Most TV, movies, books... fiction in general don't exist. This is obvious. That's sort of the point of fiction. but what if it didn't exist beyond the obvious fact that we imagined it. What if all we didn't even imagine it... or maybe most of us didn't. What if the vast majority of fiction ever produced actually happened in th daydream of one single autistic boy on a single evening in the Spring of 1988. This is the Tommy Westphall hypothesis, based on the finale of a mostly otherwise forgotten (but critically acclaimed) dramedy, St. Elsewhere. This is actually a well known theory amongst hardcore television geekdom and we've eluded to it in passing before, but we thought it was time we dove into it. So on today's episode, Wayne...
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e58. Gaming an Empire
History does not look upon tyranny with favor. The Persian Empire, The Mongol Empire, the Roman Empire, The Qing Dynasty, The British Empire. In our modern contemporary moment we tend to think of all of these as affronts to freedom and democracy… and with good reason. That said, there are a surprising number of games…
Call for Comments: Great Expectations for Disappointing Endings to the Game of Thrones
From Hannah: Game of Thrones ends Sunday and, based solely on audience opinion of the last two-to-three seasons (particularly the penultimate episode ever), it’s going to be bad. Depending on who you ask, it may be the worst finale of a television show ever (except maybe Dexter). There are a lot of reasons people are…
Call for Comments: Gaming an Empire
From Katya: Previously, we’ve have gaming episodes on direct violence in video games (I stab/shoot/punch/explode/magic the enemy.) This time we want to turn to another common theme in gaming: empire. Civilization VI Risk, Command and Conquer, Axis and Allies and other strategy games— analog and digital — allow players to command armies waging war, claiming/reclaiming…
Call For Comments: Cinematic Franchise “Endgames”
From Mav: (No worries, no spoilers in this post) Well, it’s finally time… we’re in the endgame now… and all that. In a couple hours, Avengers Endgame opens in theaters, and I assume a large number of our listeners are going to go see it (please, NO SPOILERS in the comments of this post). By…
e54. The Unbearable Whiteness of being Batman
Do you remember all of those great Batman supporting characters of color. You know… Batman’s black, latinx, asian and other ethnic sidekicks and villains like… errr… uh… you know… yeah… ummm…. It’s actually hard to come up with some, isn’t it? Well, there’s probably a reason for that. There are actually several, and have been…