Pop Culture Roulette

The Giannis trade hurts. There's no way around it. Rather than spending an hour dwelling on what happened, we decided to do what Wisconsin sports fans have always done: look back at history and remind ourselves that we've survived heartbreaking trades before. From the Packers to the Brewers to the Bucks, we revisit some of the biggest blockbuster deals in Wisconsin professional sports history to s...

This week, Justin and Jeremy take the lead as Pop Culture Roulette opens up the quest log and looks ahead to the video games that have captured our attention. From major franchise releases and long-awaited sequels to promising new titles and intriguing indie projects, we're discussing the games we're most excited to see hit our screens in the months ahead. Every gamer has a wishlist, and ours is n...

Before we can argue about the best franchises in pop culture, we first have to answer a much more difficult question: what actually qualifies as a franchise in the first place? But before we get there, the conversation takes a detour into the changing landscape of traditions. From local customs and community events to some of the recent changes around the NFL, we discuss how things evolve over tim...

Quest for Second Place: The Jessica BracketSome competitions start with a wide-open field. This one started with a champion already crowned. With Jessica firmly holding the undisputed number-one spot in our personal rankings, this week on Pop Culture Roulette we turned our attention to a much tougher question: who deserves second place? To find out, we assembled a bracket featuring famous Jessicas...

The NFL schedule release videos have officially become their own form of entertainment… so naturally we had to break them down like they were blockbuster movie trailers. With Jeremy out this week, Justin and Nicholas took a deep dive into the weirdest, funniest, most over-the-top schedule reveals from around the league and debated which teams absolutely nailed it and which ones maybe should’ve lef...

This episode of Pop Culture Roulette goes a little old school in the best way possible, with Jeremy out this time, the discussion shifts into a looser, more nostalgic hangout vibe—less structure, more hot takes, and a lot of love for the world of food TV.The conversation digs into favorite cooking shows across eras, the TV personalities and chefs who’ve defined the genre, and what actually makes a...

Are sequels actually better… or are we all just lying to ourselves? This week on Pop Culture Roulette, we spin straight into one of the most heated debates in entertainment: when does a sequel outshine the original? Armed with cold, hard numbers from Rotten Tomatoes, we put some of the biggest franchises under the microscope and let the scores guide the chaos. From beloved classics to surprising f...

Spring has officially arrived, and Pop Culture Roulette is celebrating the only way we know how—with a chaotic mix of debates, nostalgia, and an absolutely stacked candy bracket. This week, Jeremy takes control of the wheel and throws Justin and Nicholas into a series of Easter-themed debates that quickly spiral from lighthearted fun into surprisingly passionate arguments. What starts as simple ho...

This week on Pop Culture Roulette, we take on a local bracket from 102.9 The Hog… and almost immediately abandon the idea of blindly accepting it. Instead, we spend most of our time asking a much more important question: why are some of these songs even on this list in the first place? As we work through the matchups, the episode turns into a full-on takedown of the bracket itself. We’re not just...

The crew dives headfirst into the wild, weird, and sometimes downright unbelievable world of comic book crossovers—and this time, there’s a twist. With Jeremy missing from the episode, Justin is thrown into the hot seat for a chaotic game where he’s given multiple crossover scenarios and has to decide which one is actually real… and which ones are completely made up. And when we say weird, we mean...

This week on Pop Culture Roulette, the wheel sends the crew into one of the strangest brackets we’ve ever built: a full tournament dedicated entirely to Patricks. From famous first names and legendary last names to real people, fictional characters, and a few unexpected curveballs, the bracket fills up quickly with Patricks from every corner of pop culture. What starts as a simple idea quickly tur...

This week Pop Culture Roulette heads to the ballpark for a special crossover episode. The show welcomes Tim Sternberg and Charlie Semar from the Around the Bases podcast to help settle a very important pop culture debate: what is the greatest baseball comedy movie of all time? With a full bracket in place, the conversation dives into some of the funniest and most memorable baseball films ever made...

In this episode of Pop Culture Roulette, we crank the volume all the way up and launch the Ultimate Sitcom Theme Song War — a full-blown bracket battle to decide which TV intro reigns supreme. This isn’t just about nostalgia (although there’s plenty of that). It’s about catchiness. Cultural impact. Sing-along power. The songs you never skipped — and the ones that still live rent-free in your head...

In this episode of Pop Culture Roulette, we take a deep dive into the movies, TV shows, albums, and video games that have officially landed on our 2026 hype list. From guaranteed blockbusters and long-awaited sequels to risky reboots and potential surprise hits, we break down what we’re counting down the days for—and what we’re approaching with healthy skepticism. We debate which upcoming films co...

At the start of 2025, we made a list. A very confident list. A list full of pop culture hopes, expectations, and bold predictions about what the year had in store. Now that 2025 is officially in the rearview mirror, we’re back to see how that list actually held up… and spoiler alert: some takes aged better than others. In this episode, we revisit what we were most excited for across movies, TV, an...

It’s the most wonderful time of the year… and also the season when Christmas music becomes completely unavoidable. 🎄🎶This week on Pop Culture Roulette, we take a deep dive into the wide (and often exhausting) world of holiday songs. We debate the Christmas tracks we flat-out can’t stand, call out the specific versions that somehow managed to make perfectly good songs worse, and talk through the...

Ho ho hold on — because this week on Pop Culture Roulette, we’re tackling one of the biggest holiday questions of all time: who played Santa Claus the best in live-action film or television? And to be clear, we’re not talking about characters who put on the suit — we’re talking about actors who were Santa. The real deal. North Pole credentials required. From warm and wholesome to sarcastic, intimi...

The holidays are officially in full swing, and we’re celebrating the season the only way we know how—by diving straight into the snowdrift of mayhem caused by pop culture’s most infamous Christmas villains. In this cheerful-but-chaotic episode, we unwrap every delightfully terrible holiday troublemaker who’s ever tried to ruin the season, derail the festivities, or steal the spotlight from Santa h...

Happy Thanksgiving from the Pop Culture Roulette crew — and yes, welcome to our very special Thanksgiving episode, the kind networks used to hype with dramatic promos even though the biggest twist was usually someone learning the meaning of gratitude. We may not have a heartwarming lesson, but we do have chaos: this week, we turned the entire Thanksgiving meal into a full-on elimination bracket. W...

After a few weeks away due to totally real and definitely not embarrassing technical difficulties (we blame the prequel to our soundboard), Pop Culture Roulette is back! And fittingly, we’re going back in time ourselves with a deep dive into the strange, storied, and sometimes spectacular world of prequels. This episode unpacks the full history of the prequel—where it started, how it became a mode...

Hollywood might be the land of dreams, but behind the glitz and glamor lurk some seriously creepy stories. This week on Pop Culture Roulette, we’re peeling back the red curtain and stepping into the shadows to explore the most enduring—and chilling—urban legends that have haunted Tinseltown for decades. From cursed productions and haunted props to rumors that refuse to die, we’re putting the spotl...

Even the King of Horror has a few skeletons in his cinematic closet. This week on Pop Culture Roulette, the crew dives headfirst into the Stephen King adaptations that didn’t quite earn their crown. Some started with great ideas but stumbled on their way to the screen, while others left us wondering how they got made in the first place. We’ll break down what went wrong — from baffling creative cho...

The time has come to decide who truly wears the crown. In this episode of Pop Culture Roulette, the boys dive into the top half of our massive Stephen King movie bracket — where chills, thrills, and impossible choices await. From supernatural horrors to small-town nightmares, from psychological terror to pulse-pounding suspense, we’re sorting through decades of cinematic adaptations to determine w...

This week on Pop Culture Roulette, we go deep into the world of sports milestones that seem downright impossible to beat. We’re talking the legends who didn’t just raise the bar—they set it so high no one’s come close in decades. From MLB’s Joe DiMaggio stringing together that jaw-dropping 56-game hitting streak and Cal Ripken Jr.’s ironman run of 2,632 consecutive games, to Wilt Chamberlain dropp...

On this episode of Pop Culture Roulette, we take center stage for The Great TV Vanishing Act! Television history is full of strange mysteries — characters who were endlessly talked about but never actually appeared, and others who showed up once only to disappear without a trace. Was it a clever running gag, a behind-the-scenes shake-up, or just lazy writing? We play a game that highlights some of...