Make Me A Nerd with Mandy Kaplan

Andy Nelson has been sitting on this one. He's been talking about movies on The Next Reel since 2011, and when Mandy asked him to come back and pick anything, he chose the film he has loved most for his entire adult life, because he suspected (correctly, it turns out) that it would require a Xanax. Terry Gilliam's Brazil is a comedy about paperwork. It is also a horror movie about paperwork. A man is arrested in his living room because of a typo, his wife signs for him in triplicate, and the government is very sorry for the inconvenience. Mandy, a mainstream mom with a documented sensitivity to bleak world-building, spent large portions of the film feeling nauseous, anxious, and deeply disturbed, and then cackled out loud at a plumbing joke. That is the whole experience of this movie, and Andy has seen it countless times.What neither of them expected was how little of it would feel hypothetical. The forcible removals, the bombs people step around to finish lunch, the machines that do everyone's jobs badly: Mandy keeps circling back to the fact that she might have enjoyed this ride in a different decade, and Andy, who has carried this film around since high school, hears his favorite jokes land differently in real time. There's also a cameo from Robert De Niro that Mandy considers a bait-and-switch, a Jim Broadbent plastic surgery subplot she diagnoses as a Real Housewives lunch, a studio-mandated happy ending that Criterion preserved as a warning, and a brand-new nightmare creature Mandy would like to name a band after. Press play.Guest SpotlightAndy Nelson is a partner at TruStory FM and co-host, with Pete Wright, of The Next Reel, now in its sixteenth season. He also hosts Cinema Scope, where he brings in an expert to go deep on a single genre, subgenre, or movement, and Movies We Like, which invites industry guests to talk about a favorite film. Before and alongside podcasting he has spent more than 25 years in film, TV, and commercial production, with writing, directing, and producing credits on shorts, indie features, and documentaries, and he teaches screenwriting, producing, editing, and podcasting.

• Andy Nelson on TruStory FM
• The Next Reel Film Podcast
• Cinema Scope
• Movies We Like

Links & References
The Film

• Brazil (1985) on Letterboxd
• Brazil (1985 film) on Wikipedia

Terry Gilliam's Filmography

• Terry Gilliam
• Films directed by Terry Gilliam on Letterboxd
• Time Bandits (1981)
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
• The Fisher King (1991)
• Twelve Monkeys (1995)
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
• The Brothers Grimm (2005)
• The Zero Theorem (2013)
• The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)

Monty Python

• Monty Python
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
• Life of Brian (1979)
• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
• Michael Palin
• Graham Chapman
• John Cleese
• Eric Idle
• Terry Jones
• Spamalot

Cast

• Jonathan Pryce
• Robert De Niro
• Katherine Helmond
• Jim Broadbent
• Kim Greist

The Battle Over the Cut

• Sidney Sheinberg — the Universal executive who ordered the "Love Conquers All" recut

Other Films Mentioned

• Battleship Potemkin (1925) — the Odessa Steps images Andy says Gilliam is quoting
• Idiocracy (2006)
• Blade Runner (1982)
• Steel Magnolias (1989)
• A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
• Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986)
• Evita (1996)
• The Breakfast Club (1985)
• Showgirls (1995)
• What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)
• Jurassic Park (1993)

Television & Stage

• The Big Bang Theory
• The Handmaid's Tale (novel)
• The Handmaid's Tale (TV series)
• The Penguin (TV series)
• Miss Saigon

...

Until this week, Mandy Kaplan did not know the word "Stargate" existed. Not the 1994 movie, not the ten seasons of television that followed, not the conventions full of people who can spell Goa'uld on the first try. (She has also never seen an Avengers movie, and she would like that noted as a point of pride.) Fortunately, Jonny Lee Jr. was nine when the film came out, bought it on VHS and then again on DVD, and owns the complete box set of the series, which makes him about the most qualified tour guide you could ask for on a trip through an ancient Egyptian wormhole.Mandy, being Mandy, arrives with theories. Stargate, she argues, is The Wizard of Oz with better pyramids, and she has a He-Man episode to back it up. She also spots a Sesame Street icon wandering the dunes and takes the film's biggest emotional line to task for ending in a preposition. Jonny, meanwhile, has the job of explaining parasitic worm-gods to a woman whose only professed interest in worms is the tape variety. (He handles it with grace.) Somewhere between the Snuffleupagus sighting and the high school teacher who sued over his screenplay, he makes a real case for why Stargate is the gateway for people who swear they don't like sci-fi: it was never really about the technology. Press play.Guest SpotlightJonny Lee Jr. is an actor and singer, a performer in Mandy's long-running Los Angeles cabaret Miscast: Right Singer, Wrong Song, and one of Make Me a Nerd's original guests. He has already walked Mandy through Zelda, Sailor Moon, and Anne Rice's vampires. This time he brings his number-one sci-fi movie, the one he found as an elementary schooler obsessed with Egyptian and Greek mythology and couldn't believe someone had made. He's seen it six or seven times and watched the TV series through three times over.

• Instagram: @jonnyleejr
• On TruStory FM: All of Jonny's episodes
• See him live: Jonny joins Mandy for the 49th Miscast: Right Singer, Wrong Song on Sunday, November 8, at 7:30 PM at The Pico in Los Angeles.

Reference LinksThe Movie

• Stargate (1994) — Letterboxd
• Stargate (film) — Wikipedia. Production history, the lawsuit, and the box office run.
• The Stargate score by David Arnold — YouTube Music. The opening credits music Mandy couldn't stop talking about.

The Franchise

• Stargate SG-1 — Wikipedia. Ten seasons, starting on Showtime in 1997.
• Stargate Atlantis — Wikipedia
• Stargate Universe — Wikipedia
• Mythology of Stargate — Wikipedia. Where to read up on the Goa'uld, the parasitic worm-gods Jonny explains.

The Movie's Cast and Crew

• Kurt Russell — Colonel Jack O'Neil
• James Spader — Dr. Daniel Jackson
• Jaye Davidson — Ra
• Djimon Hounsou — Horus, Ra's guard
• French Stewart — Lt. Louis Ferretti
• Richard Kind — Dr. Gary Meyers
• Roland Emmerich — director and co-writer

The Series' Cast and Creators

• Richard Dean Anderson — Jack O'Neill on SG-1
• Michael Shanks — Daniel Jackson on SG-1, and per Jonny, the hotter Daniel
• Brad Wright — SG-1 co-creator
• Jonathan Glassner — SG-1 co-creator, and the "somebody else" Jonny was reaching for

Real-World Rabbit Holes

• The Stargate Project — Wikipedia. The U.S. Army's psychic-spying program Jonny remembered.
• Strategic Defense Initiative — Wikipedia. Reagan's "Star Wars."
• Ancient astronauts — Wikipedia. The pyramids-built-by-aliens idea that predates the movie.
• Mask of Tutankhamun — Wikipedia. The inspiration Jonny sees in Ra's retracting helmet.

Also Mentioned

• The Crying Game (1992) — Letterboxd. Mandy's homework assignment for Jonny.
• Interview with the Vampire (1994) — Letterboxd. The film that knocked Stargate off the top of the box office.
• The Wizard of Oz (1939) — Letterboxd
• Masters of the Universe (1987) — Letterboxd
• Sphere (1998) — Letterboxd
• Labyrinth (1986) — Letterboxd
• The Da Vinci Code (2006) — Letterboxd
• The Breakfast Club (1985) — Letterboxd. The first assignment in Jonny's reverse Make Me a Nerd.
• Schindler's List (1993) — Letterboxd
• Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) — Letterboxd. Spader as Ultron, unseen by Mandy.
• Indiana Jones — Wikipedia
• Mr. Snuffleupagus — Wikipedia
• John Hughes — Wikipedia
• Ricky Schroder — Wikipedi...

The whole premise of Make Me a Nerd is that Mandy has never seen the thing. Matthew Fox arrives to honor the late Tim Curry with a movie he has attended dozens of times and, by their own count, watched all the way to the ending exactly twice (the back row of a midnight screening has other priorities), only to learn that Mandy was once in it, onstage in New Hampshire, as an emergency replacement Columbia with about four hours of rehearsal and a group of audience members who had prepared a special welcome for the new girl. She also ended up dating Riff Raff. Matthew's first thought is for Magenta.From there we present a generous conversation about a movie both of them freely admit is not good. Matthew explains why a big, hairy, bear-shaped Meat Loaf was the closest thing they had to a role model, and how a midnight crowd in fishnets helped them figure out who they were. Mandy tests the theory of camp she picked up on the Mommie Dearestepisode against Joel Schumacher's Batman movies (the ones with the nipples), and the two of them work through the parts of Rocky Horror, and of Richard O'Brien, that haven't aged well. Along the way, Susan Sarandon refuses to acknowledge the movie exists in front of Matthew's high school, and Mandy treats a mild remark about Steve Martin's looks as an act of treason. Press play.Guest SpotlightMatthew Fox, known online as The Ethical Panda, hosts Superhero Ethics and Star Wars Generations on TruStory FM. They are also one of this season's hosts of Marvel Movie Minute, which is working through Captain America: The Winter Soldier. They find the ethical dilemmas hiding in genre media, and he spent a good part of the '90s at midnight Rocky Horror screenings without seeing the ending. Star Wars Generations returns in January alongside Ahsoka season two. This is their fourth Make Me a Nerd appearance, after The Orville, The Penguin, and The Last of Us.

• Website: theethicalpanda.com
• Instagram: @theethicalpandapodcasts
• Bluesky: @theethicalpanda.bsky.social
• YouTube: @TheEthicalPandaPodcasts
• Facebook: The Ethical Panda

Reference LinksThe Film

• The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
• The Rocky Horror Show — the 1973 London stage musical it came from
• Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror (2025) — Linus O'Brien's documentary, the one that sent Mandy and Matthew back to the movie
• Strange Journey official site
• Dr. Frank-N-Furter

The Cast & Creators

• Tim Curry — Frank-N-Furter, who decided the doctor should sound like the Queen
• Richard O'Brien — creator, writer, and Riff Raff
• Susan Sarandon — Janet
• Barry Bostwick — Brad, in heels, with gusto
• Meat Loaf — Eddie, and Matthew's role model
• Patricia Quinn — Magenta
• Nell Campbell — Columbia
• Jim Sharman — director
• Trixie Mattel and Jack Black — fans who appear in Strange Journey

The Frank-N-Furters (and Brad) That Weren't

• Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and Lou Reed
• Steve Martin — auditioned for Brad. Mandy will hear no criticism.

The Songs

• "Time Warp" — the eighth-grade dance, pelvic thrust and all
• "Sweet Transvestite"
• "Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul" — Meat Loaf's number
• "Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me" — Janet, no longer pushing anyone's hands away
• Bat Out of Hell (1977) — the album that came after Eddie

Films & Shows Mentioned

• Clue (1985) — Tim Curry, rain, a mysterious house, strangers at the door
• Labyrinth (1986)
• Legend (1985)
• The Hunt for Red October (1990) — Matthew's first Tim Curry
• Dead Man Walking (1995)
• Showgirls (1995)
• Mommie Dearest (1981)
• Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957)
• Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997)
• The Lego Batman Movie (2017)
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008)
• Nine to Five (1980)
• Rocky III (1982) — the other Rocky, briefly
• Myst...

In 1998, Hanna-Barbera handed a direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movie to a crew of veterans and then, by all accounts, forgot to supervise them. The crew used that freedom to do the one thing thirty years of Scooby-Doo had solemnly promised would never happen: they made the monsters real. Mandy came for the nostalgia — Saturday morning, cereal, the little kitchen TV dragged into the living room — and left having audibly gasped at a cartoon aimed at six-year-olds.Her guide is Journie Ma-Johnson, an actress and vocal coach whose nerd credentials include a weekly D&D campaign run in a room with a fog machine, a competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee career, and a hand-built light-up wig. Together they get into the werecats, the lovingly painted Southern Gothic backgrounds, whether Fred and Daphne were ever actually a couple, and the question Mandy asks with the directness of a woman who has waited fifty years for an answer: what exactly is going on with Shaggy? Press play.
Guest Spotlight

Journie Ma-Johnson — actress, singer, and vocal coach. Musical theater background, training from New York Vocal Coaching, and a teaching practice built around bringing acting technique into vocal work. Off the clock: weekly Dungeons & Dragons, cosplay (including a light-up Ember wig from Danny Phantom and the Soup Faerie from Neopets), retired competitive Melee, and a deep, defensible love of Scooby-Doo.

• Journie Johnson Voice — vocal coaching
• About / booking

Reference Links
Films

• Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998)
• Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island (2019)
• The Babadook (2014)
• Interview with the Vampire (1994)
• Role Models (2008)
• The Princess and the Frog (2009)

Scooby-Doo Canon

• Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island — production history
• Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost (1999)
• The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo (1985)
• A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (1988–1991)
• What's New, Scooby-Doo? (2002–2006)
• Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! (2022)
• Scooby-Doo! and Kiss: Rock and Roll Mystery (2015)
• Scoobynatural — Supernatural S13E16 (2018)
• The Hex Girls
• Mook Animation — the Japanese studio Journie clocked

People

• Frank Welker
• Mark Hamill
• Casey Kasem
• Tara Strong
• Ken Jeong
• Anansi

Music

• "It's Terror Time Again" — Skycycle
• Skycycle
• Third Eye Blind

Also Mentioned

• Super Smash Bros. Melee
• Danny Phantom
• Jem (TV series)
• Ghost Hunters
• The Blair Witch Project

TruStory FM Cross-Promos

• The Babadook-dook-dook with Tommy Metz III
• Sensual Creatures: Vampires, Frilly Shirts, and Interview with a Vampire with Jonny Lee Jr.

Fact-Check Corner

"The first feature-length Scooby-Doo movie." Journie hedges this correctly. Several feature-length Scooby-Doo TV movies preceded it in the late eighties, including Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School. Zombie Island was the first direct-to-video feature.The Supernatural crossover. "Scoobynatural" is an episode of Supernatural — season 13, episode 16, aired March 29, 2018 — not a standalone animated movie. Frank Welker, Matthew Lillard, Grey Griffin, and Kate Micucci voice the Scooby cast in it.Velma's girlfriend. Velma's crush on Coco Diablo happens in the 2022 direct-to-video film Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!, not a series.Casey Kasem and the vegetarian clause. Journie has the mechanism right, but it started with this film. Kasem was originally set to reprise Shaggy for Zombie Island and demanded the character go vegetarian; the crew declined and cast Billy West. Kasem did return as Shaggy — vegetarian — for What's New, Scooby-Doo? in 2002."Fred was flirting with Tara Strong." Tara Strong (credited as Tara Charendoff) is the voice actor; the character Fred flirts with is Lena Dupree. Third Eye Blind. They performed the title track, a cover of "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!" Skycycle did "It's Terror Time Again" and "The Ghost Is Here."The Hex Girls' lead singer. Thorn describes herself as "one-sixteenth Wiccan on my mother's side" rather than simply pagan. The eco-goth framing is accurate and, yes, extremely 1999.Make Me a Nerd is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Pete Wright. Theme song: "Wonderstruck" by Jane and the Boy.Find Mandy on Instagram at @Mandy_Kaplan_Klavens and on TikTok at @MandyMiscast.Leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and write something — Mandy will give you a shout-out, and it helps more people find the show.Want episodes early and ad-free? Join at makemeanerd.com/join.
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Mandy spent her son's Mighty Morphin years with one nagging question: why are the Power Rangers wearing their helmets in every single fight? She never asked anyone. This week Omari Miller, actor, singer, and possibly the most caffeinated man in Los Angeles, answers it before she finishes asking. The Power Rangers are a Japanese show with American teenagers taped over the top. Super Sentai has been dressing five people in matching spandex since 1975. Haim Saban saw it on TV during a business trip to Japan, licensed the fight footage, filmed the unmasked scenes back home, and cut his budget to a fraction of anything Marvel had proposed. Stan Lee, by the way, had proposed it first. He had a robot.So, that's the business story. The stranger story is everything Omari has absorbed in the years since he stumbled into this world. Yellow was a boy's color in Japan for decades. A season can run eighty episodes and then spin off a movie because that is simply how Toei keeps you. One show tanked in the ratings and broke toy sales records anyway. A villain grabs two arguing men because he assumes they're a couple, and the joke just… never… lands on them. Mandy learns that the Blue Ranger telling dad jokes on a ladder has a real acting career, that the dinosaur robots are a guy in a suit stomping through miniatures, and that somewhere in this franchise there is a rock-singing villain named Candelilla. Then she and Omari decide to write the musical. Press play.
Guest SpotlightOmari Miller is a Los Angeles–based actor, singer, and performer, and a regular in Mandy's long-running cabaret Miscast: Right Singer, Wrong Song, most recently on the bill for Miscast 46 at The Pico.
Reference Links
The Franchises

• Super Sentai
• Tokusatsu
• Power Rangers
• Kamen Rider
• Toei Company

The Episode Mandy Watched

• Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger (2013)
• Power Rangers Dino Charge (the American adaptation)
• Yamato Kinjo (Kyoryu Blue, later in Kamen Rider Geats)
• Kamen Rider Geats

Series Mentioned

• Himitsu Sentai Gorenger (1975)
• J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai (1977)
• Battle Fever J
• Denshi Sentai Denziman
• Taiyo Sentai Sun Vulcan
• Choudenshi Bioman
• Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger (source of Mighty Morphin)
• Ninja Sentai Kakuranger
• Chouriki Sentai Ohranger
• Power Rangers Zeo
• Kyukyu Sentai GoGoV
• Mirai Sentai Timeranger
• Power Rangers Time Force
• Mashin Sentai Kiramager (the 2020 gemstone season)
• Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger
• Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers
• Power Rangers Turbo
• Power Rangers Ninja Storm
• Power Rangers Mystic Force
• Kamen Rider Ryuki
• Kamen Rider Dragon Knight
• Masked Rider (1995 US series)
• Kamen Rider My-Th (2026)

The People

• Haim Saban
• Stan Lee
• Margaret Loesch
• Jinkx Monsoon
• Jerome Robbins

Films & TV

• Spider-Man (1978 Toei series)
• Inside Out (2015)
• Batman Beyond
• Sailor Moon
• Doctor Who, "The Devil's Chord"
• Friends

Concepts

• Reiwa era
• Kabuki
• Vocaloid
• Hatsune Miku

From the Make Me a Nerd Archive

• Batman Pulled a Gun: Batman Beyond with Jason Yeung
• Moon Prism Power, Make Me a Gorgeous Podcaster: Sailor Moon with Jonny Lee Jr.
• Visiting Doctor Who, Rolling with Krissy Lenz, Finding Danny Bonaduce

Marty Schneider and Dan Ludwig, hosts of the podcast Breaking Mayberry, explain that they once built two rating scales for The Andy Griffith Show: an Andy-meter for how good the episode is, and a Barney-meter for how much psychic damage it did to America. They needed both. Mandy watched three episodes on assignment (a boy kills a bird and learns a lesson, a city slicker learns to slow down whether he likes it or not, and one that is just dogs), and she arrived with a few questions. Is Ron Howard a brilliant child actor? Where exactly is Opie’s mother? Is Barney at the YMCA a little too often? And why does a show this warm leave her with a lingering sadness hangover, the same one she got from Bluey?Then Mandy watched The Mayberry Effect, a documentary about the fans who make pilgrimages to Mount Airy, North Carolina, dress as Floyd the Barber, and follow a red-headed six-year-old around his yard because he looks a bit like Opie, and she wrote down a single word: whoa. Marty and Dan apologize (they told her to watch the Ted Koppel segment instead), then get into a fandom that stopped being about the show a long time ago and became about a place that never existed, and what that looks like when you swap Barney Fife for Chewbacca. Also, a verdict on whether Andy Griffith is hot. Press play.
Guest SpotlightMarty Schneider & Dan Ludwig are a comedy team, writers, and podcasters from Philadelphia. They host Breaking Mayberry, a classic TV podcast without the nostalgia bait, taking a hard look at vintage favorites and cultural oddities from the 1950s to the early 2000s (mostly The Andy Griffith Show, occasionally Glee, currently the failed sitcoms of ABC's TGIF lineup in a miniseries called TGI Failures).

• Breaking Mayberry on Apple Podcasts
• Breaking Mayberry on Spotify
• Breaking Mayberry on YouTube (clips)
• Breaking Mayberry on Bluesky
• Breaking Mayberry on Instagram
• Support Breaking Mayberry on Patreon ($8/month, bonus episodes)

The Show

• The Andy Griffith Show
• Andy Griffith
• Don Knotts
• Ron Howard
• Frances Bavier (Aunt Bee)

The Fandom

• The Mayberry Effect (2021 documentary)
• Mayberry Days, Mount Airy, NC (September 21–27, 2026)
• Mount Airy, North Carolina
• The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club (iMayberry)
• Two Chairs No Waiting podcast (Allan Newsome, since 2008)
• Allan Newsome, Floyd the Barber tribute artist
• David Browning, "The Mayberry Deputy"
• Mayberry Man (2021 fan-funded film)
• Andy Griffith Museum

Books

• Looking for Andy Griffith: A Father's Journey by Evan Dalton Smith (UNC Press, 2024)

Music

• "The Mayberry Rap" by Rick Rumble
• "Mayberry" by Rascal Flatts
• "No Rain" by Blind Melon (the Bee Girl video)
• Theme: "Wonderstruck" by Jane and the Boy

Also Mentioned

• I Spy (1965–1968, Bill Cosby)
• Gorillas in the Mist
• Waiting for Guffman
• Cocoon
• Lady and the Tramp
• The Music Man (1962)
• Silver Spoons (Ricky Stratton)
• Happy Days (Chuck Cunningham, still upstairs)
• Firefly and the Browncoats

In the TruStory FM Universe

• Watch Me Fly… Serenity with Krissy Lenz — the episode that made Mandy a Browncoat
• Bluey with Kelly Vrooman — the other sadness-hangover episode

Fact-Check Corner

1. The book title. Marty calls Evan Dalton Smith's book Searching for Andy Griffith on "North Carolina University Press," recently released. The book is Looking for Andy Griffith: A Father's Journey, University of North Carolina Press, May 2024.
2. TV penetration in 1960. Marty says 15–25 percent of US households had a TV when the show premiered in 1960, rising to 93 percent by 1968. Commonly cited figures put US TV household penetration near 87–90 percent by 1960 already; the 15–25 percent range is closer to the early 1950s. The 1968 figure is roughly right. The underlying point (TV became ubiquitous across the show's run) is defensible, the specific premiere-year stat is not.
3. "Aired alongside I Dream of Jeannie." "Dogs, Dogs, Dogs" aired in 1963 and I Dream of Jeannie premiered in 1965.

Connect with the Show

• Follow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens (both with K's) TikTok: @mandymiscast
• Make Me a Nerd runs on curious people. If that's you, the inner circle is at makemeanerd.com/join, where episodes arrive ad-free and early, and the show goes deepe...

The British period drama is a genre built on restraint. Longing glances across drawing rooms. Inheritance law. A great many people declining, for six or seven seasons, to say the one thing they most want to say. Fackham Hall surveys this rich and noble tradition, agrees that it is both rich and sufficiently noble, and then installs a bell in the servants’ hall labeled masturbatorium. The bell rings. It keeps ringing. It rings long enough that it eventually falls off the wall from structural fatigue. This is the establishing sequence.Justine Huxley picked this one. Mandy had previously watched it in the background while doing something else and absorbed roughly a fifth of it, so she came back for a proper viewing with a notebook, which turns out to be the only responsible way to approach a film that fires a joke every fifteen seconds. Together they excavate the good stuff: the family motto carved above the gate (incestus ad infinitum), the poster in the servants’ quarters gently informing staff that unionizing causes cancer, and Jimmy Carr as a vicar who cannot place a comma to save his life or anyone else’s. Roughly halfway through, the film quietly abandons Downton Abbey and becomes an Agatha Christie murder mystery instead, and that is just fine.The conversation wanders where the good ones do. Into Justine’s parallel career playing Dungeons and Dragons on stage for animal charities, which is a real job she has. Into the international editions of Last One Laughing, of which she has personally watched about nine. Into a sincere disagreement over whether After Life is a comedy or a grief spiral with jokes in it. Anyhow… you get the idea. Press play.Guest SpotlightJustine Huxley is an actress, singer, and voiceover artist from Los Angeles, best known as the voice of Wattson in Apex Legends, with credits including Sword Art Online, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, and Spyro Reignited Trilogy. Voice acting is what pulled her into tabletop gaming, and in two years she has played more than fifty live Dungeons and Dragons shows, most of them for charity. She performs regularly alongside Mandy in Miscast LA.

• Instagram: @justinehuxley
• TikTok: @justinehuxley
• IMDb: Justine Huxley

Referenced in This EpisodeThe Main Event

• Fackham Hall — 2025, directed by Jim O’Hanlon, written by Steve Dawson, Andrew Dawson, Tim Inman, Jimmy Carr, and Patrick Carr
• The Vicar — the official clip, if you want the punctuation bit before you commit
• Damian Lewis — Humphrey, Lord Davenport, who survives more than any man should
• Thomasin McKenzie — Rose Davenport
• Ben Radcliffe — Eric Noone
• Katherine Waterston — Prudence, Lady Davenport
• Tom Felton — Archibald Davenport
• Emma Laird — Poppy Davenport, who chooses the manure
• Anna Maxwell Martin — Mrs Edna McAllister
• Sue Johnston — Great Aunt Bonaparte
• Tom Goodman-Hill — Inspector Watt
• Tim McMullan — Cyril, who is always right there
• Jason Done — J. R. R. Tolkien
• Hayley Mills — the narrator

The Comedy Lineage

• Airplane!
• The Naked Gun
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• A Fish Called Wanda — the source of Mandy’s single grievance
• Dumb and Dumber
• Family Guy — cited for the same permission structure
• The Bechdel test, without which the sisters are just two women at a party

Other Films That Came Up

• Jojo Rabbit
• The Graduate
• The Notebook, which neither of them has seen
• The Wizard of Oz
• Fifty Shades of Grey, here reduced to one

Television, Places, and Assorted Nerdery

• Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs
• Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess, the Bonaparte template
• Call the Midwife
• The Forsyte Saga and Homeland, the Damian Lewis Mandy knew
• Motherland
• LOL: Last One Laughing UK and 8 Out of 10 Cats, both hosted by Jimmy Carr
• Alan Carr and The Traitors
• Rebel Wilson, host of the Australian Last One Laughing
• The Paper and

Three times in the theater. Twenty-odd more at home. Six years of having thoughts about Parasite, and roughly four minutes total in which anyone has let her share them. This week Sherry Mandujano gets an hour.Mandy had never seen it. She takes notes throughout, and most of them are some version of "what genre is this," because the film keeps answering differently. The conversation follows it wherever it goes: production design, then class, then smell, then a woman scaling a wall sideways, then a formal grievance against the screenplay concerning facial hair. Nobody in this movie comes out looking good, and by the end that includes the people watching it. Press play.Guest SpotlightSherry Mandujano is an actress, singer, and director based in Los Angeles. Originally from the Bay Area, she trained at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York, studying theatre performance and classical voice, before moving to LA. Her screen credits include The Young and the Restless, This Is Us, I'm Dying Up Here, Baskets, and Downsizing. On stage she's appeared in Real Women Have Curves, Man of La Mancha, and Songs for a New World, and she made her directorial debut in 2021. She performs regularly alongside Mandy in Miscast LA.

• Instagram: @sherry_mandujano
• IMDb: Sherry Mandujano

Referenced in This EpisodeThe Main Event

• Parasite — 2019, directed by Bong Joon Ho
• Lee Jung-eun — Moon-gwang, the housekeeper
• Park So-dam — Ki-jung, the "art therapist"
• Song Kang-ho — Ki-taek, the Kim family father
• Suseok — the Korean scholar's stone tradition
• Jjapaguri (ram-don) — the noodle dish in the stairway scene
• 92nd Academy Awards — where Parasite won four, including Best Picture
• Palme d'Or — Cannes 2019

Other Films Mandy Brought Up

• Being John Malkovich
• The Talented Mr. Ripley
• Miss Congeniality
• Starship Troopers

Television, Games, and Assorted Nerdery

• Squid Game
• The Potato Lab — Sherry's happy-ending K-drama counterexample
• Game of Thrones and the Red Wedding
• The Golden Girls
• Magic: The Gathering
• Icarus, who flew too close to the sun

Past Episodes You Might Like

• Squid Game Season 2 with Jimmy Aquino
• Married North of the Wall: Game of Thrones with Jeremy Klavens

Fact-Check Corner

• The peach fuzz isn't poison. Sherry says the Kims "poisoned the housekeeper with the peach fuzz," and Mandy repeats it. What the film actually shows is the Kims exploiting Moon-gwang's peach allergy to produce symptoms that Mrs. Park reads as tuberculosis. She gets framed for being sick, not poisoned.
• The Oscar categories. Sherry's count is correct. Four wins at the 92nd Academy Awards in February 2020, under the official names Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. It was the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture, and it took the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2019, also a first for a Korean film.
• The production design claims hold up and it’s just crazy. Sherry's account of the crew salvaging real doors, windows, and gates from neighborhoods slated for redevelopment is confirmed by both Bong and production designer Lee Ha-jun, who also made silicone molds of real bricks from those sites. The entire semi-basement neighborhood was a built set, constructed in a water tank in Ilsan so it could be flooded and drained on schedule. The Park mansion was a set too: a real plot of land with a ground floor built on it and the upper floor added in post. 
• Da-hye's age. Mandy says "they're only like nineteen or whatever." The film never states an age. Da-hye is confirmed as a high school student being tutored for her English exams.
• The ramyeon. Sherry calls it "the pot of ramyeon," which is accurate as far as it goes. The dish is jjapaguri specifically, sold to English-language audiences as "ram-don," built from two instant noodle brands with sirloin dropped in. It’s another one of those class comments of the film, taking fifty-cent packages of instant noodles and topping them with sixty bucks of Wagyu and serving it to a kid as a snack. 

Connect with the Show

• Follow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens (both with K's) TikTok: @mandymiscast
• Make Me a Nerd runs on curious people. If that's you, the inner circle is at makemeanerd.com/join, where episodes arrive ad-free and early, and the show goes deeper between installments.
• Listening on Apple Podcasts? Leave a review. Mandy reads them on air and will absolutely say your username out loud.
• Make Me a Nerd is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Pete Wright. Theme song: "Wonderstruck" by Jane and the Boy.<...

Mandy Kaplan came to this with three episodes of Drive to Survive and one other piece of racing knowledge, which is that she can recite Talladega Nights from memory. Ninety seconds into the first episode a teenager gets dropped off at school by his mother, says bye Mom, grabs his backpack, and turns out to be a professional Formula 1 driver. Something maternal took hold around then and never really let go.Pete Wright is here to explain the sport, which he maintains is an engineering competition that happens to involve drivers. He gets a few minutes into that before the whole thing falls sideways into a team principal who called himself Darth Vader and then got fired for reasons nobody will say out loud, a crash in Singapore in 2008 that wasn't a crash, and what happens to a car when it gets within one second of the car ahead of it. Mandy wants to know who these boys are and where they came from. Pete would rather discuss regenerative braking. The part where a nineteen-year-old is currently beating the greatest driver of his generation doesn't come up until almost the end. Press play.Guest Spotlight: Pete WrightPete Wright is co-founder of TruStory FM, where he produces and engineers a bunch of what you listen to, this show included. He co-hosts The Next Reel family of film shows, Craft & Chaos, and Marvel Movie Minute, and Mandy has designated him her overlord. His debut novel Onset, Book One of the Manifest trilogy, is out now. It's a dark YA crossover thriller about foster kids, hidden abilities, and what it costs to be noticed. His novella Lattice came out earlier this year.

• Website: It's Me... Pete.
• On writing Onset: itsmepete.com/blog/2026/on-writing-onset
• Instagram: @_petewright
• Bluesky: @itsmepete.com

Reference LinksThe Show That Started It

• Formula 1: Drive to Survive
• Drive to Survive, Season 8, covering the 2025 season, released on Netflix and, in the US, Apple TV

At the Movies

• F1 (2025), directed by Joseph Kosinski and shot with real paddock access on real race weekends
• Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
• Quarterback, the Netflix series Mandy wishes Drive to Survive were more like

The Drivers

• Kimi Antonelli
• Lewis Hamilton
• George Russell
• Charles Leclerc
• Max Verstappen
• Lando Norris
• Oscar Piastri
• Isack Hadjar
• Liam Lawson
• Jack Doohan
• Gabriel Bortoleto
• Oliver Bearman
• Michael Schumacher

The Men in Charge

• Christian Horner
• Flavio Briatore

How Any of This Works

• Crashgate, the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix
• The halo
• Drag Reduction System
• How 2026 qualifying works
• 2026 F1 season calendar
• Current 2026 standings

The Circuits

• Circuit de Monaco
• Silverstone Circuit
• Marina Bay Street Circuit, Singapore
• Red Bull Ring, Spielberg

Tangents

• The Ship of Theseus
• Ernst Stavro Blofeld
• Pole Position, the arcade game
• "Wonderstruck" by Jane and the Boy

Elsewhere on TruStory FM

• Hangman Adam Page with Kevin Ryan, the wrestling episode Mandy brings up
• Prince with Kyle Olson and Pete Wright
• The Film Board, where Pete writes the openings Mandy likes

Fact-Check CornerSix corrections. Most of what Pete rattles off holds up under checking, including the qualifying format, the championship math, and the entire Horner chronology. These are the exceptions.Hangman Adam Page wrestles for AEW, not WWE. Mandy calls her earlier wrestling episode a WWE episode. Page has been with AEW since the promotion started and held its world championship.Nelson Piquet Jr., not Nelson Piquet. The Singapore driver was the son. His father is a three-time world champion who had nothing to do with it. Pete was clearly spea...

Mandy has a real, non-joking anxiety about death. You'd think that's the sort of thing a person would mention to a friend before that friend assigns her a series about a man who reanimates corpses for sixty seconds at a stretch to ask them who did it. Jessica Jimenez knew. Jessica Jimenez picked it anyway. Third appearance, still working off the Showgirls debt.So Mandy watched all nine episodes with a Xanax in one hand and a notebook in the other. Six Emmys. One writers' strike. Cancelled anyway. By about episode four she has stopped bracing for the death stuff and girded for the fight with Jessica about Olive Snook's wardrobe. Jessica may be wrong about the wardrobe. Press play.Guest Spotlight
Jessica Jimenez — TV producer, musical-theater mischief-maker, and scholar of the pop-culture deep cut. This is her third trip through the Make Me A Nerd gauntlet, following Return to Oz and Showgirls. Her stated goal this time was redemption. Her actual achievement was getting Mandy to voluntarily watch a show about corpses.Jessica's social links to be supplied — see Pete-Notes.
Reference Links

The Show

• Pushing Daisies (ABC, 2007–2009)
• Pie-lette — the Barry Sonnenfeld–directed pilot
• Pigeon — episode four, the one Mandy got lost in
• List of Pushing Daisies episodes
• Pushing Daisies at the Television Academy — the official Emmy tally
• Where to watch

The Cast & Creators

• Lee Pace — Ned, the pie maker
• Anna Friel — Charlotte "Chuck" Charles
• Kristin Chenoweth — Olive Snook
• Chi McBride — Emerson Cod, knitter
• Swoosie Kurtz — Lily Charles
• Ellen Greene — Vivian Charles
• Jim Dale — the Narrator
• Sy Richardson — the Coroner
• Raúl Esparza — Alfredo Aldarisio
• Patrick Fabian — Dandelion car salesman, and Mandy's actual friend
• Paul Reubens — Oscar Vibenius, who can smell death
• Jayma Mays — Elista, in "Pigeon"
• Joel McHale — Harold Hundin, in "Bitches"
• Bryan Fuller — creator
• Cami Patton — casting director, with Meg Liberman and Jennifer Lare

Films & Shows Mentioned

• Edward Scissorhands
• Alice in Wonderland (1951)
• The Fall (2006) — the Lee Pace movie Jessica couldn't name: Tarsem Singh, a hospital, a stuntman, and a little girl
• Bodies Bodies Bodies
• Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel — where Lee Pace actually plays the bad guy
• Dust Bunny (2025) — Bryan Fuller's directorial debut
• Scream 7 — peak-hotness Joel McHale
• The Gilded Age
• Better Call Saul and Saved by the Bell: The College Years
• Will & Grace — for the Jack-and-Karen of it all

Elsewhere on Make Me A Nerd

• Return to Oz with Jessica Jimenez
• Showgirls with Jessica Jimenez
• Labyrinth with Krissy Lenz
• Veronica Mars with Sloan Just — where Mandy learned what noir was
• Movie Friends Michelle Rubinstein and Seth Vargas on the Strange Legacy of Ed Wood

Podcasts Mentioned

• We Are Liars — A Pretty Little Liars Podcast, hosted by Michelle Rubinstein and Liss Daley
• Total Betty Podcast Network
• Movie Friends

Fact-Check CornerThe Emmy count. Mandy reads out 57 nominations, 18 wins, "including seven Primetime Emmy Awards." The overall figure tracks with IMDb's all-award-bodies tally, but the Emmy number is one high: the Television Academy lists 16 Primetime Emmy nominations and 6 wins across the two seasons. The wins were Directing for a Comedy Series and Picture Editing (2008), and Kristin Chenoweth for Supporting Actress, plus Art Direction, Costumes, and Makeup (2009). Jessica's "I think it was like seven" and Mandy's confirmation were both, endearingly, wrong together.Lee Pace is not in Star Wars. Jessica says he's "a bad guy in the newer Star Wars movies." He plays Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel — Marvel, not Lucasfilm. He's also Thranduil in The Hobbittrilogy and Brother Day in Foundation. No Star Wars.Season 3 is not announced. Jessica says it was announced earlier this year for 2027. As of now, Bryan Fuller has confirmed he has a season 3 pitch and that the cast is willing — but there's no platform attached, no formal order, and no 2027 date. Mandy's cited Dust Bunny press cycle quote is currently the accurate story.Kristin Chenoweth is 4'11", not 4'10". Lee Pace at 6'5" checks out, so the height gag survives intact.Joel McHale is 54. Mandy guessed "probably fifty-two or something." Born November 1971. Dear God… he and producer Pete are the same age. What’s the word for “delightful and depressing at the same time?”Four wives, not three....