Radio vs. the Martians!

We're like 'the McLaughlin Group' for Nerds!

Fun Size Episode 67 – When Did I Become an Old Man?

Posted on June 20, 2022 by Mike Gillis

We’re back with Dave Brouillette to speak in defense of cinema’s great unsung wet blankets. The long-suffering adults left to pick up the pieces when the reckless hot shot protagonist with a disregard for human life blows up half of downtown or nearly starts World War III while they were saving the day or just looking cool.

Is there an age where your empathy naturally starts to gravitate to these people over the bad boy hero?

We also dig into the complicated emotions of watching popular media with jingoistic or reactionary politics — from Top Gun to 24 to Death Wish — both overt and implicit. Even the stuff we like can be a bit harrowing to watch at times.

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Episode 46 – Wonder Twins by Mark Russell and Stephen Byrne

Posted on June 10, 2021 by Mike Gillis

“Wonder Twin powers — Activate!”

This month, we’re balancing teen angst and superheroics with returning guest Paul Hix of Waiting for Doom – the Doom Patrol Podcast to gush over over the hilarious satirical DC Comics maxi-series: Wonder Twins!

Exiled to Earth from the utopian planet Exxor, super-powered teens Zan and Jayna must now juggle high school with their after-school internship with the heroic Justice League! But they must also grapple with strange new Earth concepts like crippling debt, shocking inequality and mass incarceration; and they begin wondering if beating up costumed criminals and throwing them in jail is really making the world a better place…

Join our official RvtM Discord server!

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Fun Size Episode 55 – Jerkbeast

Posted on April 25, 2021 by Mike Gillis

We’re continuing our talk with Patrick Johnson, and we’re waxing nostalgic.

We look back at the sliding timeline of The Simpsons and try to count the anachronisms as they pile up. But nothing could prepare us for the existential crisis triggered as we realize that under current show continuity, Homer Simpson is now a Gen-Xer.

We also reminisce about our brief time as public access TV producers on the Seattle Community Access Network. We dealt with shoddy equipment, a menagerie of conspiracy-minded weirdos, and a city council budget crunch that ultimately killed the station. We’ve got boxes full of Pepe!

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Fun Size Episode 36 – Peak Clown

Posted on April 27, 2019 by Mike Gillis

In our latest fun-sized chat with Tobiah Panshin, we dig into the topics that really matter to working people, like the media depiction of Clowns, and how it’s affected their public perception. Is the happy clown character now a totally dead concept?

We briefly dive into the phenomenon of the Simpsons, and how what was once a controversial program has survived long enough to see an entire culture change around them. We pick at how the experiences of comic book stores and video arcades have fundamentally changed since we were children.

And finally, in a reaction to a recent Rob Kelly podcast, we ask: how can we make obnoxious people shut up in a movie theater?

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Fun Size Episode 30 – That’s My Kind of Garbage!

Posted on September 22, 2018 by Mike Gillis

We’re back to dive into an overstuffed grab bag of off-topic nonsense with Roz Townsend, and we grapple with the important questions that keep us up at night.

Is Colonel Sanders the closest thing we have to an American Time Lord? What are our favorite fictional restaurants? Are self-published fan zines a lost art? Are skunks a form of Pokémon? Did Freddie Mercury go super saiyan in the ’80s? Are modern video game mechanics inaccessible to people who didn’t grow up with them?

Plus, Casey becomes annoyed at a group of small children not being as entranced by My Neighbor Totoro as he is, and we all betray our socialist leanings.

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Fun Size Episode 27 – Not My Luke Skywalker!

Posted on May 27, 2018 by Mike Gillis

Who truly owns a piece of art, a character or a media franchise? The artist, or the audience? We sit down with Sean Duncan to seek the answer to that and many other questions.

We (finally) talk about Star Wars: the Last Jedi and the tug-of-war between fans who want the familiar comfort of wish fulfillment and fan service, and those who want to see the series take some serious risks, even if it alienates some of the fans.

We look at how the real world and the context of our own experiences color and supplement the way we receive and interpret art. Plus, is it time to retire the old ways of counting audience figures, when there are so many ways to watch, read, and play these days? Uh, yes.

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Episode 10 – Planet of the Apes

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Mike Gillis

It’s a madhouse! A MADHOUSE!

Mike and Casey invade the Forbidden Zone with our theme song’s composer Todd Maxfield-Matsumoto and Comics Should Be Good!‘s Greg Hatcher. This month we’re talking about the classic film franchise: the Planet of the Apes!

We talk about the film’s long-lived popularity, its relevance as socially-aware science fiction, its totally insane comic book adaptations in the 1970s, and its subsequent reboots.

We also try to wrap our minds around how an ostensibly family-friendly adventure series includes bloody religious imagery, nudity, babies shot with handguns, and total nuclear devastation.

Music:

“The Hunt from the Planet of the Apes” by Jerry Goldsmith

Previously titled: “Two-Fisted Misanthrope”

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