e68. Parallel Media

You ever notice that thing that happens when a movie studio releases a movie and then another studio releases a movie with pretty much the exact same premise at the same time and they’re so close to each other that it seems like neither could have copied from the other? It happens a lot! What…

Call for Comments: On Puerto Rico

People take to the Las Americas Highway in San Juan, Puerto Rico, July 22, 2019 on day 9th of continuous protests demanding the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. – (Photo by Eric Rojas / AFP)ERIC ROJAS/AFP/Getty Images From Katya: We have another serious episode in the works. On July 18th, Puerto Ricans began protesting in…

e67. Social Justice Knitting

Back on June 23rd, a popular social network took a bold stance for 2019. It decided to pronounce all support of Donald Trump or his #MAGA campaign as hate speech and white supremacy and for the most part ban it from its network. Oddly enough the network that took this stance wasn’t Facebook or Twitter.…

Call For Comments: Does Pop Culture Matter? (LIVE show at Wizard World Pittsburgh)

From Mav: Well, this is kind of exciting. We’ve been invited to do a live panel at Wizard World Pittsburgh this week. We’ll be joining together with our good friend Danny Anderson of the Sectarian Review to talk about why pop culture matters on Sunday, July 28th at 12:30 in room 315 at the Wizard…

Call for Comments: Cuteness and Popular Culture

From Hannah: Happily, we’re surrounded by cute things. The Internet was made for photos of cute cats (and hedgehogs and teacup pigs and otters and puppies and wombats and foxes and all the baby animals). How many people have gone to see films like How to Train Your Dragon or The Secret Life of Pets…

e66. Fandom Petitions

Did you hear about the thing a couple weeks ago where a Christian watchdog group started a petition to get Netflix to cancel the hit TV show Good Omens because Satan, and the internet got a big huge laugh out of it, because that show isn’t even on Netflix? That was great. But it makes…

e65. AR Gaming

(Note: an earlier version of this podcast had an audio problem. It has now been corrected. Please redownload if there is an issue) If we’d asked the question “do you play AR games?” five or ten years ago, we’d have a very different answer than we probably do today. It used to be very much…

Call For Comments: Parallel Media

From Mav: To me, one of the most fascinating things that happens in Hollywood is when two different movies with essentially the same plot come out at roughly the same time. I don’t mean one movie that is a remake of another movie. I mean when two studios come up with essentially the idea as…

e64. Mythologizing the Founders

If you live in the United States of America, then this week is Independence Day, the day when we patriotically celebrate the greatest of our heritage and the foresight of a bunch of men in breeches, wigs and stockings decided to create a perfect nation… or so we tell ourselves. If you live outside the…