Curated by Chance

Scrolls, Shrines, and Spring Break Delusion

Episode 84: Scrolls, Shrines, and Spring Break Delusion This week’s prompts: 458, Salmon, Sleep Lauren is back solo again — slightly overbooked, a little raspy, and fully in the thick of spring-semester chaos — with an episode that moves from museum donor events and teaching highs and lows to ancient Japan, Buddhist scrolls, and the enduring power of visual storytelling. After a little life update from the MAG, the classroom, and the general circus of adjunct-professor existence, Lauren takes the prompts in a different direction and dives into Japanese art before 1333. Using a single extraordinary hanging scroll — The Death of the Historical Buddha — as a starting point, she explores Buddhist imagery, grief, animism, shrine rebuilding, narrative scrolls, and the long visual history behind everything from manga to robot dogs. Along the way, she unpacks the spiritual and aesthetic traditions that shaped early Japanese art: the solemn beauty of Buddhist nirvana paintings, the Shinto reverence for objects and ritual, the rebuilding of the Ise Shrine every 20 years, the gendered distinction between “masculine” and “feminine” art forms in the Heian period, and the lively, sketchy animal scrolls that feel like proto-manga centuries before manga existed. It’s a wide-ranging, deeply visual episode about how art, ritual, storytelling, and national identity evolve — and how some of the most ancient forms still feel startlingly modern. PLUS:🖼️ A gorgeous Buddhist hanging scroll full of grief, gold, and symbolism⛩️ Why Japan rebuilds one of its most sacred shrines again and again🧵 Broken needles, animism, and the spiritual life of everyday objects📖 The Tale of Genji and the rise of “feminine” narrative art🐸 Frolicking frogs, monkeys, and rabbits as the ancient ancestors of manga Next week’s prompts: Stripe, 97, Green Please support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/curatedbychance Check Out Lauren’s Substack:👉 https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/ Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:🎧 The Show – @curatedbychance🎨 Lauren – @paisleylo🎬 Neal – @nealefischer 📧 E-mail us: curatedbychance@gmail.com Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now!Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sick Voice

Episode 83: Sick Voice This week’s prompts: Teal, Leg, 1960 Lauren is flying solo again and opens with a few updates from the past couple of weeks of guest episodes, a quick peek into the strange and wonderful conversations that happen at academic faculty parties, and a heartfelt shout-out to listener Dan for a timely and encouraging email. There’s also a little housekeeping about Patreon, reviews, and how much the show appreciates its listeners sticking with them during this busy stretch. From there, Lauren dives into the life and work of Wilfredo Lam, one of the most fascinating — and often overlooked — artists of the 20th century. Born in Cuba to a Chinese immigrant father and an Afro-Cuban mother, Lam described himself as “a mulatto of many worlds.” His art reflects that hybrid identity, blending Afro-Caribbean spirituality, Chinese visual traditions, and European modernism into something entirely his own. Lauren traces Lam’s path from studying art in Havana and Madrid to joining the surrealist circles of Paris, where Picasso, Matisse, and André Breton became part of his artistic orbit. Despite those connections, Lam remained somewhat outside the traditional modernist canon — in part because his work centered Afro-Cuban culture and identity in ways that European audiences often overlooked. The episode focuses on Lam’s most famous painting, The Jungle (1942–43) — a dense, eerie landscape of hybrid human-animal-plant figures emerging from sugarcane. Beneath its surreal imagery lies a powerful commentary on colonialism, tourism, and the exploitation of Afro-Cuban labor in Cuba’s sugar industry. PLUS:🎨 Lam’s friendships with Picasso and the Paris surrealists🌿 Hybrid figures inspired by Santería and Afro-Caribbean spirituality🌍 How tourism and colonial economics shaped Cuban culture🖼️ Why The Jungle remains a modernist masterpiece hiding in plain sight Join us on Patreon to support the show and its creators: www.patreon.com/curatedbychance Next week’s prompts: 458, Salmon, Sleep Check Out Lauren’s Substack:👉 https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/ Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:🎧 The Show – @curatedbychance🎨 Lauren – @paisleylo🎬 Neal – @nealefischer 📧 E-mail us: curatedbychance@gmail.com Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now!Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Princely Magnificence

Episode 82: Princely Magnificence This Week's Prompts: 1600, Divine, Royal Purple With Neal out (we miss you, sir), Lauren brings in a guest co-host whose name is… suspiciously close. Enter Dr. Nile Blunt — museum professional, early modern historian, maximalist icon, and longtime friend — for an episode that begins at Wegmans and ends with a beheading. Nile takes us deep into the life of Charles I of England, the famously ill-fated monarch who quite literally lost his head — but before that? Built one of the most astonishing art collections Europe had ever seen. From fake-beard diplomacy missions in Madrid to being absolutely gobsmacked by the Spanish Habsburg art hoard, we follow young Prince Charles as he travels incognito to woo a Spanish princess… and instead falls in love with something else entirely: power expressed through art. After witnessing Philip IV’s jaw-dropping collection (Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio, Bosch — the greatest hits of Western painting), Charles returns to England determined to build something even grander. And he does. Lauren and Nile unpack how Charles’ obsession with collecting wasn’t just aesthetic — it was political. In the Caroline era, “good taste” equaled moral authority. Magnificence wasn’t just décor; it was divine-right propaganda. Surround yourself with beauty, and people might believe your soul is beautiful too — and maybe that you deserve to rule. Spoiler: Parliament disagreed. Along the way, the two explore:• Why Charles River and the Carolinas are named after this doomed art bro• The concept of princely magnificence (and why it mattered)• How collecting art became a political loyalty test• Fake beards, royal cringe, and the world’s most dramatic failed proposal• Why London briefly became the Vatican–Louvre–Prado of the 17th century It’s a story about power, ego, aesthetics, absolutism, and what happens when you mistake artistic discernment for political wisdom. Plus: maximalism solidarity, pandemic friendships, and whether fake-beard diplomacy should make a cinematic comeback. Next Week's Prompts: Teal, Leg, 1960 Check Out Lauren’s Substack:https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/ Follow the show and its creators on Instagram:The Show – @curatedbychanceLauren – @paisleyloNeal – @nealefischer E-mail us: curatedbychance@gmail.com Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now!Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Magic Mike Walked so Heated Rivalry Could Run

Episode 81: Magic Mike Walked so Heated Rivalry Could Run This week’s prompts: Blue, Twitch, 15 Lauren flies solo — but not really — as she welcomes her longtime partner-in-podcast-crime Julia from Miss Information: A Trivia Podcast for a full-throttle celebration of the cinematic masterpiece that is Magic Mike XXL (2015). What begins as a prompt-inspired detour quickly becomes a passionate thesis: this is not just a stripper sequel. It’s The Odyssey. With abs. The two dive into the eight-and-a-half-hour road trip that somehow takes three days, from Tampa to Myrtle Beach’s gloriously unnamed “Stripper Convention.” Along the way: Mad Mary’s voguing chaos, a gas station Backstreet Boys breakdown for the ages, Jada Pinkett Smith presiding over a velvet-draped Savannah hedonism palace, and Andy MacDowell hosting a Charleston book club that accidentally turns into foreplay. Lauren argues that the film’s true message is simple and profound: stripping is healing. Julia charts the logistical madness of the Froyo truck crash, the montage sewing session, and the conference room glow-up that somehow transforms Resurrection into the 10:20 p.m. moneymaker. And yes — they break down that final mirror routine from Channing Tatum and the late Stephen “Twitch” Boss in reverent, breathless detail. They also tackle the deeper questions:Why is everyone littering?How long are these women at the convention?Why does no one slip on the dollar bills?And why did the third movie even exist? PLUS:The Stripper Convention as American mythJoe Manganiello’s Cheetos-fueled Backstreet Boys meltdownDomina, Rome, and subscription-based beautySex swings, Nine Inch Nails, and the most romantic wedding ever stagedMagic Mike Live in Vegas and the $87 spiritual awakeningWhy you can skip Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and just watch this instead No death. No brooding. Just friendship, fireworks, and finely crafted choreography. Next week’s prompts: 1600, Divine, Royal Purple Join us at Patreon for more fun: www.patreon.com/curatedbychance Check Out Lauren’s Substack:https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/ Watch Julia on Trivial Pursuit and listen to Miss Information Follow the show and its creators on Instagram: The Show – @curatedbychanceLauren – @paisleyloNeal – @nealefischer E-mail us: curatedbychance@gmail.com Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now!Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Dermis: A Brief History of Nudity in Film

Episode 80: Dr. Dermis: A Brief History of Nudity in Film This week’s prompts: Nude, Mirror, 2193 Neal flies solo this week — juggling book deadlines, radio producing, directing gigs, and on-camera classes — and takes the prompts “nude” and “mirror” as an invitation to dive headfirst into one of cinema’s most controversial, complicated, and endlessly fascinating subjects: nudity on screen. From the silent era’s flesh-colored body stockings and allegorical “Truth” figures to the Hays Code crackdown that scrubbed Hollywood nearly clean for three decades, Neal traces how filmmakers have used (and misused) the naked body for art, shock, comedy, horror, politics, and pure box office bait. Jane Mansfield makes mainstream movie history. Blow-Up and Midnight Cowboy help dismantle the Production Code. The ’70s explode with art-house extremity and exploitation excess — from Last Tango in Paris to Carrie. The ’80s normalize teen sex comedies and birth the erotic thriller, giving us Phoebe Cates in slow motion, Richard Gere in full frontal, and the rise of the femme fatale as both fantasy and threat. And then the ’90s detonate the culture wars. Sharon Stone’s leg-cross in Basic Instinct becomes the most paused moment in VHS history. Showgirls tests the limits of NC-17. The Crying Game uses nudity as narrative revelation. Schindler’s List reminds audiences that nudity can devastate rather than titillate. Through it all, Neal examines the power dynamics behind the camera — from Maria Schneider’s traumatic experience on Last Tango in Paris to Sharon Stone’s later revelations about consent and deception. This isn’t just a history of skin on screen. It’s a history of censorship, power, vulnerability, gender politics, commerce, shame, and spectacle — and how cinema keeps holding up a mirror to all of it. Next week's prompts: Twitch, Blue, 15 Join us on Patreon to help support our efforts: www.patreon.com/curatedbychance Check Out Lauren’s Substack: https://ltlikesthis.substack.com/ Follow the show and its creators on Instagram: The Show – @curatedbychance Lauren – @paisleylo Neal – @nealefischer E-mail us: curatedbychance@gmail.com Hear Neal each week on Triviality Podcast – Subscribe now! Listen to Lauren on Miss Information Podcast – Subscribe now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices