e433. Spider-Man: Masks, Myths, and Media — The VoxPopcast

Spider-Man, Spider-Man does whatever a spider can… So if you’re the kind of person who listens to this show, you no doubt know that a new Spider-man movie, Spider-Man: Brand…

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e432. The Odyssey and Greek Myth: The Enduring Legacy of Ancient Classics — The VoxPopcast

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that the biggest movie in the world for the last week has been Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Despite a concerted…

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e431. Henchmen, Heavies, Minions & Muscle: Narrative Dynamics of the Hired Goon — The VoxPopcast

Behind every great villain is… frankly, well, often there’s another bigger villain pulling the strings. But the truth is, while we often celebrate “the big bad” some of the most…

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e430. Tyrant: Dinosaurs and the Evolution of Indie Comics — The VoxPopcast

To a lot of people “comics” seems to mean superheroes. So much that “comic book movies” is the term that we sometimes use for what should properly be called “superhero…

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e429. Out of this World: Alien Archetypes in Pop Culture — The VoxPopcast

Aliens are one of the most enduring concepts in popular culture. It makes sense really. If we know there are other planets then it stands to reason that we might…

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e427. From He-Man to Toy Story: Nostalgia's Role in 2020s Entertainment — The VoxPopcast

Everyone is always complaining that no one makes any new movies anymore. Pop culture is seemingly just a continuous rehash of stuff that we used to have decades ago. Except…

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e426. Narrative & Technology (& Narrative) Syllabus Special — The VoxPopcast

A few weeks ago, Mav was talking with friend of the show Joe Darowski about a new class Joe is teaching at Bringham Young University called “Technology & Narrative”. Joe…

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e422. Anatomy of a Heist: More Than Just Stealing — The VoxPopcast

The Heist may be one of the popular pop culture tropes of all time. And yet, we’ve never talked about it before. So you know what that means. It’s time…

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e418. PCA Roundtable: Enjoying the Art of Immoral Artists: An Ethical and Aesthetic Dilemma — The VoxPopcast

It’s that time of year again! If you’re a long time listener to the show then you probably know about PCA already. PCA is acronym for both the Popular Culture…

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e415. Beyond the Final Frontier: Star Trek's Influence on Culture & Fandom — The VoxPopcast

Four hundred and fifteen episodes over eight years and we never talked about Star Trek. How could that possibly be? Well, it can’t be. Of course we’ve talked about Star…

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e411. Is The Cannonball Run a Bad Movie? (Ok, we know it is… but does it have to be?) — The VoxPopcast

So every once in a while we like to do an episode of the show called “is this a bad movie?” The funny part is that usually when we pick…

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e410. Teen Beach Movie: Metaphor, Methodology, Memories, and Millennials vs. GenZ — The VoxPopcast

Sometimes an episode idea comes out of nowhere. Recently, Mav overheard several of his students discussing a movie from their childhood before his morning class. After he laughed at their…

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e409. Tommy Westphall's Snowglobe: Exploring Fiction's Largest Shared Universe — The VoxPopcast

Most TV, movies, books… fiction in general don’t exist. This is obvious. That’s sort of the point of fiction. but what if it didn’t exist beyond the obvious fact that…

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e407. Oscar Sneak Preview: Breaking Down the Nominations From Snubs to Surprises — The VoxPopcast

For a show about pop culture, it’s actually somewhat rare for us to address topics of pop culture while they are actually happening. But sometimes we do. So this week,…

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e406. So, We Live in the Pitt and Here is What We Think of It… — The VoxPopcast

Well, unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard of HBOMax’s new hit series the Pitt. After all, it recentlywon like a billion Golden Globes and Emmys. Well… ok,…

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e404. Stranger Endings: Breaking Down the End of Stranger Things — The VoxPopcast

For some reason Netflix, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the proper way for everyone in the world to spend their winter Holidays of American Thanksgiving through Christmas and New…

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e403. Things You Missed 2025 — The VoxPopcast

Well here we are at the end of the year 2025; a year that somehow seemingly lasted 147 months. And yet somehow it was really only 12 months and that…

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e398. Of Course We're Talking About Wicked For Good — The VoxPopcast

There’s no sense burying the lead here. If you listen to our show at all, you know that Hannah is a Wicked fanatic. We talked about it last year (exactly…

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e395. Stealing the Fives (with permission of course) — The VoxPopcast

Every once in a while we like to step away from our usual serious… well… serious-ish, pseudo-academic intellectual pursuits and just do something a little fun. This is one of…

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e392. Games4SocialImpact 2025 — The VoxPopcast

Has it been a year already since Mav last did a special GameJam episode? I guess so. For those who are new to VoxPopcast, every year Mav serves as a…

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e391. Manga-101: Why is Manga? — The VoxPopcast

It’s always weird and oddly exciting when we discover that we have a hole in the things we’ve covered one the show. And in fact, It’s actually quite surprising that…

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e390. La Mort de le Mèmer? How memes make meaning — The VoxPopcast

We’ve talked a lot on the show in the past about Roland Barthes’ influential literary essay “La mort de l’auteur” or “the Death of the Author” and what it means…

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e389. Boycotts and their Cultural Impact — The VoxPopcast

So… America is in a weird place right now. Frankly, we could say that just about every week these days. But this last couple of weeks it’s been even more…

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e387. TV is Our Religion: The Theological Lens of Peak Television — The VoxPopcast

There’s a lot of TV content out there. In fact, sometimes it feels like there’s maybe too much TV to watch. However, there’s a certain set of shows that it…

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e385. Is Flash Gordon a Bad Movie? — The VoxPopcast

It’s been a while since we did a “is this a bad movie” episode. But the best way of investigating a “is this a bad movie” is to pick one…

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e384. From Vanderbilt Glam to Oscar's Shades: The Gilded Age Deep Dive — The VoxPopcast

In 2022, a show premiered on HBO that was perhaps tailor made for us. The Gilded Age was a 1880s period drama from the creators of Downton Abbey with sexual…

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e383. Revisiting Milkshake Ducks — The VoxPopcast

Way back on episode 47, we talked about Milkshake Ducks. That is to say, the concept of what to do when you suddenly discover that the creator of a beloved…

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e382. How Catch 'em? Exploring the Inverted Mystery — The VoxPopcast

One of the most tried and true genres of fiction is the Whodunnit mystery. The premise is simple, a crime is committed and the reader or audience watches the a…

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e381. It's Clobberin' Time! Fantastic Four's Impact on the Summer of Superheroes — The VoxPopcast

For the past couple of years, the general sentiment seems to have been that superhero movies are becoming… well… kinda bad. But, as we spoke a couple weeks ago with…

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