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…

e395. Stealing the Fives (with permission of course)

Every once in a while we like to step away from our usual serious… well… serious-ish, pseudo-academic intellectual pursuits and just do something a little fun. This is one of those weeks. Last week our friends at the Protagonist Podcast debuted a new game that they called “the Fives” and this week… well, we are…

e393. Eerie Elders: The Horror of Growing Old

It’s SPOOOOKY SEASON!!! Actually, it has been for a couple weeks and yet we really haven’t gotten into it. But now it’s time to fix that. A year ago we did an episode about “creepy kids” in media and why they are both so unsettling and so fascinating. Well, this year we thought we’d look…

e387. TV is Our Religion: The Theological Lens of Peak Television

There’s a lot of TV content out there. In fact, sometimes it feels like there’s maybe too much TV to watch. However, there’s a certain set of shows that it seems everyone agrees “these are the prestige shows”. The shows that the critics talk about. The shows that people say “that’s quality”. Of course, these…

e386. Unpacking Long-Running TV: From Sitcoms to Soap Operas

They don’t make TV like they used to. They quite literally just don’t!. There’s lots of business reasons for this and culture changes and just an over abundance of content vs what there used to be. But for better or worse, the day epic 20+ season runs of several hundred episodes are probably behind us,…

e385. Is Flash Gordon a Bad Movie?

It’s been a while since we did a “is this a bad movie” episode. But the best way of investigating a “is this a bad movie” is to pick one where one of the hosts is honestly surprised that there are people who don’t like the film. That’s what we have today. One of Mav’s…

e383. Revisiting Milkshake Ducks

Way back on episode 47, we talked about Milkshake Ducks. That is to say, the concept of what to do when you suddenly discover that the creator of a beloved media product turns out to be a very problematic individual. Even back then we acknowledged that things were much more complicated than the world liked…

e381. It’s Clobberin’ Time! Fantastic Four’s Impact on the Summer of Superheroes

For the past couple of years, the general sentiment seems to have been that superhero movies are becoming… well… kinda bad. But, as we spoke a couple weeks ago with the new Superman movie, things have been looking up a bit this summer. But something odd has been happening. For some reason, the general vibe…

e379. and now… Superman

Let’s face it, if you listen to our show there’ basically no way that you didn’t know that there was a Superman movie that came out this weekend. In fact, we’d argue that if you listen to ANY pop culture podcast, you know that there’s a Superman movie that came out this weekend. And quite…

e378. For Mature Audiences Only: When Nostalgia Grows Up

In a media landscape driven by monetizing nostalgia, reboots and remakes are inevitable. Often this involves taking a new cast to offer a modern take on the property. However, there’s something a little different that has become common place in the last few years. The “aged up reboot”. This is a curious phenomenon where a…