BYU-Idaho Radio · Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree discusses pop culture from a Latter-day Saint perspective
Children who grow up as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints become familiar with the song “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree.” It’s a fun song to get out the wiggles while they attend primary during their Sunday meetings.
Liz Busby and Carl Cranney have taken the imagery of the song to create a podcast called “Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree” where they discuss pop culture from a Latter-day Saint perspective.
“I have always enjoyed the intersection of religious themes and pop culture,” Cranney said.
The episodes have a broad range of entertainment genres from family movies like “Encanto” to Halloween-type movies like “Midnight Mass.” They pick episode topics by what they’re interested in talking about or what is happening in pop culture at the moment.
“We do also try to keep up with what’s in the culture, a little bit,” Busby said. “So we try to have a good mix of older shows and newer shows, animated, family-friendly shows, more adult shows, so we try to get a mix of everything so we cover what’s going on and also some older classics that are fun to talk about.”
Busby and Cranney invite other guests onto each show. There are regular guest hosts, including BYU-Idaho’s Ben Pacini, who join the conversation. Each podcast episode includes recommendations of other entertainment like books, videos, movies. Then after the main discussion, each host rates the media for its content – Celestial, Terrestrial, Telestial, Outer Darkness – its artistic merit – 1 to 5 popcorn balls – and its gospel connections – 1 to 5 apricots.
You can find the podcast on YouTube and all major podcast apps. You can also find the website here.