Superhero Ethics

If you try to understand why someone did something terrible, are you excusing it? Matthew Fox and co-host Paul Hoppe, a poker player and writer, look back on what more than 400 episodes have taught them and build a working framework for heroes, anti-heroes, villains, and anti-villains. Killmonger, Karli Morgenthau, Anakin Skywalker, and Finn all get run through it. Matthew traces the distance betw...

Paul Hoppe’s mom checked MLB.com every day and never once stumbled on a story about the Women’s Pro Baseball League. Matthew Fox and Paul, a poker player and writer who watched the WPBL’s first season with her, look back at what the league delivered on the field and why so few people knew it existed. They also revisit Penny Marshall’s “A League of Their Own” to see how it holds up. Matthew traces...

Walking away from a bad table is easy advice when you have money to come back with. Matthew Fox and co-host Paul Hoppe, a professional poker player and writer, spend the hour on what it means to be short stacked or underrolled. They open by remembering Tim Curry, Dolly Parton, Peter Cullen, and Hayden Panettiere, then Paul explains how stack size and bankroll hand one player power over another. Th...

Every time you size someone up by their demographics, whether at a poker table or a police stop, you’re profiling them, and it’s worth asking why. On Superhero Ethics, Matthew Fox and Paul Hoppe dig into the different flavors of profiling, from the ways poker players read opponents to the much higher stakes of police profiling on the street. They trace how casinos and comic book movies lean on the...

 On this episode, poker player and co-host Paul joins Matthew Fox to argue that quitting isn’t a moral failure, it’s a skill; one poker forces you to practice on every hand and superhero movies almost never reward. They test the idea against Steve Rogers hanging up the shield and Tony Stark’s gamble on Ultron. Paul walks through deliberately quitting the MCU and a Mets season gone bad, Matthew exp...

Would you cheer for a hero who tricks a Cyclops but never sleeps with a witch? Classics professor Adam Kemezis joins Matthew Fox to dig into how Christopher Nolan's Odyssey reshapes Homer's most cunning warrior for a modern audience, and what gets lost when three thousand years of moral complexity gets smoothed down to relatable and redeemable. Kemezis, who teaches Greek and Roman mythology at the...

Dolly Parton let the world underestimate her for fifty years, then spent that underestimation as leverage every single time. Days after her death, comedian and "Make Me a Nerd" host Mandy Kaplan joins host Matthew Fox to talk about what she meant to them, using the workplace revenge fantasy "9 to 5" as the way in. They cover the movie, the songs that came out of it, and the choices Parton made wit...

“Lanterns” so far is more cop drama than cosmic weirdness, and comic book historian Jessica Plummer isn’t convinced the trade was worth it. She joins Matthew Fox to dig into the first two episodes of HBO Max’s new John Stewart and Hal Jordan series, working through what an adaptation owes its source material and where reinterpretation turns into replacement. They get into the show’s stripped-down...

Should a beloved story get a sequel twenty years later, and does anyone actually want it? Matthew Fox and Paul Hoppe take on Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, the new Avatar Studios movie picking up with a grown-up Team Avatar, and neither host walked away loving it. They dig into what makes a "midquel" so hard to pull off, why aging up characters from a beloved kids' show is trickier than it looks...

Thanos says he “had to” sacrifice Gamora. Vader tells Luke it’s too late to turn back. Professional poker player Paul Hoppe joins Matthew Fox to dig into the sunk cost fallacy, the bias that convinces us that because we’ve already paid a price, we have to keep paying it, and to test that idea against real poker hands as much as comic book ones. They trace “don’t throw good money after bad” out of...

What if the hero afraid of his own power is exactly what makes it easy to fear an entire population? Matthew Fox is joined by returning guests Will Freeland and Steve Stormoen of the “Hype Is My Superpower” podcast to dig into “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” Peter’s uneasy partnership with the Punisher, and how Bruce Banner’s fear of himself ends up doing quiet work in the movie’s X-Men subplot. The...

What actually separates a poker player from a gambler? Professional poker player, coach, and writer Paul Hoppe steps in as Matthew Fox’s full co-host and the two spend this episode arguing over wagers, variance, and self-control at the table before turning it into a lens for superhero risk-taking. They dig into Nick Fury’s bet on New York, Kingpin’s long-shot gamble in the Spider-Verse, and a deca...

What happens once a society finds a way to turn a human body into an energy source, and decides that’s a good deal? Podcaster and TruStory FM co-founder Pete Wright joins Matthew and Paul to talk about “Lattice,” his debut science fiction novella, and the death penalty, corporate power, and family loyalty questions Wright built into its plot from the very first chapter. Wright talks about writing...

What do you owe to a culture that built you — especially when that culture is evil? Writer and poker thinker Paul Hoppe (ZenMadman) returns to Matthew Fox on Superhero Ethics to dig into R.A. Salvatore’s “The Crystal Shard,” the first Icewind Dale novel and the book that launched the 40-book Legend of Drizzt saga. Paul recommended it; Matthew finally read it. The question of who Drizzt Do’Urden is...

What happens to a friendship and a podcast over ten years and four hundred episodes? On this milestone episode, Matthew sits down with longtime guest Paul Christopher Hoppe, poker professional and author of ZenMadman’s Friday Night Is My Monday Morning Volume 1 , to talk about what has changed since Superhero Ethics started in 2016 as a media project that doubled as a mental health lifeline. They...

Did Supergirl earn her killing of the already defeated villain, or did the movie just tell us not to worry about it? Matthew Fox is joined by returning guest Jessica Plummer, comics journalist and Book Riot contributing editor, to dig into Supergirl 2026, from the internet’s reaction to star Millie Alcock to whether the film’s ethics hold together at all. Jessica has been a Supergirl fan since lon...

In 1984, a group of London lesbians and gay men decided to raise money for striking Welsh miners, because Thatcher was going after both communities. Author Becky Allen joins Matthew Fox to dig into "Pride," the 2014 film about that real coalition, asking what made it work, what the film gets right about discomfort and solidarity, and why the fact that the strike ultimately failed doesn’t diminish...

"Ben's PTSD manifested as his alcoholism and his self-destruction as the Spider. ‘I'm just going to go out there and get punched in the face voluntarily, and maybe I'll do some good at the same time.’ "— Will FreelandBen Riley didn’t become the Spider to save anyone. He did it for the rush, and Spider-Noir on Prime Video is honest enough to build a whole show on that confession. Marvel comics expe...

He-Man was always camp. The loincloth, the harness, the flexing, the pink tunic, Masters of the Universe was masculinity as WWE spectacle.. The 2026 film knew this, it just couldn’t decide what to do about it. Host Matthew Fox welcomes Pete Wright of The Next Reel Film Podcast on TruStory FM to dig into why this movie feels like five films playing simultaneously, why the Barbie comparison is more...

The Boys is over — but did it actually answer the questions it spent five seasons raising? Matthew is joined by returning guest Ocean Murff, podcast host and movie theory enthusiast, to dig into the finale and wrestle with what the show chose to resolve and what it quietly left on the table. They work through the biggest choices of the final season: Homelander’s death, Butcher’s suicide-by-Huey, R...

“Empire Records” bombed in 1995, got panned by critics, and spent the next thirty years becoming a cult classic — which tells you something about what reviews are actually measuring. Comics writer and Book Riot contributor Jessica Plummer joins Matthew Fox to revisit the film with real affection and ask what makes it hold up, and what happens when you look at it a little more closely. They get int...

What does it mean to hold real authority in a card room? Matthew Fox has spent years as a judge for TCGs like Magic: The Gathering and Star Wars: Unlimited, and returning guest Paul Hoppe managed the graveyard shift at a casino poker room. Together they compare notes on what it actually looks like to make a call when there's money on the table and the rules don't quite cover the situation. They di...

What made you the kind of person who questions things? Returning guest Rob McKenzie joins Matthew to trace the science fiction and fantasy that quietly shaped his ethics, and the conversation turns out to be about a lot more than books. They start with Isaac Asimov: the pacifism baked into “Foundation,” the Three Laws of Robotics as a moral framework, and the surprisingly dark places minimizing-ha...

This conversation first aired on Star Wars Generations and we're sharing it here because it raises exactly the kind of question this show was built for. Maul is the only one in the room telling the truth and nobody will believe him. At the halfway point of Maul: Shadow Lord, Matthew Fox is joined by returning guests Pete Wright and AK Ahab to dig into what kind of show this actually is and what to...

Is Cyclops from X-Men actually a cop, or is he just annoying? That question turns out to be the perfect entry point for a much bigger one: what does ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) really mean when the people using violence to enforce order have optic blasts and power rings instead of badges? Matthew is joined by comics writer and Book Riot contributor Jessica Plummer as they trace how the Green Lant...