Academics Henry Jenkins and Colin Maclay use their combined knowledge to dig deeper and ask more ambitious questions than most pop culture podcasts out there – not doing recaps or just remaining on the level of entertainment coverage. For them, popular culture offers resources for asking questions about who we are and where we are going, questions that can be political, legal, technological, economic, or social, but often cut across all of the above.
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MIT Media Lab’s Mitchel Resnick speaks with us about the development of his Lifelong Kindergarten research group and their efforts to affect the educational landscape through creative technological activities. Throughout the conversation, we describe the shifts in academic environments, starting from the free-form, highly imaginative kindergarten rooms to the stricter halls of higher learning.…
USC professor of English, gender & sexuality studies, and American studies & ethnicity, and chair of the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies Karen Tongson and NYU Assistant Professor of History Adrian De Leon join us to talk about their adoration of baseball and reality TV. Using their piece “ Both Sides Now: On the 2025 World Series ,” we discuss the affective and cultural dialogues sports…
University of Chicago Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, AE Stevenson and Rutgers University–New Brunswick, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies Brooklyne Gipson join us to talk about digital Black feminism online. We start our discussion with America’s relations with the platform TikTok , and how it is a large social media site for Black creators. We…
Showing her love of movies, Izzy from Be Kind Rewind chats with us about her process of creating video essays and connection to researching actresses in the Hollywood system. We discuss how her fannish love of TCM films turned into a passion for making videos and navigating complex topics often overlooked or simplified into gossip. Diving deeper into this, Izzy speaks about her recent video on…
Professor of Journalism at USC Annenberg, Robert Kozinets , and Henry Jenkins speak with us about their ongoing book series Frames of Fandom . Both authors explore how they met, their ever-evolving work in fan studies, and what inspired them to create a 16-book series. Both scholars discuss the complexity of fandom as it intersects with consumer culture and subcultures. They even ask if fandom…
In this episode, Bertha Chin — Senior lecturer and the Director of the National University of Singapore’s Communications And New Media program— and Swapnil Rai —Associate Professor Film, Television and Media Associate Professor Communication and Media at the University of Michigan—join us to speak about the global streaming media landscape. From Bollywood to Hollywood, Rai and Chin dissect the…
In this episode, we chat with Ethan Zuckerman — a Public Policy, Communication and Information professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst— about his views on the present political climate and major movements occurring in reaction to the Trump administration. From the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis to memes on the internet to the Boston Massacre, we discuss the various forms of…
In this episode, Mathew Klickstein , the host of Comic-Con Begins , and Emily Schindler , Senior Director of Learning and Engagement at the Comic-Con Museum, educate us on the history of and learning opportunities at San Diego Comic-Con. Mathew discusses how Comic-Con formed and why he documents that history in his podcast and his book, See You At San Diego: An Oral History of Comic-Con, Fandom,…
In this episode, we welcome Melanie Kohnen , an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies for Lewis & Clark College, and Billy Austin Tringali , an Instruction Librarian at the Indiana University Indianapolis and the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the J ournal of Anime and Manga Studies (JAMS), to discuss the culture and function of pop-culture conventions (“cons”). Melanie shares her…
In this episode, Professor Brian Hu from SDSU helps us tackle the world of Asian and Asian American cinema as they travel throughout various locales. Hu’s position as a film scholar and Artistic Director of the San Diego Asian Film Festival leads us through conversations about how people connect with and discover Asian culture. We touch on how regionality and heritage influence people’s…
