Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and John Perich to celebrate two years of releasing the Overthinking It Podcast every week with some well-deserved navel-gazing.
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@Perich I managed to not actually read Atlas Shrugged until after I’d already completed a degree in history/philosophy, but I can absolutely see both how it influenced you so much and then how it ended up not influencing you thereafter. The passage on the subject of how Robin Hood is the exemplar of everything that is wrong with humanity really sticks with me.
Though I think it got just as much press from South Park where Officer Barbrady learns to read, reads Atlas Shrugged, and decides to never read another book again, than from Glenn Beck
Oh and Belinkie, you said that someone calling the shots would be like Daphne on Frasier, sitting in the booth.
Well actually ;) That was Roz. Daphne was the british housekeeper/caretaker for Frasier’s father.
@Dan from Canada
Belinkie wasn’t on this podcast. The person on the podcast who hasn’t seen Frasier in entirely too long was me :-(
But yes, I stand corrected. I always liked Roz, too.
Ack! Fenzel! I feel so ashamed on my misidentification of Overthinkers. My only defense is that I’m on the east coast and listened to the podcast a few hours after it went up and was overtired?
It’s okay. Belinkie and I lived together for a while. Our cycles are synchronized. It’s easy to confuse it.
I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that movies are “inherently” social. I think the social element comes from the way movies are distributed than from any innate property; whereas live theatre and even a football game are by definition social gatherings, watching a movie doesn’t have to be any more interactive than reading a book.
I’m probably a bit biased, though, as most of the movies which have most moved me have been foreign/independent or produced before I was born, so I had to borrow them or check them out from the library rather than seeing them in the theatre with other people.
Congrats on two years, Overthinkers. I’ve listened to all of your shows now and it’s been a wild, dizzying, often good run.
I too have seen Skynyrd and am not racist. But there were so many racists. Can’t go back.
I would ask that some time in the next 2 years you guys discuss the podcasts that you listen to, or explain why you don’t listen to podcasts if that’s the way you stroll.
Maybe even get into a discussion of how this new medium can be understood intellectually. So far, I see the body podcast as cleved between those shows that aspire to the structure of radio program and those that are a response to that kind of thing–that is, alternative podcasting. Where would OTIP rest on such a fault? I would squarely on the verge of falling into the great abyss that is the bleeding edge of podcastery, yet never quite taking the plunge. Is this really Marc Maron and Ira Glass’s realm? What if someone made a podcast and never uploaded it to the internet? Is that a podcast at all? How say you?
Gasp! Perich, how have you managed to avoid seeing Titanic?
I feel like I already know the story.
Also: never read Catcher in the Rye.
For the next two years you should think about getting rid of your ~hour length limit. I think if you get on a subject where you have a lot to say, just say it. Don’t worry about sticking to the confines of a set time limit. After all, you did say on this podcast that part of what made it good is that you don’t stick to a set “script” (or however you put it).
That’s why we shill for donations–longer podcasts cost more money to host!
Alternatively, get more of your friends to listen to the show; if the audience grows enough, we can start to sell our air time to advertisers. And I know how much you all want to hear yet another podcast brought to you by Audible.com.
Are there any stats available as to how many people on average are listening to the recording from the chatrooms / how many people are downloading each episode in a given week? Be interesting to see how the audience has grown as word-to-mouth has a chance to cascade around.
As of now, there’s no one listening in the chatrooms as the Ustream live streaming has been on hiaitus for some time. Even at its peak, though, we never got beyond a few dozen live-streamers.
As for the download numbers, Wrather may or may not want to divulge those stats, but I can say for certain that our power level is way over 9,000 at this point.
It’s true. I don’t like talking about stats. Let’s talk about how AWESOME the podcast is instead. ;)
Congrats! And congrats to the listeners who have heard all 116(ish)! It’s great to have gotten involved here – I’ve learnt a lot, and laughed a lot, and spent a week talking like half-Fenzel, half-Abed from Community on account of the fact that Finals were making me mad and these were the only media I was consuming.
Regarding QI: For starters, I’m pretty sure that show is still on, but I can’t say that with certainty. Secondly, the point of the show, as established by its title “Quite Interesting” was to give interesting answers. The way the show would go is Stephen Fry would ask a question, if you got the right answer you got the most points. However, if Fry felt somebody gave an interesting answer, they could also get points. That being said, if you gave an “uninteresting” i.e. obvious but incorrect answer, you lost points. All the stuff you said about it mostly being about the banter and the jokes and the knowledge imparted is correct, of course, but it was also about just having an interesting, engaging conversation. I once dreamed of an American version of QI, but alas I find that exceedingly unlikely to happen.
I also have never seen Titanic and when I was a kid I played the trombone and I would play it by trying to match what the other trombone players were doing. Maybe that’s why I enjoy your podcast so much.
There Will Be Blood was my second favorite movie of last decade.
Keep on keeping on with the podcast. It is almost always enjoyable, even when you are talking about a new movie I haven’t seen and I have no intention of seeing.