Call for Comments: The Male Gaze and its Discontents

From Katya: This week we’re revisiting the Male Gaze. I know we’ve been here before but we have a string of guests coming up offering their own spin on various “gazes” and related subjects so we thought it was worth a revisit. (If you’d like to check out our previous conversations, check out some of…

e163. The Secret World of American Girl

Pop culture fandom is defined by a hierarchy dedication. It’s easy to watch nine Star Wars movies; how much of the Expanded Universe do you know? Anyone can watch a couple dozen Marvel movies, but “the real fan” has bagged and boarded Silver Age originals! Sure, maybe you’ve sat through all 11.5 hours of LOTR,…

e149. Let’s Talk About SuperSex

Happy Valentine’s Day! If you had a podcast devoted to pop culture with a penchant for discussing comics with some bit of regularity and a holiday came up that was devoted to beauty of love and dating and you wanted to do something nice and sweet to commemorate the holiday, what would you do? Obviously…

e147. Big Fun with Charts, Data, and Analytics!

Charts Rock! Charts are Big Fun! Seriously! Don’t you just love a good chart? Ok, maybe you don’t think you do. In fact, you might even be thinking to yourself, why is a pop culture podcast talking about charts? Well, that’s because charts are incredibly popular in modern culture. We rely on them. We see…

Call for Comments: Why Do We ƒµ¢&ing Love Charts?

From Mav: I love charts. I fucking love charts! Am I alone here? I’m a nerd, when I was a kid, I used to play with this computer program called Harvard Graphics, just for fun. All it did was make charts. Last week, working on the final chapter of my dissertation, I got to a…

e128. 9 Popular Culture Pet Peeves We Hate and Why

Pop Culture is a double edges sword. The more we love a certain type of media, the more of it we absorb. But the more we absorb, the more we notice some of the tropes that are frequently repeated. And the more we notice those tropes, the more likely we are to eventually get annoyed…

Call for Comments: Corsets, Torture Device of the Patriarchy or Comfy Back Brace of Vintage Glamour?

From Katya: Or, perhaps, a little of column A, a little of column B depending on historical context and use? I know you were all waiting with bated breath for our next fashion-centered episode (I mean, I was). Listeners that have ever checked out my Instagram account (@JustThatNerdKid) know that it mainly documents my vintage…

Call for Comments: Revising Race in Dungeons and Dragons

Dark elves aka drow From Katya: Wizards of the Coast recently announced (by recently I mean mid-June. It’s been a YEAR y’all) ways that they’re attempting to address the game’s racist characterizations of, well, in-game races. In their announcement, they acknowledge the widespread critique of their rules surrounding races, particularly the ways that stereo-typically dark-skinned…

e117. Post-Release Censorship and the Disney Vault

There was a weird story that broke a few weeks ago when people discovered that episodes of the 2012 teen sitcom Wizards of Waverly Place had “censored” the cleavage of the mother on one episode by placing a blur over the actress’s chest on the Disney+ streaming service. After some investigation, it turned out that…

Call for Comments: Birds of Prey and Women in Film

From Hannah: Birds of Prey premiered a little over a month ago to less fanfare than it deserved. I, admittedly, was hesitant to see it because of both how bad Suicide Squad was and questions about how the film would handle the character of Harley Quinn. I went in with zero expectations and had an…