The Greatest Pod

While the boys are out and about doing other stuff. Please, enjoy this excellect throwback of The Greatest Pod where we talk about The Greatest Immortal. This is where this episode starts but Ed, Ron, and Producer Bill quickly find themselves discussing what their individual goals would be if they could not die. Sure, there’s some talk about Galactus, The Highlander, demons, vampires like Lestat,...

We will be back soon but until then enjoy this classic Nerd Goat episode with Rick Wood talking about Skeletor!   J

Sorry for our absence. We have been working on a few projects and owe you all a bunch of episodes. For now enjoy a blast from the past and listen to Dani Fernandez tell you of the Greatest Saiyan Prince, Vegeta!

“Is Fantasy The Greatest Genre?” From ancient legends, to Tolkien, to now the genre has split and subdivided over and over until it’s a new species from what crawled out of the primordial myth soup. Is the simple tale of “the boy who would be king” old hat in the age of the female driven “romantasy?” Is Tolkien still the best to ever do it? Are the present fantasy authors playing a way different,...

Our first ep back after hiatus is titled “Our Greatest Moments in Fandom”. It’s the whole gang of Ed, Ron and Producer Bill, breaking down the moments, movies, and magazines that turned us into such nerds. This is almost Patreon-esque in how personal we get.  However, the vast array of pop ephemera that we talk about here will surely cause you to take your own trips down memory lane. It’s good to...

We ask, “Will Fantastic Four or Superman be The Greatest?”, in the box office and pop-cultural battle that looms this summer. They both herald a back to basics approach in a market where people have convinced themselves there’s no more places to go. Leave it up to two originals to prove them wrong…maybe. After all, these characters are as retro as they are forward thinking, as wholesome as they ar...

In this supersized spoiler chat, we debate whether the one two punch of Thunderbolts* and Daredevil : Born Again represents “Marvel’s Greatest Comeback.” Ed and Producer Bill ask, can these street level heroes and super spies cement the new foundation for the Fantastic Doomsdays to come? Is Daredevil great, wildly uneven, or both? Are the Thunderbolts* really able to replace the Avengers? Listen t...

The Reboot Crew is back! After a 4 year hiatus, the internet's favorite development team has landed a new gig with one of Hollywood's most controversial figures: David Zaslav. Their first assignment: a whole new take on Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith....and ONLY Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith! With Episodes 1, 2, and 4-9 staying intact, the Reboot it Crew will have to work...

“Our Greatest Reboots” features the gang reunited, including Billy Business of Hot Takes with Billy Biz and the YouTube Channel “Reboot It”! By the way, our sister show “Reboot It” is coming back. In this primer episode of The Greatest Pod, we discuss the “art” of the reboot, if such a thing exists. Also, much of this episode is looking back on OUR best reboots on the channel. Some real life reboo...

In fictional universes somebody has to break the news.  “The Greatest ‘Fake News’” is Ed, Ron and Producer Bill imagining what the media landscapes are in two of the most popular fictional universes. Why are superheroes attracted to the news? How intense would the politicization of Superman be? What jobs would you pick if you knew certain “the real deal” about the universe you lived in? Would you...

"The Greatest Superheroes That Aren't” is our crew, Ed, Ron, and Professor Bill, dissecting those movies and TV shows that center on someone with a superpower but nobody admits it! All types of heroic stories from Commando to Colombo feature heroes with superior powers that must fight unbeatable odds and we discuss these characters comparing and contrasting them with conventional super heroic fare...

“The Greatest Pasts” features the whole crew talking about period pieces from our iconoclastic perspectives. We don’t go gaga when you put a few period cars in the shot and have everybody say “gee whiz”, it takes more than that to get us feeling like we’re in the past. We discuss our favorite examples in this banger of an ep.    *This is the last one where Ed’s audio is a bit bad because he was vi...

“The Greatest Futures” is mostly Ed and Ron trying to not talk about the dystopia we currently live in and failing BUT we do touch on some of the greatest futures in pop culture.  From Star Trek to Total Recall we examine how fictional futures dramatize the concerns of the present. We discuss how we’d fare in certain futures like being blood boys in Mad Max, or what virtual pleasures we would or w...

“The Greatest Cops In Fiction Part Two” is us continuing to build our portfolio of powerhouse porcine patrolmen. This one features some great pulls by the gang and more specific examples of what we consider exemplary cops in fiction. Our personal philosophy is that there’s a difference between action fantasy heroes with badges versus actual police people in good stories. This ep has us defending o...

Tis the season…to discuss crime and punishment in movies! “The Greatest Cops In Fiction Part One” is us dissecting the concept of law enforcement in this dystopian future we call the present. We talk about how cops are depicted in movies and TV and we try to get our heads around the sly thrill of watching various levels of copaganda since we were kids. We discuss several of your faves and some I b...

“The Greatest Thanksgiving Special” is Ed, Bill, and the returning Ron Swallow talking about pieces of pop culture we are thankful to have experienced at particular times in our lives. These are some of the art and the culture around said art that would form us into the weirdos you know and love. Ed talks Mack Bolan novels, Ron talks rollerblading and skate videos, while Bill reveals a past as a p...

We had an impromptu convo about “The Greatest Space Characters” and it ended up NOT being “sTaR wArS vS. sTaR tReK” and more about why there will be rednecks in space and why can’t the Green Lanterns finally be truly cool. Ed and Producer Bill get into a debate about whether most science fiction aliens are “human plus” or “human minus”. We pitch some amazing “fixes” for certain characters while al...

With Ron Swallow away on his honeymoon, Ed and Producer Bill discuss “The Greatest Recastings in Pop Culture Movies”. We do all the hits, Bats, Supes, Spidey, Bond and many others that aren’t as obvious.  The debates come fast and furious, and the discussions get deep as we interrogate what it means to do a serial character “correctly.” Can someone be, say, the best recast Bond without being in th...

“The Greatest Cats in Pop Culture” is our conversation about the feline fictional characters that impacted our lives.  The cat has always been a mysterious, charismatic, enigmatic presence in the lives of humans.  Earning the love of the small ones or running from the big ones seems to be baked into our DNA.  Aslan, Mufasa, Shere Khan, Hobbes, Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, there’s just a b...

“The Greatest In Goth Pop Culture” is admittedly a weird topic to be talking about today but with the new Crow movie bombing it made us think about how truly ubiquitous goth culture was in the 80’s and 90’s.  What happened? Why did this brand of melancholic existentialism / nihilism fall out of fashion after being basically the aesthetic of 90’s action movies and many of the teens going to see the...

In this super sized episode Ed, Ron, and Producer Bill discuss and debate “The Greatest Mentors In Pop Culture.” We interrogate the different expressions of the mentor. Some are father or mother figures, some started out as replacement parents and became trusty butlers. Some are space wizards you meet for a week, or alien holograms or long dead uncles. DIfferent mentors make different heroes so in...

“Is ‘The Boys’ The Greatest Superhero Show?” You might think, “Well obviously that’s madness…right?” I’d say surely we’ve seen something about superheroes that was more hopeful. Maybe funnier? Maybe more life affirming? But better? I don’t know man. The show  manages to do pretty decent super action on a budget and the characters are pretty damn cool. Their mission to kill/neutralize “superheroes”...

You can’t trust Producer Bill and Ed Greer to do the “boring” thing of just dryly recapping this monumental San Diego Comic Con, Of course we talk Fantastic Four news, Robert Downey Jr., Mcfeel, and the Russos coming back…and some stuff from DC too. All of that’s great but we think it’s prime time to think about the comic book movie as an organism. It seems to have evolved to survive in a post spo...

“The Greatest Batman Analogues” started as a companion to our “Greatest Superman Analogues” episode but it quickly grew into a conversation about how powerful and impactful a Batman could or should be. Many Twitter dorks including us have tried to put real world morality on this particular comic book character given our frankly natural suspicion and disdain for billionaires. It isn’t actually clea...

“The Greatest Lone Wolf Characters” are iconoclastic powerhouses who don’t always get it done with their fists. Wolves don’t even have fists. From Wolverine to John Wick. From the Punisher to Ron mentioning some of his favorite fantasy characters like Allanon we hit it all. In this episode we explore the concept of the outsider hero and why they seem so important to the American myth.  Some of the...