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…

Call For Comments: King of Horror

From Wayne: Halloween is sneaking up on us so we want to record some appropriately themed episodes. It is impossible to discuss the modern horror genre without addressing Stephen King, so we’re going to dedicate an entire episode to him. Stephenking.com I’ve been a fan of King’s work since the early 80s. I read most…

e74. Harry Potter and the Politics of Wizardry

At this point it’s pretty safe to say that the Harry Potter book series is one of the most defining pieces of literature in a generation. Love it or hate it (and if you actually hate it, what’s wrong with you?) you absolutely know what it is… especially if you’re a millennial. But like all…

Call For Comments: Digital Performances and Deep Fakery

From Mav: There’s been a weird thought running through my head on and off for the last few years. How much of an actor has to be present in order for a performance to count as the actor acting? As CGI enhanced performances get more and more common what “counts”? Do we have to rethink…

Call for Comments: Kickstarter and Popular Culture

Hannah: Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site whose “mission is to help bring creative projects to life,” turned ten in April. You may know Kickstarter for enabling the Veronica Mars movie to happen. Or you may know it if you’ve played games one of the many Jane Austen games it helped launch (Marrying Mr. Darcy, Polite Society,…

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…

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…

Call for Comments: Cuteness and Popular Culture

From Hannah: Happily, we’re surrounded by cute things. The Internet was made for photos of cute cats (and hedgehogs and teacup pigs and otters and puppies and wombats and foxes and all the baby animals). How many people have gone to see films like How to Train Your Dragon or The Secret Life of Pets…

e66. Fandom Petitions

Did you hear about the thing a couple weeks ago where a Christian watchdog group started a petition to get Netflix to cancel the hit TV show Good Omens because Satan, and the internet got a big huge laugh out of it, because that show isn’t even on Netflix? That was great. But it makes…