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

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

“Masculinity is a lot like Fight Club. The first rule is that you don't talk about it.” In this episode, we’re breaking that rule, examining what Fight Club has to say about the emotional lives of men, the links between masculinity and extremist violence, and the path out of the darkness.TRANSCRIPT: HERECREDITS: Host, Writer: Alex PappademasShowrunner: Colin McNultyProducers: Sabrina Fang and Taylor JonesProduction Assistant and Fact Checker: Stella HartmanComposer, Sound Designer, Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnisStudio Direction and Theme Music: Dan LeoneExecutive Producer for Western Sound: Ben AdairEditor: Jamie YorkExecutive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, Janae MarableEditorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna LevinExecutive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara, Corinne GilliardSpecial Thanks: Joe Paulsen and Eric Spiegelman  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There were two verdicts on Fight Club: the opening-weekend box office numbers (spoiler alert: yikes) and the judgment of history. We’ll look at how Fight Club channeled the anti-consumerist politics of its moment, and explore some of the more provocative arguments made in the ensuing years about this still-contentious cult classic and its take on modern men.TRANSCRIPT: HERECREDITS: Host, Writer: Alex PappademasShowrunner: Colin McNultyProducers: Sabrina Fang and Taylor JonesProduction Assistant and Fact Checker: Stella HartmanComposer, Sound Designer, Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnisStudio Direction and Theme Music: Dan LeoneExecutive Producer for Western Sound: Ben AdairEditor: Jamie YorkExecutive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, Janae MarableEditorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna LevinExecutive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara, Corinne GilliardSpecial Thanks: Joe Paulsen and Eric Spiegelman Archival tape provided by: WTF with Marc MaronPawn Stars footage courtesy of A+E Networks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Seriously, though— how did a movie as unashamedly anti-capitalist and absurdly homoerotic as Fight Club get made by a major studio, let alone a studio owned by Rupert Murdoch? In this episode, an unlikely piece of material— and an uncompromising director’s vision for that material— somehow survives the Hollywood machine, some potentially disastrous PR, and the disdain of a billionaire who doesn’t care for movies.TRANSCRIPT: HERECREDITS: Host, Writer: Alex PappademasShowrunner: Colin McNultyProducers: Sabrina Fang and Taylor JonesProduction Assistant and Fact Checker: Stella HartmanComposer, Sound Designer, Mix Engineer: Alex MacInnisStudio Direction and Theme Music: Dan LeoneExecutive Producer for Western Sound: Ben AdairEditor: Jamie YorkExecutive Producers for Higher Ground: Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, Janae MarableEditorial Assistant for Higher Ground: Jenna LevinExecutive Producers for Spotify: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara, Corinne GilliardSpecial Thanks: Joe Paulsen and Eric Spiegelman Archival tape provided by: BAFTA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices