Tag: The Bible
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Episode 99: Mistress of the Apes (1979)
Mistress of the Apes (1979) tells the harrowing tale of Susan, an anthropologist who lost her pregnancy and learned of her husband’s murder in Congo Kenya in the same week. But she remained strong, without showing any visible signs of emotion whatsoever, until she learned to love again, in the arms of a Homo habilis…
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Episode 98: Curious George (2006)
Curious George (2006) tells the tail of the beloved eponymous monkey (sic) and reimagines (and sanitizes) The Man in the Yellow Hat as an archaeologist. This movie sets up a thoughtful and nuanced take on archaeological ethics and neocolonialism, and then says “Fuck it, it belongs in museum after all.” But George is soooo cuuuute!…
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Episode 97: Silent Films Double Feature
Today we’re reviewing two films from a brutal, primitive time in humanity’s past, when both politics and romance were conducted through violence: the early 20th Century! His Prehistoric Past (1914) and Clubs are Trump (1917) follow suspiciously similar plots in which Silent Era stars Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Snub Pollard dream of a simpler…
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Episode 96: Adventures in Dinosaur City (1991)
Adventures in Dinosaur City (1991) answers the age-old question: what if Jim Henson’s Dinosaurs and Honey I Shrunk the Kids had a baby, but it was put up for adoption and raised by the Ninja Turtles and The Flintstones, until it ran away from home and turned to sex work to survive? Kim insisted she…
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Episode 95: Ross from Friends
Today we’re talking about Dr. Ross Geller, the best friend from NBC’s hit 1990s sitcom. Ross is probably the world’s best-known palaeontologist, except it’s not clear if he specializes in dinosaurs or Pleistocene mammals. And sometimes he seems to be doing palaeoanthropology… or geology. Anyway, we’re not on a break, so prepare to pivot and…
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Episode 94: La Brea S01E01 (2021)
Today we’re returning to L.A.’s famous tar pits for the pilot episode of La Brea (2021), the timey-wimey story of a family of Los Angelinos who fall into a sinkhole in Wilshire Boulevard and somehow end up in the Pleistocene. If you love ice age megafauna, this episode is for you! The show, maybe not…
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Episode 93: The Christmas Quest (2024)
Happy Holidays! To celebrate the season we’re reviewing The Christmas Quest (2024), a brand-new Hallmark movie starring Lacey Chabert as an archaeologist searching for the lost treasure of Iceland’s Yule Lads. Josh regales us with stories of his Icelandic/Canadian heritage, from prune cake to giant classist cats to the witch living in his grandmother’s attic.…
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Episode 92: One Million B.C. (1940)
Today we’re reviewing One Million B.C. (1940), a film from Hollywood’s Golden Era which is probably the common ancestor of all caveman movies. The 1966 remake with Raquel Welch is much more famous, but as it turns out it’s pretty faithful to the original, the main difference apparently being the blatant on-screen animal cruelty (consider…
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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…
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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?…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…