Roy is speed-dating and it’s controversial! Anger is good fuel, except when it’s not. And cliques are the same as factions are the same as posses--or are they? There’s always stuff to unpack on Ted Lasso, even when not everything works in the episode... or perhaps a payoff is coming?

Thanks for tuning in. We’ll be here every Monday to unpack the previous week’s episode of Ted Lasso. We’ll also be discussing Spider-Man: Brand New Day soon, and perhaps Coyote v. Acme.

Subscribe to Pop Culture Pastors Hour on Substack or the podcast app of your choice to get the latest and greatest. Onward. Forward.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pcph.substack.com

Andor fans! Faye Marsay is in the house! Vel has joined the Ted Lasso Cinematic Universe!

Our “Ted Talks” continue with episode 3 of Ted Lasso season 4, “Richmond’s Got Talent.” We start with an assessment of the season thus far—what’s working and what’s not—before diving into some details, then finishing as we always do with one bigger nugget from each of us.

The next couple Ted Talks are TBD due to vacations and holidays, but in general, we’re here on Mondays to discuss the previous week’s episode. Subscribe to Pop Culture Pastors Hour on Substack or the podcast app of your choice to get the latest and greatest. Onward. Forward.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pcph.substack.com

Today is a bit of a different PCPH - We’re not only focusing on a book (instead of a movie or a show) but we are missing someone! MaryAnn’s number hasn’t come up in the library hold list for Theo of Golden so she deferred to Ed and to our guest, Rev. Don Meeks, to dig into this beautiful book.

We cover a lot of ground in this episode from not only details of the book (without major spoilers) but also how the book has affected each of us in our lives and in our pastoral ministries.

One book that was referenced in the conversation is To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue. You can find that book here if you are interested (and you should be - its beautiful).

MaryAnn will be back on Monday at 1pm as we do our next Ted Talk on episode 3 of season 4 of Ted Lasso (which premiered today!)

Thanks Don for joining us!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pcph.substack.com

Quick note - something went goofy with Substack’s “auto-edit” of the video and we lost about the first 90 seconds or so. I keep getting an error message try to get it to be fixed. So I’m just going with it as it is. Ah technology. :-)

Ted is back in Richmond! Beard is being very strange! And Alice Chilton is an instant hit! Our “Ted Talks” continue with episode 2 of Ted Lasso season 4, “Curiouser and Curiouser.” We start with some random tidbits (here’s the link to the song MaryAnn mentioned from season 3 episode 11, which we get a piano version of in this episode) and then finishing with one bigger nugget from each of us. This week: inequities in women’s sports, plus the relational and generational dynamics in the feminist movement.

In case you missed it, MaryAnn wrote here last week about Ted and the power of “cringe.”

Also, here’s a great article from The Athletic about what Ted has walked into. This is a gift link - hopefully it works for anyone who clicks it…

Ted Lasso Accidentally Stumbles into Women’s Soccer’s Biggest Coaching Problem

We’ll be back every Monday, usually at 1 p.m Eastern, for another Ted Talk. See you then!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pcph.substack.com

Grrr... or as Roy Kent would say, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuudge.”

Thanks to Ed’s coming to Northern Virginia for a family visit, we were so excited to be able to record together (with a puppy-cam for Scout), but started out with some tech issues! We worked those out and the recording you have before you is intact. HOWEVER, the 5 minutes of technical glitchiness are included at the end of this post for those who are interested (note that most of it is without audio but the gesticulations remain). Enjoy.

We had a great time dishing about episode 1 of Ted Lasso season 4, starting with some random tidbits (so many Easter Eggs! Wizard of Oz references!) and then finishing with one bigger “nugget” from each of us.

Here’s a link to Ed’s post about curiosity. And subscribe to MaryAnn’s newsletter, The Blue Room, where she’ll be writing about Ted and the power of “cringe” coming this Friday August 14.

MaryAnn referenced Jason Sudeikis’s Kansas City-based fundraiser concert, Thundergong, which raises funds for amputees. Here’s a video of Jason and Hannah Waddingham singing together. Perfection.

And here’s the “curiosity, not judgment” scene from Season 1

Here’s the outtakes from today…

We’ll be back every Monday at 1 p.m Eastern for another Ted Talk. See you then!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pcph.substack.com

Spoiler alert: we loved it! Christopher Nolan’s telling of the Odyssey is engaging, thoughtful, and visually arresting. We talk about Zeus’s law (which has some resonances with Jesus’ law), trauma, regret, and memory. Plus some truly incredibly body horror.

A few links mentioned:

Bettina Love talks about the underground railroad, which ran on hospitality and trust

Hospitality, the Odyssey, and Sodom and Gomorrah

And coming next week! We’ll be doing weekly “Ted Talks” in response to each episode of Ted Lasso. Join us Mondays at 1 p.m.

Thanks for joining us… and as always, thanks for sharing, rating, and reviewing Pop Culture Pastors Hour.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pcph.substack.com

The only thing that would have made our conversation more epic was to have that guy with the deep movie trailer voice kicking us off...

He’s a pastor who just finished up a funeral; she’s a pastor who led silly games for a group of kids all morning. Together they are: Pop Culture Pastors Hour.

But seriously...

Today we laid the groundwork for Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey, with discussion of what makes a story “epic,” Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey and critiques of that body of work, whether sweeping stories still matter in the TikTok age, where we see these ideas play out in our faith, and a few of our favorite epic tales.

Join us on July 28 at 3 p.m. EDT as we discuss the film The Odyssey.

Journey (epically) on!

MaryAnn & Ed

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pcph.substack.com

Our “America 250” draft was a blast! Thanks to Marlon Weems for joining us for this exploration of the theme. Each of us built a “team” consisting of one movie, one TV show/episode, one book, one piece of music, and one wild card, designed to convey the breadth of what our country is about—the good, the bad and the aspirational.

So how did we do? Below are our picks. Vote for your favorite lineup in the poll provided. Poll will stay open until July 4, and the winner will be honored with a small donation in their honor to the charity of their choice (Ed: Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Marlon: Save the Children-Gaza, MaryAnn: ProPublica)

Ed’s Team:

* Movie: Hidden Figures

* TV: 30 Days (Morgan Spurlock)

* Book: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown; Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer

* Music: U2’s “American Soul” (with Kendrick Lamar) and “American Obituary”

* Wild Card: Hamilton (Ed’s first-round pick)

Marlon’s Team:

* Movie: Sinners (Marlon’s first-round pick)

* TV: Sugar

* Book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson (especially the audiobook)

* Music: Steely Dan’s “Asia”

* Wild Card: Godfather Parts 1 and 2

MaryAnn’s Team:

* Movie: Apollo 13 (MaryAnn’s first-round pick)

* TV: West Wing Thanksgiving Episodes, season 2 (Shibboleth) and season 3 (Indians in the Lobby)

* Book: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (consider reading Gatsby as a white-passing Black character)

* Music: John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”

* Wild Card: the speech from Independence Day, Bill Pullman

A Few Honorable Mentions:

* Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

* Eyes on the Prize (six-part documentary about the civil rights movement)

* “This Land is Your Land,” Woody Guthrie

* Do the Right Thing

* The Wire

* I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

* Damn, Kendrick Lamar

* Dirty Mind, Prince

* Founding Fathers - Noiser Podcast Network

* Glory - Common and John Legend

* The two Mr Rodgers films that came out - drama with Tom Hanks and the documenary about his life

* In the Heights

Coming up on Pop Culture Pastors Hour: we’re celebrating the release of Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey with an episode about Epic Tales and Origin Stories on July 15 at 1 p.m. and a discussion of the film on July 28 at 3 p.m.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pcph.substack.com

Friends, we are right in the middle of Pride Month - a month to honor the LGBTQ community. There are Pride events taking place all over the world this month and PCPH wanted to join in on the celebration. This is not only a time to celebrate but also to learn - to hear the stories and experiences of those in this beautiful community of people. For our conversation, we were excited to welcome Dr Sebastian Barr who writes here on Substack at Weathering the Storm. Dr. Barr is a counselor and therapist with a focus upon the LGBTQIA+ community.

For our conversation, we had a bunch of different categories that we set up for possible pop culture items and we think we came up with the biggest list yet! But before we get into the categories, Sebastian shared this quote from Drew Gregory about transgender representation that needs to be shared and truly heard.

Like many, I learned about transness from film and television. Movies like Ace Ventura and The 40-Year-Old Virgin told me we should be mocked. Movies like Dressed to Kill and The Silence of the Lambs told me we should be feared. Movies like Dallas Buyers Club and The Danish Girl told me we should be pitied. And then, like lightning to the bolts on the side of my head, shows like Transparent and Sense8 told me we could be human.” – Drew Gregory

So the heart of what we shared in our conversation was about that last part… the humanity of LGBTQ+ people..

Some of our categories were:

* Start ‘Em Young - What was the first representation of an LGBTQ person in media you remember? (unfortunately most are rather problematic)

* For the Joy of It - Just simply letting LGBTQ people live. Nothing special - just the ordinary people they are

* God loves gays - where spirituality/faith and queer identity were woven together meaningfully

* Worst LGBTQ tropes - what stereotypes or cliched representations simply need to never appear AGAIN?

* Favorite representation - What is simply a really good reflection of LGBTQ people

* Stories that pushed me - what stories challenged us to further open understandings?

Many of the examples we shared were in multiple categories so here are a few of them that we particularly wanted to lift up:

* I Saw the TV Glow - Sebastian had an incredible summary of this powerful film trying to help people understand the experience of being transgender

* Semler - Christian LGBTQ musician that Sebastian shared about who will be added to our libraries for sure. (Also, Ed shared about The Many and MaryAnn shared about the song, Testify to Love)

* Casper (1995) - Sebastian shared about this film and opened it up for us in a way we had never considered

* And there’s SO much more - take a listen!

Our next episode is on June 25 as we center on stories of America at 250 with Marlon Weems!

Thanks for tuning in!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pcph.substack.com

No pulling the wool over your eyes as we ask the important question… “Will it preach?” about the recent film, The Sheep Detectives. We shear-ly had some great conversation about this fun film and there were only a few baaaaa-d puns throughout the episode. We cover a lot of areas from the film but mostly we spend time with the flock. As always, you can find past episodes here on Substack or on Apple or Spotify.

Conveniently, MaryAnn brought The Sheep Detectives into her sermon from June 7. You can listen to the message here:

A behind-the-scenes video was mentioned in our conversation and you can check that out here:

Our next scheduled episode is on Thursday, June 25 as we are joined once again by Marlon Weems as we talk America250 films. There may be one or two more that show up between now and then.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pcph.substack.com