How do you like it so far?

Rebecca Williams and Lauren Sowa discuss Disney theme park fandom from Disneyland California to Disney theme parks across the globe. Williams and Sowa share their history with Disney films and how that love has translated into their love for the theme parks as adults. We then dive further into the theme park as a space of play for adults and why being a childless adult at Disney has been unjustly...

This week we’re joined by a whoopensocker of a guest - Erica Halverson. After telling us all what a “whoopensocker” is, she brings us up to speed on her education intervention of the same name, where teaching artists employ the rules of improv to encourage kids to express themselves and engage in collaborative storytelling. Those stories are then presented back to them in the form of a professiona...

This week Henry & Colin are joined by Lori Kido Lopez , Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and Director of the Asian American Studies Program at University of Wisconsin-Madison, to discuss her new book, Micro Media Industries: Hmong American Media Innovation in the Diaspora . Lopez shares some background on this little-known ethnic community’s place in the U.S. and how their unique media ecol...

This week, Sherry Turkle , MIT professor and author, joins Henry & Colin to discuss her new memoir, The Empathy Diaries. Sherry and Henry talk about their shared experiences of teaching arts & humanities at MIT. Since Sherry’s work is usually interpreted as a critique of technology and Henry’s work is interpreted as a support of technology, they both start by sharing some recent optimism that Sher...

This week, Henry & Colin are joined by three fan studies scholars, andré m. carrington ,author of Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction ; Abigail De Kosnik , author of #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation ; and Rukmini Pande author of Fandom, Now in Color and Squee from the Margins . We talk about how race has been addressed (or not) in fandoms and fan...

This week, we are joined by Te Rita Papesch , a legendary figure in the Maori tradition of Kapa Haka, and Sharon Mazer , her friend and an American performance studies researcher. Together, they converse about Kapa Haka as a manifestation of the historic relations between the Maori people and their “Kiwi” colonizers, one which is embedded in the everyday life of the community but also undergoing c...

This week's media recommendations come from Ioana Mischie, a transmedia artist working with creative writing, film, and virtual reality, and Howard Blumenthal, a television and new media creative, to talk about how children can shape the future of education and our world. Their recommendations span everything from jazz to emerging futuristic fiction. You'll love em! ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––...

This week we invited Ioana Mischie , a futurist and transmedia artist working with creative writing, film, and virtual reality, and Howard Blumenthal , a television and new media creative, to discuss the future of education and the role of children in shaping the field. Mischie’s work includes Government of Children and Tangible Utopias , which both place children as the arbiters of new types of g...

This week's media recommendations come from scientist turned author S.B. Divya and philosophy student turned conceptual artist Jonathon Keats. Their list includes everything from 1960s architecture collectives to a weekly science fiction podcast! –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? account! You can also email us at how...

This week's conversation with scientist turned author SB Divya and philosophy student turned conceptual artist Jonathon Keats continues our series on climate futures by beginning with the notion of a thought experiment, and how that is manifested in both Divya’s fiction and Jonathon’s art projects. They discuss the tools each of them uses to invite their audiences to participate with them in optim...

This week's media recommendations come from two writers/scholars of the Solarpunk movement: Sarena Ulibarri, Editor-in-Chief of World Weaver Press and a science fiction writer whose works include Glass and Gardens and Biketopia, and Ed Finn, the Director of the Center for Science and Imagination at Arizona State University. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry,...

This week, we’re joined by Sarena Ulibarri , Editor-in-Chief of World Weaver Press and a science fiction writer whose works include Glass and Gardens and Biketopia , and Ed Finn , the Director of the Center for Science and Imagination at Arizona State University , to talk about how solarpunk can shape our understanding of climate change, social issues, and the future. They discuss the immense pote...

This week's media recommendations come from Julian Brave Noisecat and Candis Callison, leading Indigenous journalist and scholar, who share with us podcasts and books that highlight their voices -- and fantasy basketball. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? account! You can also email us at howdoyoulikeitsofarpodcast@g...

Candis Callison , an environmental journalist and associate professor at the University of British Columbia, and Julian Brave Noisecat , a Senior Media Fellow at the NDN Collective , join us today to talk about the role of Indigenous people in achieving environmental justice. They discuss methods that will better accommodate the inclusion of Indigenous voices in the present, particularly in approa...

You'd bet that the Pop Culture Collaborative would have good pop culture recommendations! And you're not wrong -- today's media recs come from Bridgit Antoinette Evans and Tracy Van Slyke, who touch on the big and bright sit-coms like The Office, Superstore and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and how we might revisit them in the light of last year. Also, we have the immortal works of Cicely Tyson, who left th...

Bridgit Antoinette Evans and Tracy Van Slyke , co-founders of the Pop Culture Collaborative , join us today to talk about the meaning of a pluralistic society, pop culture for social change, and the intersection between the arts and social activism spheres. They delve into the notion of narrative oceans, how they can be used to unify people’s experiences but also drive harmful stereotypes of popul...

This week's media recommendations are all about fantasy, a realm that our last guest Warren Hedges is very, very fond of: From the African fantasy of Marlon James' "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" to a Skyrim Mod called "3DNPC." –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? account! You can also email us at howdoyoulikeitsofarpodcast@g...

This week’s guest, Warren Hedges, teaches a course at the Southern Oregon University on how speculative genres such as science fiction and fantasy help us imagine more inclusive cultures, societies, and worlds. He shared some thoughts on Facebook about Jacob Chansley, the so-called “Q Shaman” who participated in the January 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capital and the ways his dress and tattoos refl...

Is it a bird? Is it a rhopalocera? Is it a flying bipedal anthropoid? It's all three! Naturally, today's media recommendations come from the delightful James Paul Gee, who gave us some insights about all three of those animals last week. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? account! You can also email us at howdoyoulike...

This week we host James Paul Gee , recently retired Arizona State University professor and researcher in a plethora of topics including psycholinguistics and discourse analysis. As we talk about his latest book, What Is a Human? Language, Mind, and Culture , Gee casually uplifts our fundamental understanding of what it means to be, well, human and how we’ve severely underestimated animal intellige...

This week, a pleasantly unexpected list of media recommendations comes from guests of our latest episode, Talia Stroud and Eli Pariser of Civic Signals, an organization dedicated to reimagine digital environments to be better public spaces, much like how humanity has strived to build healthy, flourishing civic spaces in the real world for millennia! –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your though...

This week we’re joined by Talia Stroud , Director of the Center for Media Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin, and Eli Pariser , formerly of Upworthy and MoveOn and author of The Filter Bubble , to talk about their latest project, Civic Signals/New Public . After several rounds of conversation on “what’s wrong with social media and how can we fix it?” Talia and Eli started Civic Signal...

Did y'all enjoy our first episode of this season? Parmesh Shahani certainly inspired us about imagining more diverse and accepting societies by focusing on compelling narratives that shatter prejudices. And with that, this week's media recommendations are exactly those that make Parmesh hopeful about the future! –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and t...

This week we welcome Parmesh Shahani , founder of the Godrej India Culture Lab and author of Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India and Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in the Indian Workplace .   While Parmesh was eating his blueberry cake and drinking coffee to start his day, the sun was setting in Los Angeles. Across this conversation, we explore his journey to the Uni...

News-flash! We'll be releasing our first regular episode for this season of How Do You Like It So Far this Thursday. But before you tune into Henry and Colin's riveting discussions, we have our weekly media recommendations! This week we have Dexter Thomas, a correspondent for Vice News and a scholar of Japanese Hip Hop. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Col...