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Cole brings us one of the great living short story writers, and we argue whether her stories are stories at all, until Jaclynn gets the last word.EPISODE SUMMARYCole makes the case for Lydia Davis, the MacArthur Fellow and Man Booker International Prize winner whose stories can run a single line. Robby read one and found it charming. Jaclynn has a Rothko theory for why she hasn't gotten Davis yet. We read a story aloud, hear Davis in interviews and readings, and fight about what the word "story" even means. You don't need to know her work first, and by the end Jaclynn has her answer.New To The Show?New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a month, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer. You're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.RSSA Long SummaryCole has spent fifteen years assuming everyone knows Lydia Davis, so the episode opens with a test: had Robby or Jaclynn heard of her before he started talking about her? For Jaclynn, the answer is only through Cole, who gave her a book of Davis's stories as a Christmas present and brings her up whenever the baby shoes story or Fleabag comes up. Cole walks us through why his assumption made sense. Davis received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 and the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, and she is admired by writers, translators and readers around the world. He also admits that every time he mentions her, he learns how few people have actually read her.From there, the conversation turns into how to approach art you don't get yet. Jaclynn offers her Rothko theory: she looked at a Rothko, thought she could paint a red square, then sat with it until she saw the complexity. Bonsai trees went the same way, from cute trees she grew up seeing at Kmart to something meditative once a man in Japan walked her through his collection without a shared language. Robby read the story Cole chose and found it charming, though he was more interested in why he was reading it than in the reading itself. Cole explains why he loves her: a story that holds a single moment, with just enough detail that every reader pictures a different hotel lounge. Along the way we hear Davis herself in interviews, including one with Tyler Cowen and one at a literary festival in Scandinavia, and reading two of her pieces aloud.The argument underneath all of it is whether these pieces count as stories. Cole finds the story in the narrator's realization. Someone brings back the plot versus story distinction from our Women Talking episode. Someone compares a Davis piece to bubble gum, a burst of flavor and then it's over. Jaclynn has barely read Davis but is in no way against her, and she keeps asking the question out loud. Stay for the last few minutes: she gets the last word, and it's the line that shows she gets it.WHAT WE DISCUSS00:27 - IS LYDIA DAVIS FAMOUS? DID JACLYNN LIE?Cole asks whether Robby and Jaclynn had heard of Lydia Davis before this episode. He explains why he assumed she was a household name in the literary world, citing her MacArthur Fellowship and her Man Booker International Prize, and Jaclynn admits the book he gave her is still unread.07:00 - JACLYNN'S BRILLIANT ROTHKO THEORYJaclynn explains why she thinks Davis is like Rothko: it looks simple until you spend time with it. She believes in Davis and says she just doesn't get her yet.08:42 - LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW WITH TYLER COWENA clip of Davis in conversation with Tyler Cowen, who introduces her as a short story writer, essayist and translator of Proust and Flaubert. She explains why she chose not to read secondary material before translating Proust.09:50 - ROBBY READS THE STORYRobby reads "Conversation in Hotel Lounge," a very short piece about two women overheard on a sofa.10:57 - JACLYNN LEARNS ABOUT BONSAI TREES.. IN JAPANJaclynn gives a second example of something she didn't understand at first: bonsai trees. She tells the story of living in Japan and being walked through a stranger's bonsai collection, with no shared language, and how that changed her mind.13:44 - LYDIA DAVIS, INTERVIEW TWOA short clip of Davis describing her novel, The End of the Story, which was built from fragments to mimic how a narrator remembers.14:18 - REINDEER ANTLERS AS ARTWe talk about how friends in art school changed one host's mind about contemporary art: anyone could make it, but the work is that they did, and that they can explain why.16:25 - ROBBY NEW YORKER RESPONSERRobby gives his honest read. He didn't hate it, found it charming, and thought it sounded like an anecdote from The New Yorker. We talk about how much work the reader does when a story gives you this little, and Cole explains the context he brought, including how Fleabag and the baby shoes story got him thinking about efficient writing.22:28 - JACLYNN READS THE STORYJaclynn reads "Conversation in Hotel Lounge" again, and the room finds new things in it. Cole loves that every reading can place the lounge, the sofa and the women differently, and calls the piece a great outline: enough detail to picture it, enough room to imagine the rest.26:51 - LYDIA DAVIS READS HER OWN WORK, "TWO SISTERS"We hear Davis read "Two Sisters," a longer piece, in her own voice. Then we talk about why a strong reaction, even dislike, is a gift to an artist.31:22 - PRETENTIOUS ALERT - SHIBBOLETHCole's theory is that knowing Davis works like a password, a shibboleth, among art students and literature readers. We explain the word, test it against Google Maps versus Apple Maps, and Cole lists the college towns where he has found fellow Davis readers. We also hear "Safe Love," a piece only a few lines long, and Cole says her stories are the shortest versions of salty dog tales.39:45 - LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW IN SCANDANAVIADavis describes her own work for a festival audience, from a novel with no chapters to stories that are a line or two long. She says she calls them all stories to make it easier.42:21 - WHERE LYDIA DAVIS GETS HER IDEAS FROMDavis says that if you wait for a good idea, you just keep doubting yourself, and that forcing it can bring up very strange and interesting material.44:17 - LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW ON IF HER STORIES ARE DOCUMENTARIESWas the hotel lounge conversation real? We disagree about whether the piece is documentary or invented, then hear Davis explain that once she decides to write about a moment, she distances it from herself and shapes it until it is finished and no longer personal.46:56 - WHAT IS ACTUALLY STORY?The big question. We bring back plot versus story from our Women Talking episode, try bubble gum and Three's Company as analogies, and argue about whether a small change in the narrator's understanding is enough. Jaclynn gets the final word on the title.CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS00:27.792 IS LYDIA DAVIS FAMOUS? DID JACLYNN LIE?07:00.667 JACLYNN'S BRILLIANT ROTHKO THEORY08:42.292 LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW WITH TYLER COWEN09:50.417 ROBBY READS THE STORY10:57.709 JACLYNN LEARNS ABOUT BONSAI TREES.. IN JAPAN13:44.834 LYDIA DAVIS, INTERVIEW TWO14:18.334 REINDEER ANTLERS AS ART16:25.751 ROBBY NEW YORKER RESPONSER22:28.542 JACLYNN READS THE STORY26:51.792 LYDIA DAVIS READS HER OWN WORK, "TWO SISTERS"31:22.375 PRETENTIOUS ALERT - SHIBBOLETH39:45.792 LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW IN SCANDANAVIA42:21.584 WHERE LYDIA DAVIS GETS HER IDEAS FROM44:17.709 LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW ON IF HER STORIES ARE DOCUMENTARIES46:56.167 WHAT IS ACTUALLY STORY?CREATIVESLydia Davis, Author and Translator As a translator, Davis is known for new English versions of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way (2003) and Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (2010). She has also translated Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, Michel Butor and Pierre Jean Jouve.AWARDSMacArthur FoundationMacArthur Fellowship (2003): WINMan Booker InternationalMan Booker International Prize (2013): WINPEN AmericaPEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story (2020): WINPEN/Hemingway Award, for Break It Down (1986): FINALISTOther prizes and fellowshipsLannan Literary Award for Fiction (1998): WINWhiting Award for Fiction (1988): WINAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters, Award of Merit Medal (2013): WINGuggenheim Fellowship: WINNational Book FoundationNational Book Award for Fiction, for Varieties of Disturbance (2007): FINALISTNational Book Critics CircleEssays One (2019): FINALISTHonorsChevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (1999)Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005)SOURCE MATERIALThe...

We went in bracing for a horror movie and got an art house director's monster epic, one we place in the DMZ in the 1990s, and we spend the episode working out how far our expectations were from what Na Hong-jin made.EPISODE SUMMARYHope (2026) is Na Hong-jin's first film since The Wailing in 2016, starring Hwang Jung-min, Alicia Vikander, and Michael Fassbender. On The Arc (thearc.fm), we talk about going in expecting a horror movie and finding a long, mostly-chase monster film that adds new movies near the end. Jaclynn calls it three movies stitched together, Robby disavows the horror label, and we land on the idea that our expectations were off, because Na Hong-jin comes from art house films.WHERE TO WATCHStreaming availability starts Tuesday 10/13! New To The Show?New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a month, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer. You're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.RSSA Long SummaryHope is Na Hong-jin's first film since The Wailing in 2016: a 156-minute South Korean film that premiered in competition at Cannes in May 2026 and opened in the US that September. It's reportedly the most expensive Korean film ever made, shot by Hong Kyung-pyo. A village police chief and his rookie deputy defend their town from a mysterious creature, and the creatures turn out to be aliens. From the director of The Chaser and The Yellow Sea, that premise caught us off guard. We showed up expecting horror, and Robby spends a good part of the episode disavowing that label, at one point in a full Southern accent, which detours us into British and Southern accents and some fun at Cole's scones.Most of our conversation is the three of us working out what the plot was. Jaclynn's take is the sharpest: it's long, mostly a chase, and introduces two new movies near the end, so it feels like three movies stitched together. Her metaphor for the film is a highlight, so we'll let you find it: it involves a three-year-old half-sibling, a crayon, and an art thesis you have to present as if the monsters were always the plan. From there we debate whether a mystery counts as a plot, whether the alien chasing the child is its mother or a servant, why the sun seems to sit at noon, and whether a cat a driver swerves to avoid was real. One of us felt for the alien during a shot of it in obvious pain. Jaclynn also tells us about living in Asia and visiting the DMZ.We also hear from Na Hong-jin, in translated Q&As (recorded in Los Angeles and Seoul). In the first, he describes a film that grew and grew, and talks about how Korea's small surface area shaped where this story could be set. A second clip, in the chapter "on the real story," comes later in the episode.The turn comes when we talk about who made it. Knowing Na Hong-jin's art house background made us reconsider what we'd watched, and it leads to a question we keep circling: what's the contract with a movie like this? In the end, we expected a horror movie and got an art house director's monster epic. You don't need to have seen Hope to follow along. Dad will explain linear.WHAT WE DISCUSS00:34 - THE MANY (OR FEW?) PLOT(S) OF "HOPE"Robby is asked to say what he thinks the plot of Hope is without bending to the will of Jaclynn, who sees three movies stitched together around one long chase. We go back and forth on whether a mystery without a clear hero's-journey structure still counts as a plot.08:36 - THE PLOT OF HOPE (FROM THE ALIENS' PERSPECTIVE)We try to untangle the alien backstory, including whether the alien chasing the child is its mother or a servant, and we don't fully agree. We compare the way the story spirals outward to a Sam Spade movie.10:20 - WHEN WERE EACH OF US IN OR OUTWe each name the moment we felt pulled into or pushed out of the film. One of us nearly walked out when the third movie began, and we talk about whether viewers should be warned that the film keeps restarting with new movies.11:13 - WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW GOING TO "HOPE (2026)"Some context before you go in: this is Na Hong-jin's first film in about ten years, it's reportedly the most expensive Korean film ever made, and we wonder whether he set out to make a blockbuster. We also marvel that the production built its sets on top of a real town.16:02 - THE #1 THING WE WANT TO SAY ABOUT "HOPE (2026)"We each give a short take on Hope, including a comparison to a jigsaw puzzle you assemble before noticing pieces are missing. Then we talk through how we'd critique it if a student had turned it in, and agree we'd put it more gently to a real student.18:01 - JACLYNN'S AMAZING ANALOGY FOR "HOPE (2026)"Jaclynn explains her mixed feelings with an extended analogy: a three-year-old half-sibling draws crayon monsters all over your art thesis, and you present it as if they were intentional. We then discuss what the contract is with a movie like this, and what viewers are owed.22:53 - ON "FOCUS" IN STORYTELLING (EXPLAINED BY THE QUESTION 'HOW DO YOU EAT A SALAD?')A conversation about focus in storytelling, explained through the question of how you eat a salad, and about how a story earns the audience's acceptance of its characters and plot. That leads into what we would ask the director.37:23 - THE OVERALL FEELING OF "HOPE (2026)"We poke fun at the chase's internal logic, from the time of day jumping around to the gas tank that never runs out, and we debate whether the cat a driver swerves to avoid was real and what that says about which lives are worth saving.CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS0:00 - COLD OPEN AND VERY SHORT TRAILER BECAUSE "HOPE" IS A KOREAN LANGUAGE ACTION FILM0:34 - THE MANY (OR FEW?) PLOT(S) OF "HOPE"3:21 - JACLYNN ON LIVING IN ASIA & VISITING THE DMZ BETWEEN North Korea and South Korea4:58 - SET DESIGN5:59 - SKETCH - CEO INTRODUCES THE DIRECTOR7:22 - THE DIRECTOR SPEAKS8:36 - THE PLOT OF HOPE (FROM THE ALIENS' PERSPECTIVE)10:20 - WHEN WERE EACH OF US IN OR OUT11:13 - WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW GOING TO "HOPE (2026)"12:12 - STORIES OF WALKING INTO FILM SETS ACCIDENTALLY16:02 - THE #1 THING WE WANT TO SAY ABOUT "HOPE (2026)"18:01 - JACLYNN'S AMAZING ANALOGY FOR "HOPE (2026)"21:47 - THE DIRECTOR OF "HOPE (2026)" ON THE REAL STORY22:53 - ON "FOCUS" IN STORYTELLING (EXPLAINED BY THE QUESTION 'HOW DO YOU EAT A SALAD?')23:59 - WHAT WOULD WE SAY TO THE DIRECTOR OF "HOPE (2026)" IN AN INTERVIEW?26:37 - MAKING FUN OF COLE'S SCONES27:38 - WHEN DID EACH OF US CRY DURING "HOPE (2026)"30:14 - THINGS JACLYNN LOVES IN VISUALS34:14 - BEHIND THE SCENES THOUGHTS (ESPECIALLY THE CAR)37:23 - THE OVERALL FEELING OF "HOPE (2026)"RECOMMENDATIONSIf you want to keep going on this one, a couple of other stops are worth your time. The InSession Film Podcast devoted an episode to Hope, a good companion listen if you want more voices on the film: InSession Film Podcast: Review - Hope.The Certified Forgotten podcast also dedicated an episode to the film, for another take on it: Certified Forgotten: 'Hope' Gets Uncertified.RELATED ARC EPISODESOr consider starting from the beginning: Episode 01: The Princess Bride is where we became friends.SOUND DESIGN ATTRIBUTIONSound design via Freesound.org and Envato.Downloaded on October 8th, 2026S: Medium Crowd Clapping 5 by jentlemen | License: Creative Commons 0S: Light, slow uncomfortable clapping by TurboFool | License: Creative Commons 0S: Room Tone: McFarlin Auditorium by lakewoodsound | License: Creative Commons 0S: CRWDApls_Unenthusiastic...

We argue that Field of Dreams isn't really about baseball or fathers so much as the elaborate lengths men will go to instead of just going to therapy, and it all starts with Robby who has cried through it on his birthday every year for more than thirty years.EPISODE SUMMARYWe believe Field of Dreams isn't really about baseball, or farming, or even fathers and sons in the way you'd expect. It's about what men will do to avoid going to therapy. Robby has watched it on or near his birthday for more than thirty years and still cries every time. Jaclynn only saw it as a baby, so it's effectively new to her, and she didn't even know the famous line right. Our guests are Joe Connor (Mr. Sports Travel) and Patrick Fleming, and this one gets more emotional than a group of people talking about a cornfield has any right to. Patrick's late father, Mike Fleming, was a Triple-A umpire everyone expected to make the majors until he went home to Iowa at 23 to run the family printing company. That is Archie "Moonlight" Graham's story all over again: two men at the edge of the big leagues who gave it up for someone else.WHERE TO WATCHStreaming availability as of 2026-09-18.Netflix (streaming with subscription)Prime Video (rent or buy)Apple TV (rent or buy)Fandango At Home (rent or buy)New To The Show?New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer; you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.RSSA Long SummaryField of Dreams is the 1989 movie where Kevin Costner hears a voice in his Iowa cornfield, plows under his crop to build a baseball diamond, and watches the ghosts of banned White Sox players walk out to play, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, and eventually his own late father, young again and asking for a catch. It is, on paper, a movie about baseball. It is also a movie about farming, and about kidnapping a reclusive author, and about a small-town doctor who gave up his one shot at the majors. None of that is what it's actually about, which is the thing Robby has known since he was 20 or 21 and cried, unexpectedly, the first time he saw it with a college friend who shared his birthday. He's watched it on or near his birthday almost every year since, more than thirty of them now, and he brought it here, which makes this his birthday movie and, fairly, makes him the star of it.What we found is that Field of Dreams makes men cry, and it makes them cry at their keyboards: when we went looking for baseball experts to explain why the game matters, we got back dozens of very macho men writing in, choked up, needing to talk about this film. Two of them are here. Joe Connor has seen live sports in 176 countries and finished all 30 major-league parks the year his father died, in his memory. And Patrick Fleming, an Iowan and an indie musician, wrote Cole an email, read aloud in full, about his father Mike, a Triple-A umpire whose school booklet said "Mike will go all the way." Mike didn't. His own father died, and at 23 he went home to run the family printing company while every one of his umpire-school friends made the majors. Archie "Moonlight" Graham, in the movie, is that exact story: one at-bat away, then a small-town doctor for the rest of his life. Mike Fleming and Moonlight Graham lived the same life, and now the Little League fields Patrick grew up on are named Mike Fleming Field, his family's little field of dreams.One of the hosts argues that the movie melts people because it lets a man have closure with a dead parent, and that closure only exists in fiction, which is what fiction is for. Another host pushes back that you don't even need the closure; you just need to watch someone you loved live out their happiest moment and get to stand in it with them. Somewhere in there we argue, at genuine length and without resolution, over whether James Earl Jones's character walks into the corn to die or to become a ghost or just to go look around and come back and write about it; one of us is very sure he's fine. We also take a hard look at what the movie asks of Costner's wife, at how much a very handsome man gets away with, at whether following your dream at all costs is exactly how we got where we are, and at the fact that the cars flooding in at the end were real Iowans answering a call on the radio, flicking their brights on and off so it would look like more of them. You do not have to have seen the film to follow any of it. But by about five minutes in, you'll want to have a catch.WHAT WE DISCUSS01:23 - WHO BROUGHT "FIELD OF DREAMS" AND WHY?Robby brought this one, because it's his birthday movie. He has watched it on or near his birthday almost every year since he was 20 or 21. It started in college, watching with a friend named Mark, when Robby cried without warning at the "want to have a catch" moment. He was shocked by his own reaction. So he watched it again the next year, and the year after that.07:55 - PATRICK'S EMAIL ABOUT HIS FATHERPatrick Fleming reads us the email he sent Cole before the taping. His father, Mike, was a professional umpire everyone thought would go all the way to the majors. Then Mike's own father died suddenly, and at 23 he went home to Iowa to run the family printing company. Patrick draws the line straight to Moonlight Graham: two men at the edge of the big leagues who gave it up for someone else. Today, the Little League fields Patrick grew up on carry his dad's name.20:57 - ROBBY READ LITERALLY ALL OF HIS NOTES ON FIELD OF DREAMSRobby has seen this movie more than 40 times, and he brought notes. We let him read them, scene by scene: the three times Ray hears the voice, Ray's fear of turning into his own father, the PTA meeting over the Terence Mann book. It's not a review. It's a man showing us how much he loves a movie.23:50 - ROBBY CRIESAnd then Robby cries, right in the middle of the moment Ray's father shows up and the catch begins. We talk about what got to him, and about realizing your parents are their own people, which brings us right back to Patrick's dad.28:41 - SONS MATCHING FATHERSPatrick tells us his father never got a traditional retirement, because he worked until he died. But he got a version of the dream in his 20s, traveling to games with his umpire friends, and Patrick compares that to his own years touring as a musician at 30. Then we turn to the ending and that sudden line of cars headed for the ballfield. It doesn't quite make sense. It works anyway, because the movie tells us it will happen and asks us to go along.33:48 - TERRENCE MANN IS A GHOSTWe talk about how the film makes small, deliberate choices, including a long cross-country drive that bonds Ray and Terence Mann without showing us most of what they say. Then we get lost in a real argument: when Terence Mann walks into the cornfield, does he die, become a ghost, or just look around and come back? One of us is very sure he's fine. The rest of us aren't buying it.41:06 - THIS MOVIE IS SO MIDWESTERNEveryone in this movie meets the impossible with calm, polite understatement, and we decide that makes it very Midwestern. One of us shares a story about saying a blandly cheerful "oh, cool" to someone whose job was scooping eyeballs out of corpses, which proves the point. We wonder what else makes it feel so Midwestern, and land on its father and son heart.43:23 - ARCHIE MOONLIGHT GRAHAM'S STORY WRAPS UP WITH PATRICK'S DADWe come back around to Patrick's dad. His umpiring career was cut short, and a Little League field back home was renamed Mike Fleming Field in his honor. It's the other half of Moonlight Graham's story, and it leads us back to Ray and the catch he and his own father never had.CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS0:00 - COLD OPEN1:23 - WHO BROUGHT "FIELD OF DREAMS" AND WHY?2:27 - WHAT'S THE NUMBER ONE THING WE WANT TO SAY ABOUT "FIELD OF DREAMS"5:17 - WHAT SHOULD YOU KNOW GOING INTO "FIELD OF DREAMS"6:35 - A VERY FUNNY INTRODUCTION OF PATRICK7:55 - PATRICK'S EMAIL ABOUT HIS FATHER10:14 - WHEN WERE WE IN AND OUT OF "FIELD OF DREAMS"13:42 - JOE HAS VISITED EVERY BASEBALL STADIUM IN THE US20:57 - ROBBY READ LITERALLY ALL OF HIS NOTES ON FIELD OF DREAMS23:50 - ROBBY CRIES28:41 - SONS MATCHING FATHERS30:42 - HOW THEY GOT THE TRAFFIC JAM IN "FIELD OF DREAMS" BEFORE CGI33:48 - TERRENCE MANN IS A GHOST41:06 - THIS MOVIE IS SO MIDWESTERN43:23 - ARCHIE MOONLIGHT GRAHAM'S STORY WRAPS UP WITH PATRICK'S DADFUN FACTS / PRODUCTION TRIVIAThe corn grew almost too well, so when Costner first hears "If you build it, he will come," he had to walk onto a foot-high platform. a...

Hobbs & Shaw has a climactic dawn battle that goes from pitch black to full daylight in about two minutes of screen time. Can the sun really rise that fast? We brought in actual scientist for an answer and a masterclass in using science for storytelling.As always, we're more than a film review podcast, and this is the proof: a years-long movie argument between Cole and Jaclynn gets settled by an actual astronomer.The SetupJaclynn has been saying for years that the sunrise in this scene is impossible, a jump cut from midnight to noon. Cole has spent just as long insisting she's wrong, and this episode is him finally bringing in reinforcements. As Cole puts it going in, "I don't think it's about the sunrise." It's Virgo season, and this is what a Virgo does with a grudge: proves it with data.Meet the AstronomerZoe Learner Ponterio manages the Spacecraft Planetary Image Facility at Cornell, the Ivy League school where Carl Sagan spent 25 years as a professor of astronomy and which still runs a Carl Sagan Institute today. She got there after years on NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers science team, working the Spirit and Opportunity missions. She almost went to Harvard instead. Her reasoning: "I at one point just looked at the Harvard dean and said, do you have a Mars rover? He was like, no. I was like, well, I guess it's a no."The VerdictZoe does the actual math: the fastest a sunrise can physically happen is at the equator on an equinox, and it clocks in around 128 seconds. At the poles, a sunrise can effectively last forever. Hobbs & Shaw is shot near the equator in Samoa, which gives the filmmakers real cover for a fast sunrise, just not one that stretches into full midday light the way the scene eventually does.The closest thing to a ruling: Jaclynn walks the scene beat by beat, cut by cut, and catches herself mid-sentence, she'd been misreading one key shot for years, mentally borrowing the framing from an old TV show. Cole, smelling blood, sums her own argument back to her until she has to say the quiet part out loud. He gets his line for the record too, repeated three times for emphasis: "You were not wrong."The Real TakeawayZoe uses science the same way the hosts use cameras and editing, as a tool for telling a story people care about. Her closing bit ties it back to the episode's own cold open: imagining what an alien visiting Earth would find remarkable about something we take for granted, in her case, the size and closeness of our moon. Her line lands the episode: "Every single film shoot should have an astronomer."Around the TableJaclynn goes in trying to prove Cole right instead of herself, and ends up seeing the sunrise shot differently for the first time in years.Robby never noticed the sped-up sunrise at all until Jaclynn pointed it out, and defends it from a pure craft angle: once the sun is up, the sun gets to be up.Cole sits on his own sunrise-shooting story from filming in the Galapagos until the very end of the debate, then finally uses it as backup.Zoe walks in to referee a movie argument and walks out making the case for why scientists and storytellers are sometimes doing the same job.Subscribe If You Like The FormatThis is the first in an occasional series bringing in people from outside film, people who aren't filmmakers or critics, to look at a scene through their expertise.Chapters0:00 Cold Open1:31 Introducing the Astronomer4:05 The Problem With the Sunrise5:14 Why the Astronomer Chose Cornell Over Harvard8:04 Personal Nitpicks About Film Continuity12:31 When Were We In or Out16:01 What You Need to Know Going In20:09 The Astronomer's Problem With the Moon in Movies20:50 Sketch: All-Hands Stand-Up Moon Meeting22:18 How to Tell if the Moon Is Right25:25 The Shortest and Longest Sunrise, a Thought Experiment29:50 The Number One Thing About the Climax33:20 Filming Sunrise and Sunset at the Equator37:06 Science in Film41:30 What Is Science Fiction (Because Star Wars Isn't)46:19 What Did We Learn49:38 Going Beat by Beat Through the Sunrise1:01:30 The Astronomer on StorytellingMore Hobbs & ShawThis isn't our first brawl in this particular light. Back when we just talked about the movie like normal people, before a Cornell scientist got involved, we did an episode called: Hobbes & Shaw - Virgo Season Continues with a Story Told Almost Entirely in Visuals

Did you know people HATE Alejandro González Iñárritu's films, walked out of Amores Perros during its Premiere, and stopped being friends with Cole because of it? And on that note: we dig into why a movie this technically towering is so hard to actually love.EPISODE SUMMARYAmores Perros (2000), starring Gael García Bernal and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is Cole's birthday pick this season on The Arc (thearc.fm), and it does not go the way birthday picks are supposed to go. The film is a landmark of Mexican cinema, told in three interlocking stories connected by a single car crash — but we spend most of the episode arguing about whether its dog-as-metaphor structure is a stroke of genius or almost embarrassingly literal. Robby gets attached to the wrong story and never recovers, Jaclynn spends two years thinking the title meant "I Love Dogs," and Cole realizes live, on mic, that the film is basically about his parents.WHERE TO WATCHStreaming availability as of 2026-07-08 (GOOD LUCK//SORRY)Apple TV (rent or buy)Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)Fandango at Home (rent or buy)Tubi (free streaming)New To The Show?New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.RSSA Long SummaryAmores Perros is Alejandro González Iñárritu's 2000 debut, three interlocking Mexico City stories bolted together by a single car crash — a dog-fighting kid trying to run away with his brother's wife, a supermodel whose lapdog vanishes under the floorboards of her new apartment, and El Chivo, an ex-guerrilla turned assassin with a pack of strays and a daughter he abandoned. It's the film that put Iñárritu, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto on the map, and, as Cole puts it, nearly every "raw, visceral, authentic" film made since has been speaking its language whether it knows it or not. You cannot legally stream or even buy it in the United States, which is how Cole ended up getting a library card specifically to check out a DVD, and how one very kind librarian stopped talking to him the moment she saw what he'd put on hold.This is a birthday-film episode — each of us picks an all-time favorite to revisit, and this one is Cole's, which turns out to be the whole show. Robby found it electric and beautifully shot and was fully in until the story handed off to the second couple, at which point he got genuinely angry, a reaction he almost never has to movies. Jaclynn, who spent two years believing the title meant "I Love Dogs" because she's half Mexican and coasting on overconfidence, was out at the DVD menu and had to switch off her empathy to get through the dog violence at all. And then, somewhere in the third act — the dead father breaking into his daughter's apartment to frame a photo of himself over her bed, the assassin's whole arc — it stops being a movie about a movie and becomes Cole visibly split open, recognizing his own parents in the supermodel and the man who ruined himself caring for her. Watching a friend realize in real time that his favorite film is a diagnosis is not comfortable, and we don't pretend it is.What we actually argue about is whether the dog-as-metaphor is too on the nose (each animal an externalized organ of its owner's suffering), whether it's just a less pop-culture-poisoned Pulp Fiction or something genuinely its own, and why nearly every shot sits at a strange, low, claustrophobic angle — Jaclynn's theory being that we're often at dog height, Cole's being that a frame taken from the eyeline of an average-height man has added nothing to anything, ever. There's a clip of Iñárritu himself in here talking about the banned bleach-bypass process that gave the film its milky, over-contrasted blue, and a running, affectionate grudge about how Cole's own best camerawork is quietly haunted by this movie's final shot. It ends where it began: Jaclynn asking Cole if he's okay. He isn't, and he'd like a good cry and a full night's sleep. We'd recommend the film, and we'd recommend not watching it alone.WHAT WE DISCUSS02:12 — Who Brought Amores Perros, and How Do You Describe Amores Perros?We describe Amores Perros as a maximalist film that mirrors its director's personality, then joke about our shared "killjoy" horoscope sign before comparing how graphically each of our two birthday-film picks handles a dog's death — Robby's film only implies it happens offscreen while Cole's shows the animal's visible suffering in bloody, sound-designed detail — with Cole noting he can tell a long story about what he already knew about the film going in.04:33 — Robby Actually Reviews The Film!Robby explains that he watched Amores Perros for the first time because it's Cole's favorite movie, praises how watchable, energetic, and visually striking it is (especially its portrayal of Mexico City), admits the dog violence shocked him but argues it works as a meaningful metaphor for how the characters treat each other, and then Jaclynn teases Cole for being visibly moved before comparing the experience of rewatching a beloved film as an adult to realizing it exposes uncomfortable truths about the person who loves it.08:46 — How Jaclynn Found Out The Film Showed Dog FightingJaclynn tells a long personal story about how, based on a matching-hat gift from Cole and her mistaken belief that "Amores Perros" translates simply to "I Love Dogs," she spent two years thinking his favorite film was a sweet movie about dog ownership until a friend's horrified reaction clued her in that it actually involves extensive dogfighting and animal death, which leads the group into a discussion of why on-screen animal harm disturbs audiences more than human violence and how convincingly the film's dog-death scenes were faked.23:19 — When Were You In or Out for Amores Perros?Jaclynn explains she was "out" on Amores Perros before even watching it (after hearing about the animal deaths and half-jokingly citing writing "the DVD menu" in our shared notes doc as her breakout point), listing the elements she normally likes in a film that this one still didn't win her over with, while the others push back and single out the movie's closing shot as a standout, with one host arguing it visibly influenced Cole's own cinematography (comparing it to a shot he later used), which Cole first denies and then half-admits.27:19 — Audiences Walked Out of the FilmWe rib Cole for picking such an on-the-nose, stylistically maximalist favorite, then play a clip of Iñárritu describing how audiences actually walked out during screenings at Cannes and the New York Film Festival, before comparing our own entry points into his filmography (mostly starting with Birdman, which we disagree about) and debate whether Amores Perros is a weaker, more stylistically derivative cousin of Pulp Fiction.29:06 — The Original Instagram Filter?We (joined by a clip of director Alejandro González Iñárritu) discuss how the film's bleach-bypass color processing gave it a high-contrast, blue-tinted look we associate with early Instagram filters, then pivot into analyzing how tightly framed, claustrophobic shots (including ones apparently filmed from a dog's-eye perspective) reinforce the characters' trapped circumstances, before riffing into a personal tangent about hating photographs shot from generic average-adult-eye-level height.41:03 — The Dogs Are a Metaphor.We debate whether Amores Perros' dogs function as heavy-handed but effective metaphors for their owners' suffering (using the scorpion-and-frog fable to explain the "rehabilitated killer" dog), then Robby admits he lost investment when the film jumped between its three interlocking stories, while Jaclynn describes being annoyed by the film's self-conscious stylistic flourishes before deciding that "announcing itself" as a film can still be valid craft, and we praise the movie's gritty, lived-in production detail before Cole starts to argue, through tears he can't fully explain, that the film invented the modern raw, visceral style so many later films have chased.58:06 — The Craziest Thing About The StoryWe marvel incredulously at the film's Daniel storyline, arguing it makes no sense that a character would let a dog starve under his floorboards for days rather than immediately tearing them up to save it, one host suggests this is a deliberate Tell-Tale Heart-style literary allusion rather than a plot hole, and we then play a clip of Iñárritu explaining that the dog-under-the-floor detail was drawn from a real story a friend told him about an abandoned family whose floor had to be broken open after their dog died and started to smell.CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS0:00 - Can a Movie Ruin a Friendship? (natural: 0:23)2:12 - Who Brought Amores Perros, and How Do You Describe Amores...