Death is a Photograph

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Mini Season — The Up Series — Episode 1 — 7 Up (1964) and 7 Plus Seven (1970) Oct 11, 2026

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Chase and Sam are taking on the ultimate quest — a boomer Epic of Gilgamesh, Shahnameh, Middlemarch, or Buddenbrooks — if you will.

In honour of Michael Apted's decades-long Up series (1964-2026) coming to an end this autumn, DPP thought a mini series working its way through an English boomer's lifetime would be a great subject to entertain fans and listeners with for the next couple of months.

Tracing the lives of 14 English men and women (and one semi-Scot) born in 1957 over seven-year iterations, the Up series creates a strange kind of self-anthropological study of the UK's post-war era: from social democracy to Thatcherism to Blairism through the lens of individual lives.

First on the docket — 7 Up and 7 Plus Seven, the first two episodes in the set, bookending the start and end of Harold Wilson's liberalising Labour era — when Britain's class system was looking shaky in new ways.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 36 — Gen X Wrap Up Sep 27, 2026

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After a year, your hosts are ready to wrap Gen X. Season One is at a close. What did we learn about the self-professedly forgotten generation? What has Banksy to do with the spirit of the age? And, most importantly we answer the question that started it all: how did the dirty girls end up in the K-Hive?

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Season 1, Gen X — Episode 35 — American Movie (1999) Sep 13, 2026

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DPP is back, baby — and this time for an encore. Chase and Sam thought they'd round out the season — find a 'capstone', if you will — for the last year. That pediment takes the form of Chris Smith's fly-on-the-wall documentary American Movie (1999).

What does it mean to aspire towards creative production as a provincial dreamer-cum-slacker? What was left of the American dream as the clock ticked over and a new millennium began?

Find out in today's episode.

Summer Break Aug 02, 2026

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Out of Office

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 34 — While We're Young (2014) Jul 30, 2026

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Fear the coming of the trilby. Yes, that's right — today, in the last episode of our first season, we're looking at Gen X accelerating towards middle age and a crash encounter with those coming up behind them: millennials.

No one captured this dissonant first encounter better than Noah Baumbach in his 2014 feature While We're Young — a spiralling comedy of manners obsessed with subcultures, technology, filmmaking, ethics, and the process of ageing itself.

Were the millennials the horrific spawn of a shallow age? Solopistic, self-involved, far too comfortable with 'selling out?' Or were they a pioneering generation, with enough earnestness and purchasing power to transform cities, fashion, media and art — at least sometimes — for the better?

Find out in today's episode.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 33 — Amores Perros (2000) + Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) Jul 20, 2026

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Patreon here.

It's the early 2000s in Mexico — and everyone is feelin' fine. The PRI's uninterrupted one-party 71-year reign of social-democratic, but also neoliberal, authoritarian incompetence is over. The insanity of the drug war proper, unleashed in 2006, is a distant spot on the horizon. A guy with the last name Fox is in charge — he's like George Bush but with even more charisma...and a strange penchant for coke (a cola).

Yes, that's right — today's episode of DPP is covering the defining, break-out films of the Nuevo Cine Mexicano — Alejandro González Iñárritu's Amores Perros and Alfonso Cuarón's Y Tu Mama Tambien. Or as Chase has characterised them — a pairing about female predatory behaviour and animal cruelty.

How was the USA's closest neighbour feeling about the End of History? Dread, joy? The irrepressible need to engage in dog fighting?

Find out in today's episode.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 31 — No (2012) Jul 05, 2026

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Patreon here.

This week, DP heads south. South to Chile — a nation which ended its military junta and dictatorship through an advertising-powered referendum just as the Cold War was ending. Could there be material that's more End of History in its politics?

Chilean director Pablo Larraín seemed to think not — producing his 2012 feature No — half as a celebration of the 1988 presidential referendum's ousting of General Pinochet, and half as a satirical send-up of the growth of political communications through advertising.

What happens when politics is stripped of its substance and rendered as a performative set of vibes?

Find out in today's episode.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 30 — Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) Jun 28, 2026

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Patreon here.

This week DPP delves into Guy Ritchie's feature debut Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998).

What did the 1990s rebirth of Cockney-cool during the Blair era mean for Gen X? How did London feel just before the turn of the 21st century? And why are British-gangster movie directors so posh?

Find out in today's episode.

Special Episode – Gerontocracy in America (2026) w/Samuel Moyn Jun 25, 2026

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Patreon and full episode here.

In the second of DPP's special book episodes, Sam and Chase interview Yale Law and History professor Samuel Moyn on his new book Gerontocracy in America: How the Old are Hoarding Power and Wealth – and What to Do About It(2026).

For how much longer will the Boomers and Silent Generation rule America? And how does their dominance differ from historical gerontocracies from Sparta to the Soviet Union?

What levers does the US government and US democracy actually have to prevent gerontocracy from continuing?

Find out in today's episode.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 29 — Freddy Got Fingered (2001) Jun 21, 2026

Show notes

Patreon here.

This week, DPP explores the cult film — Tom Green's Freddy Got Fingered (2001).

Panned at the time by venerable critics like Roger Ebert — Freddy Got Fingered has only grown in influence in the last two decades, generating a reputation as the ur-Gen X slacker and freak-out comedy.

Is this a piece of Dada genius or a symptom of the Hollywood studio system indulging the worst tendencies of a generation?

Find out in today's episode.

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