Best The Script Lab Podcasts (2025)

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019 - The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin) 51:27

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11d ago51:27

51:27

What makes Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network one of the most studied and celebrated screenplays of the last 20 years? In this episode of Screenplay Lab, host Jeff Barker breaks down The Social Network scene by scene, revealing why its rapid-fire dialogue, layered structure, and relentless conflict have made it a benchmark for screenwriters everywhe…

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018 - Aster, Peele, Eisenberg, Baker & More: Screenwriters 40:13

19d ago40:13

40:13

In this episode of The Screenplay Lab, Jeff Barker explores the creative journeys of some of today’s most exciting screenwriters and filmmakers, from Oscar winners to breakout indie voices. We dive deep into the writing styles, influences, and careers of: 🧠 Jesse Eisenberg (A Real Pain) 🔥 Coralie Fargeat (Revenge, The Substance) 🌊 Trey Edward Shult…

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23: Motherhood, Matrescence, and the Healing Power of Art with Leanne Morton 45:19

25d ago45:19

45:19

Motherhood changes everything. And sometimes, it cracks us open in ways we never expected. In this episode, therapist and art healer Leanne Morton shares how becoming a mom revealed the limits of even her own professional training. We unpack why so many mothers feel isolated, overwhelmed, and unsure of who they are, despite having prepared “all the…

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017 - Companion (Drew Hancock) 28:16

1M ago28:16

28:16

In this episode of Screenplay Lab, we dive into the genre-bending screenplay of Companion (2025), a sci-fi horror comedy written and directed by debut filmmaker Drew Hancock. Starring Sophia Thatcher (Yellowjackets) and Jack Quaid (The Boys), Companion is a bold, twisty narrative that shifts from dark comedy to sci-fi thriller to full-on horror, al…

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22: The Truth About Fertility, Lab Work, and Being Told You're "Fine" with Lauren Mallers 48:23

1M ago48:23

48:23

What if the health advice you’ve been following wasn’t made for your body at all? In this powerful episode, women’s health coach Lauren Mallers reveals the shocking gaps in research and care that continue to leave women confused, dismissed, and underserved by conventional medicine. Drawing from her own fertility journey and data-driven wellness pra…

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016 - Hereditary (Ari Aster) 39:22

2M ago39:22

39:22

Ari Aster’s Hereditary – Prestige Horror Screenwriting In this episode, Jeff Barker breaks down the Hereditary screenplay by Ari Aster, the 2018 A24 film that redefined modern horror. Whether you’re a screenwriter, filmmaker, or horror fan, this deep dive explores how Aster builds emotional horror through grief, trauma, and supernatural dread. We’l…

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21: The Truth About Perfectionism and the Good Girl Script with Brooke Jean, MA, LPC 44:07

2M ago44:07

44:07

What if your burnout wasn’t a personal failure, but a sign you’re operating by someone else’s rules? In this bold and healing conversation, I'm joined by therapist and coach Brooke Jean to unpack what happens when women stop performing for approval and start living in alignment with who they really are. Brooke shares her deeply personal story of un…

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Lab Toys vs Enterprise Products 36:17

2M ago36:17

36:17

DevOps Lunch and Learn focuses on home labbing versus enterprise use cases and why it is so tricky to satisfy the home user with enterprise products. This really is a dilemma because we love to see more crossover and we're going to talk about why.Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/CgO1zVnY5wDFgRNb7XpdUNyIgr0?utm_source=copy_url…

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015 - Challengers (Justin Kuritzkes) 33:52

2M ago33:52

33:52

Welcome to The Screenplay Lab, the podcast that treats screenplays like the art they are. I’m Jeff Barker, a screenwriter, and in this episode, we’re dissecting the bold, layered, and seductive script behind Challengers (2024) — written by Justin Kuritzkes and directed by Luca Guadagnino. Starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist, Challengers…

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20: The Truth About Infant Feeding and Why Parents Deserve Better with Valana Frohardt 41:12

2M ago41:12

41:12

What if we stopped accepting pain and shame as part of feeding our babies? In this intimate and eye-opening episode, Stephanie is joined by Valana Frohardt, a Denver-based lactation consultant and PA, who shares how her personal and professional experiences have shaped her mission to support birthing people with compassion and clarity. Together, th…

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Container Driven Architecture 45:51

2M ago45:51

45:51

In this episode, we continue our dive into the changing architecture of IT infrastructure and look at how containers and container platforms are changing. We also look at the fundamental nature of what people want to buy, accelerated by VMware Broadcom, making virtualization platforms much less attractive, and the shifting landscape here. This is w…

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014 - La La Land (Damien Chazelle) 24:01

2M ago24:01

24:01

In this episode of The Screenplay Lab, host and screenwriter Jeff Barker takes a closer look at the screenplay behind La La Land by Damien Chazelle. Known for its music and emotional impact, this film offers just as much inspiration on the page as it does on the screen. Jeff examines how the screenplay employs musical storytelling without lyrics, s…

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HA Troubleshooting [Tech Ops] 55:56

3M ago55:56

55:56

This episode of the TechOps series goes into high availability troubleshooting. Not just high availability, not just troubleshooting, but actually talking through what it takes to manage and maintain and fix HA systems. This is part of a longer discussion we've been having and so there's some really interesting ideas in the middle of these discussi…

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19: Redefining Miscarriage as Birth Grief and Transformation 30:34

3M ago30:34

30:34

What happens when your grief is invisible to the world—but unbearably real to you? In this episode, my guest Arden Cartrette, a birth and bereavement doula who has turned her personal experience of multiple miscarriages into a powerful mission of healing and advocacy. From breaking the silence around first trimester loss to highlighting the massive…

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Is 2025 even harder than we expected? 1:04:48

3M ago1:04:48

1:04:48

We review 2025 predictions today and dig into why I think this year is going to be both boring and terrifying for a lot of enterprise IT leaders. That, of course, spans Amazon, Reinvent storage, VMware, AI, and Agentic AI - we run the gamut on what is coming and why this is actually going to be a very challenging year.Transcript: https://otter.ai/u…

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The Many Bits of Quantum State 46:45

3M ago46:45

46:45

In this episode, we dive into all things quantum computing, starting from the idea that Microsoft managed to put a new quantum silicon chip together. We go all over quantum from compute to entanglement and everything in between.Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/Tt282iKZEkt5nL3C3zCDf_-pEIE?utm_source=copy_urlReferences:https://naumanahmad86.medium.com/…

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Kubernetes on Prem vs Cloud 48:57

3M ago48:57

48:57

We step back in this episode of our Tech Ops series and talk about cloud self managed infrastructure and how you balance the competing concerns. We started from a report that RackN had commissioned talking about on premises Kubernetes, and mixing that into your IT infrastructure. Can you have a cloud broker? Can you do multi cloud, some sort of tri…

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013 - The Lighthouse (Max & Robert Eggers) 29:17

3M ago29:17

29:17

In this episode of The Screenplay Lab, host and screenwriter Jeff Barker takes a deep dive into the brilliantly unhinged screenplay for The Lighthouse (2019), written by Robert and Max Eggers. This A24 psychological horror film, starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, is a claustrophobic two-hander soaked in myth, madness, and maritime misery. …

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18: Authentic Marketing That Feels Good to Create with Joanne Homestead 36:42

3M ago36:42

36:42

What if marketing could feel more like self-discovery than strategy? In this episode of Redefining Us, Stephanie Konter-O’Hara sits down with Joanne Homestead, founder of Desk Plant Creatives, to explore how soulful storytelling can transform email marketing into a powerful tool for connection and authenticity. Joanne shares her journey from educat…

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DeepThink AI and Kubernetes 1:03:51

3M ago1:03:51

1:03:51

We springboard from DeepThinking AI and have a robust conversation about what impact DeepThink is having on the industry. We also discuss where we see things going into the dilemma of people building AI infrastructure and working to do that quickly, robustly and with strong governance. This is necessary to ensure that they can quickly update and ma…

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Writing Great Test Scripts [TechOps] 52:11

3M ago52:11

52:11

We deep dive into something seemingly very small, but with a lot of repercussions for how you manage and run a data center, and that is test scripts for servers. As you're going through a production cycle or a provisioning cycle, how do you test? What do you test? This topic was from a Reddit thread that we answered and then had a whole hour conver…

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012 - Babygirl (Halina Reijn) 33:52

4M ago33:52

33:52

In this episode of The Screenplay Lab, Jeff Barker deconstructs the provocative and award-winning screenplay for Babygirl (2024), written and directed by Halina Reijn and starring Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson. This psychological erotic thriller, produced by A24, subverts the genre by placing a powerful woman at the center of a dark, complex, …

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17: Using Body Neutrality to Navigate Change and Build Confidence with Eada Gendelman 26:40

4M ago26:40

26:40

Imagine how powerful we'd all be if we stopped wasting energy on body shame and turned it toward something that truly matters. Eada Gendelman, a therapist who helps those with disordered eating is here to talk about healing our relationship with food, body, and exercise. Drawing from her own experience with an eating disorder, Eada shares how shame…

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HA in DRP [TechOps] 58:52

4M ago58:52

58:52

Today we dive into RackN high availability technology and what we did to build consensus based raft HA capabilities directly into Digital Rebar. This is one of those episodes where we are talking specifically and only about Digital Rebar, so it is a vendored conversation from that perspective.If you are building HA systems, or are interested in how…

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Gitops and Immutability 50:58

4M ago50:58

50:58

The cloud2030 Tech Ops series is an ongoing discussion for us to create what I think of as 200 level content for tech and operations leaders, exploring really complex, deep topics in a thoughtful way to really extend your knowledge base and capabilities in the data center and infrastructure space. Today's episode talks about gitops and immutability…

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011 - Waves (Trey Edward Shults) 39:41

4M ago39:41

39:41

In this deep-dive podcast episode, screenwriter Jeff Barker explores Trey Edward Shults' emotionally captivating screenplay, Waves (2019), an A24 cult classic praised especially by Gen Z audiences for its unique storytelling and profound emotional resonance. Discover how Shults innovatively uses screenplay conventions alongside experimental techniq…

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KubeVirt in the Enterprise 32:23

4M ago32:23

32:23

This is one of those fun conversations where we're really diving not just into the tech but the enterprise consumption of the tech and how people are thinking about it. How does technology like Kubernetes evolve and get used in ways that the community is not thinking about and find a whole new path for adoption and commercialization?If this is goin…

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16: Mothering the Mother: Honoring our Grief with Kelle Myers 34:23

4M ago34:23

34:23

Grief and motherhood are closely related. One mother may grieve the relationship she had with her partner before kids, another may be grieving a miscarriage, another the loss of her identity before kids. Motherhood is a profound transformation, yet we rarely honor the grief, and healing that come with it. Our guest Kellee Meyers shares about a cere…

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010 - US (Jordan Peele) + Curry Barker 44:35

4M ago44:35

44:35

In this special audio episode, host and screenwriter Jeff Barker dives deep into the genius behind Jordan Peele's groundbreaking screenplay, "Us" (2019). Explore how Peele intricately weaves supernatural horror, psychological depth, and relentless suspense into a captivating narrative that examines powerful societal themes like class division, iden…

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Why is adding LLM into an App so hard? 50:29

4M ago50:29

50:29

We talk about current events, the acquisition of data stacks and the closing of the HashiCorp acquisition by IBM. Later, we dive into the productivity of AI and what's going on - are companies really getting the benefits that they expect from AI chat bot integrations and what the challenges are? We touch base on a little bit of something more infra…

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009 - The Brutalist (Corbet & Fastvold) 33:54

5M ago33:54

33:54

Join us for a riveting exploration of THE BRUTALIST, the film that has stormed the Oscars with ten nominations, including Best Original Screenplay, Best Picture, and Best Director. In this episode, we dissect the genius of Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold’s screenplay, an intense period drama that goes beyond mere architectural discourse to challenge…

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15: Midlife Priceless: Reinventing Yourself at Any Age with Sairan Aqrawi 44:44

5M ago44:44

44:44

Sairan Aqrawi is an engineer and business strategist, reframing midlife crisis to midlife PRICELESS! She believes that turning 40 or 50 (or really any age!) marks the ideal time to reinvent oneself, rediscover passions, and take bold steps two enjoying life. And it all happens by overcoming self-doubt, embracing change, and taking action, because c…

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008 - Conclave (Peter Straughan) 32:16

5M ago32:16

32:16

In this episode, Jeff Barker takes a deep dive into CONCLAVE, the Oscar-nominated screenplay written by Peter Straughan. Adapted from Robert Harris’ novel, this gripping script blends political intrigue, religious drama, and even sports movie elements, creating one of the most unique and suspenseful screenplays of the year. 🔥 What We Cover in This …

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007 - Anora (Sean Baker) 40:35

5M ago40:35

40:35

Sean Baker’s Anora is a Romantic Drama turned Thriller infused with comedy and sharp social commentary. Recently nominated for SIX Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay, this modern anti-Cinderella story explores love, independence, and class conflict with breathtaking nuance. What to expect in this episode: The brilliance of Sean Bake…

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14: The Connection Between Disordered Eating and Nervous System Dysregulation with Ashlyn Burnett 31:59

5M ago31:59

31:59

What if your struggles with food have nothing to do with food itself? In this episode of Redefining Us, Ashlyn Burnett, a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach, shares the powerful connection between the nervous system and our relationship with food. Ashlyn shares how polyvagal theory explains the different states of the nervous system…

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Virtualization in Containers (KubeVirt, OpenShift Virtualization) 38:46

5M ago38:46

38:46

In this episode, we dive deeper into the new architectural trends for infrastructure designers in this coming decade, which is a transition from virtualization platforms first like VMware into containerized platforms first. But this time, we talk through the use of virtualization in containerized systems - keeping VMs but with what changes are nece…

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006 - A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg) 34:33

5M ago34:33

34:33

Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain isn’t just an Oscar-nominated screenplay. It's a strong example of character-driven storytelling, mental health representation, and emotional depth. In this episode of The Screenplay Lab, we break down the script, analyze its hidden meanings, and explore how Eisenberg crafts psychologically rich characters through his …

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005 - The Substance (Coralie Fargeat) 43:45

5M ago43:45

43:45

This week, we’re diving into THE SUBSTANCE by Coralie Fargeat, the Academy Award-nominated satirical psychological body horror film that’s making waves with its visceral storytelling and extensive practical effects. We’ll explore how this screenplay drives readers to confront themes of aging, beauty, and perfection, all while dissecting its bold st…

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Symbolic AI 51:01

5M ago51:01

51:01

We discuss Symbolic AI via LLMs for advanced reasoning in manufacturing and real-time analytics. Key points included leveraging symbolic representations and algebraic equations, utilizing knowledge graphs to improve model accuracy, and exploring agentic AI frameworks with specialized agents working together using swarm intelligence principles to ta…

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13: Redefining Rest, and Overcoming Overwhelm with Caitlin Morris 35:23

6M ago35:23

35:23

Caitlin Morris, an Overcoming Overwhelm Coach and mother of three, shares her raw and honest journey of navigating motherhood, grief, and the pressure to “do it all.” Caitlin helps moms redefine overwhelm and discover rest and self-care in ways that work for them. What You’ll Hear: Caitlin’s transition from fitness professional to redefining self-c…

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004 - Quick Cast: A Complete Unknown - Screenplay vs. Film 4:38

6M ago4:38

4:38

This week, we’re diving deep into A Complete Unknown, the Academy Award-nominated Bob Dylan biopic by James Mangold and Jay Cocks. In this QUICKCAST episode, we break down the creative changes that took this film from script to screen. From missing scenes (remember Johnny Cash jumping into a stranger’s car?) to reimagined character moments and modi…

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003 - A Complete Unknown (Mangold & Cocks) 42:34

6M ago42:34

42:34

This week, we're diving deep into A Complete Unknown, the stunning biopic about Bob Dylan, penned by the legendary James Mangold and Jay Cocks. Nominated for 7 Academy Awards (Best Adapted Screenplay), this script chronicles Dylan’s journey from an unknown 19-year-old in New York to his groundbreaking electric performance at the Newport Folk Festiv…

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002 - Nosferatu (Robert Eggers) 53:42

6M ago53:42

53:42

This Week on The Screenplay Lab: We're diving deep into Robert Eggers' Nosferatu screenplay, a masterful reimagining of the gothic classic. Fresh off the presses, this screenplay showcases Eggers’ unique style, oscillating between lush, sprawling sentences and punchy bursts of intensity. What We’ll Cover: Robert Eggers: A modern trailblazer of psyc…

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12: Embracing Pleasure and Redefining Sexuality with Dr. Rosalyn Dischiavo 30:49

6M ago30:49

30:49

What does embracing pleasure look like as a woman whether your a woman without kids, a mom, a woman in menopause, a grandmother, etc? In this conversation with Dr. Rosalyn Dischiavo, founder of the Institute for Sexuality Education and Enlightenment and author of The Deep Yes: The Lost Art of True Receiving, she shares her personal and professional…

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001 - Heretic (Beck & Woods) 38:29

6M ago38:29

38:29

A deep dive into the screenplay: Heretic by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Two young missionaries are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and are greeted by a diabolical Mr. Reed, becoming ensnared in his deadly game of cat-and-mouse. Dive into "Heretic," a standout script by the writers of "A Quiet Place." Known for its uniq…

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The Screenplay Lab - Trailer 1:25

6M ago1:25

1:25

This is… THE SCREENPLAY LAB. My name’s Jeff Barker, and I’m a screenwriter. Join me as we analyze one screenplay at a time. I’m not talking about the film… I’m talking about the screenplay. This unique literary device creates a sensory explosion, causing the reader to make a movie in our own minds. We’re going to search for what brings the heat… Sc…

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11: Talking Money and Motherhood with Financial Therapist Khara Croswaite Brindle 41:09

6M ago41:09

41:09

We are talking about the deeply emotional and often taboo topic of money, especially as it relates to parenting. Guest, Khara Croswaite Brindle shares her journey into the field of financial therapy and sheds light on the unique challenges parents face. Like psychological weight of financial fears and the practical considerations of budgeting for t…

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10: Redefining Motherhood and All It's Imperfections 17:49

7M ago17:49

17:49

In this episode of Redefining Us, host Stephanie Konter-O'Hara gets candid about embracing imperfections, navigating motherhood’s transitions, and fostering vulnerability. She introduces one of the many exercises around practicing vulnerability that she includes in her therapeutic group that she hosts for moms (see details on joining below). It doe…

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Software Defined Edge 49:28

7M ago49:28

49:28

We revisit edge infrastructure and the motivations behind building and managing edge infrastructure with an unusual take. In this case, we ask ourselves if all of these edge devices are becoming more software defined or becoming more standardized, off the shelf component tree. And will that change how we look at managing and running edge infrastruc…