CinemaPsych Podcast

Join Alex and guest hosts Dr. Jim Davies and Hollywood composer Joe Kraemer as they discuss the powerful music of composer John Williams' immaculate score of Star Wars (1977) and its subsequent film franchise. In 2015, the two guests hosts wrote a chapter — after decades of friendship and a shared love of nerd culture and music — on the psychology of the music from the famous sci-fi/fantasy film from George Lucas. The trio chat about how the music makes the viewer feel and how Williams uses the concept of leitmotifs to signal how characters interact and why certain sounds within music theory are associated with deeply subconscious processing. For the listener of the episode, we have s special treat of the music underscoring their chat, with a little bit of Joe's riffing and ad-libbing with his piano!

To read the chapter in our discussion, from the unauthorized book Star Wars Psychology: The Dark Side of the Mind (Volume 2), head here: The Symphony of Psychology: The Music of Star Wars

Find all of Jim's work: jimdavies.org

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by half.cool ("Gemini"). Used under license.

Episode Transcription

Go to this link to read a transcript generated by Whisper AI Large V3 Model. Disclaimer: It is not edited and may contain errors!

Join Alex as he discusses wonderfully brilliant biopic of John Forbes Nash, Jr. in A Beautiful Mind (2001). The movie focuses on John Nash's struggle with finding an original idea to make his mark while also battling schizophrenia and the paranoid delusions and hallucinations it brought. The episode takes a an accuracy approach, since we are talking about an actual historical figure. What was true about Joh Nash's experience with the psychological disorder and how did director Ron Howard portray that for the audience in the film?

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by half.cool ("Gemini"). Used under license.
3. Film reel sound effect by bone666138. Used under license CC BY 3.0.
4. Additional music: "Et Voila". Used under license.

Episode Transcription

Go to this link to read a transcript generated by Whisper AI Large V3 Model. Disclaimer: It is not edited and may contain errors!

Join Alex and returning guest host Jason Spiegelman as they discuss another one of Quentin Tarantino's classic, dare we say, most popular film, Pulp Fiction (1994). Much like their last episode, they spend most of the time just chatting about their favorite scenes and lines from the classic gangster-like film that weaves in and around different converging storylines. Live from their hotel room at the 2023 AP Psych Reading, they celebrate the podcast's fourth anniversary. chatting about morality, religion, and nihilism! The episode IS a TASTY burger!

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by half.cool ("Gemini"). Used under license.
3. Film reel sound effect by bone666138. Used under license CC BY 3.0.
4. Additional music: "Et Voila". Used under license.

Episode Transcription

Go to this link to read a transcript generated by Whisper AI Large V3 Model. Disclaimer: It is not edited and may contain errors!

Join Alex and guest host Sophie Halliday as they chat about the historical and psychological impact of Stanley Milgram's famous experiments on obedience and social influence in Michael Almereyda's Experimenter (2015), the other historical psychology movie that came out that year. This biopic stars Peter Sarsgaard as the titular character, with Winona Ryder, Jim Gaffigan, and several other star appearances as participants in the obedience studies. This witty drama-comedy takes the audience into the creation and data collection of the shock studies, but also other social influence experiments Milgram conducted over his 30ish year career. There are so many fourth wall breaks, you feel like Milgram is talking directly to the audience, to get his side of the story that followed him throughout his career. Would you shock someone because the experiment — AND SCIENCE! — demanded it?

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by half.cool ("Gemini"). Used under license.
3. Film reel sound effect by bone666138. Used under license CC BY 3.0.
4. Additional music: "Et Voila". Used under license.

Episode Transcription

Go to this link to read a transcript generated by Whisper AI Large V3 Model. Disclaimer: It is not edited and may contain errors!

Join Alex and guest host Dr. Sheila Thomas as they chat about the connection and the eventual schism of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud in David Cronenberg's psychological thriller (?) A Dangerous Method, based on the book A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, and the stage play The Talking Cure. The film stars Michael Fassbender as Jung and Viggo Mortensen as Freud, with Kiera Knightley as Sabina Spielrein. Spielrein enters Jung's life as a woman with hysteria (not a real disorder), but that turns into an affair with Jung, as he grapples with expanding psychoanalysis into something bigger than what Freud says he wants (lol, to be "empirical" and a "science!"). So strap in (is that a penis joke?) and grab your biggest (another one?) unexplained dream as we chat about these titans of psychological history!

Email Sheila for tutoring or other psych chats: sheilathomas7905@aol.com

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by half.cool ("Gemini"). Used under license.
3. Film reel sound effect by bone666138. Used under license CC BY 3.0.
4. Additional music: "Et Voila". Used under license.

Episode Transcription

Go to this link to read a transcript generated by Whisper AI Large V3 Model. Disclaimer: It is not edited and may contain errors!

Join Alex and returning guest host Dr. Wind Goodfriend in a discussion of the psychological concepts in Steven Spielberg's critical hit drama The Color Purple (1985), which stars a breakout performer Whoopi Goldberg, amazing Oprah Winfrey, and the immaculate Danny Glover (albeit a terrible character)! The main topic on the agenda: intersectionality, and what it meant for Black folks in Jim Crow rural south, but also Black women and the bonds they make and break. It's a window into a challenging life, where women were treated as pawns and subhuman. It's based on the book by Alice Walker, and there's a lot of psych found within. Join us!

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by half.cool ("Gemini"). Used under license.
3. Film reel sound effect by bone666138. Used under license CC BY 3.0.
4. Additional music: "Et Voila". Used under license.

Episode Transcription

Go to this link to read a transcript generated by Whisper AI Large V3 Model. Disclaimer: It is not edited and may contain errors!

Join Alex and guest host Dr. Chris Miller as they discuss the wild and crazy Richard Linklater film Dazed and Confused (1993), a movie that came out in the 90s, but set in the mid-1970s. The film follows teens, such as Jason London, Anthony Rapp, Adam Goldberg, Parker Posey, Joey Lauren Adams, and Ben Affleck, as they end the school year with epic hazing for those matriculating students and a wild party in the forest. There's a lot of adolescent and young adult drama, as well as some solid social psychological concepts found in this film. So, have a listen, and as breakout performance star Matthew McConaughey said, "it'd be a lot cooler if you did!"

Catch Chris on Twitter: @psychisnonlinear
Check out Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-miller-2b220346/

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by half.cool ("Gemini"). Used under license.
3. Film reel sound effect by bone666138. Used under license CC BY 3.0.
4. Additional music: "Et Voila". Used under license.

Episode Transcription

Go to this link to read a transcript generated by Whisper AI Large V3 Model. Disclaimer: It is not edited and may contain errors!

Join Alex as he discusses One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), a tour de force from Milos Forman, Jack Nicholson, and Louise Fletcher! The film follows Randall McMurphy, an inmate at a work camp in Oregon who successfully (?) tricks them into thinking he's insane and so he gets transferred to the Oregon State Hospital, a psychiatric facility. This episode explores the state of treatment in the early 1960s in America and elsewhere in the Western world, as well as the Dark Triad set of personality traits — the hallmark of psychopathy — in the character of McMurphy himself. Did the system fail McMurphy or did McMurphy fail in the system?

Check out the following account Alex references in the beginning of the episode (CW: discussion of suicide): https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/looking-back-journal-mental-hospital-user-1960s

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Head to this Paypal link to contribute directly to this podcast and keep the lights on! Also, you might check out our MERCH STORE for some great merchandise, like tees and sweaters, with the pod logo!

Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by Sro ("Self-Driving"). Used under license CC BY-SA 4.0.
3. "Et Voila" used under license.

Episode Transcription

Go to this link to read a transcript generated by Whisper AI Large V3 Model. Disclaimer: It is not edited and may contain errors!

Join Alex and guest host Dr. Jessica Hartnett as they discuss the wonderful game of baseball and the even more wonderful subject of statistics in the film Moneyball (2011), a movie adapted from a book based on another book about all the stats in baseball! And as baseball fans AND teachers of stats, imagine the gushing and the excitement about two amazing topics all rolled into one! Follow as they discuss the wonderful portrayals by Brad Pitt as real-life baseball general manager Billy Beane and Jonah Hill as the fake stats guru Peter Brand in the real-life transformation of the game of intuition into a game of stats! Don't worry, they sprinkle in some Industrial-Organizational psychology concepts in there as well!

Catch Jess on Twitter: @NotAwful or on BlueSky: Jess Hartnett
Jess's amazing Teaching Stats blog: Not Awful and Boring Ideas for Teaching Statistics

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by Sro ("Self-Driving"). Used under license CC BY-SA 4.0.
3. "Et Voila" used under license.

Episode Transcription

Go to this link to read a transcript generated by Whisper AI Large V3 Model. Disclaimer: It is not edited and may contain errors!

Join Alex and guest host Nicholas Baldwin as they discuss the wild antics of two clerks in Kevin Smith's cult class Clerks (1994). Follow Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randall (Kevin Anderson) as they navigate a day of true terribleness at a strip mall with the Quik Stop and the movie store. Oh, and let's not forget Jay and Silent Bob! The psych concepts are numerous in the world of Industrial-Organizational Psych and Nic is here to explain how even a clerk of a store are worthy of a closer IO look. Oh, and there's plenty of "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" throughout the chat!

Catch Nic on Twitter: @NicLuvsMovies
Have a listen to Nic and his wife Dani on their movies and relationships podcast, "In Love, With Movies"

Please leave your feedback on this post, the main site (cinemapsychpod.swanpsych.com) or on Facebook (@CinPsyPod). We'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to check out our Paypal link to contribute to this podcast and keep the lights on! Don't forget to check out our MERCH STORE for some great merch with our logo!

Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by Sro ("Self-Driving"). Used under license CC BY-SA 4.0.
3. "Et Voila" used under license.

Episode Transcription

Go to this link to read a transcript generated by Whisper AI Large V3 Model. Disclaimer: It is not edited and may contain errors!