After three special theme shows celebrating their 16 years of changing the way people listen to the internet, your friends in podcasting and broadcasting are back doing whatever the heck it is they usually do! Dean and Phil discuss all the news coming out of the Cannes Film Festival and the latest in the ongoing labor turmoil in Hollywood. They discuss art, comedy, and Disneyland. They offer up reviews of three new or recent releases. They celebrate the lives and legacies of a chart-topping singer-turned-actor, the Queen of Rock ‘n Roll, a groundbreaking filmmaker, and an award-winning novelist.

Phil has been chasing trains all over California and he has stories. St. Patrick’s Day was this past week and Dean and Phil have jokes about that. In “Celebrity Deaths”, Oscar-winning actor William Hurt gets remembered and the controversy surrounding celebrations of his legacy will get examined. Star of the original “Godzilla” and a great story about him get discussed, and before the Chillpak Morgue closes, R&B great Timmy Thomas has his praises sung. This is, of course, the biggest week in Hollywood and Dean and Phil “go to the movies” to discuss Steven Spielberg’s next film (a sequel to a 1960s classic), the brilliance and pain and artistry of Richard Pryor as seen in Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip and the inspiring visual storytelling on display in the works of Paolo Sorrentino, specifically his current Oscar nominee for Best International Film, The Hand of God.

Dean and Phil get the ball rolling by discussing the most “fun” (?) cities in California. Then they discuss the role film critics play as we emerge from a pandemic. The quality and box office fortunes of The French Dispatch, The Eternals, Last Night in Soho, Dune, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and No Time to Die get analyzed and discussed. Phil sings the praises of a great Japanese film, a legendary Japanese actor, and a charismatic Japanese pop star. Dean sings the praises of Benedict Cumberbatch and his new film about a famous artist. Phil sings the praises of Mike White’s satirical “The White Lotus” and tackles the controversy surround Dave Chappelle’s “The Closer” from a much different angle. Finally, Dean intrigues Phil with his description of Channing Tatum’s Amazon Prime series “Comrade Detective”.

On last week’s show, Phil introduced what will be a recurring segment for the near future: The overlooked films of 2020. This week, a unique, uniquely painful, esoteric and funny take on both the family drama and the con-artist picture, as well as a superhero movie that really did deserve to be overlooked! Last week, Dean panned a Tom Clancy adaptation written by Taylor Sheridan. This week, another new Taylor Sheridan-scripted actioner gets discussed, this one directed by Sheridan and starring Angelina Jolie. “Celebrity Deaths” is a long-standing segment of the show, but never before have Dean and Phil discussed an actor who worked for 9 decades and died at 106! Phil, is, as listeners will know, a state certified Violence Prevention Specialist. In the wake of the horrific hatred and violence being directed at members of the AAPI community, he decided to augment his training by taking bystander intervention training. He will report on this training, and offer up tips that everyone can use to both #stopthehate and #spreadthelove. And speaking of spreading the love, over the past couple months, your friends in podcasting have begun to check in “on air” with friends of the show who have appeared on past episodes, to see how the year plus of pandemic life has treated them. This week, the great storyboard artist Rob Consing drops by. He discusses the big movies he has been working on, including Morbius and Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and he competes against Dean in a round of our new, and apparently popular, vintage movie ad game (where Dean tries to guess the movie from the ad copy Phil reads)!

Recorded at 6 am (Pacific) on a Monday morning, this 70 minute conversation between your friends in podcasting is a heartfelt, insightful, irreverent exploration of such topics as knife-wielding homeless, the NFL, The Joker, backstage yoga, the important life skills improv training can teach, the key to artful conversation, the danger of reading “news” online (especially on social media), curiosity, empathy, grief, The King of Comedy and more! Oh, and don’t forget to check out Dean’s live, improv, streaming comedy series, Gravity Hole!