Convince Me I Care

The Boomers might have created her but boy, howdy, what has happened to her since! In Part 2 of our conversation on The Final Girl trope in slasher movies, we interrogate many of the ways more recent filmmakers have taken the fundamental trope and transformed, expanded and extrapolated it in wildly entertaining ways.

If you haven't watched Jennifer's Body, The Final Girls, Ready or Not, or The Menu -- or if you ...

Just in time for the Halloween season, Grace and David take their intergenerational conversation to the next level with a deep dive on The Final Girl, the movie trope that was initiated by Boomers but that has expanded, morphed and grown more fascinating as explored by Millennial filmmakers.

In Part 1, we discuss the origins of the trope and use three classic Final Girl slasher films as the basis for our investigation. We ...

The Intergenerational Movie Club continues with the Boomer classic, "Animal House." Lots of folks think they know this movie, but do they really? Or are they just remembering the clips and highlights? We dig into the connective tissue between the iconic scenes, do a semi-deep dive on the female characters, and perhaps unavoidably, revel in the Belushi of it all.

Along the way, we consider a number of intriguing q...

Welcome to the first edition of the Intergenerational Movie Club, brought to you by Convince Me I Care!

Whether you're a millennial or a boomer, sometimes you just want to Netflix and chill. So Grace and David have given their research staffs a little break and will spend at least the next couple episodes talking about movies that made a profound generational impact.

First up is "10 Things I Hate About...

Like most industrious millennials, Grace has more than one iron in the fire. With this episode, David fades into the obscurity all Boomers are bound for and hands over the reins to Grace at the helm of her new podcast, Didn't Read It: a podcast about books. For this conversation, the old white guy in the room has been dead for centuries, leaving a lot more room for Grace and her co-host Leigh to dig into literary canon without...

Among the action stars of the 1990s, Steven Seagal's rise to fame and subsequent descent into infamy has been the most baffling. How was this man able to have a career in the first place? Who thought that giving a pathological liar money, power and a platform was a good idea (spoiler: Michael Ovitz did)? The inexplicability of it all prompts Grace to wonder: were we all just dumber in the 1990s?

Enjoy this spirited co...

Artificial intelligence has been fascinating and scaring people for decades. Years before the current freak-out about ChatGPT and other SkyNet wannabes, there was something even creepier that parents were actually welcoming into their homes: Furbys! These totally-not-a-Gremlin rip-offs provide a great jumping off point for topics like what did cutting edge AI look like in the late 90s, how parents will always find something to go b...

Are you, like Grace, befuddled by the idea of seeing the same band over and over again? Did you party down at Bonnaroo and are already looking ahead to Lollapalooza? Whatever you think or think you know the Grateful Dead, Phish, or any other Jam Band, you'll learn something from this spicy conversation about this genre that's not really a genre. Hardcore jam band fans are sure to be annoyed by David's "holy trin...

Team Edward? Team Jacob? Team Confused-Old-Guy? For better or worse (many would argue better), there is a generation of folks who missed the "Twilight" craze. But actors like Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattison stubbornly insist on having  ongoing careers, often making admirable artistic choices. Their persistence prompts curiosity about their origins as Bella and Edward, principles in a world replete with vampires who do...

What were they thinking? A generation of homeowners have splurged on huge houses that are ugly, bad investments and an ecological disaster. In this episode, David and Grace dig deeper into the myopic belief in "bigger is better" when it comes to housing. Along the way, we venerate a millennial hero, chart the growth in suburban square footage, make connections between big houses and hostile public spaces, and initiate the...

David has wandered into confusing Instagram channels and Grace is challenged to go beyond convincing him to care about #vanlife to reassuring him that he shouldn't be concerned. The result is a rambling romp down the history of itinerrant lifestyles from pre-Colonial America to the Beats to modern-day influencers. And you may be shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that social media is lying to you.

Grace Todd and David T...

In honor of the Mother's Day that just passed, Grace and David celebrate their support of every type of mom there is by digging into the legacy of the Wine Mom. Why has the cheeky insouciant cry of "Rosé all day!" been twisted in some quarters into another reason to put down already put upon moms? How did an overhyped hysteria around Mother's Little Helpers in the 60s and 70s get repurposed and revived to indict...

Can David convince Grace to come even close to caring about MEAT as much as a boomer dad? Probably not, but it's entertaining to hear him try, and listen in to learn all sorts of surprising, maybe disturbing, facts about men and their relationship with meat. You'll also hear about Slaughterhouse Grace and wonder along as Grace and David consider whether millennials might be the generation that breaks free from the marketi...

This time the onus is on Grace to convince David to care about the TV network that imbues the '90s with a slight orange hue for many people, Nickelodeon. As many boomer dudes may be, he's completely iClueless about shows like iCarly. But the influence of the network and the abundantly expanded Nick-verse seems to persist and David is a bit befuddled as to why. Luckily, Grace has arrived with a bevy of enlightening, and so...

In our inaugural episode, we tackle a seasonal affliction that Grace considers an outdated relic, the Fancy Awards Show. While the Oscars were last month, the seemingly endless parade of glitzy galas pimping out gold-plated statuettes continues throughout the spring. Can David convince Grace that these overstuffed, overlong, and overhyped pageants are worthy of anything besides our derision? Tune in to find out!

Grace Todd...

Every generation projects its frustration onto the one that preceded it and its disappointment onto the one that followed. It's a time-honored tradition, like apple pie, or desperately hoping you'll get to retire before society finishes collapsing. And Convince Me I Care, debuting on April 5th, is here to stoke those fires of resentment!

Join co-hosts Grace Todd (despairing millennial) and David Timberline (obli...