Call for Comments: The Male Gaze and its Discontents

From Katya: This week we’re revisiting the Male Gaze. I know we’ve been here before but we have a string of guests coming up offering their own spin on various “gazes” and related subjects so we thought it was worth a revisit. (If you’d like to check out our previous conversations, check out some of…

e163. The Secret World of American Girl

Pop culture fandom is defined by a hierarchy dedication. It’s easy to watch nine Star Wars movies; how much of the Expanded Universe do you know? Anyone can watch a couple dozen Marvel movies, but “the real fan” has bagged and boarded Silver Age originals! Sure, maybe you’ve sat through all 11.5 hours of LOTR,…

e162. Multimedia & Literary Crossovers

We live in a geeky world. There are roughly 800 bajillion superhero tv shows and movies released every year. Even once we get away from superhero content, we quickly move into sci-fi, other comics, and toy based nostalgia IPs. Each property trying to build a cinematic universe to ensure that its fans consume more and…

e161. Describing 20 Games We Haven’t Played

Do you like to play games? We do. And Hannah really likes to play games. In fact, she’s addicted. So much so that she made a game about games… and forced the rest of us to play. Seriously… there were horrible threats… people’s families were in danger. Someone might have lost a little finger. On…

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…

e157. Standup Comedy Sitting on the Couch

Zoom meetings are are a simple fact of life in the pandemic lockdown world. Work meetings, school classrooms, social events. At this point, we’ve all done them. And quite honestly, we’re all sick of them. But as long as we’re trapped in the lockdown world, they’ve just become a reality. But what about jobs that…

e156. More Bad Things? We Love

Last year, all four hosts got together and did a show we called “Bad Things We Love” in which we built a list media that we have some kind of affection for despite our realization that it may not actually be very good. Mav and Hannah thought it’d be fun to do a sequel to…

e154. Can We Cancel Cancel Culture Culture? (or can’t we?)

Every day another celebrity “is cancelled” for any number of problematic reasons. Typically, the celebrity responds by claiming they’ve done nothing wrong and blaming “cancel culture” gone wild. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen not only politicians and actors supposedly cancelled as as well as children’s toys and books. Looking at the news,…

Call for Comments: Stand Up, Sitting Down

Photo by Bogomil Mihaylov on Unsplash From Katya: We’ve talked at length about the ways that the current global pan pizza has changed the form, content, and consumption patterns of a lot of media. One we haven’t hit on, yet, is folks that perform live; what do you do when your career/hobby/calling in life is…