Curated by Chance

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

Episode 67: Sisyphean Endeavor This week’s prompts: Automatic, Peach, 88 Neal and Lauren brave snow, slush, and Sisyphean car scraping for a cozy winter episode filled with musicals, surrealism, and just the right amount of existential dread. Neal kicks things off by greasing the wheels of nostalgia with Grease (1978) — the leather-clad, pop-perfect, Chicago-born musical that became a worldwide phenomenon. He dives into the scrappy origins of the stage show at Kingston Mines, its wild Broadway success, and the unlikely road to Hollywood superstardom. You’ll learn how Travolta stole a solo, how Olivia Newton-John got sewn into her pants, and why half the cast was pushing thirty while pretending to be in homeroom. From the palm-tree fights to the palm-sweat dance scenes, Neal proves that Grease remains the slickest high school fantasy ever committed to film. Meanwhile, Lauren spotlights British surrealist Eithel Colquhoun, a painter, writer, and practicing occultist who turned the mystical and macabre into fine art. She explores Colquhoun’s lifelong obsession with alchemy, magic, and androgyny; her expulsion from the British Surrealist Group for being “too into the occult”; and the recent Tate St. Ives retrospective that finally gave her due. From her saturated pastels and coral-toned dreamscapes to her fascination with the body as landscape, Colquhoun emerges as a forgotten visionary who painted femininity as both spiritual and subversive. PLUS: 🩰 Why Grease began in a Chicago trolley barn 🎤 The hickeys, heartbreak, and heat exhaustion behind Rydell High 🎨 Surrealist spellcraft and the art of “automatic” painting 🔮 Eithel Colquhoun’s occult feminism and androgynous visions 🕯️ When artists are literally too witchy for the art world Next week’s prompts: Charcoal, Record, 1265, Story 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! 📘 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

Episode 66: One Night at Pita Pit This week’s prompts: Bear, Five, German Lauren takes us deep into the strange and hypnotic world of Grizzly Man (2005), Werner Herzog’s haunting documentary about Timothy Treadwell, the self-proclaimed bear protector who lived — and died — among Alaska’s brown bears. She explores Herzog’s icy narration, the infamous unseen audio tape, and the way the director blurs the line between empathy and existential dread. Along the way, we get side trips through Burden of Dreams, My Best Fiend, and a Herzog TikTok rabbit hole that proves the director might just be one long performance piece. Meanwhile, Neal celebrates the strange majesty of German cinema — from the Expressionist shadows of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Karl Freund, the cinematographer who quite literally unchained the camera and later revolutionized sitcoms with I Love Lucy. He traces how Weimar–era innovations birthed horror classics like Dracula and The Mummy, and why every three-camera comedy owes a debt to one very determined German technician. PLUS:🐻 The doomed devotion of Grizzly Man🎥 When Herzog promised to eat his shoe — and did🧛 How Nosferatu inspired Hollywood horror📺 The German who lit I Love Lucy (and every sitcom since)💀 Werner Herzog: philosopher, filmmaker, and accidental meme lord Next week’s prompts: Automatic, Peach, 88 Join our Patreon (New Tiers): 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:👉 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