Episodes
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#70: “You Can See Everything” Astrological Breakdown & Saturn-Neptune Themes
Kent and Wonder discuss the film, You Can See Everything. They break down the Saturn Neptune themes the film evokes, from the joke of the title which promises transparency only to deliver mystery, to the constant skepticism of Nathan Fielder to the seeming certainty of Elizabeth Holmes. Amidst…
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#69: “The Dropout” & The Astrology of Elizabeth Holmes
Wonder and Kent discuss the life and untimed chart of convicted fraudster, Elizabeth Holmes. For this episode they watched the narrative television show The Dropout, created by Elizabeth Meriwether and starring Amanda Seyfried in an Emmy award winning performance. They also listened to the ABC…
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#68: “The Rehearsal” & The Astrology of Nathan Fielding
Kent and Wonder discuss the work and untimed chart of comedian and provocateur, Nathan Fielder. For this episode they watched, for the first time, Fielder’s hyper reality HBO show The Rehearsal. On HBO’s website the show’s one line description reads, “Nathan Fielder allows ordinary people to...
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#67: The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin using the untimed birth charts of both the director, Benjamin Ree, and his subject, Mats Steen. Themes that emerge are living with a fatal degenerative disease, living a secret life, the power of connection and community to…
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#66: Eternal You
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary, Eternal You, which tracks new and emerging technologies designed to keep our loved ones with us beyond death, thereby carving out whole new peaks in the uncanny valleys left by our digital footprints. Emerging themes include the modern preoccupation with...
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#65: Love Machina
Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary, Love Machina, which tracks the fantastical dreams of billionaire, Martine Rothblatt, as she creates an AI based on the life and likeness of her beloved wife, Bina, in a bid at immortality. Emerging themes include feats of engineering genius, romance…
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#64: Being (the Digital Griot)
Wonder and Kent discuss the innovative participatory experience, Being (the Digital Griot), which features an AI run on datasets from Black communities, theorists, poets, and activists. Being leads community discussions designed to both challenge and unify. Emerging themes include prioritizing...
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#63: And So It Begins
Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary And So It Begins using the untimed birth chart of one of the major protagonists of the film, Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist, Maria Ressa. Emerging themes include what it takes to risk your life as a journalist to uncover systemic corruption as well as...
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#62: Igualada
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Igualada using politician Francia Marquez’s untimed birth chart. Emerging themes include charismatic politicians able to speak directly to the people, the efforts of such a leader attempting to overturn entrenched systems of power, and the enduring appeal…
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#61: DIG! XX
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary DIG! XX using the untimed birth charts of the two protagonists, musicians Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Anton Newcombe. Themes that emerge center around friendship which spurs both healthy and unhealthy competition and how both coming of age and being artists...
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#60: ConBody vs Everybody
Wonder and Kent discuss the episodic documentary series, ConBody vs Everybody, a series that follows Coss Marte as he creates a fitness enterprise, ConBody, based on workouts he developed while incarcerated. Emerging themes include exile and reintegration, friends as family, and the power of...
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#59: Union
Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary Union, the story of the Amazon Labor Union, using the untimed astrological charts of its founder, Chris Smalls. Striking themes that came up were the overthrowing of an old, established guard, and the startling emergence of a potential new order and what it...
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#58: The Times of Harvey Milk
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk using politician and activist Harvey Milk’s timed birth chart. Themes that emerged were the power of community organizing to make a difference, sometimes well beyond your own community. They also discuss the danger inherent in doing...
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#57: Sue Bird: In The Clutch
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Sue Bird: In The Clutch using the untimed birth chart of the subject of the biopic, WNBA player, Sue Bird. Themes that emerge are the powerful determination and unswerving optimism matched with the talent it takes to be a champion. Also Bird’s reputation…
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#56: Frida
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Frida using the timed birth chart of artist Frida Kahlo. Themes that emerge are the desire to create beauty and meaning out of loss and darkness, the need to exert one’s autonomy in the face of near powerlessness, and the capacity to connect erotically and...
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#55: Skywalkers: A Love Story
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Skywalkers: A Love Story, using the untimed chart of one of the main protagonists: rooftopper Angela Nikolau. Striking themes that emerged were creating art inside a typically rugged and sporty profession, what it takes to do so, and how romance for…
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#54: Luther: Never Too Much
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Luther: Never Too Much using an untimed birth chart for Luther Vandross. Emerging themes include love songs and the people who sing them, and the search for meaning when we are filled with sorrow. Astrologically Kent and Wonder link this to the planet Venus...
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#53: Never Look Away
Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary Never Look Away using the untimed birth chart of photojournalist Margaret Moth. Themes that emerge are people who put their lives on the line for things they believe in, what it might take for someone to be both a risk taker and an adrenaline junkie but…
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#52: Tendaberry
Wonder and Kent discuss the experimental narrative film, Tendaberry, a poignant coming of age film centering a young, mixed race woman living in New York. Emerging themes include the forging pressures of new responsibilities and freedoms, the singular expression of humanity in a city as large as...
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#51: Desire Lines
Kent and Wonder discuss the experimental film Desire Lines, which boldly explores transmasculine identity and sexual expression, moving back and forth between archival footage, interviews, and a fictional narrative exploring the themes. Other emerging themes include the importance of archives and...
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#50: Seeking Mavis Beacon
Wonder and Kent discuss the innovative non-fiction film, Seeking Mavis Beacon, about an elusive search for the Black woman behind the eponymous AI assistant who taught millions of people how to type in the 80’s. Emerging themes include the importance of representation and the harm the lack of it...
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#49: Bob’s Funeral
Kent and Wonder discuss the non-fiction short, Bob’s Funeral, a funny and touching story of two family funerals told in first-person by filmmaker, Jack Dunphy. Emerging themes include generational humor, generational trauma, the way that humor grants us distance which grants us contemplation, and...
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#48: Nocturnes
Wonder and Kent discuss the immersive non-fiction film, Nocturnes, which follows scientists up a remote region of the Himalayas on the hunt for moths. Emerging themes include biodiversity in the midst of climate change, tracking those changes using scientific date, dark skies and what is visible...
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#47: Gaucho Gaucho
Kent and Wonder discuss the poetic non-fiction film, Gaucho Gaucho, which traces a small community of Gauchos living with their horses and families against the backdrop of the vast plains of Argentina. Emerging themes include caring for the land, the passing on of traditions, and the care of…
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#46: The Mother of All Lies
Kent and Wonder discuss the artful and personal documentary, The Mother of All Lies, which explores the 1981 Casablanca Bread Riots through the family of the director, who pushes her family to remember and recount this pivotal event despite their practiced resistance to doing so. Themes that…
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#45: The Battle for Laikipia
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary, Battle for Laikipia, which follows the violent struggle over land use between landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, who trace their properties back four generations, and the pastorialists, who have been herding cattle on those same tracts of land for hundreds of...
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#44: A New Kind of Wilderness
Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary, A New Kind of Wildnerness, about a father shepherding his young children through a terrible loss. Emerging themes include death from illness (cancer), grief and loss, family, fatherhood, siblings vs step-siblings, raising young children, ancestry, and...
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#43: God Save Texas
Wonder and Kent discuss the three part episodic documentary God Save Texas, which focuses on prisons, oil refineries, and the border, underlining the harms caused by each of these foundational institutions in a state which is a bell weather for the rest of the country. The series is based on work...
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#42: Black Box Diaries
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Black Box Diaries using the untimed birth chart of the film’s director, Shiori Ito. Emerging themes include an intrepid journalist investigating systemic cover-ups whilst also pursuing justice as a sexual abuse survivor who must face her abuser in court.…
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#41: Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat which covers the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congolese leader, Patrice Lumumba. Emerging themes include secret plots, obfuscation, Jazz as a visual structure, and film as a PhD thesis. Astrologically...
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#40: Daughters
Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary Daughters, which follows four young girls as they prepare for a special father daughter dance with their incarcerated fathers. Themes that emerged were exile and punishment, loss of innocence, fatherhood and injury to it, and what it takes to repair....
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#39: As We Speak
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary As We Speak, which explores the weaponization of rap lyrics in the criminal justice system. Emerging themes include how, exactly, the pen is mightier than the sword, the power of speech and who gets to use it, and the power of setting words to music and…
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#38: Power
Kent and Wonder discuss the essay style documentary Power, about US policing and its historical roots using the untimed birth chart of director, Yance Ford. Emerging themes include racism, the worth of identifying systemic and ongoing harms, the value of an accurate diagnosis, and the way silence...
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#37: Realm of Satan
Wonder and Kent discuss the experimental documentary Realm of Satan which is a shifting kaleidoscope of satanic imagery featuring satanists set against rich backdrops curated by ritual and imagination. Emerging themes center around taboo worship, the gravitas of ritual and giving over to it,...
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#36: Better Angels: The Gospel According To Tammy Faye
Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary Better Angels: The Gospel According to Tammy Faye using evangelist Tammy Faye’s timed birth chart. Striking themes that emerged were faith and sacrifice and the search for meaning in the wake of loss and difficulty. Astrologically these themes can be linked...
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#35: Agent of Happiness
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Agent of Happiness, which is about an agent of the (Buddhist) Bhutanese government tasked with going door to door to take the measure of people’s happiness. Themes that arise are the worth of reflecting on what makes us happy, questions around whether one...
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#34: Every Little Thing
Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary Every Little Thing about a sanctuary for wounded hummingbirds in the city of Los Angeles founded and run by a woman named Terry Masear. Themes that emerged were dedicating oneself to a life of service, what it takes to confront mortality, when does telling...
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#33: Porcelain War
Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Porcelain War about three incredibly brave Ukrainian artists, two of whom are also soldiers fighting on the frontlines in service to their country. Themes that emerge are using art as a strategy of resilience, the way time slows when you create art and also...
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#32: Sugarcane
Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary Sugarcane about the reckoning on the Sugarcane reserve following an investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school. Emerging themes include intergenerational trauma visited upon the vulnerable by figures in charge, including...
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#31: Season 2 Kickoff: Sundance 2024 Documentary Archetypal Themes
Last December, Wonder was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer, and facing an uncertain future we decided to collaborate on another Story All the Way Down season breaking down the archetypal dynamics of 36 Sundance documentaries. Bearing witness to the “creative treatment of actuality” as John Grierson...
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#30 20 Days in Mariupol
After all other International journalists leave, this director stays behind so that the world can bear witness to Russia's war crimes in Ukraine. A remarkable story of bravery that deeply influenced the framing of this entire podcast series around what it means to bear witness to each other's...
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#29 Kokomo City
Four black, transgender sex workers frankly talk about the intimate and taboo details of their work while providing pithy cultural critiques. It explores themes of gender, desire, and violence as it fully lives into the descriptions of "unfiltered, unabashed, and unapologetic" with an authentic...
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#28 King Coal
A unique, hybrid doc on the identity of Central Appalachia being inexorably connected to coal mining. It's a poetic exploration around the tensions between pride and remorse as it reckons the past, present, and future of this region. We break down KING COAL by Elaine McMillion Sheldon in this...
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#27 Twice Colonized
Biopic of Inuit lawyer & activist Aaju Peter, who is in the process of reckoning being colonized by both Canada & Denmark. It follows her professionally as she works to form an Indigenous forum at the EU, but also follows her non-linear, personal journey as she unwinds the impacts of colonialism....
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#26 Victim/Suspect
Investigative journalist Rae de Leon reveals a disturbing trend of women reporting sexual assault, who then get arrested because police think they're making false allegations in the absence of properly investigating the case. We follow de Leon as she does the work the police investigators should...
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#25 The Stroll
Black, transgender sex workers share an oral history of NYC's Meatpacking district where they found work, home, & community whilst otherwise being exiled from society. It traces an early history of activism for trans rights, while also documenting the changes in the neighborhood through many...
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#24 Fantastic Machine
A viral-video infused, essay focusing on how the camera & algorithmic distribution of moving images is slowly corrupting society. After a brief historical recap, FANTASTIC MACHINE by Axel Danielson & Maximilien Van Aertryck fully embraces the very entertaining imagery it is attempting to decry…
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#23 Is There Anybody Out There
An autobiographical journey of Ella Glendining as she searches to meet other people who share her disability, one so rare as to not have any statistics about it. We hear her many personal reflections about being disabled within a non-disabled/ableist world, and explore the moral dilemmas of…
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#22 The Eternal Memory
It's an emotional love story in the context of illness as Paulina takes care of Augusto as his Alzheimer’s disease symptoms worsen throughout the pandemic. We watch Augusto get to rediscover his love as well his work in preserving in the cultural memory of Chile throughout the Pinochet...
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#21 Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV
Biopic on the experimental artist Nam June Paik who pushed the boundaries of video art & avant-garde performance inspired by John Cage. We get to see an incredible survey of his creative works, which included many pioneering innovations in interactive art and image-making within the electronic…
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