How do you like it so far?

This week we welcome Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, author of the new book The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. She counters the deficit-framed language describing an achievement gap among youth of color by asserting that there is a corresponding, long-standing imagination gap – that lack of representation in children’s literature and media has left them unable to imagine themselves as the center of the story, in fantasy or in life. Progress is being made in media diversity and inclusion, yet Thomas argues, we’re not keeping pace in terms of priming the audience to accept these shifts. The internet is allowing children to connect with like-minded readers outside of their immediate community “bubbles,” participate in fan fiction and expand their interpretation of what they read. But do they have the resources they need to be able to read the world differently? What are the negative effects of such limited representations? Where will alternative fantasies come from? Thomas discussed here the debates that have sprung up around Black Panther and recent projects to bring alternative perspectives to historical narratives, concluding that it’s still imperative to create a dream space with and for minority youth.

Our guest this week is Jaroslav Švelch, author of Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games, which recounts the early history (and his own experience) of gaming and home computer use in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s. In discussing this creator/maker culture, we note how both local materials and state-sponsored infrastructure were repurposed by these ingenious participatory communities, where playing computer games and programming them were completely intertwined. As we have seen with many other fan communities, what started as a hobby and shared interest gave rise to personal expression and then social change, as people used games to negotiate the state politics that they were not allowed to participate in. We also talk about the importance of documenting what seems like very recent history, when it is still possible to gather first-person accounts and community artifacts and present an alternative to a top-down or corporate record.

In this episode we talk to David Craig, Clinical Associate Professor at USC Annenberg’s School for Communication and Journalism and a Fellow at the Peabody Media Center, and Stuart Cunningham, Distinguished Professor of Media and Communication, Queensland University of Technology. They are the authors of Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, in which they interviewed more than 200 online content creators. Social media entertainment has expanded rapidly and the traditional entertainment industry has been forced to cede significant power and influence to content creators, their fans, and subscribers. In this episode we discuss the rise of social media entertainment and its impact on media consumption and production, as well as the "convergence" of these industries, with the example of Indian-Canadian YouTuber Lilly Singh getting her own late night show on traditional television. Yet, who is Lilly Singh's community? How do fandom and audience move across the internet and back to cable? Can online content creators bring their type of unique talent to traditional, legacy media?

In this episode we discuss lucha libre, the popular Mexican form of professional wrestling. We are joined by Peatonito, an activist for pedestrians in Mexico City, who uses the persona of a wrestler to create spectacle as activism on the streets, such as jumping in front of cars. We also speak with Heather Levi, an assistant professor of Anthropology at Temple university, who researches professional wrestlers and professional wrestling in Mexico City. We ask: how is lucha a practice of staging contradictions? How does it comment on the political life of the audience, to bring them along to support a "super-hero" type persona? How have politics, performativity, lucha, etc. merged into each other? And also, how can the luchadores personas help to bring attention to, and increase affect and participation around, social issues outside of the arena?

This week we talk about Korean science fiction, with Sang-Joon Park, publisher; Soyeon Jeong, a Science Fiction writer; Gord Sellar, also a writer, and Sunyoung Park, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Gender Studies at USC. Each are contributors to a new book, Readymade Bodhisattva: The Kaya anthology of South Korean Science Fiction, and this interview offers potential readers some perspectives on Korean science fiction: how it emerged, what its core themes are, how it relates to western science fiction, and how it is linked to technological and political change in their country. In a rapidly changing society like Korea in the late 20th century, reading science fiction connected them with a wider world, offered them a means of working through trauma and of imagining alternative worlds. Initially encountered through translations of western writers curated for the Korean market, later transformed into a genre where local writers could make their own contributions, science fiction has emerged as a vital tradition in both literature and film (for example, Snowpiercer or The Host). What kinds of futures are imagined in this popular culture tradition? How has it allowed Koreans to think about the changes brought by ICTs?

In this episode we are joined by Kerri Hoffman, CEO of PRX (PRX, a distributor of public media content) and John Barth, Chief Content Editor of PRX. This is our fourth and last episode on the Power and Pleasure of Podcasting (with episodes 32, 33 and 34). We begin by discussing the history of podcasting and public radio, and how it has always been a venture of affecting lives and not money-making. Yet, what makes podcasting special? Listeners often speak about authenticity of the maker, speaker or host as the main distinctive factor, but we are far from knowing more specifics. There is also the ability to connect with a few, yet more interested and dedicated, niche listeners. Even what is considered “good” content differs from more raw, authentic productions, to professionally put-together shows. Its main allure, however, continues to be its ability to be open and participatory. Nonetheless, we wonder, will it join the internet and other original participatory mediums in in spite of being open, still dominated by a few, big, key players? How do we continue encouraging people to create and share podcasts when they are not so easily distributed? Will search engines such as Google, who are not in the game yet, play a significant role on who can find and access podcasts?

Amber J. Phillips (aka the High Priestess of Black Joy), podcaster and Participatory Civic Media Fellow at USC, takes the reins to interview Chenjerai Kumanyika, Assistant Professor ofJournalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University, and host of Uncivil Podcast. Following our podcasting event at USC (see episodes 32 and 33), they speak about some differences of black voices, performativity, and expectations of "authenticity" in podcasting. We also discuss what is considered professionalism in radio, and where the definition of what radio should be emerged. How was the standard set, and who was excluded from public radio? How do black podcasters negotiate code-switching, in order to be "inclusive" of the wider public, while also being able to speak to their own communities? We delve into trying to bring marginalized stories to mainstream listeners. We get into how and why Chenjerai chose the stories he did for the Uncivil podcast: what are the questions that will help us understand history with the most clarity? Civil war stories for example, are focused on the larger narratives of battles and policies, but the marginalized stories do not get told because of a lack of imagination. We also talk about the word "innovation" and criteria for it, but how the word is being used by opposite communities.

This is part 2 of our Power and Pleasure of Podcasting event at USC (see episode 32 for part 1, which included performances from our guests. In this episode, we have the Q&A session that followed, where we were able to delve into the process of making and starting to podcast. To reiterate, we had Chenjerai Kumanyika (Uncivil), Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva (The Kitchen Sisters), Melinna Bobadilla and Brenda Gonzalez (Tamarindo), and Taz Ahmed and Zahra Noorbakhsh (#GoodMuslimBadMuslim). Our guests discuss the craft of podcasting and share the stories of this bottom-up way of discussing the issues they tackle for their respective community. They share the difficulties of podcasting, such as its status as "side project" or unpaid labor, as well as the emotional labor of podcasting. We also discussed choosing names and talking to the public, the "fear of Twitter" and more. Also, we see the variability of contexts from our guests: the decision of writing for themselves, owning their own content, as well being part of collectives or working for larger radio companies.

We recently hosted an event on Power and Pleasure of Podcasting at USC, and we have the live recording to share with you . The lineup included performances by Chenjerai Kumanyika (Uncivil), Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva (The Kitchen Sisters), Melinna Bobadilla and Brenda Gonzalez (Tamarindo), and Taz Ahmed and Zahra Noorbakhsh (#GoodMuslimBadMuslim). We had the privilege of having each of these podcasters share snippets of their episodes, to show us how the alternative storytelling of podcasting can add to larger narratives. We cover the present repercussions of the Civil War; and look at Keepers of cultures, putting the spotlight on librarians and archivists as the heroes of holding down the fort on facts. The hosts of Tamarindo, a podcast that focuses on the Latinx community in LA, do a Minicast from our event; and the #GoodMuslimBadMuslim hosts also do a live episode, where they issue a fatwa to the Muslim ban.

This week we experiment with format, but also with how we think about media, with our guest Shrikanth S. Narayanan, Engineering professor at a University of Southern California. Shri works in an interdisciplinary lab that looks at "data science before it was cool," showing the benefits of interdisciplinarity when studying media and storytelling. He thinks about "signals" from media as data points to see how we react to different stimuli from film and media, which includes physical reactions emerging from particular emotional stimuli. These data points include sweating, and increased heart rate. How can we think, or study, our reactions to storytelling? How do the music, the dialogue, the visual and other stimuli shape our responses to media?

This week we touch on gender in film history with Professor of Film at Columbia University School of the Arts, Jane Gaines. During the current #timesup moment, there is an implicit suggestion that women have been waiting a long time for a higher status in the entertainment industry but also often a suggestion that progress has been made but not fast enough. But a different picture emerges when we look at these shifts in a larger historical context. More women were working above and below the line in American cinema during the silent era than are working today. And this active role in filmmaking includes women of color and women in countries around the world. We have thought of early film-making as male dominated, but how do we account for the collective forgetting of the vital roles women played during this transitional moment? How did they acquire this power? What lasting impact did they have on how Hollywood told stories?Where were they? But also, where did they go? And how can their stories help us to understand the power struggles impacting Hollywood today?

In this episode we discuss the Academy Awards with Raffi Sarkissian, Lecturer at Christopher Newport University, Virginia. Raffi has written about the long narrative created during the “award season” by creators, promotion strategists, the mainstream media etc. We discuss the emergence of the #oscarssowhite protest as a reflection of the industry's structural problems. However, since then, we have witnessed the industry attempting to course correct. Although this year has an unprecedented diversity of nominees, Raffi says, the #oscarssowhite problematic will continue to bubble under the surface. We also discuss the politics in and around Hollywood award ceremonies. Any award show is inherently political: whenever any institution decides what is considered “best," they are making a statement about their values and priorities. While Oscar once found explicit politics distasteful, more recent award shows have included multiple protests against the Trump Administration -- with Meryl Streep’s 2016 Golden Globes speech perhaps the most memorable. Other speeches, such as Viola Davis’. address struggles for inclusion and representation within the industry, not simply celebrating what has been accomplished but pushing for more progress. Even if many people do not recall who won last year's Oscars, the awards have a direct effect on who gets to create more films in upcoming years. Lastly, there are the politics of the broadcast itself: as they try to appeal to a bigger audience, who is in charge of the awards, and who are the Oscars for?

In this episode we talked to Caty Borum Chatoo, Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI) and Executive in Residence at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C. Before academia, she ranged from working with Norman Lear to producing documentaries. She collaborated with comedian Hasan Minhaj on the documentary, Standup Planet, identifying comedians in the Global South who tackled serious social justice issues, including global poverty. Comedians and activists share the common goal of identifying problems with the status quo. Caty takes us through why comedy is a viable way of talking through, and getting actual engagement, with difficult issues; the new generation of YouTubers and activists who are bringing it to legislators through, for example, comedy videos about the treatment of sexual assault survivors, and the “comedian in residence” they have at her research center. Also, we consider why it is important that people with different lived experiences and backgrounds can speak directly to their publics without first trying to appeal to majority gatekeepers and how the digital has helped re-shape how we think of audiences. Comedy can help with “activist fatigue”: we need hope, Caty says, not just anger, to deal with such depressing issues. If the question is, how do we get people to engage in serious issue? Caty argues that comedy, as solution, needs to be taken seriously.

In our third and final installment of the need for critics of color, Eric Deggans, NPR's first full-time TV critic and author of Race Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation, talks to Henry and Colin about his longtime trajectory in radio and print media. Our guest speaks about how his first encounter with white culture was through radio, and asserts that "podcasting is radio for young people" now. When starting he thought, how can we talk about culture in a unique way, of things that other people cannot see? In his case he thought not only about race, but also about other dimensions, such as being a musician. In terms of television, we talk about how critics of color are needed not only to understand the new shows that better represent minority culture, but also to make visible the prevalence of and default to white culture in general. He says that Luke Cage, for example, hit a few touchstones of growing up black in that time, creating a powerful feeling of nostalgia and understanding that he could not get, for example, with The Sopranos, which he enjoyed as an outsider.

This week we continue with the second installment of our conversation about critics of color. Colin and Henry talk to Carolina Miranda, a writer and art critic at the LA Times, and Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Director of Voice, Creativity and Culture at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Both critics came from a background of studying social movements and politics, but realized they could make a living as critics of art and music. We discuss that as a critic of color, you understand not to pigeonhole an artist, an ethnicity or race can influence a piece of art, yet so can a film watched in childhood. Yet in a moment where artists have direct access to their audience online, does everyone want criticism, and if so, how do we create a more inclusive infrastructure and economy to incentivize a diversity of voices?