e138. Holiday Tradition and Ritual in the Time of COVID

It’s the holiday season. In the United States we just celebrated Thanksgiving, and in the coming weeks that will be followed by Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Years, Pancha Ganapati, Yule, Festivus, Saturnalia, Slackernalia and probably 1000 other winter holidays that get celebrated somewhere around the world. These holidays are often commemorated by coming together with…

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…

e136. Describing 14 Films We Haven’t Seen

In a world where four podcasters are exhausted from the never ended horrific news cycle of politics, racial tensions, pestilence and death that has been the year 2020, these weary souls decide to take one week away from serious pseudo academic pop culture analysis with drinking and swearing and do… goofy pseudo academic pop culture…

e135. Election 2020: So Now What?

As most of our regular listeners are probably aware, the United States had a little election last week. Barely worth mentioning! And in that election Joe Biden and Kamala Harris defeated Donald Trump and Mike Pence for the presidency of the United States. And again, if you’ve listened to more than 10 seconds of our…

e134. Reality of Horrors!

On last week’s show, we investigated the comedic world of horror movies. This week, we wanted to go a different way… the reality of horror. Yes, of course there are horror movies that feature monsters and demons and other supernatural horrors. But what do we make of films like Deliverance, Jaws, Psycho and Cujo? What…

e133. Comedy of Horrors!

Halloween Season is upon us! As scary as 2020 has been in general, we are finally at the part of the year where we are supposed to be scared… or at least watch a lot of scary movies. But 2020 has been scary enough… and so this year we want to focus on the funny…

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…

e131. Cuties: Eroticizing the Innocent and Infantilizing Sexuality

It’s rare that a tiny little foreign market indie film gets any mainstream media attention at all. It’s even rarer that it actually trends on social media, creating calls for the public to boycott the world’s largest streaming service and results in court investigations of that company. And yet, Netflix’s new film Cuties managed to…

e130. Freshman Year in Quarantine

Way back at beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown — what seems like a million years ago — we did a special episode where we talked to Tristyn and Sophie, two graduating seniors who had their final year of high school interrupted by the sudden worldwide pandemic that we now all find ourselves still dealing with.…

e129. Corsets: Enhancement, Imprisonment, Empowerment, & Empresses

The corset might be one of the most fascinating garments in the history of fashion. On one hand, it’s simply underwear. It is a garment that provides a specific function. On the other hand popular culture has made it a symbol forever associated with everything from the Victorian Age to 80s pop music to burlesque…