🇩🇪 Podcast
Toxic Love: Pop culture on the psychologist’s couch.
A podcast about the intersections of pop culture and toxic relationships.
Pop culture has an impact. It’s no longer “just” the “soundtrack of our lives,” as radio host and DJ Dick Clarke once claimed many decades ago. Pop culture is all around us in our lives – between jobs, advertising, social media, TV and radio. Most importantly, pop culture works by pushing very specific “buttons” in our consciousness.
Pop culture influences our fantasies, dreams, expectations, and even shapes our relationship lives. Pop culture phenomena such as Fifty Shades of Grey, Bridgerton, Twilight, Hunger Games, classic novels such as Dangerous Liaisons or the once wicked effusions of the Marquis de Sade, and pop, rock, and hip-hop songs that have actually become a soundtrack to our lives, much in Dick Clarke’s sense, address and propagate certain relationship patterns. Some of these are clearly toxic and yet extremely popular with consumers. Why is that? And how does pop culture succeed in shaping consumers’ imaginations right down to their most intimate thoughts and attitudes?
Juliane Meyer, PhD, historian, literary scholar, and forensic psychologist, Isa Theobald, writer, bookseller, nerd and, as head of the Association of German SpecFic Authors, also lobbyist for good literature, discuss these issues with the well-known author Ulf Torreck.
They will do a live episode at MetropolCon, on Thursday from 20:45 to 21:45 in Atelier 2.
Juliane Meyer, PhD, works as a forensic psychologist and holds university degrees in psychology, literature, modern history, and art history.
Besides her professional interest in the pathology of the human psyche and the structures of interpersonal relationships, she loves to pursue her hobby of larp or pen & paper, especially Cthulhu.
Isa Theobald lives and works in the Saarland, where, in addition to writing, editing, translating, and acting, she also cooks, hosts mystery dinners, leads role-playing rounds, boils soap, dances with fire, collects outlandish hobbies and equally weird people, and on the whole enjoys life very much.
She is also the first chairwoman of the Phantastik-Autoren-Netzwerk e.V., a member of the Verband der Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller VS, as well as the Selfpublisherverband, active in several breast cancer support groups and part of Team Drachenwinkel to boot.
Her time machine cannot be borrowed – sorry – but she is always happy to receive friendly messages.
Ulf Torreck, born in 1973, is a writer and also appears under the alias of David Gray.
He started out as a carpenter’s apprentice, then graduated from high school, followed by law school, which Torreck says he “fortunately quit in time” to become a freelance writer.
Since 2006, he has regularly published novels and short stories, ranging from erotica to crime fiction and social satire.
He is best known for his novels “Wolfswechsel”, “Fest der Finsternis” and the series “Mordkommission Leipzig”.
Among other things, he organized the “Lange Leipziger Kriminacht” (Long Leipzig Whodunnit Night) at Leipzig’s Central Kabarett, and was one of the initiators of the reading/lecture series “Restboheme” at Noch Besser Leben, Leipzig.
Together with M.Kruppe and Michael Schweßinger he founded the cultural association “Wort & Klang” in Zeitz.
Together, M.Kruppe, Christian Schäfer, Marcus Symeon Blum, and Torreck laid the foundation for the DarkStream Festival in March/April 2020.
