The Gallery
Films, music and art
Films, albums, songs, paintings, games and shows referenced on the show. 54 entries.
#
- 3 Body Problem
Netflix series adaptation of Liu Cixin's trilogy; Samantha is 'obsessed', and Tamir notes it was renewed with one season per book.
A
- After Life
Ricky Gervais's series about a man grieving his late wife. Colin recalls a woman telling him that happiness is a great thing even if it isn't yours, and a line about planting trees whose…
- Alan Watts's court jester lecture
Watts on why kings kept a court jester: to remind the king of his own mortality and that things are not as they seem. Tamir links it to Tyler's point that tragedy becomes comedy faster as…
- Alan Watts's dream thought experiment
Tamir retells it: if you could dream any dream for 10,000 years, getting everything you want, you would eventually tire of certainty and end up dreaming the uncertain life you have now. He…
- Any Given Sunday
Football film whose Al Pacino locker-room speech Tamir recalls: as you get older, things get taken from you, and you only realize it with age.
- Apple Vision Pro
Mentioned with the Meta Quest as a manufactured virtual reality, compared to the built-in VR of dreaming.
- Assassin's Creed
Tamir recalls the town criers in the game's town squares, whose words never left the village. He contrasts that with how today one mistake reaches everyone.
B
- Back to School
1986 comedy starring Rodney Dangerfield. Kurt Vonnegut has a cameo in which Dangerfield's rich character hires him to write his son's essay on Vonnegut. Colin cites it as proof of what a…
- Back to the Future
In the Troll excerpt, the narrator buys a Marty McFly figurine without ever having seen the film. Master Chief and Spider-Man figures are bought in the same breath.
- Birth, School, Work, Death
Colin quotes the British phrase 'birth, school, work, death' for the old pre-arranged life, and adds that in between you're supposed to have fun with your mates and family.
C
- Casino
Likely the source of Tamir's image of Joe Pesci burying a body in a hole in the desert, his metaphor for cutting people out of your life instead of confronting them.
- Central Intelligence
2016 comedy with Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. Colin recalls the bar scene where Johnson faces down bullies with 'I don't like bullies', a line he has always loved because he was bullied…
- Col Gerrard music
Colin has gone back to making music and releases it on Spotify as Col Gerrard. He describes winning over the industry slowly, 'bit by bit'.
- Convo on the Shore
Murakami podcast co-hosted by Salih and Leo, discussing one book per episode (a recent one was on Norwegian Wood); Tamir is invited on.
D
- Das Literarische Quartett
Long-running German TV literary panel show. A 2000 on-air row over South of the Border, West of the Sun (one host called its sex scenes 'fast food' and was branded prudish) led to her…
- District 9
Mentioned to identify its director.
- Dune (films)
Mia resonates with the Dune movies and loves that wars are fought over the spice, which she reads as a psychedelic.
E
- Eli
Colin's award-winning short film, based on a Holocaust survivor he met. As a boy in Hungary in the summer of 1944 the man was separated from his mother and little brother at Mengele's…
- Elysium
Not considered a great film, but its dirty, ugly opening scared Grant as a plausible future. His model of what science fiction should do.
F
- Face to Face (Carl Jung interview)
1959 BBC interview in which Carl Jung discusses death as psychologically as important as birth; a clip from it opens the episode.
G
- Game of Thrones
Grant told an English student who loved it that 'anything with a dragon is stupid'.
- Grant Loves Books
Grant's channel of in-depth reviews of great 19th- and 20th-century novels, started after he returned to Canada; Tamir likens it to a whiskey to savour. It has a companion Patreon with a…
H
- Haruki Murakami Art
Salih's YouTube and Instagram channel of long-form mini-documentaries that visualize Murakami's books using his own travel footage, stock footage, graphics and music.
I
- I Know You
A film Colin made almost ten years ago. They invented a character, walked him through the streets of Italy and made him famous out of nothing, to show how little substance fame needs. The…
- Infinity Gauntlet
Tamir describes held-onto triggers as 'infinity stones of trauma' in a gauntlet: precious-feeling grievances we don't want to give up.
- Interstellar
Tamir: time dilation in Interstellar is a frightening enough phenomenon without added fantasy.
- Israeli band with a Japanese singer
Tamir mentions a new Israeli band playing 1960s-70s Middle Eastern-style music that made a whole album with a Japanese singer. He gives it as a musical example of fusion: two things you'd…
M
- Men in Black
Mentioned among Sonnenfeld's films.
- Meta Quest
Cited by Tamir as an example of the virtual reality we build for training, which dreams already provide.
- Murakami BBC interviews
Rare English-language interviews with Murakami that both hosts have listened to; Salih says he 'could listen to this guy for hours'.
- Murakami early-1990s interview
Rare early-90s interview clip played in the cold open, in which Murakami explains he borrows hard-boiled, sci-fi and love-story structures without writing those genres, and calls himself a…
N
- Nosferatu
The 2024 Dracula film, which Tamir saw in a theater. The existential-kink idea calls up its imagery for him: possession, a pilgrimage to sign one's life away, madness. He wonders why such…
O
- Of Walls and Eggs
Murakami's 2009 Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech about siding with the egg against the wall; Tamir mentions it while doubting a purely political reading of The City and Its Uncertain Walls.
- Osho's morning discourses
Bhagwan's daily morning talks. Sheela attended every morning but often fell asleep on the floor; Tamir jokes she absorbed them subconsciously, and she agrees she 'got a lot of it'.
P
- Purple Rain
Namesake of the Purple Rain tea Tamir and Mia drink on a rainy Vancouver day; a passing, playful reference.
R
- RoboCop
The 1987 film Grant's friend Zoltán argued for four hours was the best film ever made.
S
- Seinfeld
Tamir uses the sitcom to argue that even complainers can be likeable when they're authentic: you wouldn't hire any of them, but you might be friends with them or write them into a story, as…
- Shrek
Part of the Troll excerpt's absurd feed: a video challenge to eat a raw onion every day until a new Shrek movie comes out, 'day 14'.
- Solaris (film)
The poster behind Tamir; Grant hadn't seen it.
- Star Wars
Tamir dislikes adding fantasy to space; space is scary enough.
- Succession
Mia calls it a great show but uses it to typify how the West approaches death through inheritance ('how much money am I getting?') rather than ritual.
- Super Mario Bros.
Comes up in the excerpt from Troll Tamir reads: the narrator has watched people glitch through the game in under five minutes and feels nostalgic for childhood memories he never had.
T
- The Addams Family
Mentioned among Sonnenfeld's films.
- The Joker
Alan Watts lecture on the court jester, whose role was to keep people from taking life too seriously and to take it sincerely instead; Tamir links it to Grant's call to laugh at pain.
- The Lord of the Rings
Source of Gollum, the figure Ian used to personify his grasping, needy shadow.
- The Matrix
Tamir likens practiced letting-go to Neo slowing things down, gaining time to respond the way you want.
- The Princess of Kashi
A Vedantic story Tamir tells at the end. A prince falls in love with a 15-year-old portrait of a princess, then learns it is him as a child, dressed for a palace play, and his longing…
- The Wizard of Oz
Samantha describes her coaching as a 'ruby slippers thing': she is Glinda the Good Witch telling clients they could have gone home all along, but they wouldn't have believed her before…
- Tony Takitani (film)
2004 film adaptation of Murakami's story. Tamir found it more like a music video and not very memorable but liked the music; Salih recalls a scene of Tony in his student years.
- Two-moons mural
Mural painted for Tamir's studio by his friend Zoe while she listened to 1Q84, with a large moon and a smaller green moon that glow in the dark.
- Tyler Dorchester's comics
Over ten years Tyler published script-heavy, full-color Sunday-funnies comics, writing poetry and drawing characters to fit it. He hopes to bring back the website for his 'wacky…
V
- Vonnegut's lecture on the shape of stories
A talk Tamir recalls in which Vonnegut explains that stories get interesting by putting the protagonist through obstacles.
W
- Wild Wild Country
Netflix docuseries (2018) about Rajneeshpuram, which made Sheela famous to a new generation. Tamir calls it the best known of the many documentaries and says this interview is deliberately…
- Windows 95
Tamir's central metaphor for an outdated mind: 'You can't be in 2026 running Windows 95.' Old mental software is slow and gives bad results.