Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Wrather makes a surprise stop in from parental leave to join Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee and Pete Fenzel as we discuss The Onion: its history, style, and modes of satire through the years. We overthink the A.I.-threatened art of clever photoshopping, the dialogue between image and text, do…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! After six years as the only Overthinker to appreciate these masterpieces, Pete Fenzel has finally convinced Matt Belinke to watch the Tom Hardy Venom movies. And it’s just in time, as Venom: The Last Dance is here to escort the series to its Comic Book Death (and inevitable resurrection). W…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Mark Lee, Pete Fenzel, and Matt Belinkie check in with the mother of all cinematic franchises, Godzilla. After 70 years and 38 films, how can the big guy possibly surprise us, much less move us? Well shockingly, Godzilla Minus One from 2023 got a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, and earned an Oscar …

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee, and Pete Fenzel make their vague dreams into iconic realities by overthinking The Greatest Showman. Is it a concept album with spectacular visuals and only a loose plot, or a symbolic visual poem packed with bangers? An idealistic romp about a great historical cynic…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Podfather Matt Wrather is notoriously adverse to scary movies. But as he is still on paternity leave, Pete, Mark, and Matt B overthink “Trap,” a movie that is about being a dad both explicitly and metatextually. Is it a good movie? No, it is not. Its premise is nonsensical, its structure is…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee step slowly up to the wrought-iron knocker on the old oak door of this haunted mansion we call a podcast and knock three times to welcome Halloween! The door creaks on rusty hinges to reveal a bowl of tricks and treats: the spooky-scary and the spoo…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Against all odds, Matt Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee have reunited in tribute to the upcoming Oasis tour. Inspired by their once-intense but now fatigued, even deadened feelings for “Wonderwall,” they discuss the phenomenology of overplaying, the art of giving up on song meaning, and…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! In the 21st century, Dame Maggie Smith was celebrated for her portrayals of Hogwarts’s Professor McGonagall and Downton’s Dowager Countess Violet Crawley. But decades before that, she won two Oscars for movies that are now so obscure you can watch them for free on YouTube. What ties togethe…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! The Bachelor franchise has been chugging along for more than 20 years now, in a neverending ouroboros of broken hearts and moonlit dinners surrounded by hundreds of tea candles. Audiences want to see the fairy tale romance, and don’t seem to mind the awkward fact that the large majority of …

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Overthinking It has been obsessing over, and often lamenting, the Terminator franchise going all the way back to the regrettable 2009 entry, “Terminator Salvation.” The latest entry to the franchise, “Terminator Zero,” is a Netflix animated series and is much better than Salvation and subse…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Beetlejuice is such an iconic character that it’s easy to forget how weird and confusing he is (for starters, his name is actually spelled “Betelgeuse” according to his own tombstone). In this episode, Mark, Pete, Jordan, and Matt Belinkie (your substitute Matt) try to figure out if we’re d…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Once Matt Wrather heads off to parental leave, Overthinking It will be staffed entirely by parents. In the last podcast before this happens, this selfsame Impending Dad Matt, Peter Fenzel and Mark Lee each bring their own choice for “End of an Era” culture for discussion. Pete speaks on Ben…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Jordan Stokes, and Matthew Wrather examine the Netflix series called The Decameron, which does bear some loose resemblance to Bocaccio’s similarly-titled work of medieval literature. Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps Further Reading The Decameron (Wikipedia) A lectur…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee, and Peter Fenzel overthink those despicable Minions. Are they evil because they serve evil, or are they antibodies of a moral universe, because they undermine the evil they serve? What does it mean to be despicable? What fictional characters have made such an impact…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee confront the demons to overthink DOOM. They discuss the risks and successes of the dawn of 3D gaming, the pump-action panache of the DOOM guy and DOOM shotgun, and how and why we never feel fatigued or insulted by a DOOM re-release. Plus bonus di…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink the games of the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris, France. They discuss the opening ceremony, the fractured media landscape which has them consuming the games in various ways, and the tiers of sports you can relate to and can’t…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Deadpool & Wolverine, starting with a provocative (G-rated!) question, and continuing through Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps Further Reading “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel” (Jenny Nicholson on YouTube) Episo…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Middle-aged podcasters Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather investigate the “Kamala is Brat” meme and discover that it is actually a record album, such as you can play on a phonograph. They investigate Charli XCX’s BRAT, discussing its style and sound, its lyrical concern, its cultur…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Matt’s recent baby shower, and settle on the theme of baby stuff (or “stuffs”) as a peculiar and unique entry in the poetry of stuffs that makes up one’s life. Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps Episode 837: The Days are Long; T…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted, a parodic film about the 1960s in America (and, incidentally about the invention of the Pop Tart). But they don’t tuck in before they’ve had breakfaast—in a nostalgic prolegomenon (inspired by the film’s nosta…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather overthink Beverly Hills Copy: Axel F., discussing its undeserved critical reception (at least by the New York Times), its bemusing but unexpectedly resonant first sequence, the role of accountability and apology in relationships with an asymmetric power dyna…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather take another look at music generated by AI diffusion models, which have come a long way. They discuss the possible significance of this new technology and how it fits into our conception of creativity, and they play each other some tunes they’ve p…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather overthink Inside Out 2 (2 Inside 2 Out), the anxiety-centered follow up to the 2015 Pixar hit. They both had a pretty difficult experience watching the movie, which was like a 90-minute anxiety attack, but they explore its allegory of the self, the presence …

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather consider why the Pope brought comedians including Stephen Colbert, Whoopi Goldberg, and Chris Rock (?!) together at the Vatican and what he had to say to them. Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps Further Reading “Stephen Colbert and Whoopi…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Richard Linklater’s film Hit Man, now streaming on Netflix. Topics include the film’s misreading of Nietzsche, the relationship of the movie to genre (action or romcom), the forays into philosophy and psychology, and how at every turn it…