As we continue our recording break, here is another of our favorite episodes. It's fom August, 2025, and it is SO FUNNY.

I hope you're happy today, because today you're getting served this hilarious and fun episode about 2004's dance battle spectacular featuring 2000's cute boys like Marques Houston and the band B2K. We are joined by return guest Dr. Briana Barner, who previously talked about podcasts themselves. Y'all, this was a jubilant and joyous good time, and we did it all for Lil Saint (you'll have to watch the movie or listen to the episode for that to make sense).

Dr. Briana Barner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland. She received a doctorate in Radio-Television-Film and a doctoral portfolio in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Texas. Briana also earned a Master’s in Women’s and Gender Studies from UT. She is an interdisciplinary critical and cultural communications scholar with research interests in Black podcasts, digital and Black feminism, digital media, Black cultural production and representation. Her work has been published in Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, Film Quarterly, and the edited collection Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography, Feminist Approaches to Media Theory and Research and Black Sisterhoods: Paradigms and Praxis. Briana is currently working on a manuscript about the cultural production of Black podcasts.

Find her on Facebook , Instagram and here!

While we continue our recording break, we offer you what I think is the most hilarious episode we have ever done. It's from April 2025. SO funny.

It's all product placement, all the time as we talk to educator, writer and podcaster Shaun Duke about 1988's E.T. rip-off/commercial for McDonald's and Coca-Cola wrapped into a movie "Mac and Me". Oh, we laughed while recording this one. y'all.

Is it a good movie? No. Is it delightful? Yes. Hope you love this episode.

Shaun Duke is a writer, editor, podcaster, and educator. By day, he works as a professor of English at DMACC and as the Director of the Portolan Project, where he builds educational modules for science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers. By night, he produces The Skiffy and Fanty Show, a 4X Hugo Finalist SF/F/H podcast, streams games and occasional TTRPG actual plays on Twitch as AlphabetStreams, and works as a freelance editor at The Duke of Editing. He's also published genre fiction in a few places, which is pretty cool, among other nifty things. He also loves books, reptiles, his cat, and other strangeness.

You can find Shaun on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.

We are taking a little break from new episodes, so we will be posting some of our favorite past shows. This one is from last June with our new friend, Analese Alvarez!

Don't (boom) stop (hey) thinking about this podcast as we talk legendary rock band Fleetwood Mac with Analese Alvarez, co-host of the podcast Nerd Best Friends. This was so so so so much fun because Analese is not only a fan of the band, she is a really a historian of them and their music AND has a personal tie to their live reunion album and film, "The Dance". Enjoy this episode, then crank some Fleetwood Mac.

Analese Alvarez is a high school principal, Buffy fanatic, cohost of Nerd Best Friends, the podcast that covers all of the NERDY conversations you are already having.... OR WISH YOU COULD!

You can find her and the show on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.