The Bechdel Cast - Send Help with Blair Braverman

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

This week, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Blair Braverman get stranded on a remote island and survive by discussing Send Help (2026)! Check out Blair's new podcast, 'What to Carry, What to Burn,' and her website www.blairbraverman.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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HEPL HEPL, send HEPL, Jamie? What? I misspelled help. Oh no. Wow, men really do be misspelling four-letter words, don't they? Yeah. And that's sort of a taste of what this movie is like.

Yes. Welcome to the Bechtel cast. My name's Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. And what might that be, Jamie?

Well, I can tell you, it is a media metric created by a friend of the show and namesake of the show, Alison Bechtel, that was originally created in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out for back in the 80s, as a one-off joke has since become more of a mainstreamified media metric. The version we use requires the two characters of a marginalized gender speak about something other than a man for more than two lines of relevant dialogue.

They should also have names. And, you know, does this, this is tricky because I feel like this movie exists in, if I'm like breaking down all the asterisks to the Bexel test that we've had to use, difficult to pass in a two-hander that involves a man as one of the two. Exactly. And nonetheless, nevertheless, this movie persists. But also, that's just our jumping off point. I guess I've just told you it does pass the bacterial test, but not by a lot.

There you go. You can turn out the show. Goodbye. Just kidding. Let's lock in. Let's lock in. Let's do it. And get our amazing guest in the chat.

Absolutely. She is a writer. and adventurer and host of the podcast that's about survival stories, what to carry, what to burn. It's Blair Braverman. Welcome. Hello. I'm so happy to be here.

Welcome. We're so like to have you. So we're talking about send help, which came out earlier this year, right? Yeah. 26, Sam Ramey directed. Feels like longer. And boy, did this movie choose its moments to remind you it's a Sam Ramey movie. It sure does.

If any other person had directed it, those moments would be so very confusing. But because it's him, you're like, well, I guess contractually he has to do four or five of these. Yeah. They're fun moments. I mean, I'm pro. I'm pro the Ramey scary. The Rameyisms. Jump scare thing.

But yeah, it just came out. So I guess it's hard to have a story in history with this. But I know Blair, you're like truly the perfect guest for this. movie. We were talking about all the different survival-based movies that's out there. And this is the one that centers around a woman. So this is what we get. We get this in Baby Island. Oh, my God. Wait, what is Baby Island? I don't know that one either. Oh, so I'm obsessed with survival stories, but I'm also obsessed with survival stories, like how we tell the stories about survival, like in kids books and in movies and in all these different things. And I went through a couple years ago and I tried to

find every story for kids about survival in the wilderness. And it's pretty much all about boy. Because I was a kid, I was a little girl who loved like Hatchet and survival books. Oh, I loved Hatchett. And it is very hard to find a book for kids about a kid in the wilderness, my side of the mountain type story, where the kid is a girl. And you get these very weird genres when there was a girl involved. So either she's like fleeing sexual assault or abuse. right like julia the wolves or you have a book like baby island which is an incredible work of literature and it is a survival story about two little girls who are stranded on an island a desert island and have to survive except for they also get stranded with four babies no so at the time yeah so as

they're learning how to like eat bananas for food and try to like send messages and bottles they're also learning how to deal with colic and like what to do if a baby is slow to walk and how to get these four babies to keep the Lord's Day on a desert island. And it's this amazing sort of confluence of genres that I truly think is like progressive in a way because the author's like little girls like desert islands and they like babies. So I wanted to give them both. It just seems like so much work for these kids. I love it. I'm looking at this. the cover right now, I feel like there is a very fun, modern adaptation of this story. And also, like, because it came out in 1937, they're like, okay, we can't just have girls on an island.

They have to be doing some sort of parenting as well. That's why I'd never heard of that before. Yeah, like, motherhood is hard. For these girls, it's even harder. Because they're stranded on a desert island. But, like, I recognize the absurd. of the book, but I really do think, like, I'm for it. Yeah. So it's very bizarre. And I also feel like survival stories about women tend to, like, okay, this is my theory going into this before I even saw the movie, is like, when someone is stranded

in the wilderness in some way and we're telling a story about it, they either tame the wilderness or they go feral. So they either turn the wilderness into like a functioning society, a la Robinson Caruso, or they go feral and become wild themselves. and that's what happens to women in these stories. Interesting. Okay. Which I would say that Sendhalp fits into that category of she sort of becomes a wild beast herself.

Or like they become like witchy or just sort of like, I don't know. It was interesting. I mean, Farrell is a good word for it, I feel. Yeah. Yeah, totally. That's so interesting because I was thinking so much about this movie compared to, have you seen Triangle of Sadness? No, I haven't.

I was thinking a lot about Triangle of Sadness. same movie. It's a very similar movie. Really? I think triangle if that doesn't matter, but I feel like it's because, well, we can talk about it in the discussion. I feel like this movie holds back in these like weird ways that feel kind of gendered. And also, I guess it's worth saying that Centhelp is a movie that centers around a woman that is written by two men and directed by a man, which I do feel like you can feel in certain moments and choices. But that's so fast.

That, like, Blair, that makes so much, that makes so much sense. It's almost like you've spent a lot of time thinking about this. That's wild. Yeah. Because, I mean, and then compared to, I guess, what are the directions when the survival story centers around a man, how does that manifest differently with, like, the response to the environment in these stories? Usually with men, you see the pattern of them, quote-unquote, taming the wilderness.

You know, sort of creating a functional society. Like having, it's very dominance over nature. So, you know, the phrase you'll hear on survival shows is like, I'm going to make nature my bitch. Is a phrase you'll hear a lot, which is an absurd, it is such an absurd concept to begin with. True. Yeah. Nature's definitely going to make you her bitch. That's how these things work.

Kind of undefeated. Yeah. I mean, nature is indifferent. Like, it's these things, these concepts don't translate onto wilderness. We are trying to take our human concepts and project them onto something that is so utterly indifferent that it reduces them to absurdity. But, yeah, normally you would see, I mean, there's an interesting way in this movie that she also is a very competent survivor. Yeah. And is able to sort of create like a survival version of an executive desk on a beach on a tropical island.

So she's kind of doing both. I don't know. We'll get into it. Right. And but then at the end, I mean, I also, on this viewing, I was like, I don't like the end of this movie. But we'll get it to it. So did you see this movie when it came out or was this your first time? I just saw it now.

Ooh, I'm excited. I've been interested in it, but I hadn't dug in. Caitlin, I think we might have the same history with this movie because we saw it together. We sure did. We saw it in theaters. I'm trying to think who else was with us. Was it Brian? Brian, Casey, and Grant.

Okay, yes. Three amazing key hymns at the AMC with us. Really cool. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, we saw it in theaters. It came out in late January, right? So.

But I hadn't seen it since then, but it came on to streaming. I forget which platform. Disney Plus. Yeah, who? And it was like one of the most streamed movie. ever or something? Which actually does scan for me in,

I still don't understand how like streaming, they insist it translates to money through subscriptions, but I'm like, no one's signing up for a movie for Send Help. But I feel like Send Help, being successful on streaming makes sense to me because it feels so very much like

a movie you would watch on a plane, even though it heavily features a plane crash. And I feel like movies that are successful on streaming are plain movies. Have we ever talked about that? That's a theory I have. No, I think you're onto something.

Yeah, a good streaming movie, unfortunately, you should be able to kind of fall asleep during it. And this is a good movie, but this is a plain movie, I feel. I'm with you. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was like heavily streamed, so, but also I'm like, is it one of those things where, like, people actually watched it or was it just the next thing that came on? on whether or not you were sitting in front of your TV actively consuming it or not. Who knows?

The algorithm moves in mysterious ways. I mean, this is a really good movie. And it was successful. It was successful financially. I'm glad it's successful in streaming. It's whatever. The bar is so low right now that it's like original story that centers around a woman being successful.

No further questions. Like, fine. We'll take it. But it's also our job to look at it very carefully. because it is so like speaking to your point that it's send help in baby island a book that is almost 90 years old it's like this is this is rare in a way that I don't think was really a part of this movie's narrative as it came out well I was thinking about I was like wasn't there a Reese Witherspoon wilderness survival movie wild Wild?

Although I'm not sure how much of it is like, I haven't seen it. So I don't know how much of it is her like trying to survive. But it's about a woman who takes an 1,100 mile solo hike through, I'm guessing, the wild, hence the name of the movie. As a way to recover from a recent personal tragedy according to the log line of the movie. So I don't know much about that. And if it falls into this camp of stories we're talking about. I would, here I'm going to be such a survival nerd. Please.

I would categorize those differently because to me there's a difference between going into wilderness recreationally and being stuck there. For sure. And so for me it becomes, to me, like it fits into the category of survival story if someone can't get out. Yeah. And so for her going on a hike, it's like a wilderness story, but it's not. It's very intentional.

It's not quite part of the same genre. It's a different genre. Fair. Sort of a trek or an adventure story as opposed to survival. Got it. So send help, baby Island. Yeah, those two definitely the same genre. And then also, I mean, you mentioned it already, Jamie, but triangle of sadness, and I guess, like, skip ahead about two minutes, if you want to avoid spoilers for triangle of sadness.

But the whole time I was watching Send Help the first time, I was like, I've already. seen this movie and this and its triangle of sadness in the sense that the main characters include a man who has a set of qualities that a like western capitalist society values and a woman whose qualities are not nearly as valued by said society then they are stranded on a tropical island and suddenly the women's qualities and skills are necessary for for survival and the man has no wilderness survival skills. So the dynamic between them significantly shifts where the woman now holds all the power. And then also that it turns out the uninhabited island is actually inhabited.

And then some murders happen along the way, partly because the woman doesn't want to give up her power and go back to her life where she was undervalued, which is basically the premise of both movies. Yes. But I will say that where Send Help, I mean, I like Send Help because I think what it has going for it is, like, way more broadly comedic than Triangle of Sadness. Definitely a different

tone. And that it is, like, firmly centered on Linda, where Triangle of Sadness is more of a, like, I mean, I forget the name of the character who she becomes very important, but she's not like the protagonist. For sure. Yeah, it's more ensemble cast-vised.

Yeah, but there are a lot. I mean, it is, if you've seen both movies, it is a very, like, similar, similar to the back half of that movie. And I think does a lot of what this movie does a little more. I think it was just like a little less afraid of some of the themes. I think this movie is, this movie is very, and then we'll take a break and talk about what happens in the movie. But my, my, as I was rewatching it for the show and not just for fun, what was sticking out to me was like, it for a very long time. It was like, it seems like the story was afraid to let Linda do something, like morally bad. Like, they hold out so long, including like this movie is for starring two tremendously hot people stranded on an island, completely sexless.

We have to play by 30 Rock Rules where we're like, right, Rachel McAdams is fugly. I hate to see her coming. She's certainly not one of our most beautiful people. Sure, fine. movies will ask us to do this and we have we have to we have to comply but yeah I don't know there were like a few themes that they do address in triangle of sadness sex does become part of the equation in a in an icky way in triangle of sadness and the way that power has explored just feels a little less like ooh we're not gonna you know we'll deal with the violence around this plot but we won't deal with sex or desire or anything like that which I thought was

like just kind of weird. And then the good for her ending is something we've seen many, many, many times at this point. But we'll get there. We'll get there. Should we take a quick break? Let's do it. Get Bell, Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped. and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important, your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

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too much, you're in the right place. Listen to pro society on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people. And they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're

sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And here is the recap of Send Help. We meet Linda Little, played by Rachel McAdams. She's...

She's ugly. She's hideous. Ugly, ugly. Her hair is greasy. And the first moment she came in, I was like, I'm calling now. Her hair is going to be less greasy on the desert island than it is in her office. And that was true. We're right.

I do. I'm like, I want to give the movie a pass. on the like the two main characters are such stock characters that you kind of just have to roll with it. But the fact that they go out of their way later for Rachel McAdams to realize she's beautiful actually when she looks at her reflection. I'm like, all right. She literally takes her glasses off. You know, two very broad gendered types are appearing in this movie. Yeah, she takes her glasses off, lets her hair down. She's all that style and suddenly she's gorgeous. But it's also in that like the island makes her hotter?

This is where, okay, this is where I kind of got into like Lost vibes. And I'm like, ooh, I love it. There's, there are similarities between the character of Linda Little and the character of John Locke on Lost in that she really comes alive when hunting boar. And everyone's like, what the hell? Why, how are they hunting boar? And magical properties on the island making it so that you don't need glasses and or don't have cancer anymore.

It's kind of lost vibes. Yeah. That's so true. I really appreciate the costume designer who figured out what she should be wearing to look like she was frumpy in an office that would then turn into an outfit that looked cool on a desert island. Yes. Right.

Yes. As she gradually took the layers off. Like that is some costume design. By the end, she's in a, she's like washboard abs in a crop top. And you're like, why the hell not? Why the hell not? Yes. This, this, the ugliest woman at work.

Right. So this is her character. Her hair and her clothes are unkempt. She's like socially awkward and generally eating tuna. It's stuck to her face. And she works in this office surrounded by a bunch of like dude bros and everyone is undermining her at work. We also learn that she is obsessed with the show Survivor and with like survival stuff in. general, where she has all of these books on how to survive in the wilderness, and there's all these pictures of her camping or otherwise outside doing something in the wilderness. So back at work, when the boss's son, Bradley Preston, played by Dylan O'Brien, takes over the company for his dad, Bradley gives the promotion to VP that his father had promised to Linda. he gives it to this guy named Donovan instead, who's another like fratbro guy who had taken credit for this big report that Linda had prepared and he takes all the credit for her work.

Linda confronts Bradley about not getting the promotion and he basically says that she is not likable enough to get the job and that she eats too much stinky tuna. Yeah. But he does invite her along to this meeting about the. Bangkok merger. It seems like she is the only person. I mean, whatever. The movie does go way out of its way to show that like she obviously is the person for the job.

She is the only person that seems to have cracked how this merger could take place. Who knows how that hell that shit works. This is the first of many times. I don't know why. It didn't bug me when I was just like watching it in the theater. But both, both lead characters in this movie are so frustratingly gullible. at every turn. Linda is like, yeah, when you work at a company for seven years, they then treat you well.

I'm like, what year is it, Linda? Wake up. And then later, when these two just are obsessed with accepting food from each other, I'm like, guys, guys, we have to stop accepting food from each other. Anyways. Yeah, there are two back-to-back scenes where they poison each other, but we'll get there. There's there is parody in in gullible decision making here. Right. Yeah.

Okay. So Linda, Bradley, that guy, Donovan, a couple of other of like Bradley's bro buddies, board a private jet to Thailand. And on the plane, the men find Linda's audition tape for Survivor in which she's talking about how she knows how to survive in the wilderness and she knows all of the that you can make fire and has all these other skills. But the guys are laughing at her, and so she's humiliated. God, it's such a good audition tape, though.

She's like, she's like scaling playgrounds, like doing ridiculous. It's so good. It would get her on the show. I know. I thought they were coming. I also am like, how dare you make fun of someone's survivor audition tape? That is a grand tradition. Well, yeah, because Blair, you, you, you.

been on survival shows before. So it's like if you if you approve it's good. Well, I don't know. I never had an audition tape. I was recruited. But I mean, it's just going to be ridiculous. You're just like, they're going to make me look ridiculous. That's that's what you sign up for. It's it's the game. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of like I-movie transitions, silly like wipes and stuff between shots. But the point is, we know she has survival skills. And that's about to be very important because what happens next is they hit some very violent turbulence. And then the plane starts like imploding. And the door rips off. Several of the guys are sucked out of the plane. It's a very Sam Ramey way to crash a plane. Oh, yeah. Yes.

lots of like gory violence happening along the way. So Donovan, the guy who was going to get the VP job over her, dies like gruesomely. Yes. And I was watching this yesterday with my family. My kid's grandma, my mother-in-law is watching this. And she just shakes her head. She goes, Linda, you shouldn't have come on the trip. You'd be VP right now.

That's so true. Oh, my God. Yeah. She could have, I mean, she could have been. CEO. I mean, because Dylan O'Brien would not have made it out without her. They're all dead now. He would have been dead in five seconds. I also loved that even in the middle of that like gruesome great plane crash there are like character moments for both of our weird little guys where you know, Bradley is like get the fuck away from me like immediately just like tosses his best friend's question mark off a plane.

and Linda is like ultimately does choose to like save herself but also like thinks about it for a second. Take it's if it's sad is not necessarily thrilled that they're getting sucked into the ether, which feels she does try to help the men who are being sucked out of the plane. But then when she realizes that they're going to like sacrifice her for their safety, she's like never mind. Fuck you guys. Exactly. Yeah. But I just, I liked that that sets up their vibes on the island quite well. Until the movie gets confused about the Linda character and then sort of,

wait, no, actually Linda is a murderer. At the end, at the end, there's, Linda sort of like jigsaw. And you're like, what? There is, they, she does kind of go jigsaw. And you're like, wait, this was her little game. I don't know if that makes sense, given the movie I just watched. but whatever. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it.

Anyway, the plane crash lands in the ocean near a remote uninhabited island. Or is it? Or is it? The only survivors are Linda and her boss Bradley, who wash ashore on the island. Bradley's leg is injured and he's unconscious at first. So Linda gets to work on using all of her survival skills. to build a shelter from the raw materials on the island, as well as to collect rainwater for them to drink.

The next day, Bradley wakes up. He is so sad that all of his broskies have perished. But Linda seems excited to be there. She's kind of living out her dream of being on Survivor. she builds a fire, she catches and roasts some fish, which Bradley very reluctantly eats, because as we recall, he hates the smell and taste of fish. And he is still repulsed by Linda, and he is still undermining her and not appreciating all that she has done to keep them alive so far.

So she leaves him stranded on the beach all day and night to show him that the power dynamic has shifted. They're not in the office anymore. He is no longer her boss, but he is completely reliant on her for survival. And she now holds all of the power in this situation. I love this. Like, it's, I think my favorite choice in the movie, because I do feel like it kind of goes off the rails towards the end. And it just feels so like Linda in like the ways that I personally love Linda that like she is undercut. She is treated like an employee.

And she's like, okay, I'm not going to kill you, but I'm going to do something that forces you to acknowledge my value. And it's like, you know, women shouldn't have to do that. But she did what she had to do. Yes. And of course he didn't learn his lesson. Mm-mm. No. She's here's okay.

Ultimately. and we're going to get to it soon, but I'm just, I'm still, I forgot how strongly I felt this when we left the movie the first time and how strongly I feel it now. Why couldn't she just have cut his dick off? Why can't we just let her cut his dick off? Why is it have to be a rat?

Why are we doing the hard candy thing? Just cut his dick up. Come on. Tell me about it. We paid $20 to see this. And it's a rat? Come on. I agree.

Anyways. I agree. Anyway. You know, two men wrote it. So they're like, this rat. Well, no dude could never be cut off. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So the power dynamic has shifted. Then she hunts a wild boar for them to eat. The boar puts up a fight and there's some classic Sam Ramey gore and blood splatter. The scene is awesome. It's really fun. And then she manages to kill the boar. because again, she is thriving in this environment.

And this is also when she starts to get hotter. Her hair and her skin look better. Again, she's like figuring out how to wear her clothes to make it so that they're more flattering. But I mean, speaking to your point, Blair, I feel like, yeah, this is like the sequence where she's becoming, like, she's not conquering nature in the way that like men's stories tend to go. But she's like becoming one with nature. And like... Right. And he accuses her of being Susie Homemaker, which I just, that cracked me up. Because if Bear Grills was doing the things, she was doing...

People like, oh my God, you're so cool. I can't believe you know how to do this stuff. You're so valuable. But it's... Okay, so like, I mean, this is something when I've been researching real survival stories. Like, a lot of times women in real, quote-unquote, real survival situations will, like, go out of their way to make things beautiful. And men too. Like they will make things beautiful. We need beauty to survive. And so like these like arrays of fish that look like you'd get them in a fancy sushi restaurant with flowers or like cups of flowers on the table or things that are decorated and pretty.

That's a very realistic thing for people to do when they're stranded on a desert island. But for him, he's like not seeing that as life affirming. He's just completely dismissive of everything she's doing. Not even just the like making things aesthetically pleasing, but also just her like gathering water and food for them. He's like, this is a fucking wasted time. You should be sending out a distress signal, blah, blah, blah. And she's like, um, I'm feeding us. I'm keeping us alive. Like, what are you talking about? She's making a fire plow. Do you know how hard it is to make fire with a fire plow? I can only imagine. It's basically impossible. It's basically impossible to do. And she just is like casually, like she just has all of these skills. I was I was so curious, yeah, from your perspective,

because I do you've, like, you've done it yourself, you've studied so many survival stories. Does this feel plausible? Like, the way that it, okay. No, I mean, yes and no. Like, I thought it was very interesting. Like, clearly someone writing the script. or someone doing the set design, like, has really researched. There's these little details, like, when it starts raining and she's, like, cover the fire. Because it is so hard to get a coal. As long as you have a coal, you can rebuild a fire from a single coal, but it takes so much labor to get that coal. That once you have a fire going, your goal is to, like, always keep a hot coal in it 24-7 for, like, months at a time.

So I'm like, that detail, it starts raining, and she's, like, cover the fire with leaves. Like people aren't going to catch that, but that is like deep into understanding of what it would actually take to be on a desert island. Nice. And then there's these other moments like the spear that she uses to hunt the boar is fire hardened at the tip. Oh, okay. So like the end is black, which means that she like in between sharpening it was hardening the wood over coals. So it would become much harder and be able to pierce the boar's skin. And so you have this like sharpened piece of wood.

but it's very black at the end because of this like painstaking process of blackening it. And I was just like, oh, somebody did that. Somebody who made this movie. Like, I see you. And not to be like to, I personally have made a fire-hardened spear and hunted a boy with it. Whoa. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

This is not surprising to hear. I was like, oh my God, Linda. Like, I see you girl. I know how many days it took to make that spear. Have you also stabbed out the boar's eyeball? No, no, the boar actually had like left its home and I did not succeed. But, and like, yeah, you can't like then at the end when the boar like impales itself and that's the way she kills it, that's what you got to do because you're not strong enough to impale it. But if its force is coming toward you and you have the spear toward it.

So like a really good way to impale a boar actually is if you can like find its den and then really deeply bury a spear outside it so it's pointing toward the opening and it has to be a fire-hardened sphere and then smoke it out so it comes out running. Wow, good to know. Thank you. Any other survival tips you would like to share on this episode by all means? So I was like nerding out over these. Like there were some things that were so unrealistic and some things that were so like inside baseball and I was really enjoying those moments. That's so cool. I was I couldn't find an answer for this.

I was looking to see if they had like a survivalist consultant on this project. They did. And they ignored them at times, but they definitely was a consultant. Okay. It comes through. That's so fascinating. Yeah, because I guess it's I I don't know. I guess well now we're, I'm totally derailing. But is there a movie that feels like is there a movie that is like thought of by survivalist to be the closest to an authentic experience? I don't know, actually. I haven't seen all the movies, and I also, I'm not part of a survivalist culture. I'm just an independent enthusiast. I mean, that does actually kind of make sense, given the whole thing. So I think that there's probably a lot of communal wisdom among survivalists that I am not privy to because I'm just sort of like

at home reading books. Survivalists sound like. Or like going. out in the woods. It's like people just go out in the woods on their own. I don't know if they really commune. There's conferences, I guess. I've never been to one. I guess that it is kind of a, it is a solo solo thing. That's kind of the point. But that's that's so interesting that. I mean, I'm glad that they had a consultant. I'm sure that that's like where those authentic details come from. And I guess we can also tell the moments where they were like, well, this needs to happen in the script. So back to the story. tropical island survivalism is really working out for Linda.

She's thriving. The island has given her a makeover somehow. And then she sees a little boat by the shore. And she's about to flag it down because it seems like, oh, they're saved. But then she says, hmm, no, not yet. It seems like she wants to ride out this like power trip that she's on a bit longer. It has already been two weeks. Bradley is very frustrated that they have not been found and rescued yet.

Yes. While contributing nothing at all. Nothing. Yeah. His idea is to build a raft and try to sail out to sea on it in the hopes that they'll find a boat or a shipping route or something like that. But Linda is like, no, no, no, we need to stay on the island. This iconically also happens in Lost and it also iconically does not work. fails. Yes. Walt burns it. Oh my gosh. Wow. I forgot. Memba Walt. Anyway,

kind of. Anyway, Linda shuts down Bradley's idea about the raft. So he is furious and he fires her and then goes off and tries to build his own camp in a montage that is so funny because he's terrible at it. He's actually average or good at it, I would say. Oh, okay. Say more. Say more. Compared to Linda. These things that she's making look easy are so hard to do, actually.

I mean, there's some ways he's like, except, like, he can't, like, lean a stick against a tree trunk. He, like, struggles to do that. But, like, he's not cartoonishly bad. He's actually just sort of how a lot of people would do. Like, he can't make fire with a fireplow. No one can make fire with a fireplow. Like, no one can. It's a waste of energy. Don't even try.

Use a bow drill if you must. But like, he's actually just very realistic. He's not even cartoonishly bad. I mean, right. I think about what I would do if I were in this situation. And I would not accomplish anything. Yeah. So I would die, I think.

I would die pretty immediately. But compared to Linda, I guess is the point. He does not seem very good at it because she seems exceptional at these skills. Yeah. I do appreciate you're saying that this is probably just what an average person would do, though, because it's great. Like, she's just watching him. Like, that was one of the most enjoyable scenes. She's watching him.

She's, like, crafting baskets and sun hats and a hammock. Because the humor isn't, like, that he's bad at it. The humor is that he doesn't recognize that she's so good at it. So he sees her doing things well and then presumes, instead of presuming she's very good at this, he presumes, he presumes it must be easy. It must be easy. And then he fails miserably. That's very funny. Yes. I do like with Bradley consistently, because both of these characters are so broad. These are stock characters we have seen before in a new situation. But that like consistently he, like part of his part of the reason that he almost dies so many times, like on his own,

is because he is like freakishly incurious about his surroundings. And he, He refuses to treat Linda as a peer. He would rather do almost anything, including incurring significant physical pain before he will treat Linda as someone deserving of respect and not as an employee, which definitely works well in the story. For sure.

And then he eventually gives up, although his last ditch effort is to write out help on the beach using a bunch of leaves and sticks, but he misspells it and writes out heppel. And then Bradley gives up. He unfires Linda. He apologizes for how he has treated her and underestimated her. He begs her to let him come back to her camp.

And she eventually agrees and shares her lunch with him. She has made this lovely spread of sushi and flowers and fruit. And meanwhile, his leg. has healed a lot. So Linda takes Bradley on a walk through the wilderness up a mountain, and then she shows him a spot on the other side of the island where two rocks are like criss-crossed to look like an X. And she says, don't go to that part of the island. It's all poison vines and thorn bushes. And then on their way back, Linda almost falls off a cliff where this like loose bit of ground falls out from under her.

But Bradley saves her. But we'll put a pin in that because that's like Chekhov's loose ground on the cliff. And then back at the camp, they get drunk off of fermented fruit alcohol that she made. They share their backstories where Bradley says that his parents were distant and abusive. and maybe that's why he's the way he is now. Linda tells him that she was married before, but her husband, who was also abusive, died in a car accident because she let him get behind the wheel when he was drunk.

And then she also is like, I love it here. I never want to leave the island, sweetie. And we're like, oh, some things happening there. The next day, a violent storm hits the island, so they head inland to a cave. They're all cold and wet, and they huddle together for body heat. And again, it seems like there's a vibe shift where maybe something romantic is going to happen between them. And then they make a plan to rebuild their camp that washed away in the storm together, almost like they're a couple.

Or their mother and son. Like that's sort of the dynamic that is being, I think, sort of played around with in this. And I felt like, I don't know if I'm like pro or con. I'm saying this neutrally. It felt like at some point the movie kind of like wouldn't make up its mind about which direction they wanted this dynamic to go in or like how exactly the characters were feeling about it. This is, but maybe this is just me comparing it to triangle of a sadness, which makes a hard. decision where the woman in triangle of sadness, I have to just look up the character name, the woman who was previously an employee on the cruise ship and then, you know, is the only person

with survival knowledge basically takes the hot guy, like breaks up a couple and says like, okay, hot guy, you're going to live with me now and we're going to have sex and you will be protected by me in sort of exchange for this arrangement. And so, you know, Triangle of Sadness does not shy away from explicitly sexual dynamics that develop in this survivalist community. But I mean, in Send Help, there's only two of them. And so, I don't know. I guess I don't have like, I didn't want something to happen. It just felt like the movie was like ignoring what felt like clear dynamics.

I don't know. What do we think? What do we think? It feels messy to me because it feels, it seems like it's hinting that. that Linda is attracted to Bradley. She might potentially be romantically interested in him. But then it kind of walks that back different times, but then it happens again at the very end,

which we'll talk about in a scene that was very frustrating to me when they're like professing their love for each other. But yeah, to me it just feels like quite messy and that the movie doesn't really know what's going on and that it describes, it's like ascribing frustrating qualities to the woman character, like the single unmarried woman character. Yeah.

We'll talk more about it. We'll deconstruct those. But yeah, I guess it was like I, the actors have, I thought, like really great chemistry and could have got like committed to either direction of the like weird, like the messy dynamic of like she is acting basically in a maternal capacity to them, but there does seem to be some sort of attraction.

But the movie just sort of is like, Shrug. Anyways, anyways. But she's acting in a maternal capacity, but also an abusive capacity. Right. It presumes always that like, I feel like the presumption here is like if a woman has more power than a man,

she will be abusive with that too. Yeah. Right. Like that's sort of the logic within the film. Which is fair. I mean, the concept of like absolute power corrupts absolutely is like not gender specific. Right. It's not like Bradley would have done more with like better by that power if he had the ability to hold it.

But I also, I mean, I feel like we're given some. And now I'm like maybe there are like layers to it I haven't considered. I'm not sure where the information we're given about the two of them in the toilet wine scene is like really interesting because like we're told that Bradley like speaking to like what we were just saying Blair like she is acting as a caretaker but an abusive caretaker and that is Bradley's background is he grew up with abusive caretakers but I feel like that doesn't if that's meant to come out in their dynamic I feel like it was like it could have maybe been clearer and then Linda's story is like wildly charged of like I guess I wasn't I wasn't sure with her character if this is like

because she was also abused and then knew that her husband was going to be you know risking his and other safety and you know whatever that's a whole ethical mire that this movie's not equipped to handle and that's fine but I don't know like it felt like that was such a like specific intense piece of information. And I don't know if she feels a type of way about it. I don't know if she really feels remorse about it. And then it kind of just like this, we learn that kind of right before she like quote unquote goes off the deep end in terms of like violence and grabbing it everything to make sure that they stay on the island. And yeah, I don't I don't know. I really liked that scene of them opening up and then I feel like ultimately they didn't really do too much with the revelations

because like if the revelations are meant to say here are these two stock characters but they're actually way more nuanced than you thought but then they kind of just go back to acting like the stock characters for the rest of the movie I found her backgrounds I read it as having explanatory power for her being a survival buff right like her husbands of a decade is abusive, was abusive. So her home was a site of survival and a way to deal with that is to become obsessed with like survival as a sort of isolated concept and prove to yourself that it's something you can tolerate. Yeah. I mean, one of my big theories about survival in general is that like wilderness survival is not a separate category from other survival in life. It's just sort of

like a distilled version of all the survival challenges we have that allow us to sort of look at it head on. And so, I don't know, I just interpreted when she's talking about that, I was like, oh, that's why she got into survival is because it's something that she was doing on a daily basis in her household. So, like, her response to trauma is partly reflected in the fact that, like, all of her bookshelves are like, that we see in her apartment early on are like, how do you survive when, a situation in which it's very hard to do. How to survive and how to talk to your bird. Yeah, exactly. Like, like, like, to. me that felt linked.

Yeah. Implicitly linked in her character. That makes a lot of sense. I hadn't thought about it from that angle, but that absolutely makes complete sense. Yeah. Linda is so, there's so much there. I guess I just get frustrated with where the story lands for her, because it feels like kind of a contrived ending to like this very nuanced, or this like deceptively nuanced character.

Yeah. I agree. Interesting. Yeah. In any case, Linda and Bradley are now working together to build a new shelter. They seem to be on decent terms at the moment. And also, Linda has a knife that she has been using for different things that she said had washed up on shore. But she used the one with a knife. She never lets Bradley use it. Which unfortunately, I feel like the reveal later kind of stands to kind of undercut a lot of what it seems like Linda, like these amazing things Linda is doing as a survivalist. The ending causes you to be like, well, she kind of wasn't doing a lot of that, was she? But we'll get there. A little bit, but we do see her in the very first sequence where she's like building the initial shelter. The initial stuff is all her. bashes a rock to like create a jagged like piece of a rock and then we see she kills that boar and she

kills the bore and also like I mean correct me if I'm wrong Blair but survivalists like they have tools right such as knives and other things yeah like if someone is in a shipwreck or a plane goes down they often have the contents of the entire ship right but that doesn't mean they're not don't have to be extremely creative because they can't get out and they have to take the tool as they have and use them in every way possible to meet every one of their needs. Like to me, that didn't diminish her survival skills at all. Totally, totally. I could have a well-stocked kitchen, and I would still die in the wilderness.

Okay. So Bradley then offers to make Linda dinner the following night. Again, the vibes are unclear. You could read this as like, are they on a date? She's got a flower. She's got a flower in her hair. That's all we know. It seems like she thinks it's a date.

That's all we know. But then she starts to feel very woozy. And it turns out that he has poisoned her. And when she becomes incapacitated, he gets on a raft that he secretly built and tries to escape. But his raft almost immediately breaks apart. And then Linda, who is still alive, saves him. But she's also like barfing on his face.

from that was the worst big old Sam Ramey bar the worst scene I couldn't I couldn't watch but classic Sam Ramey yeah and then and then the next day to retaliate she poisons him

with an octopus that she had caught that contains like neurotoxins that paralyze him and while he's unable to move she pulls out her knife and acts like she's castrating him.

But just kidding, she was slicing a dead rat. But she, like, threatens him that the next time she will chop off his nuts. Which is actually not true, because the next time she has the opportunity to physically harm him,

there's no bullets in the gun. So I just am like, let Linda kill this guy. Why are we putting all of these narrative ideas away? But, and again, maybe this is just like a scene in this movie that, I think is like pulled from almost like copy pasted from a better movie which is like this is the scene from hard candy where Elliott page says that Patrick Wilson is being castrated but in fact that's not the case and it is I mean it's super effective but like this I don't think send help is

doing anything really new with that scenario yeah I don't know maybe just as a hard candy head I was like hey, you can't fucking do that. You can't do that. You can't do that. And also just cut off his balls. He like poisoned you and was about to abandon you. Right. Chop his dick off.

There's this, there's this dynamic between the two of them where it's like, you get the feeling that she, she wants him to do better or like wants to believe he's capable of better. But like there's no evidence to really support that. So I don't, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I'm just a sadist. And I think like, but. But if this movie is like supposed to be a like a woman who has been mistreated and ignored in her place of work getting the greatest revenge opportunity of all time, I think I'm like, just let her have it.

Let her do it. Why does she have to show him mercy this deep into the movie? But, you know, cynically, I'm like, well, two men wrote it. So that's why. But who knows? I don't know. Yeah. I wish they just let her have it.

I agree. anyway, a little later, when Linda is off gathering fruits, another boat approaches with Bradley's fiancée, Zuri, played by Edel Ismail, who has been looking for Bradley this whole time, but not wanting to give up her position of power, Linda leads Zuri and the boat captain along the treacherous path on the cliffside where Linda almost fell and died earlier. And it seems like Zuri and the boat captain maybe also die. But we kind of cut away to Linda returning to the camp being very depressed, perhaps from the murders that she may or may not have just committed.

She has a nightmare about it. And then the next day, Bradley finds Zuri's body, mostly buried in the sand. And so he confronts Linda about killing Zuri. And they start fighting and they're strangling each other and they're ripping bits off of each other. And he pokes out Linda's eye and she stabs him with her knife and again, more classic Sam Ramey violence. And then Bradley escapes toward the part of the island with all of the poison, vines and thorns, except just kidding, that's actually where this like luxury beach house is located.

And he breaks in. Linda follows him inside and then like gets on the intercom and reveals that she has been coming to this beach house for a while. This is where she got the knife. And then we also get a flashback here that confirms that she definitely murdered Zuri and the boat captain. So she's like gone off the rails, basically. She finds Bradley, pulls a gun on him.

He begs for mercy and says that she's the most incredible person he's ever met. He wants to build a life together here on the island because he loves her. And she's like, exactly, let's do it. I love you too. But he was lying and he attacks her again. though she gets the upper hand and finally kills him. With a golf club. Golf club to the head.

Which is like, ooh, great, great writing moment. Wow. The instrument of her oppression. Yeah. Men golfing. Yes. And then we smash cut to Linda golfing like a year later because she has been rescued and she's a celebrity now.

She has turned her survival story into a best-selling book that's being adapted into a movie. And then the movie Send Help ends with Linda breaking the fourth wall several times. Yeah. And saying something like no help is coming. So you have to learn

how to help yourself. The end. So let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave Netflix and Disney Plus. From $94 a month, price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything.

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And we're back. Yeah, Blair, I'm so curious what your impression of this movie is, what was on your mind as you were watching. Like, what was jumping out to you? I'm not a horror movie person. So I partly was just like, oh my God, I can't handle, like, vomiting out. someone's face. I'm squeamish about that kind of thing. But I was very excited about the survival story. And I wanted to root for Linda Moore. Like, that was very frustrating to me. I think I'm just too squeamish to, like, let go and just be like, this is a revenge fantasy. And I was just like,

like, I was almost rooting. Oh, I was almost rooting for Bradley when he's like taking, taking the raft off the island. I'm like, I don't know, man, you're a prisoner. Like, you suck. But, like, that doesn't mean you deserve to be, like, kept prisoner. Like, go be a shitty person somewhere else, I guess. Like, I couldn't quite separate, just watching it. Like, I had trouble, trouble separating her behavior. Like, I just couldn't, like, I couldn't suspend disbelief enough to, like, take her behavior as cathartic revenge and separate it from the fact that it just is like super abusive to trap someone on a desert island when they like might die of an infection and so I wanted him I was frustrated because I wanted him to be even more

hateable and her to be even more likable so that I could sort of let go and enjoy the revenge fantasy what could I'm so curious like what what could have gotten you there because that makes total sense I mean he's bad he's very bad like I don't know I don't know I don't No, like it might just be like I was too literal in watching it, maybe. No, no, I know what you mean. I tend to feel the same way where, and I think this has to do with like some strange writing choices and like inconsistency with Linda's character because she starts out as someone who obviously she's frustrated with being undermined and underappreciated at work

and all of these men are taking credit for her labor and just being awful to her, like mocking her for the way she looks and all this stuff. And so it's not hard to empathize with her initially. And then even later on, like in the, toward the middle of the story, there's a moment where it seems like Bradley is starting to realize that he is utterly dependent on her for survival and that that's something he needs to acknowledge and appreciate,

or at least he's saying that he does, whether or not he actually feels it. It's like he never fully does, but also like you're saying, Blair, that doesn't justify. I mean, it is like a fully mutually abusive dynamic that they're in, but she's the one with more power. Yeah, right, right, right. But there's this moment toward the middle where, again, Bradley is like, okay, like, I do need. this other person to survive for the time being. It's after that montage where he's like trying to build his own shelter and he is not very successful. So he kind of comes crawling back and asks if he can stay with her at her camp. And she responds with, well, that depends on like what you're willing to do or how

far you're willing to go, implying that she's asking for sexual favors, which is a reference to earlier when they were still in the office when he was interviewing like a pretty young potential assistant and he asked her how far she was willing to go for him again implying I'm expecting sexual favors from that young woman and then Bradley starts to unbuckle his pants and then Linda is like oh no I was just kidding like I would never do that I'm not like you so it feels like Like, she has been established as someone who, even though she's undermined, she's underappreciated, and she resents that, which of course, anyone would, she's not going to abuse the power that she has, at least in this capacity. But then she proceeds to like- Super changes.

Yeah, she proceeds to start to abuse it pretty significantly. And then it gets really violent and she's killing people. She's killing Zuri and this boat captain. And so like, I don't know. It just feels like her character is written to be like quite inconsistent. And I could never really get a handle on what's going on with her. And then we get that reveal that she had maybe murdered her husband or at least allowed him to die or enabled him to die. And we also don't know if she's being honest about that.

I also think that the dynamic around, okay, I guess not to like go in too hard on the writers, but like I do feel like especially in the like including dynamics of abuse and background of abuse, parental abuse and spousal abuse on both. Like I think that the movie is just like not equipped to handle having introduced those topics. Yeah. Because I think that like I think especially on Linda's end where we are given like, pretty specific detail on the fact that she was thoroughly abused by her husband who is an alcoholic. And I do feel like the way that it's written and that information is delivered, that it's delivered

as if she is a murderer, which to be opens up this whole like that like this is the key to like, oh, she's quote unquote psycho. It would be quote unquote psycho to do that. And it's like, is that a morally amazing decision to make, no, but to me, mainly because drunk drivers hurt innocent people. Right. But that's more of the issue from my standpoint than like this abuse. Like this happens all the time of someone who's been abused reaching a breaking point. And it's like from what we see in this movie and also just sort of like the other movies that these, this pair of writers have written, they're out of Friday versus

Jason movie, they've written a lot of franchise movies. I just am not seeing much to go on that like this is the writing team to try to put a spousal abuse plot point in late in the movie. And the fact that like shortly after that information has introduced, she she goes off the deep end. And that information is sort of all like mixed in. I felt like we were given like that, I don't know, it's after that scene that the movie really starts to lose me. because I think up until that point, we're given these stock characters and then kind of stripping away, like, well, who are they really? What are their backgrounds? Like how is this power dynamic going to shift? But then it turns into something far more like conventional at the end. And it's like a conventional, like I don't mind watching a woman go off the deep end and kill a bunch of people. Great. This is a movie I have watched many times and I will watch many more times. times. But like, I don't know. Yeah, that was like that scene in particular, I think it's a good scene, but it just like quickly after that, it just don't think that the movie is able to like handle

the intensity of the themes they're presenting. And then they're like, she's actually cuckoo crazy now and she is like an unrepentant murderer, which I think is a very, it's definitely a choice after learning that there was this, that she was abused. to then have her, you know, begin to act severely, like, less moral than she did before we knew she was abused. I just, I don't know. Interesting. It bugged me.

Yeah. And it, I mean, it made me think, like, are we even supposed to believe she was abused? Necessary? Like, are we supposed to think maybe she's lying about this to justify that she got mad and maybe or maybe didn't kill her husband? Like, it, I wasn't even sure sort of within the world of the film what, whether we were supposed to believe it or not. yeah okay because there's like that other moment in that scene too where again I'm like this is so

interesting if only it were going anywhere where like Bradley is talking about how he was emotionally neglected and physically abused by his mother and it sounds like emotionally neglected by both of his parents but that he he knew that his mother had been abused and so he tried to not hold like quote quote hold it against her too much. And then they have that like conversation that you're like, this is really interesting where she's like, oh, so that's why like you feel okay about the fact that you're a monster because you come by it honestly. And he's like, yeah, I guess that is how I feel.

And like that's such an interesting conversation. But I don't know. Maybe maybe I'm like over and underthinking it about like the consequences that that conversation has. I think it just like these two characters, it seems like they're punishing each other. for having been vulnerable with one another, which is interesting. It's like, now you know my secret and so you must die. But it doesn't feel like that's exactly what's going on either.

I guess I just don't know what's going on by the end, like where the characters are at emotionally. The back-to-back poisonings I found like kind of bizarre and frustrating because you're like, why are we accepting food from each other 24 hours later? At what point do you just say like, no, I'll catch my own fish. Right. Like she can hunt a boar. I don't think she needs his tapas, but whatever.

I don't know. Yeah, I also did find Linda a strong character to establish, but it just felt like the movie didn't know what to do with her by the end, which I feel like I would love to talk about good for her endings in movies because we've covered a lot of them.

They are not exclusively written by men. There are plenty of good for. for her endings to popular movies that some work for me, some don't. I think maybe one of the more famous ones that does work for me is a gone girl, right? Like that's an iconic good for her ending. Gillian Flynn's a genius. There are also good for her endings that do not work for me, like such as promising young woman, Emerald Fennell, and the ending to that movie is a fucking mess.

But there is, I feel like, and I'm like, maybe. be being conspiratorial, but when men write this ending, it feels like they just didn't know how to end the movie in a more thoughtful way. Because we have, and again, some work for me, some don't, but we have, I have like a list of them, and they're almost all by men, the Vavich by Robert Eggers, Mid-Somar by Ari Aster, ready or not by, I forget who it is, but it's a guy. there's Carrie Heathers

Like the list goes Knives out Knives out Last night And soho apparently I don't know that I did not see it But I want to talk more about this on the

Well we talk about this on the show all the time But like specifically when men are trying to write A story that is empowering to women I feel like there's like a series of Patterns that I noticed that I'm like Well I don't know that that's what I don't, it doesn't quite, it's just like a little uncanny valley the way it lands.

And to me, the way that this movie just like cuts to and she's famous now and everything's fine and she's winking at the camera. She has, her personality is completely different than it was. Right. It's like not paying off on the character we met. We're basically being told like you've been watching like a completely amoral person this entire movie. and now we're happy for her. But part of what's so interesting about Linda

is that she chooses to save Bradley. She has a question of like she wants to help several times. Like yes, over and over. Like three, four, five times. Like it's, yeah, it happens a bunch. I don't know. Is there ever a good for him ending? I feel like most people.

Every move. It doesn't. It doesn't feel framed that way, though. because it's just like, well, of course, a man triumphing at the end of a movie, that's just how stories end. So it doesn't feel special or significant? I guess I'll clarify that. When I say a good for her ending, I don't just mean a movie that ends well for a woman. It means that she has generally been responsible for someone's death. And then it ends on usually the same shot, which is her smiling at the camera being like, I did what I had to do. Poor things. This also happens. Like there, it's, it is like very much something, I mean, it's always happened, like it happens, it wasn't invented recently, but it happens in movies a lot. I think especially post me to, if you are a male ator and you aren't quite sure what to do with your morally complicated female protagonist, this is how the movie tends to end. Like, yeah, she's been responsible for someone's death or has been responsible for violence or something. And she ends with like a little smirk. We should have a, we should make a super cut of this because it is like truly stunning how many times it's happened in the last 15 years.

I don't think it is like net bad or anything like that. But it is at this point, it's definitely like if you're going to do this at the end of your movie, you better have something new to say about it. And I just like this one doesn't really to me. And it feels out of step with. It feels like it's pushing the ending of a different character onto Linda. because I just don't buy this for Linda at all. I don't know. Well, the other thing that really flummoxed me was basically the climax where they're in the luxury

beach house about to kill each other. But then in an attempt to save his life because Linda has a gun pointed at him, Bradley makes this plea of like, no, no, no, no, actually, you're so awesome. you've taught me so much. I don't want to go back to my old life. I want to stay here on this island with you because I love you. And for some reason, she falls for that. And she's like, I love you too.

And then a moment later, she realizes that he has like procured a weapon that he's hiding. And then he lunges at her with it. Right. And then she finally kills him. But like, what was what the hell was that moment? I don't know why she seems to... I love you too. I believe you.

Well, I don't know why she seems to be realizing in this moment that he would kill her without hesitation because he has attempted to do so several times. But she seems so betrayed that she... I know. Because I'm assuming she knows there's no bullets in the gun. I don't actually know if that's true now that I'm saying it out loud. But it seems like she... At least to be, is like set up to be like, she's just trying to scare him the same way that

she only kills the rat. She doesn't actually... She's not actually going to do something horrible to him. She just wants to freak him out. And then when she says, oh, he wouldn't have hesitated to shoot me, which going back to what you were saying, Blair, if we're viewing this as, yeah, well, he's her captive. Like, it wouldn't actually be out of pocket for him to do. She's quite dangerous, even if he is a piece of shit. At this point, like, I don't, I don't know.

I'm glad Linda makes it because I like tuna sandwiches and sometimes struggle in conversations at work. So. Well, that's the thing. Like, I relate to her toward the beginning of the movie. Yeah. By the end, I'm like, like, and maybe that's the point. I don't know. Maybe.

And then to your point also, Blair, at the beginning of this episode, when you said, like, survival stories are either, like, you tame the wilderness or the wilderness makes you feral. It drives you mad. And it seems as though the wilderness in this case has, like, any, like, violent impulses, she may have had, it seems like being on this island really brings out in her. Or was she like that already? We don't really, I don't know. But this ending where she's like, oh, you love me?

I love you too. I feel like it's the movie, the men who made this movie being like, well, yeah, like she's this lonely old spinster, or at least that's who she's. She was in her previous life. So of course she's going to embrace a good-looking man who says that he loves her. Of course she's going to like fall for that. Regardless of how he has treated her in the past. I don't know if that's exactly what the implication is.

But like her doing this 180 and being so gullible that feels like it comes out of nowhere that it's like very inconsistent with her character. because yes, she is a bit gullible, but she's also not so naive that I feel like her in that moment would fall for what Bradley is saying. That just read to me as like her being unstable. Yeah. Which she sort of is established as being. Like, is she rational?

I don't think she is acting rationally. Not anymore. Right, right. It's very unclear on whether. I don't know. Like to me, I'm just like, oh, she's not, she hasn't been thinking clearly for a while, perhaps. That was how I read that.

I mean, from the moment she sees the boat and chooses not to. But again, I guess I read that as like, I'm still with Linda in that moment where, yes, at that point she is deciding to be keeping a prisoner versus, you know, your more traditional survivalist setup. So that is like the moment where she sort of starts to unravel. But at that point, I feel like it still makes sense with who we met at the beginning of the movie,

where she has been so demeaned, intentionally humiliated by this guy that I guess you're like, I felt in the beginning when she makes that decision, she's like, I'm just going to ride this out a little bit longer, just a little bit longer until she can get the VP job secured. and then, okay, I'll let him know, you know, we'll pretend to come across this together. It still felt like it was a part of a larger, like, not admirable, but like a plan that didn't feel completely amorally, like, I don't know, it's still kind of at least made sense to me. It didn't seem like someone who was losing their mind. It just seemed like someone who was making a very calculated, cruel decision.

Yeah, that makes sense. Actually, now that I think, like in the moment, I was just like, oh, she's sort of losing. her mind. But now that I think about it, they have established her early on as someone who will sort of take any crumb that could possibly be interpreted as romantic interest and just run with it, despite all evidence to the contrary. Like, she's like, oh, my God, this guy, we totally had this, like, chemistry and flirtation at the, you know, holiday party. Right. And it turns out he just, like said hi to her and she did that thing of being like someone spoke to me civilly and therefore like they have romantic interest in me and so to me her believing when he says you know he wants to make a

life with her at the end is consistent with that part of her character that we met early on where she's just sort of so like rationality goes to the side when she thinks that this particular person might possibly want to be with her. That is so fair. Although I think it's still kind of like a misogynist writing choice. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a cheap trick, but it's one that's deployed multiple times. Right.

The only way I feel like it gets out of making a misogynist writing choice there is if the person we meet at the beginning, who I think is falling into. And because you have Rachel McAdams, who is a genius playing her, like racial becomes i feel like is doing a ultimately kind of poorly constructed character justice and like you really feel for her but like on paper i'm like i see that uh guys named damien and mark wrote this character who is a woman who is middle-aged single and she is made out to be lonely coded, right? She's drinking too much. She's talking to her pet. What I'm quote, pathetic. Right. Yeah. And so it's like they're already presenting her as like unstable and basically delusional as it pertains to how she communicates with men with her career. I think that this also

weirdly like the fact that she thinks that Dylan O'Brien is flirting with her, which also doesn't work when you're like, why is it so implausible that Dylan O'Brien would flirt with Rachel McAdams? But whatever. Like you're like, what? Especially after the island makes her so hot. I know after the magical island makes her so fluckable. But like it's so, it's so ridiculous, but also in the way that she approaches her career. Like she's made to seem delusional that she would ever have an opportunity to get this job. And so it's like, okay, we're presented with that stock character. So by the end, has this character been, like, has this stock character been meaningly subverted? And I think the answer is no. I think the answer at the end is like she's,

she's still like out of touch with reality. She's still. She's still. and now it's just working out for her. Like, there's some stuff in the middle that feels interesting. I think the fact that, like, again, we'll go back to what we've been talking about the whole time, that Linda has a ton of agency. She has a ton of power. But I don't think that it's really bringing anything new to what is like an unhinged, lonely woman character.

At the end, she is like an amoral murderer. So I'm like, I, no, I've seen. this one. I don't think that this is like a feminist revenge plot really because the way that she ends up getting her revenge is like, I don't think she really does get revenge in the end. Like she ends up kind of killing him in self-defense after imprisoning him. Like it's too messy to be a revenge story. Right. And then the quote unquote empowerment that she experiences at the end is like, okay, now she's rich and famous because she exploited this story for personal gain in which she actively murdered several people and is obscuring that. And then she says to camera,

like, don't help anyone. No one's coming to help you. Be all by yourself and that's how you survive the end. And I'm like, well, that's not a good message to put out in the world. Yeah. Also, isn't it strange that they sort of introduce her early on as sort of a mathematical savant to explain why she's really good at her job and then drop it? Like, I was like, how is, how is being a number of savant going to come to play on this desert island? But it almost just is sort of included as a way of explaining why she's so gifted at her job without giving her credit for It's not like she's dedicated and works hard and smart. It's like, oh, she has this sort of savant skill that is almost a thing she's like born with,

not a thing she puts effort into. And that's like, oh, she's so good at her job, but it's not even like because of choices she makes. Like, she just happens to be, I don't know, it seems weirdly dismissive. Yeah. And it's like not really relevant to how the story ends up unfolding. Like, as far as I could tell it. It's like her survival, like, hobby that brings all of her skills to it.

Well, we're forgetting that she uses her number skills to memorize a four-digit number, which is the code to the luxury beach house. So it does pay off. Whoa. Okay. Is that the course? Is that the payoff? That's, I hadn't even connected that.

Yeah, that's absolutely true. Like, a lot of it, I don't know. Like, that's for this, I guess. going back to like calling this a plain movie, I think we're thinking harder about, this is the kind of movie we're thinking harder about than anyone who has ever watched it, including professional critics.

Like, but, but I did see this movie talked about as a feminist revenge tale. And I see a lot of movies with this specific ending marketed as a feminist revenge tale. And I think we're throwing that around too loose. I think that it's disrespectful to actual feminist revenge tales.

I think this is like, like a fun movie. And I think Linda, even though she's inconsistent and I think falls into a lot of tropes, I still like, I like, I like her character. I do. But I don't think that this falls into like feminist revenge canon.

Because I don't think she gets her revenge particularly feministically. And it is written in all these gendered tropes by two guys. So it feels to me like girl boss white feminism. Well, but that's the only setting that like male writers know how to write.

Exactly. Yeah. It's not good. I don't like these movies. For the most part. There's a few. There's like Boots Riley. But even he sometimes struggles with women.

It's just a mess. Right. To me, the tell that this is written by men attempting to sort of critique gender dynamics is the forms that the sexism takes very early on, which is so cartoonish. Yes. Like the men in the office are literally saying, let's go boys. and that took balls.

And in a way, sort of diminishing office sexism into these, like, cartoonish statements, I feel like is a way of letting men off the hook. Like, then people can be like, I would never say, I know better than to say that took balls to a woman in an office. So therefore, I can't be sexist or I can't be treating women differently than men because I wouldn't use that language. And it also just, I feel like the sexism I see and I hear about from women is never like, ah, someone said that took balls.

It's like much more nuanced and systemic and insidious. And protracted too. Right. The moment where Donovan steals her report that she worked so hard on and then passes it off as his work is like, I'm not saying that hasn't happened before throughout his. but it has become such a trope at this point that it's like it seems like it was the only thing that the writers could think of to demonstrate look how sexist this office environment is that linda has to put up with well it reminds me of it's like the the stock character we refer to and i'm surprised it hasn't come up

on this episode already but the like patriarchy the guy stock character which is who bradley is he is patriarchy, the guy, which can be fun if like meaningfully subverted, but like what doing that offers to male writers is a way of ignoring what you're describing, Blair, like how sexism affects people in the workplace in really specific situations. And there is this feeling around it of like, well, I can't be sexist because I don't use the top 10 sexist catchphrases that you see in movies. Right. Exactly. Where it's, yeah, I think another case of this movie biting off more than it can chew, because we are given like some insight into Bradley.

And Bradley is a prisoner. But the movie doesn't really know what to do with all of these things being true at once. It certainly doesn't know what to do with Zuri, which is like something that just feels worth mentioning that like because we have basically a two-hounder with two white characters that our only black character with any screen time is. rudely murdered. Not awesome. But also that, like, they don't know what to do with Zuri as a character, period. She is, like, fiancé. Like, there is nothing to her other than, I love Bradley.

Like, where's Bradley? Where's my fiancé? Oh, no. Those are her, the three things she does at the movie. I love Bradley. Where's Bradley? Ah! That's what she does.

And it just, like, there are opportunities to show more nuance with the gender dynamics in this movie that it just feels like kind of perhaps a skill issue. And also like when you have Sam Ramey jump scares and like all this like if you have someone who's like a really fun director making the world interesting to watch like it's maybe easier to get away with. But yeah, as far as like classifying this as a feminist revenge. It's just too much of a mess and not it's not saying really anything.

Like, again, I'm so cool with a woman being unhinged at the end. Like, there are feminist movies that end with a woman being unhinged. Yeah. This is just simply not one of them, I don't think. Right. Well, I mean, speaking to the Sam Ramey of it all, because his style is so distinct and because his movies are often very heightened, like, I can excuse a. series of stock characters or even like stock tropey sexism or just like kind of tropes in general

in something so stylized and heightened because that almost seems like an intentional part of the style but like to your point jamie i feel like it needs to then eventually be subverted or more nuance has to be sprinkled in or something else needs to happen. where there's active commentary or something. There is a moment where, and let me know what you both think of this, where it's the scene where Linda poisons Bradley and pretends like she's castrating him. And while she's doing that, she's giving this monologue where she says, you know, I know how hard this must be for you, not being in control.

You're not used to being in this, shall we say, submissive position. I mean, it's natural for you to not be able to take orders from me to have to depend on me for your survival. It's just natural. It's your biology. And I wasn't sure what she meant by that. Because is she talking about gender in the sense that like- Or she's talking about like NEPO. Right.

Is it? I think she's, and again, this is like a very binary gender approach to take. But I also think that this movie has a very binary approach to gender. I think she's talking about gender because she's allegedly cutting his dick off. Right, because if she is talking about gender, it seems like she's referring to the fact that, like, men tend to assume more dominant roles in society and women tend to assume more submissive roles. But that's not biology. That's socialization. But she's labeling it as biology.

So that's why I wasn't, I wasn't sure what she meant because she could be talking about his parents. especially his dad, who was this big powerful boss man, who was used to being in a position of power, because so much of this movie is about power and shifting power and abusing power. But yeah, I didn't know what she was talking about. I think, I think, again, this is like tied into, and I'm specifically talking about, I think,

the men's version of a good for her. ending that this is just a feature right like it's you make you do a monologue and then you and you break the fourth wall at the end and like this it it almost just feels like a way to end a movie versus like the way this movie should have ended it feels very like shoehorned in and it's it's like yeah that that speech to be felt just again out of step with out of step with who she is and at the and I think ending on such a clear like, yay, Linda, like, I want to be on board, but we've, we know too much. We know too much to just be like, yay, Linda. We have too much information. And the dynamic is too complicated. And it feels like it's like undercutting both characters to end the

movie in that binary of a way. It feels like it's intentional that she ends up being. not especially sympathetic or empathetic. Yeah, which is fine. She doesn't have to be sympathetic. But it does make the end harder for me to digest. Fun fact. So this script was being knocked around since I think like 2019. That would make sense.

That's when every movie ended with a good for her smirk. Drew. It didn't start to enter more of a significant like pre-production period until several years later. And then in 2024 is when Rachel McAdams was brought on board and she was like entering negotiations

to be the star of the movie. And Sam Ramey specifically wanted her for the role because he had worked with her previously in Dr. Strange and the multiverse of madness, of course. Yeah. But he considered her character to be underutilized.

in the movie. I don't even remember that she was in that movie and I saw it. She, I guess, barely is. And it's like, okay, well, Sam, you directed that movie. So whose fault is it that she was underutilized? Fair, but I also think probably Marvel. I feel like no creative person involved in a franchise movie has any agency over what happened. This is true. But that's why he was like, I want to like showcase her talent more in a different project where she can be the star. Right. Which she did do.

And so, yeah, and I think it makes sense for Rachel McAdams if she's trying to, like, she doesn't often play characters like this. I don't think I've ever seen her in a horror movie or at least not in the last, like, decade. Like, Rachel McAdams is, she's just so good. She's one of our best. I feel like she should have won an Oscar for being in, Are You There God, it's me, Margaret.

She's so good in it. She can do so much. I just think that, yeah, like, it has nothing to do with the characters. And I don't even really think has very much to do with the direction. It's just, like, the way that the character is written is just such a, is so disjointed and messy. And, yeah. I don't know. Yeah.

Is there other stuff? Was there anything else that you wanted to get into? I think it's worth mentioning that these types of survival stories are almost always told through a very Western lens, because so much of Western culture has been kind of built around removing humans from nature, whereas indigenous cultures are all about having a symbiotic relationship with nature and being stewards of the land. So a story like this is just like, to me, so obviously, like Western kind of imperial vibes, because it's like, well, you wouldn't even have to try so hard to survive in a situation like this if you hadn't been so significantly removed

from nature to begin with kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely the case in terms of like people from cultures that live close to the land don't experience being trapped in the wilderness as a survival situation in the same way. It can be more like, like if someone lives a situation. subsistence lifestyle and they, I don't know, something happens with their boat and they're stuck on an island for a while or there's a storm and they're stuck out on a hunting trip or anything like that. That is almost the equivalent of like, oh man, I went into the city and I like missed the last

bus home. And, you know, it's annoying maybe, but it's not life or death in the same way. It's like, oh, I had to do something else or be creative or sleep in a place I would rather not have slept if I had caught the bus. Right. And that's not universal in every culture, of course. But it's definitely a pattern in terms of, you know, the closer side. The more wilderness is part of your everyday life, the less of an emergency it is to be stuck in it. For sure. I guess if this is like to putting you on the spot, please feel free to disregard. But if, because this is like so rare to see a woman in a survivalist plot, is there something that you, would like to see? Is there like anything that sticks out as like, well, why the hell isn't there

a movie about this person dynamic situation or I don't know? That's a really good question. I want to see more stories about girls in survival. I'm writing a book actually right now that's like a middle grade book about a girl who's lost in the woods with her dog just because that's like I want it to exist. Look up Baby Island. And yeah, I think like, fiction and nonfiction are different, right, in terms of how these stories are told. So in nonfiction, it's always interesting to see sort of how women handle these situations. And women are often, I think there's a presumption that women in a wilderness survival situation are less capable than men. And that often is not the case when it actually plays out in real life.

And you will see like women surviving where men don't or women trying to survive where men might, I don't know, immediately decide that they should just kill themselves. to save themselves suffering, whereas women will sort of fight for longer. And that's obviously on a very case-by-case basis. Sure. But I think that in fictional stories, you will see a lot more assumptions coming into play where, like, a woman in a survival situation is sort of becoming more, quote, unquote, manly in order to survive. And that is not necessarily the case.

One of my favorite survival stories is about Maurice and Marilyn Bailey. And there's an incredible book. about them that came out recently called a marriage at sea and this this couple are stranded on a lifeboat for for months and Maurice just immediately is like throwing in the towel like time time to commit suicide and Marilyn sort of saves them both and also while she's doing it is like sketching dresses she wants to sew in her notebook for when she gets home and planning dinner party she's going to wear them at women are so awesome and it's it's these things that would be seen as dichotomous, like that being so sort of stereotypically

feminine while she's also like harnessing sea turtles to pull them through the ocean to try to like go against the current toward land. Like the truth is that femininity is not at odds with survival and it's not less tough. And that is a truth that is very hard to hold in fiction for people. But it's a really interesting pattern that I see playing out. And I would love to see more of that reflected sort of like skills that are seen as traditionally female being respected for the survival skills that they are as opposed to seeming beside the point or irrelevant. Right. You know, the idea that like women will get on a desert island be like, I broke a nail,

you know, like those sort of tropes or they like become masculine and that's how they're like becoming tough. Whereas in real life what you see is like obviously not every woman is feminine, but like a woman who is feminine, that is not in conflict with her being a really badass survivor. And it can even sort of augment her skills. And I think that's like a really interesting thing. I never see portrayed in stories. Yeah, that like femininity is not disqualifying to survive and can be an asset. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Well, someday, someday, you know, women will be allowed to write a movie and maybe we'll see it. We'll see it. I'm so, I'm so, I'm so. I'm so. I'm so. I'm

I'm so... Fingers crossed. I'm so excited for your YAA book. That's incredible. Thank you. Thank you. That one... I've been wanting to do that for a while.

Absolutely. Amazing. Well, does the movie pass the Bechdel test? Does it? No. Okay. I think you could argue on a technicality, but I'm like not really inclined to give it to it.

But what do you think, Caitlin? Well, okay, there's a... there's a moment where Linda talks to her colleague in the office, who's a woman, but they mostly talk about that guy, Donovan, so that one I don't think counts. Does she have a name? If so, we barely learn it. So let's say no to that. Linda does talk to Zuri, but I think pretty exclusively about Bradley.

And then Linda talks to that woman journalist at the very end who's interviewing her while she's golfing. Oh, what I had marked as like what she, I guess. there might be a what I'll open up for a possibility is there might be a one pass in zuri and linda talking the second time where she's like oh is it just just you but the subtext to that conversation I would still say the subtext to that conversation is very much Bradley it's where's Bradley yeah so even if there's a tech I'm sure it passes on a technicality somewhere but spiritually I would say nor agree. Yeah, I don't think it does.

But what about the Bechtelcast nipple scale, where we rate the movie based on a scale of zero to five nipples, examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens? I feel like maybe a two for this one, two, two and a half. I do appreciate that it is a survival story. about a woman and showcasing a woman's ability to survive and her skills that she has developed. I think that's cool and I wish there were more stories with that basic premise. I think the movie starts to explore potentially interesting things about shifting power dynamics

and abuse of power regardless of the gender of the person. who holds the power. But the movie, again, as we've discussed, just like still employs sexist tropes. So I'm not as inclined to find it that interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I think two and a half. And I'll give one to Rachel McAdams, one to Edel, who plays Zuri. And my half nipple will.

go to the bore. Wow. That bore did nothing wrong. I'll go two and a half as well. Yeah, I think that this movie is fun. It is like not setting back feminism, but it's not really, it's, I would say it is,

it is not doing anything for it either. Which is why I'm giving it a basically neutral score. I like Linda as a character, and I feel like ultimately the way that she's characterized kind of loses its way in a way that I wish it hadn't but great performance from Rachel McAdams and yeah I think that's all I have to say so I'm going to go two and a half nipples given Wanda Linda wonder Rachel and half to my favorite character from lost John Locke of course yeah Blair how about you I was also independently thinking two to two

and a half stars. But I think you're, you're right. There's some things it's doing right. Like, she has more survival skills than him. So I'll do two and a half. I'll do the higher end of that scale. And I am giving, I think, all of my nipples to the fact that this island has no bugs. Because this island would be so full of sandflies and fleas and mosquitoes and like everyone would just have like skin that looks like it's raw bumps constantly all the time. And I appreciated that that wasn't part of the film. And it also seems like an island I want to go to for that reason. So credit where it is due.

Yeah, I mean, apparently it is a destination. There is a mansion there. So maybe that's why they built the freaky mansion. It's because it's a bugless island. Yeah, I'm thinking how did they get rid of the bugs for the filming? Pesticides. The billionaire who owns the house probably just dumped a bunch of pesticides all over the island. You know what?

Maybe there are secret tropical. places without bugs, but it's only owned by billionaires. They've snapped them up. And that's why the rest of us don't know. Yeah. Could be. Fruel. In any case, Blair, thank you so much for joining us for this discussion. Yes. Thank you for having me. Come back anytime. I would love to. Tell us where people can follow your work, listen to your podcast, read your books, etc. So I'm the author of a couple different books, most relevant to the topics here, probably is the novel, game, which is about a survival reality show where the crew disappears. And the survivors have to actually survive and figure out where that line is between choosing to partake in a survival

game and actually being in a survival situation. And, you know, the women do great in that story. And more relevantly, perhaps, is that I'm now hosting a podcast called What to Carry, What to Burn. and in each episode I tell a true survival story and they're really interesting. I really loved researching them and I was thinking about them a lot with this film. Like there's, you know, like an example would be this island that two shipwrecks happened on at the same time and one of the shipwrecks, the people all work together and they ended up like building society from scratch and then building a ship and sailing away to safety after several years and every single person lived. And the other shipwreck on the same island at the same time,

everyone was very stuck in their roles. Like the captain of the ship was like, I'm the captain, and they tried to be very hierarchical. And it immediately devolved into everyone hunting each other for cannibalism. So I think these stories are very addressing if you are interested in them also come on over to what to carry, what to burn. Totally. Oh, my gosh. Fler, you're the coolest. Thank you so much for calling on the show. You're the coolest. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. You're the best. Cool.

You can find us in all the regular places, mostly Instagram at Patreon, a.k.a. Matrion, where every month we cover a very specific topic of ours or your choosing. This month, it's me because it's my birthday month. And so we're covering a Minions movie. And if you don't like it,

please don't unsubscribe. It is the best way to support the show and we need you to so badly. You know who knows how to survive? the minions. The minions, yeah. Yeah, I think the minions are spreading the idea that men are inherently survive, like the survive.

There's no women minions until my minion movie. And then things change. Yeah, and also minions, they're cheating because they can't die. So I think that they would actually die if they could, but they can't, so they don't. And I'm glad for that. I'm so glad for that. I don't think I would be able to handle a dead minion. Kevin Lehmanon, may he live forever and ever.

I don't think we have a say, we don't have a choice. He can't die. And thank Minion God for that. Amen. All right. Well, with that, let's go take our bird and good for hers all the way down the island. Yeah. Bye.

Bye. The Bechtelcast is a production of IHeart Media, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtenen. And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them? That's me. And our logo and merch and all of our artwork, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus, ever heard of her? Oh my God. And our theme song, by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan, with vocals by Catherine Voskrasinski. Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only Aristotle Acevedo. about the podcast, please visit

Linktree slash Bechtelcast. I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted,

stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island to serve the same level of discourse.

Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of The Hey Jonas Podcast? We are at D23. So we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by.

Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adina Mansell. I audition for Frozen. What? For Christoph. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably one.

Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars and more. And I guess I can share that... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas and the I Heart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B.

I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else. first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.