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Studio Sessions

Matthew O'Brien, Alex Carter

Discussions about art and the creative process. New episodes every other week.

 

Ask Us a Question: https://studiosessionspod.com/#ask

Website: https://studiosessionspod.com

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  • 23 episodes
  • fortnightly
  • Avg 1 hr 11 min
  • English

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Episodes 23

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  • S3 · E10
    Dec 23, 2025 · 1 hr 9 min

    62. What Do We Owe The Past When We Build With Its Pieces?

    One of us has been watching a YouTube channel of video essays about art, a voice reading over striking old footage, and sent it over. The other recognized the footage as Jonas Mekas's, taken from one of his documentaries with a fair-use note and no credit. We don't name the channel. What bothers us is the gap between a channel arguing that art should stand apart from commerce and a method that looks like good branding. For contrast there's Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master. Seeing it on 35mm, one of us realized that Philip Seymour Hoffman's cadence sounds like Alan Watts, who held gatherings on an old ferryboat much like the one the film is set on. We call that reconstitution. Pasting in someone else's footage is appropriation. Then one of us plays devil's advocate. When we started writing screenplays, we both leaned on a song laid over a weak scene to do the feeling for us, so maybe this is someone young whose taste is ahead of their skill. The other wonders if his own irritation is what James Carse describes in Finite and Infinite Games, turning someone into an enemy for taking away something he'd come to enjoy. We end by asking listeners where they'd draw the line on giving credit. Mentioned in this episode: Jonas Mekas, the Prelinger Archives, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, Alan Watts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Weird Al" Yankovic. -Ai Support the show If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We appreciate and try to read all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode. Ask Us a Question: https://studiosessionspod.com/#ask Website: https://studiosessionspod.com

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  • S3 · E9
    Dec 9, 2025 · 1 hr 14 min

    61. Are We Curating Identity Or Chasing Dopamine?

    Send us a message. We explore the vintage clothing and collectibles scene in Omaha, examining the intersection of genuine appreciation, social signaling, and dopamine-driven consumerism. The conversation ranges from Matt's solo trip to a vintage event at A Priori (complete with Polaroid gift-giving) to broader questions about why we acquire things—whether it's a 1940s bomber jacket, rare vinyl records, or another book for the shelf. We discuss the spectrum between celebrating quality craftsmanship and using purchases to fill psychological needs, touching on everything from $500 Nebraska garage band 45s to the declining quality of modern retail clothing. The episode takes a practical turn when Alex proposes a personal experiment: a multi-month period of not buying anything beyond necessities. We examine the motivations behind this challenge—not primarily financial savings, but rather an exploration of impulse control, creative constraint, and resistance to consumer culture. We also revisit the idea of annual reflection sessions, moving away from metric-based goal-setting toward describing what we want our lives to look and feel like, and how to balance the fulfillment that comes from new pursuits with the discipline that characterized earlier periods of better health and lower consumption. -Ai Support the show If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We appreciate and try to read all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode. Links To Everything: Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG

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  • S3 · E8
    Nov 25, 2025 · 1 hr 17 min

    60. Artists Make Ways of Seeing, Not Objects

    Send us a message. We spend most of this episode exploring James Carse's "Finite and Infinite Games," working through the distinction between societies that defend boundaries and cultures that exist on horizons. Alex reads passages from the book about how patriotism requires enemies to function, why authentic movements like the Renaissance don't oppose anyone, and how any finite concept that tries to contain everything else is inherently evil. Matt reflects on his own pull toward rigid, binary thinking despite intellectually understanding the value of infinite play. We discuss how systems naturally protect themselves when threatened, why baseball feels different from other sports, and how finite games can exist beautifully within infinite contexts. The conversation shifts to Werner Herzog's question about uranium storage: how do you warn people 40,000 years in the future when language, images, and cultural context will have completely dissolved? Even Shakespeare is barely comprehensible after a few hundred years. We discuss breeding blue cacti, building impossible structures, and why rituals might be the only way to transmit meaning across deep time—though even Stonehenge gets misread as alien intervention. This leads us into territory about synchronicity and consciousness: Alex's story about needing a bat at his lowest point and immediately stepping on one, Matt's impossible birthday coincidence, seeing Alexander Payne right after thinking about him. We talk about channeling, glimpses of God, and whether these moments suggest something beyond atoms randomly floating around. -Ai Support the show If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We appreciate and try to read all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode. Links To Everything: Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG

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Showing 21–23 of 23 episodes