Why Has The Great British Baking Show Conquered America? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #75 w/ Stephen Carlile (from Broadway’s The Lion King)

What explains the immense quar­an­tine-time pop­u­lar­i­ty in Amer­i­ca of this quaint British real­i­ty cook­ing show? What do we get out of watch­ing tal­ent­ed ama­teurs bake things? Stephen Carlile, who is famous for play­ing Scar in The Lion King on Broad­way (and is VERY British him­self), joins your hosts Eri­ca Spyres, Bri­an Hirt, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er to con­sid­er the for­mat, con­text, and appeal of the show.

A few arti­cles we reviewed to pre­pare includ­ed:

• “The ‘Great British Bak­ing Show’ Is Bro­ken. Here’s a Five-Point Plan to Fix It.” by Bri­an Phillips
• “Why Amer­i­cans love the Great British Bake Off” by Vicky Bak­er
• “Bake Off’s Mel and Sue Quit on Day One After Tears Left a Bad Taste” by Mark Brown
• “Paul Hol­ly­wood: ‘Girls Aban­doned Bake Off’ Over Chan­nel 4 Move” from Sky News.
• “Bake Off Hid­den Secrets” by Kyle O’Sul­li­van

Fol­low Stephen on Insta­gram @carlile1. Vis­it with him online.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.