Fat Guy, Jacked Guy

The cabs aren't here, but this episode on MTV's Jersey Shore is. Take a little trip with us to Seaside Heights, New Jersey where we'll reminisce on some of the most ridiculous characters that have ever graced our television sets. We'll discuss the concept of the show, Italian-American cultural stereotypes and subcultural performance, and we'll get into just what sets Jersey Shore apart from other reality shows. If you've never seen the show before, don't worry...we got all the details for you.

The early aughts were filled with steroid and performance enhancing drug usage scandals. Athletes from Barry Bonds to Lance Armstrong were being brought in for questioning related to their uses of these sweet, sweet anabolic elixirs. In 2008, Chris Bell set out to examine the anabolic steroid panic in his documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster. In this episode, we discuss the doc, Bell's actual messages about American culture, and why BSF is still important right now.

There was a rarely discussed phenomenon going on a little before and all the way through the decade 2003-2013, and this episode is an attempt to set the historical record straight on it. That's right, we're talking about what Brendan has dubbed "The Quoting Years." Remember all that time you spent with your friends repeating lines from your favorite films and television shows? Well, get ready to stroll down memory lane with us.

20 years later, and it seems like the kisses between Madonna, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards have never been more relevant than they are right now. This week, we're examining the legendary kisses, their aftermath, and how they impacted and continue to impact queer culture and the broader culture at large. We get into some reporting from the period, and we discuss the discourse around "queerbaiting."

The title is pretty self-explanatory BUT this week, we're revisiting one of the albums of the decade that dominated the charts even if it ultimately had very little artistic merit: 50 Cent's "The Massacre." We talk about 50 Cent's persona, each track on the album, white listeners' racial imaginations and their impact on commercial hip hop, Brendan's mom's connection to G-Unit, and the album's cultural relevance in 2005 and now.

All right folks, WE'RE BACK. As you (hopefully) heard in our trailer for Season 2, we're using this new season to do a deep dive into the cultural and political phenomenon that dominated the decade between 2003 and 2013. You might be wondering why we chose this particular time period, and we promise that question is answered very thoroughly in this introductory episode to the new season. We're happy to be back, and we hope you'll join us for all we have in store!

Here's a little trailer for our new season coming to your ear holes and brain matter on January 10th! Get ready!

It's our last episode of the year, y'all! We know that many of you are going to be watching Christmas movies over the next week, so we wanted to weigh in on some of our favorite Christmas movies that urge us to challenge the capitalist hell and system of consumerism we're all forced to live in. We give you the run down on some Christmas holiday history and then get into our critiques of these very fascinating and important films.

The "War on Christmas" isn't real. But you didn't need us to tell you that. This week, we're going in on our discussion of this Conservative talking point and getting the heart of why it keeps coming up in our culture. We talk the over 100 year history of the "War on Christmas," why Conservatives love to bring it up so much, and why Liberals need to stop trying to engage with it. We're not getting involved in the discourse over whether "Happy Holidays" is more inclusive than "Merry Christmas"...we're just making fun of everyone who does.