Overthinking It Podcast

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month!

Matthew Belinkie joins Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather to overthink season 2 of Ted Lasso. They do their best to cope with a season that had many high points but less cohesion that one might have hoped.

Download (MP3)

Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps

Episode 694: Richmond Family Bubble 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)]

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month!

Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather enjoyed the final James Bond film with Daniel Craig, No Time to Die, overthinking it from every angle, from parsing the title to exploring the film’s surprising dichotomy, dualism, and dialectic. What has changed, what hasn’t changed, and will this film champion Bond-ness or consign him as a relic to the dustbin of history?

Download (MP3)

Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps

Episode 693: The Bondiest Thing to Do 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)]

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month!

Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather celebrate the harvest season by celebrating apple picking, the festive emulation by urbanites of back-breaking agriculture labor, which ends in a long drive home hauling more apples than you have ever eaten before in your life.

Download (MP3)

Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps

Episode 692: Ensconcing Yourself in Sexual Plaid 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)]

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month!

Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather convene a seminar to overthink The Chair, the new Netflix series starring Sandra Oh which mixes academic politics and personal struggles with jolts of humor. They try to untangle the show’s comment on the place of colleges, humanities, and professors in the culture; the show’s messy texture; and the map of interpretation and misinterpretation which serves as the through-line.

Download (MP3)

Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps

Episode 691: Hamilton Face with a Melville Booty 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)]

Join the Overthinking It Discord!

Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather spend a moment remembering Norm Macdonald and reflecting on his unique style. Then they dive in to overthink the new, new list of the greatest 500 songs of all time from Rolling Stone. They do a full Infinity War take on it: From “Where is the 500 greatest songs?”  to “Who is the 500 greatest songs?” and ending with, “Why is the 500 greatest songs?” They spend some time thinking about the coherence, integrity, and methodology of the list; think a while about the difference between the best, greatest, and most favorite songs; and end up in the realm of post-structuralist philosophy, because of course they do.

Download (MP3)

Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps

Episode 690: Just Take Those Old Records Off The Shelf 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)]

Join the Overthinking It Discord Server

Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the surprise Labor Day hit which is the newest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and an answer to some of the Orientalism which has characterized Marvel’s previous Asian characters. The Overthinkers find that while the film is about two dragons fighting over a pearl, there’s enough nuance and individuality the film, and some wonderful performances by the cast, that it turns out better than it had any right to be.

Spoiler alert for Planet of the Apes.

Download (MP3)

Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps

Episode 689: The Legend of Scrutiny 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)]

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month!

Peter Fenzel, Jordan Stokes, and Matthew Wrather set out on a knightly quest to overthink The Green Knight, the new art film (really, they haven’t made films this arty since the 1970s and it’s great to know they still can!) The Green Knight, as well as the source material from which it is very loosely adapted, the late-medieval alliterative poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”

Bonus information about how to dress a deer.

Download (MP3)

Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps

Episode 688: He Has Completed the Side-Quest to Return Winifred’s Head 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)]

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month!

Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather wade into the murky waters of Reminiscence, the murky near-future post-apocalyptic neo-noir written and directed by Lisa Joy (Westworld) and starring Wolverine.

This movie bombed. $1.9M opening weekend. And it didn’t cost Avengers money but it wasn’t cheap. This in itself is fascinating, and it’s fascinating to look at what didn’t work about the movie and to consider what it might have been.

Spoilers for Orpheus and Eurydice.

Download (MP3)

Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps

Episode 687: Super-Threatening Fish of an Unclear Nature 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)]

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month!

Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather overthink Val, which uses film and videotape shot by the actor Val Kilmer over the course of his life and career in order to tell the story of his life and career, puzzling out what it means to look back at moments in time; what kind of person emerges in Val Kilmer’s portrait of himself; and how closely he stuck to his aim to make a movie “about acting.”

Download (MP3)

Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps

Episode 686: A Film With Documents 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)]

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month!

Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Sony’s The Mitchells vs. The Machines, which is a heartwarming tale of a family learning to love one another and thwarting a robot uprising. Or is it?! We peel back the layers to find (and thankfully avert) a dark, Freudian psychosexual parable, a slightly confused message about the miracles and the dangers of technology, and a challenging and fascinating visual style.

Download (MP3)

Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps

Episode 685: What Do People Her Age Say? Hits Different. 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)]