Syndicated with Lesley and Ben

We invite you into a podcast, not too different from our own, a podcast of only sound. Lesley and Ben enter The Twilight Zone, the 1959 CBS produced anthology tv show about the strange, bizarre and unnatural. Written and produced by Rod Serling, the Twilight Zone is an eerie half hour format show that rides the line between science-fiction, horror and mystic and plunges audience members into tales...

It's time for another commercial commentary special! Lesley and Ben are joined by our friend, streamer Svideotheque to talk Video Games, Video Games and more Video Games. We dissect 15 commercials advertising games for arcades, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis and PlayStation 3 featuring Q*bert, Paul Rudd, Super Mario, Sonic, Kratos, Link and Zelda. We're plugged in on this very special episode of Syn...

It's time for another commercial commentary special! Lesley and Ben are joined by our friend, streamer Svideotheque to talk Video Games, Video Games and more Video Games. We dissect 15 commercials advertising games for arcades, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis and PlayStation 3 featuring Q*bert, Paul Rudd, Super Mario, Sonic, Kratos, Link and Zelda. We're plugged in on this very special episode of Syn...

For the first time in Syndicated with Lesley and Ben history, we’re covering a non-narrative show. With Victoria Collins help, we dip our toes into reality tv and cover the Korean show Chef and My Fridge (Please Take Care of My Refrigerator). It’s a wacky take on the cooking show genre, as the celebrity chefs can only make their final creations out of the ingredients already in that week’s guest’s...

Much like the Crunchyroll anime Ruri Rocks, this episode of Syndicated with Lesley and Ben, is an excuse to talk about rocks, minerals and crystals. We’re joined by Héctor González to ask a critical question. Can an anime be educational, beautiful and fan service? Yeah, of course it can. Are you kidding? We covered the first episode, My First Mineral Hunt. Ruri Tanigawa becomes fixated on a crysta...

Syndicated returns with an episode of Nine Puzzles, the freshly released South Korean detective thriller about two criminal profilers, one of whom is a murder suspect herself, attempting to solve a series of serial killings in which mysterious puzzle pieces are being left behind at the scene of the crime. We talk about atmospheric storytelling, international adaptions, how we depict memory as phys...

After a bit of hiatus, Lesley and Ben’s season on International TV continues with Money Heist, the his Spanish language crime show from Netflix about a group of bank robbers dead set on robbing the Royal Mint of Spain. This is our second show from Spain, and third Spanish overall, but instead of ghosts and worried priests, Money Heist is packed with action, intrigue and bullets. We talk about tran...

Lesley and Ben’s season on International TV continues with MOBILE SUIT GUNDUM: WITCH FROM MERCURY with returning guest Jeff Martin. Jeff has been working on a new ttrpg project called BIG ROBOTS BIG FEELINGS and that means watching a lot of Gundum anime as research, alternating between Mobile Suit and Macross shows. Jeff’s bringing that giant robot expertise to Syndicated! We talk about sad birthd...

Lesley and Ben’s season on International TV continues with The Untamed, an ahistorical Chinese fantasy drama from Tencent Video. We’re joined by Nik Boylan of Legends of Laia and Athraplay, who has spent the last year becoming an Untamed expert. After our hosts flip out about the massive complex of historical sets and theme park attractions that the Untamed is filmed at, we learn about the Xianxia...

Lesley and Ben are thrilled to be once again joined by Rachel Collins, host of the upcoming grocery and shopping podcast, 10 Items or Less! Instead of our usual format covering single episodes of television, we're chatting about vintage commercials and the stories they're telling! We cover 21 commercials ranging across the decades from the 1960s to 2004. Electronics Boutique, Hollywood Video, Schl...

Lesley and Ben’s season on International TV continues with 30 Coins, another Spanish language horror series. Now what are the odds! We talk about how international tv is working great for streaming companies, our personal affinity toward religious and folk horror (including plenty of examples), and the incredible set design of Pedraza, Spain, the location of 30 Coin’s story. We covered Season One,...

Is this thing still on? We’re coming in live from our affiliate stations across the world! We’re covering International TV this season with the help of newly installed satellite tv dish. Specifically, we’re focusing on non-English television regardless of narrative genre! We’re starting with Los Espookys, the Spanish language, Latin-American set, HBO produced comedy series about a group of friends...

We did our time, listener! 13 long episodes in crime tv. You can’t make us go back in there! It’s time to wrap up our crime season, and we could think of only one show to throw the book at us. Lesley and Ben cover The Wire, the lauded HBO prestige police procedural starring Lance Reddick, Idris Elba and Dominic West. We started with the season two finale, Any Port in a Storm and were stunned by th...

Lesley and Ben are trying something new. At Lesley’s suggestion, we’re watching Death and Other Details, the brand new murder mystery drama from Hulu, starring Violett Beane and Mandy Patinkin. Death and Other Details has a compelling plot, but is otherwise tripped up by some visual issues that got under Ben and Lesley’s skin. We’re excited to see how this mystery concludes, we just wish we could...

Lesley and Ben are now on an international crime spree. We’re tackling Lupin, the Netflix produced French thriller series about the adventures of Assane Diop, a man who has modeled himself after pulp character Arsene Lupin, the Gentleman Thief. We talk about Sherlock Holmes, pulp fiction of the early 1900s, foreign television, expanding our cultural horizons and how to execute a good plot twist. A...

Syndicated is hitting the open road and solving murders across America with Poker Face, the Rian Johnson helmed and Natasha Lyonne starring mystery anthology show. We had to cover Poker Face after tackling Columbo and Murder She Wrote. Lesley and Ben fell in love with the 1970s retro Americana aesthetic, the cast of complicated characters and the BBQ being grilled in the third episode of the show....

Cabot Cove has no shortage of murders and there is no one more qualified to solve them than mystery writer Jessica Fletcher. Editor Jay Gagnon brings us Murder She Wrote, the number one source of Angela Lansbury material. Lesley, Ben and Jay stumble through a charming double murder in the high stakes cutthroat world of fiction publishing. Logically, we picked an episode that guest stars Better Cal...

For every crime, there’s a mystery. A series of clues that lead back to the grisly, heinous answer. But Lesley and Ben stumbled on a mystery neither Jessica Fletcher nor Columbo could possible solve: what did people like about Dexter in 2006? Lesley and Ben are unimpressed with the Showtime show’s writing and narrative pacing and aren’t holding back about why. Syndicated with Lesley and Ben is a t...

Chip Chip Cheerio. Top of the Morning. Other Such Phrases. Lesley and Ben are trying something different with this episode of Syndicated. Instead of having a guest, or showing each other one of our confirmed favorite shows, we decided to take a chance on Peaky Blinders together. Imagine our shock finding out that Sam Neill is in this and that Peaky Blinders, is in fact, pretty good. Plenty of Oppe...

“Gimme Jimmy!” is what returning guest Jeff Martin said to us, verbatim when he sat down with us to talk about the AMC prequel series to Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul. We talk about convenient corruption, the fall of a moral character, Better Call Saul’s incredible cinematography and abstraction techniques, and just how awful the fictional residents of Albuquerque, New Mexico are. Syndicated with...

Any excuse to talk about Walton Goggins. Lesley sits Ben down so that they can talk about Justified, the FX modern day neo western starring Timothy Olyphant as the morally grey lawman Raylan Givens and Walton Goggins as irredeemable skinhead cult leader Boyd Crowder. Their dynamic is fascinating and we talk at length about the relationship between the two while dissecting what happens to crime whe...

The Hosts, The Producer, The Guest. We’re assembling a crack team of specialists to talk about Leverage, the heist show about criminals who rob the wealthy and corrupt. Lesley and Ben are joined by Adam P Knave, who brought us Season 2, Episode 1: The Beantown Bailout Job. We talk about safecracking, stunts and the contemporary politics of Obama Era crime and the 2008 Financial Crisis. We keep it...

We welcome back Rachel Collins for… just one more thing, so that we can talk about Columbo! Peter Falk starred as Lt. Columbo from 1968 to 2003 and we’re heartbroken that we can only cover one fantastic episode of this show. And since Rachel is guesting this episode, it’s the Dick van Dyke one. Whodunits, gunshots in the junkyard, photographic evidence, fan art of Columbo’s wife and the history of...

“This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Bemidji, MN in 2006. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.” Are Lesley and Ben keeping up the theme of snow crimes this season? Oh you betcha! It’s time for Ben’s staff pick and while watching Fargo was an obvious choice, it was i...

Woke Up This Morning, Got Yourself a Podcast. Lesley and Ben are starting their crime season off strong with the Godfather of all crime tales. We’re covering the history of HBO, cable premium channels and Tony Soprano! We could think of no better episode than The Pine Barrens, where Paulie Walnuts and Christopher Moltisanti get lost while trying to off a member of the Russian mob. Conversations ab...