There’s no sense burying the lead here. If you listen to our show at all, you know that Hannah is a Wicked fanatic. We talked about it last year (exactly 52 shows ago) when the first Wicked film came out and of course since the sequel, Wicked For Good premiered this weekend… well, it was…
Year: 2025
e397. All the Frankensteins! (like all the Draculas… but with Frankenstein)
One of pop cultures most enduring properties is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Not only is it often hailed as the first ever science fiction property, it is one of the all-time most adapted characters in film, TV and other media. In fact, Netflix just produced a new version last week. That seemed like a good excuse…
e396. Games, Education, & Collaboration: The Role of Play in Learning and Connection
We’ve mentioned on the show in the past that a large portion of Mav’s job is teaching in the Digital Narrative and Interactive Design(DNID) program at the University of Pittsburgh. Hence the occasional shows dealing with Game Jam. However, we’ve never talked about it in detail. Why is an English department so involved with this…
e394. Spirits and Spectacles: The World of Haunted Houses
Happy Halloween! As we move towards the end of Spooky Season this year, we realized that there is an interesting cultural phenomenon that we’ve never even considered on the show before but that is something of a classic pop culture phenomena — The Haunted House. Hannah recently visiting a haunted house for the first time…
e391. Manga-101: Why is Manga?
It’s always weird and oddly exciting when we discover that we have a hole in the things we’ve covered one the show. And in fact, It’s actually quite surprising that we’ve been doing this show for 391 episodes and haven’t devoted an episode to manga before now. Sure it’s come up in discussions about comics…
e390. La Mort de le Mèmer? How memes make meaning
We’ve talked a lot on the show in the past about Roland Barthes’ influential literary essay “La mort de l’auteur” or “the Death of the Author” and what it means in practical terms for cultural studies and related fields. Recently however, friend of the show Andrew Darowski, texted Mav and casually asked if that concept…