The Captain's Log

We're celebrating 10 years of The Whatnauts with an end of the year "grand prix" because you can call anything a grand prix, there's no rules stopping you! Two people talking about pizza can be a grand prix!! Kyle sees a chicken. Melissa sees a big glove. Between the two of us, we've seen Tenet 3.5 times and Interstellar 1 time and we're going to try to understand both. We also give out the yearly...

Episode 310. We discuss the uncertainty of the F1 drivers championship going into the final grand prix of the season, and then get into our own show's "season finale" with the Rotten Tomatoes game! We predict the critics scores for 40 films premiering next year, and see how close our guesses were for the cinema of 2025. After being delayed multiple times, how was Kraven the Hunter received? Which...

Episode 309. Is Louvre Detective going to be Teen Columbo's best friend or greatest enemy? What do you have to do to get a key to your city? Would you vote for a peanut over a human man? Could movie theaters drum up attendance by playing their movies in new weird colors? If you could schedule all of a year's sneezing into one day, would you? We also discuss night beef, big dumb action blockbusters...

Episode 308. We didn't intend this to be an episode where we make up movie pitches, but here we are. Kyle has an idea for the romantic comedy of the year starring heartthrob Wallace Shawn. Melissa has a Hollywood meta-thriller about an actor acting as his own dad. We talk about both Ripley's Believe It Or Not and the Talented Mr. Ripley, the biggest paintings we've ever seen, the end of Bugonia, t...

Episode 307. Your ghost hosts A Warlock and Bob Chili from Chili's are here to turn past anecdotes into "scary" "stories." Drink your exclusive Mtn Dew: Void Suck flavor, and listen to tales of: TV characters asking for your help, genetic crossbreeding experiments to make new sports mascots, a post-apocalyptic world where the only apocalypse is that everyone who knows how to make Taco Bell went to...

Episode 306. What real pieces of media are so strange and obscure that when you try to describe them, it sounds like an internet urban legend that you've just made up? We bring you endless circles, a scarecrow vigilante, little mouth guys, a robot in a mountain, and offbrand edutainment CD-Roms. We also read the notes written in Kyle's old high school copy of The Great Gatsby, learn about St. Loui...

Episode 305. New discoveries: putting stickers on a horse, an abnormal spike in Mimi per capita, and the secret of Taco Bell Shelter. Halloween is here with candy apples, baking competitions, new horror movies Him and The Long Walk, and the Korean drama Light Shop starting as a horror and then completely dropping that genre as the show goes on. We also discuss Movie Fantasy League strategy, the Em...

Episode 304. Friend of the show Jacquelyn returns for a fantasy draft of directors and their favorite actors to work with. A real film nerd's feast! Topics include: pairings so familiar they feel cozy like an old sweater, music videos, monster makeup, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, affable devils, chicken wing preferences, and Kyle MacLachlan making a fanvid edit of his and David Lynch's friendsh...

Episode 303. What did we learn this week? Kyle is too out of shape to walk 2 miles to the movie theater to see Honey Don't!, Dark Melissa comes out at fundraiser trivia nights, and there are hundreds of obscure and defunct M&Ms characters. We also discuss the animated series Pantheon, Buster Keaton gags still hitting, the possibility of Nicolas Cage as a True Detective, if you need to apologiz...

Episode 302. Did you know you can't have an open comic book in your car in Norman, OK? Or that you must be fully clothed to be rescued by a firefighter in St. Louis? We go through weird local laws, then dive into the animated anthologies Eyes of Wakanda and Predator: Killer of Killers, new shocking horror movies Together and Weapons, and Melissa's tour of "a man has a dumb idea" movies The Hudsuck...

Episode 301. We've surpassed 1000 podcast episodes AND it's the 70th birthday of some unknown man named Luigi. Lots to celebrate! We enter our "burrito era" by bundling more of our podcast content together in a single episode, and dig into season four of The Bear and Fantastic Four: First Steps. Kyle praises the cinematography of Ripley and This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection, Melissa tries...

Episode 300.  To celebrate episode 300, we present a special travelogue on Kyle's roadtrip to visit Melissa in St. Louis! We explore toasted ravioli, the Arch, Forest Park, the found art jungle gym that is City Museum, getting rained on at the Muny, seeing Superman in James Gunn's hometown movie theater, the real burgermobile from Good Burger, and Uranus Fudge Factory. Click here to watch a video...

Episode 299. For our annual trivia night, Kyle brings well-researched questions from across pop culture, and Melissa offers a quiz on the Captain's Log itself. Which two Muppets appeared in every episode of The Muppet Show? How much do the burgers cost on Bob's Burgers? What actor did we once fancast as a live-action Gumby? What limited edition McNugget sauces did Kyle eat with the McDonald's BTS-...

Episode 298. Kyle received surprise bonus snacks with his Switch 2. Melissa fears being sent to a circle of hell for people who use too many plastic grocery bags. Our cinema corner features Friendship, Bring Her Back, The Phoenician Scheme, Materialists, and The Life of Chuck -- which, spoiler alert, is mostly about math. We also discuss new operas, a performance of Hamlet where he "does a Saltbur...

Episode 297. Melissa lists things Kyle can see on his upcoming trip to St. Louis: our local walk of fame, live outdoor theater, all kinds of big weird statues, classic Italian dining, the original Build-a-Bear Workshop, and a school bus where it shouldn't be. We also discuss speed-reading a sad book, if Black Bag could've been sexier, who will "win" San Diego Comic Con this year if there isn't a M...

Episode 296. Melissa went on vacation to House on the Rock, a sprawling junk drawer of a house in the forests of Wisconsin. We take a tour of its many baffling sights, and discuss optical illusions, centaurs with the wrong ratio of human to horse, and a statue so big that it becomes cosmic horror. We also catch up with F1 news, Met Gala looks, the filmography of Gabriel LaBelle, movies about music...

Episode 295. We celebrated May the 4th this year by designing our own dream Star Wars movies! Kyle makes a crime caper and Melissa makes a psychological horror, who's surprised? We talk about spending more time in this world's unique architecture, a starship so big you can't walk across it all in one day, food and beverage of the Galaxy's Edge theme park, and why Colman Domingo should be the first...

Episode 294. Finally, after years of doing our Cinema Corner, we add more Corners and build a full house. This house has everything: an observatory, a racetrack, and a bathroom with fancy soaps that's just for company. We discuss Star Wars news, current F1 standings, recent bloodbaths in movies and TV like Warfare, Sinners, and Daredevil: Born Again, the trailers for The Fantastic Four: First Step...

Episode 293. Top questions this week: If "space opera" is a narrative genre, are there also "land operas?" Can you really taste subtle notes of oak in that wine, or are you just making that up? Will the four Beatles movies have four popcorn buckets that combine to make one big bucket? Why aren't there any original, non-franchise superhero stories on film? We also discuss Marvel's five-hour livestr...

Episode 292. Formula 1 racing begins a new season this spring, and we have Brad Pitt's F1 movie this summer, so it's time for Kyle to explain what the sport actually is! With a beautifully constructed slideshow, we give a primer to newbies about how the race works, fun facts about each driver, the evolution of the teams, and answers to Melissa's questions like "do they play jock jams at the races?...

Episode 291. We ask what you should do if you find the image of Jesus, a celebrity, or a Pokemon in a food. How do you preserve it? Who authenticates it? Who would pay $70,000 for something like that? Kyle catches us up on Daredevil and is two degrees of separation away from a Narcos character. Melissa brings us a real horse performance and tries to understand high society at the opera and symphon...

Episode 290. Kyle nominates a new Luigi. Melissa completes another Wet Awards. We both insist you watch Hundreds of Beavers! We also discuss local Oklahoma City sports, regattas, what if F1 had theme nights, a corn musical, dough hooks, blindly filling out an Oscars ballot, and taking your Gundam models to a nice dinner and seating them at the table with pretend food. Click here to watch a video o...

Episode 289. When podcast is on a bagel, you can have podcast anytime! We use the Super Bowl as a launching pad into a discussion on our favorite commercials, from the big game and otherwise, from the nostalgic '90s to today. Topics include: campaigns that made one commercial so good they just ran it for years, playing a board game in an abandoned factory, kids who interrupt school to do a berries...

Episode 288. Kyle's parents bought him a shirt with a dozen different tags on it. He's going to cut them off now, but let the video feed prove that it did happen. We discuss new movies in the "20th century tragedies" genre, including Nickel Boys, September 5, and The Brutalist, balanced out with the breezy comedy One of Them Days and bizarre art film The Timekeepers of Eternity. We look to the fut...

Episode 287. It's a snowy start to 2025, blessing Melissa with a sighting of the rare Snow Stan. Kyle still doesn't know how to drive but now has a new car. We catch up on winter break moviegoing and read over our media stats from 2024. Kyle read dozens of detective novels, implores us all to watch Pachinko, and introduces us to Chicken Nugget, a Korean show about a girl who turns into an anonymou...