Radio vs. the Martians!

We’re in the studio with Carol and Dave Brouillette , who have returned with us with good tidings from Monster Jam ! Yes, Monster Jam , the (surprisingly wholesome) spectacle of giant tires, animal shaped vehicles, big jumps, and plenty of dirt tracks and screaming fans. It’s one-part P.T. Barnum, one-part NASCAR, one-part Vince McMahon, and one-part Hanna Barbera Wacky Races . The goo...

Heroes Don’t Retire. They Reload. This month, we’re joined in the studio by not one, but two guests, Carol and Dave Brouillette of the late Hands Free Football soccer podcast, and suffering through all eight episodes of the Arnold-helmed Netflix series, FUBAR ! For decades, CIA operative Luke Brunner has been living a double life. To his suburban family, he’s been a traveling sal...

Every generation has a legend. Every journey has a first step. Every saga has a beginning. Now this is podcasting! This Christmas Eve, we’re back with a gift! In our first Retcon vs. the Martians! , Casey has ambushed Mike with an impromptu commentary track screening of George Lucas’ much-maligned science fantasy prequel that has been talked to death on every podcast and YouTube channel for the be...

Into a world of eternal life, he brought the gift of death This month, we’re eating green bread and refusing to go to Second Level meditation with Joe Preti of the late View from the Gutters comic book podcast to dive into the weird and psychedelic science fiction cult film, 1974’s Zardoz ! In the year 2293, Zed is a murderer disciple of Zardoz, a floating stone god who arms and comman...

We’re back in the studio with Joe Preti , and talking about Martin Scorsese’s three hour crime epic, Killers of the Flower Moon , and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City. Plus, a conversation about the death of the movie star as the driver of cinema. Are there any modern stars who can transcend their signature characters or franchises and elevate any movie they star in? And we lay our c...

We’re back with Kirby Green to talk about her favorite trash TV obsession: 90 Day Fiancé ! We look at the show that throws the best and worst elements of romance, desperation, immigration law, and repulsive people, into a television blender and we look at the horrifying and endlessly addictive slurry that pours out of it.

…and now the earth will run with blood again! We’re getting into the spirit of the spooky season with returning guest Kirby Green , and unmasking the underrated black sheep of the Halloween horror franchise: Halloween III: Season of the Witch ! Dr. Daniel Challis stumbles into a mystery after a man clutching a rubber mask is murdered in his hospital by a strange figure who immediately...

Though conflicting schedules this month have made a regular episode impossible, we’re back in the studio to chat about the stuff we’ve been reading and watching, and of course… we’re talking about Star Trek . Plus, Mike talks about trying out some new manga series, including one that he didn’t really care for, and another that may be one of his new favorites. Includin...

We continue our chat with Sam Mulvey , and tear the still-beating heart out of the world of martial arts frauds and scam artists. From manufactured biographies involving hidden temples and battles to the death, to selling mail order pamphlets through comic book ads promising access to forbidden techniques, we look at the grey area between the real and the phony.

Only their mother can tell them apart. This month, we’re learning the first rules of a crisis situation with returning guest Sam Mulvey of KTQA 95.3 FM radio , and exploring the first installment of the Schwartzenegger/Reitman collaboration trilogy, the wholesome eugenics comedy: Twins ! Genetic superman and polymath Julius Benedict, raised on a utopian tropical island, learns on his 35th bi...

We’re back again with Joe Preti , and chatting about the emerging streaming epoch and its tremendous downsides as corporate studio overlords start making things you love disappear, making it impossible for these shows and movies to find new fans — and for their creators to get paid for their work. The streaming services are getting worse and more expensive and several beloved shows tha...

Catch the Excitement. Catch the Adventure. Catch the Hawk. We’re breaking into the Vatican and trying to get a good cappuccino with Joe Preti as we reappraise the much maligned — and genuinely underrated — 1991 Bruce Willis box office bomb about daring heists and alchemical miracle machines: Hudson Hawk ! Eddie “Hudson Hawk” Hawkins is the world’s most famous ca...

This month, we’re joined again by Dave Brouillette , and talking about the pixelized Stanford Prison Experiment that was The Sims , and how eventual boredom can turn a gamer into a cruel capricious god tormenting their own imaginary people. We dig into real and fictionalized depictions of evil from Orson Welles in The Third Man to a documentary about former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara...

Vile, virile, vivacious, venomous, varied, voluptuous, versatile, venturesome, vibrant, vulgar, vast, vunniest vilm of 1979! We’re strapping on our seven shot six-shooters and stocking up on barrels of glue and giant boulders with Dave Brouillette of the Hands Free Football podcast to talk about the underwhelming screwball comedy western from the beginning of Arnold’s career: The Villa...

This month, we’re upturning the rocks of our childhoods and looking at all the bugs and worms, like the uncomfortable fact that serial bully and sexist Rick Berman still has any relationship to Star Trek media anymore, and how growing up sometimes means having our love of franchise media becomes more complicated. Plus, a quick rundown of the history of professional wrestlers owning (and not...

This month, we’re going boldly with Michael Warbington into the deep, inconsistent, and often-confusing world of Star Trek uniform design! Why did Starfleet have the exact same red naval uniform for nearly 70 years before they started to update their uniforms every few years in the 24th Century? Why do they keep designing great uniforms for flashback scenes that we’ll never see again?...

WANTED. Four men willing to drive a cargo of death to escape a life in hell. This month, we’re going on a jungle suicide mission with Camp Director and President of Camp Quest NorthWest , Michael Warbington , and plunging into the gritty, globetrotting William Friedkin classic about desperate men looking for a way out of purgatory: 1977’s Sorcerer ! Four men exiled in a corrupt South A...

This month, we’re continuing our talk with Carol Brouillette , and it may be time to crown Dave Bautista as the greatest professional-wrestler-turned-actor of all time. We look at his choices, roles and performances from Knock at the Cabin to Blade Runner 2049 , and compare him to his squared circle contemporaries like Dwayne Johnson and John Cena. Then we chat about the type of gimmicky overprice...

Choose Your Fate. This month, we’re joined by Carol Brouillette of the Hands Free Football podcast, and returning (one last time?) to the franchise that made Arnold Schwarzenegger the king of Hollywood in the legacy sequel, Terminator: Dark Fate ! Twenty years after the events of Terminator 2 , a young woman living in Mexico City finds herself targeted by two time travelers from an entirely...

This month, we’re continuing our chat with Chelsea Rustad , and we’re looking at billionaire narcissists getting booed, and the ethics of hidden camera comedy shows. Where is the line when it comes to comedy based on a person not knowing they’re on television? What if they know they’re on TV, but think they’re on a “serious” reality show, instead of a spoof? Who...

Find the story before it finds you. This month, we’re joined by Chelsea Rustad chair of the Puget Sound Socialist Party and the author of Inherited Secrets: Memoir of America’s Groundbreaking Genetic Witness to  draw thematic connections between seemingly disparate elements and using that to get to the bottom of B.J. Novak’s directorial debut, Vengeance ! New Yorker writer Ben Manalowi...

This month, we’re continuing our chat with Kayleigh Casterline , and digging into the intersection of sports, video games and capitalist rent-seeking. The new wrestling game, AEW: Fight Forever , is claiming that it won’t ask you to buy an entirely new game every year, the way that their rival the WWE does (not to mention the NFL, the NBA or MLB). They say they’re going to sell you a g...

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” This month, we’re riddling in the dark and escaping the goblin caves with Kayleigh Casterline and revisiting J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic 1937 fantasy book that introduced readers to the world of Middle-earth, The Hobbit ! Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys peace and quiet comfort, and never does anything unexpected to make the...

This time, we’re talking about our undying love for the Denzel Washington Equalizer movies, and how they can be a strangely bloody salve for our woes in these trying times. We dive into the often-morally iffy world of middle-aged action revenge fantasies, and what the targets of those films’ righteous violence says about the people who make them. What separates a justified cathartic experien...

This month, we’re chatting about the wonder of the public domain and open source software, and how it helps make our show possible and helps create community — and how capitalism puts up walls and exploits them to seek rent. We talk a bit about how the world’s richest douchebag tech bro finally gave us the nudge to get our show off of Twitter , just in time to watch him burn it t...