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On the show
Recent episodes
2015: The Spotlight Awakens
Apr 30, 2026
1h 39m 53s
2014: Birdman (And The Unexpected Virtue of Optimus Prime) (w/ Munsi Parker-Munroe)
Apr 16, 2026
1h 59m 26s
The 2026 Oscar Recap (feat. Olav Rokne)
Apr 2, 2026
1h 24m 03s
Should it Have Been Nominated?
Mar 19, 2026
21m 49s
2013: 12 Years Catching Frozen Fire (feat. Gina Stewart)
Mar 5, 2026
2h 10m 24s
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| Date | Episode | Description | Length | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/30/26 | 2015: The Spotlight Awakens | 2015 is all about nostalgia, be it for classic space operas or this old-timey thing called "investigative journalism." The Oscar went to Spotlight, an unassuming yet star-studded drama about the Boston Globe's efforts to expose child abuse within the Catholic Church, perhaps the most Boston movie the gang has covered yet. But audiences had little time for hard hitting historical hitpieces, not when STAR WARS WAS BACK, BABY! The Force had Awoken and audiences were there in droves, and Erin, Cl... | 1h 39m 53s | ||||||
| 4/16/26 | 2014: Birdman (And The Unexpected Virtue of Optimus Prime) (w/ Munsi Parker-Munroe) | It's 2014, and the gang hits another good news/bad news situation. First up, the Michael Keaton Renaissance began with Birdman, in which a former superhero actor fought a career slump through a big artistic project by playing a former superhero actor fighting a career slump through a big artistic project, all in seemingly one shot. Claire, Erin, and Dan's theatre kid energy is unleashed, as is returning guest Munsi Parker-Munroe's... before the joy of Birdman's rise and fall and maybe rise ag... | 1h 59m 26s | ||||||
| 4/2/26 | The 2026 Oscar Recap (feat. Olav Rokne) | As the 98th Oscars recede into the background, Erin, Claire, and Dan run down the nominated films and look ahead to our 2025 topic. Dan's seen them all, Erin's seen some, Claire saw none and tries to figure out their plots based on vibes, and returning guest Olav Rokne of the Hugo Book Club has controversial hot takes that have Dan asking how many nominees he actually paid attention to. From how four films ended up with nothing to how Sinners became the most nominated film in history, from Br... | 1h 24m 03s | ||||||
| 3/19/26 | Should it Have Been Nominated? | While Erin and Claire are away, Dan is left unsupervised, and thus takes us on a journey through the remaining years of the 2010s, looking at popcorn movies (often if not only big hits) that perhaps deserved a Best Picture nomination... or at least deserved one more than some of the actual nominees. Dan argues that perhaps cinematic thrill rides and well-made spy thrillers* are as worthy of Oscar attention as mediocre biopics in which someone does a really good job of playing Stephen Hawking ... | 21m 49s | ||||||
| 3/5/26 | 2013: 12 Years Catching Frozen Fire (feat. Gina Stewart) | It's 2013, and it's all about oppressive systems! And Disney. Award season cleared a path for the historical tragi-horror 12 Years a Slave, recounting the true story of a free man forced into a dozen years of brutal servitude, so clear a winner that the Globes had some record-high category fraud to avoid competing with yet, and yet it fell short in many categories? Audiences were split: in North America, audiences came out in droves for Katniss Everdeen's return to the arena in The Hunger Gam... | 2h 10m 24s | ||||||
| 2/19/26 | 2012: The Argovengers | Ben Affleck escapes Hollywood purgatory while the Marvel Age begins as we reach 2012! Affleck directs a tense yet also funny thriller on the Iran Hostage Crisis and makes it an awards darling by skipping over the international cooperation and diplomacy parts to focus on six people being saved by The Power of The Movies, just what the Academy loves. Audiences, however, could not resist the pull of Marvel Studios rolling their previous movies into one mega-hit, the Fast Five of superhero movies... | 1h 04m 07s | ||||||
| 2/5/26 | 2025's Oscar Snubs | While Claire and Erin are away, Dan digs into the idea of Oscar snubs, why the term still matters, and which big or acclaimed films of 2025 are conspicuously absent from the 2026 Oscars. Wicked: For Good and Avatar: Fire and Ash are follow-ups to past Best Picture nominees; why couldn't they make the shortlist? And which two films does Dan think the internet is right to feel should have been more loved by the Academy? Find out here! Find all of our episodes and the rest of Writing Therapy Pro... | 28m 06s | ||||||
| 1/22/26 | 2011: The Artist and the Furious | We reach the second silent movie to win Best Picture, and it only took 83 years. French-made silent era throwback The Artist claims Best Picture, and briefly launches Jean Dujardin in America, through nostalgia, hijinks, and one adorable dog. Erin, Claire, and Dan find themselves charmed, partially from having experienced this era at the beginning of this journey. But audiences were flocking to Brazil, as the Fast and Furious films evolved into their best self with Fast Five, in which Dom and... | 1h 43m 54s | ||||||
| 1/8/26 | 2010: The King's Toys (And Everything is Cute) | It's a new decade, and intentionally or not, everything is cute. The King's Speech pulled in as many Oscar-bait elements as it could to take the trophy, but the earnest friendship of King George VI (aka Bertie) and speech therapist Lionel Logue is cute and charming enough that Claire and Erin get swept up anyway, although Dan has some notes on their loosey-goosey approach to history. But the audience came out in droves for one "last" adventure with Woody, Buzz, and the gang in Toy Story 3, a ... | 1h 01m 51s | ||||||
| 12/25/25 | Year in Review 2025 | As the year comes to a close, it's time to look back at a year of cinema, and look forward to what our 2025 episode may look like. Erin, Claire, and Dan try to figure out what might be crowned Best Picture. Erin compares her heart favourite to what she thinks might win, Claire tries to remember if she saw a movie not for this podcast (She did! Several! Go Claire!), and Dan shows how fun he is at parties by presenting multiple ranked lists. What's leading the Oscar race so far? What Wicked: Fo... | 1h 17m 16s | ||||||
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| 12/11/25 | (Trans)Formative Franchises with Munsi Parker-Munroe | As we take our last between-decade break, Munsi Parker-Munroe returns to challenge Dan to a game. Munsi looks back at franchises from their youths, and asks Dan to guess which they genuinely liked, which they pretended to like because they were popular and boy-coded (and Munsi was at the time also boy-coded and hoping to be popular), and which they would have liked if only they'd felt safe indulging in them. Dan weighs in as someone who knew he wasn't supposed to like certain girl-coded shows... | 1h 09m 14s | ||||||
| 11/27/25 | 2009: The Na'vi Locker (w/ Kevin Weir) | Awards season 2009 came down to a telenovela-worthy duel between Kathryn Bigelow with her war drama The Hurt Locker, and her ex-husband James Cameron, delivering his second consecutive Highest Grossing Movie Ever with Avatar. Kevin Weir re-joins Erin, Claire, and Dan to break it all down. Claire is not thrilled, Dan explains how a later release makes Hurt Locker seem much better, Erin posits you can only like movies about one war. But then it's off to Pandora, to dig into the groundbreaking v... | 1h 46m 04s | ||||||
| 11/13/25 | 2008: The Slumdog Knight | After the directors of Goodfellas and Fargo won Oscars for their bleakest movies to that point, Danny Boyle won over the Academy with something basically uplifting: the story of a poor Indian youth chasing his fairytale ending via a western game show in Slumdog Millionaire. First time viewers Erin and Claire ponder Jamal's journey, while on his third viewing Dan finds some grace for Jamal's dirtbag brother. But the people's champion became a snub that changed everything, as Christopher Nolan'... | 1h 30m 23s | ||||||
| 10/30/25 | 2007: No Country For Disappointing Threequels (w/ Keith Kollee) | In the wake of Martin Scorsese getting nominated for his bleakest movie (pre-Silence), the Coen Brothers deliver their bleakest effort (pre-A Serious Man) with No Country For Old Men, pitting an opportunistic hunter Josh Brolin and a pragmatic sheriff Tommy Lee Jones against human Terminator Javier Bardem. Audiences, however, are torn between two threequels that fail to live up to the originals, as Jack Sparrow and Spider-Man face off. Is At World's End a better Pirates movie than it gets cre... | 2h 07m 47s | ||||||
| 10/16/25 | 2006: Departed Pirates | It's 2006, and get ready for the most thrilling, action packed, high quality bummers of a movie. The Oscar finally found its way to Martin Scorsese, with his tense remake of Hong Kong flick Infernal Affairs, The Departed. Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon go head to head in the Battle of the Snitches, and nobody walks away clean. Speaking of nobody being clean, audiences flocked back to Tortuga for the long awaited return of Jack Sparrow and the gang, as the Pirates of the Caribbean seek the D... | 1h 23m 08s | ||||||
| 10/2/25 | Does That Best Picture Need a Remake? | While schedules align, Dan presents a one-man crossover between us and Recovered by asking the question... do the Best Pictures of the 20th century need or warrant a remake? From Wings to American Beauty (at which point they're all so recent it's a hard no), Dan skims through 72 years of Oscars darlings to sum up potential remakes: which could be, which should be, which must not, which already have been, and some fancasts along the way. Do we need a 2020s take on Gone With the Wind? Marty? Pl... | 17m 46s | ||||||
| 9/18/25 | 2005: Crashing Jedi (feat. Munsi Parker-Munroe) | It's 2005, and Munsi Parker-Munroe rejoins Erin, Claire, and Dan to discuss what is often called one of if not the worst Best Picture winner ever... by people who have not seen The Broadway Melody. It's Crash time, and Paul Haggis is trying to say something about racism but not managing more than "Racism, boy I dunno." Will the box office champ improve the viewing experience? It's Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, often called the best of the Star Wars prequels, which to some is a badge of hono... | 1h 33m 43s | ||||||
| 9/4/25 | 2004: Million Dollar Ogre | In the wake of Lord of the Rings dominating the Oscars the previous year, the Academy decided to go small and serious again, while the audience remain here for fantasy good times. The Oscar went to Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood's story of three broken people bonding over boxing until boxing breaks them all the further. Meanwhile, audiences around the world had a relapse of Shrek Fever, flocking to Shrek, Fiona, and Donkey in greater numbers than they had for multiple pop culture icons t... | 1h 08m 45s | ||||||
| 8/21/25 | 2003: One Rings to Rule Them All (feat. Gina Stewart) | It's 2003, and we reach our final Joint Champion, as after two years of being Best Picture nominees and lurking near the top of the box office, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy reached its grand finale with The Return of the King. Gina Stewart is back to help Erin, Claire, and Dan break down the full Lord of the Rings experience, novel and movie versions, as we follow Frodo and the Fellowship past the Two Towers and all the way to Mount Doom. Who's the real king of our trilogy? What ... | 2h 14m 07s | ||||||
| 8/7/25 | 2002: Spider-Cago | It's 2002, and Hollywood is swinging, be it to all that jazz, or by webs through the city. The Academy, still waiting to see if Lord of the Rings could stick the landing, gave the big prize to musical adaptation Chicago, which managed the singular achievement of blending the gritty realism Hollywood thinks prestige pictures need with the glitzy, showy song and dance numbers musicals thrive on. Meanwhile, only one man could triumph over Frodo, Star Wars, AND the boy wizard in one year...a SPID... | 1h 23m 31s | ||||||
| 7/24/25 | Erin's Men of Spider | While we align schedules, Erin gives us a sneak peek at next episode and beyond as she breaks down the first entries of all three live-action Spider-Man eras, from someone who never read the comics and only knows these as movies. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Sam Raimi's first go-round with the character? How does Amazing Spider-Man reassess the origin in a post-Nolan/Iron Man landscape? And when Spidey comes to the MCU, what's working and not? Who's Erin's favourite Man of Spider?... | 25m 04s | ||||||
| 7/10/25 | 2001: A Shrekiful Mind | In 2001, the question on the mind of Academy voters was "Well we can't risk just awarding Lord of the Rings three years in a row, can we?" and thus an alternate Best Picture was needed: Ron Howard's call-it-a-biopic of John Nash, genius mathematician struggling through schizophrenia, with Russell Crowe taking us from coming-of-age to espionage thriller to one man's battle with his own mind in maybe too little time for all three of those. The audience, however, was all about high fantasy, and ... | 1h 16m 14s | ||||||
| 6/26/25 | 2000: Gladiator Impossible | We enter a new century by jumping back to an old trend and an adaptation of an old TV show, seems about right for 21st century Hollywood. First, the Oscar goes to Ridley Scott's Gladiator, a return to old-school sword and sandal action, only without the Jesus angle. Historical accuracy is nowhere to be found, the plot doesn't merit a lot of deep thought, but Erin, Claire, and Dan answer the important question: are they, in fact, entertained? And then Dan gets a special treat: one and only one... | 1h 36m 13s | ||||||
| 6/12/25 | The Secret Masterpieces of the 90s (feat. Munsi Parker-Munroe) | Before we enter the 21st century, Munsi Parker-Munroe returns to present their Top Ten Secret Masterpieces of the 1990s: ten films that weren't hits, didn't get Oscar love, but delight our guest to no end and they would argue are worthy of your attention just the same, because as films they're weird, they're passionate, and they're more than a little wonderful. Also Dan is here briefly. Erin and Claire will be back soon, but in the meantime, let Munsi introduce you to ten films that should be... | 30m 42s | ||||||
| 5/29/25 | Dan's Extra Credit Corner: The Missions Impossible | Before we reach the 2000s and spend half an episode breaking down Dan's least favourite entry of one of his favourite franchises, he's here to get the Mission: Impossible brainrot out of his system by breaking down the evolution of the franchise and which film did what the best. From it's lower-key suspense thriller origins to its recent final (unless...) origins, best squads, best villains, and best teammates in a quickie burst for you, the listeners, while Claire and Erin are distracted. Fi... | 29m 49s | ||||||
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1 placement across 1 market.
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