Shadow and Flame with Magik · Episode

The Internet is a dark and horrible place. Deep down, I think we all know that. And maybe it’s only gotten darker and more horrible over time. It really doesn’t…

Have you ever seen those ads for those over the top melodramatic drama movies on TikTok or Facebook or Instagram Reels or Youtube shorts? And by ads, we mean basically……

Every once in a while an adaptation property really surprises us by capturing the cultural zeitgeist far more than its source material would imply that it should. That seems to…

Obviously, Artificial Intelligence has been a big topic in the news of late. But in the world of pop culture, it really isn’t anything new. A.I. has been a huge…

Let’s talk about zines! Why? Because in many ways, they are one of the oldest and most revered artifacts of grassroots pop culture. Also, it turns out that pretty much…

So there’s a weird thing that happens when you get older. You start to realize that the things that seem indelibly important to you simply don’t matter to younger generations.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Eagle eyed (eared?) listeners might have noticed that it’s actually been a little tricky to get Monica booked on the show for the last couple of weeks because of a…

Let’s face it, if you listen to our show there’ basically no way that you didn’t know that there was a Superman movie that came out this weekend. In fact,…

In a media landscape driven by monetizing nostalgia, reboots and remakes are inevitable. Often this involves taking a new cast to offer a modern take on the property. However, there’s…

A couple weeks ago, Mav learned that they were making a sequel to a movie that he loves, Spring Breakers. The thing is, that’s an indy film that basically no…

Last week, A24 released a new movie called Materialists starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal and directed by Celine Song. Critical praise was high, but audience reaction was……

Last week Monica saw the most recent Mission Impossible movie and was fascinated by a plot detail wherein the characters need to use ancient technology from the — shudder —…

The nice thing about having your own podcast is that sometimes you can just turn a casual conversation into content that you discuss with the whole wide world. That’s what…

Do you have a collection of anything? Comics? Toys? Baseball cards? Records? Whatever? Ok, if you have such a collection, do you know what it’s worth. That is to say…

As the school year wraps up and summer begins it’s time for an annual pop culture tradition, the summer movie season. And, as we’ve done the last couple of years,…

Guess what?! We’re finally back from our conference and so the series of PCA specials is over. And so we return to business as usual and talking about the cultural…

We often say that at its essence, VoxPopcast is people hanging out and drinking at the bar after a conference. That’s not entirely true, but it’s not NOT true either.…

If you’ve been listening to the show for the past few weeks then you know that this month has been our special series of PCA episodes, and this might very…

It took 367 episodes, but it finally has happened! In this special live episode of the VoxPopcast, host Christopher “Mav” Maverick is joined for the first time (in person) by…