Contestants: Jonathan Mishory, Raghuveer Mukkamalla, Jack Rousseau, S. A. Shenoy

Join me and four brave playtesters — including one Zooming along the New Jersey Turnpike (not behind the wheel!) — who said "yes" to NO.  Learn about a dizzyingly wide variety of filmmakers, from a professional pickleball player to the mother of rapper-turned-politician "Young Cardamom" to the man who invented the notion that zombies eat brains AND learn about my favorite stupid joke, my favorite Jeopardy! compliment, my favorite mystery novel that is better than either of its movie adaptations, and the director whose marriage I shall never forgive.  All that, plus documentaries by Oppenheimer and about Barbie (sort of) and a final question in which I pronounce eight French names in a row!

NOTE: I did use editing to fix a factual error within a question.  Try to figure out which one, and then listen to Ewan Munro et al play this set as a Patreon exclusive to see if you were correct!

As always, if you like what you hear, consider donating via Ko-fi or Patreon and remember to leave a review and/or rating on iTunes!

https://www.patreon.com/recreationalthinking
https://ko-fi.com/recreationalthinking

Contestants: Randall Eng, Jing Feng, Andy Greeley, Ewan Munro, Jeffrey Seguritan, Jayanthi Srinivasan

Who needs Gukesh vs. Ding when you have Randall Eng and Ewan Munro duking it out for cinematic-quiz supremacy?  But even as we all compete to mispronounce French names that being with "M," it is Jayanthi who comes out on top with the worst pun--uh, I mean, funniest joke of all.  Sadly, those of you listening to this audio podcast won't get to see Ewan's dancing ... but that's all the more reason to join me in recording future episodes!

Thanks to my playtesters Vince Bacani, Mike Cheyne, Charlie Fritz, Chris Grubb, Raghuveer Mukkamalla, Matt Pashby, Tucker Warner, and Emily White.  (Chris was the original source of my "Earwig and the Angry Witch" joke.)

As always, if you like what you hear, consider donating via Ko-fi or Patreon and remember to leave a review and/or rating on iTunes!

https://www.patreon.com/recreationalthinking
https://ko-fi.com/recreationalthinking

Contestants: Dan Blim, Randall Eng, Jayanthi Srinivasan, Ariel Watsky

NOTE: This friendly includes 13 images that, for obvious technical reasons, cannot be included; therefore, this audio replay should not be considered a "pure" example of my work.  Keep in mind that the contestants are not big James Bond buffs.  If *you* are, and would like to play this friendly rather than listen to it, please contact me for the TSV and PDF files.

As always, if you like what you hear, consider donating via Ko-fi or Patreon and remember to leave a review and/or rating on iTunes!

https://www.patreon.com/recreationalthinking
https://ko-fi.com/recreationalthinking

Contestants: Kelsey Barcomb, Mike Cheyne, Greg Fanoe, Patrick Friel, Miranda Onnen, Tucker Warner

NOTE: This is a free preview.  Please subscribe to my Patreon to gain access to the rest of the alphabet.

I've decided to release three bonus mini-sodes this Thanksgiving (of which this is the second).  Enjoy!

Six cinephiles gather in one Zoom room to show off their knowledge of directors with surnames beginning with "H."  What happens next will educate and (hopefully) amuse you!

As always, if you like what you hear, consider donating via Ko-fi or Patreon and remember to leave a review and/or rating on iTunes!

https://www.patreon.com/recreationalthinking
https://ko-fi.com/recreationalthinking

Contestants: Kelsey Barcomb, Paige Feldman, Charlie Fritz, Cari Milowicki, Lindsay Sobczak, Tucker Warner

NOTE: This is a free preview.  Please subscribe to my Patreon to gain access to the rest of the alphabet.

Happy Thanksgiving!  This free preview is what you get, as our six cinephile contestants test their knowledge of Radiohead's "Karma Police," Pretty Little Liars, Mission: Impossible, and even Unhappily Ever After in addition to every stripe of feature film imaginable, from the silent era to Bollywood to abstract British art movies that somehow influence How I Met Your Mother.  As I say at one point, "I was thinking of doing an all-normal-movies packet, but then I was like, nah."

As always, if you like what you hear, consider donating via Ko-fi or Patreon and remember to leave a review and/or rating on iTunes!

https://www.patreon.com/recreationalthinking
https://ko-fi.com/recreationalthinking

Contestants: Dan Burgess, Randall Eng, Ewan Munro, Jayanthi Srinivasan, Anupama Srirangan

NOTE: This is a free preview.  Please subscribe to my Patreon to gain access to the rest of the alphabet.

Five cinephiles gather in one Zoom room to show off their knowledge of directors with surnames beginning with "L."  What happens next will shock and amuse you!  (But mostly amuse.)

As always, if you like what you hear, consider donating via Ko-fi or Patreon and remember to leave a review and/or rating on iTunes!

https://www.patreon.com/recreationalthinking
https://ko-fi.com/recreationalthinking

Contestants: Charlie Fritz, Andy Greeley, Lindsay Sobczak, Tucker Warner

NOTE: This is a free preview.  Please subscribe to my Patreon to gain access to the rest of the alphabet.

Four cinephiles (including our current OQL commissioner!) compete to show off knowledge of directors with "K" names.  A "From the Vault" cut of these questions, featuring yet another Randall Eng vs. Ewan Munro showdown, will soon be released on my Patreon — along with a few more Directors Sets and a couple of Recreational Thinking Lite episodes!

As always, if you like what you hear, consider donating via Ko-fi or Patreon and remember to leave a review and/or rating on iTunes!

https://www.patreon.com/recreationalthinking
https://ko-fi.com/recreationalthinking

(Note: That's a letter I, not a number 1)

Contestants: Ben Kitchen, Ewan Munro, Devin Rossiter

I recently recorded two new Recreational Thinking Lite episodes; the other (with Aaron Levine, Manas Sarma, and my Jeopardy! compatriot Andrew Whatley), will go up as a Patreon exclusive.  But as I'm working through my editing backlog — a lot of new material, much of it featuring J! superstars, is coming — enjoy some quick bites of snackable content!

https://www.patreon.com/recreationalthinking
https://ko-fi.com/recreationalthinking

Contestants: Jing Feng, Andy Greeley, Randall Eng, Ewan Munro

NOTE: This is a free preview.  Please subscribe to my Patreon to gain access to the rest of the alphabet.

Another little taste of my directors sets!  This set, covering I's and some leftover H's, is one of my hardest, but Randall & Ewan and company are more than up to the task.  Perhaps we'll hear these hardcore cinephiles on an all-cinema episode of Recreational Thinking in the not-so-distant future?

As always, if you like what you hear, consider donating via PayPal or Patreon and remember to leave a review and/or rating on iTunes!

Contestants: Frederic Bush, Chris Miller, Greg Weinstein, Tucker Warner, Dan Blim (whole time); Cliff Galiher, Charlie Fritz (part of the time)

NOTE: This is a free preview.  Please subscribe to my Patreon to gain access to the rest of the alphabet.

Welcome to my new series!  Written by a serious cinephile (me) for an audience of cinephiles, these questions also work as a starting point for anyone who wants to learn about film for quizzing purposes AND anyone looking to go, as Pauline Kael put it, deeper into movies.

Each game (of which there are four in this episode) consists of four rounds of play, Mimir-style, with 32 questions in all.  The answer to each question will be the name of a movie director, and all answers in the game will have a surname or mononym starting with the same letter.

My goal is to cover all types of cinema — mainstream, arthouse, foreign, experimental, documentary, and more — and all eras of cinema as well, with special emphasis on members of underrepresented groups (e.g. women, POC, LGBT) and underrepresented cinemas.  The questions are hard, but the games are fast-paced and filled with banter.  I hope you enjoy — and don't worry, new episodes in the usual Recreational Thinking format are on their way too!

As always, if you like what you hear, consider donating via PayPal or Patreon and remember to leave a review and/or rating on iTunes!