Hey Big Hit Show fans. We’re sharing a preview of a new podcast from Higher Ground called The Wonder of Stevie. It's hosted by Wesley Morris and this episode features Alex Pappademas.

Host Wesley Morris is taking you on a deep-dive through Stevie's Classic Period. In this episode, Wesley talks with Alex about the fourth album in Stevie’s streak: Fulfillingness’ First Finale. It was made following an unexpected and life-changing event, and shows Stevie’s different, moodier, more reflective side. Hear why the album is Wesley and Alex’s favorite (and why not everyone agrees).

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The battle is over, and Pokémon has won. Almost twenty-five years after it arrived on these shores, Pokémon hasn’t just survived— it’s become the kind of pop-cultural phenomenon that parents share with their kids. But what does that say about Pokémon, and what does our yearning for an ever-more-immersive pocket-monster-catching experience say about us?

TRANSCRIPT: HERE

CREDITS:

Writer and Host: Alex Pappademas

Showrunner: Colin McNulty

Producers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.

Production Assistant: Stella Hartmann

Fact Checker: Savannah Wright

Composer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnis

Theme Music by: Dan Leone 

Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben Adair

Editor: Jamie York

Executive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. 

Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna Levin

Executive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thanks to nostalgic fans and influential new collectors, the value of vintage Pokémon trading cards is through the roof. But you don’t have to find and flip a million-dollar Charizard to have your life changed by Pokémon. An episode about collecting, connecting, and a podcast producer who lands in Las Vegas with a binder full of holos and a dream.

TRANSCRIPT: HERE

CREDITS:

Writer and Host: Alex Pappademas

Showrunner: Colin McNulty

Producers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.

Production Assistant: Stella Hartmann

Fact Checker: Savannah Wright

Composer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnis

Theme Music by: Dan Leone 

Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben Adair

Editor: Jamie York

Executive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. 

Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna Levin

Executive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At the end of the ‘90s, after blowing up in Japan, Pokémon came to America. And it became so ubiquitous so fast that critics saw it as a plot to turn U.S. children into hypnotized consumers— or even devil-worshippers. But the version of Pokemon that conquered America was very much an American creation; in this episode we’ll look at how Pokemon became an international brand, and how its success brought out the worst in more than a few American parents.

TRANSCRIPT: HERE

CREDITS:

Writer and Host: Alex Pappademas

Showrunner: Colin McNulty

Producers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.

Production Assistant: Stella Hartmann

Fact Checker: Savannah Wright

Composer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnis

Theme Music by: Dan Leone 

Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben Adair

Editor: Jamie York

Executive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. 

Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna Levin

Executive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In which a red-hot video game company crashes and burns, with a little help from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The decline of Atari paved the way for a gaming renaissance— think Donkey Kong, Mario and eventually Pikachu. But as Japan took the upper-hand in the console business and taught a generation of American kids how to play, some Americans grew paranoid about a resurgent foreign power beating us at our own game.

TRANSCRIPT: HERE

CREDITS:

Writer and Host: Alex Pappademas

Showrunner: Colin McNulty

Producers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.

Production Assistant: Stella Hartmann

Fact Checker: Savannah Wright

Composer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnis

Theme Music by: Dan Leone 

Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben Adair

Editor: Jamie York

Executive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. 

Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna Levin

Executive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are big hits, and there are really big hits— and then there’s Pokémon, a kids’ game from Japan that evolved into the biggest multimedia entertainment franchise of all time. In this episode we’re time-traveling from ‘90s Tokyo— where a bug collector turned game designer first dreamed of catching pocket-sized monsters— to 2016, when an addictive mobile game helped Pokemon re-conquer the world.

TRANSCRIPT: HERE

CREDITS:

Writer and Host: Alex Pappademas

Showrunner: Colin McNulty

Producers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.

Production Assistant: Stella Hartmann

Fact Checker: Savannah Wright

Composer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnis

Theme Music by: Dan Leone 

Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben Adair

Editor: Jamie York

Executive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. 

Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna Levin

Executive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Big Hit Show Season 4 debuts on August 17th. How did a Japanese video game from the 1990’s become the single highest grossing franchise in history - bigger than Star Wars and Harry Potter combined? This season on The Big Hit Show, we’re exploring the biggest hit of all time, Pokémon, and how these adorable pocket monsters evolved into a media supernova unlike any the world has ever seen.

TRANSCRIPT: HERE

CREDITS:

Writer and Host: Alex Pappademas

Showrunner: Colin McNulty

Producers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.

Production Assistant: Stella Hartmann

Fact Checker: Savannah Wright

Composer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnis

Theme Music by: Dan Leone 

Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben Adair

Editor: Jamie York

Executive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. 

Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna Levin

Executive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Masculinity is a lot like Fight Club. The first rule is that you don't talk about it.” In this episode, we’re breaking that rule, examining what Fight Club has to say about the emotional lives of men, the links between masculinity and extremist violence, and the path out of the darkness.

TRANSCRIPT: HERE

CREDITS:

Host, Writer: Alex Pappademas

Showrunner: Colin McNulty

Producers: Sabrina Fang and Taylor Jones

Production Assistant and Fact Checker: Stella Hartman

Composer, Sound Designer, Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnis

Studio Direction and Theme Music: Dan Leone

Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben Adair

Editor: Jamie York

Executive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, Janae Marable

Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna Levin

Executive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara, Corinne Gilliard

Special Thanks: Joe Paulsen and Eric Spiegelman 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There were two verdicts on Fight Club: the opening-weekend box office numbers (spoiler alert: yikes) and the judgment of history. We’ll look at how Fight Club channeled the anti-consumerist politics of its moment, and explore some of the more provocative arguments made in the ensuing years about this still-contentious cult classic and its take on modern men.

TRANSCRIPT: HERE

CREDITS:

Host, Writer: Alex Pappademas

Showrunner: Colin McNulty

Producers: Sabrina Fang and Taylor Jones

Production Assistant and Fact Checker: Stella Hartman

Composer, Sound Designer, Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnis

Studio Direction and Theme Music: Dan Leone

Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben Adair

Editor: Jamie York

Executive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, Janae Marable

Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna Levin

Executive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara, Corinne Gilliard

Special Thanks: Joe Paulsen and Eric Spiegelman 

Archival tape provided by: WTF with Marc Maron

Pawn Stars footage courtesy of A+E Networks

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Seriously, though— how did a movie as unashamedly anti-capitalist and absurdly homoerotic as Fight Club get made by a major studio, let alone a studio owned by Rupert Murdoch? In this episode, an unlikely piece of material— and an uncompromising director’s vision for that material— somehow survives the Hollywood machine, some potentially disastrous PR, and the disdain of a billionaire who doesn’t care for movies.

TRANSCRIPT: HERE

CREDITS:

Host, Writer: Alex Pappademas

Showrunner: Colin McNulty

Producers: Sabrina Fang and Taylor Jones

Production Assistant and Fact Checker: Stella Hartman

Composer, Sound Designer, Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnis

Studio Direction and Theme Music: Dan Leone

Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben Adair

Editor: Jamie York

Executive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, Janae Marable

Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna Levin

Executive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara, Corinne Gilliard

Special Thanks: Joe Paulsen and Eric Spiegelman 

Archival tape provided by: BAFTA

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.