Why "The Mandalorian" Works
Alienating the Audience
Why is "The Mandalorian" so popular with Star Wars fans, yet the latest films are so divisive? Where does it veer from the traditional beats and themes of Star Wars, and where does it embrace that unique George Lucas flavor? Jack Helmuth and Nick Sperdute join to unpack everyone's favorite bounty hunter.
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Deadly Sex Objects in The Stepford Wives
Alienating the Audience
“The Stepford Wives” (1975) is a satirical horror film about spunky urban wives getting replaced by their husbands with submissive, ornamental robots. Chris and Cristi Moody come on to talk about the unease captured by the movie in a time of gender roles tumult, 1950s conformity, Second Wave Feminism, and parallels to “Get Out.”
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Vagabonding: Two Santas for Life Day
Alienating the Audience
Nick and Heaton visit Kashyyyk to work as mall santas for Life Day on the Wooki homeworld.
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The Villainess from "Ex Machina"
Alienating the Audience
Is the robot in "Ex Machina" a self-aware entity or just a stack of cold, complex algorithms which appear such? If we knew super intelligent A.I. could curse cancer (but also wanted to kill us) would we even attempt to build it? Ashland Viscosi and Jay Mutzafi rejoin to discuss.
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The Future of Humanity Involves Gene Upgrades and Cyborgs
Alienating the Audience
Lord Martin Rees is a cosmologist, mathematician, and the Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom. When he's not busy running the Centre for The Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University, he's authoring books on science and astrophysics. He joins the show to discuss his latest work, "On the Future: Prospects for Humanity."
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The Alternate History Where Nazis Won
Alienating the Audience
We beat Hitler. Whew! But what if we hadn't? What if the Nazi regime had prevailed? Science fiction repeatedly approaches the topic, either to guess geopolitics or just to gawk at the horror of it. On today's episode Andrew Young and Josh Jennings join Heaton to talk about "The Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick, "Fatherland" by Robert Harris, and "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth.
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Vagabonding: The Voyage Home (for Ska)
Alienating the Audience
Confronted by an alien probe which can only speak the language of an extinct species, Nick and Heaton must journey back in time to save Earth.
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The Last Policeman
Alienating the Audience
If an asteroid were poised to wipe out all life on Earth, would you still go to work? In Ben Winters' novel, a detective investigates a homicide in the pre-apocalypse, while many of his colleagues think it's pointless.
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The Philosophy of "The Matrix"
Alienating the Audience
The Matrix is actually quite a lot deeper than simulation theory and some cool fight scenes with black trench coats. The Wachowski sisters put a modern, techy spin on Plato's Allegory of the Cave, with ample helpings of Descartes, Hilary Putnam's "Vat in a Brain" and Robert Nozick's "Experience Machine."
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"The Road" is the Ultimate Dystopia
Alienating the Audience
Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" is simultaneously the most beautiful and hideous post-apocalyptic prose ever written. It follows a father and his son as they make their way through hellish wasteland, witnessing the horror of civilization's last wheeze en route. Josh Jennings joins to discuss.
info_outlineIf supervillains are so evil, why are they so captivating? Which crime lord would you serve under if you had to pick one?
Former Marvel editor Tom Brennan and comic book aficionados Jeremiah Johnson and Nick Sperdute join Heaton to discuss the underlying mystique and purpose of supervillains.
This file corrects for an audio issue in a previous upload.