Episodes

  • Why Anime Is Taking Over Pop Culture

    Why Anime Is Taking Over Pop Culture
    Jul 18 2025
    On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Crunchyroll EVP Mitchel Berger to talk about anime’s increasing popularity with those yearning for community. We reference a report on the state of anime several times; you can read it here. The long and the short of it, though, is that anime is increasingly popular with Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which will likely come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the wall of manga in their local Barnes and Noble. From theatrical rollouts in the United States and around the world to the 17-million-subscriber-strong Crunchyroll streaming service to the sold-out Anime Expo in Los Angeles earlier this month, it’s an enormous segment of the market that holds a deep attachment to younger audiences. If you enjoyed this week’s episode, I hope you share it with a friend!
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    43 mins
  • How 'Sovereign' Tackles a Cult with Compassion

    How 'Sovereign' Tackles a Cult with Compassion
    Jul 11 2025
    On this week’s episode, I talked to Christian Swegal, the writer-director of the new film Sovereign, about his new film and its focus on the cult-like behavior of the Sovereign Citizen movement. We discussed Nick Offerman’s commanding lead performance, how you adapt a movie with an ending and setting as tragic as this one, and the difficulty of finding compassion even for those who seem to deserve it least. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to check out Sovereign, which is in theaters and on VOD now. And please, share this with a friend!

    Movies like this don’t have huge ad budgets; they need word of mouth to thrive. It’s a tough story with some great performances by Offerman, Jacob Tremblay, and Dennis Quaid. If you want to see something a little different from the standard franchise fare flooding the multiplex, you have to support movies like Sovereign.
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    36 mins
  • Is 'F1' a Hit? How Do We Even Judge That?

    Is 'F1' a Hit? How Do We Even Judge That?
    Jul 3 2025
    Always glad to talk to the Entertainment Strategy Guy (read him here!) about the state of play in the world of streaming and beyond. Among the topics discussed this week: Whether or not F1: The Movie is a hit (and what being a “hit” means for a $200 million original for Apple as opposed to a different type of movie for a different type of studio); whether F1, the sport, is a butts-in-seats phenomenon in the United States; why the streaming wars are tightening and other streaming services are closing the originals gap with Netflix; and how sports rights are going to shake out over the next few years as the ESPN streaming service comes online and regional sports networks start to dwindle. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!
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    46 mins
  • How Zombies Can Help Explain Political Theory

    How Zombies Can Help Explain Political Theory
    Jun 27 2025
    On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Daniel Drezner—cohost of the Space the Nation podcast with Ana Marie Cox and proprietor of the Drezner’s World Substack—to discuss the eternal popularity of zombies (most recently via the hit movie 28 Years Later, which I reviewed here) and the continued relevance of his book, Theories of International Politics and Zombies, which is now in its third edition. We chatted about the ways different political theories might confront waves of the undead and discussed how this book can help explain basic problems of international relations to even lay audiences. If you enjoyed this episode, I hope you share it with a friend!

    (And, as a bonus, here’s a link to a video starring Dan, me, and Across the Movie Aisle’s Alyssa Rosenberg that asked what Star Wars would have looked like if it had been shot in the style of Ken Burns’s Civil War. Enjoy!)
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    14 mins
  • You Can Make a Movie with Your Phone

    You Can Make a Movie with Your Phone
    Jun 20 2025
    On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Bart Weiss to discuss the evolution of the iPhone-shot movie from Tangerine to 28 Years Later and his recent book, Smartphone Cinema: Making Great Films with Your Mobile Phone. You have the power to make a movie in the palm of your hand: will you use it? If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!
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    43 mins
  • Why Productions Are Fleeing Los Angeles

    Why Productions Are Fleeing Los Angeles
    Jun 13 2025
    On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Lane Brown of New York magazine to discuss his feature on an increasingly rare phenomenon: the film or TV show shot in Los Angeles. From foreign tax credits to the cost of permits, Los Angeles is getting more expensive to shoot in, meaning that more productions are moving out of Los Angeles altogether. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to read Lane’s piece. And please, share this with a friend!
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    39 mins
  • How the Studios Are (Quietly) Using AI

    How the Studios Are (Quietly) Using AI
    Jun 6 2025
    On this week’s episode, I’m joined by New York Magazine features writer Lila Shapiro to discuss her feature story on the growing utilization of generative AI by Hollywood studios to cut costs and speed up production times. From a party hosted by an AI studio to the work being done by Runway to the growing sense that, hey man, this is just The Future, it seems like AI is, as several folks in the piece put it, “inevitable.” If you enjoyed this episode or learned something in it, please share it with a friend!
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    46 mins
  • A Life in Music

    A Life in Music
    May 30 2025
    On this week’s episode, I strayed a bit from Hollywood to talk to David C. Lowery of the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven about his new album, Fathers, Sons, and Brothers. You can check out the album here and peruse the accompanying Substack here. We had a fascinating chat about how the industry has changed over the last 40 years (for better and worse), how folks discover new music, and how his experiences growing up helped shape his musical tastes and self-conception as an American. If you enjoyed the episode, I hope you check out his album and his Substack. And please share this with a friend!
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    1 hr and 4 mins