e79. Crowdfunding Creative Culture

Technology has allowed us to live in the future. We live in a future where creators and artists can market their product directly to their fans, cutting out the middle man, by using innovative online software to… ummm… be a different middle man?!?! That can’t be right? But it sort of is. Between crowdfunding sites…

Call for Comments: The Legacy of Jane Austen

From Hannah: This show is, according to our tagline, “a podcast about pop culture discussion, critique and analysis with beer and swearing.” For the most part, in our seventy-something episodes, we’ve covered contemporary topics because that’s what most of us think popular culture is. As the co-host whose main periods of study are the eighteenth…

e77. Pop Culture Etiquette

We live in a society and there are rules of polite behavior. But what are those rules? Well, that’s not exactly clear. For the most part the basic ones like saying please and thank you, most of us know. And then there are others like where do you put the forks when setting the table…

e76. Music Back in MY Day…

You know what the best music is? The music we listen to. It’s obviously better than everything else and everyone agrees. And the stuff we don’t like is trash. We can all agree on that, right? The problem is… none of us agree on what music WE listen to. Why does that happen? Why is…

Call for Comments: Pop Culture Etiquette

From Hannah: We spend a lot of time on the show talking about how we experience pop culture with other people. I only watched Game of Thrones, really, because I enjoyed sharing it with my friends. We have online communities of strangers, where we can all commiserate over The Bachelor franchise. Back in the olden…

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…

e72. The Power of Cuteness

The Internet has two main purposes: porn and cute kittens. The reason people like porn is obvious… or if it isn’t… well, that’s a different show. But what about the kittens? Why do we like cute things so much? The answer isn’t as obvious as it seems. For one thing, cute is a complicated concept.…

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…

e69. So, let’s talk about Puerto Rico…

A couple of weeks ago, many Americans were surprised to turn on the news and learn that protests had seemingly suddenly erupted on the island of Puerto Rico demanding the resignation of the governor. This went on for several days until the governor relented and stepped down and then the story all but vanished from…