Screens of the Stone Age

Tag: Sci-Fi

  • Episode 91: National Treasure (2004) with the History According to Hollywood Podcast

    National Treasure (2004) is lowkey an American history lesson disguised as a heist movie—or vice versa? Either way, there are no cavemen in it, so we have invited Kyle from the History According to Hollywood Podcast to help us Commonwealth citizens understand the American obsession with faded old documents, broken bells, and Benjamin Franklin. Listen…

  • Episode 90: Ancient Apocalypse: The Americas, Episode 6 (2024)

    Today we’re making a sacrifice to the gods of the algorithm and reviewing an episode of Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse: The Americas (2024). To help carry this burden, we’re joined by Dr. Andrew Kinkella, who helps us evaluate claims about the ancient Maya in this series’ sixth episode. How did ancient people learn to count?…

  • Episode 89: As Above, So Below (2014)

    Today we’re getting spooky with As Above, So Below (2014), the story of yet another unethical archaeologist who has no qualms about breaking into sites, vandalizing artifacts, and never documenting anything. Unlike most archaeological heroes, however, she is forced to atone for these sins by passing through the nine levels of Hell, à la Dante’s…

  • Episode 88: Tar (2020)

    It’s October so we’re reviewing scary movies! Tár (2022) is the story of a groundbreaking orchestra conductor who… wait, that doesn’t sound right… Oh, I see, we actually watched Tar (2020), the story of a greasy prehistoric demon who emerges from the La Brea tar pits to haunt a small computer repair store. Well, Josh…

  • Episode 87: 65 (2023)

    Today we’re reviewing the Adam Driver vehicle 65 (2023), a story about humans fighting dinosaurs, except the humans aren’t really humans and the dinosaurs aren’t really dinosaurs. We talk about Triassic archosaurs, shrink-wrapped dinosaurs, and “dinosauroids”, and try to figure out who this film was meant for. Win some SotSA Merch! Send your mistakes, inaccuracies,…

  • Episode 86: When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong (1971) w/ Greeced Lightning Podcast

    When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong (1971) is an Italian sex comedy in which cave women of two warring tribes stage a sex strike until their cave men make peace. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a stone-age adaptation of the Ancient Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes. It’s all Greek to us,…

  • Episode 85: Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) w/ Dr. Advait Jukar

    Dr. Advait Jukar, our first ever guest, returns for another crack at the Ice Age franchise. In The Meltdown (2006), we catch up with the world’s most famous computer-animated megafauna as they flee climate change, and a snake-oil salesman, and vultures, and Mesozoic monsters, and in the end it turns out the stakes were never…

  • Episode 84: Quest for Fire (1981) w/ Seth Chagi

    Today we’re joined by Seth Chagi of World of Paleoanthropology to review a stone age classic: Quest for Fire (1981) hits almost all the caveman movie tropes, but to be fair, it probably originated most of them. We talk about the origins of controlled use of fire, “conlangs”, and how this movie has become more…

  • Episode 83: Jurassic Park 3 (2001) w/ Dr. Andrew Kinkella

    Today we’re reviewing the third movie in the Jurassic Park franchise with extra special returning guest and actual star of the film: Dr. Andrew Kinkella! He takes us behind the scenes of his breakout role as “Lecture Attendee #231” and reveals why he gave up his film aspirations to pursue a much more practical career…

  • Episode 82: It’s About Time S01E01 (1966)

    Ross is away today but undergrad student Zach Hoorman is filling in to help us review the first episode of It’s About Time (1966), a sitcom from the creator of Gilligan’s Island about two astronauts who accidentally “break the time barrier” and find themselves stranded one million years in the past. There’s not much real…

  • Episode 81: Firebringer (2016)

    Firebringer (2016) is a musical play about the discovery of fire by a tribe of polyamourous, matriarchal ancient humans. They also invent stone tools, art, hunting—they pretty much hit all the classic caveman tropes, and even subvert some of them. The only problem is… it’s a musical. Win some SotSA Merch! Send your mistakes, inaccuracies,…

  • Episode 80: Evolution (2001)

    Evolution (2001) is a star-studded soft-disclosure propaganda film masquerading as a shampoo commercial intended to prepare us for extraterrestrial butt stuff. I think? I mean it doesn’t seem to know what evolution is. In this episode we discuss organic chemistry, asexual reproduction, and Lamarckism, and also firetrucks for some reason. Win some SotSA Merch! Send…

  • Episode 79: Adam and Eve Meet the Cannibals (1983)

    Adam and Eve (Bingo!) Meet the Cannibals (Bingo!) tells the story of two blond (Bingo!) early humans who are banished from their home (Bingo!) and go on a rambling journey (Bingo!) where they encounter dinosaurs (Bingo!) and several tribes of cave people. Of course, everyone will be familiar with the plot because it’s a loose…

  • Episode 78: Cavemen S01E01 Her Embarrassed of Caveman (2007)

    If you were watching American TV in 2004, then you remember the Geico caveman commercials. What you might not remember is that they spun off a sitcom: Cavemen (2007), starring Nick Kroll, was cancelled after only six episodes and is considered one of the worst TV series of all time. But how does it hold…

  • Episode 77: JRE #2136 Graham Hancock and Flint Dibble (2024)

    It finally happened! Archaeologist Flint Dibble faced-off against pseudoarchaeologist Graham Hancock on the Joe Rogan Experience, so we’ve invited Dr. Andrew Kinkella to help us break down this four-and-a-half-hour-long podcast episode! Was there an advanced civilization before the Younger Dryas? Find out once and for all in this episode! Listen to Dr. Andrew Kinkella on…

  • Episode 76: Evolution’s Child (1999)

    Today we’re reviewing Evolution’s Child (1999), a made-for-TV movie in which a woman is accidentally impregnated by sperm from an Ötzi-inspired ice mummy, and ultimately gives birth to a child with magical bronze age powers—and one fatal weakness. We talk ancient diseases, DNA contamination, and genetic memory, and Ross reassures us that this probably won’t…

  • Episode 75: Out of Darkness (2022)

    We rarely the get change to review a newly released caveman movie, so we’re really excited about Out of Darkness (2022), the story of Upper Palaeolithic modern humans venturing into Europe for the first time, and encountering a mysterious enemy. What could it be? Well if you’ve kept up with the field of palaeoanthropology over…

  • Episode 74: Star Trek: TNG S06E20 The Chase (1993)

    Today we’re travelling to the 24th century to discover humans’ earliest ancestors in The Chase, a 1993 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Captain Picard gets a chance to follow the road not taken and fulfill his dream of being an archaeologist. We talk pottery, ancient DNA, and linear progressive evolution. Win…

  • Episode 73: The Beast from the Beginning of Time (1965)

    The Beast from the Beginning of Time (1965) is a story we’ve seen many times: archaeologists find a caveman who wakes up and kills everyone. It doesn’t have the camp of Trog, or the star power of Horror Express, or the quotable lines of The Neanderthal Man, or the catchy surf-rock tunes of Eegah, or…

  • Episode 72: Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

    Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) tells the story of Hushpuppy, a young girl living with her daddy in the Louisiana bayou, adapting to a changing world: her father is dying, the climate is warming, and prehistoric beasts are returning from the ice to haunt her. Aurochs, the titular beasts, were real Pleistocene animals –…

  • Episode 71: Music Videos

    Today we’re diving into the music industry and reviewing seven stone age music videos: from Pearl Jam to Wu-Tang Clan, from folk to metal, musicians seem to love the ancient past. We explore the intersection of art and science, the way every generation projects their own ideals onto the past, and the disturbing amount of…

  • Episode 70: Master of the World (1983)

    We’re getting back to our roots with Master of the World (1983), an Italian film about modern humans and Neanderthals, and cave bears, and cannibalism, and fighting! And herons. And a plot? Well this is an artistic film, so if you didn’t get it then maybe you’re just not as evolved as we are. Win…

  • Episode 69: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

    It’s Episode 69, dude! So we watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), the classic time-travel movie starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter as two slackers collecting historical figures to help them pass their history final in order to save a future civilization founded on their band’s music. Imagine how weird that sentence would sound…

  • Bonus Episode: Il Primo Re – Greeced Lightning Podcast

    If you like Screens of the Stone Age, you’re gonna love Greeced Lightning, a podcast about Greek and Roman mythology and history in movies! Sara and Sam joined us for our review of Attila, and here we present the other half of that collaboration: Greeced Lightning is back! We’re kicking off Season 2 with a…