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 steal some indigenous people's sacred land and deface it with a uncanny valley like carvings, but usually they're probably just talking about some very influential people in whatever that field is. But, what if you didn't want to stick to just do one specific genre or field of pop culture? What if you were trying to decide the Mt. Rushmore of ALL of pop culture. On this week's very special episode, Mav and Wayne are...
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e34. FarmSims: Digital Transcendentalism
When we recorded the following podcast, or rather the bulk of it, we were avoiding work, sitting in front of a computer, several feet any roommate, in homes we rented, in North Carolina, avoiding work by talking about farms earned by the labor of our hands only… on a computer keyboard. FarmSims are amongst the…
Call for Comments: Watching/Streaming Cheesey Christmas Movies
From Hannah: Over the past few years Christmas has somehow become synonymous with cheesy Christmas movies from channels like Hallmark, Lifetime, and ABC Family (before it became Freeform). I’m not imagining things — Hallmark, for example, has increased its production of holiday movies to 37 and will add Hanukkah movies to its schedule next year.…
e32. Reboots, Remakes, Revivals
Albert Einstein once said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Well, honestly he probably never said that… or at least didn’t say it first, but the internet says over and over that he said it, so it must be true. Anyway, if this is something…
Call for Comments: Mystery Boxes, Spoilers, and Fandoms
From Hannah: Before I was on the show, we received a suggestion for a show topic on how popular culture fandoms react to spoilers from listener Jessi Bencloski. Spoilers are tricky, especially in big fandoms such as Harry Potter, Lost, Star Wars, and Game of Thrones. Part of what drives (or drove) those fandoms, especially once fan communities emerged online,…
e31. Heroes, Villains & Antiheroes
The antihero… just like the hero… except he can kill. Wait… heroes kill too now. In fact they always have. Well maybe it’s that the antihero swears… Actually, heroes swear now too. Is it that the antihero operates outside of the law? Nope, that’s true of heroes too. Well what is it then, and why…
Call for Comments: The Rhetoric of Digital Farming, Anti-Capitalism, and Talking Jellybeans
From Katya: Eric Barone and Chucklefish recently released the popular farm simulator, Stardew Valley, to iOS. The game draws heavily on Harvest Moon, allowing players to grow crops, care for animals, fish, befriend and even marry townsfolk. Having missed the farm sim. craze train (multiple times, in fact), and coming down with a nasty flu…
Call for Comments: Media Reboots, Revivals and Adaptations
From Mav: So we had a topic suggested by a listener, specifically Maximilian, who wrote our theme song (and was on our music of your youth episode). By the way, if it isn’t obvious, you can totally suggest topics for us to use. Anyway, Max requested we do an episode talking about the recent trend…
Call For Comments: But Baby is it really cold outside? Is it really?
December 5, 2018
From Mav: It’s the winter holiday season… that means lots of thing for pop culture: It means Christmas movies (which we already have a Call For Comments up for). It means endless consumerism, it means FoxNew turning to discussions on the War On Christmas. It means pumpkin spice everything. And it means Christmas carols… lots…