e70. Does Pop Culture Matter?

Live from Wizard World Pittsburgh! Shows like ours and… well, a lot of the rest of the internet are hopelessly devoted to popular culture: Comic books, movies, music, video games, sports, TV. All of the stuff that sophisticated people will tell you is rotting your brain and wasting your life. We like to think we’re…

e64. Mythologizing the Founders

If you live in the United States of America, then this week is Independence Day, the day when we patriotically celebrate the greatest of our heritage and the foresight of a bunch of men in breeches, wigs and stockings decided to create a perfect nation… or so we tell ourselves. If you live outside the…

e62. Comics! You know… for the Kids!

Did you know comic books used to be produced almost entirely for children? Yeah! It’s true. Ok, maybe you did know that, but there was a time in America where given the popular idea of what a comic book was, that was hard to believe. Of course, there was also a time in America where…

e42. Diss Continuity

Chances are if you listen to this show you consider yourself a geek about some pop culture media or another. In fact there’s a good chance that you geek out about several forms of pop culture media. And if that’s true, you’ve probably come to realize that in any long term franchised intellectual property, that…

e38. 2019 Box Office Draft

Do you think we can review every movie coming out next year… before we’ve seen any of them… with no real knowledge…. in one hour? Well, just you wait! Welcome to the 2019 Box Office Draft Special! Back before we started this show, Mav decided that no matter what he wanted to steal the yearly…

e35. SPOILERS! (and Mystery Boxes)

Ever since the rise of the Internet we have all lived in constant fear of all of our favorite movies, books, TV shows and every other media being spoiled by some jerk who just wants to be the first to ruin everything for everyone else… or maybe he’s just an idiot. It doesn’t matter… once…

e33. Thanksgiving Politics

If you live in the United States, it was Thanksgiving last week, and that means spending time with family. And lately, it seems that a big part of spending time with family for the holidays is discussion politics…. in detail… disgusting, gross, bloody, racist, misogynist detail… with your drunk uncle who got all of his…

Episode 27: La Mort de l’Auteur

In 1967, literary critic and semiotician Roland Barthes wrote an essay called “La mort de l’auteur” that is in many ways foundational for the field of literary studies. It describes the way that literary interpretation works — both why and how. Since we do a lot of that on this show, figured it would be…

Episode 26: The Secret Lives of Puppets

Last week David Reddish, a former writer for Sesame Street, announced that he’d always thought of Bert and Ernie as gay… and the internet exploded. Some people were happy… some people were sad… and some people just asked “why does anyone care?!?!?” Well, that’s what this show is for. Wayne and Mav are joined by Josie…

Episode 24: Genre in General

At best, “genre fiction” often seems to be taken as synonymous with “popular” or “exciting”. At worse, it is often used a pejorative meaning “low brow” or “garbage”. But what is genre anyway? And why is the word used that way? Wayne and Mav are joined by a returning Hannah to sift through a discussion on…