x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast

Tracie Guy-Decker & Emily Guy Birken

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.

tv & film

All Episodes

49:42

Rain Man: Deep Thoughts About Buicks, Toothpicks, and...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/09/16

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. When I was a little kid and I got scared, the Rain Man would come and sing to me. Join us this week as Tracie shares her deep thoughts about the 1988 film Rain Man, for which Dustin Hoffman won the Oscar for his nuanced portrayal of autistic savant Raymond Babbitt. This comedy/drama, written by Barry Morrow and directed by Barry Levinson, was singled-handedly responsible for introducing autism to American society, it also pr...

en-us

49:00

The Golden Girls: Deep Thoughts About Pop Culture's...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/09/09

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. "It's like we say in St. Olaf—Christmas without fruitcake is like St. Sigmund's Day without the headless boy." On this week's episode, Tracie and Emily prove that you can go home again to beloved pop culture from the 1980s, as long as you're talking about The Golden Girls. The episodic adventures of Dorothy, Blanche, Rose, and Sophia weren't written with the Guy sisters in mind (they were in elementary school when the show d...

en-us

58:11

V for Vendetta: Deep Thoughts About Fascism,...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/09/02

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. You cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it. Ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love... The (relatively) recent news that Stephen Colbert's show was cancelled put Emily in mind of the fate of Stephen Fry's character Gordon Dietrich in the 2005 film V for Vendetta, which is why she decided to revisit this pop culture mashup that took Alan Moore's graphic novel response to 1980s Thatcherism and upd...

en-us

52:38

The Sword in the Stone: Deep Thoughts About...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/08/26

Send us a text Hockety pockety wockety wack! Odds and ends and bric-a-brac! In revisiting this classic Disney animation from 1963, Tracie found that the charm she remembered from her childhood wasn't nearly as charming this time around. While the comedy of Merlin, Archimedes the Owl, and Arthur (known as the Wart) was still humorous, the film feels more like a series of unconnected events rather than any kind of storytelling. The only named woman in the story is Madam Mim--although looking fo...

en-us

55:51

Hook with Jenn Book Haselswerdt: Deep Thoughts About...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/08/19

Send us a text "To die would be a grand adventure!" Emily is delighted to welcome her dear childhood friend--and lifelong Peter Pan enthusiast--Jenn Book Haselswerdt to the podcast this week to discuss Steven Spielberg's 1991 film Hook. Although this fantasy film suffers from a lack of editing as well as some lazy 90s pop culture stereotypes regarding fatphobia and distracted dads, Jenn explains how magical it felt to see this love letter to Peter Pan in the theater as a child. While the stor...

en-us

59:28

The Shawshank Redemption: Deep Thoughts About...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/08/12

Send us a text Though it's now consistently named #1 on IMDB's top 250 list of classic movies, Frank Darabont's 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption started out as a commercial flop with no pop culture cache. It's understandable why Shawshank struggled to find its audience: there's no romance or women, the storytelling is slow with anything resembling action occurring in the final 30 minutes, and nearly the entire film takes place within the walls of a prison. But just as the story takes its ti...

en-us

53:47

The Beastmaster: Deep Thoughts About Storytelling...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/08/05

Send us a text I have my eyes... I have my cunning... and I have my strength. This obscure sword-and-sorcery fantasy film from the early 1980s was a staple of the Guy sisters' formative pop culture years because it was on regular rotation on HBO (which people jokingly claimed stood for "Hey! Beastmaster's on!"). This week, Tracie delves back into the bizarre five act storytelling choices that animate the journey of Marc Singer's Dar, a prince stolen from his mother's womb by an evil priest--p...

en-us

53:23

Titanic: Deep Thoughts About Pop Culture Feminism,...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/07/29

Send us a text Draw me like one of your French girls... This week, Emily finally introduces Tracie to the pop culture juggernaut Titanic, which the elder Guy sister somehow completely missed. Even in 1997, Emily appreciated how the spectacle, costumes, special effects, and even the storytelling serve writer and director James Cameron's purpose, because the rich girl/poor boy romance allows us to see the entire ship. But Cameron's purpose doesn't seem to amount to anything more than "thi...

en-us

52:54

Mrs. Doubtfire: Deep Thoughts About Cringe Comedy,...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/07/22

Send us a text It was a run-by fruiting! Revisiting the beloved 1993 Robin Williams film Mrs. Doubtfire this week was a reminder to Tracie that you can never go home again. Though she was expecting some early nineties transphobia (and was mostly pleased at its absence), she was horrified to realize the film's plot relied on a kind of men's rights activist feminist backlash, where every woman and girl in the movie represented a different feminist stereotype, from the humorless social worker to...

en-us

53:44

Mannequin: Deep Thoughts About Hiding Seriously...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/07/15

Send us a text Two things I love to do: fight and kiss boys! This week, Emily revisits another of the silly Pygmalion movies from the Guy girls' childhood: Michael Gottlieb's 1987 film Mannequin, starring Kim Cattrall, Meshach Taylor, and Andrew McCarthy. While the story of an underemployed Philadelphia artist who falls in love with a department store mannequin is as insubstantial as dandelion fluff, the film slipped some delightfully subversive and progressive gay representation into the mov...

en-us

54:40

Weird Science: Deep Thoughts on Pygmalion, Women's...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/07/08

Send us a text So, what would you little maniacs like to do first? This week, Tracie takes a deep dive into Weird Science: yet another of the John Hughes movies that helped to define Gen X pop culture. This 1985 teen comedy is a modern retelling of Pygmalion, the Greek myth that finds a sculptor falling in love with his artwork that comes to life. Except in this version, Anthony Michael Hall's Gary and Ilan Mitchell-Smith's Wyatt create Lisa (played by Kelly LeBrock) via Memotech MTX 512 micr...

en-us

50:59

Independence Day: Deep Thoughts About American...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/07/01

Send us a text Welcome to Earth. The 1996 Roland Emmerich-helmed film Independence Day was one of the touchstone movies for Emily's generation, so her flabber was absolutely gasted to learn Tracie had never seen it until a few years ago. Just in time for the 4th of July, Emily walks Tracie through what made this movie such a monumental hit in the U.S. and abroad, despite its jingoistic American exceptionalism and skin-deep application of science fiction storytelling tropes. Both in 1996...

en-us

52:09

Encyclopedia Brown with Adam Gwon: Deep Thoughts...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/06/24

Send us a text 25 cents per day, plus expenses. No case too small! 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 you to test your wits against that of the sleuth before checking the ...

en-us

79:35

Rosemary's Baby with Ryan Cunningham: Deep Thoughts...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/06/17

Send us a text 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 the absurdity of two Jewish men shaping the idea of Satanism in pop cult...

en-us

52:40

Poltergeist: Deep Thoughts About the Feminine...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/06/10

Send us a text 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 TV by the poltergeists. By the time the truly terrifying stuff appeared--i...

en-us

54:15

Firefly and Serenity: Deep Thoughts About...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/06/03

Send us a text 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 presented as proof of his feminism bona fides. This franchise gave...

en-us

50:09

The Dark Crystal: Deep Thoughts About False Binaries,...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/05/27

Send us a text 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 are incomplete as Mystics and Skeksis without each other–and for good reason. Jim Henson ...

en-us

52:53

Splash: Deep Thoughts About Mermaids, Male...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/05/20

Send us a text 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 ugly and sexist assumptions bundled together with the romantic notions. Madison th...

en-us

60:41

Stand By Me: Deep Thoughts About Nostalgia, Mental...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/05/13

Send us a text 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 of the freedom enjoyed by kids in the 1950s. But as Emily discovered this week, S...

en-us

51:14

Avalon: Deep Thoughts About Family, Money Psychology,...

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast ·

2025/05/06

Send us a text "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 great-great-granddaughter of a Jewish immigrant from Europe, Tracie feels se...

en-us

110 results

Similar Podcasts

Scoop Viewfinder

Gene Viewfinder

IGN Movie Reviews

IGN

The Adam Friedland Show Podcast

The Adam Friedland Show

BEHIND THE VELVET ROPE

David Yontef

Love Island: The Morning After

Lifted Entertainment part of ITV Studios