04 – Doki Doki Literature Club and Undertale AUs

This is our first episode featuring a special guest, and this time it’s Andy’s daughter “Mary Annette” aka “marryannte”, who is here to talk about some of the video games she loves — Doki Doki Literature Club and Undertale.

Trigger Alert: This episode discusses some adult themes including mental health and suicide. It also contains spoilers for these video games, so don’t listen unless you want to be spoiled!

Did you know Undertale has a fan community that has created “Alternate Universes” for the characters? We explore her top 10 favorite “AUs” and why she loves all of them.

03 – Greatness, continued

We continue our discussion from episode I: The Phantom Greatness to continue talking about the essence of greatness and what the purpose of this podcast is. Subjective, objective? Aristotle and the excellence in the mundane. Setting Buddhist goals. Normal distributions, standard deviations, and outliers. “It factors.” Inherent biases. Passion.

Note: We recorded this one second, but put it out third to break up this conversation a little more.

Triptych I – Toad the Wet Sprocket

A triptych is a series of paintings, photos, etc that show a single scene or idea.

Here at The Hall of Greatness, we want to do “minisodes” of the podcast where we answer three basic questions about an artist, filmmaker, actor, musician:
What is their best work?
What is their most representative work?
What is their most recognizable work?

We start with one of the kings of 90’s college rock, Toad the Wet Sprocket (Andy’s favorite).

01 – The Hall of Greatness

Welcome to our pilot episode. I’m Andy, he’s JB, and we talk about greatness, individualism vs. communal identity and why that means we get so mad about sports and Star Wars. Why do we love arguing about greatness and listing it? We need a better term than “argument” for what we need to do. Our backgrounds and where we came from. What we want to do with this podcast.

Welcome to the Hall of Greatness!

Welcome to the Hall of Greatness!

Imagine a palace of the mind, devoted to all things great. We believe, as Aristotle did, that all things exist on a scale of good to bad, and that every thing that exists potentially has its greatest and worst forms, and a lot of mediocre forms in between.

But, because “Greatness” can be subjective — even including the types of things we might consider for “great” status — these are personal palaces. While we will try to add some rigor to determine why something deserves to be considered great, not everyone may agree with those as the most important criteria. And what one person decides is worthy of inclusion might not be accepted by all.

But imagine an actual place where we debated and discussed, where we act as individual curators for our own personal halls of greatness, and try to share with others what makes them so great. This is that place.

Anything and anyone can be great. And while we will devote most of our time and space here devoted to movies, music, tv, video games, comic books, and media of all kinds, history, hobbies, the outside world, current events, etc, there is no limit to what can be curated into our own museums. Want to celebrate a bologna sandwich? No doubt there exists one that truly is great.
Sometimes bad things are “great,” too. Oftentimes something is so terrible it becomes great because of how awful it is. Some things and people should be celebrated for being the best at being the worst.

But there is, generally, too much negativity out there, and we need to take time to celebrate the things which are great. Also, I want to a fun space to hang out with my friends and my kids.

So join us on this journey, won’t you? And have a great time.