e173. War of the Readings

The Internet has one main purpose: arguing about things that don’t really matter. I’m sure you’ve seen this, people will fight over whether a movie was good or bad, what the significance of a particular scene of a TV show was, what was the hidden theme of a book, or perhaps most notably today… should…

e172. (More Drinking Than Swearing…) The Culture Of Alcohol

We’ve always had a tag on our show of “the weekly pseudo-academic roundtable with drinking and swearing” but honestly, it’s usually more of the latter. We might be drinking while we record the show, but it really has no bearing on the listener Honestly, the alcohol is usually incidental. Not this week! This week we…

e170. What is Serialization? Tune in next week!

In today’s pop culture landscape, serialization is everything. TV, movies, novels, comics. Addict people to your ongoing series and hope they keep paying for another installment. Somehow, despite the fact that we are 170 episodes into a podcast SERIES about pop culture media, much of which is SERIALIZED, hosted by people who literally study SERIALIZATION…

e168. Time to Stop Wearing Underwear on the Outside

Have you ever noticed how infrequently superheroes in most superhero TV shows and movies actually wear their superhero costumes? It makes sense when you think about it. Superhero costumes are actually kind of silly: wearing underwear on the outside of spandex bodysuits? They’re based on pop culture tropes from nearly a century ago, which honestly…

e161. Describing 20 Games We Haven’t Played

Do you like to play games? We do. And Hannah really likes to play games. In fact, she’s addicted. So much so that she made a game about games… and forced the rest of us to play. Seriously… there were horrible threats… people’s families were in danger. Someone might have lost a little finger. On…

e160. Remembering Thought & Thinking About Memory

Do you remember the song that was playing when you had your first kiss, lost your virginity, or danced at your wedding? Do you know what movie that you crowded around the TV to watch as a family every holiday as a kid? Do you have fond memories of the vacation you took in the…

e159. Obviously, it’s the Falcon and the Winter Soldier Show

it’s pretty safe to say Disney has a chokehold on popular culture in America, and to a lesser extent the entire world. Once again, the Powers that Be, as it were, has delivered down unto us yet another installment in the modern epic that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But, do we have to talk…

e158. Superhero Thought Experiments

Have you ever had one of those pointless internet arguments about the philosophical righteousness of Batman, Superman, Rorschach or Luke Skywalker? Or maybe you’ve spent hours arguing about how time travel works based on old Fantastic Four comic books. And I’m sure many of you have tried to defend the value of some superhero movie…

e157. Standup Comedy Sitting on the Couch

Zoom meetings are are a simple fact of life in the pandemic lockdown world. Work meetings, school classrooms, social events. At this point, we’ve all done them. And quite honestly, we’re all sick of them. But as long as we’re trapped in the lockdown world, they’ve just become a reality. But what about jobs that…

e156. More Bad Things? We Love

Last year, all four hosts got together and did a show we called “Bad Things We Love” in which we built a list media that we have some kind of affection for despite our realization that it may not actually be very good. Mav and Hannah thought it’d be fun to do a sequel to…