Everything we do is filtered through entertainment. If it’s not entertaining, there is a good chance that nobody is paying attention. So, to understand the world, you have to not only look at your screen but comprehend what is on it. Where does our entertainment come from? Why? How is it shaped by the world around us and how is it shaping that same world?
This is the focus of The Entertainment. Each week, Tom Knoblauch explores an element of our culture through conversations with creators and consumers of film, television, music, art, and more.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Everything we do is filtered through entertainment. If it’s not entertaining, there is a good chance that nobody is paying attention. So, to understand the world, you have to not only look at your screen but comprehend what is on it. Where does our entertainment come from? Why? How is it shaped by the world around us and how is it shaping that same world?
This is the focus of The Entertainment. Each week, Tom Knoblauch explores an element of our culture through conversations with creators and consumers of film, television, music, art, and more.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For a lot of people over the past decade, the nonstop campaigning and chaos of our political system has instilled a kind of constant dread about the future, compounded by looming environmental disaster and geopolitically uncertainty. And sometimes it feels like all we can do is accept that the train is slowly crashing. But what if we could do something about it? In 2023, Kurt Andersen teamed up with Larry Doyle and Steven Soderbergh to create Command Z, a sci-fi comedy web series about a group of time-travelers from the ruined world of the future who are given the opportunity to send their minds back to 2023 to right the ship. Their perhaps impossible mission? Convince the movers and shakers currently ruining everything to become better people. The show features a cast of very funny people including Michael Cera, Roy Wood Jr, Chloe Radcliffe, JJ Maley, and Liev Schrieber and, beyond its humor, is full of insights about what exactly is going wrong with a society that seemingly can fix itself but first has to want to do so.
This conversation originally aired last year on Riverside Chats. We’ve repurposed it for today’s episode because all of the show’s anxieties are just as relevant today as they were a year ago. You can find all of Command Z’s episodes here. Keep the conversation going. Follow The Entertainment on Facebook, Instagram, or Substack and let us know what you think. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and we’d love it if you gave us a review. The Entertainment is a production of KIOS 91.5 FM Omaha Public Radio. It is produced and edited by Courtney Bierman. Our artwork was created by Topher Booth.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
