e137. Think Virtually, Live Locally! Our New Virtual Reality

Ever since the beginning of the COVID-19 global pandemic, people the world over have been forced to spend more time meeting and communicating virtually. As different communities have implemented differing levels of lockdowns, quarantine restrictions, and work from home protocols, and distance learning, life has increasingly taken place over Zoom. Socializing over FaceTime is the…

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…

e105. Animal Crossing & Cozy Games in Worldwide Pandemics

If you’re listening to our show, chances are you live on the planet Earth (and if not, welcome!) and so that means for the last few week, you have likely been dealing with the near worldwide ramicfications of COVID-19 pandemic. That means social distancing, self quarantine, staying inside and… and playing video games . Right…

Call for Comments: The Cozy Games Stress Vaccine

From Katya: Animal Crossing: New Horizons dropped on March 20th, much to the relief of a lot of folks gaming through the COVID-19 pandemic. In the tradition of the OG Animal Crossing on GameCube or Animal Crossing: Wild World, players build up a small community of cute animal neighbors, cultivate and collect natural resources, and–…

e99. Pseudo-Academic Content: Listener Discretion is Advised

We live in a content driven world: Movies, Books, Music, TV, Comics, Video Games, and even Podcasts. “Content is king!” or so they say. But of course, different types of content are appropriate for different audiences. Anyone who has watched a movie in the last several decades knows that they have ratings, that is, a…

Call for Comments: Content Ratings and Parental Ratings Guides

From Mav: I’ve gotten into a couple conversations recently with different people about movie ratings. Not the kind of whether they’re good and bad… stars… thumbs up and down and all that. I mean MPAA ratings: G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17… or at least here in the United States, that’s what they are. Curiously, it…

e92: 2010s Decade in Review

Somehow it’s 2020. I don’t get how that happened. 2020 isn’t a year… 2020 is what you make up if you’re setting some science fiction story in the future and you’re too lazy to pick an interesting sound year like 2027 or something. But somehow it actually is 2020, which means the start of a…

e90. 30 Good Things You Missed!!! 2019 Year in Review

Happy New Year! It’s the end of 2019, and that means it’s time for all good podcasts to do a year in review episode. The thing about a show focused on pop culture like ours is that we have already devoted episodes to all of the biggest pop culture events of the year. We know…

Call for Comments: Out with the Old, In with the New, A Decade in Review

From Hannah: In our long line of special episodes, I wanted to look back over the last decade of popular culture. On this show, we’ve talked about some of the big ones in terms of franchises (Marvel pulled off The Avengers! Four times! Disney brought back Star Wars!), but clearly a lot more has happened…

Call For Comments: So, what did we miss?

It’s the end of the year. And now is the time when all good podcasts start compiling their year in review “Best of” episodes. We wanted to do something a little different here at VoxPopcast. Since we talk about pop culture every week, rather than just say what our favorite things are, we’d like to…