Following what many people seem to feel was the longest January on record, your friends in podcasting return to get February off to a good start, freewheeling their way through a variety of topics, including the closing of the most odd airport in the world, the reasoning behind Quentin Tarantino’s move into live stage work, a listener’s response to Dean and Phil’s dismissal of Oscar Best Picture nominee A Complete Unknown, and the influence David Lynch had on great Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. Dean and Phil take a deep dive into two films that figure prominently on many year-end Top Ten lists (Hundreds of Beavers and The People’s Joker) and they discuss two films that are NOT eligible for inclusion on their own lists (La Chimera and Midway). Finally, good friend of show Marc Hershon drops by to share a disturbing story about a screenwriting AI and to suggest two recent television shows.

If any week warranted an episode of epic length, it was the week that was. With Phil Leirness coming at us from the beaten and battered City of Angels and Dean Haglund coming at us from an air mattress on a hardwood floor not far from the Motor City, this week’s show covers a lot of terrain in a little more than 68 minutes. Your friends in podcasting discuss Copenhagen wedding plans and the role that city played in our understanding of quantum physics. They talk about the cold of New York City, the importance of heeding one’s intuition and the horrifying, almost unbearably sad events still ongoing in Los Angeles. Fires, bad behavior and the need for us to stop breaking things all get discussed before Dean and Phil finally put the “Hollywood” into Chillpak Hollywood Hour, briefly revisiting last week’s “Lawsuit of the Week” (involving It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni and star Blake Lively). They re-visit (and double down on) their praise for Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside”, Dean sings the praises of both “So Help Me Todd” and “Elsbeth” before the discussion turns to recent big-screen efforts by Guy Ritchie and Clint Eastwood. Finally, in the return of “Celebrity Deaths”, Phil quizzes Dean about a former U.S. President, a billionaire businessman, a Shakespearean movie star, the Gold Leader from Star Wars, a Broadway legend turned sitcom star, and a folk music icon, before setting his sights on and saying good riddance to a notorious bigot. Trust us, if you have ever enjoyed our free weekly show that has been “changing the way people listen to the internet” since May of 2007, you won’t want to miss this one!