Psycomedia

Psycomedia is a weekly podcast which, as the name suggests, looks at Psychology, Comedy and Media.

Every week, hosts Tim and Ben do their best to look at, as the introduction says, the funny side of psychology. Psycomedia does its best to tread the fine line between academic explanation, obscure jokes and genuine libel. Episodes are released on a Friday night. The show's homepage can be found here.

Tropes used in Psycomedia include:

• All Psychology Is Freudian: Inverted, so, so inverted. Inverted so much that Freud is used as profanity.
  • Up until the episode that showcases studies that Freud would approve of.
• Audience Participation: Every episode starts with feedback from the listeners in the previous week.
• Awesome but Impractical: A surprising amount of the real research discussed.
• Biting the Hand Humour: Tim and Ben both attended Oxford University but many episodes focus on the bizarre research of their teachers and other faculty members. Lovingly. And not libellously.
• Blatant Lies: Often mixed in with surprising truth.
• Bowdlerise: Freud is used as a substitute profanity.
• Brief Accent Imitation: Concerning South Africa, and the mysterious word 'kif'
• British Accents: Of course, but notably when the hosts of Advice Hot Dog claim they would believe anything said by Tim and Ben purely because of their accents.
• Catch Phrase: Hurray! (Usually ironically)
  • And speaking of Catchphrase, Tim loves to watch Blockbusters on Challenge TV too, and what was that we just did, that was a belaboured segue!
• Comedic Sociopathy: Anytime experimental design comes up, there's usually a desire for extra electrocution or animal cruelty. Usually this parodies the level of cruelty already extent in psychology.
• Couch Gag: The outro to each episode is a mini sketch (tangentially) related to the episode's topic.
• Deleted Scene: The Frankenpodcasts are built from deleted scenes, just like The Bugle.
• Double Act: Tim will often discuss the main difficulty with solo Stand Up Comedy being that he knows Ben gets him, he doesn't know that anyone else does.
• Everything's Better with Monkeys: Likely to be horribly, horribly subverted. But sometimes played joyously straight (chimp communication or a monkey with a robot arm).
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Psychology, comedy and media. Admittedly, media does include EVERYTHING.
• Foil: Tim and Ben take it in turns to lead and be foil.
• Fix It in Post: Ben will often go for this on account of Tim being the editor.
  • But subverted with sound effects which are usually done by objects near to Ben - e.g. a harmonica, a glass.
• Hates Being Touched / Nobody Touches the Hair: Referenced by Tim in some episodes.
• Heterosexual Life Partners: Tim insists this is the case. Ben points out that he has 'The Girlfriend'
• Hilarious Outtakes: Will sometimes turn up in Frankenpodcasts
• Hurricane of Puns: Usually averted by Tim stonewalling Ben.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Used for the Frankenpodcasts, which are named after the Universal film series.
• Inherently Funny Words: Ben uses these, especially when talking about animals.
• Insane Troll Logic: What seems to motivate some experiments - getting from the theory to the method using this.
• Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: Often via the use of Venn diagram. Often involving the Star Wars Expanded Universe in Tim's case.
• Large Ham: Any time Tim improvises an outro instead of one being written.
• Laugh Track: Often referenced when a joke falls flat. One episode actually used it in the outro featuring a series of Doctor Doctor jokes.
• Left It In: The consequence of a lazy editor, and Ben's deliberate inability to understand the process.
• Medium Awareness: Subverted and inverted - Tim will often have to say "This is an audio medium" but also "You can't see this, but..."
• Milestone Celebration: The 25th episode was a party episode all about wine and nibbles.
• Mistaken Nationality: Tim spends many episodes Foreshadowing a major incidence of this regarding Ben.
• My Name Is Not Durwood: The listeners gleefully do this to Ben, using such joyous variants as Dave and Not-Tim.
• Off the Rails: Is there any podcast that stays on-topic?
• Old Shame: Tim's student acting 'career'.
• Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: Featured in the very first episode, and also referenced whenever anything vaguely libellous comes up. Tim claims to have studied it extensively before starting the show.
• Overly Long Name: Inevitable in the realm of academia, with multiple authors often with ridiculous names. The best example has to be Csikszentmihalyi.
• Proud to Be a Geek: Regarding psychology, yes. Regarding Tim nearly seeing The Phantom Menace on Valentine's Day, alone, less so.
• Pungeon Master: To continue the influence of The Bugle, Ben is definitely this.
• Real Dreams Are Weirder: One episode features a discussion on this, with Tim's nightmare about David Cameron and George Osborne.
• Running Gag: Damn you Squire!, the plan to congratulate David Mitchell and Victoria Coren on their engagement, Phineas Gage Zombie Hunter, controlling a particular listener's life, backfeeding, Tim's hate of the word backfeeding, Tim hating having to bleep things, delicious cake.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Often what occurs in the 'what have we done this week' section or the introduction.
• Self-Deprecation: regarding the humourousness of the podcast, and various other matters.
• Shown Their Work: Some weeks, yes. Other weeks the preparation is rather less done.
• Small Name, Big Ego / Narcissist: Tim will always promote himself and accepts any theory that boosts his ego, despite being a minor podcaster and unpublished writer. Ben suggests that Tim's self-esteem is impossible to measure because it's too high. This especially extends to Tim's many feuds, with Lee and Herring, Emma Watson and Angelina Jolie
• Smart People Know Latin: Subverted - the title was deliberated constructed from a mix of Latin and Greek to annoy classicists.
• Sound Effect Bleep: Subverted - the bleep is just Tim saying bleep.
• Spin-Off: Discussed when Tim starts a new podcast, Tim And Max Solve All The Problems With Popular Culture, since he only did the show having appeared on the MOM Bcast and Overthinking It, and after If It Moves Critique It begins with some minor prompting from Psycomedia.
• Strictly Formula: Every week, there's a loose introduction, feedback, what Tim and Ben have done, some studies, a conclusion and an outro.
• That Came Out Wrong / Double Entendre: In a field where Freud is still considered by society at large a big name, and where technical terms includes things like Arousal, it's inevitable. And then there's the stuff involving the penile plethysmograph, which crosses over into plain Smut
• The Voiceless: 'The Girlfriend', who is according to Tim the third member of the show, despite never appearing on it, and never being asked if she wanted to be.
• Think of the Censors: "This is a clean podcast!"
  • Really done for the sake of ridiculousness, since iTunes doesn't censor anything but the most obviously non-clean.
• Title Drop: Reversed, in that each episode title comes from something said in the episode. Often leads to Long Title
• The Only Way Is Essex: Referenced, as Ben is from Essex, but bears no resemblance to any Essex stereotype. The same is true of Tim, who is supposedly from The Midlands.