Deep Water is a British documentary about a boat race in the late 1960s so maybe you can understand why I thought this pick from commissioner Aaron might be a little dry. I expected a lot of coxswain this, and bosun that. Thankfully, it turned out to be nothing like I expected. Check out the documentary, then join us for a podcast about isolation and the delicate mechanism of the mind.
A big thank you to Ann Merin for commissioning this podcast on Chaos on the Bridge, William Shatner’s 2014 documentary that peeks behind the scenes of the first few years of Star Trek: The Next Generation with cast interviews describing tumultuous power dynamics both in and out of the writers room. Frankly, it’s a must-see movie for fans of TNG and now we’ve finally seen it. Give the podcast a listen to find out what we thought.
Jim and A.Ron give some brief thoughts on the brief episodes of Netflix’s new gonzo animated anthology, Love, Death, and Robots, before beginning deliberations on HBO’s new documentary, The Case Against Adnan Syed. We’ll be off on vacation all next week! See you when we return!
Netflix and Hulu had dueling documentaries on doomed Fyre music festival, Fyre, and Fyre Fraud respectively. With slightly different focuses, the documentaries broadly outline how founder Billy McFarland built several ponzi schemes on the idea of selling a fictionalized “baller” lifestyle to young, naive, rich people and took them for a ride. Built on the back of a few dozen paid influencers and a long list of impossible promises, Fyre was supposed to be the event of the decade. Instead, it barely avoiding being a genuine humanitarian disaster. We discuss influencing, the morality of excess, and engage in the kind of barely contained glee at seeing narcissists fall from grace that you’d expect in this discussion of all things Fyre.
Special thanks to Adele McDonough who commissioned a podcast on the 2014 documentary film “Cowspiracy”, available on Netflix and most other streaming services. Produced and directed by Kip Anderson, it alleges a vast conspiracy among big business, politicians, and even environmental special interests groups to bury the severe negative impact the consumption of meat has on our global climate and water supply. Jim and A.Ron check the facts and try to answer some tough moral and ethical questions as we debate the facts, figures, and philosophy of where individual rights and personal choices come into conflict with the greater good and our duties to posterity.