Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Ever had something you love dismissed because it’s “just” pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it’s worth talking and thinking about. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, two sisters who think a lot about a lot of things. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, and wherever pop culture takes us, come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Episodes
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Adam Gwon, Emily's childhood friend and award-winning musical theater writer, joins the Guy sisters today to share how Donald Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown had an outsize influence on his understanding of storytelling. The delightful format of each short Encyclopedia Brown mystery--which gave the reader all the same information the boy detective had and invited...
This is no dream! This is really happening!
On this week's episode, Tracie and Emily are delighted to welcome award-winning writer/director and producer Ryan Cunningham to talk about Rosemary's Baby, the film that most influenced her own filmmaking and storytelling--but also made her wonder if she was a bad feminist considering the terrible deeds Roman Polanski later went to commit. The conversation covers th...
They're heeeeere!
In a moment that would echo through the 42 years that followed, Tracie and Emily's father let the girls watch the 1982 film Poltergeist on TV sometime in 1983, when the sisters were only 7 and 4 years old. This classic of pop culture horror drew the Guy girls in because of 5-year-old Heather O'Rourke, the adorable blonde-and-blue-eyed actress who played Carol Ann, who is sucked into the...
May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.
When Tracie first encountered the fan-favorite Western-in-space television show Firefly 20 years ago, she was delighted by Joss Whedon's subversion of tropes, his mastery of the written word, and his commitment to excellent storytelling. At the time, Whedon was heralded as a modern feminist and Firefly (and its follow up film Serenity) were p...
What was sundered and undone shall be whole–the two made one.
On today's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t, Emily returns to a beloved film from the Guy girls' childhood: Jim Henson's 1982 epic fantasy The Dark Crystal. Though the film's main character Jen the Gelfling follows the familiar beats of the hero's journey, baby Emily didn't understand the allegory of divine beings that...
All my life I've been waiting for someone and when I find her, she's... she's a fish.
When Tracie and Emily saw the 1984 Ron Howard film Splash as little girls, they fell in love with the badass mermaid played by Daryl Hannah. She was smart, determined, and romantic--and she had a gorgeous tail she could unfurl in Tom Hanks' bathtub. But on revisiting the movie this week, Tracie found some rather ug...
Mickey's a mouse, Donald's a duck, Pluto's a dog. What's Goofy?
Emily and Tracie always assumed their father loved the 1986 Rob Reiner film Stand By Me because the music and pop culture references were a delightful reminder of his childhood. Reiner’s period masterpiece features incredible performances from its child actors–a rarity in movies about childhood–and offers a sometimes-idyllic portrayal o...
"Where are the people who know where the people are?"
On today's episode, Tracie introduces Emily to the 1990 Barry Levinson film Avalon, the director's love letter to Baltimore and his own Jewish immigrant family. The movie follows the Krichinskys from 1914 through to the 1960s as the large, tight-knit, extended family moves, changes, assimilates, and fractures.
As a lifelong Baltimorean and the gr...
“We say who; we say when; we say how much.”
This week, Emily takes a deep dive into Pretty Woman, the 1990 blockbuster romantic comedy that catapulted Julia Roberts to stardom. The film was originally written as a tragic story about awful characters, and many people (including those close to the Guy sisters) lamented the Hollywood happy ending as “unrealistic”–but Emily argues that by giving Vivian and Edward the fairy...
By Grabthar’s hammer, you shall be avenged!
The 1999 film Galaxy Quest was almost tailor made for the Guy sisters and their dad–all lifelong Trekkers. The sci-fi satire pokes gentle fun at Star Trek, lightly skewering everything from the story tropes to the actors to the fans, all while offering a lovely tribute to folks who get really enthusiastic about their favorite media. The film also does one of our favorite thin...
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.
In 1989, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure introduced Emily to a baby-faced Keanu Reeves–and to the idea that two easy-going dopes could change the world by encouraging us all to be excellent to each other. In this episode, Emily shares how this surprisingly well-crafted comedy teaches us that destiny can’t be achieved without putting in the work and why it’s important to lo...
Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.
In addition to dazzling her with its old-school hand-drawn animation and delighting her with its sweet and funny story, the 2002 Disney film Lilo & Stitch introduced Tracie to indigenous Hawaiʻian culture. The writing and directing team of Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois traveled to Hawaiʻi for extensive artistic and cultural research and sought...
Does anybody here know how many times I had to watch Funny Lady?
The 1997 film In & Out, directed by Frank Oz (yes, the one who voices Miss Piggy) and starring Kevin Kline, Joan Cusack, and Tom Selleck, has mostly been forgotten–but this feel-good comedy had a lasting impact on Emily. When she saw it in the theater as an undiagnosed neurodivergent 18-year-old, she was confused as all hell when Kline’s character com...
I talk to God all the time, and no offense, but He never mentioned you.
On this week’s episode, Tracie traces some of her earliest ideas about romance to the 1985 Richard Donner film Ladyhawke. Although both contemporary and retrospective reviews are scornful of the anachronistic, Alan Parsons-produced, synthesizer-heavy soundtrack (so unrealistic in a film about a woman cursed to live as a hawk during the day!), Traci...
What is a place like me doing in a girl like this?
The 1999 Brendan Fraser film The Mummy has an extraordinarily beautiful cast, a delightfully bonkers plot, and a whole heap of unexamined colonialism, racism, and othering. Emily shares with Tracie the historical background of the West’s fascination with Egypt–which led to little Emily’s own interest and delight in all things Egyptological. But the Egypt we encounter i...
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
When SpongeBob SquarePants debuted in 1999, 23-year-old Tracie was not the intended audience for everyone’s favorite absorbent and yellow and porous hero–but she was charmed and entertained by the show that became a Millennial and Gen Z touchstone. This week, Tracie talks about how SpongeBob gave a generation a framework for understanding capitalism, motivation, community, and ab...
I do wish we could chat longer, but... I'm having an old friend for dinner.
On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily revisits what is arguably the most influential pop culture of our lifetime: The Silence of the Lambs. Although director Jonathan Demme and lead actor Jodie Foster illuminate the spectrum of misogyny women experience, from casual workplace putdowns to the violent treatment of women as objects, the ...
It's the karmic credit plan: buy now, pay forever.
Tracie shares her deep thoughts about the 1991 Kenneth Branagh film Dead Again on this week’s episode. Branagh brought intelligence, style, and some pretension to this noir homage that tells the tragic love story of Roman and Margaret Strauss–who have apparently been reincarnated as Mike Church and the amnesiac Jane Doe he calls Grace. While the movie hits all the...
Your mother’s a tracer!
Emily was very confused by the 1997 film Chasing Amy when she was an undiagnosed neurodivergent 18-year-old–in part because she was (and still is) crap at reading subtext and in part because the film accidentally illuminates the reality of bi-erasure. This week, Emily tells Tracie about what this well-meaning film about a cis-het white man learning to let go of his insecurities gets right about ...
Okay…but I get to be on top!
Tracie loved revisiting the 1988 Penny Marshall-helmed film Big this week. Tom Hanks’ performance of a 12-year-old boy wearing a grown man’s body is laugh-out-loud funny, and the film asks some profoundly important questions about how grownups can hold onto their childlike joy and wonder. But the love story between Hanks’ Josh Baskin and Elizabeth Perkins’ Susan–an actual adult woman–never ...
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