The Pop Culture Professors

You Can See Everything is the new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of biotech startup Theranos, who was convicted of fraud and is currently serving a federal prison sentence. Or is it a work of performance art starring Nathan Fielder, the comedian behind Nathan for You, The Rehearsal, and The Curse? It's about truth,  psychology, shame, simulacra, Silicon Valley, and a million other things besides. And we're going to get into it all.

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It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and the New York Times has published its list of the best 100 television shows of the 21st Century. We react to this list, ponder what is underrated, overrated, and completely snubbed, and question the value of grand lists in an age of micro-cultures.

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The Pop Culture Professors revisit the pilot of The Leftovers, which ran on HBO from 2014-2017. How does this grief-drenched story about a world in ontological crisis play today, in 2026? 

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and today we react to Olivia Rodrigo's new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. We analyze the lyrics and the aesthetics of the album, including the notable influence of The Cure and 80s British New Wave in particular. We offer an appreciation of Rodrigo's commitment to song craft and to live performance. And we note with pleasure that, perhaps unusually for a contemporary pop release, this album works as a coherent set of songs placed in an intentional order and with a defined narrative.

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It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and today we analyze the new TV series Cape Fear. First we give a reaction to episodes 1 & 2 of the series, and then we discuss the two earlier movie versions of the story, from 1962 and 1991.

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It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and we conclude our analysis of season 5 of For All Mankind with a discussion of the finale, “This Land Is Our Land.”

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It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of season 5 of For All Mankind. In this show, we discuss episode 6 “No Sudden Moves”; Episode 7 “The Sirens of Titan”; Episode 8 “Brave New World” and Episode 9 “Sons and Daughters”.

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It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of season 5 of For All Mankind. In this show, we discuss episode 3 “Home”; Episode 4 “Open Source”; and Episode 5 “Svoboda.”

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It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the first two episodes of season five of For All Mankind, Apple+TV’s alternate history show about a world in which the space race never ended.

First, we discuss the season premiere, “First Light.” We focus on the presentation of Mars as an alternative to the social and political system of Earth, and explore the degree to which a Martian rebellion seems likely. We look at the alternate history of the show's depiction of 2012, including the presidency of Al Gore and the analogy between Mars and Iraq.

Then, we tackle episode two, “The Hard Six.” We focus on the apparent discovery of extraterrestrial life and how that relates to the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter hypothesis; rights and citizenship on Mars; "Craters": as refugees or undocumented migrants; Dev Ayessa's continued pursuit of utopia. We also offer a critical appraisal of the episode as a work of drama, and answer listener's questions.

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It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and in this show we conclude our series on the films of Michael Mann. Structured as a knock-out tournament, we have set his eight most highly regarded movies in single-elimination competition. Today, we consider Heat (1995) and Collateral (2004). We ask what makes a Michael Mann movie distinctive, and what themes and ideas seem to capture his attention and bring out his best work. And we conclude the series by ranking the top Michael Mann movies.

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