Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response.

Thought is real. Physical is the illusion. Ironic, huh ?

The thoughts are deeper (and potentially more upsetting, so mind the CWs) than usual on this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, where Emily shares her film analysis of the 1998 cult classic What Dreams May Come. Based on the novel by Richard Matheson (who had some truly fucked up views of women, romance, and gender dynamics), director Vincent Ward and leads Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Annabella Sciorra make a concerted effort to elevate the source material beyond its misogynistic roots, giving us a visually stunning examination of the afterlife and a compassionate look at the difficulty of loving someone with mental health challenges. But the trope that Williams' Chris and Sciorra's Annie are soul mates keeps their romance from being something to emulate, erases Annie's agency, and recreates Matheson's misogynistic belief that women are nothing without their men.

Additionally, although casting Gooding as Chris's deceased mentor may have seemed progressive for the 90s, finding out that the actual mentor was cosplaying as Max Von Sydow, a white German actor, while Chris's daughter took on the form of Rosalind Chao because of a casually racist comment Chris once made about the beauty of Asian women, feels rather less worthy of nostalgia from the vantage point of 2026. That said, while Matheson's view of women is foul, the romance and imagination of the afterlife he envisioned and Ward put on the screen is nothing short of captivating and thought-provoking--and this film offers an lovely and compassionate take on how to support someone when there is nothing you can do to make things better.

Your brain may be nothing but meat, but it's meat that's craving some stimulation in the form of a delightful podcast conversation between your favorite Guy sisters! So take a listen!

Content warning: Discussions of child death, suicide, and depression. Take care with this one, y'all.

Tags:

deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, romance, pop culture, women, mental health, psychology, cult classic, cultural commentary, film analysis, movies, movie reviews, feminism, film, nostalgia, 80s and 90s movies, robin williams, cuba gooding jr, richard matheson, annabella sciorra, rosalind chao

This episode was edited by

Please give us a review and/or a rating! It really does help. In fact, email a screenshot of your review and your address to guygirlsmedia@gmail.com, and we'll send you a Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t sticker to say thanks. ~Tracie & Emily

We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response.

"But I've got style, I've got flair. How did I become the nanny?"

On this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, the Guy sisters welcome Emily's colleague Zina Kumok to share her analysis of the 1990s-era sitcom The Nanny, starring Fran Drescher. All three women appreciated the pop culture representation of a beautiful and funny working class Jewish woman on this TV show, since Drescher's portrayal of the titular nanny subverted many stereotypes about Jews, even as it leaned into others as part of the weekly fish-out-of-water comedy.

While not everything in the show has aged as well as Nanny Fine's amazing sense of style, comedic timing, and parenting psychology--specifically, there's some unpleasant 90s era fat shaming that we don't have much nostalgia for, and it's a little difficult to tell if there's an undercurrent of feminism in a show whose main character is obsessed with romance and marriage--but this piece of late 20th century pop culture is definitely worth a rewatch. Come for the one-liners and blue comedy that soared over your head the first time you watched it, stay for subversive pop culture that offers some trenchant cultural commentary on class, money, religion, and sex.

Good things come to those who wait, sir. Unless they wait too long and then they slip through their namby-pamby fingers. So don't delay in throwing on your headphones and listening in to this episode!

Tags

deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, nostalgia, 90s television, comedy, cultural commentary, fashion, feminism, fran drescher, millennial nostalgia, pop culture, psychology, romance, sitcom, storytelling, the nanny, todd oldham, women

Zina Kumok is available for one-on-one financial help at chdouglas.com

Find her on Instagram

And on LinkedIn

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus content, live zooms with Tracie & Emily, discounts on merch, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on

We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response.

With friends like these, who needs enemas?

This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie revisits the star-studded yet mostly forgotten 1994 comedy The Road to Wellville. Set at the turn of the 20th century, this film offers cultural commentary on the bonkers health crazes that gave us breakfast cereal as health food, opium as an all-purpose panacea, and the idea that an erection was a flagpole on the grave. And yet, the psychology of John Harvey Kellogg, as played by Anthony Hopkins with prosthetic teeth, shows that he was no snake-oil salesman, even if he was overly invested in his patients' bowels and genitals. He truly believed that his regimen of roughage, calisthenics, enemas, and never ever ever touching yourself would improve your physical and mental health. And there's a great deal of comedy to be found in the bodily functions that result from his methods, if farts, poop, and masturbation are your sort of humor. (Emily feels no nostalgia for the experience of watching this comedy with her father and hoping for a sinkhole to release her from her nearly fatal level of embarrassment.)

That said, the Guy sisters enjoy a fascinating conversation about women and sex, health as a business, neurodivergence, and whether it's pronounced sanitAIRium or santORium.

We promise that no one has ever died listening to our podcast. So you can feel confident about throwing on your headphones to listen in!

Tags:

deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, comedy, pop culture, movies, film, psychology, mental health, women, nostalgia, 80s and 90s movies, cultural commentary, analyzing film tropes, comedy podcast, cult classic, feminism, film analysis, storytelling, matthew broderick, anthony hopkins, bridget fonda

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus content, live zooms with Tracie & Emily, discounts on merch, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response.

I'm incarcerated, Lloyd!!

This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily shares her analysis of one of the classic movies that happened to miss the Guy girls the first time around: Say Anything. Cameron Crowe's 1989 romance/comedy created some iconic moments in our collective Gen X childhood--notably the scene of John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler holding the boom box playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" over his head.

Crowe's storytelling also turned a curious eye to toxic masculinity by showing a romance where the young woman's intelligence is a feature, not a bug, for the less-impressive young man who loves her. John Mahoney, who plays Ione Skye's nurturing but corrupt father, also offers an incredibly nuanced take on the psychology of how money can infect even the most loving of parental relationships. While Tracie and Emily both worry about how this romance between two teens will work out--especially if they do "make it" and stay together--the slice of life comedy and realism in this film are lovely to watch, even if they can feel a bit dated after 37 years.

You don't have to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything. Just throw on your headphones and listen.

Tags
nostalgia, 80s and 90s movies, cameron crowe, classic movies, comedy, deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, film, film analysis, gen x childhood, gen x nostalgia, John Cusack, mental health, movie reviews, pop culture, psychology, romance, romcom, storytelling, women

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus content, live zooms with Tracie & Emily, discounts on merch, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

Please give us a review and/or a rating! It really does help. In fact, email a screenshot of your review and your address to guygirlsmedia@gmail.com, and we'll send you a Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t sticker to say thanks. ~Tracie & Emily

We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response.

I don't have low self-esteem. I have low esteem for everyone else.

On this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie returns to an icon of 90s era feminism, the animated MTV television show Daria. Just like the eponymous Daria Morgendorffer, the people around Tracie thought she was a "misery chick" who wore her feminism, sarcasm, and impatience with the idiocy of the rest of the world on her sleeve (although Emily objects to that characterization of her beloved sister).

Still, in her early 20s, Tracie found a lot to love about this pop culture take on how smart and disaffected young women navigate unreasonable expectations in a chaotic world. In addition, Daria was savvy enough to let smart jokes land without explaining them to the audience and self-aware enough to offer cultural commentary that doesn't let Daria herself off the hook for her role in perpetuating unjust systems. It also does a great job of holding a mirror up to reality when it comes to the psychology of high intelligence, since recognizing the brutal nature of the world can lead to poor mental health outcomes that look like low self-esteem. And even though Daria falls victim to some of the ideological purity testing of 90s feminism, it also offers some pretty great examples of feminism in action.

La la la la...Before the theme song is stuck in your head forever, throw on your headphones and listen to this episode!

Tags: deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, feminism, animation, mtv, women, pop culture, cultural commentary, psychology, mental health, comedy, comedy podcast, cult classic, millennial nostalgia, mike judge, 90s television, daria, daria morgendorffer, social justice

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus content, live zooms with Tracie & Emily, discounts on merch, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on

Please give us a review and/or a rating! It really does help. In fact, email a screenshot of your review and your address to guygirlsmedia@gmail.com, and we'll send you a Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t sticker to say thanks. ~Tracie & Emily

We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response.

Earn more sessions by sleeving!

This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily enjoys analyzing film tropes in the 1987 Steve Martin comedy Roxanne, based on the Edmond Rostand play Cyrano de Bergerac. As a romance loving child, Emily adored the updated storytelling of the remarkable man with a big nose who falls in love with a beautiful woman and helps his handsome but shy lieutenant woo her in his stead.

While much of the comedy from the original French play translates remarkably well into 1980s era Washington state, writer and star Steve Martin wanted the humorous tale to be a true comedy rather than the tragic tale of missed opportunities and self-loathing (and lack of agency for women) that Rostand originally wrote. Which is why Roxanne and CD get to have their (slightly awkward) kiss and happily ever after at the end, and Chris gets to live on in Tahoe with Sandy the cocktail waitress instead of dying nobly.

Throw on your headphones, pour yourself a glass of wine to snork, and take a listen!

Mentioned in this episode:

https://seeingthingssecondhand.com/2022/04/10/roxanne-1987/

Tags

deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, comedy, women, pop culture, storytelling, romance, analyzing, film tropes, movie reviews, film, cultural commentary, feminism, film analysis, gen x childhood, 80s and 90s movies, romcom, nostalgia, steve martin, daryl hannah, cyrano de bergerac

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus content, live zooms with Tracie & Emily, discounts on merch, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

Please give us a review and/or a rating! It really does help. In fact, email a screenshot of your review and your address to guygirlsmedia@gmail.com, and we'll send you a Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t sticker to say thanks. ~Tracie & Emily

We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response.

"I know how you feel. You don't know if you want to hit me or kiss me. I get a lot of that."

On this week's episode of Deep Thoughts, Tracie revisits the 1990 film Dick Tracy, the big budget Oscar winner that pop culture forgot. Director and star Warren Beatty wanted to recreate the comic strip detective as a live action hero, complete with all the weird villains that populate the funny papers, as well as the romance Tracy enjoyed with both his loving girlfriend Tess Trueheart and the villainous femme fatale, Breathless Mahoney. In some ways, Beatty succeeded: the visuals of the film are arresting (pun very much intended). But although contemporaneous movie reviews were glowing, Dick Tracy has gone unremembered, even as a cult classic--in part because the story has very little heart and Beatty's turn as Tracy is kinda meh.

That doesn't mean this movie isn't fun (if a little infuriating) to watch. The "romance" plot that puts Tracy in a love triangle with Mahoney (played by Madonna), and the long-suffering Tess (Glenne Headly) doesn't give the viewer much to go on as to why these women want the rule-breaking detective. But if you can overlook the outdated romance, Dick Tracy can take you back to the nostalgia of watching a square-jawed detective fight the bad guys in the Sunday comics.

We promise not to put you in the cement bath. Just take a listen!

Tags: deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, romance, pop culture, film, movie reviews, cult classic, women, 80s and 90s movies, nostalgia, feminism, cultural commentary, storytelling, warren beatty, comic strip, gen x childhood, analyzing film tropes, madonna, dick tracy

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus content, live zooms with Tracie & Emily, discounts on merch, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi:

Please give us a review and/or a rating! It really does help. In fact, email a screenshot of your review and your address to guygirlsmedia@gmail.com, and we'll send you a Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t sticker to say thanks. ~Tracie & Emily

We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response.

You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?

On today's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily delves into Tim Burton's 1989 film Batman. This pop culture phenomenon was controversial prior to its release, as comic book purists objected to the casting of Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman. They assumed his acting would make the film a comedy rather than gritty storytelling. While Emily agrees that Keaton brings a level of gravitas and pathos to his depiction of Wayne, she finds something unsettling about how pop culture gives us a billionaire who spends his time and money beating up purse snatchers rather than fixing the infrastructure of Gotham City. That said, Batman--or at least this iteration of the Dark Knight--is ultimately a mafia movie, which is not at all interesting to Emily, until you add a psychopathic clown to the mix. And of course, casting Jack Nicholson as the Clown Prince of Crime (with serious mental health issues) was inspired.

Keaton's Batman may not be the pop culture hero we deserve to overthink right now, but he's the one we need to spend too much time overanalyzing. Throw on your headphones and overthink the caped crusader along with us!

Mentioned in this episode:

Review: Learning to Love Tim Burton's BATMAN (1989)

Why Fans Didn't Want Michael Keaton As Batman

Tags

deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, pop culture, film, psychology, mental health, batman, comedy, movie reviews, storytelling, comic book, analyzing film tropes, classic movies, tim burton, cultural commentary, film analysis, gen x childhood, nostalgia, 80s and 90s movies, kim basinger, michael keaton

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive ac

Please give us a review and/or a rating! It really does help. In fact, email a screenshot of your review and your address to guygirlsmedia@gmail.com, and we'll send you a Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t sticker to say thanks. ~Tracie & Emily

We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!