Call For Comments: Can We Cancel Cancel Culture Culture or Can’t We?

From Mav: So this is a weird one. We had this idea a few weeks ago that we would do a show on “cancel culture” after Gina Carano was publicly fired from The Mandalorian. But we didn’t get to it. For one thing, everyone else in the world was dumping think pieces left and right on her. For…

e151. Yet More Bridgerton! and other good things

A few weeks ago when we did our Bridgerton recap show we found ourselves with way more to talk about than we could possibly fit in a single episode. That happens a lot, really. And as we often do, we said back then that we’d have to do another episode and discuss more Bridgerton. Well,…

Call for Comments: Romanced by Bridgerton?

From Hannah: When I was in high school, I first became fascinated with the nineteenth-century novel — Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield.* And listeners of the show (and anyone who has ever met me, probably) know that while I changed how and why I read these novels, I never stopped reading them. Or…

e144. So, It’s Been a Week! (1/3/21 – 1/9/21)

We totally didn’t want to talk politics this week. And we certainly didn’t want to talk about the world being on fire. 2020 had enough of that. All we wanted to do this week was play our fun little box office game. Unfortunately, that went out the window the moment there was an attempted coup…

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…

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…

Call For Comments: Is This The Darkest Timeline?

From Mav: It’s 2020, and the world is on fire. We all know how bad things have been. Some of the things are obvious, longterm, and we’ve done shows on them before. Some of them are new: There’s a deadly pandemic that has killed over 213,000 people in the United States (and over a million…

e123. Culture, Context, Protest, and Memefication

Have you ever gotten into an argument with someone on the Internet and they tried to prove their point by forwarding some meme that was a quote of a famous person for historical figure that seemed to vaguely relate to their point in the most perfunctory possible way? When this happened, did you think to…

Call For Comments: Erasing Cultural Activism in 50 Easy Years

From Mav: I ran across an interesting meme on conservative (MAGA) social media the other day. It was a picture of Jimi Hendrix playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the original Woodstock that was being used to complain about athletes kneeling in protest during the national anthem. The text of the meme is what really got…

e119. Copaganda II: Going Rogue

A few weeks ago, we released an episode about “copaganda.” On that show we started out talking about the TV show Paw Patrol and internet calls to have it and other cop shows cancelled in the wake of the #DefundThePolice movement and heightened scrutiny on law enforcement in the United States (Note from Mav: And…