Overthinking It Podcast

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Overthinking It Podcast episodes

February 13, 2023 Episode 763: The World Ended and I’m Still Here
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Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather consider the the oddly static halftime show from 2023’s Super Bowl, as well as this year’s ads, in all their dreamlike unreality.
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Episode 763: The World Ended and I’m Still Here originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]
59 min
February 06, 2023Episode 762: Sell Everything You Own and Come Follow Me… to My Animal Crossing Island
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Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather read a couple of studies about loneliness, and elaborate upon their implications for various kinds of online social interactions.
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Further Reading
“New Social Horizons: Anxiety, Isolation, and Animal Crossing During the COVID-19 Pandemic”
Animal Crossing and Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Wikipedia
“Loneliness across cultures with different levels of social embeddedness: A qualitative study”
“The Politics Of Loneliness” (538 Politics Podcast)
Episode 762: Sell Everything You Own and Come Follow Me… to My Animal Crossing Island originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]
1 hr 9 min
January 30, 2023 Episode 761: Maybe It’s Only 500 People, I Don’t Know
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Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather transition from last week’s IMAX-scale megablockbuster to the more intimate domestic setting of the streaming service, which they find leaner and slightly meaner than when last they checked in on what was formerly the golden age of television®. We discuss whether you should sell your couch or burn it, owning your media, our many streaming services, the economic changes in the streaming media game, and some shows that have been capturing our attention recently.
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Episode 761: Maybe It’s Only 500 People, I Don’t Know originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]
1 hr 13 min
January 23, 2023Episode 760: The Everything Movie
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On the 15th anniversary of Overthinking It, Matthew Belinkie and Mark Lee overthink Avatar: The Way of Water with passion and sincere awe, while host Pete Fenzel harnesses active listening techniques to resist making fun of a 3+ hour movie he hasn’t seen about child aliens holding their breath. Cultural and psychological integration, Bruce Lee, anti-colonial/anti-capitalist resistance, models of personal, teleological, and ecological immortality, and the oversexed but sexless man-camp of Duke Nukem all play into the earnest, patient consideration of a sequel to a movie we panned on this site before it came out. (And after.)
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Further Reading
Further reading:
How to Become a Better Listener, by Robin Abrahams and Boris Groysberg in The Harvard Business Review
Previous Overthinking It articles and podcasts on Avatar
The Official Duke Nukem 3D Soundboard on Voicy
Abrahams’ and Groysberg’s nine tips for active listening:
Repeat people’s last few words back to them.
Don’t “put it in your own words” unless you need to.
Offer nonverbal cues that you’re listening — but only if it comes naturally to you.
Pay attention to nonverbal cues.
Ask more questions than you think you need to.
Minimize distractions as much as possible.
Acknowledge shortcomings.
Don’t rehearse your response while the other person is talking.
Monitor your emotions.
Abrahams’ and Groysberg’s seven behaviors for active listening:
Hearing
Auditory processing
Reading body language, tone of voice, or social cues accurately
Maintaining attention
Regulating your emotional response
Integrating multiple sources of information.
“Performing” active listening (e.g., eye contact, nodding, appropriate facial expressions)
Episode 760: The Everything Movie originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]
1 hr 12 min
January 16, 2023Episode 759: A Gelatinous Kerfuffle
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Actual lawyer Ben Adams joins Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather to discuss the internet controversy over the badly-managed leak of the Open Game License 1.1. We get really deep into Red Elixir YouTube.
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Further Reading
The SRD5 and OGL 1.0a
Episode 759: A Gelatinous Kerfuffle originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]
1 hr 13 min
January 09, 2023 Episode 758: What Makes a “Knives Out” a “Knives Out”?
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Matthew Belinkie joins Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather to overthink Glass Onion (a Knives Out Mystery), enjoying the stylishness of the storytelling and filmmaking, but having a little trouble peeling back the layers to understand the social commentary that everyone seems so sure is there.
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Episode 758: What Makes a “Knives Out” a “Knives Out”? originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]
1 hr 10 min
January 02, 2023Episode 757: The Emperor Has No Curtains
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Peter Fenzel has never seen The Sound of Music. But Mark Lee has been to see a live production of it recently, so Pete watches it with Mark and Matthew Wrather, and finds in it a latent conflict between Prussian vs Austrian values, a gendered allegory of domination in the political and domestic sphere, and a delightful meal of Schnitzel with Noodles.
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Further Reading
“No Way To Stop It” (a song from the stage musical; not in the film)
Countries holding territory that once belonged to the Habsburg Dynasty (Imgur)
Historical Lectures from The National WWI Museum (YouTube)
Episode 757: The Emperor Has No Curtains originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]
1 hr 11 min
December 26, 2022Episode 756: Structural, Load-Bearing Gingerbread
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Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Christmas food traditions of today and of days past, straddle the poultry/boeuf divide (which is to say, the Thanksgiving/Christmas divide), eat seasonally, or at least insufferably, and take a peculiar lesson from Bruce Lee: Be like whiskey, my friend.
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Further Reading
“Episode 491: Tarving the Curkey”
The Marshmallow Test
“How to Spatchcock a Turkey”
Honeybaked Ham Stores
Episode 756: Structural, Load-Bearing Gingerbread originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]
1 hr 4 min
December 19, 2022Episode 755: All The Christmases Roll Down toward the Two-Tongued Sea
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Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather deliver this years Christmas Litcast, overthinking Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” They discuss the work’s distinctive form, comparing it to slam poetry, and delve into the specifics of its scenes, focused on memory, nostalgia, aging, so-called childhood “innocence,” and how literature produces truth.
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Further Reading
“A Child’s Christmas in Wales” by Dylan Thomas
Read by the author
Wikipedia
“A Visit from Saint Nicholas (in the Ernest Hemingway Manner)” by James Thurber
Episode 755: All The Christmases Roll Down toward the Two-Tongued Sea originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]
1 hr 6 min
December 12, 2022 Episode 754: Each of Us Is a Brick in the Wall
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Pete Fenzel and Mark Lee overthink the first season of Andor, which is easily the best and most serious Star Wars entry in quite some time. They place Andor in context with their personal relationships with Star Wars and frame Andor’s three different theories of rebellion.
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Further Reading
Excerpt from Nemiks’ Manifesto
There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.
Remember this, Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.
And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.
Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.
Remember this: Try.
Luthen’s Monologue
Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion, I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.
What is my sacrifice?
I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude.
So what do I sacrifice?
Everything!
Maarva’s post-mortem funeral speech
My name is Maarva Carrassi Andor. I’m honored to stand before you. I’m honored to be a Daughter of Ferrix, and honored to be worthy of the stone.
Strange, I… feel as if I can see it. I was six, I think, first time i touched a funerary stone. Heard our music, felt our history, holding my sisters hand as we walked all the way from Fountain Square. Where you stand now, I’ve been more times than i can remember.
I always wanted to be lifted. I was always eager, always waiting to be inspired. I remember every time it happened, every time the dead lifted me… with their truth. And now I’m dead, and I yearn to lift you. Not because i want to shine or even be remembered. It’s because i want you to go on. I want Ferric to continue. In my waining hours, thats what comforts me most.
But I fear for you. We’ve been sleeping. We’ve had each other, and Ferrix, our work, our days. We had each other and they left us alone. We kept the trade lane open, and they left us alone. We took their money and ignored them, we kept their engine churning, and the moment they pulled away. we forgot them. (SIGH) Because we had each other. We had Ferrix. But we were sleeping. I’ve been sleeping. And I’ve been turning away from the truth I wanted not to face.
There is a wound that won’t heal at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything around us. We let it grow, and now it’s here. It’s here and it’s not visiting anymore. It wants to stay.
The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness, it is never more alive than when we asleep. It’s easy for the dead to tell you to fight, and maybe it’s true, maybe fighting is useless. Perhaps it’s too late. But I’ll tell you this, if I could do it again, I’d wake up early and be fighting those bastards from the start! Fight the Empire!”
Episode 754: Each of Us Is a Brick in the Wall originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]
1 hr 26 min