Shows
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastTitanic: Deep Thoughts About Pop Culture Feminism, Jack as a Trans Man, and the Relative Buoyancy of Wardrobe DoorsSend us a textDraw 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 "this is a thing that happened." Like Cameron's occasional pop culture examination of social class, f...2025-07-2953 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastMrs. Doubtfire: Deep Thoughts About Cringe Comedy, Feminist Backlash, and Hairy Leg AppreciationSend us a textIt 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 the ball-busting workaholic wife. Tracie had also forgotten how much of the...2025-07-2252 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastWeird Science: Deep Thoughts on Pygmalion, Women's Agency, and Why 1980s Movies Thought Computers Were MagicSend us a textSo, 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 microcomputer, because 1980s movies taught us computers are magic.2025-07-0854 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastIndependence Day: Deep Thoughts About American Exceptionalism, Sci Fi Disaster Movies, and Jeff Goldblum in a Flight SuitSend us a textWelcome 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 and again in 2025, Emily appreciated feeling seen as an American Jew via t...2025-07-0150 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastPoltergeist: Deep Thoughts About the Feminine Archetype in Pop Culture, Dubious Parenting Decisions, and Respect for the DeadSend us a textThey'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--including a tree that tried to eat Carol Ann's brother and a clown doll that...2025-06-1052 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastThe Dark Crystal: Deep Thoughts About False Binaries, World Building, and What Emily Isn't Willing to Accept From Her PuppetsSend us a textWhat 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 drew inspiration from the book Seth Speaks by psychic medium Jane...2025-05-2750 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastSplash: Deep Thoughts About Mermaids, Male Masturbatory Fantasies, and How Pop Culture Created the Name MadisonSend us a textAll 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 the mermaid learns how to be a human woman...2025-05-2052 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastStand By Me: Deep Thoughts About Nostalgia, Mental Health, and Cherry-Flavored PezSend us a textMickey'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, Stand By Me is not nostalgic for the toxic masculinity, mental health strugg...2025-05-131h 00
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastAvalon: Deep Thoughts About Family, Money Psychology, and Waiting to Cut the TurkeySend 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 seen by Levinson's story, and she recognizes the ways in which American culture, money, and changing technology have altered f...2025-05-0651 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastLilo & Stitch: Deep Thoughts About Animation, Found Family in Film, and...American ImperialismSend us a textOhana 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 the input of native Hawaiʻians, including voice actor and friend of the show Tia Carrere, to write this story. The result is a touching tale of...2025-04-0853 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastLadyhawke: Deep Thoughts About Romance, Gender, and Looking for Realism in a Film About a Cursed BirdSend us a textI 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!), Tracie and Emily are more interested in why the film takes away the leading lady’s agency when it otherwise gets a lot right abou...2025-03-2559 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastThe Mummy: Deep Thoughts About Colonialism, Historical Fiction, and Bisexual AwakeningsSend us a textWhat 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 in movies likeThe Mummy has little to do with the real history of ancient Egypt (check out all the white actors!) and he...2025-03-1856 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastSpongeBob Squarepants: Deep Thoughts About Absurdist Comedy, Capitalism in Pop Culture, and IMAGINATIONSend us a textWho 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 absurdist humor. She also explains how challenging the medium of animation may have encouraged the current batch of newly-minted adults to confidently break rules that don’t work...2025-03-1152 min
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastChasing Amy: Deep Thoughts About Bi-Erasure, Neurodivergence, and Well-Meaning White Men in Pop CultureSend us a textYour 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 LGBTQ representation in pop culture, what it gets wrong, and how it reinforces the gendered division of emotional labor in textual and...2025-02-111h 16
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastBig: Deep Thoughts About Giant Pianos, Women Mothering Their Boyfriends, and Why Emily Thought Adulthood Would Involve More Body-SwappingSend us a textOkay…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 sat well with either Guy girl. The sisters discuss how this film would not work if it were gender-swapped, why it seems to reinf...2025-02-041h 07
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastAlien: Deep Thoughts About Space Feminism, Ash as an Allegory for the Anti-Abortion Movement, and CatsSend us a textI admire its purity. A survivor…unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.After many references in previous episodes, on this week’s show, the Guy Girls finally tackle the iconic 1979 film Alien. Ridley Scott’s masterpiece gave Tracie and Emily a role model in Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver to be smart, tough, vulnerable, and right. While many commentators have explored the ways this film works as an allegory for rape and loss of bodily autonomy, Emily’s analysis takes it a little deeper, comparing the words and actions of the v...2025-01-141h 04
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastThe Toy: Deep Thoughts About the Lies Pop Culture Told Us About Human Rights, Redemption, and PiranhasSend us a textThat's U.S., not you ass!The Guy girls remember the 1982 Richard Pryor film The Toy with a great deal of fondness, in part because it was on heavy rotation in the Guy household through their childhood. But a pop culture staple about a billionaire’s young son “purchasing” a Black man to be his toy for the week has some pretty chilling implications that the movie itself doesn’t do enough to acknowledge. In this week’s episode, Tracie shares how rewatching this movie in 2024 is both better and worse t...2024-12-171h 01
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastAirplane!: Deep Thoughts About Comedy That Questions Everything--Except a Woman as a PrizeSend us a textWe picked the wrong week to give up horse tranquilizers…The Guy Girls have fond memories of the 1980 comedy Airplane!–specifically, they remember their dad helplessly snort-laughing at this three-gags-a-minute parody of 1970s-era disaster films. The conedy still delivers solid belly laughs, but not everything is as funny four decades later. Tracie examines how jokes about pedophilia, misogyny, racism, and homophobia in the movie punch down instead of skewering the powerful and absurd, and the sisters lament the fact that the Zucker brothers (and Jim Abrahams) question everything–except the idea that a...2024-11-191h 11
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastMen in Black: Deep Thoughts About Sci-Fi Comedy, Subversive Pop Culture, and Why Little Tiffany Had to DieSend us a textYou know what the difference is between you and me? I make podcasting look gooooood.This week, Emily dives into the remarkably subversive 1997 film Men in Black. Despite looking like nothing more than an entertaining summer blockbuster that merged sci-fi and comedy, MiB actually asks the audience to rethink what they know about immigration, xenophobia, race, policing, government, and even the buddy-cop genre. Tracie and Emily truly enjoy revisiting this old pop culture favorite that seems especially prescient in the current social and political climate. Take a listen and w...2024-11-121h 09
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastJaws: Deep Thoughts About Shark Phobia in Pop Culture, Accidents Improving Spielberg's Storytelling, and Emily Swooning Over Oxygen TanksSend us a textWe’re gonna need a bigger podcast…Join the Guy Girls this week as Emily geeks out about the most tightly-written and well-crafted summer blockbuster ever made: Jaws. This film taught us the importance of keeping the monster hidden until the third act (which only happened because the mechanical shark broke down), features the most chilling four-minute monologue (telling the true story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis), and gave Emily a framework for understanding the psychology behind why officials might focus on profits over safety (which she needed during Covid). Whil...2024-10-221h 23
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastDeep Thoughts about The Little MermaidSend us a textBright young women, sick of swimming, ready to podcast!In 1989, 13-year-old Tracie and 10-year-old Emily got to witness the Disney renaissance in real time when they saw The Little Mermaid in the theater. The Guy girls were captivated by the unparalleled animation, the show-stopping musical numbers, and the unexpected sight of their stepdad tearing up at the end. But underneath the beautifully constructed film was the uncomfortable lesson that Ariel gave up her voice for a man. But as Tracie shares in this week’s episode, that’s not the only way...2024-10-141h 10
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastDeep Thoughts about City SlickersSend us a textI crap bigger’n you!The 1991 film City Slickers holds a special place in the Guy sisters’ hearts because of how much their dad loved it. When Tracie and Emily took him to see this film in the theater for Father’s Day, they had no idea this gentle comedy-Western would offer a nuanced look at the meaning of masculinity, male friendships, and figuring out what matters in life. Although the film’s portrayal of women does not completely stand up to 2024 scrutiny–it falls victim to lazy tropes about ball-busting wives and...2024-09-241h 21
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastDeep Thoughts about Nightmare on Elm StreetSend us a textOne, two, Freddy’s coming for you…Today’s episode of Deep Thoughts gives Emily a chance to finally exorcise the boogeyman of every 80’s childhood: Freddy Krueger. Though neither Emily nor Tracie ever saw the influential 1984 film Nightmare on Elm Street, the burned and be-knived Freddy cast a long shadow over the culture, meaning the Guy sisters were completely unaware of the badass Nancy Thompson, protagonist and final girl (the last woman alive to confront the killer) who refuses to give in. Though the film hits some false notes in 2024–specifical...2024-09-101h 09
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastDeep Thoughts about The Ren & Stimpy ShowSend us a textHappy! Happy! Joy! Joy!This week on Deep Thoughts, Tracie brings nostalgia, laughter, and the unfortunate realization that you really can’t go home again with her analysis of The Ren & Stimpy Show. While creator and tortured animation genius John K brought back the artistry and commitment to craft when his angry Chihuahua and sweetly dim cat graced our screens in the early 1990s, he did so with a big old side of emotional and psychological abuse of his fellow animators and predation on teenage female fans. We revisit the hilarity th...2024-08-061h 15
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture PodcastDeep Thoughts about Jurassic ParkSend us a textHold on to your butts!On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily shares her analysis of the 1993 film Jurassic Park. She describes the thrill of being the target audience for a summer blockbuster (she was 14 when it came out) and her discomfort with how the book portrayed the only two female characters as an annoying child and a cardboard cutout with breasts. She and Tracie talk about how the film that teaches us that life finds a way makes for an unexpected (and unintended) allegory for the importance of re...2024-07-161h 11