Call For Comments: Quarantine Comfort TV

From Mav: This started out being a different kind of episode. A while back Katya pitched the idea to talk about “Feel Good TV.” She can give more details but the short side of it is that I think she wanted to talk about the kinds of shows you watch to make you feel good…

e118. #activism

We live in very interesting times. The world around us is changing every day… and with the internet if feels like it’s changing ever rapidly. With everything from #COVID-19 to #BlackLivesMatter to #MeToo to #DefundThePolice to #Resist to #LoveIsLove, the social media sites have given every one of us the ability to advocate for what…

e117. Post-Release Censorship and the Disney Vault

There was a weird story that broke a few weeks ago when people discovered that episodes of the 2012 teen sitcom Wizards of Waverly Place had “censored” the cleavage of the mother on one episode by placing a blur over the actress’s chest on the Disney+ streaming service. After some investigation, it turned out that…

e116. Copaganda, Cartoons, and You

One of the most interesting side effects of the recent #BlackLivesMatter protests sparked off by the George Floyd murder has been the #DefundPolice movement gaining national attention. Obviously that’s a big complicated issue that goes beyond shouting hashtags online (or probably should). Some jurisdictions are beginning to take the call seriously, but in the meantime…

Call For Comments: Post-Release Censorship and Revisionism

From Mav: There was an article a few weeks ago that I wanted to address with a show… and then the world went to hell and we had to deal with other things (racism, sadly, is always topical). So now I want to get back to it… and sort of expand it with some other…

e115. Why Do We Love Minor Characters?

Every story (well most stories) have a protagonist that we follow throughout the narrative. Usually we are meant to identify with them; they are our link to the plot and the world of the story. Typically, their worlds are fleshed out by any number of supporting characters that they interact with: friends, lovers, enemies. These…

e114. Your Black Friend is Tired

A few years ago, in an interview with Stephen Colbert, Will Smith said that he believed that racism isn’t getting worse — it’s getting filmed. While it may be hard to quantifiably judge the first part of that statement, the second part is certainly true. In the last couple of weeks, the public availability of…

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…

Call for Comments: Your Black Friend Is Tired

From Mav: Well, it’s been a week. If you’re in America (or probably if you’ve simply bothered to watch the news at all anywhere else in the world), you know that in addition to the now standard “we shut down the world for a global pandemic,” we’ve also been dealing with “and then we went…

e112. Social Media and Free Speech

If you’re unlucky enough to live on the planet Earth, you probably know that it’s not doing terribly well lately. We’ve had a global pandemic sweeping through every corner of the globe that has largely shut business and commerce to a halt, tanking the economy. And if you live in America, and the people dying…