The Flopcast

Here's the second half of our memorial show, celebrating those we lost in 2025 from the world of pop culture and beyond. And yes, this week's list includes both actresses who played Flo, the sassy waitress at Mel's Diner, in the movie and TV versions of Alice. We also cover the mom from Lost in Space, the receptionist at WKRP, the sarcastic little sister on What's Happening!!, a Phantom Zone villa...

We do this every year - time to look back and remember the people we lost in 2025 from the world of pop culture and beyond. This week's list includes favorites from music (Roberta Flack, Brian Wilson, Sly Stone), television (Ruth Buzzi, Loretta Swit, George Wendt), movies (Gene Hackman, David Lynch, Val Kilmer), comics (Peter David, Jules Feiffer, Jim Shooter), and many more. And we're not done, s...

For our final show of 2025, we're just relaxing and reflecting on another year of this, the most popular podcast in the world (if you don't count every other podcast). So we're looking back at Flopcast subjects, segments, and guests, as well as concerts, conventions, and whatever other weird junk kept up occupied all year. We also reveal our New Year's Resolution. It will shock you. The Flopcast w...

It's our annual holiday spectacular! And once again we're talking about old Christmas cartoons, because that's all we care about. But this time, we're looking at a couple of cartoons we've never discussed on the show before, and they're both based on classic comic strips. (They're also both on YouTube, if you want to play along.) From 1979, A Family Circus Christmas features a ghost Santa, a candy...

It's the stupid holidays, so 'tis the season for a Top 4 1/2 List of our favorite holiday dogs! Of course our list includes dogs from Christmas cartoons (compliments of Charlie Brown, the Grinch, the Simpsons, and more), as well as Christmas books and even a goofy Christmas song. If we missed your favorite holiday dog, let us know! Or just keep it to yourself! That works too. Also: An evening with...

Every year, dozens of ridiculous identical holiday movies are unleashed by Hallmark, Lifetime, Netflix, and the like. (They're so cookie-cutter that many of them literally involve cutting cookies.) And every year, we try to fix them by making them weirder. So we've selected a few new Christmas movies, and we're discussing their plots (featuring time travel, glassblowing, and pickleball) and casts...

Before we plunge into weeks of holiday silliness, here's something different for you! Five years ago, our friend Amanda decided to run at least one mile in each of the 351 towns and cities that make up Massachusetts. A month ago, she finished. And she's here to tell us all about the whole project. Including: Covered bridges, waterfalls, murder roads, World War II bunkers, Jaws filming sites, an al...

As we creep into the holidays, once again we're looking back at Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parades of the past. (Debbie Gibson is scheduled to perform at this year's parade, so you should all be road-tripping to Manhattan RIGHT NOW.) We start with the 2015 parade (featuring that top-hatted honey-roasted freak, Mr. Peanut), then keep jumping back ten years at a time, all the way to the premiere of the...

When our favorite 1980s soft rock band comes to the town where we spent the 1980s, you know we'll be there. And so Kevin has a report from the sold out Air Supply concert at the Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket, Rhode Island! (We were front row center. Close enough to catch an official Air Supply guitar pick? You bet.) Also: The Mayor of Chickentown joins the Early Birds Club! Kevin accidentally runs...

We're back with our full report on the city of Seattle, which turned out to be way over on the other side of the continent. (Probably should have packed a bag or something...) How many weird and silly activities could we squish into just a few days out west? Let's find out. Including: Retro-futuristic fun at the Space Needle! A robot on the monorail! Angry otters at the aquarium! A massive collect...

It's been about a year since we killed a whole episode flipping through an issue of Dynamite, that classic magazine for kids of the 70s and 80s, so let's do it. We have an issue from 1976 (compliments of Chris from Sci Fi Explosion!) and on the cover are America's favorite toothy Mormons, Donny and Marie Osmond! Also in this issue: Fashion tips direct from Medford, Massachusetts; an Elton John pin...

For our Halloween episode, we're revisiting a favorite subject: the cheapo department store Halloween costumes produced for decades by the Ben Cooper company. Kids loved slipping into their uncomfortable plastic masks and weird vinyl smocks for an evening of begging the neighbors for Twix bars. We look at superhero costumes (including some odd ones like Web Woman), Krofft costumes (you could be a...

We're back from a quick visit to Albany, New York, where Kevin ran a half marathon (finishing in 309th place, probably not qualifying for the Olympics) and learned the shocking truth about Alice from The Brady Bunch. Now here in Chickentown, we're looking at an odd 1959 comic book called Weather-Bird. It stars a chicken and a goat, and the whole thing is a promotional gimmick to sell children's sh...

It's no secret that we're rather obsessed with the 80s around here, so this week we're chatting with author Debby Meltzer Quick. Debby's first novel (the first of several!) is May I Have Your Attention Please , a mid-80s high school romance set in Eastboro, Massachusetts. Kevin and Debby discuss the novel itself, how much pop culture nostalgia to include in a story, how to draw from one's own life...

We didn't make any big plans for our big 700th episode, because that would have required effort, which is frowned upon around here. Instead we have a hastily assembled pile of random stuff, just for you. Including: Our ongoing cluelessness about Buc-ee's! An update on our favorite Bugaloo from Dragon Con! The 700th biggest song of the 1980s (according to our Ranking the 80s book)! The 700th bigges...

Our Dragon Con review finally concludes, just in time for us to get ready for next year's Dragon Con. We're looking at the last two days of the convention, including: Muppet talk with Muppet performers/designers Bill Barretta, Kevin Clash, Bonnie Erickson, and Dave Goelz! Actual trick-or-treating in the American Sci-Fi Classics Track room at Halloween Con! The science of Severance (it seems like a...

Our coverage of Dragon Con (Atlanta's massive Labor Day weekend nerd convention) continues! Thrill to every single weird thing we did on Friday and Saturday! Including: The Geek Girls Run! The Muppet Mayhem tournament! The return of the Music Video Book Club (during which Carly Simon hooked up with Sico the Robot)! Fantastic Four cartoons with Chris from Sci-Fi Explosion! The return of Classic Sci...

Here we go with the first of three (yikes, let's hope it's just three) episodes reviewing everything we did at Dragon Con, the ultimate gathering of geeks over Labor Day weekend in Atlanta. Including: A visit to the Center for Puppetry Arts, where we found members of Emmet Otter's Jug Band and the Riverbottom Nightmare Band! Turtles and Muscovy ducks at Piedmont Park! All our weird friends from th...

It's the shocking conclusion of our second Saturday Night Live character FlopFight tournament, and Dragon Con American Sci-Fi Classics Track co-director Joe Crowe is still here providing expert commentary. Our competitors may include a pair of insecure bodybuilders, a simple caveman, a lady with a less-than-positive attitude, and perhaps even the devil himself. It all leads to a showdown with last...

A few months back, to celebrate Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary, we did a whole FlopFight tournament of SNL characters. But since so many classic characters didn't get to play, we thought we'd just do it again. And since this is Dragon Con weekend, we thought we'd bring in a special guest: Dragon Con American Sci-Fi Classics Track co-director Joe Crowe! Joe will help us sort through this ne...

We're just days away from Dragon Con, Atlanta's massive annual gathering of the geeks! And the full schedule of all eight zillion Dragon Con events has been released. So this week, after a quick guest update (Simon Pegg is in! Tom Wilson is out!), we're looking at our individual schedules, so you'll know how to find us or (more likely) avoid us. Including: The Dragon Con walking tours; the Geek Gi...

Our Dragon Con coverage officially begins, and it might never end! Dragon Con is our favorite nerd event of the year, it's almost here, and this week we're looking through the guest list. Among those tentatively scheduled to appear are stars from Back to the Future, Daredevil, Buck Rogers, Star Trek, The Magicians... and even some actual Muppet performers. Also appearing will be many fine writers,...

With a free week before we start like eight months of nonstop Dragon Con coverage, Kevin and the Mayor are trying something new: We're recording the show from outside Chickentown Studios, in the great and filthy outdoors. Hopefully this will provide a more festive summertime atmosphere, until the mosquitoes and bats and angry villagers show up. So with nothing better to do until a search party arr...

If you've just been waiting all summer long for The Flopcast's annual robot-themed Top 4 1/2 List... well, first, what's wrong with you? Go to the beach or something. But also... here it is! Our theme this year is "recycled robots." Sometimes a robot would be designed for some movie or TV show, and then later repurposed for some other movie or TV show. Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot is the pri...

We're packing all our summer concert reports into one big show! First it's Aimee Mann in New Hampshire with her regular opener (and no stranger to the nerd world) Jonathan Coulton. (As longtime Aimee fans, we're still a little grumpy about missing the recent 'Til Tuesday reunion show...) Then we have two shows from the same exhausting weekend! First up is "Weird Al" Yankovic, who brought his Bigge...