e380. Monica in Paris: The Tropes of Study Abroad

Eagle eyed (eared?) listeners might have noticed that it’s actually been a little tricky to get Monica booked on the show for the last couple of weeks because of a time zone issue. She’s currently living in Paris on a research fellowship for her dissertation. This means that she’s basically doing the bulk of her…

e379. and now… Superman

Let’s face it, if you listen to our show there’ basically no way that you didn’t know that there was a Superman movie that came out this weekend. In fact, we’d argue that if you listen to ANY pop culture podcast, you know that there’s a Superman movie that came out this weekend. And quite…

e378. For Mature Audiences Only: When Nostalgia Grows Up

In a media landscape driven by monetizing nostalgia, reboots and remakes are inevitable. Often this involves taking a new cast to offer a modern take on the property. However, there’s something a little different that has become common place in the last few years. The “aged up reboot”. This is a curious phenomenon where a…

Call For Comments: Grown-up Reboots

From Mav: The other day, Hannah and I were talking about X-men ’97, a show that we both enjoyed. In her case, she was a big fan of the original show when she was a kid. I’m a little older and so wasn’t as much of a fan (though I did like the reboot). One…

e375. Floppy Disks and Fast Cars: Technological Nostalgia in Media

Last week Monica saw the most recent Mission Impossible movie and was fascinated by a plot detail wherein the characters need to use ancient technology from the — shudder — 1990s! Just after that, John Oliver did an expose on air traffic control towers where he noted that they often still run on software from…

Call For Comments: Retro Technology Worship

From Monica: Probably surprising no one who has listened to our many episodes about super spies or franchises with nine-plus installments, I love Mission Impossible movies. Tom Cruise can build new elaborate ways to not kill himself and I’ll eat it up every time. But perhaps because he is so insistent on doing things “for…

e372. MCU 2025: Exploring the Current Marvel Cinematic Landscape

When we started this podcast we were very cautious that we didn’t want it to be too much about the MCU, even though we loved it and it was, at that time, obviously the biggest thing in pop culture.. There are plenty of other shows that do that and we wanted VoxPopcast to be something…

e365. Works in Progress: PCA2025

This is the 365th show. This means you can now listen to VoxPopcast every day for a year and not have any repeats. That should be exciting in and of itself. But how are we celebrating? Well, if you’ve been paying attention to the show lately, you know we are coming up on PCA. Our…

e361. Carving Pop Culture Mount Rushmore (Simulcast w/ the Protagonist Podcast)

You know how sometimes people say someone belongs on “the Mount Rushmore of music” or “the Mount Rushmore of comics” or “the Mount Rushmore of sports” or whatever? Maybe they mean that these are the people who will do a bunch of atrocities and yet get mythologized to the point that the country decides to…

Call For Comments: Get Nominally Woke Have Poorly Defined Return on Financial Investment

From Mav: We’ve talked before about the ways in which people complaining that media is “too woke now” are often just not aware that the media they’ve always loved always has been. A few years back I remember when there was an uproar amongst comic fans when Nick Spencer, then writer of Captain America comics…