Free Daily Podcast Summary
The Kulturecast: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Weirding Way Media
Movies don't happen in a vacuum — they shape the culture, and the culture shapes them right back. The Kulturecast lives in that feedback loop. Each week, host Chris Stachiw — the Doctor of Podcasting — sits down with a rotating table of guest co-hosts to dig into a film, a filmmaker, or a corner of pop culture and trace how it moved the needle, and how the world moved it in return. Less "was it good," more "what did it do — and why does it still matter?" Expect deep dives, long conversations, sharp takes, and the occasional tangent worth taking. It's a show for people who love arguing about movies almost as much as watching them.
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- 2 days ago1h 4m
Required Viewing 03: Barry Lyndon
Is it even a movie? That's the question Barry Lyndon has provoked since 1975 — three hours of scenes so composed they look less like cinema than oil paintings that happen to breathe. This week on Required Viewing, Dr. David D. Perlmutter — "the Prof" — drags Stanley Kubrick's most beautiful, most divisive film to the table: the one even Kubrick devotees can't agree is a film at all.We get into the candlelight Kubrick captured with lenses built for NASA, a production that practically rebuilt a filmmaking industry to exist in 1975, and a static, painterly style that would ripple forward into The Favourite. We wrestle with Ryan O'Neal's passive, buffeted Barry, the narrator who condemns him before he can charm us, and a film so often called "beautiful but empty" — asking whether the emptiness is the whole point. Class as a cage, a scoundrel with no moral agency, and a technical achievement so singular it's a genre of one that simply couldn't be made today.Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, take it apart from every angle. New episodes every Thursday.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.———The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.New episodes weekly.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast
- 4 days ago2h 25m
"Man was meant to eat meat. We, all of us, have a little bit caveman in us."
If you missed last week's Rob Zombie goes Haddonfield edition of the show, this week should make as little sense to you as someone watching this movie without having seent the first one. On this episode of the Kulturecast, Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins the show to continue talking about Rob Zombie's foray into mainstream horror along with discussions about so much more.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.———The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.New episodes weekly.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast
- 1 weeks ago1h 24m
Required Viewing 02: Waterworld
It was the most expensive movie ever made, the punchline of a thousand headlines, and a flop so infamous it got its own nickname. This week on Required Viewing, we bail out Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costner's Waterworld (1995) and study it from every angle — separating the film that's actually on screen from the runaway-budget legend that swallowed it whole.We get into Mad Max on the open ocean, the world-building that still holds up, Dennis Hopper chewing more scenery than the Smokers could ever burn, the environmental anxieties it was early to, and why a movie everyone "knows" was a disaster has quietly floated toward cult reappraisal. Was it the trainwreck history says, or did we all just enjoy watching it sink? Let's find dry land.Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, navigate this one.New episodes every Thursday.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.———The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.New episodes weekly.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast
- 1 weeks ago2h 32m
"Behind these eyes one finds only blackness, the absence of light. These are the eyes of a psychopath."
The last thing the world needs in 2026 is yet another Halloween film but, to be fair, the last thing the world needed in 2007 was yet another Halloween film, especially one directed by Rob Zombie. Given that the film does in fact exist, Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins the Kulturecast for the first time to talk all about the finer points of reboots, Rob Zombie, and a whole lot more in this oversized part one of a two part series covering the Zombie reboot series.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.———The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.New episodes weekly.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast
- 3 weeks ago1h 19m
"God's not gonna let us die here."
From suburban horror to the back end of the Cretaceous, the American genre picture keeps finding new ways to burn down the cul-de-sac. The End of Oak Street, the latest from It Follows director David Robert Mitchell, is a studio tentpole carrying an arthouse thesis, offering Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as a marriage coming apart at the seams while something much older comes down the street. Along with a fleet of dinosaurs shot without an ounce of reverence, it takes to task suburban rot, willful ignorance, and the family unit under pressure, to largely successful effect.Mike White of The Projection Booth joins the show to talk David Robert Mitchell, dinosaur cinema, and so much more.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.———The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.New episodes weekly.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast
- 3 weeks ago1h 16m
Required Viewing 01: Sideways
Two guys, a week in wine country, and a whole lot of avoidance. This week on Required Viewing, we uncork Alexander Payne's Sideways (2004) and study it from every angle — why a shaggy road-trip comedy about a failed novelist and a fading actor became the defining midlife-male-sadness movie of its era, and what it's really pouring underneath the pinot.We get into Payne's gift for making you laugh at people you'd never want to be, Miles as a portrait of self-sabotage dressed up as good taste, wine as the film's central metaphor (yes, that merlot line), and how a small character comedy quietly reshaped an entire industry. Great movie, terrible role models — let's swirl it around.Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, Doctor of Podcasting, pour this one out.New episodes every Thursday.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.———The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.New episodes weekly.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast
- Aug 14, 202656 min
Required Viewing 0: Syllabus
Required Viewing is a brand new sub-feed within The Kulturecast main feed where Dr. David D. Perlmutter and The Kulturecast's Doctor of Podcasting Chris Stachiw talk all about filmic topics through the lenses of a different film, tv series, or pop culture topic each Thursday.On this Episode Zero: Syllabus, the good doctors sit down to discuss the thesis behind the show, what might cause something to meet the criteria of "required viewing", and what you might expect to hear in the coming episodes of "Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study".Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.
- Aug 14, 20261h 19m
"One time in the fourth grade, I messed around with a lab frog. I figure this is my punishment."
From Train to Busan to the far flung future with cloning and facism, Korean cinema spans the genre gamut. Mickey 17, the latest film from Parasite's Bong Joon Ho, is the latter as a look into the future with Robert Pattinson playing two roles as Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. Along with a cavalcade of character actors, it attempts to take to task facism, biotech abuse, and more to unsucessful effect.Texas Tech's Dr. David D. Perlmutter and K-Drama anthropologist Miranda join the show to talk Korean cinema and so much more.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.
About The Kulturecast
Movies don't happen in a vacuum — they shape the culture, and the culture shapes them right back. The Kulturecast lives in that feedback loop. Each week, host Chris Stachiw — the Doctor of Podcasting — sits down with a rotating table of guest co-hosts to dig into a film, a filmmaker, or a corner of pop culture and trace how it moved the needle, and how the world moved it in return. Less "was it good," more "what did it do — and why does it still matter?" Expect deep dives, long conversations, sharp takes, and the occasional tangent worth taking. It's a show for people who love arguing about movies almost as much as watching them.
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