On this week’s show we’re doing something a little different. As part of Mav’s new job he was asked if he was asked to volunteer as a faculty advisor and judge for the University of Pittsburgh’s Games4SocialImpact event this last weekend. Games4SocialImpact is a 2-day student game jam design competition based around the idea of…
Category: Podcasts
e233. Is Under the Cherry Moon a bad movie?
Have you ever had a favorite movie, that you’ve loved since childhood and then all of a sudden as an adult you discover that other people don’t like that movie? In fact, it seems MOST people don’t like that movie. And then you question yourself. Is the movie any good? Have you been deluding yourself…
e231. So, You Should Be Watching A League of Their Own
Way too often, when we talk about “pop culture” in 2022, we focus on superheroes, space cowboys with laser swords, and maybe a couple fantasy epics. And in fact, if you were to look at the top of the streaming charts this month, those are sort of the biggest things on the pop culture horizon…
e230. Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ratings But Were Afraid to Ask
If you’re a fan of American television, you’ve no doubt heard of “Nielsen ratings” or just “the Ratings” as they’re often called. They’re the lifeblood by which TV shows live and die. The previous president of the United States was obsessed with them (and continues to be to this day). Perhaps you’ve gotten mad that…
e229. She-Hulk: Sensational & Savage
It is pretty much impossible at this point to not have some MCU content in the current release. Between the films and the TV shows, they are a ubiquitous part of the cultural zeitgeist. So much so that we can’t really cover them all on our show anymore. However, some of them definitely seem worth…
e228. Investigating the Style Cycle
We’ve all heard complaints that the current pop-culture fad du jour is getting repetitive. For instance, right now, it’s superhero movies. People are constantly complaining about “the MCU formula” where “all the movies look the same, they all have the same plot, and they all make all the same jokes.” Whenever some other company makes…
e227. the Endless Culture of the Sandman
After “endless” years in development, the impossible has happened. The Sandman TV show is now streaming on Netflix. Of course we watched it! Remarkably, it appears to be a hit. The show is getting critical buzz as well as doing well with the fans. In fact, its arguably the most popular that the property has…
e226. So… uh… what is a Dissertation? (and why would you do one?)
When we started our little psuedo-academic pop-culture analysis podcast with drinking and swearing, we had a few requirements. One of those was that the show would be smart and would celebrate academia but wouldn’t be overly hung up on it. We specifically didn’t want to be an academic show. And we didn’t want to be…
e225. Can We Talk About Climate Change?
If you line in the United States and follow political news you might have noticed something crazy last week. The Democrats kind of… did something! In fact, they did something potentially huge. On Thursday, July 28th, essentially out of nowhere, senators Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer announced that they had come to terms on what…