e345. Superpowers, Sex, and Science with Diana McCallum

For a show that was originally created in a comic book shop, we do surprisingly few episodes about comic books. Today is an opportunity to fix that. A few weeks ago, Mav was contacted by a publishing agent and asked if we could interview the author of a book that was all about comic book…

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…

e301. Is Saltburn A Good Movie?

It’s no surprise that the US movie box office hit something of a slump last year. With few exceptions (ahem #Barbenheimer) most tried and true tentpole blockbusters underperformed (perhaps not as bad as most people claim, but that’s another issue). At the same time, in the last couple weeks we’ve had one of these weird…

e298. Why Does Everyone Hate Mary Sues?

Merry Christmas from VoxPopcast. The thing is, we’ve been doing Christmas special episodes for the last couple weeks already. And we figure you probably have a Christmas episode or twelve in your podcast feed from other places. So instead, since this episode drops ON Christmas we decided to go the opposite way and investigate something…

e292. Monstrous Women and the Horror Gaze

On this week’s not exactly Halloween special episode, Mav, Wayne and Monica are joined by returning guests Dr. Michael Chemers and Dr. Samantha Langsdale, two experts in the field of monster studies to talk about their recent conference at the Center for Monster Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. Sam and Mike share…

e286. The Legend of Harley Quinn

On last week’s episode, we delved into the world of classic literary character Hercule Poirot and his cultural significance across multiple iterations. This week, we go in the exact opposite direction. Recorded at the exact same time as last week’s show, Wayne and Mav are joined by returning guest Andrew Deman and first time guest,…

e281. Saying Goodbye to Riverdale, the Best Show on Television

Riverdale has been a constant for this podcast since almost the very beginning. We devoted our sixth episode to talking about it. Calling it “the best show on television” has become a long running joke in the DNA of our show. However, last week, the CW aired the final episode of Riverdale, closing the door…

e279. Is Sucker Punch a Bad Movie?

So the truth is, when we do our “is ____ a bad movie?” episodes, we expect that the listeners are going to be predisposed to say “yes, obviously it sucks. No one cares about that garbage movie” and we are attempting to do kind of a reparative reading of it. That’s what we were expecting…

Call for Comments: Is Sucker Punch really a bad movie?

“To be frank, the people I’ve run across who’ve come to me and said ‘Sucker Punch is my favorite movie’ are normally angsty teenage girls.” -Zack Snyder, 2023 From Monica: In 2011, I was a deeply depressed femme goth who was assaulted by a man, subsequently realized I was gay, tried coming out, and was…