Tag: music

Posted in episodes

Top Ten of 2018

Posted on by Did You Do Your Homework?

Merry Christmas, everyone! Since this is the last episode we’ll be releasing in 2018, Pete and Martha discuss their favorite stuff from this year. There’s no Stuck In Our Heads segment because really, the whole list is a Stuck In Our Heads from this year.

Martha’s Top Ten

10. Teen rom coms in general
9. Brooklyn 99, 5.22: “Jake & Amy”
8. Crazy Rich Asians
7. Annihilation
6. Haunting of Hill House, 1.06: “Two Storms”
5. The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins by the Family McElroy and Carey Pietsch
4. The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
3. Black Panther
2. Anger is A Gift by Mark Oshiro
1. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse\

Pete’s Top Ten

1. Janelle Monae, Dirty Computer (album plus “emotion picture”)
2. Black Panther
3. Unspooled podcast
4. Boygenius, boygenius
5. Anything by N.K. Jemison (but specifically The Broken Earth Trilogy, which concluded in 2018)
6. The Good Place
7. Roma
8. The Wicked + the Divine vol 7: Mothering Invention by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie
9. Beach House, 7
10. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (Netflix)

For our favorite and least favorite homeworks, you have to listen to the episode. No spoilers!

Our next episode will be a good follow-up to the lovely holiday season: we’ll be discussing Hypocrisy with return guest Sara Shaw. Have a happy new year, everyone! Here’s to an optimistically better 2019!

Twitter: @DYDYHpodcast
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Posted in extra credit

Is it time for Christmas music yet?

Posted on by Did You Do Your Homework?

(Written by Martha S.)

In our most recent episode, I told you all that my family is pretty dedicated to about half a dozen Christmas albums that we have been listening to on repeat for the last 30 years. I gave you one name – A Very Special Christmas, circa 1987 – and now I’m going to tell you the others, because they’re great albums and we’ve finally arrived at the ~socially acceptable~ time of year to be listening to Christmas music.

I’m gonna list these in alphabetical order, because I’m too close emotionally to try and rank them by favorite. I’m ALSO going to include links to my favorite tracks where applicable, for no other reason but that I feel like it.

The Bells of Dublin, The Chieftains (1991)
“A Breton Carol,” ft. Nolwen Monjarret

A Celtic Christmas, Windham Hill (1995)
“Soillse Na Nollag (The Lights Of Christmas),” ft. Altan

Christmas Extraordinaire, Mannheim Steamroller (2001)
“Do You Hear What I Hear”

A Christmas to Remember, Amy Grant (2007)
The title song, duh

Traditional Christmas Classics, various (1989)
“Sleigh Ride,” by Leroy Anderson

A Very Special Christmas, various (1987)
“Do You Hear What I Hear,” Whitney Houston
“Gabriel’s Message,” Sting

A Winter’s Solistice, various (1992) (I think)
“A Wexford Carol”

An honorable mention must also be given to A Very Veggie Christmas from Veggie Tales (1996), which I was inexplicably obsessed with for several years (their versions of “Angels We Have Heard On High” and “He Is Born The Holy Child” were my favorite for a very long time).

 

Posted in episodes, extra credit

Extra Credit episode 20.5: Holiday Faves

Posted on by Did You Do Your Homework?

Hello and welcome to our holiday break episode! Thanksgiving is tomorrow and we’re all super busy making pies or eating turkey or watching football, so we have a nice light episode for you. No homework required!

We still have credentials for you, because continuing education is a very important part of being a pop culture podcaster:

Pete: American Ulysses by Ronald C. White, specifically the audiobook format
Martha: Pokemon Ultra Moon, Nintendo DS game

We’re all about nostalgia on this episode, from Martha returning to her favorite video game franchise down through all the specifically Christmas holiday specials we kind of said we wouldn’t be talking about. We touch on some family traditions, like Pete’s family seeing a movie on Boxing Day to Martha’s family listening to the same six Christmas albums every year, pretty much on repeat. The point is: our  pop culture traditions are as much a part of our holiday experience as trimming the tree or opening presents.

Here’s the full list of the specific media we discuss (general traditions not included):

Martha

Remember the Titans, 2000 film directed Boaz Yakin and starring Denzel Washington
The Nightmare Before Christmas, 1993 film directed by Henry Selick and starring Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara and Danny Elfman
A Very Murray Christmas, 2015 Netflix special starring Bill Murray (and others!)
A Very Special Christmas, 1987 compilation album (full track and artist listings here)
A Charlie Brown Christmas, 1965 film directed by Bill Melendez, written by Charles Schultz, and scored by Vince Guaraldi
The Twilight Zone, 1959 television show created by Rod Serling

Pete

The West Wing, episodes 2.8 (“Shibboleth”) and 3.8 (“The Indians in the Lobby”)
Elf, 2003 film directed by Jon Favreau and starring Will Ferrell
The holiday musical stylings of Sufjan Stevens
The Dark Knight, 2008 film directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale

What are your go-to holiday favorites?

Posted in classroom connections, episodes

Episode 19: Sound & Music

Posted on by Did You Do Your Homework?

The homework for the episode:
Pete: Blade Runner, 1982 film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford
Martha: American Horror Story: Asylum, season 2, episode 10, “The Name Game”
Dan: Mulholland Dr., 2001 film directed by David Lynch and starring Naomi Watts

We get technical this week as we examine the ways that sound, music, and silence are used in various forms of visual media. Our guest for the episode is Dan Karlin, of SOOL Radio fame, who joins our discussion as we get into, amongst the other things, diegetic music, creating tone with sound, and how Martha gets anxious when a movie doesn’t have any score at all. It’s no accident that we’re talking about yet another Ryan Murphy joint, or that all of our media happens to be surreal in nature – truly, sound is the thread that weaves a visual story together.

Your podcasters’ credentials:

Pete: 2017 LCD Soundsystem album, American Dream
Martha: “Love Nikki Dress Up Queen” mobile game
Dan: “Always on Time” by Ashanti and Ja Rule

Welcome, Dan!

If we had recorded a mere hour earlier, Martha could have impressed everyone with some super awesome podcast she was listening to on her commute home – instead, you get to hear her try and describe the ridiculously addictive (and just pretty ridiculous) mobile dress-up game, “Love Nikki.” Dan and Pete both share their recent musical adventures, which are on very opposite ends of the sound spectrum while also both managing to be completely rad.

We have fun getting both more technical and more interpretive than ever before, as we struggle to decipher the aural stylings of a David Lynch film (spoiler alert: not even Lynch knew exactly what he was talking about), a cult cyberpunk classic, and a moment of gothic absurdity. Some things we discuss: how music can be used to underscore or indicate tone, utilizing silence and the absence of music (not always the same thing!) as a cinematic device, and how to bring aural literacy (in addition to visual literacy) into the classroom as a teaching tool.

The quote on David Lynch’s relationship to sound design is taken from an interview with John Neff, and can be found here.

On November 8, we will be joined by none other than Pete’s brother Mark to discuss Masks. Here’s your homework:

Pete: Mother Night, novel by Kurt Vonnegut
Martha: Hannibal, episodes 1.01 (“Aperitif”), 1.07 (“Sorbet”), and 1.10 (“Buffet Froid”)
Mark: Enigma, graphic novel by Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo

Follow us online @DYDYHpodcast, e-mail us at show@homeworkpodcast.com, and find us on Facebook!

And remember, if you have questions, comments, or ideas for a show, give us a shoutout here or send us an e-mail to show@homeworkpodcast.com. We’d love to hear from you!

Posted in episodes

Episode 17: Ambition

Posted on by Did You Do Your Homework?

The homework for the episode:
Pete: The soundtrack to the 2016 musical Hamilton
Martha: Glee episodes 1.01 (Pilot) and 3.22 (Goodbye)
Lizzie: There Will Be Blood, 2007 film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano

The story of one of our founding fathers told in catchy hip-hop verse, chronicling his rise from nothing to his final downfall at the hands of a political rival.

A plucky group of high school students from all social cliques join musical forces to compete in show choir.

A man builds an empire in the oil-rich fields of California, in a so-called epic tale of American capitalism, greed and violence.

Pride cometh before a fall, but does ambition necessitate isolation, violence, and sacrifice? That’s the question on everyone’s minds as we explore ambitious characters from the beginnings of America, to 1900’s California, and to the halls of modern day high school. Only now am I (Martha) realizing that this is the most musical material we’ve ever covered in one episode – perhaps ambition is too large a feeling to be discussed with mere words?

Your podcasters’ credentials:

Pete: Paradise, debut album by Knox Fortune
Martha: Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
Lizzie: Netflix original series American Vandal

Welcome, Lizzie!

Pete takes another opportunity to plug his brother’s music, but when your brother is Knox Fortune and putting out tunes like these, how can you blame him? Martha finally broke down and bought the super-sized book accompaniment to Hamilton, mostly so she can read along to “It’s Quiet Uptown” and cry a lot. Lizzie introduces us to another Netflix original series in the styles of true crime drama, which Martha immediately binged over the course of two days and can ALSO highly recommend. Anyone calling it an eight episode dick jock has thoroughly missed the point of the series, but that’s a topic for another podcast.

Today we’re talking about the potentially fatal character trait, Ambition.

  1. When we talk about characters having “ambition,” how do we differentiate that from goals or drive? Should we?
  2. Is ambition a positive or negative force in the stories we looked at?
  3. How does ambition get gendered in these narratives?
  4. What is the cost of ambition? Does ambition inherently require sacrifice or loss?

We kick things off by discussing the differences as we see them between ambition, goals, drive, passion, and greed. We diverge for a while to discuss Ratatouille, which pretty handily illustrates the shades of meaning there; we all get very emotional about Hamilton, and Lizzie and Martha get emotional over There Will Be Blood (but not really in a good way, TBH).

Other things for you to check out: Hamilton by Ron Chernow, the 2005 biography that inspired the show; the PBS documentary about the making-of Hamilton, titled “Hamilton’s America,” which you can watch on PBS.com with a WTTW Passport account

On October 11, we’re doing something a little different and diverging from our usual format to talk about Tabletop Roleplaying Games withe special guest Rachel HIlbert! Your homework for next episode is to try out an RPG if you’ve never played before – to get started, check out RPG Now for tons of free modules and rule sets.

Follow us online @DYDYHpodcast, e-mail us at show@homeworkpodcast.com, and find us on Facebook!

And remember, if you have questions, comments, or ideas for a show, give us a shoutout here or send us an e-mail to show@homeworkpodcast.com. We’d love to hear from you!

Posted in episodes

Episode 11: Grief & Grieving

Posted on by Did You Do Your Homework?

Better late than never, right, y’all?

The homework for the episode:
Pete: The Skeleton Tree by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the Pitchfork review of the album, and the Wikipedia page for it
Martha: Spontaneous by Aaron Starmer
Calee: Scrubs, episodes 5.20 and 5.21

A musician familiar with the sounds and strains of death exorcises his grief through a brief, but haunting, album.

Mara Carlyle, high school senior, leads a pretty normal (albeit substance-fueled) life – until her schoolmates start spontaneously combusting.

Dr. Perry Cox makes a call with the best information he has, which kills three patients. This is the aftermath.

Grief is something that everyone experiences in some shape or form during their lifetimes, and pop culture can help us develop the tools to deal with and overcome it. We thread our way through three stories that show us how characters overcome their grief, and also how an artist can use his art to express it.

Your podcasters’ credentials:

Pete: Plizzanet Earth
Martha: Awful Squad: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds stream from Polygon (here)
Calee: “Olaf’s Frozen Adventure” trailer

Martha’s new zen place is watching Polygon employees get shot a lot in Battlegrounds; we debate how long is too long for an animated short before a Disney movie; and Pete tries to explain Snoop Dogg to Martha (J/K; she gets Snoop Dogg, she just doesn’t quite grokk his unique method of speech).

Martha also mentions the trailer for the upcoming Disney/Pixar feature Coco, which you can watch here.

Pop Culture and Mental Health: Discussion Questions and Big Ideas

  1. How do media portrayals of grief and loss align with “typical” experiences?
  2. Does knowing the story behind a highly personal work of media change the way we view it? How?
  3. How can media/pop culture help people deal with loss, both as consumers and creators?
  4. How do others respond to those grieving? What responsibility do we have to people?

There’s a whole lot to unpack here, and not just the notion (a carry-over from last episode) that the idea of “normal people” and the “normal way” of dealing with things is a whole lot of B.S. We all agree that one of the things media can do is normalize the fact that there IS no one way of dealing with grief, but that seeing characters we love go through the grieving process can help us when we suddenly have a heft of it and no tools of our own to process it.

We’re getting our Joseph Campbell on in our next episode, which is going to be all about The Hero’s Journey. Background reading of The Man With the Thousand Faces is 100% optional (PETER). Enjoy doing your homework!

Your homework for June 28:
Martha: The Book of Life
Calee: Shrek (the first one)
Pete: The “Beren and Luthien” chapter from The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkein

And remember, if you have questions, comments, or ideas for a show, give us a shoutout here or send us an e-mail to show@homeworkpodcast.com. We’d love to hear from you!