Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Against all odds, Matt Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee have reunited in tribute to the upcoming Oasis tour. Inspired by their once-intense but now fatigued, even deadened feelings for “Wonderwall,” they discuss the phenomenology of overplaying, the art of giving up on song meaning, and…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! In the 21st century, Dame Maggie Smith was celebrated for her portrayals of Hogwarts’s Professor McGonagall and Downton’s Dowager Countess Violet Crawley. But decades before that, she won two Oscars for movies that are now so obscure you can watch them for free on YouTube. What ties togethe…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! The Bachelor franchise has been chugging along for more than 20 years now, in a neverending ouroboros of broken hearts and moonlit dinners surrounded by hundreds of tea candles. Audiences want to see the fairy tale romance, and don’t seem to mind the awkward fact that the large majority of …

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Overthinking It has been obsessing over, and often lamenting, the Terminator franchise going all the way back to the regrettable 2009 entry, “Terminator Salvation.” The latest entry to the franchise, “Terminator Zero,” is a Netflix animated series and is much better than Salvation and subse…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Beetlejuice is such an iconic character that it’s easy to forget how weird and confusing he is (for starters, his name is actually spelled “Betelgeuse” according to his own tombstone). In this episode, Mark, Pete, Jordan, and Matt Belinkie (your substitute Matt) try to figure out if we’re d…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Once Matt Wrather heads off to parental leave, Overthinking It will be staffed entirely by parents. In the last podcast before this happens, this selfsame Impending Dad Matt, Peter Fenzel and Mark Lee each bring their own choice for “End of an Era” culture for discussion. Pete speaks on Ben…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Jordan Stokes, and Matthew Wrather examine the Netflix series called The Decameron, which does bear some loose resemblance to Bocaccio’s similarly-titled work of medieval literature. Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps Further Reading The Decameron (Wikipedia) A lectur…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee, and Peter Fenzel overthink those despicable Minions. Are they evil because they serve evil, or are they antibodies of a moral universe, because they undermine the evil they serve? What does it mean to be despicable? What fictional characters have made such an impact…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee confront the demons to overthink DOOM. They discuss the risks and successes of the dawn of 3D gaming, the pump-action panache of the DOOM guy and DOOM shotgun, and how and why we never feel fatigued or insulted by a DOOM re-release. Plus bonus di…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink the games of the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris, France. They discuss the opening ceremony, the fractured media landscape which has them consuming the games in various ways, and the tiers of sports you can relate to and can’t…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Deadpool & Wolverine, starting with a provocative (G-rated!) question, and continuing through Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps Further Reading “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel” (Jenny Nicholson on YouTube) Episo…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Middle-aged podcasters Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather investigate the “Kamala is Brat” meme and discover that it is actually a record album, such as you can play on a phonograph. They investigate Charli XCX’s BRAT, discussing its style and sound, its lyrical concern, its cultur…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Matt’s recent baby shower, and settle on the theme of baby stuff (or “stuffs”) as a peculiar and unique entry in the poetry of stuffs that makes up one’s life. Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps Episode 837: The Days are Long; T…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted, a parodic film about the 1960s in America (and, incidentally about the invention of the Pop Tart). But they don’t tuck in before they’ve had breakfaast—in a nostalgic prolegomenon (inspired by the film’s nosta…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather overthink Beverly Hills Copy: Axel F., discussing its undeserved critical reception (at least by the New York Times), its bemusing but unexpectedly resonant first sequence, the role of accountability and apology in relationships with an asymmetric power dyna…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather take another look at music generated by AI diffusion models, which have come a long way. They discuss the possible significance of this new technology and how it fits into our conception of creativity, and they play each other some tunes they’ve p…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather overthink Inside Out 2 (2 Inside 2 Out), the anxiety-centered follow up to the 2015 Pixar hit. They both had a pretty difficult experience watching the movie, which was like a 90-minute anxiety attack, but they explore its allegory of the self, the presence …

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather consider why the Pope brought comedians including Stephen Colbert, Whoopi Goldberg, and Chris Rock (?!) together at the Vatican and what he had to say to them. Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps Further Reading “Stephen Colbert and Whoopi…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Richard Linklater’s film Hit Man, now streaming on Netflix. Topics include the film’s misreading of Nietzsche, the relationship of the movie to genre (action or romcom), the forays into philosophy and psychology, and how at every turn it…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Madame Web, now streaming on Netflix, wondering both what on earth this movie is and how it got that way. Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps Further Reading Form Criticism (Wikipedia) Hermeneutics (Wikipedia) Episode 830: She wa…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel (fighting a cold) and Matthew Wrather (fighting anxiety over whether the recording works) follow up on how it felt to lose an episode last week, and overthink the phenomenon of consuming entertainment through short clips on a streaming service. Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes …

UPDATE (2024-05-25T17:35-0700): If you’ve heard the short explanation embedded in this post, you’ll know that I suspected the audio-recording problem was due to a software update. Well, turns out… Ironically, if I had been less scrupulous in updating the recorder, we wouldn’t have lost the recording. Hi Overthinkers, it’s Matt Wrather. Owing to a t…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink “Meltdown May”, which leads them to consider all aspects of melting, from whether this too, too sallied flesh would melt, to stopping the world to melt with you, to nuclear meltdowns, to tuna melts. They complicate the standard picture o…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matthew Belinkie joins Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather to talk about his efforts on the Overthinking It YouTube channel and its annual chronicle of the Eurovision Song Contest. We talk about this year’s contest, how our efforts have changed over the years, and the nature of YouT…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Jordan Stokes joins Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather to discuss a New York Times “Critics Notebook” by James Poniewozik decrying the phenomenon of “Mid TV,” shows with impressive pedigrees but muted artistic ambitions. Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps Further Reading “The Comfort…