Call for Comments: Why Do People Like Crossovers?

From Mav: Recently, on my other show, GoshGollyWow, we had a brief conversation about crossovers. Well, it was recently for me, anyway… It will be in the future for listeners of both this show and the other one. In fact, because of different recording schedules, it might very possibly be in the future of when…

e160. Remembering Thought & Thinking About Memory

Do you remember the song that was playing when you had your first kiss, lost your virginity, or danced at your wedding? Do you know what movie that you crowded around the TV to watch as a family every holiday as a kid? Do you have fond memories of the vacation you took in the…

e159. Obviously, it’s the Falcon and the Winter Soldier Show

it’s pretty safe to say Disney has a chokehold on popular culture in America, and to a lesser extent the entire world. Once again, the Powers that Be, as it were, has delivered down unto us yet another installment in the modern epic that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But, do we have to talk…

e158. Superhero Thought Experiments

Have you ever had one of those pointless internet arguments about the philosophical righteousness of Batman, Superman, Rorschach or Luke Skywalker? Or maybe you’ve spent hours arguing about how time travel works based on old Fantastic Four comic books. And I’m sure many of you have tried to defend the value of some superhero movie…

Call for Comments: Thoughts on Falcon and Winter Soldier

From Mav: So, we’ve been watching Falcon and Winter Soldier, because of course we have. We weren’t sure if we were going to do a show on it. We’re not really a recap kind of show. On the other hand, we’ve sort of fallen into a pattern of doing … not so much recaps… well,…

Call For Comments: A Think Piece on Thought Experiments

From Mav: A few weeks ago, I started one of those conversations we’ve all been a part of on social media. I made a Facebook post where I postulated that Luke Skywalker was a fucking psychopath who just likes doing murder. Of course, this is a variation on a thought experiment that Star Wars fans…

e155. Introduction to Ergodic Texts and Reading

What does it mean to be an ergodic text? That’s a complicated question. For one thing, the very meaning of the word “text” can be variable to different people, but we at VoxPopcast tend to use the literary nerd definition. We call all pieces of media that we consume, enjoy and scrutinize “texts” regardless of…

Bad (?) Things We Love (or at least find interesting): Part II

From Hannah: Almost a year ago, the Voxpopcast team attempted to get you to see the inherent value of our …. questionable … entertainment choices in the episode we titled Bad Things We Love. We were perhaps a little Kantian in our notions of taste — at least at first. But the range of material…

e152. Obviously it’s the WandaVision Show

Somethings are inevitable and predictable. Water is wet, gravity pulls us down, and this show was going to have to talk about WandaVision. That was clear even before the series premiered. However, we didn’t know just how big a cultural phenomenon it would become. Who could have expected while reading the 1982 Bill Mantlo comic…

Call For Comments: So what should we say about WandaVision?

From Mav: So obviously, we’re going to talk about WandaVision on Disney+ after the finale next week. We’ve mentioned it in passing a couple times, but not really deep dove into it. If you’ve heard our previous recap shows on movies like Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as TV shows…