Jordan Stokes, Matt Wrather, and Pete Fenzel take on Fackham Hall, a 2025 comedy inspired by one of OTI’s favorite shows: Downton Abbey. Written by the the British sketch writing team the Dawson Bros. in collaboration with comedian Jimmy Carr and his brother Patrick, Fackham is a romp of dirty jokes, harmless puns, upscale production design, scathing invective about traditional British social order delivered from a literal pulpit, vaudeville-esque farcical sequences, forbidden romance, and foreboding bassoon solos.

Stokes, Wrather and Fenzel muse on who the movie is for; its comedic style as it relates to the style of its creators; the stooping-to-conquer character performances of Katherine Waterston, Damian Lewis, and Draco Malfoy himself: Tom Felton; and where and how it resembles or differs from Downton Abbey, the touchstone of so much of its aesthetics.

The trio particularly press on the notion of the work as a satire, and what teeth it may have, or if it intends to bite. The people it seems to lampoon seem to have already seen their day come and gone – or have they? Is it a takedown of the glorification of the aristocracy, or a dress-up game cavorting to the fictional echoes of an era receding from living memory?

Discussion proceeds concerning Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster as an exemplar of the aristocrats as they remain; Parliament’s recent vote to abolish hereditary peerage in the House of Lords and whether it means what it says it means; and which generation’s slang words related to manual self-pleasure (a frequent subject of Fackam Hall’s off-color gags) are relatively more or less obscene to say on a podcast.

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Further Reading

• Watch Fackham Hall on HBO Max
• Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster, on Wikipedia
• My Blackberry is Not Working, by the Dawson Bros., on the BBC YouTube Channel
• Knowsley Hall: A Historic Jewel in Merseyside, from Heritage Explore (which played the eponymous Fackam Hall in the movie)
• Lee Boardman Loved being Karl, landlord of The Dog & Drake in Fackham Hall, on Instagram

Jordan Stokes and Pete Fenzel slam the revolving door on the life and works of Chuck Norris, the six-time world karate champion who became a legend, again, for completely different things. They track his trademark emotional self-possession back from his troubled childhood, through his rise as a karate master, expressed in the code of ethics of his martial art, Chun Kuk Do, and into his oeuvre of roundhouse-kick-related spectacles and tall tales.

Jordan and Pete rewatch and break down two of his films: Good Guys Wear Black, his first starring role from 1978, and Sidekicks, his rare self-referential meta-text, from 1992. They also map his other works, from modern frontier heroic tales like Lone Wolf McQuaid and Walker Texas Ranger to battles of might against prejudicial violence, like Delta Force and Top Dog, where he teams up with a sheepdog to fight Neo-Nazis.

Through the discussion, a central question emerges: if Chuck Norris’s artistic raison d’être is to portray a simple, straightforward moral and physical unity of thought, intention, preparation, and action in the context of morally fraught situations that fail to yield to it, does he make the case more for reconciling his methods to the world, or expressing a poetry of their irreconcilability?

In the struggle of the unstoppable force versus the immoveable object, which breaks first? It’s a trick question: they’re both Chuck Norris.

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Further Reading

• Chun Kuk Do and the Chuck Norris System Code of Honor, on Kung Fu For All
• 102 Chuck Norris Jokes to Celebrate the Ultimate Badass, on Men’s Health
• Lone Wolf McQuade, as of this recording, free on YouTube Movies and TV
• Chuck Norris describes his classic fight with Bruce Lee on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, from Conan O’Brien’s YouTube Channel
• Top Dog, as of this recording, also free on YouTube Movies and TV
• The theatrical release poster for Top Dog, on Wikipedia

Peter Fenzel welcomes Matt Wrather back to the podcast, and the two (with their two hands) overthink all aspects of coming back, whether to a childhood home, a beloved, classic film re-released in theaters, or the weekly rhythm of… a podcast. They contend with their internalized representations of the other as they wonder shared memories shape us, and how memories that shape us are shared. Organized labor is actually the key to it all.

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Further Reading

• “Internal Objects” (The Melanie Klein Trust)
• Romulan Warbird (Memory Alpha)
• Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood
• From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (Wikipedia)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (IMDb)
• David Warner (IMDb)

When Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee, and Peter Fenzel planned this podcast, the intention was to visit a variety of topics related to winter. But once Matt started talking about the BookTok sensation Ice Planet Barbarians, it was clear that there wasn’t going to be time for anything else. This sci-fi romance novel, self-published by Ruby Dixon in 2015, was the beginning of a 21 book series that tells the story of a group of human women who are abducted from Earth and marooned on a desolate world (referred to in the book, to Mark’s amusement, as “Not-Hoth”). Luckily they are saved by hunky aliens who are skilled hunters and VERY generous lovers. They aren’t “barbarians” in the sense that they lack manners, but they do have a sort of rough and tumble Conan aesthetic that lends itself well to fan art.

Barbarians unites two powerful strands of escapism: first, wouldn’t it be great to escape from the crushing grip of late stage capitalism, even if it means replacing your 9-5 with a struggle of survival against the elements on a hostile planet. Secondly, wouldn’t it be nice if love and family was a matter of fate and biology, out of your hands entirely. The blue-skinned alien barbarians (and eventually the human women) have a symbiote implanted inside them that keeps them alive in the hostile environment but ALSO picks a life mate for them, giving them an instant irresistible lust for a single partner. (Speaking of lust, Matt takes mild offense to the aliens being upgrades over human men, in anatomical terms that he is too modest to specify but let’s just say there is vibration.)

Although the overthinkers are not the target demographic here, they get the appeal. There is a reason “isekai” is such a hot genre now. Modern life feels fraught and only getting more precarious. Young people are increasingly not dreaming of a better life here on earth but rather a blank slate on another world entirely (and maybe a hunky barbarian to keep you warm at night).

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Further Reading

• Ice Planet Barbarians – Wikipedia
• Isekai – Wikipedia

Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee, and Peter Fenzel power slide their way into a Child’s Garden of Video Games. Partial adoption of Mario Kart World has rattled but not shattered more than a decade of global Kart unity. A toddlers become little kids, assisted gaming experiences give way to assisted ones. As little kids grow into big kids, glorified Minecraft machines rediscover that they are gaming consoles that can explore other genres.

Matt, Mark and Pete recount their decades with Mario Kart, culminating in introducing the game to their children. They look back bemused on the history of printed and online strategy guides. They reflect on how their racers of choice have changed through their lives, what they have learned about gaming with 3 year olds, and how even kids who love Sonic still so often gravitate to Mario.

They also expand from the now-orthodox bananas and bob-ombs to describe newer shared gaming experiences with children, such as Great Wolf Lodge’s immersive live-action adventure MagiQuest with the little ones or the Japanese walking simulator Exit 8, for those a little older and more prepared for non-turtle-shell-related psychological horror.

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Further Reading

• The Unofficial Guide to Mario Kart, from Topix Media Lab, on the Scholastic Parents’ Store
• An Unofficial Guided Journal for Fans of KPop Demon Hunters, from Topix Media Lab, on Media Lab Books
• Mercedes-Benz x Mario Kart 8, on the Super Mario Wiki
• Pushing Buttons: Finally, I’ve found a game I can actually enjoy playing with my child, by Keza McDonald on The Guardian
• MagiQuest at Great Wolf Lodge
• TIFF 2025: ‘Exit 8’ Is Liminal Videogame Horror at its Best

Matt Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Jordan Stokes slip through a crack in reality and wind up in the Backrooms, which started out as a posting on 4Chan about “liminal spaces.” In 2022 a 16-year-old Youtuber with a freakish mastery of computer graphics produced a found footage video bringing the photo to life. And on the day the hosts recorded this podcast, indie movie studio du jour A24 debuted the first teaser for their feature-length adaptation.

This won’t be the first internet meme to get a movie; that distinction belongs to Slenderman from 2018. But the twist here is that the director is none other than that teenaged Youtuber, Kane Parsons, now given 15 million dollars to play with.

The hosts put on their screenwriting hats to wonder how you craft a narrative out of something that gets its power from its irrationality. The Backrooms fandom over the past five years has been divided into people (like Parsons) who feel that the offputting weirdness of the concept is what makes it powerful, and the people who imagine the Backrooms as a place that can be divided into levels, mapped, outsmarted, and ultimately conquered. Come to think of it, a lot of horror movies are balancing acts between something bizarre (a haunted videotape, for instance) and an explanation for where it came from and how to beat it (the life story of Samara Morgan). Audiences need SOME answers. But answer too many questions and the scary thing might not be quite as scary anymore.

Finally, we consider what made the Backrooms such a viral idea and potentially a box office hit. Perhaps serial killers and monsters are the threats of a previous generation. What’s scary to us today is the idea that our whole world might unravel, the rug pulled out from under us and replaced with yellow office carpeting. What’s scary is the idea that things might stop making sense for no clear reason, and we might not be able to find our way back.

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Further Reading

• Slender Man Is Exactly the Wrong Kind of Bad – Paste Magazine
• The Backrooms Wiki
• A24 Horror Movie ‘Backrooms,’ Adapting Kane Parsons’ YouTube Series, Gets Ominous First Trailer – The Hollywood Reporter
• HobbyTown USA Oshkosh interior / The Original Backrooms Photo – Wikimedia Commons
• Know Your Other World: Subgenres of Isekai – Medium
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime – Crunchyroll
• Can’t Take a Joke? That’s Just Poe’s Law, 2017’s Most Important Internet Phenomenon – WIRED
• The terrifying internet urban legend that inspired Severance – Dexerto
• People Still Live Here (Software) – Kane Pixels Backrooms Fandom Wiki

Mark Lee, Jordan Stokes, and Peter Fenzel answer the anthem, energized by John Tesh’s live performance of “Roundball Rock” on the court at the NBA All-Star Game. They map the history of the track, from Tesh’s early days touring with Yanni, through his answering machine revelation of a song that would change the world, past the heyday of the NBA on NBC, through the valley toward the Dave Tesh SNL sketch, and back to the modern, nostalgic day.

They expand this consideration to sports jingles, sports anthems, and different musics associated with competition around the TV dial and the world. From what we know about Ancient Greece, to what we think we know about Ancient Rome (mostly due to movies), to the 19th century construction of bullfighting tradition, to the growth of rugby chants out of the traditions of the Maori and Zulu, to Hockey Night in Canada, the Wide World of Sports, and the FOX robot, the Overthinkers discuss who the music is by, who the music is for, and what it all has to do with, as Roland Barthes might put it, contest and spectacle.

ERROR WARNING: With a heavy heart, we must relay one stain of shame that perhaps no atonement might wash away: in this episode, Stokes briefly confuses Greek composer and keyboardist Yanni with the Romanian Gheorghe Zamfir, duly honored “Master of the Pan Flute.” In penance, until further notice Stokes will flagellate himself with a scented candle whilst laying down vocals for an adult contemporary electro-pop remix of Gregorian chant.

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Further Reading

• Roundball Rock Returns: John Tesh 2026 All-Star Performance from John Tesh on YouTube
  
• NBA ON NBC INTRO – 1993 NBA FINALS Bulls @ Suns GAME 1, from Michael Jordan Sportsvision on YouTube
  
• Roundball Rock – SNL, from Saturday Night Live on YouTube
  
• The Untold Story of Roundball Rock, NBA’s Iconic Theme, from John Tesh on YouTube
  
• Yanni – “Santorini”…Live At The Acropolis, 25th Anniversary!…1080p Digitally Remastered & Restored from Yanni on YouTube
  
• Barthes, Roland. “The World of Wrestling.” Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972, from MIT course readings
  
• How ‘Rugrats’ composer Mark Motherbaugh creates scores, from Pitchfork on YouTube
  
• The Music of Ben Hur, from Loki1982axala, on YouTube
  
• This Music Brings Me Back to My Days in Sunny Spain and Running with the Bulls, by Kevin Gordin, from WRTI, Your Classical and Jazz Source
  
• Haka and Aotearoa/New Zealand Rugby, a case study created by Kianna Mahony, MDiv ’25, under the editorial direction of Anna Mudd, RPL Program Specialist, from Harvard and Divinity School: Religion and Public Life
  
• Gatorade Love Hurts & Michael Jordan, from Rebecca Kordecki on YouTube
  
• And some of our favorite sports themes:
  • The NFL on FOX
  • American Gladiators Theme Song
  • MLB on ESPN Theme Song
  • Old Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song
  • ABC’s Wide World of Sports (1980)
  • Spanning the World with Len Berman
  • Ingemar Johansen vs. Floyd Paterson (1960)
  • Caccia: Tosto che l’alba by Gherardello da Firenze
  • Heavy Action
  • NHL on ESPN

Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink the orthogonal cultural spectacles of the 2026 Super Bowl, considering the halftime show headlined by Bad Bunny and the perennial cultural battlefield of the commercials, this year weaving narratives of authenticity amidst a sea of grifting. The halftime show is approached first through its stagecraft and camera work which create an transporting, immersive environment for TV audiences (though probably not for stadium-goes). The presence of Gaga is debated.

And what does it all tell us about America in 2026? Maybe it’s that “in a world where nostalgia is commodified, even a minion can become a cultural icon.”

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Further Reading

• List of Super Bowl Halftime Shows (Wikipedia)
• Episode 22: DIY Naked News

Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, Mark Lee’s slide guitar, Jordan Stokes, and Matt Wrather use the power of music to channel the ancestors, bridge the gap between the living and the dead, and also discuss the 2025 Ryan Coogler film Sinners. It’s quite possibly a masterpiece; at the least, it’s certainly the best movie musical about vampires set in the Mississippi Delta that’s ever been made.

The panelists sink their teeth into the tradition of blues music in the rural south; what it means for different cultures to appropriate music; vampire lore across the centuries; and what exactly the vampires in this movie symbolize. Are they just racist villains, or is something else more complex going on here? And what does it mean that the vampires’ music absolutely slaps?

No souls were sold to the devil at the crossroads in the making of this podcast.

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Further Reading

• Watch Sinners on HBO Max
• Listen to the Sinners soundtrack on Spotify
• Crossroads (1986), starring Ralph Maccio
• Crossroads (2002), starring Britney Spears
• Saoirse Ronan and Jimmy Sing “Fairytale of New York”

Pete Fenzel and Matt Wrather convene cross-country, with snow piled in the East and sun set in the West, to clear their bottleneck of constrained podcast topics. In this storied two-hander, they dissect the perception and reality of bodies of work that strain our ability to perceive and accomplish.

The two share their subjective limits on the feet of snow that had just fallen, from the individual snow shoveler fighting a private war with the sky, to the kaleidoscopic social media snow spectator bombarded by accounts and moments from a hundred cold days while lounging in temperate comfort. These swarming pinholes alluding to some greater image beyond a veil, recall instagram stories about Taylor Swift concerts or the current state of public truth.

They further consider two masterpieces of slow and steady work done faster than seemed possible: Alex Honnold’s methodical ropeless climb of the skyscraper Taipei 101, and the Eliyahu Goldratt novel The Goal, an 80s classic about the Socratic method, narrative reinvention, communication in marriage, art’s relationship with truth, and very detailed, specific instructions on how to successfully implement lean manufacturing techniques in late 20th century bearing assembly manufacturing plants, which at this moment has a 50/50 shot of being on the waiting list at your public library.

The work continues, as we consider not how to optimize our own local maxima, but to maximize throughput – of mind, body, and soul. By which we mean duty calls on people especially in positions of authority to accept and enforce accountability for our duty to each other as humans, and also the New York Times rebooted Scrabble.

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Further Reading

• Three Hundred Sixty Thousand, Seven Hundred and Twenty Eight, at the Time of This Writing, Stock Images of Snow Storms on Getty Images.
• Which Snow Removal Tool is Best? Here’s A Comparison Between Methods, by Catherine Messier, USA TODAY NETWORK – New England, from The Providence Journal
• How To Play ‘Crossplay,’ The New NYT Game That’s Officially Out Now: The 2-player Word Game Has Its Own App, and It’s Already Making Waves, by Kelsey Pelzer, Lifestyle Director, Parade Magazine
• So What Did We Think of ‘Skyscraper Live?’ by Frederick Deler, Outside Magazine, January 27, 2026
• The Goal (1984), by Eliyahu Goldratt, in The 25 Most Influential Business Management Books, TIME Magazine, August 09, 2011