November 10, 2019
EP. 317 — 11 Stupid Pop Culture Tropes You Always See About Women
Anything can happen in a fictional world. Stories take us to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, or the fantasy-est realms ever conceived, or the grittiest most realistic representations of everyday life. But if all that is true, why do writers and creators lean on the same tropes over and over again? And why are the weakest tropes in a piece of fiction often strange takes on women’s bodies, minds, and lives?
On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt sits down with comedy writer Hallie Cantor and comedian/actor/writer Tiff Stevenson for a look at fascinatingly dumb pop culture tropes about women. From movies to TV shows to video games, they’ll reveal common entertainment myths from “water breaks like a flood” to “women are the hardest thing to draw” to “your number of boobs indicates your morality.” They’ll also run through real-life casting calls with bizarre expectations about who exists in the world, look at how pop cultural sexism and real global sexism feed into each other, and mull how Listeners Like You can push all this in a better direction.
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/11-stupid-pop-culture-tropes-you-always-see-about-women/
Recent Episodes
January 26, 2020
Freedom sucks…and that is why we have to defend it. Because our democracy involves doing a lot of stuff that takes energy, takes time, and lacks that Michael Bay Quality that only a surprise missile launch can provide. So on this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt and special guest Jason Pargin (who writes for Cracked as David Wong) are exploring the ways being afraid of everything (an easy action) can stop us from being free. Discover the decades-long tradition of some Americans wanting to give up everything in exchange for not needing to think, the centuries-long tradition of people inciting fake panics, and the reasonable ways you can help change things for the better.
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/why-fear-based-democracies-arenE28099t-free-with-jason-pargin/
January 19, 2020
How’s your local shopping mall doing? Have you checked on it lately? Swing by sometime, because its department store might’ve turned into a call center or a hospital or a go-kart track. On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by the one and only Kai Ryssdal (Marketplace, Make Me Smart) for a look at surprising, strange, and shocking stories from all over the U.S. economy. Discover an international pig flu, a 26-word statement that built the modern Internet, and more amazing ways cash is ruling everything around you. By the way, if you’re an American listener, you spent the past few years funding an astonishingly huge bailout. Surprise! Listen for details!
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/5-parts-u.s.-economy-that-are-stranger-than-you-think
January 12, 2020
Movies, TV, gaming: three things that are theoretically a waste of time. Oh sure, they deliver value in the art sense, and comfort in the goofing-off sense. But what if they’re more valuable than that? What if consuming shows and playing video games (accidentally) turns people into real-life heroes? On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/writers Caitlin Gill and Alex Watt for a look at the surprising number of times that exact thing happened. They’ll explore stories of regular people who saved a life thanks to skills gained randomly from cartoons, sitcoms, ‘World Of Warcraft’, and more silly entertainment.
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/9-times-pop-culture-accidentally-taught-people-to-save-lives/