The Worst of All Possible Worlds
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210 - Into the Woods (feat. Mattie Lubchansky)
🕑 Added 2025-10-08 06:00:07 +0000 UTCMattie Lubchansky (Boys Weekend, Simplicity) and the lads grab their cow as white as milk, their cape as red as blood, their hair as yellow as corn, their slipper as pure as gold, and feed a potion to a rapping witch as they cover Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1986 fairy tale musical: Into the Woods. Topics include the massive reworking of the second act, the many allegations against the Big Bad Wolf, and how Sondheim’s most lucrative musical might also be his best.
Mattie Lubchansky: Website // Bluesky // Instagram // Patreon
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LISTEN TO MATTIE'S PODCASTS:
No Gods No Mayors: Municipal government: a trap that catches those too incompetent, too corrupt, too strange even for national politics. And the greatest of these, the mayor - the highest political office one can hope to reach with a truly oppositional personality or a crack addiction. Mattie Lubchansky, Riley Quinn and November Kelly are teaming up to make a podcast investigating these mayors. From petty Bonapartes to flagrant mafiosi, these are their stories.
Available on Spotify // Apple Podcasts // RSS Feed
Temporal Culture War: Mattie Lubchansky and Clayton Ashley figure out what the hell was going on in culture in the early 2000s while they wade through episodes of Star Trek Enterprise.
Available on Spotify // Apple Podcasts // RSS Feed
Media Referenced in this Episode:
Into the Woods. Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Book by James Lapine. 1986.
Bernadette Peters and Original Into the Woods Cast Recall Untold Stories, Backstage Memories and Standouts With Sondheim by Adam Hetrick. Playbill. November 25th, 2014.
From "Boom Crunch" to "The Last Midnight": How Into the Woods Transformed Throughout the Years by Logan Culwell-Block. Playbill. November 19th, 2014.
Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany by Stephen Sondheim. Penguin Random House. 2011.
Into the Woods: A conversation with Sondheim and Lapine – 1991 PBS TV
Into the Woods - MTI Conversation Piece with Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine
TWOAPW theme by Brendan Dalton: Patreon // brendan-dalton.com // brendandalton.bandcamp.com
Interstitial: “There’s a Chance You Might Be Bi” // Music by Stephen Sondheim // Lyrics by A.J. Ditty // Featuring A.J. Ditty as “Himself”
Comments
Ray Salinas
I showed my mother (a middle school theater teacher) this podcast and got stuck watching videos of her production of Into the Woods Junior from a few years ago.
Ghostly
Being defined by all the things I didn’t do is my biggest fear, but I can’t seem to really do anything else. My job I hate takes up too much energy, so I just want to shut off after I get home. And I can’t quit it because I’d like to not be homeless. The only chance I ever took resulted in the best person in my life becoming my fiance. I feel out of chances.
Leo Fie
I find it so silly when Jungians talk about fairytales as somehow universal, when only a small percentage of people has ever heard of Cinderella and Co, and that if anything is because of marketing, for disney and for the Grimms. But hey, it was Jungians, of course it's gonna be bullshit.
