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 show isn't rebooted, so much as continued, acknowledging the passage of time. On this week's episode, Mav, Hannah and Wayne are joined by returning guest Sandy Eckard to examine this phenomenon and its long history throughout media from X-men 97 to Andor to The Brady Bunch and many more. Listen and let us know if you have some other examples in the comments below. Citations and Links: This episode’s Call For Comments Donate to the...
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e362. Learning in the Stacks: Libraries & Learning from Pop Culture
Have you ever had that experience where you’re talking to a friend or a teacher or even just watching Jeopardy or something, and you end up knowing a fact that you weren’t sure you even knew or not and then when questioned about how you know it you realize that you learned ir from a…
e360. Selling Woke: Navigating Complexities of Capitalism and Media Bias
You know how there’s all of those weirdos who are always claiming that “you get woke and go broke” while at the same time complaining that it’s unfair that all of media is now woke and suddenly they don’t have any non-woke alternatives. This seems incongruous and like it would be pretty hard for both…
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…
e359. 2025 Oscar Preview
It’s one week before the Academy Awards and so that means it’s time to do our annual Oscar Preview episode. And because this is VoxPopcast, of course we’re going to make a competition out of it. This year, Mav and Hannah are joined by returning guest Stephanie Siler to go through the entire Oscar ballot…
e358. Monster Crushes: Infatuation with the Unknown
Happy Valentines Day! Yes, we know we’re a few days late, but the show comes out on Mondays, and this was the closest chance we got, so what do you want from us. Anyway, this Valentines Day we want to return to one of our most frequent weird topics, Monster Sex! Well… or perhaps more…
X2Z Movies e7. Nimona
On this week’s episode, it’s Marie’s turn to pick a film that Mav has never seen before and she picks Nimona, a wonderful fantasy film about change, identity, acceptance, friendship and love. Nimona is a 2023 animated film based on the graphic novel by ND Stevenson, available for steaming on Netflix. Mav and Marie break…
e357. The Museum Dilemma: Ownership, Ethics, and Colonialism
You know that part of the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where young Indy insists over and over again that a relic belongs in a museum? Or the part where old Indy insists that an artifact belongs in a museum? Or the way people, including museums, have basically claimed this over and over in…
X2Z Movies e6. Casablanca
So far, we’ve been trading back and forth between some of Marie’s favorites more recent movies and some of Mav’s favorites from when he was younger. But now it’s time to do something different, a film that predates them both. Today, Mav and Marie review a classic from Hollywood’s Golden Age, Casablanca, a film that…
e356. Incidental Genre: Unpacking the Unexpected
A few weeks ago back on our Things you Missed episode, Mav recommended the movie My Old Ass with Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza. Since that time both Wayne and Mav’s wife Stephanie have watched it. In talking to them Mav noted a curious thing about the film. It’s technically a science fiction movie, sort…