Matt Belinkie and Peter Fenzel gather to kick off summer movie season the only way they know how: by completely failing to talk about the movies they planned to discuss and instead spending over an hour unpacking the mythological architecture of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Along the way they ask the questions no one asked them to ask: Why doesn’t Rosalina just go find Peach? What are the stars even for? And why did Bowser let his son build a universe-destroying gun without so much as a stern talking-to?

The hosts argue that the Mario movies aren’t really psychological dramas but mythological ones, stories where Peach’s lost star-sister and Bowser’s tragic indulgent-dad arc operate less like character beats and more like foundational symbols of the civilization that takes its children to the movies. Bowser, it turns out, may be the antithesis of Mario and Donkey Kong’s distant fathers from the first film. He’s so desperate to be liked by Bowser Jr. that he’d let the fabric of reality unravel rather than enforce a bedtime. He doesn’t help his kid grow up, he reverts to his villainous archetype.

From there, the conversation pinballs into the broader question of how Hollywood adapts things that were never designed to make sense. The 1993 Super Mario Bros. film is held up as the cautionary tale — a movie agonizing over how to justify two plumbers stomping on the heads of mutant goombas (although to be fair, a live action Mario movie was always an uphill battle). The hosts triangulate between three adaptation philosophies (the Grounded, the Sonic Hybrid, and the Full Embrace) and wonder where the upcoming live-action Legend of Zelda will land given that its audience wants more lore, not less.

Finally, the conversation drifts — as these things do — into a long reverie about Saturday morning cartoons, the scarcity of media in the pre-streaming era, Turbo Teen’s Cronenbergian transformation sequence, and the surprising revelation that GoBots actually came first. Plus: a preview of Dune: Part Three and whether Dune Messiah’s deliberately unsatisfying anti-climax can survive the jump to a summer blockbuster.

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Further Reading

• Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore | Rotten Tomatoes
• Moana 2 was originally a Disney+ TV series
• Bowser Jr.
• Dry Bowser
• “Do the claws hurt when they come out?”
• Saturday Morning Cartoon Schedules Archive (Wikipedia)
• Turbo Teen Transformation Supercut
• “Phantom Pilot” | ALF: The Animated Series | FULL Episode: S1 Ep1
• GoBots predated Transformers

Pete Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matt Wrather 10x the company stock price by announcing a pivot to the lucrative lithium refinement services sub-industry, for which they have no expertise, equipment, or preparation, figuring the market will reward them anyway.

In a week dominated by the bubbly news of former environmentally conscious shoe company allbirds announcing its quixotic and lucrative “pivot to AI,” the Overthinkers discuss pivots major and minor, personal and cultural. To ground the discussion, they consider “The City,” a new-style video from a long-running YouTube Channel Historia Civilis, better known for specific narratives of narrower historical events. Is this a pivot? Is  ir more or less than one? With the memory of the History Channel not fully faded, is there something about histrotainment that lends itself especially to pivots?

Inevitably the gaze turns inward, to our own beloved show, its constancies and changes, and whether or if it ought to chase some greater or lesser change. For now, it is more of the same, which we all love in a world with one foot planted, spinning in circles.

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Further Reading

• “Sneaker Company Allbirds Plans to Pivot to A.I. Yes, A.I.” (NY Times)
• “Ens***ification” (Wikipedia)
• “The City.” (Historia Civilis)
• “The Battle of the Axona (57 B.C.E.)” (Historia Civilis
• What Happened to the History Channel? by darknite125 (Funk’s House of Geekery)
• Private Equity’s Quiet Takeover of YouTube Reshapes Online Media, by Ernes Berna Killic (Türkiye Today, Jul 24, 2025)

Pete Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matt Wrather woke up from a coma and started recording this podcast, not knowing who they were or how they got there. Thankfully they figured out in time to save the world from a mysterious interstellar organism, and along the way they became fast friends and learned a lot about themselves. That’s right, the podcast is back to its old form: tackling a movie that’s currently playing in theaters, because the Overthinkers managed to get out of their homes and see Project Hail Mary on the big screen!

Well, at least Pete and Mark did. Like Grace and Rocky in the movie, the duo manage to overcome their differences and accomplish the mission: in this case, unpacking the religious themes, pop culture references, and character arcs of Project Hail Mary. Matt did not see the movie but contributed a solemn rendition of the Hail Mary prayer in ecclesiastical Latin and otherwise served in the interlocutory role.

Be sure to join us on the Discord to discuss this great film, and to help plan a playlist for our karaoke party at the end of the world! Email podcast AT overthinkingit.com for an invitation.

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Further Reading

• “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles
• The Hail Mary Prayer
• “Karaoke at the End of the World” Spotify playlist

There are two kinds of people: those that follow the outline and those that depart a the earliest opportunity. Peter Fenzel and Matt Wrather are the second kind. They set off to do one episode, but within the first 10 seconds Matt mentions the famous handshake meme from Predator, and it’s a whole other thing. That thing includes a hypotactical discussion of parataxis, which is why the Mr. Incredible meme is different from the Galaxy Brain meme, and why the Leonardo DiCaprio at the 2026 Oscars meme is different from the Orson Welles in Citizen Kane meme.

Of course this gets to a general typology of all human beings (different from the one in the first sentence of this description). Quite apart from whatever our memetic and linguistic metaphors may tell us from our future selves, it comes down to this: Some of us are adders, and some of us are subtractors.

If you’re starting to purge old belongings, and you end up having a conversation with your past self, say “hi” for us. Let ’em know it’s going to be OK.

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Further Reading

• The Handshake (YouTube)
• Memes
  • Epic Handshake
  • Woman Yelling at a Cat
  • Distracted Boyfriend
  • People Who Know
  • Galaxy Brain
  • IQ Bell Curve
  • Orson Welles Clapping
• “What is Syntaxis” (Language & Humanities)
• “Parataxis, Hypotaxis and other fun ways to help your writing do what you want” (Books around the Table)
• “Why There Are So Many Leonardo DiCaprio Drinking In Movies Memes?” (Screenrant)
• “A change of typeface: Microsoft’s new default font has arrived” (Microsoft.design)

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