The Big Hit Show

The battle is over, and Pokémon has won. Almost twenty-five years after it arrived on these shores, Pokémon hasn’t just survived— it’s become the kind of pop-cultural phenomenon that parents share with their kids. But what does that say about Pokémon, and what does our yearning for an ever-more-immersive pocket-monster-catching experience say about us?TRANSCRIPT: HERECREDITS:Writer and Host: Alex PappademasShowrunner: Colin McNultyProducers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.Production Assistant: Stella HartmannFact Checker: Savannah WrightComposer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnisTheme Music by: Dan Leone Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben AdairEditor: Jamie YorkExecutive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna LevinExecutive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks to nostalgic fans and influential new collectors, the value of vintage Pokémon trading cards is through the roof. But you don’t have to find and flip a million-dollar Charizard to have your life changed by Pokémon. An episode about collecting, connecting, and a podcast producer who lands in Las Vegas with a binder full of holos and a dream.TRANSCRIPT: HERECREDITS:Writer and Host: Alex PappademasShowrunner: Colin McNultyProducers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.Production Assistant: Stella HartmannFact Checker: Savannah WrightComposer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnisTheme Music by: Dan Leone Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben AdairEditor: Jamie YorkExecutive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna LevinExecutive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At the end of the ‘90s, after blowing up in Japan, Pokémon came to America. And it became so ubiquitous so fast that critics saw it as a plot to turn U.S. children into hypnotized consumers— or even devil-worshippers. But the version of Pokemon that conquered America was very much an American creation; in this episode we’ll look at how Pokemon became an international brand, and how its success brought out the worst in more than a few American parents.TRANSCRIPT: HERECREDITS:Writer and Host: Alex PappademasShowrunner: Colin McNultyProducers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.Production Assistant: Stella HartmannFact Checker: Savannah WrightComposer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnisTheme Music by: Dan Leone Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben AdairEditor: Jamie YorkExecutive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna LevinExecutive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In which a red-hot video game company crashes and burns, with a little help from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The decline of Atari paved the way for a gaming renaissance— think Donkey Kong, Mario and eventually Pikachu. But as Japan took the upper-hand in the console business and taught a generation of American kids how to play, some Americans grew paranoid about a resurgent foreign power beating us at our own game.TRANSCRIPT: HERECREDITS:Writer and Host: Alex PappademasShowrunner: Colin McNultyProducers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.Production Assistant: Stella HartmannFact Checker: Savannah WrightComposer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnisTheme Music by: Dan Leone Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben AdairEditor: Jamie YorkExecutive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna LevinExecutive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are big hits, and there are really big hits— and then there’s Pokémon, a kids’ game from Japan that evolved into the biggest multimedia entertainment franchise of all time. In this episode we’re time-traveling from ‘90s Tokyo— where a bug collector turned game designer first dreamed of catching pocket-sized monsters— to 2016, when an addictive mobile game helped Pokemon re-conquer the world.TRANSCRIPT: HERECREDITS:Writer and Host: Alex PappademasShowrunner: Colin McNultyProducers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.Production Assistant: Stella HartmannFact Checker: Savannah WrightComposer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnisTheme Music by: Dan Leone Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben AdairEditor: Jamie YorkExecutive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna LevinExecutive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Big Hit Show Season 4 debuts on August 17th. How did a Japanese video game from the 1990’s become the single highest grossing franchise in history - bigger than Star Wars and Harry Potter combined? This season on The Big Hit Show, we’re exploring the biggest hit of all time, Pokémon, and how these adorable pocket monsters evolved into a media supernova unlike any the world has ever seen.TRANSCRIPT: HERE CREDITS:Writer and Host: Alex PappademasShowrunner: Colin McNultyProducers: Taylor Jones and Sabrina Fang, with help from Tyler Hill.Production Assistant: Stella HartmannFact Checker: Savannah WrightComposer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnisTheme Music by: Dan Leone Executive Producer for Western Sound: Ben AdairEditor: Jamie YorkExecutive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Janae Marable. Editorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna LevinExecutive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices