e166. So… What is the Male Gaze Anyway?

Sometimes academic terms bleed over into the popular lexicon and gets used by people almost as second nature without anyone really bothering to think about what it means. “The Male Gaze”, is one of those terms. It gets used in both academic and popular pop culture criticism, but often without definition. There’s simply a vague…

e165. PCA-2021 Recap

It’s the PCA-2021 recap show! In many ways, Popular Culture Association(PCA) national conference is responsible for this show. One of the things we’ve always strived for is to have the kind of wide variety of cultural scholarship that is found there as well as the open and inclusive vibe and ideology that the organization and…

e164. Why Do We Love Plot Twists?

On today’s episode we reveal that secretly this geeky little pop culture show was always actually about education and academic all along. Did you pick up on the clues we’ve been laying out for three years? Ok, maybe that one isn’t much of a plot twist, but what about the fact that one of Hannah…

e163. The Secret World of American Girl

Pop culture fandom is defined by a hierarchy dedication. It’s easy to watch nine Star Wars movies; how much of the Expanded Universe do you know? Anyone can watch a couple dozen Marvel movies, but “the real fan” has bagged and boarded Silver Age originals! Sure, maybe you’ve sat through all 11.5 hours of LOTR,…

e162. Multimedia & Literary Crossovers

We live in a geeky world. There are roughly 800 bajillion superhero tv shows and movies released every year. Even once we get away from superhero content, we quickly move into sci-fi, other comics, and toy based nostalgia IPs. Each property trying to build a cinematic universe to ensure that its fans consume more and…

e161. Describing 20 Games We Haven’t Played

Do you like to play games? We do. And Hannah really likes to play games. In fact, she’s addicted. So much so that she made a game about games… and forced the rest of us to play. Seriously… there were horrible threats… people’s families were in danger. Someone might have lost a little finger. On…

e160. Remembering Thought & Thinking About Memory

Do you remember the song that was playing when you had your first kiss, lost your virginity, or danced at your wedding? Do you know what movie that you crowded around the TV to watch as a family every holiday as a kid? Do you have fond memories of the vacation you took in the…

e159. Obviously, it’s the Falcon and the Winter Soldier Show

it’s pretty safe to say Disney has a chokehold on popular culture in America, and to a lesser extent the entire world. Once again, the Powers that Be, as it were, has delivered down unto us yet another installment in the modern epic that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But, do we have to talk…

e158. Superhero Thought Experiments

Have you ever had one of those pointless internet arguments about the philosophical righteousness of Batman, Superman, Rorschach or Luke Skywalker? Or maybe you’ve spent hours arguing about how time travel works based on old Fantastic Four comic books. And I’m sure many of you have tried to defend the value of some superhero movie…

e157. Standup Comedy Sitting on the Couch

Zoom meetings are are a simple fact of life in the pandemic lockdown world. Work meetings, school classrooms, social events. At this point, we’ve all done them. And quite honestly, we’re all sick of them. But as long as we’re trapped in the lockdown world, they’ve just become a reality. But what about jobs that…