Birthday boy Dean Haglund has the week off, so Phil Leirness welcomes Marc Hershon to discuss the recent Emmy Awards nominations and all that is excellent right now in what we used to call “television”. Marc is a screenwriter, author, improv professor, comedy impresario, columnist, editorial cartoonist, and corporate branding expert. He is also responsible for Dean and Phil seeing many of the shows they have discussed over the past several years. Phil also welcomes Jeff Briggs to discuss China’s first female action star, “The Queen of Swords”, Cheng Pei-Pei, who died recently at the age of 78. Jeff is a lifelong archivist, a former magazine writer, and an expert on Asian Cinema. He is also Phil’s former college roommate! All in all, this week’s show is a globetrotting 73-minute epic!

Dean and Phil have thoughts about the recent assassination attempt on former President Trump and these thoughts bring back memories of John Lennon’s murder and of vigilante films of the 1970s, especially Taxi Driver as well as the American classic on which it was based, The Searchers. On this week’s show, you will hear all that before your friends in podcasting get down to remembering the great Bob Newhart and the singular Shelly Duvall, as well as Oscar-winning producer Jon Landau in “Celebrity Deaths”. The “Live Event of the Week” involves Disneyland on its 69th birthday, the invention of audio-animatronics and how Disney was denied toys as a kid. Two movies have Phil’s attention, one of whose story (Widow Clicquot) was written by a future guest of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour and the other (Bodies Bodies Bodies) an A24 satire on both WiFi culture and Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. Watching it was part of Phil’s efforts to see everything in which actress Rachel Sennott has appeared. Finally, the Emmy Awards nominations get discussed and Dean’s viewing habits get put to the test!

In more than 17 years of bringing you free, weekly entertainment, we don’t believe either Dean or Phil have mentioned the great theologian, humanist, educator, philosopher and satirist Erasmus. Finally, that oversight gets rectified! Sci-fi, radio, journalism, history, education, the “sound of the future” and the scenic delights of Middlesbrough are just some of the topics covered as lifelong broadcaster, educator and friend of the show Alex Lewczuk joins your friends in podcasting.