FYIZ

What starts out as a discussion about social media complaints evolves into a heart-to-heart regarding the pleasures and pitfalls of baiting and shaming assholes online, and then...? It's a real tangent-fest. Topics include podcasting shop-talk, finding your creative drive, and, perhaps inevitably, superheroes. Hang out with us!

In this grim and gory episode, we take a long look at writer/illustrator Brom's first novel, The Child Thief, which intersects with our ongoing Neverland studies, as it's a horror-fantasy reimagining of Peter and Wendy (with an emphasis on the Peter). And what a loose reimagining it is, complete with copious graphic violence, horrific abuse of children, and stoic, fatherly trolls. Bring your poisoned ancestral sword! We might need it.

The conversation prompt for this episode was one simple word: HULK. But before we can dig into our thoughts about the Emerald Behemoth's live-action onscreen incarnations, we're obviously required to spend a little time assessing when exactly Nicolas Cage became a meme factory AND (drumroll, please) responding to our first-ever listener email, including the scintillating Golden Girls content you've come to expect. Put on your tattered little purple pants and hang with us!

This month's installment of Respect the Stack has it all: coverage of Polly Schattel's new fourth novel, CRATER GIRL, Angela Carter's THE MAGIC TOY SHOP, and Bora Chung's story collection YOUR UTOPIA. As if that isn't enough, also included are blisteringly important topics such as our favorite colors, alternate idioms for The Shining (as opposed to "all work and no play..."), and more Book Pet Peeves. We had fun talking, now do your part and have fun listening.

There's enough negativity in the world without our help, so in this installment of the podcast the subject is pop cultural events we feel genuinely grateful to experience firsthand. The picks range from movies to music to tv shows, meaning in a lot of ways it's no different from any other episode. But we do keep it relatively positive! It's the balm your chapped soul needs.

Heeeeere's Johnny! Aaaaaand Bekah. This episode's featured tomes are Michael Cisco's Black Brane and that giant Taschen book about The Shining we teased last month. So basically it's time for a lot of reality-bending ideas and doomed characters caught in looping storylines that we're only partially certain we understand. Then, to close things out, Bekah digs into some reading peeves that put the "pet" in "petty." 

This month, Not Great, Bob takes on a subject that is near and dear to our hearts: movies (and tv shows—but mostly movies) that are made with a prankster spirit or that troll the audience to some degree. Some do it by subverting expected tropes, some do it with formal experimentation, and some do it simply by being unpleasant to watch. Pull up an uncomfortable chair and shift position awkwardly as you listen, because this podcast is aiming to weird. You. Out.

Apologies in advance if this episode BENDS YOUR MIND, because we're talking about the uncertain realities of such books as Mona Awad's Bunny and All's Well, Michael Cisco's Black Brane, and Atilla Veres's The Black Maybe. Luckily we also tackle cozier fare like Seishi Yokomizo's The Honjin Murders, a self-aware locked room mystery from 1946 in which two people are stabbed to death. Respect the Stack is a pro forest god sex podcast.

Bob and John train their eye beams on the last episode ever of The Boys, all the better to talk about both the finale itself, and the series as a whole, until their heads explode. It's gross.

The Boys is wrapping up its fifth and final season on Amazon Prime, so there's no better time than now to spin theories about where exactly this boundary-pushing, darkly funny superhero saga has been taking us. Then, we move on to the next obvious topic: three carefully selected episodes of The Golden Palace, the short-lived Golden Girls spinoff that lacked one important ingredient: Bea Arthur. Oh, ma!