Call For Comments: Can We Cancel Cancel Culture Culture or Can’t We?

From Mav: So this is a weird one. We had this idea a few weeks ago that we would do a show on “cancel culture” after Gina Carano was publicly fired from The Mandalorian. But we didn’t get to it. For one thing, everyone else in the world was dumping think pieces left and right on her. For…

e123. Culture, Context, Protest, and Memefication

Have you ever gotten into an argument with someone on the Internet and they tried to prove their point by forwarding some meme that was a quote of a famous person for historical figure that seemed to vaguely relate to their point in the most perfunctory possible way? When this happened, did you think to…

Call For Comments: Erasing Cultural Activism in 50 Easy Years

From Mav: I ran across an interesting meme on conservative (MAGA) social media the other day. It was a picture of Jimi Hendrix playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the original Woodstock that was being used to complain about athletes kneeling in protest during the national anthem. The text of the meme is what really got…

e114. Your Black Friend is Tired

A few years ago, in an interview with Stephen Colbert, Will Smith said that he believed that racism isn’t getting worse — it’s getting filmed. While it may be hard to quantifiably judge the first part of that statement, the second part is certainly true. In the last couple of weeks, the public availability of…

Call for Comments: Your Black Friend Is Tired

From Mav: Well, it’s been a week. If you’re in America (or probably if you’ve simply bothered to watch the news at all anywhere else in the world), you know that in addition to the now standard “we shut down the world for a global pandemic,” we’ve also been dealing with “and then we went…

e92: 2010s Decade in Review

Somehow it’s 2020. I don’t get how that happened. 2020 isn’t a year… 2020 is what you make up if you’re setting some science fiction story in the future and you’re too lazy to pick an interesting sound year like 2027 or something. But somehow it actually is 2020, which means the start of a…

Episode 21: Sports, Patriotism, and Social Justice

If you live in the United States, then it’s almost football season. Even if you’re the kind of non-fan that likes to unaffectionately refer to it as “sports ball” you’re likely aware of the current President of the United States’ ongoing war with players — led by blackballed former quarterback Colin Kaepernick — who have…

Call for Comments: Sports and Social Justice

From Mav: Football season is nearly upon us. If you know me, then you know that’s a big deal for me. Even if you’re not a football fan, assuming you live on the planet Earth, chances are you are also aware of the current battle over the rights of the football players to kneel in protest,…