Episode 120: Rock Music is Dead, Did the CIA Kill It?

This week, Alex and Kyle finally talk about Dropout, the College Humor streaming platform known for great comedy, passionate (parasocial) fans, and generally good-natured and kindhearted wholesomenss.

During MagicCon Las Vegas, we spoke with the team behind bringing The Hobbit to Magic: The Gathering's Universes Beyond. We discuss the importance of honoring Tolkien's legacy and how The Hobbit differs from the Tales from Middle-earth Lord of the Rings set. Wizards of the Coast:Mike Turian- Senior Executive ProducerAnnie Sardelis - Principal Game Designer Nick Marcantel - Senior Narrative Designer

This week, we have a very special episode covering everything announced at Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest in Anaheim. We discuss what we know about the new Evercold expansion and the massive amounts of updates coming to the game in Patch 8.0

This week, Alex and Jason talk about The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, whether it's "bad for kids," if characters need to grow or develop for stories to be good, and why we mix up nostalgia for quality.

This week, Alex, Kate, and Matt talk about the conspiracy theory that the CIA intentionally killed rock music to supress it's anti-governmnet, anti-war, protest nature. They get into the dearth of new political music, why it's hard to find it when it does come out, and why the long history of protest music seems to have died alongside rock music.

Prove You’re Human is a sci-fi narrative adventure game from Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客, the visionary studio behind the Peabody award-winning 1000xRESIST. What's even more exciting is that Prove You're Human is the debut title for new developer-turned-publisher, Black Tabby Publishing. Yup, the developers who brought you the genre-smashing Slay the Princess are in publishing now.We sat down with Black Tabby Publishing co-founders Abby Howard and Tony Howard Arias, and Remy Siu, the Creative Director at Sunset Visitor Studios, to discuss Prove You're Human. In our discussions, we talk about independent game development, why science fiction is such a powerful genre, and for Black Tabby Publishing, why they knew that Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客 was the perfect developer to work with as they took the leap into becoming a publisher.

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).