Episode 119: Oops, All Recommendations, Again

This week, Alex, Charles, and Neysha take a break from the tougher convos and share their biggest recommendations at the moment, including Trigun Stargaze, live-action One Piece Season 2, and Thundersong by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe.

This week, Alex, Matt, and Jason work through a sci-fi bracket in honor of the Artemis II launch and Project Hail Mary being a 10/10 movie. They debate how cool E.T. can be if he never curses like R2D2 does, whether a Star Trek replicator would shoot an avatar out like a compressed mattress, and if, from a post-modernist approach, it was actually always inevitable that the Fast and Furious movies would go to space.

This week, Alex, Kyle, and Charles discuss photorealism in video games, whether and when it has its place, and whatever is going on with Nvidia's DLSS 5 as AI slop takes over all of our art.

This week, Alex, Kate, and Matt discuss conventions, how their locations have made them more and more inaccessible, unaffordable, and worse, and why more conventions need to be held in more geographically diverse locations (especially the South).

This week, Alex talks to the team at Wizards of the Coast behind Magic: The Gathering's new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Universes Beyond Set: Eric Engelhard – Senior Game Designer and Set Design Lead, Stephanie Chung – Art Director, and Crystal Frazier – Senior Narrative Game Designer and Worldbuilding Lead. They take a deep dive into the set, from how the art style was decided on, how the set borrows from 40 years of TMNT history, and the mechanics behind the new set.

This week, Alex and Kate talk about how to be good people and neighbors in an age of constant horrors, war, and disappearings. They draw from the examples of Mr. Rogers, Ms. Rachel, the people of Minneapolis, and our own staff to try and find hope and action in dark times.

This week, Alex, Kate, Sarah, and Allyson talk about the Netflix documentary series, Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model. They discuss the docuseries, the toxicity inherent in America's Next Top Model, and how watching it impacted them, including eating disorders, on-screen representation, and much more.

This week, Alex and Kate talk about the rise of performative consumerism as a form of moralization and how it manifests from Tumblr to Bad Bunny's halftime show. Plus a reminder about some of the politics of some of the most misunderstood musicians. We aren't just the things we consume; go be a community!

This week, Alex, Jason, and Kyle discuss the Muppets, their legacy and impact, what iterations of the Muppets have worked and why, and of course, how they'd like to see the Muppets used in the future.

This week, Alex and Jason talk about the classic depiction≠endorsement argument. They talk about how a lack of media literacy leads to the misconception and when depicting unsavory things is meant to make you think versus when it's unintentionally depicting.