Four hundred and fifteen episodes over eight years and we never talked about Star Trek. How could that possibly be? Well, it can’t be. Of course we’ve talked about Star Trek, but we’ve never devoted a whole episode to it and that seems crazy given that it is one of the most enduring pop culture…
Month: March 2026
e414. Strings Attached: Puppetry, from Marionettes to AI
Puppetry is one of the oldest and most respected performance art styles in the world. Except, in America we have reduced it almost entirely to the domain of children’s entertainment. Or have we? Maybe puppets are all around us in every kind of media. Maybe we’re actually using puppets every day and we don’t even…
e413. Teen Beach Movie Revisited: a Conversation with the Screenwriter
A few weeks ago Mav and Monica did a very special show where three of Mav’s current students from his “Introduction to Popular Culture” class where the students joined us to explain their view of one of their favorite movies, Disney’s Teen Beach Movie and both its cultural relevance and its usefulness as an academic…
e412. The 2026 Oscars Prediction Special
The time comes but once a year… Hollywood’s biggest night! Or so they say. Actually, for as long as we have been doing this show, almost every year Hannah and Mav have to beg people to come and talk about the Oscars because almost no one is ever interested. Well, this year is different, we…
e411. Is The Cannonball Run a Bad Movie? (Ok, we know it is… but does it have to be?)
So every once in a while we like to do an episode of the show called “is this a bad movie?” The funny part is that usually when we pick movie for that series, we know it’s a movie that many consider good, but that we feel like we have a chance to convince people…