Curated by Chance

Episode 72: Dancin' Slow This week’s prompts: Goldenrod, 919, Hat Lauren returns — coughs muted, spirits high — and Neal officially hands the mic back after last week’s Bond-fueled solo outing. What follows is a cozy, conversational episode that blends modern art theory, eccentric geniuses, and a little bit of podcast navel-gazing as the two reflect on growth, gratitude, and why structure can sometimes be the ultimate form of freedom. Lauren takes Goldenrod and 919 straight into the world of Piet Mondrian, the Dutch modernist whose grids of black lines and primary colors became one of the most recognizable visual languages of the 20th century. She traces Mondrian’s journey from impressionist windmills to Cubist experimentation to the radical philosophy of De Stijl and neoplasticism, unpacking how horizontal and vertical lines were meant to represent nothing less than the underlying structure of the universe. Along the way: theosophy, occult philosophies, jazz clubs, secret flower paintings, rigid diets, racist pseudoscience, and the deeply funny revelation that Mondrian — stoic grid-master — loved dancing the Charleston. Meanwhile, Neal reacts in real time, connecting Mondrian’s self-imposed artistic rules to movements like Dogme 95, modern minimalism, and why restriction often produces innovation. The conversation drifts into Mondrian’s lasting influence on fashion (hello, Yves Saint Laurent), graphic design, architecture, and pop culture — including why his work keeps resurfacing every few decades as the ultimate visual reset. In between, the two share Spotify Wrapped–style listener stats, celebrate international fans, and marvel at the strange, wonderful overlap between art nerds, trivia lovers, audiobook obsessives, and people who just really liked an episode called Wash Your Damn Hands. Next week’s prompts: Attic, Fur, 160 Join our Patreon! www.Patreon.com/curatedbychance Check Out Lauren’s Substack: 👉 https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/ Join The Curated By Chance Music League (Round 4 Sign Up): 👉 https://app.musicleague.com/l/6704df400ff1429186ef8bb85e56a488/ Follow the show and its creators on Instagram: 🎧 The Show – @curatedbychance 🎨 Lauren – @paisleylo 🎬 Neal – @nealefischer 📧 E-mail us: [email protected] Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now! Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now! 📘 Order Neal’s newest book Law & Order: SVU – Confidential (out October 14): 👉 https://geni.us/HPgeZ And for more Neal in your life: 🌐 www.linktr.ee/nealefischer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 71: The Gold Standard This week’s prompts: Goldenrod, 919, Hat Neal’s flying solo this week — migraine hangover, holiday chaos, Lauren home sick — but he shows up with a gleaming, gadget-packed deep dive into Goldfinger (1964), the Bond movie that became the blueprint for all Bonds to come. From Ian Fleming naming his villain out of pure pettiness to the film’s choice to replace a convoluted Fort Knox heist with an elegant “poison the gold” scheme, Neal breaks down how Goldfinger sharpened every piece of the franchise into the gold standard. It’s a whirlwind of gold paint, gadgets, henchmen, and cinematic swagger — plus a look ahead at where Bond might go next under Amazon and who’s circling the 007 mantle now. PLUS: 🏆 The petty real-life inspiration behind Auric Goldfinger 🎶 Shirley Bassey, Jimmy Page, and the most iconic Bond theme ever recorded 🎩 Oddjob’s killer hat and Q’s weaponized DB5 💥 The laser table scene that redefined villainy Join us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/curatedbychance Check Out Lauren’s Substack: 👉 ⁠https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/⁠ Follow the show and its creators on Instagram: 🎧 The Show – @curatedbychance 🎨 Lauren – @paisleylo 🎬 Neal – @nealefischer 📧 E-mail us: ⁠[email protected]⁠ Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now! Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now! Order Neal’s newest book Law & Order: SVU – Confidential (out October 14): 👉 ⁠https://geni.us/HPgeZ⁠ And for more Neal in your life: 🌐 ⁠www.linktr.ee/nealefischer⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 70: Broad on a Couch This week’s prompts: 1717, Arena, Titian Red Neal and Lauren kick off the post–Thanksgiving stretch with an episode powered by heating pads, sunglasses, and sheer stubbornness. Neal shows up bundled in a hood, nursing shoulder pain and a barometric-pressure headache, while Lauren juggles the last week of classes, giant waitlists, and adjunct life. Neal takes “Arena” (and a little bit of “Titian Red”) straight into The Running Man (1987), the gaudy, neon-drenched Arnold Schwarzenegger cult classic loosely based on Stephen King’s Richard Bachman novel. He breaks down how the original bleak, globe-spanning manhunt of the book got reshaped into a gladiatorial TV deathmatch; why King refused to have his real name on the movie; and how the film swaps an everyman desperate to save his sick daughter for an ultra-jacked, framed helicopter pilot with an endless supply of one-liners. From American Gladiators–style stalkers (Fireball! Sub-Zero! Dynamo in a light-up diaper!) to Richard Dawson’s inspired turn as sadistic game show host Damon Killian, Neal unpacks the casting, the chaotic production history (multiple directors, Starsky-as-director Paul Michael Glaser, and hurt feelings from Arnold), and the bizarrely prescient “deepfake” climax that confused 1980s audiences. He also looks ahead to Edgar Wright’s new, more book-faithful adaptation starring Glenn Powell — complete with a blessing from Arnold himself. Meanwhile, Lauren grabs “Titian Red” and delivers a lush, art-historical love letter to Titian, the 16th-century Venetian master whose women, fabrics, and hair basically rewired Western painting. She traces his path from Bellini workshop kid to international court painter for dukes, popes, and emperors; explains how his portrait Man with a Quilted Sleeve inspired Rembrandt; and then settles into a sensual close-reading of the Venus of Urbino. Is she a mythic goddess? A high-end courtesan? A new bride waiting in a palace bedroom while the ladies root through her dowry chest? Lauren breaks down the jewelry, the sleepy dog of fidelity, the flowers, the direct eye contact, and why a bit of strategic nudity plus a mythological fig leaf made it “okay” for a not-so-celibate cardinal-in-training to hang in his room. She closes with Titian’s late “magic impressionism,” his plague-era death, and how “Titian hair” became shorthand for rich red locks all the way to Anne of Green Gables. In between, the two take a detour into modern stardom and the Glenn Powell Industrial Complex: Tom Cruise mentorship, Hollywood’s desperate search for the next capital-M Movie Star, Roman Reigns as a wrestling parallel, and why the studio machine trying to manufacture a “relatable leading man” feels a lot more obvious in the age of Instagram, fan cams, and micro-fandoms. PLUS:🎮 The Running Man as proto–reality TV fever dream📺 Richard Dawson weaponizing his game show charm as a dystopian villain⚡ Opera-singing stalkers, flamethrowers, and the most 80s cast list imaginable🖼️ Titian’s Venus of Urbino and the long, horny history of “it’s not porn, it’s mythology”🧡 “Titian red” hair, Renaissance fashion as identity, and why jewelry makes nudes feel even more naked🌟 Glenn Powell, Tom Cruise, and Hollywood’s struggle to mint a new generation of marquee names Next week’s prompts: Goldenrod, 919, Hat Join us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/curatedbychance Check Out Lauren’s Substack:👉 https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/ Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:🎧 The Show – @curatedbychance🎨 Lauren – @paisleylo🎬 Neal – @nealefischer 📧 E-mail us: [email protected] Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now!Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now! 📘 Order Neal’s newest book Law & Order: SVU – Confidential (out October 14):👉 https://geni.us/HPgeZ And for more Neal in your life:🌐 www.linktr.ee/nealefischer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 69: Podcast Therapy This week’s prompts: Turquoise, 110, Watermark Neal and Lauren fight through Thanksgiving-week chaos, closet recording, AirPods audio, and a brutal Zoom delay to bring you an episode that accidentally turns into group therapy — in the best way. Lauren takes “turquoise” straight to the American Southwest by way of Wisconsin with a rich, nuanced dive into the life and work of Georgia O’Keeffe. From her early training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League, to her complicated relationship with photographer and champion Alfred Stieglitz, Lauren traces how O’Keeffe moved from charcoal abstraction to monumental flowers, New York skyscrapers, and the bone-and-desert landscapes of Ghost Ranch. Along the way, she busts the “vagina flower” myth, talks about O’Keeffe’s resistance to being labeled a “woman artist,” and explains why the artist’s prickly independence still makes her feel so modern — even as her paintings disappear into private collections. Meanwhile, Neal grabs the “110” prompt and goes full pressure-cooker with Falling Down (1993), Joel Schumacher’s tense, divisive portrait of a man who absolutely should have gone to therapy instead of terrorizing Los Angeles. He walks us through Michael Douglas’s infamous D-FENS — short-sleeve shirt, flat-top, briefcase, and all — and the film’s odyssey structure, from the overpriced soda in the corner store to the legendary Whammy Burger breakfast meltdown and a horrifying detour through a neo-Nazi surplus shop. Neal digs into the film’s early-’90s LA context, its connection to American rage, economic anxiety, and white male grievance, and why the final “I’m the bad guy?” moment still hits uncomfortably hard. Then, in true Podcast Therapy fashion, the conversation swerves into real talk: male loneliness, the thin line between anger and sadness, revenge as a brain addiction, and why misery might be more contagious than we think. Lauren breaks down anger and grief as “roommates,” Neal brings in a book about the neuroscience of revenge, and together they make a compelling case that a lot of what we call “snapping” is really untreated sadness… plus a broken air conditioner. PLUS:💐 Georgia O’Keeffe’s flowers, bones, and “witch of the Southwest” era🏜️ Ghost Ranch, feminist iconography, and why she hated everyone’s interpretations🚗 Road rage, the 110, and the early-’90s LA anxiety baked into Falling Down🍔 The Whammy Burger scene and the fantasy of yelling “this doesn’t look like the picture!”🧠 Anger vs. sadness, revenge circuitry, and why men will literally shoot up Los Angeles instead of going to therapy Next week’s prompts: 1717, Arena, Titian Red Join us Patreon: www.Patreon.com/curatedbychance Check Out Lauren’s Substack:👉 https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/ Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:🎧 The Show – @curatedbychance🎨 Lauren – @paisleylo🎬 Neal – @nealefischer 📧 E-mail us: [email protected] Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now!Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now! 📘 Order Neal’s newest book Law & Order: SVU – Confidential (out October 14):👉 https://geni.us/HPgeZ And for more Neal in your life:🌐 www.linktr.ee/nealefischer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 68: Maybe It’s Ghibelline This week’s prompts: Charcoal, Record, 1265, Story Neal and Lauren dive into political chaos, medieval poetry beef, and paranoid thrillers for an episode that swings from 13th-century Florence to 1980s Philadelphia. Lauren takes the year 1265 and spins it into a fiery tour through Dante Alighieri’s life, exile, enemies, and the giant, cosmic fanfiction we now call The Divine Comedy. She breaks down the Guelphs vs. Ghibellines feud (and then the even pettier White vs. Black Guelph split), how Dante wrote in Italian instead of Latin to reshape an entire language, and why Beatrice lives rent-free in the author’s imagination. From the nine circles of Hell to that iconic three-part afterlife road trip with Virgil as tour guide, Lauren untangles how one poet turned politics, heartbreak, and theology into the most influential self-insert narrative in history. Meanwhile, Neal takes “Record” literally with Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (1981) — the sound-obsessed, paranoia-drenched thriller where John Travolta accidentally captures audio evidence of an assassination. Neal digs into De Palma’s cinematic lineage, how Blow Out riffs on Blow-Up and The Conversation, why the film basically invented its own genre of political dread, and the glorious insanity of the director’s beloved split-diopter shots. Expect Travolta love, Nancy Allen appreciation, Lithgow creepiness, and a crash-course in De Palma’s entire filmmaking DNA. PLUS:🔥 Dante’s exile and the pettiest political grudges of medieval Italy📚 Why The Divine Comedy shaped the afterlife in Western art🎙️ Blow Out and the conspiracy thriller hall of fame🔪 John Lithgow doing John Lithgow things🎥 Split diopters, deep focus, and De Palma’s visual mischief BLOW OUT FULL FILM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z20y1YqCc0Y SPLIT DIOPTER SHORT EXPLANATION:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6HkQvH5QvM Next week’s prompts: Turquoise, 110, Watermark Join us on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/curatedbychance Check Out Lauren’s Substack:👉 https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/ Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:🎧 The Show – @curatedbychance🎨 Lauren – @paisleylo🎬 Neal – @nealefischer 📧 E-mail us: [email protected] Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now!Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now! 📘 Pre-Order Neal’s newest book Law & Order: SVU – Confidential (out October 14):👉 https://geni.us/HPgeZ And for more Neal in your life:🌐 www.linktr.ee/nealefischer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices