The Grey Album Podcast

The ninth episode of the Grey Album Podcast – an audio companion to the newsletter that takes a free-wheeling look at pop culture.

This episode we look at two films as part of our Central European Christmas Special: The Shop Around the Corner (1940), a tender Christmastime romance set in inter-war Budapest and Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Wes Anderson's pastel-coloured meditation on the decline of civilization.

Featuring:

* Hungarian (mis)pronounciation

* A Christmas bonus anecdote

* The fashion sense of the Austrian School

* Pre-internet e-girls

* A double order of apple strudel with vanilla sauce.

* Hapsburg nostalgia

* The origin of the croissant

* Overinterpretations about fascism

and much, much, more!

The eighth episode of the Grey Album Podcast – an audio companion to the newsletter that takes a free-wheeling look at pop culture.

This episode we look at two films that are millenial classics: Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), a quirky time-travel comedy starring Aubrey Plaza and Garden State (2004), Zach Braff’s coming-of-age comedy drama that touched the heart of sensitive young white guys everywhere.

Featuring:

* A 2011 moment

* “hoomans”

* Millennials healing our souls

* KONY 2012

* The first two Coldplay albums

* Kim Jong Un’s film taste

* Desert Storm trading cards

* The decline of Netflix originals

* Why power ballads died out

and much, much, more!

The seventh episode of the Grey Album Podcast – an audio companion to the newsletter that takes a free-wheeling look at pop culture.

This episode we discuss two Los Angeles-set detective films: Inherent Vice (2014), Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s hippie mystery novel, and L.A. Confidential (1997) which follows three cops in 1950s L.A., each with wildly different styles, on hunt for the perpetrators of the Nite Owl Massacre.

Featuring:

* Spotted Dick

* Benecio Del Toro’s 70s face

* A digression about Hippie Pizza

* The actual narrator

* Epic Nixon Foundation TikToks

* Watch Guys

* ‘Audrey, Donna or Shelley?’

* What even is ‘Skibidi Toilet?’

and much, much, more!

The sixth episode of the Grey Album Podcast – an audio companion to the newsletter that takes a free-wheeling look at pop culture.

This episode we discuss Whit Stillman’s ‘Doomed Bourgeois in Love Trilogy’, three comedies of manners that portray the professional and romantic travails of upper-middle-class young people. Metropolitan (1990) takes place in the world of debutante balls, Barcelona (1994) follows two American expats in Spain at the end of the Cold War and The Last Days of Disco (1998) covers the disco scene of the early 1980s.

Featuring:

* The Decline of the West

* Neocon Romcoms

* ‘The Tapas Putsch’

* The difference between a jacket, blazer, and sportscoat

* The seething hatred of Anglo cuisine

* Knock off KFCs

* Why Boomers hate wet shaving

and much, much, more!

The fifth episode of the Grey Album Podcast – an audio companion to the newsletter that takes a free-wheeling look at pop culture.

This episode we discuss Michael Mann’s magisterial crime epic Heat (1995), featuring legendary performances from Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, and Drive (2011), Nicolas Winding Refn’s synth-and-neon-drenched L.A. noir starring Ryan Gosling as a quiet stunt driver who gets caught up in the criminal underworld.

Featuring:

* Robert DeNiro Simping

* YouTube Cobblers

* National Medal of Arts Recipient Jon Voight

* We respect crowded coffee shops

* Boogie-woogie Piano

* What is literally me?

* Dan Radcliffe is a 5 ‘4 Goblin

and much, much, more!

The fourth episode of the The Grey Album Podcast – an audio companion to the newsletter that takes a free-wheeling look at pop culture.

This episode we talk about two films as part of our Tony Blair Christmas Special Extravaganza: The Ghost Writer (2010), Roman Polanski’s political thriller about a controversial former British Prime Minister and Love Actually (2003), Richard Curtis’s modern Christmas classic rom-com.

Featuring:

* 2000s anti-neocon pop culture

* New Labour Home Secretaries

* 500 IQ Theorycel Gordon Brown

* Love Actually as Blairite propaganda

* Deported from Saudi Arabia for being too handsome

* Joni Mitchell > Joe Rogan

* Gordon Brown’s Kitchen Nightmares

* ‘You will never convince me to eat the brown meat’

and much, much, more!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The third episode of the The Grey Album Podcast – an audio companion to the newsletter that takes a free-wheeling look at pop culture.

This episode we talk about three films by legendary filmmaker Woody Allen: Annie Hall (1977), the Best Picture winner that revolutionised the romantic comedy genre; Interiors (1978), Allen’s underrated attempt at a Bergmanesque drama; and Manhattan (1979), perhaps his most complete film.

Featuring:

* Woody Allen isn’t a boomer and he hates cocaine

* ‘Van Gogh’ and ‘Notre Dame’

* An anecdote featuring Nicolas Cage

* A Weezer comparison

* Why do they all end up in France?

* Black Rifle Coffee

* The Golden Age of Seth Rogen movies

and much, much, more!

The second episode of the The Grey Album Podcast – an audio companion to the newsletter that takes a free-wheeling look at pop culture.

This episode we talk about Jonah Hill’s directorial debut Mid90s (2018), a nostalgic look at a 1990s childhood, and American Beauty (1999), the Best Picture-winning suburban satire starring cancel-culture icon Kevin Spacey.

Featuring:

* Zoomers being unable to use µTorrent

* Too much talk about skating

* A digression about Abercrombie & Fitch

* What even is dinner music?

* Kevin Spacey as himself

* What actually happened under John Major?

and much, much, more!

The very first episode of the The Grey Album Podcast – an audio companion to the newsletter that takes a free-wheeling look at pop culture.

This episode we discuss Rian Johnson’s high school neo-noir Brick (2005) and the underrated Canadian comedy-mystery film The Kid Detective (2020).

Featuring:

* Film Noir slang

* What even is sixth-form college?

* Why we all secretly love femme fatales

* 2000s Emo Kids

* The magic of diners

* A Mikhaila Peterson lookalike

and much, much, more!

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