Podcast of the [arbitrary time period]: Star Wars Minute

Pol Treidum in a rather dapper hat

Yes, it is as nerdy as it sounds. Star Wars Minute is a podcast that talks about every Star Wars movie, one minute at a time — including the opening crawl and the closing credits. They release one episode every weekday, and are currently partway into Revenge of the Sith (having gone through the original trilogy and other prequels), which means they’ve put out more than 600 episodes so far. In each episode, they somehow manage to talk for about 30 minutes about one minute of the film, and do so without being boring or repetitive. The format works well enough that it sparked a host of similarly-themed podcasts, all of which are listed at Movies By Minutes.

There’s great chemistry between the regular hosts, Alex Robinson and Pete the Retailer, and each week they feature a guest. The conversation is usually light with lots of running jokes. Of course, you can’t watch a film one minute at a time without getting quite deep into the geeky weeds (such as a long discussion about Pol Treidum’s dress sense), but most of the time the minute that they are supposedly talking about acts as a springboard for a broader conversation, nerdy or otherwise.

For me this is the perfect podcast to fall asleep to: it’s funny but not intense enough to keep me awake, and the conversation is such that if I doze off for a few minutes I can easily catch up again. Plus, with the number of episodes they’ve done, you never need to worry about running out.

Nerdy Stuff

I’ve been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, nerd that I am. I’ve seen most episodes, but never stuck to it all the way through before. While I didn’t expect to hate it, I’ve been surprised just how much I’m enjoying the rewatch. It remains an incredibly well-written show. I went in expecting that some of the high school themes wouldn’t chime with me anymore, and to some extent that is true (after all I am a full decade older than the target audience). But, I do still find plenty of depth in the writing and themes. I find (surprisingly) that I kind of miss the semi-periodic structure of TV shows from that time compared to the long-form structure that most shows seem to have these days.

Alongside rewatching it, I have been listening through the back-catalogue of the amazing podcast Dusted, hosted by Alastair Stephens and Lani Diane Rich of StoryWonk. The podcast ended some months ago (and I believe the hosts are now divorced from each other, which makes for an odd feeling sometimes), but they made it through to somewhere in Season 6 so I’ve got a good amount left to get through. Both hosts are writers and teach writing courses, and their conversations about story structure and characterisation are always fascinating. They seem pretty knowledgeable about directing and camerawork as well, something I know nothing about that gives some extra insight.

Copying the Dusted style, I’ve been keeping a list of every Buffy episode in order of how good they are. This list is objective and inarguable.