Encyclopedia Brown with Adam Gwon: Deep Thoughts About Potatoes, Problem Plays, and Pop Culture Expectations for Detective Stories

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast

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Adam Gwon, Emily's childhood friend and award-winning musical theater writer, joins the Guy sisters today to share how Donald Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown had an outsize influence on his understanding of storytelling. The delightful format of each short Encyclopedia Brown mystery--which gave the reader all the same information the boy detective had and invited you to test your wits against that of the sleuth before checking the answer in the back of the book--taught Adam how to curate information when telling a story. These mystery stories also gave children a needed sense of order and rules for the world. But when the boy detective grows up, can pop culture grapple with the mysteries that have no answers?

If you're ready to test your observational skills against the boy detective, throw on your headphones, turn to page 119, and take a listen!

Learn more about Adam at his website

Follow Adam on Instagram

Mentioned in this episode

The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno

The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

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We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our family as the Guy Girls.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find.

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1. Introduction to Encyclopedia Brown (00:00:00)

2. Sharing Childhood Detective Experiences (00:08:43)

3. The Case of the Secret Recipe (00:17:05)

4. From Boy Detective to Adult Uncertainty (00:21:43)

5. Storytelling Expectations vs Reality (00:33:30)

6. Closing Thoughts on Mysteries & Life (00:44:42)