Call for Comments: Sexy Cartoons and the Kid Gaze?

From Mav: As we approach Valentines Day this year I started thinking about our Valentine’s special from last year about “fictional celebrity crushes.” One of the things we drifted into talking about on that episode was characters like Lola Bunny and Harley Quinn — characters that despite originating in children’s cartoons, were clearly created explicitly…

e148. Sex, Love, & Bridgerton

Surprisingly, Netflix’s latest original programming sensation is Bridgerton, a regency period romance chronicling the sexual exploits, politics and scandals of 19th century London. Or perhaps this isn’t surprising at all. After all, romance has been a primary genre of fiction since… before the time period depicted in the show. Of course, people have often derided…

e147. Big Fun with Charts, Data, and Analytics!

Charts Rock! Charts are Big Fun! Seriously! Don’t you just love a good chart? Ok, maybe you don’t think you do. In fact, you might even be thinking to yourself, why is a pop culture podcast talking about charts? Well, that’s because charts are incredibly popular in modern culture. We rely on them. We see…

Call for Comments: Romanced by Bridgerton?

From Hannah: When I was in high school, I first became fascinated with the nineteenth-century novel — Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield.* And listeners of the show (and anyone who has ever met me, probably) know that while I changed how and why I read these novels, I never stopped reading them. Or…

Call for Comments: Why Do We ƒµ¢&ing Love Charts?

From Mav: I love charts. I fucking love charts! Am I alone here? I’m a nerd, when I was a kid, I used to play with this computer program called Harvard Graphics, just for fun. All it did was make charts. Last week, working on the final chapter of my dissertation, I got to a…

Call For Comments: Supersex in the Gotham City!

From Wayne: Superheroes are sexy, right? Skin tight costumes, rippling muscles, big boobs, and a near total lack of genitalia… what’s not to like? But for all of the suggestiveness of their idealized physiques, actual sexuality was a taboo topic in comics for a very long time. Some of this was due to a generally…

e143. Thirty Great Things You Missed In 2020

The year 2020 is over. You’re probably as relieved as we are. Of course the problems with 2020 are largely still with us, but at least getting here feels like SOMETHING has happened. Last year on VoxPopcast, we decided that rather than doing a “best of the year” episode with the greatest movies or books…

e141. Ghosts, Spirits, Scrooge and a Merry Marxist Christmas

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is likely the most famous Christmas story ever written. First published 177 years ago, it has been produced as stage plays, adapted into dozens of films and spoofed and parodied countless times on television shows, in comics, and other media. Whether from Disney, The Muppets, Scrooged, the original or somewhere…

e132. Is 2020 the Darkest Timeline?

A global pandemic, rampant racism, social unrest, the fall of American democracy, the deaths of celebrity and political icons, feral hogs and murder hornets, and an asteroid is hurtling towards the earth. All of this and it’s only October. 2020 has been a hell of a year. So much so that some have speculated that…

Call for Comments: Dying Laughing! Connections of Comedy & Horror

From Hannah: We all desperately need a laugh right now. Which is why you should fire up your spookiest Halloween-themed movies (and television shows and stories and novels). I’m deadly serious! There are horror movies that are laughably bad (M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening might be the best example of this). But camp classics like…