Call For Comments: Concert Amnesia and Flashbulb Memories

From Steph: Recently, news media has reported claims from many Taylor Swift concertgoers that they cannot remember large parts or even any of the 3-hour “Eras Tour” concert such as which songs Taylor performed. This so-called “concert amnesia” is particularly distressing for those paying the high prices of resale tickets. However, it is widely known…

e209. PCA2022 Conference Paper Workshop & Preview

This week we’re going to try something a little different on the show. We’ve been mentioning in the past few weeks that we several of the hosts and our most frequent guests are all gearing ups for our big annual pop culture academia conference, PCA. In the past, we’ve had shows where we presented our…

e147. Big Fun with Charts, Data, and Analytics!

Charts Rock! Charts are Big Fun! Seriously! Don’t you just love a good chart? Ok, maybe you don’t think you do. In fact, you might even be thinking to yourself, why is a pop culture podcast talking about charts? Well, that’s because charts are incredibly popular in modern culture. We rely on them. We see…

e142. Deconstructing the Queen’s Gambit

If anything has characterized pop culture in the year 2020, it’s streaming media. From Hamilton to Tiger King, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the essential elimination of out-of-the-home entertainment, we as a people have been absorbing a great deal of content from our couches through the magic of streaming. This is a world made for…

Call for Comments: “The Queen’s Gambit,” or Chess is a Virus now

From Katya: The world, it seems, has lost its collective mind over The Queen’s Gambit. Released in October, it quickly became the most-watched limited scripted series ever and hit number 1 in 63 countries, according to Netflix. I’m not going to lie, I fell into the binge too. Give me an aesthetically pleasing show with…

e124. Marveling Over Marble League!

If you’ve been following the show for the last several months, you know that in our COVID pandemic quarantine imposed death of media, we have turned our constant starvation for content to the internet and become big fans of Jelle’s Marble Runs, a YouTube channel featuring athletic competitions between… well, marbles. What started as a…

e113. Cartoons vs. Avatars

A couple of weeks ago, in order to placate the masses during a worldwide quanrantine, Facebook released their new “Avatar” system — a tool to allow users to create little cartoon characters of themselves for use in profile pics and stickers. Other technology companies have similar system. Apple has one built into its messaging system…

e39. Media Addiction

Once any TV show is on the air for long enough, a curious thing happens. It amasses enough devoted fans that watch it every week that they begin to turn on it. They constantly rave about how they now hate the show… it’s not like it used to be… but they’re still watching it anyway.…