Popcorn Psychology

Hannah, Brittney, Ben, you guys truly are doing amazing things with this pod. I love hearing my favorite movies be dissected in such a clinical/educational way while still being easy to digest. Nope has to be one of my favorite movies and when I saw the review posted for it I immediately clicked! As a young woman in my twenties this pod brings me so much joy but also resources in the sense that things I’ve struggled with or related to through my favorite characters have been made clearer to me through the insight on these three amazing people. Please continue to make these pods they are so entertaining and help me get through my week!

One of my all time FAVES! Entertaining, educational, and just all around amazing. Fully living a parasocial relationship with Hannah, Ben, and Brittney. Love considering some of these movies through the lens of these deep psychological considerations. All three understand their strengths and limitations. They have wonderful guests from time to time, totally wish I had become a therapist!

I’m a filmmaker (writer / director) and I’ve always had a strong interest in psychology, so this is right up my alley. So informative and just plain interesting! Found this podcast about a year ago, and have been working through the back catalog and always excited to see new episodes. It’s a fantastic concept and I love it, with just a couple caveats. The sound quality is inconsistent. It’s an audio-only medium, and when sound levels are really different between the speakers or the audio quality is just poor, it’s hard to listen to. Too many plosives too close to the mic. Even in film or TV, if the audio is bad, people will tune out. This seems like it might be improving, recently, and I hope it continues to improve. In the same theme of ease of listening, and I think this is improving some, too, one of the regular co-hosts (maybe Hannah?) is so very interrupty. She has a habit of cutting people off a whole lot. I’m ok with some interruptions - I think they all do it from time to time, and it’s fine! It’s a discussion! But sometimes the one co-host does it to the extreme and it just gets frustrating to listen to. There’s also a lot of upspeak? Where every phrase? Is a question? that also gets to me?And, Ben, I’m so tired of hearing about Batman. Perhaps it’s time to retire that bit. Ok, finally. Sometimes more research is needed into the cultural environment around a film’s release. I’ll use The Breakfast Club ep as an example of one that really just needed more research. The main characters were each representative of a different social group or clique, which was a prominent idea in 80’s movies as well as in the 80’s themselves: yuppies (Claire), punks (Bender), jocks (Andrew), nerds (Brian), and outcasts (Allison). I was laughing at some of the guesswork that was going on re Bender’s wardrobe and Claire’s social status, including her feelings of shame around her parents’ divorce. Sushi was a new yuppie trend at the time, and Claire eating sushi for lunch was wild. You guys sort of mostly got there in the end, but it was a little painful to listen to. These broad stereotypes were instantly recognizable to anyone who saw the film when it came out. The film then breaks down the walls between the teens who inhabit these isolated cliques, finding common connections between them. Suggestion: ask a Gen X person for some background on 80’s and 90’s movies, please, or just read more about the social context of the time. However! Having said all that - and I apologize for being so picayune - I still absolutely adore this podcast! It fulfills a niche that I didn’t know I was craving. The regular co-hosts and guests are fantastic in their insights and I love their personalities. And they’re based in Chicago, where I’m from! I’d love to see them branch out into some smaller films, or even foreign films, like a contemporary French film, for a challenge. I do love that they’ve dipped their toes into the occasional tv show, and there could be more of that, too. Thanks for the ‘cast, and keep going!

I really look forward to the new episodes! Great intersection of entertainment and psychology.