143. HYPERFOCUS BONUS: Church for Broads and the Fate of Principled Irish Musicians

Marcus and Esme make an effort to watch the same TV shows and movies together whenever possible. However, subject matter sometimes interferes and results in one of them begging out of the viewing experience. Case in point: Esme recently watched a program that Marcus noped out of in the first five minutes of the first episode once it became clear the tragic death of a young child was one of the key plot points. But Esme pressed on (with Marcus’ blessing, of course). She shares her impressions of a new classic British cop drama that, incidentally, is NOT about a church where one might go to pick up women (as its name implies).

Marcus then shares his two cents on the recent controversy singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran has made for himself, and salutes the integrity of the musicians who left his tour. In particular, Marcus calls out Aaron Rowe and the band Beoga –* two Irish acts with a lot more to lose than their American counterparts. He also provides some much needed context for listeners who might not know who Ed Sheeran or Macklemore are because they have managed to craft beautiful aesthetic bubbles for themselves.

Also, Esme provides an update on her continued success with her “watercolor habit” and Marcus identifies the one thing that would make the act of watching football a lot more manly.

*NOTE: The em dash in the second paragraph is NOT AI generated. It was put there by a real human being who thinks and writes tangentially and refuses to abandon a useful punctuation mark just because some people think it’s an automatic sign that a piece of content was written by a glorified Google search result. The author in question has been using parentheticals since he was writing term papers on an ancient word processor and he’s not about to stop now.