Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Comedy Podcast
80s and 90s movies and early 2000s tv may be called stupid shit by some, but you know it matters. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, sister podcasters who love well-crafted fiction and one another. In this comedy podcast, we look at the classic movies of our Gen X childhood and adolescence, analyzing film tropes to uncover the cultural commentary on romance, money, religion, mental health, and more. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, comedy to drama to horror, we use feminism, our super smart brains, and each other to uncover the lessons lurking behind the nostalgia of pop culture. Come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Episodes
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My, I’ll bet you monsters lead innnnteresting lives.
In this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie revisits some of her favorite classic hand-drawn animation from Looney Tunes, including the cartoon shorts “Duck Amuck,” “What’s Opera, Doc,” “Hair-Raising Hare,” “Transylvania 6-500,&rdquo...
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Four, Eight, Fifteen, Sixteen, Twenty-Three, Forty-Two
Today on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie and Emily welcome Seth Nesin to talk about the ethics of storytelling in the TV show Lost–and why you may be entitled to pop culture compensation for its completely unsatisfactory ending.
Seth explains why revisiting this early 2000s sci-fi / mystery / ...
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“Why don't you try squeezing something the size of a watermelon out of an opening the size of a lemon and see how hot YOU look?”
On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily revisits the only 1980s romcom that starts with talking sperm, Look Who’s Talking. This 1989 film, written and directed by Amy Heckerling, reflects ma...
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“Hello, this is Sy Greenblum, president of Spatula City. I like the spatulas so much, I bought the company.”
This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie and Emily welcome Justin Kramm, founder of Shitshow Creative, to talk about the cult classic comedy UHF. This 1989 film, written and starring Weird Al Yankovic, was a box-office failure, but a m...
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Now put that thing back where it came from or so help me…
Tracie revisits the classic Pixar animation Monsters, Inc in today’s episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit. This family film, which was released just after 9/11, offers the deeply reassuring message that laughter is much stronger than fear, and Tracie argues that our country’s collecti...
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“I love you, but I love me more.”
This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily shares her complicated love of the television show Sex and the City. When the HBO original comedy first aired in 1998, it was a breath of fresh feminism in pop culture. The show featured a quartet of fabulous single women in New York who had created a found family throu...
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Don't let your past dictate who you are, but let it be part of who you will become.
In this episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie revisits the surprise hit of 2002: My Big Fat Greek Wedding. This comedy broke many of the tropes that can make romcoms hard to watch, from the Hollywood gorgeous leading lady who is clumsy to show she's just a normal woman t...
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“Somebody has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, flyboy!”
On this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily tackles the foundational pop culture text of every Gen X childhood: the 1977 film Star Wars IV: A New Hope. By following the storytelling rubric offered by Joseph Campbell's monomyth (a.k.a., The Hero's Journey), George Lucas...
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Don’t you…forget about me…Don’t Don’t Don’t Don’t!
In this reprise of episode 23, Tracie takes another look at the 1985 John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. This classic Gen X teen movie passes the Bechdel test and explicitly names the prude-or-slut trap of female sexuality. It also treats Claire and Allison like prizes fo...
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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 how Michael Crichton's origina...
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Tale as old as time? It’s old, alright. True as it can be? Hmm, about that...
Beauty and the Beast is an old and not-so-necessary model for romantic love.
Hiding in the remarkable Howard Ashman score to this 1991 film is a not-like-other-girls feminism and a reified classism that isolates poor Belle and gives her no choice but to fall for her capt...
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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 talent with the trou...
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Sometimes you wanna go
Where everybody knows your name
This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie revisits the must-see-TV comedy that was always on at the Guy Sisters' house: Cheers. This powerhouse of 80s and 90s pop culture, created by the Charles brothers and the late James Burrows, is genuinely funny: the pilot episode is used by TV writers to teach ef...
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Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion
Grease is the way we are feeling
This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily revisits one of the classic movies of her Gen X childhood: Grease. This musical comedy was set in high school, but all of the lead actors were in their 20s and 30s, which may help explain why much of the lessons about romance, performin...
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I am standing here beside myself.
For this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie returns to one of the beloved movies from her and Emily's shared Gen X childhood: Short Circuit. The sisters remembered the charming robot Number 5 who gained sentience, the romance between Newton (Steve Guttenberg) and Stephanie (Ally Sheedy), and the funny malaprop...
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“…all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings.”
This week, Emily revisited everyone and their aunt’s favorite late-90s advertisement, er, romcom, You’ve Got Mail. The film was a feature-length commercial for America Online starring two of the biggest names in romcom, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. With the biting interaction...
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No-one said anything to me about the full monty!
For this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie returns to the 1997 British comedy The Full Monty. The film is a meditation on masculinity from multiple angles, including economic, sexual, psychological, physical, parental, and societal, as well as a treatise on the political aftermath of Thatcheris...
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By the Power of Grayskull!
On Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit this week, Emily returns to her first pop culture crush: He-Man, aka, Adam, prince of Eternia. As a very small child, she loved the cartoon He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and she was somewhat disheartened to learn that this beloved staple of her Gen X childhood was created specifically to sell He...
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"E.T. phone home!"
On this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie revisits one of the classic movies of her Gen X childhood: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Director Steven Spielberg is at the top of his storytelling game with this sci fi film that introduces E.T., a gentle alien botanist who is accidentally stranded on Earth and taken in by 10-year-ol...
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"I see dead people..."
This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily returns to M. Night Shyamalan's 1999 masterpiece The Sixth Sense. The film was a pop culture phenomenon when it debuted, and all everyone could talk about was the last ten minutes of the plot, when Bruce Willis's Malcolm Crowe (and the audience) realizes that his situation is much different f...
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