Pop Culture Junkie®

Olivia and Shauna recount their weekend in San Francisco enjoying the best that Pride Month has to offer there: Drag acts, wig snatching contests, music, brunch - all the good stuff. Then they get serious and talk about a topic that some could find triggering - the rise (once again) of the "thin is in" movement, especially in today's media. Please use caution if you would rather avoid discussions...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Olivia binged the hilarious 2014 HBO comedy Silicon Valley, created by Mike Judge and starring Thomas Middleditch, Martin Starr and Kumail Nanjiani. It’s available on HBO Max. We have affordable and rewarding Patreon tiers! Be the first to hear new and uncensored content, if...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Shauna rented 2025’s dystopian drama The Long Walk, based on the Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) novel. Starring Mark Hamill, the film follows a group of kids literally walking for their lives in a totalitarian regime. It’s available for rental on Prime.  We have affordabl...

Live from Phoenix Fan Fusion, Olivia and Shauna head a panel to discuss a serious topic with their characteristic dark humor and feminist sass. Womansploitation - using violence against women as entertainment - is found in movies, in television shows, in books, in true crime documentaries and podcasts. Obviously, there is money to be made in victimizing women for the enjoyment of an audience. The...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday.  Olivia recommends the riveting Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, a new book that offers a science-fictional look at today’s tradwife movement by time-traveling a tradwife-influencer poser back in time to 1855, forcing her to do without modern conveniences. Find it at your loc...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday.  Shauna has finally taken Olivia’s advice and read the Crescent City book series from A Court of Thorns and Roses author Sarah J. Maas. You can find the first three books - House of Earth and Blood, House of Sky and Breath, and House of Flame and Shadow - at your local librar...

Shauna and Olivia are in the studio together live and in person, so naturally this episode revolves around artificial life forms. Robots and Artificial Intelligence are hot topics right now, as so-called AI actresses threaten to take over Hollywood, large language models steal our creative endeavors, and humans are demonstrably losing brain power because we need AI programs to compose simple email...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Olivia recently watched I, Robot, the 2004 film starring Will Smith as a “technophobic” cop investigating robot crime in the far-flung future of 2034, and found it to be a great film for anyone concerned about the dark side of AI here in the present. You can find it on Hulu o...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Shauna went all the way back to 1997 to watch the anime series Berserk. Based on a long-running manga, Berserk the anime series only had a single season, but that one season was hyperviolent and completely addictive. (And also very triggering, as the hero, a swordsman named G...

Shauna and Olivia want to share their favorite movies with each other, and you! This time Olivia shares one of her favorite movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Directed by Michel Gondry from a screenplay he wrote with Charlie Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth, Eternal Sunshine asks and answers the question 'If you could totally erase an ex-lover from your memory, would you?' Jim Carrey plays m...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Olivia is completely obsessed with the series Peaky Blinders. Set in 1919 Birmingham, England, Peaky Blinders stars Cillian Murphy (a man who can really rock a flat cap) as the boss of a gang of street criminals and all six seasons (and a movie) are available on Netflix. You...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Shauna finally watched the 1991 classic Oscar-winning psychological horror film Silence of the Lambs with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster from start to end, and wants you to watch it again or for the very first time, whatever the case may be, You can catch it on Tubi amo...

This week, Shauna and Olivia get a little witchy and expose the history of witches in pop culture. Going back as far as Shakespeare's trio of witchy prognosticators in Macbeth through the domesticated witches of the mid 1900s, today's heroic and/or villainous Marvel witches, the Junkies talk about how witches can be representative of themes like female identity, adolescence, autonomy, sexuality an...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Olivia’s pick is The Truman Show from 1998. Starring Jim Carrey and Laura Linney, The Truman Show and its focus on the blurred line between reality and entertainment is more timely than ever right now. You can catch it on Netflix. We have affordable and rewarding Patreon tier...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Shauna shares how much she learned from the 2024 Netflix documentary Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy, which exposes the subtle (and diabolical) ways the purveyors of fast fashion keep us consuming products that we don’t really need or even want.  We have affordable and rewar...

Olivia and Shauna gird their loins for the sequel to The Devil Wears Prada, a 20-years-in-the-making follow-up to the iconic Meryl Streep/Anne Hathaway film about a naive wannabe journalist working for the toughest editor in fashion journalism. The Junkies discuss watching the movie for the first time some 20 years ago and how their perspective the film has changed over time. Was Miranda really su...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Olivia recommends the 2018 Showtime miniseries Waco, starring Michael Shannon, about the standoff between cult leader David Koresh and the US government in Waco, Texas in 1993. (There’s also a Netflix documentary on the tragedy worth watching called Waco: American Apocalypse...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Shauna says to dive into the Crescent City book series by Sarah J. Maas, the author of the ACOTAR (A Court of Thorns and Roses) series. Start with the first novel in the series. House of Earth and Blood. We have affordable and rewarding Patreon tiers! Be the first to hear new...

Shauna and Olivia want to share their favorite movies with each other, and you! Up first is Shauna's favorite movie, V for Vendetta. Released in 2006, V for Vendetta was based on the DC/Vertigo comic series by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Directed by James McTeigue and written by the Wachowskis, V for Vendetta stars Hugo Weaving as the masked V, Natalie Portman as Evey, and a veritable who's who of...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Olivia praises the four-part documentary Dynasty: The Murdochs on Netflix, which chronicles the fight for succession amongst the heirs of right wing media kingpin Rupert Murdoch. We have affordable and rewarding Patreon tiers! Be the first to hear new and uncensored content,...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday.   Shauna recommends the dishy and gripping novel Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer, about a trad wife influencer who’ll do the unthinkable to become a trad mom.  We have affordable and rewarding Patreon tiers! Be the first to hear new and uncensored content, if you dare ! Click...

After Olivia and Shauna share some Bridgerton (and cat) updates, they look at the trend of artists selling their music catalogs. Music ownership rights have been in the news a lot lately, especially due to Taylor Swift's fight to keep hers, so for this episode, the Junkies examine which popular artists are taking lump sum payments for a lifetime of work and explain why this is happening more now t...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Olivia has gone back in time for another period piece, this time the 2020 superlative dark comedy The Great, starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult, now available on Hulu. We have affordable and rewarding Patreon tiers! Be the first to hear new and uncensored content, if yo...

In PCJ Pops, the Pop Culture Junkies share their recommendations on what to experience in pop culture, today and yesterday. Shauna gives her highest recommendation to the 2012 movie Vamps, which was directed by Amy Heckerling and stars Krysten Ritter and Alicia Silverstone and is now available on Tubi. We have affordable and rewarding Patreon tiers! Be the first to hear new and uncensored content,...

Acting as Lady Whistledown and... another Lady Whistledown, the Junkies transport us to the bodice-ripping world of the Netflix drama Bridgerton, a racially diverse, sexually charged romantic series set in London during the Regency era. Bridgerton comes from Shonda Rhimes and is based on a series of novels about a group of alphabetically-named siblings who each try to find love and/or happiness am...