Call For Comments: Back in my day… Pop Cultural Literacy

From Mav: Once upon a time… well, probably once upon many times, Wayne mentioned on the show that if you ever get into a long conversation, or God forbid an argument with one of us on the Internet, then just assume that it’s going to become an episode of the show sooner or later. This…

e73. Reading Practices

How do you read? Do you do it on a computer or a tablet or do you prefer good old fashioned paper texts? Do you listen to books on tape or use an audible subscription? Do you prefer to watch movies or videos? Do you like audiobooks? Do those even count as books? What about…

e71. Back to School

There’re two ways that kids learn about college before they go. Either they talk to parents or high school counselors and they learn about all of the hard work and studying and how it’s important to take it seriously and avoid all the horrible dangers of drugs and sex and alcohol that the “bad kids”…

e70. Does Pop Culture Matter?

Live from Wizard World Pittsburgh! Shows like ours and… well, a lot of the rest of the internet are hopelessly devoted to popular culture: Comic books, movies, music, video games, sports, TV. All of the stuff that sophisticated people will tell you is rotting your brain and wasting your life. We like to think we’re…

Call for Comments: How do you read?

From Wayne: I’m a reader. I read a lot. I learned to read early from comics and children’s books and have never really stopped. Books have been my most constant companions and best friends. I grew up in a very rural place, with few opportunities. We never lived in poverty, but we also never really…

e68. Parallel Media

You ever notice that thing that happens when a movie studio releases a movie and then another studio releases a movie with pretty much the exact same premise at the same time and they’re so close to each other that it seems like neither could have copied from the other? It happens a lot! What…

Call For Comments: Does Pop Culture Matter? (LIVE show at Wizard World Pittsburgh)

From Mav: Well, this is kind of exciting. We’ve been invited to do a live panel at Wizard World Pittsburgh this week. We’ll be joining together with our good friend Danny Anderson of the Sectarian Review to talk about why pop culture matters on Sunday, July 28th at 12:30 in room 315 at the Wizard…

e62. Comics! You know… for the Kids!

Did you know comic books used to be produced almost entirely for children? Yeah! It’s true. Ok, maybe you did know that, but there was a time in America where given the popular idea of what a comic book was, that was hard to believe. Of course, there was also a time in America where…

e61. Narrative REMIX!

We seem to like stories we already know. Not just rereading or rewatching an old favorite. We seem to derive some sort of pleasure in seeing a new version of an old story… a version with a “twist.” What if Superman was a horror story? Well, lets explore that in Brightburn! What if Lizzie Bennet…

e60. Poverty Shaming

Have you ever been perusing Facebook or Twitter and run across a meme that maybe seemed a little funny at first, but when you thought about it, you just thought “hey, isn’t that just making fun of people for being poor?” Maybe the meme wasn’t funny at all…. maybe it was just a forward from…