This Is Why We're Like This

Happy Halloween! We have a special spooky treat for you! Eugenia Triantafyllou joins us from Greece to talk about Goosebumps! Eugenia has written a lot of great stories, and you can find them at her website, but if you are wondering where to begin, you might try listening to "My Country Is a Ghost" on Podcastle!

Full show notes at https://www.juliarios.com/goosebumps-welcome-to-dead-house-with-eugenia-triantafyllou/

We're back for our second Spooktober episode with another adaptation of Godfather Death, this time with Muppets!

Full show notes at https://www.juliarios.com/jim-hens/

It's October, and you know what that means: time to meditate on spookiness, skeletons, and death! To get us going, Geoffrey brought us a Mexican film from 1960, which he once watched in Spanish class.

Full show notes at https://www.juliarios.com/macario/

After watching High Spirits, we went all in on the silly and spooky combos.

Full show notes including video links at https://www.juliarios.com/after-these-messages-peter-otoole-pan-am-and-g-g-g-ghosts/

Julia brings us something … unexpected. It's a 1988 sex farce with ghosts, both real and fake. Also Peter O'Toole. Yes, really.

Full show notes at https://www.juliarios.com/high-spirits/

In honor of the new Masters of the Universe animated series, this week Geoffrey brought some episodes of the 1980s He-Man cartoon to the table.

Full show notes at https://www.juliarios.com/he-man-and-the-masters-of-the-universe/

Flash fiction writer Kayleigh Shoen (or as we like to call her: Princess of Soup) joined us again to talk about all things Punky Brewster related after we watched The Perils of Punky!

Full show notes with video links at https://www.juliarios.com/after-these-messages-punky-brewster-with-kayleigh/

For the first time in a year and a half we actually met in person to record this one! Flash fiction writer Kayleigh Shoen joined us to talk about an episode of Punky Brewster that scared her as a child: The Perils of Punky!

Full show notes at https://www.juliarios.com/the-perils-of-punky-with-kayleigh-shoen/

For the first time in a year and a half we actually met in person to record this one! Flash fiction writer Kayleigh Shoen joined us to talk about an episode of Punky Brewster that scared her as a child: The Perils of Punky!Here's Kayleigh's hazy recollection:"I was very into Punky Brewster at an age when I was too young to read clocks, so even though I loved it, I had a hard time being a regular viewer. I think I remember it being part of a Saturday morning block with PeeWee's Playhouse and Hey Vern, It's Ernest, but I'm not 100% certain. Punky Brewster has some more famous episodes like the fridge episode and the Challenger explosion episode and the must-increase-our-busts episode, but I've chosen the episodes that were most memorable to me – THE SPIDER EPISODES!  So, I actually didn't even realize this was 2 episodes because I think I only saw the first one and then – like I said I had no idea what time it was on or even the days of the week -- I probably didn't see the show again for another month. I was so little that I couldn't even really follow stories on tv. I think the first episode ends with Punky seeing a spider the size of a human adult and I was just like wow that was a really scary episode! I think I remember even thinking maybe Punky died at the end. I remember it's set in a cave and she gets separated from her friends. Maybe they're camping? The spider is very large and very furry.The first thing I'm looking forward to seeing again is Punky's style. Punky was a style icon to me as a kindergarten/first grader. I was very much a dresses with pigtails girl, and thanks to Punky I added a lot of insouciant touches like bathrobe belts and mismatched socks to put my own stamp on everything.I'm also looking forward to seeing the opening credits so I can work out what Punky's actual backstory is. What I remember can't possibly be true – that her mom deserted her in a laundromat and then Punky went to juvie before she somehow dropped in on an old guy and convinced him to adopt her?  Maybe I should've suggested the first episode, actually."So much to unpack here. First, Kayleigh was basically right about the actual premise of the show. It was very much grounded in real life issue special episodes, so this weird supernatural one where the kids go into a cave and get attacked by a giant spider is really out of the ordinary. Second, there's a whole lot of Native American cultural appropriation that happens in this particular 2 part episode. It was the mid 80s, the same era as Poltergeist II, so this shouldn't be terribly surprising, but it still definitely didn't age well. We also talked about Mike the Headless Chicken… which was a real chicken who survived a botched beheading attempt and lived for 18 months longer. Wikipedia has details, but be warned that they aren't for the squeamish. Geoffrey gives us a lesson on the history of the band Oingo Boingo, and Julia and Kayleigh share choice nuggets of trivia from oral histories of the Punky Brewster refrigerator episode and of The Perils of Punky.If you're having fun listening to us, please tell your friends about us! Subscribe to our newsletter at thisiswhywerelikethis.substack.com for free, or pay $5/month to get access to two bonus paid episodes each month! We're also on Patreon if that's your jam! Rate and review us! follow us on Twitter where we're @thisiswhy_pod! And, of course, you can always drop us a note at at [email protected]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thisiswhywerelikethis.substack.com/subscribe

After Garfield in Paradise we watched a few related vids, and had a pretty far reaching conversation about society and culture… But first, this 1957 Chevy Bel Air Commercial.We agree that this car does look really cool, and the commercial is effective. Geoffrey even cited topspeed.com's claim that there has never been a more iconic American car. Next we watched this Jack Benny clip with Frank Nelson.Frank Nelson was the hotel clerk and the rental car clerk in Garfield in Paradise, and he seems to have been really famous for always performing as this character. We finished with Wolfman Jack signing off.This one opened the floodgates about parasocial relationships. We talked about modern stuff that encourages them, like TikTok and Podcasts, and Geoffrey even brought up the old story about the audience running away from a train on a screen in the 1890s. This also led to us talking about younger people trolling older people, and eventually Obvious Plant and the Italian artist who recently sold an invisible statue for $18,000. Geoffrey also referred to this clip from The Venture Brothers when we mentioned Gen X…Thanks for listening!If you're having fun listening to us, please tell your friends about us! Subscribe to our newsletter at thisiswhywerelikethis.substack.com for free, or pay $5/month to get access to two bonus paid episodes each month! We're also on Patreon if that's your jam! Rate and review us! follow us on Twitter where we're @thisiswhy_pod! And, of course, you can always drop us a note at at [email protected]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thisiswhywerelikethis.substack.com/subscribe