What About This: Recent Episodes
Josh Pederson
Have you ever been curious about something, but you were afraid to bring it up because people might think you're weird? Well, on the What About This Podcast, we are four friends who like to ask weird questions and have discussions about all kinds of topics. We'll literally talk about anything. Join us as we answer life's greatest mysteries and maybe a few questions you didn't even know you were curious about. All this and more on the What About This Podcast.
Welcome back listeners! This is part 2 of our conversation this month. We hope you enjoyed part 1 and are excited to jump back in. In this episode, we tackle the idea of names and where they come from. We move from Disney to other famous corporate names like Nike and Amazon. Travis wonders about the impact a name has on our perception of the thing. Do we really like things or do we just like the name? They discuss what a company like Nike is actually selling (hint: it's not just shoes anymore), and what Amazon actually has to do with the river in South America. The guys then start to unpack what a name actually represents and how those properties define the person.
As always, pelase rate and review us on iTunes, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter (@wat_podcast). If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to shoot us a message. Thanks for listening!
Hey listeners, we're trying something new this month. Instead of two separate episodes, we decided to record one longer conversation and break it up into two parts. We hope this lets you in a little on how these conversations take place and how they connect to each other. We started this podcast to encourage you all to have your own strange, curious conversations and thought we'd get back to that. So if you like this episode, but feel like it ends kinda suddenly, don't worry! The rest will come in the next episode. Let us know what you think!
Are you ready to go to the happiest place on the planet? In this episode we're talking Disney! Travis and Keith had a conversation a while back about people who say they hate Disneyland. Neither think that anyone can actually mean that. The conversation starts there and goes down the rabbit hole really fast. The guys chat about how good Disney is at taking known things and turning them into Disney things. The brilliance of how Disneyland is designed and how Disney World makes you feel like you're everywhere at once. Then, things get weird. Keith brings up a theory about Disneyland by Jean Baudrillard that says Disney is actually more real than the real world. It has to do with artifice and masks.
Please take the time to rate and review us on iTunes, follow us on twitter, like us on Facebook. We appreciate all feedback and questions! And as always thanks for listening!
What's up listeners? On this episode, Travis wonders if people who are curious are more miserable than people who aren't. The guys chat about how curiosity makes people aware of their surroundings, and how absurd the world around us really is. They wonder what is the difference between being blissfully ignorant and just plain being rude. They all agree that people who say, "I've never really thought about it" drives them crazy, and how asking good, thoughtful questions is the key. In the end, they wonder, does any of this really matter? Other topics include: acknowledging misery, being present, the emotional specturm of experiences, and self-awareness.
As always, please rate and review us on iTunes and Apple Podcasts. Follow us on Twitter (@wat_podcast) and like us on Facebook. You can download all the rest of our episodes on iTunes, Podbean, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and other great podcasting outlets worldwide. Thanks for tuning in.
Let's all go to the movies! Hey What About This listeners, thanks for tuning in. This episode is about the future of the movies. Producer Josh wants to talk about something Steven Spielberg said about it: that we're going to get more independent movies and that the big budget blockbuster is dying (but not Blockbuster, that's already dead R.I.P.). The guys jump in by discussing who has more freedom: the big budget blockbuster, or the small budget indies. They talk about the restrictions in both and the type of art produced by each. That leads them to wondering if people will still go to movies at all in the future and how hard it is for a film to motivate us enough to leave our homes instead of using one of the many streaming services (ie. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Starz, HBO, etc.) They speculate that we are all turning more to experiences that cannot be replicated at home - like concerts, live theater, musicals, and the like. Other topics include: the ritual of theater going, spectacle and art, the ubiquitous nature of screens, entertainment as appeasement (panem et circenses).
Listeners! We want to try something new! We want to know what you want to talk about. So send us topics and questions. We are going to try to post our topics on all our pages before we record (@wat_podcast on Twitter, What About This on Facebook). Let us know if you have any questions about those topics, OR suggest topics we can do in future episodes. As always, please rate and review us on iTunes and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to us on iTunes, Podbean, podcasts.com, Google Play, Stitcher, YouTube and other great podcasting services around the globe.
Hey WAT listeners, thanks for joining us last year! We hope you enjoyed what we put out last year and we look forward to a lot of great episodes in 2018. On this episode, the guys get into the recent scandals that have come out of the celebrity world in the last few months. They try to unpack what responsibilities of the viewer and consumer are. Does enjoying their art mean we endorse the behavior? Are we simply perpetuating systems of power by continuing to put money in their pockets? Or can we justify appreciating it by separating art from artist? It's a deeply messy topic, so we hope you join the guys in this difficult and important conversation.
As always, we truly appreciate you listening. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, listen to us wherever you get your podcasts, follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And something new we want to try in 2018: listener questions! We're going to let you all know what topics are coming up, so send in any questions you have, and we'll get to as many as we can on that episode.
Merry Christmas WAT fans. We have a very special holiday episode for you, which happened because of a debate we had about Christmas movies. Josh asks us if we think Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and it leads us to break down what it is that makes a Christmas movie a Christmas movie. Does it have to take place on Christmas? Does it need to feature Christmas decorations and music? What is the standard? Harry Potter plays on tv every holiday season because it has a scene where somebody drags a Christmas tree through the snow. We also take a look at some of our favorite Christmas movies and what they mean to us. Kyle says a Year Without a Santa Clause is his favorite. Keith says Charlie Brown Christmas. Travis can't decide between Charlie Brown, Home Alone, Home Alone 2 and Family Stone. Josh, of course, says Die hard. The guys all agree that Christmas Vacation is just okay, and John Candy is the man. All of this and more on this episode of What About This. As always, if you want to get in contact with us, you can send us an email at humannequinmedia@gmail.com or you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter. If you happen to be on iTunes or Apple Podcasts, we would love if you could rate and review us. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Big Announcement 2017! Hey WAT listeners! This is a very special episode. It is Ryan's last episode for now. He has been called to plant a church in Texas, so he is moving to Austin! He talks to Travis, Kyle, and Keith about how this all came about and then the guys jump into a discussion about the risk that comes with following your calling. They start by talking about what a "calling" is and why it is risky. They chat about the fear of failure and how we learn through failure, the time it takes to get good at something, the various roles that make up our calling, and ultimately, how our calling is really about being fully human. As always, pelase rate and review us on iTunes and Apple Podcast, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.
Hey WaT listenters! The guys are back! After taking a bit of a break (last long one, we promise) so Keith could get settled with his newborn daughter, they are ready to go. In this episode, Travis and Keith bring a conversation they had recently; which of the major sports has the best athletes? What started out as a heated debate turns into a discussion about the nature of athletes and athleticism. The guys are interested in what is the difference between the two and which sport requires which. Travis claims that the skills of baseball requires the best athletes. Keith thinks basketball and hockey (Producer Josh thinks Keith is right about hockey) require more raw athleticism. Kyle wonders how we would test it all. They try to come up with a good competition to determine which athletes might be the most athletic and which might be the best athletes. Join the conversation on Twitter (@wat_podcast) and Facebook and let us know which sport wins! As always, please rate and review us on iTunes and Apple Podcasts.
What's up everybody? On this episode we ask the important question: Does talent matter? Keith proposes that the best basketball player ever has never even picked up a basketball. The guys chat about how important raw talent is to succeed in any given field. Is it as important as we tend to think? They try to figure out what being the "best" means, and how someone achieves it. Keith suggests it's drive and passion, Travis thinks it's a combination of talent and ethich, Kyle says it might have more to do with who you know, and Producer Josh questions everything. It also depends on what we mean by success. This one might need a follow up, so let us know what you think.
Please rate and review us on iTunes and Apple Podcasts. You can follow us on Twitter (@wat_podcast) and like us on Facebook. You can find all of our back episodes on Podbean, iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, YouTube, podcasts.com and other great podcasting outlets worldwide.
Hey WAT listeners for this episode, Producer Josh poses an interesting question: Are people losing interst in well-written, interesting fiction? The guys jump in by discussing Stephen King's "IT" (the novel) and the apprecation of horror. Then they get into how reading takes time and how maybe we are slowly losing our patience with text. Keith wonders if we are simply transitioning back to oral literature and eloquence, Travis thinks we aren't cultivating our attention spans, and Kyle posits that maybe we just don't have time. Other topics discussed: The Great Works, the importance of boredom, movies/documentaries as literature, and the value of visual storytelling. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. And please rate and review us on iTunes and Apple Podcasts.
Hey WAT listeners! Thanks for your patience with us (and thanks for asking when we were coming back)! If you are a fan of comedy, this is for you. The guys chat about the role of comedy in our world today and why it is so good at getting us to think. They tackle how comedy reveals truth and forces us to confront the unconfrontable while we laugh along, whether or not comedy has to push boundaries, and they debate which is better: the British or American Office. Also, be sure to stick around until the very end to get more details on our upcoming live event in September! As always, rate/review us on itunes (don't forget to subscribe), and find us on Facebook and Twitter.
Hey listeners! After a bit of a break, we're back with a very special episode. We got a lot of feedback from you all, saying that our short-term mission episode was a favorite, so we decided to do a companion episode. We asked our friend Kyle Rice of Project 54 Outreach to join the guys to talk about homelessness. Kyle shares a bit of his incredible journey in his calling to help the homeless of Skid Row in Los Angeles. He gives us insight about what he's learned while serving and loving the people of Skid Row. Then, the guys and Kyle discuss how to approach the problem of homelessness. Kyle and Project 54 are close to our hearts, so please go check them out at project54outreach.org and support this very worthy organization. As always, we'd love to hear your feedback @wat_podcast on twitter or What About This on Facebook.
Big news for What About This: Keith is going to be a dad! And he's a little terrified. So he wanted to talk about shame and fear. The guys got into how shame is everywhere and what it means for human beings. They think talking shame helps reduce its power over us and how to create spaces for people to find their true selves. Topics include: shame in parenting, public embarrassment, original sin, church and shame, perception of identity, true self/false self. Be sure to join the conversation with the guys on Facebook @WhatAboutThisPodcast or Twitter @wat_podcast!
Hey WAT listeners! This episode is about sports and morality. Kyle and Ryan are huge football fans, so we thought we'd dive into an interesting phenomenom of sports: when athletes do wrong and are still allowed to play. The guys chat about how we tend to idolize our favorite athletes and whether those athletes are role models or not. They also discuss social value systems and unfair application of punishment. Then they ask whether they should keep supporting a culture that doesn't always match their values. Join the conversation on twitter @wat_podcast or Facebook. Thanks for listening!
On this episode, the guys were struggling to find a topic. Then Producer Josh stepped up and wanted to know their opinion on the recent phenomenon "13 Reasons Why." Josh was concerned about how the book and show represented suicide. The guys get into some delicate topics, ask some tough questions, and wrestle with their roles when it comes to talking with people they know about mental health. Please join us in the conversation as we hope to encourage everyone to engage with this really important issue.
Hey WAT listeners, we've got a good episode up today. The guys have a conversation about short term missions--or when Christians go out into the communities to serve and spread the gospel. Kyle was challenged after reading an article and wanted to bring it to the group. They chat about how helpful or harmful short term missions are without partnering with local organizations, who are actually changing more by mission work, and what they could do better to help people.
On this week's episode, the guys get into it about who has influenced music the most in the last 75 years. Keith and Kyle say it's the Beatles. Travis disagrees. What follows is a cage match! Topics discussed: Elvis, the British Invasion, music movements, Edison and the light bulb, Nirvana, turning points in a concept, and Kyle (almost) embarassing himself in front of Sir Paul McCartney. Ryan was out of town for recording, so Producer Josh filled in! We hope you enjoy!
On this episode the guys take on social media and what it means. They chat about cultural narratives and the importance of meaning. Kyle and Travis bring up the exchange system of likes on Instagram. Keith breaks down how the idea of Self came about. Ryan throws out the idea that our identity is the real issue. There's a lot to this episode, so we may come back to this soon. Make sure to subscribe to us on iTunes and follow us on Twitter @wat_podcast