e328. What’s the Deal with Presidential Assassinations?

It’s been a weird week of American politics. And we can’t really keep up. Yeah, we know something big happened this week (the whole shakeup of the democratic nomination) but we recorded this episode last week after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. It oddly feels like old news now. But the thing is, we’re…

e326. From Mr. Ed to the Minions: Pop Culture Across Generations

Every once in a while we like to do something really different on the show. This is one of those times. Since the team is all on vacation in various places this week, Mav decided to record a show on the road. So, in this episode he sits down with his mom, Lynn, and her…

e325. So You Have To Write a Prospectus? Now What Is It, Exactly? (and can an ointment clear it up?)

One of the best parts about being an academic is that you “get summers off.” One of the worst parts of being an academic is “your off days are just a time to do more homework.” That’s where Monica is, as she is currently knee deep in trying to write her PhD prospectus. But that…

e324. Unpacking Bridgerton Season 3: Penelope, Queerness, and Fandom Reactions

It’s that time again… we’ve had another year of Bridgerton and of course we had to analyze it. Think about it, it’s a show about British regency society. In some ways this might be the most cultured and sophisticated thing we ever do. Also, there’s a lot of sex. On this week’s episode of VoxPopcast,…

e323. The Complex Legacy of Barbie: Gender, Fashion & Identity

So how about that Barbie? No, not THAT Barbie… we did a show on the movie last year. No, what we want to talk about is enduring legacy of the concept of Barbie. Starting with the doll and going through to the movie, Barbie is just… always there. Or at least she has been for…

e322. 4 Killer Out-of-the-Box X-men Movie Pitches for the MCU

It’s somehow been five years since Disney’s acquisition of Fox and the impending promise therein of having the X-men added into the MCU. While we have … let’s just say feelings… about the idea of a single global megacorportation essentially owning the movie landscape in the US, that is perhaps a show for another day.…

e321. The All-Time Best All-Time Best Albums List of All Time

A couple weeks ago, Apple Music released their list of the 100 Best Albums of all time. This isn’t really new. People do it all the time. In fact, Rolling Stone publishes a top 500 Albums of all time list fairly regularly. More than anything, these lists serve to create arguments amongst the readers about…

e320. Adrenaline and Affection: Exploring the Action Romance Genre

What do you do if you’re in couple that was designed on an 80s sitcom so you have extremely traditional gender roles of a feminine partner who loves lovey dovey chick flicks and a masculine partner violent ‘splosiony dude movies. You go to an action romance of course! So it turns out that we don’t…

e319. X-men ’97 Revisited: Superheroes, Sacrifices, & Saturday Mornings

There’s an argument that the current wave of superhero dominated content that pervades popular media doesn’t begin with the MCU but with X-men the Animated Series, a cartoon that ran from 1992-1997 and is a formative touchstone for many millennial viewers who have come of age today. This argument may be somewhat backed up by…

e318. A.I. in Academia: Balancing Technology and Traditional Learning

(Note from Mav. This is an episode about A.I. and Academic writing… so I decided to just let Descript’s A.I. take a stab at writing the show notes all by itself. Parentheticals are by me. So here’s how it did!) This episode of VoxPopcast explores the multifaceted impact of artificial intelligence, especially ChatGPT, on academia…