Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Comedy Podcast

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. NERDS!!! On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts , Emily shares her analysis (and horrified shuddering) about the oddly influential 1984 comedy Revenge of the Nerds . Though the filmmakers thought they were writing the “gentle and funny underdog story” that Gene Siskel characterized the movie as, Nerds treats women as less-than-human...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. O Captain! My Captain! Join us as Tracie brings her deep thoughts to the 1989 film Dead Poets Society on today’s episode. Though this beloved film was supposed to be a pop culture defense of the humanities (and remember, both Guy Girls were English majors at private liberal arts colleges), this rewatch made it clear the film think...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Hold on to your butts. On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily shares her analysis of the 1993 film Jurassic Park, a pop culture phenomenon that offers a surprising level of feminism. Emily describes the social thrill of being the target audience for a summer blockbuster (she was 14 when it came out) and her discomfort with...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Magic! Do as you will! Tracie brings her deep thoughts about the 1982 animated fantasy film The Last Unicorn , a lesser-known but beloved part of the traumatizing 80s pop culture canon. With gorgeous animation–the studio went on to become Studio Ghibli–this film tells an odd story about how mortality allows us to feel regret and r...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. In the words of David Cassidy, in fact, while he was still with The Partridge Family, I think I love you… Join us this week as Tracie and Emily revisit the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral that they first saw in the theater together.  Not only did this comedy launch Guy girls’ long-standing fixation on Hugh Grant, the floppy-...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Was it beauty that killed the beast? Or was it capitalism…aided by airplanes? On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Tracie and Emily welcome Oberlin Professor Pat Day to talk about the ape, the pop culture myth, the film legend: King Kong . Prof. Day walks us through how the original filmmakers in 1933 used new technology (A mu...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. We’re not bad…we’re just drawn that way! In this episode, Emily brings her deep thoughts about a marvel of innovation and animation: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? This 1988 film, a self-conscious mashup of three different animation studios’ styles and the film-noir of the Chinatown films, is a unique vehicle for a conversation about th...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Now I had the time of my life… revisiting this classic! In today’s special patrons-only bonus episode, Tracie dives deep into the unexpected hit film Dirty Dancing . Join the sisters as they unpack Eleanor Bergstein’s very intentional and subversive storytelling that made abortion integral to the plot (which surprised the heck out...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Hell is only a word… This week on Deep Thoughts , the sisters welcome best-selling horror novelist (and Emily’s fellow Kenyon alum) Scott Kenemore to discuss the 1997 cult classic Event Horizon starring Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne. The wide-ranging discussion moves from the meaning of cosmic horror to the importance of intent...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. They’re subversive and they’re kooky, whimsical, sweet and spooky…The Addams Family! snap, snap On today’s Deep Thoughts , Emily overthinks The Addams Family –specifically the 1990s era films starring Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston as Gomez and Morticia. The sisters examine how The Addams Family uses horror tropes and subversions...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. I really really really wanna zig-a-zig-AH! On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts , Tracie and Emily delve into the global phenomenon of the Spice Girls. Tracie explains how she saw the inevitability of Spicy world domination while living in London in 1997 and decided to embrace the manufactured pop group’s grrl power, despite fe...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. That’s so funny I forgot to laugh! On this week’s episode, Emily and Tracie welcome Mallory Henson to talk about her reverence for the TV show Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Mallory introduces the sisters to the path Paul Reubens took to develop the character of Pee-wee Herman and how the show recreated the joyful chaos of a child’s mind wh...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Party Time! Excellent! [Extended guitar solo] On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily revisits the most important cultural touchstone of the late 20th century: Wayne’s World . In addition to introducing an entire generation to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, this film presented a surprisingly complex characterization of Tia Carr...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an unreasonable hatred for Hackensack, New Jersey! This week, Tracie brings her Deep Thoughts about the 1978 film Superman: The Movie . From the way this film helped legitimize comic books and superheroes as a valid art form to the huge influence Christopher Reeve’s Superman still has on our culture...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. REDRUM! REDRUM! On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily breaks down the horror masterpiece, The Shining . The sisters walk through the ways in which Shelley Duvall’s portrayal of Wendy Torrance is an unexpected feminist icon, how Kubrick created an intentionally incoherent film while abusing his actors (except for 6-year-ol...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. HEY YOU GUY(Girl)S! On this week’s Deep Thoughts , Tracie revisits a classic of GenX childhood: The Electric Company . This children’s sketch comedy program with an all-star cast (Morgan Freeman! Rita Moreno! Bill Cosby?) showcased the wonderful ways that informal education can be intentional, subversive, funny, and validating. Wh...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. “This face right here is my over the moon face.” This week, Tracie and Emily welcome Joanna Church to share her Deep Thoughts about the television show Veronica Mars . Between trying to recap the telenovela-sounding plot to Tracie (coma babies! children switched at birth! a school bus that drives off a cliff and explodes!), Joanna...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Looking good, Tracie! Feeling good, Emily! On this week’s Deep Thoughts , Emily analyzes Trading Places , the film that taught her what a short sale is, how a bookie works, and that she is most definitely a money nerd. While the film offers a pointed critique of capitalism and racism, it undercuts its own message with the truly we...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. It smells like the funk of 40,000 years in here! In today’s episode,Tracie shares her deep thoughts about the iconic and groundbreaking 1983 music video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller. From the way the mini film subverts expectations to the meaning behind the horror tropes it relies on to how to contextualize Jackson’s immense tal...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. It mu5t be found…it being a realistic portrayal of women For this episode of Deep Thoughts , Emily dives into the valiant, vulnerable, and very very sexist portrayal of “perfection” in the 1997 Luc Besson film The Fifth Element . Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo is the poster child for the trope of Born Sexy Yesterday, wherein a childlike...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Good night and good luck and you stay classy, San Diego! On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Tracie and Emily welcome media studies professor (retired) Jon Shorr to talk about how pop culture has conditioned us to think about journalism, reporters, and “the news.” From Lois Lane to Woodward and Bernstein to Mary Tyler Moore,...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. We are the sisters who say Ni! Bring us…a shrubbery. On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts , Tracie and Emily dig into a source of both sisters’ understanding of what is funny, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. After 49 years, this film remains super funny, because it subverts our expectations. With minimal plot, despite the purporte...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Great Scott!! A time traveling oedipal complex masquerading as family entertainment? This special patrons-only bonus episode of Deep Thoughts takes a closer look at the film that ensured the DeLorean’s ongoing cultural relevance: Back to the Future. From the erasure of Black culture and ambition to some truly weird sexual politics...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Ooh, my little pretty one…who was really going to be somebody by age 23 On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t , Tracie revisits the film of Generation X: Reality Bites. Despite passing the Bechdel test with flying colors, the story of documentary filmmaker Lelaina (played by Winona Ryder) not only seems to present...

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Let’s do the time warp agaaaaaain! (Except with ongoing enthusiastic consent this time, mkay?) This week, Emily and Tracie talk aboutthe beloved 1975 film Rocky Horror Picture Show. From its influence on culture, fashion, music, and film to its catchy AF songs, there’s a lot to love in this genre-bending gender-bending mashup of B...