Fine Beats & Cheeses

As we continue our recording break, here is another of our favorite episodes. It's fom August, 2025, and it is SO FUNNY.I hope you're happy today, because today you're getting served this hilarious and fun episode about 2004's dance battle spectacular featuring 2000's cute boys like Marques Houston and the band B2K. We are joined by return guest Dr. Briana Barner, who previously talked about podcasts themselves. Y'all, this was a jubilant and joyous good time, and we did it all for Lil Saint (you'll have to watch the movie or listen to the episode for that to make sense).Dr. Briana Barner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland. She received a doctorate in Radio-Television-Film and a doctoral portfolio in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Texas. Briana also earned a Master’s in Women’s and Gender Studies from UT. She is an interdisciplinary critical and cultural communications scholar with research interests in Black podcasts, digital and Black feminism, digital media, Black cultural production and representation. Her work has been published in Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, Film Quarterly, and the edited collection Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography, Feminist Approaches to Media Theory and Research and Black Sisterhoods: Paradigms and Praxis. Briana is currently working on a manuscript about the cultural production of Black podcasts.Find her on Facebook , Instagram and here!

While we continue our recording break, we offer you what I think is the most hilarious episode we have ever done. It's from April 2025. SO funny.It's all product placement, all the time as we talk to educator, writer and podcaster Shaun Duke about 1988's E.T. rip-off/commercial for McDonald's and Coca-Cola wrapped into a movie "Mac and Me". Oh, we laughed while recording this one. y'all.Is it a good movie? No. Is it delightful? Yes. Hope you love this episode.Shaun Duke is a writer, editor, podcaster, and educator. By day, he works as a professor of English at DMACC and as the Director of the Portolan Project, where he builds educational modules for science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers. By night, he produces The Skiffy and Fanty Show, a 4X Hugo Finalist SF/F/H podcast, streams games and occasional TTRPG actual plays on Twitch as AlphabetStreams, and works as a freelance editor at The Duke of Editing. He's also published genre fiction in a few places, which is pretty cool, among other nifty things. He also loves books, reptiles, his cat, and other strangeness.You can find Shaun on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.

We are taking a little break from new episodes, so we will be posting some of our favorite past shows. This one is from last June with our new friend, Analese Alvarez!Don't (boom) stop (hey) thinking about this podcast as we talk legendary rock band Fleetwood Mac with Analese Alvarez, co-host of the podcast Nerd Best Friends. This was so so so so much fun because Analese is not only a fan of the band, she is a really a historian of them and their music AND has a personal tie to their live reunion album and film, "The Dance". Enjoy this episode, then crank some Fleetwood Mac.Analese Alvarez is a high school principal, Buffy fanatic, cohost of Nerd Best Friends, the podcast that covers all of the NERDY conversations you are already having.... OR WISH YOU COULD!You can find her and the show on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

We are taking a little break from new episodes, so we will be posting some of our favorite past shows. This one is from May 2025 and it is SO funny. Go get your scuba gear as we talk about the iconic movie about really smart sharks, "Deep Blue Sea". with guest Stephanie Olson. Hilarious episode.Stephanie Olson (she/her) is a writer, cosplayer, horror movie enthusiast (especially the bad ones), and Halloween-all-year person. The first story she ever wrote was the gripping tale of a haunted bog. It was created in an attempt to scare her bunkmates at summer camp, and the result was so successful she was banned from writing any more stories that week. She’s been chasing that high ever since. While horror is her first love, she also enjoys fantasy and mysteries. Stephanie has a short story published in Spontaneous Combustion Volume II, by Sic Semper Serpent, and is part of the writing team for the horror anthology podcast, Ghost Wax. Her debut fantasy novel, Still Chosen: Another Unwanted Adventure, was released in January, 2025.You can find her on Instagram at @stephaniewritesstuff

We are taking a little break from new episodes, so we will be posting some of our favorite past shows. This one is from August 2024, and it features one of our favorite people. It's show favorite Judd Winick, comic artist extraordinaire, as we discuss the definitive Star Trek fan movie, Galaxy Quest! JUDD WINICK is a cartoonist and creator of the award-winning, New York Times bestselling Hilo series. Judd grew up on Long Island with a healthy diet of doodling, X-Men comics, the newspaper strip Bloom County, and Looney Tunes. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, and today lives in San Francisco with his wife, Pam Ling; their two kids; their cats, Troy and Abed; and far too many action figures and vinyl toys for a normal adult. Judd has written and produced animation for television and film, created the Cartoon Network series Juniper Lee; has written superhero comics, including Batman, Green Lantern, and Green Arrow; and, along with his wife Pam, was a cast member of MTV’s The Real World: San Francisco. Judd is also the author of the highly acclaimed graphic novel Pedro and Me, about his Real World roommate and friend, AIDS activist Pedro Zamora.You can find him on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and here!

We are taking a little break from new episodes, so we will be posting some of our favorite past shows. This one is from June 2025, with one of our favorite guests!Join us for this bright and uplifting conversation about Issa Rae's masterpiece about being Black, young and not so sure of yourself, "Insecure". Our guest is writer, researcher and storyteller Kelly Macias. We really enjoyed this one and we hope you do, too! And check out "Insecure" on Netflix (it's heartfelt and hilarious and also kinda spicy so don't watch with your kids) because it's wonderful).Kelly Macías (she/her) is a writer, researcher, and storyteller based in Los Angeles. The multidisciplinary arts-based approach to her work is inspired by the many lived experiences of Black women and what emerges from their wisdom and magic across time and geographies. Her writing has appeared in Prose Online, The Sunlight Press, Newsweek, The Baltimore Sun, and elsewhere. She is the creator of Toogood Stories, a platform dedicated to documenting, preserving, and making visible the many facets of Black women's lives. When she isn't engaged in her mindfulness meditation practice or binge watching Netflix, she can be found somewhere in the world dancing Argentine tango in a pair of Chuck Taylors.You can find her on Instagram and on her storytelling platform. Toogood Stories.

We are taking a little break from new episodes, so we will be posting some of our favorite past shows. This one is from March 2024, with two of our favorite guests!We've got a lot of living to do as we talk "Bye Bye Birdie", the 1963 film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical. Our guests are real life sisters Genevieve Dreizen and Olivia Howell, co-founders of Fresh Starts Registry, a registry for people who are making big changes in their lives to get the things that they need to start again. You might recognize Olivia from our recent Hallmark Christmas Movie episode! This was a sister-riffic episode, and we reminisced about a movie that all 4 of us were obsessed with, the eternal hotness of Ann-Margaret, and how everyone SHOULD love Dick Van Dyke. Get on your dancing shoes and join us!In 2020, after her divorce, Olivia wanted to create a system of support for the moments in life when we start over. Alongside her sister, Jenny Dreizen, Olivia founded Fresh Starts Registry, and since then, it has been named the “the first divorce registry of its kind” by Forbes. It has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Forbes, The Cut, The New York Post, and more. Fresh Starts Registry is the first registry and online platform for everything a person needs to begin their life again after a major life change, such as divorce, job changes, moving, or coming out. They provide a free registry builder and bundles of products based on rooms of the house and budget to eliminate the overwhelm of creating a registry for restarting their life. The platform features 100+ vetted Experts in all categories to support people in all processes of their life changes. It is always free to build a registry and access the experts. Fresh Starts aims to eliminate the overwhelming feeling of starting your life over again with all the home items and Experts you need to empower you on your journey forward.https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/Find Olivia on Instagram and Genevieve there as well!

We are taking a little break from new episodes, so we will be posting some of our favorite past shows. This is from October 2024!Friend of the show Catrina Parker dives deep into the beloved world of The Golden Girls with twin sister Leslie and Producer Sam. Twin sister Lynne was unavoidable off to St. Olaf...Catrina is the host of the Quirky Pop Podcast where she explores quirky characters in tv, film, and other areas with hint of social science. Catrina has been on panels a fan conventions and interviewed in The Guardian, The New York Times, and WGN Weekend News. Catrina lives with her two teens and cat, Gallifrey in Bloomington, Il. You can find her on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

This week our new episode is on a Monday because it is May the 4th, also known as Star Wars Day, and our episode is about Episode VI, "Return of the Jedi". That movie has twins in it, and so does this episode: our guests are twin brothers Al and William Penn, and you know that your hosts, Lynne and Leslie, are too. This was a really fun one, where we talk legacy and betrayal and Jabba the Hutt. But mostly, it's about family, chosen or otherwise, and we hope you like it!!Check out Al's Substack page here!And oh yeah, May the 4th be with you.

It's Leslie's turn to share her favorite something with us, and that something is the 2016 version of the cowboy classic but with more Denzel, "The Magnificent Seven". We talk why a western with a multiracial cast would be based in reality, villains so bad you can't wait for them to get got, why it doesn't bode well for a character when he is played by an uncredited recognizable actor, and why Ethan Hawke is everything. We hope you love it.Born in hood-adjacent Baltimore City, Leslie Streeter is a columnist for the Baltimore Banner, and the author of the 2020's memoir Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like “Journey” in the Title and 2025's novel Family and Other Calamities. Her next novel, "Beignets and Big Feelings", comes out in October 2026 and is available for pre-order right now. She is the cohost of this here podcast Fine Beats and Cheeses, and a frequent speaker on grief. She is also a slow runner, an amateur vegan cook, and a fan of Law & Order. Leslie lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with her son, Brooks. Follow her on Facebook, Threads and Instagram.