Episode 844: The Letting Go of Cool

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Once Matt Wrather heads off to parental leave, Overthinking It will be staffed entirely by parents. In the last podcast before this happens, this selfsame Impending Dad Matt, Peter Fenzel and Mark Lee each bring their own choice for “End of an Era” culture for discussion. Pete speaks on Ben Stiller playing a Gen Xer making his lasts grasps at youth, paired against the meteorically rising Greta Gerwig in Greenberg; Mark muses on the heady days of Hamilton in vivo; and Matt, in a grand parting stroke to alienate and confound, tells a personal story about a discussion he had 25 years ago about the first part in the Histoire des Treize (a.k.a. The Thirteen) section of La Comédie Humaine: “Ferragus, chef des Dévorants,” by Honoré de Balzac. It is his last joke that is not a dad joke.

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Further Reading

• Greenberg Star Greta Gerwig Steps from the Shadows of Mumblecore from The Guardian, June 4, 2010
• Why Generation Um is Keanu Reeves’ Worst Movie, from ScreenRant
• Overthinking It Podcast episode #628: An Extraordinarily Rich Meal, in which we discuss Hamilton on streaming at the height of That Championship Season
• You Great Unfinished Symphony: the History Behind Hamilton at the Massachusetts Historical Society
• The Thirteen, by Honoré de Balzac, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley and Ellen Marriage, from Project Gutenberg
• Mausoleo de Augusto, Piazza Augusto Imperatore, Rome, but who knows who that guy was anyway