DINNER PARTNERS with Christopher & Eric

Your hosts Christopher and Eric are accustomed to reporting on disturbing stories long past or far away, but this week they found themselves living at the center of frightening international news as a series of horrific and unprecedented firestorms ravaged Los Angeles County. In this episode, they share their own evacuation story as the Sunset Fire threatened their beloved hometown of West Hollywood. They also share the crash course they received in wind patterns, Southern California geography and the frightening intricacies of wildfires, an ancient menace that is growing ever more fearsome in these changing times. While they’re fortunate to be among the lucky ones who didn’t lose their lives or homes, their experience of the City of Angels has been forever changed.

Christopher and Eric continue to enjoy their “off world time” in response to the garbage fire of a year that was 2024. Out Of This World month heads to the New Mexico desert by way of one of the most beloved non-fiction television series of all time, UNSOLVED MYSTERIES. In 1989, the iconic show introduced mainstream audiences to the Roswell conspiracy and its shocking implications about life from other worlds. How does that seminal episode compare with their most recent follow up in the new Netflix version of the show? Lucky for you, Christopher and Eric are serving up both. Your hosts might have been looking for an escape from reality with this one, but some of the theories it brings in for a crash landing seem solid.

Given how 2024 wrapped up, Christopher and Eric have no interest in spending the first month of 2025 talking about the news on this planet, so get ready for Out Of This World Month, a series of episodes devoted to extraterrestrial happenings, abductions, crashes and conspiracies so far out you’ll need a teleportation device to see them through. How is it possible Christopher and Eric have gone this long skewering fact free TV nonsense without serving up a show as absurd as ANCIENT ALIENS? Could it be because episodes like season 19, episode 15, entitled “Edgar Cayce —The Sleeping Prophet” have a troubling connection to Christopher’s family?

All I Want For Christmas Month — and 2024 itself — comes to what we hope is an optimistic close with this episode focused on our highest hopes for the year to come. We’re replacing those pesky, self-critical New Year’s resolutions with big dreams and even bigger commitments. On The Dinner Party Show’s Facebook page, we turned to you, our Party People, to hear your strategies for cultivating joy in the face of world events that can inspire dread.  Making art, welcoming new life, holding your heads high in the face of bullies and bigots — your answers ran the gamut, inspiring a rousing discussion of politics, the nature of happiness and the long arc of history and mental health.

Christopher and Eric continue All I Want For Christmas Month with a desperate plea for help from you, their beloved Party People. Please find them some holiday themed true crime TV episodes that aren’t hideously nightmare inducing. Your hosts decided to divide up the work this year, delivering dueling Christmastime massacres, one of which may well win the dark distinction of the most disturbing story ever discussed on the podcast. Listen to find out which episode of HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS takes the gory prize. Christopher comes bearing episode 5 of season 2 entitled “Christmas Rampage”, and Eric dives down the chimney to avoid the predators on not-so-merry display in episode 2 of season 5, entitled “Six Slays of Christmas”.

It was a year of smart, eccentric detectives and a surprise epic that captivated American audiences even though most of it wasn’t in English. Christopher and Eric serve up their favorite entertainment offerings from 2024, a year they’d otherwise like to forget. Compare and contrast with the small screen highlights they singled out back in May on Episode 232. Did SHOGUN live up to its epic promise? Did MARY & GEORGE continue to break new ground after Eric enjoyed its first two episodes? What newcomers joined the pack? The answers are all here. (If you’re expecting your hosts to list their favorite movies, don’t hold your breath. Listen to find out why.) All I Want For Christmas Month continues with gifts that come in high definition packages.

All I Want For Christmas Month begins with a perspective-giving crash course in how bad a bad year can be. True crime takes a backseat to true catastrophe as Christopher and Eric count down the final weeks of 2024, a year they’d desperately like to put in their rearview mirror. What better way to distract themselves from the personal disasters that littered their last twelve months than with some historical cataclysms that put the trials of these dreadful 365 days in perspective. Christopher takes us to the Canary Islands in 1977 where bad planning and a pilot’s arrogance put two fully loaded 747s on a collision course with fiery hell — and dramatically improved safety regulations for the aviation industry. Then Eric ships us off to the Sunda Strait, 1883, where the island of Krakatoa teaches us humbling — and terrifying — lessons about the fragility of life and the power of the earth underfoot, lessons  literally heard halfway around the world.

Having devoted their previous episodes to retail-related abuse and a gruesome family massacre, Christopher and Eric explore the lighter shade of Black Friday — the gifts! They turned to you, our beloved Party People, on The Dinner Party Show’s Facebook page to hear about the most memorable and cherished gifts that have come your way during the holiday season. Your moving answers allowed Black Friday Month to end on a lighter note, offering us the break we all needed from the usual holiday horrors offered up by the world’s true crime media and us.

Every holiday season, your hosts Christopher and Eric search high and low for a holiday themed true crime story that goes easy on the bloodshed. A high-speed chase involving a van full of stolen frozen turkeys, perhaps? No such luck again this year. Once again, we were confronted with the same gory buffet of holiday horrors, giving us no choice but to continue a dark – dare we day black -- TDPS tradition.  In season 4, episode 7 of the Peacock series HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS, entitled “Cold Turkey”, Brent and Charlotte Springford have just returned home after a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with their daughter. Unbeknownst to them, a vicious predator awaits them in the shadows of their luxurious Montgomery, Alabama mansion. Black Friday Month continues with the tale of a gruesome murder that was discovered on Black Friday itself.

Black Friday Month continues with an unconventional installment of Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club in which the victims range from the self-esteem of teenage girls everywhere to the coastline of an African nation. Ever heard of fast fashion? Christopher and Eric hadn’t until they watched this eye-opening documentary BRANDY HELLVILLE & THE CULT OF FAST FASHION on Max. Follow along on this globe-trotting journey from a small Italian town known for fashion prowess (and fraud), to the struggling nation of Ghana to a Santa Monica, California boutique where the customers become unqualified employees and ultimately victims of this head spinning con job involving smoke, mirrors, misogyny and shirts that are only meant to be worn several times before landing in the trash where the journey to their final tragic destination only begins.