Galactic Watercooler

In this episode, we discuss the recent acquisition news regarding Lucasfilm and Disney, and take some voicemail calls.

We run down the week in geek, including a Spike TV reality show offering a $10 million bounty on bigfoot, the possibility of the Governator returning as an old Conan (ignoring the Momoa era flick), more news on the Halo 4 release and storyline, the use of *face in Cloud Atlas, and much more.

This week we celebrate Halloween by taking a close look at the psychology of scariness, including why zombies, ghosts, and Grim Reapers give so many of us delightful thrills rather than existential horror. Why are we fascinated with death and the afterlife? It’s part of what makes us human. We look at cultural differences in [...]

We discuss the historic 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds, what it means historically, why we associate it with Halloween, what it tells us about our society, and how our view of the radio show’s aftermath is affected by shifts in digital media. Also, we run down the week in geek, including the fan [...]

Up this week: robots who want to be your friend — or with whom you’d like to be friends — and what this tells us about humanity. Also, we run down the week in geek, including Jill Scott’s upcoming Fringe oracle-ness, a new TV series from X-Files creator Chris Carter, our recommendations for games to [...]

We dive into the realm of robots who want to be (or emulate) humans and how they serve as a mirror for us to look at ourselves, individually and as a society. And we run down the week in geek, including some interesting Star Trek news, the (sad) numbers posted by Dredd, and our strong [...]

We put the Robots arc on hold, as Audra is getting some well-deserved rest, so Sean and Chuck cover this week’s news. And yes, Audra will be back soon!

This week, we kick off a long-overdue discussion talking about robots: robots who want to destroy the world!

In this episode, we conclude our Villains we Love to Love arc, with Mel Brooks’ classic villain (of a sort), Dark Helmet.

We continue our Villains we Love to Love arc, with a look at Portal 2’s GLaDOS, her Louise-Fletcher-like chilling calm, nurture-less “mother” persona, and impressively psychotic ability to manipulate — plus the interesting differences in how we perceive female and male villains differently. And we run down the Week in Geek, discussing Joss Whedon’s upcoming SHIELD [...]

In this episode, we continue our Villains we Love to Love arc with the Venture Brothers‘ outrageously-costumed, insecure, high-voiced swinger and villain extraordinaire: the Monarch. We examine the Monarch’s unusual upbringing, creativity, and desperation to live the 1960s supervillain life, and the startlingly realistic, humble lives of the henchmen. We sneak a glimpse into Chuck’s [...]

In this episode, we kick off our “Villains We Love to Love” arc with a look at the sympathetic and narcissistic Doctor Evil, his pitiful, neutered grasping for power, and the important line between villains who are likable, heroic foils and villains who are just plain scary.  We also give props to the Brits’ sense [...]

In our final “B” movie installment, 1995’s bum-shell Judge Dredd, we enjoy talking cheesy design elements, the dearth of non-ridiculous flying motorcycles, British views on American violence and vigilantism, and the perils of using current technology (especially in the 90’s)  to approximate futuristic computer graphics. And we run down the Week in Geek, checking out the [...]

We continue our “B” movie arc with the epically cheesy 1990 sci-fi flick Total Recall and realize that Arnold’s mechanical acting is ideal for a robot or a comic straight man but less convincing in Recall‘s mind-frak thriller landscape. We discuss the evolution of profanity in movies from the 80s to now, marvel at the fact that Recall‘s [...]

We kick off our “B” Movie arc with the hilariously cheesy, sometimes campy, and all-around fun 1985 sci-fi action flick Trancers. We revel in laughter over the movie’s halfhearted future-car, zombie cross-dressing stunt doubles, the gunning-down of a possessed mall Santa, the young Helen Hunt’s portrayal of a woman unfazed when her boyfriend’s body is [...]