts inspire some fun discussion on two different topics.

Lauren starts off talking about Ilya Repin’s 1885 painting Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan and its devastating portrait of rage, regret, and political fallout. She talks about Repin's lifestyle, Ukrainian roots, and how this work became one of Russia's most controversial canvases and evolved throughout history and was even subjected to vandalism.

Neal goes a different direction and uses LXXXV (85) for 1985, and tells us all about William Friedkin's underrated classic, To Live and Die in LA. It's based on a novel by a Secret Service agent, features currency, burning paintings, William Peterson full frontal, and a fantastic performance from Willem Dafoe. The infamous wrong-way car chase is covered at length, but what Neal and Lauren decide to fixate on is the genius of Wang Chung and their score for this film. We even get a review from the porch from Lauren's dad... sort of.

Make sure to send us your fake open house names and perhaps we'll use them!

Next week's prompts: Mint Green, Bathing Suit, 64

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Episode 87: LT's 1940s Pick-Up Lines

Prompts: 1940s, Orange, Linguist

Lauren and Neal are EXCITED to be back on the moving train that is Curated by Chance. This week's brand-spanking-new episode covers two topics that were all the rage in the 1940s.

Neal kicks things off, firmly back in the co-host chair, with a deep dive into the Transatlantic or Mid-Atlantic accent, otherwise known as the old-timey voice you hear in old movies! The polished "old Hollywood" voice was made famous by stars like Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and Neal explains why it started, how it flourished, and why it just disappeared like nothing ever happened. He speaks about Edith Skinner, Marlon Brando, James Dean, and how, spoiler alert, the accent was never real!

Lauren takes the 1940s mantle and talks all about one of America's most celebrated artists, Edward Hopper. She takes us from lonely diners to sunlit windows and explores Hopper's captured isolation, stillness, and everyday life in a way that to fans new and old still resonates. But the biggest reveal (are we surprised?) is that Hopper probably wouldn't be Hopper without his wife, Josephine.

Also on this episode, Lauren and Neal figure out fashion trends, talk about Pickleball, and Lauren let's Neal know she's happy that he isn't recording from a moving car this time.

Next Week's Prompts: Currency, Natural, LXXXV (85)

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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

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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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Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:
🎧 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:
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 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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Check Out Lauren’s Substack:
https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/

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

E-mail us: [email protected]

Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now!
Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now!

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