How do you like it so far?

This week's media recommendations are from two USC scholars who found out the impact of skateboarding culture on youth: Zoë Corwin, director of Digital Equity in Education project for the Pullias Center of Higher Education, and Neftalie Williams, whose research with the 2019-2020 USC x Tony Hawk Foundation project is the first national effort to study the impact skateboarding has on young people a...

With a new Spring Semester starting for many of us, we should remind ourselves of the importance of "play" in both civic and academic endeavors! This week's media recommendations come from Reanne Estrada, Creative Director of Public Matters, a Los Angeles-based creative studio for civic engagement, and Benjamin Stokes, Assistant Professor at American University and Director of The Playful City Lab...

What do scary people watch when they need to escape from this scary world? This week's media recommendations come from the experts of horror: Video Palace co-creator Mike Monello (also a creator of the Blair Witch Project) and Qiana Whitted, author of EC Comics: Race, Shock and Social Protest, which won the 2020 Eisner Award for best academic/scholarly work. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share yo...

This week's media recommendations come from Crystal Echo Hawk, founder and CEO of IllumiNative, a research-driven initiative created and led by Natives that is challenging negative narratives and supporting accurate and authentic portrayals of Native communities in pop culture. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? accou...

The How Do You Like It So Far team wishes you a happy 2021! With last year being one of collective pain, sorrow and loss, we need a new anthem for a new day that can inspire and comfort us. Take some recs from Varun Soni, USC's Dean of Religious Life. He has certainly helped plenty of Trojans through spiritual hardships, and hopefully the words of the seminal Bob Dylan can do the same to you. ––––...

2020 is finally coming to a close, and with it, also comes the year's final media recommendations from the How Do You Like It So Far team! Today's recommendations come from Set Hernandez Rongkilyo, an undocumented immigrant filmmaker and community organizer. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? account! You can also ema...

Tis the season to be jolly (even if the world is burning), and with it, our weekly media recommendation is here! This week we have Sue Ding, who is a documentary filmmaker and new media creator based in Los Angeles. She directs and produces nonfiction media—for platforms including The New York Times, PBS, and Netflix (latter of which released her new film "The Claudia Kishi Club"!!) ––––––––––––––...

This week's pop culture recommendations come from those who change the world with them -- Janae Phillips, Director of Leadership and Education for the Harry Potter Alliance, who oversees the Granger Leadership Academy and the Fandom Forward study guides project, among other things. Shawn Taylor is one of the founders of Nerds of Color and a founding organizer of the Black Comix Arts Festival, a fe...

As winter approaches, we all need our list of media recs to keep us warm and safe during this season! This week's episode features Suzanne Scott, author of Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry. Also on the episode is Susan Kresnicka, a cultural and business anthropologist and president and founder of cultural research firm Kresnicka Research and Insights! –––––––––...

This week we welcome Japanese Hip Hop scholar and reporter for Vice News , Dexter Thomas , and we talk a little bit about Vice News but mostly about Dexter’s outsider approach to journalism and the freedom he feels as a Black reporter at Vice in not being obligated to maintain the myth of a neutral perspective. Dexter shares his path to Vice, from college DJ to PhD in Asian Studies at Columbia Uni...

This week's episode of "What's Making You Sappy" is all about the legacy of Octavia Butler, an exceptional science fiction writer who wrote about gender and sexuality in bold new ways. With that, we have graphic novel and sci-fi recommendations from Shelley Streeby, Professor of Literature and Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, Director of Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop, John Je...

This week we’re joined by two USC colleagues, Zoë Corwin of the Pullias Center for Higher Education and Annenberg’s Neftalie Williams , who share some of what they’ve found studying skateboarding culture and its impact on youth . Spoiler alert: the impact is overwhelmingly positive! From literally creating safer spaces for Black youth to fostering wide-ranging skills like problem-solving, media cr...

Either to wind down from the crazy week we just had, or to take a well-deserved breather from the work that is ahead of us, "How Do You Like It So Far" team welcomes you to the second episode of our weekly media recommendations! This week, we have William O. Gardner, professor of Japanese language, literature and film at Swarthmore College. From animated features by the seminal Shinkai Makoto to a...

Welcome to the first episode of "What's Making You Sappy," Henry Jenkins and Colin Maclay's pop culture happy hour! For this week, we have recommendations from Clifford Johnson, a Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at USC and author of The Dialogues. We also have Dan Goldman, a writer, an artist, producer and founder and narrative lead of Kinjin Story Lab, whose work spans from grap...

Most of us probably aren’t making an effort to hang out in public spaces lately, much less seeing them as playful – quite the opposite! But with a hopeful eye to the future, this week we’re joined by artist Reanne Estrada, Creative Director of Public Matters , a Los Angeles-based creative studio for civic engagement, and Benjamin Stokes , Assistant Professor at American University and Director of...

Settle in for an extra-spooky Halloween episode! We’re joined by Michael Monello, one of the creators of The Blair Witch Project , Co-founder and Creative Director of Campfire Media and co-producer of the Video Palace podcast for Shudder , and Qiana Whitted, a professor English and African American Studies at the University of South Carolina and author of EC Comics: Race, Shock and Social Protest...

We’re joined by Crystal Echo Hawk, founder and CEO of IllumiNative , a research-driven initiative created and led by Natives that is challenging negative narratives and supporting accurate and authentic portrayals of Native communities in pop culture. IllumiNative builds on Echo Hawk’s massive research project, Reclaiming Native Truth , which laid bare the shocking reality that nearly 80% of Ameri...

If you like religion, sports or popular culture, this episode is for you, dear listener… and if you think you’re not interested in them, it is even more definitely for you! We are joined by Varun Soni , USC’s Dean of Religious Life and the first Hindu to serve as the chief spiritual officer of an American university. We traverse pandemic-driven transitions in higher education, acknowledging potent...

This week, from deep in the San Fernando Valley, we’re joined by filmmaker Set Hernandez Rongkilyo. A passionate storyteller from a young age, Set’s early love of Anime and desire to be an animator transitioned into becoming a passionate storyteller, through documentary film and now other forms as well. Set discusses their resistance to approaching documentary subjects from a supposedly neutral pe...

the Furious , and in between, explores issues of documentary filmmaking, emerging media, and Asian-American identity. The episode features Sue Ding ... We begin our discussion of Ding’s recent film, The Claudia Kishi Club , by exploring how and why the character of Claudia from The Babysitters Club franchise spoke to a generation of Asian-American youth and inspired many to enter the arts, helping...

This week, we offer the second of an ongoing series of episodes focused on fandom and fandom studies. Last week, we explored fandom’s relationship with the creative industries. This week, we are looking at fan-based activism. The episode features Janae Phillips, Director of Leadership and Education for the Harry Potter Alliance , who oversees the Granger Leadership Academy and the Fandom Forward s...

Welcome back to How Do You Like It So Far?, listeners! Today, we’re bringing you a time capsule of an episode: We recorded today’s conversation back in April, but it’s still as relevant as ever. Just don’t mind us thinking the coronavirus pandemic will be over in a couple of weeks.  The episode features Suzanne Scott , an assistant professor at the University of Texas Austin and author of Fake Gee...

Here are some of the references from this episode, for those who want to dig a little deeper:  Scholarship on Online Learning: PACE: What California’s Leaders Must Do Next to Advance Student Learning During COVID-19 Ed Week: The Disparities in Remote Learning Under Coronavirus (early in the pandemic, but similar trends) McKinsey: COVID-19 and student learning in the United States: The hurt could l...

See full show notes on our website: https://www.howdoyoulikeitsofar.org/episode-66-the-legacy-of-octavia-e-butler/ This week (tears our FINAL week), we continue our series on how science fiction thinks about disaster, especially in our new normal surrounding COVID-19 and the global pandemic.  We examine the work and legacy of Octavia E. Butler, an exceptional science fiction writer who wrote about...

Welcome to another quarant-week How Do You Like it So Far? team! We are still super lucky to be able to stay safe with our friends and loved ones right now and hope you are all hanging in there. We know it is a tough time and we appreciate you making this podcast a part of your quarantin-ing. Basically, thank you for not socially-distancing yourselves from this podcast. We are continuing our seque...