Sarah and Nathan talk about the things they have seen, read, written and played every week.
This week's big question is: if a tree falls in the woods, are you banging your own mum? But before that: Avengers Infinity War, and Netflix series The Rain.
Sarah and Nathan saw Mary Stuart at the Theatre Royal Bath, and Nathan saw a lot of films on a plane - some of which were not terrible. Plus, Age of Answers!
Don't say we didn't warn you. Ready Player One is really, really bad, so it sucks to be Sarah who only got to see that this week. Better times for Nath who also saw Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark with live soundtrack, meaning that we can delve into the mysteries of good Spielberg vs poor Spielberg. There's no Age of Answers this week because there were, shockingly, NO QUESTIONS - make us happy and send us some!
Why is the new Lara Croft movie like a plastic cup? Can a family annihilating demigod achieve character development? And just how should a person be? All these questions and more (including the ones you put to us in Age of Answers via the email below) WILL be answered in this amazing episode of The Mispronounced Item.
We're back from Seattle, and here we are with the aural equivalent of your neighbours coming over with the slides from their holiday. This week: things we learned in Seattle (mostly about aircraft, please trust us that this is very interesting), Annihilation the book and the film, Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness, and (of course) THE AGE OF ANSWERS.
We went to see Flight of the Conchords! It was great! We listened to loads of Britpop on the way! It was... variable! We watched Murder on the Orient Express! It was exactly what we hoped for! And Nathan has been playing Burnout Paradise Remastered! It has been consuming!
Apologies for being a day late on this due to Nath being ill. Still, we're here now with thoughts on Black Panther (MANY SPOILERS, you have been warned) and You Were Never Really Here (about which we try to say as little as humanly possible, leading to a pretty weird section TBH where we talk about Britpop for ages for some reason), plus The Age of Answers which is of course the best bit.
We watched Mute. We thought it couldn't be as bad as people said, but it is if anything much, much worse. So bad that Sarah argues it should have been more like Mr Bean, and actually has a point. Maximum spoilers here so avoid if you want to watch Mute (but you don't want to watch Mute). Plus a quick rattle through a novel inspired by the life of surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, and Nathan getting excited about The Swapper. Age of Answers includes some career advice and thoughts on Chuck Palahniuk, with special bonus atmospheric noises supplied by our newly adopted dog, Jessie.
Here's the Great Lost Episode from last year! And by "Great" we mean "Really Quite Long", but for EXCELLENT REASONS, mostly relating to the brilliance of Get Out, here discussed extensively (and with spoilers all the way). We originally recorded this in March 2017, but it's OK because we were right about basically everything.
"It's the intellectual equivalent of separate beds!" says Nathan, meaning he's watched a film I haven't and I've read a book he hasn't this week.
This week! Walking sims are great, humanity is terrible, and comedians are chatty.
We went to see Hamilton! It was predictably amazing! Plus a bit about Star Trek.
The fun twist this week is that we've been doing completely different things, making for some classic repartee along the lines of "what are you talking about?" and "I don't understand".
Well it's been ages, hasn't it? Let's try to make this thing more regular. Sarah and Nathan are back to talk about films, books and games again.
Women on top, Gillingham rising and evil babies
Dana Spiotta, Orson Welles, Spec Ops: The Line, Apocalypse Now, Sherlock
Sarah Perry, Hunt for theWilderpeople, Dishonored 2
Ten reasons not to worry even though everything is quite bad really!
What we did in LA, Disneyland, Yosemite and San Francisco
Watching Room, reading gruelling stories about male violence, and playing Firewatch
Making a Murderer, The Revenant, David Bowie and the bloody awful Legend
Join us this week as Nathan talks seemingly endlessly about Star Wars - no, not even the new one, but about the prequel trilogy, digital effects, and the curse of the 1990s. Sarah has been reading Jonathan Bate's biography of Ted Hughes, a very sharp look at a titanic talent and an utter bastard, and Sarah has also reviewed Samantha Hunt's new novel Mr Splitfoot and did not like it, which leads to a discussion about how critics feel when they need to be mean about things (poor us!) and, inexplicably, a blow-by-blow summary of several episodes of Adam Buxton's new podcast. Sorry.
We're back! With MASSIVE STAR WARS SPOILERS (00:51:40-01:18:12). Also best games, best film and best books of 2015.
WE'RE BACK! YouTube, Ted Hughes and leper blues.
All aboard the return train to the mid-twentieth century with revivals for Man from Uncle and Bond, changing stations at Contemporary Thrillerville for The Girl on the Train
Atwood's dystopia, Justified's new west, and why your A-level's matter
Diary of a Teenage Girl, True Detective season 2, Juiceboxxx
a whole lot of talk about Windermere, a scamper through the unconscious with new Pixar movie Inside Out, a discussion of Matt Dillon's face and its work in Wayward Pines, and a bit at the end where we both start singing the word "MONEY" at each other because Sarah has listened to Dark Side of the Moon for the estimable RAM Album Club.
This week: Nath's been watching the FX series of Fargo, which stars Martin Freeman and is available on Netflix, and mostly enjoying its fine performances and refractions of Coen-brother themes and imagery. Watching Fargo was, for the most part, an attempt not to think too hard about James Meek's Private Island, an excellent book about the sell-off of Britain's state-owned enterprises and essentials over the last 35 years, which Sarah avoided by getting into Bond - she talks about Casino Royale, Moonraker, and the word "bitch". Offline Dating comes up for discussion in what we've written this week, and finally we answer your questions - and forget to be annoyed that the BBC American film poll doesn't include a single Coen brothers entry. Rubbish.
Don't stop, don't sleep, don't let your guard for one second: we've been watching It Follows and it is pretty bloody scary. Horror stories of another kind as Nath explores the raw brilliance and tabloid tragedy of Paul Gascoigne as revealed in a new documentary, which is strangely coy about the man's violence against his wife. And Sarah chats about her review of Scarlett Thomas's funny, ambitious and ecstatically rude new novel, The Seed Collectors. Plus! Our advice on mystery staircases, and the last word anyone will ever need on Byron (twat).
We went to see Mark Thomas do his new show about trespassing! That was good, so there's some chat about that and how it reminds Nath of his own experiences re-walking London. Then Sarah has read techno-conspiracy thrill-ride Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer and Nath has read Climbers by M John Harrison, so there's some chat about that. And then there's some more chat about things that we have been writing this week (Sarah: drinking in pregnancy and how it's weird that everyone is always telling women what to do; Nath: FIFA as an exemplar structural sexism), and also what Steve Hogarty has written, which is a brilliant piece about going to St Petersberg to play a game and having a terrible time. Then we answer some of your questions, and then there is NO MORE CHAT UNTIL NEXT TIME BYE.
Musical goings on this week, as Sarah heads off on a pilgrimage to Hyde Park to kneel at the altar of Taylor Swift, while Nath whispers the Warrior's Prayer and talks about Mogwai's excellent 20th Anniversary show. Metal remains a theme for our movies this week - the exquisitely odd and probably awful Excalibur and Hawk The Slayer - before Sarah gives the Pope a good shafting, and we try to answer your questions.
After a week away the podcast returns only HUGE, with two weeks' worth of thoughts and talk making this the longest and quite possibly least disciplined episode ever. Under discussion this week is HBO's dark documentary of privilege and injustice, The Jinx, as well as the Wachowskis' new Netflix show, Sense8. We discuss the conferences that stopped us recording last week - Nath went to E3 in LA, Sarah to the British Humanist Association in Bristol - and what we've written this week, including work on the return of Doom, the strangeness of LA, and Irish abortion. Then, in a new regular, we answer your questions - you here mostly meaning 'Caroline' - and for no reason at the end there's talk about Marc Maron's interview with Barack Obama.
Drugs, murder and collapsing identities: we follow the Silk Road to ruin with Wired's astonishing two-part feature. Then hark at Nathan's untrammelled enthusiasm for E3, listen to Sarah rave about Ali Smith winning the Baileys Prize, become marginally bilious with us as we grapple with dirty old man poetry, and get a bit giddy about the lovely Nolan North.
If I told you this episode was about consciousness, empathy and growing up in Ex Machina, Leslie Jamison's essay The Empathy Exams and Judy Blume's new novel In the Unlikely Event, you might be like, "Hmm, interesting, I'll bookmark that for later." But! If I told you it's also about Sarah squawking "FOKKEN YOU IN DA FACE" and Nath doing impressions of a sad South African robot, you would probably press play instantly.
Mad Max: Fury Road is the week's big talking point, and some questions need to be answered: How on earth did it get made? Why is it so brilliant? And can Sarah pull off the "oil crown" Furiosa look in the office? Then, because in the distant future there is only phwaor, we take a look at Polly Vernon's Hot Feminist, before rounding on Game Of Thrones with a look that says "Stop bloody raping people, Game Of Thrones."
Not sure we actually get to the point at all this week, but ostensibly you will hear about: Taylor Swift's video and why it is brilliant (yes it is brilliant), practical magic in A Wizard of Earthsea, and Sarah has reviewed Kirst Logan's novel The Gracekeepers. Hurrah!
A postmortem of Politics Christmas, which seems to have birthed a new era of intolerance and awfulness ALREADY, and can only be made better through the masochistic review of hopeful pre-election left-wing headlines. The Witcher 3 provides some respite from reality - "It's like real life, in a game" - but then Sarah brings the election back up by having written about it, and everyone waltzes offstage crying and reciting favourite passages from Flann O'Brien. Kafka's The Castle is somehow involved.
Sarah has read some BOOKS this week - namely Ali Smith's How To Be Both and Do It Like A Woman by Caroline Criado-Perez. Politics Christmas Eve is celebrated with Politics Quizmas, in which Sarah is challenged to identify local parliamentary candidates using snippets of their CVs and hompages ("I'd love to give up work, politics and city life and spend my time caring for large, wild cats") and Nathan has written something about Star Wars, motion and memory.
You know what's hard? Talking about comedy without ruining all the jokes. So you get a very unfunny appraisal of Stewart Lee's very funny current tour. Nathan went to see Blade Runner. Thrill to his intimate knowledge of '80s studio politics and variant cuts. No writing to talk about, so instead you get extra Politics Christmas, Nath's London Marathon, and why Sarah gets stressed about looking at art.
Dun-dun, da-da dun-dun, da-da dun-dun, da-da dun. YES GAME OF THRONES IS BACK AND SARAH CAN'T HELP SINGING THE THEME TUNE. Will she be able to have a ten-minute chat with Nath without spoiling anything to come in the series? The latest edition of the LRB has an excellent report from Grimsby, where Ukip are winning popularity in the ruins of the fishing industry. And in things we've written this week, Sarah has dealt with the lethal crisis in migration in the Mediterranean, and Nathan has written about forthcoming game Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and very British apocalypses.
Daredevil has arrived on Netflix – we find out if the latest part of the ever-expanding Marvel universe is any good. Who cooked Adam Smith's dinner? The new book from Katrine Marçal answers this question, and in the process uncovers the missing piece of economics. And in this week's writing, Sarah has been wondering whether sex offenders really are made by their genes, and Nathan has been exploring fantamystical worlds. Yes, fantamystical is a real word. Or it should be.
This week Nathan and Sarah wrestle with the macabre and they deal with loving and dreading the new series of Inside No 9 on BBC Two, and walk with words while discussing the nature writing of Robert Macfarlane and Melissa Harrison. To finish there's discussion of a sad meeting with Python's Terry Jones, and Sarah talks about being wrong about pornography.
This week Nath's plunged himself into Bloodborne and is full of love for the games of Hidetaka Miyazaki, Sarah has gone ludicrous for the imminent arrival of the election - or, as she calls it, Politics Christmas - and we discuss GTA, games censorship and rape suspect anonymity in what we've written this week.
Great, tear-streaked excitement as Sarah finally gets to the Sleater-Kinney gig she's been waiting TEN RUDDY YEARS for (and takes Nathan along too). The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is Tina Fey's new sitcom on Netflix: females are strong as hell, but are the jokes too? And Sarah's been doing her best to destroy the Green Party, while Nathan's been writing about Little Baby Bums.
This week, it's art, escape and women loving women on the Left Bank at the Bristol Women's Literature Festival. Then Sarah and Nathan say their farewells to Terry Pratchett, and wonder how he managed to have more ideas on a page than most people have in a lifetime. And in writing, Sarah has had a pop at Jeremy Clarkson, King of the Idiots, while Nathan's been figuring out his verdict on Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number.
This week - a Helen MacDonald visit to Bristol prompts a discussion of her astonishing, nature writing-redefining memoir H Is For Hawk, while Nathan's been watching '70s dystopias Rollerball and Network and Sarah's been writing about the parenting pressures of world book day.
This week Nathan and Sarah contemplate the rise of the robots as a new wave of automation threatens to supplant the middle classes (not us!) and then talk sports and sports writing in light of a visit to watch Barcelona in the Champions League. Then, with Neill Blomkamp set to right the wrongs of Alien 3 and Resurrection, there's talk of canon and the reasons fans cling so tightly to 'official' versions of fictional events.
It's time to LWYRUP: every Breaking Bad fan's favourite attorney at law (well, semi-law) is back in Better Call Saul, and the court of Ditum is in session to deliver its verdict. Also dipped in justice is Aardman's new feature animation, Shaun The Sheep Movie, while the things we've written this week touches on proposed amendments to the UK's abortion laws, and the issue of stars in video games.
Sarah and Nathan take a fumble with Fanny Hill, as they discuss the Caroline-Quentin-starring new adaptation at the Bristol Old Vic. There's a tribute to David Carr, the New York Times' consummate columnist who died last week. And in this week's writing, Sarah reports from the launch of the Femicide Census, and Nath reviews new Mike Judge sitcom Silicon Valley.
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