The Middle of Culture

Peter and Eden run through a rapid-fire list of pop culture hot takes covering movies, TV, music, books, and games. The Star Wars watch order debate kicks things off (original trilogy only for Peter, release order for Eden), Eden defends Batman & Robin and F-Boy Island as unironically great, both agree the Beatles are played out, and they end on a shared appreciation for Alpha Centauri as the...

Eden makes Peter watch the 1994–95 OVA You're Under Arrest , a four-episode anime about two traffic cops in Tokyo. Peter goes in skeptical but comes out admitting it was fun, charming, and visually stunning. The siblings unpack what makes 90s hand-drawn animation special, how the direct-to-video OVA format enabled lavish production values, and why the 2017 revival is a cautionary tale in digital d...

Peter and Eden kick off with a leisurely check-in — outdoor Godzilla screenings, Eden's miniature laundry room diorama with a 1/12-scale mahjong set, Peter's Amon Amarth/Dethklok concert recap, and new releases from Periphery and LE SSERAFIM. Then, with an assist from ChatGPT's Codex, Peter has assembled roughly 45 of the internet's most-agreed-upon worst album covers for a tier list ranking — S b...

Peter and Eden kick off a chaotic week — Eden's dealing with the Shiny Hunters ransomware attack on Canvas (the university LMS that runs basically everything, currently being held hostage for the second time) while Peter is just weary from step counts. The bulk of the episode is a genre-spanning music deep dive: Eden assigns four critic-darling albums neither of them would normally reach for (Roby...

Peter and Eden dive into the first four issues of Larry Hama's classic G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero comics — a Kickstarter Peter may have regretted until roughly issue three, when a self-reassembling mech changed his mind. Before getting to Cobra, they cover Eden's return to Final Fantasy XIV and a crash course in Riichi Mahjong, Peter's take on Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 7 (enthusiastically defe...

Peter watches Mad Max: Fury Road for the first time in decades, and Eden — who has seen it at least a dozen times — watches the black-and-chrome edition alongside him. Peter finds the opening act almost too uncomfortable to watch, given its uncomfortable parallels to the current political moment, but gets fully on board the moment the sandstorm hits. They dig into what makes the film a masterpiece...

Peter and Eden watch 1981's Escape from New York and land, predictably, on opposite sides: Eden had a blast, Peter was fighting sleep and checking the runtime. Before getting there, they spend a significant chunk of the episode on a surprise Neurosis album drop — An Undying Love for a Burning World — that apparently derailed any other listening either of them did for a week and a half. They also w...

Peter and Eden kick off with Eden's very dramatic Iowa snowstorm (back of the house: buried; front of the house: a dusting) and a quick check-in before diving into their respective "what have you been checking out" updates — Eden on two gloriously bad movies from March Badness, plus a deep dive into obscure 80s/90s indie comics; Peter on the new Lamb of God album, Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 4, and...

This week, we dive headfirst into Absolute Wonder Woman — a reimagining of Diana raised in hell by Circe — and we can’t stop talking about how good this book is. We break down why this version finally captures the heart of Wonder Woman, why compassion is her real superpower, and why this heavy-metal redesign absolutely works. Along the way, we detour through Conan, grindhouse cinema, crocodile cul...

This week, we did something a little different — we built our own tier list website just so we could rank 80s sitcoms without fighting pop-ups and autoplay ads. Totally normal behavior. But here’s the twist: we’re not ranking them based on how “important” they were at the time. We’re asking a much more dangerous question: Would we actually rewatch this in 2026? That framework leads to some very st...

In our 100th real episode, we did something intentionally unserious: we gave ourselves 15 seconds at a time to talk about things we love. What started as a goofy structural constraint quickly turned into a revealing conversation about taste, memory, comfort, obsession, and why certain art, habits, and rituals stick with us. Along the way, we touched on music, books, games, food, family, creative w...

This week, we wandered through a grab-bag of games, music, and reading before settling into a long-overdue cultural reckoning with This Is Spinal Tap . We talked Sonic games and cursed Sonic-sonas, gacha updates that somehow turn into cyberpunk motorbike fantasies, cheerful amnesia manga, extreme metal singles that absolutely rip, and a handful of games that ranged from surprisingly delightful to...

This week, we kick off 2026 by talking about Ambrosia Sky , a short, atmospheric sci-fi game that quietly wrecked us more than we expected. What starts as a PowerWash-adjacent cleanup sim turns into a meditation on grief, abandonment, and the emotional cost of leaving home. We talk about why smaller, constrained games are thriving right now, how Ambrosia Sky uses limitation as a strength, and why...

This week we keep things intentionally low-effort and high-chaos by drafting the Billboard year-end #1 songs from 1980 through 1999. We each build a ten-song playlist from a shared pool, knowing that once a song is picked, it’s gone forever. Along the way we uncover timeless masterpieces, generational blind spots, slow-dance trauma, and more than a few baffling chart decisions. By the end, it’s le...

This week, we come in hot — starting with wuxia vibes, holiday chaos, and cursed Christmas remixes of “September” — before diving into music stats, Taskmaster binges, Eden’s Wuxia/Baihe adventures, and Peter’s latest reading spree (including Gödel, Escher, Bach ). Eventually, we embark on the Most Important Cultural Work of Our Time: a fast-food and fast-casual tier list. Along the way, we crown u...

This week, we finally dive into the cultural behemoth that is K-Pop Demon Hunters —six months late and fully confused. We talk through how this extremely catchy, hyper-animated, wildly popular kids’ movie managed to conquer 2025, even though it’s… fine? We break down what works (the faces, the music, that glorious fat tiger), what doesn’t (the pacing, the unearned romance, the baffling reconciliat...

This week on The Middle of Culture , we close out our dive into Transformers with Transformers One , last year’s animated prequel that tells the origin story of Optimus and Megatron. We rave about how shockingly good it is—beautiful animation, heartfelt storytelling, and voice performances that actually make you care about robots punching each other. Along the way, we talk about Sanderson’s declin...

In this week’s Middle of Culture , we dive deep into our usual blend of media obsession and existential humor — from the strange delights of villainess light novels and the chaos of gacha games to Tron Ares , which Eden declares “not a good movie… but maybe the best Tron movie.” Peter shares his thoughts on new music from Conjurer and Author & Punisher, reviews Wind and Truth with mixed feelin...

This week, we dive headfirst into emotional ruin — courtesy of Look Back , the devastatingly beautiful anime film by Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto. Before we get our hearts ripped out, we unpack a flood of new music releases — including Testament’s Para Bellum and Fayle's haunting Heretics and Lullabies — rail against Microsoft’s Game Pass price hike, and talk streaming fatigue and piracy....

Peter and Eden cover a whirlwind couple of weeks—family milestones, stressful schedules, and the search for meaning outside of work—before diving into media updates like Escaflone , In Mourning’s crushing new album, and the delightfully cursed Ice Cube–starring War of the Worlds (2025) . From there, things spiral into chaos with a marathon of “Would You Rather?” questions that range from the silly...

This week Eden and Peter dive into William Friedkin’s gritty 1977 thriller Sorcerer , a tense and sweat-soaked remake of The Wages of Fear . They talk through the film’s nihilistic worldview, Friedkin’s unrelenting direction, and Tangerine Dream’s eerie score that pushes the movie into fever-dream territory. Along the way, they share personal stories of how the film lingered in memory for decades,...

What starts as a simple dive into media tracking apps quickly spirals into tangents about puzzles from hell, glamping with bison and mustangs, fistfights with Satan in Pittsburgh, and the glory days of scrobbling music. Along the way, Peter and Eden hash out their very different relationships with games, books, music, and movies—and why, at the end of the day, “the juice is not worth the squeeze”...

In this episode, Eden and Peter dive into Fantastic Four: First Steps , a surprisingly hopeful and aesthetically stunning addition to the MCU. They unpack the film’s utopian vision, its fresh take on superhero storytelling, and why it might be one of Marvel’s most emotionally resonant efforts to date. From retrofuturist aesthetics to character depth and non-violent resolutions, they explore how th...

Episode Summary This week on The Middle of Culture, Peter and Eden dive into Superman 2025 —a movie they both expected to disappoint , but ultimately left them grinning. They discuss why this version of Superman finally understands the character, their favorite portrayals (hello, Nicholas Hoult’s Lex), and the messy charm of a movie that somehow pulls off being packed without tipping over. Along t...

Episode Summary: This week, Peter and Eden dive headfirst into the high-octane world of Daniel Warren Johnson’s Transformers comic run, exploring its explosive art, emotional beats, and G1 nostalgia. Along the way, they unpack the pains of modern TV consumption, vent about doomed adaptations, and gush over goth rock albums and short-form sci-fi. It’s a heartfelt mix of media love, mild despair, an...