Curated by Chance

Curated by Chance

By Neal E. Fischer and Lauren TagliaferroTV & FilmArtsVisual Arts
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Curated by Chance episodes

  • Betty Spaghetti

    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


    Join us on Patreon:

    CLICK HERE


    Check Out Lauren’s Substack

    https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/


    Join The Curated By Chance Music League (RD 5!)

    https://app.musicleague.com/l/3d2c21ad32fd4e58add97006df33d0c9/


    Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:


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


    Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now!


    Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now!


    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    59 min
  • A Pod Full of Tangents

    Episode 76: A Pod Full of Tangents

    This week’s prompts: Peach, Necktie, 309

    Neal and Lauren lean fully into chaos this week with an episode that earns its title the old-fashioned way: by going absolutely everywhere. What starts as a quick check-in spirals into a joyful, free-range conversation about internet conspiracies, parasocial fandom, doomscrolling, poetry whispered in the middle of the night, Roman fruit paintings, French Impressionists, and the eternal question of whether Doctor Who has queer time-travel fan fiction (spoiler: obviously).

    Lauren takes Peach and turns it into an art-history fever dream, beginning with drunken T.S. Eliot recitations (“Do I dare to eat a peach?”) and winding through ancient Roman still lifes, fuzzy fruit symbolism, and the unexpectedly rich visual history of peaches in painting. From there, she launches into a deep, deliciously nerdy deep dive on Pierre-Auguste Renoir — the Impressionist painter of glowing skin, soft pastels, and famously gravity-defying nudes. She traces his journey from porcelain factory apprentice to founding Impressionist, his crisis of confidence after seeing Raphael and Titian in Italy, his pivot toward classical modeling, and the voluptuous excess of works like The Large Bathers. Along the way: invisible corsets, painterly filters, imposter syndrome, arthritis rumors, nepo-baby descendants, and one of the best art quotes ever: “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”

    By the end, the episode has become exactly what it promised: a pod full of tangents, powered by curiosity, affection, and the belief that sometimes the long way around is the most fun.

    PLUS:
    🍑 Ancient Roman peaches and pre-cultivation fruit history
    📜 Drunk T.S. Eliot poetry as a lifestyle choice
    🎨 Renoir’s glow, his gravity-defying nudes, and Impressionist rebellion
    🩰 Invisible corsets, painterly filters, and the fantasy of beauty
    🧠 Imposter syndrome, artistic reinvention, and why Raphael ruins everything
    📱 Doomscrolling, fandom conspiracies, and the last good corners of the internet

    Next week’s prompts: Peach, Necktie, 309


    Join us on Patreon!

    www.Patreon.com/curatedbychance


    Check out Lauren's Substack:

    https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/

    Join our Music League

    (Volume Five launches This Friday!)
    https://app.musicleague.com/l/3d2c21ad32fd4e58add97006df33d0c9/


    Follow the 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!

    🌐 And for more Neal in your life:
    www.linktr.ee/nealefischer

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    53 min
  • To Couture a Mockingbird

    Episode 75: To Couture a Mockingbird

    This week's prompts: Paper White, 1962, Glasses

    Neal takes 1962 straight to To Kill a Mockingbird, the landmark film adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel that somehow manages to be both gentle and devastating. He talks about Gregory Peck’s towering, quietly radical performance as Atticus Finch; why the movie still holds emotional power decades later; and how its moral clarity feels almost shocking in a modern landscape full of irony and cynicism. Neal also touches on the book’s long history of bans and challenges, why that still matters, and how the film’s restraint — its refusal to sensationalize — is exactly what gives it weight.

    Meanwhile, Lauren unspools the life and legacy of Yves Saint Laurent, the fashion prodigy who permanently changed how women dress. From his early paper-doll designs and meteoric rise at Dior to the creation of ready-to-wear as a democratizing force, Lauren breaks down how Saint Laurent blurred gender lines, mainstreamed women in pants, and fused art, business, and rebellion into a single brand. She digs into his partnership with Pierre Bergé, his friendships and rivalries (Warhol, Lagerfeld), and the darker side of genius — addiction, burnout, and a career that flickered between brilliance and collapse. Along the way, we get couture history, fashion-week mechanics, and why Saint Laurent’s influence still shapes what hangs in our closets today.

    PLUS:
    📚 Why To Kill a Mockingbird still lands — and still gets banned
    ⚖️ Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch as moral north star
    👖 Yves Saint Laurent and the radical act of putting women in pants
    🧵 Couture vs. ready-to-wear, and how fashion actually makes money
    🎨 Genius, excess, and the cost of changing culture

    Next week’s prompts: Peach, 309, Necktie

    Join our show on Patreon:

    www.patreon.com/curatedbychance


    Lauren's substack:

    👉 https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/


    Follow the creators:

    🎧 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!

    🌐 And for more Neal in your life:
    www.linktr.ee/nealefischer


    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1 hr 25 min
  • Down Ghibli Road

    Episode 74: Down Ghibli Road

    This week’s prompts: Bath, Paper White, 70

    It’s New Year’s Eve at Curated by Chance, and Neal and Lauren settle into a quieter, cozier kind of chaos — the kind fueled by lingering colds, holiday brain fog, and the strange emotional clarity that tends to arrive between December 26 and January 1. What starts as a low-key check-in turns into a surprisingly tender conversation about memory, comfort, and the stories that show up exactly when we need them.

    Lauren takes the prompt “Bath” straight into the warm, surreal waters of Spirited Away (2001). What begins as a rewatch with her son becomes a meditation on growing up, fear, and transformation. She explores Chihiro’s journey from frightened child to quiet hero, the dream logic of the bathhouse, and why Miyazaki’s world never explains itself — it simply invites you to exist inside it. From No-Face’s eerie longing to the film’s gentle emotional pacing, Lauren reflects on how Spirited Away trusts its audience in ways most Western animation never dares to.

    Meanwhile, Neal brings in Down Cemetery Road, the moody British mystery series that’s become his latest obsession. Set in a quiet English neighborhood with secrets simmering just beneath the surface, the show taps into a very specific kind of storytelling pleasure: slow-burn tension, intimate character work, and the creeping sense that something is deeply off. Neal talks about the show’s measured pacing, lived-in performances, and why British crime dramas hit differently — less spectacle, more unease. It’s less about “whodunit” and more about the emotional fallout of knowing too much.

    Next week’s prompts: 1962, Glasses, AstroTurf


    Join us on Patreon:

    www.patreon.com/curatedbychance

    👉 https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/

    👉 https://app.musicleague.com/l/6704df400ff1429186ef8bb85e56a488/

    🎧 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!

    📘 Order Neal’s newest book Law & Order: SVU – Confidential (out October 14):
    👉 https://geni.us/HPgeZ

    🌐 And for more Neal in your life:
    www.linktr.ee/nealefischer

    Check Out Lauren’s SubstackJoin The Curated By Chance Music League (Round 4 Sign Up)Follow the show and its creators on Instagram

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    53 min
  • Johnny Galecki is My Wingman

    Episode 73: Johnny Galecki Is My Wingman

    This week’s prompts: Attic, Fur, 160

    Neal and Lauren close out the holiday season with migraines, subzero temperatures, Christmas Eve recording energy, and an episode that somehow becomes both a love letter to seasonal chaos and a rom-com–worthy personal anecdote.

    Neal takes “Attic” straight to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) — the quintessential “everything goes wrong” holiday classic that turns good intentions into full-blown festive disaster. He walks Lauren (who has somehow never seen it) through Clark Griswold’s doomed quest for the perfect Christmas, unpacking iconic moments like the blinding house lights, Cousin Eddie’s RV arrival, the squirrel chaos, and that legendary Jelly of the Month Club rant. Along the way, Neal dishes out a sleigh-full of behind-the-scenes stories: a deceased trained squirrel, cue cards , an unscripted crotch grab into the final cut, and why this movie accidentally helped give us Home Alone. It’s pratfalls, pine sap, and pure holiday mayhem — with a surprising amount of heart.

    Meanwhile, Lauren picks up “Attic” in a very different way, launching into a sharp, funny, and surprisingly moving breakdown of The Husbands by Holly Gramazio — a magical-realist novel about a woman whose attic functions as a portal dispensing an endless supply of husbands. She unpacks the book’s clever metaphor for modern dating, choice paralysis, grief, and self-definition, spotlighting standout husbands, the running Netflix joke, and why the book’s ending lands with such emotional precision. It’s funny, thoughtful, occasionally dark, and deeply relatable — even when the premise is completely bonkers.

    And then — because this is Curated by Chance — Neal casually drops a real-life holiday rom-com story in which Johnny Galecki accidentally becomes his wingman. Yes, that Johnny Galecki. Sometimes the universe just hands you a third-act twist.

    PLUS:
    🎄 Why Christmas Vacation still feels painfully accurate
    🐿️ Dead squirrels, wild squirrels, and very nervous stunt warnings
    📖 Magical realism as dating allegory (and emotional survival guide)
    💍 The grief of losing a perfect husband… to an attic portal
    🍸 Johnny Galecki, Midwest bars, and the power of accidental celebrity proximity

    Next week’s prompts: Bath, Paper White, 70


    Join us on Patreon:

    www.Patreon.com/curatedbychance


    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]

    Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now!

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1 hr 6 min
  • Dancin' Slow

    Episode 72: Dancin' Slow

    This week’s prompts: Goldenrod, 919, Hat

    Lauren returns — coughs muted, spirits high — and Neal officially hands the mic back after last week’s Bond-fueled solo outing. What follows is a cozy, conversational episode that blends modern art theory, eccentric geniuses, and a little bit of podcast navel-gazing as the two reflect on growth, gratitude, and why structure can sometimes be the ultimate form of freedom.

    Lauren takes Goldenrod and 919 straight into the world of Piet Mondrian, the Dutch modernist whose grids of black lines and primary colors became one of the most recognizable visual languages of the 20th century. She traces Mondrian’s journey from impressionist windmills to Cubist experimentation to the radical philosophy of De Stijl and neoplasticism, unpacking how horizontal and vertical lines were meant to represent nothing less than the underlying structure of the universe. Along the way: theosophy, occult philosophies, jazz clubs, secret flower paintings, rigid diets, racist pseudoscience, and the deeply funny revelation that Mondrian — stoic grid-master — loved dancing the Charleston.

    Meanwhile, Neal reacts in real time, connecting Mondrian’s self-imposed artistic rules to movements like Dogme 95, modern minimalism, and why restriction often produces innovation. The conversation drifts into Mondrian’s lasting influence on fashion (hello, Yves Saint Laurent), graphic design, architecture, and pop culture — including why his work keeps resurfacing every few decades as the ultimate visual reset.

    In between, the two share Spotify Wrapped–style listener stats, celebrate international fans, and marvel at the strange, wonderful overlap between art nerds, trivia lovers, audiobook obsessives, and people who just really liked an episode called Wash Your Damn Hands.


    Next week’s prompts: Attic, Fur, 160


    Join our Patreon!

    www.Patreon.com/curatedbychance

    Check Out Lauren’s Substack:

    👉 https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/

    Join The Curated By Chance Music League (Round 4 Sign Up):

    👉 https://app.musicleague.com/l/6704df400ff1429186ef8bb85e56a488/

    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!

    📘 Order Neal’s newest book Law & Order: SVU – Confidential (out October 14):

    👉 https://geni.us/HPgeZ

    And for more Neal in your life:

    🌐 www.linktr.ee/nealefischer

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    56 min
  • The Gold Standard

    Episode 71: The Gold Standard

    This week’s prompts: Goldenrod, 919, Hat

    Neal’s flying solo this week — migraine hangover, holiday chaos, Lauren home sick — but he shows up with a gleaming, gadget-packed deep dive into Goldfinger (1964), the Bond movie that became the blueprint for all Bonds to come. From Ian Fleming naming his villain out of pure pettiness to the film’s choice to replace a convoluted Fort Knox heist with an elegant “poison the gold” scheme, Neal breaks down how Goldfinger sharpened every piece of the franchise into the gold standard.

    It’s a whirlwind of gold paint, gadgets, henchmen, and cinematic swagger — plus a look ahead at where Bond might go next under Amazon and who’s circling the 007 mantle now.

    PLUS:

    🏆 The petty real-life inspiration behind Auric Goldfinger

    🎶 Shirley Bassey, Jimmy Page, and the most iconic Bond theme ever recorded

    🎩 Oddjob’s killer hat and Q’s weaponized DB5

    💥 The laser table scene that redefined villainy


    Join us on Patreon:

    www.patreon.com/curatedbychance


    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]⁠

    Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now!

    Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now!

    Order Neal’s newest book Law & Order: SVU – Confidential (out October 14): 👉 ⁠https://geni.us/HPgeZ⁠

    And for more Neal in your life: 🌐 ⁠www.linktr.ee/nealefischer⁠

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1 hr 5 min
  • Broad on a Couch

    Episode 70: Broad on a Couch

    This week’s prompts: 1717, Arena, Titian Red

    Neal and Lauren kick off the post–Thanksgiving stretch with an episode powered by heating pads, sunglasses, and sheer stubbornness. Neal shows up bundled in a hood, nursing shoulder pain and a barometric-pressure headache, while Lauren juggles the last week of classes, giant waitlists, and adjunct life.

    Neal takes “Arena” (and a little bit of “Titian Red”) straight into The Running Man (1987), the gaudy, neon-drenched Arnold Schwarzenegger cult classic loosely based on Stephen King’s Richard Bachman novel. He breaks down how the original bleak, globe-spanning manhunt of the book got reshaped into a gladiatorial TV deathmatch; why King refused to have his real name on the movie; and how the film swaps an everyman desperate to save his sick daughter for an ultra-jacked, framed helicopter pilot with an endless supply of one-liners. From American Gladiators–style stalkers (Fireball! Sub-Zero! Dynamo in a light-up diaper!) to Richard Dawson’s inspired turn as sadistic game show host Damon Killian, Neal unpacks the casting, the chaotic production history (multiple directors, Starsky-as-director Paul Michael Glaser, and hurt feelings from Arnold), and the bizarrely prescient “deepfake” climax that confused 1980s audiences. He also looks ahead to Edgar Wright’s new, more book-faithful adaptation starring Glenn Powell — complete with a blessing from Arnold himself.

    Meanwhile, Lauren grabs “Titian Red” and delivers a lush, art-historical love letter to Titian, the 16th-century Venetian master whose women, fabrics, and hair basically rewired Western painting. She traces his path from Bellini workshop kid to international court painter for dukes, popes, and emperors; explains how his portrait Man with a Quilted Sleeve inspired Rembrandt; and then settles into a sensual close-reading of the Venus of Urbino. Is she a mythic goddess? A high-end courtesan? A new bride waiting in a palace bedroom while the ladies root through her dowry chest? Lauren breaks down the jewelry, the sleepy dog of fidelity, the flowers, the direct eye contact, and why a bit of strategic nudity plus a mythological fig leaf made it “okay” for a not-so-celibate cardinal-in-training to hang in his room. She closes with Titian’s late “magic impressionism,” his plague-era death, and how “Titian hair” became shorthand for rich red locks all the way to Anne of Green Gables.

    In between, the two take a detour into modern stardom and the Glenn Powell Industrial Complex: Tom Cruise mentorship, Hollywood’s desperate search for the next capital-M Movie Star, Roman Reigns as a wrestling parallel, and why the studio machine trying to manufacture a “relatable leading man” feels a lot more obvious in the age of Instagram, fan cams, and micro-fandoms.

    PLUS:
    🎮 The Running Man as proto–reality TV fever dream
    📺 Richard Dawson weaponizing his game show charm as a dystopian villain
    ⚡ Opera-singing stalkers, flamethrowers, and the most 80s cast list imaginable
    🖼️ Titian’s Venus of Urbino and the long, horny history of “it’s not porn, it’s mythology”
    🧡 “Titian red” hair, Renaissance fashion as identity, and why jewelry makes nudes feel even more naked
    🌟 Glenn Powell, Tom Cruise, and Hollywood’s struggle to mint a new generation of marquee names

    Next week’s prompts: Goldenrod, 919, Hat

    Join us on Patreon:

    www.patreon.com/curatedbychance

    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]

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

    📘 Order Neal’s newest book Law & Order: SVU – Confidential (out October 14):
    👉 https://geni.us/HPgeZ

    And for more Neal in your life:
    🌐 www.linktr.ee/nealefischer

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1 hr 12 min
  • Podcast Therapy

    Episode 69: Podcast Therapy


    This week’s prompts: Turquoise, 110, Watermark

    Neal and Lauren fight through Thanksgiving-week chaos, closet recording, AirPods audio, and a brutal Zoom delay to bring you an episode that accidentally turns into group therapy — in the best way.

    Lauren takes “turquoise” straight to the American Southwest by way of Wisconsin with a rich, nuanced dive into the life and work of Georgia O’Keeffe. From her early training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League, to her complicated relationship with photographer and champion Alfred Stieglitz, Lauren traces how O’Keeffe moved from charcoal abstraction to monumental flowers, New York skyscrapers, and the bone-and-desert landscapes of Ghost Ranch. Along the way, she busts the “vagina flower” myth, talks about O’Keeffe’s resistance to being labeled a “woman artist,” and explains why the artist’s prickly independence still makes her feel so modern — even as her paintings disappear into private collections.

    Meanwhile, Neal grabs the “110” prompt and goes full pressure-cooker with Falling Down (1993), Joel Schumacher’s tense, divisive portrait of a man who absolutely should have gone to therapy instead of terrorizing Los Angeles. He walks us through Michael Douglas’s infamous D-FENS — short-sleeve shirt, flat-top, briefcase, and all — and the film’s odyssey structure, from the overpriced soda in the corner store to the legendary Whammy Burger breakfast meltdown and a horrifying detour through a neo-Nazi surplus shop. Neal digs into the film’s early-’90s LA context, its connection to American rage, economic anxiety, and white male grievance, and why the final “I’m the bad guy?” moment still hits uncomfortably hard.

    Then, in true Podcast Therapy fashion, the conversation swerves into real talk: male loneliness, the thin line between anger and sadness, revenge as a brain addiction, and why misery might be more contagious than we think. Lauren breaks down anger and grief as “roommates,” Neal brings in a book about the neuroscience of revenge, and together they make a compelling case that a lot of what we call “snapping” is really untreated sadness… plus a broken air conditioner.

    PLUS:
    💐 Georgia O’Keeffe’s flowers, bones, and “witch of the Southwest” era
    🏜️ Ghost Ranch, feminist iconography, and why she hated everyone’s interpretations
    🚗 Road rage, the 110, and the early-’90s LA anxiety baked into Falling Down
    🍔 The Whammy Burger scene and the fantasy of yelling “this doesn’t look like the picture!”
    🧠 Anger vs. sadness, revenge circuitry, and why men will literally shoot up Los Angeles instead of going to therapy

    Next week’s prompts: 1717, Arena, Titian Red


    Join us Patreon:

    www.Patreon.com/curatedbychance

    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]

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

    📘 Order Neal’s newest book Law & Order: SVU – Confidential (out October 14):
    👉 https://geni.us/HPgeZ

    And for more Neal in your life:
    🌐 www.linktr.ee/nealefischer

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    53 min
  • Maybe It's Ghibelline

    Episode 68: Maybe It’s Ghibelline

    This week’s prompts: Charcoal, Record, 1265, Story

    Neal and Lauren dive into political chaos, medieval poetry beef, and paranoid thrillers for an episode that swings from 13th-century Florence to 1980s Philadelphia.

    Lauren takes the year 1265 and spins it into a fiery tour through Dante Alighieri’s life, exile, enemies, and the giant, cosmic fanfiction we now call The Divine Comedy. She breaks down the Guelphs vs. Ghibellines feud (and then the even pettier White vs. Black Guelph split), how Dante wrote in Italian instead of Latin to reshape an entire language, and why Beatrice lives rent-free in the author’s imagination. From the nine circles of Hell to that iconic three-part afterlife road trip with Virgil as tour guide, Lauren untangles how one poet turned politics, heartbreak, and theology into the most influential self-insert narrative in history.

    Meanwhile, Neal takes “Record” literally with Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (1981) — the sound-obsessed, paranoia-drenched thriller where John Travolta accidentally captures audio evidence of an assassination. Neal digs into De Palma’s cinematic lineage, how Blow Out riffs on Blow-Up and The Conversation, why the film basically invented its own genre of political dread, and the glorious insanity of the director’s beloved split-diopter shots. Expect Travolta love, Nancy Allen appreciation, Lithgow creepiness, and a crash-course in De Palma’s entire filmmaking DNA.

    PLUS:
    🔥 Dante’s exile and the pettiest political grudges of medieval Italy
    📚 Why The Divine Comedy shaped the afterlife in Western art
    🎙️ Blow Out and the conspiracy thriller hall of fame
    🔪 John Lithgow doing John Lithgow things
    🎥 Split diopters, deep focus, and De Palma’s visual mischief


    BLOW OUT FULL FILM:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z20y1YqCc0Y

    SPLIT DIOPTER SHORT EXPLANATION:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6HkQvH5QvM

    Next week’s prompts: Turquoise, 110, Watermark

    Join us on Patreon:

    www.Patreon.com/curatedbychance

    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]

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

    📘 Pre-Order Neal’s newest book Law & Order: SVU – Confidential (out October 14):
    👉 https://geni.us/HPgeZ

    And for more Neal in your life:
    🌐 www.linktr.ee/nealefischer

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1 hr 11 min

About Curated by Chance

From the publisher's feed

Join filmmaker Neal E. Fischer and art curator Lauren Tagliaferro as they dive into the unpredictable world of ‘Curated by Chance,’ a podcast where creativity meets serendipity. Each episode, Neal and…

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